00
ADDRESSES AND SERMONS,
DELIVERED DURING A VISIT
TO THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA
IN 1878.
BY
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D.D.
Dean of Westminster.
$ctu fork:
MACMILLAN & CO.
1879.
PREFACE.
I HAVE been asked by my kind friends in America
to leave with them a record of the utterances which,
whether in the reception of their generous hospitalities
or in the more solemn form of addresses from the
pulpit, have been drawn from me during my brief
journey through the United States and Canada. It
will be evident that the speeches delivered on the
social occasions which led to them were sometimes
entirely unpremeditated, and always deficient in that
preparation which I could have wished. But as
they truly expressed, in however imperfect a form,
the feelings inspired by the new experiences with
which my rapid survey of American life for the first
time brought me into contact, I have not scrupled
to recall them. Some of these are reproduced from
the reports, more or less exact, of the American
journals. In two instances (the addresses to the
vi PREFACE.
Episcopal Clergy of Boston and of New York) no
report was given, and what is here printed can but
represent the substance so far as it was retained by
memory.
The Addresses, as will be seen, were delivered
to very various audiences, some of them consisting
chiefly of the great communions of the Presbyterians,
Congregationalists, Methodists, and Baptists, which
have played so large a part in the religious develop
ment of the American people. The Sermons, on the
other hand, were all delivered in the Protestant Epis
copal Church. The limitations of time were of them
selves quite sufficient to preclude any attempt at wider
ministrations, and the liberality with which the various
sections of that Church offered to me the opportunity
of speaking from its pulpits to the people of America,
rendered any further effort unnecessary.
Two additions I have ventured to make to the
Sermons preached in the United States. One is that
which was delivered in the Cathedral of Quebec. The
common interest which attaches to the whole Northern
Continent will enable the reader to enter into the
grateful farewell which that Sermon was intended to
express to the departing Governor, who has done so
much for Canada, as well as the respectful greeting
PREFACE.
to the coming Governor, from whose peculiar vantage-
ground so much is expected. I have also added,
as a preface to the whole collection of Sermons, the
substance of one preached in England, which indicates
in a more systematic form than was possible in these
discourses the general conditions of religious inquiry,
applicable equally to the theological students of both
countries. It also bears directly on the subject of the
two last discourses in New York.
I commend these pages to the indulgence of the
American public, with the humble hope that they
may tend in some measure to forward those higher
principles of Christian civilisation, on which the future
progress alike of the British Empire and of the United
States so largely depends.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
ADDRESSES :
SALEM "OUR OLD HOMES"
BOSTON LIBERAL THEOLOGY 8
BALTIMORE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. . . 16
IRVINGTON REPLY TO THE REV. DR. ADAMS . . 19
NEW YORK AN AMERICAN SCHOLAR ... 23
,, JOHN WESLEY 34,
REPLY AT THE CENTURY CLUB . . 49
,, REPLY TO THE BAPTIST MINISTERS . 56
THE PROSPECTS OF THE CHURCH OF
ENGLAND 60
SERMONS :
PREFACE ON THE CONDITIONS OF RELIGIOUS INQUIRY 71
BOSTON THE EAST AND THE WEST .... 96
PHILADELPHIA THE HOLY ANGELS . . . .115
NEW YORK THE PERPLEXITIES OF LIFE . . .133
QUEBEC THE USES OF CONFLICT . . . .151
STOCKBRIDGE, MASS. "THERE is NOTHING" . . 172
NEW YORK THE UNITY AND DIVERSITY OF
CHRISTENDOM 184
THE NATURE OF MAN .... 200
THE NATURE OF GOD .... 228
ADDRESSES
ADDRESSES.
SPEECH IN REPLY TO THE TOAST OF
"OUR OLD HOMES,"
AT THE BANQUET AT SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS, SEPT. lQ f 1878,
ON THE OCCASION OF THE TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH
ANNIVERSARY OF THE LANDING OF GOVERNOR ENDICOTT.
MR. PRESIDENT : You are aware that I have been
but two days on this side of the Atlantic. I came
to this country not to speak but to hear, not to teach
but to learn, and therefore you will not expect me,
even if there were not more potent reasons, to address
you at present at any length. But, after the kind
way in which you have proposed my health, after
the kind reception with which I have been met,
after the tribute which I feel is given in my humble
B 2
ADDRESSES. SALEM. \\
honour to my own country, I cannot refrain from a few
words to express the deep gratification which I have
had at being present, under the kind protection of my
ancient friend, Mr. Winthrop, and my new friend,
the Governor of Massachusetts, on this auspicious
occasion. You propose "our old homes." Our old
homes. It has often struck me that I should almost
have wished to have been born on this side of the
Atlantic, as a citizen of the United States, in order
to have felt the pleasure which I have seen again
and again in the faces of Americans as they have
witnessed their old homes on the other side of the
ocean. It has been my constant happiness to receive
them in that oldest of all the old homes, whether
of Old England or New England, Westminster
Abbey. It is a pleasure to me to think that those
who cross from this side of the Atlantic may find
something in that old home which may remind them
of their new homes here. You may see on the walls
of Westminster Abbey a tablet, placed in that church
by the State of Massachusetts itself, in that dubious
period over which the eloquent orator of to-day
passed with so tender and delicate a step. And
you will see the temporary grave of your illustrious
townsman, the munificent benefactor of the poor of
,] "OfJR OLD .HOMES? <f
London, where his remains were placed amidst -the
mourning of the whole metropolis. You will even see
in a corner there, most sacred of memory, Boston
harbour depicted with the sun setting behind the
western world.
But as there is a pleasure which Americans feel
in visiting their old home, there is a pleasure which
an Englishman feels when, after long waiting and
long desiring, he visits for the first time the shores
of this new home of his old race. You can hardly
imagine the intense curiosity with which, as he enters
Boston harbour, he sees the natural features opening
upon his view, of which he has so long read in
books, and when he sees pointed out to him name after
name familiar in his own country. And when I come
to this celebration, cold and hard must be the heart
of that Englishman who would not feel drawn to a
place hallowed by the recollection of those Puritan
fathers whose ancestors were as valuable an element
in our society as they can have been in yours. Long,
long ago, before I had formed the design of coming
to America, I had been drawn to the city of Salem
as the birthplace of one whom I may call my friend,
the gifted sculptor, whose vigorous and vivid poem
we all heard with so much pleasure today, and
6 ADDRESSES. SALEM. [i.
also as the cradle of the genius ranking amongst
the first places of the literature of this age and
country, the genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne.
And listening to all the marvellous strains of
interest which have gone through the speeches of
this day, one point which strikes me most forcibly
is that I am carried back from these shores to my
own country two hundred and fifty years ago. I
doubt whether there is any audience in England
which could be equally impressed by any event that
had taken place in England two hundred and fifty
years ago, with the feeling toward the mother country
and toward the societies of their own country which
I have seen throughout the proceedings of to-day.
The foundation of Salem is indeed an event which
unites together our old and our new homes, and if
there is a mixture of light and shade in the recol
lections which crowd upon us, that also is important
in its relation to the future development of our race.
If in Salem we stand on the grave of some extinct
beliefs extinct and vanished away, as we trust, for
ever so in Salem we cannot but look forward to
that distant future, to the ages in which no one can
forecast with any certainty the destinies either of Europe
or America, but in which we still hope that our own
I.] "OUR OLD HOMES." 7
English race may, under the providence of God, effect
new works and fulfil new hopes for the human race,
such as, perhaps, at present we hardly dare think of
Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
II.
THE PROSPECTS OF LIBERAL
THEOLOGY.
THE SUBSTANCE OF A REPLY AT A RECEPTION OF THE CLERGY
OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF MASSACHUSETTS
AND RHODE ISLAND, AT BOSTON, SEPTEMBER 23, 1878.
You have asked me to give a brief account of the
prospects of Liberal Theology in England. It is not
altogether a view of unmixed rejoicing. During the
last thirty years there have been many reverses, on
which I will not dwell. Still, there have been successes
achieved which justify us in hoping that, if not now,
at any rate years or generations hence, Liberal Theo
logy may resume its natural ascendency over the minds
of educated men. By Liberal Theology, I mean a
theology which, whilst comprehending all the whole
some elements of thought at work in the world, yet
holds that the Christian belief is large enough to con
tain them; which insists not on the ceremonial, the
IT.] PROSPECTS OF LIBERAL THEOLOGY. 9
dogmatic, or the portentous, but on the moral side
of religion ; which insists on the spirit, not on the
letter on the meaning, not on the words on
the progressive, not on the stationary character of
Christianity.
Let me take four groups of instances in which
the public opinion of the clergy has been deeply
changed in this direction even during the last few
years.
(i.) First, as regards the Bible. The crude notions
which prevailed twenty years ago on the subject of
inspiration have been so completely abandoned, as to
be hardly anywhere maintained by theological scholars.
Of the eleven thousand English clergy who set their
hands to a declaration in favour of those crude
notions fifteen years ago, there are probably not fifty
who would now do it again.
As regards the interpretation of the sacred books,
questions of criticism and authorship which were
formerly considered to be entirely closed are now fully
and freely discussed. The non-Pauline authorship of
the Epistle to the Hebrews, which thirty years ago is
said to have excluded a candidate from a theological
professorship, is now maintained by no one of any
name or fame. The second Isaiah, if not equally
io ADDRESSES J30STOA 7 . [n.
recognised, can be at any rate mentioned without
exciting alarm or scandal. The composite character
of the Pentateuch, in like manner, on which the
Bishop of Natal found such extraordinary difficulty
in obtaining a patient hearing, is now, in principle,
assumed almost as certain. The complexity of the
mutual relation of the four Gospels, although still
agitated, without arriving, as perhaps we never shall
arrive, at any fixed solution, is yet so deeply im
pressed on the theological mind that no scholar can
for the future avoid considering it. The Biblical
criticism, begun so admirably at Oxford by Professor
Jowett, and continued in a more cautious spirit,
though with more visible results, at Cambridge, by
Professor Lightfoot, is full of promise for the future.
(2.) Secondly, as regards social and ecclesiastical
questions. In spite of the retrograde influences
which have prevailed within or without the Church,
it may be safely asserted that never has the Liberal
doctrine of the relations of Church and State been
more thoroughly ventilated than in these later years.
The doctrine laid down by Hooker, which has always
more or less animated the policy of enlightened
statesmen and divines in England, received a new
elucidation in the writings of Arnold, and has on
II.] PROSPECTS OF LIBERAL THEOLOGY. n
the whole successfully held its ground. If the
Church of England perishes, it will not be, as might
have been the case forty years ago, for want of a
thoroughly reasonable and philosophical vindication
of the. principles of a National Church. The good
relations between Churchmen and Nonconformists,
though they have lost much, have also gained much.
The admission of the Dissenters to the universities,
their association with the revision of the translation
of the Bible, are points which, once achieved, will
not be surrendered.
(3.) Our dogmatical expositions have undergone a
modification so extensive, as that probably no treatise
on any of them would now be written with the
phraseology current forty years ago. The doctrine of
the Atonement will never again appear in the crude
form common both in Protestant and Roman Catholic
churches in former times. The doctrine of the more
merciful view of future punishment, and of the hope
of a universal restitution, has been gradually ad
vancing, and the darker view gradually receding. The
doctrine of the Trinity has been more and more
resolved into its Biblical character; the Athatiasian
creed, by half of the English clergy has been con
demned, and by the Irish Church has been silenced ;
12 ADDRESSES. BOSTON. [11.
and though there are many who insist on retaining
the old repulsive scholastic forms, the main stumbling-
blocks involved in them have lost their general interest.
The quarrels about Predestination and Justification,
which a hundred years ago filled the whole mind of
the Scottish and English Nonconformists, have, even
with them, almost disappeared. The question of
miracles has at least reached this point that no one
would now make them the chief or sole basis of the
evidence for religious truth. In this intermediate
position the contending parties may surely rest for a
time.
In all these and many like respects, Liberal
Theology, instead of standing on the merely apologetic
ground of defending itself against the attacks of its
assailants, ought itself to "claim an orthodoxy (if we
like so to call it), a Biblical, Evangelical, Catholic
character, which its opponents have never reached.
On many of the essential doctrines of Christianity,
the universality of the Divine Love, the justification
of the good heathens, the supreme importance of
morality, the possibility of human perfection, the
divinity of conscience, the identification of the Church
with the laity, of things secular and things sacred,
the Bible and the best voices of Christendom are on
II.] PROSPECTS OF LIBERAL THEOLOGY. 13
our side and not on theirs; and though, on account
of the many-sidedness of truth, and the imperfection
of human language, there is much to be forgiven
on both sides, yet, on the whole, it is they, not we,
whose extravagances need to be tolerated, and whose
errors need to be condoned.
(4.) The general relations of Theology to Literature
have gained immensely. In ecclesiastical history, Mil-
man and Lecky, with many lesser works on special
periods, have admirably filled the waste places.
Tennyson s poems and Max Miiller s researches are
a storehouse of wise theology. With all the ob
jections that may be made to Matthew Arnold, he
has in his father s spirit, though in a different
direction left an enduring mark in the light he has
thrown not only on the controversy with Puritans,
but on the importance of the Bible, and in the call
to every theological formula to cast off its provincial
and scholastic form and take the literary and universal
form, which is the test of ultimate permanence.
One word in conclusion. Whatever the relapses to
which I referred at the beginning of these remarks,
whatever the failures in store for us in the future, I
am persuaded that what is called Liberal Theology is
the backbone of the Church of England, and will be
14 ADDRESSES. BOSTON. [n.
found to be the backbone of its daughter Church in
America. The fact that a large portion of the world
and the Church is against us ought not to alter our
conviction that, in the main, we are right. We must
still hold by our colours. We have made good a
starting-point for those who come after us, perhaps in
the twentieth or the twenty-first century, and no deeper
impression will have been left upon this age than by
those who have followed in the broad track opened
by the great philosophic divines of the seventeenth
century; an impress, it may be, all the deeper, even
if, which I do not venture to anticipate, it shall come
to pass that we shall be remembered as the last of
the Liberal Theologians, the last of those who in
England did not despair of their religion and their
Church.
Of your future in America, it is not for me to
speak. Any stranger who comes to your country for
the first time must be awestruck by the vastness of the
destiny before it. But, perhaps, he may be allowed to
express his hopes in the form of an earnest entreaty
that you, the clergy, will remember the greatness of
your profession great in itself, and great in its rela
tion to the other churches and communions around you ;
that you will remember how much of that greatness
II.] PROSPECTS OF LIBERAL THEOLOGY. 15
belongs to the large and liberal conceptions of Chris
tianity which, in America as well as in England, and
in New England especially, have been breathed into
your minds by the .genial influences of the earlier part
of this century.
When I see hereafter in Westminster Abbey the
memorial which in its most beloved spot contains a
faint representation of Boston harbour, when I listen
there once more, as I trust I shall, to the eloquent
voice which I have already twice heard within those
walls, and now, with renewed pleasure, in Trinity
Church, the scenes of this first welcome to your
shores will recur with delight to my thoughts. May the
grateful sense of the kindness which I have received
from you shape itself into the sincere prayer that
God may bless you with the fulness of His blessing.
III.
ADDRESS
AT AN EVENING MEETING OF THE STUDENTS OF THE JOHNS
HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, BALTIMORE, SEPTEMBER 30, l8;3.
I AM no speaker, but I must return a few words of
thanks for the kind language with which I have been
received. When I see an institution like this in its
first beginnings, I am carried back to the time when
my own university in England was begun, perhaps a
thousand years ago, in the fabulous obscurity of the age
of Alfred, or the more recent historic times of Walter
of Merton or Devorguilla of Balliol ; and I observe
the repetition of the same yearnings after a distant
future of improvement, as those which were before the
minds of those old mediaeval founders. The same spirit
is needed for that improvement on this side of the
ocean and on the other. I am led to think of the
Hi.] JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. 17
description given by Chaucer, in that inestimable Pro
logue to the Canterbury Tales, which I hope you will
all read one day or other, of the Good Scholar and
the Good Pastor, bred in Oxford in his time; and I
see how, in spite of all the vast changes which have
passed over the minds of men since that age, the
same qualities are still necessary to make a good and
sincere scholar, a good scientific student, an efficient
medical or legal adviser, an efficient spiritual pastor.
S mnlicity, sincerity, love of goodness, and love of
truth, are as powerful and as much needed in our
day as they were in the days long ago, which formed
the great professions that are still the bulwarks of
society. The President and the Professor who have
spoken have both referred to the influence of my
beloved teacher in former times Thomas Arnold. The
lapse of years has only served to deepen in me the
conviction that no gift can be more valuable than the
recollection and the inspiration of a great character
working upon our own. It is my hope that you may
all experience this at some time of your lives as I
have done. I entreat you to cherish this hope, and
to remember that on your making the best of any such
influences, and also of the remarkable resources provided
for you in this noble institution, depends your use in
i8 ADDRESSES. BALTIMORE. [in.
life and the effect which you may produce on the future
generations of this great country. There are many
evils, many difficulties, individual and national, with
which you will have to contend; but it may possibly
cheer you in your efforts to recall these words of an
Englishman who now sees you for the first time, and
who will in all probability never see you again. May
God bless you all.
IV.
REPLY TO A SPEECH OF THE
REV. DR. ADAMS,
President of the Presbyterian Union Seminary at New York y
AT THE HOUSE OF CYRUS W. FIELD, ESQ., IRVINGTON,
ON THE HUDSON, OCTOBER 8, 1878.
THERE is one criticism which Dr. Adams s kind words
suggest to my mind namely, that Americans are
inclined to believe that Englishmen have the same
extraordinary fluency of speech that they have them
selves. But there is one consolation. When on
the eve of starting for America, I said to a young
Englishman who had visited this country that my
heart almost sank at the prospect of so long and
difficult a journey, and I asked him, "What do you
think is the chief pleasure of travelling in America?"
c 2
20 ADDRESSES. IRVINGTON. [iv.
He said: "The pleasure in travelling there is being
in a foreign country, and yet being able to talk in
our own language." It is so. I feel that, however
difficult it is to attempt to make a speech in English
to Americans, it would be much more difficult if I
had to do so in bad French or worse Spanish. The
relation between the two countries has not only been
cemented by the cable of which there are so many
natural mementoes in this house but also by this
intercommunity of sentiment and speech. As has been
said by Keble :
Brothers are brothers evermore ;
No distance breaks the tie of blood.
You remember the beautiful classical legend of Are-
thusa plunging into the sea, and coming up again in
the form of the fountain at Syracuse ; which was a
sign that although the colonists of that city had
bidden a final adieu, to their parent city in Greece,
they had not forgotten that they were the same
people under a different sky. I have already found,
while travelling here, in every city and town I visit,
under every hill and in every stream, such springs of
Arethusa breaking forth and welcoming me. Your
Washington Irving, whose home was here in this
neighbourhood, and whose tomb is among you, is
iv.] REPLY TO THE REV. DR. ADAMS. 21
still, we may consider, in Westminster Abbey, where
Poets Corner not only comprises those whose bodies lie
there, but also in a wider sense the distant poets and
authors who lie elsewhere. He was the first American
who spoke of that venerable building with the fond
respect which has now become part of yourselves ;
he was among the first to create that feeling of
affection between England and your own country after
the great separation, which must still grow with the
growth of years, and make the two nations one in feeling,
in affection, and in hope for future advancement.
There seems to me nothing more foolish than for
strangers hastily to express opinions upon problems that
can only be settled by yourselves. But one word I may
say. You are still young, and will have all the difficulties
forced upon you that we have encountered. You will,
however, have the advantage of the experience of our
past ages to assist you in overcoming them. The con
ditions of our two countries are so different that each
must judge charitably of each other. There are, perhaps,
no Scotsmen here, but all Presbyterians understand
Scotch, and will appretiate what an old minister
of the Church of Scotland said to a young Scottish
Dissenter who was full of complaints: "When your
lum (chimney) has reeked as long as ours, perhaps
22 ADDRESSES. IRVINGTON. [iv.
it will have as much soot;" and I hope that your
chimney-sweepers may be as effective as ours have
been. May God s blessing rest upon all endeavours
to bring together our different Churches in unity of
spirit, however parted in form,
V.
AN AMERICAN SCHOLAR.
AN ADDRESS TO THE STUDENTS* OF THE UNION THEOLOGICAL
SEMINARY OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF AMERICA,
AT THE SEMINARY IN NEW YORK, OCT. 29, 1 878.
IT gives me great pleasure, not only to hear the kind
words of your President, but to see the faces of so
many young students, who are called to work in this
seminary and to carry out in their several spheres the
destinies, so far as in them lies, of the Church to
which they belong and of the vast Republic of which
that Church forms so large a part. Your President
has spoken of the contrast between the youth of this
country and the age of mine. That, of course, is a
contrast which strikes everyone who comes from the
other side of the Atlantic to this; but there is one
element which is common to both sides of the Atlantic
* This Address is printed almost verbatim from an unusually
faithful report made by the students themselves.
24 ADDRESSES NEW YORK. [v.
one spring of youth which is perpetual, and that is the
sight of the young generation rising up and the inspi
ration which that sight gives to anyone who looks
upon them. I remember a friend* of mine, a poet,
who has visited America, and whose name is dear
to both countries, once quoting those lines of Words
worth s,
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky ;
" and," he added we were speaking about colleges
"my heart leaps up when I behold an under
graduate." Well, that is very much my feeling when
I look upon you. Young men all over the world arc
very much the same ; and what I would say to young
men at Oxford or Cambridge I believe I may fairly
say to you.
I would wish, as far as I can, to concentrate my
remarks, so as not to lose myself in those vague
commonplaces into which one is liable to fall when
speaking in the midst of an institution of which one
knows very little, and to persons who of necessity are
strangers. This I will endeavour to effect by re
calling to you and to myself a debt of gratitude which
for many, many years I have owed to Union Seminary.
* The late Arthur H. Clough.
V.] AN AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 25
My first acquaintance with American theological litera
ture I might almost say my first exact acquaintance
with American literature at all was in reading the
works of a Professor of Union Seminary. I mean
the "Biblical Researches" of Dr. Robinson. Whether
any of you have ever embarked on the study of those
four volumes it is not for me to ask ; but they are
amongst the very few books of modern literature of
which I can truly say that I have read every word. I
have read them under circumstances which riveted my
attention upon them (though, no doubt, not con
ducive to a very profound study of them) while riding
on the back of a camel in the Desert ; while travelling
on horseback through the hills of Palestine ; under
the shadow of my tent, when I came in weary from
the day s journey. These were the scenes in which I
first became acquainted with the work of Dr. Robinson.
But to that work I have felt that I and all students of
Biblical literature owe a debt that never can be effaced.
Those books are not such as any theological student
in America, or elsewhere, will be likely to read through
unless he has some special stimulus to do so. But
I cannot help , recalling them on this occasion, not
only for the special personal reason which I have
mentioned, but also because they appear to me to
26 ADDRESSES. NEW YORK. [v.
furnish a kind of framework for some remarks which
are applicable to all theological students everywhere.
There are three characteristics of the " Biblical
Researches " of Dr. Robinson which apply far more
widely than to the study of sacred geography. The first
is the devotion with which he applied himself to one
particular portion of the study of the Bible the outer
framework of it without any fear or hesitation as to
any consequences which might be derived from it. Dr.
Robinson, I believe it is not too much to say, was the
first person who ever saw Palestine with his eyes open
as to what he ought to see. Hundreds and thousands
of travellers had visited Palestine before pilgrims,
seekers after pleasure, even scientific travellers but
there was no person before his time who had come to
visit that sacred country, with all the appliances ready
beforehand which were necessary to enable him to under
stand what he saw; and he also was the first person
who came there with an eye capable of observing,
and a hand capable of recording, all that with these
appliances he brought before his vision. Now, this
is a part of his work which applies to many other
subjects than to the geography of Palestine or
the geography of Arabia. It is the same principle
which I endeavour to impress upon all theological
v.] AN AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 27
students the great difference between having eyes to
observe and not having eyes to observe. You may
travel through a country ; you may travel through a
book ; you may travel through the Bible itself, either
with eyes to see what is in that book or in that land,
or with the dull, unreasoning, unobserving blindness
which sees nothing at all. You ought to cultivate as
much as possible this habit of observation. You ought
to cultivate it, I say, without fear of the consequences.
There are some people who, I believe, are afraid even
of sacred geography. They are afraid of having the
outward facts and circumstances connected with sacred
history brought close to them. I remember hearing of an
old Scotswoman no doubt an old Scottish Presbyterian
who, on being told that some one had been to Jerusalem,
said : " You will na make me believe that. There is na
such place as Jerusalem on airth ! " Well, that feeling of
the old Scotswoman is, I believe, very common with
a large part of the community. They cannot bring
themselves to believe that the events of which we read
in the Bible really occurred amongst persons like our
selves ; and it is one great advantage of such a faithful,
accurate study of Palestine as Dr. Robinson gave to us,
that we are almost forced to remember that such is the
case that there was a real geography ; there was a real
28 ADDRESSES. NEW YORK. [v.
history ; there were real men and women, who are de
scribed in the Old and New Testaments, and whom we
must approach with all reverence and with all humility,
but still with the firm conviction that they lived in the
same humble kind of way, and with the same human
passions and infirmities, or at least with the same out
ward surroundings as ourselves.
The second lesson which I would wish you to derive
from this work of your celebrated Professor is this :
A friend of mine, at Oxford, once paid a visit to a
very old man, who was regarded as a kind of oracle,
for he lived to his hundredth year ; and the longer
he lived the more people went to inquire of him, as if
he were an infallible oracle. My friend went to him,
and said : " Would you kindly give me some advice in
regard to reading theology?" And he was rather dis
comfited at the old man s saying, after a long pause :
" I will give you -my advice. It is, Verify your
references: Well, I will not confine myself to so
homely a piece of advice as that, although it was very
good ; but I will say : Verify your facts. That was
what Professor Robinson did, with the greatest care.
One value of his book on Palestine is its extreme
accuracy. I travelled with those four volumes through
the country, and at the end of the time I wrote to him
v.] AN AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 29
at New York, to say that the greatest compliment that I
could pay him, after having read his books under such
circumstances, was that I had found in them only three
small, insignificant errors. This accuracy, this verifica
tion of facts, this sifting of things to the bottom, is a
thing which all students ought to cultivate, and which
theological students ought especially to cultivate, be
cause it is something which theological students are
especially apt to neglect. Do let me entreat of you to
look facts in the face, whether the facts of the Bible, or
the facts of science, or the facts of scholarship. Do
not be afraid of them. Go as far as you possibly can
in the language of Greek and Hebrew, in the com
parison of the sacred volumes of the Old and New
Testaments with the sacred volumes of other religions.
Make the most thorough and searching investigation
that you can, with light from whatever quarter, as to
the origin of the sacred books : and in this way you
will be discharging your duty, as students and as
pastors, to your Church and to your country, in this
great and stirring age in which our lot is cast.
The third characteristic which distinguishes Dr. ,
Robinson s writings is this : I have said that they
are books which we are not likely to read through
for ourselves, unless under some special temptation
30 ADDRESSES. NEW YORK. [v.
to study sacred geography; but there is one charac
teristic of them which we may all take as lessons to
ourselves that is, their style. The style of Dr.
Robinson s book is characterised by its extreme sim
plicity, combined with an elevation of description and
of feeling whenever the subject demands it. There
are books on theology which we sometimes read,
where, first of all, there is no style at all, and also
where whatever style there be is all couched in the
same uniform tone, either of dulness or of exaggera
tion. Now in Dr. Robinson s book there may be
pages, no doubt, which we should call dull, because
they never rise above the actual facts which he has
to teach us ; but whenever he does come within
sight of some great and impressive scene when he
comes, for example, within sight of Mount Sinai or
within sight of Jerusalem his style, simple and massive
as it is, is adorned with a native eloquence which at
once arrests our attention and calls forth our admira
tion. It is this style this union of simplicity where
simplicity is desirable, and of elevation where elevation
is desirable which produces upon our minds that sense
of proportion so difficult for theological students to
obtain, so distinctive yet so important, whether as
regards writing or preaching. To write on all sorts
v.] AN AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 31
of subjects connected with religion in a high-flown,
inflated, exaggerated manner is, as I said just now, a
temptation into which we are all apt to fall. The
subject rather encourages it. The subjects of theology
are so great that we imagine that if we adopt this
kind of exaggerated style we are only following the
natural expressions of a religious heart. Nevertheless,
whatever excuses we may make for this inflation, it is
a thing to be especially avoided, and it is a fault into
which American students of theology are especially likely
to fall. Do beware of it It very much diminishes
your influence. This inflated style is really one of
the chief drawbacks which we have in Europe to
our enjoyment of American literature. Dr. Robinson
I venture to say, is a most admirable exception, and
he should be an example and a warning equally in
Europe and in America.
But it is not only thus with regard to your style.
It is also very desirable to keep before your minds
the necessity of distinguishing between what is im
portant and what is unimportant, what is essential
and what is unessential, what is primary and what is
secondary. I once knew a very distinguished Italian
layman who said that, if he were to sum up the faults
of the theology of the Roman Church in one word.
32 ADDRESSES. NEW YORK. [v.
it would be that they confounded the instrumental
with the fundamentals. There are times when we
likewise are prone to confound instrumental with
fundamentals; to confound things which are of no
importance at all with things which are of the utmost
importance.
These are some of the remarks which have been
suggested to me by finding myself confronted with so
many young students, and by my having to speak in
Union Seminary, which numbered Dr. Robinson among
its professors. I cannot hope that remarks thrown
out in this cursory and fugitive manner can produce
any very lasting impression on those who hear them;
yet it is possible that even remarks like these, coming
from a stranger like myself, coming from one whose
office, at any rate, as your President has kindly
observed, is well known to you ; whose habitation is
connected, as he has reminded you, with the first
beginnings of the theology of English, Scottish, and
American Presbyterianism may now and then recur
to you in the course of your theological studies, and
may lead you, perchance, into some of the reflections
which I have suggested : first, on the desirableness of
remembering the historical character of the sacred
books with which we have to deal ; secondly, on
v.] AN AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 33
the necessity of verifying and pursuing to the utmost
all facts that are brought before you, whether in science
or religion ; and, thirdly, the importance of observing a
sense of proportion, whether in your style, or your
ideas, or your conception of the various doctrines of
Christianity.
I wish you all every success in the work in which
you are employed. Every student and pastor has his
part to play in this age of transition through which
we are passing. I shall not live to see the end of
those problems which now agitate the minds of men,
but you will perhaps live to see them sclved. You,
perhaps, in the twentieth century, will live to see a
brighter and a happier day than that which sometimes
seems to overcloud the minds and oppress the hopes of
those who live in the latter part of this nineteenth
century. But I will not depart from you except with
words of hope. May God bless you ; may God sustain
you in your efforts; may God enable you, through the
spirit of wisdom and understanding and godly fear,
both in your studies and in your pastoral duties, to
fulfil the work, whatever it be, that He has assigned
both to the greatest and the humblest amongst you.
vr.
JOHN WESLEY.
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT A RECEPTION BY THE BISHOPS,
PASTORS, AND MEMBERS OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL
CHURCH, IN ST. PAUL*S METHODIST CHURCH, NEW YORK,
NOVEMBER I, 1878.*
BISHOPS, PASTORS, AND MEMBERS OB THE METHODIST
EPISCOPAL CHURCH : I tender to you my sincere and
grateful thanks for the honour which you have done
to me, and to the Church and country which I
humbly represent, by the kindness and cordiality with
which you have welcomed me this evening.
