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THE HULSEAN LECTURES
FOR M.DCCC.XLV AND M.DCCC.XLVI.
BY RICHARD CHENETIX TRENCH, M.A.,
VICAR OF ITCHEN-STOKE, HANTS; PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY,
KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON; EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO
THE LORD BISHOP OF OXFORD J AND LATE
HULSEAN LECTURER.
SECOND EDITION, REVISED.
CAMBRIDGE :
MACMILLAN, BARCLAY, AND MACMILLAN.
LONDON: JOHN W. PARKER.
1847.
Camfcrfoge :
U rtnlett at tfie nl&erstts IPress.
ADVERTISEMENT.
I HAVE not felt myself at liberty to make more
than a few verbal alterations, or here and there to
recast a sentence, or add a clause, in these Lec-
tures, on the occasion of their second appearance.
I have inserted indeed a few brief passages, which
originally belonging to the Discourses, had been
omitted in the delivery, and have to the Second
Series appended a considerable number of Notes in
confirmation or illustration of statements made in
the text. These having been asked for in more
quarters than one, I trust may not be found unac-
ceptable to some readers.
ITCHEN-STOKE, Nov. 1.9, 1847.
2067986
SUBSTANCE OF CERTAIN CLAUSES IN THE WILL
OF THE REV. J. HULSE, M.A.
(Dated July 21, 1777.)
HE founds a Lectureship in the University of Cam-
bridge.
The Lecturer to be a " Clergyman in the Univer-
sity of Cambridge, of the degree of Master of Arts,
and under the age of forty years." He is to be
elected annually, " on Christmas- Day, or within seven
days after, by the Vice-Chancellor for the time being,
and by the Master of Trinity College, and the Master
of St John's College, or any two of them." In case
the Master of Trinity or the Master of St John's
be the Vice-Chancellor , the Greek Professor is to be
the third Trustee.
The duty of the said Lecturer is, by the Will,
" to preach twenty Sermons in the whole year," at
" St Mary Great Church in Cambridge ; " but the
number having been found inconvenient, application
was made to the Court of Chancery for leave to
reduce it, and eight Sermons only are now required.
These are to be printed at the Preacher's expense,
within twelve months after the delivery of the last
Sermon.
The subject of the Lectures is to be " the Evidence
for Revealed Religion; the Truth and Excellence
of Christianity ; Prophecies and Miracles ; direct or
collateral proofs of the Christian Religion, especially
the collateral arguments ; the more difficult texts,
or obscure parts of the Holy Scriptures;" or any
one or more of these topics, at the discretion of the
Preacher.
CONTENTS
FOR THE YEAR 1845.
LECTURE I.
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE.
PSALM CXIX. 18.
PAGE
Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of
thy law 1
LECTURE II.
THE UNITY OF SCRIPTURE.
EPHESIANS I. 9, 10.
Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according
to his good pleasure, which he hath purposed in himself;
that in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might
gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are
in heaven and which are on earth ; even in him 19
LECTURE III.
THE MAN1FOLDNESS OF SCRIPTURE.
MATTHEW XIV. 20.
They did all eat, and were filled 37
LECTURE IV.
THE ADVANCE OF SCRIPTURE.
HEBREWS I. 1, 2.
God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time
past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days
spoken unto us by his Son 57
vui CONTENTS.
LECTURE V.
THE PAST DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE.
JOHN XII. 6.
PAGE
These things understood not his disciples at the first; but when
Jesus was glorified, then remembered they that these things
were written of him 74
LECTURE VI.
THE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OF SCRIPTURE.
ISAIAH XII. 3.
With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation . 90
LECTURE VII.
THE FRUITFULNESS OF SCRIPTURE.
EZEKIEL XLVII. 9.
And it shall come to pass, that every thing that liveth, which
moveth, whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live 107
LECTURE VIII.
THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE.
REVELATION VI. 2.
Conquering and to conquer 123
CONTENTS
FOR THE YEAR 1846.
LECTURE I.
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE.
HAGGAI II. 7-
PAGE
The Desire of all nations shall come 143
LECTURE II.
THE VANQUISHER OF HADES.
MARK XVI. 3.
Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre? 162
LECTURE III.
THE SON OF GOD.
ACTS XIV. 11.
And when the people saw what Paul had done, they lifted up
their voices, saying in the speech of Lycaonia, The gods
are come down to us in the likeness of men 179
LECTURE IV.
THE PERFECT SACRIFICE.
MICAH VI. 6, 7.
Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself
before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt-
offerings ; with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be
pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands
of rivers of oil ? shall I give my firstborn for my trans-
gression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soulf ... 195
T. H. L. b
x CONTENTS.
LECTURE V.
THE RESTORER OF PARADISE.
GENESIS V. 29.
PAGE
And he called his name Noah, saying, This same shall com-
fort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because
of the ground which the Lord hath cursed 212
LECTURE VI.
THE REDEEMER FROM SIN.
ROMANS VII. 21, 23.
I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present
with me. For I delight in the law of God after the
inward man: but I see another law in my members,
warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me
into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members . . . 227
LECTURE VII.
THE FOUNDER OF A KINGDOM.
HEBREWS XI. 10.
A city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. 246
LECTURE VIII.
CONCLUDING LECTURE.
1 THESSALONIANS V. 21.
Prove all things ; hold fast that which is good 264
THE FITNESS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
FOR UNFOLDING THE SPIRITUAL LIFE OF MEN
BEING
THE HULSEAN LECTURES
FOR THE YEAR M.DCCC.XLV.
LECTURE I.
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE,
PSALM CXIX, 18.
Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things
out of thy law.
IT was with a true insight into the sad yet needful con-
ditions of the Truth militant in a world of error, that
he who has of such just title given his name to these
Lectures, which I am now permitted to deliver in this
place, devoted so largely of his temporal means to
the securing among us a succession of discourses,
having more or less nearly to do with the establishing
and vindicating of that Truth against all gainsayers
and opposers. For such apologies of our holy Faith
as he desired by this and other kindred foundations
of which he was the author, to promote and set for-
ward, are deeply grounded in the very nature of that
Faith itself and this, whether they be defensive or
aggressive, whether they be of the Truth clearing
itself from unjust aspersions, or carrying the war, as
it must often do, into the quarters of error, and prov-
ing itself not merely to be true, but to be Truth abso-
lute, to the exclusion of all rival claims. We know,
as a matter of history, that Christian literature did
begin, as far back as we can trace it, with works of
this character; they are among the earliest which
have reached us ; probably among the earliest which
existed. Nor do they belong merely to the first ages
of the Church's being, however in them they may
T. H. L. 1
2 LECTURE I. [1845.
naturally have had a special importance. The Truth,
like Him who gave it, will always be a sign which
shall be spoken against. The forms of the enmity
may change ; the coarser and more brutal accusations
of one age may give place to subtler charges of
another ; but so long as an ungodly world exists, the
enmity itself will remain, and will find utterance. The
Truth, therefore, must ever be succinct, and prompt
to give an answer for itself; and this it does the more
readily, as knowing that not man's glory, but God's
glory, is at hazard, when it is assailed ; as being in-
finitely removed from that pride which might tempt
to the keeping silence, because it knows that the
accusations made against it are unjust ; being rather
full of that humility and love, which make it willingly
condescend to the most wayward, if haply it may win
them to the service of its King.
And this is not all : the Truth cannot pause when
it has thus refuted and thrown back the things that it
knew not, which yet were laid to its charge. In its
very nature it is aggressive also. How should it not
be so ? how should it not make war on the strong-
holds of falsehood and error, when its very task in the
world is to deliver them that were prisoners there ?
how should it not seek to gather men under its ban-
ner, being moved, as it ever is, with an inward
bleeding compassion for all them that are aliens from
the faith of Christ, as knowing that every man, till he
has found himself in Him, is estranged from the true
home of his spirit, the right centre of his being ?
How should it not press its treasures upon each, com-
mend its medicines to all, when they are medicines
for every man's hurt, treasures which would make
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 3
every man rich? when it knows that it has the reality,
of which every lie is the counterfeit ; that when men
are the fiercest set against it, then are they the most
madly at strife with their own blessedness ?
But this, it might be said, would sufficiently ex-
plain the uses of Christian apology before a world
which resists, or puts by, the Faith ; it would explain
why the Truth should count itself happy to stand, as
it did once in the person of Paul, before Festus and
Agrippa, and in presence of Gentile and Jew, to
make answer for itself. But, allowing this, what
means it when before a congregation of faithful men,
when at one of the great centres of Christian light
and knowledge in our own land, a preacher under-
takes, and that at large and from year to year, the
handling some point of the evidences of our Religion?
Might not this seem at first as superfluous a form, as
when, upon a day of coronation, a champion rides
forth, and with none but loyal hearts beating in unison
with the multitudinous voices which have hailed his
king and theirs, flings down his glove, and challenges
any that will gainsay the monarch's right to the
crown which hast just been set upon his brows ? Our
task might indeed be superfluous as this, were its only
purpose to convince opposers. There is, blessed be
God, a foregone conclusion in the minds of the faith-
ful, drawn from all which they have known themselves
of the life and power of the Truth, which suffers
them not for an instant to regard it as something yet
in debate, and still to be proved ; since it has already
approved itself in power and blessing unto them.
And yet even for them a work of Christian apo-
logy may be so constructed as to have its worth and
12
4 LECTURE I. [1845.
meaning. If it widen the basis on which their Faith
reposes, if it help them to take count of and use
treasures, which before they had, but which they knew
not before save in part ; if it cause them to pass from
belief to insight ; if it bring out for them the perfect
proportions of the Truth, its singular adaptations to
the pre-established harmonies of the world, as they
had not perceived these before ; if it furnish them
with a clue for guiding some perplexed and wander-
ing brother from his dreary labyrinth of doubt and
error, if in any of these ways it effectually serve,
surely it has not been in vain. Such uses we acknow-
ledge in Evidences of our Faith, when we constitute
them a part of our discipline in this University ; which
assuredly we do, not as presuming that we have to
deal with any who are yet aliens from that Faith, who
have yet need to be brought to the acknowledging of
the truth as it is in Jesus ; but rather as desiring to
put them who already have drawn in their faith, and
that from better sources, from the lips of their mothers,
from the catechisms of their childhood, from among
the sanctities of their home, in possession of the sci-
entific grounds of that belief, which already, by a
better and more immediate tenure, is theirs.
Nor may we leave wholly out of sight that in a
time like our own, of great spiritual agitations, at a
place like this, of signal intellectual activity, where
oftentimes the low mutterings of distant controversies,
scarcely heard elsewhere, are distinctly audible, there
can hardly fail to be some perplexed with difficulties,
harassed, it may be, with doubts which they do not
welcome, but would give worlds to be rid of for ever
doubts which, perhaps, the very preciousness of the
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 5
Truth in their sight alone magnifies into importance;
for they feel that they are going to hang upon that
Truth all that is dear to them for life and for eter-
nity ; that it must be to them as their spirits' bride ;
and therefore they cannot endure upon it the faintest
breath of suspicion. I say, brethren, that we may
not leave wholly out of mind that one and another
in such perplexity of spirit may be among us here.
Happy above measure he, who has "a mouth and wis-
dom" given him to meet the necessities of such an
one among his brethren ; who shall help to bring him
into the secure haven of belief, into the confession
that in Christ Jesus are indeed laid up " all," and
those infinite, " treasures of wisdom and knowledge."
But if discourses of the kind which I am com-
mencing to-day, are indeed to be of profit to any,
there appear to be one or two preliminary conditions
in the choice of a subject, most needful to be ob-
served; which failing to observe, we shall, of sure con-
sequence, fall wholly short of those ends of usefulness
which we desire.
And first, a work of Christian defence will be
marred, if the subject which we select be one upon
which none of the great and decisive issues of the
mighty conflict between Truth and error depend ;
as when in jousts and tournaments a knight touches
the shield of some feeble adversary, passing by and
leaving the stronger and more accomplished unchal-
lenged. For thus it is with us, when we go off upon
some minor point, which, even were it plainly won,
would leave us in no essential degree the better, nor
an adversary the worse ; which he might yield without
6 LECTURE I. [1845
being dislodged from his strongholds of unbelief, with-
out even feeling them less tenable than before.
Or again, it will be to little profit that we deal
with hinderances to men's belief, which once indeed
were real and urgent, but of which the urgency and
reality have long since departed; if we take our stand
in some part of the battle-field from which the great
turmoil of the conflict has now ebbed and shifted
away; or conjure up phantom forms of opposition,
which once indeed were living and strong, but now
survive only in the tradition of books, and at this day
practically weaken no man's faith, disturb no man's
inner peace. This, too, were a fatal error, to have
failed to take note of that great stream of tendency,
which has borne us amid other shoals, and near other
rocks, from those among which our forefathers steered
with manful hearts the bark of their faith, and of
God's great mercy made not shipwTeck of that faith
amidst them all.
Or, once more, Christian apology fails in its lofti-
est aim, when it addresses not the whole man, but
the man only upon one side, and that not the highest,
of his being ; when it addresses not the conscience,
the affections, the will, but the understanding faculties
alone. How often do we meet in books of Christian
evidence the attempt made to substitute a logical or
mathematical proof of our most holy Faith for a
moral one ; to ascend to that proof by steps which
can no more be denied than the successive steps of a
problem in geometry, and so to drive an adversary
into a corner from whence there shall be no escape.
But there is always an escape for those that in heart
and will are alienated from the truth. At some stage
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. . 7
or other of the process they will successfully break
away, or even if they are brought to the end, they
remain not with us long. And we may thank God
that it is so ; for it is part of the glory of the Truth
that it leads in procession no chained, no unwilling
captives none that do not rejoice in their captivity,
and share in the triumph which they adorn. It is not
therefore that arguments which address themselves to
lower parts of man's being than the highest are to be
rejected but only their insufficiency acknowledged ;
that they of themselves will never introduce any to
the inner sanctuary of the Faith ; but can only lead
him up to the doors. Most needful are they in their
place ; most needful that Christianity should approve
itself to have a true historic foundation ; that as a
fact in history it should stand as rigid a criticism as
any other fact ; that the books which profess to tell
its story should vindicate for themselves an authentic
character; that the men who wrote those books should
be shown capable and credible witnesses of the things
which they deliver ; that the outworks of our Faith
should be seen to be no less defensible than its
citadel. But after all, the heart of the matter is not
there ; when all is done, men will feel in the deepest
centre of their being that it is the moral which must
prove the historic, and not the historic which can ever
prove the moral ; that evidences drawn from without
may be accepted as the welcome buttresses, but that
we can know no other foundations, of our Faith than
those which itself supplies. Eevelation, like the sun,
must be seen by its own light ; being itself the highest,
the ultimate appeal with regard to it cannot lie with
any lower than itself. There was indeed a sense in
8 LECTURE I. [1845.
which Christ received the witness of John, but there
was another in which He received not witness of any
man, only his own witness and his Father's. Even so
is it with his Word and his doctrine. There is a
witness which they can receive of men ; there is also
a witness which no other can yield them than them-
selves.
I trust, then, that taking for my argument The
fitness of Holy Scripture for unfolding the spiritual life
of men, and finding in its adaptations for this a proof
of its divine origin, I shall not fail in these primary
conditions, however immeasurably I shall of necessity
fall below the greatness and grandeur of my theme.
For first this question, Whether Scripture be not
a book capable of doing, and appointed to do, an
higher work than every other book, cannot be re-
garded as one which is not vital. It is felt to be vital
by all those whose aim and purpose is to prove that
it is but a book as other books, and therefore under-
lying the same weakness and incompletenesses as
every other work of men's hands. And these are
many ; since for one direct assault on Christianity as
a delivered fact, there are twenty on the records of
Christianity, or the manner of its delivery. Many a
one who would not venture boldly to enter on the
central question, whether the Christ whom the Church
believes, whom not any one passage alone, but the
collective sum of the Scriptures has delivered to us,
be not the highest conceivable revelation of the In-
visible God, and his Incarnation the necessary out-
coming of the perfections of the Godhead, will yet
hover on the outskirts of the conflict, and set himself
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 9
to the detecting, as he hopes, a flaw in this narration,
or to the proving the historic evidence for that book
insufficient. They who pass by the consideration as
one which never rose up before their minds, whether
there has not been a great education of our race,
reaching through all ages, going forward from the
day that God called Abraham from among his fathers'
idols ; and whether this great idea be not as a golden
thread, running through the whole woof and tissue of
Scripture they who shun altogether considerations
such as these, will yet set themselves diligently to
look for petty discrepancies between one historic
book and another, or for proofs which shall not be
put by, of some later hand than that of Moses in
some notice in the book of Genesis. And however
paltry and petty this warfare may be, it is no doubt
a true instinct of hate which makes them hope to dis-
cover vulnerable points in Scripture, as knowing that
could they really find such, through them they might
effectually wound Him, of whom the Scripture is the
outcoming and the Word.
Nor, again, can it be said that this is a matter,
which, though once brought into earnest debate, is
now so no more ; or that the earnestness of the struggle
has been now transferred to other parts of the great
controversy between the kingdoms of light and of
darkness. It is not so : the Porphyrys, the Celsuses,
and the Julians of an earlier age, have never wanted
their apt scholars, their worthy successors. The
mantle of the false prophet is as surely dropped and
bequeathed, as the mantle of the true. Who that
knows ought of what is going forward among a peo-
ple, who not in blood only, but in much besides, are
10 LECTURE I. [1845.
most akin to us of all the nations of Europe, will
deny that even now God's Word is tried to the utter-
most ; that it still has need to make good its claims ;
or knowing this, will presume to say how soon we
may not find ourselves in the midst of controversies,
which assuredly have not yet run themselves out, nor
by the complete victory of the Truth brought them-
selves to a quiet end ?
Nor shall we with this theme be lingering about
the outer precincts of our Faith. Not the external
authority with which these books come to us, but the
inner seal with which they are sealed, the way in
which, like Him of whom they testify, they receive
not witness of men, but by all which they are, by
all which they have wrought, bear witness of them-
selves that they are of God, even the witness of
power, this is our high argument.
And to it perhaps there will be no fitter intro-
duction than a few general remarks on the connexion
in which a book may stand to the intellectual and
spiritual life of men. And would we appreciate the
importance of a book received as absolute law, for
the mental and moral culture of those who in such
wise receive it, the influences which it will exert in
moulding them, if only that book contain any ele-
ments of truth ; let us consider for an instant what
the Koran has been and is to the whole Mohamme-
dan world ; how it is practically the great bond and
band of the nations professing that spurious faith,
holding fast in a community, which is a counterpart,
however feeble, of a Christendom, nations whom
everything else would have tended to separate ; how
it has stamped on them the features of a common
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 11
life, and set them, however immeasurably below the
Christian nations, yet well nigh as greatly above all
other nations of the world ; let us consider this, and
then what the book is that has wrought these mighty
effects the many elements of fraud and folly which
are mixed up with, and which weaken, the truth which
it possesses ; and then let us ask ourselves what by
comparison must be a Bible, or Scripture of absolute
truth, to the Christian world?
Or to estimate the shaping moulding power which
may lie in books, even when they come not as revela-
tions, real or pretended, of the will of God, let us
attempt to measure the influence which a few Greek
and Latin books, (for the real effective books are but
few,) exert and have exerted on the minds of men,
since the time that they have been familiarly known
and studied ; the manner in which they have modified
the habits of thought, coloured the language, and
affected the whole institutions of the world in which
we live ; how they have given to those who have sedu-
lously occupied themselves in their study and drunk
in their spirit, a culture and tone of mind recogniz-
ably different from that of any other men ; and this,
although they come with the seal of no absolute
authority; although, on the contrary, we feel that on
many points (and some of these the very chiefest) we
stand greatly above them. Let us take this into
account, and we shall allow that it is scarcely possible
to overrate the influence of a Book which does come
with highest sanction, to which men bow as contain-
ing the express image of the Truth, and which is, as
those are, only for a longer period and in a higher
12 LECTURE I. [1845.
region of the spiritual life, the appointed instrument
for calling out the true humanity in every man.
At first, indeed, it seems hard to understand how
any written word should possess such influence as that
which we attribute to this ; difficult to set a dispen-
sation of the Truth in that form at all upon a level
in force and influence with the same Truth, when it is
the living utterance of living men, or to ascribe to it
powers at all equal to theirs. But when we consider
more closely, the wonder disappears ; we soon per-
ceive how, by the Providence of God, a written word,
be it of man's truth or of God's Truth, should have
been charged with such important functions to fulfil.
For first, it is plain that the existence of a written
word is the necessary condition of any historic life or
progress whatsoever in the world. If succeeding
generations are to inherit ought from those that went
before, and not each to begin anew from first rudi-
ments, if all is not to be always childhood, if there
is to be any manhood of our race, it is plain that
only thus, only through such an instrument could this
be brought about.
And most of all it is evident that through a Scrip-
ture alone, that is, through a written record, could
any great epoch, and least of all an epoch in which
great spiritual truths were revealed or reasserted,
transmit itself unimpaired to the after world. For
every new has for a long while an old to contend
with, every higher a lower, which is continually seek-
ing to draw it down to itself. The most earnest
oral tradition will in a little while lose its distinct-
ness, undergo essential though insensible modifica-
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 13
tions. Apart from all desire to vitiate the committed
word, yet, little by little, the subjective condition of
those to whom it is entrusted, through whom it passes,
will infallibly make itself felt ; and in such treache-
rous keeping is all which remains merely in the memo-
ries of men, that after a very little while, rival schools
of disciples will begin to contend not merely how
their master's words were to be accepted, but what
those very words were themselves.
Moreover, it is only by recurrence to such wit-
nesses as are thus secured for the form in which the
Truth was at the first delivered, that any great resto-
ration or reformation can proceed ; only so can that
which is grown old renew its youth, and cast off the
slough of age. Without this, all that is once let go
would be irrecoverably gone all once lost would be
lost for ever. Without this, all that did not interest
at the moment, all which was laid deep for the uses
of a remote posterity, of which they were first to
discover the price and value, would long before it
reached them have inevitably perished. And when
the Church of the Apostolic age, with that directly
following, is pointed to as an exception to this general
rule, as a Church existing without a Scripture,
even as no doubt for some while the Church did exist
with a canon not full formed, but forming, and for a
little while without any Scriptures peculiarly its own,
it is left out of sight that the question is not, whether
a Church could so exist, but whether it could subsist
not whether it could be, but whether it could continue
to be. That for a while, under rare combinations of
favourable circumstances, with living witnesses and
fresh memories of the Lord's life and death in the
14 LECTURE I. [1845.
midst of it, a Christian Church without any actual
writings of its new Covenant could have existed, is
one thing ; and another, whether it could so have sur-
vived through long ages ; whether without them it
could have kept ever before its eyes any clear and
distinct image of Him that was its founder, or stamped
any lively impress of Him on the hearts of its chil-
dren. No ; it is assuredly no happy accident of the
Church that it possesses a Scripture ; but if the won-
ders of the Church's first becoming were not to repeat
themselves continually, if it was at all to know a na-
tural evolution in the world ; then, as far as we can
see, this was a necessary condition of its very sub-
sistence.
This then, brethren, will be the aim of these lec-
tures which I am allowed to deliver in your hearing.
I shall desire reverently, and with God's grace assist-
ing, to discover what I may, of the inner structure of
this Book which is so essential a factor in the spiritual
life of men humbly to trace where I can, the wisdom
with which it is laid out to be the nourisher and
teacher of all men, and of all men in all ages and in
all parts of their complex being ; also to show, where
I am able, how it has effectually approved itself as
such.
And yet, brethren, such considerations may not
be entered on without one or two needful cautions,
which I should wish to keep ever before myself, which
I should wish to commend also to you. And first,
let us beware lest contemplating this goodly fabric,
we be contemplators only ; as though we were to
stand without Scripture and admire it, and not to
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 15
stand within it and obey it. That were a mournful
self-deceit to see and marvel at its fitness for every
man, and never to have made proof of that fitness
for the needs of one heart, for the healing the deep
wound of one spirit, even of our own. And, indeed,
only in this way of love and of obedience shall we
enter truly into any of the hidden riches which it
contains ; for that only which we love, we know. No
book, much less the highest, yields its secrets, reveals
its wonders, to any but the reverent, the loving, and
the humble. To other than these, the door of higher
understanding is ever closed. We must pass into
and unite ourselves with that which we would know,
ere we can know it more than in name.
And then, brethren, again, when we propose to
consider the structure of Scripture, it is not as though
this were needed before men could enter into its full-
est and freest enjoyment. It is far from being thus ;
for as a man may live in an house without being an
architect, so may we habitually live and move in Holy
Scripture, without consciously, by any reflex act, being
aware of any one of the wonders of its construction,
the secret sources of its strength and power. To
know simply that it is the Word of God has sufficed
thousands and tens of thousands of our brethren ;
even as, no doubt, in this one affirmation is gathered
up and anticipated all that the most earnest and
devout search may unfold. We may say this, that
it is God's Word, in other language, we may say this
more at large, yet more than this we cannot say ;
after the widest range we shall only return to this at
the last.
But while this is true, it remains true also that
16 LECTURE I. [1845.
" the works of the Lord are great, sought out of all
them that have pleasure therein," if only leisure and
opportunities are theirs that if love is the way of
knowledge, knowledge also is the food of love, the
appointed fuel of the sacred fire ; that, if the affec-
tions are to be kept lastingly true to an object, the
reasonable faculties, supposing them to have been
actively called out, must find also in that object their
satisfying employment. Many among us here have,
or will have, not merely to live on God's Word our-
selves, but, as our peculiar task, to unfold its secrets
and bring forth its treasures for others. We there-
fore cannot draw from it that unconscious nutriment
which do many. Whatever may be the danger of
losing the simplicity of our love for it, and coming to
set that love upon other grounds than those on which
the love of the humblest and simplest of our brethren
reposes, and so of separating ourselves in spirit from
him ; this, like any other danger of our spiritual life,
must not be shrunk from, by shrinking from the duty
to which, like its dark shadow, it cleaves ; but in other
and more manful ways must be met and overcome.
We all of us have need, if not all from our peculiar
functions, yet all from our position as the highest
educated of our age and nation, as therefore the
appointed leaders of its thoughts and feelings, not
merely to prize and honour this Book, but to justify
the price and honour, in which we hold it ourselves,
in which we bid others to hold it.
May some of us be led by what shall be here
spoken to a fuller recognition of those treasures of
wisdom and knowledge which are or may be, day by
day, in our hands. May we be reminded of the high
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 17
privilege which it is to have a book which is also, as
its name declares, the Book ; which stands up in the
midst of its brethren, the kingly sheaf, to which all
the others do obeisance (Gen. xxxvii. 7 ;) not casting
a slight upon them, but lending to them some of its
own dignity and honour. May we in a troubled time
be helped to feel something of the grandeur of the
Scripture, and so of the manifold wisdom of that
Eternal Spirit by whom it came and then petty
objections and isolated difficulties, though they were
multiplied as the sands of the sea, will not harass us.
For what are they all to the fact, (I am here using
and concluding with words far better than my own,)
that " for more than a thousand years the Bible col-
lectively taken has gone hand in hand with civiliza-
tion, science, law, in short, with the moral and
intellectual cultivation of the species, always support-
ing, and often leading the way ? Its very presence
as a believed book, has rendered the nations emphati-
cally a chosen race, and this too in exact proportion
as it is more or less generally studied. Of those
nations which in the highest degree enjoy its influ-
ences, it is not too much to affirm that the differences,
public and private, physical, moral and intellectual,
are only less than what might be expected from a
diversity in species. Good and holy men, and the
best and wisest of mankind, the kingly spirits of his-
tory enthroned in the hearts of mighty nations, have
borne witness to its influences, have declared it to
be beyond compare the most perfect instrument, the
only adequate organ, of humanity ; the organ and
instrument of all the gifts, powers, and tendencies,
by which the individual is privileged to rise above
T. H. L. 2
18 LECTURE I. [1845.
himself, to leave behind and lose his dividual phan-
tom self, in order to find his true self in that distinct-
ness where no division can be, in the Eternal I AM,
the ever-living WORD, of whom all the elect, from the
archangel before the throne to the poor wrestler
with the Spirit until the breaking of day, are but the
fainter and still fainter echoes."
LECTURE II.
THE UNITY OF SCRIPTURE.
EPHESIANS I. 9, 10.
Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, accord-
ing to his good pleasure, which he hath purposed in him-
self; that in the dispensation of the fulness of times he
might gather together in one all things in Christ, both
which are in heaven and which are on earth; even in
him.
IT is the necessary condition of a book which shall
exert any great and effectual influence, which shall
stamp itself with a deep impression upon the minds
and hearts of men, that it must have a unity of pur-
pose : one great idea must run through it all. There
must be some single point in which all its different
rays converge and meet. The common eye may fail
to detect the unity, even while it unconsciously owns
its power : yet this is necessary still ; this growing
out of a single root, this subordination of all the parts
to a single aim, this returning of the end upon the
beginning. We feel this in a lower sphere ; nothing
pleases much or long, nothing takes greatly hold, no
work of human genius or art, which is not at one with
itself, which has not form, in the highest sense of that
word ; which does not exclude and include. And it
is hardly necessary to add, that if the effects are to
be deep and strong, this idea must be a great one :
it must not be one which shall play lightly upon the
surface of their minds that apprehend it, but rather
22
20 LECTURE II. [1845.
one which shall reach far down to the dark founda-
tions out of sight upon which reposes this awful being
of ours.
Now what I should desire to make the subject of
my lecture to-day is exactly this, that there is one
idea in Holy Scripture, and this idea the very high-
est ; that all in it is referable to this ; that it has the
unity of which I spake ; that a guiding hand and
spirit is traceable throughout, including in it all which
bears upon one mighty purpose, excluding all which
has no connexion with that, however, from faulty or
insufficient views, we might have expected it there ;
however certainly it would have intruded itself there,
had this been a work of no higher than human skill.
I would desire to shew that it fulfils this condition,
the necessary condition of a book which shall be
mighty in operation; that it is this organic whole,
informed by this one idea ; how this one explains
what it has and what it has not ; much in its form,
and yet more in its substance ; why it should be brief
here, and large there ; why it omits wholly this, and
only touches slightly upon that ; why vast gaps, as at
first sight might seem to us, occur in some portions
of it ; infinite minuteness of detail in others ; how
things which at first we looked to find in it, we do
not find, and others, which we were not prepared for,
are there.
And this unity if it can be shown to exist, none
can reply that it was involved and implied in the ex-
ternal accidents of the Book, and that we have mis-
taken the outward aggregation of things similar for
the inward coherence of an organic body : since these
accidents, if the word may be permitted, are all such
THE UNITY OF SCRIPTURE. 21
as would have created a sense of diversity ; and it is
only by penetrating through them, and not suffering
them to mislead us, that we do attain to the deeper
and pervading unity of Scripture. Its unity is not,
for instance, that apparent one which might be pro-
duced by a language common to all its parts. For it
is scarcely possible, I suppose, for a deeper gulf to
divide two languages than divides the two in which
severally the Old and the New Testament are written.
Nor can it be likeness of form which has deceived us
into believing that unity of spirit exists ; for the forms
are various and diverse as can be conceived ; it is now
song, now history ; now dialogue, now narration ; now
familiar letter, now prophetic vision. There is scarcely
a form of composition in which men have clothed their
thoughts and embodied their emotions which does not
find its archetype here. Nor yet is the unity of this
volume brought about through all the parts of it being
the upgrowth of a single age, and so all breathing
alike the spirit of that age ; for no single age beheld
the birth of this Book, which was well nigh two thou-
sand years ere it was fully formed and had reached
its final completion. Nor can its unity, if it exists,
be accounted for from its having had but one class of
men for its human authors : since men not of one
class alone, but of many, and those the widest apart,
kings and herdsmen, warriors and fishermen, wise men
and simple, have alike brought their one stone or
more, and been permitted to build them in to this
august dome and temple which God through so many
ages was rearing to its glorious height. Deeper than
all its outward circumstances, since these all would
have tended to an opposite result, this unity must
22 LECTURE II. [1845.
lie in the all-enfolding seed out of which the whole
book is evolved.
But this unity of Scripture, where is it? from
what point shall we behold and recognize it ? Surely
from that in which those verses which I have taken
from the Epistle to the Ephesians will place us ; when
we regard it as the story of the knitting anew the
broken relations between the Lord God and the race
of man ; of the bringing the First-begotten into the
world, for the gathering together all the scattered
and the sundered in Him ; when we regard it as the
true Paradise Regained the true De Civitate Dei,
even by a better title than those noble books which
bear these names the record of that mystery of
God's will which was working from the first, to the
end " that in the dispensation of the fulness of
times He might gather together in one all things in
Christ."
And all nearer examination will shew how true it
is to this idea, which we affirm to lie at its ground.
It is the story of the divine relations of men, of the
divine life which, in consequence of those still sub-
sisting relations, was struggling to the birth with
more or less successful issues in every faithful man ;
which came perfectly to the birth in the One, even
in Him in whom those relations were constituted at
the first, and perfectly sealed at the last. It is the
story of this, and of nothing else ; the record of the
men who were conscious of a bond between earth and
heaven, and not only dimly conscious, for that all
people who have not sunk into savage hordes have
been, but who recognized these relations, this fellow-
ship, as the great undoubted fact with which God
THE UNITY OF SCRIPTURE. 23
had underlaid their life the support not merely of
their personal being, but as that which must sustain
the whole society of earth whether the narrower
society of the Family, or the wider of the State, or
the all-embracing one of the Church.
How many temptations there were to wander out
of and beyond this region, which yet every one of us
must recognize at once to be the true region in which
only an Holy Scripture should move ; how many other
regions in which, had it been other than what it is, it
might have lost itself! For instance, other so called
sacred books almost invariably miss the distinction
between ethics and physics, lose themselves in theories
of creation, endless cosmogonies, subtle speculations
about the origin of the material universe. Such a
deep ground has this error, so willing are men to sub-
stitute the speculative for the practical, and to lose
the last in the first, that we find even after the Chris-
tian Faith had been given, a vast attempt to turn even
that into a philosophy of nature. What, for example,
was Manicheism, but the attempt to array a philo-
sophy of nature in a Christian language, to empty
Christian truths of all their ethical worth, and then to
use them as a gorgeous symbolic garb for clothing a
system different to its very core ? But Scripture is
no story of the material universe *. A single chapter
is sufficient to tell us that " God made the heavens
* Compare the remarkable words of Felix the Manicheean, and
the fault which he finds with it on this very ground (Augustine, Acta
c. Felice Manichceo, 1. 1, c. 9) : Et quia venit Manicheeus et per suam
prsedicationem docuit nos initium medium et finem ; docuit nos de
fabrica mundi, quare facta est et unde facta et qui fecerunt ; docuit
nos quare dies et quare nox : docuit nos de cursu solis et lunae ; quia
hoc in Paulo non audivimus, nee in caeterorum apostolorum scripturis,
hoc credimus, quia ipse est Paraclitus.
24 LECTURE II. [1845.
and the earth." Man is the central figure there, or,
to speak more truly, the only figure; all which is there
besides serves but as a background for him ; he is
not one part of the furniture of this planet, not the
highest merely in the scale of its creatures, but the
lord of all sun and moon and stars, and all the
visible creation, borrowing all their worth and their
significance from the relations wherein they stand to
him. Such he appears there in the ideal worth of his
unfallen condition ; and even now, when only a broken
fragment of the sceptre with which once he ruled the
world, remains in his hand, such he is commanded to
regard himself still.
It is one of Spinoza's charges against Scripture,
that it does erect and recognize this lordship of man,
that it does lift him out of his subordinate place, and
ever speak in a language which takes for granted that
nature is to serve him, and not he to acquiesce in
nature, that the Bible everywhere speaks rather of a
God of men than a Creator of the universe. We
accept willingly the reproach ; we acknowledge and
we glory in its entire truth, that the eighth Psalm is
but a single distinct utterance of that which all Scrip-
ture proclaims ; for that everywhere sets forth man
as the crown of things, the last and the highest, the
king to rule over the world, the priest to offer up its
praises and deals with nature not as co-ordinated
with him, much less as superior ; but in entire sub-
ordination ; " Thou makest him to have dominion of
the works of thy hands, and thou hast put all things
in subjection under his feet." And herein Holy
Scripture is one, that it is throughout the history of
man as distinct from nature, as immeasurably above
THE UNITY OF SCRIPTURE. 25
nature that it is throughout ethical, and does never,
as so many of the mythic accounts of heathen reli-
gions, resolve itself on nearer inspection into the mere
setting forth of physical appearances.
It is then the history of man ; yet not of all men,
only of a chosen portion of our race ; and such, if we
have rightly seized the purpose and meaning of a
Scripture and what it is intended to tell, it must needs
be. It is true that this too is often brought against
it as a short-coming. It is a frequent sneer on the
part of the master-mocker of France, that the Bible
dedicates its largest spaces, by far the greatest num-
ber of its pages, to the annals of a little tribe, which
occupied, to use his very words, a narrow strip of
mountainous territory, scarcely broader than Wales,
leaving almost unnoticed the mighty empires of Egypt
and Assyria ; and he goes on to observe, that from a
book which professes to go back, as this does, to the
very beginning, and to be in possession of all authen-
tic history from the first, to have in its keeping the
archives of our race, we should gladly have received,
even as we might have reasonably expected, a few
notices of these vast empires ; which had been cheaply
purchased by the omission or abridgement of lives
and incidents now written with such a special ininute-
ness.
Now it is no doubt remarkable, and a fact to
awaken our earnest attention, that in a Book, wherein,
if in any, all waste of room would have been spared,
the lives of an Abraham, a Joseph, a David, fill singly
spaces so large ; while huge empires rise and fall, and
all their multitudes pass to their graves almost with-
out a word. These vast empires are left in their utter
26 LECTURE II. [1845.
darkness, or if a glimpse of light fall upon them for a
moment, it is only because of the relations in which
they are brought to this little tribe ; since no sooner
do these relations cease, than they fall back into the
obscurity out of which they emerged for a moment.
But strange as this may at first sight appear, it
belongs to the very essence of Scripture that it should
be thus and no otherwise. For that is not a world-
history, but a history of the kingdom of God ; and He
who ever chooses " the weak things of the earth to
confound the things which are mighty," had willed
that in the line of this family, this tribe, this little
people, the restoration of the true humanity should be
effected : and each man who at all realized the com-
ing Restorer, each in whom that image of God, which
was one day to be perfectly revealed in his Son, ap-
peared with a more than usual distinctness, however
indistinctly still, every such man was singly a greater
link in the world's history than all those blind mil-
lions of whom these records have refused to take
knowledge. Those mountains of Israel, that little
corner of the world, so often despised, so often
wholly past over, was yet the citadel of the world's
hope, the hearth on which the sparks that were yet to
kindle the earth were kept alive. There the great
reaction which was one day to find place against the
world's sin was preparing : and just as, were we tracing
the course of a stream, not the huge morasses, not
the vast stagnant pools on either side, would delay
us ; we should not, because of their extent, count
them the river ; but tliat we should recognize as the
stream, though it were the slenderest thread, in which
an onward movement and current might be discerned ;
THE UNITY OF SCRIPTURE. 27
so it is here. Egypt and Assyria and Babylon were
but the vast stagnant morasses on either side ; the
man in whose seed the whole earth should be blest,
he and his family were the little stream in which the
life and onward motion of the world were to be
traced.
For indeed, properly speaking, where there are
no workings, conscious or unconscious, to the great
end of the manifestation of the Son of God in the
flesh, conscious, as in Israel, unconscious, as in
Greece, where neither those nor these are found,
there history does not and cannot exist. For history,
if it be not the merest toy, the idlest pastime of our
vacant hours, is the record of the onward march of
humanity towards an end. Where there is no belief
in such an end, and therefore no advance toward it,
no stirrings of a divine Word in a people's bosom,
where not as yet the beast's heart has been taken
away, and a man's heart given, there history cannot
be said to be. They belong not therefore to history,
least of all to sacred history, those Babels, those cities
of confusion, those huge pens into which by force and
fraud the early hunters of men, the Nimrods and
Sesostrises, drave and compelled their fellows : and
Scripture is only most true to its idea, while it passes
them almost or wholly in silence by, while it lingers
rather on the plains of Mamre with the man that
" believed God, and it was counted to him for right-
eousness," than by "populous No," or great Babylon,
where no faith existed but in the blind powers of
nature, and the brute forces of the natural man.
And yet, that there were stirrings of a divine life,
longings after and hopes of a Deliverer, at work in
28 LECTURE II. [1845.
Israel, had not been, of itself, sufficient to exalt and
consecrate its history into a Scripture. These such
an history must contain, but also something more and
deeper than these ; else all in Greece and elsewhere
that was struggling after moral freedom, that was
craving after light, all that bore witness to man's
higher origin and nobler destinies, might have claimed
by an equal right to be there. But Holy Scripture,
according to the idea from which we started, is the
history of men in a constitution of men, not seeking
relations with God, but having them, and whose task
is now to believe in them, and to maintain them.
Its mournful reminiscences of a broken communion
with heaven are evermore swallowed up in the firm
and glorious assurances of a restored. The noblest
efforts of heathenism were seekings after these rela-
tions with God, if haply man might connect himself
anew with an higher world, from which he had cut
himself loose. But here man does not appear as
seeking God, and therefore at best only dimly and
uncertainly apprehending him ; but rather God ap-
pears as seeking man, and therefore not seeking in
vain, but ever finding and man only as seeking God,
on the ground that God has already sought and
found him, and has said to him, " Seek my face," and
in that saying has pledged Himself that the seeking
shall not be in vain. With this, Scripture excludes
all mere feelings after God, not as counting them
worthless, for precious and significant in the eyes of
a Paul was the altar " To the unknown God" reared
at Athens, but excludes them, in that they belong
to a lower stage of religious life than that to which it
ministers, and in which it moves. It has no mytho-
THE UNITY OF SCRIPTURE. 29
logy ; no ideal which is not also real ; no dreams and
anticipations of higher things than it is itself destined
to record as actually brought to pass. These may be
deep out-speakings of the spiritual needs of man,
precious recollections of a state which once was his,
but which now he has forfeited ; yet being only utter-
ances of his want, cries of his need, confessions of his
loss, sharing too, as they must ever, in the imperfec-
tions of which they testify, therefore they can find no
place in a Bible. For that is in no way a record of
man's various attempts to cure himself of the deep
wound of his soul ; it is no history of the experiments
which he makes, as he looks round him to see if he
may find on earth medicinal herbs that will meet
his need ; but it presents him already in an hospital
of souls, and under a divine treatment. Heathen phi-
losophy might indeed be a preparation for Christian-
ity heathen mythology, upon its better side, an
unconscious prophecy of Christ ; yet were they only
the negative preparation and witness ; Jewish religion
was the positive ; and it is with the positive alone
that a Scripture can have to do.
Thus we have seen what, under some aspects,
such a book must be : we have seen why it is not
that, which men superficially looking at it, or in whom
the speculative tendencies are stronger than the moral
needs, might have desired it to be. In the first place,
that it is not the history of nature, but of man ; nor
yet of all men, but only of those who are more
or less conscious of their divine original, and have
not, amid all their sins, forgotten that great word,
"We are God's offspring;" nor yet even of all
these, but of those alone who had been brought by
30 LECTURE II. [1845.
the word of the promise into immediate covenant
relations with the Father of their spirits. We have
seen it the history of an election, of men under the
direct and immediate education of God not indeed
for their own sakes only, as too many among them
thought, turning their election into a selfish thing,
but that through them he might educate and bless
the world. That it does not tell the story of other
men that it does not give a philosophy of nature, is
not a deficiency, but is rather its strength and glory ;
witnessing for the Spirit which has presided over its
growth and formation, and never suffered ought
which was alien to its great plan and purpose to find
admission into it any foreign elements to weaken
its strength or trouble its clearness.
Nor less does Holy Scripture give testimony for
a pervading unity, an inner law according to which it
unfolds itself as a perfect and organic whole, in the
epoch at which growth in it ceases, and it appears
henceforth as a finished book. So long as humanity
was growing, it grew. But when the manhood of our
race was reached, when man had attained his highest
point, even union with God in his Son, then it comes
to a close. It carries him up to this, to his glorious
goal, to the perfect knitting again of those broken
relations, through the life and death and resurrec-
tion of Him in whom God and man were perfectly
atoned. So long as there was anything more to tell,
any new revelation of the Name of God, any new
relations of grace and nearness into which he was
bringing his creatures, so long the Bible was a grow-
ing, expanding Book. But when all is given, when
God, who at divers times spake to the world by
THE UNITY OF SCRIPTURE. 31
his servants, had now spoken his last and fullest
Word by his Son, then to this Book, the record of
that Word of his, there is added no more, even while
there is nothing more to add ; though it cannot end
till it has shewn in prophetic vision how this latest
and highest which now has been given to man, shall
unfold itself into the glory and blessedness of a per-
fected kingdom of heaven.
For thus, too, it will mark itself as one, by return-
ing visibly in its end upon its beginning. Vast as the
course which it has traced, it has been a circle still,
and in that most perfect form comes back to the
point from whence it started. The heaven, which
had disappeared from the earth since the third chap-
ter of Genesis, reappears again in visible manifesta-
tion, in the latest chapters of the Revelation. The
tree of life, whereof there were but faint remini-
scences in all the intermediate time, again stands by
the river of the water of life, and again there is no
more curse. Even the very differences of the forms
under which the heavenly kingdom reappears are
deeply characteristic, marking as they do, not merely
that all is won back, but won back in a more glorious
shape than that in which it was lost, because won
back in the Son. It is no longer Paradise, but the
New Jerusalem no longer the garden, but now the
city, of God, which is on earth. The change is full
of meaning ; no longer the garden, free, spontaneous,
and unlaboured, even as man's blessedness in the
state of a first innocence would have been ; but the
city, costlier indeed, more stately, more glorious, but,
at the same time, the result of toil, of labour, of
pains reared into a nobler and more abiding habita-
32 LECTURE II. [1845.
tion, yet with stones which, after the pattern of the
" elect corner-stone," were each in its time laboriously
hewn and painfully squared for the places which they
fill.
And surely we may be permitted to observe by
the way, that this idea, which we plainly trace and
recognize, of Scripture as a whole, this its architect-
onic character, cannot be without its weight in help-
ing to determine the Canonical place and worth of
the Apocalypse, which, as is familiar to many among
us, has been sometimes called in question. Apart
from all outward evidences in its favour, do we not
feel that this wondrous book is needed where it is ?
that it is the key-stone of the arch, the capital of the
pillar that Holy Scripture had seemed maimed and
imperfect without it, that a winding up with the
Epistles would have been no true winding up ; for in
them the Church appears as still warring and strug-
gling, still compast about with the Weaknesses and
infirmities of its mortal existence not triumphing
yet, nor yet having entered into its glory. Such a
termination had been as abrupt, as little satisfying as
if, in the lower sphere of the Pentateuch, we had
accompanied the children of Israel to the moment
when they were just entering on the wars of Canaan ;
and no book of Joshua had followed to record their
battles and their victories, and how these did not
cease till they rode on the high places of the earth,
and rested each man quietly in the lot of his con-
quered inheritance.
And again, this oneness of Holy Scripture, when
we feel it, is a sufficient, even as it is a complete,
answer to a very favourite topic of Romish contro-
THE UNITY OF SCRIPTURE. 33
versialists. They are fond of bringing out how much
there is of accident in the structure, nay, even in the
existence, of Scripture, that we have one Gospel (the
third) written at a private man's request, another,
(the fourth) because heresies had risen up which
needed to be checked epistles owing their origin
to causes equally fortuitous one, because temporary
disorders had manifested themselves at Corinth,
another, because an Apostle, having promised to visit
a city, from some unexpected cause was hindered
a third, to secure the favourable reception of a fugi-
tive slave by his master that of the New Testament
at least, the chiefest part is thus made up of occa-
sional documents called forth by emergent needs.
And the purpose of this slight on Scripture is evident,
tbe conclusion near at hand which is this, How little
likely it is that a book so formed, so growing, should
contain an absolute and sufficient guide of life and
rule of doctrine how needful some supplementary
teaching.
But when once this inner unity of God's Word
has been revealed to us, when our eye has learned to
recognize not merely the marks and signs of an higher
wisdom, guiding and inspiring each several part, but
also the relations of each part to the whole; when
it has risen up before us, not as aggregated from
without, but as unfolded from within, and in obe-
dience to an inner law, then we shall feel that, how-
ever accidental may appear the circumstances of its
growth, yet this accident which seemed to accom-
pany its production, and to preside in the calling
out of the especial books which we possess, and no
other, was no more than the accident which God is
34 LECTURE II. [1845.
ever weaving into the woof of his providence, and
not merely weaving into it, but which is the staple
out of which its whole web is woven.
Thus, brethren, we have been led to contemplate
these oracles of God in their deep inner unity ; we
have seen, not merely how they possess, but how we
can reverently trace them in the possession of, that
oneness of plan and purpose, which should make them
effectual for the unfolding the spiritual life of men.
We have seen how men's expectations of finding
something there which they did not find, with their
disappointments at its absence, have ever grown out
of a mistaken apprehension of what a Scripture ought
to be; how the presence of that which they miss
would indeed have marred it, would have contra-
dicted its fundamental idea, would have been a dis-
cord amid its deep harmonies, even as the discords
which men find in it come oftentimes as its highest
harmonies to the purged ear.
Nor is it without its warning to ourselves, that
these murmurings and complaints do most often evi-
dently grow out of a moral fault in them that make
them. Men have lost the key of knowledge the
master-key which would have opened to them every
door ; and then they wander with perplexed hearts up
and down this stately palace which the Eternal Wis-
dom has builded, but of which every goodlier room
is closed against them, till, in the end, they complain
that it is no such peerless palace after all, but only
as other works which man's art has reared. Nor is
this conclusion strange ; for unless they bring to it a
moral need, unless that moral need be to them the
THE UNITY OF SCRIPTURE. 35
interpreter of every part, and gather all that is ap-
parently abnormal in it under an higher and recon-
ciling law, the Book, in its deepest meaning and
worth, will remain a riddle to them still.
But this moral need, what is it ? It is the sense
that we are sundered and scattered each from God,
each from his fellow-man, each from himself with a
belief deep as the foundations of our life, that it is
the will of God to gather all these scattered and
these sundered together anew this, with the convic-
tion which will rise out of this, that all which bears
on the circumstances of this recovering and regather-
ing is precious ; that nothing is of highest worth
which does not bear upon this. Then we shall see in
this Word that it is the very history which we require
that altogether, nothing but that the history of
the restoring the defaced image of God, the re-con-
stitution of a ruined but godlike race, in the image
of God's own Son the deliverance of all in that
race, who were willing to be delivered, from the idols
of sense, from the false gods who would hold them in
bondage, and would fain make them their drudges
and their slaves.
And, brethren, what is it that shall give unity to
our lives, but the recognition of the same great idea
which gives unity to this Book ? Those lives, they
seem often broken into parts, with no visible connexion
between one part and another ; our boyhood, we know
not how to connect it with our youth, our youth with
our manhood : the different tasks of our life, we want
to bind them up into a single sheaf, to feel that,
however manifold and apparently disconnected they
are, there is yet a bond that binds them into one.
