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Besides the main topic this look also treats of 
Subject No. On page Subject No. On page 



SERMONS IN ST PAUL'S. 



' J "L uoo 

SERMONS 



IN 



ST pAiLS ' ATHEDRAL . 



BY THE LATE 



JOSEPH BARBER LIGHTFOOT, D.D., D.C.L., LL.D., 

LORD BISHOP OF DURHAM 
SOMETIME CANON OF ST PAUL'S 



PUBLISHED BY THE TRUSTEES OF THE LIGHTFOOT FUND 



UontHm 
MACMILLAN AND CO. 

. AND NEW YORK 
1893 

All Rights reserved 




.1V^ 

< ^ a 



First Edition 1891. Reprinted 1893. 



2866 



O9 



TO THE MEMORY 
OF 

RICHARD WILLIAM CHURCH 

SOMETIME DEAN OF ST PAUL'S 
GREAT ALIKE IN THOUGHT LITERATURE AND COUNSEL 

THESE SERMONS ARE DEDICATED 

IN TOKEN OF THE 

REVERENCE AND AFFECTION 

IN WHICH THEIR WRITER HELD 

THE HEAD OF THAT ILLUSTRIOUS BODY 

WHICH IT WAS HIS JOY TO SERVE 

FOR EIGHT YEARS 



EXTRACT FROM THE LAST WILL AND TESTA- 
MENT OF THE LATE JOSEPH BARBER LlGHTFOOT, 

LORD BISHOP OF DURHAM. 

"I bequeath all my personal Estate not herein- 
" before otherwise disposed of unto [my Executors] 
"upon trust to pay and transfer the same unto the 
" Trustees appointed by me under and by virtue of a 
" certain Indenture of Settlement creating a Trust to 
" be known by the name of ' The Lightfoot Fund for 
"the Diocese of Durham' and bearing even date 
"herewith but executed by me immediately before 
" this my Will to be administered and dealt with by 
"them upon the trusts for the purposes and in the 
"manner prescribed by such Indenture of Settle- 
" ment." 

EXTRACT FROM THE INDENTURE OF SETTLE- 
MENT OF 'THE LIGHTFOOT FUND FOR THE 
DIOCESE OF DURHAM.' 

" WHEREAS the Bishop is the Author of and is 
" absolutely entitled to the Copyright in the several 
" Works mentioned in the Schedule hereto, and for the 



viii Extract from Bishop Lightfoofs Will. 

" purposes of these presents he has assigned or intends 
"forthwith to assign the Copyright in all the said 
"Works to the Trustees. Now the Bishop doth 
" hereby declare and it is hereby agreed as follows : 
"The Trustees (which term shall hereinafter be 
" taken to include the Trustees for the time being of 
"these presents) shall stand possessed of the said 
"Works and of the Copyright therein respectively 
" upon the trusts following (that is to say) upon trust 
" to receive all moneys to arise from sales or otherwise 
"from the said Works, and at their discretion from 
" time to time to bring out new editions of the same 
" Works or any of them, or to sell the copyright in 
" the same or any of them, or otherwise to deal with 
" the same respectively, it being the intention of 
"these presents that the Trustees shall have and 
" may exercise all such rights and powers in respect 
"of the said Works and the copyright therein re- 
" spectively, as they could or might have or exercise 
" in relation thereto if they were the absolute bene- 
"ficial owners thereof.... 

" The Trustees shall from time to time, at such 
"discretion as aforesaid, pay and apply the income 
"of the Trust funds for or towards the erecting, 
" rebuilding, repairing, purchasing, endowing, sup- 
porting, or providing for any Churches, Chapels, 
"Schools, Parsonages, and Stipends for Clergy, and 



Extract' from Bishop Lightfoot's Will. ix 

"other Spiritual Agents in connection with the 
"Church of England and within the Diocese of 
"Durham, and also for or towards such other pur- 
poses in connection with the said Church of 
"England, and within the said Diocese, as the 
" Trustees may in their absolute discretion think fit, 
" provided always that any payment for erecting any 
" building, or in relation to any other works in con- 
" nection with real estate, shall be exercised with due 
" regard to the Law of Mortmain ; it being declared 
"that nothing herein shall be construed as intended 
"to authorise any act contrary to any Statute or 
"other Law.... 

"In case the Bishop shall at any time assign to 
"the Trustees any Works hereafter to be written or 
"published by him, .or any Copyrights, or any other 
" property, such transfer shall be held to be made for 
"the purposes of this Trust, and all the provisions 
" of this Deed shall apply to such property, subject 
"nevertheless to any direction concerning the same 
" which the Bishop may make in writing at the time 
" of such transfer, and in case the Bishop shall at any 
" time pay any money, or transfer any security, stock, 
"or other like property to the Trustees, the same 
" shall in like manner be held for the purposes pf this 
" Trust, subject to any such contemporaneous direc- 
tion as aforesaid, and any security, stock or pro- 



x Extract from Bishop Lightfoofs Will 

"perty so transferred, being of a nature which can 
"lawfully be held by the Trustees for the purposes 
" of these presents, may be retained by the Trustees, 
" although the same may not be one of the securities 
" hereinafter authorised. 

" The Bishop of Durham and the Archdeacons of 
" Durham and Auckland for the time being shall be 
" ex-offido Trustees, and accordingly the Bishop and 
"Archdeacons, parties hereto, and the succeeding 
"Bishops and Archdeacons, shall cease to be Trus- 
" tees on ceasing to hold their respective offices, and 
"the number of the other Trustees may be increased, 
" and the power of appointing Trustees in the place 
"of Trustees other than Official Trustees, and of 
"appointing extra Trustees, shall be exercised by 
"Deed by the Trustees for the time being, provided 
"always that the number shall not at any time be 
"less than five. 

" The Trust premises shall be known by the name 
of 'The Lightfoot Fund for the Diocese of Durham.' " 



CONTENTS, 



PAGE 

i. BALAAM AND BALAK. 

And Balaam rose up, and went and returned to 
his place : and Balak also went his way. 

NUMBERS xxiv. 25. . i 

ii. THE FORGIVENESS OF DAVID'S SIN. 

And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned 

against the Lord. 

2 SAMUEL xii. 13. . 16 

in. THE CONSEQUENCES OF DAVID'S SIN. 

The king covered his face, and the king cried with 
a loud voice, my son Absalom, Absalom, my son, 

my son / 

2 SAMUEL xix. 4. . 31 

iv. CESAR'S TRIBUTE AND GOD'S TRIBUTE. 

Render to Ccesar the things that are Ccesar's, and 
to God the things that are God's. 

S. MARK xii. 17. , 46 



xil CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

v. THE FALL OF JUDAS. 

Jems answered them, Have net I chosen you 
twelve, and one of you is a devil? He spake of 
Judas Iscariot the son of Simon : for he it was that 
should betray Him, being one of the twelve. 

S. JOHN vi. 70, 71. . 58 

vi. THE COUNSEL OF CAIAPHAS. 

And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the 
high-priest that same year, said itnto them: Ye know 
nothing at all, nor consider that it is expedient for 
us, that one man should die for the people, and that 
the whole nation perish not. 

S. JOHN xi. 49, 50. . 75 

vn. PILATE'S QUESTION. 

Pilate saith unto Him, What is truth ? 

S. JOHN xviii. 38. . 91 

vin. THE ONE TAKEN AND THE OTHER LEFT. 

And he went out, and wept bitterly. 

S. MATTHEW xxvi. 75. 

And he went and hanged himself. 

S. MATTHEW xxvii. 5. . io5 

ix. ' THE TRIUMPH OF FAILURE. 

Then all the disciples forsook Him, and fled. 

S. MATTHEW xxvi. 56. . 122 

x. CHRIST'S GIFT OF PEACE. 

Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto 
you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. 

S. JOHN xiv. 27. . 136 

xi. WHY STAND YE GAZING UP INTO HEAVEN? 

Why stand ye gazing up into heaven? 

ACTS i. ii. . 150 



CONTENTS. xiii 

PAGE 

xii. CHRISTIAN FORETHOUGHT AND UNCHRISTIAN 
ANXIETY. 

Take therefore no thought for the morrow; for 
the morrow shall take thought for the things of 

itself. 

S. MATTHEW vi. 34. . 164 

xiii. TRUE BLESSEDNESS. 

But He said, Yea rather, blessed are they that 
hear the word of God, and keep it. 

S. LUKE xi. 28. . 178 

xiv. HASTY JUDGMENT. 

Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord 

come. 

1 CORINTHIANS iv. 5. . 193 

xv. THE SPIRIT AND THE LETTER. 

The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. 

2 CORINTHIANS iii. 6. . 206 

xvi. S. PAUL OUR EXAMPLE. 

If I be not an Apostle unto others t yet doubtless 
lam to you. 

i CORINTHIANS ix. 2. . 218 

xvn. THE PHILIPPIAN GAOLER. 

Sirs, what mitst I do to be saved? 

ACTS xvi. 30. . 230 

xviii. THE CONSTRAINING LOVE OF CHRIST. 

The love of Christ constraineth us. 

2 CORINTHIANS v. 14. . 243 

xix. MADNESS AND SANITY. 

\ 

/ am not mad, most noble Festusj biit speak 
forth the words of truth and soberness. 

ACTS xxvi. 25. . 255 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

xx. THE MESSAGE TO LAODICEA. 

Unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans 
writej These things saith the Amen, the faithfTil 

and true witness, 

REVELATION iii. 14. . 269 

xxi. THE HOLY TRINITY 

Go ye, and teach all nations, baptizing them in 
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
Holy Ghost. 

S. MATTHEW xxviii. 19 . 287 

xxii. THE GREAT RENEWAL. 

And He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, 

I make all things new. 

REVELATION xxi. 5. . 304 



BALAAM AND BALAK. 

And Balaam rose tip, and went and returned to his 
place : and Balak also went his way. 

NUMBERS xxiv. 25. ' 

Third Sunday after Easter, 1873. 

EACH went his own way. Each returned to his 
own place. This strange intercourse between men so 
different in position and character has come to an end. 
Despite the eager desire on both sides to arrive at 
some mutual understanding, to agree on some common 
policy, they could find no meeting-point. Again and 
again, at the very moment when they seemed to be 
realising their common hope, an invisible power rose 
up, like a spectre, between them, and beckoned them 
asunder. They shifted their position: they framed 
and reframed their plans. It was all in vain. Still 
this unseen presence haunted the ground a purpose, 
a will, which, however much they desired it, they 
^ S. P. s. I 



2 BALAAM AND BALAK. [i. 

could not put aside. The conspiracy against God's 
chosen people, and God's eternal design, had come to 
nought. The worldly diplomacy of Balak, and the 
spiritual diplomacy of Balaam, had alike been futile. 
Their negociations were ended. 

And so they parted. Each went on his own way, 
to his own place. Their careers hitherto had been 
separate : their destinies henceforth will be distinct. 
How then had they been affected by this crisis ? They 
had found themselves both the one and the other 
face to face with a revelation from heaven, a 
visitation of God, in the prosecution of a common 
design. How had it left them ? 

A revelation from heaven ! The words suggest to 
our minds some striking manifestation, which appals 
the outward senses, dazzling the eye and stunning the 
ear, as when Jehovah descended amid the thunders 
and the lightnings of Sinai, and the mountain 
trembled under the tread of the Almighty Presence. 
A visitation of God ! When we hear this phrase, we 
think of some sudden and terrible physical cata- 
strophe ; as when the vessel strikes on the coral reef, 
and plunges its whole cargo of living souls into 
eternity without time even to breathe a hurried prayer: 
or when a plague suddenly appears, smites down one 
and another, then scours a whole region, sweeping 
thousands into an unforeseen and. premature grave : or 



!.] BALAAM AND BALAK. 3 

when the falling timber singles out the chance passer 
by, and widows the wife and orphans the household 
without a moment's warning. We are awe-stricken 
with revelations like this ; we count such visitations as 
these fearful and solemn indeed. And so they are. 
But it is not in the mighty and strong wind which 
rends the mountains, nor in the shuddering of the 
earthquake, nor in the devouring flame of fire, nor by 
any outward demonstrations of majesty and awe, that 
God most commonly and most fearfully reveals 
Himself to the individual soul ; but in the still small 
voice, which speaks to the conscience in some passing 
opportunity, some sudden temptation, some moral 
crisis, when the whole man is tried, is sifted, is saved 
or is lost. These moments will pass unnoticed by 
others. The voice is so low, that it penetrates one 
ear alone. The man will go about his daily task, will 
pursue his daily amusements once more, as if nothing 
had happened. To others he will appear just the 
same as he ever was. There is no outward sign of the 
moral catastrophe which has overtaken him. But he 
himself knows he cannot help knowing that God 
has visited him, that he has stood face to face with 
the Eternal One, that he is morally a changed man 
changed for better, or for worse, by the awe and the 
glory of that presence. 

And just in proportion to his endowments and his 

I 2 



4 BALAAM AND BALAK. [i. 

advantages will be the effects of such a visitation on 
his character. Greater gifts carry with them greater 
capacities of evil as well as of good. The man of the 
world cannot sin so deeply, cannot fall so low, as the 
man of the Spirit. For the latter, everything is cast 
in a grander scale his temptations, his lessons, his 
triumphs, his defeats. The same event is not the 
same to one man, and to another. The magnitude of 
the opportunity is measured, not by the magnitude 
of the actual occurrence, but by the magnitude of the 
inward capacity. 

Of these two types of character the man of the 
world, and the man of the Spirit : the man of vulgar 
capacities and vulgar aims, and the man of high 
insight and keen moral sensibilities we have ex- 
amples in Balak and Balaam. 

Balak is essentially a man of the world. He 
desires to compass common ends by common means. 
He does not trouble himself about the morality of his 
actions one way or the other. Here is an enemy to 
be conquered, and he will use every effort to conquer 
him. Here is a people to be cursed, and he will leave 
no stone unturned to get them cursed. He does not 
at all understand Balaam's scruples. He takes that 
low, depreciatory view of man's nature, which the 
worldling always takes. He has no belief in human 
integrity, or human honour. His maxim is the 



I.] BALAAM AND BALAK. 5 

worldling's maxim, that every man has his price. So 
he feels confident that, if he will only bid high enough, 
Balaam's services will be secured. He offers him 
honour, offers him wealth. He tries the bribe, which 
is the most insidious and most efficacious, when 
offered by the prince to the subject the bribe of per- 
sonal deference and respect. Then, when he is frus- 
trated, he loses all patience. 'Balak's anger was 
kindled against Balaam, and he smote his hands 
together.' It is so unreasonable, so discourteous, so 
stupid, to refuse a request, preferred with this studied 
respect and backed by these tempting offers. 

And, again, his idea of God's purpose is just on a 
par with his idea of man's integrity. He has a vague 
notion that religion cannot be dispensed with. He 
pays all outward respect to its representatives. But, 
by some means or other, religion must be made to bend 
to the political situation. He 'will have religion on his 
side, cost what effort it may. Of God, as an Eternal, 
Invincible Will, as One Who cannot change and 
cannot lie, he knows nothing. Religion is, in his eyes, 
as pliable as state-craft. He trusts to the arts of 
diplomacy in dealing with God, just as he would 
trust to them in dealing with a rival prince. He will 
increase the number of his victims ; he will change the 
position of his altars. He will bribe God; or, if bribes 
fail, he will coax Him into compliance ; and then all 



6 BALAAM AND BALAK. [i. 

will be well. Balak is the very type of the man of 
the world. 

Of Balak's future nothing is told. It is not 
probable that this crisis made any strong impres- , 
sion on his character. He ' went his way.' He had 
been thwarted in his design. He had failed, and 
there was an end of it. He returned to his ordinary 
pursuits to his wars, to his diplomacy, to his feasting. 
He was a worldling before, and he remained a world- 
ling still. Of him no terrible fall is recorded in the 
sequel. God's visitation had passed away, leaving 
him not indeed any better, but probably not much 
worse, than it found him. 

But with Balaam the case was wholly different. 
Balaam was a man of high capacities, both moral and 
spiritual. And, in the face of a great emergency, such 
a man must gain or must lose appreciably. 

Can we doubt his moral capacities, or even his 
moral attainments ? Read his repeated refusal to 
abandon his convictions, or to- tamper with the truth, 
under each repeated temptation. Have we not here, 
we are disposed to ask, a man of strictly conscientious 
principles? Does not his whole language bespeak 
the very soul of honour ? ' I cannot go beyond the 
word of the Lord my God, to do less or more." ' The 
word that God putteth in my mouth, that shall I 
speak.' ' He hath blessed, and I cannot reverse it.' 



L ] BALAAM AND BALAK. 7 

And, corresponding to his moral elevation, was his 
spiritual intuition also. He it was who 'heard the 
words of God ' and ' saw the vision of the Almighty.' 
He, a child of an alien stock, beheld spread out 
as a map before him, like that wide landscape on 
which he was even then gazing from Peer's height, 
the glorious history of the race, whom wishing to curse 
he was constrained to bless ; and in that remote age, 
to that obscure tribe, foretold the advent of a Star, 
which should rise and glorify a whole world, the 
domination of a Sceptre, whose kingdom should have 
no end. Truly it was no empty vaunt, when he 
described himself as ' the man whose eyes are open/ 
Here was a seer, if seer there ever was. 

And so he parts from Balak, having shown 
himself, as we might think, a man of unblemished 
honour, a man of far-sighted prescience. ' He rose up, 
and went and returned to his place.' Then there is 
an interruption, a pause, an interval of silence : and 
Balaam reappears on the scene. We find just one 
passing reference to his after career, to his sin, to his 
fate. Can it be the same man so changed, so fallen, 
so vile and profligate ? The man, who foretold Israel's 
glory, has conspired for Israel's shame. Balaam and 
Balak have changed places. Balaam is the tempter 
and Balak the tempted now. Balaam's name becomes 
a byword and a proverb for almost fiendish profligacy. 



8 BALAAM AND BALAK. [i. 

Balak could not have sinned so deeply. The man of 
the Spirit has fallen lower, incomparably lower, than 
the man of the world. 

A strange and' perplexing transmutation ; and yet 
is it after all so very far removed from the common 
experiences of life, that we are at a loss either to 
understand, or to appropriate, the lesson ? Have we 
known no instance in which the man of the highest 
endowments, of the keenest insight, of the loftiest 
moral perceptions, has sunk below the level of the 
common worldling, even of the common criminal ; and 
thus all confidence in human integrity, and honour 
and. purity, in all that is best and most precious in 
heaven or earth, is shaken by that one man's act? 
The prophet of God casts the stumbling-block in the 
way of the people of God. 

Is it not so, when the poet, whose divine gift of 
imagination has enabled us to realise with a keener 
zest, and to acknowledge with a deeper thanksgiving, 
the manifold glories of nature, whose insight into the 
workings of the human heart has stirred our sluggish 
sensibilities, lifting us above ourselves and inspiring us 
with larger and more generous sympathies, then uses 
the ascendency, which he has gained, to corrupt the 
wells of his country's literature with the poison of sen- 
suality? Is it not so, when some representative of the 
majesty and power of the law, whose legal decisions are 



I.] BALAAM AND BALAK. 9 

admired for their acuteness and their breadth, and on 
whose professional integrity no breath of suspicion 
has passed, is suddenly detected in acts of mean and 
petty dishonesty, to which even men of not very 
scrupulous honour would never have stooped ; as 
when once the judicial ermine was sullied in the 
person of its chief representative, and over the me- 
mory of the most illustrious Chancellor of England, 
and the most famous philosopher of modern times, 
whose writings for originality of thought and aptness 
of illustration and dignity of sentiment stand un- 
rivalled in the prose literature of our country, the 
cruel epitaph was inscribed, 'The greatest, wisest, 
meanest of mankind ' ? Is it not so, when one who 
has taken a chief part in every philanthropic move- 
ment, and occupied the foremost seat on every religious 
platform, suffers a felon's punishment for some gigantic 
fraud, which has spread a panic far and wide, and in- 
volved whole families in ruin ? Is it not so, when a 
minister of religion, whose soul -stirring eloquence has 
stung the conscience and moved the hearts of awe- 
stricken thousands, is detected in some shameful act, 
and he that has preached so often and so forcibly to 
others has himself been found a castaway ? 

These things have been. Keen insight, refined 
imagination, generous sympathies, a profound in- 
-tuition into abstract truth, a lofty sense of moral 



IO BALAAM AND BALAK. [l. 

obligations, even a high appreciation of spiritual 
mysteries, have not saved a man from ruin ; when the 
discipline of the life has been relaxed. We carelessly 
set down such painful inconsistencies to hypocrisy. 
We are sure that the man did not 'mean what he said, 
because his base actions have belied his noble words. 
It is an easy and ready solution ; but at is utterly 
false. there is a much more profound and subtle 
lesson underlying such frailties than this ! Balaam 
was not a hypocrite. There is a ring of sincerity in 
his every word. He spoke, we cannot doubt, from 
the inmost convictions of his heart, when he said : ' I 
cannot go beyond the commandment of the Lord, to 
do either good or bad of mine own mind.' It was not 
in his utterances, but in his actions, that he was 
untrue to himself. 

And how came he to be untrue to himself? 

Follow the narrative of his successive negociations 
with Balak. Analyse the conflict of motives God's 
purpose here, his own aggrandisement there. Why it 
is the very history perhaps on a grander scale, but 
still the very history of your own temptation, your 
own weakness, your own vacillation, which you seem 
to be reading. And as you trace each alternation in 
his mind the resolute resistance, the feeble conces- 
sion : the conscientious scruple, the eager desire : the 
triumph, the defeat the voice of conscience within 



I.] . BALAAM AND BALAK. II 

you points the moral of the parable, reminding you of 
some great crisis in your own inner life, and startling 
you with the direct home-thrust, ' Thou art the man.' 

Observe, first, that the conflict between the higher 
and the lower motives is unmistakeable. There could 
be no doubt on which side Balaam's worldly interests 
lay. He would secure wealth and honour ; he would 
indulge his antipathy to an unfriendly people; he 
would confer a personal service on a friendly prince 
if he could only bring himself to act in one way. 
Here was an accumulation of inducements, beckoning 
him in one direction. On the other hand, the will of 
God is clear and explicit, forbidding him to take this 
path. Has this never happened to any one here ? 

And, if so, have you dealt with your conflict and 
your temptation as Balaam dealt with his ? His 
worldly interests could not be made to change. That 
was clear. So he took 'these as his starting p'oint? 
and set himself to manipulate God's eternal purpose. 
He would not defy, would not confront and oppose 
it. Conscience was too strong for this. But he 
would circumvent it by some means or other. ' Per- 
adventure the Lord would come to meet him.' Is 
this the first or the last time, when reliance has been 
placed upon a ' peradventure ' to tamper with the 
inviolable and to change the unchangeable? Is this 
the only instance, where a man, eager to escape from 



12 BALAAM AND BALAK. [i. 

an obvious duty, has thought to silence or to convert 
God's protest within him by shifting his position or 
by multiplying his sacrifices? He hastens from height 
to height, hiding some features in the scene here 
and revealing others there ; and, having thus altered 
the relative position of the objects, he foridly hopes 
that a curse may after all be pronounced on some 
part at least of this duty which is so imperative and 
yet so hateful to him. He has changed his own point 
of view, and he vainly imagines that God will change 
His also. He multiplies his religious services; he 
increases his charitable gifts ; as if these forsooth 
could purchase immunity, or could make that right 
which is not right. 

Thus Balaam lingers over his temptation; he 
dallies with it ; he familiarises himself with it. These 
things are an allegory. 'What men are these with 
thee ? ' You too have heard at the outset the divine 
voice asking within you in no uncertain tones ; ' This 
design which thou art lodging in thy heart, this 
temptation with which thou art courting familiarity 
what manner of thing is this ? ' You were at no loss 
for an answer. The question was its own answer. 
And yet you thought that you might entertain the 
project, that you might at least turn it over in your 
mind, that you might just see whether ' peradventure ' 
it would assume some brighter aspect as you got to 



I.] BALAAM AND BALAK. 13 

know more of it. And so you involved yourself 
deeper and deeper. If you had only spurned it at 
first, your path would. have been easy. Your character 
would have been strengthened ; your temptation 
would have passed away. But this you would not do. 
You fortified yourself by strong asseverations to 
yourself that under no circumstances would you do 
wrong ; but you would reconsider the matter, and just 
see whether, somehow or other, the blessing and the 
curse could not be made to change places. Do not 
suppose that Balaam's repeated professions of integrity 
and obedience were intended to overawe Balak. It 
needs no deep penetration into man's heart to see 
a different motive from this. Their object was to 
quiet and to reassure Balaam's own conscience, when 
he felt that his footsteps were tottering. 

And then comes the apparent contradiction in 
terms. God bade Balaam go with the messengers, 
and yet God was angry with Balaam because he went. 
A strange moral paradox, it will be said. Yes : but, 
like all moral paradoxes in the Bible, instinct with the 
deepest meaning. It is a law which regulates our 
probation here, that each concession to temptation 
involves us still further, and increases the difficulty of 
resistance. The law itself is God's ordinance, is God's 
will; but the frailty on our part, which brings us 
under the operation of the law, is hateful in His sight. 



14 BALAAM AND BALAK. [i. 

Thus it was the inevitable consequence of Balaam's 
fingering the temptation in the first instance, that he 
should be drawn into closer proximity with it after- 
wards. And so he went forward, entangling himself 
more and more in the meshes of the tempter. 

But Balaam escaped. Balaam was true to his word. 
Balaam did not transpose the blessing and the curse. 
Balaam did declare God's will neither more nor less 
without reservation and without stint. His integrity 
was saved. Yes : it was saved this once, but saved only 
'as by fire.' Herein lies the solemnity of the lesson. 
He escaped this once. But the next incident recorded 
of him is a shameful, irretrievable fall. How this came 
about, we are not told. Yet was not his yielding to 
the later temptation the only too obvious conse- 
quence of his tampering with the earlier ? He had 
overcome once. God's voice within him was still too 
strong for his own baser desire. But he had caressed 
and fondled the temptation ; he had suffered himself 
to be fascinated by it. A man cannot do this without 
moral deterioration. His sense of right and wrong 
is blunted by such trifling. His power of resistance 
is diminished. He may escape once, but he will not 
escape again. 

If to any one here the history of Balaam's 
temptation, of Balaam's weakness, of Balaam's escape, 
has seemed like a parable of some past crisis in his 



lf ] BALAAM AND BALAK. 15 

own inner life, let him take the warning to heart in 
time ; lest the last scene also be only too faithfully 
reproduced in him, when the prophetic voice of 
conscience shall be once more heard no longer in 
warning, but now in condemnation bringing the 
parallel home to him, and stinging him with the con- 
viction : ' Thou art the man.' Let him that standeth, 
but even now is tottering, ' take heed lest he fall.' 



II. 

THE FORGIVENESS OF DAVID'S SIN. 

And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against 

the Lord. 

i SAMUEL xii. 13. 

Third Sunday after Easter, 1878. 

THE incident, to which these words refer, occurred 
at the most brilliant epoch of a singularly brilliant 
career. The despised shepherd lad, the youngest of 
a large family, starting in life without wealth, without 
connexions, with no external advantages of any 
kind, had raised himself by his abilities and his 
exertions to a height of power which none of his race 
had ever reached before, and which none after him 
succeeded in maintaining his favourite son and im- 
mediate successor alone excepted. 

A youth of bold exploit and persevering endea- 
vour, spent amidst trials and dangers and vicissitudes 



ii.] THE FORGIVENESS OF DAVID'S SIN. IJ 

the most varied the hard and precarious life of an 
outlaw at one time, the not less perilous service at 
the court of a jealous and moody king at another 
all these had passed away. The severe discipline of 
youth had been crowned with the triumphant success 
of manhood. He had sown in tears, and he was now 
reaping in joy. Called from the sheepfold to a throne, 
environed with personal enemies and political mal- 
contents, yet by firmness, by courage, by a lofty 
generosity and a wise discretion, by the ascendency 
of a personal character which united in itself a rare 
combination of gifts the most diverse, he had silenced 
all opposition. At length rebellions had been crushed, 
and feuds were dying out. He reigned the sole and 
undisputed sovereign of Israel. 

Nor was this all. In internal administration and 
in foreign conquest alike his vigour and ability had 
triumphed. He had wrested the last important 
stronghold from the idolatrous inhabitants of the 
land ; and had built there a fortress and a city, des- 
tined now to be the capital of his own dominions, but 
marked out hereafter as the religious metropolis of 
the civilised world Zion and Jerusalem, the most 
cherished of all cherished names, the holiest of all 
holy places, the monuments of a past history unique 
in the annals of mankind, the symbols of all the 
deepest thought and the fondest hopes of the human 
s. p. s. 2 



1 8 THE FORGIVENESS OF DAVID'S SIN. [11. 

heart to the end of time, the earthly types of our 
final and eternal home. He had organized an army 
with the regularity and the precision of Macedonia or 
of Rome. He had developed a striking and magni- 
ficent ceremonial of religious worship. He had 
surrounded himself with something at least of the 
pomp and splendour of an Oriental court. A succes- 
sion of victories had crowned his arms abroad. One 
by one the hereditary enemies of his country had 
fallen before him. . Philistia, Mpab, Syria, Edom, all 
were humbled. At this very moment he was en- 
gaged in his final and successful struggle with the 
Ammonites. Here too he was triumphant. From 
the Mediterranean to the Euphrates he had no rival. 

And, if his eye could have pierced through the 
veil of the future, and the scroll of the world's 
history had been opened before him, he might well 
have felt a proud self-complacency, as he read the en- 
during effects of his empire and administration. To us 
at least, who can trace these effects through long 
centuries of the past, who see in this empire and 
administration the channel whereby the truths, which 
have moulded the thoughts and guided the actions of 
men in successive generations, were diffused far 
beyond the limits of his own race, till they flooded 
and fertilised the whole civilised world to us, I say, 
even if we could close our eyes for a moment to the 



II.] THE FORGIVENESS OF DAVID S ' SIN. 1 9 

eternal issues of the Gospel, this reign of David 
will appear to have set upon the history of mankind 
a stamp deeper and more enduring even than the 
conquests of an Alexander, or a Csesar, or a Timour, 
or a Napoleon. 

But not only has he been thus triumphant as a 
monarch. His private designs also have been crowned 
with success. At this very moment he is enjoying 
the fruits of a secret and cherished project which was 
carefully planned and has been prosperously exe- 
cuted. An object very near to his heart has been 
attained. The risks were great, but they have been 
surmounted. Obstacles have been removed ; publicity 
has been avoided ; no scandal has been created. 
Uriah has been slain fighting valiantly in the hottest 
of the battle ; and Uriah's wife has become the wife 
of David. 

At this crisis, when success culminates and self- 
satisfaction is complete, the blow comes. His tower 
of pride is crumbled into dust by some unseen hand. 
Henceforth he is a changed man. He is no more 
light-hearted and joyous and hopeful. He has 
tangled a coil of difficulties about him, from which 
he can never again extricate himself. He has loaded 
himself with a burden of sorrow, under which he 
must stagger through life, only to bury it finally in 
the grave. Troubles gather thick upon him, troubles 

22 



20 THE FORGIVENESS OF DAVID'S SIN. [n. 



the most acute and numbing gross crimes and irre- 
gularities in his own family, the rebellion of his sons, 
even of a favourite son, annoyances and perplexi- 
ties and trials of all kinds. He has placed himself at 
the mercy of an unscrupulous and arrogant relation 
the agent in his stratagem and the master of his 
secret. Everything goes wrong henceforth. From 
this time onward 'the sword never departs from his 
house.' 

And yet, at this very moment, when the greatness 
of the crisis is revealed to him, his thoughts do not 
turn to any of these things. Not the gathering 
storm-cloud, not the fatal ascendency of Joab, not 
the existence of a perilous secret, not the loss of 
respect and of power, not any of the thousand 
perplexities and troubles in which this one act may 
involve him rise up before him now. One thought 
dominates his soul. He remembers only One, Whom 
he has grieved and alienated, One Who is invisible 
and yet very present, One this is the terrible thought 
which overwhelms and crushes him One Who is ' of 
purer eyes than to behold evil'. 'And David said 
unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord.' 

The feeling, which is here concentrated in one 
despairing sentence, is amplified in the 5ist Psalm. 
' Against Thee only have I sinned, and done this evil 
in Thy sight.' ' Wash me throughly from my wicked- 



ii.] THE FORGIVENESS OF DAVIDS SIN. 21 

ness, and cleanse me from my sin.' ' Lo, Thou requires! 
truth in the inward parts.' ' Turn Thy face from my 
sins, and put out all my misdeeds. Make me a clean 
heart, God; and renew a right spirit within me.' 
'0 give me the comfort of Thy help again, and stablish 
me with Thy free Spirit.' 'The sacrifice of God is a 
troubled spirit; a broken and contrite heart, God, 
shalt Thou not despise.' 

The oldest tradition regards this 5ist Psalm as 
the outpouring of David's soul at this crisis, when the 
crowning sin of his life was brought home to him in 
all its heinousness. The ancient heading in our Bibles 
so describes it. Nor need we question the truth of 
this tradition. To the thoughtful mind it will appear 
to bear the very stamp of that terrible crime and 
that deep penitential sorrow. It would be difficult to 
fix on any incident, or any man, in the whole range of 
history, to whom the language arid the feelings would 
be so appropriate, as to the man after God's own 
heart in the first revulsion of spirit after his terrible 
fall. One objection only is offered to this ancient 
and wide-spread belief. The concluding verses seem 
to speak of a later period, when the city was rebuild- 
ing after the return from Babylon. But is it not 
reasonable to suppose that these two verses were a 
later addition to adapt the psalm to liturgical uses ? 
Quite independently of any difficulties which they 



22 THE FORGIVENESS OF DAVID*S SIN. [n. 

create in connexion with David's authorship, they are 
marked off, as it were, from the rest of the psalm by 
their inherent character. They have no reference to 
the struggles of the individual heart; they are a 
national appeal to the God of Israel. They dwell 
not on the sacrifices of a broken spirit, but on the 
sacrifices of burnt offering. They utter the language 
no more of penitent sorrow, but of confidence and 
hope. The building of the walls of Jerusalem, the 
offering of bullocks upon God's altar have we not 
here the language of the prophets and priests after 
the restoration, probably of Ezra himself, adapting 
the penitential utterances of the Psalmist King to 
congregational worship, now that the Second Temple 
was rising, and the service of the God of Israel was 
once more reinstated ? 

But I need not dwell on this point. It is sufficient 
that this psalm represents the very spirit of David 
at this crisis the absorbing consciousness of the 
presence of a Being of infinite, purity and holiness, 
the deep sense of alienation from that Being by sin, 
the loathing of self and the yearning towards God. 

The interview between Nathan and David is 
better known and better remembered than almost 
any passage in the Old Testament. The lesson 
which it conveys is a very plain lesson. The 
preacher can have nothing to say beyond what 



ii.] THE FORGIVENESS OF DAVID'S SIN. 23 

must have occurred to any one who has bestowed 
more than a passing thought on it. Questions indeed 
there are in connexion with the narrative, on which 
much has been written and spoken. This signal fall 
of one who is commended as the man after God's 
own heart, this sudden plunge into an abyss of 
crime, may well be the starting-point for much 
serious reflection on the mixed good and evil which 
divide the empire of the human heart. The direct 
consequences of David's sin, following by an inevit- 
able moral order and embittering his whole after life 
the disorders of his family and the disturbances in 
his realm will furnish an instructive example of the 
laws by which crime works out its own penalty. 
This latter point may supply matter for consideration 
on another occasion. Today I would ask your 
attention rather to the view which David himself 
takes of his act. At the moment when the veil of 
self-deception is torn aside, when he sees his conduct 
in all its hideous deformity, one thought alone 
possesses his soul one absorbing, overwhelming, 
painfully bitter thought' I have sinned against the 
Lord.' 'Against Thee only against Thee only have 
I sinned.' 

Was David right in this, or was he wrong?, Is 
there indeed a Being of infinite perfection, before 
Whom our hearts lie open, to Whom we are respon- 



24 THE FORGIVENESS OF DAVID'S SIN, [n. 

sible for our acts, against Whom sin is treason, and 
from Whom guilt is alienation ? Or is this mode of 
regarding human conduct a play of fancy, a trick of 
education, the result indeed of habits of thought 
handed down through many generations, but never- 
theless illusory and unreal ? If so, the Bible is the 
falsest of all books ; for this is the one leading idea, 
the one unbroken thread which runs throughout from 
the first Chapter of Genesis to the last of the Apoca- 
lypse. In other things it exhibits growth, develop- 
ment, increasing light, successive revelation. Material 
conceptions graduallygive place to spiritual. National 
privileges expand till they embrace all mankind. 
The doctrines of a future life, a judgment, a redemp- 
tion, a Christ, grow ever clearer, as the dawn spread- 
ing on the mountains, till the sun arises and all 
at once the world is flooded with a blaze of light. 
But is the foundation, on which this imposing super- 
structure is built, altogether hollow and rotten ? Is 
the very light darkness ? This day of the Lord, is it 
night after all ? 

I should not dare to use such words, but that it is 
only possible to state the momentous nature of the 
issue by a strong contrast such as this. It is obviously 
(I need not dwell on what must be self-evident) it 
is obviously the most important question, which can 
occupy the thoughts of any person. There cannot 



ii.] THE FORGIVENESS OF DAVID' S SIN. 25 

be any compromise or any halting between two 
opinions here. The one view must be false, and the 
other true ; and the view that is false^whichever it 
may be must be utterly, hopelessly, incurably false. 
It is a question which infinitely concerns every person 
in this congregation, young or old, learned or ignorant, 
rich or poor ; for it affects the conduct of every day 
and every hour. According as a man answers it 
himself rightly or wrongly, so will his career be ; if 
wrongly, an entire mistake, a more than life-long 
failure, a dazzling failure possibly for he may go 
down to his grave rich in wealth, in fame, in 
popularity, in friendships yet a disastrous failure 
nevertheless; but if rightly, then full of strength, 
of power, of vitality, of truth. 

And, when I speak of answering this question, I 
do not mean answering it in a mere mechanical way, 
but answering it morally, answering it practically. 
It is not the response of the lips, but the response of 
the life, which I wish to elicit from you, from myself, 
from every one here. I cannot think that anyone in 
this congregation, if the question were pressed home 
to him, could boldly take the atheist's side. His pre- 
sence in this church is a sufficient guarantee so far. 
But there are voices abroad, which obscure, where 
they do not deny, the idea of God and with the idea 
of God the idea of sin stands or falls ; and not a few, 



26 THE FORGIVENESS OF DAVID'S SIN. [IK 

though they may not turn a direct ear to such voices, 
do yet suffer their spiritual senses to be confused by 
the din which they hear around them, till they hardly 
know what they believe. 

If any such there be here, I do earnestly entreat 
him to reflect on the danger of allowing himself to 
drift he knows not whither from mere carelessness, 
because -he will not make the necessary effort and 
face the momentous alternative which rises up before 
him. There are many points on which we may be 
content to wait for more light. But this is not one. 
It cannot be a trifling matter, for it affects every 
corner of human life. It is a matter, in which beyond 
all others we are bound to have clear views and to 
act upon them. It is a matter, in which it is perilous 
to court doubt and confusion. 

But, as I said before, it is not the answer of the 
intellect, but the answer of the conscience, of the heart, 
of the life, which I desire to evoke. ' I have sinned 
against the Lord.' 'Against Thee only have I sinned 
and done this evil in Thy sight.' 'Against Thee only.' 
Has this been the one paramount, absorbing, over- 
whelming thought with you, as it was with David, 
when you were betrayed into sin ? Or were you 
occupied with other considerations ? Were you sen- 
sible of the presence of God, or did your thoughts 
turn solely, or chiefly, on the presence of man ? 



II.] THE FORGIVENESS OF DAVIDS SIN. 2 / 

The wrong deed is done. What then ? What is 
the chief anxiety which occupies your mind ? Are 
you vexed with yourself, that in one moment of 
recklessness you should have coiled a chain around 
you which you will drag about to your dying day? 
Do you curse your folly, that for a transient gratifi- 
cation you should have bartered your good name, 
should have sacrificed (if so be) the ambitions of a 
lifetime ? Are you distressed and anxious, lest by 
any means the law should get you into its clutches ? 
Is it your first concern to hide away your wrong- 
doing that, hiding it away, you may avert its con- 
sequences? Or perhaps it is a secret sin. Do you 
congratulate yourself on its secrecy ? Alas, it might 
have been a thousand times better for you, that your 
fall had been published to all the world, so that its 
publicity had taught you its heinousness. And 
meanwhile of God's image marred, of God's purity 
outraged, of God's truth defied, of God's love of 
your heavenly Father's love scorned and trampled 
under foot, how much or how little do you think? 

Or perhaps your thoughts rise higher than this, 
but still are arrested far below the throne of God. 
You are really grieved that you have done a wrong 
to another. You are dissatisfied with yourself, be- 
cause you have forsaken your ideal, and your self- 
respect has been wounded in consequence. Nay, ask 



28 THE FORGIVENESS OF DAVID'S SIN. [n. 

yourself, this ideal, what is it, but God's image and 
superscription stamped upon your soul, though the 
legend be worn and the features blurred, so that you 
fail to trace the identity? This wrong done to another, 
what is it but a wrong done to God to God in the 
person of Christ? 'Inasmuch. as ye did it to one of 
the least ' aye, the poorest, the meanest, the feeblest 
'of these my brethren, ye did it to Me' to Me and 
none other. And so we return to the same point. 
'Against Thee only, Lord, have I sinned.' ' Against 
Thee only.' 'Thou alone hast been wronged, and 
Thou alone canst forgive.' 

'Thou alone canst forgive.' No interposition of 
priests, and no multiplication of sacrifices, can dis- 
pense with that direct, immediate, personal con- 
fronting with the Eternal Presence, that absolving, 
purifying, renewing converse with God, wherein the 
sin is laid bare before the Throne of Grace, and the 
burden cast down at the foot of the Cross. Surely 
David, if any man, would have had recourse at this 
crisis to the sacrifices of the Mosaic hierarchy, if the 
slaughter of bulls and of goats could have taken 
away sin. Yet the very thought is abhorrent to him 
in the moment of self-revelation. Not the blood of 
hecatombs could wash out one single spot from his 
soul saturated with crime. The sacrifice which God 
asked was far other than this. ' The sacrifice of God 



II.] THE FORGIVENESS OF DAVID'S SIN. 29 

is a troubled spirit ; a broken and a contrite heart, O 
God, shalt Thou not despise.' 

You know well each man knows well, if he will 
cast a glance within, what is his special danger. He 
can lay his finger at once on the dark spot which 
stains his character. He feels instinctively where the 
burden presses, which weighs down his soul. Is it 
eating away your spiritual life by a slow, continuous, 
almost imperceptible process? Or does it, like the 
sin of David, after slumbering awhile, break out 
suddenly, in some flagrant deed, startling and stun- 
ning you in the midst of your false security ? What- 
ever it may be, take it at once into the presence of 
God. Single out your special sin ; realise its heinous- 
ness ; loathe its degradation ; feel how it shuts out 
the light of heaven from your heart. If you have 
shunned God's presence, shun it no more. Seek Him. 
Dare to be alone with Him. He, and He only, can 
put away your sin. He only can cleanse your heart, 
and renew a right spirit within you. 

Only do not expect that you are undertaking a 
light task. An inveterate habit (if such it be) is 
not soon laid aside. A diseased heart is not easily 
healed. It will be a sharp, painful, probably a pro- 
longed, struggle. Persevere and conquer. If you play 
the courageous part, if you are firm and unflinching, 
if in spite of weariness, in spite of loneliness, in 



3O THE FORGIVENESS OF DAVIDS SIN. [n. 

spite of darkness overhead, you wrestle with the 
angel from nightfall till dawn of day, be assured you 
will not depart without the blessing. If without 
reserve you cry from the depths of your heart, ' I 
have sinned against the Lord,' then too without 
reserve the prophetic voice will answer, ' The Lord 
also hath put away thy sin.' 

The sin itself; but perhaps not its temporal con- 
sequences. It was not so with David. In a thousand 
ways the temporal consequences may remain. But 
the clean heart and the right spirit will be- yours. 
You will live henceforth a true life. You will be free, 
.as you never have been free before. Is this an ideal 
picture ? Strive to realise it. He who does so has 
learnt the true lesson of the season ; for he has indeed 
died with Christ ; he has indeed risen with Christ ; 
he is indeed living in Christ. 



III. 

THE CONSEQUENCES OF DAVID'S SIN. 

The king covered his face) and the king cried with 
a loud voice, my son Absalom, Absalom, my son, 

my son! 

i SAMUEI. xix. 4, 

Fourth Sunday after Easter, 1878. 

ON Sunday afternoon last, I took for my subject 
the interview between Nathan and David. I asked 
you to consider the circumstances of David's life at 
the moment when the incident occurs. Attention 
was called to the successes of his administration at 
home and the triumph of his arms abroad. This 
crisis was the culmination of his good fortune. No 
Israelite before or after achieved such great things as 
he achieved. In strong contrast to this unexampled 
career stands his sin and his humiliation. It is no 



32 THE CONSEQUENCES OF DAVIDS SIN. [in. 

comfort, no compensation to him that he has suc- 
ceeded in everything to which he has put his hand. 
The one painfully bitter thought absorbs him, 'I have 
sinned against the Lord.' Without seeking excuses, 
without calculating consequences, without any after- 
thought of any kind, he concentrates his whole soul 
on the sin of the deed. Thus his contrition is 
complete. 

And not less complete is his pardon. This imme- 
diate confronting with God, this absolute abasement of 
self, this piercing cry for forgiveness, is not unheeded. 
The answer is prompt, and it is unreserved. The same 
prophetic voice, which had denounced the offence, 
absolves the offender, c The Lord hath put away thy 
sin.' A clean heart is made, and a right spirit re- 
newed within him. 

But the lesson of David's fall would not be com- 
plete without the sequel. Though the sin was put 
away, the consequences of the sin remained. Though 
the guilt was pardoned, the penalty was not foregone. 
Let this be the subject of our meditations this after- 
noon. We will consider the culminating sorrow of 
David's after-life the revolt and death of Absalom 
as the retribution which by an inevitable moral law 
his crime had brought upon him. 

The narrative is in every way very striking. 
There is a deep pathos in it which is scarcely sur- 



in.] THE CONSEQUENCES OF DAVIDS SIN. 33 

passed elsewhere even in the Bible, the most pathetic 
of all books. It appeals to our hearts with a fresh- 
ness, which no repetition can blunt. The record more- 
over is singularly minute in this portion. The flight 
of David is told with a circumstantiality of detail 
which has no parallel elsewhere. There is no single 
day in. Jewish history it has been truly said of 
which so full an account is preserved. We have 
vividly before our eyes the long train of exiles fol- 
lowing the king,. as he turned his back on the Holy 
City, the scene of his greatest exploits, and crossed 
the brook Kidron and ascended the slopes of Olivet. 
' All the country wept with a loud voice, and all the 
people passed over.' 'David wept as he went up, and 
had his head covered, and he went barefoot : and all 
the people that was with him covered every man his 
head, and they went up, weeping as they went up.' And 
so^we follow him on his mournful way, till the pathos 
of the story and the awe of the lesson reach their 
climax in the fierce execrations and brutal insults 
of Shimei, who seizes this opportunity of trampling on 
the conscience-stricken broken-hearted king, 'Come 
out, come out, thou man of blood and thou man of 
Belial.' ' Behold, thou art taken in thy mischief, be- 
cause thou art a man of blood/ Then it is that the 
depth of the king's contrition reveals itself. Alasl it 
was only too. true it was truer even than Shimei 
S. P. s. 3 



34 THE CONSEQUENCES OF DAVIDS SIN. [in. 

knew that he was a man of blood. With a noble 
forbearance he restrains his followers from punishing 
this savage miscreant. Let him curse, and throw 
stones, and cast dust to his heart's content. How can 
he add to a grief, which already surpasses all griefs ? 
How can he deepen a humiliation, than which no 
humiliation could be lower ? ' Behold, my son seeketh 
my life: how much more now may this Benjamite 
do it?' These curses are they not after all God's 
judgment denounced against the sin ? These outrages 
are they not after all God's discipline sent to 
chasten the penitent? 'Let him alone' therefore: 
' let him alone, and let him curse ; for the Lord hath 
bidden him. It may be that the Lord will requite 
me good for his cursing this day.' 

The tide of events turns. The rebellion is crushed ; 
the rebel is slain ; the exiles retrace their steps home- 
ward. Now at length, we might have supposed, all 
would be joy and thanksgiving for the great deliver- 
ance wrought. Nay, the return is sadder than the 
departure; the triumph is more depressing than the 
humiliation. ' The victory that day was turned into 
mourning unto all the people ; for the people heard 
say that day how the king was grieved for his son. 
And the people gat them by stealth that day into 
the city, as people being ashamed steal away when 
they flee in battle.' 



in.] THE CONSEQUENCES OF DAVIDS SIN. 35 

Of the intense horrors of a civil war or of intestine 

revolution we Englishmen have been spared the cruel 

lesson. While the powerful nation, which is separated 

from ourselves only by a narrow strip of sea, has 

passed through a succession of such bloody conflicts 

within our recollection; while the great transatlantic 

people, who are bone of our bone and flesh of our 

flesh, was torn asunder by a mighty civil war within 

very recent memory, England's experience is buried 

in a remote and forgotten past. But if it be true, as our 

own great general said, that next to a defeat a victory 

is the saddest sight which a man can witness, what 

must not be the case, when to the ordinary calamities 

of war new and unwonted horrors are added, when 

the only way to triumph leads over the slaughtered 

bodies of fellow-countrymen, perhaps even of relations 

.and friends, and when each successful blow recoils on 

him who aims it! In such a conflict it must ever.be 

the case that 'the victory that day is turned into 

mourning.' 

Not less sad far sadder than this was the short, 
sharp struggle, of which the narrative is brought to a 
close in the words of the text It was civil war in 
its most terrible form. It was a combat, not only 
between fellow-countrymen, but between fellow-citi- 
zens. And the hostile chiefs were father and son. 

The crime of Absalom is not isolated. It has had 

32 



36 THE CONSEQUENCES OF DAVID'S SIN. [in. 

not a few parallels in the history of great dynasties, 
where the natural heir to the throne, impatient of 
delay, has anticipated the slow course of events, and 
snatched at the power which in due time would have 
been his own by inherited right. It has had its sad 
counterpart too in not a few private homes. Many a 
father and many a mother can tell of a child, whose 
winning ways have wound themselves round their 
affections, whose personal charms have shed a radi- 
ance of joy on their homes, and who yet has wrung 
their hearts by dark ingratitude or cruel selfishness. 
The sacred writer dwells with fondness on the endow- 
ments of Absalom, his faultless beauty, his attractive 
graces. It is clear that he himself is not proof against 
those fascinations which others found irresistible.. 
There is a terrible irony in Absalom's career which 
consciously or unconsciously each fresh stroke of the 
narrative brings out more strongly the contrast be- 
tween the outward charms and the worthless character 
of the man, the contrast between the bright hopes- 
of the outset and the deep gloom of the close, the 
contrast between his rich endowments and his hapless 
fate. He unto whom 'the soul. of king David longed 
to go forth' in the midst of his sorest displeasure, he 
of whom it is said that ' in all Israel there was none 
so much praised for his beauty,' in whom ' there was 
no blemish from the sole of his foot even to the crown. 



in.] THE CONSEQUENCES OF DAVID'S SIN. 37 

of his head/ who by his winning courtesy ' stole the 
hearts of the men of Israel/ would, we feel sure, have 
stolen our hearts also. 

Outside the walls of Jerusalem over the brook 
Kidron stands an ancient monument traditionally 
reputed to be the tomb of Absalom. Its sides, we 
are told, are 'buried deep with the stones which' the 
Jews ' throw against it in execration.' It is a religious 
duty with the modern Israelites to curse the memory 
of this prince who stole the hearts of their forefathers. 
Let the contrast speak for itself. 

The lesson is one of common and very painful 
experience dark treachery underlying an easy gaiety 
of manner, intense selfishness veiled by a graceful 
courtesy of demeanour, a worthless heart set in a 
beautiful frame. Are there any, whom God has en- 
dowed with gifts resembling these, who are conscious 
of possessing a certain power which secures them an 
easy victory over the hearts and minds of, others 
whether personal graces or conversational fluency or 
ready tact ? Let them be ever on their guard against 
themselves. These are precious endowments, if used 
rightly. They force a way, where a way is barred to 
others.; they smooth the path of life through its 
roughest obstructions ; they light up the journey of 
life through its darkest and dreariest wastes. But 
they have their special dangers also. The very ease, 



38 THE CONSEQUENCES OF DAVID'S SIN. [HI. 

with which such persons pass through life, removes the 
most valuable trials of life. When ascendency over 
others is gained without an effort by the attraction 
of personal graces, the heart will stagnate, because it 
receives no discipline and learns no lessons of self- 
denial. And hence, unless he keeps constant watch 
over himself, the possessor must become unfeeling and 
selfish. So too with the possession of natural tact 
an equally valuable and equally dangerous gift. It 
tempts men to trust to the management, rather than 
to the goodness, of their cause, to match versatility 
against truth; and thus, though they began perhaps 
by being not less single or upright than their neigh- 
bours, they fall imperceptibly into disingenuousness 
and fraud. We forebode ill of the spoilt child of a 
household ; but these are the spoilt children of a 
neighbourhood, of a people, of society at large. 

Such, we may imagine, were Absalom's tempta- 
tions; such certainly was Absalom's fall. But in 
choosing the subject I did not intend to dwell so 
much on the faults of the son, as on the sorrows of 
the father. I wished to consider the sequel of David's 
life as the consequence of David's sin. 

God has not so willed that the laws of His spiritual 
interference shall supersede the laws of natural se- 
quence. The ' water spilt on the ground ' ' cannot be 
gathered up again.' The sinful deed is an accom- 



HI.] THE CONSEQUENCES OF DAVID'S SIN. 39 

plished fact ; it is done and it cannot be undone ; the 
pardon is granted, but the consequences are not 
evaded. Thus expositors have pointed out (and the 
lesson is eminently instructive) how each one of the 
calamities, which overwhelmed the repentant king, 
flowed from some source of guilt. They have bidden 
us observe that the shameful deed of Amnon, which 
aroused Absalom's bloodthirsty revenge, and thus 
led to his banishment, his estrangement from his 
father, his rebellion and his death, grew out of the 
irregularities which must prevail in a household 
where polygamy is the rule. They have noticed that 
Ahithophel, the cunning and treacherous counsellor 
of Absalom, appears incidentally to have been the 
grandfather of Bathsheba, and that therefore his 
desertion and hostility may have been provoked by 
David's crime. They have observed also that the 
increased power and ascendency of Joab (to which the 
king's sorrows and perplexities henceforth were mainly 
due) must be traced to his possession of the fatal 
secret, to his virtual complicity in the murder of Uriah. 
They have suggested, moreover, that some rumours of 
David's guilt, having spread, would relax his hold on 
the affections of his people, and thus prepare the way 
for the revolt. They might have added (if they have 
not added), that the sins of the father must have 
lowered the moral tone of the household, and encour- 



4O THE CONSEQUENCES OF DAVID'S SIN. Im- 
aged (if they did not suggest) the sins of the sons; 
for it is the very nature of such crimes to spread by 
contagion. At all events, he who himself had done a 
deed of shame could not reprobate Amnon for a deed 
of shame ; he who himself had committed a virtual 
murder from guilty passion could not punish Absalom 
for a murder committed in revenge and under ex- 
asperation, with the crushing moral force, the lofty 
freedom, of conscious innocence. 

But indeed this is no arbitrary inference from 
the facts of. the history, no subtle but unwarranted 
theory of modern expositors. The very prophet, who 
declared the pardon, foretold at the same time the 
consequences of the sin. ' Now therefore the sword 
shall never depart from thy house.' ' Thus saith the 
Lord, Behold I will raise up evil against thee out of 
thine own house.' ' Thou didst it secretly ; but I will 
do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun.' 
God's law of cause and consequence cannot be sus- 
pended. 'Be not deceived.' 'Whatsoever a man 
soweth, that shall he also reap.' Such as the seed 
is, such will also be the harvest. 

'There are some,' said the great Augustine, 'for 
whom it is good to fall.' He who thus spoke had 
himself sinned deeply in youth, had himself fallen, 
and had risen from his fall. In him, as in the re- 
pentant king, God had created a clean heart and 



in.] THE CONSEQUENCES OF DAVID'S SIN. 4! 

renewed a. right spirit. Thus cleansed and regene- 
rated, he was permitted to pass behind the veil and 
to declare the hidden things of God with a spiritual 
insight rarely equalled since Apostolic times. And 
yet our moral instinct, not less than David's example, 
forbids us to accept this unguarded saying. It cannot 
be good for any one to fall.' 

Not good to fall. For what in common language 
we understand by the fall, is not the fall itself. The 
fall itself has been accomplished long before. The 
one startling act, the one concentrated sin, whether of 
thought or of word or of deed, is only the indication 
of an evil state of mind, fostered, encouraged, de- 
veloped by a slow growth, only the consummation of a 
gradual decline. The entertaining and the cherishing 
of the propensity to evil (whatever form this pro- 
pensity may take) the ever advancing deterioration of 
the soul this is the true fall. The other is only the 
outward symbol, the concrete embodiment, of the fall. 
It is good for a man to find out that he has fallen ; 
but it never can be good for him to fall. 

Not good to fall. For though God may create a 
clean heart and renew a right spirit in a man, his sin 
has left behind a bitter heritage of trial, a heavy 
burden of suffering, which he can only lay down with 
his life. So at least it was with David. Is there any 
one, who, dissatisfied with his insensibility to sin and 



42 THE CONSEQUENCES OF DAVID'S SIN: [in. 

wearied with the deadness of his 'heart, is tempted to 
escape from this moral torpor by some overt act of 
evil, who in despair would embrace penitence as a 
spiritual luxury, would in the Apostle's language 'sin 
that grace may abound'? Is not David's history 
enough to banish such a perilous thought ? If he is 
too weak to shake, off the burden of spiritual sloth, is 
he strong enough to bear the intolerable load which 
his sin will lay on him in its consequences ? We can 
well imagine that David's heaviest sorrows, as he 
mourned over the troubles of his household, over the 
desertion of his friends, over the rebellion and death 
of his favourite son, was the thought that all these 
trials were the legitimate consequences of his own fall; 
and that with a bitter pang of self-reproach he would 
see, as many a father has seen, in the sins of his chil- 
dren the reflection and the legacy of his own sins. 
His guilt had indeed been cleansed by the copious 
streams of God's mercy ; but the consequences of his 
guilt he must bathe in his own tears, without hoping 
to wash them away in this life. 

With such tears the tears of mingled sorrow and 
self-reproach he bade farewell to his own new capi- 
tal,- his beautiful Zion, when the rebellion broke out. 
' And David went up by the ascent of mount Olivet, 
ctnd wept as he went up, and had his head covered.' 

We are reminded by these words of a later .scene 



in.] THE CONSEQUENCES OF DAVID'S SIN. 43 

where another, resting on the slope of this same hill, 
shed tears over this same Jerusalem. 'And when He 
was come near,' says the Evangelist, ' He beheld the 
city and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, 
even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which 
belong unto thy peace. But now they are hid from 
thine eyes.' 

The place and the incident are the same; and 
yet what a contrast is there in the situation and the 
feelings of the two mourners! A great moral gulf 
separates the one from the other ; and this gulf is the 
consciousness of past sin. David's Son, like David 
himself, shed tears over a rebellious city, bewailed 
the abuse of rich opportunities, the eclipse of bright 
hopes. But in His grief there mingled no bitter after- 
taste of remorse, no shame, and self-reproach for the 
past. It was the pure, calm sorrow, which can be felt 
only by one looking down from the lofty heights of 
innocence on a people infatuated in its sin and hasten- 
ing to its ruin. He shed tears, but He did not cover 
His head. 

With still more bitter tears and with still keener 
self-reproach, now that the rebellion is crushed, the 
broken-hearted king abandons himself to his grief. 
He would give anything now his wealth, his king- 
dom, his life to have his son back. And yet he 
himself (he cannot shut out the thought) he himself 



44 THE CONSEQUENCES OF DAVID'S SIN. [in. 

must bear the blame at least in part for the crimes, 
the rebellion, the death, of his handsome, winning, 
wayward boy. Ah ! was he not indeed taken in his 
mischief? Was he not indeed ' a man of blood ' ? 

Soon or late each man will have his sorrows in 
life. It is not good for any one that he should escape 
them. By suffering even the Son of Man was made 
perfect; by suffering we must be taught, as He was 
taught. Well then will it be for us, if, when the hour 
of trial comes, we meet the struggle, not like David 
with accumulated agony and shame as those reaping 
the harvest of seeds they themselves have sown, but 
in the likeness, however faint, of David's greater de- 
scendant with a saintly heroic sorrow as those mourn- 
ing over sins from which they are free, and bearing 
calamities which they did not cause. 

But if, when the trial comes, it should find us 
otherwise ; if the type of our sorrow must be sought 
in the son of Jesse, not in the Son of Man; if we have 
sinned by some violation of God's laws, whether of 
honesty or of truth or of purity or of mercy or of 
love, so that our sufferings may be directly traced to 
our sin ; if, like another rude Shimei, our conscience 
from its vantage-ground above hurl stones and cast 
dust and heap curses on us, as we pass mournfully 
through the valley of our humiliation, reproaching us 
with being taken in our own mischief; yet never- 



in.] THE CONSEQUENCES OF DAVID'S SIN. 45 

theless even so it is good for us ; even so let us take 
heart. God's blessing is wrapped up in Shimei's 
curses, as the fertilising rain is held in the black 
thunder-cloud. 'Let him alone, and let him curse: 
it may be that the Lord will look on mine affliction. 
It is no sign to us this, that God's arm is shortened, 
that God's pardon is qualified. It is the very token 
of His presence ; it is the very message of His love. 
It is His discipline, assuring us that He has not over- 
looked our needs. It confirms to ourselves individu- 
ally the joyful tidings which the Church proclaims to 
all at this season, and which nature herself with her 
fresh awakening glories enforces by type ; for it speaks 
of resurrection, of renewal, of life. 



IV. 

CESAR'S TRIBUTE AND GOD'S TRIBUTE. 

Render to C&sar the things that are C&sar's, 
and to God the things that are God's, 

S. MARK xii. 17. 

I SUPPOSE that the selection of these words will 
seem to many to allow the preacher no alternative as 
to the subject which he proposes to consider. The 
text, and the application of the text, are too familiar 
to leave his hearers in any uncertainty. The preacher 
must desire to say something on the relations of 
Church and State. He must intend to discuss the 
advantages and disadvantages of an Establishment. 
He must wish to adjust and apportion the obligations 
which we owe to the civil and the spiritual powers 
respectively. 

Let me say plainly at the outset, that I have no 
such intention. I do not underrate the importance 
of such questions, but I do not purpose speaking of 



iv.] CESAR'S TRIBUTE AND GOD'S TRIBUTE. 47 

them to-day, simply because (if I understand the text 
aright) it has nothing at all to do with such topics, 
or at least it has only a very remote and indirect 
bearing upon them. This language perhaps will 
seem startling to some. They have been accustomed 
to regard this text as the chief authority on the 
subject. They have seen it quoted so frequently in 
the newspapers ; they have heard it so applied again 
and again in sermons. Churchmen and Noncon- 
formists friends of Establishment and foes of Esta- 
blishment have alike accepted it in this sense. 

But can this possibly be its bearing ? If this 
were so, it must be intended to draw a broad line of 
demarcation between two sets of duties. ' Here is one 
set of obligations which we owe to Caesar and not to 
God, and there is another set which we owe to God 
and not to Caesar. Keep the two quite distinct. Do 
not think at all of God's pleasure or displeasure, when 
you are doing Csesar's work; and do not regard 
Caesar's approval or disapproval, when you are doing 
God's work.' 

If the purport of the precept, I say, is distinction, 
then the distinction must be as sharp and definite as 
this. The text must proclaim a duality of authority. 
Yet we are startled, when the issue is thus set before 
us. Can anything be imagined more unscriptural 
I might well say, more irreligious, more blasphemous 



48 CAESAR'S TRIBUTE AND GOD'S TRIBUTE, [iv. 

than this ? Is not the Bible from the first chapter 
of Genesis to the last chapter of Revelation one un- 
broken protest against this sharp distinction of the 
secular and the spiritual ? Does it not teach us that 
our religion must be everywhere, because God is 
everywhere ? And more especially, when it enforces 
our duties towards our temporal rulers, what language 
does it hold ? Are we not plainly told that we owe 
obedience to kings and governors, because they are 
God's instruments, God's representatives, God's vice- 
gerents? See how S. Paul emphasizes this view; 
' There is no power but of God.' ' The powers that 
be are ordained of God.' ' He is a minister of God to 
thee for good.' ' He is a minister of God to execute 
wrath.' ' For this Cause pay ye tribute also, for they 
are ministers of God.' Not less than six times in as 
many verses does the Apostle reiterate this statement, 
that allegiance to our temporal rulers is allegiance to 
God. And in the last passage, as you will observe, 
the precept has reference to this very matter of pay- 
ing tribute. 

It is plain, therefore, that the words cannot mean 
this. But, if we desire to know what is their real 
purport, we must investigate the circumstances which 
called them forth. Who were the questioners ? What 
was their motive ? 

The questioners, we are told, were the Pharisees 



iv.] CESAR'S TRIBUTE AND GOD'S TRIBUTE. 49 

and the Herodians. With the Pharisees we are well 
acquainted. Of the Herodians we know nothing, 
except what this incident reveals. Whether they 
were a religious sect or a political party, we are not 
informed. Their name merely shows that they were 
favourable to the ascendency of Herod and Herod's 
family. 

The Pharisees and the Herodians alike must have 
had a genuine interest in the question which they 
asked, c Is it lawful to give tribute to Gaesar or not ?' 
It was not a mere speculative question. It was a 
direct, pressing, personal, practical matter ; ( Shall we 
give, or shall we not give ?' Here is the tax-gatherer 
at my door, and it is a case of conscience with me, 
whether I may give, whether I can give, or whether 
I ought not rather to submit to all the untold con- 
sequences of refusal. To the Herodian probably the 
question presented itself as the alternative between 
his allegiance to a native or quasi-native dynasty, 
and the demands of a foreign ruler. But to the 
Pharisee it would assume a far higher aspect. To 
him it was essentially a matter of conscience, of 
religion. This Csesar was the arch-heathen, the 
arch-enemy of Israel; he had his throne on the 
Babylon of the seven hills ; he had set his heel on 
the neck of the covenant people of God ; everything 
about him was profane. The sound of the Roman 
S. P. S. 4 



5O CESAR'S TRIBUTE AND GOD'S TRIBUTE, [iv. 

language in the law courts offended the ears of the 
Pharisee ; the sight of the Roman eagles hovering 
over the temple area itself shocked his eyes. Could 
he a son of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob by an 
overt act acknowledge the sovereignty of this profane 
tyrant ? Was it not a question between king Caesar, 
who was there, and king Messias, who was to come ? 
And, if so, ought he to hesitate for a moment ? Had 
he not here in another form the same .alternative 
which was offered to Israel of old on Carmel ; ' If 
Jehovah be God, then follow Him ; but if Baal be 
God, then follow Him ? ' 

Thus it was a question, which a perfectly sincere 
but somewhat bigoted Pharisee might well have asked. 
But these men were not sincere. The Evangelists 
speak of their craftiness, their hypocrisy ; our Lord 
addresses them as hypocrites. S. Luke describes 
them as ' spies who feigned themselves upright men.' 
Their object was not to solve their own difficulties, 
but to entangle Him in difficulties. In scriptural 
language they were tempting Him, luring Him on, 
that they might weave their meshes about Him. 
Hence the unnatural alliance. The Pharisees and 
the Herodians had nothing in common. But they 
would band themselves together to destroy Jesus 
'just as the Pharisees and Sadducees made common 
cause, just as Jews and Romans were leagued to- 



iv.J GESAR'S TRIBUTE AND GOD'S TRIBUTE. 51 

gether, just as Herod and Pontius Pilate shook hands 
over their victim because, though they hated one 
another, they hated Him far more. Had they not 
both alike cause to hate Him ? Could the Pharisees 
love Him, when He denounced their zeal as cunning, 
and their piety as pretence, when He held them up 
as a scorn and byword to the people, whose professed 
leaders they were ? Could the Herodians wish Him 
well, when' He denounced the leaven of Herod, and 
when He stigmatized their chief as a fox ? Therefore 
they conspire. They appeal to His courage. ' Thou 
art true, and carest for no man.' They will flatter His 
pride, and lure Him on to His ruin. The question 
placed Him in a dilemma ; ' Shall we give tribute to 
Caesar, or not ?' If He answered 'Yes,' He would lose 
caste. He would forfeit His character for boldness ; 
He would offend the scruples of the religious patriots; 
He would sink into a mere truckler and time-server. 
If He had any design of becoming a popular leader 
possibly a Messiah this would be its death-blow. 
Antagonism to foreign rule was the only standing- 
ground for such a leader. But this was not what 
they hoped. They desired that He should answer 
' No.' By praising His courage and independence of 
spirit, they strove to elicit this answer. And, if He 
should so answer, their work was done. . It was overt 
treason ; it was rank rebellion. The iron grip of the 

42 






52 CAESARS TRIBUTE AND GODS TRIBUTE. [iv. 

Roman authorities would close upon Him at once ; 
and there would be an end of Him. Their conduct 
was of a piece with the shameful hypocrisy which 
afterwards raised the cry, 'We have no king but 
Caesar' Caesar whom they detested, Caesar against 
whom their heart of hearts rebelled, Caesar whose 
yoke they would throw off to-morrow, if they could. 

Our Lord does not answer them directly 'Yes' or 
'No.' He asks for a denarius the common silver 
coin of the day. What do they see there? The 
broad brow laurel-crowned, the stern, cruel, mysteri- 
ous visage of Tiberius the reigning Emperor; or 
perhaps the singularly handsome, regular, finely-cut 
features of his predecessor, the now deified Augustus. 
And this portraiture, this name thus stamped on the 
coin, is in some sense a mark of ownership. It comes 
from Caesar's mint, and must be restored to Caesar's 
exchequer. It symbolizes the obligations which are 
due to the civil power. It tells of a fixed and orderly 
government, which secures their lives and properties 
to them, which provides for the impartial adminis- 
tration of justice, which watches over and regulates 
commercial transactions, which has assigned its weight 
and its value to this very coin, which in short makes 
life possible and worth living for them. Caesar's head, 
Caesar's superscription, is engraved upon this coin, 
just as it is engraved upon the institutions under 



iv.] C/ESAR'S TRIBUTE AND GOD'S TRIBUTE. 53 

which they live. The question was not rightly put ; 
'Is it lawful to give tribute to Csesar?' The answer 
is ; ' You are not only permitted, you are botmd to 
give tribute.' The payment is a repayment for the 
inestimable benefits which- you have received from 
the State. This then is the purport of our Lord's 
answer. He declares not indeed the Divine right of 
an Augustus or a Tiberius, not the Divine right of 
kings or of emperors, nor yet the Divine right of 
democracies, but the Divine right of established 
government, the Divine right of law and order. 
'Render to Csesar the things that are Caesar's.' 
The argument would have been just as valid, if 
instead of an Augustus or a Tiberius the emblem of 
the Roman Republic had been stamped upon that 
coin. 

'Render to Csesar the things that are Caesar's.' 
Here is a complete answer to their question. But this 
is not enough. The opportunity is seized. A rebuke 
is administered, and a lesson is enforced. These 
Pharisees were very scrupulous about the lower duties 
of religion, but very forgetful of the higher. They 
paid their tithe on mint and anise and cummin to the 
extreme farthing, and yet they omitted the weightier 
matters of the law, judgment and mercy and truth. 
They washed the outside of the cup and the platter, 
but within they were full of extortion and excess. 



54 GESAR'S TRIBUTE AND GOD'S TRIBUTE, [w. 

So here. They are infinitely scrupulous, or at least 
they feign to be so, about the political aspects of 
religion; but are they equally anxious about the 
moral and spiritual? 

This is the frame of mind, which our Lord would 
correct. 'Yes,' He seems to say, 'Ask what is your 
duty with regard to Csesar. But do not stop here. 
Do not rest content with dwelling on the politics of 
religion. Rise above your relations towards Caesar, 
and face your relations towards God. This silver- 
piece is a type, is a parable, for you. Is there no 
other tribute, think you, which you owe to a higher 
than Csesar ? Is there no other coinage, which bears 
the image and the superscription of One greater than 
Csesar ? Aye, for is it not written that God created 
man in His own image ; in the image of God created 
He him? His effigy is stamped upon thee ; His name 
and attributes are written around thee. From His 
mint thou wast issued, and to His treasury must thou 
be repaid. If to Caesar thou owest the tribute of 
these perishable coins, to God thou owest the tribute 
of thy soul, thy mind, thy life, the tribute of thyself.' 

I suppose that for every one man who is really 
eager about the spiritual and personal aspects of 
religion, who hungers and thirsts after righteousness, 
whose soul pants after the living God, scores of 
persons take an active and sincere interest in its 



iv.] CAESAR'S TRIBUTE AND GOD'S TRIBUTE. 55 

polemics the controversy between Romanism and 
Protestantism, the disputes between Churchman and 
Nonconformist, the relations of Church and State, the 
conflict between faith and unbelief. This is not a 
disease of any one time or any one place. It was 
characteristic alike of the orthodox Pharisee and the 
heretic Samaritan. When the Samaritan woman 
suddenly finds herself face 'to face with a prophet, 
how does she use her opportunity? 'Sir, teach me 
how to lay aside this burden of wickedness ; Sir, help 
me to cleanse my sin-stained life; Sir, bring me 
nearer to God ? ' Not this, but ' Sir, tell me whether 
at Jerusalem or on this mountain men ought to 
worship;' a question not unimportant in itself, a 
question to which there was a right and a wrong 
answer, but a question infinitely little, infinitely value- 
less to her then and there to her with her sin-stained 
heart, to her with her sullied life. 

Whose is this image and superscription this, 
which is stamped on thyself, O man ? It was not an 
uncommon metaphor to speak of men as coins; the 
dishonest and bad, as spurious and counterfeit; the 
upright, as genuine currency with the true ring. So 
an Apostolic father writes in the next age: 'There 
are two coinages, the one of God, the other of the 
world; and each is stamped with its own device. 
The unbelievers bear the impress of this world; the 



56 C^SARS TRIBUTE AND GOD's TRIBUTE. [iv. 

believers, of God the Father through Jesus Christ in 
love. 5 When then, having first asked, 'Whose is this 
image/ our Lord closes with the injunction, ' Render 
to God the things that are God's/ is it too much to 
infer that the connecting link between the symbol 
and the application was that familiar text, 'In the 
image of God created He him?' 

Whose is this image? Look into yourself and 
see what lineaments are traced there. What is this 
conscience, approving, stimulating, terrifying, punish- 
ing, but the impress of the Righteousness of God ? 
What is this capacity of progress, which distinguishes 
you from the beasts that perish, which urges you ever 
forward eager and restless, but the signet of the 
Perfection of God? What is this power "of memory 
and imagination, which annihilates time and space, 
penetrating into the pre-historic past and project- 
ing itself into the boundless future, traversing the 
heavens with more than the speed of lightning, 
but the stamp of the Omnipresence of God ? What 
is this anxiety about the hereafter, this desire of 
posthumous fame, this interest in descendants yet 
unborn, this witness of your immortality within you, 
but the seal set upon you by the Eternity of God ? 
Yes, everywhere are God's features stamped upon 
your soul, however blurred by ill-usage and however 
corroded by rust. 



iv.] CESAR'S TRIBUTE AND GOD'S TRIBUTE. 57 

But again. Whose is this image and superscription 
this which is stamped on thee, Christian ? When 
your brow was sealed in baptism, with whose signet 
was it sealed ? Remember how the Apostle speaks 
of admission into the Church of Christ, and to the 
privileges of the Gospel, as a re-creating, a renewing 
after the. image of God. In this second creation the 
same image was restamped upon you. The blurred 
lines were sharpened, as you passed once again 
through the mint of God. The obverse is still the 
face of God, while the reverse is the Cross of Christ. 
The old ownership is doubly affirmed. You are 
bought bought with the costliest price which even 
God Himself could pay. Henceforth you are not your 
own. You are God's God's by redemption now, as 
you were His by creation before. 'Render to God 
the things that are God's.' 



V. 

THE FALL OF JUDAS. 

Jesus answered them, Have not I chosen you 
twelve, and one of you is a devil?- He spake of Jiidas 
Iscariot the son of Simon : for he it was that shotild 
betray Him, being one of the twelve. 

S. JOHN vi. 70, 7-1. 
Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, 1871. 

THE one crime, which society judges hardly, for 
which it holds no penalty too severe, is treachery. 
Of other sins the world is a lenient critic. It deals 
very gently with the profligate ; it is full of excuses 
for the self-willed and violent. It has a sympathy 
with passion the passion of the sensualist, or the 
passion of the headstrong which softens its judgment. 
But the traitor receives no rnercy at the bar of public 
opinion. The instinct of self-preservation does not 
leave society a choice. It could not hold together, if 
perfidy were overlooked. The betrayal of a friend, 



v.] THE FALL OF JUDAS. 59 

the betrayal of a cause, the betrayal of one's country 
these are unforgiven and unforgotten crimes. Even 
treachery to a treacherous cause is barely tolerated. 
The law employs it, and disguises it with a specious 
title. We call it 'turning Queen's evidence,' but 
still it is repulsive. We avail ourselves of the 
treachery, but we loathe the traitor. It is an ugly 
name and an ugly thing, to which no social or 
political necessity can altogether reconcile .us. 

And here in the text we are confronted with the 
arch-traitor himself the one man, before 'whose one 
act the darkest treacheries recorded in the annals 
of crime seem pale and colouiless, whose name is 
handed down to all generations branded with the 
reproach of a never-dying infamy. For he betrayed 
the Friend, Who was the very impersonation of Love ; 
he betrayed the cause, in which the eternal interests . 
of mankind are bound up ; he betrayed the country, 
of which we all are citizens, the kingdom of heaven, 
where we all aspire to dwell. 

Is not the case of Judas, we are led to ask, so 
exceptional, that his temptation is not our temptation, 
that his crime cannot be our crime, and that therefore 
his fall has no lesson of warning for us ? Nay, his sin 
seems so unnatural and monstrous, that we have some 
difficulty in even realising it. The contrast is too 
violent between the Apostle and the traitor the 



6O THE FALL OF JUDAS. [v. 

intimate communion with the Holy One here, the 
vile perfidy to the Friend and Saviour there: the 
unique advantages here, the unparalleled baseness 
there. The perfect example of the Master, the eleva- 
ting society of the fellow-disciples, the words of truth, 
the works of power, the grace, the purity, the holiness, 
the love all these forgotten, spurned, trampled under 
foot, to gratify one miserable, greedy passion, if not 
the worst, at least the meanest, which can possess the 
heart of man. On this moral contrast our Lord lays 
special emphasis in the language of the text. 'Have 
I not chosen you, the twelve, chosen you out of the 
many thousands in Israel, in preference to the high- 
born and the powerful, in preference to the rabbi and 
the scribe and the priest, chosen you a mere handful 
of men to be My intimate friends, My special 
messengers now, to sit on twelve thrones judging the 
twelve tribes of Israel hereafter ; and yet one among 
you is not faithless only, not unworthy, not sinful 
only, but a very impersonation of the Accuser, the 
Arch-fiend himself.' 

Our experiences may recall some faint type of 
such a contrast, where the circumstances of the 
criminal and the baseness of the crime seem to stand 
in no relation to each other. We may have seen 
some one member of a family, brought up under 
conditions the most favourable to his moral and 



v.] THE FALL OF JUDAS. 6 1 

religious development, watched over by parents whose 
devoted care was never at fault, growing up among 
brothers and sisters whose example suggested only 
innocence and truthfulness, breathing in short the 
very atmosphere of holiness and purity and love ; and 
yet he has fallen fallen we know not how, but fallen 
so low that even the world rejects him as an outcast. 
He is a traitor to the family name, he has dragged the 
family honour in the mire. And yet, until lately, he 
was, to all outward appearances, as one of the rest 
sharing the same companionships, joining in the same 
amusements, learning the same lessons, nay, even 
wearing the same family features, speaking with his 
father's voice, or smiling with his mother's smile. 

But, though such experiences may serve in some 
measure to account for the fall of Judas, yet we feel 
that much still remains unexplained. The excep- 
tional circumstances have not yet been taken into our 
reckoning. There is a theological difficulty, and there 
is a moral difficulty. The theological difficulty re- 
lates to the part taken by our Lord Himself; the 
moral difficulty relates to the part taken by Judas. 

I. There is the theological difficulty. If our 
Lord did indeed read men's hearts, if with Divine 
insight He could forecast the future, how did He 
admit into His little band one, in whom even then 
He saw the germs of a base passion, and whose fall 



02 THE FALL OF JUDAS. [v. 

hereafter He must have foreknown by His omni- 
present intuition? There is something strangely 
contradictory, we are apt to think, between the 

selection to the Apostleship and the prescience of 
the betrayal. 

But is it really so ? If, when Judas was chosen to 
his high office, his heart had been already cankered 
with avarice, and his character debased, then indeed 
the difficulty would be great ; then indeed his selec- 
tion would have been (we cannot think the thought 
without irreverence) a solemn unreality, a mere 
dramatic display. But we have no reason to suppose 
this. When he was chosen, he was worthy of the 
choice ; he was not a bad man ; he had, we must 
suppose, no common capacities for good ; there was 
in him perhaps the making of a S. Peter or a S. John. 
His whole history points to this view of his character. 
Can we suppose that he alone had made no sacrifices, 
suffered no privations, met with no reproaches, during 
those three years, in which through good and evil 
report he followed that Master, Who was despised 
and rejected of men, Who had not where to lay His 
head ? Can we imagine that he alone had given no 
pledges of his earnestness, that he alone escaped the 
bitter consequences of discipleship, that from him 
alone Christ's unpopularity glanced off without leaving 
a bruise or a scar behind ? And does not his terrible 



v.] THE FALL OF JUDAS. 63 

end read the same lesson ? The sudden revulsion of 
feeling, the bitter remorse, the crushing despair, so 
fatal in its result, serves but to show what he might 
have been, if one vile passion had not been cherished 
in him till it had eaten out all his better nature. And 
so it was, that throughout the Lord's ministry, even to 
the last fatal moment, he seems to have been unsus- 
pected by his brother Apostles, moving about with 
them, trusted by them, appearing outwardly as one 
of them. On that night when the Master announces 
the approaching treachery, each asks sorrowfully, 'Is it 
I?' not enduring to entertain the thought of himself, 
and yet not daring to suspect the evil in another. All 
this while Judas was on his trial, as we are on our 
trial. He was selected for the Apostleship, as we are 
called into Church-membership. But, like us, he was 
allowed the exercise of his human free-will; he was not 
compelled by an irresistible fate to act worthily of his 
calling; he was free to make his election between 
good and evil ; he rejected the good, and he chose the 
evil. 

And therefore the theological difficulty no longer 
remains. We cannot say how God's foreknowledge 
and our free-will should coexist. The prescience of 
Christ is as the prescience of God. It is subject to 
the same conditions, is attended with the same 
difficulties. His little company was not intended to 
be perfect. Otherwise it would have conveyed no 



64 THE FALL OF JUDAS. [v. 

lessons to us. It had its coward in Peter ; its sceptic 
in Thomas ; and it had also its traitor in Judas. 

2. But the second difficulty, the moral difficulty, 
still remains. Granted that there is nothing inconsis- 
tent with God's known dealings elsewhere in our 
Lord's selection of Judas to the Apostleship, yet how 
are we to explain the conduct of Judas himself? With 
these advantages, amidst these associations, before 
this Presence, how could he so fall? Have we not 
here a moral impossibility ? 

Had he not, day after day, and month after month, 
and year after year, listened to the voice of Him, Who 
spake as never man .spake, Whose single utterances 
have had power to turn from evil to good and to 
change at once the whole tenour of a life, Whose 
words ringing through all the ages now after the lapse 
of eighteen centuries speak to the hearts of every man 
and every nation with a force and a distinctness and a 
penetration peculiarly their own ? Had he not heard 
Him, as He denounced the cares of this world and 
the deceitfulness of riches ; as He declared the im- 
possibility of a divided worship between God and 
Mammon? Amidst all distractions, through every 
discouragement, Judas had remained, had persevered, 
had listened ; listened to all that He had uttered from 
that first conscience-stirring sermon on the Galilean 
Mount to these last solemn discourses on Olivet and 
in Jerusalem ; and yet he was a traitor. 



v.]. THE FALL OF JUDAS. 65 

And had he not also witnessed those mighty 
works works which no man could do, except God 
were with him, which were the very credentials of His 
Messianic claims? Had he not been present when 
those five thousand were fed on the few loaves in 
Galilee, and those four thousand in Decapolis ? Had 
he not seen the lame walk, and the dumb speak, and 
the lepers cleansed, by that voice and under that 
touch? Had he not witnessed the very devils un- 
willingly confessing His name? Nay, had he not, 
only a short time ago, not far from this very spot, 
seen the crowning miracle of all, when the friend, who 
had been dead already four days, was restored to 
life again, and seated at table with his Master; and 
yet he was a traitor. 

I know that some have sought an escape from this 
difficulty by supposing that the motives of Judas were 
not so very bad after all. He was very wrong, no 
doubt, they would say; but his fault was quite as 
much an error of judgment as an obliquity of moral 
principle. He did not intend his Master to be put to 
death. He believed in His Messianic claims. He knew 
that He was the predicted King of Israel. But he 
was impatient that Jesus did not declare Himself. He 
was dissatisfied that so many golden opportunities 
had been lost, that year after year had passed and 
nothing was done. And so he would put an end to 
s. P. s. 5 



66 THE FALL OF JUDAS. [v. 

this long suspense; he would compel his Master to 
assert His sovereignty ; he \yould concentrate upon 
Him the antagonism of the rulers in such a way that 
He must declare Himself, must confound His enemies 
by the exercise of His supernatural powers, and stand 
forth confessed the Anointed, the Chosen One, the 
King of Israel. 

To this there is one decisive answer. The Gospel 
narrative gives no intimation that this, or anything 
like this, was his motive. On the contrary, they sug- 
gest a very different view of Judas's character. ' This 
he said, not that he cared for the poor ; but because 
he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare (or pur- 
loined) what was put therein.' He had misappropri- 
ated the general funds, as we should say, in delicate 
modern phrase ; the Evangelist knows nothing of 
delicate modern phrases, and calls it thieving. He 
had allowed one vile passion to grow unchecked in 
his heart. His office, as treasurer of the little com- 
pany, had given him opportunities of indulging this 
passion. He had yielded, and so fell. 

But after all does this painful history really con- 
tradict our experience? Experience may not carry 
us to the extreme point where Judas's transgression 
lies ; but, so far as it goes, it only confirms this strangq 
contradiction. For it teaches that the moral character 
by no means keeps pace with the moral opportunities ; 



v.] THE FALL OF JUDAS. 67 

nay, it shows that, when a man, placed in a position 
eminently favourable to the development of his higher 
self, does nevertheless give the rein to some vicious 
tendency within, his vice seems to gain strength by 
this very fact. It can only be indulged by resistance 
to the good influences about him, and resistance 
always gives compactness and force, always braces the 
capacity, whether for good or for evil. Moreover, such 
a man gets to isolate his vicious passion from the 
surrounding circumstances, even from the better 
impulses within himself. If he did not, his relations 
with those about him would be intolerable; the 
conflict in his own heart would be too agonizing. 
But when, gradually and half-unconsciously, he has 
got to treat his special temptation as something apart, 
to concede to it a special privilege, to regard it as a law 
to itself; then the moral checks are removed; then it 
thrives, uninterrupted and almost unnoticed ; until at 
length it casts away its disguises, it throws off all 
control, and reveals itself in all its vile deformity. 

This then is the first stage in the traitor's fall. It 
is the often-told tale of a single sin springing up and 
luxuriating in secret, till in its rank growth it has 
twined itself around all the fibres of the heart, and 
choked and killed with its poisonous embrace what- 
ever there was of pure and noble and good in that 
soul. The process had been a gradual process. It is 

52 



68 THE FALL OF JUDAS. [v. 

an old and a true saying, that no man ever became 
utterly base at once. Utter baseness requires a long 
education ; but it is carried on in secret, and so we do 
not notice it. The heinous, shocking crime first 
startles us, but it is only the end of a long series. It 
was so no doubt with Judas. He had had, as every 
man, whether good or bad, has in some form or other, 
an evil tendency in his heart. Here was his trial ; 
here might have been his moral education. But he 
made it his master, and it plunged him in headlong 
ruin. There was, first of all, the pleasure of fingering 
the coin ; then there was the desire of accumulating ; 
then there was the reluctant hand and the grudging 
heart in distributing alms ; then there was the silent 
appropriation of some trifling sum, as indemnification 
for a real or imagined personal loss ; then there was 
the first unmistakeable act of petty fraud and so it 
went on and on, until the disciple became the thief, the 
trusted became the traitor, the Apostle of Christ the 
Son of Perdition. For there was no external check 
upon him. The moral checks the influences, the 
companionships, the Divine Presence, ought to have 
been more than a compensation for the absence of 
material checks. This was his spiritual probation. 
The incomings and the outgoings of the common 
purse were alike precarious. There was no balancing 
of ledgers, no auditing of accounts in the little 



V.] THE FALL OF JUDAS. 69 

company. No one knew what was received and 
what was spent. Each trusted, and each was trusted 
by, the other. 

Up to the time of his fall Judas had been ava- 
ricious, miserly, fraudulent Let us use the plain 
language of the Evangelist, he had been a thief. But 
a traitor, an arch-traitor this was far from his 
thoughts. To betray, to ruin, to kill the Master 
Whom he respected and feared, Whom perhaps after 
his poor fashion he loved, Whose fortunes he had 
followed so long, Who (he must have felt it in his 
heart of hearts) was the destined deliverer, the anoint- 
ed King of Israel this was too terrible, too shocking, 
even for the imagination to entertain. 

Let us follow this history now through its second 
stage the temptation and the struggle. The oppor- 
tunity came. The match was put to the train, which 
long inveterate habit had laid. And could the result 
be otherwise ? 

The opportunity came. I do not doubt that he 
reasoned about it. There was much to be said for his 
yielding ; there always is much to be said for yielding, 
when a temptation courts acquiescence. He might 
argue thus. Either Jesus is the Christ, or He is 
not. If He is the Christ, my act will do no harm 
nay, it will be a positive good. It will be the means 
of eliciting the truth. He will be confronted with His 



70 THE FALL OF JUDAS. [v. 

opponents; He will wrest Himself from their grasp; 
He will crush them by His divine power; He will 
ride triumphant over His foes, and seat Himself on 
the throne of Israel. If He is the Messiah, no act 
of mine can touch Him. 

But what if he is not the Messiah ? What if those 
works of power, which I have witnessed, were wrought, 
as the priests and Pharisees have said, not by the 
finger of God, but by Beelzebub, the prince of the 
devils ? What if He is a mere pretender, a rank 
impostor ? Then there can be no doubt about the 
wisdom, the propriety of this course. By exposing 
this gigantic imposture, by terminating these blas- 
phemous assumptions, I shall confer a substantial 
benefit on my generation and my country. 

Thus he might argue. Whatever of belief there 
was in him, and whatever of scepticism there was in 
him, pointed in the same way. With the evil-hearted 
all things turn to evil. The argument was without a 
flaw. It had only one fault : it was wholly beside 
the question. It did not touch the motive of the act,, 
and therefore did not touch the character of the act. 
Believe me, if there is one maxim more sound, more 
saving, more universal in its application than another, 
it is this never to reason, never to argue, in the face 
of temptation ; but to spurn it from your presence, if 
you are strong enough ; if not, to flee from its presence. 



v.] THE FALL OF JUDAS. /I 

Of all cases this is the one where to argue, and so to 
hesitate (for if you argue you must hesitate), is to be 
lost. Logic and argument have their high and noble 
functions ; but this is not their place. Here we want 
not reasoning; we want love and conscience con- 
science which directs, and love which inspires. Love 
is better than reason. If you would realise the con- 
trast between the two, recall the scene in Simon's 
house at Bethany six days before. There too Judas 
reasons, while Mary loves. 'Why was not this 
ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to 
the poor?' Here also the reasoning is faultless; it 
has been repeated again and again in diverse forms, 
when an excuse is sought for niggardliness. But it 
was said without love, and it is repeated without love. 
Better, a thousand times better, the unreasoning 
devotion, the uncalculating abandonment of love in 
Mary, than the prudential logic, the strong practical 
common-sense of Judas. Of her it is said, ' Where- 
soever this Gospel shall be preached in the whole 
world, there shall also this be told for a memorial of 
her.' Of him, 'Woe unto that man by whom the Son 
of Man is betrayed; it had been good for that man if 
he had not been born.' 

And so Judas fell. Love might have saved him : 
reason killed him. He fell; and the heinousness of 
his crime, the greatness of his fall, lay in this, that he 



72 THE FALL OF JUDAS. [v. 

sinned against light He, whose feet this very night 
the Master had washed as an example to His dis- 
ciples, he, who this very night had partaken of the 
sacramental bread and wine, went out and forthwith 
betrayed his Lord. This violent contrast is ever 
present in the narratives of the Evangelists. 'Judas, 
which betrayed Him, being one of the twelve/ says S. 
John. ' He was numbered with us, and obtained part 
of this ministry,' says S. Peter. And all the incidents 
connected with his fatal act are symbolical of the 
contrast the favours, the privileges, the light, vouch- 
safed on the one side: the meanness, the ingratitude, 
the blackness of the treachery on the other. 'He it is, 
to whom I shall give the sop, when I have dipped it.' 
And the transition is as sudden as the contrast is 
violent. ' And after the sop Satan entered into him. 

He then having received the sop immediately went 

out : and it was night/ 

'It was night/ In the full presence of the glorious 

Sunlight it was night to that traitorous, fallen man. 

With darkness overhead, and deeper darkness still 

within, he did the deed of eternal, irretrievable infamy. 
The deed is done ; the Master is condemned ; the 

reward is secured. And then the revulsion comes. 

What is now the value of those few paltry coins? 

What is now the use of that persuasive, flawless logic? 

Is there any one here in this congregation, who has 



v.] THE FALL OF JUDAS. 73 

passed through any similar experience ; who has 
sacrificed his probity and honour, the pillar of his 
inward self-respect, to the temptation of some sordid 
gain ; who has bartered his purity the royal robe of 
his Christian birthright for the gratification of some 
hasty passion, and found out, then when it is too late, 
in the bitterness of remorse, that the bright, tempting, 
full-ripe fruit was turned to rottenness in his grasp 
loathsome to the eye and poisonous to the taste ? If 
so, he may realise, faintly realise, the despair of Judas, 
when he awoke from his moral trance. It was night, 
when the deed was done; now there is light only 
too much light striking in upon his soul, and piercing 
its darkest and most dreaded recesses with a pain- 
ful glare. 

The end we know. He flung back the accursed 
coin, the seal of his guilt, to those who had tempted 
to the fatal act. He could not bear the light, could 
not bear life, could not bear himself. 

An ancient writer, impressed by the bitterness of 
his grief and the sincerity of his confession, ' I have 
sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood,' 
would interpret his suicide favourably. In the agony 
of his condition he could not bear to wait ; his Master 
was doomed, and he would anticipate Him; would 
rush at once into the world of the unseen, seek His 
presence there, and confess the heinousness of his 



74 THE FALL OF JUDAS. [v. 

guilt, and throw himself on His infinite compassion 
' with his bare soul.' It is a striking thought. ' With 
his bare soul ' stripped of those hands which sealed 
the fatal compact by their grasp, of those eyes which 
gloated over the accursed gain, of those lips which 
gave the final, fatal, treacherous kiss. And yet this, 
we feel, is not the Judas of the Evangelists, the Son 
of Perdition. ' With his bare soul.' It had been bare 
enough throughout in the sight of God, with all its 
dark windings, all its treacherous subterfuges bare 
with that blackened guilt, which a long life of peni- 
tence were too little to wipe out, and which a suicidal 
death could only fix there the more indelibly. 

' He went to his own place ' this is S. Peter's 
simple phrase. The veil is drawn over his fate. We 
dare not, cannot lift it. There let us leave him ; 
there to the mercy of the Righteous Judge, and the 
justice of a merciful God ; there 'with his bare soul,' 
in the presence of the Christ, Whom he betrayed and 
crucified. It is not ours to judge. Only his history 
remains ; not as a discouragement, for that it cannot 
be, but as a warning to us, how the greatest spiritual 
privileges may be neutralised by the indulgence of 
one illicit passion, and the life, which is lived in the 
face of the unclouded sun, may set at last in the night 
of despair. 



VI. 

THE COUNSEL OF CAIAPHAS. 

And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the high- 
priest that same year, said unto them : Ye know 
nothing at all, nor consider that it is expedient for us, 
that one man should die for the people, and that the 

whole nation perish not. 

S. JOHN xi. 49, 50. 

Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity, 1871. 

LAST Sunday I took as the subject of my sermon 
one of the principal agents in the passion of our Lord; 
to-day I purpose taking another. Last Sunday it was 
Judas; to-day it shall be Caiaphas. By the collusion 
of these two the result was attained, the death was 
compassed fatal at once to Judas, fatal soon after to 
the Jewish priesthood, but bringing light and life and 
hope to untold generations of men and women yet 



76 THE COUNSEL OF CAIAPHAS. [vi. 

unborn. Calaphas spoke truly. It was expedient, 
though not as he understood it not expedient for 
himself, the speaker, or for his order ; not expedient 
for the Jewish priesthood or for the Jewish polity ; but 
expedient for the saving of the nations, that this one 
man should die. 

And what a contrast between the two chief con- 
spirators in this crime ! Last Sunday we followed the 
history of an isolated individual cherishing a fatal 
passion in secret. We traced the temptations, the 
misgivings, the self-excuses, the dark windings of that 
single, silent, traitorous heart. Now we are thrown 
into the midst of an ecclesiastical assembly, with its 
many voices, its diverse counsels, its tumultuous pas- 
sions, till at length the master-spirit by force of 
character, and prestige of office, and definiteness of 
purpose, sways it to his own view, and all unite in the 
resolution, ' It is expedient for us, that one man this 
one man should die/ There we had the tempted ; 
here we have the tempters. There we had the inti- 
mate friend, the chosen disciple, allured into the basest 
perfidy: here we have at least consistent enemies, 
who felt instinctively that the doctrine of this new 
Teacher must be fatal to their ascendency, and were 
only abiding their time to compass His destruction. 
Arid when the conspiracy is successful, and the deed 
is done, what a contrast still! Look at the agony 



vi.] THE COUNSEL OF CAIAPHAS. 77 

of despair there ; the heartless satisfaction here. ' I 
have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent 
blood.' ' What is that to us ? See thou to that.' It 
were almost better, we are tempted to think, to be 
like Judas crushed under the burden of that one un- 
remitted sin, than like Caiaphas, and the colleagues 
of Caiaphas, rejoicing in the success of their criminal 
stratagem, and answering with a cold, cutting sneer 
the agonized remorse of their miserable dupe. 

And I think too that in applying the lesson to 
ourselves, we feel something of this contrast. We 
cannot realise the crime of Judas ; we repudiate it ; 
we do not recognise any likeness to ourselves ; we try 
to persuade ourselves that his history has no warning 
for us. His sin is so unique and monstrous. But, 
when we turn to the Jewish priesthood and the Jewish 
populace, the case is different. A secret misgiving 
arises in us that, if we had been there, we might have 
been found in the majority, nay, more probably than 
not, we should have been found in the majority. And 
a cold shudder creeps over us at the bare thought 
that, seated in that priestly gathering, we should have 
agreed with Caiaphas in the expediency of this one 
man's death ; that, standing among that popular 
throng, we should have cried out to save Barabbas 
the robber, and to crucify Jesus the Christ. 

Not that we have any sympathy with the counsel 



78 THE COUNSEL OF CAIAPHAS. [vi. 

of Caiaphas. How could we have any ? Even if no 
world-wide issues had depended on the result, even 
if He, Whose life was trembling in the balance, had 
been an ordinary man, still this counsel would have 
been base, utterly base. It was unjust; it did not 
even profess to take account of right or wrong ; 
whether the accused deserved to die or not, was 
wholly beside the question; there was a political 
necessity, and to this He must be sacrificed; it was 
expedient for them that He should die. Again, it was 
untruthful; the reasons, which Caiaphas and those 
with him put forward, were not the reasons which 
influenced them in their secret heart. They pleaded 
the danger of a popular demonstration and the anger 
of the Romans in consequence. ' They will come and 
take away our place and nation.' But mark them at 
a later stage, and judge whether the avowed pretext 
was the real motive. Then it was Pilate, the Roman 
governor, who could have saved Jesus ; while by 
clamour and threat and insult these chief-priests 
drove him against his inclinations and against his 
judgment to shed the innocent blood. Again it was 
based on a conspiracy. This assembly was a motley 
group, composed of various members differing on 
essential questions of doctrine, and agreed only on 
this one point, that this Galilean must at all hazards 
be put out of the way. The greater part were Phari- 



vi.] THE COUNSEL OF CAIAPHAS. 79 

sees ; Caiaphas himself, and the heads of the priest- 
hood, were Sadducees. The Pharisees believed in the 
immortality of the soul ; the Sadducees denied it. 
Could any more vital difference be conceived ? But 
now they made common cause. Jesus was hateful 
to both alike. He was hateful to the Pharisees ; for 
He had denounced their pride, their formalism, their 
hypocrisy, their spiritual tyranny, in no measured 
language. He was hateful to the Sadducees ; for the 
raising of Lazarus, wrought in the very suburbs of 
Jerusalem and attracting crowds from the city itself, 
was a flat refutation of their leading doctrine, the 
denial of a resurrection. So they conspired against 
Him. And lastly it was selfish, intensely and cruelly 
selfish; for why should He, the blameless Galilean 
teacher, He Who had ever inculcated obedience to the 
powers that be, Who had enjoined His hearers always 
to render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's why 
should He be sacrificed in pretence, that the whole 
nation might not perish: in reality, that they, the 
priests, they, the Pharisees their order, their prestige, 
their interests, they themselves might not suffer ? 

And now, when we look back on the act in the 
light of revelation, with the experience of time now, 
when we realise the full significance of putting this one 
man, this Galilean carpenter, to death, the injustice, 
the hypocrisy, the collusion, the selfishness, the base- 



80 THE COUNSEL OF CAIAPHAS. [vi. 

ness of the deed excite a repulsion and an abhorrence 
which no words can describe. 

And yet, notwithstanding our abhorrence of the 
crime, we are half-forced to acknowledge that we, 
with the Jewish priests, with the Jewish mob, might 
have been partners in the guilt, that we with them 
might even have claimed as a privilege the responsi- 
bility of the act ; ' His blood be on us, and on our 
children' words lightly spoken then, words terribly 
significant afterwards. 

Nay, we feel a half inclination to palliate their 
conduct. Their religious feelings were excited ; their 
leaders worked upon their fears and their fanaticism ; 
what was first the deliberate counsel of a few bold 
spirits was accepted as the thoughtless resolution of 
all. They did that collectively, which they would 
have shrunk from doing individually. 

There is something inexpressibly shocking in the 
thought that the injustice and the wickedness of a 
large assembly even of a deliberative assembly is 
greater than the injustice and the wickedness of an 
individual. Yet so it is. The passionate are excited ; 
the timid are silenced; the immoral feel themselves 
shielded from any evil consequences by numbers ; the 
more moral calm their consciences by pleading di- 
vided responsibility. 

Yes, here is the crowning delusion. A divided 



vi.] THE COUNSEL OF CAIAPHAS. 8 1 

responsibility! How can you divide your responsi- 
bility ? Is there any other man, or any other body 
of men, master of your conscience, or you of theirs ? 
You may have the majority with you, or you may 
have it against you; but for your voice, your senti- 
ment, your vote, you will give as strict an account be- 
fore the All-righteous and All-seeing Judge, as though 
it had stood alone, as though it singly were the sole 
arbiter pf the event. He, who raises his voice for the 
murder of a man, is equally a murderer, though it 
be drowned in ten thousand others, clamouring for 
the same man's death. Does not the law itself teach 
this ? When a conspiracy to commit a crime is proved, 
it treats the conspirators as all guilty; it does not 
divide the legal penalty into so many fractions and 
apportion one to each ; but it visits all alike with the 
full punishment due to that crime. Apply this right- 
eous principle then to responsibilities of members 
composing an assembly. If as a member of a board 
you vote for an unrighteous or oppressive measure, 
because your party puts some pressure upon you ; if 
as a member of a synod you condemn or denounce 
the innocent, because it is expedient for your Church 
or your order that he should be condemned ; if as a 
member of a body of electors you vote for an unfit or 
a less fit candidate, because your interests or your 
fears prevail with you; if as a member of a trades 
S. P. S. 6 



82 THE COUNSEL OF CAIAPHAS. [vi. 

union you consent to or connive at an act of violence 
and tyranny against a fellow-workman or an employer, 
because you do not like to go against the rest of your 
class; then be assured, that for that unrighteous 
measure, for that unjust verdict, for that unfit election, 
for that act of coercion, you are equally guilty as 
though it were your own doing, for you have made 
it your own. In that forest of uplifted hands your 
hand may have passed unnoticed ; in that hubbub 
of clamorous voices your voice may have been un- 
heard ; but be assured it has gone up to heaven 
clear and distinct, with all its individuality, with all 
its peculiar emphasis as though it had startled the 
silence and awakened the echoes in the solitude of a 
desert. 

'But,' you will say, 'let all this be granted ; suppose 
that I feel the full responsibility of my individual 
vote, yet what safeguard can I have that I should not 
have gone wrong, conscientiously wrong, in such a 
case as this ? Here was prestige, authority, office on 
one side. The priests, the rulers, the rabbis, recom- 
mended this course. Could I refuse to obey those 
who sat in Moses' seat?' 

To this the obvious answer is ; that the cause 
Avhich pleads, ' It is expedient,' and cannot plead, ' it 
is. right, it is just, it is true,' must be bad, by whatever 
authority it may be recommended. Though an angel 



vi.] THE COUNSEL OF CAIAPHAS. 83 

from heaven should preach this doctrine to you, yet 
hold it accursed. No expediency can make the con- 
demnation of the innocent right 

' But the religious question the doctrine of Jesus 
and the doctrine of the Pharisees how judge between 
these? What faculty is given to me, what faculty 
had these Jews, by which they could discriminate 
between the two ? Was it not excusable, was it not 
natural, nay, was it wrong, to follow constituted au- 
thority and time-honoured prescription here ? ' 

Yes, give its proper weight to authority, to pre- 
scription ; and yet show we you a more excellent way. 
There are times, when God wills to break down the 
barriers of the past, to lead men into unexplored fields 
of truth, in short to give them a new revelation. The 
crisis, of which we are speaking, was one of these 
the most momentous of them all. At such times 
the hearts of the thoughtful and conscientious and 
devout will be filled with anxiety. At such times 
authority fails, and reason fails, and liberalism fails. 
The only safe guides, counsellors, confessors, are love 
and the Spirit. 

To the Pharisees both these were wanting. Love 
was the fulfilling of the law : and yet they saw in the 
law only a rigid system, which gave into their sole 
keeping the keys of heaven, which enabled them 
to bind on men's shoulders a burden too heavy for 

62 



84 THE COUNSEL OF CAIAPHAS. [vi. 

them to bear. Love is the mind of God ; and those 
who have no love cannot enter into His mind, cannot 
read His purposes. Love is that electric sympathy, 
which finds its like, which is drawn by a natural at- 
traction to whatever is lovely and beautiful and good. 
The mission, the words, the life, the love, of Christ 
spoke to the loving heart. They spoke to Peter and 
to John and to Nathanael, to Israelites without guile, 
in tones clear enough. But to Caiaphas and to 
the Pharisees they were inarticulate, unmeaning to 
Caiaphas, the cold and heartless, who for his own 
selfish ends ruthlessly put the innocent One to death ; 
to the Pharisees, the proud and self-complacent, who 
devoured widows' houses, while for a pretence they 
made long prayers. 

And the close ally of love is the Spirit. I use 
the term as opposed to the letter, the form. I mean 
that faculty, which pierces the outside shell, and dis- 
covers the hidden soul of things. I mean that habit 
of mind, for which mere formalities without any ac- 
companying idea are valueless, which seeks to endow 
all its acts with a meaning, a reality, a life. Time 
was when the strict observances of the Pharisees were 
not mere formalities. At a great national crisis the 
Pharisees had banded themselves together to resist 
aggression from foreign tyrants ; they had set them- 
selves to preserve the commandments of the Law and 



VI.] THE COUNSEL OF CAIAPHAS. 85 

the teachings of the Old Testament intact against the. 
degrading polytheism and the low morality of the 
surrounding nations. To effect this, it was necessary 
to be strict, over-strict, in ceremonial observances. 
Thus they had deserved well of their country : they 
had wrought and suffered in the cause of true religion. 
This we must not forget. But lapse of time, and 
change of circumstance, and increase of worldliness 
had done their work ; and while the forms remained, 
the spirit had gone ; just as one will go on repeating 
the hymn learnt long ago at the mother's knee year 
after year in a heartless, listless, unmeaning way, be- 
cause through indifference and apathy he has allowed 
the cold shadow of the world to deepen upon him, 
and has neglected to renew his spiritual faculties from 
clay to day at the source of all true freshness of life, 
at the fountain of the Holy Spirit. 

Only by the spiritual faculty are things spiritual 
discerned. To the Pharisees their rabbinical learning, 
their strict observances, their religious zeal, were use- 
less here. Their spiritual vision had been blinded by 
long disuse, and they could not see. 

So will it be with us. Without love, without the 
Spirit, we cannot judge aright. When the alterna- 
tive is offered, we shall blindly follow the counsel of 
Caiaphas; we shall prefer Barabbas the robber to 
Jesus the Christ; and in a moment of recklessness, 



86 THE COUNSEL OF CAIAPHAS. [vi. 

perhaps in an excess of religious zeal, we shall crucify 
the Son of God afresh. 

Man proposes, but man cannot dispose. Man 
devises means, but man cannot control the event. 
God takes our rough-hewn counsels and shapes them 
to His finer ends. He uses the worldly ambition of 
one prince for the overthrow of idolatry, the selfish 
profligacy of another for the establishment of a . re- 
formation. The injustice and the cruelty and the 
arrogance, the scheming and the success of Caiaphas 
are supple as clay in His hands. 

'It is expedient, that one man should die.' We 
all acknowledge the truth of this prophecy, as the 
Evangelist acknowledged it. But what would Caia- 
phas himself have said if he had foreseen the result ? 
I turn over the pages of history, and I find that a 
few years after these words were uttered, Caiaphas 
was deposed from the high-priesthood by these very 
Romans whom he was so very eager to conciliate. I 
look further, and I read that some thirty years later 
still, while many present at this council of priests and 
Pharisees were yet living, the Romans did come and 
take away both their place and nation ; and this, be- 
cause in place of believing on the true Christ Whose 
kingdom was not of this world, Who commanded to 
give tribute to Caesar, they chose as their leaders 
false Messiahs, political adventurers, whose schemes 



vi.] THE COUNSEL OF CATAPHAS. 87 

of earthly dominion were dangerous to the power and 
the majesty of Rome. 

So it is that God takes our selfish, arrogant, empty 
utterances, and fills them with a meaning of His own. 
A powerful European people only the other day, 
having declared war against a neighbouring nation 
and thirsty with the greed of conquest, sped forth 
its departing armies on their errand of expected vic- 
tory with cries, 'To the enemy's capital.' To the 
enemy's capital they indeed go ; but they go as 
prisoners, not as conquerors. By a Divine irony the 
letter of their wishes is granted; the substance is 
withheld. They entered upon the war with a light 
heart ; they came out of the war in much sorrow and 
heaviness, their finances broken, their armies destroyed, 
their empire curtailed, their prestige and their supre- 
macy gone. 

Thus an overruling providence guided and inter- 
preted the words of Caiaphas. Moreover there was 
eminent fitness in the witness chosen for this prophetic 
announcement. ' This he spake,' says the Evangelist, 
' not of himself, but being high-priest that year.' To 
him as high-priest the duty pertained of offering the 
yearly sacrifice of atonement, and entering within the 
veil to make intercession for the people. That year 
the year in which he spoke, the year of all years, 
the acceptable year of God the one great Atoning 



88 THE COUNSEL OF CAIAPHAS. [VI. 

Victim was offered, in Whom these continually re- 
curring sacrifices were abolished at once and for ever, 
Who was Himself ' a full, perfect, and sufficient Sacri- 
fice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole 
world.' By the iniquitous counsel of Caiaphas the 
Victim was slain; by the unconscious testimony of 
Caiaphas the Atonement was foretold. In this exer- 
cise of his high-priestly functions the irony of Divine 
providence was complete. The wisdom of God tri- 
umphed over the passions and the follies of men. 

But let us turn for a moment, before we part, to 
another scene. Let us leave the conspirators, and let 
us seek the Victim. At the very time, when these 
priests and Pharisees were holding their latest as- 
semblies and perfecting the designs of Caiaphas, He 
with His chosen few has retired from that last supper 
to the solitary garden, and there, in the stillness of 
the night, bowed down with agony is pouring out His 
soul to God. 

Look at the contrast. Against the overbearing 
insolence of Caiaphas, ' Ye know nothing at all,' set 
the perfect resignation of Christ, ' Not My will, but 
Thine be done.' Against the selfish and cruel policy 
of Caiaphas, ' It is expedient for 1 us for you and for 
me that one man should die,' set the absolute re- 
nunciation of Christ, ' I lay down My life for My 
sheep.' ' It is expedient for you, that I go away.' 



VI.] THE COUNSEL OF CAIAPHAS. 

The law of life with Caiaphas is to sacrifice others 
to himself ; the law of life with Christ is to sacrifice 
Himself for others. Could any contrast more com- 
plete be imagined ? Was it possible that Caiaphas 
could be other than the determined antagonist, the 
relentless persecutor, of Christ? 

And to you and to me to every member of this 
congregation the alternative is offered, and the 
choice must be made. Do you adopt as your guide 
in life the rule of Caiaphas, or the rule of Christ ? If 
the former, then you will endeavour to get through 
life easily, to avoid everything that is inconvenient 
and unpleasant, to throw your burdens on other men's 
shoulders, to give as little and to take as much as you 
can ; and, if you are clever, you may get the reward 
you seek ; you may be successful, as the world counts 
success ; you may secure ease or pleasure or position. 
But I know that no one here would consciously and 
deliberately reject the better and choose the worse. 
I know that, however specious may be the suggestions 
of a so-called utilitarian doctrine, however strong and 
however over-mastering may be your individual temp- 
tations to selfishness in practice, still the spirit and 
the conscience of everyone here would revolt against 
the baser alternative. You do acknowledge you 
cannot help acknowledging in your heart of hearts 
that it is better to live for others than to live for 



QO THE COUNSEL OF CAIAPHAS. [vi. 

yourselves, it is higher and nobler to suffer for others 
than to let others suffer for you. If you acknowledge 
it, then practise it. Spurn the counsel of Caiaphas 
henceforward in your conduct, as you have spurned 
it already in your conscience. Leave Caiaphas to his 
selfish intrigues and his 'transient successes. And 
follow the Son of Man, Who went about not receiving 
but doing good, notwithstanding His troubles and 
His failures. Choose the better part at once. As 
you go home this afternoon, determine by God's 
grace that you will devote yourself more unselfishly 
to those, with whom your existence is bound up. 
Search out at once some dark spot in the life, of 
parent, or child, or brother, or friend, or neighbour, 
which may be made purer, brighter and happier by 
your care. Begin with this, and from this beginning 
go on ; that so, advancing daily step by step on the 
path of self-denial, you may at length confess with 
perfect conviction and with heartfelt gratitude, that 
it is indeed ' more blessed to give than to receive.' 



VII. 

PILATE'S QUESTION. 
Pilate saith imto Him, What is truth? 

S. JOHN xviii. 38. 
First Sunday after Trinity, I875 1 . 

S, JOHN is especially distinguished among the 
four evangelists for his subtle delineation of character. 
We do not commonly remember, it costs us an effort 
to remember, how very largely we are indebted to the 
fourth Gospel for our conceptions of the chief person- 
ages who bear a part in the evangelical history, when 
these conceptions are most distinct. If we analyse 
the sources of our information, we find again and 
again, that while something is told us about a 
particular person in the other Gospels, yet it is S. 
John who gives those touches to the picture, which 

1 Preached before the Lord Mayor and the Judges. 



92 PILATE S QUESTION. [vil. 

make it stand out with its own individuality as a 
real, living, speaking man. The other Evangelists 
will record a name, or perhaps an incident. S. John 
will add one or two sayings, and the whole person is 
instinct with life. The character flashes out in half-a- 
dozen words. From the abundance of the heart the 
mouth speaketh. So it is with Thomas, with Philip, 
with Martha and Mary, with several others who 
might be named. 

This vividness of portraiture is our strongest 
assurance (if assurance were needed) that the narra- 
tive was indeed written by him whose name it bears, 
by the beloved disciple and eyewitness. For there is 
no effort at delineation of character; there is no 
delineation of character at all, properly so-called. 
The Evangelist does not describe the persons whom 
he introduces. They describe themselves. The in- 
cidental act, the incidental movement or gesture, the 
incidental saying, tells the tale. That which he had 
heard, that which he had seen with his eyes, that 
which he had looked upon, that which his hands had 
handled, of the Word of Life, that and that only he 
declared. 

Pilate furnishes a remarkable illustration of this 
feature in the fourth Gospel. Pilate is the chief 
agent in the crowning scene of the Evangelical 
history. He is necessarily a prominent figure in all 



vn.] PILATE S QUESTION. 93 

the four narratives of this crisis. In the three first 
Gospels we learn much about him ; we find him 
there, as we find him in S. John, at cross pur- 
poses .with the Jews; he is represented there, not 
less than by S. John, as giving an unwilling consent 
to the judicial murder of Jesus. His Roman sense of 
justice is too strong to allow him to yield without an 
effort ; his personal courage is too weak to persevere 



in the struggle when the consequences threaten to 
become inconvenient. He is timid, politic, time- 
serving, as represented by all alike; he has just 
enough conscience to wish to shake off the responsi- 
bility, but far too little conscience to shrink from 
committing a sin. 

But in S. John's narrative we pierce far below the 
surface. Here he is revealed to us as the sarcastic, 
cynical worldling, who doubts everything, distrusts 
everything, despises everything. He has an intense 
scorn for the Jews, and yet he has a craven dread of 
them. He has a certain professional regard for 
justice, and yet he has no real belief in truth or 
honour. Throughout he manifests a malicious irony 
in his conduct at this crisis. There is a lofty scorn 
in his answer, when he repudiates any sympathy with 
the accusers, 'Am I a Jew?' There is a sarcastic 
pity in the question, which he addresses to the 
Prisoner before him. 'Art Thou the King of the Jews ?' 



94 PILATE'S QUESTION. [vn. 

'Art Thou then a King, Thou poor, weak, helpless 
fanatic, Whom with a single word I could doom to 
death?' He is half-bewildered, half- diverted, with the 
incongruity of this claim. And yet there is a certain 
propriety that a wild enthusiast should assert his 
sovereignty over a nation of bigots. So he sarcastic- 
ally adopts the title : ' Will ye that I release unto 
you the King of the Jews?' Even when at length 
he is obliged to yield to the popular clamour, he will 
at least have his revenge by a studied contempt. 
'Behold your King.' 'Shall I crucify your King?' 
And to the very last moment he indulges his cynical 
scorn. The title on the cross was indeed unconsciously 
a proclamation of a Divine truth, but in its immediate 
purpose and intent it was the mere gratification of 
Pilate's sarcastic humour. ' Jesus of Nazareth (could 
any good thing come out of Nazareth?), Jesus of 
Nazareth, the King of the Jews.' He has sacrificed 
his honour to them; but he will not sacrifice his 
contempt : ' What I have written, I have written.' 

But it is more especially in the sentence which I 
have chosen for my text that the whole character of 
the man is revealed. The Prisoner before him had 
accepted the title of a king. He based His claim to 
this title on the fact that He had come to bear wit- 
ness of the truth. He declared that those, who were 
themselves of the truth, would acknowledge His 



vii.] PILATE'S QUESTION. 95 

claim ; they were His rightful subjects ; they were 
the enfranchised citizens of His kingdom. Strange 
language this in the ears of a cynical, worldly sceptic, 
to whose eyes the most attractive type of humanity 
was a judicious admixture offeree and fraud. 'Pilate 
saith unto Him, What is truth ? And when he had 
said this, he went out.' The altercation could be 
carried no further. Was not human life itself one 
great query, without an answer? What was truth, 
what else, except that which each man thought? 

Truth! This helpless prisoner claimed to be a 
king, and He appealed forsooth to His truthfulness as 
the credential of His sovereign rights. Was ever any 
claim more contradictory of all human experience, 
more palpably absurd than this ? Truth ! When 
had truth anything to do with founding a kingdom ? 
The mighty engine of imperial power, the iron 
sceptre which ruled the world, whence came it? 
Certainly it owed nothing to truth. Had not 
Augustus established his sovereignty by an unscru- 
pulous employment of force, and maintained it by an 
astute use of artifice ? And his successor, the present 
occupant of the imperial throne, was he not an arch- 
dissembler, the darkest of all dark enigmas ? The 
name of Tiberius was a byword for impenetrable 
disguise. 

Truth might do well enough for fools and en- 



96 PILATE'S QUESTION. [vn. 

thusiasts, for simple men; but for rulers, for diplo- 
matists, for men of the world, it was the wildest of all 
wild dreams. Truth ! What was truth ? He had 
lived too long in the world to trust any such hollow 
pretensions. He had listened to the ceaseless din of 
philosophical disputations till he was weary of them. 
The Stoics, the Epicureans, the Platonists, all had 
their several specifics which they vended as truth. 
All were equally sure, and yet no two agreed. He 
had witnessed certainly not without contempt, and 
yet not altogether without dismay the rising flood 
of foreign superstitions, Greek, Syrian, Egyptian, 
Chaldean, which threatened to deluge the city and 
empire, and destroy all the ancient landmarks. Could 
he believe all, or any, of these ? In this never-ending 
conflict of philosophical dogmas and religious creeds, 
what could he do, but resign himself to scepticism, 
to indifference, to a cold and . cynical scorn of all 
enthusiastic convictions and all definite beliefs ? 

'What is truth?' And yet as he turned away, 
neither expecting nor desiring an answer to a question 
which he had asked merely to end an inconvenient 
controversy, some uneasy misgiving, we may well 
suppose, flashed across the mind of this proud, 
sarcastic worldling, that he was now brought face to 
face with Truth, as he had never been brought before. 
There was a reality about every word and action of 



vii.] PILATE'S QUESTION. 97 

this Jewish prisoner, which arrested and overawed 
him. The calmness with which He urged His claims, 
the fearlessness with which He defied death, the 
impressive words, the still more impressive silence, 
the manifest innocence and rectitude of the man (if 
he saw nothing more), could not be without their 
effect even on a Pilate steeped as he was in the 
moral recklessness and religious despair of his age. 
At all events he would save the man, if he con- 
veniently could. 

But there had also been a nobler element in 
Pilate's education than moral scepticism and reli- 
gious unbelief. He was a Roman governor; and, 
as a Roman governor, he was an administrator 
of Roman law. It was their appreciation of law, 
their respect for law, their study of law, far more 
than anything else, which gave its greatness to the 
character of the Roman people. Even in the most 
degraded ages of their history, and with the worst 
individual types of men, this is the one bright spot 
which relieves the gloom. It is the noble prerogative 
of law to set a standard of morality, clear, definite, 
precise. I have no concern here with other obliga- 
tions to the law, which as Christians and as men we 
are bound to acknowledge though speaking before 
the chief representatives of English law and justice 
I cannot fail to be reminded of them this afternoon. 
S. P. S. 7 



98 PILATE'S QUESTION. [vn. 

But this exhibition of a moral standard is a gain, 
which it is hardly possible to overestimate. The 
standard will not always be the highest. From the 
nature of the case it cannot be so. Law deals with 
some departments of 'morality very imperfectly; with 
others it does not attempt to deal at all. But still, 
wheresoever it is felt and in so far as it penetrates, it 
creates an ideal, and it begets a habit, which will not 
be powerless even with the most indifferent and 
reckless. So it was with Pilate. Theological scepti- 
cism had eaten out his religious principles to the very 
core. Unscrupulous worldliness and self-seeking had 
shattered his moral constitution. But, though his prin- 
ciples were gone and his character was ruined, still he 
was haunted by some lingering sense of professional 
honour. Still the magnificent ideal of Roman justice, 
of Roman law, rose up before him, and would not 
lightly be thrust aside. He pleads repeatedly for 
justice against the relentless accusers. Three times 
he declares the prisoner's innocence in the same 
explicit words, 'I find no fault in Him.' Once and 
again he strives to shift the responsibility from his 
own shoulders ; ( Take ye Him, and judge Him ac- 
cording to your law': 'Take ye Him and crucify 
Him.' But his efforts are all in vain. They will 
have none of this. The deed shall be done, and 
he shall do it. 



vii,] PILATE'S QUESTION. 99 

It was not the first, and it would not be the last 
time, that Pilate found himself in conflict with the 
Jews. For ten years he was governor of this turbu- 
lent, unmanageable people. This was an unusually 
long period of office under an emperor like Tiberius, 
who was constantly changing his provincial govern- 
ors from mere suspicion and distrust. It must have 
cost him no little trouble to steer his course so long 
and so successfully, without foundering either on the 
suspicions of his jealous master here or on the bigotry 
of his stubborn subjects there. And yet he was 
constantly wounding the religious susceptibilities of 
the Jews. At one time he shocked them by bringing 
the military ensigns with the effigies of Caesar within 
the walls of Jerusalem ; at another he persisted by 
setting up some gilt shields inscribed with a profane 
heathen dedication in the palace of Herod within the 
same holy precincts. In both cases, he drove the 
Jews to the extreme verge of .exasperation ; in both 
cases he exhibits the same sarcastic and defiant scorn 
which is so apparent here ; in both cases their obsti- 
nate zeal or bigotry triumphs as it triumphs here, 
and they forced him in the end to retrace his steps 
and undo his deed. 

So then this was only one brief, inobtrusive epi- 
sode in a protracted struggle between Pilate and the 
Jewish people. Doubtless, it seemed at the time 

72 



ioo PILATE'S QUESTION, [vn. 

quite insignificant compared with those other and 
fiercer conflicts which I have just mentioned. It is 
passed over in silence by contemporary Jewish writers. 
It concerned the life of a single person only ; it was 
settled in a single night And yet it involved nothing 
less than the eternal destiny of all mankind. Yes, 
there is a terrible irony in God's retributive justice, 
which so blinds men to the true proportions of things. 
A single moment may do a wrong which centuries 
cannot repair. It is a dangerous thing to defy Truth; 
the majesty of Truth is inviolable; and he, who 
insults it in a moment of recklessness, can never 
forecast the consequences. Time and space and 
notoriety are no measure of importance here. Our 
memories are still fresh from the longest trial on 
record in our English law-courts. For months upon 
months men read little else and talked of little else. 
As a monument of the care and patience of English 
law, it has the highest value ; but for the destinies of 
our race it is, so far as we can see, quite devoid of 
real significance. The most important criminal trial 
on record in the history of mankind was hurried 
through in two or three short hours under cover of 
night and in the grey of early dawn. 

This is the great lesson of Pilate's crime. He 
was surprised by the Truth. He found himself un- 
expectedly confronted by the Truth, and he could 



vii.] PILATE'S QUESTION. 101 

not recognise it. His whole life long he had tampered 
with truth, he had despised truth, he had despaired of 
truth. Truth was the last thing which he had set 
before him as the aim of his life. He had thought 
much of policy, of artifice, of fraud, of force ; but for 
truth in any of its manifold forms he had cared just 
nothing at all. And his sin had worked out its own 
retribution. Not truth only, but the Very Truth 
itself, Truth Incarnate, stood before him in human 
form, and he was blind to it. He scorned it, he 
played with it, he thrust it aside, he condemned and 
he gibbeted it. 'Suffered under Pontius Pilate' is 
the legend of eternal infamy, with which history has 
branded his name. 

So it is now with us. The Lord appears suddenly 
in His temple in the shrine of the human heart and 
conscience suddenly at a time and in a form which 
we least expect. The truth visits us very frequently 
under the disguise of some common event or some 
insignificant person. It surprises us perhaps in the 
accidental saying of some little child, or in the insidi- 
ousness of some mean temptation, or in the emergency 
of some trivial choice. It stands before us at once 
our suppliant and our king. We fail to see its 
majesty veiled in this humble garb. We treat it as 
our prisoner, when in fact it is our judge and may 
become our gaoler. We flatter ourselves that we 



io2 PILATE'S QUESTION. [vu. 

have power to condemn or to release it. We have 
no fault to find with it ; but still we reject it. We 
crucify it ; and before three days are gone it rises 
from its grave to bear eternal testimony against us. 
We could not see the truth, because we were not 
ourselves of the truth. 

Here in this judicial blindness is the warning 
of Pilate's example. Like is drawn to like. Like 
only understands like. The truth is only for the 
children of truth. 

But we must not unduly narrow the sense of truth 
and truthfulness. When our Lord called Himself the 
Truth, when He declared that the Truth should make 
us free, He meant very much more than is commonly 
understood by the word. Veracity is indeed truth, 
but it is only a small part of truth. A man may 
be scrupulously veracious, strictly a man of his word ; 
he may always say that which he believes, he may 
always perform that which he promises ; and yet he 
may not be in the highest sense true. He may be 
the slave of a thousand unrealities. A genuine child 
of the truth is very much more than a speaker of the 
truth ; he is a doer of the truth, and a thinker of the 
truth also. He is frank, open, real in all things. 
Reality is the very soul of his being. He cares for 
nothing which is hollow, shadowy, superficial. Popu- 
larity, wealth, success, worldly ambition and display, 



vii.] PILATE'S QUESTION. 103 

are essentially unreal, because they are external, 
because they are transient Therefore he estimates 
them at their true value. 

The devotion of scientific men in pursuit of 
scientific truths wins our highest admiration. It is 
not without a thrill of national pride that we have 
just bidden 'God speed' to the gallant company which 
has started for the Arctic seas. To face untold hard- 
ships and possible death in such a cause is a worthy 
and noble ambition. For these are realities. But 
obviously there are truths of far higher moment to 
the temporal and eternal well-being of man, than the 
laws of magnetism, the causes of the Aurora, or the 
fauna of the polar seas. Whence came I ? Whither 
go I ? What is sin ? What is conscience ? Is there 
a God in heaven? Is there a providence, a moral 
government, a judgment ? Is there a redemption, a 
sanctification, a life eternal ? These are the momen- 
tous, the pressing questions, which a man can only 
shelve at his peril. 

Christ is the answer to all these questions. There- 
fore He is the Verity of Verities. Therefore He 
claims for Himself the title of the Truth, as His 
absolute and indefeasible right 

An incapacity to see the Truth, when thus pre- 
sented to us in its highest form, may arise from 
different causes. It may spring from bigoted parti- 



io4 PILATE'S QUESTION. [vn. 

sanship, and religious pride and obstinate formalism, 
as in the case of the Jews; or it may spring from 
cold cynicism and worldliness and dishonesty, as in 
the case of Pilate. These two conspired to crucify 
the Truth. 

As we sow, so also shall we reap. Pilate's life 
had been spent in untruthfulness. His government 
had been an alternation of violence and fraud. His 
aim had not been to rule uprightly, but to rule at all 
costs. He must calm the suspicions of his jealous 
master, and he must quell the turbulence of an unruly 
people. Whatever means would conduce to these 
ends, were legitimate means. Uprightness, honour, 
frankness, generosity, truth what were these to 
him? He had no belief in them, and why should 
he practise them ? He projected his own motives 
into his estimate of mankind at large. He read the 
characters of others in the distorted mirror of his own 
consciousness. Human life, as he viewed it, was false 
from beginning to end. It was after all the reflection 
of his own falsehood which he saw. He was ever 
looking out for the unrealities of existence ; he had 
no eye for its realities. Men's convictions were their 
foibles. Men's beliefs were his playthings. Untruth- 
fulness, cynicism, distrust, scorn, had withered his 
soul. They only will find the truth, who believe that 
the truth may be found. Pilate had no such belief. 



vii.] PILATE'S QUESTION. 105 

He had gone through life, asking half in bitterness, 
half in jest, What is truth ? He asked it now again, 
and the question was fatal. 

Pilate's temper of mind is a very real danger in 
an age like ours. Let us beware of thus jesting with 
truth, lest some time like him we crucify the Truth 
unawares. 



VIII. 

THE ONE TAKEN AND THE OTHER 

LEFT. 

And he went out, and wept bitterly. 

S. MATTHEW xxvi. 75. 

And he went and hanged himself. 

S. MATTHEW xxvii. 5. 

SO God's law was vindicated, and Christ's saying 
fulfilled: 'I tell you, in that night... two men shall be 
in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other 
left. And they answered and said unto Him, Where, 
Lord?' 

' Where, Lord ? ' The disciples' question is our 
question also. Where and when and how shall these 
things be? Does this prediction refer to our own 
times, our own circumstances? Are we ourselves 



VIII.] THE ONE TAKEN AND THE OTHER LEFT. IO/ 

directly concerned in its fulfilment? Or may we 
dismiss it at once from our reckoning, as a distant 
scene which shall be enacted on a foreign stage? 
'The one taken, and the other left' this identity 
of condition with this separation of destiny, this 
arbitrary distinction, this unequal distribution, this 
partiality in the Divine judgments, what does it 
mean ? Where is it realised ? 

' The one taken, and the other left.' Our thoughts 
will first revert to some striking physical catastrophe, 
of which we have read, or which perchance we our- 
selves have witnessed. We recall with a shudder the 
terrible railway accident, when our fellow-traveller, 
seated in the same carriage, with whom just before 
we conversed familiarly, was silenced at once, and 
the ghastly vision of his crushed and mangled 
remains rises before us with all the freshness of that 
first awful moment of our providential deliverance. 
Or we think of the terrible lightning-flash, which 
smote down one of the two friends, wandering to- 
gether in the forest, and sent the other home, unhurt 
in body, but awe-stricken in spirit, to live henceforth 
a changed man. Or we remember the account of 
the awful avalanche, sweeping down the mountain 
side and snapping the rope which in all human cal- 
culation had bound together the fellow-travellers in 
a community of destiny, whether for life or for death, 



IO8 THE ONE TAKEN [VIII. 

hurling this one over the fatal precipice, and sending 
that other home, stupefied with grief, to tell the tale 
of his companion's fate. 

But no! these are not the true counterparts to 
our Lord's prediction. A moment's reflection will 
show that His words must have a far deeper meaning 
than this. The physical catastrophe is only a type 
of the spiritual. There is a sense in which the one 
is taken and the other left, far more awful than the 
arbitrary action of the railway accident, or the light- 
ning flash, or the mountain avalanche, or the colliery 
explosion. A separation of moral destiny starting 
from an identity of moral opportunity this, this is 
the infallible sign of the presence of the Son of 
Man, come whensoever and howsoever He will. For 
this we must be ever on the watch. This will start 
the question to our lips, ' Where, Lord ? ' 

And so we turn to a wholly different class of facts, 
as illustrating our Lord's saying. Two school-fellows 
are brought up together. They have the same natu- 
ral abilities ; they learn the same lessons ; they njoy 
the same opportunities ; they are subject to the same 
moral influences. The restraints of boyhood end. 
They become their own masters. They start life 
with the same hopes. Then the divergence begins. 
The one rises into merited respect ; the other sinks 
into the abandoned profligate. Christ came to them 



viil.] AND THE OTHER- LEFT. IO9 

in the freedom of manhood. The one was taken, and 
the other left. 

Or again; two brothers grow up as playmates. A 
They have the same family interests ; they excite the 
same family sympathies. It would seem that they 
ought to entertain the same affections and to make 
the same sacrifices for those affections. But the trial 
comes. A great catastrophe overtakes some member 
of the household a blow to his honour or a blow 
to his fortunes. The one stands aloof, wrapping him- 
self in his own selfishness, daring nothing, risking 
nothing. The other is full of generous sympathy. 
He will share his purse ; he will even hazard his good 
name, confident in his lofty purpose, and resolute 
at all costs to befriend a friend. In that emergency, 
that trial of constancy, Christ came came to those 
two brothers. The one was taken, and the other 
left. 

Or again; two sisters live in one household. -, / 
They share each other's confidences ; they have the ' 
same maidenly pursuits; they are watched over by 
the same mother's care. We see absolutely no reason 
why there should be any divergence in after life. 
And yet, what are they now ? The one is a matron, 
respected and beloved, full of tender sympathy and 
wise counsels, whose very presence diffuses a radiance 
of purity and peace and joy around. The other? 



IIO THE' ONE TAKEN ' [vin. 

Ask about her, and there is silence. Her name is 
not mentioned now. Her existence is a blank. Her 
memory is an aching pain in all hearts. Christ came 
to those two sisters in the unrestrained gaieties of 
society. The one, aye, the one was taken, and the 
other left. 

I have spoken of such critical moments as comings 
of Christ. I have applied to the familiar trials and 
temptations of domestic and social life the description 
of that awful night, when the great surprise shall 
come, when the Son of Man shall appear, and the 
separation of destiny from destiny shall be complete. 
Is it a legitimate use of our Lord's words ? Or is it 
a mere play of fancy, an edifying application possibly, 
but still a forced application, neither warranted nor 
suggested by the Gospel narrative itself? 

I cannot think this. The more we read our Lord's 
predictions of the great and terrible day, the more 
do they appear instinct with this personal, present, 
immediate application to ourselves. These trials, 
these temptations, these sittings, these separations, 
are more than mere signs and emblems ; they are 
anticipations to ourselves infinitely important anti- 
cipations of the Advent of Christ. Our Lord Him- 
self has, as if purposely, so combined a temporal 
judgment with the great and final judgment in one 
signal instance. The destruction of Jerusalem was 



viii.] AND THE OTHER LEFT. Ill 

such an immediate catastrophe, a great trial of con- 
stancy, a great sifting of men. It was in some sense 
an anticipation of the great day of doom. Hence it 
is impossible to separate in our Lord's language what 
refers to the one and what refers to the other. He 
seems to speak, as it were, through the one to the 
other. So in like ' manner our own personal trials 
are comings of Christ ; they are partial, fragmentary 
realisations of the Great Coming, when all characters 
shall be sifted, and all hearts laid bare. Hence it is 
that we are forbidden to say 'lo, here/ and 'lo, there'; 
hence it is that no revelation of the day or of the 
hour has been given, but we are commanded to 
watch ; hence it is that in reply to the disciples 7 
question ' Where, Lord ? ' an enigma takes the place 
of an answer, 'Wheresoever the carcase is, there will 
the eagles be gathered together.' 

So there are many advents of Christ. Wherever 
this sign shall be, wherever this condition is fulfilled, 
there Christ has come. And the sign itself? Not 
the dazzling glory of omnipotence, not the myriads 
of attendant angels, not the thunders and the light- 
nings, not the piercing glare of the archangel's trum- 
pet, not these now ; not any emblems of majesty and 
power, but an image which speaks of an extinct life 
and a devouring vengeance. We may not think that 
this prophecy was exhausted, when the eagles of the 



112 THE ONE TAKEN [vm. 

Roman army gathered about the once holy city, to 
prey upon the corpse of a God-abandoned people. 
Of ourselves the words are spoken. This day, this 
very day, the scripture is, or may be, fulfilled in our 
ears. Here are the carcases of blessings spurned, 
the carcases of opportunities perverted, the carcases of 
warnings neglected and trials misused, the carcases of 
ruined souls. As in the desert the vultures scent from 
afar the dying beast of burden, flocking together from 
all parts of the heaven and hovering over their prey, 
till the last convulsive throb ceases and the last feeble 
moan is hushed and the glaze settles on the eye, and 
then their foul, greedy work begins ; just so, when the 
crisis has come, and the temptation has come, and 
the soul has yielded and has died, it lies a prey to a 
thousand evil influences which wreak their vengeance 
on its helpless carcase. In such a crisis, such an 
emergency, such a trial, such an opportunity for good 
or for evil, Christ comes. Then it is that He is found 
to be set for the falling of one, and the rising of 
another. Then it is that the visitation which to one 
is the savour of life unto life, is to another a savour 
of death unto death. Then it is, that the one is 
taken, and the other left. 

Such an eventful crisis was the passion and death 
of our Lord. It was the great probation and sifting 
of the disciples, of the Jews, of all the agents and all 



viii.] AND THE OTHER LEFT. 113 

the bystanders in this tragical drama. Whatever of 
good and whatever of evil lay buried in the hearts 
of any, was brought out, was tested, was exposed by 
it. The timidity and the scepticism, the violence 
and the insolence and the avarice and the fraud, 
the firm faith, the courage, the endurance, the ten- 
derness, the love, all found expression in this emer- 
gency. 

Hence it is especially a crisis of moral contrasts. 
There is the central contrast of all. Two men, 
prisoners together, both accused of sedition, both 
tried and condemned as disturbers of the public 
peace ; nay both (according to an ancient tradition) 
bearing the same hallowed name Jesus Barabbas, 
and Jesus the Christ. The chief priests and elders 
persuade the multitude to ask Barabbas and destroy 
Jesus. Barabbas is the chosen of the Jews and the 
rejected of God: Christ is slain by the Jews but 
lives for ever in God. The one is taken, and the 
.other is left. 

And around this central contrast are grouped 
other pairs, all illustrating the same lesson oneness 
of opportunity, separation of destiny. Two members 
of the Jewish Sanhedrim, both held in honour, both 
(it would seem) present at that fatal council, both 
bearing the same name Joseph surnamed Caiaphas, 
and Joseph of Arimathea. The one incurs the chief 
S. P. S. 8 



114 THE ONE TAKEN [via. 

guilt of the crucifixion ; the other is the honourable 
agent of the entombment. The one conspires against 
the King; the other loyally awaits the kingdom. 
The one is taken, and the other left. 

TAVO thieves crucified together, both guilty of the 
same crime, both suffering the merited penalty of 
their guilt, both in their last hour brought into the 
same proximity with the Holy One. The one blas- 
phemes ; the other prays. The one sinks down into 
darkness ; the other is raised up into Paradise. The 
cue is taken, and the other left. 

Two chosen disciples, both belonging to the inner 
circle of the Twelve, both constant in their attend- 
ance on their Master throughout His ministry, both 
following Him up to the last fatal night, both found 
wanting in the great emergency, both overwhelmed 
with an agony of sorrow for their sin ; and yet here 
again, the one is taken, and the other is left. 

Of all these severances the last is the most strik- 
ing. Simon of Bethsaida and Judas of Kerioth had 
possessed all things in common ; common opportuni- 
ties, common associations, common trials and dangers. 
They had witnessed the same works, and listened to 
the same words. They had lived in the same Presence. 
They had received the same revelation of the same 
Father from the same hallowed lips. Altogether it 
might have been thought that their character must 



viii.] AND THE OTHER LEFT. 115 

have been cast in the same mould. Whence then 
came this difference? 

Whence, but in the use or the misuse of that 
mysterious, that fatal, that magnificent gift of God 
to man, his free-will ? In whatever other respects 
their moral capacities or their moral education may 
have differed, it is here, and here alone, that we have 
the explanation of the result. This is the secret, 
silent force, which, working from beneath, produced 
first the rent, and then the chasm, and then the 
severance, in their characters and their destinies. 

And yet to the last moment the difference has 
not revealed itself. Both put the same question of 
misgiving, 'Is it I ? ' Both were tempted. Both 
yielded to the temptation. The same night was 
fatal to the one and to the other. Just at this 
moment it might have seemed as if there were little 
to choose between Peter and Judas. The sin of 
Judas was coarser, was more base, was more heinous ; 
but both had failed at the great crisis of all; and 
both had forfeited their position. How is it then 
that Peter rises again, while Judas sinks down, sinks 
suddenly, sinks irretrievably, sinks for ever ? 

Certainly, it was not the nature of the sin itself, 
which made his restoration impossible. It was not 
what Judas had done, but what Judas had become, 
which prevented his rising. His guilt was great, but 

8-2 



1 1 6 THE ONE TAKEN [vnr. 

God's mercy is greater. His guilt was great, but 
God's pardon does not nicely calculate less or more. 
It is the special characteristic of the Gospel, that, 
while the condemnation of sin is unbounded, the hope 
of forgiveness is unbounded also. Other religions 
fail in the one respect, or they fail in the other. They 
take a light estimate of sin, or they restrict the opera- 
tion of pardon. They encourage the sinner, or they 
scare the penitent. The Gospel alone reconciles both 
claims. This it does, as the revelation of the Father's 
infinite love : for in the light of this revelation the 
sin becomes the more hateful, while the pardon 
becomes the more assured. Therefore again I say, 
it was not the crime, which excluded forgiveness. If 
there be any one in this congregation, whose con- 
science is burdened with the memory of some past 
sin, who is tempted to doubt whether for him for- 
giveness is still possible, who seems to himself to be 
dragged ever downward by a weight which cannot be 
removed : let him shake off this doubt and spurn it 
from him, as a vile suggestion of ruin, a shameful 
libel of the tempter on the goodness of his Heavenly 
Father, Who desires only his filial submission, and is 
even now stretching a loving hand through the dark- 
ness to save him. 

. But, if so, if the crime itself was not a bar to for- 
giveness, where did the repentance of the criminal 



Yin.] AND THE OTHER LEFT. 1 1 7 

fail? What difference is there between the remorse 
of a Judas and the remorse of a Peter, that the one 
should have been taken, and the other left. 

Up to a certain point at least the conduct of 
Judas appears to contain all the elements of repent- 
ance. 

For, first of all, there is abhorrence of the crime. 
Judas is racked with agony, when his sin is brought 
home to him. The revulsion of feeling is complete. 
His exceeding bitter cry, 'I have sinned, in that I 
have betrayed the innocent blood', rings piercing 
through all the centuries, and strikes home to the 
heart of mankind. Of the intensity of his remorse no 
doubt can be entertained. Observe too that the 
whole force of his grief is concentrated on the sin 
itself, not on the temporal consequences of the sin. 
He is tortured with agony, not because he has failed, 
but because he has succeeded. He had shed the 
innocent blood. Here was the sting of his remorse. 
Not thirty pieces, nor thirty thousand pieces, of silver 
could buy this off. 

And secondly : not only is there inward sorrow lor 
the sin; there is also the outward acknowledgement 
of the crime. At once he confesses his guilt ; con- 
fesses it, not in the ear of a confidential friend, but 
confesses it openly before that council of priests and 
elders, before those unsympathetic conspirators, who 



Il8 THE ONE TAKEN [viu. 

had bought his services and were partners in his guilt. 
He faces shame, faces rebuke, faces contempt, faces 
their lurking hatred, and their undisguised scorn. 

And, thirdly, he makes reparation for his guilt 
The main consequence indeed was irreparable. The 
thing was done and could not be undone. The inno- 
cent was condemned. The blood once shed might 
not be gathered up again. But at least he would do 
what he could ; he would deny himself all advantage 
of the transaction. He flung back the accursed gain 
to his tempters. So far as the past was retrievable, 
he would retrieve it. 

The abhorrence of the sin, the confession of the 
guilt, the reparation of the crime, these three were 
complete. So far S. Peter could have done nothing 
which Judas had not done. But just at this point 
the severance begins. Remorse and repentance part 
company. The one is taken, and the other is left. 

Faith and hope are the two requisites without 
which restoration is impossible. With these is life- 
giving repentance ; without these is crushing remorse. 
Faith in God, and hope for the future. 

I. Faith in God. So long as we look only to 
ourselves, pardon seems wholly beyond our reach. 
There is nothing in our own hearts, nothing in our 
past lives, which suggests it. The more we recall our 
experiences, and the more we examine our motives, 



viii.] AND THE OTHER LEFT. I 1C) 

the more distant does it appear. A mere morbid 
anatomy of self will drive only to remorse. It cannot 
lead to repentance. It is well that we should grieve 
over our sins ; it is not well that we should give our- 
selves up to overmuch self-dissection. Our failings 
must be our steppingstones ; they must not be our 
stumblingblocks. We cannot suffer them to cripple 
our energies, or to bar our path. But this will always 
be the case, so long as our gaze is directed solely 
within. For here we find only feebleness, only 
vacillation, only ignorance, only failure and sin. 
Our strength, our consolation, our renewal, are else- 
where. It is only then, when we transcend the limits 
of self; when our heart goes forth in faith to God, 
the All-wise and Almighty, God the Merciful, God 
our Father ; then, when the finite is forgotten in the 
Infinite ; that the pardon comes, that the clean heart 
is made and the right spirit renewed within us. This 
faith Judas did not realise. He knew God only as 
an avenging Judge. He did not know Him as a 
loving Father. What could he hope from a Judge? 
What might he not have hoped from a Father ? 

2. The concentration on self is a denial of faith. 
The concentration on the past is an exclusion of hope. 
Judas could not face the future. The past had been 
an utter failure. He had attempted to make repara- 
tion ; but he could not retrieve the irretrievable, could 



120 THE ONE TAKEN [via. 

not undo what was done. Yet the future was all 
before him ; the future was uncompromised. The 
two great preachers of the Gospel were destined to 
be Peter the denier of Christ, and Paul the persecutor 
of Christ. Why should not Judas the betrayer of 
Christ have made up the triad ? Why not, except 
that having lost faith he had lost hope also. His 
horizon was bounded by the past. Now, now that 
the past was lost, nothing remained but suicide. This 
was the remorseless logic of his position. 

Do not believe it, when they tell you that hope is 
a glamour, an illusion, a phantom-light tempting you 
into a morass, and luring you to your destruction. 
Hope is the reflection of God's mercy; hope is the 
echo of God's love. Hope is energy, hope is strength, 
hope is life. Without hope sorrow for sin will lead 
only to ruin. It may not end with you, as it ended 
with him. His was an extreme case. But it must 
lead to moral paralysis, and moral suicide. "We have 
no time to brood over the errors of the past, while 
the hours are hurrying relentlessly by ; no time to tell 
our wounds and reckon up our slain, while the fight 
is still raging and the enemy is upon us. There is 
enough to occupy all our energies in- this warfare of 
life, without wasting them on lost opportunities and 
profitless regrets. Have you been tempted? Have 
you yielded ? Have you sinned ? Then go out from 



viii.] AND THE OTHER LEFT. 121 

the scene of your temptation, as Peter went out, and 
weep bitter tears of repentance before God. But hav- 
ing done this, return, return at once, and strengthen 
your brethren. In active charity for others, in devoted 
service to God, is the truest safeguard against the 
suicidal promptings of remorse. Be the foremost to 
enter the sepulchre of the risen Lord ; the foremost 
to pledge your devotion to Him, undaunted by recent 
failure ; the foremost to receive the pastoral charge ; 
the foremost to bear witness of Him to an unbeliev- 
ing world ; the foremost in zeal, the foremost in danger, 
the foremost to do and to suffer. The past is beyond 
recall. Put it behind you. The future is full of mag- 
nificent opportunities. Endeavour to realise them. 
Be energetic, be courageous, be hopeful. In the 
agony of your contrition, from the depths of your 
despair, listen to the Divine Voice which summons 
you : ' Let the dead bury their dead ; dead oppor- 
tunities, dead regrets, dead failures; yes even, dead 
sinsj and follow thou Me.' 



IX. 

THE TRIUMPH OF FAILURE. 

Then all the disciples forsook Him, and fled. 

S. MATTHEW xxvi. 56. 

First Sunday after Trinity, 187?. 

JUDGED by any human standard, the life of Christ 
had proved a misadventure and a mistake. With all 
its beauty and all its heroism and all its sublimity, it 
was a failure, a gigantic failure. On this point there 
could not be two opinions. The ministry of Christ 
had commenced amidst the festivities of a marriage. 
It had ended in the horrors of a gibbet. In dramatic 
fiction those tragedies are the most thrilling; which 
turn upon some sudden and unforeseen reversal of 
fortune, where the hero's fate overtakes him without 
a moment's warning. Christ's life was the most tragic 



IX.] THE TRIUMPH OF FAILURE. 123 

of all tragedies. From the bright sunshine of hope it 
passed at once into the impenetrable gloom of despair. 
Look at those joyous earlier days of His Galilean 
ministry. Mark how He is followed about by admir- 
ing crowds, thronging on the shores of that inland 
sea. Everywhere in Decapolis towards the East, as 
far as Tyre and Sidon in the West it is the same. 
They track His footsteps, and they hang upon His 
lips. They watch with reverence His every act and 
His every gesture. Even to the latest moment there 
is no sign of His impending doom. He enters Jeru- 
salem on His final fatal visit, and He receives the 
homage of an enthusiastic crowd. The priests and 
the rulers indeed looked upon Him with no friendly 
eye. There were scowling visages and murmured 
reproaches and dark plottings the first mutterings 
of the pent-up volcano, which was soon to burst out 
in devastation and ruin. But the heart of the people 
seemed sound. He, and He only, knew how hollow, 
how fickle, how unmeaning, was all this show of re- 
spect. Amid the Hosannas of an admiring throng, 
He entered the Holy City, the elect of the people, 
the long-expected Son of David, the acknowledged 
King of Israel. Then came the recoil, the end. The 
pdpulace turned against Him. His own disciples 
forsook Him. It would have been some solace at 
least, amid the angry threats of those priestly con- 



124 THE TRIUMPH OF FAILURE. [ix. 

spirators and the cruel taunts of that rude soldiery, to 
have been cheered by the sympathy of some friendly 
eye of Peter whose zeal only a few hours ago had 
been so fervent-, of John whom He loved with more 
than a brother's love. Even this solace was denied 
Him. He was left alone alone amidst the insults 
of the judgment hall, alone in the agonies of the 
Cross. In a few hours the work of a life-time had 
been undone. The web, which He had woven with 
so much cost, was unravelled and cast aside a mere 
mass of tangled threads. Could any failure be more 
complete than this failure? 

If you had asked any of the witnesses to this 
tragedy, their answer must have been the same. Put 
the question -to Caiaphas and the priests. They would 
tell you that a dangerous pretender had been crushed, 
that the temple and the hierarchy were safe. Put it 
to Pilate and the Romans. They would say that the 
last had been heard of one more religious enthusiast, 
who this time at least was innocent, if indeed enthu- 
siasm ever could be innocent. Put it to the bewil- 
dered disciples. They would have acknowledged 
their perplexity and dismay. Their hopes were torn 
and mangled on that Cross ; their joy was buried in 
that grave. They were stupefied by the unexpected 
end. Put it to some impartial and calm-judging 
bystander (if any such there were); and he would 



ix.] THE TRIUMPH OF FAILURE. 125 

have deplored that so much goodness and self-devo- 
tion and heroism should have perished, and left no 
fruit behind. Of all the lessons, which this life of 
lives has bequeathed to us, the one which addresses 
itself most directly to the perplexed and troubled 
spirit, the one which is most fruitful in revived 
hopes and reinvigorated energies, is this lesson of 
failure. 

To those who have any serious aims in life at all, 
to those who hear within them a voice summoning 
them to some nobler task than merely to get through 
their allotted term of days with comfort and ease and 
respectability, to those in whom the consciousness of 
the sin within and the contemplation of the misery 
and vice without stirs the depth of the soul, the 
experience of failure is the severest of all trials. It 
is so very hard to struggle against evil within the 
heart, and to seem to make no head against it, to 
return again and again to the conflict, and again and 
again to retire baffled or defeated. It is so very dis- 
heartening to stand forward as the champion of some 
neglected and despised class, or the opponent of some 
flagrant but chartered wrong, and to meet only with 
misunderstanding and want of sympathy, perhaps to 
succeed for the moment in fanning some flame of 
enthusiasm in others, then to see it flicker and die 
out ; to be left alone with all those misgivings which 



126 THE TRIUMPH OF FAILURE. [ix. 

isolation brings in its train. At such a crisis, the 
failure of Christ is the most inspiring of all lessons. 

There are three points to which our attention 
should be more especially directed first, the neces- 
sity of failure ; next, the discipline of failure ; and 
lastly, the triumph of failure. 

i. First then, failure is inevitable. Success is 
not the rule of human life. It is the very rare ex- 
ception. Of all the magnificent possibilities, and ail 
the glorious hopes, of youth only one here and there 
is ever in any degree realised in after-life. We find 
here just the same profusion of waste which appears 
throughout the processes of nature. Nature is lavish 
of hopes, but she is very frugal in results. One plant 
produces its hundreds and thousands of seeds. They 
.are sown broadcast by the winds. There is a possi- 
bility here, which in a few years might fertilise a 
desert and feed a city. It is never realised. One 
seed and another shoots up and grows and blossoms 
.and bears fruit. The rest disappear, and are heard 
of no more. Failure is written across the face of 
nature. It is only too true, as our Christian poet has 
said, that as we are 

Borne down the ebbing stream of life, 
we encounter at each turn 

Some mouldering hope or joy. 

It is only too true, that the man seems ever ' following 



ix.] THE TRIUMPH OF FAILURE. 127 

the funeral of the boy ', the funeral of bright expec- 
tations never realised, the funeral of precious gifts 
and opportunities neglected or misused. The path of 
life is strewn with the corpses of magnificent projects 
and brilliant hopes, crushed and trampled under foot. 

We say that this man or that has been eminently 
successful in life. We mean perhaps that he has 
amassed great wealth, or won great popularity ; that 
he has been a victorious general, or a famous legis- 
lator; that his name will be handed down to after 
generations, connected with some important enterprise 
or some brilliant invention, Our estimate of success 
stops short at these outward tokens. Ask the man 
himself, and his heart of hearts would often tell you 
a very different tale. He cannot forget that cruel 
bereavement, which has left his life a desolate ruin. 
He cannot put away that domestic wrong, which lies 
heavy on his heart, and throws a blight over all his 
successes. He cannot overlook that degrading, un- 
satisfied passion, which gnaws at his soul within and 
leaves him no rest. It is a mockery to him to call 
his life a success. 

And, though he should have no such trials as these, 
though his life should have been one long day of un- 
broken sunshine, can it ever be called a success, when 
nothing will avert the doom ? You have with much 
toil secured yourself an easy competency. You have 



128 THE TRIUMPH OF FAILURE. [ix. 

surrounded yourself with the comforts and luxuries 
of life. You have gathered your friends about you, 
You have built your soul a lordly pleasure-house, 
furnished with all the appliances and all the adorn- 
ments of a refined culture ; you have amassed rich 
stores of knowledge and experience the work of a 
life-time. No sooner are your preparations complete, 
than decay comes and death comes; and all, all is 
spoilt. When the fruit is full ripe, it suddenly rots. 
You have sown the seed, but you may not reap the 
harvest. Death turns the most magnificent success 
into the most signal failure. The features of the 
corpse look only the more ghastly for the sparkling 
jewels and the gay apparel which deck it out. Human 
life is an inevitable failure. 

2. But if so, if failure be inevitable, how can we 
turn it to account ? What are its special uses ? This 
brings us to the second point. 

Failure is a discipline. Other trials have their 
value sorrow, pain, opposition, obloquy, shame ; but 
the severest, the most searching, most efficient instru- 
ment of discipline is failure. As a test of strength, 
and as a test of faith alike, it is without a rival. 

As a test of strength. It is a comparatively easy 
matter for a man to carry out a great work, so long 
as public opinion is with him. He will labour night 
and day, and his toil will be sweetened, for he will be 



ix.] THE TRIUMPH OF FAILURE. 129 

paid to the full in popular applause. Nay, he may 
not have the world, or even the majority, on his side ; 
and yet he will go on bravely and cheerfully. If only 
he has secured the approval of his friends, or his party 
of those among whom his lot is cast, of those on 
whose good opinion he is dependent then he may 
defy the larger circle without. Their interposition 
deadens the blows of the external world. He has 
established a sort of body-guard about him, who repel 
the thrusts aimed at his comfort or his reputation. 
He gets just the sympathy and just the praise, which 
his heart craves most. It is only then, when good 
men misinterpret his motives and thwart his endea- 
vours, then when the chasm between his principles 
and his party begins to yawn before him, then when 
friends look grave and at length fall away, then when 
he finds that he stands alone, then, in short, when he 
realises his failure, that the strain on his courage 
begins. Then indeed he needs all the sympathy 
and support, which a transcendent example can 



give. 



And this sympathy, this support, he will find in 
the pattern, the spirit, the life, of Christ. In the 
absent loneliness of a great purpose, in the utter 
failure of a self-devoted life, history affords no ex- 
ample which can compare with this. Here he will 
seek his solace, his inspiration, his strength, his hope. 
S. P. S. 9 



130 THE TRIUMPH OF FAILURE. [ix, 

An old Greek philosopher the wisest of his race 
nearly four centuries before Christ, drew from his 
imagination a picture of the ideal righteous man. It 
was an essential feature in the portrait, that he should 
be tested by the extreme of adversity, that he should 
be misrepresented and misunderstood ; that, though 
righteous, he should be considered unrighteous ; that 
he should meet with obloquy and persecution and 
shame ; last of all a strange, instinctive prophecy 
he was to die on the gibbet. This old philosopher 
rightly divined. It was essential that the ideal man 
should fail, utterly fail, in life. Christ's perfection 
could only be manifested by entire failure. This 
failure is the most brilliant jewel in His heavenly 
crown ; the richest portion of the inheritance which 
He has bequeathed to us. 

But failure is not only a test of strength ; it is still 
more a test of faith. So long as a man is successful 
in his aims, he has no misgivings. He believes in his 
work, because it progresses under his hands. He 
believes in himself, because others believe in him. 
But a time comes when he finds himself on one side, 
and all the world arrayed against him on the other. 
He sees before him only discouragement, disappoint- 
ment, defeat. Then he asks himself whether he alone 
can be right, and so many thousands wrong. He 
begins by questioning whether the voice is indeed 



ix.] THE TRIUMPH OF FAILURE. 13! 

God's voice, and he ends by stifling the witness of 
the Spirit within him. 

By stifling the witness of the Spirit. Brothers 
and sisters in Christ, do not think that this lesson has 
no reference to you and to you. Do not persuade 
yourselves, that it is meant only for those who are 
gifted with exceptionally great capacities, and whom 
God has therefore designed for some magnificent 
work. Is there anyone here who has not at one 
time or another felt some noble enthusiasm burning 
in his heart perhaps some aspiration after a higher, 
purer, more spiritual life, perhaps some desire to 
devote self to the well-being of relations or friends, 
perhaps some design for alleviating the miseries or 
instructing the ignorance or reforming the vices of 
the outcast poor? This (can you doubt it?) was 
God's voice speaking within you, was God's Spirit 
testifying to you ; and yet you stifled it. You were 
discouraged; you tried feebly and failed; and your 
faith forsook you. You felt that you were left alone ; 
you did not feel that, though alone, you were not 
alone, for the Father was with you. You appropri- 
ated the one half of Christ's experience, the sense of 
failure; you did not appropriate the other and the 
essential half, the persistence of faith. There was in 
you then, there is in you now, if you will only believe 
it, a power which can defy failure, a power which must 

9-2 



132 THE TRIUMPH OF FAILURE. [IX. 

be victorious, because it is a power of God, and not 
of your own. Do you plead that you are young, that 
you are feeble, that you are unlearned, that you are 
without position and without influence ? What matter? 
Is not God's strength ' made perfect in weakness ?' I 
spoke before of the waste of the glorious possibilities 
of youth. What is the cause that they are thus 
squandered and lost ? What, but that we will not 
trust God's voice speaking through our aspirations 
and enthusiasms ? The first chill of ill-success damps 
our ardour. We have not faith to forecast the ulti- 
mate triumph of .God's will. 

3. And this brings .me to the third and last 
point, the triumph of failure. History teems with 
examples illustrating this principle in a higher or 
lower degree ; failure, utter failure at the outset ; 
success, brilliant success in the result. The great Flo- 
rentine reformer Savonarola commenced his mission. 
His first attempt was a total failure. He kindled 
no enthusiasm. His audiences dwindled away. He 
could not obtain a hearing. So a year passed away, 
and another and another. It was failure still. But 
an unquenchable fire was burning within him, and 
he knew that it was not an earthly flame. Then at 
length 'on a sudden/ we are told, 'he burst out; appal- 
ling, entrancing, shaking the souls of men, piercing to 
their heart of hearts, and drawing them in awe-struck 



IX.] THE TRIUMPH OF FAILURE. 133 

crowds before the foot of his 'pulpit.' No preacher 
since the Apostolic days produced such striking effects 
as he produced. 

Or take another example from a wholly different 
walk in life. The great English engineer George 
Stephenson furnishes a signal illustration of this 
lesson. He commenced life with the most serious 
disadvantages of education. He found all scientific 
men against him. He was confronted with the giant 
mass of popular inertia and distrust. But he was 
conscious of a great idea; he clung to it; and he 
persevered dauntlessly. ' I have fought for the loco- 
motive single-handed,' he said, 'for nearly twenty 
years, having no engineer to help me. I put up with 
every rebuff, determined not to be put down.' At 
length the locomotive did triumph. And look at the 
consequences. Railways have revolutionised the con- 
ditions of society, not in England only, but through- 
out the world. 

Throngs of witnesses might be produced to illus- 
trate this same truth great statesmen, great orators, 
great generals, great philanthropists, great mechani- 
cians. But all such examples pale into nothing before 
the lesson of the life of Christ. Here was the most 
signal failure, followed by the most signal triumph 
which the world has ever seen. Ask indifferent men ; 
ask unbelievers, They will confess as much as this. 



134 THE TRIUMPH OF FAILURE. [ix. 

It is the homage which unbelief itself pays to the 
transcendent glory of Christ's Person and Work, that 
it allows His influence on the world to have been the 
greatest and most beneficent which the world has 
ever known. And yet He died a malefactor's death ; 
and yet all His disciples forsook Him and fled ; and 
yet at that moment His work was stamped out 
nothing less. His life's labours and His life's suffer- 
ings were simply annihilated. 

This is the example of all examples. God's pur- 
pose cannot fail. Whatsoever is honest, whatsoever 
is lovely, whatsoever is pure, whatsoever is truthful, 
has a strength and a vitality m it, which no time can 
obliterate and no antagonism can subdue. Believe 
this, and no failure will be a failure to you. It will 
only be a triumph deferred. The pains which you 
have spent in reclaiming that poor outcast are not 
thrown away, though you see no immediate fruits. 
The seeds of morality and goodness which you have 
sown in that wayward child are not lost, though the 
soil seems hard and barren now. The coldness and 
the obloquy and the scorn which you incurred in de- 
nouncing that social wrong, or that fashionable sin, 
have not been incurred in vain, though as yet you get 
no man to hear you. The bread cast on the waters 
will be found after many days. The echo of your 
voice will come rolling back, long after it has ceased 



IX.] THE TRIUMPH OF FAILURE. 135 

to articulate, because it has been caught up and re- 
verberated through the everlasting hills. Yes, it was 
the voice of God after all, and not your own voice. 
You may not live to see it. Your life may be pro- 
nounced a failure. Your sun may set in clouds and 
darkness. Dare to face this possibility. But your 
work cannot die. Think of Christ your Master. 
Think of His unparalleled failure, and His magnifi- 
cent success. Listen to the witness of the Spirit. 
Trust God, Who is One : and not the world, because 
it is many. Then your triumph is assured. 'This, 
this is the victory that overcometh the world, even 
our faith.' 



X. 
CHRIST'S GIFT OF PEACE. 

Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you : 
not as the world giveth, give I unto you. 

S. JOHN xiv. 27. 

Fifth Sunday after Easter, 1871. 

ON the first of May, twenty years ago, was inaugu- 
rated the earliest of those great international exhibi- 
tions which have since taken their place among the 
recognised institutions of the civilised world. On the 
first of this present month, the latest of these was 
opened. These twenty years have been crowd.ed with 
momentous incidents, which will be ever memor- 
able in the pages of history. May it not be profitable, 
then, to connect the earliest of these industrial efforts 
with the latest, to review briefly the intervening 
period, and to enquire how far they have succeeded, 



x.] CHRIST'S GIFT OF PEACE. 13.7 

and how far they have failed, in the highest expecta- 
tions which they excited? Christ's promise in the 
text, ' Peace I leave with you,' shall strike the key- 
note of the enquiry. 

To those who remember the first exhibition, who 
witnessed the pomp and the brilliancy of the opening 
day, who can recall the happy auguries of a new and 
blissful era, which had broken upon the world with 
the dawn of that first May morning, the contrast 
presented in this its latest successor is striking indeed. 
Crowds doubtless will flock to it ; thousands will 
derive interest and instruction from it. But the 
sentiment, the enthusiasm, the thrill of delight, the 
inspiration of hope, is wanting. The magic is gone. 
It is a mere show-room, a mere display of mechanical 
contrivances, of industrial products, of artistic design. 
It is only an international exhibition, not an en- 
chanted world-palace, whence the choicest blessings 
are to be showered on the nations far and wide. 

How shall we account for this change of feeling ? 
Is it that imagination has waned? Is it that the 
charm of novelty has worn off, and constant repeti- 
tion deadened the sentiment ? This may be a partial 
explanation, but it is not all. Deeper still lies the 
consciousness of a grave disappointment ; and men 
resent it by refusing to this later individual effort the 
tribute of imagination and hope. 



138 CHRIST'S GIFT OF PEACE. [x. 

For the first, whatever other objects it had in 
view, was intended before all things to be a Temple 
of Peace. There under its all-embracing roof the 
products of the nations were displayed side by side ; 
thither to its wide nave and transepts the representa- 
tives of the nations flocked together. It was a novel 
sight. And in that vast concourse of all kindreds 
and peoples and tongues men saw the dawning of the 
happy day, which was to usher in the reign of Peace 
upon earth. The poet's dream at length had been 
realised ; the roar of the cannon was hushed, and the 
battle-flag furled. The nations would henceforth live 
together in harmony, bound to each other by common 
interests. War had been rendered impossible. Inter- 
national disputes would be settled b'y international 
arbitration. And, when after a few months of brilliant 
success this palace of hope vanished out of sight, it 
seemed to utter to the world, as its parting benedic- 
tion, the very echo of our Lord's own words, ' Peace I 
leave with you.' 

Then a few months more and the old warrior, our 
great champion in the fiercest struggle which the 
history of Modern Europe had seen, passed away in 
the fulness of years to an honoured grave ; and, as 
his remains were lowered into the vault of this 
Cathedral, it seemed as if with him, their representa- 
tive man, we had also buried with all due respect the 



x.] CHRIST'S GIFT OF PEACE. 139 

last lingering traditions and feelings of the warlike 
past. The new reign had indeed begun. 

And what has been the result ? At the first rude 
touch of human passion the golden chain, which 
Commerce had thus forged with so much pains to 
bind the nations in universal amity, snapped and 
shivered like glass. The voice of this messenger of 
Peace was still lingering on our ears, when the bugle- 
note again sounded shrill and loud. And from that 
time to this wars and rumours of wars have never 
ceased among us. In all history it would be difficult 
to find within the same short space a succession of 
conflicts so continuous, so various in kind, so vast in 
scale, so momentous in their issues, as those which 
we in our generation have witnessed within the last 
twenty years. To us Englishmen only a small share 
of their aggregate misery has fallen. A Russian war, 
an Indian mutiny, an Abyssinian campaign these 
are enough, and more than enough, to make us realise 
the horrors of war, and sigh for the blessings of peace. 
But, compared with those more disastrous struggles 
which have wasted other nations, our lot may be 
considered happy indeed. For, in whatever direction 
we have turned, the same sight has met our eyes. 
On the continent of America a devastating civil war, 
spread over a wider area of ground, and waged with 
larger armaments than any other civil war on record 



140 CHRIST'S GIFT OF PEACE. [x. 

in modern history ; among the people of Europe not 
once nor twice but many times nation grappling with 
nation in a fierce conflict for supremacy, for vengeance, 
for life ; dynasties overthrown, empires founded, great 
military powers created or annihilated, peoples made 
and unmade; a series of wars culminating in this 
latest and fiercest struggle, which for the fatal magni- 
ficence of its operations, the size of its armaments, the 
capacity of its destructive engines, the rapidity and 
precision of its movements, the gigantic scale of its 
battles, its sieges, its capitulations, is quite without a 
parallel; and which has only ceased, to leave as its 
legacy to the vanquished a painful civil rebellion, 
whose horrors are unredeemed by the assertion of 
any lofty principle, or the championship of any patri- 
otic cause. This is the fulfilment of our auguries, 
the realisation of our hopes. Our bright vision has 
vanished like an idle dream. International industry, 
international commerce, whatever else they have 
done, have failed to give us peace. 

Well then may we turn, in the bitterness of our 
disappointment, to that older promise, which still 
invites our acceptance, but which in our self-suffi- 
ciency we have neglected for other more specious 
offers. 'Peace I leave with you, My peace I give 
unto you : not as the world giveth, give I unto you.' 
'At this season especially, when in the Gospels for 



x.] CHRIST'S GIFT OF PEACE. 141 

each successive Sunday the promise of the Comforter 
is kept before our eyes, and when we are invited to 
linger over Christ's parting benediction, before He 
ascends into Heaven, it will be profitable for us to 
enquire what is the nature of the peace which He 
offers, and what has been the fulfilment of His 
promise ? 

The fulfilment of His promise! I fancy the 
objector will tell us to look to Christendom for an 
answer to look to its past history, and to look to 
its present condition. We shall be reminded of the 
incessant conflicts, persecutions, schisms, which have 
disgraced and devastated the Church from the begin- 
ning. The finger of scorn will be pointed to those 
darker blots which have stained the pages of her 
annals. We shall be asked not to forget the Albigen- 
sian Crusades, and the Massacre of St Bartholomew. 
We shall be bidden to recall the untold horrors of 
the Inquisition. Nay, we shall be invited to look 
nearer home ; to reflect on the scenes, of which, at a 
great crisis in the religious history of England, this 
very city, these sacred precincts, were witnesses on 
the fires of Smithfield and on the fanaticisms of 
Paul's Cross. We shall be directed to the divisions, 
the strifes, the hatreds, which at this very moment 
divide, not only universal Christendom, but individual 
Churches in Christendom. And then this promise of 



142 CHRIST S GIFT OF PEACE. [x. 

our Master will be flung in our teeth, and we shall 
be asked, where is the peace which the Gospel has 
brought to men ? 

And yet the answer is simple. The same Christ, 
Who said, 'Peace, I give unto you,' said also, 'I came 
not to send pe'ace, but a sword.' The same Christ, 
Who promised His disciples that in Him they should 
have peace, in the very next breath warned them that 
in the world they should have tribulation. Thus the 
result was foreseen, and foretold. 

' Not peace, but a sword.' This is a hard saying. 
And yet all experience bears witness to its truth. 
So long as human nature remains unchanged, the 
result will be the same. Throw down among men 

o 

any great truth, on the acceptance and interpretation 
of which momentous issues depend, and it is sure to 
become an apple of discord. Nay, in exact propor- 
tion to its importance will be the zeal yes, and the 
bitterness with which men will wrangle over it. Is 
this the fault of the truth itself? Is it not rather the 
fault of human impatience, human obstinacy, human 
passion ? 

There have been some perhaps there are now 
some who would put aside Christianity, would get 
rid of religion altogether, in order that they may get 
rid of religious zeal and religious fanaticism. What ? 
Would you proscribe the use, that you may prevent 



x.] CHRIST'S GIFT OF PEACE. 143 

the abuse ? Would you throw away the most precious 
thing which God has given to mankind, because its 
very pricelessness has made it an object of fierce 
contention ? Would you reduce human life to a dull, 
dead level of moral indifference, that you may leave 
nothing to inflame the passions, or to stimulate the 
animosities of men? Does not history tell you that 
fierce and deadly and hateful as religious wars and 
religious persecutions have been, yet the misery due 
to all these causes together is very small, very small 
indeed, compared with the aggregate of cruelty that 
outbursts of human passion have inflicted on man- 
kind ? Does not all experience teach you, that though 
you should succeed (which you never will) in thrusting 
religion wholly out of sight, yet men would still con- 
tinue to wrangle and to fight over forms of govern- 
ment, over municipal rights, over thwarted ambition, 
or wounded vanity, or wealth, or power ? 

For indeed you cannot say that Christianity itself 
lends any countenance to the quarrelsome or the 
persecuting spirit. Nay, do we not hear the very 
opposite charge brought against the Gospel of Christ, 
that it lays excessive stress on the milder qualities, 
such as gentleness, humility, patience, submission ; 
that it inculcates too exclusively the feminine virtues, 
as the phrase is, and too much overlooks the manly ? 
Is not this, in short, the reproach a just and a 



144 CHRIST'S GIFT OF PEACE. [x. 

glorious reproach that it follows too assiduously 
those things which make for peace? 

But, if you would learn how Christ fulfils His 
promise to His true disciples, if you would test the 
value of this peace which He has left as His parting 
gift, do not seek it in the heat of controversy, in the 
wrangling of theological disputants, or in the strifes 
of religious parties: but go rather to the true 
disciples of Christ, to the lowly and the poor, in 
spirit, to the suffering and oppressed, to the sorrowful 
and bereaved, to the sick and dying. Watch the 
wife cruelly outraged in her deepest feelings by the 
desertion, or worse than desertion, of a husband, for 
whose love she has given up all ; or the mother 
wounded at heart by the base ingratitude of a child, 
for whose advancement she has sacrificed all the 
comforts, and was ready to sacrifice even the neces- 
sities of life. See how, notwithstanding the bitterness 
of her trial, a deep calm broods over the sufferer, 
lulling her sharpest pangs, and enabling her to forget 
her own sorrow, while she ministers to the less 
poignant sufferings of others. Go to the wretched 
hovel of the pauper, worn out with age, helpless, 
unfriended and alone, destitute of everything which 
could make the burden of life tolerable, and yet 
cheerful and contented, drawing from an unseen 
source never-failing draughts of comfort and hope. 



x.] CHRIST'S GIFT OF PEACE. 145 

Go and stand by the bed of the dying man ; watch 
his last agonies, as the soul struggles to set itself 
free ; see how amid his paroxysms the gleam of joy 
lights up his features, flushing them with the con- 
sciousness of an invisible Presence, and the faint 
smile and the pressure of the hand bear witness to 
this inward peace, triumphant over pain, triumphant 
over death. Go and visit these scenes, and then say, 
whether Christ is slack to fulfil His promise, whether 
the peace of the Gospel is a delusion or not. 

What then is this peace, which Christ has left us ? 
What is its nature ? How can we realise it ? Whence 
comes it ? 

First of all then ; peace is not apathy, not stagna- 
tion. Whatever else it may be, it is certainly not 
freedom from labour, nor suspension of energy ; not, 
in this sense, repose. I fancy that not a few are 
repelled by the Christian ideal of the present life, as 
they imagine it to be a life apart from the interests 
and the activities of their neighbours, alien alike from 
public business and private enterprise, a life of dreary 
listlessness, a tame, unmeaning, savourless life. I be- 
lieve, that more still turn away with a feeling akin to 
loathing from the Christian ideal of the future life, 
as it is represented by some, an ideal which separates 
it from all that interests us now, and reduces it to a 
level waste of barren nothingness, a dull monotony of 
S. P. S. 10 



146 CHRIST'S GIFT OF PEACE. [x. 

existence, a very life in death. What we shall be 
hereafter, we know not, we can only imagine, now ; 
but of this we may be assured, that our state will 
afford the amplest scope for the exercise of all our 
highest faculties, purified, exalted, intensified. What 
we are expected to be here, we do know with suffi- 
cient certainty to guide us. The same Apostle, who 
describes the peace of God as passing all understand- 
ing, is he who laboured more abundantly than all. 
Let S. Paul be our type. Peace the peace which 
Christ has left us is not only consistent with the 
manifold occupations, energies, interests, cares of life ; 
but through and in these we must seek it 

But, secondly; peace is not a stifling of the con- 
science, a deadness of the moral feelings. It cannot 
be denied that those, who have drugged their moral 
sensibility, may secure immunity from many misgiv- 
ings and anxieties nay, even from some agonies 
which a lively conscience will inflict. In one sense 
they may be said to have attained repose if a dull, 
oppressive, unrefreshing torpor, which promises relief 
and ends in paralysis, can be called repose. In one 
sense they have found peace, but their peace is a 
desolation. This narcotic of the soul may afford 
.momentary ease, but it is fatal to life. It may numb 
the sense of sin in themselves, the sense of responsi- 
bility for the sins of others, but it hands over the 



x.] CHRIST'S GIFT OF PEACE. 147 

whole being, motionless and helpless, to awake at 
length to the agony of a spiritual death. 

And, lastly; if the peace of Christ is neither repose 
from active exertion nor immunity from a sensitive 
conscience, so also it is not freedom from external 
trial and suffering. In the same breath Christ offers 
to His disciples tribulation and peace not as a 
choice, an alternative; but the one as accompanying 
the other, the one as the condition of the other. And 
their whole after lives were the comment on this 
strange, paradoxical promise. ' Not as the world 
giveth, give I unto you.' He holds out no expecta- 
tion of escape from vexation, from misunderstanding, 
from calumny, from persecution, from any of the 
thousand forms of evil which friend or foe may inflict. 
Such might be the world's idea of peace. But He 
has promised to endow us with a spirit, which shall 
rise triumphant over all these things, and bear us up 
into a region of calm, unbroken, perennial peace. 

Two worlds are ours; 

this lower world with its privations, its miseries, its 
distractions, its fretting cares, which we realise only 
too vividly without an effort ; that higher world, into 
which we are even now translated by faith, where 
even now the tear is wiped from every eye, and there 
is no more death, nor sorrow, nor pain. 

This promise flows directly from the revelation 

102 



148 CHRIST'S GIFT OF PEACE. [x. 

of God in the Gospel, the knowledge of the Unity of 
God, the recognition of Him as our Father, the sense 
of reconciliation with Him in Christ 

From the knowledge of the Unity of God. The 
consciousness of one all-powerful, all-comprehensive, 
presiding will is the first stage. Without unity, there 
can be no harmony, and therefore no peace. The 
polytheist's religion was necessarily distraction. With 
one god of the hills and another of the plains, with 
one god of strength, arid another of beauty, and 
another of wisdom, and another of vengeance, and 
another of so-called love, with the necessity of appeas- 
ing this and not offending that, peace was impossible. 
His religion was but the reflex of his worldly life, his 
conflicting passions, his changing moods, his distract- 
ing cares. 

And the recognition of this one God as our Father 
is the second stage. We have earthly parents, to 
whom we are bound by the closest ties. We obey, 
reverence, love them. When they are taken away, 
we realise (some of us for the first time), how much 
they have been to us. We feel a vacuity, a sense of 
loss, an overpowering loneliness, which no time can 
repair. And yet even the relation between father 
and son, or between mother and daughter, does not 
satisfy all our yearnings after parental love and 
parental guidance. The feelings and interests of one 



x.] CHRIST S GIFT OF PEACE. 149 

generation are not the feelings and interests of the 
next. There is always some interposing barrier, 
some reserve, some drawback to unrestrained mutual 
confidence, to entire communion of heart and spirit. 
Only when we have learnt to throw ourselves uncon- 
ditionally on the all-embracing love of our Father in 
Heaven, shall we find that complete satisfaction, that 
perfect peace which passeth all understanding. 

And this lesson we learn through the Incarnation 
of the Son. Christ is not so much the realisation, as 
the manifestation, of the Father's love, for that love 
was perfect even from the beginning. God taught us 
His love in the life and teaching of Christ; God 
sealed for us His love in the Cross and Passion and 
Resurrection of Christ. Henceforth it is written in 
large letters, written right across the scroll of this 
world's history, so that men cannot choose but read. 
Christ has drawn us to the Father; has reconciled us 
to Him ; has folded us in the arms of His infinite 
love. Here alone our deepest yearnings are satisfied ; 
here alone we find repose for our weary spirits; repose 
from distraction and anxiety and temptation ; repose 
'in all time of our tribulation, in all time of our wealth, 
in the hour of death, and in the day of judgment.' 



XL 



WHY STAND YE GAZING UP INTO 
HEAVEN ? 

Why stand ye gazing up into heaven f 

ACTS i. it. 

Sunday after Ascension Day, 1877. 

ONCE again the disciples had been doomed to a 
cruel disappointment. Once again, as the cup of 
happiness touched their lips, it had been snatched 
from them, and dashed to the ground. Only a few 
weeks before their faith had undergone a terrible 
trial. They had borne their part in that triumphal 
procession the proudest moment of their lives 
when the loud Hosannas of the assembled people 
had hailed their Master as the rightful Heir of 
David's line, the long-expected King of Israel, the 
mighty Conqueror, Who should subdue the nations 



XI.] WHY STAND YE GAZING UP INTO HEAVEN ? 1 5 I 

of the earth. Their hopes then had suddenly set in 
darkness. They were stunned and paralysed. It was 
with them, 'as when a hungry man dreameth, and, 
behold, he eateth ; but he awaketh, and his soul is 
empty.' They had dreamt of a throne ; and, behold, 
a gibbet. They had imagined a palace; and, behold, 
a tomb. Out of that tomb their hopes had arisen 
again with their risen Lord. They saw before them, 
not indeed a throned and sceptred king, not a 
mighty victor laden with the spoils of his foes, not 
all that their expectations had forecast ; but they saw 
at least restored to them the same Master, Teacher, 
Friend. Then came this second shock. The Master 
discoursed freely with them about the promised 
kingdom. He led them on point by point, till the 
last anxious question trembled on their lips, ' Lord, 
wilt Thou at this time restore again the kingdom to 
Israel ? ' What was the meaning of His revival, His 
resurrection, His presence among them once more, if 
the long-expected hour had not at length arrived? 
It seemed doubtless to them, as if every moment the 
heavens must part asunder, and the celestial hosts 
descend in glorious panoply to do battle for their 
King. And yet day followed day in the same mono- 
tonous succession. Still there was delay; still there 
was uncertainty ; still there was the wearisome, daily 
routine of common duties and common cares. They 



152 WHY STAND YE GAZING [xi. 

would put an end to this intolerable suspense ; they 
would ask the question point-blank; and thus they 
would extort an answer by very plainness of speech. 
' Lord, wilt Thou at this time ? ' The answer with- 
held from them the one thing which they desired to 
know. It charged them with a difficult and dangerous 
task, to which henceforth they must devote their 
lives ; it promised them a power, which would 
enable them adequately to fulfil this task. But to 
the question 'When,' it vouchsafed no reply at all. 
'Here/ it seemed to say, 'here is the work to be 
done, and there is the means of doing it. Ask for 
nothing more. It is mere idle curiosity to go beyond 
this, to penetrate into the impenetrable/ Then, as 
if to enforce by the strongest practical comment the 
lesson which His word had conveyed, 'while they 
beheld, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him 
out of their sight.' Again it was the phantom of a 
dissolving dream. They stretched out their hands to 
clutch at the kingdom, and behold the King Himself 
had vanished away. 

Amazed and uncertain, what else could they do 
but to gaze up into heaven ? Had He really left 
them, left them for ever? Or had He but retired for 
a moment, that He might array Himself in His 
glorious majesty; and would He even now emerge 
from His celestial chamber, resplendent in glory and 



XI.] UP INTO HEAVEN? 153 

attended by countless myriads of His Father's le- 
gions? So they stood transfixed, every face upturned 
and every eye straining, that they might catch the 
first ray of the descending glory, as it darted through 
the riven cloud. 

From this dream they were startled by the rebuke 
of the angels. There was something hard and chill- 
ing in the very form of address, ' Ye men of Galilee ;' 
not, ( Ye satraps of the King of Kings, 5 nor 'Ye 
captains in the mighty Victor's host ? So then the 
glory had departed. They were humble fishermen 
and peasants still, simple inhabitants of a despised 
province, doomed to a life of vulgar toil and common- 
place cares'. A fit introduction this to the rebuke 
which follows, 'Why stand ye gazing up into heaven?' 
' Face the stern realities of life at once. You have a 
work to do, which will tax all your energies. There 
is this tremendous load of sin, under which mankind 
is sinking, and you are called to remove it ; there is 
this dense cloud of ignorance, which shrouds the 
heavens from them, and you are charged to scatter 
it. There is a whole world to be conquered for 
Christ, and you must conquer it. What matter it 
to you when He will come this very moment, to- 
morrow, next year, centuries hence ? Cease to gaze 
up into heaven. Earth is the scene of your labours 
now ; earth must be the centre of your interests.' 



154 WHY STAND YE GAZING [xi. 

The angels' address is a rebuke to idle speculation 
in regions beyond the reach of human knowledge. 
It is a warning against substituting that which is 
visionary, for that which ' is real, in religion. It is 
more especially a denunciation of this over-curious 
spirit, in those provinces into which it is most eager 
to intrude itself, in matters relating to the Ascension, 
the Reign in Heaven, the Second Advent of Christ. 
At each recurring season of the Ascensiontide there- 
fore it suggests a wholesome check to our thoughts. 
There is a highly practical way of regarding the 
Ascension : and there is also an eminently unprac- 
tical way. It directs us to the one ; it warns us off 
from the other. 

In one sense we cannot help gazing up into 
heaven. Are we not told elsewhere that 'our con- 
versation,' our citizenship, ' is in heaven ? ' Are we 
not charged to 'seek those things which are above, 
where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God ? ' 
Are we not commanded to 'lay up treasures for 
ourselves in heaven,' for this very reason that ' where 
our treasure is, there our heart will be also ? ' And 
in this spirit have we not prayed during this season 
that ' as we do believe our Lord Jesus Christ to have 
ascended into the heavens, so we may also in heart 
and mind thither ascend, and with Him continually 
dwell?' In what -sense then can we be required to 



XL] UP INTO HEAVEN? 155 

avert our gaze from heaven, and to fix our eyes on 
the earth ? ' 

The circumstances of the Apostles will supply us 
with a first answer. What was a fault in them, will 
be a fault in us also. They were eager to know the 
exact time the year and the day and the hour 
when their King would come and claim His king- 
dom. They could not submit to wait patiently. 
The Master Himself had been quite explicit on this 
point. He had told them again and again, that this 
knowledge was hidden from them. He had figured 
this truth in parables ; He had enunciated it in plain 
language. He had bidden them to watch and be 
ready always, because they knew not what hour their 
Lord would come. He had warned them that this 
ignorance was complete, was absolute, was universal. 
' Of that day and that hour knoweth no man.' It 
was hidden even from the angels of heaven the 
angels, who serve in the presence of God ; it was 
hidden in some sense from the Son Himself in His 
mediatorial capacity the Son, to Whom all things 
were made known. It was buried deep, dark, in- 
scrutable, in the eternal counsels of the Father. And 
still, notwithstanding these frequent declarations, the 
Apostles attempt again and again to probe this 
secret; still the last words which they address to 
their risen Lord ignore the oft-repeated warning; 



156 WHY STAND YE GAZING [xi. 

still the last answer which they receive from His lips 
is a rebuke for desiring to fathom the unfathomable. 
' It is not for you to know the times or the seasons.' 

The attitude of the Apostles is the type, a fore- 
casting, of the "attitude of the Church in aftertimes. 
The subject has exercised a strong fascination over 
Christians in all ages. No rebuff and no disappoint- 
ment seems to have produced any effect. Again and 
again men have been found to predict the time of the 
Second Advent. Again and again their predictions 
have been falsified by the event. In language not 
less clear than the voices heard by the Apostles of 
old, the stern logic of facts has rebuked their pre- 
sumption. 'It is not for you to know the times or 
the seasons.' 'Why stand ye gazing up into heaven?' 

And the wrong done by this lawless speculation 
is not trifling. It tends to impair that attitude of 
patient waiting which is enjoined on the Church. It 
substitutes a spasmodic, intermittent, feverish watch- 
fulness (with intervals of sloth and indifference) for 
the calm and continuous expectation, which alone 
becomes the sons of God. It is chargeable with still 
more fatal consequences than these. It has bred 
disappointment, and from disappointment has sprung 
scepticism, and from scepticism, mockery and un- 
belief. It has given occasion to the enemies of Christ 
to blaspheme. From the Apostolic age to the present 



XL] UP INTO HEAVEN? 157 

day there have been scoffers, walking after their own 
lusts and saying, 'Where is the promise of His 
coming ? ' From then until now men have been prone 
to forget 'that one day is with the Lord as a thousand 
years.' And the guilt lies in no small degree with 
the lawless speculation of believers. Strange that it 
should have been so; strange that men should not 
perceive how each such prediction falsified, each such 
hope disappointed, is after all only a fresh confirma- 
tion of the Master's saying, ' Of that day and that 
hour knoweth no man.' ' It is not for you to know 
the times or the seasons.' 

This then is one sense, in which we are forbidden 
to gaze up into heaven this presumptuous fore- 
casting the day of the Lord's Advent. And the 
second is akin to it. It has reference to the place 
and the circumstances of Christ's reign, as the other 
had reference to the time. ' Christ has ascended into 
the heaven of heavens ; Christ is seated at the right 
hand of the Father; Christ will descend thence to 
judge the quick and dead. Where then is Christ 
now, at this moment ? In some far-off star, which 
sparkles overhead in the midnight sky? In some 
bright, ethereal region in the mid- air, which we can 
vaguely imagine?' Nay, we do but perplex our- 
selves with such idle speculations ; we only create 
difficulties, where there are none, by attempting to 



158 WHY STAND YE GAZING ' [xi. 

realise that which with our present faculties is un- 
realisable. Only reflect for a moment on the meaning 
of the terms which you are using. We see now only 
' through a glass darkly,' . not ' face to face.' We 
behold, not the eternal things themselves, but only 
their shadows. God speaks to us not yet plainly, but 
in parables. Here are metaphors, and we would 
argue upon them as if they were scientific statements. 
' Set your affection on things above.' What do we 
mean by 'above?' Surely, not overhead. What is ,, 
above us now will be on a level, will sink below us 
a few hours hence as the earth revolves on its axis. 
What is above us at this very moment is beneath the 
feet of our Australian fellow-disciples of Christ 
'God dwelleth in the heavens!' What again do we 
mean by "' the heavens ? ' Not surely the skies. God 
can no more dwell in the skies, than He can dwell 
on this solid earth, than He can dwell in the restless 
ocean.. Strain your eyes and rack your thoughts, as 
you will, to find the place of His abode; and your 
brain will only grow giddy in vain. Attempt to 
reckon the myriads upon myriads of miles which 
separate you from that faint star barely discerned 
through the most powerful telescope, that star from 
which the very ray of light now striking the reflector 
was darted centuries before the" human race existed 
on this earth. Have you arrived one whit nearer to 



XL] UP INTO HEAVEN? 159 

the abode, the court, 'the throne of God, by all this 
tension of your senses, by all this play of your 
imagination? Nay, this heaven, this sky overhead, 
in its purity, its calm, its glory, its spaciousness, is 
only an image a sublime image indeed, but an 
image still of an infinitude, which we cannot de- 
scribe, cannot realise. But the abode of God God 
the Infinite, God the Omnipresent why ' the heaven 
and the heaven of heavens cannot contain' Him. 
When the Apostle describes 'the King of kings 
and Lord of lords, Who only hath immortality/ as 
' dwelling in the light unapproachable,' we picture to 
ourselves such a radiancy as Dante has described, or 
Angelico has painted. We are obliged to sustain 
our imagination by such aids. But here too light is 
only a figure. God Himself dwells no more in the 
light than He dwells in the darkness. But light is 
warmth, is geniality, is revelation, is life to us ; and 
therefore it serves as an image of the eternal per- 
fection. 

Would we really describe the dwelling-place of 
God? Then let us adopt the prophet's descrip- 
tion, ' The high and holy One that inhabiteth 
eternity.' Language cannot go beyond this. 'In- 
habiteth eternity/ a cross metaphor, it will be said ; 
time and space are confused. Yes, but herein con- 
sists the sublimity and power of the image. God has 



l6o WHY STAND YE GAZING [xi. 

no palace but eternity. And so again, when we say 
that Christ dwells 'at the right hand of God/ it is 
still more obvious that we are dealing with a me- 
taphor: God has neither hands nor feet: with God 
is neither right nor left. It would be blasphemy to 
think otherwise of Him. Nay, S. Paul says that we 
ourselves you and I, Christian men and women 
by virtue of our baptism, by virtue of our Christian 
profession, have been f seated together with Christ in 
the heavenly places,' have been enthroned already, 
where Christ Himself is enthroned. This is an 
obvious metaphor. And why then should we press 
the words in the other case, as if they described some 
visible scene, with Christ sitting on the right hand 
of God ? We recall the court of some earthly sove- 
reign, where the heir-apparent holds the place of 
honour nearest the throne ; and we picture to our- 
selves some far-off celestial palace, with its rainbow 
hues, its starry glories, where such a scene is enacted, 
only with a brilliancy intensified a thousandfold. We 
have in our mind's eye perhaps the representation of 
some famous painter, who has described on canvas 
the session of the Son in glory. And yet with a 
strange inconsistency when the painter attempts to 
portray the Eternal Father, our mind recoils with 
horror. We shudder at the profanity, we avert our 
gaze. Our repulsion, our horror, is a silent witness 



XL] UP INTO HEAVEN? l6l 

to us, that the scene cannot be localised, cannot be 
portrayed. 

But ' what then ? ' it will be said, ' the very pur- 
pose, you confess, of the Ascensiontide is to testify 
to the glorification of humanity in the Session of 
Christ, as Man still, on God's right hand. Does not 
this suppose some locality? How can you under- 
stand it otherwise ?' 

Why should you expect to understand it ? Is 
your understanding all-powerful ? Nay, do you even 
understand yourself yourself, whom you are ques- 
tioning every moment ? Do you understand how it 
is that, while your body is fixed on this one spot, 
your mind is traversing all space and all time, 
soaring into heaven beyond Arcturus and the Plei- 
ades, piercing into the remote past when this earth 
was peopled with strange monsters, plesiosauri and 
pterodactyls and labyrinthodons ? This is a fact. 
And, if this is possible, can you not conceive it 
possible also, that the humanity of Christ with all 
the limitations which it implies may be brought 
into close proximity, may, in some mysterious way, 
be placed in a position of unique honour, m relation 
to the Illimitable, Infinite, Eternal Father, such as is 
represented to us in a figure, in a parable, by sitting 
at the right hand of God ? Do not presume that you 
know everything, when in fact you know nothing at all. 
S. P. S. , ii 



1 62 WHY STAND YE GAZING [xi. 

Stand no more gazing up into heaven. Spend 
no more time on barren speculations ; they only ab- 
sorb energy and paralyze action. Nor yet on mystic 
reveries; they only satisfy the feelings, without 
stimulating the conscience. Be stirring, be working, 
be witnesses to Christ. 

Stand no more gazing up into heaven ; but rather 
ascend thither as at this season, and there ' in heart 
and mind continually dwell.' Ascend thither in the 
contemplation of humanity exalted, enthroned, glori- 
fied in Christ, in the presence of the Eternal Father. 
This thought must purify, must stimulate, must 
sanctify you, as you remember that you too are 
seated with Christ seated with Him even now in 
the heavenly places. Ascend thither in the realisa- 
tion of Christ as still a living Being, still a living 
Man, Who, though ' touched with the feeling of our 
infirmities,' has nevertheless entered into the heavenly 
sanctuary, the true Holy of Holies, and there makes 
atonement for our sins. Ascend thither in the as- 
surance of His reappearing again, at the great resti- 
tution, when there shall be new heavens and a new 
earth, and when God shall be all in all. Ascend 
thither in the spirituality of your worship, this 
knowing, that if Christ had not gone away, the 
Comforter, the Guide to all truth, could never have 
come; and that therefore His departure was ordained 



xi.] UP INTO HEAVEN? 163 

to wean you from outward, formal conceptions of 
religion. So rise from earth to heaven ; or rather, 
so call down heaven upon earth. The kingdom of 
God is within you, is around you ; heaven is in your 
homes, in your chambers and warehouses, in the very 
streets, if you have only eyes to see it. 

Stand no more gazing up into heaven ; but return 
from the Mount of the Ascension to the city of 
your abode, to the duties of your vocation, to the 
struggles of your every-day life. There continue in 
prayer and supplication; there await in confidence 
that outpouring of the Spirit, which is never denied 
to those who do earnestly seek it: there live and 
there bear witness to Christ, that you may win 
yourselves, may win others, to God. 



II 2 



XII. 

CHRISTIAN FORETHOUGHT AND 
UNCHRISTIAN, ANXIETY. 

Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for 
the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. 

S. MATTHEW vi. 34. 

Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity, 1873. 

I SUPPOSE that no passage in Holy Scripture has 
caused more real or more wide-spread perplexity 
than this. Here we have a precept which must 
mingle with the whole current of our lives, must 
affect the thoughts and the actions of every day and 
every hour. And yet it seems to set before us an 
ideal of life which is quite unattainable ; and which, 
if attainable, would be destructive to human society. 
For it seems to tell us that in the affairs of this world 



xii.] CHRISTIAN FORETHOUGHT. 165 

we should be indifferent, reckless, improvident ; that, 
if we would live rightly, we must live altogether for 
the moment; that it is culpable to look forward to 
the future, culpable to make provision for sickness 
and old age, culpable to lay by for wife and family. 

I am not stating an imaginary difficulty. I speak 
of that which I know. I have met with cases, where 
a sincere believer has been sorely perplexed by this 
precept, as he has understood it It has lain across 
his path of life, as a constant reproach to him. I 
have known cases also where the unbeliever has 
alleged it, and (I feel bound to say) has alleged it 
in all sincerity, as a triumphant argument against the 
perfect morality of the Lord's teaching. He has con- 
demned it as contradicting the best experience of 
men, as conflicting with the first principles of political 
economy, as fatal to civilisation and subversive of 
society. And knowing this, as the passage occurs 
in the Gospel for this Sunday, I did not think that 
I could better occupy your attention this afternoon 
than by investigating its true meaning and import. 
It will not have been a useless task, if by God's grace 
I shall be able to meet some open objections, and 
remove some lurking scruples. 

Now if the passage did mean what it has been sup- 
posed to mean, then the extremes in the scale of 
religious belief would be found to have met in an 



1 66 CHRISTIAN FORETHOUGHT [xn. 

unexpected way. The recklessness of the Epicurean 
would be matched by the recklessness of the Christian. 
'Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die' is the 
motto of the one; 'Dismiss all thought of the morrow; 
for the morrow will take care of itself would be the 
echo of the other. 

If it did mean this, then all those measures for 
preventing and alleviating human misery, which have 
engaged the attention of the statesman and the 
philanthropist and the parish-clergyman, are founded 
on an utterly vicious principle. Savings-banks and 
provident societies and superannuation funds and 
insurance companies what are all these but direct 
and deliberate measures of forethought for the 
morrow, systematic organisations for setting at 
nought a Divine precept, if indeed that precept 
were rightly interpreted as enjoining a reckless 
neglect of the future? 

No, assuredly no. Whatever else the text implies, 
it cannot at all events signify this. Forethought is the 
very bond of human society, the very earnest of 
human progress. Forethought is the very breath of 
the Christian life. Forethought is the very reflection 
of the Divine Wisdom. 

It is the bond of society, and the earnest of 
progress. What is it that differentiates the child 
from the man, what is it that separates barbarism 



xii.] AND UNCHRISTIAN ANXIETY. 167 

from civilisation, but the ability to realise the law 
of continuity in human affairs, and to make provision 
for the hereafter in accordance with this law ? What 
is all education the education of a nation, as well as 
the education of an individual but an instrumentality 
for calculating consequences and a machinery for 
promoting forethought ? 

And, moreover, it is the very, breath of Christian 
life. Again, I ask, what is it that distinguishes the 
Christian from the unbeliever, but that his horizon is 
immeasurably extended, and his forethought takes an 
infinitely wider sweep? The Christian is to the 
unbeliever what the civilised man is to the savage. 
The savage lives for the moment ; he gathers the 
spontaneous fruits of the earth; he makes no pro- 
vision against famine; he tills no ground, sows no 
seed, expects no harvest. As civilisation increases, 
forethought developes also. Its earliest efforts do 
not go beyond the wants of the year; it gathers in 
its harvests, and stores up its food for the winter. 
But gradually its range of vision expands. A great 
advance is made when a man drains a morass on 
which he may not hope to reap the grain, or plants 
an orchard from which he cannot live to pluck the 
fruit. The gain to society in this advance is clear. 
But what is its higher meaning ? Why, it is another 
step forward towards the more extended foresight of 



1 68 CHRISTIAN FORETHOUGHT [xn, 

the Christian ; it is an unconscious tribute to the 
continuity of being, a stammering confession of an 
interest in the future, a recognition, however halting 
and imperfect^ of a life after death. In this matter of 
forethought the civilised man stands midway between 
the barbarian savage and the Christian sage. Chris- 
tianity is not the suppression of forethought ; it is the 
education, the extension, the perfecting of it. 

And once more : forethought is the reflection of 
the Divine Wisdom. Providence is another word for 
foresight: providence is prudence writ large : and thus 
Providence is instinctively used as a synonyme for 
God. With God indeed, strictly speaking, there can 
be no foresight and no forethought ; for with Him is 
no before or after. The infinite past and the infinite 
future are all as a moment to Him. The eternal 
economy of the Universe is comprehended by Him 
at a glance. He is omnipresent in time, as He is 
omnipresent in space. But we call His eternal 
purpose providence, we call it foresight ; because with 
our limited faculties we cannot otherwise conceive or 
speak of it. And human forethought is a reflection, 
however faint and feeble, of His glorious providence. 
For it is a realisation of the future as if present; it 
" is an overleaping of intervening days and years and 
ages by the power of a reasonable faith; it is (so far as 
human capacities will permit) an annihilation of time. 



xii.] . AND UNCHRISTIAN ANXIETY. 169 

'Be not deceived.' You cannot defy God's law 
with impunity. The invariable sequence, the in- 
evitable rule, of cause and effect, is His eternal 
will alike in things natural and things spiritual. The 
law of seed-time and .harvest pervades the whole 
economy of the Universe. Forethought is the recog- 
nition of this law. 'Whatsoever a man soweth, that 
shall he reap.' If you sow intemperance and pro- 
fligacy now, you will reap disease and madness and 
a thousand nameless terrors hereafter. If you sow 
improvidence in youth, you will reap misery and 
want in old age. If you scatter the seed of reck- 
lessness, do not marvel when you gather in the 
harvest of despair. The seed is a hollow, empty, 
purposeless, indolent, vapid existence. You have 
sown the wind. The harvest is a beating, howling 
hurricane, which strips you of shelter and exposes 
you naked and defenceless to the elements. You 
have reaped the whirlwind. In vain will you shield 
yourself under the excuse that you are bidden to 
'take no thought for the morrow.' In vain will you 
parley, when your voice is drowned in the raging 
storm. ' God is not mocked.' His law will vindicate 
itself at all hazards. 

But, it will be said, whatever may be the conse- 
quences, as a matter of fact can any words more 
strong, and more explicit, be imagined, than the 



I7O CHRISTIAN FORETHOUGHT [xn. 

command to take no thought for the morrow? To 
the English ear this can only mean one thing ; ' Be 
indifferent, be careless, be improvident, about what is 
to happen tomorrow.' To the English ear of today, 
yes; but how was it, when this translation was made? 
Words are the coins of the mind. They are the 
current medium of human thought. But coins, 
though at any given time they may be regarded as 
having a definite and fixed value, will rise or fall 
from age to age. The shilling of today has a pur- 
chasing power very different from the shilling of two 
or three centuries ago. So it has been with words. 
The phrase ' to take thought,' when it came into our 
English Bibles, expressed an idea quite different from 
that which it conveys now. Thus I read in one early 
writer that a certain person was ' put to trouble and 
died of thought.' I find it stated in another that an 
' old man for very thought and grief of heart pined 
away.' So 'dying of thought' was equivalent to 
'being killed with distress of mind,' 'dying of a 
broken heart.' I turn again to the Old Testament, 
and I find the very expression which we have here. 
Saul hastens the return of himself and his servant 
homeward, 'lest his father... take thought for them/ 
i.e. ' get anxious about them.' Thus, then, ' to take 
thought' in old English is 'to feel anxiety,' 'to be 
harassed with care;' and the precept assumes a 



XII.] AND UNCHRISTIAN ANXIETY. i;i 

wholly different meaning from that which is generally 
attached to it; 'Be not anxious about the morrow; 
for the morrow will have its own anxieties. Sufficient 
unto the day is the evil thereof.' And this corre- 
sponds exactly with the meaning of the original. 
The word translated ' thought ' signifies not prudence, 
not forethought, but anxiety, harassing and distracting 
care. Thus the condemnation is hurled, not against 
a reasonable prudence about measures, but against a 
profitless solicitude about results. Thus it is a lesson 
not of recklessness, not of indifference, even in the 
affairs of this life, but of patience, of calmness, of firm 
faith in an Almighty power and love, which overrules 
all things for good. 

But, though our Lord does not in this particular 
passage condemn forethought, still He certainly does 
throughout the Sermon on the Mount seek to guide 
and graduate it. In this, as in all practical matters, 
it is necessary to observe the due proportions of 
things. The character, the consequences, the dura- 
tion, must be duly estimated: and our forethought 
must be meted out accordingly. It is this graduation 
of forethought which forms the leading idea of the 
context We hold it culpable folly, if a man sacri- 
fices the interest of after years to the enjoyment of 
tomorrow and the next day. It is only reasonable 
prudence, only common sense, we say, to make pro- 



172 CHRISTIAN FORETHOUGHT [xii. 

vision for after life. And yet, if men are asked to 
extend this principle, if they are told to enlarge the 
horizon of their forethought, if they are required to 
postpone the smaller interests of the life before death 
to the larger interests of the life after death, just as 
they have postponed the smaller interests of today and 
tomorrow to the larger interests of the years to come 
at once this is unpractical, this is overstrained, this is 
fanatical. Yet only allow the premiss, and there is 
no escape from the conclusion. Only allow that man 
is destined to live an immortal life (and you do not 
seriously question this), and then the immortal life 
must be infinitely more important than the mortal by 
reason of its infinitely greater duration. Only allow 
(and you. will not deny this) that truth and righteous- 
ness and love and purity are eternal principles, and 
then they must take an absolute precedence over meat 
and drink and clothing, over things which ' perish in 
the using.' Whenever there is a conflict between the 
two, the temporary must surrender unconditionally to 
the eternal. 

And yet you demur, and you question, and you 
cavil, when you are told to seek first the kingdom 
of God and His righteousness, as if there were some- 
thing unreal, something extravagant, in the demand. 
Nay, it is the truest, highest, rarest, most uncommon 
common sense, which is embodied in this precept. 



xii.] AND UNCHRISTIAN ANXIETY. IJT, 

Does not natural instinct bear witness to its reason- 
ableness? When in the ever-memorable cavalry 
charge at Balaklava those six hundred horsemen 
bravely rode the length of the deadly valley amid 
the roaring of cannon on the right and on the left, 
facing certain destruction : or again, when on the decks 
of the ' Birkenhead ' those brave soldiers, having first 
despatched the boats with the women and children 
in safety to the land, then themselves calmly awaited 
the end, as the vessel went slowly down, maintaining 
their ranks to the last with the same cool courage 
and the same steady bearing as if they were merely 
halting on the parade-ground ; what was the instinc- 
tive, spontaneous, universal verdict, not of England 
only, but of all Europe, called forth by their heroism 
and self-devotion ? Was there one dissentient voice 
amid this general chorus of praise, one murmur of 
disapprobation at the folly of these men in sacrificing 
their lives to duty, when they might have saved them ? 
And what, I ask, was the meaning of this unques- 
tioned and unquestionable judgment of mankind? 
Why, it was a confession that there is something better 
than food and raiment, something higher than this 
frail life with its paltry attractions and its transitory 
pleasures. It was a confession that true wisdom puts 
duty before life : and duty is a province, though only 
a single province, in that kingdom of God, which 



174 CHRISTIAN FORETHOUGHT [xn. 

Christ bids us seek first. Yes, the instinctive sense 
of mankind, when it is taken by surprise and speaks 
out of the fulness of the heart, when it is not warped 
by any consideration of self-interest, nor confused by 
any subtleties of a vain philosophy the instinctive 
sense of mankind declares that it is good to 'seek first 
the kingdom of God and His righteousness.' 

Our Lord then graduates forethought, but He con- 
demns solicitude. He condemns it on two grounds. 
It is a practical mistake, and it is a religious mistrust. 

I. It is a practical mistake. Be not anxious for 
the morrow. The morrow will bring its own anxieties. 
Do not anticipate them, but ' act in the living present.' 
Each day has its own cares, its own trials, its own 
struggles. They are enough, and more than enough, 
for that day. It is folly to accumulate upon these 
the anxieties of the morrow. It is folly to double 
your cares, incurring them first in the anticipation 
and then again in the reality. We hold that general 
both the happiest and the wisest man who, having 
carefully planned the strategy of the coming day, 
then dismisses it from his thoughts and lies down to 
rest, recruiting his powers of mind and body in the 
forgetfulness of sleep. So it is in the anxious warfare 
of life. The anticipation of care is as futile as it is 
unwise. It is futile; for it cannot change the un- 
changeable. If the trouble is to come, no previous 



xii.] AND UNCHRISTIAN ANXIETY. 175 

anxiety can avert it. If it is not to come, all previous 
anxiety is distress incurred in vain. It is unwise; 
for it is a waste of energy, a distraction of mind. 
Every moment spent on the possibilities of tomorrow 
is a moment abstracted from the realities of today. 
And these realities the duties and the charities of 
the passing hour, the conflict of good and evil, the 
trouble, the temptation, the sin these will need all 
the energies, and absorb all the thought, which we 
can bestow upon them. What might not be the 
effect on our moral and spiritual life, if we only gave 
to the education of the heart and the conscience one 
half of the time that is wasted in brooding over evils 
which will never arrive, and over troubles which we 
cannot avert! 

2. But the religious error, involved in such 
anxiety, is graver still. It is nothing less than unfilial 
and churlish distrust of the love and power of our 
heavenly Father. The practical belief in the father- 
hood of God constitutes the fundamental distinction 
between true and false religion. This portion of the 
Sermon on the Mount is wholly occupied in enforcing 
such a belief. The prayer of prayers begins with the 
enunciation of it. The words 'your Father,' 'thy 
Father,' 'My Father,' occur with astonishing frequency 
throughout the whole context. It appears as though 
our Lord would take hearts by storm, and lead us 



176 CHRISTIAN FORETHOUGHT [xn. 

captive by this endearing mode of address. He 
seems to say that this one word ' Father ' with all 
the ideas of love, and tenderness, and protection, and 
watchful care, which it involves this word once 
lodged in the heart must quiet all anxieties, and 
crush all doubts, and quell all fears. If I can only 
realise the truth that He, the All-wise and All- 
powerful and Omnipresent, He Whom 'the heaven 
of heavens cannot contain,' He Who dwelleth in 
eternity, notwithstanding the infinitude of His Being, 
is not only our Father, but my Father loves me with 
a Father's heart, watches over me with a Father's 
care then I shall lack nothing, I shall dread nothing; 
for I shall know that all things trouble and vexa- 
tion and want and sorrow and pain all things what- 
soever will work together for my good. Just as the 
child, scared by some childish fear, or bursting with 
some childish grief, flees to its father's presence, 
clings to its father's knees, buries its face in its father's 
bosom, and all is well at once; so must it be with 
you. There is no trouble so special, and no grief so 
private, and no temptation so subtle, and no apprehen- 
sion so vague, nothing so great and nothing so small, 
but that it will find a place in your Father's heart. 
Go to Him in childlike trust. Nurse no anxieties for 
tomorrow, but go to Him this very night. Open 
out to Him the grief which is breaking your heart ; 



xii.] AND UNCHRISTIAN ANXIETY. 177 

cany before Him the trouble which is desolating your 
life; lay bare to Him the temptation which is gnawing 
at your conscience; fling down before Him the sin 
which has killed your soul. For He will console; 
He will alleviate ; He will strengthen ; He will make 
alive. Cast upon Him all your anxiety, without mis- 
giving and without reserve, cast it upon Him, Tor 
He careth for you.' 



S. P. S. 12 



XIII. 

TRUE BLESSEDNESS. 

But He said, Yea rather, blessed are they that hear 
the word of Gcd, and keep it. 

S. LUKE xi. 28. 

Third Sunday after Easter, 1876. 

Tins saying, to which I purpose directing your 
attention this afternoon, is eminently characteristic of 
the Gospel teaching. It is the rapid, unpremeditated 
reply to a voice from the crowd a voice proceeding 
from an unknown person, and dictated by a sudden 
impulse. And yet it contains a lesson which is 
unexhausted and inexhaustible. It is the Master's 
standing protest against the misconception, the abuse, 
the degradation of His Gospel by the preference of 
the external and formal over the personal and 
spiritual, by the divorce of religion from morality. 



xni.] TRUE BLESSEDNESS. I/Q. 

The Saviour has been teaching after His wont. 
He has uttered words of rebuke, words of consolation, 
words of grace and of truth. The shaft has pierced 
home to the hearts of His hearers. The proud spirit 
of the Pharisee has quailed before that stern denun- 
ciation. The humble penitent has found refreshment 
and strength in those cheering tones. There is a 
directness, a depth, a Mk, a potency, in this new 
teacher's utterances, which contrasts strangely with 
the scholastic subtleties and the trivial distinctions 
and the moral subterfuges of the doctors whom they 
are accustomed to hear. One voice, breaking the 
silence, gives expression to the feeling which is up- - 
most in the minds of all. It is (can we doubt it?) 
the utterance of a mother's voice, the outpouring of a 
mother's heart. Proud indeed might that woman be,- 
who could boast of such a son. What mother would 
not pray that her child might grow up to be like 
Him, so gentle, so strong, so pure, so good, so great a 
rabbi, so wise a prophet ? ' Blessed is the womb that 
bare thee, and the paps that gave thee suck.' 

What more natural than this sudden outburst of 
admiration ? It found a hearty response we may 
venture to say in all the assembled crowd. And 
it was not more natural than true. This title of 
' blessedness ' belongs in a very special sense to her, 
to whom it is here assigned, to the mother of the 

122 



I So TRUE BLESSEDNESS. [xm, 

Lord. It was conferred upon her by the voice of 
inspiration; it has passed from mouth to mouth 
throughout all succeeding ages. She herself declared 
in no faltering tones her conviction of the glory which 
awaited her; 'Behold, from henceforth all genera- 
tions shall call me blessed.' Nor has time falsified 
her conviction. Here at all events Scripture and 
tradition the Gospel and the Church are at one. 
Her title has indeed been dishonoured, and her 
diadem tarnished, by the profane exaggeration, which 
confers on the human mother the attributes and the 
worship belonging to the Divine Son alone. But no 
foolishness, nor superstition, nor blasphemy of men, 
can recall the promise of God. 

It was not therefore because the words were 
untrue, not even because they had overstated the 
truth, that the cry of this simple woman needed 
correction. But she saw only dimly and partially. 
Her utterance was an imperfect utterance. She had 
stated a lower truth, and she had ignored a higher. 

In His reply, therefore, our Lord does not deny 
or question her statement it was beyond the reach of 
question or denial but 'He fastens on it, as an oppor- 
tunity for imparting a higher lesson. To her first, 
and to us to the Church in all ages through her, 
He seems to address such language as this. 

' Do you think it a blessing to be linked with Me 



xni.] .TRUE BLESSEDNESS. iSl 

by ties of race or of kindred, to associate with Me out- 
"wardly, to eat and drink at the same table, to visit 
the same places, to gaze upon the same scenes ? Ah! 
this is a poor and unworthy view of My Person, of 
My Gospel. Believe it, the true blessedness is not 
here ; not in ties of relationship, even the closest, not 
in the communion of the senses of the eye or the 
ear or the touch not in any of these outward things; 
for these (even the best of them) are carnal, earthly, 
transitory, and I and Mine are eternal in the heavens. 
These may be blessings, if we use them aright ; but 
they may also be curses the most bitter and deadly 
curses. Here then is the blessing of which ye would 
speak: here in this inward communion with the 
Father through Me. Knit your hearts to My heart ; 
think My thoughts; live My life. So shall ye be 
more to Me than all the ties of earthly kindred, 
even the most sacred ; more than mother, more than 
sisters and brothers : for ye shall be one with Me 
bone of My bone and flesh of My flesh, very members 
incorporate of My body one in an indissoluble union, 
one eternally, one with the Father in Me.' 

' Ye speak of the blessedness of My mother : ye 
speak rightly, for so it is. But know ye not, wherein 
her blessedness consists ? Understand ye not, that it 
must be sought, where all true blessedness alone can 
be found, not in the sphere of the material world, not 



1 8 2 TRUE BLESSEDNESS. [xin. 

in the relations of outward things, not in a common 
blood, a common home, common sights and usages ; 
but in the realm of spiritual verities, in a common 
heart and soul, in a common faith and love, in a 
common citizenship in the kingdom of heaven ?' This 
was her blessedness, that by her purity and innocence, 
by her humble faith and unswerving trust in God, she 
was deemed the least unworthy among the daughters 
of men, to become the mother of the Redeemer. 
This was her blessedness; that when this unique 
privilege was announced to her, she believed the 
heavenly message ; that hearing the story of the 
shepherds divinely guided to the manger in Bethlehem 
there to worship her babe, she pondered these things 
in her heart ; that seeing the .marvellous child grow 
from day to day grow in wisdom, as in stature and 
hearing Him speak as never child spake before, she 
kept all these sayings in her heart. This was her 
blessedness, despite all her sorrows for her sorrows 
were beyond the common lot of motherhood despite 
her sorrows, or rather by reason of her sorrows:; for 
these were to her a mighty witness of God's favour, a 
gracious trial of her faith, a merciful discipline for the 
kingdom of heaven. In one sense her blessedness is 
unapproached and unapproachable: but in another, 
and this the highest sense of all, her blessedness may 
.be thine and thine ; for ' whosoever will do the will of 



xin.] TRUE BLESSEDNESS. 183 

God, the same is My brother and My sister, yes, and 
My mother also.' 

Such is the abiding lesson suggested by our Lord's 
reply. The truth, which it enforces, lies at the very 
root of the Gospel teaching a truth even now but 
fitfully discerned in theory, and daily forgotten by us 
all in practice, yet a truth nevertheless which alone 
can give life to individuals and churches and nations. 
'God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must 
worship Him in spirit and in truth.' 'My kingdom 
is not of this world.' ' The kingdom of heaven cometh 
not with observation.' ' The kingdom of God is not 
meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy 
in the Holy Ghost.' ' God accepteth no man's person.' 
' Henceforth know we no man after the flesh : yea, 
though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now 
henceforth know we Him no more.' 

Again and again do prophets and evangelists and 
apostles enforce this elementary truth. No frequency 
of reiteration is too wearisome, and no solemnity of 
warning is too grave, to emphasize its importance. 
Yet it is hardly too much to say. that the whole 
history of the Church is one continued search after 
this truth, one unintermitted struggle against its 
opposing error. Do we need any explanation of this 
fact? We have only to ask our own hearts, to test 
our own experiences. Is it not a very real danger 



184 TRUE BLESSEDNESS. [xin. 

with all men with all, at least, who have any religious 
feelings or aspirations to repose on a doctrine or an 
ordinance or a privilege, on something good and true 
in itself, it may be; something desirable or even neces- 
sary as a means to an end ; but something external 
to ourselves, something short of the purification of 
our hearts, and the renewal of our lives? 

This spirit was never more rife than in the age 
and. among the countrymen of our Lord. It is the 
special temptation indeed of a religious epoch and 
a religious people. It was this which the Baptist 
denounced, when he warned the assembled throng 
that God was able of those very stones which lay at 
their feet yes, of those inert, . senseless, worthless 
things which they spurned at every step to raise up 
children unto Abraham. It was this which again and 
again called forth those stern rebukes and those 
hateful contrasts from the lips of our Lord Himself 
how hateful, because how repugnant to all their 
cherished partialities and their sentiments of national 
pride, we at this distance of time can but dimly 
realise. They were told that crowds should gather 
from the east and from the west, from the north and 
from the south the loathed Philistine, the hated 
Idumaean, Moab and Ammon, Asshur and Egypt, 
'the hard, tyrannical Roman, the reckless, profane 
Greek, these unclean dogs of heathendom, these 



XIII.] 



TRUE BLESSEDNESS. 1 8 =5 



reprobate sinners of the Gentiles and should throng 
into Messiah's kingdom : while they, the sons of 
Abraham, they, the heirs of the promise, they, the 
guardians of the Law, should be excluded and have 
their place in the outer darkness, where is the weeping 
and the gnashing of teeth. They were told the 
proud, scrupulous, rigid Pharisees were told that the 
very publicans and harlots should go in before them. 
What more bitter, what more humiliating, what more 
abhorrent, than such words as these ? ' Blessed are 
they who have Abraham to their father : blessed are 
they who claim kindred with patriarchs and prophets 
and kings: blessed are they to whom is committed 
the keeping of the oracles of God : blessed are they to 
whom pertain the adoption and the glory, the cove- 
nant and the promises, for whom the Law was given 
amidst the thunders and the lightnings of Sinai, whose 
are the Aaronic priesthood, the temple-ritual, the 
daily sacrifice, the continual service of praise and 
thanksgiving.' But the voice of a higher inspiration 
'breaking in disturbs this pride of patriotic self- 
complacency. ' Yea rather, blessed are they sinners 
of the Gentiles though they be blessed are they 
who hear the word of God, and keep it.' 

And from the schools of the Pharisees this leaven 
spread into the Church of Christ. S. Paul's whole 
life was spent in combating this error, this preference 



1 86 TRUE BLESSEDNESS. . [xin. 

of the outward and carnal over the moral and spiritual. 
For what was his position .in relation to his antago- 
nists ? They refused to acknowledge his authority ; 
they declined to listen to his teaching; because for- 
sooth, unlike the Twelve, he had not attended the 
Lord during His earthly ministry, had not wandered 
with Him on the shores of the Galilean lake, had not 
worshipped with Him in the sanctuary at Jerusalem, 
had not received the last bread and wine from His 
sacred hands, had not entered the judgment-hall of 
Caiaphas, and stood beneath the cross on Calvary, 
and explored the solitude of the empty grave, and 
parted from the Master on the brow of Olivet. It 
was nothing at all to them that he had laboured more 
abundantly than any of the Twelve: nothing at all 
that he had preached Christ far and wide with a 
power and an energy far beyond the rest : nothing at 
all that the signs of an Apostle were everywhere 
visible with him : nothing at all that he was ready to 
spend, and be spent, in Christ's service, that he was 
' in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours,' 
' in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in 
hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and 
nakedness,' that for Christ's sake he died daily. None 
of these things moved them. One thing only they 
valued. To have known Christ after the flesh, this 
indeed was a privilege, which gave a title to hearing ; 



xni.] TRUE BLESSEDNESS. 1 87 

this was all in all. 'Blessed are the eyes that have 
seen Thy face, and the ears that have listened to 
Thy voice, and the hands that have pressed Thy 
hand. Blessed are they who .have spoken with Thee, 
eaten with Thee, walked with Thee.' S. Paul's life 
and work were the crushing reply to all this. ' Yea 
rather, blessed is he, who has lived for Me, has 
laboured for Me, has died for Me; blessed are they 
who hear the word of God, and keep it.' 

And as we descend the stream of time, the same 
tendency reappears again and again in different guises. 
One Church claims a paramount authority, because 
it was founded, or reputed to be founded, by a leading 
Apostle. Another attracts crowds of worshippers, 
because it possesses some imagined relic of the Life 
or Passion of Christ. Another is thronged by pilgrims 
from afar, because it is the real or supposed resting 
place of some devoted saint or martyr of old. A 
peculiar virtue is attributed to prayers uttered in such 
places ; as if the favour of heaven were concentrated 
on them. We may find little resemblance at first 
sight between the grossest form of mediaeval super- 
stition, and the innocent, impulsive cry of admiration 
wrung from this humble hearer of our Lord. Yet it 
is the same feeling, exaggerated and caricatured. 
The underlying sentiment in both is the conception 
of Christ's blessing as something external and sen- 



1 88 TRUE BLESSEDNESS. [xm. 

suous. And these very exaggerations enable us to 
understand more clearly how salutary, how wise, how 
full of meaning for all ages, is this simple saying of 
the Gospel. ' Blessed are they that can trace their 
lineage to that Apostle to whom Thou didst commit 
the keys of heaven; blessed are they among whom 
repose the bones of Thy faithful servants; blessed 
are they who possess but one shred of that garment 
without seam which clothed Thy sacred body, but 
one spine of that thorny crown which tore Thy 
sacred brow, but one splinter of that ever-blessed, 
because all-accursed, wood, to which Thy hands and 
feet were nailed for our redemption.' 'Nay rather, 
blessed are they who hear the word of God, and 
keep it.' 

And let me add one memorable example of this 
false sentiment, as it stands out in the history of the 
Church. The pilgrimages to the Holy Land exhibited 
it with a force and a passion never equalled before or 
after. It became the one yearning of the pious mind, 
the one solace of the troubled spirit, the best prepara- 
tion for a peaceful death, the truest assurance of a 
joyful immortality, to have set foot on that sacred 
shore, to have visited those hallowed scenes, to have 
washed in that stream where Christ was baptized, to 
-have prayed at the manger of Bethlehem, on the 
mount of Beatitudes, in the garden of Gethsemane, at 



xiii.] TRUE BLESSEDNESS. 189 

the cave of the Sepulchre, on the hill of the Ascen- 
sion. They who had done this were invested with a 
special sanctity. They were the veneration and the 
envy of all. j Such a pilgrimage was the one fit atone- 
ment of the darkest crime, the one true consum- 
mation of the saintliest life. Thus, year by year, 
crowds flocked to Palestine from all parts of Europe, 
till at length this sentiment culminated in the Cru- 
sades; and thousands upon thousands went forth 
not to convert the souls, but to slay the bodies, of the 
unbelievers: not to rescue the brethren of Christ from 
ignorance and sin, but to rescue the manger and the 
tomb of Christ from a foreign domination. ' Blessed 
are they who go forth on this holy errand ; who carry 
fire and sword into the houses and the temples of the 
' Saracen ; who wrest Thy sepulchre from the profane 
grasp of the infidel. Blessed are they who visit the 
scenes, which Thou didst visit, who tread the ground, 
which Thou hast trodden, who pray in the holy 
places, where Thou hast prayed. Blessed, thrice 
blessed, are they, who die in battle in that land, 
where Thou didst die on the cross.' So said the 
hermit preacher ; so said the Christian bishop. And 
the listening crowds, we are told, responded with one 
voice ; ' It is God's will : it is God's will.' We need 
not countenance that self-complacency of the present, 
which sees nothing to admire in the struggles, even in 



1 90 TRUE BLESSEDNESS. [xin. 

the errors, of the past. It may be that in God's sight 
a momentary outburst of honest, unselfish enthu- 
siasm like this is far more beautiful than whole 
cycles of assiduous money-getting and luxurious 
civilisation, just because it is unselfish. Yet must we 
not confess that here at least the voice of the people 
was not the voice of God ? In this passionate en- 
thusiasm His voice, ever soft and low, was unheeded 
and unheard ; ' Yea rather, blessed are they that hear 
the word of God, and keep it/ 

And may it not be that among ourselves, in 
whatever religious school we may have been brought 
up, the same error is lurking still ? Nay, must it not 
necessarily be so, while the human heart remains 
deceitful above all things ? Are not we too tempted 
to place undue reliance on some external connexion ; 
or, if not external, at least on some formal and 
superficial relations with Him ; in any case, on some- 
thing other than the life in Christ ? 

Do we lay stress on our position as members of 
an orthodox and Apostolic Church ? Is it matter of 
self-congratulation to us, that the communion, to which 
we belong, preserves a just mean between superstition 
on the one hand, and anarchy on the other: that its 
ministry is duly ordained, that its services are decently 
performed, that its sacraments are faithfully cele- 
brated ? Is it a matter of the highest moment with us to 



XIH.J TRUE BLESSEDNESS. 19! 

observe rigidly the appointed seasons of the Church, 
to be diligent in our attendance on its ordinances? 
Do we think of this, and nothing more than this? 
'Blessed are they that are baptized into Thy name, 
that frequent Thy churches, that keep Thy fasts and 
festivals ; blessed are they that have the ministrations 
of an Apostolic priesthood.' ' Yea rather, blessed are 
they that hear the word of God, and keep it.' 

Or again; do we hold by some religious watch- 
word, do we emphasize some special doctrine as the 
keystone of our system ? Do we, for instance, uphold 
the Apostolic teaching of justification by faith, urging 
it in season and out of season ? Has this, as a formula, 
taken possession of our minds wholly ? And have 
we nevertheless, while repeating S. Paul's words, 
forgotten S. Paul's meaning? Have we failed to 
realise, that faith, with him was not an intellectual 
assent, not a barren conviction, not a religious for- 
mula, however enthusiastically maintained ; but an 
entire belief, confidence, trust in God, a conformity of 
his own will to the will of God, an unreserved sub- 
mission of himself to the commands of God, a prompt, 
unquestioning dedication of strength, abilities, wealth, 
comfort, honour, everything, to the service of Christ, 
a readiness to live and to die for Christ ? ' Blessed 
are they who adhere to the teaching of Thine Apostle 
Paul ; blessed are they who have truly apprehended 



1Q2 TRUE BLESSEDNESS. [xni. 

the plan of salvation ; who know that human merit is 
as filthy rags, that saving faith is all in all.' And 
still the Divine caution is whispered in our ears ; 'Yea 
rather, blessed are they who are followers of Paul, as 
Paul also was of Christ; blessed are they who hear the 
word of God, and keep it.' 

This then is the lesson of the text, so simple in 
statement, so difficult in practice. This is the one ab- 
solute condition of spiritual blessing, the one ultimate_ 
test of true discipleship ; T>y their fruits ye shall 
know them.' 



XIV. 

HASTY JUDGMENT. 

Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord 

come. 

i CORINTHIANS iv. 5. 

Second Sunday after Epiphany, 1873. 

THESE words speak to us with singular direct- 
ness at the present time. Four days ago the grave 
closed over the mortal remains of one, who not long 
since was the most powerful ruler, and the foremost 
man, of his generation 1 . Even, if the approach of 
death had been slower and the warning more ex- 
plicit, we should still have received it as a startling 
announcement, that the lips, on whose oracular utter- 
ances the fate of Europe hung for long years, were 
silenced, and the hand, which had dictated peace and 

1 The Emperor Napoleon III. 
S. P. S. 13 



194 HASTY JUDGMENT. [xiv. 

war to the nations, was stiffened in death. And the 
strange vicissitudes of his life invested its close with a 
still more tragic interest. Exile, emperor, victor, 
vanquished, he had passed and repassed from one 
extreme to the other in the scale of fortune. Brilliant 
triumphs and unequalled disasters in war, an empire 
rapidly consolidated and still more rapidly lost, the 
intoxication of popular' idolatry and the bitterness of 
popular hatred, the gaiety of a magnificent court 
and the agony of intense bodily suffering such were 
the sharp contrasts of this eventful career. All those 
tremendous common-places of human experience 
the instability of fortune, and the irony of life, and the 
rude irreverence of pain and disaster, and the stern 
republicanism of death received a new and striking 
.illustration in the fate of their most recent victim. 

And in the ten days just elapsed the dead man 
has lived his life over again. The world has been 
sitting in judgment on his character. All his past 
actions have been summoned as witnesses for or 
against him. All his real or supposed motives have 
been scrutinised and dissected with a pitiless minute- 
ness. In every social gathering, and in every public 
print, this has been the one absorbing topic of dis-' 
cussion. It has passed from mouth to mouth, and 
it has flashed from wire to wire; till the remotest 
hamlets have been impanelled to assist in the verdict. 



HASTY JUDGMENT. IQ'5 

It would be futile, even if it were right, to object 
to the rigid scrutiny which awaits the lives of famous 
rulers after death.. As a warning and as an example, 
it is well that they should feel the glare of publicity 
upon all their actions. But I ask (for with this 
aspect of the matter alone I am concerned) what is 
the value of the verdict, when given ? Is it adequate ? 
Is it complete ? Even though it may form a fairly 
comprehensive estimate of the statesman, the general, 
the ruler, what does it know of the man the man 
with his drawbacks or advantages of education and 
position, his motives, his temptations, his whole com- 
plex inner life; the man in himself, stripped of all 
external circumstances; the man, as he will appear 
one day before the tribunal of Christ, when the hidden 
things of darkness will be brought to light, and the 
counsels of all hearts made manifest ? 

And even in its own limited sphere is this verdict 
so clear, so precise, so unanimous, that it at once 
commands our unquestioning acquiescence ? Did not 
his own countrymen within a very few months give 
and revoke a most deliberate judgment, passing from 
almost unanimous applause to almost unanimous 
execration ? Are we not warned that the judgment 
of posterity will not be the judgment of his contem- 
poraries; that his name 'must be added to the long 
list of those, whom history hereafter will be called 

132 



196 HASTY JUDGMENT. [xiv. 

to rehabilitate ? Has not his character been described 
as an insoluble enigma, a conflicting result of antago- 
nistic qualities, of boldness and hesitation, of en- 
thusiasm and caution, of affectionate warmth and 
remorseless calculation, a mixture of the sceptic and 
fatalist ? And what is all this, I ask, this vacillation, 
this self-contradiction, this futility, in men's estimate, 
but a confession, that it is not given to man to 
fathom the heart of man, a warning that in the 
Apostle's language we should 'judge nothing before 
the time, until the Lord come'? 

And yet, here, if anywhere, the materials exist, 
which might be thought to have secured an adequate 
and final verdict ; for he of all men lived and died in 
the full blaze of publicity. During his long term of 
power, hardly a day passed when some record of his 
doings was not flashed to all the capitals of Europe. 
His movements, his looks, his words, his silence, all 
were duly chronicled. Despite himself, the world was 
taken into his confidence; and yet the world con- 
fessed that it did not understand him. It is the 
penalty, which royalty must pay, that even the pri- 
vacy of the sick-chamber and the sanctities of the 
house of mourning are ruthlessly invaded. The 
minute details of a painful malady, the worn expres- 
sion of the lifeless countenance, the very looks and 
the tears of the survivors, all are noted down, as 



xiv.] HASTY JUDGMENT. 1 97 

if with the design that no single fact might escape, 
which could bear directly, or indirectly, on the estimate 
of his character. And yet this is the result. 

'Judge nothing before the time.' Certain it is, 
that the elements of the final judgment in his case, as 
in ours, will be very different from those on which any 
anticipatory verdict of men could be based; that 
much, both of good and of evil, which assumes vast 
proportions in our estimate, will sink into littleness, 
when weighed in the scales of the Eternal Justice; 
that much, whether of good or of evil, which we do 
not know and cannot suspect, will start forth from 
the abysses of the soul, when the light of the Eternal 
Presence is turned full upon it. Certain it is, that 
at that great assize the principles, which will rule the 
verdict, are not the principles, which have dictated the 
comments of to-day ; that the standard of praise or 
blame will not be success or failure ; that Mexico and 
Sedan will not be the darkest counts in the arraign- 
ment, nor Sebastopol and Solferino the most telling 
pleas for the defence. Certain it is, that neither the 
partiality of friend nor the prejudice of foe will inter- 
pose, as now, to distort and darken the sentence: 
Italian, Austrian, Imperialist, Democrat the con- 
flicting interests of nations and the antagonistic 
sentiments of parties will be voiceless then. Certain 
it is, that the judgment in the High Court of. Heaven 



HASTY JUDGMENT. [xiv. 

will be at once more strict, and more merciful far," 
than the trial before the bar of public opinion ; more 
strict, for it will scan motives, desires,, intentions, the 
abandoned project, the abortive counsel, which are 
concealed from the keenest glances and the liveliest 
suspicions of men; more merciful, for Omniscience 
alone can duly weigh and estimate the unique diffi- 
culties of temperament and education, and the thou- 
sand unsuspected temptations that crowd about the 
path of him who commands the resources of an almost 
unlimited power. Certain it is, that one rule will be 
applied to all alike, to prince and to peasant, to him 
and to us ; that in that final award our opportunities 
will be weighed against our impediments, our gifts 
against our temptations; and, this adjustment made, 
the principle will then be applied, 'Unto whomsoever 
much is given, of him will much be required.' Certain 
it is, that just those features will be most acceptable 
in God's sight in his case, which would be in ours 
not the triumphs of diplomacy nor the feats of war; 
but the unswerving constancy, which never deserted a 
friend however humble, the lively gratitude (rare in 
common men, rarer still in princes) which in prosper- 
ous days never overlooked the services rendered in 
adversity ; the heroism of physical endurance, which' 
. fought with the agony of a painful malady, pursuing: 
the daily task in silent suffering ; the still nobler. 



xiv.] HASTY JUDGMENT. 1 99; 

heroism of moral endurance, which bore alone'without 
a sign of impatience or a syllable of reproach the 
burden of an unparalleled disaster and the execrations 
of an indignant people, grandly disdaining to shift or 
to divide the blame, which assuredly was not his 
alone. All these things are certain. But most certain 
is this, that, whosoever whether emperor or artisan 
you or I may be accepted in the great and final day, 
he will owe his acceptance, not to his merits nor to 
his character nor to his achievements, but to that vast 
reserve of God's mercy, which He has revealed to us 
in Jesus Christ our Lord. 

Such are the reflections suggested by the text. 
S. Paul had received cruel treatment at the hands of 
the Corinthians. For two years he had devoted him- 
self wholly to their spiritual needs. He had taken 
nothing from them ; he had given everything to them. 
His thoughts, his energies, the labours of his hands, 
the anxieties of his heart, all were theirs. He was 
ready to spend and be spent for their sakes. But 
they had returned his affection with coldness, and 
they had met his efforts with scorn. He had not the 
prestige of primitive apostleship. He was not elo- 
quent enough, or learned enough, for their fastidious 
demands. Other teachers were courted and extolled. 
He only was neglected and despised. 

To all this cruel ingratitude, this unworthy depre- 



20O HASTY JUDGMENT. [xiv. 

elation, lie had one reply. He refused to submit his 
character and his ministrations, to these self-consti- 
tuted judges. He denied the competency of the 
court to deal with the matter at all. Strong in the 
conviction of his own sincerity,- he appealed to a 
higher tribunal, before Avhich alone he would suffer 
his cause to be tried. He would accept no antici- 
patory verdict from men ; for the evidence was par- 
tial, the witnesses were biassed, the jury was packed. 
At the bar of the Eternal Justice alone he would 
stand. There only the verdict could be final, for 
there only the court was supreme. To him therefore 
it is an infinitely small matter, that he should be 
acquitted or condemned, whether by his Corinthian 
censors or by any other human tribunal. 
' What knowledge has one man of another, that he 
should constitute himself his judge? What know- 
ledge of another, do we ask ? Nay, what knowledge 
has he of himself? Grant for a moment, that I am 
not aware of any fault, that I can bring no accusation 
against myself. What then ? Am I competent? Am 
I impartial ? Am I omniscient ? 

This, I suppose, is S. Paul's meaning, when he 

closes his argument with the words, 'Yea, I judge not 

mine own self; for I know nothing by myself, that is, 

I am conscious of no wrong in myself; yet am I not 

hereby justified. 1 These words, as I suppose, give 



xiv.] HASTY JUDGMENT. 2OI 

not S. Paul's opinion of his own actual condition, but 
his statement of. a hypothetical and (from its very 
nature) an impossible case. For, unless I am much 
mistaken, it would have seemed infinitely shocking to 
S. Paul to use such language of himself. How could 
he, who counted himself not to have apprehended, he, 
who prayed that he might not be found a castaway, 
be conceived to say that his conscience charged him 
with nothing ? Charged him with nothing ? Think 
you that the memory of the blood streaming from 
those mangled limbs, and the glow lighting that 
saintly countenance, and the prayer of forgiveness 
rising to heaven from those martyr lips, had passed 
away and left no sting behind? God might have 
forgiven him ; but he could never forgive himself the 
man, who had hounded on those religious assassins 
to their fatal deed. Or do you imagine that during 
those long years of ministerial labours, despite all his 
energy and all his love, he saw in the retrospect no 
error or short-coming, nothing to blame and nothing 
to amend ? Nay, the best and saintliest of men must 
always be the most severe judges of themselves ; for 
their moral standard is the loftiest, and their moral 
sensibilities are the most keen. The trivial omissions, 
the unguarded words, the rebellious thoughts, the 
subterfuges, the self-deceptions, all the unobtrusive 
sins of the passing hour, which escape the meshes of 



202 HASTY JUDGMENT. [xiv.: 

a coarser conscience, are duly arrested by thcirs, 
They know most against themselves, for they note 
and record most. 

Grant that you acquit yourself at the bar of 
conscience, that the acquittal is impartial, is sincere. 
Are you competent, as a judge? Have you all 
the data before you, on which the verdict must 
be founded? How. much do you know of yourself? 
At this very moment your friends, your neighbours, 
even casual strangers, discern faults in you, which you 
do not actually and perhaps may not ever suspect. 
They see one side of you; you yourself, another. 
Yours is the larger fraction, but it is only a fraction 
still. There are intricate complications in the heart 
of every man, which far transcend his powers to un- 
ravel. At times we may almost realise not indeed 
the knowledge of ourselves, but the knowledge of our 
ignorance of self. A shock is given to the moral 
system by some unwonted occurrence a disappoint- 
ment, a loss, a sickness, a bereavement, a desertion, a 
surprise of temptation, a victory of sin. A momen- 
tary light is flashed in upon the man's heart, and 
reveals to him his inability, his meanness, his incon- 
sistency, his degradation. Then he begins to suspect 
how little he has known of his true self. But the 
'flash is gone, and the old darkness gathers about him. 
What do you remember now of the eventful history 



xiv.] HASTY JUDGMENT 203 

of some one sin which has long become a habit 
the warnings, the compunctions, the counteracting 
influences, the growing attractions, the faint resistance, 
becoming feebler and feebler as the allurement became 
stronger and stronger? How little do you scrutinise, 
record, realise the motives, which urge you to the 
conduct of to-day or to-morrow, too absorbed in the 
energy of the processes, and too eager about .the 
success of the results ! Yet just here, in this past 
history, here, in these directing motives, are the main 
elements in which your responsibility consists, the 
chief data on which your final sentence must be based. 
And if you are not competent to judge yourself, 
how will you dare to judge another? While you 
cannot track the windings of your own heart, to which 
you have free admission, how can you fathom the 
secrets of your neighbour's, where entrance is abso- 
lutely barred to you ? Of his motives you can know 
nothing. You "can only hazard a conjecture. Your 
. conjecture will be wrong in numberless cases ; it must 
be inadequate in all. Yet on the motive the true 
character of the action depends. And how, again, can 
you strip off the mask, .which men assume to disguise 
their real selves? Here is one man, who has been 
guilty of a crime, punishable by law. He is suspected. 
By bold and consistent lying he repels the charge. 
Society takes him at his word, receives him back into 



2O4 HASTY JUDGMENT. [xiv.' 

favour, perhaps regards him as an injured man. Here 
is another, who has committed the same crime. A 
single falsehood would save him from the consequence 
of his guilt. But conscience asserts herself. He has 
fallen carelessly into the sin, but he cannot de- 
liberately tell the lie. He will face the loss of liberty, 
the brand of infamy, the forfeiture of all that makes 
life worth having, rather than do violence to his 
supreme convictions. He confesses, and is con- 
demned. The world howls in execration over the 
deed. Need I ask whether the verdict of the world 
in these cases will be ratified at the bar of Eternal 
Justice? 

And still less can you estimate those manifold 
influences of external circumstance, which separate 
class from class and man from man, and which in the 
eye of the Omniscient Judge must constitute infinite 
gradations in the heinousness of the same sin. I 
have alluded already to the special temptations of 
exalted rank, of boundless resources, of absolute 
power. It is quite impossible for us common men to 
realise them. An impenetrable barrier interposes, 
and shuts off our sympathies. Let us turn now to 
the other extreme of the social scale. You are 
shocked with some exposure of degraded vice, which 
appears in our police reports. Have you thought of 
the infected moral atmosphere which that offender 



xiv.] HASTY JUDGMENT. 2Oj 

has breathed from infancy? Have you realised the 
squalid court, the crowded room, the want, the blas- 
phemy, the depravity? Has it occurred to you to 
ask yourself, whether you could have withstood all 
these influences for evil ? Spare not the sin. Hate it ; 
for it is hateful ; but do not steel your heart against the 
sinner. Remember the infinite tenderness of the Son 
of Man, Whose disciple you are ; and do not withhold 
the sympathy of your pity or the charity of your 
hope, as you yourself trust to be forgiven through 
God's infinite mercy in the last day. 

For there will be manifold surprises, strange re- 
versals of our human verdicts, in that final Court 
of Appeal ; strange reversals, when the respectable 
citizen shall be condemned, and the convicted felon 
acquitted; strange reversals, when the preacher of 
righteousness shall be shut out, and the outcast of the 
streets welcomed into the everlasting abodes. These 
things must be. The voice of Christ has said it ; the 
claims of justice demand it. Ponder over these things, 
and judge nothing before the time. Judge not, lest 
you judge wrongfully; judge not, lest ye yourselves 
be judged. 



XV. 

THE SPIRIT AND THE LETTER. 

TJie letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life, 

a CORINTHIANS iii. 6. 

Septuagesima Sunday, 1877. 

I SUPPOSE that we do not at all realise the extent 
to which even in the common things of life we are 
indebted to the teaching of S. Paul. No idea is more 
familiar to us than the distinction between the spirit 
and the letter. We talk of the spirit of a promise, of 
the letter of the law ; we speak in condemnation of 
one person who observes an engagement in the -letter 
but breaks it in the spirit, and in approval of another 
who disregards a pledge in the letter only that he 
may fulfil it in the spirit. But we do not connect this 
idea especially with S. Paul. If we chance to think 
of him, it probably occurs to us that he used this 
distinction, just as we should use it, because it was 



xvi] THE SPIRIT AND THE LETTER. 2O/ 

natural, because it was familiar, because it was on 
every one's lips in his day, as it is> in ours. 

Yet, so far as I am aware, it occurs in S. Paul for 
the first time. No doubt the idea was floating in the 
air before. But he fixed it; he wedded the thought 
to the words; he made it current coin. And from 
him it has penetrated to' every province of human life. 
For S. Paul's words, as Luther - truly said, ' are not 
words; they are live things, they have hands and 
feet.' Yes, feet to go everywhere, and hands to grasp 
everything. 

I propose therefore this afternoon to enquire, what 
this distinction means in itself, how S. Paul applies it 
in the first instance, and of what further application 
it admits. 

Now the idea of a 'letter' is something definite, 
fixed, immoveable. It implies a hard and fast line. 
It cannot be modified according to times or places or 
persons. It is inexorable; it is irreversible. When 
Pilate says, ' What I have written, I have written/ he 
means that the matter has gone beyond the point 
when discussion is possible. By the maxim Litera 
scripta tnanet ' the written letter abides,' we mean that 
the thing cannot.be hidden, cannot be questioned, 
cannot be slurred over, cannot be recalled. It is 
there, as we say, in black and white. It has taken 
its place among the permanent things of the world. 



208 THE SPIRIT AND THE LETTER. [xv. 

On the other hand ' spirit' means the direct oppo- 
site to all this. Spirit is properly a synonym for 
breath, a pulsation of air, a gust of wind. The Divine 
Influence, the Divine Person, is called the Holy Spirit. 
The name is given, because no other symbol would 
so fitly describe the operations of the spirit. These 
operations are silent and imperceptible ; they are seen 
only by the results. The spirit moves invisibly, as 
the air moves. And, like the air too, it quickens and 
sustains; it is the one indispensable condition of life 
for man. Withdraw the spirit, and the movements 
of the soul languish, the respiration of the soul ceases, 
the life of the soul is extinguished. Like the air too, 
its operations are various. Sometimes it resembles 
a gentle breeze, fanning the earth, giving health and 
vigour and joy to all things around.; sometimes it is 
a mighty rushing wind, a fierce hurricane tearing up 
ancient forests, and hurling down strong cities, deaf- 
ening with the crash of falling ruins, but itself unseen, 
intangible, imperceptible, mysterious still. ' The wind 
bloweth where it listeth, and thou nearest the sound 
thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and 
whither it goeth : so is every one that is born of the 
Spirit.' Measure it you cannot ; weigh it you cannot ; 
grasp it you cannot. It plays about you ; it buffets 
you; it makes you reel and stagger; it sweeps you 
onward. And yet you cannot so much as see it. 



xv.] THE SPIRIT AND THE LETTER. 2(X) 

But the characteristic in which the spirit especi- 
ally resembles the stirring air, and with which we are 
most closely concerned, is its adaptability. However 
small or however great is the space which it is called 
to fill, it contracts or it expands accordingly. The 
spirit, as we should say in the language of natural 
philosophy, is perfectly elastic. A breath of air will 
make its way through any crevice, however narrow ; 
it will diffuse itself over any room, however large. It 
adapts itself to every irregularity ; it fills every inter- 
stice. It is this elasticity which makes it so fit a 
symbol of the spirit. 

This antithesis of the letter and the spirit occurs 
three times in S. Paul. In the first passage, in the 
second chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, the 
Apostle is contrasting the true Jew with the false. 
The true Jew is that man of what nation soever he 
may be who acts up to the light which is given him. 
He may be no descendant of Abraham ; he may not 
have been initiated into the covenant ; he may keep 
no passovers, observe no sabbaths, offer no sacrifices ; 
he may never have heard of the tables of the law. 
He is a heathen dog in the eyes of yonder Pharisee. 
But he is just, he is honest, he is pure, he is merciful 
and loving, he is reverential. Therefore he is the 
true Jew; therefore his is the true circumcision; for 
it is, says the Apostle, 'of the heart, in the spirit, 
S. P. S. 14 



2IO THE SPIRIT AND THE LETTER. [xv. 

not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but 
of God.' 

No, not of men. The tendency of men is always 
to prefer the letter to the spirit. An incident, re- 
corded in the history of the earliest conversion of that 
country, on which the attention of Europe has of late 
been fixed, is a painful illustration of this. The 
Bulgarians, when first brought to a knowledge of the 
Gospel, put to the then Bishop of Rome one of the 
most famous of the Popes a question relating to 
the state of their deceased heathen forefathers. He 
sternly excluded all hope of salvation for them. 
He pointed to the passage which speaks of a sin unto 
death, a sin past praying for. Do you wonder, that 
he drove them to look elsewhere for more humane, 
more righteous teachers? And indeed this was not 
the first, as it has not been the last time, when such 
cruel language has been held. Christian fathers 
before him, Protestant missionaries after him, have 
sinned in the same way. Did they need this fierce 
thought to stimulate their missionary zeal ? Nay, 
might they not have drawn a truer lesson from that 
chief of missionaries, who laboured more abundantly 
than all ? Was it not enough, that the love of Christ 
should constrain them, as it constrained him ? Was 
not the sense of God's infinite gift in the death and 
passion of His only Son, was not the consciousness 



xv.] THE SPIRIT AND THE LETTER. 211 

that He had called them from death to life, that they 
owed everything which was noblest, best, truest, in 
themselves to His Gospel, was not the sight of a 
world steeped in ignorance and sin, was not the 
obligation of Christ's express command to teach all 
nations, were not all these combined a sufficient 
motive to exertion ; that they must forge this terrible 
weapon to wield in their spiritual warfare? Is not 
this indeed to make sad hearts that God hath not 
made sad ? And yet all the while the Apostle's own 
language is clear and explicit, declaring that the 
Gentiles, not having the law of Moses, had yet a 
law in themselves, and that by this law they would 
be judged. And if there were Jews who were Jews 
in the spirit, though not in the letter, so also must 
there be Christians. Many heathen shall come from 
East and West Zoroaster and Buddha, it may be, 
Socrates and Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius ; while 
the children of the kingdom the ministering priest 
and the learned apologist and the eloquent preacher 
and the rigid devotee shall be cast out. By the 
spirit, not by the letter, shall men be judged. 

The second passage, in which this distinction 
occurs, is likewise in the Epistle to the Romans. In 
the seventh chapter of that Epistle, the Apostle con- 
trasts the Christian dispensation with the Mosaic, the 
Gospel with the Law, as the newness of the spirit 

14 2 



212 THE SPIRIT AND THE LETTER. [xv. 

with the oldness of the letter. In the context he 
describes the fatal effects of the Law. It wakes up 
the consciousness of guilt in the man. So sin starts 
into life, and it kills the man. 

The same is the idea in the third passage, from 
which my text is taken. Here too the contrast is 
between the Law and the Gospel. The one was written 
on tables of stone, graven in hard and fast lines. The 
other is altogether different. Here everything is 
elastic, mobile, flexible, ready of adaptation, full of 
life. The material, on which it is Avritten, is not the 
hard slab of stone, but the fleshy tablet of the human 
heart. The pen, which traces the characters, is not 
a pen of iron, but the Spirit of the living God. And, 
corresponding to this difference, is the contrast in the 
effects. The one was a ministration of death, a minis- 
tration of condemnation ; the other, a ministration of 
righteousness. 'We are ministers,' says the Apostle 
here, f of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the 
spirit ; for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.' 
This then is the primary meaning of the text. 
The letter is a synonym for the Law ; the spirit for 
the Gospel. The Law was holy and just and good ; 
but the Law could never make perfect. Law may 
restrain, may educate, may direct, but it cannot give 
life. On the contrary its effect is, in the Apostle's 
language, to kill. By giving edge to the conscience, 



xv.] THE SPIRIT AND THE LETTER. 213 

it intensifies the sense of remorse, it wounds, it pros- 
trates, it slays. A child will go on doing a certain 
wrong act thoughtlessly and ignorantly, till it has 
become a habit, without any sense of inward dissatis- 
faction ; till at length some authoritative voice (of a 
father or of a mother, it may be), which is a law to 
that child, says, ' That is a wicked act ; you must not 
do that.' Then everything is changed. From that 
time forward each recurrence of the evil habit brings 
misery to the child ; each fresh outbreak of tempta- 
tion costs it a cruel struggle. The child's conscience 
has been awakened by the commandment The child 
has been taught the sirifulness of the sin. The child 
is far better than it was before; but it is far less 
happy. It has the sentence of condemnation in itself. 
To use S. Paul's language, the commandment has 
slain the child. 

So it was with the Mosaic law. The Mosaic law 
was given to educate the conscience of the Jews, and, 
through the Jews, of the whole human race. It issued 
prohibitions ; it imposed penalties ; it prescribed rites. 
Thus by a system of obligations and restraints it 
taught effectually the heinousness of sin. Every day 
and every hour, by some rite enjoined or some com- 
mandment contravened, it reminded the Jew of his 
guilt. But all this in itself could only kill ; it could 
not make alive. The Law said, ' Do not this ; for, if 



214 THE SPIRIT AND THE LETTER. [xv. 

thou docst it, thou shalt surely die.' The principle 
of life, under the old dispensation, was not the Law, 
but something behind the Law the fact of a merciful 
and loving Father, realised in the heart and conscience 
of the faithful. But this realisation was still only 
shadowy and incomplete, ft was then at length in 
the Incarnation of the Son of God that this love was 
perfectly manifested, then at length in the atoning 
blood of Christ that the pardon for sin was fully as- 
sured, then at length in the dispensation of the Spirit 
that the sympathetic union of man with God was 
completely established, the filial relation was realised 
and the pardoned one now no more a slave, but a 
son had courage to look upward and cry, 'Abba, 
Father.' 

This is the primary sense, in which the Apostle 
speaks of the letter killing and the spirit giving life. 
But, like many another maxim of S. Paul, the saying 
is far too full to be exhausted by its primary meaning. 
It has application as wide as human life is wide, as 
human thought is wide. 

On one such application perhaps the most im- 
portant of all I shall venture to dwell for a few 
moments. There is probably no serious Christian, 
who has not at some time or other felt inwardly 
pained, to think that he does not fulfil, that he makes 
no earnest attempt to fulfil, that the circumstances 



XV.] THE SPIRIT AND THE LETTER. 215 

of life will not allow him to fulfil, certain precepts 
of our Lord to the letter. If a man should sue him 
at law and take away his coat, would he let him have 
his cloak also ? If a man should compel him to go one 
mile with him, would he go with him twain ? Were 
he to fulfil these precepts literally, what injustice, what 
misery, what confusion might not ensue ? The words 
of Christ are the most sacred of all words. Yet even 
here, even in the words of the Divine Word Himself, 
it may be said, in some sense, that the letter killeth, 
but the spirit giveth life. And this, because human 
language necessarily confines the expression of the 
Divine thought. Human language is limited, and 
the thought is unlimited. In this particular case the 
spirit of the precept is the condemnation of a litigious, 
self-assertion. The spirit cannot be too promptly or 
too absolutely obeyed. One principle is here laid 
down in a concrete form, as it were in a parable. 
Human language cannot compass more than this. 
This principle is inviolate in itself. But right con- 
duct is a very complex affair. Right conduct consists 
in taking into account many principles at once. In 
the case before us, by obeying the precept to the 
letter we might violate some other principle. We 
might, for instance, encourage a temper of lawlessness 
and violence in action ; we might lead to the moral 
deterioration of another. 



2l6 THE SPIRIT AND THE LETTER. [xv. 

Or again, take the precept, 'Give to him that 
asketh thee.' The letter would lead to what is called 
indiscriminate chanty; and indiscriminate chanty is 
productive of the greatest evil. But here again the 
spirit of the precept is plain, and it is imperative. 
We cannot be too ready to impart to others the best 
gifts whatever those gifts may be with which God 
has endowed us. We cannot be too merciful, too 
self-denying, too sympathetic. But the form, which 
alms-giving more especially should take, must vary 
with the varying ages. In our own time, when there 
are poor laws, and workhouses and hospitals and 
dispensaries, when there is organized hypocrisy and 
professional begging, it is quite clear that we cannot 
follow in exactly the same lines which were the best 
in Palestine eighteen centuries ago, when none of 
these things existed. The question we have to ask, 
and answer for ourselves, is not only what Christ did 
or commanded then, but also what He would do or 
command us to do in this altered state of society now. 
In short, we must endeavour to ascertain the mind 
of Christ through the recorded words and works of 
Christ to ascertain it, and to follow it absolutely, 
without any reservation or afterthought. 

And our teacher here must be the Holy Spirit of 
God, ' the Spirit which searcheth all things/ He is 
the only safe interpreter of Christ's words and works. 



xv.] THE SPIRIT AND THE LETTER. 21 7 

He alone can translate them for us into modern lan- 
guage, and adapt them to modern life. This is the 
promise vouchsafed in His name. 'He shall take of 
Mine, and shall show it unto you.' If we go to any 
other teacher, then our attempts to evolve the spirit 
from the letter will be a hopeless failure. 'The 
natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit 
of God, for they are foolishness to him.' But, if we 
approach Him with a single eye and a single heart, 
not wishing to spare ourselves, not seeking to excuse 
ourselves from irksome duties, but desiring only to 
learn, and prompt, when we have learned, to obey, 
then He will not fail us. 'If any man will do His 
will/ ' is ready to do His will,' ' he shall know of 
the doctrine, whether it be of God.' 



XVI. 

S. PAUL OUR EXAMPLE. 

If I lie not an Apostle unto others, yet doubtless I 

am to you. 

\ CORINTHIANS ix. 2. 

Feast of the Conversion of S. Paul, 1874. 

IN this place, on this day, the preacher cannot 
hesitate about his theme. Speaking on this great 
festival which commemorates the Conversion of 
S. Paul, speaking in this famous church which bears 
the name of S. Paul, the great Apostle of the 
Gentiles must be, this afternoon, our example, our 
teacher, our guide. 

S. Paul, in the words of the text, claims to stand 
in a very intricate and very sacred relation to the 
Corinthian Church. He had planted the first seeds 
of the Gospel among them. He had preached to 



xvi.] S. PAUL OUR EXAMPLE. 2 19 

them, had toiled among them, had suffered for them. 
Corinth was written on his heart. Others might 
question his authority : others might disdain his 
teaching. But Corinth his own Corinth was the 
last place, where such feelings should be entertained, 
Corinth was a witness against herself. * If I am not 
an Apostle to others, yet indeed I am to you.' 

And to-day we may well imagine the Apostle 
addressing the same words of remonstrance to our- 
selves, to the congregation which gathers from 
time to time within these walls, to the clergy and 
the laymen of all degrees whose privilege it is to 
minister daily in this sanctuary: 'Whatever may be 
the influence of my teaching on others, yet with 
you it should be paramount. My name, my 
authority, my work, are ever before you. With you 
my relations are most sacred and quite unique. To 
you I am an Apostle, if to any congregation in this 
metropolis, in England, in Christendom.' 

For indeed the dedication of this great church 
in the name of S. Paul is a much more striking fact 
than at first sight appears. We ourselves are very 
familiar with sacred buildings commemorating the 
Apostle of the Gentiles. It is almost the first name, 
which could occur to us when dedicating a church 
in any town or neighbourhood, where it , was not 
already forestalled. The case was far otherwise, 



22O S. PAUL OUR EXAMPLE. [xvi. 

when in the sixth century of the Christian era 
Ethelbert king of Kent founded on the very spot, 
where we are now assembled, a cathedral dedicated 
to S. Paul. The selection then was very singular, 
almost unique. Despite the great and unparalleled 
labours of this Apostle in the first diffusion of the 
Christian Church, despite the exceptionally large 
space occupied by his writings in the volume of the 
New Testament, it is a strange fact that in Western 
Christendom during the early and middle ages the 
name of S. Paul was very rarely given to any church. 
Besides the building, in which we are met, there is 
indeed one other instance among the more famous 
churches of Western Europe : but this one exception 
may be said to strengthen the rule. It is the church 
built on the traditional site of the Apostle's martyr- 
dom and burial, the church of S. Paul without the 
walls of Rome. Of our English cathedrals not one, 
I believe, besides our own, is dedicated solely to 
the Apostle who laboured more abundantly than all, 
whom tradition especially associated with England. 
Some of the noblest, such as York and Westminster, 
bear the name of S. Peter the most favourite dedi- 
cation of all. Others, and these not a few, are 
designated after the mother of our blessed Lord. 
Others, again, bear the name of local saints. In the 
midst of all this strange neglect, it is surely a notable 



xvi.] S. PAUL OUR EXAMPLE. 221 

fact, that our own great church the cathedral of 
this metropolis, the cathedral of the greatest city 
in the modern world bears the appropriate name of 
the Apostle of the Nations. May we not take this 
unique fact, as our watchword and our beacon, a 
sign of our special calling here, and a token of the 
spirit which should animate us in our work ? More 
'than seven centuries ago, when the Cathedral of 
S. Paul was laid in ruins by a fire not the first nor 
the last of those fierce conflagrations which have 
raged on this site a neighbouring bishop pleaded 
in his diocese for contributions to the rebuilding, 
on the ground that, though S. Paul had planted 
Churches throughout the world and shed the light 
of the faith in all lands, yet this was the only epis- 
copal see on earth which bore the Apostle's name. 
On the same grounds I press upon you an appeal of 
another kind to-day. As the memory of S. Paul is 
our special privilege here, so his example is our 
special inheritance and his doctrine our special obli- 
gation; 'If I am not an Apostle to others, yet indeed 
I am to you.' 

As year after year the Festival of the Apostle's 
Conversion comes round, we cannot fail to be im- 
pressed with the long continuity of the history, which 
connects this site with the name of S. Paul. Before 
the earliest dawn of all those great intellectual and 



222 S. PAUL OUR EXAMPLE. [xvi. 

social and political influences, which have moulded 
the character of England, before, long before, the 
birth of the English literature, the English consti- 
tution, the English empire, we might almost say 
before the birth of the English language and the 
English nation, the Apostle of the Gentiles was 
commemorated on this spot. Invasion has followed 
invasion ; dynasties have risen and fallen ; all things 
around and about have changed ; but this one name 
has remained throughout fastened upon this one 
site. From age to age fire has done its worst; 
building after building has fallen a victim to its rage ; 
but each successive fabric as it rose, amidst every 
vicissitude of time, with every divergence of style, 
has handed down to the next the name of Paul, Paul 
the servant of Jesus Christ, as our special inheritance 
in these latest times. And S. Paul's has ever been 
the familiar name of this building. Other great 
churches are commonly described by their locality:' 
we speak of Lincoln, of Canterbury, of Durham, of 
York, of Westminster ; but London Cathedral is 
an unused and almost unknown designation. We 
recognise it only .as S. Paul's. Thus he has ' been 
with us at all seasons,' through his name and his 
example he has 'gone among us preaching the 
kingdom of God;' 'for the space of thirteen cen- 
turies at the least ' he has ceased not warning every 



xvi.] S. PAUL OUR EXAMPLE. 223 

one night and day.' ' Be ye followers/ or rather, as 
it should be rendered, ' Be ye imitators of me, even 
as I also am of Christ.' 

But what need it may be said what need have 
we of any secondary example to follow ? Have we 
not our perfect pattern, exemplar, ideal, in Christ? 
Why should we descend to a lower level ? What 
is this but to substitute the Imitatio Fault for the 
Imitatio Christi? Nay, I reply, if there should ever be 
found any conflict between the two, we cannot hesitate 
whom to follow. If Paul should break out in im- 
patient remonstrance before an unrighteous judge, 
'God shall smite thee, thou whitened wall,' then we 
turn away to a greater than Paul, ' Who suffered for 
us, leaving us an example/ 'Who when He was reviled 
reviled not again, when He suffered, threatened not.' 
Indeed it were sheer blasphemy to put Paul in the 
place of Christ, or to seek union with God through 
Paul. But this very point the union with God in 
Christ, this realisation of Christ's presence, this 
most difficult of all lessons to master is just the 
lesson which Christ Himself cannot illustrate, can- 
not teach by His example, because He is Himself 
the Lesson. Now it is an unspeakable help to us 
to have before our eyes a vivid exemplification of it ; 
to trace in the manifold and complicated relations 
of daily life the working of this one principle, as the 



224 S. PAUL OUR EXAMPLE. [xvi. 

mainspring of thought, of feeling, of conduct the 
realisation of Christ's presence, the mind of Christ 
appropriated (as it were) and absorbed in the mind 
of the believer. We need not only the Great Example 
Himself, but we need also an example of the follow- 
ing of the Great Example. Such an end (can we 
doubt that it was a providential end?) is served by 
the biography and letters of S. Paul. The position, 
which he holds in the Scriptures, is 'quite unique in 
its prominence. It is the explanation, it is the seal, 
it is the indication of his own bold, but not over- 
bold, appeal to the Corinthians, uttered in no access 
of self-glorification, but dictated by the guidance of a 
higher Spirit and approved by the Christian conscience 
in all ages, ' Be ye followers, be ye imitators, of me, 
even as I also am of Christ.' 

For observe, how all the requisite conditions of 
such an example meet in the person of S. Paul. 

First ; in such a man the one principle of action 
must be illustrated in manifold capacities and rela- 
tions of life. Now, in the older history of the human 
race, it would be difficult to point to any man, who 
fulfilled this condition more completely than S. Paul. 
No biography is more fertile in incident ; none more 
complex and varied in its manifestations. With 
Greeks and barbarians, with Romans and Jews, in 
Europe and in Asia, among friends and among foes, 



xvi.] S. PAUL OUR EXAMPLE. 225 

with rich and ' poor, with weak and strong, now 
defending himself against a powerful conspiracy, now 
animating a demoralised ship's crew amidst the perils 
of the tempest, now rapt in beatific visions, now 
toiling hard with his own hands for his daily bread ; 
in almost every conceivable relation of life working, 
preaching, acting, suffering, hoping, fearing, living, 
dying he is seen. And still the motive power is 
the same, 'Not I, but Christ that liveth in me.' 

And again; in. such an example as we have 
supposed, it is necessary that he should be his own 
spokesman. We want to know the exact expression 
of his feelings, the inmost working of his mind. This 
is just what S. Paul's own letters give ; and what no 
report of others could have given. In the whole 
range of literature there is nothing like them. Other 
correspondence may be more voluminous, more ela- 
borate, more studiously demonstrative. But none is 
so faithful a mirror of the writer. In none does the 
man's personality, the man's character, stand out so 
distinctly, so naturally, so unreservedly, in all its 
varying moods, and all its manifold interests. And 
what do we suppose was the providential design in 
all this ? What, but that we might trace the intricate 
workings of a mind which conformed itself to the 
mind of Christ, might imitate the manifold energies 
of a life in which Christ lived again. 

S. P. S, 15 



226 S. PAUL OUR EXAMPLE. [xvi. 

Once more; in such an example, it is requisite 
that he should be situated like ourselves with regard 
to Christ. Like ourselves, he must not have been a 
personal disciple of Christ. Like ourselves, he must 
have been denied the support of daily intercourse 
with the Saviour in the flesh. In his case, as in ours, 
faith must not have had an ally in memory. By 
him, as by us, Christ must have been realised only 
spiritually. This Paul is to us. This Peter and 
John never could have been Peter with all his 
fervour and John with all his love. We might have 
evaded their example. It would have seemed hardly 
to touch our case. Had not they both gone in and 
out with Him for well-nigh three whole years ? Was 
not Peter's confession of faith wrung from, him at the 
Saviour's very feet, and had not John at that last 
sad solemn meal leaned on the Saviour's own bosom? 
Yes, here we might have said here was the expla- 
nation of their stedfastness ; here in these external 
aids, in this visible, tangible communion, was the 
secret of their vivid realisation of Christ's presence in 
after-life. So we are tempted to argue. We forget 
that this external communion was accorded not to 
a Peter and a John only, but to a Thomas who 
doubted and to a Judas who betrayed. S. Paul is 
God's protest against this self-delusion: S. Paul is 
God's witness that this realisation of Christ may be 



xvi.] . S. PAUL OUR EXAMPLE. 22 7 

attained, and attained in the highest degree, by ; one 
who like ourselves has never known Christ after the 
flesh. 

And this appropriation of Christ, this union with 
God in Christ, is the very soul of S. Paul's teaching. 
Ask different persons what is the leading, .the char- 
acteristic doctrine, of the Apostle of . the Gentiles, 
and you will get different answers. Some, and these 
the larger number, will reply, justification by faith. 
Others, and these not a few, will say, the liberty ol 
the Gospel. But read his Epistles for yourself, and 
you will find that for once when either of these 
doctrines is referred to, union with Christ will be 
mentioned ten times. They are indeed prominent; 
they are discussed, are argued, because they were 
impugned. But it underlies the whole. It appears 
under every variety of circumstances, and in every 
form of language. Now it is the ' putting on Christ;' 
now it is the ' being transformed into Christ's image ;' 
now it is 'being crucified with Christ;' now it is the 
'bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord 
Jesus:' now it is the 'rising with Christ,' the 'living 
with Christ.' Now, conversely, it is Christ 'being 
formed' in us, Christ 'living in' us. 

And just this it is, which interprets the Apostle's 
appeal, ' Be ye imitators of me, even as I also am of 
Christ.' ' 

15-2 



228 S. PAUL OUR EXAMPLE. [xvi. 

'Not Paul, but Jesus' has been the cry of more 
than one sceptical writer, who has impugned the 
accredited views of Christian doctrine and Apostolic 
history. 'Not Paul, but Jesus' a thousand times. 
'Not Paul, but Jesus,' the Apostle himself would 
have said. ' Not Paul, but Jesus,' the devout believer 
will say to the end of all time. 'Not Paul, but 
Jesus:' yes, but Jesus was manifested in Paul; Jesus 
worked in Paul ; Jesus lived in Paul ; Jesus died in 
Paul. S. Paul's life was the great example to all time 
of union with God in Christ. Such is his appeal 
to us to-day : 'I have striven to grow into Christ, to 
put on Christ, to live with Christ, to die with Christ. 
This was the one guiding principle of my life. So 
strive ye. Be ye followers of me.' 

And this is also the soul of Christian ethics 
Are there any here, on whose ears such words fall 
altogether dead, who can attach to them just no 
meaning at all? Then, however respectable they 
may be in their lives, they know no more of the 
higher graces and gifts of the Christian character 
the absolute self-renunciation, the perfect trust, the 
absorbing love, the willingness to dare and to suffer 
anything than the idle loiterers in the plains know 
of the glories of a sunrise amidst the Alpine heights. 
Are there any, who have apprehended however feebly 
their meaning, who have caught, it may be, from far 



xvi.] S. PAUL OUR EXAMPLE. 229 

below a passing glimpse of the rosy light which tips 
the snowy peaks, who are filled with yearning at the 
sight ? Let them take courage from S. Paul, and 
struggle upward, and thank God for this bright ex- 
ample thus vouchsafed to them. 

Only imagine for a moment S. Paul's Epistles 
blotted out at once from our Bible and our memories. 
Only reflect what history would have been, what 
human life would have been, if they had not been 
written, or, being written, had not been preserved 
how impoverished, how dwarfed, how blighted. Try 
to realise, if you can, the extent of the loss to your- 
self each day. Think of the void which would have 
been left in your heart, and in your mind. And 
let the extent of this imagined loss be the measure 
of your thanksgiving to-day; while you determine 
henceforward to understand more fully the great 
lesson of his life, and thus to give a practical answer 
to his appeal, ' If I be not an Apostle to others, yet 
indeed I am to you.' 



XVII. 

THE PHILIPPIAN GAOLER. 

Sirs, what must I do to be saved? 

ACTS xvi. 30. 

Second Sunday after Christmas, 1879. 

IT was a strange question to come from such a 
person. Of all employments and positions in life, the 
office of a gaoler in S. Paul's time would seem to hold 
out the least promise to a Christian preacher. The 
Christian preacher looks for some impressibility in his 
hearers. If he cannot reckon on high spiritual insight, 
he will at least approach his audience through their 
sympathies and affections. He will knock at the 
door of their humanity; and in this way he will obtain 
an entrance for his divine message. But what can he 
hope for here ? Humanity has no place in a gaoler's 
language. Humanity is excluded by his very func- 



xvii.] THE PHILIPPIAN GAOLER. 231 

tions as a gaoler. A gaoler lives in hourly intercourse 
with criminals. He sees human nature in its most 
brutal and degraded forms. He becomes familiarised 
with crime. He gets to regard vice, as the rule, not 
the exception, in mankind. He ceases to believe in 
human virtue, at least in its higher and nobler types. 
He sinks into a hard cynicism. Has he not had too 
wide an experience to put any faith in the illusions 
of philanthropists and preachers ? Virtue is a mere 
pretence, and repentance is an elaborate hypocrisy. 

And he becomes hardened also in another way. 
Whatever feelings of compassion he may have natu- 
rally, he. is forced to thrust them aside. If he were 
too gentle, or too sensitive, or too merciful, he would 
be unfit for his trade. He must steel his heart to the 
inroads of pity. He must ply his task in a stern, 
relentless, mechanical way. To lock those chains, to 
bar that door, to shut out the face of heaven, perhaps 
for ever, on this victim, to drag out that other half- 
blinded once more into the light of day, only that he 
may lay his head on the block or stretch his limbs on 
the cross this is the cruel routine of his daily life. 
What room is there here for sympathy, for love, for 
tenderness, for 'any of those humane emotions on 
which the Christian preacher reckons as his most 
powerful allies ? 

The gaoler at Philippi is introduced to us first; 



232 THE PHILIPPIAN GAOLER. [xvii. 

performing his gaoler's task. Here are two new 
prisoners to be looked after. They are far more 
dangerous than the ordinary run of prisoners. They 
are disturbers of the public peace; they are revo- 
lutionary agents; they are foreign emissaries; they 
would subvert the social and political institutions of 
the place. ' These men, being Jews, do exceedingly 
trouble our city.' ' They teach customs which are not 
lawful for us to receive, neither to observe, being 
Romans.' Accordingly they have been scourged first, 
and they have been cast into prison afterwards. 
Special injunctions are given to the gaoler. The 
prisoners must on no account be allowed to escape. 
He is not wanting on his part. He obeys his orders 
to the letter, and beyond the letter. He thrusts them 
into the inner dungeon, a dark underground vault, as 
would appear from the sequel. He is not content 
with this. He has made their feet fast in the stocks. 
Even the slight liberty of movement, which heavy 
chains would have allowed them, is rendered impos- 
sible. He has not suffered himself to be betrayed 
into any weakness. He has performed his grim task 
with relentless rigour. He has done his gaoler's work 
in a true gaoler's spirit. What hope more hopeless, 
than the conversion of such a man as this? The poor 
itinerant divining girl half impostor, half demoniac 
was a far more promising subject than he. It was not 



xvn.] THE PHILIPPIAN GAOLER. 233 

in a heart like this, that any profound spiritual emo- 
tions could be looked for. It was not on lips like his, 
that we should expect the question to arise, ' Sirs, 
what must I do to be saved ?' 

But the man, though a gaoler, was a man still. 
He had his human emotions, his human fears, aye 
and as the sequel shows his human compassions 

\ 

also, which his grim trade had been powerless to 
crush out. We must not. imagine that, when he asked 
the question, he asked it with any very distinct con- 
ception of its bearing. He spoke of saving himself. 

What did he mean by this ? His soul was convulsed 

j * 

by a tumult of conflicting passions. Only the moment 
before he would have done the very reverse of saving 
himself; he would have committed suicide. The first 
instantaneous terror was past. His prisoners were 
safe. His own life was safe safe from his own mur- 
derous hand, and safe from the displeasure of his 
masters. But a vague, bewildering awe had seized 
him. He was in imminent peril, he knew not whence 
and how. Hence his imploring cry, 'What must I do 
to be saved ?' And God took him at his word. 
God accepted his confused yearning ; God heard his 
inarticulate utterance. He asked for salvation. And 
God taught him salvation ; God gave him salvation, a 
gift far higher, far nobler, far more beneficent, than it 
had entered into his heart to conceive, 



234 THE PHILIPPIAN GAOLER. [xvn. 

It is instructive to observe the instrumentality, 
which laid the gaoler prostrate at the Apostle's feet 
This instrumentality is two-fold, partly external and 
partly moral. There is the physical catastrophe, and 
there is the spiritual influence. 

i. There is the physical catastrophe. . Suddenly, 
we are told, there was a great earthquake. The 
prison was shaken to its foundations. The doors flew 
open. The fetters were loosed. It is so that God 
works not uncommonly in His regenerative processes. 
Through the avenue of the senses He forces His way 
to the spirit. It may be that the Lord Himself is not 
in the great and strong wind, nor in the earthquake,; 
nor in the fire ; but the fire and the earthquake and 
the strong wind are His precursors, are His pioneers. 
They are as the voice of one crying in the wilderness 
of the man's heart, ' Prepare ye the way.' They 
arrest the eye and the ear ; they overawe and subdue 
the spirit; they hold the man spell-bound; and in the 
supervening silence the still small voice is heard. 

So it was here. Shaking the foundations of the 
prison, this earthquake had shaken the foundations of 
this man's self-sufficiency too. .Opening the doors of 
the cells, it had opened the doors of his spiritual 
capacity also. Shaking off the chains of the prisoners, 
it had shaken off the fetters of obdurate routine 
from his heart likewise. Awakening him out of his. 



xvii.] THE PHILIPPIAN GAOLER 235 

bodily slumbers, it had awakened him at the same 
time from the torpor of his spiritual apathy. And so 
agitated and bewildered his whole moral nature 

o 

reeling and staggering with the shock he flings him- 
self at the Apostle's feet. 

2. But this was not sufficient. The physical 
shock might arrest, but it could not instruct. It 
might overawe, but it could not inspire. The rum- 
bling and the crash of the earthquake is not the only 
voice which breaks the midnight silence. There is 
the voice of prayer and praise, borne aloft to the 
Throne of Grace from those subterranean dungeons. 
We may well imagine that this voice also, so strange, 
so unearthly, so unlike the gibes and the curses and 
the blasphemies which were wont to issue from the 
prisoners' cells, had arrested the gaoler's ear; that 
they had suggested hopes and fears, which he could 
but vaguely understand ; that they held out to him a 
new ideal of life, at which he blindly clutched ; that, 
mingling with his dreams, they had moulded his 
awakening thoughts ; and thus insensibly they had 
shaped the cry which rose to his lips, 'Sirs, what must 
I do to be saved ?' 

This is a type of God's dealing with our own 
hearts. It may be that during the year, which has 
just run out its course, God has spoken to one and 
another in this congregation with this two-fold voice. 



236 THE PHILIPPIAN GAOLER. [xvn. 

Some unwonted catastrophe has convulsed our lives. 
The sudden bereavement has stunned our senses. 
The crash of our fortunes has stricken us down. The 
failure of our plans in life has crushed us in its ruin. 
The hairbreadth escape from some ghastly accident, 
or the unexpected recovery from some deadly sick- 
ness, has awed us in the retrospect. Here is the 
earthquake, which has awakened us from our slum- 
bers, which has subdued and terrified us, which has 
sent us trembling and staggering to the Apostle's 
feet. And meanwhile for us, as for the Philippian 
gaoler, the voice of the earthquake has been supple- 
mented by the voice of prayer and praise. The fresh 
memory, it may be, of some dear companionship, 
severed by death, has borne our spirits upward on its 
wings. The present blessing of some hallowed friend- 
ship has purified and elevated our thoughts. The 
stimulating example of some heroic, saintly life, whose 
record is enshrined in history, has nerved and inspired 
us. The reading of the Bible, or the services of the 
Church, or perchance the voice of the preacher has 
struck some chord which has vibrated through our 
spiritual being. In one way or another the voice of 
prayer and praise has found its way to our heart of 
hearts in the midnight silence, amidst the crash of 
the earthquake and the trembling. of the prison cells; 
and in our awe, in our bewilderment, in our vague 



xvii.] THE PHILIPPIAN GAOLER. 237 

unsatisfied, tumultuous yearning, we have uttered the 
imploring cry, ' What must I do to be saved to be 
saved from hardness, to be saved from sin, to be 
saved from self, to shake off this torpor of death, to 
awake to God and to life ?' 

Since we met in church last Sunday, another 
year has drawn to a close a year eventful in many 
ways, a year of striking inventions, of appalling 
catastrophes, of desolating famines, of vast political 
disintegrations and reconstructions, of wars and ru- 
mours of wars. And Death, our stern monitor, has 
enforced his solemn lessons with more than his 
wonted emphasis. His strict impartiality has rarely 
received more impressive illustrations than in the 
twelve months past. Here he has mowed down the 
obscure and unknown in countless multitudes at a 
single stroke : there he has lopped off one by one with 
fatal precision of aim the heads that towered above 
the rest. In his wholesale sacrifices he has shown his 
wonted indifference to circumstances and to means. 
He slew his thousands in battle here in Europe, and 
his tens of thousands by famine there in Asia. He 
plunged a whole cargo of human victims without a 
moment's notice in the midst of their holiday making, 
here at our very doors in a river grave ; and within 
a few days he smothered another heavy freight of 
sufferers, surprised while plying their daily toil there 



1238 THE PHILIPPIAN GAOLER. [xvii. 

in a distant colliery deep under ground, summoning 
earth and fire as his executioners in this case, as in 
the other he had impressed water to do his behest. 
And in singling out his conspicuous victims too he 
has dealt with an even hand. He began the year by 
striking down in rapid succession the two sovereigns 
who represented, as no other men could represent, 
not to their own country only, but to the whole civi- 
lised and thinking world, the two seemingly antago- 
nistic principles whose reconciliation must be the 
great work of the coming age the religious inhe- 
ritance of the past, and the political aspirations of the 
future. At the beckoning of his stern hand the two 
rival potentates of the Vatican and the Quirinal, who 
for long years had dwelt apart, though inmates of 
the same city, each in his palace fortress the one 
frowning on the other, stubborn and irreconcilable 
were brought together in the silent, lowly chambers 
of the grave. And his year's work, which he thus 
inaugurated, he has carried out in the same impartial 
spirit. He has laid his grip on the crowned king, but 
he has not spared the discrowned king. He has 
summoned this royal lady in widowed age, and that 
other a bride of yesterday, and that other again a 
matron in her prime, the mother of a youthful family; 
This the latest of his royal victims, the mourned of 
two great nations he has reserved, as it were, to 



xvil.] THE PHILIPPIAN GAOLER. 239 

crown with a peculiar solemnity the warnings of the 
year at its close; for this latest loss appeals to the 
heart of our common humanity, recalling, as it does, 
not some intellectual movement or world-wide politi- 
cal aspiration, not any partial or narrow interest, but 
the silent, unobtrusive, homely duties .of the woman, 
of the daughter, of the sister, of the wife, of the 
mother, of the nurse. And we too, it may be, in our 
own circles, in our own homes, have felt the chill 
presence of death. There is a vacant chair by our 
fireside ; there is a vacant place in our hearts. If we 
are men, there is a painful memory of the past. If we 
are Christians, there is a joyful hope for the future. 
But the present is a blank void, a darkness only the 
more dark because it is visible, an aching pain which 
we bear as best we may. The wife, the parent, the 
child, the brother, the friend that was more than a 
brother, is gone. The ruthless reaper has put in the 
sickle. He has gathered in the ripe grain. 'The 
harvest' the harvest of our affections ' is past ; the 
summer' our summer of life ' is ended. And' we' 
are we saved ? 

'What must I do to be saved ?' This is no worn- 
out, obsolete question. It is as real now, as it was 
eighteen centuries ago ; as pertinent here in the heart 
of Christendom, as it was there amidst the surround- 
ings of paganism ; as vital to you and to me to us 



240 THE PH1LIPPIAN GAOLER. [xvil. 

baptized Christians as it was to that poor, bewildered, 
terror-stricken, heathen gaoler in that far-off Roman 
colony. 

But it matters much it matters everything in 
what sense we ask the question. What do we mean 
by this saying ? From what evil do we desire to be 
rescued ? 

There are three distinct senses, in which this 
question may be asked. 

First of all ; we may ask it with reference to our 
temporal affairs. What shall I do to save myself 
from the impending ruin of my fortunes ? To save 
myself from this threatened forfeiture of my good 
name ? To save myself from the vengeance of the 
law, which my carelessness or my dishonesty is 
bringing upon me ? To save myself from the social 
entanglements, which my profligacy and my selfish- 
ness have woven about me ? To the question, so 
asked, the text furnishes no answer. Of salvation in 
this sense it has nothing to say. 

Or secondly; we may ask it of our eternal welfare, 
and yet not ask it in the best way. Our motive may 
be sheer terror nothing else. The dread hereafter 
absorbs our thoughts wholly. Of God's Fatherly love 
outraged and wounded, of the Temple of the Holy 
Spirit sullied and profaned, of Christ's transcendent 
sacrifice despised and set at nought of these \\e reck 



XYII.] THE PHILIPPIAN GAOLER. 241 

nothing. But the worm that dieth not, the fire that 
is not quenched this is the terrible apprehension, 
which haunts our dreams, and dogs our steps in our 
waking hours. In short, it is not the wrongdoing 
itself, but the punishment of the wrongdoing which 
troubles us. Salvation to us is not salvation from sin, 
but salvation from the consequences of sin. ..:/> 

Thirdly and lastly. Would we ask the question, 
as it should be asked? Would we ask it in such a 
way, that it will receive its full and effective answer ? 
Then our petition will run thus. What must I do, 
that I may be delivered from this my sin? What 
must I do, that I may cleanse myself from this im- 
purity, which sullies my soul ? What must I do, that 
I may rid me of this untruthfulness, this dishonesty, 
this insincerity, which mars my life ? What must I 
do, that I may expel this avarice, which cramps my 
heart ? What must I do, that I may shake off this 
lethargy, which numbs my spirit? What must I do, 
that I may cast out this demon of worldliness, of self, 
which shuts out Thee and Thy presence, God ? For 
Thou, Lord, and Thou only, art salvation, Thou only 
art heaven, Thou only art eternal life. 

And to the question so asked the answer is still 

the same to us, as it was to this heathen gaoler 

eighteen centuries ago ; c Believe on the Lord Jesus 

Christ, and thou shalt be saved.' Believe on Him, 

S. P. S. 16 



242 THE PHILIPPIAN GAOLER. [xvn. 

not as a traditional heirloom, not as a formal creed, 
not as a sentimental aspiration, but believe with that 
direct, personal, living faith, with that practical trust 
and confidence, which will draw you to Him, as 
the truest of friends, for advice, for consolation, for 
strength, for renewal, in all your sorrows and in all 
your trials. 

And, above all, believe that He has power to save 
you from your sins. What were the terms of the 
angelic message, of which the season reminds us? 
' Thou shalt call His name Jesus : for He shall save 
His people' not from the wrath to come, not from 
the fire that is not quenched, not from future retri- 
bution in any form (though this also He shall do), 
but first and chiefest 'from their sins.' Yes; it is 
this actual weight of sin, under which at this moment 
you are staggering, that He undertakes to remove. 
It is a present strength, a present cleansing, a present 
renewal, a present salvation, that He promises to you. 
This faith the highest form of faith will indeed 
remove mountains. 'I can do all things through 
Christ which strengtheneth me.' ' Only believe/ and 
thou shalt be saved. 'Lord, I believe; help Thou 
mine unbelief.' 



XVIII. 

THE CONSTRAINING LOVE OF CHRIST. 

The love of Christ constraimth us. 

2 CORINTHIANS v. 14. 

Twelfth Sunday after Trinity, 1876. 

WHO is this Paul that writes these strange words ? 
Who is this Christ to whom he ascribes such mar- 
vellous power? What had been their past connexion? 
What were their present relations ? How can we 
explain this tyrannous influence, this complete ab- 
sorption of self in another, to which the writer 
confesses ? Is he speaking of some devoted parent, 
to whose fostering care and patient self-denial he 
feels that he owed everything? Or of some loved 
brother, with whom all his fondest memories of life 
in infancy, in childhood, in youth, in manhood are 

162 



244 THE CONSTRAINING LOVE [xvni. 

bound up ? Or of some friend, who has been more 
to him than a brother, from whose large heart and 
commanding intellect, he has learnt lessons that 
were more precious than life itself, in whose purity, 
in whose nobleness, in whose entire self-forgetfulness, 
he has seen a standing protest against all that was 
base and mean in himself? Nay; he was none of 
these. He was not a parent, not a brother, not a 
friend, as men count friendship. He was an entire 
stranger, whom Paul had probably never seen on 
earth, whom certainly he had never cared for, never 
loved. And he was dead too; had been dead now 
more than a quarter of a century. So that there 
was nothing, absolutely nothing, in their human 
relationships to account for this strange, this extra- 
vagant, this passionate language. 

And the more we examine the facts of their past 
history, the more hopelessly bewildering do we find 
them, as tested by the ordinary standard of human 
occurrences and human motives. 

It is now the year 57 or 58 of our era, when 
S. Paul writes these words. Place yourself in imagi- 
nation some twenty-five or thirty years earlier than 
this date. What do you see then ? Here is a Jew 
. of humble rank, a carpenter's son, sentenced to suffer 
as a criminal, executed by a most ignominious death, 
put out of the world with the emphatic approval 



xvni.] OF CHRIST. 245 

of all classes, the haughty Pharisees, the scornful 
Romans, the mocking soldiery, the hooting populace 
What was there to attract, to subdue, to dominate, 
in this most painful, most repulsive of all scenes? 
And yet this is the Christ this humble peasant, 
this despised outcast, this hated criminal whose 
constraining power the writer confesses to be abso- 
lute over all his thoughts and feelings and actions. 

And next, what does past history tell us about 
the writer himself? Is there any key here which 
will unlock the secret ? Place yourself again in 
imagination a few years later some twenty years 
before the words were written. What do you find 
then? Why, just what the previous scene would 
lead you to expect. This Paul, the writer, is devot- 
ing all the energies of his sincere and passionate 
nature to the extermination of an infatuated sect 
that has gathered round the name of this dead man, 
this criminal whom all classes alike had agreed to 
execrate. He spares no pains; he shrinks from no 
severities. Men and women, young and old, falling 
into his hands, are treated alike. Imprisonment, 
torture, death such is the fate that awaits his 
victims. No sincerity, no innocence, no patience 
or meekness in the sufferers touches his heart. 
Even the spotless purity and the transparent holi- 
ness of a Stephen only adds fuel to his indignation. 



246 THE CONSTRAINING LOVE [xvni. 

The name of Christ is an abomination to him. The 
followers of Christ are outside the pale of our com- 
mon humanity. 

I have asked you to turn yourselves back in 
imagination some twenty-five years, and again some 
twenty years before these words were written. It 
is not a wide space of time for the memory to range 
over. About the same interval separates us from 
the Crimean War and from the Indian Mutiny. And 
yet it seems to us who were grown up at the time, 
as if these things had happened only the other day. 
How vividly do we picture to ourselves the struggles, 
the perils, the triumphs of Alma and of Inkerman ! 
With what painful distinctness do we recall the 
horrors and the suspenses of Delhi and Lucknow 
and Cawnpore ! And can we suppose that S. Paul 
remembered less distinctly the incidents in his own 
personal career, so striking, so unique, so fraught 
with the most acute pain and the intensest ecstasy ? 
Nay, we may be assured that each momentous crisis, 
each signal event, stood out in his recollection with 
a sharpness of outline and a fulness of detail, which 
would shame the average memory of the average 
man. For he was after all the same Paul, who had 
hounded on the savage executioners to the stoning of 
Stephen ; the same Paul who ' breathed out threat- 
enings and slaughter against the disciples of the 



xvni.] OF CHRIST. 247 

Lord;' the same Paul who (it is his own metaphor) 
had harried and devastated the Church of God. 
His step is not quite so elastic; his face is not 
quite so free from furrows ; his spirits are not quite 
so buoyant. But there is the same fire, the same 
zeal, the same intensity of passion and of action 
now as then. 

The same, and yet how changed! 'The love of 
Christ constraineth me.' The love of Christ ! What 
did he know then of the love of Christ ? Had he 
not loathed and execrated the very name of Christ, 
hated it with all the hatred of which his intense nature 
was capable? 'I can do all things through Christ 
that strengthened! me.' 'All things through Christ'? 
Nay, surely, 'in spite of Christ, against Christ.' 
Had he not 'thought that' he 'ought to do many 
things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth'? 
And he had acted upon this conviction with a 
persecuting energy which has rarely been surpassed 
before or after. But now he was changed, shall 
we say ? Nay rather, let us use his own language ; 
he was" ' born again,' he was ' created anew,' he was 
called into being from not being. Hitherto he was 
not, and now he is. In Jesus Christ he is a new 
creature, a new creation. In Jesus Christ old things 
have passed away for ever away. All things, yes, 
all things have become new. In Jesus Christ the 



248 THE CONSTRAINING LOVE [xvni. 

prophetic anticipation is already realised. There is 
a new heaven overhead ; there is a new earth beneath 
his feet All things human and divine are changed 
to him now. The objects, on which his eye rests, 
though still the same, are not the same. They arc 
invested with a new power and meaning. The. ex- 
ternal world has undergone a change corresponding 
to the inward man. His thoughts are new ; his 
associations are new ; his hopes and aspirations are 
new; his motive is new. 

Yes, his motive is new. This is the grand central 
fact, the prime secret of the change. There is a 
new mainspring to the machinery of his moral and 
spiritual being. Hitherto he had acted from various 
considerations and impulses. He had been influenced 
by self-assertion or self-indulgence ; he had been led 
by party spirit ; he had been the slave of convention 
or of habit ; he had been impelled by a desire of 
popularity or of fame; he had been stimulated by 
rivalry ; he had been driven forward by fear, or held 
back by shame; he had been moved by higher 
motives than these, though not by the highest, by 
a spirit of patriotism, by a fire of orthodoxy, by an 
enthusiasm of religion, a zeal of God, though not 
according to knowledge. But now all these lower 
"motives were neutralised, were crushed, were trans- 
formed, were absorbed, were glorified, in the one 



xviii.] OF CHRIST 249 

transcendent, overwhelming, all-pervading thought of 
the constraining love of Christ. 

The love of Christ. The Apostle does not mean, 
as at a first glance we might suppose, his own affection 
for Christ, his own devotion to Christ. This affection, 
this devotion, was indeed a constraining power. But 
it was only second in the chain of causes and con- 
sequences. It was 'not the source and origin of his 
energy. The source must be sought farther back 
than this. The source must be sought outside him- 
self. The source must be found in God, not in man. 
Not his love for Christ, but Christ's love for him, for 
others, for all mankind, for a world steeped in igno- 
rance and sin and misery this was the prime cause 
of all his moral activity, the paramount motive which 
started and directed all the energies of this most 
magnificent of all magnificent lives. His own love 
for Christ was only the response, only the sequel as 
he himself would have confessed, the necessary, the 
inevitable sequel to Christ's love for him once im- 
pressed upon his being. Christ first loved him, and 
he (how could he help himself?) was fain to love 
Christ. It was not he, Paul, that lived any longer; 
it was Christ that lived in him. It was not he, Paul, 
that planned, that felt, that toiled, that suffered for 
Christ, that traversed the world with his life in his 
hand for Christ, that was instant in season and out of 



250 THE CONSTRAINING LOVE [xvui. 

season for Christ, that died daily for Christ ; but it 
was Christ's own love, fermenting like leaven in his 
inmost being, stirring and animating his sluggishness. 
This unspeakable love rises up before him, as the one 
great fact, which will not be thrust aside, the one 
clear voice which will not be silenced. It haunts him 
sleeping and waking. It occupies the whole backr 
ground of his thoughts. Forget it? How can he 
forget it? Others may forget, but he can never 
forget. 

For what had this love of Christ been to him, 
Paul, individually ? Could he forget that he had been 
the chief of sinners, because the chief of rebels ; that 
his ingratitude had far exceeded the ingratitude of 
that excited Jewish mob, of that flippant Roman 
soldiery, because he had persecuted intelligently, 
deliberately, persistently; giving his whole mind, as 
well as his whole heart, to the work? And yet 
Christ singled out him of all men; rebuked him, 
caressed him, subdued him, won him ; held him up 
to an astonished world as a signal token of God's 
long-suffering and mercy. Can we wonder that in his 
own emphatic language it 'constrained' him, that is, 
held him tight in its grip; that it bound him hand 
and foot; carried him whither it would and stayed 
him when it would ; that it fettered all his movements 
and forced all his actions ? Aye, he was more than a 



xvni.] OF CHRIST. 251 

conqueror through Christ, but he was less than a cap- 
tive through Christ. He was Christ's freedman, but 
he was Christ's very slave also. It was this love of 
Christ, this stern, imperious, relentless master, which 
dragged him from city to city ; which exposed him to 
heat and cold, to famine and nakedness, to perils on 
all sides ; which drove him to prison and to death. 

The bearing of these facts on Christian evidences 
is obvious. They have forced an acquiescence from 
many a suspicious and reluctant spirit Many, who 
have seen their way to setting aside all other external 
evidence, have found this an insuperable barrier in 
their path. Many, who have held themselves entitled 
to doubt the early date and the historical credibility 
of the Gospels, have been convinced by S. Paul's 
conversion and life, as an evidence of S. Paul's belief. 
Such a conversion, followed by such a life, would 
have no basis to rest upon, unless the main incidents 
of the Gospel, as we have them, were accredited facts 
at the time. But it was not for this purpose that I 
have offered the subject for your consideration this 
afternoon. I had a directly practical aim in view. 
We have dwelt thus long, with little effect, on S. 
Paul's resistance to Christ's love, overcome at length 
by its persistent force, unless we have seen each one 
of us in this strange story, a type, a parable, of that 
which is, and of that which may be, with ourselves 



252 THE CONSTRAINING LOVE [xvm. 

individually. His stubbornness, his ingratitude, his 
defiance of God, is but ours written out large. The 
form may be different, but the essence is the same. 
We too have seen the love of Christ as manifested in 
the narrative of the Gospels and the career of the 
Church; we too have experienced the goodness of 
God in the thousand blessings and opportunities of 
our daily life. Well for us, if we too are acting ig- 
norantly, as he acted. Well for us, if we have shown 
the same zeal, the same vigour, the same self-devotion, 
the same sincerity, which he showed, even when most 
mistaken. His resistance was active, intensely active ; 
ours may be passive, most probably it is, but it is a 
fighting against God all the same. 

And if his sin is a type of our sin, may not his 
victory be a type of our victory also ? Do we suppose 
that the love of Christ, as a motive of action, has lost 
any of its force by the lapse of eighteen centuries? 
Have we ever given it a fair trial ? We have perhaps 
cast a passing glance at it, grudgingly stolen from the 
occupations of business or the attractions of pleasure. 
But what is this ? Have we contemplated it, studied 
it, appropriated it, absorbed it? Has that life, that 
work, that character, that Person all those elements 
which combine to present the complete picture of 
" that love have these, I say, been the one great 
object of our contemplation, rilling all the interstices 



xvii!.] OF CHRIST. 253 

of our work and our recreation alike,, till they have 
become the daily food of our moral life ? And, if it 
is not so, can we wonder that our hearts are cold, 
that our lives are listless, that our allegiance is divided 
between God and the world the world getting far 
the larger share ? I say to you, and I say to myself, 
Give it a fair trial I cannot pretend that the task 
is easy. It will cost no common effort. But the 
result is certain. The love of Christ worked miracles 
in S. Paul. It has worked miracles in all who have 
followed in S. Paul's footsteps. 

How can it be otherwise ? What is it that deter- 
mines the character of the man ? It is not the results 
of his actions. A cruel, ambitious, profligate con- 
queror has more than once proved a benefactor to 
mankind. Yet no one with any moral sense will call 
such a man a good man. It is not in the deeds 
themselves. These may be beneficent and useful. 
But they may be done, not because they are bene- 
ficent and useful, but to procure popularity or fame. 
It may be a question of barter in some form or other 
after all. But, if the character of the man is not 
determined by the results of his actions, nor by the 
actions themselves, it must be by his motives. And 
here you have the purest motive of all. A motive to 
be'pure must be unselfish. And this is altogether 
outside self. It is the study of another's character ; 



254 TIIE CONSTRAINING LOVE OF CHRIST, [xvni. 

it is the admiration of another's goodness ; it is the 
awe, the gratitude, the loyalty, the reciprocation, the 
love, the exaltation, because the abasement, which 
comes from the contemplation of a perfect ideal in 
One, Who is at once a Brother, a Friend, a Saviour, a 
Master, a King. 

And, being the purest, it is also the most efficient 
of all motives. Love I speak not of passion is 
proverbially the most potent of moral influences, the 
love of husband and wife, the love of brother and 
brother, the love of friend and friend, the love of parent 
and child. And here is love in its highest form, 
love in its ideal perfection, love without any alloy 
of earthly passion, love most human, because most 
divine, love kindly inspiring, energizing your whole 
heart and your whole life. Only realise this love, 
and you also will be more than conquerors ; conquer- 
ors, while you are dragged helpless in the triumph 
of the Omnipotent Captain at His chariot wheels ; 
conquerors, because captives; conquerors of the world, 
because conquerors of self. 



XIX 

MADNESS AND SANITY. 

I am not mad, most noble Festus ; but speak forth 

the words of truth and soberness. 

ACTS xxvi. 25. 

First Sunday after Trinity, 1875. 

IT was no even-handed contest in which the 
Apostle found himself engaged, when he appeared 
in the presence-chamber at Csesarea. The place, the 
season, the persons, the surroundings of the scene 
might well have appalled a man of less conspicuous 
courage or of feebler convictions. 

It was the occasion of a great state ceremonial, 
a durbar (we might almost call it), when the imperial 
viceroy, the representative of the law and majesty 
of Rome, newly arrived in his province, received the 
welcome and the homage of the most powerful of 
native princes. King Agrippa, we are told, had come 



256 MADNESS AND SANITY. [xix. 

with great pomp to Cassarca to salute Fcstus. We 
happen to know from other sources that he had 
reasons of his own for wishing to conciliate the favour 
of the new governor. Just at this time he had a 
quarrel with the Jews, and he was anxious to secure 
the powerful support of Fcstus. He had recently 
added to the palace of the Herods a lofty dining-hall, 
from which his guests could look down upon the 
Temple area. The priests and guardians of the sacred 
precincts resented this intrusive curiosity. It was 
indecent, and it was contrary to all precedent, that 
the most sacred rites should thus be exposed to the 
profane gaze of idle revellers. They therefore built 
up a high wall, which shut out the king's view. 
Agrippa resented the indignity, and endeavoured to 
get the obstruction removed. He applied to Festus 
for aid, and Festus warmly espoused his cause. 

All this we have on the authority of the Jewish 
historian. And I mention the fact for two reasons. 
In the first place, it illustrates the truthfulness of the 
narrative. Where we are able to test the incidents in 
the Acts by contemporary history and archaeology, 
we cannot fail to be struck with the correspondences. 
There is a coincidence sometimes in the actual events, 
sometimes (as here) in the historical position, which 
affords the highest guarantee of truthfulness. The 
officious welcome given by Agrippa to Festus on his 



MADNESS AND SANITY. 257 

arrival, the cordial relations existing between the 
Jewish king and the Roman governor, as here related, 
receive a flood of light from the account of the Jewish 
historian. The narrative of S. Luke and the narrative 
of Josephus fit together, as complementary pieces of 
a historical whole. In the second place, a reflection 
is suggested by what is said, and what is left unsaid, 
in the secular historian of the day. His .account 
illustrates the false estimate of the relative proportions 
of events, which men inevitably take who are mixed 
up in them. This aggressive insolence of Agrippa 
was the one topic of general interest at the time. 
It was eagerly discussed, we cannot doubt, by high 
and low, among priests and people, at every public 
concourse and in every domestic circle. It alone has 
obtained a place in the record of Josephus. When 
the rumour got abroad that the king had hastened to 
Csesarea with a splendid retinue to welcome the new 
governor on his arrival, all tongues would be eager 
to tell, all ears open to hear, how Festus had received 
his visitor, and what line he was likely to take on the 
burning question of the day. But this interview with 
Paul who cared for it? Who talked about it? It 
was a wholly unimportant episode in a conjuncture 
of the highest public moment. The historian says 
nothing about it. Why should he? The name of 
Paul is not once mentioned throughout his' narrative, 
s. P. s. 1 



258 MADNESS AND SANJTY. [xu. 

Yet time has wholly reversed the verdict of contem- 
porary history. Of the magnificent palace of the 
Herods, of the goodly buildings of the Temple, not 
one stone is left standing upon another. For eighteen 
centuries they have been a ruin and a desolation. 
The aggressiveness of Agrippa and the policy of 
Festus have alike passed away, leaving not a trace 
behind. But the words of Paul are living, germi- 
nating, fructifying still. Still his outspoken reply to 
the blunt taunt of the Roman governor appeals to the 
latest generations as a mighty witness to the Gospel ; 
' I am not mad, most noble Festus ; but speak forth 
the words of truth and soberness.' Still his pathetic 
rejoinder to the flippant sarcasm of the Jewish king 
stands out as a model of Christian courtesy and large- 
ness of heart ; ' I would to God, that not only thou, 
but also all that hear me this day, were such as I am, 
except these bonds.' The quarrel of Agrippa has 
vanished out of sight. The pleading of Paul is the 
inheritance of all the ages. 

Never probably had the Apostle found himself 
before a more uncongenial audience. The imperial 
governor, the native sovereign, their splendid re- 
tinues, Roman officials, Jewish priests, soldiers and 
civilians, courtiers and holiday makers some cold 
and indifferent, others bitterly hostile were all alike 
devoid of sympathy. 



xix.] MADNESS AND SANITY. 259 

In this unfriendly concourse the attitude of Festus 
more especially demands our attention. Festus was 
not a man whose opinion could be lightly disregarded. 
We have not to do here with a sceptical and cynical 
worldling like Pilate, or a cruel and reckless profligate 
like Felix. He is eminently just. He is trans- 
parently sincere and outspoken. He is a prompt and 
vigorous ruler. He is the very man to. whom in the 
common affairs of life we should entrust our cause 
with confidence. Nothing could be more upright 
than his treatment of the prisoner from first to last. 
His predecessor had cruelly detained this Paul bound 
for two whole years ; Festus brings on his cause at 
once. The Jews ask him to send Paul to Jerusalem ; 
he declines to take this unusual course. They press 
him to give judgment against the prisoner ; he flatly 
refuses. 'It is not the manner of the Romans,' he 
says bluntly, almost rudely, 'to condemn any man 
without a fair trial.' Accordingly the prisoner is con- 
fronted with his accusers. The governor hears the 
complaints ; they are many and serious; but he judges 
them to be altogether vexatious and irrelevant ; they 
do not come under the cognisance of the Roman law. 
He is ready to release the prisoner ; but the prisoner 
appeals to Caesar; and so the cause is taken out of 
his hands. Yet even then he is not satisfied. He 
wishes at all events to understand the rights of the 

172 



260 MADNESS AND SANITY. [xix. 

case; 'It seemeth to me unreasonable,' he says, 'to 
send a prisoner, and not withal to signify the crimes 
laid against him.' 

The whole narrative thus sets Fcstus before us, as 
a man of strict integrity, worthy of the highest respect 
in the ordinary .business of life. This is the bright 
side of his character. . But he has no ideas or aspira- 
tions beyond. His view is strictly limited to the 
affairs of this world. When the future and the un- 
seen are mentioned, he is lost in confusion. He is as 
helpless in dealing with such topics, as one colour- 
blind in discriminating the hues of the rainbow. His 
outspoken sincerity only betrays the extent of his 
helplessness. He is blunt even to contempt, when he 
refers to 'one Jesus, Which was dead, Whom Paul 
affirmed to be alive. 1 'Affirmed to be alive!' This 
was decisive. Could any sane man maintain an ab- 
surdity like this ? He listens for a time with patience, 
while S. Paul pleads his cause ; but at length he can 
no longer restrain himself. He is confirmed now in 
his surmise. He interrupts the prisoner, shouting 
rather than speaking, ' Thou art mad, Paul.' What is 
this but the incoherent rambling of a maniac all this 
talk about sin, and repentance, and forgiveness, and 
salvation ? What is this but the very phantom of a 
diseased brain this story of the apparition on the 
way to Damascus, with the light and the voice, not* 



xix.] MADNESS AND SANITY." 26 1 

withstanding the many circumstantial details which 
invest it with the air of sober history ? ( Thou art 
mad, Paul.' All this has just nothing in common with 
the solid experiences, the stern matter-of-fact duties 
of the Roman magistrate and the Roman citizen 
in short, with the acknowledged realities of human 
life. 

' Thou art mad, Paul.' Yes ; it was madness, sheer 
madness, to commit social suicide, as this Paul had 
done. For indeed his conduct . deserved no other 
name. He had given up a high and honourable posi- 
tion among his fellow-countrymen; he was learned 
after the manner of their learning ; he was orthodox 
according to their standard of orthodoxy; he was abl6 
.and energetic; he stood well with the chiefs of his 
nation; he was on the high road to promotion. And 
yet he suddenly gave up all. and for what ? To be- 
come an outcast and a wanderer on the earth ; to be 
hated by the Jews and scorned by the Greeks; to 
drag out a miserable career of penury, of suffering, of 
.toil and danger;, to carry his life in his hand from 
.hour to hour; to be shipwrecked, imprisoned, scourged, 
stoned, left for dead; to be spurned by all men as the 
very filth, the offscouring of society, the scum of the 
world. Who has put the case more strongly than the 
Apostle himself? Aye, he knew (no one could know 
better) that he was mad, ' irretrievably mad, as the 



262 MADNESS AND SANITY. [xix. 

world counts madness. 'We are fools/ he says of 
himself, 'we are fools for Christ's sake.' 

'Thou art mad, Paul.' It was not only that his 
practical conduct betrayed his insanity; his religious 
creed also was nothing better than the raving of a 
maniac. Who ever heard before of one claiming the 
allegiance and the worship yes, the worship of the 
whole world for a Crucified Malefactor, this Jesus, 
this dead Man, 'Whom Paul affirmed to be alive?' 
There was no difference of opinion here between Jew 
and Greek. On most questions affecting religion the 
one spoke a language quite unintelligible to the other. 
But here there was absolute unanimity of sentiment. 
Festus and Agrippa, the Roman soldier and the 
Hebrew priest, alike must join in condemning it. 
This doctrine of Christ crucified, nay, Christ risen 
again it was a scandal to the Jew, and it was folly 
to the Greek. Here again no one knew better than 
the Apostle, how his teaching was regarded by the 
learning and the intelligence and the sagacity of his 
age. He knew it; he repeated it; he gloried in it. 
He invited all men to become mad, as he was mad. 
This madness, he maintained, was the indispensable 
condition of all higher knowledge. 'If any man 
thinketh to be wise in this world, let him become a 
fool, that he may be wise.' 

So then two wholly irreconcilable views of life 



Xix.] MADNESS AND SANITY. 263 

confronted each other in Festu's and Paul. Paul was 
sincere ; had he not given the amplest proof of this ? 
Festus also was sincere. His whole conduct breathes 
the air of sincerity. And yet between the two there 
is a yawning, impassable gulf. If Festus is right, P,aul 
is mad, hopelessly mad-; if Paul is right, Festus is 
blind, stone-blind. 

It is not my purpose now to treat this scene in its 
bearing on Christian evidences. From this point of 
view it would suggest not a few important reflections. 
I might point for instance to the calmness and so- 
briety of the Apostle's statement; to the perfect 
assurance with which he details the history of his 
conversion and the grounds of his belief ; to the manly 
and courteous simplicity with which he replies to the 
rebuke of Festus and the sarcasm of Agrippa. Cer- 
tainly nothing is more unlike the delusions of an 
enthusiast, or the ravings of a maniac, than the whole 
tone and manner of S. Paul on this occasion. Or 
again, I might turn away from the scene itself to its 
results. I might remind you that the civilised world 
after long wavering did ultimately prefer the madness 
of Paul to the sanity of Festus. I might ask you to 
reflect how enormous has been the gain to mankind 
from this preference, and how terrible would have 
been the loss, if it had taken Festus as its teacher and 
condemned Paul as a lunatic. I might point out hovv 



264 MADNESS AND SANITY. " [xix. 

Christianity rescued a helpless world, hastening to its 
ruin, seething in its own corruption ; how it endowed 
human society, thus rescued from premature moral 
decay, with fresh youth and health, by infusing into it 
new convictions and new hopes ; how this re-creating,' 
renewing, reinvigorating influence contained in itself 
the potentiality of all that is noblest and best in 
modern civilisation and modern life. 

All these considerations, and others besides these, 
might be urged. But I have no intention of dealing 
with the evidences of Christianity this afternoon. I 
am speaking as a Christian to Christians. It is a 
practical, and not an intellectual conviction, which. I 
wish to enforce. I would desire to dwell on the mag- 
nitude of the alternative offered. No ingenuity, and 
no indifference, can bridge over the gulf which sepa- 
rates the view of human life taken by Festus from the 
view of it taken by S. Paul the view taken by the 
upright and respectable man- of the world who lives 
only in the present, and the view taken by the. Chris- 
tian whose soul is dominated with the presence of 
God, with the consciousness of sin, with the conviction 
of eternity. God forbid that we should set ourselves 
up as judges of others; God forbid that, possessing 
(as we believe we possess) a wider vision and a fuller 
light, \ve should think meanly or speak lightly of the 
upright ruler, of the honest citizen, in whom neverthe- 



xix.] MADNESS .AND SANITY. 265 

less the religious motive is scarcely perceptible, if 
perceptible at all. Honesty, truth, uprightness, what- 
ever in human life is lovely and of good report, is 
consciously or unconsciously the very reflection of 
the perfect attributes of God Himself. We wrong 
God, when we wrong such men as these. 

But still the fact remains. Here are two antago-. 
nistic views of human life and human destiny. Men 
may strive to patch up a hollow compromise between 
them ; but no truce is real, because no meeting-point 
is possible. It is the alternative of sanity and mad- 
ness, of light and darkness, of life and death. You 
have decided that , the Christian view is sanity, is 
light, is life. The decision must not be, cannot be, 
inoperative. It has altered your entire point of view. 
It will pervade your whole being. It will -influence 
the thoughts and actions of every day and every hour. 
It may not change the outward business of your life, 
except in a very few cases. There is no reason why 
it should. But it will infuse into it a wholly dif- 
ferent spirit. It will breathe the breath of heaven 
into the work of earth. 

All this stands to reason. It cannot be a matter 
of indifference,, whether you are responsible only to 
the judgment of human society with its caprices, its 
prejudices, its -misunderstandings, its narrowness, its 
blindness ;- or- to an all-seeing eye, which overlooks 



266 MADNESS AND SANITY. [xix. 

nothing, misinterprets nothing, misjudges nothing, 
which scans motives, desires, tendencies, not less than 
overt acts. It cannot be a matter of indifference, 
whether the wrong-doing is simply a violation of 
physical order which may be attended with incon- 
venient results, simply a breach of some social com- 
pact which your fellow-men are bound to resent in 
self-defence; or a rebellious defiance of the All-holy, 
All-righteous God, an act of base ingratitude towards 
a loving Father in Heaven. It cannot be a matter of 
indifference, whether He, Who appeared in our flesh 
and walked upon our earth more than eighteen cen- 
turies ago, was (I shudder to apply the term even as a 
bare hypothesis) a lunatic a lunatic, I say, for there 
is no escape from the dilemma ; all His words and all 
His work, His aims, His aspirations, His promises, 
His whole life and teaching, were, on this hypothesis, 
built upon a mere delusion; or whether He was 
indeed the great Teacher of the truth, the Only- 
Begotten of God, Whom the Father in His infinite 
mercy sent down to live our life and die our death, 
that He might rescue us from our prison-house of sin. 
It cannot be a matter of indifference, whether this life 
is our entire life, whether intelligence, consciousness, 
conscience, personality all that we call ourselves 
shall vanish at the touch of death, evaporating in 
gases and crumbling into dust; whether therefore it 



xix.] MADNESS AND SANITY. 267 

is the true and sole aim of wise men to play out their 
little part here as decently, as respectably, as success- 
fully as they can ; or whether there is an eternal 
hereafter, before which the triumphs of the present 
are just nothing at all. 

This is the tremendous alternative. Did I exag- 
gerate, when I called it a contrast between light and 
darkness ? There is no halting between two opinions 
here, no passing to-and-fro at convenience ; for the 
chasm is broad, and it is fathomless. Accept there- 
fore the alternative which you have chosen, with all 
its consequences. Think over it, master it, live it. 
Men will taunt you with inconsistency. They will 
do so justly. But be not dismayed. Let the taunt 
nerve you to greater efforts. It will stimulate your 
actions, but it will not shake your creed. The incon- 
sistency must necessarily be the greater, as the ideal 
is the higher. Festus was no doubt much more con- 
sistent than S. Paul. The standard of Festus was the 
ordinary standard of honourable and upright men ; 
and, it would seem, he did not fall far short of it 
The standard of S. Paul was absolute self-negation ; 
he is constantly bewailing his shortcomings, his feeble- 
ness, his worthlessness. The mere voluptuary is far 
more consistent than either. Indeed it is difficult for 
sense-bound men, like ourselves, to project themselves 
into the eternal, the infinite ; it is difficult, amidst the 



268 MADNESS AND SANITY. [six. 

surroundings of earth, to live as citizens of Heaven. 
But this is the far-off goal, towards which you will 
ever be striving. The seal of immortality is stamped 
upon you. Do not forget this. Endure to be called 
madmen, when you stand- before the judgment-seat of 
a Festus. This is inevitable. Only remember, that 
you are the sons of God, you are the redeemed of 
Christ, you are the temples of the Spirit, you are 
the heirs of eternity. ; 



XX. 

THE MESSAGE TO LAODICEA. 

Unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans 
write; These things saith the Ame?i, the faithful 
and true witness. 

.REVELATION iii. 14. 

Third Sunday after Epiphany, 1878. 

THE Revelation of S. John was written, as every- 
one allows, after the Epistles of the other Apostles 
included in the Canon of the New Testament. A 
great change has passed over the history of the 
Gospel, since the period recorded in these earlier 
writings. Death has deprived the Church of three 
great leaders. S. James in Jerusalem, S. Peter and 
S. Paul in Rome, have been crowned with the 
martyr's crown. Of the chief Apostles the pillars 
of the Church S. John only survives. The doom 



2JO THE MESSAGE TO LAODICEA. [xx. 

has been pronounced on the once Holy City. The 
eagles are gathered about the carcase of the dying or 
the dead. Jerusalem has fallen, or is even now 
falling. ' Old things are passed away.' The temple 
services, the Mosaic ritual, have ceased for ever. The 
original home of Christianity is a mass of ruins. The 
surviving disciples of the Lord and, foremost among 
them, John the son of Zebedee go forth to settle 
among the Gentiles. ' Behold, all things are become 
new.' 

Henceforth the Churches of Asia Minor are the 
centre of life and activity in the Christian community. 
These brotherhoods had from the first received more 
than their proportionate share of attention from the 
earliest and greatest teachers of the Gospel. They 
had been founded by S. Paul, and they had been 
watered by S. Peter. Their names, their histories, 
their privileges, their failings, are recorded for the 
instruction of later ages alike in the Epistles of the 
great Apostle of the Gentiles, and in those of the 
great Apostle of the Circumcision. We may well 
suppose that there was something eminently hopeful, 
or something eminently critical, in the state of these 
Asiatic Churches, that so much labour should have 
been bestowed upon them by their Apostolic teachers. 
For now, when S. John, driven into exile by the cata- 
strophe which has overtaken the Holy City, is com- 



xx.] THE MESSAGE TO LAODICEA. 2/1 

pelled to seek a new home, it is in this same region 
that he fixes his abode. These Churches of Asia 
Minor are henceforth his special care. To them he is 
commissioned to deliver his Lord's messages from his 
retirement, or his banishment, in Patmos, rebuking, 
comforting, instructing, exhorting each individually 
according to its special needs and its special failings. 

It has been thought by some that the letters to 
the Seven Churches arc prophetical of seven succes- 
sive stages in the history of Christendom. It is much 
more probable that the simpler view of their bearing 
is the correct view. They are words of warning and 
encouragement addressed to the immediate wants of 
the several communities ; and they are varied accord- 
ingly. They present to us the Churches in a later 
stage of growth than the Epistles of S. Paul or 
S. Peter. They exhibit manifold diversities of type, 
which only lapse of time could develope. One is 
steeped in poverty, and yet is rich withal. Another 
abounds in wealth, and yet is a miserable pauper. 
The imminent peril of one is the bigotry and narrow- 
ness of Judaism ; the besetting temptation of another 
is the license of Gentile profligacy. One is com- 
mended for its zeal against false teaching ; another is 
reproved for its indifference to heresy. In one there 
is a falling-off from the fervour of its earliest love ; in 
another the last works are more than the first. The 



272 THE MESSAGE TO LAODICEA. [xx. 

Churches have passed through several years of ex- 
perience. They have been tested by the fiery trial of 
persecution ; or . they have undergone the not less 
searching ordeal of prosperity. With all these di- 
versities of character they serve as types, as illustra- 
tions, of the different features, which may distinguish 
Christian communities from time to time. Only in 
this sense should they be regarded as prophetical. 

The message to Laodicea is perhaps the most 
striking of the series. In other Churches definite 
failings are rebuked, and definite good deeds are 
praised. In Laodicea no positive. sin is named, and 
no positive excellence is singled out. In other 
Churches errors of doctrine are denounced. In Lao- 
dicea no heresy is so much as hinted at. We are told . 
nothing here of the hateful deeds of the Nicolaitans, 
as at Ephesus and Pergamos; nothing of the Jews 
falsely so called, the synagogue of Satan, as at 
Smyrna and Philadelphia; nothing of the woman 
Jezebel, the false prophetess, who seduces the servants 
of the Lord, as at Thyatira ; nothing of the doctrine 
of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast a stumbling- 
block in the way of the children of Israel, as again 
at Pergamos; nothing of those false teachers who 
sounded the depths of Satan, as again at Thyatira. 
The Church of Laodicea was, so far as we are in- 
formed, perfectly orthodox, perfectly respectable. 



xx.] THE MESSAGE TO LAODICEA. 273 

And yet in the uncompromising sternness of the 
rebuke, in the sustained severity of the denunciation, 
this letter far surpasses all the others. Standing last 
of the seven, it derives a singular emphasis from its 
position. It is the Lord's parting message to all His 
Churches. 

And for this reason too it has a wider application 
than the rest. The special circumstances of the other 
Churches give a special character to the messages 
addressed to them. Hence they contain lessons more 
especially adapted to exceptional crises of a Church, 
as, for instance, when it is directly assailed by per- 
secution from without, or when it is insidiously 
undermined by false teachers from within. The 
Laodicean Church, on the other hand, represents the 
unobtrusive and indefinite temptations of ordinary 
times and ordinary men the false security, the easy 
indifference, the unruffled self-satisfaction, of indi- 
viduals and of Churches, when they are not roused 
to a sense of their true condition by any unwonted 
circumstances. 

Of Laodicea two historical notices are preserved, 
bearing on her condition at this time, and illustrating 
the message in the Apocalypse the one in secular 
history, the other in an Apostolic Epistle, 

Only a few years before S. -John wrote, a heavy 
blow had fallen on Laodicea. The whole region is 
S.P. S. 18 



274 THE MESSAGE TO LAODICEA. [xx. 

highly volcanic; earthquakes were and are frequent 
here. On this occasion however the shock was more 
disastrous than usual. The city was in great part 
thrown down. But the Roman historian, who records 
the incident, adds another fact also of importance. 
It was usual for these cities of Asia Minor, when 
suffering under such calamities, to receive aid from 
the imperial treasury. Laodicea neither asked nor 
obtained any such relief. So great were her own 
material resources, that she recovered herself from the 
blow without any assistance from without. It was a 
proud satisfaction, we may well imagine, to this easy, 
prosperous commercial city thus to show her indepen- 
dence, and self-sufficiency before an admiring world. 

The notice of Laodicea in an Apostolic Epistle, 
written within two or three years of this event, is 
hardly so flattering. Giving directions to the Colos- 
sians, S. Paul charges them to interchange letters 
with their neighbours of Laodicea. At the same 
time he sends this message to the Church of the 
Laodiceans ; ' Say to Archippus, Take heed to the 
ministry which thou hast received in the Lord, that 
thou fulfil it.' The misgiving, which prompts this 
warning, does not stand alone. In other passages of 
the same Epistle the .Apostle betrays uneasiness 
about the Church of Laodicea, as well as about the 
neighbouring Church of Colossse. He speaks of the 



.xx.] THE MESSAGE TO LAODICEA. 275 

conflict, the mental solicitude, which they cause him. 
He says that Epaphras also is very anxious about 
them, always struggling, always wrestling for them in 
his prayers, that they may stand firm in the faith. 
Evidently they are in a very critical . state, when S. 
Paul writes. 

The message in the Revelation is the sequel both 
to 'the laudatory notice in the Roman historian, and 
to the uneasy misgiving of the Christian Apostle. 
We see from it into what a spiritual condition the 
; Laodiceans had passed through their national prospe- 
rity mentioned by the one. We learn also from it 
that there was only too much ground for the anxious 
forebodings entertained by the other. ' Thou sayest, 
I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need 
of nothing ; and knowest not that thou art wretched, 
and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked. I 
counsel thee to buy of Me gold tried in the fire, that 
thou mayest be rich ; and white raiment, that thou 
mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy naked- 
ness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eye- 
salve, that thou mayest see.' 

It is the great work of God's word to contrast the 
real with the apparent, to strip away all conventional 
disguises, and to reveal the truth in things moral and 
spiritual. This agent is described elsewhere under the 
image of a keen, double-edged knife, piercing, probing, 

IS 2 



276 THE MESSAGE TO LAODICEA. [xx. 

dividing with infinite skill and precision, anatomizing 
and laying bare the inmost thoughts and desires of 
the heart. This 'Word of God' as the Apostolic 
writer uses the term this Divine Voice, speaks to us 
in many ways. Sometimes it whispers to us in the 
secret communings of our own hearts ; sometimes it 
deafens us with the thunderclap of a sudden and cruel 
catastrophe. Sometimes it addresses us through the 
utterances of inspired Prophets or Apostles, when the 
old familiar text which we have slurred over time out 
of mind with listless eyes, appears suddenly ablaze, 
each several letter traced out in lines of fire by the 
visible hand of an invisible power on the palace walls, 
an unwonted and an unwelcome guest breaking in 
upon the banquet of our pride and self-complacency. 
Sometimes it pierces us through the taunts of an 
enemy of the faith, scoffing at the contrast between 
the selfish, mundane life which we lead, and the sub- 
lime creed of self-renunciation which we profess. But, 
from whatever side the knife may strike, the hand 
which wields it is the same. 

Has it ever happened to any here, that in the 
midst of your false security, when all seems going on 
well with you, when you have got to look upon your- 
selfyour comfortable position, your high character, 
your reasonable orthodoxy, your orderly and religious 
life w ith no small complacency and self-satisfaction, 



xx.] THE MESSAGE TO LAODICEA, 277 

its keen, cold edge has been suddenly felt. A 
message has come to you, as it came to the Church 
of Laodicea, startling you out of your apathy. You 
know at once from Whom it has come. There is a 
directness, there is a distinctness, there is a searching- 
ness, about the message, which cannot be misunder- 
stood. It is the voice of the Amen the voice of 
the Faithful and True Witness. You recognise you 
cannot help recognising its truth and its fidelity. It 
tells you that, though you fancied yourself spiritually 
rich, you are miserably poor; though you thought 
you were clothed in comfortable and seemly raiment, 
you have been going about in shameful tatters ; 
though you were proud of the range and the keenness 
of your vision, you were wholly blind. The prosper- 
ous, easy, self-complacent, self-admiring man finds 
himself to be after all utterly beggared in that which 
alone is true wealth. Struggle as you will, you 
cannot dispute the verdict. Your own conscience 
subscribes to it, and your own judgment seals it. 

i. It tells you that you are poor. You thought 
that you had all the appliances needed for any 
emergency which might arise, that you were prepared 
by Christian principles for all the possible cata- 
strophes of human life. Were you not rich in the 
precious treasure, well-stored with religious maxims, 
well-versed in religious services? So long as you 



278 THE MESSAGE TO LAODICEA. [xx. 

were prosperous, these served your turn very well. 
But the message came came. in the sudden blow 
which scattered your stores of worldly wealth, or 
in the cruel bereavement which snapped the thread 
of your deepest affections and your fondest hopes, 
And then the truth flashed upon you ; then you made 
a discovery of your real self. The fountain, which 
flowed freely in the sunshine of prosperity, was frozen 
hard and dry by the winter of affliction. It was a 
painfully bitter experience to you to find that your 
religion, of which you thought so highly, was so 
inadequate, so conventional, so unmeaning, so hollow 
and unsubstantial after all. You sought God, and you 
could not find Him. You had to begin to build up 
your religious life anew from its foundations. 

2. It tells you also that you are naked. You 
have set great store on your irreproachable character : 
you have guarded your fair fame with scrupulous 
care. You were proof against the assaults of direct 
opposition ; you could have battled bravely with the 
storms of adverse fortune. These might do their 
worst and succeed ; and yet you could have preserved 
a dauntless courage ; your spirit would not have been 
broken. But you wore a proud and sensitive self- 
consciousness, the mantle of a stainless and unblem- 
ished reputation. You persuaded yourself that no 
man could rob you of this. And as long as you were 



xx.] THE MESSAGE TO LAODICEA. 279 

so clothed and so protected, you could bear any 
vicissitudes that might overtake you. The moment 
came, which stripped you of your comely robe per- 
haps through some trifling neglect or inadvertence of 
your own, perhaps through accidental circumstances 
over which you had no control. A misunderstanding 
of an ambiguous word, a misinterpretation of a doubt- 
ful act, a mistaken identity, an anonymous libel, a 
malicious scandal, has torn to shreds the garment 
which you had woven for yourself with so much care, 
and which you prized so highly. And you are: left 
bare and defenceless, exposed to the chilling scorn 
and the scoffing taunts of an unsparing world, 

3. Again ; it tells you that you are blind. Under 
ordinary circumstances you see your way clearly 
enough. You have no doubt about the path you 
ought to pursue. You have no moral difficulties, 
no inward struggles. You have enough of conscience, 
enough of insight, enough of moral discrimination, 
to steer your course through the common shoals and 
quicksands of life. But a great crisis comes, a trial 
of unwonted perplexity. And under the intensity of 
the moral struggle you break down. It is a conflict 
between two opposing claims; or it is, more likely, 
a conflict between an obvious duty on the one hand, 
and a strong affection, or a mastering aversion, on the 
other. If your spiritual life had been what it ought 



280 THE MESSAGE TO LAODICEA. [xx. 

to have been, what it seemed to others to be, what 
even you yourself thought it to be, the decision would 
not have cost you a moment's perplexity. As it is, 
you hesitate, you waver, you cannot see your way. 
Your moral vision grows more and more indistinct. 
The light within you is darkness. 

In this hour of adversity or bereavement, in this 
downfall of your shattered reputation, in this agony 
of intense moral conflict, you find out your real self. 
The Faithful and True Witness speaks directly to 
you : ' Thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, 
and blind, and naked.' He denounces for the past, 
and He advises for the future. 'I counsel thee to 
buy of Me gold, that thou mayest be rich ; and white 
raiment, that thou mayest be clothed ; and anoint 
thine eyes with eye-salve, that thou mayest see. As 
many as I love, I rebuke and chasten.' ' This sense 
of destitution, of nakedness, of blindness, this hu- 
miliating self-revelation, this very bitter scourge 
what is it, but an instrument of mercy in My hands, 
bringing thee to a knowledge of thyself and of God ?' 
' Be zealous therefore, and repent." 

But what is the cause of this hapless condition ? 

How shall we explain this poverty in wealth, this 

nakedness in sumptuous clothing, this blindness in 

keen vision ? The image in the sequel is the answer 

to this question. 



xx.] THE MESSAGE TO LAOD1CEA. 28 1 

' I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor 
hot; -I would thou wert cold or hot.' The words 
are at first sight startling. It is not uncommonly, I 
imagine, assumed that these words 'hot' and 'cold' 
stand for ' good' and ' bad ;' that they denote the 
godly and the godless respectively. Thus the text 
seems to countenance the idea that there is more 
hope for the reckless profligate, than for the respect- 
able citizen who is without any deep sense of religion ; 
or in other words, that the bad man is better than 
the partially good. Such an interpretation is burdened 
with difficulties. It even involves a contradiction in 
terms. Scriptural teaching and moral instinct alike 
repudiate it. The words 'hot,' 'lukewarm,' 'cold,' 
therefore cannot mark different degrees on the moral 
thermometer. The metaphor must be otherwise ex- 
plained. It is doubtless taken from the practice of 
mixing hot or cold water with the ordinary wines 
drunk by the ancients, according to the season of the 
year or the hour of the day. Each had its proper 
time, its proper use, its proper quality. Each was 
good in its way ; each answered its purpose. But the 
tepid, lukewarm water is useless, insipid, nauseous. 
The palate and the stomach alike reject it. Thus 
the hot and the cold represent those who set them- 
selves in different ways to realise some ideal, who 
make it their business to act up to some standard. 



282 THE MESSAGE TO LAODICEA. [xx. 

The standard may fall short of the Gospel ideal. 
The aim may not be the Christian aim. But the 
vigorous, energetic, single-minded pursuit of it is 
elevating and ennobling in itself. The man of science, 
or the scholar, who prosecutes his researches with a 
devotion which seeks no reward beyond, will serve as 
an example of what is meant. The unconverted 
heathen, who availed himself of his opportunities and 
fulfilled his work, who was a patriotic citizen, who 
was an honourable and assiduous merchant, who was 
a brave and devoted soldier, stood on a far higher 
level than the apathetic, indolent, heartless disciple of 
Christ, in spite of his superior enlightenment and his 
larger advantages. He was at least not lukewarm. 
His life had a meaning and a use. It had a force 
and a savour in it. 

The danger of Laodicea will be the danger of all 
Christian men and all Christian communities in a 
season of unruffled calm, of external prosperity, of 
settled routine. It is a danger which threatens a 
Church like our own, with its considerable endow- 
ments, with its well-appointed ordinances, with its 
legal position and its acknowledged respectability, 
It is a danger which threatens a country like our own, 
where material appliances abound, where the stream 
of social and political life flows smoothly and unin- 
terruptedly, where religious ordinances are regularly 



xx.] THE MESSAGE TO LAODICEA.' 283 

performed and respected. It is a danger also which 
lies very near to any ordinary congregation of church- 
going people, exempt for the most part from the 
severest exigencies and the hardest experiences of 
life, who have their conventional duties and amuse- 
ments, their conventional social and domestic engage- 
ments, their conventional religious observances ; and 
whose spiritual life therefore runs a risk of degene- 
rating into a conventional routine. For it is just 
here that convention must have no place. In the 
common avocations of life, even in the external ordi- 
nances of religion, it is inevitable, and it is right, that 
rule and habit should to a great extent prevail. But 
if any man's inward life has become conventional, 
has become crystallized, has been hardened into a 
dry, mechanical system, then that man is dead, though 
he liveth. The spiritual life must be always healthy, 
always fresh, always growing and expanding, always 
gathering fresh experiences and throwing out new 
developments. 

If this is your danger or mine, then to us the 
message of the Faithful and True Witness is espe- 
cially addressed ; speaking ever and again in these 
momentary shocks which ruffle the tenour of our 
lives, or in these sudden flashes which startle the 
slumber of our consciences, rebuking our apathy, 
denouncing our lukewarmness, warning us to be 
zealous and repent. 



284 THE MESSAGE TO LAODICEA. [xx. 

Rebuking and denouncing and warning; but yet 

at the same time guiding, comforting, encouraging, 

speaking in tones of infinite love and assurance and 

hope. Close upon this stern and startling message, 

these words of uncompromising reproof, follows the 

gracious invitation, freely extended to all, closing 

the letter to the Laodiceans and with it the appeal to 

the seven Churches, speaking clearer and lingering 

later even than the words of condemnation and 

rebuke : , ' Behold, I stand at the door and knock : 

if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will 

come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with 

Me. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with 

Me on My throne, even as I also overcame, and am 

set down with My Father in His throne.' 

As we hear the words, we are reminded how this 
striking image has been transferred to the canvas by 
the genius of a living artist. We recall the calm, 
patient figure waiting at the door, the sad, earnest, 
reproachful look of tender compassion, the hand 
uplifted in the act of knocking, the ear attentive for 
the faintest sound of a response from within. We 
remember well the scene of neglect and desolation 
around ; the door bolted and barred, the hinges and 
' the fastenings rusted, the thorns and briars straggling 
across the entrance, the pathway overgrown with 
tangled weeds and poisonous fruits. As we gaze, 



xx.] THE MESSAGE TO LAODICEA. 285 

we seem almost to hear the repeated knock, low but 
clear, sounding hollow through the empty chambers 
and passages. Has it occurred to us to ask ourselves 
whether this striking picture may not be too true a 
parable of our own lives if not of the whole, at 
least of large portions of them to enquire, whether 
this scene may not even now be enacting, and we 
ourselves the unconscious actors? 

To keep our ears open to each sound of His voice 
(however soft and low), to answer the first summons 
of His knock (however faint and distant) this is our 
most pressing need. It is very rarely that His voice 
will be heard clear and ringing, very rarely that His 
knock will startle with its loudness. But the less 
obtrusive appeals He makes to us day by day. At 
each repeated call, we are bidden to open our hearts, 
and lay before Him our inmost thoughts, our keenest 
desires, our hopes, our fears, our temptations to evil, 
our aspirations after good. This if we do, He will 
come in to us ; will establish Himself an inmate in 
our hearts; will become our most welcome guest, and 
our most generous host ; will cheerfully receive from 
us such meagre entertainment as alone we can give ; 
will set before us in turn the lavish banquet, which 
His wealth alone can dispense. 

This if we persevere in doing, He will not only 
admit us as guests to His table, He will even seat 



286 THE MESSAGE TO LAODICEA. [xx. 

us as kings on His throne. For we shall follow in 
His steps, shall conform to Him, shall grow into Him, 
shall be one with Him, as He also is One with the 
Father. His kingdom shall be our kingdom, as His 
rule of life has become our rule of life : for He also 
overcame, and is set down on His Father's throne. 



XXI. 
THE HOLY TRINITY. 

Go ye, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the 
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 

Ghost. 

S. MATTHEW xxviii. 19. 

trinity Sunday, 1872 \ 

IT is a common remark, that Trinity Sunday 
differs from other festivals which retain a place in 
the Calendar of our Church in this respect, that, 
while they commemorate facts, it commemorates a 
doctrine. The contrast might perhaps be better 
stated, by saying, that, while they commemorate 
facts occurring in time, facts cognisable by the senses, 
facts of external history, it alone commemorates a 
fact which transcends all experience, which is of no 
special time or place, which is eternal in the heavens. 

1 Preached before the Lord Mayor and the Judges. 



288 THE HOLY TRINITY. [xxi. 

For, if this doctrine be a mere speculative opinion, 
a metaphysical definition in scholastic dogma, and 
not a living truth, then this day's anniversary is an 
idle, unmeaning solemnity, which it would be well 
to abandon at once and for ever. 

But here, in the parting words of our Saviour, 
in the deed of bequest to the disciples, in the charter 
of inauguration of His Church, stands the command, 
that all henceforth who are incorporated into the 
family of God, all who claim the privilege of son- 
ship in Christ, shall, as they sink beneath the water 
in which they bury their past lives, their corrupt 
affections, their worldliness, their impurity,, their 
dishonour, from which they emerge to fresh hopes 
and privileges, to a new and regenerate life that 
they shall, at this momentous crisis, be incorporated, 
not as our Version inadequately gives it, 'in the 
name,' but as the stronger expression of the original 
requires, 'into the name of the Father and of the 
Son and of the Holy Ghost' Is this an idle form of 
words this, which was first enjoined as the parting 
legacy of Christ to His Church, this which in obe- 
dience to His command is pronounced over each 
one of us at the great crisis of our lives ? If not, 
what does it involve ? What does it mean this co- 
ordination, this union, this commemoration of Three 
in One? 



xxi.] THE HOLY TRINITY. 289 

But, besides being different in kind, Trinity Sunday 
was also a much later institution than our other great 
Christian festivals. The doctrine indeed was fully 
recognised. It was enunciated in Christ's own bap- 
tismal formula ; it was taught by the fathers; it was 
systematized in the creeds. But still it was not 
specially commemorated. It was seen to be involved 
in all the main historical facts of the Gospel, the 
Incarnation, the Resurrection, the outpouring of the 
Spirit, and therefore it was regarded as underlying 
all the great Christian anniversaries. Christmas, 
Easter, Whitsuntide, were all alike witnesses to the 
Holy Trinity. So long ages elapse. To the medi- 
aeval Church we owe the institution of this festival. 
It is even said that this was especially an English 
usage, that an English archbishop first established 
it as a regular anniversary, and that from England 
it spread throughout the Western Church. It had a 
precarious, fluctuating recognition before; it was a 
local, but not a general festival: it was celebrated 
sometimes before, sometimes after, the great cycle 
of Christian seasons, before Advent or after Whit- 
suntide. At length it was generally adopted, and 
definitely fixed in its present position, as the crown- 
ing anniversary of the Christian year. 

And rightly so fixed. For, if we have followed 
the course of the Christian seasons, we have been 
s. P. s. 19 



THE HOLY TRINITY. [x:u. 

led to the very threshold of such a commemoration. 
Without this termination to the series, we should 
experience a sense of incompleteness, of inadequacy. 
On Septuagesima we were invited to contemplate 
the marvels of creation : we were bidden to cast our 
eyes backward to the first beginnings of all things, 
and forward to the final consummation of all : this 
vast universe in its origin, in its plan, in its destina- 
tion, is one mighty chorus hymning with myriad 
voices the glories of its Creator, Architect, Father. 
To the thoughtful mind the marvellous discoveries 
of. science would add a richness and a fulness to the 
voice of the Church. The minute organisms revealed 
by the microscope, and the intricate relations analysed 
in the laboratory, the distant worlds traversed by the 
astronomer, and the countless ages recorded by the 
geologist, all swell the triumphant strain, which rises 
from far and near, from present and from past, to 
the throne of Heaven the song of praise and thanks- 
giving to Him the Eternal, Him the Omnipotent, 
Him the Invisible, Him the Beginning and the End. 

Thus our thoughts were directed, first of all, to 
God the Father, the Creator. Then came the season 
which is dedicated especially to the Son. The two 
great historical facts in the life of the Incarnate 
Word were brought before us in succession. Good 
Friday and Easter Day directed our thoughts to 



xxi.] THE HOLY TRINITY. 2QI 

the Passion and the Resurrection the crowning act 
of transcendent love, and the crowning revelation of 
infinite hope. We were taught, how God sent down 
His Eternal Word, Who was with Him from the 
beginning, to become man, to die as man, that He 
might rescue mankind from sin, to rise as man, that 
He might be the first-fruits of a glorified humanity. 
This was the anniversary of the revelation of God 
the Son, God the Redeemer. 

And, finally, on Sunday last we were invited to 
commemorate that great manifestation, when the 
infant Church was baptized with the Holy Ghost 
and with fire, as the historical revelation of the third 
Person in the Blessed Trinity, Whose mysterious, 
impalpable influence is diffused through the hearts 
and consciences and intellects of men, prompting in 
them whatsoever is true, whatsoever is pure, what- 
soever is honest, whatsoever is lovely, in theology and 
in science, in contemplation and in feeling and in 
active life. This is the celebration of God the Spirit, 
God the Sanctifier, on Whitsunday. 

And now we are asked to sum up all these 
lessons in one, and to realise the Unity of the 
Eternal Godhead, under this threefold Personality. 
Septuagesima, Easter, Pentecost, all unite in this 
day's commemoration. 

What then, we ask, is the purpose of Trinity. 

192 



2Q2 THE HOLY TRINITY. [xxi. 

Sunday ? What is the proper use to make of it ? 
What lesson, or lessons, ought it to leave behind ? 
I. First of all, it is a witness to the importance 
of beliefs. And is not such a witness needed at the 
present time ? To hear men talk, one would suppose 
it an acknowledged axiom, that the ideas, the senti- 
ments, the opinions, of individuals or of society 
exercised no influence at all on their well-being. 
It is not uncommonly, though loosely and thought- 
lessly said, that, while it is important what a man 
does, it does not matter what a man thinks. If this 
means nothing more than that the mere adherence 
to certain dogmatic forms, which do not touch the 
man's heart and do not influence the man's life, is 
nothing worth, then it may be accepted. If it means 
only that God alone the All-Seeing can read the 
workings of a man's heart, and measure the degree- 
of guilt attaching to false opinion, that it is idle and 
presumptuous in us to anticipate His verdict, then 
too we need not find fault with it. If it is merely 
another way of expressing the fact, that men's 
actions are often very much better and often very 
much worse than their professed or even than their 
genuine opinions, then also we may concede the 
'point; for daily experience confirms it. But if it is 
intended to assert and in a loose way this does seem 
to be its intention that, while a man is responsible 



xxi.] THE HOLY TRINITY. 293 

for his actions, he is wholly irresponsible for his 
thoughts ; that he need not give himself any concern 
whether he has right or wrong opinions, or no opinions 
at all, on moral and religious questions; that such 
opinions are powerless, or almost powerless, so far 
as regards any effect on the man's life and conduct ; 
that society. at large has no interest in securing right 
views or in correcting wrong views, because neither 
the one nor the other has any practical bearing on 
its welfare, because men would act very much as they 
act now, whatever views they might hold if this 
be its intention, then it is a doctrine which we must 
repudiate with all the energy and all thelndignation 
and all the strength which we can command, as the 
most dangerous of all heresies, destructive to indi- 
viduals and to commonwealths, a flat denial of the 
truth-seeking instincts of our nature, a direct contra- 
diction of common experience and of universal history. 
For does not history teach us, that nations and 
societies have been profoundly and lastingly influenced 
by the ideas, the beliefs, which they have adopted ? 
Dynasties have come and gone ; institutions have 
flourished and have decayed. But a. religious belief, 
a moral idea, surviving all changes, living and fruc- 
tifying, has influenced for good or for evil successive 
generations, aye and successive races, of men. This 
silent, invisible thing, which we call an idea, has been 



2Q4 THE HOLY TRINITY. [xxi. 

found more potent far than all the elaborate ma- 
chinery of states, and all the complex appliances of 
society. Nay, have we not seen how, at its mere 
touch, elaborate systems have melted away and 
time-honoured constitutions crumbled into dust ? 
Imponderable though it be, on whatsoever things it 
has fallen, it has ground them to powder. 

And, when we pass from the effects on society 
to the effects on individuals, we cannot say that 
these are small. It is true that you may often see 
a man, who seems destitute of any definite religious 
beliefs, whose speculative opinions, if logically carried 
out, would tend to moral indifference, exemplary and 
upright in his private life, a conscientious man of 
business, a patriotic citizen. But trace his career 
back, and what do you generally find? Why, that his 
habits have been formed under religious influences 
which he has since renounced; that a standard has 
been set to him by early principles, from which he 
has since broken loose ; that his character, in short, is 
the result, not of the opinions which he now holds, 
but of the opinions under which he was brought up. 
It is only in the second generation that the effects 
of unbelief make themselves felt. The first rises 
"superior to its worst influences by virtue of antece- 
dent training. The next is brought up in its atmo- 
sphere, and the poison diffuses itself through the 



xxi.] THE HOLY TRINITY. 295 

moral system. It is a patent fact, though a grave 
moral enigma, of which revelation indeed promises 
a future and final adjustment, but which present 
experience nevertheless teaches to be painfully true, 
that 'the fathers eat sour grapes, and the children's 
teeth are set on edge.' It was not the heated imagi- 
nation of a Christian preacher, but the calm and 
deliberate opinion of a rationalist philosopher, which 
pronounced it to be the universal teaching of history, 
that ages of scepticism and unbelief have always 
been ages of moral decay. 

Therefore it is not indifferent, you citizens and 
patriots, for the welfare of the state and of the 
society in which you live, what religious opinions 
you hold yourselves, and what you disseminate 
among others., It cannot be unimportant, you fathers 
and mothers, for the well-being of your children, 
whether or not you educate them to believe in a God, 
Who is a righteous Father and a loving Redeemer 
and a sanctifying Spirit. 

It is not unimportant nay, it is vastly important 
even if you look only to their welfare here. And, 
as for the hereafter, God be your witness, as God 
shall be your judge. 

There are two false views of creeds. One of 
these I have already described. It attaches no 
importance to beliefs, and therefore to creeds, as 



296 THE HOLY TRINITY. [xxi, 

the expressions of belief. It regards them with 
cold indifference, perhaps even with supercilious, 
contempt. They are not practical, and therefore 
they are not worth considering. This is the spirit 
of the Sadducee. 

The other view is directly opposed to this, and 
yet it is hardly less dangerous. It affects to set the 
highest value on creeds, and it ends in degrading 
them. We may look upon creeds as rigid forms of 
words, to be carefully learned, to be tenaciously 
maintained; and nothing more. The spirit may be 
wanting, while the form is jealously guarded. We 
may hold them vastly important, not because they 
contain the expression of eternal truths truths, 
which sinking into the heart and pervading the 
spirit will permeate and leaven and purify the whole 
life of the man but only because they have been 
handed down, because we find them there. We 
may treat them as though they had some magical 
value, independently of their reception into the 
heart ; they are not appropriated ; they are simply 
'worn ; worn as phylacteries, worn as badges of doc- 
trinal superiority, and flaunted in the face of others, 
as a reproach to their heterodoxy^ This spirit it 
is, which reproduces the Pharisees of old ; this it is, 
which by a natural reaction, evokes and encourages 
the indifference and the coldness of the Sadducee. 



THE HOLY TRINITY. 297 

But. the Spirit of the Gospel, the Spirit of Christ, 
is alien .alike from the one and the other. Creeds 
are important to us; they are important, not for 
the condemnation of others, but for the edification 
of ourselves; they are important, not because the 
repetition of any form of words however sacred 
and however true can act as a theological charm 
and avert the consequences of a selfish heart or an 
immoral life, but because, duly apprehended, they 
teach us the true nature of God, and His work for 
us and our relations to Him; and so teaching us, 
act as a regenerating influence, detaching us from 
our corrupt passions and our paltry ambitions, and 
drawing us from earth to heaven. 

There are two main influences, by which society 
is moulded. The one of these is its laws and insti- 
tutions ; the other is its ideas and sentiments and 
beliefs. We are under no temptation, as citizens 
and as Englishmen, to disparage the former of these. 
Individually, and collectively, we are reminded every 
day and every hour how much we owe to them 
bur lives, our property, our freedom of action, our 
opportunities of progress, our material well-being in 
its manifold aspects. Without them, we should be 
utterly helpless ; we should be left at the mercy 
of blind chance. But they do more than this. Not 
only our material, but also our moral welfare is 



298 THE HOLY TRINITY. [xxi. 

very largely and beneficially influenced by them. 
Laws are wholesome restraints upon us ; they supply 
a valuable moral training. They also serve as moral 
landmarks rough landmarks, it may be, but highly 
valuable as far as they go. 

And to-day, when the chief administrators of 
our laws, and the leading representatives of public 
order, are present in this congregation, we shall not 
be likely to ignore or to underrate our obligations 
to this influence. But if the ceremonial of to-day 
is intended, as I cannot doubt it is intended, to 
teach us any lesson at all, it must surely be this; 
that law renders homage to a higher power ; that it 
acknowledges its own imperfections'; that it looks 
up to those eternal principles of duty and order and 
self-restraint, which are the expression of the mind 
of God, as the Great Original, of which it is only a 
partial, shadowy image, the Fountain- Head, from 
which it derives its truest inspiration. In short it 
bears testimony to the importance of belief. 

And indeed history is our witness, that not even 
the most perfect administration of law, and the most 
complete elaboration of political machinery, can save 
society from utter degradation and ruin, if this higher 
principle be wanting. This truth has been vindi- 
cated at infinite cost to a sceptical world, but it has 
been vindicated signally and beyond dispute. The 



xxi.] THE HOLY TRINITY. 299 

Roman Empire the most elaborate organisation and 
the vastest power, which the world has ever seen 
fell at length fell, and how great was its fall, we 
know. At the very moment, when her great lawyers 
had elaborated that marvellous system of jurispru- 
dence which has been the special bequest of Rome 
to an admiring world; at the very moment, when 
the cornice had been placed on the edifice of her 
political institutions, and the franchise, gradually 
extended, was at length granted to all the subjects 
of that vast empire; then, just then, unmistakable 
signs of decay appeared. She was seen to be tot- 
tering to her fall. And this, because despite her 
admirable laws, despite her political institutions, her 
moral principles were eaten away. She had ceased 
to believe in any higher power, who vindicates those 
principles. She was rotten at heart. This is a lesson 
surely, on which we Englishmen may do well in this 
age to ponder. 

2. But Trinity Sunday is not only a protest 
against indifference to belief: it is also a witness to 
the importance of a particular belief. You are asked 
to-day to pledge your assent to the teaching of the 
Bible and the Church, first, that there is One God, 
Eternal, Omnipotent, All Wise and All Good; and 
secondly, that this One God, taking into account the 
inadequacies of human language and the poverty 



3OO THE HOLY TRINITY. [xxi. 

of human thought, is most correctly conceived of 
and spoken of as Father, Son, Spirit; Creator, 
Redeemer, Sanctifier; as Three in One. 

This is a difficult saying, you reply. Yes, it w 
difficult. Could you expect it otherwise? Have you 
ever reflected on the nature of God at all ? Are you 
so sanguine, or are you so inexperienced, as to 
suppose that, with your finite faculties, you can form 
any adequate conception of Him, which shall be free 
from difficulties ; that, with your limited powers of. 
expression, you can put that conception into language 
which shall not be liable to misunderstanding? A 
very intelligible conception indeed you may form: 
a very simple statement you may make. But what 
is the result? Your deity is either a mere man like 
yourself on a larger scale ; or it is a pure abstraction 
which has no moral power at all. Then do not 
think lightly of the Nicene faith, even as a philoso- 
phical exposition. 

But it is not as such that I ask your attention 
to the doctrine to-day. It is as to a living truth, 
which shall appeal to the hearts and mould the 
lives. I am not speaking as to philosophers, but 
as to Christian men and women. 

And to Christian hearts the doctrine of the Holy 
Trinity says this. 

It tells them first, that there is One, Absolute, 



xxi.] THE HOLY TRINITY. 301, 

Eternal Being, from Whom all things have proceeded, 
and unto Whom all shall return; that He dwells 
in the light unapproachable; that He is Infinite 
Power, Infinite Justice, Infinite Wisdom above all 
He is Infinite Love. He is the Creator of the uni- 
verse, and He is the Father of mankind. His design 
is stamped on the world without ; His will must be 
the law of our life within. And He is a Person. 
The dream of the pantheist, even if it could be 
accepted by the intellect, would leave the conscience 
uninstructed, and the heart unsatisfied. 

It tells us again that God has manifested Him- 
self; manifested Himself in creation and in history; 
manifested Himself by special revelations from time 
to time. God the Word, God the Son, is the agent 
of this manifestation. As the crowning revelation 
of all, He became incarnate, took our nature upon 
Him, lived and died and rose as man. If Christ's 
Godhead is denied, then the union of man with 
God has not been effected ; then our redemption 
is not real, and our faith is vain. The reality" of 
our redemption carries with it the deity of our 
Redeemer. And we cannot conceive of an incar- 
nation, without conceiving of a Person; we must 
believe in God the Son. 

And lastly; it tells us, that God is present in us 
and about us always ; that He acts upon us by this 



3O2 THE HOLY TRINITY. [xxi. 

invisible Presence; that, like the pulsations of air, 
this mighty, unseen Influence sweeps over us, coming 
we know not whence, and going we know not 
whither; that this Presence is our teacher, our 
witness, our advocate, our comforter, above all our 
sanctifier ; that so He is a Person, speaking directly 
to. our personality, Spirit to spirit, Mind to mind. 

Into this confession you were baptized, when 
the Threefold Name was pronounced over you. Is 
it, think you, a mere hard dogma, a dry scholastic 
form ; to some a stumbling-block, to others fool- 
ishness ; or is it to them that apprehend and believe, 
both the wisdom of God and the power of God?. 
Is there in the ideas which it involves, nothing to 
instruct, nothing to exalt, nothing to regenerate, 
nothing to purify? God our Father, God our Re- 
deemer, God our Sanctifier here we have the re- 
sponse to all our yearnings, the cure for all our 
maladies, our fullest strength and our loftiest hope. 

God grant, that in this life we may realise Isaiah's 
vision of old ; that beholding the glory of the en- 
throned Lord, filling the temple of the world with 
His train, and hearing the cadence of the angelic 
voices, singing ' Thrice Holy to the Lord of Hosts,' 
we may be touched by a seraph's hand with the live 
coal from the eternal altar, that so our iniquity may 
be purged and our sin taken away. Thus, when the 



xxi.] THE HOLY TRINITY. 303 

warfare is accomplished and the toil is done, we 
shall pass by an easy transition from the earthly 
temple to the heavenly, from the prophetic type 
to its apocalyptic antitype; we shall share the un- 
clouded vision and the glorious functions of those 
who are full of eyes within, and rest not day and 
night, saying, ' Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, 
which was, and is, and is to come.' 



XXII. 

'THE GREAT RENEWAL. 

And Pie that sat upon the throne said, Behold, 
I make all things new. 

REVELATION xxi. 5. 

Second Sunday after Christmas, 1875. 

ANOTHER year has passed away, another year 
with its joys, its sorrows, its successes,, its failures, 
with its delightful associations and its dark memories, 
with its toils, its trivialities, its regrets, with its partial 
achievements, its phantom hopes, its unrealised pos- 
sibilities. 

Another year has passed away. What does this 
mean? There has been no jar, no dislocation, in 
the course of nature. All things continue .as they 
were from the beginning. The sun and the moon 
and the stars appear and disappear as hitherto. The 
earth revolves in her orbit undisturbed. The thirty- 



xxii.] THE GREAT RENEWAL. 305 

first of December passes into the first of January 
as noiselessly, as imperceptibly, as any one day 
succeeds any other. We ourselves emphasize the 
transition ; we ring out the old and ring in the new ; 
we celebrate the epoch with friendly welcomes and 
merry gatherings ; we compensate for the silence 
of nature by stir and noise of our own. But, after 
all, the distinction of old and new year is only an 
arbitrary distinction; after all the transition is one 
of our own making. And yet it appeals to us, as 
few other occasions appeal. It touches our whole 
being, kindling the affections, quickening the memory, 
stimulating the conscience, strengthening the resolves. 
It does this, because, though conventional itself, it 
is the echo of an eternal voice, the shadow of a 
divine reality. It tells us that all things are moving 
forward with ceaseless flow; it reminds us that we 
ourselves are drawing near and ever nearer to the 
inevitable goal; it warns us that the day is far 
spent and the night is at hand, the night when no 
man can work. It takes up the Apostle's warning, 
and bids us remember that old things are passed 
and passing away ; it bids us remember that the great 
change cometh, and even now is ; it is the very 
herald of Him, Who sitteth on the throne, announc- 
ing to us the proclamation of our King; 'Behold, 
J make all things new.' 

S. P. S. 20 



306 THE GREAT RENEWAL. [xxn. 

' Behold, I make all things new.' The last chap- 
ters of the last book in our Bible are not, as we 
might have expected, a summary of the past, but 
an anticipation of the future. They are a magnifi- 
cent prophecy of things to come ; they tell of a 
great renewal, when everything which mars the 
happiness or sullies the life of man here shall be 
removed; there shall be no more pain, no more 
sorrow, no more sin, no more death. Yes, God 
shall make His tabernacle with men, shall be seen 
of men, shall be knoAvn of men. And where God 
is, there no evil can coexist. Hope, not regret, is 
the watchword of the Christian. Forward, not back- 
ward, is the keynote of the Bible. 

It was not so with the old pagan religions. The 
world with them was not going forward, but back- 
ward. Their ideal was not in the future, but in the 
past. Their prevailing religious sentiment was a 
wistful, regretful wail of despair over a happy state 
of mankind, which had passed away, never to return. 
All things were going from bad to worse. Justice 
had once dwelt upon the earth ; she had taken wings 
and was never more seen. An age of gold had 
been succeeded by an age of silver ; an age of silver 
had given place to an age of iron. The burden of 
paganism was not ' I make all things new,' but ' I 
make all things old.' The world was wearing out, 



xxii.] THE GREAT RENEWAL. 307 

it was hastening to decrepitude, to decay, to ruin, 
to hopeless, irretrievable ruin. 

Sons and daughters of God, brothers and sisters 
of Christ, you whom the Father has adopted into 
His family, you whom the Redeemer has purchased 
with His blood, not such is the lesson which the 
Bible teaches to you, not such is the thought which 
the season will suggest to you. You have been 
educated in a nobler school. You have been taught 
to look forward. The past year has had its sorrows, 
its disappointments, its sufferings. It has brought 
its bereavements. Old faces have passed out of 
sight. The cheerful voice will be no more heard; 
the pleasant smile will be no more seen. The wise 
counsels and the tender sympathies are missing. The 
associations of half a lifetime have been suddenly 
snapped asunder. Aye, you cannot hide it from 
yourself. This last year has made a terrible blank 
in your life. What then ? Will you say that a light 
has been for ever quenched ; or will you not rather 
believe that a torch has been removed hence, to 
burn more brightly elsewhere, to gladden you 
yes, you with a clearer flame hereafter ? Or you 
have had trials and annoyances of another kind 
during the past twelvemonth. Your business has 
gone wrong; your character has been attacked ; your 
confidence has been betrayed ; your affections have 



308 THE GREAT RENEWAL. [xxn. 

been spurned and blighted. An unhealed sore is 
festering in your heart. It has been a dark year 
for you. Again I say ; turn your back upon the 
past ; set your face courageously and stedfastly to- 
wards the future. What encouragements, what 
consolations, what hopes, what bright visions of 
usefulness, what glorious anticipations of bliss, may 
you not find there you whom Christ has ransomed, 
you to whom all things are possible, you to whom 
nothing is denied, if you will only look forward in 
hope to God Who cannot fail, instead of looking 
backward in fond regret to a world of which you 
have already had little experience, which has mocked 
and deceived and robbed you, leaving you a prey 
to vain disappointment and cruel self-tortures. Or 
is it worse still with you ? Is it some new sin which 
has fastened upon you ? Is it some old evil habit, 
against which you have struggled, but not struggled 
manfully enough; which still retains its hold upon 
you ; which seems still to poison the springs of your 
higher life ; which fills you still with a sense of 
feebleness, of dissatisfaction, of self-loathing. Again 
I say ; turn your back upon the past. The past will 
give you no strength ; the past will only tempt you 
. to indifference or to despair. But look in front of 
you ; for there is the secret of strength, there is the 
promise of victory, there is the assurance of recovery, 



xxn.] THE GREAT RENEWAL. 309 

there is the clean heart and the right spirit, there is 
the vision of glory, there is the very presence of 
God Himself, 'Behold, I make all things new.' 

'Behold, I make all things new.' This is the voice, 
which speaks to us at the opening of another year. 
It teaches us through the parable of the seasons. 
The earth is hard and barren now ; it was frost-bound 
yesterday and it may be so to-morrow ; the days are 
short and the nights long. But every hour which 
passes brings us nearer to renewal and life. Already 
the light is gaining on the darkness. A few weeks 
hence the iron hand of winter will be relaxed. The 
earth will once more be set free. With the spring 
showers and the genial sunshine, the trees will burst 
into leaf, and the blade will .spring up from the 
ground. All will be freshness, will be joy, will be 
life, the earnest of summer flowers and the promise 
of autumn fruits. 

'Behold, I make all things new.' This same lesson 
is written indelibly with a pen of iron on the very 
strata of the earth. The hieroglyphs, which cover 
these tablets of rock and which modern geology has 
deciphered, bear witness to this one great principle 
extending through countless ages. They are a long, 
continuous record of successive renewals, progressive 
quickenings, new creations, fresh types of vegetable 
and animal life, each higher than the preceding. 

203 



3IO THE GREAT RENEWAL. [xxu. 

From the earliest dawn of its history, when the 
inert mass of the earth began to heave and seethe 
with the first, rude, formless forms of awakening life, 
till last in time man himself was planted on the 
earth man endowed with speech and reason and 
conscience, man created in God's own image, man 
charged with the sovereignty over earth and all 
earth's creatures these rock inscriptions still yield 
the same lesson. It is the republication in diverse 
forms of the Eternal King's one great edict. It is 
the announcement of re-creation, of renewal, of 
requickened and heightened life. 

'Behold, I make all things new.' This lesson is 
not only engraved on the successive strata of the 
earth ; it is written also in the successive pages of 
human history. Epoch has followed on epoch, race 
has outstripped race in the struggle for power. Popu- 
lous nations have come and gone; great empires 
have risen and fallen. But the one law, which we 
trace throughout, the one principle which God has 
stamped on the history of mankind as the expression 
of His Holy will, is renewal, is progress. There may 
have been seasons of apparent retrogression, but 
they were only apparent; they have ever proved 
the starting points of a newer, a more vigorous, a 
higher life. The wild nomad peoples retired before 
the barbaric empires of the East; these empires 



xxii.] THE GREAT RENEWAL. 311 

yielded to the superior culture of Greece and Rome ; 
Greece and Rome in turn disappeared to make way 
for the more healthy, more enduring, because more 
moral, influences of Christian civilisation. And 
Christian civilisation itself has advanced from one 
conquest to another. 

Yes, there has been renewal, there has been 
re-creation throughout all the ages before man and 
after man : but these progressive changes, however 
striking in themselves, are after all only faint sha- 
dows, blurred types, imperfect, very imperfect, analo- 
gies of the great and ultimate renewal of which the 
text speaks. They may serve to lead our thoughts 
onwards ; but they can never satisfy ; nay, they can 
only increase our dissatisfaction, because, while they 
heighten our ideal, while they stimulate our cravings, 
they leave us as far as ever from the realisation. 
What is all this progress to me or to you, if our 
brief mundane life is all, if this tangible, material 
world has nothing beyond and above it ? We have 
been encouraged, we have been compelled, to look 
out more and more into the future ; and then in cruel 
mockery we are told that the future is nothing, 
absolutely nothing to us. This we cannot believe; 
we cannot help forecasting a time, when our great 
ideal shall be realised, when perfect justice shall be 
vindicated, when sorrow and pain and death shall 



312 THE GREAT RENEWAL. [xxn 

cease, when the righteous shall live in the presence 
of God, Our own hearts, our own consciences, con- 
firm the inviolability of the promise, ' Behold, I make 
all things new.' 

Brethren, we cannot disguise it from ourselves. 
A great conflict is raging in the world now, in which 
we, all of us, great or humble, ignorant or learned 
alike, are called to take a side an internecine conflict, 
a conflict between two directly antagonistic, irrecon- 
cilable views of human life and human destiny. It 
is vain that we try to take an intermediate position. 
It Is vain that we would halt between two opinions. 
There is no standing ground between the two only 
a yawning, fathomless gulf which cannot be bridged. 
Let me place them side by side ; and then judge for 
yourselves which is the truer, the nobler, the more 
ennobling. 

The materialist's view of life is this. I am the 
plaything of an inevitable necessity, which mocks 
me with an appearance of liberty; I am a mere 
straw, floating helplessly down the stream of time ; 
an atom amidst a world of atoms, driven hither and 
thither like the rest by incontrollable forces. My 
thoughts, my words, my actions, are all decided for 
me. My conscience, my affections, my moral sense, 
are only the resultants of physical laws. My free- 
will is a mere delusion. I have no more power of 



xxn.] THE GREAT RENEWAL. 313 

choosing between good and evil, than a stone has 
power to choose whether it will rise or fall. I am 
therefore no more blameable for committing a rob- 
bery or telling a falsehood, than I am for being 
stricken v/ith a fever. Justice, honesty, purity, are 
only social fictions conventional arrangements, ne- 
cessary for the well-being of society, but having no 
other force or value. I myself am here to play my 
little part as an actor on this narrow stage nay, not 
as an actor (this would imply some power of self- 
determination), but as a puppet moved hither and 
thither by wires with all the show of initiative 
power, but none of the reality. The wires will be 
snapped, the puppet will be broken up; and there 
is an end of all. Will, conscience, consciousness, all 
shall vanish and be no more. 

In direct and irreconcilable opposition to this 
stands the Christian's view. I am placed here under 
certain conditions of life, God's natural laws. I am 
bound by many restrictions, am surrounded by many 
temptations. But I have a power given to me, which 
it rests with myself to use or misuse. I have a 
heaven-sent capacity, which I am bound to educate, 
and which, if duly educated, is an instrument of 
incalculable moral force. My conscience is a witness 
of God's eternal will. My consciousness is a witness 
of my own immortality. There is a great battle 



314 THE GREAT RENEWAL. [xxii. 

raging within and about me a deadly conflict be- 
tween good and evil. The good shall prevail in the 
end. It cannot do otherwise, because it is good. 
I am called to take my side in this struggle. The 
alternative is not a mock alternative. The power 
of choice is a real power. Can I hesitate ? Shall I 
not frankly accept the challenge, and range myself 
as a fellow-worker with God ? Shall I not fight 
manfully under the Captain of my Salvation, Who 
will lead me to certain victory. The course is long, 
but the prize is great. The struggle is hard, but 
the triumph is assured. There are manifold trials 
now, temptations, misgivings, doubts, persecutions, 
failures, incapacities, sinful cravings, sinful deeds. 
But it shall not be so hereafter. Have I not assur- 
ance of this in the magnificent vision of the future 
which floats ever before my eyes a vision of infinite 
joy and strength and hope ? ' Behold, I make all 
things new:' 'new heavens and a new earth, wherein 
dwelleth righteousness.' 



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ii 

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THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 15 

DEVOTIONAL BOOKS ig 

THE FATHERS 20 

HYMNOLOGY . 21 

RELIGIOUS TEACHING 2I 

SERMONS, LECTURES, ADDRESSES, AND THEOLOGICAL 

ESSAYS .22 



THEOLOGICAL CATALOGUE 

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THEOLOGICAL CATALOGUE 9 

The Gospels continued. 

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THEOLOGICAL CATALOGUE n 

The Epistles of St. Paul continued. 

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The Epistles of St. John 

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THEOLOGICAL CATALOGUE 13 

The Epistle of St. John continued. 

illustrative, and exegetical, which are given beneath the text, are extraordinarily full and 
careful. . . . They exhibit the same minute analysis of every phrase and word, the same 
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The Epistle to the Hebrews 

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THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. The Greek Text, .with 
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GUARDIAN. " In form this is a companion volume to that upon the Epistles of St. 
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The Book of Eevelations 

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CHURCH Q UA R TERL Y RE VIE W." Mr. Maclear's text-books of Bible history 
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THEOLOGICAL CATALOGUE 17 

Liturgy continued. 

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE ARTICLES OF THE 
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8vo. Sewed, is. net. 



THEOLOGICAL CATALOGUE 19 

Historical and Biographical continued. 

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ffatbers 



INDEX OF NOTEWORTHY WORDS AND PHRASES FOUND 
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THEOLOGICAL CATALOGUE 21 

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22 MACMILLAN AND CO.'S 

Bell (Rev. G. C.) contimied. 

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THEOLOGICAL CATALOGUE 23 

Benson (Archbishop) continued. 

CHRIST AND HIS TIMES. Addressed to the Diocese of Canter- 
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FISHERS OF MEN. Addressed to the Diocese of Canterbury in 
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24 MACMILLAN AND CO.'S 

Brooks (Phillips, late Bishop of Massachusetts) continued. 

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THEOLOGICAL CATALOGUE 25 

Church (Dean) continued. 

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26 MACMILLAN AND CO.'S 

Davies (Rev. J. Llewelyn) continued. 

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THEOLOGICAL CATALOGUE 27 

English Theological Library continued. 

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28 MACMILLAN AND CO.'S 

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THEOLOGICAL CATALOGUE 29 

Hort (Dr. F. J. A.) continued. 

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30 MACMILLAN AND CO/S 

Illingworth (Rev. J. R.) continued. 

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THEOLOGICAL CATALOGUE 31 

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