The freedom of faith

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

ON THE THRESHOLD.

By T. T. Mui^GER. i6mo, gilt top, $i.oo.

Talks to young people on Purpose, Friends and Companions,
Manners, Thrift, Self- Reliance and Courage, Health, Reading
and Intellectual Life, Amusements, and Faith.

This book touches acts, habits, character, destiny ; it deals
with the present and vital thought in literature, society, life ;
it stimulates one with the idea that life is worth living. . . .
The production of a book of this sort is not an every- day oc-
currence : it is an event : it will work a revolution among
young men who read it ; it has the manly ring from cover to
cover. — New York Times.

The spirit in which the book is written is neither narrow nor
unduly critical, but sympathetic rather, and healthful and
manly. The work is a plea, not for asceticism or rigidity of
any kind, but for self-respect, open-mindedness^, and right-liv-
ing; for good faith and earnestness of life; for cheerful cour-
age, honesty, and good health alike of body and mind. It is
such a plea as all manly young men will listen to with interest
and profit. — New York Evenmg Post.

It is a book calculated to do a great deal of good wherever
it is attentively read, as it can hardly help being by any one
who dips into it at all. We wish especially that every young
man on the threshold of life might have such a wholesome
introduction to its struggles and prizes as this book furnishes.
— Christian Register (Boston).

There is a finished, not to say eloquent brightness in these
chapters, which carries the reader on with kindling interest
from page to page. ... At once wise and winning, and free
from anything comtno7i. — The Independent (New York).

It is sensible, earnest, candid, and discriminating, and, withal,
thoroughly interesting. — The Congregationalist (Boston).

*^* For sale by Booksellers. Senty post-paid^ on receipt of
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HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO., Boston, Mass.

THE

FREEDOM OF FAITH.

BY

THEODORE T. MUNGER,

AUTHOR OF "ON THE THRESHOLD."

'* Peace settles where the intellect is meek ;
The faith Heaven strengthens where He moulds the creed. "

Wordsworth

BOSTON:
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY.

New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street.

1883.

Copyright, 1883,
By THEODORE T. HUNGER.

AU rights reserved.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge :
Electro typed and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co

DEDICATED

TO

E. D. M.

CONTEE"TS.

f—

PAGE.

Prefatory Essay : " The New Theology " 1

SERMONS.

I.

On Reception of New Truth o c 45

11.
God our Shield. I. . o . . 71

III.
God our Reward. II. . . « 91

IV.
Love to the Christ as a Person 107

V.

The Christ's Pity , , . o o 129

VI.

The Christ as a Preacher c « , . 149

VII.
Land Tenure . . » . . o » . « . « » » o » o . 169

VIII.
Moral Environment , . o , « , , o • o o o « . 191

IX.
Immortality and Science c . . . o , « , » » » , 215

VI CONTENTS.

X.

PAGE

Immortality and Nature . , , 235

XI.

Immortality as taught by the Christ 255

XII.

The Christ's Treatment of Death 271

XIII.
The Resurrection from the Dead 293

XIV.
The Method of Penalty 315

XV.

The Judgment , . , » , o , 337

XVI.

Life a Gain , . . . o 357

XVII.
Things to be Awaited .•..,.,,,..,. 377

"THE NEW THEOLOGY."

" Man's chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy
Him forever." — Westminster Catechism,

*'I shall merely enumerate a few of the most common of these feel-
ings that present obstacles to the pursuit or propagation of truth : Aver-
sion to doubt; desire of a supposed happy medium; the love of system;
the dread of the character of inconsistency; the love of novelty; the
dread of innovation ; undue deference to human authority ; the love of
approbation, and the dread of censure; regard to seeming expediency.' '
— Whately^s Annotations on Bacon'' s Essay on Truth, page 10.

"The principles on which I have taught: First. The establishment
of positive truth, instead of the negative destruction of error. Secondly.
That truth is made up of two opposite propositions, and not found in a
via media between the two. Thirdly. That spiritual truth is discerned
by the spirit, instead of intellectually in propositions ; and, therefore,
Truth should be taught suggestively, not dogmatically. Fourthly. That
belief in the Human character of Christ's Humanity must be antecedent
to belief in His Divine origin. Fifthly. That Christianity, as its teach-
ers should, works from the inward to the outward, and not vice versa.
Sixthly. The soul of goodness in things evil.'' — Life of F, W, Rdbert-
son. Vol. ii. p. 160.

PREFATORY ESSAY.

^'THE NEW THEOLOGY."

The purpose of this Essay is to state, so far as
is now possible, some of the main features of that
phase of present thought popularly known as " The
New Theology : " to indicate the lines on which it
is moving, to express something of its spirit, and to
give it so much of definite form that it shall no
longer suffer from the charge of vagueness.

I use, however, the phrase New Theology sim-
ply as one of convenience, disclaiming for it any
real propriety, and even denying its appropriate-
ness. For the thing that it represents is not new
nor yet old. It might better be described — as it
has been — as a Renaissance : for the conceptions
of Christian doctrine that are now floating in the
minds of men, with promise of crj^stallizing into
form, are not of recent origin ; they prevailed in
the first centuries of the church, while the stream
ran clear from the near fountain, and they have ap-
peared all along in individual minds and schools, as
the higher peaks of a mountain range catch the
sunshine, while the base is enveloped in mist and
shadow, — not many, and often far separate, but
enough to show the trend, and to bear witness to
the light. Neither is this phrase used to designate

4 THE NEW THEOLOGY.

a class, nor to separate one set of men from another.
The distinguishing line does not run between dif-
ferent minds, but rather runs through all minds.
Every calm, reflecting person now interested in the-
ology may detect in himself a line of demarkation
between sympathies that cling to the old and that
reach out after the new. With the noisy, thought-
less shouters for the new because it seems to be
new, and with the sullen, obstinate sticklers for the
old because it is the old, these pages have little to
do. There is, however, a large class of earnest,
reflecting minds who recognize a certain develop-
ment of doctrine, a transfer of emphasis, a change
of temper, a widened habit of thought, a broader
research, that justify the use of some term by which
to designate it. This class need little teaching, save
that of their own trained intelligence ; they know
the age and its requirements ; they know the Scrip-
tures, the spirit of their teachings and the law of
their interpretation ; they know how to hold them-
selves before the philosophies in whose court the main
questions are decided ; they have open eyes before
the growing knowledge of the world and the un-
folding manifestations of God. But while this class
have been quietly passing from one phase of thought
to another, without shock to their minds or detri-
ment to their characters, there is a far larger class
who are thrown into confusion by the change it has
observed in the other. Only the trained intellect
passes easily through changes of thought and belief :
others see in change only a loss ; they regard modifi-
cation of view as abandonment ; they cannot readily

THE NEW THEOLOGY. 6

adjust their eyes to the increasing light. Hence
there is at present a sad state of popular confusion
as to religious belief. The people hear new state-
ments in regard to inspiration, atonement, retribu-
tion, and the war of words that follows in councils
and from the press and pulpit and platform intensi-
fies their confusion, — stormy assertion, passionate
denial, retreats into the past on one side, and blind
rushing into the jaws of a material philosophy on
the other side, Calvin or Herbert Spencer, the old
creed or no Bible, blind fear offset by blind au-
dacity. Meanwhile, "the hungry sheep look up
and are not fed ; " " the people perish for lack of
knowledge ; " they know not what to believe. They
cannot be fed or quieted by exhortations to believe
what they have always believed, nor are they fed
or content when assured that every-day morality is
all they need to concern themselves about, or that
all theology is to be reconstructed, in due time, on
a basis of physical evolution. For, while there is,
without doubt, a strong popular drift towards ma-
terialism, there is also a counter, protesting drift
that flows out of the inextinguishable spiritual in-
stincts. When religion is presented to men envel-
oped in a material philosophy, they scent danger,
and turn from it "blindly wise," driven by^ an in-
stinctive fear lest they be " canceled in the world
of sense." But the people cannot themselves for-
mulate these instincts and reduce them to their
rational equivalents ; they cannot make the transi-
tion from that which no longer feeds and satisfies
to the fresher conceptions that can. Hence it is

6 THE NEW THEOLOGY.

largely an age of arrested belief, dangerous to all,
fatal to many. The blame is thickly and widely
scattered about, — on pulpit and pew, on science
and philosophy, on theologians and editors, on the
orthodox and the heterodox ; let us each take our
share, for there is a certain deep homogeneity of
the age that renders it accountable for its condition.
There is, however, this sure ground of hope : that
the great body of mankind will not long live with-
out a faith.

While what is called the New Theology is, in
part, the cause of this condition, it also finds in it
the reason of its being. It is not a disturber of the
peace in the realm of belief, but comes forward to
meet the unconscious thought and the conscious
need of the people, and, if possible, do something
towards quelling the anarchy of fear and doubt that
now prevails. It is not a vague thing,

" Wandering between two worlds, one dead,
The other powerless to be born,"

but a definite movement, that attempts to link the
truth of the past with the truth of the present
in the interest of the Christian faith. It justifies
itself by the belief that it can minister to faith, and
by a conviction that the total thought of an age
ought to have the greatest possible unity, or, in
plainer phrase, that its creed ought not to antago-
nize its knowledge.

In attempting to give some expression of the
New Theology, I wish to state with the utmost
emphasis that I do not speak for any party, but
only describe things as I see them. And especially

THE NEW THEOLOGY. 7

would I disclaim any ex-cathedra tone that may-
seem to issue from any form of words. I speak
from the stand-point of the sharpest and even most
isolated individuality, — for myself alone.

I will first refer to certain negative features, in-
dicating what it is not; and then more fully to its
positive character.

1. It does not propose to do without a theology.

It seeks no such transformation of method or form
that it can no longer claim the name of a science. It
does not resolve belief into sentiment, nor etherealize
it into mysticism, nor lower it into mere altruism ;
yet it does not deny an element of sentiment, it ac-
knowledges an element of mysticism, and it insists
on a firm basis in ethics. It is the determined foe of
agnosticism, yet it recognizes a limitation of human
knowledge. While it insists that theology is a sci-
ence, and that therefore its parts should be coor-
dinate and mutually supporting, and an induction
from all the facts known to it, it realizes that it
deals with eternal realities that cannot be wholly
compassed, and also with the mysteries and contra-
dictions of a world involved in mystery and beset
by contradictory forces. If it finds itself driven into
impenetrable mystery, as it inevitably must, it pre-
fers to take counsel of the higher sentiments and
better hopes of our nature, rather than project into
it the frame-work of a formal logic, and insist on its
conclusion. It does not abjure logic, but it refuses
to be held by what is often deemed logic. While it
believes in a harmony of doctrines, it regards with
suspicion what have been known as systems of the-

(.::

8 THE NEW THEOLOGY.

ology, on the ground that it rejects the methods by
which they are constructed. It will not shape a doc-
trine in order that it may fit another which has been
shaped in the same fashion, — a merely mechanical
interplay, and seeking a mechanical harmony. In-
stead, it regards theology as an induction from the
evelations of God — in the Bible, in history, in
the nation, in the family^ in the material creation,
and in the whole length and breadth of human life.
It will have, therefore, all the definiteness and har-
mony it can find in these revelations, but it will
have no more, since it regards these revelations as
under a process still enacting, and not as under a
finality. The modern authors whom it most con-
sults must be regarded as holding a theology worthy
of the name, — Erskine, Campbell, McLeod, Mau-
rice, Stanley, Robertson, the Hare brothers, Bush-
nell ; and if we enumerate its representatives among
the living, we must recite the names of those who

I are eminent in every form of thought and in every

( work of holy charity.

2. The New Theology does not part with the his-
toric faith of the church, but rather seeks to put
itself in its line while recognizing a process of de-
velopment. It does not propose to commit " retro-
spective suicide " at every fresh stage of advance.
It holds to progress by slow and cosmic growth
rather than by cataclysmal leaps. It allies itself
even with the older rather than the later theologies,
and finds in the early Greek theology conceptions
more harmonious with itself than those in the the-
ology shaped by Augustine.^
1 See the very able and suggestive article, by Prof. A. V. G. Allen, on

THE NEW THEOLOGY. 9

8. It does not reject the specific doctrines of the
church of the past. It holds to the Trinity, though
indifferent to the use of the word, but not to a
formal and psychologically impossible Trinity ; to ^
the divine sovereignty, but it does not make it'
the corner-stone of its system, preferring for that
place the divine righteousness, i. ^., a moral rather
than a dynamic basis ; to the Incarnation, not as a
mere physical event, for that has entered into many
religions, but as the entrance into the world through (
a person of a moulding and redeeming force in hu-
manity, — the central and broadest fact of theology ;
to the Atonement as a divine act and process of
ethical and practical import — not as a mystery of
the distant heavens and isolated from the strug-
gle of the world, but a comprehensible force in the
actual redemption of the world from its evil ; to the
Resurrection as covering the whole essential nature
of man ; to Judgment as involved in the develop-
ment of a moral nature ; to the eternal awards of
conduct considered as laws and principles of charac-
ter, but not necessarily set in time-relations; to hu-
man sinfulness under a conception of moral freedom;
to Justification by faith in the sense of a faith that,
by its law, induces an actual righteousness — a sim-
ple, rational process realized in human experience ;
to Regeneration and Sanctification by the Spirit
as most imperative operations based on the utmost
need, and on the actual presence and power of the
Spirit in the life of humanity. It does not explain

"The Theological Renaissance of the Nineteenth Century," in the
Princeton Review^ November, 1882, and January, 1883.

10 THE NEW THEOLOGY.

away from these doctrines their substance, nor min-
imize them, nor aim to do else than present them
as revealed in the Scriptures and as developed in
history and in the life of the church and of the
world.

4. It is not iconoclastic in its temper ; it is not
pervaded by a spirit of denial, but is constructive —
taking away nothing without supplying its place;
it does not, indeed, find so much occasion to take
away and replace as to uncover and bring to light.
Believing that revelation is not so much from God
as of God, its logical attitude is that of seeing and
interpreting.

5. It is not disposed to find a field and organiza-
tion outside of existing churches, conscious that it
is building on that Eternal Foundation which alone
has given strength to the church in every age. It
claims only that liberty whereunto all are called
in the church of Christ. It asserts that the real
ground of membership in the church is fidelity to
the faith, and that this ground is not forfeited be-
cause it refuses to assent to human and formal con-
ditions that the church has taken on, and which are
not of the substance of the faith. Emphasizing as
it does the headship of Christ in the visible as well
as invisible church, it would retain its place in the
church on the basis of its loyalty to Christ and as
its all-sufficient warrant, paying small heed to a
narrow, ecclesiastical logic that now confounds, and
now distinguishes between, the bounds of the visi-
ble body and the breadth and freedom of Christ's
church.

THE NEW THEOLOGY. 11

I pass now to the positive features of the New
Theology.

1. It claims for itself a somewhat larger and
broader use of the reason than has been accorded
to theology.

And by reason we do not mean mere speculation
nor a formal logic, but that full exercise of our na-
ture which embraces the intuitions, the conscience,
the susceptibilities, and the judgment, i. ^., man's
whole inner being. Especially it makes much of
the intuitions — the universal and spontaneous ver-
dicts of the soul ; and in this it deems that it allies
itself with the Mind through which the Christian
revelation is made.

The fault of the theology now passing is that it
insists on a presentation of doctrines in such a way
as perpetually to challenge the reason. By a logic
of its own — a logic created for its own ends, and
not a logic drawn from the depth and breadth of
human life — it frets and antagonizes the funda-
mental action of human nature. If Christianity
has any human basis it is its entire reasonableness.
It must not only sit easily on the mind, but it must
ally itself with it in all its normal action. If it
chafes it, if it is a burden, if it antagonizes, it de-
tracts from itself ; the human mind cannot be de-
tracted from. Man is a knower ; the reason never
ceases to be less than itself without losing all right
to use itself as reason. Consequently a full adjust-
ment between reason and Christianity is steadily to
be sought. If there is conflict, uneasiness, burden-
someness, the cause is to be looked for in interpreta-

12 THE NEW THEOLOGY.

tion rather than in the human reason. For, in the last
analysis, revelation — so far as its acceptance is con-
cerned — rests on reason, and not reason on revela-
tion. The logical order is, first reason, and then
revelation — the eye before sight. It is just here
that a narrow and formal theology inserts its hurtful
fallacy ; it says. Use your reason for ascertaining
that a revelation is probable, and has been made,
after which the only office of the mind is to accept
the contents of the revelation without question, i. ^.,
without other use of the reason than some small
office of collating texts and drawing inferences.
J But this is formal and arbitrary. The mind accepts
revelation because it accepts the substance of revela-
tion. It does not stand outside upon some structure
of logical inference that a revelation has been made,
and therefore is to be accepted, but instead it enters
into the material of the revelation, and plants its
I feet there. The reason believes the revelation be-
I cause in itself it is reasonable. Human nature —
so far as it acts by itself — accepts Christianity
because it establishes a thorough consensus with
human nature ; it is agreeable in its nature to hu-
man nature in its normal action. It wins its way
on the man-ward side by winning the assent of the
whole reasonable nature of man. The largest play
must be allowed to this principle. It is thus that
the light of thought enters into and guides all spir-
itual processes, and discloses their reality. It is
thus, and thus only, that the reason of man meets
and recognizes the reason of God that is wrought
into the revelation. Otherwise, belief is a mechan-

THE NEW THEOLOGY. 13

ical thing, and spiritual processes become blind acts
of the will. It is arbitrary and unscientific to use
the reason up to a certain point, and then hood it
with blinding restrictions ; to think and weigh and
feel up to the point of the discovery of a revelation,
and then remand thought and feeling to the back-
ground, and so reduce the whole action of the mind
to an acceptance of texts. Thought and feeling are
as necessary for interpretation as for acceptance,
and it is as legitimate for the reason to pass judg-
ment upon the contents of revelation as upon the
grounds of receiving it ; they are, in fact, identical.
In brief, we accept the Christian faith because of
the reasonableness of its entire substance, and not
because we have somehow become persuaded that a
revelation has been made. It is impossible to con-
ceive of it as gaining foothold in the mind and
heart in any other way, nor can faith in it be other-
wise secured. And the revelation will be forever
appealing to the reason ; playing into it as flame
mingles with flame, and drawing from it that which
is kindred with itself. The inmost principle of rev-
elation is that the mind of God reveals itself to the
mind of man ; and the basis of this principle is
that one mind is made in the image of the other,
and therefore capable of similar processes of thought
and feeling. Revelation is not a disclosure of things
to be done, or of bare facts pertaining to eter-
nity, but is rather an unveiling of the thought and
feeling of God to men, in response to which they
become sons of the Most High. This is the hold
that it has on humanity, and this is the method of

14 THE NEW THEOLOGY.

its acting. Hence, in simple phrase, it must be on
friendly terms with the human reason and heart.
It is on such terms; it is only through misinterpre-
tation that it antagonizes the sober conclusions of
universal reason and evokes the protest of the uni-
versal human heart.

If it be said that human nature is weakened and
perverted by evil, and therefore cannot be relied on
for just estimates of the contents of revelation, we
answer that it is then equally unfit to form a judg-
ment on the question of having or not having a rev-
elation. If reason can determine the universal
point, it can determine the particular points ; if it
can cover the whole, it can cover the parts. But,
what is of greater moment, to attribute inability
to the reason is to pave the way to Pyrrhonism. If
I cannot know in such a way as to satisfy my rea-
son, I must forever doubt. Here is where Pascal
fails as a defender of the faith, holding that be-
cause the reason is corrupted it can be sure of noth-
ing, yet asserting the duty of belief, — a very mon-
strosity of inconsistency ; yet he bravely accepts it,
and has, at last, but one word for the questioner :
" Do as I do : go to mass and use holy water."
The impotence of his conclusion is the condemna-
tion of his premise.

There are indeed limits to reason, and it has in
it an element of faith, but so far as it goes, it goes
surely and firmly ; it is not a rotten foundation, it
is not a broken reed, it is not a false light. It may
be so sure that it can justly protest in the face
of Heaven, '' Shall not the Judge of all the earth

THE NEW THEOLOGY. 15

do right ? " It will be humble and docile and trust-
ful, but these qualities are not abrogations of itself.
It does not claim for itself the ability to measure
the whole breadth and reach of truth ; it does not
say, I will not believe what I cannot understand,
for it knows full well that human reason is not
commensurate with eternal truth. But this is quite
different from silencing reason before questions that
have been cast upon human nature, yet are so inter-
preted as to violate every principle of human na-
ture ; e. ^., it is not called to hold its belief in God
as a reasonable belief, and to accept a conception of
God that throws it into a chaos of moral confusion
and contradiction. To trust is a great duty ; but as
reason has an element of faith, so faith has an ele-
ment of reason, and that element requires that the
fundamental verdicts of human nature shall not be
set aside. The lines on which trusting reason, or
reasoning trust, proceed do not run straight into
impenetrable mystery, and come back from that
mystery to slay reason and well-nigh slay faith.

The familiar illustration, drawn from the duty of
the child to obey the parent without understand-
ing why, is a partial fallacy. The highest relation
between child and parent is that in which there
is sympathetic obedience because the child under-
stands why. ''No longer do I call you servants;
for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth :
but I have called you friends ; for all things that I
heard from my Father I have made known unto
you." " Mine own know me, even as the Father
knoweth me : " when the Revised Version thus tells

16 THE NEW THEOLOGY.

US that believers know Christ even as the Father
knows him, there is not much room for mystery in
the revelations of the Christ.

This blind acceptance of revelation as something
with which the reason has little to do, in respect to
which the New Theology parts company with the
Old, is based on the conception that revelation is
grounded on miracle, i, ^., on sense, — a principle
that Christ condemned over and over; "Blessed are
they that have not seen, and yet have believed."

2. The New Theology seeks to interpret the
Scriptures in what may be called a more natural
way, and in opposition to a hard, formal, unsympa-
thetic, and unimaginative way.

Its strongest denial and its widest divergence
from the Old Theology lie here. It holds pro-
foundly to inspiration, but it also holds that the
Scriptures were written by living men, whose life
entered into their writings ; it finds the color and
temper of the writer's mind in his work ; it finds
also the temper and habit of the age ; it penetrates
the forms of Oriental speech; it seeks to read out
of the mind and conception and custom of the wri-
ter instead of reading present conceptions into his
words. In brief, it reads the Scriptures as litera-
ture, yet with no derogation from their inspiration.
It refuses to regard the writers as automatic organs
of the Spirit, — "moved," indeed, but not carried
outside of themselves nor separated from their own
ways and conceptions. It is thus that it regards
the Bible as a living book; it is warm and vital
with the life of a divine humanity, and thus it

THE NEW THEOLOGY. 17

speaks to humanity. But as it was written by men
in other ages and of other habits of speech, it needs
to be interpreted ; it is necessary to get back into
the mind of the writer in order to get at the inspi-
ration of his utterance ; for before there is an in-
spired writing there is an inspired man, through
whom only its meaning can be reached. This is a
very different process from picking out texts here
and there, and putting them together to form a doc-
trine ; yet it is by such a process that systems of
theology have been formed, and cast on societj^ for
acceptance. The New Theology does not proceed
in such a way. The Old Theology reads the Scrip-
tures with a lexicon, and weighs words as men
weigh iron ; it sees no medium between the form
of words and their first or preconceived meaning.
It looks into the Bible as one looks through space,
beyond the atmosphere, upon the sun, — seeing one
point of glowing lights but darkness on every side ;
one text of burning sense, but no atmosphere of con-
text, or age, or custom, or temper of mind, or end
in view. The New Theology does not tolerate the
inconsistency of the Old, as it slowly gives up the
theory of verbal inspiration, but retains views based
on verbal inspiration. It will not remove foundations
and prop up the superstructure with assertions.

Again, it does not regard the Bible as a magical
book; it is not a diviner's rod ; it is not a charmed
thing of intrinsic power, representing a far-off God.
The New Theology remembers that the mass, the
confessional, the priestly office, the intercession of
saints, were the product of a theology that held to

2

18 THE NEW THEOLOGY.

a mechanical, outside God, and that these supersti-
tions sprang from the demand of the human heart
for a God near at hand. It remembers that when
these superstitions were cast off and the theology
retained the Bible was put in their place, and with
something of the same superstitious regard. Hence,
it was not read naturally and in a free, off-hand
way, as it was inspired and written, but in hard and
artificial ways, and was used much as men use
charms. The New Theology does not reduce to
something less the inspiration of the Bible, nor does
it yield to any theology in its sense of its supreme
value in the redemption of the world ; but it holds
it as purely instrumental, and not as magical in its
power or method. It is a history of the highest
form in which God is manifesting himself in the
world, but it is not the manifestation itself; it is
not a revelation, but is a history of a revelation ; it
is a chosen and indispensable means of the redemp-
tion of the world, but it is not the absolute means,
— that is in the Spirit. It is necessary to make
this distinction in order to read it, otherwise it
cannot be interpreted ; it lies outside the sphere of
our rational nature, — a charmed mystery, before
which we may sit in awe, but not a voice speaking
to our thinking minds.

Again: the New Theology is not disposed to
limit its interpretation of the Scriptures by the prin-
ciple contained in the phrase '' the plain meaning
of the words." This is a true principle, but it
may be used in a narrow and untrue way. It is
one of those phrases that wins immediate assent be-

THE NEW THEOLOGY, 19

cause it flatters the popular mind, like the ap-
peals to " common sense," — a trick under which a
vast amount of error and slipshod belief has crept
into the world. It is by an undue and exclusive
use of this principle that a theology has been cre-
ated intolerable to human nature. Now a theology ?
cannot be forced on the human mind. Men may
be required to believe what they do not like to be-
lieve, but they cannot be forced to believe what
they cannot believe, i. e., to believe against the
universal voice of reason and heart and knowledge. [
There will first be silence, then denial and rejection,
and all along ineflBciency or abnormal results. To
escape from a theology so created, there must be
a broader principle of interpretation than this of
" the plain meaning of the words ; " or, rather, this
principle must be enlarged, until it becomes some-
thing quite different. There must be recognized
the principle of moral evolution or development, —
a principle that removes whatever difficulties some
may feel as to Hebrew anthropomorphism ; it must
be allowed that every writer of the Bible wrote un-
der human limitations, and that it is within the
province of the reason to discover the limitations
and so get at the meaning, as it does with any other
book, with only this difference, that when it thus
reaches the meaning it is wholly trustworthy.

Another principle is that the Bible, like the order
of history, is a continually unfolding revelation of
God ; it is a book of eternal laws and facts that are
evolving their truth and reality in the process of
history. Its full meaning is not yet disclosed; it is

20 THE NEW THEOLOGY.

an ever-opening book. It is always leading man in
the right direction, but it does not show him at
once, in clear light, the whole domain of truth it
is therefore a book to be constantly and freshly in-
terpreted; it may mean to-morrow more than it
means to-day. This principle of » the plain mean-
ing of the words " is to be used under other princi-
ples and in connection with all possible knowledge.
The point has recently been made by a critic ot
the Unitarian school that " the Bible is an ortho-
dox book " With profound respect for the honesty
and ability of the critic, the New Theology re-
gards with indifference a criticism that encourages
the Old Theology to foster theories that the critic
plainly sees can lead only to its final and utter
collapse, proYoking the instant and necessarily ex-
pected inference that "we must revise our Bible
or keep our creed." The New Theology agrees
neither with the critic nor with the comment; it
holds principles of interpretation that bmd it nei-
ther to the school represented by the one nor by the
other. To assert an identity between the Bible and
the theology of New England as it was sixty years
ago is to ignore previous ages of church history,
and scores of years' since; it is to ignore all other
theology, -the early Greek, the Armmian, the
Mystical, and the Romish. Yet upon such a sum-
mons, some are induced either to " revise the Bible
or keep the creed." The New Theology wdl do nei-
ther ; it refuses to be deceived by an " undistributed
middle" of a syllogism; it chooses mstead to re-
, interpret the Bible, i. e. find out what it actually
means, and revise the creed if it is necessary.

THE NEW THEOLOGY. 21

By what rule, under what impulse, for what rea-
son, shall it do the former ? The answer is brief :
When it must ; ^. g., when there is such an accumu-
lation of knowledge and of evidence against the ap-
parent meaning that the mind cannot tolerate the
inconsistency, it must search the text to see if it
will not bear a meaning, or rather does not contain
a meaning, — indeed, was intended to convey a
meaning that we have failed to catch, — consistent
with ascertained facts. It is already a familiar pro-
cess, as illustrated in the treatment of the first
chapters of Genesis. The Bible receives no detri-
ment from being interpreted under such a principle ;
how much larger, in their truth, are these chapters
than they were a century ago ! This is not a cha-
meleon process ; it does not reduce the Bible to a
pliant mass, to be shaped anew by every restless
critic; it does not deprive it of positive meaning
and character. It regards it rather as a revelation
of God, the full meaning of which is to be evolved \
in the history of the world, — a light that simply j
burns brighter as time goes on. It is this very j
characteristic that makes it a miraculous book, if ?
we care so to name it. It is to be remembered,
also, that the Bible generates the light in which it
is to be interpreted, — " the master light of all our
seeing ; " it were well if that light were more used !
There is no denial of the fact that doctrines now
regarded as parts of orthodoxy are the reflections
of the social condition in which they were formu-
lated. The doctrines of divine sovereignty, of total
depravity, and of the atonement are shot through

22 THE NEW THEOLOGY.

with colors drawn from the corruption of Roman
society, from the Roman sense of authority and the
Roman forms of justice. The Bible furnished iso-
lated texts for holding these conceptions, but the
Bible, as a whole, did not furnish the conceptions ;
had it been used to furnish conceptions of doc-
trines, we would not now have what goes for ortho-
doxy. But Rome passes, and the Bible endures ;
the leaven of heathen society is eliminated, and the
leaven of the Gospel works its slow transformer
tion in the world. It generates a sense of free-
dom and humanity that renders impossible a belief
in divine sovereignty, and human depravity, and
legal atonement, and future retribution, as they
were first formulated, and are still retained, in
the Old Theology. The present universal protest!
against the old conception of retribution is due!
simply to the fact that the Gospel itself has trained

. X t^^ mind to such a point of tender, humane, and
just feeling that it necessarily repudiates it. The
defenders of the old view hurl the Bible, as though
it were a missile, at doubters and deniers ; the New
Theology says, Let us open it again, and read it
in the light that it has kindled in our minds and in
society, not despising the tenderness and human-
ity which are its offspring. Whatever the Bible
may be, it is not a Saturn, devouring its own chil-

y/ dren.

/S^ 3. The New Theology seeks to replace an exces-
sive individuality by a truer view of the solidarity
of the race.

It does not deny a real individuality, it does not

THE NEW THEOLOGY. 23

predicate an absolute solidarity, but simply removes
the emphasis from one to the other. It holds that
every man must live a life of his own, build himself
up into a full personality, and give an account of
himself to God : but it also recognizes the blurred
truth that man's life lies in its relations ; that it is
a derived and shared life ; that it is carried on and
perfected under laws of heredity and of the family
and the nation ; that while he is " himself alone "
he is also a son, a parent, a citizen, and an insepa-
rable part of the human race ; that in origin and
character and destiny he cannot be regarded as
standing in a sharp and utter individuality. It
differs from the Old Theology in a more thorough
and consistent application of this distinction. That
holds to an absolute solidarity in evil, relieved by
a doctrine of election of individuals ; this holds to
a solidarity running throughout the whole life of
humanity in the world, — not an absolute solidarity,
but one modified by human freedom. It is not dis-
posed wholly to part company with the Old in re-
spect to the " fall in Adam " (when the Scriptures,
on this point, are properly interpreted), and hered-
itary evil, and the like ; it sees in these conceptions
substantial truths, when freed from their excessive-
ness and their formal and categorical shapes, but it
carries this solidarity into the whole life of man.
If it is a fallen world, it is also a redeemed world ;
if it is a lost world, it is a saved world ; the Christ
is no less to it than Adam ; the divine humanity is
no smaller than the Adamic humanity ; the Spirit
is as powerful and as universal as sin ; the links

24 THE NEW THEOLOGY.

that bind the race to evil are correlated by links
equally strong binding it to righteousness. It goes,
in a certain manner, with the Old Theology in its
views of common evil, but it diverges from it in its
conceptions of the redemptive and delivering forces
by ascribing to them corresponding sweep. To re-
peat : it does not admit that Christ is less to the
race than Adam, that the Gospel is smaller than
evil ; it does not consign mankind as a mass to a
pit of common depravity, and leave it to emerge
as individuals under some notion of election, or by
solitary choice, each one escaping as he can and
according to his " chance," but the greater part not
escaping at all. It does not so read revelation and
history and life, finding in them all a corporate
element, "a moving altogether when it moves at
all," — an interweaving of life with life that renders
it impossible wholly to extricate the individual. It
allies itself with the thought of the present age
and the best thought of all ages, that mankind is
moved by common forces, and follows common ten-
dencies falling and rising together, partakers to-
gether in all good and ill desert, verifying the
phrase, " the life of humanity." It believes that
the Spirit broods over the " evil world " as it
brooded upon the chaos of old ; that humanity is
charged with redemptive forces, wrought into the
soul and into the divine institutions of the family
and the nation, and whatever other relation binds
man to man ; and it believes that these forces are
not in vain.

Still, it does not submerge the individual in the

THE NEW THEOLOGY. 25

common life, nor free him from personal ill desert,
nor take from him the crown of personal achieve-
ment and victory. It simply strives to recognize
the duality of truth, and hold it well poised. It
turns our attention to the corporate life of man
here in the world, — an individual life, indeed, but
springing from common roots, fed by a common
life, watched over by one Father, inspired by one
Spirit, and growing to one end ; no man, no gener-
ation, being '' made perfect " by itself. Hence its
ethical emphasis ; hence its recognition of the na-
tion, and of the family, and of social and commer-
cial life, as fields of the manifestation of God and
of the operation of the Spirit ; hence its readiness
to ally itself with all movements for bettering the
condition of mankind, — holding that human soci-
ety itself is to be redeemed, and that the world
itself, in its corporate capacity, is being reconciled
to God; hence also an apparently secular tone,
which is, however, but a widening of the field of
the divine and spiritual.

4. This theology recognizes a new relation to nat-
ural science ; but only in the respect that it ignores
the long apparent antagonism between the kingdoms
of faith and of natural law, — an antagonism that
cannot, from the nature of things, have a basis in
reality. But while it looks on the external world
as a revelation of God and values the truth it may
reveal ; while even it recognizes in it analogies
to the spiritual world and a typical similarity of
method, it does not merge itself in natural science.
It is not yet ready, and it shows no signs that it

26 THE NEW THEOLOGY.

ever will be ready, to gather up its beliefs, and go
over into the camp of natural science, and sit down
under the manipulations of a doctrine of evolution,
with its one category of matter and one invariable
force. It is not ready to commit itself to a finite
system, a merely phenomenal section of the uni-
verse and of time, with no whence^ or whither^ or
why^ — a system that simply supplies man with a
certain kind of knowledge, but solves no problem
that weighs on his heart, answers no question that
he much cares to ask, and throws not one glimmer
of additional light on his origin, his nature, or his
destiny. It accepts gratefully the knowledge it dis-
closes of the material universe, its laws and its pro-
cesses ; it admits that science has anticipated theol-
ogy in formulating the method of creation known
as evolution, that it has corrected modern theology
by suggesting a closer and more vital relation be-
tween God and creation, and so has helped it throw
off a mechanical theory and regain its forgotten the-
ory of the divine immanence in creation. But far-
ther than this it does not propose to go, for the sim-
ple reason that it is the end of its journey in that
direction. The New Theology, like the old, re-
fuses to merge itself in a system that is both mate-
rial and finite, and therefore incapable of a moral
and spiritual conception. It denies that the uni-
verse can be put into one categorj^, that matter is
inclusive of the spiritual, or what is deemed spirit-
ual ; it denies that the material world is the only
field of knowledge, and that its force is the only
force acting in the world. It asserts the reality of

THE NEW THEOLOGY. 27

the spiritual as above the material, of force that is
other than that lodged in matter, of truth realized
in another way than by induction from material
facts, however fine their gradation, of an eternal
existence and a human self-consciousness correlated
in mutual knowledge and freedom and power. It
makes these assertions on scientific grounds and as
inductions from phenomena, and therefore claims
for itself the possession of knowledge that is such
in reality.

It is the more careful to make these assertions
that involve an infinite and eternal Will and a hu-
man consciousness of God in free and eternal rela-
tions to God, because it has witnessed the experi-
ment of those who have attempted to preserve faith
without a theosophy. " Step by step, the theolog-
ical is supplanted by the scientific, the divine by the
human view," — a process that finally brings " eter-
nal things " within a finite system, or retains them
as mere sentiments that will surely fade away, and
so leave man at the mercy of a system of necessity
under which all nobility and freedom will die out,
or linger but as contradictory instincts.

The New Theology accepts the phrase " a religion
of humanity," but it holds that it is more than an
adjustment of the facts of humanity, and more than
a reduction of the forces of humanity to harmony.
It accepts the theory of physical evolution as the
probable method of physical creation, and as hav-
ing an analogy in morals ; but it accepts it under
the fact of a personal God who is revealing him-
self, and of human freedom, — facts not to be ascer-

28 THE NEW THEOLOGY.

tained within the limits of a material philosophy.
It holds that the main relations of humanity are to
God, and that these relations constitute a theology,
a science of God ; for in Him we live, and move,
and have our being.

5. The New Theology offers a contrast to the
Old in claiming for itself a wider study of man.

It chooses for its field the actual life of men in
the world in all their varying conditions, rather
than as massed in a few ideal conditions. It finds
its methods in the every-day processes of humanity,
rather than in a formal logic. It deals with human
life as do the poets and dramatists : it views human-
ity by a direct light, looks straight at it, and into
it, and across its whole breadth. A recognition of
human nature and life, — this is a first principle
with the New Theology. To illustrate : take a ser-
mon of Robertson's, that on " The Principle of the
Spiritual Harvest ; " see how every sentence rests
squarely on human life, touching it at every point,
the sermon and human experience meeting as if
cast in a mould. Compare with this some of the
recent utterances on everlasting punishment, —
able, and wrought out with great exactitude of
thought, yet touching human life at not a single
point; eliciting no response from consciousness or
experience, from moral sense or common sense ;
deftly constructed things, built outside of the world,
and as if shaped by another order and for other
beings than those we know ; resting on nothing but
a formal logic, built out of definitions that antici-
pate the conclusions, through which they antago-
nize every natural operation of the human mind.

THE NEW THEOLOGY. 29

The Old Theology took for itself small foothold
on humanity. Theology is, indeed, the science of
God, but it is not that alone ; it is also the science
of the relations between God and man, which,
though not the main, is as real a factor as God.
The Old Theology stands on a structure of logic out-
side of humanity ; it selects a fact like the divine
sovereignty or sin, and inflates it till it fills the
whole space about man, seeing in him only the sub-
ject of a government against which he is a sinner ;
it has nothing to say of him as he plays with his
babe, or freely marches in battle to sure death for
his country, or transacts, in honest ways, the honest
business of the world. It lifts him out of his man-
ifold and real relations, out of the wide and rich
complexity of actual life, and carries him over into
a mechanically constructed and ideal world, — a
world made up of five propositions, like Calvinism
or some other such system, — and views him only in
the light of that world ; requires him to think and
feel and act only in the light of that world ; teaches
him that there is no other world for him to consider,
and that his life and destiny are bounded by it,
that there is no truth, no reality, no duty, no proper
field for the play of his powers, no operation of the
Spirit of God, no revelation of God, outside of this
sharply-defined theological world.

We have but to name the matter in this way to
understand the subtle isolation that invests the
clergy of this theology, men apart from the world,
out of practical sympathy with it, having no place
for it in their theory, thinking on different lines,

30 THE NEW THEOLOGY.

and making small use of its wisdom or its material.
It explains the subtle antagonism that runs through
all literature. There is no poet, nor novelist, nor
dramatist, no profound student of human nature,
no mind with the gift of genius and insight and
broad, free sympathy with humanity, no great in-
terpreter of human life, but in one way or another
indicates his dissent from this theology. Nowhere
has it had greater sway than in Scotland. It is
not denied that it develops certain sides of charac-
ter into almost ideal perfection ; but why is it that
nearly every great mind in Scotland, for more than
a hundred years, has rejected its theology wholly
or in part? Hume, Burns, Scott, Carlyle, Irving,
Erskine, Campbell, McLeod, McDonald, — the
defection of such minds from a faith so thoroughly
inwrought into the texture of the national mind is
a problem not to be explained by the vagaries of
genius. It is to be explained rather by the fact
that these great minds either felt or saw — some
one and some the other — that the bourds of the
theology were not commensurate with the bounds
of human life. Hume was repelled into infidelity ;
Burns satirized it, Scott turned his back on it, Car-
lyle kept silence, McDonald protests against it,
Erskine and Campbell and McLeod sought to
modify it. The present restlessness in the world
of theological thought is due largely to the fact that
the teachings of literature have prevailed over the
teachings of the systems of theology. One covers
the breadth of human life, the others travel a dull,
round in a small world of their own creation ; they
no longer interest men.

THE NEW THEOLOGY. 31

The protest is hardly stronger in literature than
in the pulpit, where it shows itself in two forms :
first, in an unthinking sensationalism, that throws
all theology aside and preaches from the news-
paper, retaining only a few theological catch-words
for a seeming foothold, while it discourses of duty
and conduct with more or less wisdom, as happens,
but without a philosophy or any other basis for
meeting the questions that invariably rise in the
mind when summoned to think on eternal truths ;
again, it shows itself in quiet and persistent efforts
to modify and enlarge the definitions of the Faith,
to widen the field from which truth is drawn, to
broaden the domain of theology till it shall em-
brace the breadth of human nature and the knowl-
edge of the world, — recognizing the fact that God
is revealing himself in the whole life of the world,
in the processes of history, in the course of nations,
in all the ordained relations of life, in the play of
every man's mind. It thus multiplies the relations
in which man stands to God ; it brings God and
man face to face, the full nature of One covering
the whole nature and life of the other. It is the
characteristic fault of the Old Theology that it
touches human life as a sphere touches a plane,
— at one point only ; as in the doctrine of divine
sovereignty, the whole being of God resting on
man in that one truth. The New Theology would
present them rather as plane resting on plane, —
the whole of God in contact with the whole of man.
It thus allies itself not only with the Scriptures,
and with philosophy and science and human con-

32 THE NEW THEOLOGY.

sciousness, but it awakens a sense of reality^ the
securing of which lies at the basis of the Incarna-
tion, — the divine hfe made a human life, the Son
of man eating and drinking, a living way, that is,
a way lived out in very fact in all the processes of
human life, and so leading to eternal life.

The pulpit of the New Theology, in its efforts to
broaden its field, encounters the criticism that it
secularizes itself. It may be its temptation and its
danger, but only because it is not true to itself. It
was the criticism brought against the Son of man,
but the fact that He was the Son of man was its
refutation. The New Theology does indeed regard
with question the line often drawn between the sa-
cred and the secular, — a line not to be found in
Jewish or Christian Scriptures, nor in man's nature,
a line that, by its distinction, ignores the very
process by which the kingdoms of this world are
becoming the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ.
It is one thing for the pulpit to go over into the un-
redeemed world and use its spirit and methods and
morality, to fail to distinguish between good and
evil ; it is quite another thing to recognize in the
composition and on-going of human society a divine
revelation and process. Hence, it draws its theol-
ogy from the Bible, indeed, but because it finds
in the Bible the whole body of truth pertaining to
humanity. And if there is any truth, any fact of
science, any law of society, outside of the Bible, it
" thinks on these things."

This full and direct look at humanity induces
what may be called the ethical habit of thought.

THE NEW THEOLOGY. 33

The New Theology seeks to recover spiritual pro-
cesses from a magical to a moral conception. It
insists that these processes and facts are governed
and shaped by the eternal laws of morality. It
would have a moral God, a divine government truly
moral, a moral atonement, and not one involving
essential injustice, nor clouded with mysteries that
put it outside of human use ; an atonement resting
on God's heart, and calling into play the known
laws and sentiments of human nature, and not one
constructed out of a mechanical legality ; an atone-
ment that saves men by a traceable process, and not
one that is contrived to explain problems that may
safely be left with God ; an atonement that secures
oneness with the Christ, and not one framed to
buttress some scheme of divine government con-
structed out of human elements. It regards faith
as a moral act, a direct acceptance and laying hold
of God in trusting obedience, a simple and rational
process ; and it opposes the view which regards it
as simply a belief that an atonement has been made,
a holy life being merely its proper adjunct. It
would make faith an actual entering into and fel-
lowship with the life of the Christ, and the indi-
vidual's justification by faith the actual realization
and consequent of this oneness. It does not differ
essentially from the Old Theology in its treatment
of regeneration, but it broadens the ground of it,
finding its necessity not only in sin, but in the un-
developed nature of man, or in the flesh. It is dis-
posed also to regard it as a process, involving known
laws and analogies, and to divest it of that air of

34 THE NEW THEOLOGY.

magical mystery in which it has been held ; a plain
and simple matter, by which one gets out of the
lower world into the higher by the Spirit of God.

It is said of this Theology that, leaning so heavily
on human life in all its complexity and contradic-
tion, it necessarily lacks logical precision and coher-
ence, and that its parts are not mutually self-sup-
porting. It accepts the criticism, and confesses that
it does not first and mainly aim at these features ;
it does not strive to compass itself with definitions,
nor to bring the whole truth of the Faith within the
bounds of a system. It does not, for example,
make it a prime object to shape one doctrine in or-
der that it may fit in with another, or so shape all
that they shall present a harmonious structure. It
is not its first object to build a system, and it does
not proceed in that fashion because it does not re-
gard it as a living way, that is, a real way. To
illustrate : it does not make future retribution an
inference from some governmental scheme, or the
complement of a doctrine of decrees and election.
It is thus aside from the ordinary thought of men ;
nor can they ever be brought to believe that their
destiny is contained in the conclusion of a formal
logic. Whatever the destiny of men may be, the
New Theology will not assert it in either direc-
tion in order to perfect a system. Indeed, it does
not greatly care for systems as they have been hith-
erto constructed. It seeks rather to observe the
logic of life, the premises and sequences, the syllo-
gisms and conclusions, that are involved in daily
existence, in the struggles and conflicts and contra-

THE NEW THEOLOGY. 35

dictions of this struggling and contradictory world.
It takes for its own that logic which is found in
Macbeth, and Hamlet, and the Scarlet Letter, in
the Prometheus and Job, in the parables of the
Sheep and the Goats, and the Prodigal Son, and
the Lost Sheep, — a logic not easily wrought into a
system, but as systematic as human life. It aims
simply at a larger logic, the logic wrought into the
order of the world as it is daily evolved under the
inspiration of Eternal Wisdom and Love.

6. The New Theology recognizes the necessity
of a restatement of belief in Eschatology, or the
doctrine of Last Things.

It is not alone in this respect ; it is the position
of nearly every school and organ of theological
thought. The New Version compels it, the thought
of the age demands it. But while there are enough
who urge the necessity, whenever a champion ap-
pears in the lists he receives but a cold welcome
from those who summoned him. The New The-
ology recognizes the necessity, but its work is not
summed up in meeting this need. In the popular
conception it is identified with mere criticism of
existing views of everlasting punishment. No mis-
take could be greater ; still, seeing the necessity in
common with others, it does not withhold itself from
the subject, and if its essays, though largely nega-
tive and tentative, are met by contradiction and
ecclesiastical censure, it does not stay its hand nor
heed the clamor. " Truth hath a quiet breast."

First, and broadly, the New Theology does not
propound any new doctrine relative to future eter-

36 THE NEW THEOLOGY.

nal salvation or eternal punishment. It is popu-
larly supposed to concern itself chiefly with the fu-
ture condition of men, but it rather draws away
from such a field. It is less assertive here than in
any other region of theological thought. It is, how-
ever, critical of the Old Theology, deeming it to be
wise above what is written and out of line with the
logic of the Faith ; but it does not follow it into the
future existence, with denials that imply a state-
ment of the contrary, nor with positive assertions
of its own. And the reason is that it transfers, to
a large extent, the scene of the action of the truths
pertaining to the subject from the future world con-
ceived as a world of time and space to a world
above time and not set in dimensions of space. In
briefer phrase, it does not regard the future world
as identical with the eternal world. Hence, its
constructions on the subject turn largely on the
word '' eternal," which it does not regard wholly as
a time-word, but as a word of moral and spiritual
significance ; it has little to do with time, but rather
has to do with things that are above time ; there is
no more and no other relation between time and
eternity in the future world than there is in the
present world. This conception of the word does
not necessarily imply that eternal punishment will
not be everlasting ; only, if that belief is entertained,
it does not rest on this word, but is to be based on
other grounds. And the battle waged over it is
due simply to the mistaken anxiety of one side lest
it shall be robbed of a text. But this rendering of
the word does not antagonize the doctrine it has

THE NEW THEOLOGY. 37

been held to teach ; it simply separates it from the
doctrine.

The New Theology emphasizes this use of '^ eter-
nal " as a word of moral and spiritual import, be-
cause it puts in their right place and relation the
action of all the great processes of the Faith. The
Faith is not a finite thing, but an infinite ; its truths
are not conditional, but absolute ; the play of its laws
is not within time, but above time ; its processes are
not hedged about by temporal limits, — in time it
may be, but not bounded by it ; its facts have an
eternal significance, which is other than that meas-
ured by ''the cycles of the sun." Thus the Christ
is the eternally begotten Son of God, and He is the
Lamb that hath been slain from the foundation of
the world. This conception carries the interpreta-
tion of the Faith into the region of God, and allies
it in its processes to his existence and his thought,
which are above time. It proceeds on the specific
belief that the Christ spoke and acted as in the
eternal world. He would not otherwise have been
a manifestation of God, nor would He have spoken
eternal truth. It holds this logic with stern co-
gency, for it sees that only thus the historic life of
the Christ becomes an ever-present and ever-endur-
ing reality ; only thus can it regard the Faith as
free from the chance and mischance of time, as
larger than the confines of Judea, as broader than
the stretch of centuries, as independent of the inci-
dents and accidents of a changing world. Only thus
can a correlation be established between the life
and words of the Christ and the action of the Spirit.

38 THE NEW THEOLOGY.

They do not mean the same, the One is not a carry-
ing out of the Other, the One does not take the
things of the Other and show them unto us, ex-
cept as there is accorded to One the same absolute
and eternal method that confessedly belongs to the
Other.

But the New Theology does not plant its entire
conception of the subject upon one word. It seeks
rather to enlighten itself by the general light of the
entire revelation of God ; and thus it finds itself
driven to such conclusions as these : namely, that
every human being will have the fullest opportu-
nity for attaining to the end of his creation as a
child of God ; that every human being will receive
from the Spirit of God all the influence impelling
to salvation that his nature can endure and retain
its moral integrity ; that no human being will be
given over to perish while there is a possibility of
his salvation. These are the very truisms of the
faith, its trend, its drift, its logic, its spirit, and its
letter, when the letter is interpreted under the spir-
it ; and they are equally the demand of the human
reason. It might also be added as a truism that if
the Gospel is intended for the world it is a Gospel
for the world in very fact ; if there is " a true light
which ligliteth every man coming into the world," it
will surely lighten every man. If, in its present ac-
tion, the faith is conditioned by time and proceeds
under a law of development, we need not conclude
that its application to the world of mankind is lim-
ited to time, or is bounded by periods or stages of
development; this may involve essential injustice

THE NEW THEOLOGY. 89

and other equally improbable elements. And so we
are told that the Old Testament worthies are lifted
by their faith out of their age and stage of devel-
opment, and, by waiting, are '' made perfect " with
those of a later age, and under " some better thing "
that God had provided ; that is, the final condition
of character for these ancient believers was not
gained in their own age. But in what sphere did
they await a perfection not to be gained except in
connection with future generations ? The specific
truth involves the general one, namely, that char-
acter is not necessarily determined in any given
stage of development. There is reason in this :
man is an eternal being, and the great processes
that affect his destiny take eternity for their field.
It is thus that the seeming injustice and inequality
that are incidental to his life under time are met
by a transfer to the eternal world. The first fact
pertaining to man is that he is eternal by virtue of
the image in which he is created ; the second fact
is that he is temporal : his destiny takes its rise in
one and is greatly affected by it, but its completion
and adjustment must be through the other. Only
thus is he properly coordinated ; only thus can he
be justly treated.

If it be said that these truisms conflict with cer-
tain texts, we waive yet do not grant the point,
and answer that it is on the basis of these truisms
there is such a consensus between Reason and
Revelation that we accept it and hail it as a Gos-
pel. If it be said that this makes Reason the judge
of Revelation, we dissent, and yet assert that Rev-

40 THE NEW THEOLOGY.

elation is not loaded with characteristics that shut
it off from appeals to reasonable belief. It is not
denied by any that the Gospel, in its inmost spirit
and in its largest expression and purpose, means
salvation. As such, it invests and presides over
all other truths that may be connected with it.
The key-note of the Old Testament is deliverance,
and the Christ is the Lamb of God which taketh
away the sin of the world. It is not in accord with
nature in the limited field in which we observe
and feel it. The Gospel is not within the category
of sensible nature ; if it were we would not need
it. Nor is it in accord with a legal system ; it is
the antagonist of such a system. We may find in
nature, and in human law and custom, analogies to
processes in the Gospel, but we do not find in
them the measure and total method and scope of
the Gospel.

The immediate form under which the subject is
now engaging attention is that of "probation," —
with the question whether there is one or more.
An immense advance has been made in rational
thought and scriptural interpretation in regard to
it ; concessions are made on every side which, if not
new, are unfamiliaro Still, the feeling cannot be
avoided that the process of clearing is attended by
a certain hardness of treatment not properly be-
longing to it, and under terms that are foreign to
its meaning, and with limitations that are not justi-
fied by generous thought. It is largely associated
with the phrase "a chance," — a poor word in it-
self, an unscientific, a chaotic word. To interpret

THE NEW THEOLOGY. 41

probation as the equivalent of '' a chance," and only
insisting that it shall be fair, puts human life in a
false relation to God, who has revealed himself as
the Father of men. Probation may be involved in
the idea of a family, but it is not the spirit or end
of it; it is simply incidental. The father, indeed,
educates his children for future use and responsibil-
ity ; but only in some indirect sense are they under
probation ; they are not reared in an atmosphere
of ''chance," even though fair, or of an overhang-
ing doom to be averted, but are children in the
father's house, reared in hope and love and free-
dom. We are not here in the world to be tested,
but to be trained under God's lessons. Tested we
are, but what father puts his household under a
test? The question of probation comes to the
front only when the proper elements of household
life have been eclipsed. And what, then, is proba-
tion ? A ''chance," and one at that? Not in such
terms is the history of a lost child of God's family
described, but as a sheep that the shepherd seeks
. till he finds. This is paternal, this is God-like, and
• it is far removed in spirit from the conception in-
volved in such a phrase as " chance," whether fair
or not, whether one or many. That man is under
probation is, indeed, true ; it is involved in the pos-
session of a moral nature, and it is to be regarded
as such rather than as a condition springing out
^ of sin. Man is under probation, not because he is
8t sinner, but because he is a moral being, under-
going a formative process. It should, therefore,
not be treated in a harsh, doom-like way, but as a

42 THE NEW THEOLOGY.

gracious feature of a gracious system. No father
says to his children, " You have a chance ; it shall
be fair; I will not be hard with you ; it will last just
so long ; if you do not meet the test you may go
your own way." It is, indeed, possible that in a
desperate exigency of family-life a father might be
forced to say this, but it is not in such guise that a
wise and tender parent presents himself to his chil-
dren. As little is it the aspect of the Heavenly
Father before men. Probation is a fact, but it is
not a fact to be treated as though it were already a
semi-doom.

As to whether there is one probation or more,
there is an immense gain to theological thought in
getting the subject out of physical and temporal
bounds in the region of morals. But is it not plain
that when this is done the question whether there
is one or more vanishes ? Probation is a continu-
ous state or process till it ends by its own nature.
It is one or many, as we choose to regard it, just as
education may be regarded as a single or sub-di-
vided process. All discussion of this sort is a mere
logomachy. Probation may be divided into as
many days, or hours, or distinct moral experiences
as one undergoes. It is simpler and more scientific
to say that man has but one probation, but, by its
nature, it cannot have any bounds of time, whether
of earthly life or world-age. It may, indeed, syn-
chronize with the world-age, but only because that
goal of time is postponed till the problem of exist-
ence has been solved by every human being. But
probation will not be determined by the world-age.

THE NEW THEOLOGY. 43

but by its own laws. It ends when character is
fixed, — if indeed we have any right to use a word
so out of keeping with moral freedom, — and it is
not possible to attach any other bound or limit to
it. And character is fixed in evil when all the pos-
sibilities of the universe are exhausted that would
alter the character. The shepherd in the parable
seeks the lost sheep till he finds it ; shall we add
to the parable, and say, " or till he cannot find it " ?
If we do so, it is in view of the fact that the will of
man, made in the image of God, is a mystery deep
as the mystery of God himself.

Such are some of the features of this fresh move-
ment in the realm of theology, for it can scarcely be
called more than a movement, an advance to meet
the unfolding revelation of God. It is not an or-
ganization, it is little aggressive, it does not herald
itself with any Lo here or Lo there, it does not
crowd itself upon the thought of the age, it is not
keyed to such methods. It has no word of con-
tempt for those who linger in ways it has ceased
to walk in ; it has no sympathy with those who have
forsaken the one way. It does not destroy foun-
dations, nor sap faith, nor weaken motives ; it does
not reduce the proportions of evil nor dim the glory
of righteousness ; it does not chill the enthusiasm
of faith, nor hold it back from its mightiest efEort
of sacrifice. It seeks no conquest represented in
outward form, but is content to add its thought to
the growing thought of the world, and, if it speaks,
content to speak to those who have ears to hear. It
makes no haste, it seeks no revolution, but simply

44 THE NEW THEOLOGY.

holds itself open and receptive under the breath-
ing of the Spirit that has come, and is ever coming,
into the world ; passive, yet quick to respond to the
heavenly visions that do not cease to break upon
the darkened eyes of humanity.

ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TEUTH.

" Never forget to tell the young people frankly that they are to expect
more light and larger developments of the truth which 3'ou give them.
Oh, the souls which have been made skeptical by the mere clamoring of
new truth to add itself to that which they have been taught to think fin-
ished and final ! " — Rev. Phillips Brooks, Tale Lectures.

"Infidelit}^ is the ultimate result of checking the desire for expanded
knowledge.*' — Edwards A. Park, D. D.

" In the Bible there is more that Jinds me than I have experienced in
all other books put together; the words of the Bible find me at greater
depths of my being; and whatever finds me brings with it an irresistible
evidence of its having proceeded from the Holy Spirit." — Coleridge.

"The soul once brought into inner and immediate contact with a
divine power and life is never left to itself." — J. Lewis Diman, D. D.,
Sermon No, VL

ON THE EECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH.

"And Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that
God is no respecter of persons : but in every nation, he that feareth him
and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him." — The Acts x. 34,
35.

If we were to take this book of the Acts, and
put it ofE at a little distance, so as to get its outhne
as a whole, and its trend, we would find that its
main purpose is to unfold the broadening spirit and
form of the church of God.

It is a history of transition. On its first page
the Christ ascends, and is no more contained in
Judea. As the heavens, into which He rises, over-
arch the whole world, so his gospel begins to spread
its wings for its world-wide fiight. Soon the Spirit
— universal as the "casing air" — breathes upon
the Apostles, and they begin to act under an in-
spiration as free and wide as the wind that typi-
fies it. On every page some barrier gives way ;
with every line the horizon broadens ; one province
after another is brought within the circle of the ex-
panding faith, till at last Corinth and Athens and
Rome are found playing their parts in this divine,
world-wide drama. There is in this book of the
Acts, as in Homer, and in all great histories, a
wonderful sense of motion. One feels as if sailing

48 ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH.

in a great ship, under a bounding breeze, out of a
narrow harbor into the wide sea ; every moment
the shores withdraw, and the waters broaden, and
the winds blow freer, till at last we get room to
turn our prow whichever way we will. So in read-
ing this history, it is no longer Judea, but the world ;
no longer Jerusalem, but Rome and Spain also ; no
more one chosen people, but all nations. Every-
where the Spirit is seeking worshipers ; the bud of
divine promise has opened, and its perfume fills the
world.