32
36 LECTURE II.
Our hearts, we want a central point for them, as it
were a heart within the heart, and we oftentimes
seek this in vain. Oh, what a cry has gone up from
thousands and ten thousands of souls ! and this the
burden of the cry, I desire to be one in the deep
centre of my being, to be one and not many to be
able to reduce my life to one law to be able to
explain it to myself in the master-light of one idea,
to be no longer rent, torn, and distracted, as I am
now.
And whence shall this oneness come ? where shall
we find, amid all the chances and changes of the
world, this law of our life, this centre of our being,
this key-note to which setting our lives, their seeming
discords shall reveal themselves as their deepest har-
monies? Only in God, only in the Son of God only
in the faith that what Scripture makes the end and
purpose of God's dealing with our race, is also the
end and purpose of his dealing with each one of us,
namely, that his Son may be manifested in us that
we, with all things which are in heaven and all things
which are in earth, may be gathered together in
Christ, even in Him.
LECTURE III.
THE MANIFOLDNESS OF SCRIPTURE.
MATTHEW XIV. 20.
They did all eat, and were fitted.
IT was the aim of my preceding Lecture to trace the
unity which reigns in Scripture, that it has a law to
which each part of it may be referred, a root out of
which it all grows. It will be my purpose in the pre-
sent to bring out before you how this Book, which is
one, is also manifold ; a fact which we may not be so
ready to recognize the instant that it is presented to
us, as the other. For the truth which occupied us
last Sunday, of the Bible as one Book, not merely one
because bound together in the covers of a single volume,
but as being truly one, while it testifies in every part
of one and the same Lord, while it is everywhere the
utterance of one Spirit ; this, whether consciously or
unconsciously, has strong possession of men's minds
in this our land. We feel, and rightly, that every at-
tempt to consider any of its parts in absolute isolation
from the other, rent away from the connexion in which
it stands, is false, and can lead to no profitable result ;
and it is hardly possible to estimate too highly the
blessing of this, that the band which binds for us the
parts of this volume together is unbroken even in
thought ; that we still feel ourselves to have, not a
number of sacred books, but one sacred Book, which
not merely for convenience sake, but out of a far
deeper feeling, we comprehend under one name.
38 LECTURE III. [1845.
Yet, on the other hand, there are other truths
which, if we mean to enter into full possession of our
treasures, we need also to make thoroughly our own.
This idea of the oneness of Holy Scripture is incom-
plete and imperfect, till it pass into the higher idea of
its unity; till we acknowledge that it is not sameness
which reigns there ; that, besides being one, it is also
many ; that as in the human body we, having many
members, are one body, and the perfection of the
body is not the repetition of the same member over
and over again, but the harmonious tempering of dif-
ferent members, all being instinct with one life not
otherwise is it with Scripture. For in that, whether
we look at the Old or New Testament, the same rich-
ness and variety of form reveal themselves, so that it
may truly be said, that out of the ground of this
Paradise, the Lord God has made " to grow every
tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food ; "
all that the earth has fairest appearing here in fairer
and more perfect form the fable, only here trans-
formed into the parable the ode transfigured into
the psalm oracles into prophecies histories of the
world into histories of the kingdom of heaven. Nor
is tragedy wanting, though for CEdipus, we have the
man of Uz ; nor epos, though for " the tale of Troy
divine," ours is the story of the New Jerusalem, "com-
ing down out of heaven as a bride adorned for her
husband." And it will be my desire to shew how this
also was needful, if it was to be the Book which should
indeed leaven the world, which should offer nutriment,
not merely for some men, but for all men; which
should not tyrannically lop men till they were all of
one length, but should encourage in every man the
THE MANIFOLDNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 39
free development of all which God had given him.
Thus it must needs have been, if the Spirit by this
Word was to sanctify all in every man which was
capable of being sanctified ; which, coming originally
from God, could be redeemed from the defilements of
this world, and in purer shape be again restored unto
Him.
It will be my task then to consider to-day the
relations of likeness and difference in which various
parts of Scripture stand to one another ; to shew how
the differences are not accidental, but do plainly cor-
respond to certain fixed differences in the mental and
moral constitutions of men ; how there is evidently a
gracious purpose of attracting all men by the attrac-
tions which shall be most potent upon them ; of spread-
ing a table at which all may sit down and find that
wherein their soul delights, till those words of our
text, "They did all eat and were filled," shall not be
less true in regard of all the faithful now, true rather
in an higher sense, than they were in regard of those
comparatively few, whom the Lord nourished with
that bread of wonder in the wilderness. And truly
this Book, in the plainness and simplicity of many,
and those most important, parts of it, might be likened
well to the five barley-loaves of the Lord's miracle.
Seeing them about to be set before the great spiritual
hunger of the world, seeing the multitudes waiting to
be fed, even disciples might have been tempted to
exclaim, " What are they among so many?" But the
great Giver of the feast confidently replies, "Make
the men sit down;" and they have sat down wise men
and simple, philosophers and peasants, "besides women
and children," and there has been enough and to
40 LECTURE III. [1845.
spare ; all have been nourished, all have been quick-
ened ; none have been sent empty away.
And first, let us take those books which must ever
be regarded as the central books, relating as they do
to the central fact, to the life of our blessed Lord, and
which will afford the fullest illustration of my mean-
ing. It is a fact which would at once excite every
man's most thoughtful attention, were it not that
familiarity had blunted us to its significance, that we
should have, not one history only, but four parallel
histories, of the life of Christ a fact which indeed
finds a slight anticipation in the parallel records which
the Old Testament has preserved of some portions of
Jewish history. None will call this an accident, or
count that the Providence which watches over the fall
of a sparrow, or any slightest incident of the world,
was not itself the bringer about of a circumstance
which should have so mighty an influence on all the
future unfolding of the Church. It is part, no doubt,
of this spreading of a table for the spiritual needs of
all, that we have thus not one Gospel, but four ; which
yet in their higher unity, may be styled, according to
that word of Origen's, rather a four-sided Gospel*
than four Gospels, even as out of the same instinctive
sense of its unity, the whole Instrument, which con-
tained the four, was entitled Evangelium in the early
Church.
And if we follow this more closely up, we can
trace, I think, a peculiar vocation in each of the Evan-
gelists for catching some distinct rays of the glory of
* EvayyeXiov -re-rpdyiovov. Thus too Augustine (In Ev. Joh., Tract.
26) : Quatuor Evangelia, vel potius quatuor libri unius EvangeliL
THE MANIFOLDNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 41
Christ, which the others would not catch, and for re-
flecting them to the world so that the terms, Gospel
according to St. Matthew, according to St. Mark, and
so on, are singularly happy, and imply much more
than we, for whom the words are little more than a
technical designation of the different gospels, are wont
to find in them. The first is the Gospel according to
St. Matthew the Gospel as it appeared to him. This
which he has pourtrayed is his Christ : under this
aspect the Deliverer of men appeared to him, and in
this he has presented Him to the world ; and so also
with the others. For Christ, ever one and the same,
does yet appear with different sides of his glory re-
flected by the different Evangelists. They were them-
selves men of various temperaments ; they had each
the special needs of some different classes of men in
their eye when they wrote their Gospels ; and as these
classes, though under altered names, still subsist, they
have in this respect also, as ministering to these various
needs, an everlasting value.
Thus the first Gospel, that of St. Matthew, was
evidently a Gospel designed for the pious Israelite,
for him who was waiting the theocratic King, the Son
of Abraham, the Son of David ; who desired to find
in the New Testament the fulfilment of the prophecies
of the Old, and in Christianity the perfect flower, of
Avhich Judaism was the root and stem. And as among
the Epistles that of St. James, so among the Gospels,
this of St. Matthew was to serve as the gentle and
almost imperceptible transition for so many as clung
to the forms of Old Testament piety ; and desired to
hold fast the historic connexion of all God's dealings
from the firet.
42 LECTURE III. [1845.
But the second Gospel, written, as all Church tra-
dition testifies, under the influence of St. Peter and
at Rome, bear marks of an evident fitness for the
practical Roman world for the men who, while others
talked, had done ; and who would not at first crave
to hear what Christ had spoken, but what He had
wrought. It is eminently the Gospel of action. It
is brief; it records comparatively few of our Lord's
sayings, almost none of his longer discourses; it occu-
pies itself mainly with his works, with the mighty
power of his ministry, into which ministry it rushes
almost without a preparatory note. Some deeper
things it has not, but presents a soul-stirring picture
of the conquering might and energy of Christ and of
his Word.
But the third Gospel, that of St. Luke, composed
by the trusted companion of St. Paul, and itself the
correlative of his Epistles, while it sets forth one and
the same Christ as the two which went before, yet in
some respects sets Him forth in another light. Not
so much, with St. Matthew, " Jesus Christ, a minister
of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm
the promises made unto the fathers" not so much,
with St. Mark, Jesus Christ " the Lion of the tribe of
Judah," rushing as with lion-springs from victory to
victory ; but Jesus Christ, the Saviour of all men, is
the object of his portraiture. This is what he loves
to dwell on, the manner in which not Israel alone,
but the whole heathen world, was destined to glorify
God for his mercy in Christ Jesus ; he describes Him
as the loving physician, the gracious healer of all, the
good Samaritan that bound up the wounds of every
stricken heart ; in whom all the small and despised
THE MANIFOLDNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 43
and crushed and down-trodden of the earth should
find a gracious and ready helper. Therefore, and in
accordance with this his plan, has he gathered up for
us much which no other has done ; he sets the seventy
disciples for the world over against St. Matthew's
twelve Apostles for Israel ; he breaks through narrow
national distinctions tells of that Samaritan, that
alone shewed kindness of that other, who, of ten,
alone remembered to be thankful ; and his too, and
his only the parable of the Prodigal Son, itself a
gospel within the Gospel.
But to hasten on from these characteristics of the
earlier three, which might well detain us much longer,
something was yet wanting ; a Gospel in which the
higher speculative tendencies, which were given to
men not to be crushed or crippled, should find their
adequate satisfaction a Gospel which should link
itself on with whatever had occupied the philosophic
mind of heathen or of Jew the correction of all which
in this was false the complement of all which was
deficient. And such he gave us, for whom the Church
has ever found the soaring eagle as the fittest em-
blem * he who begins with declaring that the Word
of God, whereof men had already learned to speak so
much, was also the Son of God, and had been made
flesh, and had dwelt among us full of grace and truth
who, too, has brought out the inner, and, so to
* Thus the Christian poet :
poelum transit, veri rotam
Soils ibi vidit, totam
Mentis figens aciem :
Speculator spiritalis
Quasi Seraphim sub alls
Dei videt faciem.
Volat avis sine meta
Quo nee vates, nee prbpheta
Evolavit altius :
Tam implenda quam impleta
Nunquam vidit tot secreta
Purus homo purius.
44 LECTURE III. [1845.
speak, the mystical relations of the faithful with their
Lord, as none other before him had done'"".
It is true that this fulness under which the life of
our Lord has been set forth to us, being, as it is, one
of the gracious designs of God for our good, has been
laid hold of by adversaries of the Faith, who would
fain wrest it to their ends. Taking the difference,
where it is the most striking, they have bidden us to
note how unlike the Christ of the first three Gospels
and of the fourth ; and what a different colouring is
spread over this Gospel and over those ; and they
would draw their conclusion, that either here or there
historic accuracy must be wanting, that both portraits
cannot be faithful. We allow the charge, so far as
the difference, and only reject it when it assumes a
diversity, of setting forth. There are features of our
Lord which we should have missed but for his por-
traiture who lay upon the Lord's bosom ; deep words
which he has caught up, for which no other words
that any other has recorded would have been ade-
quate substitutes. But what then ? This is not a
weak point with us, but a strong. We rejoice and
glory in this, rather than seek to gloss it over or con-
ceal it. So far from being first detected by an hostile
criticism, an early Father of the Church had expressed
this very distinction in words which in sound perhaps
are almost overbold, styling the first three Gospels,
evayyeXta crit)/u.a.TiKct, and the fourth an tvayyeXiov
ov. Yet it is needless to observe, that herein
* See Origen's interesting discussion (Comm. in. Joan., Tom. i.)
on the relation of the Gospels to the other Scriptures, and their relation
within themselves, one to another. On this latter subject he expresses
himself thus : ToX^tjTe'oi/ TOIVW el-jrelv aTrapxrjv M" Tra<riav ypa<p<av eivai
TO. fvayye\ia, -ru>v fie evayyeXiwv dtrap^v TO Kara 'Itodvvijv.
THE MANIFOLDNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 45
he meant not to cast the faintest slight on those by com-
parison with this, but would only imply that those set
forth more the outer, and this the inner, life of Christ.
And for the fact itself, do we not find analogies
to it, however weak ones they may be, in lower
regions of the spiritual life ? To take an example
which must be familiar to every scholar, how dif-
ferent the Socrates of Xenophon, and the Socrates
of Plato. Yet shall we therefore leap to the con-
clusion, that if the one has painted the master truly,
then the other has pourtrayed him falsely ? Such
a conclusion may lie upon the surface ; it might ap-
pear to us an easy solution of the difficulty ; yet were
it a very different solution from that to which all the
profoundest enquirers into the matter have arrived.
Were it not wiser to suppose with them, that each of
the great scholars of the Sage appropriated and carried
away, as from a rich and varied treasure-house, that
which he prized the most, that which was most akin
to himself and his own genius, that which by the
natural process of assimilation he had made most truly
and entirely his own ; the practical soldier, the man
of strong common sense, appropriating and carrying
away his world- wisdom, his popular philosophy ; the
more meditative disciple taking as his portion the
deeper speculations of their common master concern-
ing the Good and the True ? And if thus it prove
with eminent servants of the Truth if they are so
rich and manifold that they present themselves under
divers aspects to divers men, it being appointed them
in their lower sphere to feed many, if, like some rich
composite Corinthian metal, they yield iron for this
man's spade, and gold for the other's crown, how much
46 LECTURE III. [1845.
more was this to be looked for from Him, who was the
King of Truth, who was to feed and enrich not some,
but all ; and this, not in some small and scanty mea-
sure, but who was to satisfy all in all ages with good-
ness and truth ? How inevitable was it that He, the
Sun of the spiritual heaven, should find no single mirror
large enough to take in all his beams should only be
adequately presented to the world, when many from
many sides did, under the direct teaching of God's
Spirit, undertake to set him forth.
Doubtless the pregnant symbol of the early Church,
according to which the four Gospels found their type
and prophecy in the four rivers of Paradise, that toge-
ther watered the whole earth, going each a different
way, and yet issuing all from a single head ; a sym-
bol, which we find evermore repeated in the works of
early Christian art, wherein, from a single cross-sur-
mounted hill, four streams are seen welling out ; this
symbol was so great and general a favourite, because
it did embody under a beautiful image, this fact,
namely, how the Gospels were indeed four, and yet
in their higher unity but one *. And so not less, when
the Evangelists were found, as they often were, in the
* Allusions to it are frequent in the early hymnologists. Thus,
one of them in an hymn, De SS. Evangelistic :
Paradisus his rigatur, Horum rivo ebretatis
Viret, floret, faecundatur, Sitis crescat caritatis,
His abundat, his lastatur Ut de fonte Deitatis
Quatuor fluminibus. Satiemur plenius.
Fons est Christus, hi sunt rivi, | Horum trahat nos doctrina
Fons est altus, hi proclivi, Vitiorum de sentina,
Ut saporem fontis vivi Sicque ducat ad divina
Ministrent fidelibus. Ab imo superius.
Another too in an hymn, De S. Joanne Evangeltetd :
Inter illos primitives Toti mundo propinare
Veros veri fontis rivos Nectar illud salutare
Joannes exiliit, Quod de throno prodiit.
THE MANIFOLDNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 47
four living creatures of Ezekiel's vision, of whom each
with a different countenance looked a different way,
and yet all of them together upheld the throne and
chariot of God, and ever moved as being informed by
one and the selfsame Spirit ; this too was something
more and better than a mere fanciful playing with
Scripture ; there was a deep truth lying at the root of
this application, and abundantly justifying its use*.
And as we have a Gospel which stands thus four-
square, with a side facing each side of the spiritual
* The first that we know of who connected these with the four
Evangelists was Irenaeus. He says (Cora. Hter., 1. 3, c. 2 8,)
TeTpdfiopQa yap -ra a, Te-rpd^op^ou /cat TO evajye\iov f and draws Out
at length the fitness of each to represent each ; on which see Suicer's
Thes., s. v. euayyeXi<rri|9. It was taken up by many after him ; thus
by Jerome, Comm. in Ezek. c. i. ; Prol. in Comm. super Matth. ; and
Ep. 50 : Matthaeus, Marcus, Lucas, et Johannes, quadriga Domini, et
verum Cherubim, per totum corpus oculati sunt, scintillae emicant,
discurrunt fulgura, pedes habent rectos et in sublime tendentes, terga
pennata et ubique volitantia. Tenent se mutuo, sibique perplex!
sunt, et quasi rota in rota volvuntur, et pergunt quoquumque eos
flatus Sancti Spiritus perduxerit. Cf. Augustine, De Cons. Evang.
1. 1., c. 6 ; and the Christian poet sings thus :
Circa thronum majestatis Forms fonnant figurarum
Cum spiritibus beatis Formas Evangelistarum,
Quatuor diversitatis Quorum imber doctrinarum
Astant animalia. Stillat in Ecclesia.
Formam primum aquilinam, Hi sunt Marcus, et Matthasus,
Et secundum leoninam ; Lucas, et quern Zebedams
Sed humanam et bovinam Pater misit tibi, Deus,
Duo gerunt alia. Dum laxaret retia.
And another:
Curam agens sui gregis Quos designat in propheta
Pastor bonus, auctor legis Forma pictus sub discreta
Quatuor instituit :
Quadri orbis ad medelam,
. Formam juris et cautelam
Per quos scribi voluit.
Circa thema generale
Habet quisque speciale
Vultus animalium.
His quadrigis deportatur
Mundo Deus, sublimatur
Istis area vectibus :
Paradisi hare fluenta
Nova fluunt sacramenta,
Sibi privilegium ; Quae irrorant gentibus .
48 LECTURE III. [1845.
world, so have we a two-fold development of the more
dogmatic element of the New Testament. For like
as the seed, one in itself, yet falls into two halves in
the process of its fructifying, or as the one force of
the magnet manifests itself at two opposing poles,
exactly according to the same law, re-appearing in the
spiritual world, we have two developments of the same
Christian theology, which make themselves felt from
the very first, whereof St. Paul may be taken as chief
representative of the one, and St. John of the other.
We cannot do more than trace the distinction in some
of its broadest features. We see then St. Paul making
man the starting point of his theology. The divine
image in man, that image lost, the impossibility of its
restoration by any powers of his own ; the ever deeper
errors of the sin-darkened intellect ; the ever vainer
struggles of the sin-enslaved will ; it is from this
human side of the truth that he starts ; these are the
grounds which he first lays, as eminently in his
great dogmatic Epistle to the Romans. And only
when he has brought out this confession of a fall, of
an infinite short-coming from the true ideal of huma-
nity, and from the glory of God, only when the cry,
" Oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me?"
has been wrung out from the bond-slaves of evil, does
he bring in the mighty Redeemer, and the hymn of
praise, the " I thank God through Jesus Christ" of
the redeemed. But St. John, upon the other hand,
starts from the opposite point, from the theology in
the more restricted sense of the word ; in this justify-
ing the title o 660X070?, which he bears. His centre
and starting-point is the Divine Love, and out of that
he unfolds all ; not delineating, as his brother Apostle,
THE MANIFOLDNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 49
any mighty birth-pangs, in which the new creature is
born; since rather in that passing from death unto
life, and in that abiding in the Father and in the Son
which follows therefrom, the discovery of sin does not
run long before, but rather goes hand in hand with,
the discovery of the grace of God for forgiving, and
the power of God for overcoming, that sin which by
the Spirit of Christ is gradually revealed. Thus we
have man delivered in St. Paul, God delivering in
St. John ; man rising in the one, God stooping in
the other ; and thus each travels over an hemisphere
in the great orb of Christian Truth, and they, not
each singly, but between them, embrace and encircle
it all.
For this is part of the glory of Christ as compared
with his servants, as compared with the chiefest of his
servants, that He alone stands at the absolute centre
of humanity, the one completely harmonious man, un-
folding all which was in that humanity equally upon all
sides, fully upon all sides the only one in whom the
real and ideal met, and were absolutely at one. Every
other man has idiosyncrasies, characteristics some
features, that is, of his character marked more strongly
than others, fitnesses for one task rather than for an-
other, more genial powers in one direction than in
others. Nor even are the greatest, a St. Paul or a
St. John, exempted from this law ; but, according to
this law, are made to serve for the kingdom of God ;
and the regeneration, even that mighty transformation
itself, does not dissolve these characteristics, but
rather hallows and glorifies them, using them for the
work of God. And thus, in the power of these special
gifts, that which lay as a fruitful germ in the doctrine,
T. H. L. 4
50 LECTURE III. [1845.
or, more truly, in the facts of our Lord's life, was by
his two Apostles developed upon this side and upon
that.
And as it was meant that the Gospel of Christ
should embrace all lands, should fix, at its first en-
trance into the world, a firm foot upon either of its
two great cultivated portions, so in these two, in
St. Paul and in St. John, we recognize wondrous
preparations in the providence of God for the winning
to the obedience of the cross both the western and
the eastern world. Who can fail to see in the great
Apostle of Tarsus, in his discursive intellect, in his
keen dialectics, in his philosophic training, the man
armed to dispute with Stoic and Epicurean at Athens;
who should teach the Church how she should take the
West for her inheritance ? nor less was he the man
who, by the past struggles of his inner life and the
consequent fulness and power with which he brought
out the scheme of our justification, should become
the spiritual forefather of the Augustines and Luthers,
of all them who have brought out for us, with the
sense of personal guilt, the sense also of personal
deliverance, the consciousness of a personal standing
of each one of us before God. And in St. John, the
full significance of whose writings for the Church is
probably yet to be revealed, and, it may be, will not
appear till the coming in of the nations of the east
into the fold, we have the progenitor of every mystic,
in the nobler sense of that word of every contem-
plative spirit that has delighted to sink and to lose
itself, and the sense of its own littleness, in the bright-
ness and in the glory of God. Shall we not thank
God, shall we not recognize as part of his loving
THE MANIFOLDNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 51
wisdom, that thus none are left out ; that while there
are evidently among men two leading types of mind,
he has made provision for them both for the dis-
cursive and the intuitive, for the schoolman and the
mystic, for them who trust through knowing to see,
and for them also who believe that only through
seeing they can know ; that, whatever in their intel-
lectual condition men may be, the net is laid out to
catch them ? For then, when once they are taken,
all that might have been in them of overbalance in
one direction, all of faulty excess, is gradually done
away, and redressed, till they and those that have
been brought in by an opposite method, are more
and more led to a mutual recognition and honouring
of the gifts each of the other, and to the unity of a
perfect man in Christ Jesus.
Nor is it only that there is different nourishment
for different souls, but the same nourishment is also
so curiously mixed and tempered, that it is felt to be
for all. As, perhaps, the most signal example of this,
let us only seek to realize to ourselves what the Book
of Psalms, itself, according to that beautiful expres-
sion of Luther's, ' a Bible in little,' has been, and for
whom how men of all conditions, all habits of thought,
have here met, vying with one another in expres-
sions of affection and gratitude to this book, in telling
what they owed to it, and what it had proved to
them. Men seemingly the most unlikely to express
enthusiasm about any such matter lawyers and
statists immersed deeply in this world's business, clas-
sical scholars familiar with other models of beauty,
other standards of art these have been forward as
the forwardest to set their seal to this book, have
42
52 LECTURE III.
left their confession that it was the voice of their
inmost heart, that the spirit of it past into their
spirits as did the spirit of no other book, that it
found them more often and at greater depths of their
being, lifted them to higher heights than did any
other or, as one greatly-suffering man, telling of the
solace which he found from this book of Psalms in
the hours of a long imprisonment, has expressed it,
that it bore him up, as a lark perched between an
eagle's wings is borne up into the everlasting sunlight,
till he saw the world and all its trouble for ever
underneath him. I can imagine no fairer volume
than one of such thankful acknowledgements as I
have described, and it is a volume which might easily
be gathered, for such on all sides abound ; not a few
of them as large, as free, as rapturous as that of our
own Hooker, which must be present to the minds of
many of us here. Nor is it wonderful that there
should be such ; for, to quote but one noble utter-
ance* in relation of this book, " the conflict of naked
power with righteousness, of the visible with the invi-
sible, of confusion with order, of the devilish with the
divine, of death with life, this is its subject. And
because this is the subject of all human anxieties,
this book has been that in which living and suffering
men in all ages have found a language, which they
have felt to be a mysterious anticipation of, and pro-
vision for, their own especial wants, and in which
they have gradually understood that the Divine voice
is never so truly and distinctly heard, as when it
" Maurice's Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy in the Encyclop.
Metropolitan.
THE MANIFOLDNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 53
speaks through human experience and sympa-
thies*."
* The reader may be well pleased to see a few more of these
brought at a single glance under his eye. St. Basil may fitly lead.
In a passage Horn. I. in Psalmos, quoted at much greater length
in Suicer's Thes. S. V. ^aX/xos, '"faX/nds datfiovwv (pvyadevn'ipiov TII? TIOV
dyye\wi> /3ot/0eis t-rrayiayi) ' oir\ov ev <o/3ots vvKTepivoli, dv aVau<7is KOTTIOV
fifjiepivuiv' vr\irioi<3 dtrfpaXeia' aKfiri^ovcriii eyKa\\<oTrifffj.a' Trpeo-jSu-repois irapri-
yopia' yvvaitfci /coo-/ios dp/jioSitoTaTos' Tas e,o)/u'as oiKi^ei Tasdyopd? atatppu-
vi^ei' elcrayop.evoi'i a-rotxeiu><ris, irpoKoirTovrtav aujjris, re\eiov/u.tvcav <rr/-
piyna, e<ocXj|<Ti<zs (ptavtj . oC-ros TCCS copras <paidpvvei, OUTOS Ttji/ /caret Qeov
\virr\v, 8-np.Lovpy el. >FaXju6s yap Kal e/c XiO/vijs KapSias SaKpvov eKKaXeiTai.
^aX/xos TO T(OV dyye\tav epyov,To ovpdviovrro\LTevfj.a, TO TrvevfiaTiKov dv/nt-
ap.a, K. T. X. St. Ambrose, as it was often his manner to reproduce what
he found in the Greek Fathers to his purpose, would seem to have had
this passage of his great eastern contemporary in his mind when
he composed his not less beautiful laud of the Psalms, Enarr. in Ps. i.
Here too it is but a fragment which can be quoted : Historia instruit,
Lex docet, prophetia annunciat, correptio castigat, moralitas suadet :
in libro Psalmorum profectus est omnium, et medicina quaedam salutis
humanae. Quicunque legerit, habet quo propriae vulnera passionis
special! possit curare remedio. ..Quantum laboratur in Ecclesia ut fiat
silentium, cum lectiones leguntur ! Si unus loquatur, obstrepunt uni-
versi: cum psalmus legitur, ipse sibi est effector silentii. Omnes
loquuntur, et nullus obstrepit. Psalmum reges sine potestatis super-
cilio resultant. In hoc se ministerio David gaudebat videri. Psalmus
cantatur ab imperatoribus, jubilatur a populis. Certant clamare sin-
guli quod omnibus proficit. Domi psalmus canitur, foris recensetur.
Sine labore percipitur, cum voluptate servatur: psalmus dissidentes
copulat, discordes sociat, offensos reconciliat...Certat in Psalmo doc-
trina cum gratia simul. Cantatur ad delectationem, disci tur ad erudi-
tionem. Nam violentiora prsecepta non permanent : quod autem cum
suavitate perceperis, id infusum semel prsecordiis, non consuevit elabi.
And Augustine (Confess., 1. 9, c. 4,) speaks of the manner in which he
exulted in the Psalms at the time of his first conversion : Quas tibi,
Deus meus, voces dedi cum legerem psalmos David...et quomodo in te
inflammabar ex eis, et accendebar eos recitare si possem toto orbe
terrarum adversum typhum human! generis... Quam vehementi et
acri dolore indignabar Manichaeis, et miserabar eos rursus, quod ilia
sacramenta, ilia medicamenta nescirent, et insani essent adversus
antidotum quo sani esse potuissent.
Jeremy Taylor in his Preface to the Psalter of David, speaking of
the manner in which, by the troubles of the civil wars, he was de-
prived of his books and his retirements, and how in his deprivation he
found
54 LECTURE III.
Indeed, in the fact of such a book as the Psalter
forming part of our sacred Instrument, we trace a
most gracious purpose of God. For in the very idea
of a Revelation is implied rather a speaking of God
to men than of men to God: and such a speaking
from heaven predominantly finds place in all other
books of Holy Scripture. Yet how greatly had we
been losers, had there been no corresponding record
of the answering voices that go up from earth unto
heaven. How earnestly should we have craved a
standard by which to try the feelings, the utterances
of our spirits, a rule whereby to know whether they
were healthy and true, the same voices, the same
found comfort here, thus goes on : " Indeed, when I came to look upon
the Psalter with a nearer observation, and an eye diligent to espy any
advantages and remedies there deposited...! found so many admirable
promises, so rare variety of the expressions of the mercies of God,
so many consolatory hymns, the commemoration of so many deliver-
ances from dangers and deaths and enemies, so many miracles of
mercy and salvation, that I began to be so confident as to believe there
could come no affliction great enough to spend so great a stock of
comfort as was laid up in the treasure of the Psalter ; the saying of
St. Paul was here verified, ' If sin ' and misery ' did abound, then did
grace superabound ;' and as we believe of the passion of Christ, it was
so great as to be able to satisfy for a thousand worlds ; so is it of the
comforts of David's Psalms, they are more than sufficient to repair
all the breaches of mankind." And Donne, {Sermon 66), taking his
text from Ps. Ixiii. 7, proceeds : " The Psalms are the manna of the
Church. As manna tasted to every man like that that he liked best,
so do the Psalms minister instruction and satisfaction to every man in
every emergency and occasion. David was not only a clear prophet
of Christ himself, but a prophet of every particular Christian; he
foretells what I, what any, shall do and suffer and say. And as the
whole book of Psalms is oleum effusum, an ointment poured out upon
all sorts of sores, a searcloth that supples all bruises, a balm that
searches all wounds, so are there some certain psalms that are imperial
psalms, that command over all affections, and spread themselves over
all occasions; catholic universal psalms, that apply themselves to all
THE MANIFOLDNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 55
cries, as those of each other regenerate man. Such
a rule, such a standard we have here ; man is speak-
ing unto God; that which came from heaven is return-
ing to heaven once more. Here we have insight into
the mystery of prayer ; streams of life are rising up as
high as the heights from which first they came down ;
the mountain-tops of man's spirit are smoking, but
smoking because God has descended upon and touched
them.
These are but a few examples, brethren, time
will allow us to adduce no more, of that which all
Scripture will abundantly supply, the evidences,
namely, of its own adaptation for the needs of all,
for all the needs of each. And these things being so,
let us for ourselves gladly enter into this many-
chambered palace of the Truth, whereof the doors
stand open to us evermore. Let us thankfully sit
down at this feast of many spiritual dainties, which is
spread for us and for all. And if not every one of
them at once delights us ; if of some we have rather
to take the word of others that they are good than
as yet proved it so ourselves, let us believe that the
cause of this lies rather in the sickness of our palate,
than in the faulty preparation of that which the^great
Master of the feast has set before us ; and let us
ask, not that these be removed, but that our true
taste be restored ; and this the more, seeing that
unnumbered guests, who in time past have sat down,
or are now sitting down, at this heavenly banquet,
have borne witness that these meats which may be
dull and tasteless to us, were life and strength to
them, " yea, sweeter than honey and the honeycomb."
We are sick, and these are medicines no less than
56 LECTURE III. [1845
food ; and for us that word must stand fast, Non cor-
rigat ceger medicamenta sua. Let us thus bear ourselves
towards Holy Scripture, and then presently, in that
which seemed a stranger face we shall recognize the
countenance of a gracious, a familiar friend. We shall
more and more see how this Scripture was laid out by
One who knew what was in man, One who desired also
to unfold us on all sides of our moral and spiritual
being ; who, too, in the largeness of his love would
send none empty away ; but who does herein open his
hand, that He may fill all things living with plenteous-
ness.
LECTURE IV.
THE ADVANCE OF SCRIPTURE
HEBREWS I. 1, 2.
God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spaJce in
time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these
last days spoJcen unto us by Ms Son.
WE have seen how in Holy Scripture one idea is
dominant, the idea of a lost, defaced, and yet not
wholly effaced, image of God in man, with God's
scheme for its restoration and renewal : we have seen
how that, which is one in having this for its subject,
and in knowing no other subject, has yet a manifold
development, marvellously corresponding to the mani-
fold necessities of his nature to whom it is addressed,
and who by its help should be renewed. But the
progressive unfolding of God's plan in Scripture, may
well afford matter for another discourse, and will sup-
ply our theme for this day.
Nor shall I herein be wandering from my argument,
since this progressiveness of Scripture is an important
element in its fitness for the education of man. For
this we claim of a teacher to whom we yield ourselves
with an entire confidence, that there be advance and
progress in his teaching ; not indeed that this should
be at every moment distinctly perceptible, but that it
should be so when long periods and courses of his
teaching are contemplated together. The advance
may sometimes be rather in a spiral than in a straight
line, yet still on the whole there must be advance; he
58 LECTURE IV. [1845.
must not eddy round in ceaseless circles, leaving off
where he began, but evidently have a scheme before
him, according to which he is seeking to lead on unto
perfection those that have committed themselves to
his teaching. It is of the essence of a true teacher,
be that teacher book or person, thus to carry forward.
If it be a book claiming to educate, it must be itself
the history of an education, the record of an intensive,
as well as extensive, development. We look for this,
and we rest our expectation on a yet deeper feeling.
"We feel that as each individual man was meant to go
on from Blower to higher, and in the end to have Christ
fully formed in him, so the Church as a living body
could not have been intended to be a stationary thing,
always conning over the same lessons, but rather ad-
vancing in a like manner to perfection ; not in this
advance leaving ought behind which God has taught
it ; but ever carrying with it into its higher state, as
part of its realized possession, all which it has gotten
in a lower. And if so, that Book which was to be the
record and interpreter of these dealings of God, ever
running parallel with them, growing with their growth,
explaining them as they unfolded themselves, that
must bear the stamp and impress of the same pro-
gress.
Does a nearer examination of Holy Scripture bear
out this our expectation ? Does it speak of itself as a
progressive revelation of the Name of God ? And if
so, can we discern it to be such, to be the gradual
unfolding of the ideas of the kingdom, and of men's
relations to it, to be a continual calling out in them
the sense of new relations and new faculties and
powers ? I think, both. And, first, Revelation speaks
THE ADVANCE OF SCRIPTURE. 59
of itself in such language. " I have many things to
say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now;" surely
this was what God had been saying to his elect from
the first, till that crowning day of Pentecost, when
they were made capable of all mysteries, and had the
unction of the Holy One, and knew all things ; and
with much before us, it needs not to tarry with the
proofs of this.
And as regards ourselves, we can trace, I think,
the Scripture to be this which it affirms itself to be.
Who, for instance, can help feeling that in the three
memorable epochs by which it marks the greatest un-
unfoldings of the kingdom of God, I mean, in the
calling of Abraham, the giving of the Law by Moses,
the Incarnation of the Son of God, we have the
childhood, the youth, the manhood of our race, of that
elect portion of it, at least, which God had gathered
into a Church and constituted for the while the repre-
sentative of all ; and that we have this with marvellous
correspondencies of these epochs to similar periods in
the lives which we ourselves are living ?
In Abraham and the Church of the patriarchal we
have that which exactly answers to childhood. Their
relations to God were as a child's to a father, the
same undoubting, unquestioning affiance ; with as yet
no fixed code of law ; the deeper evils of the heart
not as yet stirring, the awful consciousness of those
evils as yet unawakened. So Abraham and the patri-
archs walked before God, in the beauty and the sim-
plicity of a childlike faith love seeming as yet the
only law, and no other law being needed, since not
yet the whole might of the rebellious will had been
aroused, since a sheltering Providence had hitherto
60 LECTURE IV. [1845.
kept aloof many temptations which should afterwards
arrive.
But a very different stage of man's history begins
with Moses. The father is thrown for awhile into the
back ground by the lawgiver ; God appears the giver
of a " fiery law : " and the race having outgrown its
childlike estate, with all the blessed privileges of that
time, appears now as the youth, aware of this terrible
law, and struggling against it ; and in this struggle
brought to a consciousness of that which before was
hidden from it, namely, the deep alienation of its will
from the perfect will of God. This seems, at first
sight, as though it were a retrograde step in man's
progress, and regarded apart from the final issues it
were ; as the Apostle himself confesses, when he says,
" I was alive without the law once, but when the com-
mandment came, sin revived, and I died." Yet nor
he, nor any, could have done without this coming in
of the law. The opposition of his will to God's will
being in man, most needful was it that it should not
remain latent, but be brought out, yea, brought out
in all its strength, as an holy law could alone bring it
out ; for thus only was it in the way of being subdued.
God having made Himself known as a God of love,
most needful was it that men should know Him also
the God of an absolute righteousness ; since without
this that love itself had shewn in men's eyes as a poor
thing, as a weak toleration of their evil, instead of
being, as it is, that which more than all else makes
Him a consuming fire for all impurity and evil.
But with the entering of the Son of God into our
nature, the manhood of the race begins that which
it was meant in its final perfection to be that, for
THE ADVANCE OF SCRIPTURE. 61
the sake of which it passed through those lower stages.
The consciousness of the filial relation has again re-
vived in its full strength, and the suspended privileges
are restored. "Abba, Father!" is once more on the
lips of the Church, only with deeper accents and a
fuller sense than at that earlier day of all v\hich in
these words is included. The sense of God's love
which belonged to its childhood, of God's righteous-
ness which predominated in its youth, are reconciled ;
they have met and kissed each other. His love is seen
to be righteous, and his righteousness to be loving. His
law is no longer struggled against, for it is written in
the heart, and it reveals itself as that which to keep is
the truest blessedness.
And how mysteriously, brethren, does this teach-
ing of our race, which was thus written large, and
acted out upon a great scale in the history of God's
chosen people, repeat itself evermore in the smaller
world, in the microcosm of elect souls, which are under
the same divine education. Is there not many a one
who can trace in himself the same process and pro-
gress as we have been following here ? First was our
childhood, corresponding to Abraham's state the
undeveloped, yet true affiance on an heavenly Father,
when we needed no more than this ; when as yet
we had not looked down into the abysmal deeps of
evil in our hearts, when we too were alive without the
law, and dreamt not of the rebel, who was ready,
when occasion came, to take arms against his Lord,
though that rebel was no other than ourselves.
But the years went on, with all which they brought,
with their good and with their evil : and childhood
was left behind ; and to us too the time arrived for
62 LECTURE IV. [1845.
the giving of the law ; and then us too God led apart
into the wilderness, separated us from every other
living soul, made us feel the mystery of our awful
personality, and spoke to us as He had never spoken
before, even face to face, revealing Himself to us no
longer merely as the God of our fathers, but with an
higher revelation, as the I AM, the Holy One. For
us, too, was that terrible giving of the law in the deep
of our souls, which he who has known will say boldly,
that Sinai with its thunders and lightnings, its black-
ness and its darkness, its unendurable voice which he
who heard craved that he might hear no more, was
not more terrible ; and sin is no longer a word but a
reality, is no longer felt as the transient grieving of a
parent's heart, but as the violation of an eternal order,
a violation which cannot remain unavenged or unre-
drest. But dreadful as this law is, terrible and threat-
ening shape as it rises over the soul, does not each
man make the same experience as did Israel of old,
and find out its helplessness for the true ends of his
life ? It can kill the sinner, but it cannot kill the
sin : that only shrinks deeper into its hiding-places in
the soul, and needs another charmer to lure it out.
This is our state of condemnation, which is yet most
needful for a right entering into the state of life and
freedom : this is the law preparing for, and handing
over unto, Christ.
And as there was the manhood of the race, as the
Church which God had been training and disciplining
so long, was introduced into the fulness of its inherit-
ance, when Christ, who had upheld it always, came
visibly into the midst of it ; so is it in like manner
when God brings his First-begotten into the inner
THE ADVANCE OF SCRIPTURE. 63
world of any single heart. Then that heart under-
stands all the way by which it had been led, and sees
how all things have worked for the bringing it into
that grace in which now it stands. Then the child's
faith returns ; only is it now a mightier faith, a more
heroic act of affiance, for it is a faith in God despite of
and in full knowledge of our evil, instead of a faith in
God in ignorance of our evil.
Marvellously does He thus run oftentimes the lives
of his children parallel with the life of the Church at
large, as that life is unfolded in Sacred Writ, bringing
each in particular under the same teaching as the
whole. Yet this is not all : we have not merely in
Scripture God carrying Israel his Son through succes-
sive stages, which may serve to explain to us the stages
of our own innermost spiritual life ; but we may trace
there another sequence, another progress that by
which He is training his people into a sense of ever-
widening relationships, and this also making answer to
the sequence in which He trains each one in particular
of his children into the same, and serving as a pattern
thereto. For what are the great fellowships of men,
which rest not upon man's choice, but upon God's
will, which are not self-willed associations into which
men gather of themselves, but societies wherein they
are set by the act of God? Each will at once reply,
The Family, The State, The Church. And this too is
their order ; the Family must go before the State,
being itself the corner-stone on which the State is
built ; and the State, which is the fellowship of certain
men to the exclusion of others, waits to be taken up
into the Church, which is the fellowship of all men
who believe in the risen Head of their race.
64 LECTURE IV. [1845.
And this sequence is that maintained in the Bible ;
for what is the early history of the Bible, but pre-
dominantly the history of the Family ? of the blessing
which awaits reverence for the family order, of the
sure curse which avenges its violation. On the one
side, we have the men who were true to this divine
institute; who, amid many weaknesses, recognized and
honoured it the Seths and Enochs before the flood,
the Abrahams and Isaacs, the Jacobs and Josephs
after. On the other side we have the Lamechs and
Tubal Cains, and at a later day, the builders of Babel,
the men who thought to associate themselves, to say,
A confederacy, where God had not said it, to knit
themselves into a body by bands of their own, instead
of owning that God had knit them already skilled
masters, as we learn, in the arts of life, starting up, as
we are told, into a premature civilization ; yet having
in themselves, through violations, which we can plainly
trace, of that family order, of the primal institutes of
humanity, the seeds of a sure and swift decay; so
that presently they are lost to our sight altogether ;
while the Patriarchs, the honourers and sanctifiers of
these relations, walk before us heads of a nation, of
that kingly and priestly nation in which all other
nations should be blest.
But Holy Scripture does not linger here. It
passes on, and its middle history is the history of this
nation, of national life ; shewing us by liveliest ex-
ample, all that can exalt, all that can degrade, a peo-
ple : how Israel, so long as it believed in its invisible
Lord and King, its righteous Lawgiver, was great and
prosperous how, when it lost that faith and bowed to
idols of sense, it became of a surety inwardly distracted,
THE ADVANCE OF SCRIPTURE. 65
externally enslaved forfeiting those very outward
gifts for the sake of which it had turned its back upon
the Giver righteousness and truth and justice perish-
ing between man and man, while He in whom alone
these have any substantial existence was no longer
held fast to and believed.
And then in the New Testament, not the conditions
under which the Family can exist, not the conditions
under which the State, but the idea of the Church, of
that fellowship which, including all, may itself be in-
cluded by none, is unfolded to us. There we behold
the laws of the universal kingdom, and Christ, not the
King of a single nation, but the Head of humanity,
the Saviour of all.
And this order of Sacred Scripture, is also the
order of our lives. I mean not that we first become
members of a family, and then of a State, and lastly
of a Church ; but this is the order in which we become
conscious of relations. For what is it that a child
first discovers ? that it is the member of a family
that it has kindred. What are its earliest duties ? a
faithful entering into these relations ; its earliest sins?
a refusal to enter into them. And what next ? that
there is a wider fellowship than this of home-love
and home-affections, to which it belongs ; that there
are other men to whom it owes other duties ; that it
is the member of a State no less than a family, that it
must be just as well as loving. And last of all is per-
ceived that there is yet another fellowship at the root
of both these fellowships, which gives them their mean-
ing, which alone upholds and sustains them against all
the sin and selfishness which are continually threaten-
ing their dissolution a fellowship with the Lord of
T. H. L. 5
66 LECTURE IV. [1845.
men, and in Him with every man of that race which
He has redeemed, of that nature which He has taken.
And so the cycle of God's teaching is complete, and
that cycle in which the Scripture shews us that He
taught the world is found here also again to be the
cycle in which He teaches the individual soul.
But to pass to quite another province of our sub-
ject : we must not leave unobserved the manner in
which prophecy bears witness to this progressive un-
folding of God's purpose with our race. Often we
dishonour prophecy, when the chief value which it has
in our eyes is the use to which it may be turned as
evidence ; when we regard it as serving no nobler
ends, as having no deeper root in the economy of
God than in this are presumed; when it is for us
merely a miraculum scientice, which, with the miracles
properly so called, the miracula potential, may do duty
in proving against cavillers the divine origin of our
Faith ; when all that we can find is that the doers of
the works and the utterers of the words did and said
what was beyond the reach and scope of common
men. But the fact that prophecy should constitute
so large an element in Scripture finds its explanation
rather in that law which we have been tracing through-
out all Scripture the law, I mean, of an orderly
development, according to which there is nothing
sudden, nothing abrupt or unprepared in his counsels,
all whose works were known to Him from the begin-
ning. It is part of this law that there should ever be
prefigurations of the coming, that truths so vast and
so mighty as those of the New Covenant, so difficult
for man's heart to conceive, should have their way
THE ADVANCE OF SCRIPTURE. 67
prepared, should, ere they arrive in their highest
shape, give pledge and promise of themselves in lower
forms and in weaker rudiments.
Thus was it good that before the appearing of the
Son of God in the flesh, there should be, in the lan-
guage of Bishop Bull, " preludings of the Incarnation,"
transient apparitions of Him in a human form, though
not in the verity of our human nature. Thus was it
ordered that each one of the mighty acts of our
Lord's life should not stand wholly apart, and without
analogy in any thing which had gone before, but ever
find in something earlier its lineaments and its out-
lines. Weak and faint these lineaments may have been,
weak and faint they must have been, when compared
with the glory that excelleth ; yet sketches and out-
lines and foreshadowings still of the glory to be re-
vealed. Thus, more than one was wonderfully born,
with many circumstances of a strange solemnity, with
heavenly announcements, with much that went beyond
human expectation, ere HE was born, by the annun-
ciation of an Angel, through the overshadowing of the
Holy Ghost, whose name should be called Wonderful,
The Mighty God. So we may say that in the shining
of Moses' face, as he came down from the mount of
God, we have already a weaker Transfiguration, a
feeble fore-announcement of that brightness, which,
not from without, but breaking forth from within,
should clothe with a light which no words could ade-
quately utter, not the face only, but the whole person,
of the Son of God. So again, in the translation of
Elijah the lineaments of his Ascension appear, who,
not rapt in a chariot of fire, not needing the cleansing
of that fiery baptism, nor requiring that commissioned
52
68 LECTURE IV. [1846.
chariot to bear him up, did in the far sublimer calm-
ness of his own indwelling power arise from the earth,
and with his human body pass into the heavenly
places*. And once more, in the dividing of the Spirit
which Moses had, upon the seventy elders of Israel, so
that they all did prophesy, we recognize an earlier
though a weaker Pentecost ; in which however the
later was surely implied : for if from the servant could
be imparted of his spirit, how much more and in what
larger measure from the Son ? All these should be
contemplated as preparatory workings in a lower sphere
of the same Spirit, which afterwards wrought more
gloriously in the later and crowning acts ; as knit to
those later by an inner law, as sharers of the same
organic life with them.
The rending away of isolated passages, and then
saying, This Psalm, or That chapter of Isaiah, is pro-
phetic and has to do with Christ and his kingdom,
and this without explaining how it comes that these
have to do, and those nearest them have not, can
never truly satisfy ; men's minds resist this fragmen-
tary capricious exposition. The portions of Scripture
thus adduced very likely are those in which prophecy
concentrates itself more than in any other : they may
be the strongest expressions of that Spirit which
quickens the whole mass ; but it has not forsaken the
other portions to gather itself up exclusively in these.
* Gregory the Great (Horn, in Evang.) : Elias in curru legitur
ascendisse, ut videlicet aperte demonstraretur, quia homo purus adju-
torio indigebat alieno. Per angelos quippe facta et ostensa sunt adju-
menta ; quia nee in crelum quidem aerium per se ascendere poterat
quern naturae suae infirmitas gravabat. Redemtor autem noster non
curru, non angelis sublevatus legitur, quia is qui fecerat omnia, nimi-
rum super omnia sua virtute ferebatur.
THE ADVANCE OF SCRIPTURE. 65
Rather the subtle threads of prophecy are woven
through every part of the woof and texture, not
separable from thence without rending and destroy-
ing the whole. All the Old Testament, as the record
of a divine constitution pointing to something higher
than itself, administered by men who were ever look-
ing beyond themselves to a Greater that should come,
who were uttering, as the Spirit stirred them, the
deepest longings of their souls after his appearing,
is prophetic ; and this, not by an arbitrary appoint-
ment, which meant thus to supply evidences ready
to hand for the truth of Revelation, in the curious
tallying of the Old with the New, in the remarkable
fulfilments of the foretold, but prophetic according to
the inmost necessities of the case, which would not
suffer it to be otherwise.
For how could God, bringing to pass what was
good and true, do other than make it resemble what
was best and truest, which he should one day bring to
pass? Raising up holy men, how could he avoid
giving them features of likeness to the Holiest of all?
appointing them functions and offices in which to bless
their brethren, how could these otherwise than an-
ticipate his functions and his office, who should come
in the fulness of blessing to his people ? Inspiring
them to speak, stirring by the breath of his Spirit the
deepest chords of their hearts, how could He bring
forth from them any other notes but those which made
the deepest music of their lives; their longings, namely,
after the promised Redeemer, their yearnings after
the kingdom of his righteousness, mere longings and
yearnings no longer now, since the Spirit that inspired
such utterances, being the very Spirit of Truth, gave
70 LECTURE IV. [1845.
pledge, in sanctioning and working the desire, that
the fulfilment of that desire in due time should not be
wanting ? If the poet had right when he spake of
"the prophetic soul
Of the great world, dreaming of things to come ;"
by how much higher reason must a prophetic soul
have dwelt in Israel, by which it not vaguely dreamed,
but in some sort felt itself already in possession, of
the great things to come, whereof it knew that the
seeds and germs were laid so deeply in its own bosom?
We may say of Judaism, that it bore in its womb the
Messiah, as the man-child whom it should one day
give birth to, and only in the forming and bearing of
whom it found its true meaning. This was its function,
and according to the counsel of God it should have
been saved through this child-bearing ; though by its
own sin it did itself expire in giving birth to Him
who was intended to have been not its death but its
life.
