Hours of thought on sacred things

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HOURS OF THOUGHT

ON

SACRED THINGS.

VOL. I.

BY

JAMES MARTINEAU, LL.D., D.D.,

HONORARY MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, AND
PRINCIPAL OF MANCHESTER NEW COLLEGE, LONDON.

*iiY^5 ayvr/t Tottov oliceioTcpov e7ri yTJs ovk e^ei ©eds.

Demophili Sent. Pythag. 45.
Urn Gott zu )iaben, muss man zuerst etwas sein, das Gott haben kann.

Richard Rothe : Stille Stunden, 189.

0

LONDON : ^

LONGMANS, GREEN, READER AND DYER.
1880

LONDON :

PRINTED BY WOODFALL AND KINDER,

MILFORD LANE, STRAND, W.C.

PREFACE.

The first duty, it has been said, of a retired preacher is
to commit to the flames whatever he has prepared for
the pulpit, and secure the world against further tedium
from his labours. In the face of this canon of clerical
duty, I have hesitated to rescue a few fragments from
the process of destruction, and let them try for them-
selves whether their natural life has reached its term.
If I have found courage for the experiment, it is chiefly
because a previous collection, which thirty years ago I
did not expect to reproduce, is apparently more true to
the feeling of the present time than to that of the last
generation. Those who have spent thought and zeal on
the moral movements of their age may naturally dread,
as their strength declines and their speed slackens, to
be thrown out of the great march which they have
long shared : and they may legitimately put it to the
test, whether they have dropped off into loneliness,
or whether their voice is still in harmony with the
tones which meet the future. If the following pages

iv Preface.

should foster any high impulse in those who have the
work of life before them, or shed any light on those
who have the sorrows of life behind them, I shall be
content not to have withheld it.

This volume represents, on the whole, a considerably
later stage of feeling and experience than the "Endeav-
ours after the Christian Life "; and doubtless bears
traces, in parts, of the more recent aspects of religious
speculation. But essentially the same view of life, the
same conception of the order of the world, the same
interpretation of the Christian mind, will still meet the
reader : for they remain unaffected, so far as I can perceive,
by the real discoveries, and are prejudiced only by the
philosophical fictions of the last five-and-twenty years.
The new lights of historical criticism certainly change,
in no slight degree, our picture of the origin and growth
of the Christian religion : but every larger comprehen-
sion of the universe only invests the principles of that
religion with sublimer truth; and every added refine-
ment of conscience the more attests their spiritual
worth.

London, October 6th, 1876.

CONTENTS.

i.

PAGE

The Tides of the Spirit 1

II.

Seek First the Kingdom of God — I. ... 17

III.

Seek First tbe Kingdom of God— II. 31

IV.
The Witness of God with our Spirit ... 45

V.

The Better Part 59

VI.

Perfection Divine and Human...

VII.

The Moral Quality of Faith ...

• •• • • a

VIII.

Divine Justice and Pardon Keconciled 102

vi Contents.

v IX.

^) PAGE

God Kevealed unto Babes 114

X.

The Messengers of Change 127

XI.

Secret Trust 140

XII.

The Sorrows op Messiah ... ... 153

XIII.
The Bread of Life 164

XIV.
The Unknown Paths 177

y The Finite and the Infinite in Human Nature 191

XVI.

Time, to Nature, God, and the Soul 203

XVII.
Forgiveness to Love 217

XVIII.
Life to the Children of the Prophets 229

Contents, vii

XIX.

PAGE

Tee Godlt Mai? 243

XX.

The Inner and Outer Kingdom of God „. 256

XXI.
Religion in Parable ... 270

XXII.

Neither Man nor Woman in Christ Jesus 284

XXIII.
The Powers of Love 297

XXIV.
The Discipline of Darkness ... ... 315

XXV.
Rest in the Lord ... 329

HOURS OF THOUGHT.

I.

Cjw Cib*s 0f i\t Spirit.

Luke iv. 16.
" And he came to Nazaretb, where he had been brought up ; and as his
custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up
for to read."

We cannot wonder that something in his look, — some
visible flush of inward life, — fastened the eyes of all
upon him. For to his human feeling, which could no-
where assert a greater right than there, the moment
was overcharged with a certain sad intensity. Since
last he stood upon that spot, a change had passed upon
him : a light, long struggling with the clouds and often
drowned in a golden haze of mystery, had cleared itself
within him : he was no longer at his own disposal, or
free to rest upon the trodden paths; but the sacred
dove was ever on the wing before him, and now alighted
on the synagogue of Nazareth, and there, where he
naturally fell into the attitude of docility, left him to
speak the word of supernatural power. Never is it so

B

2 The Tides of the Spirit.

hard to follow and trust a higher inspiration, as amid
the crowd of customary things ; and in proportion as
the heart is tender and gracious, clinging with fibres of
reverent affection to the past, is it a sorrowful loyalty
that takes us out to anything beyond. If ever Jesus
could yield to misgivings of what was committed to
him, it would be in that place ; whose threshold he
could not reach without passing the cottage and the
workshop door, and overtaking the slow steps and bent
forms of village elders, and being startled by the re-
membered laugh of many a child ; whose walls were
written all over with early memories ; where bars of
sunshine painted the floor with a meaning not to be
erased ; where the voices of familiars whispered round
him ; and the venerable features were turned upon him
of the Levite who taught him to read the very scroll in
his hand ; and he felt the eye of Mary, and knew all
the flutter of her heart. There, in presence of those
at whose feet he used to sit, — there, where he first
heard and pondered Israel's hope, and watched a holy
light on other faces, not knowing that it was reflected
from his own, — how could he stand up and draw the
great words of Isaiah upon himself, and say aloud,
' This is the hour,' — 'Lo ! it is I.' ? A consciousness
less divinely calm must have grown confused under the
crossing rays of so many sympathies. But with him
the temptation was now passed : he had emerged from
the desert that lay between the old life and the new,

The Tides of the Spirit. 3

The very Spirit of God had driven him thither to hear
what could be said against itself: pale with fasting,
alone by night with his Satan and his God, he had
learned the worst ; had not only flung the self away,
but loosed the detaining hand of custom, and freely
gone into the divine captivity. And now, he was no
longer his own : his humanity was the organ of a higher
Will : no flitting of the Spirit, off and on, — it rested
with him now ; no stormy skies that often blotted out
the stars, but a pure and tranquil look into the infinite.
And so, he could bear those native scenes again, for they
lay in another light : the hills of Nazareth were trans-
figured before him : from all things round the dull and
weary aspect had fled, that makes them press with the
weight of usage ; and he stood amid the well-known
groups, as some immortal friend might return and look
in among us here, with unabated love, but with saintly
insight into meanings hid from us.

Lifted then into the full power of the Spirit, with the
forces of evil already shrinking before him, whither, as
least uncongenial, does he take his heavenly point of
view ? — To the village synagogue, on the stated day of
rest : nothing newer, nothing higher ; but just the place
and time which had been sacred to the fathers. The
first thing which he did, under freshest inspiration, was
to resume the dear old ways, to fall in with the well-
known season, to unroll the same venerable page ; only
to find a new meaning in words that had long carried

b 2

4 The Tides of the Spirit.

their rhythm to his heart. What ? had he not risen above
that ? could the dull preachings and the drawling prayers
say anything to him ? What charm could he longer
feel in these childish Sabbath usages, — the decent dress,
the restful hours, the flowing together of families and
walking to the house of God in company ? Did not he,
above all, live in a constant air of divine communion,
and mingle with the eternity where all is consecrate
alike ? Do what he might, go where he would, — walk-
ing early on the beach, sitting by the well at noon, or
kneeling by night upon the mountain grass, jostled by
the city multitudes or borne upon the sea alone, — was
he not always with the Father, — himself a better sanc-
tuary than he could ever find ? What could a nature
at that height have to do with any sacred enclosure of
space or time ? Yet, " at Nazareth, where he had been
brought up, he went, as his custom was, into the syna-
gogue on the Sabbath day."

We are sustained then by the sympathy of the highest
inspiration, when we make it our " custom " too, to
illuminate in our calendar some holy day, and to raise
near every cluster of our dwellings a house where
"prayer is wont to be made." Heed not the fastidious
critic who tells you that the world has outgrown the
church, — that the living voice of trust and aspiration
shall soon have no response from sorrowing and struggling
men. Depend upon it, his is the humour of the hour ;
and you who keep to the old reverent ways are taking

The Tides of the Spirit. 5

sides with the perpetuity of our humanity. Fear not
that you have here to do with any perishable work.
Crowd the pavement of the church with the aged and
the young : make it the favourite store-house of earnest
vows and living sacrifice : train its echoes to sweet and
holy hymns, that shall blend soul with soul, and carry
all to God ; and, thus sanctified, let it stand by night
and day a silent witness to the world of invisible and
heavenly things.

Against the Christian habit of seasonal and local
worship the truth is often urged, that God is a Spirit,
eternal and omniscient, abiding neither in "this moun-
tain " nor in that " Jerusalem," and bearing equal rela-
tion to every mind and every moment. This truth is
drawn aside into two opposite abuses. On the one
hand, the mystic would mould himself into accordance
with the divine constancy, by spreading the margin of
his prayer till it covers the whole of life ; and would let
out the imprisoned glory of his highest mood to trans-
figure all the years. For him it is too small a thing to
be " in the spirit on the Lord's day " : any little Patinos-
isle of vision is too limited for him : he must be always
at the holiest he can ever be : he must sink his whole
footing and himself away in the infinite flood whose
perfection has no tides. To pass into a sacred equa-
nimity and float evenly along, neither wrapt in chariot
of fire, nor blinded with clouds of dust ; to carry about
in the heart a heaven that shall steep the commonest

6 The Tides of the Spirit.

work in stainless colours ; to let labour and rest, youth
and age, with all intermittent things, stand for the body
and be nothing to the soul, and inwardly live as if no
shadows lengthened and no heavens rolled ; — is the
secret aim of one who loses himself in the spirituality
and immensity of God. And this very same truth
which urges him to worship always, i.e. as much at one
time as at another, is, on the other hand, the plea with
the secular temper for specially worshipping never, i.e.
as little at one time as at another. How often do you
fall in with one who feels himself above the superstition
of real prayer ; who is conscious of no personal relations
beyond this world ; to whom the whole expression and
organism of religion is but a discipline for social duty, —
a discipline necessary for the feeble, decorous for the
good, but empty for the wise ; who is rather its patron
than its disciple, and maintains churches for the world
as he keeps a nursery for his children, with as little
idea of spending his own adult and earnest life there ;
and who looks on times and places of devotion, on the
voice of contrition and aspiration, on the swelling hymn,
on the impassioned words of psalmist and prophet, and
the memorials of a Saviour's sacrifice, as an overwrought
provision for sustaining the daily moralities of life.
Serving God's will in the constant course of a faithful,
manly, kindly career, he is out of his element else-
where ; has no burden to lay down, no height to seize :
always equal to himself, he wants no reminder, appro-

The Tides of the Spirit. 7

priates no confession, and receives every ideal demand
upon him as flowing water receives falling sparks. And
so, he looks down on all special worship as a weakness
to which he cannot descend ; and, if ever social con-
nexion or hereditary ties commit him to the interests of
a Christian church, he upholds it for others rather than
himself; or else encourages it as a platform of party
self-assertion, and is proud of its dedication to his own
opinions, instead of humbly offering in it the best that
he has, and all that he is, to the real and living God.

Now what answer can we give to these two men,
both apparently resting on a great and sublime truth, —
the eternal constancy of God ? — the one adapting him-
self to it by congenial persistency of devotion, — the
other by ethical steadiness of will. Shall we ask from
each of them some little allowance for human infirmity,
which cannot hold on by a rule so patient ? Shall we
say to the Mystic, ' You must let us down at times
from that untenable height of yours : why bid us

"Wind ourselves too high
For mortal man beneath the sky "?

we are on earth and God in heaven ; and while we are
here, our feet must sometimes stroll the easy grass, and
the natural darkness hide diviner visions from us'?
And shall we say to the other, ' You must not expect
every one to be as even-minded as yourself, — as well
able to dispense with the freshening of conscience and

8 The Tides of the Spirit.

the fervours of faith : the atmosphere of the common
human nature is of unstable balance, and so long as it
has its belt of tropical heats, you must let its sweeping
winds have way ' ? In answering thus, you plead on
both hands for a concession to acknowledged weakness ;
and you treat just the opposite things as weakness in
the two cases, making humble excuse, first, for ever
touching the earth, and then, for ever springing towards
heaven ; and, in both instances, apologising for alterna-
tions of mood as something humiliating but inevitable,
needing the tender mercy of Eeason and out of harmony
with the reality of God. These feeble self-contradic-
tions I venture to leave behind, and to advance at once
to a firmer position. In the Occasionalism of piety, I
see not its shame, but its distinctive glory ; and would
lay stress on the intermittency of the devout affections,
as the sign, not of poverty or weakness, but specifically
of their grandeur in themselves, and their accurate
accordance with what is highest in God's realities.

For, whether you stay at home, and look in upon
the composition of our own nature ; or go out into
the universe and Providence of God, you will find this
law : — that, of his agencies and manifestations, it is
the lowest that are least mutable, and most remain the
same from first to last ; whilst the highest have ever
a tidal ebb and flow, — moving in waves of time, and
surprising hidden inlets of space with their flood.

In our bodily constitution itself this law already

The Tides of the Spirit. 9

begins to leave its trace. Two systems of parts and
offices co-exist, we are told, in the human frame ; one
comprising the group of organs and functions which
we have in common with the vegetable world, and by
which, like the plants, we breathe, and take and use
our nourishment, and throb with the sap of strength,
and grow; the other including the additional endow-
ments of an animated organism, the instruments by
which we move, and perceive, and feel. By the organic
life we vegetate ; by the animal life we suffer and we
act. And in accordance with their respective ranks, the
former and lower never ceases or remits from birth to
death ; — the beating heart, the heaving breast, and all
the silent chemistries, persevering by night and day,
whether half seen beneath the bloom of infancy, or
shut up beneath the lines of age ; while the latter and
higher subsists by intermission, — springs into action,
falls back into sleep ; and even with the young child's
eye, so bold and loving to the light, the lids droop and
enforce a shade ; and the quick limbs collapse and are
flung upon the bed of nature till the spent tide returns.
Rise a step higher in our nature, and the intermittent
pulsation of the finer energies becomes more marked.
Mind is more fitful than strength, less under steady
control of the will, faster and further in its ebb, in pro-
portion as it is fuller and grander in its flood. The
day-labourer with his limbs can bear longer hours than
the man of letters with his pen ; and can produce more

io The Tides of the Spirit.

even work. And precisely as the faculties which he
tasks are above the level of intellectual routine, is the
thinker dependent on moods which he cannot command
or prolong : — to learn, to criticize, to judge, to arrange,
being usually in his power ; but to combine, to discover,
to create, being the free gift of happy moments not
his own. Is he a compiler and fabricator of mental
products ? his process, like any other manufacture, may
go on, wherever the machinery of industry is set in
motion. Is he poet or inventor ? then he seems to be
the organ of another will, and to be now lifted into
clear achievement, now sunk into deep humiliation.
At times, a murky atmosphere appears to close in upon
his soul and damp down its very flame to smoke ; and
all his faithfulness and patience are unavailing to
perforate the gloom, and end only in the dripping of
the sad rain. At another time he seems to be planted
high in a pure and lustrous air ; to look on nothing
that does not shine with a self-light : the quick stream-
ing thoughts flow upon him like a morning wind ;
every darkening cloud swims off to the far horizon and
melts into bars of indigo and gold : turn his inter-
preting eye where he will, he mingles with the mean-
ings of things ; and his feet are on the mountains, and
his heart with God.

And who will venture to say that the highest insight
of the spirit is even half as constant as the highest
action of the mind ? Ask the saintliest men and women

The Tides of the Spirit. 1 1

of this world, whether their holy watch was continuous,
and their faith and love as reliable as their thought ;
and they will tell you how long, even when they went
up to be with the Saviour on the mount, have been the
slumbers of unconsciousness, compared with the price-
less instants when they were awake and beheld his
glory. In every earnest life, there are weary flats to
tread, with the heavens out of sight, — no sun, no moon,
— and not a tint of light upon the path below ; when
the only guidance is the faith of brighter hours, and
the secret Hand we are too numb and dark to feel.
But to the meek and faithful it is not always so. Now
and then, something touches the dull dream of sense
and custom, and the desolation vanishes away : the
spirit leaves its witness with us : the divine realities
come up from the past and straightway enter the
present : the ear into which we poured our prayer is
not deaf; the infinite eye to which we turned is not
blind, but looks in with answering mercy on us. The
mystery of life and the grievousness of death are gone :
we know now the little from the great, the transient
from the eternal : we can possess our souls in patience ;
and neither the waving palms and scattered flowers of
triumph can elate us, nor the weight of any cross
appear too hard to bear. Tell me not that these undu-
lations of the soul are the mere instability of enthusiasm
and infirmity. Are they not found characteristically in
the greatest and deepest men, — Augustine, Tauler,

12 The Tides of the Spirit.

Luther ? Nay, did not the Son of God himself, the
very type of our humanity, experience them more than
all ? Did he not quit the daily path, now for a Trans-
figuration, and now for a Gethsemane ? did not his
voice burst into the exclamation, ' I beheld Satan as
lightning fall from heaven,' yet also confess, ' Now is
my soul troubled ' ? And had he not his hours on the
mountain all night ? and what, think you, passed
beneath those stars ? Ah no ! those intermittent
movements are the sign of divine gifts, not of human
weakness. God has so arranged the chronometry of
our spirits that there shall be thousands of silent
moments between the striking hours.

Nor is it in personal experience alone that we read
this law. When we pass out of ourselves, and look
abroad over the Providence of God in nature and in
history, the same truth appears again. How it may be
with God in his own essence, I dare not presume to
think. He is the high and holy One who inhabiteth
eternity ; and if you will say of him those awful and
'mysterious things that flow from the conception of
Infinitude, — that in him there is no succession, no
transition, no emotion, — that he never comes and goes,
is neither here nor there, — that he is the stationary
Now, abiding still, with nothing past and nothing future ;
— I hold my peace, and breathe no word against you.
But this I know, and in this I rather rest : whatever
he may be in himself, his manifestations to us do not

The Tides of the Spirit. 13

lie still before us in the sleep of a frozen sea : they
break out of this motionless eternity : they sweep in
mighty tides of nature and of history, with flux and
reflux : they are alive with shifting streaks of light
and gloom ; and have the changing voice of many
waters. And the clearer and more spiritual they are,
the more marked is this fluctuating character ; and
they affect us, not as the dead of noon or the dead of
night, but as the quick-flushing morning or the tender
pulses of the northern lights.

God, you say, is eternal and immutable. If by this
you mean that there never was a time, and nowhere is
a place, empty of his agency, it is most true. But if
you mean that his agency is everywhere and always
equal, — that it cannot be encountered more or less, —
that it is the same in the life of an angel and in the
gravitation of a stone, — that there is for us no nearer
to him and no further from him, — you give expression,
I believe, to the largest falsehood that can be framed.

Where is it that we find the trace and illustration
of the constancy of God ? To what realm does your
thought fly, when you would conceive his unchangeable
Infinitude ? You pass out into the field of Space, and
carry with you the amplest measure of imaginable
Time : you take leave of this historic earth, as of a
village life, and move among the kosmic cycles on
whose dial the little index of humanity can scarce play
the part of second's hand : you step from star to star,

14 The Tides of the Spirit.

and go to meet half-way the rays that have been
travelling to you for a million years. And as you
observe how orderly, how punctual, how balanced, how
silent of its beginning, how unhinting of an end, that
night-scene is, you adore indeed Him " that bringeth out
this host by number " ; but you return with a cold
shudder from so fixed a face of God, and take refuge
again in the green valleys of a more changing and
ephemeral world. The great physical elements and
laws which, from their inexorable regularity and
gigantic sweep, stand before our thought as emblems
of the Divine unchangeableness, are the largest, but also
the lowest of God's manifestations. Speaking of his
majesty, they are dumb respecting his character ; or,
at best, if they declare his faithfulness, they pronounce
it stern as Fate, and drive into recoil the advances of
affection.

But let us not fear. That immensity takes us the
very furthest from him that we can go. The worlds he
has made out of nothing ; but man out of himself: the
one, accordingly, he has put under necessity ; the other
he draws with cords of love. In the one, his word is
pledged and bound ; with the other, his Spirit still lives
free. Nature is only his fabric, and is not like him ;
Man is his child, and is susceptible of his image. The
human characteristics must for ever stand with us
as, out of all that we can think, the very likest to
him ; and these are not a perpetual and unrelenting

The Tides of the Spirit. 15

mechanism ; but the thinking Eeason, the aspiring
Conscience, the elective Will, the gentle and self-sacri-
ficing Affection. And when these speak to our hearts
as his witnesses, we have our eye upon a more inter-
mittent as well as a higher glory, than can be found
in the great physical laws : for, as the Spirit bloweth
where it listeth, the life of men and angels has at once
a freer and diviner movement than the travels of a sun-
beam or the revolution of a star. Nor is it in all men,
or in the whole of human history, that it is given us to
trace the impress of his Mind. However true it is that
there is no private heart to which he is quite strange,
yet it is not in all alike that the sanctities of his agency
visibly appear. We see and own him in proportion to
the nobleness and beauty of the lives which he inspires ;
and it is only now and then, at the great crises of
society, that the common level of the human self and
the finite understanding is transcended, and sages,
prophets, saints rise above their nature and become the
organs of a Spirit not their own. I presume not to
say how it is God takes up his abode with us ; where,
across the melting colours the precise line should be
drawn that divides the human from the divine. But
wherever he so dwells with the soul as to impart his
own character, and lift before our eye the beauty of
holiness, it is his supreme expression, as it is his
rarest. Accordingly it is this which he selects for the
supernatural revelation of himself which stands unique,

1 6 The Tides of the Spirit.

