ornia
al

THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

'&km

c^^k^*^ ^^£L

THE PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT
IN RELIGION

FROM OUR LORD'S SERMON ON THE MOUNT,

AND CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO
PREVALENT ERRORS.

BOOK II.

EXAMINATION OF THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT,

FROM MATT. V. 38. TO MATT. VI. 18.

Being the Christian Advocate's Publication for 1846.

BY THOMAS WORSLEY, M.A.,

MASTER OF DOWNING COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE,
AND RECTOR OF SCAWTON, YORKSHIRE.

Thy Law is the Truth. P.«. cxix. 142.

Teach me Thy Way. 0 Lord, and I will walk in thy Truth. P.*. j.xxwi 11

I am the Way and the Truth. John xiv. i>.

LONDON :
JOHN W. PARKER, WEST STRAND.

M.DCCC XLVI.

kingdom of hea-

Blesscdarethey
that Mourn : for
they shall be corn-

Hallowed be
thy Name.

THE LAW WHICH IS THE TRUTH.

LAM* OF THE NAME.

Outward. Inward.

1. Thou Bhalt do no murder. 1. Thou shall deny and crucify all causeless auger. Mat. v. 22 — 26.

2. Thou shall not commit adultery 2. Thou shalt deny and crucify all lawless lust. v. 28—32.

.3. Thou Bhalt not forswear thyself. 3. Thou shalt deny and crucify all profaneness and lying, v. 34—3".

Thou shalt perform to the Lord Thou bhalt speak and do the truth, v. 37.

thy i

LAW OF THE KINGDOM.

, and a tooth fin

I a word.

1. Resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on the right

cheek, turn to him the other also.

2. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy

coat, let him have thy cloke also.

3. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.

LAW OF THE WILL
Outward.
Blessed are the Thy Will

Meek: for they be done, as in Thou shalt love thy neighb

shall inherit the heaven so in and hate thine enemy,
earth. earth,

1. Love y<

2. Bless them that curse you,

3. Do good to them that hate you,

Blessed are
they which do
Hunger & Thirst
after Righteous-
ness : for they
shall be filled.

And Forgive

Blessed are

us our Tres-

the Merciful : for

passes, as we

thev shall obtain

Forgive them

mercy.

that Trespass

THE WAY.

MAY OF ALMS.

1. Take heed that ye do not your alms (righteousness) before men, to be seen of them : otherwise ye

have no reward of (with) your Father which is in heaven.

2. Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in

the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They
have their reward.

3. But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth :

That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seetii in secret himself shall
reward thee openly.

WAY OF PRAYER.

1. And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites: for they love to pray standing in
the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto
you, They have their reward.

PRAY TO THY FaTHER WHICH IS IN' SECRET J AND THY FATHER WHICH SEETH IN SECRET SHALL

But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do : for they think that they shall he
heard for their much speaking. Be ye not therefore like unto them : for your Father knoweth
what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.

aiCH ART IX HBAVEN

THI-SPAS-S AliAINST VS.

Blessed are tl
Pure in Hear
for they shall a

Fori
But :

: HEAVENLY FaTHE

1. Moreover when ye fast, be not
that they may appear unto me

WAY OF FASTING.

ls the hypocrites, of a sail countenance ; for they disfigure thei
i to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

CONTENTS OF BOOK II.

CHAPTER I.
LAW OF THE KINGDOM.

PAGE

The Law of the Kingdom succeeds the Law of the Name 211

Corresponds to the Blessedness of the Mourners and to the

Aspiration, Thy Kingdom Come 212

Outward Law of the Kingdom, An eye for an eye, and a

tooth for a tooth 21.3

This Law realizes the preceding outward Law of the Name ... 214

By ordaining punishment, and the measure of punishment, for

all infractions of it 215

And by so balancing our temptations to disobedience 216

Suffering, thus affirmed to be inseparable from Sin, results
inwardly from the war which ceases not in this life be-
tween the Law of the Kingdom in our minds, and the
Law of Sin in our members 217

As in the Law of the Name, so in this Law of the Kingdom,
its outward implies its inward Law : though this outward
Law was specially given to determine and guard the King-
dom of God in its rudiments by Moses ; the inward — to guard
it in its fulness by Christ 218

How this Law of the Kingdom was fulfilled by Christ him-
self in its outward Requirement 219

How, in each of its inward Requirements 220

As the Law of His own, it must also be the Law of His
People's Life, even if we see not that it rests on the
Realities of the Incarnation and of Divine Justice 221

The Fellowship which rests on these must be a Fellowship of

Suffering 223

Here, to know the doctrine we must do the words: that is,
we must accept the suffering which results from a true obe-
dience to the Law of the Kingdom H.

We must ever grow in obedience to this Law, that we may

ever grow in discernment of it; — and the converse 224

a 2

61 1717

IV CONTENTS.

PAGE

And ;is we thus obey and discern the Law ourselves, so must
we present it for the growing discernment and obedience

of our brethren 225

The threefold Law of the Name, the Kingdom, and the Will,
must also, since it is a complete and living Law, be set

forth as n whole ib.

This principle has already been found to obtain in the three
Aspirations of the Prayer, and in the corresponding Bea-
titudes 226

As these Aspirations culminate in the last, Thy Will be done,
so do the three corresponding Bodies of Law, in the final

Law of the Will 227

A Law which corresponds to our holiest Aspirations must be
a perfect Law, or it could not, at every stage of our
progress, witness and minister to our progressive and final

Sanctification, as to a Reality ordained of God ib.

This threefold Body of Law, though perfect and final as it is
the true Law of our Being, requires another, setting forth
and guarding the Way through which it may actually
become the Law of that Being; and again, another setting
forth and guarding the new Life which results from its

becoming so 228

This view simplifies the general Synopsis in Book L, winch
will be found to present the Divine Righteousness as re-
vealed to us in Christ 230

1st, for our desiring Contemplation \

2nd, for our earnest Aspirations and Strivings (

3rd, for our daily Reception I

4th, for our resulting renewal in Mind and Life ... '
In that whole threefold Law which is the Truth, obedience
to this central Law of the Kingdom implies obedience
to the preceding Law of the Name, and issues in obe-
dience to the succeeding Law of the Will... 236

This Law of the Kingdom is thus Central, as being based
on the Central Verity of the Incarnation, and on the
consequent Oneness of Christ with His Church, and so

with The Children of Men ib.

The outward Law of the Kingdom implies the inward :
but as the proper office of the outward, is permanently to
sustain the Kingdom of God on earth in its outward

CONTENTS. V

CAGE

Truth, first set forth by Mosea ; so is that of the inward,
permanently to sustain the same Kingdom, in its inward
Truth, here set forth by Christ 237

This Law, both in its inward and outward Form, bears wit-
ness to, and realizes the Truth, that Suffering belongs
to Sin, Blessedness to Obedience, and also the Truth of our
Oneness with each other in Christ, whether as Members
of a Christian Family or of a Christian Community 238

The ordained Unity of the Children of Men in their great
Elder Brother, to which Noah, Abraham, and Moses,
witnessed in part, was at length fully set forth and con-
stituted in Christ, and in it we see the Reality of all He
did and suffered 239

This Central twofold Truth of the Kingdom, that we are
in Christ one with each other, and that Suffering is due
to Sin, is progressively realized for us by every act of faith-
ful and hopeful obedience to the Law of the Kingdom .. ib.

Dangerous misapprehension of the word mystical in speaking

of this our real Oneness with each other in Christ 240

The inward Law of the Kingdom, or of that Larger Christian
Righteousness, which implies Suffering for the Sins also [of
our brethren, as distinguished from the narrower Jewish
Righteousness, which demands Suffering for our own, rests
on this Oneness, as on a Reality now actually brought in... 241

The Reality and the Law are but different Forms of the same

Truth 242

Cod's earlier training of His Church and World towards this
Unity. Its identity in principle with His teachings now.
They, like us, had revealed to them, according to the
measure of their actual capacity, a Divine Reality, that
they might devoutly contemplate and aspire after it, — a
Divine Law, that they might faithfully obey it 244

How this Law of the Kingdom works together with the

Aspiration of the Mourners, Thy Kingdom come 245

How through hopeful Obedience to it, the Central Christian
Verity of our Oneness with the Brethren in Christ is in-
wrought into our Souls 247

This Law of the Kingdom comes, in the order of Growth,
heforc the Law of the Will. For it is not possible that
we should freely love out enemies, unless we have first

VI CONTENTS.

pakk

learnt in Christ's School to bear with their injurious

words and deeds, and to return them good for evil 248

Odisse quern keseris

249
Amnrc cm benejeceris

Principle of Self-denial 250

Relations of the Law of the Kingdom with the preceding

Law of tiik Name 251

The Sermon on the Mount builds up the complete Christian

Society, by building up the Individual Christian Man ... ib.
Illustration from Plato's Method of constituting a Community
or Polity. His capital error lay in misapprehending and
debasing that pure Family Life, from which alone can
be unfolded the genuine Life, either of the Community

or of the Individual 252

To this Central Life of the Family our Lord at once gives
its real place and worth, by assigning the Second, or
essentially Central Commandment of each Successive Law,
for its more especial Guardianship, even as He assigns
the First and Third Commandments of each for the Special
Guardianship of the Individual Life and of the National

Life respectively 253

Thus, in the Law of the Name, this Life of the Family
is guarded in its very Germ and Birth by a Command-
ment forbidding Adultery and Lawless Lust, and enjoining
truth to the vow and obligations of Marriage ; in the Law
of the Kingdom, it is guarded in its Growth or Christian
unfolding into that ever-increasing Family, whereof Christ
is the Head and Elder Brother, by a Commandment re-
jecting any Righteousness not based on this universal bro-
therhood, and enjoining that Righteousness of reconciled
Justice and Mercy which does so rest ; and in consider-
ing the Law of the Will, we shall find it to be similarly
guarded in its perfection by the Central Commandment

of that Law 254

Central and peculiar character of the Commandment, If any

man will sue thee, &c 255

Its seeming encouragement to evil men 256

To live in its Spirit is our daily renewal 257

The Law of the Name, of the Kingdom, and of the Will,

must be contemplated in their relations to each other 258

< 'ON TENTS Vll

PAOK

The saying, "AVe must be just before we are generous," shews
us in part why the Law of the Name must precede the
Law of the Kingdom 259

Legal Mercy i^ Christian Justice ib.

Real Obedience to the Law of the Kingdom grows only out of

Faith in the corresponding Realities of the Kingdom 260

Without such Faith we fall back on the Law of the Name ;
which yet, as glorified by Christ, is of power to shadow forth
the higher Law of the Kingdom 261

Still, though closely related, these two Bodies of Law are essen-
tially distinct, and the actual order of their sequence can-
not be broken ib.

Unity of Form and Import in each 262

The Law — of the Name — of the Kingdom — of the Will, de-
termines and guards — the existence — the daily growth
— the actual stature, of each Christian man's renewal in
the spirit of his mind 26-3

In this Mirror of holy Law the true Being of God as well as
of man is reflected, not in the form of Abstract Being,
which we could not apprehend, but in the positive form of
a Life. The fundamental Constituents of our genuine
human Life are three, and are rightly designated as
The Individual)

The Family > Life 264

The National J

This threefold Body of Law determines and guards those un-
folding Realities of each Man's Being which fit him for
his genuine Christian Life 265

It has an outward Code, which determines and guards that whole
Life in its outward manifestations, — an inward Code, which
determines and guards it, in its inward Realities 266

The second Table of the Decalogue presents the Form which
pervades these three Bodies of Law : though this Form
may be discerned most clearly in the first Table, which
is indeed the normal Type or essential Form of holy Law:
a Form resting on the revelation of God's own Being, and
on the truth that in His image and likeness made he
man 268

Under the light of Christ we can discern this whole Body of
Law, in the two Tables of the Decalogue, as in its living
germs. And it is thus perhaps that we shall most readily

Vlll CONTENTS.

PAGE

apprehend the character and office of this whole Christian
Law which is thk truth 269

That office is to determine, and guard from desecration, Holi-
ness or Holy Being, whether in its Perfection as in God,
or in its Birth and Growth as in Man 270

How the Successive Unfoldings of holy Law fulfil this Office for
the Successive Revelations and Communications of His Di-
vine Righteousness 271

Why it behoved the Law of the Kingdom, as well as the Spi-
ritual Realities, of the Kingdom, to be explicitly revealed 272
This Law of the Kingdom gives its most practical form to the

Commandment, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. . . 273

By Faith, Hope, and Love, we apprehend and receive the Name,

the Kingdom, and the Will, of God . . 274

Holy Law guards the Divine process through which the Will

of God becomes also the Will of Man 276

Law of the Kingdom essentially Central 277

This Law itself centres in a Commandment guarding the Life
of the Kingdom in that Life of the Family, which is its
heart ,.. 278

Misapprehension of the Family Life, a chief ground of failure in

Social Theories, ancient as well as modern 279

The first Command in the Law of the Kingdom builds- onward

from the first Command in the Law of the Name 281

What Self is, Christianly speaking 283

How this first Command wages war with it 285

How the second Command is still more centrally opposed to it. . 287

Idea and Law of Property, when brought in 288

Christ witnesses to the truth that the Family Life is the Central
Life of the Kingdom in his own Life and Death, in His
Legislation, in His Prayer, and at Pentecost 290

Why at that time, and not afterwards, the brethren had all

things in common 291

Permanent yet friendly Antagonism of the outward and inward

Laws of Property 293

Example of this 295

How the second Command in the Law of the Kingdom builds

onward from the second in the Law of the Name 2!»7

Similarly of the third in each as these are specially ordained to
determine and guard the unfolding Life of the Christian
Nation or Community 300

CONTENTS. 1 X

rAi.K

Each Command in the Law of the Kingdom implies an element
of inward freedom as well as of outward compulsion. Hence
this Law lies between, and reconciles, the more outward
Law of the Name and the more inward Law of the Will 301

How the Christian, differs from the so-called philosophic, Method

of building up the man, and the community. ;icj

The last Command in the Law of the Kingdom realizes and
quickens the whole of that Law, and connects it livingly
with the final Law of the Wilt, 304

CHAPTER II.
LAW OF THK WILL.

Its outward and inward Commandments 30f>

The outward Law of the Will builds onward from the outward
Law of the Kingdom, as the latter does from that of the
Name, and completes the determination and guardianship of
our genuine human Life in its outward Acts and Manifesta-
tions. This truth most clearly seen in the history of the

Jewish National Life.. 308

That Life not more holy in God's eyes than the Life of a
Christian Nation, which last also requires this outward Law

of the Will to complete its outward guardianship .310

The whole outward Law of the Name, the Kingdom, and the

Will, must stand or fall together 311

Christian meaning of hating our enemies 313

Lawfulness of war, as of Judicial oaths 314

Love of good implies hatred of evil 315

The Integrity of a Nation's outward or State Life is and must
be guarded by this Law ; if only because its outward and
visible, cannot be rent asunder from its inward and Spiri-
tual Life 316

Friendly Antagonism throughout this Divine Legislation, be-
tween its Jural or outward, and its Moral or inward Laws. 31 8
Highest Form of this Antagonism the basis on which Interna-
tional Peace and Law may be solidly built up 321

The outward Laws are not repealed by the giving of the
inward : — a revelation of both, in their leading lines, being
necessary to the Guardianship of our complete Human Life. 322

X CONTENTS.

PACE

Discipline of Man, as a Child of Wrath, by this Law of Love

and Hate, considered historically 323

The principle of Hate not to be eradicated by this Discipline,

but changed from hatred of good to hatred of evil 327

This Discipline actually, if not essentially, slow and gradual... 328

The outward Law of the WhiL, though it implies the inward,
does not render the explicit and exact Revelation of the
latter unnecessary 320

Such a Revelation the more necessary from the difficulty of
conceiving the apparently free emotions of Love and Hate
to be at all under the controul of Law 330

Obedience to this Final Law of the Will is possible, only as
implying obedience to the Central Law of the Kingdom,
and in it to the Fontal Law of the Name 331

This principle exemplified, with regard to the First Command-
ment, in each of these three Bodies of Law 332

With regard to the Second 333

... the Third 335

the last Commandments in each 338

Object of the Final Law of Love 340

This Final Body of Law is essentially of the same Form with

the two which precede it 342

It guards in their highest Perfection those Realities of our
Being which the Law of the Kingdom guards in their
Growth, and that of the Name in their Birth 344

Its successive Commandments present an Ascending Order of

true Communion with God and Man 340

CHAPTER III.
THE MAY OF ALMS.

The Law which is the Truth is final, inasmuch as it presents
the whole Law of our true Being ; — not final, inasmuch as
it presents not the Way in which it is itself to lie actually
inwrought into us that it may become the Law of our
Lives 349

The transition at this point is from the thing to be done, to

tiii: Wat? or doing it 352

Failure in the latter, ever besets those who discern not the

relations of Holy Law to Holy Life 363

CONTENTS. XI

l'A(iK

The Right and the Wrong Way of doing the things of God's

Law 354

Are Alms, Prayer, and Fasting, Examples of the Way, or the

whole of it? ,35.5

Previous Question as to the right reading in Matt. vi. 1 ih.

AiKaiocrvvn, on what grounds preferable to e\erifj.oa-6vi] .357

Intimate connection between the Truth and the Way pre-
sented by this reading ,360

Manifestations of Continuity between the Truth and the Way

in the fundamental Forms of Communion 30.3

The Christian Way is here set forth in all its leading lines 364.

The First Commandment in this Way is at once the living
germ," and THE FIRST distinct element, of THE whole
Way. For, as our being seen may imply all the ways in
which we can be apprehended or known, so our Right-
eousness may comprehend our Obedience to the whole
Body of Holy Law. And again, we may rightly regard this
Righteousness as that Christian Justice which, though it
lies at the root of Christian Mercy, is distinct from it 366

To read eXeijfxoavvt) in this verse, though not fatal to the mean-
ing, would not bring it out in its full import, and would
be less consistent with the context, and with the voice of
Antiquity 368

Why Righteousness in its Primary sense of Justice is spe-
cially guarded with reference to the seeing eye 370

What further guardianship it requires as unfolding itself into

the Feelings and the Acts of Mercy 372

General Aim of this First Body of Directions in the Christian

Way 373

Answer to the Objection, that the actual doing of Righteous-
ness cannot be considered as our Bread 374

CHAPTER IV.
THE WAY OF PRAYER.

Forgiveness is the Central Christian Temper and the Central

Object of Christian Prayer 377

We all sin daily. Not forgiving our brother, and so not receiv-
ing the Forgiveness we daily pray for, we remain in a

Xll CONTENTS.

PAGB

State of unpardoned sin, which is a state neither of Jus-
tification nor of Sanctification 379

This twofold Forgiveness is the heart of our Communion with

God and with man 380

Hence the Directions for the Way of Prayer correspond to the
Beatitude of the Merciful and to that Petition for Pardon
which is visibly as well as essentially Central in the Prayer 381

Heine, the Reality of Prayer and of Forgiveness are brought
in together in the middle' of this Way or Method through
which holy Law becomes holy Life 382

The Directions in the Way of Prayer, are specially ordained

to realize and guard the Spirit of Mercy 383

To enjoin Prayer without teaching us the Way of Prayer,

would be insufficient 384

The outline of the whole Way, given in the Way of Alms,

is filled up in the Way of Prayer and of Fasting 38.5

As the Christian Justice issues in Mercifulness, so this Spirit of
Mercy has its highest life in Prayer, and first livingly realizes
the all-embracing Law of doing as we would be done by ... 887

However deep our sense of sin, tins merciful spirit strengthens
our Faith both in the pardon once wrought out for us by
Christ, and in the daily pardon through Him of our daily
sins 390

The former implies also Faith in Christ's Perfect Righteousness
having been once for all brought in ; the latter — Faith hi this
same Righteousness being daily and progressively commu-
nicable to us 393

Without Faith in this twofold Pardon of Sin, the Divine Right-
eousness cannot begin or continue to flow into our Souls ... 394

This Pardon ministers, through Faith in it, to our daily growth
in Grace, by removing a central and fatal hinderance to
that growth 396

Its important Place in the Church's Creeds and Liturgies 397

The Right Way of Prayer determines and guards the Blesseo

Temper of Mercy ib.

The whole Body of Law, and so of Obedience, is here endowed
with the Reality and the Way of Prayer, that it may
become throughout all its members a more glorious and
Spiritual Body 398

CONTENTS. Mil

PAOK

The Way of Righteousness (Alms) is guarded in all the three
modes of Communion, the seeing eye, the hearing ear,

THE DOING HAND 399

The Way of Prayer is (and can be) guarded with reference

to the two first only, though each of these is twofold 400

The giving of the Lord's Prayer, finally realizes the Right, and

excludes the Wrong, Way of Prayer 401

This Prayer realizes Communion, through Christ, as well with
our Brethren as with our Father ib.

The Import of the Prayer already considered (B. 1. c. 4.) 402

The Law which is the Truth turns mainly on the Realities
of the Individual, the Family, and the National, Life ib.

The Way, — on the Realities of our Communion with the Father
and the Brethren in Christ, by hungering and thirsting
after Righteousness, by the Spirit of Mercy, which
is also the Spirit of Prayer, finally, by refraining from

EVIL, THAT WE MAY BE KEPT PURE, AND DO HlS WlLL ib.

The Directions in the Way of Prayer how distinguished, as

to Form, from those in the Way of Alms 400

CHAPTER V.
THE WAY OF FASTING.

So to hunger and ask for, as that we may receive and eat, our

Daily Bread, is not all 405

There remains to Fast, or to refrain, from that which is not

Bread, and from wrongly receiving that which is 4<>7

J he Energy and Discernment for so refraining grow out of

walking in the way thus far pointed out ...- 408

To Fast is to live in the Spirit of the Petition, " Lead us not
into Temptation, but deliver us from evil," which is also
the Spirit of the Pure in Heart 409

Such Fasting completes, and is in harmony with, the whole

Christian Way ib.

The Way of Righteousness — or of Alms (of that Christian
Justice which issues in the Temper and in the Works of
Mercy) is at once primary and comprehensive. The Way
of Prayer realizes and guards in the fullest energy of
its Spiritual Life the Temper of Christian Mercy ; as
the Way of Fasting does the Works or Acts of tbe
same Mercy 412

CONTEXTS.

I>A(iK

Anticipation of Two Portions of that Final Law of Spiritual
Discernment which concludes the Sermon. One, com-
pleting the Way of Alms, the Other, — the Way of Prayer 415

The Law of Spiritual Discernment regarding Prayer 417

Intelligible necessity for such a Final Law 419

Thus, our Lord's whole Legislation on the Mount will com-
prehend the Law — of the Truth, — of the Way, — of the

Life, and — of Spiritual Discernment 420

Conclusion of the Way of Fasting 421

As the Law of the A^ill is essentially positive, so the Way
of Fasting is essentially negative, though it implies the
daily reception of our fitting daily portion of Righteous-
ness unto Holiness 422

The Directions for Fasting complete our guardianship in the

Right Way 423

Comprehensiveness of the Principle of Fasting 425

It will be again noticed in considering the final Law of

Spiritual Discernment 426

ERRATA.

*e 221, line 10 from bottom, dele it before be

301, line 8 from bottom, for predominate read predominates

302, line 13 from top, this true
304, line 5 from top, or and
357, line 14 from top, in in

372, line 14 from bottom, k\er)jxo<fv(iri e\erjfi.o<jvi>ri

14

BOOK II.

EXAMINATION OF THE SERMON ON
THE MOUNT,

FROM MATT. V. 38. TO MATT. VI. 18.

14

BOOK II.

EXAMINATION OF THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT,
FROM MATT. V. 38. TO MATT. VI. 18.

Chapter I.
LAW OF THE KINGDOM.

In our contemplation of the Christian Law as finally re-
vealed by Our Lord on the Mount, we have hitherto
lingered as it were on the threshold of the Kingdom of
God, and have dwelt chiefly on those primary and funda-
mental Commandments, which are ordained for the guar-
dianship of His Holy Name, both as. that Name has been
revealed to man, and as it has been called and placed
upon him to the end that in him and by him it may be
hallowed.

Having then already completed the general survey
of this twofold law op the Name, we would now enter
upon that portion of our Lord's legislation which imme-
diately follows it, and which may be designated gene-
rally the Law op the Kingdom of God in Christ as
coming in man's heart. On the peculiar character of
the transition from the Law of the Name to the Law
of the Kingdom, we will not at present dwell, nor on
the doctrinal views with which it is immediately con-
nected; but rather give our attention, in the first place,
to this Law of the Kingdom itself, at which in the order
of our Lord's discourse we are now arrived, and which

14 — 2

212 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

is comprised in Matthew v. 38 — 42, inclusive : " Ye have

HEARD THAT IT HATH BEEN SAID, An EYE FOR AN EYE, AND
A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH : BUT I SAY UNTO YOU, THAT YE
RESIST NOT EVIL : BUT WHOSOEVER SHALL SMITE THEE ON THE
RIGHT CHEEK, TURN TO HIM THE OTHER ALSO. And IF ANY
MAN WILL SUE THEE AT THE LAW, AND TAKE AWAY THY COAT,
LET HIM HAVE THY CLOKE ALSO. And WHOSOEVER SHALL
COMPEL THEE TO GO A MILE, GO WTITH HIM TWAIN. GlVE TO
HIM THAT ASKETH THEE, AND FROM HIM THAT WOULD BORROW
OF THEE TURN NOT THOU AWAY.1*

Our immediate object then is, to consider attentively
this Law of the Kingdom as coming in man's heart,
both in itself and in its relations to the Blessedness
of the Mourners, and to the Aspiration, Thy Kingdom
come.

That the reader may be spared all unnecessary re-
ference to the Synopsis of the whole subject accompanying
the First Book, and may, independently of this, be enabled
to contemplate at one view those portions of our Lord's
legislation on the Mount which are now about to be
examined, we have thought it best to print them in
St. Matthew's order, and to place opposite to each dis-
tinct portion of holy Law, that Beatitude and that clause
of the Lord's Prayer to which in our view it specially
corresponds.

First, then, with regard to the correspondence we affirm
to exist between this great Christian Law of accepting
and suffering ill, of doing and imparting good, on the one
hand, and the Temper of Christian Mourning, with its Aspi-
ration to God. "Thy Kingdom come,11 (Book i. p. 96) on

CH. I.] LAW OK THE KINGDOM. 213

the other ; we shall content ourselves in the outset with
assuming the reality of such a correspondence, in the con-
fidence that an examination of the Law itself will justify
this assumption.

In contemplating this Law of suffering evil and impart-
ing good, which we affirm to be in a very important sense
the special and central Law of the Kingdom of God in
Christ, as coming in man's heart, it will be expedient (as
in the case of the Law corresponding to the primal Aspi-
ration, " Hallowed be thy Name"), first, to consider the
import of that more outward form, An eye for an eye, a

TOOTH FOR A TOOTH, in which this LAW OF THE KINGDOM Was

delivered to them of old time,

Now, we have seen already in examining the Law of
the Name, that even in its more outward form as given
in the Decalogue, it is no lifeless accumulation of merely
authoritative rules, but that it is intelligibly informed by
a living spirit of order and of growth ; that no Com-
mandment can be taken from it or added to it, none
transposed in it, without destroying the perfection of this
order. We have perceived further, that in the Law of
the Name as given by our Lord, the outward grounds and
conditions of the Individual Life are first guarded by a
Law against murder ; that the indispensable outward con-
ditions of the Family Life are next guarded by a Law
against adultery, both because it is a Life holy in God's
eyes, and because it is the living root of that still holier
and more excellent thing, namely, the Life under God
and in Christ, of the Complete Human Society. Next,
we have seen the Life we live as members of that com-

214 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II

plcte society itself, guarded in its essential outward con-
ditions by a Law against all forms of perjury or false-
hood before God ; which, like the two preceding Laws,
is enforceable under God by human tribunals.

And if we thus discerned a principle of living order
in the Code which forbids murder, adultery, and perjury,
and which thus outwardly, at least, guards and vindicates
our whole human Life in its threefold source, by guarding
and vindicating that Holy Name, which is now for ever
called and placed upon it; not less easy was it to perceive
a continuous unfolding of this principle in the fourth or
complemental Law of the same Code, which, by demand-
ing the judicial form at least of positive truth before
God, presents to us that principle and Commandment of
holy Law which is intelligibly next in real order to the
three preceding Laws, and which alone can make it
possible for these preceding Laws to be practically en-
forced.

Thus far then we discern the traces of essential order
in this unfolding of holy Law. But we may fairly ask,
has this order arrived here at its practical completion I
And the answer must be, that it has not. For though we
already have Laws for the protection of our threefold Life,
and a provision for true witness towards the enforcing these
Laws, they must yet fail of being enforced practically and
uniformly, unless we have pains and penalties annexed to
their infraction, unless we have some further Law pro-
viding both punishment and the measure of punishment for
every violation of them. What then must be the other out-
war 1 y<*t essential Law which may effectually guard from

CH. I.] LAW OF THE KINGDOM. 215

violation these already ordained guardian Laws themselves,
which may at once convert each of them into a practical
and enforceable Commandment ? The Principle of holy
Law which effectually meets and satisfies this want, is this
very principle of Righteous Retribution, an eye for an
eye, a tooth for a tooth, — a principle which is, in fact,
identical with that of suffering for sin ; seeing that sin is
the transgression of God's Law, and that this is the prin-
ciple of actual and fitting punishment for every such trans-
gression.

This is the Commandment which in real and intelli-
gible order comes next after the three primary and nega-
tive Commandments and the fourth positive and comple-
mental one ; which, as we have seen, (B. i. ch. 6,) together
constitute the Law of the Name, in so far as that Law
deals immediately with our overt acts : regulating first
our outward, that it may through this regulate also our
inward Life.

This Commandment, ordaining at once punishment for
transgression and the true measure of that punishment,
bears first on outward acts, such as may be witnessed to
by the sworn testimony of human witnesses; and is en-
forced, first, by outward penalties, such as will best guard
from violation the preceding Laws, by balancing and ena-
bling us to resist our evil tendencies to violate them.
And it is plain that this Commandment can never cease to
be necessary until that Law in our members has ceased to
exist which wars against the Spiritual Law of our Life in
( hrist.

This portion of Law must continue in force, not only

216 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II,

as an effectual witness to the true form of outward obe-
dience, but as an essential and fundamental condition of
a growing obedience to inward as well as outward Law.

It balances, that it may empower us to resist, our
tendencies and temptations to evil, so far as we are not
yet enabled to resist them by the sufficient unfolding in us
of that inward Law and inward Power of Righteousness
unto Holiness, which is of the Spiritual Kingdom of Christ.
It does not do more than balance these evil tendencies,
because in this, as in all his Laws, God has respect to that
faculty of choosing between good and evil with which he
has endowed us, and which, however weak and easily over-
powered by unbalanced temptation, in the unrenewed, or
but partially renewed mind, is yet always really there, as
the ultimate ground of moral responsibility.

Although, however, the primary aim of this Command-
ment, AN EYE FOR AN EYE, A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH, is to give a

practical completion to the guardianship of man's outward
Life, as being in God's order a holy thing ; to make that
guardianship real which was before only nominal ; still,
this Commandment has its chief and ultimate value, in im-
mediately presenting, under an intelligible and enforceable
form, that principle of holy Law which is ordained to
guard from violation the Kingdom of God in Christ, as
established in growing power on earth.

This highest end it effects by vindicating and realizing
the eternal truth on which that Kingdom is based,
namely, that as blessedness and happiness are essentially
and, in God's absolute order, inseparable from holiness or
real obedience, so suffering and misery are, in the same

CH. 1.] LAW OF THE KINGDOM. 217

order, inseparable from sinfulness, that is, from a state of
disobedience to His Holy Law.

Moreover, in vindicating and realizing this fundamen-
tal truth of God's Kingdom, that suffering is inseparable
from sin, it reveals and commands that special form of
suffering which alone can be to us salutary, namely, the
suffering preliminary to or connected with our return into
God's order, or the order of a true obedience. Strictly
speaking, it indicates rather than commands suffering ; for
the command is to obey holy Law, whether we feel this
obedience as suffering or not. Nevertheless, suffering is,
throughout our whole Christian life on earth, practically in-
separable from true and growing obedience ; and this what-
ever be our actual progress in holiness. For as the war
between the Law in our mind and the Law in our mem-
bers cannot cease till we are fully renewed in the spirit of
our mind, that is, cannot cease on earth, so neither can
the sufferings which belong to that war.

Indeed, suffering may be most truly contemplated as a
necessary and daily result of this unceasing contest between
the Holy Law of God, as revealed to us in Christ, and the
Law of sin and death which is in our members. And the
stronger our spiritual discernment, the more clearly must
we perceive the arduousness and painfulness as well as the
blessedness of a real and growing obedience to that holy
Law.

Again, we have already seen (B. i. p. 172) that the
Body of Law which corresponds to the first Aspiration,
Hallowed be Thy Name, does, even in that more outward
form revealed to them of old time, implicitly contain its

218 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. 'HOOK II.

more inward and spiritual import revealed to us by our
Lord on the Mount. And no otherwise shall we find it to
be with regard to this more outward Law of God's Kingdom
as ever coming and being established on earth. When
seen in the fulness of its import, that is, when discerned in
the light of Christ, it is the central, realizing Law of that
Kingdom, as well in its rudiments by Moses as in its per-
fection by Christ. Without this Law, that Kingdom would
then have been, and would now be, a Kingdom in Name
only, and not in Power. This real and just recompence of
reward for our deeds, whether evil or good, is in fact the
central reality on which that Kingdom rests its universally
compelling power. This, the whole history of its establish-
ment on earth, from its first beginnings to its full mani-
festation, teaches us. This truth is more especially and
pointedly set forth by our Lord's concluding words in this
very Sermon on the Mount ; and in accordance with those
aw7ful words, it will, we know, be so set forth at the Day of
Judgement, that each individual soul of man will be com-
pelled to feel its reality, for weal or for woe, through all
eternity.

Christ's declaration, indeed, that no jot or tittle of the
Law shall pass away till all be fulfilled, has certainly not
less depth and reality of meaning for this portion of it
than for any other. And let us first ask, Did it indeed
pass away from Him ; or was it not rather in Him and by
Him fulfilled to the uttermost, and in all its command-
ments, outward as well as inward ?

Assuredly, this Body of Law was actually fulfilled by
our Lord Himself throughout its whole breadth, from its

CH. I.] LAW OF THE KINGDOM. 219

earliest to its latest requirement. And first, it was ful-
filled in this very requirement at once fontal and central
of absolute justice : An eye for an eye, a tooth for a
tooth. This great, all-comprehending demand of Divine
justice, hitherto unsatisfied and unmet, He met at once
and satisfied by becoming man, and suffering from his
birth at Bethlehem to his death on Calvary the full penalty
of man's countless transgressions ; by taking the Manhood
into God, and thus endowing that otherwise powerless
Humanity with the Divine long-suffering, and enabling it to
undergo this righteous retribution, and to endure, through
a perfect and perfectly sanctifying obedience in Him, those
sufferings which it had merited through disobedience in
Adam.

But we see in Christ's life and death not only his
general fulfilment of this Law of Retribution in all its
breadth, but his fulfilment at once real and literal of the
same Law in that its more spiritual form and import
which He here expounds to us.

The first of these unfoldings of this great central
Law, Resist not evil ; but whosoever shall smite thee
on the right cheek turn unto him the other also, was
then in its letter as well as in its spirit more than fulfilled
by Christ, when he gave his cheek to the smiter, and his
back to the stripes by which we are healed ; when he
turned not away his face from that shame by which
we are saved from everlasting shame and confusion of
face.

And so of the second of these unfoldings, " If any

MAN WILL SUE THEE AT THE LAW AND TAKE AWAY THY COAT,

li'JO PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II

let him have thv cloke also ;"" this Commandment was
then fulfilled by Him to the uttermost, in a deeper truth
indeed, and a fuller meaning than we are of power to
fathom, when He freely suffered himself to be stripped
even to nakedness, that ho might give to the executors on
Him of an unrighteous Law, not only that outer seamless
garment dyed in His blood ; but — to the end even that
his enemies might be clothed therewith, — that inner,
that more livingly continuous and protecting robe of
righteousness which in the same blood is made exceeding
white as snow.

Again, with regard to the third of these unfoldings,
" Whosoever shall compel thee to go with him a mile,
go with him twain.11 This Law was then indeed fulfilled
by Christ in its deepest and truest meaning, when he was
compelled and meekly submitted himself to this compul-
sion, to bear his cross along that weary road ; to go
with our poor Humanity to the place of sacrifice, that he
might there suffer with its sufferings and perfect it with
his perfection ; that He might go with that once poor
but now enriched and glorified Humanity, further than
it could then so much as desire to go, even to his hea-
venly home.

Lastly, with regard to the fourth and positive Com-
mandment of this central Law op His Kingdom as coming
on earth, which comprehends and realizes each of its pre-
ceding and more negative Commandments — give to him
that asketh of thee, and from him that would borrow of
thee, turn not thou away, — this holy Law was then
indeed obeyed by Him in all its utmost breadth, when He

CH. I.] LAW OK THE KINGDOM. 221

gave not only to them who were already of power to ask Him,
but to all those countless multitudes of every age and every
nation, who might through his still more secret gifts at
length become so, that gift which includes and glorifies
all other gifts, himself ; His Body and Blood, His Life
and Spirit ; to the end, that His Spirit, His Life, His
Body and Blood, yea, He Himself might be ours even as
we are His ; and that in thus possessing and being pos-
sessed by Him, we might find our real and enduring bliss.

Now, though it is only in the growing energy of
spiritual discernment which belongs to the growing obedi-
ence of faith and hope and love, that we can fully enter
into this Law of Suffering, as the central Law and Spirit
both of His own Life and of the Life of His whole Church,
still, whether we be yet able to grasp this high truth
worthily or not, with all our combined powers of Intellect,
Affections, and Will, we cannot but practically feel and
know, that since we are bound by our Christian profession
to be imitators of Christ, and since obedience through
whatever suffering to all holy Law was the pervading
spirit of His Life, it must also it be the pervading spirit
of our Life in Him.

We may as yet be unable clearly to perceive how the
Law of Suffering rests on the deep and broad principle
of Righteous Retribu ion ; we may as yet dimly discern
and feebly grasp that great quickening verity which has
in the depths of the Incarnation its living root — the real
oneness, I mean, in Christ of the whole Church ; and so
at length, if we fall not away from God's order, of the
whole human Race, of the children of men. Nevertheless.

222 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLEC1 IN RELIGION. [ 1SOOK II.

wc cannot but practically and historically discern and
know, that as it was in this respect with Christ, so it
must be with each of us ; that as he was a man of sorrows
and acquainted with grief, that as His life was one of
suffering even unto death for righteousness1 sake ; of being
perfected and glorified, and of bringing many sons to
glory by that obedient suffering ; even so must it be the
special and central Law of the Life of that Body, and of
every Member of that Body whereof He is the Head.

We know, I say, and cannot but know from manifold
testimony, whether we comprehend its grounds or not,
that so it must be. And not only from testimony as
to this fact of our Lord's obedience to the Law of Suffer-
ing, do we believe and know that it behoved him so to obey
and so to suffer, but we learn by degrees to recognize the
absolute consistency of these his sufferings with the great
and fundamental verity of his Incarnation.

And even as we are empowered to perceive that this
primal act implies and contains such sufferings for Him-
self the Head, so through further contemplation of the
same great Reality of His Incarnation, and consequent
oneness with the Race he came to save, are we enabled
to discern that it behoves us also to suffer with Him.