This, then, is another remarkable aspect under
which the progressiveness of God's dealings, and of
that Book which is their record, presents itself to us,
this long and patient training of his people through
many a preceding word and institution and person
into the capacity of recognizing his glory, of whom
all that went before was but the shadow and the
symbol. In all this was a prelude to prepare the
spiritual ear for the full burst of a later, and but for
that, an overwhelming harmony ; a purpling of the
east, which might tell in what quarter the Sun of
Righteousness would appear, and whither the straining
eyes must turn, that would catch the first brightness
of his rising.
THE ADVANCE OF SCRIPTURE. 71
Nor is it unworthy of observation, that prophecy
did never run before that actual development, which
alone would enable it to speak a language which men
should understand. It did not paint upon air ; but
ever claimed forms of the present in which to array
its promises of the future. Thus we have no mention
of Christ the Prophet till a great prophet had actually
arisen, till Moses could say, " The Lord thy God will
raise up unto thee a Prophet like unto me." We hear
nothing of Christ the King, till there were kings in
Israel theocratic kings who should give the pro-
phecy a substance and a meaning ; who should make
men know, though with many imperfections, what a
sceptre of righteousness was, and a king ruling in
judgment. And thus (did time allow) we might trace
in much more detail how not only in the idea of type
and prophecy there is obedience to that law of advance
and progress, which we have everywhere been finding,
but in the very order and sequence of the prophecies
themselves. Yet this matter we must leave. Sufficient
for us to have seen how in prophecy are the outlines
and lineaments which shall indicate, and fit men to
know the very body of the Truth, when that at length
shall come ; to have considered under another aspect
to-clay, how Scripture is its own witness, gives proof
that it is what it affirms itself to be, a Book for the
education of men, in that it plainly contains the
gradual unfolding of a great idea, such a thought as
only could have entered into the mind of God to con-
ceive, such a thought as He only who is the King of
ages could have carried out.
And without question, for ourselves, brethren, the
lessons which the Scripture contemplated as this Book
72 LECTURE IV. [1845.
of an ever-advancing education may suggest, are not
very far to seek. And this first. God has taken our
whole race by the hand that He may lead it on toge-
ther ; even so will He lead every single soul that will
trust itself to Him. He will speak to us first as "little
children," then as " young men," and then as "fathers."
His Word in our hearts shall be as the blade, and the
ear, and the full corn in the ear. He will give us, as
we are faithful, an ever larger horizon, a widening
horizon of duty, with an increasing consciousness of
powers and faculties for fulfilling that duty.
And our second lesson lies also at the door, that
seeing, as we do in Scripture, what the school has
been in which all God's saints have been trained, we
be well content to learn in the same, nor count that
we can learn better in any other. The study of this
Scripture shews us how through the everlasting ordi-
nances of the Family, the State, the Church, God
trains into nobleness and freedom the souls and spirits
of men ; how he calls out in their strength, first the
affections, then the conscience, and last of all, the
reason and the will of men. It teaches us that, not
in self-willed separation from common duties, but in a
lowly and earnest fulfilling of them, men have grown
up to their full stature as men. Often in that evil
pride which makes us rather to follow after that which
will divide us from our brethren, than that which will
unite us to them, we have counted, it may be, that
we could discipline ourselves better, that we could
train ourselves higher, than by those common ways in
which all our fellows are being trained, better than
through the ordinances of the family, better than
through the duties which devolve on us as citizens,
THE ADVANCE OF SCRIPTURE. 73
better than by the teaching and Sacraments of Christ's
Church. It has seemed to us a poor thing to walk in
those trite and common paths wherein all are walking.
Yet these common paths are the paths in which bless-
ing travels, are the ways in which God is met. Wel-
coming and fulfilling the lowliest duties which meet
us there, we shall often be surprized to find that we
have unawares been welcoming and entertaining An-
gels ; and nurturing ourselves upon these, it shall be
with us in our souls and spirits as it was with Daniel
and his young companions, when they shewed fairer
and better liking, and had more evidently thriven
upon their common food, their ordinary pulse, than
had all their compeers upon their royal dainties,
their profane meats, brought from the table of the
Babylonian king.
LECTURE V.
THE PAST DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE.
JOHN XII. 16.
These things understood not his disciples at the first ; but
when Jesus was glorified, then remembered they, that these
were written of him.
THE subject of the Lectures which I am now permitted
to resume, is the fitness of Holy Scripture for unfold-
ing the spiritual life of men, and the arguments which
we may from this fitness derive for its being the gift
of God to his reasonable creatures, whom He has
called to a spiritual fellowship with Himself. So many
who are now present cannot have heard the earlier
discourses, so little have I a right to expect that those
who did, should vividly retain them in their memories,
that I shall just mention at this resumption of the
course the point at which I have arrived, not attempt-
ing to retrace even with hastiest steps, but indicating
merely by lightest hints, the way by which we hitherto
have gone. Passing by, then, the external arguments,
not as comparatively unimportant, but as not belong-
ing to the domain of my peculiar subject, I have
sought, after some preliminary observations which
filled the chief part of my first Lecture, in the second
to trace the oneness of Scripture; how there runs
through it one idea, that of the kingdom of God, and
how by that one are knit into unity its most diverse
parts and elements ; in the third, how this Scripture
THE PAST DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 75
which is one, is also manifold, so laid out that it shall
nourish all souls, and make wonderful answer to the
moral and intellectual needs of all men ; and then in
the fourth, the latest of that series, I endeavoured to
shew how Scripture is fitted to be the Book of our
education, the furthererof our spiritual growth, through
itself being the history of the progressive education of
our race into the fulness of the knowledge of God.
An ample task remains for us still : this day's
portion of that task will consist in an attempt, it
must be indeed a most imperfect one, to shew how
this treasure of divine Truth, once given, has only
gradually revealed itself; how the history of the
Church, the difficulties, the trials, the struggles, the
temptations in which it has been involved, have inter-
preted to it its own records, brought out their latent
significance, and caused it to discover all which in
them it had ; how there was much written for it there
as in sympathetic ink, invisible for a season, yet ready
to flash out in lines and characters of light, whenever
the appointed day and hour had arrived. So that in
this way the Scripture has been to the Church as
their garments to the children of Israel, which during
all the years of their pilgrimage in the desert waxed
not old, yea, according to rabbinical tradition, kept
pace and measure with their bodies, growing with
their growth, fitting the man as they had fitted the
child, and this, until the forty years of their sojourn
in the wilderness had expired. Or, to use another
comparison which may help to illustrate our meaning,
Holy Scripture thus progressively unfolding what it
contains, might be likened fitly to some magnificent
landscape on which the sun is gradually rising, and
76 LECTURE V. [1845.
ever as it rises, is bringing out one headland into
light and prominence, and then another; anon kin-
dling the glory-smitten summit of some far mountain,
and presently lighting up the recesses of some near
valley which had hitherto abided in gloom, and so
travelling on till nothing remains in shadow, no nook
nor corner hid from the light and heat of it, but the
whole prospect stands out in the clearness and splen-
dour of the brightest noon.
And we can discern, I think, in some measure,
causes which in the wisdom and providence of God
worked together to constitute Scripture as this glorious
landscape which should ever reveal new features of
wonder and beauty, this boundless treasure with riches
laid up for all future times and all future needs. The
apostolic Church that of which the sacred writings
of the New Covenant are a living transcript was not
merely one age and one aspect of the Church, but we
have in it the picture and prophecy of the Church's
history in every future age. All which in those after
ages should only slowly declare itself, is there presented
in one great image, the most amazing contrasts, the
best and the worst, the highest and the lowest, the
noblest assertions, and the deadliest perversions, of the
Truth. It is, if we may so speak, a rapid rehearsal of
the great drama of God's providence with his Church,
which should afterwards be played out at leisure on
the world's stage. Nothing, which was after to be,
was not there ; although by the necessities of the case,
all comprest and brought into narrowest compass, and
so to speak, all foreshortened, and, as a picture of the
future, wanting in perspective and in distance. But
this glimpse once vouchsafed to us of all, the wondrous
THE PAST DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 77
picture dislimns and dissolves again ; that aera in which
were all other aeras wrapped up, closes, and the period
of gradual development begins ; but yet not this, be-
fore every error and the antidote of every error had
been set down, every heresy which should afterwards
display itself full-blown, had budded, and the witness
against it had been clearly borne ; not till it had been
seen how Jewish legality and heathen false liberty
would equally seek to corrupt the Truth, and with
what weapons both were to be encountered ; not till
missions to the Jew and missions to the heathen had
alike been founded, and the manner of conducting
them been shewn ; not till many Antichrists had re-
hearsed and prefigured the final one, and tried the
faith of God's elect. And thus it was ordained that
the canonical Scriptures, which seem to belong only
to one age, should indeed belong to all ages ; inas-
much as that age, that fruitful time, that middle point
of the world's history, in which an old world died and
a new world sprang to life, had the germs and rudi-
ments of all other times within its bosom.
It is this fact, that the Holy Scripture contains
within itself all treasures of wisdom and knowledge,
but only renders up those treasures little by little,
and as they are needed or asked for, which justifies
us in speaking of a development of doctrine in the
Church, and explains much in her inner history that
might else startle or perplex. But about this matter
so much has lately been spoken, and another theory
of the manner in which the Church unfolds her doc-
trine, looking at first sight the same as this, but at
heart entirely different, has so diligently been put
forth, and that with purposes hostile to that sound
78 LECTURE V. [1845.
form of faith and doctrine, which it is given us to
maintain and defend, that it might be worth our
while to linger here for a little, and consider wherein
the essential difference between the false theory and
the true is to be found, and in what sense, and in what
only, the Church may be said to develop her doctrine.
It is familiar to many who have watched with interest
the course of the controversies of our day, that those
who have given up as hopeless the endeavour to find
in Scripture, or in the practices or creeds of the early
Church, evidence for the accretions with which they
have overlaid the Truth, have shifted their ground,
and taken up a position entirely new. True, they
have said, these additions are not there, but they are
the unfolding of the Truth which is there ; they are
but the producing of the line of Truth, the later num-
bers of a series, whereof the earlier in Scripture are
given; they are necessary developments of doctrine,
such as the Church has ever allowed to herself, and
which will alone explain many of the appearances
which she presents.
Now doubtless there is a true idea of Scriptural
developments, which has always been recognized, to
which the great Fathers of the Church have set their
seal * ; and it is this, that the Church, informed and
quickened by the Spirit of God, more and more dis-
* Thus Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. Liv. 22.) : Multa enim latebant
in Scripturis, et quum praecisi essent haeretici, quaestionibus agitaverunt
Ecclesiam Dei ; aperta sunt quae latebant, et intellecta est voluntas
Dei....Numquid enim perfecte de Trinitate tractatum est antequam
oblatrarent Ariani ? numquid perfecte de poenitentibus tractatum est
antequam obsisterent Novatiani ? Sic non perfecte de baptismate
tractatum est antequam contradicerent foris positi rebaptizatores. Cf.
Enarr. in Ps. Lxvii. 31 ; and Confess., 1. 7, c. 19. Improbatio haereti-
corum facit eminere quid Ecclesia sentiat, et quid habeat sana doctrina.
THE PAST DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE.. 79
covers what in Holy Scripture is given her ; but it is
not this, that she unfolds by an independent power
anything further therefrom. She has always possessed
what she now possesses of doctrine and truth, only
not always with the same distinctness of consciousness.
She has not added to her wealth, but she has become
more and more aware of that wealth ; her dowry has
remained always the same, but that dowry was so rich
and so rare, that only little by little she has counted
over and taken stock and inventory of her jewels. She
has consolidated her doctrine, compelled thereto by
the provocation of enemies, or induced to it by the
growing sense of her own needs. She has brought
together utterances in Holy Writ, and those which
apart were comparatively barren, when thus married,
when each had thus found its complement in the other,
have been fruitful to her. Those which apart meant
little to her, have been seen to mean much, when thus
brought together and read each by the light of the
other. In these senses she has enlarged her dominion,
her dominion having become larger to her.
And yet all this which she has laboriously won,
she possessed before, implicitly though not explicitly,
even as the shut hand is as perfect an hand as the
open ; or as our dominion in that huge island of the
Pacific is as truly ours, and that region as vast in ex-
tent now, as it will be when every mountain and valley,
every rivulet and bay, have been explored and laid
clown in our maps, and the flag of England has waved
over them all. All, for example, which the later
Church slowly and through centuries defined upon
this side and that, of the person of the Son of God
of the relation of his natures and the communication
80 LECTURE V. [1845.
of their properties of his divine will and his human,
all this the earliest had, yea and enjoyed, not hav-
ing arrived at it by analytic process, not able perhaps,
as not needing, to lay it out with dialectic accuracy,
but in total impression, in synthetic unity. She pos-
sessed it all, she lived in the might and in the glory
of it; as is notably witnessed by the prophetic tact,
if one may venture so to call that divine instinct, by
which she rejected all which was alien to and would
have disturbed the true evolution of her doctrine,
even before she had fully elaborated that doctrine;
by which she refused to shut the door against her-
self; and even in matters which had not yet come
before her for decision and definition, preserved the
ground clear and open from all that would have em-
barrassed and obstructed in the future.
We do not object to, rather we fully acknowledge,
the theory of the development of religious Truth so
stated. We no more object, than we do to a Nicene
Creed following up and enlarging an Apostolic, which
rather we gladly and thankfully receive as a rich
addition to our heritage. But that Nicene Creed in
the same manner contains no new truths which the
Church has added to her stock since the earlier was
composed, though it may be some which she has
brought out with more distinctness to herself and
to her children, as it contains broader and more
accurately guarded statements of the old. But the
essential in this progress of Truth is, that the later
is always as truly found in Scripture as the earlier
not as easy to discover, but when discovered, as
much carrying with it its own evidence ; and there,
not in some obscure hint and germ, putting one in
THE PAST DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 81
mind of an inverted pyramid, so small the founda-
tion, so vast and overshadowing the superstructure
as for instance, the whole Papal system, which rests,
as far as Scripture is adduced in proof, on a single
text nor yet there in some passage which is equally
capable of a thousand other turns as that given ; as,
for example, when the worship of the Blessed Virgin
is found prophesied and authorized in the Lord's
answer to her at the marriage in Cana of Galilee.
But with these limitations the scheme is altogether
different from that which some of late have put for-
ward, different not in degree only, but in kind ; and
it is that mere confusion of unlike things under like
terms, which is so fruitful a source of errors in the
world, to call by this same name that theory which,
refusing the Scriptures as, first and last, authoritative
in and limitary of the Truth, assumes that in the
course of ages there was intended to be, not only the
discovery of the Truth which is there, but also, by
independent accretion and addition, the further growth
of doctrine, besides what is there ; which recognizes
such accretions, when they fall in with its own notions,
for legitimate outgrowths, and not, as indeed they
are, for noxious misgrowths, of doctrine ; and which
thus makes the Church from time to time the creator
of new Truth, and not merely the guardian and definer
and drawer out of the old. This is all that she assumes
to be ; whatever she proclaims, she has ever the con-
sciousness that she is proclaiming it as the ancient
Truth, as that which she has always borne in her
bosom, however she may not have distinctly outspoken
it till now ; as part of the Truth once delivered to
T. H. L. 6
82 LECTURE V. [1845.
her, though, it may be, not all at once apprehended
by her.
Thus was it felt in the ages long past of the
Church ; thus also was it at the Reformation ; for
that too was an entering of the Church on a portion
of the fulness of her heritage, on which she had not
adequately entered before. It is hardly too much to
say, that the Reformation called out from their hiding-
places the Epistle to the Romans, the Epistle to the
Galatians, and generally the Epistles of St. Paul, which
then became to the faithful all which they were in-
tended to be. It is not, of course, implied that these
were not read and studied and commented on before,
or that much and varied profit was not drawn from
them in every age, or that they had not been full of
blessing for unnumbered souls. But with all this,
men's eyes were holden, and had been for long, so
that the innermost heart of them, the deepest signifi-
cance was not seen. For they were the needs of souls,
the mighty anguish of men's spirits, which were the
true interpreters of these portions of God's Word.
When that vast and gorgeous fabric, the Papal Chris-
tendom of the middle ages, dissolved and went to
pieces, that which, as one contemplates it on its
bright side or its dark, one is inclined to regard as a
glorious realization, or an impious caricature, of the
promised kingdom of Christ upon the earth ; when
the time arrived that men could no longer live by
faith that they were members of that great spiritual
fellowship, (for it was felt now to be only the mockery
of such ;) when each man said, " I too am a man, my-
self and no other, one by myself, with my own burden,
THE PAST DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 83
my own sin, the inalienable mystery of my own being
which I cannot put off on another, and as such, I must
stand or fall ; it helps me nothing to tell me that I
belong to a glorious community, in which saints have
lived and doctors taught, wherein I am bound in closest
fellowship with all the ages that are past ; this helps
me nothing, unless I too, by myself, am a healed man,
with the deep wound of my own spirit healed, unless
you shew me how my own personal relations to God,
which sin has utterly disturbed, may be made firm and
strong again;" then, when men thus felt, where
should they so naturally turn as to those portions of
Scripture especially designed to furnish a response to
this deep cry of the human heart, and which are occu-
pied with setting forth a personal Deliverer from this
personal sense of guilt and condemnation ? And not
anything else but this mighty agony of souls would
have supplied the key of knowledge to the Epistles of
St. Paul, which had remained otherwise to the faithful
as written in a strange language, to be admired at a
distance, but dealing with matters in which they had
no very close concern. But with this preparation, and
thus initiated by suffering, men came to them with
ineffable joy, as to springs in the desert, and found in
them all after which their inmost spirits had yearned
and thirsted the most.
Thus at the Keformation the relations of every
man to God, consequent on the Incarnation and death
and resurrection of the Son of God, were those for
which the Church mainly contended ; that those re-
lations were perfect, that by one oblation Christ had
perfected for ever them that were sanctified, that
nothing might come between God and the cleansed
62
84 LECTURE V. [1845.
conscience of his children, to bring them nearer than
they were brought already, no pope, no work, no
penance, that all which pretended to intrude and
come between was a lie. And by consequence those
records of Scripture which were occupied with declar-
ing the perfectness of these relations, were those most
sedulously and most earnestly handled ; bright beams
of light flashed out from them, at once enlightening
and gladdening and kindling, as there had never done
until now.
But in our own day, as we see in that country
where alone a speculative philosophy, with which theo-
logy has to put itself in relation, exists, the controversy
has drawn, as was to be looked for, even nearer yet
to the very heart of the matter. For now it is not,
What is the meaning for us of this constitution in the
Son ? but whether there is such a constitution at all?
it is not what follows on the relations which the In-
carnate Word established between God and men, but
whether there have been any such relations at all
established any meeting of heaven and earth in the
person of Jesus of Nazareth, whether all which has
been spoken of such has not been merely dreams of
men, and not, as the Church affirms, facts of God?
And therefore the Gospels, as we see, come mainly
into consideration now ; round them the combatants
gather, the battle rages : they are felt to be the key
of the position, which, as it is won or lost, will carry
with it the issues of the day. Every one that would
strike a blow at Christianity, strikes at them ; criticises
the record, or the fact recorded ; the record, that it
is a loose and accidental aggregation of floating ma-
terials, of insecure traditions, which crumbles to pieces
THE PAST DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 85
at any accurate handling or the fact recorded, that
a man who was God, and God who was man, is in-
conceivable, and carries its own contradiction on its
front.
And as the Gospels are the point mainly assailed,
so are they the citadel in which they must make them-
selves strong, from which they must issue, who would
win in our day any signal victory for the Truth. First,
the record itself must be vindicated, the glory and
perfectness of its form, the mystery of those four
Gospels in their subtle harmonies, in the manner
wherein they complete one another, handing us on,
the first to the second, and the second to the third,
and the third to the last: the wondrous laws of
selection, and laws of rejection, which evidently pre-
sided at their construction, and do continually reveal
themselves to the deeper enquirer, however the shallow
may miss or deny them. And then, secondly, the facts,
or, to speak more truly, the fact must be justified,
which in those Gospels is recorded, that it is the
highest wisdom, that a Son of God, who is also the
Son of man, is the one, the divine fact, which alone
explains either God or man, is that which philosophy
must end by accepting at the hands of Theology as
the crowning Truth, and only in accepting which it
will find its own completion, and the long and weary
strife between the two obtain an end.
And as it was at the Reformation with the Pauline
Epistles, as it is now with the Gospels, so, I can-
not doubt, a day will come when all the significance
of the Apocalypse for the Church of God will be ap-
parent, which hitherto it can scarcely be said to have
been ; that a time will arrive when it will be plainly
86 LECTURE V. [1845.
shewn how costly a gift, yea rather, how necessary an
armour was this for the Church of the redeemed.
Then, when the last things are about to be, and the
trumpet of the last Angel to sound, when the great
drama is hastening with ever briefer pauses to its
catastrophe, then, in one unlocked for way or an-
other, the veil will be lifted up from this wondrous
Book, and it will be to the Church collectively, what,
even partially understood, it has been already to tens
of thousands of her children strength in the fires,
giving her " songs in the night," songs of joy and
deliverance in that darkest night of her trial, which
shall precede the break of her everlasting day ; and
enabling her, even when the triumph of Antichrist is
at the highest, to look securely on to his near doom
and her own perfect victory.
But we are dealing to-day with the past develop-
ment of Scripture, not with the future with what it
has already unfolded, not with what it may have still
in reserve. That may well occupy us hereafter ; for
the present, let us ask ourselves what is the great
lesson which we should draw from this aspect of the
subject which we have been this day contemplating.
A lesson surely of the very deepest significance. For
if other generations before us have had their especial
task and work, so also must we ; a work which none
other have done for us, even as none other could ;
for just as each individual has some task which none
other can fulfil so well as he, for it is his task, so
every generation has its own appointed labour, and
only can be at harmony with itself, when it has faith-
fully girded itself to that. Let us not then, under
shew of humility, flatter our indolence, and say that
THE PAST DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 87
in this matter of the treasures of the knowledge of
God all is searched out ; that for us it remains only
to live on the handed clown, on that which others
have already won from his Word. Let us not, in this
manner, turn that into a standing pool or reservoir,
which might be a spring of water springing up as
freshly and newly to our lips as to the lips of any who
have gone before us.
Shall we determine, for instance, to know no other
Theology, no other results of Scripture, save those of
the Church of the first ages ? Are we thus honouring
Christ's promise to His Church, when we imply, as so
we do, that the Spirit of wisdom and understanding
was given to her once, but is not given to her always?
Shall all history, as an interpreter of God's Word, go
for nothing with us be assumed to stand in no rela-
tion to that Book, of which surely the very idea is,
that as it casts light upon all, so it receives light from
all ? Or do we presume too far in believing that there
are portions of its vast and goodly field, which we can
cultivate with larger success than those who preceded
us, to which we shall bring experience which they did
not and could not bring, which will yield therefore to
us ampler returns than they yielded to them ?
Or, again, were it not as great a mistake, as partial
a view upon another side, to require that the Theology
of the Reformation should be the ultimate term and
law to us 3 to say that we would know nothing fur-
ther, and to look, respectfully it may be, but still
coldly, on any truths which were not at that day
counted vital? Surely our loss were most real, re-
fusing to take our part in cultivating this field which
the Lord has blest, and which He has now delivered
88 LECTURE V. [1845.
to us, that we in our turn might dress and keep, and
enrich ourselves from it ; a loss we know not how
great ! for we too, had we been faithful and earnest,
might have found hid in that field some treasure, for
joy whereof we should have been ready to renounce
all that we had, all our barren theories, and hungry
speculations, and mutual suspicions, if only we might
have made that treasure our own ; so reconciling, so
evidently fitted would it have shewn itself for all our
actual needs.
We may purpose indeed to live on what others
have done, the mighty men of the days which are
past, the fathers or revivers of our faith ; and we
may count that their gains will as much enrich us as
they enriched them. But this will not prove so indeed;
for it is a just law of our being, one of the righteous
compensations of toil, that what a man wins by his
labour, be it inward truth, or only some outward sup-
pliance of his need, is ever far more really his own,
makes him far more truly rich, than ought which he
receives or inherits ready made at the hands and from
the toils of others. And they of whom we speak
earned their truths, by toil and by struggle, by mighty
wrestlings till the day broke ; watering with the sweat
of their brow, oftentimes with tears as of blood yea,
with the life-blood of their own hearts, the soil which
yielded them in return an harvest so large. So was
it, and so only, that they came again with joy, bearing
their sheaves with them. And would we do the same,
let us first indeed see that we let nothing go that
we forfeit no part of that which we inherit at their
hands. But also with a just confidence in that blessed
Spirit, who is ever with His Church, who is ever lead-
THE PAST DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 89
ing it into the Truth which it needs, let us labour,
that through prayer and through study, through earnest
knocking, through holy living, that inexhausted and
inexhaustible Word may render up unto us our truth,
the truth by which we must live, the truth, what-
soever that be, which, more than any other, will deliver
us from the lies with which we in our time are beset,
which will make us strong where we are weak, and
heal us where we are divided, and enable us most
effectually to do that work which our God would have
done by us in this the day of our toil.
LECTURE VI.
THE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OF SCRIPTURE.
ISAIAH XII. 3.
With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.
IT was my endeavour in my last Lecture to bring be-
fore you the progressive unfolding of the Scripture
for the Church the manner in which for the company
of faithful men in all ages, considered as one great
organic body with one common life, there has been
such a lifting up of veil after veil from the Word
of God ; they only gradually coming into the know-
ledge of all the riches which in that Word were their
own. It were a worthy task for us to-day to consider,
what no doubt all of us must often have felt, the way
in which it has been ordained that the treasures of
Holy Scripture should for the individual believer be
inexhaustible also, should be quarries in which he
may always dig, yet which he never can dig out, a
world of wisdom in which the most zealous and suc-
cessful searcher shall ever be the readiest to acknow-
ledge that what remains to know is far more than
what yet he has known.
For this is a most important need for a Book such
as we affirm the Bible to be, a Book for the cultivat-
ing of humanity, for the developing, by the ministry
of the Church, through the teaching of the Spirit, the
higher life of every man in the world. It belongs to
THE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OF SCRIPTURE. 91
the very primal necessities of a Scripture which is
ordained for such ends as these, that it should be thus
inexhaustible ; that no man should ever come to its
end, himself containing it, instead of being contained
by it, as by something far larger than himself. The
very idea of such a Book, which is for all men and
for all the life of every man, is that it should have
treasures which it does not give up at once, secrets
which it yields slowly and only to those that are its
intimates ; with rich waving harvests on its surface,
but with precious veins of metal hidden far below, and
to be reached only by search and by labour. Nothing
were so fatal to its lasting influence, to the high pur-
poses which it is meant to serve, as for any with justice
to feel that he had used it up, that he had worked it
through, that henceforward it had no " fresh fields "
nor "pastures new" in which to invite him for to-
morrow. Even where this did not utterly repel him,
where he maintained the study of this Book as a com-
manded duty, his chiefest delight and satisfaction in
the handling of it would have departed ; he no longer
would draw water with joy from these wells of salva-
tion, for they would be to him fresh springing wells
no more.
It will be my purpose on the present occasion to
trace, as far as I may, what there is in the structure
and conformation of Scripture to constitute it this
Book of unsearchable riches for each : and in so doing
I shall not, as might perhaps at first sight appear, be
going over again the subject which was treated last ;
for that was the organic unfolding of the Word for the
Church considered as an whole ; this the wealth which
there is stored for each one of the faithful in particu-
92 LECTURE VI. [1845.
lar, and which all, given to him in his Baptism, he yet
only little by little can make his own, appropriating
and transmuting it into the substance of his own life.
Now the first provision made for this by the grace
and wisdom of God, the first at least which I would
no te, is one which by shallow or malignant objectors
has been often turned into a charge against it, I man
the absence of a systematic arrangement ; for such is
the shape which the complaint generally assumes.
But this complaint of the want of method in Scrip-
ture, what is it in fact but this, that it is not dead,
but living ? that it is no herbarium, no hortus siccus, but
a garden ? a wilderness, if men choose to call it so,
but a wilderness of sweets, with its flowers upon their
stalks its plants freshly growing, the deAv upon their
leaves, the mould about their roots with its lowly
hyssops and its cedars of God. And when men say
that there is want of method in it, they would speak
more accurately if they said that there was want of
system; for the highest method, even the method of
the Spirit, may reign where system there is none.
Method is divine, is inseparable from the ideas of God
and of order : but system is of man, is an help to the
weakness of his faculties, is the artificial arrangement
by which he brings within his limited ken that which
in no other way he would be able to grasp as an
whole. That there should be books of systematic
Theology, books with their plan and scheme thus
lying on their very surface, and meeting us at once,
this is most needful; but most needful also that Scrip-
ture should not be such a book. The dearest interests
of all, of wise men equally as of women and children,
demand this.
THE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OF SCRIPTURE. 93
It is true that one of the latest assaults on Scrip-
ture by a living adversary of the faith, by one who, at
first attacking only the historical accuracy of the
Gospels, has since gone rapidly the downward way,
till he has sunk at last, as his latest writings testify,
into the bottomless pit of sheerest atheism*, it is true
that his assault is mainly directed against this very
point. He demands of a book, which claims to be the
appointed book for the guidance and teaching of hu-
manity, that he should be able to lay his finger there
upon a precept or a doctrine for each occurring need,
that he should be able to find in one place and
under one head all which relates to one matter ; and
because he cannot find this in the Bible, he opens his
mouth against it, and proclaims it insufficient for the
ends which it professes to fulfil. But Holy Scripture
is not this book for the slothful is not this book
which can be interpreted without, and apart from, and
by the deniers of, that Holy Spirit by whom it came.
Rather is it a field, upon the surface of which if some-
times we gather manna easily and without labour, and
given, as it were, freely to our hands, yet of which
also many portions are to be cultivated with pains and
toil, ere they will yield food for the use of man. This
bread of life also is to be often eaten in the whole-
some sweat of our brow.
It is not a defect in Scripture, it is not something
which is to be excused and explained away, but rather
a glory and a prerogative, that there reigns in it the
freedom and fulness of nature, and not the narrow-
ness and strictness of art ; as one said of old who
* Strauss. Compare his Leben Jesu with his Christliche Glau-
benslehre.
94 LECTURE VI. [1845.
adorned this University, and is yet numbered among
the honoured band of the Cambridge Platonists, when
speaking of the delightful exercise of the highest
faculties of the soul, which is thus secured : " All
which gratulations of the soul in her successful pur-
suits of divine Truth would be utterly lost or prevented,
if the Holy Scripture set down all things so fully and
methodically that our reading and understanding would
everywhere keep pace together. Wherefore that the
mind of man may be worthily employed, and taken
up with a kind of spiritual husbandry, God has not
made the Scriptures like an artificial garden, wherein
the walks are plain and regular, the plants sorted and
set in order, the fruits ripe and the flowers blown,
and all things fully exposed to our view ; but rather
like an uncultivated field, where indeed we have the
ground and hidden seeds of all precious things, but
nothing can be brought to any great beauty, order,
fulness, or maturity, without our industry, nor indeed
with it, unless the dew of his grace descend upon it,
without whose blessing this spiritual culture will thrive
as little as the labour of the husbandman without
showers of rain*."
But to pass to another branch of the subject ; it
is part of this absence of system, with the presence in
its stead of an higher method, of this constitution of
Scripture as a Book which no man should ever search
* Henry More, in his Mystery of Godliness, B. i., c. 2. Another in
our own day has expressed himself in like manner : " Scripture cannot,
as it were, be mapped, or its contents catalogued ; but after all our
diligence to the end of our lives and to the end of the Church, it must
be an unexplored and unsubdued land, with heights and valleys,
forests and streams, on the right and left of our path and close about
us, full of concealed wonders and choice treasures."
THE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OF SCRIPTURE. 95
to the end, and then be tempted to lay aside as known
and finished, that so much of it should be occupied
with the history of lives. That which is to teach us
to live, is itself life not precepts, not rules alone,
but these clothing themselves in the flesh and blood
of action and of suffering. A system of faith and
duty, however intricate, one might come to the end
of at last. One might possess thoroughly a Summa
Theologies, however massive and piled up ; for after
all, however vast, it yet has its defined bounds and
limits. But life stretches out on every side, and on
every side loses itself in the infinite. An Abraham, a
David, a Paul, there is always something incomplete
in the way in w,hich we have hitherto realized their
characters ; they always abide greater than our con-
ception of them, and at the same time always ready
to reveal themselves in some new features to the lov-
ing and studious eye. Beheld in some new combination,
in some new grouping with those by whom they are
surrounded, they will yield some lesson of instruction
which they have never yielded before. And if they,
how much more HE, whom we are bidden above all to
consider, looking unto whom we are to run our course,
and whose every turn and gesture and tone and word
are significant for us. We might study out a system;
but how can we ever study out a person ? And our
blessedness is, that Christ does not declare to us a
system, and say, ' This is the truth ; ' so doing he
might have established a school : but he points to a
person, even to himself, and says, { I am the Truth,'
and thus he founded, not a school, but a Church, a
fellowship which stands in its faith upon a person, not
96 LECTURE VI. [1845.
in its tenure of a doctrine, or, at least, only mediately
and in a secondary sense upon this.
But another reason why the Word of God should
be for us this mine which shall never be worked out,
is, no doubt, the following : that our own life brings
out in it such new and undreamt-of treasures. What
an interpreter of Scripture is affliction ! how many
stars in its heaven shine out brightly in the night of
sorrow or of pain, which were unperceived or over-
looked in the garish day of our prosperity. What an
enlarger of Scripture is any other outer or inner event,
which stirs the deeps of our hearts, which touches
us near to the core and centre of our lives. Trouble
of spirit, condemnation of conscience, pain of body,
sudden danger, strong temptation when any of these
overtake us, what veils do they take away, that we
may see what hitherto we saw not ; what new domains
of God's word do they bring within our spiritual ken !
How do promises, which once fell flat upon our ears,
become precious now; psalms become our own, our
heritage for ever, which before were aloof from us !
How do we see things now with the eye, which before
we knew only by the hearing of the ear ; which, before,
men had told us, but now we ourselves have found !
How much, again, do we see in our riper age, which
in youth we missed or passed over ! And thus, on these
accounts also, the Scripture is well fitted to be our
companion, and to do us good, all the years of our
life*
Fuller. " The same man at several times may in his apprehen-
sion prefer several Scriptures as best, formerly most affected with one
place, for the present more delighted with another ; and afterwards
THE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OF SCRIPTURE. 97
Another provision which in it is made for awaken-
ing attention, and for summoning men to penetrate
more deeply into its meaning, is to be found in its
apparent, I need not say only apparent, contradictions.
But it is not at pains to avoid the semblance of these.
It is not careful to remove every handle of objection
which any might take hold of. On the contrary, that
saying, " Blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended
in me," finds as true an application to Christ's Word
as to his person. For that Word goes on its way, not
obviating every possible misconception, not giving
anxious pains to shew how this statement which it
makes and that agree. It is satisfied that they do
agree, and lets those that are watching for an offence
take it. They whose hearts were already alienated
from the Truth are suffered to stumble at this stone,
which was set for this very fall and rise of many,
that the thoughts of many hearts might be revealed,
and that they who were longing for an excuse for un-
belief might find one.
And with the same challenge to the false-hearted,
the same fruitful supply of suggestive thought for the
devout enquirer, these matters claiming reconciliation
will meet us, not in the history only, but also in the
doctrine. For it is ever the manner of that Word
with which we have to do, now boldly to declare its
truth upon this side, and then presently to declare it
as boldly and fearlessly on the other not painfully
and nicely balancing, limiting, qualifying, till the whole
conceiving comfort therein not so clear, choose other places as more
pregnant and pertinent to his purpose. Thus God orders it that
divers men, (and perhaps the same man at divers time) make use of
all his gifts, gleaning and gathering comfort, as it is scattered through
the whole field of the Scripture."
T. H. L. 7
98 LECTURE VI. [1845.
strength of its statements had evaporated, not caring
even though its truths should seem to jostle one an-
other. Enough that they do not do so indeed. It is
content to leave them to the Spirit to adjust and re-
concile, and to shew how the rights of each are com-
patible with the rights of the other and not compatible
only, but how most often the one requires that the
other have its rights, before it can have truly its own.
Thus how profitable for us that we have the divers
statements of St. Paul and St. James divers, but not
diverse each, in the words of St. Chrysostom, declar-
ing the same truth, &a0o/ows, but not evavriw how
do they summon us to a deeper entering into the
doctrine than might otherwise have been ours, bidding
us not to be satisfied till we reach that central point
where we can evidently see how the two are at one,
and do but present, from different points of view, the
same truth. How useful to find in one place that God
tempted Abraham, and in another, that God tempteth
not any*. Should we have learned so well the signifi-
cance of temptation, should we have been set to think
about it so effectually, by any other process ? Or when
the Lord sets before the pure-hearted, that they shall
see God, that God whom his Apostle declares that no
man hath seen nor can seef, how does this set us to
meditate on that awful yet blessed vision of God,
which in some sense shall be vouchsafed to his servants,
even as in some it shall remain incommunicable even
unto them.
If indeed these difficulties had been artificially
contrived, if they had been puzzles and perplexities
* Compare Gen. xxii. 1, with Jam. i. 13.
t Compare Matt. v. 8, with 1 Tim. vi. 16.
THE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OF SCRIPTURE. 99
with which the Bible had been sown, that it might last
us the longer, that in the explaining and reconciling
of them we might find pleasant exercise for our facul-
ties, they would be but of slightest value. But they
grow out of a far deeper root than this ; they have
nothing thus forced and unnatural about them. Rather
is it here as in the kingdom of nature. How often
does nature seem to contradict herself, so beckoning
us onward to deeper investigations, till we shall have
reached some higher and more comprehensive law, in
which her seeming contradictions, those which lie upon
her surface, are atoned. And this because she is in-
finite : for it is of the essence of manifold and endless
life that it should at times thus present itself as at
variance with its own self. It is the glory of Scripture
that its harmonies lie deep, so deep, that to the care-
less or perverse ear they may be sometimes mistaken
for discords. There might have been a consistency of
its different parts a poor and shallow thing lying
on the outside, traced easily and at once, which none
could miss ; but such had been of no value, had been
charged with no deeper instruction for us.
To look, on another side, at the manner in which
Holy Scripture presents itself as this inexhaustible
treasure, what riches are contained in its minutest
portions ! As it can bear to be looked at in its largest
aspect, so it challenges the contemplation of its
smallest details in this again like nature, which shews
more wonderful, the more microscopic the investiga-
tion to which it is submitted. Here truly are maxima
in minimis the sun reflecting itself as faithfully in
the tiny dewdrop, as in the great mirror of the ocean.
The most eminent illustrations of this widest wealth
72
100 LECTURE VI. [1845.
laid up in narrowest compass must naturally be found in
single sayings of our Lord's. How do they shine, like
finely polished diamonds, upon every face ! how simple
and yet how deep ! apparent paradoxes, and yet pro-
foundest truths ! Every one can get something from
them, and no one can get all. He that gathers little
has enough, and he that gathers much has nothing
over: every one gathers there according to his eating*.
For example, "Whosoever will save his life shall lose
it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall
find it;" who sees not that in these words the keys
of heaven and of hell are put into his hands ? and yet
who will venture to affirm that he has come to their
end ? that he has dived down into all their deeps, or
that he ever expects to do so ? that he has made alto-
gether his own the mysteries of life and of death which
are here? Or again, "Every one that exalteth himself
shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be
exalted ;" what is all the history of the world, if read
aright,, but a comment on, and a confirmation of, these
words ? In the light of them what vast pages of men's
* Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. ciii.) making spiritual application of
the words, " All beasts of the field drink thereof," (Ps. civ. 11.) to the
streams of Holy Scripture, beautifully says : Inde bibit lepus, inde
onager: lepus parvus et onager magnus; lepus timidus, et onager
ferus, uterque inde bibit, sed quisque in sitim suam Non dicit aqua,
Lepori sufficio et repellit onagrum ; neque hoc dicit, Onager accedat,
lepus si accesserit, rapietur. Tarn fideliter et temperate fluit, ut sic
onagrum satiet ne leporem terreat. Sonat strepitus vocis Tullianae,
Cicero legitur, aliquis liber est, dialogus ejus est, sive ipsius sive
Platonis, seu cujuscumque talium : audiunt imperiti, infirmi minoris
cordis, quis audet illuc aspirare ? Strepitus aquae et forte turbatae,
ccrte tamen tarn rapaciter fluentis, ut animal timidum non audeat
accedere et bibere. Cui sonuit, In principio fecit Deus coelum et
terrain, et non ausus est bibere ? Cui sonat Psalmus, et dicat, Multum
est ad me ?
THE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OF SCRIPTURE. 101
destinies, of our own lives, become clear ! Even the
sceptic Bayle was compelled to call them an abridge-
ment of all human history ; and such they are, setting
us as they do at the very centre of the moral oscilla-
tion of the world. These examples of that, whereof
hundreds might be adduced, must suffice.
Nor is it only what Scripture says, but its very
silence which is instructive for us. It was said by one
wise man of another, that more might be learned from
his questions than from another man's answers. With
yet higher truth might it be said that the silence of
Scripture is oftentimes more instructive than the speech
of other books ; so that it has been likened to " a dial
in which the shadow as well as the light informs us*."
For example of this, how full of meaning to us that
we have nothing told us of the life of our blessed
Lord between the twelfth and the thirtieth years
how significant the absolute silence which the Gospels
maintain concerning all that period ; that those years
in fact have no history, nothing for the sacred writers
to record. How much is implied herein ! the calm
ripening of his human powers, the contentedness to
wait, the long preparation in secret, before he began
his open ministry. What a testimony is here, if we
will note it aright, against all our striving and snatch-
ing at hasty results, our impatience, our desire to
glitter before the world ; against all which tempts so
many to pluck the unripe fruits of their minds, and to
turn that into the season of a stunted and premature
harvest, which should have been the season of patient
* Boyle (Style of Holy Scripture) : " There is such fulness in that
book, that oftentimes it says much by saying nothing ; and not only
its expressions but its silences are teaching, like a dial in which the
shadow as well as the light informs us."
102 LECTURE VI. [1845.
sowing, of an earnest culture and a silent ripening of
their powers.
How pregnant with meaning may that be which ap-
pears at first sight only an accidental omission ! Such
an accidental omission it might at first sight appear
that the Prodigal, who while yet in a far country had
determined, among other things which he would say to
his father, to say, " Make me as one of thy hired ser-
vants," when he reaches his father's feet, when he hangs
on his father's neck, says all the rest which he had
determined, but says not this*. We might take this, at
first, for a fortuitous omission ; but indeed what deep
things are taught us here ! This desire to be made as
an hired servant, this wish to be kept at a certain dis-
tance, this refusal to reclaim the fulness of a child's
privileges, was the one turbid and troubled element in
his repentance. How instructive then its omission ;
that, saying all else which he had meditated, he yet
says not this. What a lesson for every penitent, in
other words, for every man. We may learn from this
wherein the true growth in faith and in humility con-
sists how he that has grown in these can endure to
be fully and freely blest to accept all, even when he
most strongly feels that he has forfeited all ; that only
pride and the surviving workings of self-righteousness
and evil stand in the way of a reclaiming of every
blessing, which the sinner had lost, but which God is
waiting and willing to restore.
Many other of the apparent accidents of Scripture,
on what deep grounds do they rest ! Thus, for example,
in the history of Pharaoh's trial, that God should ten
times be said to have hardened his heart, and he ten
* Compare in Luke xv. ver. 19 and 21.
THE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OF SCRIPTURE. 103
times to have hardened his own, or to have had it
hardened, without any reference to other than himself.
The least attentive reader will scarcely have failed to
observe this hardening attributed sometimes to God,
and, sometimes, more or less directly, traced to the
king's own wilfulness and pride. But in the history
of that great strife between the will of God and the
will of his creature, in this the pattern history of that
struggle, such exactly equal distribution of the lan-
guage which assumes the freedom of man's will, and
that which assumes the ultimate lordship of God over
the course of the world a lordship which even the
resistance of the wicked does not derange or impugn
this exactly equal distribution of either language is
surely most remarkable. The great, however mysteri-
ous, fact of the freedom of man's will going hand in
hand with the sovereignty of God is not put in ques-
tion by an exclusive use of a language resting on or
assuming one of these truths or the other nay rather,
exactly equal rights are given to them both ; for both
are true, both of paramount importance to be affirmed.
The sinner does harden his own heart ; his resistance
to God is most real : and yet there is a sense, a most
true sense also, in which God hardens it ; for, to use
the old distinction, He who is not the auctor is yet the
dispositor malorum determines that the evil of the
sinner shall break out in this form or in that, works
even the dark threads of that resistance into the woof
of, providence which He is weaving ; and as Solomon,
in Jewish legend, compelled the wicked spirits to assist
in the temple which he was building, so does God
compel even his enemies, and them, when they are
striving most fiercely against Him, to do his work,
104 LECTURE VI. [1845.
though they mean not so, and to contribute their
stones to that heavenly temple of which He is the
builder and the maker.
Neither let us leave out of sight, when we are
taking into account the provision which Scripture
makes for nourishing the faithful in all the stages of
their spiritual life and growth, that infinite condescen-
sion, according to which, like the prophet who made
himself small, that he might stretch himself, limb for
limb, upon the dead child, it, in some sort, contracts
itself to our littleness *, that we, in return, may become
able to expand ourselves to its greatness. We see
this gracious condescension in nothing more strongly
than in that teaching by parables and similitudes,
which there occupies so prominent a place. No one
turns away from them in pride, as too childish ; none
retreat from them in despair, as too high. In the
parable the Truth of God is not sought to be trans-
planted, as a full-grown tree, into our minds ; for, as
such, it would never take root and flourish ; we never
could find room for it there. But it comes first as a
seed, a germ small to the small, but with capacities
of indefinite expansion ; it grows with our growth,
enlarging the mind which receives it to something of
its own dimensions. Little by little the image reveals
itself more fully ; some of its fitnesses are perceived at
once, and more and more, as spiritual insight advances ;
all of them perhaps never, lying as they do so deep,
and having their roots in the mind of God, who has
constituted this outward world to be an exponent of
the inner, a garment of mysterious texture which his
* Or as one said in the middle ages : Tota sacra Scriptura loqui-
tur nobis tanquam balbutiendo, sicut mater balbutiens cum filio suo
parvulo, qui aliter non potest intelligere verba ejus.
THE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OF SCRIPTURE. 105
creative thoughts have woven for themselves. But
for this very reason, we come back again and again to
these divinely chosen similitudes with fresh interest,
with new delight, being continually rewarded with
glimpses, unperceived before, of the strange and mani-
fold relations, in which the visible and the invisible
stand to one another.
Thus, brethren, have I endeavoured to present to
you this day a few of the aspects under which this
Word of the Scripture may be contemplated as one
fitted evermore to provoke, and evermore to reward,
our enquiries. As one said of old, Habet Scriptura
Sacra haustus primos, habet secundos, habet tertios.
There is, indeed, a tone and temper of spirit, in which
if we allow ourselves, all its wells will seem dry, and
all its fields barren. The superficial dealer with this
Word, he who reads, formally fulfilling an unwelcome
task, he who feels in no living relation with the things
which he reads, who consults the oracle, but expects
no living answer from its lips, who has never known
himself a pilgrim of eternity, to whom life has never,
like that fabled Sphinx, presented riddles which either
he must solve, or, not solving, must perish, such an
one may say, as in his heart he will say, What is this
Word more than another ? It may bring to him no
other feelings but those of tedious monotony and in-
expressible weariness. But with the loving and earnest
seeker it will prove far otherwise : he will ever be
making new discoveries in these spiritual heavens;
ever to him will what seemed at first but a light
vaporous cloud, upon closer gaze, to his armed eye,
resolve itself into a world of stars. The further he
106 LECTURE VI. [1845.
advances, the more will be aware that what lies before
him is far more than what lies behind the readier
will he be to take up his hymn of praise and thanks-
giving, and to wonder with the Apostle at " the depths
of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of
God" which are displayed at once in his works and in
his Word.
LECTURE VII.
THE FRUITFULNESS OF SCRIPTURE.
EZEKIEL XL VII. 9.
And it shall come to pass, that every thing that liveth, which
moveth, whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live.
THE aspect of my subject, which I desire this day to
bring under your notice is this, namely the fruitfulness
of Holy Scripture ; in other words the manner in which
is has shewn itself a germ of life in all the noblest
regions of man's activity; has with its productive
energy impregnated the world ; and how, to use the
image suggested by my text, everything has lived
where these healing waters have come ; so that in this
way too this Word has attested itself that which in
my preceding lectures I have endeavoured to prove
that it was fitted for being, that which we might be-
forehand presume it would be, namely, the unfolder
of all the nobler and higher life of the world. And
these are considerations which will suit as well at a
period of these discourses, when they are drawing
nigh to their conclusion. For it were to little profit
to have shewn how the Scripture ought to have been
all this, how it was fitted for being all this, unless it
could be shewn also that it had been ; unless we could
point to the world's history in evidence that it had
done that, which we say it was adapted for doing.
" The blind see, the lepers are cleansed, the dead are
raised ;" it was to these mighty works that Christ
108 LECTURE VII. [1845.
appealed in answer to the question, "Art thou He that
should come, or look we for another?" And this is
the true answer to every misgiving question of a like
kind. The real evidence for ought which comes claim-
ing to be from God, is its power the power which it
is able to put forth for blessing and for healing. If
the Scriptures manifested no such power, all other
evidence for their divine origin, however convincing
we might think it ought to be, yet practically would
fail to convince. Men will not live on the report that
ought is great or true, unless they so see it and so
find it themselves. But if they do, no assertion on
the part of others that it is small, will prevail to make
them count light of it. For a moment the confident
assertions of gainsayers may perplex, or even seriously
injure, their faith: but presently it will resume its
hold and its empire again.
Thus it has been well and memorably said, that
the great and standing evidence for Christianity is
Christendom ; and it was with good reason, and out
of a true feeling of this, that Origen and other early
apologists of the Faith, albeit they had not such a
full-formed Christendom as we have to appeal to, did
yet, when the adversaries boasted of their Apollonius
and other such shadowy personages, and sought to set
them up as rivals and competitors with the Lord of
glory, make answer by demanding "What became of
these men ? what significance had they for the world's
after development? what have they bequeathed to shew
that they and their appearance lay deep in the mind
and counsel of God? what society did they found?
where is there a fellowship of living men gathered in
their name ? or where any mighty footmarks left upon
THE FRUITFTJLNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 109
the earth to witness that greater than mortals have
trodden it ?" And the same answer is good, when it is
transferred to the books which at any time have made
ungrounded claim to be divine records, and as such, to
stand upon a level with the Canonical Scriptures ; and
which sometimes even in our day are brought forward
in the hope of confounding the Canonical in a common
discredit with them. We in the same way may make
answer, Is there not a difference ? besides all other
condemnation under which they lie, besides the absence
of historic attestation, and the want of inward religious
meaning and aim, are they not self-condemned, in
their utter insignificance in their barrenness in the
entire oblivion into which they have fallen in the
fact, in short, that nothing has come of them ? What
men have they moulded ? what stamp or impress have
they left of themselves upon the world? where is
there a society, or even a man, that appeals to them
or lives by them.