— " the Word made flesh," — the divine life humanised,
and the human glorified, — the Mending of both in
communion and reconciliation. In that sacrifice cul-
minate the intermittent visitations of God : it was not
tidal only : it is once for all ; and as it was supreme, it
was solitary too. As all the special goodness, grace,
and truth of historic men give pauses of blessed rest,
and are not the week-day, but the sabbath of the world ;
so is the divine perfectness of Christ the sabbath of
sabbaths, the solemn jubilee of our humanity.

Be assured then that in your ancient usages of
seasonal and local worship, in seeking here to meet
at intervals the high tides of God's spirit, you are in
harmony with his sublimest Providence, — with a law
of variation transcending any physical uniformity over
which it sweeps. Reverence the holy custom, shelter
from heedless slight the living impulse, that week by
week calls you hither to remember, to aspire, to pray.
Bring only the pure, lowly, childlike heart, tender to
everything except the sins you must confess, — full of
hope for the world and trust in God; spread out an
eager and a gentle spirit for the dropping of fruitful
seeds from Holy Writ and saintly hymn ; freshen the
fading vow of self-sacrificing love ; and your worship
here will not only resemble his who, in fulness of the
Spirit, " went, as his custom was, into the synagogue
on the sabbath day," but prepare for a higher com-
munion, where " your life is hid with him in God."

n.

Bztk first t\t ^mtf&am ai (Bob.

-**-

Matt. vi. 33.

"Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all
these things shall be added unto you."

Though the mountain slope may still be found on
which these words were uttered, the figure of Jesus, as
he sat on a basaltic block and taught, is seen by us
only across the chasm in which eighteen centuries are
sunk : the diminished picture rises in the distance,
like a sunny knoll swelling out of a sea of darkness ;
and the voice reaches us, like the intonations, rather
seen than heard, of a vision or a dream. Had we been
on the other side of the separating gulf, and mingled
with the peasant audience, and pressed the actual grass
which is now but a verdure of our thought ; had we felt
the upland breath of that autumn evening, on which
the great Teacher's fervent accents rose or died away ;
had we seen the lengthening shadows flung from that

1 8 Seek first the Kingdom of God.

height upon the lake below, bisecting its blue waters,
and creeping towards the white sails, the shelving
beach, the lighted rocks, of the remoter shore ; had
we marked the eye of Jesus invited by the note of
birds wheeling overhead, and caught his instant words,
" Behold the fowls of the air ; " or, as he pointed to
the pastures brilliant with their golden amaryllis, heard
his praise of the lilies that toil not ; we should have
owned that the heaven above was less deep in beauty
than the divine soul before us : ashamed of our mean
cares iinder the Providence he interpreted, we should
have filled our evening with truth and trust inspired
from him : we should have felt that we had been with
one who stood alone among the sons of God ; and who
rose above all earthly spirits, as the snowy peak of
Lebanon, now crimson with the sunken sun, towered
above the dark world below. Who can wonder, if many
a loving Mary, many an ardent Peter, many a true-
souled John, took the vow from that hour, to " seek
first the kingdom of God," and believe that " all other
things would be added unto them " ?

We receive these words, however, amid a scene quite
different ; and it is well if their truth and beauty, felt
as they look up at us from the page of Scripture, do
not cease to live as realities in our conscience, and
become ideal and historical with the time that gave
them birth. Does this ranking of human aims, — first
spiritual good, then temporal necessities, — describe the

Seek first the Kingdom of God. 19

actual order of our prevalent pursuits, or even the
arrangement of our habitual convictions? Carry the
precept in your memory, as you walk the city, musing
on the contents of that hum of voices. Take it to the
dock side, as you listen to the roll of traffic, and think
of the history of all its wealth. Recall it in the mill,
as you reflect to what end it is that all the giant
mechanism heaves and whirls incessantly. If all this,
it may well occur to you, is just for the things that are
" added unto " men with scarce a thought of theirs,
how transcendently strenuous must be their primary
pursuit, to which this is but a trustful leisure ! Assum-
ing this scene, with all its bewildering intensity, as a
sample of their indifference, what must be the measure
of their holy zeal ! Alas ! you well know that those
burning aspirations in reserve do not exist; that the
stir around about you belongs, not to the secondary, but
to the chief business, of men ; — to the ends that rule,
not to those that serve, in human life; and that far
from being here amid its cooler temperature, you stand
in the very focus of its most fervid heats. Nay, you
will perhaps think, that it not only is so, but really
ought to be so ; that, after all, man's first great struggle
must be to maintain his footing upon this world ; that
the means of life cannot but take precedence of the
rules of living ; that the Christian law of trust, though
quite in place in the Sermon on the Mount, is positively
too romantic for the warehouse and the street. Men

c 2

20 Seek first the Kingdom of God.

must be allowed to make sure of physical support ; and
then will be time enough to look after their spiritual
nature : let them " seek first " what they are to eat and
drink ; and, this once secured, the kingdom of God may
be " added unto " it.

This style of sentiment is not likely to appear less
reasonable, when you turn to those who, from horror at
its irreligion, have fled from the world which it governs,
and resolved to live out a sincere Christianity, in abdica-
tion of all the pursuits of human appetite and affection.
Far up in Alpine heights, or in cloistered silence in
the heart of cities, you may find fraternities and sister-
hoods, renouncing everything except the kingdom of
God, aspiring to it by the path of a holy austerity, and
submitting cheerfully to a self-crucifixion of every affec-
tion below the standard of an angelic sanctity. But
this attempt at entire dedication to Heaven produces a
form of character which is far from satisfying our con-
ception of a Christian symmetry of soul. Between
fear of the abyss and aspiration to the skies, the blessed
earth, our appointed place that lies in the midst, is too
lightly touched, or even contemptuously disowned : the
quest of God is too like a heartless flight from man ;
and it would be strange if the law of Christ, — the
friend of publicans and sinners, — were suited only to
the exceptional case of the saintly recluse, and incapable
of being acted out by us face to face, amid the actual
throng and press of life, without flight from our tempta-

Seek first the Kingdom of God. 2 1

tions, or suicide of our nature. Christianity no doubt
would be a blessed thing, if it merely snatched a noble
few by diviner attractions from a world heavy with
incurable corruption, and drew them into its sanctuary
with the awful invitation, " Ephraim is joined with idols,
let him alone." But there is no true reflection of its
great Author's spirit, till the Church and the World are
not two, but one, — the inner and the outer courts of
the same earnest worship ; till the evil that is abroad
is not despaired of but confronted and assailed, and
disciples have the heart to say, " This earth is by no
means Satan's, but wholly God's ; come, let us chase
away these demons of darkness, and win it back for
him ; " till religion, instead of shrinking within the
altar rails, and lighting there a lonely lamp of incense,
can turn its radiant face upon the people, penetrate
their open life with its flash, and shatter and spoil the
false idols of their hearts, and in all things reconcile
and fuse together the human and the holy.

But how can this be, you will say ? what means does
Christianity afford of blending the secular and spiritual
extremes of character, and, by union of these opposites,
completing the healthful circuit of our moral power ?
Hitherto it seems to have kept them wider apart than
ever ; and while the minds at either end appear to have
some force of Beason, it is in the one case Beason
degraded into too gross a Sense, in the other raised to
too ethereal a Sanctity.

22 Seek first the Kingdom of God.

There is no juster complaint against human exaggera-
tion than this. And, strange as it may seem, the error
of the two parties, however contrasted in result, is one
and the same. They both feel, what the language of
Jesus emphatically states, that there is some sort of
opposition between the living for worldly and living for
spiritual good. But they altogether mistake the nature
of this opposition. They fancy it to consist in this ;
that the two orders of pursuit have quite different
spheres of work ; that what the secular man does, the
religious man must avoid ; that the quest of temporal
advantages is one kind of business, tasking our industry
with an appropriate set of occupations ; the quest of
heavenly sanctity another kind of business, prescribing
occupations almost perfectly distinct. Accordingly there
are employments which this pernicious moral super-
stition has branded with an equivocal mark of irreligion ;
and other employments which are supposed to constitute
the substance of the true Christian obedience. The
provision and government of house and home, the daily
meal, the social hour of recreation or of rnirth ; the
transaction of private business, or the control of public
affairs ; the enlargement of knowledge, the practice of
art, the pursuit of truth ; — in short, all the charac-
teristic engagements of the citizen, the merchant, the
politician, the student, are conceived to lie upon the
secular side of human life, and to constitute our tempta-
tions to evil rather than our opportunities for good. On

Seek first the Kingdom of God. 23

the other hand, works of charity to the needy, and
visits of conversion to the guilty; the exercises of
private devotion and of public prayer; the contem-
plation of saintly examples, and the accumulation of
scriptural impressions and unearthly thoughts ; direct
and broad conversation about things invisible, and
comparisons of inward experience, are supposed to
constitute the religious staple of life, from which every
distraction is a humiliating concession to the low and
shameful necessities of a fallen nature. Hence, the
popular conception of Heaven wholly excludes all idea
of activity and thought, and admits nothing but a per-
petuity of positive worship. Hence too, when a man
of this narrow religion becomes entangled in affairs of
the world, he carries into them no clear calm feeling of
sacred obligation, to guide him in the path of noble
uprightness ; but rather a conscience half flurried to
find himself there at all, amid things too profane to
come within his province of duties : his faith can make
nothing of such sinful materials, except resolve to
escape from them as fast as it can ; and need I say, that
one who, with this feeling, gets, with no small stake at
issue, into an unmanageable Devil's world, is very apt
to let Satan have his own way, in despair of battling
with him on his own ground ? And hence, finally, he
who with such belief, is determined never to capitulate,
has no resource but the hermit's ; to quit the scene of
human energy and abandon the cares for subsistence,

24 Seek first tlie Kingdom of God.

and going about some diviner work, expect the ravens
to come and feed him, while he sits still. This he
calls a trust in Providence ; though it is manifestly a
contempt of the established course of Providence, and
a trust only in that which would directly violate it.
He calls it a quest of the kingdom of God ; though it
is a flight from the realm of allotted duty, and a
renounced allegiance of natural obligations. He calls
it an emancipation from all thought of the morrow ;
yet it is plainly the surest way of filling the mind with
real anxiety about " the meat that perisheth," and of
engaging the whole religious affections, as in a game-
ster's play, in the precarious question of its failure or
supply.

In fact, the godless lover of gain, and the gainless
lover of God are fanatics both, taking hold of the oppo-
site ends of the same falsehood. And the truth which
suffices to rebuke them both, is this ; that the kingdom
of God is not a business, set up in rivalry with worldly
business; but a divine law regulating, and a divine
temper pervading, the pursuits of worldly business.
It does not change the materials, but the form and
spirit, of our life. It leaves our outward occupations
essentially what they were, and opens to us still the
domestic hearth, the public council, the field, the city,
and the ocean, as the sphere of all our work : but it
makes us conscious of the different orders of desire
and affection that may guide us through all these ; the

Seek first the Kingdom of God. 25

brutal appetencies, the shrewd selfishness, the instinc-
tive kindliness, the sense of justice, the love of goodness,
the aspiration after the perfectness of God, with which
the very same employments may be debased or conse-
crated. The feeling of divine duty is not a new faculty
of action added to our mind, having a distinct set of
objects indifferent to us before : all the impulsive
forces that send us on to our theatre and take us to
our work are instinctive gifts of nature, neither more
nor fewer in the sinner or saint. But when devout
Conscience finds entrance among them, it sets them in
the relative order of their ranks ; forbids the scramble
of eager and unsettled claims ; commands lazy appetite,
already seated at the feast, to get up and gird itself and
serve ; sends impudent ambition to take the lowest
place ; and says to truthful love driven to the door,
" Friend, come up higher." It reveals to us the
comparative worth and authority of the several sources
of action within us : it is simply, indeed, as the word
denotes, the consciousness of this ; and is therefore not
properly a separate principle of the soul, but the
inherent knowledge of their own place in the scale of
excellence which attends the exercise of all our springs
of action. It is not a power, but a perception, and
performs a function judicial, not executive. No man,
accordingly, can with any precision be said to act from
conscience : he acts from some primitive instinct or
acquired affection : but two of these may at the same

26 Seek first the Kingdom of God.

instant be candidates for the possession of his Will ;
and when he puts aside the one which he knows to be
the meaner, and obeys the other because he feels it to
be the nobler, we signify the fact by the loose phrase,
he acts from conscience. It is plain here that if there
were no natural springs of volition, Conscience, left
alone, would be wholly unproductive : it would be in
possession of a sinecure, and its occupation would be
gone. And what we thus say of Conscience, we say
of the kingdom of God ; for I know of no religion,
natural or revealed, which is not a development of this
divine element in our souls ; an opening before it, by
the apparition of some new greatness, of a higher and
yet a higher than even its highest was before ; a total
passing away of worship into infinitude ; and a sense of
the sleepless watch of the Holiest around the path of
life.

From this view of our nature it follows that spiritual
good is not a new object given us by our religion, but
only the regulated and proportioned pursuit of natural
good, in entire deference to the relative excellence of its
several kinds. Oiiginal instinct is altogether blind
except to its own particular object, which it pursues as
if it were the universe : hunger seizes upon food, anger
strikes an obstacle, pity flies to suffering, with unre-
flecting impulse, seeing nothing else, and making no
more estimate of its own end than the migratory bird
of the seasons whose changes it obeys. Each instinct

Seek first the Kingdom of God. 2 7

is sufficient for its own end, and for nothing more";
lights our way and impels our activity, to its appro-
priate good, wholly regardless of the existence of any
other ; nothing can he added to it, nothing can be taken
from it, without impairing its perfection, and turning it
from an element of health into a seat of disease. Man,
moreover, not only has instincts, hut knows them, and
is able so to compare them as to perceive which is
higher, which lower : he not only knows them, but
rules them, not letting each take its chance of becoming
uppermost, but exercising preference among them,
according to the divine right and rank of each. As this
perception of relative worth among the springs of
conduct is what we mean by Conscience, so the con-
sequent 'power of practical choice among them is what
we mean by Will. And spiritual good is nothing but
the perfect consonance between these two : it exists
where the moral vision is clear and wide, the moral
volition quick and strong, and what the one discerns,
the other executes. The proper and sole-appointed
function of the Will is, not to form a partnership with
any instinct, and add itself on as a fresh energy to its
pursuit ; not to rise up in rivalry to instinct, and by
counterpoise subtract something from its force; but,
letting the quantities of our nature alone, to guide us
by its qualities; to make a true choice among the
natural principles, when two or more are knocking at
the gate of entrance to our life.

28 Seek first the Kingdom of God.

In what then consists the opposition between the
pursuit of natural and the pursuit of spiritual good ? —
the desire of physical supplies, and the aspiration after
the kingdom of God ? It lies in this : — He who seeks
after " what he shall eat and what he shall drink " is
one whose chief conscious aim is to get such things :
He who seeks first " the kingdom of God " is one whose
chief conscious aim is not to get them unworthily.
The one throws his whole reflective and directing
powers into the work of instinct, madly enhancing, yet
intellectually guiding, its intensity; infuriating the
chase, yet giving it precision ; and turning the innocent
tendency of the creature, into the clever passion of the
demon. The other applies his thoughtfulness to the
control of his instincts, and the establishment among
them of the true divine subordination of the lower to
the higher. He never quits the helm to feed the fire ;
to steer the good ship, and not to double the tension of
the steam, is the allotted office of his skill. He knows
where his real danger lies ; not in having appetites so
weak as to need provocatives, but in not duly feeling the
humble place they occupy ; in sinking down among
them out of sight of the higher principles of action ;
in absolutely forgetting, in the delirium of pursuit, the
noble possibilities stretched along his upper range of
powers; and, deceived by mere mental light, lapsing
into moral darkness the most profound ; with eye, like
Lucifer's for ages fallen from Heaven, so accustomed to

Seek first the Kingdom of God. 29

lurid fires and crimsoned steams that the white and
virgin beams of the morning star, and all the cool
silence of the skies, are unimaginable quite. In thus
confining himself to the regulation of his natural aims,
and the studious guardianship of the divine rights, so
apt to be forgotten, of their highest ranks, he exercises
a genuine trust in Providence, the very trust which
Jesus enjoins. The worldly man is not content with
the prompting of natural appetite : it is not strong
enough for him to rely on its doing enough for him ;
and he must add to it all the deliberative energies of
his Will. The fanatic hates and fears his appetites :
so long as they exist at all, they are too strong for his
repose and will do too much for him ; and for their
annihilation he hurls against them all the force of
Eesolution. The Christian trusts his natural appetites
to find him all needful physical good : believing them
neither an over provision nor an under provision, he lets
their amount alone, and directs all his conscious aims
to a higher point, the maintenance of the nobler affec-
tions in their loftier place. Were all these higher
powers of his nature wholly lifted off and put away,
he would cease to be a man, and would be simply
dropped, where the creatures below him now stand,
upon the ground of unconscious animal instinct : and
would he not, though deprived of insight into himself,
be safe as they ? Would he not, like them, be sup-
ported still, without knowledge and without a care ?

30 Seek first the Kingdom of God.

And if his instincts would suffice him then, and procure
him what he wants with unreflecting simplicity, being
incapable of solicitude, they may well dispense with
thought and study now, and refuse the burden of
anxiety. He may confide in the inevitable activity of
these primitive springs of his nature, by which Heaven,
" knowing that," in common with other creatures, we
" have need of " physical good, has provided for its
adequate supply. God feeds us, precisely as he feeds
the fowls of the air, not by the suppression of instinct,
but by its natural and unconscious skill ; — a skill so
sure, so perfect, if we will only believe it, as to set us
at liberty for higher solicitudes and a more consecrated
watch. And so the rule of our divine Teacher comes
out perfect and unimpeachable. The more unconscious
(i.e. without thought) our pursuit of physical good, the
better for the ends of life : the more distinct and
conscious our pursuit of moral and spiritual good, the
nearer are we to the kingdom of God. The whole
energy of our Will may be bent on the maintenance of
a divine order, proportion, and harmony, among the
principles of action. This may be our sole earnest
concern ; the engagement of heart, in favour of which
we may resign all thought for the morrow, — for the
morrow of time, or even, 1" would add, the morrow of
eternity.

III.

Suh first i\t iimgbxrm 0f §00.

ii.

Matt. vi. 33.

"Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all
these things shall be added unto you."

In those teachings of Christ which appear to the wor-
shipper of " sober sense " most strongly tinged with
enthusiasm, a higher Eeason perpetually discovers a
singular exactitude of truth, which spoils them for the
purposes of the fanatic, and dispenses with all apology
for their " poetical licence." The passage, whose
general lesson I have taken for my text, is not unfre-
quently extolled, in the first instance, for its beauty,
and then frittered away as mere hyperbole. To minds
sincere and pure, nothing can be more offensive than
this kind of praise ; as if there could be the beauty it
applauds, except for the truth which it denies ; as if
sentiments could be fair to look at which it would be

2,2 Seek first the Kingdom of God.

ridiculous to live by. It makes a true heart sorrowful,
or even indignant, to hear the light way in which rules
of life and forms of character are sometimes discussed
as objects of taste, without the least apprehension of
them as matters of obligation. Yet by all that we
morally admire, we are practically bound. Human
duties are not a mere picture gallery, in which we may
loiter with our critic's glass ; or a histrionic stage whose
representations may delight us, while we sit still ; but
great and solemn realities, presented on a scene where
every spectator practices, beneath the eye of heaven, the
divine art which he beholds ; where to discern an ex-
cellence is to receive a trust ; and ideal admirations are
the source of actual necessities. Whoever feels that
there is an irresistible attraction in Christ's doctrine of
repose on Providence, ought to distrust and disbelieve
himself, when tempted to explain it into metaphor : he
is bound to regard such propensity as the dictate of his
lower mind contradicting the knowledge of the higher ;
and to search, with more open eye, for the divine wisdom
that escapes him now. Beauty can no more exist in
the moral world without truth, than without light in the
natural.

In Christ's divine parable of trust, a contrast is drawn
between that which men must seek for themselves, and
that which they must leave God to provide. The one
great end of all their active powers, is moral and
spiritual good ; while for temporal provision there is to

Seek first the Kingdom of God. 33

be a surrender of themselves into the Divine hand.
This doctrine, which is a truly characteristic principle
of his religion, is treated, I fear, as a piece of pious
extravagance ; and is dismissed with the reflection that
really it is out of the question for men, hungry, thirsty,
domestic, social, not planted in any pastoral Eden, hut
dwelling in crowded cities, to think of living like the
lilies. And so it would be, if by this were meant, any
idle standing still, to subsist on air or whatever else the
heavens might send. But see how far is any such poor
thought from the mind of Christ. Does he mean that
nothing should be done for subsistence ? Only look at
the example he offers of that implicit reliance which he
enjoins on the Divine provision. He bids us " behold the
fowls of the air " ; and says, that " Godfeedeth them"
Do they, then, stay at home, and do nothing, expecting
crumbs of manna to drop from rich tables in the skies ?
Are they found, empty of all appetency, regardless of
the changing year, and hanging ever upon miracle ?
Why, their whole existence is a continued quest after
that physical good which is their true and only end ;
and to pilfer the garden and the field, to skim and sip
the stream, to dress their plumage with finer gloss, and
sing the song of glad repletion, is their work from morn
to night. "What eager industry flutters in the spring
around the skirts of the plantation, gathering the bits
and brakes scattered for them by the winter's storm !
What busy preparation, at autumn's first chill wind,

D

34 Seek first the Kingdom of God.

wheels and musters overhead, for the long flight over
Southern seas, the swift cheering on the slow, and the
young wing supporting the old ! What studious watch,
under the semblance of flashing sport, does the home-
loving swallow keep ! And is not this truly called, a
feeding of the creatures by their Maker ? Is it not his
hand that is opened, when they are filled with good ?
Yes; only, " that which he giveth them, they gather • "
he supplies their wants, not without activity of theirs,
but by means of it ; not by casual miracle, but by con-
stant law ; by putting his skill within them, as well as
spreading his affluence ivithout.

But how then, you will say, can their life be quoted,
as rebuking ours ? If their dependence upon God con-
sists in providing for themselves, what else do we ?
And why should the same thing be reproached as world-
liness in us which is admired as pure trust in them ?