I am aware that one of the chief grounds I may
say the chief ground on which this welcome has been
afforded me is a recognition of the debt which I
have been thankful to have been able to repay to
the founder of the Society of Methodists. When I
* Taken almost verbatim from the excellent report in The
Christian Advocate.
vi.] JOHN WESLEY. 35
think of this vast assemblage, when I think of the
magnificent results which Methodism has achieved in
this great country, it would be tempting to me to
enlarge on the hopes and the prospects which may
lie before the Methodist Church in the United States
of America; but I feel that the ignorance under
which a stranger comes to a foreign land forbids him
to enlarge on a field of which he must necessarily
know very little, and I therefore prefer to confine the
few remarks which I venture to make on this occasion
to the reasons which induced me in England, and
which now induce me here, to pay my humble tribute
to John Wesley, the founder of this great society.
In so doing I trust that you will feel, and I feel
myself, that I am best enlarging on the sources of
your strength, and best unfolding the hopes that
open before you.
In the address which has been kindly presented
to me, allusion has been made to the monument
in Westminster Abbey, which by my permission was
erected to the memory of the two illustrious brothers
who established the first beginnings of Methodism. It
was some eight or ten years ago that the then President
of the Wesleyan Conference in England, whose name,
has been rightly mentioned in the address just read
D 2
36 ADDRESSES. NEW YORK. [vr.
asked, with that courtesy and modesty which is
characteristic of him, if I would allow the erection
of a monument in Westminster Abbey, in Poets
Corner, to Charles Wesley, as the sweet Psalmist of
our English Israel. I ventured to answer : " If we
are to have a monument to Charles, why not to
John?" To John Wesley, accordingly, together with
his brother Charles not as excluding Charles, but
as the greater genius, as the greater spirit of the two
that monument has been erected. It was erected
close to a monument which in the last century was
placed there to the memory of the great Congregational
divine and poet, Isaac Watts, and I mention the cir
cumstance as showing that, in welcoming this recog
nition of your illustrious founder, I have been but
following precedents already established in Westminster
Abbey and in the Church of England.
It has been said in the address, and I think
that it has been said also by the other speakers,
that we are assembled here in a building consecrated to
the Methodist worship, consecrated to the worship
of Almighty God, as set on foot in this country by
John Wesley. It reminds me of what happened to
myself when on visiting, in London, the City Road
Chapel, in which John Wesley ministered, and the
VI. J JOHN WESLEY. 37
cemetery adjoining in which he is buried, I asked
an old man who showed me the cemetery I asked
him, perhaps inadvertently and as an English Church
man might naturally ask " By whom was this ceme
tery consecrated?" and he answered: "It was con
secrated by the bones of that holy man, that holy
servant of God, John Wesley." In the spirit of that
remark I return to the point to which I have ven
tured to address my remarks, and that is the claims
which the character and career of John Wesley have,
not only upon your veneration, but upon the veneration
of English Christendom.
And first of all, may I venture to say that in
claiming him as your founder, you enjoy a peculiar
privilege amcvng the various communions which have
from time to time broken off from the communion of
the Church of England. The founder of the English
Baptists (they will allow me to say so) is compara
tively unknown. The founder of the English Congrega-
tionalists (and I say it with no shadow of disrespect)
is also comparatively unknown ; the founder of En
glish Unitarianism (and I say it again without a shadow
of disrespect) is also comparatively obscure ; the
founder of the Society of Friends, George Fox, has
been superseded in celebrity by William Penn, and
38 ADDRESSES. NEW YORK. [vi.
by other illustrious Friends who have risen in that
society since his departure. But it is no disrespect to
the famous society of Methodists, it is no disrespect to
the eminent and reverend persons who sit around me,
to say that no one has risen in the Methodist Society
equal to their founder, John Wesley. It is this
which makes his character and his fortunes so peculiarly
interesting to the whole Christian world.
And let me ask in what particulars it is that
John Wesley has attained this great preeminence?
First of all, there is a remark which is to all reflecting
persons specially instructive, that, if you will allow me
to say so, his career is a vindication of the character
of the much despised eighteenth century. I know not
whether in America, but certainly in England, it has
been the habit of our time to disparage altogether the
religious genius of that age. John Wesley, if any person
of the last century, was a representative of it ; in his
long and eventful life he covered almost the whole of
those hundred years. He showed that even in that
century, in many respects dry and dull, there was a
capacity for producing a religious character of the
highest order. He was the chief reviver of religious
fervour in all Protestant Churches both of the Old
and the New World. Fie had as has been well said
vi.] JOHN WESLEY. 39
by one whom I venture to call the first of modern
English* critics he had "a genius for godliness."
Again, there is this very interesting peculiarity of
John Wesley interesting not only to Wesleyans, but
to every communion throughout the world that he
showed how it was possible to make a very wide
divergence from the communion to which he belonged
without parting from it. " I vary," he used to say,
"I vary from the Church of England, but I will never
leave it." And in this assurance of his determina
tion to hold to the Church of England in spite
of all difficulties and obstacles he persevered unto
the end. It would be unfitting and unbecoming in
me to cast any censure on the course which this great
society, especially in America, has taken since his
death. Circumstances change ; opportunities are lost ;
events which might have been possible in his life
time may have become impossible since. Never
theless, the relations which he himself maintained
towards the Church of England give encouragement
to all intelligent minds and active hearts in their
several communions to endeavour to make the best of
an institution so long as they can possibly remain in
it. And on these relations which he encouraged his fol-
* Matthew Arnold.
40 ADDRESSES. NEW YORK. [vi.
lowers to maintain, of friendliness and communion with
the Church of England, I need not repeat his oft-
reiterated phrases. Those expressions, those entreaties,
which he urged upon his followers, not to part from the
mother Church, are not the less instructive nor the less
applicable because, as I have said, circumstances both in
England and in America have in some degree parted us
asunder. There are those in our own country there
are possibly those in America who think that the
Wesleyans, the Methodists, may perchance be one of the
links of union between the mother Church of England
and those who are more or less estranged from it. On
this I pronounce no opinion. I know that separations
once made are very difficult to reconcile. Like the two
friends described by the English poet (I apply a quota
tion used by Norman M Leod on a like occasion) :
They stand aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs that have been rent asunder.
But still we may always trust that something of
the old affection to the old Church still continues.
One cannot help seeing this very occasion shows it
that there is something in the hearts of Methodists which
responds to the feeling still entertained towards them
by the mother Church. I always feel that some in
justice has been done, in common parlance, both in
vi.] JOHN WESLEY. 41
our Church and in the outlying communions, to the
bishops and the authorities of our Church at the time
of John Wesley s career. It was not, as has been often
incorrectly said, by the action of the English bishops
that John Wesley and his followers were estranged from
us. The King (George II.), the judges, and the chief
bishops I particularly mention Archbishop Potter,
Bishop Gibson, Bishop Benson, and the famous Bishop
Lowth treated him with the utmost consideration and
respect ; and nothing could have been more friendly
than the conduct of George II. , or of the judges
of England, toward John Wesley and his followers.
It was the ignorant country squires, and country clergy,
and above all the ignorant multitudes, that would
not endure him. The hostility arose very much from
that stupid, vulgar, illiterate prejudice which exists in
the professional fanaticism and exclusiveness of the
less educated clergy everywhere, and in that bar
barous intolerance so characteristic of the mobs of all
countries. The feeling which drove the followers of
John Wesley from a place in thre Church of England,
a few years later drove the philosopher Priestley from
his scientific studies at Birmingham to take refuge in
Pennsylvania. Therefore, I repeat, the feeling between
the Church of England and the Methodists need never
42 ADDRESSES. NEW YORK. [vi.
be broken. You may remain apart from us, and we
may remain apart from you ; but we shall always feel
that there is an undercurrent of sympathy on which we
can always rely, and which, in times far~ distant, may
possibly once more bring us together.
I pass from these preliminary and general remarks
to three points which characterise the method of his
teachings, and which also are of immense value for
all Christian Churches.
One of them is that which is inscribed on his monu
ment : " The world is my parish." It is true that there
is a counter principle, no less true, "The parish is my
world." The particular sphere in which each of us has
to labour is for each of us the most important, may be
for each of us the world, the chief world, perhaps the
only world in which we may hope to do any good ; if we
fail there, we shall hardly succeed anywhere. But still we
must also bear in mind Wesley s principle. We are not
confined in our ministrations or our teachings only to
the particular sphere in which our lot may happen to
be cast. For those avho write books, those whose
example extends beyond their own circle, the world
is their parish. It is very difficult for anyone to calcu
late how far, how very far, even in this almost illimit
able country, the effect of his influence may extend.
vi.] JOHN WESLEY. 43
The world of America is, in a certain sense, the
parish of everyone who hears me. On the effect of
the examples which you, young or old, layman or
pastor, may hold forth, the destinies of this country to
a great degree may hang. It is so in all lands. It
must be especially so in a country like this, where
public opinion, where the opinion of the people at
large, is supposed to have so great a sway. Do not
for a moment suppose that you can wink at individual
corruption and yet leave the world of this great country
uninjured. Each one of you must remember that
whether in giving your votes, or in writing for news
papers, or in whatever sphere you may be exercising
any influence at all, that influence may reach far
beyond the parish or place in which your daily duties
lie "the world is your parish."
Another point on which Wesley laid stress was the
principle that it was not desirable to have preachers
and teachers and pastors stationed in one place, but
that the standard of religion and morality had to
be constantly quickened and freshened by the system
of itinerant preachers and pastors, who were to
enliven and revive religious feeling from time to
time, from season to season, in places where otherwise
decay and dulness might have set in. You will, here
44 ADDRESSES. NEW YORK. [vi.
too, allow me to say that the opposite principle has
also some value. There is some value in a pastor
growing up amongst his people, a pastor who has seen
successive generations growing up around him when
to the influence of his preaching is added the far
greater and more spiritual influence of a long life of
good example, known and loved by the fathers and
children of all the homes that are gathered within
reach of the parish church. Yet we ought all to feel
that there is, nevertheless, such a thing as the neces
sity of enlightening and refreshing these more stationary
pastorates by the introduction of new influences, new
hopes, new instruments, such as John Wesley had
in mind when he conceived his design of itinerant
preachers. In the old country this has been to a
large extent acknowledged by the introduction of special
services and sermons over and above the stated and
regular ministrations. To a certain degree the Church
of England has profited by his warnings ; and the
services and sermons which have now been set on
foot in almost every cathedral of England varying
the stationary teaching by the constant introduction
of new preachers, coming again and again, so as to
infuse new life into these old congregations and a
new spirit into these old grooves are examples of
vi.] JOHN WESLEY. 45
the manner in which John Wesley s principles may be
engrafted into Churches seeming at first to be very
far removed from Wesleyan institutions.
There is yet one further remark which I would venture
to make on the character and career of John Wesley.
Everyone who knows anything of his long and eventful
course will know that there are many points in it which
it is difficult to defend or to reconcile. But the question
always arises in any person of historical magnitude
Fuch a man as your famous founder what was the
primary, fundamental, overruling principle of his whole
character and teaching ? And for this we have the best
possible testimonies. We have the testimony I have
heard it myself from humble Methodists in England,
aged persons who had hung upon his lips and seen him
in the cottages of the poor. We have also the testimony
I know not whether you are acquainted with it, but if
not I strongly recommend it to the study and perusal of
every Methodist, whether in England or America we
have the testimony of a most enlightened and distin
guished layman, who was his intimate friend, and who
judged him not merely like his more enthusiastic and
unlettered followers, but with the full discernment
of character which superior intelligence and refined
religion alone can give. I mean Alexander Knox.
46 ADDRESSES. NEW YORK. [vi.
He has described him to us in terms most striking
and persuasive, in the letter appended to the latest
edition of Southey s " Life of Wesley." He has recorded
his conviction that the main fundamental overpowering
principle of Wesley s life was not the promotion of any
particular dogma or any particular doctrine, but the
elevation of the whole Christian world in the great prin
ciples of Christian holiness and morality. I might
enforce this by many extracts from this letter of
Mr. Knox, or by expressions both of his humble and
of his more intelligent followers; but it is enough to
refer you to the sayings and sermons in which this
principle is again and again repeated with every kind
of emphasis by John Wesley himself. You will see it
in his journals, you will see it in his sermons on the
catholic spirit, and on the Beatitudes, those admirable
sermons to which all Methodists express their adhesion.
There is one passage, which I have selected out of
hundreds, which I trust you will allow me to read to
you, both because it gives in the most emphatic and
attractive language this principle of his mission, and
also because it expresses that friendly and kindly re
lation which, as in the former part of this address, I
endeavoured to show to you, existed between him and
the high authorities of the Church of England. Let
VI.] JOHN WESLEY. 47
me give one single extract : " Near fifty years ago,
a great and good man, Dr. Potter, then Archbishop
of Canterbury, gave me an advice for which I have
ever since had occasion to bless God. If you
desire to be extensively useful, do not spend your
time and strength in contending for or against such
things as are of a disputable nature, but in testi
fying against open notorious vice, and in promoting
real essential holiness. Let us keep to this, leaving
a thousand disputable points to those that have no
better business than to toss the ball of controversy to
and fro ; let us keep close to our point ; let us bear
a faithful testimony, in our several stations, against all
ungodliness and unrighteousness, and, with all our
might, recommend that inward and outward holiness,
without which no man shall see the Lord. "
It is this which endears the memory of John
Wesley, not only to his own society, not only to
the Church of England, but to all who wish for the
welfare and the progress of humanity throughout the
whole world.
It is because of the keenness and the pertinacity
with which John Wesley maintained this fundamental
doctrine of Christianity that I rejoice to think that
he is honoured amongst the kings and heroes, amongst
48 ADDRESSES. NEW YORK. [vi.
the great, whether in literature or science, whose monu
ments adorn the walls of Westminster Abbey.
I thank you all, bishops and pastors, who sit around
me. I thank you also, members of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, by whom this building is so
densely filled. I thank you all for the generous
and unexpected sympathy, with which I have been
received among you in this my too brief visit to this
great country and to this famous city.
VII.
REPLY
AT THE BREAKFAST GIVEN BY THE CENTURY CLUB, NEW YORK,
NOVEMBER 2, 1878.
THE hospitality shown to me has been no exception
to that with which every Englishman meets in this
country, in the endless repetition of kind words and
the overwhelming pressure of genial entertainment
which has been thrust upon me. That famous En
glishman, Dr. Johnson, when he went from England
to Scotland, which, at that time, was a more formid
able undertaking than is a voyage from England to
America at the present time, met at a reception at
St. Andrew s a young professor who said, breaking the
gloomy silence of the occasion : " I trust you have not
been disappointed !" And the famous Englishman
replied: ^ ( No; I was told that I should find men of
rude manners and savage tastes, and I have not been
So ADDRESSES. NEW YORK. [vrr.
disappointed." So, too, when I set out for your shores
I was told that I should meet a kindly welcome and
the most friendly hospitality. I can only say, with
Dr. Johnson, I have not been disappointed.
But in my vivid though short experience of Ame
rican life and manners, I have experienced not only
hospitality, but considerate and thoughtful kindness, for
which I must ever be grateful. I can find it in my
heart even to forgive the reporters who have left little
of what I have said or done unnoted, and when they
have failed in this, have invented fabulous histories of
things which I never did and sayings which I never
uttered. Sometimes when I have been questioned as
to my impressions and views of America, I have been
tempted to say with an Englishman who was hard
pressed by his constituents with absurd solicitations:
"Gentlemen, this is the humblest moment of my life,
that you should take me for such a fool as to answer
all your questions." But I know their good intentions
and I forgive them freely.
The two months which I have spent on these
shores seem to me two years in actual work, or two
centuries rather, for in them I have lived through all
American history. In Virginia I saw the era of
the earliest settlers, and I met John Smith and
vn.] THE CENTURY CLUB. 51
Pocahontas on the shores of the James river. In
Philadelphia I have lived with William Penn, but
in a splendour, which I fear would have shocked
his simple soul. At Salem I have encountered the
stern founders of Massachusetts ; at Plymouth I have
watched the Mayflower threading its way round the
shoals and promontories of that intricate bay. On
Lake George and at Quebec I have followed the
struggle between the English and the French for the
possession of this great continent. At Boston and
Concord I have followed the progress of the War of
Independence. At Mount Vernon I have enjoyed
the felicity of companionship with Washington and
his associates. I pause at this great name, and carry
my recollections no further. But you will understand
how long and fruitful an experience has thus been
added to my life, during the few weeks in which
I have moved amongst the scenes of your eventful
history.
And then leaving the past for the present, a new
field opens before me. There are two impressions
which are fixed upon my mind as to the leading cha
racteristics of the people among whom I have passed,
as the almanack informs me, but two short months.
On the one hand I see that everything seems to be
E 2
52 ADDRESSES. NEW YORK. [vn.
fermenting and growing, changing, perplexed, bewilder
ing. In that memorable hour memorable in the life
of every man, memorable as when he sees the first
view of the Pyramids, or of the snow-clad range of
the Alps in the hour when for the first time I
stood before the cataracts of Niagara, I seemed to
see a vision of the fears and hopes of America. It
was midnight, the moon was full, and I saw from
the suspension bridge the ceaseless contortion, con
fusion, whirl, and chaos, which burst forth in clouds of
foam from that immense central chasm which divides the
American from the British dominion ; and as I looked
on that ever-changing movement, and listened to that
everlasting roar, I saw an emblem of the devouring
activity, and ceaseless, restless, beating whirlpool of
existence in the United States. But into the moon
light sky there rose a cloud of spray twice as high
as the Falls themselves, silent, majestic, immovable.
In that silver column, glittering in the moonlight, I
saw an image of the future of American destiny, of
the pillar of light which should emerge from the dis
tractions of the present a likeness of the buoyancy
and hopefulness which characterises you both as
individuals and as a nation.
You may remember Wordsworth s fine lines on
vii.] THE CENTURY CLUB. 53
" Yarrow Unvisited, Visited, and Revisited." " America
unvisited" that is now for me a vision of the past; that
fabulous America, in which, before they come to your
shores, Englishmen believe Pennsylvania to be the
capital of Massachusetts, and Chicago to be a few miles
from New York that has now passed away from my
mind for ever. "America visited;" this, with its historic
scenes and its endless suggestions of thought, has taken
the place of that fictitious region. Whether there will
ever be an "America revisited" I cannot say; but if there
should be, it will then be to me not the land of the
Pilgrim Fathers and of Washington, so much as the land
of kindly homes, and enduring friendships, and happy
recollections, which have now endeared it to me. One
feature of this visit I fear I cannot hope to see repeated,
yet one without which it could never have been
accomplished. My two friends, to whom such a pleas
ing reference has been made by Dr. Adams, who have
made the task easy for me which else would have been
impossible ; who have lightened every anxiety ; who
have watched over me with such vigilant care, that I
have not been allowed to touch more than two dollars
in the whole course of my journey they, perchance,
may not share in "America revisited." But if ever such
should be my own good fortune, I shall remember it as
54 ADDRESSES. NEW YORK. [vn.
the land which I visited with them ; where, if at first they
were welcomed to your homes for my sake, I have
often felt as the days rolled on that I was welcomed
for their sake. And you will remember them. When
in after years you read at the end of some elaborate
essay on the history of rnusic or on Biblical geography
the name of George Grove, you will recall with pleasure
the incessant questionings, the eager desire for know
ledge, the wide and varied capacity for all manner of
instruction, which you experienced in your conversa
tions with him here. And when also hereafter there
shall reach to your shores the fame of the distin
guished physician, Dr. Harper, whether in England
or in New Zealand, you will be the more rejoiced
because it will bring before you the memory of the
youthful and blooming student who inspected your
hospitals with such keen appreciation, so impartially
sifting the good from the evil.
I part from you with the conviction that such
bonds of kindly intercourse will cement the union
between the two countries even more than the won
derful cable, on which it is popularly believed in
England that my friend and host, Mr. Cyrus Field,
passes his mysterious existence, appearing and re
appearing at one and the same moment in London
VIL] THE CENTURY CLUB. 55
and in New York. Of that unbroken union there
seemed to me a likeness, when on the beautiful shores
of Lake George, the Loch Katrine of America, I saw
a maple and an oak tree growing together from the
same stem, perhaps from the same root the brilliant
fiery maple, the emblem of America ; the gnarled and
twisted oak, the emblem of England. So may the
two nations always rise together, so different each
from each, and representing so distinct a future, yet
each springing from the same ancestral root, each
bound together by the same healthful sap, and the
same vigorous growth,
VIII.
REPLY
TO AN ADDRESS PRESENTED BY THE BAPTIST MINISTERS OF
NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN, ON NOVEMBER 4, 1878.
PERHAPS you expect me to say a few words but they
must be I fear brief in grateful acknowledgment for
the kind reception which I have met in this city,
and for the sentiments in the address which has just
been read. It is certainly not too much for me to say
that I regard the great Baptist denomination with deep
interest.
I regard it with interest, first, because of the
work which its pastors have done in America and
England but more particularly in America towards
the extension of religion among classes that we in our
Church might find it difficult to reach. The Churches
in this country and in England, as I have before re-
viii.] TO THE BAPTIST MINISTERS. 57
marked in one of my sermons, ought to be all fellow-
labourers in the Christian work, each one doing that
work for which it is peculiarly fitted. So it is that
we ought to feel grateful to the Baptist Churches for
aiding in a task which we ourselves could not accom
plish. This is the first ground on which I would
express my obligation to you.
Secondly, you have alluded to me, in your address,
as an ecclesiastical historian, and have referred to the
undoubted antiquity of your principal ceremony that
of immersion. I feel that here also we ought to be
grateful to you for having, almost alone in the
Western Church, preserved intact this singular and
interesting relic of primitive and apostolic times,
which we you will forgive me for saying so which
we, at least in our practice, have wisely discarded.
To the third ground of my interest in the
Baptist Church you have also alluded in your address.
There can be no doubt that you have produced some
Christians of such eminence and worth that they are
reckoned amongst the wealth of all Christendom.
Bunyan the writer, Robert Hall the preacher, Havelock
the soldier, these are the men to the purity of whose
lives, and to the strength of whose minds, we all owe
so much. It is indeed difficult to learn from the
58 ADDRESSES NEW YORK. [VIIL
" Pilgrim s Progress" whether Bunyan was a Baptist
or Paedobaptist, a Churchman or a Nonconformist ; but
this is the very reason why he is so important, because
it shows that he belonged to that high order of genius
which transcends all the limits that divide us into
different denominations. Again, in the finest and
most famous sermons of Robert Hall, which, unfortu
nately, I am not old enough to have heard myself,
there was nothing in them by which you could ascer
tain whether he did or did not attach any value to
immersion in baptism yet we feel as we read those
sermons that there was something in that magnificent
eloquence, something in that dignified presentation of
the Christian faith, which brought him into contact
not only with your own body but with ours, and with
all who have the heart and mind to understand one
so highly gifted. Of Havelock I will only say what
was told to me by a friend of mine, who spoke to
his wife, and asked whether she knew how he bore
himself during the terrible conflicts in India. His
wife answered : " I have not heard from him for some
time ; but I am sure that, now as always, he is trusting
in God and doing his duty." I know not whether
Havelock in those moments looked back with most
affection to our Church which he had left, or to
viii.] TO THE BAPTIST MINISTERS. 59
yours which he had joined. But this answer is one
in which we might all sympathise. " Trusting in God
and doing our duty" these are words which bind us
ail together. If you or I can feel that those who
know us best can say of us that we are trusting in
God and doing our duty, it is enough to teach us
that this is a ground of communion which neither
the difference of external rites, nor the difference of
seas or continents, can ever efface.
IX.
THE PROSPECTS OF THE CHURCH OF
ENGLAND.
SPOKEN AT A RECEPTION GIVEN BY THE CLERGY OF THE
PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH, IN NEW YORK, NOV. 4,
1878.
INVITED, as I am, by the remarks which have just
been made, to say something on the prospects of the
Church of England in relation to the progress of
Liberal Theology, I will first offer a few observations
on its external fortunes. Those who have preceded
me have, I think rightly, spoken of Westminster Abbey
as a typical likeness of these relations. So long as
any Church or communion is placed by the State in
possession of a national building like Westminster
Abbey, so long there will be an Established Church
in England. Those who wish for the destruction of
the National Church must, by a logical process (as
ix.] THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 61
they have in fact announced in the programme of
their intended scheme put forth to the world), sever
all connection between that or other like national build
ings and the offices of religion. The Abbey might, in
that case, continue as a venerable monument, like
the Round Towers of Ireland or the mounds in the
American wilderness, but it would cease to be filled
with that glow of historical and religious life which
through its long history has distinguished it from a
mere Walhalla or Museum. And, on the other hand,
the secular and national influences which Westminster
Abbey represents have an important bearing on the
growth and spread of those liberal opinions in theology
which are held by those who, here or elsewhere, express
their sympathy with myself as their spokesman. But
for the connection of the Church of England with the
State, I myself should certainly never have been Dean
of Westminster ; and the comprehensive and large asso
ciations which the institution fosters and inspires have
been an immense support to any individual convic
tions and utterances of my own, which find in those
associations so ready and so vast an echo.
When I speak of my connection with the Liberal
section of the Church of England, you will not wish
or expect that I should consider myself here as repre-
62 ADDRESSES NEW YORK. [ix.
senting that section only. It is the very characteristic
of the Church of England that anyone who professes
to express its more liberal aspirations cannot fail to
f
claim kinship with all the varying shades of opinion
which make up the whole institution, and which, by
their close contact within the same Church, tend to
enlarge and correct each separate tendency, including
* the tendency of Liberal Theology itself. It has been
a source of deep gratification to me to find that
the Protestant Episcopal Church of America, in the
welcome which it has afforded to me, has understood
this position, and has thereby proved the genuineness
of its descent from the Mother Church. It has been
almost beyond my expectations that I should have
received such expressions of sympathy, not merely
from those whom I knew to be in agreement with
me, but from those who, on the right hand and on
the left, might well have held aloof. To all such
expressions I have felt myself bound to respond,
not merely from a grateful sense of the kindness
which they manifested, but from the conviction that
I was thus best acting in conformity with the principles
which I have always cherished and maintained. It
has been a frequent saying of Mr. John Bright not
an unkindly neighbour of the Church of England
IX.] THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 63
that, if the Church were united within itself, it would
stand for ever. On this I have often remarked, that
if it were in absolute and uniform agreement through all
its parts, its downfall would be already sealed. I am
glad to recognise this same diversity in the Episcopal
Church of America, and I trust that here, as in England,
liberal Churchmen may be of service in protecting its
more extreme sections from each other. And yet I
feel that the American Episcopal Church ought to be,
in a special sense, the natural home of the broader
sentiments entertained by those whom I especially
address. The characteristic changes which that Church
introduced into its liturgy when, after the War of
Independence, it became a separate body, were directly
derived from the larger and more generous elements
which animated the Church of England at the beginning
of the last century. That attempt at enlightenment
and conciliation, which was inspired by Tillotson, in
the Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster, and which,
unfortunately, failed with us through the madness of
a clerical faction, was carried out here; and Tillotson,
we all know, was the most statesmanlike and large-
minded primate who has occupied the See of Canter
bury till the present time, when his place is worthily
filled by one whom the American bishops and clergy
64 ADDRESSES. NEW YORK. [ix.
have learned to respect and to honour as we do,
and who is specially endeared to them by the intimate
knowledge which circumstances have given to them
of that deep and overwhelming affliction with which
it has pleased God recently to visit him. Those
changes to which I have referred in the American
Prayer-book, with hardly more than one exception, all
run in the same upward direction ; and however much
the American Episcopal Church may, from time to
time, have been led astray by influences similar to
those which have retarded the progress of the Church
of England, yet surely it is not too much to hope that
the force of that original impulse and impact still con
tinues, and will guide you safely onwards to the haven
where you should be.
It is not for me to speak in detail of the relation
of the Episcopal clergy of America to those of the
other communions by which they are surrounded and
in a certain sense overshadowed. Yet I have been
rejoiced to observe so many indications on both sides
of the disappearance of ancient barriers and the forma
tion of new bonds of union. There is a passage in
the Book of Genesis, on which I have often been
accustomed to dwell, as a likeness of the course which
we may hope that ecclesiastical history may take.
ix.] THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 65
When Isaac digged a well in the valley of Gerar, the
neighbouring herdsmen strove with him, and he called
the name of that well Esek, that is to say, " strife or
controversy;" and they went on to another well, and
there also there were accusations and counter accu
sations, and he called the name of that well Sitnah^
that is to say, " calumny," or " recrimination." And
they went on and found another well in a large free
open space, where each had room to feed their flocks
at will, without interfering with the others, and he
called the name of that well Rchoboth, that is to say, as
it is in our version, " room," or " width " or " breadth,"
or as it is called in the sacred Vulgate of the ancient
Church, Latitude, or in plain English, "latitude."
Latitude, or latitudinarian, is not deemed a reproach
by that venerable translation ; it was deemed the highest
title of honour by the noblest English divines at the
close of the seventeenth century. It may perchance
be our best guide, even in the New World, to the
still waters of comfort and peace.
One remark in conclusion. I have been asked
whether, on some former occasions of addressing the
clergy of this country, I have not spoken of the
future in too desponding a tone. It is true that at
times I feel that in this close of the nineteenth century
66 ADDRESSES. NEW YORK. [ix.
we may be passing through a temporary eclipse. But
there is only one permanent danger which I seem to
discern as affecting all Churches alike. Let me illus
trate it by a story from another scene. When, in a
banquet given to him by the chief statesmen of Italy ?
Mr. Gladstone addressed them in a powerful speech
on the glories of their country, in that beautiful
Italian tongue of which he is so complete a master,
he suddenly exclaimed : " But there is an enemy in
the midst of you." They started ; they turned to
each other ; they whispered : " He means the Pope."
But for once Mr. Gladstone was not running on
ecclesiastical controversies. He was thinking of an
enemy in the heart of the Italian kingdom, familiar
to the mundane experiences in which his trans
cendent financial powers made him more completely
at home. He said : " His name is Deficit" May I
apply this saying, not to the deficiency of revenues
or receipts of which he spoke, but to the deficiency
of young men of promise and power entering the ranks
of the Christian ministry, whether in our Church or
yours, or any of the other numerous Churches of either
world. I know not how far you are menaced by this
danger, but if you are, or if there be any appre
hension on that score, I entreat you to be constantly
IX.] THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 67
on your watch to meet it, to lose no opportunity of
removing any stumbling-block or obstacle which may
deter such men from entering your ranks. If you, if
we, can thus be kept on a level with the energy, the
science, the nobleness, and the genius of the times in
which we live, however dark may be the passing
cloud, there will be no fear either for Liberal Theology
or for the Christian Church in the age which is yet
to come.
I part from you with these, as I believe, my last
public utterances in America. The welcome which you
have given to me I trust I may have the opportunity
of repaying, when those of you who come to visit
Westminster Abbey once more seek there the greeting
which in former times was never absent, but which
will now, as far as change of circumstances permit, be
redoubled by the grateful recollection of the hospitality
and the friendship which have met me here.
F 2
SERMONS.
PREFACE
TO THE FOLLOWING SERMONS.
ON THE CONDITIONS OF RELIGIOUS
INQUIRY.