Thus, let any one acquainted with the apocryphal
gospels, compare them for an instant with the sacred
Four which we recognize and receive. It is not merely
that there is an inward difference between these and
those, which would be characterized not too strongly
as a difference like that which finds place between
stately forest-trees and the low tangled brushwood
which springs up under their shadow ; it is not merely
that those spurious gospels are evermore revolting to
the religious sense, abandoning earth without soaring
to heaven ; robbing the person of Christ of its human
features, without lending to it any truly divine ; ever
mistaking size for greatness, and the monstrous for
the miraculous. It is not this only, but the contrast
110 LECTURE VH. [1845.
is at least as remarkable in this respect, that while the
Canonical Gospels have been so fruitful, from those
other nothing has sprung : while the Canonical have
been as germs unfolding themselves endlessly ; winged
seeds endued with a vital energy, which, where they
have lighted, have taken root downward and sprung
upward; those other might be likened to the chaff
borne about by the winds of chance, having no repro-
ductive powers; owing their origin to obscure heretical
sects, never extricating themselves from those narrow
circles in which they first were born ; and, save only
as literary curiosities, with the perishing of those sects,
themselves perishing for ever. They have remained
as dry sticks, as the barren rods which refused to
blossom, and as such not to abide in the sanctuary.
(Numb, xvii.) But the Canonical Gospels have wit-
nessed for themselves, as did Aaron's rod, when it
budded and clothed itself with leaves and blossoms
and almonds. They too, blossoming and budding,
have borne witness to themselves, and to their right
to be laid up in the very Ark of the Testimony for
ever. For it is not the authority and decision of the
Church which has made the Canonical Gospels potent,
and the apocryphal impotent, those fruitful and these
sterile ; rather that decision is the formal acknowledg-
ment of a fact, which was a fact before ; a submission
to authority, to the authority of the Spirit witnessing
to and discerning that Word which is the Lord's ; this
rather than any exercising of authority. That decision
was the spiritual instinct of the Church recognizing
and setting her seal to a fact which was a fact before
namely that these were false and those true ; she
distinguished thus the chaff from the corn, but it was
THE FRUITFULNESS OF SCRIPTURE. Ill
not her decision which had any thing to do with
making these to be chaff and those wheat.
It is the task which I propose to myself to-day, to
consider a few aspects under which the Scriptures
have thus shewn themselves strong ; have approved
themselves quickeners of the spiritual and intellectual
life of men ; although here, in treating such a subject
as this, one is tempted, as more than once has been
my lot, to start back at the greatness of the theme,
the vastness of knowledge of all kinds which to handle
it worthily would require, the fragmentary nature of
ought which, even were the knowledge possessed, one
could hope within the limits of a single discourse to
present. As the matter however may not be past by,
I will seek to present to you one or two reflections,
in the hope that they may be only as the first thoughts
of a more fruitful series which your own minds will
suggest.
And perhaps one of the first which suggests itself
is this, namely, how productive the Holy Scriptures
have been, even in regions of inward life and activity,
where at first sight one would least have expected it,
where we should have been tempted for many reasons
to anticipate exactly opposite effects. How many
things Christianity might, at first sight, have threatened
to leave out, to take no note of, or indeed utterly to
suppress, which, so far from really warring against, it
has raised to higher perfection than ever in the old
world they had attained. With what despair, for ex-
ample, a lover of art, one who at Athens or at Rome
fondly had dwelt among the beautiful creations of
poet and of painter, would have contemplated the rise
of the new religion, and the authority which its doc-
112 LECTURE VII. [1845.
trines were acquiring over the hearts and spirits of
men. What a death-knell must he have heard in this
to all in which his soul so greatly delighted. He might
have been ready perhaps to acknowledge that our
human life under this new teaching would be more
rigorously earnest, more severe, more pure : but all
its grace and its beauty, all which it borrowed of these
from the outward world, he would have concluded,
had been laid under a ban, and must now vanish for
ever. This was evidently in great part the cause of
the unhappy Julian's mislike of the rising Faith of
his alienation from it, as of that of many other hea-
thens like-minded with him. It is true, their hostility
lay much deeper than this ; that it grew out of a far
bitterer root. But this was evidently one of their
griefs against the doctrine of the Nazarene. They
could not consent to lose the grace and beauty of the
Hellenistic worship : all art seemed inextricably linked
and bound up with the forms of the old religion, and,
if that perished, inevitably doomed to perish with it :
and so they resisted while they could ; and when they
could resist no longer, they sat down and made pas-
sionate lamentation at the grave of the old world,
which all their lamentations could not call back to
life ; instead of rejoicing at the birth and by the
cradle of the new, with which indeed all the hopes of
the future were bound up.
And the Christian himself of those earliest ages
might almost have consented to take the same view
even as we do find a Tertullian, and others of his
temper, actually doing : nor in this was he at all to be
wondered at, least of all did he deserve the sneers
with which the infidel historian of the later empire has
THE FRUITFTJLNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 113
on this account visited him. His exaggerations were
only those into which a man of strong moral earnest-
ness might most naturally have fallen. So had all
skill and device of poet and of painter engaged then
in the service of the flesh, so did they do exclusive
homage to the old idolatries, so deeply polluted, for
the most part, were they, so far sunken with a sunken
moral world, that the Christian neophyte, when he
renounced in his baptismal vow all pomps of the devil,
might easily have deemed that these were certainly
included ; and that to forego them wholly and for
ever was his one duty, his only safety.
How little, at any rate, could one or the other,
could friend or foe of the nascent faith, have forecast
that out of it, that nourished by the Christian books,
by the great thoughts which Christ set stirring in
humanity, and of which these books kept a lasting
record, there should unfold itself a poetry infinitely
greater, an art infinitely higher, than any which the
old world had seen ; that this faith, which looked so
rigid, so austere, even so forbidding, should clothe
itself in forms of grace and loveliness, such as men
had never dreamt of before? that poetry should not
be henceforward the play of the spirit, but its holiest
earnest ; and those skilless Christian hymns, those
hymns " to Christ as to God," of which Pliny speaks,
so rude probably in regard of form, should yet be the
preludes of strains higher than the world had listened
to. yet. Or who would have supposed that those art-
less paintings of the catacombs had the prophecy in
them of more wondrous compositions than men's eyes
had ever seen or that a day should arrive when, above
many a dark vault and narrow crypt, where now the
T. H. L. 8
114 LECTURE VII. [1845.
Christian worshippers gathered in secret, should arise
domes and cathedrals, embodying loftier ideas, because
ideas relating to the eternal and the infinite, than all
those Grecian temples, which now stood so fiair and
so strong, but which yet aimed not to lift men's minds
from the earth which they adorned.
How little would the one or other, would Christian
or heathen, have presaged such a future as this that
art was not to perish, but only to be purified and re-
deemed from the service of the flesh, and from what-
ever was clinging to and hindering it from realizing
its true glory, and that this Book, which does not
talk about such matters, which does not make beauty,
but holiness, its end and aim should yet be the truest
nourisher of all out of which any genuine art ever has
proceeded ; the truest fosterer of beauty, in that it is
the nourisher of the affections, the sustainer of the
relations between God and men ; which affections and
which relations are indeed the only root out of which
any poetry or art worthy of the name, ever have
sprung. For these affections being laid waste, those
relations being broken, art is first stricken with bar-
renness, and then in a little while withers and pines
and dies as that ancient art, which had been so
fertile while faith survived, was, when the Church was
born, already withering and dying under the influence
of the scepticism, the profligacy, the decay of family
and national life, the extinction of religious faith,
which so eminently marked the time : only having a
name to live, resting merely on the traditions of an
earlier age, and on the eve of utter dissolution. Such
was its condition when Christ came, and cast in his
Word, as that which should make all things new,
THE FRUITFULNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 115
into the midst of an old and decrepit and worn-out
world.
Yet here it may be as well to observe, that when
I use this language, it is not as assuming that the
Bible, merely as a book apart, had done, or could
have done, this, or ought else whereof presently there
may be occasion to speak not as though the Book
had been cast into the world and had leavened it,
itself the sole and all-sufficient gift which Christ had
bequeathed unto men. Bather, the Spirit, the Word,
and the Church are the three mighty factors which
have wrought together for the great and glorious
issues of a Christendom such as that in the midst of
which we now stand. The Church, taught and enlight-
ened by the Spirit, unfolds and lays out the Word,
and only as it is informed and quickened by that
blessed Spirit of God, can lay it out for the healing
of the nations. We cannot think of this Book by
itself doing the work, any more than we can think
of the Church doing it without this Book, or of the
two doing it together without the ever-present breath
of an Almighty Spirit.
But while this work is thus the result of a three-
fold energy ; while we can never, so long as we think
correctly, separate one of its factors, save for distinc-
tion's sake, from the others ; while, therefore, speaking
of the Scripture and what it has wrought, we must
ever conceive of it as in the possession of a living
body of interpreters, the company of the faithful, and
of them as enlightened by the Holy Spirit to use it
aright ; yet not the less may I ask you to contemplate
the mighty work of the world's regeneration in those
features upon which the influences of a Scripture are
82
116 LECTURE VII. [1845.
mainly traceable, to note the part which this Scripture
has borne in bringing about that new creation, wherein
the old things of the world have past away, and all
things have become new.
For without running into the tempting error of
painting the old world black, for the purpose of bring-
ing out, as by a dark background, the brightness and
glory of the new ; without denying to that old world
what it had of noble and true, or calling, as some have
done, its virtues merely shewy and splendid sins ; yet
it is not easy to estimate how much was to be done,
how much to be undone, ere a Christendom, even
such as we behold it now, could emerge out of that
world which alone yielded the materials out of which
the new creation should be composed. The Word of
the Cross had need, as a mighty leaven, to penetrate
through every interstice of society, leavening language,
and laws, and literature, and institutions, and manners.
For it was not merely that at that change the world
changed its religion, but in that change was implied
the transformation, little by little, of everything be-
sides ; everything else had need to reconstruct itself
afresh. And in this Word there resided a power
equal to this need. The pattern of Christ, kept in the
record of Scripture ever clear in all its distinctness of
outline before men's eyes, his work thus ever repeat-
ing itself for them over again, has given, as we our-
selves see and feel, a new, inasmuch as it is an infinitely
higher, standard of ideal goodness to the world has
cast down usurping pretenders to the name of virtues
from their seats, has lifted up despised graces in their
room. That Word has everywhere given to us graces
for virtues, and martyrs for heroes ; it has so reversed
THE FRUITFULNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 117
men's estimate of greatness, that a wreath of thorns
is felt to be a far worthier ornament for a brow than
a diadem of jewels a Christ upon his cross to be a
spectacle more glorious far than a Caesar on his throne.
From that Word too we have derived such a sense
of the duties of relation, of the debt of love which
every man owes to every other, as was altogether
strange to the heathen world. For when in that well-
known story the poet awoke shouts of a tumultous
applause by declaring nothing human alien from him-
self who was a man, deep as was the feeling in men's
hearts which was here appealed to, yet in those very
shouts of applause it was declared to be as new as it
was deep. In those was the joyful recognition of a
truth which lay deep in every man's bosom, but which
had not taken form or shape or found utterance until
then. Yet, with all our practical shortcomings in love
to our brethren, how different is the condition marked
by this little incident from ours, in which this noble
utterance of the Roman poet is felt to be so true as
hardly to escape from being a truism ; and the love
which men owe to one another on the score of their
common stock, is so taken for granted, and the idea
of it has so penetrated even into our common speech,
that kind and kinned, human and humane, are with us
but different pronunciations of the same words.
And at least as wonderful, at least as fruitful, is
the incoming of the Word of Christ, not into the
midst of an old and corrupt civilization, but when it
kindles for the first time a savage people into life.
How does it seem to brood with a creative warmth
and energy over all the rudiments of an higher life,
which lay in that people's bosom, and yet but for this
118 LECTURE VII. [1845.
never could have come tq the birth, rather were in
danger of utterly dying out. How does it arrest at
once that centrifugal progress of sin, which is ever
drawing the men or the nations that have wandered
out of the sphere of the divine attraction, further and
further from God, the true centre of their being.
Tribes which were in danger of letting go the last
remnant of their spiritual heritage, nay, of utterly and
literally perishing from the face of the earth, victims
of their own vices, and of that uttermost degradation,
which had caused them at length to let go even those
lowest arts by which animal existence is sustained,
even these that Word finds, even in these nurses up
the dying embers of life ; till the savage re-awakens
to the consciousness of a man, and the horde begins,
however feebly at first, to knit itself into the promise
of a nation.
There may be spectacles which attract us more,
there may be tidings to which we listen with a keener
interest, but surely there can be no tidings worthier
to be listened to, no spectacle upon which Angels look
down with a livelier sympathy, than those which such
a land and time will often present ; when, it may be,
some greybeard chief, stained in times past with a
thousand crimes, but now having washed away them
all in the waters of Baptism, hangs upon the words of
life, makes himself, perhaps, the humble and willing
scholar of some little child, that he may learn to read
with his own eyes of that Saviour who has pardoned
even him. And ever as he reads of " the gentleness
of Christ," of his prayers for his crucifiers, of Him
who, being first, made Himself the last, who, being
Lord of all, became servant of all, there dawns upon
THE FRUITFULNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 119
him more and more the glory of meekness, of over-
coming evil with good, of serving others in love, instead
of being himself served in fear : and he understands
that this only is truly to live, and all which he has
lived contrary to this, has been not life, but an hideous
denial of life. Such sights other days have seen ; such
are to be seen in our own : for, blessed be God, it is
not our fathers only who have told us of such things
done in their times of old, but our own report the
same. We too " see our tokens." In New Zealand,
in far islands of the Pacific, we have proof that this
Word is yet mighty through God for casting down
the strongholds of Satan and of sin.
Nor needs it to look thus far abroad to be re-
minded of what this Word has done. The Scripture
itself is full of remembrancers of its own power. He
who, tolerably acquainted with the past history of the
Church, with the struggles which accompanied the
unfolding, fixing, and vindicating of her dogma, he
who, furnished with this knowledge, passes over Scrip-
ture, may in some moods of his mind pass over it as
over a succession of battle-fields. He may be likened
to a traveller journeying through some land, which,
by the importance of its position or the greatness of
its attractions, has drawn contending hosts to its soil,
and been a battle-ground for innumerable generations.
Besides all in those pages which speaks more directly
to himself, they are eloquent to him with a thousand
stirring recollections. For at every step which he
advances, he recognizes that which has been the mo-
tive of some mighty and long drawn conflict, in which
the keenest and brightest intellects, the kingliest
spirits, the Bernards and the Abelards of their day,
120 LECTURE VII. [1845.
were engaged. Here,' there, and everywhere, be it
that he wanders among the extinguished volcanoes of
controversies which have now burned themselves out,
or among those which are flaming still, he meets with
that, to maintain their conviction about which, men
have been content to spend their lives, to make ship-
wreck of their worldly hopes, have dwelt in deserts,
in caves, and in dungeons, yea, gladly have encountered
all from which nature most, and most naturally, shrinks.
And whatever there may have been of earthly and of
carnal mingling in the motives of the combatants,
however in some of them he can recognize only the
champions of error, yet in these mighty and passionate
strivings, in these conflicts which generation has be-
queathed to generation, he reads the confession which
all past ages have borne, that this Word was worth
contending for, being felt by those worthiest to
judge, dearer than life itself, and such that things
else were cheap by comparison with it.
Strange too, that even where there have not been
these stirring excitements, where there has been no
trumpet-peal sounding in men's ears, and summoning
them to do battle for some perilled truth, that even
here too, multitudes of men should have been well-
pleased to employ their lives in learning themselves
better to understand, in seeking to make others un-
derstand better, this one Book should have counted
those lives worthily spent, and all other wisdom and
knowledge then only to have found their true meaning
and destination, when doing service as of handmaids
unto it. For vast as is the apparatus of helps of all
kinds which have accumulated round such other books
as are signal monuments of human intellect and power;
THE FRUITFULNESS OF SCRIPTURE. 121
many as we find well satisfied to be nothing as inde-
pendent labourers in the fields of knowledge, content
to be only ministrant to the better understanding of
this author or that book; yet are these taken alto-
gether few and insignificant beside those that have
thus felt in regard of the one Book with which we
have to do. Surely the spectacle of any great library,
and of the volumes there which stand in immediate
relation to this one, with the certainty, that so long as
the world stands, they will go on accumulating and
multiplying, must to a thoughtful mind suggest many
meditations of what the meaning and significance of
that one must be, and the manner in which it must
set in motion the minds of men. Nor will he, in esti-
mating this, fail to call to mind that those which stand
in direct relation to that Volume, which bear upon the
front that they are thus connected with it, multitu-
dinous past all count as they seem, are yet but a small
fraction of those which owe to this one all which is
most characteristic in them their impulse, their mo-
tive, their form, their spirit ; that all modern European
literature is there as in its germ ; that even the works
which seem to stand remotest from it, least to own a
fealty to it, do yet pay to it the unconscious, it may
be the unwilling, homage of being wholly different
from what they would have been, had they indeed at
all existed, without it.
Such, brethren, are a few aspects under which I
would ask you to consider how the Holy Scriptures
have justified themselves by the effects which they
have brought about, by the mighty deeds which they
have done ; shewing themselves seeds of life, leaven
122 LECTURE VII.
of power in the world. And I should be untrue to
my position here, did I conclude without asking you
to make personal application of the things which you
have heard to yourselves. This Word which has thus
been fruitful everywhere, which has supplied what was
lacking, and healed what was sick, and revived what
was ready to die, will it be less effectual in us, if only
we receive it aright ? This, which has made so much
else, like the dry rod of Aaron, to blossom and to bud,
will it not be as potent in our hearts, till they too are
clothed with foliage and fruits and flowers which are
not naturally their own ? Shall we say, " I am a dry
tree," when we might be as trees planted by rivers of
water, which should not fear the drought of the desert,
nor see when the heat cometh ? All things have lived
whithersoever these waters which issue from the sanc-
tuary have come. Shall not our hearts live also, until
we too have like reason with the Psalmist for prizing
these testimonies of God, even because with them He
has quickened us ?
LECTURE VIII.
THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE.
REVELATION VI. 2.
Conquering and to conquer.
AN earlier lecture in this present course was dedicated
to the manner in which Holy Scripture had, little by
little, laid bare its treasures to the Church; and in
my very latest I had occasion to speak of the victories
which the Truth had won and was winning still the
way in which the word of the Scripture was vindi-
cating itself to be all that it claimed to be, shewing
itself mighty, through God, for doing its appointed
work ; how, like the personal Word, it had ridden
forth, and was riding yet, a victorious conqueror over
the earth. It remains to consider, and with this con-
sideration we shall fitly conclude our subject, in what
way it is likely to approve itself a conqueror to the
end ; what preparations we can trace in it for meet-
ing the future evils of the world, the future needs of
the Church ; how far we may suppose that this Book,
which has revealed so much, may yet have much more
to reveal.
And this is our confidence, that as the Scripture
has sufficed for the past, so also it will suffice for the
time to come ; that it has resources adequate to meet
all demands which may be made on it ; that it has in
reserve whatsoever any new conditions of the world,
124 LECTURE VIII. [1845.
any new shapes of evil, any new, if they be righteous,
cravings of the spirits of men, may require. We
believe that as the Scripture is an armoury in which
the Church has found weapons for all past conflicts, so
will it find them there for all which are yet to come
conflicts which, it may be, we as little forecast or
dream of now, as we do of the weapons which are
ready wrought in this armoury for bringing them to
a glorious termination; and the weapons too them-
selves being oftentimes such, that they who were by
God employed to forge them, while they knew that
they would serve present needs, yet hardly knew,
perhaps knew not at all, what remote purposes they
should also serve, to what great ulterior purposes they
should one day be turned. Yet thus, no doubt, it shall
be : for just as in works of man's mind, talent knows all
which it means, but genius, which is nearer akin to
inspiration, means much more than it consciously
knows ; even so wise men and prophets and evan-
gelists, who were used for the uttering of this Word,
knowing much of that which they spake and recorded,
yet meant still more than they knew the Holy Ghost
guiding and shaping their utterances, and causing
them oftentimes to declare deeper things, and things
of wider reach and of more manifold utility, than even
they themselves, enlarged and enlightened by that
Spirit as they were, were conscious of the while.
That which they spake being central Truth, presented
a front, not merely to the lies of their day, not merely
to the falsehood which they distinctly had in their
mind to encounter, but presents a front to every
later lie as well; and so we have entire confidence
that the Truth being ever, in the language of Bacon,
THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 125
"an hill not to be commanded," the same those
Scriptures, which are Scriptures of very truth, shall
shew themselves an hill which shall never be com-
manded, but which rather shall itself command all
other heights and eminences of the spiritual and in-
tellectual world. However high these tower, this
Word will always have heights which tower above
them all ; judging all things, it will be judged of
none; itself the measure of all, no other thing will
bring a measure unto it.
We can indeed guess but uncertainly what may
be the future unrolling of the world's history what
antichristian forms of society may rise up, promising
good, for the moment seeming to keep their promise,
consecrating the flesh, breaking down the walls of
separation between the holy and the profane, making
all profane while they pretend to make all holy
what master-works of Satan, his latest and crowning
forms of opposition to the Truth. Or, again, we can
only uncertainly apprehend what heresies may appear,
subtler and more attractive even than any which the
world has yet beheld coming with greater semblance
of holiness, and well-nigh causing even the elect to
fail. But our reliance in this Word and the revela-
tion of the Name of God which is there, is this, that
out of it the Church will be able to refute those
heresies by the help of its warnings and intimations
to detect and to defy the attractions of Antichrist,
even when he comes with all the lying wonders, and
in all the false glory, of his kingdom.
For while it is hard for us to say what may be the
exact forms of those future evils, while we cannot
discern accurately beforehand the lineaments and
126 LECTURE VIII. [1845.
proportions of these latest monstrous shapes which
shall ascend from the pit, as neither would this fore-
knowledge profit us much ; yet the hints which in
God's prophetic word we have, the course of the
mystery of iniquity as it is already working, seem
alike to point to this, that as there has been an aping
of the monarchy of the Father, in the absolute des-
potisms of the world, an aping of the economy of the
Son, as though he already sat visibly on his throne,
in its spiritual despotisms, and eminently in that of
Rome ; so there remains yet for the world, as the
crowning delusion, a lying imitation of the kingdom
and dispensation of the Spirit such as in the lawless
Communist sects of the middle ages, in the Familists
of a later day, in the St. Simonians of our own, has
attempted to come to the birth, though in each case
the world was not ripe for it yet, and the thing
was withdrawn for a time. Yet doubtless only for a
time ; to reappear in an after hour full of false free-
dom, full of the promise of bringing all things into
one ; making war on the family, as something which
separates between man and man, breaking down and
obliterating all distinctions, the distinctions between
nation and nation, between the man and the woman,
between the flesh and the Spirit, between the
Church and the world. So seems it ; and when we
translate St. Paul's words, with which he characterizes
the final Antichrist, as though he had simply called
him "that wicked one""," we lose a confirmation of
this view which his words more accurately rendered
would have given us. He is not simply the wicked
one, but o aj/o/xo9, the lawless one ; and the mystery is
* 2 Thess. ii. 8.
THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 127
not merely a mystery of iniquity but of lawlessness
(civo/mias). Law, in all its manifestations, is that which
he shall rage against, making hideous misapplication
of that great truth, that where the Spirit is, there is
liberty.
Then, when this shall have come to pass, then at
length the great anti-trinity of hell, the dragon, the
beast, and the false prophet, will have been fully
revealed in all deceivableness of unrighteousness ;
and yet not so mighty to deceive, but that the Church
of the redeemed, armed and forewarned by this
Word of God, shall see in all this, only what it looked
to see, only what it had been taught to expect ; and
in the might of the counter-truth, in the confes-
sion of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,
shall be saved even in its weakest and simplest mem-
ber, from that strong delusion, which shall be too
much for every one besides.
And in thus speaking of Holy Scripture, I am but
expressing a confidence which those who have searched
the deepest into it have oftentimes expressed. Thus,
to take but one name and another out of the noble
catalogue of English worthies, Robert Boyle expresses
himself thus : "I consider here that as the Bible was
not written for any one particular time or people, but
for the whole Church militant diffused through all
nations and ages, so there are many passages very
useful, which will not be found so these many ages ;
being possibly reserved by the prophetic Spirit that
indited them, (and whose omniscience comprises and
unites in one prospect all times and all events,) to
quell some future foreseen heresy, which will not,
perhaps, be born till we be dead, or resolve some
128 LECTURE VIII. [1845.
yet unformed doubts, or confound some error that
hath not yet a name." And Bishop Butler uses lan-
guage well nigh the same : " Nor is it," he says, " at
all incredible that a Book which has been so long in
the possession of mankind should yet contain many
truths as yet undiscovered. For all the same pheno-
mena and the same faculties of investigation from
which such great discoveries in natural knoAvleclge
have been made in the present and last age, were
equally in the possession of mankind several thousand
years before. And possibly it might be intended
that events as they came to pass, should open and
ascertain the meaning of several parts of Scripture."
But, besides these mighty mischiefs which may
hereafter arise, of which we can at most discern now
only the dim beginnings, the obscure foreshadowings,
there are also others which have already taken form
and shape some of them such as have stood strong
and in the main unshaken for thousands of years ;
which yet we believe, which indeed yet we know, shall
one day be overthrown by the greater power and
prevalence of the Truth. For we are sure that the
religion of Christ is as the rod of Moses, which did in
the end swallow up every rod of the magicians that
the Church shall possess the earth that "the field"
in which the Son of Man sows his seed is not this
land or that land, but " the world." And anticipating,
or to speak more truly, being sure of this, it may not
be unbecoming to see if we can at all discern in
Scripture the preparations which have been there made,
and the might which is there slumbering, against each
of those closer conflicts, which the Church, by its
help, must one day wage with those forms of untruth
THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 129
and error. Such enquiry will, at any rate, not be
foreign to our subject ; for that subject being the fit-
ness of Holy Scripture for unfolding the spiritual life
of men, a great part of that fitness must lie in its
capacity to meet and overcome each deadlier form of
superstition and error, which, under one name or an-
other, cramps and confines, or wholly hinders, the true
development of the spirits of men.
How profitable were it, in regard of the more
effectual conducting of Christian missions, to be more
conscious than generally we seek to be, of what is our
peculiar strength, and what the peculiar weakness of
each of those systems of error, which we seek, in love
to the souls which are made prisoners by it, to over-
throw ; so that we should not blindly run a tilt against
it, with no other preparation save a confidence in the
goodness of our cause, but with wisdom and insight
assail it there, where there were best hope of assailing
with success. For every one of these, while their
strength is in that fragment of Truth, which, however
maimed and marred, with whatever contradictions and
under whatever disguises, they hold, have also emi-
nently their weak side, that on which they signally
deny some great Truth which the spirit of man craves,
which the Scriptures of God affirm a side, therefore,
on which if assailed, they must sooner or later perish,
or rather will not always continue at strife with their
own blessedness. To know this, and to know also
what engines out of the divine armoury ought to be
especially advanced against each of these strongholds
of confusion, to know not merely that we are strong
and they weak, but where and why strong in regard
of each, and where and why they are weak ; this is
T. H. L. 9
130 LECTURE VIII. [1845.
surely a needful, as it is a much-neglected, discipline;
this is a duty not indolently to be forgone by a
Church like our own, a Church which God's providence
and leading has so clearly marked out to do the work
of an Evangelist on vast continents and in far islands
of the sea.
To give such a training as this, was no doubt the
meaning and purpose of the catechetical schools of
Alexandria, so famous through all Christian antiquity;
they were instituted to afford the highest culture to
the evangelist, to give him the fullest understanding
of what he was to oppose, and how he was to do it.
And such an insight as this, could we have it clear,
into Scripture and its adaptation for overcoming each
shape of falsehood, how would it make us workmen
that did not need to be ashamed. How would it
enable us at once, and without beating the air, to ad-
dress ourselves to the points really at issue between
us on one side, and Jews, Mohammedans, and infidels,
on the other. For the Truth which is still the same,
which might not give up one jot or tittle of itself,
though it had with this the certainty of winning a
world, may yet of infinite love continually change its
voice, and present itself ever differently, according to
the different necessities of those whom it would fain
make its own.
And on the other hand, we address ourselves but
in a slight and inefficient manner to our work, when,
without discrimination, without acquaintance with those
systems which hold souls in bondage, which hinder
them from coming to the light of life, we have but one
method with them all one language in which to de-
scribe them all one common charge of belonging to
THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 131
the devil on which to arraign them ; instead of recog-
nizing, as we ought, that each province of the dark
kingdom of error is different from every other; instead
of seeing that it is not a lie which can ever make any
thing strong that it is not certainly their lie which
has made them strong, and enabled them to stand
their ground so long, and some of them, saddest of
all ! to win ground for a while from Christendom
itself; but the truth which that lie perverts and denies.
Handling them in that other way, we turn but to little
advantage that manifold Word of wisdom with which
God has enriched his Church, and which, containing
as it does its own special antidote for every error,
would allow, and indeed demands, a much more special
dealing with each, and one which would get much
more nearly to the heart of the matter.
Thus, the Mohammedan is strong in that he affirms
God to be distinct from the creature, so that he may
not without blasphemy be confused with it a jealous
God, who will not give his glory to another. In the
might of this faith, in the conviction that God had
raised him up to assert this truth in the face of all
who were forgetting it, he overran half a world. But
he is weak, and the moon of Islam, as it has waxed,
so will it wane before the Sun of Righteousness, inas-
much as he makes the gulf which divides God and
man to be a gulf which can never be bridged over, an
impassable chasm, fixed for eternity ; he is weak,
because he knows not, and will not know, of one, the
Son of Mary, the Son of God, in whom the human
and divine were not confounded, nor lost one in the
other, but united. He does not satisfy the longings
of the human race, which was made for this union as
92
132 LECTURE VIII. [1845.
its highest end and crowning perfection, which will be
satisfied with nothing short of this ; and therefore we
are sure that the day will come, however little we may
as yet discern its signs, when the fiery sword of Mo-
hammed will grow pale before the ever-brightening
lustre of the cross of the Son of Man ; when the Scrip-
tures will shew themselves over all the dark places of
the earth mightier than the Koran. We are sure of
this, because those Scriptures maintain ah 1 which is
there of truth are as jealous and more jealous of the
incommunicable name of God, say, and say far more
clearly, Our God is one God ; but in addition to this,
affirm that which is there denied, but which the spirit
of man will never rest till it has found and known, a
Son of God, and him also the Son of Man.
The Indian religions, they too are not without
their elements of an obscured truth and in this
mainly, that they declare it to be most worthy of
God to reveal Himself as man that this is the only
true revelation of Him, that an incarnation is the
fittest outcoming of the glory of God. But, not to
urge that what they have to tell of such matters are
only dreams of men, and not facts of God besides
this, they are comparatively worthless, in that they do
not concentrate and gather up this revelation of God
in one incarnation, but lose and scatter it through
unnumbered. For while one incarnation is precious,
a thousand are worth nothing; they become mere
transient points of contact between God and man,
momentary docetic apparitions of the divine under
human forms. And the books which are the records
of these, and the religion which rests on those books,
must give way before that Book, which can say in
THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 133
holiest, yet soberest, earnest, " The Word was made
flesh" and which knows not merely of an Incarna-
tion, but of a Resurrection and an Ascension, in which
the Son of God made manifest that he had wedded
the humanity for ever, that he had not come merely
into transient relation with it, but had made it his
own for eternity ; sitting down in it on the right hand
of the Majesty on high.
And that other later birth of Hindooism, that other
vast system of further Asia, which we are continually
perplexed whether to call it a pantheism, or a gigantic
atheism, that which in the end loses everything in
God, and makes absorption in Him the ultimate end
of being, that too begins with fairer promises. For
it starts with that which is so deeply true, that in God
we live and move and have our being that as man
came from God, so he must return to God that
there is but one Spirit which moves through all things.
But then, refusing to know ought but the Spirit, re-
fusing to know the Father and the Son from whom
that Spirit proceeds, so neither can it save its votaries
from that gulf wherein all things, and man the first,
are annihilated in an abysmal deep, which is not the
less dreadful, because it calls itself God; that gulf
which is ever yawning for every nobler and deeper
speculator in theology, who has not the mystery of
the ever-blessed Trinity, three Persons and one God,
for his safeguard and his stay, an ever-abiding wit-
ness to him for the distinctness of personal being.
And we are sure that neither will this system stand
before that Word which affirms, and only with far
higher clearness, that " God is a Spirit ; " but affirms
also, that " there are three that bear record in heaven,
134 LECTURE VIII. [1845.
the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost ; " without
which that other truth is only as a noble river pre-
sently to lose itself among the sands.
These, brethren, are the great rival religions to
Christianity, which yet contend with it for the pos-
session of the world each of them, as you see, pre-
senting points of contact for the absolute Truth ; and
at the same time all presenting points of weakness
sides upon which they dumbly crave to be fulfilled by
this Truth, even while they are striving the most
fiercely against it ; the Truth in Holy Scripture being
at once the antagonist and the complement of them
all.
Nor may I not observe that any other dealing
with them than this, which, even while it wars against
them, welcomes and honours the wreck and fragment
of Truth which they still may retain any ruder and
less discriminating assault on that which men have
hitherto believed, and which, however mixed up with
falsehood and fraud, has yet been all whereby they
have holden on to an higher world, any such attack,
even when it seems most successful, may be full of the
utmost peril for them whom we thus coarsely seek to
benefit, and with these unskilful hands to deliver. For,
indeed, there is no office more delicate, no task need-
ing greater wisdom and patience and love, than to set
men free from their superstitions, and yet, with this,
not to lay waste in their hearts the very soil in which
the Truth should strike its roots to disentangle the
tree from the ivy which was strangling it, without, in
the process and together with the strangling ivy, de-
stroying also the very life of the tree itself, which we
designed to save. Where this process of men's extri-
THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 135
cation from error has been rudely or unwisely carried
out, either by their own fault or that of others, where
they have been urged to rise up in scorn, and to
trample upon their past selves, and all that in time
past they have held in honour, how mournful fre-
quently the final issue ! Thus, how unable do we often
prove to retain the converts from Eomanism which we
have won. They do not return to that which they
have left, but they pass on, they pass through the
Truth into error on the other side. They pass from
darkness into the sunlight, and that sunlight scarcely
gilds and brightens them for an instant, ere they glide
into another and thicker darkness again ; scarcely are
they in the secure haven a moment, ere they put
forth, as though incapable of enjoying its repose, among
the shoals and eddies once more.
And so too the Hindoo children in our Indian
schools, when we have gathered them there, and shewn
them in the light of modern philosophy, the utter
absurdity and incoherence of their sacred books, and
provoked them to throw uttermost scorn on these, we
yet may not have brought them even into the vesti-
bule of the Faith, rather may have set them at a
greater distance than ever ; for to have taught them
to pour contempt on all with which hitherto they have
linked feelings of sacredness and awe, is but a ques-
tionable preparation for making them humble and
reverent scholars of Christ. Wiser surely was St.
Paul's method, who ever sought a ground common to
himself and him whom he would persuade, though it
were but an handbreadth, upon which to take his
stand who taught men reverently to handle their
past selves and their past beliefs, who to the Athe-
136 LECTURE VIII. [1845.
nians said, "Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship,
Him declare I unto you," and spake of the Cretan
poet as "a prophet of their own;" who re-adopted
into the family of the Truth its lost and wandering
children, however they might have forgotten their true
descent, in whatever far land, under whatever unlikely
disguises, he found them. Thus, and because he thus
dealt, he became, in the language of a Greek father,
which contains scarcely an exaggeration, the vvpfya-
ywyos Trjs oiKovfJievrjs, he who led up the world as a
bride unto Christ.
But I must draw my subject to an end, and with
a few general remarks on the aim and scope of what
here I have been permitted to deliver, will conclude.
My purpose has been, as I trust even they may have
gathered who have heard but a part, and that the
latest, of these discourses, to bring out an inner wit-
ness for Scripture from that which, to an earnest and
devout examination, it shews itself as fitted for doing
from that which it has already done from that which
we may believe it will accomplish yet. And this sub-
ject I have chosen out of those which were before me,
because truly there is great strength and comfort and
assurance for us in these evidences for the things
that we have believed, which are drawn, not from
without, but from within from their inner glory,
their manifest fitness. Thus, for example, if gainsayers
at any time should adduce apparent disagreements
between one Gospel or one book of history and an-
other, as between Matthew and Luke, Chronicles and
Kings, and seek to trouble and perplex us with these,
surely the true way to meet them were to bring first
THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 137
the whole question into an higher court. Let us put
rather the question to be resolved as this, In what
traceable connexion do these books, each by itself,
each in relation to the whole of the other books, stand
to the great purpose of God with humanity ? Can
they be shewn evidently to form integral parts of a
mightier whole ? Do they reveal the Name of God ?
Do they yield their nourishment for the divine life of
man ? Have they yielded such for our own ?
And then not indeed to refuse entering into
those lower and merely critical questions of detail ;
but if it has been found that the book satisfies higher
needs, fulfils loftier requirements claiming for it on
the score of this, the entire, the trustful confidence of
faith, that it will justify itself in all lesser matters,
that it will come out as clear and clean in them, as in
its greater purpose and aim. Here too that word will
hold good, " He that believeth shall not make haste."
He will be content to wait. For what weakness does
it manifest, what inner mistrust of the things which
we have believed, how feebly must we hold them,
how little can they have blest us, when we raise a cry
of fear at any new and startling results to which
science or criticism may have, or may seem to have,
arrived. These too will presently be shewn what they
are ; if true, they will fall into their place, and that
place a place of subjection to revealed Truth : if false,
however noisy now, however threatening to carry the
world before them, will vanish away in a little while.
But to dread anything, to wish that anything which
has been patiently sought or honestly won, should be
ignored or kept back, betrays an extreme weakness ;
Christ has not laid his hand on us with power, or we
138 LECTURE VIII. [1845.
should not be so easily persuaded to believe his cause
tottering, or his Truth endangered.
And, indeed, as regards ought which may be
brought forward with purposes hostile to the Faith, may
not the past well give us confidence for the future? One
and another adversary has risen up ; for what has not
the world beheld in this kind ? Essays on the Miracles,
Ages of Reason, Lives of Jesus, Theories of Creation.
And then, in the first deceitful flush of a momentary
success, oftentimes the cry has gone forth, It is finished;
and the fortress of the Faith is held to be so fatally
breached, as henceforward to be untenable, and its
defenders to have nothing more to do than to lay
down their arms, and surrender at discretion. And
already those that dwell upon the earth begin to make
merry over the slain witnesses ; and already the new
Diocletians rear their trophies and stamp their medals,
the memorials of an extinguished Faith they them-
selves being about to perish for ever, and that Faith
to go forward to new victories. For anon the floods
retreat ; and temple and tower of God, round whose
bases those waters raged and foamed and fretted for
an instant, stand calmly and strongly as ever they did
before. We too some of us have heard, and probably
we shall hear again, such premature hymns of an
imaginary triumph. And when such are confidently
raised, the unstable are perplexed, and the waverers
fall off, and seeds of doubt, to be reaped in an harvest
of weakness, are sown in many minds. But let us,
brethren, have a sanctuary to retreat to, till each such
tyranny is overpast, as 6verpass it surely and shortly
will. Let us have that immediate syllogism of the
heart, against which no argument is good. Let us be
THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF SCRIPTURE. 139
able to say, These words, we have found them words
of healing-, words of eternal life. This is our sole
security to have tasted the good Word, to have
known the powers of the world to come. And what
if Theology may not be able, on the instant, to solve
every difficulty, yet Faith will not therefore abandon
one jot or tittle of that which she holds, for she has
it on another and a surer tenure, she holds it directly
from her God.
THE END OF THE LECTURES
FOR 1845.
CHKIST THE DESIEE OF ALL NATIONS,
OE, THE UNCONSCIOUS PBQPHECIES
OF HEATHENDOM:
BEING
THE HULSEAN LECTURES
FOR THE YEAR M.DCCC.XLVI.
LECTURE I.
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE.
HAGGAI II. 7.
The Desire of all nations shall come.
ALTHOUGH the Founder of these Lectures, which it is
permitted me a second time to deliver in this place,
did by no means offer a narrow range of subjects,
from which the preacher should make his choice, but,
on the contrary, so expressed himself, that it would
be quite possible to adhere to the letter of his injunc-
tions, and still, at the same time, altogether to quit
the region of Christian apology ; yet I cannot but
believe that in so doing I should be forsaking the
spirit of those injunctions, and hardly fulfilling the
intentions with which these Lectures were founded
by him. Those who have gone before me in this
honourable office, arguing, probably, from the sub-
jects which he has placed in the foremost rank ; from
the purpose which kindred foundations, by him esta-
blished among us, were evidently meant to serve ;
from the especial importance attached by good men
in the age wherein he lived, to such defences of our
holy faith, have generally concluded that they should
best be fulfilling his intention, to which they felt a
pious reverence was due, if they undertook the main-
tenance of some portion of the truth, which had been
especially assailed or gainsayed. Nor do I purpose,
on the present occasion, to depart from the practice
144 LECTURE I. [1846.
which the example of my predecessors has sanctioned ;
having rather chosen for my argument a subject re-
commending itself to me, first, by a certain suitable-
ness, as I trust will appear, to our present needs, and
to controversies of our day, such as are approaching,
if we are not actually in the midst of them as yet ;
and secondly, by an evident bearing which it has upon
one of the two great branches of study cultivated
among us in this University. Christ the Desire of all
Nations, or, The Unconscious Prophecies of Heathendom
such appears to me the title which will best gather
up and present at a single glance to you the subject,
which it will be my aim in the following discourses, if
God will, under successive aspects to unfold.
Leaving aside, as not belonging to my argument,
what there was of positive divinely constituted prepa-
ration for the coming of Christ in the Jewish economy,
I shall make it my task to trace what in my narrow
limits I may, of the implicit expectations which there
were in the heathen world to contemplate, at least
under a few leading aspects, the yearnings of the
nations for a redeemer, and for ah 1 which the true
Eedeemer only could give, for the great facts of his
life, for the great truths of his teaching. Nor may
this be all: for this, however interesting in itself,
would yet scarcely come under the title of Christian
apology ; of which the idea is, that it is not merely
the truth, but the truth asserting itself in the face of
error. It will therefore be my endeavour further to
rescue these dim prophetic anticipations of the hea-
then world from the abuse which has sometimes been
made of them, to shew that these dreams of the world,
so far from helping to persuade us that all which we
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 145
hold is a dream likewise, are rather exactly that which
ought to have preceded the world's awaking : that
these parhelions do not proclaim everything else to
be an optical illusion, but announce, and witness for,
a sun that is travelling into sight ; that these false
ancilia of man's forging, tell of a true which has in-
deed come down from heaven. I would fain shew
that there ought to have been these ; the transcend-
ing worth and dignity of the Christian revelation not
being diminished by their existence, but rather en-
hanced ; for its glory lies, not in its having relation
to nothing which went before itself, but rather in its
having relation to every thing, in its being the middle
point to which all lines, some consciously, more un-
consciously, were tending, and in which all centered
at the last.
And this it is worth our while to shew : for we do
not here, as the charge has sometimes been made
against us, first set up the opponent, whom we after-
wards easily overthrow, for he was but the phantom
of our own brain. On the contrary, it has been at
divers times from the very first, and is in our own
day, a part, and a favourite part, of their tactics who
would resist the Faith, to endeavour to rob it of its
significance as the great epoch in the world's history,
by the production of anterior parallels to it.
These may be parallels to its doctrines and ethical
precepts ; and they are brought forward with the pur-
pose of shewing that it is therefore no such wisdom
of God, no such mystery that had been kept secret
from the beginning of the world ; that what it pro-
fessed to give as a revelation from heaven, men had
attained before by the light of reason, by the unas-
T. H. L. 10
146 LECTURE I. [1846.
sisted efforts of their own minds. The attempts to
rob Christianity in this way of its significance are, as
I observed, not new. If such objections have been
zealously urged in modern times, they belong also to
the very earliest. To take two examples, one old, one
new. Celsus, in the second century, quoting words
of our blessed Lord's, in which he exhorts to the for-
giveness of enemies, remarks that he has found the
identical precept in Plato, with only the difference,
as he dares to add, that it is by the Grecian sage
better and more elegantly spoken"". And Gibbon,
having occasion to speak of one of Christ's most me-
morable moral precepts, " Whatsoever ye would that
men should do to you, do ye even so to them," cannot
resist the temptation of adding " a rule which I read
in a moral treatise of Isocrates four hundred years
before the publication of the Gospel." And in like
manner we all probably remember, if not the contents,
yet the title which the book of an English deist bore,
one of the ablest of that unhappy band, " Christianity
as old as the Creation;" a book which by that title at
* Origen, Con. Cels., 1. 7, c. 68. In like manner Celsus affirmed
that our. Lord's words, Matt. xix. 23. were transferred from Plato,
De Legg., 1. 5. 742. (Con. Cels., 1. 6. c. 16.) Augustine too (De Doctr.
Christ., 1.2, c.28) makes mention of some in his own time, readers
and lovers of Plato, qui dicere ausi sunt omnes Domini nostri Jesu
Christi sententias, quas mirari et praedicare coguntur, de Platonis
libris eum didicisse. St. Ambrose also, as we learn from Augustine,
(.E/>.31,) had found it necessary to write against such ; which he did
in a work that now has perished. How excellent is Augustine's own
answer (Enarr. in Ps. cxl. 6) : Dixit hoc Pythagoras, dixit hoc Plato
.... Propterea si inventus fuerit aliquis eorum hoc dixisse quod dixit
et Christus, gratulamur illi, non sequimur ilium. Sed prior fuit ille
quam Christus. Si quis vera loquitur, prior est quam ipsa Veritas ?
O homo, attende Christum non quando ad te venerit, sed quando te
fecerit.
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 147
once indicated the quarter from which its author ad-
vanced to the assault of revealed religion.
And not seldom this charge appears in an aggra-
vated form ; and it has been sought to be proved, not
merely that others had said the same before, the
Gospel, but that it had covertly borrowed from them
that so far from being more and higher than an-
other birth of the human mind, it possessed so little
vital and independent energy, as to have been com-
pelled to go back to prior sources, and to build with
the materials of others, and to adorn itself with their
spoils. Urged by their desire to prove this, hoping to
convict it thus of being in possession of things not its
own, the adversaries of the Christian faith have gone
far to seek for the anticipations and sources of its
doctrine. Thus, with Voltaire, India, and still more,
China, were the favourite quarters from which he
laboured to shew that its wisdom had been drawn ;
although his almost incredible ignorance exposed him
to the most ridiculous errors, and made him the dupe
of poorest forgeries, palmed on him as works of the
ancient wisdom of the East, and which by him were
again confidently produced as such*. Somewhat later
* There is a curious account of a fraud which was played off on
him, in Von Bohlen's Das Alte Indien, v. 1, p. 136, connecting itself
with a singular piece of literary forgery. A Jesuit missionary, whose
zeal led him to assume the appearance of an Indian Fakir, in the
beginning of last century forged a Veda, of which the purpose was,
secretly to undermine the religion which it professed to support, and
so to facilitate the introduction of Christianity to advance, that is,
the kingdom of truth with a lie. This forged Veda is full of every
kind of error or ignorance in regard of the Indian religions. After
lying, however, long in a Romanist missionary college at Pondicherry,
it found its way to Europe, and a transcript of it came into the hands
of Voltaire, who eagerly used it for the purpose of depreciating the
1 2 Christian
148 LECTURE I. [1846.
the Zend-Avesta and the religion of Zoroaster were
triumphantly appealed to, as having been the true sun
from which the borrowed light of Judaism and Chris-
tianity had proceeded. Then again, men said that
our blessed Lord had been educated and initiated in
the secret lore of the Essenes, and that he, the Wisdom
of God, had first learned wisdom in these schools of
men. Or by others, Rabbinical parallels to various
sayings in the New Testament, to evangelical parables
and doctrines, have been solemnly adduced, as solving
the riddle of Christianity, as enough to dissipate that
nimbus of glory with which it had been hitherto sur-
rounded, to refute its loftier claims, and to prove its
origin of earth, and not of heaven. So has falsehood
travelled round the world, as inconsistent with itself
as it is remote from the truth, each later birth of it
devouring the preceding.
And they have wrought in the same spirit, and in
reality with the same weapons to the same ends, who
yet, somewhat shifting their ground, have not so
much sought to turn our Christian faith into a doc-
trine which had been often taught before, as into a
dream which has been often dreamed before; who
have not therefore laboured to produce parallels to its
isolated sayings or doctrines to rob it here and there
of a jewel in its crown ; but have aspired to a com-
pleter victory, striking at the very person and acts of
Him on whom it rests, and out of whom it has un-
folded itself. And in this way ; they have ransacked
all records of ancient religions for such parallels,
Christian Books, aud shewing how many of their doctrines had been
anticipated by the wisdom of the East. The book had thus an end
worthy of its beginning.
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 149
nearer or more remote, as they could in them find,
not now any more to the sayings, but rather to the
doings, of his life ; and having mustered and marshal-
led in threatening order as many of these as they
could draw together, they have turned round and said
to us " In all times, and all the world through, men
have been imagining for themselves, as you see, sons
of God, expiations by sacrifice, direct communications
with an higher world, oracles and prophecies, wielders
of a power mightier than nature's, restorers of a lost
Paradise, conquerors of Hades, ascensions into heaven.
They have imagined them, and nothing more ; for the
things which they thus in spirit grasped at, never found
an historic realization, however men may have en-
riched themselves, and we do not deny that they did
so, with the thought that such things had been, or one
day should be." And then it has been further asked
us, What right had we to difference our hope from
the hope of all others ? They longed so earnestly,
that at last their longing wove a garment, made even
a body, for itself; what right have any to affirm that
it is otherwise with the things which they believe ?
And thus, because men have hoped for, and reached
after, that which in Christ is given, and hoped so in-
tensely, that they have sometimes imagined it to be
actually theirs, so projecting their hope, as to give it
at last an objective reality, w r e are bidden to believe
that ours is but such an ardent desire, fashioning at
length a body for itself. Parading a long line of
shadows, these adversaries require us to acknowledge
the substance we have embraced to be a shadow also ;
shewing how much false money is in the world, and
has at different times passed current, they demand of
150 LECTURE I. [1846.
us, how we dare to assume that which we have accepted
to be true ; when they should see that the shadows
imply a substance somewhere, that the false money
passes only under shelter of a true. Proving, as it
is not hard to prove, those parallels to be groundless
and mythical, to rest on no true historic basis, they
hope that the great facts of the Christian's belief will
be concluded to be as weak that they will be in-
volved in a common discredit* and the faiths of
which those other formed a part having come to
nothing, or evidently hastening to decay, that this
may be assumed to underlie the same judgment, and
to be hastening to the same inevitable dissolution,
however the signs of it as yet may not appear.