The answer is plain ; it is not the same thing that is
thought fair in the creature, and base in us. It is only
in the mere outward act of self-provision that they
are alike ; and, so far, they are not at all condemned.
But this one act may correspond, in the two cases, to
states of the internal nature wholly different : the
springs of activity, where alone any moral quality
resides, may have no resemblance ; and the more, in
this respect, man can restore himself to the condition
of the " fowls of the air," the more does he fulfil the
ends of his responsible existence.

Seek first the Kingdom of God. 35

The animals are impelled by an unreflecting instinct
to pursue the good appropriate to their nature. By a
relation, wholly incomprehensible to us, between the
feeling of want in them and the existence of supply in
the world, these two things, like the poles of an electric
system, find each other out and meet. The appetite of
the creature is not merely a passive sensation of un-
easiness, but a positive guidance to activity ; of which
we can only say this one thing, that it is a blind ten-
dency, not an intelligent foresight, — an abandonment to
propensity, not an exercise of Will. And thus, while
the insect and the bird continually provide for the
morrow, they take no thought for the morrow : wholly
surrendered to the infallible direction implanted in their
nature, they are landed in good after good, and accom-
plish end after end, of which assuredly they had no pre-
conception. Hence it is that their happy maintenance
is held to be divine ; for though the agility which
achieves it is theirs, the skill and forethought, absent
from them, remain with God. Mind and volition there
must be to produce works of order and beauty and en-
joyment surpassing our highest strength and art ; and
failing as they manifestly do in the creatures below us,
we refer them to the Creator above us. To live then
the simple life of lower natures, is to be fed by the
hand of God ; and by its unconscious surrender to
involuntary, though internal, guidance, becomes the
negative type of perfect trust.

d 2

36 Seek first the Kingdom of God.

Now man has within him the whole apparatus of in-
stincts belonging to inferior beings ; just as perfect for
their proper ends; just as mysterious in their detec-
tion of the means ; so that if he were endowed with
nothing more than this system of animal direction, his
subsistence, his habitation, and all the external con-
ditions of his life, would be secure. Like the brutes
that are joint tenants with him of this earth, he might
pass his years in blind exemption from anxiety, enclosed
within the moments as they come. He would have
no mental, no moral, existence ; but, zoologically con-
sidered, he would be complete. Unconsciousness, then,
is the natural and perfect state of these fundamental
faculties, and always belongs to them in the purest
types of their activity ; and in so far as they lose this
attribute, they are injured by entering the presence of
other powers liable to a different law. In man, how-
ever, this ceases to be possible. He is a responsible
being, entrusted with the power of self-direction, and
gifted with its pre-requisite, self-knowledge; and as
there is no portion of his instinctive activity exempted
from the dominion of his Will, there is no impulse that
may not be made the object of his reflection, no plea-
sure which he may not turn into a deliberate end, no
affection which he may not criticize. His whole being
may become transparent to his own eye ; and from the
propension of the brute to the aspiration of the saint,
he may lie analysed at his own feet. This power of

Seek first the Kingdom of God. 37

introspection is the indispensable preliminary to the
Conscience ; — which is only the intuitive knowledge we
have with ourselves of the relative excellence of our
several principles of action. Thus, the three endow-
ments of Self -Knowledge, Self-Estimation, Self-Direc-
tion, separate us by a vast interval from the creatures
around us that only within the narrowest limits can be
regarded as reflecting, or moral, or voluntary.

Observe now the effect of this self -light upon the
different forces of our nature by which we are impelled.
To a being thus let into his own secrets, the uncon-
scious, innocent, life of the mere creature becomes
impossible. He was hungry before, he can be dainty
now ; and the sway of the unknown stomach may be
succeeded by that of the tasty palate. The wild animals
can be guilty of no excess : their instincts stop at their
proper boundary, and spontaneously keep their propor-
tioned place. But what natural law effects for them, it
is left for moral law to effect in us ; and though pre-
cisely the same limits which instinct woidd assign to
the appetites are the true and right ones, and the life
according to nature coincides in its external form with
the life according to Conscience, yet the rule which is
involuntary in other beings, we have to enforce upon
ourselves. We must forbid passion to break its bounds :
we must set a stern police over desires to which self-
knowledge has whispered dreams of disaffection and
taught a thousand rebel arts. We must wield all the

38 Seek first the Kingdom of God.

powers of the Will rcpressively against the lower
impulses that solicit us, and actively in "behalf of the
higher. And we must do this till the insurgent pro-
pensities, made restless by their first self-consciousness,
are driven back within their lines, and reduced to
content with their primitive domain. Thus, the Moral
order of the mind effects the restoration of these
inferior appetites to their instinctive place; and the
law of Duty in the pursuit of physical good is but a
voluntary re-adoption of the law of nature ; and the
will of God within us is but the image rendered back,
from the clear reflective soul, of the method of God
without us. Here then is one meaning of high import
evolved from the rule of Christ ; — that the pursuit of
physical good in a moral being is to have no larger
range than in an instinctive being ; that the superadded
power of the Will is to be engaged not in extending,
but in preserving the measures of this range ; and so
leaving the higher affections an unobstructed scope
through the whole supplemental range of peculiarly
human activity. And alas ! it is needless to say, how
little place the spirit of such a rule has in our actual
affairs. Who can doubt, that the increase, not the
divinely regulated pursuit, of physical good, is the
leading object with the majority of men? that they
are not content with the force of desire that nature has
made strong enough in all ; but throw into it all the
higher faculties of the man, and hire into its service

Seek first the Kingdom of God. 39

reason, affection, imagination? that the Will, instead
of watching and restraining the aim, goes wholly over
to it, works strenuously in its service, and even stifles
the expostulations that intrude from the better mind ?
Whoever lives under the guidance of such a leading
aim, and is more concerned about what he gets, than
what he is, comes directly under the Christian con-
demnation, and is a servant of Mammon, and an alien
from God.

But there is another aspect of Christ's lesson from
the fowls of the air. The Moral law as to physical
good is a return to the natural law, not only in respect
to the extent of the pursuit, but even in respect to its
unconsciousness. How, you will say, can this be, if
we are so let behind the scenes of our own nature?
How can a man daily determine his sleeping and
wTaking, choose his meals, superintend his business,
and yet not know what he is about ?• Assuredly, he
cannot ; and yet, throughout these processes there are
curious snatches of unconsciousness, where once there
was a laborious and intending will. The punctual
walk, distracting when it was new, and wearisome when
he was ill, for the most part leaves his attention free.
The manual skill, or even the mental reckoning,
acquired by painful effort, he throws off with the
facility of speech. The temperate or abstemious diet,
adopted not without a humbling strife, he finds a thing
of course. In a thousand ways mechanical activity is

40 Seek first the Kingdom of God.

creeping into his being, and releasing the living powers
of the Will for new tasks of nobler enterprise. In
short, Habit in man supplies the place of Instinct in
animals, and enables him to end with the unconscious-
ness with which they begin. It releases him once more
from the anxieties of self-care, and leaves behind him
a protected realm, whence he may push forward to new
conquests. It cannot elevate him to a state of holiness,
for that implies fresh affection and pure choice breath-
ing in the soul of action ; but it can put him back into
a state of innocence, and shelter a portion of his being
within the security of nature, while he passes on the
wing into the higher regions of the spirit. This
necessity for urging ever onward, and applying the
force of resolution to points of attainment still in
advance, must always prevent the course of a respon-
sible soul from being one of ease and restfulness : in
a certain sense, — a sense however not depressing but
inspiring, — it must be a strife, a glorious battle, pro-
tracted through eternity. We can never be free to
stand still, and only rule, or receive manumission from
our divine service ; the mark of heaven is upon us, and
we must for ever work, though in higher and higher
fields. This is the true " bond of pcrfectness," from
which it is the sign of a really servile and unloving
nature to desire escape. I do not say then that habit
will ever perform the task of obedience for us ; but it
will shift it to an upper and nobler stage ; it will make

Seek first the Kingdom of God. 41

peace where there is conflict now ; and restore the
reign of simple unconsciousness throughout the inferior
principles of our nature. He who by strength of pur-
pose has restrained his appetites and their dependent
pursuits within the range of nature, and then by habit
compelled them to act with mechanical unreluctance
within these bounds, is virtually reinstated in the
healthiness of Instinct. In respect to the parts of
their being which they have in common with him, the
fowls of the air are not more free than he. Only that
his disengagement from the meaner anxieties of the
Will is an earned deliverance, not a natural incapacity :
his content with his allotted limits is a devout and
open-eyed acquiescence, not a blind necessity : his self-
surrender, for all things physically needful, to the
guidance of God infused into his involuntary nature, is
not an animal thoughtlessness, but a positive exercise
of affectionate and holy Trust.

Here then is the exact interpretation of the Saviour's
rule. Seek ye your physical good unconsciously, by
strictness of habit restorative of the innocence of In-
stinct. Seek ye spiritual good, i.e. a divine order and
temper in all pursuits, — with full consciousness, and an
earnest tension of the living Will. In this doctrine
there is no enthusiasm, no extravagance ; but a union
of beauty, truth, and goodness, that touches not our
conviction only, but our deepest love and worship.

How then stands our practice by the side of this

42 Seek first the Kingdom of God.

divine rule ? Does it reflect this estimate of the two
sorts of good that solicit us ? In conducting the great
enterprise of life, have we established such a true order
and holy strictness in our habits as to make the
heavenly Art and Skill of the process, and not its
worldly stake, our grand concern ? Nay ; do we even
direct our aims, confessedly perhaps in confusion for
ourselves, with a better regulation for our children ? Do
we not say to ourselves, " They must live," and take
this as the guiding motto of their education, and plead
it as an excuse for a thousand questionable things, that
should make a Christian blush? Do we not most
studiously train, most carefully elaborate in them, those
desires which are sure of being the strongest, and place
the rashest and most negligent confidence in those
higher aspirations which, if they struggle into being at
all, are likely to be all too faint ? Do we not pamper
the fiend of ambition in their hearts, and insult and
starve the angel of devout humiliation ? What care is
taken to clip betimes the high excursive wing of the
soul, beating already an air that worldly parents cannot
breathe, and tame it to the miserable cage of wealth
and display ; destined, poor prisoner, to dash itself now
and then against its bars, but to gain no liberty save the
awful release of death ! What can be more startling to
a true mind than the crowded carefulness of secular
instruction, contrasted with the negligent emptiness of
religious education ? Nay, is it not a fact that, for the

Seek first the Kingdom of God. 43

sake of station and fashion, parents procure for their
children a direct and systematic teaching in acknow-
ledged fiction on the highest subjects ; and, while they
would stand aghast at a false quantity in Latin or a
mistake in geography, care nothing if the whole system
of the moral universe be misconceived; while they
would be ashamed that Aristides should be confounded
with Aristotle, or Marathon mistaken for Mantinea, are
indifferent to the most gigantic errors as to the whole
character and government of God? And when the
young depart from the preconceived model of the
parents' wish, what class of aberrations awaken the
most manifest disappointment, and receive the severest
rebuke ? Is it the prudent profligacy, the sharp cunning,
the well-disguised envy, the slippery yet presentable
integrity, which imply the utter wreck of Conscience,
and are the fatal symptoms of spiritual ruin ? Or is it
the conscientious eccentricity, the high defiance of con-
ventionalism and convenience in the service of some
generous heroism, — the resolve to live a true and
earnest life, — which, wherever they appear, rebuke the
littleness of men, and give a place among the nobility
of God ? These symptoms tell too true a tale of the
frequent inversion of the Christian aim, and betray, in
the sincerest and tenderest relation of life, an anxiety
first for the physical good, with only a willingness that
then the Kingdom of God, if so it chance, should be
added unto it. " They must live,'" do you say, in

44 Seek first the Kingdom of God.

excuse for perverting the minds of your children ? A
true-souled parent, who knows the real contents and
significance of life will say, " Rather than sustain
themselves here on shameful and unworthy terms,
Let them die ! "

IV.

S% WLxtnm ai <£0*r foiijj out Spirit.

-♦♦-

Romans viii. 16.

"The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the
children of God."

It was a favourite idea with Plato, that in order to
discover the true doctrine of personal morality, we
should begin by studying the Commonwealth rather
than the Individual. The single soul, he thought,
was too small and subtle a thing to reveal its nature
and the laws that bind it, to a vision dull as ours ; but
in a great community we have a magnified image of
the same human nature, with all its relations made
colossal to the eye, and its swift passions reduced to a
stately and measurable march. In this conception
there is at least thus much of truth involved; that
large social phenomena often show what is passing
through the private heart; that tendencies silently
operating on you and me, unmarked by others, un-

46 The Witness of God

suspected even by ourselves, may have conspicuous
expression in the literature, the taste, the morals of
the age ; that lights of self-knowledge may therefore
flash upon us from the open spaces of the world, and
the broad pavement of our time serve to us as the
secret confessional. Thus we may find, I fear, a
magnifying medium of self-inspection in a certain mode
of speech about Religion which is every year becoming
more familiar, and separating us further from the simple
fervour of an earnest and prophetic age. I refer to the
disposition to look at faith instead of living in it ; to
own it as a noble fact in human nature, without be-
coming personally committed to it ; to feel interest in
its representations, but evade contact with its realities.
There is no more favourite object of criticism than its
different forms : the origin of each peculiar worship,
the meaning of its symbols, the character of its doc-
trines, are a topic no longer special to the divine, but
familiar even to the newspaper. Yet the great objects
of trust seem none the nearer for all this : they lie off
at second-hand; and men discuss with the lips each
other's creeds, instead of going into silence with their
own God. The pure and simple faith of the elder time
has passed away ; nor is it any sufficient compensation
for the loss, that unbelief has grown gentle and respect-
ful. For, in truth, the loss of enthusiasm in the one
case and the improvement of temper in the other are
both parts of the same phenomenon : they are the

With our Spirit. 47

meeting, or at least the approximation of the two
extremes upon the common ground of a secret scep-
ticism, empty of all power, positive or negative.
Waiving the awful and fundamental question, — the
only one that touches any living soul, — whether the voice
of prophets and of prayer be true, men agree that at
any rate religion is an indestructible affection of the
human mind ; that whether we regard it as a dream, a
philosophy, or a revelation, it remains a fact ; that it is
an influence of such transcendent importance as to
reward study and demand regulation and control. We
find it accordingly not approached as a divine verity,
but dealt with as a human product ; dressed up and
administered as a medicine for the maladies of character
and society; judged of by its fitness to the wants of
a nation or a class. The distastefulness of one ex-
treme is studiously balanced by reaction into another;
stagnant falsehoods are permitted to remain from in-
dulgence to the sickly minds long used to breathe their
exhalations ; and to purer streams of thought no wel-
come is given, lest fevered mortals should feel too great
a freshness, as of morning air. Churches are built, not
as holy shrines to God, but as platforms of sectional
opinion : doctrines and sentiments are estimated, not
by the sincere rule of our private heart, — not by their
intrinsic worth and sanctity — but by their supposed effect
on the prejudices of others and the current usages of
thought. All this betrays a disheartening unreality of

48 The Witness of God

faith. Such theological cormoisseurship would sink
abashed before the living look of God ; plunged in the
pure and sanctifying tides of his infinite Being, all fear
and art would be baptized away. There clings to us
some untrustful feeling, something that keeps us mere
lookers-on, and hinders the surrender of our minds to
the divine captivity that makes their freedom.

Were I to try to give expression to the sort of doubt
which saps our moral strength, I should do it in the
language of a theory which pervades the atmosphere
of modern thought, and may well affect us, though we
know it not. " Religion," we perhaps think, " is a
beautiful creation of the human soul, the embodiment
of her highest aspiration and intensest hope, her acknow-
ledgment of Law, her sigh of guilt, her gaze of love,
her solace for death, her picture of eternal perfectness.
It is at least her sublimest effort, and an affecting
testimony to the sweet and solemn depth of her nature.
But whether, as she wanders through its scenery, she
wakes and sees, or only dreams, is more than we can
surely tell. Perhaps she has made her creed by giving
names to the shapes of thought within her, and then
turning them out to dwell as visions in the external
space and light. As fear calls up the ghost it dreads
to see, and grief projects upon the air an image of the
dead, so perhaps may human faith only paint its heaven
and invent its God." This is the misgiving which
weakens the present age for great enterprises, and fills

With our Spirit. 49

it with a certain tolerant sadness, patient of hurnar
trusts, but uninspired by them. No man of veracious
mind can be content until it is dissipated. He cannot
let it remain doubtful whether his religion is a mere
phantom-world, floating across the wall of thought ; or
accept compliments upon its majesty and grace, as if it
were a free creation of his soul. Talk to him as if its
reality was only relative to him, and was unknown to
the firm eternal universe, and your very gentleness
insults and hurts him. " I speak," he will reply,
" that I do know, and testify that which I have seen ;
and if you receive not my witness as true, spare me
your praise that it is beautiful. The divine objects I
announce are there , and the light by which I see them
has no glory but as it flows from their reality ; were it
self-kindled, it would be but a darkness turned into
fire." If others cannot perceive the Holy Spirit that
looks on us through the veil of life and nature, — if in
low moods of thought I lose the blessed Presence
myself, and begin to ask whether it was a vision, — why
should I trust the blind heart instead of the seeing, and
believe the Night rather than the Day ? Is it more
likely that the pure soul, from its own sunbeams,
should weave imaginary sanctities, than that the im-
pure, by its turbid clouds, should hide the real ones ?
No; it is when inward confusion prevails in the con-
science,— when care consumes the temper and duty is
heavy to the will, — when the blood is hot, and the heart

E

t;o The Witness of God

is cold, — then it is that doubt becomes our tempter, and
says daily unto us, • Where is your God ? ' When the
fogs of earth lie thick around us, it puts the telescope
into our hands, and says, ' Now show us your stars ! '
We may retort the charge of brilliant dreaming, and
say that our miserable doubts are but the black shadow
of our own spiritual disorder thrown upon the universe
and turning it into the negative of God.

This controversy between faith and unbelief, between
the better inspirations and the meaner suggestions of
our nature, is not confined to the sphere of direct reli-
gion. There is no pure admiration, no deep reverence,
which has not to vindicate itself against a similar impu-
tation. What floods of unspeakable beauty may pour
upon the artist's view from a natural scene of moorland
or sea-beach, in which the literal observer, using his
best eyesight, would find nothing to reward a look !
What hints of wondering thought, what prayers of ap-
pealing love, may gleam through a clear eye, or quiver
on a living face, where a common spectator sees nothing
but the colour and the form ! Which then has the
truer appreciation of what is there ? He who has only
the ocular perception prides himself on seeing the
plain reality, just as it is ; and smiles at his imaginative
neighbour who flings upon it a glory that dwells only in
his dreams. He to whom the eye is but the spirit's in-
strument feels sure there is no falsehood in his vision,
and sharply answers, ' Thou dull mortal, thy lens and

With our Spirit. 51

retina are good ; but there is something opaque which
the optician cannot reach ; may God give thee light ! '
So is it with every element and influence of life. There
are some men before whom if you place some strain of
deepest poetry, they will discern in it only the shape of
the thought, the flow of the verse, and the fall of the
rhyme • while to others it will bring tones of unearthly
music for the hymns of their secret heart, and the very
page, as it lies spread upon the knee, will meet them
with a holy look. Nay, even in the scientific study of
the outward creation, there is room for the same differ-
ence between man and man. One, with the penetra-
tion of a vigilant intellect, will watch nature sharply,
as if it were an enemy, or coldly, as if it were a dead
mechanism, and note its movements and methodise its
facts : another, with a certain pressure of love and
reverence, will not sit outside, but enter with a secret
sympathy into the interior, and so catch the style of
the creative hand as to surmise its laws ere yet he proves
them. There is nothing which you may not try to un-
derstand in these two ways, — by observation from with-
out, and by affection taking its abode within : by the
first you learn only what it is not ■, by the second you
appreciate what it is. How rarely do you meet any
particular man, among all who fill the streets, to whom
you find it a congenial thing to apply the Christian
doctrine of immortality! The name on the shop or
office-door seems not to stand on your register of

e 2

52 The Witness of God

heavenly things : the common features, the retail talk,
the trivial cares, the mind filled up with the town news,
appear so foreign to the atmosphere of God as to dash
the glory of your religion ; and when you go to his
funeral, you think of the worthy tradesman who has lost
his home, not of the saintly spirit that has attained it.
But with his wife and his children it is otherwise. To
them he is a light in the very heaven which he obscures
to you, and mingles a dear and venerable reality with a
scene that was but shadowy before ; he is the nearest
object to their thought of God ; his image mingles with
their prayers; and in the picture of diviner worlds,
nothing seems more clear and natural than he. Yet
they have chafed against his faults more painfully than
you ; and have had that near familiarity which, except
to the deepest hearts, is rarely free from its moments of
dispute and discontent. But you have looked at him
with the scanning eye of criticism ; they, with the pene-
tration of affection : you have noticed his manifestations;
they have had insight into himself; have known his
temptations; witnessed his faithfulness; felt his ten-
derness ; overheard his sighs for a nobler life. And it
is wonderful how often, when the artificial glass of
judgment is thrown aside, and you trust to the trans-
parent air of a natural love, the vulgarities of a soul
appear to melt away, and you are disenchanted of your
fastidious scorn.