With this change of scene there is corresponding
change of personal attitude ; conversions not only
in character, but in opinion ; it is a record not only
of repenting and turning, but of broadening. For
conversion does not necessarily enlarge a man ; it
may simply turn him in another direction. It is
possible to come out of evil into good, and yet re-
main under intellectual conceptions that dwarf and
restrain one. There is a broad world-wisdom that
often runs along with a worldly life, that may be
lost if the better life is held under narrow concep-
tions, so that while the change may be a gain mor-
ally it is a loss intellectually ; a process that has
had illustration from the first until now, — in the
proselytes whom St. Paul found it so hard to teach
the distinction between the letter and the spirit,
and in those of to-day who fail to distinguish be-
tween conduct and character, between dogma and
life, between the form and the substance of the
Faith. Valuable as this book of the Acts is as a
record of events, and as the nexus between the Dis-

ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH. 49

pensations, it is more valuable as introducing the
life of the Spirit, and as showing how the faith
of ages develops into liberty and the full life and
thought of humanity. Here we have the full reve-
lation of God evoking the full life of man.

The incident before us is a happy illustration of
this, — a minute and graphic history of the experi-
ence of a Roman centurion ; a history priceless in
its assurance of possible sainthood outside of the
church, yet showing its hard conditions : telling
us how his devout aspirations carried him into the
realm of vision, and drew him towards the faith
that was more than his, and brought upon him an
inspiration greater than any that came upon his
blind yearnings after righteousness. Here also is
a somewhat similar experience of Peter, matching
and rounding that of Cornelius ; for God is teach-
ing them both, drawing them off into the realm of
vision, where they can be more effectually moulded
to the divine uses. Sleep is not vacant of spirit-
ual impression. God giveth his beloved, not sleep,
but " in sleep." Into that mystery of physical re-
pose that unbars the doors of the mind and with-
draws the sentry of the will, the Spirit may come
as unto its own, and say what it could not when
the man is hedged about with wakeful and watchful
powers. Shakespeare puts the deepest moral ex-
periences of evil men into their dreams ; why not
also into those of the good ? And so Peter intro-
duces into the world a truth, often foreshadowed,
and long in course of preparation, but not yet real-
ized, that God is no respecter of persons, has no
4

50 ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH.

partialities, hears the prayers of all men, and is
pleased with their good deeds. This history, with
these dovetailing incidents, is mainly a lesson in
breadth and largeness of view. In closer phrase, it
is a full expression of a gradually developing reve-
lation of God. Cornelius is led out of his small
world of simple devoutness, a world where the
light and the darkness contended, and brought
into the full light and harmonies of divine knowl-
edge. And Peter is led out of his still clinging
Judaism, with its imperfect conceptions of God,
and distinctions of food exalted into religion, and
is made to know that God, having created all men
and all things, has no partialities ; and that because
God has none, he is to have none, — his first effect-
ual lesson in the requirement he had before heard,
to be perfect, as the Father in heaven is perfect.

Notice how God not only enlarges and broadens
the views of these men, but does this in the direc-
tion of himself. Peter is taught to think as God
thinks, to look on men as God looks on them.
He is enlarged upward, heightened as well as
broadened in his knowledge. For there is an en-
largement of view that is mere breadth without
height ; it keeps along the level of the earth, grows
wise over matter and force, pierces to the centre in
its search, weighs and measures all it finds, creeps
but never soars, deeming the heights above to be
empty. It is the direction knowledge is now tak-
ing. The science and a great part of the litera-
ture of the day and of what is called "culture,"
and the vast crowd that claims for some reason to

ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH. 51

''know the world," the average man in society and
business, all tend to a mental largeness that has
extent without height. It is always difficult to
maintain the equilibrium of truth. In preceding
centuries the mind shot upward, but within narrow
limits ; the gaze of thought was heavenward, as
in the pictures of the saints. There was no look
abroad, almost none upon the earth ; nature was
simply to be used as found, not studied for further
uses. Hence, there was great familiarity with the
lore of religion, but dense ignorance of the laws of
matter and of human society ; there were no mys-
teries in heaven, but the earth did not even suggest
a problem. Knowledge was high, but it was not
broad. To-day the reverse is true : thought runs
earthward and along the level of material things,
but hesitates to ascend into the region of the spirit.
It is interesting to note how this tendency per-
vades classes that apparently do not influence one
another : thus the scientific class, and the lighter
literary class ; neither reads the works of the other,
nor are there any natural avenues of sympathy
between them, yet in each we find the same close
study of matter and man, and the same ignoring of
God and the spiritual nature. Or, compare the
man of universal culture with the average man of
the world, who reads the newspaper, and keeps his
eyes open on the street : the latter knows little of
the former, never reads his books, nor even dilu-
tions of them, yet we find them holding nearly the
same opinions about God and the Faith, vague,
misty, and indifferent ; but both are very obser-

52 ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH.

vant of what is about them. Such a fact seems to
indicate that, instead of one class leading the way,
or one set of minds dominating the rest, all are
swept along by currents that flow out of some un-
seen source. It seems to controvert the familiar
saying that philosophy shapes the thought of the
world. Never were the demonstrations of ethical
and spiritual philosophy clearer or stronger than at
present, but the age is materialistic. Never were
the evils of materialism and the necessity of the
spiritual so keenly felt, yet the tide of the former
sweeps on without abatement. It seems to indi-
cate the presence of other forces than those found
in chance habits of thought, or in the brain of the
strongest thinker. Aquinas and Hume, Bacon and
Spencer, are not so much originators as exponents
of currents of thought ; they represent a force which
they themselves seem to be. There are ages of
faith and ages of doubt ; it is not easy to doubt in
one or to believe in the other. None of us are ex-
empt from these prevailing tendencies, however
much we may contend against them. Nor is it
well that we should be wholly exempt ; it is doubt-
less better that an age should have homogeneous-
ness, else it will work at cross - purpose, and un-
duly chafe and fret at itself. It is for some wise
end that the gaze of men is for a time diverted
from the heavens and turned to what is about
them. It had become necessary that man should
have a somewhat better knowledge of the world,
and of his relations to it and to society. Hence
his attention is directed thither by a divine and

ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH. 53

guiding inspiration, and no thinking man can be
exempt from it. The only danger is lest the ten-
dency become excessive, and we forget to look up-
ward in our eagerness to see what is about us. It
is the oflBce of Christian thought to temper and
restrain these monopolizing tendencies and secure
a proper balance between them, to hold and en-
force the twofold fact, that while our eyes are
made to look into the heavens, our feet are planted
in the soil of this world. Tennyson has no wiser
lines than these : —

" God fulfills himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.*'

The thing we are apt to fail of to-day is not
breadth and thoroughness of knowledge of what is
about us, but of what is above and within us.

I have fallen into this train of thought by re-
flecting how God led Peter away from his small
notions of religion, the doing or not doing this or
that, and brought him into a higher and larger
conception of Himself.

As we read the story we wonder at the readi-
ness and ease with which Peter gave up old habits
of thought and entered into new ones. It is not
easy for us to realize how great and violent a
change he thus made in a moment. We have our
convictions, strong enough they seem ; but we have
little conception of the power of an Oriental's con-
victions in respect to religion. Our strongest con-
victions pertain to liberty and social order ; the
Oriental's pertain to religion. He is easily en-

54 ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH.

slaved, but not easily converted. The western mind
will not brook tyranny, but it readily modifies its
faith. Still, it is not easy for any one suddenly to
lay down one's life-long convictions and take up
new ones. Change of opinion is naturally slow
and partial. But here is Peter, with the tradi-
tional spirit of an Oriental, and the added inflexi-
bility of the Jew, violating this apparently natural
order, and passing at once under a new set of ideas.
What is the explanation ?

1. It seems to be in the nature of religious
changes that they shall occur suddenly. There
may be, there must be, long seasons of preparation
for any moral change, but the transition is instan-
taneous. It is the law of revelation. Its way is
prepared by the slow processes of reason and educa-
tion, but the revelation itself is quick, immediate,
and not to be traced. Divine truth comes by
flashes. The heavens open, and the Spirit descends
as on the swift wings of a dove. Saul goes a-perse-
cuting, and a light above the sun's dazzles him into
instant submission. The Holy Spirit comes like a
rushing wind upon the disciples, and in an hour
they are new men. The jailer hears and believes
in a night. Luther, while toiling up the holy stairs
of the Lateran, holding to salvation by works, drops
that scheme on the way, and lays hold of the higher
one of salvation by faith. Ignatius Loyola in a
dream has sight of the Mother of Christ, and
awakes a soldier of Jesus. It is often so. We do
not so much grow into the possession of new spir-
itual truths as we awake to them. Their coming

ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH. 55

is not like the sunrise that slowly discloses the
shapes and relations of things, but is like the light-
ning that illuminates earth and sky in one quick
flash, and so imprints them forever on the vision,
like the coming of the Son of man, if indeed there
be any other coming of Him than in fresh revela-
tions of truth. Intensity makes up for time ; the
subtler agency engraves a deeper impression. Char-
acter is of slow and steady growth, but the revela-/
tions of truth that inspire character are sudden.*
A new outlook is gained and the man is changed,
as, in climbing a mountain, it is some sharp turn in
the path that reveals the new prospect which in-
spires the onward march. Some can affirm that it
was in a moment that the charm of poetry, the
pleasurable consciousness of thought, the passion of
love, the dignity of manhood, the obligation of ser-
vice, the sense of the divine goodness, came upon
them. These experiences are not so much growths
as revelations, and because they come quick they
move us ; we take up their motion ; we are inspired
by their energy. To provide us with such experi-
ences, the element of unexpectedness, of surprise
and catastrophe, is put into life. An uneventful
life is apt to be poor and barren, unless one has the
rare gift, like Wordsworth, of turning every sun-
rise and sunset, every storm, every changing phase
of the old landscape, every fresh day of uneventful
household life, into newness. It is the events of
life — marriage, births, sickness, travel, new scenes
and relations, the changes that drop from fortune's
wheel, the thunderbolts out of clear skies, the sud-

56 ON THE EECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH.

den lift of dark clouds — that bring new visions of
truth. It was through a wonderful dream that
Peter got that conception of God, new to himself
and to the world, which so instantly mastered him.

2. His ready change was also due to the fact that
he got sight of larger and more spiritual truths
than he had been holding.

When truths, or what claim to be such, are of
equal proportion, we balance them, or try one and
then the other ; but as soon as one asserts itself as
larger and finer we accept it instantly. Peter had
been used to believing that God was a respecter of
persons, but when he caught sight of the fact that
God has no partialities, but accepts all men who
work righteousness, liis truth-loving nature rushed
at once toward the greater truth. We have an ap-
petence for new spiritual truth, and take to it read-
ily. Hence every new notion or device that calls
itself religious gets certain and quick following, but
it only shows how insatiable is the demand for the
new. This does not imply that we are to go about
peering into the corners of the universe to find new
truths, nor that we are to sit down and manufact-
ure them. Truth already exists ; there is now all
there ever will be. All we have to do is to take it ;
to hold ourselves open to it ; to do God's will, and
we shall know it ; to read it as Providence writes it
before our eyes ; to listen to the still voice of the
Spirit ; to keep a single eye, an open ear, and an
obedient will. It is of the nature of spiritual truth
that it reveals itself. The fundamental Christian
idea is God seeking man, not man seeking God;

ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH. 57

the latter phrase represents a subordinate idea. We
make but a poor figure when we attempt to think
out a religion, or even to think our way through one.
It is not a search after God, but a revelation of God.
The grand movement and impulse are on the divine
side. We ourselves can find nothing ; we can only
take what comes, watch the unveiling of divinity,
careful only lest anything revealed escape our no-
tice. The main thing for us to do is to get out of
the caves of sin and self-conceit into the open air,
where the sun shines and the Spirit breathes. An
upturned face, an honest heart, space about us for
the Spirit to get access, — these are the conditions
of a continually fresh feast of eternal truth.

There is also in such truth a self-attesting power
that tends to secure instant reception. When one
comes to me with a new machine, or a new theory
of government, or of the material universe, or of
physical life, I hesitate ; but when I see a new dis-
closure of the divine love, or a fresh exhibition of
the value of humility and patience, or of some new
adaptation of Christianity to human society, or of
the superioritj'' of spirit over matter, or indication
that it is other than matter and inclusive of it, I at
once believe. It is simply another candle brought
into a lighted room.

This self- attesting quality goes farther and be-
comes commanding. Truth so seen allies itself with
God and takes on divine authority. Peter says,
''Grod hath showed me that I should not call any
man common or unclean." It is one of the subtle
workings of all high truth that it vests itself, as by

68 ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH.

some instinct, with the divine attributes. No one
would call a doctrine of expediency an eternal truth,
even if he believed it ; a sense of language, running
deeper than he knows, would forbid. But this
same subtle sense of language almost requires us to
put the epithet before love and duty and sacrifice.
So vested, truth becomes authoritative and shuts
out all hesitation ; with Peter, we rise and eat.

I have had in mind thus far not any new laws of
conduct or mysteries pertaining to God, or man, or
destiny, but rather fresh and expanding vision of
old truths, other sides of many-sided truth. Strictly
speaking, there is no such thing as new truth ; truth
is not a creatable thing, being simply the reality of
existing things ; but there is such a thing as fresh
sight of the truth that now is and always has been
and ever will be. To keep ourselves in the way of
it is a clear and vital duty. We can hardly do any-
thing worse for ojir moral growth than to hold it in
such a way that it may not change its form, or pro-
portion, or aspect, to us. When we bind it up in
a form of words, or let it lie quiet in unthinking
minds, or wear it as a sort of charm while we go
about our work or pleasure, we have made a very
poor and meagre thing of it. Not that one is to
hold his faith as in a constant flux, or suffer him-
self to be blown about by every new wind of doc-
trine, but rather that he should attain the twofold
attitude of alertness and passivity: passive to the
Spirit that is ever breathing upon us, and alert to
note and follow the unfolding revelation of God in
the world.

ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH. 59

It is, I doubt not, a matter of conscious experi-
ence with many, this fresh insight into truth, the
germ or heart remaining the same, but taking on
new forms and displaying new powers. It is such
a relation to truth that keeps the mind delighted
with it, exciting it by sweet surprises and inspiring
it by new prospects. Thus it becomes living water,
springing up into eternal life.

It is a mistake to regard the truths of the Chris-
tian faith, even those that are called leading and
fundamental, as having a fixed form. Were they
revelations from God, they might perhaps be so
regarded ; but being revelations of God, they imply
a process of unfolding. Truth is not something
handed down from heaven, a moral parcel of known
size and weight, but is a disclosure of God through
the order of the world and of the Spirit. This is
the key to the history of the Old Testament, the
central element of the revelation by the Christ, the
method of the Spirit. It is allied to the highest
assertions of science, the other side of the arch that
springs to meet that which rises out of the visible
creation, the keystone of which is God, creator of
the world and redeemer of humanity.

Having spoken generally, I shall now speak more
particularly of some of these truths, with a view
to calling attention to this intermingling of perma-
nent and changing qualities. The aim will be to
inspire and aid belief rather than to challenge it,
and to touch the themes in a broad and inclusive
way, and by no means in the opposite way.

Take first the truth known as the Trinity,

60 ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH.

though one could wish, with Calvin, "that the
word itself were buried in oblivion." It has an-
other look to-day from that it wore a hundred
years ago. That view, if urged still, makes a very
dry, formal, unnourishing thing of it. If, how-
ever, we suffer it to be transformed, under the ex-
panding conception of God that has come in with
the age, it grows vital and inspiring. It is the
characteristic thought of God at present that He is
immanent in all created things, — immanent yet per-
sonal, the life of all lives, the power of all powers,
the soul of the universe ; that He is most present
where there is the most perfection : —

*'He is more present unto every creature He hath made
Than anything unto itself can be."

With such a conception of God, it becomes easy to
see how there should be a Son of man who is also
the Son of God, and a Spirit everywhere present
and acting. Revelation and thought so nearly meet
that there is no chasm between, and no stress is
laid on faith as it passes from one to the other.
The formal trinity and the formal unity, the more
barren conception of the two, pass away, and God
in Christ, filling the mould of humanity to the full,
becomes a great, illuminating truth. We may or
may not pronounce the ancient phrases, but we
need no longer hesitate to say, '' Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit;" meaning a paternal heart and will
at the centre, a sonship that stands for humanity,
a spiritual energy that is the life of men, and
through which they come into freedom and right-

ON THE EECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH. 61

eousness. This conception of God may be brought
into the category of science, and even be required
by it. It allies itself with its great postulates and
demonstrations, and not only falls in with its analo-
gies, but is needed for their application to human-
ity and its history.

So of the atonement : it contains a truth that
mankind has never been willing to live without,
and yet it has always been putting on new forms
and yielding a richer life. It is the most elastic of
the doctrines, capable of very low and very high
expression. The conception of it that prevailed
two hundred years ago shocks us of to-day. And
more recent views of it as a matter of penal satis-
faction and substitution, and as a mere contrivance
for the expression of the divine feeling, no longer
feed spiritual life ; and so we are struggling towards
St. Paul's and the Christ's own statement of it as
containing the law and method of life for every
man : " He that loseth his life for my sake shall find
it." We are getting to read this truth as meaning
Christ formed in us, a law and way of life. And
just as the older conceptions fade out, and the
greater ones dawn, is there not only a deeper
spiritual life, but a plainer coordination between
the life they beget and the necessities of human
nature.

So also of regeneration : the foundations of this
stringent doctrine are broadening and deepening
with advancing thought. It has been held simply
as a moral necessity, having its basis in sin ; but we
are beginning to see that the Christ taught it also

62 ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH.

as a psychological necessity. We must be born
again, not merely because we are wicked, not be-
cause of a lapse, but because we are flesh, and need
to be carried forward and lifted up into the realm
of the spirit, — a constructive rather than a recon-
structive process. Thus presented, it appears at
once as a universal necessity, and allies itself with
the thought of the age.

In the same way, the much and justly criticised
doctrine of divine sovereignty and decrees is re-
solving into the universality of law, the favorite
conception of the age. Science, with its doctrine
of an original, ultimate force, advances more than
half-way towards this assaulted truth, while the
larger conception to which it has helped us has
taken its debatable features out of the hands of
both contending schools.

Or take the doctrine of sin, its inheritance and
its relation to the personal will : the old-time pre-
sentations of it were crude and harsh, but as we
interpret it in the light of experience and history,
we affirm it with increased emphasis. The keenest
thought of the world is overtaking the thought of
revelation. The doctrine of heredity as found in
the pages of science, the doctrine of freedom as
found in the pages of philosophy and the observa-
tion of life, yield nearly all we care to claim.

So, too, of the miracles. I do not think the best
thought is now stumbling over miracle, as it was a
few years ago. Modern intelligence has grown so
wide that it embraces both law and miracle in one
harmony, and cares little to find any line of de-

ox THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH. 63

markation between them. Law fades out into mir-
acle, and miracle runs up into law. No one now
defines one as the violation of the other. An as-
sertion of " the reign of law " does not disturb us
so long as we are conscious of the hourly miracles
wrought by personality. The point of contact and
union may not be seen, but we trace their converg-
ing lines into the mystery that surrounds God's
throne, believing that they meet in Him, who is
both a will and a force to the universe, — a force
in it, and a will over it.

Take next retribution, the most controverted of
doctrines : the subject has merely fallen into the
crucible of modern thought, and is emerging in
new shape. It will never be denied so long as men
have eyes to trace cause and effect, and it will never
cease to have power so long as it is kept in that
category, where only it belongs, and where it be-
comes simply a matter of intelligence. Just now
we are shifting our point of view, and stripping the
subject of certain arbitrary and dogmatic coverings
that had come upon it. We are putting it in the
light of law and daily experience and Christ's word.
We are finding out that it is not a matter of future
time, but of all time ; or rather, not a matter of time
at all, but an eternally acting principle. But it is
undergoing no greater modification at present than
it has undergone in the past. It has fallen into an
atmosphere of hope, and so allied itself with the spirit
and logic of revelation, and is thus becoming a genu-
ine motive to conduct and ceasing to be an incubus
of despair. The true preacher of retribution is not

64 ON THE EECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH.

one who tones it down to mere remorse and separa-
tion from God, — things that no evil-doer takes into
account, — carefully separating from it all physical
suffering and every other conception of pain calcu-
lated to move men ; a retribution eliminated of all
motive, and simply drawn out into infinity. In-
stead, he sets the subject in the practical light of
cause and effect in the external world, and in the
more searching light of the same lavr working in
the moral nature, where it binds hand and foot and
casts into the outer darkness ; he points out the
horrible consequences of crime and ignorance and
low pleasure; he unfolds the wretchedness that
follows avarice and self-seeking and indolence and
low-thoughtedness ; he makes it clear that the wages
of sin is death ; in short, he emphasizes the two
features of retribution that alone are effective,
namely, its nearness and its certainty, and lifts it
into the timeless ranges of eternity, where alone
its true emphasis is found. Like the kingdom of
heaven, of which it is the dark shadow, it is not to
be defined by any Lo here or Lo there, or shut
within any time-phrases. Dogmatism on either side
is no longer regarded with favor* So long as we
cannot explain evil, we have no right to claim defi-
nite knowledge of its consequences. So long as we
cannot sound the depths of our own nature, we can-
not predicate with certainty what that nature will
do or become in any direction. The most reverent
and profound thought of the day merely seeks to
rescue the subject from a dogmatism that reflected
immorality upon God, and made it a burden too

ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH. 65

heavy for the human spirit to endure; provoking
thus an instinctive rejection that paved the way to
total unbelief. The new thought is in the interest
of faith ; the old was fast ministering to doubt and
denial and fierce contempt. Meanwhile the Christ's
words grow luminous under the tenderer thought of
humanity, and are seen to uphold the human heart
and reason, while they also hold the conscience
steadily to the contemplation of the immeasurable
evil of sin.

Take last the inspiration of the Bible. The
theories of a generation ago are fast disappearing,
verbal, dynamic, plenary, an inspiration covering
all historical and scientific reference ; none of them
are any longer insisted on. There is not now,
and probably never will be, any generally accepted
theory of inspiration, simply because it cannot be
so compassed; as the Christ said, "Thou canst
not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth."
It is the breathing of God upon the soul; who
can put that into a theory ? So far as it shall have
form or method of statement, it will be found in
the larger truth of the Holy Spirit in all the scope
of its action. We are getting to speak less of the
inspired looTc^ and more of the inspired men who
wrote it ; the quality or force of inspiration lying
not so much in the form, or even matter, of the
thing written, as in the writer himself, — his rela-
tion to his age, the clearness of his thought, the
pitch of his emotions, the purity of his spirit, the
intensity of his purpose. We do not so much look
into a book to find an infallible assertion as into the

5

66 ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH.

inspired author, expecting to find trustworthy guid-
ance and reflected inspiration ; remembering, how-
ever, that, though inspired by the Spirit, he is but
an inspired man^ knit to his age and race and con-
dition. The revelation, therefore, will have a two-
fold character : it will be divine and human, the
one conditioning the other; not an imperfection,
but rather the only kind of revelation that could
serve our needs, for the line of revelation from God
to man must run through the human heart. If it
takes color and form on the way, it is no less divine
and trustworthy.

But without a theory, we are reading the Bible
with fuller faith than ever before. The more light
we bring to it from nature and study and experi-
ence, the clearer its truths stand out ; in such light
it is becoming its own evidence, and no more needs
an apologetic theory than a candle needs an argu-
ment for illumination. We are not even careful to
dispute about this or that seeming inaccuracy ; in-
stead, we are confident that here is a book that
keeps ahead of all thought, and constantly fur-
nishes new light and fresh inspiration to mankind.

These illustrations might be increased till they
comprehended the entire range of Christian doc-
trines. And when we had gone through them all,
we would find, on review, one feature attaching to
them severally and collectively, namely, that each
one has a permanent essence and a shifting form ;
the essence unquestioned, the form always under
debate. To see and make this distinction is in it-
self of utmost value; it is enough to save one to

ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH. 67

the Faith. But a thoughtful mind will go farther,
and ask, How happens it that Christianity has this
twofold feature of a permanent essence and a shift-
ing form? The answer will take him into that
world of thought recently opened, the main feature
of which is the law of development or evolution.
Into this world, the Faith must go. The timid may
linger on the threshold, but the time has come to
enter in and set the Faith face to face with this
principle that now colors and dominates all thought*
Once in, the atmosphere is found friendly. It is
not something to be quelled, but an ally to be
pressed into service. What it does for every other
department of thought it may do for the Faith, —
open another door between the mystery of the ex-
ternal order and the human reason. It not only
thus finds itself in friendly relations with other
realms of thought and knowledge, a state that the
mind imperatively demands, being made to seek a
harmony of all truth, but it is now able to under-
stand and vindicate itself. When it contemplates
itself as under development, it has the key of its in-
terpretation ; it can account for its changes ; it can
defend its history; it can separate its substance
from its forms ; it can go free and unburdened of
past forms which were never of its essence ; it can
once more take its place at the head of the sciences,
and demand the loyalty of all, not because it recog-
nizes their method, but because it alone offers a so-
lution of the method, and is the solvent of all sci-
ences. Recognizing this principle, we can read the
Old Testament, and need no other explanation or

68 ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH.

apology than it affords. The sayings of the Christ
no longer wear a simply personal or half-explicable
meaning, a somewhat wiser Oriental ethic, but be-
come principles and revelations of eternal truth.
The mustard-seed, the leaven, the seed cast into
the ground, and the earth bringing forth fruit of
herself, — these parables not only fall in with the
principle, but attest Christ's absolute knowledge of
it. It accords with that prime feature of revelation
before referred to, as of and not from God ; a com-
ing of God into the world by a process parallel with
human development, and the source of it.

It is not meant, however, that Christianity is to
take its place under any school of scientists or phi-
losophers, using their data and binding itself to their
conclusions. Evolution is not to be identified with
any school of thought or department of knowledge ;
it is a principle pertaining to the order of the world,
Christianity has its own data and phenomena, and
they are not to be classed in any other category.

It will be noticed that the reception of new truth
has been spoken of in two ways that are apparently
contradictory : one as quick and as by instant reve-
lation ; the other gradual, a growth or develop-
ment. They are not inconsistent, but represent the
two methods of revelation : the twofold nature of
truth as having a divine source and element and a
human ground and element, and the twofold nature
of man as spirit and mind. These methods play
into each other. One prepares the way for the
other. One is slow, and keeps pace with the grad-
ual advance of society and a like development of

ON THE RECEPTION OF NEW TRUTH. 69

the individual. The otlier is quick, is allied to the
mysterious action of the Spirit, which knows not
time nor space, and accords with the loftiest action
of our nature. I gain knowledge slowly; I gain
the meaning of knowledge instantly ; it is a reve-
lation of the Spirit that acts when knowledge has
done its work. There were ages of civil and eth-
ical training, of progress and lapse and recovery and
growth, but the meaning of it flashed upon the con-
sciousness of the world in a day. And so a man
thinks, studies, undergoes life, gropes now in dark
ways, or stands still, in despair of truth ; but find-
ing this intolerable, presses on, and at last, in some
better moment, some hour of spiritual yearning or
tender sympathy or bitter need, the heavens open
to his willing eyes, and in one swift glance he sees
the meaning of all he has known, and feels the
breath of the descending Spirit. Now he knows,
indeed. Now there is meaning in the world and in
life. The sense of vanity that invariably clouds
existence and oppresses thought, when not so illu-
mined, passes away. Now he begins to live to
some purpose. Death is swallowed up in life. The
material is merged in the spiritual. The eternal
order takes the place of this shadowy and elusive
order of nature that once held him, and he tastes
the satisfactions of the Spirit.

GOD OUE SHIELD.

"Man is conscious of the being of God, and lives and acts in this
consciousness, and the reality of the being of God so comes to him.'* —
MuLFORD, Republic of God^ page 1.

"Thus God has will' d
That man, when fully skill 'd,
Still gropes in twilight dim ;
En com pass 'd all his hours
By fearf uUest powers

Inflexible to him :
That so he may discern

His feebleness ;
And e'en for earth's success

To Him in wisdom turn,
Who holds for us the keys of either home,
Earth and the world to come."

John Henry Newman, The Elements,

"Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel with smile or frown:
With that wild wheel we go not up or down."

Tennyson's Geraint and Enid,

"We exist here in a double connection: first, with the transitory on
one side, and, secondly, with the untransitory on the other; and we
fare as many other creatures do that are made for two distinct elements,
coming into distress in one element the moment they lose connection
with the other." — Dr. Bushnell, Moral Uses, page 383, English ed.

" There is throughout nature something mocking, something that leads
us on and on, but arrives nowhere, keeps no faith with us. All promise
outruns the performance. We live in a system of approximations. Every
end is prospective of some other end, which is also temporary; a round
and final success nowhere. , We are encamped in nature, not domes-
ticated.'^ — - Emerson.

GOD OUR SHIELD,

"After these things the word of the Lord came unto Abram in a
vision, saying: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.'' —
Genesis xv. 1.

There are two main things that man needs in
this world : he needs protection and the fulfillment
of his desires and labors, a negative and a positive,
a shield and a reward, something to protect him
while in the battle, something to reward him when
it is over.

This promise is silently keyed to the note of
struggle as underlying life, the conception of life
that the wise have always taken. It is the condi-
tion of the highest virtue; it is the aspect that
every earnest life takes on. It is as a conflict that
existence begins in Eden, it is a victory that crowns
it in the new Jerusalem ; the first word in Scrip-
ture is of trial, the last is of overcoming. Life is
not mere continuance or development ; it is not a
harmony, but a struggle. It continues, it develops,
it may reach a harmony, but these are not now its
main aspects.

It is this element of struggle that separates us
from other creations. A tree grows, a brute de-
velops what was lodged within it ; but man chooses,
and choice by its nature involves struggle. It is

74 GOD OUR SHIELD.

througli choice and its conflicts tliat man makes his
world, himself, and his destiny; for in the last
/analysis character is choice ultimated. The ani-
mals live on in their vast variety and generations
without changing the surface of the earth, or vary-
ing the sequences wrought into their being; but
man transforms the earth, and works out for himself
diverse histories and destinies. One is perfectly
coordinated to nature ; the other is but partially so,
and is man-like just in the degree in which he gets
out of the formal categories of nature into the free-
dom of his own spiritual and eternal order ; great
just in the degree in which he rises above instincts,
and gets to living out of moral choices.

This is a matter well worth thinking of while
the tendency is so strong to identify man with
nature, and make him wholly the creature of phys-
ical environment ; a habit of thought which, if not
checked at the proper point, leads to some doctrine
of necessity by which the moral sense is paralyzed,
and thence to atheism, a path straight, swift, and
sloping to the hells of unbridled desire. For when
you attempt to account for man as a product of na-
ture, and to shut him up in natural processes, you
shut out the heavens and the God who sits on their
circle, and make him but another of the beasts
" that tear each other in their slime." I do not
deny that man is in nature, and that her processes
are wrought into him, and even are features of his
whole history, but only that he is summed up in
nature. The strong tendencies of thought just now
are towards such identification of nature and man,

GOD OUR SHIELD. 75

with complimentary phrase of him as her crown or
flower, the product of her forces lifted to the high-
est, the final outcome of her order working to its
finest issue, and the like. This tendency is in the
air and haunts all minds, an evil miasm exhaled
from the low fens and primal depths of matter,
poisoning faith and breeding diseases that slay all
nobility and glory of life. How far it will go can-
not be told, but it will go far enough to show that
it leads to confusion and despair. But when these
sure ends are reached, man will reexamine himself,
and find out that he is divine as well as physical,
and that he cannot, even in the light of his own
phenomena, be classed with the perishing orders of
the external world. Happy is he who now sees
the intellectual fallacy in such a conception of man !
Happier still is he who has entered into the Christ-
idea of sonship in God, and with swift and easy
logic reasons that the child must share the life
and destiny of the Father ! Meanwhile, however
pressed by the accuracies of science, and while wait-
ing for its highest conclusions, let us cherish the
nobler conception. Anything that even seems to
wear the look of descent in thought is to be re-
garded with suspicion, or passed by.

It is this nobler view of man, as choosing and
struggling, that makes it needful he should have
protection in the world. If he were only an ani-
mal he might be left to nature, for nature is ade-
quate to the needs of all within her category ; but
transcending, and therefore lacking full adjustment
to nature, he needs care and help beyond what she

76 GOD OUR SHIELD.

can render. He finds himself here set to do bat-
tle, life based and turning on struggle ; but nature
offers him no shield fit to protect him, nor can
nature reward him when the struggle is over. She
has no gifts that he much cares for, she can weave
no crown that endures, and her hand is too short to
reach his brow.

There is a better philosophy back here in the
beginnings of history, the beginnings also of true,
full Hfe. Abram is the first man who had a full
religious equipment. He had open relations to
God ; he had gained the secret of worship ; he
had a clear sense of duty, and a governing princi-
ple, namely, faith or trust in God. It starts out
of and is based on this promise of God to be his
Shield and Reward. His sense of God put his life
before him in all its terrible reality ; it is not going
to be an easy matter to live it. Mighty covenants
are to be made; how shall he have strength to keep
them ? He is to become the head of a separate na-
tion ; how can he endure the isolation necessary to
the beginning? He is to undergo heavy trials and
disappointments ; how shall he bear them ? He is
promised a country for his own, but he is to wan-
der a citizen of the desert all his days, and die in
a land not yet possessed ; how can he still believe
with a faith that mounts up to righteousness ? Only
through this heralding promise : " I am thy shield,
and thy exceeding great reward." When you are
in trouble I will protect you. When you fail of
earthly rewards I will be your reward. But
Abram's life, in its essential features, was not ex-

GOD OUR SHIELD. 77

ceptional. I do not know that it was harder to live
than yours or mine. I do not know that his duties
were more imperative, his doubts more perplexing,
his disappointments and checks severer than those
encountered by us all to-day. He needed and we
need two things to carry us through, protection
and fulfillment of desires, shield and reward.

Let us now look at the first of these two things
with something more of detail.

1. We need protection against the forces of nature.

In certain aspects nature is kind to us and helps
us ; she strives to repair any injury she may do to
us ; she is often submissive and serves us with do-
cility. But in other aspects she is cruel and un-
sparing, and her general aspect is that of a power
over us rather than under us. We play with the
fringes of her garment ; we turn some little of her
forces to our use, shut up a little of her steam and
gather a little of her electricity and yoke them to
our service ; we turn aside a rill of falling water
here and there and hold up our sails of a hand's
breadth to her wide winds, but how little have we
trenched on the mighty powers that infold us!
How far off are we from any subjugation of nature,
how feeble still are we before its greater forces. It
may be the function of civilization to turn these
forces to use and to get men into friendly relations
with them, but when the farthest progress is made
in this direction, the general character and aspect
of nature will not have greatly changed. Water
will still drown, gravitation will still dash in pieces,
heat will still slay, gases will still poison. There

78 GOD OUR SHIELD.

will be no more pliancy in natural laws to favor the
finite condition that man will never escape here.
No degree of obedience that we may render to them
will prevent oxygen from consuming tissue, or
strengthen the walls of the jugular vein, or take
away the wasting power from the years. Nature
remains in her most comprehensive laws and largest
processes, a power over man, alien in temper to his
freedom, not correlated in its absolute methods to
his conditioned powers, making exactions that he
never can meet or evade. A system that has for
its largest feature a doom and that leads to a doom,
cannot be other than a terror to man until he is
provided with some other conception than it affords.
I confess that I should be filled with an unspeaka-
ble dread if I were forced to feel that I was wholly
shut up in nature. We are constantly brought face to
face with its overpowering and destroying forces and
we find them relentless. We may outwit or outmaster
them up to a certain point, but beyond that we are
swept helpless along their fixed and fatal current.

But how does God become a shield against them ?
Only by the assurance that we belong to Himself
rather than to nature. When that assurance is
received, I put myself into his larger order ; I join
the stronger power and link myself to its fortunes.
I cannot of myself contend against this terrible or-
der of nature as it drives me to wreck on stormy
seas, or consumes my body with its relentless tooth,
but I can say, " I do not belong to your order.'' I
am speaking here in the line of philosophic thought
as well as of religious trust, for faith must have

GOD OUR SHIELD. 79

some foothold on the rock of truth. The question
pressing hardest to-day is, to which order do we be-
long, to the material or to the spiritual ? Does the
one or the other compass us ? Is mind a gradation
of matter ? Is spirit the essence of matter, or is it
something other than matter, over it and inclusive
of it? We talk of Waterloos and Gettysburgs;
they were petty conflicts in comparison with this
battle now going on in the realm of thought, one
side claiming that the material world includes man,
the other side claiming that he cannot be summed up
in its category and is but partially adjusted to its
methods, that its highest principle, which is unvary-
ing law, is opposed to his highest principle, which
is freedom, thus preventing full correlation between
them and inducing relations that are painful and
destructive to him. It makes a great difference
practically, which side we take. If the material
world includes me, then I have no shield against its
relentless forces, its less than brute indiscrimina-
tion, its sure finiteness or impersonal and shifting
continuance. Then I am no more than one of its
grains of dust and must at last meet the fate of a
grain of dust. But if spirit has an existence of its
own, if there is a spiritual order with God at its
head and with freedom for its method, then I be-
long to that order, there is my destiny, there is my
daily life. My faith in that order and its Head is
my shield when the forces of nature assault me and
its finiteness threatens to destroy me. I say to it,
" You may slay my body with your laws, and you
will at last, but you will not slay me, nor can you

80 GOD OUR SHIELD.

greatly hurt me ; nay, you can only bless me in a
sort of servile way ; I do not belong to you, I be-
long to God." 1

2. We need a shield against the inevitable evils of
existence.

Sooner or later there comes a time to every one
of us when we are made to feel not only that we
are weaker than nature, but that there is an ele-
ment of real or apparent evil in our lot. It does
not often come early. Happily the larger half of
life is spent before we awake to the fact that a
process of decay and loss is going on within us.
For fifty or more years there is a triumphant sense
of strength and adequacy. We ride on the crest
of the waves of life, and have no sense that we
can be engulfed in its waters. Out of this strong,
divinely-wise ignorance come the great achieve-
ments, for it is a certain simplicity in men that
leads them to undertake great things. But by and
by there comes over us a new sense of ourselves.
We detect the working of a law of weakness and
decay. Our bodies gradually lose their elasticity,
our heritage of strength slowly wastes away, the
step grows slower, the feet feel their way along
the earth instead of touching it with firm rebound,
the eyes lose their keenness, the skin shrivels, the
frame shrinks together, the voice loses its soft and

1 I hardly need to say that I do not intend to assert any doctrine of
dualism, or to array God and nature as opposing forces. God is inclu-
sive of nature, and the relations of nature to man are benevolent, but it
is still true that because man is not throughout coordinated to nature,
the relation involves pain from which there is no deliverance except by
an alliance with God who is more and other than nature.

GOD OUR SHIELD. 81

clear vibration, the recovery from illness is slow and
partial. And thus there dawns on us a sense of
mortality peculiarly real. The tables are turned
with us. Heretofore life, the world, the body, —
all have been for us ; now they are against us, they
are failing us ; the shadow of our doom begins to
creep upon us.

How real this experience is every thoughtful
person of years well knows. It has in it, I verily
believe, more bitterness than death itself. It is the
secret of the sadness of age. And there is every
reason why this experience should be sad. It is
necessarily so until we can meet it with some larger
truth and fact. No philosophy can meet, no force
of will can outmaster it, no mere habit of cheer can
hold its own against it. It is a fact, and cannot be
reasoned away, and as the stern law of decay holds
on its course, the force of will and the smile of
cheer die out by slow or rapid degrees.

" Whatever poet, orator, or sage
May say of it, old age is still old age.'*

It is a horrible fact, and it cannot be anything less,
as this cheerful poet is forced to say, — this fact of
loss and decay. It may be unmanly not to endure
it, but it is not unmanly to see and feel it as it is.
But even manly endurance itself fails as the pro-
cess goes on, and the powers of body and mind
shrink towards nothingness. We are not now deal«
ing ,with sentiment, but with the hardest of facts.
The common appeal is to a spirit of cheer, to force
of will, for courage to the last, to go down with the
flag flying, and the like. This is indeed sentiment,

6

62 GOD OUR SHIELD.

but no philosopher, no physiologist, will use it ; they
know that the will and courage are involved in this
process. The mind stands with one foot on the
body. However it may be with it as an entity, its
working energies flow out in the same wasting cur-
rent as those of the body. As this stage of exist-
ence draws on, the question is forced upon us, —
Is there no shield against this evil ? Is there noth-
ing left for us but brute-like endurance, or some
phantom-show of cheer and will, nothing but senti-
ments that are bound up in the dissolving process,
and that necessarily come to an end when most
needed ?

Along with this decadence of powers comes a
greater evil, — an apprehension of finiteness. In
our years of wholeness and strength there is no
such apprehension. Life carries with it a mighty
affirmation of continuance, but when life weakens
it begins to doubt itself. But the idea of coming
to an end is intolerable ; it does not suit our nature
or feelings ; it throws us into confusion ; we become
a puzzle to ourselves ; we cannot get our life into
any order or find for it any sufficient motive or end,
and so it turns into a horrible jest, unless we can
ground ourselves on some other conception. But
the sense of finiteness presses on us with increasing
force ; it seems to outmaster the infinite, and even
to assert its mastery in the process at work within
us. This process has come to wear a scientific cast,
and seems to claim the endorsement of science.
We are kept alive by the action of two laws, — the
vital and the chemical. Physical life is the result

GOD OUR SHIELD. 83

of the struggle between the two, — the vital building
up, the chemical tearing down, — constant waste,
constant repair. Were the latter to cease, death
would shortly follow. Silently, ceaselessly the two
forces work in perpetual antagonism, — life weaving
in its mysterious loom the cell-tissue that makes up
the human fabric, — how we cannot tell, science
cannot unravel the process. All we can say is, that
it must be the hand of creative Life himself that
holds the threads, and throws the shuttle. Over
against it is the busy destroyer — oxygen — burn-
ing up the life-woven tissue steadily, relentlessly.
For years the vital force is stronger and weaves
faster than its enemy can destroy. But at last,
somewhere in mid-life, the forces are equal. Then
the chemical gains on the vital, and pulls down
faster than the other builds up. We die simply
because chemical force triumphs over vital force,
because the law of destruction is stronger than the
law of life, because the finite outmasters what
seemed infinite. Does it outmaster it or not ?
That is the question. It is here that we need a
shield to interpose against the horrible suggestions
of this last battle of life. And it is just here that
God offers himself as such a shield, — God himself
in all the personality of his being, — the I Am, —
Existence, The name itself is an argument ; exist-
ence is in question, and here is Existence itself
saying to a mortal man, '^ I am your shield." Must
not the protection bear a relation to the Being who
protects ? God is behind and in this battle that
seems won by death. One side is plain enough.

84 GOD OUR SHIELD.

The chemist can tell us all about it, — how oxygen
tears down, — but he can tell us nothing of how
life builds up. The Sphinx, staring upon the Nu-
bian sands, is not more dumb than he when he
stands before life weaving its tissue. There is a
power and a principle present that he cannot detect
or measure, and never will ; the mystery of being
is insolvable ; eternity will not give us the key. If
he is logical he will not attempt to draw conclusions
as to the destiny of man when there is an unknown
element in the problem. If this unseen Power sees
fit to weave the fleshly fabric in a finite way, we
need not conclude that the life itself shares the fate
of the apparent web. With an omnipotent Weaver
weaving a fabric made up of finite threads, and also
of incomprehensible threads, spun and drawn out of
his own being, it is not necessary to believe that
when the finite are dissolved, the others also are
dissolved. Their entire relation is that of antagon-
ism,— may they not be diverse in their destiny?
They were originally brought together, — how we
do not know, — may they not be separated, — how
we cannot understand; but one mystery is not
greater than the other. One is a fact, the other
maybe and has its analogy to support it. We may
rest in the conclusion, that if God has had a hand in
the making of us, his work will endure. Between
ourselves longing for life, and this devouring sense
of finiteness, stands God — a shield. " I made you,"
He says, '' but you shall not perish because I put
you into a perishing body. Because I made you
you cannot perish. Because I am the ever-living
God you shall live also."

GOD OUR SHIELD. 85

3. God is a shield against the calamities of life.

It is rarely that one gets far on in life without
seeing many times when it is too hard to be borne.
Take ordinary, average life, I hardly see how men
stand up under it. Take a life like that of so
many around us, where only one pair of hands is
all there is between the family and starvation, with
the chances of sickness or no work. Ah ! " the sim-
ple annals of the poor" are not cheerful reading.
Or, take the every-day catastrophes, loss of prop-
erty, little children, or wife, or husband, swept away
by death ; take the life-long sorrows, the drunken
son, the daughter gone to shame, the marriage that
has turned into disgust, — it is not easy to walk
steady through the years with such burdens on one.
Consider, also, how hopes die out, how life with
most settles into a dull ache of disappointment,
what multitudes carry about secret sorrows, and
how, for most of us, the life that was to be so free,
and glad, and prosperous, has turned into a tread-
mill of toil or dull routine of trifles. I confess I
see little life that is of itself rewarding, little life
that pays as it goes. There are few who can say
with Walter Scott, " sat est vixisse^^^ it is enough
to have lived. For vast multitudes life is unutter-
ably sad and bitter, for many others it is dull and
insipid, for others one long disappointment, for
none is it its own reward. It will always wear this
aspect to the sensitive and the thoughtful unless
some other element or power is brought in. Man
cannot well face life without some shield between.
He may fight ever so bravely, but the spears of life

86 GOD OUR SHIELD.

will be too many and too sharp for him. And no
shield will thoroughly defend him but God. The
lowest, by its very condition, demands the highest;
the weakest calls out for the strongest, — none but
the strongest can succor the weakest ; the saddest
can be comforted only by the most blessed; the
finite can get deliverance from its binding and tor-
turing condition only in the eternal one. When
Hamlet caught sight of life, and saw what he had
got to do and bear, he said, " I '11 go pray." You
have but to name God before sorrow and it changes
color ; name Him before burdens and they grow
less ; name Him before the vanity of life and it dis-
appears. The whole sphere and scene of life is
changed, lifted into a realm of power and wisdom
and gladness. With the incoming of God there is
a sense of reversal, everything that is sad and poor
and dark and wrong is turned about and gathers
meaning and purpose. A prophetic sense enters
into us, and these wandering, disorderly, fragmen-
tary features and experiences of life, are built up
into a city that hath foundations in which we re-
pose by faith.

4. God is a shield against ourselves.

It is, in a certain sense, true of us all that we are
our own worst enemies. One may have no fatal
appetite or habit, and this still be true. There is
a wide difference between a development of per-
sonality, and that growth and condition known as
self-consciousness. One is the highest achievement
of life, the other is its curse and failure. The dif-
ference springs from the motive or principle of con-

GOD OUR SHIELD. 87

duct, for in all things the seed determines the shape
and character. If this seed is self-love, self-care,
self-exaltation, it ends in the creation of a world in
which self is the only citizen. It cuts the man off
from external inspirations and motives. Humanity
ceases to move him. The world breathes upon him
no inspiring motive. Human love loses its tender
force and appeal. His own instincts and faculties
cease to work well. There are no longer sweet in-
fluences in the Pleiades. The spirit departs from
all things, and nature, instead of a radiating source
of influence and thought, becomes a show or vain
form that passes dully before his eyes. Whatever
he looks upon becomes a mirror that reflects him-
self, and ceases to be the sign and medium of truth.
It is the last and worst result of selfishness that it
leaves one alone with self, out of all external rela-
tions, sealed up within self-built enclosures. A
very fair and seemly life may end in this way. If
self be the central thought, it ends in nothing but'
self, and when this comes about we find that self
is a poor companion. It matters not what form it
takes, — intellectual conceit, personal vanity, pride
of dress, self-pampering, ambition, avarice, or even
that commonest of mental habits, the thoughts play-
ing about self in fond and idle ways, — the tendency
is to an exclusion of all but self, and so to a fixed
state of self-consciousness. And this is misery, this
is perdition, to be shut up with self, to walk up
and down self and find out at last how small self
is, to measure and weigh self and find out how
light self is, to feed on self, to dwell, to sleep and

88 GOD OUR SHIELD.

wake and converse with self alone, there is nothing
worse than this.

If you would see this truth put into its highest
expression, read Tennyson's "Palace of Art." The
greater poets never mistake when they touch themes
like this. The aesthetic school of the day strives to
use this poet for enforcing its small fancies and un-
certain morality; but this poem, written long ago
as if by prophetic inspiration, is the denial and
refutation of its main current, and contains its final
history; at last —

"No voice breaks thro' the stillness of this world:
One deep, deep silence all.' '

He built its palace, more gorgeous than its weaker
fancy can devise, but he left it empty on the simple
ground of a lack of that morality which it passes
by, or but lightly names. A weak and false repre-
sentative of this earnest age is this school with its
brooding parade of self at the front, reminding one
of the curtain of a theatre whereon is painted a
careless youth touching the strings of a lute for list-
less girls amongst flowers and fountains, while be-
hind it is Hamlet rehearsing his great question,
" To be, or not to be," or Lear struggling with the
tempest and his own heart.

One of the main uses of God, so to speak, is to
give us another consciousness than that of self, — a
Grod'Consciousness. It was this that Christ made
the world's salvation, not breaking the Roman
yoke, not instituting a new government or a new
religion, not revealing any formal law or secret of
material prosperity, or any theory of education or
reform, but simply making plain a fact, assuring

GOD OUR SHIELD. 89

the world that God is, arid that He is the Father,
and breathing a consciousness of it into men, open-
ing it up to the world's view, and writing it upon
its heart as in letters of his own blood ; thus he
brought in a God-consciousness in place of a world-
consciousness and a self-consciousness, this only,
but who shall measure its redeeming power ! And
there is no more gracious, shield-like interposing of
God than when He comes in between us and self as
a delivering presence. It is the joy of friendship
that we are conscious of our friend, and that he
draws us away from ourselves. It is the joy of the
home that each one is conscious of the other; home-
life reaches its perfection when parents and chil-
dren not only love, but pass on to the highest form
of love, — a steady and all-informing consciousness
of one another. It shadows forth the largest form
of the truth, God dwelling, not amongst but in
men, a shield against themselves. It is God Him-
self who fills this relation. I, the ever-living God,
am your shield ; not some truth about me, not some
" stream of tendency," not some blind or unknown
force working towards righteousness, but I who
made you in my image, and whom therefore you
know, I am your shield !

Thanks for this old and ever new promise flam-
ing its glorious assurance in the front of history!
It is the personal God who stands between us and
the dread forces of nature, his ministers and ours
and no more, between us and our finiteness, be-
tween us and calamity, between us and self, with
its vanity, its meagreness, and the dread conclusion
to which it points.

GOD OUR EEWAED.

" O Thou whose power o*er moving worlds presides,
Whose voice created and whose wisdom guides,
On darkling man in pure effulgence shine,
And cheer the clouded mind with light divine.

' T is thine alone to calm the pious breast

With silent confidence and holy rest ;

From Thee, great God, we spring, to Thee we tend,

Path, Motive, Guide, Original and End.'*

BoethiuSj translated by Dr Johnson.

** There entertain him all the saints above.

In solemn troops and sweet societies,

That sing, and singing in their glory move,

And wipe the tears forever from his eyes."

Lycidas,

" With God, the human soul not merely interprets the secret of the
universe ; it comprehends, and is at peace with itself. For God is the
satisfaction of its thirst." — Canon Liddon, Elements of Religion^
page 80.

GOD OUR REWARD.

We now take up man's other main need, the pos-
itive one, namely, the fulfillment of desires and
labors.

It is the characteristic of man that he plans and
remembers ; he plans to gain an object, he remem-
bers his plan and looks for its fulfillment. Life is
based on this idea of a return or reward to be
gained ; that is, it is not its own reward. It is not
enough for man simply to livCe The ox lies down
in the shade and chews his cud in utter content.
There is, doubtless, a vast joy, an immeasurable,
blissful content in the animal creation that seems
to mock the inseparable woe of humanity. Their
almost perfect health, their harmonious adjustment
to their surroundings, their entire oneness with
their world and their kind, must yield a joy nearly
perfect in its kind. A bird's song, a child's laugh-
ter, are simply the expression of joy in bare exist-
ence. But a man soon gets beyond the state when
he can say, '' It is enough to live, to eat and drink
and sleep and dwell at peace with my kind."
There are indeed moments when the cup of life
overflows; days in June when heaven and earth
draw so near together that the rapture of both fills

94 GOD OUR REWARD.

the heart, and one is forced to cry with the poet :
" O God, I thank thee that I live." There are mo-
ments also when love so overwhelms the other fac-
ulties that we think not of yesterday or to-morrow,
but only of our present perfect bliss, as when words
of plighting troth have been uttered, or, in some
tenderer moment, a father takes his prattling child
on his knee, and in the unutterable outgoing of his
love, catches a glimpse of how God loves, and why,
loving so. He dwells in infinite repose. But such
moments are transient, bits of eternity unduly real-
ized, chance foretastes of what shall be when that
which is perfect is come. The law of our condition
soon reasserts itself ; the ecstasy of eternity passes,
and time resumes its sway over us, time that gives
us nothing because it has itself no existence, and
can only promise us something in the future, crying
as it flies past on its swift wings : '^ to-morrow and
to-morrow ! "

This great figure standing in front of the mists
of antiquity, the first man with clear heavens above
him, outlined our leading relations to life and to
God. He had in some way, it matters not how,
got a clear sight of God, and it worked upon him
in a legitimate way : it awed and commanded him,
and drew him out of himself toward God, so that
God was more to him than his child ; for it is in the
nature of God and of man, that God should be more
to man than his child, even his only child. And
having such sight of God, he has like faith in Him,
a vast, all mastering, all possessing faith answering
all the ends of righteousness, nay, it is righteous-

GOD OUR REWARD. 95

ness. What is external righteousness, — the petty-
details of doing, or not doing, — to this passionate,
immeasurable loyalty of faith? The faith itself
sweeps to the outermost skirts of conduct and in-
fuses its devotion into every act and feeling. Here,
in such a faith as this, not in any legal posturings
and formal coming and going, is found the true phi-
losophy of life. Now, what shall God do for a man,
how deal with one who trusts him in this way ? He
will be his shield, will protect him against the world
and mischance and his own finiteness. And he will
see to it that this other great necessity, this looking
for a fulfillment of labors and desires, is met ; and
he will see to it in a personal way, and, in a sense,
become the reward itself : " I will be thine exceed-
ing great reward."

And so Abram lived his life of solitary obedience,
waiting but never doubting, patiently enduring,
looking for the promised country but never finding
it, and at last died without its sight. But all along
God was rewarding him, making life tolerable if
not triumphant, calm if not joyful, while the great,
main desire of his life, the dream and aspiration of
his years, is carried over into the world to come.
He found a country, but it was beyond the Jordan
of death. It was not a land flowing with the milk
and honey of earth, of heavy clusters of grapes and
abundance of corn, but was a heavenly country : its
riches were the fruits of his owu patient endurance,
its valleys were the depths of his own humility, its
mountains were the exaltations of his own faith, all
wrought into some fit expression amongst the reali-
ties of eternity.

96 GOD OUR REWARD.

I like to draw water from these ancient wells, es-
pecially from this dug by our father Abraham, be-
cause its waters are so sweet and wholesome. They
spring up from the central depths of our common
nature, they quench the strong thirsts of our immor-
tal being. There is a sublime naturalness and sim-
plicity in the way in which Abram is led through
life. God deals with him and he deals with God,
in lofty, natural, and direct ways. He needed very
nearly the same things that we need, and God led
him very nearly as he leads us.

We will break up this divine rewarding into
some of its particulars, with the question. How does
God become our reward ?

It is a striking fact that God's leading represen-
tations of true and righteous life are that it is not
in vain, that it will be rewarded. This is the truth
that underlies that commonest of all religious words,
bless^ a word used with such iteration that its mean-
ing has well-nigh dropped out of it. That God
will bless^ is the sum of our prayers. We mean, if
we mean anything, that God will prosper us, that
success may attend our labors, that we may reach
happy consummations, that we may get good things,
that we may receive benefits of some kind. Thus
our commonest and deepest feeling in religion is
keyed to a divine reward ; it shows that we were
made to have it, clear proof that we are the heirs
in God's kingdom, that the ascetic idea of going
without is not in his plan. The little child believes
that all things belong to it and claims everything
it can touch, book, or toy, or picture, stretching out

GOD OUR REWARD. 97

its hands for the moon with a divine sense of own-
ership. And the child is not wrong ; the child is
never wrong in its spontaneous conduct, acting out
what God put into it, reflecting the thought of the
face that its spirit beholds. All things do belong
to it, and are withheld only while it is in its spirit-
ual minority, for purposes of discipline, and until it
learns to distinguish between the good and the evil.
But at last God's children, being heirs, inherit, and
all things become theirs. These are not idle words,
nor a dream of conceited religionists. Down equally
deep with the truth, that man, like God, is a giver,
is the other truth, that he is a receiver, like God
in this also for whom are all things. The largest
generic truth from which we think, is that God
made man in his own image, a truth not so much
to be restricted as spread out and applied in the
whole field of human speculation. If it opens abys-
mal depths and heights in God, from which we
shrink as not for us, it is still God who summons
us towards Himself, even to a seat in his throne.
This ceaseless cry and strife for something we have
not got, this outstretched hand of humanity, is not
a caprice, nor yet an act of selfishness, but rests on
this divine, inborn sense of heirship to all things ;
only, we forget that we must inherit through God,
that only the meek possess the earth, the pure in
heart see God. But what a truth ! What trans-
forming power is wrapt up in it ! What a light it
throws on toil, and narrow circumstance, and all
these restraints and bonds that tie us down to this
place and that task ! I take it that a great part of
7

98 GOD OUR REWARD.

this earthly tuition and discipline is not more to
work out the evil that is in us, than to prepare us
to receive what God has in readiness to give us. I
cannot otherwise interpret the great and terrible
withholding seen in the vast majority of lives ; this
fearful negative must mean a gracious positive. I
know that we are often summoned to think of all
worlds from the conditions of this, to reason that
because they are hard here they will be hard else-
where, but the logic is meagre. I grant that if
present and known conditions are the only factors
in the argument we have a very dreary outlook,
almost worse than none. But when God is intro-
duced into the argument, it changes its drift and
conclusion, for He is just and good, and He is also
eternal, and hence his plans are not to be judged
by their appearance in any section of time. I know
not how else to put any meaning on life. Here
is a widow, alas, how many such ! poor and all but
friendless, suffers perhaps for food, shivers with
cold, no past but suffering, no future with any hope
or light, life a simple struggle to keep her soul alive
as God would have her, but she reads, " all things
are yours," and carries the promise up to God in
faith. What will you do with such a life ? What,
but say that the withholding is but a preparation
for, and pledge of, a corresponding giving. Or,
take some finer spirit, a mind athirst for knowl-
edge, burning to see the world and the works of
men, to look on art, to hear music, to know history
and literature, eager to push out into his great
world of thought and fact, filled with a passion

GOD OUR REWARD. 99

truly diyine to see and know and realize ; but here
he is, poor, fettered to some given place and task,
perhaps watching a shuttle to earn the bread of de-
pendent ones. What a mal-adjustment ! What a
blindness of fate ! What a cruelty of providence !
Yes, unless sometime and somewhere this sublime
hunger is satisfied. There is running through all
Christ's teachings a subtle thread of reversal ; it
seems to cover circumstance as well as character ;
it is not always based on the moral ; Lazarus passes
before our eyes without character; the poor have
their blessing on the ground of poverty. The scales
of allotment and condition will be evened, the lack
here will find its fullness there, whatever it be.
We reason far more truly from the character of
God than from his acts. One we know, the other
is partial, in process ; one is absolute, the other is
phenomenal ; one is eternal, the other is for the
time being. So, I do not build my expectations of
the future on the processes and conditions now
going on, but rather on the absolute nature of God,
which is love ; it is the nature of love to meet
wants, and will omnipotent love leave any wants
unmet ? I do not forget that life is largely made
up of duties and responsibilities, but these are
simply forerunners, having no value in themselves,
and but the drill and education necessary for a re-
ception of God's measureless gifts. Hence, as soon
as we begin to believe in God, to see, obey, and
trust Him (the sum and definition of faith), God
begins to feed us with promises as He did Abram.
Everything is for the believer ; but he does not now

100 GOD OUR REWARD.

want, nor conld he now receive, everything, but
only certain things, and so God promises and gives
these, varying the form to suit his expanding na-
ture. Abram longed to become the head of a na-
tion, and God made him the father of all believers ;
he desired a country, and God gave him an eternal
possession. And so it is with all who have turned
their faces trustingly towards the great Giver; it
were well to know and feel it ! God is an imposer of
duties ; yes, but beyond that He is the Rewarder of
those who diligently seek Him. God says, " Thou
shalt and thou shalt not," and scourges the disobe-
dient ; yes, but above and beneath all this He is the
giver of eternal life to all who will, and this must
contain all things.