This scheme of attack has been so long and so
vigorously plied, so much success has been expected
from it, that in the works of the later assailants of
Revelation from this quarter, there speaks out a cer-
tain indignation, mingled with astonishment, at the
resistance which it is still presuming to offer; as though
it were not to be endured, that every other religion
should have confessed itself a mythology, and that this
should deny it still that each other, like a startled
ghost, should have vanished at the first cockcrowing
of an intellectual morn, but that this should continue
to affront, as boldly and as confidently as ever, even
* Tertullian (Apol. 47,) speaks of the way in which these parallels
were played off against the Christian verities Elysium not only
having forfeited belief in itself, but having helped to destroy a belief
in heaven Minos and Rhadamanthus having rendered the judgment-
seat of Christ a mockery ; though in his narrow fashion he sees in
them nothing but the adulteria veritatis the work of the jealous
envy of evil spirits, qua de similitudine fidem infirmarent veritatis.
But if the truth was hard to receive with these, might it not have
been impossible to receive without them ?
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 151
the light of the world's middle day that each other
should have crumbled into nothing at the first touch
of the wand of a critical philosophy, but that this
should entirely refuse to obey its dissolving spell.
Now all charges against the truth, however desti-
tute of any solid foundation, out of whatever perversity
of heart or mind they may have sprung, yet, when
continually re-appearing, when repeating themselves
in different ages, and by the mouths of different ob-
jectors, and those independent of one another, have
yet, we may be sure, something which has rendered
them not merely possible, but plausible ; which sug-
gested them first, and, with the frivolous and thought-
less, with those that have been eager to believe them,
and to be quit of the restraints of a positive faith, has
given them currency and favour. Let me seek, then,
as an important element of my subject, to consider
what that something is, which has served to suggest,
and afterwards to give a point to these charges ; and,
not pausing here, to shew that the truth, which, how-
ever distorted, is at the bottom of these charges, is
one which we may cheerfully and without any mis-
giving recognize.
And this is not all : for I would fain also shew that
it would be a grievous deficiency, if that were absent
from our Christian faith, which has been the motive
and hint to these accusations if that faith, as far as
regards the whole anterior world except the Jewish,
stood in relation to nothing which men had thought,
or felt, or hoped, or believed ; with no other coefficient
but the Jewish, and resting on no broader historic
basis than that would supply. It will be my purpose
to enquire whether we may not contemplate the rela-
152 LECTURE I. [1846.
tions of the absolute Truth to the anterior religions
of the world, in an aspect in which we shall cease
altogether from regarding with suspicion these ap-
parent anticipations of good things given us in Christ ;
in which, instead of being secretly embarrassed by
them, and hardly knowing exactly how to deal with,
or where to range them, we shall joyfully accept these
presentiments of the truth, so far as they are satisfac-
torily made out, as enhancing the greatness and glory
of the truth itself; and as being, so far as they are
allowed to have any weight, confirmations of it.
Nor will it be a small satisfaction, if this be pos-
sible, as I believe it easy, to make our adversaries
do drudging work for us ; to plough with their oxen ;
to enter, as we shall do then, upon their labours ; and
all that they have painfully gathered up with purposes
hostile to the faith to appropriate, and make defen-
sive of it ; not so much anxiously defending our own
position, as confidently turning theirs ; wresting from
them their own weapons, and then wielding them
against themselves.
And first, in regard of the ethical anticipations of
what is given to us in the Gospel, the goodly max-
ims, the striking precepts, the memorable sayings,
which are gathered from the fields of heathen philo-
sophy, and then sometimes used to depress the original
worth of the teaching of Christ and his Apostles, I
will not urge here, and I have no object in urging,
though I may, in passing, remark, how many that are
sometimes adduced of these are wholly deceptive as
parallels to Christian truths. How often in their
organic connexion they would be very far from con-
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 153
taining that echo or presentiment of truth which we
deem we catch in them ; how often they have indeed
a very different significance from that which we first
put in them, and only afterwards educe from them.
Nor yet will I press how the goodliest maxim is indeed
nothing, save in its coherence to a body of truth ; how
a world of such maxims, were they gotten together,
would be only as ten thousand artificial lamps, failing
altogether to constitute a day, and not in the remotest
degree doing the work, or supplying to the world the
place, of a single sun.
Not to press this, and accepting fully and freely
what has been said wisely and well before the Gospel
and apart from the Gospel, and allowing to the full
that it has many times touched the heart of the matter,
yet still is there nothing here which we need wish we
could deny, which we should not rather desire to find.
Indeed, so far from there having been in time past a
shunning or ignoring of these heathen parallels, the
early apologists perhaps only admitted them too freely :
yet thus at any rate they testified that to acknowledge
them they felt to be no confession of a weakness in
their position. Thus more than one has likened the
faithful delivered from an evil world to the children
of Israel brought out of Egypt, who borrowed and
carried forth from thence vessels of gold and vessels of
silver, the same which probably afterwards furnished
the precious metals which they dedicated to the holier
uses of the sanctuary. In like manner, they said,
there was much which the faithful, delivered out of
the spiritual Egypt, would leave behind him, as all its
abominable idolatries ; but something also which he
would carry forth, and which he had a right to carry
154 LECTURE I. [1846.
forth, for it was not truly the riches of that land. This
silver and this gold had been originally dug from mines
of divine truth, and bearing it with him, he only re-
claimed to its noblest purposes that which had been
more or less alienated and perverted from them*.
Nor need we deal more timidly with these parallels
than they did. So long, indeed, as we regard God's
revelation of Himself in Christ, as a revelation merely
of certain moral truths, it maybe startling to find
ought that is therein, anticipated in any other quarter.
But when we more rightly contemplate it as the ma-
nifesting of life, that the Life was manifested, and
dwelt among us, then we feel that they who gave, and
could give, precepts and maxims only, however precious
these were, whatever witness they bore to a light
shining in the darkness, to a divine spark not trodden
out in man, to a God nurturing the heathen, with all
* Thus Augustine ( De Doctr. Christ., 1. 2, c. 40): Philosophi autem
qui vocantur, si qua forte vera et fidei nostrae accommodata dixerunt
maxime Platonici, non solum formidanda non sunt, sed ab eis etiam
tanquam injustis possessoribus in usum nostrum vindicanda. Sicut
enim -flCgyptii non solum idola habebant et onera gravia, quse populus
Israel detestaretur et fugeret, sed etiam vasa atque ornamenta de auro
et argento, et vestem, quse ille populus exiens de ^Egypto sibi potius
tanquam ad usum meliorem clanculo vindicavit, non auctoritate
propria, sed praecepto Dei, ipsis -5gyptiis nescienter commodantibus
ea, quibus non bene utebantur, sic doctrinae omnes Gentilium non
solum simulata et superstitiosa figmenta gravesque sarcinas supervacui
laboris habent, sed etiam liberates 'disciplinas usui veritatis aptiores,
quod eorum tamquam aurum et argentum, quod non ipsi insti-
tuerunt, sed de quibusdam quasi metallis divinse providentiae, quae
ubique infusa sunt, eruerunt, debet ab eis auferre Christianus ad
usum justum praedicandi Evangelii. Origen (Ep. ad Gregor., 1. 1.
p. 30) uses the same illustration, observing, however, that, according
to his experience, the gold which is brought out of Egypt is oftener
used for the fashioning of an idol, a golden calf, the work of men's
own hands which they worship, than for the adorning of the taber-
nacle of God.
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 155
this yet gave not that, which for man is the gift of
gifts and blessing of blessings. And this is the true
way in which to contemplate it. That which differ-
ences Christianity from all other religions is not its
theory of morals ; this is a most real, yet at the same
time only a relative, difference, for there were ethics
before there were Christian ethics *. But its difference
is, that it is life and power, that it transforms, that it
transfigures, that it makes new creatures, that it does
for all what others only promised to do for a few.
Herein the essential difference resides. Men, for in-
stance, before it came, could speak worthy things, and
could really feel them, about the beauty of overcoming
their desires, of forgiving their enemies, of repaying
injuries with kindness, of coming to God with clean
hands and a clean heart. Such sayings abound in
every code of morals -f- : but the unhappiness was, that
they who uttered these sayings and they who admired
them, did little more than this. It was not that there
was any falseness in their admiration : they delighted
* Grotius indeed says ( De Verit. Rel. Christ., 1. 4, c. 12) : Ejus
[sell, religionis Christiana] partes singulae tanta? sunt honestatis, ut
suapte luce animos quasi convincant, ita ut inter paganos non defue-
rint qui dixerint singula, quse nostra religio habet universa. Lactan-
tius expresses himself more cautiously, and is careful to add how none
but a teacher sent from God could have knit these scattered limbs into
a body. He says, Inst. Div., 1. 7, c. 7 : Nullam sectam fuisse tarn
deviam, nee philosophorum quendam tarn inanem, qui non viderit ali-
quid e vero. Quodsi extitisset aliquis, qui veritatem, sparsam per
singulos, per sectasque djffusam, colligeret in unum, et redigeret in
corpus, is profecto non dissentiret a nobis. Sed hoc nemo facere, nisi
veri peritus ac sciens, potest : verum autem non nisi ejus scire est, qui
sit doctus a Deo.
t See for instance in Von Bohlen (Das Alte Indien, v. 1. p. 364)
a beautiful collection of Indian sayings of this kind on the love of our
neighbour, and the forgiveness of injuries.
156 LECTURE I. [1846.
in them after the inner man, but in the actual struggle
with evil, they were ever weak to bring them to effect.
There was a great gulf between the saying and the
doing, which never till in Christ was effectually bridged
over ; so that the Christian speaker in that beautiful
dialogue, the Octavius of Minucius Felix, exactly hit the
mark, when, to characterize the practical of Christian
life as distinguished from the speculative of heathen
philosophy, he exclaimed of that sect every where
spoken against, to which he belonged, Non eloquimur
magna, sed vivimus.
And yet, brethren, when we thus trace the miser-
able contradiction that ever existed in a world out of
Christ, between the good seen and the evil done, the
vast chasm between the two, let this be with no pur-
pose of laying bare their sores, with no thought of
glorying in their infirmities, to whom in a less favoured
time the only fountain of effectual strength and heal-
ing had not yet been opened. For indeed, brethren,
may there not be many a one among ourselves to
whom, with far less excuse, all this explains itself,
alas ! only too easily ? many a one, it may be, who
remembers times of his own life, before his moral con-
victions had been gathered up and found their middle
point in Christ and in those times repeated falls
under temptation, which explain to him only too
vividly the condition, in which this ever-recurring
infidelity of men to their moral convictions found
place in which they were thus able to trace the out-
lines of a righteousness, but impotent to fill them up,
and so ever leaving it in outline still well skilled to
draw a ground-plan, but weak to build any superstruc-
ture thereon the virtue loved, till the opportunity
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 157
came for practising it ; the sin hated, till the moment
for testifying that hatred had arrived.
But to pass on to the other charge, to the resem-
blances to the great facts on which our faith reposes,
to the great events of our Lord's life, which are ad-
duced from other quarters, with the requirement,
because those have proved weak to stand, that we
should acknowledge these to be weak also; they
only will consent to such a conclusion, who have failed
to perceive that according to the very highest idea of
Christianity, such there needs must have been. For
what do we affirm of Christ '? when do we conceive
worthily of Him ? When we conceive of Him, in the
prophet's words, as "the Desire of all nations" the
fulfiller of the world's hopes the stiller of creation's
groans the great birth of time, unto which all the
unspeakable throes of a suffering humanity had been
tending from the first. These resemblances disturb
us not at all, they are rather most welcome ; for we
do not believe the peculiar glory of what in Christ we
possess to consist in this, that it is unlike every thing
else, " the cold denial and contradiction of all that
men have been dreaming of through the different ages
of the world, but rather the sweet reconciliation and
exquisite harmony of all past thoughts, anticipations,
revelations." Its prerogative is, that all whereof men
had a troubled dream before, did in Him become a
waking reality ; that what men were devising, and
most inadequately, for themselves, God has perfectly
given us in his Son; that in the room of shifting
cloud-palaces, with their mockery of temple and tower,
stands for us a city, which hath come down from hea-
ven, but whose foundations rest upon this earth of
158 LECTURE I. [1846.
ours ; that we have divine facts facts no doubt
which are ideal, in that they are the vehicle of ever-
lasting truths ; history indeed which is far more than
history, for it embodies the largest and most con-
tinually recurring thoughts which have stirred the
bosom of humanity from the beginning. We say that
the divine ideas which had wandered up and down
the world, till oftentimes they had well nigh forgotten
themselves and their own origin, did at length clothe
themselves in flesh and blood ; they became incarnate
with the Incarnation of the Son of God. In his life
and person the idea and the fact at length kissed each
other, and were henceforward wedded for evermore.
If these things be so, and it will be my desire in
this place, and in these lectures, to trace how they
are, one or two considerations will lie very near to us ;
and with the pressing of these on your thoughts and
hearts I will this day conclude. And first, the general
consideration, that what there may have been in the
world obscurely struggling to be Christian before
Christ and his Church, so far from suggesting to us
poorer thoughts of what in Him we possess, under
how far more glorious aspect does it present that to
us ! All which men before could conceive, but could
not realize, could feel after, but could not grasp,
could dream of, but ever when they awoke found no-
thing in their hands, it is here ; " the body is of
Christ." And the Church which he has founded, we
behold it as sitting upon many waters, upon the great
ocean of truth, from whence every stream that has at
all or at any time refreshed the earth was originally
drawn, and to which it duteously brings its waters
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 159
again*. We may contemplate that Church as having,
in that it has the Word and Spirit of its Lord, the
measure of all partial truth in itself; receiving the
homage of all human systems, meekly, and yet, like a
queen, as her right; understanding them far better
than they ever understood themselves; disallowing
their false, and what of true they have, setting her seal
upon that true, and issuing it with a brighter image,
and a sharper outline, and a more paramount authority,
from her own mint.
Again, if the more excellent glory of that which
we possess in Christ is, that it is not shadow but sub-
stance, not anticipation but possession not the idea,
but the fact, or rather the fact and the idea in one,
how are we letting go our most precious gains, when
we at all let go, or when we even slight, our historic
faith, resting on and finding its object in the person
of the Saviour ! What a miserable exchange, to give
up this, and to accept the largest, the most vaunted
theories concerning the godlike and the true in its
room and as its adequate substitute, the most mag-
nificent ideas in the place of the humblest affiance on
the Son of God soon to find that we have gotten
pebbles for jewels, words for things, that we are in a
world peopled only with ghosts and phantoms ! Oh
loss unutterable, if we allow any to strip off for us the
historic realization of the truth in the person of Jesus
of Nazareth, as though it were not of the essence of
the matter, as though it were a thing indifferent, use-
ful perhaps for the simpler members of the Church,
* Clement of Alexandria on this very matter (Strom., 1. 1, c.5) :
Mia f*ev ovv TJ}S tX)0eia 65<is' a'XX' eis av-rijv Ka.6d.irep eis dewaov Trora/udf,
tKpeov<ri -rd peWpa d'XXa a\\o6ev.
160 LECTURE I. [1846.
but for others hindering' rather than helping the con-
templation of the pure idea, which they would persuade
us it is alone needful to retain. They promise, it is
true, who invite to this sacrifice, that if only we will
destroy this temple of our historic faith, in three days,
yea, in an instant, as by a magic wand, they will raise
up for us a goodlier and more gorgeous fabric in its
room. Let it be our wisdom to give no credence to
their words ; knowing this, that it was the very bless-
edness which the coming of the Son of God in the
flesh brought us, that it brought us that, which these
would fain persuade us to relinquish and renounce,
that it lifted men out of and above that condition into
which these deceivers would willingly persuade them
to return.
No doubt there is a temptation to give in to this,
a temptation working in each one of us to take up,
that is, with a religion which shall consist in the con-
templating of great and ennobling ideas, instead of in
the serving with a straightforward and downright obe-
dience a personal God. Those ideas, we feel that we
can deal with them as we like ; they exert no con-
straining power upon us ; we are their masters, and
not they ours : or if we have allowed them any rule
over us, when the stress comes, we can withdraw it
again; allowing them just as much authority as is
convenient to us. There is no " Be thou holy, for I am
holy" in them no pointing to the rugged way of the
Cross, with a Forerunner walking there, and a command
that we follow him in it. Let us watch earnestly
against so subtle a temptation, shewing as it does so
fair, and finding so much in our slothful and sinful hearts
that makes them only too ready to embrace it.
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 161
And surely, brethren, at this season the Church
suggests and presents to us mighty helps against all
this. What help so effectual as to enter truly and
deeply into the Passion of our Lord to tarry at no
cold and careless distance from that cross to which
each day of this lenten season is now bringing us
nigher ? but to seek to draw forth the riches of grace
which are laid up for us in it, and in the considering
of Him that hanged thereon. Let us determine, bre-
thren, that in this coming week, the beginning it may
be of a more holy life, we will bring ourselves con-
tinually within the sphere of those mighty, those trans-
forming influences, which are ever going forth from
thence. Let us make proof how it can open for us
the fountain of purifying tears, sealed it may be for
long how a burden can be laid down at its foot
which is crushing us to the earth, and from which
nowhere else is deliverance. Let us seek to enter
into nearer fellowship with the Man of sorrows, with
our crucified God. And then, when we have proved
how this fellowship can bless us, how it can cleanse us
from our impurities, how it can strengthen us for our
tasks, can enable us to tread underfoot our enemies,
we shall not readily exchange such a fellowship as this
with a living Lord, so full fraught with blessings, for
that of mere notions and phantoms ; which, however
much they may promise, will desert us in the hour of
need, and prove utterly helpless, whensoever the real
stress of life's trial comes.
T. H. L. 11
LECTURE II.
THE VANQUISHER OF HADES.
(Preached on Easter Sunday.)
MARK XVI. 3.
Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of
THE heathen expectations of a deliverer I ventured
in my preceding lecture to characterise as " the un-
conscious prophecies of heathendom;" prophecies
indeed which knew not at what they pointed, of which
the lines were most wavering and indistinct when set
beside the clear outlines of Jewish hope yet in a
wider and laxer sense prophecies still ; or if we will
not make that word common, but reserve it for the
highest of all, we may call them the world's divination
at the least. For in these expectations of a world,
which, though deeply fallen, remained God's world
still, it was divining what it needed, and obscurely
feeling after it. And this divination, these guesses at,
and Teachings out after, the truth, so far from shun-
ning and keeping out of sight, we may use, I said, not
of course putting them in the forefront of our array,
yet may we use them still, as arguments for that Faith,
to which all has thus tended from the first, which the
world was craving for before it received, and short of
which it never found its perfect satisfaction or rest.
It is the same argument, applied in a different
region, of Christianity as evidently the complement of
THE VANQUISHER OF HADES. 163
all that went before, which the early apologists were
wont to use in their conflict with Gnostic and Mani-
chaBan. They urged the manner in which the Chris-
tian revelation as the Church received it, rooted itself
deeply in an anterior constitution, was evidently not a
sudden improvisation, but the culminating fact of an
idea which had been realizing itself through all the
sacred history of the past, was as the perfect flower,
of which all genuine Judaism had been the stalk and
stem. And they founded on this traceable connexion
the superiority of its claims to those of all rival sys-
tems, which could produce no such accordance of their
new with pre-existing and pre-established harmonies
in the spiritual world ; but had rather abruptly and
violently to force a place for themselves, than to fit
into one already prepared for their reception, which
rested on an undoing and denying of the past, rather
than a sanctioning and perfecting of it*. And as
there was, no doubt, a most real force in their argu-
ment, exactly so has it for the thoughtful mind a deep
significance, that Christ should have met and satisfied
all nobler longings of the heathen world that all
deeper and better impulses which were anywhere at
work, should have been tending toward Him. The
worth of the unspeakable gift which in Christ is ours,
is wonderfully testified by the fact that all should have
been in one way or another either asking for that
gift, or fancying that they had gotten it, or mourning
its departure, or providing substitutes for it. For,
See especially Tertullian, Adv. Marcion., 1. 3 and 4, passim, in
which this is his ever-recurring thought, re-appeaving in an infinite
variety of forms. Oh Christum et in novis veterem ! he exclaims,
having shown how the rudiments of almost all Christ's miracles are to
be found in the Old Testament.
164 LECTURE II. [1846.
however in the one elect people, as the bearers of the
divine promises, the beating heart of the spiritual
world, the appointed interpreters to the rest of their
blind desires, this longing- after a Redeemer came
out in greater clearness and in greater strength, and
with no troubling disturbing elements, their education
being far more directly from God, and being expressly
aimed at the quickening of these longings to the
highest, yet were those longings themselves not
exclusively theirs. They, indeed, yearned, and knew
what they yearned for : the nations yearned, and knew
not for what. But still they yearned : for as the earth
in its long polar night seeks to supply the absence of
the day by the generation of the northern lights, so
does each people in the long night of its heathen
darkness bring forth in its yearning after the life of
Christ, a faint and glimmering substitute for the same.
From these dreamy longings after the break of day
have proceeded oracles, priests, sacrifices, lawgivers,
and the like. Men have no where given up hoping ;
nor acquiesced in the world's evil as the world's law.
Everywhere they have had a tradition of a time when
they were nearer to God than now, a confident hope
of a time when they should be brought nearer again.
No thoughtful student of the past records of man-
kind can refuse to acknowledge that through all its
history there has run the hope of a redemption from
the evil which oppresses it ; nor of this only, but that
this hope has continually linked itself on to some
single man. The help that is coming to the world, it
has ever seen incorporated in a person. The genera-
tions of men, weak and helpless in themselves, have
evermore been looking after one in whom they may
THE VANQUISHER OF HADES. 165
find all which they seek vainly in themselves and in
those around them redressers of the world's wrong,
deliverers from the world's yoke, vindicators of the
honour of the race, souls of heroic stature, in which
all the features of greatness that are imparted with
niggard hand unto others shall be found gloriously
and prodigally combined. Such in almost every reli-
gion men have learned to look back to, as having
already come : such we find that they are everywhere
expecting, as yet to appear.
As little can one deny that there is that in men,
which prepares them to welcome these at their appear-
ing. There is a natural gravitation of souls, which
attracts them to mighty personalities ; an instinct in
man, which tells him that he is never so great as when
looking up to one greater than himself that he is
made for this looking upward to find, and, finding to
rejoice and to be ennobled in, a nobler than himself.
And doubtless this instinct in itself is divine. It is
the natural basis on which the devotion of mankind to
Christ is by the Spirit to be built ; it is an instinct
which, being perfectly purified of each baser admix-
ture, is intended to find its entire satisfaction in Him.
True, it may stop short of Him ; true, it may turn
utterly away from Him. Tt may stop short of Him,
resting in human heroes, in men glorious for their
gifts, eminent for their services to their kind ; and we
have then the worship of genius instead of the worship
of God. Or it may turn utterly away from Christ,
and then, being in itself inextinguishable, and therefore
surviving even in those who have wholly forsaken Him,
it will, thus perverted and depraved, lay them open
to all the delusions of false prophets and of antichrists.
166 LECTURE II. [1846.
For it is this, this attraction of men to a mightier
than themselves, which, being thus perverted, has filled
the world with deceivers and deceived ; which has
gathered round the hunters of men the ready instru-
ments which have executed their will. It is this which
has drawn souls, as moths to the candle, to rush into
and to be scorched and to be consumed in the flame,
which some wielder of heavenly gifts for hellish aims
has kindled. It is this which swells the train round
some conqueror's car, as he urges his destructive
course through the world. What for instance, to take
a near illustration, was the devotedness of the French
soldiery to their great leader but this ? Who does not
feel that this devotion, out of which thousands and
tens of thousands were ready to meet, and did joy-
fully meet, dangers and fatigues and agonies and
deaths, only for the hope of one word of approbation,
one smile from him, counting all more than repaid by
this who does not feel that this was the inverted side
of something in itself most true and most noble, to
which even in its degeneracy it bore witness ; and
only had now run wild and lost its appointed destina-
tion ? It is this, this craving of men passionately to
devote themselves to some one, which makes an Anti-
christ possible, which will make him so terrible when
he appears men by a just judgment of God being
permitted to dedicate all which they ought to have
dedicated to Christ, to his opposite, to him who conies
in his own name, because they refused to give it,
because they refused to give themselves, to Him who
came in the name of his Father. It will then be
fearfully seen that there can be an enthusiasm of hell,
no less than an enthusiasm of heaven.
THE VANQUISHER OF HADES. 167
And as on the one side there is a preparedness
to acknowledge these kings of men, these spiritual
and intellectual chiefs of our race, so soon as they
shew themselves ; thus too, upon the other hand, such
have never been wanting to claim the reverence and
the homage of their fellows, to seat themselves on
these prepared thrones of the world. Certainly there
is nothing in the study of the past which fills one with
more awe and wonder than the infinite significance of
single men in the development of the world's history.
That history lies out before our eyes no Tartarian
steppe, no Indian savannah, stretching out at one vast
level, or with only slight elevations or depressions ; but
with marvellous inequalities, and here and there with
ravines deep almost as hell itself, and again with
mountain summits towering well nigh unto heaven.
Everywhere we encounter those that bring to their
brethren a new blessing or a new curse, that gather
up as at a centre the world's light or the world's
darkness ; from whom that light or that darkness
diffuses itself anew and with a new energy benefi-
cent lords or baleful tyrants in the spiritual kingdom
of men's thoughts and feelings each one for weal or
for woe, in narrower or wider circles, for longer or
shorter spaces, wielding his sceptre over the hearts
and spirits of his fellows ; helping to make them
slaves or to make them free, to exalt or to cast them
down. On the one side august lawgivers, founders of
stable polities, bringers in of some new element of
civilization, restorers, even amid heathen darkness, of
some purer knowledge of God ; on the other side,
destroyers that have known how to knit to them as
with magic bands multitudes of their brethren, and to
168 LECTURE II. [1846.
make them the passionate servants of their evil will ;
proclaimers of sensual philosophies, that have assisted
to make our life cheaper than beasts', to empty it of
its loftier hopes and its faith in an higher destination ;
seducers after whom the world has wondered; stars
whose name has been Wormwood, that falling from
heaven, have made the waters of earth bitter, so that
the men died who drank of them.
Thus has it been, brethren, that the world has
been ever opening wide its arms to welcome its
redeemers, oftentimes cruelly deceived, counting
oftentimes, like Eve, that it had gotten a man from
the Lord, even him who should comfort it under the
curse, when indeed it was thus welcoming only the
deepener of the curse, and it may be the author of
some new mischief; yet hoping ever, with hopes that
even at the best were only most imperfectly and in-
adequately fulfilled. Thus have the multitudes of
men still gathered and grouped themselves round
central figures in history, giving testimony even by an
oftentimes fatal readiness for this, that mankind was
made for a Christ, for a divine leader in whom it
should be set free, by the mightier and holier magic
of his will, by the prevalence of a diviner attraction
which he should exercise upon them, from all the
potent spells of seducing spirits and seducing men
that humanity was made for one to whom it should
be able to deliver itself perfectly and without reserve,
and to be blest in so delivering itself. For he being
identical with righteousness, and wisdom, and love,
they who lose themselves in Him, only lose to find
themselves again for ever.
So much, brethren, we may say generally con-
THE VANQUISHER OF HADES. 169
cerning the hope which the world has cherished of
redeemers and saviours a hope which at length was
fulfilled so perfectly in Him, and only in Him, who
bears both these titles, that we well nigh feel as if
the titles themselves, to say nothing of any deeper
homage or devotion, cannot without wrong to Him,
and encroachment upon his due honour, be lent to
any other. And upon this day, brethren, upon this
resurrection morn, it will fall in well with the joyful
solemnities of the time, with the current in which' our
thoughts must needs be running, and from which it
would only be a loss if the discourse you heard in
this place should awhile divert them, to address our-
selves to a part of the subject, which, had not this
high day come upon us, might perhaps have been
more conveniently reserved to a later occasion ; but
which if now, moved by the fitnesses of the season, I
a little anticipate, you will pardon me this wrong.
The aspect of the subject which I mean is this, the
world's hope of its deliverers as conquerors of death,
its expectation of One who should lead captivity cap-
tive, in whom mortality should be swallowed up in
life, who should be a vanquisher of hell, a bringer
back of souls, and first and chiefly of his own, from
the prison-house of the grave.
Such expectations in abundance there were ; for
nowhere have men sat down content under the heavy
laws of death which bound them. They have ever
been imagining a reversal of the curse, a breach or a
repeal of those inexorable laws. The old world was
ever feeling after " Jesus and the Resurrection." And
being full of this thought, it traced it every where.
Thus, in the cycle of the natural seasons, when the
170 LECTURE II. [1846.
earth in spring starts up from its long winter sleep,
men saw a symbol and a never-failing prophecy of
life rising out of death : that winter was as the world's
death, this spring as the world's resurrection. The
enthusiasm which the spring woke up, the rapture
with which the outbursting of bud and blossom, the
signs of the reviving year, were hailed the way in
which the chiefest and joyfulest feasts of almost all
religions were coincident with, and evidently cele-
brated, this time, being full of this spring gladness,
all this was not an evidence, as some would have us
to believe, that those religions were merely physical,
did merely commemorate the revolutions of the na-
tural year. But this rapture and delight with which
the outer tokens of renovation and revival were
hailed, had their root in a profound and instinctive
sense of the connexion between man and nature, in a
most true feeling that the symbols of renovation in
nature could not be aimless and unmeaning, symbols
of nothing, but must needs point to deeper realities
in the life of man*. The spring-time suggested such
* I may quote, though long, the sublime passage in Tertullian
on the vestiges of a resurrection which we may trace everywhere
in nature (De Resurr. Carnis, c. 12) : Dies moritur in noctem, et
tenebris usquequaque sepelitur. Funestatur mundi honor; omnis
substantia denigratur. Sordent, silent, stupent cuncta: ubiquejusti-
tium est. Ita lux amissa lugetur : et tamen rursus cum suo cultu,
cum dote, cum sole, eadem et Integra et tota universe orbi reviviscit ;
interficiens mortem suam, noctem ; rescindens sepulturam suam tene-
bras ; heres sibimet existens, donee et nox reviviscat, cum suo et
ilia suggestu. Redaccenduntur cnim et stellarum radii, quos matu-
tina succensio extinxerat: reducuntur et siderum absentiae, quos
temporalis distinctio exeinerat : redornantur et specula lunae, quse
menstruus numerus attriverat : revolvuntur hyemes et restates, verna
et autumna, cum suis viribus, moribus, fructibus. Quippe etiam
terra de coelo disciplina est arbores vestire post spolia, flores denuo
THE VANQUISHER OF HADES. 171
joyful solemnities, because it was felt to be in some
sort the Easter of nature, and obscurely to give
pledge, or at least intimation, of an higher Easter in
store for man.
And if it may be permitted me to take a little
wider range, and to gather proofs and confirmations
of what I am affirming, of the manner in which
human nature has claimed a resurrection as its own,
not from the heathen world only, but wherever in
popular faith or tradition I can find them, I would then
adduce, as a remarkable illustration of this, the ex-
ceeding difficulty with which the world has ever per-
suaded itself of the death of any who have mightily
blest it, or with whom it has confidently garnered
up its dearest hopes the eagerness with which it
snatches at the thought, that such a one has not
truly died, making much of the slightest hint that
seems to give a colour to this hope ; so congenial is
it to the heart of man. It was said of Moses, " No
man knoweth his sepulchre unto this day," (Deut.
xxxiv. 6,) and these words, despite the plain declara-
tion that went before, were sufficient provocation for
a whole family of Jewish legends to the effect that he
had not really paid the debt appointed to every man
colorare, herbas rursus imponere, exhibere eadein quse absumpta sunt
semina ; nee prius exhibere, quam absumpta. Mira ratio ! de frau-
datrice servatrix : ut reddat, intercipit ; ut custodiat, perdit ; ut inte-
gret, vitiat ; ut etiam ampliet, prius decoquit...Nihil deperit, nisi in
salutem. Totus igitur hie ordo revolubilis rerum, testatio est resur-
rectionis mortuorum. Operibus earn praescripsit Dens antequam
literis ; viribus praedicavit antequam vocibus. Praemisit tibi naturam
magistram, submissurus et prophetiam, quo facilius credas prophetiae,
discipulus naturae; quo statim admittas, cum audieris quod ubique
jam videris, nee dubites Deum carnis etiam resuscitatorem, quern
omnium noris restitutorem.
172 LECTURE II. [1846.
living. In like manner we know how that word of
the Lord concerning the beloved apostle, " If I will
that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee ?" this
was enough to cause the report to go forth that he
should not die ; and not the express denial by St.
John himself of any such significance in the words,
was able to extinguish this belief, which continued to
propagate itself from age to age*.
In like manner we sometimes see a whole nation
which has found it impossible to believe that he on
whom its hopes were fondly built, whom it had
trusted should at length have delivered it, and with
whose death those hopes have all fallen to the
ground, that he indeed has come, like other men,
under the law of mortality, has passed away, and
left his work, as it seems, unconcluded. How long
Britain was waiting for her Arthur ; how long did the
legends that told of him as surviving yet in the far
valley of Avalon live on the lips and in the hearts of
a people. And exactly in the same manner, in a
later and more historic age, Portugal waited for her
youthful king, looking fondly and with aching expec-
tation for his return and this, for many a weary year
after he had perished, not obscurely, but in open
fight, among the sands of Africf.
See Augustine, In Ev. Joh., Tract. 124 : Tertullian, De Animd,
c. 50; Hilary, De Trinit. L 6, c.39; Jerome, Adv. Jovin., 1. 1, c. 26;
Neander's Kirch. Gesch., v. 5, p. 1117.
f Thus Michelet (Hist, de France, 1. 17) having told the death of
the last Duke of Burgundy : " II n' etait pas facile de persuader au
peuple que celui dont on avait tant parle etait bien vraiment mort.
II etait cache, disait on, il etait tenu enferme, il s'etait fait moine ; des
pelerins 1'avaient vu, en Allemagne, a Rome, a Jerusalem ; il devait
reparaitre tot ou tard; comme le roi Arthur ou Frederic Barberousse,
on etait sur qu'il revicndrait. II se trouvait des marchands, qui ven-
THE VANQUISHER OF HADES. 173
And may not some of us have known, brethren, in
our own experience something that quite explains to
us this difficulty of believing in death ? Have we not
found this difficulty ourselves ? and how, when the
loved are gone, when they have left their places
empty, it is only by repeated efforts that we can
realize to ourselves that it indeed is so how we have
to say again and again to hearts half incredulous still,
that it will never again in this world be otherwise
that so much truth and faith and love have indeed
been withdrawn from hence and for ever. Thus ear-
nestly does the spirit of man protest even against
that semblance of annihilation, which death seems to
wear.
Nor need it of necessity be the loved or hoped in,
those in whom the expectations of others have in-
tensely centered : let it be only some terrible man,
one that has curdled the life-blood of the world with
fear ; and even such a one as this, having once been
so much to men, though only so much to their fears,
they will hardly be persuaded to have indeed past
away from the earth which so quaked and shuddered
at his tread. How long after the death of Nero did
the firm persuasion survive, that he was only hidden
for a season, and that the earth should once more
be cursed with his presence the Christians of the
Roman Empire giving this expectation a colouring
natural to them, and conceiving of him as the personal
Antichrist, who should make presently his terrible
draient a credit, pour etre payes au double, alors que reviendrait ce
grand due De Bourgogne. It is well known how many obscure
rumours have in like manner found favour with the common people
in different parts of Europe, that Napoleon is yet alive.
174 LECTURE II. [1846.
re-appearance from the East, to carry forward against
them the work of blood which he had commenced*.
But to return to the sphere more directly marked
out for me by my subject, and to look there for
evidences of the manner in which the spirit of man is
incredulous of death, witnesses, protests against it, as
by a second sight sees what shall be in the fulness of
time, and prematurely grasps at it, what frequent
mention in the Greek fable we meet of visitors of
Hades, of those that have descended and held inter-
course with the spirits there, those who have in a
sense " preached to the spirits in prison," and then
returned from the kingdom of night or it may be
burst for others, as well as for themselves, the gates
and barriers of the grave, rescuing and bringing back
from that dark region to the glad light of life some
delivered soul. I may spare any great details in
proof of this ; time would not allow them ; such
might scarcely seem in place ; and to a congregation
like that which I address they would be evidently
superfluous. By one example only I would indicate
that which I mean, but that example the most illus-
trious which ancient fable supplies. It is familiar to
us all how the great cycle of the labours of Hercules
was not finished till he had done battle with Death.
Earthly exploits, even the mightiest and most mar-
vellous of these, were not sufficient. It was felt, and
most truly, that to complete even the idea of the
hero-champion of men, something more was needed, a
greater victory was demanded at his hands : he must
wrestle with, and in personal conflict overcome, foes
* Tacitus, Hist., 1. 2, c. 8 ; Suetonius, Nero, c. 57; Augustine, De
Civ. Dei, 1. 20, c. 19 ; Lactantius, De Mort. Pers., 2.
THE VANQUISHER OF HADES. 175
mightier than those of flesh and blood even the last
enemy, death and the grave. Nor even then had his
own life attained its perfect consummation ; since for
this it was needed that all which was of earth in him-
self should be burned out, that the dregs of mortality
should be cleansed away in the purifying flames of a
funeral pyre, willingly ascended and this being done,
that he himself, in sign that he could not die any
more, that he was indeed made partaker of immor-
tality, that death could have no more dominion over
him, should be wedded to eternal Youth amid the
blissful mansions of the immortal gods *.
Such, no doubt, is the interpretation of this preg-
nant symbol ; and thus, brethren, by a thousand voices,
in a thousand ways, the world has been declaring that
it was not made for death, for that dread and alien
thing, which, notwithstanding, it found in the midst of
it. Thus has it looked round for one who should roll
away the stone from the door of that sepulchre, to
which it had seen its sons one after another unreturn-
ingly descend ; and eking out the weakness of its
arguments for immortality by the strength of its de-
* In Buttmann's Mythologus, v. 1, p. 252 seq., the higher signifi-
cance of the whole mythus of Herakles is unfolded with an exquisite
tact and beauty. Without entering into the merits or demerits of
other parts of the book, it may yet be as well to say that it is only
this single treatise which I wish to speak of in this language of admi-
ration. If K. O. Miiller is right in his conjecture that 'A<5/u>m)s =
'A5a>acrTos (//. 9, 158) the indomitable, a name belonging to Hades,
and that Apollo's service of Admetus is his passing down to the
infernal world in consequence of having slain the earth-born Python ;
if this be true, and he brings much that is curious in confirmation of
this view, we may then add one more, and that not the least remark-
able, to the Greek mythic narrations of this description. (See his
Scientific Mythology, p. 243246 Engl. Transl.)
176 LECTURE II. [1846.
sires, it has been forward to believe that for this one
and that the stone had been actually rolled away. But
yet presently again, it has felt only too surely that it
had but the shadow, and not the very substance, of
the things hoped for : and in doubt and perplexity,
in despondency and fear, has made the words of the
Psalmist its own : " Dost thou shew wonders among
the dead? Shall the dead rise up and praise thee?"
but, unlike to him, it has not known what answer to
give to its own question.
And so it went on, until at length, after many a
false dawn, the world's Easter morning indeed broke,
and from beside an empty tomb they went forth, the
witnesses of Jesus, preaching Him and the resurrec-
tion ; men able to declare things which they had seen
that there was indeed a risen Head of our race, one
who had tasted death for every man, who, not in poet's
dreams, or in legend of olden time, but in very truth,
had burst its bands, because it was impossible He
should be holden by them ; that there was one for
whom death was what men had so often, and so fondly
and significantly called it even a sleep ; for He had
laid Him down and slept, and after his three days'
rest in the grave, risen up again, because the Lord
had sustained Him. The day at length arrived, when
men were able to go forth, preaching Him who had
shewn himself alive by many infallible proofs ; in whom
too, being risen, mortality was swallowed up in life ;
and who was now seated at the right hand of the
Majesty on high, angels and principalities and powers
being made subject unto Him.
Such was the word of their message that the
stone was rolled away, that the riddle of death was
THE VANQUISHER OF HADES. 177
solved ; and hearts unnumbered welcomed the tidings,
and expanded themselves to it, as flowers, shut through
some long dreary night, unfold themselves to the
warmth and the light of the returning day. And shall
not we, brethren, bear our part in the great jubilee
which that message of theirs has summoned the world
to keep, in the glory and gladness of this day and of
this day's mysterjs before which all phantoms and
shadows of the night flee away, before which all sad-
ness and despair are weak to stand ? Truly, with a
deep insight into the mystery of this Easter morn, did
the great poet of our modern world make the Easter
hymn the glad voices which said Christ is risen,
these, caught by accident, of potency sufficient to
wrest the poison-cup untasted from the hand of the
despairing one, who had already raised it to his lips*.
And how, brethren, fares it with ourselves? Is
that word for us a scatterer of sadnesses, a quickener
of joys ? Does it enable us to put off the sackcloth of
our spirits, and to gird ourselves with gladness ? Let
us earnestly ask ourselves this question ; for surely it
is a sign that all is not right with us, when other things
make us glad, but not this when the natural spring
fills our hearts with a natural joy, but this with no
spiritual when we stand aloof, cold and unsympa-
thizing, as the wondrous cycle of the Christian year
goes round, as the great events of our Lord's life and
death and resurrection and glory succeed one another
in a marvellous order ; not humbling ourselves in the
humiliations of that life, and therefore not exulting in
its triumph ; never having stood beside the cross of
* See Goethe's Faust, Scene 1.
T. H. L. 12
178 LECTURE II. [1846.
Jesus, and therefore having no right and no desire to
stand beside that open tomb, where he reared his first,
his everlasting trophy over death. If we feel not this
gladness, let us take shame to our dull hearts, and
claim it as a gift from our God, which he will not
deny us. Let us ask that we too may be borne up-
ward and borne onward on the great stream of the
Church's exultation. Let us ask this earnestly ; let
us ask it as something which we ought not to be
without. For of this let us be sure, that now, after
eighteen hundred years, that announcement of the
angel, " He is not here, but is risen," should be as fresh
and new, as full of an unutterable joy to us, as it was
to those weeping women, who came to pay the last
sad honours to their dead Lord, but found only his
empty and forsaken grave.
LECTURE III.
THE SON OF GOD.
ACTS XIV. 11.
And when the people saw what Paul had done, they lifted
up their voices, saying in the speech of Lycaonia, The
gods are come down to us in the likeness of men.
IT was my endeavour when we last met, to trace out
the manner in which humanity has ever been looking
in one quarter or another for its redeemers and sa-
viours for deliverers from physical, deliverers from
moral evil. Carrying forward my subject a step, it
will be now my aim to shew how it has not merely
been heroic men, men who triumphed over all, even
death itself, but divine men, for whom the world has
been craving ; in whom it has felt deeply that its help
must lie a most true voice of man's spirit ever tell-
ing him that only from heaven the true deliverance of
the earth could proceed. We shall see how men have
been ever cherishing the conviction of a real fellow-
ship between earth and heaven, and that not merely
an outward one, but an inward ; a conviction that the
two worlds truly met, not by external contact only,
but in the deeps of personal life, in persons that most
really belonged and held on to both worlds. We shall
see how the world, with all its discords, has had also
its preludes to the great harmonies of redemption ;
has had its incarnations sons of God, that have come
down to live a human life, to undertake human toils,
122
180 LECTURE III. [1846.
to die a human death : its ascensions sons of men,
that have been lifted up to heaven, and made partakers
of divine attributes : we shall see how men have never
conceived of this world around us as totally dissevered
from that world above us, with an impassable gulf
between them, but always as in living intercommu-
nion the one with the other.
And to this subject the words of my text will form
a fitting introduction, yielding, as they do, a signal
testimony to a wide-spread faith through the heathen
world in these living relations between heaven and
earth ; for no sooner did those men of Lystra see in
Paul and Barnabas, beneficent healing presences, with
power to chase away the sicknesses of men, than at
once they leaped to the conclusion, " The gods are
come down to us in the likeness of men," and could
hardly be restrained from offering them divine hon-
ours. The words themselves are a noticeable evidence
of the world's preparedness, even in that day when so
much of an earlier and more childlike faith had pe-
rished, to welcome its deliverer from heaven. Nor
are we without a parallel evidence to the same in that
exclamation of the awe-struck heathen centurion, who
at sight of nature suffering with her suffering Lord,
and setting her seal to the awful meaning of his death,
could come to no other than a like conclusion, and
exclaimed, " Truly this was the Son of God."
For indeed this, which is peculiar to our Christian
faith, namely, that in it at length, and in it only, a
real meeting-place between heaven and earth has been
established in the person of Jesus of Nazareth that
the divine was born into the human, and so, not by
transient and external contact, but in very deed, hea-
THE SON OF GOD. 181
ven came down to earth, and the earth was lifted up
into heaven, God became a man, and man God this,
Avhich is the peculiar prerogative and glory of our
Christian faith, is yet not so peculiarly ours, but that
every religion has, in some shape or other, made pre-
tension to the same. It was claimed of all, though
fulfilled only in one. " The tabernacle of God is
with men, and he will be their God, and dwell among
them" this in positive fulfilment did only in the
Only-begotten come true ; yet, as far as the idea
reaches, is the essence and centre, not of one reli-
gion, but of all. Men may conceive it under diifer-
ent aspects, may imagine it to be brought about in
various ways ; some of these ways will approach nearer
to the heart of the matter than others ; but this idea,
in one shape or another, must constitute the central
one of every religion.
I will endeavour to trace a few proofs of this, as
in the heathen religions of antiquity they meet us
everywhere, to hold up before you a few forms in
which, with more or less distinctness, men expressed
their desire after, or embodied their belief in, this
fellowship, and more than fellowship, this union be-
tween God and man ; and then to shew how far short,
even in idea, not to speak of the realization of that
idea, all which men ever conceived in this way fell of
the actual fact upon which the Church is founded.
And first, would we trace what is nearest to a
nation's heart, we should turn to its poetry ; there we
shall find not what it has, but what it is reaching after
not its actual work-day world, but that ideal world
after which it is longing. If, then, we turn to the
oldest, the epic, poetry of Greece, we behold heroes
182 LECTURE III. [1846.
and gods and men mingling familiarly together. In
this free intercourse, in this beaten and well-trodden
way between earth and heaven, we have what we might
venture to call the heathen counterpart to the heavenly
ladder seen by Jacob in dream, on which angels were
ascending and descending, with the Lord himself at
the summit ; even as that was but the weak intima-
tion of a closer union between earth and heaven to be
effected in the person of the Son of Man an union
wherein God should no longer appear at the summit
of the ladder, but at its foot no longer a God far
off, but near ; men now at last beholding the " hea-
ven open, and the angels of God ascending and de-
scending upon the Son of Man."
We may select one instance more, which Greek
art will supply, of the sense of so intimate relations
between God and man, as only the Incarnation could
at length adequately express. We oftentimes take it
as a matter of course, one which therefore excites in
us no reflection or surprize, that the statues of the
Grecian gods should be in human forms, in the per-
fection of human grace and beauty the highest which
the skill of artist could attain. And yet, what a won-
derful thing was this, to have arrived at the convic-
tion that the human was the most adequate expression
for the divine that if God did reveal himself, it
would be as man that the nearest approximation to
the ideal of humanity was the worthiest type of the
Godhead. These too in their kind we must regard
as prophecies of the Incarnation ; not, indeed, of the
deeps of that mystery, but weak prophecies of it
still.
Not, however, in the ideal world of art only did
THE SON OF GOD. 183
this faith find utterance, but in the actual world as
well. The whole scheme of an Oriental court, and
eminently that of the Great King, was laid out on the
idea that it was the visible representation of the court
of heaven, and the king himself a visible incarnation
of the highest God. The sense of this speaks out in
every arrangement, in the least as in the greatest,
and is the key to them all. Thus, the laws of that
kingdom when once uttered, could not be reversed or
changed, (Dan. vi. 8,) because the king who gave them
was the incarnation of God, and God cannot repent,
or alter the thing which has gone out from his lips*.
None, as again we learn from the Book of Esther (iv.
11), might come into the king's presence unbidden
and live, save by a distinct act of grace. They must
die, unless the golden sceptre, in token of this grace,
was held out to them ; because none but the pardoned
can behold the countenance of God and not perish
at its intolerable brightness. So, as that same book
teaches us, it was forbidden to one clothed in sack-
cloth to enter within the palace ; (iv. 2 ;) and this,
because heaven, of which that palace was the image,
is the region of life and gladness, not of sorrow or of
death ; which, therefore, as they might not enter there,
* God is aTjoe-n-Tos, his counsels dneTe/n.e\i)Ta, and he not a man
that he should repent ; and even such his visible representative on
earth must he. It was on this unchangeableness of what had once
gone forth from the lips of the king, which itself was thus no capricious
state rule, but grew out of the very idea on .which the Persian mo-
narchy rested, that the enemies of Daniel founded their confident
expectations of success in their conspiracy against him. (Dan. vi. 8, 15. )
So, too, when the purposes of Ahasuerus the king were altered con-
cerning the Jews, he yet could not reverse the edict which permitted
them to be attacked by their enemies : he could only give another
edict, allowing them to stand upon their defence. (Esth. viii. 10, 11.)
184 LECTURE III. [1846.
so neither might these things, which are their visible
signs and symbols, enter into the palace of the king.
The seven princes, that stood nearest to the throne,
and saw the king's face (i. 14), corresponded to the
seven highest angels that were supposed to stand
before, and nearest to, the throne of God. Nor was
the adoration offered to the Persian king a mere act
of homage or sign of fealty, but was most truly, and
in the highest sense, a worshipping; and exactly
because felt as such, was so earnestly resisted, though
from different motives, by the Greek alike and the
Jew by the Greek, as dishonouring to himself, by
the Jew, as dishouring to his God. It was a worship-
ping of the king's person for the presence of God,
which was supposed to dwell singularly in him.
Again, when the foremost place in all the earth
had passed into the possession of another, what was
the apotheosis of a Roman Cesar, in life, or after
death, but a troubled speaking out of men's sense,
that he who stood in the forefront of humanity, the
chiefest of the sons of men, should also be more than
man ? This, in itself most true, did only become the
fearful blasphemy it was, when the worship was mis-
applied, and the object to which it was due had been
mistaken. It was indeed an irony of the heathen
world, and of its magnificent pretensions, worthy of
the great author of mischief, when the honour that
it owed to Christ the Lord, being diverted on the
way, was rendered to a Nero or a Tiberius. The
prince of this world was herein mocking his votaries,
exactly as he mocked the Jews, when they too were
led to incorporate their rejection of all that was best,
and their choice of all which was worst, in an out-
THE SON OF GOD. 185
ward fact, in that cry of theirs " Not this man, but
Barabbas."
And I may perhaps be permitted to observe as
not alien to our present argument, but as another
striking proof of this craving of men for that which
is given to them in Christ and in his Incarnation, for
such a bridal of two worlds as was celebrated therein,
that whenever, even in Christendom, men have lost
their faith in this gift, or have suffered that faith to
grow weak, then they have not rested till they have
created for themselves a substitute for that truth
which thus they have let go. Thus, no sooner had
men's faith in a present, though invisible, Head of his
Church waxed feeble no sooner did the God-man,
because he could not be seen or touched or handled,
appear far off to carnal and sense-bound generations,
than they began to yearn for a substitute, who should
give them in palpable form all which they no longer
felt that they possessed in Him. And thus men began
to lend questionable honours and ambiguous titles to
a pope ; and ever as they more let go their sense of
the reality of Christ's headship, they lent more of his
glories, of his names, his honours, his divine attributes,
to the man who had placed himself in his seat, and
offered them in a gross and visible way that connexion
between earth and heaven, which they were intended
to have found in Him of whom it is written, " The
Head of every man is Christ."