To whatever extent we enter into that true membership
or oneness with Christ, which is implied in his Incarna-
tion, to the same extent does it behove us to enter
into the fellowship of His sufferings, bearing each other's
burdens, as being, in Him our common Head, members
one of another. And since the nature of this member-
ship was not fully revealed, nor the membership itself

CH. I.] LAW OF THE KINGDOM. 223

actually constituted, until the Word was made flesh and
dwelt among us ; so neither was this fundamental prin-
ciple of suffering for sin set forth before that time, under
a form of Law fitly corresponding to the full revelation
and constitution of that membership.

And here, in proportion as we advance more deeply
into the Realities and Laws of the Kingdom, and the
Will of God, we perceive more and more clearly the bless-
edness of those who, though they have not seen, yet
believe and obey. We feel and know that these are
truths which cannot be solidly and fruitfully apprehended
by the mere Intellect ; that here, if we would indeed know
of the doctrine, we must in the strength of faith do the
words. We begin to perceive some of the real limita-
tions to the province of the Intellect in religion, and
in these very limitations to discern somewhat of the
real and vast extent of that province. We begin to
perceive that a main drift of Christianity is the purify-
ing and reconciling the Intellect and the Affections, and
that the central method through which it accomplishes
this reconciliation is by making the affections truthful,
through an earnest and truthful exercise on their real
objects. We begin to perceive, that however danger-
ous and ultimately fatal it may be to neglect absolute
truthfulness or accordance with holy Law, in the exer-
cise of our affections, and absolute Truth regarding their
objects ; it is no less dangerous, no less fatal, to content
ourselves with striving after a discernment of God s
Truth, or of His Law which is the Truth regarding these
realities of our affections, and to neglect their earnest

J"J^ PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

and faithful exercise. It is, I say, when we are carried
onward in our contemplation of revealed truth to such
great spiritual ideas and realities, as this of entering into
the fellowship of the sufferings of Christ, that we seem
to recoil instinctively from dwelling on, or presenting such
verities as merely or mainly objects of the Intellect. Then
we seem to perceive instinctively that such living truths
ought to be and can only be apprehended with all our
heart, with all our soul, and with all our powers of life
and practice, as well as with all our mind. And these
are, indeed, great and holy instincts of our true Being.
Nevertheless, even here, nay, here especially, the spirits of
the prophets must be subject to the prophets.

Any failure in this fundamental element of absolute
truthfulness, and absolute truth in our discernment and
setting forth to others of the revealed realities of Holy
Being and of holy Law, must be guarded against as wore
absolutely fontal, as the root of a deeper and wider
corruption, even than any failure, however fatal to our
own blessedness, in our personal exercise of these implanted
realities of Holy Being. This, however, is a question
of the highest spiritual order. Practically speaking,
neither is before or after, neither is greater or less than
the other. Practically speaking also, the two are essen-
tially one. We must do the whole of God's truth to the
uttermost, we must to the uttermost present the whole of
it to be done by others; or in His words whose least word
is final, " Verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth
pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from
the Law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever, therefore, shall

CH. I.] LAW OF THE KINGDOM. 225

break one of these least Commandments, and shall teach
men so, he shall be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven:
but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be
called great in the Kingdom of Heaven."

Now we are fully persuaded that a perfect Law of
liberty and life, this Law of Christ, that is, which we are
now considering, can be apprehended and taught in the
integrity and fulness of its compelling power, only in
so far as it is apprehended and taught as a living whole.
In no other form can its inherent spiritual truth and
beauty exercise their full power over our affections in
their growing truthfulness, over our unfolding spiritual
discernment. We must perceive more and more clearly
that these Laws of Christ are no other than the great
spiritual Realities of the name, the kingdom, and the will
of God presented to us by Him under the form, trans-
lated for us into the language, of holy Law. In so far
as we fail of thus discerning it, this Law becomes for us
not an inward and living, but an outward and fragmentary
Law. Whereas in the light of this verity we perceive each
element of holy Law in its own distinctness, all in their
essential unity. We at once perceive a clue to this other-
wise intricate labyrinth.

Thus it was that in our exposition of the Beati-
tudes as the Realities of holy personal Being in their
growth in man, we found it necessary to the true dis-
cernment of each blessed Temper in itself, as a distinct
element of that Being, to contemplate it also in its rela-
tions to the rest. And this necessity we perceived to arise
out of the truth that the Beatitudes constitute a living
15

226 PROVINCE Of THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [lSOOK II.

whole (Book i. p. 71). Thus also we found it to be with
regard to the Lord's Prayer as possessing in itself a no
less real and living unity.

We observed, moreover, in this vital unfolding of the
Beatitudes, that the first three possess a character of
their own, really and intelligibly distinguishing them from
those which follow, and that Spiritual Poverty, Mourning,
and Meekness, are the special Tempers which make our
souls capable of actually receiving in daily increasing mea-
sure those Realities of His righteousness unto holiness which
God is ever ready to impart through Christ and the Spirit
to those who indeed ask for and can indeed receive them.

The same principle manifested itself with regard to
those first three utterances of the Prayer which are the
Aspirations to God of the first three Blessed Tempers ; and,
as might be expected, still more distinctly ; for in no way
can the genuine character of a Temper or disposition mani-
fest itself more worthily than in its proper and truthful
utterance to God. These utterances are most clearly dis-
tinguished from the rest as being neither direct Petitions
for actual gifts or benefits from God, nor Ascriptions of
honour and glory to Him, but Aspirations or yearnings of
our spirits for the hallowing of His Name, the coming of
His Kingdom, the doing of His Will.

And in the same manner shall we find that there
exists a most real distinction between the great threefold
Body of Holy Law which corresponds to this threefold
Aspiration, and all that remaining portion of the whole
Christian Law or Rule of Life given by our Lord on the
Mount.

CH. I.] LAW OF THE KINGDOM. 227

And first, as these three Aspirations to God of all that
is spiritual within us come to their highest fulness in the
final Aspiration, that God's Will may be done on earth
no otherwise than it is done in heaven, even so does the
corresponding threefold Body of Law culminate in that
perfect law op the will, Love your enemies, bless them

THAT CURSE YOU, DO GOOD TO THEM THAT HATE YOU, AND PRAY
FOR THEM WHICH DESPITEFULLY USE YOU AND PERSECUTE YOU,

or, to sum up all in a single Commandment, which alone
is worthy to express in the language of holy Law the
entire renewal and so the entire freedom of the Will, Be

YE PERFECT EVEN AS YOUR FATHER WHICH IS IN HEAVEN IS
PERFECT.

It is indeed manifest that as our Aspirations at least
must be satisfied with nothing short of this ordained per-
fection, if only in order that our Lives may not fall miser-
ably short of it, if only that it may be even a possible thing
that our Lives should continually approach it ; so also must
the Body of Law which corresponds to these Aspirations
after an effectual Sanctification or renewal in the spirit of
our minds, be endowed with a corresponding completeness
and perfection. It must present in the form of holy
Law the very same things, the very same perfection,
which the Beatitudes of Spiritual Poverty, Mourning,
and Meekness, present in the form of holy Tempers,
which the Prayer presents as the real, the ever more
and more attainable objects of our earnest and hopeful
Aspirations.

If a Law below this in perfection had been given, it
would have been no witness to the truth that our Sanc-

15—2

228 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [iJOOK II.

tification is an ordained Reality, is the Will and the Glory
of God : it would have been no schoolmaster to bring us
continually nearer and nearer to Christ.

Again, we saw that in a very important sense all is
accomplished so soon as the first three Beatitudes have
been indeed born into the soul, and endowed with their
proper utterances to God in the three Aspirations of the
Prayer. And in a no less important and real sense may
this threefold Body, this great Triad of Law, be regarded
as the entire and perfect Body of Christian Law ; the com-
plete presentment under the form of Law of the Realities
of holy personal Being ; the Truth therefore, or true
form, of the Humanity as renewed in Christ.

But if this be indeed so, why does not the Christian
Law here terminate ? If this be its completion, what fol-
lows must be superfluous ; or if, as is the case, there be
still a considerable Body of Law to come, this cannot be
its completion.

The objection has a seeming, but not a real force.
We know that Christ is the way as well as the truth.
We know that He is also the life. And even as in the
first distinct portion of His legislation He presents to
us the absolutely true and perfect Law of our real or
renewed Being, that law which for us, as for Him, is the
truth ; so in the second does He present to us the way
or method in and through which this perfect and holy
Law, this absolute Truth of God and man, is to be in-
wrought into our Being, and written in our hearts. And
so again in the last distinct portion does he present our
spiritual or real life, (in the form of those highest Laws

CH. I.] LAW OF THE KINGDOM. 229

which determine and guard that now indwelling and in-
herent life,) as it continually results from our daily walk-
ing in Christ's way or method of obedience to that Divine
and perfect Law which is the truth.

That such is, in its great leading lines, the real order of
the Sermon on the Mount, a continued examination of it
from several points of view has left on my own mind no sha-
dow of doubt. Nor, I am persuaded, will the earnest student
of that portion of Scripture fail to perceive either the reality
of this order when once pointed out to him, or its fruitful-
ness in important results. To present all the grounds on
which it rests, or all the consequences to which it leads,
would be an attempt wholly inconsistent with the scheme
of this work; but the idea itself, when once discerned, will
advance ever into a clearer and clearer light, in proportion
as the Sermon on the Mount is more steadily contem-
plated as a complete and living whole. Such a student
I would earnestly entreat not to be deterred by any
apparent formality or intricacy in the general Synopsis
of the whole subject which accompanies the First Book.
If it embodies more results and a more definite order
than he has already discerned, let the expressions of these
which it contains be for the time wholly neglected, and let
the Synopsis itself be referred to only when other means
of discovering the traces of this order and method have
failed, or where, as at present, the order itself is for the
first time pointed out.

In the light of this idea he will at once see the mean-
ing of the four larger spaces into which the Table is
divided, and which are separated from each other by broad

230 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

circular lines. He will perceive that the order and method
they indicate, and which we affirm to be our Lord's order
and method as recorded by St. Matthew, are based on
nothing less solid and enduring than an intelligible and
spiritual necessity.

The first of these spaces corresponds and has refer-
ence throughout to that spiritual beholding and con-
templation of the revealed Godhead which, as we have
seen, is the ordained fountain of our real and enduring
Life.

The second of these larger spaces, or, as from their
subdivisions we may call them, Triads, corresponds and has
reference throughout to our aspirations and strivings for
the communication of His Divine Wealth to our Human
Poverty: both these fontal Realities of our spiritual Life
being now discerned through the revelation in Christ of
the truth concerning His Being and our own : a reve-
lation which presents His Righteousness under the idea
of Wealth, chiefly because its essential character and
value for us consists in its essential Communicableness.
In the whole three-fold Body of Law^, corresponding to
these three Aspirations, is presented that complete Obe-
dience which in God's order is indeed the living Body
whereof these Aspirations are the quickening Spirit. And
if we ourselves be in this Divine Order, if we have not in
vain taken upon us His Holy Name, and in vain entered
into His covenant, if we refuse not to be reformed, and
cast not His Law behind us; then these holy Aspirations,
this spirit of Poverty, Mourning, and Meekness, are for us
also actually and daily being clothed upon with this robe of

CH. I.] LAW OF THE KINGDOM. 231

righteousness, woven without seam throughout, — with this
perfect living Body of holy Obedience.

But, as the Natural Body cannot grow towards perfec-
tion, or have healthy increase, without its proper food, so
neither can the spiritual Body of a true obedience, of
Righteousness, that is, unto Holiness. Growth by nourish-
ment is the ordained mean, the condition in God's order
necessary, for really advancing towards spiritual as well
as towards natural perfection. True there is also in both
cases a previous underlying condition necessary for such
healthy growth. Disease may have destroyed or vitiated
our appetite. Though bread and wine be present for the
satisfaction of our proper wants, those wants which are in
the order of our health may by us be still unfelt. We
may have no healthy hunger and thirst for them, or our
hunger may be for that which is not bread, our thirst
for what cannot quench or assuage it : or, in our fevered
and unhealthy state we may have a false craving even for
that which is bread indeed and wine indeed; and then
our disease is aggravated, our fever inflamed, even to peril
of dissolution, by those very means which were ordained
to be, and otherwise would have been, the means of
healthy growth, of renewed and increasing strength.

Moreover, though we may discern in part the absolute
beauty of this entire and living Body of Righteousness
unto Holiness, though we may dwell on it with desire
and yearn for its communication to ourselves, we cannot
really receive it as an entire and living Body. It cannot
so be inwardly digested and assimilated by us, and so
really minister to our growth and strength. To this end it

232 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

must, as we have elsewhere observed, be broken for us, by
our Almighty and all-seeing Father, into the fragmentary
forms of our daily duties, that our hearts may be daily
strengthened by the actual doing of righteousness, our
spirits daily comforted by actually shewing and receiving
mercy.

And let us beware of regarding this most real analogy
between our Natural and our Spiritual Life rather as the
play of a trifling fancy, than as having a solid foundation
in the order of God's revealed Truth. We shall, on the
contrary, find our Lord's use of it most amply justified to
our spiritualized reason, by its pervading and fruitful
character ; and here especially we shall perceive that it
explains the transition from this manifestation and present-
ment to us by our Lord of the complete Body of Divine
Truth under the form of holy Law, to that Christian way
or method, by the daily and constant use of which we do
indeed receive into our souls our daily and sufficient por-
tions of that real meat which consists in doing the Will of
our heavenly Father. Not indeed that any one of these
lower Realities of our Natural Life can suffice to sustain
the whole weight, to expound the entire import of its cor-
responding absolute Reality in our Spiritual Life : inasmuch
as that higher Life is far richer, fuller, and more real.
Any single form or image therefore, borrowed from the
lower and poorer Life, must needs break down under the
weight of meaning it has to bear in setting forth its cor-
responding Spiritual Reality. And this principle explains
at once the variety in our Lord's parables, and in St.
Paul's figures. Still we shall find that there do belong

CH. I.] LAW OF THE KINGDOM. 233

to the lower Natural Life certain comprehensive and car-
dinal Realities, specially fitted in themselves, specially em-
ployed by our Lord for presenting to us the corresponding
Realities of our worthier and more enduring Life; and
that with these pregnant Realities the Sermon on the
Mount is more peculiarly conversant. Meat, Drink,
Clothing, the actual or natural, and the spiritual or real :
seeing, hearing, communing, the actual or natural, and
the spiritual or real : wealth, treasure, the actual or
natural, and the spiritual or real : the things which con-
cern our actual or natural, and our spiritual or real life,
as we are individuals, as we are members of a family,
as we are members of a community: — such are our known
earthly things, through which chiefly our Lord has ex-
pressed to us His unknown heavenly things ; and if we
be not yet of power to receive His lessons, we must at
least believe, if we would ever arrive at this power, that
they have meanings, real, deep, and fruitful on the one
hand, and on the other, divinely, that is, perfectly, fitted
to our actual and growing powers of apprehension. Above
all, and as a first approach to this inner shrine of His
temple of Truth, we must at once and for ever reject
the profane notion, that any one of these living words
is a mere incidental illustration ; let us rather say, is
without an import so essentially inexhaustible, that how-
ever long and deeply dwelt on, it will never cease to yield
fresh food for our enduring Life.

In the language then of these significant Realities of
our Natural Life which our Lord has consecrated to
this use, we may say that as in one great Division of the

234 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [bOOK II.

whole Sermon our Lord presents His living Body of Law
in all the truthful Beauty of its holiness, so in the next
he reveals the Way or method in which we must receive
into ourselves that Body, broken to be the daily food of
our enduring Life ; and so in the last he presents that
real life as implanted, as actually unfolding itself within
us in virtue of this heavenly food.

And thus it is that the Divine Righteousness, the holy
Truth which is presented for our reception in the second
great Division of the Sermon on the Mount, is presented
in the fourth as actually and livingly realized within us
through the means set forth in the third. So that in
our Lord's order we have, first, our devout contempla-
tion of the Divine righteousness, of the beauty of holi-
ness that we should desire it ; secondly, our consequent
Aspirations that it may be communicated to us ; thirdly,
the means by which these Aspirations are daily realized
in and for our own souls ; fourthly, the new life of holi-
ness which results in us from their being so realized.
And we have, moreover, for each of these States or
Energies of Being, which together constitute our pro-
gressive Renewal, a distinct Body of Law, determining
at once the true character of that State or Energy, and
guarding it effectually, so far as this Body of Law is really
obeyed, against its inherent and ever active tendencies to
fall off from that true character.

Such we would affirm generally is the leading idea of
the Sermon on the Mount. And this idea, if we appre-
hend it aright, and strenuously subordinate ourselves to
it, up to the full measure of the grace granted us, is of

(II

. I.] T.AW OF THE KINGDOM. 235

power under God, actually and progressively to realize
itself in our souls ; that is, through Christ and the Spirit
really to effect in us what it thus distinctly presents to
us as the absolute truth, as the true way, and as the
true life. Herein we see the ordained method of our
renewal in the spirit of our minds ; such a coming, within
us and around us, of the Kingdom of God in Christ as
is ever growing out of a true hallowing of His Name,
and issuing in a fuller and freer accomplishment of His
Will. And this view will at once materially simplify the
apparently complex arrangement of the general Synopsis
accompanying the First Book. For it will be found
that the distinct Portions of the Sermon on the Mount
which succeed each other in that arrangement, that is,
in our Lord's own order as recorded by St. Matthew,
are really dealing with the same things under three dif-
ferent points of view ; that for example, the third of
these main Divisions or Triads presents the way or
method of actually doing the very same things which the
second presents as things to he done, as things the doing
of which fulfils the absolutely holy Law of our true or
renewed Being ; and that the fourth presents the very
same things, not now as things to be aspired after and
striven for, nor as things to be daily done in a certain
way or manner, but as things already received into our
spirits and embodied in our lives.

Having thus glanced at the general principle which
in our view informs and quickens the whole Sermon on
the Mount, we will proceed with our survey of those suc-
cessive portions of it which remain to be considered, with

23 G PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [fiOOK II.

a hope that each of these may now be more easily ap-
prehended as well in its own distinct character, as in
its real relations to the rest.

From what has been already said, it will be evident
that the portion of Law we are now more especially
engaged on, namely, that corresponding to the second
Aspiration, " Thy Kingdom come," is really central in a
very important and intelligible sense. This Law of the
Kingdom we shall find to be the living centre of Christ's
holy Law, contemplated as the true law, or the truth,
of our Being ; in accordance with the words of the
Psalmist, " Thy Law is the Truth." If our spiritual dis-
cernment were perfect, we should be able of ourselves
to perceive in this central Idea and Law all those which
in Christ's order follow, as well as all those which precede
it ; and even now, in the light of His teaching, we are
enabled to perceive in part this important and simplifying
character of the Body of Law we are now specially con-
sidering.

We perceive such a comprehensive character in this
central Law of the Kingdom of God on earth as mani-
fested in Christ, first in its intimate correspondence with
the full Reality of that Kingdom as so manifested. That
full Reality, based on the accomplished Incarnation of
our Lord and on the consequent personal unity with Him
of his ever-growing Church, could not be adequately pre-
sented under the restricted form of the corresponding Law
given to them of old time. True indeed it is, as we have
already admitted, that even this apparently restricted
form, " an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,"

CH. I.] LAW OF THE KINGDOM. 237

does implicitly contain the same great Truth which is here
fully developed by our Lord into the central law of the
Kingdom of God on earth, consistently with the full deve-
lopment of that Kingdom in Himself and in His Church ;
but no less true is it that this primary and restricted
form of the Law belongs primarily to the imperfect
Polity constituted of old time in Moses, rather than to
the perfect Kingdom now constituted in Christ.

The restricted form of this Law was of power to sus-
tain, as its central stay and prop, the weight of that
unenduring Jewish Polity. The expanded form here given
by our Lord is of like power with regard to His own
real and spiritual Kingdom. One great truth to which
both the outward or Jewish, and inward or Christian,
form of this Law are indispensable witnesses, is the truth,
that as blessedness or reward belongs to holiness, accom-
panies, that is, a true obedience to God's holy Law : even
so suffering or punishment belongs to sin, or in other
words, to all transgression of the same Law.

The other no less important and more essentially
Christian truth witnessed to by this Law as unfolded by
our Lord on the Mount into its full Christian form and
import, is the truth of our essential unity with each other
before God, as we are in Christ members one of another.

In Him not only is each Individual Christian at one
with himself, not only does each Family of brethren after
the flesh dwell together in unity ; but in Him there is
at length brought in the only true bond of union which
can livingly and permanently hold together a Complete

238 PE0V1NCE OV THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [iiOOK II.

Human Society in all its essential Realities and conditions,
outward and inward.

This real unity, which is now at length fully consti-
tuted in Christ and the Spirit, which in God's order is
inherent, and which in man's order must be growingly
realized in each genuine Christian Polity, was adumbrated
and witnessed to even in that first Divine Economy which
was by Noah ; more amply witnessed to and set forth in
the second which was by Abraham and Moses. But it is
now at length for us in Christ and the Spirit that this
unity, ordained and gradually unfolded from the beginning,
is brought in, that it may be realized in all the fulness of
its absolute perfection ; a perfection to which every act of
really doing, or of truly teaching Christ's holy Law, con-
tributes ; a perfection which will then be final when the
kingdoms of the world are indeed become the kingdoms
of our Lord and of his Christ.

It is this great idea of the real personal unity of the
Church in Christ its Head, and in the Spirit which per-
vades and energizes throughout it ; it is the Reality cf this
oneness, as based on, and growing out of, the Reality of
the Incarnation, with which we must penetrate and imbue
ourselves, if we would be true churchmen, if we would
enter into this central Law of our fellowship with the
sufferings of Christ. If we discern not, if we have not a
living faith in this underlying Reality, we can never discern
this Law of the Spirit of Christ's Life, and of his spiritual
Kingdom, as a Reality, as a real Law binding upon every
Christian man ; to which he is bound, the love of Christ

CH. I.] T.YW OF THE KINGDOM. 239

and of Christ's Church constraining him resolutely to
subordinate himself. In the mirror of this fontal idea we
shall see the absolute Reality of all that Christ did ; of
all that we have to do in following His steps : we shall
see the Reality with which He took our actual nature
upon Him ; the Reality with which He sanctified that
nature by the fulfilment of all righteousness, by an abso-
lutely sinless obedience to holy Law at every moment of
His whole life. We shall see in His sufferings throughout
that whole life, His sufferings even unto death, the Reality
of His personal oneness with the Race he came to save.
For only as man indeed, as indeed the Son of Alan, as
the man, could He in this divine order of essential justice
really suffer for the sins of men.

Again, in His real oneness with those whom he chose
out of the world, that He might sanctify them to God as
firstfruits of the world, we see the growing and ultimate
accomplishment of the great purpose of His taking flesh,
namely, the kingdoms of the world becoming His Kingdoms,
not as Satan falsely offers, but as the Father really gives
unto Him all these, yea, all power in heaven and earth.
We see that is His real oneness, first with His ever-grow-
ing Church, and then through it with the whole redeemed
Race of man.

And this full and final unity of its elder brother and
Head with the whole Race of mankind, being God's Truth,
being the Central Truth of His Kingdom established on
earth in Christ, we must act in the spirit of that Truth,
or we shall act falsely, not in accordance, that is, with the
Central Truth, and so with the Central Law of this king-

2'iO PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

dom. Now we cannot be personally one with Christ
unless we are personally one with each other ; for this
would be to introduce division into the body of Christ ;
and Christ is not divided.

And here in passing let us remark, that much evil re-
sults to the Church from the habit into which men fall, of
thinking and speaking of this unity as of something essen-
tially and in its true character less real, than the outward
and visible unity of our bodies, by which it is so fre-
quently expressed. Such thoughts and words are indeed
the expressions of a want of faith in the Reality of Christ's
oneness with His people, and of their oneness with each
other in Him ; a Reality essentially far more absolute
than that of any outward or visible unity whatever. Such
habits of thinking and speaking tend to produce, even
when they do not arise out of, a want of practical faith
in this unity as in itself a holy Reality, as designed by
God to be ever more and more fully realized in each of
us here on earth ; and so they tend to make us luke-
warm both in our Aspirations and our Strivings after the
realizing, in ever-increasing fulness for ourselves and for
our brethren, of this blessed unity which is the very bond
of peace.

Let us then watchfully guard ourselves, let us pray
and strive against the evil and unbelieving notion that
this unity of Christ with His Church is a mere mystery ;
that this Body of Christ is a mystical Body in any sense
exclusive of the very highest Reality. And if it be asked in
what Temper, by what prayers and strivings, may wo most
effectually pluck up and cast forth this evil root of unbelief,

CH. I.] LAW OF THE KINGDOM. 241

and receive in its stead a living faith in this living Reality,
I answer, in the Blessed Temper of Christian Mourn-
ing, by the Aspiration, Thy Kingdom come, and by ever-
renewed Strivings after obedience to this Law of the
coming kingdom. Obedience to this Law does for us, even
as it did for our great elder Brother, realize the ordained
personal oneness between Him and the brethren.

It is in the order of God's highest revelation of a
Justice or Righteousness at once human and Divine, in the
order namely of that more excellent Righteousness re-
vealed in His Son, that we should in the spirit of this unity
bear one another's burdens, even as He bore ours. To
suffer for our own transgressions is but the lower form of
Justice or Righteousness ; a form revealed under Moses,
and practically embodied in this outward Law of Right-
eous Retribution. For patient submission to this form of
Righteousness, which exceeds not that of the Scribes and
Pharisees, no thanks are due to us. Such retribution
is the dictate of our mere natural sense of personal
right; is simply a translation, into the form and language
of righteous Law, of that idea of Justice which we should
possess even if Christ had not revealed the larger mem-
bership and Personality which is now in Him consti-
tuted. That larger and worthier Personality and its
corresponding Life, involve a larger and worthier idea of
Righteousness or Justice, and this idea must be embodied
in a larger and worthier Law.

Now we can never enter into and subordinate our-
selves to this new and more excellent Law, unless we
16

242 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [ BOOK II.

practically believe in the new and more excellent Reality
out of which it springs.

If we practically discerned the truth, that in Christ wo
are members one of another ; if this close personal unity of
the great Family, which in heaven and earth is named after
Him, were by us believed in and felt as a Reality rather
than quoted as a text; we should then have no difficulty
in apprehending and entering into the Law which springs
out of it. If we discerned the Spirit of the Kingdom, we
should discern the Law of the Kingdom. That it is difficult,
if not impossible, for the natural man to discern or to have
faith in either, is most true ; most true it is that the
gradually overcoming this great and real difficulty has been
a main object of God's teaching from the first. To this
end was unity impressed on His people in their very Name.
They were the sons of Abraham : they were the children
of Israel : they were Israel : for the Family Life also has
its own natural oneness, and the language which expresses
this oneness is ever, as it was in that early age especially,
a language coming home to man's heart and under-
standing. To this end the Israelites were led onward
to discern, through that of the Family Life, the real unity
in itself under God of the National Life also. And see
how gradual was the transition ; in order that what was
in itself hard to learn, might be encumbered by no un-
necessary difficulties. Long after they had become a
nation, and when now their National Life had grown
out into its full perfection in David, they were still
Israel, and so still Jacob. Thev were called in Isaac,

(II. 1.] LAW OF THE KINGDOM. 2 !•.'>

they were the seed of Abraham. They were still so
named, still so regarded by God. Yet see also how real
was the transition ; in order that this teaching might be
effectual, as well as easy to apprehend. Egypt was for
the chijdren of Israel at once the grave of the Family
Life, and the birthplace of the National Life. Ever after
their baptism in the sea and in the cloud, their true Life
lay in the Covenant of a National Unity with God, and
in Him with each other. This Reality God ceased not
to inculcate on them, by dealing with them as actually
endowed with real personal unity ; as being in His sight,
and in His truth, one with each other. Such was the
meaning of their national judgements and national mer-
cies, national rewards and national punishments : whether
the nation suffered at a later period of its Life for the
sins of a former, or whether at the same period the people
suffered for the sins of their rulers, or their rulers for
those of the people. So that we cannot accuse God of
having left us unprepared and undisciplined towards this
larger unity. As with them the Family Life merged
gradually in the National, and was at once the informing
spirit of that larger Life, and God's chosen means for
realizing it, even so must it ever be with us. And then
from this genuine National Life there will continually
result a higher Life, and a larger unity in the great
Christian Family of Nations: a unity not the less real
or the less truly catholic, because its Life is hidden with
Christ in God, because that Life cannot be embodied or
come to a personal Head in any human Potentate. Thus I
say will there continually result, in fuller and fuller degrees

1 6—2

^4-4 PROVINCE 01 THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [iJOOK II.

of perfection, that universal Family and Kingdom, to
govern which from on high and through the Spirit, it
was good for us that Christ should depart ; over which
we may not desire for ourselves any earthly king, any
father but our Father which is in Heaven.

Nor, indeed, is the mode of teaching He adopts with us
essentially different from that which he employed towards
His earlier Church. To them He presented such a revela-
tion of Himself as might most worthily exercise and elevate
their actual powers of apprehending Him ; and with it such
a corresponding Law as might tax to the uttermost, and
continually enlarge, their actual powers of obeying Him.
To us He does the very same : only, since the Revelation of
Himself made to us is more largely and worthily unfolded,
so also is the corresponding Law. For the principles of
God's teaching are always the same. Knowing what is
in man, and knowing that he must livingly apprehend
Divine Truth, not by any one power or faculty, but by
exerting in harmony all the best energies of his Being ; He
gives the Truth of a Divine Reality for our devout and
reasonable contemplation : He gives the very same Truth
under the form of a Divine Law for our devoted and intel-
ligent obedience. And thus, and thus only, are we by
degrees imbued throughout our whole Being with His
Holy Truth, and thus does our whole Being become ever
more and more truthful.

Can we then indeed discern how the revelations of that
Divine Reality, and of that Divine Law, which we are now
considering, that is, of the Reality and the Law of the
Kingdom of God in Christ, as come and over coming on

CH. I.] LAW OF THE KINGDOM. 245

earth, do really and intelligibly work together to imbue us
with that holy Reality, to make us apprehend it not with
our understandings only, but with heart, and mind, and life I

Does obedience to this Law of the Kingdom, this
Law of suffering, or rather of accepting evil and be-
stowing good, (for the suffering is really incidental, though
practically speaking, inseparable from the acceptance of
evil ; and is moreover really and ultimately overbalanced by
the consolation and joy of bestowing and receiving good)
does a faithful and hopeful self-subordination to this Law
really and in any distinct and intelligible sense work toge-
ther with the spirit of Christian Mourning, and with its
Godward voice, Thy Kingdom come? is this Law in harmo-
nious consistence with the revealed Reality of that Kingdom
as having come once, and as ever coming on earth ? In re-
ply to these questions I would ask another: By what means
can the fact of Christ's mournful absence from his Church
and world, and of the consequent essential evil and misery
which are in both, be so effectually realized by us, be so
pointedly brought home to our personal consciousness, as
by our being personally and feelingly brought into contact
with that evil and misery, and by our being thus enabled
to have intimate experience through these sharp forms
of suffering, of the terrible results of sin, without the
necessity of paying for that mournful experience the ruin-
ous price of sinning in our own persons I

Again, can any other Law be conceived which could
more effectually realize for our own souls that fundamental
Verity of the Kingdom as come and coming mi earth, ouh

24c) province of thb intellect in religion. [llook ii.

unity in Christ with the brethren, and so with the sons
op men I Let it even be granted, for the sake of argument,
that we have not sinned in our own persons, and that
therefore our suffering for sin would be inconsistent with
that lower idea and law of justice, which has its root in
a verity no broader than that of our own individual per-
sonality, and individual responsibility. Yet have we not
sinned in that larger Personality of Christ's Church, which
is now constituted to be or to become co-extensive with the
world, and of which we are not less truly members, than the
limbs are members of the natural body, or than brothers
by blood are members of the same family? And is it
not then for us absolutely and strictly just, is it not simply
in the order of that larger and fuller Righteousness brought
in by Christ, that as when one limb is diseased, the whole
body suffers and mourns ; as in the degradation of a
sister, or a brother, the whole family suffers and mourns ;
so it should be also with regard to our brothers or sisters
in Christ, even to that whole earthly Family which is now
constituted in Him. And will it not indeed be so with
us, exactly in proportion as we have a living and practical
faith in this reality of our oneness in Christ with the
brethren i Can we then ask how faithful and hopeful self-
subordination to this Law intelligibly and distinctly minis-
ters to, and works together with, the spirit of mourning?
or, again, how it deepens and realizes that spirit's God-
ward voice, " Thy Kingdom come," that voice, which,
though it implies the more sorrowful element of this true
or Christian Mourning, does yet chiefly express the more

CH. I.] I. \\V OF THE KINGDOM. :M-7

hopeful and forward-looking feeling which belongs to it.
For what can give greater reality and fervency to our
Aspiration for the ever-increasing presence of Christ by
the Spirit to His Church and World, than this ever-
deepening sense of the miserable results of His absence
from them ; unless indeed it be the hopeful consciousness
of His growing presence to our own souls, whereby we
can communicate to others such real benefits in the order
of His Kingdom as they are of power to receive ? Or —
since this growing presenee is a witness to our own souls
of that higher and more positive truth of the kingdom,
as come and coming on earth, namely, that it is a King-
dom of real communicable good, of real communicable
consolation — how better shall we strengthen for ourselves
this witness, how more effectually heighten for our own
souls this central power of the Kingdom, this energy of
imparting good, than by faithfully and hopefully exer-
cising it I

Nor let it be said that we are giving a forced and
unnatural semblance of distinctness and precision to that
which is essentially vague and general ; that for example,
this Law of suffering personal injury, wrong, and compul-
sion, and of giving and lending to them that ask of us — of
accepting evil that is, and of communicating good, might
no less fitly be set forth as having a special correspondence,
not with this second, but with the third Aspiration, " Thy
will be done as in heaven so on earth ;" for we shall find
that this is not so, but far otherwise. The Law of the
central Aspiration for the coming of Christ's Kingdom is
indeed itself really and intelligibly central ; and as being so

248 PROVINCE OK THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

has living and important relations with the Law of the
first, as well as with that of the third Aspiration; but it is
also intelligibly distinct from them. And if asked for an
example or a proof of this alleged distinctness, we would
request the reader to compare the Body of Law assigned
to the kingdom with that assigned to the will: and we
would then affirm this to be at least one real and intelli-
gible distinction between them, namely, that a real fulfil-
ment of the Law of the will is for us in God's order
possible only in so far as we have actually subordinated
ourselves to this central Law7 of the Kingdom. Whereas
the converse of this affirmation is not true. Thus we can,
by no immediate exertion of the Will, love our enemies,
if our hearts have not yet been disciplined and trained
upward to a capacity for such love ; and so even the first
Commandment in this Law of the will, if not preceded
by a Law conferring such a discipline, would cease to have
for us any practical meaning. It might be a witness to
our true or normal state of Being, but it could not effec-
tually lead us towards realizing that state in our own
souls. Now the Law of the Kingdom really constitutes
such an effectual discipline of our Affections and Will, as
to make obedience to this higher and more spiritual Law
of love — this law of the absolute Will of God — of the
Will of man so far as renewed — a possible thing. And
moreover, this Law of the Kingdom, however arduous
and difficult, is not, as we may at once perceive, beset by
the same spiritual impossibility of immediate obedience,
as a Law commanding those to love their enemies
whose hearts are as yet incapable of any such holy

CH. 1.] I AW OK THE KINGDOM. 24.9

affection. There can be few who know not intimately
that it is at least possible men should patiently suffer evil
from others, patiently do good to them, though in thus
doing and suffering they may at first have to put a force
upon themselves, and though they may even during a long
persistence in this obedience to the Law of the Kingdom,
be incapable of any such free and pure affection towards
those whom they patiently benefit, as deserves the name
of holy love, — as constitutes any adequate fulfilment of
the first commandment in the Law of the will. Yet by
degrees they find their reward. They find that as that
sentence of the Roman historian, " proprium humani ingenii
est odisse quem lseseris,11 is fearfully true of the unre-
deemed, unaided Humanity ; even so its converse — that
by suffering for and doing good to others we learn to love
them — is not less true, when once that poor outcast
Humanity has again been placed within the Kingdom of
God in Christ, and as a loyal subject and citizen of that
Kingdom has been indeed subordinated to its proper Law
of accepting evil and imparting good. They find that
through earnest obedience to this Law, the growing power,
the free energy of such a self-sacrificing love as consists
with the perfectly holy Will of God, is daily being unfolded
and quickened in their souls.

Moreover, though a true and willing, that is a really
Christian self-subordination to the Law of suffering evil
and communicating good, is at first very hard ; it involves
no spiritual impossibility even in its beginnings. For
this Law recognizes and implies, if it does not expressly
enjoin, the putting a force upon our natural inclina-

250 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

tions, that is on the natural Self. So that we are still
in the order of this central Law of the Kingdom, even
though our endurance of evil and our communication of
good should not be wholly free : even though in every such
act we are obliged more or less to deny and constrain
ourselves. Nay, the principle of spiritual growth, hidden
in this central Law, is the very principle of permanent
self-denial ; for how great soever may be our advance in
freely obeying, there will still be things in the order of
this Law, too hard to be accomplished by us with absolute
freedom. Such things God's providence is ever bringing
towards us, in proportion as we are enabled to receive and
to overcome them ; and thus, though in the daily pro-
gress of our renewal the realm of free obedience will be
always increasing, there will still ever remain to us a large
unreduced region of self-denying and suffering obedience.
Hence we see that as God's appointed order is from the
kingdom of God as coming through much suffering and
self-denial in our hearts, to the will of God as effectually
inwrought into our spirits for a new Will ; even so there is
a similar and real order of priority between the Body of
Law we have affirmed to be specially that of the Coming
Kingdom, and the Body of Law which in our view is
that of the Accomplished Will.

The definite relations which subsist between this cen-
tral Law of the kingdom, and the resulting and final Law
of the will, may be more properly noticed when we are
immediately considering the latter. For the present, having
seen the connection of this central body of law with the
Christian Temper of Mourning, and with the Aspiration,

CH. I.] LAW OF THE KINGDOM. 251

"Thy Kingdom come," let us consider its relations with
that Law of the name which immediately precedes it.

We shall do this more easily if we fail not to bear in
mind the main practical purpose of the Sermon on the
Mount, which is indeed the unfolding our true or re-
newed Being, the destroying and casting forth our false and
evil or fallen Nature. Christ is here renewing and perfect-
ing that image of God in which He made man, but which
was marred by the fall. It is here we shall find if we seek
it, His method for accomplishing this end. We shall find
that this renewing and perfecting of man, of mankind,
through Christ and His Church, is here presented to us
immediately in its simplest and most practical form, the
renewing and perfecting that is of the Individual Man
in the spirit of his mind. True it is, that whilst we are
here tracing the process of thus renewing and perfecting
this lesser Personality of the Individual, we are enabled
to perceive at the same time how that larger Personality,
the Church, does under Christ its Head and in God's
order, necessarily unfold itself and grow towards perfec-
tion, in unison with this true unfolding and perfecting of
the individual Christian man.

The spirit of the whole Sermon on the Mount, the
Forms, "Our Father, give us," &c. so thoroughly in unison
with that spirit, shew us at once that the Individual
Christian Man can be built up and perfected, only as he
is more and other than a mere Individual, only as he is
in personal communion with that larger Membership whose
Head is Christ.

