HOURS OF THOUGHT 
 
 ON 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES MARTINEAU, LL.D., D.D., 
 
 AUTHOR OF "ENDEAVORS AFTER THE CHRISTIAN LIFE," ETC. 
 
 *"X*I* y'|? T6irov otKcioTepop iirl y>js OVK Ix^t 0cd?. 
 
 DEMOPHILI Sent. Pytha.g. 45. 
 
 Um Gott zu Jtaien, muss man zuerst etwas sein, das Gott haben kann. 
 
 RICHARD ROTHE: Stille Stunden, 189. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS. 
 1876. 
 
 2 -
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE first duty, it has been said, of a retired preacher 
 is to commit to the flames whatever he has prepared 
 for the pulpit, and secure the world against further 
 tedium from his labors. In the face of this canon of 
 clerical duty, I have hesitated to rescue a few fragments 
 from the process of destruction, and let them try for 
 themselves whether their natural life has reached its 
 term. If I have found courage for the experiment, it is 
 chiefly because a previous collection, which thirty years 
 ago I did not expect to reproduce, is apparently more 
 true to the feeling of the present time than to that of 
 the last generation. Those who have spent thought 
 and zeal on the moral movements of their age may 
 naturally dread, as their strength declines and their 
 speed slackens, to be thrown out of the great march 
 which they have long shared; and they may legiti- 
 mately put it to the test, whether they have dropped 
 off into loneliness, or whether their voice is still in har- 
 mony with the tones which meet the future. If the 
 following pages should foster any high impulse in those
 
 iv Preface. 
 
 who have the work of life before them, or shed any 
 light on those who have the sorrows of life behind 
 them, I shall be content not to have withheld it. 
 
 This volume represents, on the whole, a considerably 
 later stage of feeling and experience than the "Endeav- 
 ors after the Christian Life " ; and doubtless bears traces, 
 in parts, of the more recent aspects of religious specu- 
 lation. But essentially the same view of life, the same 
 conception of the order of the world, the same inter- 
 pretation of the Christian mind, will still meet the 
 reader ; for they remain unaffected, so far as I can 
 perceive, by the real discoveries, and are prejudiced 
 only by the philosophical fictions of the last five and 
 twenty years. The new lights of historical criticism 
 certainly change, in no slight degree, our picture of the 
 origin and growth of the Christian religion : but every 
 larger comprehension of the universe only invests the 
 principles of that religion with sublimer truth ; and 
 every added refinement of conscience the more attests 
 their spiritual worth. 
 
 LONDOJI, October 6, 1876.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 i. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Tides of the Spirit 1 
 
 II. 
 
 Seek first the Kingdom of God 1 17 
 
 III. 
 Seek first the Kingdom of God II 31 
 
 IV. 
 The Witness of God with our Spirit 45 
 
 V. 
 The Better Part 59 
 
 VI. 
 Perfection Divine and Human 72 
 
 VII. 
 The Moral Quality of Faith 86 
 
 VIII. 
 Divine Justice and Pardon reconciled 102
 
 vi Contents. 
 
 IX. 
 
 God revealed unto Babes 
 
 X. 
 
 The Messengers of Change . . ...... 127 
 
 XI. 
 Secret Trust ............. -.140 
 
 XH. 
 The Sorrows of Messiah .......... 153 
 
 XIII. 
 The Bread of Life ............ 164 
 
 XIV. 
 The Unknown Paths . . . . ...... 177 
 
 XV. 
 
 The Finite and the Infinite in Human Nature . . 191 
 
 XVI. 
 Time, to Nature, God, and the Soul ...... 203 
 
 XVII. 
 Forgiveness to Love ............ 217 
 
 xvm. 
 
 Life to the Children of the Prophets ...... 229
 
 Contents. vii 
 
 XIX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Godly Man 243 
 
 XX. 
 
 The Inner and Outer Kingdom of God 256 
 
 XXI. 
 Religion in Parable 270 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Neither Man nor Woman in Christ Jesus .... 284 
 
 XXIII. 
 The Powers of Love 297 
 
 XXIV. 
 The Discipline of Darkness 315 
 
 XXV. 
 
 Best in the Lord . 329
 
 HOURS OF THOUGHT. 
 
 I. 
 
 &ty Citos of % Spirti 
 
 LUKE iv. 16. 
 
 "And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up; and as his 
 custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up 
 for to read. ' 
 
 \VE cannot wonder that something in his look, some 
 visible flush of inward life, fastened the eyes of all 
 upon him. For to his human feeling, which could no- 
 where assert a greater right than there, the moment 
 was overcharged with a certain sad intensity. Since 
 last he stood upon that spot, a change had passed upon 
 him : a light, long struggling with the clouds and often 
 drowned in a golden haze of mystery, had cleared itself 
 within him : he was no longer at his own disposal, or 
 free to rest upon the trodden paths; but the sacred 
 dove was ever on the wing before him, and now alighted 
 on the synagogue of Nazareth, and there, where he 
 naturally fell into the attitude of docility, left him to 
 speak the word of supernatural power. Never is it so 
 

 
 2 The Tides of the Spirit. 
 
 hard to follow and trust a higher inspiration, as amid 
 the crowd of customary things ; and in proportion as 
 the heart is tender and gracious, clinging with fibres of 
 reverent affection to the past, is it a sorrowful loyalty 
 that takes us out to anything heyond. If ever Jesus 
 could yield to misgivings of what was committed to 
 him, it would he in that place ; whose threshold he 
 could not reach without passing the cottage and the 
 workshop door, and overtaking the slow steps and bent 
 forms of village elders, and being startled by the re- 
 membered laugh of many a child ; whose walls were 
 written all over with early memories ; where bars of 
 sunshine painted the floor with a meaning not to be 
 erased ; where the voices of familiars whispered round 
 him ; and the venerable features were turned upon him 
 of the Levite who taught him to read the very scroll in 
 his hand ; and he felt the eye of Mary, and knew all 
 the flutter of her heart. There, in presence of those 
 at whose feet he used to sit, there, where he first 
 heard and pondered Israel's hope, and watched a holy 
 light on other faces, not knowing that it was reflected 
 from his own, how could he stand up and draw the' 
 great words of Isaiah upon himself, and say aloud, 
 ' This is the hour,' ' Lo ! it is I.' ? A consciousness 
 less divinely calm must have grown confused under the 
 crossing rays of so many sympathies. But with him 
 the temptation was now passed : he had emerged from 
 the desert that lay between the old life and the new.
 
 The Tides of tfie Spirit. 3 
 
 The very Spirit of God had driven him thither to hear 
 what could be said against itself: pale with fasting, 
 alone by night with his Satan and his God, he had 
 learned the worst; had not only flung the self away, 
 but loosed the detaining hand of custom, and freely 
 gone into the divine captivity. And now, he was no 
 longer his own : his humanity was the organ of a higher 
 Will : no flitting of the Spirit, off and on, it rested 
 with him now ; no stormy skies that often blotted out 
 the stars, but a pure and tranquil look into the infinite. 
 And so, he could bear those native scenes again, for they 
 lay in another light : the hills of Nazareth were trans- 
 figured before him : from all things round the dull and 
 weary aspect had fled, that makes them press with the 
 weight of usage ; and he stood amid the well-known 
 groups, as some immortal friend might return and look 
 in among us here, with unabated love, but with saintly 
 insight into meanings hid from us. 
 
 Lifted then into the full power of the Spirit, with the 
 forces of evil already shrinking before him, whither, as 
 least uncongenial, does he take his heavenly point of 
 view ? To the village synagogue, on the stated day of 
 rest : nothing newer, nothing higher ; but just the place 
 and time which had been sacred to the fathers. The 
 first. thing which he did, under freshest inspiration, was 
 to resume the dear old ways, to fall in with the well- 
 known season, to unroll the same venerable page ; only 
 to find a new moaning in' words that had long carried 
 
 B 2
 
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 <T their rhythm to his heart. What ? had he not risen aljove 
 
 that ? could the dull preachings and the drawling prayers 
 say anything to him ? What charm could he longer 
 feel in these childish Sabbath usages, the decent dress, 
 the restful hours, the flowing together of families aud 
 walking to the house of God in company ? Did not he, 
 above all, live in a constant air of divine communion, 
 and mingle with the eternity where all is consecrate 
 alike ? Do what he might, go wliere he would, walk- 
 ing early on the beach, sitting by the well at noon, or 
 kneeling by night upon the mountain grass, jostled by 
 the city multitudes or borne upon the sea alone, was- 
 he not always with the Father, himself a better sanc- 
 tuary than he could ever find ? What could a nature 
 at that height have to do with any sacred enclosure of 
 space or time ? Yet, " at Nazareth, where he had been 
 brought up, he went, as his custom was, into the syna- 
 gogue on the Sabbath day." 
 
 We are sustained then by the sympathy of the highest 
 inspiration, when we make it our " custom " too, to 
 illuminate in our calendar some holy day, and to raise 
 near every cluster of our dwellings a house where 
 " prayer is wont to be made." Heed not the fastidious 
 critic who tells you that the world has outgrown the 
 church, that the living voice of trust and aspiration 
 shall soon have no response from sorrowing and struggling 
 men. Depend upon it, hisjs the humour of the hour ; 
 and you who keep to the old reverent ways are taking
 
 TJie Tides of tJie Spirit. 5 
 
 sides with the perpetuity of our humanity. Fear not 
 that you have here to do with any perishable work. 
 Crowd the pavement of the church with the aged and 
 the young : make it the favourite store-house of earnest 
 vows and living sacrifice : train its echoes to sweet and 
 holy hymns, that shall blend soul with soul, and carry 
 all to God ; and, thus sanctified, let it stand by night 
 and day a silent witness to the world of invisible and 
 heavenly things. 
 
 Against the Christian habit of seasonal and local 
 worship the truth is often urged, that God is a Spirit, 
 eternal and omniscient, abiding neither in " this moun- 
 tain " nor in that " Jerusalem," and bearing equal rela- 
 tion to every mind and every moment. This truth is 
 drawn aside into two opposite abuses. On the one 
 hand, the mystic would mould himself into accordance 
 with the divine constancy, by spreading the margin of 
 his prayer till it covers the whole of life ; and would let 
 out the imprisoned glory of his highest mood to trans- 
 figure all the years. For him it is too small a thing to 
 be " in the spirit on the Lord's day " : any little Patmos- 
 isle of vision is too limited for him : he must be always 
 at the holiest he can ever be : he must sink his whole 
 footing and himself away in the infinite flood whose 
 perfection has no tides. To pass into a sacred equa- 
 nimity and float evenly along, neither wrapt in chariot 
 of fire, nor blinded with clouds of dust ; to carry about 
 in the heart a heaven that shall steep the commonest
 
 6 The Tides of the Spirit. 
 
 work in stainless colours ; to let labour and rest, youth 
 and age, with all intermittent things, stand for the body 
 and be nothing to the soul, and inwardly live as if no 
 shadows lengthened and no heavens rolled ; is the 
 secret aim of one who loses himself in the spirituality 
 and immensity of God. And this very same truth 
 which urges him to worship always, i.e. as much at one 
 time as at another, is, on the other hand, the plea with 
 the secular temper for specially worshipping never, i.e. 
 as little at one time as at another. How often do you 
 fall in with one who feels himself above the superstition 
 of real prayer ; who is conscious of no personal relations 
 beyond this world ; to whom the whole expression and 
 organism of religion is but a discipline for_social duty, 
 a discipline necessary for the feeble, decorous for the 
 good, but empty for the wise ; who is rather its patron 
 than its disciple, and maintains churches for the world 
 as he keeps a nursery for his children, with as little 
 idea of spending his own adult and earnest life there ; 
 and who looks on times and places of devotion, on the 
 voice of contrition and aspiration, on the swelling hymn, 
 on the impassioned words of psalmist and prophet, and 
 the memorials of a Saviour's sacrifice, as an overwrought 
 provision for sustaining the daily moralities of life. 
 Serving God's will in the constant course of a faithful, 
 manly, kindly career, he is out of his element else- 
 where ; has no burden to lay down, no height to seize : 
 always equal to himself, he wants no reminder, appro-
 
 The Tides of the Spirit. 7 
 
 priates no confession, and receives every ideal demand 
 upon him as flowing water receives falling sparks. And 
 so, he looks down on all special worship as a weakness 
 to which he cannot descend; and, if ever social con- 
 jexion or hereditary ties commit him to the interests of 
 a Christian church, he upholds it for others rather than 
 himself; or else encourages it as a platform of party 
 self-assertion, and is proud of its dedication to his own 
 opinions, instead of humbly offering in it the best that 
 he has, and all that he is, to the real and living God. 
 
 Now what answer can we give to these two men, 
 both apparently resting on a great and sublime truth, 
 the eternal constancy of God ? the one adapting him- 
 self to it by congenial persistency of devotion, the 
 other by ethical steadiness of will. Shall we ask from 
 each of them some little allowance for human infirmity, 
 which cannot hold on by a rule so patient ? Shall we 
 say to the Mystic, ' You must let us down at times 
 from that untenable height of yours : why bid us 
 
 "Wind ourselves too high 
 For mortal man beneath the sky"? 
 
 we are on earth and God in heaven ; and while we are 
 here, our feet must sometimes stroll the easy grass, and 
 the natural darkness hide diviner visions from us ' ? 
 And shall we say to the other, ' You must not expect 
 every one to be as even-minded as yourself, as well 
 able to dispense with the freshening of conscience and
 
 8 The Tides of the Spirit. 
 
 the fervours of faith : the atmosphere of the common 
 human nature is of unstable balance, and so long as it 
 has its belt of tropical heats, you must let its sweeping 
 winds have way ' ? In answering thus, you plead on 
 both hands for a concession to acknowledged weakness ; 
 and you treat just the opposite things as weakness in 
 the two cases, making humble excuse, first, for ever 
 touching the earth, and then, for ever springing towards 
 heaven ; and, in both instances, apologising for alterna- 
 tions of mood as something humiliating but inevitable, 
 needing the tender mercy of Reason and out of harmony 
 with the reality of God. These feeble self-contradic- 
 tions I venture to leave behind, and to advance at once 
 to a firmer position. In the Occasionalism of piety, I 
 see not its shame, but its distinctive glory ; and would 
 lay stress on the intermittcncy of the devout affections, 
 as the sign, not of poverty or weakness, but specifically 
 of their grandeur in themselves, and their accurate 
 accordance with what is highest in God's realities. 
 
 For, whether you stay at home, and look in upon 
 the composition of our own nature ; or go out into 
 the universe and Providence of God, you will find this 
 law : that, of his agencies and manifestations, it is 
 the lowest that are least mutable, and most remain the 
 same from first to last ; whilst the highest have ever 
 a tidal ebb and flow, moving in waves of time, and 
 surprising hidden inlets of space with their flood. 
 
 In our bodily constitution itself this law already
 
 The Tides of the Spirit. 9 
 
 begins to leave its trace. Two systems of parts and 
 offices co-exist, we are told, in the human frame ; one 
 comprising the group of organs and functions which 
 we have in common with the vegetable world, and by 
 which, like the plants, we breathe, and take and use 
 our nourishment, and throb with the sap of strength, 
 and grow; the other including the additional endow- 
 ments of an animated organism, the instruments by 
 which we move, and perceive, and feel. By the organic 
 life we vegetate ; by the animal life we suffer and we 
 act. And in accordance with their respective ranks, the 
 former and lower never ceases or remits from birth to 
 death ; the beating heart, the heaving breast, and all 
 the silent chemistries, persevering by night and day, 
 whether half seen beneath the bloom of infancy, or 
 shut up beneath the lines of age ; while the latter and 
 higher subsists by intermission, springs into action, 
 falls back into sleep ; and even with the young child's 
 eye, so bold and loving to the light, the lids droop and 
 enforce a shade ; and the quick limbs collapse and are 
 flung upon the bed of nature till the spent tide returns. 
 Rise a step higher in our nature, and the intermittent 
 pulsation of the finer energies becomes more marked. 
 Mind is more fitful than strength, less under steady 
 control of the will, faster and further in its ebb, in pro- 
 portion as it is fuller and grander in its flood. The 
 day-labourer with his limbs can bear longer hours than 
 the .man of letters with his pen ; and can produce more
 
 10 The. Tides of the Spirit, 
 
 even work. And precisely as the faculties which he 
 tasks are above the level of intellectual routine, is the 
 thinker dependent on moods which he cannot command 
 or prolong : to learn, to criticize, to judge, to arrange, 
 being usually in his power ; but to combine, to discover, 
 to create, being the free gift of happy moments not 
 his own. Is he a compiler and fabricator of mental 
 products ? his process, like any other manufacture, may 
 go on, wherever the machinery of industry is set in 
 motion. Is he poet or inventor ? then he seems to be 
 the organ of another will, and to be now lifted into 
 clear achievement, now sunk into deep humiliation. 
 At times, a murky atmosphere appears to close in upon 
 his soul and damp down its very flame to smoke ; and 
 all his faithfulness and patience are unavailing to 
 perforate the gloom, and end only in the dripping of 
 the sad rain. At another time he seems to be planted 
 high in a pure and lustrous air ; to look on nothing 
 that does not shine with a self-light : the quick stream- 
 ing thoughts flow upon him like a morning wind ; 
 every darkening cloud swims off to the far horizon and 
 melts into bars of indigo and gold : turn his inter- 
 preting eye where he will, he mingles with the mean- 
 ings of things ; and his feet are on the mountains, and 
 his heart with God. 
 
 And who will venture to say that the highest insight 
 of the spirit is even half as constant as the highest 
 action of the mind ? Ask the saintliest men and women
 
 The Tides of the Spirit. 1 1 
 
 of tliis world, whether their holy watch was continuous, 
 and their faith and love as reliable as their thought ; 
 and they will tell you how long, even when they went 
 up to be with the Saviour on the mount, have been the 
 slumbers of unconsciousness, compared with the price- 
 less instants when they were awake and beheld his 
 glory. In every earnest life, there are weary flats to 
 tread, with the heavens out of sight, no sun, no moon, 
 and not a tint of light upon the path below ; when 
 the only guidance is the faith of brighter hours, and 
 the secret Hand we are too numb and dark to feel. 
 But to the meek and faithful it is not always so. Now 
 and then, something touches the dull dream of sense 
 and custom, and the desolation vanishes away : the 
 spirit leaves its witness with us : the divine realities 
 come up from the past and straightway enter the 
 present : the ear into which we poured our prayer is 
 not deaf; the infinite eye to which we turned is not 
 blind, but looks in with answering mercy on us. The 
 mystery of life and the grievousness of death are gone : 
 we know now the little from the great, the transient 
 from the eternal : we can possess our souls in patience ; 
 and neither the waving palms and scattered flowers of 
 triumph can elate us, nor the weight of any cross 
 appear too hard to bear. Tell me not that these undu- 
 lations of the soul are the mere instability of enthusiasm 
 and infirmity. Are they not found characteristically in 
 the greatest and deepest men, Augustine, Tauler,
 
 1 2 The Tides of the Spirit. 
 
 Luther ? Nay, did not the Son of God himself, the 
 very type of our humanity, experience them more than 
 all ? Did he not quit the daily path, now for a Trans- 
 figuration, and now for a Gethsemane ? did not his 
 voice hurst into the exclamation, ' I beheld Satan as 
 lightning fall from heaven,' yet also confess, ' Now is 
 my soul troubled ' ? And had he not his hours on the 
 mountain all night ? and what, think you, passed 
 beneath those stars ? Ah no ! those intermittent 
 movements are the sign of divine gifts, not of human 
 weakness. God has_so__arranged the chronometry of 
 our spirits that there shall bo thousands of silent 
 moments between the striking hours. 
 
 Nor is it in personal experience alone that we read 
 this law. When we pass out of ourselves, and look 
 abroad over the Providence of God in nature and in 
 history, the same truth appears again. How it may be 
 with God in his own essence, I dare not presume to 
 think. He is the high and holy One who inhabiteth 
 eternity ; and if you will say of him those awful and 
 mysterious things that flow from the conception of 
 Infinitude, that in him there is no succession, no 
 transition, no emotion, that he never comes and goes, 
 is neither here nor there, that he is the stationary 
 Now, abiding still, with nothing past and nothing future ; 
 I hold my peace, and breathe no word against you. 
 But this I know, and in this I rather rest : whatever 
 he may be in himself, his manifestations to us do not
 
 The Tides of the Spirit. 1 3 
 
 lie still before us in the sleep of a frozen sea : they 
 break oat of this motionless eternity : they sweep in 
 mighty tides of nature and of history, with flux and 
 reflux : they are alive with shifting streaks of light 
 and gloom ; and have the changing voice of many 
 waters. And the clearer and more spiritual they are, 
 the more marked is this fluctuating character ; and 
 they affect us, not as the dead of noon or the dead ol' 
 night, but as the quick-flushing morning or the tendei 
 pulses of the northern lights. 
 
 God, you say, is eternal and immutable. II by this 
 you mean that there never was a time, and nowhere is 
 a place, empty of his agency, it is most true. But if 
 you mean that his agency is everywhere and always 
 equal, that it cannot be encountered more or less, 
 that it is the same in the life of an angel and in the 
 gravitation of a stone, that there is for us no nearer 
 to him and no further from him, you give expression, 
 I believe, to the largest falsehood that can be framed. 
 
 Where is it that we find the trace and illustration 
 of the constancy of God ? To what realm does youi 
 thought fly, when you would conceive his unchangeable 
 Infinitude ? You pass out into the field of Space, and 
 carry with you the amplest measure of imaginable 
 Time : you take leave of this historic earth, as of a 
 village life, and move among the kosmic cycles on 
 whose dial the little index of humanity can scarce play 
 the part of second's hand : you step from star to star,
 
 14 The Tides of the Spirit. 
 
 and go to meet half-way the rays that have heen 
 travelling to you for a million years. And as you 
 observe how orderly, how punctual, how balanced, how 
 silent of its beginning, how unhinting of an end, that 
 night-scene is, you adore indeed Him " that bringeth out 
 this host by number " ; but you return with a cold 
 shudder from so fixed a face of God, and take refuge 
 again in the green valleys of a more changing and 
 ephemeral world. The great physical elements and 
 laws which, from their inexorable regularity and 
 gigantic sweep, stand before our thought as emblems 
 of the Divine unchangeableness, are the largest, but also 
 the lowest of God's manifestations. Speaking of his 
 majesty, they are dumb respecting his character ; or, 
 at best, if they declare his faithfulness, they pronounce 
 it stern as Fate, and drive into recoil the advances of 
 affection. 
 
 But let us not fear. That immensity takes us the 
 very furthest from him that we can go. The worlds he 
 has made out of nothing ; but man out of himself: the 
 one, accordingly, he has put under necessity ; the other 
 he draws with cords of love. In the one, his word is 
 pledged and bound ; with the other, his Spirit still lives 
 free. Nature is only his fabric, and is not like him ; 
 Man is his child, and is susceptible of his image. The 
 human characteristics must for ever stand with us 
 as, out of all that we can think, the very likest to 
 him; and these are not a perpetual and unrelenting
 
 TJic Tides of the Spirit. 15 
 
 mechanism ; but the thinking Reason, the aspiring 
 Conscience, the elective Will, the gentle and self-sacri- 
 ficing Affection. And when these speak to our hearts 
 as his witnesses, we have our eye upon a more inter- 
 mittent as well as a higher glory, than can be found 
 in the great physical laws : for, as the Spirit bloweth 
 where it listeth, the life of men and angels has at once 
 a freer and diviner movement than the travels of a sun- 
 beam or the revolution of a star. Nor is it in all men, 
 or in the whole of human history, that it is given us to 
 trace the impress of his Mind. However true it is that 
 there is no private heart to which he is quite strange, 
 yet it is not in all alike that the sanctities of his agency 
 visibly appear. We see and own him in proportion to 
 the nobleness and beauty of the lives which he inspires ; 
 and it is only now and then, at the great crises of 
 society, that the common lavel of the human self and 
 the finite understanding is transcended, and sages, 
 prophets, saints rise above their nature and become the 
 organs of a Spirit not their own. I presume not to 
 say hoiv it is God takes up his abode with us ; where, 
 across the melting colours the precise line should be 
 drawn that divides the human from the divine. But 
 wherever he so dwells with the soul as to impart his 
 own character, and lift before our eye the beauty of 
 holiness, it is his supreme expression, as it is his 
 rarest. Accordingly it is this which he selects for the 
 supernatural revelation of himself which stands unique,
 
 1 6 The Tides of the Spirit. 
 
 " the Word made flesh," the divine life humanised, 
 and the human glorified, the blending of both in 
 communion and reconciliation. In that sacrifice cul- 
 minate the intermittent visitations of God : it was not 
 tidal only : it is once for all ; and as it was supreme, it 
 was solitary too. As all the special goodness, grace, 
 and truth of historic men give pauses of blessed rest, 
 and are not the week-day, but the sabbath of the world ; 
 so is the divine perfectness of Christ the sabbath of 
 sabbaths, the solemn jubilee of our humanity. 
 
 Be assured then that in your ancient usages of 
 seasonal and local worship, in seeking here to meet 
 at intervals the high tides of God's spirit, you are in 
 harmony with his sublimest Providence, with a law 
 of variation transcending any physical uniformity over 
 which it sweeps. Eeverence the holy custom, shelter 
 from heedless slight the living impulse, that week by 
 week calls you hither to remember, to aspire, to pray. 
 Bring only the pure, lowly, childlike heart, tender to 
 everything except the sins you must confess, full of 
 hope for the world and trust in God; spread out an 
 eager and a gentle spirit for the dropping of fruitful 
 seeds from Holy "Writ and saintly hymn ; freshen the 
 fading vow of self-sacrificing love ; and your worship 
 here will not only resemble his who, in fulness of the 
 Spirit, " went, as his custom was, into the synagogue 
 on the sabbath day," but prepare for a higher com- 
 munion, where " your life is hid with him in God."
 
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 MATT. vi. 33. 
 
 ''Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all 
 these things sball be added unto you." 
 
 THOUGH the mountain slope may still be found on 
 which these words were uttered, the figure of Jesus, as 
 he sat on a basaltic block and taught, is seen by us 
 only across the chasm in which eighteen centuries are 
 sunk : the diminished picture rises in the distance, 
 like a sunny knoll swelling out of a sea of darkness ; 
 "and the voice reaches us, like the intonations, rather 
 seen than heard, of a vision or a dream. Had we been 
 on the other side of the separating gulf, and mingled 
 with the peasant audience, and pressed the actual grass 
 which is now but a verdure of our thought ; had we felt 
 the upland breath of that autumn evening, on which 
 the great Teacher's fervent accents rose or died away ; 
 had we seen the lengthening shadows flung from that
 
 1 8 Seek first the Kingdom of God. 
 
 height upon the lake below, bisecting its blue waters, 
 and creeping towards the white sails, the shelving 
 beach, the lighted rocks, of the remoter shore ; had 
 we marked the eye of Jesus invited by the note of 
 birds wheeling overhead, and caught his instant words, 
 "Behold the fowls of the air;" or, as he pointed to 
 the pastures brilliant with their golden arnaryllis, heard 
 his praise of the lilies that toil not ; we should have 
 owned that the heaven above was less deep in beauty 
 than the divine soul before us : ashamed of our mean 
 cares under the Providence, he interpreted, we should 
 have filled our evening with truth and trust inspired 
 from him : we should have felt that we had been with 
 one who stood alone among the sons of God ; and who 
 rose above all earthly spirits, as the snowy peak of 
 Lebanon, now crimson with the sunken sun, towered 
 above the dark world below. Who can wonder, if many 
 a loving Mary, many an ardent Peter, many a truc- 
 soulcd John, took the vow from that hour, to " seek 
 first the kingdom of God," and believe that " all other 
 things would be added unto them " ? 
 
 We receive these words, however, amid a scene quite 
 different ; and it is well if their truth and beauty, felt 
 as they look up at us from the page of Scripture, do 
 not cease to live as realities in our conscience, and 
 become ideal and historical with the time that gave 
 them birth. Does this ranking of human aims, first 
 spiritual good, then temporal necessities, describe the
 
 Seek first the Kingdom of God. 19 
 
 actual order of our prevalent pursuits, or even the 
 arrangement of our habitual convictions ? Carry the 
 precept in your memory, as you walk the city, musing 
 on the contents of that hum of voices. Take it to the 
 dock side, as you listen to the roll of traffic, and think 
 of the history of all its wealth. Eecall it in the mill, 
 as you. reflect to what end it is that all the giant 
 mechanism heaves and whirls incessantly. If all this, 
 it may well occur to you, is just for the things that are 
 " added unto " men with scarce a thought of theirs, 
 how transcendently strenuous must be their primary 
 pursuit, to which this is but a trustful leisure ! Assum- 
 ing this scene, with all its bewildering intensity, as a 
 sample of their indifference, what must be the measure 
 of their holy zeal ! Alas ! you well know that those 
 burning aspirations in reserve do not exist ; that the 
 stir around about you belongs, not to the secondary, but 
 to the chief business, of men ; to the ends that rule, 
 not to those that serve, in human life ; and that far 
 from being here amid its cooler temperature, you stand 
 In the very focus of its most fervid heats. Nay, you 
 will perhaps think, that it not only is so, but really 
 oiifjht to be so ; that, after all, man's first great struggle 
 must be to maintain his footing upon this world ; that 
 the means of life cannot but take precedence of the 
 rules of living ; that the Christian law of trust, though 
 quite in place in the Sermon on the Mount, is positively 
 too romantic for the warehouse and the street. Men 
 
 c 2
 
 2O Seek first the Kingdom of God. 
 
 must be allowed to make sure of physical support ; and 
 then will he time enough to look after their spiritual 
 nature : let them " seek first " what they are to eat and 
 drink ; and, this once secured, the kingdom of God may 
 be " added unto " it. 
 
 This style of sentiment is not likely to appear less 
 reasonable, when you turn to those who, from horror at 
 its irreligion, have fled from the world which it governs, 
 and resolved to live out a sincere Christianity, in abdica- 
 tion of all the pursuits of human appetite and affection. 
 Far up in Alpine heights, or in cloistered silence in 
 the heart of cities, you may find fraternities and sister- 
 hoods, renouncing everything except the kingdom of 
 God, aspiring to it by the path of a holy austerity, and 
 submitting cheerfully to a self-crucifixion of every affec- 
 tion below the standard of an angelic sanctity. But 
 this attempt at entire dedication to Heaven produces a 
 form of character which is far from satisfying our con- 
 ception of a Christian symmetry of soul. Between 
 fear of the abyss and aspiration to the skies, the blessed 
 earth, our appointed place that lies in the midst, is too 
 lightly touched, or even contemptuously disowned : the 
 quest of God is too like a heartless flight from man ; 
 and it would be strange if the law of Christ, the 
 friend of publicans and sinners, were suited only to 
 the exceptional case of the saintly recluse, and incapable 
 of being acted out by us face to face, amid the actual 
 throng and press of life, without flight from our tempta-
 
 Seek first the Kingdom of God. 2 1 
 
 tions, or suicide of our nature. Christianity no doubt 
 would be a blessed thing, if it merely snatched a noble 
 few by diviner attractions from a world heavy with 
 incurable corruption, and drew them into its sanctuary 
 with the awful invitation, " Ephraim is joined with idols, 
 let him alone." But there is no true reflection of its 
 great Author's spirit, till the Church and the World are 
 not two, but one, the inner and the outer courts of 
 the same earnest worship ; till the evil that is abroad 
 is not despaired of but confronted and assailed, and 
 disciples have the heart to say, " This earth is by no 
 means Satan's, but wholly God's ; come, let us chase 
 away these demons of darkness, and win it back for 
 him ; " till religion, instead of shrinking within the 
 altar rails, and lighting there a lonely lamp of incense, 
 can turn its radiant face upon the people, penetrate 
 their open life with its flash, and shatter and spoil the 
 false idols of their hearts, and in all things reconcile 
 and fuse together the human and the holy. 
 
 But how can this be, you will say ? what means does 
 Christianity afford of blending the secular and spiritual 
 extremes of character, and, by union of these opposites, 
 completing the healthful circuit of our moral power ? 
 Hitherto it seems to have kept them wider apart than 
 ever ; and while the minds at either end appear to have 
 some force of Reason, it is in the one case Reason 
 degraded into too gross a Sense, in the other raised to 
 too ethereal a Sanctity.
 
 2 2 5V/ _/;'.?/ /// Kingdom of God. 
 
 There is no juster complaint against human exaggera- 
 tion than this. And, strange as it may seem, the error 
 of the two parties, however contrasted in result, is one 
 and the same. They hoth feel, what the language of 
 Jesus emphatically states, that there is some sort of 
 opposition between the living for worldly and living for 
 spiritual good. But they altogether mistake the nature 
 of this opposition. They fancy it to consist in this; 
 that the two orders of pursuit have quite different 
 spheres of work ; that what the secular man docs, the 
 religious man must avoid ; that the quest of temporal 
 advantages is one kind of business, tasking our industry 
 with an appropriate set of occupations ; the quest of 
 heavenly sanctity another kind of business, prescribing 
 occupations almost perfectly distinct. Accordingly there 
 are employments which this pernicious moral super- 
 stition has branded with an equivocal mark of irreligion ; 
 and other employments which are supposed to constitute 
 the substance of the true Christian obedience. The 
 provision and government of house and home, the daily 
 meal, the social hour of recreation or of mirth ; the 
 transaction of private business, or the control of public 
 affairs ; the enlargement of knowledge, the practice of 
 art, the pursuit of truth; in short, all the charac- 
 teristic engagements of the citizen, the merchant, the 
 politician, the student, are conceived to lie upon the 
 secular side of human life, and to constitute our tempta- 
 tions to evil rather than our opportunities for good. On
 
 Seek first the Kingdom of God. 23 
 
 the other hand, works of charity to the needy, and 
 visits of conversion to the guilty; the exercises of 
 private devotion and of public prayer ; the contem- 
 plation of saintly examples, and the accumulation of 
 scriptural impressions and unearthly thoughts ; direct 
 and broad conversation about things invisible, and 
 comparisons of inward experience, are supposed to 
 constitute the religious staple of life, from which every 
 distraction is a humiliating concession to the low and 
 shameful necessities of a fallen nature. Hence, the 
 popular conception of Heaven wholly excludes all idea 
 of activity and thought, and admits nothing but a per- 
 petuity of positive worship. Hence too, when a man 
 of this narrow religion becomes entangled in affairs of 
 the world, he carries into them no clear calm feeling of 
 sacred obligation, to guide him in the path of noble 
 uprightness ; but rather a conscience half flurried to 
 find himself there at all, amid things too profane to 
 come within his province of duties : his faith can make 
 nothing of such sinful materials, except resolve to 
 escape from them as fast as it can ; and need I say, that 
 one who, with this feeling, gets, with no small stake at 
 issue, into an unmanageable Devil's world, is very apt 
 to let Satan have his own way, in despair of battling 
 with him on his own ground ? And hence, finally, he 
 who with such belief, is determined never to capitulate, 
 has no resource but the hermit's ; to quit the scene of 
 human energy and abandon the cares for subsistence,
 
 24 Seek first the Kingdom of God. 
 
 and going about some diviner work, expect the ravens 
 to come and feed him, while he sits still. This he 
 calls a trust in Providence ; though it is manifestly a 
 contempt of the established course of Providence, and 
 a trust only in that which would directly violate it. 
 He calls it a quest of the kingdom of God ; though it 
 is a flight from the realm of allotted duty, and a 
 renounced allegiance of natural obligations. He calls 
 it an emancipation from all thought of the morrow ; 
 yet it is plainly the surest way of filling the mind with 
 real anxiety about " the meat that perisheth," and of 
 engaging the whole religious affections, as in a game- 
 ster's play, in the precarious question of its failure or 
 supply. 
 
 In fact, the godless lover of gain, and the gainless 
 lover of God are fanatics both, taking hold of the oppo- 
 site ends of the same falsehood. And the truth which 
 suffices to rebuke them both, is this ; that the kingdom 
 of God is not a business, set up in rivalry with worldly 
 business; but a divine law regulating, and a divine 
 temper pervading, the pursuits of worldly business. 
 It does not change the materials, but the form and 
 spirit, of our life. It leaves our outward occupations 
 essentially what they were, and opens to us still the 
 domestic hearth, the public council, the field, the city, 
 and the ocean, as the sphere of all our work : but it 
 makes us conscious of the different orders of desire 
 and affection that may guide us through all these ; the
 
 Seek first the Kingdom of God. 25 
 
 brutal appetencies, the shrewd selfishness, the instinc- 
 tive kindliness, the sense of justice, the love of goodness, 
 the aspiration after the perfectness of God, with which 
 the very same employments may be debased or conse- 
 crated. The feeling of divine duty is not a new faculty 
 of action added to our mind, having a distinct set of 
 objects indifferent to us before : all the impulsive 
 forces that send us on to our theatre and take us to 
 our work are instinctive gifts of nature, neither more 
 nor fewer in the sinner or saint. But when devout 
 Conscience finds entrance among them, it sets them in 
 the relative order of their ranks ; forbids the scramble 
 of eager and unsettled claims ; commands lazy appetite, 
 already seated at the feast, to get up and gird itself and 
 serve ; sends impudent ambition to take the lowest 
 place ; and says to truthful love driven to the door, 
 " Friend, come up higher." It reveals to us the 
 comparative worth and authority of the several sources 
 of action within us : it is simply, indeed, as the word 
 denotes, the consciousness of this ; and is therefore not 
 properly a separate principle of the soul, but the 
 inherent knowledge of their own place in the scale of 
 excellence which attends the exercise of all our springs 
 of action. It is not a power, but a perception, and 
 performs a function judicial, not executive. No man, 
 accordingly, can with any precision be said to act from 
 conscience : he acts from some primitive instinct or 
 acquired affection : but two of these may at the same
 
 26 Seek first the Kingdom of God. 
 
 instant be candidates for the possession of his Will ; 
 and when he puts aside the one which he knows to be 
 the meaner, and obeys the other because he feels it to 
 be the nobler, we signify the fact by the loose phrase, 
 he acts from conscience. It is plain here that if there 
 were no natural springs of volition, Conscience, left 
 alone, would be wholly unproductive : it would be in 
 possession of a sinecure, and its occupation would be 
 gone. And what we thus say of Conscience, we say 
 of the kingdom of God ; for I know of no religion, 
 natural or revealed, which is not a development of this 
 divine element in our souls ; an opening before it, by 
 the apparition of some new greatness, of a higher and 
 yet a higher than even its highest was before ; a total 
 passing away of worship into infinitude ; and a sense of 
 the sleepless watch of the Holiest around the path of 
 life. 
 
 From this view of our nature it follows that spiritual 
 good is not a new object given us by our religion, but 
 only the regulated and proportioned pursuit of natural 
 good, in entire deference to the relative excellence of its 
 several kinds. Original instinct is altogether blind 
 except to its own particular object, which it pursues as 
 if it were the universe : hunger seizes upon food, anger 
 strikes an obstacle, pity flies to suffering, with unre- 
 flecting impulse, seeing nothing else, and making no 
 more estimate of its own end than the migratory bird 
 of the seasons whose changes it obeys. Each instinct
 
 Seek first the Kingdom of God. 2 7 
 
 is ^sufficient for its own end, and for nothing more; 
 lights our way and impels our activity, to its appro- 
 priate good, wholly regardless of the existence of any 
 other ; nothing can he added to it, nothing can he taken 
 from it, without impairing its perfection, and turning it 
 from an element of health into a seat of disease. Man, 
 moreover, not only has instincts, hut knows them, and 
 is able so to compare them as to perceive which is 
 higher, which lower : he not only knoivs them, but 
 rules them, not letting each take its chance of becoming 
 uppermost, but exercising preference among them, 
 according to the divine right and rank of each. As this 
 perception of relative worth among the springs of 
 conduct is what we mean by Conscience, so the con- 
 sequent power of practical choice among them is what 
 we mean by Will. And spiritual good is nothing but 
 the perfect consonance between these two : it exists 
 where the moral vision is clear and wide, the moral 
 volition quick and strong, and what the one discerns, 
 the other executes. The proper and sole -appointed 
 function of the "Will is, not to form a partnership with 
 any instinct, and add itself on as a fresh energy to its 
 pursuit ; not to rise up in rivalry to instinct, and by 
 counterpoise subtract something from its force; but, 
 letting the quantities of our nature alone, to guide us 
 by its qualities; to make a true choice among the 
 natural principles, when two or more are knocking at 
 the gate of entrance to our life.
 
 28 Seek first the Kingdom of Cod. 
 
 In what then consists the opposition between the 
 pursuit of natural and the pursuit of spiritual good ? 
 the desire of physical supplies, and the aspiration after 
 the kingdom of God ? It lies in this : He who seeks 
 after " what he shall eat and what he shall drink " is 
 one whose chief conscious aim is to get suck things: 
 He who seeks first " the kingdom of God " is one whose 
 chief conscious aim is not to get them unworthily. 
 The one throws his whole reflective and directing 
 powers into the work of instinct, madly enhancing, yet 
 intellectually guiding, its intensity; infuriating the 
 chase, yet giving it precision ; and turning the innocent 
 tendency of the creature, into the clever passion of the 
 demon. The other applies his thoughtfulness to the 
 control of his instincts, and the establishment among 
 them of the true divine subordination of the lower to 
 the higher. He never quits the helm to feed the fire ; 
 to steer the good ship, and not to double the tension of 
 the steam, is the allotted office of his skill. He knows 
 where his real danger lies ; not in having appetites so 
 weak as to need provocatives, but in not duly feeling the 
 humble place they occupy ; in sinking down among 
 them out of sight of the higher principles of action ; 
 in absolutely forgetting, in the delirium of pursuit, the 
 noble possibilities stretched along his upper range of 
 powers ; and, deceived by mere mental light, lapsing 
 into moral darkness the most profound ; with eye, like 
 Lucifer's for ages fallen from Heaven, so accustomed to
 
 Seek first the Kingdom of God. 29 
 
 lurid fires and crimsoned steams that the white and 
 virgin beams of the morning star, and all the cool 
 silence of the skies, are unimaginable quite. In thus 
 confining himself to the regulation of his natural aims, 
 and the studious guardianship of the divine rights, so 
 apt to be forgotten, of their highest ranks, he exercises 
 a genuine trust in Providence, the very trust which 
 Jesus enjoins. The worldly man is not content with 
 the prompting of natural appetite : it is not strong 
 enough for him to rely on its doing enough for him ; 
 and he must add to it all the deliberative energies of ^ 
 his Will. The fanatic hates and fears his appetites : p i- 
 so long as they exist at all, they are too strong for his 
 repose and will do too much for him ; and for their 
 annihilation he hurls against them all the force of 
 Resolution. The Christian trusts his natural appetites 
 to find him all needful physical good : believing them 
 neither an over provision nor an under provision, he lets 
 their amount alone, and directs all his conscious aims 
 to a higher point, the maintenance of the nobler affec- 
 tions in their loftier place. Were all these higher 
 powers of his nature wholly lifted off and put away, 
 he would cease to be a man, and would be simply 
 dropped, where the creatures below him now stand, 
 upon the ground of unconscious animal instinct : and 
 would he not, though deprived of insight into himself, 
 be safe as they? Would he not, like them, be sup- 
 ported still, without knowledge and without a care ?
 
 30 Seek first the Kingdom of God. 
 
 And if his instincts would suffice him then, and procure 
 him what he wants with unreflecting simplicity, being 
 incapable of solicitude, they may well dispense with 
 thought and study now, and refuse the burden of 
 anxiety. He may confide in the inevitable activity of 
 these primitive springs of his nature, by which Heaven, 
 "knowing that," in common with other creatures, we 
 "have need of" physical good, has provided for its 
 adequate supply. God feeds us, precisely as he feeds 
 the fowls of the air, not by the suppression of instinct, 
 but by its natural and unconscious skill ; a skill so 
 sure, so perfect, if we will only believe it, as to set us 
 at liberty for higher solicitudes and a more consecrated 
 watch. And so the rule of our divine Teacher comes 
 out perfect and unimpeachable. The more unconscious 
 (i.e. without thought) our pursuit of physical good, the 
 better for the ends of life : the more distinct and 
 conscious our pursuit of moral and spiritual good, the 
 nearer are we to the kingdom of God. The whole 
 energy of our Will may be bent on the maintenance of 
 a divine order, proportion, and harmony, among the 
 principles of action. This may be our sole earnest 
 concern ; the engagement of heart, in favour of which 
 we may resign all thought for the morrow, for the 
 morrow of time, or even, I would add, the morrow of 
 eternity. 
 
 ^nju^..Aji
 
 m. 
 
 Jlimjbom 0f 
 
 n. 
 
 MATT. vi. 33. 
 
 " Seek ye first the kingdom of God and bis righteousness ; and ail 
 these things shall be added unto you." 
 
 IN those teachings of Christ which appear to the wor- 
 shipper of " sober sense " most strongly tinged with 
 enthusiasm, a higher Eeason perpetually discovers a 
 singular exactitude of truth, which spoils them for the 
 purposes of the fanatic, and dispenses with all apology 
 for their " poetical licence." The passage, whose 
 general lesson I have taken for my text, is not unfre- 
 quently extolled, in the first instance, for its beauty, 
 and then frittered away as mere hyperbole. To minds 
 sincere and pure, nothing can be more offensive than 
 this kind of praise ; as if there could be the beauty it 
 applauds, except for the truth which it denies; as 'if 
 sentiments could be fair to look at which it would be
 
 32 Seek first the Kingdom of God. 
 
 ridiculous to live by. It makes a true heart sorrowful, 
 or even indignant, to hear the light way in which rules 
 of life and forms of character are sometimes discussed 
 as objects of taste, without the least apprehension of 
 them as matters of obligation. Yet by all that we 
 morally admire, we are practically bound. Human 
 duties are not a mere picture gallery, in which we may 
 loiter with our critic's glass ; or a histrionic stage whose 
 representations may delight us, while we sit still ; but 
 great and solemn realities, presented on a scene where 
 every spectator practices, beneath the eye of heaven, the 
 divine art which he beholds ; where to discern an ex- 
 cellence is to receive a trust ; and ideal admirations are 
 the source of actual necessities. Whoever feels that 
 there is aTi irresistible attraction in Christ's doctrine of 
 repose on Providence, ought to distrust and disbelieve 
 himself, when tempted to explain it into metaphor : he 
 is bound to regard such propensity as the dictate of his 
 lower mind contradicting the knowledge of the higher ; 
 and to search, with more open eye, for the divine wisdom 
 that escapes him now. Beauty can no more exist in 
 the moral world without truth, than without liyld in the 
 natural. 
 
 In Christ's divine parable of trust, a contrast is drawn 
 between that which men must seek for themselves, and 
 that which they must leave God to provide. The one 
 great end of all their active powers, is moral and 
 spiritual good ; while for temporal provision there is to
 
 Seek first the Kingdom of God. 33 
 
 "he a surrender of themselves into the Divine hand. 
 This doctrine, which is a truly characteristic principle 
 of his religion, is treated, I fear, as a piece of pious 
 extravagance ; and is dismissed with the reflection that 
 really it is out of the question for men, hungry, thirsty, 
 domestic, social, not planted in any pastoral Eden, but 
 dwelling in crowded cities, to think of living like the 
 lilies. And so it would be, if by this were meant, any 
 idle standing still, to subsist on air or whatever else the 
 heavens might send. But see how far is any such poor 
 thought from the mind of Christ. Does he mean that 
 nothing should be done for subsistence ? Only look at 
 the example he offers of that implicit reliance which he 
 enjoins on the Divine provision. He bids us " behold the 
 fowls of the air"; and says, that " Godfeedeth them." 
 Do they, then, stay at home, and do nothing, expecting 
 crumbs of manna to drop from rich tables in the skies ? 
 Are they found, empty of all appetency, regardless of 
 the changing year, and hanging ever upon miracle ? 
 Why, their whole existence is a continued quest after 
 that physical good which is their true and only end ; 
 and to pilfer the garden and the field, to skim and sip 
 the stream, to dress their plumage with finer gloss, and 
 sing the song of glad repletion, is their work from morn 
 to night. What eager industry flutters in the spring 
 around the skirts of the plantation, gathering the bits 
 and brakes scattered for them by the winter's storm ! 
 What busy preparation, at autumn's first cnill wind, 
 
 D
 
 34 Seek first the Kingdom of God. 
 
 wheels and musters overhead, for the long fiigiit over 
 Southern seas, the swift cheering on the slow, and the 
 young wing supporting the old ! What studious watch, 
 under the semblance of flashing sport, does the home- 
 loving swallow keep ! And is not this truly called, a 
 feeding of the creatures by their Maker ? Is it not li is 
 hand that is opened, when they are filled with good ? 
 Yes; only, "that which he giveth them, they gather " 
 he supplies their wants, not without activity of theirs, 
 but by means of it ; not by casual miracle, but by con- 
 stant law ; by putting his skill within them, as well as 
 spreading his affluence without. 
 
 But how then, you will say, can their life be quoted, 
 as rebuking ours? If their dependence upon God con- 
 sists in providing for themselves, what else do we ? 
 And why should the same thing be reproached as world- 
 liness in us which is admired as pure trust in them ? 
 
 The answer is plain ; it is not the same thing that is 
 thought fair in the creature, and base in us. It is only 
 in the mere outward act of self-provision that they 
 are alike ; and, so far, they are not at all condemned. 
 But' this one act may correspond, in the two cases, to 
 states of the internal nature wholly different : the 
 springs of activity, where alone any moral quality 
 resides, may have no resemblance ; and the more, in 
 this respect, man can restore himself to the condition 
 of the " fowls of the air," the more does he fulnl the 
 ends of his responsible existence.
 
 Seek first the Kingdom of God. 35 
 
 The animals are impelled by an unreflecting instinct 
 to pursue the good appropriate to their nature. By a 
 relation, wholly incomprehensible to us, between the 
 feeling of want in them and the existence of supply in 
 the world, these two things, like the poles of an electric 
 system, find each other out and meet. The appetite of 
 the creature is not merely a passive sensation of un- 
 easiness, but a positive guidance to activity ; of which 
 we can only say this one thing, that it is a blind ten- 
 dency, not an intelligent foresight, an abandonment to 
 propensity, not an exercise of Will. And thus, while 
 the insect and the bird continually provide for the 
 morrow, they take no thought for the morrow : wholly 
 surrendered to the infallible direction implanted in their 
 nature, they are landed in good after good, and accom- 
 plish end after end, of which assuredly they had no pre- 
 conception. Hence it is that their happy maintenance 
 is held to be divine ; for though the agility which 
 achieves it is theirs, the skill and forethought, absent 
 from them, remain with God. Mind and volition there 
 must be to produce works of order and beauty and en- 
 joyment surpassing our highest strength and art ; and 
 failing as they manifestly do in the creatures below us, 
 we refer them to the Creator above us. To live then 
 the simple life of lower natures, is to be fed by the 
 hand of God ; and by its unconscious surrender to 
 involuntary, though internal, guidance, becomes the 
 negative type of perfect trust. 
 
 D 2
 
 36 Seek first the Kingdom of God. 
 
 Now man has within him the whole apparatus of in- 
 stincts belonging to inferior beings ; just as perfect for 
 their proper ends; just as mysterious in their detec- 
 tion of the means ; so that if he were endowed with 
 nothing more than this system of animal direction, his 
 subsistence, his habitation, and all the external con- 
 ditions of his life, would be secure. Like the brutes 
 that are joint tenants with him of this earth, he might 
 pass his years in blind exemption from anxiety, enclosed 
 within the moments as they come. He would have 
 no mental, no moral, existence ; but, zoologically con- 
 sidered, he would be complete. Unconsciousness, then, 
 is the natural and perfect state of these fundamental 
 I faculties, and always belongs to them in the purest 
 types of their activity ; and in so far as they lose this 
 attribute, they are injured by entering the presence of 
 other powers liable to a different law. In man, how- 
 ever, this ceases to be possible. He is a responsible 
 being, entrusted with the power of self-direction, and 
 gifted with its pre-requisite, self-knowledge ; and as 
 there is no portion of his instinctive activity exempted 
 from the dominion of his Will, there is no impulse that 
 may not be made the object of his reflection, no plea- 
 sure which he may not turn into a deliberate end, no 
 affection which he may not criticize. His whole being 
 may become transparent to his own eye ; and from the 
 propension of the brute to the aspiration of the saint, 
 he may lie analysed at his own feet. This power of
 
 Seek first the Kingdom of God. 3 7 
 
 introspection is the indispensable preliminary to the 
 Conscience ; which is only the intuitive knowledge ice 
 have with ourselves of the relative excellence of our 
 several principles of action. Thus, the three endow- 
 ments of Self-Knoidedge, Self -Estimation, Self -Direc- 
 tion, separate us by a vast interval from the creatures 
 around us that only within the narrowest limits can be 
 regarded as reflecting, or moral, or voluntary. 
 
 Observe now the effect of this self-light upon the 
 different forces of our nature by which we are impelled. 
 To a being thus let into hisown^secrets, 'the uncon- 
 scious, innocent, life of the mere creature becomes 
 impossible. He was hungry before, he can be dainty 
 now ; and the sway of the unknown stomach may be 
 succeeded by that of the tasty palate. The wild animals 
 can be guilty of no excess : their instincts stop at their 
 proper boundary, and spontaneously keep their propor- 
 tioned place. But what natural law effects for them, it 
 is left for moral law to effect in us ; and though pre- 
 cisely the same limits which instinct would assign to 
 the appetites are the true and right ones, and the life 
 according to nature coincides in its external form with 
 the life according to Conscience, yet the rule which is 
 involuntary in other beings, we have to enforce upon 
 ourselves. We must forbid passion to break its bounds : 
 we must set a stern police over desires to which self- 
 knowledge has whispered dreams of disaffection and 
 taught a thousand rebel arts. 'We must wield all the
 
 38 Seek first the Kingdom of God. 
 
 powers of the Will rcpressitely against the lower 
 impulses that solicit us, and actively in behalf of the 
 higher. And we must do this till the insurgent pro- 
 pensities, made restless by their first self-consciousness, 
 are driven back within their lines, and reduced to 
 content with their primitive domain. Thus, the Moral 
 order of the mind effects the restoration of these 
 inferior appetites to their instinctive place; and the 
 law of Duty in the pursuit of physical good is but a 
 voluntary re-adoption of the law of nature ; and the 
 will of God within us is but the image rendered back, 
 from the clear reflective soul, of the method of God 
 without us. Here then is one meaning of high import 
 evolved from the rule of Christ ; that the pursuit of 
 physical good in a moral being is to have no larger 
 range than in an instinctive being ; that the superadded 
 power of the Will is to be engaged not in extending, 
 but in preserving the measures of this range ; and so 
 leaving the higher affections an unobstructed scope 
 through the whole supplemental range of peculiarly 
 human activity. And alas ! it is needless to say, how 
 little place the spirit of such a rule has in our actual 
 affairs. Who can doubt, that the increase, not the 
 divinely regulated pursuit, of physical good, is the 
 leading object with the majority of men ? that they 
 are not content with the force of desire that nature has 
 made strong enough in all ; but throw into it all the 
 higher faculties of the man, and hire into its service 

 
 Seek first the Kingdom of God. 39 
 
 reason, affection, imagination? that the Will, instead 
 of watching and restraining the aim, goes wholly over 
 to it, works strenuously in its service, and even stifles 
 the expostulations that intrude from the better mind ? 
 Whoever lives under the guidance of such a leading 
 aim, and is more concerned about what he gets, than 
 what he is, comes directly under the Christian con- 
 demnation, and is a servant of Mammon, and an alien 
 from God. 
 
 But there is another aspect of Christ's lesson from 
 the fowls of the air. The Moral law as to physical 
 good is a return to the natural law, not only in respect 
 to the extent of the pursuit, but even in respect to its 
 unconsciousness. How, you will say, can this be, if 
 we are so let behind the scenes of our own nature ? 
 How can a man daily determine his sleeping and 
 waking, choose his meals, superintend his business, 
 and yet not know what he is about ? Assuredly, he 
 cannot ; and yet, throughout these processes there are 
 curious snatches of 'unconsciousness, where once there Q t , 
 was a laborious and intending will. The punctual 
 walk, distracting when it was new, and wearisome when 
 he was ill, for the most part leaves his attention free. 
 The manual skill, or even the mental reckoning, 
 acquired by painful effort, he throws off with the 
 facility of speech. The temperate or abstemious diet, 
 adopted not without a humbling strife, he finds a thing 
 of course. In a thousand ways mechanical activity is
 
 4O Seek first the Kingdom of God. 
 
 creeping into his being, and releasing the living powers 
 of the Will for new tasks of nobler enterprise. In 
 short, Habit in man supplies the place of Instinct in 
 animals, and enables him to end with the unconscious- 
 ness with which they begin. It releases him once more 
 from the anxieties of self-care, and leaves behind him 
 a protected realm, whence he may push forward to new 
 conquests. It cannot elevate him to a state of holiness, 
 for that implies fresh affection and pure choice breath- 
 ing in the soul of action ; but it can put him back into 
 a state of innocence, and shelter a portion of his being 
 within the security of nature, while he passes on the 
 wing into the higher regions of the spirit. This 
 necessity for urging ever onward, and applying the 
 force of resolution to points of attainment still in 
 advance, must always prevent the course of a respon- 
 sible soul from being one of ease and restfulness : in 
 a certain sense, a sense however not depressing but 
 inspiring, it must be a strife, a glorious battle, pro- 
 tracted through eternity. We can never be free to 
 stand still, and only rule, or receive manumission from 
 our divine service the mark of heaven is upon us, and 
 we must for ever work, though in higher and higher 
 fields. This is the true " bond of perfectncss," from 
 which it is the sign of a really servile and unloving 
 nature to desire escape. I do not say then that habit 
 will ever perform the task of obedience for us ; but it 
 will sh ift it to an upper and nobler stage ; it will make
 
 Seek first the Kingdom of God. 4 1 
 
 peace where there is conflict now ; and restore the 
 reign of simple unconsciousness throughout the inferior 
 principles of our nature. He who by strength of pur- 
 pose has restrained his appetites and their dependent 
 pursuits within the range of nature, and then by habit 
 compelled them to act with mechanical unreluctance 
 within these bounds, is virtually reinstated in the 
 healthiness of Instinct. In respect to the parts of 
 their being which they have in common with him, the 
 fowls of the air are not more free than he. Only that 
 his disengagement from the meaner anxieties of the 
 Will is an earned deliverance, not a natural incapacity : 
 his content with his allotted limits is a devout and 
 open-eyed acquiescence, not a blind necessity : his self- 
 surrender, for all things physically needful, to the 
 guidance of God infused into his involuntary nature, is 
 not an animal thoughtlessness, but a positive exercise 
 of affectionate and holy Trust. 
 
 Here then is the exact interpretation of the Saviour's 
 rule. Seek ye your physical good unconsciously, by 
 strictness of habit restorative of the innocence of In- 
 stinct. Seek ye spiritual good, i.e. a divine order and 
 temper in all pursuits, with full consciousness, and an 
 earnest tension of the living Will. In this doctrine 
 there is no enthusiasm, no extravagance ; but a union 
 of beauty, truth, and goodness, that touches not our 
 conviction only, but our deepest love and worship. 
 