Exactly in the same manner a thoughtful observer
of the progress of Unitarianism in our own day, will
not have failed to note that a system which shrinks
from saying " Christ is God," yet finds it impossible
to rest in that denial, and is rapidly and inevitably
186 LECTURE III. [1846.
hastening to say, even as it has already said plainly
enough by the lips of its most forward votaries, " Man
is God ;" giving in the end to every man that which
it started with affirming it was blasphemy to give to
any, even to the Son himself. And were that, or any
other yet barrener form of unbelief, to succeed for a
time in emptying the throne in men's hearts wherein
the Son of God is sitting, on the instant we should
behold impious and frantic enthusiasts springing up
on every side, claiming the vacant seat, and obtaining
too the homage which was withholden from Him. For
truly, our deliverance from superstition lies not in
unbelief, but in faith. In holding fast the truth, and
only in that, are we delivered from its distorted coun-
terfeit. Thus the Holy Eucharist, satisfying as it
does the solemn and mysterious cravings of the human
soul, delivers the Christian world from hateful mys-
teries and dark orgies. Thus, again, faith in the
sacrifice once offered upon Calvary hinders and cuts
off those hideous attempts at expiation, which, but
for that, the sin-laden heart of man would inevit-
ably devise for itself. And thus, too, an exalted
Saviour preserves us from blasphemous usurpers of
divine honours, the truth of God from the lie of the
devil.
But let us see, brethren, what nearer to the heart
of the matter the old world had, of incarnations and
ascensions ; let us see the highest form in which it
presented these truths to itself. And contemplating
that highest, let us still take note how the Christian
truth of the Word made flesh, even as a doctrine, WAS
original not to say that alone in Christ it past from
THE SON OF GOD. 187
a speculation, and became a fact. It will be instruc-
tive to mark how all other systems not merely did not
give what they professed to give, (for that of course,)
but how even what they professed to give, fell short
of, and was only an approximation to, the actual needs
of humanity.
Thus the Greek mind could conceive of a much-
suffering man lifted up for his toils' and virtues' sake
into the highest heaven. Their pantheon is full of
such, of heroes after the toils and conflicts of a
life worthily spent for their fellow-men, made free of
heaven, and admitted even into the circle of the
immortal gods ; and so far they had in their popular
belief anticipations of Him, the man Christ Jesus,
whom, because He humbled Himself, and for our
sakes became obedient to the death of the cross,
therefore God greatly exalted, setting Him at his
own right hand.
But yet how little was there here any true blend-
ing of the human and divine, and how truly men felt
this ; as is wonderfully testified by the fact that this
exalted and glorified man, however many divine attri-
butes were added to him, yet did not get the name of
God ; he was but a Saifjuav after all ; he was not, to
use language which has been well used of the Son,
Deus ex radice. They felt with a right instinct that a
deified man did not thereby, and that indeed he could
not, become God that no accumulation of divine
honours could make one truly God, who was not such
already ; even as the Church, in a later day, was not
to be deceived into accepting the Arian theory con-
cerning the Son of God as an adequate substitute for
her own, by the utmost prodigality of divine names
188 LECTURE III. [1846.
and titles and honours which were proposed to be
lavished upon Him. She felt rightly that all these
would not in the least fill up the chasm that divided,
and must divide for ever, God from that which was
not God. So was it with the apotheosis of heroic
men : the divine glory did but gild and play upon the
surface of their being ; if a man was to be also God,
if there was to be any perfect union of the two, it
must be by other means, by a process which must
reach deeper and much further back than this.
But moreover the other half, the other factor,
even of the idea of such a person as this, was alto-
gether strange to the Greek mind. A God coming-
down from heaven, emptying himself of his glory, and
in a noble suffering undertaking a human life, and,
that he might be the helper and deliverer of men,
enduring all, even the hardest, for them, tasting death
itself, all this, a God thus stooping, and suffering,
and dying, was wholly alien to every conception of
theirs. The very idea of the gods with them was of
beings free from all care, untouched by any sorrow,
living ever joyful, and ever at ease : or if they so-
journed for a while in this toilsome and tearful world,
yet sojourning as visitors only not touching the bur-
den of its woe with the tip of their finger under-
taking it might be human tasks, yet undertaking them
in sport, not really coming under, or feeling their
weight. True, indeed, that this conception of a suf-
fering God, which was so strange to all western habits
of thought, was familiar to the mythologies of the
East. They have their Osiris, and not him alone,
though in him these sufferings of a divine nature
come the most prominently and gloriously out who
THE SON OF GOD. 189
in the fulness of his beneficent purposes for the race
of men, and in mighty and earnest conflict with the
prince of evil, endures all things, going down even to
the deeps of death : and thus, no doubt, the Eastern
religions were not without their anticipations of Him,
who though He was rich, yet made Himself poor, even
the poorest, for us, that we through his poverty might
be rich.
And yet how imperfect, even as regards the idea,
was this too. Humanity, however it craved a God
for its deliverer, yet craved just as earnestly a man ;
it wanted a redeemer out of its own bosom, one in
whose every triumph over moral or physical evil it
could rejoice that " God had given such power unto
men" It felt, and truly, that no other would serve its
turn that, forasmuch as the children are partakers
of flesh and blood, he also, if he would be every man's
brother, and thus able to be every man's redeemer,
must be partaker of the same ; " fairer than the chil-
dren of men," and yet himself a child of man that
from the midst of itself, from the depths of its own
life, its redeemer must proceed. A God who was
only God, might conquer for himself, but there was
no pledge or proof in his conquest, that man could
conquer ; a God who overcame death and rose from
the dead, gave no assurance thereby of a resurrection
for the race of man.
And thus each of the great divisions of the Gen-
tile world had but a fragment, even in thought and
desire, of the truth : the Greek world, the exaltation
of manhood the Oriental, the glorious humiliations
of Godhead ; and thus it came to pass that each of
these, even as a speculation, was maimed and imper-
190 LECTURE III. [1846.
feet. These systems, so far from providing what man
needed, had not satisfactorily and on every side even
contemplated what he needed; much less had they
given it.
And how indeed could it be given ? This was the
riddle which He alone whose counsels were from ever-
lasting, who knew all the true needs of man, and
meant to satisfy them all, could solve. It seemed in-
deed that the world, craving one who should be man
no less than God for its deliverer, put its demands in
irreconcilable contradiction with themselves ; and again,
that demanding for its redeemer one in whom the hu-
man and divine should not slightly and transiently
touch one another, but should be brought into inner-
most union, it here too required that which it was
impossible that it ever should receive. And yet the
same wonder-stroke of God solved both these pro-
blems.
The first difficulty was this, If the world needed a
man, yet where should it find the man that it needed?
It had often put forth its champions, but there was
ever found an attainder of blood in every man's de-
scent, a blot on every man's scutcheon, a flaw in every
man's armour. If no helper of humanity but one
born out of its bosom would do, and yet every one
born from thence, partook in its sin, was one needing
to be healed, and who could not therefore be himself
the healer, was a sharer in the diseased organism, and
could not therefore expel its poison from others,
whence was such a one to come ? The answer was
at length given in the Virgin-born. Men had long
before had an obsure apprehension that only so could
the difficulty be solved. The birth from a pure virgin
THE SON OF GOD. 191
had been attributed to many""". For there was that
in men's hearts which told them that for one to be an
effectual Saviour, he must be a new beginning, a new
head of the race ; not a mere link in the chain of
sinful humanity, since of the sinful the Sinless could
never come ; but by such marvellous means as that
miraculous conception he must be exempted from the
corruption transmitted from generation to generation
of the children of men.
But this was not all ; this Virgin-born was also
Immanuel, was that which men had asked for, " God
with us." He had indeed a Father, but that Father
was God ; and thus in the deepest deep, in the inner-
most core and centre of his life, this man was also
God. In the cradle of Bethlehem, when a pure Virgin
had been touched with fire from heaven and had borne
a Son, in Him at length the world found all its long-
ings fulfilled, its seemingly irreconcilable desires all
satisfied and atoned.
Thus, brethren, I have sought to trace out before
you to-day that which was perhaps the worthiest
element in the religions of the heathen world that
which, indeed, entitled them to the character of re-
ligions at all their recognition, with all shortcomings
and deficiencies, of a real bond between earth and
heaven, their sense that the Divine could reveal itself
no way so fitly as in the forms of the human, that the
Human could be lifted up to, and made to bear the
weight of, the Divine that man was God's offspring,
of the blood royal of creation. The pervading sense
of this was indeed what mainly constituted them, in
* Especially to founders of religions, as Buddha, Zoroaster.
192 LECTURE III. [1846.
God's providence, preparations and predispositions for
the absolute truth which should in fulness of time be
revealed. For that there were upon these points cer-
tain predispositions for the reception of the truth in
heathendom, which did not exist among the Jews, no
one I think can deny. None can thoughtfully read
the early history of the Church, and mark how hard
the Jewish Christians found it to make their own the
true idea of a Son of God, as indeed is witnessed by
the whole Epistle to the Hebrews how comparatively
easy the Gentile converts ; how the Hebrew Christians
were continually in danger of sinking back into Ebion-
ite heresies, making Christ but a man as other men,
refusing to go on unto perfection, or to realize the
truth of his higher nature ; no one can mark this,
and contrast it with the genial promptness of the
Gentile Church to embrace the offered truth, " God
manifest in the flesh," without feeling that there must
have been effectual preparations in the latter which
wrought its greater readiness for receiving and heartily
embracing this truth when it arrived. And what
other preparations could they have been, but these
which we have been tracing"""?
It is true that there was with this, infinitely too
feeble a sense, too feeble even in the best, of the
manner in which sin had cast them down from the
high places of their birth a confession far too weak
* The Christian apologists often find help here. Thus Arnobius
(Adv. Gen., 1. 1, c. 37): Natum hominem colimus. Quid enim, vos
hominem nullum colitis natum? Non unum et alium, non innu-
meros alios, quinimmo non omnes quos jam templis habetis vestris,
mortalium sustulistis ex numero, et co?lo sideribusque donastis ? He
could appeal to such passages as that of Cicero ( Tusc. Quast., 1. 1,
c. 13) : Totum prope coelum nonne humano genere completum est ?
THE SON OF GOD. 193
and wavering, (for only the Holy Ghost could have
wrought a right confession,) of that attainder that
was in their blood, the utter forfeiture of their in-
heritance which their sin had brought about. It was
not seen how man had ceased to be a Son of God,
could never but by a new adoption, a regeneration,
become such again. But man's divine original, his
first creation in the image of God, was so firmly held
fast to by all nobler spirits, that St. Paul upon the
hill of Mars could at once take his stand on this as a
great meeting point between himself and his Athenian
hearers as the ground which was common to them
and him : " Certain also of your own poets have said,
For we are also his offspring." (Acts xvii. 28.) Here
at least they were at one.
And, brethren, it is possible that we may learn a
lesson which we need, or at least remind ourselves of
truths which we are in danger of suffering to fall too
far back in our minds, by the contemplation of those,
who, amid all their errors and darkness and confusion
and evil, had yet a sense so deeply imprinted, a faith
so lively, that man was from God, as well as to God ;
capable of the divine, only because himself of a divine
race. Oftentimes it would seem as if our theology of
the present day had almost lost sight of this, or at
least held it with only too feeble a grasp ; beginning,
as it so often does, from the fall, from the corruption
of human nature, instead of beginning a step higher
up beginning with man a liar, when it ought to have
begun with man the true image and the glory of God.
And then, as a consequence, the dignity of Christ's
Incarnation, of his taking of humanity, is only imper-
fectly apprehended. That is considered in the main
T. H. L. 13
194 LECTURE III. [1846.
as a makeshift for bringing God in contact with man ;
and not to have been grounded on the perfect fitness
of man, as the image of God, of man^s organs, his
affections, his life, to be the utterers and exponents
of all the life, yea, of all the heart of God. It is
oftentimes considered the chief purpose of Christ's
Incarnation, that it made his death possible, that it
provided him a body in which to do that which merely
as God he could not do, namely to suffer and to die ;
while some of the profoundest teachers of the past,
so far from contemplating the Incarnation in this
light, have rather affirmed that the Son of God would
equally have taken man's nature, though of course
under very different conditions, even if he had not
fallen that it lay in the everlasting purposes of God,
quite irrespective of the fall, that the stem and stalk
of humanity should at length bear its perfect flower
in Him, who should thus at once be its root and its
crown. But the Incarnation being thus slighted, it
follows of necessity, that man as man is thought meanly
of, though indeed it is only man as fallen man, as
separated by a wilful act of his own from God, to
whom this shame and dishonour belong. In his first
perfection, in the truth of his nature, he is the glory
of God, the image of the Son, as the Son is the image
of the Father, declaring the Son as the Son declared
the Father : surely a thought, brethren, which if we
duly lay to heart, will make us strive that our lives may
be holy, that our lives may be noble, worthy of Him
who made us after his image, and when we had marred
that and defaced it, renewed us after the same in his
Son.
LECTURE IV.
THE PERFECT SACRIFICE.
MICAH VI. 6, 7.
Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself
before the high God ? shall I come before him with burnt-
offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be
pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of
rivers of oil ? shall I give my firstborn for my transgres-
sion, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul ?
THERE are few facts more mysterious, brethren, than
the prevalence of the rite of sacrifice through the
world. Nations which it is impossible could have
learned it of one another, nations the most diverse in
culture, the highest in the scale, and well nigh the
lowest, differing in every thing besides, have yet agreed
in this one thing, namely, in the offering of things
which have life to God, or when the idea of the one
God has been lost, to the gods many of heathenism
the essential of that offering in every case being
that the life of the victim was rendered up. And they
have all agreed in considering that this act of theirs
had a value, that it did place upon a new and better
footing the relations in which they stood to the hea-
venly powers ; that by these sacrifices they might
more or less re-constitute the relations between them-
selves and God, which by any cause had been dis-
turbed, bringing themselves nigher to Him, and ren-
dering Him more favourable to them.
132
196 LECTURE IV. [1846.
Now there are few or none in our day who would
count that they had explained the prevalence of these
convictions, in the conspiracy of the more artful few
to hold the simpler many in bondage. These convic-
tions were too wide spread, too universal ; moreover,
men were too direfully earnest in carrying them out,
to allow us to accept any such explanation as this.
Sacraments they might be, and often were, of the
devil, and not of God, but yet dreadful sacraments
still bonds and bands by which men knit themselves
to one another, and knit themselves also to a spiritual
world, if not to heaven, yet to hell. Those who
explain them into artful contrivances, may so give
witness for their own shallow insight into the past
history of the world, for the absence of any deeper
needs at work in their own hearts, since if there had
been such, they would have suggested a profounder
explanation ; but the time is past when they will find
any number of persons to accept their explanation as
sufficient.
As little can their theory be historically justified,
who trace up the existence of sacrifice to the rude
notions about God which belonged to an early age ;
for then we should see a people, as it attained worthier
views about Him, gradually outliving and renouncing
the practice of this rite. But, contrary to this, we
find in the most cultivated nations the theory of sacri-
fice only the more elaborately worked out, the sacri-
fices themselves only multiplied the more. Here and
there there might be found in some obscure corner of
the earth, a savage tribe or horde, which had sunk
below the idea and practice of sacrifice ; though one
in which, in one form or another, it did not survive,
THE PERFECT SACRIFICE. 197
it would be difficult to point out ; but nowhere a peo-
ple that had risen above it. Here and there a philoso-
pher may have set himself against the popular belief,
but nowhere has he been able to change it ; he has
ever stood single and alone, and has as little carried
with him the more thoughtful and deeper spirits of
his time as the common multitude. He may have
eloquently declaimed on the absurdity of supposing
the gods would be pleased with the death-struggles of
animals, with the blood of bulls and of goats ; but
there was ever something in men, though they might
not be able to explain it to themselves, which told
them that sacrifice had a significance and a meaning,
which a few plausible words could not get rid of or
destroy.
Such, brethren, I think you will admit are the
facts, for I speak to those capable of judging. Whe-
ther we turn to those pages of Greek and Roman
literature, brought by our studies in this place espe-
cially before us, or whether we take a wider range
within our ken, everywhere alike we encounter a con-
sciousness upon man's part, that the relations between
him and the powers in whose hands he is, have been
interrupted and disturbed. The fact might be some-
times overlooked and forgotten by him in times of
prosperity, but we see it evermore mightily emerging
from the deep of his heart, when the judgments of
offended heaven were evidently abroad. Everywhere,
too, we encounter the effort by certain specific and
definite acts of expiation and atonement to restore
those disturbed relations again. "Without blood is no
remission of sin," was a truth as deeply graven on the
heart and conscience of heathen as of Jew.
198 LECTURE IV. [1846.
For vast and complex as is the Jewish system of
offering, yet it is not a greater body of sacrifice than
we meet almost everywhere else, when we turn to the
ritual of heathenism. That Levitical system is of
course in every way more complete : it is an organic
whole ; excluding all individual caprice, all too into
which the true idea of sacrifice, when escaping from
God's control, would inevitably degenerate. More-
over it was no will-worship, but the appointed way in
which God was to be sought, and not that in which
men out of their own hearts imagined that they would
seek Him. But with all this, it does not, I think, run
into greater detail, nor take more entire possession of
the whole life of man, nor demand a more continual
recognition of a distance and separation from God
which has need to be removed, than did the heathen
systems of sacrifice with which it was surrounded,
when we take them in their sum total, when we count
up all their infinite forms and varieties. For doubtless
it was meant that they too, by this their multitude
and repetition, should give testimony against them-
selves, should witness as plainly as did the Jewish in
the same way, for their own weakness and unprofit-
ableness ; since of them, too, we may say, that had
they been effectual to do what they professed to do,
" would they not have ceased to be offered, because
the worshippers once purged would have had no more
conscience of sin?" But thus, by their endless multi-
plication, and by the confession of weakness contained
therein, they pointed, though not with prophetic ex-
plicitness, yet still in their degree, away from them-
selves, and to that one all-sufficient sacrifice once
offered upon Calvary.
THE PERFECT SACRIFICE. 199
Nor need we, when we look a little deeper into
the matter, when we come to apprehend what was the
central idea of sacrifice, be so much surprised, as at
first we are, to find it this rite of an almost universal
character. For then we perceive that it was no
arbitrary invention, for which a thousand others might
have been substituted as well ; but rather that the
essence of all religion lies in that of which sacrifice
was the symbol namely, in the offering up of self, in
the rendering up of our will to the will of God, the
yielding of our life to Him as something which had
been rebellious in time past, and therefore worthy to
die, but of which we desire that the rebellion may
cease, that so we may of his mercy receive it back a
life pardoned and forgiven. The blood is the seat of
the life, the seat therefore of the eTriGv^ia., the desire,
which in fallen man is a desire at variance with the
will of God. In sacrifice, in the pouring out of the
blood, is the symbolic rendering up of this rebellious
principle ; a confession that it is only worthy to die ;
that as the thing offered died, so the offerer might
justly die the act having of course only its true sig-
nificance when the offerer did realize to himself what
he did rested not in the outward work, but said to
himself and to God, "I stand in living communion
with this which I offer ; even as this blood, so I offer
myself; dying that I may live ; giving myself to Thee,
that I may receive my true life back again at thy
hands ; losing my life that I may find it." Of course,
it is not to be supposed that each worshipper so dis-
tinctly gave to himself an account of what he was
doing; but this lay more or less obscurely in the
background of his mind, and gave a meaning to his
200 LECTURE IV. [1846.
act. Our ordinary use of the word sacrifice, shews
how truly we have gotten to the innermost heart of
its meaning ; for it is ever used to signify the giving
up of something dear. And what so dear as our self-
will ? The giving up of that is indeed the giving up
of all.
But when we speak of the idea of sacrifice as
being this giving up of the self-will, there may seem a
difficulty in applying this, when we come to the great
and only perfect sacrifice offered by Christ on the
cross. Of course it was not there no one would
dare to suppose it was the offering up of a rebellious
will ; we hardly dare speak of such a thing, though it
be but to deny it. But it was the giving up of his
own will * that will which had the liberty of choosing
for itself what the Father had not chosen for it, but
in the entire rendering up of which he realized the
very central idea of all sacrifice, which all that had
gone before had only pointed at weakly : " Sacrifice
and burnt-offering Thou wouldest not ; then said I,
Lo ! I come to do thy will, O God." In other words,
sacrifice and burnt-offering God was weary of those
shadows of the true ; and Christ came to give the
substance ; and his actual pouring out of his soul to
death was the outer embodiment of the inward truth,
that this yielding of his will to his Father's reached to
the uttermost, did not shrink from or stop short of
the last and most searching proof to which it was put.
* And therefore the controversy of the Church with the Monothe-
lites in the seventh century, a conflict in which commonly so little
interest is taken even by Students of Church History, was one for life
and death. The denial of a human will in Christ was in fact a denial
of his sacrifice.
THE PERFECT SACRIFICE. 201
In sacrifice, then, was the confession of a life for-
feited, and this confession incorporating itself in an
act, wherein the forfeiture was actually carried out.
This however is but half the idea of sacrifice : for it is
ever this confession made in another. If a man had
given himself to death, because he felt that he was
worthy to die, he would but have involved his already
confused relations to God in deeper confusion. He
might be unworthy to live, but was not therefore at
his own choice to die. If as a sinner, he owed God
a death, yet as God's creature, made to serve Him,
he equally owed Him a life. The premises are right,
that man's life is forfeited ; but the conclusion fear-
fully wrong, when he carries out himself and in his
own person the forfeiture. Such false conclusions
from right premises they draw, the miserable victims
that in our day fling their bodies to be crushed be-
neath the wheels of some idol car; the same they
have drawn, who, in despair at the greatness of their
sins, have lifted up their hands against their own life ;
for even self-murder, that most hideous perversion of
the idea of sacrifice, yet grounds itself on a sense of
life being the only worthy offering. Thus a Judas
goes and hangs himself, because he feels his sin so
great that it cannot be left without an atonement,
and in the darkness and unbelief of his heart, he has
put back the one atonement which would have been
sufficient even for a sin so great as his ; and this too
is the thought of each other, who by a like fearful act
of self-violence has denied the love, though he cannot
deny the righteousness, of God.
Never then in himself, never by means of his own
life, could man's acknowledgement that that life was
202 LECTURE IV. [1846.
forfeited rightly be carried out. It must needs be in
another. And the same reason exists against making
that other some fellow-man. His life too is a sacred
thing, is itself an end. It could not therefore be used
as this means to some other end. In human sacrifices,
in the offering of other men's lives, there appear the
same false consequences from right grounds as in
men's offering of their own. It remained that, if sacri-
fice was to be, the sphere of animal life must be that
of which it should take possession, and in which it
must move the life of animals being the nearest
akin to, and the noblest after, man's and therefore
fitter than any meaner for the setting forth his ob-
lation of himself. And man thus taking possession
of this, either at God's express command, or moved
by his own religious instincts, was indeed taking pos-
session of that over which he had entire right, of that
which having been given him for the use of his body,
was much more given him for the spiritual needs of
his soul.
Such, I think, we may venture to say was the
normal unfolding of the idea of sacrifice; the ab-
normal appears in those revolting caricatures of the
true idea, on which we have lightly touched in
human sacrifices in dreadful self-oblations in Baal
priests cutting themselves with knives, and so pour-
ing out, if not all, yet a part of their life in the
self-inflicted tortures and living death of Indian Fa-
kirs in the blind despair of mighty sinners, who with
profane hand have broken in upon and laid waste the
awful temple of their own lives.
Wonderful indeed, brethren, is the manner in
which, armed with the truth, we may look upon past
THE PERFECT SAERIFICE. 203
pages of the religious history of man, some of the
most soiled and blotted, and decypher there an origi-
nal writing of God, which all those stains and blots
have not availed to render illegible altogether*. If
only we have an ear to hear, marvellous voices will
reach us, and from quarters most unexpected, which
shall speak to us of Calvary and of the cross, though
they little mean it themselves such voices for in-
stance as his, who, accounting for the human sacrifices
of the Gauls, observed, that they were deeply per-
suaded that only the life of man was a fit redemption
for manf. What was this conviction of theirs, but
the dark side of that truth which the apostle to the
Hebrews proclaimed, when he said that the blood of
bulls and of goats could not take away sin, but that
it must be purged away by better sacrifices than
these J? Nor do I think that it will otherwise than
* Tertullian (De Animd, c. 41): Quod enim a Deo est non tarn
extinguitur quam obumbratur. Potest enim obumbrari, quia non
est Deus ; extingui non potest, quia a Deo est.
t Caesar (De B. G., 1. 6, c. 16.) : Pro vita hominis nisi hominis
vita reddatur, non posse aliter deorum immortalium numen placari
arbitrantur. Cf. Muller's Dorians, b. 2, c. 8, $ 2. Out of a sense of
this arose the extreme difficulty of eradicating human sacrifices in the
Roman empire, and the long survival of some of them. Thus Tertul-
lian (Apol 9) : Infantes penes Africam Saturno immolabantur palam
usque ad proconsulatum Tiberii. Cf. Scorp., c. 7 ; Minucius Felix,
p. 199. Ouzel's Edit.; Pliny, ^.^.,1.30,0.3,4; Eusebius, Prcsp. Evang.,
1. 4, c. 17.
% Thus there was an obscured truth in those abject and crouch-
ing superstitions which Plutarch paints with such a masterly hand in
his exquisite little treatise, Hepl Aein-iSainovias a truth which he misses
a recognition, that is, of sin, of a great gulf fixed between the sin-
ner, and the offended power of heaven, which the SenriSai/j.tov, how-
ever vainly, was seeking to bridge over. His terror and his trouble
had a true ground, and one which would hinder him from accepting
as sufficient such attempts to pacify his fears, as those which Plutarch
offers
204 LECTURE IV. [1846"
repay us well to follow a little into detail the convic-
tions of the world concerning that which constituted
a sacrifice of worth, and trace how every thing here
pointed, whether it meant it or not, yea, when it
seemed most to point away from Him, to the central
figure in the world's spiritual history, to the immacu-
late Lamb which taketh away the sins of the world.
Thus it is hardly needful to observe, that it lay
ever in the deepest convictions of men that an offer-
ing, to be acceptable, must be an offering of value,
not something which cost the bringer nothing that,
while all was poor by comparison with Him to whom
it was offered, or considered in relation to that for
which it was offered, yet must it be the best which the
offerer had ; not the lame and the blind, not the
scanty gifts of a niggard hand ; he thus giving token,
that if he had ought worthier, he would bring it.
Therefore must the selected victim be pure of fault
and of blemish, or, having such, was unfit for the altar
the sense of this required perfection being as lively
in heathen sacrifice as in Jewish. Therefore was the
bullock brought which had never yet submitted its
neck to the yoke, the horse which had known no rider,
or, in Hindoo ritual, no touch even of man ; in other
words, that was brought which had not been already
used and in part worn out in the service of the world,
but which was thus wholly and from the first conse-
crated to heaven. Hence too, as the offering must
not be a niggard one, the prodigality in sacrifice
which startles us at times : the hecatombs of victims,
the rivers of oil, the cattle from a thousand hills.
offers him, namely that the gods were kind ( M ei\txi'oO- There was
something else besides this which he was craving to know, before he
could dare to believe that they were other than enemies to him.
THE PERFECT SACRIFICE. 205
Herein too lay the explanation of yet direr sacri-
fice as of their sons and daughters in the Moloch-
worship of the Phenicians the fruit of their body for
the sin of their soul ; such offering, for instance, as
we read of at Carthage, when, instead of the cheaper
substitutes with which they had satisfied themselves
for long, they sought out, in the mighty peril of the
city, the dearest things which they had, the choicest
children of the noblest houses, and cast them into the
glowing arms of that merciless idol, which their sin-
darkened hearts had devised for their god*. Out of
this same sense that an offering grew in worth with
the worth of that which was offered, sprang the re-
joicing among the worshippers of Odin, when the lot
of the yearly sacrifice fell upon no meaner man than
the king the pledge of a future felicity to the nation
which was esteemed herein to lief. To what did all
this reaching out after the worthiest, the purest, the
choicest, the best, point, even in its dreadfullest per-
versions, but to Him who was the fairest of the chil-
dren of men, the choicest which the earth had borne,
the one among ten thousand, who yet, being such, did
by the eternal Spirit offer Himself without spot to
God who being the anointed King of the world, was
thus in a condition to make acceptable atonement for
all men ?
Diodonis Siculus, 1. 20, c. 14. Cf. 2 Kin. iii. 27 ; Eusebius,
Preep. Evang., 1. 4, c. 16.
-f. Witsius (De Theol. Gent., p. 683) : De Septentrionalibus populis
refert Dithmarus primo anni mense nonaginta novem sortito eligi
solitos qui diis immolarentur, idque durasse usque ad Henrici I. Ger-
manise regis, tempora. Faustissimum vero id regno litamen existima-
tum,, si sors regem tetigisset ; quam victimam totius populi multitude
summa cum gratulatione et applausu prosecuta sit.
206 LECTURE IV. [1846.
Nor less significant was the sense of a more
prevailing atonement, of an added value which was
imparted to an offering, when one, not thrust on by
necessity, not compelled to die, but willingly, offered
himself; the feeling of which was so strong, that if not
the reality, yet at least the appearance, of this willing-
ness, was often by singular devices sought to be
obtained*. When, for example, the foremost man of
a nation gathered upon his sole devoted head all the
curses which impended on his people, all the anger of
the immortal powers -f% and with that upon him gave
himself to a willing death for all, so turning, it might
be, into victory the tide of disastrous battle, what
have we here but in its kind a reaching out after
Him, the chief and champion of the race of men,
whose life no man took from him, for He might have
asked of his Father more than twelve legions of angels
against his enemies but who sanctified Himself, freely
pouring out his soul unto death and who, not that
He might deliver some single people, but all the world,
became the piacular expiation of that world, drew
upon his own head the penalties which would else
have alighted upon all, became a curse for man ; and,
when all was at the worst, when all seemed for ever
lost, changed by his accepted death the certain defeat
into the glorious victory of our race ?
* Thus Tertullian, of the parents that offered their children to
the Phenician Moloch (Apol. 9) : Libentes respondebant, et infantibus
blandiebantur, ne lacrimantes immolarentur. Cf. Plutarch, Ilepi Aeio-i-
daifLiovias, C. 13.
t Thus Livy, of Deems (Hist., L 8) : Ornnes minas periculaque
ab Deis superis inferisque in se unum vertit. On this whole subject
of men as (j>apfj.aKoi, Ka&app.aTa, 7repiv//;/uaTa, diroTpoTiaioi, S6C Lomeier,
De Lustrat. Vet. Gent., c. 22.
THE PERFECT SACRIFICE. 207
We may not refuse, brethren, to recognize these
references to the cross of Christ : we shall read the
history and mythology of the old world with little
profit if we do. Nor need we fear the recognition ;
for it is the marvellous, and at the same time most
natural, prerogative of Christianity, that, being the
absolute truth, it has, or rather itself is, the touch-
stone to discover all true and all false, detects the
truth which is hidden in every lie, finds witness for
itself in that which oftentimes seems, and indeed is,
most opposed to itself, is able to recognize in the
tares of earth the degenerate wheat of heaven ; in
the world's harshest discords, the wreck and ruin of
God's fairest harmonies ; and in Satan himself, the
lineaments of the fallen angel of God.
But besides the witness for the great coming sacri-
fice, which was contained in the sacrifices of heathen-
ism, how mighty a sense of the cross of Christ, and of
its significance, do we meet in other regions of ancient
life. What a boding of it, for instance, forms the
background of the Greek tragedy. How mysterious
is the manner there in which, from some far back
transgression, some Trpwrap-^of O.TYI*, the curse clings
to a family, passes on from generation to generation,
an ever-increasing load of transgression; until at length
the great calamity, the headed-up guilt of all, lights
not on the most, but on the least guilty head, on the
head of one that by comparison is innocent. What
an unconscious symbol this of the curse cleaving to
the Adamic race ! For as in each lesser circle of that
race we most often see the burden of the cross rest-
ing with the heaviest weight on the truest heart in
that circle, so in the great circle of humanity we
* ^schylus, Agamemnon, 1163.
208 LECTURE IV. [1846.
behold Him of the truest heart of all, the only unguilty
One, bearing on the accursed tree the accumulated
curse of the whole Adamic family, which had come
down through long ages; and not bearing only, but
bearing it away. For as in those solemn and stately
works of ancient art to which I alluded, mild breaths
of reconciliation seem to make themselves felt, when
once the curse has lighted, the expiation has been
made not otherwise, and only far more gloriously,
does the deep inner connexion between the judgment
of the world and the forgiveness of the world appear
in that death of Christ, which was at once judgment
and forgiveness, in which the world was condemned,
and in which, being condemned, the world was also
forgiven.
But another evidence of the sacrifice of Christ, as
that to which the world had been tending, lay in the
endeavour of those who, after that sacrifice had been
finished, would not accept it, to substitute something
else of the same kind in its room. They felt that
only so could they stand their ground, could they
recover or maintain any hold upon the hearts of men.
With what monstrous exaggerations the idea and prac-
tice of sacrifice re-appeared in the final struggle of
Paganism with the Christian faith, is abundantly known
to every student of Church history. The apostate
Julian, for instance, of whose life the revival of Pa-
ganism was the ruling passion, ran here into extremes
which earned him the ridicule of the more lukewarm
adherents of the old superstition themselves * ; and
* See the manner in which the heathen Ainmianus Marcellinus
(1. 22, c. 12) speaks of the prodigality of his sacrifices. Victimarius
was the title which was given him at Antioch, not apparently by the
Christians alone.
THE PERFECT SACRIFICE. 209
he, the same who had trod under foot the cross of
Christ, and counted the blood with which he was sanc-
tified a common thing, did yet submit himself to
loathsome rites*, seeking in the blood of bulls pro-
fusely poured on him, as in a cleansing bath, that
purifying which he had refused to find in the precious
blood-sprinkling of the Lamb of God, slain from the
foundation of the world.
Again, the inner necessity of having somewhere a
sacrifice to rest on, the certainty that if men have not
the true, they will generate a substitute in its room,
was signally proved by the manner in which the doc-
trine concerning the mass grew up in the Christian
Church itself. No sooner did men's faith in a finished
sacrifice, one lying at the ground of every prayer,
every act of self-oblation, every acceptable work, grow
weak, than the feeling that they must have a sacrifice
somewhere, produced, or, so to speak, by instinct de-
veloped, a doctrine to answer their needs turning
that Holy Eucharist, which is the ever-present witness
in the Church of a sacrifice once completed on the
cross, and continually pleaded in heaven, turning
that itself into the sacrifice, and seeking to supply by
these poor but continual repetitions, the weakness of
their faith in the one priceless offering, upon the ac-
ceptance of which, as upon an unchangeable basis, the
Church everlastingly reposes.
And now, brethren, by way of practical conclusion
from all this on which we have been entering to-day .
what a witness is there here against that shallow view
* Those of the tauroboliad. Prudentius (Peristeph. 10, 100G
1050,) gives a description at large of this revolting rite.
T. H. L. 14
210 LECTURE IV. [1846.
of the truth which should bless us, that would leave
it a bare doctrine, a system of morals, lopping away
as superfluous and mystical, as a remnant of Judaism,
all which speaks of atonement, of propitiation, of
blood-sprinkling, of sacrifice. The contemplation of
the benefits of Christ's death under aspects suggested
by these words, so far from being this shred of Judaism,
which a more perfect knowledge must strip off, finds
on the contrary as many anticipations everywhere be-
sides as there. They are as busy about sacrifice in
the outer court of the Gentiles, as in the holier place
of the Jew ; and as little there as here is it a separable
accident, the garniture and fringe of something else,
but in either case itself constituting the core and
middle point of worship, recognized in a thousand
ways as that which must lie at the ground of all
approaches unto God.
And these things being so, how can we escape
from owning that some of the deepest, the most uni-
versal needs of the human heart have not yet been
awakened in us, if we have never yet desired to stand
under the cross, nor ever claimed our part in the great
oblation which was made thereon, as on the holiest
altar ever reared upon the earth needs which that
transcendent offering on Calvary was meant for ever
and perfectly to satisfy ? It is plain, brethren, that we
are leading an outside life, playing but with the sur-
faces of things, never having brought ourselves in
contact with inmost realities, that there never yet has
risen upon our souls the awful vision of an holy God,
that we have wholly shrunk from looking down into
the abysmal deeps of our own corruption, if as yet we
have never cried, " Purge me with hyssop, and I shall
THE PERFECT SACRIFICE. 211
be clean ; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow."
For when once we have learned ought of this, we then
surely feel that not amendment of life, that not tears
of sorrow, that not the most perfect baptism of repent-
ance, that not all these together, would of themselves
reach our needs, or remove our stains, or give peace
for the past, or confidence for the future ; that only
in the Lamb slain is there purity, or pardon, or peace.
Oh then, brethren, let us hasten there, where we
may make that precious blood-sprinkling our own ;
let us hasten there, lest they rise up against us in the
last day those heathens, who set such a price on
their sacrifices, which were at best but shadows of
the true ; who made by them such continual acknow-
ledgement of guilt which they had contracted, of
punishment which they deserved, of reconciliation
which they desired; lest they rise up, condemning
us, who shall have counted the blood with which we
were sanctified a common thing, and brought into the
awful presence of the Judge a conscience stained and
defiled, which yet might have been purged and for
ever perfected by far better sacrifices than theirs.
142
LECTURE V.
THE RESTORER OF PARADISE.
GENESIS V. 29.
And he called his name Noah, saying, This same shall com-
fort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because
of the ground which the Lord hath cursed.
A WORD or two may be needful on commencing again
these lectures, which, after the lapse of some months,
I am permitted to resume ; I may thus hope to remind
such among my present hearers as have heard the
earlier discourses, and inform such as have not, what
has been their course, and what the road we hitherto
have travelled over. I have undertaken, then, to
trace in a few leading lines the yearnings of the world
which was before Christ, or which, though subsequent
to Him, has yet lain without the limits of Christendom,
and beyond the mighty influences of his word and
Spirit, a world to which He was still therefore a
Saviour to come to trace I say the yearnings of
this whole world after its Eedeemer, and the pre-
sentiments of Him which it cherished. I have sought
to shew that if there was much in the world, as in a
fallen world there needs must have been, ready to
resist and oppose the coming in of the Truth, prompt
to take up arms against it at its appearing, so also, on
the other hand, in that it was a world which came first
from God, and which had never been abandoned by
THE RESTORER OF PARADISE. 213
Him, but which all along He had been in highest wis-
dom and highest love preparing for and leading to
this glorious consummation, there were in it certain
predispositions for the Truth, there was that which
was ready to range itself under the banners of that
Truth, so soon as once they were openly set up. I
have endeavoured, too, to prove that the existence
.of unconscious prophecies of the truth, resemblances
in lower spheres of the spiritual life to all which at
last was perfectly manifested in the highest, is only
that which we should have expected ; so that it is not
the presence of these resemblances which need per-
plex us, but rather their absence which would have
been justly surprising, which would have been indeed
most difficult to account for.
I take up my subject at this point, and go forward
to another branch of it, seeking to shew that in ano-
ther aspect beside those already contemplated by us,
we have in Christ our Lord " the Desire of all na-
tions," inasmuch, that is, as we have in Him one who
was at perfect understanding with nature, wielded it
at his will, declared that He was come to restore it,
to bring back the lost Paradise ; and did not merely
declare this in word, but by firstfruits of power exer-
cised upon it, by the mighty works that He did, gave
manifest tokens that He was come, at once to set it
free from the bondage of corruption, and to set free
the race of which He appeared as the Head from the
blind tyranny which it exercised upon them to give
to his people something more than the Stoic freedom
of opposing an intrepid and obdurate heart to the
assaults of fortune, or the accidents of nature. For
214 LECTURE V. [1846.
though that in its place was well, which should enable
a man to say amid a falling world, Impavidum ferient
ruince, yet better still his work, who should so bear up
and strengthen and establish the shaken pillars of the
universe, that wreck and ruin should find place in it
no more.
But why, it may be asked, should this deliverance
of nature have been, upon one side, part of the world's
expectation? or why, which is in fact the same question
on its other side, should the giving of this deliverance
cohere so intimately, as we shall see it does, with
Christ's redemptive work, as to be in fact one aspect
of that work itself? For this reason because of the
closest connexion in which the disorder from which
the redemption was expected, stood related to the sin
of man. That disorder was felt truly to be the echo
in nature of the deeper discords in man's spiritual
being. When man sinned, then in the profound and
not exaggerated language of our great poet, "All na-
ture felt the wound." Man was as the highest note
in the scale of creation, and when he descended,
through all nature there followed a corresponding
reduction. It became subject to vanity, not willingly,
not by an act of its own will, but by reason of another,
by reason of him who subjected the same, by reason
of man. (Rom. viii. 20.) We behold the fact itself on
all sides acknowledged, the fact, I mean, of a primal
perfection, of a present disorder. Of the sense of
primal perfection we have singular witness in the lan-
guage, (and there is no such witness as the unconscious
one which language supplies,) of two the most highly
cultivated nations of the ancient world, whom all the
THE RESTORER OF PARADISE. 215
present confusions of nature could not hinder from
using words signifying order and elegance* to designate
the world which they beheld around them ; for so to
them did this grace and beauty gleam through its
present disorders, so instinctively did they feel these
to belong to the true idea of the universe, grievously
as that was now defaced and marred -f-. While with
all this, on the other hand, its present disorders ap-
peared so great, its discords so harsh, that the Epicu-
rean poet found, as he thought, warrant and ground
enough in these for his atheist conclusion, that no
hand of Eternal Wisdom presided at its planning, that
no final causes could be traced throughout it, but that
all was the work of a blind chance \ . That conclusion
of his was indeed most false, yet this much was true,
that Paradise had disappeared from the earth ; and
man, the appointed prince of creation, did stand
among the rebel powers of nature ; which had cast
off his yoke, at the moment when he cast off the
yoke of his superior Lord, practising upon him, by a
just judgment, the disobedience and the contumacy
which it had learned from him ; and which did now,
Avith its thorns and its briars, its wastes and its wilder-
nesses, its earthquakes and its storms, present him too
* Koo>io and mundus. Pliny (H. .2V., 1.2, c. 3): Quern KOO^OV
Grseci, nomine ornamenti appellaverunt, eum nos a perfecta absolu-
taque elegantid mundum. Pythagoras is said to have been the first
who applied the word KOO-^OI to the material universe a word which
was in its way almost as great an acquisition for natural philosophy,
as was Plato's idea for intellectual and spiritual.
t Compare the De Naturd Deorum, b. 2.
$ Lucretius :
Nequicquam nobis divinitus esse paratam
Naturam rerum, tantd stat prcedita culpd.
216 LECTURE V. [1846.
faithful a reflex of the sin and evil, the desolation and
barrenness of his own heart.
Yet nevertheless, though Paradise was gone, he
kept in his soul the memory of that which once had
been, and with the memory, the hope and the confi-
dence that it would yet be again that perhaps, though
his eyes could see it nowhere, it yet had not wholly
vanished from the earth. If there bloomed no Para-
dise in the present, at least there lay one before him
and behind. If it lay not near him, yet in the dis-
tance, in the happy Iran, among the remote Hyper-
boreans*, in the far land of the blameless Ethiopians.
He felt, indeed, that he was himself weak to win it
back, but he could not resign the trust that a cham-
pion would arise, and accomplish for him that which
he was unequal to accomplish for himself. Nor was it
only when the son of Lamech was born that men said
in a joyful expectation, "This same shall comfort us
because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed."
Of many more the same hope was fondly conceived.
The world could hardly picture to itself any one of
its leading spirits, of the great benefactors of the past,
the mighty deliverers in the future, without thinking
of the curse upon the earth as more or less lightened
in his time and by his aid. For it truly understood
that however the resistance which we find in nature,
a resistance so stubborn that only with long labour
and toil we make it subject to our will, may be part
of the needful discipline of the present time may
be, though not good in itself, yet good for our present
condition, and something which we could not be with-
out still that release from all this, from this resist-
" See Muller's Dorians, b. 2, c. 4.
THE RESTORER OF PARADISE. 217
ance and contradiction of the outward world, is a
portion of the blessedness in store, not indeed so
much for its own sake, as because it will go hand in
hand with, and be the outward expression of, another
and greater healing and deliverance in the inner do-
main of men's spirits.
This yearning after a lost Paradise, this belief that
it should some day or other be restored, we find exist-
ing everywhere, and, as was to be expected, in the
worthier religions the most vividly. Thus it conies
out with a remarkable strength and distinctness in
that which has so many noble elements in it, which is
in many respects so remarkably free from the more
debasing admixtures of most other worships of hea-
thendom I mean the religion of the ancient Persians.
Through that all there runs the liveliest expectation
of a time when every poison and poisonous weed
should be expelled from the earth, when there should
be no more ravening beast, nor fiery simoom, when
streams should break forth in every desert, when the
bodies of men should cast no shadows, when they
should need no food to sustain their life, when there
should be no more poverty, nor sickness, nor old age,
nor death.
And what is most remarkable, and makes these
expectations to belong to our argument is, that not in
Jewish prophecy alone were these hopes, and the ful-
filment of these hopes, linked with, and consequent
upon, the coming of a righteous King, one of whom
righteousness should be the girdle of his loins, and
faithfulness the girdle of his reins, who should reprove
with equity for the meek of the earth (Isai. xi. 4, 5);
but in all the anticipations upon all sides of these
218 LECTURE V. [1846.
blessings to men, they were thus connected with the
expectation of a king reigning in righteousness. In
his time, and because of his presence, these blessings
should accrue : he should be himself the middle point
of blessing, from which all should flow out. For there
was a just sense in men, which hindered them from
ever looking for, or conceiving of, any blessings apart
from a person with whom they were linked, and from
whom they were diffused. Even in the Pollio of the
great Latin poet, however little interpreters are at
one concerning the wondrous child, the kindler of such
joyful expectations, however unsatisfying the common
explanations must be confessed to be, yet this much
is certain, that the poet could not conceive or dream
of a mere natural golden age. It must centre in and
unfold itself from a living person : it must stand in a
real relation to his appearing, being the outcoming
and reflection of his righteousness. The world's his-
tory can have no sentimental and idyllic, it must needs
have an epic and heroic, close.
But it may be asked, Are we justified in looking
at this expectation as the expectation of something
which is to be indeed made ours in Him that is true?
All will, I think, allow that the prospect of a restored
Paradise, in other words, of a world lightened from its
curse, does belong to the very essence of our Christian
hope that there was a truth in the ancient Chiliasm,
which all its sensual exaggerations should not induce
us to slight or to put aside in so far, that is, as it
was a protest against the dishonour which would have
been put upon a part of God's creation, or rather upon
the completeness of the redemption of that part, if it
THE RESTORER OF PARADISE. 219
had been regarded as so utterly and irrecoverably
spoiled, that now it could only be destroyed, and not
renewed. Assuredly the hope of this recovery forms
part of the anticipation of prophets. The waste
places of the world, those outward signs of sin, imprest
visibly on nature, shall disappear ; " the wilderness and
the solitary place shall be glad." What glory the
world yet keeps shall be enhanced and infinitely
multiplied ; " The light of the moon shall be as the
light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be
sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day that
the Lord bindeth up the breach of his people, and
healeth the stroke of their wound*." (Isai. xxx. 26.)
All the discords which have followed hard upon the
fall shaU be hushed to peace ; " The wolf also shall
dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down
with the kid." (Isai. xi. 10.) And apostles take up
the strain : they too declare how " the whole creation
groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now ; "
how " the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth
for the manifestation of the sons of God." (Rom. viii.
19.) They see in ecstatic vision not merely a new
heaven, but a new earth, and One sitting upon his
throne who says, "Behold, I make all things new."
(Rev. xxi. 5).
And we have, not lying thus on the surface of
Scripture, other obscurer yet not less significant indi-
cations of the intimate connexion between the restora-
tion of man and the restoration of the outward world,
as for instance, in the use of the same word in the
* For the way in which the Jewish commentators understood such
passages as these, see Schoettgen, Hor. Heb., v. 2, pp. 62, 171 ; and
Eisenmenger's Entdeckt. Judenthum, v. 2, p. 826.
220 LECTURE V. [1846.
New Testament to signify the one and the other.
There is a regeneration of man, but the same word
(iraXiyyevecria) is most significantly applied to nature
also, and expresses that great and transcendent change
which for it also is in store. (Matt. xix. 28.) There is
for it also a new birth, for so much this word thus
applied tells us, no less than for man, a casting off
of its old and wrinkled skin, a resurrection morn,
when it too shall put on its Easter garments ; when,
as some foster-nurse, it shall share in the glory of the
royal child whom it has reared ; and who at length
ascending the throne of his kingdom, is mindful of
her in whose lap in time past he has been nurtured*.
Man's regeneration is indeed a present one, and na-
ture's in the main a future ; yet are they but workings
in narrower and wider spheres of the same almighty
power, and so may thus justly be called by the same
name.
Nor by word alone, but also by pregnant symbol,
it was declared that this redemption was a part of
that work which the Son of man came to effect. For
I cannot doubt that there was a symbolic pointing at
what had been lost, and what was to be won back, in
the fact of the Temptation of our blessed Lord finding
place in the wilderness. The garden and the wilder-
ness are thus set forth to us as the two opposite poles.
By sin the first Adam lost the garden, which hence-
forward disappeared from the earth, so that the very
site of it has since been vainly sought ; and from that
day forth the wilderness was man's appointed home.
* Chrysostom : KaOoVep yap Tifljj'i'i/, -rraiSiov Tpetfeova-fi ftacriXiKov, eirl
'yat)ujf, OVTIO /cat j KTttrts.
THE RESTORER OF PARADISE. 221
Christ therefore, the second Adam, taking up the con-
flict exactly at the point where the first Adam had
left it, and inheriting, so to speak, all the consequences
of his defeat, did in the wilderness do battle with the
foe, and triumphing in righteousness, won back the
garden for man which, though we see it not yet,
will in due time unfold itself from Him and as one of
the fruits of his victory ; for the centre being won,
the circumference will be won also. We recognize a
slight hint of the meaning that lay in making the
wilderness the scene of this great conflict, in that
which one Evangelist alone records, and which might
at first sight seem but as a stroke added to enhance
the desolate savageness of his abode : " He was with
the wild beasts." (Mark i. 13.) But surely it means
that in Him, the ideal man, the Paradise prerogatives
were given back ; the fear of Him and the dread of
Him were over all the beasts of the field : " He was
with them" and they harmed Him not, but did rather
own Him as their rightful Lord.
Nor may we confine to that single act of our
Lord's life, the tokens which He gave that He should
be this deliverer of nature ; nor may we say that the
glory of a redeemed nature is a glory which as yet
altogether waits to be revealed. Rather is it already
and most truly begun. In his miracles we see the
germs and beginnings of its liberation. In them na-
ture is no longer stiff but fluent : its laws, so stubborn
to others, become elastic in his hands : before Him
each of its mountains becomes a plain : it listens for
and hears and obeys the lightest intimation of his
will.