Still it is most important to our clearly understanding

252 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [ROOK II.

the order and method of the Sermon on the Mount, and
more especially of our Lord's legislation therein contained,
that we should consider it as His revealed method of
unfolding, of determining and guarding in the absolute
Truth of his Being, the individual christian man. The
bearing this in mind will be found to obviate several
difficulties in comprehending the details, and even the
spirit of this great Body of Christian Law : and to the
students of Greek philosophy the contrast between this
method, and that deliberately adopted by Plato in his
Republic, will be found full of instruction.

This striking contrast we must content ourselves at
present with briefly noticing. We may however observe
that Plato's method of presenting and legislating for the
Individual Man, by first presenting and legislating for a
Polity of individual men, is more directly opposed in its
Form than in its Spirit to the divinely true, or absolutely
real, method here laid down by our Lord : inasmuch as both
methods will be found to involve an intimate analogy and
correspondence between the larger Personality of The
Whole Organized Community and the lesser Personality of
The Individual Man. This analogy, though not explicitly
brought out in the Sermon on the Mount, does really
pervade every portion of it, and above all others its legis-
lative portion. Only we shall find that in this portion
especially, there is set forth and guarded in its integrity
that one essential and central element of mans Real Life,
through a fundamental misapprehension and neglect of
which in Plato's system, the genuine Life of the Commu-
nity becomes impossible, and the system itself, as a really

CH. [. | LAW OF THE KINGDOM. 2-r)li

practical exposition of our rightly constituted Human Life.
becomes little better than a specious falsehood.

That foundation and centre of our real human Being,
which the Greek philosophy neglected or perverted, the
Christian philosophy presents in its purity and truth : I
mean the Family Life, with the affections in their purity on
which it rests, with the Laws in their truth by which it is
guarded. And accordingly we shall find with regard to
the three distinct Bodies or Codes of holy Law which we
are now considering, that in each of these its first Com-
mandment guards the Realities of the Individual Life, either
in their Beginnings, in their Growth, or in their Perfection;
that the second Commandment in each of them effects the
same guardianship for those Realities and conditions of our
Being on which are more especially founded the Life we live
as members of a Family ; and similarly, that the third Law
in each successive Code of the name, of the kingdom, and of
the will, is as an angel of God appointed to guard ever, as
they are ever unfolded under the influence of His Spirit, the
Realities of that more perfect and comprehensive Life which
we live as members of a complete Christian and Spiritual
Community on earth. We shall find further, that in each
of these distinct yet closely related Bodies of Law, the first
three Commandments are as compared with the fourth of a
negative character, even when they are not of a negative
form ; but that the fourth is, on the contrary, always essen-
tially positive ; and further, (if we may be pardoned such
a use of terms belonging more especially to exact science,)
that this fourth Commandment is ever essentially polar and
(•(mi/ilfmental to each of the three Commandments which

254 PROVINCE 01 THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

precede it, and which without it would want their practical
as well as their intelligible and spiritual completeness.

Thus, as we have already seen (Book i. ch. 6), the
outward as well as inward Realities of this three-fold Life
of man are guarded in their roots and from their very
birth by the law of the name as presented in the complete-
ness of its outward form, and in the fulness of its inward
spirit, by our Lord. And the more searching our examina-
tion of the Law of the Kingdom which is at present before
us, the more clearly shall we perceive that this Central Code
is ordained to guard the continual growth and develop-
ment of the same threefold Life, which we have already
seen guarded by the Law of the Name in its birth and in
the conditions absolutely essential to its very existence.
And even as growth implies birth, and is a continual
unfolding of it ; so our obedience to these Laws of the
Kingdom implies and continually developes into a maturer
holiness our obedience to those fundamental and primary
Laws of the Name. From this point of view we shall dis-
cern that essentially central character already pointed out
as belonging to the Law of the Kingdom ; and we shall
further perceive in it one Commandment which is as it
were a heart of hearts, an inner centre in this central
body of Law itself. We shall find this absolute centre in
that very injunction to refrain from vindicating by Law
even our legal rights, which has presented a stumbling-
block to the understanding and to the faith of so many.

For what indeed does a sincere obedience to this
injunction of our Lord affirm, in that language of practice
which is of all others the truest and the most intelligible ?

I'll. I. ] LAW OF THK KINGDOM. 255

It affirms that what the lower and not yet Christian idea
of Justice or Righteousness freely assigns to you, and
holds you blameless in receiving, nay, blameworthy in not
vindicating, you refuse to vindicate and receive for yourself.
This however, in accordance with what has already been
said, is obedience to this central Commandment only in
its negative injunction, " If any man will sue thee at

THE LAW, AND TAKE AWAY THY COAT, LET HIM HAVE THY

cloke also." Its positive injunction, "Give to him that

ASKETH THEE, AND FROM HIM THAT WOULD BORROW OF THEE

turn not thou away," remains to be obeyed. And what
does your obedience to this Commandment declare, in the
same practical and truthful language ? It declares and
affirms the very same thing positively which you have just
declared negatively, namely, that as before in what you
will receive, so now in what you will impart, you deny, and
refuse to be bound by, this lower and inadequate idea and
Law of Justice or Righteousness, which takes no account
of our living membership with each other in Christ, and
which has no broader basis than the legally-enforceable
rights of the individual insulated man.

Now we affirm, that obedience to these two injunc-
tions, or rather to this one complete central Command-
ment of the Law of the Kingdom, in its positive as well as
in its negative import, is not only a bearing practical wit-
ness to the Central Truth of Christianity, namely, that a
larger and more real Personality is now actually consti-
tuted in Christ as the Head and His Church as the
Body, and that we are each of us actually living elements
or members of that worthier Personality: but it is far more

2")<i PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

than a mere witness to this great living and quickening
Truth.

So far as we continually subordinate ourselves to this
central Commandment, and act in its spirit, to the same
extent are we daily mortifying and destroying that false
Self within us, whose righteousness cannot exceed that of
the Scribes and Pharisees, and so cannot enter into or
inherit the Kingdom of Heaven : to the same extent are
we daily under God building up within us that true or
renewed Self, whose Life is hidden with Christ in God, and
is manifested in the loving our neighbour as ourselves.

Here, however, will occur the objection ; such conduct
may indeed have this central force and efficacy in exer-
cising and building up the person who pursues it, in all his
worthier and more spiritual capacities. But are we in this
matter to regard merely our own edification, and not also
that of our brethren ? And what, if we perseveringly act
out this principle, must be the natural and inevitable
effect of our conduct on all those persons whose rude
injustice is thus weakly submitted to ? Or, if this over-
strained view be indeed the true one, might not such
persons I'eceive practical encouragement in their violent
courses, or even be led to take higher ground, and to
affirm that they are themselves also acting in God's
recognized order, and furnishing to others that special
discipline which is essential to Christian perfection ; To
these questions it might suffice to reply, that though it
must needs be that offences come, yet woe is denounced
on that man by whom they come ; and that he who on
this pretext inflicts evil and commits injustice, separates

CH. I.] LAW 01 THE KINGDOM. 257

himself thereby from Christ, and is joined in spirit to
the author of evil. With regard to the practical en-
couragement given to reckless and bad men by our so
suffering their aggressions, we shall have occasion presently
to see that a remedy against this is provided in another
part of this comprehensive legislation.

We know indeed from the history of Christendom that
the effects of such conduct may be safely left to themselves,
nay, that the more fully this Law of the Kingdom, and this
its central injunction, are carried out into practice, the
more effectual are its influences for good, on others as well
as on ourselves: we know that "sanguis martyrum semen
ecclesiae;" so that we might well and safely strive to realize
this great Commandment in our own practice, even if our
understandings furnished us with no solution for the dif-
ficulty in question.

But the answer which it concerns us at present to
make is, that our Lord in this great Body of Christian
legislation is setting forth the acts, the practices, and
course of conduct, by self-subordination to which, in the
strength of faith, and of a growing hope and love, each
Christian man may most deeply enter into and realize the
true Christian Life; may most effectually mortify and cast
forth the evil in him which opposes itself to that life, most
effectually under God cultivate and unfold the good which
belongs to it.

We see at once, indeed, that nothing can be more de-
structive of the essentially unchristian spirit of Self, than a
sincere obedience to this central Commandment in the Law
of the Kingdom, which says to each Christian man, Thou
17

258 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

shalt regard and hold to nothing whatever as belonging of
right to thine own self, but all as belonging to the body
of Christ, to the great Family of Christian men, and as
held in trust for its use. And we have already in part seen
that no Law can be conceived more fitted to foster within
us the temper of Christian Mourning, and those heartfelt
yearnings and Aspirations for the coming of Christ's
Kingdom in our hearts, which are in God's order the har-
bingers of its actually and progressively coming there.

The main drift and essential character of this central
Body of Law cannot however be clearly apprehended with-
out contemplating it in its relations to those two distinct
Bodies of Law. which precede and follow it. For in pro-
portion as this complete Body of absolute truth unfolds
and manifests itself to us in a divine order, as the Law of
the Name, as the Law of the Kingdom, and as the Law^
of the Will ; in the same proportion do we perceive in it
an ever-unfolding spirituality of import, and a more living
unity in itself as a whole. Hence, if we cannot rightly
discern or obey the Law of the Name, without entering
into its real relations to the Law of the Kingdom, still less
can we truly and practically discern either the Law of the
Kingdom, or the Law of the Will, unless we enter into the
pervading relations which bind them into one. And even
without any detailed examination of the several command-
ments contained in these three Bodies of Law ; and confin-
ing ourselves at first to their general spirit ; the reality
and leading principles of such an order and connection are
almost self-evident. For example, the proverbial saying,
that we must be just before we are generous, expresses,

ill. I. I LAW OK THE KINGDOM. 259

not very exactly indeed, but sufficiently so for a first
general notion, the real principle on which the Law of
the Name, or of primal truth and primal justice, precedes
the Law of the Kingdom, or of that higher Christian truth
and Christian justice, which is revealed in and by Christ
as being the Righteousness of His Kingdom. Not that
truth and justice or righteousness are in themselves
changeable, but that they are capable of being, and have
actually been, progressively unfolded to us by God : every
further revelation of the Truth of holy Being having been
actually accompanied by a new unfolding of the Law of
holy Being. So that the Law under which men lived
before the revelation of their essential oneness in Christ,
could not possibly suffice them now, or rightly correspond
to the higher Christian Truth of their Being, when at
length in Christ revealed to them. Under this new reve-
lation of the true idea of man, as now in Christ at one
with the brethren, the same acts, which before this revela-
tion were acts of mercy and generosity, are now acts of
mere Christian justice. They are so in themselves ; and,
if only we believe in and enter into this great and new
revelation of our real relations in Christ to God and to
each other, they become so for us.

That the acts and the temper of Christian unity or
brotherly love, will never become our temper and our
habitual acts ; that this higher Christian idea of right-
eousness, however true in itself, however capable of being
actually inwrought into our own souls, will never be for
us realized, unless we firmly believe both that it is a
Divine idea, and that it may bo so realized — these are

17—2

260 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

limitations to the compelling power of this more excellent
righteousness which are thoroughly consistent with its
essential character ; for they shew us how large in it must
be the province of faith. If once by faith we admit this
verity, as a verity which under God, and through His
ordained means, may be realized' in our own souls and in
our brethren, then this new Law of the Kingdom becomes
the Law of our lives, as by a spiritual necessity. But so
long as we realize not to ourselves the great central Verity
of the Kingdom, so long as our oneness with each other
in Christ remains for us a mere lifeless notion; we object to
the Law which presents that Verity in the form of a Life;
which translates that true idea of our state in Christ into
the mere obtrusive and exacting language of a Law, claim-
ing our personal active obedience, setting itself up as
having a binding power over our consciences and lives.
Hence, through our not believing in and accepting, as a
Divine Verity, this higher righteousness, we fall back on
that lower and less worthy, though still true, form of
righteousness which is based on a portion only of the
whole truth of our Being as now in Christ revealed,
namely, on the truth that we are each of us individuals
personally responsible for our acts to God, and that we
shall each of us be personally punished or rewarded for
them. This last is the character of the Law of the Name,
contemplated as distinct in principle from the Law of
the Kingdom : although such is the living continuity of this
whole threefold Body of Divine legislation, that even in
this Law of the Name, the Law of the Kingdom is
continually shadowed forth : just as the higher and more

°H. I.] LAW OF THE KINGDOM. 1 6' 1

spiritual unity of the Church or Body of Christ in Christ
its Head, is shadowed forth in the lower and less spiritual
unity of each individual man in his own single personality.

And here a caution may be necessary. The conceded
fact that this Law of the Kingdom is thus closely related
to the Law of the Name must not be wrested into a con-
cession or a proof that there is no such real distinction
as we insist on, between the two. On the contrary, each of
these three Codes of Law will be found to have its own
proper and distinct character, and to be, if we may so
speak, a perfect translation into the language of holy Law,
of the living Verities to which that Code intimately corre-
sponds— the Verities that is, first, of the name of God
as brought near to and put upon each of us ; second, of
the kingdom of God as actually come and ever coming in
increasing power in our hearts ; third, of the will of God
as continually becoming our Will by daily renewal in the
spirit of our minds.

The impossibility of transposing the two last Bodies of
Law we have already seen. To contemplate this abso-
lutely perfect and spiritual Law of love, which is the Law
of the renewed will, as preceding in the order of Growth
that effectual discipline of a suffering obedience which
alone can enable us truly to obey this last and holiest
Law, is to introduce utter confusion in the place of abso-
lute order ; and would be not less inconsistent with such
inward and real order, than it would be with the out-
ward order of the Christian year, were the Church to
celebrate the feast of our Lord's Resurrection to newness

262 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

of life and joy, before she had gone with Him in the spirit
of Mourning through the grave and gate of death.

And now that we have obtained some general notion
of the order which presides over this living development
of holy Law, it may be well to consider it somewhat more
exactly. And to this end we would first notice the
identity of essential form which prevails in each of its
distinct portions.

If, as we shall find ourselves justified in doing, we
take the primary and immediate aim of the whole of this
threefold Body of Law to be the renewal in the spirit of
his mind of the individual man ; and if we take the
implanting and perfecting in him of a genuine power and
energy of communion with his heavenly Father, and with
his earthly brethren, as our test of the accomplishment of
this renewal, we shall hardly fail in discerning the per-
vading principle of this legislation ; we shall find that
the implanted powers, the very elements and constituents
of his genuine Humanity, in virtue of which he is capable
under God of being raised to this energy of a true com-
munion, are determined and guarded by the first of these
Bodies of Law in their very birth, in the primary grounds
and conditions of their existence ; that by the second,
these Realities of our Being are determined and guarded
in their genuine Christian growth, in all the essential con-
ditions of their true developement ; and that by the third,
the perfection or normal state of these divinely human
Realities is determined, and the Realities themselves are
guarded from declension and for further unfolding, in that

CH. I.] LAW OK THK KINGDOM. 263

state of approach towards perfection to which they have
at any time been actually advanced.

In contemplating the Law of the Name of God as
revealed to man in the first Table of the Decalogue, and
the Law of the Name of God as put upon man in the
second, we found it expedient to consider each Command-
ment chiefly in itself, but also in its relations to the Table
of which it formed part. And in proportion as we advance
in this Divine order from the twofold Law of the Name to
the Law of the Kingdom and the Law of the Will, we
shall find that these successive unfoldings of holy Law are
bound together by a still closer and more living unity, and
that we cannot grasp the main drift and bearing of this
threefold Body of Law unless we bear in mind that it is
ordained in its completeness to determine and guard our
whole genuine Life on earth under God, as we are bap-
tized into His Name, as we are members of His King-
dom, and as we are doers of His Will. So discerned it
will be found to present the most effectual means which
holy Law can supply for determining and guarding at
every moment of their existence, those implanted and
unfolding Realities of the daily renewed mind, on which
alone can be constituted and built up our genuine human
and spiritual Life.

Moreover, in this full and perfect Law, as in a
clear mirror, we shall behold the fundamental Realities of
our renewed being reflected to us in the form of a living
obedience, of a reasonable and spiritual life ; nor can we
in any other mirror discern them so practically. And no
less true is it, that the Being of God also, as well as our

264 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [book II.

own renewed Being, is most faithfully and discernibly
reflected to us in the same mirror of His holy Law. For
this is indeed the Law, not only of our own renewed mind,
but also of His absolutely holy Being, and it must there-
fore truly reveal and express to us the character and attri-
butes of that Being.

Since, however, this holy Law presents our genuine
Being not in its essence but in its manifestations, not as
abstract Being which we should with greater difficulty
apprehend, but as a life, whereby our actual powers of
apprehension are far more immediately and fully met ; it
will be necessary to consider a little more accurately what
are indeed the constituents of this life which are thus
presented to us under the forms of holy Law; and also
whether those presented by this Law are really all its
essential constituents.

In doing this we shall find that this threefold Body of
Law determines and guards, in order to their full and
healthy development, those Realities of our Being on
which depends the possibility of our entering into God's
order as revealed in Christ, and so living a good or Chris-
tian life, with reference to three distinct constituents of
that ordained life. These fundamental constituents are,
1, our Individual Life; 2, that which we live as members
of a Family ; 3, that which we live as members of a Com-
plete Human Society. And on due consideration we shall
find not only that these are essential constituents, but
that they are indeed all the essential constituents of our
genuine human Life. And hence we shall further perceive
why it would have been superfluous and inconsistent with

CH. I.] LAW OF THE KINGDOM. 265

the spirit of this fundamental legislation to provide for
more than the determination and guardianship in their
genuine form of these essential constituents of our Being:
why it was unnecessary, in this His fundamental legisla-
tion, to dwell on more at length, to unfold more largely
and in any fulness of detail, either the Family Life, or,
what might seem to need this more deeply, the Life we
lead as members of a reasonable and spiritual Community,
as members in Church and State of a Christian Nation.
We shall see that by determining and guarding, in each
individual soul of man, those unfolding Realities of his true
Being which alone can sustain the weight of this Complete
Threefold Life, His legislation has done all that it was
necessary or expedient to do.

To whatever extent this Body of Law becomes the
Law of a man's Life, to the same extent will he actually
fulfil all the duties and relations which belong to him as
an Individual, as a member of a Family, as a member of
a reasonable and spiritual Community. And on the other
hand, to whatever extent he is not actually subordinated
to this threefold Body of Law, to the same extent will he
be incapable of and unfit for these duties and relations.

That a complete fulfilment of all the duties and rela-
tions belonging to this threefold Life does really present,
under the form of obedience to holy Law, the whole of our
genuine earthly existence, both in itself and as a prepara-
tion and discipline for our enduring and heavenly exist-
ence, we shall, I am persuaded, find less reason to doubt
in proportion as we consider the matter more fully. We
shall find that any form or conception of our genuine

!><>(>' PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

human Life, falling short of this, falls short of the real com-
pleteness and fulness of that Life as ordained under God
and constituted in Christ ; that every form or conception
of that Life which would include any other or any more
really distinct fundamental elements ; has in it something
either superfluous or essentially false. Again, with regard
to these fundamental forms or elements of our genuine
human Life, each of them requires a twofold Body of Law,
one regulating its overt acts, the other regulating the in-
ward Realities of the Affections, of the Intellect, and of the
Will, which issue in those overt acts ; and that although it
is possible to discern the outward Law as implying the
inward, or the inward as implying the outward, still both
these distinct kinds or orders of explicit Law are necessary
to the effectual determination and guardianship of our
complete human Life as under God unfolding itself in each
of its fundamental constituents towards its ordained per-
fection.

Now all these essential offices of holy Law we affirm to
be fulfilled by the threefold law of the name, the kingdom,
and the will, which is before us ; and we feel justified in
thus stating our view of its main drift and purpose, be-
fore we have fully examined in detail the last two of these
three closely connected Bodies of Law, by the circumstance,
that the first of them (that of the name,) has already
been examined (B. i. ch. 6) in detail, and that we have
already discerned in it those fundamental principles and
that essential form which will be found to pervade and cha-
racterize this Law or the Kingdom, and also the succeeding
Law of the Will. As we have already found with regard

CH. I.] I.WV OF THE KINGDOM. 267

to the Law of the Name, so shall we find with regard to
the Law of the Kingdom, and the Law of the Will, that
each of these distinct yet closely related Bodies of Law
consists, first, of an outward Law or Code, whose office is
to determine and guard this genuine threefold Life (as
ever growing towards perfection) in all its leading outward
manifestations ; and second, of an inicard Code, ordained
to fill the very same office with regard to those inward
Realities of heart and mind which alone can give to these
outward manifestations their Christian and spiritual truth.

We shall find, further, that each of these Codes,
whether of outward or of inward Law, is essentially, though
not always apparently, of the same form.

This pervading form of holy Law is more clearly
manifested in the law of the name as put upon man, that
is in the second Table of the Decalogue as revealed in its
full perfection by our Lord. By the outward form of that
Law we have already seen the threefold Life of man deter-
mined and guarded in the outward conditions and realities
essential to its very existence, and to the possibility of its
being further unfolded towards its ordained fulness of per-
fection. By the inward form of the same Code we have
seen it determined and guarded in the inward conditions
and Realities essential to the attainment of the same
ends.

And here we have drawn attention to the second
Table of the Decalogue rather than the first, as presenting
this normal and pervading Type, this essential Form of
holy Law, because the second Table in its Christian
fulness constitutes the first distinct portion of that

268 1'KOVINCE OK THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [bOOK II.

threefold Body of holy Law, whose office as a whole is to
determine and guard in its integrity the Being and Life
of man, as he is baptized into the name of God, as he is
a growing member of the Kingdom of Christ, as he is a
living stone in the Temple of the Spirit ; and because we
may therefore more directly and naturally refer and com-
pare the two succeeding Bodies of Law with this first.

If, however, we wish to discern in its absolute perfec-
tion this normal Type of holy Law, we must look at the
first Table of the Decalogue, whose office, as we have
already seen, is to determine and guard in its integrity
the holy Being of God as revealed to man. And when
once we have discerned this we shall not wonder, remem-
bering that in the image of God made he man, that each
of these three Bodies of Law more especially ordained for
the determining and guarding in its revealed integrity the
now holy Being of man, should be essentially conformed to
that first Table ; that our greater Lawgiver should also
make all things according to the pattern shewn once to
Moses in the Mount.

And here we will be bold to assert, and that with no
fear of effectual contradiction or disproof, that this first
Table of the Decalogue presents to us the absolute Normal
Type or Essential Form of holy Law, and that this form
is such because it rests on the Being of God, and on its
relations to the Being of man, as these have been revealed
to us in their absolute reality by Christ.

We have already in the First Book (pp. 145, 170,)
pointed out traces of this essential identity of form in
the two great fundamental manifestations of holy Law

CH. I

] LAW or THE KINGDOM. 269

which determine and guard respectively the Being of God
and the Being of man ; and we may now further affirm
that this essential identity of form is, in these two bodies
of Law, more immediately discernible than in those which
follow. Nor can we be surprized at this, for even as the
first Table of the Decalogue, when discerned in the fulness
of its import, is of power to determine and guard for us in
its integrity the Holy Being of God, to whatever extent
that Being may have been revealed to man ; even so this
second Table of the Decalogue, when similarly discerned,
is of power to determine and guard in its integrity the
real Being of man, to whatever extent that Being may
have been revealed to him.

Perhaps indeed the simplest way in which we can
enter into the true bearings on each other of these succes-
sive Bodies of Law, of the Name, of the Kingdom, of the
Will, is by regarding each of them as fuller and fuller un-
foldings of the Law which determines and guards man's
real Being, and by conceiving these successive expositions
of the deep import of that Law, (whereof the primal mani-
festation is the second Table of the Decalogue as given by
Moses,) as necessary for the continual determination and
guardianship of that Being, not as stationary, but in the
ever-growing fulness of its Reality : so that in the very-
proportion in which the idea of mans true Being is re-
vealed to hiin, in evei'-increasing fulness of truth, in the
very same proportion is the law of that being, the
law which realizes that idea for each true doer of it,
revealed and presented to him for his faithful and reason-
able fulfilment.

270 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [jSOOK II.

From this point of view this threefold Body of Law
will be best seen in its essential singleness of purpose, and
in the corresponding oneness of Form which pervades
each portion of it. We shall perceive that though its
more immediately discernible office is to guard our own
Being from falsehood and evil, it is not less really ordained
to guard from desecration the holy Being of God : not
indeed as that Being is the one life-giving object of our
devout beholding; for the revelation of Him in this special
character is specially guarded by the first Table of the
Decalogue, a Law whose depth of wisdom is so great that
it is ever of power to guard for our beholding each suc-
cessive revelation of the Godhead ; whether that revela-
tion be made under symbolic forms, as to Moses, or in
the fulness of its reality, as through Christ.

Distinct from this Special object of the First Table,
but not less essential to our final renewal, and so to the
dory of God, is the object of the threefold Law of the
Name, the Kingdom, and the Will. This whole Law is
ordained to guard in its integrity the holy Name and
Being: of God, not now as it is revealed to us for our
devout contemplation, but as it is brought into real com-
munion with us, into a communion becoming ever, through
Christ and the Spirit, closer and more intimate, and the
reality of which involves not Life merely, but living Growth.

Now in the great Christian verity of such an ever-
heightening communion, we have the real and intelligible
o-round of a Law whose essential character is that of
Growth or unfolding. Accordingly we find that God has
guarded the primary and fontal communication to us of

CH. I.] LAW OK THE KINGDOM. 271

Himself made through the revelation of His Name by
a distinct Body of holy Law, namely, the first Table of
the Decalogue in the ever-expanding fulness of its mean-
ing, corresponding to our ever-expanding discernment in
the light of Christ of that revealed Name.

We find that He has guarded the next and more in-
timate communication to us of Himself, made through the
putting upon us of this revealed Name, by another distinct
Body of holy Law, namely, by the second Table of the De-
calogue ; and we find that this body of Law also has in it
the same capacity for being unfolded into a nobler form
as well as a deeper import, in proportion as our power
unfolds itself of receiving and realizing for our own souls
this second communication of the Godhead.

And now that these first movements on the part of
infinite mercy and lovingkindness towards our fallen race
have prepared the way for a still fuller and more intimate
communication of Himself, of His Divine Wealth, to our
human poverty ; now that the Lord of the universe can
come to us and dwell with us in and through Christ,
and the Kingdom of Christ ; now at length that more
real communion takes place : that Kingdom of growing
power and spirituality is brought in. And as no earthly
kingdom can subsist without its ordained and appropriate
Laws, still less can this Kingdom of God on earth, coining
as it does conquering and to conquer, in the hearts of
men. And accordingly we find that it has its own fitting
Code or Body of Law. True it is. as we have already
admitted, that this proper Law of the Kingdom is in one
sense but a worthier and larger unfolding of the Law oi

Zi'l PROVINCE OK THK INTELLECT IN RELIGION. ^ BOOK II.

the Name. True that a perfect Intelligence might with-
out a new revelation of holy Law have derived and unfold-
ed this LAW OF THE EVER-COMING KINGDOM from the tWO

previously given laws of the revealed and the imposed
name. Such a pure Intelligence might, I say, from these
previous Bodies of Law, and from the revealed Reality of
that deeper and fuller communication of the Godhead
which belongs to Christ's Kingdon on earth, have divined
and set forth the appropriate Law of that Kingdom. But
to assume man's actual intelligence to be capable of this
clear legislative insight, to claim for him in his natural
state the power of translating the revealed realities of
the kingdom of God as through Christ and the Spirit ever
coming in man's heart, into the proper laws of the king-
dom, would be to affirm that he possesses naturally that
renewed mind, and that spiritual discernment, which can in
God"s order result only from a real self-subordination in
the strength of faith and hope to this very Law7 of the
Kingdom. It is quite evident, therefore, that together with
the revelation and constitution of the kingdom itself,
this Lawt of the Kingdom must also be revealed and con-
stituted. So far indeed is man's unrenewed mind from
being capable of such an effort, that even after some pro-
gress has been made in its renewal, its power of discern-
ing the essential and intimate correspondence between the
revealed realities of the kingdom, and the revealed Law
of the Kingdom, is for the most part limited and imper-
fect. Till our renewal is far advanced, till these inward
Realities of the Kingdom are deeply inwrought into our
souls, tlrat genuine idea of the Kingdom which gives living

CH. I.] LAW OK THE KINGDOM. 273

unity and fitness to this Central Law, flits before us as it
were only at intervals, and is ever eluding and escaping
the grasp of our spiritual discernment. We speak indeed
of Christ as the Head, of the Church as the Body of
Christ, of ourselves as Members of that Body : we are
far from rejecting what the Creed teaches of the Commu-
nion of Saints : but we do not habitually realize even in
thought and word the inseparable consequences, the neces-
sary results of these revealed Verities. Tf there be such
a Head, such a Body, and such Members, not in words
only but in very deed ; if this great living Personality be
not a mere notion, be no longer for us as for them of old
time a prophetic announcement ; but, on the contrary, an
actually existing Personality which has united and is ever
uniting with itself countless multitudes of our fellow-men ;
must not this new and living Membership have for itself a
new and living Law ? And if the great central Verity of
the Kingdom be indeed this, that we are in Christ one
with our brethren, must we not ever in act and deed
enter into this unity? And again, what Law can more con-
duce to our so entering, than this Law of the Kingdom ?
What Commandments or injunctions can more faithfully
present under the form of Law this great central Verity,
than that very Body of Law which enjoins us to realize,
by action as well as by suffering, this intimate Member-
ship, this Personal Oneness in Christ with our brethren.

This Law of the Kingdom is indeed a thoroughly prac-
tical expansion of the Commandment, Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself. For if we be thus in Christ one
with our brethren, then it is not less fitting and reasonable
18

274- PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [ROOK II.

that wc should bear without anger the suffering inflicted
on us by an offending brother, than that we should bear
without anger the pain of a disordered limb : nay, it is
more so : for if we have but faith in this our Membership
with each other in Christ's Spiritual Body, it is a more
real Membership than that of our natural limbs one with
another.

And here let us observe that the Christian grace of
Hope (as implying Faith previously entertained and acted
on), is the central sustainer and nourisher of our souls in
their growing self-subordination to this Law. By Faith it
is chiefly that we apprehend the Kingdom whilst it is yet
far off from our own souls or from the souls of those
around us. But it is the daily coming of that Kingdom in
our hearts and in the hearts of our brethren through
much tribulation, it is the consciousness of a daily growth
in our power of obeying its Law, which enkindles and feeds
in our hearts this Grace of Hope, and enables us patiently
if not joyfully to endure the sufferings which belong to
such obedience. And in the same manner we shall find
that Love, as growing out of and implying the presence of
Faith and Hope, is the proper support, the appointed sus-
taining energy of any real self-subordination to the final
Law of the accomplished will, "He that loveth me doeth
my words." Moreover, it is only through such faithful and
hopeful self-subordination to this central Law of the King-
dom, and in it to the primal Law of the Name, that this
form of Holy Love, which is its only full and genuine
form, can result and manifest itself in our souls. It is only
in the spirit of that Love spoken of by St. Paul, which

CH. I.] LAW OF THE KINGDOM. 275

abideth when Faith is swallowed up in sight, and Hope
in fruition, that we can obey that holiest Law of the
Will which is the Law of Man's renewed Being, and the
spirit of which he breathes forth to God in the utterance,
" Thy will be done, as in heaven so on earth."

In considering the entire Body of the Divine Law as
expressing, under the form of Law, the truth of holy
personal being, we have spoken of certain portions of it
as more peculiarly ordained to guard the absolutely Holy
Being of God in its revealed integrity ; and of other por-
tions as more specially appointed for the fulfilment of the
same office with regard to the Being of man as now in
Christ revealed and constituted to be a holy thing.

Now we must ever bear in mind the truth, that these
two offices of holy Law are by no means incompatible.
Indeed, it may be further affirmed, that each portion of
it ministers at once to both these ends. Thus, for exam-
ple, the Law of the revealed Name, the first of these dis-
tinct portions, guards the Being of God, as the one Holy
Object of our devout contemplation, as the one quickening
fountain of our enduring Life. Nevertheless this, though
its highest, is not its only office. The Being of God is
guarded from desecration by this Law, not as dwelling
apart in its own Absolute Holiness and Perfection, but
as revealed to man, and as thus brought into contact
with at least one important element of man's Being,
namely, with his capacity for devout contemplation, — with
whatever power he actually possesses of discerning and
dwelling on The One Holy Being, The One Source of all
Holiness.

18 — 2

27<5 PROVINCE OK THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [nOOK II.

This Body of Law therefore, in guarding from dese-
cration the Being of God, guards also from desecration
the Being of man, in those noblest powers of devoutly con-
templating and dwelling on the revealed Godhead which
specially distinguish him from the unreasoning and un-
spiritual orders of creation, and which are the primary and
indispensable conditions of his ultimate renewal and Sanc-
tification. For if the one holy and hallowing object of
these powers be the Godhead, truly and effectually, though
at first not fully, revealed and discerned; then these
powers in man of discerning and contemplating God are
of primary importance, or rather necessity, to man's well-
being ; and so they require guarding in their integrity and
truth, no less really than does this revelation from God of
His own Holy Being. And if this be true of the first
Table of the Decalogue, which has special reference to
the Being of God, still more true must it be of those
three succeeding Bodies of Law whose immediate object is
to guard the Being of man in its progressive Sanctification
or renewal, through the Name of God into which he is
baptized, through the Kingdom of God ever coming in his
heart with growing power, through the Will of God ever
being more and more fully inwrought into his spirit and
accomplished in his Life. In fine, it is not the absolute
incommunicable Being of God which is thus guarded
either by the whole or by any distinct portion of that
Divine Law which is the truth. For a Law having this
object, could be no Law /or man. But it is that Being as
communicable and actually communicated to man : and
therefore the genuine office even of the first Table of the

CH. I.J LAW OP THE KINGDOM. 277

Decalogue is to guard from desecration, and for hallowing,
the Being of man through a similar guardianship of the
Godhead as revealed to man. And thus it would seem
that if we are desirous of presenting in a simpler and more
comprehensive form the ultimate end and aim of holy
Law, we might present it as the ordained guardian of
holy personal Being or of the holy Will ; whether this
be contemplated in its absolute perfection as in God, or
in its state of progressive renewal as in man.

And if it be from this point of view that we may
discern in its greatest simplicity the ordained office of this
entire fourfold Body of holy Law; so shall we most clearly
and practically discern the aim of its last three distinct
portions which refer more immediately to ourselves, by
regarding the Law op the Kingdom as their heart and
centre, by steadily contemplating a true and hopeful obe-
dience to it, as throwing us back on a faithful obedience
to the Law of the Name, as unfolding in us an energy
of free and loving obedience to the Law op the Will.

This last truth a searching self-examination would
teach us far more effectually than any process of reasoning
or any verbal exposition. Nor indeed would it be easy to
devise a more practical and effective method of self-exami-
nation than one founded on this central Law op the King-
dom, and on that earnest obedience to it which is ever
growing out of obedience to the fundamental Law of the
Name, and ever resulting in obedience to the final Law of
the Will.

And thus far we have thought it best to deal with
these four distinct Bodies of holy Law, and specially with

278 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [iJOOK II.

the last three of them, as having an essential unity of
purpose, and a corresponding unity of form and import.

Let us now proceed to look somewhat more closely at
each distinct Commandment in this central Law of the
Kingdom, as each is ordained to guard inviolate some
essential element of our unfolding Humanity. Whilst we
thus contemplate these, let us be careful also to remark
the manner in which, under this absolutely necessary
guardianship of holy Law, the true elements, not of our
Individual Life merely, but of our Full Social Life, unfold
themselves.

And let us, in dwelling on this clear reflection of the
Divine Form of our Humanity in the Divine Law which
determines and guards it, fix our attention more especially
on the fact, that in God's order and method as here
revealed by our Lord, the Individual Life does not unfold
itself into the Complete Life of the Community either
immediately and directly, or by any self-determined means,
as in Plato's otherwise wonderful attempt to evolve the
true Idea of a Community ; but only in accordance with
one definite order and method, only through the Family
Life as the ordained centre of our true Human Life on
earth, as the golden link which alone is of power to bind
into living oneness our genuine Life as Individuals, with
our genuine Life as Members of a Reasonable and Spiritual
Community.

The deep importance of the fact that this great prin-
ciple is here clearly and repeatedly borne witness to, will
be best estimated by those who are most conversant with
that conception of a human Polity to which we have just

(II. I ] LAW OF THE KINGDOM. "27(J

referred, and in which, despite of this central failure, the
Greek philosophy came to its fairest bloom ; and who have
also studied the more modern theories of social or politi-
cal philosophy which involve misapprehension, neglect, or
open contempt of the same essentially central principle :
namely, that the Family Life, jealously guarded in its
purity and truth, is alone capable of evolving from its
bosom that Life of a complete Christian and Spiritual
Society which is ever guarded, inwardly and outwardly, in
its unfolding perfection, by the Law of Christ, and whose
free energies are ever becoming more and more accordant
with the holy Will of God.

The central twofold Commandment in the Law of
the Kingdom, to which is more especially committed the
guardianship of this all-important Family Life, in its un-
folding Christian perfection, — the Commandment, that is,

NOT TO VINDICATE WHAT IS LEGALLY OUR OWN, and FREELY TO

impart it to our brethren, — we have already considered
as at once drawing to a head, and solving, the main diffi-
culty of this Law of the Kingdom. Its first Command-
ment, to receive meekly an injurious blow, may be no
less difficult than the second for flesh and blood to obey.
It may even more revolt our sense of personal dignity
and worldly honour. And indeed this first Commandment
does actually set itself in opposition, if not to the Law of
the land, yet to that so-called Law of honour which by
very many is regarded and obeyed as embodying, in a
high and noble form, man's inherent sense of his own per-
sonal Rights. In this its cutting opposition to an acknow-
ledged Law, (however erroneous that acknowledgement),

280 province or the intellect i.\ religion, [rook II.

will be found the chief hinderance to a general acceptance

of this first Commandment in its true spirit and meaning.
Were it not for the early influence obtained over their
minds and practice by this so-called Law of honour, men
would not find it so difficult to perceive and to enter into
the real drift of this first Commandment in the Law of
the Kingdom. But for this tyrannous preoccupation by
the world and the worlds Law, they would not be so
impatient of the very notion of such meekness. They
would not resist, as an impeachment of their personal
courage and personal honour, any attempt to persuade
them that this Law has, if they be Christians, not only
a stringent and inevitable claim on their obedience, but
a no less absolute title to their intelligent and reasonable
acquiescence. For how can they be Christians, in deed
as well as in name, unless they have a practical belief,
and so a growing discernment of the work which Chris-
tianity is ordained and brought in to accomplish in their
hearts ? And is not that work, for each individual soul of
man, the slaying ever and casting forth of his evil, unre-
newed and selfish nature ; the daily renewal of his true
Being, as actually constituted, as continually unfolded, as
at length to be glorified, in Christ? Or can they indeed so
enter into God's glorious purpose towards them in Christ,
without also perceiving how essentially and intelligibly this
Law works together with that purpose, without perceiving
that this first Commandment in the Law of the Kingdom
is a deepening and carrying out (in accordance with that
fuller revelation of the Being of God which has taken place
by the establishment of Christ's Kingdom on earth,) of

CH. I.] LAW OF THE KINGDOM. 281

THAT VEKY PART OF THIS GREAT WORK which Was begun by

the first Commandment in the Law of the Name ; by
the Commandment, that is, against causeless anger.