 How then stands our practice by the side of this
 
 Lv^U^ 
 
 42 Seek first the Kingdom of God. 
 
 divine rule ? Docs it reflect this estimate of the two 
 sorts of good that solicit us ? In conducting the great 
 enterprise of life, have \ve established such a true order 
 and holy, strictness in our habits as to make the 
 heavenly Art and Skill of the process, and not its 
 worldly stake, our grand concern ? Nay ; do we even 
 direct our amis, confessedly perhaps in confusion fcr 
 ourselves, with a better regulation for our children ? Do 
 we not say to ourselves, " They must live," and take 
 this as the guiding motto of their education, and plead 
 it as an excuse for a thousand questionable things, that 
 should make a Christian blush ? Do we not most 
 studiously train, most carefully elaborate in them, those 
 desires which are sure of being the strongest, and place 
 the rashest and most negligent confidence in those 
 higher aspirations which, if they struggle into being at 
 all, are likely to be all too faint ? Do we not pamper 
 the fiend of ambition in their hearts, and insult and 
 starve the angel of devout humiliation ? What care is 
 taken to clip betimes the high excursive wing of the 
 soul, beating already an air that worldly parents cannot 
 breathe, and tame it to the miserable cage of wealth 
 and display ; destined, poor prisoner, to dash itself now 
 and then against its bars, but to gain no liberty save the 
 awful release of death ! "What can be more startling to 
 a true mind than the crowded carefulness of secular 
 instruction, contrasted with the negligent emptiness of 
 religious education ? Nay, is it not a fact that, for th
 
 Seek first the Kingdom of God. 43 
 
 sake of station and fashion, parents procure for their 
 children a direct and systematic teaching in acknow- 
 ledged fiction on the highest subjects ; and, while they 
 would stand aghast at a false quantity in Latin or a 
 mistake in geography, care nothing if the whole system 
 of the moral universe be misconceived; while they 
 would be ashamed that Aristides should be confounded 
 with Aristotle, or Marathon mistaken for Mantinea, are 
 indifferent to the most gigantic errors as to the whole 
 character and government of God ? And when the 
 young depart from the preconceived model of the 
 parents' wish, what class of aberrations awaken the 
 most manifest disappointment, and receive the severest 
 rebuke ? Is it the prudent profligacy, the sharp cunning, 
 the well-disguised envy, the slippery yet presentable 
 integrity, which imply the utter wreck of Consaience, 
 and are the fatal symptoms of spiritual ruin ? Or is it 
 the conscientious eccentricity, the high defiance of con- 
 ventionalism and convenience in the service of some 
 generous heroism, the resolve to live a true and 
 earnest life, which, wherever they appear, rebuke the 
 littleness of men, and give a place among the nobility 
 of God ? These symptoms tell too true a tale of the 
 frequent inversion of the Christian aim, and betray, in 
 the sincerest and tenderest relation of life, an anxiety 
 first for the physical good, with only a willingness that 
 then the Kingdom of God, if so it chance, should be 
 added unto it. " They must live," do you say, in
 
 44 Seek first the Kingdom of God. 
 
 excuse for perverting the minds of your children ? A 
 true-souled parent, who knows the real contents and 
 significance of life will say, " Rather than sustain 
 themselves here on shameful and un worth j terms, 
 Let them die 1 "
 
 IV. 
 
 Wkimss d (Soft foitlj 0ttr Spirit 
 
 ROMANS viii. 16. 
 
 " The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the 
 children of God." 
 
 IT was a favourite idea with Plato, that in order to 
 discover the true doctrine of personal morality, we 
 should begin by studying the Commonwealth rather 
 than the Individual. The single soul, he thought, 
 was too small and subtle a thing to reveal its nature 
 and the laws that bind it, to a vision dull as ours ; but 
 in a great community we have a magnified image of 
 the same human nature, with all its relations made 
 colossal to the eye, and its swift passions reduced to a 
 stately and measurable march. In this conception 
 there is at least thus much of truth involved; that 
 large social phenomena often show what, is passing 
 through the private heart; that tendencies silently 
 operating on you and me, unmarked by others, tui-
 
 46 The Witness of God 
 
 suspected even by ourselves, may have conspicuous 
 expression in the literature, the taste, the morals of 
 the age; that lights of self-knowledge may therefore 
 flash upon us from the open spaces of the world, and 
 the broad pavement of our time serve to us as the 
 secret confessional. Thus we may find, I fear, a 
 magnifying medium of self-inspection in a certain mode 
 of speech about Keligicn which is every year becoming 
 more familiar, and separating us further from the simple 
 fervour of an earnest and prophetic age. I refer to the 
 disposition to Took at faith instead of living in it ; to 
 own it as a noble fact in human nature, without be- 
 coming personally committed to it ; to feel interest in 
 its representations, but evade contact with its realities. 
 There is no more favourite object of criticism than its 
 different forms : tho origin of each peculiar worship, 
 the meaning of its symbols, the character of its doc- 
 trines, are a topic no longer special to the divine, but 
 familiar even to the newspaper. Yet the great objects 
 of trust seem none the nearer for all this : they lie off 
 at second-hand; and men discuss with the lips each 
 other's creeds, instead of going into silence with their 
 own God. The pure and simple faith of the elder time 
 has passed away ; nor is it any sufficient compensation 
 for the loss, that unbelief has grown ccntle and respect- 
 ful. For, in truth, the loss of enthusiasm in the one 
 case and the improvement of temper in the other are 
 both parts of the same phenomenon : they are the
 
 With our Spirit. 47 
 
 meeting, or at least the approximation of the two 
 extremes upon the common ground of a secret scep- 
 ticism, empty of all power, positive or negative. 
 Waiving the awful and fundamental question, the 
 only one that touches any living soul, whether the voice 
 of prophets and of prayer be true, men agree that at 
 any rate religion is an indestructible affection of the 
 human mind ; that whether we Regard it as a dream, a 
 philosophy, or a revelation, it remains a fact ; that it is 
 an influence of such transcendent importance as to 
 reward study and demand regulation and control. "We 
 find it accordingly not approached as a divine verity, 
 but dealt with as a human product ; dressed up and 
 administered as a medicine for the maladies of character 
 and society; judged of by its fitness to the wants of 
 a nation or a class. The distastefulness of one ex- 
 treme is studiously balanced by reaction into another; 
 stagnant falsehoods are permitted to remain from in- 
 dulgence to the sickly minds long used to breathe their 
 exhalations ; and to purer streams of thought no wel- 
 come is given, lest fevered mortals should feel too great 
 a freshness, as of morning air. Churches are built, not 
 as holy shrines to God, but as platforms of sectional 
 opinion : doctrines and sentiments are estimated, not 
 by the sincere rule of our private heart, not by their 
 intrinsic worth and sanctity but by their supposed effect 
 on the prejudices of others and the current usages of 
 thought. All this betrays a disheartening unreality of
 
 48 The Witness of Gcd 
 
 faith. Such theological connoisseurship would sink 
 abashed before the living look of God ; plunged in the 
 pure and sanctifying tides of his infinite Being, all fear 
 and art would be baptized away. There clings to us 
 some untrustful feeling, something that keeps us mere 
 lookers-on, and hinders the surrender of our minds to 
 the divine captivity that makes their freedom. 
 
 Were I to try to give expression to the sort of doubt 
 which saps our moral strength, I should do it in the 
 language of a theory which pervades the atmosphere 
 of modern thought, and may well affect us, though we 
 know it not. " Religion," we perhaps think, " is a 
 beautiful creation of the human soul, the embodiment 
 of her highest aspiration and intensest hope, her acknow- 
 ledgment of Law, her sigh of guilt, her gaze of love, 
 her solace for death, her picture of eternal perfectness. 
 It is at least her sublimest effort, and an affecting 
 testimony to the sweet and solemn depth of her nature. 
 But whether, as she wanders through its scenery, she 
 wakes and sees, or only dreams, is more than we can 
 surely tell. Perhaps she has made her creed by giving 
 names to the shapes of thought within her, and then 
 turning them out to dwell as visions in the external 
 space and light. As fear calls up the ghost it dreads 
 to see, and grief projects upon the air an image of the 
 dead, so perhaps may human faith only paint its heaven 
 and invent its God." This is the misgiving which 
 weakens the present age for great enterprises, and fills
 
 With our Spirit. 49 
 
 it with a certain tolerant sadness, patient of human 
 trusts, but uninspired by them. No man of veracious 
 mind can be content until it is dissipated. He cannot 
 let it remain doubtful whether his religion is a mere 
 phantom-world, floating across the wall of thought ; or 
 accept compliments upon its majesty and grace, as if it 
 were a free creation of his soul. Talk to him as if its 
 reality was only relative to him, and was unknown to 
 the firm eternal universe, and your very gentleness 
 insults and hurts him. " I speak," he will reply, 
 " that I do know, and testify that which I have seen ; 
 and if you receive not my witness as true, spare me 
 your praise that it is beautiful. The divine objects I 
 announce are there , and the light by which I see them 
 has no glory but as it flows from their reality ; were it 
 self-kindled, it would be but a darkness turned into 
 fire." If others cannot perceive the Holy Spirit that 
 looks on us through the veil of life and nature, if in 
 low moods of thought I lose the blessed Presence 
 myself, and begin to ask whether it was a vision, why 
 should I trust the blind heart instead of the seeing, and 
 believe the Night rather than the Day? Is it more 
 likely that the pure soul, from its own sunbeams, 
 should weave imaginary sanctities, than that the im- 
 pure, by its turbid clouds, should hide the real ones ? 
 No ; it is when inward confusion prevails in the con- 
 science, when care consumes the temper and duty is 
 heavy to the will, when the blood is hot, and the heart 
 
 E
 
 50 The Witness of God 
 
 is cold, then it is that doubt becomes our tempter, and 
 says daily unto us, ' Where is your God ? ' When the 
 fogs of earth lie thick around us, it puts the telescope 
 into our hands, and says, ' Now show us your stars ! ' 
 We may retort the charge of brilliant dreaming, and 
 say that our miserable doubts are but the black shadow 
 of our own spiritual disorder thrown upon the universe 
 and turning it into the negative of God. 
 
 This controversy between faith and unbelief, between 
 the better inspirations and the meaner suggestions of 
 our nature, is not confined to the sphere of direct reli- 
 gion. There is no pure admiration, no deep reverence, 
 which has not to vindicate itself against a similar impu- 
 tation. What floods of unspeakable beauty may pour 
 upon the artist's view from a natural scene of moorland 
 or sea-beach, in which the literal observer, using his 
 best eyesight, would find nothing to reward a look ! 
 What hints of wondering thought, what prayers of ap- 
 pealing love, may gleam through a clear eye, or quiver 
 on a living face, where a common spectator sees nothing 
 but the colour and the form ! Which then has the 
 truer appreciation of what is there ? He who has only 
 the ocular perception prides himself on seeing the 
 plain reality .Just as it is ; and smiles at his imaginative 
 neighbour who flings upon it a glory that dwells only in 
 his dreams. He to whom the eye is but the spirit's in- 
 strument feels sure there is no falsehood in his vision, 
 and sharply answers, ' Thou dull mortal, thy lens and
 
 With our Spirit. 51 
 
 retina are good ; but there is something opaque which 
 the optician cannot reach ; may God give thee light ! ' 
 So is it with every element and influence of life. There 
 are some men before whom if you place some strain of 
 deepest poetry, they will discern in it only the shape of 
 the thought, the flow of the verse, and the fall of the 
 rhyme ; while to others it will bring tones of unearthly 
 music for the hymns of their secret heart, and the very 
 page, as it lies spread upon the knee, will meet them 
 with a holy look. Nay, even in the scientific study of 
 the outward creation, there is room for the same differ- 
 ence between man and man. One, with the penetra- 
 tion of a vigilant intellect, will watch nature sharply, 
 as if it were an enemy, or coldly, as if it were a dead 
 mechanism, and note its movements and methodise its 
 facts : another, with a certain pressure of love and 
 reverence, will not sit outside, but enter with a secret 
 sympathy into the interior, and so catch the style of 
 the creative hand as to surmise its laws ere yet he proves 
 them. There is nothing which you may not try to un- 
 derstand in these two ways, by observation from with- 
 out, and by affection taking its abode within : by the 
 first you learn only what it is not , by the second you 
 appreciate what it is. How rarely do you meet any 
 particular man, among all who fill the streets, to whom 
 you find it a congenial thing to apply the Christian 
 doctrine of immortality! The name on the shop or 
 office-door seems not to stand on your register of 
 
 E 2
 
 52 The Witness of God 
 
 heavenly things : the . common features, the retail talk, 
 the trivial cares, the mind filled up with the town news, 
 appear so foreign to the atmosphere of God as to dash 
 the glory of your religion; and when you go to his 
 funeral, you think of the worthy tradesman who has lost 
 his home, not of the saintly spirit that has attained it. 
 But with his wife and his children it is otherwise. To 
 them he is a light in the very heaven which he obscures 
 to you, and mingles a dear and venerable reality with a 
 scene that was but shadowy before ; he is the nearest 
 object to their thought of God ; his image mingles with 
 their prayers; and in the picture of diviner worlds, 
 nothing seems more clear and natural than he. Yet 
 they have chafed against his faults more painfully than 
 you ; and have had that near familiarity which, except 
 to the deepest hearts, is rarely free from its moments of 
 dispute and discontent. But you have looked at him 
 with the scanning eye of criticism ; they, with the pene- 
 tration of affection : you have noticed his manifestations ; 
 they have had insight into himself; have known his 
 temptations; witnessed his faithfulness; felt his ten- 
 derness ; overheard his sighs for a nobler life. And it 
 is wonderful how often, when the artificial glass of 
 judgment is thrown aside, and you trust to the trans- 
 parent air of a natural love, the vulgarities of a soul 
 appear to melt away, and you are disenchanted of your 
 fastidious scorn. 
 
 Which then, in all these cases, is the true view, the
 
 With our Spirit. 53 
 
 literal, or the devout? The depth and beauty which 
 enthusiasm everywhere beholds, are they really there, 
 that we should try to rise into the vision ? or are they a 
 romance, that we should seek to wipe them off? Does 
 the mind put them into nature, or take them out ? Are 
 we to honour their revealer as a prophet of divine 
 endowment ? or their disenchanter, as the model of 
 human wisdom ? For my own part, without in the least 
 denying that it is possible for an idealising fervour to 
 see too much, I believe we are in more danger from 
 the dulness which sees too little. In relation to the 
 highest truth, mere sense and intellect, looking through 
 the frosty air of a wintry heart, may be but instruments 
 of delusion. If indeed we stood before the face of a 
 dead universe ; if nature were but an organization of 
 atoms, pregnant with blind forces and teeming with un- 
 intended births ; if the planets as they move did but 
 dance the minuet of Fate ; if the morning light were 
 but a chemical glare, quite empty of the play of thought, 
 and the waters and the winds had no meaning in their 
 song ; if duty, hope, and sorrow were the paroxysms of 
 a puppet, a mere thrill upon the nerves ; then, with our 
 living mind to present before the scene, we should be 
 above its meaningless materialism ; there would be 
 nothing to understand, nothing to reach, that is beyond 
 the perceptions of the eye and the register of the cold 
 intelligence. But if, while we are on one side of nature, 
 the Infinite God is on the other ; if, interposed between
 
 54 The Witness of God 
 
 the divine Spirit and the human, it may become the 
 veil to separate them, or the communion to unite ; if 
 the plain of the restless sea and the curves of the quiet 
 stars are the tracings of his living thought ; if the 
 scenery before us and the experience within us are the 
 symbols of his speaking Mind; if conscience be his 
 voice, and trial his appeal for deeper trust, and every 
 gleam of aspiration the kindling of his touch : 0, 
 then, how can we expect to know either nature or life 
 but by the hermeneutics of a godlike spirit, the con- 
 verse of sympathy between his will and ours ? It is a 
 work of interpretation, in which success will be chiefly 
 won, not by the eye quick to apprehend the external 
 characters of things, but by souls familiar with what 
 holiest purpose and sublimest thought are likely to 
 mean. A pure, faithful, devout and tender mind, borne 
 down by no weight of stifled nobleness, and lifted above 
 selfish fear and care, has the best key to the mysteries 
 of humanity, and an insight into the counsels of the 
 Infinite, clearer than acuteness and philosophy can 
 give. 
 
 The scepticism which men affect towards their higher 
 inspirations is often not an honest doubt, but a guilty 
 negligence ; and is always a sign of narrow mind and 
 defective wisdom. Who ever found that the heavy 
 mood in which he could admire nothing, be touched by 
 nothing, sanctify nothing, permanently proved the true 
 one ? Who, when once he has escaped it, does not
 
 With our Spirit. 55 
 
 know this leaden look and solid air upon the surface of 
 life to be the brooding cloud of his own heart ? and how 
 often do the more luminous perceptions of other souls 
 reveal to us, in nature, in art, in character, a beauty we 
 had not discerned before, but which is no sooner shown 
 than it startles us by its reality out of all denial ! Left 
 to ourselves to peer about from the dull prison of our 
 grosser mind, unaided by the mighty spirits of our 
 race, wlio emancipate us by their greatness and snatch 
 us by their genius into the free light, how little should 
 we see of the sanctity and glory of this world ! What 
 a dim and subterranean life we should live ! Yet the 
 instant we are taken aloft we find that the darkness was 
 the dream and the splendour is come true ! If you will 
 believe only in the perceptions of sense and distrust the 
 intimations of the spirit, it is a question how low you 
 will descend for your test of certainty. Will you depend 
 upon your own faculties in proportion as they are simply 
 animal, and deny them in proportion as they are divine ? 
 confide in your eyesight and give the lie to the con- 
 science and affections ? The herds that low amid the 
 Alpine echoes have, no less than you, the outline of the 
 everlasting hills, and the verdure of the pine -cleared 
 slope, painted on their vision, and the chant of the 
 distant torrent swelling and fainting on their ear: is 
 their perception truer, are they nearer to reality, 
 because they cannot, with you, meet the sublime gaze 
 of nature and see through to the eternity of God?
 
 56 The Witness of God 
 
 The grandeur and the glory that you behold, are they 
 not there ? the divine expressiveness, the speaking 
 appeal to your silent worship, the mingling of some- 
 thing secret "with your spirit, as if unseen thought were 
 flowing from the mountains and the sky, to meet the 
 answering radiation of your soul, are these, which are 
 the human privilege, a phantom of unreality, a delu- 
 sion which the fortunate hrutes escape ? It is impos- 
 sible ! Call it imagination, call it wonder, call it love, 
 whatever it be that shows us the deeper significance 
 of the world and humanity and makes the difference 
 between the surface-light of sagacity, and the interpene- 
 trating glow of worship, we owe to it whatever highest 
 truth, whatever trustiest guidance we have. Wherever 
 there is anything beautiful to read, anything holy, any- 
 thing tender and profound, this alone avails and com- 
 mands the key of true interpretation. The hard and 
 literal mind mistakes everything in proportion as its 
 import is of priceless worth ; misses, beyond all others, 
 the drift of human language, still more the silent ex- 
 pression of look and action, and gropes without appre- 
 hension through the blessed hieroglyphics of life and 
 nature. Does not the poet, does not the prophet, ask 
 for a reader with enthusiasm enough to appreciate him, 
 and complain that by others ho is not understood ? If 
 the greatest human works and utterances demand for 
 their apprehension a soul kindled with intense affections, 
 con we doubt what is the qualification, and what the
 
 With our Spirit. 57 
 
 disqualification, for reading the Divine ? May not their 
 Author, Soul of our souls, who breathes the eternal 
 poem of the universe, and attunes our minds to hear it, 
 who provides at once the hymn of the morning stars 
 that sing together and the chords of the spirit that 
 tremble to their strain, ask as clear a response from us 
 as we demand from one another ? 
 
 When, therefore, in higher moments brought by the 
 sorrows of life, the tension of duty, or the silence of 
 thought, you catch some faint tones of a voice diviner 
 than your own, know that you are not alone, and who it 
 is that is with you. Stay not in the cold monologue of 
 solitary meditation, but fling yourself into the com- 
 munion of prayer. Fold not the personal shadows 
 . round you ; lie open to the gleam that pierces them ; 
 confide in it as the brightest of realities, a path of 
 heavenly light streaking the troubled waters of your 
 being, and leading your eye to the orb that sends it. 
 Learn to distrust the suggestions of lower and more 
 earthly. hours, and scatter the fears of the slothful, un- 
 awakened heart. If we treat the very " light that is in 
 us as darkness, how great is that darkness ! " Be it 
 ours to doubt the glooms, and not the glory of our 
 souls ; to lie low beneath the blinding cloud, and simply 
 cry, " Lord, that I may receive my sight ! " and rise up 
 to prophesy, only when the heavens are opened, and the 
 divinest scope of things is clear ; to court, and not to 
 shun, the bursts of holy suspicion that break through
 
 58 The Witness of God with our Spirit. 
 
 the crust of habit and the films of care, and accept 
 them as a glance from the eye of the Infinite, the 
 " witness of his spirit with our spirit, that we are the 
 children of God."
 
 V. 
 
 art. 
 
 x. 41. 
 
 'Martha, Martha! thou art careful and troubled about many things: 
 but one thing is needful ; and Mary hath chosen that good part, which 
 shall not be taken away from her. " 
 
 THE sketch of the sisters of Bethany presented in the 
 Gospel, possesses more than a biographical interest. 
 Discriminated as they are from each other with the 
 utmost clearness, and representing, not simply indi- 
 vidual peculiarities, but two natural orders of human 
 character, they acquire all the force and significance of 
 allegory. The figures would be striking and graceful, 
 as mere domestic pictures, giving us insight into a 
 family interior touched with colours ancient but un- 
 faded, and filling us with melancholy to think of how 
 old a pedigree are the cares and aspirations of the 
 present hour. But the great household of the world 
 has ever been divided very much as the cottage of 
 Lazarus; occupied and directed by sister spirits,
 
 60 The Better Part. 
 
 whereof Martha and Mary are the genuine types; 
 deriving thence both its rivalries and its harmonies; 
 and seeking in different but balanced ways to fulfil the 
 mission of eternal Providence. And there too, Christ 
 has sat divinely in the midst, watching the toil, 
 teaching the wisdom, quieting the strife ; appealed 
 to by the competing spirits, and giving many an 
 unexpected adjudication. The agency and affinities 
 of his religion, in the private mind and on the 
 theatre of the world, are not obscurely seen in the 
 incidents of that village home; and the personal 
 features, so small and distinct in themselves, expand, 
 under the glass of a true interpretation, into lineaments 
 of universal history. 
 
 What observer of human affairs can fail to recognise 
 everywhere the class represented by the bustling, 
 officious, indefatigable Martha, worn with her toil, yet 
 ever making more, greedy of all the work, yet com- 
 plaining of others' rest ? There are men and there are 
 nations that seem ordained to be the fags of the world ; 
 whose honest pride is to keep its larder stored and its 
 wardrobe full; who exist only to sweep its passages 
 and clean its windows ; and find their most complacent 
 dignity in spreading its table with the whitest cloth, 
 and preserving its accounts in the safest order. They 
 do not deliberately think these administrative cares to 
 be the great objects for which man is set upon the stage 
 of being : they are always on the way to some higher
 
 The Better Part. 61 
 
 end : only they never reach it ; for when they are just 
 within a step of it, and the neatest preparation has 
 been made for beginning to live, some new dust is 
 discovered that must first be cleared away, and some 
 finish, positively the last, constantly remains to be 
 interposed. Fuming under self-imposed tasks, they 
 think themselves the hardly entreated servants of all : 
 deploring the slavery of life, they would be at a loss to 
 use its freedom. Does any one suppose that if Martha 
 had been more than taken at her word, she would 
 really have sat at Jesus' feet, with surrendered and 
 kindling mind? and that she would not rather have 
 started up on the remembrance of some loose screw in 
 the economical machine, which must be set fast ere 
 her attention could be at liberty ? And is it not plain 
 that the half of mankind whom she represents, while 
 lamenting that their years are spent in drudgery, and 
 leave them no time for wonder, thought, and love, are 
 at home only among the means of life, and, these once 
 ready, would be perplexed to live. And so it is, that 
 they are always preparing for a time that never comes : 
 one trifle more of management, and then they will sit 
 down to wisdom; and as they run out on this final 
 errand without their hat, death overtakes them like a 
 thunder-shower, and drives them to the shelter that 
 forbids return. 
 
 Barer and more scattered is the class formed in the 
 likeness of the quiet, thoughtful Mary, less anxious to
 
 62 The Better Part 
 
 be the entertainers, than the disciples, of heavenly 
 wisdom. Still such a class, being ordained of Provi- 
 dence for the harmony of the world, exists ; and even 
 in this busy, trading, struggling, England, the least 
 genial to it, perhaps, of any climate in history, is by no 
 means extinct. Here and there you may meet with 
 those, who recall you at once from the accessories to 
 the essence of our existence ; who, instead of spelling 
 its little syllables, interpret for you its great meaning ; 
 who do its work, not from a menial point within it, 
 but from a lordly position beyond it, and rather pass 
 through the present than are imprisoned in it. Other 
 men appear to constitute life by small and gradual 
 additions ; jotting down act after act, as their will may 
 happen to expend it ; and only gaining a glimpse of 
 the sum total, as the vast account is swelling towards 
 its completion : and so they gather but an empiric 
 wisdom that looks back on the beginning from the end, 
 and miss the reflective insight that discerns "the end 
 from the beginning. But these, on the contrary, seem 
 to comprehend the whole of life before experiencing its 
 parts ; to descend from its vast scope into its separate 
 details ; and to diffuse one indivisible character through 
 the successive acts which measure, but do not make it. 
 No doubt there is a good in that " knowledge how to 
 live," which sagacity derives from mere length of days, 
 and which gives a wholesome ripeness to the counsels 
 of age. Such gathered experience is an indispensable
 
 The Better Part. 63 
 
 antidote to the impulses of inexperienced self-will : it 
 adds a fresh witness to truth and goodness, and 
 strengthens the collective conscience of humanity. 
 But, for personal guidance, it comes too late : the voyage 
 is over, ere the chart is drawn ; and after a thousand 
 dangers of the deep, the skill to steer is won, at the 
 moment when the anchor is about to drop in the still 
 waters. Inductive knowledge is the glory of a pro- 
 gressive race, that can spare centuries without stint, 
 provided science does but organize itself at last ; but 
 it is a poor reliance for the transient individual who 
 cannot afford to wait for his moral wisdom till he dies. 
 And so, to save our time and shorten the' excuses of 
 folly, God gives us, in the highest things, an intuitive 
 knowledge and prophetic light : we are not left to the 
 thread of memory ever in our hand, whereby to measure 
 our past courses ; but from the earnest eye, looking for 
 the path before it, a radiance shines that shows the 
 true way by night or noon. To clear and brighten this- 
 native light of conscience, or rather to preserve its 
 original purity, is for every man the good part which 
 shall not be taken from him. 
 
 The preference which Jesus manifested for the cha- 
 racter of Mary, has, I believe, been often esteemed 
 more poetical than just. It has been accused as a 
 romantic judgment, giving countenance to the mis- 
 chievous belief that the qualities best adapted for this 
 world are uncongenial with the spirit of the other.
 
 64 The Better Part. 
 
 The passage has been read, not without a secret pity 
 for the good Martha ; and many a worthy housewife 
 has thought within herself, " It seems rather hard that 
 this is what we get for all our pains." From the out- 
 side it looks so easy to sit still and gaze up on the face 
 of heavenly goodness, so pleasant to take in the lessons 
 of holy truth, that those who see the attitude from 
 amid the toil and heat of the common day, regard it 
 only as a mental luxury, a coolness from the tree of 
 life upon the grass of thought ; more fit to be envied 
 of men, than applauded by the Son of God. And yet 
 there is the deepest truth discoverable in this verdict of - 
 Christ ; and the whole history of individual character, 
 and Of collective society, leads us to the same result. 
 Those to whom life is a succession of particular busi- 
 nesses, however intelligent, energetic, and conscientious, 
 must rank in the scale of human excellence below 
 those to whom life is rather the flow of one spirit. 
 
 In the former there is always to be noticed a certain 
 want of proportion in the parts and methods of their 
 career. It has not the unity of a pervading aim, the 
 ground-colouring of a latent affection. It is not the 
 spontaneous expression of a given mind, but the 
 activity provoked by a given lot ; so that its highest 
 energy is that of adaptation rather than creation. Every 
 one understands, or at least feels, the difference there 
 is, in matters of Art, between a work of ingenuity and 
 a work of genius. It is a characteristic of all the
 
 The Better Part. 65 
 
 " useful arts," those to which we dedicate the chisel, 
 the furnace, and the mill, that they direct themselves 
 to the formation of some definite mechanical product. 
 The distinct preconception of an outward object which 
 he is to complete, guides the processes of the artisan ; 
 and all his skill consists in the intentional application 
 of means to his proposed end, and the gradual appear- 
 ance of the result by due accretion of materials. He 
 can tell you how he did it all ; can enumerate the in- 
 gredients in a receipt ; lay down the methods by scale 
 and compass ; and enable you to do the same thing 
 again. It is the characteristic of " the fine arts," 
 those which avail themselves of language, form, and 
 colour, that they do not see at the beginning the outward 
 result in which they end ; that it comes out from their 
 feeling, instead of standing before them as their guide ; 
 that it is reached, as men say, blindly, not i.e. by 
 the artificial lamp of the understanding, carried in the 
 hand and consciously turned this way and that to show 
 the way, but by self-light from the sense of beauty 
 hidden in the heart. The symmetrical unity of the 
 work arises, not from contrivance, but from harmony in 
 the mind which it expresses. Hence the incommu- 
 nicable and purely subjective character of all high art. 
 Its great masters can give you no list of its materials, 
 no account of its procedure : they cannot teach you to 
 do the same ; and if you will serve an apprenticeship 
 to them, it must be by Veneration for their works, not 
 
 F
 
 66 The Better Part. 
 
 by imitation of their ways. Rules may help you to 
 manufacture, but cannot inspire you to create. Now 
 there is a difference analogous to this in the moral 
 administration of human life. Duty has its artisan, 
 who labours by prescription to the will ; and its artist, 
 who shapes forth the love within his heart. The one 
 lives after the manner of the journeyman, executing 
 each separate order as it may happen to come in ; the 
 other, in the spirit of the poet, fashioning his own 
 designs, and expressing through them all, one truth, 
 one prayer, one hope. In the former case, everything 
 is contemplated in detail : every paiticular task is an 
 independent care and end, seen apart from the relations 
 on which its worth depends, and for a time, remaining 
 all in all.. Hence arises a slavery of the mind to means 
 and conventions ; a worship of proprieties instead of 
 obligations ; an inability to follow the shifting bound- 
 aries of rule and habit, and an adherence to custom 
 dry and dead. A conscientious will, without the light 
 and glow of high affections, is almost inevitably the 
 prey of superstition, and lies under the nightmare of 
 fear. With what childish care may you often observe 
 it tending and watering the artificial flowers of rootless 
 usage, unconscious that they hold no seed and can ripen 
 no fruit ; while the true eye for nature can tell at any 
 distance the blossoms of the meadow and the wood, 
 from those of the ball-room and the stage. No degree 
 of sagacity can protect the cfrafing will from false and
 
 The Better Part. 67 
 
 disproportioned estimates. Its possessor carries with 
 him a constant magnifying glass, which by exaggerating 
 all trivial things, and leaving the grandest to spread far 
 beyond his field of vision, equalises the little and the 
 great. He sees no relation of parts. Each task in 
 turn takes up the whole of him at once, and causes a 
 wearing expenditure of effort on every successive point, 
 without bringing the fruits of power in the end. A 
 perpetual exaggeration of small things will never make 
 a great one ; and those who take a series of limited 
 views, for want of the ascendant faith and love which 
 blend them into one vast prospect, leave on you, after 
 all, the impression that our existence is made up of 
 petty matters, that our world is a colony of busy 
 insects making a mighty buzz about a very little being. 
 They show the_earnestness of ajl_the.part&-of life ; but 
 not of the whole ; and by their failure to present it in 
 any noble aspect, or shed on it any tint that is divine, 
 are apt to provoke others into cynicism and frivolity, 
 rather than awe them with the sense of obligation. 
 But a soul kindling with devout aspiration cannot 
 mistake instrumental details for ultimate ends. The 
 act of the hour belongs to the business of the day; 
 the business of the day has its place in the scheme of 
 years ; the scheme of years is but the element of an 
 eternal work ; and all is the expression of a constant 
 spirit, conversing with God in the present, and in quest 
 of his higher mind in the future. To such a one, life 
 
 F 2
 
 68 The Better Part. 
 
 is not a mere voyage by the log and line, an experi- 
 mental cruise over waters unexplored ; but a course 
 computed by the everlasting stars over an ocean un- 
 visited indeed, but not unknown ; with its relation to 
 the heavens discerned, and sunny inlets and blessed 
 islands ever in the thoughts. 
 
 The difference between a life pieced together from 
 even the stoutest remnants, and a life woven, though 
 with fragile woof and fading colours, from the con- 
 tinuous warp of a pure heart, is conspicuous especially 
 in the temper with which the ills and wrongs of the 
 human lot are borne. The mind intent on outward 
 tasks and dedicated to mere day-labour cannot endure 
 thwarting : its work failing or destroyed, it is left 
 without resource ; its only end is gone ; the very world 
 it had chosen for its abode has burst as a bubble ; and 
 it is precipitated into empty space, as a disconsolate 
 ghost. If the disappointment is caused by the mis- 
 conduct of others, the indignation of such a one has 
 no natural check ; sits amid the ruin in despair ; bursts 
 the bounds of reason ; and recovers only with reflective 
 shame. Shut up as he is in object after object as if 
 there were nothing else, the habitual vehemence of his 
 nature is easily explained. He lives a thousand lives 
 instead of one. He is always gaining or losing his all :. 
 playing for the earthly stake and not for the heavenly 
 skill, he looks with eager gaze at the slightest stroke, 
 and is all eye for every move. He feels with respect to
 
 The Better Part. 69 
 
 every untoward event as if it were an injury ; and can 
 scarcely refrain from being angry with his afflictions. 
 From this unhappy thraldom, whoever " has chosen the 
 better part " is delivered without effort. Regarding his 
 whole life as the instrument of higher ends, he can lose 
 this or that of its contents without its function being 
 gone. Engaged not on what it has, but on what it is, 
 he keeps the great object of his earnest spirit under 
 every change. While it remains to be lived, its essence 
 and its worth abide, and decay and disappointment 
 touch its accidents alone. And so the vicissitudes which 
 irritate and confuse inferior minds, leave him, though 
 in sorrow, yet with undisturbed stability; and while 
 others allow themselves to be provoked by afflictions as 
 if they were injuries, he can receive injuries almost as 
 if they were but afflictions ; having ever in reserve the 
 sense of a Divine Will, that limits the conditions of 
 wrong, and checks it far short of hopeless ruin. This 
 tranquillity of view imparts also a loftiness to life, which 
 redeems even its poorest passages from the appearance 
 of anything mean. Nothing menial, nothing contemp- 
 tible remains in the inevitable relations of men, when 
 once regarded as constituents of a Divine order. The 
 lot which God provides, the trouble which he pities, the 
 soul that he loves and visits cannot be beneath our 
 patience and reverence : the scale of life within which 
 he can hide his light, is no object of our anger or our 
 scorn. Where self is dissolved in the all- sanctifying
 
 7o The Better Part. 
 
 Presence, no guiltless experience can bring humiliation. 
 The emancipated nature rises in.to repose ; and attains 
 the sweet and quiet mind which never sways from its 
 own centre ; whose openness to love does not disturb its 
 fidelity to duty ; which passes through extremes of cir- 
 cumstance with a serene and touching constancy ; and 
 is so attuned that, whether caressed by summer winds, 
 or quivering before rending storms, it can give forth only 
 harmony. To such a one, the littleness of the parts of 
 life loses power to deprive the whole of greatness ; in- 
 versely, the greatness of the whole gives every part a 
 large significance, and secures even the least from dis- 
 regard as not worth the carefulness of a devout aspiring 
 conscience. The gentle " spirit of piety holds in it no 
 contempt ; cannot feel itself above anything that bears 
 the sacred name of duty ; is thankful enough if it be only 
 equal to it. No ! it is quite another temper, the false 
 imagination of romance, not the true heart of religion, 
 that despises the small component elements of life, and 
 fancies that in such foolish scorn there is some wise 
 liberty.. A certain freedom, no doubt, the two may be 
 said to have in common. They can both fling them- 
 selves loose from usage, and strike into paths eccentric 
 with the movements of the world. But when romance 
 dashes out of the established ways, it is to please 
 itself; when religion, it is to serve others: the one in 
 self-display, the other in self-forgetfulness : the one in 
 defiant joy, the other in modest reluctance : the one in
 
 The Better Part. 71 
 
 triumph over inferior men, the other in surrender to the 
 higher will of God. And here we touch the inmost 
 difference between them ; that with the one, it is the 
 claim of liberty from what is below ; with the other, the 
 need of submission to what is above. And so, while 
 the face of the one looks superciliously down, that of 
 the other turns reverently up, and lets the feet be 
 directed, not by eager and foreseeing choice, but by the 
 felt hand of an Unseen Guide, whose counsels are known 
 only moment by moment. And thus a sacred calm 
 falls upon the soul, forever hearing the whispered 
 words, " Fear not, for I am with thee."
 
 VI. 
 
 lerMum )thi:itt anb Iwrnmt, 
 
 MATT. v. 48. 
 
 "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is 
 perfect." 
 
 FKOM no lips but those of the great Mediator between 
 the divine and the human in our world could this precept 
 fall without failing of its beauty and suffering reproach 
 for its extravagance. Had any teacher less near to God, 
 less dear to man, given utterance to it, it would have 
 been taken to imply either a presumptuous estimate of 
 earthly possibilities, or a low conception of heavenly 
 sanctity. How often is the Christian preacher, nay, 
 even the Stoic moralist, accused of demanding too much 
 from human nature, of urging the wing of aspiration 
 beyond its appointed height, when he merely asks for 
 some faint lineaments of the Divine image on the soul, 
 and rebukes the petty thoughts and low ambitions which 
 completely shut it out ! When he looks among them 
 for only some reflected trace of the infinite purity, some
 
 Perfection Divine and H^^man. 73 
 
 pious nobleness to mark them as the Children of the 
 Highest, how readily is he charged with losing himself 
 in the regions of romance ! Yet here the Teacher of 
 teachers, the great interpreter of Conscience, tranquilly 
 demands, not merely the consciousness of God, hut 
 the living likeness of him ; not only the resemblance 
 of an involuntary feature and a transient hour, but a 
 similitude intentional, constant and complete: "Be ye 
 perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect." And 
 from him we accept the injunction, as giving not only 
 the ideal of our life, but the actual of his. Himself 
 the middle point of reconciling harmony, where the 
 attributes of humanity are touched with the glory of a 
 divine perfection, he renders it credible to us that, all 
 minds being of one race, the Supreme Holiness may 
 repeat itself in all : he destroys the hopeless distance 
 at which an unapproaching worship stands ; and brings 
 into conscious sympathy and resemblance the goodness 
 of the finite and the infinite. 
 
 Self-evidently, it is not in the scale, but only in the 
 kind, of character, that our nature can be brought to 
 the similitude of God's. Cut off, as we are, from all 
 sensible approach to him in dimension, we can bear his 
 image only in the spirit of our souls. It is just in this, 
 however, that the perfection of a moral agent must 
 consist. He might have great magnitude and long 
 duration and intense force, yet be no more than a 
 monster and an anti-god, a gigantic depositary of
 
 74 Perfection Divine and Human. 
 
 passion and disorder. Space and Time and Power are 
 mere physical elements, quite neutral in the estimate of 
 character, and conceivable alike of Devil and of Deity. 
 It is in the kind of sentiment ruling within the mind, 
 the balance of its graces and the proportion of its love, 
 that all its perfectness consists : and these are colours 
 that may be no less faultlessly blended within the 
 miniature frame of a mortal nature than on an ampli- 
 tude boundless as the sky. To change our physical rela- 
 tion to God, of absolute dependence and incommensur- 
 able littleness, is no more possible than for the wave to 
 become the ocean : but just as the same laws that sway 
 the masses of the sea also trace the ripple and shape 
 the spray, so may the very same divine principles, the 
 same preferences, the same constancy which belong to 
 the spiritual life of God, reappear in the tiny currents 
 of our will and even the -very play and sparkle of our 
 affections. It is but the affectation of humility, or the 
 dislike of noble claims, that can make us shrink from 
 our affinity with the Father and Inspirer of all souls. 
 
 There is a special feature in the Divine perfection on 
 which Christ in his exhortation emphatically dwells. 
 God warms with his sunshine the evil and the good, 
 and refreshes with his rain the just and the unjust. No 
 impulse of anger, no persuasion of complacency, diverts 
 him from his steady ways, or alters the fundamental 
 ground-work of beneficence, on which all his adminis- 
 tration rests. There is a common mercy, an inalienable
 
 Perfection Divine and Human. 75 
 
 love, which he never permits to become contingent, 
 and from which nothing ever falls away. It abides with 
 the sinful as with the saintly, and returns the same 
 mild look to guilty defiance as to trustful prayer. 
 Looking on Nature as the theatre and on her methods 
 as the activity of God, we cannot fail to be struck with 
 his serene perseverance through the storms of human 
 affairs, and the heavings of human passion. Once 
 having established a physical law, he persists in doing 
 thus and no otherwise without weariness from lapse of 
 time or deviation from change of place. Go where you 
 will, live where you may, you are in the presence of his 
 silent veracity, his unswerving consistency. The rules 
 which he has laid down for this terrestrial sphere, 
 which dispose of its matter, distribute its growths, and 
 determine its movements, which we read off from the 
 ocean, and the mountains and the ah*, are followed 
 no less in the furthest fields of telescopic vision ; and 
 processes observed in the newest continents and never 
 traced till yesterday explain the geologic vestiges of 
 incalculable time. Science cannot find a Law, pro- 
 vincial or provisional : intending to interpret one spot, 
 she alights upon a truth for all : struck with a momen- 
 tary phenomenon, she seizes the key of a periodic 
 combination. She cannot detect the orbit of the moon, 
 without discovering the plan of all the solar worlds ; 
 or catch and expound the sunbeam in a crystal without 
 telling a truth of Orion and Pleiades. Ere yet there
 
 76 Perfection Divine and Human. 
 
 was any moral life upon this world, a material order 
 had heen established, and was slowly building up and 
 garnishing the future dwelling-place of man : the 
 rippled sand, the gravelled beach, the sedgy marsh, the 
 treasured and the melting snow, have left their record 
 of seasons and successions like our own. And through 
 all the subsequent moral vicissitudes of human history, 
 this steady order has continued, as if those vicissitudes 
 had not entered on the scene. There are indeed 
 legends which tell of a visible sympathy of the 
 elements with the affairs of man, of Nature angry 
 with his. crimes : but no such convulsion at her heart 
 has left a trace upon her punctual record and her calm 
 face. Over Arctic wastes or teeming cities the Sun is 
 equally lavish of his flood, and glances alike from the 
 sword of an Attila and the crucifix of a Xavier : the 
 full moon indifferently flings her purity into the 
 windows of revelry and guilt, and paints the Saviour's 
 image on the chancel-floor where lonely sorrow and 
 devotion kneels. 
 
 "What Science calls the uniformity of nature, Faith 
 accepts as the fidelity of God. They are but the 
 settled ways of his sole causation, the program of his 
 everlasting work, the dial-plate which the index of 
 human expectation is to traverse age by age. When 
 we speak of their unerring regularity, we do but attest 
 his truth, which keeps the time-piece steady for us, and 
 warns us how the shadows lie. He that framed these
 
 Perfection Divine and ffiiman. 77 
 
 rules might have made others in their stead, and at any 
 moment change them by a thought. But once he has 
 announced them, an eternal Word has gone forth, and 
 shall not be made void. It is a promise made alike to 
 just and unjust, and must be punctually kept with 
 both. "Without a reliable Universe and a trust-worthy 
 God, no moral character could grow. A fickle world 
 admits only of a lawless race : no obedience could be 
 required from those who are planted among shifting 
 conditions, to whom foresight is denied, and whose 
 wisdom is as likely to go astray as their folly. As well 
 might you attempt to build upon the restless sea, or to 
 steer by shooting stars, or keep time by the leaves 
 dancing in the wind, as shape a mind or train a 
 character amid a scene whose courses were unsteady 
 and where action was a lottery. All human habits are 
 formed by a mutual understanding between man and 
 nature. Who could be temperate, if the food that 
 simply nourishes today were to intoxicate to-morrow ? 
 Who would put away sloth to be in his fields betimes, 
 but in faith that the sun would not forget to rise? 
 Who build his observatory, were not the heavens still 
 the same that Kepler and Galileo scanned ? Thus the 
 constancy of creation is the direct expression of the 
 good faith of God ; of his regard not only for our 
 security, but for the culture of our reason and the 
 insight of our conscience. He disciplines us thus to 
 his own love of beauty and order. His eternal patience
 
 78 Perfection Divine and Human. 
 
 takes away our excuses of surprise, and rebukes our 
 pleas of disobedience. The wild sophistry of tempta- 
 tion is put to shame by the serene light of his natural 
 countenance and the steady swing of the pendulum 
 that counts his ways. He secures us against all 
 passionate sway : no impulse rushes into space with 
 irruption of blessing or of curse : no devilish element 
 bursts the bars of his prohibition, and maddens us by 
 dashing with discords the music of the spheres. He 
 keeps the everlasting watch himself and, if there be 
 chaos any where, takes care it shall not be here. That 
 he may be true to us, he foregoes a portion of his 
 infinite freedom, and binds himself to methods whose 
 cycle we can measure and whose exactitude we may 
 trust. The natural Universe is God's eternal act of 
 Self-restraint : and if he is willing to descend into finite 
 system and trace the fields of his presence with the 
 orbits of accurate custom, is it too much for us to 
 answer him with a life -of faithful regulation ; to repress 
 within us the sources of confusion ; to mark the flow 
 of time with intersections of punctual duty; and so 
 pursue our way that neither the just nor the unjust 
 may be able to distrust us ? To enter spontaneously 
 into the bonds of inflexible veracity, and habits of holy 
 order, is the first element in that perfection which 
 brings us into the similitude of God. 
 
 If however there were nothing diviner than the punc- 
 tuality of Nature, God after all would not be perfect.
 
 . 
 
 v" 
 
 Perfection Divine and Human. 79 
 
 Precisely because his sun shines and his rain descends, 
 alike on the evil and the good, do we feel that, if this 
 were all and represented his whole thought, his forbear- 
 ance would be a cold indifference, and his mercy more 
 terrible^ than vengeance. He would be indeed above 
 the realm of passion, but still below the heights of pure 
 affection ; and while we should be safe from the flash 
 of impulse, we should have the promise of no dear 
 love. We can revere and worship the universal good- 
 ness which spreads a common ground for the thankful 
 and the thankless ; but only if it be a real long- 
 suffering, a self-repression put upon a higher sen- 
 timent, the temporary silence of a holy Mind, that 
 for truth's and pity's sake treats for awhile as the same 
 those that are felt to be infinitely different. Could we 
 think that the just and unjust in being dealt with alike 
 by the courses of the universe, were not discriminated 
 in the deep reality of God, there would be no beauty, 
 no tenderness in the comprehensive sky and the im- 
 partial showers : the restrained flashes of retribution 
 would touch us no more than the stony lightnings 
 hanging from the fist of some sculptured Jove; and 
 the neutral smile upon the face of narture would be 
 ghastly as the mildness on the features of the dead. 
 We admire the evolutions of a tranquil and persistent 
 order, the precision, the symmetry, the smooth chro- 
 nometry of unwearied Law ; but only as the expression 
 of what is higher behind; only if the mechanism is
 
 8o Perfection Divine and Human. 
 
 put forth by what is not mechanical ; only if its 
 inexorable necessity be the product and determinate act 
 of an Infinite Will. As the usage of a Mind whose 
 activity is free, the accuracy of the heaven and the 
 earth is marvellous ; as the -balance of forces with which 
 matter is bound, it is not marvellous at all. As a 
 voluntary sameness amid the profusion of possibilities, 
 as the calm look of living Holiness on a drama so often 
 passionate with guilt and sorrow, it subdues us with 
 adoration and consoles us with the deepest trust ; but 
 as the involuntary dynamics of a rotatory necessity, it 
 would grind us to despair. Often indeed, with our 
 best faith, there is something hard to bear in the fixity 
 of nature around the dangers and the agonies of men. 
 Over the village stricken with the plague, why does the 
 sun rise with such a dreadful glory, and the morning 
 breeze sweep with so mocking a freshness in its breath ? 
 When the ship strikes and rends asunder with a shriek, 
 why does the water swing about as if it held nothing 
 better than itself, and the surge fling and beat the 
 mother and her child, as if they were a senseless log ? 
 When a tyrant's army sleeps encamped upon the field, 
 ready in the morning to crush a nation's life, why do 
 the patient stars look so divinely down, and glide over 
 the wicked watch-fires as if they were a lamp of 
 sacrifice ? Were this unconcerned steadfastness all that 
 our faith presented to us, there would be no perfectness 
 in God : Providence would be no more than Fate ;
 
 Perfection Divine and Human. 81 
 
 Duty, an accommodation to necessity : Science, the 
 negation of worship. Were this all, then would man, 
 in imitating God, lose the highest attributes of his 
 soul ; would dry up into a mere unbending organism 
 of habit, a machine punctual, precise, and polished ; 
 never slackening to think, never pausing to weep, never 
 quickened with joy; beating off his steady stroke of 
 work and disappointing no one's computation, till death 
 cuts off the steam. A faithful and reliable man is a 
 priceless and wholesome blessing in this world : but 
 this cold exactitude is not faithfulness. Springing 
 from no life of conscience, and graced by no varieties 
 of love, it is neither a sacrifice to God, nor a heart- 
 offering to man, but only that absence of disturbance 
 which arises from an unimpassioned and plodding 
 nature. The human piecework that is got through by 
 those who are content to do much and be nothing is 
 doubtless great. But its good is only negative : the 
 moment it ceases to be the expression and outcoming 
 of a living soul, its very copiousness is dearth and its 
 success is failure. When the regularities of habit and 
 the perseverance of will become simply automatic, they 
 lose their claim to moral admiration : however they 
 may pace with heavier .grist the mill of wealtji, they 
 have ever less to offer at the shrine of worship : the 
 windows are darkened through which gleams of divine 
 and solemn light once entered and enriched the soul : 
 the voice loses its mellow tones, and is no longer 
 
 G
 
 82 Perfection Divine and Human. 
 
 flexible enough to sing a song of hope to the heavy 
 hearts of sorrowing men. No withered unconcern, no 
 dead exactitude, is fitted for a life like ours, a life full 
 of free elements, related not merely to the punctualities 
 of material nature, but to the heaving passions of 
 living men ; a life strewed with various sorrows and 
 full of struggling nobleness, where no open ear is ever 
 far from the curse, the sigh, the prayer ; a life of 
 outward heats and inward thirst, that no sleeping mill- 
 pond can keep clear and fresh, but only the running 
 waters of the pure soul descending from the upland 
 wilds. Neither in the human nor in the Divine 
 existence does the most faultless uniformity in itself 
 constitute perfection. 
 
 But there is something far other than this in God. 
 He is not only the Author of Nature ; he is also our 
 " Father in Heaven" Above and around all his action 
 in the physical creation there lies a diviner and a 
 tenderer realm, an infinite circumambient space of his 
 mind, that does not act on matter but is only present 
 with spirits, and whose transcendent nature we can 
 only., express by saying that here he is "in Heaven" ; 
 not on the earth, not in the planets, not with the 
 sun, though the place and orbits of them all are in the 
 natural sky ; but out of the whole astronomic realm, in 
 a preternatural sphere, more beautiful and glorious 
 than any where bounden law and rigorous necessity 
 prevail. However vast and majestic the uniformities
 
 Perfection Divine and Human. 83 
 
 of nature, they are nevertheless finite : science counts 
 them, one by one ; and completed science would count 
 them all. God however is not finite : he lives out 
 beyond the legislation he has made ; and his thought, 
 which defines the rules of matter does not trans-migrate 
 into them and cease else-how to be ; but merely flings 
 out the law as an emanating act, and himself abides 
 behind as thinking power, an eternal Spirit with a 
 boundless inner life still unexpressed. In this silent 
 ocean of his being, this transcending spiritual sphere of 
 his life, dwells the remaining element of the perfection 
 which we seek. It is an all-embracing Love, an in- 
 exhaustible holiness, an eternal pity, an immeasurable 
 freedom of affection, whence all the regularities of his 
 will spring forth, and which leaves enough behind to 
 visit the private wants of every soul, to linger with 
 tenderness near every sorrow, to be present with rescue 
 in every temptation. This it is that is the real ground 
 of our trust and love : God is not merely the power of 
 nature, but the Father of spirits : his resources are 
 not spent and used up in the legislation of the physical 
 universe, but are large enough to overflow freely and 
 copiously into the spirits that are in the likeness of him- 
 self. Hence, without violated rule, without breach of 
 pledge, he can individualize his regards, enter with his 
 gentle help into every mind, and while keeping faith with 
 the universe, knock at the gate of every lonely heart. 
 Stupendous as may be the network of determinate 
 
 G 2
 
 84 Perfection Divine and Human. 
 
 law, with threads fastened on every world and con- 
 tinuous through all kosmic ages, there is room enough 
 in the interstices for the free play of the Spirit that 
 passeth where it listeth, for the movements of an 
 everlasting moral life amid the natural, and all the 
 swift pulses of Divine affection. It is precisely in the 
 union of these two, a customary order he will not 
 loose, a free Spirit he will not bind, that he is 
 perfect in himself and open to near communion as well 
 as distant trust. 
 
 And if it is with this perfection that we are to be 
 perfect, how clear becomes the type of our highest 
 good ! and how truly it speaks to our purest aspirations ! 
 An imperturbable Order penetrated with an ever-fresh 
 and pliant Love, is not that the very balance we need, 
 to bring the conscience to repose ? First, like God, to 
 reclaim the wild spaces of our life, to reduce its chaos 
 of possibilities, to divide it into times and seasons, and 
 tell each punctual duty when to rise ; to organise a 
 scheme of faithful habits, against which impulse shall 
 dash in vain, and within whose barriers the waters shall 
 lie safe and still ; to be accurately reliable and true, to 
 begin no cycle we do not maintain, and of aJl the lights 
 we hang aloft to see that "not one faileth " ; is to 
 vindicate our affinity with the creative method of his 
 mind. But then there is a higher 'kindred with him, 
 the kindred of the spirit, yet to claim. Through all 
 the inexorabilities of habit the living breath of every
 
 Perfection Divine and Human. 85 
 
 gracious affection must flow at its own sweet will : 
 around the rocky fixtures of resolve, the tides of a 
 great heart must freely dash and sweep. If once we 
 allow the method and mechanism of our being to 
 stiffen on us and shut us in ; if in the rigour of our 
 duty we have no love to spare ; if, within our rules of 
 justice, pity cannot stir ; if toiling day by day in our 
 field of patient work, we forget what it is to mingle 
 with the beauty of the world, to wonder at the mystery 
 of life, or sink into the meaning of death and sorrow ; 
 we become what the universe would be without a God, 
 a fatalised organism, in servile bondage to its own 
 lowest forces, transcended and wielded by no Diviner 
 Soul. From this uttermost blight no trustful disciple 
 shall seek deliverance in vain. Let him but keep close 
 to the fountains of living inspiration, and the spring 
 will not run dry. Let him go even to the task-work of 
 action in the spirit, not of egotistic mastery, but of 
 reverent obedience, and it will bring no withering to 
 his heart. Let him keep his thought and faith in 
 sympathy with both sides of this great world, which 
 manifests the life of God, its everlasting ways, its 
 ever living spirit ; and he shall renew his strength like 
 the eagle's ; he shall blend the ground-note of constant 
 duty with the sweet and running melody of an ever- 
 varying love ; and by the harmony of opposites, become 
 at length "perfect as the Father in Heaven is perfect."
 
 VII. 
 
 [col (Qualilw of Jfaitjj, 
 
 2 TIMOTHY i. 5. 
 
 " (When) I call to remembrance tlie unfeigned faith that is in thee; 
 which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and 
 I am persuaded iu thee also." 
 
 IT is not often that* the old Reformer, preparing 
 to quit the scene of his labours, bequeaths to his 
 young successor such parting counsels as those of 
 Paul to Timothy. The usual product of experience, 
 especially of an experience gained in attempting 
 a great moral revolution, is a certain caution and 
 lowering of hope : and when, looking back upon 
 the past, the spent enthusiast measures the small- 
 ness of his achievements by the splendour of his early 
 projects, he is tempted to regret the magnitude 
 of his aims, and to advise for the future a zeal 
 too temperate to live through the frosts of circum- 
 stance. Towards the end of life, the precepts \\hich 
 most naturally flow from our lips express themselves 
 in negatives : we warn the fresh aspirant not to
 
 The Moral Quality of Faith. 87 
 
 expect too much ; not to confide too implicitly in men ; 
 not to be too certain of the truths he loves ; not to 
 wage a fruitless battle with the obstinacy of human 
 affairs, or waste his strength in seeking to force the 
 bounds of possibility. The disposition to judge every 
 enterprise by its event, and believe in no wisdom that is 
 not endorsed by success, is apt to grow upon us with 
 years, till we sympathise with nothing for which we 
 cannot take out a policy of assurance. It was other- 
 wise with Paul. He had many friends of his own 
 standing, connected with precious memories of the 
 past: at Antioch, his earliest patron Barnabas, his 
 partner in many a trust; at Corinth, his associates 
 Aquila and Priscilla, with whom he had so long lived 
 and worked ; at Ephesus, the faithful Onesiphorus who, 
 wealthy merchant as he was, was not ashamed of the 
 apostle's chain, but when at Rome visited and refreshed 
 his captivity. But none was so dear to him as Timothy, 
 the youngest of them all : not one, he says, did he find 
 likeminded with him.* In him there was nothing to 
 check and chill the great apostle's unexhausted heart ; 
 whose rich tones found full response in the young man's 
 fervour and disinterestedness, and whose yet elastic 
 hopes gained a new spring in the presence of a kindred 
 enthusiasm. The friendship between these two men, 
 so unequal in years and so different in powers, is one 
 of the most suggestive episodes in the early history of 
 
 * Philipp. ii. 20.
 