Such a thought is wholesome and heartening ; it
is intended to give tone and color to life. Hence,
it should enter fundamentally, and in its true order,
into theology. First of all, God is a giver. Hence,
away back in the dawn of history, God said to the
first man worthy to hear it : " Now that you be-
lieve, I would have you begin by thinking of me
as one who will be your shield and reward: I will
take care of you, I will give you unspeakable bless-
ings." God began with Abram in this way ; it
was not hard duty first and the joy of reward
finally, but the great, glad hope and promise came
first. It is a common thing to mistake the key-note
of our faith ; we trust Providence as though it were
a last resort, and think of duty as perhaps a noble
yet rather heavy thing to do. But not to such a
key is the psalm of believing life to be sung ; it is

GOD OUR REWARD. 101

to be caught rather from these ancient words of
God : " Fear not : I am thy shield and thy exceed-
ing great reward."

It may be felt by some that this matter of divine
reward is, after all, a vague thing. What is it?
Where is it? How does it come about? Is it a
direct gift, or is it wrought out through laws ? It
is vague because it is a matter of trust and gradual
realization. What God has in reserve for those
who believe on Him, cannot now be measured. Nor
do we know through what new conduits the reward-
ing joys of eternity may flow into us, nor what fresh
fountains of bliss may be unsealed within us. The
spirit of man is an unsounded, perhaps fathomless
depth, a store-house of measureless possibilities.
To assert what man will do or not do, what he will
become or cannot become, is to assert a knowledge
of the infinite ; we have no knowledge of man that
wholly defines and compasses him. Here all the
beauty of the earth and the majesty of the sky
come to us through one sense, all the sweetness of
melody through one sense, all the lusciousness of
fruits through one sense, all the fragrance of odors
through one sense, — small inlets and few for things
so many and vast. But as we know through sci-
ence that there are sounds we do not hear, and
colors that we do not see, and odors that we do
not smell, it is not improbable that we shall be
opened wider, and at more points, to the wonders
and delights of the universe ; for it were unreason-
able to suppose that the head of creation does not
at last comprehend creation, making gains as we go

102 GOD OUR REWARD.

hence like that of the embryo, which, when born
into the world, finds its one sense of feeling sup-
plemented by sight and hearing. So, also, the few
faculties through which we now receive pleasure,
intellectual, social, physical, may be increased, so
that, instead of touching the external world at
these few points, we may touch it at a thousand,
and every point of contact be an inlet of joy. Or
these present faculties may be enlarged to an im-
measurable capacity. But these things are matters
neither of knowledge or faith ; they are the wise
dreams of the " prophetic soul " that may turn to
reality.

It is as far as we can go in this matter to say
that God rewards in two ways : by the results of
obedience, and, in a less clear but no less real way,
by the direct gift or impartation of Himself. They
are not distinct, but stand in the relation of process
and end, or condition and result.

Forever and forever is it true that reward follows
obedience, tritest yet truest of all words. It is the
one all embracing, unfaltering truth, the gravita-
tion of the moral universe, — Obey and be blest !

Obedience does not merely avoid the suffering of
broken law, but it yields a positive reward. Every
act of obedience, if consciously rendered and so be-
coming an act of faith, has a reward commensurate
with the act. It might have been otherwise, and
obedience had for its only end the cold result of
suffering avoided. But we are made on a more
generous plan. Whenever, anywhere in this uni-
verse, any soul hears the divine voice saying, " Thou

GOD OUR REWARD. 103

shalfc *' and reverently obeys, it finds, however it be
with other results, this unfailing one, a deep and
peaceful satisfaction in having obeyed. And so it
is that a life of humble, honest labor may have over-
spreading it a steady sense of reward. The man
goes to his daily toil and comes home at night, with
small returns perhaps that are quickly spent, a
somewhat weary and rather hopeless tread-mill it
seems, but he says, " I have at least the reward of
doing my duty." Without it he would despair;
without it humanity would not tolerate the burden
of existence. This reward can be greatly height-
ened by getting clear sight of such duties as they
are related to God's will. The unconscious reward
is real and large ; no little child ever returned from
a wearying errand without it ; no savage in Africa
ever obeyed the inward voice whispering in his dull
brain, " thou oughtest," but God dropped the reward
of peace into his heart. The inner life of heathen-
dom has not yet been presented to our thought.
When will missionaries tell us of the good they find
as well as the evil? It is the struggling and over-
borne goodness that would most appeal to our sym-
pathy ; it is the smouldering embers of not yet
burnt out virtues that would stimulate us to add
the gospel flame. One has recently spoken : '' Call
them heathen who will; but from what I know
of their hearts, they do not seem to be forsaken
by the Divine Spirit." ^ As deep calls unto deep,
so every loyal heart, touched by God's Spirit, goes

1 See letter from a missionary in India to the Rev. Newman Smyth,
D. D., in The Independent^ Jan. 18, 1883.

104 GOD OUR REWARD.

out in yearning, helpful love towards these heathen
who pray as they best know, and not wholly in
vain.

But a clear view of life as reflecting God's will,
lifts the obedience into the consciousness where all
the faculties play upon it.

The reward of simple, daily duty is sometimes
best seen in the dark contrast of disobedience, as
the stars shine fairest upon the blackness of empty
space. We often grow dull to the value of our vir-
tues, we forget the rewarding power of our habitual
obedience. We are temperate, industrious, thrifty,
patient, kind, true, faithful, wise, reverent, but for-
get that home, love, respect, peace, health, strength,
property, and perhaps honors are their rewards,
paid at the counter of God's daily reckoning.
Hence, when duty grows dull, it is well to look off
into the black regions of disobedience. Alas ! we
seldom have need to look far. Lust, with its satiety
or disgrace or corruption ; drunkenness with its tyr-
anny, and waste and poverty and disease ; selfish-
ness come at last to despairing solitude ; dishonesty
breeding suspicion and alienation ; avarice with its
heart of ashes ; folly with its harvest of bewilder-
ment and blindness ; impiety standing on the bor-
der of life, nothing behind or before and despair
within; — in the gleams of such black flames we
read again the lesson of obedience and shudder at
the thought of ever having doubted its rewards.

Still the positive view is the better one, for we
must learp to value goodness in its own light and
by its own weight. There will thus come about at

GOD OUR REWARD. 105

last, as in the Christ, a joy that is independent of the
on-going world, that is not heightened by the sense
of external evil, but is the straight outcome of a heart
entranced with goodness. When one thus fills every
mould of duty with sympathetic obedience, he is
doing more than pleasing God and blessing man, he
is unsealing hidden depths within himself that are
stored with God's own eternal joy. I beg you to
think of this ; it is not so trite as you may suppose.
In our iterated appeals for duty we commonly base
them upon pleasing God and blessing man, that is, on
its inherent rightfulness and its beneficence, leaving
out the profounder argument that it sets one's own
nature in order so that by its very law it evolves
joy, for no harp was ever strung capable of uttering
such music as the soul of man attuned to righteous
obedience. It is hearing such music that makes
men willing to die for a cause, to live patiently un-
der wrong, to plead for the reform for which the
age is not ripe, to stand true while evil corrupts the
world. The New Jerusalem lieth four-square ; so
stands he who has learned to render a trustful obe-
dience to his God ; he stands true to the world, true
to himself, true to the eternity about him, and true
to God.

If there were not such a reward as this, there
would be no motive sufficient to propel man on this
long voyage of existence. For the reward or mo-
tive must be within and have its play within the
circle of his own being simply because he has no
permanent relations to anything without. There
are but two abiding realities, God and self ; all else

106 GOD OUR REWARD.

is phenomenal, transient. Tbe earth whereon we
stand, the air we breathe, the firmament that in-
spheres us, will pass away; the goodly fellowship
of humanity will yield before the separating years ;
the hands clasped in tenderest love will part ; the
child, the friend, the whole encircling life of the
world, will be lost to us for a while at least, as we
go "to the land of darkness and the shadow of
death." The present complexity of life and rela-
tion settles surely into a simplicity in which only
self and God remain — self alone with God ! Hence
life in its full sense, ideal life, is simply a true ad-
justment and interplay between these two, self
living unto and in God, and God returning upon
self with joy, — a process more stable than the uni-
verse and as enduring as God himself. The final
word of the soul is: "And now I come to Thee."
After one has entered on such an obedience as this,
he soon begins to find that he is mainly acting in
the sphere of two personalities, — himself and God.
I mean this: he is not acting under certain laws
and principles, — these conceptions grow dim and
become mere phrases and conveniences of speech ;
but he comes to realize that he is living unto, and
as it were, in God. And as he goes on, all things at
last resolve themselves into this complection ; it is
God whom he serves, and God is his reward ; he
wants no other ; he lives and dies with one all-sat-
isfying word in his heart and on his lips : —

" Whom have I in heaven but Thee ?

And there is none upon earth that I desire be^
sides Thee."

LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON.

"Love is inexorable as justice, and involves duty as the sum of the
fiommandments of the law." — Mulfokd, Republic of God^ page 190.

"My heart's subdued
Even to the very quality of my lord."

Othello, I. 3,

" The love of Jesus is noble, and spurs us on to do great things, and
excites us to desire always things more perfect." — The Imitation of
Christ, Chap. V.

" The hold which Christianity has depends on Christ, and the hold
which Christ has is chiefly dependent on those personal affections and
reverential regard which souls that receive Christ entertain towards
Him." — Pres. WooLSEY, SermonSj page 355.

LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON.

" And verily I say unto you, wheresoever the gospel shall be preached
throughout the whole world, that also which this woman hath done shall
be spoken of for a memorial of her." — St. Mark xiv. 9.

The fact that three of the New Testament writers
rehearse this story shows how fully they entered
into Christ's purpose to perpetuate it. They have
different plans, and omit or include events and words
accordingly, but they do not omit this event and
Christ's comment upon it. Evidently it is a marked
thing. It is the only intimation made by Christ
that any record was to be made concerning Him.
Here is something, He says, that shall have a uni-
versal record. Yet these faithful historians tell the
story somewhat differently, not in a contradictory
way, but as each felt it ; as a poet, a historian, and
a moralist might describe a battle, harmonizing in
the main points, but each coloring his account with
the hue of his own mind. This variation is a great
help in getting at its meaning. St. Matthew and
St. Mark adhere to the express purpose of Christ
to set the deed of this woman before all the world,
and so put their emphasis upon its memorial feature,
but St. John seems to forget this, and can only re-
member that the anointing was for the burial of

110 LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON.

his Lord. His love blinds him to the main point
enjoined by Christ; but the omission itself is sig-
nificant, as it shows how the central idea had already
been accomplished in him; he does not think of
the woman, but of the service done to his Master.
And the event has been used by a great preacher of
the age, kindred in spirit to this disciple, to show
how keen is " the insight of love " in detecting the
true uses and ends of service. The apostle and
the preacher were held by a feature of the event,
but how beautiful and profound the attraction !

The beauty and pathos of the incident is apt to
shut us off from any critical thoughts about it.
The passion and humility of the love, the abandon
of its expression, the fine symbolism of its minuter
features, anointing not the head only but the feet,
and gathering from thence to the flowing honors of
her head the now sacred ointment ; these points
catch and hold the eye till we are inclined to think
its main use is to adorn the sacred page as a pic-
ture. But it is more than a picture. If events are
grouped and colored in such a way as to excite our
sense of the beautiful, we may, indeed, pause a
moment to reflect bow inevitably divine things are
beautiful, how surely a true act has a grace of its
own ; how, as we come into the higher ranges of
conduct, truth and beauty and goodness melt into
each other. But such thoughts must be transient,
the delicious recreation of a moment only, after
which we pass on to the substantial truth behind
the picture. When we approach it with analysis,
we are struck with the fact that in certain respects

LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON. Ill

it has features exceptional and somewhat contra-
dictory to any others found in the history of Christ.
A woman deeply moved breaks a box of costly oint-
ment upon his head and feet. In rescuing her from
the criticism provoked by this act, He exalts her and
her deed into world-wide fame. There is no par-
allel to this in all these histories. It is not only
exceptional, but it is not plain why it is so. The
pledged honor seems inordinate. The woman, in a
beautiful and touching way, sacrificed a cherished
treasure upon the person of Christ, — certainly not
a great act unless it were great in some unusual
way. It involved but expense, and no personal
danger. It had in it no element of self-denial, no
great force of will, nothing of the stalwart graces
of endurance or heroic purpose. Outwardly it fell
far short of what men have always been doing and
enduring for Christ. The catacombs of Rome are
full of the ashes of believers who were persecuted
for his sake, and the crumbling tablets are fast
refusing to reveal their names. For centuries a
great army of martyrs marched to prison, to the
arena, to the stake, but leaders and host are now
nameless. There are multitudes to-day whose ser-
vice seems far more valuable, and is rendered at
far greater cost, than the one deed of this woman,
but no provision is made for their special remem-
brance. It seems inconsistent also with Christ's
method, for it was this sort of honor and praise
that He rigidly excluded. It was a fundamental
point in his kingdom that personal exaltation had
no place in it ; the exact reverse was fundamental.

112 LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON.

Something else must be meant than that this woman
was to be heralded wherever the Gospel might go.
Indeed, when we look carefully at the story, we find
that it does not provide the requisite elements of
such a fame. The two writers who alone give the
laudatory promise, withhold the name of the woman,
so that if personal fame be meant by Christ, it is not
connected with any person ; while John, who omits
the laudatory promise, alone indicates the name.
It is as though a monument were built to some hero
and his name omitted from the inscription. There
is indeed such a monument in the Public Gardens
of Boston, that celebrates the discovery of ether, —
nameless of all except the mercy thus achieved, —
a monument prophetic of the age when there shall
be " no pain any more," but equally Christian in
the unwitting exaltation of good above the doer of
good. It hints the way to a true reading of the
incident before us. Christ evidently had some other
purpose than to bestow personal fame on this wom-
an; this were out of keeping with true womanly
desire, with the nature and method of his kingdom,
with his personal principles, and with the whole
tenor of his teaching. But why does He use words
that seem to imply it ? Reading the story more
carefully we find that it is not the woman who is
to have world-wide mention, but her deed^ this
that she hath done, and herself as some nameless
one who rendered it. The deed is the centre of
significance ; there is something in this little act of
reverent affection so peculiar and so valuable as
to justify the honor put upon it. Let us search it
out.

LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON. 113

I think we are near the truth when we say that
the deed happened to be the exact type of that feel-
ing and relation to himself which Christ regarded
as necessary, and so he seized it as a perpetual ex-
ample ; that is, He takes it for use. There is here
no sentimentalizing, no lapsing into unusual meth-
ods. Instead He takes the act — a personal act in-
deed, but still the act only, — and makes it a part
of his gospel. It memorializes not a person but a
temper of mind, yet in and through an environment
of personality. This explains why the woman is
made so prominent, while the central thought rests
on the action ; it explains why the world-wide me-
morial is nameless. It has in it an element for-
ever essential to a true reception of the gospel ;
hence Christ connects it with preaching, it is to
go wherever the gospel goes, and to become a part
of it.

Looking at it more closely, we find as its main
characteristic that it was the expression of a feeling, .
and that it was intensely personal. This woman
had come under a great sense of gratitude to
Christ ; she had found in him a response to every
better feeling, an insight into her heart that was
like self-knowledge, or deeper still, a revelation of
self to herself, a sympathy that was as a new life.
The thought of Him drew her to goodness, and
made evil no longer possible. And so He became
enshrined in her soul almost as God ; nay, all her
thoughts of Him were like her thoughts of God,
except that their dread was softened by a human
grace. He was inspiration, guidance, strength,

114 LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON.

everything to her; hence the tribute. She does
not, with long and careful thought, consider how
she may forward his cause or do some good work
that may please Him, — that may come after; now
there is but one thing for her to do ; it must be
something for Jesus himself, upon his person, so
that it shall express how personal and vital is his
influence upon her. It is not truth, it is not an
idea that inspires her, but this Jesus himself, and
so upon Jesus himself she lavishes her tribute of
reverent love.

But this is a gospel to be preached in all the
world : How shall it preach to us ? We have no
seen and present Lord to receive the raptures and
gifts of our love. We can lay no golden or odorous
gifts by his cradle, we have no ointment for his
wearied feet, no spices for his burial. Such ser-
vice, were it possible, would seem somewhat apart
from even our warmest thought of Christ. We
cannot conceive ourselves as acting or as required
to act in quite that way. The outward parallel is
not for us, but the inward parallel sets forth an
unending relation and an unfaltering duty. Christ
asked from men nothing of an external nature, but
He steadily required their personal love and loyalty.
He did not ask of any a place to lay his head, it
mattered little if Simon asked Him to his feasts,
but, once there, it did matter whether Simon loved
Him or not. Waiving all personal ministration, He
yet claims personal love. Strange spectacle ! Here
is a man indifferent to what is done for him or to
him, but demanding love ! a human contradiction,

LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON. 115

but hiding a divine truth. It is not truth or purity
or wisdom you are to love, but me. You are to be
faithful, not so much to your convictions as faithful
to me. Nay, what you do is of secondary impor-
tance if you first love me.

Thus Christ presented Himself before the world,
drawing it off from its speculations, its ritualized
dogmas, its traditional ethics, and fixed its thought
upon Himself, a new centre of truth and inspira-
tion. His position is without parallel. The phi-
losophers had said, "Accept our ideas, adopt our
systems," but Christ said, "Accept m^." No relig-
ionists have ever made a similar claim. Gautama
said, " This is the way, by renunciation." Moham-
med said, "There is heaven." They sunk them-
selves in their theories, and, while claiming leader-
ship, put the centre of their systems in some idea
or external end, but Christ merges all ideas and
methods in devotion to Himself, and the devotion
is summed up in love. A most strange thing ; —
here is one whose main thesis is abnegation of self,
and is himself its prime illustration, and at the same
time sets himself up as the centre of the world's
love ! It is out of such contradiction that we are
to look for the issue of the finest truth, as vision is
born of darkness and light.

There is in this attitude no final abjuring of phi-
losophy and system and docti^ne, but only the adop-
tion of a higher and surer method of reaching them,
a vitalizing and humanizing of them. In its last
analysis the idea is this: Truth entering human
society through a person, and making love its vehi-

116 LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON.

cle. For personality is the secret of both the Chris-
tian and Judaic systems, — revelation by a person.
The peculiarity of these systems is not their truth ;
there is not much question about truth. Men are
sure to find it out first or last. And ethical truth is
almost the first to clear itself in the human under-
standing. The old philosophies and mythologies
are packed with undoubted truth ; enough for all
social and personal need if that were all that was
necessary. It was inevitable that the precepts of
love as the sum of duty should have early utter-
ance ; the human mind could not go amiss of them.
But to connect them with a person for authority
and inspiration was another matter ; the efl&cacy of
the precepts lies in the Person that utters them,
and in the relation of this Person to man. The
fault of Matthew Arnold's definition of God, '^ a
power not ourselves that works for righteousness,"
is, that it blurs the personality behind the right-
eousness, and so deprives it of motive. Whatever
significance there is in the Jewish Scriptures lies in
the personality emblazoned on every page, a God
who is not a power only, but also a person, and a
power because He is a person, not a "stream of
tendency " flowing in free or hindered currents, des-
tined perhaps to flow, but capable also of resistance,
with some question of ultimate success, but the /
am^ the Personal Being ! Cast this out, and they
might have been burned with the books of Alex-
andria with little loss. But because they contain
this uniform and self-attesting assertion of a per-
sonal God, as personal as man is, and the basis of

LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON. 117

his personality, they have laid warm and nourish-
ing at the roots of that civilization which is domi-
nating the world.

There is reason in this. A relation of duty
cannot be fully established and sustained except
between persons, I owe no duty to force or to
" a stream of tendency," I merely fall in with, or
resist it, without any play of my faculties except
some sense of prudence. This would seem axio-
matic, yet it is in the face of such axiomatic truth
that we are asked to accept the theories of an un-
knowable God, theories that annihilate duty by
rendering impossible a relation of duty. The He-
brew and Christian Scriptures have presented duty
to the world, not only in a rational but in a com-
manding way, because they assert in the loftiest
way the two correlative elements in duty, namely,
the personality of man and the thorough person-
ality of God. I* is Christ's revelation of this per-
sonality, on each side, that constitutes Christianity.
It was long before its facts crystallized into systems.
The church sprang up about the revealii^ person
of Christ ; love to him was the bond that held it
together ; and so it continued to be till the image
of Christ grew dim, and the Master was buried first
beneath his church, and then under formal render-
ings of his truth, and to-day Christendom puts its
churches and its theologies before its Lord.

There are those who contend that what we need
is not the Christ himself but the truth of Christ ;
that if we accept the principles He taught, there
need be no special enthusiasm or even thought

/

118 LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON.

about their author. And thus Christianity is grad-
ually reduced to a philosophy, and thence into mere
maxims about good and evil, as though even in
Christ's day they were not the lumber of the world.
But let us see if Christ was mistaken in planting
his system upon personal love and devotion to Him-
self. Or, more broadly, why does this Faith, that
claims to be the world's salvation, wear this guise
of personal relations ? Simply because in no other
way can man be delivered from his evil. There
may be exceptions here and there in whom natural
dispositions are so happily blended that they have
attained to a stainless if cold virtue. But take men
as they are, the bulk and mass of humanity, they
are too blind to find their way by the light of pre-
cepts, too firmly wedded to evil to be moved by
theories of virtue, too solidly imbedded in the cus-
tom of an "evil world" to be extricated by any
play of reason. And as to experience, the fancied
teacher of wisdom, with its " hoard of maxims," it
is the weakest of all. Polonius is but " a tedious
old fooi" to the Hamlets who are struggling with
their own weakness in the hard play of human life.
It is the subtlest thought in the profoundest drama,
that Hamlet is searching for a human love to up-
stay and inspire him ; it is the key to all his wild,
testing talk with Ophelia ; the love he found, but
there was no strength in it ; it could not draw to-
gether his scattered and faltering energies and set
them to some definite end, and so his life sweeps on
to its tragic close. There is in all these simply lack
of motive-power. Men need instead something of

LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON. 119

the nature of a passion to dislodge them, some deep
swelling current of feeling to sweep them away
from evil towards goodness, from self towards God.
Suppose Christ had simply depicted the miseries of
sin and the inherent fitness and excellence of the
virtues, what would He have done ? What become ?
Simply another Rabbi with a few followers for a
generation. He began instead by forming personal
relations with a few men, captivating them by his
divine charms, making them feel at last that his
love was more than a human love, even God's own
love. Ideas, truths, principles, these are not lack-
ing, but the essence of his power is not in them, for
they have no power. The great, reflective novelist
has well stated it in her earlier and wiser pages :
"Ideas are often poor ghosts; our sun-filled eyes
cannot discern them ; they pass athwart us in their
vapor, and cannot make themselves felt. But
sometimes they are made flesh ; they breathe upon
us with warm breath, they touch us with soft re-
sponsive hands, they look at us with sad, sincere
eyes, and speak to us in appealing tones ; they are
clothed in a living human soul, with all its conflicts,
its faith, and its love. Then their presence is a
power, then they shake us like a passion, and we are
drawn after them with gentle compulsion, as flame is
drawn to flame." And yet it is ideas that the loud-
voiced wisdom of the age would have us believe to
be the salvation of the world ! God is driven far-
ther and farther into unknowable heavens, the
Christ is made to figure only on a dim and blurred
page of history, the Spirit is thrust out on some

120 LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON.

score of intellectual difficulty, all reduced to ideas
and ghostly at that, and a selfish world is sum-
moned to drop the principles that have made it
what it is and that stand to it for the solidest real-
ities, by a phantom-show of ideas for which it does
not care, or but admires as some far-off unattainable
glory ! The Faith that is to redeem the world
must have a surer method, it must have a vitalizing
motive, and such a motive can proceed only from a
person using the strongest force in a person — love.
And thus the Christ comes before humanity, mak-
ing God's love manifest in a human and personal
way, so unfolding his divine beauty in word and
deed that men kneel before Him, subdued into glad
receptivity of his truth. Thus it was that the mul-
titudes thronged about Him, that Zaccheus was won
by his condescending pity, that this woman broke
upon Him her fragrant tribute of honor, that
Thomas said, " Let us also go, that we may die with
Him," and Peter, with a devotion that outran his
courage, " Even if I must die with thee, yet will I
not deny thee," that John leaned upon his bosom,
that the women of Jerusalem bewailed Him on the
cross and lingered about his sepulchre, that Joseph
claimed the privilege of his burial, that the disci-
ples mourned while He lay in the tomb, that joy
gave wings to their feet when they heard of his res-
urrection. And when He finally ascended, and the
full scope of his love came to be realized, when his
character and being began to stretch away into the
infinite under the revelation of the Spirit, it stirred
them to even deeper passion. His love, seen now

LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON. 121

to be divine, awoke in them all the divineness of
love, and became the measure of their devotion.
From that day to this, the faith of believers has
clustered about the personal Christ, growing cold
and effete as it has drawn off from Him towards
philosophy, and waxing warm and effective as it has
come near to his glorified person. I grant that this
love varies in its external features. In these later
days, it has the calm of thought, the sobriety of
conviction, the breadth that springs from a realiza-
tion of his work. The semi-erotic aspect it has
sometimes been made to wear and that is still
weakly cherished in some quarters, has largely
passed. The love we now render is the fidelity of
our whole nature, the verdict of our intelligence,
the assent of our conscience, the allegiance of our
will, the loyalty of sympathetic conviction, all per-
meated with tender gratitude ; but it is still per-
sonal, loving Him who loved us and gave Himself
for us.

There are reasons for the assertion just made,
that it is only through such a love that we can be
delivered from ourselves and our evil. It is no
novelty even in the thought of the world. " George
Eliot " says : ^ "It is one of the secrets in that
change of mental poise which has been fitly named
conversion, that to many among us neither heaven
nor earth has any revelation till some personality
touches theirs with a peculiar influence, subduing
them into receptiveness." It only needs to make
this assertion universal to have in it a definition of

" ~" 1 Daniel Deronda^ ii. 36.

122 LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON.

the process of Christian faith, and almost a vindi-
cation of it by its superb insight. How otherwise
shall we begin to secure this process of conversion ;
how uproot the selfishness that makes it neces-
sary ? Authority fails ; the commandments are in
the Old Testament, also in other sacred books it is
claimed, but they had not much honor in their
fruits. But when they issued from the lips of the
living Christ, they fell into men's hearts like fire,
and wrought in them as a passion. Will not
thought open a path between evil and good ?
Thought may resolve conduct and character into
their elements, but it cannot separate them. Phi-
losophy makes slow progress in saving men ; it has
eyes to see man's misery, but no hands to lift him
out of it. If, upon such a basis, one begins to
struggle towards the good, the result is a hard,
painful life, sustained by mere will, without warmth
or glow or freedom, often overshadowed by doubts
and mazed by sophistries, for there are philosophies
and philosophies, a life more deficient and less ex-
alted than it seems to itself, because it is not con-
stantly matching itself with a personal standard.
The measure of rules and bare ideals has little
working efficacy, it is unsubstantial, it does not rec-
ognize the complexity of life, for only life can meas-
ure life, it guides but imperfectly and lacks the
strongest of motive- powers — inspiration. There is
light enough but no warmth, matter enough but no
attraction. Goodness that is enforced or devised
has no propagating power. You cannot think, or
plan, or legislate it into existence ; it is not a prod-

I

LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON. 123

uct of syllogism, nor a deduction of knowledge, nor
a fruit of experience, but is akin to life and must
be begotten. And so character is placed under the
lead of personal love. At the threshold of life we
are met by affections that check and call us off
from inborn selfishness, the love of parents and of
brother and sister, and then that fiery passion that
ushers in a love that makes of twain one, and then
the diviner, downward-flowing love upon children ;
it is in such ways as these, all personal, that evil is
kept or crowded out, and we become tender and
generous and pure. But beyond lies the broader
sphere of humanity, for which there is but small
native passion, and hence but little inspiring force
impelling us to its duties. Yet this is the field of
our highest duties, for here are our widest relations.
And it is here chiefly that Christ becomes an in-
spiration through the loyalty of love. Christ is
humanity to us, He has hardly any other relation ;
He was not a father or husband, as son and brother
his relation is obscured, his citizenship is not em-
phasized. In a certain sense, it is hardly necessary
to have an inspiring and saving Christ in these
relations, they enforce themselves, they are still
full of their original, divine power. Not so, how-
ever, when we get outside of these domestic and
neighborly instincts. Our relation to humanity at
large is so blurred that it fails to enforce its duties.
Hence Christ put himself solely and entirely into
this relation, the Son of man, the Brother of all
men, the Head of humanity, and there sets in play
the divine forces of universal love and pity and

124 LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON.

sympathy. When our love meets his in the loy-
alty of faith, we find ourselves rightly related to
humanity and to God. Faith in Christ has for one
of its main ends the proper adjustment of the indi-
vidual to society. The secret, essential relation of
the Christ to humanity, and of humanity to God,
flows to us along this channel of obedient, inspiring
love, and so we come to love our neighbor as our-
selves, and God supremely.

But the truth may be set in even a larger light.
The love of Christ not only delivers us from evil
and unites us to humanity, but it does the wider
work of uniting us to God's eternal order both on
earth and in heaven.

The one supreme truth is that Crod is love. This
is the secret of the universe. Creation is the out-
come of this fact ; the whole order of all things is
grounded in it ; the harmony of the universe is its
realization. There is therefore no possible rela-
tion for a human being to stand in to God and to
his creation but that of love. Not to love God is
to be in confusion, at odds with creation, aside
from the order of the universe. The whole crea-
tion swims in a sea of eternal love. Every law and
process and form, material and spiritual, angelic
and human, individual and social; every relation,
every method, is established in this love. This
makes love the supreme and all-embracing duty ; it
is thus only that we come into accord with the
world, and fall into the current that sweeps through
eternity. Thus love, that seems the most volun-
tary thing, and the thing most to be kept at our

LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON. 125

own disposal, to be giyan or withheld as we see
fit, becomes an imperative obligation, for it is the
only possible bond by which we can hold our place
in God's created order, the one highway between
self and all other things and beings. Not to love is,
at last, utter and absolute separation from all else
— even from self; it is the outer darkness where
existence itself becomes bewilderment. To get into
this love, which is God, and respond to its mighty
harmonies, and know its perfect peace, this is the
great and final achievement. Consider this truth
until you have mastered it, or, at least, got some
glimpse of it, and then put beside it the revelation
of this love in the Son of God, and you see at once
why you are to love Him. It is simply putting
yourself in accord with the ruling principle of the
universe, it is falling into line with the eternal
order; for the whole universe is wrought into Him;
He is the only begotten Son of the Father ; in Him
the entire order of nature is set forth ; in Him the
whole of God's will is perfectly obeyed ; He is the
perfect Righteousness. And in Him the full order
and will of eternal Love is brought into humanity,
where human love, your love and mine, may lay
hold of it and play into it. Nor can there be con-
ceived any other method by which human love can
enter into the eternal Love ; it must go by the eter-
nally ordained path of personality, and the person-
ality must be a manifestation of all the fullness of
God. Hence there is no other name under heaven
wherein we must be saved.

The great problem set before the Faith, — nay,

126 LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON.

let US not generalize, — the imperative need of every
man is to get over from the natural and evil side
of life to the Christ side, to give up worldly ways
of feeling and acting, and pass into the Christly
way ; to die unto self and let Christ be formed in
him, the true son of God and of man taking the
place of the Adamic self, — a very definite and im-
perative work lying before every human soul. It
is the secret of life, it is the key of destiny. How
to bring it about is the question. It is an achieve-
ment, for it is nothing less, wrought, so far as we
are concerned, by love to Christ, and by the ser-
vice of love. For the whole nature follows love.
Whithersoever it goes all the faculties troop after
it. It is the magnet of human nature ; where the
heart is there are all the treasures of mind and
will and moral nature. Let this love be planted
in Christ, — won and fixed by our ever deepening
sense of truth and goodness and all moral beauty,
— and we begin to go over to Him upon it as upon
a bridge. Character itself cannot be imparted or
exchanged, but everything that goes to make char-
acter may be imparted, or quickened into action.
Using this love as if it were some broad stream,
the truth, the strength, the humility, the sympathy,
the spiritual insight, the obedience, the very right-
eousness of Christ float down into us and become
our own, and so at last we are one with Him and
one with God, for He and God are one.

Let us not strive to find any other path for indi-
vidual or social regeneration ; there is no other
path. Here is the way, the truth, the life. We

LOVE TO THE CHRIST AS A PERSON. 127

cannot save ourselves; we cannot think or will
ourselves into the life of God ; we cannot drift into
it on the tide of time. We must go by the eter-
nally ordained path of love to Him who is the reve-
lation of eternal Love, — a Person, — and su£Eer
his love to charm us into a kindred love ; we must
lay our hearts close beside his, that they may learn
to beat with the same motion ; our wills near his,
that they may fall into its harmony.

THE CHEIST'S PITY.

" Nothing but the Infinite pity is sufficient for the infinite pathos of
human life."
• ••••••••••••• •

** When you have lived longer in this world, and outlined the enthusi-
astic and pleasing illusions of youth, you will find your love and pity for
the race increase tenfold, your admiration and attachment to any par-
ticular party or opinion fall away altogether." — John Inglesant, Vol. I.,
page 121.

"Thou wilt feel all, that Thou mayest pity aXV — ChiHstian Tear,
Tuesday before Easter,

'* He came laying His hand upon our head in sickness. His fingers
upon our eyes, sighing out His soul upon us, breathing His peace into us,
touching, taking us by the hand as we sink, entering into our homes,
lifting us up in fever, teaching, chiding, enfolding, upholding, enlarging,
inviting, encouraging, drawing, calming, controlling, commanding." —
Rev. H. S. Holland, Logic and Life, page 219.

THE CHRIST'S PITY.

"But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion
for them, because they were distressed and scattered, as sheep not having
a shepherd." — St. Matthew ix. 36.

We often speak of love as the ultimate passion,
but there is a depth even beyond love. For love is
largely its own reward, and so may possibly have an
element of imperfection, but pity or compassion
has not only all the glory and power of love, but it
forgets itself and its own returning satisfactions,
and goes wholly over into the sufferings of others,
and there expends itself, not turning back or within
to say to itself, as does love, '' How good it is to
love! " Hence Balzac, in " The Alchemist," in de-
picting an ideally perfect love, makes the object of
it deformed, thus profoundly indicating that love
is not at its height and perfection without the ele-
ment of pity. It may be a factor in the solution
of the problem of evil that it calls out the highest
measure of the divine love ; a race that does not
suffer might not have a full revelation of God's
heart. What ! Create a race miserable in order to
love it ! Yes, if also thereby its members shall learn
to love one another, and if thus only it may know
the love of its Creator. In the same way it is man's
consciousness of misery, or self-pity, that reveals to

182 THE CHRIST'S PITY.

him his own greatness, — a thought that Pascal
turns over and over.

Pity is love and something more: love at its
utmost, love with its principle outside of itself and
therefore moral, love refined to utter purity by ab-
sorption with suffering. A mother loves her child
when it is well, but pities it when it is sick, and
how much more is the pity than the love ! How
much nearer does it bring her, rendering the flesh
that separates her from it a hated barrier because
it prevents absolute oneness, dying out of her own
consciousness, and going wholly over into that of
the child whose pains she would thus, as it were,
draw off into her own body ! To die with and for
one who is loved — as the poets are fond of showing
— is according to the philosophy of human nature.
Might not something like it be expected of God,
who is absolute love ? And how shall He love in
this absolute way except by union with his suffer-
ing children ? Such is the nature of pity ; it is a
vicarious thing, which bare love is not, because it
creates identity with the sufferer.

The text is one of the peculiarly revealing pas-
sages of the Christ's life. Here we behold in Him
the blending of the highest forms of both divine
and human love : the incarnation of one, the per-
fection of the other, one in their expression, for
love is the reflection of unity. We see Him moving
through the villages telling the good news of the
kingdom of God at hand, healing all sickness aiid
suffering that came under his pitying eye, and
moved with compassion for the multitudes He could

THE CHRIST'S PITY. 133

not reach. The people throng about him, as they
always will when a true teacher speaks. They
open to Him their hungry hearts, their bewildered
minds, their despairing hopes for this world and
that to come. Or they stand before Him, dull and
dead as the forms and doctrines under which they
had been smothered, or they bring to Him their
nearer sorrows of wearying, life-sapping disease.
For this compassionating teacher takes in the whole
range of suffering ; He sees that man is one ; that
bodily sickness and spiritual ailment are not far
apart; that both in physical disease and moral
degradation the common need is life. And it is to
restore life to humanity that He has come ; not to
save souls, not to save bodies, but to save soul and
body; He has not come to build up " a faded para-
dise " in this world, nor to unlock the gates of a
paradise beyond, but to establish an order here so
strong and well founded that it shall endure forever.
But as He looks over these suffering multi-
tudes and reflects how little He can do for them,
how few He can reach, how slow are the processes
by which they are delivered from their sufferings ;
as He reflects how soon they will lapse out of the
inspirations He has stirred, and turn again to their
blind teachers ; as his thought goes out to the wide
world of suffering of which this is only a faint sign,
he is moved with compassion. How can He leave
them when He can do so much for them ; leave
them to bear their sicknesses alone, to wander
about in this world that is so full of God's truth
and love without any one to show it to them ; to be

134 THE CHRIST'S PITY.

harassed by fears of death and haunting thoughts of
the future, and vague, fearful thoughts of God, and
by the unrest of conscious evil and all the weariness
of unexplained life ! And so in a sort of despair —
it is the only thing He can do — He turns to his dis-
ciples and says : " Pray ye the Lord of the harvest,
that He send forth laborers into his harvest/' It
was not a vain request ; the next we see is these
disciples, themselves the answer of their own
prayer, armed with saving and inspiring power,
going out into this world of unredeemed suffering.
They go on an errand of compassion ; they are to
declare the kingdom of heavenly love as at hand, to
heal the sick, to cast out devils, to raise the dead,
— all in that large-hearted measure which they
had realized in themselves.

In speaking further, we will guide our thoughts
by naming several points.

1. Christ's habitual look at men had regard to
them as suffering. No other aspect of life seems to
have struck Hira with equal force or to have so
claimed his thought, that He did not feel its sorrow.
The foundation of his work is ethical, but the tone
is drawn from his sensibilities rather than from his
judicial sentiments; the ethical is but the instru-
ment ; to get rid of the sorrow is the end.

The painters, and especially that nearly greatest
one, Da Vinci, have given us a man burdened with
his own sorrows, but when the artist comes who ap-
prehends the true Christ, he will figure a sympa-
thizing Christ ; the drawn lines of finest sensibility,
a mouth tender and trembling with just uttered

THE CHRIST'S PITY. 135

words of compassion, and eyes fathomless with un-
utterable pity. I do not suppose that Christ was
unobservant of, or unresponsive to, the pleasures of
men. He did not sit at feasts with sad words upon
his Hps, but still his thought struck through these
gladder phases and saw the lack behind the pleas-
ure, saw that the meat and the wine stood for no
full satisfaction, that the laughter was not the echo
of a real joy. Nor yet do I mean that Christ's
thought did not strike deeper still and find back of
all suffering the eternal joy that underlies exist-
ence ; that He did not know and feel that the key-
note of the universe is blessedness. He not only
knew this, but He knew it as no other ever knew it.
In the last days of his earthly life, when his eyes
were lifted somewhat from their long gaze at the
world and turned to the heavens. He spoke of little
else. This eternal joy had become his own, its se-
cret won by obedience and sacrifice, full and well-
ing over in desire that it might be full in those
about Him. But He did not habitually take this
larger and deeper view ; it was, in some sense, a re-
served view. To have had it before Him in all its
force would have bred a sort of ecstasy unfitting for
his work. Instead He looked at men and life as
they are in the present moment. It is a main point
in studying the eternal Christ to separate Him from
all time-conceptions. In nothing is his divinity
more attested than in his sharing the divine con-
ception of what we call time. Like God He inhab-
its eternity in all his thought and speech. We do
not coordinate God with space and time, these are

136 THE CHRIST'S PITY.

human and conditional ; with God time is an eter-
nal now. If Christ has any thought derived from
God, it is this. He did not stand beside a man
racked with pain and exult in his future health.
He had a more present cheer for those who wept
over their dead than the hope of a future resurrec-
tion. It is the significant feature of his thought
and teaching that the forces and facts of eternity
are drawn within the present ; the kingdom of God
is at hand here and now ; the power of the resur-
rection is realized now in those who believe. It
was the same with suffering ; the divine perfection
of his sympathy drew his thought away from its
future and linked Him to its present.

2. The question arises : Is this a true or false, a
healthy or morbid view of human life ? When one
reads Pascal, whose whole thought is based on the
misery of men, one says, this is morbid, this cannot
be the philosophy of life. But the airy sentimen-
tality of the optimists satisfies us as poorly; we feel
that Pascal has an acuter insight and the greater
weight of facts. The question cannot be answered
by determining whether there is more happiness or
suffering. Of this it would seem there could be no
doubt. It is a good world ; God pronounces it such
while He is making it. All good has not evaporated
with moral evil ; it was Pascal's intemperate the-
ology that led him to the opposite conclusion. This
great intellect did not draw his data from life nor
from his own sufferings ; he was a recluse and had
small range of social facts, and his acuteness for-
bade him to reason from himself; he simply rea-

THE Christ's pity. 137

soned on the basis of a doctrine of original sin that
emptied human nature of all its contents, — a mis-
erable, not to say irredeemable, condition indeed !
There is, no doubt, suffering vast and keen, but it
is small and shallow to the happiness that enspheres
life as the air enfolds the earth. In individual
cases evil or mischance may turn the balance to-
wards suffering, and sin dims the brightness of the
inwrought joy of life for us all. But could we
measure the satisfaction that comes from natural
affection, from the exercise of bodily and mental
functions, from our adaptations to the world and
society, from the mysterious sweetness of life itself,
we would find our miseries outweighed many-fold.
The mere fact that we stay in the world is proof
that we really make the unconscious estimate. If
this were not so, not only would the race not en-
dure existence, but it could not endure it. When
it becomes as a whole miserable rather than happy,
it will die by natural consequence as a man dies by
disease. Suicide is not oftener an indication of in-
sanity than that the scale has inclined to the wrong
side in a personal estimate of happiness and misery.
Pessimism has no need to urge its logical plea for a
self-destruction of the race; it will destroy itself
when it becomes conscious that the pessimist's creed
is true.

But none the less is suffering real, and none the
less will a sympathizing nature pause upon it rather
than look through to the underlying joy, and espe-
cially a great pitying nature like Christ will pause
upon it and see little else. It is not a matter of

138 THE CHRIST'S PITY.

more or less, but of appealing anguish. The most
imperative appeal made to love is that of suffering ;
joy takes care of itself. Jacob had eleven sons
about him, but Joseph was not. The shepherd has
ninety and nine safe-folded, but ''one is away on
the mountains cold." A group of happy children
bless a JBreside, but the parents watch them with a
shaded joy, thinking of the wanderer, dead or liv-
ing they know not, but lost to them and to good-
ness. Put yourself in a great city, walk its fine
streets, visit its theaters and parks, watch the gay
throngs ; spend days thus, and then one hour where
poverty and vice unite to create wretchedness, — for
one hour only see the little children sick and starv-
ing, the sewing-women in garrets, the dying on
their beds of rags ; breathe the air, take in the squa-
lor, the vice, the utter misery ; get one glimpse of
this life, and the gay multitudes are forgotten in
the deeper impression made here. Or spend an
evening in a pleasure-party, and then pass to the
bedside of a sick child, hear its moans, watch its
restless tossings and appealing look for impossible
relief, — which of the two pictures stays longest in
any feeling heart ! It is not a matter of more or
less suffering that gives the tone to one's thoughts,
but sensitiveness to whatever suffering there may
be. Hence Christ paused here in his look at man-
kind ; nothing diverted his gaze from its suffering.
In the weariness of the flesh. He sometimes with-
drew from the aching vision into the secrecy of the
mountains, and at moments He exulted as He saw
the Satan of this misery falling like hghtning from

THE Christ's pity. 139

heaven, and the burden of sorrow rolling off from
the heart of the world, but for the most his eye
rested steadily upon the suffering before Him : a
man of sorrows, but not his own sorrows ; a man
of griefs, but griefs that were his own only as He
took them from others into his own heart !

It is not to be thought, however, that this Christly
pity embraced only the conscious suffering of men.
It is an undiscerning sympathy that reaches only
to ills that are felt and confessed. We every day
meet men with laughter on their lips, and unclouded
brows, who are very nearly the greatest claimants
of pity. Pity him who laughs but never thinks.
Pity the man or woman who fritters away the days
in busy idleness, calling it society, when they might
read a book. Pity those who, without evil intent,
are making great mistakes, who live as though life
had no purpose or end, who gratify a present desire
unmindful of future pain. Pity parents who have
not learned how to rear and train their children ;
pity the children so reared as they go forth into
life with undermined health and weakened nerves,
prematurely wearied of society, lawless in their dis-
positions, rude and inconsiderate in their manners,
stamped with the impress of chance associations
and unregulated pleasures. No ! it is not pain that
is to be pitied so much as mistake, not conscious
suffering, but courses that breed future suffering.
Who, then, calls for it more than those who have
settled to so low and dull a view of life as not to
feel the loss of its higher forms, content with squa-
lor and ignorance and low achievement or mere

140 THE CHRIST'S PITY.

sustenance? It is now quite common to say, at
the suggestion of some very earnest philanthropists,
that the poor and degraded do not suffer as they
seem ; that they get to be en rapport with their
surroundings, and so unmindful of their apparent
misery. This may be so, but even if the wind is
thus tempered to these shorn lambs of adversity, it
is no occasion for withholding pity. Nay, the pity
should be all the deeper. The real misery here
is, that these poor beings do not look upon their
wretched condition with horror and disgust, that
they are without that sense and standard of life
which would lead them to cry, "This is intolerable;
I must escape from it." Hence, the discerning
Christ-like eye will look through all such low con-
tentedness to the abject spirit behind it, and there
expend its pity. Not those who suffer most, but
oftener those who suffer least, are the most pitia-
ble. The naked and starving, the widowed and
orphaned, and even those about to die may have
currents of life flowing quick through them, and
life always contains the seeds of joy. Pity rather
the man who is content with this world, and is
governed by its small prudencies ; pity him who is
blind to God's inspiring presence ; pity the man
who is feeding himself with low pleasures and
through beastly appetites. The deepest pity of all,
*' tear-dropping pity," will rest where it is impos-
sible to awaken moral feeling or the sense of noble
things. Then breaks out the divine cry : '' If thou
hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day,
the things which belong to thy peace ! "

THE CHRIST'S PITY. 141

I speak at length on this point, because so fine a
force as human pity ought to be wisely directed.
It should be something more than an emotion
springing out at the sight of suffering ; it should be
a matter of insight, of careful measurement, and
just adaptation.

But, beyond the unrealized suffering, how much
is there that is not so overlaid ! It is not necessary
to paint the picture that we see so often, so often
indeed that we do not see it. Suffer ? Who does
not suffer ! What body that is not at times racked
with pain, what house long escapes sickness, what
home that sooner or later is not overshadowed by
death. Poverty, business troubles, domestic anx-
iety, mistake and its bitter fruit, regret for the past^
darkened futures, the slow eclipse of bright hopes,
the life that has missed its meaning, — - let us not
make little of these. They may not be the greater
part of even any single life, but they are real. Get
the verdict as you will ; read it in the pages of the
masters of human nature whose greatest works are
tragedies, listen to it in the songs of the poets, or
trace it in the faces of men, or find it in the sad
pensiveness that grows with the years, and it will
be the same. It is a suffering world, not wise
enough to avoid disaster, not strong enough to
wrestle with nature, not yet good enough to reap
the rewards of virtue, not aspiring enough to attain
the joy and peace of faith. It is a fallen world,
fallen away from its ideals and inwrought meth-
ods, and hence it cannot be other than a suffering
world. It is the mystery of humanity ; beast and

142 THE CHRIST'S PITY.

bird reach their appointed measure of bliss, but
man fails of his. The fact itself bespeaks a rem-
edy ; the anomaly asserts a return of the law and
reign of joy. Because infinite loye pities, it will
deliver !

3. It is not a long step from the Christ's pity to
that it evokes in those who believe in Him.

There is something beyond a sense of justice and
fair dealing, something beyond even good-will and
love. The highest relation of man to man is that
of compassion. Hardly separable from love in
words, it may be in conception ; it is love at its
best, love quick, love in its highest gradation ; it is
the brooding, the yearning feeling, the love that
protects while it enfolds. It is not laid upon us as
a bare duty, but something to which we are born
and trained, the evolution of the highest moral sen-
timent. Hence all suffer in common ways and in
almost equal degree except when sin throws its
leaden weight into the balance. Every throb of pain
I feel is a divine call to pity your pain. When my
child dies I am called to weep by the grave of
yours. When poverty with its stings and con-
straints is your portion, God bids me enter into
your condition with pitying heart and hand. Our
sorrows are not our own, to be secretly wept over or
soon dispelled. God forbid that any of us should
pass through suffering and come out of it, not only
unchastened, but with no tenderer feeling for the
whole suffering humanity ! It should be the first
question with one who in any way suffers, as it is
nearly always the first impulse: To what service

THE Christ's pity. 143

of ministering pity am I called ? For the ultimate
purpose of God in humanity is to bring it together.
No true thinker dissents when the process of history
is defined as reconciliation. The main human in-
strument is that we are considering ; it is the finest
and most dominant force lodged in our common
nature ; it brings men up to the point from which
they launch into the Universal Love.

The law and the method run very deep. One of
the chief problems of the day is : how to reconcile
the antagonisms of society. While there have been
in previous ages a wider space between classes and
far heavier oppression and wrong, never before
have there been so intense a consciousness of op-
pression and wrong and so threatening restlessness
under it. Communism and Nihilism and the uni-
versal organization of labor and capital into oppos-
ing forces, to-day at peace, to-morrow at war, are
not happy prognostics. Nor do the thoughtful pass
by the segregating tendency going on in all manu-
facturing regions, with its inevitable alienation, and
only kept from revolt by steady prosperity ; they
know to what such alienation leads at last; the
logic of history and of human nature points to one
tragical conclusion. Argument will not close this
chasm, force only widens it, prosperity but keeps it
as it is for the hour. Other methods must be used
to overcome these threatening evils. Social science
is doing something, but knowledge does not lead
the regenerating forces of society; it may marshal
them and point the way, but the leader will be a
diviner force, a subtler inspiration. The opposing

144 THE CHRIST'S PITY.

classes must be brought closer to one another, first
by the exercise of justice and then by the exercise
of Christian sympathy. When the rich get near
enough to the poor to feel the constraint and per-
plexity and bitterness of their poverty and so are
moved to share its burdens, there will be peace in
society ; never before ! Society itself will at last
exact justice, but justice is but the portal of that
fair temple in which a united humanity shall serve
and love and worship.

Great care must be taken to keep this fine qual-
ity from sinking into a mere sentiment. There is
indeed,

" The sluggard Pity's vision-weaving tribe,
Who sigh for wretchedness, yet shun the wretched,
Nursing, in some delicious solitude,
Their slothful loves and dainty sympathies."

It is not a gush of feeling, it is not made up of tears
or sighs, nor is its exercise to be confined to actual
pain, but is to be carried back into the region of
causes^ and here the wisest compassion will be busi-
est. A vast amount of pain and sorrow is due
to injustice : the extortions of the strong and the
rich, the unequal distribution of the burdens of
society, the discrimination against woman in the
laws and in payment for labor, the tyrannical op-
pression of poor women in cities, the greed of land-
lords, the horrors of tenement houses, the narrow
margin between wages and living, the legal indorse-
ment of dram-shops, the tragedies of the stock-mar-
ket, the robberies of monopolies, the facility of di-
vorce, — these are some of the fountains out of which
flow steady streams of misery. Hence, a wise com-

• THE CHRIST'S PITY. 145

passion will strive for ]\st laws, and honest admin-
istration, and a better order of society. So of
sickness: it mostly springs from lack of sanitary
knowledge and regulations. It is beautiful, the
pity that hovers by sick-beds and flies to pestilence-
stricken cities, but it is a larger and wiser pity that
strives to secure the conditions of health. So of
intemperance, without doubt the greatest evil of the
day; it is a true pity that lifts up the fallen, but
that is finer and truer which goes back into the re-
gion of causes, — wise nurture, and restraint of the
greed that lives on the evil. So a discerning pity
will watch with jealous eye the great, deep wrongs
of society, and when the conflicts that they beget
come on, as come they must, it will know where to
array itself ; as Shakespeare, who never discourses
more wisely than when he dilates on this theme in
two of his dramas, says : —

"I show it most of all when I show justice;
For then I pity those I do not know.'*

There is indeed an orderly development of human
society, not to be unduly hastened, but it is by
struggle, and one of its factors is the human will
and heart.

It was on the Judean counterparts of such suffer-
ers that the pitying eye of the Christ steadily rested.
The well-to-do, ''the fat and greasy citizens," He
passed by, giving his pity to the stricken deer of
society; they that are whole have no need of a
physician. Translate the phrase that describes the
class He most sought, "publicans and sinners," and
we have the vast pariah class, that outer fringe of

10

146 THE CHRIST'S PITY.

society that has fallen away from its true order and
is dragged along, a shame and a clog, hated and
hating, redeemable by no forces it knows, and
kept at the lowest level of misery and degradation
by the contempt and neglect of the better classes ;
a mighty throng that renders needless any asser-
tion of depravity or any argument for a redemption.
Here was the special field of the Christly service.
Life is complex and humanity is broad, and Christ
covered it all, but because He was under the condi-
tions of humanity He suffered Himself to divide his
thought and pity where they were most needed.
His example has all the weight of an express com-
mandment :

*' — It most invectively pierceth through
The body of the country, city, court,
Yea, and of this our life. "

The respectable, the rich, the ranks of orderly so-
ciety, these have their claims upon us, but the pay-
ment of them belongs rather to the gospel of pru-
dence and easy love. The true gospel of Christly
pity points to these palsied and spirit-possessed
children of sin and misfortune. A true recognition
of it would well-nigh reverse the whole order of
church procedure ; it would put the grand church
in the slums and the humble chapel in the avenue.

I have not been speaking of a sentiment but of a
laWy something that underlies not only Christianity
but society, and underlying one because it underlies
the other, for their spheres and methods must ulti-
mately be the same.

It is the tenderness of eternal love that binds

THE CHRIST'S PITY. 147

God to his creatures. It is the tenderness of human
love, wise, strong, and pitiful, that binds men to-
gether. And it is out of such sympathy only that
peace is born for community or nation.

THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER.

"Goodness doth not move by being, but by being apparent." —
Hooker, Booh /., vii. 7.

*' In Christianity nothing is of real concern except that which makes
us wiser and better ; everything which does make us wiser and better is
the very thing which Christianity intends." — Stanley, Christian In-
stitutions, page 314.

** The New Jerusalem, metropolis of earth and heaven, is not a city
built of stone nor of any material rubbish, since it has no need of sun
or moon to enlighten it; but its foundations are laid in the eternal wants
and passions of the human heart sympathetic with God's infinitude, and
its walls are, the laws of man's deathless intelligence subjecting all things
to his allegiance. Neither is it a city into which shall ever enter anything
that defileth, nor anything that is contrar}^ to nature, nor yet anything
that produceth a lie ; for it is the city of God coming down to men out of
stainless heavens, and therefore full of pure unmixed blessing to human
life, and there shall be no more curse." — Henry J am.es j Society the
Redeemed Form of Man^ page 473.

*' We ought to receive with the utmost confidence those truths which
pervade, like an atmosphere, the whole Bible."— Rev. Newman Smyth,
D. D., Orthodox Theology, page 139.

THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER.

" The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
Because he anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor;
He hath sent me to proclaim release to the captives,
And recovering of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty them that are bruised,
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord."

St. Luke iv. 18, 19.

When we have once measured these words, we
shall be reminded of the tent of the Arab chief:
when folded it could be carried in his hand, but
when spread it was wide enough to shelter his whole
tribe.

A study of the incident under which they were
spoken in the synagogue of Nazareth is peculiarly
rewarding, because it looks off in so many directions :
into remote Jewish history, into present customs,
to the nature of the gospel, to its manifold methods
of working, to the heart of God, to the inspiration
of Christ ; and finally it discloses the weakness and
evil of human nature when its prejudices and tra-
ditional thoughts are assaulted. It is so rich in
material and association that a book could legiti-
mately be made from it. It would be a book his-
torical, ecclesiastical, political, theological, ethical,
psychological, and the treatment would not be
forced. Were a thoughtful student to sit down to

152 THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER.

the study of this passage, he would first be led to
an investigation of the captivity of the Jewish
nation in Babylon, and of the details of that cap-
tivity; the peculiar forms of suffering endured,
and the effects in body and mind, and upon national
beliefs and customs. He would then be led to
study the literature of the book of Isaiah, and of
the relation of the Hebrew prophet to the people,
— almost a unique thing in history. He would
then pass to a study of the political economy of
the Jewish state, and especially to that peculiar
feature of it by which every fifty years society was,
to a certain extent, resolved into its elements and re-
constructed ; all alienated lands restored, all bonds-
men liberated, probably all debts canceled, — the
most unique feature in human legislation, and one
of the wisest and most gracious, affording, as it
did, a barrier against the aggressions of capital,
checking the growth of oppression, taking off the
burdens from the poor and unfortunate, and giving
them another chance by restoring them to freedom
in their circumstances, an inwrought, constitutional
defense of the people against their natural oppres-
sors, a system instinct with liberty and grace and
every divine quality. It was an arrangement full
of wisdom, in that it was constantly restoring the
nation to the great social principles on which it was
founded, principles of righteousness and mercy and
freedom, — an order linked in with its religion and
with sacrifice for sins that were also burdens and
bondage, — a vast, stupendous system, overwhelm-
ing in its significance, sweeping all about the life

THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER. 153

of every man, covering him with its grace, from
the misery of outward misfortune and mistake to
the guilt of secret crimes !

If it is asked where Jesus refers to this system,
the answer is in the phrase, " the acceptable year
of the Lord." We might read these words many
times, and not suspect that Christ referred to this
political feature of the Jewish commonwealth, unless
we had learned that the year of jubilee was com-
monly known as '' the acceptable year." The
phrase is thus taken out of the hands of a narrow
theology that uses it as a time- word, — a certain
day beyond which there may not be another in
which God is gracious, and instead is made to
stand for the ushering in of an order and an age
of the freedom and mercy and justice presaged by
the year of jubilee, an age of spiritual and also po-
litical freedom, an eternal reign of righteousness
and love.

Our student will then be led to study that pathetic
story of the captivity, when the daughters of Jeru-
salem wept by the rivers of Babylon and hung their
harps upon the willows, and the prophets sank into
lamentations or rose into ecstatic visions of deliver-
ance and return ; thence to the special forms of that
oppression, how it broke the hearts and bruised
and weakened the bodies, especially inducing blind-
ness, and thence into a study of the return and
upbuilding. He will then pass to a study of the
synagogue, find out when the people began to as-
semble in these edifices built, like our churches,
throughout the country, in which the people met

154 THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER.

every Sabbath to bear tbe law read and discussed.
He will, with awakened curiosity, be led to see in
the synagogue the germ or framework of the Chris-
tian Church, and to suspect the reason why Christ
said nothing about an external church, because here
was one already existing in external form sufficient
for all practical purposes, — a very simple, rational,
and convenient institution, fit to shelter and house
believers every one of whom has become a king and
priest to God. He will see that the synagogue,
and not the temple, furnished Christianity with its
Church. And he will be apt to close his study with
very slight regard for the vast hierarchical systems
that envelop and weigh down the faith, and to con-
clude that the Church is a very simple thing; at
most but a body of believers come together to re-
peat the words of their common faith, without any
priest at all, but only a minister for simple con-
venience.

Our student will come to know much about the
customs of the people, and of the procedure in
the synagogue, notably that children were required
to attend its service and hear the Law, and join in
its simple worship. He will learn that certain parts
of the sacred books were appointed to be read on
certain days, and much also of ancient manuscripts,
their shape, texture, how kept and read, and of
Oriental ways of teaching. As he thus studies,
he will be forced to the imperative conclusion that
he is reading a history of the most trustworthy
character, and not a tissue of myths and late re-
membrances ; and if he has the gift of logic and

THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER. 155

insight, he will be drawn away from any thin, semi-
learned theories that may have clouded his faith in
the record.