THE story of Jacob wrestling with the angel is one
which, however we may interpret its literal meaning,
undoubtedly lends itself in the original, even more
than in our translation, to a deeper and more spiritual
sense. The vision took place, we are told, in the
crisis of Jacob s life. He was returning from Meso
potamia. He was on the eve of the meeting with
his brother. Every incident, almost every word, is
charged with a double meaning. There are the banks
of the Jabbok, the "wrestling-stream" (such is the
meaning of the word), wrestling, forcing its way
through the rocky basins of the deep defile which
parted the brothers asunder. There are the earthly
72 ON THE CONDITIONS OF
"messengers" on whose intercession he relies; there
are the heavenly " messengers " who are ranged
behind them; there are the two "bands" or com
panies of his own tribe, and compared with them
are the two " bands " or companies of angels. There
is the "face" of his brother Esau, whom he longs
but fears to see ; there is the " face " of God, which
also he fears yet longs to see. It is in the midst
of these conflicting images, as in a dream, that he
encounters he knows not whom on the mountain
side. The wrestling of the torrent, with its tangled
thickets and its rocky boundaries, bears a likeness to
a yet mightier wrestling of the human soul with its
deep perplexities and sorrows. Through the long
watches of the night, the Patriarch is locked in a
struggle as for life and death with the mysterious
combatant, and he entreats that he may know his
name. But when at last the dawn rises" (so it is
expressed in the original) over the hills of Gilead,
he feels that his whole being is transfigured. "He
said : I have seen God face to face, and my life is
preserved. And he called the name of the place
Peniel, * The Face of God. " At that moment the
twilight of the dawn "bursts" into full sunlight, and
RELIGIOUS INQUIRY. 73
he summons courage to descend from the face of the
mountain height, and plunges down into the narrow
glen, and passes the fatal stream, and prepares him
self for the dreaded interview. Always (such was the
belief of his descendants) he bore with him the marks
of that mighty conflict, "for he halted on his thigh."
It was as though the agony of the conflict had dislo
cated even his earthly frame. Henceforth "few and
evil were the days of his pilgrimage." Nor do we ever
lose entirely the recollection of the wily son of Rebekah.
But still the grander, nobler part prevailed ; the dark
crafty Jacob, the treacherous supplanter of his brother
Esau, disappeared and became "Israel," the Prince of
God, the Conqueror of God, the founder of the mighty
nation which still bears his glorious name. On that
day, as it were, in the depths of his spiritual being
were born Moses and David, Elijah and Isaiah, and
One greater than all, who was indeed the Prince of
God, and should prevail for ever.
This encounter, as I have said, has been considered
as the likeness, almost without an allegory, of all
spiritual struggles. It is the groundwork of one of
the finest hymns in our language that in which
Charles Wesley describes the appeal of the struggling
74 ON THE CONDITIONS OF
human soul to the mysterious Stranger whom it meets
on its passage through life :
Ome, O thou traveller unknown,
"Whom still I hold, but cannot see.
My company before is gone,
And I am left alone with Thee.
With Thee all night I mean to stay
And wrestle till the break of day.
It has been made the groundwork of an interesting dis
course by the greatest English preacher of this cen
tury, Frederick Robertson. It was the constant burden
of a gifted Bishop of the Scottish Episcopal Church,
who, if any one of our day, wrestled with the questions
of his time till his fragile frame was broken by the
force of the spiritual conflict.
There are indeed numberless experiences of in
dividual existence which the story represents to us. It
describes the struggles which every autobiography re
veals the entrance on a new stage of life, the decision
on a profession, the inrush of new thoughts, the
wrestle with temptations, with circumstances, with
sorrows. It represents how the common things of life
are to us the indications of the Divine presence. The
" bands " of our friends and companions become to us
" bands " of ministering spirits. In the chime of familiar
RELIGIOUS INQUIRY. 75
bells we hear a voice bidding us turn again and take
heart. In reading the pathetic scene of another s
early trials, John Stuart Mill finds the dried-up foun
tains of his heart unlocked, and after years of prema
ture hardness is born again as a little child. In the
whispering of the mountain torrent, as we find our
selves in some long forgotten, but instantly remembered,
scene of former years
All along the valley, down its rocky bed
The living voice to us is as the voice of the dead.
It describes also the last struggle of all, it may be
in the extreme of age or of weakness, in the valley of
the shadow of death. There the soul finds itself alone
on the mountain ridge overlooking the unknown future ;
" our company before is gone," the kinsfolk and friends
of many years are passed over the dark river, and
we are left alone with God. We know not in the
shadow of the night who it is that touches us we feel
only that the Everlasting Arms are closing us in ; the
twilight of the morning breaks, we are bid to depart
in peace, for by a strength not our own we have
prevailed, and the path is made clear before us.
There is also another struggle another wrestling
that which takes place between the human spirit and
;6 ON THE CONDITIONS OF
the vast mysterious problems by which we are sur
rounded. In every age this struggle takes place, in
some perhaps more than in others, and it may be that
such an age is ours. "Such questioning," it has been
wisely said, " necessarily belongs to every transition
state,* a transition which every age and every soul
must make from an unintelligent assent to a traditional
creed towards an intelligent assent to a true faith :" not
all light nor all darkness, but still, as we humbly trust,
from darkness into light
To many, all such mental struggles will be
unknown and unsought. There was no wrestling
with God in the early patriarchal days of Abraham
and Isaac. Let those, if such there be, who live
in that old ancestral peace continue so to live ;
only let them not pretend to wrestle when they are
in no difficulty. It is very rarely indeed that the
sudden changes from church to church, or the adop
tion of this or that strange practice or form, are the
results of deliberate doubt or search. They are more
commonly the mere change of one fancy for another,
or a leap from darkness into darkness. It is not
* "Reflections and Reminiscences of John M Leod Campbell,
p. 256.
RELIGIOUS INQUIRY. 77
of these that we would speak. But for those who
are exercised on the great problems of Religion and
Theology, it may be not presumptuous to suggest four
homely maxims, impressed upon us alike by the Bible
and by human experience.
(i.) Any such conflict, whether of mind or spirit,
must be serious and in earnest. It must be an
anxious endeavour to gain that which we seek. "I
will not let thee go except thou bless me." The
expression is bold even to the verge of irreverence.
But it is not irreverence, because nothing is more
reverent than an earnest determination of purpose. It
is not playfulness or gaiety of heart that we de
precate in God s name, keep of that as much as can
possibly be had. It is not that which makes a soul un
stable or hollow. But asking questions without waiting
for an answer ; talking merely for the sake of victory ;
treating sacred and important questions as party
flags, to be hoisted up or pulled down, according as
it suits the ebb and flow of public opinion all this is
no struggle, no inquiry at all. This is levity, this is
foolish jesting mere vanity and vexation of spirit.
Whoever repeats the phrases of religion or of irre-
ligion, merely to astonish or bewilder, or to conceal his
ignorance, or to gain momentary popularity; whoever
78 ON THE CONDITIONS OF
enters on the questions of religious thought without
a determined intention of doing or saying what is best
for his own conscience and for the consciences of
others, is a profane person, by whatever name he calls
himself. But a man who is possessed with what the
French call " the grand curiosity " of knowing all that
can be known, he who looks up to the truly great
authorities of all ages and countries, to the high in
telligences of unquestioned fame and worth that God
has raised up to enlighten the world he has made
an effort to enter on the narrow path, and to force his
way through the strait gate that leads to eternal life.
The very struggle to him is good. The very awe of these
great questions produces in his mind the reverence
which is the first element of religion. That was a
true name which the old Greeks employed to describe a
good man, a religious man. They called him " a man
of business" a man in earnest, a man who felt the
gravity of what he was doing and saying. Such a
man, no doubt, may get his conscience warped, or
may become fanatical or self-deceived; but so far as
his seriousness goes, he is right; so far as his serious
ness is sincere, whatever be his errors, he is on the
right way, and God is not far from him. Not what
others think for us, but what we are able to think
RELIGIOUS INQUIRY. 79
for ourselves is the true life of our life. Well said the
German poet : " The secret of Genius is first, next,
and without end to honour truth by use." Struggle,
wrestle with the meaning of the sacred words which
we employ. Take them not in vain. Where we cannot
find their meaning they are to us as though they
were not; we had best not apply them at all. But
in all those that are worth retaining as in all the
dispensations of life and nature there is what in the
story of Jacob is called a "Face," an aspect, of God
which looks out at us from behind the darkness if
we gaze steadily in the right direction.
(2.) Every such inquiry must be carried on with the
conviction that truth only is to be sought. As perfect
love casts out fear, so perfect confidence in truth casts,
out fear. That old proverb of the Apocryphal Book of
Esdras is not the less excellent because it is so familiar :
"Great is the truth, and stronger than all things."
"Magna est veritas et prsevalebit." * Jacob is de
scribed as struggling, wrestling with the unknown
* I Esdras iv. 35. The words of the original text are : " Magna
est veritas et pravaht." The change from the present tense,
prtzvalet, "is strong," to the future, pravalebit, "will be strong,"
indicates the increasing conviction in Christendom of the ultimate
victory of Truth.
8o ON THE CONDITIONS OF
mystery. He knew not what to make of it, but it
prevailed at last over him and he prevailed with it.
It is the very likeness of the search of a sincere soul
after Truth. Often the Truth may elude our search,
may slip from our grasp, may fling us on the ground;
but if we cling fast to it, some portion of it will be
ours at last, and we in its triumph shall be more than
conquerors. A venerable divine of the Roman Church
has,* in our time, powerfully described the human
intellect under the figure of a ravenous wild beast that
has to be driven back by the iron bar of authority,
"smiting hard and throwing back the immense energy
of the aggressive intellect," lest it should, as it were,
devour and dissolve all things, Divine and human, in
its insatiable appetite. This is surely not the figure
presented to us in Jacob s vision or in the Bible
generally. The Truth that is really Divine does not
smite down its combatant. Nay, rather it allows itself
to be embraced, repulsed, embraced again, seized
now by this side, now by that, lifted up, pressed,
challenged to surrender. "Come, let us reason to
gether." "The Lord will plead with Israel." "We
can do nothing against the Truth, but for the Truth."
* Dr. Newman s "Apologia," pp. 381, 382.
RELIGIOUS INQUIRY. Sx
The human intellect has had placed before it by
Him who made it, one object and one only, worthy
of its efforts, and that is Truth Truth, not for the
sake of any ulterior object, however high or holy, but
Truth for its own sake. We hope, we trust, we humbly
believe, that Truth will in the end be found to coin
cide with goodness, with holiness, with grace, with
humility, with all the other noblest aspirations of the
human spirit. But if we think and reason on these
high matters at all, we must seek and desire Truth
even as though it existed by and for itself alone. And
the most excellent service that Churches and pastors,
authorities of State or of Religion, universities or
teachers, can render to the human reason in this
arduous enterprise is not to restrain, nor to blindfold
it, but to clear aside every obstacle, to open wide the
path, to chase away the phantoms that stand in the
road. Above all, it is alike the high calling of true philo*
sophy and Christian civilisation, to rise beyond the
reach of the blinding, bewildering, entangling influence
of the spirit of party. It was once said by Archbishop
Whately that the chief evil of the modern Church of
Rome was not transubstantiation, or the worship of
the saints, or purgatory, or any other of the special
opinions held by its members, but the fact that it was
G
82 ON THE CONDITIONS OF
"a great party," inspired by the same motives and
guided by the same principles as bind together sects
and parties, political or other, throughout the world.
So far as the Church of Rome or any other Church
is not this, even its errors are comparatively innocent ;
so far as it is this, its very truths become mischievous.
" Whatever retards a spirit of inquiry," said Robert
Hall, " is favourable to error. Whatever promotes it, is
favourable to truth. But nothing has greater tendency
to obstruct the exercise of free inquiry than a spirit of
party. There is in all sects and parties a constant
fear of being eclipsed. It becomes a point of honour
with the leaders of parties to defend and support their
respective peculiarities to the last, and, as a natural
sequence, to shut their ears against all the pleas by
which they may be assailed. If we seek for the reason
of the facility with which scientific improvements esta
blish themselves in preference to religious, we shall
find it in the absence of party combination." No
doubt even the domain of science has not been free
from the passions and personalities of party teachers ;
but the great Nonconformist whom I have just cited
had good ground had, I may almost say, Divine
authority for directing his special warning to the
religious world. This spirit of combination for party
RELIGIOUS INQUIRY. 83
purposes, and this alone, is what the New Testament
calls "heresy." This it is that constitutes the leading
danger of synods and councils, which, by their very
constitution, become almost inevitably the organs,
never of full and impartial truth, almost always of
misleading ambiguities which tend rather to darkness
than to light, rather to confusion than to union.
(3.) We must in our inquiry be on the watch as far
as we can, not for something to attack, but Tor some
thing to admire ; not for something to pull down, but
for something to build up. " Prove all things," says
the Apostle, and he almost immediately afterwards
adds, "abstain from every kind* of evil," that is,
from every kind of evil, however specious, however
religious may be its appearance. This, no doubt, is
an. important maxim. The negative side of Christianity,
the formation of an atmosphere in which whole classes
of falsehood have been unable to live, is a merit which
has been hardly enough appreciated. But the more
direct maxim of the Apostle is still more important :
" Prove all things ; holdfast that which is good" It has
been too often the conventional strategy of theological
argument, in dealing with books or persons with whom
* I Thtss. v. 21, 22 (in the original).
G 2
84 ON THE CONDITIONS OF
we differ, to give no quarter ; to treat them as wizards
were treated down to the middle of the seventeenth cen
tury, as though they were embodied and absolute evil
as if the moment we find ourself face to face with such a
book or such a line of argument, the first thing to be
done is to tear it to pieces, and pick out all its worst
parts, and take for granted the worst possible con
struction. Far be it from us to deny that there are
books so worthless, characters and principles so detest
able, that they demand all the indignation of which the
human soul is capable. But these are exceptions. Far
oftener, when we are perplexed and distressed, the
impression is as of the vision in the Book of Job :
"Fear cometh upon me and trembling; a spirit passed
before me, but I could not discern the form thereof;
the image was before mine eyes, and there was silence."
In the larger part of such books as from their fame
and weight demand to be read, as there are none
which are uniformly good, so there are very few
which are uniformly evil. In all we must discriminate.
Even the Bible itself has its gradations. The Old
Testament, great as it is, is not so Divine as the
New. The Apocalypse, splendid as are its imagery
and its purpose, is not so edifying as the Gospels or
the Psalms. It was said of the Koran that it had
RELIGIOUS INQUIRY. 85
two faces, one of a beast, to scandalise the weak,
one of a seraph, to attract the faithful. That, to a
certain extent, is the case even in the Bible ; it is
the case certainly with all other good books. There
is the face of the beast which may terrify; but there
is the face of the seraph to delight us, and he is
the best inquirer who, while he acknowledges the face
of the beast, yet turns away from it to gaze chiefly
on the face of the seraph. We are justly indignant
with ignorant or foolish scoffers, who in speaking
of the Bible speak only of its obscure, harsh, and
perplexing passages; who omit the Sermon on the
Mount, and speak only of the questionable acts
of the Patriarchs : who omit the glory of the
hundred and nineteenth Psalm, and dwell only
on the curses of the hundred and ninth ; who
speak only of the rare anathemas and pass over
the long-suffering love, of the Parables in the
Gospels or of the Epistles of St. Paul. But we
should be no less indignant with ourselves or with
others, if, in speaking or reading of books of science,
books of philosophy, books of religion, we look at
them only to extract the evil, the controversial, the
offensive, the frivolous ; and overlook the genius, the
wisdom, the knowledge, the goodness, which, whilst
86 ON THE CONDITIONS OF
disagreeing ever so much, we might yet discover in
them for our eternal benefit. It is astonishing how
vast a loss we sustain for our spiritual life by thinking
only how we can destroy, attack, and assail, instead
of thinking how we can build up, define, or edify.
There is not a book in the world, however great or
good, which would stand the test of being taken only
in its weaker points. There are very few books of
any name or fame in the world which will not confirm
our faith or raise our minds, if judged, not by passion
or prejudice, but on their own merits, "according to
righteous judgment." Jacob wrestled to the end
through darkness and light, and in the end he felt
that his unknown enemy was no enemy at all, but
the same vision of angels that he had seen at Bethel,
the kind and merciful face of God, the God of his
father Abraham, and of his father Isaac.
(4.) Yet one more rule. Let us enter onjhese in
quiries, not in despair, but in hope. There is doubtless
enough to discourage. Sometimes we think that we
are about to be overwhelmed by a general return of
forgotten superstitions, sometimes by a general chaos
of incredulity ; sometimes our course seems darkened
by an eclipse of faith, sometimes by an eclipse of
reason. Yet, on the whole, the history of mankind
RELIGIOUS INQUIRY. 87
justifies us in hoping that as in the moral, so also in
the intellectual condition of the race, in regard to these
higher spiritual truths, our light is not altogether
swallowed up in darkness, that the good cannot be
and is not altogether lost, that the evil, the error, the
superstition, that has once disappeared, even if it
returns from time to time, will not again permanently
rule over us as heretofore. Christianity itself goes
through these struggles. In its Divine aspect it wrestles
with man. In its human aspect it wrestles with God.
It has within it, like the Patriarch, two natures the
crafty, earth-born Jacob, the lofty, heaven-aspiring
Israel.
Only we must acknowledge, let us rather say we
must insist on, two conditions, if we would draw hope
from the experience of religious history. First, we
must acknowledge the immense changes through which
Christianity has passed. It is because there is hardly
any one form of Christian truth which has been held
" always, everywhere, and by everybody," that we seem
to see how it may at last assimilate to itself all the
good and all the truth which the world contains, and
which, though not in it, are yet of it. So far as it
has survived the conflicts of eighteen centuries, it has
been not by adhering rigidly to the past, but by casting
88 ON THE CONDITIONS OF
off its worser and grosser elements, and taking up in
each age something of that higher element which each
age had to give. It has survived the corruptions and
superstitions which it inherited from the Roman Empire,
and has carried off in the struggle the elements of
Roman civilisation. It has survived the miserable
controversies of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries,
and has carried off from its earlier age the first germs
of liturgical worship and the memory of the martyrs.
It has survived the barbarous fancies and cruelties of
the Middle Ages, and carried off with it the marvels
of mediaeval art. It has survived the fierce conflicts
of the Reformation, and has carried off with it the
light of freedom, of conscience, and of knowledge.
It has survived the shock of the French Revolution,
and has carried off with it the toleration and the
justice of the eighteenth century. It has survived the
alarms which were excited at the successive appear
ance of Astronomy, Geology, Physiology, Historical
Criticism, and has carried off with it a deeper insight
into nature and into the Bible. In each of these
anxious wrestling matches it has, like the Patriarch,
seen the Face of God, and its life has been not only
preserved but transfigured. Jacob, the old, treacherous,
exclusive Jacob, has with each of these receded ; Israel,
RELIGIOUS INQUIRY. 89
the princely, the venerable, the loving father of the
chosen people, has gradually prevailed.
And there is the second condition, that we must
look for the true face of our religion in the face of
those who have best represented it. We sometimes
claim, and justly claim, as the glory of our faith, that
it has attracted to itself the strength of intellects such
as Shakespeare and Newton, Pascal and Rousseau,
Erasmus and Spinosa, Goethe and Walter Scott. But
then do we sufficiently remember what is the aspect of
Christianity which commanded the reverential attention
of men so different each from each? Was it the
Christianity of Nicsea, or Geneva, or Westminster,
or Augsburg, or the Vatican? No. It was, by the
very nature of the case, something of a far more
delicate texture, of a far deeper root.
Again, we may find an indication of the permanent
character of Christianity when we ask what is the form
of it defended by its chief apologists. The Chris
tianity for which Paley argued in his " Evidences," and
Lardner in his " Credibilia," and Butler in his " Sermons "
and "Analogy," and Pascal in his "Thoughts," and
Charming in his "Discourses" was this the Calvinist,
or the Lutheran, or the Wesleyan, or the Tridentine,
or the Racovian Creed? No; for to each one of
90 ON THE CONDITIONS OF
those stout champions of the faith, one or other of
those forms would have been as revolting as that
which they advocated was precious to them.
Again, it is the religion which has inspired the
course of states and nations. Read the concise but
subtle account given of the influence of Christianity
on civilisation by the present Dean of St. Paul s, or
the more extended examination of it in the history
of Latin Christianity by his famous predecessor read
either of these works, or watch, if we prefer it, the
gradual development of Christian art, from the Good
Shepherd of the Catacombs to the Transfiguration of
Raphael, from the majestic basilica to the soaring
lines of the Gothic cathedral. Whilst we acknowledge
in them the triumphant progress of what is best in
Christianity, shall we not also acknowledge that it is
a progress to which the Councils, the Confessions,
even the Fathers and Schoolmen, have contributed
almost nothing, and the general spirit of the race and
the faith almost everything?
And is not the religion which animated these
higher intelligences and these wider spheres the same
which has animated the poor, the humble, the child
like, the saintlike of all persuasions? We do not
deny that at particular epochs of excitement, the tern-
RELIGIOUS INQUIRY. 91
porary opinions of particular schools and times may
have filled the soul with heavenly fervour, that the
doctrines of the " Invention of the Cross," or " the
Sacred Heart," or "the Immaculate Conception" of
" Imputed Righteousness," of " Sudden Conversion,"
of " Episcopal Succession," of " Non-intrusion," may
have swayed whole assemblies of men with one com
mon impulse, or lighted up the last moments of de
parting saints with celestial energy. But these have
been the mere wreaths of foam on the waves of
enthusiasm. The perpetual undercurrent of devotion
has been of another sort. "Pray for me," said an
eminent French pastor on his death-bed, "that I
may have the elementary graces." Those elementary
graces are to be found in the great moral principles
which lie at the bottom of the barbarous phraseology
in which the sentiments of the poor, living or
dying, are often expressed. It was but recently* that
there was recorded the saying of an old Scottish
Methodist, who in his earlier years had clung vehe
mently to one or other of the two small sects on
either side of the street: "The street I m now travel
ling in, lad, has nae sides; and if power were given
* " Reminiscences of the Pen-Folk, by One who knew them," p. 41.
92 ON THE CONDITIONS OF
me, I would preach purity of life mair, and purity
of doctrine less than I did." "Are you not a little
heretical at your journey s end?" said his interlo
cutor. " I kenna. Names have not the same tenor
on me they once had, and since I was laid by here
alone, I have had whisperings of the still small voice,
telling me that the footfall of faiths and their wranglings
will ne er be heard in the Lord s kingdom whereunto
I am nearing. And as love cements all differences,
I ll perhaps find the place roomier than I thought in
times by-past."
And finally, the converging testimony rendered by
so many different experiences towards the triumph of a
higher Christianity is crowned by the testimony of the
Bible itself. That the theology of the Bible is some
thing beside and beyond, something greater and vaster
than the theology of each particular Church or age, is
proved by the fact that on the one hand it has never
been found sufficient for the purposes of tests and
polemics, and, on the other hand, that whenever the
different schools of theologians have been brought
together on its platform, either for selecting extracts for
the public services of the Church, or for revising its
translations, the points of division have fallen aside, the
points of union have come to light, and the points of
RELIGIOUS INQUIRY. 93
discussion have for the most part had no bearing on the
divisions or the theories of Christendom. It is in the
various aspects of the theology of the Bible which is
also the theology of European literature the theology
of great men, the theology of the saints, and the
theology of the poor and of little children, that we may
hope to see the Face of God.
We complain of the unfairness of the German critic
who attacked the possibility of a Christian faith by
directing his artillery against the coarsest and grossest
forms in which that faith has been supported by any
of its adherents. But this should be a solemn warning
to us to see how far we have ourselves identified it
with those forms. We smile at the narrowness of the
English philosopher who regarded Christianity as the
completest development of human wickedness, because
he fixed his mind on one particular doctrine sometimes
preached in its name. But this should be a solemn
warning to us, to see how far such a doctrine is one
for which we ourselves have contended as essential to
the faith. True Christianity is beyond the reach of
such attacks or such defences. Those who have
watched the effects of sunrise on the Alpine ranges will
remember the dark and chill aspect of the wide land
scape in the moment preceding the dawn. At last
94 QN THE CONDITIONS OF
there arose at once in the western and the eastern
heavens a colour, a brightness, a lightness varying,
diffused, indefinite, but still spreading and brightening
and lightening, over the whole scene. Then, <; as
in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye," the highest
summits of the range of snow burst from pale death
into roseate life, and every slope and crest became
as clear and bright as before they had been dark and
dull ; and meanwhile the same light was .creeping
round the mists of the plain and the exhalations of
the lakes, and they too were touched by gold, and
every shape and form yielded to the returning glow.
Such is an image of the rise of true religion, and there
fore also of true theology, shadowy, diffused, expansive
as the -dawn, yet like the dawn striking with irresistible
force now here, now there, first on the highest intel
ligences, then on the world at large, till at length the
whole atmosphere is suffused with its radiance, and
the shades of night have melted we hardly know how
or where.
Such is the process by which the great regenerating
truths of religion have made their way, and still make
their way into the heart of man truths not the less
religious because they have often come from seemingly
opposite quarters, truths which gain their place the
RELIGIOUS INQUIRY. 95
more certainly because they come not in a polemic,
but a pacific garb, not conquering, but subduing; not
attacking error, but creating a light in which the
shadows insensibly flee away. " Falsehood can only
be said to be killed when it is replaced." Truth van
quishes only when it can enlist the religious enthusiasm
that is too often the heritage of error. Enthusiasm
can only be fully commended when it is enlisted on
behalf of the wider and nobler instincts of the good
and wise throughout mankind.
When the struggle is drawing to its end, when the
day breaks and the sun rises, there will have been
some who in that struggle have seen the Face of God.
THE EAST AND THE WEST.
PREACHED IN TRINITY CHURCH, BOSTON, SUNDAY MORNING,
SEPTEMBER 22, 1878.
IN the ninth verse of the hundred and thirty-ninth
Psalm are these words : " If I take the wings of the
morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand
shall hold me."
In this utterance of the Psalmist, as in the whole
Psalm, the most simple meaning is the expression of
belief in the omnipresent power of God. The traveller
who passes from one quarter of the globe to another,
feels that the encircling sky which girdles in the ocean
is but a type of the unseen Power that surrounds us
all. It is the same truth as that expressed in the last
words of one of the earliest English navigators in
American waters : " Heaven is as near to us on the sea
as on the land." The philanthropist, whose wide charity
I.] THE EAST AND THE WEST. 97
embraces within its grasp the savage and the civilised
man, the white man and the negro, feels that the hand
of God is with him in his enterprises, because in the
face of all his fellow-men he recognises, however faintly
and feebly delineated, the image of the likeness of God.
Howard and Wilberforce, Eliot and Charming, were
alike sustained by the thought that, in the widest diver
sities of human nature, and in the lowest depths of
human degradation, God was with their efforts, because
in the better part of every human being there was a
spark of the Divine spirit. The philosopher who
endeavours to trace out the unity of mankind, and
the unity of all created things, consciously or un
consciously expresses the same truth; namely, that
our Maker s eye saw our substance yet being im
perfect, and that "in His book were all our members
written, which day by day were fashioned" and
evolved, " while as yet there were none of them,"
while all was as yet rudimental and undeveloped,
alike in the individual and in the race. The heart-
stricken, lonely, doubting sufferer, who sees only a
step before him, who can but pray, " Lead, kindly
Light, amid the encircling gloom" he too can echo
the words of the Psalmist: "The darkness" is no dark
ness to Thee ; the darkness and light to Thee are
H
98 SERMONS. BOSTON. [r.
both alike." "Though He slay me, yet will I trust
in Him."
But in the especial form of the words of the text
there is a peculiar force, which it is my purpose on
this occasion to bring before you. The Psalmist
wishes to indicate that God was to be found in those
regions of the earth into which it was least likely
that any Divine influence should penetrate ; and he
expresses it by saying : " If I were to take the wings
of the morning, if I were to mount on the out
spreading radiance which in the eastern heavens pre
cedes the rise of dawn, if I were to follow the sun
on his onward course, and pass with him over land
and ocean till I reach the uttermost parts of the
sea, far away in the distant and unknown West "
for in the original the two words mean the same
thing "even there also, strange as it may seem, the
hand of God will lead us, the right hand of God
will hold us ; even there also, beyond the shadows
of the setting of the sun, even there, beyond the
farthest horizon, the farthest West of the farthest sea,
will be found the Presence which leaps over the
most impassable barriers. 5 To the Psalmist, living in
Palestine, living in those regions which were then
the sole seat, not only of religion, but of civilisation
i.l THE EAST AND THE WEST. 99
and knowledge also, this expression was the most
forcible mode which he could adopt of saying that no
where in the wide world could he wander from the
care of the Almighty ; and in so saying he has,
whether intentionally or not, given utterance to a
truth to which the other parts of the Bible bear
witness, but which receives its full confirmation in
the New Testament, and its full realisation in the
history of Christendom and of the modern world.
That which seemed to him so portentous as to be
almost incredible, has become one of the familiar,
we might almost say one of the fundamental, axioms
of our religious and social existence. "Not only in
the East" so we may venture to give his words
their fullest and widest meaning " not only in the
East, consecrated by patriarchal tradition and usage,
but in the unknown and distant islands and seas
of the West, the power of God shall be felt as a
sustaining help and guiding hand."
True religion, the point of contact between the
East and the West, this is the thought upon which
I propose to dwell. And, first, let us observe the
actual fact in human experience. The contrast be-
tween the East and West is one of the most vivid
which strikes the mind of man. Of the great geo-
H 2
ioo SERMONS. BOSTON. [i.
graphical impressions left even on the most casual
observer, none is deeper than that which is produced
when a child of Western civilisation sets foot on the
shores of the Eastern world. And so in history, as
has been observed by a profound student, two dis
tinct streams of human interest have always followed
the race of Shem and the race of Japhet ; but the
turning points, the critical moments of their history,
have been when the two streams have crossed each
other, and met, as on a few great occasions, in
conflict or in union. It is the very image which is
presented to us in the splendid vision -of the Evan
gelical Prophet in the sixtieth chapter of the book of
Isaiah. The seer lifts up his eyes, and beholds on
one side all the nations of the East, with all the
peculiarities of custom and of dress such as have
endured from his time to ours dromedaries and
camels, golden ornaments from India, clouds of in
cense from Arabia, flocks and herds of the wandering
tribes of Arabia and Tartary all crowding to receive
the blessings of the future. And this was fulfilled;
for we are never allowed to forget that Christ was
born of an Eastern nation, clothed in Eastern dress,
speaking in an Eastern language, familiar with Eastern
sky and land. He was of the seed of Abraham, the
I.] THE EAST AND THE WEST. 101
first wanderer from the Eastern hills ; of Isaac, brother
of the Arabian Ishmael ; of David and Solomon,
Oriental kings. To His Eastern birthplace the Churches
of the West have ever turned with peculiar reverence,
and his Eastern home and Eastern tomb have been
the points around which the conflicts of Europe
again and again, and even in our own recent time,
have turned.
There is an interest, as of our childish days, with
which we cannot but regard the cradle of our race and
of our faith, an interest not the less keen because that
early sunrise of mankind has now been left so very far
behind. The wings of the morning may flag and fail,
but not so the purpose of God. It extends to the noon
and to the evening no less. We must not look east
ward, we must not look backward, if we would know
the true strength of human progress and of Christ s
religion. Westward, far into the westward sea^ the
Prophet looked, when, after beholding the dromedaries
and camels of Arabia coming from the East, he
turned to that distant horizon, and exclaimed : " Who
are these that fly as a cloud, and as the doves to
their windows?" "The isles" that is, the isles, and
coasts, and promontories, and creeks, and bays of
the Mediterranean and Atlantic shores " the isles
102 SERMONS. BOSTON. [j.
shall wait for him, and the ships of Tarshish first."
Tarshish, that is, the West, with all its vessels of
war and its vessels of merchandise ; the ships of
Tarshish first, of Phoenicia and Carthage and Spain
these first brought the shores of Cornwall, the name
of Britain, within the range of the old civilised world.