 88 The Moral Quality of Faith. 
 
 the gospel. It was apparently the one mellowing 
 affection that toned down the impassioned vigour of 
 Paul ; that bound him tenderly to life, and, when he 
 would spring to grasp the heavenly crown, recalled him 
 with a sigh ; that mingled a constant human image 
 with his prayers and brought them trembling on his 
 voice ; that, homeless as he was, made him feel amid 
 his wanderings the sadness of absence and of loneli- 
 ness. The travelled ambassador of Christ, who snatched 
 Christianity from the hands of a local faction and 
 turned it to a universal faith, whose powerful word 
 shook all the gods from Cyprus to Gibraltar, who 
 turned the tide of history and thought, giving us the 
 organization of Christendom for the legions of Rome, 
 and for Zeno and Epicurus, Augustine, Eckhart and 
 Luther, he, with his indomitable soul, was conquered 
 by a Lycaonian youth, and now in Rome sat, with his 
 chained hands upon his knee, musing, as he says, with 
 joy, on the tears and embrace of their last parting. 
 And then he writes to say he cannot do without him. 
 All have deserted him but one ; at his hearing in the 
 palace he had to meet his accusers almost alone ; and 
 now he waits his sentence, and ere the imperial sword 
 can fall upon his neck, he must see Timothy again. 
 What is the tone of the letter, written at a crisis like 
 that, the letter which resigns the expectation so long 
 cherished, of living till Messiah conies? Does he 
 indite a threnody of disappointment ? Does he caution
 
 The Moral Quality of Faith. 89 
 
 Timothy against sacrificing himself to impetuous hopes, 
 and tell him that zeal is well enough, but that after all 
 we must take men as we find them ? On the contrary, 
 his words fan every noble fire in the young man's heart : 
 like the voice of the retired victor, looking on and 
 feeling the blood glow at sight of the race again, they 
 spur the dear Athlete to fresher effort, and bid him 
 mark the goal. The spirit of fear ' 'tis no gift of 
 God's ; only the spirit of love and power ! let the good 
 soldier of Jesus press on in hope, heedless of any 
 shame and hardship that may befall a faithful man ; 
 stir up the gift that is in him ; be instant in season and 
 out of season ; keep a patience never spent by failure ; 
 and in the last extremity remember in whom he has 
 believed. Glorious Apostle ! Would that every leader's 
 voice could burst, as he falls, into such a trumpet- 
 sound, thrilling the young hearts that pant in the good 
 fight, and must never despair of victory ! 
 
 The secret of this deep affection between the aged 
 apostle and the young disciple is to be found in a 
 quality common to them both, which made Timothy 
 wise beyond the measure of his youth and Paul fresh 
 against the tendencies of age ; that energy of faith 
 which, from its wondrous conquests over our lower 
 nature, is by many regarded as supernatural. By 
 faith I do not mean their common belief in Christ and 
 devotion to his cause : I do not refer to any agreement 
 of their intellect in relation to the propositions of a
 
 9O The Moral Quality of Faith. 
 
 creed ; but to a certain quality of heart and character 
 so rare to find in these days, that it is scarce possible 
 to explain. He calls it an " unfeigned " faith, and 
 takes it as the mark of transparency and simplicity of 
 soul. He treats it, not as an apostolic gift, but as 
 flowing down in the maternal succession, from the 
 gracious heart of Eunice and the blessing of the good 
 grandmother Lois, ere yet there was any Christ to 
 believe in. It was therefore an attribute that might 
 pass across the line from nature into grace ; that could 
 descend in the track of hereditary religion, and link a 
 faithful family to heaven. Nothing so marks the 
 , degradation of our modern Christianity as the notion 
 that/aif/t is only opinion, that a man may have it or 
 not without aifecting his moral worth, that it is the 
 result of intellectual accident or opportunity, for which 
 God will never call him to account. It is, on the 
 contrary, beyond all comparison, the most complete 
 and distinct exponent of a man's character ; and if 
 only we can get to know it, he is revealed to us more 
 clearly, than if Che whole catalogue of his actions were 
 given us to read. Matters of historical theology, no 
 doubt, critical questions about the authorship of books 
 and the authority of councils, may be differently 
 judged by inquirers of the same spiritual grade. But 
 it is not so with the deep essence of religion ; and the 
 view which we may take of our moral relations, of the 
 life here and hereafter, of the ruling laws of this
 
 ^ OriMJUUrt?**' ' 
 
 e-y_ <>|ttji^^> v 
 
 The Moral Quality of Faith. 9 1 
 
 universe, of the being and character of God, is the 
 direct product of the radical affections of our nature, 
 
 and will be false or true simply as these affections are 
 
 . 
 mean or noble. Our devout beliefs are not built as we , v 
 
 suppose, upon the dry strand of reason, but ride upotf"^ 
 the flood of our affections; safe and joyous, bounding,':*' 
 over its waves, when its surface only plays with the c ;^ t 
 sweet breeze of heaven ; but engulfed, when it rages 
 in"the storm of passion, or fixed in stiff death, when 
 its flow is stopped by the winter of an Arctic intellect. 
 We do not simply learn from experience what we are to 
 think ; but we carry into experience feelings and pre- 
 conceptions by which we read and interpret experience. 
 Faith is the natural hypothesis of a pure and good 
 heart, whence it looks on the face of nature and of life, 
 and deciphers and welcomes their diviner lineaments. 
 Want of faith is the hypothesis of a low and unaspiring 
 heart, which feels the presumption to be against what- 
 ever is high and glorious, and gives the benefit of every 
 doubt to the side of the flat and mean. In some men 
 there is surely a visible openness of impression to what 
 is excellent and noble in character, a readiness to 
 believe in goodness, a willingness to take for granted 
 that all is right till proof arises of something wrong, 
 a manifest assurance that at the bottom of all things 
 lie the foundations of eternal truth and holiness, so 
 that whatever is faithfully and lovingly done has God 
 and nature, and therefore hope and promise on its side.
 
 92 The Moral Quality of Faith. 
 
 This presumption in favour of all beauty and sanctity 
 in human life, and in the universe, is faith. It has a 
 moral character, because it implies a personal know- 
 ledge of the higher principles and affections of our 
 nature as able to rule the lower: they have been 
 listened to as oracles : they have vindicated themselves 
 as realities : they have submitted to no fatal insult, 
 but have kept upon their lawful throne. No man 
 can believe in a rule over creation which is powerless 
 over himself; or see in other souls a goodness traceless 
 in his own. 
 
 We readily acknowledge this moral character of faith 
 in our relations with one another. You come for the 
 first time into intercourse with a stranger. There is a 
 clear confiding light in his eye, and a free sit in his 
 features, and a frank fiow in his speech, which make 
 you feel in a moment that you are not watched, but 
 trusted ; that you have no part to play, no cautions to 
 adopt, no prejudices to evade, but simply to lie open 
 as you are, and be believed. You are introduced to 
 another man, more studiously gracious perhaps than 
 the former : but the smile upon his face is not alive ; 
 his laugh has not the sincere ring of the vibrating 
 soul ; his eye seems to carry his attention beyond what 
 you are saying to yourself; his words, with all their 
 smooth flow, reveal his thoughts and nature as little as 
 a protocol. If you admire anything, you feel that you 
 amuse him like a fresh child ; and if you are indignant
 
 The Moral Quality of Faith. 93 
 
 at some wrong, you see that his response is a flash of the 
 lips without any charge within the heart. You stand 
 before the unfaith of the critic, not with the sympathy 
 of the man ; and you know what to expect, if you say 
 a thing too foolish or too wise. Each of these men 
 comes into your society with an hypothesis lurking in his 
 heart, the one of trust, the other, of distrust : these 
 
 
 
 are no conclusions from evidence, no deliberate opinions, 
 but the mere predispositions of their own nature. 
 Moreover, when the acquaintance has ripened and you 
 have given them real grounds for positively judging 
 you, the same indications on your part will produce 
 a different effect upon them : be the signs of character 
 what they may, they will prove different things to the 
 two men ; of whom one will be the first to believe the 
 evil, the other to believe the good ; the one finds food 
 for the appetite of derision where the other makes 
 occasion for love and approbation. "We cannot say that 
 there are no opinions formed by men of one another, 
 in a true judicial spirit : but certainly the vast majority 
 of such judgments are mere self- revelations showing 
 the native affinities of soul which experience is used to 
 justify and confirm. The avidity for detraction springs, 
 I believe, as often from want of faith as from want . of 
 charity. There are some unhappy beings, whose life 
 is a long wasting with the canker of jealousy; who 
 have an exhaustless store of suspicions ever circulating 
 among their friends ; on whom innocent words fall with
 
 94 The Moral Quality of Faith. 
 
 a sting and are returned to you with poisoned point ; 
 who toss ever upon the fevered bed of scorn, and 
 fall only into troubled dreams, and find no Saviour 
 to take them by the hand, and bid them rise to the 
 light of love and rest. Had they "faith as a grain of 
 mustard seed," they could say to this mountain of 
 oppression on the breast, "Be thou removed, and be 
 thou cast into the sea," and it would be done ! But, 
 with them, the presumption is always in favour of the 
 dark and evil : that is the ground colour of the universe 
 to them ; all else is but a phenomenal play above the 
 surface, a fair and evanescent show that has no 
 perennial root, and which the season's sunshine fades 
 away. And so a brooding night is ever throwing up 
 its black waves again to swallow the blessed islands 
 that had begun to be verdant in ' the heart. No doubt, 
 this temper constitutes in itself a violation of charity : . 
 indeed the three Christian graces of Faith, Hope, and 
 Charity, perish in it hand in hand : but Faith, I 
 believe, is often the first to die ; and then the others 
 say, "Let us also go and die with her." Indeed a 
 vital sympathy binds these graces together in the soul ; 
 and where one is wounded or in bonds, the faintness or 
 constraint will reach them all. 
 
 There is indeed a certain temper, often usurping the 
 name of Charity, which springs, not from faith, but from 
 the utter want of it ; an easy laxity, a good-natured 
 indulgence knyards the siufulness of men, arising from
 
 The Moral Quality of Faith. 95 
 
 mere dim-sightedness as to its reality ; a smiling com- 
 placency to which character is indifferent, provided 
 enjoyment and good fellowship are unimpeded ; a sun- 
 shine of mere animal cheerfulness, dry and constant 
 and tedious as the staring summer's noon, that has no 
 tearful lights, no hiding-place of majesty and storm, no 
 bursts of moistened glory tracing a penitential way from 
 some green spot of earth to the veiled yet reopened 
 purity of the sky. There are those who talk patron- 
 isingly of forgiving human sin, as if it were theirs to 
 deal with as they liked, as if it were a personal affronb 
 to them, about which they might exercise their mag- 
 nanimity at will ; as if there were no God of awful 
 holiness, in whose presence and before whose law the 
 guilty and the guiltless stand, and with whose pity or 
 whose frown it is not ours to play. The spurious charity 
 that is simply tolerant of moral deformity, because 
 untouched by aspiration towards moral perfection, is an 
 odious burlesque of the pure Christian grace. The 
 true charity is not that which thinks lightly of evil, but 
 that which is slow to believe in it; whose presump- 
 tions are ever those of a trustful and holy heart ; and 
 which, even when a brother's guilt is indisputably clear, 
 thinks, amid its shock and grief, that he has fallen from 
 his real nature, and cannot be at peace with himself, 
 that there must be a better soul behind, where God's 
 long-suffering solicitation may find a hearing yet ; and 
 that any how, through whatever suffering and discipline,
 
 96 The Moral Quality of Faith. 
 
 the right ways of heaven, the everlasting sanctities, 
 must triumph in the end. And so it is, that without 
 faith there can be no charity. 
 
 When we pass from the domain of human relations 
 into that of the Divine, we shall inevitably carry our 
 habitual temper into the survey, and our faith or unfaith 
 will be still suffused with a moral colouring. I do not 
 say that no other causes than the predisposition of our 
 affections operate in determining religious belief, so that 
 we can at all justly infer the character from the creed. 
 Among men of equal excellence and similar cast of 
 feeling there are doubtless purely intellectual varieties 
 of conviction : and we should go fatally wrong in our 
 estimate of others, did we form it by the narrow rule 
 of agreement with ourselves. But in measuring the 
 solidity of our own thoughts on Divine things we should 
 be strangely self-ignorant, did we not allow for the mood 
 in which they visit us and take their shape, and place 
 more or less of confidence in them according as the 
 moral atmosphere is large and lustrous within us, or 
 contracted by mists of fear and dull with dejection of 
 heart. And to suppose that the test which holds for 
 ourselves has no application beyond would be to ignore 
 the plainest phenomena of life : for what fact is more 
 evident than that men's views of the unseen as of the 
 seen world, are, for the most part, less expressive of 
 their range of knowledge than of their tone of senti- 
 ment, and, even when affecting to be intellectual con-
 
 The Moral Quality of Faith. 97 
 
 elusions, betray the marks of moral assumptions. It is 
 the mere pedantry of liberalism, to treat all the humours 
 of religion and no-religion as so many differing philo- 
 sophies, and to insist that our sympathies shall hold 
 towards them a bearing of impartial indifference. Legal 
 equality they must assuredly have ; but, secure in this, 
 they must remain exposed to the free play of love and 
 aversion which flows around all the indications of human 
 affection and will. 
 
 We are not spontaneously drawn to one who is always 
 suspecting his friends, and who deems it so natural a 
 thing for them to wrong and hurt him, that he imagines 
 it on hints the most inadequate. When his mistrustful 
 eye is lifted beyond the immediate circle and looks into 
 the invisible world, do you expect its expression instantly 
 to change and become sweet and childlike before God ? 
 It cannot be ! the habit of unrestful vigilance, of court- 
 ing the dark corners of possibility, of giving the benefit 
 of every doubt to the worse alternative, will still assert 
 itself, and expose him to misgivings of Providence, and 
 an exigent demeanour towards heaven. The Cynic in 
 society becomes the Pessimist in religion. The large 
 embrace of sympathy which fails him as interpreter of 
 human life, will no less be wanting when he reads the 
 meaning of the universe. The harmony of the great 
 whole escapes him in his hunt for little discords here 
 and there. He is blind to the august balance of nature, 
 in his preoccupation with some creaking show of defect. 
 
 a
 
 98 The Moral Quality of Faith. 
 
 He misses the comprehensive march of advancing pur- 
 pose, because while he himself is in it, he has found 
 some halting member that seems to lag behind. He 
 picks holes in the universal order ; he winds through its 
 tracks as a detective ; and makes scandals of all that is 
 not to his mind. He trusts nothing that he cannot see ; 
 and he sees chiefly the exceptional, the dubious, the 
 harsh. The glory of the midnight heavens affects him 
 not, for thinking of a shattered planet or the uninhabitable 
 moon. He makes more of the flood which sweeps the 
 crop away, than of the perpetual river that feeds it year 
 by year. For him the purple bloom upon the hills, 
 peering through the young green woods, does but dress 
 up a stony desert with deceitful beauty; and in the 
 new birth of summer, he cannot yield himself to the 
 exuberance of glad existence for wonder why insects 
 tease and nettles sting. Nothing is so fair, nothing so 
 imposing, as to beguile him into faith and hope : as 
 the language of men is " for the concealment of 
 thought," so the professions of nature are to be read in 
 reverse ; so that in every promise he sees its breach ; in 
 every inspiration, its collapse ; in every life, its death. 
 On the soft cheek and clear eye and springing limbs of 
 the infant he gazes in the spirit of a pathologist, to ask 
 himself which of them will soonest rot away ; and the 
 jubilant throng of playing schoolboys suggests to him 
 the forecast of sad fates, from broken strength and 
 sickened hearts, or faded innocence. In all this melan-
 
 The Moral Qiiality of Faith. 99 
 
 choly -view there may still remain a tinge of humane 
 regret, and the scepticism may hang compassionately 
 round others without a tone of personal complaint. But 
 in selfish minds the same temper takes a meaner turn, 
 and resorts to the pettiest reasons for the most deso- 
 lating thoughts: "If God were good why should I 
 be born with a club-foot? if the world were justly 
 governed, how could my merits be so long overlooked?" 
 It is not often that this moral defect of faith works 
 itself out into such full-formed type. But the germ of 
 it lurks in us all, and puts forth its tendency at least in 
 transient moods, when the vision is dim and the heart 
 is low. In flat and heavy hours, the tones of conscience 
 are so .muffled that, by not listening we can miss them, 
 and can say of the Holy Spirit, "it is nought." Amid 
 the tragedies of life, in the haste of sudden grief or the 
 crises of appalling suspense, the quick and vehement 
 waves of passion that sweep within us break angrily 
 against the steadfast sternness of nature ; we resent its 
 silence, we deprecate its periodicity, we are in despair 
 at its calmness, and say "it is the face of the blind:" 
 we forget the long years quickened by the felt life and 
 love of God, and the high moments kindled by his 
 freshest Inspiration ; Lr it is strange and sad how 
 small and brief a darkness may quench for us an 
 everlasting Sun. The healthy mind has no deeper 
 assurance, none closer to the very springs of its energy, 
 than that it is entrusted with itself, able to rise with 
 
 H 2
 
 ioo The Moral Quality of Faith. 
 
 wing that strengthens in the flight, or to drop into 
 unfathomable fall. But when the moral nerve relaxes 
 and life is looked at more than lived, sickly subtleties 
 invade us, and, fitting us into tne universal mechan- 
 ism, oppress us with the ancient nightmare of fate. 
 Has the time come when some dear saintly soul 
 vanishes from our side, and leaves us to our lonely 
 path ? As we think of all his noble and lovely ways, 
 the realised heights, the ever-growing depths of his 
 nature, nothing seems more natural and sure than his 
 migration into a sanctity of larger and immortal scope. 
 But if, holding the vigils of death till we are faint 
 and numb, we cease to listen to our love and let go 
 the visions of our memory, and surrender our weakness 
 to the waxen look and cold touch of those shrunk 
 features ; if in imagination we are dragged along the 
 physiological history because easy to conceive, and 
 baffled by the spiritual, because it has no pictures to 
 help it ; ami if thus we permit ourselves to dwell on 
 the unanswerable problems of so transcendent a hope ; 
 it wavers from too sharp a contrast with the present 
 darkness, and fades from sight by very immensity of 
 glory. In all these experiences, we blindly yield to 
 material pressures, and sink always from the native 
 faiths of our higher mind; we go over, not to more 
 valid evidence, but only to meaner suspicions ; and are 
 like one who is ready, in unhappy mood, to forego a 
 lifelong confidence in the first of friends and give heed
 
 The Moral Quality of Faith. 101 
 
 
 asrainst him to some paltry calumny. It is an offence, 
 
 not less against the calmness of Season than the 
 constancy of love, to he thus haunted by the visions 
 of an untrustful mind, and, like some poor sleep- 
 walker, be led by ghosts of fear over marsh and moor 
 till the home of rest is lost. Be it ours, in all things 
 human and divine, to keep the good heart of faith ; 
 and as we accept the clearness of a brother's face and 
 the simplicity of his word and the freedom of his 
 affection, so to throw ourselves open to the expression 
 of God's life and love, in the beauty of the world, in 
 the law of conscience, in the ample range of thought 
 and aspiration, and in the promises, already pressing to 
 fulfilment, of saints and prophets. It is never a good 
 sign, be it remembered, when doubts beset us founded 
 on no better reason than that the thing in question is 
 " too good to be true." The suggestion, we may then 
 be sure, is not from our best and noblest mind; and 
 should be dealt with, less as an honest plea, than as a 
 low temptation, and swept away as an ungenial mist, 
 by a breath of fresh affection, clearing the stars again. 
 There can be no pure intellectual eye for heavenly 
 truth, till this meaner order of moral suspicions is 
 dismissed with the quick and resolute prayer " Lord, I 
 believe, help thou mine unbelief I 1 '
 
 vm. 
 
 gibitw <fusfia atttr |)ar!twtt 
 
 1 JOHN i. 8, 9. 
 
 "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is 
 not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us 
 our sius and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 
 
 THERE are two extreme tendencies in human senti- 
 ment respecting God, from which a devout and 
 thoughtful heart shrinks with equal repugnance ; 
 a religion which begins with fear, and a religion 
 that ends without it. On the one hand is the 
 passionate faith of remorse, which throws the 
 shade of its own despair upon the universe of God ; 
 lies prostrate in the dark cell of alienation ; and 
 declares that, if no mediator interpose, there is no 
 hope or respite from the curse of inexorable Law. 
 On the other is the creed of lenient good nature, 
 which spreads the light of its mild indifference over 
 all things ; considers the sins of men as chiefly venial 
 frailties ; is pleased with its own tolerance ; and trusts 
 that Heaven will overlook what it must have foreseen
 
 Divine Justice and Pardon Reconciled. 103 
 
 and did not think worth while to prevent. The former 
 places us under a rule so pure, that the faintest guilt 
 appears before it as something infinite ; and beneath 
 a law so strict, that the word it speaks can never be 
 recalled. The latter represents the Sovereign Judge as 
 measuring sin rather by the standard of our weakness 
 than of his own true perception, as full of tender 
 allowance for a tempted nature, as holding out to our 
 aim an ideal which he does not really expect us to 
 reach, and as leaving it to be understood, that if there 
 be only some decent approach towards his standard, he 
 would be glad of a pretext for avoiding painful severities. 
 The former would deserve the praise of moral loftiness, 
 were it not used as a mere prelude to a doctrine of 
 atonement offensive to every sentiment of right. The 
 latter might boast of vindicating the divine clemency, 
 but for making free with it on somewhat easy and 
 sinful terms. Indeed, by a singular inconsistency, the 
 former overstrains the law of conscience in order to 
 prove it impracticable and get rid of it : the latter too 
 amiably relaxes it, in order to retain its force. The 
 system which most depreciates morality starts with the 
 sternest view of duty ; and that which is most exclu- 
 sively moral begins with frittering obligation away. 
 
 Think what it is to affirm, that amendment only is 
 needful to forgiveness, and that from penitent sin the 
 punishments of God are freely withdrawn. Does the 
 guilt then go for nothing with him, and are his
 
 IO4 Divine Justice and Pardon Reconciled. 
 
 penalties an empty threat ? May his law be violated, 
 his oracle of conscience insulted, his expostulating 
 spirit quenched, with impunity, provided only this does 
 not run on to the end ? Does he treat his children 
 entirely according to their present temper, and make no 
 difference for their previous unfaithfulness ? Then it 
 is quite false that he " rewards every man according to 
 his works " : he puts on the same footing the old 
 offender and the young saint : he thinks nothing of the 
 hugest amount of wickedness, once thrust into the 
 past: his word, so solemnly given against it, is all 
 recalled, and its warning was never more than a pious 
 fraud, like the nursemaid's threat to give the refractory 
 child to the black man. Everything veracious, every- 
 thing august, everything holy vanishes from a govern- 
 ment thus pretending to inflexible rules yet surrendering 
 all to the pressure of the moment. 
 
 And yet, it seems equally difficult to maintain as to 
 deny the strict veracity of the Divine warnings and 
 promises. Is the presage of the guilty mind literally 
 true, and does every sin find us exactly out, and pay us 
 just our due ? Is the word of Heaven, that is gone 
 forth against the wilful, never made void, and precisely 
 " as a man soweth so also must he reap " ? Alas ! 
 then, what hope remains for us? for then is there 
 " no place for repentance " though we " seek it care- 
 fully with tears." If the accounts of justice are strictly 
 kept ; if their balance is earned forward from page to
 
 Divine Justice and Pardon Reconciled. 105 
 
 page ; if it is impossible for us ever to overpay, and 
 certain that we are always falling short ; what can 
 prevent the reckoning from being ever worse, and our 
 existence from being burdened and borne down by an 
 everlasting debt ? The past breathes despair upon the 
 present, and sends its icy wind on every fresh and 
 blossoming growth within the heart. Could we but 
 throw off the weary nightmare beneath which we feebly 
 gasp, could we spring up and start anew, the forces of 
 the soul are not yet broken, but are young and hope- 
 ful still : only, while chained to this mortal weight, 
 they lie as if crushed and dead. We cannot stir till 
 we are pardoned ; yet cannot be pardoned till we stir. 
 Thus, if there be forgiveness with God, it cannot but 
 loosen the tie between conduct and its consequences ; 
 or, if that tie be strict, there can be no forgiveness. 
 
 There is no more serious dilemma presented by 
 human faith than this; nor any more productive of 
 looseness and confusion in the soul. Minds not much 
 in earnest about their moral and spiritual life may not 
 feel it or may suppose it a mere nicety of theory ; for 
 it is not the character of such minds to demand any 
 unity or consistency in their religion : they are content 
 with a plain truth here, and a good rule there, a little 
 that is pretty sure to be right, and a great deal that 
 can hardly be wrong : but taking up each in turn as an 
 external thing, and finding for none a vital root within 
 the soul, they are unconscious of incoherencies and
 
 io6 Divine Justice and Pardon Reconciled. 
 
 contradictions by which many a loving heart would be 
 torn to pieces. These easy believers cheerfully worship 
 the good-natured God, and deny all difficulties. But to 
 whomsoever the human surface of things has opened 
 and shown the divine ; to whomsoever mere wrong has 
 deepened into sin and regret into remorse ; whoever has 
 found the need of forgiveness to be a want more real 
 and urgent than that of daily bread; whoever cannot 
 be off and on with his Maker, as in the play of taste 
 and mood, but must see himself an outcast or be 
 reconciled ; whoever, in short, lives instead of dreams ; 
 he well knows, that this perplexity is speculative 
 only to those whose religion is not practical ; and that 
 to the daily task of service, the hourly spirit of peace, 
 nothing is more needful than a clear and uncontradicted 
 light of divine forgiveness. 
 
 The truth is, it is a hard thing for our narrow mine 1 
 to take in the infinite harmony of Divine perfection. 
 Our conscience and our affections make incompatible 
 demands on God. We require for our support that he 
 be faithful ; we look, for our comfort's sake, that he be 
 tender too. Certainly, if we are to trust in his holi- 
 ness, there must be a law sure and universal, that binds 
 together guilt and punishment ; a law without excep- 
 tion to its grasp, without swerving in its execution. 
 It is to reveal this law that the misgivings of conscience 
 shake us with their awful voice ; that spectral shadows 
 flit across the heart of guilty gaiety ; that boldness
 
 Divine Jiistice and Pardon Reconciled. 107 
 
 before the sin sinks into abjectness after it ; that, in 
 proportion as we lose our moral count, and the skein 
 of life, wound no longer smoothly off, is ravelled into a 
 broken and tangled waste, we rush into vain distractions 
 to quell the fever of our secret misery, and yet find no 
 peace. To assure us of this law it is, that our only 
 rest is found in true simplicity ; that under the clouds 
 of evil passion the mind is tossed and heaves in storm, 
 but under the heaven of pure affections, lies calm as 
 the summer sea ; that, till the stubbornness of pride 
 gives way, there is no quiet in the soul, no smoothness 
 on the brow, but only furrows of ever-deepening care ; 
 that the stiff Will of self, so rigid to resist, proves 
 feeble to achieve, and gets no power, save to fret itself 
 and others, till it is melted by some noble inner love, 
 and flows down into the moulds of a divine obedience. 
 It is an ineradicable faith, that every tendency to dis- 
 turbance and disorder follows the direction of human 
 guilt ; and that every approach to repose is on the path 
 of human faithfulness. No shade of doubt is to be 
 cast upon this faith ; it is as much our primitive, 
 instinctive guidance, as our expectation of the future 
 from the past. As, for purposes of knowledge, it is 
 appointed us to believe that the sun which has risen 
 today will rise tomorrow ; so, for the ends of duty, it 
 is given us to feel that sin has a bitter fruit to ripen, 
 and that having sown the wind, we shall reap the whirl- 
 wind. This is the corner-stone of our whole structure of
 
 1 08 Divine Justice and Pardon Reconciled. 
 
 confidence in the moral government of God. Without 
 it every lost battle of justice would appear irretrievable, 
 every truth, eclipsed for the moment, would seem as if 
 quenched for ever ; and the hope which has supported 
 injured goodness in every age, which has taken away 
 the edge of suffering and the terrors of death, the 
 assurance that God and time are on the side of right 
 and will put its persecutors to shame, would be at once 
 the highest sublimity, yet the vainest reliance of our 
 world. If anywhere in this universe it were discovered 
 that the law of cause and effect did not universally 
 hold, that the conditions under which physical phe- 
 nomena occurred were not steady, that the supposed 
 connections of events were broken, and the signs of 
 their coming which were noted on one day could not 
 serve for another; this would be the death-blow to 
 human science, a proclamation that creation had run 
 wild, that nature, relapsing into chaos, was knowable 
 no more. Not less true is it, that if, anywhere upon 
 the track of time, one sin were found to have escaped 
 its menaced punishment, if the rule were seen to waver 
 and relent which joins suffering to the faithless will 
 as its inseparable shadow, if ever He who " sets the 
 poor with princes " were to set the wicked with his 
 saints ; this would be the death-blow to all moral 
 faith, a declaration that the foundations of life were 
 crumbling beneath our feet, a premonition of universal 
 dissolution. As reason cannot move without pre-
 
 Divine Jtistice and Pardon Reconciled. 109 
 
 suming on the uniformity of nature ; so must conscience 
 rely on the unchangeableness of Law ; and can worship 
 only a God pledged never to treat those who have been 
 guilty like those who have not. 
 
 And yet, if this be all, the truth is more terrible 
 than we can bear, and God severer than we can love. 
 Does he then judge always by the past, and shut the 
 door conclusively on the moments as they go, so that 
 the touch of the present, and the cry of its entreaties 
 can reach them no more ? Is there no meaning in the 
 prayer " Blot out my transgressions, and remember not 
 my sins " ? no divine truth in that saying, " Her sins, 
 which are many, are forgiven ; for she loved much " ? 
 Did it make no difference to Peter, that a look recalled 
 him, and he went out and wept bitterly ? Whence 
 then the "joy in heaven over the sinner that re- 
 penteth " ? If compassion be impossible to God, it is 
 strange that he has implanted any in us ; for he has 
 more reason to pity us, than we can have to pity one 
 another; we, gazing in the face of an equal and a 
 brother; he, looking from his serene Almightiness 
 down upon our nature, tempted, sorrowing, struggling, 
 dying. No, it is as much a part of perfection to 
 - receive the penitent as to reprove the sin ; unless the 
 noblest impulse of the human soul seeks vainly for its 
 image and prototype in him. Indeed it is matter of 
 experience that contrition, with all its sadness, is not 
 without its answer of relief. -At first, no doubtj,
 
 no Divine Justice and Pardon Reconciled. 
 
 transgression drives us from before his face, and we 
 wander in awful solitudes like Cain. But the banish- 
 ment is too dreary to be borne. We are first stopped 
 in our flight to sit down and think upon our shame ; 
 and then are drawn to steal back, and doubtfully seek 
 the old neighbourhood again ; and its dear looks smite 
 us to the heart, till we lift up our voice and weep 
 aloud, saying ' If perchance the Lord would look upon 
 our tears ' ; and at length we hint our prayer no more, 
 but catch his very eye, and say ' Lord put me to grief, 
 but cast me not off : not from thine absence, but from 
 thy hand, let me receive thy chastisement : let me be 
 stricken, but bear with me here : thy darkest frown is 
 better to my soul than the dry light upon the 'wilder- 
 ness of exile.' And with this self -surrender there 
 comes an unexpected peace, so sad and solemn that 
 surely it is the response of God ; and must be accepted 
 as a token that, truly, " the contrite heart he does not 
 despise." If therefore, on the one hand, he cannot 
 treat penitent sin as if it were innocence, so neither, on 
 the .other, can he treat it like impenitence : and the 
 present temper reflects back some light upon the past 
 transgression. 
 
 But how, alas, you will still say, can these things 
 both be ? how can God at once swerve no hair's- 
 breadth from his threatened punishment ; and yet be 
 ever ready to forgive ? Rightly to understand this, we 
 must mark the distinction between his interior nature
 
 Divine Justice and Pardon Reconciled. 1 1 1 
 
 and his external government, between what he is in 
 himself and what he has written out and proclaimed in 
 the legislation of this universe. Not all that dwells 
 in his thought and lives in his heart has he put forth ; 
 and vast as is the field, and sublime the record, of 
 creation ; solemn as we find the path of life, and awful 
 the insight of the conscience ; these are but a part of 
 his ways ; and there is yet a hiding-place of his 
 thunder that none can understand. Everything in him 
 is infinite ; and all the splendour of his revelation in 
 the old earth and in the older sky, and on the heart of 
 humanity, and even in the unique life of the Man of 
 sorrows, are but a few front lines of light, streaking 
 the surface of immensity. He says to us much ; but 
 he is silent more : his law is open and remains ; his 
 Spirit that made it abides behind, and is committed to 
 nothing save by its own nature to all that is beautiful 
 and perfect. Thus, his infinite disapprobation of sin 
 has not all found utterance : part is expressed, and part 
 reserved. The former is embodied in the moral law 
 and stamped into our moral nature : it is written on 
 the agitated brow of passion and gleams from the eyes 
 of guilty men : it is heard in the sighs of the broken 
 will, in the plaint of purifying sorrow and the sweet 
 hymns of souls redeemed and peaceful. The latter is 
 not embodied at all : it is a free existence : no lines 
 define it, no bound encloses it : it is as the divine 
 colour of all truth and majesty without its form, with
 
 ii2 Divine Justice and Pardon Reconciled. 
 
 hues ready to bathe all things but fixed on none. 
 Now, exactly corresponding to this division between the 
 legislated word and the secret thought of God, there is 
 a distinction in the guilt of man : part comes out in 
 action and part remains behind ; the one fixing itself 
 in ineffaceable characters in the realm of nature ; the 
 other diffusing a taint of degradation through the 
 secret soul. Here too, the element which pushes itself 
 into expression is finite : it is an overt and determinate 
 offence, bringing nameable mischiefs, and inflicting 
 visible and calculable wrongs : but the evil spirit which 
 has shot out this curse is something infinite, and is 
 conscious, if ever its vision becomes true, of a vileness 
 that has no bounds, a sinfulness which no definition 
 can enclose. Both lie exposed to God's holy disap- 
 probation : the act however to his expressed displeasure 
 and purpose of retribution : the deformed mind to his 
 reserved abhorrence. With respect to the perpetrated 
 volition he has irrevocably committed himself: his 
 veracity is pledged to go on : his word has gone forth, 
 which binds together guilt and pain, and it cannot 
 return unto him void. Not one consequence which he 
 has annexed to wrong-doing will fail to appear with 
 relentless punctuality : no miracle will interpose to 
 conduct away the lightning of retribution. "Within 
 that realm of law and nature, he is inexorable, and 
 has put the freedom of pity quite away ; and as the 
 Atlantic storm turns not aside to avoid the ship where
 
 Divine Justice and Pardon Reconciled. 1 1 3 
 
 sanctity or genius are afloat, so neither does the 
 tempest of justice falter and pause to spare the head 
 uplifted in repentant prayer. But it is otherwise with 
 respect to the soul and person of the sinner himself : 
 the sentiments of God towards him are not bound : 
 and if, while the deed of the past is an irrevocable 
 transgression, the temper of the present is one of 
 surrender and return, there is nothing to sustain the 
 Divine aversion or hinder the outflow of infinite pity. 
 Free as our soul is to come back and cry at the gate ; 
 so free is He to open and fold us gently to his heart 
 again. Weak indeed from the ' waste of all our 
 strength, lame with our many wounds, in peril from 
 our dim sight, and pain from treasured agonies, we 
 must still be ; and God can only say ' My poor child, 
 I cannot help thee here : this burden must thou carry- 
 to its end.' But still the penitent lives no outcast 
 life : the light of reconciliation is upon him : he suffers 
 and is very faint, and often his heavy cross weighs him 
 to the earth : but he can bear the scourge of nature, 
 now that he is withered by no scorching look of God. 
 Wrestling with the Almighty no longer, he can move 
 on upon his journey with a cheerful heart, though ever 
 after halting on his staff. And so ceases the contradiction 
 between the exactitude of Justice and the tenderness of 
 Pity ; and we may say with understanding heart " If 
 we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us' 
 our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 
 
 I
 
 IX. 
 
 m\ta 
 
 LUKE x. 21. 
 
 " In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit and said, I thank thee, 
 Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from 
 the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes ; even so, 
 Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight." 
 
 THAT the sage should miss what the infant can see 
 seems at first but little possible, and still less a subject 
 of thankfulness. It would appear to discourage the 
 highest attributes of our nature, to throw contempt on 
 the patience of thought, and cruelly to visit the prayer 
 for light with the deeper darkness. Can it be that the 
 more pains we take to know, the less will the truth be 
 found ; that the rich and practised mind is at a dis- 
 advantage compared with the inexperienced and empty ? 
 And if so, why exult in the frustration of the noblest 
 of human aims, and the confiscation of the prize to 
 those who have no aim at all ? Many a zealot, baffled 
 by the acumen or indifference of more polished minds, 
 has found in these words consolation for his own igno-
 
 God Revealed unto Babes. 1 1 5 
 
 ranee and the rudeness of his followers ; as also in the 
 similar words of Paul, " Ye see your calling, brethren, 
 how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many 
 mighty, not many noble, are called ; but God hath 
 chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the 
 wise, and the weak things of the world to confound the 
 things that are mighty; and the base things of the 
 world, and the things that are despised hath God 
 chosen, yea, and things that are not, to bring to nought 
 things that are ; that no flesh should glory in his 
 presence." Tertuliian, for example, dwells with a 
 savage satisfaction on the supposed exclusion from the 
 kingdom of God of whatever we hold fair and great in 
 the old heathen world and richest for the adornment 
 of all time ; and exults in peopling it with hordes of 
 triumphant barbarians like himself. Is this the spirit 
 of Christ's thanksgiving ? Are we required, out of 
 sympathy with it, to believe Socrates an outcast and 
 clap our hands as he vanishes from hope ? to stifle our 
 reverence for ^JEschylus and Plato, for the Scipios and 
 Antonines, and declare God's preference for mendicant 
 monks and illiterate missionaries ? Must we condemn, 
 as secular and carnal, our own natural admiration for 
 the gifts of wisdom, the disciplined powers, the large 
 and supple thought, the balanced feeling, the accurate 
 expression, of a well-cultured nature, and force our- 
 selves into harmony of taste with the raw religion of un- 
 mellowed sectaries, their loud voice, their rude speech, 
 
 i 2
 
 1 1 6 God Revealed unto Babes. 
 
 their narrow zeal, their tumultuous inspirations ? Far 
 from it. It is not intellect from which God hides him- 
 self, but selfishness and pride ; which may belong alike 
 to taught and untaught, and darken the soul of sophist 
 or of clown. The words of Christ no doubt imply that 
 knowledge of other things may co-exist with blindness 
 as to that which is divine ; and the apprehension of 
 divine truth with ignorance of other things. And how 
 it is, that the two kinds of discernment are separable, 
 without being incompatible, will be evident if we unfold 
 a little their difference of nature. 
 
 There is light both in the "babe" and in the 
 " wise " : but in the former it is wholly spontaneous ; 
 in the latter it is chiefly derivative. In its infancy, the 
 soul simply apprehends what is given it to perceive ; 
 lies confidingly on the bosom of nature and lets the 
 morning beams come into the full and wondering eyes ; 
 does not read off by skilful signs the absent and the 
 future, but mingles with the present and takes it in ; 
 starts no doubts, is entangled in no reflections, but lives 
 straight out of the unquestioned instincts of the hour. 
 Later on, this impulsive freshness is all changed. 
 Second-hand information is added to the first : the 
 order of events and the classification of objects are 
 registered: much that is invisible is ascertained by 
 analogy, and that is yet to come predicted by laws of 
 succession; and by well organized combinations of 
 thought new deductions arise, new possibilities disclose
 
 God Revealed unto Babes. 1 1 7 
 
 themselves, new courses of imagination are open, that 
 withdraw us ever further from the primitive sources, 
 and make us forget, in the fertile plains and park- 
 landscapes of our migration, the lonely uplands of our 
 birth. We have reached so much by circuitous paths 
 and mediate contrivance, that the early starting-point 
 and assumed base of all our mental reckoning has been 
 lost : we no longer know the simple from the complex, 
 the artificial from the natural in thought : we use the 
 tissue which we have woven to dispute the fibre of 
 which it is made; and follow down the streams of 
 reasoning, exploring as we go, in hope of truths that 
 all the while lie far up at the fountain head. It is 
 this loss of the habit of natural trust, this tendency 
 to anxious quest of something distant instead of pure 
 repose on what is here, that, according to Christ's 
 prayer, hides God from the " wise and prudent." And, 
 'conversely, it is the surrender to spontaneous light and 
 love, the simple passing out upon it into life, without 
 doubt of its guidance or scrutiny of its claims, that 
 reveals him unto " babes." 
 
 How profoundly true this is, that in divine things 
 the little child may know what the great philosopher 
 may miss, will appear if you only think what God 
 is, and whether he is likely to be discovered on any 
 explorer's track or by any artifice of calculation. Two 
 things science enables us to do, from which all its 
 triumphs spring. It shows us how to put the parts
 
 1 1 8 God Revealed unto Babes. 
 
 and products of nature into true classes; and it 
 qualifies us to foresee phenomena else unsuspected. 
 But God is neither a being to be classified, nor a 
 phenomenon to be foreseen. Such procedures of the 
 mind are quite inapplicable, except to the finite and 
 the transient ; and he who goes forth upon them may 
 find whatever begins to be, but not that which for ever 
 is; may rightly dispose of this and that, but never 
 meet the All in All. As well might you attempt to 
 put space under your microscope, or weigh gravitation 
 in your scales. If you believe that God exists, and 
 understand your words when you call him " infinite " 
 and " eternal," you cannot expect to find him as one 
 object among many, but as a Spirit in all , the living 
 reality of all appearance ; the firmament of thought 
 that holds the stars ; the omnipresent deep that throws 
 up the tides of history and the ripplings of private care ; 
 the sole power of the universe without ; the archetype 
 of the free soul within ; and the secret source of the 
 meaning that dwells in everything. Were he at all 
 away, we might step forth to seek him ; did he ever 
 slumber, we might watch for the date of his waking 
 times. But living for ever in us and around us, he 
 does not enable us to compare his presence with his 
 ; absence : if we miss him, it is from his perpetuity and 
 nearness ; if we meet him, it is not by feeling after 
 him abroad, but by dropping inwards and returning 
 home. The differences by which he is revealed are in
 
 God Revealed unto Babes. 119 
 
 us and not in him ; in our faculty of recognition, by no 
 means in his constancy of action. His light is alive 
 in the very hearts that neglect or deny him ; and in 
 those that most own him is latent a thousand times 
 for once that it flashes on their conscious eye. But 
 there are moments when the heauty of the universe 
 looks in at us with a meaning quite divine ; or the 
 crises of history shake us as the visible drama of 
 Providence ; or the eye of appealing misery burns into 
 the place of pity in our souls and we know it to be his 
 sympathy as well as ours ,* or a new insight of duty 
 opens a path which he alone could show. In these 
 instances, we strain no ingenuity to discover him ; it is 
 he who comes to us and finds us ; his presence rises 
 of itself, and the revelation is spontaneous. Our sole 
 concern is to accept it, to revere it, to follow it, to live 
 by it. 
 
 Thus the true attitude of the devout mind always 
 involves a certain quietism and self-relinquishment. 
 Instead of pressing curiously forward, it sinks in medi- 
 tation back, rests upon the moment as divine, and feels 
 the very pavement beneath its feet as holy. It has 
 neither any distance to go, nor any time to wait, in 
 order to elose in with the Spirit of God ; only to own 
 and trust him now and here, to pass into his hand 
 with simple faith, a disarmed and unreluctant captive 
 to his will. To look at the Christian conflict from with- 
 out, you might suppose that it was. achieved by lashing
 
 I2O God Revealed unto Babes. 
 
 the soul to intense volition, by an ever-hasting never- 
 resting agility, by breathless eagerness to mount the 
 height. An energy so great seems to strain all the 
 powers of Resolve : a victory so arduous over ease and 
 passion has in it a royal air of mastery : an aspiration 
 so lofty appears to set the eye on what is distant and 
 toil for it with determined vow. Yet, if you will look 
 within, you will find quite another mood of mind 
 from this ; not rigid purpose, but pliant affection ; not 
 kingly command, but docile submission ; not even any 
 passion for far-off excellence, but a willing heart for the 
 duty that is near. The spirit of highest heroism before 
 men stands as a little child before the face of God. 
 When the Christian lady, endowed with whatever is 
 choicest in the gifts of nature and the enrichments of 
 life, exchanges the cultivated home for the noisome 
 j - f ^^hospital, pledges the highest accomplishments to the 
 Jfc* lowliest charities, carries gentle graces and clear faculty 
 into the presence and service of wounded and fevered 
 exiles, and lives only to see and do what few men, in 
 their strength and hardihood, would dare approach : we 
 ask ourselves with reverent wonder, how a resolution so 
 magnanimous could declare itself at all, and how sacri- 
 fice so costly can bear the constant drain. Perhaps the 
 struggle we imagine never has been there. Perhaps 
 the difficulty, the reluctance, the stern mustering of 
 conquering force, are all a dream. Perhaps there has 
 only been a simple yielding up of self to the asking
 
 God Revealed unto Babes. 121 
 
 look of God, a dropping of all resistance, an acquies- 
 cence in the moulding touch and pressure of the divine 
 will. The originality and greatness of such minds arise 
 not from prasternatural effort, but from unreserved sur- 
 render: they do not determine whither they will go, 
 but only say, ' Yes,' whithersoever they are led : they 
 do not fret to find the way or complain because they 
 cannot trace it far, but, hand in hand with an everlasting 
 Guide, set a foot of firm content on the next ground 
 that he may show. Hence the quietude and evenness 
 of all their ways, a certain gentle and solitary air that 
 seems too mild to give out so much power, a half- 
 mystic reserve whence strangely issues a rare organizing 
 and administrative faculty. For it is the g^eat marvel 
 of the Christian character, that the completest self- 
 sacrifice gives the completest self-possession ; that only 
 the captive soul, which has flung her rights away, has 
 all her powers free ; and that simply to serve under the 
 instant orders of the living God, is the highest qualifi- 
 cation for command. This is the meaning of that great 
 saying of Cromwell's, " One never mounts so high as 
 when one knows not ivliither one is going " : a saying 
 which " the wise and prudent " scorned as a confession 
 of blindness, but which reveals to simpler minds the 
 deepest truth. 
 
 There are, in fact, two types of human greatness, 
 the Pagan and the Christian, the moral and the reli- 
 gious, the secular and the divine. The former has its
 
 122 God Revealed unto Babes. 
 
 root and essence in trying hard ; the latter, in trusting 
 gently: the one depends on voluntary energy; tho 
 other on relinquishment of personal will to cast every 
 burden upon God. The one chooses its own ends, 
 elaborates the means, attempts to see several moves 
 before it, and secures the unity of its course and cha- 
 racter by plan and vigilance ; the other, possessed by a 
 God-given end, becomes its organ and its implement, 
 and simply lets it use, from day to day, the entire powers 
 of the soul. On a nearer view, there is here, after all, 
 not so much an abnegation of will, as a return to its 
 primitive simplicity. The child, impelled towards some 
 object of his wish, e.g. to run after a ball, to imitate 
 a phrase, to make a drawing of a horse, is wholly pre- 
 occupied with his conception, and never measures his 
 resources against it, or thinks of the chain of move- 
 ments that must lead from the idea to the accomplish- 
 ment. He lets the end find its own means ; and flings 
 himself upon the unconscious tentatives that carry him 
 to his goal without telling him his way. In such in- 
 stinctive execution of his remote aim there is ever the 
 grace and freedom of an inspiration. But when, in 
 order to frame it into an expertness, you draw back his 
 thought and fix it upon the process, and make him 
 count and register the steps, the flow of power will fail 
 him ; the feet will totter, the voice will hesitate, the 
 finger stiffen ; and the spontaneous faculty, lost by your 
 analysis of Nature, has to be doubtfully regained by
 
 God Revealed unto Babes. 123 
 
 combinations of Art. Similarly, in the higher intuitions, 
 it is the unconditional surrender to an authoritative end, 
 with implicit trust in its command of means, that arms 
 them with a force serene and irresistible. Free from 
 every care, entangled in no web of calculation, the 
 thoughts gain an unanxious elasticity, and the life 
 derives unity from the singleness of spontaneous feeling 
 that pervades it all. Both these heroisms may be high 
 and noble : both may be untainted by mean passions 
 and unworthy aims : both have left their trace of glory 
 on human history. But the strenuous self-reliance 
 must yield the palm to the quietude of self-sacrifice 
 and the victory of faith. However intense the stimulus 
 which ambition or even conscience may give to the in- 
 tellect and will, it is not to be compared with the might 
 assumed by the faculties of their own accord, when 
 released from fear and care, and flung into the Almighty 
 hand to be wielded at his will. There is no instrument 
 so tremendous in this world as a human soul thus 
 committed to what is diviner than itself : it is as the 
 two-edged sword of the Spirit with the scabbard thrown 
 away; and wherever difficulties are to be cleft, and 
 fiends of evil to be cut down, there it will be found, 
 flashing on the Providential field. Be it the saintly 
 woman, or be it the God-fearing Puritan, " None mount 
 so high as those who know not whither they go."- 
 
 It is not then so difficult to understand how the most 
 wonderful Christian activity proceeds from the quietest 
 
 '
 
 124 God Revealed unto Babes. 
 
 and most passive surrender. Equally true is it, that 
 the more you studiously attend to divine and infinite 
 things, instead of letting them attend to you, the less 
 are you likely to learn of them. Why pry about to find 
 the universal Light ? why wander through the dark to 
 meet the Night ? The Light is here and bathes ytfu 
 all the while : the Night is around, and hides you in 
 its embrace. Drink-in the beauty of the hour: lie 
 open to its deepest hints and holiest meaning : be still, 
 and ask for purity of heart ; and the blank will fill, the 
 cloud will glow, with One who is often found of them 
 that seek him not. Those who in this matter prate 
 most about " progress " are just the people to make the 
 smallest way ; and none seem to win less knowledge of 
 sacred things than those who make a watchword of 
 " truth " and a parade of " free inquiry." This posture 
 and direction of the mind is false except for finite ancl 
 evanescent things, and must be dropped to begin the 
 life of faith. The Infinite is not hid in a corner ; or 
 locked among the treasures of the Vatican ; or lingering 
 among the antiquities of the first century ; or waiting 
 behind some future and undevised experiment, that 
 we have any key to turn, any bar to remove, any choicest 
 instruments to invent ere he becomes accessible. Were 
 it so, were he at the end of some hard problem, the 
 mere prize of logical skill, what hope would there be 
 for the multitude of toiling men ? We sometimes hear 
 it said, by well-read people ; "If we, with all our ad-
 
 God Revealed unto Babes. 125 
 
 vantages of mental training, find it so difficult to banish 
 doubt and realise the holy truths which we profess ; if 
 we are often obliged to have recourse to subtle reason- 
 ings arid close reflection in order to clear up a perplexity 
 and shake off a misgiving, how can we expect from the 
 untaught poor anything but inapprehension and un- 
 belief?" Were religious faith the creation of dialectic 
 or the fruit of erudition, this despondency would be 
 just. But its source and place are far different. It is 
 rather the first root of life than the last blossom of 
 thought ; and is secured upon the native love and un- 
 sophisticated conscience which may lie torpid through 
 some wintry seasons of civilization, but can never die 
 within the soil of our humanity. To commune with 
 God, there is need of no subtle thought, no foreign 
 tongue, no newest philosophy : " the pure in heart shall 
 see " him ; and Fox and Bunyan can more truly make 
 him known, than " Masters of Sentences " and " Angelic 
 Doctors." It is not till we fall from the platform of 
 our natural trusts, that the wheels and pulleys of argu- 
 ment are plied to lift us back again ; and the artifices 
 of reason would never be needed but to meet and 
 balance the artifices of doubt. The dark spirits which 
 the restless intellect evokes, a brighter intellect alone 
 is able to disperse : but when it has cast them out, it 
 has but chastened its own work, and reinstated us in 
 natural health. Religion is born ere thought begins : 
 it is re -born, when thought is consummated and enters
 
 126 God Revealed unto Babes. 
 
 into its glory. But meanwhile, as the familiar measures 
 and methods of intelligence are given for the finite order 
 of things, it is no wonder that they embarrass the 
 apprehension of the Infinite, and increase the difficulty 
 rather than the facility of faith. And so long as this 
 lower mind takes no counsel with the higher and 
 spiritual nature, and does not widen the horizon of its 
 view, it will be blind to what the other sees ; and our 
 mental advance will be marked by the alternation of an 
 ever-creeping shadow on divine things scattered by an 
 ever-answering light. In order to emerge from this 
 struggle of action and reaction, we need, not increase 
 of acuteness, so much as return to simplicity. The 
 supreme prerogative of cultivated Reason will then be 
 to reopen the native pieties of early love and trust ; and 
 the truly wise will see around them, in richer hues and 
 sublimer proportions, the heaven that lay around the 
 child. While the curious intellect tries this and tries 
 that, with an ever-shifting call of " Lo ! here," and 
 "Lo ! there," to the tender conscience and the unspoiled 
 mind the kingdom of God has already come.
 
 PSALM Iv. 19. 
 "Because they have no changes, therefore they fear not God." 
 
 To one who tries everything by the standard of enjoy- 
 ment, there arises a curious contradiction between the 
 inner nature and the outer lot of men. We are thrown 
 upon an existence where nothing is permanent, nothing 
 asleep. We bring into it a soul that sighs for repose, 
 that struggles with the restless tide, and ever hopes to 
 drift into the still waters, and lie within the shelter of 
 the hills. Our life is planted on the surface of a 
 whirling sphere. Our prayer is to find its tranquil 
 centre and revolve no more. Not that we are passive 
 all the while, and borne along by powers wholly foreign 
 to ourselves. Strange to say, we are sharers in the 
 very stir and turmoil of which we complain. We 
 create the race which we say outstrips us and leaves 
 us faint. We fling our voice into the hum of human
 
 128 The Messengers of Change. 
 
 history ; yet stop our ears, lest it should drive us mad. 
 It is not the mere lapsing seasons of the heavens and 
 the earth, not the passage of our physical life alone, by 
 which our remonstrance is called forth : but, not less, 
 the vicissitudes of society, the shifting attitudes of 
 thought and feeling, the evanescence- of habits, institu- 
 tions, and beliefs ; processes, of which our own agency 
 is the producing cause, and in pleading against which 
 we are plaintiffs against our own will. Thus, we are at 
 variance with ourselves, as much as with our God ; and 
 are like wayward children, breaking their toys and then 
 weeping at the wreck which their own passion has made. 
 The yearning for rest is no doubt deeper and stronger 
 with the old than with the young, with the conservative 
 than with the reforming spirit. But it exists in all. 
 The very desire for progress is for the sake of some 
 fixed goal : the most burning aspiration hopes to sit 
 and look forth at last from the cool and freshening 
 height. The intensest action sustains itself on the 
 thought that it may soon subside : it loves not the 
 burden it is impelled to bear, but trusts ere long to 
 lay it down. When the poet or the moralist touches 
 on the transiency of all earthly things, and the per- 
 petual succession of fresh relations, it is always with 
 some sadness in the strain : as if he went forth to take 
 a tender farewell of the old, rather than to swell the 
 triumph of the new. And even the philosophy which 
 has brought itself to think that the universe is but an
 
 The Messengers of Change. 129 
 
 eddy of eternal change, an ocean composed, all through 
 its depths, of crossing currents of phenomena, has 
 usually taught the doctrine either with a sorrow in the 
 voice, or in the metal tone of heartless arrogance. The 
 decree of vicissitude manifestly presses heavily upon 
 the soul : and whether it be the outward condition of 
 established comfort that crumbles beneath the feet ; or 
 the beliefs of earlier days that change like the morning 
 clouds before the kindling light ; or the affections that 
 have given a quiet sanctity to life, and are now called 
 to drop their objects one by one at the word of Death ; 
 the cry of the heart is still the same, " that it 
 were with me now, as it was in the times never to 
 return ! " 
 
 This regretful glance at the fading colours of the 
 past, this longing to find rest from the ceaseless flow 
 of change, has two different meanings and tendencies : 
 one false and evil ; the other true and good. Its 
 impulse is false, when it leads us to the mere negative 
 resource of ease and exemption, instead of the positive 
 repose in God ; when we only cry to be let alone, that 
 our sleep be not disturbed too soon ; when we simply 
 shrink from the touch of new duties and new sorrows ; 
 when we are angry at the noble passion that urges us 
 to toil and danger, and repent of the love that brings 
 us grief. Its impulse is true, when it makes us, in our 
 quest of peace, go out beyond vicissitude, instead of 
 weaving a nest within it ; when it refers us to a centre 
 
 K
 
 130 The Messengers of Change. 
 
 of stability, a spirit of Almighty constancy, a presence 
 of pure and infinite affection, amid and behind the 
 fluctuations of created things ; when, instead of return- 
 ing to our ark at the first spray of the cold flood, we 
 do but rise upon the wing to look through the upper 
 air, and then take our resolute track to the fixed and 
 illumined hills. The soul is faithless which, when it 
 is stung by severities and bowed by afflictions, tries to 
 choke its sympathies and bring a frost upon its mellow 
 seasons. It is not by reducing life to less, but by 
 expanding it to more ; not by muffling its stern tones, 
 but by ringing its sweetness clearly out, that a serene 
 harmony can be obtained. When duty is severe, we 
 must be more reverently dutiful ; if love brings sorrow, 
 we must love more and better ; when thought chills us 
 with doubt and fear, we must think again with fuller 
 soul and deeper trust. 
 
 The changeful lot which our lower instinct deprecates 
 is, in truih, the very discipline by which God would 
 draw us to himself. Repugnant to our animal and 
 sentient nature, it kindles the diviner element to life. 
 There is none but God himself that can abide for ever 
 holy, for ever perfect, for ever wakeful, without any 
 experience of alternation. As for us, if we have no 
 changes, we fear him not. Our faculties of intellect 
 and feeling, our sense of beauty and of right, the 
 opening out of character and affection, are made de- 
 pendent on the stimulus of incessant change. The
 
 The Messengers of Change. 131 
 
 passiveness of the infant's existence, is overcome by a 
 thousand soliciting impressions ; the light that fasci- 
 nates the eye ; the touch that puts a spring into the 
 limbs ; the ever-varying challenge of the mother's 
 looks, forcing the tender cheek into a smile. The 
 great apparatus of external nature, which would teach 
 us nothing if it and we were fixed, glides with transi- 
 tory images before the sight, and, ere we can sleep 
 before one scene, presents us with another. This is 
 indeed the very condition of all apprehension and in- 
 telligence. Dipped ever in the same scene, plunged 
 in one colour, filled with one monotone, no perception 
 would be startled into birth : the glance of attention 
 sleeps, till the moment of transition ; it leaps forth at 
 the edges of light and darkness, of sound and silence, 
 and in crossing the line first learns the realm on either 
 side. So long as life is young, a perpetual stream of 
 wonder pours on the mind and bathes it with exhaust- 
 less admirations : even were no lines of unexpected 
 order, no new regions of knowledge opened, the .rapid 
 ripening of the faculties themselves would alter the 
 apparent lights on every scene, and dissolve the out- 
 lines of each prior experience. And in this training 
 of constant change there is a marvellous tendency to 
 drive us upon faith in the Unchangeable. Finite 
 things can be discerned only against the background 
 of the Infinite. The visible body that glides before the 
 eye is as an island in the Space that has no bounding 
 
 K 2
 
 132 The Messengers of Change. 
 
 shore. The passing event that marks the moment is 
 but a point of contact where the curve of our being 
 meets the tangent of Eternity. No appearance emerges 
 and arrests our thought, without raising questions of 
 Causation, and speaking to us as from a hidden Mind 
 that meditates in beauty and speaks in law. To the 
 pure and unspoiled heart, all phenomena that present 
 no deformity, and all experience clear of sin, open a 
 way for the consciousness of God : gleams of him will 
 frequently break through; and a certain tacit sense 
 of his reality and nearness will linger around even 
 common hours and daily tasks. Where the first 
 lessons of life, the first stirrings of the soul, are 
 hindered by no hardening and ungenial culture, its 
 features of earthly gladsomeness will have a certain 
 modest setting of heavenly reverence. 
 