Which then, in all these cases, is the true view, — the

With our Spirit. 53

literal, or the devout 2 The depth and beauty which
enthusiasm everywhere beholds, — are they really there,
that we should try to rise into the vision ? or are they a
romance, that we should seek to wipe them off? Does
the mind put them into nature, or take them out ? Are
we to honour their revealer as a prophet of divine
endowment ? — or their disenchanter, as the model of
human wisdom ? For my own part, without in the least
denying that it is possible for an idealising fervour to
see too much, I believe we are in more danger from
the dulness which sees too little. In relation to the
highest truth, mere sense and intellect, looking through
the frosty air of a wintry heart, may be but instruments
of delusion. If indeed we stood before the face of a
dead universe ; if nature were but an organization of
atoms, pregnant with blind forces and teeming with un-
intended births; if the planets as they move did but
dance the minuet of Fate ; if the morning light were
but a chemical glare, quite empty of the play of thought,
and the waters and the winds had no meaning in their
song ; if duty, hope, and sorrow were the paroxysms of
a puppet, a mere thrill upon the nerves ; then, with our
living mind to present before the scene, we should be
above its meaningless materialism ; there would be
nothing to understand, nothing to reach, that is beyond
the perceptions of the eye and the register of the cold
intelligence. But if, while we are on one side of nature,
the Infinite God is on the other ; if, interposed between

54 The Witness of God

the divine Spirit and the human, it may become the
veil to separate them, or the communion to unite ; if
the plain of the restless sea and the curves of the quiet
stars are the tracings of his living thought ; if the
scenery before us and the experience within us are the
symbols of his speaking Mind ; if conscience be his
voice, and trial his appeal for deeper trust, and every
gleam of aspiration the kindling of his touch : — 0,
then, how can we expect to know either nature or life
but by the hermeneutics of a godlike spirit, — the con-
verse of sympathy between his will and ours ? It is a
work of interpretation, in which success will be chiefly
won, not by the eye quick to apprehend the external
characters of things, but by souls familiar with what
holiest purpose and sublimest thought are likely to
mean. A pure, faithful, devout and tender mind, borne
down by no weight of stifled nobleness, and lifted above
selfish fear and care, has the best key to the mysteries
of humanity, and an insight into the counsels of the
Infinite, clearer than acuteness and philosophy can
give.

The scepticism which men affect towards their higher
inspirations is often not an honest doubt, but a guilty
negligence ; and is always a sign of narrow mind and
defective wisdom, Who ever found that the heavy
mood in which he could admire nothing, be touched by
nothing, sanctify nothing, permanently proved the true
one ? Who, when once he has escaped it, does not

With our Spirit. 55

know this leaden look and solid air upon the surface of
life to be the brooding cloud of his own heart ? and how
often do the more luminous perceptions of other souls
reveal to us, in nature, in art, in character, a beauty we
had not discerned before, but which is no sooner shown
than it startles us by its reality out of all denial ! Left
to ourselves to peer about from the dull prison of our
grosser mind, — unaided by the mighty spirits of our
race, who emancipate us by their greatness and snatch
us by their genius into the free light, — how little should
we see of the sanctity and glory of this world ! What
a dim and subterranean life we should live ! Yet the
instant we are taken aloft we find that the darkness was
the dream and the splendour is come true ! If you will
believe only in the perceptions of sense and distrust the
intimations of the spirit, it is a question how low you
will descend for your test of certainty. Will you depend
upon your own faculties in proportion as they are simply
animal, and deny them in proportion as they are divine ?
— confide in your eyesight and give the lie to the con-
science and affections ? The herds that low amid the
Alpine echoes have, no less than you, the outline of the
everlasting hills, and the verdure of the pine-cleared
slope, painted on their vision, and the chant of the
distant torrent swelling and fainting on their ear: is
their perception truer, — are they nearer to reality,
because they cannot, with you, meet the sublime gaze
of nature and see through to the eternity of God?

56 The Witness of God

The grandeur and the glory that you behold, are they
not there 1 the divine expressiveness, the speaking
appeal to your silent worship, the mingling of some-
thing secret with your spirit, as if unseen thought were
flowing from the mountains and the sky, to meet the
answering radiation of your soul, — are these, which are
the human privilege, a phantom of unreality, — a delu-
sion which the fortunate brutes escape ? It is impos-
sible ! Call it imagination, call it wonder, call it love,
whatever it be that shows us the deeper significance
of the world and humanity and makes the difference
between the surface-light of sagacity and the interpene-
trating glow of worship, we owe to it whatever highest
truth, whatever trustiest guidance we have. Wherever
there is anything beautiful to read, anything holy, any-
thing tender and profound, this alone avails and com-
mands the key of true interpretation. The hard and
literal mind mistakes everything in proportion as its
import is of priceless worth ; misses, beyond all others,
the drift of human language, still more the silent ex-
pression of look and action, and gropes without appre-
hension through the blessed hieroglyphics of life and
nature. Does not the poet, does not the prophet, ask
for a reader with enthusiasm enough to appreciate him,
and complain that by others he is not understood ? If
the greatest human works and utterances demand for
their apprehension a soul kindled with intense affections,
can we doubt what is the qualification, and what the

With our Spirit. 57

disqualification, for reading the Divine ? May not their
Author, — Soul of our souls, who breathes the eternal
poem of the universe, and attunes our minds to hear it,
who provides at once the hymn of the morning stars
that sing together and the chords of the spirit that
tremble to their strain, ask as clear a response from us
as we demand from one another ?

When, therefore, in higher moments brought by the
sorrows of life, the tension of duty, or the silence of
thought, you catch some faint tones of a voice diviner
than your own, know that you are not alone, and who it
is that is with you. Stay not in the cold monologue of
solitary meditation, but fling yourself into the com-
munion of prayer. Fold not the personal shadows
round you ; lie open to the gleam that pierces them ;
confide in it as the brightest of realities, — a path of
heavenly light streaking the troubled waters of your
being, and leading your eye to the orb that sends it.
Learn to distrust the suggestions of lower and more
earthly hours, and scatter the fears of the slothful, un-
awakened heart. If we treat the very " light that is in
us as darkness, how great is that darkness ! " Be it
ours to doubt the glooms, and not the glory of our
souls ; to lie low beneath the blinding cloud, and simply
cry, " Lord, that I may receive my sight ! " and rise up
to prophesy, only when the heavens are opened, and the
divinest scope of things is clear ; to court, and not to
c-hun, the bursts of holy suspicion that break through

58 The Witness of God with our Spirit.

the crust of habit and the films of care, and accept
them as a glance from the eye of the Infinite, — the
" witness of his Spirit with our spirit, that we are the
children of God."

V.

K|* §*te fart.

Luke x. 41.

"Martha, Martha! thou art careful and troubled about many things:
but one thing is needful ; and Mary hath chosen that good part, which
shall not be taken away from her."

The sketch of the sisters of Bethany presented in the
Gospel, possesses more than a biographical interest.
Discriminated as they are from each other with the
utmost clearness, and representing, not simply indi-
vidual peculiarities, but two natural orders of human
character, they acquire all the force and significance of
allegory. The figures would be striking and graceful,
as mere domestic pictures, giving us insight into a
family interior touched with colours ancient but un-
faded, and filling us with melancholy to think of how
old a pedigree are the cares and aspirations of the
present hour. But the great household of the world
has ever been divided very much as the cottage of
Lazarus; occupied and directed by sister spirits,

60 The Better Part.

whereof Martha and Mary are the genuine types;
deriving thence both its rivalries and its harmonies ;
and seeking in different but balanced ways to fulfil the
mission of eternal Providence. And there too, Christ
has sat divinely in the midst, watching the toil,
teaching the wisdom, quieting the strife ; appealed
to by the competing spirits, and giving many an
unexpected adjudication. The agency and affinities
of his religion, in the private mind and on the
theatre of the world, are not obscurely seen in the
incidents of that village home; and the personal
features, so small and distinct in themselves, expand,
under the glass of a true interpretation, into lineaments
of universal history.

What observer of human affairs can fail to recognise
everywhere the class represented by the bustling,
officious, indefatigable Martha, worn with her toil, yet
ever making more, greedy of all the work, yet com-
plaining of others' rest ? There are men and there are
nations that seem ordained to be the fags of the world ;
whose honest pride is to keep its larder stored and its
wardrobe full ; who exist only to sweep its passages
and clean its windows ; and find their most complacent
dignity in spreading its table with the whitest cloth,
and preserving its accounts in the safest order. They
do not deliberately think these administrative cares to
be the great objects for which man is set upon the stage
of being : they are always on the way to some higher

The Better Part. 61

end : only they never reach it ; for when they are just
within a step of it, and the neatest preparation has
been made for beginning to live, some new dust is
discovered that must first be cleared away, and some
finish, positively the last, constantly remains to be
interposed. Fuming under self-imposed tasks, they
think themselves the hardly entreated servants of all :
deploring the slavery of life, they would be at a loss to
use its freedom. Does any one suppose that if Martha
had been more than taken at her word, she would
really have sat at Jesus' feet, with surrendered and
kindling mind? and that she would not rather have
started up on the remembrance of some loose screw in
the economical machine, which must be set fast ere
her attention could be at liberty ? And is it not plain
that the half of mankind whom she represents, while
lamenting that their years are spent in drudgery, and
leave them no time for wonder, thought, and love, are
at home only among the means of life, and, these once
ready, would be perplexed to live. And so it is, that
they are always preparing for a time that never comes :
one trifle more of management, and then they will sit
down to wisdom; and as they run out on this final
errand without their hat, death overtakes them like a
thunder-shower, and drives them to the shelter that
forbids return.

Rarer and more scattered is the class formed in the
likeness of the quiet, thoughtful Mary, less anxious to

62 The Better Part

be the entertainers, than the disciples, of heavenly
wisdom. Still such a class, being ordained of Provi-
dence for the harmony of the world, exists ; and even
in this busy, trading, struggling, England, the least
genial to it, perhaps, of any climate in history, is by no
means extinct. Here and there you may meet with
those, who recall you at once from the accessories to
the essence of our existence ; who, instead of spelling
its little syllables, interpret for you its great meaning ;
who do its work, not from a menial point within it,
but from a lordly position beyond it, and rather pass
through the present than are imprisoned in it. Other
men appear to constitute life by small and gradual
additions ; jotting down act after act, as their will may
happen to expend it ; and only gaining a glimpse of
the sum total, as the vast account is swelling towards
its completion : and so they gather but an empiric
wisdom that looks back on the beginning from the end.
and miss the reflective insight that discerns the end
from the beginning. But these, on the contrary, seem
to comprehend the whole of life before experiencing its
parts ; to descend from its vast scope into its separate
details ; and to diffuse one indivisible character through
the successive acts which measure, but do not make it.
No doubt there is a good in that " knowledge how to
live," which sagacity derives from mere length of days,
and which gives a wholesome ripeness to the counsels
of age. Such gathered experience is an indispensable

The Better Part. 63

antidote to the impulses of inexperienced self-will : it
adds a fresh witness to truth and goodness, and
strengthens the collective conscience of humanity.
But, for personal guidance, it comes too late : the voyage
is over, ere the chart is drawn ; and after a thousand
dangers of the deep, the skill to steer is won, at the
moment when the anchor is about to drop in the still
waters. Inductive knowledge is the glory of a pro-
gressive race, that can spare centuries without stint,
provided science does but organize itself at last ; but
it is a poor reliance for the transient individual who
cannot afford to wait for his moral wisdom till he dies.
And so, to save our time and shorten the excuses of
folly, God gives us, in the highest things, an intuitive
knowledge and prophetic light : we are not left to the
thread of memory ever in our hand, whereby to measure
our past courses ; but from the earnest eye, looking for
the path before it, a radiance shines that shows the
true way by night or noon. To clear and brighten this
native light of conscience, — or rather to preserve its
original purity, — is for every man the good part which
shall not be taken from him.

The preference which Jesus manifested for the cha-
racter of Mary, has, I believe, been often esteemed
more poetical than just. It has been accused as a
romantic judgment, giving countenance to the mis-
chievous belief that the qualities best adapted for this
world are uncongenial with the spirit of the other.

64 The Better Part.

The passage has been read, not without a secret pity
for the good Martha ; and many a worthy housewife
has thought within herself, " It seems rather hard that
this is what we get for all our pains." From the out-
side it looks so easy to sit still and gaze up on the face
of heavenly goodness, — so pleasant to take in the lessons
of holy truth, that those who see the attitude from
amid the toil and heat of the common day, regard it
only as a mental luxury, a coolness from the tree of
life upon the grass of thought ; more fit to be envied
of men, than applauded by the Son of God. And yet
there is the deepest truth discoverable in this verdict of
Christ ; and the whole history of individual character,
and of collective society, leads us to the same result.
Those to whom life is a succession of particular busi-
nesses, however intelligent, energetic, and conscientious,
must rank in the scale of human excellence below
those to whom life is rather the flow of one spirit.

In the former there is always to be noticed a certain
want of proportion in the parts and methods of their
career. It has not the unity of a pervading aim, the
ground-colouring of a latent affection. It is not the
spontaneous expression of a given mind, but the
activity provoked by a given lot ; so that its highest
energy is that of adaptation rather than creation. Every
one understands, or at least feels, the difference there
is, in matters of Art, between a work of ingenuity and
a work of genius. It is a characteristic of all the

The Better Pa7't. 65

" useful arts," those to which we dedicate the chisel,
the ' furnace, and the mill, that they direct themselves
to the formation of some definite mechanical product.
The distinct -preconception of an outward ohject which
he is to complete, guides the processes of the artisan ;
and all his skill consists in the intentional application
of means to his proposed end, and the gradual appear-
ance of the result by due accretion of materials. He
can tell you how he did it all ; can enumerate the in-
gredients in a receipt ; lay down the methods by scale
and compass ; and enable you to do the same thing
again. It is the characteristic of " the fine arts,"
those which avail themselves of language, form, and
colour, that they do not see at the beginning the outward
result in which they end ; that it comes out from their
feeling, instead of standing before them as their guide ;
that it is reached, — as men say, blindly, — not i.e. by
the artificial lamp of the understanding, carried in the
hand and consciously turned this way and that to show
the way, but by self-light from the sense of beauty
hidden in the heart. The symmetrical unity of the
work arises, not from contrivance, but from harmony in
the mind which it expresses. Hence the incommu-
nicable and purely subjective character of all high art.
Its great masters can give you no list of its materials,
no account of its procedure : they cannot teach you to
do the same ; and if you will serve an apprenticeship
to them, it must be by veneration for their works, not

66 The Better Part.

by imitation of their ways. Eules may help you to
manufacture, but cannot inspire you to create. Now
there is a difference analogous to this in the moral
administration of human life. Duty has its artisan,
who labours by prescription to the will ; and its artist,
who shapes forth the love within his heart. The one
lives after the manner of the journeyman, executing
each separate order as it may happen to come in ; the
other, in the spirit of the poet, fashioning his own
designs, and expressing through them all, one truth,
one prayer, one hope. In the former case, everything
is contemplated in detail : every particular task is an
independent care and end, seen apart from the relations
on which its worth depends, and for a time, remaining
all in all. Hence arises a slavery of the mind to means
and conventions ; a worship of proprieties instead of
obligations ; an inability to follow the shifting bound-
aries of rule and habit, and an adherence to custom
dry and dead. A conscientious will, without the light
and glow of high affections, is almost inevitably the
prey of superstition, and lies under the nightmare of
fear. With what childish care may you often observe
it tending and watering the artificial flowers of rootless
usage, unconscious that they hold no seed and can ripen
no fruit ; while the true eye for nature can tell at any
distance the blossoms of the meadow and the wood,
from those of the ball-room and the stage. No degree
of sagacity can protect the chafing will from false and

The Better Part. 67

disproportioned estimates. Its possessor carries with
him a constant magnifying glass, which by exaggerating
all trivial things, and leaving the grandest to spread far
beyond his field of vision, equalises the little and the
great. He sees no relation of parts. Each task in
turn takes up the whole of him at once, and causes a
wearing expenditure of effort on every successive point,
without bringing the fruits of power in the end. A
perpetual exaggeration of small things will never make
a great one ; and those who take a series of limited
views, for want of the ascendant faith and love which
blend them into one vast prospect, leave on you, after
all, the impression that our existence is made up of
petty matters, — that our world is a colony of busy
insects making a mighty buzz about a very little being.
They show the earnestness of all the parts of life ; but
not of the whole ; and by their failure to present it in
any noble aspect, or shed on it any tint that is divine,
are apt to provoke others into cynicism and frivolity,
rather than awe them with the sense of obligation.
But a soul kindling with devout aspiration cannot
mistake instrumental details for ultimate ends. The
act of the hour belongs to the business of the day;
the business of the day has its place in the scheme of
years ; the scheme of years is but the element of an
eternal work; and all is the expression of a constant
spirit, conversing with God in the present, and in quest
of his higher mind in the future. To such a one, life

f 2

68 The Better Part.

is not a mere voyage by the log and line, — an experi-
mental cruise over waters unexplored ; but a course
computed by the everlasting stars over an ocean un-
visited indeed, but not unknown ; with its relation to
the heavens discerned, and sunny inlets and blessed
islands ever in the thoughts.

The difference between a life pieced together from
even the stoutest remnants, and a life woven, though
with fragile woof and fading colours, from the con-
tinuous warp of a pure heart, is conspicuous especially
in the temper with which the ills and wrongs of the
human lot are borne. The mind intent on outward
tasks and dedicated to mere day-labour cannot endure
thwarting : its work failing or destroyed, it is left
without resource ; its only end is gone ; the very world
it had chosen for its abode has burst as a bubble ; and
it is precipitated into empty space, as a disconsolate
ghost. If the disappointment is caused by the mis-
conduct of others, the indignation of such a one has
no natural check ; sits amid the ruin in despair ; bursts
the bounds of reason ; and recovers only with reflective
shame. Shut up as he is in object after object as if
there were nothing else, the habitual vehemence of his
nature is easily explained. He lives a thousand lives
instead of one. He is always gaining or losing his all :
playing for the earthly stake and not for the heavenly
skill, he looks with eager gaze at the slightest stroke,
and is all eye for every move. He feels with respect to

The Better Part. 69

every untoward event as if it were an injury ; and can
scarcely refrain from being angry with his afflictions.
From this unhappy thraldom, whoever " has chosen the
better part " is delivered without effort. Eegarding his
whole life as the instrument of higher ends, he can lose
this or that of its contents without its function being
gone. Engaged not on what it has, but on what it is,
he keeps the great object of his earnest spirit under
every change. While it remains to be lived, its essence
and its worth abide, and decay and disappointment
touch its accidents alone. And so the vicissitudes which
irritate and confuse inferior minds, leave him, though
in sorrow, yet with undisturbed stability; and while
others allow themselves to be provoked by afflictions as
if they were injuries, he can receive injuries almost as
if they were but afflictions ; having ever in reserve the
sense of a Divine Will, that limits the conditions of
wrong, and checks it far short of hopeless ruin. This
tranquillity of view imparts also a loftiness to life, which
redeems even its poorest passages from the appearance
of anything mean. Nothing menial, nothing contemp-
tible remains in the inevitable relations of men, when
once regarded as constituents of a Divine order. The
lot which God provides, the trouble which he pities, the
soul that he loves and visits cannot be beneath our
patience and reverence : the scale of life within which
he can hide his light, is no object of our anger or our
scorn. Where self is dissolved in the all-sanctifying

70 The Better Part.

Presence, no guiltless experience can bring humiliation.
The emancipated nature rises into repose ; and attains
the sweet and quiet mind which never sways from its
own centre ; whose openness to love does not disturb its
fidelity to duty ; which passes through extremes of cir-
cumstance with a serene and touching constancy ; and
is so attuned that, whether caressed by summer winds,
or quivering before rending storms, it can give forth only
harmony. To such a one, the littleness of the parts of
life loses power to deprive the whole of greatness ; in-
versely, the greatness of the whole gives every part a
large significance, and secures even the least from dis-
regard as not worth the carefulness of a devout aspiring
conscience. The gentle spirit of piety holds in it no
contempt ; cannot feel itself above anything that bears
the sacred name of duty ; is thankful enough if it be only
equal to it. No ! it is quite another temper, — the false
imagination of romance, not the true heart of religion, —
that despises the small component elements of life, and
fancies that in such foolish scorn there is some wise
liberty. A certain freedom, no doubt, the two may be
said to have in common. They can both fling them-
selves loose from usage, and strike into paths eccentric
with the movements of the world. But when romance
dashes out of the established ways, it is to please
itself; when religion, it is to serve others: the one in
self-display, the other in self-forgetfulness : the one in
defiant joy, the other in modest reluctance : the one in

The Better Part. yi

triumph over inferior men, the other in surrender to the
higher will of God. And here we touch the inmost
difference between them ; that with the one, it is the
claim of liberty from what is below ; with the other, the
need of submission to what is above. And so, while
the face of the one looks superciliously down, that of
the other turns reverently up, and lets the feet be
directed, not by eager and foreseeing choice, but by the
felt hand of an Unseen Guide, whose counsels are known
only moment by moment. And thus a sacred calm
falls upon the soul, forever hearing the whispered
words, " Fear not, for I am with thee."

VI.

tytxkctiam ffib'xm anfr iSmtmtr.

Matt. v. 48.

"Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is
perfect."

Fkom no lips but those of the great Mediator between
the divine and the human in our world could this precept
fall without failing of its beauty and suffering reproach
for its extravagance. Had any teacher less near to God,
less dear to man, given utterance to it, it would have
been taken to imply either a presumptuous estimate of
earthly possibilities, or a low conception of heavenly
sanctity. How often is the Christian preacher, — nay,
even the Stoic moralist, — accused of demanding too much
from human nature, of urging the wing of aspiration
beyond its appointed height, when he merely asks for
some faint lineaments of the Divine image on the soul,
and rebukes the petty thoughts and low ambitions which
completely shut it out ! When he looks among them
for only some reflected trace of the infinite purity, some

Perfection Divine and Human. j$

pious nobleness to mark them as the Children of the
Highest, how readily is he charged with losing himself
in the regions of romance ! Yet here the Teacher of
teachers, the great interpreter of Conscience, tranquilly
demands, not merely the consciousness of God, but
the living likeness of him ; not only the resemblance
of an involuntary feature and a transient hour, but a
similitude intentional, constant and complete: "Be ye
perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect." And
from him we accept the injunction, as giving not only
the ideal of our life, but the actual of his. Himself
the middle point of reconciling harmony, where the
attributes of humanity are touched with the glory ef a
divine perfection, he renders it credible to us that, all
minds being of one race, the Supreme Holiness may
repeat itself in all : he destroys the hopeless distance
at which an unapproaching worship stands ; and brings
into conscious sympathy and resemblance the goodness
of the finite and the infinite.