That all this had need so to be in the presence
222 LECTURE V. [1846.
of one claiming to be all which He claimed, that it
all stood in vital and intimate connexion with his work,
was most truly felt by a world which evermore adorned
its champions with like powers, which evermore con-
ceived of them as w r orkers of wonders, as bringers
back in like manner of the lost harmonies of creation,
and conceived of nature as plastic in their hands and
obedient to their will. It was a true instinct, however
mistaken in the persons to whom the wondrous works
were ascribed, out of which the world concluded that
he who professed to deliver his fellows, must not be
bound upon any side with the same heavy yoke as
they were that the very idea of a champion of man-
kind was that of one in whom should be found again
all the lost prerogatives of every man.
And when we thus say that the miracles which
Christ wrought were these signs and tokens of a
redemption, let us not pause here, nor contemplate
them as insulated facts, once and once only having
been, but rather as facts pregnant with ulterior conse-
quences, as the earliest steps of a series, as firstfruits
of a gracious power which did not stop with them, but
has ever since continued to unfold itself more and
more. What Christ once, and in them, wrought in
intensive power, he works evermore in extensive. Once
or twice He multiplied the bread, but evermore in
Christian lands, famine is become a stranger, a more
startling, become a more unusual, thing the culture
of the earth proceeding with surer success and with a
larger return. A few times he healed the sick, but
in the reverence for man's body which his Gospel
teaches, in the sympathy for all forms of suffering
which flows out of it, in the sure advance of all
THE RESTORER OF PARADISE. 223
worthier science which it implies and ensures, in and
by aid of all this, these miraculous cures unfold them-
selves into the whole art of Christian medicine, into
all the alleviations and removements of pain and
disease, which are so rare in other, and so frequent
in Christian lands. Once he quelled the storm ; but
in the clear dominion of man's spirit over the material
universe which Christianity gives, in the calm courage
which it inspires, a lordship over the winds and waves,
and over all the blind uproar of nature, is secured,
which only can again be lost with the loss of all the
spiritual gifts with which he has endued his people.
Already Paul was de facto admiral in that great tem-
pest upon the Adrian sea.
Thus then, brethren, we see that the world's ex-
pectation upon this side also has an answering fact.
There is One who does truly give what the hearts of
men have desired. Their longing after a redeemed
creation was no delusive dream, however the ways in
which they realized that longing, and gave it an out-
ward shape, were premature and vain. And here you
will bear with me, even though I repeat an admonition
once made already, but the importance of which will
abundantly justify its repetition. Let us then for our-
selves take care that we view aright these askings
after the true, and understand what they mean : let
us see that they be not, by the fraud of men, used
against us, to undermine, or at least to embarrass, the
faith which they ought to help to establish. We have
spoken already of the way in which they might be so
used. The slight upon the miracles of Scripture, and
all other God's mighty gifts to the world by his Son,
through the adducing of other works seemingly of a
224 LECTURE V. [1846.
like kind, other similar pretensions made by, or on
behalf of, others, the mingling and so losing sight of
the divine facts amid a multitude of phenomena ap-
parently similar, this opposition to the truth has been
often attempted, but is probably now working itself
out into a more consistent theory, and one more con-
scious of itself, and what it means, and what advan-
tages it possesses, than ever in times past it has done.
The evading of the stress of Christ's works by the
reply, that such have been the accompaniment of every
heroic personage, glories and ornaments which the
imagination of his fellows has inevitably lent him, the
halo with which it has clothed him, for instance, that
it has evermore been presumed that the outer world
will obey him, no reluctant slave to his material force,
but a ready servant to his spiritual will ; this manner
of dealing with the marvellous works of Christ is likely
to find great favour in our time. Nor is it hard to
see the reason. It falls in remarkably with the ten-
dencies of our age. It retains, and is consistent with,
a certain measure of respect toward the records of
revelation. For it does not presume those parts of
them which affirm supernatural facts to be a fraud or
forgery, nor yet to be the record of deceptions and
sleights of hand, but only that the men to whom we
owe these accounts lay under the same laws, were
subject to the same optical illusions in the spiritual
world, as all their fellows, as belong to the very essence
of man's nature : it fared with them but as with others,
that the mighty desire became father to the belief.
This theory offers a way of dealing with a great mul-
titude of statements presented as historic, which men
are unwilling to brand outright as falsehoods, and yet
THE RESTORER OF PARADISE. 225
as little willing to accept as truths. It offers a middle
course, decently respectful to Christianity, and at the
same time effectually escaping from its authority : and
presenting, as it seems to do, a calm and philosophical
explanation both for its more perplexing phenomena,
and also for very much beyond it, it will be strange
if in our age, which rejoices so much in large and in-
clusive points of view, it does not find a ready and a
wide acceptance.
But in truth, brethren, this universal imagination,
these consenting expectations upon all sides, in so
many thousands and thousands of hearts, these, if we
believe in a divine origin and destination of man, if
we believe that this man or that may be deceived,
but that all men cannot since whatever there may
be of false at the surface, the foundations of his
being are laid in the truth, being laid in God if
we believe that this or that generation may be dream-
ing fantastic and merely feverish dreams, which have
no counterparts whatever in the actual world of
realities, but not all generations if there is that in
us which, prior to all argument, solemnly binds us
to believe that no such cruel falsehood would be
played off upon man as a great longing laid deep
in his heart, without a corresponding object then
to us believing so, these wide-spread, or say rather
these universal expectations, will themselves give tes-
timony to a truth corresponding to them. We shall
not indeed look for a truth answering to them in
all their accidents, for of these many will be local,
temporary, varying : and the truth, when it comes to
pass, must more or less depart and differ from that
form in which it clothed itself to them who waited for
T. H. L. 15
226 LECTURE V. [1846.
it. So of necessity it must be ; for that form per-
force was more or less injuriously affected, distorted,
and obscured by that sinful element, which in the
mind of each would mingle with, and in part debase
and degrade it. But there will be a testimony in
these consenting expectations for that which lies at
the root of, and after the merely accidental is stripped
off, remains common to, and so constitutes the essence
of, them all.
And when we are deeply convinced of this, then
in all those in whom the world has greatly hoped
workers, as it has been thought, of wondrous works
bringers back of a golden age utterers, as has been
fondly deemed, of the forgotten spell of power
graspers anew of the sceptre over nature which had
fallen from the hand of every one beside readers
backward of the primal curse in the mighty acts
attributed to each one of these, we shall trace proofs
of the exceeding fitness which there was, that He who
indeed came in the fulness of the time, should come
furnished with signs and wonders and mighty works,
so that even the winds and the sea obeyed Him, and
the bread multiplied in his hands, and the wild beasts
knew him for their lord, and in the desert Paradise
bloomed anew at his presence. In legend and in tale
utterly worthless as history we shall yet read pro-
phetic intimations, which indeed understood not them-
selves, of Him who in the days of his flesh, by first-
fruits of power, declared Himself the promised Seed
of the woman who should comfort us for the earth
which God had cursed, and at length bring about its
perfect redemption from that curse, making it, thus
redeemed, a fit dwelling-place for his redeemed people.
LECTURE VI.
THE REDEEMER FROM SIN.
ROMANS VII. 21, 23.
I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present
with me. For I delight in the law of God after the
inward man : but I see another law in my members, war-
ring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into
captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
WE were occupied, when last we met together, with
the world's expectation of one who should deliver all
outward nature from its curse, of one in whom the
Adamic prerogatives should re-appear. To-day I shall
be led, as by a natural transition, to speak of a yet
nearer deliverance, and one which it imported to man
yet more that he should win, or that another should
win for him an harmony which he demanded with a
yet more earnest longing than this harmony of nature
with itself, or of nature with him an inner harmony,
a deliverance from his own evil, from that in himself
which was threatening his true being with destruction,
from the lusts which embraced his soul, but while they
embraced, strangled and destroyed. For sin has never
reigned so undisputed a lord in his heart, but that
there were voices there protesting against its lordship.
His will was enslaved ; but he knew that it was en-
slaved, that freedom was its birthright ; and that bond-
age, however it might be its miserable necessity now,
yet was not its true condition from the first.
15 2
228 LECTURE VI. [1846.
It was the sense of this, of such an inner contra-
diction in his life, which made one to exclaim that he
felt as if two souls were lodged within him* ; and
another to set forth the soul of man as a chariot,
which two horses, one white and one black, were
drawing -f- so did the wondrous fact present itself to
him, of the flesh lusting against the spirit, and the
spirit against the flesh, so had he learned that if there
is that in every man which is drawing him up to God
and to the finding of his true freedom in God, there
is also that which would fain drag him downward, till
he utterly lose himself and his own true life in the
mire of sensual and worldly lusts, till the divine in
him be wholly obscured, and the bestial predominant
altogether^:. It was the sense of this, which made the
image of the two ways, a downward and an upward
one easy and strewn with flowers, but a way of death ;
one hard and steep and sharp set with thorns, but a
way of life, as familiar to heathen moralists as to us
" Xenophon, Cyropaed., \. 6, c.l, 41. Cf. Seneca (Ep. 52) : Quid
est hoc, Lucili, quod nos alio tendentes alio trahit, et eo unde recedere
cupimus, impellit ? quid colluctatur cum animo nostro, nee pcrmittit
nobis quidquam semel velle 1
f Plato, Phcedrus, c. 25.
J This sense of the latent beast, or the more latent beasts than one,
in every man, which may be fed and pampered, and roused to fiercest
activity, while the true man in him perishes with hunger, supplies the
groundwork of that famous and often imitated passage in Plato, Rep.,
1. 9, c. 12.
Hesiod, Op. 289 292 ; Cebes, Tab., c. 12 ; Xenophon, Memorab.,
1. 2, c. 1, 21 seq.; in regard to which last passage there is a very inter-
esting discussion in Buttmann's admirable elucidation of the mythus
of Herakles. (Mythol, \. 1, p. 252.) He there shews that according to
all likelihood, the " temptation" of Herakles belonged to the original
legend, and was not the mere poetical invention of Prodicus. Lactan-
tius (Inst. Div., 1. 6, c. 3) notes how heathen poet and philosopher had
already used this image of the two ways.
THE REDEEMER FROM SIN. 229
who hear of the broad and the narrow way, the wide
and the strait gate, from the lips of the Lord himself.
And thus the problem which each nobler system
proposed to itself was the delivering from this evil,
the bringing of an harmony into the inner life its
end to make man a king, so that he should have do-
minion over himself, and over all of his nature which
was not truly himself that which was appointed to
rule in him, ruling, and that which was appointed to
serve, serving the charioteer charioting, and not
dragged in the dust at the heels of his horses. The
promise which it held out of giving this, was that
which to every more earnest spirit each system had
of attractive, and only as it promised this, had it an
attraction for them. They only felt drawn to it, as it
undertook to give them this liberty, and harmoniously
to re-adjust the disturbed relations of their inward
life.
I know that when we undertake to speak of these
things, and would fain shew in how wonderful a de-
gree the ancient world was engaged with the same
moral and spiritual problems as are engaging ourselves,
there is a caution which we must take home to our-
selves, if we would not trace entirely delusive resem-
blances, and be led away by merely accidental like-
nesses in expression, which yet point to no real likeness
at the root ; this caution, I mean that since there
are points of apparent contact in almost all systems,
it follows that before we can find any significance in
these, or conclude one because of them to stand in
any real affinity to another, we must strictly ask our-
selves, how deep these resemblances go, whether they
lie merely on the surface, or reach down to the cen-
230 LECTURE VI. [1846.
tral heart of the matter, to that which determines the
nature of each ; whether we have been caught by
words and phrases which have a similar sound, but
which, looked into more nearly, will be found to con-
ceal under language which sounds nearly the same,
statements which are really and essentially most diverse.
This mistake no doubt has often been made ; phrases
have been snatched at and claimed as ours, as antici-
pating and bearing witness to Christian truths, without
waiting to inquire what place they really hold in the
complex of the system from which they are taken.
Thus a Latin Father* has spoken of Seneca as "one
of us" on the score of certain shewy maxims which
sound at first hearing, and till they are adjusted into
their place, like great Christian truths ; and this,
though perhaps there could not have been two schemes
more opposite at the heart to one another than that
Stoic, which in its pride would teach us to seek all in
ourselves, and the Christian, which bids us with an
humbler yet truer wisdom to seek all out of ourselves
and in God.
But at the same time, and owning our liability to
be thus deceived, we must yet keep far from that
other course, which shunning the faults and exaggera-
tions of this, refuses to see stirring at all in the hea-
then world the same riddles of life and of death which
are perplexing ourselves. Into this extreme they run,
who will give any explanation rather than a moral
one, and the more trivial the better, to the legend and
the tale of antiquity, obstinately refusing to hear in
the most earnest voices which reach them from the
past, cries after the same deliverance for which we
" Jerome ( Adv. Jovin., 1. 1, in fine) : Noster Seneca.
THE REDEEMER FROM SIN. 281
yearn. The tendency to this is in truth at its root
antichristian ; for it grows, whether it owns it or not,
out of a conviction that all with which Christianity
deals is in fact accidental, and does not belong to the
essential stuff of humanity that this revelation of
which we boast, has no claim to be considered as an
answer to the deepest and most universal needs of
men that echoes of it therefore are nowhere to be
listened for, or being caught, are in no wise to be ac-
counted more than accidental reverberations of the
air.
Keeping then that caution in view, but as a caution
only, and resisting, as we are bound to do, the en-
deavour to rob the whole heathen world, its philosophy
and mythology alike, of all moral significance for us,
on the score that significance has sometimes been
found where truly there was none, we may boldly say
that the highest philosophy of the old world did con-
cern itself with a redemption not of course with a
Redeemer, for of such it knew not : but it did avow-
edly set before itself as its aim and purpose the help-
ing of souls to a birth out of a world of shews and
appearances into the world of realities, out of a world
of falsehood into one of truth, turning them from
darkness to light, from the contemplation of shadows
to the contemplation of substance*. That favourite
saying of Socrates that he exercised still the craft of
his mother, that his task and work, his mission in the
world, was such an helping of souls to the birth, by
the helping to a birth the conceptions which were
* The great passage in the Republic of Plato, 1. 7, c. 1, 2, will at
once suggest itself to many.
232 LECTURE VI. [1846.
struggling there*, this rested on no other thought,
was in its kind and however remotely a prelude to far
mightier truth, the earthly anticipation of an heavenly
word, of Ms word who said, "Ye must be born again."
It pointed, although at an infinite distance, to the
possibility of a birth into a kingdom, not merely of
reality as opposed to semblance, but of holiness as
opposed to sinf.
What again is " Know thyself," that great saying
of the heathen philosophy, in which, when it turned
from being merely physical, and a speculation about
natural appearances, the sun the moon and the stars,
to the making of man and man's being the region in
which it moved, the riddles of humanity, the riddles
which it sought to solve j what was that "Know
thyself," that great word in which it embodied and
expressed so well its own character and aim, and all
that it proposed to effect, but a preparation afar off
for an higher word, the " Repent ye," of the Gospel ?
Since let that precept only be faithfully carried out,
and in what else could it issue but repentance ? or at
least in what else but in an earnest longing after this
great change of heart and life ? For out of this self-
knowledge nothing else but self-loathing could grow
* Plato's Theeetetus, c. 6. Stallbaum's edit., p. 63. See Van
Heusde's Initia Philosophic Platonicae, v. 2, p. 52 seq.
f- And so too there are counterparts, weak and pale ones they
must needs be, of the Christian idea of conversion, which find place
in the same philosophy. How remarkable are the very terms, M 6 Ta -
a"rpo<prj diro TWU aKitav kirl TO <eos (Rep., 1. 7, C. 13), irfpirrTpo<pi}, tyv)(rj?
vepiaywyii (Rep., 1. 7, c. 6), with which we may compare the eTricr-rpe-
4>e<re<u of the New Testament, 2 Cor. iii. 16 ; 1 Thess. i. 9; Actsxviii.
18.
? Cicero, Tusc. Qucest., 1.5, c. 4.
THE REDEEMER FROM SIN. 233
so that men being once come, as they presently must,
to a consciousness of their error and their departure
from goodness and truth, should hate themselves, and
flee from themselves to whatever higher guide was
offered them; to the end that they might become
different men, and not remain the same which before
they were*. What could any man behold himself, if
only he beheld himself aright, but, to use the wonder-
ful comparison of Plato -f, as that sea-god, in whom
the pristine form was now scarcely to be recognized,
so were some limbs of his body broken off, and some
marred and battered by the violence of the waves,
while to the rest shells and stones and sea-weed had
clung and overgrown them, till he bore a resemblance
rather to some monster than to that which by nature
he was ? What was man but such a wreck of his nobler
self, what but such a monster could he shew in his
own eyes, if only he could be prevailed to fix those
eyes steadfastly upon himself?
And when men, thus learning their fall, and how
* See the affecting words, which Plato (Sympos., c.32) puts into
the mouth of Alcibiades, concerning the mysterious and magical
power of the truth, even as partially embodied in the words and
person of a Socrates, to convince of sin ; until, as the young man
owned, it seemed to him that it were far better not to live than to live
the man he was. (wVre p.oi <$o'ai p.i] fiuo-rov elvai SX.OVTI a!s exJ.)
f -De Rep., 1. 10, C. 11 : "Qairep ol TOV 6a\aTTiov TXavxov bpwvTfi, OVK
dv STL paSttus OVTOV idoiev TI]V dp^aiav (fxuiriv, VTTO TOV TO. TS TraXaia TOV
0-cafj.a.Tos /ue/oi) Ta fj.ev eKKeK\d<r6ui, TO. oe (rvvTe-rpi(p6ai /cat Trai/rtos \e\on(itja-6ai
viro TOOV KVfiaTtov, a\\a oe irpoairefyvKevai oa-rpea -re KOI (puKia Kat TreVjoas,
<a<TTe trai/Ti fjidXXov dtipiia eoutevai j olos JJu cpvaei. O'VTUI Kal TI}V \l/v-)(r]v TJ/uels
0ea>Ve0a SjaKei/xe'vTji/ viro pvpiiav naKwv. This Glaucus, as the Scholiast
tells us, discovered the fountain of immortality, of which he drank ;
but not being able to shew it to others, was by them hurled into the
deep of the sea. From time to time, the fishermen catch sight of him,
or hear him bewailing his immortality. The way in which this my-
thus is used by Plato, is a testimony for the profound meaning which
he found in it.
234 LECTURE VI. [1846.
great it was, learned also to long for their restoration,
very interesting and instructive is it to observe how
Christ realized for yearning souls not only the very
thing which they asked for, but that in the very forms
under which they had asked it ; most instructive to
observe how the very language of Scripture, in which
it sets forth the gifts which a Saviour brings, was a
language which more or less had been used already to
set forth the blessings which men wanted, or which
from others they had most imperfectly obtained the
Gospel of Christ falling in not only with the wants of
souls, but with the very language in which those wants
had found utterance.
Thus there had continually spoken out in men, a
sense of that which they needed to be done for them,
as an healing, as a binding up of hurts, a stanching of
wounds. The art of the physician did but image
forth an higher cure and care, which should concern
itself not with the bodies, but with the souls, of men.
They were but the branches of one and the same dis-
cipline, so much so, that the same god who was con-
ceived master in one, the soother of passions, was
master also in the other, the healer of diseases. It
was conceived of sins as of stripes and wounds, which
would leave their livid marks, their enduring scars, on
the miserable souls which had committed them, and
which carried these evidences of their guilt, visibly
impressed on them for ever, into that dark world, and
before those awful judgement-seats, whither after death
they were bound*.
How deep the corresponding image of Christ's
* Plato, Gorgias, c. 80, Stallbaum's edit. p. 314. Tacitus (Annal. 6)
has a fierce delight in applying these words to Tiberius.
THE REDEEMER FROM SIN. 235
work as a work of healing, reaches in Scripture, I
need not remind you. His ministry of grace had been
set forth in language borrowed from this art, by pro-
phets who went before ; He should be anointed to
heal the broken-hearted, to bind up the bruised ; and
when he began that ministry, He claimed these pro-
phecies for Himself, laying his finger on the most
signal among them, and saying, " This day is this
Scripture fulfilled in your ears." (Luke iv. 21.) And
then too we shall all remember how in another place
He spake of sinners as being sick, and Himself as
their physician (Matt. ix. 12.); and by the good Sa-
maritan it has been often thought more than likely,
that He shadowed forth Himself, the despised of his
own people, and yet the true binder up of the bleed-
ing hurts of humanity. But what need of more proof,
when we use the very word health* as equivalent for
salvation. That fearful saying of the heathen sage
remains most true, that every sin is' a. wound, that it
leaves behind it its scar, invisible now, for it is a
scar not on the body, but the soul, which will yet be
only too plainly visible in the day of the revelation of
all things. Yet He so heals them whom He takes in
hand, He makes so perfect a cure, that not even the
scars of their hurts shall remain ; " by whose stripes
ye are healed." He only waited till there was an
earnest desire awakened in men that they might find
themselves in an hospital of souls till these desires
came to an head, till it was felt that all which was
offered elsewhere reached not to an effectual binding
* Thus Plato (DeRep., 1. 4, c. 18, Stallbaum's edit,, p. 324) : 'A P eT,j
pev dpa o>'s EOIKCV, vyleid -re TIS av ettj (cat Ka\\o<s (cat cueta \\rv\riy, /caKta
oe o<roe TC (cat alamos (cat daOe i/eta.
236 LECTURE VI. [1846.
up of hurts, was but an healing of them slightly,
presently to break out anew, or a covering of them
over with purple and with gold, leaving them the
while to fester unhindered beneath. He only waited
till it was owned that a divine Physician, and none
other, could take the great sufferer in hand, and then
straightway He stood by the sufferer's side, and prof-
fered him all that he had asked for, but had now
despaired of finding, even help and healing, and
these in the very forms under which he had asked
them*.
Nor was it otherwise with the idea of freedom an
idea which lies so close to the very heart and centre
of the Gospel, that its benefits and blessings are per-
haps oftener set forth by a word borrowed from this
circle of images than by any other, oftener described
as a redemption or a purchase out of slavery, and Christ
as a Kedeemer or purchaser, and thus a setter free,
than by any other language. It is true that we have
come to use these words with so little earnestness,
have taken them so much in vain, we have so lightly
passed them backward and forward from hand to
hand, that the sharpness and distinctness of their first
outline has been for us almost lost and worn away, so
that they scarcely, or only now and then, with any
vividness bring to our minds the truths which they
affirm the awful truth of that slavery out of which we
were delivered, the glorious truth of that liberty into
which we have been brought. But still these words,
though we may forget it, do evermore proclaim this ;
* Augustine (Serm. 87, c. 10) : Jacet toto orbe terrarum ah oriente
usque in occidentem grandis aegrotus. Ad sanandum grandem aegro-
tum descendit omnipotens medicus. Humiliavit se usque ad mortalem
carnem, tamquam usque ad lectum aegrotantis.
THE REDEEMER FROM SIN. 237
and they are words by which oftener perhaps than by
any other, the Holy Spirit in the Scripture declares
the benefits whereof Christ has made us partakers.
And being this Redeemer or setter free, He was
in this regard also " the Desire of all nations." For
He, when He said "Whosoever committeth sin, is the
servant of sin," (John viii. 34,) when his apostle cha-
racterized himself in his natural state as a slave, "sold
under sin," (Rom. vii. 14) ; when another of his apostles
spoke of evil men as " servants of corruption," (2 Pet.
ii. 19,) He and they, using this language, were but
affirming the same which had been found out and felt
by every sinner that ever lived, of which the confession
had been wrung out too from the lips of thousands.
When too He oifered freedom, a victory over all which
was bringing into bondage, an overcoming of the
world, as the issue of obedience unto Him, He was
but offering that, which in one shape or another, each
guide and teacher of his fellows had offered before.
with indeed the mighty difference, that He could make
good his offer, and they not. I need not remind you
with what frequency we meet, sometimes almost to
satiety, declarations of this kind, of wisdom being
the only freedom, the wise man, the only free man,
the only king, of the soul of the sinner as a tyrant-
ridden city*, of lusts as evil mistresses which enslave
the soul and bring it into bondage ; how the promise
of liberty is on the lips of each who would gather dis-
ciples round him. All this is strewn too thickly over
the pages of heathen literature to need any proof in
particular. And meeting these statements thus fre-
quently and thus earnestly expressed as we often do
" Pkto, Rep., 1. 9, c. 5.
238 LECTURE VI. [1846.
meet them there, we must see how they bear testimony
that men continually envisaged the highest benefits
which their souls could attain, under the aspect of
freedom, of redemption that the attaining of this
freedom was the object of their lives and hopes, how-
ever little they could make it their own, however they
discovered and were meant to discover, through their
fruitless struggles and toils, that only when the Son
made them free, they could be free indeed.
Again, a pointing at the crowning gift which was
at length given unto the world in Him, may be traced
in the idea of music which was so frequently and so
fondly used as the best outward expression of inner
life-harmony. This indeed was felt to have so singular
and profound a fitness, that a term borrowed from
this art, was, we may say, formally adopted as the
aptest for setting forth that whole discipline which
occupied itself with the right composure of the higher
powers, with the bringing into one concent the three-
fold nature of man ; he in whom this language comes
most prominently forward, finding no worthier terms
in which to describe that wisdom with which he was
enamoured, than as the fairest and mightiest of the
harmonies * ; while sin, on the contrary, presented it-
self to him and to many more, as a deep inner dis-
harmony, as a discord which had forced itself into the
innermost centre of man's life, and only through the
expulsion of which he could again make it what it
ought to be, rhythmic, numerous, and harmonious. All
these thoughts, which, though first expressed by one
or two, yet found echoes in the bosoms of all, how
did they in their weakness to realize themselves, in
* Plato (De Legg., 1. 3) : Ka\X/<rrji; KOI fieyia-r^ TWV <rv[i<t>(oviwv.
THE REDEEMER FROM SIN. 239
the fact that discords ever made themselves too plainly
felt in the lives, not of the taught only, but of the
teachers as well how did they ask for One, the mighty
master of all spiritual melodies ; whose own life, free
from one jarring note, should make perfect music in
the ears of God ; and not this alone, but who should
attune once more that marvellous instrument which
had lain silent so long, or from which discords only
had proceeded, even the soul of man, and draw from
it again sounds which should be sweet even in the
ears accustomed to the symphonies of heaven.
Surely all their language, though they knew it not,
pointed to such a mighty master of heavenly harmo-
nies as this. For if it be true of Him, that as He
emptied the golden seats of Olympus, and swept their
long line of heroes and demi-gods and gods into the
darkness and corruption of the tomb, He gathered
from each idol as it fell its pretended majesty and do-
minion and power, claiming all rightfully for his own,
and weaving all the scattered rays of light into one
crown of glory for his own head ; then of none of
these could this be more truly spoken than of him
whom men feigned to be the god of harmony, to have
potency thereby over the spirits of men, with power
to exalt, to purify, and to soothe, whose music acted
as a charm to tranquillize the passions and attune the
spirit to a peace with itself, and with all which was
around it*. For Christian peace, the peace which
Christ gives, the peace which He sheds abroad in the
heart, is it ought else than such a glorified harmony
the expelling from man's life of all that was causing
disturbance there, all that was hindering him from
* Muller's Dorians, b. 2, c.8, 11.
240 LECTURE VI. [1846.
chiming in with the music of heaven, all that would
have made him a jarring and a dissonant note, left
out from the great dance and minstrelsy of the spheres,
in which mingle the consenting songs of redeemed
men and elect angels*?
Thus did the Son of God at his coming in the
flesh, take up the unfulfilled promises of all human
systems. For they were unfulfilled ; those systems
had wrought no deliverance worthy of the name in
the earth. How scanty was the number of those whom
they would even undertake to save, a few highly
favoured or greatly gifted spirits of the world not
the poor, the ignorant, the weak ; in this how different
from that Gospel which is preached to the poor, and
whose tidings are good because they are these, that
the Lord hath founded Zion, and the poor of his
people shall put their trust therein ! But theirs was
essentially an aristocratic salvation j-, which should
help a few, setting them apart from their fellows,
on pinnacles from whence they were in danger of
looking down far more with gratulation at their own
deliverance, than with any inward and bleeding com-
passion for the multitudes which were toiling and
vainly seeking for a path below. And indeed often it
* It is remarkable enough that although Christian art shrunk, and
so long as there was an heathenism rampant round it, rightly shrunk,
from any large use of symbols borrowed from heathen mythology, yet
pictures of Christ as Orpheus taming the wild beasts with his lyre, are
probably as old as the third century. (Christl. Kunst-Symbolik, p. 134>
and Piper's Mythologie der Christl. Kunst, p. 121.) Compare the
opening of the later Clement's Cohort, ad Gentes, and Eusebius, De
Laud. Conslantini, c. 14, p. 760, ed. Reading.
f See Origen's admirable words in his reply to Celsus ( Con. Cels.,
1. 7, c. .59, 60), shewing how at the best the philosophers were larpoi
o\iyu>v, but Christ the iarpov TTO\\WV.
THE REDEEMER FROM SIN. 241
was not a salvation at all, even in the very lowest
sense of that word : how often was it Satan casting
out Satan one form of evil expelling another, men
finding food for pride and vainglory in the very ad-
vances in wisdom and self-restraint which they had
made* and thus those very victories which they had
won over fleshly sins, helping to make them slaves
of spiritual wickednesses of the seven worse spirits
which take possession of the house, empty and swept
and garnished ; from which the one spirit of sensual
lust has gone out, but which has not been occupied
by any nobler guest.
And if, brethren, even our struggles after an in-
ward conformity to an higher rule, are what they are
if with all the helps at our command, we yet win
no step without an effort, if oftentimes our premature
hymns of victory over this sin or that are changed
into confessions of a shameful defeat, and we, who
went forth with victorious garlands too early wreathed
about our brows, have to come home and put ashes
upon our heads, how must it have been with them ?
how continually must it have been a seeing of the
better only with a greater guilt to choose the worse !
Surely the confession of the Jewish Pharisee that was
zealous for the law and for righteousness must have
* The well-known passage of Cicero (De Nat. Deor., 1. 3, c. 36) has
been often quoted. Men justly thank the Gods for the external com-
modities which they enjoy; but, he proceeds, Virtutem nemo unquam
acceptam Deo retulit. Nimirum recte, propter virtutem enim jure
laudamur, et in virtute recte gloriamur. Quod non contingeret, si id
donum a Deo, non a nobis haberemus. . .Nam quis, quod vir bonus esset,
gratias Diis egit unquam ? At quod dives, quod honoratus, quod inco-
lumis. Jovemque Optimum Maximum ob eas res appellant, non quod
nos justos, temperantes, sapientes efficiat, sed quod salvos, incolumes,
opulentos, copiosos.
T. H. L. 16
242 LECTURE VI. [1846.
been the confession of unnumbered souls in all the
world, wrung out from a deep heart-agony, from the
sense of defeats repeating themselves with a sad uni-
formity, of ever deeper entanglement in the defilements
of the flesh and of the world " That which I do, I
allow not ; for what I would, that do I not ; but what
I hate, that do I I delight in the law of God after
the inward man ; but I see another law in my mem-
bers, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing
me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my
members. O wretched man that I am! who shall
deliver me from the body of this death?"
Such voices, no doubt, did make themselves heard.
For indeed we shall not err, if contemplating the times
which went before the Incarnation, we affirm that
there had been two cries which had long been going
up into the ears of the Lord of Hosts two cries,
although one was far more distinct and articulate
than the other. There was the voice of appointed
prophets and seers, watchers on the mountains of
Israel, waiting for a Sun of Kighteousness, who, as they
surely knew, should in his time scatter the world's
gloom, and shed healing from his wings. There was
their voice who, knowing this, would yet out of a
mighty sense of the present evil around them and
within them, have fain hastened the time, psalmist
and prophet who exclaimed, " Oh that the salvation
were given unto Israel out of Zion ! " " Oh that thou
wouldest rend the heavens and come down ! " But there
was another, a more confused cry, of multitudinous
tones : it oftentimes knew not what its own accents
meant ; it was often rather a groan within the bosom
of humanity, which asked not, and thought not of, a
THE REDEEMER FROM SIN. 243
listener, than a voice sent up unto heaven. It was a
cry which only infinite wisdom and infinite love would
have interpreted into that cry for heavenly help, which
indeed at the heart it was ; a cry needing infinite love
to pardon all in it which made it rather a cry against
God, than to Him. But that love it found. He who
said long before, " I have seen, I have seen the afflic-
tion of my people," saw also the affliction of a world
hopelessly out of the way, translated its confused
voices into an appeal unto Himself, and sent forth his
Son to be the Saviour of the lost.
And then, what not alone the Law could not do,
in that it was weak through the flesh, but what all
wisdom had been equally impotent to effect, for it
underlay the same weakness, He did ; what they could
not give, He gave. For here we come back again to
a point which I have pressed already, but which yet is
so important, that I shall make no apology for pressing
it once more, which is this, that the prerogative of
our Christian faith, the secret of its strength is, that
all which it has, and all which it offers, is laid up in a
person. This is what has made it strong, while so
much else has proved weak, that it has a Christ as its
middle point that it is not a circumference without
a centre, that it has not merely a deliverance, but a
Deliverer, not a redemption only, but a Redeemer
as well. This is what makes it fit for wayfaring men ;
this is what makes it sun-light, and all else compared
with it but as moon-light, fair it may be, but cold and
ineffectual ; while here the light and the life are one ;
the Light is also the Life of men. Oh how great the
difference between submitting ourselves to a complex
of rules, and casting ourselves upon a beating heart ;
162
244 LECTURE VI. [1846.
between accepting a system, and cleaving to a person.
And how tenfold blessed the advantages of the last,
if that person is such a One that there shall be nothing
servile in the entire resignation of ourselves to be
taught of Him, for He is the absolute Truth nothing
unmanly in the yielding of our whole being to be wholly
moulded by Him, for that He is not merely the highest
which humanity has reached, but the highest which it
can reach its intended and ideal perfection, at once
its perfect image and superior Lord.
They felt this, that help must lie in a person, that
only round a person souls would cluster, those who,
when they would fain make a final stand for the old
beliefs of the world, and prove if these could not even
now be quickened to dispute the world with the youth-
ful Christian Church ; they felt, I say, this, who set
about marshalling, not merely rival doctrines to the
Christian, but rival benefactors to Christ. If He went
about Judaea doing good, they also would point to
sages of their own, who travelled on like errands to
the furthest East. This is, no doubt, the meaning of
that half-fabulous life of Apollonius, which just as
Christianity was rising into notice and evident signifi-
cance, made its appearance ; this the explanation of
that revived interest in Pythagoras, which then found
place. The votaries of the old religions felt that in
this respect they must not come short of that which
they would oppose ; and rightly however weak and
flitting and unreal the phantoms which they conjured
up to their help.
For, brethren, had we a system only, it would
leave us just as weak as other systems have left their
votaries. We should have to confess that we found in
THE REDEEMER FROM SIN. 245
ours, as they in theirs, no adequate strength that
not merely now and then, and at ever rarer intervals,
we were worsted in our conflict with the sin of our
own hearts, but evermore. Our blessedness, and let
us not miss that blessedness, is, that our treasures are
treasured in a person, and are therefore inexhaustible
in one who requires nothing but what first He gives
who is not for one generation a present teacher
and a living Lord, and then for all succeeding a past
and a dead one, but who is present and living for
all as truly for us in this later day, as for them who
went up and down with Him in the days of his flesh.
Our strength and our blessedness is, that what we
have to know is "the truth as it is in Jesus;" that
what we have to learn is to " learn Christ ; " that
what we have to put on, is to " put on the Lord Jesus
Christ" and the righteousness which is by Him.
LECTURE VII.
THE FOUNDER OF A KINGDOM.
HEBREWS XL 10.
A city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker
is God.
WE have seen the manner in which He who was " the
Desire of all nations," met and satisfied the yearnings
of men for an inward peacemaker, for one who, by the
mighty magic of his word and Spirit, should change
the tumult of man's soul into a great calm; who
should heal the hurts which each man was conscious
that he had inflicted upon himself; who should set
each man free from the bondage to those lords many,
his own lusts and inordinate affections, under whose
cruel tyranny he had come. But besides these long-
ings for harmony and health and freedom in the region
of his own inner life, there are other longings and
other desires which crave satisfaction. For each, be-
sides being simply a man, is also a man among men :
besides the sinful element which so perplexes his own
inner life, in the relation of one part of it to the other,
of the higher to the lower, which so threatens his true
life with destruction, not from foreign, but from intes-
tine, enemies the same sinful element acting out-
wardly in himself, and in every other man, disturbs
and perplexes his relation to them, and theirs to him.
That which remains in himself, unsubdued, of evil,
THE FOUNDER OF A KINGDOM. 247
that which exists of the same in every other man,
brings about a collision between two selfishnesses.
"From whence" in the wonderfully simple, yet pro-
found language of Scripture, language applicable to
the pettiest village brawl, and to the mightiest conflict
that has ranged one half of the world against the
other " from whence come wars and fightings among
you ? come they not hence, even of the lusts that war
in your members?" (Jam. iv. 1.)
At once the question has presented itself to every
thoughtful man, it eminently did so to the great
spirits of antiquity, Is the warfare of these encoun-
tering selfishnesses the necessary, the only condition
of society ? Is it our wisdom to acquiesce in it, satis-
fied if this evil will allow itself to be kept within cer-
tain bounds to be so far restrained, that a society, a
living together of men for social conveniences unat-
tainable in their isolated state, becomes possible? And
is society such a fellowship of men that have holdeii
back, by mutual consent, so much of their selfishness
and evil, as would render habitation within the same
walls or in the same neighbourhood impossible, and
would thus defeat them of the gains which they
desired by this combination to attain?
There have never been wanting, there were not
wanting of old, those who dared to avow this wolfish
theory of society for their own that is, as a theory :
for no community of men has ever subsisted upon it ;
no sooner have they attempted to put it in practice,
than, biting and devouring, they have presently been
utterly consumed one of another. And they who
even avowed it as a theory were few a profligate
sophist of the old or the new world, a Thrasyma-
248 LECTURE VII. [1846.
ehus* or a Mandevillej-; the exceptions and not the
rule. For rather it was truly seen that the fellowship of
man with man, so far from being an artificial product
of his wants, something added on to his true humanity,
that lay circular and complete in himself already,
something therefore which he might have forgone
without any necessary imperfection, is that rather
which constitutes the very humanity itself animals
herding, men only living, together. It was seen that
this fellowship is the sphere in which alone his true
life, that which belongs to him as man, can unfold
itself I in which alone he can reach, it is little to
say, the perfection of his being, but without which he
cannot be conceived otherwise than as a monster, such
a monster as the world never saw. It was truly per-
ceived of that other condition of absolute isolation,
that, so far from being the state of nature, it is rather
a state so unnatural that no man has ever perfectly
reached it the most absolute savage not having be-
come an isolated unit, not having been able to strip
himself bare of all moral relations being at most able
to act as though he had not, but never able to cease
from having, these. And they understood therefore
that not this tamed selfishness was the idea in which
the state consisted, and on which it reposed, but that
there was another, to which every state and fellowship
of men, as it deserved the name, as it would be any-
thing better than a pirate's deck or a robber's den,
must be a nearer or more remote approximation : a
Plato's Republic. t Fable of the Sees.
$ As is remarkably witnessed in the words, civilized, civilization.
The civilized man, as contra-distinguished from the savage or utterly
degenerate man, is essentially the civis, belongs to a civitas.
THE FOUNDER OF A KINGDOM. 249
condition in which men were holden together by in-
visible ties, by sanctions which not the flesh, but the
spirit, owned to be binding, by common rites, by
sanctities which men dared not neglect *, by a god
Terminus keeping the boundaries of fields, by a dread
of vengeance, not as the mere human recoil of outrage
on the wrong doer, but as being itself divine, a con-
dition in which men have felt that they were one
people, not so much in their common interests and
common aims, or even in their common history and
descent and language, as in the one tutelar Deity that
overlooked their city, and to whom they had confided
its keeping.
If it was so if there was this sense existing in
the hearts, shewing itself in the acts, of men, that the
relations between man and man rest on something out
of sight, are spiritual relations, not those of force, or
fraud, or convenience that men do not huddle toge-
ther as cattle, to keep themselves warm, nor band
together as wild beasts, that they may hunt in com-
pany; that law is not a result of so much self-will
which each man might have kept, yet for certain
advantageous considerations throws into a common
stock, but that rather there is a law of laws, anterior
to, and constituting the ground of, each positive enact-
ment if men had any sense of this divine order,
which they did not themselves constitute, but into
which they entered ; which to accept was good, which
to deny and fight against was evil, if they did thus
believe in a kingdom of righteousness and truth, and
that we were ordained for that, (in the words of the
father of Roman philosophy, Nbs ad justitiam esse
* Sophocles, Antigone, 450460.
250 LECTURE VII. [1846.
natos,) if there was any true feeling that those lusts
and desires, so far from being the ground of the state,
the cement which held it together, were rather the
element of decay which was ever threatening its dis-
solution, and were to be denied as the violations of
the humanity, not recognized as its essentials ; then
we have implicitly here the acknowledgment of, and
the yearning after, the kingdom of God*. They who
believed this, believed in " the city which hath foun-
dations," in that only one which can have everlasting
foundations, for it is the only one whose foundations
are laid in perfect righteousness and perfect truth
the city " whose builder and maker is God," which
Abraham looked for, and because he looked for, would
take no portion in the cities of confusion round him,
but dwelling in tents witnessed against them, and
declared plainly that he sought a country the city of
* Thus Cicero (De Legg., 1. 1, c. 7-) : Universus hie mundus una
civitas comnranis Deorum atque hominum existimanda. Cf. De Fin.,
1. 5, c. 23, and the glorious passage in Juvenal (Sat. 15, 131 158,) one
of the noblest in antiquity, on the fellowship of men with one another,
as resting on their divine original. I may he excused for quoting a
few lines :
Separat hoc nos
A grege mutorum, atque ideo venerabile soli
Sortiti ingenium, divinorumque capaces,
Atque exercendis capiendisque artibus apti
Sensum a coelesti demissum traximus arce,
Cujus egent prona et terram spectantia. Mundi
Principle indulsit communis conditor illis
Tantum animas, nobis animum quoque ; mutuus ut nos
Affectus petere auxilium, et praestare juberet,
Disperses trahere in populum, migrare vetusto
De nemore, et proavis habitatas linquere silvas ;
jEdificare domos, laribus conjungere nostris
Tectum aliud, tutos vicino limine somnos
Ut collata daret fiducia; protegere armis
Lapsum, aut ingenti nutantem vulnere civem;
Communi dare signa tuba, defendier iisdem
Turribus, atque una portarum clave teneri.
THE FOUNDER OF A KINGDOM. 251
which we already are made free, and which it was
given to the latest seer of the New Covenant, ere the
book was sealed, to behold in the spirit coming down
from heaven in its final glory. (Kev. xxi. 2.)
And can we say that there were not such thoughts
and expectations stirring in the hearts of men that
the idea of a perfect state, as well as of a perfect
man, had not risen up before the eyes of them, the
men of desire, the souls to which any spirit of higher
divination was imparted? Were not the latest specu-
lations of the wisest sage, those to which he fitly came
after he had accomplished each other task, concerning
this very thing ? Nor needs it to press that derivation
of religion which would make it the band and bond,
which binding men to God, binds them also to one
another ; for it is a derivation at the least question-
able*; and the fact, to which such an etymology
* Nitzsch (Theol. Stud. u. Krit. v. 1, p. 532) seeks elaborately to
prove that, according to the genius of the Latin language, the only
possible derivation of religio is Cicero's (De Nat. Deor., 1. 2, c. 28) : Qui
omnia, quse ad cultum Deorurn pertinerent, diligenter retractarent
et tanquam relegerent, sunt dicti religiosi, ex relegendo. It will thus
have for its first meaning, the conscientious anxiety and accuracy in
the performance of the divine offices. The passage which best ex-
plains how the word obtains a wider meaning is this from Arnobius
(Adv. Gen. 1. 4, c. 30) : Non enim qui solicite relegit et immaculatas
hostias credit . . .nuinina consentiendus est colere, aut officia solus reli-
gionis implere. This etymology was called in question by Lactantius,
who derives the word not from relegere, but religare, to which deri-
vation allusion is made in the text. He says (Inst* Div,, 1. 4, c. 24) :
Hoc vinculo pietatis obstricti Deo et religati sumus, unde ipsa religio
nomen accepit ; et non ut Cicero interpretatus est, a relegendo. He
has Lucretius on his side, to whose words he alludes :
arctis
Relligionum animos nodis exsolvere pergo.
Augustine too, who at first had consented to Cicero's etymology, in-
clines at a later period (Retract., 1. 1, c. 13) in favour of the other.
Freund (Lat. Worterbuch, s. v.) without expressing himself at all so
strongly
252 LECTURE VII. [1846.
would give only an additional proof, is unquestionable
without it I mean, that the invisible ties were those
in which every state was acknowledged to consist, so
that with their weakening it must grow weak, with
their perishing it must perish; while to strengthen
and to multiply these, was justly regarded as the
noblest mission of its noblest sons. What if here too
heathendom had but the negative preparation, and
Judaism the positive ? what if the Jew could point to
a state which did realize, though through his own sin
most inadequately, this kingdom in its unripe and
early beginnings, and if he was upheld by the sure
word of prophecy, that one day the King of this king-
dom should be revealed, and should reign in righte-
ousness ; while for the heathen they were for the most
part dreams to which he could impart no reality,
realities which tarried infinitely farther behind the
idea which they professed to embody this was only
according to the distribution, in God's manifold wis-
dom, of their several parts to Jew and Gentile, in the
preparation for Christ's coming; to the one being
already given the stamina and rudiments of that which
afterwards should unfold itself more fully, to the other
being given little more than the expectation and the
want yet both so conspiring to prepare the way for
his appearing.
This want and this expectation Christ came to
satisfy ; for He came, not merely to awaken a religious
sentiment in the minds and hearts of his disciples, or
to declare to them certain doctrines of which before
strongly as Nitzsch has done in regard of the absolute inadmissibility
of the other derivation, yet accepts as certainly preferable the Cice-
THE FOUNDER OF A KINGDOM. 253
they were ignorant ; but to found a kingdom, as He
Himself declared from the first ; as St. John, the
herald of his coming, had declared before Him ; " The
kingdom of God is at hand ;" "The kingdom of God
is among you." For this term, " kingdom of God,"
we must not impoverish as though it were merely a
convenient abstraction to express the sum total of the
religious sentiments, opinions, feelings, actions of his
disciples. But this kingdom, as it is a kingdom, points
to a visible fellowship, and the embodiment therein of
a number of persons, constituting an organic whole,
owning a single head. And as it is a kingdom of God,
it declares God to be its author and its founder ;
it declares itself to be lifted above the caprice
of men, neither having been made, nor yet being to
be marred, by them ; which they indeed may deny,
but which cannot deny itself, nor by their denial be
annulled.
The practical Eoman saw as much as the natural
man could see of this in a moment that the question
at issue between Christ and the world was not a
question of one notion and another, but of one king-
dom and another ; and seeing, he came at once to
the point, "Art Thou a king then ?" And that empire
which tolerated all other religions, would have tole-
rated the Christian, instead of engaging in a death-
struggle with it, to strangle or be strangled by it, but
that it instinctively felt that this, however its first seat
and home might seem to be in the hearts of men, yet
could not remain there, but would demand an out-
ward expression for itself must go forth into the
world, and conquer a dominion of its own a do-
minion which would leave no room in the world for
254 LECTURE VII. [1846.
another fabric of force and fraud ; for it was his do-
minion who, sitting on his throne, should scatter away
all evil with his eyes ; who had said in a thousand
ways, "All the horns of the ungodly will I break, but
the horns of the righteous shall be exalted.''
It is quite true that this kingdom, in the men who
at any time compose it, may misunderstand and mis-
take itself, even has it has often done. There are
times when it caricatures itself into a popedom, when
knowing rightly that it ought to have a real and out-
ward existence, yet it will not believe that it has this,
or is a kingdom at all, unless it can outdo the king-
doms of the world on their own ground, and in their
own fashion ; unless it can be a kingdom like unto
them, and greater than they in their kind of power
and magnificence and glory. It is quite true that
times arrive when it cannot believe in its own one-
ness, unless it can see that oneness represented to it
in a visible Head. Yet this only proves that times
may arrive, when through the sin of its members, its
consciousness of itself as God's Church grows weak,
when it has only too much lost hold of the great
truths on which it was founded, and which it was
intended to proclaim ; and having done so, does, by
an inevitable necessity, act over again the unfaithful
request of the children of Israel, when they desired
a king to go forth with their armies, as one went forth
with the armies of the nations, and would not believe,
unless they could thus see him there, that " the shout
of a King was among them/' (1 Sam. viii.) And the
reaction from this error must not make us to count
that this kingdom can only be spiritual when it ceases
to be real, when retiring into the hearts of men, and
THE FOUNDER OF A KINGDOM. 255
dwelling there apart, it claims no more the world for
its possession, and each region and province of man's
actual life for its own.
But to return. This kingdom, as it was a consum-
mation of all that men had ever hoped in the way of
a kingdom of righteousness, as it was a protest and
witness against the evil into which each kingdom of
the world, each fairest polity of man's founding, was
ever presently degenerating, was not all. Christ came
to give more than this ; to give not merely a kingdom
of truth for some men, but for every man ; to found
a fellowship which should be for men as men, which
should leave out none, which should call no man com-
mon or unclean. This indeed was new, not merely in
fact, but even in theory ; for it had hardly risen over
the horizon of their minds who stood in wisdom and
in goodness upon the mountain-summits of the world.
The Greek ever left out the barbarian, the freeman
the slave, the philosopher the simple. The highest
culture of some was ever built upon the sacrifice of
others; they were pitilessly used up in the process.
So far from men themselves producing the thought
of an universal spiritual fellowship, even after it was
given, they were long in making it their own. Thus
Celsus mocks at the madness of the Gospel, (for so to
him it shewed,) adduces as enough to convince its
author of a shallow impracticable enthusiasm, that he
should have proposed such a dream as this, that
Greeks, and Barbarians, and Lybians, and all men to
the ends of the earth, should be united in the recep-
tion of one and the same doctrine.