All these, with their energy and activity, were to build
up the walls, and pour their wealth through the gates
of the heavenly Jerusalem. And so in fact it has
been. Westward went the Apostle of the Gentiles,
when starting from the coast of Syria he embarked
on what a great French writer has called the "Chris
tian Odyssey ;" westward to that island which alone
emerged on the horizon of the Israelite as he
looked from the heights of Lebanon, the spot which
was to him the sole representative of the westward
races, the isle of Chittim, the isle of Cyprus, des
tined, perchance, in our later day to give back to
the Eastern races what it once received from them.
Westward the Apostle still advanced when he crossed
over from Asia into Europe, and came into contact
with the civilisation of Greece; westward yet again
when he reached the mighty capital of the Western
dominion; westward farther still when he stretched
his yearning gaze toward what was then called the
I.] THE EAST AND THE WEST. 103
last limit of the world, the Pillars of Hercules, the
extreme border of Spain. And so it has been
through the long history of Christendom. The
Eastern Churches, in spite of all their manifold in
terest, have not been the true centres of Christianity.
They may have their destiny and their mission; but
it is in Italy, in France, in Germany, in England, in
America, that the hopes of Christian civilisation
rest. Christianity, born in the East, has become the
religion of the West even more than the religion of
the East. Only by travelling from its early home
has it grown to its full stature. The more it has
adapted itself to the wants of the new-born nations,
which it embraces, the more has it resembled the
first teaching and character of its Founder and of
His followers. Judaism, as a supreme religion, ex
pired when its local sanctuary was destroyed. Moham
medanism, after its first burst of conquest, withdrew
almost entirely within the limits of the East. But
Christianity has found not only its shelter and
refuge, but its throne and sanctuary, in countries which,
humanly speaking, it could hardly have been ex
pected to reach at all. From these Western coun
tries, in spite of their manifold imperfections, that
Eastern religion still sways the destinies of man-
104 -SERMONS. BOSTON. [i.
kind. Under the shadow of that tree which sprang
up from a grain of mustard-seed on the hills of
Galilee, have been gathered the nations of the
earth. The Christian religion rose on the "wings
of the morning," but it has remained in the "utter
most parts of the sea," because the hand of God
was with it, and the right hand of God was uphold
ing it.
And now let us briefly consider what were the
peculiar points of Christianity which have enabled
it to combine these two worlds of thought, each so
different from the other. In its full development, in
its earliest and most authentic representation, we
see the completion of those gifts and graces which
East and West possess separately, and which we each
are bound in our measure to appropriate.
(i.) First observe, on the one hand, in the Gospel
History, the awe, the reverence, the profound resigna
tion to the Divine Will, the calm, untroubled repose,
which are the very qualities possessed by the Eastern
religions at a time when to the West they were
almost wholly unknown, and which even now are
more remarkably exhibited in Eastern nations than
amongst ourselves. "Thy will be done," that great
prayer which lies at the root of all religion, is a
I.] THE EAST AND THE WEST. 105
thought which the old Western nations hardly un
derstood. It breathes the spirit of the race of
Abraham, of the race of Ishmael. " God is
great," so a Mussulman Algerine once said to his
Christian captive. The captive, who came from the
British Isles, has recorded that it was the first word
of consolation that had reached his heart, and caused
his sinking spirit to revive. On the other hand, look
at the practical activity and beneficence which formed
the sum and substance of the Redeemer s life; how
He went about everywhere doing good, how He
made the service of man to be itself the service of
God. This is a vast advance from the immovable East.
It is the Divine recognition of those energetic faculties
which have especially marked the character of the
Greek, the Roman, the German, and the Anglo-Saxon
races of mankind. Christ has taught us how to
be reverential, and serious, and composed. He has
taught us no less how to be active, and stirring, and
manly, and courageous. The activity of the West has
been incorporated into Christianity because it is com
prehended in the original character and genius of our
Founder, no less than are the awe and reverence
which belong to the East.
(2.) Again, in every Eastern religion, even in that
io6 SERMOA T S. BOSTON. [ T .
which Moses proclaimed from Mount Sinai, there
was a darkness, a mystery, a veil, as the Apostle
expressed it, a veil on the prophet s face, a veil on
the people s heart, a blind submission to absolute
authority. There was darkness around the throne of
God ; there was darkness within the temple walls ;
there was in the Holy of Holies a darkness never
broken. To a large extent this darkness and exclu-
siveness must prevail always, till the time comes when
we shall see no longer through a glass darkly. There
always must be mystery in the greatest truths; "a
boundless contiguity of shade," which no philosophy,
no inquiry, no revelation, no decrees of councils, no
speculation of theologians, can ever fathom or remove.
This marks Christianity in common with all the reli
gions of the East. But yet, so far as the veil can
be withdrawn, it has been withdrawn by Jesus Christ
and by His true disciples. He is the light of the
world. In Him we behold with open face the glory
of the Father. He came to bear witness to the
truth. He went to and fro, rousing the hearts and
the minds of men to seek for truth. In Him the
cry of inquiry and of freedom which had already
been awakened in the West found a ready response.
Not without a purpose was the Greek language, with
].] THE EAST AND THE WEST. 107
all its manifold flexibility, chosen for the vehicle of
His teaching, rather than the stiff, immovable Hebrew.
Not without a natural affinity did the Grecian philo
sophy attach itself to the first beginnings of the Gospel.
Not unfitly were Socrates and Plato deemed by the
early Fathers to have been Christians before the time.
The revival of the studies of the ancient languages
and the vast impulse given to the progress of human
thought by the Reformation was in itself a new mani
festation " of Christ, a new declaration of His union
with minds and classes of men who had before been
deemed to be without God in the world. It is a
constant reminder, that in using to the utmost
the resources of science, in watching for light from
whatever quarter, in sifting and searching all that
comes before us to the very bottom, we are fulfilling
one of the chief calls of our religion, we are accom
plishing the very will of the Redeemer. Whatever is
good science is good theology; whatever is high
morality and pure civilisation is high and pure
religion.
The freedom and progress of the West contrast
as strongly with the stagnation of the East as the
greenness of our fields .contrasts with its arid plains,
the shadows of our clouds and the freshness of our
loS SERMONS. BOSTON. [i.
breezes with its burning suns, the ceaseless variety
and stir of our teeming cities with its vast solitudes.
And it is a contrast which Christ and Christianity
have anticipated. It is God s gift to us, to be deve
loped as our special contribution to the treasures of
our common faith. Let us be of good heart, let us
not be unworthy of our high calling. Wherever state
ments are received without evidence, wherever hollow
watchwords are used like sounding brass and tinkling
cymbal, there the shadow of barbarism is still upon
us ; wherever language is used as a veil to conceal
our thoughts, wherever we allow ourselves to employ
sacred words without meaning, there the light of the
Gentiles has not dawned upon us. Truly it has been
said, that the theological controversies which have
agitated the Churches to so little practical purpose
have turned on words which were not defined, and
therefore not understood. The moment the words
have been denned, and their meaning appreciated,
that moment the excitement has cooled, and the
passions evaporated. So it was with the scholastic
disputes concerning the Trinity; so it has been with
more recent disputes concerning Predestination and
Justification. The spirit of Western enlightenment has
turned its lantern upon them; and they have disap-
I.] THE EAST AND THE WEST. 109
peared, or are disappearing, like phantoms and sltadows,
and the dayspring from on high lias arisen in our hearts.
(3.) Again. There was in all Eastern religions, whether
we look Godward or manward, a stern separation
from the common feelings and interests of mankind.
We see it, as regards man, in the hardness and
harshness of Eastern laws ; we see it, as regards God,
in the profound prostration of the human soul, dis
played first in the peculiarities of Jewish worship, and
to this day in the prayers of devout Mussulmans.
And this also enters in its measure into the life of
Christ and the life of Christendom. The invisible,
eternal, unapproachable Deity, the sublime elevation
of the Founder of our religion above all the turmoils
of earthly passion and of local prejudice that is the
link of Christianity with the East.
But, on the other hand, there was another side of
the truth which until Christ appeared had been
hardly revealed at all to the children of the older
covenant. Degrading and erroneous as in many
respects were the old Gentile notions of the God
head, yet there was one thought which dimly and
darkly ran through all the old religions of the nations
which the Bible called the Children of Japhet :
namely, the thought that the gods were not fa-r
no SERMONS. BOSTON. [i.
removed from any one of us. They had from time
to time come down into the ranks of men ; they
had been seen labouring, suffering, weeping, nay, even
dying, for the service and the welfare of the human
race. And this it is which in the life and character
of Christ is wonderfully combined with that deep
reverence for God of which the Eastern nations had
received so large a share. In Christ we see how
the Divine Word could become flesh, and yet the
Father of all remain invisible and inconceivable.
In Christianity we see not merely, as in the Levitical
system, man sacrificing his choicest gifts to God,
but God, if one may so say, sacrificing His own
dear Son for the good of man. Not only the lofti
ness of God as with the Hebrews, but the con
descension of God as with the Gentiles ; not only
the abasement of man as with the Jew, but the eleva
tion of man as with the Greek were in Jesus Christ
set forth in indissoluble union. And with this closer
revelation of the Divine compassion was called
forth the justice, the gentleness, the mercy, the
humanity, which the West has developed more
strongly than the East, and which makes Christianity
to be emphatically the religion of love and, in the
largest sense, of charity.
I.] THE EAST AND THE WEST. m
These are some of the points in which Christianity
combines the religion of the East and West in
which, having sprung from the East, it has become
the religion of our Western civilisation. What do
we learn from this ? Surely the mere statement of
the fact is an almost constraining proof that the
religion which thus unites both divisions of the human
race was indeed of an origin above them both ; that
the light which thus shines on both sides of the image
of humanity is indeed the light that lightened!
every man. There is no monotony, no sameness,
no one-sidedness, no narrowness, here. The variety,
the complexity, the diversity, the breadth, of the
character of Christ and of His religion, is indeed an
expression of the universal omnipresence of God.
It is for us to bear in mind that this many-sided
ness of Christianity is a constant encouragement to
hold fast those particles of it which we already
possess, and to reach forward to whatever elements
of it are still beyond us. Say not that Christianity
has been exhausted ; say not that the hopes of Chris
tianity have failed, nor yet that they have been entirely
fulfilled. " In our Father s house are many mansions."
In one or other of these each wandering soul may at
last find its place, here or hereafter.
1 1 2 SERMONS. BOSTON. [i.
I have spoken hitherto of the general contrast
between the East and the West, between the Children
of Shem and the Children of Japhet, between the
sacred regions of Asia and the secular regions of
Europe. I have tried to point out that here, as else
where, in the Gospel, that which was last has become
first, that which seemed secular has become more
holy than that which seemed most sacred ; that the
things of Caesar are not separate from the things of
God, and that by giving to Caesar the things which
are Caesar s, we in that very act give to God the
things which are God s. Thus far, what I have said
is applicable to the whole Western world, on the other
side of the ocean as well as on this side. In this
respect we are all the common children of the mighty
nations which formed the centre of the civilisation
and history of mankind. But does not every word
that has been uttered acquire a larger significance to
a son of that Old World when, standing here for the
first time, he looks upon this New World, of which,
in their loftiest flight of fancy or inspiration, apostle
or prophet never dreamed ? Is it possible for him.
as he descends from his flight on the wings of the
morning, and lands on these shores, where the race
and the faith of his fathers have struck so deep a
I.] THE EAST AND THE WEST. 113
root, not to feel again and yet again the thought
which, more than a century ago, inspired the well-
known line of the philosophic poet: "Westward the
course of empire takes its way"? Far be it from any
of us to pronounce with certainty that the latest off
spring of time will be the noblest. Far be it from a
stranger to forecast the duties or prospects which rise
before his imagination, as he finds himself in this
West beyond the West, in this West which even
beyond itself looks forward to a yet farther West,
towards which the bays and promontories of these
eastern shores of the new continent shall, perchance,
as the years roll on, stand in the same relation as
the East, the ancient consecrated East, the ancestral
hills and valleys of English and of European Christen
dom, stand to them. We cannot, we dare not, forecast
the future; but we cannot, we dare not, repress the
thought that a future, vast and wonderful for good
or for evil, must be in store for those descendants
of our common race to whom this mighty inheritance
has been given. For the New World as for the Old
World there is a glorious work to do, a work which
requires all the reverence, all the seriousness, all the
repose, of the East; all the activity, all the freedom,
all the progress, of the West ; all the long past of
ii4 SERMONS. BOSTON. [i.
Europe, all the long future of America a work which
neither can do for the other, but a work which both
can do together.
" Hast thou but one blessing, my Father ? bless
me, even me also, O my Father ! " This is the
prayer which East and West, England and America,
may well send up from shore to shore. Give to each
the grace to learn from each. Give to each the
strength to fulfil that pure and lofty mission which
belongs to each. Give to each the spirit of wisdom
and understanding, of "holy hope and high humility,"
to which the whole body of mankind, fitly joined
together and compacted by that which every joint
supplieth, according to the effectual working of every
part, shall make increase of the body unto the edifying
of itself in love. We have taken the wings of the
morning, we have dwelt in the uttermost parts of the
Western sea. O, may Thy hand even there lead us
onward ! O, may Thy right hand even there hold
us up I
II.
THE HOLY ANGELS.
PREACHED IN ST. JAMES S CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA,
SEPTEMBER 2Q, 1878.
"Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Matthew vi. 10.
IT is on the last part of. these words "as it is in
heaven," that I propose to dwell. We are invited
to consider them by the festival of this day, Michael
mas. But there is no time or place in which we may
not turn our thoughts from earth to heaven, from the
seen to the unseen, from the confused, imperfect ways
of the performance of God s will in this troublesome
world to its perfect and Divine fulfilment in a better
and higher state. It is on this that our thoughts
shall now be fixed.
I do not propose to dwell at length on what is
told us concerning the Holy Angels. It is not easy
nor is it necessary, to separate what we have learned
I 2
ii6 SERMONS. PHILADELPHIA. [n.
concerning them from the Bible, and what we have
learned from the great representations of them in
painting and in poetry. But the general idea which
the belief in angels expresses is deeply rooted in the
Christian heart and is full of instruction. If our
thoughts concerning them are drawn more from Milton
than from the Bible, yet Milton has, in his splendid
imagery, laid hold of a noble doctrine, at once Biblical
and philosophical. The idea of the heavenly host of
angels includes the operations of God in the vast
movements of the universe, and His ministrations
through the spirits of men, whether now or hereafter.
It includes that ideal world to which Plato fondly
looked as the sphere in which reside the great ideas,
the perfect images, of which all earthly virtue and
beauty are but the imperfect shadows. It includes
the thought of that peculiarly bright and lovely type
of Christian character to which, for want of any other
word, we have in modern times given the name of
" angel " or " angelic " superhuman, yet not Divine ;
not heroic, not apostolic, not saintly, yet exactly what
we call " seraphic " or " angelic," elevating, attracting,
with the force of inherent nobleness and beauty. "An
angel s nature," says Luther, " is a fine, tender, kind
heart, as if we could find a man or woman, who had
ii.] THE HOLY ANGELS. 117
a heart sweet all through, and a gentle will without
subtlety, yet of sound reason. He who has seen such
has seen colours wherewith he may picture to himself
what an angel is." The idea belongs to that high
region of thought where religion and poetry combine.
Religious belief furnished the materials, but poetry
wrought and transformed them into shapes which the
latest religious culture of mankind can never cease to
recognise. Let us, therefore, trace, so far as we can,
the outlines of that perfect fulfilment of the Divine
will of which here we see only the scanty and partial
promise.
(i.) First, the will of God is perfectly done in heaven,
because it is, as we believe, done with the unbroken,
uninterrupted sense of the presence of God. It is
well to know how to be in sympathy with the will of
God j to feel truly the littleness of all that is little, and
to feel no less truly the greatness of all that is great;
to have a just measure of what is partial, secondary,
indifferent,* and of what is eternal, permanent, and
essential; to look beyond the narrow present to the
far-reaching past and future. This, which we may
believe is the instinct of the blessed intelligences
which stand around the throne of God, ought to be
the aspiration, difficult and arduous, yet not impossible,
1 1 8 SERMONS. PHILADELPHIA. [n.
of those who are struggling here on earth. "The
Lord sitteth above the cherubim, be the earth never
so unquiet." We should strive to look upon things on
earth as we imagine that He looks upon them who
sees their beginning, middle, and end. This is the
first ground of the belief of which we are speaking.
(2.) Again, the thought of the host of heaven suggests
the idea of order, law, subordination. When the most
majestic divine of the English Church, Richard Hooker,
was on his deathbed, he was found deep in contem
plation, and on being asked the subject of his reflec
tions, he replied " that he was meditating upon the
*
number and nature of angels, and their blessed
obedience and order, without which peace could not
be in heaven ; and oh ! that it might be so on earth ! "
It was a meditation full of the same grand thought
which inspired his great work on "Ecclesiastical
Polity" the thought of the majesty of law, "whose
seat," as he says, " is the bosom of God, and whose
voice is the harmony of the universe." The very
words by which the angelic intelligences are described
" thrones, principalities, and powers " the connection
into which they are brought with the universal laws
of nature " He maketh the winds His angels, and
the flames of fire His ministers" bring before us the
II.] THE HOLY ANGELS. 119
truth that by law, by order, by due subordination of
means to ends, as in the material, so in the moral
world, the will of God is best carried out. This
truth gives a new meaning to those researches through
which the students of nature are enabled, by working
with those laws, to work out the will of their Maker.
But it also gives a fresh force and interest to those
other manifestations of law in the government of
States or Churches, by which there also the will of
God must be done on earth as by those higher laws
in heaven ; by the laws of duty in the human con
science ; by the laws of nations ; by the laws and
constitutions which Divine Providence has, through
the genius of man and the progress of arts, raised up
in our different commonwealths. By such laws,
the stars are kept from wrong,
And the most ancient heavens through it are fresh and strong.
By such laws all human societies are kept from unruly
disorder, popular violence, despotic tyranny. By the
supremacy of such laws, has the Church and State
of England hitherto been guarded and guided to
temperate freedom, and wholesome doctrine, and
solid unity. Out of such laws have sprung the great
communities which trace their descent from England
120 SERMONS. PHILADELPHIA. [n.
on this side of the Atlantic. And, oh ! by the
supremacy of law may we all continue to be ruled;
by law may the passions of individuals be restrained,
and the liberty of thought and of speech secured,
and the peace and order of the whole community
maintained ! By such order and by such law may the
whole of modern society, on this side of the ocean
or the other, be maintained in the stress and strain
now laid on every part of its complex organisation.
Let justice, which is the soul of law, prevail, though
heaven itself should fall ; or, rather as heaven cannot
fall, if only justice be done let justice, which is God s
will in heaven, on earth have its perfect work.
(3.) Again the Scripture teaches and our own heart
and reason respond to the thought that, combined with
the universal sense of the Divine presence and of the
Divine law, there is in the celestial world a wide
diversity of gifts and operations. " Few and far
between," indeed, are the glimpses which the Bible
gives us of the heavenly hierarchy ; yet they reveal
to us such a variety of form and beauty as naturally
befits the pattern and exemplar of this universe, so
fearfully and wonderfully made, of this marvellous
complexity of human souls and spirits created in one
Divine image, though in a thousand types. The seraph s
II.] THE HOLY ANGELS. 121
fire, we are taught to think, is different from the cherub s
strength. We see the four living creatures before the
throne, contrasted each with each, as ox with eagle,
and eagle with lion, and lion with man; one star
differing from another in glory ; there a rainbow, like
unto an emerald ; there the guileless virgin souls
following the gentle Lamb whithersoever He goeth ;
there the multitude, in white robes, with palms in
their hands, that have come out of great tribulation ;
there the armed soldiers of heaven, galloping on
white horses to victory.
Truly, "in our Fathers house are many mansions ;"
truly, the gates of that heavenly city "are open con
tinually, day and night." In those many mansions,
through those open gates, by those diverse gifts, our
Father s will is done in heaven.
It has been one happy characteristic of the Church
of England, that it has retained these several aspects
of the Christian character within its pale. There is
in Westminster Abbey a window dear to American
hearts, because erected by an honoured citizen of
Philadelphia, in which these two elements are pre
sented side by side. On the one hand is the sacred
poet most cherished by the ecclesiastical, royalist,
priest-like phase of the Church, George Herbert; on
122 SERMONS. PHILADELPHIA. [n.
the other hand, the sacred poet most cherished by
the Puritan, austere, lay phase of the Church, William
Cowper. That diversity is an example of the way
in which God s will is wrought on earth as it is
in heaven. I have said that we do not speculate
on the names or natures of angels, yet as symbols
and outlines of the Divine operations they may be
full of good suggestions. In the rabbinical and
mediaeval theology, this diversity used to be re
presented by the manifold titles of the various
" principalities and powers." Most of these have now
dropped out of use; but there are some few which,
either from their mention in the Biblical or the
apocryphal books, or from the transfiguring hand of
artistic or poetic genius, have survived. Michael, the
leader of the host of heaven, the champion of good
against evil, the immortal youth of Guide s magnificent
picture, trampling on the prostrate dragon ; Gabriel, the
pacific harbinger of glad tidings, the inspirer of hea
venly thoughts, by whose gracious touch the greatly
beloved Daniel was sustained, and the retiring Mary
encouraged, to whom the Arabian Prophet in his cave
looked for inspiration, to whom Milton assigned the
delightful post of guarding the gates of the earthly
paradise; Raphael, the "sociable spirit," the travelling
II.] THE HOLY ANGELS. 123
companion of the good Tobias, the ideal of those
angels whom, in mortal form, we sometimes entertain
unawares, whose words, when ended,
So charming left his voice, that we the while
Think him still speaking, still stand fixed to hear ;
Uriel, the " regent of the sun," " the light of God,"
seen for a moment in the books of Enoch and Esdras,
but in Milton s poem the glowing representative of
the angel of all knowledge ; Ithuriel, the searcher,
the discoverer of truth, with his spear whose touch of
celestial temper no falsehood can endure ; Abdiel,
the everlasting example, as long as the English language
lives, of courageous isolation, " the dreadless angel "
Among the faithless, faithful only he ;
Among innumerable false, unmoved,
Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified.
Such are the Divine ideals that the angelic powers
represent. They bring before us the summits of virtue,
and also its divergences. As in heaven, so on earth
let us strive, so far as is possible, that no light, of
however a different a lustre from our own, be extin
guished ; that no strength of purpose or conscience,
however diverse from our own, be shut out ; that no
124 SERMONS. PHILADELPHIA. [n.
aspiration after truth or duty, however wayward, be
stifled ; that no spark, even though it be that of the
smoking flax, be quenched; that no soaring pinion
be clipped in its upward flight ; that, of all the many
coloured shades, of all the numberless diversities,
whether of English or universal Christendom, none
be regarded as useless or worthless ; that every good
and perfect gift, whether in man or nature, whether in
the Old World, with all its aged and venerable forms,
or in the New World, with all its youth and vigour, be
alike hailed as coming down from the " Father of Lights,
with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turn
ing." Not in the exclusiveness of the courts of heaven,
but in their width and openness, shall we rejoice here
after : not by the exclusiveness of any Church or
school on earth, not by the equality of all human
characters, but by their inequalities ; not by contrac
tion within our own circle, but by our patient endurance
of things beyond our narrow vision, ought we to rejoice
now. " Every blessed spirit which ever existed" so
wrote one of the best of the Reformers to a prince
bowed down by great bereavement, and asking anxiously
concerning that unknown state beyond the grave
" Every blessed spirit which ever existed, every holy
character which shall exist, every faithful soul which is
II.] THE HOLY ANGELS. 125
living now, all these, from the beginning of the world
even unto the consummation thereof, thou shalt hereafter
see in the presence of Almighty God."
In that very diversity lies the strength, the beauty,
and the interest of the celestial hierarchy. Nor was it
without a deep meaning that the Book of Daniel speaks
of " the angel " the genius, as it were of each par
ticular empire and kingdom in the ancient heathen
world. Those angel forms, those idealised representa
tives, the genius of each State, and Nation, and Church,
still meet us in the commonwealths of modern times.
Of these the whole family of Christendom and the
whole family of mankind is composed. At the times
when their characteristic diversities are most strongly
brought out, we seem to see God s purpose in having
allowed such diverse formations among His creatures.
The angel of the old hemisphere, and the angel of the
new hemisphere, are both dear in the sight of Him
who made them both, and who designed for each a
work which none but they, and they both separately
and conjointly, can accomplish.
(4.) There is yet another thought suggested, especially
by that name which gives its chief meaning to the
festival of Michaelmas. "There was war in heaven;
Michael and his angels fought against the dragon."
126 SERMONS. PHILADELPHIA. [n.
This is the ideal side of the greatest of earthly evils.
There is war even in heaven, to carry out the will of
God in casting out evil from the world ; and so far as
the same qualities are called forth by war on earth,
it is true that even in the midst of the carnage of
battle, even in the midst of the misery of precious
lives lost, of brilliant hopes overturned, there is a like
ness to the conflicts of the celestial hosts. Courage,
self-control, discipline these are the gifts by which
victories are won on earth. Courage, self-control,
discipline these, if we may so say, are the gifts by
which victories are won in heaven.
Some of us may have read the complaint uttered
in one of the most striking works of American genius
against the famous Italian picture to which I have
alluded, in which the Archangel bestrides his fallen
enemy in unstained armour, with fair, unfurrowed
brow, with azure vest, with wings undisturbed. " Not
so," says Nathaniel Hawthorne, "should virtue look
in its death-struggle with evil; the archangel s feathers
should have been torn and ruffled, his armour soiled,
his robes rent, his sword broken to the hilt." Even
in the contests of heaven there must be struggles,
and of those struggles earthly warfare gives us a like
ness and type. All honour to the efforts after peace
li. j THE HOLY ANGELS. 127
which inspired the aims of that Society of Friends to
which this city owes its existence, and yet it is not
without significance that the only authentic portrait of
William Penn is that which represents him in his
early youth as a gallant soldier in complete armour,
and with the motto, "Peace is sought by War." Peace,
whether in religion or in politics, is the end, but it
is often true that war and conflict must be the means.
Michael the Archangel, the soldier of the heavenly hosts,
is a true exemplar of Christian goodness, no less than
the gentle Raphael or the gracious Gabriel. May God s
will everywhere, and by all of us, be carried out with
the same unswerving, persevering determination to
resist and conquer evil by man s will on earth as by
God s will in heaven.
(5.) Again, the heaven, where the Divine will pre
vails, is described in the Bible as a world of spirits.
It is the spirit, the spiritual, which unites and vivifies
the whole. In Ezekiel s complicated .vision of the
angelic operations of Divine Providence, it is the
spirit which is in the midst of the wheels. " Whither
soever the spirit was to go they went, and they went
every one straight forward, and they turned not when
they went." In the vision of St. John, no less, all the
worship is of the spirit, and of the spirit alone. " 1
123 SERMONS. PHILADELPHIA. [n.
saw no temple therein, and the city had no need of
the sun or of the moon to shine in it, and there
shall be no more curse, for the tabernacle of God
is amongst them." Doubtless, in our imperfect state,
the will of God cannot, in this respect, be done entirely
on earth as it is in heaven. Yet still the thought of
that state to which we all look forward helps us
more clearly to understand what should be the aim
and object of all earthly combinations and forms,
whether of language, of government, or of worship.
It is by the spirit, not the letter; by the essential
substance, and not the accidental covering; by
the better understanding of the meaning that lies
beneath the words ; by the better appreciation of unity
amidst outward differences ; by the comparison not
only of earthly things with earthly, but of spiritual
things with spiritual, without respect of persons or
nations, that the unity of spirit, which is the unity
of the blesse^i angels in heaven, can ever be pro
duced amongst Churches or nations. Much of the
course of this world may be carried on by colossal
armies, and by blood and fire and sword, by gigantic
commerce, by daring assertion of authority,, by cere
monial observances, by dogmatic exclusiveness. But
there is a higher course, which is carried on bv the
ii.] THE HOLY ANGELS. 129
still, small voice of conscience ; by the union of in
telligent minds ; by spirit, not by matter ; by reason,
not by force ; by mind and heart, and not by ex
ternal polity. Each one is, in this sense, a king to
himself. The hosts which really govern the world
are the thoughts and consciences of men. More
dear in the sight of God and His angels than any
other conquest is the conquest of self, which each man,
with the help of heaven, can secure for himself. There
is one great characteristic of the venerable religious
society of which this city is the centre namely, that
alone of separate Christian communions it placed before
it, as the object and reason of its existence, not any
outward ceremony, not any technical doctrine, but the
moral improvement of mankind the insignificance of
all forms and of all authority, compared with the in
ward light of conscience. This protest of the Friends,
this lofty aspiration, may have been accompanied by
many relapses, many extravagances, many glaring in
consistencies ; but in itself, and looking not at its
means, but at its ends, it is an example to all
Christendom ; it is not only Christian, but angelic.
(6.) There is yet one more aspect of this doctrine,
the constant activity of the ministering spirits of God,
in their care for His glory and for the welfare of men.
K
130 SERMONS. PHILADELPHIA. [u.
There are, indeed, those who serve, although they only
" stand and wait;" those who in the temple of heaven,
as in the temple on earth, do God s will by silent praise
and contemplation. Lut this is not the usual descrip
tion of the ministering spirits. They rest not, day nor
night ; their rest is in work, and their work itself is
rest. They rejoice, so we are told, in the recovery of
every fragment of good. And this ministration for our
welfare extends even to those operations of Providence
which seem at times most adverse. As in nature, the
fierce rain, the wild wind, the raging fire, are often
indispensable instruments for the purification Of rivers,
the invigoration of health, the reformation of cities, so
also it is in individual experience. In our own lives
how often it is that we come across what have been
finely called " veiled angels."
We know how radiant and how kind
The r faces are those veils behind ;
We trust those veils one happy day
In heaven and earth shall pass away.
There is one such veiled angel to whom, in Oriental
countries, a special name has been given, well known
through the words of a pathetic poem, taken as the
motto of the most tragical chapter of English fiction.
It is "Azrael, the angel of death." Yes, even Death,
II.] THE HOLY ANGELS. 131
the darkest and sternest of the messengers of God,
even he is, or may be, an angel of mercy. In a
famous speech of one of our greatest orators during
the European war of twenty-five years ago, there occur
words which have never been forgotten by those who
heard them, and which struck a sacred awe on the
national assembly to which he spoke : " The angel of
death is passing over the land. I seem even now to
hear the flapping of his wings." Not only in war, but
in every day of every year, in some household or other
at this season, especially over the Southern region of
this country, afflicted by wasting pestilence, that tread
may be felt, the rustling of those wings may be heard.
But the angel of death is also the angel of life, for
if Death divides he may also reunite. The angel
whose visits are of judgment and destruction invites
and provokes us to works of charity and kindness.
The angel who sits within the shadow of the sepulchre
is also the angel of the resurrection of our immortal
souls.
These then are the ways in which God s will is done
in heaven :
First, the consciousness of the Divine presence ;
Secondly, the majesty of law j
Thirdly, the diversity of Divine gifts ;
K 2
132 SERMONS. PHILADELPHIA. [:i.
Fourthly, the conflict with evil ;
Fifthly, the spiritual character of the service of
heaven ;
Sixthly, the Divine beneficence.
May God grant that now and then as we pray our
daily prayers to God, for His will to be done on earth
as it is in heaven some one of these thoughts, so
imperfectly expressed, may take possession of our
souls.
III.
THE PERPLEXITIES OF LIFE.