 But the cycle of young experience soon completes 
 itself. At each return its repetitions become more and 
 more familiar. Change itself becomes customary, and 
 visits the mind with monotony rather than variety. 
 The spring seems to burst with a fainter verdure, and 
 the winter hearth to burn with a less vivid glow. The 
 morning-breeze of young enthusiasm, so fragrant of 
 the night, so fresh from heaven, grows drowsy with 
 the steady heat, and sinks to rest : and the mental 
 and moral life which had been nursed in vicissitude 
 threatens to perish under the opiate of usage. Not 
 that Providence abandons us in our maturity, or omits
 
 The Messengers of Change. 133 
 
 to ply us with awakening appeals. No sooner has life 
 ceased to he a constant flow of novelty, than it enters 
 on a series of grand crises, which intersect its even 
 course : its current orhit has become as a beaten track : 
 but there are nodes it cannot pass without a spark 
 and thrill. When life-long ties are contracted, and the 
 green path is entered at one end at whose other the 
 death-shadow waits in ambush ; when first the home 
 of marriage is set in order ; when the child is born ; 
 when the parent dies ; when the friend deserts, or the 
 business fails, or the sickness prostrates ; the Angel of 
 Change looks in again through her veil of light, or 
 her curtain of shadows, and reminds us of Him who 
 abideth in the midst for ever. All these are epochs of 
 natural devotion ; and only the most insensible heart 
 can pass them with the neutral heedlessness of instinct, 
 and without any enriching hue of awe-ful thought. 
 The incidents of the great mortal drama are so pre- 
 pared as never to permit the interest to flag ; and even 
 in its quietest development, where the plot seems most 
 evenly to act itself out, we cannot be long without some 
 scene whose pathos touches us, or whose misery appals. 
 These times, moreover, are irregularly scattered on our 
 way, that they may the better surprise our insensibility, 
 and that we may not kill them by anticipation ere they 
 come. They are not like the steadily recurring hours 
 that announce the stated duty and find us mechanically 
 prepared. With whatever wonder we watch the dial-
 
 134 Th e Messengers of Change. 
 
 plate of life, we cannot find them there. The deeper 
 crises are marked in invisible characters there, legible 
 only to the Omniscient eye ; and as the index traverses, 
 we know not what birth, what death, what sudden hope, 
 what blighted joy, lies just upon its touch. When these 
 hours strike, neither matin nor vesper has such a holy 
 sound : it is God himself that tolls us in to prayer, 
 and calls us to listen to his great Sermon on the 
 Mount ; and whether we are in the field or on the sea, 
 we must throw down the common implements of our 
 work, and go and stand before his face. As one crisis 
 after another is brought upon our lot, it gives us the 
 means of moral admeasurement and deeper self-know- 
 ledge : it reads off the reckoning of our spirits, and 
 tells us whether we more deeply live, or more begin 
 to die. Each newest sorrow revives the thought of 
 those before, and spreads out the past in tender 
 colours before the eye : the pictures of other years, the 
 scenes once pressed by our more elastic feet, the dear 
 forms that were with us there, and held us by the hand, 
 stand out in the clear and silent light : and their very 
 looks may tell us whether any grosser film has gathered 
 on our soul ; whether we can meet their calm and holy 
 face ; whether, as we are further from them in one 
 direction, we are nearer to them in another ; and 
 whether the same atmosphere of God seems to enfold 
 us both and make us one with them and him. The 
 emergencies that reveal things to our sight are a disci-
 
 The Messengers of Change. 135 
 
 pline which, however grievous, we can ill spare ; and, 
 to those that give them worthy welcome, they leave a 
 trust nobler than security, and a wisdom better than 
 any joy. The men who most escape them, who most 
 completely realise the false elysium of an easy life ; 
 whose heritage saves them the rough battle with 
 difficulty, to win an honourable footing in the world; 
 whose health is never shaken by disease, and whose 
 home is invaded by no anxiety ; are rarely those who 
 most penetrate to the moral significance of life, and 
 are alive with the quickest affection and the promptest 
 alacrity of conscience. Too often a sluggish cloud 
 gathers on their mind and hides from them the finest 
 expression, the divinest look, upon the features of 
 nature and humanity. All things fall tamely to their 
 lot as matters of course : the prizes for which others 
 spend all their manly strength, the decent and orna- 
 mental comfort, the provision for the sinking parent, 
 the education for the rising child, the store of books, 
 the fund for charity, the time for kindly deeds, the 
 place of influence in society ; all are theirs without a 
 thought, and, grown flat with usage, have none of the 
 rich flavour of hope and toil. Great is the danger that, 
 because they have no changes, they may cease to fear 
 or love. It is only by strong and noble effort to shake 
 off the slothful weeds as they creep over the surface of 
 such a life, and keep the margin clear by the running 
 waters of pure affection, that they can retain the native
 
 136 The Messengers of Change. 
 
 clearness of the soul, and continue to reflect the gaze 
 of Heaven. What the natural history of the heart, 
 the quickening necessity, the subduing sorrow, accom- 
 plish for others, is left in their case to the strenuous 
 vow of their own will. It is one of the great compen- 
 sations which balance, more equally than men suppose, 
 the good and ill of human existence, that where there 
 is more affliction there is often more affection too : if 
 the burden is heavier to be borne, the soul is more 
 elastic to bear it ; and by many a sorrowing creature, 
 flushed with the inspiration of love, duties are thrown 
 profusely and spontaneously off, which the painful 
 struggles of unawakened ease could scarcely lift. 
 
 So completely is it the Providential plan to secure to 
 us the discipline of change, that, when we fall asleep 
 on the crust of usage, a fire is immediately kindled 
 beneath us, and we sleep on a volcano. Our very 
 inertia operates as an instrument to prepare for us new 
 crises that shall force us to spring to our feet once 
 more. Whatever be our appointed work, the first 
 moment of its neglect is the first moment of its decay ; 
 and where we cease to grow our corn, the poison plants 
 will cover all the ground. God has made nothing in 
 this world to keep nothing, at least, that has a beauty, 
 and that bears a fruit ; death only and negation, de- 
 formity and barrenness, will flourish when let alone. 
 The individual mind, abandoned to negligence, watched 
 by no eye of conscience, bathed in no presence of God,
 
 137 
 
 exercised in no athletics of duty, loosens all its healthy 
 structure, and sinks into moral decline ; little, perhaps, 
 suspecting its own degeneracy, till surprised into some 
 awful degradation, and wakening into shame. No in- 
 stitution, no state, no church, will go on of itself and 
 hold its footing in the nature of things, while its 
 guardians and trustees are dozing on their watch. 
 There is ever a little speck of disease, a canker of evil 
 and falsehood, secreted in the substance of terrestrial 
 things, which is sure to spread, if you omit to wipe the 
 dust from their surface, and wash them with the waters 
 of purification. If you persist awhile in your unfaith- 
 fulness, you will be startled at length by the spasm of 
 a sudden agony ; and it will be well, if by repentant 
 efforts at renewal and the use of painful remedies, a 
 disastrous dissolution is staved off. In nations, as in 
 persons, too great a calm, too mild an indifference, too 
 peaceful an apathy, is ever a dark and boding sign, the 
 lull that comes before the storm, the dead silence ere 
 the thunder breaks. If we stir the atmosphere and 
 fling it upwards from no soil burning with noble 
 passions ; if every zone of our world reduces itself to 
 temperate and timid heats ; if no circulating breath of 
 pure enthusiasm passes from land to land, bearing on 
 it the cry of sympathy with the down-trodden, and of 
 defiance to the oppressor ; God will clear the air for us 
 from above, and fling across our fields and cities the 
 whirlwind of revolution. Thus it is that " He who
 
 138 The Messengers of Change. 
 
 abideth for ever will afflict us," if, " because we have 
 no changes," we cease to stand in awe of him. There 
 is no peace but in waking to all his seasons, and 
 moving freely with the windings of his Will; quick 
 to seize each fresh surprise of duty ; alert before day- 
 break to strike our tent of ease ; patient to endure the 
 crown of thorns which must press upon the brow of 
 every son of God. 
 
 If, then, the very law of life is a law of change ; if 
 every blossom of beauty has its root in fallen leaves ; 
 if love, and thought, and hope would faint beneath too 
 constant light, and need for their freshening the dark- 
 ness and the dews ; if it is in losing the transient that 
 we gain the Eternal ; then let us shrink no more from 
 sorrow, and sigh no more for rest ; but have a genial 
 welcome for vicissitude, and make quiet friends with 
 loss and Death. Through storm and calm, fresh be 
 our courage, and quick our eye, for the various service 
 that may await us. Nay, when God himself turns us 
 not hither and thither, when he sends us no changes 
 for us to receive and consecrate, be it ours to create 
 them for ourselves, by flinging ourselves into generous 
 enterprises and worthy sacrifice ; by the stirrings of 
 sleepless aspiration, and all the spontaneous vicissitudes . 
 of holy and progressive souls; keeping always the 
 moral spaces round us pure and fresh by the constant 
 thought of truth and the frequent deed of love. And 
 then, when, for us too, death closes the great series of
 
 The Messengers of Change. 139 
 
 mortal changes, the past will lie behind us green and 
 sweet as Eden, and the future before us in the light of 
 eternal peace. Tranquil and fearless we shall resign 
 ourselves to God, to conduct us through that ancient 
 and invisible way, which has been sanctified by the feet 
 of all the faithful, and illumined by the passage of the 
 Man of griefs.
 
 XI. 
 
 j&emt Cmst. 
 
 JOHN iv. 32. 
 " I hare meat to eat that ye know not of." 
 
 THE sense of dependence, it has been declared, 
 constitutes the essence of religion. At all events, it 
 is an essential condition. A nature perfectly self- 
 possessed and self-sufficing, in equilibrium with the 
 world without, and at rest from the balance of its 
 powers within, would be so rounded off and complete 
 in itself as to float through existence unconscious of 
 the "attractions, untroubled by the resistances, which 
 determine its path. It is when we feel the jar of 
 actual adjustments, that the sphere of the possible 
 bursts open to us ; when we are borne out on the wing 
 of affections which find nowhere to alight, but only 
 floods below and clouds above, that we set our heart 
 on the rock beneath the waters and the light beyond 
 the gloom. And there are such provisions for this 
 experience in the whole constitution of our life, that
 
 Secret Trust. 141 
 
 not even the most robust and limited of men can 
 escape the sense of instability. There are times when 
 we cannot but feel the world too strong for us ; the 
 world u'ith&ut ; when its strain of duty loads us with 
 too heavy a weight ; or the stroke of its laws shatters 
 our reliances and leaves us wounded and alone ; or the 
 tyranny of its opinion baffles in us what is wisest and 
 tortures what is best ; or the brevity of its duration for 
 us brings us at the same hour to the last verge of its 
 opportunity and the full discovery of its scope. Nor 
 are we less liable to be overmastered by the world' 
 within ; when the will is struck down by the lightning 
 of passion, or moves creaking with the friction of 
 temper, or sinks in the collapse of depression ; and 
 whether we are taken up and borne along upon the 
 storm, or checked by the secret threads that bind us 
 to the ground, we seem to be disposed of against vain 
 remonstrance of our own. Even if the winds were 
 calm without, the floods would roll within ; for in our 
 unstable soul the very bottom heaves beneath ; so that 
 we are tossed between the elements and ride on a 
 surface that never rests. 
 
 What provision then is there for conquering this 
 uncertain sea ? what means of holding an even way 
 through the fluctuations of impulse and vicissitude ? 
 In the habits of human life, and the resources of 
 human character, there are helps of various degree to 
 this end. To steady us amid the dizzy sweep of
 
 142 Secret Trust. 
 
 change, it is good to be under a rule of outward 
 necessity, which weights down our. sudden caprices and 
 goads our flagging resolves, and compels us to pace 
 a round of achievement we should else deem it too 
 monotonous to take. Be it only the drill of an army, 
 the discipline of a frigate, the punctual bell and 
 inexorable machinery of a mill, whatever mingles law 
 and measure with the forces of the will, and constrains 
 them to work in rhythm if they work at all, is a 
 beneficent corrector of irresolution and vehemence, 
 and builds up those habits of outward order, in which 
 inward right most loves to dwell. It is still better to 
 pass under the sway of a fixed purpose of our own, 
 \vhjch shall be worthy of our conscience and adequately 
 tax our powers ; to make it the master of our industry, 
 the counsellor of our doubts, the victor of our tempta- 
 tions. And whether it be to write a history, to solve a 
 problem, or to remedy an abuse, whoever has clearly 
 before him such an end in view, sails with his compass 
 alight through the wildest night, and, bearing onward, 
 is heedless of the pelting rain, and unbewildered by 
 the gloom. From all who are intent upon great works, 
 a Luther, a Cromwell, a Clarkson among reformers, a 
 Gibbon, a Humboldt, a Grote among intellectual men, 
 the distractions which weaken life naturally fall away ; 
 and even its griets strike upon them with gentler 
 touch ; and over many a dead lift of obstruction which 
 would bring less concentrated energies to pause they
 
 Secret Trust. 143 
 
 are carried by a quiet persistency. But neither the 
 service of an involuntary necessity, nor the execution 
 of a voluntary purpose, reaches the ultimate sources of 
 unrest ; and, in order to steady us from the centre 
 outwards, it is best of all to be possessed by a hidden 
 faith, which keeps its tints of beauty and its lines of 
 truth behind the flying shadows, a secret image of 
 what life really is before the verifying eye of God, a 
 preoccupation with its rightful perfectness as seen in 
 the supreme visions of the heart. Once let there be 
 this felt difference between the seeming and the reality 
 of things ; let them carry an inward idea which is 
 moulding them even while they mar it, and which 
 will persevere and emerge through their transient 
 deformities; let the phenomena pass in front of this 
 divine light, while the mind sinks deep into it, and 
 abides there with perfect trust ; then, having the 
 interpreting key to changes which baffle others, it 
 dwells in an element of peace, and identifies itself, not 
 with the discords of the world which are working them- 
 selves off, but with the harmonies that are striving 
 to be. To look upon the scene of things as thus 
 pervaded by the thought of a just and holy God, and 
 charged to work it out, in unconscious servitude or con- 
 scious partnership, to live with heart and hope fixed 
 upon the higher ends instead of imprisoned in the 
 0or beginnings, this is to have power perfected in 
 weakness, and joy kindled amid tears : this, as we toss
 
 144 Secret Trust. 
 
 upon the deep and are covered with the night, is better 
 than the fragile compass : it is the compass lifted to 
 heaven, and turned into stars that are never clouded 
 and never set. 
 
 " I have meat to eat that ye know not of." "What 
 words could more- pathetically hint at the spiritual 
 source of strength in that unique career, that aliment 
 of the holy, true and good which Plato says is the 
 common well-spring for the thirst of all minds, divine 
 and human. Thus to live out of the invisible and 
 higher, and cling to it as the last reality, is Religion ; 
 and this it is which alone takes away the hardness of 
 duty and gives a sweetness to affection, and mingles 
 a sanctity with experience. 
 
 1. There is an invisible and transcendent element 
 in Duty, which at once defines and inspires it ; clears 
 its form and turns it from a human reluctance into 
 a divine joy. It is in vain that we look around and 
 consult the outward world, and take up now with this 
 example, now with that, in order to find what we ought 
 to be and do. So long as Conscience tries to " live by 
 sight and not by faith," and cannot stay at home with 
 God, but must go forth into the desert or the city at 
 every call of "Lo! here," and "Lo! there," it can 
 only pass from thraldom to thraldom and find no true 
 Deliverer. Neither models that appeal to the eye, nor 
 maxims that speak to the ear, can ever, without 
 abatement, send us to the divine light or tell us the
 
 Secret Trust. 145 
 
 divine thought. Plant me where you will upon that 
 which is, I must look across a chasm to that which 
 oiiaJit to be. The kingdom of heaven remains within ; 
 and only hroken gleams from it are reflected from the 
 world without. Eight and wrong are nowhere clearly 
 set in the sunshine, or painted definitely out in the 
 opposite characters of men ; but are mixed up together, 
 as if the combinations of fact took no notice of the 
 
 distinctions of thought, and some weakness of nature 
 
 \ 
 
 fell short of the design of God. Where have you 
 
 ever found, even in the selectest gallery of the good, 
 one whom you could make your absolute rule of life ? 
 Do you fix, for instance, on the pure soul which sits 
 behind that uplifted face, and, the more it retires 
 within, shines the more through the transparent eye ? 
 He who looks at you with that sweet pathetic light and 
 whose voice makes music in the heart, may never have 
 known a passion that is ignoble or a vision that is 
 unclean ; but see ! his home is in confusion, his 
 appointments are unkept, his wife is overworked, and 
 he heeds not that he has left her to serve alone ; in 
 dreaming how the world might be better he lets it drop 
 into the worse. Do you turn then, in your disappoint- 
 ment, to one who shall be " safe from all illusions " ; 
 whose clear discernment and firm will keep him well 
 adjusted to the world around him ; and who suffers 
 under no disproportion between the intellect which 
 apprehends and the conscience which works out the 
 
 L
 
 146 Secret Trusf. 
 
 practical problems of life ? If you keep close to him, 
 his calm and constant mind may hold you punctual 
 to duty and secure against mistake. But, alas ! if 
 you are in doubt and wayward sorrow, you never dare 
 confess to him ; if you go astray into some folly, he 
 will only upbraid you; if the wing of some high 
 passioii' lifts you from his beaten track, and struggles 
 to reach the blue and visionary distance, he will part 
 from you with contemptuous adieu. Sick at heart with 
 the cold repulse, do you take for your comrade and 
 your guide that young apostle of righteousness, the 
 enthusiast of self-denial, who flings himself as an 
 organ of divine pity on the sins and grievances of the 
 world, and shames them from a presence instinct with 
 faith and hope and charity ? It is well ; while you 
 are at his side, conscience can never sleep, and the 
 will, touched by the love of God, can bend with a 
 tender grace to the smallest things. But he will hurry 
 you hither and thither, faster than your reason and 
 more capriciously than your conscience can go : stable 
 only in nobleness, he is carried, with the hectic flush 
 of restless impulse from one compassion to another, 
 and misses the quiet unity which alone can compress 
 any achievement into the few human years. Not the 
 beauty only, but the possibility of his life you find 
 to be exceptional ; and with loving sorrow you have to 
 leave him on his path alone. 
 
 And if in even the higher characters of men no
 
 Secret Trust. 147 
 
 adequate rule of life is to be found, still vainer is the 
 trust in the current sentiments and recognised standard 
 of society around. It is a miscellaneous multitude of 
 the foolish and frivolous as well as of the wise and faith- 
 ful, which votes into existence the moral opinion of a 
 community ; and its level can never rise above half-tide, 
 except when some mighty wind of genius and goodness 
 sets in from the deep, and for an hour builds it up to 
 fiood. From its very nature, social law asks no more 
 than men of all sorts agree to demand of one another ; 
 and lets off with impunity the follies it is prudent to 
 wink at, and the sins it is not convenient to forego ; and 
 if this is to be our measure of right, to uphold us where 
 we are, low indeed must be our moral position, and 
 precarious our standing even there. If you have only 
 your little share in the public conscience, all that 
 dignifies existence is at the mercy of the veering winds, 
 and all that consecrates it retires behind the cloud : not 
 the goodness only, but the beauty and true adornment 
 of life, oscillate into senseless distortions ; and you will 
 deck yourself, under Cromwell, in the winding-sheet of 
 Puritanism, and in the next age in the lascivious robes 
 of the Restoration, and will helplessly deliver yourself 
 in our time to those outrages on taste which bespeak 
 vacuity or shamelessness of character. Unless you 
 have some selecting principle within, the native affinity, 
 the incorruptible reverence of a pure and modest nature, 
 you have nothing to steady you under the swaying 
 
 L 2
 
 148 Secret Trust. 
 
 movements of custom ; nothing to protect you from any 
 favourite folly ; nothing to hinder your captivity to the 
 false admirations that for ever lie in wait for the idle 
 and the faithless of mankind. It is by looking up 
 beyond the actual, not by looking down into it, by seek- 
 ing God within, not consulting men without, that you 
 will truly measure the divine claims upon you, and find 
 your duty clear and calm and sacred. Commune with 
 him, the All-holy, and it will become a secret under- 
 standing between his spirit and your own, a trust from 
 him, answered by assent and love from you ; an escape 
 from the poor twilight of human mediocrity into the 
 precincts of a lustre which can never fade. A soul that 
 goes apart with this divine vision of goodness has that 
 to feed on which others think not of. 
 
 2. There are also invisible capacities in Humrin 
 Nature, a latent fund of diviner affection, without an 
 eye on which we shall ill sustain the depth and fresh- 
 ness of our charity, and the very fountains of the heart 
 must dry. Look only at the surface of life, either where 
 the triflers loiter or the competing crowd pushes its 
 eager way, and tramples the weak upon the ground ; or 
 enter just the first stratum of motive immediately 
 below, where men dress up their seeming to one another, 
 and invent decorous disguises for their selfishness ; and 
 you have the scene before you which turns the observer 
 into the cynic and satirist. And carry that temper 
 whither you will, you will never see more than this : all
 
 Secret Trust. 149 
 
 that turns up will confirm it ; for it elicits what is akin 
 to itself; it creates its own evidence as it goes, and 
 publishes it in the journals and the clubs ; and drives 
 whatever contradicts it to hide in the forest shades of 
 the inmost spirit and be alone with God. If we have 
 no trust, and frame our speech and tune our voice as 
 having none, we shall often find it difficult to love even 
 our friends as they appear to us : our very presence 
 will harden them, and put them on their defence ; and 
 by many a carping word, or chafing of the spirit, they 
 will do injustice to themselves. How often may you 
 hear the querulous dialogue, the mutual complaint, the 
 artificial fenrv? of hurting speech, between those who, if 
 they would but burst the barrier of their pride, would 
 fall into eacn other's arms, and in dismissing the fiend, 
 let the reconciling angel in ! The pure and tender eye 
 which is not arrested by the troubled and broken surface, 
 but sends its glance behind and within, not only sees 
 the actual love that lives there, but warms and wakes 
 the possible love that was asleep and never stirred before, 
 Our humanity, touched with a divine freedom, has 
 larger and more liberal limits than its critics and its 
 students dream : it is not base ; it is not noble : it is a 
 vast possibility of baseness or of nobleness ; and nothing 
 so kindles its high spiritual consciousness and trans- 
 figures it with light divine, as the appeal of trustful 
 sympathy, and the expectant light of a brother's faith. 
 Could we not treat the guilt and degradation which
 
 150 Secret Trust. 
 
 defbrm the world as something unnatural, a spoiling of 
 the idea of God and the possibilities of man, could we 
 not rely on some supporting response when we bear 
 down upon them with expostulating call, it would be all 
 over with our patience and our hope. But when we 
 pass the poor deforming exterior, and enter the inner 
 nature, and ever so faintly trace the sleeping lineaments 
 of the divine image, pity despairs no more, and love 
 recovers from its recoil. 
 
 8. There is, finally, an invisible meaning and Provi- 
 dence in Life, which alone, through the clashing voices 
 and dizzying movements of the scene around, can steady 
 the tremblings of nature, and bring a quietude to the 
 heart. Were we sent upon this stage with blind 
 spiritual eye, and committed to our sensibilities alone 
 to grope about and judge by what the moments bring, 
 all things would appear confused and fragmentary ; and 
 however divine the poem of the world, the scattered 
 shreds would not reveal its thought or the broken strains 
 its melody. From our own position, simply as we feel 
 it, all security and peace often seem to pass away : the 
 ground breaks beneath our feet, and, as in a dream 
 where there is nothing solid to clutch at, we sink we 
 know not whither. On the bed of pain, when thought 
 and will swim feebly away and we are condensed into 
 the poignant moments ; when we long for the night, 
 but, when it comes, the stars glide too slowly and the 
 silence will not let us moan ; and we watch for the
 
 Secret Trust. 151 
 
 morning, but, when it dawns, the soft light mocks us 
 with its sweetness and the birds with the blitheness of 
 their song ; in the vigils of anxiety, when some life 
 which is our all trembles in the scale, and we extort a 
 thousand contradictory oracles from the flush upon the 
 features or the cloud upon the eye ; under the sting 
 of calumny, when things we most abhor are told of us, 
 and averted faces and sarcastic words show that the lie 
 has proved too strong and the love of friends too weak ; 
 in the countless vicissitudes of broken fortune and 
 shattered health and disappointed hopes ; all must look 
 like ruin, if we have no stay beyond the impression of 
 the hour. And even though we should not be upon the 
 rack of suffering ourselves, how often, if there were 
 nothing behind the things we see, might the immediate 
 aspect and courses of the world disturb us ! When the 
 minds of men seem to fall into confusion, deserted by 
 the simple sanctities of their fathers but not yet emerg- 
 ing into any clearness of their own ; when, for want of 
 any firm foothold of right, authority quails and rude 
 forces triumph ; when audacity seizes upon states, yet 
 is itself afflicted with the wavering of irremediable 
 doubt ; when churches, enfeebled within by puerile 
 superstitions, stand amid a rising flood of atheistic 
 denial ; when the distinctions slip, away between veracity 
 and pretence, between trade and theft, between modesty 
 and license ; we might well despond, if we did not look 
 beyond the present, and interpret it by the light of a
 
 152 Secret Trust. 
 
 diviner thought than animates its actors. But lifted to 
 an adequate distance from it, and assigning to it its 
 place in the Providence of humanity, we discern it but 
 as a pulsation in the line of time, one of those moments 
 of alternate tension and relaxation which are separately 
 dark, but together make the very light by which we 
 see. Thither, to that divine elevation above momentary 
 things, let the soul resort in faith ; and the sorrowful 
 clouds that shut it in are surmounted, and the ever- 
 lasting sunshine reached. In frailty and in trembling, 
 we rest in an eternal calm. In loneliness, we have still 
 an ever living communion. Deserted by the voices of 
 affection, we are with Him who attuned their sweetness, 
 and will console their loss. And djmg, we do but pass 
 to the very source and home of life.
 
 xn. 
 
 S0rrrjfos xif 
 
 JOHN xii. 27. 
 
 " Now is my soul troubled ; and what shall I say ? Father, save me 
 from this hour ? but for this cause came I unto this hour. Father ! 
 glorify thy name.' 5 
 
 IN Rome there are ancient catacombs which were used 
 by the primitive Christians for interment of their dead. 
 As depositories of the ashes of a lost generation, they 
 are nought to us : the dust of believer or unbeliever, 
 of the sinful or the saint, is drifted by the winds of 
 time into the common wreck of our humanity. But a 
 single mark made by a living hand is worth all the 
 remains of death sealed and treasured with so much 
 care ; especially when traced in moments of truth and 
 tenderness on the curtain drawn around the sleep of 
 friends : and the outside of the urn and the sarcophagus 
 may teach a more instructive lesson than can be learned 
 from the emptiness within. Now throughout the deco- 
 rative emblems and inscriptions in the early Christian
 
 154 The Sorrows of Messiah. 
 
 cemeteries, it has been remarked, one uniform character 
 may be observed, their spirit of cheerfulness and hope. 
 By some fresh breath, the gloom seems all swept out 
 from the chamber of so many griefs ; and a sweet and 
 placid light to fill the place, other than the glare of 
 earthly day, and like an enclosure of starlight from the 
 skies. The images and pictures on the walls exclude 
 all the horrors, and present only the sanctity, of death ; 
 assuring us that survivors kept over it a secure and 
 quiet vigil, invested it with peaceful thoughts, and 
 looked through it to a holy and passionless existence. 
 There, the evergreen leaf protests, in sculptured silence, 
 that the winter of the grave cannot touch the saintly 
 sotil : the blossoming branch speaks of vernal suns 
 beyond the snows of this chill world : the good Shep- 
 herd shows, from his benign looks, that the mortal way, 
 so terrible to nature, had become to those Christians as 
 the meadow path, between the grassy slopes and beside 
 the still waters. Yet were these mausoleums peopled 
 by no favoured race. They were the last asylum of the 
 persecuted ; they opened the first shelter to the weary 
 and despised : side by side with those who had fallen 
 asleep on the pillow of domestic care, were many who 
 had died th martyr's death, and mingled their last sigh, 
 not with the sobs of affection, but with the fiendish 
 shouts of the amphitheatre. When this is borne in 
 mind, the impress of cheerfulness on the symbolic 
 memorials of the place cannot fail to strike us as re-
 
 The Sorrows of Messiah. 155 
 
 naarkable. That the victims pelted hither by the storms 
 of a merciless world should be laid down upon the earth 
 without a mark of anger or a burst of mourning, but 
 only with the mild farewell of affection and of hope, 
 attests the power of the new faith to still with its word 
 the fiercest tempest of grief and passion. 
 
 This indication however is in perfact agreement with 
 otner signs of a fearless and glad enthusiasm pervading 
 the early Church. Rome was startled by the appear- 
 ance, in her effeminate cities, of a people whom it was 
 impossible to terrify ; on whom torture and death, con- 
 secrated by some invisible charm, lost their deterring 
 power ; who reminded her of her old republican hardi- 
 hood, only that it was not so much manty as godlike ; 
 who amid the pestilence, or after the siege, came into 
 the streets to cool the fevers of death, and soothe the 
 rage of despair; who escorted the martyr to his end 
 with envious gratulations, and greeted the earthquake 
 itself with the hymn of redemption. 
 
 And even earlier than any organized Christendom, 
 we find, in the apostolic writings themselves, abundant 
 traces of the same spirit. What can be more free and 
 buoyant, with all their variety, than the writings of 
 Paul? Brilliant, broken, impetuous, as the mountain 
 torrent freshly filled, never smooth and calm, but on 
 the eve of some bold leap, never vehement but to fill 
 some receptacle of clearest peace, they present every- 
 where the image of a vigorous joy. Beneath the form
 
 156 The Sorrows of Messiah. 
 
 of their theosopbic reasonings, and their hints of deep 
 philosophy, there may be heard a secret lyric strain of 
 glorious praise, bursting at times into open utterance 
 and asking others to join in chorus. " Rejoice in the 
 Lord always ! and again, I say unto you, Rejoice ! " 
 His life was a battle ; from which, in intervals of the 
 good fight, his words arose as the song of victory. 
 
 The primitive followers of the faith then were all of 
 one heart and mind ; and that was a heart of free and 
 natural joy. Yet they were disciples of one who is 
 known to all ages as the Man of sorrows ; of one serene 
 indeed in spirit, and of a strength divine and clear ; but 
 with the tinge throughout of a sad earnestness, some- 
 times flushing up into a transient glow of hope, rarely 
 deepening into the shade of a visible anguish ; and yet 
 throughout, from the wrestlings in the desert to his cry 
 upon the cross, showing itself in miracles of pity and 
 in nights of prayer ; in the light of his love and the 
 flash of his invective, his delight in nature and in 
 childhood, his abhorrence of Pharisees and hypocrites ; 
 in the deep beauty of his parables, and the melancholy 
 wisdom of his prophecies ; in the sedate unity of his 
 life and the quiet majesty of his death. How indeed 
 is he represented by the emblem in which Christendom 
 has embodied its veneration ? The crucifix is the 
 accepted symbol of grief divinely borne. 
 
 Whence is this contrast between the disciple and the 
 Master ? Why, when we look beneath the garment of
 
 The Sorrows of Messiah. 157 
 
 praise, do we find, at the heart of the religion, the 
 spirit of sadness? The outward lot of Paul was not 
 less severe than that of the Crucified himself; and he 
 had certainly no hope, no trust, no comfort, which had 
 not been imparted by the author of his faith. Could 
 Jesus give a gladness it was not permitted him to share, 
 and by the gentle hand of his religion wipe away all 
 tears except his own ? All theologies are much per- 
 plexed to afford any account of this. If he was an 
 inspired man, why did not his inspiration lift him 
 beyond the range of grief, and awaken in him the 
 temper which it produced in others at secondhand ? 
 If, as others say, he was God veiled in the flesh, how 
 could he have sorrow beyond even the measure of a 
 man ? 
 
 Nothing in truth can be more natural, if we did not 
 persist in looking for the explanation in the wrong 
 place. Assuming that, under one name or other, there 
 was in Christ a blending of divine and human elements, 
 we fancy that it was his participation in the human 
 nature which bruised him with sorrow, and that his 
 higher attributes, by their imperfect amount or occa- 
 sional retreat, fell short of power to heal the wounds. 
 Had this been so, then those who, with the disciples, 
 stood upon a lower level of humanity, would have been 
 sunk into a deeper darkness, instead of being lifted into 
 a more cheerful light. No, it was the Divine spirit in 
 Christ, as it is in every noble heart, that subdued
 
 158 The Sorrows of Messiah. 
 
 him to that earnest sadness, which, under human im- 
 pulse only, would have been soon forgot. However true 
 it may be that "Man is born to trouble," he owes the 
 distinction not to his inferior, but to his highest powers. 
 Reason alone has the privilege of tears : Conscience 
 trembles with remorse ; creative Thought laments its 
 poor performance ; and the light of Love casts the long 
 shadow of death. Lift off these crowning faculties, 
 and you remove at once our griefs and glory, and let us 
 down to the poor level of unfallen Adam. If labour 
 and sorrow come of the lapse in Paradise, we have 
 reason to bless the sinning mother of all flesh, that she 
 held not her hand from the forbidden fruit, and ex- 
 changed the grass and flowers of Eden for the rock, the 
 thistle, and the thorn. It is not as child of the earth, 
 but as a Son of God, that man has his heritage of care. 
 And in proportion as the Divine spirit is transcendent 
 over the inferior nature, and through higher and higher 
 brightness becomes a supernatural light of the world, 
 must the shadow deepen too ; till in Messiah we reach 
 the limit of inspired sorrow ; where the lot and outward . 
 scope of being is finite as in other men ; but the soul, 
 immeasurable and infinite. 
 
 Far from its being wonderful that the disciples 
 should have a joy to which the Master was a stranger, 
 it is the necessary consequence of their relative posi- 
 tion. He who himself is a religion, must needs miss 
 the chief solace of religion. Others believe in him ;
 
 The Sorrows of Messiah. 1 59 
 
 but he has no mediator in the immensity that leads 
 to the Most High. They gather, with reverent affec- 
 tion, round him, and feel a perfect rest ; finding in him 
 a representative image of all that is Divine, a mid- 
 point of clear conception beyond which they cannot 
 go : but he stands, with uncovered head, beneath the 
 Infinite, and has no help to God but his own poor 
 thoughts. They live, as we all do unconsciously, by 
 communicated religion, the instinctive dependence of 
 lower souls upon the higher, and the divine right 
 of the greater to hold the less : but he has no higher, 
 no greater, and, while ruling systems of minds, floats 
 through space with no guiding attraction except to the 
 awful Centre which is everywhere. No Messiah of heaven 
 can find a disciple's rest at the feet of them who sit 
 in Moses' seat. And yet no one can be his own Christ. 
 It is this singular position, beyond all the beaten ways 
 and city lamps of the habitable earth, on the confines 
 of eternal night, and amid the breaking lights of a 
 new world, that fills the prophet's soul, ever genial 
 and tender beneath its sublime strength, with sorrow 
 even unto death. He cannot love and have a home in 
 a sphere which is not yet hung up in heaven, and 
 which he spends himself in creating : and so, the 
 meanest things have a shelter denied to him ; and the 
 saying comes to pass as it is written, " the foxes have 
 holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son 
 of Man hath not where to lay his head."
 
 160 The Sorrows of Messiah. 
 
 Consider, for instance, the difference there is between 
 obeying a Law, and following out a heart of Love. 
 It is poorly represented by the difference between the 
 piecework of industry and the creation of genius. The 
 apostles were entrusted with a definite and prescribed 
 task, requiring indeed alacrity of heart and fidelity of 
 will and heroism of resolve, but still a task clear and 
 fixed, and in which settled ways were possible, and 
 skill and habit would avail them, and visible progress 
 might be made. And this type of life, viz. of Duty 
 within appointed limits, and desires coextensive in 
 their range, is the happiest of all. It has the healthi- 
 ness of labour in its progress, and the rewards of 
 labour in its close. It is essentially the life of child- 
 hood, environed with an invisible protection, and with 
 the freedom of an unreluctant obedience. Tell me 
 only the burden I have to bear, and weigh it out before 
 me day by day, and let it but be according to the 
 measure of a man, and I can lift it up with joy. And 
 BO it was even with the various life of Paul. He had 
 a thing to say, and then to take the consequences: 
 his instructions never changed ; and in . peril and in 
 prison, he was still an ambassador in bonds. When 
 he had done at Antioch, he could go to Corinth : when 
 he had affrighted Diana at Ephesus, he could take 
 passage over the ^Egean and defy Minerva on Mars 
 hill : having made his defence in Jerusalem, by appeal 
 to Caesar he could see Rome also, introduce the Prince
 
 The Sorrows of Messiah. 1 6 T 
 
 of Peace in the metropolis of a nation of soldiers, and 
 plant the cross ahove the capitol. And as he went, 
 he could count the synagogues he had converted, and 
 the centres of Christian light he had left behind. He 
 had moreover some forty years of toil, in which to see 
 how the lahour of his hands could prosper and grow ; 
 how the blessed seed could burst the sullen soil and 
 show its green young life, now here, now there ; till in 
 the winter of his own age, the seasons of God seemed 
 to bring a warmer sky, and crown his tillage with a 
 reproductive blossom ere he dies. But the Master's 
 mission was different from this. It was a work not to 
 be reckoned by quantity at all, but by quality alone, 
 so that one might almost doubt, from any measurable 
 symptoms, whether it had a real existence. No long 
 and versatile career was permitted to spread and 
 multiply its power. He was gone before mid-life ; and 
 three years at most achieved the work which two 
 thousand assuredly will not exhaust ; and the poor 
 villages of Galilee, and the precincts of Jerusalem 
 bounded the steps of him, at whose name the front 
 ranks of all mankind, for fifty generations, have bent 
 the knee. And his sorrow, therefore, lay in this ; 
 that he did not know, and as a consequence of his 
 inspiration could not know, what he did, except that 
 it was his best, or whither he went, except that it 
 was whereto God was sending him. No standard of 
 usage or habit availed him to compute his way : false 
 
 M
 
 1 62 7 he Sorrows of Messiah. 
 
 formulas can no more estimate a true soul, than 
 equations can solve you the beauty of the morning 
 light. He could not move for a single step in the 
 beaten ways which were the high road of hypocrites 
 and had their ending in destruction ; yet he fell upon 
 a time over which no other path was traced. So he 
 had to dispense with the help of custom ; to break 
 through all dreamy traditional veneration for things 
 abominable to his inner heart ; to see for himself the 
 true and divine path of light through the clouds which 
 his age and place had thrown around him ; content if 
 he could only discern the next step clearly ; and ready 
 to follow the pointings of the finger of God, though 
 it directed his foot upon the sea, or bade him walk 
 sheer off into the darkness of the abyss. At every 
 instant he had to find his work by the living spirit 
 of love and truth and trust, without and against the 
 dead momentum of habit and of law. It was a moral 
 life without sleep ; a watch in the great observatory 
 of nature through a night that never yielded to the 
 dawn, with eye ever strained on the eternal stars. 
 Hence the sublime faintness of the inspired soul ; kept 
 awake by the resistless glory of the Creator ; yet 
 sinking with the pale exhaustion of the creature. 
 
 The prophet's heart, moreover, is rich in deep 
 affections ; open to all gentleness and beauty ; quick to 
 pity ; eager to love ; and in spite of its clear percep- 
 tions of spiritual things, not without a certain distrust
 
 The Sorrows of Messiah. 163 
 
 and self-renunciation that make it long for the 
 answering suffrage of other minds to say ' Amen ' to 
 all its prayers. Yet, from the necessity of the case, 
 he lives in absolute loneliness : he stands where 
 sympathy cannot reach : he leans his head on the 
 bosom of no equal, and must put up with poor 
 disciples' blind sorrow at his sighs. He is alone, 
 except with God ; and God alas ! is silent always ; 
 a thing that makes a great difference to a loving and 
 dependent soul. " Answer me, God ! " is the cry 
 not only of ancient seers, but of human nature in 
 its grief and aspiration in every age. The tone of a 
 living voice, coming across the misgivings of nature, 
 and rendering response to the aspirations of the 
 wrestling and solitary spirit, would raise it up in 
 conscious and joyful power. But this is denied to 
 the doubts and anguish of the saviours of the world. 
 Their cries and tears are dissipated and lost in the 
 immensity into which they are thrown ; and there is 
 " silence in heaven " unto this hour. This it is that 
 makes the grandeur, yet the desolation, of a life of 
 absolute faith ; this, which brings to the Redeemer the 
 deep trouble of the soul ; without, however, tempting 
 him to say " Father, save me from this hour ! " but, 
 seeing that " for this cause came he unto this hour," 
 leaving him content to say " Father, glorify thy 
 name ! " 
 
 M 2
 
 xm. 
 
 a* of ife. 
 
 MATT. xiv. 19-21. 
 
 " And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass ; and took 
 the five loaves and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven he blessed 
 and brake ; and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the 
 multitude. And they did all eat, and were filled ; and they took up of 
 the fragments that remained twelve baskets full. And they that had 
 eaten were about five thousaud men, beside women a^d children." 
 
 JOHN vi. 49-51. 
 
 " Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness and are dead : this ia 
 the bread which oometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof 
 and not die ; I am the living bread which came c'own from heaven." 
 
 THE Israelitish tradition of the manna in the wilderness 
 left behind it a long bequest of imagery and doctrine. 
 To the nation whose romantic history it enriched, this 
 "angels' food" became the favourite emblem of the 
 providing care of God ; first, of the affluence of his 
 natural supplies ; then, of the fulness of his spiritual 
 grace. To the Poet telling of His pity who hears the 
 raven's cry, to the Prophet promising His answer to 
 the deeper hunger of the soul, no illustration so readily
 
 The Bread of Life. 165 
 
 occurred, as the dry desert sparkling in the morning 
 with his riches as with the dew, and the shower of 
 plenty that fell as crumbs from the table of infinitude. 
 The earliest records of our religion cannot otherwise 
 express the influence which diffused itself from the 
 presence and spirit of Jesus, than by at once comparing 
 and contrasting him with the old Lawgiver and his 
 miraculous supplies. Moses gave the fathers support 
 adequate to the perishable life of nature : Christ 
 cherished in their children the undying life of the 
 SQU! : Moses furnished them with an outward food, 
 gathered on the ground and not less strange to him 
 than to themselves : Christ offered them no foreign 
 discovery, nothing but himself : he found the divine 
 element within him, and in his own person was the 
 bread of life. He also, though on the grassy hills of 
 Galilee instead of among the sands and rocks of Horeb, 
 was with a mighty multitude in a desert place; and 
 there he fed them too, so that they need never want or 
 thirst again ; but withal gave them nothing but him- 
 self : when he was there, he was his OAvn sacrament ; 
 the most lifegiving element that ever came from 
 heaven. This is the meaning which, according to the 
 fourth Gospel, he himself has put upon his feeding the 
 multitude ; and in treating it as expressive of the 
 essence of his religion and the mode of his influence, 
 rather than as a bald wonder of the material kind, we 
 do but obey his injunction to look not at the meat that
 
 1 66 The Bread of Life. 
 
 perisheth, but at that which endureth unto everlasting 
 life. The narrative is evidently emblematic, and finds 
 its true and permanent significance in the idea which it 
 embodies, and of which the occurrence it relates is but 
 the vehicle. If you take the fact as historical, then it 
 is the picture-writing of Providence, the allegory of 
 God, by which he represents to us tho ministrations of 
 Christ to the eternal cravings of our secret' nature. If 
 otherwise, then it is the human product of the very 
 same truth, the attempt to fix arid sculpture in the 
 substance of concrete incident the reality of his creative 
 energy as the supporter and vivifyer of souls, the 
 flowing feeling, congealing itself, as consciousness 
 grows cold, into the solidity of history; just as the 
 mystic imagery of Jesus, as he breathed out his last 
 words of affection, and brake the bread of parting and 
 handed the wine of his remembrance, has been turned 
 into physical dogma, and petrified into a eucharistic 
 incarnation. In any case the fact exists only for the 
 sake of the divine truth which holds it in a permanent 
 abode. 
 
 The little basket, carried up among the hills, fur- 
 nished beneath the hand of Christ an ample feast. 
 And no less a marvel does God work with all the pure 
 in heart who go up into the lonely place to meet him. 
 Be they only not quite empty of truth and love ; let 
 them have but the poorest pilgrim's unleavened cake 
 of sincerity and faith ; and when they have spread their
 
 The Bread of Life. 167 
 
 insufficiency before God, and broken it into its worth- 
 lessness for his blessing to enter, they shall return 
 richer than they came and gather more than they had 
 brought. The rules of quantity, the laws of weight 
 and measure, do not hold beyond the outward world ; 
 they disappear wherever the Holy Spirit claims its own. 
 The smallest spiritual store, taken into the most retired 
 spot, has a self-multiplying power; and if only used 
 with holy trust, will pass the dimensions of nature and 
 betray the resources of the infinite. The great Creative 
 Spirit is ever ready to touch the merest grain of manna 
 in the heart, and make it numerous to shine on all the 
 ground. He to whcm space is the seed-plot of stars 
 has in the human soul a tillage more lustrous in the 
 sowing and more enduring in the fruits. When he 
 flings a handful of moral endowments into the furrows 
 of our nature, he never withholds the mellowing winds 
 and dews; and the germs will not perish unless we 
 deny them root. Within the smallest genuine grace 
 he has wrapped up boundless possibilities; and who- 
 ever will but believe in it and apply it faithfully shall 
 never fail of more. There is no one so miscreated or 
 misplaced as to have within him no germs of good, 
 from which a fruitful circle may be made to spread. 
 Just as in the Pacific Ocean, if once a coral rock is 
 built up to the level of the tide and feels the caresses 
 of the wind, some little speck of life appears, and as 
 the island rises, widens till it dips into the salt waves ;
 
 1 68 The Bread of Life. 
 
 so in the most desolate mind, born furthest from the 
 main-land of hope and power, there is never wanting 
 some point of native green, that may creep, as it were, 
 from stone to stone, till it fairly drive the barrenness 
 away. If you will but find God's living gift within 
 you, and simply trust it when it presses into growth, 
 there is not a waste place of your nature that shall not 
 become habitable, and even glorious with a wild beauty. 
 Whatever you may doubt, something there is which you 
 deem true ; however much is common and unclean, you 
 have your gleams of what is surely holy ; wherever you 
 are weak, there is some matter on which your secret 
 eye is clear, and your foot is firm. Here then is the 
 ground on which your moral life is to be raised. 
 Whithersoever others may lead you, here is your native 
 well-spring of faith and love ; whatsoever others may 
 teach, this is the divine oracle to you. Sink deeply 
 into this, and be at one with it, worship in it, live from 
 it, ere you even try to know or undertake to do aught 
 else. Till you get down to the foundations of your 
 natural piety and touch sacred ground, you cannot 
 raise the superstructure of either your knowledge or 
 your action. Heed not what is dark, play not with 
 what is perplexed, believe not your unbelief, till you 
 have flung yourself into your real faith, and done the 
 thing you most revere. He that will follow the will of 
 God where it is clear shall find less than before that is 
 obscure ; and no step on holy ground will ever bring
 
 The Bread of Life. 169 
 
 you nearer to a soil barren and unblest. There is a 
 wonderful power in gimple pure veracity, that knows its 
 own pretences and can tell its seeing from its dreams ; 
 that has an ear for the still voice of God, instead of 
 drowning it in the hum of its own sophistries ; and an 
 eye to watch his lights and shades, instead of suf- 
 fusing all things with its own colouring. From such 
 guileless and open conscience he is never entirely hid ; 
 some dear and holy secret, minute it may be, but 
 precious as a known star upon an unknown sea, he 
 makes distinct and clear : and since his infinite nature, 
 perfect as a sphere, surrounds us every way, it matters 
 not from what bright point you begin to trace its 
 glories : there are a thousand great circles of truth 
 and goodness stretched across its immensity, any one 
 of which will take you to fresh lights, yet bring you 
 whence you came. If a man will but leave off deceiv- 
 ing himself, lay aside his intellectual and imaginative 
 arts, and reduce himself to spiritual simplicity ; he will 
 find a path by light other than his own, a light from 
 which doubt and unreality flies away. Faithful to his 
 first grace, he is enriched with a second: devoutly 
 serving the authority of this, his gift is still enlarged : 
 he becomes wiser and nobler and nearer to God, at 
 every stage ; till at last the very fragments and leavings 
 of his faithfulness, the dropped words of his insight, 
 the casual deeds of his affection, exceed the first entire 
 amount. And he that begins with fasting himself
 
 1 70 The Bread of Life. 
 
 leaves enough on the ground to fill the satchel of a 
 dozen apostles. 
 
 The reduction however of the mind to spiritual 
 
 simplicity, the return to a childlike transparency, is a 
 
 change which, though it seems but the cessation of 
 
 art, is often heyond the mere wishes and strivings of 
 
 nature. Most men, when they have discovered their 
 
 own unreality, and suspected their miserable delusions, 
 
 continue in them all the same ; and feel like one who 
 
 undergoes shipwreck in a dream, and sees the firm 
 
 land close by, yet can put forth neither hand nor foot 
 
 to reach it. Strange that, of all possible tasks, simply 
 
 to be ivhat we are should prove, not the easiest, but 
 
 infinitely the hardest ! It is the saddest evidence, if 
 
 not of a " fallen," yet of an abused and sin-beclouded 
 
 nature, that to revert to our primitive faith, to come to 
 
 ingenuous terms with our genuine love, and live out 
 
 of the hearty kernel of our being, is at once the 
 
 nearest and the rarest of attainments. Needing only 
 
 quiet surrender and bringing only heavenly peace, it 
 
 is evaded by incessant efforts and postponed for a 
 
 corroding misery. But wherever this pure grace of 
 
 simplicity exists, it has for men a secret and irresistible 
 
 charm. They recognise in it the traces of God's 
 
 immediate presence, the conditions of his inspiration, 
 
 the light from him which they too have felt and lost. 
 
 It is the holy prophet's grace, that keeps from before 
 
 his eye every deforming veil, and leaves him face to
 
 The Bread of Life. 171 
 
 face with divine things, and gives him communion 
 with the Spirit of all truth. Quite different from 
 philosophic reflection, which employs the mediation of 
 reasoning and the instrument of analysis, and arrives 
 at its conclusions by methods of which it can render 
 logical account, that purity of heart which sees God 
 discerns him by the immediate glance of sympathy. 
 Standing in front of the great curtain of appearance, 
 on which the shadows of his thought are thrown, it 
 watches them as they traverse, and interprets them 
 with the infallible apprehension of a congenial soul. 
 How he reads off the meaning and expressiveness of 
 things and meets in them the very heart of God, such 
 a one is unable to explain : only, that meaning is plain 
 and certain to him as sorrow in human tears and 
 aspiration in the lifted eye. The divine Indwelling in 
 the mind of man is ever, I believe,, in some uncon- 
 scious grace at first, some reverence, some love, which 
 possesses him ; which is not the object of his thought, 
 but the very colour of his thinking ; which he did not 
 form by the laws of his movement, but which con- 
 stitutes his invisible axis of revolution. He does not 
 know his own gift, but only the duty and the God 
 to which it bears him. It makes him feel the false- 
 hood of the world, without being aware of his own 
 truth : it impels him to be alone, and to go up above 
 the mists into the solitude of prayer : it places before 
 him a universe of realities different from that which
 
 1 72 The Bread of Life. 
 
 occupies ordinary men, and throws the great drama 
 of existence, with all its intense interests, off from the 
 transient stage of material semblance into the eternal 
 theatre of invisible justice. He is detected by others 
 to be a revelation ere he finds it himself ; and when 
 he retires among the hills for private communion, he 
 draws all men unto him. They follow him by an 
 impulse scarcely more conscious of its nature than his 
 own ; looking indeed with wonder on him, but unaware 
 what it is in themselves that needs him and looks 
 up to him for help and guidance. They know not 
 the depth of their spiritual hunger : he knows not the 
 riches of his divine supply ; yet by the mystic attrac- 
 tion of mutual fitness they wend their way to the same 
 spot, above the world and alone beneath the sky. 
 
 Once set however face to face, they cannot fail to 
 find each other out, by the directing instinct of inward 
 wealth and inward want. Meeting upon that height, 
 with disturbing voices and deluding sights away, and 
 only the simplicity of God between, they can hide the 
 truth from one another and from themselves no more. 
 Jesus had gone up from the populous valleys with no 
 view to look on any eye but that of God, or breathe 
 a word, except of prayer : he went, because there the 
 hills shut out the lower world, and only space and 
 silence reigned : he went, to avoid the false press of 
 human admirations and satisfy the true aspiring of 
 divine want ; not to distribute, but himself to taste,
 
 The Bread of Life. 173 
 
 the blessed bread of heavenly communion. But when 
 the reverence of the people disappointed him, and 
 they went out afoot from all the cities and preoccupied 
 the mountain grass, he was moved with compassion, 
 " because they were as sheep without a shepherd " ; 
 and he let his soul descend in its abundance on them, 
 instead of laying it low in its need and sorrow before 
 God. Wondering, it may be, what he has to give, 
 having retreated thither just because he had not 
 enough for himself, yet unable to withhold his supply, 
 he tried how far his store would go, and threw among 
 them the frugal morsels of heavenly truth he had 
 collected from the infinite : "he began to teach them 
 many things," and continued till the day itself was 
 spent : commencing with the scant estimates of 
 aspiration and humility, he found what would suffice 
 for all. So it ever is with the influence of a holy 
 mind. With the quickness of sympathy and pity, the 
 prophet's soul so believes in others' eternal hunger 
 as to take no scrupulous measure of his own supply. 
 Were he asked, he would say, "it is not much, and 
 hither I came that it might become more " ; but called 
 out to make the most of what he has, he finds a 
 miracle of bounty ; for not one among thousands goes 
 empty away. In all the higher gifts of the spirit, 
 in the graces of a pure, devout, and loving nature, 
 in a simple and holy faith that takes lonely walks with 
 God, there is this marvellous and blessed paradox :
 
 1 74 The Bread of Life. 
 
 they are the most absolutely inalienable, yet the most 
 freely communicable of all treasures. Nothing is so 
 strictly private, so characteristically personal, as the 
 temper of a mind lifted above earthly delusions and 
 filled with a divine and all-reconciling light. Its trust, 
 its hope, its vision, live in it, it knows not how : it can 
 tell them, but can show no path to them ; can sing 
 them out in hymns, but not demonstrate them in 
 problems ; knows them to be first-hand truth, cut 
 off from second-hand approach. Yet so far is Religion 
 from being, on this account, a purely individual thing, 
 a reserved account between each worshipper and 
 God, that it cannot even live at all upon these terms : 
 as well might you try to condense the lightning into a 
 chamber-lamp to shine for you and your little tasks 
 alone : it exists only by flashing from heaven to earth, 
 from cloud to cloud, down on the sea, up from the 
 western to the northern sky. Divine faith is the 
 most diffusive and kindling of all things. Kept as a 
 private store, it wastes away and perishes ; it becomes 
 so meagre that you can feed upon it no more : you 
 yield to a worse temptation than befell your leader in 
 the desert, and turn the bread of life into a stone. 
 No one, I suppose, ever deeply believes, or even 
 thoroughly disbelieves, alone and by himself. He 
 cannot dispense with others' sympathy; he listens 
 for what they say of these great things : he looks into 
 their eyes : he wonders about their thoughts : he waits
 
 The Bread of Life. 175 
 
 till they give a sign ; and not till they hint his secret 
 feeling, does he dare to think it right. If none ever 
 confirmed the leaning of his affections, he would sus- 
 pect it was only a distortion in himself; and would 
 be ashamed to bow down and kneel, were there no 
 bended head but his. No ! faith is no individual 
 property, to be shut up in the closet of personal 
 silence ; it is a thing of Catholic consent ; the ultimate 
 element in which our common human soul exists and 
 which spans the interval between it and God ; the 
 spiritual atmosphere in which the vibrations flowing 
 from the tones of truth and love are propagated from 
 mind to mind, from region to region, from time into 
 eternity. Faith is not less an intercommunion and 
 mutual confession of souls with each other, than of 
 all with the Father of spirits. The condition of its 
 vivid existence is, the profound consciousness of com- 
 mon wants and common aspirings, and the presence 
 of some clear and faithful heart inspired to express 
 and interpret them. Where no such earnest want 
 is felt, where it is suppressed by the ascendency of 
 sense and the indulgence of ease, to the neglect of 
 the higher demands of every noble nature, the possi- 
 bilities of religion are crushed out. To minds in this 
 state it seems as if there were nothing in it ; and if 
 Jesus had had with him only a company of well-fed 
 and self-satisfied Pharisees, assuredly there would 
 have been no miracle, but only a repudiated basket
 
 176 The Bread of Life. 
 
 of scanty loaves and small fishes. Let any man only 
 be satisfied, and God himself can find him no repast. 
 But Christ relied on the natural hunger of honest 
 hearts, and trusted to the yearning soul and multiply- 
 ing grace to make what he had suffice. And lo ! the 
 answer to his prayer is the great continuous miracle 
 of Christianity itself; millions from every height of 
 history testifying unto this day, that they in their time 
 have been divinely fed 1
 
 XIV. 
 
 nfeiurfmi 
 
 Is. xlii. 16. 
 
 " I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not : I will lead them 
 in paths they have not known. I will make darkness light before them 
 and crooked things straight." 
 
 THEKE is undoubtedly a sense in which all faith is 
 "blind." Science steps only where she clearly sees; 
 faith can dispense with seeing. Science boasts of her 
 prevision ; faith can advance into the dark. Science is 
 proud of her power to lead the order of events ; faith 
 gives the hand and is thankful to be led. If the whole 
 of life were distinct as a diagram before us and mamge- 
 able as a machine ; if we could command its issues and 
 measure out its years ; if, by our own skilled choice, we 
 could determine our health, our genius, our family, our 
 lot ; if, further, each passing age of the world could lay 
 out the next and foresee the future as it reads the past ; 
 we should have attained the Elysium of science and 
 found the " Happy Islands " of civilized ambition. 
 