Self-evidently, it is not in the scale, but only in the
kind, of character, that our nature can be brought to
the similitude of God's. Cut off, as we are, from all
sensible approach to him in dimension, we can bear his
image only in the spirit of our souls. It is just in this,
however, that the perfection of a moral agent must
consist. He might have great magnitude and long
duration and intense force, yet be no more than a
monster and an anti-god, a gigantic depositary of

74 Perfection Divine and Human.

passion and disorder. Space and Time and Power are
mere physical elements, quite neutral in the estimate of
character, and conceivable alike of Devil and of Deity.
It is in the kind of sentiment ruling within the mind,
the balance of its graces and the proportion of its love,
that all its perfectness consists : and these are colours
that may be no less faultlessly blended within the
miniature frame of a mortal nature than on an ampli-
tude boundless as the sky. To change our physical rela-
tion to God, of absolute dependence and incommensur-
able littleness, is no more possible than for the wave to
become the ocean : but just as the same laws that sway
the masses of the sea also trace the ripple and shape
the spray, so may the very same divine principles, the
same preferences, the same constancy which belong to
the spiritual life of God, reappear in the tiny currents
of our will and even the very play and sparkle of our
affections. It is but the affectation of humility, or the
dislike of noble claims, that can make us shrink from
our affinity with the Father and Inspirer of all souls.

There is a special feature in the Divine perfection on
which Christ in his exhortation emphatically dwells.
God warms with his sunshine the evil and the good,
and refreshes with his rain the just and the unjust. No
impulse of anger, no persuasion of complacency, diverts
him from his steady ways, or alters the fundamental
ground-work of beneficence, on which all his adminis-
tration rests. There is a common mercy, an inalienable

Perfection Divine and Human. 75

love, which he never permits to become contingent,
and from which nothing ever falls away. It abides with
the sinful as with the saintly, and returns the same
mild look to guilty defiance as to trustful prayer.
Looking on Nature as the theatre and on her methods
as the activity of God, we cannot fail to be struck with
his serene perseverance through the storms of human
affairs, and the heavings of human passion. Once
having established a physical law, he persists in doing
thus and no otherwise without weariness from lapse of
time or deviation from change of place. Go where you
will, live where you may, you are in the presence of his
silent veracity, his unswerving consistency. The rules
which he has laid down for this terrestrial sphere,
which dispose of its matter, distribute its growths, and
determine its movements, — which we read off from the
ocean, and the mountains and the air, — are followed
no less in the furthest fields of telescopic vision ; and
processes observed in the newest continents and never
traced till yesterday explain the geologic vestiges of
incalculable time. Science cannot find a Law, pro-
vincial or provisional : intending to interpret one spot,
she alights upon a truth for all : struck with a momen-
tary phenomenon, she seizes the key of a periodic
combination. She cannot detect the orbit of the moon,
without discovering the plan of all the solar worlds ;
or catch and expound the sunbeam in a crystal without
telling a truth of Orion and Pleiades. Ere yet there

76 Perfection Divine and Human.

was any moral life upon this world, a material order
had been established, and was slowly building up and
garnishing the future dwelling-place of man : the
rippled sand, the gravelled beach, the sedgy marsh, the
treasured and the melting snow, have left their record
of seasons and successions like our own. And through
all the subsequent moral vicissitudes of human history,
this steady order has continued, as if those vicissitudes
had not entered on the scene. There are indeed
legends which tell of a visible sympathy of the
elements with the affairs of man, — of Nature angry
with his crimes : but no such convulsion at her heart
has left a trace upon her punctual record and her calm
face. Over Arctic wastes or teeming cities the Sun is
equally lavish of his flood, and glances alike from the
sword of an Attila and the crucifix of a Xavier : the
full moon indifferently flings her purity into the
windows of revelry and guilt, and paints the Saviour's
image on the chancel-floor where lonely sorrow and
devotion kneels. -

What Science calls the uniformity of nature, Faith
accepts as the fidelity of God. They are but the
settled ways of his sole causation, the program of his
everlasting work, the dial-plate which the index of
human expectation is to traverse age by age. When
we speak of their unerring regularity, we do but attest
his truth, which keeps the time-piece steady for us, and
warns us how the shadows lie. He that framed these

Perfection Divine and Human. Jj

rules might have made others in their stead, and at any
moment change them by a thought. But once he has
announced them, an eternal Word has gone forth, and
shall not be made void. It is a promise made alike to
just and unjust, and must be punctually kept with
both. Without a reliable Universe and a trust-worthy
God, no moral character could grow. A fickle world
admits only of a lawless race : no obedience could be
required from those who are planted among shifting
conditions, to whom foresight is denied, and whose
wisdom is as likely to go astray as their folly. As well
might you attempt to build upon the restless sea, or td
steer by shooting stars, or keep time by the leaves
dancing in the wind, as shape a mind or train a
character amid a scene whose courses were unsteady
and where action was a lottery. All human habits are
formed by a mutual understanding between man and
nature. Who could be temperate, if the food that
simply nourishes today were to intoxicate to-morrow ?
WTio would put away sloth to be in his fields betimes,
but in faith that the sun would not forget to rise?
Who build his observatory, were not the heavens still
the same that Kepler and Galileo scanned ? Thus the
constancy of creation is the direct expression of the
good faith of God ; of his regard not only for our
security, but for the culture of our reason and the
insight of our conscience. He disciplines us thus to
his own love of beauty and order. His eternal patience

78 Perfection Divine and Human.

takes away our excuses of surprise, and rebukes our
pleas of disobedience. The wild sophistry of tempta-
tion is put to shame by the serene light of his natural
countenance and the steady swing of the pendulum
that counts his ways. He secures us against all
passionate sway : no imjjulse rushes into space with
irruption of blessing or of curse : no devilish element
bursts the bars of his prohibition, and maddens us by
dashing with discords the music of the spheres. He
keeps the everlasting watch himself and, if there be
chaos any where, takes care it shall not be here. That
he may be true to us, he foregoes a portion of his
infinite freedom, and binds himself to methods whose
cycle we can measure and whose exactitude we may
trust. The natural Universe is God's eternal act of
Self-restraint : and if he is willing to descend into finite
system and trace the fields of his presence with the
orbits of accurate custom, is it too much for us to
answer him with a life of faithful regulation ; to repress
within us the sources of confusion ; to mark the flow
of time with intersections of punctual duty; and so
pursue our way that neither the just nor the unjust
may be able to distrust us ? To enter spontaneously
into the bonds of inflexible veracity, and habits of holy
order, is the first element in that perfection which
brings us into the similitude of God.

If however there were nothing diviner than the punc-
tuality of Nature, God after all would not be perfect.

Perfection Divine and Human. 79

Precisely because his sun shines and his rain descends,
alike on the evil and the good, do we feel that, if this
were all and represented his whole thought, his forbear-
ance would be a cold indifference, and his mercy more
terrible than vengeance. He would be indeed above
the realm of passion, but still below the heights of pure
affection ; and while we should be safe from the flash
of impulse, we should have the promise of no dear
love. We can revere and worship the universal good-
ness which spreads a common ground for the thankful
and the thankless; but only if it be a real long-
suffering, — a self-repression put upon a higher sen-
timent,— the temporary silence of a holy Mind, that
for truth's and pity's sake treats for awhile as the same
those that are felt to be infinitely different. Could we
think that the just and unjust in being dealt with alike
by the courses of the universe, were not discriminated
in the deep reality of God, there would be no beauty,
no tenderness in the comprehensive sky and the im-
partial showers : the restrained flashes of retribution
would touch us no more than the stony lightnings
hanging from the fist of some sculptured Jove; and
the neutral smile upon the face of nature would be
ghastly as the mildness on the features of the dead.
We admire the evolutions of a tranquil and persistent
order, the precision, the symmetry, the smooth chro-
nometry of unwearied Law ; but only as the expression
of what is higher behind ; only if the mechanism is

8o Perfection Divine and Human.

put forth by what is not mechanical ; only if its
inexorable necessity be the product and determinate act
of an Infinite Will. As the usage of a Mind whose
activity is free, the accuracy of the heaven and the
earth is marvellous ; as the balance of forces with which
matter is bound, it is not marvellous at all. As a
voluntary sameness amid the profusion of possibilities,
as the calm look of living Holiness on a drama so often
passionate with guilt and sorrow, it subdues us with
adoration and consoles us with the deepest trust ; but
as the involuntary dynamics of a rotatory necessity, it
would grind us to despair. Often indeed, with our
best faith, there is something hard to bear in the fixity
of nature around the dangers and the agonies of men.
Over the village stricken with the plague, why does the
sun rise with such a dreadful glory, and the morning
breeze sweep with so mocking a freshness in its breath ?
When the ship strikes and rends asunder with a shriek,
why does the water swing about as if it held nothing
better than itself, and the surge fling and beat the
mother and her child, as if they were a senseless log ?
When a tyrant's army sleeps encamped upon the field,
ready in the morning to crush a nation's life, why do
the patient stars look so divinely down, and glide over
the wicked watch-fires as if they were a lamp of
sacrifice ? Were this unconcerned steadfastness all that
our faith presented to us, there would be no perfectness
in God : Providence would be no more than Fate ;

Perfection Divine and Human. 81

Duty, an accommodation to necessity: Science, the
negation of worship. Were this all, then would man,
in imitating God, lose the highest attributes of his
soul ; would dry up into a mere unbending organism
of habit, — a machine punctual, precise, and polished ;
never slackening to think, never pausing to weep, never
quickened with joy; beating off his steady stroke of
work and disappointing no one's computation, till death
cuts off the steam. A faithful and reliable man is a
priceless and wholesome blessing in this world : but
this cold exactitude is not faithfulness. Springing
from no life of conscience, and graced by no varieties
of love, it is neither a sacrifice to God, nor a heart-
offering to man, but only that absence of disturbance
which arises from an unimpassioned and plodding
nature. The human piecework that is got through by
those who are content to do much and be nothing is
doubtless great. But its good is only negative : the
moment it ceases to be the expression and outcoming
of a living soul, its very copiousness is dearth and its
success is failure. When the regularities of habit and
the perseverance of will become simply automatic, they
lose their claim to moral admiration : however they
may pace with heavier grist the mill of wealth, they
have ever less to offer at the shrine of worship : the
windows are darkened through which gleams of divine
and solemn light once entered and enriched the soul :
the voice loses its mellow tones, and is no longer

G

82 Perfection Divine and Human.

flexible enough to sing a song of hope to the heavy
hearts of sorrowing men. No withered unconcern, no
dead exactitude, is fitted for a life like ours, — a life full
of free elements, related not merely to the punctualities
of material nature, but to the heaving passions of
living men ; — a life strewed with various sorrows and
full of struggling nobleness, where no open ear is ever
far from the curse, the sigh, the prayer ; — a life of
outward heats and inward thirst, that no sleeping mill-
pond can keep clear and fresh, but only the running
waters of the pure soul descending from the upland
wilds. Neither in the human nor in the Divine
existence does the most faultless uniformity in itself
constitute perfection.

But there is something far other than this in God.
He is not only the Author of Nature ; he is also our
" Father in Heaven.'" Above and around all his action
in the physical creation there lies a diviner and a
tenderer realm, an infinite circumambient space of his
mind, that does not act on matter but is only present
with spirits, and whose transcendent nature we can
only express by saying that here he is " in Heaven " ;
— not on the earth, not in the planets, not with the
sun, though the place and orbits of them all are in the
natural sky ; but out of the whole astronomic realm, in
a prater natural sphere, more beautiful and glorious
than any where bounden law and rigorous necessity
prevail. However vast and majestic the uniformities

Perfection Divine and Human. S3

of nature, they are nevertheless finite : science counts
them, one by one ; and completed science would count
them all. God however is not finite : he lives out
beyond the legislation he has made ; and his thought,
which defines the rules of matter does not transmigrate
into them and cease else-how to be ; but merely flings
out the law as an emanating act, and himself abides
behind as thinking power, — an eternal Spirit with a
boundless inner life still unexpressed. In this silent
ocean of his being, — this transcending spiritual sphere of
his life, dwells the remaining element of the perfection
which we seek. It is an all-embracing Love, an in-
exhaustible holiness, an eternal pity, an immeasurable
freedom of affection, whence all the regularities of his
will spring forth, and which leaves enough behind to
visit the private wants of every soul, to linger with
tenderness near every sorrow, to be present with rescue
in every temptation. This it is that is the real ground
of our trust and love : God is not merely the power of
nature, but the Father of spirits : his resources are
not spent and used up in the legislation of the physical
universe, but are large enough to overflow freely and
copiously into the spirits that are in the likeness of him-
self. Hence, without violated rule, without breach of
pledge, he can individualize his regards, enter with his
gentle help into every mind, and while keeping faith with
the universe, knock at the gate of every lonely heart.
Stupendous as may be the network of determinate

g 2

84 Perfection Divine and Human.

law, with threads fastened on every world and con-
tinuous through all kosmic ages, there is room enough
in the interstices for the free play of the Spirit that
passeth where it listeth, — for the movements of an
everlasting moral life amid the natural, — and all the
swift pulses of Divine affection. It is precisely in the
union of these two, — a customary order he will not
loose, — a free Spirit he will not hind, — that he is
perfect in himself and open to near communion as well
as distant trust.

And if it is with tlds perfection that we are to be
perfect, how clear becomes the type of our highest
good ! and how truly it speaks to our purest aspirations !
An imperturbable Order penetrated with an ever-fresh
and pliant Love, — is not that the very balance we need,
to bring the conscience to repose ? First, like God, to
reclaim the wild spaces of our life, to reduce its chaos
of possibilities, to divide it into times and seasons, and
tell each punctual duty when to rise ; to organise a
scheme of faithful habits, against which impulse shall
dash in vain, and within whose barriers the waters shall
He safe and still ; to be accurately reliable and true, to
begin no cycle we do not maintain, and of all the lights
we hang aloft to see that " not one faileth " ; — is to
vindicate our affinity with the creative method of his
mind. But then there is a higher kindred with him,
the kindred of the spirit, yet to claim. Through all
the inexorabilities of habit the living breath of every

Perfection Divine and Human. 85

gracious affection must flow at its own sweet will :
around the rocky fixtures of resolve, the tides of a
great heart must freely dash and sweep. If once we
allow the method and mechanism of our being to
stiffen on us and shut us in ; if in the rigour of our
duty we have no love to spare ; if, within our rules of
justice, pity cannot stir ; if toiling day by day in our
field of patient work, we forget what it is to mingle
with the beauty of the world, to wonder at the mystery
of life, or sink into the meaning of death and sorrow ; —
we become what the universe would be without a God,
a fatalised organism, in servile bondage to its own
lowest forces, transcended and wielded by no Diviner
Soul. From this uttermost blight no trustful disciple
shall seek deliverance in vain. Let him but keep close
to the fountains of living inspiration, and the spring
will not run dry. Let him go even to the task-work of
action in the spirit, not of egotistic mastery, but of
reverent obedience, and it will bring no withering to
his heart. Let him keep his thought and faith in
sympathy with both sides of this great world, which
manifests the life of God, — its everlasting ways, — its
ever living spirit ; and he shall renew his strength like
the eagle's ; he shall blend the ground-note of constant
duty with the sweet and running melody of an ever-
varying love ; and by the harmony of opposites, become
at length "perfect as the Father in Heaven is perfect."

VII.

m^t ffioral (Qualify d Jfatifr.

2 Timothy i. 5.

" (When) I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee;
which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice ; and
I am persuaded in thee also."

It is not often that the old Reformer, preparing
to quit the scene of his labours, bequeaths to his
young successor such parting counsels as those of
Paul to Timothy. The usual product of experience,
especially of an experience gained in attempting
a great moral revolution, is a certain caution and
lowering of hope : and when, looking back upon
the past, the spent enthusiast measures the small-
ness of his achievements by the splendour of his early
projects, he is tempted to regret the magnitude
of his aims, and to advise for the future a zeal
too temperate to live through the frosts of circum-
stance. Towards the end of life, the precepts which
most naturally flow from our lips express themselves
in negatives : we warn the fresh aspirant not to

The Moral Quality of Faith. 8 7

expect too much ; not to confide too implicitly in men ;
not to be too certain of the truths he loves ; not to
wage a fruitless battle with the obstinacy of human
affairs, or waste his strength in seeking to force the
bounds of possibility. The disposition to judge every
enterprise by its event, and believe in no wisdom that is
not endorsed by success, is apt to grow upon us with
years, till we sympathise with nothing for which we
cannot take out a policy of assurance. It was other-
wise with Paul. He had many friends of his own
standing, connected with precious memories of the
past : at Antioch, his earliest patron Barnabas, his
partner in many a trust; at Corinth, his associates
Aquila and Priscilla, with whom he had so long lived
and worked ; at Ephesus, the faithful Onesiphorus who,
wealthy merchant as he was, was not ashamed of the
apostle's chain, but when at Rome visited and refreshed
his captivity. But none was so dear to him as Timothy,
the youngest of them all : not one, he says, did he find
likeminded with him.* In him there was nothing to
check and chill the great apostle's unexhausted heart ;
whose rich tones found full response in the young man's
fervour and disinterestedness, and whose yet elastic
hopes gained a new spring in the presence of a kindred
enthusiasm. The friendship between these two men,
so unequal in years and so different in powers, is one
of the most suggestive episodes in the early history of

* Philipp. ii. 20.

88 The Moral Quality of Faith.

the gospel. It was apparently the one mellowing
affection that toned down the impassioned vigour of
Paul ; that bound him tenderly to life, and, when he
would spring to grasp the heavenly crown, recalled him
with a sigh ; that mingled a constant human image
with his prayers and brought them trembling on his
voice ; that, homeless as he was, made him feel amid
his wanderings the sadness of absence and of loneli-
ness. The travelled ambassador of Christ, who snatched
Christianity from the hands of a local faction and
turned it to a universal faith, — whose powerful word
shook all the gods from Cyprus to Gibraltar, — who
turned the tide of history and thought, giving us the
organization of Christendom for the legions of Rome,
and for Zeno and Epicurus, Augustine, Eckhart and
Luther, he, with his indomitable soul, was conquered
by a Lycaonian youth, and now in Rome sat, with his
chained hands upon his knee, musing, as he says, with
joy, on the tears and embrace of their last parting.
And then he writes to say he cannot do without him.
All have deserted him but one ; at his hearing in the
palace he had to meet his accusers almost alone ; and
now he waits his sentence, and ere the imperial sword
can fall upon his neck, he must see Timothy again.
What is the tone of the letter, written at a crisis like
that, — the letter which resigns the expectation so long
cherished, of living till Messiah comes? Does he
indite a threnody of disappointment ? Does he caution

The Moral Quality of Faith. 89

Timothy against sacrificing himself to impetuous hopes,
and tell him that zeal is well enough, but that after all
we must take men as we find them ? On the contrary,
his words fan every noble fire in the young man's heart :
like the voice of the retired victor, looking on and
feeling the blood glow at sight of the race again, they
spur the dear Athlete to fresher effort, and bid him
mark the goal. The spirit of fear ' — 'tis no gift of
God's ; — only the spirit of love and power ! let the good
soldier of Jesus press on in hope, heedless of any
shame and hardship that may befall a faithful man;
stir up the gift that is in him ; be instant in season and
out of season ; keep a patience never spent by failure ;
and in the last extremity remember in whom he has
believed. Glorious Apostle ! Would that every leader's
voice could burst, as he falls, into such a trumpet-
sound, thrilling the young hearts that pant in the good
fight, and must never despair of victory !

The secret of this deep affection between the aged
apostle and the young disciple is to be found in a
quality common to them both, — which made Timothy
wise beyond the measure of his youth and Paul fresh
against the tendencies of age; — that energy of faith
which, from its wondrous conquests over our lower
nature, is by many regarded as supernatural. By
faith I do not mean their common belief in Christ and
devotion to his cause : I do not refer to any agreement
of their intellect in relation to the propositions of a

90 The Moral Quality of Faith.

creed ; but to a certain quality of heart and character
so rare to find in these days, that it is scarce possible
to explain. He calls it an "unfeigned" faith, and
takes it as the mark of transparency and simplicity of
soul. He treats it, not as an apostolic gift, but as
flowing down in the maternal succession, from the
gracious heart of Eunice and the blessing of the good
grandmother Lois, ere yet there was any Christ to
believe in. It was therefore an attribute that might
pass across the line from nature into grace ; that could
descend in the track of hereditary religion, and link a
faithful family to heaven. Nothing so marks the
degradation of our modern Christianity as the notion
that faith is only opinion— that a man may have it or
not without affecting his moral worth, — that it is the
result of intellectual accident or opportunity, for which
God will never call him to account. It is, on the
contrary, beyond all comparison, the most complete
and distinct exponent of a man's character; and if
only we can get to know it, he is revealed to us more
clearly, than if the whole catalogue of his actions were
given us to read. Matters of historical theology, no
doubt, — critical questions about the authorship of books
and the authority of councils, — may be differently
judged by inquirers of the same spiritual grade. But
it is not so with the deep essence of religion ; and the
view which we may take of our moral relations, of the
life here and hereafter, of the ruling laws of this

The Moral Quality of Faith. 91

universe, of the being and character of God, — is the
direct product of the radical affections of our nature,
and will be false or true simply as these affections are
mean or noble. Our devout beliefs are not built as we
suppose, upon the dry strand of reason, but ride upon
the flood of our affections ; safe and joyous, bounding
over its waves, when its surface only plays with the
sweet breeze of heaven ; but engulfed, when it rages
in the storm of passion, or fixed in stiff death, when
its flow is stopped by the winter of an Arctic intellect.
We do not simply learn from experience what we are to
think ; but we carry into experience feelings and pre-
conceptions by which we read and interpret experience.
Faith is the natural hypothesis of a pure and good
heart, whence it looks on the face of nature and of life,
and deciphers and welcomes their diviner lineaments.
Want of faith is the hypothesis of a low and unaspiring
heart, which feels the presumption to be against what-
ever is high and glorious, and gives the benefit of every
doubt to the side of the fiat and mean. In some men
there is surely a visible openness of impression to what
is excellent and noble in character, — a readiness to
believe in goodness, — a willingness to take for granted
that all is right till proof arises of something wrong, —
a manifest assurance that at the bottom of all things
lie the foundations of eternal truth and holiness, so
that whatever is faithfully and lovingly done has God
and nature, and therefore hope and promise on its side.