He will then pass to a study of the matter of
Christ's preaching. He finds that Christ read the
appointed lesson for the day, which happened to
be the day of Atonement, but not the whole of it ;
that He pauses in the middle of a sentence because
the rest was not to his purpose, and he is flooded
with revealing light shed by the omission, for the
Christ has not come to proclaim "the day of the
vengeance of our God." That conception was not
to enter into the order He had come to declare. It
was an undue presence of that conception that made
Judaism imperfect, and John the Baptist less than
the least in the kingdom of heaven. It was the
absence of that conception of God that furnished
the positive elements of the revelation of God which
Christ was making.

Our student, as he scrutinizes this preaching, finds
in it a twofold meaning, though but one spirit.
This Gospel is primarily a deliverance shadowed by
the year of jubilee ; it embraces the physical and
social ills of men and their spiritual ills. The in-
extricableness with which they are united in the
words of Christ suggests to him the profound mys-
tery of body and spirit, mind and matter, environ-
ment and spiritual history. He will find in it a
denial of all Manichean and Stoic notions that the
soul is independent of the body, and is to be treated
in another fashion, but rather will he find the
broader philosophy, that man is to be regarded as

156 THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER.

a unit, body and soul making up one life, and that
what truly blesses one blesses the other. He will
discover a certain temper in these words that fur-
nishes a keynote to the Christian system, and a
prophecy of its work. He finds in them a theology
and a life, a doctrine and a practice, and that the
two are inseparable.

Our student, as he goes on in the history, gets as
deep an insight into the human heart as into the
divine. He reads again the oft-recurring story, a
great spirit rejected by friends and neighbors; it is
only the carpenter's Son, the boy who grew up in
the midst of us, and now, forsooth ! claiming to be
a prophet ! And they drive him out of their city.
He finds in this no strange history, but only an
illustration of a daily fact. Men never see the
great in what is about them. We ride without
eyes under Greylock, and go to the White Moun-
tains for sublimity. The moon in Venice, and the
6ky in Naples, have more charm than here at home.
The weeds of other climates become our flowers,
and our flowers seem to us but weeds. There is
little heroism, little devotion and nobility on our
square mile ; there are no epics or lyrics of human
deed and feeling sung in our streets ; the great, the
beautiful, the excellent, is at a distance. Why we
think thus it may be hard to tell, unless it is from
instinctive reverence on the one hand, and on the
other, because the realization of greatness makes us
aware of our own littleness, and so provokes us to
envy and anger.

Quite a broad field our student has traversed in

THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER. 157

studying this short paragraph of St. Luke's Gospel,
— from the political constitution of Judea down to
the subtilties of our common nature !

We pass now to this preaching of Christ, and
will speak of its substance, its philosophy, and its
power.

1. Its substance. Without doubt we have here
the keynote to his entire teaching. This was his
gospel from first to last, whatever He may have said
of an apparently different tenor on special occasions.
It is a derogation and an absurdity to suppose, as
is sometimes asserted, that Christ, finding this kind
of preaching did not answer, changed his tone to
a "woe." It may be reasonably supposed that
Christ did not feel his way along, but that He un-
derstood himself and his work from the first, and
struck at once to the heart of his business. This
appears still more plainly as we realize that, here
at the outset. He brings out the whole divine mean-
ing of the Jewish economy. It is understood that
great numbers of persons are still reading that pur-
blind mass of crudities known as the "Mistakes of
Moses." Does the author of that book know what
the Jewish system means when you get down to
the soul of it ? Does he tell you that its keynote
is mercy, and that its method and aim is simply
that of deliverance and freedom from the actual
ills of life? Does he tell you that it is a system
shot through and through with great redeeming
and liberating forces ? Does he tell you that it
takes a nation of slaves, ignorant, barbaric, be-
sotted in mind and degenerate in body, and by a

158 THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER.

shrewdly adapted system of laws lifts it steadily
and persistently, and bears it on to ever bettering
conditions and always towards freedom ? Does he
tell you that from first to last, from centre to cir-
cumference, it was a system of deliverance from
bondage, from disease, from ignorance, from anar-
chy, from superstition, from degrading customs,
from despotism, from barbarism, from Oriental vices
and philosophies, from injustice and oppression,
from individual and national sin and fault ? Does
he tell you that thus the nation was organized in
the interest of freedom, planned to secure it by a
gradually unfolding system of laws, educational in
their spirit, and capable of wide expansion in right
directions ? Nothing of this he sees, but only some
incongruities in numbers and a cosmogony appar-
ently not scientific.

It is the peculiarity of Christ's preaching that He
pierces at once to the centre of this great deliver-
ing system, and plants his ministry upon it. He
takes its heart, its inmost meaning and intent, and
makes them universal. He draws them to the front,
leaving behind the outworn framework of laws and
ordinances, and lays them directly before the eyes
of the people. " This is the meaning of your law,
this is the secret of your nation, namely, deliver-
ance, freedom."

We cannot conceive a better Gospel nor a pro-
founder social order than this. It accords with the
largest view of humanity, whether it be scientific,
historical, or religious. Science and history and re-
ligion tell a like story of deliverance, emergence

THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER. 159

from the lower into the higher, struggle towards
the better, deliverance from evils, and so a passing
on into righteousness and peace. Christ supple-
ments and crowns this order of nature and provi-
dence by his Gospel. " I am come to save you in
full, body and spirit, to make you free indeed by
a spiritual freedom ; I am come to declare that this
deliverance, which is the secret of your national
history, is to become universal, the law of all na-
tions and the privilege of all men." Here is a
gospel indeed !

The peculiar feature of this quotation from Isaiah,
which Christ makes his own, is its doubleness.
" The poor," — but men are poor in condition and
in spirit. " The captives," — but men may be in
bondage under masters or circumstances, and also
under their own sin. " The blind," — but men may
be blind of eye and also in spiritual vision. " The
bruised," — but men are bruised in the struggles of
this rough world, and also by the havoc of their
own evil passions. Which did Christ mean ? Both,
but chiefly the moral, for He always struck through
the external forms of evil to the moral root, from
which it springs, and of whose condition it is the
general exponent. And He always passed on to the
spiritual end to which external betterment points.
He was no reformer, playing about the outward
forms of evil, — hunger, poverty, disease, oppression,
— giving ease and relief for the moment. He does
indeed deal with these, but He puts under his work
a moral foundation, and crowns it with a spiritual
consummation. Dealing with these, He was all the

160 THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER.

while inserting the spiritual principle which He calls
faith. Unless He can do this, He is nearly indif-
ferent whether He works or not. If you cannot
heal a man's spirit, it is a small thing to heal his
body. If you cannot make a man rich in his heart
and thought, it is a slight matter to relieve his pov-
erty. At the same time, Christ will not separate
the two, for they are the two sides of one evil thing.
Poverty and disease and misery mostly spring out
of moral evil. They are not the limitations of the
finite nature, but are the fangs of the serpent of
sin. To refer evil, physical or moral, to develop-
ment, betrays clumsy observation. The imperfec-
tion of development is a phrase the parts of which
do not go together. In a true and orderly develop-
ment, every part and point are perfect. A half-
grown animal is never blind because it is half-
grown, or paralyzed because it is young, or sick
because it is immature. In the natural order, evils
come in when the development has been reached,
and its energies have ceased to act in full force.
But those who contend that physical and moral
evils are the necessary attendants of what they call
imperfect development, reverse the very process
from which they argue, placing them at the outset
where they are never found in any other order.
Plainly, we cannot reason from one to the other ;
plainly, there is a disturbing element in human
development, for which no analogy can be found in
the physical and animal processes. Human ills are
not the sole products of ignorance, nor the chance
features of human progress, but the fruit of selfish-

THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER. 161

ness, — not an order but a perversion. And so Christ
sets himself as the deliverer from each, the origin
and the result, the sin at the root, and the misery
which is its fruitage. Therefore let no man think
that there is any gospel of deliverance or helpful-
ness for him, except as it is grounded in a cure of
whatever evil there may be in him, — evil habits, or
selfish aims, or a worldly spirit.

2. The philosophy of this preaching, for I know
not how else to name a certain feature of it.

Suppose some questioner had arisen in that syna-
gogue of Nazareth and asked Jesus, not as to the
substance of his preaching, for that was plain
enough, but what was the ground of it. " You de-
clare a gospel of deliverance ; on what ultimate fact
or reason do you rest your declaration ? " A rea-
sonable question, had there been any to ask it ; there
are many asking it to-day. I think the answer
would have been of this sort : " I am making in this
gospel a revelation of God, showing you his very
heart, putting Him before you as He is, without any
paraphernalia of symbol or ritual, translating Him
into life. This is what God feels for you, this is
how He loves and pities you, this is what God pro-
poses to do for you ; to cheer you with good news,
and open your blind eyes, and free your bruised
souls and bodies from the captivity of evil." And
it is God who is to do this, not any human one, no
trend of society or course of nature, no self-strug-
gles or self-wrought wisdom, but God uncovered,

revealed, brought abreast human life, and face to
11

162 THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER.

face with every man ; this puts reason into the
good words.

When shall we learn it, we of to-day ? Troubles
enough we all have ; cheerless hearts all around us ;
blind eyes that see no glory in heaven and no path
on earth ; captives of lust and appetite and avarice
and hard-heartedness and sordidness, conscious of
the bitter captivity. They are all about us ; they
are here ; perchance we are such ; perchance I am !
Do we know how to be healed ? Do we know how
to get free from these blinding, enslaving, torment-
ing sins ? There is but one way, and that is by
somehow getting sight of God, such sight of Him
that we shall believe in, that is, trust and obey Him ?
Those words in the Nazareth synagogue were but
the idlest breath except as they brought the deliv-
ering God before men. But when God is seen and
known, the whole nature of man leaps into joyful
and harmonious activity. Of all words used by
those about to die, the commonest are these : " He
is such a God as I want ; " profoundest words of
faith and philosophy! The only words in death, the
best in life ! It is God that we want ! It is such
a God and so revealed that we need! Under this
revelation of Him our troubles shrink, our broken
hearts are healed, our darkened minds are illumi-
nated, our sins pass away in tears of shame and re-
pentance, and our whole being springs up to meet
Him who made us and made us for Himself ; the
secret of existence is revealed, the end of destiny
is achieved !

3. The remaining point is the power of this

THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER. 163

preaching. In one sense its power lay in its sub-
stance, and in another sense, in the philosophy or
ground of it, but there was more than came from
these ; there was the power that resided in Him who
spoke these truths.

There is almost no power in words however com-
fortable in sound, or explicit in meaning ; there is
almost as little in bare truth. These are not the
lacks of the world. Words ! have not men spoken
good words from the beginning ? Truth ! There
has been no dearth of truth from the first. It is
written in the heart of man. It cries perpetually
in the street. It is graven on the heavens and the
earth ; philosophy has always taught it ; literature
is crammed with it. There has never been a civ-
ilization nor an age that was not overarched by
a knowledge of the fundamental truths of charac-
ter and duty, never an age without some nearly
adequate conception of God. But how powerless !
How slowly has the world responded to what it
knows ! How feebly does any man answer to his
perceptions of right and truth ! The reason is that
truth has little power until it is transmuted into
conviction in the mind of some person who utters it
as conviction. In no other way has truth any force
than by this alchemy of personal belief. There
must first be a sight of it, and then a belief in it.
There is, however, a wide difference or rather gap,
between the two. The philosophers and religion-
ists of old saw truth, but they saw it in detached
forms and not as a system ; they also failed to con-
nect it with a personal, divine source, and hence

164 THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER.

had no ground of inspiration and no sufficient mo-
tive to duty. In other phrase, they were without
the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Compare, for ex-
ample, Abraham and Zeno ; the latter had an im-
measurably wider culture and range of thought, but
he could not elaborate a vital system. Abraham,
on the contrary, with his one idea of a spiritual,
personal God, and his one principle of obedient
trust, inaugurated an order that instantly became
vital and endures still as eternal truth. He did not
look as widely, perhaps not as directly at life, as
the Stoic, but he looked in truer directions. One
truth, unless it happens to be an all-embracing
truth, and no number of truths however clearly
seen, have any inspiring or redeeming power until
they are grounded in an eternal Person. Mozley,
in one of his sermons, asks : " Have we not, in our
moral nature, a great deal to do with fragments?"
Yes, and it is the weakness of human nature when
it undertakes to teach moral truth that it has only
fragments to deal with. It is because Christ did
not see truth in a fragmentary way, and because
there was in Himself nothing fragmentary, that He
teaches with power. There is no capability in man
of resisting perfect truth ; when it is seen, it con-
quers. The main thing therefore is to see^ but men
love darkness, and even when they begin to see, it
is in a half-blind way.

We read that they wondered at his gracious words,
and that later, at Capernaum, they were aston-
ished at his teaching, for his word was with author-
ity or power. Why astonished at his teaching ? It

THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER. 165

was nothing new ; it was mainly a quotation, but
He spake it with power, or in a way that com-
manded assent. But in what lay the commanding
power? Not in any impressiveness of manner, or
felicity of presentation. It was something more
even than sincerity and earnestness of conviction.
None of these elements reach up to power. The
impressive and felicitous manner is often weak.
One may be very sincere and earnest and yet pro-
duce no great effect. Elements of power, they do
not constitute power. The world is full of sincere
and earnest men, advocating measures, pleading for
causes, preaching sermons, who make little impres-
sion and gain no ends. The main reason is that
they lack scope, their vision is small, they do not
see their subject in its large relations and bearings.
They have no measure or comprehension of it, but
take some feature or incident of it and mistake it for
the whole. The listeners feel consciously or uncon-
sciously the lack or the error, and refuse to believe,
or to be moved. There can be no estimate of the
mischief often wrought by very good and earnest
men, who by some fine qualities of zeal and honest
purpose and fluency, get the attention of the multi-
tude and preach a gospel shot through with nar-
rowness and ignorance, tagging to its fundamental
and unmistakable features some de-spiritualizing and
cramping notion of a second personal coming of the
Lord, or the like, and so dragging the whole system
down to the level of a dead Judaism, opening
breaches through which the whole faith of the peo-
ple who first hear them gladly, at last flows out ;

166 THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER.

truth swept along with error because they have
been taught to regard them as identical. There are
many dangerous teachers in the world, but none
equals the good man whose ignorance outweighs his
goodness, the goodness floating the ignorance while
it does its fatal work.

The main element of power in one who speaks
is, an entire, or the largest possible comprehension
of the subject. One may earnestly declare a truth,
but if he does not see it, he will not impress it. But
whenever one sees a truth in all its proportions and
relations and bearings, sees it with clear, intense,
absolute vision, he will have power over men how-
ever he speaks. Here we have the key to the
power with which Christ preached. We read that
the Spirit of the Lord was upon Him, He was filled
with the Spirit, inspired, breathed upon through
and through by the divine breath. But it was not
the Spirit that spoke through the Christ, nor was
the power that of the Spirit. The power was in
the Christ whose being was set in motion by the
Spirit. He was not an instrument played upon, a
divine harp responding to heavenly winds, but an
actor, a mind that saw, a heart that felt, a will that
decided, all moving together. He was passive only
in the freedom with which He gave Himself up to
be possessed by the Spirit. It was a force behind
and in his faculties, illuminating and arousing them
to their fullest action. It is not the light that sees,
but the eye illuminated by light. Inspiration is a
mystery and it is not a mystery. It is not a mys-
tery, in the respect that we know it to be a fact ;

THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER. 167

it is a mystery in the respect that we cannot under-
stand it. We hear the sound thereof but cannot
tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth. It is the
witness put into humanity that it is kindred with
God. We know not what it is, but when we feel
its breath we know that it is the breath of God.
But the Spirit is not the power of Christ; it is
rather that which sets in action Christ's own power
which lay in his absolute comprehension of what He
said, and in a perfect comprehension of his position.
He saw the meaning of the Jewish system. He
knew what the acceptable year of the Lord meant.
He pierced the old symbolism to the centre and
drew out its significance. He saw that God was a
deliverer from first to last, and measured the signifi-
cance of the fact. He knew that God was the
Father, and the full force and mighty sweep of that
name. The whole heart and mind of God were
open to Him. And because He knew God, He knew
how God felt and what He would do, and have Him
do. And so He takes his place as the One who is
to declare and manifest to the world the absolute
character and nature of God. This was the power
of Christ's preaching ; He saw God ; He understood
God ; He comprehended God ; He knew what God
had done, and would do ; the whole purpose and
plan of deliverance and redemption lay before Him
as an open page.

We cannot measure this knowledge of the Christ ;
we can but faintly conceive of it. But the measure
of our conception of it, is the measure of our spir-
itual power over others. We speak, we teach, we

168 THE CHRIST AS A PREACHER.

live with power just in the degree in which we have
got sight of God in the revealing Christ and through
Him of the purpose and plan that underlie these
mysteries that we call life and time.

LAND TENURE.

" The people forming the nation exists in its physical unity and cir-
cumstance, in a necessary relation to the land."

*' The possession of the land by the people is the condition of its his"
torical life."

"The right to the land is in the people, and the land is given to the
people in the fulfillment of a moral order on the earth." — Mulford,
The Nation J Chap. V.

" The land is the essential condition of the normal and moral develop-
ment of the state, and therefore it is absolutely holy and inalienable.
It is here that the real moral spirit of the love of the father-land rests ;
originally it is a love of one's native land, and always retains this nat-
ural element, but in its completeness it is wholly interpenetrated with
this consciousness of a moral relation." — Rothe, quoted in The Nation^
page 71.

"The generous feeling pure and warm,

Which owns the right of all divine,

The pitying heart, the helping arm,

The prompt self-sacrifice are thine.

Beneath thy broad, impartial eye.

How fade the lines of caste and birth !

How equal in their misery lie .

The groaning multitudes of earth." — Whittier.

LAND TENURE,

** And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty through-
out all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof ; it shall be a jubilee
unto you ; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye
shall return erery man unto his family." — Leviticus xxv. 10-13.

All men ultimately get their living out of the
soil. There seems to be a recognition of this in
that inexhaustible storehouse of fundamental truths,
— the first chapters of Genesis. Man is placed in a
garden to till it and to eat its fruits. He has no
other way of living, and will never have any other.
There never will be a process by which the original
elements that enter into food will be manufactured
into food. We may fly in the air, or travel around
the earth with the sun, but we shall never take the
unorganized substances that form grass and grain
and the flesh of animals, and directly convert them
into food ; they must first be organized into vital
forms. There seems to be in this process a hint
of the eternal truth that life proceeds only from
life.

Hence, questions pertaining to land are the most
imperative that come before men, because the first
and most constant question with every man is,
How shall I live, how get my daily bread ? All
other questions pertaining to life or condition come

172 LAND TENURE.

after this one. He may be free or enslaved, he
may live in a city or on the sea, he may be edu-
cated or left ignorant, but first of all he must have
food, and food, first or last, comes out of the ground.
Every human being must have some real relation
to a certain extent of soil. The relation may be
an indirect one; he may never see his estate, he
may live in a city and not know the grain that
yields his loaf, but somewhere there is a certain
stretch of land that stands for that man's life. Fif-
teen square feet, it is said, will furnish a Hawaiian
enough to support existence; the Indian requires
miles of hunting ground ; the Belgian farmer lives
well on two or three acres ; here in New "England
we require many. But the main point is the im-
perativeness of the relation. Commerce, manufac-
tures, schools, churches, government even, all these
represent no such necessity as an open relation to
the soil. You may burn all the ships, factories,
churches, school-houses, annihilate government, and
man still lives, but cut him off from the soil, and
in a week he is dead.

I say this to explain the force of land questions,
their interest to thinking minds, their place in his-
tory, and in political and divine economy, which,
however, are one thing. To get man rightly re-
lated to the soil, in such a way that he shall most
easily get his food from it, this is the underlying
question of all history, its keynote and largest
achievement. The chief struggles in all ages and
nations have turned upon this relation. For a hun-
dred years Roman history was colored by struggles

LAND TENURE. 173

over the agrarian laws, the patricians claiming the
lands of Italy for their own, the people and the
great conquerors claiming them for themselves and
the disbanded armies ; these struggles were the
basis of Caesar's fortunes. It was the apportion-
ment of the lands of England by William the Con-
queror to his followers, that laid the foundation of
those conflicts between the nobility or land-owners
and the people, that have never ceased, and that
are to-day at white heat ; questions in which there
is technical justice on one side and eternal right-
eousness on the other. Why should not the Duke
of Buccleugh own land over which he can ride
thirty miles in a straight line, with a title good
for nigh a thousand years ? Why, again, should
one man hold land from which thousands of peo-
ple, on or near it, who are well-nigh starving,
could get their bread ? I do not attempt to answer
these questions, because they are complicated and
do not admit of brief answer, but the recent land-
act of Mr. Gladstone shows how a great, philo-
sophical statesman regards them, " marshaling the
way they are going." The Code of Napoleon, which
took the great estates of France, and even all landed
possessions, and made them subject to division on
inheritance, showed the same broad sense of human
justice, with perhaps some lack of forecast.

There are two forces at work in the matter, both
proceeding out of what seems almost an instinct for
ownership of the soil. The earth is our mother,
and she woos us perpetually to herself. To own
some spot of land, and be able to say, "this is

174 LAND TENURE.

mine," is one of the sweetest of personal feelings ;
it declares our kinship with this natural world that
nurses our life and upholds our feet. There is a
sort of pathos always felt when one speaks of own-
ing a burial lot, — a slight, tender satisfaction, as if
it were fit that one should himself own the spot of
earth where his earth-fed body is to be resolved
into the elements. And thus it was that Abraham,
though he was to have no country here, but only a
heavenly one, still was suffered to call his own the
cave where he buried his dead ; so dear and natural
a satisfaction was not to be withheld.

These two forces that draw men to the soil are,
first, a natural, almost instinctive sense of keeping
close to the source of life, as a wise general does
not allow himself to be separated from his supplies.
This is broad, everj^-day, common-sense. When a
people are shut off from the soil, or denied owner-
ship of it ; when it is held by a few and farmed out
even at low rents ; when land is held in such a
way that it no longer answers its end of feeding the
people, but is kept for parks and forests and hunt-
ing grounds, there will be restiveness, complaint,
and resistance, coupled with a defective life of the
nation and of the family. Back of all claims of
inheritance, above all laws, and deeper down than
technical justice, is the ineradicable conviction that
the soil is for the people simply because they live
out of the soil ; and it is a simple corollary that the
living should be as easily got, and as generous as
possible. The main reason why we have an annual
immigration of over a quarter of a million from

LAND TENURE. 175

Europe is that land can be owned here, while there
it can only be rented. And this emigration is the
reason why Europe is saved from agrarian revolu-
tions, and the few are left in possession of the land.
The injustice of ages lingers because there is an
outlet for human indignation.

The other force is the pride and greed and love
of power of the strong. Here is a triple-woven
force out of which has sprung by far the greater
part of the injustice and oppression that have
afflicted the race. There is no pride so natural
and persistent as pride in extensive ownership of
land. It is figured in the temptation of the Christ,
to whom was shown all the kingdoms of the earth.
To climb a hill or tower, and say, ''I own all I
see," — this is merely the topmost reach of self-
satisfaction. It is simply the broadest possible re-
flection to the man of his own importance. To
own the earth, — that which feeds man and up-
holds him, that which endures while the genera-
tions flit across its surface, that whereon is wrought
the perpetual mystery of growth, the arena of the un-
failing goodness, the promise-covered and promise-
keeping earth, — this is the most philosophic and
well-nigh noblest form of human pride. It is in=
nocent when it does not invade the just rights of
others; when it does not forget that the earth is
the common property of humanity, on the simple
ground that it is necessary to its life.^ But, in-

1 I hardly need say that I do not here intimate any theory of Com-
munism, or of arbitrary distribution of the soil, nor even in what the
right consists by which any man holds a particular portion of land. I

176 LAND TENURE.

stead, nearly the whole world is subject to the en-
croachments of this pride. And greed joins hands
with pride. There is no form of wealth so per-
manent, because the earth endures forever ; so un-
fluctuating, because based on the sure order of
nature; so steady in its revenues, because drawn
from the imperative demands of daily need. Hence
the rich invest in lands. There is hardly a heavy
capitalist in the country who is not a large land-
owner at the West ; and these lands, lying unused
in the track of advancing populations, become the
cause of the high cost of farms bought by the poor.
A Boston or New York capitalist early secures some
thousands of acres; the poor emigrants push be-
yond, settle the country, and thereby advance the
value of the tract many fold, — a shrewd and tech-
nically just operation, but essentially mean and eter-
nally unjust.

And to pride and greed is added the love of
power. The possession of the soil is the surest
exponent and standing-ground of worldly force.
Everything else may fail : the hearts of men, coined
treasures, ships and houses, bonds and promises
to pay, but so long as society keeps a man in
the possession of land he is so far forth strong ;
he has a place to stand in, the fortifications built by
nature, and the arms and defenses that spring per-
petually out of the earth ; he realizes the fable of
Antaeus.

am only speaking of a more general and primitive principle, namely, a
close and direct relation of the people to the soil, — a stumbling-block in
all history, — a relation yet to be realized in the larger part of the
world.

LAND TENURE, 177

It is through these impelling forces, the govern-
ing ones in human nature, that the land has com-
monly been held by a few rich and strong, while
the great mass of mankind have lived upon it at
second-hand, shut out from large portions, enslaved,
serfs, payers of rents with no chance of purchase,
suffered simply to draw from it their necessary
bread, the profits of their toil passing to owners
whose ancestors stole the land ; — such, and worse,
is the history of man's relation to the soil. In all
ages, and in the immense majority of cases, the
relation has been characterized by deep and cruel
injustice. It is the chief field of that dark word
and fact — oppression. The main oppression in the
world has been a denial of man's natural rights in
the soil.

There has been almost nothing of it in this coun-
try, except at the South, where the cycle of wrong
and its retribution has been completed. Whenever
it has taken form, — as in the State of New York,
in the middle of the century, — it has met with
summary repulse. In California, the evil of vast
estates, not to be bought or cultivated, was be-
coming real, when recently the State enacted a new
constitution, chiefly to secure a different system of
taxation, under which these vast estates are crum-
bling into small farms, at purchasable prices. Happy
nation, where every man who will, may sit under his
own vine and fig tree ! Not so is it with any other,
and never before was it so in all the world, unless
we except that little nation called Judea, the only
nation that, at the outset, anticipated the inevitable

12

178 LAND TENURE.

evils of land-monopoly, and provided against them.
All other nations have swept blindly into these
evils, to emerge only after long ages of struggle and
bloodshed.

The remarkable feature of the Jewish Common-
wealth is its anticipatory legislation against prob-
able, and otherwise certain abuses. The struggles
of other nations, and the skill of statesmanship,
have been to correct abuses ; in the Jewish Com-
monwealth they were foreseen and provided against.

There are no words to express the wonder felt by
the student of social science as he first measures
the significance of that feature of the Jewish state
known as the year of jubilee. It is little under-
stood, hidden away in an uninteresting book, stated
in ancient and blind phraseology, a thing of long
past ages, nevertheless it remains the most exalted
piece of statesmanship the world has known, — an
example of social sagacity, and broad, far-reaching
wisdom, such as we look for in vain in the annals of
any other nation.

It is a singular fact that the enslaved of the col-
ored race are the only class that seem ever to have
measured the significance of the year of jubilee.
It had a meaning and a hope for them that they
drew out of these old Levitical scriptures, and wove
into their songs and prayers and preaching and
every-day speech; and at last their day of jubilee
came ! It was also understood by one of the other
race : John Brown, — a Jewish prophet in the whole
temper of his mind, a man who traversed a line of
thought and action far above the level of technical

LAND TENURE. 179

justice and constitutional law, — found in this an-
cient law of Moses the inspiration that made him
the defender of Kansas against the slave power and a
willing martyr at Harper's Ferry. He had a favor-
ite hymn, Charles Wesley's " Blow ye the trumpet,
blow ! " The poet saw in the year of jubilee a
spiritual deliverance from sin, its ultimate and high-
est significance indeed, but this political iconoclast
saw it in its direct and simple meaning as a deliver-
ance from slavery, — the first and only man in the
modern world who ever drew upon it for practical
purposes.

A few words will give us the salient features of
the institution, when we shall see the application of
all that has been said.

The Jewish Theocracy had for one of its main
features a system of Sabbaths curiously and pro-
foundly arranged for the interpenetration of divine
and political principles. The Sabbath was not as
it is with us, a spiritual thing, but was both polit-
ical and moral, yet so finely were the two features
welded that they are inseparable. The Sabbath
was thus made an assertion that life is of one piece,
and that God is over and in all life. Every half-
century, presumably the natural period of human
life, formed a grand Sabbatical circle; first the
seventh-day Sabbath, then the seventh Sabbatical
month in each year, then the Sabbatical seventh
year. When seven of these have been observed,
there is ushered in a year of remarkable provisions,
known as the year of jubilee. The weekly Sab-
bath was for the physical and spiritual rest of the

180 LAND TENURE.

individual ; the seventh Sabbatical month is also
for the individual, but it has a wider social signifi-
cance, takes in the nation and winds up with the
chief religious act of the nation, — the fast and sacri-
fice of atonement. The seventh Sabbatical year
has an agricultural and political significance. The
ignorance of later periods and the delayed wisdom
of modern science are anticipated ; the soil is to lie
fallow one year in seven for recuperation. To-day
the agricultural journal is urging upon farmers this
bit of ancient wisdom. On this seventh year all
debts were remitted, a custom retained even to the
exact time by the laws of many States, notes out-
lawing at the end of seven years, and accounts at
even a shorter period. The purpose was both pru-
dential and merciful. It led to snugness in busi-
ness, it avoided entanglements that outweigh mem-
ory and so render testimony difficult, it put a limit
about the power of the presumably strong over the
presumably weak and unfortunate, yet had no qual-
ity of injustice, as all transactions were based on a
full understanding of it. It simply prevented a
compounding of interest, a process fatal at last to
both parties. But all this is moral as well as eco-
nomic. It was a perpetual lesson in thrift, in care-
fulness, in forbearance and mercy; it was a contin-
ual rebuke to the hardness of avarice; it assured
the poor and the unfortunate that by a divine law,
his burden would be taken off. It constantly fed
hope by giving every man a fresh start, not daily
or yearly, which would be demoralizing, nor at the
end of some remote and undefined period, which

LAND TENURE. 181

would be disheartening, but once in seven years, a
period long enough to enforce the lesson of mistake
but not long enough to crush the spirit.

A cycle of seven years also measured the limit of
the bondage of any Hebrew slave, though not syn-
chronizing with the seventh-year Sabbath. Humanly
speaking, slavery could not be kept out of the He-
brew Commonwealth ; it was too early in the history
of the world. But it was hedged about by stren-
uous laws all merciful in character, and of such a
nature in their operation that slave holding became
unprofitable, and the system died out. Moses was
wiser than this nineteenth-century nation of ours !
He sapped the life-blood of the institution by wise
statesmanship ; we drowned it in a sea of blood and
fire, — blood from a million hearts, fire that touched
the hearts of forty millions.

But the fiftieth year, or year of jubilee, has a
wider scope. It covers this prime question of land-
tenure. It settled at the outset the problem that
no other people ever solved except through ages of
struggle and revolution.

The Hebrew nation existed under the conscious-
ness of a covenant with Jehovah. It would be a
petty criticism that pried into the origin of this be-
lief, moved by contempt at the seeming presumption
of this little nation of fugitive slaves, — petty and
narrow indeed ! It were wiser and more scientific
to regard every nation as under covenant with God,
if it but had the wisdom to know it. That this na-
tion discerned the eternal fact, and wrought it into
the foundations of their State, only shows its insight

182 LAND TENURE.

into the nature of the State, and its receptivity of
inspired truth. Moses was no partialist, no con-
ceited dreamer that Israel was a favorite of heaven,^
This was but the poetic gloss put on the national
career by the poet-prophets of a later age. He
doubtless knew that every nation exists under cov-
enant with God, exists in God and for God, and
that this relation constitutes a covenant. In the
same way, every man has a covenant with God ;
and this necessary relation, made up of promises
and laws on one side and obligations on the other
side, is the peculiar glory and hope of every life.
But this covenant, whether with a nation or an in-
dividual, takes on special forms according to cir-
cumstances. It is in the covenant of God with this
nation of ours to give us the continent, and to keep
it forever, if it continues free and just. It is in the
covenant of God with every man to grant him a
certain, special success and reward if he keeps
God's commandmentSo So when these Hebrews
were on the way to Palestine there was elaborated
for them, or inspired within them, a belief that God
had given them this land. They drew on the tradi-
tions of their race and called it a promised land.
They held the hope of possessing it from God, and
so it was a covenant possession. This is not super-
stition nor conceit, but truth so large that we can
hardly take it in. It were better to train ourselves

1 I am not unmindful of the criticism as to the authorship and date of
the Pentateuch now in progress ; but will merely say that the point now
under consideration bears internal and unanswerable proof of dating
from the Conquest of Canaan ; it could not, from its very nature, have
originated at a later period.

LAND TENURE. 183

towards a comprehension of it than look down upon
it as a narrowness. But this promised land was for
the nation, for all and each one ; not for the heads
of the tribes, not for the successful warriors, not for
the strong, or rich, or high-born, if such there were.
When the promised land was reached and secured
there was allotted to every family a tract of land,
a sort of universal homestead act. Recognizing the
fact that man's ultimate dependence is upon the soil,
the purpose is to keep the whole body of the people as
near it as possible, and to prevent dispossession from
it. They are not forbidden to sell it ; such a re-
quirement would have taken all freedom and elas-
ticity out of practical affairs, it would have made
men the creatures of formal rules instead of leaving
them to the educating influence of commercial
transactions. Inalienable estates make a man at the
same time weak and too strong : weak because he
has no call to preserve his own, and too strong be-
cause he has resources without corresponding char-
acter ; he will be over- confident, willful and pre-
sumptuous.

But on the other hand, these Jewish estates could
not be permanently alienated. Once in fifty years
all land, that had been sold, reverted to the family
to which it had been allotted : " every man re-
turned to his possessions."

It does not lessen the wisdom of this legislation
that it probably did not meet the exigencies of the
later development of the nation, nor even that its
details may have become a hindrance in the more
complex state of society that followed the Captivity,

184 LAND TENURE.

when it probably ceased to be enforced. Its wis-
dom is to be found in its previsionary features, in
its reversal of ordinary history, that is, it planted
the nation on equal rights at the outset instead of
leaving them to be achieved by struggle, and in its
assertion of the general principle that it is wise to
keep the body of the people as near the source of
their subsistence as possible. It was not given up
until it had educated and grounded the nation in
those conceptions of practical righteousness that are
found in the pages of the prophets, through whom
they have become the inspiration of the world.

Its design and effect are evident. It was a bar
to monopoly of the land. All greed and pride in
this direction were limited. One might add field
to field for a series of years, but after a time the
process ceased and the lands went back to their
original owners. The purpose was to make such a
habit unprofitable, to keep the resources of society
evenly distributed, to prevent the rich from becom-
ing too rich and the poor hopelessly poor, to undo
misfortune, to give those who had erred through
sloth or improvidence an opportunity to improve
the lessons of poverty, to prevent children from
reaping the faults of their parents ; one generation
might squander its portion but the next was not
forced to inherit the consequences. Thus once in
fifty years society was rehabilitated. It was a per-
petual lesson in hope and encouragement. It took
off accumulated burdens. It put limits about the
cruelty of man to man. It was a constant assertion
of equality. It fostered patriotism, a virtue that

LAND TENURE. 185

thrives best on the soil. It kept alive in every man
a sense of ownership of his country. It was, prima-
rily perhaps, an inwrought education of the family,
fostering a sense of its dignity, and guarding the
sanctity of marriage and legitimacy of birth. All
these influences and ends drew their efl&cacy, not
from their formal perfection, but from the fact that
they sprang out of a divine requirement, and were
the expressions of a moral order that rested on God.

Such are some of the main features of this unique
law. There are minor features that it is not neces-
sary to speak of, details appropriate to its proper
execution. For example, the fields lying fallow
was necessarily incidental to a transfer of them.
It also directed the attention of the restored owners
to other forms of labor, such as the repair of houses
and the like, that were needful. Thus we see how
the seemingly trivial or superstitious features pass
away under examination, and resolve into practical
wisdom.

Though a political measure, it is informed with
spiritual significance. It is throughout instinct
with mercy. It taught humanity. It rebuked and
repressed the great sins. It was in keeping with
the underlying fact of the national history which
was deliverance, and, as well, with the central idea
of the world, which is redemption, — redemption
from evil however caused and of whatever kind.
It was an assertion of perpetual hope, — hope which,
though long delayed, comes at last to all, and every
man returns to the possessions his Creator gave
him. It was in its profoundest meaning, a prophecy

186 LAND TENURE'.

wrought into the practical economy of a nation.
It shadows forth the recovery from evil, the un-
doing of all burdens that weigh down humanity, the
eternal inheritance awaiting God's children when
his cycle is complete. And so the Christ, when, on
the day of atonement, he stood up in the synagogue
of Nazareth to read, opened the book where it was
written : —

*' The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
Because He anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor ;
He hath sent me to proclaim release to the captives,
And recovering of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty them that are bruised,
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord."

And the eyes of all were fastened on Him as He
said : '' To-day hath this Scripture been fulfilled in
your ears." The acceptable year of the Lord was
this year of jubilee. Christ stood upon this great,
sabbatical idea of the Jewish system, not upon the
sacrificial and ceremonial idea, but upon this far
loftier one of rest and deliverance, — rest in God,
and deliverance by God from all the evil of the
world.^ He made universal what had been partic-
ular, general what had been restricted. He ushered
in an age of jubilee, a restoration not to be undone,
a deliverance never to lapse into captivity,

1 The true relation of Christ to the Sabbath is to be found here, rather
than in his chance allusions to it in his conflicts with the Pharisees, in
which necessarily there was something of antagonism to it as a Pharisaic
custom. Christ discerned the fact that the entire Jewish life, individual
and national, was Sabbatical, — there was no time that was not a Sab-
bath ; i. e., the nation was grounded on and immersed in rest and de-
liverance. The question remaining for us to-day is, Shall we have a
sign of these eternal facts and processes ? Shall we have a Sabbath or
not? I have never seen any elaboration of this view, namely, that
Christ planted Himself upon the sabbatical, and not on the ceremonial
idea.

LAND TENURE. 187

This ancient piece of statesmanship is full of
pointed lessons for these modern times. It cannot
be reproduced in form, but it still teaches the ever
necessary lesson, that nations and corporations and
individuals are always forgetting that the world
belongs to all men by the gift of God. It teaches
the wisdom of showing mercy to the poor and un-
fortunate, and the unwisdom of permitting endless
monopolies and limitless increase of wealth. It is
the business of the State to see that these things
are restricted, as both right and safe, as necessary
for the rich as for the poor. The methods em-
ployed may sometimes seem to lack in technical
justice, but there is a righteousness that lies back
of formal justice. As the world goes, the forms of
justice are apt to become the instruments of oppres-
sion in the hands of the avaricious, the proud, and
the strong. These three always lie in wait to op-
press the poor, the humble, and the weak ; and their
choicest instruments are those legal forms and insti-
tutions that are necessary to society. But they
have their limits by a law which is above all such
laws and formal institutions. When wealth op-
presses the poor, or keeps them at the mere living
point, when monopolies tax the people, whenever a
few own the soil, however legal the form of pos-
session, when there is any process going on by
which the rich are growing richer and the poor
poorer, there is a divine justice above all formal
justice, that steps in and declares that such pro-
cesses must stop.

Shakespeare saw this, as he saw so many things

188 LAND TENURE.

that underlie social righteousness ; Shylock was
legally entitled to his pound of flesh, but there was
a law of mercy that overruled technical justice, and
Portia resorts to technical quibbles to save the un-
fortunate Antonio, only because the avaricious Jew
would not heed this law of mercy. The dram-
atist thus sets forth the fact, that if the law of
mercy is not fulfilled, other means will he used to
the same end. Moses put these means into the con-
stitution of the State. The Jewish theocracy was
imbedded in mercy ; its forms down to the minutest
detail were instinct with the finest spirit of justice
and equality, and tenderest regard for the poor and
unfortunate. It reversed human history, beginning
at the goal to which other nations are tending.
Still, it is not exempt from the process of develop-
ment, but the development pertains to the form;
the spirit underlying the developing form is in
keeping with the absolute perfection of God, and is
the attestation of his presence in the forms.

There is a wisdom in laws that hedge about the
courses of the avaricious and the strong, even at
the expense of technical justice. For when the op-
pressions of the rich and the powerful and the for-
tunate reach a certain point, the oppressed multi-
tudes turn like bunted beasts at bay, and destroy
both their oppressors and the social fabric.

These dangers are never far off from any people.
They have their seeds in human nature. We have
once tasted their bitterest fruit, we may taste it
again.

Three dangers confront us that we do not yet

LAND TENURE. 189

rQUch heed, but whicli are sure to take shape when
the outlet now found iii new land is closed, and the
forces of society are shut up to themselves : the
growth of monopolies, the antagonistic organization
of capital and labor, and legislation in the interest
of wealth. They can be met and averted only by
a recognition of the fact that the nation is a moral
order, and endures only through a realization of
practical righteousness.

MORAL ENVIRONMENT.

" Though it is true that we cannot make ourselves feel at the time by
an act of the will, acts of the will do eventually, not create feeling, in-
deed, for feeling is a divine gift, but elicit it and bring it into play by
removing the obstructions to it. The formation of habits by acts of the
will against inclination is indeed the working of the law by which the
mind is prepared for a higher state, in which feeling, and inclination
itself moves it to good." — Mozley, University Sermons, page 152.

*' The problems to be solved in the study of human life and character
are these : Given the character of a man and the conditions of life around
him, what will be his career? Or, given his character and career, of
what kind were his surroundings? The relation of these three factors
to each other is severely logical. From them is deduced all genuine
history. Character is the chief element ; for it is both a result and a
cause, — a result of influences and a cause of results."— Pkesident
Garfield.

**He fixed thee mid this dance
Of plastic circumstance.

This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest ;
Machinery just meant
To give th)' soul its bent,
Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed."

Robert Browning, Rabbi Ben Ezra.

MORAL ENVIRONMENT.

"Wherefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, al-
ways abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that
your labor is not in vain in the Lord." — 1 Corinthians xv. 58.

Is it for this that St. Paul has led us through his
mighty argument, to confirm us in the homely duty
of steadfastness ? Is it for this only, mere every-
day fidelity, that he has taken us along this grandest
highway of thought, compassing the whole histoiy
of humanity, spanning the gulf of death, and tra-
cing human destiny till it is lost in the ecstasy of
final victory and eternal life? One would think
that having lifted us to such heights, he would leave
us there to bask in the eternal sunshine and drink
the joy of the victory over death. It seems an anti-
climax in thought and style, that after the mighty
themes brought before us, — the sway of death
from Adam to Christ, the resurrection from the
dead set forth by analogies drawn from heaven and
earth, the mystery of the spiritual nature and the
deeper mystery of the image it shall bear, — it
seems out of keeping that we should be called upon
to fold the wings upon which we have followed him
in his inspired flight, and drop back into the mere
ploddings of every-day duties. Whether it seems
an anti-climax or not, depends upon one's concep-

13

194 MORAL ENVIRONiMENT.

tion of what is high and low. A mere rhetorician
would not have dared to add anything after the
sublime assertion of the victory over death and the
grave. A sentimentalist would have said : '' there
can be nothing higher or better than such a frame ;
here let us abide." But St. Paul, being no mere
rhetorician and nothing whatever of a sentimental-
ist, saw that there was something higher than vic-
tory over death, something more essential than
comfort in the revelation of destiny ; and so he leads
us on to what he conceives to be highest and best.
It is an interesting disclosure of the underlying
traits of his mind that is made by the purpose lying
back of, and running through, this chapter. His
aim is not to enlarge our knowledge of the future,
not to reveal our destiny, not to comfort mourners,
not to take away the fear of death ; all these ends
are gained, but they are not the primary ends before
him. He sets this matter of resurrection from the
dead right in the minds of the Corinthians because
false views of it were injuring and perverting the
service they were to render. So long as they be-
lieved that resurrection meant some spiritual trans-
formation already past, they were incapable of true
service ; their hope was behind them, their inspira-
tion was a spent force, there was no sufficient mo-
tive for thorough fidelity ; for in morals the motive
is always ahead. They had dropped a definite and
inspiring hope and taken up in its stead some fan-
tastic notion that resurrection from the dead meant
simply an awakening of their spiritual nature, type
of mistake made now as well as then, and followed

MORAL ENVIRONMENT. 195

by loss as great. Such are they who deny all valid-
ity of fact to gospel narrative, and shrink all the
objective revelations of God into the interplay of
their own emotions. Take definiteness and out-
ward reality away from the Faith, and there will be
no more strong, definite service, but instead endless
and useless introspection upon the mysteries of our
nature, the rehearsal of which comes to be regarded
as the fulfillment of all righteousness, — a very
tiresome thing, and so dropped, or exchanged for
the startling assertions of atheism ; for between
a God revealed and atheism there is no resting-
place. St. Paul is careful that they of his day
shall fall into no such mistake ; hence these words
that sound like the trump of doom, awakening
echoes in the under-world, and calling in the courses
of the stars to aid him in his saving work. His
single aim is to keep men from lapsing out of a true
and rational service to God. Service ! service that
is steadfast, that flows out of unmovable convictions,
that always abounds in work, that is kept to its
standard by the most inspiring of hopes, that is con-
fident of success, knowing it is not in vain in
the Lord because he is the Lord of an actual resur-
rection. Such is the height to which he leads us,
beyond which there was, in his mind, nothing higher,
as there can be nothing higher in the mind of any
one who rightly measures human life. For service
unites in a practical form the two highest qualities
or forces of our nature, — love and fidelity ; one cov-
ering our emotional, the other our moral faculties ;
one fixing us in the eternal order of human sympa-

196 MORAL ENVIRONMENT.

thy and oneness, the other turning it to practical
ends and holding it steady to its work.

Thus service becomes the height and sum of hu-
man duty. Servants exalted into friends ; servants
understanding the glory of their calling and also
the secret of blessedness ; servants in the one work
of doing good in an " evil world ; " such is the name
and the vocation of all who are born into the woild.
Its finest characteristic is steadfastness, the holding
on quality, persisting, not by mere force of will, but
by sympathy with, and faith in, the end to be
reached.

This steadfastness requires first of all, that one
should be steadfast in his own moral condition ;
and of this point we will now speak.

As it is the finest feature of service, so it is the
one we are most apt to fail of. Alternations of
feeling that find their way into conduct, lapsing
away from purposes, the fading out of clear percep-
tions of truth, the slothful neglect of plain duty ;
here is the fault of us all. But there are reasons
for it that it is well to understand.

1. The high standard of requirement makes it
hard of attainment. This is one of the features of
Christian service that tends to throw it out of gen-
eral acceptance ; in one way or another men are
always trying to escape claims that are otherwise
so attractive. Ask anything of me, but do not ask
me to be perfect ; take much from me but do not
require all ; leave me some little space where I may
be my own master and hold something as my own:
so men have ever said, not discerning that a perfect

MORAL ENVIRONMENT. 197

standard is both a necessity and a blessing. Thus
only can God declare his perfect will ; thus only is
highest effort evoked ; thus only do we learn the
perfectibility of character, one of the unique fea-
tures of the Faith ; thus only is the divine element
within us summoned to its fellowship with the
Spirit. But while the high standard awakens en-
thusiasm, it also begets discouragement ; we are
like men climbing some tall peak, who draw strength
from its very height, and start afresh as they see
the glory of the light that plays about the distant
summit, but are also wearied by the same condi-
tions. The greatness that inspires also weakens ;
the perfection that stimulates our finer qualities
presses heavily on our weaker ones. We hold our
lives under this two-fold condition of perfect re-
quirement and human weakness, and the result is
an experience sharing in the qualities of each. But
it is better that there should be fluctuation under
high requirement than uniformity under low re-
quirement. For the kingdom of Heaven aims only
at the best ; it does not concern itself with what is
inferior ; it is gauged throughout upon the scale of
the perfect and the infinite.

The struggle of the ages, the inmost purpose of
human development, is to bring men up to the
point of enduring the highest motives. It is one
of the unique features of the Christ, — a sinless man
demanding sinlessness, ending the preparatory stage
of inferior requirement, and of winking at the hard-
ness of the human heart, and launching upon the
world the utterly new conception and demand of

198 MORAL ENVIRONMENT.

perfection. Yet He makes it in no bare way, but
with a corresponding disclosure of motives and with
gracious provision in case of failure. In a moment,
and for the first time, the world of eternity is
thrown wide open, the absolute nature of God is
revealed, the assertion of perfectibility and the de-
mand for it laid upon men, destiny lifted out of
time into the timeless ranges of eternity ; and along
with these overwhelming revelations, enough in-
deed, it would seem, to crush the human spirit, a
redeeming revelation of grace and pity and patience
and inspiring aid. Such is the miracle in the world
of thought and history that Christ presents ! Such
is the absolutely new conception and method that
He inserts into society for its adoption, a method
that combines infinite stringency of requirement,
with provisions that render them effective in every
weakest child of humanity.

2. Steadfastness finds another hindrance in the
stronger power of the world, stronger because
nearer and always present. We have only to put
out our hands and we feel it ; our eyes always be-
hold it; its voices fill our ears; it is built into the
structure of our bodies ; our flesh is wrought out of
its dust ; our nerves vibrate in unison with its elec-
tric pulsations ; our blood is red and vital with the
nourishment drawn from its bosom. It is but a
short road between our bodily desires and their ful-
fillment ; it is not a long road between worldly
desire of any sort and its gratification. It is all
before us, near at hand, unmistakable, very real
and substantial. It is not strange, that when the

MORAL ENVIRONMENT. 199

claims of this world conflict with those of the eter-
nal world, the former should often win us. For
the eternal world, though near, is not visible, nor
has it a voice always to be heard amidst the clamor
of this world. Its tones are low, its movements are
fine and delicate like the touch of spirits, its re-
wards and satisfactions are parts of a wide-circling
system, the full force and results of which we do
not yet experience. Now, it is almost a law of our
nature that the nearest motive governs us. That
it is not wholly a law is the foundation of religion.
That we can reject the nearer motive, and yield to
the remoter or higher one, is the basis of spiritual
life. The use of this possibility of our nature con-
stitutes character in its higher ranges.

With such hindrances as these, it becomes a vital
question how to fortify ourselves in a steadfast habit
of spiritual life. For fluctuation is weakness and
misery; the heart as well as the judgment protests
against this serving two masters. There is no peace
nor strength nor success save in steadiness and unity
of purpose. How to gain it is the question.

It is evident that the first aijd main thing to do
is to set the whole current and habit of life against
these temptations. We must cherish the enthusiasm
of the high standard ; we must resist the nearer
motive, and hold the two worlds of sense and spirit
in their right relation ; we must recognize the fact
of human weakness, and treat it accordingly, bring-
ing up fresh reserves of will to fill the place of
drooping purposes, inducing higher moods that shall
lift us out of the lower. All this is very evident,

200 MORAL ENVIRONMENT.

but is it not' possible to come into some condition,
some moral fortress, that shall be in itself fortified
against this tormenting fluctuation ? Mere acts of
the will, the proddings of conscience, the enthusi-
asms of the spirit do not avail ; the fault is in the
will itself, in the conscience, and the flesh-encased
spirit. Something is needed to steady the will, to
supply the place of an intermitting conscience, to
take up the irregularities of the emotions ; some-
thing to keep the moral machinery in action, when
will and conscience and emotion flag or cease to
act.

We are driven to that old-fashioned thing called
habit^ which I shall now speak of under the modern
phrase of environment.

It is a point greatly overlooked just at present,
that faith needs an environment. Because faith is
spiritual in its essence, we are too ready to con-
clude that it is spiritual in its substance ; that
because it is inward and invisible, it has no need
of an external and visible form. So it is left un-
housed, — a spirit without body, a tartarian ghost
in this very concrete world.

It is a practical as well as curious question as to
the relation of character to the external world. Is
character the result of inward forces, — using the
world simply as a field of action, a mere standing
ground, — or does it actually draw upon external
forces ? Does all come from within, or is there an
interplay of forces upon the moral nature from both
worlds ? Does environment contribute to character?
It is a strange feature of an age that deems itself

MORAL ENVIRONMENT. 201

thouglitful, that it takes opposite sides of this ques-
tion according to the department of life to which it
is applied. If it is the spiritual department, the
whole drift of the age is towards inwardness, with
denial of, or indifference to, any force or value in
environment. Faith and spiritual condition are
deemed so wholly interior in their sources and arena
of action, that they are hardly allowed a place even
in conversation ; much less do they require an en-
vironing form and habit. But if the question refers
to education, to health, to social habits, to culture,
there is a disposition to make much of environment.
Strange inconsistency of an age that imagines itself
logical ! It has taught us the great word and truth
of environment ; we ask it to be consistent in its
application of it.

This word environment has become a sort of key-
word in modern thought. It would not have so
fastened itself on common speech were there not a
fresh and intense sense of some truth for which it
stands. It is an old word, as old as the language,
but the fact or force that it represents is far larger,
or rather is far more plainly recognized, than here-
tofore. The ancient and also the eternal truth is
that man grows from within out. It is from within,
— thoughts, principles, beliefs, desires, affections,
purposes, — that a man's life takes shape. This is
eternal, unchangeable truth ; the Christ declared
it, the poets and philosophers repeat it, it under-
lies the great theories of education, it is the first
principle of the Christian faith. But all truth is
double. Man grows also from without. If the seed

202 MOKAL ENVIRONMENT.

of growth is sown within him, the moisture and
light and air that determine the growth are from
without.

It has been recognized of late that the environ-
ment of men has affected them far more than has
been supposed. The immense variety in all animal
life is, how far we know not, but to an immense
degree, the result of varying external conditions,
or change of environment. The favorite scientific
thought of the day holds to a certain unity of life
at the outset, and that the variety is due to external
causes. This probably is not a universal truth, but
it is a truth of immense sweep. Physically, man is
molded by climate, by food, by occupation. Men-
tally he is molded by institutions, by government,
by inherited beliefs and tendencies. It is a truth
of wide range and significance, and just now rather
overshadows the other and greater truth, that man
grows from within, and has his shape in a spiritual
germ wrapped up in himself.

There is, however, a general inconsistency in its
application. In the natural sciences, especially those
pertaining to plants and animals, the environment
is studied quite as much as the nature of the plant
or animal. So the peculiarities of races and nations
and communities are explained by their surround-
ings ; there is less talk of blood and more of condi-
tion. The social science of the day plays about
the external condition of the degraded masses, and
wisely so, for the without must be reformed as well
as the within. In short, in every department of
thought except one, there is a deep sense of the
value and power of environment.

MORAL ENVIRONMENT. 203

The department from which it is excluded is re-
ligion; everywhere else proper external conditions
are insisted on ; the organization of society must
aid and reflect its culture ; a city must have public
buildings and institutions that correspond to its
growth ; the value of art in shaping mind and char-
acter is thoroughly felt, the influence of good houses,
pure air, sweet water, shapely architecture, fine pro-
portion and color is everywhere recognized, and
justly. But when we come to religion, we find that
the favorite thought of the day has halted.

There is no graver accusation to be brought
against the age than this inconsistency, and espe-
cially on the part of those who make the most of
environment, emphasizing it everywhere until they
come to this part of life, where they stop and say :
"Religion is a spiritual matter; it is all within;
it is something not to be spoken of; a spirit of
reverence is all that is needed — the form may
go ; be humble, but you need not pray ; fear God,
but you need not trouble yourself about church
or worship ; keep children pure, but don't burden
their minds with the forms of religion." We recog-
nize in this a very general and popular habit of
thought, especially in two classes, — the scientific
class, and the vast bulk of the people who have
caught its way of thinking. There are two classes
yet exempt, — the humble, believing class, and the
few who are too intelligent to be deceived by the
transient fallacy.

I think those of us who still hold on to the value
of the external forms of religion may well ask of

204 MORAL ENVIRONMENT.

those who do not, to be consistent. They have taught
us the immense truth in that word environment ;
we ask them, by their own logic, to carry their idea
into religion, instead of coming to a dead halt on
its threshold. We ask them not to turn their backs
on their philosophy by making the spiritual culture
of a man an exception to his physical and mental
culture. We ask the man who is particular that
his children should live under the disciplining influ-
ence of fine art, and good society, and beautiful
scenery, and healthful surroundings, to act on the
same wise principle in training his children in eter-
nal morality. As things are going, the latter is left
out ; the forms of religion are passing away from
the family ; there is no daily grace over meat, no
household prayer and hymn, no systematic teaching
of religious truth and duty ; the church is void of
children ; young men, for the most part, do not
attend church ; the act of worship no longer is es-
teemed of value for the young ; the great mass hold
it to be of small importance for any. And so the
entire matter of environment in religion is dropping
away from society more and more. It is a fact of
immense significance that young people no longer
frequent the churches, — which means that a gen-
eration is coming on that is not trained in worship
and religion. What will come of it cannot be ac-
curately foreseen; but it will be a state properly
named as atheistic.

The difficult point \o contend with in this state
of things is a certain conceit and assumption of
superiority. It used to be said that the religious

MORAL ENVIRONMENT. 205

man assumed to be better and wiser than the out-
sider, but to-day it can be said that the assumption
is on the other side. There is a suppressed sneer
for those who still go to church, and worship God
in any outward way. It is a common and not sup-
pressed boast, especially on the part of young men,
that they are "not much of a churchman," for such
is the phrase for stating that they have thrown
away the whole thing, — outgrown it, they claim.
They rather pity you that you also have not out-
grown it, and look down upon you from their
agnostic heights as very deluded and quite behind
the age. There is nothing so difficult to contend
with as conceit, unless it be fashion, and, alas ! this
practical atheism is supported by these two but-
tresses. The man who still holds on to the forms
and strict observances of religion meets a subtle
current of mild, pitying contempt. The young
man who goes to church puts himself outside the
vast majority, whose jeers are not lacking.

The reason of this inconsistency is that, as yet,
there is but little recognition of any environment
except a physical one ; there is failure to see that
our twofold nature implies a twofold environ-
ment ; that as a material world enfolds the body
and plays into it with educating forces, so there is
a world of moral and spiritual fact that is the thea-
tre and condition of moral and spiritual culture. I
am aware that the reality of this world is ques-
tioned. But let us consult the poets, who are the
best pihilosophers. It is in the very essence of
poetry that it recognizes this double environment ;

206 MORAL ENVIRONMENT.

without it, it would have no vocation, no field, no
possibility of existence even. Pegasus loses his
wings and becomes a plow-horse. All thought is re-
duced to a bare realization of material facts, — man
a thinker, but with nothing to think of except mat-
ter ! All poetry, all high art, is a protest against
this degrading conclusion. By its own inspired in-
stinct it assumes a moral and spiritual order that
enfolds man and plays into him. Shakespeare, al-
most without fail, puts every great moral action
into a framework of corresponding physical like-
ness. The tempest in Lear's heart is linked to the
tempest of the elements by more than a fancy.
The moonlight sleeping on the bank, and the dis-
tant music, have a logical relation to the lovers'
hearts. When " fair is foul, and foul is fair," these
moral confusions " hover through the fog and filthy
air," and are uttered on '' a blasted heath." When
the noble king draws nigh to the castle in confiding
love and gratitude, —

" The air
Nimbly and gently recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses."

As the hour of Banquo's murder draws on, —

" Good things of day begin to droop and drowse."

Macbeth appeals to night to aid him in his crime.
Thus, throughout, this master of thought throws
back into the physical world the reflections of the
moral acts done within it, but on what ground,
except that in and behind the physical there is a
moral order on which they repose. He could not
find in nature a reflection of moral acts, if nature

MORAL ENVIRONMENT. 207

itself were not an expression of moral realities.
The physical itself is environed and contained by
the spiritual. Indeed, the whole relation of man
to nature runs up into morals for its explanation,
nor can it be found elsewhere. Thus, the uniform-
ity of natural law, when brought into contact with
the free will of man, means a fixed moral habit.
Thus, his recurring natural wants tend to fix him
in wise and orderly ways that are more and higher
than physical customs. And so the uniformity of
nature's forces and operations have not only a moral
significance, but become sources and educators of
moral habits. Man is thus being trained as a
moral being into a certain affinity with the courses
of nature ; the stars rise and set in him ; the steadi-
ness of gravitation is reduced to a moral equivalent
in his obedient heart. This steadfast environment
of natural law is simply a plan and method, so far
as it goes, for getting man into a corresponding
moral state, — uniform but free, and so tending to
produce a fixed yet free character, — brought up, at
last, to the nature of God whose perfect freedom
finds expression in the uniformity of his laws.