 N
 
 178 The Unknown Paths. 
 
 But in the literature of such a spot would be no poetry, 
 in its music no hymn, in its architecture no cloister, in 
 its voices no prayer : amid the staring daylight, no altar 
 lamp would be trimmed to keep the watch ; and, in the 
 hard elastic air, no ear would listen for the faint steps 
 of any Divine visitant. The reality of God would be 
 still there, as the stars hang over us no less at mid-day 
 than by night ; but our vision would not suspect him, 
 his deep would be a dazzling blank ; and for relief the 
 eye would drop back and rest on the near fields where 
 the plough is moving and on the striped sea, and the 
 outline of the beach and hills. The scene of our own 
 surveying, the work of our own tillage, would lie as an 
 empire beneath us and detain us from any apprehension 
 of a higher authority beyond. 
 
 It is ever the ambition of men to walk by sight : it 
 is the method of God to lead them as the blind by a 
 way that they know not. They naturally try to diminish 
 the amount of guess-work in their life, and to make 
 sure of the grounds of action in whatever they under- 
 take. To take nothing on trust, to fasten the thread 
 of every enterprise on fixed laws of nature, to venture 
 into no field that is unexplored, to fill up no blank 
 with images of thought, but turn away from the invisible 
 because it is not visible : constitute their maxims of 
 highest prudence. Carry out this principle to its 
 extreme consequences, let it become a universal rule of 
 living ; and it lands us in a mere secular materialism.
 
 The Unknown Paths. 179 
 
 Why trouble ourselves, it suggests, with anything 
 beyond this world ? Who can tell us anything about 
 it ? Here we are, in a sphere of which we know some- 
 thing, abounding with remediable evils and unrealized 
 possibilities of good ; in the midst of men like our- 
 selves, to whom we cannot fail to be a blessing or a 
 curse. Let us hold to the work which we understand ; 
 make ourselves and our neighbours what is fitting and 
 worthy here, and leave the hereafter to take care of 
 itself. With model cottages, well-drained towns, uni- 
 versal instruction and cheap recreations, protected by 
 just laws and free institutions, we shall make the most 
 of the world we have ; and do better than by sighing 
 after one that we have not. Dealing with the alphabet, 
 with the account-book, with the laws of health and the 
 arts of skill, we know what we are about, and cannot 
 fail to grow cleverer, richer, stronger, and to leave the 
 earth more habitable than we found it. But when we 
 propose to operate on a future, whose conditions are un- 
 seen, and to shape what is given us by that which is as 
 yet withheld, what is this but to sacrifice the more real 
 to the less, and to vest in our ignorance the casting vote 
 against our knowledge ? By appeal to considerations of 
 this kind, men justify a total disregard of their diviner 
 relations and encourage in themselves the purely secular 
 taste which refuses to draw on faith for the sources 
 either of wisdom or of charity. 
 
 Nor are they altogether wrong. Whoever wants to 
 
 N 2
 
 1 80 The Unknown Paths. 
 
 find the proper thing to do and how best to do it must 
 look about him and gather it from the visible scene in 
 which his lot is cast ; and if, instead, he fixes his eye 
 beyond, and reckons his task backward from what he 
 imagines there, he may think a penance more sacred 
 than plain justice, and a sacrament higher than a 
 charity. All the matter of our human work must no 
 doubt be determined by the actual relations in which 
 we stand today, by our necessities, our opportunities, 
 our powers. What a man can do best is the true task 
 for him ; what his neighbours and his age want most 
 should prescribe the form of his self-sacrifice. Now is 
 the time, and here is the world, committed lo our trust ; 
 and any form of activity that looks another way in 
 neglect of their pressing appeals, may well be suspected 
 as an evasion or a romance. If, therefore, any one 
 comes to us and, under pretext of sanctity, disparages 
 the business of our working days ; if, as his condition of 
 anything divine, he wants from us something else than 
 to drive the plough, to navigate the ship, to order the 
 house, to teach the child, to help the weak ; if, in our 
 labour to remove every canker from the life of men, he 
 sees nothing to disprove our being aliens from God; 
 then we may justly assert the claims of our common 
 human world, and defy him to fetch anything diviner 
 from the skies. No slight or scorn is to be endured 
 towards the duties which God has made ready for our 
 hand; nor is eternity to be railed off from time,
 
 The Unknown Paths. 181 
 
 as if that were the high altar and this the profane 
 street. 
 
 But does it follow that, because our business is with 
 the present, we go astray when we trust and meditate 
 the future ? that, since we have to deal with the visible 
 and finite, all affection is misplaced on the invisible and 
 infinite ? that, unless we are surrendered, heart and 
 soul, to the temporal claims of human life, we shall but 
 wander from our true end ? Not in the least. This is 
 indeed the inference drawn by superficial men, who 
 persuade themselves that dreams of religion are the 
 great hindrance to the real amelioration of the world. 
 But its utter falsehood is attested by the whole course 
 of human and especially of Christian history ; which 
 rather proclaims, that, if you would improve this world, 
 you must have the hearts of men set upon another ; if 
 you would give any grandeur to life, you must pale it 
 beneath the splendour of an hereafter ; if you would 
 prevent the waste of industry, the contempt of moral 
 economy, the indifference to the lesser humanities, you 
 must train the soul to a worship that goes immeasurably 
 beyond them. There is not a secular reform in the 
 whole development of modern civilization which (if it is 
 more than mechanical) has not drawn its inspiration 
 from a religious principle. Infirmaries for the body 
 have sprung out of pity to the soul; schools for the 
 letter, that free way may be opened to the spirit ; sani- 
 tary laws, that the diviner elements of human nature
 
 1 82 The Unknown Paths. 
 
 may not become incredible and hopeless from their foul 
 environment. Who would ever lift a voice for the slave, 
 that looked no further than his face ? or build a reform- 
 atory for the culprit child, if he saw nothing but the 
 slouching gait and thievish eye ? Nay what impulse 
 would even science itself have had, if sustained only by 
 the material utilities ? what inspiring zeal, but for that 
 secret wonder which feels the universe to be sacred and 
 is a virtual thirst for God ? 
 
 I know it sounds like paradox to say that the more 
 you magnify the present, the less you can make of it ; 
 and that, if you exalt man to be highest of all, you will 
 reduce him to the meanest. Yet is it undeniably the 
 thought of immortality that imparts dignity and depth 
 to whatever in us is mortal : and were we not fitted for 
 communion with God, there would be little to revolt us 
 in the vacant mind, the unchastened habit, the servile 
 lot. All the pathetic appeals and reverent usages of 
 life, the patient love, the costly pity, lavished on sorrow 
 and infirmity, all the graceful ceremonial of the affec- 
 tions at the birth, the marriage, and the funeral, assume 
 that everywhere more is than seems ; that whatever 
 happens has holier meanings than we can tell ; that 
 the characters written on the screen are flung out by 
 light behind. Take away the divine symbolism from 
 our material existence, and let it stand only for what 
 it can make good on its own account, and what is 
 there to redeem it from selfishness and insignificance ?
 
 The Unknown Paths. 183 
 
 The home sinks into a house, the meal into a mess, the 
 grave into a pit : honour and veracity are appreciated 
 chiefly as instruments of trade ; purity and temperance, 
 as necessities of health ; justice, as the condition of 
 social equilibrium ; mercy, as the price of a quiet time. 
 Does this literal aspect really satisfy you ? Does it give 
 any adequate account of your natural feeling towards 
 these several elements of life ? If this were all, would 
 they stir you with such passion of love, of awe, of 
 admiration, as sometimes carries you off your feet? 
 No ; we are not made upon this pattern ; and in our 
 composition are colours mingled which are native to no 
 earthly clay. In every good man there are affections, 
 moral impulses, aspirations, far more intense and deep 
 than would accord with any secular proportions; and 
 he instantly becomes aware of this, if he falls into 
 unsympathising society, where he is put upon his self- 
 defence. As soon as he tries to justify an enthusiasm, 
 however true, and casts about for visible and definite 
 grounds on which to rest it, he is conscious of weaken- 
 ing it by the argument designed to give it strength ; he 
 feels that it has rights of its own beyond the reach of 
 all his words ; he is hurt that his advocacy, vainly 
 struggling to speak for it, has but spoiled the charm 
 with which it speaks for itself. Let any one endeavour, 
 upon a mind of hard, clear surface, to infiltrate some 
 moral conviction to which it has hitherto been imper- 
 vious ; and he will find how little he can open the living
 
 184 The Unknown Paths. 
 
 pores of conscience by showering down pleas of reason 
 and interest that turn to dust ere they alight. 
 
 What then do we gather from such experience? 
 That the purest inspirations of men have other grounds 
 than our secular life presents, and would lose their 
 justification, were there nothing else; that it is they, 
 nevertheless, that have led, and must ever lead, every 
 worthy enterprise by which the world is ennobled and 
 adorned ; that, therefore, did we cease to trust them, 
 did we let the world rule them in place of their claim- 
 ing to rule the world, the very springs of improvement 
 would decay ; the progress we admire would turn to 
 retrogression ; and the present life, for which we make 
 the costly sacrifice, the finite plot, reserved for such 
 careful culture on condition of being screened from the 
 infinite dews, would become a waste of fallen foliage 
 and rotting fruits. 
 
 In this respect, as in so many others, does God lead 
 "the blind by a way that they know not." He realizes 
 other ends than they contemplate ; and the ends which 
 they contemplate he achieves by other means than 
 theirs. Ever since the gospel was first preached, of 
 Christ the risen, his disciples have set their affections 
 on things above, and held this world in relatively light 
 esteem : yet the heaven they sought remains as it was, 
 and the earth they despised is enriched and glorified. 
 Were we to contrive a way of improving this life, we 
 should set men to think of nothing else : yet God con-
 
 The Unknown Paths. 185 
 
 tradicts this ruinous device, and reaches the end by 
 drawing men away from it, and pre-engaging them with 
 a higher. It is the great principle and mystery of all 
 his Providence : to reach the upper light, we must 
 follow blind affections ; and to realize the lower kind 
 of good, we must forget it. The astronomer, in search 
 of a missing star, looks away from the field in which it 
 lies, and by side-light it steals into his eye ; and thus 
 the Christian, with vision directly fixed on one region, 
 seizes the brilliants of another. While we are intent 
 on divine things, God accomplishes the human. We 
 are always planning how we may govern and mould the 
 world according to our will : but he has made us sus- 
 ceptible of affections more powerful than our will, 
 passions beneath us that deliver us captive to Satan, 
 aspirations above us that lift us to Christ. These it is 
 that surprise and disappoint our calculations, and snatch 
 us off to ends other than our own. These it is that so 
 often seem to deny the race to the swift and the battle 
 to the strong. These it is by which God rules the 
 world and leads us in a path we have not known. 
 These are the trembling strings of our nature on which 
 his Spirit has but to breathe and play, to change the 
 rhythm of history and deepen the music of humanity. 
 
 While this remains the constitution of the moral 
 world, it will defy our boastful predictions, slip through 
 the fingers of rulers and diplomatists, and the Eternal 
 Father will reserve the times and seasons in his own
 
 1 86 The Unknown Paths. 
 
 hand. It is of the very essence of these deep faiths 
 and affections through which he appeals to us and lives 
 in us, to produce the most astonishing and incalculable 
 results. When Christianity hegan to spread through 
 the cities of the empire, it was pronounced an " un- 
 social superstition," and was supposed to threaten the 
 dissolution of all human bonds. The disciples with- 
 drew from the resorts of gaiety and ambition, and 
 looked with passionless and neutral eye on every game 
 in which others lost or won their life, their all. The 
 Master seemed to let go his rights, and abdicate his 
 pride ; for he would take of the bread broken by his 
 bondsman's hand, and chant " Amen " to his impas- 
 sioned prayer. The Slave emerged from all that was 
 servile, and walked as a man set free by a divine cap- 
 tivity. The "Woman, repelling the approach of the 
 frivolous and vain, betrayed a deeper life ; and by a 
 certain queenly dignity recalled the matronly images 
 of better days, though without the matron's patrician 
 pedigree, and patrician scorn. No doubt, a new feeling 
 had taken possession of the little flock scattered over 
 that mighty world ; a feeling which in one sense could 
 not but have a levelling effect on the inequalities of 
 men ; viz. the consciousness of each one's personal 
 responsibility to a Holy God, and immortal relation to 
 the self-sacrifice of Christ. Nothing certainly can so 
 sanctify the individual, and lift him into integral im- 
 portance, as this sense of lonely, secret, eternal inter-
 
 The Unknown Paths. 187 
 
 communion opened between the soul of each and the 
 Spirit of all. Yet what has been its working in human 
 life ? Has it separated each man from his fellow, and 
 planted him in an insular region of his own ? Has it 
 rendered Society impossible, and pulverised the moral 
 fabric into human atoms ? On the contrary, the 
 Christian individuality has created the intensest social 
 cohesion ; and of all the combinations of this world, 
 the churches of Christendom have presented the 
 examples of greatest tenacity and profoundest faithful- 
 ness. Nothing else has so conquered the egotisms and 
 exorcised the selfishness of men, and kindled in them 
 the living enthusiasm from which self-sacrifice must 
 spring. No machinery of party, no sectional interests, 
 no compact organization, has ever bound, or will ever 
 bind, a fabric of human elements, like the power of 
 Christian reverence and Christian love. Thinking of 
 no union, planning no framework of incorporation, the 
 true disciples find themselves in mutual relations of 
 unspeakable sympathy, from the deep intentness of 
 each separate eye on a heaven and a God overarching 
 all. The profoundest union sprang direct from a 
 spiritual individuality. These Christians contemplated 
 no such thing as a Christendom : they only sought to 
 take the next step truly on the way to their everlasting 
 Zion : but, putting themselves into the hand of an 
 unfailing Guide, they, like all that will trust him, were 
 led in paths they had not known; and the blindness
 
 1 88 The Unknown Paths. 
 
 to them was turned into light for the world. His 
 greatest things are ever born of their own opposites ; 
 the highest energy emerges from the lowest self- 
 surrender ; secular progress, from spiritual aims ; social 
 ^cohesion, from lonely dignity of soul. 
 
 It is the same in all memorable times. If the 
 greatest crises of history are full of surprises, it is 
 because the Providence of God betakes itself to other 
 channels than the elaborative will of man. For the 
 control of events and the governance of the world ice 
 resort to what in truth is our only leverage, the 
 dominant wish, the collective purpose, of our com- 
 munity. In stirring up and organizing this, we cast 
 out from it, in order to arm it with its greatest power, 
 all that is special to any section of the whole, all that 
 is too high for mediocre thought and level feeling ; and 
 obtain for our end a general support by reducing it to 
 the measure of general apprehension and interest. A 
 vast area of opinion is thus secured for the furtherance 
 of our aims. And if these aims should also be ancient 
 and familiar, conservative of what exists and is known 
 rather than new and experimental, they win the 
 guarantee of long time as well as large range, and 
 would seem to present an irresistible front, whether 
 it be to march aggressively forward and seize the next 
 station in advance, or to lie defensively intrenched upon 
 the ground and sweep all the approaches of assault. 
 Yet, with all our resources, there is that behind with
 
 The Unknown Paths. 189 
 
 which we cannot reckon. Human will, in order to have 
 wide extent and long institution, must dispense with 
 high elevation ; you cannot keep the general host or 
 the linked generations of mankind on the strain of any 
 rare and noble vision ; and the force they lend you is 
 that of consolidated mass rather than of keen intensity. 
 It never rises into the light which catches the loftier 
 minds and kindles their enthusiasm ; and on these it 
 is that each new Divine illumination is shed, some 
 greater thought, some deeper faith, some fresh com- 
 passion, which carries its flash into waiting hearts and 
 changes for them the whole aspect of life. The in- 
 spirations of a single soul, at first flung into the winds 
 without an echo, find their way ere long by elective 
 affinity into responsive natures, and, creating them 
 anew, send them also forth with the fire of prophecy : 
 so that the lonely " dreamer " comes to wield a power 
 of conversion which the hugest "Propagation Society" 
 may have reason to envy. It is in the free play of 
 these surprises of insight and affection that the world 
 is lifted to higher stages, and led in paths it had not 
 known. Seek not to organize these revelations of indi- 
 vidual minds. Fix them by consent and vote, turn 
 them into a school, and their ethereal penetration is 
 gone ; they fold their wings and perish. Let them fly 
 as the wind that bloweth where it listeth ; and as they 
 impinge on this and that, they will wake up consonant 
 tones, wherever possible, and fill the measure of their
 
 The Unknown Paths. 
 
 harmonies. Let your own heart also lie for ever open 
 to their claim : expect them not ; refuse them not ; 
 only guard their inward springs with reverent heed, 
 the secret misgiving of customary wrong, the dawning 
 love of a more perfect right, the incipient glimpse of 
 purer truth; for such graces are harbingers of the 
 Divine approach. Follow them simply, when they 
 visit you, though they should draw you from the 
 trodden paths and cherished plans of life. Turn not 
 to the right or left to see whether others are on the 
 track : for the call of God must be submitted to no 
 second voice, but must suffice to take you on your 
 course alone. And then, if some long-laboured purpose 
 should pine away unrealized, it will only be that diviner 
 issues may arise instead : if His way is hid from you 
 even when your feet are on it, it is only that he may 
 make the momentary darkness into more glorious light 
 before you.
 
 XV. 
 
 Jfmit* anfr % fitfmtt* m 
 
 EOM. viii. 19. 
 
 " The earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation 
 of the sons of God." 
 
 AMONG the deep yet neglected hints which lie beneath 
 the surface of Scripture, there is none more searching 
 than the distinction here assumed between the " crea- 
 ture " and the " son " of God. The " creature " is 
 simply the fabric of his skill, related to him as the 
 texture to the hand that weaves it, indebted to him for 
 its existence, carrying in itself his purpose, but only 
 as a thing, a tool, an article, in the outfit of his 
 world. The " son " is the partaker of his essence, the 
 repeater of his life, related to him as the child whom 
 the parents cannot hinder from being like themselves ; 
 growing up therefore into his image, and betraying, 
 even in exile and servitude, an irrepressible sympathy 
 with his affections, and yearning towards him as the
 
 192 The Finite and the Infinite 
 
 everlasting home. In man, both these characters are 
 united. As a product of nature, born to take a place 
 and pass away among the organisms of this earth, he 
 is a creature no less than the cattle on a thousand hills, 
 and God is his Maker. As a vehicle of something 
 above nature, as lifted into the freedom of personal 
 existence, as sharing in the life of the Eternal Spirit, 
 he is a son of divine lineage, and God is his Father. 
 Observe how the apostle Paul regards these opposite 
 features in our nature, and connects them with the 
 person and the life of Christ. Each of the two cha- 
 racters has its trace within us and makes itself felt by 
 desires and sufferings of its own : the consciousness of 
 the natural, ever sinking on the finite, and the con- 
 sciousness of the spiritual, ever rising towards the 
 infinite, coexist and wrestle in our nature. In that 
 pathetic strife, the weight of self and sense would 
 have borne us down, would even have erased the con- 
 ception of anything beyond, had not the very spirit of 
 our Sonship taken human form in Christ, and claimed 
 us by the appeal of his divine life, his sacrifice of death, 
 his conquest of the grave. Startled by that perfect 
 vision, the sleeping ideals wake again within our hearts : 
 caught up into the current of his filial surrender, we 
 recover our affinity and cry, " Abba, Father ! " and as 
 soon as we have courage to live as sons, to trust the 
 faint longings that bear us homewards, and float away 
 whithersoever they lead us, we find a sudden witness of
 
 In Hiunan Nature. 193 
 
 hope and spring of power. Not that we escape our 
 lower thraldom at once : the outward oppression of 
 nature weighs upon us yet, the panting breast, the 
 bleeding feet, the dimness on the way, the shadow on 
 the mind. But there was darker eclipse than this on 
 Calvary ; and that we have seen clear off into an 
 immortal glory ; and with the conscious foregleams of 
 the Spirit within us, we can wait, through the time of 
 earnest expectation, for the manifestation, still in reserve, 
 of our sonship to God. Not risen as yet from the out- 
 ward cross and burden of humanity, we nevertheless 
 bear his mark upon our brow ; and carrying the holy 
 secret with us as we toil along, we find whatever is 
 grievous sweetened and what is humbling glorified. 
 
 In thus associating us with the divineness of Christ, 
 and expanding the term " Son of God " from a Personal 
 to a Human designation, does the apostle speak to us 
 in an unknown tongue ? or does he wake some faint 
 response, some half-heard solemn tones, as from im- 
 measurably distant corridors ? Are there any real 
 vestiges in our humanity of something transcending 
 the fabricated creature, of some living relationship 
 with the Parent-spirit, some real communion with his 
 holy nature, some melting of our finite life into sym- 
 pathy with his infinite ? Surely the depth and signifi- 
 cance of life must be half missed by those who do not 
 find such vestiges in all the higher endowments and 
 experiences of our being. 
 
 o
 
 194 The Finite and the Infinite 
 
 Look, for instance, at the Intellectual instinct ; and 
 consider whether, in its direction and its range, it is 
 just what you would expect in a " creature " planted only 
 amid earthly and secular relations and computed to be 
 worked out in threescore years and ten ? What is it 
 that men most love and long to know ? If you see 
 them in multitudes hushed in eager attention, uncon- 
 scious of the ground beneath their feet, and lost in an 
 ideal world, what interest, do you suppose, thus holds 
 them in mid air ? Is it some truth that lies nearest to 
 them in time and place, and is most in contact with 
 their lot ? the arithmetic which will help them to buy 
 and sell ? the sanitary rules, which will keep them clean 
 and wholesome ? the economic laws, which distribute 
 the produce of their toil? On the contrary, these 
 things, with everything that is pursued as the outfit of 
 an art or livelihood, are looked on as a sort of drudgery 
 and learned in obedience to a necessity ; and to find 
 these very topics pursued with any enthusiasm, you 
 must usually go to a circle of enquirers where their 
 interest is not personal and practical. The true secret 
 thirst of the mind is never reached by offering selected 
 draughts of " useful knowledge " : the dietary of 
 Prudence may adopt and recommend them : but 
 "Wonder finds them dry as ashes to its lips. What is 
 learned with an express view to its gainful result is 
 spoiled, by this dominating purpose, of its generous 
 flavour, and is scarcely a mental enrichment at all.
 
 Ill Human Nature. 195 
 
 It may be skill : it may be capital : it may be power : 
 but, in the noblest sense, it is not knowledge. Scorning 
 the narrow measure of individual wants, human curio- 
 sity flies out, and with wing more eager as the air 
 grows stra'nge, into fields remotest from the home- 
 steads of personal and social life. To go forth and see 
 where the stars are and how they lie ; to get round them 
 and dive into the fountain of their light ; to frustrate 
 their eternal silence and make them tell their paths ; 
 to pass from station to station and gain assurance that 
 there is no end to their geometry ; and then to drop 
 back on the grass-plot of this world, mentally sublimed 
 by the sense of physical insignificance ; has ever had a 
 solemn charm for human intelligence. Nor are we less 
 subject to the spell of incalculable Time than of im- 
 measurable Space. "What is it that rewards the geolo- 
 gist for his laborious penetration into the earth's crust, 
 his dim gropings among archaic forms, and all the 
 patient steps of his induction ? Mainly this : that 
 he elongates the pendulum of his time-piece till it 
 slackens to the rate of races and the organic pulsations 
 of a world ; that in the field or brow beneath his feet 
 he reads the depositions of a million years and the 
 denudations of a million more ; and, setting aside the 
 seas and continents and even atmosphere of today, can 
 ride upon the glaciers or peer through the tropic steams 
 or face the grotesque monsters of the planet destined 
 to be ours. How is it that the intensest interest hangs 
 
 o 2
 
 196 The Finite and the Infinite 
 
 around these far-off sciences ? that we cite them as 
 among the greatest triumphs of human research ? 
 what concern so deep can we have with lines of thought 
 that scarcely keep within the limits of the finite ? why 
 do they strike in upon us and stir us in the very seats 
 of intellectual romance ? Tell me not of their indirect 
 utility, though it is indisputable : does a Herschel live 
 for the sake of the Nautical Almanack, or a Murchison 
 and Lyell for the sake of Californian mines ? It is 
 because we love to be spoken to in tones from the 
 borders of the infinite, and feel them to have a native 
 sound. Cariying in ourselves secret 'relationships with 
 universal space and unbeginning time through Him 
 that fills them both and lives in us, we know the 
 tidings which come furthest from them to be nearest 
 to us : they remind us of our augustest kindred : they 
 free us from our momentary prison : they show us the 
 white sail, they breathe on us with the very wind, that 
 shall take us out of exile. Their awful fascination 
 bespeaks a nature mysteriously blending in its affections 
 the finite and the infinite, and standing on the confines 
 of both. 
 
 The same mixed character is still more evident in 
 the constitution of the human Conscience. Here too 
 we are well furnished, but at the same time strangely 
 oi-er-furnished, for our immediate work. Moment by 
 moment, the way of right is never left in the dark : 
 temptations and duties, taken one by one, are always
 
 In Human Nature. 
 
 inwardly known for what they are : definite guidance is 
 ready for us, which, in each case, it is quite practicahle 
 to follow. Yet, though eacJt fidelity is possible in 
 detail, it would seem impossible to be true to all : to 
 the most constant and devoted mind their call will 
 sometimes come in moments of deadened affection or 
 of weakened will, when their accents cannot pierce the 
 deafness of spiritual sleep ; and as soon as the waking 
 hour returns, the eye opens on a lapsed opportunity, 
 and droops in shame. "Who but the dull and blind is 
 free from this sad burden ? What face is always up- 
 lifted to the light of life, and never darkened by the 
 shadow of death ? Is there one of us to whom the 
 pure law of Christ, so lovely to see, so deep and 
 musical to hear, lies realized in the past ? or, does it 
 yet look down on us from the future, through sad and 
 heavenly eyes, as a distant " Counsel of perfection," 
 and still call us, after all these years, " Come unto me, 
 ye heavy laden, and I will give you rest " ? Were the 
 human Conscience, like human Prudence, the mere 
 product of experience ; were it the reflection of the 
 world's opinion ; were it given only for our temporal 
 guidance without significance beyond; why should we 
 not get rid of our sins as we do of our mistakes, 
 commit them and have done with them, and let the 
 Dead Past bury its dead, and leave no ghost behind ? 
 This is actually the approved wisdom of hard and 
 driving men whose ethics are but instruments of ex-
 
 *S\ 
 
 198 The Finite and the Infinite 
 
 ternal work. But where there is a deeper insight, 
 where the outer doing is looked on as the symbol of 
 the inner being, where affection, character, will, have 
 any life and drama of their own, this discharge of 
 old compunctions, this cheerful erasure of bankrupt 
 accounts, is quite impossible. Only when evil is re- 
 garded as a transitory mishap, can it be thus forgot : 
 once let the consciousness awake that it is disloyalty to 
 the Spirit of eternal Holiness, and there is in this a 
 conservative power which will forbid its awful shadow to 
 depart. And hence, strange as it may seem, it is not 
 the guilty that know the most of guilt : it is the pure, 
 the lofty, the faithful, that are for ever haunted by the 
 sense of sin, and are compelled by it to throw them- 
 selves upon a love they never doubt yet cannot claim. 
 To thoughtless observers of human nature this always 
 seems the paradox of piety; that none burst into 
 such passionate confessions as those who apparently 
 have nothing to confess ; that the more faithful they 
 become, the less assuredly have they peace with them- 
 selves ; that the further they retreat from the power of 
 evil, the more does its sorrow sit upon their brow. 
 Why do you hear from a Fenelon words of humiliation 
 that never escape a Richelieu ? why are the prayers of 
 prophets and the hymns of saintly souls so pathetic in 
 their penitence, so full of the plaintive music of baffled 
 aspiration, like the cry of some bird with broken wing ? 
 It is because to them the truly infinite nature of holi-
 
 In Human Nature. 199 
 
 ness has revealed itself, and reveals itself the more, the 
 higher they rise ; because in its secret breathings to 
 their hearts they recognise, not any romance of their 
 own, but the communing Spirit of the Living God; 
 because they can no more measure evil, than you can 
 measure hurt affection, by any scale of external magni- 
 tude, but, like all violated love and honour, by the inner 
 intensity of its unworthiness and the sanctity of the 
 personal claims which it insults. And the more they 
 surrender themselves to the inspiration which calls 
 them upward and become identified with the infinite 
 sympathies, the wider grows their spiritual horizon, 
 and the deeper their yearning for the everlasting hills 
 that lie folded afar in visionary light. That the blind- 
 ness of conscience shuts us up in finite comfort, while 
 its kindled sight throws us open to infinite unrest 
 and precipitates us on a mingled world of penitential 
 shadows and brilliant aspirations, would be an un- 
 intelligible contradiction, were it not that our life and 
 nature are more than sentient, more than rational, 
 more than ethical ; and that then first do we find in 
 what a universe we stand, when we gain its spiritual 
 key, and pass the veil that hides us from the Living 
 God. 
 
 But if this be the meaning of our sense of sin, what 
 hope, you will say, that it can ever leave us? If 
 holiness be infinite, and we are not, is it not an awful 
 thing to have the susceptibilities, without the powers, of
 
 2OO The Finite and the Infinite 
 
 infinitude ? And was it not the work of Christ to give 
 us rest from the strife and sorrows of compunction ? 
 Yes : not however a rest within ourselves, as if we 
 either ceased from sin, or could see it with other and 
 less saddened eyes ; but a rest out of ourselves, a pure 
 and perfect trust in Him whose spirit draws us from 
 before and whose pity supports us from behind. It is 
 an unfaithful attempt, to escape from the burdens of 
 self-reproach otherwise than by completer surrender. 
 Shake them not off : ask not to have them taken away : 
 crave for no peace which they deny : go with them all, 
 go as you are, to Him of whose light they are the 
 shadow ; and say to him, " I am a sinful man, 
 Lord : in my short-comings, whilst I live, I can never 
 acquiesce ; but, whilst thou livest, I can never despair." 
 This is the condition of an immortal nature within 
 mortal bounds, of the " son " blended with the " crea- 
 ture " of God. In a nature like ours the vital beams 
 of the divine essence must ever shoot and struggle in 
 their gulf of darkness, and make no white effulgence, 
 but break into the colours of a stormy glory. Do the 
 awful splendours terrify rather than inspire you ? fill 
 you with personal fear lest the whip of lightnings start 
 forth from the cloud and fling its lash upon your guilt ? 
 Do you want ease and self-content on any terms ? You 
 can sink back into the "creature," and stifle the sighs 
 of the " son " of God within you. But if you will 
 slaim your divine heritage, if you will take the type of
 
 In Hitman Nature. 201 
 
 being which it gives you, you must be satisfied, now 
 and for ever, with something else than self-repose : you 
 must be content with mourning at home and rest 
 abroad : you must so love God as to be willing to 
 resemble him in all except his joy ; and then his 
 answering affection will be more to you than all you 
 have renounced, and give you an unselfish "peace that 
 passeth understanding." 
 
 On every side then, the relation of our life to the 
 supernatural which penetrates and enfolds it, betrays 
 itself in our consciousness. The intellect, which seeks 
 to transcend the finite in space and time and truth ; 
 the conscience, which owns the infinite in duty and 
 stays itself on the infinite in love ; indicate the scale 
 of our affinities, and attest a nature that liveth not 
 by bread alone but by every Word of communion with 
 God. Moulded of perishable and imperishable ele- 
 ments, we sink and rise, we sleep and wake, we faint 
 and struggle on ; toiling outwardly for transitory wants, 
 pining inwardly with everlasting thirst. Be it not in 
 blind unconsciousness that we carry in us the seal of 
 the Eternal. Shall God's Spirit plead with us every 
 day, and never reduce us to a sweet and holy mind ? 
 Because our feet are in the dust, shall our heart never 
 go up into the mountain to pray, and our thought 
 never pace the heights of meditation ? Shall the 
 years sweep by and take from us all that is mortal, 
 without waking the immortal life within us from the
 
 202 l he Finite and the Infinite, etc. 
 
 winter in which it sleeps ? Shall we wait to die into 
 the surprise of God, instead of taking his dear and 
 solemn converse now and for ever ? Shall we dream 
 of a future eternity, and be blind to that which 
 surrounds us every instant, which brings its judg- 
 ments to our conscience, its present God to our trust, 
 its mighty company of saints to our affection ? Ah ! 
 let the film of the carnal mind fall from our eyes ; 
 and yielding ourselves to be led by the Spirit of God, 
 let us claim our divine Sonship and enter on its 
 glorious liberty. There will be no sadness then in 
 the flow of life and change : time will take nothing 
 but our delusions away ; will enfold us in a warmer 
 light of divine affection ; and clear the everlasting air, 
 till we see even as we are seen.
 
 XYI. 
 
 io ftate, 
 
 Ps. Ixxxix. 47. 
 
 " Remember how short my time is : wherefore hast thou made all men 
 in vain ? " 
 
 WHETHER or not a man is made in vain depends 
 however very little on his allowance of time. " Long 
 life " may be needful to " satisfy him," to prevent 
 disappointment of a natural instinct and give a certain 
 completeness to his existence on the personal side ; 
 but is far from necessary to God's purposes in creating 
 him, or to the intensest and fullest action of his being 
 on the sphere into which he is born. The divinest 
 life that ever took the form of humanity, the life 
 above all others least " in vain," hung upon the cross 
 ere half our proverbial term was spent ; and with a 
 few months of love and sorrow profusely' sowed the 
 whole seed-field of human history. The cravings of 
 ease and comfort may dictate the prayer for protracted 
 freedom from disturbance : the passionate cry of
 
 2O4 Time to Nature, God, and the Soul. 
 
 desolate affection may protest against the abrupt 
 quenching of its familiar lights, brilliant and unex- 
 hausted still: but, by the measures of the Spirit, 
 moments may often suffice for years; and many a 
 soul, though not outwardly stricken, yet inwardly 
 weighed down by the cross of too great a life, is so 
 far from desiring " length of days," as to have no 
 lingerings but for others' sake, and to stand ever eager 
 for the vioce, " Lift up your head, for your redemption 
 draweth nigh " ! 
 
 Nothing indeed is more wonderful to think of than 
 the different values of Time to different orders of 
 existence. To mere physical natures it is nothing, 
 except the element that contains their successions ; 
 the element that is always there, and always uni- 
 form ; the empty receptacle of their changes ; producing 
 nothing, destroying nothing ; the mere open door of 
 all possibilities. The heavens and the earth are 
 insensible, to their own vicissitudes, and have neither 
 pride nor fear at their longevity. They measure time 
 for others, but know nothing of it themselves : they 
 move in order to render its march perceptible, but are 
 blind and deaf to the rhythm which they beat. To 
 the rising sun it is nought what day in the world's 
 calendar it glorifies : the transit of the stars is calm 
 alike, whether they look down on the young Paradise 
 or on the trodden latitudes of guilt and sorrow: the 
 clock in the sick chamber does not stop to listen to
 
 Time to Nature, God, and the Soul. 205 
 
 the parting breath, but ticks on, whether to count the 
 pulses of life, or to sharpen the silence of death. The 
 particular objects in creation have indeed their period : 
 -they pass through various stages of a career, all lying 
 between a beginning and an end ; and if you come 
 upon them to-morrow, they are not the same that you 
 would find them to-day. The difference however is 
 for you and not for them ; and is lost when you restore 
 them to their place in the great organism of nature. 
 The universe as a whole is always sure to be; and 
 to its life, which has all space to roam in, it matters 
 not whether the pulsation be due here or there. To 
 the physical elements, history is nothing : the young ' 
 oak, if its roots be only fed, is indifferent, whether 
 its sap is from the juices of the new earth, or drawn 
 from the falling foliage of ten thousand years; and 
 the full moon would as soon look down on a Geth- 
 semane as on an Eden. In the fields of creation every 
 hour is equally full, with neither more nor less than 
 what is due : indeed it is this very evenness that 
 makes and counts the hours and gives them equal 
 length; and we set off its constancy against our 
 contingent and passionate existence, because assured 
 that we can rely on its relentless neutrality. Nature, 
 in short, as a phenomenon in time, serves only to 
 mark it for higher beings ; and neither makes it nor 
 minds it. Duration, already on the field, does but use 
 the cycles of Nature as its ministers and interpreters.
 
 206 Time to Nature, God, and the Soid. 
 
 If Nature is below any perception of time, God, at 
 the other extremity of being, is above it. He is the 
 great " I Am" : his verbs have no tenses: his expe- 
 rience is never past ; his knowledge never future : 
 with him nothing fades away and sets : nothing dawns 
 and brings surprise. Whatever enters into his being 
 is not phenomenal, but real ; not transient and finite, 
 but permanent and infinite. Truth, the expression of 
 what unchangeably if, ; beauty, the conception of a 
 fixed ideal ; holiness, the love of voluntary perfection ; 
 these, which meet in his personality, are not historical 
 and incidental, but unsuccessive and spiritual, the 
 ground-thought of the universe itself, the law and 
 life that underlie the course and determine the drift 
 of its development. He is the essence of all the 
 eternities : before his eye the accidents of being fall 
 away, and the inner significance alone is present to 
 his view. Only that which is always true and fair and 
 holy belongs to him ; not learned by him afterwards 
 from the form of its manifestation, but known before- 
 hand in itself ; not read off from the face of the world 
 by his perceiving eye, but created into the transitory 
 universe by his everlasting thought. His intellect 
 is not like ours, that climbs upward from fact to law, 
 from law to cause, from cause to the abiding ground 
 of all ; but, inversely, meditates downwards from 
 its own infinite essence into specific and multiform 
 expression ; and out of its still ocean volatilizes the
 
 Time to Nature, God, and the Soul. 207 
 
 clouds, and keeps alive the running waters, of all 
 earthly good. For him, who embraces the ages, they 
 can bring nothing, and take nothing away. 
 
 God, then, includes time without being affected by 
 it, and time includes Nature which is unaware of it. 
 He too completely transcends it, his icorks are too 
 profoundly subject to it, to be otherwise than indif- 
 ferent to its lapse. But we stand at an intermediate 
 point and bear affinity with both extremes. We are 
 akin to nature, inasmuch as we are born and grow 
 and die : we are akin to God, as we bear the stamp 
 of living thought, and wield the power of creative will. 
 As natural products, we pass through time and suffer 
 all its seasonal changes : as supernatural souls, time 
 passes through us, and becomes tributary to a life 
 beyond change. It is in a mixed being like ours, 
 in the meeting of the physical and the spiritual, the 
 touch of the divine upon the human, that duration 
 ceases to stand and begins to .flow ; that the hours 
 count themselves off aloud, and mingle with grief and 
 joy, and ring out by turns the chime and the dirge. 
 We cannot pretend to be mere organisms, to which 
 each period comes alike ; ready to bloom in the spring 
 or wither in the wintry wind; or to be passive and 
 unconscious, like the sea, whether glancing in the 
 moonlight, or sweeping wildly under the darkened 
 sky. We cannot pretend to be " as gods," lifted above 
 the reach of change, exempt from sleep and waking,
 
 208 Time to Nature, God, and the Soul. 
 
 and lost in constancy of light and love. Life has its 
 perspective for us ; bright forms and slanting gleams 
 and soft shadows in the past ; a haze not without its 
 glory in the future ; both, looked at with a sigh from 
 thorny ways and wasting heats in the present. la 
 relation to lower existence, our human consciousness 
 of time is a prerogative : in comparison with God's 
 life, it is an infirmity, or at least a limitation. And 
 according as we use or abuse it, we may verge towards 
 either extreme, sinking ourselves into nature or merg- 
 ing into God. Do we use change, or does change 
 use us? Do we drift into the currents of necessity, 
 or keep the open sea, where, with the good winds of 
 heaven, a course may yet be steered? Do we sur- 
 render the eternal in us to the temporal, and yield 
 the soul to the seasonal pressures of life ? Then do 
 we go over to the side of mere nature, and claim 
 our slave-lineage with pride. Or do we convert the 
 temporal in us into the eternal, and appropriate all 
 change and loss to feed imperishable love and glorify 
 divinest truth ? Then do we draw nearer unto God 
 and humbly own our heavenly filiation. 
 
 It is with good reason that we are accustomed to put 
 a high estimate upon experience ; to give heed to men 
 who have it ; and expect from them counsels rich in 
 wisdom. But experience, in any high and comprehen- 
 sive sense, is the rarest, as it is the choicest of human 
 qualities. More must go to make it than we are apt to
 
 Time to Nature, God, and the Soul. 209 
 
 suppose ; not habit and opportunity alone, which can 
 only give a narrow dexterity of hand or mind ; but some 
 breadth of faculty to seize relations, and depth of con- 
 science to read life truly, and quickness of affection to 
 sympathise with it largely ; and a cultivated reverence 
 of mind to know its own ignorance and find the way 
 to others' wisdom. The materials and occasions of 
 experience may often abound ; and yet may remain 
 without moral result, for want of the living mind and 
 moulding love to elaborate and shape them. Some men 
 there are whom no lapse of time seems to soften or 
 expand; from whom whole floods of experience vail 
 flow off and leave them dry ; who pass through events, 
 and remember them, and like to call back their outward 
 image again, but are just the same as if the events had 
 been different ; who reproduce in age the very senti- 
 ments and prejudices they had looked up in youth, and 
 gather nothing from the past but a mood ungenial to 
 the present. They repeat the story of their early days, 
 not as a poem, but as an almanac ; can give you the 
 dates but not the meaning of the changes they have 
 seen ; and of the men they have admired can tell as 
 much as the register and the coffin-plate. To such 
 natures, case-hardened against the elements, time and 
 the seasons come .in vain : winter and summer, not a 
 crevice opens in the rock where a green thing can push 
 its root. Wanting susceptibility, to appropriate what is 
 given and work it up into the organism of the personal
 
 2 1 o Time to Nature, God, and the Soul. 
 
 existence, they can only by an abuse of terms be said to 
 have " experience " at all : they want its diviner con- 
 ditions, though supplied -with its natural vicissitudes; 
 and were life to come over again, they would do and be 
 essentially the same. Nor is this hardness of mind, 
 this resistance to the solicitations of time, at alt peculiar 
 to the rough and working world. In the intellectual as 
 in the practical sphere of human affairs the same fact 
 may be observed. To some minds knowledge itseli 
 seems to come, not as a nutriment, but as an incrusta- 
 tion : they take it up and keep it, yet are scarce wiser 
 than before : they let themselves serve as mere organs 
 for its elaboration ; and when the honeycomb is ready, 
 the insects come out as they had gone in. It is amazing 
 to find how few there are whom knowledge enters as 
 living truth, and moulds to higher beauty ; how often it 
 proves but a Satan's promise to those who taste the 
 fruit, " Ye shall be as gods." The littleness that may 
 stand in face of the widest field of thought, the in- 
 sensibility that hears no Saviour's voice when tender 
 griefs stand at the door and knock, the self-will that can 
 hold its stiff footing and deny its prayer when God is 
 waiting for the surrendered heart ; too clearly show how 
 many, of all that are born, yet remain to be born again. 
 It would almost seem that, for different souls, there are 
 different periods for opening, and different rates of 
 ripening ; and that while some welcome the first breath 
 of spring, and strike their eager fibres into the mellow
 
 Time to Nattire, God, and the Soul. 211 
 
 soil, others never in this world burst the capsule of their 
 self-enclosed humanity; or at least make only such 
 tardy and reluctant growth as to stint the glory of 
 God's natural year, and reserve for another clime its 
 grace, its foliage, an.d its fruit. Not always however 
 are we doomed to fear that the heavenly birth is thus 
 delayed. There are some to whom the tearful atmo- 
 sphere of this world early brings the dew and sprinkling 
 of regeneration ; and to whom, thenceforth, no event is 
 simply physical, no experience chiefly external ; but an 
 inner fire takes up and kindles whatever is offered, and 
 is sure to be nurtured by it into a purer and diviner 
 flame. To such souls every element of life is sacred, 
 and every momentary change is rich ; and the transient 
 brush of sunshine that but touches the grass and flits 
 away, will show them more than the longest and the 
 most staring summer-day can give to the shrewd open 
 eye. Whatever happens to them or passes before them 
 becomes a part of them : their tablet of the past is not 
 the memorandum-book of business and affairs, but the 
 illuminated calendar of the affections, where the names 
 are holy and the days are bright. The legends they 
 have to tell are not superficial anecdotes that fools can 
 understand as well as wise ; but snatches from the great 
 drama of reality, strophes flung out from its chords of 
 joy or grief, moving and significant to those onlj who 
 know it as a whole. "Where there is in the soul this 
 living mood of watchfulness and response, it needs no 
 
 P 2
 
 2 1 2 Time to Nature, God, and the Soul. 
 
 large knowledge to give the finest wisdom, no length of 
 days to enrich the heart with the deepest experience. 
 Let the mind be only pure and tender with the love of 
 God, large with his presence, and free in the quietude 
 of faith, and its faculties move upon the slightest hint, 
 and find more in an ordinary year than sharp-sightcd- 
 ness and sound-headedness alone could discern from 
 beneath their knitted brows in half a century. I know 
 not indeed which is the more marvellous ; the frequent 
 ripeness of the young, where their nature is well 
 directed, in moral and spiritual wisdom ; or the apparent 
 failure, equally frequent, of the longest life to awaken 
 the most elementary sentiments of religion. In either 
 case we learn how little mere Time has to do with things 
 divine ; how, when we keep near to God, the smallest 
 allowance may suffice ; and, when we quit him for the 
 mere natural life, the largest is of no avail. 
 
 Indeed, that Time is no measure of value in the 
 deeper concerns of our humanity, is apparent from a 
 comparison, not only of different persons, but even of 
 different parts of our own individual experience. No 
 hour-glass, no diary, can estimate for you the "fulness 
 of time " : it is the soul that fills it : if the soul lie 
 asleep, it is not filled at all ; if she be awake, in the 
 vigils of suspense, of sorrow, of aspiration, there may bo 
 more in an hour than you can find in a dozen empty lives. 
 As it is with place, so is it with time. Often it happens 
 that some one spot, uncoveted by others, visited by no
 
 Time to Nature, God, and the Soul. 213 
 
 pilgrim feet, may be more to you than all the world 
 besides : it may be but a bit of meadow-land with a path 
 beneath the elms ; or an old house that looks upon a 
 street ; or a bench in a plain village church. But if it 
 be there that your childish steps ran free ; if through 
 those windows you looked ere the tint of wonder had 
 yet flown ; if at that shrine you knelt in your first deep 
 sorrow-; if shadowy forms surround you there with 
 benign and holy looks, and tones are in the air that 
 you alone can hear; the place will have for you a 
 sacredness quite unique and immeasurable ; a magni- 
 tude of interest that no lines of longitude can define. 
 In like manner may a weight truly unlimited be con- 
 densed into a speck of time. In Gethsemane itself it 
 needed but three cries of briefest prayer, and the most 
 pathetic crisis had passed from the sublimest of his- 
 tories. Less pregnant, and yet of immeasurable con- 
 tents, was the point of suspense for the Christian 
 confessor, while the Roman tribunal paused on the 
 verdict " To the release," or, " To the lions" ! And 
 in the private house where, as you gaze up to the 
 chamber aloft, the unaccustomed lamp,, the soft-flitting 
 shadows on the blind, and an indescribable lo.ok of 
 hushed intensity betray the vigils over some life quiver- 
 ing on the verge, what, think you, would you learn 
 from thje pale watcher of those fading eyes, if you 
 asked her how much she lived in the hour ere they 
 closed? The patriot, snatching from his courier the
 
 214 Time to Nature, God, and the Soul. 
 
 news of the decisive battle lost or won ; the widow, 
 when her son's ship has foundared, asking at the 
 broker's office for the list of the shipwrecked and the 
 saved ; these can tell you, or rather cannot tell, 
 what may be comprised in the twinkling of an eye. 
 Nor, for this experience, is there need of any startling 
 external vicissitudes ; it belongs no less to the purely 
 internal story of the mind. As Newton, in testing his 
 theory, approached the end of his calculations, and 
 foresaw that it would be verified, the rush of thought 
 became too great for even his tranquillity, and with 
 trembling hand he delivered to another the task he 
 could not complete himself. Such a burst of sudden 
 discovery, the solution of a life-long problem, comes 
 charged with a meaning in excess of human strength. 
 Nay, even the simple student, who discovers nothing, 
 but only finds the wise whom he may follow, can never 
 forget the hour when first he felt the power of the higher 
 mind that wakened up his nature and revealed him to 
 himself ; if by the living voice, the memory of its tones 
 will make all others seem empty ; if by the silent page, 
 it will look up with a deep and tender light which 
 brighter genius will never eclipse. Still more marked 
 are the nodal points of the spiritual history; when 
 from our penitential prayers the shell of custom breaks 
 away, and floods the heart with all their meaning ; or 
 when, after long darkness on a trackless sea of doubt, 
 the cloud passes from the pole-star of our life, and
 
 Time to Nature, God, and the Soul. 215 
 
 gives us our true way ; or when we are caught up into 
 self-forgetfulness and enter on the freedom of a sur- 
 rendered will. The magnitude of these moments, 
 their real proportion to the whole story of our days, no 
 dial -plate can show. The pendulum may beat but 
 once, ere all be over ; yet that instant may carry in it 
 the burden of years. For the higher regions of our 
 nature, the true measures of time are found, not, as 
 with physical changes, in any ratio of traversed arcs, 
 but in the relation of events to our affections ; and in a 
 focus, which is only a point, may burn a light of the 
 spirit greater than you can find diluted through indefi- 
 nite wastes of dull and hazy life. 
 
 Magnitude of life then stands not in mere length of 
 days. That is but one of its dimensions ; and only 
 " in our haste " can we protest, when it is abridged, 
 that God has " created us in vain." It is not larger 
 time that we want, so much as the more capacious soul 
 to flow through every pore of the little which we have. 
 So long as we shrink within the fence of selfish ease, 
 and see nothing, feel nothing, think nothing, beyond 
 the drowsy range of personal routine, our lot will be so 
 empty, that no amount of it can ever seem enough ; 
 and our complaint of its brevity would not be cured 
 by the gift of centuries. While the spirit sleeps, the 
 longest time-piece will be running down, and can count 
 nothing but its own lessening distance from stoppage 
 and death. But to the insight and affections of a mind
 
 2 1 6 Time to Nature, God, and the Soul. 
 
 awake there is no end to the plenitude of things ; it 
 overcharges the hours that try to give its reckoning. 
 Shall we forget in what a world we have our place ? 
 Ere our pulse heats thrice, the neighbouring air vihrates 
 with the cry of every passion, the tones of every sorrow, 
 of humanity; and sun and moon look down on the 
 incidents of unnumbered moving dramas ; and he who 
 dwells in this air with susceptible ear and looks on this 
 stage with open eye may well lose all heed for his own 
 life, while it is multiplied and melted by sympathy in a 
 thousand others. A single instant of the Divine Life, 
 spread over all that is simultaneous, is worth an 
 eternity of ours, which at least begins by taking all 
 things one by one. And in proportion as we emerge 
 from this childhood of the mind, and claim our ap- 
 proach towards union with God, will the contents of 
 our experience enrich themselves, and its area correct 
 its evanescence ; till a mere moment may become worth 
 a millennium before ; and the Transient may be to the 
 large soul more than the Everlasting to the little : and 
 then whether our Time be long or short by Sun and 
 Moon may well remain indifferent, since the life that 
 is beyond time and nature is vivid within us.
 
 xvn. 
 
 LUKE vii. 47. 
 
 " I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven ; for she loved 
 much : but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little." 
 
 IN order to appreciate aright the sentiment here meant 
 to be conveyed, we must, I suppose, slightly correct 
 the form of words, and restore to the two clauses their 
 due balance and contrast : ' Her sins are forgiven, for 
 her love is great ; but he to whom little is forgiven, it 
 is because he loveth little.' That is to say, there is 
 a perfect parity of movement between God's receiving 
 affection and our trustful advance ; profuse attachment 
 on our part being met by free reconciliation on his ; 
 whilst the cautious and frugal heart scarcely reduces 
 its estrangement in the least. In this great lesson lies 
 the whole point of the incident : to lead on to this are 
 the figures, at the head of the feast and at the feet of 
 Christ, presented in such elaborate opposition; the 
 cold politeness of the Pharisee, content to be civil to
 
 218 Forgiveness to Love. 
 
 tho Son of God ; and the passionate reverence of the 
 woman, who forgets the restraints of usage in her 
 gratitude and tears. Tho evident intention of Jesus is, 
 to pica I her intense devotcdncss as a sufficient ground 
 for Divine forgiveness; and not, as the historian in- 
 versely supposes, to account for her attachment by a 
 prior act of pardon : for it is not till the last moment 
 of tho scene that he winds up with tho announcement 
 " Thy sins are forgiven " ; and silences all murmurs 
 hy again referring to her fervour of trust as the reason 
 of her release ; " Thy faith hath saved thee ; go in 
 poaco." No doubt,, tho same tender and susceptible 
 soul that wins forgiveness by depth of love will also 
 repay it with devoted gratitude : the imploring faith at 
 first, and tho resulting joy at last, will bo of the same 
 rich tone ; and, in his words to Simon, Jesus may have 
 touched on both relations, and spoken of forgiveness 
 as at once the answer to a love spontaneous and the 
 awakoner of a love responsive ; and with this he may 
 have contrasted the hopeless case of the insensible and 
 formal mind, which for want of love goes without for- 
 giveness, and, uninellowed by forgiveness, flows down 
 in no love. And this douMe turn to the thought may 
 explain the evangelist's wavering and confusion between 
 the two directions. But whoever will set himself at a 
 lo distance from the incident and look at its character 
 as a whole, cannot fail to seize its essential spirit in this 
 truth ; that in heaven there is mercy for the reverent
 
 Fo; <s to Lc 219 
 
 niul loving, and a strict account for tho critical and 
 
 COlcl. 
 
 I \rhaps tho historian would have Kept this lesson 
 moro clearly in his eye, had ho not apparently taken 
 too dark a view of tho woman's character, :m<l heeii 
 misled by Christ's words about her " wtniii sins" into 
 tho inference that sho was living a life of outuard 
 shame. The appearance of such a person, \\ith atti- 
 tudes of such vehement enthusiasm, in the dining- 
 room of tho fastidious . Simon, would present a manifest 
 improbability. And we are relieved of tho dilliculty by 
 tho other three evangelists,* who relate an incident HO 
 similar to this that it can bo nothing elso ; an incident 
 in which tho entertainer is still Simon, and a woman in 
 devoted discipleship expends her precious spikenaid en 
 tho Lord, and the guests find fault with his perm. 
 of the act. If these are features which could hardly 
 occur twice, wo must suppose the same t'acl, to ho 
 the common base of all tho narratives, and must uso 
 
 tlirm to correct and sup| Irmnit, cadi other. \Vi> thus 
 Irani from tho other gospels that tho scene was in 
 Bethany, and from the fourth evangel!;!, that, the 
 woman was no other than Mary the sister of La/anis. 
 If so, it is no wonder that her act is regarded l-y 
 tho narrators as tho simple expression of reverential 
 homage, apart from all penitential meaning; and that 
 no reference is made to any sins in her that asked 
 * Mutt. \\vi. i; 1:1. Mi,!, xiv. ::-: .lulu, \ii. 1-8.
 
 22O Forgiveness to Love. 
 
 forgiveness. By taking our stand at a mid-point 
 between the two accounts, we may perhaps discern the 
 truth of both. To the outward eye of the spectators 
 at Bethany there would appear no ground for contri- 
 tion in that gentle Mary who had long sought, and well 
 knew where to find, " the one thing needful " ; and they 
 would see nothing in her demeanour but the outpouring 
 of an unsparing veneration. Yet in the inner relations 
 of that susceptible soul might there not have been 
 many burdens of self-reproach, many grievous failures 
 and transgressions which she had longed to confess, and 
 now at length had laid at his feet ? Those good sisters, 
 as we know, were not always quite genial together ; and 
 the brisk hand and the tender heart, being human both, 
 might well make sins for themselves and sorrows for 
 each other, that needed the eye of Christ to clear them 
 away. But as this would be all among themselves, 
 private as the confessional, any words of re-assurance 
 that might escape* the lips of Christ would fall upon 
 the hearers without their key; and an expression of 
 forgiveness, repeated to those who knew nothing of the 
 persons or the scene, might be misconstrued to imply 
 that she to whom it was addressed must have been " a 
 sinner " in human sight as well as in Divine. Let us, 
 however, who know that it was Mary of Bethany, not 
 so misunderstand those bitter tears, and the gracious 
 words that dried them at their fountain-head. "We 
 cannot penetrate the spiritual confidences which so
 
 Forgiveness to Love. 221 
 
 humbled and moved her at the feet of Christ. But 
 this we know assuredly ; that the same eager suscepti- 
 bility which was so quick to choose " the good part " 
 and follow whither the heavenly thirst might lead, would 
 also cause her to feel as if " her sins were many " : for 
 the ideal wing is often broken against the barrier of the 
 real : the holiest light in the upper region of the soul 
 flings the deepest shadow on the ground; and the 
 depth of contrition is proportioned to the height of 
 aspiration. Nor let us dare to call this an illusion : 
 for it is the most certain of all moral laws, that every 
 sin brings a film upon the inner vision and sets the 
 soul more nearly in the dark ; that in the heart where 
 evil is faintest, there is it best known ; and that none 
 can take the full measure of its shadow but He that 
 sees it from the Light of lights. And what, accord- 
 ingly, is the consolation which the Saviour offers to her 
 contrition ? Does he treat it as a mistake ? does he 
 say, she need not distress herself, for in reality there is 
 but little amiss, and Lazarus and Martha declare she is 
 the best creature in the world? On the contrary, he 
 respects her self-abasement ; he adopts and repeats her 
 remorseful estimate ; he owns the sins to be many, 
 only not too many for the reconciling love of God. 
 
 Here then we have the distinctest contrast between 
 two types of mind and character, with a direct verdict 
 from the lips of Christ on their relative nearness to the 
 heart of God. There is the apparently correct and
 
 222 Forgiveness to Love. 
 
 unobjectionable Simon, honest enough to risk the 
 imputation of discipleship by opening his house to the 
 Galileans, and worthy to be on intimate terms with the 
 good family of Bethany. Evidently sensitive about the 
 proprieties, and vexed that he cannot avoid " a scene," 
 he has no insight below the surface, no sympathy 
 with the hidden source of those silent tears. Cold and 
 even in himself, he has an aversion to the language of 
 intense affection, and likes to see the gloss of decorous 
 moderation spread over all things. His ethical self- 
 management guards the balance of his habits and 
 keeps him negatively right ; and, having no real 
 appreciation of sin or sigh for inner consecration, he 
 probably finds the " pleasures of a good conscience " 
 just upon his level. Though self-righteousness can 
 never be without a touch of pride, we know nothing 
 against his morals, his charity, or his outward religion. 
 One single feature, and that a want and not an enor- 
 mity, arrested and fixed the eye of Christ : his love 
 ivas little. On the other hand, there is the devoted 
 and affectionate Mary, known to us only by her con- 
 trition, aspiration, and reverence ; of whom we can 
 only think as of a face now uplifted and receptive, now 
 downcast and in tears. Her outer life remains for us 
 in the dark : we can only see that that passionate inner 
 nature must have passed through many a strife, and 
 may well have been betrayed into many a fall. We can 
 by no means feel sure that she never was surprised into
 
 Forgiveness to Love. 223 
 
 the sharp and bitter word, or was always punctual with 
 the outward task ; that she did not miss the near duty in 
 quest of a far wisdom ; that, where her love was strong, 
 no golden mist ever dimmed her clearness of eye or 
 purity of conscience. But, whatever her delusions or 
 sins, they were not those of a dead but of a living 
 heart : they had no canker of selfishness : they were 
 the weeds of a vernal nature, so green as scarce to be 
 told from promised flowers, not autumn spawn, grow- 
 ing where the sap is gone and the rot begun. The 
 upper springs of her soul, however troubled in their 
 later flow, were pure and untainted yet : humility and 
 trust had not ceased to be habitual, or self-complacency 
 to be impossible. The vision of a higher sanctity stood 
 ever at one remove, and kept alive a secret light within 
 the eye, and moulded the very features into reverence. 
 If her will was weak and knew not how to rule, it was 
 not stiff with pride, but could resign itself and serve. 
 Sad and confused as may be the accounts of such a one 
 with God, there is an open hope, a source of power, 
 a likeness with himself yet uneffaced, so long as the 
 Love is great. 
 