92 The Moral Quality of Faith.

This presumption in favour of all beauty and sanctity
in human life, and in the universe, is faith. It has a
moral character, because it implies a personal know-
ledge of the higher principles and affections of our
nature as able to rule the lower: they have been
listened to as oracles : they have vindicated themselves
as realities : they have submitted to no fatal insult,
but have kept upon their lawful throne. No man
can believe in a rule over creation which is powerless
over himself ; or see in other souls a goodness traceless
in his own.

We readily acknowledge this moral character of faith
in our relations with one another. You come for the
first time into intercourse with a stranger. There is a
clear confiding light in his eye, and a free sit in his
features, and a frank flow in his speech, which make
you feel in a moment that you are not watched, but
trusted ; that you have no part to play, no cautions to
adopt, no prejudices to evade, but simply to lie open
as you are, and be believed. You are introduced to
another man, more studiously gracious perhaps than
the former : but the smile upon his face is not alive ;
his laugh has not the sincere ring of the vibrating
soul ; his eye seems to carry his attention beyond what
you are saying to yourself; his words, with all their
smooth flow, reveal his thoughts and nature as little as
a protocol. If you admire anything, you feel that you
amuse him like a fresh child ; and if you are indignant

The Moral Quality of Faith. 9"

o

at some wrong, you see that his response is a flash of the
lips without any charge within the heart. You stand
before the unfaith of the critic, not with the sympathy
of the man ; and you know what to expect, if you say
a thing too foolish or too wise. Each of these men
comes into your society with an hypothesis lurking in his
heart, — the one of trust, — the other, of distrust : these
are no conclusions from evidence, no deliberate opinions,
but the mere predispositions of their own nature.
Moreover, when the acquaintance has ripened and you
have given them real grounds for positively judging
you, the same indications on your part will produce
a different effect upon them : be the signs of character
what they may, they will prove different things to the
two men ; of whom one will be the first to believe the
evil, the other to believe the good ; the one finds food
for the appetite of derision where the other makes
occasion for love and approbation. "We cannot say that
there are no opinions formed by men of one another,
in a true judicial spirit : but certainly the vast majority
of such judgments are mere self-revelations showing
the native affinities of soul which experience is used to
justify and confirm. The avidity for detraction springs,
I believe, as often from want of faith as from want of
charity. There are some unhappy beings, whose life
is a long wasting with the canker of jealousy; who
have an exhaustless store of suspicions ever circulating
among their friends ; on whom innocent words fall with

94 The Moral Quality of Faith.

a sting and are returned to you with poisoned point;
who toss ever upon the fevered bed of scorn, and
fall only into troubled dreams, and find no Saviour
to take them by the hand, and bid them rise to the
light of love and rest. Had they "faith as a grain of
mustard seed," they could say to this mountain of
oppression on the breast, "Be thou removed, and be
thou cast into the sea," and it would be done ! But,
with them, the presumption is always in favour of the
dark and evil : that is the ground colour of the universe
to them ; all else is but a phenomenal play above the
surface, — a fair and evanescent show that has no
perennial root, and which the season's sunshine fades
away. And so a brooding night is ever throwing up
its black waves again to swallow the blessed islands
that had begun to be verdant in the heart. No doubt,
this temper constitutes in itself a violation of charity :
indeed the three Christian graces of Faith, Hope, and
Charity, perish in it hand in hand : but Faith, I
believe, is often the first to die ; and then the others
say, "Let us also go and die with her." Indeed a
vital sympathy binds these graces together in the soul ;
and where one is wounded or in bonds, the faintness or
constraint will reach them all.

There is indeed a certain temper, often usurping the
name of Charity, which springs, not from faith, but from
the utter want of it ; — an easy laxity, a good-natured
indulgence towards the sinfulness of men, arising from

The Moral Quality of Faith. 95

mere dim-sightedness as to its reality ; a smiling com-
placency to which character is indifferent, provided
enjoyment and good fellowship are unimpeded ; a sun-
shine of mere animal cheerfulness, dry and constant
and tedious as the staring summer's noon, that has no
tearful lights, no hiding-place of majesty and storm, no
bursts of moistened glory tracing a penitential way from
some green spot of earth to the veiled yet reopened
purity of the sky. There are those who talk patron-
isingly of forgiving human sin, as if it were theirs to
deal with as they liked, — as if it were a personal affront
to them, about which they might exercise their mag-
nanimity at will ; as if there were no God of awful
holiness, in whose presence and before whose law the
guilty and the guiltless stand, and with whose pity or
whose frown it is not ours to play. The spurious charity
that is simply tolerant of moral deformity, because
untouched by aspiration towards moral perfection, is an
odious burlesque of the pure Christian grace. The
true charity is not that which thinks lightly of evil, but
that which is slow to believe in it; whose presump-
tions are ever those of a trustful and holy heart ; and
which, even when a brother's guilt is indisputably clear,
thinks, amid its shock and grief, that he has fallen from
his real nature, and cannot be at peace with himself, —
that there must be a better soul behind, where God's
long-suffering solicitation may find a hearing yet ; and
that any how, through whatever suffering and discipline,

g 6 The Moral Quality of Faith.

the right ways of heaven, the everlasting sanctities,
must triumph in the end. And so it is, that without
faith there can be no charity.

When we pass from the domain of human relations
into that of the Divine, we shall inevitably carry our
habitual temper into the survey, and our faith or unfaith
will be still suffused with a moral colouring. I do not
say that no other causes than the predisposition of our
affections operate in determining religious belief, so that
we can at all justly infer the character from the creed.
Among men of equal excellence and similar cast of
feeling there are doubtless purely intellectual varieties
of conviction : and we should go fatally wrong in our
estimate of others, did we form it by the narrow rule
of agreement with ourselves. But in measuring the
solidity of our own thoughts on Divine things we should
be strangely self-ignorant, did we not allow for the mood
in which they visit us and take their shape, and place
more or less of confidence in them according as the
moral atmosphere is large and lustrous within us, or
contracted by mists of fear and dull with dejection of
heart. And to suppose that the test which holds for
ourselves has no application beyond would be to ignore
the plainest phenomena of life : for what fact is more
evident than that men's views of the unseen as of the
seen world, are, for the most part, less expressive of
their range of knowledge than of their tone of senti-
ment, and, even when affecting to be intellectual con-

The Moral Quality of Faith. 97

elusions, betray the marks of moral assumptions. It is
the mere pedantry of liberalism, to treat all the humours
of religion and no-religion as so many differing philo-
sophies, and to insist that our sympathies shall hold
towards them a bearing of impartial indifference. Legal
equality they must assuredly have ; but, secure in this,
they must remain exposed to the free play of love and
aversion which flows around all the indications of human
affection and will.

We are not spontaneously drawn to one who is always
suspecting his friends, and who deems it so natural a
thing for them to wrong and hurt him, that he imagines
it on hints the most inadequate. When his mistrustful
eye is lifted beyond the immediate circle and looks into
the invisible world, do you expect its expression instantly
to change and become sweet and childlike before God ?
It cannot be ! the habit of unrestful vigilance, of court-
ing the dark corners of possibility, of giving the benefit
of every doubt to the worse alternative, will still assert
itself, and expose him to misgivings of Providence, and
an exigent demeanour towards heaven. The Cynic in
society becomes the Pessimist in religion. The large
embrace of sympathy which fails him as interpreter of
human life, will no less be wanting when he reads the
meaning of the universe. The harmony of the great
whole escapes him in his hunt for little discords here
and there. He is blind to the august balance of nature,
in his preoccupation with some creaking show of defect.

H

98 The Moral Quality of Faith.

He misses the comprehensive march of advancing pur-
pose, because while he himself is in it, he has found,
some halting member that seems to lag behind. Ho
picks holes in the universal order ; he winds through its
tracks as a detective ; and makes scandals of all that is
not to his mind. He trusts nothing that he cannot see ;
and he sees chiefly the exceptional, the dubious, the
harsh. The glory of the midnight heavens affects him
not, for thinking of a shattered planet or the uninhabitable
moon. He makes more of the flood which sweeps the
crop away, than of the perpetual river that feeds it year
by year. For him the purple bloom upon the hills,
peering through the young green woods, does but dress
up a stony desert with deceitful beauty ; and in the
new birth of summer, he cannot yield himself to the
exuberance of glad existence for wonder why insects
tease and nettles sting. Nothing is so fair, nothing so
imposing, as to beguile him into faith and hope : as
the language of men is " for the concealment of
thought," so the professions of nature are to be read in
reverse ; so that in every promise he sees its breach ; in
every inspiration, its collapse ; in every life, its death.
On the soft cheek and clear eye and springing limbs of
the infant he gazes in the spirit of a pathologist, to ask
himself which of them will soonest rot away ; and the
jubilant throng of playing schoolboys suggests to him
the forecast of sad fates, from broken strength and
sickened hearts, or faded innocence. In all this melan-

The Moral Quality of Faith. 99

choly view there may still remain a tinge of humane
regret, and the scepticism may hang compassionately
round others without a tone of personal complaint. But
in selfish minds the same temper takes a meaner turn,
and resorts to the pettiest reasons for the most deso-
lating thoughts : "If God were good why should I
be born with a club-foot? if the world were justly
governed, how could my merits be so long overlooked?"
It is not often that this moral defect of faith works
itself out into such full-formed type. But the germ of
it lurks in us all, and puts forth its tendency at least in
transient moods, when the vision is dim and the heart
is low. In flat and heavy hours, the tones of conscience
are so muffled that, by not listening, we can miss them,
and can say of the Holy Spirit, " it is nought." Amid
the tragedies of life, in the haste of sudden grief or the
crises of appalling suspense, the quick and vehement
waves of passion that sweep within us break angrily
against the steadfast sternness of nature ; we resent its
silence, we deprecate its periodicity, we are in despair
at its calmness, and say "it is the face of the blind : "
we forget the long years quickened by the felt life and
love of God, and the high moments kindled by his
freshest inspiration ; for it is strange and sad how
small and brief a darkness may quench for us an
everlasting Sun. The healthy mind has no deeper
assurance, none closer to the very springs of its energy,
than that it is entrusted with itself, able to rise with

H 2

ioo The Moral Quality of Faith.

wing that strengthens in the flight, or to drop into
unfathomable fall. But when the moral nerve relaxes
and life is looked at more than lived, sickly subtleties
invade us, and, fitting us into the universal mechan-
ism, oppress us with the ancient nightmare of fate.
Has the time come when some dear saintly soul
vanishes from our side, and leaves us to our lonely
path ? — As we think of all his noble and lovely ways,
the realised heights, the ever-growing depths of his
nature, nothing seems more natural and sure than his
migration into a sanctity of larger and immortal scope.
But if, holding the vigils of death till we are faint
and numb, we cease to listen to our love and let go
the visions of our memory, and surrender our weakness
to the waxen look and cold touch of those shrunk
features ; if in imagination we are dragged along the
physiological history because easy to conceive, and
baffled by the spiritual, because it has no pictures to
help it ; and if thus we permit ourselves to dwell on
the unanswerable problems of so transcendent a hope ;
it wavers from too sharp a contrast with the present
darkness, and fades from sight by very immensity of
glory. In all these experiences, we blindly yield to
material pressures, and sink always from the native
faiths of our higher mind; we go over, not to more
valid evidence, but only to meaner suspicions ; and are
like one who is ready, in unhappy mood, to forego a
lifelong confidence in the first of friends and give heed

The Moral Quality of Faith. 101

against him to some paltry calumny. It is an offence,
not less against the calmness of Reason than the
constancy of love, to be thus haunted by the visions
of an untrustful mind, and, like some poor sleep-
walker, be led by ghosts of fear over marsh and moor
till the home of rest is lost. Be it ours, in all things
human and divine, to keep the good heart of faith ;
and as we accept the clearness of a brother's face and
the simplicity of his word and the freedom of his
affection, so to throw ourselves open to the expression
of God's life and love, in the beauty of the world, in
the law of conscience, in the ample range of thought
and aspiration, and in the promises, already pressing to
fulfilment, of saints and prophets. It is never a good
sign, be it remembered, when doubts beset us founded
on no better reason than that the thing in question is
" too good to be true." The suggestion, we may then
be sure, is not from our best and noblest mind ; and
should be dealt with, less as an honest plea, than as a
low temptation, and swept away as an ungenial mist,
by a breath of fresh affection, clearing the stars again.
There can be no pure intellectual eye for heavenly
truth, till this meaner order of moral suspicions is
dismissed with the quick and resolute prayer " Lord, I
believe, help thou mine unbelief! "

VIII.

1 John i. 8, 9.

"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is
not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us
our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

Theee are two extreme tendencies in human senti-
ment respecting God, from which a devout and
thoughtful heart shrinks with equal repugnance ;
a religion which begins with fear, and a religion
that ends without it. On the one hand is the
passionate faith of remorse, which throws the
shade of its own despair upon the universe of God ;
lies prostrate in the dark cell of alienation ; and
declares that, if no mediator interpose, there is no
hope or respite from the curse of inexorable Law.
On the other is the creed of lenient good nature,
which spreads the light of its mild indifference over
all things ; considers the sins of men as chiefly venial
frailties ; is pleased with its own tolerance ; and trusts
that Heaven will overlook what it must have foreseen

Divine Justice and Pardon Reconciled. 1 03

and did not think worth while to prevent. The former
places us under a rule so pure, that the faintest guilt
appears before it as something infinite ; and beneath
a law so strict, that the word it speaks can never be
recalled. The latter represents the Sovereign Judge as
measuring sin rather by the standard of our weakness
than of his own true perception, — as full of tender
allowance for a tempted nature, — as holding out to our
aim an ideal which he does not really expect us to
reach, — and as leaving it to be understood, that if there
be only some decent approach towards his standard, he
would be glad of a pretext for avoiding painful severities.
The former would deserve the praise of moral loftiness,
were it not used as a mere prelude to a doctrine of
atonement offensive to every sentiment of right. The
latter might boast of vindicating the divine clemency,
but for making free with it on somewhat easy and
sinful terms. Indeed, by a singular inconsistency, the
former overstrains the law of conscience in order to
prove it impracticable and get rid of it : the latter too
amiably relaxes it, in order to retain its force. The
system which most depreciates morality starts with the
sternest view of duty ; and that which is most exclu-
sively moral begins with frittering obligation away.

Think what it is to affirm, that amendment only is
needful to forgiveness, and that from penitent sin the
punishments of God are freely withdrawn. Does the
guilt then go for nothing with him, and are his

1 04 Divine Justice and Pardon Reconciled.

penalties an empty threat ? May his law be violated,
his oracle of conscience insulted, his expostulating
spirit quenched, with impunity, provided only this does
not run on to the end ? Does he treat his children
entirely according to their present temper, and make no
difference for their previous unfaithfulness ? Then it
is quite false that he " rewards every man according to
his works " : he puts on the same footing the old
offender and the young saint : he thinks nothing of the
hugest amount of wickedness, once thrust into the
past : his word, so solemnly given against it, is all
recalled, and its warning was never more than a pious
fraud, like the nursemaid's threat to give the refractory
child to the black man. Everything veracious, every-
thing august, everything holy vanishes from a govern-
ment thus pretending to inflexible rules yet surrendering
all to the pressure of the moment.

And yet, it seems equally difficult to maintain as to
deny the strict veracity of the Divine warnings and
promises. Is the presage of the guilty mind literally
true, and does every sin find us exactly out, and pay us
just our due ? Is the word of Heaven, that is gone
forth against the wilful, never made void, and precisely
"as a man soweth so also must he reap " ? Alas !
then, what hope remains for us? for then is there
" no place for repentance " though we " seek it care-
fully with tears." If the accounts of justice are strictly
kept ; if their balance is carried forward from page to

Divine Justice and Pardon Reconciled. 105

page ; if it is impossible for us ever to overpay, and
certain that we are always falling short ; what can
prevent the reckoning from being ever worse, and our
existence from being burdened and borne down by an
everlasting debt ? The past breathes despair upon the
present, and sends its icy wind on every fresh and
blossoming growth within the heart. Could we but
throw off the weary nightmare beneath which we feebly
gasp, could we spring up and start anew, the forces of
the soul are not yet broken, but are young and hope-
ful still : only, while chained to this mortal weight,
they lie as if crushed and dead. We cannot stir till
we are pardoned ; yet cannot be pardoned till we stir.
Thus, if there be forgiveness with God, it cannot but
loosen the tie between conduct and its consequences ;
or, if that tie be strict, there can be no forgiveness.

There is no more serious dilemma presented by
human faith than this; nor any more productive of
looseness and confusion in the soul. Minds not much
in earnest about their moral and spiritual life may not
feel it or may suppose it a mere nicety of theory ; for
it is not the character of such minds to demand any
unity or consistency in their religion : they are content
with a plain truth here, and a good rule there, a little
that is pretty sure to be right, and a great deal that
can hardly be wrong : but taking up each in turn as an
external thing, and finding for none a vital root within
the soul, they are unconscious of incoherencies and

106 Divine Justice and Pardon Reconciled.

contradictions by which many a loving heart would bo
torn to pieces. These easy believers cheerfully worship
the good-natured God, and deny all difficulties. But to
whomsoever the human surface of things has opened
and shown the divine ; to whomsoever mere wrong has
deepened into sin and regret into remorse ; whoever has
found the need of forgiveness to be a want more real
and urgent than that of daily bread ; whoever cannot
be off and on with his Maker, as in the play of taste
and mood, but must see himself an outcast or be
reconciled ; whoever, in short, lives instead of dreams ;
— he well knows, that this perplexity is speculative
only to those whose religion is not practical ; and that
to the daily task of service, the hourly spirit of peace,
nothing is more needful than a clear and uncontradicted
light of divine forgiveness.

The truth is, it is a hard thing for our narrow mind
to take in the infinite harmony of Divine perfection.
Our conscience and our affections make incompatible
demands on God. We require for our support that he
be faithful ; we look, for our comfort's sake, that he be
tender too. Certainly, if we are to trust in his holi-
ness, there must be a law sure and universal, that binds
together guilt and punishment ; a law without excep-
tion to its grasp, without swerving in its execution.
It is to reveal this law that the misgivings of conscience
shake us with their awful voice ; that spectral shadows
flit across the heart of guilty gaiety ; that boldness

Divine Justice and Pardon Reconciled. 107

before the sin sinks into abjectness after it ; that, in
proportion as we lose our moral count, and the skein
of life, wound no longer smoothly off, is ravelled into a
broken and tangled waste, we rush into vain distractions
to quell the fever of our secret misery, and yet find no
peace. To assure us of this law it is, that our only
rest is found in true simplicity ; that under the clouds
of evil passion the mind is tossed and heaves in storm,
but under the heaven of pure affections, lies calm as
the summer sea ; that, till the stubbornness of pride
gives way, there is no quiet in the soul, no smoothness
on the brow, but only furrows of ever-deepening care ;
that the stiff Will of self, so rigid to resist, proves
feeble to achieve, and gets no power, save to fret itself
and others, till it is melted by some noble inner love,
and flows down into the moulds of a divine obedience.
It is an ineradicable faith, that every tendency to dis-
turbance and disorder follows the direction of human
guilt ; and that every approach to repose is on the path
of human faithfulness. No shade of doubt is to be
cast upon this faith ; it is as much our primitive,
instinctive guidance, as our expectation of the future
from the past. As, for purposes of knowledge, it is
appointed us to believe that the sun which has risen
today will rise tomorrow ; so, for the ends of duty, it
is given us to feel that sin has a bitter fruit to ripen,
and that having sown the wind, we shall reap the whirl-
wind. This is the corner-stone of our whole structure of

108 Divine Justice and Pardon Reconciled.

confidence in the moral government of God. Without
it every lost battle of justice would appear irretrievable,
every truth, eclipsed for the moment, would seem as if
quenched for ever ; and the hope which has supported
injured goodness in every age, which has taken away
the edge of suffering and the terrors of death, — the
assurance that God and time are on the side of right
and will put its persecutors to shame, would be at once
the highest sublimity, yet the vainest reliance of our
world. If anywhere in this universe it were discovered
that the law of cause and effect did not universally
hold, that the conditions under which physical phe-
nomena occurred were not steady, that the supposed
connections of events were broken, and the signs of
their coming which were noted on one day could not
serve for another; this would be the death-blow to
human science, — a proclamation that creation had run
wild, — that nature, relapsing into chaos, was knowable
no more. Not less true is it, that if, anywhere upon
the track of time, one sin were found to have escaped
its menaced punishment, if the rule were seen to waver
and relent which joins suffering to the faithless will
as its inseparable shadow, if ever He who " sets the
poor with princes " were to set the wicked with his
saints ; this would be the death-blow to all moral
faith, — a declaration that the foundations of life were
crumbling beneath our feet, — a premonition of universal
dissolution. As reason cannot move without pre-

Divine Justice and Pardon Reconciled. 109

suniing on the uniformity of nature ; so must conscience
rely on the unchangeableness of Law ; and can worship
only a God pledged never to treat those who have been
guilty like those who have not.