PREACHED IN CALVARY CHURCH, NEW YORK, OCTOBER 6, 1878.
" Suffer me a little, and I will shew thee that I have yet to ?peak
on God s behalf."/^ xxxvi. 2.
THE Book of Job is full of interest from beginning to
end; its dramatic character, its pathos, pervade its
structure throughout. It is divided into two sections.
The first part describes, in the most vivid poetry, the
misery and the hopes of the Patriarch. This occupies
thirty-one chapters. But the pith and conclusion of
the book is to be found in the second part, from the
thirty-second chapter to the end. The long contro
versy of Job with his three friends is finished, when
Job, although feeling that he was right, and they were
wrong, breaks out into the cry : " Oh that one would
hear me! Behold, my desire is that the Almighty
would answer me." That cry was heard. The words
134 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [ill.
of Job were ended ; the three friends were silent ; but
there was yet another spectator drawn to the scene of
sorrow the youth Elihu. He had heard both sides ;
he had waited until they had all spoken, with that
reverential deference which, in Oriental countries, marks
the conduct of youth to age ; but now he could restrain
himself no longer. " He was full of matter, the spirit
within him constrained him ; he spoke that he might
be refreshed." He opened his lips, and answered :
" I am young, and ye are very old ; wherefore I was
afraid, and durst not shew you mine opinion. I said,
days should speak, and multitude of years should teach
wisdom. But there is a spirit in man, and the inspira
tion of the Almighty giveth them understanding. Great
men are not always wise, neither do the aged understand
judgment. Therefore I said : Hearken to me ; I also
will shew mine opinion." He then, with trembling and
hesitating accents, in confused and complicated argu
ments, entreats them to listen to him, for he speaks in
and for a higher power than his own. " Suffer me a
little, and I will shew thee that I have yet to speak on
God s behalf."
Some critics have thought that the character of
Elihu was introduced into the book at a later date, in
order to clear up the perplexed horizon ; but, at any
in.] THE PERPLEXITIES OF LIFE. 135
rate, his part forms an integral element in the sacred
story as now handed down to us. It is like that of the
wise chorus in the Grecian tragedy; like that of an
impartial judge balancing the arguments of a contested
cause. Gently and calmly, without vehemence, and
without anger, he turns the attention of the Patriarch
from himself and his sufferings to the greatness, the
power, the wisdom of God. The complaints of Job
against his friends might be right, but "against God
behold in this they were not just." " I will answer thee,
that God is greater than man. Why dost thou strive
against Him ? for He giveth not account of any of His
matters." And thus he rises to a strain yet higher ;
he leaves the comparison of good and evil in this life,
and turns to the purer and clearer works of God in
creation. Then there comes the final confirmation of
his view of the world : " While Elihu yet spake, his
heart trembled and was moved out of its place ;"
there was a roar of thunder and a whirlwind, and
from the whirlwind the Lord answered Job and said :
"Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without
knowledge ?"
The wonders of nature were unfolded piece by
piece before his face; "the laying of the foundations
of the earth, when the morning stars sang together;"
136 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [in.
the waves of the sea, the sun, the planets, the snow,
the clouds, the mighty forms of the animal creation,
the marvellous instincts of beast and bird, the war-
horse impatient for the battle, " Behemoth " (that is,
the hippopotamus) revelling in his unwieldy strength,
"Leviathan" (that is, the scaly crocodile of the Egyptian
Nile). What the hard dogmatism of the friends had
been unable to effect, is now at last impressed by the
terrible yet glorious vision of the Divine works in
creation. Before that solemn display of the majesty
of God the proud spirit of the ancient chieftain was
bowed down, and he said: "I know that Thou canst
do everything, and that no thought can be withholden
from Thee." "I have heard of Thee by the hearing
of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee ; wherefore
I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes."
This is a brief summary of the close of this in
structive book. Let us draw from it its chief practical
lessons. They are four in number; four lessons, as
we may call them, on the perplexities of life.
(i.) First, the wisdom put into the mouth of Elihu,
when the three friends had failed, recalls to us the
truth taught elsewhere in Scripture, that there are
times when traditional authority must give way, when
he who is young may instruct those who are aged,
Hi.] THE PERPLEXITIES OF LIFE. 157
when "out of the mouths of babes and sucklings
God has ordained" that very "strength" which the
world most needs. That deference to age and expe
rience on which the three friends insist, is indeed the
general rule both in sacred and common life. Un
less it were so, society would always be dissolving
and reconstructing itself afresh ; teaching and acting
would lose that solidity and stability which is the
only guarantee of progress as well as of permanence.
Hesitation and modesty are the true models of youth
ful reverence at all times. But the doctrine which is
shadowed forth in the appearance of Elihu is this,
that each generation must learn not only from that
which has gone before, but from that which is coming
after it. The rising generation, for what we know,
has some truth which the older generation may have
failed to apprehend. Even a child can instruct its
elders, by good example, by innocent questions, by
simple statements. Elihu "was young," and the three
friends " were very old ; " yet to him, and not to them,
was entrusted the message of pointing out the true
answer to the great difficulty which had perplexed
them all. It was indeed no new truth which he put
before them ; but it was, for that very reason, the
more needed that the quick and lively eye of youth
138 .SERMONS. NEW YORK. [m.
should rightly perceive it and apply it. So to put
forth old truths that they may with each successive
age wear a new aspect; so to receive new truths that
they may not clash rudely with the old ; this is the
function which God entrusts to each new generation
of mankind. So, again and again,
God hath fulfilled Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
So, again and again, new life has been breathed
into expiring systems, new meanings into ancient
creeds, new applications have been given to the
most venerable truths. The younger nations are
called to take charge of the older races. A new
world, as our English statesman said, is called into
being to redress the misfortunes of the old. Let not
that new world fail of its mission from any narrow
ness of view, or darkness of insight, or false shame,
or false presumption.
(2.) Secondly, the Book of Job impresses upon us
that there are problems beyond the power of man to
exhaust; and in that certainty of uncertainty it is our
privilege to rest The human mind, it has been well
said, may and ought to repose as calmly before a
confessed and unconquerable difficulty as before a
in.] THE PERPLEXITIES OF LIFE. 139
confessed and discovered truth. The error, both of
Job and of his friends, had been to think that they
could measure the counsels of God, that they could
determine the course of His judgments : the friends
declaring that because Job was afflicted he could not
be righteous ; Job complaining that, because he was
righteous, he ought not to be afflicted. Elihu, on the
other hand, and the voice from the whirlwind, taught
that " touching the Almighty we cannot find Him
out;" "He is excellent in power and justice, and in
plenty of judgment ; He will not afflict without need."
In that power and justice and judgment, no less than
in His mercy and love, let us place our absolute con
fidence. " God," as the old proverb says, " never smites
with both hands at once ; " with one hand He strikes
to afflict, but the other is uplifted behind the veil, to
bless, to heal, and to purify. We may rest assured
that the Supreme Mind has a purpose, even though
we do not see it.
And how is this truth enforced on Job ? It
is by the unfolding before him of the wonders
of the natural world. To him, as to all the
ancient Gentiles, "the invisible things of God, even
His eternal power and Godhead," would be chiefly
seen through the creation of the world, through the
140 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [in.
things which are made. To us a deeper revelation
has been vouchsafed ; and were another Elihu to
appear before us to confirm our faith, it would not
only be from the wonders of nature, but from the
"still small voice" of the Gospel and of the Spirit,
which tells us that in the life and death of Jesus
Christ the will of God and the duties of man are for
ever united. The cross of Christ is the pledge to us
that the deepest suffering may be the condition of
the highest blessing, the sign, not of God s displeasure,
but of His widest and most compassionate love.
But though we have thus been raised above the
need of Elihu s ancient mission, yet still the descrip
tion of the natural world is often the best guide to
us, as to Job; and the more, because our view of
nature is so much fuller than it could be in the days
of the Patriarch. To the primeval ages of the world,
the fiery horse of the wilderness, the monsters of the
river Nile, were more wonderful, and are therefore in
this book more largely described even than "the
sweet influences of Pleiades," or "the bands of Orion;"
even more than " the watercourse, or the over
flowing of the thunder." But to us, who have been
taught the immeasurable distances, the incalculable
magnitude, of the heavenly bodies, which to Job
in.] THE PERPLEXITIES OF LIFE. 141
seemed only twinkling points in the firmament of
heaven; who have been taught the wonderful system
of the movements of cloud and storm, which in
those older times must have seemed to be separate
shocks and isolated convulsions; to us the argument
in the closing speeches of the Book of Job is
strengthened a hundredfold. We know that what we
see are but the outskirts of creation; that the power
and the wisdom which rule this vast universe must
be beyond the reach, not only of our understanding,
but of our furthest speculation. Many a one who
has been perplexed by the uncertainties and conten
tions of history, has been strengthened by the certainty
and the unity of science. "The moral perversions of
mankind would have made an infidel of me," said one
of the best prelates of this century, "but for the
counteracting impression of a Divine providence in
the works of nature." Whatever else the discoveries
of modern science teach us they teach us this the
marvellous complexity and the unbroken order of the
material world; they indicate to us, how vast is the
treasure-house of resources by which the immortality
of each separate spirit, the inter-communion of spirit
with spirit, and of all with God, may be sustained in
a higher world. They confirm the thought that "now
1 42 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [in.
we know in part, and see through a glass darkly," but
that in the infinite immensity in which God dwells,
and into which we hope we may pass after death,
"we shall know even as we are known."
A famous English philosopher, dear to the Western
world Bishop Berkeley, whose footsteps, whose relics,
and whose name the traveller follows with interest at
Newport,* at Hartford,f at Yale,J and even to the
shores of the Pacific has described a comparison
which occurred to him in St. Paul s Cathedral in
London, as he saw a fly crawling up one of the pillars :
" It required," he says, " some comprehension in the
eye of an intelligent spectator to take in at one view
the various parts of the building, in order to observe
their symmetry and design; but to the fly, whose
prospect was confined to a little part of one of the
stones of a single pillar, the joint beauty of the whole,
or the distinctive use of its parts, were inconspicuous,
and nothing could appear but the small inequalities on
the surface of the hewn stone, which, in the view of
* In the house called "Whitehall," the rocks called "Para
dise," and in Trinity Church, at Newport.
f His chair is in the college at Hartford.
His legacy of books is in the library at Yale.
The new college at San Francisco is, I am told, called after
Berkeley s name.
in.] THE PERPLEXITIES OF LIFE. 143
that insect, seemed to be so many deformed rocks
and precipices." That fly on the pillar is indeed the
likeness of each human being as he creeps across
the vast pillars which uphold the universe. That
crushing sorrow, which appears to us only a yawning
chasm, or a hideous obstruction, may turn out to be
but the jointing or the cement that binds together
the fragments of our existence into one solid whole.
That dark and crooked way, through which we have
to grope in doubt and fear, may be but a curve,
which, in the sight of superior intelligences, shall
appear to be the tracery of some elaborate ornament
or the span of some majestic arch. Everything which
enables us to see how the universe is one whole;
everything which shows that man is bound by subtle
links with all the other parts of creation ; everything
which shows us how many of the miseries of the
world of man, the wretchedness of improvidence,
intemperance, and sensuality, are also breaches of
the fixed rules of nature; everything which confirms
us in the belief that the revelation of the Infinite
and the Divine is not confined to a single race or
Church, but pervades, more or less, all the religious
instincts of mankind ; everything which impresses upon
us the continuity, the unity of the Divine and human,
144 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [in.
of the sacred and secular, brings us into the frame
of mind which the Bible and experience alike im
press upon us as needful for the reception of the
first principles of true religion.
(3.) This brings us to the third lesson contained in
the Book of Job. "I abhor myself," says the Patriarch,
" and repent in dust and ashes." He was called away
from dwelling on himself, and on his own virtue, to
feel that he was in the presence of One before whom
all earthly goodness and wisdom seemed insignificant.
It was the same truth to which the friends had vainly
endeavoured to bring him, but to which they could
not bring him, because they combined it with a con
tradiction against which his conscience and reason
revolted.
He had been right in the assertion of his own
innocence; his friends had been wrong in believing
that his calamities were judgments on his sins. Still
he was at last brought to confess that "though he
had whereof to glory, yet not before God." Looking
at himself, not in comparison with other men, but in
comparison with the All-holy and the All-pure, his
sufferings seemed to assume another aspect. "God is
in heaven, and we upon earth ; let Him do as seemeth
Him best." Those upon whom the tower in Siloam
jll/j THE PERPLEXITIES OF LIFE. 145
fell were not sinners above the rest of mankind, but
all such calamities warn us to take a serious and solemn
view of our mortal condition. They bring us into the
presence of Him, before whom we feel that sense of
sin and infirmity which we naturally shrink from ex
pressing in the presence of our fellow-men. When we
think of Him as He appeared to Job in the works of
creation, when we think of Him from whom nothing is
hidden, and in the light of whose countenance our
secret sins are set, it is no mock humility, but the
simple expression of our most enlightened conscience,
to abhor ourselves before Him, and repent in dust
and ashes.
A pious old Churchman of the last generation,
Joshua Watson, used to say that as life advanced his
abhorrence of evil in himself and his loathing for
it so increased, that in his latter days confessions
of sin, which in youth had seemed to be somewhat
exaggerated, became the sincere voice of his heart.
No doubt there is another instinct in human nature,
the very reverse of this, the consciousness that we are
made in the image of God, that we are the masters of
our own destiny, the heirs of all the ages, crowned
with glory and honour, some of us with the faculties,
all perhaps with the hopes of angels. It was the glory
146 SERMONS. NEW YORK. (i\\.
of one of the great religious teachers of New England
to have brought out this feeling with a force which,
even if exaggerated, has left an enduring mark on his
age, which neither in Europe nor America can easily
be effaced. It is part of the buoyancy and elasticity
of mind which is so remarkable a heritage of this
people, and which gives so strong a pledge of their
future greatness.
Yet still, the self-abasement of Job is not the less
a necessary element of that perfect and upright
character, of which he is represented as the type.
And not only in moral matters, but in intellectual
matters also, do we learn this need for humility. How
often do we hear ignorant, half-educated men, how
often do we hear audacious young men, pronouncing
on difficult problems of science and religion with a
certainty which to those of mature years seems abso
lutely ridiculous. We all have need of the grace of
humility. We have need of the conviction that many
of us, perhaps most of us, are but as dust and ashes
in the presence of the great oracles in the various
branches of knowledge that Divine wisdom has
raised up amongst us. We have need of willingness,
of eagerness to be corrected by those who fear to
tread where we rush boldly in, and of a desiie to
in.] THE PERPLEXITIES OF LIFE. 147
improve ourselves by every light that dawns upon us
from the past or the present, from the east or from the
west, from heaven or from earth.
(4.) Lastly, the sense of the vastness of the universe,
and of the imperfection of our own knowledge, may
help us in some degree to understand, as in the case
of Job, not, indeed, the origin of evil and of suffering,
but, at any rate, something of its possible uses and
purposes. We look round the world and we see cruel
perplexities the useless spared, the useful taken ; the
young and happy removed, the old and miserable
lingering on; happy households broken up under our
feet, disappointed hopes, and the failure of those to
whom we looked up with reverence and respect. We
go" through these trials with wonder and fear ; and
we ask whereunto this will grow. But has nothing
been gained? Yes, that has been gained which
nothing else, humanly speaking, could give. We may
have gained a deeper knowledge of the mind of
God, and a deeper insight into ourselves. Truths
which once seemed mere words, received without
heed and uttered without understanding, may have
become part of ourselves. In time past we could say,
" We heard of God by the hearing of the ear," but
now we can say, "Our eye seeth Him." Humility
L 2
148 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [HI.
for ourselves, charity for others, self-abasement before
the Judge of all mankind, these are the gifts that
even the best men, and even the worst men, may gain
by distrust, by doubt, and by difficulty.
May I close these words by an illustration drawn
from the lips of a rough seafaring man, one of the
few survivors of a great wreck which took place
some years ago, when a crowded steamship foundered
in the stormy waters of the Bay of Biscay? As soon
as those who had escaped from the sinking vessel
found themselves in a small boat on the raging sea,
they discovered that their chief danger came, not
from the massive sweep of the waters, but from the
angry breaking waves which descended upon them
from time to time, and against which every eye and
hand had to watch with unabated attention. As the
shades of evening grew on, the survivor who told me
the story said that his heart sank at the thought that
in the darkness of the night it would be impossible to
see those insidious breakers, and that sooner or later
the boat would be engulfed by them. But with the
darkness there came a corresponding safety. Every
one of those dangerous waves, as it rolled towards
them, was crested with phosphoric light, which showed
its coming afar off, and enabled the seamen to guard
III.] THE PERPLEXITIES OF LIFE.
149
against it as carefully as if they had been in full
daylight. The spirits of the little company revived,
and though, from time to time, the cowards or the
desperadoes amongst them were for turning back, or
driving an oar through the frail boat s side, the
coruscations guided them through the night ; and
they did at last, in the early dawn, catch a view
of the distant vessel by which they were saved.
That crest of phosphoric light on the top of those
breaking billows was as the light of Divine grace, the
compensating force of Providence, in the darkness of
this mortal night, and on the waves of this trouble
some world. The perplexity, the danger, the grief,
often brings with it its own remedy. On each burst
ing wave of disappointment and vexation there is a
crown of heavenly light which reveals the peril, and
shows the way, and guides us through the roaring
storm. Out of doubt comes faith; out of grief
comes hope ; and " to the upright there ariseth up
light in the darkness." With each new temptation
comes a way to escape; with each new difficulty
comes some new explanation. As life advances, it
does indeed seem to be as a vessel going to pieces,
as though we were on the broken fragments of a
ship, or in a solitary skiff on the waste of waters;
ISO SERMONS. NEW YORK. [in.
but so long as our existence lasts we must not give
up the duty of cheerfulness and hope.
The sense that kept us back in youth
From all intemperate gladness,
That same good instinct now forbids
Unprofitable sadness.
He who has guided us through the day may guide
us through the night also. The pillar of darkness
often turns into a pillar of fire. Let us hold on
though the land be miles away ; let us hold on till the
morning break. That speck on the distant horizon
may be the vessel for which we must shape our course.
Forwards, not backwards, must we steer forwards and
forwards, till the speck becomes a mast, and the
mast becomes a friendly ship. Have patience and
perseverance; believe that there is still a future before
us ; and we shall at last reach the haven where we
would be.
IV.
THE USES OF CONFLICT.
PREACHED IN THE CATHEDRAL OF QUEBEC, OCTOBER 2O, 1878.
" Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from
Bozrah ? this that is glorious in his apparel, travelling in the great
ness of his strength ?
" I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save.
" Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like
him that treadeth in the wine-fat ?
"I have trodden the wine-press alone, and of the people there
was none with me : for I will tread them in mine anger, and trample
them in my fury; and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my
garments, and I will stain all my raiment. For the day of ven
geance is in my heart, and the year of my redeemed is come."-
Isaiah Ixiii. 1-4.
THIS passage belongs to that second portion of the
Book of Isaiah in which the Prophet is anxiously
looking forward to the return of his people from
the Babylonian captivity. He supposes himself to
be at Jerusalem, and he describes that he sees a
figure advancing from a distance, advancing from
the south, from the red mountains where dwelt the
152 SERMONS QUEBEC. [IY.
old hereditary enemies of Judah, the children of the
red-haired Esau, who, in the day of the destruction
of Jerusalem, had said : " Down with it, down with it,
even to the ground I" His form is terrible to behold.
His robes are scarlet, as with the vivid colour of the
rocks of Petra, from whence he comes Petra, "the
rose-red city "crimson as the cliffs from which the
fastness of Bozrah looks down over the Promised Land.
"Who is this that cometh from Edom ? with dyed
garments from Bozrah? this that is glorious in his
apparel, tossing back his head in the greatness of his
strength?" And from the far-off conqueror comes the
gracious answer : " It is I that speak of righteousness,
I that am mighty to save "I, who not only speak of
what is right and true, but come, at all hazards, to do
it, and carry it on to victory.
Once again the Prophet gazes on those blood-
red garments, as their colour flashes more distinctly
on his view. He sees that they are not, as they
seemed in the distance, the scarlet mantle worn by
the warrior chiefs of the Arab tribes, but rather like
the raiment of those who, in southern and eastern
countries, enter the wine-press at the vintage, and
with naked feet crush the purple clusters, and press
out the juice of the grape, till they wade knee-deep in
iv.] THE USES OF CONFLICT. 153
a foaming crimson torrent, which dashes, as in waves
and fountains of blood, over the clothes of the treaders.
"Why art thou red in thine apparel, and thy gar
ments like him that treadeth in the wine-fat ? " And
the answer comes once more : " I have trodden the
wine-press alone, and of the people there was none
with me. For I trod them down in mine anger, and
trampled them in my fury; and their blood was
sprinkled on my garments ; and I have stained all
my raiment. For the day of vengeance is in mine
heart, and the year of my redeemed is come." The
retribution was at last to fall on the savage tribes of
Edom ; the crisis of their fate was surely to approach,
and Israel was no more to be vexed by their insolent
triumph; a bright era was to open before the chosen
people, as when their ancestors had marched through
these mountains into their place of destined rest.
Such is the literal occasion of the prophecy, and
it is in part suggested by the like denunciations of
vengeance against Edom in the thirty-fourth chapter.
It is one of the instances in which Hebrew prophecy
repeats itself from century to century ; the later prophet
taking up and applying what the earlier prophet had
first uttered.
The vision, as we see, reflects in the deepest dye
154 SERMONS. QUEBEC. [iv.
what may be called the sanguinary character of ancient
Jewish history. It is one of the few visions, almost
the only vision, of this kind in the utterances of the
Evangelical Prophet. It breaks in upon the peaceful
melodious strains of his salutations and consolations
like a thunder-clap in a clear sky, like the clash of
arms in a bridal feast. It breathes throughout the
deep undying hatred of the race of Jacob towards
the race of Esau, roused to the utmost pitch by the
ungenerous delight which the Edomites had taken in
the fall of their ancient rival. It is the concentration
of the cry for vengeance which runs through the
brief prophecy of Obadiah, and which closes with
a sunset of blood the tender delicate pathos of
the hundred and thirty-seventh Psalm. It lent its
imagery to that same fierce sentiment continued in
after ages by the Jewish people, when the name of
their dead enemy Edom was transferred to their living
enemy, the Roman Empire; and yet again when Chris
tendom began those cruel persecutions of the Jewish
race which ought still to raise a blush of shame on
every Christian cheek, when the soul of Esau was
believed by Israelite Rabbis to live over again in the
Churches and States of Europe, and echoes, not loud
but deep, of the curses of the ancient prophets still
iv.] THE USES OF CONFLICT. 155
rang in many a synagogue, in many a house of traffic,
in Rome and in Toledo, in Venice and in York.
So regarded in its first historical meaning, the pro
phecy belongs to that outward vesture of Divine things
which waxeth old and is folded up ; deeply instructive
in its relations to the history of the ancient Jewish
race, but on that very account with no permanent
bearing on the fortunes of Christendom or of man
kind. But the more keenly we figure to ourselves
this external difference, the more fully do we perceive
the significance of the inward spirit which gives to
this, and other like words of Jewish prophecy, an
enduring value. Edom has passed away. Whether
it received its death-blow from the Maccabees or the
.Romans, the race of Esau no longer haunts the rocks
of Petra or .the fortress of Bozrah. Other nations
have peopled these lonely fastnesses. The maledic
tions of the prophets as regards this particular object
have exhausted themselves ages ago. But not so the
principles which lie at the root of those maledictions-
like a pearl, as a well-known interpreter of prophecy
said, " like a pearl at the bottom of the deep sea."
There are, we may say, when we examine this
prophecy, two such principles one of more limited,
and one of more universal application. The more
156 SERMONS. QUEBEC. [iv.
limited application is that which arises out of the
question : What was the source of this bitter, inex
piable hatred against the race of Edom? It was
this. The enmity of Edom, unlike the enmity of
Babylon or Nineveh, was not the attack of open foes
in fair fight; it was the destruction of friends by
friends ; it was the desertion of kinsmen by kinsmen ;
it was the crime of hounding on the victorious party,
of " standing by on the other side " in the day of the
sorest need of the weaker or the vanquished cause.
This is no obsolete evil confined to ancient days.
The wicked old proverb, " Howl with the wolves," is
a maxim which is still but too common a maxim as
hateful to the Christian evangelist as it was to the
Hebrew prophet. The prophecy in this sense breathes
the true chivalry of human nature, of Christian nature.
It calls upon us all, old and young, to remember
that to trample on a fallen foe, whether in public or
in private life, is neither wise nor generous.
But there is a more general truth involved in the
very sound of the heart-stirring words, a bracing and
invigorating note, as though we heard the voice of a
trumpet talking with us. What is this universal truth ?
It is that good is achieved in this mixed world of ours
chiefly by struggle and combat. There is always the
iv.] THE USES OF CONFLICT. 157
red range of Edom to be surmounted before we
can reach the Promised Land; there is always the
wine-press to be trodden before we drink the juice
of the grapes ; there is always the battle to be fought
before the victory is won. It is not enough to speak
of righteousness ; we must be active in doing it. It
is not enough to wait till others help us ; we must
act and fight, we must do and dare, though we stand
alone though "of the people there be none with us."
We may look, and there will be none to help ; we
may wonder that there is none to uphold ; but a just
cause is its own support ; our own arm, in the strength
of God, may bring salvation to us ; the fury, righteous
passion, indignation, enthusiasm of a single man is
enough to uphold a sinking cause.
Let me take some particular instances in which
this general principle is established.
First, let me speak of the most sacred of all its
exemplifications. These words are not, indeed, in any
strict sense of the phrase, a prediction of our Saviour s
coming. They are never quoted as such in the New
Testament. They have no historical reference to His
life. But they are something much more than a pre
diction. They are a prophecy in the strict sense of
the word that is, an announcement of a Divine truth,
1 53 SERMONS. QUEBEC. [iv.
of which the historical manifestation of Jesus Christ
was the chief end and the crowning example. Not
in the letter but in the spirit, and yet partly even in
the letter, the thrilling question of the Prophet might
have been repeated when the people of Jerusalem stood
round the open space on Calvary, and saw approaching
up that mournful way a figure "whose visage was marred
more than any man, and his form more than the sons of
men." His garments were red with blood; His very
sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling
down to the ground. "Who is this that cometh from
Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah ? . . . Where
fore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments
like him that treadeth in the wine-fat?" So it might
well be asked, in accents of awe mingled with grief;
and the answer is the same as to the Prophet : " I that
speak of righteousness, and am also mighty to save."
Yes, that mean, that despised, that blood-stained, that
agonised form is the form of the Invincible Conqueror.
He has not only been the Prophet, the Teacher of
righteousness; He has also been mighty to put His
words into deeds, His promise into performance. He
is alone. His friends and disciples have fled. He has
trodden the wine-press alone, and of the people of
His age there was none with Him. But in the midst
IV.] THE USES OF CONFLICT. 159
of this isolation He is still the King of Kings and
Lord of Lords, acknowledged as the foremost figure
of human history, as the clearest personification of
the Divine perfections. His own arm has brought
salvation to Him. His strong love, strong as death,
hath upholden Him. " For the day, not of vengeance,
but of forgiveness, is in His heart, and the year of
His redeemed is come." Out of that dark hour
and that fierce agony, was destined to be brought
the redemption, the civilisation, the sanctification of
mankind.
The same general truth which lies expressed in the
vision of the conqueror of Edom, in the sufferings of
Christ, can also be seen in many vicissitudes of human
life. Let us look at it as it regards individuals. We
are here guided by the application of this pro
phecy in Scripture itself. Look at the visions in
the Apocalypse,* where the older language is worked
up again in a new form. Look at that vision of the
heavenly warriors following their heavenly Leader on
white horses as He rides before them with His vesture
dipped in blood. Who are they ? Who are those
celestial champions of Christendom who come in the
thickest fray to help those that have no helper ? There
* Rev. xix. 11-16.
160 SERMONS. QUEBEC. [iv.
are the martyrs for the early Christian faith, who literally
came with their garments dyed in blood, the advanced
guard, the forlorn hope, who fought their way through
the passes of Edom for us and for themselves, witnesses
to the sacredness of conscience, and to the value of
a noble and honourable death. There, too, are the
martyrs of truth and science, who, in solitary study,
misunderstood, neglected, and unrequited, have trodden
the wine-press of knowledge alone; or who like the
earliest explorers and discoverers of these regions,
who fixed the first European habitation on this spot
laboured that other men might enter into their
labours, and enjoy the Land of Promise, which they
only saw in the far futurity, as from the top of Pisgah.
There, too, are the firm companions and friends of our
youth and age faithful through good report and evil,
who appear at the right moment, like guardian angels
at our side, warding off temptation and misfortune,
encouraging us when there was no one else to en
courage, warning us when there was no one else to warn,
advising us in spite of ourselves, standing by us when
the world turned against us. There, also, is the young
boy or the young man, at school or college, doing what
he knows to be right, avoiding what he knows to be
wrong, remembering what he has learned at home,
IV.] THE USES OF CONFLICT. 161
though far away. There, too, are the pure-minded and
high-spirited amongst men, who stand perhaps alone
in a frivolous, selfish circle, yet still holding their
own against the ridicule of foolish enemies or the
flattery of false friends determined to work, though
their neighbours are idle; to be frugal, though those
around are extravagant; to be truthful, pure, and
temperate, though those around are treacherous and
self-indulgent.
And again, there is another vision in the Apo
calypse* in which the same figure is taken up
with a still profounder meaning : " What are these
which are arrayed in white robes, and with palms
in their hands, and whence came they? These are
they which came out of great tribulation, and have
washed their robes, and made them white in the
blood of the Lamb." That is to say : These are they
who have suffered, not only in temptation, but in the
innumerable sorrows, disappointments, mortifications,
and changes of this anxious pilgrimage of life. These
are they who have been refined and purified in that
long struggle ; who have learned from their own
sorrows and from their own trials to feel for the
sorrows and the trials of others ; who have gained
* Rev. vii. 13, 14.
102 SERMONS. QUEBEC. [iv.
through that experience a power beyond their own
the power of faith, the power of sympathy, the power
of rising above the petty cares of earth, the power of
discernment between what is solid and enduring and
what is false and fleeting. Truly that blood in which
their white robes are washed is the blood of the Lamb
not the blood offered to appease an angry God, but
the life blood (the blood which is the life) of the
gentle and spotless Lamb ; the drops of that same
agony which watered the Garden of Gethsemane, filling
up, as the Apostle says, the afflictions of Christ, who
was tempted like as we are, and learned wisdom like
us by suffering.
And if this great law of Divine redemption be
true of individuals, if struggle and suffering be their
condition of good, and if that good be thus the key
to much that is mysterious in the suffering and the
struggle, so also it is in regard to the more complex
affairs of nations and Churches.
Alas ! if we look over the history of the world,
how often it seems but one vast blood-red field, one
long ascent of Calvary. "Who is this that cometh
from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah?"
"Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy
garments like him that treadeth in the wine-fat?" Is
iv.] THE USES OF CONFLICT. 163
not this the description of the human race itself? Is
it not the aspect as of a bleeding warrior emerging
from a hard-won fight, splashed with the gore of the
slain, plume and helmet crushed, sword broken, and
armour bruised? When we look on the desolation of
war, its necessary horrors, its unnecessary but too often
concomitant sins Can any good, we are sometimes
tempted to say, come out of this Edom, this Golgotha,
this vast confusion of misery ? For what end has been
this waste of blood, of energy, of precious lives, of noble
souls, of high intelligence ? Often, indeed, in the course
of human history, we must say with grief, None
none whatever. In one sense they belong to that
outward frame of old Hebrew prophecy, that dismal
imagery of vengeance and destruction and carnage,
which Christ came not to fulfil but to destroy. But,
nevertheless, here also the inward principle of the pro
phecy still holds its course. There is something even
in the remembrance of former wars, something in the
very heat of the turmoil of civil or national conflicts,
which braces our nerves, which clears the atmosphere,
which dispels frivolity, which restores a just balance of
things important and things trivial, which compels us
to look into ourselves, which sifts and tears to pieces
the false pretences and false arguments of every party.