It will not answer to shut out character from
these external orders, and confine it to an interplay
of emotions and convictions in our secret bosoms ;
it must have another world than its own to secure
and draw out its development. And such a world
is provided. The nation when viewed as a moral
order and citizenship is made sacred, the family
when regarded as divine and eternal, society when
it is felt to be a relation of righteousness, the church

208 MORAL ENVIRONMENT.

when it is recognized as the necessary and natural
condition of spiritual life, — these are the outer
walls of the environment upon which high character
depends, and by which it is shaped in its general
features. But as within a walled city there are
other walls environing household life, and within
these still other walls enclosing the individual, and
as the body itself is a sort of wall about the spirit,
— all needed to secure a full, sound life, — so char-
acter must have successive rings or layers of envi-
ronment about it in order that it may have fullness
and strength.

I believe it to be one of the chief mistakes of the
age, the fruit of an excessive individualism, tliat
the value of such environment in shaping and fix-
ing character is overlooked. There are more vital
points on the other side, life is from within, but
truth is double ; it can reach no height but on the
balancing pinions of the within and the without ;
clip either wing and it circles round and round and
at last comes to the earth. The outward drill of
religious observance and spiritual habit is as need-
ful as the devout feeling, even though, like the
river of life, it flows out of the throne of God. One
logically implies the other, but it does not neces-
sarily secure it. One may run the risk of formal-
ism, but the other runs the risk of extinction. It
is a matter of regret that to stand within or without
the church is getting to be regarded with indiffer-
ence. And if within, the recurring duties of the
relation are regarded as hardly obligatory or even
important. Now, this framework of Christian ser-

MORAL ENVIRONMENT. 209

vice is indispensable to Christian character, and the
necessary condition of its permanence and steadi-
ness. The outward habit tends to create an inward
habit ; the external method favors the internal dis-
position and becomes its measure, as in a plant the
soil and light are the conditions and the measure
of th^ growth of the vital principle within it.

Here lies the secret of public worship ; we do
not worship because we feel like it, but that we
may feel. The feeling may have died out under
the pressure of the world, but coming together
from mere habit, and starting on the level of mere
custom, we soon feel the stirring of the wings of
devotion, and begin to rise heavenward on the pin-
ions of song and prayer. This is well understood
in England, and underlies the much criticized " Ca-
thedral system." To one who goes for the first
time from our simple American churches into an
English cathedral, York or Westminster, and en-
counters its elaborate ritual, repeated twice every
day, often to almost no congregation, a service com-
posed largely of singing, the prayers intoned, the
Scriptures read in a strange penetrating monotone,
— it seems the vainest form, a relic of popery, a
thing kept up to please the ear and eye, and to
reap the fruits of the rich endowments. There is,
indeed, much to criticize, much that might well be
changed, much that might well be added ; but the
longer one thinks of this system and usage, the
more one suspects there may be in it solid sense
and far-reaching wisdom ; he sees in it a nearly in-
destructible embodiment and assertion of worship.
14

210 MORAL ENVIRONMENT.

The building itself is of stone, its history shades off
into dimly recorded ages. In its crypt lie the ashes
of the great for a thousand years ; on its walls are
the names and eflBgies of statesmen and soldiers and
philosophers and saints ; its pavements are worn
with the tread of generations. It is vast, beautiful,
solemn, enduring ; it spreads wide and generous
over the earth, resisting the encroachments of this
world's eager hands, and rising high into the pure
spaces of heaven. St. Paul's is not a beautiful struc-
ture, but it overlooks the Bank of England and the
Exchange. And thus all over England, in towns
nowhere two hours apart, are found these great
churches, with their corps of clergy and choirs, with
daily service heralded by softly chiming bells, ut-
tered by divinest music, and invested with the sol-
emn usage of long ages. There is no interruption of
this service, no vacation, no holiday, no break from
pestilence or war or political change. Here is a
mighty fact tremendously asserted ; it forces a sort
of inevitable reverence, not the highest and purest
indeed, but something worth having. It becomes
the conservator of the faith, and in the only way in
which it can be conserved, through the reverent
sentiment and poetry of our nature. Hence, it has
reduced the entire service to song and chant. The
prayers and creeds are not said but sung. Trans-
lated thus into sentiment, etherealized into poetry,
the hard and outworn part of them vanishes away,
and their real spirit lays hold of the spirit, and is
sent up into the spiritual heavens on the wings of
song ; for a creed is not made to be read as prose,

MORAL ENVIRONMENT. 211

but to be sung as poetry; and it is all the truer
and more truly confessed because so rendered. The
fresh critic says of much of this service, why not
change it ? Why not suit it to the times ? And
indeed one may justly press such questions, but the
answer also has force : " We want an unchanging
assertion of our faith in the worship of God : it
ought not to change with the fickle tide of human
thought ; its real meaning is keyed to unchanging
human need ; it has met these needs in ages past,
and it will meet them for years to come ; if you
require changes, make them for yourself as you go
along — the church is broad and tolerant."

The practical question arises. Has this great sys-
tem real power ; does it keep alive reverence and
speak back to the lives of the people ? It would
be idle to claim that it is the only or main chan-
nel of religious life in England. The dissenting
churches reach more of the people and enforce a
more direct and cogent influence ; but neither will
or ought to yield to the other ; the wise men on
either side do not antagonize one another ; each
has its field and method. The main value of the
established church is its lofty and unshaken asser-
tion of the worth of worship — keeping alive rever-
ence, which is the mother of morality, and furnish-
ing a public environment of the common faith.

This system of form and worship is kept up be-
cause the highest culture and intelligence in Eng-
land believe in it. There is there as here a tide of
shallow and conceited thought setting against ex-
ternal observance; it will not deny God but will

212 MORAL ENVIRONMENT.

build Him no altar ; it will be reverent but it will
not worship by voice or knee. The service, as it
is observed in the cathedrals and in the parish
churches all over England, and in the Presbyterian
churches of Scotland, which are presided over by
men equally intelligent and robust in intellect, is
the protest of the best minds in Great Britain
against the divorce of religion from the forms of
religion. We have not, in our country, the aids
and bulwarks against this disintegrating influence
that are there so effective. The immemorial usage
and the thorough organization of worship afford, at
least, a covert while the fitful winds of unbelief
sweep over the people. Here we have no antiquity
that commands veneration, and our organization of
worship is slight and shifting. But all the more
we need, as individuals and churches, to hold right
principles on this subject and cling to good cus-
toms. We cannot afford, in this day, to let any-
thing in the way of religious observance pass away
without the severest challenge. We can do nothing
better for ourselves, for our families, for the faith,
than secure for each a full, ministering environment
of religious custom. A man should have for him-
self certain religious habits and usage, — something
of an external nature that shall speak back to him
in confirmation of his belief; it helps to make it
definite, to keep it constant; it bridges over the
weak and languid spots in one's experience ; it is
a body holding together the soul and playing into
it from the external world. It is the belief of all
churches that the sacraments are an outward sign

MORAL ENVIRONMENT. 213

of inward grace. It is a relation sanctioned by the
highest thought of all ages; without religious ob-
servance there can be no full, strong, rewarding
spiritual life, and hence no real life.

More imperatively is it needed in the household.
A family without prayer, without a domestic ritual
of worship, is an anomaly ; it is as though the body
were without an eye or a limb ; it will be weak
where strength is most needed ; it will lack a cer-
tain fine fliavor and sweetness, and will grow hard
and dreary, and at last desolate because the ave-
nues of light and lasting joy and peace have been
kept closed. And for like reasons, the claims of
the Church should be heeded. It is the altar before
which every man should worship, because he is
linked to an external world, and also to a world of
fellow-men.

If you would have a faith, put under it a solid
earth, and overarch it with an infinite heaven;
stand firm on one, and look steadfastly into the
other.

IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE,

"And hear at times a sentinel

Who moves about from place to place,
And whispers to the worlds of space,
In the deep night that all is well.

"And all is well, though faith and form
Be sundered in the night of fear ;
Well roars the storm to those that hear
A deeper voice across the storm. '^

In Memoriam, exxvi.

" The foundations of a faith in a future life lie outside of Revelation,
and ought, therefore, to be disclosed independently of it. . . . It is im-
mortality which gives promise of Revelation, not Revelation which lays
in our own constitution and in the government of God the foundations
of immortality." — Pres. Bascom, Philosophy of Religion^ page 185.

"There is in man the suspect that in the transient course of things
there is yet an intimation of that which is not transient. The grass that
fades has yet in the folded and falling leaves of its flower that perishes
the intimation of a beauty that does not fade. The treasures that are
frayed by the moth and worn by the rust are not as those in which love
and faith and hope abide. There is a will that in its purpose does not
yield to mortal wrong. There is a joy that is not of emulation. There
is a freedom that is other than the mere struggle for existence in physi-
cal relations, and is not determined in its source or end by these finite
conditions." — Mulfokd, Republic of God^ page 243.

IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE.

" Seeing that these things are thus all to be dissolved, what manner
of persons ought ye to be in all holy living and godliness, looking for
and earnestly desiring the coming of the day of God, by reason of which
the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt
with fervent heat ? But, according to his promise, we look for new
heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." — 2 Peter
iU. 11-13.

It is a singular fact that these words have far
more probability of truth than they had a genera-
tion ago. Then, the stability of the physical uni-
verse was held to be a settled fact of science ; it is
not so regarded now. The science of to-day is in-
clined to the opinion that the physical universe will
undergo great catastrophes and probably be extin-
guished. But while science thus adds its weight
to Scripture, it throws diflBculties in the way of be-
lief in future existence by destroying the only
known theatre of life. If this world and the uni-
verse of worlds are to undergo at times such catas-
trophes as science and Scripture indicate, even to
possible destruction, where shall immortal man
abide ? Where is he when the heavens are on fire
and the elements melt with heat ? The Scriptures
do not heed the question, but modern thought stum-
bles over it into unbelief.

The question most eagerly urged to-day is that of

218 IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE.

human immortality. It is doubted and assailed on
all sides, consciously and unconsciously. It is dis-
cussed and denied under definite form ; it mingles
with the current thought of the hour ; it haunts the
most thoughtful minds ; it disturbs the faith of the
most devout. It is doubted not only by science
but by theology. There is springing up a school
of religious thinkers, learned and devout, that de-
nies the inherent immortality of man, regarding it
as an achievement, or result of faith and virtue.
The religious form of this opinion is immortality
conditioned upon holiness ; its scientific form is the
survival of the fittest. They are the two sides of
one theory and tend to support each other, though
the advocates of each work their vein of inquiry
independently of the other. It is not impossible
that the scientific theory, the survival of the fittest,
so far as it relates to the past of existence and up
even to the very verge of the working of the Chris-
tian system, will prevail, and win common accept-
ance ; but it is a question if Christianity is not the
exact reversal of this principle, and the introduc-
tion of another phase of God's eternal laws. Chris-
tianity teaches not that the strongest only survive
but also the weak. Indeed Christianity is not itself
except it teaches this. Its inmost principle, its en-
tire significance, is the salvation of the weak. Its
contrast with nature is that it saves and does not
destroy. It abdicates its place and function when
it admits that any part of humanity perishes at
death.

But the common, every-day skepticism of immor-

IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE. 219

tality springs from a somewhat general though not
very thorough knowledge of the scientific theories
as to life and origin now at the front. It is the in-
fluence, rather than the knowledge, of these theories
that lies behind the doubts.

Physical science chiefly touches human destiny
at two points of what is technically known as the
principle of Continuity; namely, the resolution of
thought and feeling into molecular changes ; and
the development of man from preceding lower or-
ders of life. The principle is thought to militate
against immortality, as it implies that all the po-
tency of life is within matter, and that all mental
and moral activities are but the operation of organ-
ized matter. Under this hypothesis thought and
feeling are resolved into the whirl of molecules and
the formation and destruction of tissue, a wholly
material process, necessary in its character and ad-
mitting of no permanent personality. \To find any-
thing outside of this all-comprehending law of
which immortality can be predicated, anything that
survives when the bond breaks that holds the whirl-
ing atoms together, is an impossibility under this
conception. On the contrary, its analogies seem to
point to an opposite result. Personality under this
theory is but a momentary lifting up of certain par-
ticles and forces from the ocean of being into which
it soon falls back, like a wreath of spray snatched
by the wind from the crest of a wave, drawing its
energy from it, never ceasing to play into it, and
finally mingling with it. The main thing is not
personality but the all ; the chief object is not to

220 IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE.

erect lasting personalities but to keep the great
ocean of activity in full working order; the real
value of existence lies not in yielding an order of
enduring persons, but in the undiminished energy
of itself, throwing up, for a moment, such phenom-
ena as trees and beasts and men, as if for its own
secret delight. So long as science held only this
view of the world it was not wholly devoid of no-
bility of sentiment. It could speak of immortality
if not of enduring personality ; the forces entering
into and passing out of human life do not cease
but live and act forever ; men perish, but man sur-
vives ; the generations pass away, but the race en-
dures. Here, indeed, is a certain kind of immortal-
ity, capable even of sustaining a lofty, if not real
theory of altruistic morality.

But of late, these fine sentiments have been losing
their force. There are indications that leading
physicists are getting somewhat concerned at their
own conclusions, and are surmising if there may
not be some world or order outside the reach of
their tests ; or if in that something that lies back of
whirling atoms, — that something which it is forced
to recognize though it cannot lay hold of it, — there
may not be a universe spreading out in regions as
vast as those revealed by the microscope and tele-
scope ; if this universe of suns and planets, of earth
and air, of revolving atoms and continuous force, is
not, after all, a hemisphere against which lies an-
other universe as real as this, a universe of causes
and beginnings, and therefore perhaps of ultimate
destinies. For science is now asserting that the

IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE. 221

material universe is limited in its duration. It is
simply a vortex-ring, like a puff of smoke, having
its origin in friction, and at last to be brought to an
end by friction. It is matter diffused by heat, los-
ing its heat and uniting again as cold cinder. The
sun once was all, and all once more will become the
sun, and the reunited sun will lose its heat in space,
and when heat is gone, all motion will cease, and
eternal silence and death will reign throughout
space. Not a cheerful gospel certainly, this that
science last reveals to us. It is not strange that
the dreariness of such conclusions repels the mind
towards some better hope, and that phj^sicists are
working other veins of truth, if for no other end
than to escape the horror of desolation their own
triumphs have compelled them to face Mr. Fiske
says : " There is little that is even intellectually
satisfying in the awful picture which science shows
us of giant worlds concentrating out of nebulous
vapor, developing with prodigious waste of energy
into theatres of all that is grand and sacred in spir-
itual endeavor, clashing and exploding again into
dead vapor balls, only to renew the same toilful
process withovit end — a senseless bubble-play of
Titan forces, with life, love, and aspiration brought
forth only to be extinguished." Such sentiments
characterize the ablest physicists of the age.

It is a great achievement to have traced this
physical universe down to its end, and taken an in-
tellectual measure of it. One of three possible des-
tinies is now held to be certain : it will either cease
to exist, or it will exist as a frigid mass of dead

222 IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE.

matter ; or it will forever repeat a process of alter-
nate vaporization and condensation. Whichever it
be, the question rises with infinite emphasis : What
is the end of creation ? The study of the material
universe takes us farther and farther from life and
meaning and use. We reach, at last, either nothing-
ness, or a cinder, or a ceaseless clash and repulsion of
vapor-balls called worlds, with possible moments of
life amidst vast cycles of lifeless ages. We reach the
end of a road but find nothing to tell us why it ex-
ists. The question forces itself upon us, if by look-
ing in other directions we cannot reverse this pro-
cess and find some worthy end of creation, something
instead of nothing, the play of mind instead of the
whirl of molecules, life instead of death. The re-
cent verdict of science as to the fate of the material
universe, drives us with irresistible force to belief
in an unseen, spiritual world, — not the belief of
religious faith, but of cold, hard reason. The pro-
foundest depth of absurdity into which the mind
can sink is the denial of purpose. Meaning, worth,
use, there must be somewhere. If we cannot find
it in the seen, we must search for it in the unseen.
If the path into the visible leads away from it, we
must open one into the invisible to see if it cannot
be found there. There is no theory that lays hold
of the universe with so comprehensive a grasp as
the principle of continuity, but like all other mate-
rialistic theories, it leaves a somewhat unexplained
and outside its grasp, a somewhat that embraces its
beginning, consciousness, moral freedom, and the
main-spring of its activity ; but it may be consid-

IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE. 223

ered as favorable to , immortality by reaction from
its own triumphs. It remands us with terrible em-
phasis, to some other order for light which it haa
demonstrated to itself that it cannot find, finding
only darkness.

The other main point at which physical science
touches human destiny, is in connection with that
part of the doctrine of physical evolution which
holds that all forms of life are developed from pre-
ceding forms under the impulse of some unknown
force, — a theory not yet exactly defined and far
from being fully proved. So far as it is accepted
in its extreme form, it seems to violate the hope of
immortality by bringing all life into one category,
and under one law, with the apparent inference of
one destiny. If personal identity can be predicated
of one set of beings, why not of all, if all are one ?
The very vastness of the hope seems its own de-
struction. Bishop Butler, encountering the same
objection from another line of argument, boldly
accepts this logic, and does not withhold immor-
tality from the brutes. Aside from logical consid-
erations, it may be a harmless belief, but while the
verdict of human thought has always been in favor
of the immortality of man, it has rejected that of
the brute ; and the permanent impressions of the
race are not to be disregarded. It does not follow
that because all lives may be developed from a
preceding order, one destiny awaits them. It is a
process of involving as well as evolving, and the
former may introduce new conditions, if not new
forces, that affect the final issue. It may even be

224 IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE.

granted that all the potentiality of life is drawn
from preceding orders, without being forced to the
conclusion that their destiny is the same. This
potentiality has an accretive quality, in so far at
least as to form new combinations. It may thus
unite energies that shall enable it "to shoot the
gulf we call death." Take the extremest form of
evolution, — matter having all the potency of life
within itself, — it does not necessarily exclude future
existence. The space between an ascidian and a
thinking brain is as wide as that between temporary
existence and unlimited existence. If an ascidian
can evolve mind, the brief life of an ascidian may
evolve endless life. Somewhere along the process
it may pick up the quality of continuance as some-
where, according to the theory, it picks up the
sense of moral freedom ; for there is nothing in this
assumed potentiality of matter adverse to contin-
uance. On the contrary, as the theory presupposes
the eternity of matter, and the continuity of force,
the probability would be that the vital potentiality
of matter embraced a principle of eternal duration
that would at last come out in some of the higher
forms of life. If matter can attain to mind that
longs for immortality, may not its potentiality be
able to achieve it ? If it can develop the concep-
tion, may it not be able to develop the fact ? A
matter that can work itself up into such forms as
a Shakespeare or a Newton, might be expected
to reach corresponding achievements in regard to
time.

If the question still recurs, at what point in the

IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE. 225

process of evolution, granting its truth for the mo-
ment, the principle of immortality is inserted, or
gets possession ? — a question of great pungency un-
der the principle of continuity, we answer it by
instancing an analogy. At what point of its growth
does a plant acquire the power of self-perpetuation ?
As a shoot it utterly perishes if cut down ; the lusty
after-growth of stem and branches also withers into
nothingness; the flower is not " a self-reviving thing
of power ; " but the flower, gathering light and dew
into its glowing bosom, intermingles with them its
own life-essence and so bears a seed around which
it folds its faded petals as a shroud, and falls into
the dust, no longer to perish but to live again.
This is more than illustration, it is an argument.
A living thing under the law of development comes
to have a power of self-perpetuation that it did not
have at first ; why should it not be so with the life
that has culminated in man ? He is the flower of
life, and in his heart alone may there be found the
seed of eternal existence.

But this phase of the subject is unsatisfactory ;
it is not necessary to consider it under these sup-
positions, and we turn to another. We want not
mere continuance but some solid ground for belief
in personality after death. An immortality of force,
of vital energy, of impersonal life, is a matter of
small concern to us. If this be our destiny, all
personal hopes, plans, and motives must be confined
to this side of the grave. Our little life is indeed
rounded with a sleep, a brief journey from noth-
ingness to nothingness. But reason, and human

15

226 IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE.

nature itself forbid us to accept any theory of ex-
istence that can only be named with a sigh, as this
must be. The keynote of the universe is 303% and
every theory of destiny must harmonize with it.
Evolution cannot impair the fact of personality here
or hereafter, simply because man transcends nature,
which is the field of evolution. It is true that we
are very thoroughly mixed with the nature about
us, and physically may be one with it. We give
our bodies over to the evolutionist to predicate what
he will of them, but we draw a line that science is
forced to respect, between our physical and moral
nature, and claim for the latter a diverse set of
laws and a diverse destiny. Man may comprise all
that has gone before him in nature, but he is not
summed up by it. As the grand proof of this, we
adduce the fact of the moral nature with its prime
characteristic of freedom. This takes man out of
the category of the material world, and exempts
him from its destiny. He covers, but he also tran-
scends nature and is a supj^a-neitiwal being. It is
absurd to suppose that the order of law that reigns
universal in the realm of nature should yield such a
thing as free-will. Mr. Darwin himself aduiits that
"free-will is a mystery insoluble to the naturalist."
Necessity, which is the equivalent of law, never
could evolve freedom. But choice, or freedom, is
the constituting characteristic of man, upon which
is built the whole fabric of his life and moral nature.
It makes him a person ; it is the basis of his his-
tory. It puts him above the order and on-going of
nature. Make the chain of evolution as strong as

IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE. 227

you will, bind man down to nature by every mus-
cle and nerve and bioplastic cell of his body, here
is something unaccounted for, and by far the greater
part of him. As a moral being, he is utterly inex-
plicable on any theory of evolution that attempts
wholly to account for him. As moral, he is at-
tended by a vast array of faculties, experiences, and
phenomena, that evolution cannot explain, such as
consciousness of identity, abstract conceptions, moral
obligations, the sense of God, the consciousness of a
will. If natural science refuses to accept these as
legitimate phenomena, or treats them as mere en-
largements of physical instincts, so much the worse
for natural science ; it thereby abdicates its func-
tion of explaining phenomena. The greater physi-
cists perceive this. Professor Tyndall says that the
chasm between brain-action and consciousness is im-
passable, that " here is a rock upon which mate-
rialism must split whenever it pretends to be a
complete philosophy of the human mind." The
admission is valuable, not merely because of its
origin, but for its impregnable truth. With such
a chasm between the two parts of man's nature, —
molecular processes and perpetual flux on one side,
and conscious identity, moral sense, and freedom on
the other side, — we need not feel troubled at any-
thing physical evolution may assert of man : it sim-
ply cannot touch him. We may now build our
argument as to his destiny, unhindered by -any
clamor that may reach us from the other side of
this chasm, — a chasm that science itself recognizes
in our composite nature.

228 IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE.

Thus far we have simply outlined some of the
reasons why such theories as that of the continuity
of force, and physical evolution throw no barrier
in the way of possible immortality. The former
fails to account for man, and is intolerable to the
human mind. The latter does not account for the
beginnings of life, for the plan of any life, for the
source of the potency that works in life, or for
the reason that guides its workings; it does not
account for the difference between the instincts of
the brutes and the mental and moral faculties of
man, nor for the sense of personal identity; nor
can any theory account for it that is limited by
matter with its universal law of constant flux and
atomic change. Personal identity is impossible un-
der any theory whatever of materialism. A con-
sciously enduring being cannot be got out of a
perpetual flux. It can proceed only from a non-
atomic, and therefore non-fluctuating substance, —
from something therefore wholly opposite to mat-
ter. Matter cannot uphold the consciousness of
identity. When this is apprehended, we shall have
little difl&culty in believing that we are far outside
its limits, — of another substance and destiny.

But other difficulties may arise, such as the
thought that this sense of personal identity may be
temporary, that as it slowly grew within us, so it
may slowly die out ; that as our life was drawn out
into separateness from the great ocean of being, so,
having some cycle within itself, it will sink back
into it, as a star rises and sets. Age and infancy
are very like, especially when each is normal ; sleep

IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE. 229

and unconsciousness mark both. As there is no
identity before infancy, is there any after age ?
The fact that, notwithstanding the extreme plausi-
bility of this familiar analogy, the human mind has
never accepted the suggestion, has great signifi-
cance ; it has instinctively felt that this resemblance
does not indicate a reality. Descartes argued : " I
think, therefore I am." Had he continued, I am,
therefore I shall continue to be, he would have
uttered as cogent logic. Granted the consciousness
of personality, and it is impossible to conceive of
non-existence. If selfh a unit and not a conglom-
erate of atoms, how is it to be got out of existence?
We cannot conceive of the annihilation of an ulti-
mate atom. We can conceive of an organism being
resolved into ultimate atoms, but not of their de-
struction ; science and reason agree in this. But
man is conscious of himself as an entity, — a moral
unit, — a non-fluctuating, unresolvable, and hence
indestructible thing. This is the logical expression
of the common belief in immortalitv, and is the
basis of the remark of Goethe, that "it is to a
thinking being quite impossible to think himself
non-existent."

The thought that we may sink back into the life-
flood of the universe from which we came, as a drop
of water lifted by the wind falls into the ocean, is
checked by the same sense of the impossibility of
the loss of personal identity. Whatever may be
our relations to the source of life, the I, the self,
must remain. Anything else is, as Goethe says,
unthinkable. Tennyson asserts the same : —

230 IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE.

"That each, who seems a separate whole,
Should move his rounds, and fusing all
The skirts of self again, should fall
Remerging in the general soul,

'*Is faith as vague as all unsweet;
Eternal form shall still divide
The eternal soul from all beside.'*

But it may be said, if there is another life, there
must be another world. Where is it? Of what
composed ? If it is within the limits, or under the
laws of matter, it can have no endurance. The
soul must have a sphere like itself, — permanent,
unfluctuating. And because it must have it, its
existence may be asserted on common and well ac-
cepted grounds of reasoning. Whatever is needed
to account for and explain any well attested truth
or phenomenon, may be accepted as real. Thus,
when the undulatory theory of light was estab-
lished, it was necessary to assume the existence of
the luminiferous ether, and there is still almost no
other proof of its existence than that the nature of
light demands it. Science has thus created by sim-
ple deduction a universe of matter. Surely if phi-
losophy may create a universe in which to float the
worlds, and convey those quiverings of burning suns
that we call heat and light, it will not withhold a
fit sphere for the soul when it breaks away from
the bonds of matter. We base our proof, however,
not on mere analogy, but on the simple ground that
the nature of the soul demands a proper and an-
swering sphere, as wings demand air, and fins
water. Otherwise, creation is without order and
coherence. It is nothing against the existence of

IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE. 231

such a world that we do not see it, or get any report
of it. The sense of this came over me with great
power as I once stood upon a spur of the Contra
Costa Range at New Almaden, and looked down
upon the valley of Santa Clara that stretched away
from its base, a floor of emerald, twenty miles to
the Bay, and twenty miles between the enclosing
mountains. A thin, blue haze — the miracle of
beauty in that land — spread gauze-like over the
landscape, deepening to purple in the hollows of
the hills, obscuring all traces of human habitations,
and leaving visible only the vast stretch of fields
without motion or sound or other indications of life,
— a visible world. But, I mused, how much more
real is the world hidden under its distance and
shroud of azure, the unseen world of human life,
the play of passion, the strife of ambition, the ache
of sorrow, the joy of hope, — a world unseen^ but
so real and intense as to blot the other into insig-
nificance.

Were we to search for this sphere of the soul, we
would not look for it in any refinement of matter,
nor in any orb beyond the " flaming walls of the
world," but rather in an order over against this
visible order, as mind stands over against the body.
If, however, it be said that the mind must always
have a body, or something like it, to hold it up, a
sub-sto^ — a something like quicksilver upon a mir-
ror, to take up and turn back its operations, some-
thing to sustain reaction and perhaps necessary to
yield consciousness, — we may follow a hint dropped
by science in its latest suggestions. Physicists of

232 IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE.

the highest rank hold to the existence of a pure
or non-atomic fluid filling all space, in which the
worlds swim, a sort of first thing to which atomic
matter is a second thing. But wliile science thus
acknowledges a non-atomic fluid filling the inter-
stellar spaces as a basis upon which the universe is
a cosmos, or a united whole, it cannot impugn the
analogy of a non-atomic soul fluid, or ether, as the
basis or body upholding the mind, if we care to
claim it. As we can imagine all the worlds from
"Blue-eyed Lyra's topmost star" to the smallest
asteroid, swept together into some far-off corner of
space — a not improbable result — and leave it clear
of atomic matter yet filled with ether ready to float
and unite another universe, so the material atomic
body may be swept away and gathered to its orig-
inal dust, leaving the immaterial body intact, a
basis for the mind and its action as it had been
before. Science and Revelation here draw very
near to each other : science demanding a non-atomic
substance as the only possible basis of conscious
identity, and Revelation asserting '' there is a spir-
itual body ; " and " God giveth it a body even as it
pleased Him."

The subject leads us into a region of mystery,
where indeed all truth conducts us, shading off in
quicker or slower degree, according to the nature
of the truth. What can you say of human life ?
Where will you get your terms for describing life ?
Where will you stand as you draw off and look at
life — being? Make being objective, and where are
you when you contemplate it ? What upholds your

IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE. 233

feet ; what is the light of your eyes as you look at
this fact of existence ? You cannot tell ; you are
in a region of mystery. Outside of all our thinking
lies this unknowable region, a land of mystery.
Every true thinker reaches it quickly. It is igno-
rance to overlook this field, into which run paths
from every department of study. A crystal of salt
is as mysterious as conscience. Question it with
What ? Whence ? For what ? and you are at once
in the realm of darkness. As the mystery of space
invests the physical creation, so do our thoughts
lose themselves in mystery whenever certain crucial
questions like these are connected with ourselves.
But mystery implies faith ; they are correlatives.
I do not mean faith in any specific sense, but rather
that as all thought runs at once into mystery, all
knowledge has in it an element of faith. And by
faith, I mean a fixed hope that there is truth that
cannot be attested except as it bears witness to
itself. And no man is a thinker who shuts this
faith-element out of his speculations. For no man
can be called a thinker who does not follow the
paths opened by the study of any fact or thing.
The secret of thought lies in tracing the connec-
tions and bearings of truth. I go farther: no man
is in any high sense a thinker upon whom these
questions. Whence ? Why ? For what ? are not
pressing down for answer. The secret, the soul of
thought, is not disclosed till, in the shrouded cham-
bers of stillest meditation, these questions are raised
in respect to whatever the hands touch and the eyes
see and the ears hear. And whenever these ques-

234 IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE.

tions, Whence? Why? For what? are asked, the
questioner jBnds himself in depths of mystery. If it
be life that he questions, it is dumb before him. If
it be a crystal, its gleam dies out ; it cannot tell
whence it came, or whither it goes, or why it is.
Into this region we are driven when once we begin
to think, a region where we have no light but such
as comes from our hopes, no assurance but such as
is generated by the assertions of our own souls.
Finding myself here, I question no longer the dumb
unanswering world about me, but I question myself.
I ask, as I have a right to ask. What do I want ?
What do I need ? What is the meaning of these
voices that never cease utterance, like the echoes
of tides within sea-caverns, voices that speak of
God and self and destiny. I question these, and
though it be still a world of mystery about me, I
get answers that are plainer, and that reach deeper
down, and higher up, than when I look into the
face of gleaming planets, or drop dredging plum-
mets into the depths of the sea. I get, at least,
affirmations that yield me repose, and take some-
thing of the vanity and jangle out of life. And if
here I raise the question of destiny, I find myself at
liberty to believe in what I want. I need life, and
I take it, and no philosophy of matter or origin can
pluck it out of my hand.

IMMOETALITY AND NATUEE.

**Who forged that other influence,
That heat of inward evidence,
By which he doubts against the sense?

** He owns the fatal gift of eyes,
That read his spirit blindly wise,
Not simply as a thing that dies.

" Here sits he shaping wings to fly ;
His heart forebodes a mystery :
He names the name Eternity.'*

Tennyson, The Two Voices,

"For love, and beauty, and delight.
There is no death nor change; their might
Exceeds our organs', which endure
No light, being themselves obscure."

Shelley, The Sensitive Plant.

"Life loveth life and good: then trust
What most the spirit would, it must;
Deep wishes, in the heart that be,
Are blossoms of necessity."

David A. Wasson, Seen and Unseen,

" I cannot believe and cannot be brought to believe, that the purpose
of our creation is fulfilled by our short existence here. To me the ex-
istence of another world is a necessary supplement of this to adjust its
inequalities and imbue it with moral significance."

Thurlow Weed.

IMMORTALITY AND NATURE.

" If a man die, shall he live again? " — Job xiv. 14.

It is a strange fact that the human mind has
always held to the immortality of the soul, and yet
has always doubted it ; always believing but always
haunted by doubt. Yet this throws no discredit
upon the truth ; rather otherwise. A belief that
remains persistently rooted in the mind of the race,
generation after generation, yet ever beset by an
adverse influence, must have a vitality drawn from
truth itself; were the belief not true, the doubt
would long since have vanquished it, for nothing
but truth can endure constant questioning. The
fact, though strange at first sight, is not inexplica-
ble. It is a truth that takes up, and sets forth the
antagonism found in man's own nature as a moral
being put under material conditions, a mind shut
up in a body. The consciousness of mind and
moral nature is always asserting immortality ; the
sense of our bodily conditions is always suggesting
its impossibility. It is the same thing that has al-
ways showed itself in philosophy ; idealism deny-
ing the existence of matter, and materialism deny-
ing the reality of spirit. But the true philosophy
of the human mind is both idealistic and material-

238 IMMORTALITY AND NATURE.

istic ; / am^ the world is^ — this is the general ver-
dict ; it holds both to mind and matter ; but they
tend to war against each other, mind consciously
preeminent over matter, and matter forever doubt-
ing the reality of mind, claiming it to be a part of
itself. Hence, when the practical question of im-
mortality is raised, the mind asserts the continu-
ance of itself after death, subject, however, to the
doubts raised by our close subjection to matter. It
is under such conditions that we hold all high
truths — spiritual, ethical, mental. We do not
reach unquestioned ground till we come to truths
of mathematics, the unshared domain of matter.

In keeping with this, we find that nearly all
doubt or denial of immortality comes from the
prevalence of a materialistic philosophy ; nearly al-
ways from some undue sense or pressure of the ex-
ternal world. The skeptics are those who study the
physical world exclusively; or those who are pecul-
iarly sympathetic with the order of the material
universe, or those who fall in with a prevailing
habit of materialistic thought. Great sinners very
seldom question immortality. Sin is an irritant of
the moral nature, keeping it quick, and so long as
the moral nature has voice, it asserts a future life.

Just now the doubt is haunting us with unusual
persistence and power of penetration. Certain
phases of science stand face to face with immortal-
ity in apparent opposition. The doctrine of con-
tinuity or evolution in its extreme form, by in-
cluding everything in the one category of matter,
seems to render future existence highly improbable.

IMMORTALITY AND NATURE. 239

But more than this, there is an atmosphere, engen-
dered by a common habit of thought, adverse to be-
lief ; for in morals, eyerything goes by atmospheres.
There is a power of the air that sways us, without
reason or choice. But, as usual, public opinion lags
behind its origin. While there are schools of sci-
ence that hold immortality to be impossible, still if
the verdict of the broadest and highest science
could be reached it would be found in sympathy
with the doctrine of a future personal existence.
For science is rapidly changing its spirit and atti-
tude. It is revealing more and more the infinite
possibilities of nature. Its own triumphs have
made it humble and believing ; it does not now say :
it is improbable ; but rather, nothing is improbable.
The trend of tendency is outward, taking in more
and more. Its lines of perspective do not converge
but spread outward, taking in more of spirit as
they take in more of matter. It is also getting
over that stultifying principle of positivism that
nothing is to be believed that cannot be verified by
result, the most shriveling doctrine that ever found
place in philosophy. True science admits that some
things may be true that it cannot verify by result,
or by any test that it can use. The most thought-
ful believers in the doctrine of evolution understand
very well that it does not account for the beginning
of life, for the plan of any life, for the potency that
works in matter, for the facts of consciousness, for
moral freedom and consequent personality. Here
are facts and phenomena that it sees must be ac-
counted for ; and it also sees that they intimate and

2-±0 IMMORTALITY AND NATURE.

perhaps demand a future life. In short, science is
broadening into philosophy, and is getting philo-
sophic insight and outlook.

In considering immortality, it is quite safe to put
science aside with all its theories of the continuity
of force, and the evolution of physical life and in-
wrought potentiality, and the like. There is noth-
ing here to hinder faith in whatever may be asserted
of immortality from other sources. It matters not
what the evolutionist says of our past, or through
what gradations of being he may trace our physical
history ; it matters not how we came to be what
we are. We are what we are, moral beings, with
personality, freedom, conscience, moral sense ; and
because we are what we are, there is reason to hope
for immortal life. Whatever may be the origin of
our moral nature, it cannot affect its destiny ; our
past does not determine our future. So much for
science ; if it cannot say anything for immortality,
it cannot say anything against it.

In any attempt to prove immortality, aside from
the Scriptures, we must rely almost wholly upon
reasons that render it probable. Our consciousness
of personality and moral freedom declare it possi-
ble, but other considerations render it also probable
and morally certain. Indeed, our faith in immor-
tality, aside from revelation, rests upon indications
that point to it, omens that presage it, inwrought
prophecies that demand it for their fulfillment.
But let us allow no sense of weakness to invest the
word probability. Many of our soundest convic-
tions are based on aggregated probabilities. In-

IMMORTALITY AND NATURE. 241

deed, all matters perta(ining to the future, even the
sunrise, are matters of probability.

We propose to name some of the grounds for be-
lieving that the soul of man is immortal. I speak
chiefly to those whose faith in the Scriptures is not
absolute, and to those who are troubled with flashes
or seasons of doubt that blind them to their better
hope ; to those also, who, by some state or habit of
their minds, demand other testimony than that of
revelation.

1. The main current of human opinion sets
strongly and steadily towards belief in immortal-
ity. Whenever the question has been raised, it
has been decided in the affirmative. It is a per-
manent conviction of the race, varied only by soli-
tary voices of denial, and by periods of doubt, like
the present, through the over-pressure of hypotheti-
cal and seemingly antagonistic truth.

2. The master-minds have been strongest in their
affirmations of it. We do not refer to those who
receive it as a part of their religion. In weigh-
ing the value of the natural or instinctive belief,
Augustine's faith does not count for so much as
Cicero's, and Plato's outweighs Bacon's ; Plutarch
is a better witness than Chrysostom ; Montesquieu
than Wesley ; Franklin than Edwards ; Emerson
than Channing ; Greg's hope is more significant than
Bushnell's faith. All the great minds, often in spite
of apparently counter philosophies, draw near to the
doctrine, and are eager to bear testimony to it.
Even John Stuart Mill, whose religious nature was
nearly extirpated by an atheistic education, does

16

242 IMMORTALITY AND NATURE.

not say nay when the roll of the great intellects is
called. Blanco White, another wanderer from the
fold of faith, wrought into the form of a sonnet so
perfect that we instinctively call it immortal, an
argument, the force of which men will feel so long
as '' Hesperus leads the starry host : " —

*' If light can thus deceive,
Wherefore not life ? '*

Wordsworth touched the high water-mark of the
literature of the century in his ode on immortality,
and Tennyson's greatest poem is throughout exult-
ant in the hope that '' Life shall live forever more."

3. The longing of the soul for life, and its horror
at the thought of extinction. Emerson profoundly
says : " When the master of the universe has points
to carry in his government, he impresses his will in
the structure of minds." That this inwi'ought desire
should only guard the mortal life would be an un-
worthy use of so deep a passion, even if it did not
come nigh to deception. The universe is adequate
to meet the wants of all its children. It does not
use infinite thoughts for finite ends. There must
be correlation between desire and fulfillment.

4. The action of the mind in thought begets a
sense of a continuous life. One who has learned to
think finds an endless task before him. He comes
to the end of nothing, solves nothing, reaches no
full truth, only a few hints and stepping-stones
*' that slope through darkness up to God." The
brute probably has a clear understanding of all sub-
jects upon which it thinks ; that is, the bounds of
perception .and thought are identical ; but man

IMMORTALITY AND NATURE. 243

reaches the bounds of nothing. The atom may
hide a universe, and the seen heaven of stars may-
be but an atom to the whole. We speak of cause
and effect, but we grasp only a little section of an
infinite series. We trace cause till eye and thought
can go no farther, when we reverently say God,
spanning, in our ignorance, worlds of unattain-
able truth. We trace effect only to lose it as the
drop is lost in the ocean. Thus, with a sense of
truth, we cannot absolutely measure any truth. All
things are linked together, and the chain stretches
either way into infinity. It is a necessity of thought
to follow it, and the necessity indicates the fact.
There can be no fit and logical end to thought till it
has compassed all truth. It is unreasonable to sup-
pose that we are admitted to this infinite feast only
to be thrust away before we have well tasted it.

5. A parallel argument is found in the nature of
love. It cannot tolerate the thought of its own
end. "It announces itself as an eternal thing.''
The spontaneous forms it assumes in language put
it outside all limitations of time. It takes us over
into the field of absolute existence, and says : Here
is native ground ; I cannot die ; if I perish I am no
longer love, but misery. Love has but one symbol
in language — forever; its logic is, there is no
death.

" What vaster dream can hit the mood
Of love on earth ? "

6. There are in man latent powers, and others
half revealed, for which human life offers no ade-
quate explanation. Worship demands for its justi-

244 IMMORTALITY AND NATURE.

fication a broader field than this life. Time might
possibly explain obedience, but not rapture ; rever-
ence or dread, but not the longing of the soul after
God. There is within us a strange sense of expect-
ancy. As Fichte says : " My mind can take no hold
of the present world, nor rest in it for a moment,
but my whole nature rushes on with irresistible force
towards a future and better state of being." A di-
vine discontent is wrought into us, — divine, because
it attends our highest faculties. It is true that one
who has reached the higher grades of life has learned
not to fret against time, but it is equally true that
he is not content with time. The repose of the
greater spirits is not acquiescence in the allotments
of time, but the conscious possession of eternal life.
Time and mind are not truly correlated. Hence
the delight we take in all symbols of vastness and
power. The child claps its hands as it looks upon
the sea and hears its "wild uproar," — feeling a
secret kinship with it. The peace brought by the
mountains is but the content of the mind in having
found a somewhat truer measure of its own vast-
ness. The repose of the soul when night reveals
the immensity of the universe, springs from its con-
tact with a truer symbol of itself than the day
affords. Hence, in the night, all the passions of
the soul have greater sweep ; it is then we pray,
that inspirations breathe through us, that imagina-
tion opens widest her doors ; the upper deeps of
space call to the deeps within. I would not weaken
what I believe to be sound argument by any admix-
ture of mere sentiment. I refer therefore, in the

IMMORTALITY AND NATURE. 245

soberest and severest way, to those blind emotions
that fill the mind whenever we listen to the music
of the masters, or look upon true art, or in any way
come in contact with what is highest and best. So
far as they are translatable into thought, they assert
a perfection and a life of which this is but a fore-
taste. So also the wind blowing through reeds
upon the margin of a lake or the branches of moun-
tain pines, or perchance over grasses that cover the
graves of the dead, has a Memnonian tone that fore-
tells the dawn of an eternal day. The perfect of
whatever sort, whether the purity of a flower, or
the harmony of sounds, or the perfection of char-
acter, awakens a kindred sense within us that is the
denial of all limitations,

7. The imagination carries with it a plain inti-
mation of a larger sphere than the present. It is
diflScult to conceive why this power of broadening
our actual realm is given to us, if it has not some
warrant in fact. If this world is all, an intense
perception of it would seem to be of more value
than any imagining of what is not and cannot be.
But our minds are not set more to a realization of
world-facts than to dreams of what is possible. How
blind were the earlier civilizations to the material
world while they sang their great poems and built
their still enduring philosophies. The most natural
thing the mind does, is to break through its visible
barrier and fall to enlarging its domains. It finds
itself in a cell, it builds a palace ; roofed over and
walled in, but will own no limits save the infinite
spaces of heaven. The imagination is plainly the

246 IMMORTALITY AND NATURE.

open door of the mind by which it escapes its lim-
itations, but into what does it open, illusion or
reality ?

8. The same course of thought applies to the
moral nature. It has been claimed by some that
they could have made a better universe. An auda-
cious critic has asserted that he could have done
this very thing, made a better world, as La Place
said he could have constructed a better planetary
system. When asked how he would alter the pres-
ent order, he replied, " I would make health catch-
ing instead of disease ; " a very bright answer, but
its wit is not so great as its apparent wisdom. Any
mind at once says. Why not ? The critic is not far
wrong, if this world is the only theatre of human
life. It is true that if the element of disease were
taken out of life, there would go out with it that
strength that comes through struggle with adverse
conditions ; if we had not disease to contend with,
we would have instead mental weakness. And if
health were contagious, instead of being the result
of virtue and wisdom, we would have so much less
wisdom and virtue. A South Sea Islander does not
trouble himself to make bread when he can pluck
it from the trees ; and a man would not question
his mind or conscience in regard to health if he
could secure it by contagion ; hence mind and con-
science would be feeble so far as they depended
upon the discipline of health-seeking. But, after
all, this critic of eternal Providence is not far
wrong, if all this struggle with disease, and other
great evils, have their only reward in this life.

IMMORTALITY AND NATURE. 247

Time is not long enough to compensate man for
such mighty conflicts. It is not presumptuous,
however, to say that man could have been better
made, if he is not to live after death ; this one life
of earth would be better if his moral nature were
emptied of the greater part of its contents, and their
place filled by instincts. A round of utilitarian
duties, of low prudencies and calculations covering
the brief span of existence, would be the highest
wisdom. It' this life is all, we are over-freighted
in our moral nature, like a ship with the greater
part of its cargo in the bows, ever drenched with
the bitter waters of the sea, instead of floating
freely and evenly upon them. If this life is all,
there is no place for such a faculty as conscience
with its lash of remorse in one hand, and its peace
like a river, in the other. It is out of proportion
to its relations. It is like setting a great engine to
propel a pleasure-boat, or like building a great ship
to sail across a little lake. A strong, well grounded
instinct, that led us to seek the good and avoid the
bad, as animals avoid noxious food, would be a
better endowment than conscience, unless it has
some more enduring field than this from which to
reap. The step from instinct to freedom and con-
science, is a step from time to eternity. Conscience
is not truly correlated to human life. The ethical
implies the eternal.

Let us now turn from human nature to the divine
nature, where we shall find a like, but immeasur-
ably clearer, group of intimations. Assuming, what
no intelligent skepticism now denies, the theistic

248 IMMORTALITY AND NATURE.

conception of God as infinite and perfect in char-
acter, this conception is thrown into confusion if
there is no immortality for man.

1. There is failure in the higher purposes of God
respecting the race ; good ends are indicated but
not reached. Man was made for happiness, but the
race is not happy. Man was made for intelligence,
but the race is ignorant. Man was made for social
order, but war is his habit. He was made for vir-
tue, but the race is vicious. Only now and then
does one fulfill the evident ends for which he was
made. As a whole, there is the direst failure, and
unless there is another field where these hideous
wrongs and lacks may be set right, we must con-
clude that a wise and good God organized society
upon the plan of failure, with the result of immeas-
urable, hopeless misery. The possibility of ultimate
earthly success does not lessen the weight of this
fearful conclusion. What is the perfection of some
far off generation to us and to our generation ?

2, The fact that justice is not done upon the
earth involves us in the same confusion. That jus-
tice will sometime be done gives us peace ; that
justice should never be done throws the soul into
a chaos of endless cursing and bitterness. The
slighting of love can be endured, but that right
should go forever undone is that against which the
soul, by its constitution, must forever protest. The
remonstrance — it was not a question but a remon-
strance— of Abram with God: "Shall not the
judge of all the earth do right?" is the privilege
of every soul, not an expectation but a demand.

IMMORTALITY AND NATURE. 249

The sentiment of righteousness underlies all else in
man and in God, for we cannot conceive of God
without attributing it to Him. But justice is not
done upon the earth, and is never done, if there be
no hereafter. Multitudes suffer what they do not
deserve, incurring the penalties of vices and crimes
not their own. It is the nature of certain vices to
yield their bitterest results in posterity, the offender
himself escaping with but little suffering. Here
justice is blind indeed, failing both to inflict and
to spare. A babe that suffers from an inherited
vice, and dies in moral purity, might pass to noth-
ingness, but the injustice could never perish. It
would endure a blot on the white robe of divine
righteousness; it would forever prevent the uni-
verse from being a moral order. Were there no
God, the wrong would pass into the elements to
work eternal discord ; it would haunt the ages ; for
if there is no imuiortality for the soul, there is im-
mortality for wrong till it is set right. The martyr
dying in the arena, while the tyrant jests above him,
is an eternal injustice if there be no future. If all
the unjustly treated of the earth were to pass before
us, — the oppressed, the persecuted, the victims of
unjust wars, of priestcraft, of enforced ignorance, of
false opinion, of bad laws, of social vices, — the sad
procession would number well-nigh the whole. Shel-
ley calls this ''a wrong world ; " St. Paul, '' a present
evil world." They saw it alike, but the Apostle
put into the word present a hope that the wrong
and evil world will at last yield to a right world.
3. Man is less perfect than the rest of creation,

250 IMMORTALITY AND NATURE.

and relatively to himself, is less perfect in his
higher than in his lower faculties. So marked are
these facts as to suggest a failure of power or wis-
dom on the part of God to carry out the best part
of his plan ; which is actually the position taken by
John Stuart Mill. And Mr. Mill is right unless a
broader sphere than this world is allowed for the
development of man. In the animal races, there is
but little falling short of typical perfection, but the
perfect type of humanity transcends experience, and
can be known only by an ideal projection of hints
and fragments drawn from the worthiest and great-
est. How perfect also is the material universe, and
with what harmony it " still quires to the young-
eyed Cherubim ; " what exact obedience, and hence
what order, in all realms save our own, which is the
highest. What conclusion can we draw but that
the Creator succeeded in his lower works but failed
in his higher, — a conclusion so monstrous as to
render plausible any theory of human destiny that
avoids it ; for a Creator is responsible for his crea-
tion ; and every act of creation must be justified by
its wisdom. There can be no justification of a cre-
ation that is characterized by failure.

4. As love is the strongest proof of immortality
on the man-ward side of the argument, so is it on
the God-ward side. Divine love and human love
are alike, and act alike. Love demands sympathy ;
it is enduring by its own nature. Absolute and
infinite love must love forever. Love also, by its
nature, suffers from anything that hinders its ex-
pression, or brings it to an end. It is so with man ;

IMMORTALITY AND NATURE. 251

it must be so with God in a more absolute sense.
But God has set us in relations of love to Himself,
his love for us being the basis and reason of our
love for Him. Life has no higher end than to come
into a conscious love of God. Grant now, for a
moment, that this life is the end of all, — what sor-
row does God inflict upon Himself by allowing the
objects of his love to perish ! Nay, what more than
sorrow, what folly to train men to love, to lead them
through years up to the point of mutual recognition
and sympathy only to snuff them out of existence !
What then are we but bubbles floating on the
summer air of existence, reflecting for a few fleet-
ing moments the image of our Creator, and bursting,
destroy both ourselves and the image we reflect !
Why should love allow the end of what it loves ?
If it cannot prevent the end why does it create?
It is as though a father should rear children till
their love for him had bloomed into full sweet-
ness, and then dig graves into which he thrusts
them while their hearts are springing to his, and
his name is trembling upon lips that he smoth-
ers with eternal dust. It is related of an Arab
chief, whose laws forbade the rearing of his female
offspring, that the only tears he ever shed, were
when his daughter brushed the dust from his beard
as he buried her in a living grave. But where are
the tears of God as he thrusts back into eternal
stillness the hands that are stretched out to Him in
dying faith ? If death ends life, what is this world
but an ever-yawning grave in which the loving
God buries his children with hopeless sorrow, mock-

252 IMMORTALITY AND NATURE.

ing at once their love and hope, and every attribute
of his own nature. Again we say, the logic of love
upon the divine as upon the human side, is, there is
no death. Divine as well as human love has but
one symbol in language — forever.

The probabilities might be greatly multiplied.
If stated in full, they would exhaust the whole
nature of God and man. Immortality has been
named " the great prophecy of reason," — a phrase
that is in itself an argument. We cannot look into
ourselves without finding it. The belief is a part of
the contents of human nature : take it away, and its
most unifying bond is broken; it has no longer an
order or a relation ; the higher faculties are with-
out function : eyes, but nothing to see ; hands, but
nothing to lay hold of ; feet, but no path to tread ;
wings, but no air to uphold them, and no heaven to
flj'^ into. To doubt immortality is to reverse in-
stinct ; to reject the loftiest verdict of reason ; to
withhold from humanity its inspiration ; to blast
the only hope of mankind. It is a lapse, a regres-
sion ; it crowds man back into his animal nature,
and makes him a thing to eat and drink and perish.
It cuts every strand that binds man to God, and
destroys all conceptions of God. In place of the
moral and spiritual truths that underlie and feed
the life of society, it puts a creed of negation and
despair : —

" The pillared firmament but rottenness,
And earth's base built on stubble."

Let us be careful then how we allow ourselves to
think on this subject except with the utmost so-

IMMORTALITY AND NATURE. 253

lemnity and carefulness of thought. Let no pre-
sumptions against it stand till they have been
tested and weighed by absolute knowledge. And
let not the reasons for it be given up till we have
some other theory of man and his destiny that shall
clothe him with equal glory, and secure for him an
equal blessedness ; and if we cannot solve immor-
tality as a problem, let us cherish it as a hope, hold-
ing that such a hope is better than the wisest per-
plexity.

IMMORTALITY AS TAUGHT BY THE

CHRIST.

"The faith of immortality depends on a sense of it begotten, not
on an argument for it concluded." — Dr. Bushnell, Moral Uses, page
16.

"It would seem that the highest and holiest soul carries with it like
an atmosphere a perfect serenity, a sense of present eternity, a presage
of immortality." — George S. Merriam, The Way of Life, page 156.

" But souls that of his own good life partake,
He loves as his own self ; dear as his eye
They are to Him ; He Ml never them forsake;
When they shall die, then God Himself shall die ;
They live, they live in blest eternity."

Henry More.

IMMORTALITY AS TAUGHT BY THE

CHRIST.

"Because I live, ye shall live also." — St. John, xiv. 19.

Science may throw no barrier in the way of be-
lief in immortality ; nature and the heart of man
may suggest clear intimations of a future life ; hu-
man society may demand another life to complete
the suggestions and fill up the lacks of this life; but,
for some reason, all such proof fails to satisfy us.
It holds the mind, but does not minister to the
heart. It is sufficient to extinguish the horror of
great darkness that falls upon us at the thought of
death, but it does not kindle the sense of life into
a flame of joy. It is a matter of experience that
the faith in immortality that is based upon the logic
of our own nature and conditions, is not a restful
faith. It is forever going over the proofs to see if
there be no flaw in them ; it is startled by the new
discoveries of science ; it grows weak before the
pressure of the physical world and its laws; it is
ever haunted by questions : after all, may not the
mind be as the body and perish with it ? — is not
this law of waste and destruction that wars contin-
ually against life and everywhere conquers it,
stronger than life ? — stronger in the visible world,
17

258 IMMORTALITY AS TAUGHT BY THE CHRIST.

may it not be stronger in the invisible world ? And
so this faith stands with a question upon its lips,
tremulous at times, peering into the future with a
troubled gaze, hoping rather than believing, and
passing into the future with the peace of resigna-
tion rather than the joy of assurance.

It is noticeable also that the faith of natural evi-
dence awakens no joyful enthusiasm in masses of
mankind. Plato and Cicero discourse of immortal-
ity with a certain degree of warmth, but their coun-
trymen get little comfort from it. Their joys and
hopes still play about the present life ; death is still
terrible ; mere continuance of existence yields iio
inspiring joy. The reason is evident when we refer
to our own experience. The mere fact that I shall
live to-morrow, does not sensibly move me ; it
awakes no raptures ; it does not even awaken re-
flection. Something must be joined with existence
before it gets power. Or, to come at once to the
point, immortality must be united with character
in order to solace and inspire men. Or, striking to
the very heart of the matter, immortality must be
connected with the living God, in order to be a liv-
ing and moving fact.

We will now consider the way in which Christ
treated the subject ; and so I trust we shall come to
see how it is that a Christian faith in immortality
differs in power from any otherwise suggested.

When Christ entered on his ministry of teaching,
he found certain doctrines existing in Jewish theol-
ogy ; they were either imperfect or germinal truths.
He found a doctrine of God, partial in conception ;

IMMORTALITY AS TAUGHT BY THE CHRIST. 259

He perfected it by revealing the divine fatherhood.
He found a doctrine of sin and righteousness turn-
ing upon external conduct ; He transferred it to the
heart and spirit. He found a doctrine of judgment
as a single future event ; He made it present and on-
going. He found a doctrine of reward and punish-
ment, the main feature of which was a place in the
under and upper worlds where pleasure was im-
parted and pain inflicted ; He transferred it to
the soul, and made the pleasure and pain to pro-
ceed from within the man, and to depend upon his
character. He found a doctrine of immortality,
held as mere future existence ; He transformed the
doctrine, even if He did not supplant it, by calling
it life^ and connecting it with character. His treat-
ment of this doctrine was not so much corrective, as
accretive. He accepts immortality, but He adds to
it character. He puts in abeyance the element of
time, continuance, and substitutes quality or char-
acter as its main feature. Hence He never uses any
word corresponding to immortality (which is a
mere negation — unmortal), but always speaks of
life. The continuance of existence is merely an in-
cident, in his mind, to the fact of life. It follows
inevitably, but is not the main feature of the truth.
For a moment, we will speak of the subject with-
out regard to this distinction. We find Christ hold-
ing to immortality ; He does not assert but assumes
it, and not only assumes it, but at once begins to
build upon the assumption. He never makes a
straight assertion of future existence except once,
when the Sadducees, pressing him with a quibbling

260 IMMORTALITY AS TAUGHT BY THE CHRIST.

argument against the resurrection, are led away
from their point to the matter of future life itself,
and are confounded by the simple remark, that when
they speak of the God of the patriarchs, they con-
fess that the patriarchs are alive because God is the
God of the living and not of the dead, that is, the
non-existent. Elsewhere, He simply assumes a fu-
ture life. But an assumption is often the strongest
kind of argument. It implies such conviction in
the mind of the speaker that there is no need of
proof. Christ calmly takes it for granted that
there is a proper field for the play of his truth. He
will not stop to prove that such duties as self-denial,
love, faith in God, obedience, prayer, are based upon
a future existence. They presuppose it, and of
themselves are a sufficient argument for it. With-
out it, how inconclusive all his teachings become,
how meagre, how untrue ! Why put men under a
law of self-denial that may even involve death, as it
did in his own case, if death ends all ? Why reveal
to men the powers of eternity, if they are the crea-
tures of time ? Why mock them with revelations
of the upper world, if they are never to enter it ?
And if Christ perished at death, what a jangle of in-
consistency his own life becomes ? His dying words,
" Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit," be-
come mere dying breath wasted in empty space.