Nor can we greatly wonder : the sense of diversity
was so strong, that which was differencing men was so
256 LECTURE VII. [1846.
mighty, the intellectual superiority of the Greek over
the Barbarian was so immense, that we cannot be so
much surprized to find one thus mocking at the scheme
for bringing all men into one, as the shallow dream
of an enthusiast's brain. Such it must have seemed
to him, who had not insight enough to perceive that
the real ground of separation between men lay, not in
natural distinctions of race, of customs, of language,
but in different objects of worship, in the gods many
of polytheism. These were what kept men apart, and
rendered their union and communion impossible. They
were not at one in the highest matter of their lives :
how should they be in the lower ? And if this was the
ground of division, then the walls of partition might
yet be thrown down, would indeed fall away of their
own selves, when once there was revealed to faith one
God and Father of all, one Christ a common object
of love and adoration for all, in whom the affections
of all might centre, one Spirit, effectually working in
all. Then indeed the Babel mischief, the confusion
of spirits, whereof the confusion of tongues was only
the outward sign, would cease ; even as for one pro-
phetic moment on the day of Pentecost, in the gift
of tongues, it hod ceased""", in sign that the Church
which that day was founded was for ah 1 nations and
tongues and tribes. The distinctions between men
were indeed infinite, reaching far down into the deeps
of their being, yet not to that being's centre ; and in
the regeneration, in that mighty act of God's, which
* Grotius : Pcena linguarum dispersit homines (Gen. xi.), donum
linguarum disperses in unum populum recollegit. In the Persian
religion there was the expectation of a day coming when, with the
abolition Of all evil, eva piov /cat n'lav TroXneiav dvOptoirtuv naitapiiov Kal
ofnoyXtacra-tav dirdvrtav yeve<r6ai, (Plutarch, De Is. et Osir., C. 47-)
THE FOUNDER OF A KINGDOM. 257
does not obliterate distinctions, but reconciles them in
an higher unity, they might all, so far as they were
elements of separation, be annulled. When to all
alike it was permitted to say, " We are Christ's, and
Christ is God's," then the secret of a fellowship was
imparted, which should include all nations, in which
there should be neither wise nor simple, Greek nor
barbarian, bond nor free, but Christ should be all in
all.
Of all this the world had, beforehand, scarcely the
faintest intimations the poorest parodies. Yet such
parodies perchance there were ; and we may be allowed
to trace dim indistinct yearnings even for this, for the
breaking down of the middle wall of partition, for the
making of twain one new man. Thus there were
already in the centuries anterior to our Lord meeting-
places for the Greek and Jew. Remarkable in this
respect was the existence of such a city as Alexandria,
where the Jew and Greek met, and sought to ex-
change to mutual profit the most precious commo-
dities each of his own intellectual and spiritual land,
the Jew making himself acquainted with Greek cul-
ture, the Old Testament Scriptures becoming acces-
sible to Greek readers. Yet still these meetings were
intellectual only : no true blending did or could have
followed from them. It is the fire of charity which
must melt, ere there can be any real moulding into
one. In vain had the whole East and West jostled
violently together ; they had hardly mingled any more
for this. A certain surface civilization had ensued,
which was common to both ; but hearts waited for
more prevailing bands than those which even an Alex-
ander could weave, ere they would knit themselves
T. H. L. 17
258 LECTURE VII. [1846.
together in one. And as far as any practical realiza-
tion of the hopes which at any time the world cherished,
from this it now was further off than ever. The iron
kingdom, the fourth beast, dreadful and terrible and
strong exceedingly, had broken all other, and was
stamping the residue under its feet ; until it seemed
now as if brutal force was all that remained, or that
had a meaning any more, and as if the world only
could be prevented from falling into pieces by those
links and bands of iron, which were forged around it.
But how hateful such a world was to live in, how
intense a loathing it inspired in each nobler spirit, the
works of Tacitus seemed preserved to us especially to
tell. For surely this is the key-note of them, the pre-
dominant thought, this indignation and scorn, which
all words, even his own, seem weak to him to utter,
at the sight of the high places of the earth, the seats
of blessing, the thrones of beneficent power, occupied
by the meanest and basest of their kind, till we feel,
as we read, this conviction to have been branded as
with burning iron on his soul, that it were better ten
thousand times not to be, than to witness the things
which he has witnessed, and to bear the things which
he has borne*. Nor on his soul only was the convic-
tion branded, but on those, we cannot doubt, of mul-
titudes besides, whose more dumb agony found only its
adequate expression in his words.
But these failures, these shipwrecks of the world's
hopes, these issues of things so different from the pro-
mise with which they started, this agony, this despair,
they were not for nothing. They were part of that
severe discipline of love to which the world was being
* Agricola, c. 2,3,45.
THE FOUNDER OF A KINGDOM. 259
submitted : they helped to constitute that fulness of
time in which the Son of God should come, and, com-
ing, find acceptance. Not till the world's pride and
self-confidence were thoroughly broken, would it have
been prepared to humble itself under his cross, would
it have accepted that cross for the standard round
which it rallied. For the breaking of this pride two
great experiments had been going forward at the
same time, had run through, as they gave a moral
meaning to, all the anterior history of the world
experiments which needed both to be thoroughly and
fairly tried. Of the Jewish it concerns us not here to
speak at large: it was this, if righteousness could come
by the law ; if there was a law which could give life
an external rule of conduct, even though of divine
appointment, which could sanctify and save if there
was not a weakness and falseness in man, which would
defeat and frustrate it all. This was most needful,
and only through the process of this could a Saul ever
have been transformed into a Paul.
But the other, which may not seem to us so
directly of God's ordaining, yet was so indeed : for it
was of its very essence that He should not mingle in
it so far, should seem to have less to do with it ;
that those to whom it was given to try it out should
walk in their own ways, and be left to their own
resources. The experiment was this, whether man
could unfold his own well-being out of himself whe-
ther art or philosophy or institutions could give it to
him ; whether in any of these he could truly find him-
self and the good for which he was made. And of
this experiment we cannot say that it was unfairly
tried, or imperfectly worked out. All which was
172
260 LECTURE VII. [1846.
required for its success was there, and had been given
in largest measure. God had raised up men of the
most glorious gifts, of the mightiest strength of will ;
and surely had deliverance lain in ought which man
could unfold, by his own strength, out of his own
being, the world had been indeed redeemed, and had
found the fountain of salvation in itself.
But fair and flattering, full of the promise of suc-
cess, as the results shewed oftentimes for a while,
there was ever a worm at the root of this glory of the
world. The moment of highest perfection was ever-
more the moment of commencing decay. How deeply
tragic, though in different ways, the histories of the
Greek and Roman worlds ! how had the paths of glory
led one and the other, though by diverse ways, to the
grave of all their moral and spiritual independence ;
the intellectual conquests of the one and the worldly
triumphs of the other, however diverse, yet having
agreed in this, that they alike left the victors enslaved,
degraded, and debased the Greek a scorn to the
Roman*, and the Roman to himself. And now the
fresh creative energy of an earlier time had all de-
parted and disappeared: and that springing hope,
which contemplated its objects, if not as attained, yet
at least as attainable, was no more. The world had
outlived itself and its attractions f saddest of all, had
outlived even its hopes ; the very springs of those
hopes seemed to be dried up for ever. Yet was not
this all without its purpose and its blessing. It was
something to be shut in to the one remedy, all other
* See such passages as Cicero Pro Flacco, c. 4 ; Juvenal, Sat. 3,
58113 ; 10, 174.
f Augustine : Mundus tanta rerum labe contritus, ut etiam spe-
ciem seductionis amiserit.
THE FOUNDER OF A KINGDOM. 261
devices having failed, to have come thus to the husks;
for this alone would have sent back the prodigal of
heathenism to claim anew his share in the rich pro-
vision of his father's house. This was the emptiness,
of which Christ's coming should be the answering
fulness. In all this agony, this mighty yearning of
souls, the gates of the world were being made high
and lifted up, that the King of Glory might come in.
Only in such an utter despair, in such a sense of de-
crepitude, of death already begun, would the world
have welcomed aright the Prince of Life, who came
to make all things young, and out of the wreck and
fragments of an old and decaying world, to build up
a fairer and a new.
And such he built up indeed. " They went astray
in the wilderness out of the way, and found no city to
dwell in : hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in
them. So they cried unto the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress. He led
them forth by the right way, that they might go to a
city of habitation." And this city of habitation, this
kingdom, was all which they had asked for, or could
ask. It was a free fellowship, the constraining bands
of it being bands of love and not of force ; and He
that founded it fulfilling the idea of the true spiritual
conqueror of men, who should subdue all hearts not
by force or by flattery, but by the mighty magic of
love as some of old had been reaching out after this,
when they dreamed of Osiris, that he went forth to
conquer the world not with chariots and with horses,
but with music ; for so had they felt that the power
which truly wins must be a spiritual one, an appeal to
the latent harmonies in every man that in a king-
262 LECTURE VII. [1846.
dom of heaven law must be swallowed up in love,
not repealed, but glorified and transfigured, its hard
outline scarcely visible any more in the blaze of light
with which it is surrounded.
It was a large fellowship larger than the largest
which the heart of man had conceived ; for it should
leave out none, it should trample upon none : He that
was its Head should " be favourable to the simple and
needy, and preserve the souls of the poor." Nay, it
should be larger than this, for it should embrace hea-
ven and earth. That whereof the great Italian sage
had caught a glimpse, that 0iXx*, that amity or
reconciliation of all things, whether they be things in
heaven or things on earth, had found its fulfilment.
Henceforward heaven and earth, angels and men, con-
stituted one kingdom, " his body, the fulness of Him
that filleth all in all."
It was a righteous fellowship. If ought of un-
righteousness was within it, it was there only as a
contradiction to the law of that kingdom, and pre-
sently to be separated off: even as all of unrighteous
that was against it was in due time to be taken out of
the way ; for it in its weakness was yet stronger than
the strongest. It was only weak as the staff of Moses
was weak; which being one, and an instrument of
peace, did yet break in shivers all weapons of war, the
ten thousand spears of Pharaoh and his armies.
And being this righteous kingdom, it was also an
eternal kingdom, having in it no seeds of decay, a
kingdom not to be moved, which should endure as
* PorphyriuS (De Vita Pythag.) : $>i\iav (KareSei^e) WJTWI/ Tiyxls
diravra-s, ei-re Qeiov Trpos avOptu-irovs etre doy^d-nov TT/OOS aXXtjXa el-re
dvQpwTuov TT/OOS otXXjj'Xovs. See Baur's Apollonius von Tyana und Chris-
tits, p. >94.
THE FOUNDER OF A KINGDOM. 263
long as the sun and moon endureth, of the increase
of which there should be no end.
To this city, brethren, ye are come the city of
which such glorious things are spoken, the city of our
God. Not only prophet and king of Israel, but sage
and seer of every land, have desired to see the things
which we see, and have not seen them so truly are
they the best things which man can conceive, or God
can give. And what do they require of us but a
walk corresponding ? Citizens of no mean city, whose
citizenship is in heaven, we must not shew ourselves
unworthy of so high an honour. It is the very aggra-
vation of the sinner's sin that he deals frowardly in
the land of uprightness ; and because he does so it is
declared that he shall not see the majesty of the
Lord. (Isai. xxvi. 10.) We baptized men are in this
"land of uprightness," in this kingdom of the truth.
For it is not that we shall come, but in the sure word
of Scripture, we are come to Mount Zion, the city of
the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to all the
glorious company which is there.
And surely the apostle's argument which he drew
from this ought to stand strong for us, his exhortation
to find place in our hearts ; " Wherefore we receiving
a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace,
whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence
and godly fear." (Heb. xii. 28.)
LECTURE VIII.
CONCLUDING LECTURE.
1 THESSALONIANS V. 21.
Prove all things ; hold fast that which is good.
IT needs not, I trust, to remind you, brethren, that in
these lectures which are now concluding, we have been
engaged in the seeking to discern the prophecy of
Christianity, which has run through all history. I
have traced in them, so far as under the conditions
and limitations of such discourses I might, the manner
in which the old world was in many ways blindly strug-
gling to be that better thing which yet it never could
truly be, except by the free grace and gift of God,
to come to that new birth, which yet it could not
reach, until power for this mighty change was given it
from on high. We have asked ourselves whether we .
could not discern an evident tending of men's thoughts
and feelings and desires in one direction, and that
direction the cross of Christ, a great spiritual under-
current, which has been strongly and constantly setting
that way ; so that his bringing forth of his kingdom
into open manifestation, if in one sense a beginning,
was in another, and in as true a sense, a crowning
end.
And it has cohered intimately with the purpose of
these lectures, which, according to the purpose of their
founder, should assume more or less of a defensive
CONCLUDING LECTURE. 265
character, to urge the apology for our Christian faith
which is here. It has been to me an argument for
the truth and dignity of his mission who was its author,
to find that in Him all fulness dwelt, all lines con-
centered, all hopes of the world were accomplished.
For surely the King of Glory shews to us more glorious
yet, when we are able to contemplate Him not merely
as the Prophet and Priest and King of the Covenant,
but as the satisfier of vaguer, though not less real,
aspirations, of more undefined longings, of more wide-
Spread hopes when looking at Him, we take note,
with the inspired seer, that on his head are many
crowns, and looking it his doctrine, that not Israel
only, but the isles also nad waited for his law.
This my subject I have now brought to a close ;
or at least I dare not, at this latest moment, open it
upon another side. I may perhaps more profitably
dedicate the present opportunity to the considering
of some ways in which our recognition of the intimate
relation between all that has gone before and all that
now is, between the hopes of the past and the fulfil-
ments of the present, may practically and usefully in-
fluence our study of antiquity. For indeed a Christian
view of the ancient world, which shall neither despise
it, because it is not what it could not be, itself Chris-
tian, because its grains of finer gold, of purer ore, are
mixed with so much impure and debasing ; nor yet on
the other hand glorify it, as though its imperfect an-
ticipations of the truth were as good as, or rendered
superfluous, the manifestation of the perfect image
of God in his Son, or its faint streaks of light were as
truly an illumination as the day-spring from on high ;
this true it is most profitable for us that we should
266 LECTURE VIII. [1846.
win. It may preserve us from extremes and exagge-
rations on either hand, into which we are in danger of
running. It may preserve us too from a listless, care-
less, unfruitful study of that which, unless we neglect
the plain duties that lie before us, must form one of
the chief occupations of several, the most precious
and least recoverable years of our lives, years in
which our minds are to be built up, if built up at all ;
in which, more than in any other, our characters are
being moulded, and are receiving that impress which
they shall bear to the end.
The exaggerations to which I allude are twofold.
There is that, first, against which one is almost un-
willing to say a word, springing as it so often does,
out of a state of mind in which there is so much that
is admirable, giving witness for a moral earnestness,
without which men would have been scarcely tempted
to it ; I mean the exaggeration of those, who in a
deep devotion to the truth, as it is a truth in Christ
Jesus, count themselves bound by their allegiance to
Him, by his Name which they bear, his doctrine which
they have learned, his Spirit which they have received,
to take up an hostile attitude to every thing, not dis-
tinctly and avowedly Christian, as though any other
bearing were a treason to his cause a betrayal of his
exclusive right to the authorship of all the good which
is in the world. In this temper we may dwell only on
the guilt and misery and defilements, the wounds and
bruises and hurts, of the heathen world ; or if ought
better is brought under our eye, we may look askant
and suspiciously upon it, as though all recognition of
it were disparagement of something better. And so
we may come to regard the fairest deeds of unbaptized
CONCLUDING LECTURE. 267
men as only more shewy sins. We may have a short
but decisive formula with which to dismiss them : we
may say, These deeds were not of faith, and therefore
they could not please God. The men that wrought
them knew not Christ, and therefore their work was
worthless hay, straw, and stubble, to be utterly
burned up in the day of the trial of every man's
work.
Yet is it in truth a violation of the law of con-
science, to use so sweeping a language as this. Our
allegiance to Christ as the one fountain of light and
life, demands that we affirm none to be good but Him
no goodness but that which has proceeded from
Him : but it does not demand that we deny goodness,
because of the place where we find it because we find
it, a garden-tree in the wilderness ; but rather that
we claim it for Him, who was its true source and
author, and whom it would itself have gladly owned
as such, if, belonging to a happier time, it could have
known Him. We do not make much of a light of
nature, when we allow a righteousness in those, to
whom in the days of their flesh the Gospel had not
come ; we only affirm that the Word, though He had
not yet dwelt among us, yet being the light which
lighteth every man that cometh into the world, had
lighted them. Some glimpses of his beams gilded
their countenances, and gave to them whatever bright-
ness they wore ; and in recognizing this brightness,
whatsoever it was, we are giving honour to Him, and
not to them ; glorifying the grace of God, and not Ihe
powers of man.
I can well understand how in the earnestness and
exclusiveness of a first love to Christ, and to that
268 LECTURE VIII. [1846.
word of Holy Scripture which directly testifies of
Him, all teaching of all other books, in which is no
explicit mention of his name, should appear valueless
to us; and all else taste flat and dull, because we
taste not there the sweetness of that One Name which
is sweeter than all. Yet were it good for us to see
that, without going back one jot from this entire
devotedness to the Lord of our life, which everywhere
looks for Him, and finds everything savourless without
him a devotedness too precious to be forgone, and
for which no other gains would compensate that
without, I say, going back from this, we might yet
enlarge the sphere of our Christian sympathies, and
take a wider range of objects within it. To this end
let us learn to cultivate a finer spiritual ear, and one
which shall be more quick to catch the fainter echoes
and whispers of his name, which are borne to us from
other fields than those of Scripture ; let us learn to
look for Him even where they thought not and could
not have thought directly of Him, whose pages we
may hold in our hand. Let us aim to take keener
note of the manner in which all things pointed to Him,
all things were asking for Him the world passing
judgment on itself*, and out of its own lips at once
Cicero ( Tusc. Quasi., 1. 2, c. 22) : In quo viro erit perfecta
sapientia, (quern adhuc nos quidem videmus neminem : sed philosophorum
sententiis, qualis futurus sit, si modb aliquando fuerit, exponitur,) is
igitur, &c. Compare Theognis, 615, OiSeW ira^^v dyaQdv K al ^-
Tpiov av8pa TWV vvv dvQpoairwv TJeXios KaQopa- .Even supposing a man
were to reach the highest goodness, this could only be, as was confessed,
through a long process of anterior mistake and error : he must be as
a diamond which is polished in its own dust. Seneca (De Clement , 1. 1,
c. 6) : Etiam si quis tarn bene purgavit animum, ut nihil obturbare
eum amplius possit aut fallere, ad innocentiam tamen peccando per-
venit.
CONCLUDING LECTURE. 269
condemning itself, and demanding its Eedeemer*,
demanding him in frequent acknowledgements of the
vanity of all things, in confessions of its own incurable
evils f, in voices of deepest sadness and despair, as
theirs who by word or solemn rite declared plainly
that it was better for man never to have been born
than to live ; or, if he lived, that then the gods had
no better boon for him than an early death J and
this not in the Christian sense of death as a passage
into life, but only as the harbour from the world's
woe, the anodyne of the world's pains.
Let us take note too of the manner in which the
language of philosopher and of poet seems often
marvellously overruled to have a deeper significance,
to bear the burden of a larger and completer thought,
than it is possible that they who uttered it could
have had in their mind, or could have attached to
their words. As for instance, when it is said$ that
the highest righteousness must be approved in ex-
tremest trial, that if we would know certainly whether
" Seneca (Ep. 52) : Nemo per se satis valet ut emergat : oportet
manum aliquis porrigat ; aliquis educat.
t Thucydides, 1. 3. c. 45 ; Seneca, De Ira, 1. 2, c. 8.
+ Compare the remarkable fragment of Euripides, quoted in the
original by Clemens of Alexandria (Strom., 1. 3, c. 3), and in a Latin
translation by Cicero (Tusc. Disp., 1. 1. c. 48.)
'ESei yap tjyitas, <ruXXoyoi> Troiou/tefous,
Toi/ <pvina Qprivelv, els o<r' ep^e-rai KUKU'
TOJ/ 6' av OavovTa /cat iroviav jreTrau/xe'i/oj'
Xat/ooj/Tas, ev<pi}n.ovvTas eKTrejuTreiv do/xwjs.
Compare Herodotus, 1. 5, c. 4; Pliny, H. N., 1. 7, c. 1 and c. 41.
Si verum facere judicium volumus, ac repudiata omni fortunse ambi-
tione decernere, mortalium nemo estfelix ; Pindar, Pyth., 8. 131.
By Plato (De Repub. 1. 2, c. 4, 5.) I have not seen it noted how
the reverse of the picture, the perfectly unrighteous man, whom Plato
draws, is almost as remarkable a prophecy in its kind, of Antichrist,
and of the deceitful glory which will surround him.
270 LECTURE VIII. [1846.
one be indeed a lover of the good, he must be set in
those conditions, in which to abide by the good shall
bring upon him every outward calamity, shame and
loss and scorn and torture and death, all which he
might have avoided would he ever so little have gone
back from that good; the righteousness which he
chooses must be stripped utterly bare of every orna-
ment, yea, must seem to the world as the extremest
unrighteousness, and then only it will be seen whether
he loves it for its own sake to us Christians shall not
this possible case at once present itself as an actual
one? Shall we not catch here, as many indeed have
caught*, a prophetic word about the cross, and about
Him who even in this way was proved, by ignominy
and scorn and suffering and death, whether He would
love the good and hate the evil ; and who did by a
distinct act of his will choose for his portion that
righteousness to which all these were linked, and
which could only lead Him by roughest paths to the
shamefullest and bitterest end? Or when another
expresses his conviction that a sacred Spirit dwells
with man, yea, not with him only but in him, a Spirit
which is not his own, however freely it converses with
him, a Spirit which treats him as he treats it-f-, shall
Grotius (De Verit. Eel. Christ., L 4, c. 12) : Et vero laetius esse
honestum, quoties magno sibi constat sapientissimi ipsorum dixere.
Plato, De Republica 11, quasi prcescius, ait, ut vere Justus exhibeatur,
opus esse ut virtus ejus omnibus ornamentis spolietur, ita ut ille habe-
atur ab aliis pro scelesto, illudatur, suspendatur denique. Et certe
summae patientise exemplum ut exstaret, aliter obtineri non poterat.
f Seneca (Epist. 41) : Sacer intra nos spiritus sedet, malorum bono-
rumque nostrorum observator et custos ; hie prout a nobis tractatus
est, ita nos ipse tractat.-.Quemadmodum radii solis contingunt quidem
terram, sed ibi sunt unde mittuntur, sic animus magnus et sacer, et in
hoc demissusut propius divina nossemus, conversatur quidem nobiscum,
sed hseret origini suse.
CONCLUDING LECTURE. 271
we refuse to acknowledge here a word which was
reaching out after that Spirit, the Spiri^ of the Father
and the Son, which, dwelling in God, does also dwell
in sanctified souls ; which if we grieve, will grieve us,
which if we continue to provoke, will utterly forsake
us? And in many such ways as these we may disen-
tangle the golden threads of a finer woof than its own,
which were running through the whole tissue which
the ancient world was weaving for itself; we may
delightedly observe how the cross of Christ was as an
invisible magnet, drawing hearts to itself by a mighty,
though secret, attraction, in ages long before it was
openly lifted up, an ensign for the nations.
Let us remember too how little the world could
have done without these preparations which sometimes
we are tempted to despise. Difficult as was the
world's reception of the word, and its transition to
the faith, of Christ, how much more difficult would it
have been, if the Avay had not been thus prepared.
What another thing would it have been, if the word
about the Son of God, where it first was delivered,
besides strengthening and purifying and enlarging,
had needed also to create, the very foundations of
religious belief and ethical science on w hich it rested ;
if it had been needful for it to be not merely the seed,
but the soil, having first to form the very ground in
which it should itself afterwards find room and depth
to germinate. If instead of finding a language ready
at hand, which it could appropriate, and needed only
thus to rescue for itself*, if, instead of this, all nobler
* Thus not merely the more obvious, but the more recondite rites
of heathenism, have been made to set forth far better things than
themselves. For example, the mysteries yield the substratum of
language
272 LECTURE VIII. [1846.
words and signs, all which spoke of worship, of religion,
of sanctity, of initiation, of atonement, of piety, had
been absent from it, how different the case would have
been. And with the absence of the things, there would
also have been inevitably the absence of the words
which are their correlatives ; since language is no
more than thought and feeling permanently fixing and
embodying themselves ; it is but as the pillars of Her-
cules, to mark how far the conquests of spirit have
advanced.
No one can have thoughtfully perused the modern
records of missionary labour among savage tribes, and
the almost insurmountable hinderances opposed to the
reception of the Gospel by languages, if they deserve
the name, stripped of each nobler and deeper element,
languages in which is no speculation, no distinction,
no hoarded thought, no embodied morality, no uncon-
scious wisdom, no terms, in short, but for the barest
needs or the vilest doings* of the animal man, without
language and imagery and allusion to each word of the following
noble passage, in which Clement (Cohort, ad Gent., c. 12) is exhort-
ing the Gentiles to become nvvrai of Christ: "Q TWV dytaiv ok
aXtjOws fJLV&Tripitav ' (a <O>TOS dnqpaTov. oaSov)(ovfJiaL, Tov<t oiipavovs Kal TOV
Oeoi/ eiroiTTeutras ' u'ytos yivofiai, p.vovp.evo<i iepo(f>ai>Tei de o Ku/otos, /cat
TOV \LvaTt\v atppayi^eTai, (pioTuytaytav ' /cat TrapaTiQeTat, Tto IIaTy>i TOV ire -
TTKTTevKOTa, alwffi Ttipovfievov. TavTa TIUV efjLtav fjLvffTijpiiav -rd (iuK\ev-
/uaxa ' el fiouXei, Kal (TV /mvov, /cat xP e " a ' els M 6 * 7 "' dyyeXwu dfji(pl TOV dyev-
injTov Kal dvta\e6pnu KOI fj.ovov OJ/TWS Qeov, {rvvvftvovv-ros jjui" TOU Oeou
Aoyov.
* Languages like one of the North-American Indian, which pos-
sesses a word for a tomahawk, but none for God ; or that of a tribe in
Australia, which with the same deficiency, has yet a word to describe
the process by which an unborn child may be destroyed in its mother's
womb. On all this subject of language rising and falling with the rise
and fall of a people's moral and spiritual life, and on the speech of
savages as not being the primal rudiments, but the ultimate wreck,
of a language, there is much of deep interest in De Maistre's Soirees
de St. Petersburg, Deux. Entret.
CONCLUDING LECTURE. 273
feeling that a miserable necessity is imposed on the
Truth when it must weave for itself the, very garments
in which it shall array itself, and is in danger of losing
its treasures in the very attempt to communicate
them, so wretched are the only channels through
which it can convey them. And considering this, he
will esteem it to have been an infinite mercy, yea a
very primal necessity, that the Truth, where it uttered
itself in that which should be its normal utterance for
all future ages of the Church, where it first took body
and shape, should have found, as regarded language,
vessels ready prepared for its new wine, and only wait-
ing for an higher consecration, an inheritance which
it had but to make its own, entering upon it, as the
children of Israel entered upon vineyards which they
had not planted, and wells which they had not digged,
and houses which they had not built, of which yet
they became the rightful possessors from henceforth.
Nor can we doubt that by that, which we with our
fuller knowledge, our larger grace, are inclined to
slight, many were preserved from defilements, in which
otherwise they had been inevitably entangled. This
salt may have been powerless to give the savour of
life to that with which it came in contact; but that
progress of corruption, that dissolution of social and
personal life, which it was unable ultimately to arrest,
it yet retarded for a time r \ It preserved many a
* The consideration of the Greek philosophy as a irpovatSela for the
reception of the absolute Christian truth, is a more recurring one, and
takes a more prominent place, in the writings of the later Clement,
than perhaps in those of any other teacher of the early Church. Thus
he speaks of it in one place as a step to something higher : (v-n-opddpav
ovvav Tf/ KCLTO. XpttTTov <iXo<ro</ua, Strom., 1. 6, c. 8.) Again, as a
preparatory discipline, and ordained to be such by the providence
T. H. L. 18 of
274 LECTURE VIII. [1846.
man for something better than itself, and in not a few
cases of which we have distinct record, handed over in
due time its votaries to the school of Christ. To
mention but a single example. Few who have once
read, will forget the manner in which the falling in
of God : (en TJJS Qeiav irpovoias oeSoardat, TrpoTrai.5evovcrav eis Ttjv Sid X/oi-
tTTov reXeitoo-iv, Strom., 1. 6, c. 17) ', and so again as an anterior culture
of the soil of man's heart for receiving the seed of life : (vpoKaQaipei
Kal irpoeQ'i^ei TJJV \f/w)(iiv eis trapct^o^v TTIO-TCCOS, Strom., 1. 7, C. 3.) It
would seem from more passages than one in his writings, that he felt
it needful to defend himself for the so high appreciation in which he
held the philosophy of Greece : ijv -rti/es 6iap e /3\iJKacnv, dXnQeia* olaav
elKova evapyfj, Qeiav Stopedv "EXXijo-i SeSofj.evnv. There were those who
warned against its attractions, as being those of the " strange woman"
of Prov. v. 3 8, " whose lips drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth
is smoother than oil." (Strom., 1. 1, c. 5.) The heathen philosophers
were according to them the "thieves and robbers" which "came
before" Him who was the time Shepherd of men (Strom., 1. 1, c. 17)-
Tertullian may be taken as a representative of the more intolerant
view ( ApoL, c. 46) : Quid simile Philosophus et Christianus ? Grseciae
discipulus et coeli ? famae negotiator et salutis ? verborum, et factorum
operator ?... interpolator erroris, et integrator veritatisl furator ejus et
custos ? Whatever exaggeration there is in the language of Clement,
yet this I think is certain, that his strong expressions have their rise
in a deep and solemn feeling, that nothing anywhere which is good,
by which men have been kept back from any evil, or prepared to any
good, but must be traced up to God. He dared not trace it to any
other; thus speaking of this very thing his words are, vdv-rtav /uei/ ydp
otxios TWV naXoov o 6eos. (Strom., 1. 1, c. 5.) And that he did not
make the difference between the two a mere question of degree is
plain from such expressions as these : Xwp/JeToi j 'E\\i)vi K ,i d\,',0eia
Trji Ka6' ;/ias, el Kal TOV avTov /ueTeiXtj<ei/ oi/o'/iaros, KCU peyeOei yi/a)'<retus,
Kal diroSeifcei icvpiioTepa, Kal Seia cvvd/iei ' QeooiSaKTOi yap vfj.ei<s. (Strom.,
1. 1, c. 20.) That other was the wild olive which had need, ere it bore
any nobler fruit, of insertion upon the good (Strom., 1. 6, c. 15) ; words
which may suggest a comparison with that most eloquent passage at
the end of the first book of Theodoret, De Grcec. Affect. Curat. And
those remarkable words have been often quoted in which Clement
likens heretics and founders of human systems to the rabble rout that
tore the body of Pentheus limb from limb : so they tore the truth, and
then each boasted of the fragment in his hands as though it were the
whole (eKa'o-TJ) oirep e\ayev, ok irdaav a\>\e"i TijV a'\t/'0etai/).
CONCLUDING LECTURE. 275
with the Hortensius* of Cicero kindled the young
Augustine, and inflamed him with a passionate love of
wisdom. What a moment it was in his life when he
lighted on that treatise, how greatly did it serve to
arrest him in that downward career which he was then
too rapidly treading, to hinder him from utterly laying
waste his moral life ! How did it set him to the seek-
ing for goodly pearls, though the goodliest of all, the
pearl of great price, he was not yet to find ! He him-
self in after years describes all this, with thankful
ascriptions of praise to the guiding hand of his God,
and telling how that book, though it did not, and
could not bring him into the inmost sanctuary of the
faith, yet was to him in the truest sense a porch to
that auguster temple not made with hands, into which
at a later day he should be privileged to enter ; and
did at once hand him over to the searching of the
Scriptures, though as yet his eyes were holden, and he
found not in them till a later day their hid treasures
of wisdom and of knowledge -\.
Otherwise called De Philosophid. It has been lost, all but a few
unimportant fragments. The subject was the superiority of philosophy
to eloquence.
t Con/, 1. 3, c. 4 : Usitato jam discendi ordine perveneram in librum
quemdam cujusdam Ciceronis, cujus linguam fere omnes mirantur,
pectus non ita. Sed liber ille ipsius exhortationem continet ad philo-
sophiam, et vocatur Hortensius. Ille vero liber mutavit affectum
meum,...et vota ac desideria mea fecit alia. Viluit mihi repente omnis
vana spes, et immortalitatem sapientiae concupiscebam sestu cordis
incredibili.
He has very interesting acknowledgements (Conf., 1. 7, c. 9, 20, 21)
of the effect which the Platonist books exerted upon him at the great
crisis of his life that went before his conversion, what he found
in them, and what he did not find, where they helped, and where
rather they hindered him : concluding with this declaration of the
things which he had looked for there in vain : Hoc illae litterse non
habent, Lacrymas Confessionis, Sacrificium tuum, Spiritum contribu-
18 2 latum,
276 LECTURE VIII. [1846.
But I spoke of exaggerations on either side into
which we were liable to fall. To take the very oppo-
site extreme to this of painting the old world to our-
selves in lines and colours of unredeemed blackness,
we may dwell exclusively on the fairer side which it
presents, shutting wilfully our eyes to each darker and
more revolting spectacle which it displays. We may
find in its art and its literature that which gratifies
our taste, and out of a lack of any deeper moral wants,
we may come to say with the poet, " Beauty is Truth,
Truth Beauty," and where we find beauty and propor-
tion and harmony, may be ready to pardon the absence
of every thing beside ; just as those Italian literati at
the revival of learning, who preferred calling them-
selves brethren in Plato to brethren in Christ, to whom
the groves of Academus were far more than the waters
of Siloam, and the cultivation of taste than the pro-
motion of holiness men who so mourned over the
vacant thrones of Olympus, that to them an heaven
opened, with angels ascending and descending upon
the Son of man, seemed but an insufficient compen-
sation.
But such a nearer acquaintance with the world
which was before and out of Christ, as these studies
latum, Cor contritum et humiliatum, Populi salutem, Sponsam, Civi-
tatem, Arrham Spiritus Sancti, Poculum pretii nostri. Nemo ibi can-
tat : Nonne Deo subdita erit anima mea ? ab ipso enim salutare ineum :
etenim ipse Deus meus et salutaris meus, susceptor meus, non move-
bor amplius. Nemo ibi audit vocantem : Venite ad me qui laboratis
...Et aliud est de silvestri cacumine videre patriam pacis, et iter ad
earn non invenire, et frustra conari per invia, circum obsidentibus
et insidiantibus fugitivis desertoribus cum principe suo leone et dra-
cone : et aliud tenere viam illuc ducentem, cura co?lestis imperatoris
munitam, ubi non latrocinantur qui coelestem militiam deseruerunt ;
vitant enim earn sicut supplicium.
CONCLUDING LECTURE. 277
faithfully pursued must give us, will teach us that if
there are sides on which heathen mythology stands
related to, and has the recollection and intimation of,
something higher than itself, there are also other sides
upon which it lies under the influence of man's cor-
ruption, is itself the outgrowth of his foolish sin-dark-
ened heart, with the impurities of its origin cleaving
to it, does itself help distinctly to mark his down-
ward progress toward idolatry, and toward the losing
of the Creator in the creature, is often only the
strangely distorted resemblance, never more than the
faint prophecy, of the coming truth. And if so, we
shall feel that to linger with that is ridiculous, whose
only worth is that it hands on to something better
than itself, and is capable of being translated into a
nobler language than its own. So too we shall feel
that if the ancient philosophy had glorious ethical
precepts, yet were they but adumbrations of the truth,
since they wanted, for the most part, that body and
substance which action alone could give them ; as is
plain from unnumbered confessions and complaints on
all sides heard, that the world's physicians had not
healed themselves, much less their patients; as is
plainer still in the colossal character which sin had
assumed* at the time of Christ's appearing, till it
sat as it were incarnate in the person of a Tiberius on
In its two great aspects of lust and cruelty : the passages in proof
of the first may remain unquoted ; but what a picture of the last, this
account of the gladiatorial games and of the manner in which they had
grown ever bloodier, presents ! (Seneca, Ep. 7) : Quid quid ante pug-
natum est, misericordia fuit: mine, omissis nugis, mera homicidia
sunt...Plagis aguntur in vulnera, et mutuos ictus nudis et obviis
pectoribus excipiunt. Intermissum est spectaculum? interim jugu-
lantur homines, ne nihil agatur.
278 LECTURE VIII. [1846.
the throne of the world*. In all this we shall behold
how feeble all the barriers which the world's wisdom
could raise up, to stay the overflowings of the world's
ungodliness and evil-f*.
But to imagine yet a third position ; we may read
these books, not indeed setting them up in our af-
fections against the truths which ought to be dearest
to us, nor on the other hand slighting them, because
not themselves Christian; but failing altogether to
trace in them any relation at all to the great facts of
the spiritual life of man. We may read them, forget-
ting that the meaning of books is to make us under-
stand something else besides books, that we miss their
With only slight exaggeration Seneca compares the aspect of the
world in which he was living to that of a city taken by storm (De
Senef., L 7, c. 27) : Si tibi vitae nostrae vera imago succurret, videberis
tibi videre captse cummaxime civitatis faciem, in qua omisso pudoris
rectique respectu vires in consilio sunt, velut signo ad permiscenda
omnia dato. Non igni non ferro abstinetur ; soluta legibus scelera
sunt, nee religio quidem, quae inter arma hostilia supplices texit, ullum
impedimentum est ruentium in praedam. Hie ex private, hie ex pub-
lico, hie ex profano, hie sacro rapit : hie efFringit, hie transilit : hie
non contentus angusto itinere, ipsa quibus arcetur evertit, et in lucrum
ruina venit. Hie sine caede populatur: hie spolia cruenta manu
gestat : nemo non fert aliquid ex altero. Compare his 95th Epistle.
j- Thus the atrocity of the gladiatorial shews was by heathen
moralists abundantly felt and understood. Cicero indeed makes but a
feeble protest against them (Tusc. Quesst., 1. 2, c. 17) : Crudele gladi-
atorum spectaculum et inhumanum nonnullis videri solet ; et haud
scio an ita sit, ut nunc fit. But Seneca more distinctly (Ep. 95) :
Homo, sacra res, homo jam per lusum et jocum occiditur, et quern
erudiri ad inferenda accipiendaque vulnera nefas erat, is jam nudus
inermisque producitur ; satisque spectaculi in homine, mors est. Cf.
Ep. 7- And Lucian, in a collection of the notable sayings of Demonax,
a Cynic philosopher of the second century, tells of him, that once when
the Athenians were planning a spectacle of the kind, he told them that
they must overthrow the altar of Pity, before they proceeded further
in this matter. Yet with all this it remained for an unlettered Chris-
tian monk to put a stop to these bloody shews.
CONCLUDING LECTURE. 279
significance to us, when they have their end in them-
selves, when they do not hand us on to life and to
action ; when they explain to us no mysteries of our
being, help us in no struggles of our souls, make clear
to us no dealings of our God.
There was a time in our lives, yet a time which
we who are here present should now have left behind
us, when this might have been natural enough, when
it would have been premature to begin to meditate
on the moral problems which these works present, or
to do more than first to master their difficulties, and
those overcome, to walk up and down admiring and
enjoying the strange and wondrous world into which
they had helped to introduce us. But the time is
gone by, when that alone was our task. Further
duties are ours to study that classical antiquity in
the light which our Christian faith and experience
throw back upon it, with an open eye for its moral
good and for its moral evil, with an entire confidence
that in Christ and in his Gospel is given to us the
touchstone which shall enable us to recognize the
sharp and dividing sword which shall enable us uner-
ringly to separate between the evil and the good,
the false and the true.
Let us feel that not by some strange inconsis-
tency, some traditional usage which we will not aban-
don, but cannot defend, it has come to pass that a
literature and philosophy, not Christian but heathen,
hold the place which they do among us, members of
the Church of Christ are at this day contemplated,
as they have been contemplated in time past, by each
wiser and more thoughtful man, as an indispensable
organ for all higher education, necessary instruments
280 LECTURE VIII. [1846.
for the cultivating of the complete humanity *. Let
us feel that this only could have been, inasmuch as
they stand in some real and intimate relation to the
innermost fact of our lives, to our Christian hope a
relation of defect it will often be, yet a relation not
the less, which should not be overlooked or denied.
And these things being so, let us understand that we
fall below our position, we fall short of the purpose
with which these books were placed in our hands,
when we fail to regard them in such a light as this.
And in this light to look at them will not mar nor
hinder that free spontaneous joy in them which in
earlier times may have been ours. We may keep that
earlier delight, and yet, keeping it, may pass on to a
deeper and more meditative emotion. For indeed
with what livelier interest shall we occupy ourselves
with this classical antiquity, when we feel that it is
" The intimate connexion "between the Reformation and the revival
of classical learning, with the zeal and success of the Reformers in pro-
moting this last, all will remember Melancthon's especially, to whom
beside other titles of honour, this of Preceptor Germanise was added.
There is a very interesting letter of Luther's, hi which thanking
a friend, who had sent him a Latin poem which he had composed, and
had at the same time expressed his fears that the cause of Classical
literature would suffer from men's zeal about Theology, Luther replies
that it should not so with his consent: Ego persuasus sum, sine
literarum peritia prorsus stare non posse sinceram theologiam, sicut
hactenus ruentibus et jacentibus literis miserrime et cecidit et jacuit.
Quin video nunquam fuisse insignem factam verbi Dei revelationem,
nisi primo, velut praecursoribus baptistis, viam pararit surgentibus et
florentibus linguis et literis. Plane nihil minus vellem fieri aut com-
mitti in juventute, quam ut poesin et rhetoricen omittant. In ea certe
vota sum ut quam plurimi sint et poetae et rhetores, quod his studiis
videam, sicut nee aliis modis fieri potest, mire aptos fieri homines ad
sacra tarn capessenda, quam dextre et feh'citer tractanda....Quare et te
oro ut et meo (si quid valet) precatu agas apud vestram juventutem,
ut strenue et poetentur et rhetoricentur. (Luther's Briefe, v. 2., p. 313.
J)e Wette's edit.)
CONCLUDING LECTURE. 281
not disconnected with the highest things of our life,
the most solemn questions which can employ us as
baptized men.
How many will be the thoughts and emotions, and
all of them purifying and ennobling, which these
studies, in this spirit pursued, will awaken and cherish
within us ! Thus surely a divine compassion will often-
times stir in our hearts, as with an ear made open by
love, we drink in the voices of the world's deep dis-
quietude, its confessions of an intolerable burden*, its
acknowledgements that if there be nothing prouder,
* In none perhaps so frequent and distinct as in Lucretius. There
is a very interesting lecture in Keble's Prcelectiones, on the witness for
and craving after that which Christianity only can give, that is to he
found by those who know how to look for it, in the reputedly atheistic
work of the great Roman Poet. He dwells on the many passages in
which he expresses his deep dissatisfaction with life, and with all
which life could offer a dissatisfaction which yet was not, like that
of so many, on the score of the fleeting nature of life's pleasures and
the little of them which a man hi his brief space could enjoy but had
its rise rather in a sense that these very pleasures, even in fullest
measure, did never truly satisfy or fill the soul (Preelect. 35) : Campus
hie ferme nobilium est poetarum, ut naenias canant ac querimonias de
vitae flore fragili ac caduco. Habet autem Lucretius noster illud,
ni fallor, proprium ac modo non singulare, quod non tarn breves
ct augustos incuset sevi in terris agendi limites, quam ipsum vitae hujus
statum, vel optimae actae : significet, rem earn unicuique hominum et
fuisse, et fore semper, molestissimo omnium oneri. This is but one of
the many memorable passages of the kind, 3. 1016 :
Deinde animi ingratam naturam pascere semper,
Atque explere bonis rebus, satiareque nunquam,
Quod faciunt nobis annorum tempora, circum
Cum redeunt, foetusque ferunt, variosque labores,
Nee tamen explemur vita'i fructibus unquam;
Hoc, ut opinor, id est SEVO florente puellas
Quod memorant, laticem pertusum congerere in vas,
Quod tamen expleri nulla ratione potestur.
Compare 3. 10G6 1097.
282 LECTURE VIII. [1846.
so also there is nothing more miserable, than man *.
And these we shall not go far without meeting : for
however the prevailing tone of that heathen world
may be lightsome and gay, a summons to enjoy the
present, to pluck the roses of life ere they wither, yet
if only we listen aright, we may detect that in its
laughter there is heaviness ; and oftentimes that laugh-
ter is followed by a sigh drawn from deeps of the
heart far deeper than those where its smiles were
born-f*. Surely we shall find in these cries of a con-
stant unrest, a thousand confirmations of his word,
who, heathen as he was, yet likened man in his sepa-
ration from God, to a child torn from its mother's
arms, and which nowhere could be well, till it was
given back to those arms once morej.
Again, as we acquaint ourselves with the lamenta-
tions of mourners for their dead, lamentations so deep
and so despairing, as to explain to us all the meaning
of that sorrowing without hope, which by the apostle
is attributed to the heathen ; as we hear too the
* Pliny (H. N., 1. 2, c. 5) : Nee miserius quidquam homine, nee
superbius.
t Compare Herodotus, 1. 7, c. 46; Iliad, 17. 446; Odyss., 18. 129;
Lucretius, 5. 222; Moschus, Idyll., 3. 106; Sophocles, (Edipus Col, 1225 ;
Virgil, Georg., 3. 66. There is a striking collection of passages in
which the vanity, the sorrow, the hurden of life, are acknowledged, in
Plutarch's Consol. ad Apollon.
i Dio Chrysostom, Orat. 12, p. 405, ed. Reiske.
How affecting a picture does Augustine give of what his feelings
were, when, in the time during which he was still moving in the
element of heathen life, the friend of his soul was taken from him
(Conf., 1. 4, c. 4) : Quo dolore contenebratum est cor rneum; et quid-
quid aspiciebam, mors erat. Et erat milii patria supplicium, et paterna
domus mira infelicitas : et quidquid cum illo communicaveram, sine
illo in cruciatum immanem verterat. Expetebant eum undique oculi
mei, et non dabatur mihi ; et oderam omnia, quia non haberent eum,
CONCLUDING LECTURE. 283
wretched consolations of miserable comforters, the
slight palliations of sharpest sorrows, which were all
that, with all their kindness, they could suggest, we
shall know how to prize the oil and wine, the strong
consolations which are stored in the Gospel for each
bruised and smitten heart.
Or a compassion profounder yet will stir within us,
as the voices reach us, which proclaim that the very
citadel of hope was lost, voices of an utter uncertainty
about all things, and these coming from some of the
earth's noblest spirits, who asked of themselves, and
could give no satisfying answer to their own question,
whether there was indeed a God governing in right-
eousness*, or whether all was not given over to the
blindest chance whether they who did his will were
a care to Him ; whether they survived the grave, and
if there were indeed any future and happy seats re-
served for the names of the just.
And even that of impure which we shall encounter,
as we must encounter it, there, proving, as it often has
done, fuel of dark fires in unholy hearts, setting them
as with sparks of hell in a blaze, it shall not be to us,
nee mihi jam dicere poterant : Ecce veniet, sicut cum viveret, quando
absens erat. Factus eram ipse mihi magna quaestio, et interrogabam
animam meam, quare tristis esset, et quare conturbaret me valde ; et
nihil noverat respondere mihi. Et si dicebam : Spera in Deum, juste
non obtemperabat ; quia verior erat et melior homo quern carissimum
amiserat, quam phantasma in quod sperare jubebatur. Solus fletus
erat dulcis mihi, et successerat amico meo in deliciis animi mei.
* The reader will remember the way in which the De Naturd De-
orum concludes, and the entire indecision in which all is left. Pliny
(H. N., 1. 2, c. 5) is more explicit yet in his open confession of an utter
scepticism in any moral government of the world : Irridendum vero
agere curam rerum humanarum illud quidquid est summum. Anne
tarn tristi multiplicique ministcrio non pollui credamus dubitemusve ?
Cf. Lucian's Jupiter Tragcedus, c. 17.
284 LECTURE VIII. [1846.
who go not to seek it, who unwillingly encounter it,
this incentive and provocative to evil. Rather shall
this impure itself conspire to the same ends with all
else which there we meet. It shall make us feel, in
its light we shall more plainly see, what hideous sores
there were to be healed, how deep a corruption to be
subdued, when men could thus glory in their shame,
and some comparatively pure in their lives, felt that
in their works it was not merely so permitted, but so
expected, that they should write*. And intruding, as
often that unholy does, among the fairest creations of
genius, rising up like a plague-spot upon their fore-
heads, who were among the most gifted of their age
and nation, it shall teach us a solemn lesson, even this
how much of moral insensibility may co-exist with
highest capacities of intellect how little the sense of
beauty by itself avails to preserve purity of heart,
how needful it is that hearts should be in better
guardianship than this, how the highest of this
earth's yields us no security against the lowest ; it
shall teach us that if there are pinnacles of heaven
above every man, and that in him which prompts him
to ascend them, so also are there abysses of sensuality
yawning beneath his feet, and that in him which
tempts him to engulph himself in these f.
See the elder Pliny, Epist., 1. 4, ep. 14 ; 1.5, ep. 3.
t I borrow these remarkable words from the answer of one, whose
position gave him full right to speak, to the proposal for publishing an
expurgated edition of the Classics for the use of schools. Rather, he
says, he would have the works as the authors wrote them ; and en-
countering with his pupils any of those passages which, in such an
edition, would have been omitted, he would make them the occasion
of some such comment as the following : " This lesson they teach you,
that refinement of intellect will not purify the heart ; that great mental
endowments may co-exist with great moral insensibility ; that vigour
CONCLUDING LECTURE. 285
Nor will this be all; there will mingle in these
studies thoughts and feelings of a liveliest thankful-
ness to God, as amid the great shipwreck of the Gen-
tile world, we recognize the planks by which one and
another attained as we trust safely, and through the
mercy of a Saviour whom as yet he did not know, to
the shore of everlasting life thankfulness mingled, it
may oftentimes be, with something of an wholesome
shame to ourselves, as we contemplate the faithful-
ness and fealty to the good and true, which even in
the world's darkest hour have been shewn by them,
whose knowledge was so little, and whose advantages
so few, as compared with our own. And perhaps it
of understanding and delicacy of taste will not reform the world. You
see that these have been tried and found wanting. Something more is
needed. You may conclude also that the depravity of an age and
country was great, in which those who were the most distinguished
by their intellectual endowments and literary culture, thought them-
selves not only licensed, but expected thus to write. It follows that you
have in these passages an evidence of the divine power and purity
of that influence which did what all the wisdom of the world could
never do. It is Christianity, and it alone, which has really expurgated
the literature, not only of Greece and Rome, but of the civilized
world. These passages are the trophies of the triumphs of Christian-
ity. They shew us, as in a triumphal procession, what fearful enemies
it has conquered. Without them you might have asked what social
good has the Gospel done ? What moral blessings have we derived
from it ? These passages forbid, they answer, those questions. They
remind you from what, and into what you have been delivered, and
by Whom. Therefore, had we expunged them, we should have
diminished the strength and glory of that very cause which we desire
to serve. Being what they are, I fear not that you should pervert
them to an improper use. God forbid that you should dwell on them
with any other feelings than those of sorrow mingled with thankful-
ness. Horace, had he lived when you do, would have been a Christian,
and had he been a Christian, he would not have written thus ; but if
you who are Christians, love to read, what he, had he been one, would
have loathed to write, you, who ought to Christianise him, heathenise
yourselves."
286 LECTURE VIII. [1846-
shall seem to us then, as if that Star in the natural
heavens which guided those Eastern Sages from their
distant home, was but the symbol of many a star
which twinkled in the world's mystical night, but
which yet, being faithfully followed, availed to lead
humble and devout hearts from far off regions of
superstition and error, till they knelt beside the
cradle of the Babe of Bethlehem, and saw all their
weary wanderings repaid in a moment, and all their
desires finding a perfect fulfilment in Him.
THE END.
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