 The emphatic preference which Christ evinces for 
 this form of character above the ethical and self-reliant 
 is no accident, exceptionally appearing in this passage 
 of his life. It pervades the whole expression of his 
 mind. He would not let this same Mary be withdrawn 
 from sitting at his feet : he blessed the wondering heart
 
 224 Forgiveness to Love. 
 
 of the young child : he told how the voice of the con- 
 trite publican reached the ear of God : he opened the 
 Divine arms to the prodigal returning and subdued : he 
 sorrowfully saw the rich youth go away, who had obeyed 
 the commandment without joy, yet had not faith to 
 take the cross. It is indeed the one essential charac- 
 teristic of his religion, that which distinguishes the 
 gospel from the law, from natural morals, from self- 
 spun philosophy, that it insists on the doctrine of 
 reconciliation by love. To teach the rewards of obe- 
 dience may be simply Deistic : to proclaim pardon on 
 repentance is only Jewish : to announce forgiveness to 
 affection and trust is distinctively Christian. Short of 
 this truth we have not entered on our discipleship. 
 This thought it is which makes the difference between 
 the new ages and the old, between true churches and 
 false, between Christian and Pagan art, between a 
 Magdalen and a Cleopatra, between a Saviour and a 
 Nemesis. And if the consciousness of Christendom, 
 after passing through Paul and John, through Clement 
 and Augustine, through Tauler and Luther, has not 
 brought this truth home to our hearts, we have yet to 
 lay ourselves open to the benignest breath of a regener- 
 ated world. 
 
 " Her sins are forgiven ; for she loved much ": does 
 the reason seem to you inadequate to the result ? 
 Remember what Divine forgiveness is, and alone can 
 be. It is not a rescinding of the appointed sufferings
 
 Forgiveness to Love. 225 
 
 of guilt. It is not a treatment of moral wrong as 
 though it were moral right, or only neutral. It cannot 
 alter the sinful past, or relieve it, by a single shade, of 
 God's disapproval : he can never be brought to see it 
 other than it is. But the act which is evil hi itself is 
 also an offence against Him who identifies his will 
 with all that is good. And of this personal alienation 
 forgiveness is the removal. Is it strange that it should 
 be removed by personal love, and not removed without 
 it ? How should sympathy and communion be re- 
 stored, while the offender's face is averted in distrust ? 
 How should they fail to be restored, when the inner 
 discordance has now ceased, when the stain on the past 
 looks alike to both, and the same loves and aversions 
 render the human and the Divine mind again congenial ? 
 What is it that ever separates us from God ? It is 
 simply the unlikeness of our minds to his ; their low 
 tastes and disproportioned desires ; their pride in what 
 is nought to him, their indifference to what is all in 
 all; their devotion to the perishable self amid the 
 flow of his everlasting love ; their slight of the truth 
 he has so magnificently shown, and the holiness he has 
 yet more awfully secreted in the very heart of things. 
 We throw around us the self-evolved clouds of a nature 
 neglected or debased, and then complain that his beams 
 are hid : we plunge into ever deeper shades, and marvel 
 that the Sun is under permanent eclipse. But the 
 light of his countenance is steady and eternal ; and it 
 
 Q
 
 226 Forgiveness to Love. 
 
 is ready to shine in again upon us, whenever affections 
 go forth from us intense enough to perforate the mist. 
 Nay, He himself, with the breath that bloweth where it 
 listeth, often sweeps mercifully by, and makes inlets 
 for gleaming lights and tender colours not our own. 
 To remove the estrangement, it only needs that, on 
 such invitation, we set our face the other way, and look 
 to him with free response and trust; that we reflect 
 him instead of darkening ourselves ; that we let him 
 show us our delusions as they really are ; and, stripping 
 away reserve and self-enclosure, pass into affectionate 
 communion with him. The return of sympathy is the 
 removal of ungenial separation ; and he that is not 
 separated is forgiven. 
 
 Thus and thus only is the personal relation which 
 has been disturbed by sin re-adjusted and rectified. 
 As for the outward penalties incurred, they yet remain ; 
 and it would be a thing furthest from the wish of a 
 restored and purified mind, that any act of oblivion 
 should blot them out. Nay, were they not already 
 there, provided in the legislation of the universe, the 
 regenerate heart would never rest without creating and 
 suffering them, self-imposed. With or without the 
 contrite love, the consequences of our sin have to be 
 borne. Only, ivithout it, they come upon us as dry 
 and unrelieved suffering, a parching fever untended 
 and alone, consuming us in exile, with no tender looks 
 hovering near us, and no home tones floating on the
 
 Forgiveness to Love. 227 
 
 ear. With it, they light indeed their fires within us 
 still; hut they are cooled and well-nigh quenched in 
 the joy of reconciliation and the floods of living sym- 
 pathy. AYherever there is a true thirst for God and 
 that thirst is not in vain, hell itself is fresh with water- 
 brooks, and so bursts into green as to be hell no more. 
 
 And as it is with the peace, so is it with the power, 
 of the spirit of awakened love. We are helpless and 
 paralysed without it. The mere regret for past and 
 irrevocable wrong only gnaws the mind with unpro- 
 ductive belf-contempt, or works upon a feeble prudence 
 that cannot lift itself from its own flat : and even true 
 shame and remorse, while only retrospective and mel- 
 lowed by no personal trust and present sympathy, rather 
 prostrate than inspire the soul. They are the needful 
 weakness by which we are brought low and made clear, 
 in preparation for the access of a higher strength. It 
 is only in the guise of a deep love that that higher 
 strength enters to possess us. It is only when the 
 force of conscience ceases to be a propulsion in the 
 dark, and stands before us transfigured with the glory 
 of a Divine form, only when it is discovered to be no 
 mere part of ourselves, but .the immediate real presence 
 of the Holiest of all, that we are touched and caught 
 up by its inspiration. Then it wins to itself the tran- 
 scending power of a personal affection ; and the spiritual 
 impulse and the deepest love fall into coalescence. 
 Instead of distant obedience arises near communion : 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 Forgiveness to Love. 
 
 in place of a precarious and trembling will, toiling on 
 tlie dust, we find the transporting wing of aspiration, 
 and leave detaining weights behind. As for mere 
 human strength and self-reliance, it cannot hold 
 through this high race. Not long shall even young 
 resolve press on without being weary ; and the youth- 
 ful spirits too often utterly fall. But they that, with 
 trustful love, " wait upon the Lord, shall renew their 
 strength "; " they shall mount up on wings like eagles ; 
 they shall run and not be weary ; they shall walk and 
 shall not faint."
 
 xvrn. 
 & 10 % Chiton of % f 
 
 ACTS iii. 25. 
 "Ye are the children of the prophets." 
 
 IT is an old problem, to determine the characters which 
 most clearly distinguish man from the other tribes that 
 share with him the occupancy of this world. I will 
 venture to add one to the many answers it has received : 
 he can tell what o'clock it is. His nature indeed has 
 few more discriminating symbols than that small instru- 
 ment, the watch. Other creatures travel down the path 
 of time : but he alone can count the steps. They too 
 are liable to season and to change : but he only can mark 
 the cycle and anticipate the end. They also bear within 
 them the vestige of the past, and can dream again of 
 some old sight or sound : but in him alone, from know- 
 ledge of its source, is it ripened into memory. They 
 belong to duration : but duration rather belongs to him ; 
 not indeed to change its empty form, but to mark its 
 divisions, to glorify its spirit, and determine its contents.
 
 230 Life to the Children of the Prophets 
 
 He would have no name by which to describe the present 
 moment, were not the past and the future simulta- 
 neously before his thought. It is a high prerogative, 
 this meeting of the three elements in his mind at once : 
 nor does he often appear to me in closer affinity to the 
 Divine nature, than when I hear the church-clock 
 beneath the midnight sides, man's hour-bell striking 
 on the ear, and watch God's time-piece of stars gliding 
 before the eye. 
 
 Yet how little true to this prerogative does he 
 practically seem ! If you place him before you in 
 idea, as the only known being, save God, who can 
 measure the flow of time, and discern the relation of 
 his Now to a heretofore and a hereafter; you think 
 his position august and sublime, and expect a nature 
 widened and calmed by that breadth of duration which 
 seems to claim him. But if you turn from his chro- 
 nometer to himself, if you look for the past and the 
 future in his own mind, extending his sympathy and 
 tranquillizing his passions, the solemnity of your 
 expectation is sadly disappointed : you see almost the 
 same slavery to the moment, the same blindness to all 
 beyond, as in creatures who are aware of nothing else. 
 He seems delivered over from instant to instant, like a 
 helpless tradition moulded by small pressures of the 
 time, and losing permanent truth at every point. He 
 burns away with self-consuming care in the running 
 focus of the present, fusing down his life into drops
 
 Life to the Children of the Prophets. 231 
 
 that no man cares to gather ; and shows nothing of that 
 large lustre of the soul which resembles the spacious 
 and unwasting light of electric sides. Nay, his very 
 privilege of seeing fore and aft is corrupted hy him into 
 a means of heating up, instead of cooling down, the 
 interest of the moment : his dexterity, his experience, 
 his power of anticipation, are freely applied to deepen 
 his immediate stake, and make the instant game more 
 desperately engaging to his passions ; but not to give 
 the quiet heart and steady hand of one who frequents 
 it only as the gymnastic of a divine skill, and is un- 
 dazzled by its showy prize. Instead of abating the 
 vehemence of his short-sighted wishes by the sense of 
 larger and more enduring good, he directly imports all 
 the resources of memory and the fervours of hope into 
 his momentary desire, and thus doubles his slavery 
 instead of attaining his freedom. 
 
 This habit of living for the moment is, even in its 
 best forms, narrowing to the mind and withering to the 
 heart. It cannot coexist with the sense of God upon 
 the soul. It makes the difference between the blindness 
 of passion and the long sight of affection, between the 
 evanescent haste of impulse and the permanent aspira- 
 tion of enthusiasm, between the heats of the natural 
 and the intensity of the spiritual man. This is readily 
 admitted in the case of one who lives for imme- 
 diate pleasure. The common feeling of mankind looks 
 with contemptuous pity at his inability to resist the
 
 232 Life to the Children of the Prophets. 
 
 bait that dances before his eye, his fickle purposes, 
 changed by each bright colour which the prism of life 
 may throw upon the wall of thought, his feeble cap- 
 tivity to stronger wills, his quick spirits and his lin- 
 gering repentances. 
 
 Could such a one be persuaded to change immediate 
 pleasure for immediate interest, it would be more difficult 
 to procure his condemnation from the verdict of men : 
 for the inconsistency which most offends them would be 
 replaced by a steady and prudent self-command. Yet 
 the improvement, though fitting him for the competitions 
 of the world, may leave him absolute stranger as before 
 to the love and life of God ; nay, may even be the sign 
 of a more hopeless alienation : for I believe there is no 
 hell so far from God, no exile so total, as the cares of 
 sordid self-interest. Under that spell the very language 
 of recall becomes an unintelligible jargon, and, amid the 
 sleep of the interpreting soul, is taken for unmeaning 
 cant. There are men voluntarily delivered over to the 
 work of mere livelihood and gain, men who, without 
 the sad necessities and redeeming inspiration of affection, 
 dwarf their whole nature to the scale of retail trade, 
 who, instead of withstanding by a noble spirit the little- 
 ness of life, fall into it with glee and relish ; the paradise 
 of whose hopes is a comfortable business, and the idol 
 of whose admiration is the shrewd neighbour sure to 
 make his fortune. To such a man all the depth and 
 beauty of life are closed. The sweetest relations suggest
 
 Life to the Children of the Prophets. 233 
 
 nothing but shapes in his secular affairs ; his daughters 
 are emblems of so many marriage chances, and his sons 
 of so many apprentice -fees ; and his charities and his 
 church, an investment in decent reputation. Friends, 
 there is nothing degrading in the humblest and the 
 hardest fate ; nothing much nobler in this world than a 
 meek true soul struggling against the narrow bounds of 
 the sphere assigned it, and faithful to cherish the light 
 of God in the inglorious darkness of a bitter lot. But 
 to find the smallness of affairs a relief from any higher 
 strain, to hug the degradation and make ourselves at 
 home with it, to plead it in excuse for the unresisting 
 meanness of our nature, to preach from its low plat- 
 form a crusade of blind unbelief against the visions of 
 prophets and the breathings of the devout, this is a 
 direct betrayal of the post of life, and treason against 
 the holy Providence of all. Whoever fixes himself upon 
 the centre of mere prudential interest forfeits thereby 
 his title to speak, because his power to judge, of anything 
 divine : for heaven pays small respect to our poor taste 
 for plain truths, and so withdraws from the earthly eye 
 the " deep things of God," that " the natural man 
 cannot discern them." 
 
 Nay, this blindness may befall a far worthier class 
 than the votaries of pleasure or of interest : it is the 
 penalty of all who concentrate themselves upon the 
 present, who live for the moment, even though it 
 be the momentary Duty. Conscience also has its
 
 234 Life to tJie Children of the Prophets. 
 
 narrowness ; its scrupulous, microscopic gaze, that 
 looks for the animalcules of obligation till it grows 
 blind to the stars of faith, and the free heaven swims 
 dizzily before it. The anxieties of the merely dutiful 
 mind show that there is yet a barrier leaving it outside 
 the union with God. Those cautious steps betray the 
 deterring fear, and are unlike the free movements of a 
 confiding love. I know at once whose steps they are : 
 they belong to one who appreciates religion as the 
 means of good morals, instead of morals as the germ 
 and condition of religion ; whose very faith therefore is 
 a worship of prohibition, a conservatism of limits, an 
 apprehension of the escape of some fugitive desires ; 
 and can never fling itself in pure enthusiasm and with 
 fearless trust upon a large career where no rule can 
 guide it but only love impel. The small scale of affec- 
 tion in these honest and rigid minds shows itself in 
 censorious thoughts : they cannot see beyond the cir- 
 cumference of their own rules : they have no sympathy 
 for other types of life, no large eye for good if God 
 should hide it under strange costume : and so, as the 
 world will grow into unexpected shapes, they are 
 amazed at the perverseness of the world ; treating it 
 indeed with no greater rigour than they would severely 
 apply to themselves ; only forgetting that the Lord of 
 Omniscience gathers himself not into their centre, but 
 rather calls them out into his circumference. In short, 
 the soul which foregoes its privilege of spreading itself
 
 Life to the Children of the Prophets. 235 
 
 out on past and future, and lives for the moment, 
 whether of pleasure, of interest, or even of duty, suffers 
 a dwindling in its nature. In helpless irritability, in 
 miserable egotism, in ungenial rigour, in uneven spirits, 
 does the exaggeration of the present betray itself. By 
 continuance in it a man inevitably becomes ever smaller 
 in soul, while, by losing sight more and more of any- 
 thing beyond him, he feels as though he were greater ; 
 till at length he becomes incapable of learning, of 
 trusting, of looking up at all ; and exhibits all the 
 littleness of the child, only without the child's tender- 
 ness and faith. Nor is this result at all prevented 
 by any magnitude in the mere scale of a man's 
 outward and personal life. It is as true of master 
 as of man, of merchant as of clerk. Be the outline 
 and circumference of occupation large or small, the 
 contents, taken one by one, are not dissimilar; and 
 while the minds that penetrate them remain alike, the 
 only difference will be between a taller and a lower 
 stature of the same type of character. 
 
 There are times, I suppose, to every thoughtful man, 
 when the impression of this littleness in his actual life 
 comes upon him with a startling force. A touch of 
 sorrow which wakes the faded forms of old affection, a 
 poet's strain at which some high enthusiasm vibrates in 
 the heart again, a night upon the mountain or the 
 ocean where a Presence greater than the whole field of 
 worlds is felt in the rush of the waters and the silence
 
 236 Life to the Children of the Prophets. 
 
 of the air, or the sight of some secret sufferer who 
 meekly bears a cross unknown to us, surprises us 
 into the humbling discovery, that we have been dead to 
 the sublimities that lie as a cloud of glory around us 
 and within us. Something deeper than the senses 
 show or the hand can touch gleams upon us every- 
 where, an expressiveness behind the features of life 
 and nature which we had never seen before ; and scenes 
 quite often looked at now seem to look at us, and 
 with the living light of a Divine eye. Something that 
 was eternal we had always supposed that there must 
 be ; now we find that there is Some One who is eternal ; 
 and the drawing near to him, the penetration to him 
 through his universe, the saying of a true word, the lifting 
 of a clear face, to him, appears to have a meaning we did 
 not suspect. Compared with this meaning, how poor 
 seems all that we had taken to be most real ! how 
 empty the contents of our busiest day, too troubled 
 about many things to leave any opening for the one 
 thing needful ! Yet what is a day, but a sample of the 
 eternity in which we are and are to be ? If this 
 arousing of the soul is not faithfully followed up, habit 
 will reassert its power, and contradict the divine call 
 by a positive relapse ; and an utter scepticism of every- 
 thing infinite will ensue, and the mind will look back 
 on its only waking experience as a brilliant dream. 
 But if, by perpetuity in the change, this proves to be 
 a true regenerative hour, the opposite effect will follow.
 
 Life to the Children of the Prophets. 237 
 
 Finite things will be despised and disbelieved; will 
 suffer vengeance for their long tyranny, and be spurned 
 as mere deceptive shows ; and the more intense their 
 despotism has been, the more thorough will be the 
 renunciation of their sway. "When the scales first fall 
 from the eyes of one who has been living for the 
 moment, that which lies before his astonished view 
 is ths eternal depth of God, towards which the currents 
 of a resistless spirit appear to draw him. If he have 
 a strong impetuous soul, like Augustine or Luther, he 
 plunges in and loses himself in quest of the everlasting 
 point of view. The conversions of such minds from 
 the life for the moment to the life for eternity are facts 
 to be treated with a hearty reverence. Nevertheless, 
 the sweep at once from egotism to God is too vast not 
 to bring some giddiness, some loss of equilibrium, into 
 a nature like ours. The sudden transfer from the 
 exclusively personal point to the exclusively divine is 
 not free from the illusion of vehement contrast. Finite 
 things are too absolutely quenched, and sink away from 
 even their just rights. All that is human is dwarfed 
 and slighted ; and every mild and gracious light, of 
 natural pity, of domestic affection, .of cultivated art, 
 is put out by the intense splendours of the beatific 
 vision. Hence, periods distinguished by a rapid burst 
 of religious consciousness have rarely been unmarked 
 by wild and tragic features, by a life deepening into 
 vivid colours and shaping itself into gigantic forms. A
 
 238 Life to the Children of the Prophets. 
 
 taste and feeling for greatness unsoftened by bsauty has 
 developed itself. The immensity of the divine ends 
 pursued has swallowed up the scrupulous care of con- 
 science about the means employed. The curbs on 
 human passion, the respect for human life, the rights 
 of human thought, have given way. And breathing 
 in a region of transcendent air, men have lost the 
 gentleness and warmth of a kindred and considerate 
 heart. The new-born soul, carried alofb by the fiery 
 steeds of praeternatural affection, is apt to be stripped, 
 in the mighty wind of its ascent, of the mantle of its 
 humanities, and let it drop on less glorious prophets, 
 still toiling on the level of this world. 
 
 Behold then the opposite dangers between which 
 we stand. He who lives for the moment never finds 
 his soul and is alien from God : he who springs out 
 of this darkness to live straightway for eternity wins a 
 giddy height which only the most balanced minds can 
 safely hold, and whence the lesser graces and charities 
 are apt to pass out of sight. Have we nothing then to 
 mediate for us between these two, between the simply 
 natural and the simply spiritual, between the purely 
 personal and the absolutely Divine ? Are there but those 
 two foci of position for our nature, the solid darkness 
 of self, and the ethereal effulgence of God, the one 
 blinding from its gloom, the other from its brilliancy ? 
 Far from it. There is an intermediate realm, or rather 
 an interposed path spreading from the one to the other,
 
 Life to the Children of the Prophets. 239 
 
 with stages of sweet rest for weary souls, and many a 
 loving help on the way from earth to heaven. For 
 those who cannot take the whole distance at a bound, 
 God has prepared, between the natural and the 
 spiritual, the heroisms, the martyrdoms, the sancti- 
 ties, of History. If we cannot live at once and alone 
 with him, we may at least live with those who have 
 lived with him ; and find, in our admiring love for 
 their purity, their truth, their goodness, an intercession 
 with his pity on our behalf. To study the lives, to 
 meditate the sorrows, to commune with the thoughts, of 
 the great and holy men and women of this rich world, 
 is a sacred discipline which deserves at least to rank 
 as the forecourt of the temple of true worship, and may 
 train the tastes, ere we pass the very gate, of heaven. 
 It is an exercise which neither permits us to remain in 
 self-idolatry, nor yet plunges us into self-annihilation. 
 It strengthens what is weak in our souls by the 
 sympathy of ages : it supports us against the derisive 
 face of living fools by the sublime gaze of whole cen- 
 turies of the wise : it relieves the sense cf our life's 
 littleness by showing us the possibility of greatness. 
 Above all, it corrects and inverts our delusive estimates 
 of what is solid and powerful in this world. In our 
 own individual experience we are ever tempted to think 
 nothing real, nothing positive and practical, except our 
 material business, the visible produce of our pains, the 
 outward administration of our life ; while the inner and
 
 240 Life to the Children of the Prophets. 
 
 ideal life is deemed so unsubstantial a dream that those 
 who apeak of it are supposed to be beating the air. 
 The experience of nations and ages reverses this. The 
 glories of the past are not in huge trades, or fine pro- 
 perties, or even in laws and rites and institutions which 
 in their day kindled the passions of party strife : these, 
 chafed into dust by the mouldering hand of time, suc- 
 cessively fall away with the earthly conditions from 
 which they come ; while the mere impulses of expres- 
 sion, through which affection and admiration pour 
 themselves forth and heart appeals to heart, mould 
 themselves into imperishable Arts, though asking only 
 for the most perishable of materials, forms and tones, 
 colour and language ; and precisely the most ethereal 
 and interior of thoughts, which visit us only in 
 evanescent gleams, of something terrible in sin, 
 of something infinite in duty, of a possible union 
 with God through love and a mastery of life 
 through entire surrender, prove the most perma- 
 nent realities in history ; constructing themselves into 
 faiths which have been the cradle of nations and the- 
 divine nurse of the most vivifying individual minds. 
 The ink of Virgil on its thin leaf outlasts the Roman 
 walls and aqueducts : nay, the unwritten words of 
 Homer survive the cities where they were sung, and 
 are our only guide to the rivers and plains which he has 
 made immortal, but w-hich nature and history could not 
 keep. Of nothing does the aspect change more with
 
 Life to the Children of the Prophets. 241 
 
 time than of that wealth and station for which such 
 sacrifices are made. Who now cares for all that 
 Kallias had, in comparison with the least part of what 
 Socrates icas ? or would save the banking credit of all 
 the Fuggers at the cost of a table-talk of Luther's? 
 Who would envy the pontificate of Leo, if he could 
 have the pencil of Ikffaelle ? And in spiritual things, 
 when they steal from their true retreats and dare to 
 speak, it is the simplest truth and love that are surest 
 to endure ; and ages that can no longer yield the heart 
 to the ceremonial of St. Peter's or Notre Dame or West- 
 minster, will still surrender to the persuasive piety of a 
 St. Francis, a Fenelon, a Leighton. Next to the judg- 
 ments of God himself are the estimates of the human 
 mind exposed to the long tests of history. And the 
 pure insight of religion, if not intuitively present, may 
 be reached perhaps by a silent circuit through the elite 
 of generations gone. 
 
 Shall it then make no difference to us, except to 
 our accumulated capital, that we live in an old human 
 world, rich in the memory of ancient dynasties of 
 thought ? We are " the children of the prophets " ; 
 and are fond of owning it by rebuilding their tombs 
 or raising memorials of a century's gratitude and 
 honour. Shall the record of their genius and graces 
 be fixed on the marble or the bronze, and tell no story 
 except when there is sunshine to show it and an eye 
 to read it ? Shall it have no transcript on " the living 
 
 R
 
 242 Life to the Children of the Prophets. 
 
 tables of the heart," to be ever with us and gleam by 
 night as well as day ? We forfeit the chief source of 
 dignity and sweetness in life, next to the direct com- 
 munion with God, if we do not seek converse with the 
 greater minds that have left their vestiges on the world. 
 Rather let us keep a constant eye upon the light of 
 their spirits, and never quit our hold of the shadowy 
 hands, of which the nearest is almost at our door and 
 the furthest feels the touch of Christ and disappears in 
 the effulgence of God. If it is not given us, with the 
 inspired apostle, to reach "the third heaven" in the 
 twinkling of an eye, or, with the rapt mystic, to spring 
 aloft on the wing of prayer and float straight into the 
 arms of the Infinite Love, they will draw our feebler 
 spirits upward by insensible attraction, and bring us to 
 the same end at last. This blessed dependence, this 
 holding on of link to link, of soul to soul, of age to 
 age, is the true " communion of saints," which bridges 
 the waters of death, and embraces its opposite banks 
 in one City of God.
 
 XIX. 
 
 PSALM xii. 1. 
 " Help, Lord; for the godly man ceaseth." 
 
 WITH many a bright child, many a high-minded youth, 
 restive under Puritanical guardianship, it would seem, 
 I fear, no bad news that "the godly" were ceasing; 
 and his suppressed feeling would be that they could 
 very well be spared. For the phrase has become ap- 
 propriated to a type of character far from lovely in 
 even its best aspects, and so adverse to natural joy and 
 dreary in its idea of perfectness as to repel all large 
 and genial minds. It is the standing infatuation of 
 divines, first to spoil the poetic depth of religion by 
 reducing its speech to technical use, and then to charge 
 on human corruption the repugnance which the dismal 
 product excites. The kind of person to whom they 
 would award the epithet "godly" is familiar to us all; 
 the man of evangelical piety, whose life is ruled 
 by gratitude for unmerited salvation and desire to 
 
 R 2
 
 244 The Godly Man. 
 
 rescue others from the perdition which he has escaped ; 
 who can glibly say the creeds without a pause of doubt, 
 and is duly shocked with the superstition that adds any- 
 thing to them or the heresy that takes anything away ; 
 who looks on his Church as the great agency by which 
 God is in contact with the world, and measures by its 
 rule all men and things, all history, all life, all pro- 
 gress ; who pours his gifts into its treasury, and makes 
 it the almoner of all his bounty. That a character of 
 this form is compatible with many excellences, nay, is 
 even a pledge of them, we need not deny : but the 
 selection is narrow and peculiar ; it carries with it 
 grave deformities and faults which it consecrates as 
 sanctities ; and it omits, as if profane, many human 
 characteristics which must for ever remain objects of 
 admiration and trust. 
 
 Even apart from its abuse in the religious dialect of 
 a school, the word " godly " has come to mean some- 
 thing vastly more limited and less certainly significant 
 of nobleness, than it once denoted. It marks only one 
 special aspect of character, one order of feelings and 
 habits, viz., those which are directed towards God. 
 No doubt these ought to carry in them all else that is 
 pure and good, and to refine and perfect every other 
 side of the moral nature. And wherever God is present 
 to the thought as the everlasting life of beauty, truth, 
 and goodness, and kindles their faint authority with 
 the glow of personal affection, there, to live in con-
 
 The Godly Man. 245 
 
 scions relations with him will sustain the whole action 
 of the soul at its highest, and be equivalent to right- 
 eousness all round; and secret communion with him 
 will take the mind to the very well-spring of every 
 better love, and revive the aspirations drooping in the 
 heat and dust. A spirit always rightly disposed towards 
 a perfect Being can neither be in disorder within itself, 
 nor be wrongly disposed towards any other. But then 
 religious susceptibility is often keen, where the con- 
 ditions, intellectual or moral, 'of so manly and compre- 
 hensive a piety are wanting ; and a worship may ba 
 paid which sanctifies the discord of the passions and 
 confirms the confusion of the conscience. And, on the 
 other hand, there are secular forms of character, un- 
 deniably high and noble, which seem to have no 
 sympathies on the spiritual side, and are unconscious 
 of light from above. It would be a monstrous and a 
 monkish rule to measure men in our time by their 
 devotions ; to admit to the glory of godliness every 
 assured intimate of heaven, and exclude from it every 
 one from whom the living presence of the Most High 
 is hid. 
 
 It may check this overbalance of our estimates on 
 the side of piety to remember that the word "godly" 
 in its primitive intent, means only " godlike." It 
 expresses, not the personal affections which have God 
 for their object, but the characteristics which may bring 
 a human soul into resemblance to him. To the strong
 
 246 The Godly Man. 
 
 and simple builders of our speech he was a godly 
 man who drew their reverence, not whom they found 
 constantly expressing his own; with whom they felt 
 themselves in the presence of something divine ; whom 
 they trusted as a rock of righteousness ; to whose 
 shelter they could fly in every storm of wrong. Such 
 a one they would doubtless take to be " the Friend of 
 God"; but the sign of it to them was not in his 
 devotions and private demeanour towards the world 
 above ; rather in this, that he stood to them in the 
 place of God, and was the chosen Organ of eternal 
 Eight. If, with this clue, we seek for the central 
 essence of the character, we shall certainly rot rest 
 with the pieties exercised in conscious worship. For 
 precisely here it is that we stand on purely human 
 ground, and are disposed of by affections which the 
 Supreme Spirit (Jannot share. To look up, to aspire, 
 to adore, to weep the tears of failure and breathe the 
 sighs of hope, are the pathetic privilege of finite na- 
 tures, planted on the open borders of the infinite. God 
 lives without personal relations above him : He has no 
 prayers to say, no creed to repeat ; and the beauty of 
 holiness in him can have no fitting emblem in the 
 uplifted eyes and patient looks of the true saint. Of 
 his perfection we can think only as of a spontaneous 
 conformity with an inward righteousness and a pure 
 preference of the best ; as an inherent love of planting 
 out the germs of this moral order in other minds;
 
 The Godly Man. 247 
 
 as an ever-during sympathy with its growth there, 
 bringing them nearer to himself. If, then, Goodness, 
 in its culmination, is something other than devotion to 
 a higher nature, and is divested of its character of 
 personal affection, how can I disown it as the Divine 
 in miniature when it appears under the same aspect in 
 a human mind ? If I see a man living out of an inner 
 spring of inflexible right and pliant pity ; if he refuses 
 the colour of the low world around him ; if his eye 
 flashes with scorn at mean and impure things which 
 are a jest to others : if high examples of honour and 
 self-sacrifice bring the flush of sympathy upon his 
 cheek ; if in his sphere of rule he plainly obeys a 
 trust instead of enforcing an arbitrary will, and in his 
 sphere of service takes his yoke without a groan, and 
 does his work with thought only that it be good ; I 
 shall not pry into his closet or ask about his creed, but 
 own him at once as the godly man. Godliness is the 
 persistent living out an ideal preconception of the 
 Right, the Beautiful, the Good. Wherever this is 
 dominant, it ensures 
 
 1. A certain perfection and thoroughness of personal 
 work. There are two ways in which all human 
 achievements may be carried out, according as you 
 elaborate them from within or from without. It is 
 the boast of the practical man that he adapts his 
 operations to the external conditions which shut him 
 in, takes accurate measurement both of his exigencies
 
 248 The Godly Man. 
 
 and of his possibilities, avails himself of opportunity and ^ 
 evades difficulty,- and never permits himself to be run 
 away with by impracticable aims ; and he perpetually 
 confirms his opinion of his own adroitness by his 
 visible success. Life, thus administered, is like a 
 game of skill, in which every move is computed by 
 balancing the values of surrounding contingencies', and 
 making it an advance or a retreat according as there 
 may be a better chance to win. On the other hand, it 
 is the habit of a creative mind to spend its chief labour 
 in the field of thought, to clear its designs, to fix its 
 standard, to mature its projects there ; and not till 
 then, except by an unconscious tact seldom absent from 
 such a nature, to taka account of the allies and foes 
 encamped upon the outer plain ; and when baffled in 
 the struggle, as it often is, to withdraw with quiet and 
 abstracted look, unaware of the obtrusive laughter 
 which proclaims the enthusiast's defeat. Life, thus 
 administered, is like a poem or a meditation overheard ; 
 which finds a deeper meaning for what else were shallow 
 noise, and haunts the world that is with the spectre of 
 what ought to be. These opposite methods have no 
 doubt, to a great extent, their separate spheres ; the 
 one prevailing in works of adaptation and convenience, 
 the other in works of genius. But neither can afford 
 to dispense with tile other : and, above all, there is no 
 human function so purely mechanical, no task so poor 
 and common, no drudgery so dry, as to admit of being
 
 The Godly Man. 249 
 
 performed at its best by manipulation and arithmetic, 
 without a directing idea in the mind and zeal in the 
 heart. Take this away, let there be no image in the 
 thought of the perfect product as it should ensue from 
 the hand, no sense of shame if it be inferior, no joy 
 if it transcend ; and industry is bereft of its very soul, 
 and, in the selfish attempt to shirk its obligations, sinks 
 into veritable slavery. Once measure your diligence by 
 mere outward necessity, with no anxiety but to get 
 passably to the other side of it, and the root of all 
 dishonesty has struck within you, and will bear its 
 fruit. If you build, the hidden stones will be rubble ; 
 if you plead, your language will become suggestive of 
 falsehood, and your ingenuity degenerate into tricks; 
 if you rule in public affairs, you will learn the arts of 
 shiftiness and evasion, and will lapse into that shrink- 
 ing from responsibility which is the modern form of 
 treason to the State. The one security for personal 
 fidelity and effective achievement lies in the ascendant 
 habit of working from within ; from the native love of 
 order, beauty, right ; from faith in them as the master- 
 ing powers of the outer world ; from reverent allegiance 
 to them, which makes acquiescence in their defeat im- 
 piety. As God eternally thinks out his universe into a 
 perfection more divine, so does the godly, shaping the 
 scene around him from the life within, turn it into a 
 completer kosmos, as his time flows on. 
 
 2. This godliness again it is, this inward stay upon
 
 250 The Godly Man. 
 
 the right and true, which gives authority over dependent 
 natures, and most wins ohedience, while most frugal 
 and tranquil in demanding it. It is sometimes said, 
 that the gift of command goes with strength of will ; 
 and certain it is, that from weakness of will it passes 
 entirely away. But it is little that can he effected in 
 the aifairs of men, and nothing in the higher depart- 
 ments of human life, by mere driving force of purpose, 
 and intolerance of personal defeat. It was never meant 
 that in this world, or any other where responsible minds 
 are found, the pleasure of one should be the law for 
 all ; and wherever that pretension is set up, we all 
 turn rebels on the instant, and the push begins of will 
 against will ; and, submit as we may, it is with protest, 
 and keen watching to slip the tyranny. In the armed 
 pleasure of one mind there is no natural authority over 
 the unarmed of another ; and if the helpless yields, it 
 will be as the captive, to work in chains, and plan 
 revenge in tears. It is not stronger Will, but higher 
 liight, that bears the title to rule in the societies of 
 men ; and only he who visibly forgets himself, and 
 becomes the organ of a law he did not make and cannot 
 alter, whose will is firm because it is not his own, but 
 is backed by a divine adamant that cannot yield, can 
 win a loyal and glad obedience. He is not enforcing 
 his personal preferences, but vindicating the just and 
 good, which he at once embodies and obeys. This 
 total retreat of self, this advance to the front of an
 
 The Godly Man. 251 
 
 august and invisible moral necessity, is the secret of 
 that quiet dignity with which effective authority is 
 invariably exercised. Rebuke itself acquires a solemn 
 weight where it falls with impersonal gentleness, spoiled 
 by no heats of fluttered egotism, and tinged only with 
 the sorrow of disappointed trust. Whoever lives out 
 of any inward faith in good, is involuntarily disposed 
 to presume it in others even while it is yet latent, and 
 is the first to see it when its incipient expression comes ; 
 and in dealing with them he addresses himself to it, 
 and confides in the response. The very light of hia 
 eye kindles into life the spot on which it falls : he 
 looks for the conscience, and it is there. All who come 
 into his presence learn to feel that they have more than 
 justice done to them ; that the best they have is seen, 
 in them, and the best they can is expected from them ; 
 and under this warmth of appreciation every promise of 
 good hastens its growth, opens into the upper air, and 
 is nourished into strength. Yet, if they even fail, they 
 know it is a part of the same faith which led him to 
 expect the good, that he will make tender allowance 
 for the ill, and not surrender the hope baffled for the 
 moment, but true for ever. No induction of experience, 
 no life computed by the outward look of men and 
 things, would ever attain this mingled authority and 
 sweetness. They are the natural expression of that 
 godliness which works out of an inward faith in 
 beauty, truth, and good.
 
 252 The Godly Man. 
 
 3. The same principle carries with it a grace whicli 
 at first view might seem to contradict the claim of 
 natural authority over dependent natures ; a certain 
 deference towards others which refrains from self- 
 assertion, and rather becomes receptive of their good. 
 Where there is no deep faith in the spiritual bases of 
 human life, in the revelation and the power of Eight 
 in the conscience of mankind, there is in the heart no 
 certain source of " honour towards all men," no patient 
 hope of future nobleness for them to soothe the dis- 
 appointment at their unworthiness. Unsustained by 
 moral trust and reverence, the gentle respect, the 
 gracious amenities of life are left to rest only on the 
 personal affections ; and scarcely go beyond the private 
 circle, except when misfortune startles compassion and 
 wakes the generosity which the sunshine sends to sleep. 
 In how many a family may you see the most loving 
 interior relations, the quick discernment of each other's 
 good, the modest self-estimate, the mutual sacrifice of 
 personal desire, the joy in opportunities of help ; yet, 
 towards the outer circle of the world, a critical attitude 
 from which every line of tenderness, nay, every look 
 of justice, has disappeared; the censorious talk, the 
 malignant hint, the suspicious prophecy, the mean 
 construction, the eager tale of some shame at which 
 the heart might weep ! All this would seem to con- 
 tradict the first impression of that gentle home. It is 
 simply that the affections are near-sighted, and have
 
 The Godly Man. 253 
 
 no faith ; they are ready, clear and true, so far as 
 their vision goes ; every soft light arrests them, every 
 blossom of beauty charms them ; but where the dis- 
 tance lies beyond their organ and the mist closes 
 round, they believe only in daikness and all that it 
 may hide. They are unconscious of their strange 
 illusion ; that in a world all human, a world which in 
 its breadth does but repeat their little plot, they should 
 see so much that is lovely at home, and believe in so 
 much deformity abroad. God save us from the bitter- 
 ness and scorn of the cynical spirit, by giving us the 
 faith of the godly in the secret springs of good ! For 
 him, in his intercourse with men, the presumption is 
 always on the side of simplicity and rectitude ; he does 
 not believe in knavery till his keen search has been 
 pushed through all the title-deeds of good repute ; he 
 recognises a provisional claim in humanity itself, and 
 allows his respect to enter into possession, until some 
 fatal flaw compels its retreat. As it is the theory of 
 habitual distrust, the perpetual need of exceptional 
 vigilance, that makes the City vulgar, so it is the 
 natural ease of a pure and confiding mind which 
 imports true refinement and composure to the person 
 in whom it dwells. Surrounded by those whom he 
 respects, if not for what they are, for what they may 
 be, he is drawn out towards them on the lines of genial 
 appreciation ; he converses only with their good ; the 
 egotism possible to us all sleeps and never stirs within
 
 254 The Godly Man. 
 
 him ; its insolence of thought, its rudeness of speech, 
 its selfishness of act, are impossible to him ; and the 
 dignified stability of a mind that lives from within is 
 naturally clothed with -the modest grace of reverence 
 and charity. 
 
 Wherever these lineaments of character appear, we 
 look upon the face of righteousness, and cannot join in 
 the desponding cry " Help, Lord, for the godly man 
 ceaseth." If they do not reflect the Divine likeness, 
 I know not where we are to seek it. Shall I then say a 
 strange thing if I affirm that, nevertheless, the picture 
 is not perfect ? Its features take no notice of God, and 
 mould themselves as if he were not. They would 
 complete the human lines of excellence and beauty, if 
 Man were the highest of beings and stood upon the 
 world as its god ; but does not complete them, since 
 they leave without trace his relation to the Infinite 
 Mind, whose love he unconsciously shares and whose 
 trust he blindly executes. To live " like gods," when 
 we are not so, is a condition which no virtues or affec- 
 tions can redeem from distortion and mistake. And 
 were we really "gods," yet embraced in the empire of 
 a " God of gods," it is plain that to ignore or forget 
 this feature of our position could only weaken and 
 mutilate our moral nature, leaving it without the 
 energy of loyalty and the graces of confiding obedience. 
 To consummate, therefore, the adjustment of our 
 character to our place, we need to own the Divine Spirit
 
 The Godly Man. 255 
 
 above us as well as to have it within us, and to let its 
 brightness in ourselves be the reflection of our com- 
 munion with him ; to transform what was before a 
 self-asserting impulse of right into personal reverence 
 and love; to learn what it is to lean on an invisible 
 support, to find a living Guide in every darkness, and 
 to hear an inspiration that is not carried on the wind. 
 He who thus recognises his human position, and takes 
 its new affections into his heart, is not weakened, but 
 incredibly strengthened by his conscious dependence ; 
 and will the better serve as a stay to others, when his 
 own feet are planted on the Rock.
 
 XX. 
 
 Cjre Jfimsr rniir (gtofcr fUircjtom 0f < 
 
 EOM. x. 14, 15. 
 
 "How shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and 
 how shall they hear without a preacher? and how shall they preach, 
 except they be sent ? As it is written, How beautiful are the feet of 
 them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good 
 things." 
 
 EVER since Civil Society has been an object of study 
 and reflection, it has affected thoughtful minds with 
 a strange mixture of admiration and compassion. It 
 seems at once the glory of our nature, and its shame. 
 Other races are rendered gregarious by various wants 
 and common affections ; but man alone balances yet 
 deepens the mutual dependence by the arts of exchange. 
 Other races submit to be led by the strong, and combine 
 their toil for co-operative works ; but with him alone 
 does Law ascend from force to Right, and union pass 
 from blind instinct to conscious self-devotion, and the 
 mere nest or hive is replaced by the City and the State. 
 To detect any clear improvement in other creatures, you 
 must take your survey by geologic time ; but, for him,
 
 The Inner and Outer Kingdom of God. 257 
 
 the little span of history suffices ; and while the swallow, 
 the beaver, and the ant build and live as they did before 
 he began to note their ways, he needs but a few cen- 
 turies to move with accelerated pace from the rudeness 
 that keeps no record of itself to a civilization crowded 
 with material resources, and rich in its jurisprudence, 
 literature, and art. A human commomvealth with its 
 hierarchy of mutual service, its army of tamed passions, 
 its invisible guard of ideal restraints, its traditions of 
 heroism, its hopes of greatness, its sympathy with the 
 moral life of the world, is the highest product of the 
 Providence of God, and the most impressive witness to 
 the possibilities of Man. Yet within this - glorious 
 product, as it grows and spreads, there lurks a canker 
 that feeds on its exuberance, and perforates its substance 
 with misery and decay. The expansion and consolida- 
 tion of the State, which give a grander career to genius 
 and power, leave no shelter for the maimed and weak, 
 but turn them out into a battle where they are sure to 
 fall ; and in some form or other, the slave-quarter, 
 the serf- village, or the poor-house, the sign has never 
 been absent, from any nation that has a history, of a 
 crushed or unreclaimed humanity. It seems as though 
 the distances widened as the education of the world 
 advanced ; and while our nature at one end moved on a 
 vaster scale, at the other it shrivelled and rotted away. 
 Only in a ripe community can the statesman, the poet, 
 the philosopher, the artist, appear, or any product of 
 
 s
 
 258 The Inner and Outer 
 
 the Mind go forth that shall he "a possession for 
 ever." Yet the great cities which they immortalize 
 hide, hehind their temples and their courts, a thousand 
 festering ills ; they are ths birth-place of new diseases, 
 the nursery of hateful vices, and afford in their densest 
 parts hut a crowded solitude of unpitied miseries. This 
 contrast of brilliant resource with humiliating failure, 
 of a society blossoming at the head and pining at the 
 root, has always affected thoughtful minds with a 
 "noble discontent." The joint spectacle of high capa- 
 bilities and mean sufferings is intolerable to every 
 generous heart : the light of inward hope conflicts with 
 the darkness undeniable without, and tries to penetrate 
 it and touch it with some colours of ideal promise. 
 From this impulse have sprung all social theories ; 
 philosophical republics, Eutopias, socialisms, kingdoms 
 of heaven ; all aspire to realise the ascertained passi- 
 bilities, and exclude the saddest disappointments, of our 
 human union. 
 
 No relief, said Plato, will ever reach the ills of men, 
 till either statesmen become philosophers, or philoso- 
 phers assume the government of states. This saying 
 indicates the direction in which the Greek mind sought 
 the solution of the social problem. You must deal, it 
 was thought, with the commonwealth as a whole, and 
 put a reconstructing hand upon it from the place of 
 power. Ths scene is all wrong on which you plant 
 men, and where you train them : you leave it open to
 
 Kingdom of God. 259 
 
 unprincipled competitions : you make its bribes to private 
 selfishness too great, its demands on public sacrifice too 
 small : you place its supreme interests at the disposal 
 of incompetence, setting over its tribunals those who 
 have no knowledge of justice, and over its schools those 
 who have false notions of education : you let the poets 
 tell mischievous fables about the gods, and the orators 
 talk flattering sophistry to the people : you foster the 
 taste which admires successful ambition, and scorns the 
 abstinence of incorruptible rectitude. You must sweep 
 all this away, and rebuild the theatre of life ; per- 
 mitting none to come upon it who do not bid fair for 
 manly strength and virtue ; assigning to each his place 
 and career, and precluding him from functions for which 
 he is not fit ; and so disciplining all for the character 
 possible to them, the workers foi* industry and temper- 
 ance, the soldiers for bravery and obedience, the rulers 
 for wisdom and integrity, that the whole may exhibit 
 a partnership and equilibrium of goodness like the 
 unity of a single harmonious Soul. Schemes of this 
 kind for mending the world rested all their hopes 
 on arrangement, and computed simply the forces of 
 environing influence. In dealing with the problem, 
 men, as they were found in experience to be, constituted 
 the immutable factor, which was to be let alone, and 
 made to yield a new result only by being worked into 
 new conditions. A revolution in the world was re- 
 quired, to change any individual man. 
 
 s 2
 
 260 The Inner and liter 
 
 The method of Christianity appears the very opposite 
 to this; and has at all events become so in its 
 administration now. It is not, with us, a theory of 
 reorganised society, the dream of a new Polity, through 
 the establishment of which character is to attain its 
 true proportions ; but a direct appeal to the individual 
 conscience, which aims to redeem men, one by one, 
 and bring them, just where they stand, into inner 
 harmony with God. And it is true that, in its origin 
 also, Christianity left the existing constitution of the 
 world alone, and, unlike the philosophers, propounded 
 no projects for modelling it anew. This however arose, 
 not from any better opinion of it, but from a worse ; 
 not from indifference towards it, but from despair of 
 it ; not from retreat into the citadel of the inner man 
 to defy the' enemies without, but from the vision of a 
 City of God in which already the disciples were enrolled, 
 and which, without aid of theirs, would soon replace 
 the Empire of the seven hills. It was not for want of 
 the old dream of a divine commonwealth, but because 
 that dream, as they believed, God would realise for 
 them, that they were neutral to the existing State, and 
 wasted on it neither zeal nor enmity. They too had 
 their image of perfect life, their sacred allegiance, their 
 society swayed by eternal justice and secure of right- 
 eous order ; and, possessed by the faith and expectation 
 of it, they so lived in it as to become " dead "to this 
 world, and carry all their thought and heart into the
 
 Kingdom of God. 261 
 
 relations of " another country, even a heavenly." Their 
 despair of the actual and historic scene of things was 
 thus deeper than the philosopher's : for they never 
 thought of mending or reconstructing it : they simply 
 left it to perish. And in withdrawing from it, they 
 meant to retire, not into a mystic inward life of indivi- 
 dual piety, much less into any Stoic strength of personal 
 isolation, but into the citizenship of a better community, 
 soon to be realized, and blending in itself meanwhile 
 the seen with the unseen, and animating the posts of 
 duty below with the living inspiration of Christ and God 
 above. 
 
 This death to the actual world, this life in an ideal 
 which replaced it without conflicting with it, inciden- 
 tally brought into existence the highest characteristic 
 of Christian civilization. The image of a holier life, 
 of a kingdom of God where wrong and sin should 
 never come, touched the sleeping springs of higher 
 affection and spiritual power in the heart, and lifted 
 men into a new birth of character. New tastes, new 
 love, new hopes broke upon them from depths of 
 their nature never reached before, and delivered them 
 from the thraldom of outward things and the strife of 
 the passions they had served. Snatched from them- 
 selves, and carried off by a spirit diviner than their 
 own, they see their own past which was hid from them 
 before, and hear and answer many a call of God that 
 had come to their deaf ear in vain. A consecration
 
 262 The Inner and Outer 
 
 falls upon the walks of daily duty and the place of 
 nightly rest : a beauty enters for them into the 
 simplest task that only has a better and a worse ; and 
 there is a Presence that allays the troubles, and puts a 
 sweetness into the discords of life. Looking away from 
 the scattered and broken fragments of goodness among 
 men to the perfect natures of a supernal sphere, the 
 disciple was carried clear past the ancient standards of 
 piety and moral strength ; and, leaving behind him the 
 piece-meal distribution of virtues among classes and 
 ranks, rose to the great idea of One Righteousness, 
 realized in heaven, approached on earth, alike possible, 
 alike necessary, for all minds. This is the true and 
 indestructible ground of Christian brotherhood and 
 unity, this recognition of a common capacity for re- 
 semblance to God, a common liability to fall away 
 from it, a common trust to press into greater near- 
 ness to it. And this was found in the fervour of that 
 first age, when the Christians died to the fermenting 
 world around them, and flung themselves into the 
 affections of an ideal state, and tried the tender ties 
 of mutual sacrifice, and rehearsed the life of a holy 
 and perfect world. And the experiment, once tried, 
 vindicated itself by the permanent elevation which it 
 produced in human thought and character. The acci- 
 dents of the conception fell away, the essence remained : 
 unsuspected depths of the moral nature were revealed : 
 indefinite possibilities of the spirit burst the bounds of
 
 Kingdom of God. 263 
 
 expectation, and showed where the living germs of good 
 were lurking unseen ; and it became the settled expe- 
 rience of Christendom, that humanity and God are 
 never hopelessly estranged from one another ; but that, 
 if the true congenial point of any single soul can be 
 reached and touched, even the dead will be alive again, 
 and the lost will be found. 
 
 Thus, from the lonely life of the first Christians, which 
 could only work internally upon itself, came to light 
 the great truth that, without waiting to reconstruct his 
 world, man in himself may become a new creature, and 
 take the initiative at home in introducing the kingdom 
 of heaven. Renouncing the maxims of prudent despair, 
 that you must take men as they are, that you must 
 suit the scene around them to their proved weakness 
 and make the best of their inevitable sin, Christianity 
 has ever charged its missionaries thus : " Go forth to 
 this people, and speak to them from the level, not of 
 what they are, but of what they ought to be : take with 
 you the measure, not of outward existence, but of the 
 inner sanctuary : abate no claim of God upon them, 
 but tell them all his righteous will : remember that 
 you are his, rather than theirs, or theirs only for his 
 sake : fling yourself on the tide of his love, and fear 
 not that you will be borne in upon some hidden inlet 
 of their nature : nay, his compassion in your heart 
 will make a way where there was none before, and 
 shake the dull souls till they start up and prophesy."
 
 264 The Inner and Outer 
 
 This faith in the spiritual possibilities of every indivi- 
 dual conscience has passed, as an inseparable constit- 
 uent, into the permanent life of Christendom. Only, 
 it now acts on a world which is no longer expected to 
 perish, which we cannot dismiss from our attention 
 as delivered over to Satan, which we are not permitted 
 tc escape as foreign to us ; but which, as the abiding 
 school of our humanity, we are bound to set in order 
 and to recover for God. So that the scene of tilings is 
 returned upon our hands, and the social problems of 
 the old philosophy renew themselves upon a larger 
 and more complicated world. The two rival proposals, 
 which Pagan wisdom and Evangelic zeal divided be- 
 tween them, to redeem the life of persons, and to 
 amend the scene of things, have lost their enmity, have 
 fallen into partnership, and devolve upon us together. 
 In dealing with them, however, there must still remain 
 a division of labour ; seeing that, in spite of their 
 unity at last, the agencies and faculties that are needed 
 for the one are seldom qualified to serve the other. It 
 must ever be the function of the secular State to re- 
 adjust the things that furnish forth the theatre of life, 
 to settle institutions, economy, police and laws, and see 
 to it that they constitute a fitting school for just and 
 righteous habits. But to the spiritual agency of the 
 Church it must be left to address itself to persons, one 
 by one, to reach the secret springs of better life, and 
 speak for God to the languid but undying conscience of
 
 Kingdom of God. 265 
 
 humanity. Of this divine work we must never weary, 
 and never despair ; hut carry into it the eternal patience 
 of God ; who, age after age, solicits with his grace 
 every soul of man ; and now here, now there, stands 
 at the door, and knocks, and would lift the latch on 
 the first hospitable hint. With one and another, nay 
 with multitudes, the Christian appeal may seem to he 
 made in vain : but, if only the true heat of the heart 
 goes with it, it will find some hiding-place in many a 
 mind that for the moment owns it not; and, like a 
 phrase of forgotten music or the snatches of a perished 
 dream, will steal forth in some tender twilight hour, 
 when there are none to see the tears of compunction, 
 or to mock at the returning tones of prayer. This 
 trust in the living Spirit of God, which finds some 
 crevice still open in the hardest heart, this persistency 
 of appeal that cannot listen to despair, is the true 
 prophetic gift, without which the Church is a pretence 
 and the preacher had better hold his peace. It is the 
 first requisite of Religion, the primary inspiration of all 
 Faith, that the witness to the higher life must never 
 falter and never cease : if once it grows ashamed before 
 the face of unawakened men, and, like the timid poet, 
 shrinks from the laugh of the dull and blind and can 
 only nurse itself in solitude, it is living faith no more ; 
 and is equally unlike the apostle, who, amid the 
 splendid idolatries of Athens, remonstrated " daily in 
 the market place with such as met with him " ; and
 
 266 The Inner and Outer 
 
 the Son of Man himself who, even in the retirement of 
 the hills, when he saw the multitudes " as sheep with- 
 out a shepherd," had compassion on them, and poured 
 forth to them his divinest words. 
 
 To reach the springs of inner life where they are 
 sealed up, and keep them clear where they are flowing, 
 the one great agency is, the personal power of an 
 earnest and sympathetic mind, living itself in a higher 
 order of ideas, and above the danger of heing dragged 
 down to the level where they are lost. There lies the 
 true pastoral gift; deep faith in God, deep pity for 
 man ; and strength to carry the vision of a divine order 
 into the qlash and confusion of the world : and wher- 
 ever you meet with any good measure of this gift, 
 thank God that the prophets are not dead : arm it 
 freely with your outward help, and confide in it from 
 your inmost heart. Send it, better still take it, as 
 the messenger alike of humanity and God, into the 
 City recesses, where the struggle of life is fiercest, and 
 brightened least by either physical or spiritual light. 
 There is nothing like the living breath of conviction 
 and trust, for fanning every latent suspicion and heal- 
 ing compunction that else would die. Tell me not 
 that the weight of ill is too heavy to be lifted; the 
 greater the burthen, the more elastic force is needed to 
 heave it off. Do you say, the material conditions of 
 our poor neighbourhoods are too oppressive to give 
 encouragement ? then are they too oppressive to permit
 
 Kingdom of God. 267 
 
 desertion and neglect. The more they stifle the 
 spiritual possibilities, the more must they be counter- 
 balanced by persistency of culture, and intensity of 
 appeal. Would you really plead the density of the 
 darkness as the reason of withholding the sparse and 
 only light ? Be assured,, if we speak thus of our poor, 
 they are no darker than we. It is all a fancy that, 
 even in their lot, different as it looks, they are much 
 other than ourselves in their temptations, in their 
 affections, and in their victories. Who that knows 
 them, in their troubles and their strivings, would dare 
 to give the counsels of hopelessness ? Are there not, 
 there as elsewhere, inequalities of character, ranging 
 over every grade, from the mean to the heroic ? marvels 
 of unselfishness, fortitude, and temperance, attesting 
 the noblest force of conscience, as well as the yielding 
 habits by which indigence itself may rot away in 
 luxury? From such a field, at once of sadness and 
 of promise, would you recall every reminder of higher 
 obligation, every aid to struggling goodness, every 
 nurture of divine hope and love ? Can no father be 
 sustained by self-sacrifice to prolong the education of 
 his children ? no mother be helped to make her sons 
 and daughters truthful, brave, and modest ? no youth 
 be braced up to manly self-government amid the temp- 
 tations of the City ? The more tainted the atmo- 
 sphere around, surely all the more need is there for a 
 loving friend of every righteous effort to pass, as a
 
 268 The Inner and Outer 
 
 breath of moral wholesomeness, through the unventi- 
 lated courts of life. Nor is it true that this personal 
 dealing with men, one by one, stands in the way of any 
 larger reform of the field on which they live. On the 
 contrary, it justifies the reformer's enthusiasm and 
 accelerates his work ; and brings to every problem that 
 minute and practical insight without which it cannot 
 be wisely solved. Indeed every religious mission that 
 carries the cleansing spirit of Christ where it was un- 
 known before, reforms its own field in little, and re- 
 hearses the experiments that must pass on to a greater 
 stage. Not till the outward and the inward agencies 
 understand each other and go to their work together, 
 will men be relieved from the pressures which keep 
 them in their littleness and sin and suffering ; or their 
 nature expand in all dimensions together, and justify 
 the ideal hopes of Christian faith. But in this 
 partnership, it is and must ever remain the peculiar 
 function of Christian societies to deal, not so much 
 with the things that surround and influence human 
 life, as with the living persons themselves that con- 
 stitute it ; to see them in their individuality ; to hold 
 them in presence of sympathy which feels not only for 
 them but with them ; to find in them, by searching 
 appeal, the higher capacities and lovelier features of 
 that humanity which Christ sanctified for us all. The 
 Church which abdicates this office or turns it into a 
 pretence is in the eye of God a Church no more ; and
 
 Kingdom of God. 269 
 
 in abandoning its divinest function will soon discover 
 that its own life is withering away. Some sincere and 
 natural intercourse with the poor and suffering, some 
 vivifying contact with struggles and sorrows not our 
 own, is indispensable to the discipline of character as 
 well as to the fulfilment of duty; and the frequent 
 tendency to substitute, for the real compassions and 
 executed labours of love, the fictitious griefs of the 
 drama or the tale which genius fetches from scenes of 
 misery to fling into the lap of ease, will be found, if it 
 lead to no personal action, not a source of strength, but 
 an enervating delusion. Not so, but by standing face 
 to face with the injured natures and grievous lot we 
 would redeem, by meeting them eye to eye and speak- 
 ing to them in the vernacular language of the true 
 heart, can we vindicate the communion of all orders 
 and ages of men with one another and with God, as 
 kindred branches of the great family of souls.
 