M 2
1 64 SERMONS. QUEBEC. [iv.
There is something also in the profession of a
soldier which keeps alive before the world the in
estimable value of some of the greatest Christian
virtues courage, discipline, and honour. A soldier s
temptations may be beyond the temptations of other
men, but for that very reason the example of a good
soldier, pure, and just, and noble-minded, is beyond
all other examples a city set on a hill, a fortress that
cannot be taken, an encouragement to the weak and
wavering everywhere. In the midst of that burning
fiery furnace of war there appears a Divine Form
walking with us ; we know not whence He came, or
how He is there, but He will at last prevail, if only
we have grace to recognise Him, to seize the oppor
tunities which, out of these excandescent heats, fly off
as sparks from the anvil. As iron sharpeneth iron, so is
man to man. War and conquest are amongst the woes
of God s heaviest judgments, but how often have the
finest and noblest results grown out of it ! How vast
has been the moral impulse given to national life by
such struggles, whether from within or from without !
Look at the history of this famous place. How closely
has the memory of later years bound together the names
of the two heroic rival chiefs who perished on the
same day, almost in the same hour, beneath the walls
iv.] THE USES OF CONFLICT. 165
of Quebec ! How strong an incentive to the best
and most generous feelings of human nature is the
joint tribute which we all involuntarily pay to Wolfe
and to Montcalm ! And, again, how singular is the
providence which, out of those long conflicts between
England and France on these Western shores, has
worked out the peculiar result of this Dominion of
Canada, where the language and the manners of the
two great civilising races of Europe flow together,
as hardly anywhere else, in one harmonious stream,
and sustain the influence and image of the ancient
monarchies of Europe, side by side with the great
republic of this New World.
And, again, if the principle of the ancient prophecy
applies to the turmoils of the State, no less is it true
of the turmoils of the Church. There again, as we
look at the divisions of Christendom at large, or of
any one of its separate Churches, the question often
arises, Who is this that cometh from Edom with
garments dyed in Christian blood the seamless
raiment rent in twain by the violence of Christian
controversy? Can this be the Prince of Peace? Can
this be the God of Love? Can this be the Merciful
and the Just? Yet here, also, is another side to
the picture. Here, also, must the Truth of God
1 66 SERMONS. QUEBEC. [iv.
enter into its rest by hard-won victory, by generous
rivalry, by the eager conflict of soul with soul and
mind with mind. Union of the same elements is
nothing; it is only the union of diverse elements
which makes unity worth having. If all were the
eye, where were the hearing? and if all were the
ear, where were the seeing? We may have absolute
agreement and sameness every face like every other
face, every mind like every other mind; but we should
then have none of the variety of nature, none of the
culture of civilisation, none of the richness and the
fulness of Christianity. But in proportion as any
Church is civilised, and national, and comprehensive,
there must be divisions, and those very divisions are
the sign of comprehension and of vitality. As in the
State, so in the Church, it is by argument, by debate,
by the intercourse of different souls, that truth is sifted,
and light struck out, and faith tried, and charity per
fected. There are streams of religious thought which,
like the Nile, can diffuse beneficence by their sole
strength, without tributary or accessory aid ; but the
stream of the highest Christian truth, in this respect,
resembles the mighty river, the glory of the Western
world, which flows beneath the heights of Quebec, and
which derives its force and majesty from that peculiar
iv.] THE USES OF CONFLICT. 167
conformation of this continent which has made it the
depositary and the outlet of all that vast volume of waters
which, in hidden springs, and immense lakes, and
world-renowned cataracts, discharge themselves into its
broad channel, and make it the highway of the nations.
Such is true Christianity, accepting and including all
the elements of life which, from the inland seas of far
antiquity, or the rushing torrents of impetuous action,
or the dissolving foam of ethereal speculation, find their
way into its capacious bosom.
No doubt, whether in the Church or the State, there
is a sense in which these divisions may become our
destruction instead of our edification. There is a
sense in which a house divided against itself cannot
stand ; in which the river of life may be so swelled
as to burst its bounds ; and that is when these divi
sions become embittered by stupid prejudice, by
personal malignity, when each exaggerates the faults
of each, when each looks upon each, not as an element
of life to be included, but as an element of death to
be thrust out. That indeed is Edom without Palestine,
Golgotha without Redemption, the Crucifixion without
Christ.
But there is a more excellent way by which
differences lead to counsel and to strength. It is the
1 68 SERMONS. QUEBEC. [iv.
comparison of truth with truth, the candour which
fair discussion engenders, the generosity which springs
from matured knowledge, the conviction which springs
from honest doubt, the determination to see the meaning
which lies behind the words, to seek in different practices
and doctrines not their worst, but their better side.
"Who is this," we may once more ask, "that
cometh from Edom that is glorious in his apparel,
travelling in the greatness of his strength leading his
people through the deep, as a horse through the
wilderness, that they should not stumble?" It is indeed
CHRIST Himself. It is the Spirit, the Eternal Spirit,
of His life, and of His death, of His acts, and of His
words. It is those who see in Him something vaster
and higher than any single Church, or than any single
leader, who see in Truth something greater than any
one of the particular forms of Truth ; who see in love
and charity something grander even than faith or hope,
even than agreement in opinion, even than uniformity
in worship. Such as these may, with their Master,
tread the wine-press alone, but not the less have they
the future in their hands ; and in the faith which
breathes this spirit, however imperfect, however strug
gling, they will stand fast for ever, because it has in it
the pledge of immortality, because the day of victory
iv.] THE USES OF CONFLICT. 169
is in its heart. The blood with which they are sprinkled
is not the blood of fierce conflicts, nor yet even the
blood of which I have before spoken, wrung out by
suffering, whether in ourselveS or in others. It is the
blood of Christ in that highest sense in which it is
used in the Bible not merely the blood of His agony,
but the life-blood of His Spirit, which alone gives^ force
and virtue to all His efforts for us ; the life-blood of
Christ and Christendom, which is love or chanty
the love which sees in the service of man the best
and highest means of the service of God.
We have spoken of all the various manifestations
of principle which the text involves, and we have
travelled far away from the blood-stained vision of the
Prophet to more peaceful and homely applications of
the general truth, that the good of man and the will
of God can only be carried out by long struggle and
exertion.
Is there not an exemplification of this truth present
with peculiar force at this moment ? The whole, city of
Quebec, the whole Dominion of Canada is lamenting
at this moment the departure of perhaps the most
beloved and valued ruler who has ever swayed its
counsels. Or, if this be too much to affirm when we
1 70 SERMONS. QUEBEC. [iv.
think of those who have gone before, yet at least we
may say that he who yesterday took his last farewell of
these shores showed us in his high position what are
the special qualities by which rulers have made, and
can make, themselves beloved and valued by those
whom they are called to govern. This is not the
place, nor would it be fitting for me, to speak of those
peculiar graces and gifts which enabled your late
Governor to carry out so successfully his exalted mis
sion. But there is one aspect under which his example
was applicable, not only to all statesmen, but to all
conditions of life. Not by the conflict of war or
struggle, but by that pouring out of the very life-blood
of a generous nature, was the work accomplished and
the recompense attained. Whatever gifts he had were
all used to the uttermost for the public service. What
ever graces of art or speech had been given to him by
nature, were made available for the sake of rendering
those around him and beneath him happy, and at ease,
and useful. No stone was left unturned that could by
him be turned for this object; no time, no labour
was spared that could forward the work that was to
be done. These are homely arts, but they are arts
often neglected. For the want of them the wheels of
the world s progress drag heavily; by the use of them
iv.] THE USES OF CONFLICT. 171
the course of civilisation and religion runs smoothly
onward. They are arts, too, which in our humble
measure are within the reach of all. Each can use
his talents, whatever they may be, with that ungrudging
devotion for the public good which was employed in
the use of those loftier talents in that high place.
Each can make the little world around him more
happy and more useful by determining to despise and
ignore what is base and trivial, by resolving to make
the best and the most of all that there is of good,
and noble, and generous, whether in ourselves or others.
May we all show our grateful sense of him whom we
have lost by doing likewise each in our sphere. May
the successor, who in a few weeks will take his place
with the most sacred pledge which the Sovereign of
England has yet given to these distant possessions,
in like manner devote the energies of his noble and
ancient race, and the purity of his blameless life, to the
fulfilment of the great task entrusted to him. May
he and she, when their work is closed, depart with the
like reward of a grateful people, with the like con
sciousness that they too have used to the utmost the
greatness of their strength ; that they too have moved
forward the hours of the eternal year of redemption
from all evil, and of advance towards all good.
V.
"THERE IS NOTHING."
PREACHED AT STOCKBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, OCT. 27, l8j8.
"There is nothing." I Kings xviii. 43.
IN the story of Elijah on Mount Carmel there is
a striking passage made to some of us yet more
striking by the music of Mendelssohn in which it has
been enshrined where the young lad attendant on the
Prophet ascends the highest point of the long ridge
of the mountain, and whilst his master remains on
the lower level, looks out over the wide expanse of
the Mediterranean Sea. It is a scene of which every
step can still be identified. The boy gazes, in the
hope that the Prophet s earnest prayer may bring
down the long-desired rain. The sun had sunk into
the Western Sea. But after the sunset there followed
the long white glow so common in the evenings of
Eastern countries. Seven times the youthful watcher
v.] "THERE is NOTHING:* i 73
went up and looked, and seven times he reported :
" There is nothing." The sky was still clear ; the
sea was still calm. At last out of the far horizon
there arose a little cloud, the first that for days and
months had passed across the heavens. It was no
larger than an outstretched hand ; but it grew in the
deepening shades of evening, and quickly the whole
sky was overcast, and the forests of Carmel shook in
the welcome sound of those mighty winds which in
Eastern regions precede a coming tempest. The cry
of the boy from his mountain watch had hardly been
uttered when the storm broke upon the plain, the
rain descended, the Kishon swelled and burst over
its banks, and the nation was delivered from its
sufferings.
This is :ne of those parables of nature which we
may apply in many directions. It expresses the truth
that often, out of seeming nothingness, there arrives
the very blessing most desired.
(i.) "There is nothing." So the disciples thought
when from the top of Olivet they gazed into heaven
after their departed Master. "There was nothing;*
there was no opening in that sky to tell them whither
He. had. gone. They would see Him no more again.
But was there indeed nothing to come ? Yes, there
1/4 SERMONS. STOCKBRIDGE. [v.
was everything. That little cloud which had shrouded
Him from their sight was full of blessings. In a few
days there would be a rushing mighty wind that would
sweep through their hearts and through the world.
Christ was gone, but Christendom and Christianity
were coming. The earthly life of Jesus of Nazareth
was over, but the eternal life of His spirit was begin
ning. Greater works than this would henceforth be
wrought in the world, because He was gone to the
Father.
(2.) "There is nothing." So we think as we look
into the wide world, and see no visible trace of its
Eternal Maker and Ruler. There is the infinite space,
and nothing, as far as we can see, beyond it. There
is the perplexity and misery of mankind, and nothing
to relieve it. We say : " O that Thou wouldst rend
the heavens and come down ! " and no voice answers
to us. But the absence of any especial presence is
itself an expressive indication of the spiritual nature
of things Divine. The things which are seen are
temporal ; it is the things that are not seen which
are eternal. Even the dry light of critical analysis
has thrown a flood of knowledge on the Bible. Even
the philosophers of the last century quickened and
freshened the whole atmosphere of religion with a
v.] "THERE IS NOTHING." 175
nobler influence. Science, if it cannot increase our
faith, has at any rate purified and enlarged it. Even
in the drought of the latter half of this nineteenth
century, there is, if we look for it, the promise of
a great rain. Even in the silence of death, even in
the darkness of the unseen world, we have the
assurance that there is One to whom the darkness
and the light are both alike. Let us hold on
"knowing, fearing nothing; trusting, hoping all."
(3.) "There is nothing." So we say to ourselves
as in the blank desolation of sorrow we look on
the lonely work that lies before us. The voice that
cheered us is silent, and the hand that upheld us is
cold in the grave. So has thought many a one, like
Elijah s lad, orphaned, bereaved, left desolate, who is
left to work his own fortune, who feels that he is
alone in the world. But out of that tender memory
comes at last a cloud of blessings. There descends
upon our dry and parched souls a dew as of the
night of sorrow; on that barren and dry land where
no water is, there comes an abundance of rain, and
again we are refreshed, and feel that the very solitude
in which we are left calls forth new vital energies.
(4.) "There is nothing." So it would seem as we
look at the small materials with which we have to
i;6 SERMONS. STOCKBRIDGE. [v.
carry on the conflict with the great powers of nature.
The little tube with which Galileo, like the boy on
Carmel, looked from the heights of Fiesole on the
starry heavens how slight, how feeble it seemed ;
yet it was enough to reveal an unknown universe,
to disclose the secrets unknown from the beginning
of the world. The electric spark discovered by an
American printer, so subtle, so imperceptible, what
has it not produced, of which Benjamin Franklin
never dreamed? How vast are the forces which
the indomitable will and inexhaustible energy of
this generation has drawn from it the annihilation
of time and space, the girdle around the world, which
to Shakespeare seemed the wildest of fairy dreams,
but which in our day has become the solid chain
on which hangs the grandest enterprises of com
merce, and the surest bond of national concord !
(5.) " There is nothing." So we sometimes think
as we look on the barren fields of theological and
metaphysical controversy. Nothing, so we say, can
be gleaned from the thorny speculations with which,
on this spot, the most famous of the American
divines in the previous age laboured to build up.
the hard system of Calvin; yet.. even in that hard
system those who most dissent from it may find
v.] "THERE IS NOTHING." 177
grains of pure gold; even from the most rigid state
ments of Jonathan Edwards, our modern philoso
phers have laboured to extract a religious sanction
for the belief in the fixity of the general laws of the
universe ; even in the most unlovely of Christian
theologians, whether in Geneva or in Massachusetts,
there is still something to invigorate and to stimulate,
when we reflect that they were striving to fortify the
eternal principles of truth and righteousness against
the temptations which beset us all. There is such a
power as the grace of God working on the human
will, if only it be understood that the grace of God
is not the unreasoning power of a relentless Fate,
but the goodness and wisdom of the Supreme
Intelligence, to whom nothing is so precious as
virtue and purity, nothing so hateful as vice and
corruption.
(6.) "There is nothing." So we say as we look
upon many a human spirit, and think how little there
is of good within it, how hard is the ground that
has to be broken, how slight the response that is
to be elicited. So may well have thought Nathan
the prophet when he came to David. What was
there of goodness or virtue in that unhappy soul ?
Treachery, murder, passion, might seem to have
N
1 78 SERMONS. STOCKBRIDGE. [v.
closed every avenue of hope. Yet there were two
approaches to that seemingly lost soul. One was
the spark of generous indignation which it was still
possible to rouse against wrong and injustice when
he heard of it in others. David s anger was greatly
kindled, and he said: "As the Lord liveth, the rich
man that hath taken the little ewe lamb shall surely
die, because he had no pity." It was on this just
anger against others that the Prophet worked, and
turned it against himself. From that small cloud
came abundance of rain. The fifty-first Psalm, the
thirty-second Psalm, burst from the soul of the peni
tent king, and he became once more the sweet
Psalmist of Israel. And the other approach was
that which is found so often in the hardest of hearts.
It was the death of his little child"! shall go to
him, but he will not return to me." Deep down in
the human soul is the fountain of natural affection,
the fountain of natural tears. Strike that, and we
shall not strike in vain. There seems to be nothing;
but in that soft place in a father s heart, there is, there
may be everything. So it is that lost souls are
converted, regenerated, saved.
(7.) " There is nothing." So we think of the small
effects which any effort after good can accomplish.
v.] "THERE IS NOTHING."
179
How poor, how slight, how insignificant, are the con
tributions of compassion, or even the organisation of
great societies, to lighten the vast load of human
misery, or relieve one inch of the withering drought
of suffering humanity. Yet here also out of that
nothingness often rises that little cloud, not bigger
than a man s hand, yet the very hand that relieves
us, that grasps us, that saves us from perishing. Think
not lightly of any effort that can save any human
being from misery and want. Let us never despair ;
let us have patience. A word of compassion goes a
long way. The pressure of the silent hand is never
forgotten. Be not weary in well-doing. Patience
worketh experience, and experience hope.
(8.) " There is nothing." So may have thought the
Hebrew race, when they looked over the wide waste of
the Western Sea as Elijah s boy from Mount Carmel ;
nothing which could carry on the true religion, if any
thing cut short its light and prospects in the East.
Yet there was something on the far horizon like a
cloud, like a man s hand. It was the only island of the
western coasts which they could see. It was the island
of Chittim, the island of Cyprus, now become familiar
to English thought. In that faint outline they recog
nised the hope of a new world. It was as when
N" 2
i8o SERMONS. STOCKBRIDGE. [v.
Columbus in the drifting seaweed gathered hopes of
discovering a new continent, it was a shadow of future
events, a foretaste of the civilisation of Western
Europe.
(9.) "There is nothing." So it might have seemed,
when the first settlers of Massachusetts established
the English race on the cheerless shores, the barren
rocks, the trackless forests of this continent. Yet
there was everything ; there was the hope of a new
world ; there were the elements of a mighty nation,
if only those who followed after sustained the high
spirit and great resolves of those who had gone before.
It was but two days ago that I read in the close of
a volume written by the founder of the venerable
village of Concord, a sentence which ought to bring
at once the noblest encouragement and the sternest
rebuke to every citizen of this commonwealth. " There
is no people," says Peter Bulkley in his " Gospel Cove
nant," in the year 1646, to his little flock of exiles
"There is no people but will strive to excel in some
thing. What can we excel in if not in holiness? If
we look to numbers, we are the fewest ; if to strength,
we are the weakest ; if to wealth and riches, we are
the poorest of all the people of God throughout the
whole world. We cannot excel, nor so much as equal,
V.] " THERE IS NOTHING." 181
other people in these things ; and if we come short
in grace and holiness, we are also the most despicable
people under heaven. Strive we therefore to excel,
and suffer not this crown to be taken away from
us."
The progress is indeed marvellous from that day to
the present, when that poorest and fewest and weak
est of the nations, that little cloud not bigger than
a man s hand, has taken its place amongst the most
vigorous and wealthy and powerful of mankind. But
the moral remains the same, or rather is strengthened.
That vast development has shown of what growth the
human race is capable, and yet how entirely that
growth depends on the nobleness of character and force
of will brought to bear upon its natural resources. A
little one has become a thousand not because of its
numbers, not because of its wealth, but because of the
high destiny which God has assigned to it, and which
it must accomplish or perish. Had the forefathers of
this mighty nation not struggled to reclaim the wilder
ness, and convert the savage, and build up the Church
of God by river and by forest had there not been men
like the gallant soldiers who guarded these frontiers, to
catch, in the intervals of war and bloodshed, visions
of a happy and peaceful future, and to lay the
1 82 SERMONS.-STOCKBRIDGE. [v.
foundations on which learning and religion might
freely flourish and abound this nation would never
have been born, this empire would never have arisen.
And this truth is but the likeness of all human
existence. It is a likeness of the way in which much
grows out of little. It is a warning not to despise
the day of small things. "The great events of
history," says an acute French writer, "like the
mysterious personages in old romances, come through
a door in the wall which no one had noticed."
We cannot tell what immense issues may depend on
our public and our private duties.
And this truth is the more necessary and the
more conspicuous in a place like this, withdrawn
from the stir of the great world amid its encircling
hills. Each of us is bound to make the small circle
in which he lives better and happier; each of us is
bound to see that out of that small circle the widest
good may flow ; each of us may have fixed in his
mind the thought that out of a single household
may flow influences which shall stimulate the whole
commonwealth and the whole civilised world. The
long life of a venerable pastor or a good layman
spent chiefly in preaching the Gospel and doing
good, though it seems to be nothing at the time,
v.] "THERE IS NOTHING" 183
yet in the fragrance which it leaves behind is a
memory as lasting as the Pyramids.
God grant that as our horizon of duty is widened,
our minds may widen with it; that as our burden
is increased, our shoulders may be strengthened to
bear it ! God grant to us that spirit of wisdom and
understanding, uprightness, and godly fear, without
which, even in the greatest things, there is nothing;
with which, even in the smallest things, there is
everything !
VI.
THE UNITY AND DIVERSITY OF
CHRISTENDOM.
PREACHED IN TRINITY CHURCH, NEW YORK, ON ALL SAINTS*
DAY, NOVEMBER I, 1878.
" Many members yet but one body." I Cor. xii.
2O.
IN this the mother Church of the English settlers of
New York, and on this day of the communion of all
the saints of the Universal Church, I propose to ask
what are the different parts which at present compose
the great body which we call Christendom, and to
see what is the use to which these different parts
have ministered and may minister.
There are four such parts or members outside of
ourselves ; if we add ourselves there will be a fifth.
But it may be useful for once to look out of our
selves at the other four, which have their seats chiefly
in foreign countries. These are the Greek, or Eastern
VI.] UNITY &&gt; DIVERSITY OF CHRISTENDOM. 185
Church; the Latin, or Roman Church; the Lutheran,
or German Church ; the Calvinist and Reformed
Churches.
Of each of these we might ask, and truth some
times calls upon us to ask, What evil has each of
these Churches done ? What error has each of them
added to the world ? But we may also ask, with
equal justice and with more charity : What good has
each of them done ? What truth has each of them
set forth? What error has each of them served to
correct ?
We know how in a family we sometimes see four
brothers or cousins, each of the most different cha
racter from the other. We might wish sometimes that
they were all exactly alike, but God has made them
different; and it is their very difference which makes
them to be of use to each other. One of them is
much older than the rest, grave, perhaps stiff and
reserved, unwilling to move ; looking at the more
eager sports and pursuits of the younger members
of the family calmly, kindly, forbearingly ; not adding
much to their amusement, or advancement, or instruc
tion; but giving them from time to time a word of
wise counsel, and telling them of the manners and
customs of the good old times, which, but for his
1 86 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [vi.
tenacious memory and older years, would be quite
forgotten. That is the position of the ancient Eastern
or Greek Churches, which are found in Asia, Egypt,
Greece, and Russia. They have for many hundred
years done but little for the knowledge or activity of
the world. But they represent, more than any other
set of Christians now existing, the usages of older
days. They have handed down to us creeds and
ancient forms, which without them would have been
lost. They look upon all younger Churches more
kindly and gently, perhaps, than any of those younger
Churches look upon them and on each other. They
are quite unlike us. We never could adapt ourselves
to their religious customs, nor they to ours. But for
that very reason we can regard them with respectful
gratitude, and the very remoteness of their position
and their manners from us makes us feel more forcibly
the examples of Christian wisdom and Christian faith
which we may find amongst them. Such was the
answer of the Eastern Patriarchs in a letter sent to
the Pope of Rome : " Let us love one another in
order that we may be able with one accord to worship
God." Such was the letter of the Patriarch of Con
stantinople a few years later: "Let us approach the
subject which you bring before us by historical
VI.] UNITY & DIVERSITY OF CHRISTENDOM. 187
methods." Such, in the great empire of Russia, was
the good old Archbishop of Moscow, who died some
few years ago. Such was the character of the Russian
Admiral Kornileff, who fell in the siege of Sebastopol.
We see in all these, features of the same Christian
family as ourselves, yet with a peculiar primitive ex
pression, a quiet strength, which we could hardly
have found outside of those old Churches. That is
the eldest brother of our household.
Then, again, it often happens that we see in the
family another brother full of art, of imagination, full
also of practical energy, wishing to have everything his
own way, yet giving a new force and a new grace
to everything about him. Such a member of the
Christian family was born in the Latin Western Church,
which, by that name, is now to be found chiefly in the
countries of Italy, France, and Spain of which the
finest fruits were seen in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, and from which the Protestant Churches are
descended, and derive some of their peculiar qualities.
There is, no doubt, much evil that the Latin Church
has done, both in former and in present times. In
these later days it has lost many of the graces which
adorned it in the Middle Ages. But, as I have said,
we have to ask : What good has it done ? What
1 88 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [vi.
is there which we have gained from it which has not
been equally produced by any other? Two points
I will especially name. The first is the cultivation of
art and of beauty in religion. There is not one of us
who may not be the better for the contemplation of
the splendid ancient churches, and the lovely ancient
pictures, which have been handed down to us from the
days of the Mediceval Church. They are its bequest
to the family treasures of Christendom ; we may enjoy
them and be grateful for them without scruple. The
second is the gift of self-denying and devoted benefi
cence, which they have shown at different times of
their existence. The Sisters of Mercy, the Sisters of
Charity in their great hospitals, the inexhaustible labours
of many of their missionaries, both in the Old and
in the New World, are examples to all Christians every
where. These, amidst whatever faults and they had
many have left models from which every Christian
Church may learn something, and by which all our
Christian experience has become richer. Of the Latin
Church, as of its chief modern representatives the
Jesuits, may be said : " Ubi male nemo pejus ; ubi bene
nemo melius" "Where they have done ill, nothing
can be worse ; where they have done well, nothing
can be better."
vi.] UNITY &&gt; DIVERSITY OF CHRISTENDOM. 189
There is another brother of the same household,
another member of the same body. This, too, we have
sometimes seen in individual life : Some younger son of
the family, with as much faith and energy as the others,
but full of burning indignation against wrong, full of
ardent desire for knowledge and instruction, impatient
of any authority, with a heart full of genial sympathy
for all that is new and true everywhere. His likeness
too is to be found in the great household of Christen
dom. We may almost think that we have seen him
in bodily shape. His name there is Martin Luther.
He is the father of the Protestant Churches, but espe
cially of the Churches of Germany. On All Saints
Eve, he made his first stand in that famous scene
which on this day is celebrated by all the children
of the Reformation in the European Continent.
Against him too, and against the Churches which he
founded, we might have many reproaches to bring.
But here again let us ask only : What good he has
given to us and to the whole family? What bless
ings have we gained from the Church of Germany as
from none besides? It is the conscientious, inde
fatigable love and search for truth, especially of truth
in things Divine and sacred. No other Church or
nation has done so much to explain, and examine,
190 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [vi.
and prove on every side the text, letter, sense,
and spirit of the Bible. Through Luther, the Bible
was first fully brought before the whole mind and
heart of Europe; and through Luther s successors, by
many an effort, sometimes successful, sometimes un
successful, but almost always with a sincere desire to
find out the truth, the Word of God that is, the Truth
has been set forth, and discussed, and searched down
to the very dividing of its joints and marrow, of its
soul and spirit. This duty , of unceasing, unswerving
resolution to "prove all things, and hold fast that
which is good," is what we all, even the humblest
amongst us, have gained from Luther and from Ger
many. It was well said by a young English student,
who was once asked what was the evil and what the
good which Luther had contributed to the movement
of the Reformation: "He found a united Church, he
left a divided Church : he found a dead Church, he
left a living Church."
One other branch of the family still remains. Thus
we may have known in some private household, besides
the grave elder brother, besides the imaginative and
devoted younger brother, besides the genial, energetic,
inquiring boy who is always pushing forward in the
race and school of life, there is also the stubborn,
vi.] UNITY & DIVERSITY OF CHRISTENDOM. 191
unyielding, conscientious youth, who will not give way
for a single moment on any point, however small,
that seems to him to be right ; but who thus prevents
any of the others from lording it too exclusively over
their brothers and sisters. Here we come to those
other children of the Reformation akin to Luther,
yet not exactly the same, who were nursed, not on
the Elbe or the Rhine, but under the snow-clad
Alpine heights at Geneva and Zurich the severe
austerity of Calvin, the boundless freedom of Zwinglius.
These are the fathers of the Reformed Churches of
Switzerland, of Holland, of France, and of Scotland.
These have furnished to Christendom the sternness,
and the soberness, and also the martyr zeal which has
defended the rights of conscience, and the liberty of
the individual soul, against oppression and against
tyranny everywhere. Here, too, has been nursed the
clear intrepid logical argument which will be satisfied
with nothing else but demonstration and proof, even
in the most sacred things. Against these also we may
complain that often by them evil has been repaid
with evil, and railing with railing, and that they who
defied the sword of others smote with the sword
themselves. Yet not the less is the good which they
bequeathed to the Church a good and perfect gift
1 92 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [vi.
coming down from the Father of Lights the gift of a
resolute, independent conscience, which regards every
thing else as mere vanity and frivolity.
Thus, briefly, I have passed through the body of
Christendom, through the family of the Christian
household. If any religious community is capable of
understanding this unity in diversity, it ought to be
that which belongs to the English-speaking race. Our
own Church of England has, as has been often ob
served, this peculiar advantage, that it touches with one
hand the immovable Churches of the East, and with the
other the changing Churches of the West. We may
add that it has also this advantage, that, being connected
through its ancestral observances with the historical
Churches of former times, it yet includes within itself
those elements of independence and free thought
which have burst from its borders both in England
and in America. And, further, by reason of its com
prehensiveness, it contains, or ought to contain, those
qualities which have from time to time belonged to all
the other branches of Christendom. The boldness of
Latimer, the wisdom of Cranmer, the magnanimity
of Falkland, the philosophic dignity of Hooker and
Butler, the ideal aspirations of Berkeley, the critical
and artistic mind of Coleridge, the poetic genius of
vi.] UNITY & DIVERSITY OF CHRISTENDOM. 193
Bunyan and Herbert, the sound common sense of Paley.
the indefatigable zeal of Wesley, the comprehensive
benevolence of Jeremy Taylor, and Tillotson, and
Channing, these belong to the Church of England
and its children in all their several branches. These
ought to enable us to enter into all the varieties of the
Christian household, because, these are characteristics
which may be found in all. The same bright smile,
the same open brow, the same ready tongue, may be
found in brothers who in all other respects are divided
by such marks as we have named.
And now let me briefly sum up the advantages of
such a brief survey as we have traversed.
(i.) It is good for us for a moment to look out of
ourselves, and to be taught that we are not the whole
world, or the whole Church. Great as is the Church
of England, great in itself, and in its daughter Churches,
great as is the English nation and its mighty children
of the United States of America, yet they are not all.
We cannot safely dismiss or reject the other members
of the family, as if we had no concern with them. We
have doubtless done something for them, but they
each of them in their day have also done something
for us.
(2.) It is useful to see how by such different gifts
o
I 9 4 SERMONS.-NEW YORK. [vi.
and graces, as well in nature as in the Church, God s
work is carried on. It is a part of that machinery by
which the whole system of the world in which we live
is so fearfully and wonderfully made. Each part locks
into each. We cannot safely dispense even with the
Churches which we may most dislike, and which in
other respects may have wrought much evil. " God hath
tempered the body together, having given more abundant
honour to that part which lacked, that there should
be no division in the body. If the whole body were
an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole body
were a hearimr, where were the smelling ? " If Chris
tendom were all Eastern or Greek, where were the action
and energy of the West ? If Christendom were all
Roman, where were the independent research and
independent conscience of the Protestant? If Chris
tendom were all Lutheran or all Calvinist, where would
be the beautiful imagination of the South, or the
grave repose of the East, or the savour and fragrance
of ancient days and departed greatness ? If the
Anglo-Saxon race and the Anglo-Saxon Churches,
with all their splendid qualities, were the sole pos
sessors of the earth, we should run the risk of de
generating into overweening presumptuous Philistines.