In so far as they have discerned the end and aim of all
these workings of God in Christ to us- ward, they will
see that this first Commandment in the Law of the Name
has its proper office and value in building up our true
Christian and Spiritual Being, by denying and mortifying
this evil wrathfulness of our false or unrenewed Being ;
that obedience to it is a condition, without which it is in
God's order impossible that we should obey this first Com-
mandment in the Law of the Kingdom. For, not to speak
now of any higher or more spiritual discernment, how,
even to our mere human and natural apprehension, is it
possible that any one of us should meekly bear an in-
jurious blow, so long as he remains incapable of restrain-
ing the outbreaks of his wrath, when there is indeed no
cause for anger ? It matters little, perhaps, which of these
Laws is first presented to us, first contemplated by us ;
it matters comparatively little whether, by our ineffectual
strivings to fulfil the higher and more arduous Law, we
are sent back to the lower and easier ; or whether we are
trained in our obedience to holy Law, in accordance with
the perfect order of Christ, by first bending all our
strength to accomplish this lower form of obedience, which
is not only in itself less difficult, but which is at once
an essential condition, and a real element, of that more
arduous obedience.

Such an apprehension of this Divine order is, I say,
little, if at all, above our natural powers of insight. Nor

282 PROVINCE OF THB INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

is it much more difficult to perceive how obedience to this
first Commandment in the Law of the Kingdom, (if our
souls have been thus growingly endowed with the power
of obeying it,) must be, of all other means which Law
can present, the most available in mortifying Self: in
effecting that destruction and casting forth of the evil,
unrenewed, and selfish nature, which we have seen to be
one chief end of the Christian discipline. In order, how-
ever, to our perceiving this clearly, we must bear in mind
that Self, in the Christian sense, is a different thing from
Self in the Jewish, or Pagan, or any other sense. As
Christians, we do not mortify Self, but rather act out
and intensify the false and selfish nature within us, in so
far as we do not habitually realize in our lives and conduct
that living Membership with Christ, that Real and Per-
sonal because Spiritual Unity which is now in Him consti-
tuted, and of which, if we have entered into our covenanted
state and condition, each one of us is a Living Personal
Element or Constituent.

This principle is the key to many passages of Scrip-
ture. Thus for example, he that hateth not father, mother,
brethren, yea, his own soul or life, for my sake, cannot
be my disciple. If, that is, when the affections and con-
duct which belong to his natural Being and Life, whe-
ther as an Individual or as a Member of a Family, are
incompatible with the affections and conduct which belong
to that holier Being and Life whereof Christ is the Head,
his Church the Body, and himself a true Personal Element,
or Living Member; he prefers these merely Natural Forms
of his earthly Life to that Spiritual Reality of his Hea-

CH. I.] LAW OF THE KINGDOM. 283

venly Life into which Christ came to raise him; then he
is not Christ's disciple. Nor can he be, so long as in life
and act he loves not Christ better than these merely natural
things ; so long as in life and act he hates not these, as
compared with Christ. If we be found in Christ new
creatures, every thing short of acting out this our new
Life and Being in Him, is Self, and must be cut out and
cast forth. It must be so, even if the true affections
and the right conduct, or the legitimate interests belonging
to us as Members of a Family, or as Individuals, should
at any point oppose themselves to those belonging to us
as Members of Christ. Not that they can indeed perma-
nently do this, for whoever faithfully and courageously
denies and rejects, for Christ's sake, all that is thus
below Christ, shall receive even in this world a deeper
blessedness in that very kind which he has thus sacrificed,
or offered up to God in Christ ; and in the world to come
life everlasting. But to whatever extent our actual inte-
rests and feelings, whether as Individuals or as Members
of Families, clash with our allegiance to Christ, and with
the duties or the affections which belong to, and express
our unity in Him with our brethren, to the same extent
must all such lower claims be at once sacrificed to those
of our higher Life in Christ — to the duties, the affec-
tions, and the interests which belong to and constitute
that Life.

It is this central Christian Idea and Verity which
here manifests itself in the form of holy Law ; and
to whatever extent we are truly obedient to the whole
Law of the Kingdom, as now before us, to the same

284 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

extent we actually realize in our lives this central Chris-
tian Truth. Obedience to the spirit of this first Com-
mandment in the Law of the Kingdom actually is the
most consummate sacrifice we can offer to Christ, and to
that higher Life we live in Christ, of those personal feel-
ings which are natural to us as individual men.

Such an obedience is a declaration, not in words but
in act, that we disallow and at once reject even the most
peremptory claims of our Individual Personality and Life,
when these are inconsistent with the claims of that
larger and worthier Personality and Life into which we
have been engrafted in Christ. As the light of nature
prevents us from being angry with a disordered and
offending member of our natural Body, because by the
Law of our bodily constitution we are bound to suffer
with it in its sufferings ; even so the light of Christ
prevents us from being angry with a disordered and
offending member of the more real and glorious Body we
constitute in Him, because by the Law of our spiritual
constitution we are similarly bound to suffer with it in
its sufferings. Every act of obedience to this Law is a
realizing of our constitution in Christ as members of his
Spiritual Body.

If we were each of us mere distinct individual per-
sons, if we together constituted no larger and worthier
Personality, then indeed this injunction to suffer personal
insult and injury would be unintelligible ; then we might
claim to be each of us the guardian and vindicator of his
own personal honour and well-being. And, in point of
fact, it is the want of practical faith in this Ileal Oneness

CH. I.] LAW OF THE KINGDOM. 285

of the Christian Church in Christ its Head, which makes
so many of its nominal members still assert for themselves
such a right of personally avenging their personal wrongs.
The growing predominance of Law does indeed, histo-
rically speaking, gradually wear out this deep-rooted feel-
ing, both with reference to individuals, and even to family
wrongs and quarrels, as in the instances of duelling, and
the feuds of Clanship or Tribe Life : but this, though indi-
rectly a real result of Christian Law, springs more imme-
diately from that outward and enforceable form of it,
which, in each nation, represents rather its State Life, than
its Church Life; though here, as ever, outward Law is found
to be a schoolmaster bringing us to inward Law, and to
Christ its fountain.

But whatever be the means which God employs for
gradually bringing in a real obedience to the spirit of this
Law, it is easy to perceive that such an obedience, if
indeed brought in, must be the plucking up and casting
forth of that very root of bitterness which is also the
root of the unchristian Self within us. Let us look closely
to it, and we shall find that no antagonist but this Law
can wage a war so absolutely internecine with that un-
christian principle and feeling of mere individuality and
insulation from the brethren, which lies at the roo.. of all
other forms of Self, which is the very principle and germ
of all sin against the Law of our Life in Christ. And
here again we must remember, that this legislation does
throughout deal primarily with the inner man of the
heart ; that in legislating for each stage and moment of
our renewal, it ever enjoins those acts, that course of

286* PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

conduct, which of all others is most destructive of our
false, most constructive of our true Being. The volumi-
nous train, the serpentine foldings of the evil within us,
are here put aside, in order that its head may be laid
bare, and that Christ may at once set His heel on it and
crush it. We must remember, that here, not only are the
branchings out of evil within us disregarded, in order
that the axe may be laid to its root, but that there is,
in this great three-fold presentment of holy Law, even
an apparent neglect of the consequences which our un-
flinching obedience to its behests may produce on those
around us. This neglect we shall indeed find is either
apparent only, or temporary ; and that when our great
Legislator has, once for all, in this three- fold body of Law
laid down the things to re done which are in the Divine
order of our true Being, he next determines, with the
same clear and absolute mastery, the manner, the way
or method in which they ought to be done ; and after-
wards more fully still, the measures and limitations which
belong to this truth and to this way. If we thus discern,
as the primary drift of this whole legislation, the renewal

OF THE INDIVIDUAL MIND INTO CONFORMITY WITH THE MIND THAT

was in Christ, that is, into the express image and likeness
of God, we shall then see that no one of the Laws it
contains can be other than it is, without intelligible injury
to the progress and accomplishment of this renewal. And
specially of this first Law we shall see that in obedience
to it, as a more difficult obedience in the same kind, is
implied and contained the power of mortifying and deny-
ing all other modifications of that special and most intense

CH. I.] LAW OK THE KINGDOM. 287

form of this unrenewed and unchristian Self which besets
our personal Life and Being as individual men.

But if its first Commandment, of suffering personal
and injurious wrong, be thus found to furnish a solid
basis to this Central Law of the Kingdom, still more
clearly does its second Commandment, to yield readily,
and willingly to impart, our substance, manifest itself
as the innermost heart of that Central Legislation. It
has been already observed, (p. 254), that in this very
Commandment, which is beset by the greatest apparent
difficulties of all, we shall indeed find a master-key to our
Lord's legislation on the Mount. It has also been seen
(B. i. p. J 59), that Property, and a Law guarding it, are
fundamental conditions for any worthy development of our
Being beyond the limits of the Individual and of the Family
Life. And if we glance for a moment at the historical
facts of that development, as recorded in the Bible, we
shall perceive more distinctly how and when this Idea of
Property was realized, this Law brought in. In that
inspired record we see this take place at the period when
the family life is actually expanding, through the inter-
mediate Tribe Life, into that genuine national life, which
had already been constituted The Patriarchs, while
brethren, sons of one father Jacob, had all things in
common. But when having been born from the dark
womb of Egypt, and in the sea and in the cloud bap-
tized into their Divinely ordained national life, they had
begun to grow towards the reality and fulness of that
Life ; when now each Tribe was no longer, even in itself,
a Family, but rather an intermediate new thing unfolded

288 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

from the Family, to be a fitting element of the National
Life; when in God's order it became necessary to the
existence of this larger Life of the Nation, that the Tribes
themselves, and also the distinct Families constituting each
of them, should dwell peaceably side by side as neigh-
bours; then the Law, Thou shalt not steal, became neces-
sary, and was brought in ; because the ordinance of dis-
tributed and guarded property had become necessary, and
had been brought in. During the preceding period of the
purely Patriarchal or Family Life, the Idea and the Law of
Property remained undeveloped. And Abraham, however
increased in nomad wealth, which was indeed a step to-
wards definite property (in land), possessed such real pro-
perty only in promise.

This circumstance with regard to Abraham and the
Patriarchal Life generally, we shall find to be no unimport-
ant witness to the fact that in Christianity the Idea and
Reality of the Family Life is in God's truth central.
It is in Abraham we are called. We, the Gentiles, are
raised up of stones to be sons of Abraham. And accord-
ingly the very heart of our Being, our central and most
essential Life as Christians, is this Family Life, not the
Individual, not the National Life : though the former is
necessarily implied in, and though the latter as necessarily
grows out of, this all-important and absolutely central
Form of our earthly Being. Our Lord's witness to this
truth is unceasing ; and if we cannot come as children to
the Father in Him our elder Brother, we cannot come
at all.

To this truth He witnessed as well in His death as

(If. I. I LAW OK THE KINGDOM. 289

in His life. For as Abraham, the founder of the Patri-
archal or Family Life in its symbolic reality, had not so
much as a burial-place of his own in the land, but was
constrained to buy one of Ephron the son of Zohar its
rightful owner ; even so Christ, the founder of that Ileal
Family in heaven and earth which shall never become
extinct, (for this Israel perishes not,) but shall bear his
Name through all eternity, had not, in his life on earth,
where to place his foot or to lay His head, and in His
death was, like Abraham, constrained to make his grave
with the rich.

To this truth He witnessed in his legislation. For
though the Command, Thou shalt not steal, (which, as
we have seen (B. i. p. 159), takes us beyond the limits of
the Family, and within those of the National Life,) having
been once pronounced by God, ceases not, and cannot cease,
to be valid ; yet, as being in this distinct form peculiar to
the National, and alien from the Family Life, it actually
disappears, as a distinct Law, from our Lord's final legis-
lation on the Mount ; and it is there comprehended in a
larger Law, belonging no less to the Family, than to the
National Life ; namely, in the Law which enjoins us to
deny and renounce all falsehood whether in word or deed,
as being in both, falsehood before God, and to our sworn
Covenants with Him. (13. i. p. 178.)

To this central truth He witnessed in teaching us
how to pray. For when we pray, that is, in the chiefest
and truest energy and act of our Spiritual Life, we are
to contemplate and commune with God, not as our Creator,
not as our Sovereign Lord and King, but as our Father.
19

'2!)0 PROVINCE 'il THE INTELLECT IX RELIGION. [iJOOK II.

And, as we shall hereafter find, that fifth Commandment
of the Decalogue, which is given chiefly to guard and aid
the unfoldings of our spiritual discernment, exercises this
growing insight into the Holy, chiefly by teaching us the
honour due to God and to His Church, as these can be
expressed to our human understanding and natural affec-
tions by the honour due to our earthly father and our
earthly mother.

Perhaps, however, the most remarkable witness to this
truth was given after Christ had ascended to His Father
and our Father, and had poured forth from on high the
promised Spirit, that Spirit of adoption which should cry
in our hearts, Abba, Father ; that Spirit of paternal and
maternal comfort which should not leave us orphans.

It was at Pentecost that this true and enduring Life
of the Family was at length fully constituted, and that it
immediately manifested itself in the fair and unreturning
bloom of a holy childhood. We know that this was the point
of time wherein the true spirit of the Family Life could
manifest itself most distinctly, for we know that in fact
this Life was not and could not be immediately unfolded
into that fuller Life of the entire Community or Nation,
towards which it ever tends. We know that at this
special point of the Church's history, such a development
had not as yet begun. And as we know this for an his-
toric fact, so we are conscious that in the Divine order
of Growth, the Family Life is essentially prior to the Na-
tional— is so, both as the perpetual underlying condition
of that more completely organized Life, and as necessarily
prior in time to any genuine historical unfolding of it.

(II. I. [ I, AW OP THE KINGDOM. 291

Accordingly, we find that at this special point, and until
God had provided for the constitution of Christian So-
cieties, which might contain the Spirit of the Family Life
under those more definite forms of outward as well as
inward Law which National Communities require, this
guardian Law of Property was in abeyance : not because
it ceased to be in force — for its permanent validity and
heightened sanctity were awfully witnessed to and vindi-
cated in the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira — but because
when and in so far as men have all things in common, the
words, Thou shalt not steal, become simply unmeaning :
because then the Idea and the Law of Property disappear
together.

Although, indeed, this temporary Community of goods
was most real, and though it sprung immediately out of
the strong sense of that new and perfect oneness into
which men had just been brought by Christ and the spirit
of Christ, yet it did not for any one destroy the reality,
or abrogate the Law, of Property ; but only left them
in abeyance for such of the brethren as had freely
determined to renounce their property, though effectually
protected by that Law in the possession of it. And this
we are most carefully taught. " Whilst it remained was
it not thine own, and when thou hadst sold it, was it not
in thine own power V

Thus we see why at first they had all things in com-
mon, and also why this was only at first. For in the
final constitution at Pentecost of the Christian Family
Life, that Life of free obedience to the whole outward as
well as inward Law of truth which is the genuine Life

19—-

292 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [liOOK II.

of Christian Nations, was also finally constituted ; that it
might thenceforth ever advance under the proceeding
Spirit, towards its ordained perfection. So that in the
Christian Code, as now become the fundamental outward
as well as inward Law of every Nation's Life, the two
Ideas and Laws of Property, as outwardly guarded, in-
wardly unguarded, subsist amicably side by side ; the lower
and outward Law ever rendering possible our obedience to
the higher, — the higher and inward Law ever giving
to the lower its Christian meaning and import. And thus
it becomes as it were the paradox of the Kingdom of
Christ, that its inward Law forbids us to exact or grasp
that which its outward Law allows us to take and hold.

We cannot constitute a Christian Nation unless the
Commandment, Thou shalt not steal, be of force, and
this commandment cannot be of force unless it is actu-
ally enforced by fitting measure of punishment. And of
this measure the true ground is and will ever be the
Law of Retributive Justice, An eve for an eye, a tooth

FOR A TOOTH.

But, on the other hand, we cannot constitute a Chris-
tian Family, nor will the spirit of that great Family which
in heaven and earth is named after Christ, unceasingly
and growingly animate all Christian nations, unless this
central guardian Law of Property, An eye for an eye. a
tooth for a tooth, be accompanied by a more Spiritual
Law ever dwelling as it were over against it, ever exer-
cising with regard to it a friendly and corrective antago-
nism ; an antagonism which becomes absolute when we
are looking with a single eye to the Christian and Spiri-

CH. I.J LAW OK THE KINGDOM. 293

tual edification of the Individual Man ; and when the
question is, what course of conduct, obedience to what
directions, will best work together with his daily re-
newal I

Now this daily renewal of the Individual Man is pre-
cisely the central drift and aim of the legislation we are
considering, and therefore here this antagonism does become
absolute. It has been said to them of old time, " An eye
for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you,
If any man will sue thee at the Law, and take away thy
coat, let him have thy cloak also."

Now the man who would indeed bear witness to and
avail himself of Christ's order and method for raising
him out of his unholy and unblest condition of selfish
insulation from his brethren, into that holy and blest con-
dition of spiritual or real oneness with them which in
the same Christ is now constituted, will do this most
effectually by acting out in spirit and in truth, and if
God demand it of him, to the very letter, this central in-
junction of the distinctively Christian Law. Its outward
Commandment, based on that lower Idea of Justice which
assumes us to be mere Individuals, says, You have a right
to your own; take and maintain it. On the other hand,
its inward Commandment, based on that higher Idea of
Justice which sets forth our larger Spiritual unity in
Christ, however opposed it may be to the letter of the
former outward Commandment, is, when once we dis-
cern it as spoken of a different subject, a different person,
not really opposed to its Spirit. The Person addressed
by this Law in its Christian sense, is no longer the Indi-

294 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. | HOOK II.

vidual Man, but a living Member of the Body of Christ ;
and that which, as a mere Individual, he holds as his own,
he now holds in common with all who, whether actually
or in God's purposes, are together with him Members
of the Body of Christ.

In proportion to the degree in which a man thus dis-
cerns and obeys this Law, will be his own solid build-
ing up in Christ, through the effectual mortification and
denial of the unchristian Self within him.

Doubtless there are important practical limitations to
this principle. We may not thus subserve merely our
own edification. This lower form of Justice or Righteous-
ness must, as an essential condition of that higher, be
borne witness to and acted out. And to do this, in our
own persons, is not seldom a sacred duty. Nor are the
two principles so incompatible as might be supposed.
We may even conceive cases where a slight variation in
the circumstances would make it our Christian duty to
obey one rather than the other of these antagonist Laws,
or, what might seem impossible, to obey both of them.
For example, your barn has been robbed, and you have
watched and seized the culprit with your corn in his pos-
session. He is a poor man with a family, and has borne in
the main a good character : but other thefts have taken
place in the neighbourhood, and some suspicion has before
fallen on him. He pleads for mercy, and alleges poverty
and sharp distress. What is to be your conduct ? Your
duty under God, to the Community or Nation of which
you are a member, as it is under Christ's outward Law, as
ii is a State^ and as its well-being and even existence rest

CH. I.] LAW OF THK KINGDOM. 295

on protection to Property, demands that you should pro-
secute, that you should put in force the retributive justice
which is the ordained guardian of Property, — that you
should act on that lower Law, An eye for an eye, a
tooth for a tooth. Your duty to the same Community,
as it is under Christ's inward Law, as it is a Church, and
as all its members are in Christ brethren of one Family,
members of one Body, is to obey the Law of readily

YIELDING AND FREELY IMPARTING OUR OWN, which is the

inward and spiritual Law of the Life of this Commu-
nity : — to acquiesce therefore in the loss, nay, to give
him, if not another measure of corn to supply his
bitter needs and to still the hungry wailings of his
children, yet some other gift which may best effect this.
Do we say that a right practical decision in such cases
is not difficult? far from it. On the contrary, these
are the very occasions for exercising and forming a rea-
sonable and Christian discretion, a sound spiritual dis-
cernment. And the exercise of such a discretion under
given circumstances may well and rightly lead a Christian
man on one occasion to prosecute, on another, instead of
vindicating his own by Law, to keep the matter secret,
and to give more than has been taken ; on another, both
to prosecute and to give. And some one of these courses
he will adopt, independently of his own immediate feeling.
Now such cases do, as we have said, involve the exercise
of a practical Christian wisdom : their difficulties are not
only real, but so great, that without this Law of Christ,
and a genuine discernment of it as a whole, in its inward
import as well as in its outward form, we could not

296 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [nOOK II.

effectually overcome them. Nor can we deal with them
successfully in each case as it arises, even with the aid
of this Divine legislation, unless we deeply enter into its
principles by sustained meditation and obedience up to
the full measure of that power which is ever granted to
our earnest aspirations and strivings.

Tt would be inconsistent with the order observed
by our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount, to set forth
at present His distinct and pointed enunciation of those
limiting principles which are necessary for our practical
guidance in such cases ; for in this great Body of his
legislation He is laying down the things to be done, not
the method or the limitations to be observed in doing
them. We may however so far anticipate that enun-
ciation, as will enable us to discern its import and bear-
ing more readily, so soon as in His order we have arrived
at it. With this view we may affirm that one main
limiting principle which ought to guide our practice in
such a case is involved in the question, What, on a really
charitable estimation, have we reason to believe is the
most merciful conduct on our part which our offending
brother is capable of receiving, without injury to his per-
manent well-being? This principle reconciles our own
truest interest with his. and so with that of the Commu-
nity. By thus acting, we obey in the highest degree, consist-
ent with his real advantage, that more inward Law of the
Kingdom, a complete obedience to which does, as we have
sen, conduce most effectually to the raising us out of our
selfish nature and selfish interests, into that true and
spiritual oneness with the brethren, which is now consti-

CH. I.] LAW OF THE KINGDOM. 2f)7

tuted and ordained for us in Christ. This principle does
not indeed preclude the exercise of our discernment as to
what degree of Christian mercy our erring brother can
thus bear, but it effects that measure of practical limita-
tion which for a reasonable and spiritual Being is suffi-
cient,— more than which would leave him without a genuine
exercise of his growing powers of insight and Christian
judgement.

Thus we see that, practically speaking, this second
or central Commandment in the Law of the Kingdom
must continue to be of force both in its outward and inward
Form, both in its negative and positive import. In all
these bearings it must continue to be obeyed.

Again, we have already seen with regard to the
Individual Life how the first Commandment in this Law
of the Kingdom builds onward from the first in the Law7
of the Name ; inasmuch as the power of meekly suffering
an injurious blow necessarily presupposes the power of being
more than conqueror over causeless anger. And here in
the same manner we see at once that the Second Com-
mandment in the Law of the Kingdom, as the Guardian
of our higher and more real Family Life in Christ, builds
onward from the Second Commandment in the Law of
the Name, as the Guardian of our visible and natural
Family Life. For, if we cannot deny ourselves in law-
less pleasures, how can we, for the sake of others, and
in the spirit of this Christian brotherhood, deny ourselves
in lawful satisfactions and enjoyments I how can we, by
readily yielding or freely imparting to our poorer brethren
in Christ that property which represents and procures for

298 PROVINCE OK THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

us those gratifications, make to ourselves lasting friends
of the mammon of unrighteousness ?

And so again it will be found with regard to the third
Commandment, Whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile,
go with him twain, which here also has special reference
to that larger reasonable and spiritual Life of the Christian
Community, which rests on, and is ever proceeding out of,
the central Family Life. If we be not true to those
relations which bind us together in the oneness of a
natural Community, how can we be true to the closer and
more real relations which centre in Christ our Prophet,
King, and Priest, and which bind us together in the larger
and fuller oneness of a Christian and spiritual Community I
If we be not yet of power to fulfil the duties which
belong to us as members merely of a Civitas hominum, how
shall we be found able to fulfil the larger and broader
Law, this royal Law of liberty, which guards and deter-
mines the more excellent life we lead as members of a
Civitas Dei, of a Christian nation, of a State, which is
also a Church, of a human, which is also a Divine Polity ?
It is plain that with regard to these relations also, we
must be just in the lower and natural, before we can be
just in the higher and Christian, meaning of the word :
just, before we are generous ; just, before we are merciful
and self-denying. Now it is precisely this lower Justice,
this simple Truthfulness, which is set forth and guarded by
the third and fourth Laws of the Name, by the Laws of
truth, that is, both in its negative and positive bearing, the
twofold Law which commands us to deny all falsehood, to
affirm all truth, whether in word or deed, — not to be falsa,

< H. I.] LAW OF THE KINGDOM. 299

but to bo actively true, to all our Covenants, explicit or
implicit, and specially to our National Covenant with God.
Now this Commandment of Truth and truthfulness which
comprehends and realizes the two preceding Command-
ments, and which thus draws to a practical head the
whole Law of the Name, might be not unfruitfully con-
templated as implicit?/ containing in itself the whole Law
of the Kingdom also, and especially this its Third Com-
mandment, which we are now considering. For to this
end it is only necessary that we should discern what is
this truth of our Life, as it is the life of the kingdom
now fully constituted in Christ, as in Him each indivi-
dual man is not merely an Individual Christian, not merely
a member of a Christian Family, but also and chiefly a
member, in Christ and the Spirit, of a Christian Community,
in all its outward as well as in all its inward relations.
It is for the truth of these relations, for our truthfulness
to them, that our Lord is here legislating. He is tolling
us, that in this higher Truth, the Truth of his Kingdom as
come on earth, the truth of His revealed and imposed
Name as now become His revealed and established King-
dom,— our possessions and resources, our time and energies,
our personal services and labours, cannot in the last re-
sort be claimed for ourselves, or even for our families after
the flesh. He is giving us a Law embodying this Truth
in a corresponding practical discipline, a discipline the main
drift of which is, as before, the effectual casting forth
from the spirit of man, all that most centrally opposes itself
to the realizing that renewed state of it which corresponds
to this truth.

300 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

Ts such then indeed the character of the Law before
us, and does it, like its preceding Laws, strike at once
and effectually the very heart of the evil it is aiming
at I We hesitate not to reply, that the Law, Whosoever

SHALL COMPEL THEE TO GO A MILE, GO WITH HIM TWAIN,

however brief and simple in its form, does really and
effectually embody the very spirit and aim we are speak-
ing of. And first, as the Law against falsehood com-
bines in one the two Laws which precede it, against
murder and adultery, because these are the capital false-
hoods, the one against the Individual Life, the other
against the Family Life ; even so does this Law combine
in one broader Law the two which precede it ; namely,
the first which enjoins the meekly suffering violence done
to our person, the other which enjoins the meekly suffer-
ing violence done to our property, and the personal unwil-
lingness and backwardness to avenge our own wrong even
by the enforcing of public or jural Law. This third Law
does, I say, clearly comprise both them in its larger
import ; and, indeed, the very word employed might well
lead us to its special bearing on those larger and more
public relations we have as Members of a Community, as
Individual Elements of a real National Life ; for this word
dyyapeveiv belongs primarily and properly to services
demanded of the individual by the Nation of which he is a
member, services implying an appropriation more or less
absolute by the Nation, not merely of the person, not
merely of the property of its subject or member, but of
the means by which lie lives, of his time and personal
exertions, of all that he has and all that he is.

CH. I.] LAW OK THE KINGDOM. 301

Let us observe, next, how in this Law as in the two
which precede it, the thing enjoined, whether it be doing
or suffering, is at once raised above the character of a
mere opus operatum, is at once ennobled by an inward
freedom. In the first Law, the exponent of this inward
freedom is the turning the other cheek ; in the second,
the forbearing to have recourse to Law, it being in our
power to do so ; and in this third, (which involves and
carries out the two former), it is the willingly going
another mile with the person who has forced us to go
with him one. In all these there is an element of com
pulsion, and an element of freedom, in all that of freedom is
ever rising into predominance, till it becomes paramount
in that last Law of the Kingdom, Give to him that

ASKETH OF THEE, AND FROM HIM THAT WOULD BORROW OF THEE

turn not thou away, which is not so much a fourth dis-
tinct Law, as it is the positive Commandment necessary
to complete each of the three preceding negative ones ;
and hence especially we see the appropriateness of the;
whole Law of the Kingdom as lying centrally between the
Law of the Name, wherein the principle of compulsion,
of a force put upon our unrenewed self outwardly and
inwardly, predominate, and the Law of the Will, as
renewed from day to day, wherein the element of freedom
finally predominates, and becomes all in all. For the Law
of the Renewed Will, which no compulsion can reach, and
in which force has no part, is at once the Royal Law of
Liberty and the Law of holy Love.

And now, perhaps, enough has been said on this
central Body of Law to give some insight into the order

302 PROVINCE OF THI? INTELLECT IN' JibXIGlON. [ HOOK 11

and method wherein our Kingly Legislator builds up
His chosen nation, His peculiar people. He does it by
no construction of an intricate Polity, as the heathen
legislator attempted to do it; he does it by building up
the Citadel and Temple of the Body and Spirit of man,
rather, let us say, by so renewing the Individual man in
Body, Soul, and Spirit, in Intellect, Affection, and Will,
as to make of him a living stone, fit for his appointed
place in that divinely human dwelling. We see, as this
holy legislation unfolds itself, how it determines and
guards the Being of man in those implanted and growing
capacities, powers, and energies, which not only render
him capable of this citizenship and true churchmanship, but
which are perpetually demanding for their proper satis-
faction these states and conditions of our genuine earthly
Life ; demanding them, I say, no less vehemently and
effectually, than our human affections, in their fulness and
truth, demand that pure Family Life, which is their proper
home.

This Law of the Kingdom, from its deeply important
and absolutely central character, has seemed to justify us
in dwelling on it more at length than on any other portion
of the Christian Law, even as we found ourselves, in con-
sidering the Beatitudes, compelled to bestow special
attention on the Blessed Temper of Christian Mourning,
which corresponds to it, and on its proper Aspiration,
Thy Kingdom come. Nor have we even thus been able
to do more than present in mere outline this very import-
ant part of our subject ; though we would fain trust that
enough has been said both to sot forth its own essential

OH. I.J LAW OF THE KINGDOM. 308

character, and facilitate our discernment of the remaining
portions of holy Law, as all haying a reference more or
less direct to this central legislation of the Kingdom, this
central Christian Law of accepting evil and imparting
good.

Specially, with regard to the immediately succeeding
Body of Law which in our view corresponds to the Bless-
edness of the meek, and to the Aspiration, Thy will be
done, we shall find that whatever pains may have been
taken to enter into the spirit of this central Law of the
Kingdom, by devout meditation on it, by earnest Aspira-
tions and strivings after obedience to it, the more fully
shall we be prepared for effectually discerning and freely
subordinating ourselves to this succeeding Law* of the

RENEWED AND EMANCIPATED WlLL.

Before, however, we pass onward to the final Law of
holy Love, let us dwell for a few moments longer on this
last Commandment in the Law of the Kingdom, not as
it realizes our ordained Communion with Christ in the
brethren, for this would at present lead us too far, but as
it is the Spiritual link which gives unity and power to
the Law of the Kingdom, and which also livingly con-
nects it with the Law of the Will.

With regard to the Law of the Name, we have
already found (B. i. pp. 164, 171), that the fourth posi-
tive Commandment, of speaking and doing the Truth,
gives practical reality to each of the three preceding nega-
tive Commands, enjoining the denial of those capital
falsehoods which destroy the truth or true Being of our
threefold Life in each of its constituent elements. And

304 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

even so in this Law of the Kingdom, the fourth or last
Commandment, Give to him that asketh of thee, and

FROM HIM THAT WOULD BORROW OF THEE TURN NOT THOU

away, we have already seen in part the very same cha-
racter of a complemental or positive Law, giving to each of
its immediately preceding negative Laws that fulness of
reality and life which they would otherwise want, and
wanting which they would not, nor could effectually minis-
ter to our building up. Let it be granted that you are
of power to forgive even the passionate blow of your younger
brother in Christ, that you can patiently suffer him to
take from you what your Heavenly Father allows you to
call your own : be it that your sense of brotherhood, your
feeling of brotherly kindness, is yet stronger than this,
that you can really give up your own way to go his way,
and to do willingly what he would have you do ; still
there is something wanting to the full sense of brother-
hood, to the full power of brotherly kindness. There
must be more than mere passive acquiescence, there must
be a nearer approach to true freedom, more satisfying
manifestations of real affection, than acts even of unre-
luctant acquiescence. The difference, the line of dis-
tinction, may not be very broad, for continuity is a
pervading principle of this Divine legislation. Never-
theless, not to vindicate our own is one thing, freely to
impart it (when asked for) is another. It is indeed the
other thing which is yet wanting to the realizing in act
the great newly-revealed Idea of our brotherhood and
oneness in Christ, that Central Idea, through the realizing
of which His Kingdom comes on earth in ever growing

OH. I.] LAW OF THE KINGDOM. 305

power. And it is therefore the other thing for which the
Law of the coming Kingdom is concerned to provide, for
which by this fourth positive Commandment it does
actually, and, in so far as we obey it, effectually pro-
vide. And here in the order of our investigation we
have arrived at the point of transition from this Central
Law of the Kingdom to that final Law of the Will,
which is at once the Law of our highest Spiritual freedom
and of our holiest Love.

20

Chapter 1 1 .
LAW OF THE WILL

The Body of Law which we have designated as the Law
of the Will, as the Law, that is, corresponding to the As-
piration, Thy will be done, and to the Blessed Temper of
meekness, is comprised in Matt. v. 43, 44, Ye have heard

THAT IT HATH BEEN SAID, ThOU SHALT LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR,
AND HATE THINE ENEMY. But I SAY UNTO YOU, LoVE YOUR
ENEMIES, BLESS THEM THAT CURSE YOU, DO GOOD TO THEM
THAT HATE YOU, AND PRAY FOR THEM WHICH DESPITEFULLY
USE YOU, AND PERSECUTE YOU.

Let us then here begin by examining the first of these
Commandments, that, namely, given to them of old time,
Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy,
and we shall find that, like the other Laws presented
by our Lord, as given to them of old time, it is not abro-
gated or superseded but rather adopted and carried out
by Him, into all its fulness of import : although there is
here also a pointed antagonism between this Mosaic Com-
mand, and the more Spiritual Code of Law which corre-
sponds to it. This antagonism betweeen the inward and
the outward Law of the Will is similar to that already
observed between the inward and outward Laws, as well
of the Name as of the Kingdom ; and we shall find that
these antagonist Laws may here also be similarly re-
conciled.

We have already seen that the two outward Codes of

Cll. I).] LAW OF THE WILL. 307

the Name and of the Kingdom determine and guard our
threefold Life in its outward acts and manifestations : the
first, by three Commandments forbidding Murder, Adul-
tery, Perjury ; and by a fourth enjoining the positive

FULFILMENT OF THOSE VOWS OR COVENANTS WITH GoD, ALL
VIOLATION OF WHICH HAD BEEN THUS FORBIDDEN ; the Second,

by one comprehensive Commandment ordaining punishment,
and its true measure, for all such violations.

And now our Divine* Legislator presents, in connection
with this final Law of the Will, another Commandment
similarly set forth, and apparently belonging to this same
order : namely, to that order of holy Law which guards
and determines our genuine human Life in its outward
acts and manifestations. Also, this Commandment is the
last of those brought forward by our Lord on the Mount
as having been given to them of old time.

Now, assuming our interpretation of the former Laws
of this outward order to be the right one, assuming that
they do thus gradually build up and constitute an effectual
determination and guardianship of our outward and visible
life ; what is there yet wanting to the completeness of
this determination and guardianship \ And if there be
any such want, is it met by the Law now before us ?
And, lastly, since this Law, Thou shalt love thy neigh-
bour, and hate thine enemy, is, in this special order, the
last presented by our Lord ; is it, in conjunction with those
which precede it, sufficient to meet all the fundamental
legislative requirements of our outward and visible Life ?
To these questions we reply, that there is such a want,
that this Law does meet it, and that in doing so it com-

20— 2

308 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

pletes the determination and guardianship of our genuine
threefold Life in all its essential outward manifestations.

How it fulfils these offices we shall understand most
readily by looking at it first historically. No one can for
a moment doubt that this Law constitutes an addition to
the foregoing outward Laws, which was absolutely essential
to the complete and effectual determination and guardian-
ship of the Jewish National Life. The witness of their
whole history is so clear on this point, that we may not
waste words in proving it. This hating their enemies,
was found ever to be a condition of their well-being, and
even of their Being, as a nation, not less essential than
the loving their neighbours. Why this was permitted to
be so, what was the nature of this hate, how such a Law,
or obedience to it, is consistent with the declaration that
God is Love, may not be so clear : but that this Law was
at once an essential and a final addition to the funda-
mental Laws of the Jewish Polity, will, I am persuaded,
become more evident the more deeply we consider it. To
present the grounds of this position with any tolerable
fulness, would be inconsistent with our present object.
The more important of those which are historical, must
be familiar to every one adequately conversant with the
Old Testament History. The reasonable and intelligible
o-rounds on which it rests, we must be content with
briefly noticing ; though these are by no means unim-
portant ; since it is on such, that many will be prepared
to admit or to deny that this outward Law continues
to have for us any practical meaning. It might have
been, they will say, and indeed we feel ourselves bound

CH. II.] LAW OF THE WILL 300

by the historical facts to admit, that it was, a Law essen-
tial to the complete determination and guardianship of
the Jewish National Life ; but we perceive no intelligible
sense in which it can be applicable to our own. We live
under a Law of love ; and so far from hatred of our ene-
mies being allowable for us, we ought to have no enemies,
and all war ought to be at an end.

Now in answer to this objection it may be remarked,
that the presumption in favour of this Law having some
real and practical meaning, not only for the Jew but also
for us, is very strong; inasmuch as it has been already per-
ceived that each of the preceding Laws here similarly set
forth by our Lord, as given to them of old time, not only
has such a meaning, but constitutes an indispensable ele-
ment of that compactly organised Body of holy Law,
whose office is to guard from violation the outward and
visible acts and manifestations of our genuine human Life.
And this argument will be strengthened when we remem-
ber that no word which has once issued from the mouth
of God ever really perishes, still less any one of these great
Legislative Words, of which no jot or tittle shall pass away.
And if we are so far prepared to regard this outward
Law of the Will as being permanently of force, the same
principles will lead us to infer that, for us, it is ordained
to regulate the outward rather than the inward Life ; for
such we have found to be the special office of each of
the Laws already presented by our Lord as having been
given to them of old time.

Accordingly we shall find that to the complete deter-
mination and guardianship of our outward Life in its

310 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

genuine fulness, this fundamental Law, and this alone, is
still wanting.

If the integrity of the Jewish National Life was in
itself and in its ever-unfolding results a thing very holy
in God's eyes, a thing worthy of His most jealous guar-
dianship ; not less holy in His eyes, not less worthy
of His guardianship, is the integrity of each Christian
Nation's Life. And though we freely concede to the
objector, that under the actual dispensation of Christ
and the Spirit there ought to be no war, we would remind
him, that neither the affirming nor the conceding this
abstract proposition furnishes any solution to the all-im-
portant practical question, — by what means is a Chris-
tian Nation to preserve its integrity, or even its National
existence, when assailed by force of arms ? The Society of
Friends has indeed been consistent in this matter up to
a certain point. It has not selected this one Command-
ment alone from the whole Code of outward Law here
presented by our Lord as having been already given,
but it has added another: that, namely, which forbids
the breach and ordains the fulfilment of our oaths to
God. And these two, out of all this compact Body of
outward Law, it affirms to be absolutely and wholly at an
end for us ; inasmuch as the very subject-matter on which
they legislate is by our Lord for ever taken away : —
all swearing, whether judicial and solemn for the end of
controversy, or irreverent and profane ; all war, whether
for unholy aggression and lust of power, or for the main-
tenance of a Nation's Life, being now absolutely unholy,
absolutely and finally forbidden by God.

CH. II.] LAW OF THE WILL. 311

Far be it from us to speak disrespectfully of this Society,
or to undervalue the conscientious witness it has borne
to the great principles of Christian Truth and Chris-
tian Peace. Still we must affirm, that only as existing
in the bosom, as tolerated and protected by the Laws, of
a Nation whose existence and well-being are guarded by a
larger and truer interpretation of these Divine Words,
could it have continued to bear this witness ; and that
only through the subordination of each National Life to
that larger and truer interpretation which recognizes both
these Laws as having, for us also, a most real and prac-
tical meaning, can any effectual progress be made in
realizing those very principles of truth and peace to which
it so zealously bears witness. We shall find that this
whole framework of outward Law is too compactly joined
together by God, to be thus capriciously or wilfully put
asunder by man. Together as a whole it must stand
or fall. We may call it, as in one sense it is, outward
Law. Nevertheless this Law, and obedience to it, are
the counterparts, the conditions and the symbols, of inward
Law and inward obedience. We may regard it as, in its
outwardness, a mere scaffolding, which, though useful once,
has now done its work, and should be taken down : but
we shall find that it is a scaffolding absolutely essential
to the building up of the Being which in Christ we ought
to become ; and that until we are built up to the mea-
sure of the stature of His fulness who is the Head, it
must ever stand.

But of what nature, it may be again demanded, is this
Christian hate ; or is hate, in any form or under any cir-

312 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

cumstances, enjoined or permitted by our Lord I Clearly it
is so: for not only are those that love Him to see that they
hate the thing that is evil, but if any man hate not father,
and mother, and brethren, yea, his own soul, for Christ's
sake, he cannot be His disciple. But it will be replied, this
last is a hatred of degree only, and the declaration is but
a brief and pointed way of saying, that the love we bear
to our kindred must be as hate compared with the love we
bear to Christ : just as in things natural we call lower
degrees of heat, degrees of cold. And this reply is a true
one : only let it be remembered, that if the conduct
demanded of us by our love to Christ clash in any respect
Avith the conduct flowing forth from our love of kindred,
we must at once by preference do the things demanded
of us by the love of Christ — for loving him aright or
above these, implies the so doing His words.

And in so far as we have arrived at the Christian
truthfulness of a renewed mind, we shall not only do this,
but do it heartily and willingly. Our natural reluctance
will be absorbed and overcome in our spiritual readiness.
And, if we be wholly in God's order, we shall even do it
freely and joyfully.

Now this is sufficient to furnish a practical solution to
the difficulty before us. We may not be able to deter-
mine exactly the kind or degree of hate wherewith we
must hate those who would invade our Country, who would
destroy or violate the integrity of our National Life. It
may be a kind of hatred, which, like the hatred of parents
spoken of by our Lord, is not incompatible with love; but
whatever be its essential nature, practically speaking, it must

CH. II.] LAW OF THE WILL. 313

issue in resistance even unto death to such unholy aggres-
sions. And moreover, if these outward acts of resistance be
consistent with the Will of God, and the order of Christian
duty, as wo hesitate not to affirm they are, there ought to
be no inward reluctance in performing them. We enter
more fully into the Divine order in proportion as we per-
form them with more truthful freedom, and we are then
only, entirely and absolutely in that order when we perform
them with absolute truth, that is, with our whole heart
and soul. Now the inward movements and feelings of our
hearts which issue in such warfare (with whatever degree
of Christian love they may be compatible,) must at all
events partake more of the nature, and more truly deserve
the name, of hate, than any feelings towards our kindred
which Christianity can enjoin or recognize.

Again, there must evidently reside in the National
Personality, under whatever form that Personality may
come to its head, an effectual power of enjoining on its
members the performance of such National duties. This
is a portion of outward Law, the true spirit of obedience
to which has already been prepared by the third Com-
mandment in the inward Law of the Kingdom. Such a
power in each Nation is essential to the continuance even
of its existence ; and all provision for its well-being must
clearly be futile unless essential provision be first made
for its mere Being, for its existing at all. In virtue then
of this Law, the enemies to the outward Life and well-
being of a Nation must be dealt with bv that Nation, no
otherwise than it deals with the enemies to the outward
Life of its individual members. Thev must, that is, bo

314 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION, [BOOK II.

resisted to the death by the Nation, and cast forth from
its bosom ; and the righteous indignation with which this
is accomplished and wrought out, is the hate here spoken
of. We are at present purposely confining ourselves to
the most important bearing of this Law ; but it will at
once occur that the enemies to the outward Life of the
Individual, and of the Family, were, together with the
violators by Idolatry of the National Life, to be hated,
in the same manner : — that the murderer and adulterer
were, even as the idolater, to be stoned without pity by the
congregation. (Deut. xvii. 7.)

It may be said, and it is often said, that to consider
thus is to consider too curiously : that the whole affair of
war, in whatever shape, is a terrible and unintelligible
necessity, absolutely unholy and unchristian : that even
though we may be compelled by the arm of Law to serve
as soldiers, and though we may endure this because we
cannot avoid it, the less we think about it and try to
reconcile it with our ideas of right, the better ; as such a
reconciliation is wholly hopeless, and the attempt only
increases our sin. Let us however remember, that a
man's condemning himself in the thing which he yet allows
is of the very essence of sin ; and that a clear insight into
the undoubted truth that a Christian man may not only
lawfully bear arms, but cannot lawfully in God's sight
refuse to do so when his country requires it of him, is
most important to the clearing innumerable consciences
from a very heavy sin.

Let then this outline, however meagre, suffice for the
present to indicate the place and bearing in our scheme

CH. II.] LAW OF THK WILL. 315

of this last of those fundamental Laws which determine
and guard our complete Christian, or Lawful and Spi-
ritual, Life in its outward Realities and manifestations.
The reader's own meditation on the example and teach-
ing of Christ will best shew him how he may separate
the evil and hostile act from the evil and hostile agent,
the sin of Amalek from the sinners the Amalekites : how
with our greatest English conquerors, and our bravest
English sailors and soldiers, he may reconcile the sternest
outward hatred with the tenderest inward love for his
country's foes : how those whose Will is at one with the
Will of God cannot but hate the Evil Will and the thing
that is evil : how the sinner must be really and finally
hated only in so far as his Will is really and finally opposed
to the Will of God ; for the holy personal Will cannot
love, but must hate, the unholy.

Nor can we be better prepared for discerning the in-
ward Law of the Will, than by such a discernment of its
outward form. And first, even Plato could perceive that
such tyrannous invaders of a nation's rights and Life, if
(IhuXaaToi, can only become more incurably evil, more hope-
lessly miserable, by such impunity ; so that to resist and
overthrow a tyrannous invader is doing him the greatest
and indeed the only kindness in our power ; so to punish
him is the only manifestation of our inward love towards
him which he now permits us to put forth. And herein
we have at once a real principle of reconciliation between
the outward and inward Commandments of this Law of
the Will which appear to be so cuttingly opposed to each
other. As, in the Law of the Kingdom, we found the

31 <) PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

antagonism melt away, as our insight became clearer,
between its outward Commandment, An eye for an eye,
and a tooth for a tooth, and its inward Commandment,
Patiently to suffer evil, readily to impart good ; so
here, we begin already to see that a similar opposition is
capable of a similar reconciliation ; and that as this out-
ward Law of the Will is absolutely necessary to the fur-
ther and final unfolding of our outward and visible Life,
so is its inward Law absolutely necessary to the further
and final unfolding of our inward and Spiritual Life. We
see that to hate evil and to love good, is a fundamental
and essential Law of the renewed or holy Will ; that so
long as evil exists in the world, this Law can never want
an important practical meaning. We see that such a
meaning is distinctly brought out for our instruction, in
this last great guardian Law of the Jewish National
Life, and illustrated in every page of the history of that
Life. Lastlv, we see that this illustration is carried on
through the history of every Christian State that has yet
existed, and that each Christian Nation must, as it is a
State, as it has an outward visible Life which cannot be
rent asunder from its inward Spiritual Life, render a
true obedience to this Law, or perish, as a Nation, from
the face of the earth. For all other wrongs which have
hitherto met us in our examination of the Christian
Law, we have seen that God has provided other reme-
dies ; but then all these other wrongs are violations of
the Individual or of the Family Life in its Being or in
its integrity, and the remedies for them as well as the
wrongs themselves, we have seen to be taken out of Indi-

CH. II. J LAW OF THE WILL. 317

vidual, or Family jurisdiction and vindication, and to be
lodged in the larger jurisdiction and vindication, in the
more capacious bosom, of the Nation, as of a great tempo-
ral and spiritual Personality, which under God and in
Christ is in itself complete. For this final outward Law,
therefore, there is not sufficient room within that bosom :
it cannot have its full, its highest practical and enforceable
application within the limits of the National Life. But
in every part of this outward Law we have had to do with
outward and visible, with practical and enforceable appli-
cations ; and for this its last Commandment also, we
clearly discern such an application. But we discern it
as normally remedial, in the last resort, of the wrongs
which one Nation inflicts on another, not of those which
Families or Individuals suffer from each other as mem-
bers or elements of the same National Life. Moreover, we
find no outward and enforceable Law in the whole Divine
legislation which supersedes this or presents an available
substitute for it.

On all these grounds we are prepared to accept and to
present it as the Law which completes the determination
and guardianship of our human Life on earth in its fullest
definite and visible form. And we thus accept this Law,
first, as being divinely ordained, and next, as recom-
mending itself to our human reason, to our consciences
enlightened by the light of Christ and of His Spirit ener-
gizing in the Church, and manifesting Himself in the
Church's history.

In examining the Law of the Will, we have now
briefly considered the Commandment, Thou shalt love thy

31 <S PROVINCE OK THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

neighbour, and hate thine enemy. And in accordance
with what has been said, this Commandment, though it
implicitly contains the corresponding inward Law, may be
rightly designated not only as the primal, but as the out-
ward form of that Law. When contemplated in its largest
bearing as the ordained guardian of the complete National
Life in its outward manifestations, it might not unfitly be
called the fttate Element of this final Law of the Will.
Or, again, we might designate it by another word which
has recently been employed by a high authority on the
philosophy of Law and Morality, as the Jural Element or
portion of this Law ; and the use of this term, in a sense
somewhat modified from that in which its proposer has
employed it, may aid in throwing light on the real charac-
ter of this Law of the Will, as it was given to them
of old time. Let us for a moment regard this Law,
Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy,
as the Jural basis, the necessary underlying condition of
the corresponding spiritual Law of love even to ene-
mies, in the same manner as we have already seen that
the Law, An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, is the
true Jural basis, the absolutely necessary underlying con-
dition of its corresponding and centrally Christian Law,
that namely, of accepting evil, and imparting good. In
this central Law of the Kingdom, the notion of such an
underlying Jural Law, of a Law that is, enforceable
under God through human witnesses, before human tribu-
nals, and by the sword of Temporal Justice, is perfectly
clear. Without such Jural guardianship of Property, the
higher moral and spiritual Law of freely imparting it,

OH. II.] LAW OF THE WILL. li I !>

could not be fulfilled. For if Property were not so
guarded, there would be no Property to impart. In this
case the Jural Law of the Kingdom contemplates each
member of the great Christian Family in his distinctness
from all the other members, whilst its corresponding
moral or specially Christian Law contemplates him in his
unity with all other members of that Family : and thus his
complete position and state, both as a Distinct Indivi-
dual, and as a Living Member of that great Family, is
taken account of, determined, and guarded.

And now let us for a moment regard this matter in
its highest aspect. Let us contemplate each Christian
Nation, or Polity in Church and State, first in its distinct-
ness as an Individual Member of the great and ever-grow-
ing Christian Family of Nations :— for, indeed, the idea
of the Family Life centrally pervades that of the National
Life even here.

And next, let us regard each of these Nations as it
exists, or ought in God's order to exist, in its genuine
Christian and Spiritual Unity with all the rest.

Then shall we find that it is with this final Law of
the Will even as it was with that Central Law of the
Kingdom : we shall find that its outward Form, Thou

SHALT LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR, AND HATE THINE ENEMY, is the

Law which determines and guards the Being of each
Nation in its distinctness; that the corresponding and
absolutely Spiritual Law, Thou shalt love and bless,

AND DO WELL TOWARDS, AND PRAY FOR, THINE ENEMY, is the

Law which determines and guards the true Being of
each Nation as it is a member, or living element, of this

',\'2(> PROVINCE Of THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

Universal, Christian and Spiritual Community or Bro-
therhood of Nations. And as in the preceding Law of
the Kingdom, so here we shall find, further, that with-
out this underlying condition, without a Law permitting
and enjoining each Nation to maintain the integrity of
its own National Being against all assailants, to main-
tain this integrity by no lukewarm and merely outward
resistance, as though our sense of right, our knowledge of
God's Will, were rather dragging us back than urging us
forward in this warfare, but with a most real and deter-
mined hostility, with heart and soul as well as life and
limb and worldly goods ; — without this underlying ground
of a true Christian patriotism, there can be no full, no
worthy and final development of that real and universal
brotherhood among Christian Nations as well as Christian
men, in virtue of which brotherhood alone, it is possible
for War to cease among them. And this is plain on
several grounds. It is at once plain, if only from the con-
sideration that, on the Quaker's principle, every Nation's
Life and Being, with all the Realities and germs of good,
of genuine freedom, and of brotherly and Christian love
which God has entrusted to it to guard and to unfold,
would be at once crushed and destroyed by the first mili-
tary despot whose evil lust of dominion might be pampered
by enslaving it. And although, as we have said, the idea
of such an outward and enforceable Law as is necessary for
this guardianship, differs slightly from our exact notion
of Jural Law, inasmuch as we have here no recognized
earthly tribunal, it will, on consideration, be found that this
is a genuine use of the sword of Temporal Justice, and that

CH. ir.] LAW OF THE WILL. '.I'll

thus the two swords, the temporal and the spiritual, are
under (rod sufficient for the guardianship of our human
life in its fullest as well as in its most elementary forms.
True, that this highest use of the sword of temporal justice
must be a last resource. True, that the deepest and hea-
viest responsibility attaches to the unsheathing it for this
ultimate earthly and visible warfare with the power of
evil. But however strong our sense of the responsibilities
attached to its exercise, we are still bound to maintain
that this right to unsheath the sword of War is entrusted
by God to Christian Nations. And we would further
affirm, that it is only on the basis of this admitted right,
that we can look forward to any solid and progressive
advance in the cause of International Peace, and of such
a just and generally recognized International Law as may
effectually guard that peace from violation.

So soon as we have thus discovered the relation be-
tween the outward or Jural, and the inward or Moral
and Spiritual, Law of the Will, to be a relation, not of
absolute and hostile, but of limited and friendly antago-
nism, we shall have perceived that such a relation subsists
between these two distinct elements of outward, or Jural.
and inward, or religiously- moral Law. in each of these
three great Bodies of Law; that is, in the Law of the
Name, in the Law of the Kingdom, and in the Law of
the Will. We shall have perceived with regard to each
of these living portions of the entire Body of Holy Law.
that the outward, or Jural Form, is very far from being
necessarily or actually repealed by the promulgation on
the Mount of its more distinctively Christian Form ; but
21

'i'2'1 PROVINCE OK THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK ir.

that, on the contrary, the continued existence of both
these Forms of holy Law in a state of friendly antago-
nism and mutual support, is ordained by God as necessary
to the effectual determination and guardianship of our
complete inward and outward Life, as it progressively
unfolds itself under the light of Christ, and the quicken-
ing energies of the Proceeding Spirit.

Thus, at length, we shall perceive that in this whole
Body of Law, inward and outward, nothing is wanting,
nothing superfluous.

In it those foundations of holy Law which lie too
deep to be discerned aright without such a revelation, are
revealed and laid bare to us ; while the building on these
a superstructure which shall be at once consistent with
them, and adapted, in all that is essentially variable, to
the peculiarities of national character or position, is en-
trusted by God to each Christian Nation or Community,
as the exercise best fitted to unfold its reasonable and
spiritual Discernment.

Here, however, we are in some degree anticipating :
for such a friendly Antagonism between inward and out-
ward Law has not yet been fully shewn with regard to
this final Law of the Will, though we would fain hope
that it has been satisfactorily made out with regard to the
preceding Laws of the Name and of the Kingdom.

To confirm our view that this Lawt of love and hate
is essentially and intelligibly The Law of the Will, inde-
pendently of all arguments derived from the observed order
and method of our Lord's Sermon on the Mount, we
might not inaptly quote the well-considered and valuable

CH. II.] LAW OK THE WILL. '.l'J.:i

decision of Augustine, that the bent and sway, the real
character, of the Will, is determined and manifested bv
that which a man loves or hates, and that nothing is
finally punished, nothing finally miserable, but the Will
which permanently hates good and loves evil : Nihil ardet
in inferno nisi propria voluntas. But whether we acquiesce
in this principle as a matter of faith, or whether we con-
sider it historically or philosophically, we are equally led
to the conclusion that so it is and must be.

If we regard this matter historically, we shall find
that in the actual discipline and education of mankind,
under God, towards a capacity for any true renewal of the
Will, this element in man's Being of wrath and wrathful
hate is anything but overlooked or ignored in the scheme
of that progressive education ; that in the earlier period
of this discipline it is more especially taken account of, and
that there it comes forward as that fundamental element
of mans actual Being which it was the main object of this
earlier discipline to train and to correct. What then was
the drift of this training 1 Clearly not to eradicate this
impulse, but to give it a certain ordained direction, certain
ordained bounds and measures. They were to hate their
enemies. But then their enemies were the enemies also of
God and of goodness, so that in them was embodied
the principle of evil in a distinct, intelligible form. They
were to hate and to exterminate their enemies. But then
this was revealed to them through Moses, as ordained
by God, as being in His order, and therefore in the
order of Right and Justice. Into all the real grounds
of this ordinance they might then be incapable of enter-

21—2

324 PROVINCE OB THE INTELLECT IN BELIG10N. [fiOOK II.

in^. Nevertheless, to them these grounds were mani-
i'ested partially, even at first, and ever more fully in pro-
portion as they were able to understand them. With
regard to the Nations of the Land, they knew, not only
that these were the enemies of God, but that the mea-
sure of their iniquity was full, and that they were them-
selves ordained to be the executors on them of Divine
justice. Further, they knew God's purposes with regard
to themselves, in thus cutting off and casting out the
Heathen, and planting them in : — that so was to be ful-
filled in its beginning the promise to Abraham, I will
make of thee a great Nation, and in thee and thy seed
shall all the Families and Nations of the earth be blessed.
They knew that for this purpose it was necessary that the
heathen should be cast forth from the Land, to the end
this new and holy Nation might be planted in and grow
there. They knew that God was doing this, not for
their deservings, but for the sins of the nations, and for
His own glory in the blessing and restoration of mankind.
So that though their obedience rested mainly on fear,
seeing they could not discern its higher ends so clearly
before, as we are enabled to do after their fulfilment ; yet
were the reasonable and spiritual grounds of their obe-
dience even then in part disclosed to them and continually
urged on their attention.

That they, or even that we, before whom the whole
series of providential events lies unrolled, accompanied by
the continuous commentary on them of God's Word and
Spirit, should discover all the ends of this their discipline,
in which the hostile, unsparing extermination of the pre-

OH. II. "J LAW OF THE WILL. 325

vious inhabitants of the Lund bore so large a part, cannot
he expected. Still these things were written and done for
our instruction also, on whom the ends of the world are
come, and we have manifold titles and obligations to
ponder, and to profit by, all the fulness of their meaning.

Tf then we interpret God*s earlier by his later teach-
ings, we cannot but see in them the first lines and pre-
cepts of an ever-unfolding discipline applied to that Prin-
ciple of our Nature, which we are led by Divine wisdom as
well as by human philosophy to regard as absolutely fun-
damental : that principle which in the unrenewed mind,
in the children of wrath, manifests itself as wrath and
wrathful hate, and which ceases not to exist as a fun-
damental element of our Being, even in the renewed mind;
though it is there transmuted into the form of Righteous
Indignation, of that Burning and Holy Zeal wherewith
those who love God must hate the thing that is evil.
It is as a Child of Wrath that God's holy Law first takes
hold of man ; it is to this real, though mysterious ground
of our Being, that His corrective and remedial discipline
is first applied : applied, not, it may be, according to
our wisdom, but according to His who knows what is
in man, as well in its dark, unsightly root, or feeble
germ, as in its full and fruit-bearing perfection.

What this mysterious ground of our Being was in its
essence, as it first came forth from the Creator's hand,
we know not ; what it is in our fallen and unrenewed
state we know but too well, both in its inward nature and
in its outward fruits. It is Causeless Anger: it is Mur-
derous Wrath. And so its proper fruit is murder. Tt

*>26 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. ^BOOK II.

issues in the destruction of Life, our own as well as our
brother's, our inward and real as well as our outward and
visible Life.

Genesis records the first outbreaks of this savage and
evil Nature, this wild beast into which sin perverts the
man within us. This enmity to Life lies at the root even
of the primal transgression in Paradise. For that lusting
after forbidden pleasure or forbidden advantage which
tempts us to break the Divine Law of our Life, involves a
real, though it may be a hidden, enmity against that Life,
and, so far as we are concerned, a sure destruction of it.
Here, however, it is not so distinctly manifested as in the
sin of Cain. In that sin it stands before us confessed in
its fearful and hateful Nature. In Cain we see the fallen
man as a Child of Wrath, — the fallen Humanity, — our-
selves, in so far as we are and remain children of wrath.
This transgression of the first-born man involves and is the
germ of all other transgressions of men since born. For
in destroying Life, all human violations of God's Will are
as it were summed up ; all is destroyed even in the germ,
which it is the ordained office of His holy Law to guard.
Accordingly, we see that God's first distinct revelation of
holy Law (that by Noah) deals solely with this fundamen-
tal perversion : concentrates on this single point all man's
yet feeble and undeveloped capacity for apprehending
and obeying holy Law : -confines itself rigorously to laying
down broad and clear the first lines of the Law of
Life and Death, which are indeed the first lines of the
Law of Love and Hate, of this highest and holiest Law
of the Will which is now before us.

(II. II. J LAW OF THE WILL. 327

Nevertheless, it remains true that this Fundamental
Element of our Being, which when possessed and perverted
by the Evil One, assumes so fearful and hateful a form,
has yet a true and holy character of its own ; and that
when the evil one is cast out by a stronger than himself,
this character may be restored to it.

Hence, as the Divine teaching and discipline is further
unfolded in the Mosaic Dispensation, we perceive that it
proposes to itself no such end as the absolute eradication of
this fundamental principle of anger and hatred from man's
heart and spirit ; but, on the contrary, its gradual disci-
pline and renewal from causeless and murderous wrath
and hatred of good, to zealous and holy indignation and
hatred of evil. But man's fall from God and from holy
obedience would indeed be a small thing, were it in God's
order possible for his restoration and renewal to be at
once and summarily accomplished. Slow and painful, on
the contrary, did it behove that renewal to be. Very
slow and painful above all must be these its first steps.
An effectual and universal discipline for man's deeply-per-
verted Will, such that it may freely hate what in God's
eyes is hateful, freely love what is thus lovely, is no light
matter : — rather say is, of all other objects regarding
man which almighty Power and Love can propose to
itself, the highest and the most wonderful ; of all other
that which implies and involves the most absolute perfec-
tion of wisdom in its accomplishment.

Man's notions of education are indeed, for the most
part, limited to a single generation, to a few individuals
out of it, to a short period of life even for these ; but

328

PROVINCE OK THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

God's education is not of this kind now, nor was it
then.

This primary perversion of man's Being by him who
was a liar and murderer from the beginning, had broken
out in murderous falsehood to those primal affections which
bind Families together, and which are also the neces-
sary conditions of any larger Human Society. And the
same perversion continued to bear its evil fruits, till the
whole earth was filled with violence and corruption. And
even as the first lines and precepts of the discipline or-
dained to remedy this perversion had been laid down in
the legislation by Noah, so were they further carried out
in Law and act under the Mosaic Dispensation. That
perverted principle of deadly wrath which could not be at
once elevated and purified into a zeal according to know-
ledge, and a holy hatred of the thing that is evil, might yet
be raised above parricidal and desolating fury, and directed
to such objects as should progressively minister to its
purification.

In the spirit of such a progressive discipline was given
this primal Law of the Will, Thou shalt love thy

NEIGHBOUR, AND HATE THINE ENEMY : a Law which, in its

immediate and more restricted meaning, was not too large
for the obedience and discipline of Israel after the flesh,
and which, in its ultimate and most comprehensive mean-
ing, was large enough for the obedience and edification of
the true Israel of God. For this outward Law of the
Will not only prepares men for the corresponding inward
and spiritual Law, but, when spiritually discerned, implies
and contains it: inasmuch as we are still and always bound

CH. II.] LAW OF THE WILL. 329

to hate our real enemies, the world, the flesh, and the
devil, as at once our enemies and the enemies of God ; no
less than we are bound to love our neighbour — every one,
that is, who, being in Gods order, must be already near
to us, or who being by God brought near to any one of* us,
may through our means be brought nearer unto Him.

Let us not however suppose that this pregnancy of
meaning, this divine comprehensiveness in the more out-
ward Law of the Will, can render superfluous the com-
plete unfolding of its inward and spiritual import here
given by our Lord.

It is precisely in this most arduous and difficult region of
holy Law, a region which men very slowly and reluctantly
recognize as really included within its realm, that we need
at once the greatest precision, and the most perfect deve-
lopment. I say, men are slow to recognize love and hate
as within the domain of Law. And they are so with
reason : for in one important sense our great poet's words
are as true of holy Love, as they are of natural pity and
compassion :

The quality of mercy is not strained :

It droppeth as the gentle dew from heaven

Upon the earth heneath.

Nor, indeed, do we always find that those who maintain
these freer movements of our spirits, these emotions of
love and hate, to be within the domain of Law, are pre-
pared with satisfactory answers to the questionings and
objections of those who assert them to be wholly impul-
sive and uncontrollable.

It is not, at least, without some show of reason, that

330 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION'. [BOOK II.

when we quote to them as binding on their consciences
this wondrous Law of loving, and blessing, and praying for
eur enemies, our revilers, and persecutors, they should
meet us and stop our mouths with the questions, Who
can really fulfil this Law? And if no one, to what end
then is it given ? And if any man can fulfil it, must he not
fulfil it freely and impulsively \ Or is any one indeed of
power so to obey an outward and compelling Law, as to
love that which he actually hates, or to hate that which
he loves I

Doubtless these are great and real difficulties. Still
it is in no small degree through our misapprehension of
the true character of this holiest Law, that we are com-
pelled to confess, with humbled and sorrowing hearts, our
own incapacity for any worthy measure of obedience to it ;
to confess that it stands before us rather as a light to
reveal and reproach our wanderings, than as a lantern
guiding our feet along the way of peace.

Doubtless also we are bound to confess, that by no
immediate exertion of our own Will are we of power to
put forth our love towards our enemies and those that
hate us, if already it flow not forth to them spontaneously.
But if our kindly affections cannot be thus put forth or
withheld at pleasure, are there indeed revealed to us by
Christ no effectual methods for endowing our Will with
this glorious freedom, for rendering possible its effectual
subordination to this perfect Law of love I To this ques-
tion we would reply, that there are such methods, that
they have their living centre in that very Law of the
Kingdom which we have recently been contemplating; and

CH. II.] LAW OF THE WILL. 331

that, as an earnest and effectual striving after obedience
to each distinct Commandment in this central Law of
the Kingdom, is ever throwing us back on the underlying
necessity of obedience to a corresponding Commandment
in the preceding Law of the Name, so is it ever guarding
the growth within us of a free energy of obedience to the
very same Commandment, now raised to its utmost spiri-
tuality in this perfect and final Law of the Will.

And since this is a matter of personal Christian ex-
perience, no less than of reasonable and spiritual discern-
ment, we would here fearlessly appeal to those who have
most earnestly and effectually striven to realize for them-
selves these holy Laws, by a living obedience.

To such an one we would say, Have you — in the
strength of a hopeful faith in the great truth, that we must
first enter into the fellowship of our Lord's obedience, and
so of His sufferings and humiliation, that we may be en-
abled to enter into the fellowship of His consolation, and
of His glory, — thus earnestly striven to obey in its true
spirit that first Commandment in the Law of the coming
Kingdom, — of the suffering Church, by obedience to
which we do with Christ rise superior to personal and in-
jurious wrong? Have such earnest strivings forced you,
and do they still force you to confess, how small is your
actual power of obeying this arduous Law ? And, should
reproving conscience whisper, How canst thou weakly hope
to be more than conqueror over this intolerable sense of
wrong, seeing thou hast yielded thy soul a prey to the
rebellious risings of causeless anger ; must you not confess
your folly in expecting to accomplish the greater and far

332 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. ^BOOK II.

more difficult act of self-control and self-denial, whilst
incapable of that which is less and easier in the very same
kind ?

Or, on the other hand, if you have not so failed, if
you be indeed already of power thus to suffer injurious
wrong, to discern, behind the uplifted arm of the wrathful
smiter, the loving and correcting hand of God ; to discern
in that wrathful smiter himself an erring and wayward
younger brother, for whom also Christ died, and who,
though it be in ignorance and bitterness of spirit, is yet
ministering, at his own extremest peril, to your discipline
and purification ; to what more immediate cause can you
attribute this new spiritual energy and insight, than to the
resolute mortification of all inward and outward move-
ments of causeless anger I

And again, how, when you thus discern your enemy,
can you refrain from pitying, from forgiving, and from
loving him I And is not this that first holy energy of our
renewed spirit, in the strength of which we fulfil the first
Commandment in this Law of the Will, Love your
enemies.

And so may it be shewn, that an earnest obedience
to each distinct Law of the coming Kingdom, throws us
back on the necessity of such an obedience to a corre-
sponding Law of the hallowed Name, realizes for us a
freer energy of obedience to the kindred requirement of
that final Law of the Will which is now before us.

Thus, with regard to the next, or central Command-
ment in the central Law of the Kingdom, If any man

WILL SITE THEE AT THE La\V, AND TAKE AWAY THY COAT, LET

CH. JI.] I, AW OF Till-: WILL. 333

him iiavk in v cloak also. Can we reasonably hope for
the power of giving up, for Christ's sake and ;it his bid-
ding, those possessions and enjoyments, which holy Law
itself concedes to us and guards for us, so long as we
remain powerless to mortify and deny our lustings after
those possessions and enjoyments which holy Law both
forbids to us and guards from us by the terrors of imme-
diate and righteous retribution.

Must not our hopes for inward power to deny ourselves
in lawful pleasures, that we may relieve the wants, and
gratify the wishes of others, be a hope making us
ashamed, so long as we are thus powerless, even with
immediate shame and punishment before our eyes, to over-
come the temptations of adulterous and unlawful lusts,
so long as we continue to cut the very nerves out of our
souls, and remain dead unto God and all goodness, by
habitually giving way to the blandishments of godless and
lawless pleasures ?

But if, on the other hand, through faithful and
prayerful obedience to that earlier and less arduous Law
which forbids such lusts, we have had born within our
souls the power of freely bestowing on that brother, even
though he come to us in the guise of an adversary, our
outward and temporal blessings, and with this also, the
power of discerning him as our brother in Christ, must
there not result within our spirits, from such a living power
of kindliness and Christian discernment, that still freer and
holier energy, whereby we gladly and lovingly extend to
him not only our temporal, but also our spiritual bless-
ings ; whereby we bless him from our heart as well as

*}34 PROVINCR OF THE INTELLECT FN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

with our substance ; whereby we bless him even while in
ignorance he curses us.

And not only are we thus endowed with the free
energy, with the power and Will, that is, to bless from our
hearts even those who in ignorance curse us, — an energy
more excellent in the same kind than that of blessing out-
wardly or with visible good things, of readily yielding or
freely imparting, as to brethren, our worldly goods ; but in
this free energy OK blessing we are further endowed with
that very spirit which in the Family Life is paramount
and innermost. Tt is ever under the forms of this Life that
Blessing manifests itself. It is through this Life, in its
worthiest form, that God's choicest Blessings are poured
forth upon man. It is the seed of the woman that shall
bruise the serpent's head. It is in the great Patriarch, and
in his seed, that all the Families and Nations of the earth
shall be blessed. In this most glorious of blessings, Law is
overlooked, and as nothing ; the Jewish National Life is
overlooked, and as no thing ; and we are referred directly to
the Blessedness, in Christ their true elder Brother, of the
sons of Abraham, the true Israel. And so we shall find
all the great and prominent acts of blessing recorded in
the Old Testament, are recorded as taking place in the
bosom, and with reference to the unfolding, of the Family
Life. And well indeed may it be so : for the one Blessing
wherein all these centre and culminate, is the promised
seed, that true Isaac, who is the prr^ the ayaWicicns:,
the laughing and singing of the now fully blest Humanity.
And see we not how in this Sermon on the Mount, wherein
the Blessing and its Blessedness are presented to us as being

CH. II.] LAW OF THE WILL. 335

through Christ and the Spirit our own inward Blessedness,
our human, as well as his Divine, Beatitude, — see we not
here how this our perfect Beatitude does in like manner
stand first and apart, as Something more holy, more excel-
lent and Divine, than all guardian Law, than all holy
Prayer, than every other element of our enduring Life ?

This Blessedness, all this great Blessedness is our in-
heritance as children. And as surely as we are Children of
God in Christ, so surely do we inherit it now and for ever.

Lastly, do we find it a hard thing to submit our-
selves patiently to national institutions and ordinances ?
Are we, as but dimly discerning the holy Reality and full
import of this larger National Life, impatient of the
burdens it imposes on us, and which it cannot but impose
authoritatively I And do not these demands on our sub-
stance and personal services compel us to examine and
discern the real foundations of our Complete Human Life?
do they not send us back to the vows, explicit or implicit,
to the fundamental Covenants with God. on our truth to
which this our larger and fuller Human Life, with all that
it contains, really rests, and to which therefore we may
not dare to be false ?

This third Commandment in the Law of the Kingdom
leads us to perceive and to fulfil our duties as members of
a Christian Nation, and to discern in these duties a fuller
and holier Form of that comprehensive truth to God and
to our own Being, which is enjoined on us by the third
Commandment in the Law of the Name, and which we
can indeed fulfil in this larger and more excellent Form,
only in so far as we have offered up our hearts a daily

336' PROVINCE OK THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

sacrifice to the same truth, in its less arduous require-
ments.

And what indeed do we find to be the conduct of a
sincere Christian man who has discerned the truth of this
his Larger Life ; who has perceived the holiness, as under
God, and as hallowed by His Name put upon it, of the
state whereof he is a citizen and subject ; who reveres in
that state the outward and visible majesty of holy Law,
the divinely-ordained bearer of its temporal sword ; who
cheerfully acknowledges the claims of that State on his
true allegiance and best services I Does his country in her
hour of need and danger lay on him heavier burdens 1 he
answers her demands willingly ; he is ready, he wills, to
contribute more than she requires of him. Does she call
for his personal services I he leads on his friends and fol-
lowers also to her aid. Does she ask for his counsels :
he gives up gladly his time and thoughts to her welfare.

What, again, is his conduct as a member also of his
National Church — the Church of his Fathers I Does he
shrink from the demands she makes, for the carrying out
her blessed purposes, on his substance or his time, on his
thoughts or on his personal services ? Rather if, by faith-
fully and strenuously acting out his positive duties in the
matter, he has been led to discern the real blessings and
privileges of that holy Membership, he will add to those
necessary things labours also and offerings of love, in order
that she likewise, on her part, may be enabled to accomplish
more than the barely needful ; to extend her labours of
love, her free-will offerings, to those who are far off also,
to the benio;hted in distant lands as well as in his own. to

CH. II.] law OF THE WILL. 33*7

those who are yet enemies and unreconciled, as well as
to the household of faith. And this he will do as
having faith also in the blessedness of her efforts, even
though they may be made in a manner which in part he
disapproves. He will, as it were, compel himself to aid
her to the uttermost : trusting in her wisdom as in a
wisdom which is higher and holier than his own, which
is for him the ordained channel and representative of the
very highest and holiest wisdom.

Moreover, it is through such well-understood and
strenuous obedience to this third Commandment in the
Law of the Kingdom, as growing out of a similar obedi-
ence to the third Commandment in the Law of the Name,
that we are gradually endowed with an inward power of
freely fulfilling this third Commandment in the final Law
of the Will. Do good to them that hate you, or rather,
act well and generously or handsomely towards them,
ku\w9 iroieiTe toia fucrovvTas ufxas.

He whose affections have been by such a full and
holy discipline and exercise enlarged and purified, is, be-
yond all others, of power to act generously and nobly even
towards his enemies.

And this is true, not only of individual men, but also
of Nations, in so far as they consist of men thus trained
and formed. Such a Nation will, above all others, be
found to act peaceably, tolerantly, and generously towards
its enemies, whether these be enemies of its outward or of
its inward Life, whether its National well-being and glory,
as it is a State, be the object of their hatred, or as it is a
Church-
22

338 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IX RELIGION. [HOOK II.

Lastly, the truth we are now maintaining, that obedi-
ence to the Law of the Kingdom grows out of obedience
to the Law of the Name, and issues in obedience to the
Law of the Will, manifests itself still more clearly when
we fix our attention on the three positive and compre-
hensive Commandments in which each of these distinct
Codes, or Bodies of holy Law, is gathered to its head :
I mean, first, The Commandment of doing and speaking
the truth to all our brethren, as to Christ our elder Bro-
ther, as to his Father and our Father ; second, The Com-
mandment of giving and lending to our brethren who ask
of us, as to Christ our elder Brother, as to his Father and
our Father ; Third, The Commandment of praying to our
Father and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for our
brethren in the same Christ, in so far as the enmity of
any one of them against ourselves and against Him is as
yet unsubdued ; to the end they may each and all realize
the membership with Christ, the oneness with Him and so
with each other and with the Father, which He has
bought for them.

For we at once perceive that he who performs to the
Lord his vows, who is indeed true to all the Covenants to
which God is at once a party and a witness, and which
determine his obligations as an Individual, as a member of
a Family, as a member of a Reasonable or Lawful, and
Spiritual Society ; who fills all the states and relations of
this manifold Life with the Realities of those affections
which belong to them ; who, with regard to all these, not
only speaks but does the truth in simplicity and love,
a\}]9ev(oi> aei ev dydirti ; whose yea is yea as well as his

CH. II.] LAW OP THE WILL. 339

nay nay; who affirms, that is, and realizes all truth as well

as denies and mortifies all falsehood ; — we perceive, I say,
at once that the person who in this sense is true, both
can and will be above all others really generous and
merciful. Is it not in persons thus true-hearted that
we look for and find real tenderness of heart ? Are
not such persons both capable and communicative of
enlarged affections, and also of that clearer and fuller
spiritual discernment which perceives the reality and bless-
edness of our universal brotherhood in Christ ; which
perceives that all enmity, except against the evil Will
which is itself enmity to God, is cast forth from that
brotherhood, or swallowed up in it ? And must we not,
from the ground of a heart so enlarged, from a spirit so
renewed, freely breathe forth to God that holiest prayer,
whereby even our malicious persecutors may be brought
within the circle of God's grace and pardoning love,
Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do ?
Since then we have now seen that the relations be-
tween the preceding Laws of the Name, and of the
Kingdom, and this last Law of the Will are so inti-
mate, and that it can be rightly discerned and obeyed
only as it grows out of both and reconciles and glorifies
both in its own higher unity; there will be the less need
for our insisting, at any length, that this is and must
be the absolute and final Law of God's revealed, and of
man's renewed, Will ; the Law, that is, which really and
intimately corresponds to the final Aspiration, Thy Will
be done, as in heaven so ox earth, and therefore also to
the blessedness of the meek.