 XXI. 
 
 in 
 
 MATTHEW xiiL 34, 35. 
 
 " All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables ; and 
 without a parable spake he not unto them ; that it might be fulfilled which 
 was spoken by the prophet, saying, ' I will open my mouth in parables ; 
 I will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world.' " 
 
 THE parable, then, is a mode of uttering " things 
 hidden"; of bringing to the light the deep -buried 
 secrets of the heart ; and drawing forth into conscious- 
 ness those divine and primitive truths which have been 
 Bet from the beginning in the firmament of the soul, 
 but, for want of an interpreter, have been taken for 
 sparkles instead of suns. All the critics in the world, 
 with their learned disquisitions on allegory and apologue 
 and metaphor and simile, can never mend the prophet's 
 idea of a parable, so brief, so exact, so profound, as 
 a way of indicating realities hidden from the foundation 
 of 'the world. The critics will tell you that the use of 
 this mode of instruction in ancient times was a conse- 
 quence of the oral teaching then prevalent ; that printing
 
 Religion in Parable. 271 
 
 being unknown, and writing uncommon, it was neces- 
 sary to strike deep into the mind at once the lesson 
 which vanished on the lips; that so, the prophets in 
 the palace or the street, the seer in the desert, the man 
 of God on the beach or the hill-side, borrowed hints 
 from the scene around, and painted sacred things in 
 visual and dramatic forms on the imagination of 
 monarch or of multitude. But now that art has clipped 
 the " winged words," and memory betakes itself to 
 books, we are more elaborately and precisely taught by 
 argument and precept ; and human nature, emerging 
 from its childhood, exchanges its love of fable and 
 similitude for moral and religious philosophy. I rather 
 suspect a different cause for the phenomenon in ques- 
 tion; and doubt whether, even if Jesus of Nazareth 
 were living among us now, amid all the advantages of 
 cheap tracts and daily journals, he would teach us 
 much otherwise than after the old fashion, not with 
 the dead page and laboured disquisition, but with the 
 living voice, and the artless parable. For, I take it, 
 different conceptions of the work to be achieved lie at 
 the root of his method and of ours : ours assuming 
 that religion is to be put into the mind ; his, that it is 
 to be brought out of it ; ours aiming to teach the truth 
 by intellectual judgment; his, to inspire it by moral 
 sympathy ; ours speaking with didactic baldness, as to 
 the ignorant ; his, with mystic hints and deep sug- 
 gestions, as to a fraternity already taught of God, and
 
 272 Religion in Parable. 
 
 needing but a new touch of holy light to re-awaken 
 trust and wonder from their sleep. He who instructs 
 by indirect and figurative methods, and, avoiding literal 
 statements, delights in allusion and analogy, supposes 
 one or both of two things ; viz. that his subject is 
 incapable of direct presentation ; or, that his hearers 
 possess its fundamental ideas, and require, not its form 
 within their thought, but its spirit in their souls. Both 
 these assumptions appear to me to pervade the whole 
 ministry of Christ ; to have opened his lips in parables, 
 as the natural speech of religion ; and to explain in 
 part, why "never man spake like this man." 
 
 The essence of parable obviously consists in this ; 
 that its representations are typical and mediate, not 
 literal and direct ; special and picturesque not abstract 
 and philosophic ; moral in their unity and movement, 
 not logical. Hence it will be found the fittest instru- 
 ment in religion for the expression of Belief, of Worship, 
 and of the sanctities of Conscience. 
 
 Religious belief is obliged to resort to the language 
 of emblems, simply because its objects are all in- 
 finite in their nature, and respecting infinite things the 
 literal truth is unattainable and incommunicable. God, 
 heaven, responsibility, are beyond the measure of our 
 experience ; vast as the atmosphere to the bird or the 
 forest to the child ; regions whose circuit we cannot 
 make, but which embrace us always, yet never shut us 
 in. We were created in their midst ; we dwell within
 
 Religion in Parable. 273 
 
 them now ; we can emerge from them no more. Our 
 souls are subjects, and not lords within this realm, 
 permitted only to do its appointed service, and obey its 
 nearest law. Not unless they transcend the confines 
 of our experience can any objects of thought become 
 religious. If we could discover the country of departed 
 spirits, hold daily converse with the sainted blest, and 
 grow familiar with the everlasting hills, the reality of 
 the better land would so far cease to be a religious 
 truth, and be transferred from our faith to our 
 geography. And when we ourselves have emigrated 
 thither in death, be its experience what it may, it will 
 become our earth ; divine perhaps and holy, but, if so, 
 only through a discernment equally possible here, of 
 some invisible sanctity, some secret awe within its 
 scenes ; while this world, as it falls into the retrospect, 
 will sink into the celestial hues ; and we shall live, 
 between one heaven of reminiscence, and still perhaps 
 another of hope. So again, if the work of life pre- 
 sented itself to us only as an external and mechanical 
 task, a routine of dry and calculative habit, there 
 would be nothing devout in duty. It is the boundless 
 depth of obligation, the infinite beauty of holiness, 
 the sigh for a sinless devotion of heart and will, that 
 fling the conscience into penitence and prayer. And 
 were it not that obligation enlarges with capacity, and 
 the tension of the will must maintain an everlasting 
 strife, and the ease of living well bids us begin to 
 
 T
 
 274 Religion in Parable. 
 
 live better, there would be no permanent sacredness, no 
 heavenly allegiance, in the moral ties that bind us. 
 Nay, God himself is adorable in his perfections, in that 
 they are unapproachable. Behind their visible splen- 
 dour they pass into the deeps and hide themselves in 
 mystery. From the outlines of daylight he seems to 
 vanish away ; and he made night on Sinai's top ere he 
 could appear : and though on the mount of transfigura- 
 tion it was a bright cloud by which he overshadowed 
 his servants, yet cloud there was to veil his glory still. 
 We are not indeed to suppose that there is any piety 
 in mere ignorance, or anything but impiety in with- 
 holding attainable knowledge : but assuredly only that 
 can permanently remain venerable to u.s which is above 
 us, which puts forth power, and life, and light upon 
 us : and so wonderful is the universe that lies before 
 the worshipper's thought, that the more he knows, the 
 more seems the province left unknown, and every new 
 world that he detects appears to deepen the abyss in 
 which it floats. Religion, in truth, in all its forms, 
 announces a series of realities surpassing experience and 
 conception : all its terms, in every language, are so con- 
 trived as to denote this. At one time it describes divine 
 things in negatives, venturing only to say what they 
 are not, and confessing the inadequacy of our ideas ; 
 speaking of the immensity of God, that is, his tran- 
 scending all our measures of thought ; of the immor- 
 tality of man, that is, his outliving all our limits of
 
 Religion in Parable. 275 
 
 time ; of the 'immaculate sanctity of Christ and the 
 spirits of the just, that is, their maintenance of an 
 ideal perfection. At another time it has recourse to 
 superlatives, and turns to God as the Best, the Greatest, 
 the Most Holy. And it is clearly impossible that 
 things transcendental and superlative can come before 
 us in literal definition : they would then belie their own 
 character, and become determinable by the formulas of 
 experience. They can only express themselves symboli- 
 cally ; and how truly they then present themselves will 
 depend on the vastness and grandeur of the emblem, 
 and the wealth of the soul among whose thoughts and 
 affections it runs with suggestive power. At best, our 
 approximation is humbling enough. By the law of 
 our mind, the natural perfections of God seem to elude 
 our distinct conception. For we are obliged to assign 
 to all objects a position in time and space : we cannot 
 speak of the Divine existence without assigning to it a 
 when and a where ; yet are assured by reflection that 
 this is an illusion of our own ; that these relations 
 belong only to our perception, not to Him whom we 
 perceive ; before whom duration and dimension are 
 nought ; and in whose Absolute Being dwell all things 
 in a universal Here, and all events in the everlasting 
 Now. 
 
 Nor is it in mere magnitude of scale that the immen- 
 sity of God consists. We cannot coldly satisfy ourselves 
 with the mere physical belief which diffuses his being 
 
 T 2
 
 276 Religion in Parable. 
 
 among the stars, and perpetuates it through the courses 
 of eternity. In this kind of sublimity there is nothing 
 truly divine : the atheist's mechanic force, or dead 
 dumb nothingness, might have the same ; and it were 
 heathenish thus to confound the gigantesque with the 
 godlike. God is a Spirit : and, besides this boundless- 
 ness of dimension, is infinite also in moral intensity ; 
 not, if we may say so, in quantity merely, but in 
 quality too. Wisdom, beauty, holiness, are immeasurable 
 things, which are appreciable by pure perceptions, but 
 which no rule can gauge, and no argument demonstrate. 
 That the blush of morning is fair, that the quietude of 
 grief is sacred, that the heroism of conscience is noble, 
 who will undertake to prove to one that does not see 
 it ? Nor can you say in terms of measurement how 
 good and right it is to pity the wretched, and maintain 
 fidelity and truth. In everything which we profoundly 
 revere and love, there appears a certain infinitude which 
 fills us with untiring wonder and draws us into per- 
 petual aspiration. What unfathomable depth of sanctity 
 and sorrow in the features of a Madonna ! What ex- 
 haustless sublimity streams upon the eye that gazes 
 devoutly on the crucifix ! What fields of unspeakable 
 freshness and purity lie open in the full eyes of a 
 thoughtful and loving child ! and these things reside 
 not in the mere material form or colour, or size, or in 
 anything that knowledge can estimate or words define ; 
 but in a spirit gleaming with mysterious expressiveness
 
 Religion in Parable. 277 
 
 through them all. It is in no mere hyperbolic sense 
 that we speak of the infinitude of the moral perfections 
 of God. And to feel this is to feel that there is a 
 profundity entirely beyond our present view ; that the 
 thoughts of him we now possess are significant of 
 more than we can reach ; that to set before us what- 
 ever is most perfect is, for the time being, to approach 
 him nearest ; and that still our musings are always 
 in parable ; a symbolic presentation, perhaps logically 
 false, yet most divinely true. Religion is the manifes- 
 tation of the heart's indestructible faith in perfection ; 
 and so it must ever dwell at the summit ; and that 
 which ceases to be our highest belongs ' no more to our 
 religion, and yields to the conception that transcends 
 it. In no slight sense, therefore, the superior truth of a 
 religion consists in its greater majesty and loveliness ; 
 and he who best awakens the sleeping perceptions of 
 the conscience and the heart and penetrates their actual 
 life with a quickening ideal, reveals the most of God 
 and heaven. And what has ever wrought so effectually 
 for this end, as the tales of inimitable beauty, by which 
 Jesus melted the soul of nations and of ages ? 
 
 Worship too, as well as belief, naturally frames itself 
 into parable. It instinctively avoids the vain and harsh 
 attempt at literal speech ; and abandons to a petty 
 rationalism that critical precision which, in dread of 
 the forms of error, wanders altogether from the spirit 
 of truth. At best, when we try to speak to God,
 
 278 Religion in Parable. 
 
 religion sinks with the utterance, and seems to become 
 poor : the pure celestial thoughts, the deep and solemn 
 wants, the -sad and lowly confession, seem to come with 
 intolerable friction from our rough human voice ; and the 
 inner skies of meditation, so vast and clear in silence, 
 becloud themselves in speech. "When Jesus loosened 
 the imprisoned tongue, the noisy praises of the healed 
 man were less expressive than the dumb looks with 
 which before he had gazed up on the face of Jesus. 
 Language hides too little and defines too much, to 
 bring forth truly the things of God within us : so that 
 spoken religion is apt to pass into theology ; and those 
 who have it most upon their lips are very apt to have it 
 least within their hearts. Its constant external exposure 
 to the petty commerce of words destroys its vastness 
 and ideality within. Hence it is not surprising that 
 the shallowest religion has been usually the most 
 voluble, and the deepest has maintained the greatest 
 frugality of speech ; has resorted rather to the worship 
 of signs and emblems, beneath whose vagueness the 
 sanctities of faith find quiet shelter. The stately 
 minster, whose vault overarches the dead, and whis- 
 pers the sighs and plaints of the living ; the picture 
 of sacred story, giving to the present the silent beauty 
 of the past without its familiarity ; the gestures of holy 
 men bending low in prayer; the organ's chant, con- 
 tradicting no man's thought, and praj'ing for all hearts 
 with a sweet and mighty voice ; these have been spon-
 
 Religion in Parable. 279 
 
 taneous creations from the soul of Christendom, heaving 
 with the inspiration of God, and labouring to speak, 
 without spoiling a love so holy. These symbols have 
 the breadth needful for the affections, and cover far 
 more than any words. They commit no one to thoughts 
 that may not be true to him ; they speak, not to him 
 from others, but from himself to God, taking up his 
 own emotions more faithfully than he could tell them. 
 They awaken within him his own highest, without 
 taking it out of his hands, and shaping it precisely for 
 him. It is the same with all the deep affections of our 
 nature. Who can dare to speak to sorrow bowed to the 
 earth, or to penitence in its inconsolable shame ? The 
 lips seem to insult the heart ; and, after vain attempts, 
 we give up to silence, and are content to grasp the hand 
 or kiss away the tears. Of death too we feel that we 
 cannot fitly speak ; and the flowers upon the grave, or 
 the sculptured emblem in the church significantly hint 
 at cherished memories and griefs sharply graven on the 
 soul ; or if words are used, we love to take the conse- 
 crated phrase of Scripture, or at least the unsoiled and 
 hidden beauty of an ancient tongue. All which may 
 show us clearly, that there is no prose religion ; that 
 it demands an ideal beauty as its native and rightful 
 dress ; and cannot purely worship except in emblem 
 and in parable. 
 
 Nor can even our Moral Life dispense with reflected 
 images and similitudes. In its first and unspoiled
 
 280 Religion in Parable. 
 
 simplicity indeed, the intuition of conscience is direct 
 and true, and in the competitions of impulse never 
 mistakes the better for the worse ; nor does it need, 
 ere it can rightly judge them, to see them thrown into 
 an external picture, or dramatised upon a foreign stage. 
 We cannot meet, standing face to face in our own mind, 
 compassion and anger, or the prompting to truth and 
 the gain of a lie, without knowing their relative claims 
 upon our will. And so long as this insight is healthily 
 followed, and character unfolds itself with unstained 
 purity, this immediate discernment of the right will 
 continue unimpaired, and grow in -clearness and in 
 range. Nay, it is not even lost by the first sin ; for 
 what is the remorse that follows it but the straight and 
 true vision still, only of the shadowed instead of the 
 illumined side of the reality, the sorrowful eclipse of 
 the same glorious and hopeful light ? But just here is 
 the crisis ; it is the last chance of the simple unper- 
 verted vision. Will you throw yourself open to all 
 your compunction, and go back with it at once, though 
 with bare feet and over thorny ways, to the station you 
 have left ? Then shall you retain your direct perception 
 of the good, only with enfeejblcd power to act on it. 
 But if, as must be feared, you haste away from your 
 sorrow and smother the keen shame, you will shift from 
 the moral to the sentient and selfish point of view, and, 
 bribing your better feeling into silence, will dress up 
 your case in such false lights as to deceive yourself.
 
 Religion in Parable. 281 
 
 And thus it is that by unfaithfulness we are delivered 
 over to self -justification, and forfeit the native capacity 
 for looking eye to eye at the presence and proportions 
 of our duty. The clear discriminative apprehension 
 once surrendered, we are at the mercy of the accidents 
 of emotion ; till, swaying to and fro as the waves may 
 swing, we lose our count, and measure our course no 
 more, but drift upon the current, we know not whither. 
 When the moral order has thus fallen to pieces in 
 the mind, the ruins choke the avenues of direct 
 entrance to the conscience, and self-deception resents 
 the very approach of remonstrance. "Who does not 
 know the blinding power of pride ? who will undertake, 
 by mere onset of rebuke, to carry the entrenchments 
 of egotism ? It is rare indeed that others' righteous 
 indignation draws the tears of penitence from the 
 wrong-doer; so quick is the demon of self-excuse to 
 leap in between and freeze them at their fount. But, 
 while it is the curse of sin that it spreads a film on the 
 eye turned inwards, and works in the darkness it has 
 made, it leaves the outward gaze of moral discernment 
 for a longer time undimmed : so that fallen men can 
 still be critics of the upright, and the conscience, blind 
 to its own wreck, can mark even a slight deflection 
 in another. Shall we be angry at this, and forbid the 
 worse to pronounce judgment on the better ? See rather 
 to what happy use you may turn this feature, if only 
 you have the ingenuity of love and the clearness of
 
 282 Religion in Parable. 
 
 the prophet's insight. You can avail yourself of the 
 offender's remaining perception to make him judge 
 himself. Instead of dwelling on his own individual 
 case, and so touching the springs of vanity and resent- 
 ment, you c"an withdraw him from the personal point 
 of view, and let its confusing disquietudes sleep. You 
 have but to set up before him the portrait of another 
 personality, into which you weave the colours and 
 adjust the relations of his character; and in that 
 mirror he sees the deformities he had not felt, and 
 abhors himself at secondhand. The child who yields 
 to a burst of anger or a seduction of selfishness without 
 a twinge of reproach will be rivetted by the tale from 
 which the same passions look at him from another's 
 eyes : his cheek will flush, his sobs will quicken, with 
 the thrill of a true moral sympathy; and when at 
 last it breaks upon him, as the terrible resemblance 
 deepens, that for that picture he might himself have 
 sat, the inward wave of retributive justice is beaten 
 back upon his own conscience and floods it with re- 
 pentance. Every wise parent is led by the tact of love 
 to discover the power of such dramatic presentations of 
 life, and acquire the skill to place them on the stage of 
 the child's fancy. And when, in Jerusalem, the poet- 
 king, wrapt in a cloud of passion, added crime to crime 
 without a touch of shame, treachery to license and 
 murder to both, the prophet, with ready insight into 
 that rich ideal nature, drew the picture of the poor
 
 Religion in Parable. 283 
 
 man's ewe-lamb that grew up with his children and 
 drank of his cup, only to he slain for the rich man's 
 table ; and by the tension of indignant pity shivered 
 the crust of guilty illusion, and flashed conviction 
 home upon the conscience with the words " Thou art 
 the man ! " Thus may the parables of the moral life 
 beguile us out of our darkness, and force us once 
 more to be impartial witnesses of our own character. 
 They fix in a secondary image what we had let slip in 
 immediate feeling. They plant us clear of the fierce 
 crossing rays of the momentary position, and serve as 
 optical purifiers to ward off all except the light we 
 need ; and show us again, at visual distance, some of 
 the " things hidden " from us by their very closeness to 
 ourselves. Their function is thus like that of expe- 
 rience itself; which is never a present, but always a 
 posthumous teacher ; and delivers its lesson by chang- 
 ing the position which misleads us, and in parting us 
 from the past reveals it more distinctly to the view.
 
 xxn. 
 
 nor Woman in Christ 
 
 LUKE xx. 35, 36. 
 
 "They who shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world and the 
 resurrection of the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage ; neither 
 can they die any more ; for they are equal to the angels ; and are the 
 children of God, being the children of the resurrection." 
 
 IN the representations of Christ by the great masters 
 of sacred art, it is seldom that you complain of any 
 preponderance of manly strength. The fault is rather 
 of the opposite kind ; an excess of feminine gentleness 
 and grace ; a fineness of feature and clearness of brow 
 and soft-flowing hair, that give too much to beauty, 
 and leave not enough for force. It is far from being 
 true, indeed, that this prevailing character carries with 
 it of necessity the impression of weakness. It is 
 redeemed however from this danger by the infusion 
 not of manlike but of godlike elements; intellectual 
 majesty, heavenly serenity, spiritual depth. Even in 
 the portraiture of his sufferings, the Ecce Homo, 
 the garden, and the cross, it is usual to find an
 
 Neither Man nor Woman in Christ Jesus. 285 
 
 intense passive susceptibility, immediately combined 
 with a divine repose ; without any intervention of 
 wrestling energy and personal power. It is as if a 
 kind of slight was put upon the special attributes of 
 men, the moral solidity, the resolute will, the strenu- 
 ous fidelity to trust, which are the noblest of their 
 more distinctive marks ; as if these, however justly 
 held in honour in human society as the main reliance 
 of the world, were incapable of being worked up into 
 the type of sublimest life. 
 
 Nor can we fail to trace the same peculiarity of 
 Christian ideal in the legends of his birth and the 
 doctrine of his double nature. "Whatever was human 
 in him was his heritage from Mary ; and could be 
 nothing but the pure, the gracious, the tender and 
 trustful, the suffering and patient. And the higher 
 attributes that mingled an ineffable dignity with these 
 and turned them from weaknesses into powers, belonged 
 to his celestial nature, and proclaimed him Son of 
 God. "What is this but to say that in him the love 
 and pity of the woman's heart were straightway blended 
 with the thought and holiness of God; passing by 
 and omitting the more voluntary energies and self- 
 asserting personality of men ? The Christendom which 
 invented these legends must evidently have been 
 wearied with a world of violence, passion, and selfish- 
 ness, of masculine ambitions and grasping resolve ; 
 must have sighed for some form of strength which
 
 286 Neither Man nor Woman 
 
 might consist with ^ reverence and affection; and have 
 felt that only He who, while consciously at one with 
 the Highest, was touched also by sympathy with the 
 frail, could escape the self-idolatry of an age that had 
 hardened itself against hoth. In a world trodden down 
 by Roman legions, and ruled by competition of cor- 
 ruption, a world where all the force seemed Satanic and 
 the refinement enervating and impure, it is intelligible 
 that refreshment should be found in an image of 
 humanity carrying divine insight and resource into 
 the domestic retreats of sorrow and affection. 
 
 The picture which has thus set itself in the Christian 
 imagination, though owing some of its lineaments to 
 after-touches of grateful thought, is legitimate and 
 historical in its outline. Even Paul, who otherwise 
 knows nothing of the personal portraiture of his Lord, 
 appeals to the disciples " by the meekness and gentle- 
 ness of Christ " ; and though the gospels are not 
 without examples of authoritative energy and terrible 
 invective, still it is not these that we feel to be half 
 so characteristic as the blessing on the child, the call 
 to the weary, the look upon the guilty, the lesson of 
 the field-flower, and the forgiveness on the cross. 
 When he corrects the morals of his time, it is to 
 render them passionless and self-denying ; when he 
 ascends to the springs of its devotion, it is to make 
 them overflow with more copious love and clearer trust; 
 when he opens the contents of human hope, and lets us
 
 In Christ Jesus. 287 
 
 see his image of final and perfect life, it is a vision of 
 natures pure as the angels, and not called to die any 
 more. Himself the Lamb of God, meekly led away 
 to sacrifice, he has so endeared and consecrated the 
 forms of affectionate and self-forgetful goodness, that 
 the old Pagan and even Hebrew notions of God's 
 character have become uncongenial to a Christian 
 mood : we feel it cold and hard to speak exclusively 
 of " virtue," (the right life of manhood), of justice, 
 of rectitude, and require to ascend into the higher 
 and warmer conceptions of sanctity and holy peace, 
 of faith, and hope, and charity. 
 
 This gentle, feminine type of religious character 
 owes nothing to the Jewish parentage of the gospel ; 
 and it is in proportion as you take your impression 
 from John and Paul rather than from the Judaic 
 records of Matthew and Mark, that the ideal disengages 
 itself into clearness. It is the general tendency of 
 strict monotheistic religions to bring out the force, 
 but overpower the finer susceptibilities of our nature ; 
 to make zealots of firm will, to bind hosts together by 
 a conquering purpose, to form brotherhoods of intimate 
 fidelity, rather than to melt the soul with compre- 
 hensive pity, or inspire a tender reverence for even 
 the weak and wandering. The monarchy of God in 
 heaven repeats or realizes itself in a theocracy on 
 earth : he commands rather than inspires, or inspires 
 chiefly to command : his prophets are always men,
 
 288 Neither Man nor Woman 
 
 and their message is political: nature and mankind 
 are his fabric and his instrument, detached from his 
 being, but subject to his sovereignty, and constrained 
 to do his will. The relation of man to God is one of 
 obedience more than of communion : its sentiment is 
 founded, not on their nearness and kindred, but on their 
 distance and contrast : far as the heaven is from the 
 earth, incapable of blending as the East is with the 
 West, are the thoughts of the human spirit in respect 
 of the Divine. The Hebrew imagination is ever on 
 the strain to put an infinite space between the majesty 
 of the Creator and the subjection of the creatures ; to 
 magnify him and humble them ; to seat his presence 
 above the circle of the sky and spread the inhabitants 
 of the earth " as grasshoppers " beneath him. Nor 
 is this conception of natural distance contradicted or 
 removed by the closer and tenderer images with which 
 prophets sweeten and diversify their song. They all 
 imply, not inward congeniality, but outward protection ; 
 the father of the son, the mother of the nurseling, the 
 husbandman of his favourite vine ; and all are founded 
 on the feeling of interval between two natures, not 
 of resemblance ; affinity itself being used to express 
 not so much the identity of kind as the affection of 
 individuals. Quite in harmony with this conscious- 
 ness of natural distance, is the belief that God's com- 
 munications with our race are always through some 
 mediation, of angel or prophet, empowered to bridge
 
 In Christ Jesus. -289 
 
 the chasm, and open a way into nature from the realm 
 beyond. The Arab learns of Mahomet, and Mahomet 
 of Gabriel, and Gabriel alone of Allah. The Catholic 
 listens to the priest; the priest to the apostles; the 
 apostles to Christ ; and Christ himself to Moses and 
 Elijah, who come to him from the Lord and world of 
 life. Special interposition implies ordinary separation ; 
 and only in the absence of immediate communion can 
 mediate messages find room to pass to and fro. 
 
 This Judaicr conception, of perfect distinction be- 
 tween God and man, as of two individuals existing 
 quite apart, unless by exceptional provision for meet- 
 ing, is favourable to strong moral conviction and 
 masculine resolve. It is of the very essence of the 
 sentiment of duty, to feel that we are charged with a 
 trust from God ; and a trust can be devolved upon us 
 only from one who i's outside of us, and knows that we 
 have an isolated power of our own. He gives the law, 
 for us to execute : he is there, and we are here : he 
 leaves us a field whose tillage or whose barrenness 
 is ours ; and conscience, in every utterance of self- 
 reproach, confesses the power of self-command. This 
 consciousness, that he is lord of something, inspires a 
 man with self-asserting energy ; quickens his sense of 
 obligation ; and makes him aware, as he casts his eye 
 over that which is committed to his charge, that he has 
 much to answer for in the good or evil administration 
 of this world. His sphere of duty is his sphere of
 
 290 Neither Man nor Woman 
 
 pmver : in ruling it, he holds a kingly attitude towards 
 all that it contains ; and whether it be a household, a 
 business, a tenantry, or an empire, that is given him 
 to keep in order, it lies beneath him, subject to his 
 will, trusting to his fidelity, appealing to his affection. 
 The delegate of a law above him, he has to give and 
 be a law to those beneath him ; rendering it flexible to 
 their nature and capacity, yet ever true to the measure 
 of eternal right. This is always the peculiarity of the 
 purely moral view of life : man, deputed for his 
 separate work, it sets apart from God, and each 
 man, as bearing his own burden, from every other. 
 It produces the sense of inalienable, lonely responsi- 
 bilities, giving infinite importance to every soul that 
 carries them. It sees around it a universe of detached 
 persons, to no two of whom is just the same shade 
 of sentiment and action due. It is founded on the 
 differences of beings and of things, and directs a dis- 
 criminating regard to each according to its nature and 
 character. The conscientious, turning the eye within, 
 feel distinctions and scruples which others slur; and, 
 directing the gaze without, perceive moral lights and 
 shadows hid from less fastidious vision. It is ever their 
 tendency to remain at a critical distance, just and self- 
 possessed ; severe to themselves and not tender to the 
 world. Or, if God has given them, not only the pure 
 conscience, but also the gentle heart, they will perhaps 
 have pity to spare for sin as well as sorrow; provided
 
 In Christ Jesus. 291 
 
 however it be sin deep and dark enough to look like 
 misery, and baffle all estimate : for an ethical benevo- 
 lence will often spread a profuse compassion on the 
 lowest wickedness, while habitually censorious to the 
 slight faults of neighbours, or, it may be, to the mere 
 divergent tastes of a younger generation. 
 
 That this temper of mind and mode of regarding 
 life is rather Stoical than specifically Christian, and 
 more properly Jewish than either, must be felt by 
 every one whose gospel is defined by John or Paul. It 
 gives us simply human morality, with a divine sanc- 
 tion : a noble gift, truly ; but still securing only half 
 our life, its manly vigour, its self-regulation, its clear 
 justice and fidelity; and leaving as yet untraced the 
 other half, its feminine dependence, its tact of love, its 
 flush of enthusiasm, and whatever is characteristic of 
 Him who opened his lessons with the beatitudes and 
 closed them with the legacy of peace. To fall into 
 any harmony with these, the soul must assume quite 
 another attitude, and enter into quite another thought 
 of God ; an attitude, not of lordship over the duties 
 beneath, but of captivity to the divine solicitations 
 above ; a thought of God, not as sending instructions 
 through an outer medium, or from afar in time or 
 place, but as our immediate living Light, as the holy 
 Spirit of our spirits, the everlasting ground of grace 
 ?vud beauty and love. In contrast with the moral 
 impulse of the mind which looks at the differences of 
 
 n -2
 
 292 Neither Man nor Woman 
 
 things, is the devout which seeks their unity ; which 
 ascends beyond all diffracted or intercepted rays to the 
 primal light that flings them ; and, instead of remain- 
 ing outside spectator of other heings, delights to lose 
 itself in the embrace of the All in All, and become the 
 organ of the Eternal Will. "VVe sigh for a conscious 
 union with God, which is far from being implied in 
 mere obedience to him ; nay, which is excluded till 
 obedience gives place, to a freer and less reluctant 
 harmony with him. To know that we belong to 
 another, and that other, God ; to hear him ever claim- 
 ing us in low, near whispers, dissolved through every 
 silence and still shooting on us amid the voices of 
 men; to see him gleaming on us, not only in the 
 exposed places of solitude, but through the thick 
 foliage of events, like the horizontal sun, flooding the 
 open desert with crimson, or piercing the forest with a 
 patterned glory ; to read a meaning that is his in 
 every aspect of life and nature, and go forth to meet it 
 when it is hopeful and reconciled, or droop our eyes 
 before it, if it be sad with a shade of pity ; to feel our 
 whole being dipped in his spirit and imbued with the 
 sacred tincture ever more : this is the surrender to 
 him that makes the life of holy communion, that 
 completes and balances the soul on its diviner side, 
 and that gave that feminine depth and gentleness to 
 Christ. Without this mood of contemplative oneness 
 with God, this genial melting of our life in his, there
 
 In Christ Jesits. 293 
 
 may be in us no want of masculine sense and energy, 
 of clear truth and honour, of faithful constancy under 
 temptation ; but there will also be a Jewish hardness 
 and narrowness of mind, a dry unmellowed temper, an 
 egotistic and critical irreverence for all that will not 
 submit to our survey. If aspiration is not to die out 
 from our religion, if affection and self-oblivion are not 
 to fly away and leave it empty of all diviner habitant, 
 if the love of God, as a passion and a power, is not to 
 be insultingly dismissed among the romances of the 
 past, we must open a more hospitable heart to the 
 gospel of the Spirit, and more deeply enter into the 
 life of the living God. It is a significant fact, that in 
 all religious systems which, instead of representing 
 God chiefly as moral Lawgiver, are fond of dwelling 
 on him as the Holy Spirit, there the prophets are, or 
 at least may be, women. So was it among the Phry- 
 gian Christians of old, who developed the doctrine of 
 the Paraclete. So has it ever been among the Society 
 of Friends, who keep silence till the Spirit speaks. So 
 is it when the Catholic estatica attests the supernatural 
 grace that still penetrates and consecrates the organism 
 of the visible Church. If the fact shows, on the one 
 hand, the dangers of a faith overbalanced on this oppo- 
 site side, it shows, on the other, that the view of God 
 most cherished by a tender piety, and most cherishing 
 it again, is the mystic rather than the moral, that 
 which envelopes us in communion, rather than sends
 
 294 Neither Man nor Woman 
 
 us out on errands of obedience, which takes up our 
 personality into a higher sphere instead of detaching 
 it for separate work in a lower. Morality defines down- 
 ward the duty of each ; lives in the midst of human 
 and natural details ; attaches itself to the particular 
 persons and concrete businesses of life. Devotion 
 opens its arms upwards to the Source of all; merges 
 itself in the divine and supernatural Infinity; sighs 
 after the universal spirit of all reality and ground of 
 all appearance and secret tincture of all good and 
 beauty. For neither the masculine concentration of 
 the one, nor the feminine diffusion of the other, is 
 our nature exclusively designed ; to neither can it be 
 given up without one-sidedness and perilous excess. If 
 they are rarely harmonised, it is not for want of a 
 visible ideal or of a fitting capacity. In Christ, at 
 once the Son of Man and Son of God, they were 
 blended without discord or interference, the majesty 
 and the meekness, the force for this world, the tender 
 mingling with another, the percussion upon human 
 evil and the melting into divine communion. And in 
 the higher mind of us all the possibility exists of 
 similarly blending all the seeming opposites that make 
 up the equilibrium of goodness, and drawing into one 
 nature the fair and happy contrasts that begin with 
 distribution, only that mutual fascination may help 
 them to union. What but our own low ideal is to 
 hinder the moulding of our defective and broken
 
 In Christ Jesus. 295 
 
 humanity into more Christ-like completeness ? Shall 
 we never rise to an inflexible moral enthusiasm, un- 
 tainted by personal passion; to an indignation at 
 wrong, kindled only by reverence for the right, and 
 made persuasive by sympathy with the wronged ; to a 
 transparent simplicity unspoiled by the deepest insight 
 and the largest intellectual view ; to the fusion of 
 quick affections with unconquerable will ; to a passion 
 for beauty so loving as to labour in the midst of 
 deformity; to such inward union with the Highest 
 as shall brace the soul to undismayed compassion for 
 the lowest ? Are the graces of character never to have 
 any vigour, or its vigour any grace ? Are the heroes to 
 be for ever rude, and the saints for ever sickly ? Not 
 unless the cross is to be forgotten, and its very shadow 
 to vanish from the earth. So long as it stands visible 
 and fixes any venerating look, no poor fragment of 
 spiritual good can ever content the conscience : without 
 aspiring to the whole, we fall at once from the disciple's 
 place ; and when our all is done, we must still feel 
 ourselves a great way off. To have neither restlessness 
 nor apathy, but pass freely between energy and repose, 
 at the call to act or the need to suffer; to bind the 
 wounds without indulgence to the sins of men ; to 
 have no tears but those of pity, to utter no reproach 
 but as the true interpreter of conscience, to send 
 forth no cry that does not soften into prayer ; to mingle 
 with the beauty of the world, yet find it but the symbol
 
 296 Neither Man nor Woman in Christ Jesns. 
 
 of a more transcendent glory ; only brings us some- 
 what nearer to that marvellous life in which the 
 contradictions of thought and the conflicts of feeling 
 formed the very harmony of a nature lifted into perfect 
 peace. His own picture of the kingdom of heaven is 
 the unconscious reflection of himself; the finished 
 and all-blending sphere, where the differences are not 
 indeed lost, but separated no more, between the woman 
 and the man, the elder and the child ; and all are as 
 the angels of God, that serve him with the wholeness 
 of a balanced nature. So conceived, that kingdom is 
 neither distant nor future ; in its germ and possibility, 
 it is already within us. And when, in realizing it, 
 we have " risen from the death of sin to the life of 
 righteousness," we shall have passed, through that 
 resurrection, into the singleness of spirit which belongs 
 to the " children of God that cannot die any more."
 
 xxin. 
 
 C(p $0fawrs xrf fofce. 
 
 GAL. T. 22. 
 "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace." 
 
 IF these be the fruit of the Spirit, they cannot be 
 mere matters of temperament. They have a higher 
 origin than a physical frame happily moulded, or even 
 a will dutifully disposed. There is something in them 
 of more heavenly fire ; lighting up our human nature, 
 but not entirely kindled there ; leaving with us the 
 blessing, but rendering back to God the praise. When 
 philosophy gives an account of the human soul, it 
 can find only constitutional propensities and voluntary 
 acquisitions. When we interrogate Christianity, we 
 are told, besides, of communicated sanctities ; states 
 of mind which inheritance cannot give, or resolution 
 command ; which need some touch of God to wake 
 them up ; which are above us, and yet ours ; which 
 do our work, and yet are better than our will; and
 
 298 The Powers of Love. 
 
 seem to lie on the border-land of communion between 
 the finite and the Infinite spirit. That this language, 
 which has approved itself to the deepest and devoutest 
 men in Christendom, should be all a senseless mys- 
 ticism, is an opinion which modest thought will be 
 reluctant to maintain. There is something strange 
 and unintelligible in the anxiety of a pretended ration- 
 alism to get rid of the inspiring God, to make sure 
 that our nature will be quite let alone, to environ it 
 with an impassable ring-fence, and plant sentry-boxes 
 of argument all round, to exclude the possible encroach- 
 ments of anything Divine. If the apostolic language 
 expressed no other truth, it would at least describe, 
 with simplicity and faithfulness, the complete trans- 
 formation which religion effects in the original instincts 
 and feelings ; how, by conquering, it glorifies them ; 
 and turns them from animal impulses into moral and 
 spiritual powers. To a mind uplifted in divine con- 
 version, and, through past toil and patience, dwelling 
 in a light above the storms of sin and sorrow, a new 
 being seems to have arisen ; a thick dream to have 
 broken away ; a drowsy pressure to have flown from 
 the head, a sultry leaden cloud to have been swept 
 from off the freshened heart. Its old affections, though 
 called by the same names, appear but counterfeits of 
 those which are ascendant now ; poor masks, serving 
 for the mimicry, but mocking the reality, of life. How 
 indeed is it possible to disguise from ourselves the
 
 The Powers of Love. 299 
 
 pretences of which, till the spirit wakes to the inner 
 truth of things, we are half- willing dupes ? how much 
 society there is without communion, and laughter 
 without gladness, and quiet without escape from care ! 
 The acts and hahits which should flow from the affec- 
 tions of the soul, spring often only from its misery. 
 The good fellowship that seems so cordial, warming 
 the lips and hrightening the eye, how often is it a 
 flight from self rather than a quest of others, the 
 opiate of conscience rather than the wine of Love ! 
 The mirth that rings with so genial a sound, and seems 
 to flash from heart to heart, is it all like the true glee 
 of childhood ? or can you not discern a false and eager 
 heat, as though something were thrust down that the 
 gladness may leap up ? And the composure and self- 
 possession of men, is it not sometimes a mere negative 
 tranquillity, the calm of them that sleep ? and at 
 others, a triumph of intellect smoothing the troubled 
 fancy, and of will refusing to betray ? in neither case, 
 the serenity of inward affection and living content ? 
 The retreat from secret thought, the restlessness of 
 wasted power, the suspicions of injured nature, the 
 aching of unsatisfied capacity, are always at work with 
 silent free-masonry among men ; hurrying them about 
 to clasp hands with one another in conspiracy against 
 themselves ; and leading them to mimic the look of 
 things that would appear, were they a world of faithful 
 souls. The disguise is transparent to the eye of purity ;
 
 300 The Powers of Love. 
 
 which looks on the drama as on children acting the 
 wedding and the funeral in the nursery ; occupied with 
 the scenery and the pageantry, heedless of the meaning 
 and the pathos. 
 
 Even the genuine instincts and healthy sentiments of 
 men, freed from all corruption of pretence, undergo a 
 complete and noble change, when living in the atmo- 
 sphere of a religious soul; and always fail of some 
 portion of their grace and power, till hreathed upon by 
 this, their natural air. We are glad enough indeed, 
 in a world like ours, to welcome a loving heart on 
 almost any terms. "When the sickness is at its height, 
 we do not ask the physician for his diploma ; when the 
 bleeding lie so thick upon the field, we must accept 
 any nurse that will bind their wounds ; and of him 
 that lifts the faint we demand not whether he be a 
 Samaritan. It were ungracious to complain of such 
 charity as can be found to soothe the grievances, and 
 shame the selfishness, of life. Only, the gentle mind 
 is ever open and docile too ; they that love well are 
 thankful to love better ; and in precise proportion as 
 the spirit of affection is elevated, is its work more 
 surely achieved, and its experience more truly peaceful. 
 
 There is a humane love, which constitutes the hum- 
 blest and most frequent form of unselfish feeling. It 
 finds its objects among the miserable, and attaches 
 itself to them in proportion to their woes. In human 
 pity there is a strange combination of repulsion and
 
 The Powers of Love. 301 
 
 attraction, which it is the paradox of philosophy to 
 state, and the mercy of God to ordain : it cannot en- 
 dure the sight of wretchedness, and yet can never leave 
 it. To no ear are the cries of anguish so piercing; 
 yet it hovers within the circle where they wander, 
 and flies to the centre whence they come. To no eye 
 does manhood struck down in its strength and wasting 
 on its bed, or the child decrepid with hunger and 
 neglect, or the wife deserted and broken beneath the 
 burden of life, present a sight so sad ; but it is 
 fascinated to the spot, and lives amid the haunts it 
 dreads. To stop that ear, to shut that eye, would 
 seem to give an easy promise of relief; nor is there 
 anything to hinder except that they would cease to be 
 the organs of humanity, and would be degraded into 
 the instruments of selfishness : and so, it is no more 
 possible to get them closed, than to persuade the 
 sobbing child to put aside the story that draws forth 
 its tears. It is needless to say what we owe to the 
 soul of compassion ; of how many infant ills it has 
 rocked the cradle till they fell into the sweet sleep of 
 recovery; of how many a cruel passion it has stayed 
 the uplifted arm ; what old and giant oppressions it 
 has challenged to the lists, and laid low with the sling 
 and stone of its youthful indignation. It is indeed an 
 emotion, to be incapable of which were to be less than 
 huni^n. It is the great power which lifts the heavy 
 mass of mankind above the gross interests, the un-
 
 302 The Powers of Love. 
 
 worthy sloth, the heartless indifference, towards which 
 they are else continually sinking. And just when the 
 low temper of society and greedy negligence of men 
 have brought us to believe in self-love alone, some 
 sudden outbreak of this passion breaks through the 
 crust of our philosophy, and proclaims the hidden fires 
 of our nature that fuse the cement and shatter the 
 structures of our selfishness. Pity certainly fulfils one 
 of the conditions of all the noblest love : it is not a 
 lonely and unproductive feeling : it cannot pass (except 
 through imaginative abuse) into an empty luxury. It 
 looks a brother in the face : it puts a consolation into 
 his heart : it fans into a flame the embers of dying 
 hope; and thus, it awakens a grateful return. In 
 place of an affliction that looked up, and a sorrow that 
 looked down, there is a reciprocal sympathy standing 
 eye to eye with a mild and manly brotherhood. But, 
 with all this, there is work ordained for us which this 
 impulse will not suffice to do. Fastening itself on 
 suffering alone, it sees nothing else. It looks on man 
 exclusively as a being capable of pleasure and pain ; 
 and until it perceives the trace of pain, till it is roused 
 by the sigh from behind it, or moved by wringing hands 
 before it, it remains at rest as if all were well. Yet 
 suffering is not the only or the greatest ill : beneath 
 the smooth and glossy surface of easy life there may 
 hide itself many an inward disease which the mere 
 glance of pity docs not discern. Flourishing iniquity
 
 The Powers of Love. 303 
 
 that gives no seeming pain it lets alone : invisible cor- 
 ruption may spread without arrest. Even suffering is 
 commiserated by quantity rather than by quality, being 
 estimated by the scale of the sentient nature, more 
 than by that of the rational spirit; and a blind in- 
 stinctive treatment is administered, destructive of the 
 higher discipline, like that of the ignorant nurse, 
 who, at any price of indulgence, hushes the cries of 
 the wayward child. Any way, the character of animal 
 impulse clings too much to this feeling, to allow of its 
 satisfying the demands of a good heart. 
 
 In minds of a higher culture, at the present day 
 in the minds of an immense class, there is a very 
 different order of affection, for which great claims have 
 been advanced, as though it might assume the empire 
 of the soul, and wield the very sceptre of religion. 
 I refer to imaginative or (esthetic love, which attaches 
 itself to objects in proportion as they are beautiful, 
 kindles the enthusiasm of Art, and completes itself in 
 the worship of genius. Let us not be provoked by the 
 exaggerations of others to think slightingly of a power 
 which is of a very high order in the combinations of 
 our world, and owes its sickliness only to its isolation. 
 Our life would be but a poor affair without it, a 
 miserable succession of present instants, with no land- 
 scape sleeping in the past, no perspective enshadowed 
 in the future ; with light to cut our corn, and fell our 
 timber, and steer our ship, but not to play upon the
 
 304 The Powers of Love. 
 
 waving fields, and paint the forest stems, and glance 
 upon the sea ; with an intelligible task before us, and 
 worthy neighbours near us, but no solemn expressive- 
 ness in the one, no feature of inspiring heroism in the 
 other ; with a kindliness at heart, that would not stand 
 still and see a creature die, but with no eye to see 
 further than the suffering flesh, or ear to catch more 
 than the uttered words ; so that the plaint of deepest 
 pathos is reduced to prose, dumb sorrows are uninter- 
 preted, and the light hand of a graceful love is but 
 a dull prehensile limb. In this affection there is a 
 feature, not found in our compassion, but never absent 
 from the noblest love. It makes us like and more like 
 the object that engages it. The rays it sheds upon us 
 touch our features with transformation, till the coun- 
 tenance of the soul glows like that of the prophet who 
 has been with God. This assimilating power cannot 
 remain involuntary in a self-conscious being like man : 
 it is not a blind tendency, but a confessed desire, an 
 intentional effort, wherever realization is possible. No 
 one can admire without wishing to resemble, and 
 tracing in his spirit the lineaments that transfigure 
 him " into the same image, from glory to glory." 
 Hence, to this feeling for what is beautiful we owe the 
 temper of aspiration, the pressure towards a perfection 
 that, with our ascending nature, ever rises and recedes. 
 "What more, you will say, do we want than this ? the 
 tact of love below, and the urgency of desire above,
 
 The Powers of Love. 305 
 
 seem to complete the graces possible to our limited 
 souls. Yet is this affection very barren, until thrown 
 into the midst of others, to harmonise and glorify 
 them : by itself it is but as the spread of colour with- 
 out design, which may turn the canvas into atmosphere, 
 but represents only the airy conditions of a scene that 
 might be or that is to be. No reciprocal sympathy is 
 requisite to this sentiment : that which is admired as 
 beautiful, does not admire in return. And, above all, 
 there is a direct tendency to turn with indifference or 
 even merciless repugnance from what is unlovely in 
 human life ; to stipulate for interesting objects of 
 compassion ; and to shrink from the harsh tasks, the 
 mean cares, the repulsive sights, the obscure dangers, 
 which patient goodness encounters without a word. 
 The early Christians were very sensible of this, and 
 left a curious proof how profoundly they distrusted a 
 feeling which has since attained unrivalled energy in 
 Christendom. They interpreted with literal severity 
 the words which they accepted as prophetic of their 
 Lord: "He hath no form nor comeliness; and when 
 we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should 
 desire him ; " and they consistently made the first 
 images of Christ objects frightful to behold. Whence 
 an enthusiasm so strange and barbarous ? It was a 
 violent reaction from the Pagan worship of beauty, 
 which had ennobled Art, and corrupted nature ; ex- 
 tracted wonders from the quarries of Pentelicus, and 
 
 x
 
 306 The Powers of Love. 
 
 horrors from the populace of Rome and Corinth : per- 
 fected the marbles of the temple, and degraded the 
 humanity of the worshipper. Heathenism had brought 
 into monstrous combination physical beauty and moral 
 deformity : the Christians retaliated by reconciling 
 moral beauty with physical deformity. But the union 
 was not permanently possible to the human heart. 
 For, that ugly Christ of the early disciples was also 
 most sacred and beloved ; the hiding-place of a divine 
 grace, the covered centre of whole galaxies of holy 
 light ; and that was a secret which human nature 
 could not for ever keep : some gleam would fain shine 
 through to rebuke the scoffing eye of the profane : the 
 features must now and then.be touched with a holy 
 radiance : the divinity, enclosed in so inadequate a 
 cell, would conquer the feeble humanity at last, and 
 by the perseverance of inward sublimity, change it 
 into visible and undisputed glory. And thus, as in 
 nature, so in faith, love becomes the source of beauty ; 
 and so refines the forms and deepens the expressive- 
 ness of things, that matter grows transparent, and 
 earth is but the transitory film veiling an eternal 
 heaven. 
 
 There is however a higher mood of affection than 
 this idealizing thought. "We are conscious of a moral 
 love, which has reference to persons only, not to 
 things ; which attaches itself to them, in proportion as 
 they are good; judges them by the standard of an
 
 The Powers of Love. 307 
 
 internal Law ; and expresses itself in tones, not of 
 tenderness as in pity, or of admiration as in the trance 
 of beauty, but of grave and earnest approval. This it 
 is that first sweeps with a healthful and invigorating 
 breath through every other sympathy, turning it from 
 a consuming excitement into a productive faculty. But 
 for this, life would be only piteous as an infirmary, or 
 fair as a gallery of art; not a theatre of strenuous 
 action, where conflict gives birth to noblest deeds, and 
 to many a sorrow too glorious for compassion. This it 
 is that makes the world a drama of deep and often 
 breathless interest ; that forces us to take sides in every 
 struggle and stretch forward with looks of suspense 
 and prayers for victory, as the hosts sway to and fro 
 in the thick fight; that draws out our favourites and 
 heroes in history, and makes of them a perspective of 
 great spirits through the past. But for this, the martyr 
 would be only a man burnt ; and the confessor on the 
 rack of inquisition but as the patient on the surgeon's 
 table. This puts a mighty courage into the woman 
 and the child, and turns the gentlest nature into heart 
 of oak ; and even fills us with a tempestuous glory at 
 the sufferings of the good. Inspired by this, we can 
 stand by and see the prophets sawn asunder; can 
 cheer on the apostles hunted from city to city ; can 
 feel, as we watch the Christian maidens waiting for the 
 tiger's spring, the defiance of a dreadful joy ; can cling 
 to the robe of Stephen and say, ' Hold on, Brave 
 
 x 2
 
 308 The Powers of Love. 
 
 heart,' while they shout ' Stone him to death,' and 
 lay bare our head, " that we also may die with him." 
 The moral affection unites the separated excellencies of 
 the others ; at once creating reciprocal sympathy, and 
 exercising the strongest assimilating power. To be 
 approved by our brother is to hear the trembling hope 
 of conscience confirmed, to know that there is another 
 nature like our own, to feel that our vows and prayers 
 are lonely no more ; and we are conscious of that 
 mutual intelligence, which is at once the secret and the 
 solace of affection. And to approve a being as good is 
 to acknowledge a claim to become like him : and the 
 claim implies desire ; and the desire pushes itself into 
 tendency. I know not indeed a more serious thing 
 than the responsibility thus incurred by all human 
 affection. Only think of this : whoever loves you is 
 growing like you ! neither you nor he can hinder it, 
 unless at the cost of alienation. Is the resemblance 
 worth creating ? should you be pleased to see in your 
 own friend another self? would he appear to you with 
 an added light of excellence, or with a duller shade as 
 of disappointment and saddened hope ? 0, if you are 
 not a desolate being in this world, if you are grateful 
 for but one creature's love, if a child's trust or a 
 parent's shelter, a sister's pride or a brother's manly 
 joy, rests upon you, rise to the height of so pure a 
 blessing : reverence the sanctity of those dear souls : 
 dra^ them not down by the very embrace with which
 
 The Powers of Love. 309 
 
 they cling to you ; but, in requital of their faithful 
 cares, strive, if it be possible, to lift them to a mood 
 they will rejoice to reach, and through their gentleness 
 secure their consecration. 
 
 Even this moral love, however, is not without imper- 
 fections, leaving something still to be supplied. Its 
 characteristic sentiment of Approbation has always in 
 it a certain patronizing air, not welcome to the mercy of 
 a true heart, and more like the rigour of a Zeno, than 
 the grace of Christ. True it is that the eye of con- 
 science penetrates readily to inconspicuous excellence, 
 and lifts the poor out of the dust, if he be but a strug- 
 gling saint. But, should he be a lost sinner, it puts 
 him, with severe justice, by the side of rich and gaudy 
 wickedness, as a creature joined to idols, that must be 
 let alone. Nor can it admire anything but efforts of 
 the will, the battle of resolution with temptation, the 
 strife after a harmony of spirit yet unattained. Trans- 
 plant it to a scene where that harmony is already won, 
 where evil shows off its attraction all in vain, where 
 angel-minds find nothing to resist, but love and do 
 with one accord whatever is fair and holy and sing at 
 their work the glad strains of emancipated natures, and 
 this feeling finds itself in a strange land, where its 
 plaudits would be a coarse intrusion, and die away 
 upon the sainted air. Nor in any of the forms of love 
 which we have named, is there adequate provision for 
 suppressing the discords, and quieting the troubled
 
 3io The Powers of Love. 
 
 passions, of mankind. Pity grieves over the suffering 
 they give ; but, not going to their heart, can only hush 
 them up, and charm the delirium to temporary sleep. 
 Imagination dislikes the jar, and evades it by escape 
 into its dreams. Conscience disapproves, and scolds 
 the uneasiness into sullen silence, but cannot exorcise 
 the demons of the heart. This is a kind of human ill 
 that goeth not out except by the voice of prayer and in 
 recompense of faith. Not till we call down the Spirit 
 of God himself, can we find the consummate fruit of 
 love, and joy, and peace. There is an affection higher 
 than we have named ; a Divine Love, directed first 
 upon God himself, and thence drawn into the likeness 
 of his own love, and going forth upon other natures, 
 in proportion to their worth and claims. This is the 
 cro wning and calming term of all prior affections ; pre- 
 supposing them, and lifting them up from clashing and 
 unrest to harmony and peace. Who can show us any 
 grace or power which it does not include? One who 
 lives in converse with Infinite Perfection can neither be 
 without the sympathies that ennoble minds on a lower 
 level, nor surrender itself to any as tyrant over the rest. 
 The springs of his tenderness and strength are ready to 
 be touched by whatever has native claims upon a human 
 heart, by suffering, by beauty, by goodness ; nay, so 
 ready, that the fitting love will not be driven back 
 though the suffering be ugly, and the beauty wicked, 
 and the goodness narrow and unattractive. He is not
 
 The Powers of Love. 311 
 
 insensible to the shadows of imperfection, but is carried 
 with intenser feeling to the lights of character; for 
 they alone are the soul's realities, and there it is that 
 the promise lies ; and as they brighten and spread, the 
 shadows will flee away. This faith, which naturally 
 flows into him from contact with the All-holy Mind, 
 saves him from the bitterness of cynicism and the de- 
 spondency of romance. No preferential love, it is true, 
 not even the Divine, can be without its aversions ; 
 but when they fall upon remediable and perishable ill, 
 while the heart is engaged upon an everlasting good, 
 their harshness is softened and their dejection relieved. 
 He that is taken up into true love for God dwells at the 
 fountain-head of perfect life, and has there, not only an 
 ever-present Refuge from his disappointment in partial 
 natures, but the goal of hope, the purifying and pene- 
 trating force, whither the most distant wanderer tends. 
 The higher his conception of the Soul of souls, the less 
 is his surprise that in our humanity the image is broken 
 and the resemblance faint : he stands at an elevation 
 where impatience is impossible, and from the consum- 
 mate end of all good a joy goes forth to greet its 
 smallest beginnings. Yet, quick as his sympathy will 
 be to detect the germs of every grace, he will no more be 
 carried away with enthusiasm for detached and limited 
 excellence than be flung into despair by the uncancelled 
 wrongs and grievous sins of men ; for he lives where he 
 can be shut up with neither, and both are transcended
 
 3 1 2 The Powers of Love. 
 
 and seen only in their true relations. Entranced with 
 the vision of the Supreme Good, he can never fail to 
 recognise and embrace its broken reflections everywhere ; 
 also he can never cease to demand the missing features 
 that are yet withheld ; and so it is that this love of his 
 is generous and exacting too ; meeting the achievements 
 already made with refreshing response, yet pressing for 
 all that yet remain behind, with a grave arrest of sym- 
 pathy and an expressive silence till they come. This 
 highest form of love is as well proportioned and discrim- 
 inative as it is quick and copious ; and while flowing 
 freely in to cherish every actual grace, still fixes an 
 asking look upon the possible, under which no earnest 
 conscience can ever sleep. It is a prospective affection, 
 grateful for the present, but thirsting towards the 
 future ; and is thus, if not the source, at least the 
 foster-parent of all progressive righteousness. It will 
 suffer no slight to the little child, and casts a tender 
 eye on the rudimentary heaven of his nature ; yet 
 will give no rest to the noble youth who had kept all 
 the commandments and yearned for something more. 
 When I am contemplated by this Christ-like spirit, I 
 know that I am regarded with an interest measured by 
 the capacities of my being ; and with a love which is 
 in perfect tune with my inward character and has no 
 reservations but from my own unfaithfulness. In pro- 
 portion as the conditions of my life-problem are fulfilled, 
 as my powers put themselves forth in adequate and
 
 The Powers of Love 313 
 
 fitting activity, as I promptly and truly respond to the 
 demands upon my will, am I animated and upheld by 
 support of the divinest sympathy. And just as far as 
 my nature fails and flags, as I forfeit strength by 
 unresisted temptations and incur shame by degrading 
 compliances and shrink from required sacrifice, do I 
 feel upon me a look which deepens all my guilt and 
 doubles the sadness of my infirmity, and yet silently 
 pleads with me to re -assert the rights which I have 
 impaired, and overtake the march from which I had 
 fallen away. 
 