If we are to lose " the sweetness and the light " which
vi.] UNITY & DIVERSITY OF CHRISTENDOM 195
breathes and shines through all the Churches together
in the hearts and minds of their most distinguished
members, where would be the catholicity which is, or
ought to be, the mark of the Holy Church Universal ?
But knowing beforehand what is good in each, we
shall not be thrown off our balance by suddenly dis
covering it, as if it were some new and strange thing.
By seeing that each has something which the other
has not, we shall recognise the human, imperfect,
mixed character of each, and counterbalance one good
gift by another. This is the true Christ-inn wisdom
of common life; it is no less the Christian wisdom
of ecclesiastical life ; it is no less the religion of little
children.
(3.) It is a lesson to us to look, not only for the
evil, but also for the good of the world in which we
live. Truth compels us to be aware of the faults of
others. This we cannot, and ought not to conceal.
But charity no less than truth compels us to look,
at least from time to time, on the other side. "Can
there come any good thing out of Nazareth?" was
the question of the natural, unregenerate, uncivilised,
unsanctified heart. " Can there come any good thing
out of Greece, out of Rome, out of Germany, out of
Geneva ? " " Can there come any good thing out of
o 2
196 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [vi.
England ? " has sometimes been said in America.
" Can there come any good thing out of America ? "
has sometimes been said in England. This is a
question which has been repeated and reverberated
a thousand times, and the answer is : " There may
be much good." There was much evil in Nazareth,
but there was also in it the greatest of all good.
There may be, there is, much of evil in each of those
Churches that we have named, but there has been,
and there is now, and there yet may be much good.
God s providence is greater than our divisions ; God s
arrangements are wiser than our confusions; Paul and
Cephas had each their own peculiar gifts, but they
were all Christ s, and Christ is God s.
(4.) And finally, if there be a call upon us to look in
this spirit on the Churches of other lands and other
races, much more is there a call for all the various com
munions of the English race to do so,, whether here or
beyond the ocean, who are bone of our bone, and
flesh of our flesh, and blood of our blood. When
your Puritan founders felt themselves compelled to
leave their native shores, they did not lose their
affection for their own mother Church and country.
"Farewell," they said, "dear England not Babylon,
but England. Farewell, dear Church of England.
VI.] UNITY & DIVERSITY OF CHRISTENDOM. 197
We wish not to separate from it, but to reform its
practice and to propagate the Gospel." When the
division was effected between the American Colonies
and the parent State, when misunderstanding and war
and recrimination had widened the alienation to the
utmost pitch, when throne and Church and the very
name of England were thrust aside with fierce indigna
tion, even then your forefathers in this city spared this
venerable Church with its vast endowments, now so
nobly used, to remain as a monument of American
moderation, to which a high-minded English statesman
of our own day has been enabled to appeal, in the hope
of restraining the destructive rage of political partisan
ship and ecclesiastical fanaticism on our own shores.
May this be the generous spirit in which, here and
elsewhere, the various communions of the Anglo-Saxon
race may regard the ancient Church of England with
its more special representatives on this side of the
Atlantic; that ancient Church which with all its short
comings has been bound up with the very vitals of
the English Commonwealth, with the very fibre of
English History, with the best issues of the English
Reformation, and which, in its majestic forms, in its
sober and refined character, still furnishes a model
even for those who have parted from it. And to
198 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [vi.
those who have so parted, may not we also in like
manner turn in the same spirit ? If there be any such
present here, to them let the same principle be
addressed, as children of the same parentage, and
members, though divided, of the same body. I do
not name their names, but one by one they pass
before the mind, as we touch not on their defects or
excesses, but on their gifts and on their graces. Even
in these gifts and graces there is much which we
cannot copy, but amidst them all there is always that
more excellent way of love to God and man, without
which every gift and grace comes to nothing. You
who have reached, as we find it hard to reach, the
rude and ignorant classes of the simple negro in the
South, the rough settler and the wild miner in the
West; you who have unfurled before the eyes of
Christendom with unshaken confidence the flag, not
of war, but of peace ; you who have retained in its
strange simplicity the primitive Oriental sacramental
form which all other Western Churches have aban
doned; you who amidst the difficulties of a new world
preserved the more systematic study of the old
theology of Europe ; you who first endeavoured to
civilise and Christianise the Indians of this continent,
and who first revived in America the spirit of mis-
vi.] UNITY & DIVERSITY OF CHRISTENDOM. 199
sionary enterprise in foreign parts ; you who have
recalled the Christian world to a larger view of the
Divine love, to a nobler view of human nature, and
to a profounder study of the Holy Scriptures ; to one
and all of you, however much differing from us, and
we however much differing from you, is owed a debt
of gratitude for doing what we, perchance, had not
done, and could not do. Be it ours and yours alike
to acknowledge this mutual debt freely and fully. In
this multiplication perhaps excessive multiplication
of Churches and communions, be it the effort of
every Church and every communion not to spend the
precious time that remains in needless recrimination
or proselytism. Let us not build on other men s
labours; let there be a just division of labour; let
each endeavour not to supersede but to supplement
the other; let each strive and pray that as we are
knit together in one communion and fellowship in the
body of Christ our Lord, so we may all help each
other in all virtuous and godly living, till we come to
those unspeakable joys which God has prepared for
those who, of whatever race or creed, unfeignedly
love Him who is Perfect Goodness and Perfect
Truth.
VII,
THE NATURE OF MAN.*
PREACHED IN GRACE CHURCH, NEW YORK, SUNDAY MORNING,
NOVEMBER 3, 1878.
"What is thy name?" Genesis xxxii. 27.
THIS is the last day on which I shall have the oppor
tunity of speaking from the pulpit in this country on
the great questions which concern us all. I have
chosen for my subject the story of the mysterious
conflict of Jacob and the unknown traveller on the
heights of Peniel. Divested of its outward imagery,
it represents the twofold problem which lies at the
basis of all religion : " What is man, and what is
God ? It is the object of this discourse to ask what the
highest utterances of the Bible, in common with our
own best experiences, teach us of the nature of man.
The question of the Divine to the human being
* In this and the following sermon there are a few passages
which were omitted in the delivery.
Vii.] THE NATURE OF MAN. 201
"What is thy name?" this is the question which I
propose to consider on the present occasion ; the
same question which the Psalmist proposed, when, after
contemplating the wonders of the world of nature, he
turned round upon himself and asked, " What is
man?" It is the question which has risen from
time to time in the heart of every thoughtful seeker
as life opens on our view, or as the shadows of sorrow
and death close round us as when the great states
man of Holland laid his head on the block, and with
his last voice exclaimed: "O God, what is man?" It
is the unquenchable desire to have in our minds
some knowledge of the origin, the destiny, the nature
of that being,
Darkly wise and rudely great,
Placed on the isthmus of a middle state.
Nothing could be more alien from the intention
of him who addresses you than to attempt to examine
on this occasion scientifically and philosophically the
thousand branches of speculation which this question
involves. My object here is far humbler, but yet
not, I trust, altogether unworthy of so great a theme.
It is, as I have said, to state the broad outlines, the
general spirit of the Biblical theology on this subject,
202 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [vn.
and to draw out from it those elements of thought
which, as they are not in opposition to any modern
theory concerning man, cannot be thereby destroyed
ox set aside.
(i.) In regard to the outward frame of man, what
is the teaching of the Bible, whether in the dim
visions of the primeval records of the Book of Genesis,
or in the more direct teaching of the x\ T ew Testament ?
I need hardly say that, in thus approaching the in
quiry, we are not to be possessed with the desire-
alike false to philosophy and to the true nature of
the Bible with the desire of finding systems of
anatomy or of physiology in the Hebrew or Greek
Scriptures. To all such expectations the best answer
is the fine application by Lord Bacon of the angelic
question at the Holy Sepulchre : " Why seek ye the
living amongst the dead?" "Why seek ye the dead
amongst the living?" The spheres are different, the
language is different. The skeleton of science is not
to be found in the smiles and the tears of the Biblical
appeals to cur conscience and affections. But making
all allowance for this, treating the sacred books as
they claim on their face to be treated, as popular,
inartificial, poetical, passionate, practical records; seek
ing in the sacred history not a subtle analysis of
vii.] THE NATURE OF MAN. 203
mental phenomena, but such an obvious exempli
fication of these truths as suffices to illustrate and
confirm them ; there are elements of thov ghr, of
imagery, of suggestive indications, which the philo
sopher need not despise, and which the religious man
may gladly use, if for no other purpose, yet at least as
stepping-stones which will not fail us in passing from
one sphere to another. When we hear on every side
of the inquiries concerning that mysterious frame
which has been so fearfully and wonderfully made,
let us not be alarmed as though some new thing had
happened to us. However far we may trace back the
material parts of man, from whatever earlier forms of
existence it may be thought possible to derive the
bodily frame which we possess in common with other
parts of the creation, no one can go farther back or
deeper down than St. Paul or than the Book of
Genesis have already led us. " The first man is of
the earth, earthy," says St. Paul; "the Lord God,"
says the Book of Genesis, " made man out of the dust
of the earth," out of the inanimate brute earth. There
is much, no doubt, that has of late years brought
out the likeness of our physical nature to that of the
lower animals, with a force, and vivacity, and mul
tiplicity of illustration that was not known before.
204 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [vn.
But the fact itself has always been familiar even to
the ordinary observer. There is much also that has
long ago compelled us to abandon the prosaic chro
nological character of the earlier chapters of the Bible.
But this need not preclude us from recognising the
truth of their general spirit, of their spiritual forecast.
The Biblical and the scientific accounts thus far
at least go together that neither in the one nor the
other can the description of man s origin affect or
destroy our knowledge, our certainty of what he is
now. There is nothing more surprising in being told
that the race of mankind has sprung, as the Bible
tells us, from the dust of the earth, than in being told
that a Newton or a Shakespeare has sprung from the
small sleeping infant, without speech, without reason,
almost without consciousness. It would be new, it
would be against religion, it would be against the
Bible, it would, I may add, be against all fact and
all experience, if we were told that because of this
humble origin, if so it be, therefore we could never
rise above it; that because we were once children,
therefore we must be for ever children and can never
become men; that because we were once savage, we
could never be civilised ; that because our first man
was of the earth, earthy, therefore all our higher and
vii.] THE NATURE OF MAN. 205
nobler desires, and hopes and affections, are also of
the earth, earthy. This would indeed make us, as
St. Paul says, of all creatures the most miserable. But
any such degrading, retrograde belief is repudiated by
none more than by the chief of our philosophic inquirers.
They, as well as the most devout theologian, maintain
that the destiny, the vocation of man is not to be sta
tionary, but progressive; that nothing in the whole
world is so excellent and enduring as that which has
been done by the heroic, or generous, or truthful
amongst the sons of men ; that " to all eternity the
sum of truth and right will have been increased by
their means ; that to all eternity falsehood and injus
tice will be the weaker because such deeds have been
done." Why should we insist on making such inquirers
worse than they are? Why should we drive into the
Devil s camp those who are eager to be ranked with
the servants of the Supreme Good and the worshippers
of the Eternal Truth ? If it be an inconsistency, it is an
inconsistency to which they themselves plead guilty,
and of which we should too gladly avail ourselves ; if
they pander to the baser, viler, falser parts of human
nature, they have themselves fallen below the higher,
healthier, nobler thoughts on which they have proudly
insisted.
206 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [vil.
When, therefore, we are asked, "What is thy
name?" we may without misgiving reply fearlessly that
we are not ashamed of our lineage or our destiny.
The name of "Adam," and homo, and humamts,
all alike mean " the child of the ground." But there
are far other and higher names or if not names,
at least descriptions in store for him ; and to arrive
at these we must ask not only what is our bodily struc
ture, but what is our inmost self? Man looks upwards,
not downwards forwards, not backwards ; and it is
the direction in which he looks, far more than the actual
look itself, which indicates what he is. It is not the
descent, but the ascent of man which reveals his true
nature. As the Christian poet, George Herbert, sang,
with an insight beyond his age :
All things unto our flesh are kind
In their descent and being to our mind
In their ascent and cause.
" Do what you like," said the ancient philosopher (and
surely the modern philosopher would say no less),
" do what you like with my body : my body is not
me."
(2.) This brings us to the second part of the
Biblical account of man to that division which,
vii.] THE NATURE OF MAN. 207
whether scientific or unscientific, has its response in all
human* language. The self of a man is that which the
Bible, in the largest sense, calls his soul the seat of
all those intellectual and moral faculties which lie behind
the outward frame, which even when we look at the
face of a living friend we do not see which when we
look at the face of a dead friend we know are no longer
there. This is the widest sense of the word " soul," or
"self." But both the Bible and common experience
make a distinction here also between the lower and
the higher. The Apostle says, in that great chapter
where he discusses the hope of immortality " the first
man was made a living, natural soul" The natural man
the natural genius, the natural intellect, the natural
play of mind, the natural vigour this is no doubt a
vast element in the human being.
But still we all feel that these are not the qualities
which most endear, most attract, most elevate. There
is something yet beyond ; and that is what the Apostle
calls the spirit the quickening, life-giving spirit. There
is an earthy man and a natural man ; but there is above
all a " spiritual " man. As we have borne in our outward
frame the image of the earthy, which we share in common
with the animal creation; as we have a living soul, a
natural soul, which we share in common with all, even
208 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [vn.
the most degraded of men ; so in our innermost being
we bear the image of the heavenly, which we share in
common with God Himself. If the soul is, in the Teu
tonic languages,* the " sea," the vast illimitable ocean of
the human being, on which "the wind," "the breath,"
plays, it is the breath, the wind itself, which is the life of
that troubled sea. That is " the spirit," that is the man
himself; that is the essence of our nature, which is made
in the image of God. And if we ask, what is this
spiritual part ? we must reply, It is the affections ; it
is the generosity which embraces the needs of others
besides ourselves; it is the conscience, which is the
ruling faculty within us; it is the faith which removes
mountains ; it is the hope which looks beyond the grave ;
it is, above all, the love, the charity, which never fails
which is at once the homeliest and the loftiest of the
virtues of humanity and of the attributes of Divinity.
He who cultivates this part of his existence who
makes the two other parts, of the body and the
soul or mind, subordinate to this one supreme part
he is a spiritual man. He in whom this spiritual
part lives and burns has a pledge of immortality.
And what is impressed upon us by the history of
* Professor Max M tiller s "Lectures on the Science of Lan
guage," pp. 437-455-
vii.] THE NATURE OF MAN. 209
our race is that this spiritual part of man s nature
has, on the whole, most constantly advanced. The
first man, which was of the earth, earthy the outward,
physical man has, on the whole, remained the same.
The intellectual part has advanced immensely; the
civilised man is far above the savage the Greek
and the Roman far above the Asiatic. But the
spiritual man the soul of the affections whilst on
the one hand it is found in some measure even in
the lowest forms of the human race, where the
intellect is least developed, yet, on the other hand,
has advanced, even where the intellect has remained
stationary. If the Greek was an advance on the
barbarian, the Christian in his highest state is a far
greater advance on the heathen. It is in this in-
. definite growth of the spiritual man, as compared
with the stationary character of the earthly, natural
man, that we gain at once a new insight into the
spiritual forces of which we are now composed, and
a new hope for our future. Rest assured that our
happiness, our dignity, our welfare here and hereafter,
depend not on what our ancestors were thousands of
years ago, not on the construction of our outward
frames, nor even on the channels through which our
moral natures have come to us, nor even on those
p
210 SERMONS.-NEW YORK. [vn.
high mental gifts of intellect, mind, and genius which
are, after all, gifts, ornaments of ourselves, not our very
selves. No, not on any of these things, wonderful
as they are, and greatly as they contribute to our
happiness, does the real destiny of men or of nations
rest; but on our moral nature itself on what we are,
on what we do, on what we admire, on what we detest,
on what we love, on what we hate. The Prophet
Ezekial declared long ago that whatever be the
parentage, whatever be the circumstance of anyone,
"The soul that sinneth it shall die; the man that is
just, the man that turneth away from his wickedness
and .doeth that which is lawful and right he shall
surely live." However much the outward frame may
be mortal, however much the intellect may change
its forms with each succeeding age the moral and
spiritual nature of man outlasts all convulsions in this
life, and will, we humbly trust, outlast death itself.
There is something greater than the resurrection of
the body, and that is the immortality of the soul;
and there is yet something greater still, and that
is the everliving, quickening, vivifying power of the
spirit. "O that Ishmael might live before thee."
So, as it has been finely described of late, we are
otten tempted to say with Abraham, as we look at
vii.] THE NATURE OF MAN. 211
the brilliant figures whether of men or of nations
that pass across this scene with their dazzling qualities,
their social charms, their magnificent appearance. But
it is not Ishmael, it is Isaac, the homely spiritual
Isaac, that lives and endures through all changes, and
has within him the pledge of perpetual progress and
perpetual youth. It is the character, the sum total of
our moral being, which we have to regard in the
supreme judgment. This self, this character, is
that soul which we cannot exchange for any other
good in the world. It is this of which the Bible
says, "What shall it profit a man to gain the whole
world and lose his own soul ? " his own spiritual,
innermost, moral self. It is this great doctrine of the
Bible which was expressed in other words in the
famous warning of Necker to Mirabeau equally ap
plicable to unscrupulous brilliancy everywhere, whether
in Church or State, in young or old "You have too
much sense, too much ability, not to find out sooner
or later that, after all, morality is iy. the nature of
things."
It is this same doctrine which at the Reforma
tion expressed itself both in the saying of the great
Reformer and of his imperial adversary. "Here
stand I," said Luther; "I can do nothing against
p 2
212 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [vn.
conscience." " To endeavour to domineer over the
conscience," was the confession wrung from Charles V.,
however little he may have followed it out in practice,
"is to invade the citadel of heaven." It is this doc
trine of the supremacy of conscience, whether as in
volved in the Bible, or familiar to us as it is drawn
out by Butler, which corrects the pretensions of all
artificial authority. All human authority, civil or
ecclesiastical, must in the last resort be alike subor
dinate to the one Divine authority which speaks to us
through the voice of conscience. When the Apostles
declared, and when we after them declare that we
must obey God rather than man, it was not the re
pudiation of the laws of ruler or magistrate ; it was
then the assertion of the supremacy of conscience
against the authority of a Sanhedrin of priests and
scribes, as it still may be against the authority of a
Pontiff, a Synod, or a Council. It is this doctrine
also which is the foundation of all true spiritual in
dependence tha is, of the independence by which a
brave man acts for himself and by himself, regardless of
adverse critics or fashion, or carping foes, or what is
still more difficult to withstand of lukewarm friends.
" They have said. What say they ? Let them say."
That is the noble motto of the chief college in the
VII.] THE NATURE OF MAN. 213
University of Aberdeen. It should be the motto also
of every resolute soul, which cares more for mind than
for matter, more for quality than for quantity, more
for God than for man.
It is this doctrine, also, of the superiority of the
spiritual nature of man above his physical frame,
which, as it is our safeguard against the materialism of
the scientific lecture-room, is also our safeguard against
the materialism of the altar and the sacristy. Such a
materialism has pervaded many ages and minds, to
which the philosophy of Democritus and Lucretius was
quite unknown. When for a thousand years the Chris
tian Church believed that the eternal weal or woe of
human beings depended on the immersion of the
human body or sprinkling the forehead in a baptistry
or a font of water ; when the regeneration of nations,
in the Middle Ages, or even in the seventeenth century,
was supposed to depend on the possession of a dead
bone, or a fragment of wood, or a contemplation of the
anatomical structure of the Redeemer s heart; when
Dodwell maintained that in its own nature the soul
was mortal, and that none but bishops had the power
of giving to it " the Divine immortalising spirit ;" when
a celebrated English divine maintained some fifty years
ago that the ordinary means by which a human being
214 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [vn.
acquired immortality was by physically partaking of the
bread and wine of the Eucharist these were all so
many attempts to sink the spiritual in the material, to
resolve the spirit of man into the material particles of
meat and drink, of inanimate substances, and of things
that perish with the using. No doubt the vital power
of Christianity, the inherent force of its immense
spirituality, always rose far above these carnal and
beggarly elements ; no doubt their own elevation of
character and genius carried many of these teachers,
whether ancient or modern, far beyond the region of
such physical or metaphysical theories, into their own
pure and lofty ideal of morality and holiness. But it
was the glory of the Reformation, it was the especial
glory of the far-sighted Reformer of Zurich, to proclaim
beyond mistake that the significance of sacred rites
consists not in their physical but in their moral essence
not in the perishable accidents of their outward
tokens, or in the precise forms of their ministration, but
in the souls and spirits of their receivers. It is the
continual protest of the most deeply inspired utterances
of the Bible from first to last. "My heart and my
flesh faileth," said the Psalmist all that is outward and
material may vanish away but nevertheless " God is
the strength of my heart and my portion for ever."
vii.] THE NATURE OF MAN. 215
" Though worms destroy this flesh, yet without my
flesh "without this outward covering" I shall see
God," was the hope of the patriarch Job. " The flesh
profiteth nothing : the words that I speak unto you, they
are spirit and they are life " so we hear the teaching
of Christ Himself. "Heaven and earth" all that is
material, all that is external " shall pass away ; but my
words " the living, inspiring expressions of wisdom and
mercy and truth " shall never pass away." " The king
dom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness and
peace and joy in the Holy Ghost " so spake not once
only, but again and again, the Apostle Paul. Wherever
the mind of the worshipper, whether in Catholic or
Protestant Churches, is fixed on the outward instead
^of the inward, the accidental instead of the essential,
the temporary instead of the eternal, there, and in that
proportion, the original spirit of the Gospel is exchanged
for the Judaic, the Etruscan, the Brahminical. When-
ever, whether in Catholic or Protestant, whether in
heathen or Christian lands, the irrational, the magical,
the inanimate, gives place to the reasonable, the holy,
and the living service of the human soul to God there,
from the rising up of the sun to the going down of the
same, the pure sacrifice, the true incense, is offered,
by which alone man can hope to prevail with his Maker.
216 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [vn.
I have thus briefly run through all these several
exemplifications of the Biblical doctrine of the supe
riority of spirit to matter, because thus only can we
see its far-reaching scope. But it gives the full mean
ing also to the whole object of our lives. In the
two national Catechisms of Great Britain the cate
chism of the Church of England and the catechism
of the Church of Scotland the question of the text,
though in somewhat different terms, stands in the
forefront of each. " What is your name ?" is the
question put in our Catechism ; and the answer is the
Christian name by which we were dedicated to God
in our infancy. It may seem perhaps it may actually
be in its literal meaning a trivial question. Yet it
must have been intended to lead us to the thought,
not trivial, but exceedingly serious that the aim, the
object, the essence of our being, that which is expressed
by fche name that distinguishes our own personal identity
and character, is the moral service of the Holy and
True Jesus Christ our Lord. And the question of
the Scottish Catechism is like unto it only expressed
in a more direct and lofty form, and addressed not
to the individual but to the race : " What is the chief
end of man ?" and the answer is : " Man s chief end
is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever." It is
VII.] THE NATURE OF MAN. 217
to glorify the Supreme Goodness and the Supreme
Truth by being good and true ; and it is to enjoy the
triumph of goodness and the triumph of truth above
all earthly consideration and through all the ages of
our existence.
(3.) There is yet one other inquiry bound up in
the question :" What is man?" "What is thy name?"
The answer of the Patriarch to the Divine Inquirer
was more than the Patriarch himself knew. He said,
"Jacob." But the true reply was: "Thy name shall
no longer be called Jacob," the supplanter, "but
Israel," the conqueror of God. He was two beings
wrapt up in one even his innermost self had two
natures, two names, each striving for the mastery: the
earthly (may we not even say the mean, the fiendish ?)
Jacob ; the princely (may we not almost say the
angelic, the Divine ?) Israel. This is a question which,
even more than the general inquiry of which we have
been speaking, comes home to each of us. There is
not only the question, "What is man?" but the ques
tion, "What is this man?" ".What art thou, O man?
What is thy name?" and in each of us, even in the
very seat of our being, there are as in Jacob two,
nay, sometimes three or five, separate characters
striving for the mastery. It is that conflict between
2i8 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [vil.
two contending principles that dialogue, as it were,
between " the two voices " which is one of . the
profoundest mysteries of our nature, but which the
Bible itself fully acknowledges. We see it in the
dark struggle within the single mind of the author
of Ecclesiastes. We see it in the dramatic form
of the Book of Job and the Song of Solomon. We
see it not only in the twofold character of Jacob,
but in the double, treble, quadruple character of
David. We see it in the multiplied demons one,
two, seven mounting till their name is Legion,
which, however we explain the phrase, took posses
sion of their victims in the Gospel history. We
see it in the flux and reflux of the better mind
of Peter, described in a few successive verses as
the Rock of the Church, and as Satan, its deadly
enemy. We see it in the distractions and divisions
in the mind of Paul in the seventh chapter of
the Epistle to the Romans. We see it through the
long history of mankind and of Christendom : the
mixture of the hypocrite and the saint; the union
of the coward with the hero; the fool lurking in the
innermost chambers of the mind of the wisest; the
filthy thought ensconcing itself in the crystal heart of
the purest ; the versatile genius with his hundred
vii.] THE NATURE OF MAN. 219
hands and hundred faces. We see it in what Colbert
called the official conscience of the Sorbonne and the
natural conscience of the man and the citizen. We
see it in the old barbarian Adam lurking within the
folds of the new civilised Adam of later days. We
see it in the old theological Adam striving to main
tain his own against the new, Christian, spiritual, Adam
in each successive generation. It surely is not without
cause that we call attention to this doctrine of the
double side of human nature thus running through the
Bible and through historical experience. Common
place, obvious as it is, it has been a thousand times
overlooked, and yet is at least as important as the
theory of Pelagius or the theory of Augustine. It is
the true antidote to those undiscriminating judgment,
which have been the bane of ecclesiastical history
and of theological speculation. It bids us to refuses
on the very threshold of any Church or any system,
its claim to be either all good or all evil to be either
Christ or Antichrist. It renounces at the outset the
possibility of an unerring oracle lodged in any human
institution or of absolute allegiance to any human
party. It commands us unhesitatingly to admire the
admirable, to detest the detestable, even in the same
individuals, in the same party, in the same Church
220 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [vn.
or nation. Wherever the contrast has been repeated
in human history between Jacob, the selfish, timid,
crafty slave, and Israel, the persevering indomitable
wrestler with the Almighty, there the theology of the
Bible and the philosophy of life alike call us to
refuse the evil and choose the good, without partiality
and without hypocrisy. " With Samuel Rutherford, the
bitter and bigoted controversialist," says an excellent
living divine of Scotland, "let us have no fellowship.
To Samuel Rutherford, the devout and spiritual pastor,
let the full sympathies of our soul be given." That
is a judgment which must be often and often repeated.
Milton, the sublime, unearthly poet, and Milton, the
savage antagonist of Salmasius ; Wesley s Christian
wisdom and Wesley s eccentric folly; Bossuet, the
magnificent Christian orator, and Bossuet, the per
secutor of the Huguenots ; the grace of the Middle
Ages, and their hideous atrocities; the splendour of
the Reformation, and its deplorable failures; Benedict
Arnold, the hero of Saratoga, and Benedict Arnold,
the traitor of West Point ; Napoleon Bonaparte, the
restorer of order in France, and Napoleon Bonaparte,
the mean and selfish despot; all these we must alike*
recognise, alike admire, and alike lament. Avoid that
dismal fatalism which insists on accepting the crimes
vii.] THE NATURE OF MAN. 221
and follies of men as though they were the indis
pensable conditions of great deeds or great characters.
(4.) And there is yet one final reflection which occurs
to us when we contemplate the possibilities of human
nature, and its capacities of conquest over its meaner
self. We sometimes are tempted in despair teachers
and taught alike to imagine that as the child, the
boy, the youth is born, so he must grow up to the
end, that Jacob will be always Jacob, that no force of
circumstance or education can ever change the spots
of the human leopard or the skin of the moral Ethio
pian. To a certain degree, no doubt, this is true. The
stamp of individual character is ineffaceable ; there are
many innate qualities and gifts and passions which can
never be either given or taken away in later life. Look
if, out of the wide course of history, I may select two
as occupying conspicuous places in the annals of man
kind, and as having been described by the most powerful
delineator of historical characters that perhaps the
world has ever seen look at the characters of the
Regent Orleans and of the Second Dauphin, as por
trayed by the Duke of St. Simon. The one, with a
disposition so generous, so easy, so upright, destroyed,
enervated, petrified before the very eyes of his despairing
friends by the debasing, scoffing, cynical influences of
222 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [vn.
him who was the shame of the Church of France and
of the Court of Rome, Cardinal Dubois. The other,
in his early years, so ungovernable, so self-willed one
might almost say so brutal growing under the influence
of his pure-minded and faithful advisers, the Duke of
Beauvilliers and the Duke of Chevreuse, his high-minded
and excellent servant Moreau, and the best moods of
his enlightened, noble-minded preceptor Fe ne lon, to
become the model prince of all times, modest, yet
self-possessed, deeply religious, yet constantly becoming
more and more liberal, more and more tolerant ; who,
had he been spared to ascend the throne, might in all
human probability have averted the occasion of the
French Revolution. I have named these two famous
examples, because actual examples are worth a thousand
nameless allusions. But it is not necessary to go to
past history, or to the courts of Princes, in order to
prove that it is possible even with all the fixity of
human character, with all the fixity of general laws
that the rising, growing, changing generation of the
youth of England and the youth of America, may,
under God, be converted, born again, by a conversion,
by a regeneration not less complete because its wrestiings
and convulsions are not visible, or its origin marked by
any outward material sign. How many a young man
VIL] THE NATURE OF MAN. 223
has ere now been transfigured by the near influence of
a faithful friend, sticking closer than a brother, warding
off temptations, making him feel, till it became part
of himself, how beautiful, how godlike a thing is the
bright and stainless career of unselfish and uncorrupted
goodness ! How many an enduring aim and purpose
of life has been inspired by such friend or such teacher,
which, with "the expulsive power of a new affection,"
drives before it all that is base and trivial, leaving
us masters of ourselves, and inheritors of the true
kingdom of God.
And if there be any place on earth where this
conflict of the human spirit with the material, or the
better part of the human spirit with the worser part,
is clearly brought before us, it is in this great city.
When we look at its small beginnings, the Dutch
settlement gathered round the puny church, the little
fortress on the green point of land between the two
enclosing streams, its humble wall or palisade defending
the timid colonists within from the incursions of the
neighbouring Indian tribes; and then look at the
illimitable extension of this Babylon of the West, its
endless traffic and thoroughfare of rival nations, these
hanging ways over which the more than Babylonian
whirl and stir rolls its chariot wheels above our heads,
224 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [vii.
we see how the human will and intellect has worked
out of these material conditions a destiny which a
hundred years ago could never have been conceived,
we see how a new creation has been formed almost
within the lifetime of a single generation. External
nature has had her share, but the mind of man must
claim a still larger part.
But then arises with increasing strength the ques
tion, whether that higher spirit of man, of which we
have been speaking, has also borne its part; whether
in the midst of this great Babylon we can trace signs
of the Jerusalem which is from above, and which is
free from earthly entanglements. The traveller who
has come from beyond the sea, and returns to his
home in the small island where his duties lie, feels
his own conceptions of the imperial capacities of his
race increased. But he also asks whether there has
been, and will be, a corresponding growth of that
without which wealth, and fame, and vast extent of
territory, are but as dust in the balance. Bigness is
not of necessity greatness, nor is splendour of itself
civilisation, nor is even indomitable will and per
severance absolutely identical with progress. Some
times, as we think of the chequered history, whether
of the long annals of the mother country, or the
vii.1 THE NATURE OF MAN. 225
no less chequered history of this country, short in
duration but long in eventful characters and eventful
incidents, there comes to our minds the recollection
of those lines of the cynical poet of England :
New times, new climes, new lands, new men, but still
The same old tears, old crimes, and oldest ill.
Yet with this we must combine, if possible, the brighter
prospect of the Christian poet, which, though referring
only to the duties and tasks of daily life, may be
applied also to the fortunes of empires and Churches,
even of those which were least in his mind :
New perils past, new sins forgiven,
New thoughts of God, new hopes of heaven,
New treasures still, of countless price,
God will provide for sacrifice.
When we think, whether in England or in America,
of the boundless generosity of individuals ; when we
remember the kindliness and purity of domestic hearths ;
when we think of the efforts of the higher and more
civilised portion of each nation, our hearts refuse to be
disquieted. We call to mind the proud motto of the
State of New York, into which the venerable poet of
America has, in his immortal verses, thrown a yet
loftier meaning "Excelsior." Higher and yet higher
Q
226 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [vn.
must the aim of spiritual and moral effort soar, if it
is to keep pace with its national splendour, if it is not to
be led captive in the train of its vices. More strenuous
and yet more strenuous, must the struggle be if it is to
reach to the summit of the great ambition of this New
World. " Human courage must rise to the level of
human adversity " that was a noble saying of an
American general whom both sides in the late civil
conflict delighted to honour. Human virtue, we may
add, must rise to the level of human corruption and
human temptation.
And when we speak of cities and nations, let it be
always remembered that such words are futile unless
they reach individuals. He who speaks here is speaking
almost his last words in this country. To every man, to
every young man especially of that rising generation on
whom its future depends he would say, with all the serious
ness of which he is capable : " Thou hast this double
nature j thou hast what one of the purest of your poets
calls this dual mind. Choose, therefore, whosoever
thou be to whom these words shall come with any force,
choose between the better and the worse. It is the
tragic interest of thy life that the evil may predominate
and become thyself; it is the sublime hope of thy life
that the good shall predominate and become thyself.
vii.] THE NATURE OF MAN. 227
1 Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel ;
for as a prince of God thou shalt have power with God
and with man, and shalt prevail. Thou hast it in thy
power to become the slave of passion, the slave of
luxury, the slave of senseless party spirit, the slave of
corruption. Thou hast it in thy power also to become
the free controller of thyself, the everlasting benefactor
of thy country, the unfailing champion of thy God."
Q 2
VIII.
THE NATURE OF GOD.
PREACHED IN HOLY TRINITY CHAPEL, NEW YORK, SUNDAY
EVENING, NOV. 3, 1878.
"Tell me thy name." Genesis xxxii. 29, 30.
ON this, the last time on which I address a con
gregation in this country, I propose to dwell on a
subject which concerns us all, and, having elsewhere
spoken of the Nature of Man, to speak of the Nature
of God.
The belief in God has, in these later days, been
strangely represented from opposite sides as of slight
importance. On the one hand there is a tendency
in certain critics, after demolishing by a great appa
ratus of argument and learning, a variety of state
ments in the sacred books, to announce that the
Divine and supernatural has been eliminated from the
knowledge of man altogether; whilst all the time
they do not profess to touch nay, even claim to
viii.] THE NATURE OF GOD. 229
retain their belief in the one Divine and super
natural source of all things. On the other hand, there
is a corresponding tendency in a certain class of theo
logians to treat this great admission, this great assertion,
as of little value; insomuch that amongst the odious
and offensive names of theological disparagement, one
of the most odious is the appellation which, whether
in its Greek or Latin form, means a believer in God.
We surely need not concur with either of these views.
Is it not certain that, if there be such a thing as
theology at all, it must be an attempt to give an
account of God? Is it not at once our policy and
our duty to maintain that wheresoever and so long
as this belief remains, the true supernatural, the true
ideal, immaterial idea is not abandoned? that from
this, as from an impregnable citadel, we may view
with calmness the approaches of friends or assailants
towards it? We need to be reminded sometimes
that there is a regenerating, inspiring force in the
belief which, even in its most general and inde
finite form, cquld enkindle as with a soul of fire
the scanty, though intense, faith of Job and David,
of Plato and Marcus Aurelius, and which in our own
day could furnish the chief incentive to the youthful
piety of Chalmers, and appeal to the matured expe-
230 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [vm.
rience of Mary Somerville, who, in her ninety-third
year, reposed with unshaken confidence on the Suprerpe
Eternal Mind which contained all beauty and all wisdom,
all truth and all goodness. The religious element of
the world is not dying out so long as, amidst whatever
doubts and difficulties, the inquirer takes refuge (as in
one well-known touching instance of our own time) in
the unassailable fortress of the faith in God, which,
"even in the dread hour when the shadows of death
are gathering around us, when the world fades from
our sight, and the human faculties fail, when the
reason is enfeebled and the memory relaxes its grasp,
still remains the Supreme Consoler, soothing the last
moments, and pointing to a ray of light beyond the
mystery of the grave." It may be that there shall
be some who, when they review the theological con
troversies of the last fifty years, and the wanderings
of the two gifted brothers who, each from opposite
points of view, have shone as lights in English Chris
tendom, and traversed many a phase of faith and
many a subtle speculation, will find that amidst their
several works, the one which will outlive the polemics
of the first, and the doubts of the second, will be
that profound and pathetic analysis in which the
younger of the two has described the relation of the
viii.] THE NATURE OF GOD. 231
soul to God, "the course by which the soul, weak
and wandering as a storm-driven bird, learns to nestle
in the bosom of the Infinite One." It is by making
the most and not the least of this primeval yet un
exhausted belief, that we can best hope to strengthen
the foundation and extend the sphere of religious
thought; and everyone, young or old, in this con
gregation may perchance be the better and wiser
for turning to a brief meditation upon it. What I
propose to attempt is the humble, yet, I trust, not
altogether unprofitable task of drawing out from the
Bible itself its basis of teaching on the nature of God.
And for this purpose I will again take the story of
Jacob s vision as the framework of what I have to
say, because it well expresses the aspect under which
this great truth appears in the Scriptures, and appears
also to the intelligence of man in proportion to his
elevation and advancement.
As there is a varying theology of the sixth, thir
teenth, and eighteenth centuries, as there is a separate
theology of Greek and Latin and German Christendom,
so also there is a theology of the Bible ; changing, in
deed, with the changes of the successive ages through
which the sacred literature runs, but yet sufficiently
distinct from those later developments and sufficiently
232 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [vm.
homogeneous to justify us in considering it apart and
regarding it as the best guide to our thoughts. On
the one hand the Bible describes, and every human
being above the mere savage feels, the sense of
something around, beneath, above us which we cannot
see, or touch, or comprehend fully the "traveller
unknown " in the watches of the night, whose course
we cannot cross, whose embrace we cannot evade,
suggesting more than is revealed. Not less surely
than the dumb animals, so far as they can think or
feel, must be conscious of another agency, of another
order of being in the world beside themselves, namely,
the human race, whose ways and thoughts are not
as their ways not less surely is the human race
itself aware of a space in the universe which it does
not fill, and a law which it did not create. As it has
been well said by a well-known writer : " We did not
make our own nature ; we know that we did not.
Influences which shape our conduct and our destiny
come to us from without. Felicities and facilities,
whence do they spring ? Suggestions and stimulations,
whither do they tend? There is something about us
that often knows better what we would be at than
we ourselves." And yet this power, this overruling
influence, who can adequately grasp? The ancient
viii.] THE NATURE OF GOD. 233
heathen -religions tried to dogmatise upon it by ima
gining separate divinities in every country and in
every influence of nature. But it is one of the grand
peculiarities of the Bible, one of the most striking
instances of what may be called the prophetic or pre
dictive power in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures,
that notwithstanding, shall we say, or in consequence
of, the depth of their religious insight, they recognise
to the full all that can be said in modern times of
the inscrutable unknown nature of this vast influence
which directs, and controls, and sets in motion the
universe. " Lo ! these are parts of His ways. But
how small a portion is heard of Him. Canst thou
by searching find out God ? Canst thou find out
the perfection of the Almighty ? It is more high
than heaven. What canst thou do ? Deeper even
than hell. What canst thou know ? No man has seen
God at any time. O the depth of the riches both
of wisdom and the knowledge of God ; how unsearch
able are His judgments and His ways past finding
out!" In this darkness can we wonder that human
thought and language at times fail altogether ? It is
the fool who says in his heart: "There is no .God/
-It is not the fool, but the wise man, who is often
silent before this immense mysterious presence. And
234 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [vm.
if at times he should stagger and stumble in endea
vouring to arrange his conception, then it is no infidel
philosopher, but the sainted Augustine, who said :
" Let those rage against you who know not with
what labour truth is found, and with what diffi
culty error can be avoided, who know not with what
sighings and groanings that cannot be uttered, even
the smallest particle is attained of the full understand
ing of God.. God exists more truly than He can be
thought of. He can be thought of more truly than
He can be spoken of." " Why askest thou after My
name, seeing that it is secret?" "God is in heaven
and thou upon earth ; therefore let thy words be few."
It is with the separate glimpses of the Divinity as
with the famous Torso in the Vatican, the fragment
of some noble statue, the memorial of some super
human struggle, which Michael Angelo in the blind
ness of his old age used to feel round and round,
gathering by touch what he could not gain by sight,
receiving from the imperfect fragment an inspiration
of the unknown whole. "That unfinished block,"
he used to say, "was his master, and he was
its obedient pupil." This was a true likeness of the
human race, or its most gifted members, feeling,
groping after God, if haply they might find Him.
viii.] THE NATURE OF GOD. 235
Again and again has this faint touch in the dark
been sufficient to light up the soul. Theodore Parker,
who, whatever else were his convictions, was filled
with a profound belief in God, was, he tells us, first
inspired with it by the inscrutable power of the inward
voice, which, when he was a boy, restrained him in
sport from throwing a stone at a tortoise. It was a
very slight indication, but to his capacious intellect
and feeling heart it was enough. Thus far we are
with Jacob in his midnight wrestling. We see not
Him with whom we have to deal.
But the human mind cannot but ask and strive
to figure something more. Who art thou ? What
art thou ? " Tell us thy name." That is the question
to which every system of religion, mythology, theo
logy, endeavours to give answers more or less true.
There are many answers besides those which we find
in the Bible. There are all those names of "Gods
many and Lords many," by which the nations of an
tiquity imagined to themselves the Supreme Divinity.
All these, doubtless, for a time and in their measure,
soothed the souls of men. They are all passed away.
They linger only in the names of the stars or of the
days of the week, having no longer any relation to
our actual life. There are again the many names
236 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [vin.
which modern theology or philosophy has invented
Essence, Substance, Personality, Impersonality, the
First Cause, the Universal Whole, the Absolute Being.
These and many like names may no doubt be useful
as clues through the labyrinth of metaphysical inquiry ;
yet they are not, properly speaking, parts of religion.
But there are two modes in which the questions and
answers are put in the Bible which will perhaps be
found useful both to the learned and to the unlearned.
They both appear in the vision of Jacob the one is
indirect, the other is direct.
Of the indirect mode we have examples when in
this story it is said that the Patriarch saw "the Face
of God;" or when Moses on Horeb said: "Show me
Thy glory; show me Thy Face." "The Face of
God." It is a most expressive word. In the original
it is the same phrase which is translated into Greek
by one of the words which in Latin and in English
have been rendered by the modern word of which I
have just now spoken, "Person." But in itself it is at
once more simple and more profound. We ask, as
we look out on this perplexed, and at times dark and
sorrowful world, what is the countenance, the expression
which it bears towards us, in which direction it looks,
in which direction the whole movements of nature and
viii.] THE NATURE OF GOD. 237
of the events of life are set. That significance and
meaning of nature, that expression of the course of
human events which looks upwards and forwards, which
we gather from history or from experience, how shall
we call it? The Greeks called it Fate. Modern philo
sophy speaks of it as Law. The theology of Calvin
speaks of it as the Divine Counsel or Decree. But the
old Hebrew phrase is more striking, and perhaps is more
intelligible than any of these. The Face, the Aspect,
the Countenance of the Invisible. "Turn thy face,"
says the Psalmist, "The Lord make His face to shine
upon us. Lift up the light of Thy countenance upon
us." It has been said truly that the metaphor, or what
is intended by the metaphor, is the same as in the
word " Providence," that is, " the foresight of God "-
the eyes, the face of God looking into the future. It
has been said, by a keen though unfriendly observer,
that the one article of popular belief in England is
a belief in Providence. When Roger Williams, the
eccentric but noble enthusiast, who first in this country
conceived the idea of religious toleration, reached the
shores on which he founded his settlement, he called
it "Providence," and he called it so in reference to
this very text of the Bible, because he said he had
here " seen the face of God shining upon him through
238 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [vm.
all his troubles." That idea of Providence remains im
mortalised in the famous State which is still so called.
Do not part with this belief. Although Providence only
provides for those who determine to provide for them
selves, yet, still, this trust in Providence seems to be a
chief ground of the buoyant, inexhaustible hope which
this great country entertains of its future destiny.
As the eye of a picture seems to follow us, as
the face of the departed recurs to us in dreams or in
passing clouds or in the flash of sudden associations ;
so is the lifting up from time to time of the Divine
countenance behind the veil. We do not pretend to
fathom the whole being of God ; but the face, the eye,
the glance this perhaps we may hope to see and to
attain.
And then we ask what is the Countenance, the Face,
the Providence, the expression, that out of these various
aspects looks down upon us most steadily in the dark
ness ? This brings us to the more direct mode by which
the soul inquires into the problem, "Tell me Thy
name?" It was a question, as we have said, which, in
the fullest and exactest sense, cannot be answered.
"Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name?"
There was no answer to Jacob except that which is
sometimes the best answer of all, that "he was blessed."
viii.] THE NATURE OF GOD. 239
Some of us may have read the beautiful prayer of
Savonarola, one of the few Christians who are almost
equally revered by Protestants and Roman Catholics,
and who, in his last days of distress and anguish, thus
poured forth his soul to the Almighty : " God, who
inhabitest light inaccessible God, who art the hidden
God who canst not be seen by the eyes of the body,
nor comprehended by the created intellect, nor be
explained by tongue of man or of angels my God, I
seek Thee though I cannot grasp Thee, I call upon
Thee though I cannot describe Thee. Whatever Thou
art, Thou art everywhere ; for I know that Thou art the
greatest of things if, indeed, Thou be a thing, and not
rather the Cause of all things if, indeed, Thou be a
Cause, for I find no name wherewith to name Thine
ineffable majesty." That was the way in which the
presence of the unknown Supreme was revealed to
Jacob ; that is the way in which oftentimes it is revealed
to us. Where metaphysical forms fail to express our
thoughts, where religious doctrine seems to elude us,
there may still be the sense that the everlasting arms
are beneath us, and blessings break on our heads.
The poor Buddhist pilgrim who prayed, to he knew
not what, for support, and in the strength of that
prayer was sustained body and soul long days and
240 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [vm.
nights, was blessed, and that blessing was enough
for him. The Samoyede, who said in her morning
prayer: "Sun, arise, I arise with thee," and in her
evening prayer, "Sun, go to rest, I rest with thee,"
expressed a sense of harmony with the order of the
world which raised her above her own sluggish life.
Still, indefinite as the Divine ideal must always be,
elevated as the thought of almost any ideal must be,
yet the whole question of the good or evil of a
religion must ultimately turn upon or resolve itself
into the character which the Divine Nature assumes,
the aspect which the Divine Countenance wears. The
name which invests the ideal with a false misleading
character may be worse than no ideal at all. It was
this made Lord Bacon say : " It were better to have
no God at all than an opinion which is unworthy of
Him; for the one is but unbelief, the other is con
tumely." It was this which made Wesley say that
if God were what some represent Him to be, He
would not be God, but the Devil. There is in the
Imperial Library of St. Petersburg a collection of the
various books used by Voltaire, and gathered by the
Empress Catherine round the statue of the old philo
sopher, bearing on their margin copious annotations in
his own characteristic handwriting. Amongst these is
VIIL] THE NATURE OF GOD.
241
a well-known French work, composed to disprove the
existence of a Supreme Being. It is on the first page
of this work, and as a protest against the whole of it,
that Voltaire has inscribed his famous saying : " If God
did not exist, we should have to invent Him." And
in this scornful and indignant strain his remarks are
continued throughout the work. The main strain of
his arguments is always to urge that the God
whom the author of this " system of nature " was en
deavouring to subvert was not the God who is alone
worthy of the adoration of the true philosopher and
the true religious man. The position which Voltaire
in these his better moments maintained, and maintained
so earnestly, is the same as that supported by all who
care for the honour of Him whom they worship, namely,
that in proportion as the idea of God rises to the
highest pitch of mental and moral excellence it deserves
the adoration of mankind, and only in proportion as
it does so rise, do all the attacks of honest doubters
and all the scandals of false defenders fall off to the
right hand and the left. " Tell me what is Thy name "
is therefore the question which in some form we must
urge; and it is a question which we will proceed to
answer as best we can from the general drift of the
Bible itself.
242 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [vni.
The first answer that we find in the Scriptures is that
name which in our English version we translate " God."
The word used in the original text is " El," " Elohim,"
the Strong One, the Strong Ones, the Almighty One.
It is full of force. It is from the same root which
expresses in Hebrew the strength of the mighty forest
bull, the strength of the ancient oak. It expresses
that behind all this fluctuating, moving, shifting scene,
behind all these waverings and weaknesses, there is One
who is as it were "the hero" (this is one meaning which
the word involves), the mighty champion on whom
we can depend as we should upon an impregnable
fortress, an inaccessible rock, which remains after all
around has perished or is perishing " my Castle, my
Fortress, my Deliverer." This is the first name by
which the Unknown is called. Even without going
further it is a consoling, invigorating thought: the
forces of the universe gathered, as it were, into one
focus, the bone and sinew of the world sustaining, as
on an unshaken basis, the whole fabric of nature and
of man. It is the same word as " Allah," which in the
religion of Islam has produced the deepest sense of
the presence of God that perhaps the world has ever
witnessed. Those who have seen the Arab Mussulman
absorbed in his devotions at sunrise or at sunset, undis-
VIIL] THE NATURE OF GOD. 243
turbed, unmoved, amidst the distractions of pleasure,
business, conversation, will feel that the absolute sub
mission, resignation, and awe which this apprehension
of the Divine nature creates is in itself a moral strength.
" God is Great." It is a doctrine which may lend itself
to speculative fatalism and to practical lethargy ; but it
is a faith which cannot be despised either as barren or
as superstitious.
Still the soul kept on asking, and another name
was revealed, if not first to Moses, yet through him
first clearly, the name called in the Hebrew, "Jehovah,"
by us translated "the LORD," but which is faithfully
preserved only in the French version of the Bible, in
this respect far superior to all other ancient or modern
translations, as " the Eternal." That is the name which
expresses to us the self-existence, the unchangeable
simplicity and unity which is not to be represented
in any outward form. The strength, the power, might
be, and was set forth in all the different shapes of
sacred stone and sacred tree and sacred animal. But
the Eternal is not these. Eternity, whatever it be, is
something deeper and vaster; it is that aspect, that
face of Divine nature which to the heathen was so
difficult to conceive, but which to the Israelite became
part of his daily life. When the Roman historian
R 2
244 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [vm.
described the peculiarity of the Jewish worship he
deemed it a marvel that "they had no image, no
likeness in their innermost shrine. It was an empty
sanctuary in which they bowed down before the Ever
lasting, the Unchangeable, the Invisible." This was
the second name by which the Divine Being was
known. It was .the death-blow of a thousand super
stitions. It was, and is, the attraction which draws
the human spirit upwards from earth into the depths
and heights of Infinite Greatness.
Time still rolled on and there was another name
which the Israelite gave to this great Invisible
Lord. When the wandering tribe was turned into a
settled kingdom, when the rude hut and movable
tabernacle were exchanged for the solid temple;
when poetry, and science, and music, and military
pomp, and statesman-like skill, grew up under the
fostering care of David and Solomon, then the name
of "the Eternal" had to become the bond and centre
of all those forces of earthly civilisation ; and when
the ark approached its final resting-place in Jerusalem,
and when the warders on the ancient towers, like Jacob
asked what was the name of the new Divine Comer
" Tell us thy name. Who is this King of Glory ?" it
was not enough that they should be told, as were the
vili.] THE NATURE OF GOD. 245
older patriarchs, that He was strong and mighty in battle,
or that fte was the Eternal. The new name by which
He was henceforth to be called, and was throughout the
Jewish monarchy called, was "Jehovah Sabaoth," that
is, the Eternal, who is the leader and the centre of the
hosts of heaven and the hosts of earth. The invisible
Guide of human history, the invisible Master of human
characters, translated in the Greek, both in the Old
and the New Testament, " Pantocrator," the Ruler of
principalities, and powers, and dominions. The Eternal
self-existence was not brought down to man, but man,
with all the countless energies of his heart and intellect,
was drawn up towards Him. The soul of the royal
Psalmist saw more clearly into the face of God even
than Jacob on the heights of Peniel, or Moses on the
top of Horeb. If Socrates brought down philosophy
from heaven to earth, David in this new name lifted
up earth to heaven.
But still, we ask, what was there even behind the
name of the Eternal One, the name of the Eternal
Lord of Hosts? There was always, even from the
first, an impression, deepening with the voice of each
succeeding prophet, that this Strength, this Eternity,
ran ever in one direction, that the one sight on earth
which attracted the gracious smile of that ever present
246 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [VIIL
countenance was the righteousness, the moral perfec
tion of man. "The countenance of the Eternal is
against them which do evil." " Thou art good and
doest good." " Keeping mercy for thousands; and
that will by no means clear the guilty." "The
Eternal is our righteousness." More and more the
Eternal One came to be known as the Holy One;
the Strong One came to be known as the Righteous
One. It was these indications that led the spirit of
the chosen people forward in their approach to the
Divine, as they drew nearer and nearer to the hour
when, in the fulness of time, the day should break
and the shadows flee away. More and more, as that
hour approached, the older names seemed to fail; the
word which comforted Moses and David, the name of
Jehovah, ceased to be pronounced. Silence gathered
over that sacred name. Not only was the Holy of
Holies vacant, but the sacred letters of the Holy Name
itself came to be void of meaning. At last the moment
came when another and yet another name should
be given, as much greater than the "Eternal" as that
had been greater than the "Strong" and the " Mighty."
The long struggle of the human spirit with the mystery
of the Divine nature was drawing to its end. The
closing words of the profound hymn of Charles
viii.] THE NATURE OF GOD. 247
Wesley fitly express the conclusion of the whole
matter :
Yield to me now, for I am weak,
But confident in self-despair.
Speak to me here, in blessings speak,
Be conquered by my instant prayer.
My prayer hath power with God ; the grace
Unspeakable I now receive ;
Through faith I see Thee face to face;
In vain I have not wept and strove,
Thy nature and Thy name is "Love."
So it is. There are in the New Testament a few
a very few direct definitions of the Divine nature.
And they all occur in the writings of the latest oracle
of the Apostolic age, whose title and whose date may
be fairly questioned, but whose profound insight into
these problems cannot be denied. He has not told
us that God is the Universe ; he has not told us
that God was a man like ourselves. He did not side
with the upholders either of the personality or the
impersonality of the Divine Being. In St. John s
definitions what we are told is, that "God is Spirit."
We are told also that " God is Light." But we are most
emphatically and repeatedly told that "God is Love."
It is a definition which has never been re-asserted in
any creed; but it is a definition which encourages us
2+8 SERMONS: NEW YORK. [vm.
to take so hopeful a view of the Supreme governance
of the world as to say that the expression of the
Supreme mind, whatever else it might be, strength,
eternity, wisdom, righteousness, is above all else, Love
or Charity. "God is Love," or as the Latin phrase goes,
" God is Chanty." The same Evangelist has told us
" no man has seen God at any time." From this
he never goes back. But he, and they who were with
him, in that climax and crisis of the religious history of
mankind, had received a new impression of the Divine
nature, and there could be no question for them, as
there can be no question for us, that the prevailing
expression of the countenance which they beheld beside
the Lake of Galilee, and from the Cross of Calvary was
" Love." In that human face they felt that they had
seen the face of God, and their life was preserved. And
this declaration that God is Love, as it is the last and
greatest of all theological definitions, gives just meaning
to all the others. It expresses the source of the strength
of the Divine nature, gives harmony to the idea of
the Eternal. It supplies the bond of perfectness by
which the Eternal is connected with the onward course
of human history. This then is the definition of the
Face or Countenance of God. It is founded on the
belief that Goodness is the essence of the Divine nature.
viii.] THE NATURE OF GOD. 249
In that prayer of Savonarola, which I before quoted,
he thus pours forth in the midst of his distress his
ultimate confidence : " Thou God art whatever Thou art
in Thyself for Thou art Thine own wisdom, Thine own
goodness, Thine own power ; and, above all else, art
merciful. What art Thou but mercy and love ? Thou
canst not depart from Thine own nature. Deep calls to
deep. The deep of misery calls to the deep of mercy.
May the deep of mercy swallow up the deep of misery.
Have mercy upon me, not according to the mercy of
men, which is small, but according to the mercy of
God, which is great, which is infinite." So, in his last
extremity, when deserted by friends, and trampled
down by enemies, prayed the reformer and martyr;
so may pray every true philosopher, every true saint
may we not say, every humble sinner ?
But there is still one more question that may be
asked. What is the personal familiar name by which
we are to call this Fountain of all Goodness? Once
more we ask, " Tell me Thy name ? " Give us some
word by which that face, that name of Love, may
be endeared to us, may be made, so to speak, to
smile, to support, to guide us. How and by what
method shall we arrive at this more direct application?
The Greek philosophers, the Jewish prophets, even
250 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [vui.
the Christian apostles, had done what they could to
define the nature of the Invisible. The name, which
by them had not been discovered, was reserved for One
higher than any of them.
There was a story once told to me by an American
Presbyterian minister in the Jerusalem Chamber at
Westminster, that the assembly of Westminster divines,
when they were there engaged in drawing up the
Confession of Faith, and when they came to the
question of making a definition of the Supreme Being,
found the difficulty so overwhelming that they proposed
to have a special prayer offered up for light. The
youngest minister present was to undertake the office.
It was, according to the English tradition, Calamy,
according to the Scottish tradition, Gillespie. He rose
up in the assembly, and he began his prayer by an
impassioned and elaborate invocation of the Almighty,
which he had hardly uttered, when the whole assembly
broke out into the exclamation i This shall be our defi
nition !" The definition may still be read as the open
ing of the third article of the Westminster Confession.
It is an example of that curious union of metaphysical
and devotional language in which the Puritan divines
excelled. But it is not to recommend this special
definition of the Westminster divines that I have cited
viii.] THE NATURE OF COD. 251
this story. It is rather to say that what by a natural
impulse seemed to them the only method of extricating
themselves from their difficulty has been the solution
which the Christian world, we may almost say the
human race itself, has chosen in the midst of this
great inquiry. If we still ask, " Tell me Thy name ?
Give me some name by which that face, that name
of Love, may be made to speak, and smile, and guide
us," this last blessed name is made known to us
in Prayer in the best of all prayers, in the opening
of the One Prayer which has, beyond any other
formulary or creed, been translated into all the
languages, and adopted by all the civilised nations
of the earth. Not by metaphysical definitions, but in the
natural uplifting of the spirits of all mankind to God
in the Lord s Prayer is the name given in which we
all most gladly acquiesce, and to which we all most
gladly cling " Our Father who art in Heaven."
" Our Father." It is a name contained twice or thrice
in the Old Testament. It is a name found here and
there in the Talmud. It is a name not altogether
unknown to the old Gentile world. But it was
only through its consecration in the mouth of Jesus
Christ our Lord that it became the name which has
superseded all other names, and has remained ever
252 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [vin.
since the name of the God of Christendom, who is
the God of all the world. The Father; Our Father.
That is the great name of the Supreme, a name as
much greater than the Strong, or the Eternal, or the
Lord of Hosts, as He who revealed it is greater than
Abraham, Moses, or David. Thus, then, "the Face
of God " to us is His love, love in spite of all the
contradictions which cross and perplex our path of
life. "The Name of God" to us is our Father; the
love, compassion, far-reaching watchful care of the
most venerable figure which each of us individually
has known on earth, is the likeness which brings
before us the love, the compassion, the watchful care
of the Ruler of the Universe. This is the last reve
lation of the Being of God.
This is the name which has always conveyed the
deepest comfort to the human soul in all its per
plexities. "/ do not know how the great loving
Father will bring out light at last, but He knows, and
will do it !" That was David Livingstone s consolation
in the wilds of Africa, and that may be ours also in
all our toils and trials. For the ideal of a father is
the impersonation of supreme love, which is the
essence of supreme goodness.
And if we yet further ask how this name of the
viii.] THE NATURE OF GOD. 253
Father, whom no man hath seen or can see, is borne
in upon our souls, it is in two aspects, in two modes,
which we can all understand, and which the whole
world has felt. " Lord, show us the Father," we cry,
"and it sufficeth us." And the answer is: "He that
hath seen, he that hath heard, and he that hath read
of Jesus Christ, hath seen, and heard, and read of
the Father." In that manifestation of Divine Love,
in that visible representation of the best perfections of
Humanity, which was made in the image of God, we
have the best likeness of the Strong, the Eternal, the
Holy, to correct, and guide, and strengthen the
representations of nature. And yet once more, there
is the voice of God, the likeness of God, the breath of
God, which speaks in our own consciences, which
dwells in our own hearts, which inspires our best
thoughts. That same Apostle who taught us that
God is Love, has taught us that " God is a Spirit,"
and " Hereby know we that we dwell in God, because
He has given us of His Spirit." The Spirit which in
our highest moments moves with our spirits, is the Love
which is alike the innermost Spirit of the Universal
Father, and the Love which is the innermost Spirit of the
Divine Man, Christ Jesus. This is the full Face this is
the final mode of declaring the name of God.
254 SERMONS. NEW YORK. [vill.
And now let me say one parting word to those
who perchance will never hear me again. I have
done my best to explain the name of God; but
neither this explanation, nor any other, will be of any
avail unless it makes us feel how serious and solemn
a thing it is to believe that we are in the hands of
One to whom nothing is so precious as goodness,
to whom nothing is so hateful as sin. Religious
feeling, religious doctrine, religious ordinances are
of no value unless they produce in our lives justice,
integrity, honesty, purity, gentleness, modesty. These
are the means by which the name of God is honoured
amongst men. You who have still your way to make in
the world, remain stedfast to this thought. You may
have many difficulties, many perplexities, but remember
that so long as you believe that God is just, so long as
you know that the best mode of serving him is to be like
Jesus Christ in the goodness and truthfulness of His
character, so long you have enough for your religious
guidance. On both sides of the Atlantic it is equally
true that a serious, stedfast, upright walk of life is the
one thing needful to commend us in the sight of- the
All Holy and the All Wise. May He through His
Spirit strengthen you, and may you strengthen your
own spirits, in this endeavour ! May He guard you, and
VIII.] THE NATURE OF GOD. 255
may you guard yourselves against the manifold tempta
tions to evil in this great city ! May He give you grace
to know and love, whether in man, woman, or child,
whatsoever things are true, and honest, and just, and
pure, and lovely, and of good report !
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