In Christ's own mind, the intense and absolute
consciousness of God carries with it immortality, as
it does the whole body of his truth. Hence, if I
were to construct one all-embracing argument for
immortality, and were I to put it into one word, it

IMMORTALITY AS TAUGHT BY THE CHRIST. 261

would be — Giod. The last word of science in re-
gard to the physical universe is that it is probably
limited ; there is an outer edge beyond which is
empty space ; within this limited universe, at its
centre, is a world around which all others revolve,
the sun of suns, the centre of all systems, whose po-
tency reaches to the outermost verge, holding them
steady to their courses, a world invisible perhaps to
us but felt in the harmony with which our planet
fulfills its appointed journeys. It is not otherwise
in morals. Given the fact of God, and all other
truth takes its place without question. The worlds
of fact and duty, the meteoric flights of genius, the
nebulous clouds of speculation, the burning suns of
devotion, the cold, unlighted realms of physics — all
fall into true place and function when they centre
about God. A belief in God clarifies all subjects at
once. There is no longer such a thing as mj^stery
when God is known. Hence, when there is an
overpowering, all-possessing sense of God as there
was in Christ, truth takes on absolute forms ; hence
it was that He spoke with authority. His vision of
God made his perception of truth absolutely per-
fect; hence his teachings are beyond criticism. It
is the marvel of the world that it has never been
able to lay its finger convincingly upon a weak spot
in all the various utterances of the Christ, nor even
show that He did not speak with utter and absolute
knowledge of every theme he touched. He saw the
whole of every truth, and saw it in the clear light
of absolute vision. It is not necessary to refer this
to his essential divinity ; it is due rather to his ut-

262 IMMORTALITY AS TAUGHT BY THE CHRIST.

ter and perfect sense of God ; for God is light and
in Him is no darkness at all. When we come into
that light, all darkness of doubt and mystery flies
away, and we know all truth even as we are known.
It was Christ's realization of the living God that
rendered his own conviction of eternal life so ab-
solute.

We can but notice how grandly Christ reposed
upon this fact of immortal life. He feels no need
of examining the evidences, or balancing proofs ;
no doubts overcloud his faith ; death offers no hin-
drance ; it is but a sleep. He regards nothing from
the stand-point of time or this life, except worldly
work. He stands steadily upon life^ life endless by
its own nature. He cast himself upon this eternal
fact of life and immortality without hesitation or
reserve, and died with Paradise open to his sight.
Death was no leap in the dark to Him ; it was not
even a land of shadows : it was simply a door lead-
ing into another mansion of God's great house.

It is a proper question to ask here, "Is it prob-
able that Christ was mistaken ? Is it possible that
his faith in immortality was but an intense form of
a prevailing superstition ? " If we could find any
weakness elsewhere in his teachings, there would
be ground for such questions. But as a moral
teacher He stands at the head, unimpeachable in
the minutest particular. His wisdom was the finest,
his judgment the truest, his analysis of life the
deepest, his assertion of duty the most authoritative
that human ears have ever heard. Is it probable
that, true in all else. He was at fault in this one

IMMORTALITY AS TAUGHT BY THE CHRIST. 263

respect ? Is it probable that this faultless structure
of harmonious and self-witnessing truth is built
upon a phantasm, cosmos resting upon chaos ; that
a body of truth all interwoven and suffused with
life is based upon an illusion of life ? Here is
where personally I rest. I see nature devouring
life, a law of death reigning everywhere; I see the
star of life rise and set; I see life yielding to silence,
and all that held it going to mix with the elements;
I look into the unseen world, but I get no report or
vision of it ; I gaze into the infinite heavens and
am shriveled to nothingness ; I look into the in-
finity of animal life with its law of destruction and
death and I say, Is it not so with man ? But I
turn from the doubts thus suggested to Christ and
they vanish like morning mists. Dr. Arnold de-
fined faith as " reason leaning on God." So here,
we do not abdicate reason before mere words, but
suffer it to lean on one to whom the Father has
showed all things. If one tells me ninety-nine
truths, I will trust him in the hundredth, especially
if it is involved in those before. Build me a column
perfect in base and body, and I will know if the
capital is true. When the clearest eyes that ever
looked on this world and into the heavens, and the
keenest judgment that ever weighed human life,
and the purest heart that ever throbbed with hu-
man sympathy, tells me, especially if He tells it
by assumption, that man is immortal, I repose on
his teaching in perfect trust. This is the highest
possible exercise of reason, for that is not reason
that isolates itself from the wisest and best, and

264 IMMORTALITY AS TAUGHT BY THE CHRIST.

says, I will solve my problems alone. It is reason
to see with the wise, and to feel with the good.
Still another distinction must be made ; we do not
accept immortality because Jesus, the wise, young
Jew, wove it into his precepts, but because the
Christ, the Son of God and of man, — Humanity
revealing Deity, — makes it a part of that order of
human history best named as the Reconciliation of
the world to God. Immortality is not an aspira-
tion of the devout, nor a guess of the wise, nor a
conclusion of the logicians, but is the centre and
soul of God's order in the world ; and the achieve-
ment of a faith in it is wrought out by an under-
standing of this order, and by obedience of its
eternal laws.

We may now return to our main point and con-
sider how Christ taught immortality. As I have
said. He makes no straight assertion of it, but as-
sumes it. He speaks rather of life, and life implies
immortality. He does not think of it as a future,
but as a present fact. The element of time does
not seem to have entered much into his thoughts.
He was too wholly at one with God to think of
past and future. As time, in the divine mind, is
an eternal now, so it seems to have been with
Christ. We do not find Him peering into the ages
upon ages of futurity, and drawing comfort from
the thought that He is to live on and on throughout
them all. Neither an infinite nor a perfect being
regards time as we do. If the cup of life is full,
there is little sense of past or future ; the present is
enough. To dwell on the future is an impeach-

IMMORTALITY AS TAUGHT BY THE CHRIST. 265

ment of the present. Hence, a little child whose
angel still beholds the face of the Father, does not
repine over the past, or sigh for the future. The
very law of innocence and perfection, whether in
child or angel or God or perfect man, tends to ex-
clude the sense of time. Continuance becomes a
mere incident ; the main and absorbing thought
is quality of life. When Christ speaks of eternal
life. He does not mean future endless existence ; this
may be involved, but it is an inference or secondary
thought ; He means instead fullness or perfection of
life. That it will go on forever, is a matter of
course, but it is not the important feature of the
truth.

And thus we are brought to the fundamental fact
that Christ connected life or immortality with char-
acter. Life, as mere continuance of being, is not
worth thinking about. He does not withhold future
existence from the wicked and unbelieving, but
plainly regards it of little account. Of what value
is the mere adding of days to days if they are full
of sin ? Practically such life is death, and so He
names it. Life is not the living on of a wicked
soul through endless ages. Forever to hold a con-
scious being together as an organism, is not a real
immortality. We may go even farther in this direc-
tion ; there can be no real and abiding faith in im-
mortality until it becomes wedded to the spiritual
nature. So long as we hold it as a mere persuasion
of the mind, or as an idea, it is subject to the chances
of an idea ; it meets the challenge of science ; it
ebbs and flows with the alternations of our mental

266 IMMORTALITY AS TAUGHT BY THE CHRIST.

clearness ; it is overclouded by exhalations that rise
out of the physical order to which we are linked.
Hence I would not attempt to convince one skep-
tical of immortality through his reason alone. But
when the spiritual nature is brought into exercise,
it generates not only a faith in eternal life, but rea-
sons for it. When life begins to be true, it an-
nounces itself as an eternal thing to the mind ; as
a caged bird when let loose into the sky might say :
Now I know that my wings are made to beat the
air in flight ; and no logic could ever persuade the
bird that it was not designed to fly ; but when caged,
it might have doubted, at times, as it beat the bars
of its prison with unavailing stroke, if its wings were
made for flight. So it is not until a man begins
to use his soul aright that he knows for what it is
made. When he puts his life into harmony with
God's laws ; when he begins to pray ; when he
clothes himself with the graces of Christian faith
and conduct — love, humility, self-denial, service ;
when he begins to live out of, and unto, his spiritual
nature, he begins to realize what life is, — a reality
that death and time cannot touch. But when his
life is made up of the world, it is not strange that
it should seem to himself as liable to perish with
the world. Hence we are not to regard the prevail-
ing general belief in future existence as a genuine
faith in immortality ; this is the product alone of
spiritual life. Christ made no recognition of im-
mortality, except in connection with faith, and by
faith He meant the result of faith, righteous char-
acter. Those who believe have everlasting life.

IMMORTALITY AS TAUGHT BY THE CHRIST. 267

Others may exist, but existence is not life. Others
may continue to exist, but continuance is not im-
mortality. Here we find the significance, and the
self-witnessing reality of the miracles in which
Christ raised the dead. They are specimens of his
universal work, a dramatic setting forth of the pro-
cess of life He is bringing to light, an overflow of
the fullness of life behind the veil, dawn-streaks of a
sun not yet risen. But these pre-resurrections, these
interruptions of the course and order of death, are
wrought only in an atmosphere of faith ; and thus
He asserts that life has no value, except as it is
linked with goodness. Of what avail to restore one
to life, unless it be to life indeed ! To have brought
forward these images of the resurrection upon a
background of sin and unbelief, would have been a
discord ; the drama of eternal righteousness that He
is enacting in living ways would thus have no unity.
Not even in hint, or symbol, not even to do a work
of apparent mercy, will He deal with life, except in
connection with morality. He vrill have nothing to
do with bare existence, — that stands forever fixed
in the sure order of creation ; when it is under sin,
He will not recognize it as life. To lift men out of
existence into life, was his mission.

Christ not only gave us the true law of immortal-
ity, but was Himself a perfect illustration of it, and
even named Himself by it — the Life. It is a great
thing for us that this truth of immortality has been
put into actual fact. Human nature is crowded
with hints and omens of it, but prophecy does not
convince till it is fulfilled. And from the divine

268 IMMORTALITY AS TAUGHT BY THE CHRIST.

side also we get assurances of endless life ; but in
so hard a matter we are like Thomas, who needed
the sight and touch to assure him. And in Christ
we have both, — the human omen and the divine
promise turned into fact. In some of the cathedrals
of Europe, on Christmas-eve, two small lights, typi-
fying the divine and human nature, are gradually
made to approach one another until they meet and
blend, forming a bright flame. Thus, in Christ, we
have the light of two worlds thrown upon human
destiny. Death, as the extinction of being, cannot
be associated with Him ; He is life, — its fullness
and perfection, and perfect life must be stronger than
death. The whole bearing of Christ towards death,
and his treatment of it, was as one superior to it,
and as having no lot nor part in it. He will indeed
bow his head and cease to breathe in obedience to
the physical laws of the humanity He shares, but
already He enters the gates of Paradise, not alone
but leading a penitent child of humanity by the
hand. And in order that we may know He simply
changed worlds. He comes back and shows Himself
alive ; for He is not here in the world simply to
assert truth, but to enact it. And still further to
show us how phantasmal death is. He finally departs
in all the fullness of life, simply drawing about Him-
self the thin drapery of a cloud.

I cannot close without directing your attention to
a lesson implied in all that has been said, namely,
a true and satisfying sense of immortality must be
achieved. It cannot be taken second-hand. We
cannot read it in the pages of a book, whether of

IMMORTALITY AS TAUGHT BY THE CHRIST. 269

nature or inspiration. We cannot even look upon
the man Jesus issuing from the tomb, and draw
from thence a faith that yields peace. There must
be fellowship with the Christ of the resurrection
before we can feel its power ; in other words, we
must get over upon the divine side of life before we
can be assured of eternal life. A full predication
of immortality can only be made through the moral
and spiritual faculties. It is because we are, in
part, under the dominion of the world, and worldly
sense, and worldly maxims, that we doubt, or see
dimly ; we are like Milton's " tawny lion " in crea-
tion, fully formed in head, and " pawing to get free
his hinder parts," which are still one with the dust
of the earth ; or like the Sphinx, of human head
and the body of an animal, —

*' Gazing right onward with calm, eternal eyes ; **

intelligent of eternity, yet linked to perishable na-
ture. And so there are two voices within us : the
voice of our earthly nature and the voice of the
spirit, and they utter conflicting words. It is our
business in life to silence one, and give full ear to
the other. By humility, by self-denial, by unworld-
liness, by spiritual thought, by devout aspiration,
by silent communion with God, we grow into an
abiding sense of eternal life. " Join thyself," says
Augustine, "to the eternal God, and thou wilt be
eternal." Just in the degree in which we attain
height of spiritual nature are we able to predicate
immortality of ourselves. It is not a thing an-
nounced by any " Lo here " or '' Lo there," but is

270 IMMORTALITY AS TAUGHT BY THE CHRIST.

within us, the fruit of faith, the achievement of
spiritual endeavor. It will be strong or weak,
steady or fluctuating, just in the degree in which
our life is rooted in the eternal verities of God's
kingdom. Yet it will ever be a matter of degree
so long as faith is weighted with present conditions ;
a matter of degree, yet doubt ever lessening to the
vanishing point of nothingness, and faith growing to-
wards the fullness of utter knowledge ; as one climb-
ing a mountain sees an ever-widening horizon, till,
upon the summit, he beholds the circle of visible
things melt into the infinity of space.

THE CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF
DEATH.

r

" 'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant,
Oh, life, not death, for which we pant;
More life, and fuller, that I want."

Tennyson, The Two Voices.

It can hardly be gain for us to die, till it is Christ for us to live."
Pres. Bascom, Philosophy of Religion, page 187.

*' Sleep is a death; O make me try,
By sleeping, what it is to die :
And as gently lay my head
On my grave as now my bed.
Howe'er I rest, great God, let me
Awake again at last with Thee.
And thus assured, behold I lie
Securely, or to wake or die."

Sir Thomas Browne, Evening Hymn.

**0 living will that shalt endure

When all that seems shall suffer shock,
Rise in the spiritual rock.
Flow through our deeds and make them pure,

" That we may lift from out the dust
A voice as unto him that hears,
A cry above the conquer' d years
To one that with us works, and trust,

*' With faith that comes of self-control,
The truths that never can be proved
Until we close with all we loved.
And all we flow from, soul in soul."

In Memonam, cxxxi.

THE CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF DEATH.

"Jesus said unto her; I am the resurrection and the life; he that be-
lieveth on me, though he die, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth
and believeth on me shall never die." — St. John, xi. 25, 26.

It is only from great inspired natures that we
hear so contradictorv words as these. It is not
until we rise somewhat above the level of ordinary-
thought, that we perceive the doubleness, or two-
foldness, that invests life, the assertion of which
yields apparent opposition in language. In one
breath, Christ says that if a man dies and believes
in Him, he shall live ; and in the next breath He
says, that whosoever liveth and believeth on Him
shall never die. Language could not be made more
violently contradictory ; believers shall never die ;
dead believers shall live ; yet every docile reader
of the Bible, coming on such a passage, feels that
it contains a truth too subtle to be grasped with
words. Language attempts it, but is turned hither
and thither in vain attempts to embody the mean-
ing, and the result is wild and contradictory state-
ments. But the very ambiguity of the language is
an indication of the value of the truth hidden un-
derneath it. When the strata of the rocks are
twisted and upturned, the miner looks for gold,
deeming that in the convulsions that so disposed
18

274 THE Christ's treatment of death.

them, a vein of the precious metal may have been
thrown up from the lower deep.

And not only is there a certain blindness in the
treatment of the subject, but the subject itself is a
mystery. We see but one side, or, as it were, the
gate-way ; beyond, all is uncertainty and darkness.
But this blindness and apparent contradiction has
its ground in us, in our feeble capacity to under-
stand and to believe. To the Christ it was clear
and radiant truth. He was dealing with the actual
fact of death. Women were weeping for their dead
brother before him. It was no time for fine, mys-
tical talk, for ambiguous words of comfort, and it
was this very desire to administer a higher comfort,
that made his words seem strange and doubtful.
In order to get at their meaning, we must keep in
mind that Christ was drawing comfort for these
afflicted friends, not from the old sources, but from
Himself. Martha has expressed her faith in the
common doctrine of the resurrection at the last
day. Christ does not deny nor assent to it, but
passes over it, as though it had little power to
assuage the actual suffering of death. If it be true,
it is a far-off event, ages hence, at the last day ; it
hardly touches the present fact of death. It has
nothing definite, immediate, or specially consolatory
in its character, being simply an affirmation of fu-
ture existence. So little power had it, that Mar-
tha did not think of it, till led to it by Christ's
question. She doubtless shared the vague belief of
the Jews, that '^ her brother would ascend some
time or other on angels' wings into a place some-

THE Christ's treatment of death. 275

where above the stars ; " but how could that com-
fort her? She could not bridge the gulf of time
and space between herself and that event. She
could get from it no assurance that her brother
would ever be known by her; that the ties sun-
dered by death would ever be joined again. There
her brother lay in the tomb, dead, fast passing to
corruption, soon to become as the dust of the earth,
and there he would lie for ages, dead ; herself soon
to die and lie beside him, and sleep the long sleep
of utter forgetfulness. What comfort is there here
for yearning human love that longs for nearness
and response? God's love may wait patient through
ages, because ages are nothing to Him, but human
love is impatient, because it is human and under
finite conditions. We cannot endure that the object
of our love should be beyond our knowledge and
reach, and the bitterness of death springs from this
fact of utter separation and apparent loss. A fu-
ture, general resurrection, is only a slight mitigation
of this suffering, because its operation is so distant
and vague. Our little ones die — children that we
scarcely endure to have out of our sight ; the winter
day seems long if they are absent, and the journey
wears tediously away that separates us from their
caresses ; when these die. it is small comfort to
know that ages upon ages hence, when great gulfs
of change and place are passed, they and we shall
live again. Instead of dwelling on that, we cling
to the form and mementos spared by death ; we
visit their graves and keep alive the past instead of
making alive the present. Christ, there by the

276 THE Christ's treatment of death.

tomb of Lazarus, strove to give these mourners a
more substantial comfort than these far-away fan-
cies of the common tradition.

He did this by a word and an act, — the one to
show how true was the other ; but we will speak
only of the word.

1. His first purpose was to get their minds away
from death ; He will not let them think of it, but
gives them instead life^ and crowds it upon them in
all ways possible.

There is but one natural fact to which Christ
showed antipathy. We have no indication that
climate, or storm, or heat, the weariness of deserts,
or the roughness of mountains, moved Him to any
word or thought of dissatisfaction. There was no
impatience with youth ; no sadness over age. He
did not sigh over the brevity of life, or human
frailty, or the variety of allotments. So far as we
can gather. He was in profound sympathy with the
natural order of the world, and of human life, save
only in respect of its end. Death itself is a natural
and fit event, and must have been regarded by Christ
with no more aversion than the night or the tem-
pest. But the fact had been so sunk in its associa-
tions, and identified with fears so horrible and con-
ceptions so false ; it stood for so much that was an-
tagonistic to Himself, that He regarded it with aver-
sion, and shrank from all mention or recognition of
it. He set the whole weight of his thought and
speech against what was known as death. There is
a fine, illuminating significance in the fact of his in-
disposition to use the word. We observe in ourselves

THE Christ's treatment of death. 277

a reluctance to utter certain words because their as-
sociations are so bad or painful. The word is an
open gate through which all the evil and bitterness
it represents pours in upon us, and we seek for am-
biguous and milder phrases when forced to utter-
ance. And the finer the nature, the keener is the
sensitiveness to such association of speech and fact.
Death, as it was commonly regarded, was a hateful
thing to Christ, and He would not name it. And
so He said that the daughter of Jairus was not
dead, but asleep. The mortal change had come,
but that which the people meant had not come.
They thought that some dark and dreadful change
had come upon her spirit; that she had entered
upon a long and gloomy sleep in the grave ; that a
cessation of life in its fullness has taken place till
the last great day. But Christ will not counte-
nance such views, and says that no such change had
come : she is rather asleep ; her life itself, in all
its grand and beautiful functions, is still going on
aside from the closed eyes and the pulseless form.
He showed the same reluctance to apply the word
when Lazarus died, and spoke of him as sleeping^
till the dullness of his companions forced him to
use the ordinary word. He evidently intends to
teach another use of words as to the close of life,
to inaugurate another phrase in place of " death."
The conception He desires to establish is so differ-
ent, that He clothes it in a new word, instead of
striving to put a new meaning into an old word.

Why have we not learned the blessed lesson, or
rather why have we forgotten it ? for the early be-

278 THE Christ's treatment of death.

lievers, fully taught by the resurrection of Christ,
caught at once the remembered hints, and always
spoke of physical death as sleep. St. Luke writes
of Stephen, though his life was "dashed out by
cruel stones," that he "fell asleep." And St. Paul
writes many times over of those who have " fallen
asleep," and St. Peter of the fathers who " fell
asleep." They cherished the new word with fond-
ness, wrote it upon their tombs, and devised em-
blems to set it forth. Even now in the catacombs
of Rome, may be read such words as these : " Sleep-
ing in Jesus ; " " He sleeps in peace." Sleep is
peace ; to sleep in peace, then, how restful ! How
fresh and strong must be the awaking after such
sleep !

If Christ had done nothing more for humanity
than give to it this word sleep in place of death,
he would have been the greatest of benefactors.
To that which seems to us the worst thing He has
given the best name, and the name is true. It is a
great thing that we are permitted to take that al-
most dearest word in our tongue — sleep — and
give it to death ; sleep that ends our cares and re-
lieves us from toil, that links day to day and shuts
out the horror of darkness, that checks with pleas-
ant suggestion the current of evil, that soothes and
ends the fever of daily life, that begins in weariness
and ends in strength, that keeps soul and body quiet
while God fills again the exhausted lamp of life,
that lets the mind into the liberty of dreams and
perhaps suffers it to bathe in the original fountain
of life; it is no small or unmeaning thing that

THE Christ's treatment of death. 279

Christ taught us to apply this word to that seeming
loss and horror hitherto called death. This is not
sentiment nor poetry, except as sentiment and po-
etry stand for what is most real and substantial.
Christ did not utter pleasant deceptions by the
grave of his friend Lazarus ; He taught new truth
about death, that it is not what it seems, — a loss
and horror, a matter of entombment and corruption,
of ghostly waiting in the under-world, of disem-
bodied and half-suppressed existence till the last
great day at the end of the world. He puts all this
aside, and invests it in a new atmosphere and sur-
rounds it with different suggestions. It is to life
what sleep is to the day. Sleep rests and restores
the body to a fuller and fresher life. Christ would
not have called death sleep merely because of its
external likeness ; his thought struck deeper than
that. He meant that death does for us what sleep
does for the body : repairs, invigorates, and repeats
for us the morning of life.

Amongst the profoundest words of Shakespeare
are those in which he speaks of sleep as '' great
Nature's second course." In a profounder sense
still, the sleep of death ushers in the ''second
course" of nature, even the life that shall never
know death nor sleep.

2. His next purpose is to get them to identify
Himself with the resurrection ; or, rather, to sup-
plant it and the far-off life it indicates, with Him-
self and his life. Martha had spoken of a general
resurrection in the last day — not necessarily a spir-
itual fact nor having a spiritual bearing, — a mere

280 THE CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF DEATH.

matter of destiny, like birth and death, a distant
mysterious event. Christ draws it near, takes it
out of time, vitalizes it, puts it into the category of
faith, and connects it with Himself. He says : Do
not think of the resurrection in that way, as a JBnal,
world-end event, and thus suffer all the natural
gloom and bitterness of death ; instead, transfer
your thoughts on the matter to me ; consider me as
the resurrection, and that whoever believes in me is
absolutely beyond the reach of death, as it has been
hitherto regarded.

But how is it that believing in Christ thus puts
us beyond the reach and power of death ? — a fit
question and capable of answer, for this process has
a philosophy and traceable order. Some may pre-
fer to believe that this assurance is of the nature of
a promise, and that those who believe in Christ are
greatly strengthened and upheld by Him in the hour
of death. This is undoubtedly true, but it is the
small part of a much larger truth. Christ had in
mind something of greater scope than momentary
ministration to the dying. This is comparatively a
small matter ; for how many die instantly ; how
many sicken and die in utter unconsciousness ; the
vast majority with benumbed perceptions and sen-
sibilities. It was doubtless intended we should go
out of the world as unconsciously as we came into
it. It cannot therefore be to meet so rare and brief
an experience as conscipus agony of death that
Christ makes this statement. The entire truth
that Christ had in mind was this : that faith in
Himself, by its own law, works away from death

i

THE Christ's treatment of death. 281

towards life. For, Christ is life ; to believe in a
person is to become like that person, or one with
him. Hence, to believe in Christ the Life is to be-
come a sharer with Him in whatever He is, there-
fore in his life. We are told that Christ could not
be holden of death ; faith in Him works toward the
same freedom.

The assimilating power of faith, that is, the power
of faith to make those who believe like that in
which they believe, is a recognized principle. The
whole nature follows the faith, and gravitates to-
wards its object. A moulding process goes on ;
faith is the workman and the object of faith is the
pattern. Starting within, down amongst the de-
sires and affections, it works outward, till the exter-
nal man becomes in form, feature, and expression
like the absorbing object. We meet men every
day in whose faces we see avarice, lust, or conceit,
as plainly as if it were imprinted on their foreheads.
They have so long thought and felt under the
power of these qualities that they are made over
into their image. A man who worships money
comes to wear the likeness of a money-worshiper
down to the tips of his fingers ; his eyes and nose
and the very posture of his figure, bear witness to
the transforming power of his faith. The Hindu
who worships Brahma sleeping on the stars in im-
movable calm, gets to wear a fixed expression. The
mediaeval saints who spent days and nights in con-
templation of the crucifix, came to show the very
lineaments of the man of sorrows, as art had de-
picted them, and sometimes, it is said, the very

282 THE Christ's treatment of death.

marks of his torture in their own bodies. It is a
principle wonderful in its method and power. We
A are all passing into the likeness of that in which we
believe. There is no need that men should be la-
beled, or that they should make confession with
their lips. Very early the faith hangs out a label,
and soon the whole man becomes a confession of
its truth. You have but to look, and you will see
here a voluptuary, there a sluggard; here a miser,
there a scholar; here a bigot, there a skeptic; here
a thinker, there a fool; here a cruel, unjust man,
there one kind, generous, true ; here one base
throughout, there one radiant with purity. It is
wonderful, this power of faith first moulding, then
revealing. It is the power of love directed by
will, which together makes up faith ; and as it
works out so it works within, shaping all things
there in like manner. It is by this principle that
Christ unites men to Himself. It is at this point
that He inserts Himself as a saving power into the
world. He brings men to believe in Him in order
that they may become like Him, and if like Him,
then one with Him, sharers of his nature and his
destiny. And if one with Him, then his life is their
life ; whatever pertains to Him pertains to them.
The fellowship and oneness engendered by faith is
an abiding fact and endures through life and the
change called death. Christ is the Life : He stands
in humanity for that eternal reality, and He came
that men might know and realize it. If they be-
lieve in Him, they shall have life, and shall never
die. By faith, we get over upon Christ's side in

THE CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF DEATH, 283

this terrible matter pf death. Taught and inspired
by Him, we are able to predicate life of ourselves,
even as He predicated it of Himself.

But the question rises, Did not Christ die, and do
we not die, even if we believe in Him ? In the old-
world, and still common, sense of the word, the
sense in which Martha used it, Christ did not die,
He did not go down into the grave and lie there,
soul and body, in unconsciousness, nor did He
pass into some nether place to wait till summoned
again to life ; there was no loss, no forlorn stay in
a disembodied state, as the heathen pictured the
under-world. In this common, and still existing
sense of death Christ did not die. He refused to
countenance such an idea of death. And those who
believe in Him get deliverance from these false and
terrible views of it, and come to share in Christ's
view. Thus those who believe in Him never die.

In another sense Christ did die. He suffered
this housing of the soul to be torn away, the taber-
nacle to be taken down, but He will not call it
death. It does not touch the life : that flows on,
an unbroken current, and rises into greater fullness.
And so Christ says that those who believe in Him,
and die in this sense, do not really die: though
dead, they live.

And yet the fact and process of death remain.
Its thick darkness may be taken away, but a heavy
shadow still overhangs it. Why, having come into
a consciousness of life, must I still undergo death ?
— A curious and pertinent question. It is not a
sufficient answer to refer it to the course of nature.

284 THE Christ's treatment of death.

I can conceive no answer but this : Man needs for
his supreme development to undergo the supreme
experience, which is death. He can have no full
test of himself, except by the death of himself.
When he can say : '^ Life is my all, but I can lay
down my life," he utters his highest word ; nothing
more eductive can be experienced or conceived.
There is thus reflected back to him the assertion
and proof of his manhood and highest attainment.
So, to die fearfully, or dumbly, or in passive sub-
mission to the inevitable, is below man. But to
die bravely and calmly, or for a cause, is the prime
achievement. Hence man alone is made conscious
of death ; he alone can freely and willingly die.
In doing this he puts on himself the seal of a per-
fect personality ; no test short of this would reveal
him to himself; none less would measure him. It
would be a vain thing, however, if it were a con-
scious ending of existence. I can die, but I must
die to some purpose ; I can lay down my life, but I
must hope to take it up again.

We might pursue the subject into a most attrac-
tive field of thought, and show how a life of faith
in Christ is, in itself, a wholesome, life-giving, life-
nurturing process. It is always turned towards life.
It fosters growth and increase ; it strengthens and
enlarges. It always keeps in view a fuller, broader,
and deeper life, and thus repudiates the idea of
death ; it does not look in that direction. One
who believes in Christ, and is therefore pure and
true and just and kind, has in each of these quali-
ties a cable binding him to eternity ; for purity and
truth and justice and love are eternal things.

THE Christ's treatment of death. 285

It is a fact of unspeakable moment that the whole
matter of Christian believing and living is summed
up as life. And by life I mean existence in the
perfect fulfillment and enjoyment of all relations.
Unfold this short definition into its full meaning,
and we have life as Christ used the word. This is
the final, comprehensive, definitive term that stands
for the Christian idea. We misname it salvation,
but salvation is subservient to life. We talk about
going to heaven or hell, but Christ speaks of eter-
nal life; of saving the soul, but Christ bids us save
the life ; forfeit the world, if need be, but keep that
full and unharmed. We transport the matter into
some future world; Christ puts it into the hour that
now is. It is the devastating mistake of ages of
imperfect faith that the emphasis and crisis of life
is carried forward into the next world, robbing this
of its dignity, disrobing it of its loftiest motives,
cheapening by withholding from it its proper fru-
itions. There is no juster word used amongst men
than probation^ and none more perverted. Life is
indeed probation, but the judgment that decides is
in perpetual session ; not for one moment is it ad-
journed ; every hour it renders the awards that
angels fulfill ; daily and forever does the Christ of
humanity judge according to the deeds done in this
present life of humanity, and send to right or left
hand destinies. There is no day of eternity au-
guster than that which now is. There is nothing
in the way of consequence to be awaited that is not
now enacting, no sweetness that may not now be
tasted, no bitterness that is not now felt. What

286 THE Christ's treatment of death.

comes after will be but the increment of what now
is, for even now we are in the eternal world. The
kingdom of heaven has come and is ever coming ;
its powers and processes, its rewards and punish-
ments are to-day in full activity, mounting into
ever higher expression, but never more real in one
moment of time than in another. Thus seen, life
begins to get meaning and dignity, and this world
becomes a full theatre of God's action, — for here
and now is his throne of judgment set in the heart
of every man and in every nation. And so life is
the single theme of the Christ, — life and its full-
ness. God gives his children one perfect, all-com-
prehending gift — life. It is his own image, his
very substance shared with his creatures. Life car-
ries everything with it ; if true, it may be trusted
to the uttermost ; all things belong to it. By its
own law it is endless ; why should life ever cease
to be life? It has but one enemy, — sin. So long
as life is true to its own laws and relations, it knows
no diminution of its forces. If there had been no
sin, no law-breaking, there would have been nothing
that we now call death. Change there might have
been, successive phases of life, as the bud yields the
flower, and the flower the seed, but nothing like
that we call death. Even the body would not
really die. Had its powers not been impaired by
sin it would have filled its round of years without
evil defect, and sunk into sleep, ending life as it
began, with slowly fading consciousness, not dying,
but changing bodies as the butterfly emerges from
the chrysalis. Heredity almost teaches this in cer-

THE Christ's treatment of death. 287

tain exceptional lives. Nor would we ever have
known this lethargy of mental faculties, this dull-
ness of spiritual vision, this apathy of moral feeling,
this that we truly call deadness of spirit, if in all
generations the laws of our whole nature had been ob-
served. But when sin came, death also came. And
so the entire system began to work towards death,
in body and spirit, in men and nations. Christ in-
troduces a reversing power, and turns the stream
of tendency toward life. It is no mystery or mira-
cle, unless it is strange that one being should change
another into his likeness, or bring him under his
power. We can conceive one so recipient of Christ's /
truth, so in sympathy with Him, so obedient to Him,
as to have little .^ense of yesterday or to-morrow, to
care little for one world above another, to heed
death as little as sleep, because he is so filled with
the life of God. It is towards this high state that
Christ conducts us, sowing in our hearts day by
day the seed of eternal life, — truth and love and
purity. For if order is restored to our souls, the ^
mind and body will follow after, and spiritual life
will assert its preeminence over physical death.

The subject leaves us with two leading impres-
sions : —

1. Comfort in view of the change called death.
That was Christ's aim, to comfort Martha as she
wept by the grave of her brother. He does not
strive to annihilate her grief, but to infuse it with
another spirit. As Jesus Himself wept, so we would
not have love shed one tear less over its dead ; but
there are tears that are too bitter for the human

288 THE Christ's treatment of death.

eyes to shed, — tears of despair ; and there are tears
that reflect heaven's light and promise as they fall,
— tears of hope. Death in certain respects can
never be other than it is, but there is a despair, a
horrible sickening fear to which Christ will not con-
sent. He takes death as the world has conceived it,
and, because He so changes the thing. He gives to
it a new name ; He takes away its sting by taking
away the sin of which it is the shadow. If a strict
separation between sin and death can be effected,
there is no evil in the latter except something of
physical suffering, and of pain in parting from
friends; but this is taken up and submerged in
that vast flood of hope that flows out of the gos-
pel. Aside from this we may approach death as we
approach sleep, as a grateful ordinance of nature,
not longing for it, not dreading it, but accepting it
as God's good way : a step in life, and not a going
out of life. Here is where the comfort of Christ's
revelation centres ; it does not leave death a horri-
ble uncertainty, a plunge into darkness, an entrance
into some ghostly realm of torpid, waiting existence.
It is instead, from first to last, a matter of life^ life
enlarged and lifted up, fuller and freer : " I came
that they may have life, and may have it abun-
dantly."

2. The subject leads us up to a new sense of the
value of faith in Christ.

It is no small thing to be delivered from false
views of death. Consider with what a hopeless
gaze the heathen regard it, what dreary visions of
an under-world, peopled with shivering, bodiless

THE CHRIST'S TREATMENT OF DEATH. 289

shades, working out the penalties of earthly sins, or
revisiting the earth in degraded forms. The Jews
even got no farther than some vague notion of a
resurrection at the last day. There is no certainty
till we come to Christ, and no deliverance from fear
except through faith in Him. And by what rule
shall we measure the value of this certainty and
deliverance? We who have looked the last upon
faces dear to us, and seen the life spark vanish from
sight, can feel, though we cannot measure, the value
of the faith which assures us that death is but the
shadow of a coming greater life. It is a matter of
unspeakable comfort, a blessing not to be compassed
by thought, that Christ has inverted all the mean-
ings that nature and habit have put upon death.
The question is often put. What has Christianity
done for the world ? It has, at least, done this :
When a mother lays her babe in the grave, life of
her life, and loved more than life, she can believe
that it is not dead but alive ; that elsewhere its
sweet life is going on with full function and person-
ality. It is no small matter that human love is
thus kept alive in hope, rather than crushed under
the nether millstone of despair. What has Christ
done for the world ? He has delivered human love
from the bondage of despair, and brought it under
the inspiration of hope. And this is nothing more
nor less than keeping love alive and strong; for
nothing is surer than that the constant blighting of
love by hopeless death wears away its fineness and
weakens its power as an element of civiliz'^tion.
Few heathen wives are like Phocion's, of whom

19

290 THE Christ's treatment of death.

Plutarch tells, who, when her husband was unjustly-
put to death by the Athenians, herself lighted his
funeral pyre and gathered up his bones in her lap
and brought them to her house and buried them
under her hearthstone, saying, '' Blessed hearth !
to your custody I commit the remains of a good
and brave man." What love, and yet what de-
spair ! Under the strain of such unrelieved suffer-
ing, love shrinks and hardens : —

*''• Death with its mace petrific, smites it into stone.'*

Love must have hope to feed on or it shrivels into
mere animal instinct ; but when soothed and drawn
up to heaven by its hope, and spiritualized by a
sense of eternal life, it asserts its infinite energies,
and works in its own mighty way for the regenera-
tion of the world. It is in such ways that Christ
ministers to civilization. He invented no machine,
neither engine, nor loom, nor compass ; He taught
no science ; He laid down no theorj^ of public edu-
cation, no system of government ; He organized no
school of social science. It is a superficial view that
regards civilization as depending upon these things.
Christ went deeper : He took off the pressure from
the human heart so that it could beat freelj^, and
send full pulses of healthy blood to the brain and
hands and feet of society. The human heart lies
back of and underneath all else ; out of it are all
issues of life, for society as well as for individuals.
Unless love, parental and social, is kept strong and
vital, there will be no civilization worth the name.
But love cannot be constantly smote by death and

THE Christ's treatment of death. 291

its despair, and preserve its high and ministrative
functions. What has Christ done for civilization ?
He secured free action for the mainspring of civi-^
lization. Get down to its heart and there you will
find the brooding, creative spirit of Christ, filling
it with hope and strength.

By what mighty arguments are we thus led up to
Christ ? Come, then, all ye who are in bondage to
the fear of death ; and ye who have laid away be-
loved ones in the sleep called death, and ye who are
cherishing seeds of sin that make death real, come
all to Christ, sit at his feet, believe on Him; be
one with Him ; and as He lives, ye shall live also,
and shall never die.

THE

RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD.

*' Then long eternity shall greet our bliss
With an individual kiss.'* Milton, On Time*

"Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,
And let that pine to aggravate thy store ;
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross ;
Within be fed, without be rich no more;
So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,
And, Death once dead, there's no more dying then."

Shakespeare, Sonnet cxlvi.

" This wonderfully woven life of ours shall not be broken by death
in a single strand of it; it shall run on and on, an unbroken life, upheld
by the will of the Eternal. Death cannot break it, but it shall change
it. It shall draw from it all perishable dross. While the life remains
the same, some elements of which its strands are woven shall be changed;
instead of the silver cord shall be the thread of gold ; for the corruptible
shall be the incorruptible; and there shall be no more entanglement and
imperfection, no more strain upon any strand of it; the flesh shall not
chafe against the spirit, nor the spirit against the flesh, but there shall
be at last the one perfectly accorded, incorruptible, and beautiful life."
— Rev. Newman Smyth, Old Faiths in Neio Lights^ page 366.

THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD.

'^ He is not here; for He is risen, even as He said.*' — St. Matthew
xxviii. 6.

*' If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.'* — 1 Cor.
XV. 44.

The doctrine of immortality and the doctrine of
resurrection from the dead stand somewhat in the
same relation as a block of marble to a finished
statue. The Christian doctrine of resurrection is
the natural fact of immortality wrought into shape.
We may know there is a statue in the marble, but
how beautiful* it may be, in what grace of posture
it may stand, what emblems may hang upon its
neck or crown its head, what spirit may breathe
from its features, we do not know till the inspired
sculptor has uncovered his ideal and brought it to
light. The analogy may go farther. As an artist '
works a mass of marble into a statue, putting men-
tal conceptions and meanings into it that are no part /
of the marble, so Christ has given a divine shape to(
immortality and filled it w^ith beautiful suggestions
and gracious meaning. We see in the statue the
mind of the sculptor as well as the marble ; so in
the doctrine of the resurrection we see the mind '
and purpose of Christ as well as the bare fact of
future existence.

296 THE RESURRECTION FROM THE d£AD.

The doctrine has fared ill in previous ages, as
have all the great doctrines. But the perversion
of truth is due not so much to ignorance as to an
overmastering desire to guard against correspond-
ing errors. Over against nearly all the false and
gross forms that Christian truth has taken on from
age to age, may be discerned the shadows of errors
that have faded from our view, but were very real
to the men whom they first confronted. It has been
the way of the world thus far to meet error by ex-
aggerating the truth. The human mind loves the
truth and is ever seeking it, but it has not yet
reached the point of resting calmly and steadily
upon it; its action is like the swing of a pen-
dulum rather than like the poise of the needle, — >
vibrating across the centre of truth instead of point-
ing straight towards it. We must not allow our-
selves to be either shocked or disgusted by the
forms given to the doctrine of the resurrection in
the early Christian centuries. Let us rather re-
member that the generations after us may hold our
views of truth, on many points, as cheap as we hold
those of the ancients on the subject before us. Not
that there is no attainable standard of truth ; we
have a compass pointing to the exact truth as well
as a pendulum vibrating about it, — a divine reve-
lation whose source is in the heavens, as well as a
liuman reason swayed by the forces of earth. We
find in the Scriptures the doctrine of the resurrec-
tion set down in forms that not only agree with
reason, but stimulate it to higher exercise. Neither
in Christ nor in St. Paul do we discover the pres-

THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. 297

sure of worldly influence in their treatment of it.
Christ was Himself the resurrection ; He did not so
much teach it as act it ; and therefore we find in
Him the absolute truth of the subject. St. Paul's
discussion of it grows more and more luminous as
it is subjected to the advancing thought of the ages.
It cannot be denied, however, that very early it
took on a crude and gross aspect. The Fathers
taught not only the resurrection of the flesh, but
drew it out into the most absurd particulars ; the
hair, the teeth, the nails, and every specified organ
of the human frame would be raised up ; some
claiming that the bodies would be raised as they
were at death ; others as in their highest perfec-
tion; others that the hair and nails cut would not
be lost, neither would they be raised " in such
enormous quantities as to deform their original
places, but shall return into the body, into that
substance from which they grew." Such views
strike us as ludicrous, but there is an explanation
of them.

Two great enemies threatened the early life of the
Church : Pantheism and Gnosticism. There are
but two philosophies — the Christian and the Pan-
theistic : one asserting the personality of God and
man ; the other denying all personality. The doc-
trine of the one ever-living God kept the Jcvrish
nation free from the latter ; for the personality of
God carries with it the personality of man. Chris-
tianity reasserted it, and gave it intensity by exalt-
ing man, and investing him with supreme duties,
and assigning to him a personal destiny. It is this

298 THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD.

single fact that underlies modern civilization, an
intense sense of the personality of man. It is the
mainspring of the energy, the humanity and the
faith of Western civilization as contrasted with the
Oriental and the Ancient. If the question be raised
again that is now so often raised as a taunt —
''What has Christianity done for the world?" —
we answer : it established a philosophy of man that
has inspired whatever is great and good in modern
civilization, and it supplanted a philosophy that
unnerved man's spirit, stripped him of all dignity,
and made him not only an easy victim of tyrants
but of little worth in his own sight.

Wherever the Christian theory does not prevail,
the Pantheistic does ; it is the only alternative of
the human mind ; it haunts the world continually ;
all lapses of Christian faith are in its direction. It
was the philosophy of the world when Christ en-
tered it ; it will be the philosophy of the world if
Christianity is ever driven out of it. Its effect is
to blast human energy by destroying human per-
sonality. The Fathers felt its encroachments upon
the Church, and well understood its influence. By
assailing personality, it denied an enduring identity^
which is the total significance of the resurrection.
In order to meet the Pantheistic spirit and influ-
ence, they went to an extreme and claimed that the
resurrection covered the whole man, flesh and bones
as well as mind and spirit. In the main thej'- were
right ; in the details they were wrong. It is com-
mon to flout the memory of these great names by
holding up the unseemly details of their teaching.

THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. 299

but they did not act under the inspiration of igno-
rance ; they were guarding the most sacred truth
ever committed to human keeping against the most
insidious foe that ever assailed it. Their philosophy
was not yet fine enough to teach them that personal
identity consists not in flesh and blood, and so, in
their noble zeal for this vital truth, they asserted
the resurrection of the flesh.

Another enemy that threatened the Church, more
definite and specific than Pantheism, was* Gnosti-
cism with its Oriental doctrine of contempt of the
body, holding that there is an antagonism between
the flesh and the spirit, and that the flesh itself is
evil, — a dangerous doctrine, as it makes sin exter-
nal, transfers it from the heart to the body, and so
turns all the forces of 'religion into mere discipline
of the flesh. The Fathers perceived its danger, and
not only denied that the flesh was evil, but empha-
sized their denial by asserting its literal resurrec-
tion. Again, they were right in the main but
wrong in detail. This doctrine of contempt for
the body was not only injurious to religion but to
civilization. Its tendency was to paralyze society
by reducing the wants of the body to the lowest
point. Had the Fathers allowed this doctrine to
prevail, not only would the Church have been sub-
verted, but civilization itself would have been
checked. Thus we see that the assertion of the
resurrection of the flesh, with all its gross absurdity,
was an assertion in favor of breadth of thought and
of toleration ; it was a protest against narrowness
and bigotry. We are accustomed to think of the

300 THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD.

ancient creeds as putting limitations about thought
and belief, but they were rather assertions of lib-
erty, — veritable bills of human rights, prescribing
not so much that men shall think in right ways, as
that they shall not think in narrow and shriveling
ways. It is very easy, it costs but little mental
effort, to throw contempt upon the doctrines of
the early church, but no broad thinker, no wise,
charitable mind, will indulge in such a habit. The
forms given to the early doctrines may be criticised,
but they are not to be despised.

It was this sturdy defense of great imperiled in-
terests that secured for the doctrine of the resurrec-
tion the place it has so long held in the Church.
The occasion for the form first given to it has
passed away, but the form itself remains. We still
assert in words a literal resurrection of the body,
but none of us believe it. Our hymns, our prayers,
our epitaphs, and too often our sermons, imply that
the dust of our bodies shall be reanimated in some
far-off future and joined to the waiting soul. At
the same time, we know that science declares it to
be impossible ; our reason revolts from it ; it is sus-
tained by no analogy ; it is an outworn and nearly
discarded opinion. There is, however, a general
feeling of perplexity in regard to it. The present
state of the question rather breeds skepticism than
ministers to faith. Teach a thinking man chemis-
try and he must be skeptical ; mathematics even is
against the traditional view. It is an unhappy
thing when one revelation of God is set in appar-
ent opposition to another. When such is the case.

THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. 301

the higher revelation commonly yields before the
lower one; we side with the lower because it is
nearer. The wiser way is to harmonize them ; for
God cannot be inconsistent with Himself.

The view now oifered is substantially this : that
the resurrection is from the dead^ and not from the
grave ; that it takes place at death ; that it is gen-
eral in the sense of universal ; that the spiritual
body, or the basis of the spiritual body, already
exists, and that this is the body that is raised up, —
God giving it such outward form as pleaseth Him,
and thus preserving that dualistic state essential to
consciousness, if not to existence itself. I hold
these views as both scriptural and rational, as ac-
cording with the essence of the doctrine and with
the analogies of nature.

Let us notice some considerations that render
these points probable.

The analogy of nature. The continuance of life
in the succession of plants and animals does not
depend upon the transmission of matter, but of an
immaterial principle or entity folded within the
least possible amount of matter. The matter does
not seem to be essential to the future life except as
holding it during a very brief crisis. When an
oak is about to become another oak, its life is com-
mitted to an acorn, — a slight wrapping of matter,
and thus left for a few days till the oak can begin
again its general method of existence by air and
light and moisture, when it lets go the enfolding
matter which decays and becomes to the new oak
no more than any other matter. It may foster its

302 THE EESURRECTION FROxM THE DEAD.

life by its decay, but it does this incidentally, as
any other matter might. The acorn simply covers
a crisis in the life of the oak; the continuance of
the oak does not depend upon the continuance of
the acorn, but rather upon getting rid of it. The
principle is uniyersal. The law of succession does
not consist in one bodily form entering into another,
but in something quite different. As applied to
the resurrection, this analogy indicates that future
life does not depend upon the preservation of the
physical body, but rather upon its loss.

We find a similar analogy in the animal world.
The butterfly emerges from the chrysalis — a per-
fect croature — not by working up the substance of
the worm into itself, but by a growth within it.
At a certain stage, the chrysalis may be opened,
and the members of the winged insect may be seen,
two bodies in one : one fed through the agency
of the other, but not identical with it. The but-
terfly gains its perfect form, not by assimilating
the worm, but by getting rid of it. It is the
most beautiful analogy in nature, its very gospel
upon the resurrection, — at first a creeping thing,
dull and earth-bound, a slight period of dormancy,
and then a winged creature floating upon the air
and feeding upon flowers ; one life, yet possessing
from the first the potency of two forms. The
Greeks early saw it, and adopted it into their phi-
losophy and literature, using it, however, better
than we do. For, misled by false notions of a car-
nal resurrection, we have argued back upon the
analogy and treated it as though the substance of

THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. 303

the caterpillar were transmitted into the substance
of the butterfly, which is not scientific truth. But
the Greeks regarded it as both a body and a soul,
not a soul made out of a body.

The entire significance and value of the doctrine
of the resurrection from the dead, centre in the fact
that it sets forth human identity. There are two
general types of thought in regard to the nature of
man. One asserts that he is a person ; the other
that he is an essential part of nature. All special
theorizing ranges itself under one of these types.
Pantheism asserts that man is merely phenomenal,
and at death sinks back into the general whole.
Christianity asserts that man is an immortal per-
son. It is the antagonism of these two systems
that led St. Paul and the Fathers to lay such em-
phasis upon the resurrection. The latter, hard
pressed by Pantheism in defending identity, did
not carefully or correctly define in what identity
consists, and so pushed on to the extreme of assert-
ing a resurrection of the flesh. It remains for mod-
ern thinking to clear away the slight rubbish left
by them about the foundations of the great truth,
and make it consonant with revelation and science.
Pantheism says that man is a part of nature ; Chris-
tianity says that man is made in God's image, — a
person and forever to be a person, or that he has
an enduring identity. The resurrection is mainly
the assertion that this identity continues after death
in opposition to Pantheism, which claims that man
is resolved into the elements. Any theory that pre-
serves full identity is suflScient to meet the demands

304 THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD.

of faith, for this is the main point that the doctrine
is designed to teach.

The question now rises : In what does identity-
consist ?

Identity does not lie in matter, nor is it depend-
ent upon matter. If it does, then matter and the
will are the same ; then mind is as phenomenal as
matter and is under the same laws. Hence fatal-
ism ; hence pantheism ; evil is good and good is
evil. By a fiction of language, however, we apply
identity to material things. It is on the assump-
tion that this is a true use of the word, that the
puzzles of the metaphj^sicians are constructed as to
the sameness of a thing with changing elements ;
as a knife whose parts are lost and replaced succes-
sively, till no single part of the original remains.
Is it the same knife ? If the lost parts are found
and reunited, is that the same knife ? Did the
original knife lose its identity ; and if so, when ?
These insolvable puzzles show the logical impro-
priety of applying the word identity to matter.
Matter has no real identity. Matter is one ; it is
in perpetual flux. The mist rising from the river
is a visible illustration of an invisible, universal
process. The lichens upon our granite hills are
transforming rock into gas and soil as really as the
sun is changing the river into mist. Neither rock,
nor lichens, nor the gas and dust into which they
change have identity. The only identity we can
apply to matter is that of appearance. We say the
river is the same, but it is the sameness of appear-
ance only, it changes every moment. A ray of

THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. 305

light, a column of smoke, a flame of fire, — these are
the same only in the sense that they offer the same
appearance. The hunter leaves his cabin in the
morning, and before he enters the forest, turns and
sees the blue column of smoke ascending from his
hearth. He returns at evening and sees the same
column of smoke, but in reality it is another col-
umn in the same place. I go back at times to the
spot where years ago I used to watch the coming
and going of the ships, and I say to the dear friend
who watches them still from that place of match-
less beauty, " There are the same white sails we
used to see twenty years ago." But they are not
even the same ships; there is simply the same ap-
pearance and impression.

Now what is the identity of the human body ?
Have we anything different when we come to the
"human form divine?" There is one ever-acting
enemy of material identity — oxygen — unceasing
combustion. No material thing remains the same
for the millionth part of a second. We see this
transformation in flame ; we do not see it in flesh,
but the flesh is burning as really as the wood. If
it burns too fast there is fever and death ; if it
burns too slowly there- is also death. The chemists
tell us that we are ablaze to the tips of our fingers.
Food is the fuel, and the fire runs along the veins
as flues, burning up certain particles that are re-
placed by others... This process makes up physical
life. Stop it, that is, establish positive identity,
and death speedily follows. Thus material iden-
tity, instead of being a factor of life is a factor of

306 THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD,

death. It is on the wrong side of the question for
those who would connect it with the living fact of
the resurrection.

Such facts as these show us the difficulty of con-
necting identity with the material body, and of
supposing that it enters, in any way, into the fact
of the resurrection.^

The ancients, having no science to instruct them,
regarded the body as always the same and imper-
ishable. Hence the Egyptians embalmed their
dead and hid them within mountains of stone ;
hence the Jews buried within caves and rock-hewn
sepulchres, sealing the entrance with stones, look-
ing for a physical resurrection. But the knowledge
of oxygen puts another face upon the matter, and
we must not forget that God made oxygen and or-
dained its function. We do not set science against
the Bible, but we may use science as an aid in in-
terpreting it.

We now answer our question positively. Its neg-
ative side shows us that personal identit}^ cannot
lie in matter; then it must lie outside of matter.

What is the living creature man ? He is not the
matter that makes up the perpetual flux known as

1 If there is any organized matter of which identity can be predi-
cated, it must be a form that is beyond the known laws of matter, —
some refinement of it too delicate and ethereal to admit of disorganiza-
tion. This is indeed supposable, and seems to some to be called for in
order to explain the connection between mind and matter, but we have
not, as yet, any grounds for accepting it; nor even thus could the gulf
between the external world and consciousness be bridged. It offers,
however, an interesting field for the united studies of the metaphysician,
the ph3^siologist, and the chemist. The acceptance of an interstellar
ether as a simple logical inference from the nature of light, affords a
hint that there may be discoveries of even another kind of matter.

THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. 307

the human frame ; he is nothing that the chemist
can put test to. He must be something, not mate-
rial, that endures, upon which the shifting phenom-
ena of animal life play themselves off. We may
not be able to say what it is, or to get a clear con-
ception of it ; but we know there is something that
sustains the fleshly existence. Call it an organiza-
tion, a dynamic essence, a substance, that which
stands under the phenomena of life; call it, as
does St. Paul, a spiritual body ; any name answers
so long as we recognize the thing. It may be well
to regard the Scriptural distinction of hody^ soul^
and spirit as organic and not rhetorical, and to
think of man as a threefold being: a physical
body, a human soul, and a living spirit. It is at
least a convenient distinction, and so using it, we
claim that identity resides in the two last as mak-
ing up human nature, and in no sense in the first.
Thus we do not come to the man, the unchanging
person, till we get outside of matter. There, beyond
the reach of the chemist and his tests, in the imma-
terial soul and spirit, in the underlying organiza-
tion, in the living type, it matters not what we call
it, lies the proper identity of man. No addition or
withdrawal of matter can increase or lessen this
identity. He is as perfectly man without as with
flesh. And for aught we know, his mental and spir-
itual operations might go on without the physical
system, though not without some sort of a body.
If separated, the soul would quickly have another
body suitable to its place and needs, for the soul is
the builder of man ; as Spenser says : —

308 THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD.

" For of the soul the body form doth take,
For soul is form, and doth the body make.'*

Now as identity is the central idea of the res-
urrection, what is the fact of the resurrection?
Taught by so many ages of traditional belief, it is
not easy to rid ourselves of the thought that it is
in some way connected with the physical body, that
something goes into the grave that is to come out.
It is interesting to recall how clear a conception
Socrates had on this matter. '' In what way would
you have us bury you?" said Crito to him. "In
any way that you like ; onlj^ you must get hold of
me, and take care that I do not walk away from
you." Then turning to those about him, with a
smile, he continued : '' I cannot make Crito believe
that I am the same Socrates who have been talking
and conducting the argument ; he fancies that I am
the other Socrates whom he will soon see a dead
body, and asks, How shall he bury me? And
though I have spoken many words in the endeavor
to show that when I have drunk the poison I shall
leave you to go to the joys of the blessed, these
words of mine with which I comforted you and
myself, have had, as I perceive, no effect upon
Crito. I would not have him say at the burial —
Thus we lay out Socrates, or, thus we follow him to
the grave ; for false words are not only evil in
themselves, but they infect the soul with evil. Be
of good cheer then, my dear Crito, and say that
you are burying my body only, and do with that as
you think best."

Our thinking on this point will correct itself if

THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. 309

we keep in mind that the body is not the man, and
that it is the man who is raised up. He goes into
the other world simply unclothed of flesh, there to
take on an environing body suited to his new con-
ditions. As here we have a body adapted to grav-
itation and time and space, coordinated to physical
law, a body with cycles of time — day and night,
months and years, wrought into it, — a body that
feeds upon organized matter, that responds to heat
and cold, and is simply a pathway of nerves be-
tween the mind and the external world, so doubt-
less it will be hereafter ; the spirit will build about
itself a body such as its new conditions demand.

This change necessarily takes place at death. A
disembodied state, or a state of torpid existence be-
tween death and some far-off day of resurrection,
an under-world where the soul waits for the reani-
mation of its body ; these are old-world notions
that survive only through chance contact with the
Christian system. Christ did not teach them ; his
ascension was an illustrative denial of them. He
found such beliefs existing as a part of the religion
of the day, and did not contradict them in set
terms, but taught higher truth in regard to the sub-
ject, and left them to fall by their own weight.
This higher truth was the announcement of Him-
self as the Resurrection and the Life. This simple
phrase, when thoroughly understood^ is the repudia-
tion of all these ghostly theories that overhung the
ancient world, and have floated down into the
Christian ages. It takes the element of far futu-
rity out of the resurrection, and dissipates the shad-

310 THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD.

ows of the under-world, by putting life in place of
death.

We will glance at some of the texts bearing on
the subject. The Sadducees propose a question that
implies the resurrection of the flesh at the last day,
a doctrine of their rivals, the Pharisees, and fairly
stated. Christ's answer is directed mainly to the
dogma, not to either sect. Its central idea is that
because the Patriarchs are alive, they have been
raised up. " But that the dead are raised, even
Moses showed ; He is not the God of the dead, but
of the living ; for all live unto Him." Their resur-
rection is the pivot upon which their present life
turns. If Christ's words do not mean this, we must
despair of language as a vehicle of thought.

His words at the tomb of Lazarus are equally
plain, and are of the same tenor. Martha states
the doctrine of a resurrection at the last day ;
Christ sets it aside as a cold, comfortless supersti-
tion, and announced faith in Himself as covering
the whole matter. The plainest feature of this nar-
rative is the contrast Christ makes between Mar-
tha's words and his own ; if one was right the other
was wrong.

The words of Christ to the penitent thief, " To-
day thou shalt be with me in Paradise," imply a
life of conscious fellowship beyond, and because it
was such, having all the elements of a perfect con-
dition.

There are indeed words of Christ that seem to
imply a resurrection from the grave, as, '' The hour
Cometh in which all that are in the tombs shall

THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. 311

hear his voice." If we read these words literally
we must believe that the entire man, body and soul,
is in the grave, which is more than can be claimed
by any. The very absurdity drives us to another
conception, — that of Christ's assertion of his power
over both worlds, the living and the dead.

Again Christ said repeatedly: "I will raise him
up at the last day," but we must not read these
words as an endorsement of a far-off resurrection
but rather as a pledge of help to the end, and of
final victory. He adopted a current phrase because
any other would have diverted the mind from the
main thought.

Christ's own resurrection yields a proof of the
immediate resurrection of all. He was the Son of
Man, and as He fulfilled all the righteousness of
humanity, so He illustrated the life of humanity.
He lived and died as a man. He rose and ascended
into heaven as a man. Why should we assert a
part of this and not the whole ? Why die as a man,
but rise as God ? We have no authority for draw-
ing such a line of demarcation between these two
phases of his career. Instead, the whole signifi-
cance of his relation to humanity demands that no
such line shall be drawn. He would not be the Son
of man, nor the Saviour of mankind, if his resurrec-
tion had been immediate, and mankind's were to
be delayed for ages. To every believer who closes
his eyes in death trusting in Him, He says ^^ To-day
thou shalt be with me."