 Thus, from this highest term, of divine love, there 
 is nothing omitted : it covers, it blende, it modulates, 
 it dignifies, it sweetens all the rest. Hence the chief 
 religious minds have a largeness of their own which, 
 as history shows, gives them a mysterious grasp of 
 other and minor natures, and lifts them, in the moral 
 world, into the same relation to partial forms of 
 character, that, in the intellectual world, the philoso- 
 pher bears to the specialist, and, in the sphere of Art, 
 Michael Angelo bears to a pattern-designer. The soul 
 in which this commanding affection remains silent may 
 breathe out this or that rich tone, and even its snatches 
 of broken melody ; but it is as a lyre without its chief 
 string, or an organ with its central octave dumb ; and 
 It can never be adequate to deliver the great master- 
 pieces of human creation, which tax all the powers of 
 performance and comprise all the resources of harmony.
 
 The Powers of Love. 
 
 The humane, the beautiful, the right, remain only 
 scattered elements of good, till they are gathered into 
 the Divine, and blended into one by the combining 
 love of God.
 
 XXIV. 
 
 lim 0f 
 
 JOB xiii. 24 (part), 25 (part). 
 
 " Wherefore hidest Thou thy face ? Wilt Thou break a leaf driven to 
 and fro ? " 
 
 As the Book of Job and Lockyer's Astronomy lay 
 together on my table, I could not help contrasting in 
 them the genius of the ancient East and of the modern 
 West. Only the Mediterranean longitudes lay between 
 the authors ; yet in the face of how different a world 
 did they live ! To the one, as he looked up on the 
 heavens from the Arabian plains, the vault of night 
 seemed written all over with mysteries : to the other, 
 ccanning it from his observatory, it is inscribed with 
 diagrams that may be worked and periodic times that 
 may be registered. The Patriarch (if we may sub- 
 stitute him for his poet) had never, it is plain, been 
 lectured to at any Royal Institution, and looked with 
 superfluous awe at many things in nature which we 
 ' perfectly understand.' Orion and Pleiades above, the
 
 316 The Discipline of Darkness. 
 
 forests and the torrents below, the wild creatures of the 
 mountain and the floods, the speed of the ostrich, the 
 flight of the bird, the neck of the war-horse, the scales 
 of Leviathan, are marvels in his eyes, the speaking 
 fragments of an almighty life behind. From us, the 
 wonder of these things is gone. That " He hangeth 
 the earth upon nothing " is no less a matter of course 
 than that the stone flies from the sling. " The way 
 for the lightning of thunder," far from being " hid 
 from the eyes of all the living," we may see on every 
 church steeple. Since our lessons in geology, we know 
 it is the ' raised beaches," instead of " the Almighty," 
 that have " set bars and doors to the sea and said, 
 ' Hitherto shalt thou come and no further, and here 
 shall thy proud waves be stayed.' ' : We have " mea- 
 sured the breadth of the earth," and ascertained what 
 a trifle it is. We have " entered the way where light 
 dwelleth," and can name the incandescent chemicals 
 from which it comes. The "wild ass" and the 
 "unicorn," are they not stuffed in our museums? 
 and in the nearest Zoological Gardens may you not 
 see Behemoth in his reeds, " moving his tail like a 
 cedar " ? We have got so familiar with the place and 
 plan of things, that nothing looks in upon us with a 
 quickening eye, and our wonder is all used up. 
 
 This habituation to the order of the world, the result 
 of long and large experience, satisfies our natural desire 
 to see into the Law of all that is and happens. We
 
 The Discipline of Darkness. 3 1 7 
 
 do not like to be taken unawares : we prefer the track 
 clear and open into the distance, and gladly escape the 
 starts of the thicket which hides we know not what : 
 we deem it a gain to reduce the surprises of life, and 
 stand on a field where nothing is unforeseen. Nor is 
 this the mere craving of our sentient nature, seeking 
 for repose. It is no less the ambition of the intellect 
 to unravel the seeming tangle of events, to lay out 
 here and there the many-coloured threads, and trace 
 how the parts make up the pattern of the whole. If 
 Science ever indulges an Elysian dream, I suppose it 
 is to live in a scene where all can be predicted for the 
 future and interpreted in the past ; where the intricate 
 shall be only a cluster of the simple, and the mysterious 
 a forgotten haze that once veiled the plain ; where no 
 duration can hide anything and no distance dwarf it ; 
 and from the perspective of thought the shadowed 
 glades, and the curving sea, and the dip of the 
 horizon, shall take themselves away. 
 
 With this ideal, in its application to the work of our 
 hand and the range of our research, there is no fault to 
 be found. To be out of gear with the system to which 
 we belong, is to be displaced from its movements, or to 
 feel them only as a shock. The more insight we can 
 obtain into its rules, the more shall we fall in with its 
 power, as if it were our own ; and be prepared for its 
 certainties, as if they lay in our design ; and be saved 
 all struggle for what is not to be, and all anxiety about
 
 318 The Discipline of Darkness. 
 
 what is sure to come. In proportion as we grow into 
 the scheme of nature, making our understanding its 
 copy and our will its servitor, do we extend our know- 
 ledge, secure our action, economise our strength : no 
 error, no waste, no frustration, confuses our career; 
 and, suffer as we may, it is the quiet endurance of 
 calculated ill, with no added pang of horror and alarm. 
 Wherever then we can push our conquests over the 
 darkness of the world, it is not for us to pause in the 
 advance : wherever the way is open, we are free and 
 bound to go. But it is another question, whether we 
 have reason to complain of the many paths we cannot 
 enter, and of the impassable limits that baffle us and 
 turn us back. Must we deplore it as a spoiling of our 
 life, that not all its elements are uniform ; that the 
 date of death hovers over four-score years, and alights 
 now here now there ; that the birth of children, the 
 incidence of disease, the specialities of mental consti- 
 tution, nay, even such outward things as the shipwreck 
 and the fire and the missile's flight, defy our foresight, 
 and, though intensely affecting our well-being, hide 
 themselves in the inscrutable order? That in one 
 sense we feel a grievance in such irreducible uncer- 
 tainties, is evident from this ; that by the method of 
 insurance we endeavour to get rid of them, and find an 
 equivalent for the prescience we cannot exercise. The 
 advantage we thus win is still of the same kind. "We 
 secure ourselves against a shock, and establish a base
 
 The Discipline of Darkness 319 
 
 to make our reckoning safe ; and though we cannot 
 steady the uncertain sea on which we ride, we place in 
 equilibrium a compass that shall direct the helm. And 
 so, if all our life's interests could be reduced to rule, if 
 everything human could be predicted like the phases 
 of the moon, we should doubtless become completely 
 adapted to a world without alternative ; every hour 
 would find us ready ; our place might depend upon us 
 with the certainty of fate ; no step would ever have to 
 be retraced ; habit would be perfected with us. But 
 then, Habit would become supreme. We should be 
 worked up into the mechanism of nature, and what else 
 would bo our Personal powers would be yoked into the 
 same team with the weights, and damps, and winds. 
 Wherever such a state is approached, we turn out 
 more work, but exercise less Soul ; inasmuch as Rule 
 in nature becomes Routine in man. If, to perfect this, 
 and make it all in all, fulfils our ideal of humanity, 
 and the largest outer product gives the greatest life, 
 then we must lament that an uncertainty remains to 
 strain the cords of our hearts, and fling forth music 
 from the swaying air. But if our life have another 
 measure, taken from within, if it may be judged, not 
 wholly by what it successfully does, but in part by 
 what it intrinsically is, if moreover it has other attri- 
 butes than it takes from the intellect and the will, if, 
 with rights transcending these, it have a trust of duty, 
 and a pleading of pity, and a flood of great affections,
 
 320 The Discipline of Darkness. 
 
 then we must see, in the irreducible uncertainties, the 
 very school and discipline of this side of our humanity, 
 where its glory and its sorrow blend. 
 
 In truth, for the birth and the freshening of human 
 Love, the conditions most essential are just the con- 
 ditions we most resist : the inequalities, and the un- 
 certainties of life. It is because we are not all alike, 
 but a great mixed company of weak, and strong, of men 
 and women, of young and old, of bright and sad, nay, 
 of ancient and modern, of native and foreign, that our 
 dull souls awake into sympathies which carry them out 
 of themselves in all directions, and that reverence, trust, 
 compassion, rise and spread through all the spheres. 
 And it is because, thus taught to love, we cannot see 
 what will befall, that we are driven to love the more. 
 There are times, no doubt, when we forget that anything 
 is precarious, and for the moment accept the unbroken 
 health of things as if it were a pledge that so they 
 would always be ; and these are apt to be bold and 
 wanton times, when the voice is loud, and the laugh is 
 rude, and the words not free from insolence. If ever, 
 in such an hour, we have borne hard upon a friend, 
 let but an illness stretch him before us, and his life 
 begin to look frail, how instantly we know that we 
 have too little prized it, and all the harsh tones dis- 
 appear ! Wherein lies the magic of that look of his ? 
 "Whence do those pale features draw the persuasion 
 they do not mean to speak ? If we knew for certain
 
 The Discipline of Darkness 321 
 
 that in a month he would be on Change again, and that 
 the bell would not toll for him till after thirty years, 
 would the turn of his eye equally smite upon our 
 heart ? were there no crisis sitting on his face, no 
 suggested moment of trembling between life and death, 
 should we move around him with the same reverent 
 step, and speak to him with the same meaning in the 
 voice ? No : it is not from what we see with the out- 
 ward eye, but from the questioning visions of the mind, 
 the haunting dread, the half-ready tears, the shadow 
 of the morrow behind the light of today, that the 
 thoughtful tenderness all comes ; and a rigid certainty 
 would soon crystallize upon the soul and bring the 
 hardness back again. And as it is when fears are 
 deepening, so is it when they are waning too, yet not 
 forgot. Let the crisis pass, and the days of conva- 
 lescence come, when the faint glance grows bright, 
 and the languid cheek begins to glow, and the feet are 
 planted firm again, and the sunshine and the rustling 
 leaves, and the children's merry voices, are charged with 
 a new joy ; why do we linger near our friend, as if a 
 sacred fascination held us ? why gaze at him with an 
 insight we never had before ? why feel an old weight 
 lifted from the heart, and spring to him with the 
 trust and promise of a fresh vow ? It is becaus3 the 
 trembling scales have turned, and we are purified by 
 the wonder of deliverance ; snatched from the com- 
 punctions of inadequate affection, and placed on the 
 
 Y
 
 322 The Discipline of Darkness. 
 
 threshold of better hopes. It is ever the secret back- 
 ground of possibilities we cannot read, which invests 
 the forms in the front light with mellowing tints of 
 mystery, and a veil of unearthly beauty ; and did these 
 never reach us with their appeal, we might know the 
 actual, and do the palpable and safe ; but we should 
 aspire to nothing, and venture nothing, bear nothing 
 with high trust, and take no vow of self-devotion. 
 
 In trying then to eliminate uncertainty, we strive, 
 through the instinct of the understanding and the 
 will, to destroy the very discipline appointed for the 
 conscience and affections ; and as, morally, we conquer 
 in our intellectual defeat, and repair our defects of 
 knowledge by nobleness of love, it may well be believed 
 that we shall never push our lines of foresight to the 
 further limits of our human world, but, in the last 
 days as in the first, find ourselves on the bounding 
 shore of the seen and the unseen, with our nature 
 competed for by the finite light and the infinite 
 shadows, and wrung into its glory by the conflict and 
 its sorrows. Had not Life the interest of an ever- 
 opening plot, with catastrophe preparing every instant 
 but hidden to the last, with how little care should we 
 see its curtain rise, with how little sympathy watch its 
 actors play their part, with how slight a sigh perceive 
 its drop-scene fall ! Why, as you look upon a group of 
 children at their play, why does the ringing laughter 
 bring you, along with the response of happy affection,
 
 The Discipline of Darkness. 323 
 
 a graver and a tenderer mood ? It is the contrast of 
 the thoughtless present and the hidden future : you, 
 know there is a drama writ, but with invisible ink, and 
 reserved in the casket of each young life ; and the 
 images throng upon you of the countless moving vicis- 
 situdes of our humanity ; and upon the ear of thought, 
 the peal of the happy marriage bells, or the toll for 
 the early death, rings out ; and you wonder which is on 
 the first step of manly faithfulness or womanly devoted- 
 ness, and which on the slippery incline that descends 
 into untraceable ruin. And so in every emergency of 
 later years, in the last embrace before the long voyage, 
 or in the parting before the war, it is the alternative 
 images peering in upon the mind, of happy greeting, 
 or of a silent spot for ever sacred in the far waters or 
 on the foreign field, that deepen the moment with a 
 meaning it cannot speak ; and though the voice per- 
 haps is cheery and the heart beats firm, the strength 
 of each friend is only in the other, and in the high 
 trust they carry into the dark. If you take the dan- 
 ger and the doubt away, where would be the gentle 
 reverence of the surrender ? Let there be no arrow 
 by night, no malady by day, let the three-score years 
 and ten be assured to the last hour, and the eyes fall 
 punctually asleep with the setting sun entered on the 
 calendar ; and would anything tender and divine hang 
 around this death by the clock? No watchful love 
 could hover round the invulnerable : they might go 
 
 Y 2
 
 324 The Discipline of Darkness. 
 
 forth on their enterprise alone, and be forgotten ; fol- 
 lowed by no musing fancy, that is flushed with their 
 triumph or anguished at their fall. Between us and 
 God it may be true that " there is no fear in perfect 
 love " ; for the Eternal is for ever safe : the All -holy 
 is for ever good : but among ourselves it would be a 
 shallow love that was without its fear; for the very 
 goodness and sanctity to which we look up are noble 
 because secured by no necessity ; and the lives that 
 are the Joy of ours would shine with a drier light, were 
 they less precarious ; and it is the refraction of tears 
 ever possible, that breaks the rays into colours soft 
 and beautiful. If we are faithful to one another in 
 our onward march, it is because there is not one who 
 may not fall : our road lies through a perpetual am- 
 bush ; and whoever has a friend to keep step with him 
 on the way will try to place him on the sheltered side. 
 Of our moral nature it is the very essence, that it 
 is given to meet alternatives; of our affections, that 
 they have to live in the actual with eye upon the pos- 
 sible ; and the whole wisdom and magnanimity of life 
 consist in a will conformed to what is, with a heart 
 ready for what is not. Unless all character is to 
 perish, the contingencies must stay. The tacit mutual 
 dependence, the secret suspicion that here or there the 
 ground which looks so solid is undermined, the con- 
 stant possibility of a total change of parts in the 
 drama of our life, and so the silent wonder that
 
 The Discipline of Darkness. 325 
 
 mingles with every scene, these are the freshening 
 powers breathing on what else were common or un- 
 clean, and meeting and startling us like angels encoun- 
 tered in the street. Whatever depth there may be in 
 our poor love, whatever reverence speaks in our rough 
 voice, flows into us from that world unseen. 
 
 All our private experience goes to soothe our com- 
 plaints of darkness, and reconcile us to the conditions 
 of a precarious existence. The witness of history is 
 on the same side. In the education of mankind, what 
 races have played the most quickening and effective 
 part ? Is it the industrial and gainful, that, in the 
 interests of prosperity, have cultivated isolation, and 
 have evaded the conflicts of honour, lest they should 
 raise the rates of insurance ? Phoenicia, who treated 
 the world as an Exchange, and crowded every port with 
 her ships, could not even hand down her maritime 
 discoveries, and died without a bequest, except of her 
 colonies, her superstitions, and her crimson dye. Egypt, 
 by the very uniformity of her physical fertility, re- 
 mained in moral barrenness : and, with a monopoly 
 of the arts and sciences, sat for ages, like her own 
 Sphinx upon the desert, placidly gazing on an unfer- 
 tilized world. Her stereotyped civilization aimed, not 
 without success, to reproduce in society the inflexible 
 order of natural law, and to bar out the contingen- 
 cies of affairs. If you would estimate such stationary 
 periodicity, compare its fruitless longevity with the
 
 326 The Discipline of Darkness. 
 
 brief flash of the Hellenic States, which still lights up 
 the thought and thrills the hearts of men. And in 
 lands where freer and larger play is conceded to human 
 capacities, is it, do you think, the safe and quiet times 
 when risk is absent and ease secured, that cut the 
 distinctive lines into their character, and give them a 
 physiognomy in history ? On the contrary, it is in the 
 days of peril, in the crises of anguish, that the force of 
 character steps forth and constitutes itself, and under 
 some high and daring guidance, finds a footing upon 
 the rock and retakes the citadel of hope. Had Thebes 
 never been humbled, she would have found in Epami- 
 nondas no deliverer to illuminate her page in history. 
 Had Athens never been abandoned to the Persian in- 
 vader, there would have been no magic in the names of 
 Marathon and Salamis: her -writers would have been 
 without their most telling allusions, her orators without 
 their most kindling appeals ; and her people would not 
 have risen to that ideal type of life which makes them 
 the wonder of all time. Had Rome seen nothing but 
 an Augustan age, she might have had historians, if 
 there had been any history to tell ; and poets, if they 
 could dispense with great admirations, and sing without 
 the material of great actions ; and philosophers, if the 
 problems of the world had ever agitated the sleepy 
 experience of men. But it was the tyranny of Tarquin 
 that created the Republic : it was from the cloud of 
 Carthaginian invasion that Scipio emerged: it was
 
 The Discipline of Darkness. 327 
 
 amid the shame of spreading corruption that the noble 
 protest of Stoic virtue arose, and mingled a melancholy 
 majesty with the empire's fall. Nor is it otherwise 
 with any State that has earned a remembrance of 
 itself. Of every great City, the memorials of fallen 
 heroes and the trophies of dread strife, are among the 
 chief works of art. Every legislative hall is guarded 
 by the figures of those who once braved the dangers 
 of their country's darkest hours. In every national 
 tradition, the popular favourite is the captive king, the 
 chained patriot, the unflinching martyr. 
 
 And if it is the great crises of peril that, as they are 
 passing, train a people's character, so is it their reflec- 
 tion in literature that, ages after they are gone, still 
 spreads and perpetuates the ennobling influence. The 
 inspiration that descends on us from the Past, and makes 
 us heirs of accumulated thought and enriched affections, 
 from whom chiefly does it come ? Is it from the 
 uniformly happy and the untempted good ? from those 
 who have most realized the lot for which our sentient 
 and intellectual instincts cry aloud ? No : but from the 
 central figures of the great tragedies of our humanity ; 
 from the conquerors of desolating monsters ; from the 
 creators of Law and tamers of the p2ople ; from love 
 beyond death, that carried its plaintive music to the 
 shades ; from the avengers of wrong ; from the martyrs 
 of right ; from the missionaries of mercy ; from the 
 pass of Thermopylae ; from the Milvian bridge ; from
 
 328 The Discipline of Darkness. 
 
 the fires of Smitlifield ; from the waters of Solway ; 
 from the cross of Calvary. A world without a contin- 
 gency or an agony could have no hero and no saint, 
 and enable no Son of Man to discover that he was a 
 Son of God. But for the suspended plot that is folded 
 in every life, history is a dead chronicle of what was 
 known before as well as after ; Art sinks into the 
 photograph of a moment that hints at nothing else ; 
 and poetry breaks the cords and throws the lyre away. 
 There is no Epic of the certainties ; and no lyric without 
 the surprise of sorrow and the sigh of fear. Whatever 
 touches and ennobles us in the lives and in the voices of 
 the past is a divine birth from human doubt and pain. 
 Let then the shadows lie, and the perspective of the 
 light still deepen beyond our view ; else, while we walk 
 together, our hearts will never burn within us as we 
 go ; and the darkness, as it falls, will deliver us into 
 no hand that is Divine.
 
 PSALM xxxvii. 7. 
 " Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him." 
 
 IT is difficult for the young, and not less so for those 
 who yet remain children in soul, to believe the startling 
 assertion, by religious writers, of the universal misery 
 of men. The sad music of the prophets, the passionate 
 outpourings of an Augustin, the plaintive meditations 
 of a Pascal, and even the tender voice of the Man of 
 Sorrows, appear to them pitched in too deep a key and 
 to wander over notes too far from the brilliancy of joy. 
 The impression is tims very prevalent, that devout 
 persons take melancholy views of things, and throw 
 the unreal shadows from their own minds on the 
 outward scene of their existence. Yet if you will but 
 turn over the page and consult the expression of the 
 same mind in another mood, you may find words 
 transparent with an infinite depth of peace, or dashing 
 on in a torrent of rejoicing. The same Paul who now
 
 330 Rest in the Lord. 
 
 wrings bis drooping hands and cries, " wretched 
 man that I am," ere long flings them aloft to exclaim, 
 " Rejoice in the Lord always ; and again I say unto 
 you, Rejoice ! " The same Wesley who now deplores 
 his " vain repentances," his life grown " fruitless at 
 its end," in lines that hear the trace of tears, then 
 bursts into the triumph of his watch-night songs, and 
 glories in the awful joys of death, in strains that make 
 the passing bell appear to ring with victory. To the 
 inexperienced, both the sadness and the joy seem 
 strange and unintelligible, vehement and opposite 
 outrages upon truth and reality, the alternations of 
 a tumultuous and ill-regulated mind. And yet they 
 not only co-exist without any tendency to mutual ex- 
 clusion ; but are found in men most remarkable for 
 their calmness and constancy of soul, for the clearness 
 of their purposes, and the force and patience of their 
 will. 
 
 The fact is, the childish and the saintly mind form 
 different judgments of life because they look on it from 
 opposite mental stations ; the one from a condition of 
 unaicakened aspiration, the other from that of aspira- 
 tion that has found its path and touched its limits 
 while the great mass of men on whom their observa- 
 tion is made fill an intermediate field, of uneasy and 
 neglected aspiration. The child, gazing at the grown 
 world, and seeing men's outward possessions and not 
 their inward wants, thinks admiringly of their lot,
 
 Rest in the Lord. 331 
 
 regards it as a powerful and cheerful thing, and longs 
 to press into it. The saint, discejning an inward want 
 beyond all the measure of outward possession, pities 
 the infinite thirst that feeds only on ashy and juiceless 
 fruits. And in this deep compassion, with which he 
 looks on life, he from time to time includes himself; 
 for though he has reached the head-spring of ever- 
 living waters, he is not always there : he wanders from 
 them and often becomes as he was when he knew them 
 not, and is then not less parched and sick at heart than 
 all the rest. The three stages of character are not so 
 separated, that when we have emerged into the higher, 
 we cannot relapse into the lower : we cannot ascend, 
 till the atmosphere of God is spread around us ; but to 
 descend in its very midst, we have only to droop the 
 wing. And so it is, that those who have touched the 
 summit know the sunshine and the cloud of every 
 elevation ; while they who are yet below listen, as to 
 strange tales, to the glories and the terrors of the 
 height. 
 
 The great secret of all peace lies in the ascendency 
 of some strong love. Love, the admiring or reverent 
 direction of the heart on some object, is the positive 
 power of our life ; and on its free action, on its due 
 match against the problems it undertakes, depend the 
 tranquillity and unity of existence. The child is happy, 
 because his love is well proportioned to its ends : it 
 ranges over the little circle of good before his eyes;
 
 332 Rest in the Lord. 
 
 and goes unanxiously forth to embrace and realize its 
 aim. He is checked by a venerated control from with- 
 out, not hy shameful hesitancies within : he sighs for 
 little that is out of reach ; and he lives ever pursuing 
 and ever winning his pursuit. The man, at least of 
 the present and all similar ages, is unhappy, because 
 in this he has ceased to be a child. The balance of 
 his nature is destroyed. He has more understanding, 
 and has no more love. The great motive energy of 
 his soul is overchecked, regulated by exacting scruples 
 into an uneasy incapacity. He can no longer surrender 
 himself freely into the possession of a great truth, or 
 plunge into the tides of a glorious passion. He has 
 the wish to take the right course, and the discernment 
 to avoid the wrong, but no impulse to bear him hither 
 or thither ; and so he sits, like a pilot in a calm, with 
 infinite skill to direct his helm, but not a breath to 
 swell his sails. The office of the intellect is purely 
 regulative, that of the conscience mainly prohibitive : 
 they speak to us in negatives ;- " not this way, for it 
 is foolish "; "not that, for it is wrong." They supply 
 no power, but, assuming it to be there, prevent its 
 waste and its abuse. An age that develops them to 
 the neglect of all else, and attempts to live by them 
 alone, finds itself therefore wise in the cure of all 
 diseases, yet without the freshness of natural health, 
 poising its existence on dietetic niceties and not breast- 
 ing the winds of the mountain and facing the driving of
 
 Rest in the Lord. 333 
 
 the snow. "We have surely fallen on such a time of 
 feebleness and unrest. We have the critic everywhere : 
 the lover now r here. Nothing so cheap as the intelli- 
 gence which suffices to contradict and the conscientious- 
 ness which prompts to object : but the heart-wisdom 
 that can light us on our way by the lustre of sweet 
 and earnest affection, the holy zeal that can melt our 
 doubts away and make our duty a march of common 
 joy instead of a skirmish of individual scruples, are 
 little less than obsolete. Disintegration is at work in 
 every church : irresolution marks every party in the 
 state : isolation enfeebles every man apparently fitted 
 to lead in thought or action. Sects keep together by 
 external repulsion rather than by internal attraction ; 
 and the only fervours that appear seem to be the in- 
 spirations of antipathy. In private life the lines of 
 care are deepened : a certain anxiety of mind, a visible 
 susceptibility of temper, the absence of a genial and 
 trustful spirit, betray the unsatisfied nature and the 
 dearth of guiding sympathies within. Thought, grown 
 too quick and active for love, becomes a painful rest- 
 lessness. It is incapable of any flight of steady aim 
 that shall enable it to migrate from clime to clime of 
 truth ; but is like the swallow that has lost its nest, 
 wheeling in idle circles through the air, sweeping the 
 grass or tipping the water with its wing, still hovering 
 round its place of loss, with a cry that proclaims it 
 desolate.
 
 334 Rest in the Lord. 
 
 Wherever this source of unrest exists, there is no 
 remedy but in restoring the lost proportions of the 
 soul : by disciplining the affections into a greatness 
 suitable to the control of so critical a judgment and so 
 scrupulous a conscience. In the absence of anything 
 of nobler scope, limited loves, particular enthusiasms, 
 mere fancies of the mind, be they only innocent, are a 
 great good ; breaking the threads of detaining hesita- 
 tions, and in one direction at least delivering the heart 
 from contempt. The active votary of any harmless 
 object is better than the passive critic of all ; and the 
 dullest man who lives only to collect shells or coins is 
 worthier than the shrewdest who lives only to laugh at 
 him. And if his pursuit, instead of fastening on a 
 mere dead product of nature or history, attach itself 
 to some human object, if it be the pride of a father in 
 a child, or the guardianship of a mother by her son, it 
 redeems life from the curse of sterility, and enriches it 
 with many spots of gentle beauty : it turns the soul 
 out from its own close centre and gives it the free air 
 of disinterestedness : it imparts strength for wholesome 
 self-denial ; and smooths out the hard lines upon the 
 features with the softening touch of pity and of joy. 
 In these days it is a wiser and more difficult skill in 
 education to preserve the enthusiasms of nature, than 
 to regulate them by the artifices of reason ; to save 
 the moral admirations from false shame at their own 
 earnestness than to restrain them from rash excess.
 
 Rest in the Lord. 335 
 
 Let tlio fresh dew lie undisturbed upon the young 
 child's soul : only by drinking it eagerly in during the 
 early .hours can it bear the noonday heats and l.end an 
 unwithered smile to the evening shades. 
 
 But it is only in contrast with no love that we can 
 thus accept any love as a good. It cannot be morally 
 indifferent what the object of affection is. It would 
 be a weak and sentimental abuse of Christian doctrine 
 to suppose that, because " love is the fulfilling of the 
 law," any sort of feeling that carries us out of our- 
 selves satisfies the demands of divine obligation and 
 completes the conditions of a holy peace. The objects 
 offered to the heart are very variously worthy of its 
 attachment ; and only when each has its just share 
 and place and, however dear, recedes before more 
 venerable claims, can we cease to be among the weary 
 and heavy-laden, and find the true disciple's inner rest. 
 It is the vice of amiable fanatics to treat love as in 
 itself the supreme good, the end of the Christian life ; 
 to pray always jand only for the melting of the stony 
 heart ; as if, when this were done, all was surely right, 
 and nothing remained for vigilance and aspiration. 
 Love is a good, not on its own account, but on account 
 of the excellence to which it clings ; not because it sets 
 the heart at one with something, but with something 
 noble, true and holy. Nobleness, truth and holiness 
 must therefore be higher than affection, being that to 
 which it ought to spring. Where they are not made
 
 336 Rest in the Lord. 
 
 supreme and paramount, wherever love stays with 
 mixed and lower objects and intercepts the clear view 
 of these, wherever it learns to be satisfied with its 
 tenderness and heedless of its purity, not only is its 
 influence tainted, but its peace is spoiled by utter 
 instability. A heart entirely surrendered to its human 
 and earthly relations, without throwing around them 
 the hallowed atmosphere of faith, is indeed redeemed 
 from the dry pining of a bark-bound and unmellowed 
 nature ; but has no security from the sorrows and sins 
 of impulse, no shelter from the storms of tumultuous 
 anguish. The domestic love which is a mere enlarge- 
 ment of instinct, without moral appreciation, without 
 reverence, providing the tender care, but unconscious 
 of a holy trust, is detained with the earthly form, and 
 never catches the heavenly spirit, of its lot. No sacred- 
 ness mingles with the daily task : no angel-hand wipes 
 the tears of weariness away : no treasured hope beguiles 
 the bereft and mourning heart with visions sweet and 
 calm. For want of a supporting reverence, the truest 
 affection loses its clearness and misses its proper end. 
 The parent, for instance, loves his children : nor was 
 there ever perhaps a country or an age in which this 
 relation had more power than with us. Too often, 
 however, he loves them with no tincture of respect or 
 restraining sense of sanctity ; but more and more with 
 the tenderness of indulgent instinct ; less and less with 
 that quiet strength to deny them and authority to
 
 Rest in the Lord. 337 
 
 guide them, which springs from the consciousness of 
 a trust and the presence of a Divine eye. Hence, the 
 natural distance between souls, the very thing that 
 makes the beauty of life's perspective and the whole- 
 someness of its discipline, is disappearing from recog- 
 nition : young and old, wise and foolish, are brought to 
 the level of a kindly but prosaic equality ; and the 
 hoary head turns coward, whilst the young child grows 
 bold. Hence, too, a spectacle more and more common, 
 especially in the families of the affluent, which a 
 thoughtful observer finds it sad to behold. Often you 
 may see the earliest years of children cared for with a 
 studious conscience ; not merely a well-adjusted phy- 
 sical management, and a steady mechanism of habit 
 and good instruction ; but a nice vigilance over the 
 temper and dispositions, a scrupulous regard for truth 
 and purity, an anxiety to train the moral taste aright ; 
 giving you every hope that the parents know their 
 sacred trust, and feel their house to be a shrine of 
 devout service. What fairer sight can there be than 
 the children of such a home ? the open brow, the 
 clear confiding eye, the gracious ways, the artlessness 
 moulded into beauty, present a frequent picture which 
 it is a joy to behold. Thus far the purest desires of 
 the home, the prayers that the children may be good, 
 have no hindrance : they regulate the hours, they choose 
 the instructor, they form the speech, they determine the 
 companions, they select the tale. But the nursery does 
 
 z
 
 3 38 Rest in the Lord. 
 
 not last for ever. The time comes when its threshold 
 must be passed, and from a distance the hum and mur- 
 mur begin to flow upon the ear from the great halls of 
 life ; and how often does that dizzying sound act with 
 a fatal charm and confuse the native religion of the 
 parent's heart! He no longer offers these young 
 souls only to goodness and to God, but now limits his 
 higher wishes by the conditions of fashion and success. 
 That his sons should be pure, manly, noble ; that his 
 daughters should be guileless, modest, and of loving 
 earnest heart ; that both should be so true to their best 
 aspirings as to meet any Christ-like eye and lie open to 
 any holiest spirit ; these wishes are qualified now by the 
 resolve that no disadvantage shall be suffered in the hot 
 race of life> and no unskilfulness endured in the usages 
 and ideas of the surrounding world. And so, from that 
 moment, the tyranny of custom intrudes upon the serious 
 sanctities of parental choice ; and on the minds hitherto 
 so protected a thousand influences are permitted to pour 
 which shock their purity and bewilder their veracity and, 
 with a false dazzle of frivolity, put out the earnest stars 
 of heavenly contemplation. It is of all things the 
 most melancholy to watch the moral clouding over of 
 life's early dawn ; to trace the dim veil stealing over the 
 artless look ; to notice how the earnest tone begins to 
 leave the voice, and every worthy enthusiasm dies away 
 into indifference ; how it comes to be thought a fine 
 thing to speak coolly of what is odious for its vice,
 
 Rest in the Lord. 339 
 
 and critically of what is awful for its beauty. Thus 
 to see the young that had filled us with love and 
 hope growing out of their simplicity and intuitive clear- 
 ness instead of maturing into depth and enlarging into 
 greatness, is like the disappointing passage from the 
 fresh spring to the mid-summer in the precincts of a 
 large town instead of in the open country and amid the 
 breezy hills ; the brilliant foliage, the joyous grass, the 
 sportive light, fading in the one case into a dingy 
 grimace of nature, ripening in the other into a massive 
 fulness and splendour. Where this spoiling takes 
 place, I believe it is because we mingle no reverence with 
 our affection, and accept without awe the solemn trust of 
 a child's conscience. Were there a deeper reality in our 
 cares for religious training, we should feel committed to 
 us a soul new as if born in Paradise, and should watch 
 to see the divine features come out; should fear to 
 quench any aspiration, to contradict any protest, to hurt 
 any sacred instinct, of a spirit nearer perhaps to God 
 than ours. Do you plead the necessity, urged for so 
 many questionable things, of giving the youth betimes 
 " a knowledge of the world " ? Aye ; but of what 
 "world"? for that is a large name, which covers 
 several different things. Do you mean the crowd of 
 contemporaries on the same level with himself, his 
 equals or inferiors in principle and character, who by 
 their tendencies and habits vote into existence the 
 customs amid which he is to live ? If BO, you propose 
 
 z 2
 
 34-Q Rest in the Lord. 
 
 to bring him down to the average standard created by 
 the mixed multitude of good and bad, to kill out 
 every higher expostulation of the soul, and undo as he 
 ad^ 7 ances the hopeful work of earlier years. No : be 
 not afraid to scorn so poor an ambition. Let him grow 
 familiar with an elder and a better " world " than this ; 
 with the men of grander stature, who constitute the 
 honour and lustre of history ; who will rebuke in him 
 all mean enclosure in the present and make him con- 
 scious of high communion with the past; who will 
 kindlo him with veneration for the nature given him to 
 adorn ; who will detain him in the company of tho wise 
 and holy, and touch him with shame, if he be not 
 worthy of their society and kindred. The minds above 
 him, the spirits of patriots and saints, martyrs of truth, 
 apostles of righteousness, these are the " world," in 
 the " knowledge " of which it is ennobling to excel, 
 though it gives no passport to the assemblies of fashion, 
 and supplies no key to the slang of frivolity. 
 
 As with domestic love, so is it with every affection 
 that can separately possess the soul : if it escapes the 
 grasp, and is not taken up by the glory, of a devout 
 Faith, it is never safe from becoming wavering, wild, or 
 tyrannous. If frustrated, its disappointment is without 
 rebound, falls with crushing blow and then lies still as 
 a dead and irremovable weight. If satisfied, the joy 
 of success, spoiled by self-gratulation, becomes a mere 
 exuberance of spirits, and has none of the serene
 
 Rest in the Lord. 341 
 
 dignity of a thankful soul. "Where there is no quieting 
 perception of a Divine Presence in the world, the sense 
 of justice, the indignation at wrong, sinks into a revolu- 
 tionary passion, fantastic in its speech and reckless in 
 its ways, instead of a grave and considerate obedience 
 to the eternal Law of God. All human enthusiasms, 
 permitted to become ultimate and disown their divine 
 subordination, invariably degenerate into restlessness 
 and precipitation ; fret and chafe impatiently against 
 the obstacles that stay their course ; and where they 
 cannot win a happy way, waste -and corrode themselves 
 with inner scorns and vexations. A vehement tempera- 
 ment may no doubt be externally subdued by considera- 
 tions of policy, or the discipline of good taste and 
 intellect. But how paltry is this decent self-control, 
 compared with the real internal calm when the Christ- 
 like spirit has walked over the wild waters of the soul ! 
 No sublimer spectacle do I know on earth, than the 
 faculties of a grand and passionate nature, as in a 
 Socrates or a Paul, falling into stillness before the 
 face of God, and by the awful light of his countenance 
 turned from a stormy nobleness into a loving and work- 
 ing power. It is a spectacle which emerges painfully 
 and rarely from the battle of the will, spontaneously 
 and often from the repose of faith. 
 
 In thus seeking a divine transfiguration for all our 
 natural impulses, I am far from wishing to set up, like 
 our older divines, the love of the Creator in opposition
 
 342 Rest in the Lord. 
 
 to what was called " the love of the creatures"; as 
 though the mind intent on God must find every other 
 sympathy ahsorbed, and feel itself alone and without 
 relation amid the Infinite. This fancied antagonism 
 between the human and divine yearnings of our nature 
 is a cold metaphysic sublimation so false to reality that 
 the gentlest spirit, we may safely affirm, will ever come 
 more gentle and loving from its prayers ; and the first 
 trace by which God marks his path across the soul is 
 the new tenderness in every tint of pure affection, and 
 the quicker movement in each work of kindly service. 
 But this I do profoundly believe ; that all finite loves 
 are only half-born, wandering in a poor twilight, un- 
 knowing of thtir peace and power, till they lie within 
 the encompassing and glorifying love of God. Where 
 there is no reference to him, our pictures of the moral 
 universe become as much mere local distortions as the 
 systems of nature which misplace the stationary Sun. 
 The soul, drawn out by filial sympathy into his infini- 
 tude and blended by aspiration with his absolute perfec- 
 tion, sees the inner orbits of dependent good precisely 
 as they are, fair and true in themselves, but borrowing a 
 more solemn beauty from their relation to the whole. 
 Held to their centre of equilibrium, and facing his light 
 from their several distances, the lesser affections observe 
 their proportions and do not fly from their tracks. How 
 can they ever look away from him ? He is the element 
 in which they live. Though they were to perish, ho
 
 Rest in the Lord. 343 
 
 would endure. While all else rises and flows by, he 
 is and ever stays. Amid the fleeting shows and dis- 
 appointed promises of good, he abides with us, the in- 
 exhaustible Essence and reality of all. In him alone, 
 but in him for ever, there is Rest. In evil days, 
 when just men strive in vain to beat back the hosts of 
 wrong, and mad tyrannies gall the heart with shouts of 
 triumph, the Sentinel of every world is on his sleep- 
 less watch, and knows how to protect it from surprise. 
 He is the continuous thread of all our years, and his 
 love throws in each pattern of beauty woven into their 
 texture : and when the images of the past, the distant 
 fields, the dear abode, the gracious forms, the vivid 
 hopes, the earnest heroisms, of our young days, gleam 
 with a fairer light through the sorrows and failures of 
 maturity, it is his breathing spirit that dissipates the 
 cloud of time, and sends his reviving sunshine through. 
 Only let us be at one with him, and our life gathers 
 down upon it the strength of his infinite serenity. The 
 simple thought, that ' God is here,' that the august 
 Ordainer of our trust and supporter of our faithfulness 
 is present in the very hiding-places of the soul, con- 
 tains within it the most powerful agencies of religion. 
 Warning, sympathy and rest are treasured in it to in- 
 exhaustible amount. Amid the fatigues of life's inces- 
 sant struggle, under the sense that we can never sleep or 
 all things will go wrong, refreshment is instantly gained 
 when we ascend to the fountain of all affection, and touch
 
 344 Rest in the Lord. 
 
 the parching lips with the draft of life. In temptations 
 to unfaithfulness witnessed by no human eye, let us 
 hut say, ' Ah ! Lord, but thou art here,' and the failing 
 purpose springs to its feet again. And under the en- 
 croachments of fretfulness or despondency from the 
 frequent perrerseness of men, what can so soon check 
 the hasty thought, soothe the unquiet passion, and put 
 a music of patience into the soul, as the look of that 
 pure and loving eye from its depth of infinite calm ? 
 In the trembling of age and the stealthy approaches 
 of the last sleep, the dear presence of an Almighty 
 Guardian, to whom age is as childhood and who unites 
 the future with the past, fills the deepening shadows 
 with a mild and holy light. Let him only be near ; and 
 the obscuring veil of mortal ill that sometimes seems to 
 shut us in, and tempts us to believe in nothing but the 
 sad rain, is soon withdrawn, like the cloud lifting itself 
 from out the glen ; and the sunshine first glorifies, then 
 dissipates the haze ; leaving the mountain-range of im- 
 movable goodness and beauty clear against the ever- 
 lasting sky. So pass the storms away, so deepens the 
 heavenly view, to the soul that will but "rest in the 
 Lord and wait patiently for him."
 
 Messrs. Roberts BrotJiers* Publications. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. By Rev. 
 D. \V. FAUNCE. i6mo. Price $1.50. Contents: The 
 Statement; The Method; Principles; The Christian in 
 Prayer; The Christian in his Recreations; The Christian 
 in his Business. 
 
 From the Boston Cultivator. 
 
 It will be remembered that by the will of the late Hon. Richard Flelchef 
 a fund was bequeathed to Dartmouth College, from the proceeds of which should 
 be offered biennially a prize of $500 for the best essay on the importance of holy 
 living on the part of Christian professors, and to the author of this admirably 
 written work has the prize been awarded. This earnest, practical appeal for a 
 higher standard of Christian living comes fresh from the heart, and we think 
 must reach the heart and bring forth fruit in the lives of those who read it. In its 
 wi e application it comes to the Christian in his business and social relations, 
 his daily duties and recreations, telling him how in all these varied relations he 
 can be a " Christian in the World," and a blessing to his race. 
 
 From tlie Christian Era. 
 
 But the characteristic of the work, one which will attract to it a class of 
 intelligent, spiritual-minded Christians, the unorganized fraternity of the inner and 
 the outer life, is its lefty, uncompromising, exhilarating idealism. It exhibits the 
 perfect man in Christ, and to that picture it points with the calm earnestness of 
 conviction, though with the humility and sympathy begotten by the consciousness 
 of sin and the remembrance of divers stumblings in the way of life. 
 
 From the Syracuse Journal, 
 
 Mr. Faunce is a clear and forcible writer, whose name is familiar to readers 
 of the Baptist press, and in this essay he has most powerfully and practically 
 developed his subject. He first impresses the practicability and positiveness 
 of Christian duty, demanded alike from Christians and busy men in the world. 
 The first five chapters are devoted to the Statement, Method, and Princ pies 
 involved, devoting the remaining chapters to the duty of the Christian in Prayer, 
 in his Recreations, and finally in his Business. The full, rich, practical stiggcst-ons 
 contained in this essay, the earnest spirit which inspired it, and withal its pleasant^ 
 flowing style, render it one of the most desirable of books on kindred topics, and 
 we bespeak for it at least a place in every Christian library. 
 
 Sold everywhere by all Booksellers. Mailed, postpaid, by 
 the Publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON.
 
 Messrs. Roberts Brothers 1 Publications. 
 
 RINGERS AND SONGS OF THE LIBERAL 
 FAITH; being selections of Hymns and other Sacred 
 Poems of the Liberal Church in America, with Biograph- 
 ical Sketches of the Writers, and with Historical and 
 Illustrative Notes. By ALFRED P. PUTNAM. 8vo. 
 Price $3-00. 
 
 Front the Neiv York Independent, 
 
 The service which lias been done by Dr. A. P. Putnam, of Brooklyn, to those 
 eonii minions usually called Liberal, by compiling his beautiful book entitled 
 " Singers and Songs of the Liberal Faith," is one not easily exaggerated. . . . 
 As literature, these hymns have a high value ; but they signify most as expressions 
 of religious sentiment, as devout utterances of trusting and aspiring souls. . . . 
 There is, as Dr. Putnam reminds us, very little heresy in hymns. And we pity 
 the bigot who could read this volume through without feeling some drawings of 
 Christian fraternity toward the people whose deepest life is here so nobly 
 expressed. 
 
 From the Liberal Christian. 
 
 It is very creditable to the editor that he has embraced so large an area and 
 reaped the fruits of Jields lying as far apart as the utmost extremes of our Zion. 
 We find no evidence of any partisan or school prejudices in his selections ; indeed, 
 we know no work from which personal biases have been more successfully or 
 creditably excluded. In this respect, Dr. Putnam's volume is a true Irenicon, 
 a peacemaker; sweetly reconciling the discordant voices of denominational 
 polemics, in the harmony accordant of song. We cannot doubt that the assem- 
 bling of so many and such dissimilar thinkers, in one chorus of praise, is a long 
 step towards a union in higher sentiments of those temporarily divided by 
 intellectual diversities. 
 
 From the Christian Union, 
 
 The literary value of Mr. Putnam's collection is unusually high, when we 
 compare it with that of other volumes of religious poetry. To our minds the 
 most convincing evidence of the existence of religious feeling among the people is 
 the immense circulation of books of religious verse." We speak from actual 
 knowledge when we say that certain compilations of religious poems have sold in 
 greater numbers than the works of the most popular poets. These pious verses 
 have, as a rule, been entirely devoid of poetic expression or sentiment, but their 
 subjects have reconciled readers to all literary defects. Admirable as is the spirit 
 which accepts such books, we cannot help believing it would be improved and 
 elevated if the same thoughts were presented in language more poetic ; for 
 spirituality is, practically, the poetry of devotion. We hope, therefore, that Dr. 
 Putnam's book will be largely bought and read. 
 
 Sold everywhere by all Booksellers. Mailed, postpaid, by 
 the rublishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON.
 
 MESSES. EGBERTS BROTHERS' PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 TIIK PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRA- 
 DITION. By KHKUERIC HKNRY HKPOE, D.I)., Author ol 
 " Reason in Religion." One volLime, IGiuo. Price $1.50. 
 
 From the A'ew York Tribune. 
 
 Mr. Hedge may be called an eclectic: not as one who picks from dlf- 
 fsrent systems the detached bits that suit him. and then joins them skilfullj 
 together; but as one who, committing himself unreservedly to neither sy&- 
 teni, endeavors by independent and cultivated insight to get at the dtei>est 
 truth contained in formulas, creeds, and institutions. His faitli is wholly 
 In reason: he will prove all things, and hold fast only what is good; but 
 bis crucibles are various in size and quality, his tests are of many kinds, 
 and his reason combines the action of as many intellectual faculties si* ha 
 can bring into play His faith is planted in a firm but gracious Theism, 
 Oioral like that of Muses, and loving like that of Christ. The belief in a 
 divine origin, education, guidance, and discipline of the world, runs through 
 his pages; and a conviction of the moral capabilities and of the spirit u.il 
 destination of man shines in his argument and ennobles the conclusion. 
 Those who do not agree with the book need not be orlcnded by it; and they 
 who do agree with it will be charmed by the beauty iu which what they 
 regard as truth is converted. 
 
 from the London (Enr/.) Enquirer. 
 
 We have been unable to criticise because we tind ourselves throughout 
 In entire sympathy and agreement with the writer. We cordially commend 
 L)r. Hedge's book as the best solution we have ever seen of the dittieult 
 problems connected with the primeval Scripture record, and as an admi- 
 rable illustration of the spirit of reverent constructive criticism. Such a 
 work as this is aim >st like a new revelation of the divine worth of the 
 ancient Hebrew Traditions, and their permanent relation to the higher 
 thought and progress of the world. 
 
 AMERICAN RELIGION. By JOHN WEISS. One 
 volume, IGnio. Cloth. Trice $1.50. 
 
 From the I'hilailelphia Press. 
 
 Himself a clergyman, Mr. Weiss writes understandingly upon a very 
 solemn theme. His closing chapter, entitled "The American Soldier," ! 
 one cf the noblest and truest tributes to the patriots of 18GI-U5 ever put into 
 print. 
 
 From the Chicago Tribune. 
 
 Mr. Weiss has presented to the public a scheme for an American religion 
 which, it is almost needless to say, is a religion of the intellect adapted to 
 the highest form of American culture, and not pervaded to any great d'ffre* 
 with spirituality, as the term is understood among orthodox believers. 
 ... If Mr. Weiss had christened his scheme "American Morality," we 
 would gladly have hailed his discovery. As it is, we cannot but commend 
 Its loftiness of purpose. It is a work full of noble thought, and, however 
 much the reader may disagree with it from a religious point of view, there 
 are very few who can fail to be struck with its purity of aim and its healtl.y 
 moral tone; while the merely literary reader will derive eijual gratilicatlon 
 from the scholarly style and the richness of illustration and research it dis- 
 plays. The last diopter but one, "Constancy to an Ideal," is one of the 
 finest and noblest essays ever written b; au American, and deserves to be 
 read and heeded by every American. 
 
 Sold everywhere. Mailed, postpaid, by the Publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS. BOSTON
 
 Jlfessrs. Roberts Brother? Publications. 
 
 RINGERS AND SONGS OF THE LIBERAL 
 FAITH; being selections of Hymns and other Sacred 
 Poems of the Liberal Church in America, with Biograph- 
 ical Sketches of the Writers, and with Historical and 
 Illustrative Notes. By ALFRED P. PUTNAM. 8vo. 
 Price $3-00. 
 
 Front tJte Neiu York Independent. 
 
 The service which has been done by Dr. A. P. Putnam, of Brooklyn, to those 
 communions usually called Liberal, by compiling his beautiful book entitled 
 " Singers and Songs of the Liberal Faith," is one not easily exaggerated. . . . 
 As literature, these hymns have a high value ; but they signify most as expressions 
 of religious sentiment, as devout utterances of trusting and aspiring souls. . . . 
 There is, as Dr. Putnam reminds us, very little heresy in hymns. And we pity 
 the bigot who could read this volume through without feeling some drawings of 
 Christian fraternity toward the people whose deepest life is here so nobly 
 expressed. 
 
 From the Liberal Christian. 
 
 It is very creditable to the editor that he has embraced so large an area and 
 reaped the fruits of fields lying as far apart as the utmost extremes of our Zion. 
 We find no evidence of any partisan or school prejudices in his selections ; indeed, 
 we know no work from which personal biases have been more successfully or 
 creditably excluded. In this respect, Dr. Putnam's volume is a true Irenicon, 
 a peacemaker; sweetly reconciling the discordant voices of denominational 
 polemics, in the harmony accordant of song. We cannot doubt that the assem- 
 bling of so many and such dissimilar thinkers, in one chorus of praise, is a long 
 step towards a union in higher sentiments of those temporarily divided by 
 intellectual diversities. 
 
 front the Christian Union. 
 
 The literary value of Mr. Putnam's collection is unusually high, when we 
 compare it with that of other volumes of religious poetry. To our minds the 
 most convincing evidence of the existence of religious feeling among the people is 
 the immense circulation of books of religious verse." We speak from actual 
 knowledge when we say that certain compilations of religious poems have sold in 
 greater numbers than the works of the most popular poets. These pious verses 
 have, as a rule, been entirely devoid of poetic expression or sentiment, but their 
 subjects have reconciled readers to all literary defects. Admirable as is the spirit 
 which accepts such books, we cannot help believing it would be improved and 
 elevated if the same thoughts were presented in language more poetic ; for 
 spirituality is, practically, the poetry of devotion. We hope, therefore, that Dr. 
 Putnam's book will be largely bought and read. 
 
 Sold everywhere by all Booksellers. Mailed, postpaid, by 
 the Publishers f 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON.
 
 MESSES. EOBEETS BEOTEEES' PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 THE PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRA- 
 D1TION. By FKKUERIC HKNRY HEDGE, D.I)., Author ol 
 " Reason in Religion." One volume, IGino. Price SI. 50. 
 
 From the Xeic York Tribune. 
 
 ui leat-on: lie win prtneaii iiiings, ami uoiu INN only wuai is goou; [>ui 
 bis crucibles are various in si/e anil quality, his tests are of many kinds, 
 ami his reason combines the action of as many intellectual faculties a8 ha 
 can brlrtg into play, liis faith is planted in a tirin but gracious Theism, 
 nioral like that of Moses, and loving like that of Christ. The belief in a 
 divine origin, education, guidance, and discipline of the world, runs through 
 liis pages; and a conviction of the moral capabilities and of the spirit u.U 
 destination of man shines in his argument and ennobles the conclusion. 
 Those who do not agree with the book need not be oti'ended by it; and they 
 who do agree with it will be charmed by the beauty iu which what they 
 regard as truth is converted. 
 
 From tlie London (Entj.) Enquirer. 
 
 We have been unable to criticise because we tind ourselves throughout 
 In entire sympathy and agreement with the -writer. We cordially commend 
 Dr. Hedge's book as the best solution we have ever seen of the uitlinilt 
 problems connected with the primeval Scripture record, and as an admi- 
 rable illustration of the spirit of reverent constructive criticism. Such a 
 work as this is aim ;st like a new revelation of the divine worth of the 
 ancient Hebrew Traditions, ami their permanent relation to the higher 
 thought and progress of the world. 
 
 AMERICAN RELIGION. By Jonx WEISS. One 
 
 volume, llimo. Cloth. Trice $1.50. 
 
 From the Philadelphia Press. 
 
 Himself a clergyman, Mr. Weiss writes umlerstandingly npon a very 
 solemn theme. Hi's closing chapter, entitled " The American Soldier," ii 
 one cf the noblest and truest tributes to the patriots of 1801-Go ever put into 
 print. 
 
 From the Chicago Tribune. 
 
 Mr. Weiss lias presented to the public a scheme for an American religion 
 whirli. it is almost needless to say, is a religion of the intellect adapted to 
 the highest form of American culture, and not pervaded to anv great d^jree 
 with spirituality, as the term is understood among orthodox lielievers. 
 ... 11' Mr. Weiss had christened his scheme "American Morality," we 
 would gladly have hailed his discovery. AH it is, we cannot but commend 
 Its loftiness of purpose. It is a work full of noble thought, and, however 
 much the reader may disagree with it from a religious point of view, there 
 are very few tvhocan fail to be struck with its [unity of aim and its healtl.y 
 moral tone; while the merely literary reader will derive e<jual gratification 
 from the scholarly style and the richness of illustration and research it dis- 
 plays. The last chapter but one, "Constancy to an Ideal," is one of the 
 finest and noblest essays ever written b; an American, and deserves to be 
 read and heeded by every American. 
 
 Sold evert/where. Mailed, postpaid, by the Publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON
 
 Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 
 
 THE PERFECT LIFE. 
 
 n Ouclbe Discourses. 
 By WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING, D.D. 
 
 Edited from his manuscripts by his nephew, WILLIAM 
 HENRY CHANNIXG. 121110. Price 1.50. 
 
 "The pulpit of the present day is in great clanger of losing its 
 dignity. For this, as well as other reasons, we welcome these Dis- 
 courses of Dr. Channing. They are written in a fresh and pure 
 style, and express lofty thoughts in simple yet noble language. 
 We marvel that they have not been previously given to the pub- 
 lic." BMiotheca Sacra. 
 
 "The volume is very welcome for many and the best reasons. 
 Doubtless a jealous Orthodox critic, intent on finding heresies, 
 will discover more or less to cavil at or challenge ; but these Dis- 
 courses lift us into an atmosphere too high and serene for polem- 
 ical controversy, and tend to make the reader's heart cry out after 
 the living God, or lovingly adore him as for the gift of his glorious 
 self to the soul. All the charm of Dr. Channing's glowing and 
 finished style lend themselves to this significant and reverent 
 message from the depths of his heart. Is'ot many books are so 
 thoroughly saturated with religion as this, and it is of such a sort 
 as the world greatly needs to-day." Dover Morning Star. 
 
 "To all who are capable of discriminating we recommend it as 
 a work which will enlarge their conceptions of the greatness 
 and preciousness of Christianity, and lead them to deal more rev- 
 erently with their own nature, and with all questions if duty and 
 destiny." Christian Standard? 
 
 "They tell what we would all gladly believe, if we cannot prove 
 it to be true. And they will save those who read them wiih 
 sympathy from that pride of half-knowledge, which makes the 
 present seeming a barrier to all future revelation." Christian 
 Register. 
 
 Sold everywhere. Mailed postpaid by the Publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON.
 
 MESSRS. ROBERTS BROTHERS' PUBLICATIONS. 
 TlIB LAYMAN'S BREVIARY; 
 
 r, fHelutattcns for dcberg Ban in tfie gear. 
 
 FROM THE GERMAN OF LEOPOLD SCHKFER. 
 
 BY C. T. BROOKS. 
 
 Square i6mo. Cloth, gilt, bevelled boards. Price $i.co. 
 Cheaper edition. i6mo. Cloth. Price $1.50. 
 
 from the Christian Register. 
 
 " The volume, which is a beautiful specimen of typography, and enriched with 
 a portrait of its author, consists of a series of poetical meditations for every day 
 in the year, characterized by great simplicity and directness of thought, consider- 
 able knowledge of life, a high and pure aim, and much beauty of expression. 
 Many of the pieces are perfect gems, and the volume will be highly prized by 
 thoughtful and cultivated readers. We know no bonk ol its class to which stronger 
 praise can be awarded than will be bestowed on this by such persons, as there is 
 none which we have read with more satisfaction and profit, or which is nior; likely 
 to furnish wholesome food for thought to every reader." 
 
 From the N. Y. Times. 
 
 "Schefer unites the deepest worship of the works of nature as the creation* 
 of God with the broadest human sympathies, and colors his poetical n editaticns 
 with profuse wealth of Oriental imagery. The plan in which they are arranged 
 a separate meditation for every day in the year in no way fetters the freedom of 
 \Ls, fancy, although ' the changing seasons of the year ' gave an undertone to the 
 strain of his poetry. It is not a work to skim through and throw aside: many of 
 what at first glance might seem fugitive pieces are deeply suggestive. It would 
 be difficult to find a work for presentation of more solid worth. We must cot 
 omit a word or two as to the general appearance of the book. It is beautifully 
 and substantially bound, while the exquisite clearness of the type and the delicate 
 tone of the paper are in perfect harmony with the beauty of the thoughts embodied 
 in them." 
 
 Sold everywhere. Mailed, postpaid, by the Publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON.
 
 Messrs. Roberts Brothers Publications. 
 
 REASON, FAITH, AND DUTY. 
 
 PREACHED CHIEFLY IN THE COLLEGE CHAPEL. 
 
 BY JAMES WALKER, D.D., LL.D., 
 
 LATE PRESIDENT OF HARVARD COLLEGE 
 
 With a newly engraved Likeness of the Author. 
 
 One handsome square I2mo volume. Price $2.00. Sold 
 everywhere. Mailed, postpaid, by the Publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, 
 
 Boston.

 
 THE LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Santa Barbara 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW.