'#^W«^: 
 
 -• r^i 
 
 n 
 
 L I B RARY 
 
 OF THE 
 U N I VERS ITY 
 or 1 LLl NOIS
 
 GUIDANCE INTO TRUTH-WHAT HINDERS ? 
 
 THREE 
 
 SUGGESTIVE DISCOUESES: 
 
 1. HINDRANCES FROM ERRORS IN JUDGMENT. 
 
 2. HINDRANCES FROM WANT OF LOVE. 
 
 3. HINDRANCES FROM THE BREACH OF THE 
 
 COVENANT OF HOPE. 
 
 By rev. JAMES SKINNER, M.A., 
 
 S. ISamabaa', ^(mUco. 
 
 " We prefer the edification of the Churches to all private respect and favour 
 toward each other ; for by this means, the word of faith being consonant among 
 us, and Christian charity bearing sway over us, we shall cease from speaking 
 after that manner which the Apostle condemns — ' I am of Paul, and I am of 
 Apollos, and I am of Cephas ;' for if we all do appear to be of Christ, Who 
 is not divided amongst us, we shall then, through God's grace, preserve the 
 body of the Church from schism, and present ourselves before the throne of 
 Chbist with boldness." — Letter of the Eastern Bishops to the Western 
 Bishops. Theodoret Ecc. Hist. lib. 5, 9. 
 
 LONDON : 
 J. T. HAYES, 6, LYALL PLACE, EATON SQUARE.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 I AM not aware that any of the regular and con- 
 sistent members of S. Barnabas' congregation are 
 Romanizing. I rejoice to think, that the spirit of our 
 service to God is, throughout the whole body, a 
 spirit of affectionate, hearty, earnest, loyalty to the 
 English Church. I am quite sure our strength lies 
 in such a spirit. Never can weakness for the marring 
 of any good purpose whatever, so prevail amongst 
 us, as when our hearts become shaken in confidence 
 and love, and we begin to talk contemptuously of the 
 Church of England, and partially of the Church of 
 Rome. 
 
 I think it is a great mistake to talk contempt- 
 uously at all — either of Rome, or of any body of 
 Christians whatever. It is an unchristian temper, 
 after all is said. But, it is worse than a mistake to 
 talk contemptuously of the Spiritual Mother who bore 
 us — at whose breasts we have been nourished, and 
 under whose shelter, by the Holy Ghost, we have 
 been made what we are, in holiness of life.
 
 IV 
 
 I know there are many persons who are tempted 
 first to talk undutifully, and then to act unfaithfully. 
 The first generally leads to the second. And when 
 this is so, there is seldom any good account to be given 
 of the course of their perversion. There has been no 
 patient investigation — no years of study and of impor- 
 tunate prayer — no discipline of body and of mind — 
 beforehand. An act of the will — an impulse of 
 the feelings — and all is over. And then comes 
 that change on which the whole destiny of a soul 
 hangs. 
 
 Perversions to Rome are beginning again. They 
 seem to come by fits and gusts. There is nothing 
 strange in this. So long as there are weaknesses and 
 infirmities among mankind, there will be manifesta- 
 tions of them outwardly in bodies and in minds. And 
 it is a feature incidental to all great movements of the 
 mind to truth, that some persons will go off" in one 
 or other extreme. I have heard of certain letters, and 
 seen one, from Rome, where one or two young men 
 have lately been perverted. These letters have been 
 circulated among persons attending this Church. I 
 have thought it my duty to preach the first of the 
 following sermons in consequence, and to print it. 
 
 -UIUC
 
 And I have added two others, preached formerly, 
 which bear upon the same subject. 
 
 If any one recognizes forms of expression and argu- 
 ments which they have heard or seen before, I hope 
 they will bear in mind that one cannot, in every case, 
 remember to whom one is indebted for what one learns 
 in the course of general study. Besides, I must avow 
 that I am not aiming at originality, but at doing 
 good, and asserting my own undying affection for the 
 Church of England, in which God has been pleased 
 to call me to serve. 
 
 It is my duty to state, that the line of thought pur- 
 sued in the third sermon, was suggested to me by an 
 earnest and an able Irish Cleryman whom I met in 
 the south of Europe in 1847, who is now in very 
 high office among the body of persons called " Irving- 
 ties," — or as they call themselves, " The Church.'* 
 
 The only difference to my mind, between that 
 " development " and the Roman supremacy, is, that, 
 for one Pope, generally an Italian, we have twelve 
 Popes — all, I believe. Englishmen — claiming to sit 
 upon the apostolic throne, and to rule the Universal 
 Church !
 
 VI 
 
 The " twelve Apostles " of the present century make 
 no claim to a succession. They simply assert a call 
 by direct inspiration. This is a plain and straight- 
 forward issue, at all events. And they may accept it, 
 as proved, who can. 
 
 S. Barnabas' Parsonage, 
 Wfdtsuntide 1856.
 
 SEEMON I. 
 
 HINDRANCES FROM ERRORS IN JUDGMENT. 
 
 " Contention ariseth either through error in men's judgment, or else disorder 
 in their affections. When contention doth grow by error in judgment, it 
 ceaseth not till men, by instruction, come to see wherein they err, and what it 
 is that did deceive them. Without this, there is neither policy nor punishment 
 that can establish peace in the Church." — Hooker. 
 
 {^Preached at S. Barnabas', Pimlico, on the Fourth Sunday after Easter.) 
 
 " When He the Spirit of Truth is come, He will guide you 
 unto all truth." — S. John xvi. 13. 
 
 It may seem, at first sight, strange that our Lord's 
 last discourse, before He suffered, should take up the 
 thoughts of the Church, and be marked out for the 
 Gospel, during the whole interval from Easter to the 
 Ascension. We might have rather looked to hear of 
 remission of sin — of reconciliation with God — of life 
 and rest, and peace — the blessed fruits of His Passion ; 
 instead of which, we hear of His own anticipated suffer- 
 ings, and all the trials and sorrows which await His 
 people. 
 
 But our first sight is often a short sight, and so it 
 is here. The Church desires to lead us onward and 
 upward. Do not linger on your festal joy, she 
 seems to say ; do not set up for yourselves a perpetual 
 holiday. Remember the image of God has been 
 restored to you, and you must preserve it. Remember
 
 the image of the old man has been dead and buried, 
 and you must never renew it more. And how is this 
 to be done ? You must be up and see ; you will never 
 accomplish it by simply reflecting upon His Death and 
 Resurrection: for, the burden of the world — the crosses 
 which it brings — the exercises of patience which it 
 furnishes — are all real, and no mere reflections will 
 sufiice to meet them ; you must find out and acknow- 
 ledge some course of acfiow; there are some instru- 
 ments of action necessary, and you must use them : 
 you must energize — you must act. 
 
 Thus the Church seems to speak ; for, she sets before 
 us Christ's promise of the Holy Spirit — the Spirit of 
 power — the Spirit, not of rest, but of action. 
 
 If your burden is heavy, the Spirit will help you to 
 bear it; if you are blind to your wants, the Spirit will 
 enlighten and convince you ; if you are guilty and 
 polluted, the Spirit will reprove and rebuke you ; 
 if you are borne down by sorrow, the Spirit will com- 
 fort and console you. 
 
 And so the lesson of the Church to-day is all of the 
 Holy Spirit — not so much of the office of the Holy 
 Spirit, which is a Whit-Sunday subject, as of our need 
 of the Holy Spirit — and the blessed assurance that 
 we have that which we need. 
 
 Need of the Holy Spirit ! Who does not acknow- 
 ledge it? You, who are sunk in sin and folly, with 
 hard, unsoftened, indocile hearts, seared by the wither- 
 ing blast of long accustomed self-indulgence, the 
 need of the Holy Spirit — to accuse you, to reprove you,
 
 to stir you, to plead with you, to win you. And you 
 who are struggling on, even though you have attained 
 the higher paths of the hill of saintliness, the need 
 of the Holy Spirit — to strengthen you, to build you 
 up, to cheer you, to press you onward and onward 
 still. 
 
 Need of the Holy Spirit ! Does not the abiding 
 infidelity of the world, underlying all its vicious 
 customs and profane contempt of religion, prove it? 
 Does not divided, weakened, paralyzed Christendom, 
 with its thousand thousand separate souls vying with 
 each other in coldness, and hardness, and in devotion 
 towards God, prove it ? — the penury of divine grace 
 amongst us — the spiritual famine which outstretches 
 its wings over the baptised nations of the earth ! And 
 yet here is the promise of the text — the promise to the 
 Church of Christ for ever — " When the Spirit of 
 Truth is come. He will guide you unto all truth." 
 Has it failed ? Can it fail ? Is not this Presence of 
 the Spirit perpetual ? And is He not as powerful 
 now, as ever of old ? Can He not work now as 
 wrought He ever of old ? 
 
 This is a large subject, and I cannot go deep into 
 it in one discourse ; but there are times when, though 
 we cannot say all or much on a subject, it is fitting 
 and even necessary to say something. I have reason 
 to think this to be such a time, and therefore I will 
 try to say what I can. 
 
 I need not tell you that the Presence of the Holy 
 Spirit, ever guiding the Church, is a point of indis- 
 
 b2
 
 4 
 
 pensable faith in a Christian. It is of the essence of 
 The Church. That is not The Church of Christ 
 which has not the Presence of the Holy Spirit ever 
 guiding it to the truth. 
 
 I need not tell you, that this Presence of the Holy 
 Spirit ever guiding The Church— founded on the 
 words of my text — is exclusively claimed by that body 
 of Christians called the Church of Rome. You pro- 
 bably know that a large body of Christians living in 
 different parts of the world, but calling themselves 
 Roman Catholics because they acknowledge a common 
 visible head who lives in the city of Rome, and has 
 episcopal jurisdiction over one see in Italy — that this 
 body of Christians, first of all, assumes that it has the 
 Presence of the Holy Spirit guiding it to what it calls 
 truth ; and then proceeds to deny that any other body 
 of Christians has it too. 
 
 The process of argument is one which has influenced 
 a number of persons to join the Church of Rome, and 
 will probably influence more. I say the process of 
 argument ; for I do not believe that the argument 
 influences anybody. It is the process — the very bold- 
 ness of it — which irresistibly wins over men's wills 
 already set in that direction. 
 
 So far as I understand it, the process is this : — It is 
 taken for granted that the Bishop of Rome is the 
 head and centre — the visible point of unity to the 
 Church of Christ. And then, the Bishop of Rome 
 proceeds to excommunicate all who do not agree to 
 his terms of union.
 
 Thus, he brings about a form of oneness which he 
 calls the Unity of the Church. He eliminates every- 
 thing discordant — gets rid of all who differ from him 
 — puts them out of the pale of ordinary salvation — 
 and the residuum, according to his view, is the 
 One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. He 
 makes a form of unity, and then calls it The Church 
 OF Christ. 
 
 The Bishop of Rome rules and directs and governs 
 this Church according to his own laws ; sometimes by 
 the exercise of his own will and pleasure simply, and 
 sometimes through the media of synods and councils 
 of Bishops nominated by himself. And then he boasts, 
 that by always moving in doctrine, in this way, he is 
 always developing truth, and proving the life of the 
 Church. 
 
 And then, the words of my text are brought to bear 
 upon this creation. The witness of the Spirit is onCy 
 not various. The Church of Rome is one. Therefore, 
 the Church of Rome has the witness of the Spirit. 
 
 The witness of the Spirit is a guide to truth. The 
 Church of Rome has a guide. Therefore, the Church 
 of Rome is a guide to truth. 
 
 The witness of the Spirit must be a living speaking 
 voice. The Church of Rome has a guide to truth 
 which speaks and lives. Therefore, the Church of 
 Rome has the witness of the Spirit. 
 
 Other bodies of Christians are not one with the 
 Church of Rome, nor with each other. Other bodies 
 of Christians do not claim to have a visible, living,
 
 6 
 
 speaking, infallible guide. Therefore, other bodies of 
 Christians have not the witness of the Spirit ! 
 
 Such is the process, so far as I know, which, by 
 the magnitude of its claim, overawes some minds, and 
 wins others whose wills — that strange, mysterious, un- 
 accountable part of us — whose wills have been won 
 before. 
 
 I am not going to argue out the case against this 
 monstrous assumption of the Roman Communion : 
 I merely wish to suggest one or two important 
 positions: — 
 
 1. The Bishop of Rome is not, and never was, 
 the visible centre of Unity to the whole Christian 
 Church.* 
 
 • I take the liberty of quoting the late Archdeacon Manning, 
 and of observing here, that I have not yet heard of his ever satis- 
 factorily answering his own masterly book on the " Unity of the 
 Church :"— 
 
 " In committing the plenitude of their authority to one and 
 only one in each Church, it is evident that the Apostles acted 
 upon the rule which our Lord Himself has sanctioned by His 
 own practice. As a type of unity, He first committed the Apos- 
 tolic power to S. Peter, but afterwards to all the Apostles. They 
 all were what Peter was : endowed with an equal share in the 
 fellowship of an equal authority. Not that they were dependent 
 one on another, so as to be unable to act, except in an united 
 college. Each severally was absolute. Under God he had no 
 one set over him. Each one was a Vicar and Vicegerent of 
 Christ. Each one in every land wheresoever they wefe scat- 
 tered abroad, carried with him the whole mystery of the Gospel, 
 
 all its truths, and sacraments, and powers. As each one had 
 
 in himself the faith, so he had the polity of the Church in all its
 
 2. The Bishop of Rome has not, and never had, 
 any right to impose terms of Communion on the rest 
 of Christendom, or to create any form of unity of his 
 own, or to depart from that one form taught by 
 Christ and His Apostles. * 
 
 plenitude; and as Christ their Loud had intrusted His Own 
 commission in full to each one of their body, so did they in like 
 manner. They had represented Him, and now they constituted 
 representatives of Him and of themselves. They, therefore, made 
 over, in like manner, their commission in full to chosen men, who, 
 in their stead, should be to each several Church the Vicars of 
 Christ and of God; and on this is founded the rule which is as 
 old as the Apostolic age — * Wheresoever the Bishop appears, there 
 let the multitude be ; even as wheresoever is Christ, there is the 
 Catholic Church.' (S. Ignatius ad Smyr.)" — Manning's Unity of 
 the Church, pp. 152-3. 
 
 * " That the Church is capable of such an union (under one 
 singular government or jurisdiction of any kind) is not the con- 
 troversy. That it is possible I do not question. That when, in a 
 manner, all Christendom did consist of subjects to the Roman 
 Empire, the Church then did arrive near such an unity, I do not 
 at present contest. But that such an union of all Christians is 
 necessary, or that it was ever instituted by Christ, I cannot grant. 
 The Holy Scriptures do nowhere express or intimate such a kind 
 of unity, which is sufficient proof that it has no firm ground. We 
 may say of it as Saint Austin saith of the Church itself: — " I will 
 not that the Holy Church be demonstrated from human reason- 
 ings, but the Divine oracles." (S. Aug. de Unitate, c. 3.) S. Paul 
 mentions and urges the unity of spirit, of faith, of charity, of 
 relation to our Lord, of communion in devotions and offices of 
 piety. But concerning any union under one singular visible 
 government or polity he is silent. He saith ' One Lord, one 
 faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all ; ' not one
 
 8 
 
 3. The witness of the Spirit has never failed, and 
 never will fail, the Church as a body. It has failed 
 particular Churches, and will fail them again. Pos- 
 sibly, for all her boasting, it has failed the Church of 
 Rome; possibly also, it has failed, or may fail, the 
 Church of England. But as a body — as a whole, it 
 is impossible that the Church of Christ can fail of 
 the witness of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 4. The relation of individual souls to this witness 
 of the Holy Spirit — how, amidst the sins of nations 
 and Churches — blinding and darkening and deadening 
 them — truth may be kept alive, by God's Holy Spirit, 
 in separate single hearts. How also the witness of 
 the Holy Spirit is so outraged in other single hearts, 
 which, rising to a large aggregate, make up bodies of 
 men amounting to whole kingdoms — outraged by a 
 perverse and obstinate will — outraged by a temper 
 which leaves Him no room to operate — outraged by 
 an impure and unholy life which utterly banishes 
 Him — how might it not be shewn, that men are 
 divided, and weak and powerless for good, and 
 hardened to the true sense of immortality, by their 
 own separate resistance of all holy inspirations, and 
 all high desires, and all mighty workings of the 
 Eternal Spirit ! 
 
 monarch, or one senate, or one Sanhedrim; which is a pregnant 
 sign that none such was then instituted. Otherwise he could not 
 have slipped over a point so very material and pertinent to his 
 discourse." — See Buhop Barrow on the Unity of the Church. 
 Vol. I. pp. 280-7.
 
 5. Then — what seems to be wholly overlooked in 
 the Roman theory — the promise of the Holy Spirit 
 is to guide into all truth. And that is one thing, while 
 the promise of the Holy Spirit to compel into truth 
 is another thing, and very distinct, and nowhere 
 vouchsafed in Holy Scripture, -''- It were needless to 
 say how plainly one may recognize the work of the 
 Spirit from the very beginning, all through the Church, 
 in every age and in every land, witnessing to one and 
 the same truth, and guiding, leading, directing souls 
 to that one truth ; and how plainly also one may 
 recognize another work — resisting, and thwarting, and 
 gainsaying it. How obvious also, that a whole par- 
 ticular Church, as such, may gainsay and resist such 
 a leading — while multitudes of individual souls in it, 
 may submit themselves, and be led. 
 
 6. Again : what was this expediency which Christ 
 urged upon His disciples — when He spake of going 
 and the Comforter coming — but that His visible 
 
 * See the whole third chapter 'of the Fourth Council of Lateran — 
 Innocent iii. a.d. 1215 — one of the most esteemed and most formal 
 and legitimate of all the atithorities of the Church of Rome. Take 
 but one short passage : " Moneantur autem et inducantur, et si 
 necesse fuerit per censuram ecclesiasticam compellantur sceculares 
 potestates, quiluscunque fungantur oflBciis, ut sicut reputari cupiunt 
 et haberi fideles, ita pro defensione fidei praestent publico jura- 
 mentum, quod de terris suae jurisdictioni subjectis univeros kcsreticos 
 ah ecclesia denotatos, bona fide pro viribus exterminare studebunt, 
 ita quo a modo quandocunque quis fuerit in potestatem sive 
 spiritualem sive temporalem assumptus, hoc teneatur capitulum 
 juramento firmare."
 
 10 
 
 Presence should be removed. That, when His great 
 and immediate work on earth was completed on the 
 Cross and from the Tomb, there should no longer be 
 presented to His Church the snare of His visible 
 Presence — as to the sons of Zebedee, so more or less 
 to all — tempting men to build up for themselves an 
 earthly centre. " We trusted that it had been He 
 which should have redeemed Israel." 
 
 But the Roman system has set itself to do that very 
 thing which Christ said was inexpedient, when, upon 
 the wreck of an earthly empire, the Bishop of one city 
 has prevailed to raise himself not only above his equals 
 in the same ministry, which collectively represents 
 Christ, but above the Kings of the earth, and every 
 form of secular authority — one man uniting in himself, 
 in visible glory upon the earth, the offices of Priest and 
 King.^'> And the translation of a special representa- 
 
 • Bellarraine De Rom. Pontif. v. 1, says — " Prima sententia 
 est, suramum Pontificem jure divino habere plenissimam potes- 
 tatem in universum orbem terrarum, tarn in rebus ecclesiasticis 
 quam civilibus — ita decent Aug. Triumphus, Alvarus Pelagius, 
 Panormitanus, Hostiensis, Silvester, et alii non pauci." " The first 
 opinion is, that the Pope has a most full power over the whole 
 world, both in ecclesiastical and civil affairs. This is the doctrine 
 of Aug. Triumphus, &c., and many others." Bellarmine quotes 
 one Augustinus Triumphus— and what does he say ? " Error est 
 non credere Pontificem Rom. Universalis Ecclesiae Pastorem 
 Petri successorem et Christi Vicarium, supra temporalia et 
 spiritualia, universalem non habere primatum ; in quern quandoque 
 multi labuntur, dictse potestatis iguorantia, quae cum sit infinita, eo 
 quod magnus est dominus, et magna virtus ejus et magnitudinis 
 ejus non est finis, omnis creatus intellectus in ejus perscrutatione
 
 11 
 
 tive of Christ to Rome — what is it but the lengthening 
 out of that privilege which Christ declared should no 
 longer be confined to place or time — to Jerusalem, or 
 to Judea, or to Galilee, but should henceforth be co- 
 extensive with the utmost bounds of the earth. What 
 is it but a direct negation of that primitive distribution 
 of power to all Churches through all Bishops, which 
 proved to be no less the safeguard than the dissemi- 
 nation of Divine truth — that " single episcopate of 
 many Bishops diffused about in a numerous and 
 accordant multitude.'* * 
 
 And lastly; this notion of a perpetual "living 
 voice," is but a captivating fallacy. There is a life 
 for evil as for good. To speak, therefore, is no certain 
 sign that what is spoken is true. Doubtless it were 
 well, if so it had pleased God, that the visible unity 
 of His Church had never been broken : but what is 
 this but to say, how well it had been for the nations 
 never to have provoked God's wrath and vengeance 
 by their sin. Had we continued true to God, doubtless 
 He would have blessed us all with fuller and more 
 continuous manifestations of His will. But it is sin 
 which has brought division ; and it is mere arrogance 
 in Rome to aflPect to be free, either from division which 
 is the consequence, or from sin which is the cause. 
 
 invenitur deficere." (De Potest. Ecclesiae ad Pop. Joh. 22.) — 
 See JBp. Barrow. So that this Roman divine blasphemously 
 attributes to the Pope — " Great isj the Lord, and great is His 
 power, and of His greatness there is no end." 
 
 * S. Cyprian, ep. 52.
 
 12 
 
 So long as the Church is divided, her living voice 
 must cease. Rome is not the living voice of " The 
 Church," because a part of the Church is not and 
 cannot be " The Church." The age of division is for 
 The Church — an age of paralysis of speech ; and then 
 she falls back upon what she said, once for all, when 
 Her voice was clear.^''" Till God is pleased to restore His 
 Church to that oneness to which He still destines her, 
 our appeal must be an appeal to a Voice which spoke in 
 apostolic and primitive times, and which surely speaks 
 no less distinctly now, because long ago It spake so 
 well. Nay rather, being the Voice of the Holy Spirit 
 then, It is the Voice of the Holy Spirit still — a Voice 
 which never grows old — a Voice which never waxes 
 feeble — a Voice sent forth by Him Who *' was dead, 
 and is alive for evermore." 
 
 Such would be the kind of propositions I should 
 
 * " The sacramentum unitatis was first infringed during the 
 quarrels of the Greeks and Latins : it was shattered in that great 
 schism of the sixteenth century, which issued, in some parts of 
 Europe, in the Reformation, in others, in the Tridentine decrees, 
 our own Church keeping the nearest of any to the complete truth. 
 Since that era, at least. Truth has not dwelt simply and securely in 
 any visible Tabernacle. This view of the subject will illustrate 
 for us the last words of Bishop Ken, contained in his will : — "As 
 for my religion, I die in the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Faith, 
 professed hy the whole Church before the disunion of East and 
 West; more particularly I die in the communion of the Church 
 of England, as it stands distinguished from all Papal and Puritan 
 innovations, and as it adheres to the doctrine of the Cross." — 
 Tracts of the Times, No. Ixxi. p. 29.
 
 13 
 
 venture to establish if I were arguing this matter out, 
 and I should sum up with these two most important 
 facts . — first — that the promise of guidance was to the 
 Apostles, no less than to their successors. It must, 
 therefore, follow that no truth could be revealed to after 
 ages which the Apostles did not know. It is im- 
 probable that they, who were appointed to declare, and 
 did declare, the "whole counsel of God," were suffered 
 by the Holy Ghost to keep back truth, that it might 
 be reserved for some wondrous developing prerogative 
 of modern Rome. 
 
 And secondly, that the promise of guidance was into 
 all truth — not dogmatic, theological, doctrinal truth 
 only — but into all truth affecting the soul, and there- 
 fore into moral truth as much as any. I suppose it 
 would be easy to draw a fearful picture of the kind of 
 witness to moral truth, set up by the Bishop of Rome 
 and his ecclesiastics, in the middle ages. It would be 
 no part of my argument against Rome as a Church, 
 that some of her Popes and ecclesiastics were profli- 
 gate. But it would be fatal to her own argument — 
 fatal to her exclusive claim to propound moral truth, 
 through the special Presence of that Pure and Blessed 
 Spirit Who guides into all truth. * 
 
 So much would, I think, go far to settle the question 
 
 * It is not my intention to go into the facts of this most 
 important part of the case. The pages of Liguori might alone 
 suffice, altogether apart from history. Yet I will quote Bellar- 
 mine's own account of a.d. 912: — ** Quae tunc facies sanctae 
 ecclesiae Romanae ! quam fcedissima cum Romae dominarentur
 
 14 
 
 against Rome. And then for divisions, in the rest of 
 Christendom — who would not acknowledge that no- 
 thing so much as resistance to the Holy Spirit in 
 morals — I do not mean gross sins only, but pride, 
 self-will, vain-glory, covetousness, party spirit, dis- 
 obedience, unlove — nothing so much as resistance 
 to the Holy Spirit in morals, marks the character of 
 almost every country — certainly of our own to a 
 fearful extent. So that you have before you, at once, a 
 sufficient account of unbelief and division in religiouy 
 without seeking farther. And you have this comfort, 
 on the other side, that there are thousands of indivi- 
 duals everywhere, in whose hearts God is preserving 
 His Truth, and out of whom He will gather in His 
 One Church, before the " time of the end." 
 
 Such is an outline, which, if an opportunity offered, 
 I should endeavour to fill up, on this vital subject. 
 Meantime, my brethren, there is for us the blessedyac^ 
 of Christ's kingdom — not His kingdom on this side 
 the grave only, but beyond — His One kingdom tran- 
 scending all mortal thought of space and time — Saints 
 before the law — Saints under the law — Saints under 
 the Gospel — the One Body of Christ.* 
 
 potentissimae aeque ac sordidissimae meretrices ! quarum arbitrio 
 mutarentur sedes, darentur episcopi, et quod audita horrendum et 
 infandum est, introducerentur in sedem Petri eorum amasii pseudo 
 pontifices, qui non sint nisi ad consignandum tantum tempora in 
 catalogo Romanorum Pontificum scripti." — N. 14, Vol. x. p. 663. 
 
 * " Sancti ante legem, sancti sub lege, sancti sub gratia, omnes 
 hi perficientes Corpus Domini in membris sunt ecclesiae constituti." 
 — S. Gregor. Magn. ep. 24.
 
 15 
 
 Let us make much of it, and wait patiently for the 
 rest. The inhabitants of the Heavenly Jerusalem are 
 already so many that no mortal tongue can tell by 
 name, their number, or their nation, or their age. 
 This at the least is true. Besides an innumerable 
 company of angels, there is the " general assembly 
 and Church of the first-born," and all the spirits of 
 "just men made perfect." The many thousands of 
 the tribes of Israel — the first-fruits of the gospel, and 
 "a great multitude" besides, "which no man can 
 number, of all nations and kindreds, and people and 
 tongues." There are Moses and Elias, Abraham and 
 Isaac and Jacob, and all the servants of the Most High 
 God, that ever lived and died in His true faith and fear, 
 from the beginning of the world to this very day. 
 They are all now there — in His One kingdom — as 
 really in It there, as we are in It here. And their 
 number is continually increasing, by some one or other 
 of the brotherhood passing onward from the outer cor- 
 ners on earth, to the heart and centre of the Kingdom 
 in Heaven. And the Holy Spirit — Which flows from 
 Christ through the whole Church, into the several 
 members, quickening each, as each is incorporated, 
 uniting all to Christ, and in Christ, — first to the 
 Father, and then to one another — He is the spring 
 and source of all unity and all love in the Body, and 
 He knows no distinctions, except impenitence and 
 wilful sin. Of men of all ranks and conditions — 
 princes and peasants, nobles and artizans, rich and 
 poor, priests and laymen, young men and children—
 
 16 
 
 some are still on earth, others — a far larger compaTiy 
 — are departed to be with Christ. And they are as 
 truly members as the others. Death makes no essen- 
 tial change in that spiritual life which, before death, 
 they lived in Him. We are one Body and one Spirit, 
 not only with His people now on earth, but with all 
 the faithful departed. The whole Church, struggling 
 still on earth, serves God in one ministry. The whole 
 Church, now rejoicing with Christ, serves Him in 
 another ministry. But they are the ministries of The 
 One Church. And the greater the measure of union 
 with Christ, the more abundantly is the Holy 
 Spirit poured out upon us one by one. ^'■ 
 
 Thus, all who have been grafted into Christ, 
 
 * " The very same one Holy Church is now under one condi- 
 tion, and hereafter shall be under another. It has now a mixtui-e 
 of evil men, and then shall not have any : as it is now mortal, 
 because made up of mortal men, but shall then be immortal 
 because there shall be in it no one who can any more die even in 
 the body ; just as there were not therefore two Christs, because 
 first He died, and afterwards dieth no more." — S. Augustine 
 Brev. Coll. cum Donat. c. x. 
 
 "The body of this Head is the Church ; not that which is in this 
 place, but both in this place and in all the world ; not that which 
 is at this time, but from Abel to those who shall be born even 
 unto the end, and shall believe in Christ : the whole people of 
 the Saints belong to one city, which city is the Body of Christ, 
 of which Christ is Head. Thus also the angels are our fellow 
 citizens : only as strangers far from home we are toiling ; while 
 they in the city await our comiug. And from that city, from 
 which we are absent far off, letters have come to us, which are 
 the Scriptures." — S. Augustine Enarr. in Ps. xc. ser. 2.
 
 17 
 
 and abide where they have been grafted, whereso- 
 ever they live upon the face of the whole earth, 
 are free of the same blessed City. And they have 
 the same title to Its gifts, as they whose race is 
 already run, and who rest there for ever. And such 
 are far more in number, thank God, than some are apt 
 to reckon — far more than any narrow scanty bond of 
 man's devising can suffice to compass. In the very 
 worst of times, when the Church of God on earth was 
 so lost in the corrupting slough of idolatry that Elijah 
 deemed of no true heart left besides his own, God 
 knew of seven thousand that had not *' bowed the 
 knee to Baal." And so, in these perilous days of ours 
 — which seem, indeed, in respect of God's love and 
 service, to be the very dregs of time — not only among 
 ourselves, and in spite of the judgments which hang 
 over us, but also among the other nations of the ear,th, 
 overwhelmed, as they are, in unbelief, and ignorance, 
 and superstition, and godlessness — doubtless, within 
 His Church, there are tens of thousands being trained 
 for heaven, secretly and gently in their own place, by 
 the means of grace which there they find — having 
 their eyes opened, being turned from darkness unto 
 light, and from the power of Satan unto God — re- 
 ceiving forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among 
 them that are sanctified by faith that is in Christ 
 Jesus. 
 
 And now, my brethren, what remains but that we 
 bless God for the mercy which still finds us, where 
 His Providence has placed us — in our own English
 
 18 
 
 Jirovince of that vast kingdom, wherein Saints are first 
 trained, and then glorified. 
 
 It were well if we could learn to take what God 
 gives, and be content — to absorb ourselves in the one 
 work of our own salvation, us God is pleased to show 
 the way, and to leave with Him other souls and other 
 ways with which God has not called us to deal. But 
 in times of much perplexity, when each man's scruples 
 are carried to his neighbour, and one imagination is 
 made to work upon another, till all the certain land- 
 marks of truth are shadowed over in the confusion 
 which succeeds — it is needful for us, who have the 
 awful responsibility of watching for souls, to lose no 
 opportunity of stablishing you in the faith wherein 
 ye now stand, and by which, through Christ Jesus, 
 it is the will of God you should be saved. 
 
 O ! my brethren, in what biotherhood of faith — • 
 unheard of in the Scriptures of truth, or the records 
 of the early Church — are men looking to find Jesus 
 the Saviour of our souls, and the Saints, partakers in 
 our joy — if they are dissatisfied with that bond which 
 could hold S. Peter and S. Paul, and " the disciple 
 whom Jesus loved," and the Apostles and Evangelists, 
 and the first Disciples of the Cross — the blessed martyr 
 S. Stephen, and all who followed him in blood through 
 those fierce persecutions which devastated the infant 
 kingdom of the Gospel — all those to whom the pro- 
 mise of my text was first expressly made — and then 
 the noble Bishops and confessors of after times — the 
 Clements and Polycarps, and Ignatius*, and Ireneus*,
 
 19 
 
 and Justins — the Chrysostoms, and Basils and noblest 
 Gregories, and the rest down to the eighth century,* 
 when, for the first time, that one single branch of the 
 Church whii^h shuts us out from salvation, and seeks 
 to rob us of our nearest and dearest, our best and 
 holiest, amid protests from the East and West, violated 
 that law of love and faith, once delivered to the Saints, 
 to whicli we, by God's blessing, still adhere, f 
 
 ! brethren, if the Christianity which sufficed to 
 perfect the thousands of Saints — first, and best, and 
 greatest in the brightest days of Christendom — be so 
 defective for these latter days, that new developments 
 about S. Mary, the Saints, and Purgatory, and Indul- 
 gences, and a mutilated Eucharist, and the Universal 
 Supremacy of one mortal Bishop, have become neces- 
 
 * The Deutero-Nicene Council, a.d. 787 — a General Council 
 falsely so called, and the first of its kind — was the first to 
 " develope " truth on grounds short of the Scriptures. It was the 
 first in a divided stat<! in the Church. 
 
 t " For collective unity, all the Bishops of the Catholic Church 
 at large are one College. They are, to the Church of these latter 
 times, what the Apostolic College was to the Church in the begin- 
 ning — all equal in sacerdotal power, but ordered according to 
 ecclesiastical use and custom. In and under them the Church 
 Catholic is one. Thei-e is then a collective unity of all particular 
 Churches, with their several Bishops, in one Catholic body under 
 the Episcopal College ; and there is a distributed or several unity 
 in each particular Church, under its own Bishop. This unity of 
 the Church, theiefore, inheres in the one origin, the one succes- 
 sion, and the one College of Catholic Bishops." -Manning's 
 Unity of the Church, pp. 155-6. 
 
 c2
 
 20 
 
 &ary to the salvation of immortal souls, to what a 
 fearful extent must God have given us over to believe 
 a lie. 
 
 I must beseech you to bear with my earnestness, 
 but not to be in earnest would be to mock both God and 
 you. And this point enters into all the real question 
 before us. These developments of faith are either neces-^ 
 sary to salvation, or they are not necessary at all. If 
 they are necessary to salvation, why were the Saints — 
 trained in the early Church for near a thousand years — 
 saved without them ? It is no answer to say that the 
 Church held in the first age what she holds now; and 
 that heresy has forced her, from time to time, **to throw 
 her faith into dogmatic shape — precipitating truths, 
 as it were, which before were held in solution." The 
 case admits of a much plainer answer, and an answer 
 much less philosophical and subtle : the awful import- 
 ance of the subject demands one. Did S. Paul offer 
 up his addresses to S. Mary ? or did S. Paul pray that 
 the merits of S. John Baptist should be imputed to 
 him ? Did he hold that S. Peter could give indul- 
 gences to shorten the prospective sufferings of the 
 Corinthians in purgatory ? These questions are the 
 true ones to help us out of perplexity. They can but 
 be answered one way, unless the unspeakable bold- 
 ness of another view be ventured upon — that Popes 
 and Bishops, and even private men and women, have 
 knowledge of Divine truth now, which Apostles and 
 Martyrs and Confessors had not then. 
 
 The faith of the Church of Christ which formed
 
 21 
 
 Saints from the beginning is the faith now, and (God 
 strengthening her) will for ever be the faith of the 
 Church of- England, by which she too seeks to train 
 Saints, and fulfil the mission to which, through an 
 unbroken chain from the Apostles, Christ has called 
 her. The Church of England seeks to save the souls 
 of her children. She finds the means which saved souls 
 in long generations before the claims of modern Rome 
 were heard of sufficient — Christ Jesus, the Son of 
 God, the Author and Dispenser of all grace and 
 pardon — the Church, His living representative — the 
 Sacraments, her instruments — Bishops, her rulers — ' 
 — their collective decisions, her voice — and Holy 
 Scripture her standard of truth. If these suffice, what 
 need we more ? * 
 
 * " There is no one point in which the British Churches can 
 be attainted of either heresy or schism. As for heresy, they 
 openly profess the Canonical Scriptures, the Catholic Creeds, the 
 first six General Councils, rejecting, with the Council of Frank* 
 fort, the seventh, which alone, in addition to the first six, is 
 received by the Greek Church ; and, with the Greek Church, 
 rejecting all subsequent Councils of the Western Church untruly 
 pretending to be oecumenical. With these also they acknowledge 
 all true Apostolical traditions, and submit themselves, in prepara- 
 tion of mind, to the definitions of a free and lawful General 
 Council. This is enough, if the confession of their adversaries 
 were wanting, to clear them of heresy. As for schism, they 
 have done no more than take off from their neck a yoke which 
 Christ never laid upon it ; and that, too, not when it was 
 meekly imposed, but when, through the wickedness of men, it 
 became intolerable. 
 
 ** The conduct, also, of the English Church is strictly parallel
 
 22 
 
 The question of external Communion does not touch 
 the life of the Church at all. An organized union of 
 Churches is doubtless a great blessing ; would to God 
 it had never been interrupted ; let her look to it, at 
 whose door the burden of this must lie. But it does 
 not enter into the formal notion of a Church. The 
 whole system of metropolitans, patriarchs, and popes, 
 and the confederacy of sees, is matter of expediency 
 or propriety; but it is not necessary to the conveyance 
 of grace, or the fulfilment of the law of unity. Dis- 
 sension between Churches is verv lamentable, and a 
 signal breach of the law of love ; but it as little avails 
 to unchurch them, as lukewarmness, or corrujition of 
 doctrine, or ambition, or covetousness, or an)' other 
 reigning lust. Intercommunion, therefore, while it is 
 a duty as other duties, is not the tenure or instrument 
 of connection between the unseen world and this. 
 Each diocese is a distinct and perfect Church, suffii'.ient 
 for itself, with its own Bishop as the ultimate centre 
 of unity and channel of grace ; and the communion 
 of Christians, one with another, and the unity of thi-m 
 
 -with that of the African. She acknowledges the members of the 
 Roman Church as Christians, calls them brethren, recognizes their 
 faith and sacraments, admits their orders, and receives those that 
 come to her communion without so mucli as conditional baptism. 
 She acknowledges the Body of Christ in all Churches which are 
 neither in heresy nor schism : she excommunicates none : she 
 prays for all, and is, in heart and desire, at unity with those that 
 refuse communion to her. So much, then, for the imputations of 
 heresy and schism." — Manning's Unity of the Church, pp. 362,5.
 
 23 
 
 all together, do not lie in mutual intercourse and com- 
 bination, much less in abject submission the weaker 
 to the stronger — not in what they do in common, but 
 in what they are and have in common — in their 
 Apostolic descent, their Episcopal form, their primitive 
 faith, and their Sacramental gifts.* 
 
 There are various notes of truth of various cogency : 
 the only question is, what is the essential note. Be- 
 cause intercommunion is an important note, it does 
 not follow that it is essential. Rome interprets it to 
 mean subjection to herself; and then says it is essen- 
 tial, and simply condemns those who refuse to own it. 
 But can she prove it ? If it is the essential note now, 
 why was it not so from S. Gregory the Great up to 
 S. Paul ? Why was Meletius of Antioch reckoned a 
 Saint without it ? and, although out of communion 
 with both Rome and Alexandria, reverenced as a Saint 
 to this very day? 
 
 But we are concerned, my brethren, about our own 
 claims, and our own duties and responsibilities and 
 talents. We have no call to condemn others. It is 
 enough for us that God has blessed us with the 
 heavenly gifts of grace, and the comforting signs of 
 
 • " The absolute irresponsibility of every Catholic 33isliop, so 
 long as be shall administer his Church within the rule of canonical 
 order, and keep himself free from pravity of doctrine and wicked- 
 ness of life, is an axiom as self-evident as the absolute equality of 
 the Apostles. Witliin the limits above described, they owe an 
 account to God alone." (S. Cyp. Lip. xxxi., and Council of 
 Carthago, p. 330. Ed. Ben.) — Manning, p. 269.
 
 24 
 
 His Own Presence. We seek no more. We feel our- 
 selves, connected with the Church Catholic, through 
 our own dear Church of England, by associations 
 which stretch over her whole history ; *' through the 
 great and holy who adorned her earlier and grander 
 days, or those revered champions who sustained her 
 in her weakness ; or that meek and retiring few, 
 fallen on evil days and evil tongues, who, up to tliis 
 very hour, have preserved, in her recesses — better, 
 perhaps, than those who occupy her public posts — the 
 memory of her ancient doctrines and her rights.'* Yes, 
 beloved, a large and ample claim is ours ; not com- 
 munion only with the glorious Saints of earliest and 
 most suffering Christendom, but with our own Saxon 
 heroes of Christ, and Norman defenders of the faith ; 
 and lower down the stream of time, with oar own 
 martyred Prince and Primate, and that faithful band of 
 godly confessors whom God raised up for the truth, 
 when a "new king arose '* to disown and put it down ! 
 Then we claim our beloved Andrews, and Cosin, and 
 Ken — our Hooker, and Bramhall, and Jeremy Taylor 
 — our Herbert, and Farrer, and Pearson, and Wilson, 
 — our Jackson, and Butler, and Home — with manifold 
 others, who lived and died — as the providence of God 
 has called us to live and die— and who, now resting 
 from their labours, still love us with a deeper love, 
 and pray for us with more earnest prayer,* because of 
 the sorrows amid which our lot is cast. 
 
 * I put this forth only as a pious opinion which Christians 
 have ever been free to entertain. " Ut volet accipiat quisque
 
 25 
 
 My brethren, these, and a thousand other associa- 
 tions, bind us to our Church by a tie of unspeakable 
 strength and holiness ; and never can it be that, because 
 she, now more than ever, needs our allegiance, and 
 confidence, and service, we should raise our heel 
 against her, and depart. As for those who have left, 
 or are leaving us, may God forgive them this wrong; 
 and may He keep us from their sin. They have for- 
 gotten one solemn truth which we will do well to 
 remember. What Providence sets before us in reliction 
 — amid whatever trials — is His will and our duty. 
 He leads us into all truth, not by doubting, but by 
 believing. Though the received system, in which we 
 are born, were as unsafe as the sea when S. Peter 
 began to walk on it, yet we are told " Be not afraid." 
 He who could make S. Peter walk upon the waves, 
 could make even a corrupt and defective system, were 
 our's such, a safe home for our souls ; much more can 
 He teach and train us, by the witness of His Own 
 Word, and the universal testimony of His Church. 
 God's dealings with individuals are individual. Each 
 Christian soul is placed under a special Providence, 
 
 quod dicam. Si rebus viventium interessent animae mortuorum, 
 et ipsae nos auando eas videmus alloquerentur in somnis, ut de aliis 
 taceam, me ipsum pia mater nulla nocte desereret quae terra 
 marique secuta est ut mecura viveret. Absit enim, ut facta sit 
 vita feliciore crudelis, usque adeo ut quando aliquid angit cor 
 meum, nee tristem filium consoletur qucm dilexit anice, quern 
 nunquam voluit moestum videre."— ^. Augustine. De Cura geraiid 
 pro Mort. Ben. ed. vi. 526.
 
 26 
 
 and not a mere general law. He calleth us all by our 
 names, one by one. He has as much care of one, as if 
 there were but one, and none else to claim His care ! 
 O ye who forget this, and choose for yourselves what 
 you will, what a peril ye run into ! * What a peril 
 to withdraw from that body which is privileged to 
 convey Christ's Presence into your soul, by God's 
 own appointment ! Let your opinions on the relative 
 claims of different portions of the Church be what 
 they may, can you be sure that the blessing of 
 Christ's Presence will be equally given you in the 
 new position of your own choice, as in the first place 
 of the choice of God ! 
 
 There be many that say — Who will show us any 
 truth ? " Lord, lift Thou up the light of Thy counte- 
 nance upon us." All will be dreary indeed, till you 
 are content to submit to God's governance ; then 
 nothing is dreary — all will inspire hope and trust ; 
 you will feel that you are under His hand, and that 
 whatever comes to you is His gift of guidance, or His 
 rod of discipline. What is it to us, whether the 
 Church of our baptism be behind some, or before other 
 branches of the vine, if He is training us heavenward 
 beneath its shadow ! God give us this confidence ! 
 
 * " In any form of Christian community— except only the one 
 Church— the basis of unity is the choice of the individual will. 
 The very idea of submission and forbearance chosen by the indi- 
 vidual will, implies its correlative of personal independence and 
 active selfishness, as objects which might equally be chosen." — 
 Manning, p. 241.
 
 27 
 
 — " Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, 
 neither is there any divination against Israel." 
 
 There, may be danger to our stedfastness from those 
 gifted ones who come among us as angels of light ; 
 but the "Apostles' doctrine and fellowship," — "the 
 faith once delivered to the Saints " — will never fail us, 
 if we are true to it ; and " though we, or an angel 
 from heaven preach any other Gospel unto you than 
 that which we (S. Paul) have preached unto you, let 
 him be accursed." 
 
 The love of this faith may cost us much : but cost 
 what it may, God help us if we let it go ! What 
 profit to us in the cloud of witnesses if, at the least, 
 they shall not have taught as this ? " What are 
 these which are arrayed in white robes, and whence 
 came they ? And I said. These are they which 
 came out of tribulation, and have washed their robes, 
 and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb." 
 And shall the sorrows and perplexities, and trials, 
 and difficulties of God's providence to ms, exceed 
 the " tribulation" of the Saints? or shall we win their 
 palms of victory, without tasting somewhat of their 
 afflictions ? O ! may God save us from such a 
 thought, and from that cold and heartless and faithless 
 self-will which might engender it ! 
 
 Be patient now. By-and-bye, the earth will sink 
 beneath us, and the kingdom of our better birthright 
 will be concentrated in heaven ; and all who, in their 
 places, are striving after sanctity, will see each other, 
 as God sees them, and as they see God. " And fie
 
 28 
 
 that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them. 
 They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more ; 
 neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. 
 For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne 
 shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living 
 fountains of waters, and God shall wipe away all tears 
 from their eyes."* Be patient now. " They that put 
 their trust in God shall understand the truth ; and 
 such as he faithful in love shall abide with Him : for 
 grace and mercy is to his Saints, and He hath care 
 for His elect." t Be patient now. Abide where God 
 has placed you. By-and-bye He will take you up 
 among the Saints, " and so shall you be ever with 
 the Lord." 
 
 • Eetel vii. 15, 17. f Wisdom iii. 10.
 
 SERMON II. 
 
 HINDRANCES FROM WANT OF LOVE. 
 
 " They that are enemies to brotherly charity, whether they are openly out of 
 the Church, or seem to be within, they are pseudo- Christians and Antichrists." 
 — S. Augustine* 
 {Preached at S. Barnabas', Pimlico, on the Fifth Sunday after Trinity.) 
 
 " Having compassion one of another." — 1 S. Pet. iii. 8. 
 
 The English language cannot express in one word 
 that fulness of meaning which the one word of the 
 original conveys. Our borrowed word " sympathy " 
 comes nearest; yet either this, our own word, does not 
 altogether meet the case, or we do not altogether 
 understand our own word. 
 
 The received notion and practice of sympathy, or 
 compassion, hardly reaches higher than general good 
 nature and kindness of heart. It is hardly set up 
 amongst us as an universal principle of action, much 
 less as a great gift of grace — an earnest of the Holy 
 Spirit of God — a living token or note of God's Presence, 
 winning His favour, and witnessing to His work. 
 
 * "Hujus autem fraternae caritatis iniraici, sive aperte foris sint, 
 sive intus esse videantur, pseudo-Christiani sunt et antichristi." — 
 De Baptismo con. Don. Lib. iii. c. 19. Ben. ed. Vol. ix. p. 119.
 
 30 
 
 I am not undervaluing what passes for compassion 
 amongst us : I am taking the measure of it. I am' 
 considering whether it is not something different from 
 that Christian grace to which S. Peter calls us in the 
 text ; whether it is not, in some sort, always bound up 
 strictly with misfortune or suffering, or else with joy 
 or rejoicing, insomuch that, apart from misfortune or 
 apart from joy, it is rarely called out. And so, whether 
 it is not a humane sentiment simply — the consequence 
 of infirmity, and the effect of self-love. 
 
 We are moved by the misfortune af another, and 
 then we are said to show compassion in the form of 
 sympathy; or, we are moved by the joy of another, 
 and then we are said to show compassion in the form 
 of congratulation. But is it not true that a sensitive 
 heathen might so act, by the mere force of natural 
 instinct, and by the very subtle power of self-love? 
 He would, naturally, grieve over the sorrow of his 
 neighbour, and naturally rejoice over his neighbour's 
 joy, because his mind would be filled by the more than 
 possibility of his own sorrow and his own joy, under 
 circumstances which also might, any day, become his 
 own. 
 
 But this is not the gift spoken of in the text. That 
 gift is so associated with other gifts that it cannot be 
 mistaken. It is not an instinct — it is not a sentiment 
 — it is not an impulse. There are no specialties which 
 restrict its operation to times, and seasons, and circum- 
 stances of sorrow or of joy. It is of the high grace of 
 Gospel — it is of the great works of the Spirit ; and,
 
 31 
 
 therefore, it is for all mankind — of all ages, of all 
 sexes, of all countries, in all situations of life, at all 
 periods of time. 
 
 I have neither the power nor the inclination to 
 mystify you with a fine-wrought definition. But first, 
 I will tell you what I take this grace to be. It is that 
 gift whereby God enables us to love- " not in word but 
 in deed ;" and " in deed" — not merely to feed hungry 
 people, and clothe naked, and visit sick, and bury dead, 
 and teach ignorant, and entertain strangers — but, much 
 more than words can compass — to put ourselves in our 
 neighbour's place, and then to judge, and speak, and 
 act, as if we were judging, and speaking, and acting 
 for ourselves. That is what I take to be the practical 
 meaning of " having compassion one of another ;" 
 — transferring circumstances and position, one to 
 another's — feeling the burden, one of another — the 
 privileges, one of another — the calls, one of another — 
 the diflBculties, one of another — the dangers, one of 
 another — the deprivations, one of another — " having 
 compassion one of another." And "one of another" — 
 not brother, or sister, or husband, or wife, or parent, or 
 child, only those — one of another : not Church of 
 England only they, one of another; not Church of 
 Rome only they, one of another ; not Orientals — 
 Greeks, Armenians, Syrians, Copts, Nestorians, only 
 each, one of another ; not Protestants, a thousand sub- 
 divisions, only each, one of another — not members of re- 
 ligious societies, sects, cliques, parties, coteries of one way 
 of thinking, each, one of another — but baptized souls —
 
 32 
 
 East and West, North and South — of every tongue — 
 in every clime — Christians, one of another ! * 
 
 Such I take to be, in some small degree, a measure 
 of the length and breadth of the Christian grace of 
 compassion. And the next thing I will tell you is — 
 that we have it not ! We in the Church of England 
 have it not. The Church of Rome has it not. The 
 Eastern Church has it not. The Protestant bodies 
 have it not. It is not in Christendom. ! brethren, 
 what a judgment of God on the false-hearted people 
 of the nations of the earth. Christian compassion is 
 not in Christendom. And hence the division of East 
 and West — hence the exclusiveness of Rome — hence 
 the perversity of the East — hence the isolation of 
 England — hence the self-will of Germany — hence 
 bitterness and wrath, and clamour and strife. There 
 is no " compassion, one of another ! " 
 
 All the world owns this evil condition of things. And 
 all sorts of accounts are given of it, and all sorts of 
 remedies for it are proposed. It is said^ by some 
 amongst ourselves, that our internal divisions are our 
 own greatest curse. The Church of Rome echoes the 
 cry, and comes in with her forced uniformity for the 
 cure t She proposes a remedy which can only suc- 
 
 • " Distant inter se linguae, sed linguarum distantiae non sunt 
 scbismata, omnes linguae ad unam fidem." — S. Avgustine in Joan. 
 
 + The Christian Church does not recognize ybrce as a means to 
 bring any to believe. " Sed nee religionis est cogere religionem 
 quae suscipi sponte debet non vi." — Tertullian ad Scapidam.
 
 33 
 
 ceed by establishing an equal evil— the assumption of 
 a high supremacy which excludes all but its own 
 adherents * 
 
 But the Church of Rome is no more free from the 
 universal evil than ourselves. She stifles liberty of 
 discussion, and calls helpless silence peace. She com- 
 pels uniformity of belief, and calls abject submission 
 unity. But she has within her — as all who know her 
 working abroad can tell — full as many slumbering 
 elements of discontent and division f as we, who suffer 
 
 * It is sometimes forgotten that no one more protested against 
 this high supremacy than one of Rome's greatest and best bishops 
 —Gregory the Great. " What wilt thou (John of Constantinople) 
 say to Christ, the Head of the Universal Church, in the trial of 
 the last judgment, who, by the appellation of universal dost endea- 
 vour to subject all His members to thee ? Whom, I pray, dost 
 thou mean to imitate, in so perverse a word, but him who, despising 
 the legions of angels constituted in fellowship with him, did 
 endeavour to break forth unto the top of singularity, that he 
 might also be subject to none, and alone be over all ? " — S. 
 Gregory the Great. Ep. iv. 38 ap, Barrow. 
 
 t There have never been any divisions, in any portion of the 
 Church, to exceed, either in importance or in intensity, the quarrels 
 between the Jesuits and Dominicans, on the nature and necessity 
 of Divine grace. The proceedings of the famous congregation 
 " de Auxiliis," so often assembled by the Popes Clement VIII. 
 and Paul V. have been kept secret, for fear of the disclosures 
 which they would reveal. It is certain that Paul V. dared not 
 offend the King of France, who was a Jesuit, or the King of 
 Spain, who was a Dominican. One of the most learned of the 
 Dominicans, Cardinal Henry Noris (in his " Vindicise Augus- 
 tinianse ") complains that he is compelled to be silent about what 
 
 D
 
 34 
 
 out-speaking liberty of opinion to an extreme. And 
 no doubt this terrible conflict of opinions — these mani- 
 fold divisions of creed — this remorseless tearing up of 
 God's one and indivisible truth, is an awful curse. 
 Yet, after all, that curse is only the natural effect of 
 another curse which underlies it ; and that other curse 
 must first be removed before the fearful evil itself shall 
 cease to tell. That other curse is want of love. 
 
 This is not a theological difficulty how the faith shall 
 be settled ; it is altogether a moral difficulty how the 
 faith shall be received. It is not a question for the 
 intellect, but for the moral sense. It is not a question of 
 ecclesiastical learning or theological attainment, but of 
 religious education — discipline — training. It is not a 
 question of external blessing, but of internal fitness. It is 
 not where is the pure faith, but where are the pure and 
 simple hearts. Each body of Christians is seeking to 
 absorb all other bodies into itself; as if the mere visible 
 framework of a compact organization were the ultimate 
 end of all things. But if all Christendom were to 
 ^become Anglican, or Roman, or Greek, or Protestant 
 
 passed to the disadvantage of Molina and the Jesuits, and in 
 favour of the school of S. Augustine. 
 
 The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin is another 
 source of division which not even the present Pope's decree has 
 availed to remove. In 1848, I had some lengthened interviews 
 with a Priest of the kingdom of Naples, who assured me, in the 
 most solemn way, that he was one of a great number who, if they 
 were free to speak and act, would openly avow their repugnance 
 to Roman error. The practical working of the Supremacy doc- 
 trine was hateful to his conscience, but he dared not say so.
 
 35 
 
 to-morrow, it would be all the same. The root of the 
 matter would not be touched. A mere external bond 
 could never supply the loss of true love. And true love 
 cannot possibly be penetrating Anglicans, or penetra- 
 ting Romans, or penetrating Greeks, or penetrating 
 Protestants. If it were, it must long since, by its own 
 sheer force, have united them all in one. " It is mani- 
 fest that Sion is the City of God. What is that City 
 of God but the holy Church ? For men, who love each 
 other, and also their God Who dwells in them, are 
 unto God a city. As a city is held together by some 
 law, their law is love, and love is God." * 
 
 But if this be so, and love be nowhere, and hatred 
 everywhere, where is truth? God vouchsafes truth 
 to those by whom He knows it will be received. 
 Moreover, God vouchsafes truth in His Own way. It 
 is not truth because Rome has it. Nay, whatever 
 Rome has — if only'\ Rome has it, then is it rather 
 error. But it is truth, because the whole Church 
 has it. It is truth, because the whole Church has it 
 from God. It is truth, because the whole Church 
 has it from God, through one and the same bless- 
 ing — one and the same Spirit — one and the same 
 Sacraments — one and the same Scriptures — one and 
 
 * S. Augustine Enarratio in Ps. xcviii. 
 
 t " That sentence of Tertullian may well pass for a certain 
 principle and axiom : — " Quod apud viultos unum invenitur non 
 est erratum sed traditum." — Barroic's Exposition of the Creeds 
 vol. i. p. 54G. 
 
 d2
 
 36 
 
 the same inward condition of heart. " Them that are 
 meek shall He guide in judgment, and such as are 
 gentle them shall He learn His way," 
 
 And truth is not lost among us because we are 
 divided. Is reason lost, because so many act unreason- 
 ably ? Is virtue lost, because so many are impure ? 
 Is Christianity lost, because so many live a life worse 
 than heathen ? If the Romanists' taunt of our divi- 
 sions were a good argument against our having 
 Divine truth in the Church of England, it would be 
 o-ood for too much. What would be the effect of those 
 moral obliquities which disgrace the whole Church ? 
 Moral deficiencies are not less evils than doctrinal 
 divisions ; indeed, it is my firm persuasion, that doc- 
 trinal divisions are the fruit of moral obliquities. If, 
 therefore, divisions unchurch us, why should not 
 immoralities unchurch them?* And then, against the 
 wicked lives of Christians, what security have we that 
 Christianity itself is true ? 
 
 * " Ecclesiam veram intelligere non audeo nisi in Sanctis et 
 justis." — Augustine de Bap. con Donat. iv. 1, 6, 3. 
 
 " I dare not understand the Church to be but among holy and 
 righteous men." 
 
 Yet the Roman system thus deals with morals : — 
 
 ** Si autem Papa erraret praecipiendo vitia vel prohibendo 
 virtutes, teneretur Ecclesia credere vitia esse bona, et virtutes 
 malas, nisi vellet contra conscientiam peccare." — Bellarmine de 
 Pont. 4, 5. 
 
 " If the Pope should err by enjoining vices, or forbidding 
 virtues, the Church should be bound to believe vices to be good, 
 and virtues evil, unless it would sin against conscience."
 
 37 
 
 " All of one mind," — " having compassion one of 
 another," — " loving as brethren," — " pitiful," — "court- 
 eous," — not " rendering evil for evil, or railing for 
 railing, but contrawise blessing ;" — " all bitterness and 
 wrath, and anger and clamour, and evil-speaking put 
 away, with all malice," — and only mutual kindness. 
 Such is S. Peter's inspired notion of Christians, given 
 us to-day ; and you cannot entertain it, for an instant, 
 without feeling that surely where such men prevail, 
 there God will vouchsafe truth. But where are such 
 men? Are they anywhere? Are they, at least, in 
 such sort in Rome, or in England, or in the East, or 
 among Protestants, that one of those bodies has them 
 exclusively^ and they are nowhere else ? 
 
 Again : " Lovers of their ownselves," " covetous, 
 boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, 
 unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce- 
 breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of 
 those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, 
 lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, having a 
 form of godliness, but denying the power thereof." 
 Such is another Apostle's inspired account of another 
 class of men ; and you cannot entertain it, for an 
 instant, without feeling sure, that where such men 
 prevail, there God will conceal His truth. And where 
 are such men ? Are they not everywhere ? Is Rome, 
 or is England, or is the East, or is the Protestant 
 world free ? 
 
 And yet truth is not lost. The difference, between 
 the works of grace and the works of nature, is only all
 
 38 
 
 the more manifest. The great truth, of man's free choice 
 and will, is only all the more manifest. And this is 
 most manifest of all — that the diffusion of truth is not 
 confined to East, or West, North, or South — that it is a 
 work of grace spreading everywhere — that other works 
 of grace must precede it everywhere ; and that every- 
 where its work is suspended, wherever those other and 
 preceding works fail.* 
 
 Now, my brethren, each one of you in your place, 
 remember, that you have upon you a part of the 
 
 * " The peace and amity between Churches has been oftentimes 
 broken, sometimes by the sins, and sometimes by the misunder- 
 standings of Pastors and Bishops. A total suspension of com- 
 munion has sometimes lasted for many years, without either side 
 incurring the sin of formal heresy or schism, which alone separate 
 a Church from the Body of Christ. And what has lasted long 
 may last always, without the cutting off of either from the 
 objective unity of the Church. Although the channels of com- 
 munion on earth are cut asunder, yet the lines of ascent and 
 descent from earth to heaven, by which the communion of sacrifice 
 and grace is interchanged between the faithful and their unseen 
 Head, are open and sure." — Manning's Unity, p. 274. 
 
 " Unity is a duty : it is the subject of admonition, exhortation, 
 and prayer. It was the subject of the prayer of our Blessed 
 Lord, which is not, therefore, frustrated and denied because His 
 Church has from time to time forfeited His inward peace. His 
 prayers on earth, and His intercession in heaven are both in 
 harmony with the laws of man's moral probation. Our Lord 
 prayed that His disciples might be one, yet Paul and Barnabas 
 parted asunder in contention. He prayed that they might be led 
 into all truth, and yet Peter and Barnabas dissembled at Antioch." 
 — Manning's Unity, pp. 275-6.
 
 39 
 
 burden of the common sin of Christendom. The 
 divisions of Christendom have grown out of the accu- 
 mulated sins of its single members. And by those 
 accumulated sins those divisions are sustained. Never 
 did the Evil One devise a more wicked delusion than 
 the notion that you can throw off this responsibility, 
 by shifting, for yourself, the place of your probation. 
 Some impatient faithless spirits talk of Rome as a cure ; 
 as if " going over to Rome," (as it is called) could rid 
 you of the evil of division, or of your share in its sin. 
 As if one could " go over " out of one place of respon- 
 sibility into another place of responsibility, and simply 
 wipe out the stain of the whole Church's unfaithfulness 
 by the mere change. As if there were no good on this 
 side the path, and over there no evil. O ! no, beloved, 
 this were a mere perpetuation of that most miserable 
 pride and selfishness from which all our sorrows spring. 
 It was nothing but this selfishness, and pride, and 
 un-compassion, and un-forbearance, and unkindness, 
 which made the first schism in the Church of God ; 
 and on this same food schisms will be maintained to 
 the end. It was nothing but this which rent the East 
 from the West, and both East and West among them- 
 selves.* It is nothing but this which keeps them 
 
 * " It must never be forgotten that the act of the Bishop of 
 Rome, by which a most grievous and stubborn contest was began 
 in the English Church, was taken, not in the character of Patri- 
 arch, but in the title of Supreme Pontiff. The same bull which 
 made a rent in every English Diocese professed to depose also the 
 Queen of England. It was a power to give away not sees but
 
 40 
 
 separate and divided to day. *' Our Hea'1, which is 
 Christ, would have us to be His members, that, by 
 the conjunction of charity and faith, He might make 
 us to be one body." * We have thrown off charity, 
 and so broken the bonds of faith. And what wonder 
 if we are no longer one? 
 
 O ! no, my brethren, do not so mistake your own 
 responsibility as to think the sins of the divided Church 
 a matter of past history, to be accounted for by a set 
 of external facts, and to be repaired by an external 
 badge of party-membership. The sin, my brethren, is 
 in us all now — in all the Christian nations now — it has 
 been transmitted to us, and we have all too willingly 
 inherited it. The same want of " compassion one of 
 another " which begot divisions at first— sustains them 
 now. And that want is ours. My brethren, it is yours 
 — you are bound to others by far different ties — by 
 almost every tie but the one tie of love — by predilec- 
 tion, by taste, by vanity, by cupidity, by almost every 
 tie but compassion — by almost every tie but that tie 
 
 thrones also ; and the effect of this has been, as in the East and 
 in England, to erect altar against altar, and succession against 
 succession. In the formation of sects in Diocesan Churches — in 
 the exclusive assumption of the name Catholic — in the re-ordina- 
 tion of Priests, and in restricting the One Church to their own 
 communion, there has been no such example of division since the 
 schism of Donatus." — Manning's Unity, p. 364. 
 
 • " Caput nostrum quod Chbistus est, ad hoc sua esse membra 
 nos voluit, ut per compagem charitatis et fidei unum nos in se 
 corpus efficeret." — iS. Greg. M. ep. vii. HI.
 
 41 
 
 of divine power through which you can stand in every 
 baptized soul's place, and feel for him as for yourself. 
 Christian compassion (it is a grievous thing to say) 
 unites nobody. From the moment men offend your 
 fancy, or wound your vanity, or violate your prejudice, 
 or aggrieve your interest, or jar against your opinions, 
 the brittle tie which unites you is broken. And yet, 
 you know. Christian compassion is not a blind caprice ; 
 it is not an idle fancy ; it is not a natural preference ; 
 it is not a mere sympathy of temper and disposition ; 
 — it is a high duty, reasonable and just, growing out 
 of the noblest impulses of grace, and stretching forward 
 into the brightest anticipations of faith. Preference is 
 not the love of others — it is the love of self. Preference 
 changes often — love endures for ever. And therefore, 
 that preference which alone has bound you to others, 
 through self-will, through interest, through party- 
 spirit, or through whatever process it has developed 
 itself, has proved a rotten bond. And hatred and bitter- 
 ness, and slander — all the worst passions of the heart, 
 and all the saddest expressions of the tongue — have 
 been the fruit it has borne. 
 
 And as we all have our share in this sin, so depend 
 upon it, the true remedy is in our own hands. God 
 will never give us unity till we are all more earnest in 
 striving to be one.* 
 
 * We seem to have forgotten alike the spirit and the letter of 
 that royal Injunction of our own Queen Elizabeth — " That the 
 knot of all Christian society, which is charity, be not loosed ; the 
 Queen's Majesty straightly commandelh all her subjects to forbear
 
 42 
 
 Learn, first of all, forbearance. It is never right to 
 judge another by your own model. He may have 
 graces not less pleasing to God, nor less useful in their 
 purpose, than those He has given to you. It is very 
 awful to hear you condemn another because he is born 
 in another region of the world, and received Christianity 
 under different circumstances, and worships after other 
 forms— as if you, and your notions, and your prejudices, 
 were the patterns of truth — as if God judged as man, 
 according to the outward show, and not according to 
 the secret riches of His love. It is very awful to hear 
 you condemn another because he rejoices to serve God 
 with all the aids of art, the beauty of ritual, and music, 
 and architecture, and has deep and unspeakable con- 
 victions about the reverence due to Sacraments and all 
 holy things, as \i you could measure the operations of 
 that Spirit Who has manifold designs and instruments 
 of blessing, and the most inexhaustible means of 
 spreading His power far and wide.* 
 
 all vain contentions and disputations in matters of religion, and 
 not to use, in despite or rebuke of any persons, these eonvitious 
 words, papist or heretic, schismatic or sacramentary." — Injunc- 
 tions 1559, § 50. 
 
 *• Whenever ye find the spirit of arrogance and pride, the spirit 
 of envy, hatred, contention, cruelty, &c., assure yourselves that 
 there is the spirit of the devil, and not of God, albeit they pretend 
 to the world outwardly ever so much holiness; for, as the Gospel 
 teacheth us, the Spirit of Jesus is a good, holy, sweet, lowly, 
 merciful Spirit, full of charity and love, full of forgiveness and 
 pity, not rendering evil for evil, extremity for extremity." — 
 Homily for Whitsunday, 2nd part. 
 
 * " There arc many things in which, without breach of unity.
 
 43 
 
 Next, live out the principle of generosity — christian 
 kindness. " There are diversities of operations, but it 
 is the same God who worketh all in all." Give all 
 credit to all men for that to which God has called 
 them. To life and activity, or wisdom and prudence, 
 or godly jealousy and zeal ; to patience, or meekness, 
 or gentleness, or submission to God's will ; to out- 
 ward usefulness to the Church, to inward communion 
 with God. Whoever has one of these graces should 
 give due credit, and confidence and love, to him who 
 has another. The gifts may be granted for different 
 ends — in different portions of the vineyard, through 
 
 because without breach of charity, Christians may differ. ''Alia 
 sunt in quibus inter se aliquando etiam doctissimi atque optimi 
 I'egulse Catholicae defensores, salva fidei compage, non consonant." 
 S. Augustine con Jul. i. ii. p. 205. 
 
 " In such points w hioh may be held diversely of diverse men, 
 * salva fidei compage,' I would not take any man's liberty from 
 him, and humbly besceech all men that they would not take mine 
 from me." — Archbishop BrajnhalVs Fair Warning, c. 1. 
 
 For instance, on the subject of confession — the exhortation in 
 King Edward's first Prayer Book, required " such as shall be 
 satisfied with a general confession not to be offended with them 
 that do use, to their further satisfying, the auricular and secret 
 confession to the Priest ; nor those also which think needful or 
 convenient, for the quietness of their own consciences, particularly 
 to open their sins to the Priest, to be offended with them who are 
 satisfied with their humble complaint to God, and the general 
 confession to the Church. But in all things follow and keep the 
 rule of charity, and every man to be satisfied M'ith his own con- 
 science, not judging other men's consciences or acts, whereas he 
 hath no warrant of God's Word to the same."
 
 44 
 
 different outward circumstances — but the Giver is the 
 same. 
 
 Lastly, bless God for every occasion in which you 
 can hold communion with the whole, or with any part 
 of the divided Church, l^ray for those occasions to 
 be multiplied, and learn to bridle your tongue. Make 
 what barriers you please, there is no baptized soul 
 throughout the world but he is your brother. We are 
 all descended from the same blessed loins ; and though 
 Esau hates Jacob, and Jacob supplants Esau, yet once 
 they lay in the same womb : therefore, " why do ye 
 wrong one to another, for ye are brethren ? " And why 
 not rejoice, my brethren, and be thankful if, in any- 
 thing, that spirit of contention shall die out, and you can 
 feel yourselves no longer two but one.* I have a holy 
 
 * The 30th Canon of the Church of England says expressly — 
 " Nay so far was it from the purpose of the Church of England to 
 foreake and reject the Church of Italy, France, Spain, Germany, 
 or any such like Churches in all things which they held and 
 practised, that, as the Apology of the Church of England con- 
 fesseth, it doth with reverence retain those ceremonies which do 
 neither endamage the Church of GoD, nor oflfend the minds of 
 sober men ; and only departed from thevi in those points wherein 
 they rvere fallen, loth from themselves in their ancient integrity, 
 and from the ApostUc Churches which were their fist founders." 
 
 " Indeed, our Church of England deserves better the name of 
 Catholic, both for her Catholic charity, and especially for that she 
 maintains her communion upon the foundations and principles of 
 Christian religion both with the Western and Eastern Churches 
 — whom the Church of Rome excommunicates from the society 
 of the mystical Body of Christ, limiting the Church to Rome,
 
 45 
 
 abhorrence of Roman error ; but from my heart I say, 
 God help that miserable man who will not hold the 
 truth, because Rome holds it too ! I have a hearty 
 
 and such places as depend upon it. As the Donatists did of old 
 to Africa — separating herself also from the communion of the 
 Churches of Greece, Russia, Armenia, and all the Protestant 
 Churches, much greater is her schism for refusing to be a fellow 
 member with other Churches, in the Universal Church of Christ, 
 and challenging to be the head, the root, the foundation of all 
 other Churches. Yet because they still keep to the main funda- 
 mentally, we do not exclude them from the Catholic Church ; 
 though by their hard and rigid censures and excommunication of 
 us, and others that do not hold with them, they do very much 
 hazard their right and title to the said Catholic Church, as much 
 as by anything." — Archbishop BramhaWs Works, p. 990. 
 
 " Let the Church of Rome answer for herself, if she can, for 
 her trampling upon the poor Greek Church, as she lies in the 
 dust, and branding her with heresy for her doctrine o^ procession, as 
 cruelly as her Turkish masters burn their half-moons on the bodies 
 of those whom they enslave. But our Church is not so unchari- 
 table as to define it a heresy for any to maintain that the Holy 
 Ghost proceeds from the Father by the Son, though we 
 maintain as great a truth that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the 
 Father and the Son. But this makes no breach of communion 
 among us, the difference only arising from inadequation of lan- 
 guages, which notwithstanding, we agree in the main of this 
 article." — Archbishop LaudCs Animadversions on Naked Truthj 
 p. 7. 
 
 " That particular Churches would be as tender as may be in 
 giving their definitions and determinations, especially where there 
 may be admitted a latitude of dissenting without prejudice done 
 either to the substance of the Catholic faith, or to the tranquility 
 of the Church, or to the salvation of the dissenter : in which
 
 46 
 
 abhorrence of Protestant error ; but from my heart I 
 say, God help that miserable man who will not recog- 
 nize the truth at all, when it is held also by those who 
 cannot allow the universal authority of the Papal see. 
 I do pray with all my soul, that the differences between 
 us and Rome, between us and Germany, between us and 
 the home sects — that the sad differences among our- 
 selves, may daily grow less ; and that, for such a 
 blessed end, we may have more " compassion '* and 
 kindness " one of another ;" and this prayer I would 
 press upon you, beloved, that you may learn it for 
 yourselves, and teach it to your children. 
 
 Take off your passions — the passions of unholy 
 nature — and set yom faith upon the evils of the Church 
 and the world. Set your prayers upon them.* Grace 
 
 respect the moderation of the Church of England is much to be 
 commended, and to be preferred not only before the Roman 
 Church, which with insufferable tyranny bindeth all her children, 
 upon pain of damnation, to all her determinations, even in those 
 points which are no way necessary to salvation, but also before 
 sundry other reformed Churches who have proceeded further than 
 this Church hath done." — BjJ. Sanderson. Pax Ecclesice. p. 52. 
 
 • " How sober and sound soever our proceedings be in these 
 cases, all is vain which we do to abate the errors of men, except 
 their unruly affections be bridled. Self-love, vain- glory, impati- 
 ence, pride, pertinacy, these are the bane of ou)- jjeace. And 
 these are not conquered or cast out, but by prayer. Pray 
 for Jerusalem, and your prayer shall cause " the hills to bring 
 forth peace :" peace shall distil and " come down like the rain 
 upon the mown grass, and as the showers that water the earth." 
 We have used all other means, and behold we are frustrate — we
 
 47 
 
 will teach you not to resent, not to speak high swelling 
 words of carnal indignation, but to bear and forbear, 
 and pray, and entreat, and wait. ! what a calm, in 
 the midst of all — " having compassion one of another," 
 to entreat and to wait. And for love sake, bridle your 
 tongues — " refrain your tongues from evil, and your 
 lips that they speak no guile." You shall often lament 
 speaking much : never shall you be sorry for holding 
 your tongue. Speaking much, and speaking hastily, 
 and rashly, and harshly, and censoriously, and sarcas- 
 tically, and scoffingly, and irreverently — that you shall 
 lament often ; but, silence — gentle, forbearing, fearing, 
 loving, silence — never. 
 
 have laboured in vain. In disputations, whether it be because 
 men are ashamed to acknowledge their errors before many wit- 
 nesses, or because extemporality doth exclude mature and ripe 
 advice, without which the truth cannot soundly and thoroughly 
 be demonstrated, or because the fervour of contention doth so 
 disturb men's understanding that they cannot sincerely and 
 effectually judge : in books and sermons^ whether it be because 
 we do speak and write with too little advice, or because you do 
 hear and read with too much prejudice : in all human means 
 which have hitherto been used to procure ])eace : whether it be 
 because our dealings have been too feeble, or the minds of men 
 with whom we have dealt too implacable, or whatsoever the cause 
 or causes have been : forasmuch as we see that as yet we fail in 
 our desires, yea, the ways which we take to be most likely to 
 make peace, do but move strife. O ! that we would now hold 
 our tongues, leave contending with men, and have our talk and 
 treaty of peace with God. We have spoken and written enough 
 of peace, there is no way left but this one — * Pray for the peace 
 of Jerusalem.'" — Hooker^ s Fragments, Bookviii. ap2>' 8. Keble's 
 ed. Vol. iii. p. 464.
 
 48 
 
 beloved in the Lord ! let us all beg of God to 
 show us the more excellent way of compassion and of 
 love — the true path to unity. We all live, I am afraid, 
 too much outwardly. Religion is carried into our 
 strong animal passions, not to subdue but to feed 
 them ; and so, the wretched warmth of our corrupt 
 nature is often mistaken for life, and zeal, and power. 
 Noise, and bustle, and tumult, and hurry, and much 
 talking, the excitement of temper, and the agitation 
 for influence, and authority, in our own party — are 
 these things uncommon amongst us ? Yet what is 
 there of God's grace in them — what of love — what of 
 " compassion one of another ? " 
 
 Examine yourselves, brethren. The difference is so 
 great between confusion and peace, strife and gentle- 
 ness, envy and mercy, every evil work and every good 
 work, you cannot mistake your side. 
 
 On the one part the tests are these — " adultery, 
 fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witch- 
 craft, hatred, variance, emulation, wrath, strife, seditions, 
 heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, 
 and such like." 
 
 On the other part — " love, joy, peace, long-suffering, 
 gentleness, faith, meekness, temperance." 
 
 O ! my brethren, you cannot mistake your side.
 
 SERMON III. 
 
 HINDRANCES FROM THE BROKEN COVENANT 
 OF HOPE. 
 
 " We are one body by our agreement in religion, our unity of discipline, and 
 our being in the same covenant of hope." — Tertullian.* 
 
 (Preached at S. Barnabas', Pimlieo, on the Seventh Sunday after Trinity.) 
 
 " There is one body and one spirit, even as ye are called in 
 one hope of your calling ; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one 
 God and Father of all. Who is above all, and through all, and 
 in you all." — Ephesians iv. 4, 5, 6. 
 
 There is nothing so marked in Holy Scripture and 
 the Creeds of the Church, in all ages, as God's great 
 law of the unity of the Church. And there is nothing 
 so perplexing to earnest souls, as the flagrant breach of 
 that law, to which the divisions of Christendom bear 
 melancholy witness. 
 
 The Epistle for to-day requires me to address you 
 on this subject. The words of my text are so precise 
 and clear. They stand out over against the fact which 
 contradicts them — the many bodies, and many spirits, 
 and many hopes, and many lords, and many faiths, 
 and many baptisms of modern times, with such a dis- 
 tinct voice of condemnation that I have no choice but 
 
 * " Corpus sumus de conscientia religionis et disciplinas unitate, 
 et spei fcedere." — Tertullian Apolog. 39. 
 
 E
 
 60 
 
 notice tliem. And yet, I shall avoid both of two 
 courses which you may expect me to take. I shall 
 neither attempt any formal account of the subject of 
 unity, nor shall I discuss the Roman claim to the 
 exclusive possession of that which it has, almost 
 exclusively, served to interrupt for others, and to 
 unspiritualize for itself. 
 
 Both of those lines of argument are very important 
 and necessary in their proper place ; but they are not 
 so much suggested by my text as the assertion of 
 certain great general considerations which lie much 
 deeper than mere formulae of Church discipline and 
 jurisdiction, at the root of an evil, which is not merely 
 English or merely Roman, but infects the whole state 
 of Christ's Church, in these latter days. 
 
 Now, first of all, observe, my brethren, two things— 
 God's law on this subject, — and, in spite of his breach 
 of that law, man's instinctive craving after it. The 
 Divine law of unity in God's Church is such an unity 
 as subsists between the Persons in the Godhead — 
 between the Lord upon earth, and His Father in the 
 heavens.* Also, it is an outward unity such as the 
 world shall see, and must acknowledge. And thus, 
 
 * " Illud potius voluit commendare- quod alio loco ait — ego 
 et Pater unum suraus, ubi eamdem Patris et suam significavit esse 
 naturam. Ac per hoc et cum in nobis sunt Pater et Filius, vel 
 etiam Spiritus Sanctus non debemus eos putare naturae unius esse 
 nobiscum. Sic itaque sunt in nobis, vel nos in illis, ut illi unum 
 sint in natura sua, nos unum in nostra." — S. Augustine in Joh, 
 c. 17. Tract, ex. Ben. Ed. Vol. III., 775.
 
 51 
 
 the breach of that law is the great catholic sin (so to 
 speak) of the visible Church. It is the great violation 
 of the will of the One Father of the One Family. It is 
 the great reproach to the Name of the One Head of 
 the Church. It is the great denial of the Presence and 
 Power of the Holy Ghost. That which Christ 
 prayed for must be good. The contradiction of it 
 must be evil. 
 
 I am not now taking to account the distinction 
 between an organic unity and a subjective unity, which 
 is so true, that but for its truth, the want of unity in 
 the Church might be the most direct evidence of her 
 apostacy. But I am taking a broad view of what 
 meets the eye. God has set forth a plain fixed law. 
 That plain law is not kept. It is an evil state of things. 
 It is a necessary consequence of sin — but it is evil in 
 itself. It is not a right state because it is the actual 
 state. When the nations of old combined wickedly, and 
 sought to build up a tower which should be the 
 rallying point of their union, and the monument of 
 their pride, God broke up their combination by divid- 
 ing their language. He scattered those elements of 
 union which could only consummate wickedness. And 
 so, no doubt, in the Church — when godly union was 
 abandoned by men, ungodly unity was hindered by 
 God. Men who would not unite in God's way, were 
 hindered from uniting in their own way. When 
 the Church began to build up an earthly Babel — a 
 temporal centre — and to gather round that, instead of 
 looking for the City of God from heaven. He con- 
 
 E 2
 
 52 
 
 founded their speech, so that they spake to one another 
 a strange language. The same words expressed 
 different meanings to different minds — because the true 
 meaning was, more or less, evaded by all. 
 
 But God has ways of over-ruling evil. The 
 want of unity has, no doubt, been the means of pre- 
 serving a measure of truth upon the earth. Hostile 
 bodies have watched each other, and feared each other's 
 censure, and so have been restrained. Their separate 
 efforts at self -justification have tended to preserve the 
 great standards by which all, in common, must be tried. 
 If the Latin, or the Greek, or the Anglican, or the Pro- 
 testant bodies had striven to destroy the foundations of 
 Christianity, sectarian hatred would have denounced 
 the crime, even if zeal for the truth had been extinct. 
 No doubt, therefore, division is not the worst state of 
 the visible Church. A worse state is coming — but 
 that is not the subject now. Yet while division is not 
 our worst condition, it is very far from the best. The 
 best is the right condition, and the right condition is 
 that for which Christ prayed — the condition of unity. 
 
 And this brings me to the second point which I 
 called you, first of all, to notice — how an instinct of 
 this truth stirs mightily now in all men's minds. If 
 measures of public good cannot be carried without the 
 public consent, then all things, which militate against 
 that public consent, must be taken out of the way. 
 Such is the determination of men's minds. But nothing 
 so hinders mutual concurrence as religious differences. 
 Therefore, religious differences must be taken out of the
 
 53 
 
 way. And so popular systems of education, liberal 
 schools, liberal colleges — are the efforts which are 
 now made, everywhere, to break down distinctions, and 
 to work society into unity. Favour towards a particular 
 Church is yielding to a spirit of impartiality, or rather 
 of indifferentism, towards all. 
 
 The working elements, in worldly as well as in reli- 
 gious communities, seem tending to the unity of the 
 human family, even if it be by the exaggerations and 
 perversions of true principles. Communism and social- 
 ism are caricatures of Christian verities. But, whatever 
 they are, they have become instruments through which 
 men speak their minds. And their one mind is this — 
 that men must unite to do some great work in common 
 — that they must bring their collective intelligence to 
 bear upon all questions of government and social 
 economy, in order that every burden may be relieved, 
 and every abuse corrected — in order that all men may 
 freely help all men to bring about what all men 
 desire — the perfection of man's powers, and the joys of 
 the earth which he inhabits. 
 
 And it is just the same in what is called the " reli- 
 gious world." The same struggle for unity strikes the 
 observant eye. What is the Evangelical Alliance ? 
 and the Protestant Association ? What are the hundred 
 other societies, composed of good men of " all de- 
 nominations," for combined religious action, but 
 indications of a feeling that the separation of Christians 
 is a contradiction in terms — that it is an anomaly 
 which must be done away.
 
 54 
 
 One common feature marks all those movements 
 of which I have spoken. They seem to fix unity 
 not on the basis of truth expressed, but on the basis 
 of truth suppressed. Nevertheless, they are signs of 
 the times, and I call you to note them, that you 
 may be wiser by them. They are all imitations — 
 or rather, they are all irregular results — of a deeper 
 movement of the Spirit of God, in the midst of His 
 Church. The time will come for the power of God 
 to unite His Church that she may stand forth, and be 
 seen, and recognized, and obeyed in the world. He 
 has long suffered the flesh of man to obstruct His Will. 
 But, in His own time. He will lift up the veil from 
 those promises which have, as yet, been hidden from 
 our eyes, and we shall see the exceeding greatness of 
 His might in those who put their trust in Him. 
 
 My brethren, that unity of the Church, outward 
 and inward, for which the Head of the Church prayed, 
 must, sooner or later, be accomplished on earth. It is 
 true, bodies, which have corrupted themselves, have 
 never, as bodies, repented. Usually they have gone 
 from bad to worse. But some out of all shall learn 
 God's ways, and shall witness for God's truth, and 
 shall manifest God's power. It were vain to hope that 
 Latins and Greeks and Protestants, retaining their 
 several sinful excesses and defects, shall ever become 
 one Church, in God's appointed way. It were vain 
 also to hope that, as bodies, they will ever, severally, 
 renounce their excesses, and supply their defects. But 
 God shall be glorified by the faith and unity of His
 
 55 
 
 Church, through " a remnant," at the close of the 
 Christian dispensation, just as He was glorified through 
 " a remnant " at the close of the Jewish. And thus, 
 the restoration of unity is an interest altogether per- 
 sonal and individual to each baptized soul, just because 
 it is common to so many. And the course of it must 
 lie along no barren tract of controversy on questions 
 of privilege and precedence, but along the line of an 
 unfailing compliance with all the express conditions 
 of our calling in Christ Jesus. The moral habit of 
 the men of our age is not in accord with their high 
 destiny. It has an antipathy to submission. Their 
 will is not at unity with God. And that is the evil 
 along the course of which the remedy must be made to 
 run. They are the tempers of men which break or 
 conserve the unity of the Church. The unity of the 
 Church is not only a creed — it is a life.* 
 
 And now, as, by God's blessing, we can, let us 
 draw this out. 
 
 " There is one body and one spirit," says the Apostle, 
 and how ? — " even as ye are called in one hope of your 
 calling.^' The first step, therefore, to Christian unity 
 in the Church, is for Christians to know their common 
 hope. Christians must know unto what they have 
 
 * "The idea of humbly learning God's truth and passively 
 receiving sacramental mysteries from the hands of a man like our- 
 selves ; of submitting to counsel or reproof, rebuke, correction, at 
 the judgment of a fiellow^-sinnei-, is a test and probation of our 
 moral habit, which by its searching and salutary virtue attests 
 itself to be of God." — Manning's Unity, p. 268.
 
 56 
 
 been called. No m^n can take his place until he 
 understands what that place is — what God has pur- 
 posed him for, and called him to be. And " the hope" 
 of the Gospel, my brethren, what is it? It is not 
 simply that our sins may be pardoned — it is not simply 
 that our souls may go to heaven when we die. The hope 
 to which we have been called, is to inherit all things, 
 as " heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ," — to 
 reign with Christ in the kingdom to come — to sit 
 with Him upon His throne, as now He sitteth with 
 the Father upon His throne. This is our calling — 
 to have our human nature, in its entireness, brought 
 into that condition into which Christ has already 
 brought it in His Own Person. As we now " bear the 
 image of the earthy," we are called to "bear the image 
 of the heavenly." We are to become like That which 
 Jesus Christ became, when He rose from the dead, and 
 ascended up into Heaven. A change, similar to that 
 which passed on His Body, must pass upon our body. 
 And when this shall take place, then we shall enter, with 
 Him, into the inheritance of all things. 
 
 Mark this well, my brethren, we are called not 
 merely to look at Jesus crucified, but at what Jesus 
 became after He was crucified. He was crucified for 
 our sins, but His crucifixion was not His ultimate con- 
 dition. After His crucifixion, He rose from the dead, 
 and He rose with that very Body which had been cruci- 
 fied. In that risen Body, He now appears for us at 
 God*s right hand. In that Body He shall come to us 
 again, and when He comes. He will change His people
 
 57 
 
 who shall be alive, and raise up those which shall be 
 dead. And that change, my brethren, is our final 
 condition. That change is our introduction into the 
 promised kingdom. And the hope of that kingdom, 
 and the hope of that change, is the common hope of 
 the Christian. 
 
 You do not see man in his glory, when you behold 
 the unfallen Adam in paradise, fresh from his Maker's 
 hands. You do not see for what man was destined, 
 when you see Jesus Christ suffering upon the Cross. 
 But when you look into the Heaven of Heavens, and 
 see the Son of God sitting, as a Man, at God's right 
 hand, then you understand the calling of man — then 
 you can enter into David's words — " Lord, what is 
 man, that Thou art mindful of him, and the son of 
 man that Thou regardest Him ?" Yes, brethren, the 
 glorified Jesus still calls us brethren. He loves us 
 now, as He loved us, when He hung upon the Cross. 
 As He came down into the depths of our humiliation, 
 so will He raise us up unto the heights of His exalta- 
 tion. 
 
 Now what the text sets forth is plain — there can 
 never be any restoration to unity but on this founda- 
 tion. It is belief in this " hope of our calling" which 
 will first bring us together. The Christian world is 
 separate and divided, because men do not understand 
 the oneness of their baptism. And they do not under- 
 stand their baptism, because they do not believe in this 
 hope of their calling. There are two things set forth 
 in Christian baptism — death with Christ, and resur-
 
 58 
 
 rection with Christ. And all men who earnestly desire 
 that God's pledge to them in baptism shall be abso- 
 lutely fulfilled in them, all such are in the way of 
 Christian unity. 
 
 My brethren, in this way is your interest in the 
 unity of the Church a personal interest. You have 
 all been baptized. You are all responsible for that 
 which is signified in baptism. By the sacrament of 
 baptism, Christ sets before you what He has redeemed 
 you for, — what He proposes to do in you, —what He 
 proposes to do with you. Now, if all men understood 
 what their baptism means — if all men were willing to 
 have their baptism a real transaction between God 
 and them — if all men were willing to experience in 
 themselves that which baptism expresses, no longer 
 would they be hindering the unity of the Church. 
 
 What is the state of the case ? In baptism, God 
 binds Himself to us, so to speak. He makes a 
 covenant with us. He guarantees to us certain bless- 
 ings. And we, on our part, do solemnly give our- 
 selves up to Him. We are ready that what He 
 proposes to us shall take effect in us. We are baptized 
 into the Name of the Blessed Trinity, in order that we 
 may receive from God all the blessing which the 
 " Father" supplies, — all the glory which the " Son" 
 brought into our nature, and all the instruction, and 
 comfort, and illumination, which the Holy Spirit can 
 impart. All this, and more than language can define, 
 or thought can compass, has God, in our baptism, 
 engaged to do for us.
 
 59 
 
 Now God is in earnest, whether we be in earnest 
 or not. What, in baptism. He sets before us in visible 
 signs, He is Himself present to work in us. He does 
 not give us a dry task to perform, but He draws nigh 
 Himself, to aid the performance of it, and to fulfil a 
 work in us. Men seem as if they thought their 
 justification before God a thing done for them by 
 Him, but their sanctification an offering of their own 
 — a work achieved bi/ them in return for the favour 
 received. But it is not so. God accounts us righteous 
 for His Son's sake, when we believe in Him, and then 
 in baptism. He engages to make us, really, that which 
 He accounts us — to make us really righteous. But 
 the cause of complaint which God has againt us all, 
 my brethren, is not that we have fallen in Adam, and 
 are incapable of righteousness, but that we are forget- 
 ting the covenant which He has made with us, and we 
 with Him — that we will not give Him the opportunity 
 of fulfilling the promises which He has made to us — 
 that we either turn our baptism into an idle ceremony, 
 or make it a piece of necromancy and magic. God 
 is provoked with us, because we will not remember 
 the holy obligations which burden us. He is waiting 
 upon us every day, — and waiting in vain — to hear us 
 ask Him to give us, in actual and absolute experience, 
 all that which He has already given us in sacramental 
 engagement. 
 
 This, my brethren, is the sin of the Christian 
 nations, that, being in covenant with God, they wull 
 not stand to that covenant. This is the history of our
 
 60 
 
 broken unity. The Lord appointed one baptism for 
 all. And all who partake in that one baptism should 
 be one. Let Christians return to their baptismal 
 engagements, and our lost unity will be restored. 
 Baptism contains all the elements of our perfection. "S* 
 O ! woe be to those who hinder Christian unity, by 
 requiring of man more than is signified in his Christian 
 baptism ; or who, being content with less than is 
 signified in his Christian baptism, do not require all 
 that Christian baptism contains. 
 
 Be not deceived. There is no right condition of the 
 Church of God recognized in Holy Scripture but the 
 condition of unity. There is no other condition set 
 forth in the Sacraments which God has instituted. 
 " By one spirit, we are all baptized into one body, 
 whether we be Jews or Greeks, whether we be bond or 
 free ;" and " We being many are one bread, and one 
 body, for we are all partakers of that one bread." 
 Whoever is not mourning over the loss of unity — 
 whoever is not seeking its recovery, with all his heart 
 and all his soul, and with all that breadth and depth 
 of heart which is worthy of the subject, is a stranger 
 to the purpose of God, and a traitor to the success of 
 his baptismal calling. He knows neither what is good 
 for himself, or good for his neighbour. He cannot be 
 perfected. No man can measure the bereavement 
 
 • " So he that holds that immovable rule of truth which he 
 received at his baptism, will know the words and sayings and 
 parables which were taken out of the Scriptures." — S. Ireneus i. 
 1. Apud. Barrow. Vol. I. p. 270.
 
 61 
 
 which all sustain by divisions in the Catholic 
 Church.* 
 
 In the primitive definition of the Church of God, 
 there are four terms used, " One," " Holy," " Catholic," 
 and " Apostolic." Unity is the pre-requisite to all 
 the rest. The Church first is one — and therefore, fit 
 to be presented to God, to do His holy work. And 
 then she is separated to Him — " Holiness to the Lord." 
 And then she is Catholic — spreading over all nations, 
 and bringing salvation to all. But her unity is the 
 key-stone of the whole framework. First, there is 
 one body and one spirit. To make room for the mani- 
 festation of the one Spirit, there must first exist the 
 one Body. Break the unity of the body, and you 
 quench the spirit. Quench the spirit, and you lose 
 the hope. Lose the hope, and you lose Jesus the 
 Lord. You cease to believe in God's truth as He 
 did. You occupy yourself with speculations, and 
 abstractions, and developments of doctrine about God, 
 in the place of God Himself. You have not the faith 
 of the Lord — you cannot fulfil His baptism, and so 
 you fail in apprehending God the Father, " Who is 
 
 * " The Lord saith, ' I and the Father are one j' and again, 
 of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, it is written — 
 * and these Three are One :' and does any one think that oneness, 
 thus proceeding from the divine immutability, and cohering in 
 heavenly sacraments, admits of being sundered in the Church, and 
 split by the divorce of antagonist wills ? He who holds not this 
 unity, holds not the law of God, holds not the faith of Father 
 and Son, holds not the truth unto salvation." — S. Cyprian. Unity 
 of the Ch. Treatises, p. 135. Oxford.
 
 62 
 
 above all, and through all, and in you all." Break 
 one link of the chain, and you break the chain. Re- 
 fuse the first object in the series, and you let go all 
 the rest. 
 
 Mark the order of the text — " There is one body " 
 — one organized society, called into existence by God 
 Himself, with power to every member in it, having 
 one life in the body. It is a "io^y" — a visible thing 
 — a material combination — '* a city set on a hill." And 
 "owe body" — made out of all nations — not an English 
 Church, nor a Roman Church, nor a Greek Church, 
 nor a Protestant Church — not many sects — but one 
 Church — one Body, having its proper form, its pecu- 
 liar instincts, its distinct mode of subsistence, and its 
 own law of growth and development. 
 
 And further, there is "one spirit." The "one body" 
 is not a narrow fleshly confederacy,* but a wide living 
 
 * " The voluntary aggregations of men into communities pro- 
 fessing Christianity are no more Churches, than an arbitrary 
 combination of fathers and children under one roof are a family. 
 The one constitutive principle is wanting, which is the will of 
 God, knitting them in one by a revealed or natural sanction. 
 They have not the first element of moral unity. They have no 
 relation to each other ; no fatherly authority no brotherly claims. 
 The very essence of a family is natural order based upon the 
 duties of submission and the rights of equality. God is the author 
 of these relations by the appointment of nature. The lives of 
 parental authority are a silent revelation, as divine as the voice of 
 God at Sinai ; and the polity of a family is as exactly ordained of 
 God as the pattern which was shown to Moses on the Mount. 
 Without this authorship and sanction there could be neither
 
 63 
 
 Church, having one spirit — the Spirit of Christ rest- 
 ing upon It, and dwelling in It. That Spirit Which 
 came down upon the Head of the Church when He 
 was baptized, and Which again came down from 
 heaven upon His Church made righteous in Him, is the 
 one Spirit to fill the one Church with one hope. Every 
 society is organized with a distinct hope and end. And 
 the Church of God has a hope and end, of which the 
 possession of the one Spirit now is the antepast and 
 earnest. Where the Spirit is, there the " hope " is 
 kept alive. Where the Spirit is not, there the one 
 hope of the Church dies out, and some other hope fills 
 its place. 
 
 And further still, there is " one Lord," Who has 
 attained to the hope — Who has brought our whole 
 human nature to its ultimate state of perfection and 
 blessedness — Who is ready to take His kingdom, but 
 waiteth for the many sons Whom He is bringing to 
 glory, that they may be ready also. The Head has 
 entered into the hope, and the Body shall follow. And 
 when the body shall have entered in, then the Head 
 of the Church and the Church shall reign together for 
 ever. 
 
 And further still — there is " one faith " by which 
 the Lord attained that height in heaven. He came 
 down from heaven to show all creatures how to trust 
 
 parental authority, nor filial obedience, therefore no moral disci- 
 pline of the will. For this reason the divinely constituted polity 
 of the Church effects what no other system can." — Manning's 
 Unity, p. 251.
 
 64 
 
 in God. He became " a worm and no man," having 
 no strength of His Own, but leaning by faith upon 
 another — " He trusted in God and was delivered/' 
 " In the days of His Flesh He offered up prayers and 
 supplication and was heard in that He feared." He is 
 " the author and finisher of all faith ;" the example of 
 it in Himself, the perfecter of it in others. There is, 
 therefore, but one faith by which Jesus prevailed and 
 became Lord of all — by which we, through Him, shall 
 also prevail and attain His kingdom. 
 
 And farther still — there is "one baptism." Through 
 faith, the Church enters into Christian baptism — going 
 under the water which drowns the flesh — submitting 
 to the fire which consumes the body of sin, and purges 
 out the dross from the spirit. " Ye shall be baptized 
 with the baptism wherewith I am baptized." " We 
 " suffer with Christ, that we may reign with Him." 
 
 And lastly — one God and Father of all, Who is 
 above all, and through all, and in you all. Such is 
 the summing up. They who are baptized into 
 Christ and with Christ — God is their God and 
 Father — over them to bear rule — in them continually 
 to dwell — and by them to work out all His holy will 
 and pleasure with the children of men. 
 
 Bear with me a few minutes more. I have sketched 
 out that sort of unity which Christ prayed for, and 
 S. Paul pressed upon the Ephesian Church. Now do 
 not say that such a unity is impossible. My brethren, 
 God has appointed means by which this unity can be 
 effected, how difiicult soever the work may appear.
 
 65 
 
 Christ could not pray for an impossibility. His 
 Apostles, jfilled with the Spirit, could not press an 
 unattainable object. The Spirit of God is able to do 
 it, and He will do it. The kings of the earth cannot 
 do it. The Church, becoming carnal and worldly, 
 cannot do it.* Forced uniformity can be produced, 
 
 * *' Non est amplius ecclesia, sed respublica quoedam humana, 
 sub Papae monarchia temporali." So the Archbishop of Spalato 
 described the Church of Rome, of which he was himself a Bishop. 
 The history of this prelate is as instructive as it is curious. Marcus 
 Antonius de Dorainis, a learned inquirer into facts of history, and 
 doctrines of the Church, becomes convinced of the innovations of 
 Rome. A persecution threatens him in Dalmatia, where his see of 
 Spalato is situated, and in 1616, he comes for shelter to England. 
 The King receives him gladly, and Archbishop Abbot invites him 
 to assist at the consecration of some English Bishops. Then he is 
 made Master of the Savoy, and Dean of Windsor. While in 
 England, he writes his book against Rome, " De Republica Eccle- 
 siastica," which, he boasts to the last, was never answered. Great 
 oifence is taken at Rome, and violent threats alternate with 
 flattering offers of reconciliation to win him back. Neither is all 
 well with him in England; for, through the intrigue of the Spanish 
 Ambassador, he falls into disfavour with the King and the Clergy. 
 I'hus abandoned by his new friends he accepts the proposals of 
 Rome, an^ requests leave to quit the kingdom. A commission — 
 Abbot and the Bishops of Lincoln, London, Durham, and Win- 
 chester — sit upon him, and order him off in twenty days. He 
 departs, but promises that he will never maltreat the Church of 
 England, nor speak reproachingly of her — that her Articles are 
 clear of heresy, and all "serviceable and sound." But he does not 
 keep his word, and all his future is but misery. Gregory XV. 
 gives him a pension which Urban VIII. stops, and then the 
 Archbishop broaches his former convictions, and taunts the 
 
 F
 
 66 
 
 and has been produced by such instruments. But 
 to make many men of one mind, and of one heart, 
 and of one will, and of one outward organization, and 
 of one inward life — to make one Church out of all 
 nations, in which the peculiarities of each nation, 
 according to the different characters given to each by 
 God, should be preserved, and all should be combined 
 into one harmonious whole — intertwined and inter- 
 woven by the wisdom and power of God — in which 
 Church should be found Jews, and Greeks, and 
 Romans — English, and French, and Germans — men of 
 the North and the South, of the East and of the West 
 — loving one another out of a pure heart fervently, 
 and holding up together the testimony of Christ over 
 all the earth — that is the work of the Holy Ghost. 
 It is His Own proper work. He came down at Pente- 
 cost to do the work. He first descended to make the 
 material Body for the Lord, of the substance of the 
 Blessed Virgin, and to endow that Holy Body with the 
 fulness of heavenly gifts. And when that Body was 
 taken to the Right Hand of God, the same Spirit 
 came down again, from the Ascended Lord, to raise up 
 for Him His mystical Body — to bind that Body to Its 
 Lord, and to endow It with all powers needful for His 
 
 Roman Church with never answering his book. Whatever were 
 his sentiments of truth, this kind of conduct is damaging to his 
 memory, as showing a time-serving temper. His fate was, as 
 may be supposed, rapid and decisive : — study searched — papers 
 found — prison door opened — then shut — and so an end of Antonius 
 de Dominis in this world for ever.
 
 67 
 
 service. The work which the Holy Spirit came to 
 do He can do, and He will do. 
 
 But, my brethren, this work must be your work too. 
 And only so far as it is yours, shall you be permitted 
 to reap its blessedness. God never works for man's 
 good against his will, but according to his will Will 
 the thing, and work for it, and pray for it, and God 
 will perform it. The raising up of the Church — Its 
 unity — Its perfection — the coming of Its Head — Its 
 entrance into the kingdom prepared before the founda- 
 tion of the world — this is the only abiding hope of the 
 universe. And if you are not already lost men and 
 women, this hope must fill your minds and move your 
 hearts 
 
 0, my brethren, do not put this from you. Do 
 not imagine that you can cultivate individual religion 
 while you forget the Body of Christ. Do not limit 
 your zeal to yourselves, and to people like yourselves. 
 " In the last days, men shall be lovers of their own 
 selves.'* Take care — selfishness begins in religion, and 
 then branches out in all other directions. Men say 
 they can do without their brethren. With their Bibles 
 and their pet religious books, they can shut themselves 
 up with themselves, and deal with God, without Priests, 
 or Sacraments, or Church. The spirit of modern 
 religion is the spirit of isolation. Oh ! how it narrows, 
 and estranges, and desolates ! " It is not good for man 
 to be alone." 
 
 Do not speak of personal religion as if to separate 
 yourselves from all Christendom were personal religion.
 
 68 
 
 How is personal religion to be attained ? * Where is 
 personal religion to be found? Do not all honest men, 
 in all sects, feel that personal religion is well-nigh 
 breathing its last ? And O ! Christian people, what 
 shall revive personal religion ? When we are zealous 
 for the glory of God's Church, only then shall His 
 comforts fill us to overflowing. When God's people 
 of old returned from their captivity, they sought to 
 make themselves individually comfortable and pros- 
 perous, and God said " Ye have sown much and bring 
 in little. Ye eat, but ye have not enough : ye drink, 
 but ye are not filled with drink : ye clothe you, but 
 there is none warm ; and he that earneth wages, eameth 
 wages to put into a bag with holes." f And why was 
 
 * " Besides these joints and bands of the great miracle of 
 charity (the holy Eucharist), the Church silently testified, at all 
 times, by the habitual tenor of ks practice ; for the life of every 
 Christian was a type of the unity of God. The universal love of 
 all, the various sympathy in joy and sorrow, the denial and sub- 
 jugation of self for the sake of others, the forgiveness of injuries, 
 the quenching of resentment, the love of enemies, were rays ema- 
 nating from some central brightness. Their unearthliness and 
 their inclination revealed their advent to be from heaven, and their 
 origin to be in God." — Manning's Unity, pp. 224-5. 
 
 None of us should despair because of pressing evils. Let u^, 
 correct all we can, and bear the rest — praying to God rather than 
 complaining to man. " Pii et placidi misericorditer corripiant 
 quod possunt ; quod non possunt patienter ferant, et cum dilectione 
 gemant atque lugeant donee ant emendet Deus, ant in messe 
 eradicet zizania." — S. Augustine con Parmen. 1. iii. c. 1. 
 
 t Haggai i. 6.
 
 69 
 
 this? They strove to have abundance and ease in their 
 cieled houses, while the House of God "lay waste." And 
 so now, men dream of prosperous individual religion, 
 while the Church, the House of God, is in ruins. 
 " Go up," said the Lord to the selfish ones of old — . 
 " go up to the mountain and bring wood and build 
 the House, and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be 
 glorified, saith the Lord. Ye looked for much, and 
 lo ! it came to little ; and when ye brought it home I 
 did blow upon it. Why ? saith the Lord of Hosts, 
 because of Mine House that is waste, and ye run every 
 one to his own house. Therefore, the heaven over 
 you is stayed from dew, and the earth is stayed from 
 her fruit : and I called for a drought upon the land 
 and upon the mountains, and upon the corn, and upon 
 the new wine, and upon the oil, and upon that which 
 the ground bringeth forth ; and upon men, and upon 
 cattle, and upon all the labour of the hands."* 
 
 ! fearful was God's curse upon the narrow-minded 
 Jews of old. And fearfully again will such a curse be 
 spiritually fulfilled in us, and in our children. May 
 God turn us from our selfishness and enlarge our 
 hearts ! 
 
 " Consider now, saith the Lord, from the day that 
 the foundation of the Lord's Temple was laid — 
 consider it — from this day will I bless you."f 
 
 • Haggai i. 8, 9, 10, 11. t Haggai ii. 18, 19. 
 
 London : J. T. Hatbs 5, Lyalt Place, Eaton Square.
 
 A SERMON 
 
 PREACHED IN 
 
 C|e |kms st Jatoarkii €\nn\, 
 
 AFTER ITS 
 
 PARTIAL DESTRUCTION BY FIRE, 
 
 ON SUNDAY, NOVEMBER Sth, 1857, 
 
 REV. WALDEGRAVE BREWSTER, M.A. 
 
 CURATE. 
 
 f ttMisIjelj in ailj at its lesto cation. 
 
 LONDON: .1. MASTERS; OXFORD: J. H. & J. PARKER; 
 CHESTER: HUGH ROBERTS, EASTGATE ROW.
 
 SERMON. 
 
 N E H EM I A H ii. 17. 
 
 " Ye see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lieth waste, and 
 the gates thereof are burned with fire : come, and let us build up the 
 wall of Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach.'" 
 
 The Bible, though the word of God, and perhaps 
 chiefly designed to show us the deep things of God, 
 has yet a wonderfully human character about it. God, 
 indeed, speaks there, and that with no doubtful voice; 
 but He speaks, for the most part, in the person of 
 men, and stoops to all the ordinary forms of speech 
 which men employ. And, so far from wearing the some- 
 what cold and repulsive aspect of a high and abstract 
 theology, or hard and dry morality, the Scriptures 
 abound with the most attractive and pathetic appeals 
 to our understanding and aff'ections, which can be 
 brought to bear upon them. True, as we read, 
 the heavens open, and majestic words of sovereign 
 power, or of solemn warning, fall upon our ears; but 
 mingled with them are the accents of a human love, 
 and we feel in the presence of One like ourselves, at 
 Whose feet we may sit and look upward, if not with 
 perfect and familial' confidence, yet at least with less
 
 trembling awe. And this it is which has made God's 
 word, at all times, the hand-book of the lowly, as weU as 
 the learned. Speaking to no particular age or class, 
 but to the whole human race ; and from the depths of 
 man's nature, as well as God's knowledge ; it is no 
 Sybilline mystery, to be opened only in the hour of 
 perplexity : but a bosom friend and associate, whose 
 daily converse improves our mind, as much as it cheers 
 our heart. 
 
 Thus only could it become to us what it actually is, 
 and satisfy all our nature's wants : hence its touching 
 parables and engaging histories ; hence its universality 
 and human tenderness. Not only do different portions 
 of it fall in with the ever varying moods and tempers 
 of men, according to their different characters and 
 fortunes, at once correcting and elevating, as well as 
 supplying a means of expression to their thoughts 
 and feelings ; but neither can any circumstance or 
 condition of life befall any number of us, I had almost 
 said any individual, which is not there represented 
 to the full, and in such a manner that we may take 
 pattern from it for the regulation of our own conduct 
 and emotions. Accordingly, we find there not parables 
 only, but portraits ; accurate and most striking repre- 
 sentations of what we ourselves might become under 
 every phase of life, with all its shifting joys and sorrows. 
 And these are drawn, as if the Spirit of God in 
 drawing them had sympathized with us, and thrown 
 Himself, so to say, into our ways of thinking; had 
 been touched with a feeling of om' affections ; and 
 striven to reach our hearts by their means. 
 
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 What simple and affecting scenes of domestic life, 
 for instance, are set before us in the histories of the 
 Patriarchal ages and others of a later period. What 
 a muTor for great and public men in the lives of Moses 
 and Samuel, of Daniel and David. How natural yet 
 how picturesque is the chapter from which the text is 
 takeil ; and how easily does the greater part of it 
 accommodate itself to our condition here and present 
 state of mind. We are not merely told that Nehemiah 
 was moved by the desolation of his country to return 
 thither and repair its ruins, which would have been 
 enough to record the bare historical fact; but regard 
 has been evidently had to the interest which any one 
 similarly cu'cumstanced might natm-ally feel in the 
 matter; and we ai^e allowed to observe how the first 
 thought arose in his mind, to accompany him from the 
 moment he determined upon attempting the work, and 
 note all the trials and difficulties he had to encounter 
 in its accomplishment. And this is a part of what I 
 would call the human character of the Bible, that it 
 thus di'aws us "with the cords of a man," entering into 
 our thoughts, satisfying our curiosity, and consulting our 
 aflfections; not merely narrating what was done, but 
 discovering to us all the feelings and difficulties of those 
 who did it, that we may not want for encouragement 
 or instruction under hke circumstances. 
 
 What, again, can be more admirable in this respect, 
 or considerate to us, than the whole of this story 
 of Nehemiah ? One of the childi-en of the captivity, 
 he had been promoted to be^ the king's cup-bearer, 
 a post of special dignity and favour. On a certain
 
 occasion some of the Jews came to him, possibly on 
 a matter of business, or perhaps for the express purpose 
 of interesting him in the matter, and told him how his 
 countrymen that had been left in Judea were in great 
 affliction and reproach ; and that the wall of Jerusalem 
 was broken down, and the gates thereof burned with 
 fire. Moved by this account, he prays that God would 
 enable him to return to Jerusalem, and repair its ruins. 
 Shortly after the king noticing his sadness and abstrac- 
 tion, when on duty at the palace, inquires the cause of 
 it : and now observe his reply, " Why should not my 
 countenance be sad, when the place of my fathers' 
 sepulchres lieth waste, and the gates thereof are burnt 
 with fire ? " Then he asks the king's leave and assist- 
 tance for the restoration he proposed. Having obtained 
 these he sets out at once on his expedition and arrives 
 at Jerusalem. Then, again, comes one of those touch- 
 ing pictures which in any other composition would be 
 set down as a most exquisite stroke of art ; "I arose 
 in the night, I and some few men with me; neither 
 told I any man what my God had put into my heart to 
 do at Jerusalem : and I went out by night .... and 
 viewed the walls which were broken down, and the gates 
 which were consumed by fire. So I went up in the 
 night by the brook and viewed the wall, and turned 
 back and entered by the gate of the valley, and 
 returned." And afterwards, he adds, when occasion was 
 given, how he m'ged all the rulers and the people to 
 help him in the good work he had undertaken : " then 
 said I unto them, Ye see the distress that we are in, 
 how Jerusalem lieth waste and the gates thereof arc
 
 burnt with fire ; come and let us build up the wall of 
 Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach." 
 
 Here, then, is a case as nearly parallel to om- own 
 at the present moment, as any well can be : and you 
 see something of the way in which, I should suppose 
 God would have us feel and behave under it. And 
 this is not told us in a hard and unfeeling or merely 
 chdactic way, but in that which fi'om its kindly and 
 human touches might seem calculated beyond all others 
 to move our sympathies and secure our hearts. 
 
 And here, in a word, is the course we should take. 
 Let us first of all pray honestly and earnestly to God, 
 that He would be with us, and prosper us in our work ; 
 let us seek help and assistance from any who are able 
 to contribute what we can not towards it ; and let us at 
 once encourage one another, and arise, one and all, — for 
 one and all are interested, and none, not the youngest 
 or poorest, should be deprived of his right to share 
 in such a work as this ; — let us, one and all, arise and 
 build up our walls, that the place of our fathers' 
 sepulchres lie no longer waste, and we ourselves be 
 no longer a reproach. 
 
 Now, it seems but natural to ask why Nehemiah 
 speaks only of " the place of his fathers' sepulchres," 
 when David, we cannot doubt, would have spoken of 
 the house or city of the Lord his God? And one reason 
 might very well be, that the person to whom he spoke 
 differed from him in religious opinions; and, therefore, 
 he urged a motive, not, probably, the strongest to his 
 own mind, but such as he thought the other would 
 recognise and allow. For this, indeed, is an argument
 
 which all men admit ; one of those touches of nature, 
 which makes the whole world kin, as we say ; which is 
 understood every where, and might be accepted, when 
 other grounds would prove only so many points of 
 difference. But, beyond a doubt, that which made 
 Nehemiah so anxious about Jerusalem and the Temple, 
 was the persuasion that they were to him the pledge 
 and place of God's presence, and God's promises. 
 In them his fathers had seized God, and found favour 
 with Him. To rebuild them was an act of piety which 
 no consideration of personal ease or enjoyment could 
 induce him to forego ; and their restoration was the 
 surest sign that God still owned His people, and would 
 hold gTacious intercourse with them. That which drew 
 his soul towards Jerusalem, and made all his yearning 
 thoughts tm'n thitherwai'd, was a rehgious rather than 
 a merely natm'al feehng ; yet, hke all religious ties 
 and relations, gathering up the natm^al into itself and 
 sanctifying them, as Christ in taking our nature did 
 not destroy, but rather deified it. With some of us, 
 also, I trust, the most constraining motive to the love 
 of God's house, will ever be the thought that it is His 
 house ; that there our fathers worshipped, and we om*- 
 selves ha.ve often found our God in the ordinances of 
 His grace. There He first received us into His family 
 fi'om a fallen world : there sanctified the several relations 
 of home and affection, into which we have since entered: 
 and there, not only do the bodies of our loved ones He 
 ai'ound us, but we know that He watches over their 
 holy and august repose, and will restore them to us in 
 all their perfection when He comes again.
 
 9 
 
 To others who, unhappily, are alienated in feehng, 
 or differ in opinion, and so do not worship with us, it 
 may be only the place of their fathers' sepulchres, that is, 
 may have only such hold upon them as the relationships 
 and ties of this life, though the best of them, can give 
 it ; and yet for all that be loved by them with no weak 
 or idle affection. For, short of those which are simply 
 religious, there is, perhaps, no stronger or more sacred 
 feehng than this, even if it is not itself in some sense re- 
 ligious. Certainly it obtains almost universally. Hardly 
 can you find any people, however low or degraded, alto- 
 gether insensible to it ; while it was the only reason 
 once given by a considerable North American tribe, for 
 refusing a very advantageous offer that had been made 
 them for the lands they occupied: "how shall we 
 remove the bones of our fathers ?" 
 
 In urging this point, then, Nehemiah was probably not 
 stating all those considerations which would have weight 
 with his own mind, nor, perhaps, that which had the 
 greatest, but only that which he thought most likely to 
 be appreciated by the person with whom he had to do. 
 And thus we, too, may be glad to find any common 
 ground, where those who differ from us in other points, 
 can yet meet us, and join with us in building up our 
 walls, which lie waste, and our gates, which have been 
 consumed by fire. No one, indeed, who witnessed the 
 general zeal and activity which was shown on the 
 occasion of our cruel disaster, can think that all regard 
 for these holy places has died out in the minds, even 
 of those who seem ordinarily but too careless and 
 indifferent about such matters. It may not be all we
 
 lu 
 
 could wish, or take exactly the shape we should 
 deshre ; it may be weak, and require a good deal to call 
 it into action; but there are evidently provocations 
 which it would not tamely endure. From one motive 
 or another, the attachment of the people of this 
 country to the churches in which their fathers 
 worshipped, even where they themselves have ceased 
 for a time to do so, is greater than many would imagine. 
 There is a sense of property and interest in them, 
 which centuries of traditional feeling and possession 
 conspire to keep alive ; and which, if any serious 
 mischief to them were attempted, would exhibit itself 
 in a manner, and with a vivacity, little, perhaps, 
 anticipated by those who would destroy, or divert them 
 from their proper uses. Many, who do not avail them- 
 selves of them as they might, have yet their own value 
 and affection for them ; and would be very unwilling 
 to have them seriously interfered with, or to be deprived 
 of their right of access to them. And, in some cases, 
 it might become apparent that to injure them greatly, 
 would be like touching the apple of their eye, even with 
 those who could hardly have been expected to stand 
 forth in their defence. 
 
 If, however, we have other and, as we deem, higher 
 and holier motives than these to urge us on, then let 
 us show ourselves more energetic and self-denying ; 
 if we have greater interests at stake, as I do not 
 hesitate to say we have, then let us be ready to make 
 greater sacrifices, to show our sense of them. And 
 let every individual of every class and age be in- 
 vited to help in this great work ; not merely because
 
 11 
 
 of the amount of pecuniary assistance they may be 
 able to give ; but because it is a Christian's birth- 
 right that he should be allowed to take part in every 
 thing which conduces to the glory of God : and let 
 such arrangements be made for this purpose as the cir- 
 cumstances of every person may render most convenient 
 to him. A further advantage I see in such a measure, 
 is, that a person seldom makes a sacrifice for anything, 
 be it what it may, without feeling that the object for 
 which he made it has become proportionately dearer to 
 him. This is the natural effect of any act of sacrifice 
 or self-denial upon the doer: but in the case of religious 
 objects, a supernatural grace, may be reasonably 
 expected to attend upon the action. And thus our duties 
 are blessed to ourselves, as well as their immediate 
 objects. Consider again, how often what we withhold, 
 or spend upon some object of sensual pleasure or 
 worldly ambition, is utterly lost and dissipated; or re- 
 mains only to become a snare and a curse to us. On the 
 other hand, whatever we give to God has this blessing in 
 it: that it still remains to us as our own, and our works 
 do follow us, in a sense which cannot be true of that 
 which we spend upon ourselves, or any mere object of this 
 life. Nor does the good we thus do end with our 
 own life, but lives on after we are gone hence, to 
 bring others to Him; and continues to accomplish and 
 augment the work for which we devoted it when we 
 are no longer here to forward or direct its operation. 
 
 Once more : it may be asked how is it that God can 
 permit the evil mind of one man to do such dishonour 
 to Him, and bring such trouble and distress upon so
 
 I -2 
 
 many othei-s : and to this we must answer that, though 
 we cauuot pretend to see all the designs wliich God 
 has in permitting such things, yet we can easily con- 
 ceive how gi'eater houom* may redound (Ps. Ixxvi. 10:) to 
 Him, and we om*selves may be spiritually improved 
 by the exercise of those rehgious priuciples which such 
 an event calls into action ; and that all may uot be so 
 evil as it seems, even in the soitow and vexation which 
 it occasions to those who sufl'er most from it. 
 
 There me few. I should hope, in whom the destnic- 
 tion of this Chm*ch has uot excited some salutary 
 reflections. Many, perhaps, have found that they 
 really have more interest iu it than they ever thought 
 they had before ; and could not see it desti'oyed with- 
 out feehugs which they did not know they euteitidned 
 towards it. Some, by such discoveiy of theii- own heaits, 
 may be led to the fiu-ther question, how it comes 
 about that they have hitherto piized its ordinances so 
 little; and determine, by God's gi-ace, to frequent 
 them more for the futm'e. Others again, I would fain 
 hope, who have hitherto stood aloof fi'om us, may be 
 drawn towai-ds us by the conviction that we have, after 
 aU, a depth of common interest ui holy things which 
 it is not worth theii" while to overlook for a few inferior 
 or imimportaut differences of opiniou ; for community 
 in loss and sufleiing has often a wouderful effect in 
 reconciling differences, tind blotting out recollections 
 that hinder unity of sentiment and action. 
 
 If, then, any such results as these should foUow, 
 and God grant they may, they would materially deti-act 
 from the amount of evil really inflicted by this gi-eat
 
 13 
 
 crime. If, indeed, our loss call any of us to a keenei- 
 and more religious apprehension of the blessings of 
 public worship ; if it awaken in us a more earnest 
 desire to honour God in our substance, or lives and 
 actions ; "if it help us, in any way, to realize more 
 distinctly our true relation to Grod and to one another ; 
 if it make us more united, more forbearing, more 
 truthful, more religious; then, so far from wondering 
 that God should permit any one person to have the 
 power of inflicting so much loss and inconvenience on 
 so many, we shall the rather wonder to find how much 
 good He can work out of that which, to our eyes, 
 must seem at first sight an unmitigated evil. 
 
 And, as such a result is neither impossible nor 
 unnatural, let us endeavour seriously to bring it about. 
 Let us pray God to do it for us, and by us, and in us. 
 Let us entreat Him to draw our hearts more together ; 
 to make us more considerate and kind to one another ; 
 to help us to feel our own faults, and forget each 
 other's offences in our common loss. As the evil 
 brought upon us is unusual in its extent and enormity; 
 so let us pray Him to enable us to distinguish it as 
 remarkably by the way in which we bear and improve 
 it. Let those who point to the one be compelled to 
 notice the other as pointedly, so that we may be no more 
 a reproach. Let us arise and build again our Holy 
 House, in which our fathers worshipped ; and let the 
 common work, and the common interest which we must 
 feel in it, unite and draw us more and more together. 
 Let our earnestness in the matter, too, be so apparent 
 as to be a support and spur to those who undertake the
 
 14 
 
 direction of it. In short, let us imitate those who have 
 already given so hberally of theii' substance towards it : 
 for though we may never want opportunities of doing 
 good or promoting the glory of God ; not often does 
 He make so urgent an appeal to any of us ; not often 
 does He bring the question of our readiness to uphold 
 His honom' so pressingly home to us. 
 
 But, while we thus urge on the restoration of the 
 material fabric, let us not forget that we, also, are 
 described as living stones in a still more glorious 
 structure ; of which apostles and prophets are the 
 foundation, and Christ himself the firm and stable 
 corner stone. In this spuitual temple, then, let us 
 arise and build with redoubled energy, that our earthly 
 shrines, in which we now worship, may be more lovely 
 in His sight ; and we ourselves, at last, be placed among 
 the stones with which the foundations of the walls of 
 the heavenly Jerusalem (Rev. xxi. 19.) are daily being 
 garnished. 
 
 W. B. 
 
 PRINTED BY HroH EOBEKTS, EASTGATE ROW, CHESTER.
 
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