22—2

340 PROVINCE OK THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION, [ko<M< II.

That this is so cannot but bo at once perceived and
acknowledged by those at least who have felt the exposi-
tion already given to be in the main consistent with
revealed truth. Those who have not, will hardly be led to
this feeling, by any further dwelling on this highest Form
of holy Law. For a true discernment of the Law- of the
Will results hardly less spontaneously from a true discern-
ment of the preceding Laws, which in it find their con-
summation, than a true energy of loving obedience to this
highest Law is ever resulting from a growing power of
faithful and hopeful obedience to those lower Laws of the
Name and of the Kingdom.

This final Law of Holy Love is set by our Lord
for the determination and guardianship of man's renewed
Will, to whatever extent that renewal is continually pro-
ceeding, as it will continually proceed, under a faithful and
hopeful self-subordination to the foregoing Laws. It is
ordained by Him to determine the true character of that
renewed Will as a Will of Holy Love, and to guard it
in the integrity of that character from all violation and
wrong, whether through assaults and temptations from
without, or through declensions and fallings off from
within ; and if, only on the ground just mentioned, we
at once discern that this final Law is, as we have named
it, properly and specially the Law of the Will, properly
and specially the Law ordained to correspond and work
together with the Aspiration, Thy Will be done, as in
heaven so on earth. And if further proof were wanting,
we have it in the sentences which immediately succeed,
and render reasons for, this Law, the condensed import

CH. II.] LAW OF THE WILL. 341

and spirit of which we thereby find is, Be ye perfect,
as your Father in heaven is perfect ; which can be no
other than the Law of Holy Being, or of holy Will,
given in its utmost generality, and implying the truth
that mans Will, when fully renewed, is ordained to be
absolutely at one with the Will of God.

There is another point which may here be noticed.
It has appeared with regard to the three distinct Bodies
of Law which have already been examined, that in each,
its first three Commandments are, as compared with its
fourth, of a negative character ; and that the fourth Com-
mandment in each is essentially of a positive and coniple-
mental character ; so that without obedience to it there
can be no free and living obedience to any one of the
three, which in each Body of Law precedes it. This prin-
ciple has been already shewn to obtain, 1. in the Law of
the Name as it is revealed to us, or the first Table of
the Decalogue (B. i. p. 139); 2. in the second Table as
given by our Lord, that is, in the Law of the Name as
it is put upon us (B. i. p. 179) ; and 8. in the Law ok
the Kingdom as coming in our hearts (B. ii. p. 304).

Now, if we examine the final Law of the Will in its
Christian and Spiritual import, as the Law of love, with
reference to this principle, we shall find that though its
first three Commandments are in a very important sense
positive, as every Law of the renewed Will must primarily
be, seeing its primary impulses are all free and all towards
God, and need only direction to their truest and highest
good, and strengthening in that direction ; yet it is plain,
that the fourth of these Commandments is of a still more

o4t> PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [llOOK II.

absolutely and essentially positive character, — is a Com-
mandment at once complete in itself, and involving the
completion of the three which precede it. To love our
enemies, to bless them that curse us, to do gracious
things to those who hate us, are none of them acts neces-
sarily complete and effectual in themselves. They do not
any or all of them necessarily involve the accomplish-
ment of that which is the end of spiritual Law, and in it
of all Law ; namely, true and loving communion with
God in man, and with man in God. Our enemy denies,
it may be, in his evil hatred, and repels our love, rejects
our blessings, will none of our good deeds ; but with
regard to our prayers it is wholly otherwise ; these he
cannot reject, for they are addressed, not to him, but to
God : and even as they are the most real, intimate and
positive acts of our spirit, so are they the acts of our love,
which of all others are in themselves most complete. In
these acts the enmity is, for our own souls at least, more
effectually overcome than in any of those just mentioned.
That enmity is thus hidden in the presence of God from
the provokings of men. And this is already much, when
we remember that Christ's Law aims at the renewal of
the World through the renewal of the Individual Man
regarded as a living member of His ever-growing Church ;
and that such an emancipation of the Individual Man
from the slavery of wrath and hate, as is implied in real
and earnest prayer for his spiteful persecutors, not only
tends to that renewal, but is that renewal itself in its
fairest and most excellent form; inasmuch as herein his
Will is at one with the Will of God. For God's holiest

CM. II. j LAW OF THE WILL. 343

Attribute is, that He wills our good, while we are yet ene-
mies. So that in our spirits when we thus pray, Hi^ Will
is actually done on earth as it is done in heaven. Indeed,
prayer being more especially the act of the Will in a state
of renewal, — of all that is most spiritual within us, is
essentially the most perfect Act and Energy whereof we
are capable. And it is not only more perfect in itself
than any one of the acts enjoined by the preceding Com-
mandments of this final Law, but it is of power to com-
municate to each of these its own perfection. Each of
these acts, when done in the spirit of prayer, becomes and
is a Spiritual Reality before God and for our own souls ;
whether it be rejected or accepted by the person towards
whom it is done. Moreover, if any manifestations of our
inward feeling and disposition towards him can escape
this rejection, and effectually reach him, it must be
acts of kindness done in the spirit of prayer, done not as
from ourselves, but as from God and in Christ. If the
truth that they have been so done, once reaches him, if he
but once realizes this truth, he is already evercome and
gained : so far at least as we can be workers together
with God towards this blessed end. And thus in fulfilling,
throughout all its requirements, this final Law. we shall
have accomplished to the uttermost all that God has placed
within our power and given us to do, for the gaining of our
brother, for his enduring blessedness, and for our own.

And here we would for a few moments dwell on this
final Law of the Will as it is ordained to determine, in
their genuine character, and to guard, in their highest spi-
ritual Perfection, those Realities of our purified Affections,

344 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

which we have already seen guarded by the preceding forms
of holy Law in their Birth and in their Growth. Nor
shall we be surprized to find, on the one hand, that each of
these distinct Realities of our Being has a Commandment
ordained to guard it in that highest Perfection to which
under the influences of the Spirit it can attain, even as
it has other Laws to guard its Nascent and its Unfolding
Forms. Nor, on the other, shall we expect the distinction
which obtains between these several Commandments of this
final Law, to be as broad and clear as they are in the Law
of the Name, or even in that of the Kingdom ; inasmuch
as the ennobled Realities of our Being, which these Com-
mandments are given to guard, tend to Perfect Oneness
with each other in the very same proportion in which they
approach their Spiritual Perfection. Accordingly, we
shall find that the highest spiritual perfection of the indi-
vidual Christian man is determined and guarded by the
Law, Love your enemies; for through such love alone are
we at length more than conquerors over that causeless
anger which we have seen to issue in the destruction, in-
ward and eternal, as well as outward and temporal, of the
Individual Life. In the same manner, the highest and
most Spiritual Law of that perfect Family Life which we
have as members of the one great and real Family which
in heaven and earth is named after Christ, is the Com-
mandment, Bless them that curse you. For thus to
bless is that Special Act of the purified Affections and
renewed Will which overcomes spiritual evil by spiritual
good. And in this overcoming consists the essential bless-
edness of all true members of that Family. Also it is

OH. 11.] LAW OF THE WILL. 345

through this holy Energy of Christian Love that we are
more than conquerors over our evil lustings after unholy
delights and unlawful possessions. For to bless another
even in outward deed, is not the despoiling him against
Law of his good things, but the imparting to him beyond
Law of our own. And when the energy by which we do
this is no longer an energy of outward act merely, but is
carried up into the region of absolute truth; that is, of the
spiritualized affections and of the renewed Will, we are at
once more than conquerors over all lawless lust. For
since Christ has no fellowship with Belial, the two cannot
subsist together, and either must perish out of the soul.
Hence this final Law of the Family Life in its utmost
spirituality, completes that which the guardian Law of
the primal or fontal Family Life, Thou shalt not commit
adultery, had begun, and which its guardian Law, as ever
unfolding into the Christian Family Life, Thou shalt

READILY YIELD AND FREELY IMPART OF THINE OWN TO THY

brethren in Christ, had carried onward. Another ground
on which this Law of blessing is essentially a Law of
the Family Life has been already touched on : namely,
that the Idea and Reality of Blessing does throughout
the Divine records specially belong to that Life, and to
its relations ; and that Individuals and Nations are blessed,
not as such ; but the former as members or as represen-
tatives of certain Families ; the latter, as growing out
of or grafted into such Families. Examples of this prin-
ciple are so numerous, and exceptions to it so rare, that
we might almost affirm the Bible history to be one con-
tinuous exemplification of it.

346 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [ROOK II.

Lastly, we shall find that it is only in virtue of a
living energy of obedience to this third Commandment of
the Law of the Will, Do good to them that hate you,
with its spiritual completion, Pray for them which de-
spitefully use you and persecute you, that there can
be a final conversion into love of that last and most-
obstinate form of hatred which besets our international
relations, and which in God's highest truth is allowed to us,
as it was enjoined on the Jews, Trpos tt)v aK\rjf)OKapciai>,
because our hearts, like theirs, must, under his discipline,
be gradually softened and enlarged for an ever-widening
circle of Christian Love.

We will conclude our remarks on the Law of the
Will, which is also the Law of holy Love, by briefly
noticing the ascending order of real or loving Communion
which is set forth in its successive Commandments. In
so far as we have entered into the preceding Laws of the
Name and of the Kingdom, we have already learnt to dis-
cern, in our enemy and persecutor, one for whom Christ
died, and in whom the enmity to God and man may
through the Spirit of Christ be overcome ; one whom, even
through our means, Christ may reconcile to his Father
and to his brethren ; and who, in blindly persecuting us,
may have already contributed, at the peril of his own
soul, to our enduring blessedness. Let us suppose that
this discernment has ceased to be for us matter of words
and notions, that it has become, not only a Truth of Faith,
but a Reality of Consciousness. If this be so with us, then
through Christ and the Spirit we are already of power to
love our enemy. And, accordingly, His first Command-

CH. II. J LAW OF THB WILL. .'J47

ment permits not this new and holy power to lie dormant
in our souls, or to waste itself on such objects as cannot
worthily exercise and strengthen it. Hence it is that we
may not exert it merely on those who love us ; since this
is not a holier or more blessed thing than the natural man
can do, who has been endowed from on high with no new
and more glorious power of Love. His first Command-
ment in this Law of Love or of the renewed Will, is to
cherish and. strengthen, by exerting it on its most proper
objects, this New Power; and thus to give it fixedness and
solidity, and to transform it from an Indwelling Power
into an Outstreaming Energy of holy Love. Such is the
aim of the Command, Love your enemies.

Again, as the first Commandment of this final Law
prescribes the actual putting forth of this New Power of a
true or loving Communion with all the children of men, so
the second gives to this putting forth or exertion of Love
its genuine Christian expression. Even as our heart must
yearn with Love, so must our tongue overflow with Bless-
ing. Nor is this, however it may appear, a distinction
without a difference, nor does it imply a trivial advance.
A sealed well is indeed full of water, but how different in
its own living freshness, as well as to the thirsty traveller,
from a gushing spring ! Our love also must spring forth
and manifest its blessedness by the scattering of Blessings
even on our enemies, and by thus overcoming their
curses. Nor must it rest in thus rightly and lovingly
seeing and speaking to our enemy, nor must he be suf-
fered to rest in seeing and hearing that we love him. He
must also fed our love. We must be joined to him in the

348 PROVINCE OK THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

more intimate Communion of loving Acts, of fair and
gracious Deeds : for so much is implied in the KaXws
Troieire. We must devise means for acting handsomely
and nobly towards him ; for doing this secretly and un-
known to him, if he would reject it when done openly.
And even should all these approaches and degrees of a
true and loving Communion with him fail, there yet re-
mains that Communion of prayer to God for him, which,
as we have seen, cannot fail, which is the most real and
perfect Communion of all ; and which, if anything can do
so, that is, if our enemy be not indeed and finally repro-
bate, having his portion with the enemies of God, will
also impart of its own living efficacy and power to each of
those previous less positive and less compelling manifesta-
tions of holy Love.

Chapter III.
THE WAY OF ALMS.

It will be observed, that in considering the whole three-
fold Body of Law, which corresponds to the three Aspira-
tions of the Lord's Prayer, and which is indeed the Law
of our true Being, we have spoken of its last portion,
the Law of the Will, as in some definite and important
sense, final. Yet this last Commandment in the Law of
the Will is immediately succeeded by another Law or
direction regarding Alms (or Righteousness) ; and this again
by several more, regulating our conduct in various impor-
tant particulars. How then can this Law of the Will be
final \ We reply, that the Law of the Will is final in a
sense similar to that in which the Aspiration, Thy Will
be done, as in heaven so on earth, is final in the Prayer ;
and in which the blessed Temper of Meekness is final in
the Beatitudes. It is final in the order of absolute truth.
If our meekness, that is, our readiness to give up and
sacrifice our own Will, and to receive for a new Will the
holy Will of God, be absolute and uninterrupted, then our
Will is wholly renewed. And this is final, so far as the in-
ward and spiritual Realities of our Being are concerned.
For this perfect renewal of the Will is the end or final
object of Christianity. Then also we utter, with absolute
truthfulness, the Aspiration, Thy Will be done, as in hea-
ven so on earth. For this Aspiration is no other than the
genuine expression to God of this very spirit of Meekness,

350 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT l\ RELIGION. [HOOK II.

which, in its perfection, is final. And when we thus utter
this Aspiration with complete truthfulness, with our Life,
that is, as well as with our Spirit, then do we also love
our enemies; we bless them that curse us ; we do good to

THEM THAT HATE US, and We PRAY FOR THEM THAT DESPITE-
FULLY USE AND PERSECUTE US. For, OUT fulfilling this Law

of Love is not only God's Will to us-ward, but it is the

COMPLETE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THAT WlLL in US and by US.

The whole, therefore, of this threefold Body of Law
may be rightly regarded as containing God's revelation to
us in Christ of that absolute truth, or true Law, of our
Being which is in harmony with God's Will, and obedi-
ence to which, from the heart, constitutes at once our
Renewal and our Blessedness.

Although, however, this threefold Law of Christ pre-
sents to us the Complete Truth of our Being, yet, when the
revelation of this Law reaches us, it finds us rendering
obedience, not to itself, but to another and opposite Law :
to a Law whose power over us emanates from the earthly
centre of the selfish and unholy Will, not from the hea-
venly centre of the Divine and holy Will. Hence it is
that such a revelation would be ineffectual for any practi-
cal purposes, if it stopped here ; if it merely set before us
the truth or true Law of our Being, even though it did
this both with regard to the outward Manifestations and
the inward Realities of that Being. This, our true Being,
with its proper energies and their proper Law, is not
revealed to us merely that it may be gazed on. whether
to dazzle and overwhelm us by its unapproachable excel-
lence, or to pamper our speculative curiosity, or to make

OH. III. J THE WAY OF ALMS. 3.51

us proudly imagine that it is already indeed our own,
because we are able to discern in part, and complacently
to dwell on, its truthful and holy beauty.

Not for such ends, but that it may actually supplant
and replace our false and accursed nature, is this our
true and blessed Being revealed in its holy Realities
and in its holy Laws. And hence arises the necessity,
when once these new things have been revealed, of a
secondary revelation, instructing us in the way or method
of this supplanting, teaching us how those old things are
to be cut out, these new things grafted in and made
to grow.

Accordingly, as that whole unfolding of the truth,
which we have lately been considering, teaches us what
these new things of a man are in themselves, as Realities
of Being, as Energies of Act, and as Laws of both ; even
so the whole Portion or Triad of our Lord's Discourse
which we are now entering upon, reveals to us God's way
or method of implanting them in our spirits, and so of sup-
planting also by the expulsive power of these new Affec-
tions, Energies, and Laws, those corrupt Affections and
unholy Energies, those Laws of the world, the flesh, and
the devil, which before constituted and determined our
Being in its falsehood, our fallen and evil Nature.

Indeed the Revelation by our Lord of the absolute
truth of our Being under the form of holy Law, might
itself lead us to infer that such a way or method there
needs must be : inasmuch as that Revelation presents the
Realities of holy Affections, of holy Energies, and of holy
Law, not merely in their perfection, but also in their

352 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

state of advance towards that perfection, and in the
beginnings of that state. And if there be a State of
advance, there must also be a Way or Method of advance ;
and if we know not this way, it must be taught us, or
we shall fail to advance, even if we do not fall away and
go backward.

But it may be said. Let us pass from the region of an-
tecedent probabilities, and let it be shewn us more directly
that such a Method is actually contained in these Directions
about Almsgiving, Prayer, and Fasting, which might seem
to constitute another threefold Body of Law ; if they be
not rather a collection of separate and distinct rules for
our Christian conduct, having no special reference to each
other, or to any previous or succeeding portion of the
Sermon on the Mount.

First then we may notice, as a broad indication of the
real and important transition which takes place at this point
of our Lord's Discourse, the fact, that, before this point the
thing to be done is enjoined ; after this point, the manner
of doing it. Before this point it is, " Let your yea be
yea, and your nay, nay ;" or, " Pray for them that de-
spitefully use you and persecute you ;,? the Form of legisla-
tion is simply imperative and injunctive. After this point
it is, ichen ye give alms, and when ye pray, or when ye fast,
do it thus and thus, and not otherwise.

This alone might suffice to convince us that we have
here left the domain of Law properly so called, of that
Form of Law which lays down absolutely, and determines
imperatively, the things which it belongs to the tkuth
of our Being to do or to refrain from doing; that we

CH. III.] THE WAY OF ALMS. 353

have left the domain of absolute truth and perfect okoer
as these manifest themselves in holy Law, and are entering
on the true way or method revealed by Christ, through
which that holy truth is to possess itself of our souls.
And if we do not at once perceive the necessity for such a
distinct Body of teaching, as well as the fact of its existence
in our Lord's Discourse, we cannot fail to perceive that
necessity in the history of the Church, not only ever since,
but even before, it was subjected to explicit Law.

The failure of Cain in his offering, no less than that of
the Pharisee in his obedience, lay chiefly in this, that though
he did the thing, he did it not in the right way. And
this has ever been and is still the failure of those who have
not discerned the true relations of holy Law to holy Life.
They have thought the doing or leaving undone the thing
enjoined or forbidden, was all ; all that even God looked
to ; all therefore, certainly, about which they need concern
themselves. But since this notion of the thing done being
all, is at war with the truth of our Being, as spiritual and
even as reasonable creatures, the attempt to realize and
act it out in our lives, must ever end in failure and in evil.
If we do the thing, without providing that it be done in
the right wav, we are quite sure to do it in some wrong
way. If we do it not for the sake of right, and of right
persons, we are quite sure to do it for the sake of wrong,
and of wrong persons. There is here for us no middle
and indifferent course.

And this is so evident, that a little reflection may dis-
pose us not only to concede the principle, but to coun-
tenance an exaggerated view of it ; namely, that these
23

'A.r)4 PROVINCE OK THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [kOOK II.

wrong ways or methods must necessarily be very nu-
merous, even in their essential grounds. Such a view
is indeed not wholly erroneous, for doubtless there are
many ways in which we may thus err. Still we must
remember that the very guarding us against error in the
way of performing our duties, presupposes a knowledge of
the main Body of duty, and that on this account we may
expect the forms or kinds of such error to be less nume-
rous. If we already know the things we ought to do, and
are really striving to do them, the errors into which we
may fall, as to the way or mode of doing them, are not so
numerous as might be supposed. And to whatever extent
they may seem to multiply themselves, these ramifications
are still to be traced up to a few leading branches, and
ultimately to a single root. To this root our Lord here
lays the axe.

The doing these things of the Law of truth, these
things which belong to the Truth of God and of our own
Being, as before God and to God, is the true method, the
way of Christ. The doing them as before men and to

MEN, is THE FALSE METHOD, THE WAY OF ANTICHRIST.

And here it may be replied, This indeed appears to be
the key-note of all these directions as to Alms, and Prayer,
and Fasting : but why are these particular Acts or Prac-
tices of the Christian Life chosen ? Are they selected out of
all our other duties, as affording good and striking examples
of the right and the wrong way of fulfilling not only these,
but all other demands on us of Christ's holy Law ? Or
can it, in any intelligible and practical sense, be affirmed
that they contain or imply the whole of our Christian

CH. III.] THE WAY OK ALMS. 355

Life ? Before we attempt to answer these questions, some
preliminary considerations are necessary.

We have endeavoured, and thus far successfully, to
avoid the introduction of questions bearing on the integrity
of the text in this portion of St. Matthew's Gospel ; nor
has our own investigation been beset by any considerable
difficulties arising from this source. Here, however, we
arrive at a very important various reading. It is doubtful
whether oiKaioavvij or eXer/noavir], be the true reading in
the first verse of this sixth chapter. The carefully esti-
mated weight of MS. authority for each reading is not far
from being equal. The Latin Fathers have generally
regarded it as preponderating on the side of Sucaioa-vvrj,
the Greek on that of eXeri/noauvrj. Our Codex Bezae as
well as the Vatican MS. has oLKaioavvrj ; and this reading
Griesbach admits into his text as being in his own judge-
ment clearly the right one, though he marks its doubt-
fulness on MS. authority, by giving it in smaller characters.
Tholuck in his Bergpredigt (in loc.) gives the authorities
and arguments on both sides, and comes to the conclusion
that they preponderate on the side of SiKaioauvti.

In such a case of balanced or nearly balanced external
evidence, the view of a definite internal organization in
the Sermon on the Mount, which we are endeavouring to
unfold, may possibly throw some weight into either scale ;
or at all events, some light on the meaning of this discre-
pance.

Now in the course of unfolding that view, it has already
been maintained (B. i. p. 105,) that the first of the three
Petitions, Give us this day our daily bread, is the genu-

23 — 2

356 PROVINCE UK THE [NTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

ine and ordained utterance to God of that Blessed Temper
which hungers and thirsts after Righteousness, and that
therefore it is indeed our daily portion of that true Right-
eousness, both of Justification and Sanctification, which
came and cometh down from heaven, that we pray for in
praying for our daily bread ; that it is such a doing the
Will and work of our Father from day to day, which alone
can, as its real food, sustain our real Being in health and
strength and growth. So that the deeper import of this
petition would be, Grant us this day rightly to discern

AND DO OUR THIS Day\s CHRISTIAN DUTIES. For to discern

and do them rightly, is to discern and do them in the
spirit of Faith and Hope and Love towards God; and, so
discerning and doing them, we receive into our spirits the
daily increase of that Righteousness unto Holiness, which
is at once Righteousness of Justification, and Righteousness
of Sanctification.

Now it will be seen at a glance that the portion of
Christ's way or method which comes first in order, and
which in our scheme corresponds to the hunger and thirst
after righteousness, and therefore also to the petition,
Give us this day our daily bread, teaches us, by its first
and most comprehensive Direction, the right way of doing
or exercising this very righteousness, which is the daily
bread of our real Life, and the hunger for which is a
blessed hunger : Take heed that ye do not your Right-
eousness (alms) before men to be seen of them, otherwise
ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.

If therefore we give our decision in faviour of Sikcli-
oavvtj (Righteousness), as the reading preferable on the

CH. III.] THE WAY OF ALMS. 357

whole to eXeiivoo-tn'r/ (Alms, or rather Mercifulness, whe-
ther in heart or act,) we find that our Lord has already
in the Beatitudes taught us the Blessedness of an earnest
and longing desire for the inward reception of that very
oiKaioaovrj or Righteousness, the right way of inwardly
receiving which He is here teaching us ; and further, that
He is just about to endow us with the right utterance to
God, Give us this day our daily bread, of this new spi-
ritual desire or craving; an utterance which we have
already seen (B. i. p. 106) must, in its most real meaning,
be a petition for this same Siaaiuauvn or Righteousness to
be daily and inwardly received and digested by us.

Thus far, then, the evidence, inward as well as out-
ward, seems strongly in favour of Righteousness as in
this particular passage the true reading ; as that reading
which has the preponderance of authority in its favour,
and which most effectually harmonizes this Blessed Temper
at once with its genuine Utterance to God, and with its
ordained guardian Law.

We should thus moreover perceive the living conti-
nuity between the Triad of Divine order and Law or of
absolute truth, which we have just left, and the Triad of
Christian method or of the true way, which we are now
entering on. And we should see in what sense these Direc-
tions as to the right way of doing our duties are still
portions of holy Law, and still fall under the general defi-
nition of Law as determining and guarding the Realities
of holy Personal Being, and as thus ministering to our pro-
gressive renewal.

It is through that devout contemplation of the re-

358 PROVINCE OK THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

vealed Godhead which is expressed in the Address, Our
Father, which art in heaven, and which is determined
and guarded in its integrity by the first Table of the
Decalogue, or the Law of the revealed Name, that we
receive into our spirits that quickening sense of God's
Righteousness and of our own unrighteousness, which is
poverty in spirit in its living germ, and which, as it un-
folds itself within us, the second Table of the Decalogue, in
its Christian fulness of import, or the Law of the imposed
Name, is specially ordained to guard. It is through a
deeper discernment and a more devout contemplation of
the same Godhead as revealed and imparted to us in
Christ, that we are further endowed with that blessed
sense of the real Communicableness, in Christ, of God's
overflowing Righteousness to our absolute want of it, which
kindles in us a hopeful yearning for its actual communi-
cation, and fills us at once with the Christian Mourning
and the Christian Comfort — that blessed sense which the
central Christian Law of suffering evil and imparting
good, is ordained to guard in the integrity of its daily-
unfolding Life. Lastly, it is by a still more inward appre-
hension of the same Godhead through the Proceeding
Spirit that we are endowed with that Meekness whose
spirit yearns ever to be delivered from the evil Will, and
to receive for a new Will the Will of holiness ; whose
voice is Thy Will be done, as in heaven so on earth ;
and whose integrity is guarded and kept from evil by the
final Law of the Will.

Here then at length it is, that a direct Petition for
the actual and inward communication to us of such a por-

CM. III.] THE WAY OF ALMS. 359

tion of this Righteoi sness unto Holiness as we are from
time to time capable of receiving, has its fitting place
in the Divine Order and Method revealed to us by
Christ.

Indeed, when once we practically believe that this
Righteousness unto Holiness is of all things the most
deeply needed by us, the most excellent and desirable for
us ; and also that it is actually communicable, and will,
on our rightly and duly praying for it, be effectually and
growingly communicated to our own souls — we cannot but
pray for it; and all we then can want in this matter is
the boon of fitting words, and generally of a right way,
wherein we may prefer our petitions for it to God ; and
such further directions from Him as will enable us to
guard from desecration those needful portions of this holy
treasure which, in answer to our daily prayer for them,
we may have already received at His hands.

Now we have before seen what this treasure is, and
in what words it is to be prayed for. How it is to be
kept in its integrity, when it has in this way been ac-
tually committed to us we shall see by and by. How
this heavenly treasure is to be guarded from desecration
and failure during its daily, progressive communication to
our own souls, Christ now proceeds to teach us. When
ye do your Righteousness, when ye receive at the hands
of your Father which is in heaven your daily portion
of that meat which is the doing of his Will— a meat
the world knows not of, neither indeed can know — when
a fragment from that great threefold Body of holy Law
has thus been broken off to sustain you for the day in

3()0 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

body and soul; to be hungrily received, inwardly digested,
and effectually transmuted into a new energy within you
of free and living obedience ; so that in the strength of
that meat you may daily journey on toward the Mount
of God, — then it is, in order that your souls may not be
defrauded of the living and quickening powers and energies
which this food daily and rightly received can alone
impart, — then it is that your gracious Lord guards that
reception from falsehood and evil by this first and most
comprehensive Direction for the way of Righteousness, —
Take heed that ye do not your Righteousness before
men to be seen of them, otherwise ye have no reward
wtth your Father which is in heaven. Whatever be
the portion of Righteousness which is given you this day
to be done, — whatever be the portion of Christian Duty
which your Father sets before you for your this day's
edification, it is in the first direction of the Christian
Way that you will find summed up the only right way
of receiving and fulfilling it.

And thus we see that at this transition point from
that great threefold Body of holy Law which sets forth
the Absolute Truth of our Being, in its Birth, in its
Growth, and in its Perfection, to this Christian Way or
Method of receiving that holy and truthful Law into our
heart, there is a continuity the most living and the most
intelligible. We shall find, as we proceed, that the whole
of that Way or Method, whereby the new and inward
man is daily being formed within us, is in like manner
effectually guarded by this portion of our Lord's legisla-
tion ; its next two Bodies of Directions determining the

CH. III.] THE WAY OF ALMS. 361

wrong as well as the right way of Prayer and of Fasting,
and saying of the right, This is the way, walk ye in it.

But it may be asked, Is the axe here laid to the root ?
Does this way or method, if faithfully followed, secure
from desecration the living and growing Body of our daily
Christian obedience? Let us examine this way a little
more closely, that we may perceive in what it essentially
consists.

And here again we shall be aided by the spirit of con-
tinuity which breathes through our Lord's Discourse. In
examining the great threefold Body of holy Law as present-
ing, in the form of Law, the absolute truth of our Being,
we have found that the Cardinal Points on which it all
turns, the Fundamental Realities it deals with throughout,
are those of the Individual,, the Family, and the National
Life, as together constituting our full Christian Life on
earth. But in contemplating the Law of the Will,
the third distinct Code of that whole Body of Law which
is the Truth, we perceived that besides these, certain
other Fundamental Ideas and Relations were coming into
view.

We perceived that the several Energies and Acts of
a loving Communion with God in Man, and with Man
in God, manifest themselves throughout that Law of
Love which is also the Law of the renewed Will, in
an ascending order ; that in one point of view the first
three of its Commandments have reference respectively to
the Individual, to the Family, and to the National Life,
and that the fourth, or last of them, is that completing
and realizing Commandment which gives living power and

362 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [ROOK II.

efficacy to the three which precede it ; but that in another
point of view these several Acts and Energies manifest
themselves in the order of the three cardinal and essen-
tial Forms of Communion, whether of man with his
brethren, or of God with his children.

In this complete threefold Form we have, first, the
Communion which is by Sight ; second, the Communion

which is BY THE UTTERED VOICE AND THE HEARING EAR ;

third, the Communion which is of act and deed ; and
last, that Communion which realizes and glorifies these
its lower forms in immediate intuition, the seeing even as
we are seen. For we perceive that to love our enemies
is to discern them aright ; that to bless those who curse
us, is to speak to them aright ; that to do good to those
who hate us, is to act to them aright ; lastly, that to
pray for them that despitefully use and persecute us, is to
hold with them that Communion of love which is most
perfect and all-comprehending.

Now these cardinal Forms or fundamental Ideas and
Realities of Communion are not, as we shall find, intro-
duced in vain. They grow out of what has preceded,
they pervade what follows. Specially and centrally do
they pervade this region of the Christian way or method.

It is under these three Forms that our actual daily
Communion with God and with man is here guarded from
the approaches of all desecrating falsehood and evil. And
well may it be thus : for if our Communion be effectually
o-uarded in these its essential constituents, it is kept in-
deed : it is effectually and throughout kept and delivered
from evil ; for the completion both of God"s Communings

CH. III.] THE Way o: \j,ms. 363

with man, and of man's Communings with God, is con-
tained under these Scriptural and comprehensive Forms.
And, accordingly, they meet us repeatedly, not in the
Old Testament only, but also in the New ; as. for ex-
ample, in the solemn declaration, Exod. iii. 7, the spirit of
which is given Acts vii. 34, "I have seen, I have seen
the affliction of my people which is in Egypt, and I have
heard their groaning, and am come down to deliver them ;"
and again in 1 John i. 1, "That which was from the begin-
ning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our
eyes (ewpana/uLev tois o(p9a\fxol<> rj/uaw), which we have
looked upon (eOeaodfjLeOa), and our hands have handled
of the Word of Life." Now if we thus commune with
Man as apart from God, as an independent Being, and as
in himself our final object, falsehood and evil enter; nor
is apostasy far off. If, on the contrary, we discern, speak
to, act towards man as towards a member of Christ, who
Himself is one with the Father ; then we are walking in
the way, and no harm can happen unto us ; then we dis-
cern Man as he is in God, and so we shall be enabled to
discern God as he is in Man : we shall, that is, be enabled
rightly to discern Christ, whom to know is Life.

What has been said may in part furnish an answer to
the question, whether the Directions here given as to the
Way or manner of performing our Christian duties, are to
be looked on as special examples only, of the right Way,
or as virtually comprehending the whole of it. It is clear,
even before we separately examine the three distinct Forms
or conditions of that Communion here presented generally,
as Alms (Justice ami Mercy), Prayer, and Fasting, that

364 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

our Lord is here manifesting fully, and in all its great
leading lines, not partially and in a few of them, the
Christian Way or method. This, however, will appear
more clearly as we proceed.

As we found in the Law of Fontal or Absolute
Truth, so shall we find in this Law of Christian Method,
that its first Commandment or Direction contains implicitly
and in living germ the whole of that way or method. And
we shall find, moreover, that it implies a knowledge of the
whole of that Law which is the Truth, and a yearning
desire to obey it. Knowing what our Righteousness and
Blessedness is, and hungering and thirsting after the re-
ceiving and the doing it, we are to take heed that we do
it not before men to be seen of them, 71-^0$ to QeaOijvui
auTois ; where the very verb used, at once and vividly places
before us the inevitable result of making men, not God,
the final object of those actions which we regard as right.
For by this method we become actors, not doers, of right-
eousness. Nay, even though we may consider certain
actions as right in the abstract, and may therefore endea-
vour to do them, — which is a step nearer the right method
than mere men-pleasing, — yet if it be not as right in His
eyes who sees the heart, that we discern and strive to do
them, this perception of abstract moral right will very
rarely, if ever, be found clear or strong enough to de-
liver us from the tyranny of this ostentatious or theatric
spirit.

God sees the heart. In so far, therefore, as we do
our Righteousness before God and to God, we do it from
the heart. Men see the outward act. In so far, there-

CH. III.] THE WAY OF ALMS. '.Uu,

fore, as we do our Righteousness before Men and to Men,
we do it outwardly: or, to recur to the pregnant illus-
tration implied in OeaOijvai, we act it rather than do it.
And in this illustration we may see also how the doing our
Righteousness to men, corrupts it, not only as to its motive,
but soon also and effectually as to the thing itself. For the
standard, and even the kind, of righteousness which obtains
the applause of men, is a lower standard and kind than
that which has praise of God.

Hence originate the world's Codes of Right, as for
example, the so-called Law of honour. Hence, Schemes
of Right or Moral Philosophies, such as those of the
Spanish Jesuits Sanchez or Escobar, which are exposed
by Pascal, and which, though ostensibly Christian, aim
covertly at conciliating men's favour, and making friends
of their corrupt inclinations, by adulterating as well as
lowering the Christian standard of Righteousness.

Again, as this being seen of men may, in one sense,
rightly be taken to imply all the means through which
we can be apprehended or known of men ; even so do
the words StKaioavi/r) u/iwv, your Righteousness, in a cor-
responding sense, comprehend all the right acts which a
man can perform; obedience, that is, Christianly speaking,
to the whole three-fold Body of Christian Law. And
here, again, in contemplating this first Commandment of
the Christian Way or Method, as containing in its germ
the whole Method, Smaioavvr} has a more absolute pro-
priety than eXerjfjLocui'n ; for justice is the root, mercy
the bloom, alms (mercy in act) the fruit, of holy Love.
God's order of edification or of growth is Righteousness

366 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

unto Holiness, even as his order of Perfection is Holi-
ness unto Righteousness — Sovereign Mercy issuing in
Absolute Justice. But this first Commandment, or Direc-
tion of the Christian Method, must be regarded, not only

AS CONTAINING THE WHOLE OF THAT METHOD IN ITS GERM,
bllt also AS BEING THE FIRST DISTINCT ELEMENT OF IT. And

in this point of view also, Sucaioavvrj is more thoroughly
appropriate than eXoj/uLoavvr}. For, in a true order of
growth, our Sense, and our Acts, of Justice or Righteous-
ness must be determined and guarded in their integrity,
before our Feelings and Acts of Mercy or Christian gene-
rosity : even as, in the same order of Spiritual Growth or
Sanctification, we must first pray for and receive our daily
increase of Righteousness, before we pray for and receive
God's merciful Forgiveness of our daily trespasses.

But though SiKuioauvr] has stronger claims to be the
true reading in this place than eXerj/uLoawri, on internal
grounds, — as indeed the external evidence also decidedly
preponderates in its favour, — yet, were it not for the
absolute Order and Method which characterise the whole
Sermon on the Mount, and which ^Luaioaui'Tj perfectly falls
in with and satisfies, the essential meaning of the passage,
as consistent in the main with that Order and Method,
would still be preserved, even were we, with our authorized
version, to read e\ei]fxoai'i>rj here, as well as in the three
succeeding verses.

True it is, that the doing Justice and loving Mercy
and the walking in this way, not proudly with men, but
humbly with our God, comprehends all that is good for
our own souls, and all that the Lord requires of us. True

CH. III.] THE WAY OF ALMS. o()7

it is, that the inward Realities and outward Acts of Jus-
tice and Mercy belong to, and include every Form of our
genuine threefold Life ; the whole Law of Truth which
we have been contemplating being really and practically
drawn to a head in these two words oiKatoavvt) and eXe-
nuoavvt). True also that Justice does, in the order of
growth, precede Mercy. Nevertheless, we must remember
that now at length, in Christ, Mercy and Truth are met
together, Righteousness and Peace have kissed each other :
now at length in Christ the true vine, Justice the root,
and Mercy the fruit, are at one. Now therefore He has
given us to discern each in the other ; to see one and
the same living vine in its darker root of Absolute Justice,
in its fair blossoms of Christian Mercy, and in its golden
fruits of active and suffering Love. And though we more
clearly perceive the unity of a vigorous and productive
Life in this vine, when we discern it both in its root and
in its fruit, yet if we see the bloom of that life on the
clusters which weigh down its tendrils, we infer from
this the life of the whole vine, in branch and stem and
root. And thus it might be, without essential prejudice
to the truth He is teaching us, that our Lord should
here speak of the temper and acts of Mercy only : desig-
nating the tree merely by its fruits, and that four times
in immediate succession. He might, I say, do this, be-
cause the fruit is the main thing, the thing which God
seeks on his vine, and which causes the true Ephraim to
be a plant pleasant in his eyes. He might do it, to ex-
ercise our discernment of the now inseparable oneness
of Justice and Mercy, effected and revealed in Himself.

368 PROVINCE OP THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

Since however the reading diKawaui'ti on the first of
these four occasions, presents the whole truth of this
matter more clearly, and consists more fully and exactly
with the hitherto unbroken order which pervades the
Sermon on the Mount, as well as with the witness of
Antiquity, our voice must be given in its favour.

Assuming, therefore, the correctness of this reading,
the first Commandment or Direction of the Christian
way is, Take heed that ye do not your Righteousness

BEFORE MEN, TO BE SEEN OF THEM, OTHERWISE YE HAVE NO
REWARD OF YOUR FaTHER WHICH IS IN HEAVEN. And in

this Direction we have a perfect transition, or rather, a
living connection between the things to be done by us,
and the way of doing them. The things to be done
by us are designated in a word, they are, our righteous-
ness. The way of doing them is not less briefly and
effectually taught us, they are to be done to God. So
only can our Hunger and Thirst after Righteousness be
satisfied, so shall we be filled and strengthened, and deli-
vered from spending our labour for that which is not
bread.