And yet, if this be all, the truth is more terrible
than we can bear, and God severer than we can love.
Does he then judge always by the past, and shut the
door conclusively on the moments as they go, so that
the touch of the present, and the cry of its entreaties
can reach them no more ? Is there no meaning in the
prayer " Blot out my transgressions, and remember not
my sins " ? no divine truth in that saying, " Her sins,
which are many, are forgiven ; for she loved much " ?
Did it make no difference to Peter, that a look recalled
him, and he went out and wept bitterly ? Whence
then the "joy in heaven over the sinner that re-
penteth " ? If compassion be impossible to God, it is
strange that he has implanted any in us ; for he has
more reason to pity us, than we can have to pity one
another; — we, gazing in the face of an equal and a
brother; he, looking from his serene Almightiness
down upon our nature, tempted, sorrowing, struggling,
dying. No, it is as much a part of perfection to
receive the penitent as to reprove the sin ; unless the
noblest impulse of the human soul seeks vainly for its
image and prototype in him. Indeed it is matter of
experience that contrition, with all its sadness, is not
without its answer of relief. At first, no doubt,

no Divine Justice and Pardon Reconciled.

transgression drives us from before his face, and we
wander in awful solitudes like Cain. But the banish-
ment is too dreary to be borne. We are first stopped
in our flight to sit down and think upon our shame ;
and then are drawn to steal back, and doubtfully seek
the old neighbourhood again ; and its dear looks smite
us to the heart, till we lift up our voice and weep
aloud, saying ' If perchance the Lord would look upon
our tears ' ; and at length we hint our prayer no more,
but catch his very eye, and say ' Lord put me to grief,
but cast me not off : not from thine absence, but from
thy hand, let me receive thy chastisement : let me be
stricken, but bear with me here : thy darkest frown is
better to my soul than the dry light upon the wilder-
ness of exile.' And with this self- surrender there
comes an unexpected peace, so sad and solemn that
surely it is the response of God ; and must be accepted
as a token that, truly, " the contrite heart he does not
despise." If therefore, on the one hand, he cannot
treat penitent sin as if it were innocence, so neither, on
the other, can he treat it like impenitence : and the
present temper reflects back some light upon the past
transgression.

But how, alas, you will still say, can these things
both be ? how can God at once swerve no hair's-
breadth from his threatened punishment ; and yet be
ever ready to forgive ? Rightly to understand this, we
must mark the distinction between his interior nature

Divine Justice and Pardon Reconciled. 1 1 1

and his external government, between what he is in
himself and what he has written out and proclaimed in
the legislation of this universe. Not all that dwells
in his thought and lives in his heart has he put forth ;
and vast as is the field, and sublime the record, of
creation ; solemn as we find the path of life, and awful
the insight of the conscience ; these are but a part of
his ways ; and there is yet a hiding-place of his
thunder that none can understand. Everything in him
is infinite ; and all the splendour of his revelation in
the old earth and in the older sky, and on the heart of
humanity, and even in the unique life of the Man of
sorrows, are but a few front lines of light, streaking
the surface of immensity. He says to us much ; but
he is silent more : his law is open and remains ; his
Spirit that made it abides behind, and is committed to
nothing save by its own nature to all that is beautiful
and perfect. Thus, his infinite disapprobation of sin
has not all found utterance : part is expressed, and part
reserved. The former is embodied in the moral law
and stamped into our moral nature : it is written on
the agitated brow of passion and gleams from the eyes
of guilty men t it is heard in the sighs of the broksn
will, in the plaint of purifying sorrow and the sweet
hymns of souls redeemed and peaceful. The latter is
not embodied at all : it is a free existence : no lines
define it, no bound encloses it : it is as the divine
colour of all truth and majesty without its form, with

1 1 2 Divine Justice and Pardon Reconciled.

hues ready to bathe all things but fixed on none.
Now, exactly corresponding to this division between the
legislated word and the secret thought of God, there is
a distinction in the guilt of man : part comes out in
action and part remains behind ; the one fixing itself
in ineffaceable characters in the realm of nature ; the
other diffusing a taint of degradation through the
secret soul. Here too, the element which pushes itself
into expression is finite : it is an overt and determinate
offence, bringing nameable mischiefs, and inflicting
visible and calculable wrongs : but the evil spirit which
has shot out this curse is something infinite, and is
conscious, if ever its vision becomes true, of a vileness
that has no bounds, a sinfulness which no definition
can enclose. Both lie exposed to God's holy disap-
probation : the act however to his expressed displeasure
and purpose of retribution : the deformed mind to his
reserved abhorrence. With respect to the perpetrated
volition he has irrevocably committed himself: his
veracity is pledged to go on : his word has gone forth,
which binds together guilt and pain, and it cannot
return unto him void. Not one consequence which he
has annexed to wrong-doing will fail to appear with
relentless punctuality : no miracle will interpose to
conduct away the lightning of retribution. "Within
that realm of law and nature, he is inexorable, and
has put the freedom of pity quite away ; and as the
Atlantic storm turns not aside to avoid the ship where

Divine Justice and Pardon Reconciled. 1 1 3

sanctity or genius are afloat, so neither does the
tempest of justice falter and pause to spare the head
uplifted in repentant prayer. But it is otherwise with
respect to the soul and person of the sinner himself :
the sentiments of God towards him are not bound :
and if, while the deed of the past is an irrevocable
transgression, the temper of the present is one of
surrender and return, there is nothing to sustain the
Divine aversion or hinder the outflow of infinite pity.
Free as our soul is to come back and cry at the gate ;
so free is He to open and fold us gently to his heart
again. Weak indeed from the waste of all our
strength, lame with our many wounds, in peril from
our dim sight, and pain from treasured agonies, we
must still be ; and God can only say ' My poor child,
I cannot help thee here : this burden must thou carry
to its end.' But still the penitent lives no outcast
life : the light of reconciliation is upon him : he suffers
and is very faint, and often his heavy cross weighs him
to the earth : but he can bear the scourge of nature,
now that he is withered by no scorching look of God.
Wrestling with the Almighty no longer, he can move
on upon his journey with a cheerful heart, though ever
after halting on his staff. And so ceases the contradiction
between the exactitude of Justice and the tenderness of
Pity ; and we may say with understanding heart " If
we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us
our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

1

IX.

60b JJriwaiebr nnta §afos.

Luke x. 21.

" In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit and said, I thank thee, 0
Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from
the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes ; even so,
Father ; for so it seemed good in thy sight. "

That the sage should miss what the infant can see
seems at first but little possible, and still less a subject
of thankfulness. It would appear to discourage the
highest attributes of our nature, to throw contempt on
the patience of thought, and cruelly to visit the prayer
for light with the deeper darkness. Can it be that the
more pains we take to know, the less will the truth be
found ; that the rich and practised mind is at a dis-
advantage compared with the inexperienced and empty ?
And if so, why exult in the frustration of the noblest
of human aims, and the confiscation of the prize to
those who have no aim at all ? Many a zealot, baffled
by the acumen or indifference of more polished minds,
has found in these words consolation for his own igno-

God Revealed unto Babes. 115

ranee and the rudeness of his followers ; as also in the
similar words of Paul, " Ye see your calling, brethren,
how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many
mighty, not many noble, are called ; but God hath
chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the
wise, and the weak things of the world to confound the
things that are mighty; and the base things of the
world, and the things that are despised hath God
chosen, yea, and things that are not, to bring to nought
things that are ; that no flesh should glory in his
presence." Tertullian, for example, dwells with a
savage satisfaction on the supposed exclusion from the
kingdom of God of whatever we hold fair and great in
the old heathen world and richest for the adornment
of all time ; and exults in peopling it with hordes of
triumphant barbarians like himself. Is this the spirit
of Christ's thanksgiving ? Are we required, out of
sympathy with it, to believe Socrates an outcast and
clap our hands as he vanishes from hope ? to stifle our
reverence for yEschylus and Plato, — for the Scipios and
Antonines, — and declare God's preference for mendicant
monks and illiterate missionaries ? Must we condemn,
as secular and carnal, our own natural admiration for
the gifts of wisdom, — the disciplined powers, the large
and supple thought, the balanced feeling, the accurate
expression, of a well-cultured nature, — and force our-
selves into harmony of taste with the raw religion of un-
mellowed sectaries, — their loud voice, their rude speech,

1 2

1 1 6 God Revealed unto Babes.

their narrow zeal, their tumultuous inspirations ? Far
from it. It is not intellect from which God hides him-
self, but selfishness and pride ; which may belong alike
to taught and untaught, and darken the soul of sophist
or of clown. The words of Christ no doubt imply that
knowledge of other things may co-exist with blindness
as to that which is divine ; and the apprehension of
divine truth with ignorance of other things. And how
it is, that the two kinds of discernment are separable,
without being incompatible, will be evident if we unfold
a little their difference of nature.

There is light both in the "babe" and in the
" wise " : but in the former it is wholly spontaneous;
in the latter it is chiefly derivative. In its infancy, the
soul simply apprehends what is given it to perceive ;
lies confidingly on the bosom of nature and lets the
morning beams come into the full and wondering eyes ;
does not read off by skilful signs the absent and the
future, but mingles with the present and takes it in ;
starts no doubts, is entangled in no reflections, but lives
straight out of the unquestioned instincts of the hour.
Later on, this impulsive freshness is all changed.
Second-hand information is added to the first : the
order of events and the classification of objects are
registered : much that is invisible is ascertained by
analogy, and that is yet to come predicted by laws of
succession ; and by well organized combinations of
thought new deductions arise, new possibilities disclose

God Revealed unto Babes. 1 1 7

themselves, new courses of imagination are open, that
withdraw us ever further from the primitive sources,
and make us forget, in the fertile plains and park-
landscapes of our migration, the lonely uplands of our
birth. We have reached so much by circuitous paths
and mediate contrivance, that the early starting-point
and assumed base of all our mental reckoning has been
lost : we no longer know the simple from the complex,
the artificial from the natural in thought : we use the
tissue which we have woven to dispute the fibre of
which it is made; and follow down the streams of
reasoning, exploring as we go, in hope of truths that
all the while lie far up at the fountain head. It is
this loss of the habit of natural trust, this tendency
to anxious quest of something distant instead of pure
repose on what is here, that, according to Christ's
prayer, hides God from the " wise and prudent." And,
conversely, it is the surrender to spontaneous light and
love, the simple passing out upon it into life, without
doubt of its guidance or scrutiny of its claims, that
reveals him unto " babes."

How profoundly true this is, — that in divine things
the little child may know what the great philosopher
may miss, — will appear if you only think what God
is, and whether he is likely to be discovered on any
explorer's track or by any artifice of calculation. Two
things science enables us to do, from which all its
triumphs spring. It shows us how to put the parts

1 1 8 God Revealed tcnto Babes.

and products of nature into true classes; and it
qualifies us to foresee phenomena else unsuspected.
But God is neither a being to be classified, nor a
phenomenon to be foreseen. Such procedures of the
mind are quite inapplicable, except to the finite and
the transient ; and he who goes forth upon them may
find whatever begins to be, but not that which for ever
is; may rightly dispose of this and that, but never
meet the All in All. As well might you attempt to
put space under your microscope, or weigh gravitation
in your scales. If you believe that God exists, and
understand your words when you call him " infinite "
and " eternal," you cannot expect to find him as one
object among many, but as a Spirit in all; the living
reality of all appearance ; the firmament of thought
that holds the stars ; the omnipresent deep that throws
up the tides of history and the ripplings of private care ;
the sole power of the universe without ; the archetype
of the free soul within ; and the secret source of the
meaning that dwells in everything. Were he at all
away, we might step forth to seek him ; did he ever
slumber, we might watch for the date of his waking
times. But living for ever in us and around us, he
does not enable us to compare his presence with his
absence : if we miss him, it is from his perpetuity and
nearness ; if we meet him, it is not by feeling after
him abroad, but by dropping inwards and returning
home. The differences by which he is revealed are in

God Revealed unto Babes. 1 1 9

us and not in him ; in our faculty of recognition, by no
means in his constancy of action. His light is alive
in the very hearts that neglect or deny him ; and in
those that most own him is latent a thousand times
for once that it flashes on their conscious eye. But
there are moments when the beauty of the universe
looks in at us with a meaning quite divine ; or the
crises of history shake us as the visible drama of
Providence ; or the eye of appealing misery burns into
the place of pity in our souls and we know it to be his
sympathy as well as ours-, or a new insight of duty
opens a path which he alone could show. In these
instances, we strain no ingenuity to discover him ; it is
he who comes to us and finds us ; his presence rises
of itself, and the revelation is spontaneous. Our sole
concern is to accept it, to revere it, to follow it, to live
by it.

Thus the true attitude of the devout mind always
involves a certain quietism and self-relinquishment.
Instead of pressing curiously forward, it sinks in medi-
tation back, rests upon the moment as divine, and feels
the very pavement beneath its feet as holy. It has
neither any distance to go, nor any time to wait, in
order to close in with the Spirit of God ; only to own
and trust him now and here, — to pass into his hand
with simple faith, a disarmed and unreluctant captive
to his will. To look at the Christian conflict from with-
out, you might suppose that it was achieved by lashing

120 God Revealed unto Babes.

the soul to intense volition, by an ever-hasting never-
resting agility, by breathless eagerness to mount the
height. An energy so great seems to strain all the
powers of Resolve : a victory so arduous over ease and
passion has in it a royal air of mastery : an aspiration
so lofty appears to set the eye on what is distant and
toil for it with determined vow. Yet, if you will look
within, you will find quite another mood of mind
from this ; not rigid purpose, but pliant affection ; not
kingly command, but docile submission ; not even any
passion for far-off excellence, but a willing heart for the
duty that is near. The spirit of highest heroism before
men stands as a little child before the face of God.
When the Christian lady, endowed with whatever is
choicest in the gifts of nature and the enrichments of
life, exchanges the cultivated home for the noisome
hospital, pledges the highest accomplishments to the
lowliest charities, carries gentle graces and clear faculty
into the presence and service of wounded and fevered
exiles, and lives only to see and do what few men, in
their strength and hardihood, would dare approach : we
ask ourselves with reverent wonder, how a resolution so
magnanimous could declare itself at all, and how sacri-
fice so costly can bear the constant drain. Perhaps the
struggle we imagine never has been there. Perhaps
the difficulty, the reluctance, the stern mustering of
conquering force, are all a dream. Perhaps there has
only been a simple yielding tip of self to the asking

God Revealed unto Babes. 121

look of God, a dropping of all resistance, an acquies-
cence in the moulding touch and pressure of the divine
will. The originality and greatness of such minds arise
not from prasternatural effort, but from unreserved sur-
render : they do not determine whither they will go,
but only say, ' Yes,' whithersoever they are led : they
do not fret to find the way or complain because they
cannot trace it far, but, hand in hand with an everlasting
Guide, set a foot of firm content on the next ground
that he may show. Hence the quietude and evenness
of all their ways, — a certain gentle and solitary air that
seems too mild to give out so much power, — a half-
mystic reserve whence strangely issues a rare organizing
and administrative faculty. For it is the great marvel
of the Christian character, that the completest self-
sacrifice gives the completest self-possession ; that only
the captive soul, which has flung her rights away, has
all her powers free ; and that simply to serve under the
instant orders of the living God, is the highest qualifi-
cation for command. This is the meaning of that great
saying of Cromwell's, " One never mounts so high as
when one knows not whither one is going " : a saying
which " the wise and prudent " scorned as a confession
of blindness, but which reveals to simpler minds the
deepest truth.

There are, in fact, two types of human greatness, —
the Pagan and the Christian, — the moral and the reli-
gious,— the secular and the divine. The former has its

122 God Revealed unto Babes.

root and essence in trying hard ; the latter, in trusting
gently : the one depends on voluntary energy ; the
other on relinquishment of personal tvill to cast every
burden upon God. The one chooses its own ends,
elaborates the means, attempts to see several moves
before it, and secures the unity of its course and cha-
racter by plan and vigilance ; the other, possessed by a
God-given end, becomes its organ and its implement,
and simply lets it use, from day to day, the entire powers
of the soul. On a nearer view, there is here, after all,
not so much an abnegation of will, as a return to its
primitive simplicity. The child, impelled towards some
object of his wish, — e.g. to run after a ball, to imitate
a phrase, to make a drawing of a horse, is wholly pre-
occupied with his conception, and never measures his
resources against it, or thinks of the chain of move-
ments that must lead from the idea to the accomplish-
ment. He lets the end find its own means ; and flings
himself upon the unconscious tentatives that carry him
to his goal without telling him his way. In such in-
stinctive execution of his remote aim there is ever the
grace and freedom of an inspiration. But when, in
order to frame it into an expertness, you draw back his
thought and fix it upon the process, and make him
count and register the steps, the flow of power will fail
him ; the feet will totter, the voice will hesitate, the
finger stiffen ; and the spontaneous faculty, lost by your
analysis of Nature, has to be doubtfully regained by

God Revealed unto Babes. 123

combinations of Art. Similarly, in the higher intuitions,
it is the unconditional surrender to an authoritative end,
with implicit trust in its command of means, that arms
them with a force serene and irresistible. Free from
every care, entangled in no web of calculation, the
thoughts gain an unanxious elasticity, and the life
derives unity from the singleness of spontaneous feeling
that pervades it all. Both these heroisms may be high
and noble : both may be untainted by mean passions
and unworthy aims : both have left their trace of glory
on human history. But the strenuous self-reliance
must yield the palm to the quietude of self-sacrifice
and the victory of faith. However intense the stimulus
which ambition or even conscience may give to the in-
tellect and will, it is not to be compared with the might
assumed by the faculties of their own accord, when
released from fear and care, and flung into the Almighty
hand to be wielded at his will. There is no instrument
so tremendous in this world as a human soul thus
committed to what is diviner than itself: it is as the
two-edged sword of the Spirit with the scabbard thrown
away; and wherever difficulties are to be cleft, and
fiends of evil to be cut down, there it will be foand,
flashing on the Providential field. Be it the saintly
woman, or be it the God-fearing Puritan, " None mount
so high as those who know not whither they go."

It is not then so difficult to understand how the most
wonderful Christian activity proceeds from the quietest

124 God Revealed unto Babes.

and most passive surrender. Equally true is it, that
the more you studiously attend to divine and infinite
things, instead of letting them attend to you, the less
are you likely to learn of them. Why pry about to find
the universal Light ? why wander through the dark to
meet the Night ? The Light is here and bathes you
all the while : the Night is around, and hides you in
its embrace. Drink-in the beauty of the hour : lie
open to its deepest hints and holiest meaning : be still,
and ask for purity of heart ; and the blank will fill, the
cloud will glow, with One who is often found of them
that seek him not. Those who in this matter prate
most about "progress " are just the people to make the
smallest way ; and none seem to win less knowledge of
sacred things than those who make a watchword of
" truth " and a parade of " free inquiry." This posture
and direction of the mind is false except for finite and
evanescent things, and must be dropped to begin the
life of faith. The Infinite is not hid in a corner ; or
locked among the treasures of the Vatican ; or lingering
among the antiquities of the first century ; or waiting
behind some future and undevised experiment, — that
we have any key to turn, any bar to remove, any choicest
instruments to invent ere he becomes accessible. Were
it so, were he at the end of some hard problem, the
mere prize of logical skill, what hope would there be
for the multitude of toiling men ? We sometimes hear
it said, by well-read people ; "If we, with all our ad-

God Revealed unto Babes. 125

vantages of mental training, find it so difficult to banish
doubt and realise the holy truths which we profess ; if
we are often obliged to have recourse to subtle reason-
ings and close reflection in order to clear up a perplexity
and shake off a misgiving, how can we expect from the
untaught poor anything but inapprehension and un-
belief?" Were religious faith the creation of dialectic
or the fruit of erudition, this despondency would be
just. But its source and place are far different. It is
rather the first root of life than the last blossom of
thought ; and is secured upon the native love and un-
sophisticated conscience which may lie torpid through
some wintry seasons of civilization, but can never die
within the soil of our humanity. To commune with
God, there is need of no subtle thought, no foreign
tongue, no newest philosophy : " the pure in heart shall
see " him ; and Fox and Bunyan can more truly make
him known, than " Masters of Sentences " and " Angelic
Doctors." It is not till we fall from the platform of
our natural trusts, that the wheels and pulleys of argu-
ment are plied to lift us back again ; and the artifices
of reason would never be needed but to meet and
balance the artifices of doubt. The dark spirits which
the restless intellect evokes, a brighter intellect alone
is able to disperse : but when it has cast them out, it
has but chastened its own work, and reinstated us in
natural health. Religion is born ere thought begins:
it is re-born, when thought is consummated and enters

126 God Revealed unto Babes.

into its glory. But meanwhile, as the familiar measures
and methods of intelligence are given for the finite order
of things, it is no wonder that they embarrass the
apprehension of the Infinite, and increase the difficulty
rather than the facility of faith. And so long as this
lower mind takes no counsel with the higher and
spiritual nature, and does not widen the horizon of its
view, it will be blind to what the other sees ; and our
mental advance will be marked by the alternation of an
ever-creeping shadow on divine things scattered by an
ever-answering light. In order to emerge from this
struggle of action and reaction, we need, not increase
of acuteness, so much as return to simplicity. The
supreme prerogative of cultivated Reason will then be
to reopen the native pieties of early love and trust ; and
the truly wise will see around them, in richer hues and
sublimer proportions, the heaven that lay around the
child. While the curious intellect tries this and tries
that, with an ever-shifting call of " Lo ! here," and
"Lo ! there," to the tender conscience and the unspoiled
mind the kingdom of God has already come.

X.

Psalm It. 19.
"Because they have no changes, therefore they fear not God."