We cannot enter upon a full examination of St.
Paul's great chapter on the subject, but wiU only

312 THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD.

say, read it, with the points already discussed in
view, and you will find verse after verse ranging
itself naturally under them. " Flesh and blood
cannot inherit the kingdom of God, neither doth
corruption inherit incorruption." ''If there is a
natural body, there is also a spiritual body," — one
succeeding the other. We have borne the image
of the earthly, we shall bear the image of the
heavenly ; but there is no hint that countless ages
intervene between them. The whole drift of the
triumphant words is towards an immediate ex-
change of one image for the other. There are
words in this chapter that are hard to understand.
It is not easy to get a clear conception of what St.
Paul means when he says : " We shall not all sleep,
but we shall all be changed." There is often an
element of futurity in his references to the resur-
rection seemingly at variance with other references.
But St. Paul used all his great words — faith, justi-
fication, death, resurrection — in different senses.
Thus he says : " If ye then be risen with Christ,"
— meaning a spiritual resurrection already accom-
plished. But the great fifteenth chapter is aimed
directly at those who held this view of it; the
difference being that St. Paul held both views, and
his opponents but one. Doubtless in some sense
the resurrection will be future and far off, and per-
haps simultaneous for all, but it will not be the
resurrection from the dead. The death of man,
and his assumption of a spiritual body, is not the
whole of the resurrection. It stands for " the
finished condition of humanity," and its final pres-

THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. 313

entation to God as the work of Christ. " What
mysteries lie beyond the mark " of death we know
not. St. Paul may have had glimpses that he could
not wholly express. But when he said that he was
willing to be absent from the body and to be present
with the Lord ; and that he desired to depart and
to be with Christ, he had no thought of a resurrec-
tion that would put a moment between the death
of his body and his presence with the Lord.

And this may be our faith. Having life in its
abundance, there is no break in its current at death ;
there is no waste of even endless ages. If joined
to the divine Life, every change must be to more
life. If one with Christ, how can it be that we
shall not share his destiny, and go from world to
world in his company ? Because we are one with
the Life, death has no more any dominion over us.
With such hopes let us await our time of departure.
With such hopes let us lay our dead in the grave,
— not dead, not here, for they are risen.

THE METHOD OF PENALTY.

THE METHOD OF PENALTY.

" But in these cases,
We still have judgment here ; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor ; this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice
To our own lips." Macbeth^ I. 7.

"You reap what you sow — not something else — but that. An act of
love makes the soul more loving. A deed of humbleness deepens hum-
bleness. The thing reaped is the very thing sown multiplied a hundred-
fold. You have sown a seed of life — you reap life." — Robertson's
Sermons, Vol. I., No. XIV.

" Oh ! that my lot may lead me in the path of holy innocence of word
and deed, the path which august laws ordain, laws that in the highest
empyrean had their birth, of which heaven is the father alone, neither
did the race of mortal man beget them, nor shall oblivion ever put them
to sleep. The power of God is mighty in them, and groweth not old."
— Sophocles, (Ed. Tyr.

THE METHOD OF PENALTY.

"Some men's sins are evident, going before unto judgment; and
some men also they follow after." — 1 Timothy v. 24.

I DO not claim to be wholly correct in my use of
these much-disputed words, when I connect them
with God's judgment of sin. I presume they
simply mean that some men's characters are open,
and anticipate the verdict of more thorough knowl-
edge ; others are more reticent, and become known
only after a longer trial of them. They are simply
an injunction of carefulness, made by St. Paul to
Timothy, in regard to ordination ; as though he had
said, " Be careful whom you ordain ; some men are
transparent, easily understood ; others reveal them-
selves more slowly." They are the words of age
and wisdom addressed to youth and inexperience,
with perhaps some special vindication in the not
over-robust nature of Timothy.

Still they contain the principle I wish to bring
out, namely, men's sins manifest themselves vari-
ously as to time, some reaping their penalty soon,
others late ; some in this world, others in the next
world. I am certainly within the spirit of the text
when I say that some sins anticipate judgment;
they invoke it, and receive its sentence, and experi-
ence its penalty, apparently before the time ; they

818 THE METHOD OF PENALTY.

run their course quickly, and incur their doom in
this life. There are other sins that meet with little
check ; they are slow to overtake their consequences ;
they come upon little in this life that can be called
penalty. Speaking from daily observation, we may
say that the retribution of some sins begins in this
world ; while there are other sins that await their
punishment in the next world.

I am well aware of a distinction often made by
which the consequences of sin are divided into chas-
tisement and penalty ; one being reformatory, and
having the good of the sufferer in view ; the other
penal, and looking towards governmental ends. But
the distinction is confusing to practical thought ;
we cannot be sure that it is true ; and if it were,
who shall draw the line of demarcation ? I prefer,
for practical purposes, to regard both elements as
present in all penalty, to see in it always a reforma-
tory design, and also a purpose to vindicate the law,
— two inseparable things, however.

Both elements are present in every actual case of
natural penalty. No man suffers the painful con-
sequences of vice without knowing that the pain
calls for reformation, and also that it is a vindica-
tion of the excellence of the law. Why should
we discriminate between what God has so closely
united ? Neither in nature nor in the Scriptures
do we find a warrant for drawing a line through the
consequences of sin, and saying, '' This is discipli-
nary, and that is penal." The suffering involved in
sin utters but one voice, but it utters it in various
notes, and with an undertone. It first sounds a

THE METHOD OF PENALTY. 319

note of warning : " Do not sin ; you will suffer if
you do." When sin is committed it says: ''Do
not sin again." And if the sin is repeated, and
settles down into a habit, it says : " You will suffer
so long as you sin." At the same time there may
be heard the deep under-tone of conscience declar-
ing the punishment to be just. This is all that
penalty says to the sinner ; that sin begets suffer-
ing; and that the suffering is divinely just ; and it
says the latter in order to make the lesson of the
former effective. When a man suffers in conse-
quence of sin, and, at the same time, sees it to be
just, connecting it of course with the Maker of the
law, he is feeling the two strongest motives adverse
to sin that are possible to his nature. Penalty says
this first and last and always ; and it never says
anything else. What authority have we for in-
truding upon this profound operation of God's law
with our arbitrary distinction, saying : " Up to this
point the suffering is chastisement, but beyond it
is hopeless penalty ; hitherto it is for man's good ;
henceforth it is for the glory of God and the main-
tenance of his government." I protest against this
distinction, because it is practically mischievous
and weakening in the everyday experience of men.
I would not have one think, when he is feeling the
painful consequences of sin, that he is simply under-
going chastisement with a view to the correction of
his fault, but I would have him also feel that he is
enduring the wrath of God against sin. In other
words, I would not withhold the grandest element
of penalty from any stage of its action, but would

320 THE METHOD OF PENALTY.

secure the action of its entire meaning upon the
earliest as well as the latest phase of sin. The
natural conscience makes no such distinction. As
the body withers under the pain engendered by its
sin, the conscience confesses that it is undergoing
the just punishment of God. To thrust the distinc-
tion between chastisement and punishment into this
indivisible experience, is to weaken and undo its
saving work.

It is never well to make distinctions in moral
operations that are not plainly indicated in those
operations. Human ingenuity may not only make
this distinction in regard to penalty, but many
more ; they are possible to thought ; but if you
would have the penalty of sin effective, do not lay
the finger of analysis upon it ; let it stand in the
singleness of its awful grandeur, warning the sin-
ner and showing forth the wrath of God upon sin.
It would augment public virtue if men were taught
that the painful consequences of their sins and
crimes are even now the veritable judgments of
God; if already they could be made to feel that
the pains that have hold of them are the pains of
hell. The Gehenna of which Christ spoke, lay just
outside the walls of Jerusalem. The smoke of its
never-quenched fires rose before the eyes of his au-
dience. There, close at hand, was the pit into
which their whole bodies would speedily be cast if
they did not cut off their offending hands and feet,
and pluck out their offending eyes. He did not
say, " The pains in your offending members are
simply admonitory, — merely corrective of your

THE METHOD OF PENALTY. 321

faults ; soon you are to be punished in some other
way and for another purpose." Not thus does a
great moral teacher warn men of their sins. The
thunderbolt of retribution is not divided into sec-
tions, according to a theological note-book ; it does*
not flash two lights upon the guilty soul. When
punishment overtakes sin, be it sooner or later, it
contains its whole meaning.

There is a distinction, however, as to the time in
which the consequences of sin assert themselves as
punishment ; a distinction simply of sooner or later,
here or hereafter, based upon the kind of sin.

We shall best come to an understanding of this
truth by looking a little into the method of retri-
bution.

It is, as its definition implies, a return of disobe-
dience, or payment, when, in due time, it returns
again. It is the natural and inevitable consequence
of broken law. If we seek for an explanation of
this law, we find none, except that it is so. We
perceive its fitness and beneficence, but farther
back we cannot go. The law is wrought into our
moral nature, and also into our consciousness ; cer-
tainly, it commands early and universal assent.

We notice also that the penalty is akin to the
sin ; it is under the seed-law, — like yielding like.
The elements of one pass on into the other, merely
changing their form and relation to the man, like
the little book of the Apocalypse, sweet in the
mouth but bitter in the belly. We pay out sin ; it
is repaid as penalty, — the same metal coined with
a new inscription, or molten to flow a burning
21

322 THE METHOD OF PENALTY.

stream through all our bones. We receive back
the things we have done, changed only as mist is
changed to water, and heat to flame. The law of
cause and effect, a necessary relation, the most
generally recognized principle known to the human
mind, covers the whole matter. And the effect
often bears so absolute resemblance to the cause as
to arrest the imagination, and is called poetic jus-
tice ; the murderer drinking the poison he had pre-
pared for another.

In human government it is not so, but only be-
cause of its imperfection. When we reason from
the human to the divine government, and infer that
God governs as man does, we reason from imper-
fection to perfection ; we infer from the sick what
the well man will do ; from the ignorant what the
wise will think, — a species of logic it is time to
have done with. If there is any special feature of
the divine government, it is that it is not like any
human government yet set in operation. The latter
cannot use the seed-principle, the law of cause and
effect, except in a limited degree, because it has
not the creating of its subjects. It is an increated
principle, and cannot be superinduced to any great
extent. When a man steals, all that human law
has yet learned to do is to imprison, or otherwise in-
jure him, inflicting an arbitrary, deterrent suffering.
Society merely defends itself. It is seldom skillful
enough to establish a natural relation between the
crime and the penalty.

But that part of human society which is not
organized into government, the social relationship

THE METHOD OF PENALTY. 323

of men, is more skillful to connect evil with its
natural punishment. If one sins against the con-
ventional laws, or moral instincts, of societj^, he
meets with exclusion or disgrace according to the
nature of the offense. Treachery is punished with
scorn ; cowardice with its own branding name of
contempt ; a liar by the loss of trust ; pride fails
at last of sympathy ; selfishness reaps its own iso-
lation. Dante, with finest perception, illustrates
the principle by placing upon the heads of hypo=
crites crowns of lead, thus forcing them to look
where before they had looked in mock humilityo
Society, because it is a spontaneous relation, thus
attains somewhat to the divine method ; but only
in God's moral kingdom do we find the principle
perfectly observed. Planned for self-regulation, and
in analogy with the laws of growth, it hides the
fruit of punishment within the seed of disobedience.
There is no arbitrary and artificial arrangement
of prisons, and stripes, and fiery chains ; but what-
ever there is of these is the inevitable outgrowth of
sin.

There is a most significant recognition of this
principle underlying all of Christ's references to
the subject. In no case does He touch the matter
of penalty, but He recognizes it as flowing natu-
rally out of sin. The unforgiving debtor goes him-
self to prison ; the sleeping virgins find a closed
door ; the guest without a wedding garment is ex-
cluded from the feast ; they who make excuse, go
without ; the prodigal comes to want ; the slothful
servant loses that which he had; they who will

324 THE METHOD OF PENALTY.

not minister to humanity are sent away from the
presence of the Son of Man, who is the head of
humanity ; they who will not cut off offending
members must suffer the corruption of their whole
body, and be cast into the Gehenna whose flame is
evermore burning up corruption ; Dives, living in
selfish ease, and giving the hungry Lazarus but the
crumbs that fell from his table, comes at last into
torment, and thirsts for one cooling drop of water ;
for selfish ease works surely towards tormenting
want.

Cause and effect ; natural order ; congruity be-
tween the sin and its penalty; — these are the un-
failing marks that the great teacher put upon the
subject. What wisdom, what truth, what justice,
is the voice of universal reason and conscience.

It is the weakness of human government that it
does not employ this principle in the punishment
of crime, so far as it might. It was a doubtful
policy that abolished the whipping-post and pillory.
If a brutal husband whips his wife at home, he
can have no better punishment than a whipping in
public ; or, if this be corrupting to the people, then
in private. No punishment is so effective as that
which makes a man feel in himself what he in-
flicts upon another. And if men who in secret do
shameful deeds, who follow shameful callings be-
hind screened doors and windows, could be exposed
in humiliating ways to public contempt, they would
not only be justly but effectively punished. For
many shameful occupations need only to have the
stamp of shame put upon them, to be driven out

THE METHOD OF PENALTY. 325

of existence. If the keepers of brothels were to be
exposed to public view at noonday, with appro-
priate inscriptions above their heads, their business
and numbers might shrink within an endurable
compass.

If these suggestions be thought to imply a retro-
grading civilization, let me answer, they harmonize
with the divine order. This is exactly what God
does with offenders ; it is his way of punishing, and
so of preventing sin, bringing hidden things to
light, giving back to men what they have done
whether it be good or evil. It were wise to be slow
in pronouncing barbarous a principle and method
so plainly a part of God's eternal order.

Christ did not reject this law, technically known
as the Lex talionis^ when He said : '^ Ye have heard
that it hath been said, an eye for an eye, and a
tooth for a tooth ; but I say unto you, resist not
him that is evil." He merely took away from it
the element of revenge. The Scribes had lost sight
of the rule as a principle of judicial action, and
made it one of retaliation. As such He condemned
it, but He left the principle intact, and used it over
and over in his moral teachings. It is a part of
that older law which He said was to be fulfilled to
the uttermost, — not however as a spirit of revenge,
the ''wild justice" of the savage, — but of that
even-handed justice which Plato declares to be the
very essence of the state.

There is but one sound, effective method of pun-
ishing wrong-doing, and that is to make the offender
feel the evil he has inflicted. God has wrought it

826 THE METHOD OF PENALTY.

into the nature of man, and the order of the uni-
verse. We have no intimation in the Scriptures or
in nature that sin is punished in any other waj'.
And it is altogether probable that God's ways
are sufficient for their ends. Let us not then go
about to concoct other schemes of penalty, and
thrust them into God's plans, because they corre-
spond to our systems. It is one thing to reason
from nature up to God, but quite another to reason
from human institutions that are full of human im-
perfection.

This divine method of punishment does not ex-
clude from it a sense of the feelings of the Law-
giver. This, too, is bound up in a natural way
with the sin. Hence it is not necessary to make a
distinction between punishment and penalty, on the
ground that one expresses the feeling of a personal
Lawgiver, while the other is the natural conse-
quence of sin. This distinction is the fruit of a
mechanical, extra-mundane conception of God ; it
is not necessary in order to secure the presence of
such personal feeling. A proper conception of God
as immanent in the order of nature avoids the
necessity of the distinction ; the operations of na-
ture are expressions of God's personal feelings.
When a man breaks a law of God, a sense of the
wrath of God at once asserts itself, if the conscience
is natural ; if it is hardened, it slumbers, but sooner
or later it awakes. The painters set forth a uni-
versal truth when they depict Cain as fleeing from
the dead body of Abel with downcast head ; there
was an eye above whose glance he felt, but could

THE METHOD OF PENALTY. 327

not face. And thus the wrath of God against sin
is wrought into the very automatism of the body.

We do not know that there is any other way in
which God can lay hold of a sinner to punish him.
I do not mean that God is limited in Himself, but
in the offender. The pain must reflect the sin, or
the sinner is not punished ; he will not feel the
justice of the punishment, or get to hate the sin,
until he has tasted its bitterness, and felt its dis-
cord as an agony in his own soul. God sustains all
relations through law ; even love and grace are by
law — the law of love and grace. There is even a
"law of liberty." But the special feature of the
sinner's relation to God is a relation of law, — Irohen
law, and his punishment consists in the fact that he
is shut up with it. And out of the fragments of
broken law rise barriers, built by nature, that shut
the sinner away from everything but the broken
law : away from God, away from all true fellow-
ship with men, away from himself, till at last he
finds himself in the outer darkness of utter disorder,
a prison whose bolts will never draw back unless
Eternal Love without hears the voice of penitence
within.

As we thus look at retribution in the mingled
light of revelation and reason, we are prepared to
understand why it is that some sins are punished
in this world, while other sins await punishment in
a future world.

If we were to classify the sins that reap their
painful consequences here, and those that do not,
we would find that the former are offenses that

328 THE METHOD OF PENALTY.

pertain to the body, and the order of this world ;
and that the latter pertain more directly to the
spiritual nature. The classification is not sharp ;
the parts shade into one another ; but it is as ac-
curate as is the distinction between the two depart-
ments of our nature. In his physical and social
nature man was made under the laws of this world.
If he breaks these laws, the penalty is inflicted here.
It may continue hereafter, for the grave feature of
penalty is that it does not tend to end, but con-
tinues to act, like force imparted to an object in
a vacuum, until arrested by some outside power.
But man is also under spiritual laws, — reverence,
humility, love, self-denial, purity, and all that are
commonly known as moral duties. If he offends
against these, he may incur but little of painful
consequence. There may be much of evil conse-
quence, but the phase of suffering lies farther on.
The soil and atmosphere of this world are not
adapted to bring it to full fruitage.

Stating our distinction again: punishment in this
world follows the sins of the grosser part of our
nature, — that part which more specially belongs to
this world, — sins against the order of nature, against
the body ; sins of self-indulgence and sins against
society. The punishment that awaits the next
world is of sins pertaining to the higher nature,
sins against the mind, the affections, and the spirit.
The seed of evil sown in the soil of this world
comes to judgment here. The seed of evil sown in
the hidden places of the spirit, does not bear full
fruit till the spiritual world is reached. Man is

THE METHOD OF PENALTY. 329

coordinated to two worlds. They overlap and reach
far into one another; the spiritual inter-penetrates
the physical ; and the physical sends unceasing in-
fluences into the spiritual. Still, each is a field
whereon evil reaps its appropriate harvest.

Illustrations of the first confront us on every
side ; judgment pronounced and executed here ; sin
punished here. Take the commonest but most in-
structive example — drunkenness. As soon as de-
sire becomes stronger than the will, it begins to
act retributively. When appetite dictates to the
moral nature, the man's feet touch the threshold of
hell. The shame, the conscious weakness, the un-
satisfied desire rising at last to torment, — what are
these but the pains of hell? But the full cycle of
sin and penalty is not completed except in his body.
Bloated and distorted in countenance, senses be-
numbed, powers enfeebled, blood fevered, nerves
tremulous as the aspen, haunted by visions, con-
sumed by inward fires ; but every pain, every thrill
of weakened nerves, every enfeebled sense, each tot-
tering step of the debased flesh towards the dust,
is the proper penaltj'^ of this kind of sin. Having
sown to the flesh, he reaps of the flesh corruption.
His sin works out its penalty on its own ground.
I do not say that it ends here, because it is also
linked with an order more enduring than this world.
For, as one standing over against a mountain may
fill the whole valley with the clamor of shouting,
but hears at length an echo as if from another
world, so these sins, having yielded their first fruits
here, may stir up vaster penalties hereafter. The

330 THE METHOD OF PENALTY.

terrible feature of penalty, so far as any light is
thrown upon it from its own nature, is that it can-
not anticipate an end. It is a cause, and cause
always works. It is seed, and the law of seed is
endless growth. Penalty, by its own nature, must
go on forever unless it meets a stronger opposing
power.

The subject finds various illustration: indolence
eating the scant bread of poverty; willful youth-
hood begetting a fretful and sour old age ; selfish-
ness leading to isolation ; ambition overreaching it-
self and falling into contempt ; ignorance yielding
endless mistake ; worldly content turning first into
apathy, then into disgust ; these every-day facts
show that if we sin against the order of this world,
we are punished in this world. If we sin against
the body we are punished in the body. If we
break the laws of human society, it has immediate
and appropriate penalties. Each after its own kind,
and in its own time, is the universal law.

We turn now to the other point, namely, that
sins against the spiritual nature do not incur full
punishment here, but await it in the spiritual
world.

We constantly see men going through life with
little pain or misfortune, perhaps with less than the
ordinary share of human suffering, yet Ave term
them sinners. They do not love nor fear God ;
they have no true love for man; they reject the
law of self-denial and the duty of ministration ;
they stand off from any direct relations to God ;
they do not pray ; their motives are selfish ; their

THE METHOD OF PENALTY. 331

temper is worldly ; they are devoid of what are
called graces except as mere germs or chance out-
growths, and make no recognition of them as
forming the substance of true character. Such men
break the laws of God, and of their own nature, as
really as does the drunkard, but they meet with
little apparent punishment. There may be inward
discomfort, pangs of conscience at times, a painful
sense of wrongness, a dim sense of lack, but nothing
that bears the stamp of penalty. These discomforts
grow less, and at last leave the man quite at ease.
The petty and inevitable troubles of life are not
the punishments of such sin ; they do not awaken
a conviction that they proceed from sin. But the
drunkard, the sluggard, the voluptuary, know that
their sufferings are the penalties of their sins.
These men seem to be sinning without punishment,
and often infer that they do not deserve it. The
reason of the difference is plain. They keep the
laws that pertain to this world, and so do not come
in the way of their penalties. They are temperate,
and are blessed with health. They are shrewd and
economical, and amass wealth. They are prudent
and avoid calamities. They are worldly wise, and
thus secure worldly advantages. Courteous in man-
ners, understanding well the intricacies of life, care-
ful in device and action, they secure the good and
avoid the evil of the world. If there were no other
world, they would be the wisest men, because they
best obey the laws of their condition. But man
covers two worlds, and he must settle with each
before his destiny is decided : he may pass the judg-

332 THE METHOD OF PENALTY.

ment seat of one acquitted, but stand convicted be-
fore the other. It is as truly a law of our nature
that we shall worship as that we shall eat. If one
starves his body he reaps the fruit of emaciation
and disease. But one may starve his soul and none
remark it. This world is not the background upon
which such processes appear, or they appear but
dimly ; but when the spiritual world is reached, this
spiritual crime will show itself.

When, a half century ago, the famous Kaspar
Hauser appeared in the streets of Nuremberg, hav-
ing been released from a dungeon in which he had
been confined from infancy, having never seen the
face or heard the voice of man, nor gone without
the walls of his prison, nor seen the full light of
day, a distinguished lawyer in Germany wrote a
legal history of the case which he entitled, '' A
Crime against the Life of the Soul." It was well
named. There is something unspeakably horrible
in that mysterious page of history. To exclude a
child not only from the light, but from its kind ; to
seal up the avenues of knowledge that are open to
the most degraded savage ; to force back upon it-
self every outgoing of the nature till the poor vic-
tim becomes a mockery before its Creator, is an
unmeasurable crime ; it is an attempt to undo God's
work. But it is no worse than the treatment some
men bestow upon their own souls. If reverence is
repressed, and the eternal heavens are walled out
from view ; if the sense of immortality is smoth-
ered ; if the spirit is not taught to clothe itself in
spiritual garments, and to walk in spiritual ways :

THE METHOD OF PENALTY. 333

such conduct can hardly be classed except as a
crime against the life of the soul.

But one thing is certain. As the poor German
youth was at length thrust out into the world for
which he was so unfitted, with untrained senses in
a world of sense, without speech in a world of
language, with a dormant mind in a world of
thought, — so many go out of this world, — with no
preparation in that part of their nature that will
most be called into use. There the soul will be in
its own realm ; it will live unto itself, a spirit unto
spiritual things. What darkness, what confusion,
what bewilderment, what harrowing perplexity
must the unspiritual soul feel when it enters the
spiritual world ! A spiritual air to breathe ; spir-
itual works to do ; a spiritual life to live, but the
spirit impotent ! If there has been absolute per-
version of the moral nature here, it must assert it-
self there in the sharpest forms, but the natural
penalty of the greater part of human sin is dark-
ness. For the greater part of sin consists in with-
holding from the soul what it needs ; in low con-
tentedness with this world, in refusing to look into
the heavens that insphere us. This is the condem-
nation, that men have loved darkness. And the
penalty of loving darkness, is darkness : a soul out
of keeping with its condition, and therefore bewil-
dered, dazzled by light it cannot endure, or blind
from the disused sense, it matters not which ; it is
equally in darkness. A true life in this world is
indeed the best preparation for the world to come ;
but it must not be forgotten that the chief duties

334 THE METHOD OF PENALTY.

in this world are spiritual, and that spiritual heav-
ens overarch this world as well as the next.

I hope this discourse will awaken within us a
living sense of the certainty of the punishment of sins
here and hereafter. It is not strange that the world
of thinking men reject it when it is taught as some
far off, arbitrary, outside infliction by God in vindi-
cation of his government, the issue of some special
sentence after special inquisition. This is unlike
God, it has no analogy, no vindication in the Scrip-
tures ; it is artificial, coarse, unreasonable. It is
just now the special scoff of the world, but the scoff
is the echo of unreasoning words reiterated till the
world was weary of them. Carry the subject over
into the field of cause and effect and we find it irra-
diated by the double light of reason and revelation.
It takes on a necessary aspect. Penalty is seen to
be a natural thing, like the growing of seed. It is
not a matter that God, in his sovereignty, will take
up after a time, but is a part of his ever-acting
law.

The question of penalty is not to be settled by
3^ea or nay count ; it cannot be set aside by a sneer
of fine oratory ; nor is it the pliant tool of system-
building theology on either side ; it is not a ques-
tion to be settled with men, nor with revelation
only, but with the order of nature, with the soul
under law, with God as the author of nature and
the framer of law. The pain that now attends dis-
obedience is a proof and pledge that all broken law
will reap its appropriate pain: each offense after
its kind, and in its own time. It is not a matter of

THE METHOD OF PENALTY. 335

text or decree, but of law which is also text and de-
cree, even all texts and all decrees.

Does any one, turning aside from the certainty
and fitness of future punishment, ask how long, or
how brief, are God's penalties? — questions needless
under the principles laid down. How long? So
long as sin reaps its consequences. How brief?
Not till the uttermost farthing of defrauded order
and wronged justice is paid back to the ordainer of
order and justice ; not till the darkness-loving eyes
open to the light, and the self-centered affections
turn to God. Will this happen ''at last — far off
— at last, to all ? " The answer is hidden in the
mystery of personality. The logic of the gospel is
salvation, and the secret of the universe is joy ; " so
runs my dream ; " so we read with our finite eyes,
but these same eyes discern also a shadow they
cannot pierce.

The worthier question is, How shall I avoid the
sin ? Or, having sinned, how shall I be rid of it ?
How shall I turn back its stream of fatal tendency,
which, if not checked by some all-powerful hand,
must flow on, so far as the sinner can see, for-
ever?

THE JUDGMENT.

"When the future life begins, every man will see Christ as He is, and
the sight of Him may of itself bring a finality to his character and des-
tiny, as it discovers each man fully to himself." — President Porter,
New-Englandei\ 1878.

*' It only requires a different and apportioned organization — the body
celestial instead of the body terrestrial — to bring before every human
soul the collective experience of his whole past experience. And this,
— this, perchance, is the dread Book of Judgment, in whose mysterious
hieroglyphics everj^ idle word is recorded. Yea, in the very nature of a
living spirit it may be more possible that heaven and earth should pass
awa}', than that a single act, a single thought, should be loosened or lost
from that living chain of causes, to all whose links, conscious or uncon-
scious, the free will, our absolute self, is coextensive and co-present." —
Coleridge.

" We are to think of the Judgment not as an evenly limited to a specific
* day,' but as a process^ which runs its course throughout the whole ex-
istence of the responsible subjects of law." — Whiton, Gospel of the
Resurrection^ page 144.

" Death, if I am right, is, in the first place, the separation from one
another of two things, soul and body, nothing else. And after the}' arc
separated they retain their several characteristics, which are much the
same as in life. . . . When a man is stripped of his body, all the natural
and acquired affections of the soul are laid open to view." — Plato.
Georgias.

THE JUDGMENT.i

*' And I saw the dead, the small and the great, standing before the
throne; and the books were opened; and another book was opened,
which is the book of life; and the dead were judged out of those things
which were written in the books, according to their works." — Revela-
tion XX. 12.

It is related of Daniel Webster, the regality of
whose moral endowment no one disputes, that when
once asked what was the greatest thought that had
ever occupied his mind, he replied, "• The fact of
my personal accountability to God."

A common definition of man is that he is an ac-
countable being. The epithet carries a world of
meaning. It differentiates man from the rest of
creation. Consciously accountable for conduct, —

1 It is not within the proper scope of a sermon to treat this subject
with that close criticism it is now receiving from theological scholars ;
for this I refer my readers to such works as Dr. Mulford's Republic of
God., and Dr. Whiton's Gospel of the Resurrection., — two notable addi-
tions of the day to theology. While I fully accept their teaching that
Judgment is a constantly recurring crisis, I also recognize the fact that
it has an objective basis in the changes that attend man's personal his-
tor}^ Thus, a change of worlds is followed by judgment, — the change
evokes judgment; thus, "it is appointed unto men once to die, and after
this Cometh judgment." But the Scriptures do not indicate that this
judgment involves finality as distinguished from previous judgments ; it
ma?/ involve it, but not necessarily, and only as successive judgments or
crises point towards finality. Finality is to be found in character, and
not in judgment, except as a crisis tends to develop and fix character.
The true substance of judgment is to be sought in subjective moral con-
ditions, and not in external governmental arrangements.

340 THE JUDGMENT.

this makes man man. Eliminate accountability,
and he drops into the category of instinct and
natural desire ; if he is a savage, he becomes a
beast; if he is civilized, he becomes virtually a
criminal. The great leading question in govern-
ment, in society, in religion, in individual life, is
how to awaken and render active a sense of account-
ability. It is the factor that stands between free-
dom and law ; free to obey law ; an inwrought
sense demanding this use of freedom.

Freedom and conscience imply accountability;
accountability implies rendering account, and this
implies a judgment; such is the logic that covers
human life, few and simple in its links, but strong
as adamant, and inexorable as fate. It underlies
and binds together the twofold kingdom of time
and eternity, — one chain, whether it binds things
in heaven, or things on the earth.

No one of these coordinate facts is widely separ-
ated from the others. The sense of accountability
is all the while acting ; we are constantly rendering
account ; we are all the while undergoing judgment
and receiving its awards.

It is the weakness of formulated theology that it
arbitrarily transfers the most august and moving
features of God's moral government to a future
world, thus placing the wide and mysterious gulf
of time and death between actions and their mo-
tives. It is an axiom in morals that the nearer
motive commonly determines the conduct ; hence it
should be as close as possible. The wisdom of this
is hinted in the speed with which suffering overtakes

THE JUDGMENT. 341

any infringement of the laws of existence. That
which threatens to end life quickly, causes quick
suffering. The moment we touch fire we are burned ;
the sentence of broken law is executed at once.
And all broken law begins at once to incur judg-
ment; the quick pang of conscience that follows
sin is the first stroke of judgment; while under-
going it, the soul is passing a crisis, and turns to the
right or the left hand of eternal righteousness.

Thus we are all the while rendering account to
the laws without and within ; we are all the while
undergoing judgment and receiving sentence of ac-
quittal or condemnation. It does not follow, how-
ever, that because judgment is drawn forward into
this world from the next, that it is confined to this
world. Great moral laws have universal sweep.
As gravitation is the same here and in Sirius, and as
righteousness is the same in this life and in the life
to come, so the great leading operations of our
moral nature are the same in all worlds and in
all times. Instead of confining judgment to the
future, we take it out of time-relations, and make
it a fact of eternity. It is an ever on-going pro-
cess. Conduct is always reaching crises and enter-
ing upon its consequences. It may be cumulative in
degree, and reach crises more and more marked ; it
may at last reach a special crisis which shall be the
judgment when the soul shall turn to the right or
left of eternal destiny.

But while this latter phase of the great truth
may well be allowed to breathe over us an august
and solemn influence, it should no less be remem-

342 THE JUDGMENT.

bered that the throne of judgment is now set, and
that the Judge is all the while judging men and
nations in righteousness. The powers and solemni-
ties of eternity already enfold us. There is no
grandeur or awfulness of future pageant that is
not now enacting, if we had eyes to see it. It is a
part of our moral blindness that we do not see it.
It is the fault of theology that it does not teach
men, as Christ taught them, that the generations
do not pass away till the divine judgments pro-
nounced on them are fulfilled. The most impera-
tive moral need of the age is a belief that the sane-
tions of God's eternal laws are now in full force
and action about us, asserting their majesty and
glory in the blessings and inflictions that all the
while flow out of them ; sure to act hereafter be-
cause they are acting now. The kingdom of
heaven is at hand, complete, king and sceptre,
law and sanction ; its reign is begun, it commands,
and judges, and rewards, and condemns. It is the
recognition of this great moral fact, unseen by the
world, and but half seen by theology, that is needed
to put us where Christ stood, and to unfold to us
the divine order as it appeared to Him. We simply
misread — we fail of correct intellectual conception,
— when we interpret his words upon the coming of
the Son of Man, and his separating work, taking
one and leaving another, as referring to some world-
end event. In no one of his discourses does He
declare more plainly his coming and judgment than
in that on the destruction of the temple, but the
generation was not to pass away before his words
were to be fulfilled.

THE JUDGMENT. 343

Let us not belittle this life. • There is no moment
of time grander than the present. The ages of
eternity will usher in no day more momentous than
those that are now passing ; for already his fan is
in his hand, and He is separating the wheat from
the chaff, taking one and leaving another. Already
and evermore are we passing through crises or judg-
ments that turn us into right or left hand paths.
The providential event, or the moral conviction that
tests our character and gives it tendency, is a com-
ing and judgment of the Son of Man. For judg-
ment does not consist in assigning the reward or
penalty — that is done by the laws, but in discern-
ing between right and wrong, and separating them.
It consists in making manifest, as St. Paul says :
"• We shall all " — not appear — but '^ be made man-
ifest before the judgment seat of Christ." But
while recognizing the need of holding to the per-
petual coming of the Son of Man for judgment,
thus making this life the full theatre for the action
of his eternal kingdom, we also recognize the truth
that judgment is a fact of the life to come.

A profound view of judgment as a test or crisis
entailing separation, shows us that it attends
change ; for it is through change that the moral na-
ture is aroused to special action. It is a law that
catastrophes awaken conscience. Indeed, all great
outward changes, of whatever character, appeal to
the moral faculties. They are God's opportunities
for getting access to the soul. It is also a peculiarity
of the action of the moral nature under great out-
ward changes, that man is disclosed to himself.

344 THE JUDGMENT,

Recall the most joyful event of your lives, and you
will find it to have been also a period of great self-
knowledge. Recall your deepest sorrow and you
will still more vividly recognize it as an experience
in which there was a deep, interior measurement
of yourself. Recall the chief catastrophe of your
life, the loss by fire, the failure in business, and you
will confess that the manner in which you bore it
has become a sort of test by which you estimate
your character. You got a fair look at yourself,
that had much to do with your future.

If change has this revealing and judging power,
the change of worlds must have it in a superlative
degree. There are no moral laws and forces there
that are not also here, for the kingdom of heaven is
upon earth, but they may act with greater intensity
because of our own changed relation to them. An-
other world, another body, other senses, other rela-
tions, the dimness of earth gone, the clear unre-
fracting light of eternity shining around us ; here
is a change that the Judge may well use and name
as the judgment of all. It is appointed unto men
once to die, and after that cometh judgment ; the
testing and unveiling of character and conduct.
Preeminently, far beyond anything that has pre-
ceded, man is then judged and assigned his true
place and direction.

I do not claim to understand and harmonize the
many symbolical references to future judgment in
the Bible. But any attempt to harmonize them
under a conception of une general assize, one event,
one day, one assembly of the vast humanity, is vain

THE JUDGMENT. 345

and useless ; it is too incongruous, too difficult of
conception to justify itself. The fact that all the
Biblical references are symbolical, indicates that the
bare method and procedure of judgment do not
easily come within the range of human thought.
Revelation wisely dresses its great moral operations
in objective forms — parables, and visions, and sym-
bols, — a drapery that we may throw aside as soon
as we have eyes to see the bare and simple truth it
unfolds. Thus Christ taught, first the parable, then
its interpretation.

I think the central truth of the judgment can no-
where more easily be got at than in the passage
before us. No other symbol than that of books
could so vividly convey the fact that the whole life
comes into judgment. Nothing is left out or for-
gotten ; there can be no mistake. The books are
the unerring transcript of the life. The simplicity
of the symbol is marred by the introduction of " an-
other book " than those recording the works. Why
is there ''another book which is the book of life ; "
and what does it mean ? All exegesis of the Apoc-
alypse is doubtful, involving as it does, facts that
transcend conception. Here and there are rifts
in the surging clouds of symbolism through which
we seem to get some clear glimpses of " things
to come," but we must not be too confident. Per-
haps we are interpreting best, when we bow be-
fore the mysterious words and say, ''Thou, O Lord,
knowest, we do not." Still let us humbly venture
a reply.

Mankind do not go up to the throne of God to be

346 THE JUDGMENT.

judged simply by their works. Parallel with hu-
manity is the Kingdom of Heaven. Parallel with
men's deeds are the purposes of God. Over and
above what humanity does of itself is a plan of re-
demption, the working out of which enters into hu-
man destiny. It may be that the other book repre-
sents that other power, and the influences that flow
out of the life of Christ. It is a book of life, and
He is the life of the world. Men are judged by the
records of their works, but it may be that the sen-
tence pronounced is affected by what is written in
the book of life. I am aware that this complicates
the thought, but we must remember that the prob-
lem of spiritual destiny is not absolutely simple. It
has other elements than mere goodness and badness.
It involves the divine will, a reconciliation, a work
wrought upon humanity as well as by it ; it has a
God-ward as well as a man-ward side. Nor is it
strange that a question involving such a mystery as
evil should be hard to answer. With an unknow-
able element in the problem, who shall solve it?
And when this or that is asserted about eternal
destiny on either side, as though it were a matter
of alphabetic plainness, we say, '' Explain evil, be-
fore you assert its consequences." While the way
of life is plain, so that even a little child may walk
in it, it is overhung by mysteries whose shadows
deepen as it leads into the future.

But we will leave this side issue and turn to the
main thought : the books out of which men are
judged. We say at once, '' Books, records, items of
conduct written down in order ! how can there be

THE JUDGMENT. 347

such things in a spiritual world ? — earthly things
after the earth itself has vanished ? " There can
indeed be no books, but there may be something
that corresponds to books ; no records, items of con-
duct, engraved or engrossed, but there may be some-
thing that answers the purpose of records. There
may be no reading of charges, or rehearsal of deeds,
but there may be something that shall make every-
thing known and evident. Where shall we look,
to what shall we turn, for such a solution ? I do
not think we are permitted to go outside of nature
and its divine laws for answer. The books must
be found in God, or nature, or man. The mind of
God must indeed be a tablet whereon are written
all the works of men, but let us not touch that in-
effable mystery without warrant. Science, in the
person of some of its high priests, has suggested
that all the deeds of men are conserved as distinct
forces in the ether that fills the spaces of heaven,
and may be brought together again in true form, in
some new cosmos, as light traversing space as mo-
tion, is turned to heat when arrested by the earth.
But we can find no link between such a fact, if it
be a fact, and the moral process of judgment. We
must search man himself for the elements of his
great account.

There is more in man than we have yet com-
passed. He is a deep down which the plummet of
science has not yet sunk. We look at ourselves,
and say : " Here I am, a body with five senses ; a
mind that thinks and chooses ; a soul that enjoys
and suffers and loves and worships ; a grand cate-

348 THE JUDGMENT.

gory of faculties, something worthy of immortal-
ity ?'' but we have not reached the bottom of our
nature. A closer analysis, or chance revelations as
in dreams or abnormal conditions, indicate faculties
that slumber, or exist in germ, that may awaken,
or grow into fullness. We do not yet know the
capacity or reach of our most evident powers. Let
a fit of anger or the delirium of disease, or some
great excitement like that of battle, possess the
body, and resources of physical strength are devel-
oped not common to it. Horatius holds the bridge
against an army. Achilles in his wrath slays the
mighty Hector. The sick, in the delirium of fever,
pass from utter weakness to herculean strength;
even the body is an unmeasured force.

Take the mind : at first it is merely a set of
faculties, without even self-consciousness, but con-
tact with the world brings them into action, — first
observation, then memory; soon the imagination
spreads its folded wings ; then comes the process of
comparison and combination, and thus the full pro-
cess of thinking is developed, — a process to which
there is no end, and the capacities of which are
immeasurable. When we reach the limit of our
own powers, we open the pages of some great mas-
ter of thought, and there find new realms that re-
veal corresponding powers.

Take the soul : there are faculties that exist only
in germ till certain periods of life arise. The child
knows nothing of the love that breaks in upon the
youth with its rapturous pain and yearning of insa-
tiable desire, flooding the heights of his being, but

THE JUDGMENT. 349

the capacity was in the child. The soft touch of a
babe's hand unlocks n^w rooms in the heart of the
mother. New relations, new stages of life, disclose
new powers and reveal the mysteries of our being.
We are all the while finding out new agencies in
nature ; even its component parts are not yet all
discovered, while the forces developed by combina-
tion are doubtless immeasurable in number and
degree. It is a most suggestive fact that the bring-
ing together of two or three simple substances de-
velops that prodigious force seen in the stronger
explosives. If mere combination of material things
yields such results, what may new scenes and new
contact not do for the soul; what new powers,
what new experiences may not follow when the
spirit breathes ethereal air, and the eyes look on
the whiteness of God's throne ! It is the specialty
of man that his nature is an unsounded deep. A
handful of acorns covers a mountain-side with for-
est, — a sufficient mystery when we think of it, —
but there it ends, in simple immense reproduction.
But man, being made in the image of God, is stored
with endless capacities, for he has a long journey
before him down the endless ages, and new powers
will be needed, — fresh wings as he mounts into
higher atmospheres. Such a theme must be touched
reverently, but I knew nothing to forbid us regard-
ing the soul of man as a seed dropped from God's
own self into this earthy soil, here to begin its
endless growth back towards its source, — an end
never to be attained, because limiting conditions
have been assumed, but still at an ever lessening

350 THE JUDGMENT.

distance. What other dream can cover so well the
majesty and mystery of our nature ?

But we need not let our thought travel so wide
from absolute knowledge in order to find a capacity
that shall uphold the fact of future judgment. Take
the memory, the faculty through which the con-
sciousness of identity is preserved. With so im-
portant a function to fulfill, it is altogether probable
that its action is absolute, that is, it never forgets.
We cannot understand its action, but probably we
speak accurately when we say that an impression is
made upon the mind. The theory that memory is
a physical act, and therefore cannot outlast death,
is untenable. Matter, having no real identity, can-
not uphold a sense of identity, which is the real
office of memory. The impression of what we do,
say, hear, see, feel, and think, is stamped upon the
mind. An enduring matrix receives the impres-
sion ; is it probable that it is ever lost ? We think
we forget, but our thought is corrected by every-
day experience. The recalling of what was lost,
shows that the forgotten impression remains true.
The mind wearied by toil forgets at night, but re-
members when sleep has refreshed the body. The
body forgot ; the mind retained its knowledge. How
significant ! If death is sleep, with what freshness
will the mind resume its offices when its new morn-
ing dawns upon it ! We forget the faces we have
seen, but on the first fresh glimpse we remember
them. We revisit scenes that long since had faded
from memory, but the new sight uncovers the old
impression. Even so slight a thing as a note of

THE JUDGMENT. 361

music, or a perfume, will bring up scenes long ago
forgotten ; a strain of music, and a face that had
grown dim to memory, comes back from the dead in
all its freshness. I never hear a certain hymn but
a scene of my childhood plants itself before me
with such vividness that all else fades out, and I
can see nothing beside : a little country school-house
dimly lighted for evening service, and a small com-
panj^ of neighbors and kindred assembled for prayer
and praise. I have heard the symphonies of the
great masters, and choruses sung by vast multi-
tudes, but above them all I can hear the hymn that
bore up the supplicating praise of that little assem-
bly, and I doubt not I shall hear it when I hear the
song of Moses and the Lamb, for it mingled with
the foundations of my beginning. And w^ho has
not by chance taken in the perfume of new-mown
hay, and by that subtle breath been borne back to
the early home, the hill-side, the winding river,
and the dear companionship of the past ? It is a
most significant fact that so slight a thing can thus
stir and uncover the depths of memory. You are
all familiar with the common fact that persons re-
suscitated from drowning uniformly speak of that
flash of inner light by which their entire lives pass
in order before them. What can this be but a
prelude to what follows every death — the begin-
ning of a revelation that only fails of completion
through chance ? How plainly does it suggest that
nothing is forgotten, and that death unlocks the
chambers of memory, revealing all the deeds done
in the body. If so, it must be for a purpose ; there

352 THE JUDGMENT.

must be some special intent in this divine ordinance
by which revelation attends great change. You
are also familiar with the often quoted incident, —
commented on by Coleridge, — of the servant-maid
of a German professor, who, while ill of fever, re-
peated long phrases of Greek and Hebrew, having
by chance, when well, heard her master utter them
aloud. How delicate the tablet that receives such
impressions, how tenacious in its keeping, and yet
how sure to render them up I DeQuincey, a pro-
found observer upon the subject, says that when
under the influences of opium, the most trifling in-
cidents of his early life would pass again and again
before his distempered vision, varying their form,
but the same in substance. These incidents, which
were originally somewhat painful, would swell into
vast proportions of agony, and rise into the most
appaUing 'catastrophes. This was the action of a
diseased nature, but it indicates what shape our
lives may assume if viewed at last through the
medium of a sin-diseased soul. The body may be a
clog upon the soul, but it keeps down what is evil
as well as what is good. There is no doubt but
that all the nobleness and excellence of our nature
will spring into full sight and action when this clog
is taken off ; and there is like certainty that the
evil within us will stand forth in equal clearness of
light. Death is simply the removal of conditions,
the unveiling and making manifest of the whole
man.

Not only does the memory retain conduct, but all
impressions upon the soul remain imbedded within

THE JUDGMENT. 353

it. Nothing is lost that has once happened to it.
Nature is a wonderful conserver of what takes place
in its realm. Science has been showing us of late
something of the force residing in the actinic rays
of light, by which it transfers impressions from one
object to another. Wherever light goes, it carries
and leaves images. The trees mirror one another,
and opposing mountains wear each the likeness of
the other upon their rocky breasts. These fine
properties in nature suggest corresponding proba-
bilities in man. It is poor logic to accept these
fresh miracles of nature that are being so often
revealed, and hold that we have compassed man
and his possibilities. If such a process as this
is going on in the dull substances without, how
much more surely is it going on in the soul. All
contact leaves its mark. We are taking into our-
selves the world about us, the society in which we
move, the impress of every sympathetic contact
with good or evil, and we shall carry them with
us forever. We do not pass through a world for
nought, — it follows us because it has become a part
of us.

It may be said that these impressions are so nu-
merous and conflicting that they can yield no dis-
tinct picture hereafter. But we must not limit the
capacity of the soul in this respect, in the presence
of greater mysteries. In some sense, it may pre-
sent, as it were, a continually fresh surface. A
most apt illustration waits upon our thought drawn
from the palimpsests found in the monasteries of
Italy ; parchments that, centuries ago, were in-

23

354 THE JUDGMENT.

scribed with the history or laws of heathen Rome,
the edicts of persecuting emperors, or the annals
of conquest. When the church arose, the same
parchments were used again to record the legends
and prayers of the saints. Later still, they were
put to further use in rehearsing the speculations of
the school-men, or the revival of letters, yet pre-
senting but one written surface. But modern sci-
ence has learned to uncover these overlaid writings
one after another, finding upon one surface the
speculations of learning, the prayers of the church,
and the blasphemies of paganism. And so it may
be with the tablets of the soul, written over and
over again, but no writing ever effaced, they wait
for the master-hand that shall uncover them to
be read of all. What are these Apocalyptic books
but records of our works printed upon our hearts ?
What are the books opened but man opened to
himself ?

This is a view of the judgment that men cannot
scoff at. Its elements are provided ; its forces are
at work ; it lies within the scope of every man's
knowledge. It is but the whole of what we already
know in part. Even now sin draws off by itself,
shunning the light of day and the gaze of good
men ; hereafter the separation will be complete.
Even now good and evil stamp their works upon
the face, configuring the whole body to their like-
ness ; there the soul will stand forth in all its act-
ual proportions, and this standing forth is that
opening of the books which goes before judgment.
It is man opened to himself ; opened also to the
universe of intelligent beings.

THE JUDGMENT. 355

As there are powers in man that render judg-
ment possible, so there are conditions on the other
side that cooperate. One cannot be judged except
there be one who judges. Man is judged by man;
nothing else were fit. The deflections from per-
fect humanity cannot be measured except by the
standard of perfect humanity. Hence it is the Son
of Man, the humanity of God, who judges. When
man meets Him, all is plain. His perfection is the
test ; He furnishes the contrast that repels, or the
likeness that draws. This then is judgment : man
revealed by the unveiling of his life, and tested by
the Son of Man.

I have striven so to present it that we shall feel
its certainty. It is not an arbitrary arrangement
of the future, dissociated from the laws of our na-
ture, but it is their inevitable outworking. Its pre-
liminary process, its foreshado wings, are part of
present experience. Just in the degree in which
character discloses itself, does the judgment of sep-
aration take place. Possibly there may be one here
whose heart and life are vile, whose mind is the
nest of evil thoughts, whose desires run unchecked
into baseness ; and by the side of such an one may
sit another, pure in heart and life. They sit side
by side, and may go hence together, may even
dwell under the same roof, and break bread to-
gether, but if they were suddenly revealed to one
another, soul to soul, with no veil of flesh between,
one all fair and pure, the other dark and foul, they
would by instinct separate and fly apart. And
the judgment is this only, — a separation. There

^.

366 THE JUDGMENT.

will be no need that the judge shall point to the
right or the left. Each will go to his own place,
is all the while going thither, by the law of his own
nature.

The theme has one lesson for us all, — a lesson
of preparation.

Prepare by repentance for sin, by faith in Christ,
by fellowship with the Spirit.

Prepare by honest thought, by self-denial, by
unending struggle after righteousness, by spiritual
aspiration.

Thus prepared,^ the opening of the book of our
life will bring no shock or shame, and the judgment
will but conduct us a step nearer to that throne
from which heaven and earth have fled away.

LIFE A GAIN.

" Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower —
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which, having been, must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In the years that bring the philosophic mind."

Wordsworth, Ode on Immortality,

"The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together:
our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not ; and our
crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our virtues." — AlVs
Well That Ends Well, iv. 3.

*' Silent rushes the swift Lord
Through ruined systems still restored,
Broadsowing, bleak and void to bless,
Plants with worlds the wilderness ;
Waters with tears of ancient sorrow
Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow.
House and tenant go to ground,
Lost in God, in Godhead found."

Emerson, Threnody.

"Draw, Holy Ghost, Thy seven-fold veil
Between us and the fires of youth ;
Breathe, Holy Ghost, Thy freshening gale,
Our fever'd brow in age to soothe."

Christian Year; Conjirmation,

LIFE A GAIN.

*'I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly." —
St. John, x. 10.

There is a strange question that has come under
discussion of late, — a question symbolizing the au-
dacity of the age and something of its lack of rev-
erence,— namely, "Is life worth living?" The
book that made it a title is nearly forgotten, but
the question still enters into the speculations of the
schools and into the common talk of men. It
seems strange that any one should ask the question
in soberness and sincerity, and as though it were
debatable, until we recollect that a philosophy has
won for itself recognition that has for its main thesis
that life is not worth living because this is not only
a bad world, but the worst possible world. It is
not difficult to detect the genesis of this brave phi-
losophy. So soon as one begins to doubt the good-
ness of God, or to suspect ever so vaguely that God
is not infinitely good, one begins to doubt if life has
much value. So soon as there is a suspicion that
there is not an eternal goodness behind and under
life, it changes color and grows cheap and poor.

It happens just now that in several directions the
goodness of God, or, at least, the proofs of it are

360 LIFE A GAIN.

being questioned. The philosopher is still stum-
bling over the problem of the ages, the existence of
evil, with partial but not entire relief in the doc-
trine of evolution ; the why is simply carried farther
back. The scientists, many of them, are saying
that for their part they see no clear evidence of a
creating goodness ; see much indeed that looks in
an opposite direction, or simple indifference to hap-
piness. The reactions of an intense age, and the
revelations of motives in a state of society in which
there is no secrecy, an age strong in analysis but
weak in synthesis, favor the same tendency. Sud-
denly, the world seems to have discovered that it
suffers, and that man is selfish ; it can dissect life
with alarming accuracy, but it has not yet learned
to put it together. When there is doubt as to
the source, there will be doubt of the value of
whatever flows from it. If God is not good, his
greatest gift may not be good. If the infinite force
does not act beneficently, no inferior force can
evolve any good. If the eternal tide flows with
indifference to happiness, happiness will be a mat-
ter of chance. The more impatient overleap all
reasoning on either side, and ask. If man was made
to be happy, why is he not happy? — not an easy
question to answer nor a good one to ask. The
questioner has no advantage because answer is dif-
ficult, and he has the disadvantage of being forced
to answer it himself ; if he is presumptuous he will
attempt it ; if he is wise, he will say, I have not
the data, and will '^ trust the larger hope."

The question with which we started involves an

LIFE A GAIN. 361

audacity that almost forbids its utterance. We
might perhaps question a feature of life, but to
turn face to face upon existence itself and doubt its
worth, to point life with an interrogation, — thought
can go no farther in audacity, — a thing not identi-
cal with courage, but rather with that folly which
dares the sphinx that slays if the riddle is unsolved.
If we get an answer in the negative, we cannot
avoid the wish that the earth were shorn of life and
swinging once more on its round, a mute, dead
world, and the farther wish that creation itself
were blotted out, and if creation, also the Creator.
This is logical, but to sweep infinite space and eter-
nal duration clean of matter and being, to empty
and then annihilate the universe, — such audacity
reaches beyond sublimity, and sinks into the ridicu-
lous. The Puritan mother of Samuel Mills, who,
when her son, under the stress of morbid religious
feeling, cried out, " Oh, that I had never been born,"
said to him, " My son, you are born, and you can-
not help it," was more philosophical than he who
says, " I am, but I wish I were not." A philosophy
that flies in the face of the existing and the inevita-
ble, forfeits its name. And a philosophy which,
having found out that life is undesirable, proposes
to get rid of it, — the position of the pessimist- school,
namely, to educate the race to the wisdom of uni-
versal and simultaneous suicide, — has, at least, a
difficult matter in hand, the end of which need not
awaken concern. There is some other issue before
mankind than self-extinction. Life may get to ap-
pear very poor and worthless, but the greater part

362 LIFE A GAIN.

will prefer to live it out to the end. Great nature
has us in hand, and, while allowing us a certain
liberty, and even wildness of conduct, has barriers
beyond which we cannot go. "You may rail at
existence," she says, ''but you cannot escape it."
It may be impossible to escape by what is termed
self-destruction. We were not consulted as to the
beginning of existence ; it may be that we can have
no voice as to its end. We may throw ourselves
over the battlements of the life that now holds us,
but who can say that we may not be seized by the
mysterious force that first sent us here, and be
thrust back into this world, or some other no better,
to complete an existence over which we have no
power ? If a malignant or indifferent force evolved
human existence, it is probable that, by reason of
these very qualities, it will continue this existence;
were it to permit extinction it would violate its own
nature. A being made or evolved cannot outmaster
or outwit the being or force from which it sprang ?

" 'Tis not within the force of fate,
The fate conjoined to separate."

If existence is so wretched that extinction is desir-
able, it is necessary to suppose a good God in order
to be certain of attaining it ; no other would permit
it. But will He not rather deliver from the misery
and preserve the life? Whether the pessimist is
aware of it or not, he wears the cap and bells, and
his doleful doctrines, however soberly uttered, will
be heard as jests. Still it is not amiss that the
question has come up ; it has the use of turning
the thought of the age to human life with careful

LIFE A GAIN. 363

scrutiny and measurement. Men have always been
ready enough to see the evil in life ; that side of
existence has been well attended to, but the other
side, the good wrought into it, has not been fairly
estimated. And especially we have been too ready
to conclude that life is a waning process, a game
of inevitable loss, a glory that fades away into dull-
ness and night. The weight of uttered testimony
leans to this side, for there is a strange property in
human ill that draws thought to it. The great
masters write tragedies and comedies, one in seri-
ousness, the other in jest. " Vanity of vanities,
all is vanity ; " " Few and evil have been the days
of my life ; " so reiterates the moralist and sage
of all ages, uttering, however, his feeling rather
than his thought, pitying rather than scrutinizing
himself. But now that men are rising up and
calmly asserting that these estimates are a true and
final verdict drawn from all the facts of life, that
life is a fading glory, a vanishing process, a decep-
tion ending in total loss, we are forced to consider
if these representations have even the color of truth.
For life must not be suspected. If not held as of
supreme value it loses all value, and sinks out of
all use ; it is the beginning and the sure prognostic
of utter demoralization. When the glory of life
is tarnished, it does not need to be cast away, it
is gone already. One who holds existence cheap,
destroys the basis of achievement; character is
graduated by the estimate put upon that which
holds character. One may die cheerfully at God's
bidding, but only at his ; or gladly for a cause,
but the cause must be worthy of the sacrifice.

364 LIFE A GAIJT.

The subject is so large that only one phase of it
will now be taken up, namely, a comparison be-
tween what is gained and what is lost in life as it
goes on.

That there are gains and losses, wrought even
into the texture of life, there is no question, but
which are in excess, is a matter of debate. That
multitudes make life a waning process through evil,
there is no doubt. The real question is, Is life so
organized that it is a process of gain rather than
loss, with the further question if the loss does not
subserve the gain ?

In making this comparison we start with the fact
that there seems to be possible but one kind of ex-
cellence at a time. We never see a person simul-
taneously at the height of personal beauty, of en-
ergy, and of wisdom ; one excellence follows another.
Hence we must not infer that, because one phase
passes away and another comes on, there is actual
loss ; it is possible that there may be a succession
characterized by an ascending grade. In childhood
there is a grace and symmetry, a certain divineness
in movement and play of feature, that quickly dis-
appear, but are nearer perfection than anything of
any sort that comes after. I can see God in the
patience and ecstasy of the saints, but not so clearly
as in the features and movements of a little child.
St. Sebastian holds no comparison with the sacred
Babe in the discerning eye of art. Their angels
behold the face of the Father, and we behold God
in them. If this divine beauty could live on, we
say, how much richer and more glorious life would

LIFE A GAIN. 366

be ! But it vanishes, and something less ethereal
and more substantial comes in. We still have
beauty, but the suggestion of divineness is gone.
The physical is shot through with the bright flame
of human passion, and made glorious by the kin-
dling light of thought. The child shone with a
beauty reflected from the creating Hand ; the youth
is beautiful with his own feeling and thought, an
advance in kind, but not in degree. The excellence
is higher in kind than that of childhood, but its in-
effable charm, the utter grace, the eye that looks
from measureless depths into yours, unabashed be-
cause it knows no evil, — being gazing upon being,
as the angels may, — these are gone. But the down-
cast eye and mounting color of youthhood are higher
because they speak of the personality that is com-
ing on : the divine withdraws to make room for
the human. And then, as beauty loses its fresh-
ness, there is a transfer of excellence from the
physical to the intellectual and moral. A certain
external glory passes, but now comes on courage,
strength, imagination, and thought. And now for
the first, life begins to yield fruit self-grown. Up
to this point it has seemed a reflection of the world
out of which it came ; it slowly fades as in a dis-
solving picture, leaving less pleasing forms, but as
we touch them, we find they are not images but
realities. But after a long period of full personal-
ity marked by strength and achievement, a change
comes on that seems to be one of absolute loss.
Energy, courage, hope, fade out by slow degrees, —
the down-hill of life, we call it. And loss indeed it

366 LIFE A GAIN.

is ; a fine glory, the rarest excellence yet realized,
has passed, but it is a question if the repose of feel-
ing, the calmness of thought, the charity of disposi-
tion that follow, are not higher. They do not count
so high in the ordinary estimate, for there is noth-
ing men so admire as the resistless energy and un-
conquerable spirit of the middle period of life. Out
of them spring the main achievements of society,
and it is natural to value highest that which seems
greatest. But we should hesitate before deciding
that life culminates in the middle, and that half of
it is given up to its own decay. Here, is a great
improbability, at least. It may be, as in preced-
ing periods, that one kind of excellence has yielded
to another and higher ; that life is not like crossing
a mountain, a climb to the summit, and an equal
descent to the foot. It may be that life is not the
exhaustion of a certain amount of vitality, not a
ripening and a decay, but is a process quite differ-
ent. It may be that it has in it a law of endless
ascent, that life represents an unquenchable force,
and can never be less than it is. If we take one
view, it leaves life a sad mystery ; if the other, it
makes it explicable, for so long as life is on the
gain, it explains and indorses itself, — like Emer-
son's flower, "it is its own excuse for being." But
a life that mounts only to sink back to the same
level, confounds thought. Now, as between these
theories, one of which has some color of external
facts to support it, yet leaves life sad and inexpli-
cable, and the other of which explains it and puts
it in harmony with other truth, we are bound to

LIFE A GAIN. 367

choose the latter by every principle of reason. It
is a false logic that makes us content with mystery
when there is any possible explanation of it. Being
itself may be involved in eternal mystery, and may
forever deepen as existence goes on, but the ad-
juncts of being, its end and its relations, are solv-
able and not parts of the ''unending, endless quest."
And if I find myself shut within a dark cave, as
Plato pictured, I will welcome the faintest glimmer
that seems to play about a possible opening into
the world of light. Enough comes through to as-
sure us that life, as ordained by God, if undisturbed
by sin, is throughout a steady gain through a suc-
cession of excellences, each higher in kind than the
preceding. Just here the text has force. Sin, with-
out doubt, breaks up this order of growth and suc-
cession of higher qualities, and the Christ is here to
restore it and to secure for it that growing abun-
dance of which it is capable. But we are now
speaking rather of the natural, inwrought order of
life, than of rescue from its perversions.