But again, if we consider this Righteousness, or Jus-
stice (as distinct from Mercy,) to be, in the order of
Spiritual Growth, the first Form of our Communion with
God in man, and with man in God : to be the spiritual or
real bread, as distinct from the spiritual or real wine of
that Communion ; what special propriety is there in this
first Form of Communion being guarded from the evil
and desecrating power of that ostentation which our Lord
notes as addressing itself to the eye ? If we take this dina.i-

CH. III.] THE WAY OK ALMS. .'<()!)

oauvt) as containing in its first and general sense of Right-
eousness or Justice, the larger and fuller sense of Rijrht-
eousness unto Holiness, then we can easily conceive that
this first Direction of the way, namely, to do our Right-
eousness not to men but to God, is sufficient, if rightly
discerned, for its general guardianship. By this rule we
are protected generally from the evil of obeying in a wrong
Way the great and holy Body of Christian Law which is
the truth, and which is given for our true obedience ;
and in such a general sense this first direction of the way
is of power to guard generally all the avenues through
which we can discern and receive into our souls this
Righteousness, or manifest that reception to our brethren ;
whether this discernment and reception of God's righteous
Law be through the seeing eye, or through the hearing
ear, or whether, last and best, we be joined to His Word
and Law, and receive them into our inmost Being through
earnest obedience, knowing the things of Christ by doing
them. Still all these modes combine and are necessary
to constitute in their fulness the means ordained for our
solidly apprehending and discerning His righteous and holy
Law. And all need the guardianship of this general and
comprehensive principle of the Christian wrAY or method.

All then must be to God, not to men ; to His glory
and for His praise, not for the praise of men and for our
own glory. But so soon as each of these Forms of discern-
ment has to be guarded from desecration by its own pecu-
liar Law, then we see a meaning in our Lord's distinc-
tions. For, first, the Idea of Justice, whether Divine or
human, is in the main, and in its great lending eharacter-
24

370 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [HOOK II.

istics, more on a level with the natural capacity of man,
than is the Idea of Mercy. Even by the light of natural
reason and the uninformed conscience, we discern more or
less clearly this Idea of Justice : but it is only Reason
illuminated by the light of Christ, and Conscience in-
formed by the teaching of the Spirit, which can truly
discern the higher Idea and Reality of Mercy.

Independently of such teaching, man may indeed hope
for Mercy from his fellow, but he demands Justice. The
Law of Right is clear, the remission of it perplexing. His
own Rights he sees distinctly, and would enforce strongly.
If another foregoes Rights which he has the power to en-
force, this at first excites astonishment mixed with incre-
dulity, then, when the evidence is complete, admiration as
well as wonder ; it is a thing to be talked about, a matter
of praise and glory. Herein lies the danger of the merciful
man; the echo of his fame returns upon his ear, ana1 if he
shield himself not under Christ's guardian Law from this
subtle mischief, he learns first to delight in it, and then to
swell its tones with the trumpet of his own vain glory.
Not so with regard to Justice. To be merely just en-
titles us not to high praise and credit even in the worlds
view : but to fail in mere justice, is matter of blame ;
is actual loss of character and reputation : and that, not in
the eyes of a few, but of all. For all can, in the practical
sense now before us, see at once what is just and what
is unjust. And herein lies the special temptation to do
our Justice or Righteousness before men. Though our just
dealing is not, like our acts of mercy and munificence,
matter of fame and celebrity, it is a thing which even the

CH. III.] TIIK WAY OF AIMS. 371

natural man both sees clearly, and expects confidently, and
on which, therefore, our reputation depends, — not so much
in the positive sense of honour, as in the negative senso of
freedom from direct blame and crimination.

And so we come to do our Justice or Righteousness
for our reputation, or to escape the loss of it ; not in order
that we may be just before God, that we may have His
praise and reward, and may be delivered from his right-
eous indignation against all injustice and falsehood.

If however the Christian Righteousness, in its primary
aspect of strict Justice, be especially beset by temptations
to eye-service and men-pleasing ; if, further, as it is a Right-
eousness unto Holiness, and as it passes into the higher
Christian Justice of Mercy, its liability to be desecrated and
corrupted by human praise and vain glory be continually
increased ; this peril is not, as might seem, really diminished
in proportion as our merciful feelings are taught to issue
in Acts of mercy, but rather demands our being kept and
guarded from it, as from a still closer and more insidious
temptation, by a new Commandment or Direction, as well
as by renewed watchfulness and prayer. For the habit or
practice of doing kind and merciful Acts is a thing so real,
and so apparently a part of ourselves, that we are thrown
off our guard, and disposed to be less careful about our mo-
tives in doing them ; and even to fancy that the influence
of a good example may well make amends for any little
creepings in of ostentatious motives. If indeed we were of
those " who sigh for wretchedness, yet shun the wretched,"
we might well tremble for our sincerity ; but as we really
are merciful in act and deed, as well as in feeling and

24—2

372 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [l!OOK II.

emotion, there can, we persuade ourselves, be no great
harm, and there must be much of the acknowledged
benefit of example, in letting our kind acts or our merci-
ful conduct come abroad and be publicly known.

Therefore it is that Christ's guardianship over the Act
is the closest and most jealous of all. When thou art

DOING AN ACT OF MERCY, (TOV C€ TTOIOVVTOS e\etpXOOVl')]V, LET
NOT THY LEFT HAND KNOW WHAT THY RIGHT HAND DOETH.

Hide it from thy dearest friend, hide it, if possible, from
thine own consciousness, then wilt thou find it in God.

It is indeed comparatively an easy thing to discover
hollowness and untruth in our quick feelings for the wants
and sorrows of others, when such sentiments of pity
issue not in acts of self-denying kindness to them. If,
tried by this test, we be found wanting, we may well
suspect that such slothful sympathies belong not to true
Christian tenderness of heart, to the e> ei;nuoi v>), or Merci-
fulness which is here spoken of. Still more clear, however,
must be our conviction that something is essentially wrong-
within us, if we are at all disposed to take credit for such
feelings. And there are many ways in which this dispo-
sition manifests itself, short of directly displaying and
parading them. Herein lies the chief danger of indulging
tender emotions which issue not in acts of kindness and
mercy. In itself and as a habit of mind this implies in-
ward want of truth. And if such a habit be not effectually
mortified, its tendency to fall under this its special tempta-
tion of ostentatiously setting itself forth, soon becomes irre-
sistible. And again, in so far as we yield to this temptation,
and are enslaved by it, all inward truthfulness perishes out

• 11. 111. ] THE WAY OF ALMS. 373

of our souls ; wo beeomo actors, not doers, of mercifulness ;
and as actors are wont, we are desirous that others should
see our graceful exhibitions of feeling, till at length we
neither blush at their praises, nor hesitate to proclaim our
own merits.

By such a real and increasing, though it may be an
unconscious and unsuspected, reference to men and not
to God, both of our primary and positive duties, and
of our feelings and acts of Christian mercy, our inward
truthfulnes is, gradually perhaps, but in the end too surely,
destroyed. We become, therefore, by degrees more and
more incapable of true Communion with God; for he
requires truth in the inward parts, and to Him lying lips
are an abomination. And thus it is, that unless this
plague be stayed, we can have no reward of our Father
which is in heaven.

And so much may, perhaps, suffice to shew how this
first Body of Directions belonging to the Christian way or
method marks out in its leading lines, presents rather
in its living germ, the -whole of that way. It does so, even
if with the Greek fathers, and with our own authorized
version, we read eXer/noavvt) in this first verse, and adopt
further our actual rendering of eXerjuoauvrj by its uncmes-
tionable derivative, Alms ; provided we be careful not to
rest in the prevalent narrow and almost technical signifi-
cation of the word ; but to see in it that Christian Mer-
cifulness, in heart and act, which has its hidden root in
absolute Justice or Righteousness. Otherwise the Reality
of Mercy in our hearts and lives will be no less shrunken
and contracted, than the flowing and vocal Greek word

374 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

which denotes it, has been in our language. Still that
first Body of Directions does this more effectually and
beautifully, if with the Latin Fathers, and with the Vatican
and Cambridge MSS., we here read cinaiocjvvii- If we
adopt this reading, the ascending order is from Justice
through Mercy to those Acts, which are at once Acts of
Justice and Mercy, of Christian truth, and of Christian
lovingkindness.

Before, however, we consider the nvay or method of
prayer and of fasting, one probable objection may be
noticed. How can the actual doing of Righteousness unto
Holiness be properly considered as bread \ By Bread
may indeed be well represented the Power of doing it
daily imparted to us from on high, in answer to our daily
prayer, or it may even be the daily portion of God's
Word, by whose teaching we are enabled rightly to do it ;
but the actually doing it is surely something more and
other than our Bread.

Such an objection we meet first by the text already
quoted, (B. i. p. 106), My meat is to do the Will of my
Father which is heaven. And if it be said that this
expression of our Lord's is figurative, or that what was
indeed His meat is not necessarily ours also, we must proceed
to consider the objection on its own merits. First then we
are prepared to concede and maintain that instruction in
the Will of God is not only a part, but a very important
and fundamentally necessary part, of our daily bread. But
then we further maintain, that it is so only as it pre-
sumes our daily, truthfully, and earnestly uttering the
final Aspiration, Thy Will be done, as in heaven so ox

CH. III.] THE WAY OF ALMS. 375

earth, which contains and heightens botli those which pre-
cede it, and which does itself immediately and necessarily
precede this prayer for bread. If this Aspiration really
expresses, as it must do if truthfully uttered, the strong
yearning of all that is spiritual within us, our fervent
desire, in faith, and hope, and love, for such a doing of
God's Will, in our own lives and in the lives of our bre-
thren,— then instruction in that Will is indeed our daily
bread, then the savour of that food is a savour of Life
unto Life. But if we yearn not for such an accomplish-
ment of His Will ; if, on the contrary, we are still really
set on doing our own will, if, so persisting, we cast behind
us the voice of His Will, the Commandments of His Law,
— then is the savour of this food a savour of death unto
death. So that instruction in God's Will is really our
food only when, and in so far as, it is in order to our
rightly and truly obeying that Will; and the first Petition
can, in this sense also, be rightly and truly uttered, only in
so far as we already both can and do utter daily from the
ground of our hearts the last Aspiration. Be it so, the
objector may reply ; but if indeed spiritual rather than
natural bread is intended to be prayed for here, and if
instruction in Righteousness be that more heavenly bread,
only in so far as it is mingled with practical faith and
obedience in the hearer, and if further it be no bread,
but rather poison, to those who are hearers only and not
doers of the Word, deceiving their own souls, — still it
seems probable that the Spiritual gift we are here in-
tended to pray for is the Grace of God or Power from on
high enabling us to perform this Will, rather than the

'376 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

actual performance of it. And this, again, is most true,
only it must be understood with a similar limitation. If
we pray for and receive that Grace, that Power, yet exer-
cise it not in the actual doing of His Will, our last state
is worse than our first ; so that here ajmin our real and
life-giving bread is the actual doing of His Will. More-
over, the Power, the holy Energy, for this purpose has been
already granted us, so soon as we have been enabled from
our hearts to utter the Aspiration, Thy Will be done, as
in heaven so on earth ; so that there remains only the
giving us, by our heavenly Father, that we may do them,
such portions of His Will as He sees fitted to supply our
whole Being, through the doing of them, with its proper,
daily food.

If, then, we are satisfied as to the sense of this first
Body of Directions in the Christian way or method, and as
to the fact that it contains in living germ the whole of that
method, we are in a condition to look onward to the un-
folding of this germ, and to consider how it manifests itself ;
secondly, in the right way of praying ; and so thirdly, in
the right way of fasting.

Chapter IV.
THE WAY OF PRAYER.

W e have already seen, in contemplating the Law of
the Will, (p. 342,) that it is in the Spirit of prayer

THAT THE TEMPER OF MeRCY MANIFESTS ITSELF IN ITS HIGHEST

reality and most practical energy ; and we are now to
be taught that the Form of Mercy in God, whereof each
man's conscience must whisper to him that he stands most
in need, I mean, forgiveness of the sins of which his
conscience is afraid, is that Special Object of Christian
Prayer, which in the order of our daily renewal is abso-
lutely central, just as the Form of Mercy in ourselves, which
enables us effectually to utter this Petition, has the same
central character and importance. For, if we forgive not
our brethren their trespasses against us, neither will our
heavenly Father forgive us our trespasses.

This Idea and Reality of Continued Pardon, of Daily
Forgiveness granted to our Daily Prayer, is not only the
central Idea and Reality of Christ's way or method, but in
being so, it is the central Idea and Reality of Prayer itself,
of our continued state of Justification before God. and even
of our progressive Sanctification or daily renewal in the
spirit of our minds. So long as we daily pray for this in
the right or appointed way, and therefore daily receive it,
we both remain in this state of Justification, and our daily
renewal or Sanctification can and does proceed. So long
as we fail in these two essential conditions of our growth in.

378 PROVINCE OK THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK U.

Grace, we can neither continue in the one state nor ad-
vance in the other. For in many things we sin all, and sin
daily ; not only in failing to perform our Christian duties,
but in the manner or in the spirit in which we perform
even the best of them.

Now, whatever be our view of the great reconciling
and atoning sacrifice of Christ, (and it cannot be too
exalted, though it may easily fail of discerning this glo-
rious reality in all its exceeding fulness and truth), we
must at all events take heed that this view be not incon-
sistent with His own plain and repeated declaration, — a
declaration which is not only embodied in the daily prayer
for forgiveness which He puts into our mouth, but which
is, immediately after the giving of the whole prayer, again
insisted on in words too plain to admit of doubt : " If ye
forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will
also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their tres-
passes, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.1'

It is, perhaps, conceivable that some may doubt whe-
ther the failing to pray at all for the daily forgiveness of
our daily trespasses against God, or, if we pray for it, the
doing so in a spirit of ostentation, will prevent our receiv-
ing that forgiveness; though our Lord's teaching here,
both in its letter and in its spirit, seems indeed to leave
no room for such doubt.

With regard, however, to the condition of our forgive-
ness by God, which has just been quoted, it is too explicit
and too carefully guarded from misinterpretation, to admit
of any real doubt whatever. The words cannot be explained
away ; they must either be accepted or rejected. If these

CH. IV.] THK WAY OF PRAYER. 379

be Christ's words, we cannot be forgiven unless we forgive.
And since this is our daily prayer, we cannot continue in
this state of forgiveness, unless we also continue in the
temper or spirit of forgiveness. In other words, without
the continual fulfilment of this condition, we continue in a
state of unpardoned sin, which is a state, not of daily
Renewal or growth in Grace, but of enmity to God, of
falling off or apostasy from Him.

And it is chiefly in this essentially' pervading charac-
ter of forgiveness, this free course and passage of par-
doning love from God through us to our brethren, that we
recognize this portion of our Lord's teaching as being
absolutely central in the Divine order and method of our
Sanctification. From this teaching it is that we learn to
contemplate forgiveness, not only as an Act in Time, but
as a continuous or eternal act on the part of God ; and
on our own part in like manner, not merely as a single
Act of Forgiveness, but as a forgiving state of mind, a per-
manent and growing Temper of Forgiveness ; a temper
which is not exhausted but strengthened by its healthy
exercise, by the exertion of its proper acts of forgiveness,
even though they be seventy times seven, that is, unlimited
in number.

This Christian State of forgiveness in its twofold sense
of still forgiving, being still forgiven, is the central Reality
of our Christian Life, just as a state of repentant and
earnest obedience to Christ's holy Law is its underlying
condition, and a state of daily renewal in Spiritual strength
and growth, and therefore in Spiritual discernment, is
its unfailing result.

380 PHOV1XCK OP THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [ liOOK II.

Our Acts and our State of Forgiveness have more of
this truly central character, than any other act or any
other state of which we are capable.

We have already seen how the daily imparting in
simplicity to our brother, whatosever he needs and asks
from us, whatsoever we are capable of giving and he of
receiving, is Christ's appointed way of guarding in their
integrity the costly treasures which we ourselves daily
receive through Him from God ; for as it is by teaching
that we best learn, so it is by rightly imparting God's
gifts, that we most effectually receive and retain them.

And herein we already perceive the living power of
that great spiritual principle, which informs and quick-
ens this whole Christian way or method, still more mani-
festly than it does the Law and the Prophets. As our
heavenly Father does to us, first in giving, so must we do
to our earthly brother ; for this is the first Reality of a
true Communion of our own souls with God and man, and
inherits already both the greater and the lesser blessed-
ness which belong to giving and receiving.

But it is the next step in this way which brings us far
nearer to the very heart of a true and loving Communion
with both ; for he to whom much is forgiven, the same
loveth much. So that our believingly and hopefully dis-
cerning and entering into this twofold state of forgive-
ness, ensures at once our love to God, and our brother's
love to us, even as it is the continual manifestation of
God's love to us, and of our love to the brethren.

x\gain, by shewing us the way of forgiveness, Christ
has shewn us a more excellent way, in this respect also,

Cfl IV.] THE WAY 01- PRATER. 381

that to forgive is always in our power; to give, not always.
Those who are poor in everything else, may yet be rich in
forgiveness ; and thus it comes to pass, that the spirit of
forgiveness is the central spirit of our Christian Commu-
nion with God and man, the central breathing forth of
that spirit in prayer.

It is because Forgiveness is the central Idea and Ob-
ject of the Christian Prayer, even as it is the central State
and Temper of the Christian Life, that in our Lord's order
we find the Commandments or Directions which determine
the right wtay or method of Prayer, correspond more espe-
cially to this Petition for Mercy, which is the very heart
or centre, not only of the three Petitions, but of the whole
Prayer. Indeed it is the centre, outwardly and visibly, as
well as inwardly and intelligibly : inasmuch as the Address,
Our Father, which art in heaven, belongs equally, and is
equally applicable, to every clause of the whole Prayer, and
stands as it were at the same distance above all, that it may
with the same living power pervade and quicken each.

Indeed, it is the real though implicit presence of this
Address to each of the several Aspirations, Petitions, and
Ascriptions, contained in the whole Prayer, which makes
each of these to be a true and living portion of it.
And we cannot doubt that this lifting up to God the eyes
of our spirit, which is implied in our truthfully uttering to
Him the blessed words, Our Father, which art in hea-
ven, is a no less essential accompaniment of this central
Petition for Pardon, than it is of the first Aspiration,
" Hallowed be thy Name," or of the last Ascription,
" Thine is the glory for ever and ever."

382 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [ROOK 11.

And this intimate correspondence and central position
of the two great Christian correlatives of Prayer and
Forgiveness will, on due consideration, be found not a
fanciful but a most real and pregnant example of that
perfection of Outward Form, as well as of Inward Import,
which characterizes the Sermon on the Mount.

If we contemplate and discern aright our Lord's con-
summate Order, we shall perceive that it is at this special
point in His unfolding of that Holy Truth and Way
which issue in holy Life, — at this point in His creation
of the new man, that the living Body of Obedience be-
comes at once, by the inbreathing of the Prayer, instinct
throughout with the quickening Spirit of Obedience; we
shall perceive that the Prayer when once given, does, like
a spirit of life and health, immediately pervade and inspire
every distinct portion of this holy Law, and therefore
every distinct element of that obedience which this Law
enjoins and represents.

We have already, in each successive Body of Chris-
tian Law, discerned that which at once defines or deter-
mines in its true character, and guards from desecration
or declension, some corresponding holy Temper or Affec-
tion. Nor shall we find this principle fail us here. The
Body of holy Law which at once determines and guards
the Temper and Spirit of Christian Mercy, is the Law
we are now considering ; that, namely, which expounds
and enjoins the Christian Way or Method of Prayer.

In perceiving this truth, we shall again be aided by
a reference to the Law of the Will. In that final
exposition, under the Form of holy Law, of our renewed

CH. IV.] THE WAY OF PRATER. 383

Being in its highest truth, wo saw that the Divine spirit of
a merciful lovingkindness, embracing even our enemies, can
be fully and surely realized by us, only in and through
Prayer. Though our enemy may scornfully throw back
upon us every other manifestation of our feeling towards
him, though he may with contempt reject our forgiveness,
our love, our good offices, yet he cannot reject this ;
he cannot choke up within our hearts the energies of
prayer, which are flowing forth thence to God for him.

Whilst Prayer remains, there remain to us not only
the means of effectually realizing, in act and energy, the
Blessed Temper of Mercy, but the very highest and most
perfect means, the only means which are absolutely secure
from failure. May it not, then, be most truly affirmed,
that the right method of prayer is revealed and enjoined
for this special purpose, that it may determine in its
highest and most living truth, and in that truth effec-
tually guard, the Blessed Temper or Spirit of Mercy ?

Again, in the Law of the Will, prayer is enjoined
simply : for here we are still in the department of the
Truth, not of the Way, — of the thing which God's
Truth and Law, and the Truth and Law of our Being, re-
quire to be done by us. And in this part of the Divine
Order, the Way or Method of doing it aright is merely
implied, and not yet unfolded. Nor, indeed, would its
unfolding, even here, have been necessary, had our Lord's
office been simply to reveal the Truth of our Being, and
not also to restore us to that truth, and to keep us in
it when restored ; or, what is equivalent, had our spiritual
discernment and energies been already clear and strong

384 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

enough to perceive and hold to this right Way or Method
of doing God's truth. But then the very same fallen
and evil condition which made a revelation of the Truth,
or true Law of our Being, necessary, demanded, no less
imperatively, a further revelation of the right Way or
Method of realizing that truth in our own souls : inas-
much as the chiefest and most miserable evil which cha-
racterizes this our fallen state, is a deadly weakness and
impotence in the Will, or in those very energies of Spi-
ritual Life and Spiritual discernment.

To enjoin Prayer, therefore, simply and merely, with-
out further revealing and enjoining the true Method or
Way of Prayer, without guarding its exercise from those
evils which, through our actual sinfulness, must needs
otherwise hurt and destroy its life, would have been un-
availing. Whereas, with the additional revelation of this
Way, the guardianship within us of that unfolding Spirit
of Christian Mercy which is the Central Spirit and Life of
Christian Prayer, is an effectual guardianship, if only we
avail ourselves of it — is so for us, not as existing in any
ideal or ultimately possible state of spiritual Energy and
discernment, but in that state of sinful weakness and want
of spiritual insight which actually cleaves to us, and from
which we actually require to be raised and freed.

Our Lord's revelation and injunction, therefore, of
the Way or method of Prayer, gives practical complete
ness to His previous revelation of that part of the Law
of our true being which enjoins Prayer. Thus He
finally enables us to realize Prayer, by Directions which
determine for us practically what real Prayer is, and what

CH. IV. J. THE WAY OF PRATER. 38.")

it is not ; and which practically guard it for us in its
integrity, by forbidding the wrong, and enjoining the right
way of exercising it.

And here we see how the whole way is an unfolding
of its first Branch, and even of its first Injunction.

That Injunction teaches us how to do our SiKcuoavvri :
that is, generally our Righteousness, all our Duties ; spe-
cially our Justice, our primary Duties. The second In-
junction teaches us how to be Merciful, that is, to be
inwardly and Christianly Just ; the third, how to be
Merciful in Act. By Mercifulness in Act we mean the
Blessed Temper of Mercy, as it implies Justice, and as it
is embodied and realized in accomplished Acts of Mercy
or Charity, such, for example, as feeding the hungry,
clothing the naked, or visiting the sick and the afflicted,
Acts in which, when performed rightly, before God. that is,
and not before men, the Temper and inward Power of
Mercy has its practical completion, and becomes a freely
outstreaming Energy of Mercy.

Now as this is an outline of the whole Christian
way or Method, so are the Directions regarding Prayer
and Fasting the filling up of what in this outline is yet
wanting to the spirituality and efficiency of that Method.
So far as ^iKcuocrvv}], or Christian Justice, is concerned,
this Method is already completed by the first Body of
Directions, namely, by those which contemplate and re-
gulate it as a Righteousness ever growing out into the
Reality, and ever manifesting itself in the proper Acts,
of the fuller Christian Righteousness. So far as eXetjuo-
auvrj, or the Temper of Christian Mercy, in which this
25

386 PROTINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [HOOK II.

Christian Justice (ciKaioavut)) has its higher Life, is more
especially concerned, we have here in this second or central
portion of the Christian Way, several important unfold-
ings of the principle which pervades the whole of that
way. More especially do we here see that the central
and peculiarly Christian exercise of this new spirit of re-
conciled Justice and Mercy, must indeed address itself to
God, and not to men. This Christian Spirit of a -Mercy
which is also Justice, is, centrally and essentially, the
Spirit of Prayer.

A living and hopeful Faith in the fundamental Verities
of God's Wealth, and our own Poverty, — an assured
belief that God both can and will, on our asking it, com-
municate of His Wealth to our Poverty, — such a Faith
is already the beginning of Prayer ; such a belief issues
in Aspirations which want only a little of the further
teachings and communications of Christ to become direct
Petitions. Man's spirit, thus far taught of God, already
yearns for the communication to his own soul of this
Divine wealth, of this Righteousness unto Holiness ; —
yearns to be permitted and enjoined, not merely to aspire
after them, but directly and continually to pray for them.
And in this very yearning, Prayer has its living germ. But
though thus already quickened, it is not yet fully formed
within the soul. Even when we have been taught, and can
rightly utter, the first direct Petition, the first immediate
prayer to God, — that namely, for the communication to us
of our daily portion of His wealth of Righteousness, we have
not yet arrived at that which in our whole Christian Com-
munion with God, as well as in the perfect Form of Prayer,

CH.1V.] THE WAT OF PRATER. ;j,S7

is absolutely central. The Temper which in Hungering
and Thirsting after God's Righteousness in Christ, is not
only accounted Righteous, but is already blessed, and shall
progressively and finally be filled with Righteousness, — is
one thing; the Temper, which, in being Merciful shall
obtain Mercy, is another ; a more prayerful, and a more
blessed Temper, both because it is more blessed to give
than to receive, and because we cannot receive and hold
fast our portion of the central Christian Blessedness, that
of being in a state of forgiveness as from our heavenly
Father in Christ, unless we are also kept in a state of
forgiveness as towards our earthly brother in the same
Christ.

It is in this Temper of Mercy and Forgiveness that
we first livingly realize an inward obedience to the great
central Law of doing as we would be done by ; that,
through forgiving, we enjoy a fitness and capacity for the
great Christian privilege of being forgiven; that we enter
into a real and permanent state of forgiveness.

With regard to Righteousness, as implying the ful-
filment of God's Law in all its exceeding breadth, our
Blessedness does and must still consist more in the hun-
gering and thirsting and striving after this fulfilment,
than in the full satisfaction of such cravings. But with
regard to Mercy, the Blessedness is not assigned to those
who thus aspire and strive after the Temper of Mercy,
but who hate it ; not to those who hunger and thirst after
Mercifulness, but to the merciful. Indeed, that we should
inwardly possess this Temper of Mercy is necessary, if it
were only because without some real and practical Power

25—2

388 province or the intellect in religion. [rook h.

of exercising Forgiveness towards others, we can have no
living and growing Faith in the reality of God's Forgive-
ness and pardoning love towards ourselves.

We may indeed, without this, believe that God is
indifferent to sin ; that it is no real offence to Him. But
without a living germ of this Blessed Temper of Mercy
in our own souls, we cannot have a living and growing
Faith in His really and continually forgiving us our sins,
whilst we also believe that sin is the one thing which He
abhors and which provokes His utmost displeasure. Accord-
ingly, when the sinner has once realized the fundamental
Truths of his own actual sinfulness and of God's abhorrence
of all sin, the great struggle and agony of his soul hangs on
the Reality — the Possibility of Forgiveness. His awakened
conscience tells him that his sins deserve punishment. Holy
Law confirms the voice of conscience and declares further
the measure of that righteous retribution, An eye for an
eye, a tooth for a tooth. From without, indeed, there comes
a voice of mercy, but from within there is none to answer.
There, all is dark and silent : or if there be a voice, it is
the voice of despair, of a deliberate hopelessness. You
have taught me, and I feel inwardly that God is just and
that my sins justly deserve punishment ; you have taught
me, and I feel inwardly, that it is the merciful who shall
receive mercy. But I am not merciful, and as I have
shewn no mercy, so neither can I receive any.

Now it is the answering this voice of despair, the
stilling this cry of anguish, which is at once the central
difficulty and the central glory of Christianity. Nor is the
difficulty overcome, nor the glory complete, even when an

' "• IV.] THE WAY OF PRATER. 389

answer has been once for all satisfactorily given, as in
Christ it is given, to the accusing conscience. That which is
the central difficulty in the order of our Justification, is also
the central difficulty in the order of our Sanctification ;
and — were it not that a living faith in the Forgiveness
of sins through that one great Act of Redemption, Atone-
ment and Remission, which we have in the Perfect Sacrifice
of Christ, heightens our actual discernment and sense of
the Mercy of God, even more than it heightens our actual
discernment and sense of the exceeding sinfulness and hate-
fulness to God of our sins, — were it not for this, our be-
lieving in FORGIVENESS AS A STATE, AS OUR COVENANTED

Christian State, would be even more difficult than our
believing in the remission of sins committed before our en-
hance into that covenant by baptism, which some seem to
regard as the whole remission vouchsafed to us in Christ.
When however, through Faith in that redeeming and
atoning Act, we are once brought within the order and
method of our Sanctification, we become capable of all
those affections of holy Love, whereof Mercy is the per-
vading spirit. We become capable of loving Him, of loving
and shewing mercy to the brethren in Him, and as His
members, because we now believe and know that He first
loved us and shewed mercy to us while we were yet in our
sins. And it is chiefly through this heightened Power and
Energy of Mercy that our Energy of Faith also is height-
ened and becomes a more living and hopeful Energy.
Hence, although we now discover more and more clearly
from day to day both the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and
the exceeding falsehood and self-deceit of saying thai we

390 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

sin not ; yet our Faith in God's Mercy and our inward
sense of it are ever unfolding themselves more rapidly even
than our consciousness of sin. And thus, it is that, through
Christ who strengthens us, we are still more than con-
querors : we become and remain of power to believe in
Forgiveness as a State, as the covenanted State and
condition of our Christian life, — to believe in God's
Daily Forgiveness granted to our Daily Prayer, for our
Daily trespasses and sins.

Of such an ever-growing and still victorious Faith in
God's Mercy this central utterance of the Christian Prayer
is the ordained voice. And accordingly, — since this living
Faith, in the Reality of Daily Forgiveness from God, is an
essential element in our daily renewal or Sanctification,
and involves in itself a grounded Faith in the fulness, per-
fection, and sufficiency of the great Redeeming and
Atoning Act whereby Forgiveness for the sins of the
whole world was once for all wrought out, — we find that
two distinct forms of difficulty and unbelief beset this great
central Petition for Pardon, to weaken our faith in its
efficacy, and to drag us backward from its fervent and
effectual utterance. One of these forms of unbelief besets
it as it is the central voice and prayer of a Justifying,
the other as it is the central voice and prayer of a Sanc-
tifying, Faith.

And even of those who desire to hold most firmly to that
great fundamental doctrine of Justification by Faith, which
alone is of power to sustain the whole fabric of our hope
towards God, some have felt this first hinderance to be
almost insuperable. How, they say, can that Forgiveness be

CH. IV THE WAY OF PRAYER. 391

full and free, and wrought out for all, which still remains
a thing to be daily prayed for; a thing which in the \<t\
prayer we daily offer up for it, we ourselves are com-
pelled to clog and limit in its freedom and universality
by the inseparable words, As we forgive them that tres-
pass against us ? Now if that Justification which is by
Faith has and must have for its living centre in our own
souls a firm belief in the glorious Reality, that Forgive-
ness and Reconciliation with God have been wrought out
for us by Christ ; and if this Faith burns strongly and
brightly, or grows dark and feeble within us, just as the
Spirit of Mercy and Forgiveness in our own souls waxes
or wanes ; if, which is most true, the Temper of Mercy be
the Temper which can believe in Mercy, then even our
Forgiveness op Justification is not clogged and hindered,
but aided and realized by this condition ; then are we not
enslaved, but emancipated by it ; then does this condition
not thrust us forth from, but retain us in, our State of
Justification.

But, again, others have more especially felt the other
branch of this difficulty. The eye of their Faith has fixed
itself so firmly on the Remission of sins as connected with
Baptism, on the Forgiveness wrought out for us by Christ
as consigned in that Sacrament to the individual soul, that
they have not with the same clearness and power dis-
cerned and realized that Sacrament as being also, what
nevertheless it assuredly is, the commencement, namely,
and bringing in of a state of forgiveness. And through
this unbelief in forgiveness as our covenanted Christian
State, not only has their daily utterance of this central

392 PROVINCE OF THK INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [ROOK II.

Petition for it partaken of a perplexing and unreal cha-
racter, but they have been in some instances led to conclu-
sions regarding post-baptismal sin, which though set forth
as tending to purity of life, cannot but really lead men to
despair of all acceptance with God. For if indeed there
remain no remission for post-baptismal sin, can any one
baptized Christian be at this moment in a State of For-
giveness : that is, in a state of Grace or acceptance with
God ? Or can any one, holding this belief regarding post-
baptismal sin, think that he is in such a state, without
saying in his heart that he has no sin ;. that is, without
inward untruth and self-deception ?

From both forms of error we are delivered by Christ
who is the Way we must walk in, as well as the Door we
must enter by; who teaches us not only the Absolute Truth
of God's Order, as manifested in the Law of holy Being,
but the effectual Method of so leading us into that Order
that we may remain in it ; of so realizing that Law in and
for our own souls that it may become the Law of our hearts
and lives, and that thus we may ourselves become holy.

When we affirm that this Reality of Forgiveness is even
more livingly central in the order of our Sanctification
than in the order of our Justification, we would be under-
stood as affirming further, that in both these orders this
Reality of Forgiveness implies a no less essential ante-
cedent Reality. In the order of Justification, this ante-
cedent Reality is the Perfect Righteousness once for all
brought in by Christ. In the order of Sanctification, this
antecedent Reality is the fitting portion of that Righteous-
ness which we receive daily into our own souls in answer to

CH. IV.] THE WAY OP I'HAYKK. .'!!».'>

the first Petition, ''Give us this day our daily bread.1'' In
the order of Justification, were it not for this Perfect Right-
eousness once for all brought in by Christ, there could be
no Forgiveness, and so no Faith in it. And it is only in
proportion to our living Faith in that Perfect Righteous-
ness, AS HAVING BEEN ACTUALLY BROUGHT IN BY CHRIST, and

moreover as including in its perfection a real communi-

CABLENESS TO US, TO EACH LIVING CHRISTIAN MAN HERE ON

earth — it is, I say, only according to the proportion in
which we have such a Faith in the Righteousness once for
all brought in by Christ, that we can have a living Faith in
the Forgiveness which was also at the same time once for
all brought in by Him. For to believe in Forgiveness,
independently of the bringing in by Christ of this Perfect
and really Communicable Righteousness, is to believe in
no assured and intelligible Christian Verity, but in an
unauthorized and incomprehensible fiction of our own
minds. God's Will to us-ward is our Sanctification and
Blessedness ; but as he has given us to be Persons and
not Things, so he deals with us as Persons, and forces not
our Will. Everything, indeed, short of this He has done
to draw us back to Him. More especially has He been
careful to remove this great central obstacle, the sense of
unforgiven sin, which, of all others, most effectually sepa-
rates between us and Him. He has, had we but faith
and spiritual insight to discern this fully, removed it at
once and for ever at the Incarnation, by taking the Man-
hood into God, by sending forth the eternal Word, which
was with God and which was God, to be made flesh and
to dwell among us. For a more perfect communication of

394 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

the Divine Righteousness to man, than was here accom-
plished, cannot even be imagined. And if the Divine
Righteousness be indeed communicable to man, and if the
obstacle to man's actual reception of it, next in import-
ance to want of Faith in any such communicableness, be
that sense of our own inherent sinfulness, of our actual
and unnumbered transgressions, which makes us feel our
reception of this Righteousness into our own souls to be
impossible, then we have at once a broad, a solid and clearly
discernible ground for the remission of sins. They are
remitted, and we are to have Faith in their remission, in
order that this otherwise insuperable barrier of conscious
sin and sinfulness being removed, the Divine Righteousness
may begin and continue to flow freely into our souls, which it
cannot do without this Remission, and without our Faith in
it. And that the eyes of our Faith and spiritual discernment
might not be dazzled by gazing on Christ alone, in whom
this great Reality of the Divine Righteousness actually
brought in, actually grafted into the whole Humanity, is
most gloriously manifested, we are further taught by the
example of Apostles, Saints, and Martyrs ; especially we
are taught at Pentecost, how the Divine Righteousness is
further communicable to men like ourselves, and how in
us, as in them, Christ may be made at once righteousness
and forgiveness — can be made Forgiveness, because he is
made Righteousness.

And if such be indeed the Form in which this central
truth manifests itself in the order of our Justification, very
nearly allied, yet very distinct from this, is the Form
in which the same truth manifests itself in the order of

CH. IV.] THE WAY OF PRAYER. 'A'J't

our daily renewal or Sanctification. In this order, our
daily prayer for fitting portions of the Divine and, in
Christ, actually communicable Righteousness, "Give us
this day our daily bread," is answered by the actual com-
munication to us of such portions. And here also the
daily and actual communication to us of God's Righteous-
ness in Christ is the living ground of the daily and actual
communication to us of God's Forgiveness in Christ. It is
so really, and it is so intelligibly. For what is the meaning
or value for us of Daily Forgiveness, if in spite of it we
are to remain in, or to relapse into, our former or a
worse than our former state of sin ; that is, into our
former or a worse than our former state and degree of
alienation from God, and essential misery in ourselves?
It is only as implying daily accessions of this Righteous-
ness, in other words, Growth in grace, daily renewal from
strength to strength, that daily Forgiveness has for us its
real import.

And now we begin, in this central portion of our
task, to perceive how the holy Law of our Being, and the
holy Realities and Energies of our Being, act and react on
each other. For what indeed is this Daily Bread which
we receive as at once an answer to our Daily Prayer, and
a reward of our Daily Obedience, even as we work for and
earn, as well as pray for, the daily bread of our natural
life ? This most real bread of our Life is, as we have seen,
the doing of God's Will ; and our daily blessedness con-
sists in our being daily filled to the full measure of our
capacity with this heavenly and unsating food. We have
seen also in what this doing of God's Will consists.

396 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [eOOK II.

It is comprized in two words, Righteousness and Mercy.
It is most properly and fully so comprized ; for those
Realities of SiKaioavvrj and eXe^jaoavvrj, inward and out-
ward, in feeling and in act, are still distinct Realities,
though in Christ they are at one with each other, and
though they may even be truly contemplated as actually
one ; for Christian Righteousness or Justice is, in its
highest reality, Mercy.

Here then, at length, the Spirit of Obedience be-
comes one with the Spirit of Prayer. In our new Power
and Energy of shewing mercy we have sure witness that
this Righteousness of Christ, this Righteousness unto
Holiness, not only may be, but is actually being com-
municated to our own souls. And thus it is that our
daily prayer for pardon receives a living import, which
otherwise it could never have. If we be not daily par-
doned, the daily communication and flowing forth from
God into our own souls of this Righteousness of Christ,
must cease. For unpardoned sin cuts off this communi-
cation ; and how can we have pardon, except we repent
and pray to God for it? and who amongst us sins not
daily, whatever be his Christian stature, or state of
Christian growth ? Daily forgiveness then, so far from
becoming less real and less necessary, because we are grow-
ing in Grace, becomes more so : it becomes now a thing
full of hope, full of comfort. We see that by it an
obstacle is removed which would otherwise cut off and
prevent God's Communion with us, our Communion with
Him. We see that the hinderance thus done away
with, is the last which can fatally oppose itself to the

OH. IV.] THE WAY OP PRAYER. 397

actual coming, day by day, and in daily increasing mea-
sures, of God's kingdom in our hearts. And even in this
discernment we have the earnest of consolation. But in
so far as we realize such a discernment by living and pray-
ing in the spirit of this Petition for Pardon, we are actually
comforted; our mourning is indeed turned into joy, and we
receive of that conscious Blessedness which the world can
neither give nor take away.