Let us, if we can, make a comparative estimate
of the loss and gain as we pass our allotted years.

1. We lose the perfection of physical life, its grace
and exuberance. The divineness of childhood, the
exultation in mere existence, the splendor of youth,
the innocence that knows no guile, the faith that
never questions, the hope that never doubts, the joy
that knows no bounds because the limitations of
life are not yet reached, — these all pass a, way.
''But are not these immense losses?" we say.
" What can be better or greater than these ? ** In

368 LIFE A GAIN.

a certain sense there is nothing better or higher,
but these qualities are not properly our own ; they
are colors laid on us, divine instincts temporarily
wrought into us, but not actual parts of us ; they
fall away from us because they are not. Yet they
are not wholly and forever lost ; they recede in
order that we may go after and get firmer hold of
them. The child is guileless by nature, — the man
because he has learned to hate a lie. The child is
joyous, it knows not why, — God made it so ; it is
Nature's joy rather than its own ; but a man's joy
is the outcome of his nature reduced to harmony,
— thought, feeling, and habit working under per-
sonality to the same end. One is necessarily ephem-
eral, the other is lasting, because it is the product
of his own nature ; it may not be so complete and
divine of aspect, but it has become an integral and
permanent factor of the man. The loss, therefore,
is not so great as it seems ; it is rather a transforma-
tion.

2. We lose, in time, the forceful, executive quali-
ties. We no longer undertake enterprises of pith
and moment, or take on heavy responsibilities.
Old men do not explore unknown continents, or
learn new languages, or found new institutions, or
head reforms, or undertake afresh the solid works
of the world ; the needed energy is gone, but not
necessarily lost ; it may have been transmuted, as
motion is changed into heat and light.

3. When we come to mental qualities, there is
smaller loss. It is sometimes thought that the
imagination decays with years, but it rather changes

LIFE A GAIN. 369

its character. In youth it is more erratic, and may-
better be named as fancy ; in age it is steadier and
more subservient to the other faculties, entering
into them, making the judgment broader, the
sense of truth keener, and bringing the possibili-
ties of truth within reach of thought. In the-
greater minds the imagination rather grows than
lessens. Sophocles, Milton, Goethe, lead a va^
host of poets and philosophers who never waned
in the exercise of this grandest faculty. It is to
be doubted if there is such a thing as decay of
mental power. When one is tired ona cannot
think, words come slowly, the thread of discourse
is easily lost, memory is dull, the judgment loses
its breadth, the perception its acuteness ; but a few
hours of sleep restore the seeming loss. So what
seems decay may pertain only to the age-wearied
flesh ; the mind is still there, as it was in weariness
and sleep, with all its strength and stores. It is
true that in the years of middle life, there is a cer-
tain thoroughness and intensity in all things done
or thought, that comes from strength, but the judg-
ment is not so sure, the grasp is not so comprehen-
sive, and the taste so correct, as later on.

This, then, seems to. be the sum of the losses
sustained in life: a certain natural or elemental
divineness of early childhood not to be kept as such,
but to be lost as a divine gift, and reproduced as a
human achievement ; the bloom and zest of youth ;
the energy and force of maturity, and certain fea-
tures or sides of our mental qualities. But we detect
no loss of moral qualities, and but little of mental.

370 LIFE A GAIN.

The order is significant: the physical changes
utterly, the mental partially, the moral not at all,
if the life is normal.

What now do we gain as life goes on ?

1. This evident progress from the lower to the
higher must be accouilted a gain. It does not
matter how this progress is made, whether by actual
loss of inferior qualities supplanted by higher, or
by a transformation of forces, though the latter is
more in accord with natural science, which asserts
that force is indestructible, — an assertion of tre-
mendous scope of inference ; for if force is inde-
structible, it must have a like basis or medium
through which it acts ; thus it becomes a potent
argument for an unending life. However this be,
each phase of existence is so beautiful that we are
loath to see it yield to the next ; still it is a richer
stage that comes on. A mother, enraptured with
the perfect beauty of her babe, wishes, with foolish
fondness, that she might keep it a babe forever, yet
is content to see it unfold its larger life, and "round
to a separate mind." None of us would choose, if
we might, .to go back to any previous phase, and
stay there. We may long for the innocence of
youth, but who would take it with its ignorance, —
for the zest of youth, but not at the expense of
immaturity ; for the energy of mid-life, but not at
the cost of the repose and wide wisdom of age.

2. Though we lose energy and courage and pres-
ent hope, we gain in patience, and, upon the whole,
suffer less. It is glorious to defy fortune with
strength, but it is better to be able to bear fortune

LIFE A GAIN. 371

with patience. We are under illusion while we are
pitting our energy against the forces of the world,
but when at last we can say, " I cannot conquer but
I can endure," we are no longer acting under illu-
sion but in true accord wdth the might and majesty
of our nature. Ulysses could not contend against
the tempest, but he was superior to it when

*' He beat his breast, and thus reproached his heart;
Endure, my heart; far worse hast thou endured."

"Man is but a reed," says Pascal, "but he is a
thinking reed ; were the universe to crush him he
would still be more noble than that which kills him,
for he knows that he dies, and the universe knows
nothing of the advantage it has over him." This
elaborated patience, and knowledge of one's rela-
tions to life, is an immeasurable gain over the un-
tested strength and false measurements of our ear-
lier years.

3. We make another gain as thought grows calm,
and the judgment is rounded to its full strength.
Knowledge becomes wisdom. Passion and preju-
dice pass away from our estimates. And especially
we gain in comprehensiveness and so lose the spirit
of partisanship. This not only renders age valua-
ble to the world, but it is a comfortable possession ;
it is a deliverance from the small tempests that fret
the surface of life. Then only, truth feeds the
mind with its unalloyed sweetness.

4. There is a great gain in the later years of life,
in certain forms of love and sympathy. The passion
of early love, its semi-selfishness, and the restriction
and prejudice of early sympathy, pass away, but

872 LIFE A GAIN.

love itself remains in all its strength, purer, calmer,
more universal. It takes on a yearning quality, it
pities, it forgives and overlooks, it bears and hopes
and forgets, and so is like God's own love. Early
love is intense but it is without knowledge, but that
of age is calm and broad because it is wise. Es-
pecially does the grace of charity belong to full
years. The old are more merciful than the young ;
they judge more kindly and forgive more readily.
Hence they are poor disciplinarians, but their fault
is rather their virtue ; they are not called to that
duty. This changing and expanding form of the
supreme principle of our nature has great signifi-
cance in the question before us. At no time are
we let from under its power ; at first an instinct,
then a conscious passion for one, but blind ; then a
down-reaching tenderness for children, wiser and
more patient; then an out-reaching to humanity,
moved by conscience and guided by knowledge ;
and at last a pitiful, universal sympathy that allies
itself to the Eternal Love. Here is a gain that is
simply immeasurable, spanning the breadth be-
tween the unconscious instinct of the child and the
method of God's own heart.

There is also in advanced years a mingling and
merging of the faculties, one in another. Thought
has more faith in it and faith more thought ; reasou
more feeling and feeling more reason; logic and
sentiment melt into each other ; courage is tem-
pered with prudence, and prudence gets strength
and courage from wisdom ; joys have in them more
sorrow and sorrows more joy ; if it has less zest it

LIFE A GAIN. 373

touclies the mind at more points, while sorrows lose
their keenness by falling under the whole range of
faculties. An old man does not feel the same rap-
ture before a landscape as one younger, but he sees
it with more eyes, so to speak ; his whole nature
sees it, while the youth regards it with only the one
eye of beauty. . This united action of the mind,
this cooperation of all the faculties, is something far
higher than the disjointed experiences of early life.
It is like the action of the Divine Mind in which
every faculty interpenetrates every other, making
God one and perfect. And in man, it is an intima-
tion that he is approaching the Divine Mind, and
getting ready, as it were, for the company of God.

Life is a fire, yet not to blast and reduce to ashes,
but to fuse. It takes a vast assemblage of qualities
and faculties most unlike and often discordant, and
reduces them first to harmony and then to oneness.
Consider how man is made up ; under a simple
bond of self-consciousness a set of qualities not oth-
erwise related, warring against each other ; good
and evil passions, selfishness and love, pride and
humility, prudence and folly, mental faculties so
unlike at first as to antagonize each other ; the log-
ical faculty opposed to imagination, reason to senti-
ment, the senses demanding one verdict and the
conscience another, — such a world is man at the out-
set. Life is the reconciliation of these diversities
and antagonisms ; the process may be attended by
apparent loss, but only apparent. The law of the
conservation of forces holds here as in the physical
world. In the fire of life, the form is melted away

874 LIFE A GAIN.

from each quality, but only that their forces may
flow together and be fused into one general force
that shall set towards the Eternal Righteousness.
Thus there comes on that process and condition of
life which is called a mellowing. When the growth
is normal and is unhindered by gross or deep-seated
sin, a change or development takes place in nearly
all that is well described by this word. The man
ripens, his heart grows soft, he speaks more kindly.
A rich autumnal tint overspreads his thoughts and
acts. He looks into the faces of little children with
a brooding tenderness. He finds it hard to distin-
guish between the faults and the vices of the young.
He hates no longer anything except a lie, and that
because it contradicts the order into which he has
come. He draws no sharp, condemnatory lines
about conduct, but says to all offenders, " Go and
sin no more." His pride dies away; he no longer
cherishes distinctions, but talks freely with the
humble and has no awe before the great ; he for-
gets his old notions of dignity, and is a companion
with his gardener or with the President. This
state is sometimes regarded as weakness, and as
though it sprang from dulled faculties, but it is
simply the moral qualities come into preponderance,
or rather the equilibrium of all the forces. Life
has ripened its fruits, and the man begins to feel
and act like God. Something of the divine pa-
tience and charity and wisdom begin to show in
him, and we now see why God made him in his
own image, and gave him his life to live. If life
can start at the point of mere existence, and thence

LIFE A GAIN. 375

grow up into likeness to God, it is worth living.
And if life reaches so far, we may be sure it will
go on. If it gets to the point of laying hold of
God, and begins to feel and act like God, it will
never relax its hold, it will never cease from action
so essentially and eternally valuable. There is the
same reason for the continued existence of such a
being as of God Himself ; that which is like the
Best must, for that very reason, live on with the
Best. We can no more conceive of God suffering
such an one to go out of existence than that a
good father would put to death his child most like
himself because of the likeness.

This line of thought has force only in the degree
in which life is normal, but the fact that it is not
wholly such does not break up or foil the divine
intention wrought into it. For there is a provision
in humanity against its own failures. Life of itself
may not reach its proper fullness, but One is in
humanity who is redeeming it from its failures and
filling its cup even to overflow. Nor is the sadness
of age an indication of real loss ; it may have an-
other meaning : —

"The clouds that gather round the setting sun,
Do take a sober coloring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality."

It may be a wise provision for attenuating the
thread that holds us to this world. The main fea-
ture of life is not its sorrow or its joy, nor even its
right or wrong doing. Its main feature is that,
starting at the bare point of existence, it grows
with such stride and rapidity that it yields first a

376 LIFE A GAIK.

person, and then reaches up to God, into whose
aflBnities and likeness it enters as a partaker. The
space between the infant and a mind walking in
conscious oneness with God marks a gain so im-
mense, so rich and wonderful, that we cannot meas-
ure it. It is from such a stand-point that the value
of life is to be estimated, and not from the amount
of sorrow and happiness, nor from any failure
through evil. What is evil when there is a soul
of goodness in all things ? What is sin when it is
redeemable ? What is a little more or a little less
of suffering when such gain is possible ? What are
toils and what are storms, when such a port is to
be reached ? The plan seems almost indifferent to
happiness and to evil, utilizing one and contending
against the other, while it presses steadily towards
this gigantic gain, the growth of a soul from simple
consciousness into God-likeness.

It is somewhat the fashion now to derogate from
the dignity and glory of life. There is doubt that
it leads to anything besides its own end ; a weak-
ened sense of God suggests a poor and low estimate
of it. '' Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we
die," is a sentiment that hovers in the air. There is
no way to prevent it from becoming the watchword
of society, but by a fresh incoming of faith in God
as the Father of men and the Ordainer of life with
its laws and ends, — facts not left to the wayward-
ness of our human reason, but revealed in a true
Son of God who incarnated the full glory and per-
fection of life, and makes it abundant for every
other child of God.

TfflNGS TO BE AWAITED.

"Man is, properly speaking, based upon Hope, he has no other pos-
session but Hope; this world of his is emphatically the Place of Hope."
— Sartor EesartuSj ii. 7.

" Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas,
Ease after war, death after life, does greatly please.'*

Faerie Queen, 1. 9.

" The preliminary step to following Christ is the leaving the dead to
bury the dead, not clamoring on his doctrine for an especial solution of
difficulties which are referable to the general problem of the Universe."

Robert Browning's Ussay on Shelley,

THINGS TO BE AWAITED.

" Until the day break, and the shadows flee away." — The Song of
Solomon, ii. 17.

I DO not know the nature of the feeling out of
which these words sprang. It may be hard to de-
termine whether it was a human or a divine rap-
ture, whether it enfolded only some Jewish lover,
or whether, under such chaste and tender symbols,
it uttered the yearning delight of God in his church.
It hardly matters which ; a true love is as sacred
as a holy church, for the church is but the Lamb's
wife. They stand on the sacred page, in their
tender beauty, like a golden sunset which to one
may be only a " promise of a fair to-morrow," to
another a simple refraction of light, to another a
symbol of eternal repose and glory. The meaning of
words lies not wholly in the words themselves, but
also in us. Whatever the first use and intent of this
phrase, it describes a waiting, and a joy to come, a
waiting under darkness and shadow, and a joy to
come with the light. And so they answer well the
purpose of suggesting the truth of which I shall
speak, namely, that there are many things in life
and destiny that are to be awaited.

Man, in his inmost being, is not keyed to the
temporal, but to the eternal. The final solution of

380 THINGS TO BE AWAITED.

life is not to be found in the past, the present, or
the future, but in a state named eternity, in which
"time shall be no longer," — a state unconditioned
by a material body and by cycles of time, — a state
of absolute freedom and of unfettered existence ;
whatever the man is^ that he is perfectly, whether
good or bad. I do not mean that he will be per-
fectly good or bad, but that there will remain on
him no condition nor limitation of his character.
At present, there are weights and checks on the
expression of character ; in the eternal state there
are none : it has absolute expression, and works in
perfect freedom to its proper end, whether it be
good or evil. But here and now man is put into
relations of time, and, while character is always
mounting towards this eternal state as into a native
ether, it is shaped In and by time. Past, present,
and future, are realities that we cannot escape. As
Carlyle says : " The curtains of yesterday drop
down ; the curtains of to-morrow roll up, but yes-
terday and to-morrow both are." The maxims that
bid us forget the past, and trust the future, and
live in the present, while they contain a half truth,
hold also an insidious error. We cannot forget the
past, and we ought not to forget it ; we can be in-
sensible to the future, but we ought not to be
insensible to it. It is by the forfeiture of our great-
ness and essential nature, that we put the main
emphasis of life upon the present. All the past
is shut up within us, and is a sort of perpetual
present. All the future is before us, and though
duty is a present thing, it is constructed out of the

THINGS TO BE AWAITED. 381

past, and runs endlessly into the futufe. We thus
have the past with its memories, the present with
its duties, and the future with its anticipations, —
one for wisdom, one for action, and one for hope, —
a trinity of temporal enYironment holding man until
he is ready to be let into eternity. Eternity now
is, but we enter its fullness by the path of futurity,
and so, in common speech, we treat as one the eter-
nal and the future worlds.

Despite the brave assertion of the present as the
only field of action, and so, by narrow inference, of
thought, the future plays a large part in life and
character. '' One world at a time," is a motto for
a brute and not for a man. To stand before the fu-
ture world as before a dead wall, is an attitude to
which we are not called ; we are not made after
that fashion, but are keyed to anticipation and
hope ; and if so, then we are keyed to a world in
which hope has fulfillment, and not to a world in
which it is a steadily dissolving illusion. Anticipa-
tion and hope are not mere features of a religious
faith, but essential conditions of true living, hands
and feet by which we travel towards, and lay hold
of, our destiny. Hence there are many things that
belong to us which are put into the future, and are
therefore to be awaited ; and since we are put into
this relation of waiting^ we must not fret because
we do not have them, nor strive to get them before
they are due.

We can speak confidently of such things only as
we now know in part, beginnings that here have
no completion, germs that come to leaf and bud,

382 THINGS TO BE AWAITED.

but not to fruit, in the soil of this world ; processes
that have promise of great results but are cut
short of them, desires and aspirations that now have
no full satisfaction.

1. We wait for rest. If the question were raised :
is man made for toil or for rest? the answer would
be a mixed and qualified one. He is appointed to
toil, he is destined to rest ; one is his condition, the
other is his end. If man is made in God's image,
he is made to share in God's condition ; and both
Christian revelation and heathen conjecture unite
in conceiving of Deity as in repose, eternally acting
yet in eternal rest. This is no contradiction, but a
simple necessity when the powers are infinite and
harmonious. Ruskin, in one of his most thoughtful
passages, has aptly touched the truth : " As op-
posed to passion, changefulness, and laborious exer-
tion, repose is the especial and separating charac-
teristic of the eternal mind and power; it is the ' I
am ' of the Creator opposed to the ' I become ' of all
creatures. The desire of rest planted in the heart
is no sensual nor unworthy one, but a longing for
renovation, and for escape from a state whose every
phase is a mere preparation for another equally
transitory, to one in which permanence shall have
become possible through perfection." As we grow
in this image and pass beyond its early limitations,
we approach this eternal rest ; it remains for the
children of God. If it be said that man can
never attain this repose because he can never reach
the eternal perfection and power, it may be an-
swered that it does not depend upon the propor-

TfflNGS TO BE AWAITED. 883

tions of the being, but upon the harmony of his
powers and upon his adjustment to his external
condition. One whose nature has been reduced to
perfect harmony may have perfect peace within,
and also without, if also he is in a world entirely
adapted to him. But we have not this rest at pres-
ent except in some foretaste of it in our spirit. Un-
ceasing toil is the largest feature of human life. It
is divinely appointed, but it is painful ; it is a bless-
ing, but also a suffering; an evil thing, but with a
soul of goodness in it. It is wise, for, if remitted,
vice creeps in, but it is no less a bond that chafes, a
burden that weighs down, a trial that wearies the
spirit. It walls in virtue and undergirds character,
yet it is the most pathetic feature of human society.
As the sun journeys about the earth, it summons
the greater part of those it shines on to hard and
heavy toil till its setting dismisses them to brief
rest. And this rest is chiefly found in sleep, the
nightly death to life, as though rest were no part of
man's conscious life. Let us not regard as fancy
this hint thrown out by the order of nature. When
man w^ould rest, he is taken out of this conscious
world into one, how unlike ! but because unlike to
this, like to some other in which rest is the main
feature. If we die, in a sense, to this daily life of
toil, to get rest, and thus go off into a world of
freedom that is revealed to us by fragments of
chance-remembered dreams, how surely is it an in-
timation that the other death ushers us into a world
of absolute freedom and repose ; for freedom and
repose are correlatives. Weariness does not come

384 THINGS TO BE AWAITED,

from action but from restraints put on action.
There is a spiritual vis inertice. As a world moves
with tireless motion in a void, so the mind may act
in perpetual vigor and freshness when the resist-
ances of time are taken off. Hence 'Hhere is no
night there;" hence He "neither slumbers nor
sleeps." To all else, to bird and to beast, the sun
brings joy, but to man only toil. How much wea-
riness, how much ache of body and disease, how
much lethargy of mind and cramping of powers,
how much vain longing and bitter complaint and
sullen endurance and despair, it yields, it were im-
possible to tell. But no feeling heart can dwell on
it a moment, and not break with unavailing sympa-
thy. And yet, in itself, it is the great blessing of
this life. " Thank God for work," is the cry of
every wise heart. As society goes on, it will lessen
its severity and take away some of its sharpest
stings, but it will never eliminate the fact. The
moment toil is exchanged for leisure, a gate is
opened to vice. When wealth takes off the neces-
sity of labor and invites to idleness, nature executes
her sharpest revenge upon such infraction of the
present order ; the idle rich live next door to ruin.
How strange a condition ! Made for rest ; made in
the image of Him who dwells in eternal repose, yet
when we stretch out our hand for the likeness, the
fiery sword that guards this tree of life scorches us
with deadly flame ! How shall we explain it ? Here
is toil, our lot, our necessity, wrought into the hu-
man order, our safeguard against evil, but full of
essential pain, uncongenial, out of keeping with

THINGS TO BE AWAITED. 885

what is deepest in us, at odds with conscious des-
tiny; how shall we carry the conflicting elements,
in our mind ? I answer, that rest is something ta
be awaited in God's own time. To unduly seize it^
is ruin ; it breaks the mould in which our life is
cast. To patiently wait for it makes toil endur-
able, and assures us that our external lives are not
a mockery of the hopes wrought into us. Some
morning, this shadow will flee away. In the church
of St. Nazaro in Florence is an epitaph upon the
tomb of a soldier, as fit for the whole toiling race
as for his own restless life : " Johannes Divultius,
who never rested, rests, — hush ! " We say of our
dead, ''they rest from their labors." Whatever the
future world may be to us or require of us, it is not
clothed in the guise of toil, but offers seats of eter-
nal rest ; it is the contrast of earth, the other side
of mortal existence as spirit is the other side of
matter.

2. We wait for the renewal of lost powers.

However we answer the question, if life is a pro-
cess of loss or gain, it cannot be denied that real or
apparent loss is one of its largest features, even
when life is at its best. Is this loss absolute, or
do we regain that which seems to pass ? If the
former, it puts a hard and almost despairing look
upon existence. We come into life dowered with
good, — high instincts, noble emotions, graces of
person and spirit, faculties divine in their free-
dom, — imprints that testify to our divine creation.
Surely God made us, and his work justifies Him !
But all this glory and grace that invest us at the

25

386 THINGS TO BE AWAITED.

outset, — these divide touches left on us by the crea-
tive hand, — pass away. The freshness, the beauty,
the glory, the innocence, the boundless vitality, the
native hope, the instinctive faith, the high pur-
pose, fade out. Something better, or something
that better serves a present purpose, may take their
place : still they are good, — glories put on us by
God's own hand. And if any say they are but
natural, only so much the more are they divine.
Shall I never, — so we are forced to ask ourselves,
— shall I never have again the buoyancy of youth,
the zest, the innocence, the unquestioning faith, the
ardent desire and unconquerable will, the bounding
vigor of body and mind, with which I began life?
We do not get half way through our allotted years
before these riches are gone from us. If they are
gone forever, one half of life, at least, is spent
under an ever-deepening shadow. It is difficult to
believe that existence is so ordered; that God's
increated gifts are annihilated; that the impress
of his hands, the similitudes of Himself, are blotted
out forever. It were unendurable for us, it were
like a waste on the part of God, if these first riches
of our being are to perish. It is easier to conceive
of this mysterious soul that we are, as a garner
in which whatever is good is preserved ; that it
hives the sweetness of life for future use, as bees
hive honey for winter's need ; that, as a flower
folds its beauty and perfume in the husk-clad seed,
and will produce them again, so these first excel-
lences are hidden in the enfoldings of this life, to
reappear when the spiritual body shall blossom

THINGS TO BE AWAITED. 387

into its eternal state. St. Paul speaks of the re-
demption of the body ^s something that is waited
for. He means no narrow doctrine of a physical
resurrection, but a renewal of existence, — a restora-
tion of lost powers.

It changes the whole color of life, and its char-
acter also, if we take the one view or the other, —
if we regard existence as a dying-out process, or as
passing into temporary eclipse, to emerge with all
its past glories when the shadows of death flee
away.

3. We wait for the full perfecting of character.

I do not mean, of course, that we are to wait in
the sense of relaxing effort after perfection, — such
waiting may end in an eternal failure of character,
but rather that the effort that now only partially
succeeds will finally reach success.

There is nothing that weighs more heavily upon
a right-minded man than the slow progress he
makes in overcoming his faults. Here we are at
twenty, with the faults of childhood upon us:
peevish, ungoverned, insatiable ; at thirty, with
the faults of youth: vain, inconsiderate, pleasure-
loving ; at forty, still wearing the badges of early
folly : proud, passionate, sensual ; at fifty or sixty,
but not yet wise with the experience of life : selfish
still, unsympathetic, ambitious, full of conscious
weaknesses, and perhaps with an ill-repressed brood
of evil habits, and the characteristic vice of age,
— avarice. Yet all the while we may have been
striving after the good, curbing the evil, keeping
our faces heavenward, all the while aiming to fear

388 THINGS TO BE AWAITED.

God and keep his commandments, never at any
time wholly giving up the strife after ideal excel-
lence. This, after all, is the tragical feature of life,
that it is linked with so much failure in character ;
that it is given for wisdom, and yet we are not wise ;
for goodness, and we are not good ; for overcoming
evil, and evil remains ; for patience and sympathy
and self-command and love, and yet we are fretful
and hard and weak and selfish. This makes the
bitterness of death, and calls out the cry. Vanity
of vanities, all is vanity I There is nothing a right-
minded man desires so much as entire right-minded-
ness. Will it never come ? Yes, — but it must be
awaited. Entireness is nowhere a feature of pres-
ent existence, else it could not be a world of hope
and promise. On no thing can we lay our hand
and say. Here is finality and perfection. The ada-
mant is crumbling to dust ; the orderly heavens os-
cillate towards final dissolution, and foretell '' new
heavens ; " in every soul is weakness and fault. We
are keyed not to attainment, but to the hope of it
by struggle towards it. And it is the struggle, and
not the attainment, that measures character and
foreshadows destiny. Character is not determined
by faults and weaknesses, and periodic phases of
life, nor by the limitations and accidents of present
existence, but by the central purpose, the inmost
desire of the heart. If that be turned towards
God and his righteousness, it must at last bring
us thither.

4. We await the renewal of sundered love.

When love loses its object its charm is inter-

THINGS TO BE AWAITED. 389

rupted, for love is oneness and cannot Drook sepa-
ration. It is impossible to believe that God has
organized into life an incurable sorrow; that He
has made love, which is the best conceivable thing,
— being the substance of Himself, — the neces-
sary condition of the greatest misery. If man will-
fully perverts love so that it becomes this, it were
another matter, but that God has so ordered exist-
ence that love is thwarted into unquenchable sor-
row, it is impossible to believe. If this were so,
we no longer have a good God. But what is infi-
nite sorrow, what is greatest misery, but love sun-
dered by hopeless death ? There is but one gate
that leads out of this labyrinth of mortal perplex-
ity, one thing and one only will make life other
than a curse, namely, a belief that love, being eter-
nal in its nature, will have an eternal realization.
Hence, we do not believe that death is an end of
love's oneness. Love may suffer an eclipse, but it
is not sent wailing into eternal shadows. It is as
sure as God Himself that human love shall again
claim its own. Will He have his, and not give us
ours ? Will the Father of men keep his children
forever in his conscious heart, and not let me have
mine ? There is nothing in this universe of min-
gled light and shadow so sure as this. But this
eternal union must be awaited. It begins here,
springing out of mysterious oneness ; it grows up
amidst unspeakable tenderness, rising from an in-
stinctive thing to an intellectual and moral union,
losing nothing, and weaving into itself every strand
of human sympathy till it stands for the whole sub-

390 THINGS TO BE AWAITED.

stance of life, and so vanishes from the scene. If
this prime reality is an illusion, then all else is. If
it does not outlast death, then all may go. But
love is not a vain thing, and God does not mock
Himself and us when He makes us partakers of his
nature.

"What is excellent,
As God lives, is permanent;
Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain,
Heart's love will meet thee again."

5. We wait for the mystery to be taken off from
life.

The crucial test of a thoughtful mind is a sense
of the mystery of life in this world. The mind
that regards everything as common, as a matter
of course, has not begun to think. One who has
even once put the question. Why? before life, its
origin, its relation to matter, its purpose, may be
accounted thoughtful. The main feature of the
highest intellectuality is that of awe and question
before the mystery of being and destiny. This is
the reason that such names as Plato, Shakespeare,
Goethe, Shelley, Pascal, Emerson, Hawthorne, and
" Geo. Eliot," are placed so high in the list of
greatness ; whatever their treatment of the mystery
of life, they have the deepest sense of it. It is this
that makes Hamlet greater than Macbeth : one is a
plain picture of a human passion ; the other depicts
a man who is brooding on the mystery of life. The
critics cannot explain the drama ; nor could Shake-
speare himself have explained it ; the dijSiculty lies
in the subject. It is this that takes such a man as
Robertson out of the ranks of ordinary preachers

THINGS TO BE AWAITED. 391

and puts him by himself. This highest order of
mind is not antagonistic to faith ; it is simply con-
scious of the incomprehensible range of truth.
None but an inferior mind has a plan of the uni-
verse ; it is to the thoughtless that all things are
plain. What is life? What is matter? What is
the relation between them? What is creation?
Granting evolution, what started the evolving pro-
cess ? Assuming God, what is the relation of crea-
tion to Him ? What the relation of man ? What
is this that thinks and wills and loves — this I?
And then, what is it all for? Is there a final pur-
pose and an order tending to it, or is it but the
whirl of molecules, the dust of the universe circling
for a moment in space, of which we are but some
atoms? Is there a bridge between consciousness
and the external world, or a gulf that cannot be
spanned or fathomed ? Is life a reality, or is it a
dream from which we may awake in some world of
reality to find that this world was but the vision of
a night ? We are born out of sleep ; we die into
sleep. Are we truly awake between ? What cer-
tainty is there that these senses convey true reports
of the outer world, and that it may not be a phan-
tasm, a projected play of our own consciousness that
may vanish some moment like a dissolving cloud ?
These are questions that are never absent from the
great minds ; they send their color into the sonnets
and plays of Shakespeare; they prompt the phi-
losophies from Pythagoras down ; they tinge the
great poems ; they rise i-n every thoughtful mind
whenever he looks into the heavens at night, or

392 THINGS TO BE AWAITED.

listens to the endless murmur of the sea, or con-
siders the mystery involved in touch and sight and
sound, or takes in the sweep of the generations,
one coming and another going, forcing the ques-
tion — Whence ? Whither ?

It is useless to deny that this mystery carries
with it a sense of pain. It is alien to mind, a con-
dition foreign to our nature. And the more thor-
oughly mind is true to itself, the more painfully
does it feel the darkness. When Goethe, dying,
said, '' Let the light enter," he uttered, not the
highest and best hope of the heart, but the dearest
satisfaction of the intellect. He felt that he was
going where the shadows that hang over this world
would flee away, and he could find some answer to
the questions that had vexed him here.

So, too, those commoner questions. Why does
evil exist ? Why do the innocent suffer ? Why
does one suffer on account of another ? Why does
life end untimely ? Why is man so subject to na-
ture ? Why is the experience of life so long in
ripening the fruit of wisdom? Why are the chances
so against man that he spends his days in sorrow
and evil ? Why is there not more help from God ?
Why does life gradually assume the appearance of
a doom, spent in vanity and ending in death ? We
get no full answer to these questions in this life.
We make some petty syllogisms about freedom as
the necessary condition of good, and evil as inci-
dental to the best possible system, and the like, —
true enough they are, perchance, but they are not
answers : they simply throw the questions a little

THINGS TO BE AWAITED. 393

farther back. Our faith teaches us submission and
trust, but it does not tell us why these things are
so. And because they are not explained, some blas-
pheme, and some despair, and some make the mys-
tery an excuse for sin : " it is all a tangle — let us
eat and drink."

Shall these questions never be answered ? It is
not easy to believe that mind will forever be har-
assed by an alien element ; it may always require
something other than itself to stand upon, or as a
foil like that which the jewel-merchant puts under
precious stones to reflect their color, but it will not
forever wear this other as a clog and burden. It is
the function of mind to know, its proper element
is knowledge and certainty. Insolvable mystery,
especially such as involves pain, cannot well be a
permanent and final feature of existence. Being
itself may forever remain a mystery, and may
deepen as existence goes on, but it involves no suf-
fering, it is simply inexplicable wonder at self.
But these other shadows that cloud life, these ques-
tions that tire and fret us with their importunity,
yet admit of no sure answer ; these problems that
often render faith well-nigh impossible, and prompt
us to " curse God and die ; " these slowly vanish
when the great light of eternity dawns on us. That
were a poor world if it did not do this for us.
Mystery may remain, but it will be harmonious
mystery. The accusing doubt, the seeming con-
tradiction, the painful uncertainty, will pass away,
and we shall see " face to face " and know even as
we have been known.

394 THINGS TO BE AWAITED.

If the grounds of this expectation are asked for,
we find them in these words of St. Paul : we shall
know as God knows. The mystery of the present
life is due to the fact that it is so heavily condi-
tioned by its material environment; matter con-
tends against spirit. But as existence goes on, if
it is normal, it throws off these conditions and
presses towards absolute action and full freedom.
This is the eternal state, and this action is eternal
life, and the world where it is achieved is the eter-
nal world. The whole process and condition is
illustrated in the Christ. His peace was perfect,
his joy was full. He knew that God heard Him, He
saw the Father, He dwelt in light, and so his whole
life had the freedom and certainty and perfection
of eternity. One with Christ by faith here and
now, yet overshadowed by clouds and beset with
struggles, we await the hour, not " troubled " nor
'' comfortless,'' when we shall be with Him where
He is, in the light of the shadowless "eternal
noon."

6. We wait for full restoration to the presence of
God.

I do not forget that through Christ we come to
the Father ; that the obedience of the Son is the
path that leads to the Father's house. There is no
truth but that truth, no way but that way, no life
but that life ; there is no other name under heaven
by which men can be saved, because that name
carries with it the elements and methods of salva-
tion. All this is true, but it is an unfulfilled pro-
cess. There is a knowledge and presence of God

THINGS TO BE AWAITED. 395

for which we long that is not met even m Christ,
for He Himself was as one who waited for a joy set
before Him ; He Himself was about to go to the
Father's house, not yet having come to it. The
perfection of Christ's revelation of God does not
consist in an entire uncovering of God, but in
showing a way that leads to God. Much indeed
He reveals, his heart of love, his righteous will,
but we demand more than knowledge of those we
love : we demand presence, sight, contact. When
Christ was teaching the people. He had all knowl-
edge of God, but when the weary day was past, He
climbed the mountain — alone — if, in the remote
and soKtary height, and in the deeper solitude of
darkness. He might get some closer sight of God.
Jacob, on his way to meet Esau, well enough knew
there was a God above him, but that was not
enough, and so he wrestled till daybreak for a reve-
lation that should be more than knowledge. " Tell
me thy name," show me thy very self, is the cry of
his needy heart.

Whether we have come to the hour of conscious
need or not, it is the demand of every one of us.
There are hours when the whole world, and all it
contains, shrivels to nothingness, and God alone
fills the mind ; hours of human desolation, seasons
of strange, mysterious exaltation, times of earthly
despair, or of joy ; the height and excess of any
emotion bears us away into a region where God
Himself dwells. But even if we have taught our-
selves to make the impression of these hours con-
stant, there is still an unsatisfied element in the

396 . THINGS TO BE AWAITED.

knowledge. We long for more, for nearness, for
sight or something that stands for sight, for the
Father at hand, and the home of the soul. I know
that in many and many of God's children there is
a longing for God that is not satisfied, because they
are children and are away from the Father's house.
And I know still better that the unrest of this
weary world is its unvoiced cry after God.

This full, satisfying presence of God, must be
awaited. It is contended against by sense, by the
w^orld of things, by the limits that shut out the in-
finite, and by our own slow and hesitating depar-
ture from the evil and the sensual, — a muddy vesture
of decay doth grossly close us in ; but when this
falls off, and these earthly shadows flee away, we
shall see face to face, and know as we are known.

In showing that there are many things that are
to be awaited, even till another life, I am aware
how perilously near we run to the suggestion that,
if these things are so, strife after the best, and
most we can get in this world, may be relaxed.
But we must not forget that all truth is double;
we strive, we wait. There is no doubt but this
life and world are mainly keyed to struggle, that
man is a doer and not a waiter. The main pur-
pose of life should be to get all the good out of it
possible. Force from nature all the sweetness you
can ; wring from the earth all her richness ; get all
the joy possible from sight and sense and sound ;
test to the utmost the ministering power of every-
thing and relation ; wait for nothing that you may
have by proper effort. This is our great, human

THINGS TO BE AWAITED. 397

privilege, but when we have used it to the utmost,
there will be many things we want that we have
not gained. The greatest things, the most vital,
do not lie within the scope of our powers, yet as
they belong to us they may be confidently awaited.
We are free, but we are also bound ; but our life
and nature reach beyond our limitations, and lay
claim to what is beyond our present reach.

This is a great truth ; it uncovers the divine part
of us. To live with only a recognition of our pres-
ent possibilities, to draw all our joy and comfort
from such things as we can now get under our
touch and sight, as so many are telling us, — this, I
conceive, to be thoroughly brutish. It makes man
but another bird among the trees, or another insect
humming in the evening air. But to hope and wait
for the highest and best we can conceive, this ex-
pands life, this stretches out its short span. This
affords a field for the solution of its mysteries, for
the cure of its ills, for regaining what is lost, for
recomposing the " sweet societies " of earth, for that
realized oneness with God which is the unceasing
cry of the God-created spirit.

Hence the last look at destiny is that of a seat
in the eternal throne : all limitations ended, all
heights surmounted, all things hoped and waited
for gained !

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ored Plates. 8vo, full gilt, J2.50.

James Freeman Clarke, D. D.

Ten Great Religions. An Essay in Comparative The-
ology. With an Index. 8vo, $3.00 ; half calf, $5.50.
Contents : Ethnic and Catholic Religions ; Confucius and the
Chinese ; Brahmanism ; Buddhism, or the Protestantism of the
East ; Zoroaster and the Zend Avesta ; The Gods of Egypt ; The
Gods of Greece ; The Religion of Rome ; The Teutonic and Scan-
dinavian Religion; The Jewish Religion; Mohammed and Islam;
The Ten Religions and Christianity.

He treats the ten condemned faiths in a spirit of the fullest rever-
ence, anxious to bring to light whatever of good is contained in them,
regarding each as in reality a religion, an essay toward the truth,
even if only a partially successful one. ... A great body of valu-
able and not generally or easily accessible information. — The Na-
tion (New York).

Nothing has come to our knowledge which furnishes evidence of
such voluminous reading, such thorough study and research, and
such masterly grasp of the real elements of these religions, as does
the volume before us. James Freeman Clarke has accomplished a
work here of solid worth. — Missionary Review (Princeton).

Ten Great Religions. Part II. A Comparison of all

Religions. 8vo, $3.00; half calf, $5.50.

Contents : Description and Classification ; Special Types, Law
of Development ; Origin and Development of all Religions ; The
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ions ; Idea of a Future State in all Religions ; The Future Religion
of Mankind.

Common-Sense in Religion. A Series of Essays.

I2mO, $2.00.

Contents : Common Sense and Mystery ; Common-Sense View
of Human Nature ; On the Doctrine Concerning God ; The Bible
and Inspiration ; The True Meaning of Evangelical Christianity ;
The Truth about Sin ; Common-Sense and Scripture Views of
Heaven and Hell ; Satan, according to Common-Sense and the
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pointments of Jesus ; Common-Sense View of Salvation by Faith ;
On not being Afraid ; Hope ; The Patience of Hope ; Love ; The
Brotherhood of Men.

As the common-sense of religion is the most certain reality of all
life, the title of these essays is admirably chosen. It must arrest at-

HoiightoUy Mifflin & Co. 3

tention in face of the conservative determination to relegate religion
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Joseph Cook.

BOSTON MONDAY LECTURES.

These wonderful lectures stand forth alone amidst the contemporary
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bolt from heaven. — James McCosh, D. D.

Professor J. L. Diman.

The Theistic Argument as Affected by Recent The-
ories. Edited by Professor George P. Fisher. 8vo, $2.00.
The author has succeeded in making it clear that recent science
impels us to a point where the necessity of admitting the existence
of God is irresistible ; that its most elevated conceptions and widest
generalizations render it necessary to accept the presence and con-
stant efficient energy of God as realities, and that the modes of oper-
ation which science discloses are in harmony with the fundamental
principles and postulates of Christianity. — British Quarterly Review.
Dr. Diman concedes to his opponents every advantage of debate,
adopts their phraseology, follows their methods of reasoning, grants
to them every principle that they have established wholly or approxi-
mately, and, indeed, a great deal that is scarcely more than conjec-
ture ; and yet he is able to present a defense of theistic doctrine that
will seem most admirable and most consolatory to its adherents and
most embarrassing to some of its enemies. He has conducted the
whole discussion with rare ability, and has furnished sound reason-
ing at every successive step. — Times (New York).

4 Religious Publicatiotis of

Orations and Essays, with selected Parish Sermons.

A Memorial Volume, with a Portrait. 8vo, gilt top, $2.50.

Contents : A Commemorative Discourse. J. Lewis Diman. By
the Rev. James O. Murray. — Literary and Historical Addresses :
The Alienation of the Educated Class from Politics ; The Method
of Academic Culture ; Address at the Unveiling of the Monument
to Roger Williams in Providence ; The Settlement of Mount Hope ;
Sir Henry Vane. — Reviews : Religion in America, 1776-1876 ; Uni-
versity Corporations. — Sermons : The Son of Man ; Christ, the
Way, the Truth, and the Life ; Christ, the Bread of Life ; Christ in
the Power of His Resurrection ; The Holy Spirit, the Guide to
Truth ; The Baptism of the Holy Ghost ; The Kingdom of Heaven
and the Kingdom of Nature.

I think it is not the partiality of personal friendship which leads
me to regard these productions of Professor Diman as not surpassed
by any other writings of the same class in our literature. — Professor
George P. Fisher.

One cannot read these pages without becoming conscious of con-
tact with the workings of a strong and an earnest mind. The words
betoken culture, scholarship, and, what is more important, they show
that he who wrote them lived near to God. — The Churchman (New
York).

The rich contents of this volume assure his place among our no-
blest teachers and scholars. — Christian Register (Boston).

The Dhammapada.
Texts from the Buddhist Canon, commonly known as

Dhammapada, with accompanying Narratives. Translated from
the Chinese, by Samuel Beal, Professor of Chinese, University
College, London. 8vo, gilt top, $2.50.

This is a most important addition to our knowledge, as the Pali
texts of this work, hitherto available to scholars, and translated by
Professor Max Miiller and others, contain only two thirds of the
matter which has survived in the Chinese version. — The Athenceum
(London).

Joseph Edkins, D. D.

Religion in China. Containing a brief account of the
Three Religions of the Chinese, with Observations on the Pros-
pects of Christian Conversion among that People. 8vo, gilt top,
$2.50.

Dr. Edkins writes with the firmness and clearness of a mind that
has mastered its subject ; and few scholars will require a completer
statement of the principles pi the Chinese theologies, their develop-
ment, present phase, and contrasted character, than he furnishes. —
Tribune (New York).

Chinese Buddhism. A volume of Sketches, Historical,

Descriptive, and Critical. 8vo, gilt top, $4.50.
With the purpose constantly in mind to speak for the advance-
ment, the civilization, and the Christianization of the Chinese, Dr.

HoughtoUy Mifflin & Co. 5

Edkins has here written a work fit to serve, for ordinary readers at
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York).

Ludwig Feuerbach.

The Essence of Christianity. Translated from the
Second German Edition by Marian Evans (George Eliot).
8vo, gilt top, $3.00.

I confess that to Feuerbach I owe a debt of inestimable gratitude.
Feeling about in uncertainty for the ground, and finding everywhere
shifting sands, Feuerbach cast a sudden blaze into the darkness, and
disclosed to me the way. — S. Baring-Gould, in The Origm and
Development of Religious Belief.

Washington Gladden.

The Lord's Prayer. Seven Essays on the Meaning

and Spirit of this universal Prayer. i6mo, gilt top, $i.oo.

Often as we offer this prayer, and much as we have studied over
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supplications, and to comprehend more in them than has been our
wont. — Lutheran Quarterly (Philadelphia).

W. R. Greg.

The Creed of Christendom. Its Foundations con-
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A model of honest investigation and clear exposition, conceived in
the true spirit of serious and faithful research. — Westminster Re-
view (London).

Dr. Martin Haug.

Essays on the Sacred Language, Writings, and Re-
ligion OF THE Parsis. Second Revised Edition, by Dr. E. W.
West. 8vo, gilt top, $4.50.

It supplies the most accurate knowledge now accessible of one of
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and thorough scholarship. — Christian Register (Boston).

Hindu Pantheism (A Manual of).

The Vedantasara. Translated, with Annotations, by-
Major G. A. Jacob, Bombay Staff Corps. With Preface by E. B.
Cow^ELL, M. A., Professor of Sanskrit in the University of Cam-
bridge. 8vo, gilt top, $2.50.

The Vedantasara, acknowledged to be the best presentation of the
modern phase of these tenets, is in this little book translated, and its
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lation, while the translation may be accepted as accurate and faithful.
— Christian Union (New York.)

6 Religious Publications of

Hymns of the Ages.

Hymns of the Ages. First, Second, and Third Series.
Each in one volume, illustrated with steel vignettes, after Turner.
i2mo, $1.50 each ; half calf, $9.00 a set ; morocco, $12.00.

They date all the way from the sixth century to to-day. But, old-
est and newest, they deal with that which is older than the ancientest,
and newer than the latest of them. And this is the ground of their
excellence, and of the esteem in which they are held, — that worthily
and sincerely they deal with that truth in souls whose infinite variety
age cannot wither and custom cannot stale, and with which every
heart, as it is pure, finds itself at home in a dear and sacred kinship.
— Christian Examiner,

Henry James.

The Secret of Swedenborg. Being an Elucidation of
his Doctrine of the Divine Natural Humanity. 8vo, tinted paper,
$2.50.

We admire the metaphysical acuteness, the logical power, and the
singular literary force of the book, which is also remarkable as car-
rying into theological writing something besides the hard words of
secular dispute, and as presenting to the world the great questions
of theology in something beside a Sabbath-day dress. — Atlantic
Monthly,

Society the Redeemed Form of Man, and the Ear-
nest OF God's Omnipotence in Human Nature. Affirmed in
Letters to a Friend. Crown 8vo, j§2.oo.

Samuel Johnson.

Oriental Religions, and their Relation to Univer-
sal Religion. By Samuel Johnson.
India. 8vo, 802 pages, $5.00; half calf, $8.00.

Samuel Johnson's remarkable work is devoted wholly to the re-
ligions and civilization of India ; is the result of twenty years' study
and reflection by one of the soundest scholars and most acute think-
ers of New England, and must be treated with all respect, whether
we consider its thoroughness, its logical reasoning, or the conclusion,
unacceptable to the majority, no doubt, at which it arrives. — Repub-
lican (Springfield).

China. 8vo, 1,000 pages, $5.00 ; half calf, $8.00.

Altogether the work of Mr. Johnson is an extraordinarily rich
mine of reliable and far-reaching information on all literary subjects
connected with China. . . . He decidedly impresses us as an author-
ity on Chinese subjects. — E. J. Eitel, Ph. D., Editor of The China
Review (Hong Kong).

Thomas Starr King.

Christianity and Humanity. Sermons. Edited, with
a Memoir, by Edwin P. Whipple. Fine steel portrait, i2mo,
^2.00 \ half calf, $4.00.

Houghton, Mifflin & Co, 7

Contents : The Experimental Evidence of Christianity ; Cries
from the Depth; The Supremacy of Jesus; Christian Thought of
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Dollar ; The Divine Estimate of Death ; Distribution of Sorrows ;
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Organ and its Symbolism ; The Supreme Court Decision and our
Duties ; Living for Ideas and Principles ; The Heart and the Issues
of Life ; Salt that has lost its Savor, or Religion Corrupted ; Les-
sons from the Sierra Nevada ; Living Waters from Lake Tahoe ;
The Comet of July, i86i ; Religious Lessons from Metallurgy ;
Christian Worship.

The Koran.

Selections from the Koran. By Edward William

Lane. A new edition, revised and enlarged, with an introduction
by Stanley Lane Poole. 8vo, gilt top, fe.50.

Alvan Lamson, D. D.

The Church of the First Three Centuries ; or, No-
tices of the Lives and Opinions of the Early Fathers, with special
reference to the Doctrine of the Trinity ; illustrating its late origin
and gradual formation. Revised and enlarged edition. 8vo, $2.50.
Dr. Lamson was a Unitarian in opinion, but in this book he does

not advocate his views except by showing how they are supported by

history.

Rev. J. Long.
Eastern Proverbs and Emblems illustrating Old

Truths. 8vo, $3.50.

This curious collection of proverbs, gleaned principally from
among the Eastern peoples, illustrates the analogy of the old truths
of Scripture with the common sayings in every-day use in the East.

Samuel Longfellow and Samuel Johnson.
Hymns of the Spirit. i6mo, $1.25.
A collection of remarkable excellence.

W. A. McVickar, D. D.

Life of the Rev. John McVickar, S. T. D. With por-
trait, crown 8vo, $2.00.

Hundreds of scholars in all professions and vocations, now living,
will be delighted with this admirable biography of their revered mas-
ter, who for fifty years stood foremost among the eminent men who
filled the professors' chairs in Columbia College. — Journal (Albany).

William Mountford.

EuTHANASYj or, Happy Talk towards the End of Life.

New edition, T2mo, $2.00.

It is the product of a mind cultivated, gentle, and reverent, ap-
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the soul to rest in the peace of confidence in the goodness of God. —
Advertiser (Boston).

8 Religious Publicatio7ts of

Elisha Mulford, D. D.

The Republic of God. 8vo, $2.00.

It is the mirror of tiie age, the gospel of the age, the embodiment
of the thought of the age, and yet, for the most part, it is the state-
ment of the truth of all ages as it concerns the spiritual life of man.
The prime thought of the book can no more be shaken than the
eternal hills, and whether men accept or dispute different points in
its development, it is one of the few books that sooner or later create
a new world for men to live in. — limes (New York).

No book on the statement of the great truths of Christianity at
once so fresh, so clear, so fundamental, and so fully grasping and
solving the religious problems of our time, has yet been written by
any American. — Advertiser (Boston).

It is the most important contribution to theological literature thus
far made by any American writer. — The Chiirchinan (New York).

A book which will not be mastered by hasty reading, nor by a
cool, scientific dissection. We do not remember that this country
has lately produced a speculative work of more originality and force.
. . . The book is a noble one — broad-minded, deep, breathing forth
an ever-present consciousness of things unseen. It is a mental and
moral tonic which might do us all good. — The Critic (New York).

Rev. T. T. Munger.

On the Threshold. Familiar Lectures to Young Peo-
ple on Purpose, Friends and Companions, Manners, Thrift, Self-
Reliance and Courage, Health, Reading and Intellectual Life,
Amusements, and Faith. i6mo, gilt top, $1.00.
This book touches acts, habits, character, destiny; it deals with
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hand-book to possible careers ; it stimulates one with the idea that
life is worth living ; there are no dead words in it. The production
of a book of this sort is not an every-day occurrence : it is an event ;
it will work a revolution among young men who read it; it has the
manly ring from cover to cover. — Times (New York).

The Freedom of Faith. Sermons. i6mo, $1.50.

Contents : Prefatory Essay : The New Theology ; On Reception
of New Truth ; God our Shield ; God our Reward ; Love to the
Christ as a Person ; The Christ's Pity ; The Christ as a Preacher ;
Land-Tenure ; Moral Environment ; Immortality and Science ; Im-
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Christ's Treatment of Death ; The Resurrection from the Dead ; The
Method of Penalty ; Judgment ; Life a Gain ; Things to be Awaited.

J. A. W. Neander.

General History of the Christian Religion and

Church. Translated from the German by Rev. Joseph Torrey,

Professor in the University of Vermont. With an Index volume.

The set, with Index, 6 vols., ^20.00. Index volume, separate, %'^.oo.

**Neancler's Church History" is one of the most profound, care-
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dependent historical works that have ever been written. In all these

Houghton^ Mifflin & Co. 9

respects it stands head and shoulders above almost any other church
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about no other that I have ever seen), I now use the translation con-
stantly in preference to the original. — Professor Calvin E. Stowe,
Andover, Mass.

Peep of Day Series.

Peep of Day Series. Comprising "The Peep of Day,"

*' Precept upon Precept," and " Line upon Line." 3 vols. i6mo,
each 50 cents ; the set, $1.50.

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.

The Gates Ajar. i6mo, $1.50.

Of all the books which we ever read, calculated to shed light upon
the utter darkness of sudden sorrow, and to bring peace to the be-
reaved and solitary, we give, in many important respects, the prefer-
ence to "The Gates Ajar." — The Congregationalist (Boston).

Physicus.

A Candid Examination of Theism. By Physicus.
8vo, gilt top, ^2.50.

Prayers of the Ages.
Prayers of the Ages. Compiled by Caroline S.

Whitmarsh, one of the editors of " Hymns of the Ages." $1.50.

I have long wished for something of the kind, a broad, liberal,
catholic presentation of what must be regarded as the flower of the
world^s piety and devotion. The " Hymns of the Ages " are favor-
ite volumes with me, and I have comforted the sick and sorrowing
with them. But this last volume, it seems to me, I shall value high=-
est. — John G. Whittier.

George Putnam, D. D.

Sermons by George Putnam, D. D., late Pastor of the

First Religious Society in Roxbury, Massachusetts. With fine

steel portrait. i6mo, gilt top, $1.75,

Contents : If Thou hadst been here ; I have Trodden the Wine-
Press alone ; Life a Voyage ; Jesus and Solomon ; Almost and Al-
together ; Tekel ; Christian Manliness — Doing and Standing ; Go
Quickly ; True Religion ; Unitarianism ; Infidelity ; One Faith ;
The Windows towards Jerusalem ; Oh, that I knew ! The One
Foundation ; The Ofiense of the Cross ; Science and Theology ;
Hath God said it ? Righteousness First ; Hindrances ; Anthropo-
morphism ; Thou shalt say. No ; The Miracle of Cana ; Introduc-
tory I. and II. ; Ordaining Address.

Rev. James Reed.

SWEDENBORG AND THE NeW ChURCH. l6mO, $1.25.

While the work is definite and positive in its affirmations, it is
written in an admirable spirit, and is quite free from every taint of

lo Religious Publications of

that narrow sectarianism or supercilious dogmatism which too often
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mended to any one who desires to acquaint himself with the princi-
ples of Biblical interpretation and the theological views of the Swe-
denborgians or New Church. — Christian Union (New York).

Edward Robinson, D. D., LL. D.
Harmony of the Four Gospels, in Greek. 8vo, $1.50.
The Same, in English, 12 mo, 75 cents.

Biblical Researches in Palestine. 3 vols. 8vo, with

maps, $10.00. Price of the maps alone, $1.00.

Dean Stanley said of these volumes : '* 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 riv-
eted my attention upon them while riding on the back of a camel ;
while traveling 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 can never be effaced."

It lays open, unquestionably, one of the richest discoveries, one of
the most important scientific conquests, which has been made for a
long time in the field of geography and Biblical archaeology. — Carl

RiTTER.

Physical Geography of the Holy Land. A Supple-
ment to " Biblical Researches in Palestine." 8vo, %y^o.
A capital summary of our present knowledge. — Lojtdon Athenceum,

Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament,
including the Biblical Chaldee. From the Latin of William Ge-
SENius, by Edward Robinson. Twenty -second Edition. 8vo,
half russia, J6.00.

Gesenius is indispensable. No one has yet arisen who, with the
same comprehensive mastery of the lexical material, can lay claim to
the uniform sobriety of philological judgment and the all but abso-
lute freedom from bondage to the trammels of theory which charac-
terize Gesenius. He is still the " prince of Hebrew lexicographers."
— Professor P. H. Steenstra, Cambridge Episcopal Theological
School.

English- Hebrew Lexicon: Being a complete Verbal
Index to Gesenius' Hebrew Lexicon. By Joseph Lewis Potter,
A. M. 8vo, $2.00.

Rev. Thomas Scott.

The Bible, with Explanatory Notes, Practical
O'bservations, and Copious Marginal References. By
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I believe it exhibits more of the mind of the Spirit in the Scrip-
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Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1 1

William Smith.

Dictionary of the Bible, comprising its Antiquities,
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There are several American editions of Smith's Dictionary of the
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This edition has 500 more pages than the English, and 100 more
illustrations ; more than a thousand errors of reference in the Eng-
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Professor Roswell D. Hitchcock, of New York, said : " There
cannot well be two opinions about the merits of Smith's Bible Dic-
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language, is now still better." The London Bookseller remarked :
"It seems that we have to thank America for the most complete
work of the kind in the English, or, indeed, in any other language."

No similar work in our own or in any other language is for a mo-
ment to be compared with it. — Quarterly Review (London).

Robert South, D. D.
Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions. With

a Memoir of the author. 5 vols. 8vo, $15.00 ; sheep, $20.00 ; half

calf, $25.00.

We doubt if, in the single quality of freshness and force of expres-
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Milton to Burke, equaled South. — E. P. Whipple, in North Amer-
ican Review.

South's sermons are adapted to all readers and all days. — Retro-
spective Review (London).

Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Religious Poems. Illustrated. i6mo, gilt, $1.50.

The poems are all characterized by the genius of Mrs. Stowe. . . .
There is a profound appreciation of the inner life of religion, — a
wrestling for nearness to God. — American Christian Review.

A Talmudic Miscellany.

A Talmudic Miscellany ; or, A Thousand and One Ex-
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piled and translated by P. I. Hershon. With Introductory Pref-
ace by Rev. F. W. Farrar. 8vo, gilt top, $4.50.
A scholarly and painstaking book — the volume has a solid value.

— Tribune (New York).

It will interest theologians, historians, and thinkers. — Advertiser

(Boston).

12 Religious Publications,

Henry Thornton.

Family Prayers, and Prayers on the Ten Command-
ments, with a Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, etc.
By Henry Thornton. Edited by the late Bishop Eastburn,
of Massachusetts. i2mo, $1.50.
Probably no published volume of family prayers has ever been the

vehicle of so much heart-felt devotion as these. They are what

prayers should be — fervent, and yet perfectly simple. — Christian

Witness.

Professor C. P. Tiele.

Outlines of the History of Religion to the Spread
OF THE Universal Religions. 8vo, gilt top, $2.50.
His main object is to show how that one great psychological phe-
nomenon which we call religion has developed and manifested itself
in such various shapes among the different races and peoples of the
world. By this outline sketch of the author we see how all religions,
even those of highly civilized nations, have grown up from the same
simple germs, and we also learn the causes why these germs have in
some cases attained such a rich and admirable development, and in
others have scarcely grown at all. — Transcript (Boston).

The book is one of uncommon and curious interest. — Courant
(Hartford).

James M. Whiton.

The Gospel of the Resurrection. i6mo, gilt top,

^1.25.

A thoughtful and reverent study of one of the fundamental doc-
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life beyond the grave more intensely and vitally real. — Journal
(Boston).

John Woolman.

The Journal of John Woolman. With an Introduc-
tion by John G. Whittier. i6mo, $1.50.
Get the writings of John Woolman by heart. — Charles Lamb.
A perfect gem. His is a beautiful soul. An illiterate tailor, he
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Christianity is most inviting : it is fascinating. — H. Crabb Robin-
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4 Park St., Boston ; 11 East Seventeenth St., New York.

t9