It does not belong to our present argument to notice
more than incidentally the witness which the Church bears,
and has ever borne, whether in her Creeds or in her Litur-
gies, to the importance at once and the difficulty of a
living Faith in the forgiveness of sins, specially in this
Daily or Continual Remission. By placing the prayer for
daily pardon, and the seal and assurance of daily pardon,
before all her Acts of direct Communion with God, our
own Church distinctly expresses her conviction, that with-
out continual Daily Forgiveness, and continual Faith in it,
there can be no continued and effectual Communion with
God. And as she thus witnesses that Prayer can be
realized only in the Faith that our daily trespasses are
daily forgiven us by God in Christ, so does Christ Himself
witness that we cannot be and remain in this State of
Forgiveness and Communion with God, unless we also live
in the Temper and Exercise of Forgiveness and Communion
with our brethren.

The Directions, therefore, which concern the way of
Prayer may well be that portion of holy Law which is
specially ordained to determine and guard in its Chris-
tian reality the Blessed Temper of Mercy. Nor need the

398 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [rOOK II.

consideration of this way now detain us long : for though
this be indeed the true place in our Lord's order for the
giving and the unfolding of Prayer, we have been led to
deviate in this one instance from His perfect order, and to
consider the Prayer immediately after the Beatitudes,
(B. i. c. 4). Not that we were then unconscious of the
absolute perfection of His own order, or had failed to per-
ceive that the Temper of Christian Prayer and the Tem-
per of Christian Mercy and Forgiveness must be brought
in together ; that only at this point could the living Body
of Obedience receive into itself without measure the quick-
ening Spirit of Prayer. Our motive for this deviation was
to avoid certain difficulties of exposition, incidental to a
rigorous following out of the more perfect order ; inasmuch
as the relations between each Blessed Temper and its
proper voice in Prayer are more immediately discernible
than the relations between each Blessed Temper and its
proper guardian Law. We must, however, here repeat that
when, with the Spirit and Power of Forgiveness, Prayer is
brought in and unfolded, it at once gives its own Spiritual
Life to every distinct element of our entire Christian obe-
dience. It hallows as well as quickens that obedience
throughout, not merely in this central Power of Forgive-
ness, but in all that generates this blessed Power within
our hearts, and in all that freely proceeds from it.

For this Spirit of Christian Prayer the Body of Obe-
dience has been long preparing ; by this Spirit of Christian
Prayer, when once breathed into it, that Body of Obedience
becomes a Spiritual Body, and is daily renewed from strength
to strength into a freer and more glorious Obedience.

CH. IV. J THE WAV 01? PRATER. 3!>!)

Prayer then we may contemplate as ordained to be
the especial means of realizing in our own souls both the
State and the Temper of Forgiveness or of Mercy. And
thus that portion of Holy Law which sets forth the true
Way or Method of Prayer, determines and guards in its
integrity the inward Reality of Mercy, the inward Blessed-
ness of the Merciful. And as the way of Christ is in all
respects perfect, Prayer is here guarded in its integrity
as the inmost Reality of Merciful Affections. And this
guardianship is effected by the second Body of Directions
in the Christian way, even as the first guards the Blessi d
Temper wrhich Hungers and Thirsts after Righteousness ;
and as the third and last is ordained, as we shall presently
find, to guard that resulting Purity of Heart which issues
in free Energies, in complete and genuine Acts of merciful
lovingkindness.

Let us now observe in what tins central Christian
way or Method of Prayer as here laid down by our Lord,
is distinguished from the way of Righteousness on the
one hand, and from that of Fasting on the other.

The first of these Methods is, as we have seen,
guarded from falsehood, at each of the three great avenues
by which good and evil enter into and proceed out of
our hearts. By the first Law or Body of Directions
belonging to Christ's way, our hungering and thirst-
ing after Righteousness, our strivings after doing Justice
and loving Mercy, our communings with God in man and
with man in God, are shielded and kept from desecration,
with reference to the eye that seeth, the ear that heareth,
and the hand that doeth, whether it be good or whether

400 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [bOOK II.

it be evil. For by each of these avenues the praise of
men or the fear of men can enter in, to defile and corrupt
the single eye to God's glory, the ear which heareth Him
only, the hand which, whether it eschews evil or ensues
good, does it to Him. And thus it is plain that our entire
Communion with God in man and with man in God, in
this kind, is fully and effectually guarded. But with
respect to Prayer, there is, if we consider it well, no place,
properly speaking, for this third and last form of Com-
munion, or, to speak more truly, this last Communion
of the perfected Jet is absorbed and glorified in the two
previous Communions of devout contemplation and prayer-
ful utterance. In Prayer, that is, the Communion we
hold with God, and with man in God, is already perfected,
under the two Forms of sight and hearing, and does,
by its nature, admit of no other Form. Accordingly
Prayer is by our Lord here guarded in those two Forms
only.

Since, however, tins second form of Communion is not
like that by sight or intuition, through a single avenue,
but needs the portals both of ear and lips for its goings
out and comings in, both these portals must be guarded
and kept ; and so soon as this also is done, the full and
effectual guardianship of Prayer is accomplished.

We are not to pray that we may be seen of men, but
that we may be seen of God only. We are not in prayer
to look to men, but to look to God only. Again, we are
not to pray that we may be heard of men, or receive our
answer of reward from men, but that we may be heard
and answered of God only. We are not in praying to

CH. IV.] TIIE WAY OF PRAYER. 401

speak in many words, as to men who are ignorant of our
wants, but in few, as to God who knows them.

And then the determination and guardianship both of
our prayerful contemplation of God and of our prayerful
utterance to Him is completed by the delivery to us of
a Form of Prayer, which, if rightly discerned and used,
at once and effectually excludes the wrong by realizing
the right way of Prayer, not only with regard to men-
pleasing, but also and chiefly with regard to (SaTroKoyia^
or vain repetition, and thus actually and permanently
endows us with the second great Reality of the Christian
way, the blessed Reality, that is, of a true Communion
by Prayer with our heavenly Father, and with our earthly
brethren in Christ.

This latter and more human element of a prayerful
Communion in Christ with our heavenly Father we have
not thought it necessary to insist on at any length, either
here or in our exposition of the Prayer. (Book i. c. 4.)
It is indeed too evidently implied in the whole Prayer,
and too universally acknowledged, to require formal argu-
ment in a treatise like the present. The great Family
which on earth is named after Christ at once confesses
and realizes the Verity that it is a family of brethren
dwelling together in unity with itself and with its hea-
venly members, when it utters with one voice the Address,
Our Father, which art in Heaven, and the succeeding
Aspirations, Petitions, and Ascriptions, which are, each
of them, at once from all and for all, not from one or for
one. To say, My Father, which art in Heaven, give me
this day my daily bread, would be already an act of
26

402 PROVINCE OK THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION j HOOK II.

self-insulation, and a breach of the Bond and Covenant of
that great Brotherhood and Sonship we have in Christ.

Having already (Book i. c. 4,) considered the seve-
ral clauses of the Prayer in themselves, and in their
relations as well to each other as to the Blessed Tempers
to which they give prayerful utterance, we may not, in
speaking of the right way or method of praying, repeat
or enlarge what has been said on the actual substance
and import of Prayer. We shall therefore conclude this
portion of our subject with a few remarks as to the Form
in which these Directions concerning Prayer are given
by our Lord.

We have seen that, in the Way of Alms, the Form
of our Lord's Directions is, in one respect, identical with
the Form of His Commandments as given in each of the
distinct Bodies of Holy Law which together make up The
Truth, or True Law of our Being : that is, there are first
three Negative Directions, and then a concluding Positive
Direction, giving its own completeness and reality to those
also which precede it.

With regard to the Form of our Lord's Directions
in this second Portion of the whole way, namely, the
Way of Prayer, we have already seen that the last Mean
or Form of Communion (that of the completed Act) is
as it were absorbed in the two preceding Means or Forms
of devout Contemplation and Prayerful Utterance ; and
since here the negative Direction which regards seeing
and being seen of men and of God, requires a distinct and
separate positive Direction, no less than does the negative
Direction which regards rightly speaking, that we may be

CH. IV.] THE WAV OF PRAYER.

rightly heard, the Form of this second or central Body
of Directions with regard to Prayer i.s varied accordingly.
That is, the Right way of looking to God when we pray,
that we may be seen of Him, is given immediately after
the Wrong way of looking to men when we pray, that
we may be seen of them. And in like manner, the Right
way of speaking to God, when we pray, that we may
be heard of Him, closely follows, that it may exclude and
replace the Wrong way of speaking to men, that we may
be heard of them.

•2ii — J.

Chapter V.
THE WAY OF FASTING.

We may now therefore pass onward, and briefly consider
the Christian Way in its last portion; that, namely, which
regards Fasting. Nor shall we here pause to contemplate
the various Ideas of Fasting inconsistent with this teach-
ing of our Lord which may have been advocated at
different periods of the Church's Life ; but rather endea-
vour to discern that Idea of this Form or mean of Com-
munion with God which is really set forth in our Lord's
way or method of Fasting ; and which is consistent with
the two preceding portions of the whole Christian Method,
the way of Alms, namely, and the way of Prayer.

Now we have already observed that the first Body
of Directions in this Christian way (that, namely, which
corresponds to the Hungering and Thirsting after Right-
eousness), points out briefly the whole of that way. And
we shall perhaps see the main drift of this last part of
the unfolded way more clearly, by referring it, even at
the expense of some repetition, to that first outline of the
whole. We have there, both in their distinctness and in
their unity, Directions with regard to our Hungering and
Thirsting after Justice and Mercy, and with regard to our
Acts of Justice and Mercy. Now the lower realities of
our natural Life which are here employed by Christ to set
forth the higher realities of our Spiritual Life, might
themselves suffice to shew us that something more is

CH. V.] THE WAY OK PASTING. 405

required in order to our rightly receiving the food of
either, than the hungering and thirsting for it. We may
hunger and thirst for such kinds or quantities of either
food as befit not our actual state, whether bodily or spiri-
tual, or both ; for though perfectly pure and confirmed
bodily health is accompanied by a healthy taste as to
quality, and a healthy appetite as to quantity, no one
ever realizes this state so completely as will enable him
rightly and safely to forego all restrictions on his tastes
and appetite. He still finds some rules or principles of
diet and of temperance necessary, that he may be ever
master of himself and of all his faculties, bodily, intel-
lectual, and spiritual.

And in proportion as such a rule or principle is better
suited to his constitution, and more firmly followed out in
practice, by the habitually receiving what is good, and
refraining from what is bad, for his actual bodily con-
dition, in the same proportion does his health become
purer and more confirmed ; in the same proportion does
his rule of living become a principle of living, — a principle
which at length is almost unconsciously exercised ; an
immediate discernment or sense of what in this matter is
right or wrong for him ; an immediate rejection of the
wrong, and reception of the right. Now the very lan-
guage we have here used to express the truths of our
bodily well-being, may be used, with little or no variation,
to express the truths of our spiritual, that is, of our real
or highest well-being.

That this is so we shall readily conceive. For, first, it
may not be doubted that in our real and enduring state of

406 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

Being, as that Being has been more than restored to us in
Christ, the Body and the Spirit are no longer at twain, but
at one with each other. And thus not only does the lan-
guage of our outward, express the truths of our inward
Being, but by rightly receiving the food of our natural Life,
our whole Life on earth, natural and spiritual, is sustained
and nourished.

Moreover, even as our natural, so, and by analogous
means, are our spiritual senses or organs of perception
(aladtiTtifjia) exercised to discern good and evil. Only since
our Spiritual Being never on earth arrives at confirmed
manhood, at the full energy and piercing insight of clear
and perfect health, we can never outgrow the necessity for
rules and directions as to the food which our spiritual
health requires us to accept or to reject, whether this
food be presented to us by God under the form of natural
or of spiritual sustenance.

Without such further Directions whereby we may
rightly keep ourselves, and be rightly kept from evil, the
former Directions which regard the rightly hungering and
thirsting after good, whether under the form of Justice or of
Mercy, or of both as in Christ reconciled and at one, would
be practically incomplete. We know already, from our con-
templation of that threefold Body of holy Law wherein
the truth of our Being is set forth, how large a por-
tion of Right consists in the refraining from Wrong ; and
as we advance in our obedience to that Law, or in the
Christian Life, we perceive that this province of refraining
increases rather than diminishes; that it embraces not
merely the refraining from positive evil, but from that.

CH. V.] THE WAY OF FASTING. 10/

which is in itself good and right, when a higher good .ni<l
a nobler right, when our allegiance to Christ demands
it. Thus, for example, though our love and duty to
parents is in itself, or in Christ's order, good and right,
yet it must give way when our love and duty to Christ is
in question. Whenever the two are incompatible, we must
refrain our souls from the more earthly affection, and
keep them low, that we may not be found wanting to the
claims of the more heavenly. The province of Christian
Fasting is indeed for each individual Christian not less
extensive than the province of Self-denial. Without some
exertion of our Spiritual Energy and Discernment in re-
fraining, no single Act of our Christian duty can be accom-
plished. Our sense of right and our zeal for it may
already be strong, our kindly feelings may flow forth
freely ; but it is more especially when we come to realize
these in Act, that this province of Refraining assumes its
real and great importance.

Accordingly, as Christ's way is a living way, not a dead
system, the very Power of Discernment we require for
this purpose is continually proceeding from a faithful self-
subordination to those Directions regarding the way which
we have already considered. It is by such hungering
and thirsting after Righteousness, by such cherishing and
exercising the Temper of Mercy, by such giving Alms of
what we possess, that our spiritual senses are thus sharp-
ened to discern and ensue good, to discern and eschew evil.

For now under Christ's discipline we begin to per-
ceive, even of our own selves, that the real and sustaining
food of our whole Being, in body and soul from day to

408 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

day, is the willing and earnest fulfilment of each day's
Christian duties, and that if these be done before God,
not before men, in the Christian spirit of Mercy and of
Prayer, we have already entered into a state of growing
and enduring Blessedness, and are passed from death unto
life. We begin to perceive that all we have left to pray for
is the being kept in this state ; and we begin to feel that
God's Holy Spirit is interceding for and striving together
with our spirit, that we may not be led into temptation,
but delivered from evil ; inasmuch as the yielding to tempt-
ation, the admission of evil, mars and interrupts this
Divine work of our daily renewal in the spirit of our
minds, and with it our state of growing Blessedness and
Purity of Heart. We begin to feel within us that quicken-
ing hope in the strength of which we purify ourselves even
as He is pure, and further, to perceive how the earnest
and unceasing Prayer that we may be thus kept by our
heavenly Father, is not only intimately connected with this
Blessedness of the Pure in Heart, and with all our strivings
after it, but is itself both the worthiest expression of those
strivings, and the fullest realizing of that Blessedness
whereof we are on earth capable.

Just as Prayer to God for our enemies is, if it be
indeed truthful and earnest, the most real exercise of a
merciful and forgiving spirit, so is the fervent and dis-
cerning utterance of this Prayer for his continual guard-
ianship, that very act and energy of our spirit wherein a
growing Purity of Heart most especially exercises and
strengthens itself.

To whatever extent we live and pray in the spirit of

CH. V.] THE WAY OF FASTING. 4(>!)

this last Petition, Lead us not into temptation, hut deliver
us from evil, to the very same extent does this Christian
Purity of Heart unfold itself within us ; to the same extent
shall we be enabled to discern and enter into the true spirit
and exercise of Christian Fasting. Thus shall we be led
to perceive both what it is in itself, and what is the right
way or method of exercising it ; that even as man must
live not by bread alone, but by every word and thing that
proceedeth out of the mouth of God ; so must he fast, not
from bread alone, but from every word and thing that
proceedeth not out of the mouth of God ; that as his
daily food is to do the Will of his heavenly Father, so
his daily fasting is to abstain, to the uttermost and in all
things, from violating that Will.

Thus it is that the way of Fasting completes the way
of Alms and Prayer, that is, of Christian Justice and
Christian Mercy, and gives to the whole Christian way
the really practical character which it would otherwise
want. Moreover, the way of Fasting, and the Directions
belonging to it, are in principle essentially the same as
the way of Alms and the way of Prayer, and the
Directions belonging to these ; though in the manifestation
of that principle there is here also a diversity. The prin-
ciple is still, that our Fasting is to be before God and not
before men. The difference in its manifestation arises
immediately and intelligibly out of the different nature of
the case. In order to our journeying securely in the way
of Righteousness unto Holiness, we have found that a
threefold guardianship is necessary. First, our Christian
sense of Right, our Christian Justice, must be guarded by

410 PROVINCE 01? THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

that single eye to the real glory flowing forth from God,
which alone can preserve it from the fatal desecration of
vain-glory, from the final apostasy of looking to men only,
for its object and reward. Next, the truthful affections
and the truthful words of Christian Mercy, as they are
ever welling forth from this implanted and growing sense
of Christian Justice, in tender compassion for our bre-
thren in Christ, and for our own souls, as now no longer
our own but His, and in prayer to God for their forgive-
ness and acceptance in the same Christ, as well as for
our own, must in like manner be guarded, not indeed
entirely from the loving observation of our Christian bre-
thren, or even from the knowledge of those that are yet
without, for they must see that we love one another, and
can forgive our enemies, that they also may glorify our
Father which is in heaven ; but from all reference to the
applause of men as the object for which we are to cherish
the spirit of Mercy in our hearts, or to give utterance to
that spirit in our Prayers and in our Lives.

For, lastly, these feelings, which are at once truthful
and merciful, these blessed inward Realities of the daily
renewed and purified Affections, have yet another Form
wherein they express themselves, besides those of kind For-
giveness and of fervent Prayer. They express themselves
fully and finally in acts, which imply indeed both an
indwelling sense of Christian Justice and an active and
prayerful spirit of Christian Forgiveness, but which are yet
more and other than the merely feeling compassion, or the
merely praying for mercy towards others ; — in Acts which
set a final seal on the reality and truthfulness of these

CH. V

.] THE WAY OK FASTING. 4l 1

Christian A flections and Prayers ; in Acts of Christian
Justice and Mercy done in the spirit of Prayer, done,
that is, to God in Christ and not to men, whether these
be feeding the hungry with such bread, both natural and
Spiritual, as they can receive and we can give, or clothing
the naked with such clothing as will warm them, and
cover the shame of their nakedness, or visiting and
comforting the sick, whether in body or soul ; — or what-
ever other good works there be in which the reconciliation
of Justice with Mercy, of oucaioavvij with ekeijuoavi'ii, is
finally consummated in Act and Energy.

So soon as, in addition to His previous guardianship,
our Lord has fenced round and defended these truest and
most comprehensive expressions of that Mercy (eXer/nu-
avvn), which for Christians is also Justice (ciicaioauvr)),
from the contaminating breath of human applause, and so
from the plague-spot of hypocrisy, He has already shewn
us summarily the whole Christian Way or Method, in each
of its three essential Branches. Only in order that we
might see clearly that without the Spirit of Prayer there
can be no real or Christian Spirit of Mercy, He unfolds
the more summary Directions regarding Mercy, that fair
stem of the root of Righteousness, into the fuller and
more special Directions regarding Prayer, in which alone
this Blessed Temper of Mercy can be fully realized. And.
in doing this, he guards Prayer from desecration as a
kind of Communion with God and with man in God.
which can by its very nature, have reference to two only
of those channels or means through which all Communion
must take place, to seeix<;, namely, and to h easing. For if

412 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [l300K II.

our prayers be so guarded by Christ, that in praying we
indeed look to God alone, not to men, and speak to God
alone and not to men ; then is this special Form of our
Communion fully and effectually guarded, inasmuch as this
devout and prayerful beholding of God, this lifting up the
eyes of our body and of our spirit to Him, this earnestly
and discerningly addressing to Him the words He endows
us with, constitutes the whole of Prayer, the Completed
Act of that Communion which is by Prayer.

Again, when our Lord comes to unfold more fully
His Method or Way, as to the completed act of Christian
Justice and Mercy, we perceive at once that this further
unfolding has the same consummate perfection both in Form
and Import. If we take the analogy, which He through-
out presents, of natural food, we see at once that a healthy
appetite for meat and drink, even though we are furnished
with abundance of both, is not sufficient for our continu-
ance in health and growth and strength. There is even
here another essentially distinct principle which must be
taken account of, and which, if neglected, will be not less
surely the ruin of our bodily well-being, than a want of
appetite or a scarcity of food : I mean, the principle of
refraining, — whether it be from what is unwholesome in
its own nature, or in its fitness for our actual state, or in
regard to the measures and portions of it which we can
rightly receive, digest, and assimilate. Unless we take
practical account of this additional principle, neither the
abundance of food, nor the keen appetite for it wherewith
(rod has blessed us, will avail for our continued health and
growth, (hi the contrary, they will both become tempt-

OH. V.] THE WAY OF FASTING. H3

ations and incentives, if not to surfeiting and drunken-
ness, yet to habitual and harmful excess ; and so occasions
of manifold diseases, and of various kinds of suffering and
death. And not only is this so in our spiritual as well as
in our natural life, but it is here more especially that we
observe the wonderful harmony and unity which in the
highest reality subsist between our inward and spiritual,
and our outward and visible, life. Such indeed is the
essential and indestructible character of this unity between
the body and the spirit of man, as now having its living
root in the Incarnation of our Lord, that the continual
exercise of self-restraint and self-denial over our natural
appetites is absolutely necessary to the health and well-
being, not only of our natural, but also of our spiritual
life. And further, as we must ever refrain and keep our-
selves low, lest our heart be made fat and our spirit
dimmed as well as our body disordered, by excess or
intemperance in meats and drinks, so is a further self-
restraint necessary to our truly and rightly receiving each
and every portion of that meat which consists in the
doing our Father's Will.

It is doubtless already much that we should have a
vehement desire to be just, and that the Temper of Mercy
and Forgiveness should be strong within us ; but it is not
all. Our earnest aspirations and strivings to do right
must shape themselves according to the rules and mea-
sures of God's holy Law. Our Mercy must flow forth on
others, even as His Mercy on us, through the channels
which He has formed for it, or it will run to waste, water-
ing the desert, and leaving the hearts of our brethren

414 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

and our own hearts barren. To this end we must sted-
fastly refrain from all cravings after a false righteous-
ness or a false mercy, whatever be the nature or degree
of the falsehood which besets them, whether it be self-
righteousness or ostentatious kindness, or whether it be
the casting of pearls before swine, and giving that which
is holy to the dogs, conferring good things, that is, of
whatever kind, which those who receive are incapable
of receiving aright, but which must turn to the perma-
nent and real injury both of giver and receiver.

This last Direction, indeed, though presenting a prin-
ciple of the utmost comprehensiveness and importance, and
though without it the Law of Justice and Mercy, whether
for the giver or the receiver, is practically as well as ideally
and essentially incomplete, belongs, as will be found, to
another distinct and final Body of Law, begiiming with
the injunction, " Judge not, that ye be not judged," and
continuing to the end of the Sermon. The consideration
of this last and highest Form of Law, which may be
generally designated as the Law of spiritual discern-
ment, we have deferred, consistently with our Lord's order,
until the whole of the more immediately practical portion
of holy Law has been brought under review. But in
proportion as we advance in our discernment of the Truth
and of the Way, as these are expressed in holy Law, —
of their mutual bearings, and of their spirit and scope as
a whole ; in the same proportion shall we become ca-
pable of perceiving how each Injunction of this absolutely
final Law of spiritual discernment gives completeness
and perfection to some definite portion of the larger

CH. V.] THE WAY OK FASTING. 4 1 ~>

Body of Law which in our Lord's consummate order pre-
cedes it.

Thus, for example, those who have entered into what
has been already set forth, are now in a condition to per-
ceive of themselves and at once, the fitness and indeed the
absolute practical necessity of some explanatory and limiting
addition to the truthful Law of giving to those who ask
of us, and to the right Way of doing this, which is here
laid down. For if there were none such, we might be
required on Christ's authority to give men, because they
ask it of us, the means of destroying at once themselves
and their benefactors. We might be required to give to
the spendthrift, who has rebelled against his parents, the
means of continuing in his wilful disobedience, and impe-
nitent sin — the means of strengthening himself in his evil
way ; and so through this false mercy we might bring final
ruin both on ourselves and him. Accordingly we find that
such a Law has its place in our Lord's legislation, and
that, like every other Law or sentence contained in the
whole Sermon on the Mount, it strikes at once on the
head of the evil it is ordained to slay: Give not that

WHICH IS HOLY UNTO THE DOGS; NEITHER CAST YE YOUR
PEARLS BEFORE SW/NE, LEST THEY TRAMPLE THEM UNDER THEIR
FEET, AND TURN AGAIN AND REND YOU. In these WOrds

we have at once an effectual limitation and completion
of the general Laws previously laid down of giving, and
of rightly giving ; a limitation which, however brief, will
be found to comprehend all that is really necessary for
our practical guidance, and that remains undetermined by
those former Laws. That this final Injunction, as to rightly

tl6 PROVINCE or THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [HOOK II.

giving, is more especially a Law of spiritual discernment,
we perceive in its setting forth chiefly the Spiritual or
real grounds of what we are to do and leave undone,
rather than the things themselves which are to be done,
or even the right method of doing them. That good
thing, whether natural or spiritual, which will be tram-
pled into the mire with swinish hoof, which will be basely
and foully abused to the purposes of an evil and godless
life, we are not to give; — a Law which implies the
actual existence in us of some power of spiritual discern-
ment, and teaches us to unfold and strengthen, by rightly
exercising it.

We must use our discretion as to what will or will
not be so abused ; our best, that is, our most charitable
and hopeful discretion no doubt, but still our discretion,
our Christian and Spiritual Insight And here again the
living character of this Law will avail us. If we give that
which, in God*s holy order, is unfit for the receiver, that
which will be really and permanently injurious to him, we
may be quite sure that this will redound to our own real
and permanent injury, as well as to his. If he tramples
our pearl in the mire, he will also assuredly turn again
and rend us. And conversely, if, stedfastly beholding him,
we have rightly discerned his power of receiving, if we
have rightly proportioned our gift to that power, then
will a blessing rest not only on the receiver, but also
and more fully on the giver. Therefore it is that this
Law which limits our giving becomes again closer, easier,
and more practical. If we can once truly determine the
question — Will this gift be so received as to be really

CH. v.] THE WAY OF PASTING. 417

injurious, or as to be really beneficial to the receiver! —
we have in such a determination that which practically
completes the whole Law and way of giving. We now
know that, according to the means God has granted us,
we should give or lend to him that asketh of us ; that we
should give as before God and not as before men ; lastly,
that we should withhold our gift when, in the exercise of
our Christian discretion, we perceive that it will be really
injurious to the recipient, and so really injurious to our-
selves, and to the Christian Society whereof we are mem-
bers. We will content ourselves at present with merely
pointing attention to one other Portion of this Law of
Spiritual Discernment, that, by anticipating it in part, we
may prepare the way for an exposition of the whole of that
Final Chi'istian Law.

We refer to those Commandments in this Law of
Spiritual Discernment which are presented in the larger
Synopsis as completing our Lord's teaching with regard
to prayer, in the same manner as we have just seen
it completed with regard to giving, to Our Acts, that
is, of Christian Justice and Mercy: namely, by setting
forth to our intellectual and spiritual Discernment the

REAL EFFICACY OF PRAYER, and THE REAL GROUNDS OF THAT

efficacy ; and by shewing, at the same time, that the
Communion which is by Prayer, is a real and most intimate
Communion, though, as we have already seen, it manifests
itself only under the Forms of Contemplation and of
Speech. In Prayer, we are not only to seek that we may
find, not only to ask that we may receive, but we are to

KNOCK ALSO THAT IT MAY BE OPENED UNTO US ; the UllSeen

27

418 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [liOOK 11.

hand of Prayer touches the very door of Heaven ; and
through that opened door our Communion with the Father
in Christ and the Spirit is complete. But what this great
central Law of Spiritual discernment most perfectly and
most touchingly shews, both to our purely human feelings and
to our spiritualized reason, is the real efficacy of Prayer, as
discerned in the real grounds of that efficacy. The human
Intellect, so far as it is renewed and spiritualized, at once
and intuitively recognizes the truth of these three great
utterances of the Spirit, " Ask, and it shall be given you ;
Seek, and ye shall find ; Knock, and it shall be opened unto
you.11 But in so far as the merely natural understanding
has not yet been replaced by that understanding, which
is the knowledge of The Holy, then and to the same extent
does our Lord present this great central truth through
the medium also of our natural Affections. And if a human
father, who is evil, cannot but give bread to his child ask-
ing for it, how can that Heavenly Father, who alone is
good, and whose merciful lovingkindness is over all his
works, refuse it to the prayers of His children \

Here again, therefore, we have a practical completion
of the whole Method of Prayer. Our insight whether spi-
ritual and intuitive, or natural and through the medium
of our human Affections, is by this final teaching of our
Lord engaged in the same holy cause with all our powers
of faithful and hopeful obedience ; and now therefore, if
only we indeed subordinate ourselves to all this Body
of holy Law regarding Prayer, we cannot but become
prayerful men, and the zeal with which we pray must
needs be a zeal according to knowledge.

CH. V.] THE WAY Of TASTING. 419

To notice even thus briefly these two Laws of Spiritual
Discernment regarding Almsgiving and Prayer is, no doubt
strictly speaking, an infraction of the exact order which
pervades the Sermon on the Mount. Possibly, however,
the rule may be here illustrated by the exception. More-
over, as we advance towards a fuller perception of the
drift of both these previous Bodies of Law which teach us

THE THINGS TO BE DONE, and THE WAY OF DOING THEM, We feel

more and more strongly the resulting necessity for this
further and absolutely complemental Law of spiritual dis-
cernment ; for a Law, that is, which shall add to our
faithful Acceptance of the thing God ordains to be done,
and to our hopeful Practice of the Christian method of
doing it, a spiritual and quickening insight into the real
and eternal grounds on which this Right Obedience rests.
We feel that such a more excellent way, such a higher and
holier Law, must flow forth, under the Spirit's teachings,
from those former Laws, in order to that inward and out-
ward completeness which we now begin to perceive would
without this final Law be wanting. We feel and inwardly
know that a Law which is to be for reasonable and spiritual
creatures the complete Law of their whole Being, must in
its highest teachings be addressed to the Intellect, as itself
purified, as reconciled with the purified Affections, and as
thence issuing in the renewed Will, — in other words,
must be addressed to the spiritual discernment. We
feel that it must be an evil thing, and contradictory
to our real Being as renewed in Christ, for us to rest or
be inwardly at peace under any Form of obedience to
God's holy Law, short of a free, a loving, and discerning

420 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [hOOK II.

obedience ; that if we place our standard lower than this,
we can find no rest for the sole of our foot, but must fall
into the gulf either of Pharisaic eye-service, or of utter
lawlessness. To a Law which is at once reasonable and
spiritual no true and worthy obedience can be rendered
which is not itself reasonable and spiritual, which is not
ever growing out of a faithful and hopeful, into a loving
and discerning, obedience. It is, indeed, the very earnest
of our final reward for doing Justice and loving Mercy
and walking humbly with our God, that we should receive
into our spirits this growing and blessed Power of dis-
cerning Him as He has revealed Himself to us in Christ,
which, in its final and ordained perfection, is no other
than the Power of seeing Him as He is.

When once Holy Law has guarded for us, in their
truth, the things to be done, and the way or manner of
doing them, there remains to be guarded from all desecra-
tion and falsehood only that resulting Life, which is holy
in all its Acts and Energies, and specially in its highest and
worthiest energy, that of a Genuine Spiritual Discernment.
The first two portions of this Holy Law, those, namely,
which determine and guard our renewal in its truth and
in its way, we shall have already considered, as fully as
the plan of this general survey will permit, when we have
finished our observations on the Method of Fasting, the
last Branch of that threefold way wherein we must daily
walk. Our views regarding the last portion of Christ's
more immediately practical Law, that Portion namely,
which determines and guards our Life, in so far as.
through this daily renewal in the spirit of our mind, it

CH. V.] THE WAY OK FASTING. 421

has become a Christian or Holy Life, will be unfolded,
if God permit, in the next Book. In it we also hope to
find a fitting opportunity (after this survey of our Lord's
more fundamental legislation regarding the Truth, the
Way, and the Life, has been completed,) for the contem-
plation of that absolutely final Body of Law which deter-
mines and guards our spiritual discernment as that Energy
of our Being, thus daily renewed, which of all others is the
holiest and most blessed, and which has its crown and
consummation in the eternal Beholding and Fruition of
God.

We have now seen how these two Laws of Spiritual
Discernment give final and practical completeness to those
previous Commandments and Directions of the truth and
of the way which have already begun for us the determi-
nation and guardianship of that Christian Righteousness
or Justice which issues in the imparting of our good
things to our brethren, and of that Christian Mercy
whose holiest energy is Prayer. Let us conclude the
Second Book by a return, from this digression, to the Wat
of Fasting, and by a brief consideration of what still
remains to be examined in that last Branch of the
Christian Method.

Here, then, we would observe generally, that as the
Law of the Will (which concludes and draws to a prac-
tical head the whole Law which is the Tbdth) is essen-
tially positive, even so the Way of Fasting (which con-
cludes and draws to a practical head the whole Christian
Way) is essentially negative .

A moment's consideration will show that this cannot

422 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

be otherwise : for this Law of the Truth has for its
object the determining and guarding, at each stage of its
daily renewal, that holy Energy of the Will which of all
the Realities of our Being is, when finally renewed or
emancipated, the most real and positive, as well as the
most comprehensive.

And since this Law of the Truth of our Being con-
cerns itself with the Realities of that Being, and with the
Order in which they are unfolded within us, (not with the
Way through which they are to be inwrought into our
souls), — and since we have seen this Order to he from the
lower to the higher, from the more outward to the more
inward, from the more negative and imperfect to the more
positive and perfect, of those Spiritual Realities ; and
have further observed a corresponding advance towards
the positive and the perfect, in the Laws ordained to
guard these growing and holy Energies, from the Law of
the Name to this final and perfect Law of the Will ; —
it is quite clear that in this final Law, the Will is
contemplated as effectually renewed, and therefore that
this proper Law of a Free and Holy Energy, is, and must
be, essentially Positive.

Not so with regard to the Way. The Way of Christ
does, in every one of its Injunctions, presume that such
a holy Energy is already implanted, and requires to be
daily unfolded within our souls. It presumes the inherent
Life, the ever-growing and quickening Power, of this New
Spiritual Principle, so far as its unfolding germ of good
is effectually guarded from the destructive inroads of
evil. Hence this Wat or Method concerns itself less

CH. V.] THR WAY OF PASTING. 428

and loss, in proportion as it is correspondingly unfolded,
with the encouragement of this daily - growing good,
more and more with the overthrow and casting forth
of the evil, which would destroy it, and of that Evil
One whose malice and cunning against man grow
with the growth of man's holiness. Hence, this Way
provides, first, for our daily and rightly receiving that
daily portion of Righteousness unto Holiness through
which we are daily renewed in the spirit of our minds.
It provides next, for the daily casting forth of the sin
which clings even to our most earnest strivings after a
true obedience, and from the insulating, soul-hardening
consciousness of such unforgiven sin, by endowing us with
the excellent and most comfortable privilege of Daily
Pardon through Daily Prayer for it. And to complete the
effectual exclusion of this desecrating evil, which is ever
watching at the door of our hearts, that it may enter
to mar God's growing work there, and the presence of
which is ever alienating and separating us from our Father
and our brethren, it endows us further with a watchful
guardianship, extending itself over our Lives, as well as
over our hearts and spirits. For even as Christ guards
our hearts from these hateful and murderous incursions of
evil by revealing to us the essential Blessedness, the glo-
rious and inconceivable privilege, of the Pure in Heart;
as he guards our spirits by endowing them with the Peti-
tion (effectual if offered in His way), Lead us not into
temptation, but deliver us from evil ,• — even so does He
no less effectually (if we enter into and walk in that way)
guard our Lives against these renewed inroads of our

4-24 PROVINCE OF THK INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [HOOK II.

deadly enemy, by enjoining us when we fast, when we
abstain, that is, from all bread and from all wine, whether
spiritual or natural, whether real or symbolic, or both,
which we do not receive as given from God's hand to our
Prayer, which we eat not temperately and thankfully, and
which we distribute not charitably, — by enjoining us, I

Say, WHEN WE THUS REALLY FaST, TO FaST UNTO GoD, AND
NOT UNTO MEN.

By this last Direction in the way of Christ, our
guardianship is complete. By it is the last entrance
closed against the malice and cunning of our foe. With-
out this key-stone, not only is the previous work of our
building up unfinished, but no part of it is firm and safe.
Even if all the right things were done, and all the wrong
things avoided, which the Law of Truth enjoins ; — nay,
more, if all these things were done in the way by Christ
pointed out to us, — if further, the temptations and evils
opposed to them were actually resisted and overcome, —
yet, if they were resisted and overcome, not to God and
for His glory, but to men and for their praise, — then all
would be in vain, then our last state would be worse than
our first.

Here again, therefore, Christ's guardianship is very
jealous. And ought we not of our own selves to perceive
that so it must be; to perceive that in all completed Acts
there must be much refrained from as well as something
done ; that the refraining from the wrong is here a most
important condition and element of doing the right. And
as this Power and Energy of Refraining is essential, so is
it essentially secret. For it is not only in its true cha-

CH. V.] TfiB WAY OF FASTING. 425

racter negative, — unseen, unheard, unfelt, of men, and dis-
cerned only by God ; but it is also inseparable from our
effectually accomplishing any one of those Christian acts
which as we have seen are, of all things, most jealously
guarded by Christ from being done before men, and not be-
fore God. Even in lower instances the same principle holds.
In every branch of knowledge, speculative or practical, the
affirming or the realizing of a single truth implies the
tacitly denying and rejecting many falsehoods. In every
province of art, the conception or the creation of one form
of surpassing beauty, implies the same tacit rejection of
many less perfect and less fair. The more deeply indeed
we consider the matter, the more clearly shall we perceive
that it is this most real and important, though essentially
latent and unobtrusive power of intuitively rejecting the
many wrong ways of doing what lies before them to be
done, which more especially distinguishes men of really
practical and energetic character ; and that though other
faculties are required for its beginning, no solid and orderly
work, no work which will finally stand its appointed trial,
can, without the exercise of this Power, be brought to its
actual and legitimate completion.

And if this secret Energy of Refraining be essential in
lesser things, how much more so is it in those which con-
cern our highest well-being. How continually does history
teach us, how often and how recently has experience shewn
us, that zeal and energy in the cause we deem right, though
essential things, are not the only things essential to a solid
and growing advancement of the truly Right, of that
Righteousness which is unto Holiness ! How often does ;i
28

126 PROVINCE OF THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. [BOOK II.

zeal not according to knowledge, an energy not in the
order of God's truth, loosen and scatter what it seeks to
consolidate and to build up ! How often are we found
wanting in this silent wisdom of rejection, whether by
falsely rejecting the Stone which is the Head of the Corner,
and the silver and gold and precious stones which should
be built upon it ; or by failing to reject the hay and straw
and stubble which are ever being presented to us that we
may build therewith !

Here, however, we may pause. For this most impor-
tant Christian Idea and Reality of Fasting must receive
further consideration when we arrive in order at that por-
tion of the Law of spiritual Discernment which especially
concerns it, and which teaches us that as one of its essen-
tial characteristics is, that it be done secretly and to God,
so another is that it must ever, at the time and to our
actual feelings, be painful, hard, and difficult ; in other
words, that it is the daily denial of the unchristian Self
within us, the daily rejection and crucifixion of our remain-
ing unrenewedness.

END OF THE SECOND BOOK.

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