To one who tries everything by the standard of enjoy-
ment, there arises a curious contradiction between the
inner nature and the outer lot of men. We are thrown
upon an existence where nothing is permanent, nothing
asleep. We bring into it a soul that sighs for repose,
that struggles with the restless tide, and ever hopes to
drift into the still waters, and He within the shelter of
the hills. Our life is planted on the surface of a
whirling sphere. Our prayer is to find its tranquil
centre and revolve no more. Not that we are passive
all the while, and borne along by powers wholly foreign
to ourselves. Strange to say, we are sharers in the
very stir and turmoil of which we complain. We
create the race which we say outstrips us and leaves
us faint. We fling our voice into the hum of human

128 The Messengers of Change.

history ; yet stop our ears, lest it should drive us mad.
It is not the mere lapsing seasons of the heavens and
the earth, not the passage of our physical life alone, by
which our remonstrance is called forth : but, not less,
the vicissitudes of society, the shifting attitudes of
thought and feeling, the evanescence of habits, institu-
tions, and beliefs ; processes, of which our own agency
is the producing cause, and in pleading against which
we are plaintiffs against our own will. Thus, we are at
variance with ourselves, as much as with our God ; and
are like wayward children, breaking their toys and then
weeping at the wreck which their own passion has made.
The yearning for rest is no doubt deeper and stronger
with the old than with the young, with the conservative
than with the reforming spirit. But it exists in all.
The very desire for progress is for the sake of some
fixed goal : the most burning aspiration hopes to sit
and look forth at last from the cool and freshening
height. The intensest action sustains itself on the
thought that it may soon subside : it loves not the
burden it is impelled to bear, but trusts ere long to
lay it down. "When the poet or the moralist touches
on the transiency of all earthly things and the per-
petual succession of fresh relations, it is always with
some sadness in the strain : as if he went forth to take
a tender farewell of the old, rather than to swell the
triumph of the new. And even the philosophy which
has brought itself to think that the universe is but an

The Messengers of Change. 129

eddy of eternal change, an ocean composed, all through
its depths, of crossing currents of phenomena, has
usually taught the doctrine either with a sorrow in the
voice, or in the metal tone of heartless arrogance. The
decree of vicissitude manifestly presses heavily upon
the soul : and whether it be the outward condition of
established comfort that crumbles beneath the feet ; or
the beliefs of earlier days that change like the morning
clouds before the kindling light ; or the affections that
have given a quiet sanctity to life, and are now called
to drop their objects one by one at the word of Death ;
the cry of the heart is still the same, " 0 that it
were with me now, as it was in the times never to
return ! "

This regretful glance at the fading colours of the
past, this longing to find rest from the ceaseless flow
of change, has two different meanings and tendencies :
one false and evil ; the other true and good. Its
impulse is false, when it leads us to the mere negative
resource of ease and exemption, instead of the positive
repose in God ; when we only cry to be let alone, that
our sleep be not disturbed too soon ; when we simply
shrink from the touch of new duties and new sorrows ;
when we are angry at the noble passion that urges us
to toil and danger, and repent of the love that brings
us grief. Its impulse is true, when it makes us, in our
quest of peace, go out beyond vicissitude, instead of
weaving a nest within it ; when it refers us to a centre

K

130 The Messengers of Change.

of stability, a spirit of Almighty constancy, a presence
of pure and infinite affection, amid and behind the
fluctuations of created things ; when, instead of return-
ing to our ark at the first spray of the cold flood, we
do but rise upon the wing to look through the upper
air, and then take our resolute track to the fixed and
illumined hills. The soul is faithless which, when it
is stung by severities and bowed by afflictions, tries to
choke its sympathies and bring a frost upon its mellow
seasons. It is not by reducing life to less, but by
expanding it to more ; not by muffling its stern tones,
but by ringing its sweetness clearly out, that a serene
harmony can be obtained. When duty is severe, we
must be more reverently dutiful ; if love brings sorrow,
we must love more and better ; when thought chills us
with doubt and fear, we must think again with fuller
soul and deeper trust.

The changeful lot which our lower instinct deprecates
is, in truth, the very discipline by which God would
draw us to himself. Kepugnant to our animal and
sentient nature, it kindles the diviner element to life.
There is none but God himself that can abide for ever
holy, for ever perfect, for ever wakeful, without any
experience of alternation. As for us, if we have no
changes, we fear him not. Our faculties of intellect
and feeling, our sense of beauty and of right, the
opening out of character and affection, are made de-
pendent on the stimulus of incessant change. The

The Messengers of Change. 131

passiveness of the infant's existence is overcome by a
thousand soliciting impressions; the light that fasci-
nates the eye ; the touch that puts a spring into the
limbs ; the ever-varying challenge of the mother's
looks, forcing the tender cheek into a smile. The
great apparatus of external nature, which would teach
us nothing if it and we were fixed, glides with transi-
tory images before the sight, and, ere we can sleep
before one scene, presents us with another. This is
indeed the very condition of all apprehension and in-
telligence. Dipped ever in the same scene, plunged
in one colour, filled with one monotone, no perception
would be startled into birth : the glance of attention
sleeps, till the moment of transition ; it leaps forth at
the edges of light and darkness, of sound and silence,
and in crossing the line first learns the realm on either
side. So long as life is young, a perpetual stream of
wonder pours on the mind and bathes it with exhaust-
less admirations : even were no lines of unexpected
order, no new regions of knowledge opened, the rapid
ripening of the faculties themselves would alter the
apparent lights on every scene, and dissolve the out-
lines of each prior experience. And in this training
of constant change there is a marvellous tendency to
drive us upon faith in the Unchangeable. Finite
things can be discerned only against the background
of the Infinite. The visible body that glides before the
eye is as an island in the Space that has no bounding

k 2

132 The Messengers of Change.

shore. The passing event that marks the moment is
but a point of contact where the curve of our being
meets the tangent of Eternity. No appearance emerges
and arrests our thought, without raising questions of
Causation, and speaking to us as from a hidden Mind
that meditates in beauty and speaks in law. To the
pure and unspoiled heart, all phenomena that present
no deformity, and all experience clear of sin, open a
way for the consciousness of God : gleams of him will
frequently break through ; and a certain tacit sense
of his reality and nearness will linger around even
common hours and daily tasks. Where the first
lessons of life, the first stirrings of the soul, are
hindered by no hardening and ungenial culture, its
features of earthly gladsomeness will have a certain
modest setting of heavenly reverence.

But the cycle of young experience soon completes
itself. At each return its repetitions become more and
more familiar. Change itself becomes customary, and
visits the mind with monotony rather than variety.
The spring seems to burst with a fainter verdure, and
the winter hearth to burn with a less vivid glow. The
morning-breeze of young enthusiasm, so fragrant of
the night, so fresh from heaven, grows drowsy with
the steady heat, and sinks to rest : and the mental
and moral life which had been nursed in vicissitude
threatens to perish under the opiate of usage. Not
that Providence abandons us in our maturity, or omits

The Messengers of Change. 133

to ply us with awakening appeals. No sooner has life
ceased to be a constant flow of novelty, than it enters
on a series of grand crises, which intersect its even
course : its current orbit has become as a beaten track :
but there are nodes it cannot pass without a spark
and thrill. When life-long ties are contracted, and the
green path is entered at one end at whose other the
death-shadow waits in ambush ; when first the home
of marriage is set in order ; when the child is born ;
when the parent dies ; when the friend deserts, or the
business fails, or the sickness prostrates ; the Angel of
Change looks in again through her veil of light, or
her curtain of shadows, and reminds us of Him who
abideth in the midst for ever. All these are epochs of
natural devotion ; and only the most insensible heart
can pass them with the neutral heedlessness of instinct,
and without any enriching hue of awe-ful thought.
The incidents of the great mortal drama are so pre-
pared as never to permit the interest to flag ; and even
in its quietest development, where the plot seems most
evenly to act itself out, we cannot be long without some
scene whose pathos touches us, or whose misery appals.
These times, moreover, are irregularly scattered on our
way, that they may the better surprise our insensibility,
and that we may not kill them by anticipation ere they
come. They are not like the steadily recurring hours
that announce the stated duty and find us mechanically
prepared. With whatever wonder we watch the dial-

134 The Messengers of Change.

plate of life, we cannot find them there. The deeper
crises are marked in invisible characters there, legible
only to the Omniscient eye ; and as the index traverses,
we know not what birth, what death, what sudden hope,
what blighted joy, lies just upon its touch. When these
hours strike, neither matin nor vesper has such a holy
sound : it is God himself that tolls us in to prayer,
and calls us to listen to his great Sermon on the
Mount ; and whether we are in the field or on the sea,
we must throw down the common implements of our
work, and go and stand before his face. As one crisis
after another is brought upon our lot, it gives us the
means of moral admeasurement and deeper self-know-
ledge : it reads off the reckoning of our spirits, and
tells us whether we more deeply live, or more begin
to die. Each newest sorrow revives the thought of
those before, and spreads out the past in tender
colours before the eye : the pictures of other years, the
scenes once pressed by our more elastic feet, the dear
forms that were with us there, and held us by the hand,
stand out in the clear and silent light : and their very
looks may tell us whether any grosser film has gathered
on our soul ; whether we can meet their calm and holy
face ; whether, as we are further from them in one
direction, we are nearer to them in another ; and
whether the same atmosphere of God seems to enfold
us both, and make us one with them and him. The
crises that reveal these things to our sight are a disci-

The Messengers of Change. 135

pline which, however grievous, we can ill spare ; and,
to those that give them worthy welcome, they leave a
trust nobler than security, and a wisdom better than
any joy. The men who most escape them, who most
completely realise the false elysium of an easy life ;
whose heritage saves them the rough battle with
difficulty, to win an honourable footing in the world ;
whose health is never shaken by disease, and whose
home is invaded by no anxiety ; are rarely those who
most penetrate to the moral significance of life, and
are alive with the quickest affection and the promptest
alacrity of conscience. Too often a sluggish cloud
gathers on their mind and hides from them the finest
expression, the divinest look, upon the features of
nature and humanity. All things fall tamely to their
lot as matters of course : the prizes for which others
spend all their manly strength, the decent and orna-
mental comfort, the provision for the sinking parent,
the education for the rising child, the store of books,
the fund for charity, the time for kindly deeds, the
place of influence in society ; all are theirs without a
thought, and, grown flat with usage, have none of the
rich flavour of hope and toil. Great is the danger that,
because they have no changes, they may cease to fear
or love. It is only by strong and noble effort to shake
off the slothful weeds as they creep over the surface of
such a life, and keep the margin clear by the running
waters of pure affection, that they can retain the native

136 The Messengers of Change.

clearness of the soul, and continue to reflect the gaze
of Heaven. What the natural history of the heart,
the quickening necessity, the subduing sorrow, accom-
plish for others, is left in their case to the strenuous
vow of their own will. It is one of the great compen-
sations which balance, more equally than men suppose,
the good and ill of human existence, that where there
is more affliction there is often more affection too : if
the burden is heavier to be borne, the soul is more
elastic to bear it ; and by many a sorrowing creature,
flushed with the inspiration of love, duties are thrown
profusely and spontaneously off, which the painful
struggles of unawakened ease could scarcely lift.

So completely is it the Providential plan to secure to
us the discipline of change, that, when we fall asleep
on the crust of usage, a fire is immediately kindled
beneath us, and we sleep on a volcano. Our very
inertia operates as an instrument to prepare for us new
crises that shall force us to spring to our feet once
more. Whatever be our appointed work, the first
moment of its neglect is the first moment of its decay ;
and where we cease to grow our corn, the poison plants
will cover all the ground. God has made nothing in
this world to keep — nothing, at least, that has a beauty,
and that bears a fruit ; death only and negation, de-
formity and barrenness, will flourish when let alone.
The individual mind, abandoned to negligence, watched
by no eye of conscience, bathed in no presence of God,

The Messengers of Change 137

exercised in no athletics of duty, loosens all its healthy
structure, and sinks into moral decline ; little, perhaps,
suspecting its own degeneracy, till surprised into some
awful degradation, and wakening into shame. No in-
stitution, no state, no church, will go on of itself and
hold its footing in the nature of things, while its
guardians and trustees are dozing on their watch.
There is ever a little speck of disease, a canker of evil
and falsehood, secreted in the substance of terrestrial
things, which is sure to spread, if you omit to wipe the
dust from their surface, and wash them with the waters
of purification. If you persist awhile in your unfaith-
fulness, you will be startled at length by the spasm of
a sudden agony ; and it will be well, if by repentant
efforts at renewal and the use of painful remedies, a
disastrous dissolution is staved off. In nations, as in
persons, too great a calm, too mild an indifference, too
peaceful an apathy, is ever a dark and boding sign, the
lull that comes before the storm, the dead silence ere
the thunder breaks. If we stir the atmosphere and
fling it upwards from no soil burning with noble
passions ; if every zone of our world reduces itself to
temperate and timid heats ; if no circulating breath of
pure enthusiasm passes from land to land, bearing on
it the cry of sympathy with the down -trodden, and of
defiance to the oppressor ; God will clear the air for us
from above, and fling across our fields and cities the
whirlwind of revolution. Thus it is that " He who

138 The Messengers of Change.

abideth for ever will afflict us," if, " because we have
no changes," we cease to stand in awe of him. There
is no peace but in waking to all his seasons, and
moving freely with the windings of his Will; quick
to seize each fresh surprise of duty ; alert before day-
break to strike our tent of ease ; patient to endure the
crown of thorns which must press upon the brow of
every son of God.

If, then, the very law of life is a law of change ; if
every blossom of beauty has its root in fallen leaves ;
if love, and thought, and hope would faint beneath too
constant light, and need for their freshening the dark-
ness and the dews ; if it is in losing the transient that
we gain the Eternal ; then let us shrink no more from
sorrow, and sigh no more for rest ; but have a genial
welcome for \icissitude, and make quiet friends with
loss and Death. Through storm and calm, fresh be
our courage, and quick our eye, for the various service
that may await us. Nay, when God himself turns us
not hither and thither, when he sends us no changes
for us to receive and consecrate, be it ours to create
them for ourselves, by flinging ourselves into generous
enterprises and worthy sacrifice ; by the stirrings of
sleepless aspiration, and all the spontaneous vicissitudes
of holy and progressive souls; keeping always the
moral spaces round us pure and fresh by the constant
thought of truth and the frequent deed of love. And
then, when, for us too, death closes the great series of

The Messengers of Change. 139

mortal changes, the past will lie behind us green and
sweet as Eden, and the future before us in the light of
eternal peace. Tranquil and fearless we shall resign
ourselves to God, to conduct us through that ancient
and invisible way, which has been sanctified by the feet
of all the faithful, and illumined by the passage of the
Man of griefs.

XL

Sunt Cntst.

John iv. 32.
** I have meat to eat that ye know not of. *

The sense of dependence, it has been declared,
constitutes the essence of religion. At all events, it
is an essential condition. A nature perfectly self-
possessed and self-sufficing, in equilibrium with the
world without, and at rest from the balance of its
powers within, would be so rounded off and complete
in itself as to float through existence unconscious of
the attractions, untroubled by the resistances, which
determine its path. It is when we feel the jar of
actual adjustments, that the sphere of the possible
bursts open to us ; when we are borne out on the wing
of affections which find nowhere to alight, but only
floods below and clouds above, that we set our heart
on the rock beneath the waters and the light beyond
the gloom. And there are such provisions for this
experience in the whole constitution of our life, that

Secret Trust. 141

not even the most robust and limited of men can
escape the sense of instability. There are times when
we cannot but feel the world too strong for us ; — the
world without ; when its strain of duty loads us with
too heavy a weight ; or the stroke of its laws shatters
our reliances and leaves us wounded and alone ; or the
tyranny of its opinion baffles in us what is wisest and
tortures what is best ; or the brevity of its duration for
us brings us at the same hour to the last verge of its
opportunity and the full discovery of its scope. Nor
are we less liable to be overmastered by the world
within ; when the will is struck down by the lightning
of passion, or moves creaking with the friction of
temper, or sinks in the collapse of depression ; and
whether we are taken up and borne along upon the
storm, or checked by the secret threads that bind us
to the ground, we seem to be disposed of against vain
remonstrance of our own. Even if the winds were
calm without, the floods would roll within ; for in our
unstable soul the very bottom heaves beneath ; so that
we are tossed between the elements and ride on a
surface that never rests.

What provision then is there for conquering this,
uncertain sea ? what means of holding an even way
through the fluctuations of impulse and vicissitude ?
In the habits of human life, and the resources of
human character, there are helps of various degree to
this end. To steady us amid the dizzy sweep of

142 Secret Trust.

change, it is good to be under a rule of outward
necessity, which weights down our sudden caprices and
goads our flagging resolves, and compels us to pace
a round of achievement we should else deem it too
monotonous to take. Be it only the drill of an army,
the discipline of a frigate, the punctual bell and
inexorable machinery of a mill, whatever mingles law
and measure with the forces of the will, and constrains
them to work in rhythm if they work at all, is a
beneficent corrector of irresolution and vehemence,
and builds up those habits of outward order, in which
inward right most loves to dwell. It is still better to
pass under the sway of a fixed purpose of our own,
which shall be worthy of our conscience and adequately
tax our powers ; to make it the master of our industry,
the counsellor of our doubts, the victor of our tempta-
tions. And whether it be to write a history, to solve a
problem, or to remedy an abuse, whoever has clearly
before him such an end in view, sails with his compass
alight through the wildest night, and, bearing onward,
is heedless of the pelting rain, and unbewildered by
the gloom. From all who are intent upon great works,
a Luther, a Cromwell, a Clarkson among reformers, a
Gibbon, a Humboldt, a Grote among intellectual men,
the distractions which weaken life naturally fall away ;
and even its griefs strike upon them with gentler
touch ; and over many a dead lift of obstruction which
would bring less concentrated energies to pause they

Secret Trust. 143

are carried by a quiet persistency. But neither the
service of an involuntary necessity, nor the execution
of a voluntary purpose, reaches the ultimate sources of
unrest ; and, in order to steady us from the centre
outwards, it is best of all to be possessed by a hidden
faith, which keeps its tints of beauty and its lines of
truth behind the flying shadows, a secret image of
what life really is before the verifying eye of God, a
preoccupation with its rightful perfectness as seen in
the supreme visions of the heart. Once let there be
this felt difference between the seeming and the reality
of things ; let them carry an inward idea which is
moulding them even while they mar it, and which
will persevere and emerge through their transient
deformities; let the phenomena pass in front of this
divine light, while the mind sinks deep into it, and
abides there with perfect trust ; then, having the
interpreting key to changes which baffle others, it
dwells in an element of peace, and identifies itself, not
with the discords of the world which are working them-
selves off, but with the harmonies that are striving
to be. To look upon the scene of things as thus
pervaded by the thought of a just and holy God, and
charged to work it out, in unconscious servitude or con-
scious partnership, to live with heart and hope fixed
upon the higher ends instead of imprisoned in the
poor beginnings, — this is to have power perfected in
weakness, and joy kindled amid tears : this, as we toss

144 Secret Trust.

upon the deep and are covered with the night, is better
than the fragile compass : it is the compass lifted to
heaven, and turned into stars that are never clouded
and never set.

" I have meat to eat that ye know not of." What
words could more pathetically hint at the spiritual
source of strength in that unique career, — that aliment
of the holy, true and good which Plato says is the
common well-spring for the thirst of all minds, divine
and human. Thus to live out of the invisible and
higher, and cling to it as the last reality, is Keligion ;
and this it is which alone takes away the hardness of
duty and gives a sweetness to affection, and mingles
a sanctity with experience.

1. There is an invisible and transcendent element
in Duty, which at once defines and inspires it ; clears
its form and turns it from a human reluctance into
a divine joy. It is in vain that we look around and
consult the outward world, and take up now with this
example, now with that, in order to find what we ought
to be and do. So long as Conscience tries to " live by
sight and not by faith," and cannot stay at home with
God, but must go forth into the desert or the city at
every call of "Lo! here," and "Lo! there," it can
only pass from thraldom to thraldom and find no true
Deliverer. Neither models that appeal to the eye, nor
maxims that speak to the ear, can ever, without
abatement, send us to the divine light or tell us the

Secret Trust 145

divine thought. Plant me where you will upon that
which is, I must look across a chasm to that which
ought to be. The kingdom of heaven remains within ;
and only broken gleams from it are reflected from the
world without. Eight and wrong are nowhere clearly
set in the sunshine, or painted definitely out in the
opposite characters of men ; but are mixed up together,
as if the combinations of fact took no notice of the
distinctions of thought, and some weakness of nature
fell short of the design of God. Where have you
ever found, even in the selectest gallery of the good,
one whom you could make your absolute rule of life ?
Do you fix, for instance, on the pure soul which sits
behind that uplifted face, and, the more it retires
within, shines the more through the transparent eye ?
He who looks at you with that sweet pathetic light and
whose voice makes music in the heart, may never have
known a passion that is ignoble or a vision that is
unclean ; but see ! his home is in confusion, his
appointments are unkept, his wife is overworked, and
he heeds not that he has left her to serve alone ; in
dreaming how the world might be better he lets it drop
into the worse. Do you turn then, in your disappoint-
ment, to one who shall be " safe from all illusions " ;
whose clear discernment and firm will keep him well
adjusted to the world around him ; and who suffers
under no disproportion between the intellect which
apprehends and the conscience which works out the

L

146 Secret Trust.

practical problems of life ? If you keep close to him,
his calm and constant mind may hold you punctual
to duty and secure against mistake. But, alas ! if
you are in doubt and wayward sorrow, you never dare
confess to him ; if you go astray into some folly, he
will only upbraid you ; if the wing of some high
passion lifts you from his beaten track, and struggles
to reach the blue and visionary distance, he will part
from you with contemptuous adieu. Sick at heart with
the cold repulse, do you take for your comrade and
your guide that young apostle of righteousness, the
enthusiast of self-denial, who flings himself as an
organ of divine pity on the sins and grievances of the
world, and shames them from a presence instinct with
faith and hope and charity ? It is well ; while you
are at his side, conscience can never sleep, and the
will, touched by the love of God, can bend with a
tender grace to the smallest things. But he will hurry
you hither and thither, faster than your reason and
more capriciously than your conscience can go : stable
only in nobleness, he is carried, with the hectic flush
of restless impulse from one compassion to another,
and misses the quiet unity which alone can compress
any achievement into the few human years. Not the
beauty only, but the possibility of his life you find
to be exceptional ; and with loving sorrow you have to
leave him on his path alone.
And if in even the higher characters of men no

Secret Trust. 147

adequate rule of life is to be found, still vainer is the
trust in the current sentiments and recognised standard
of society around. It is a miscellaneous multitude of
the foolish and frivolous as well as of the wise and faith-
ful, which votes into existence the moral opinion of a
community ; and its level can never rise above half-tide,
except when some mighty wind of genius and goodness
sets in from the deep, and for an hour builds it up to
flood. From its very nature, social law asks no more
than men of all sorts agree to demand of one another ;
and lets off with impunity the follies it is prudent to
wink at, and the sins it is not convenient to forego ; and
if this is to be our measure of right, — to uphold us where
we are, — low indeed must be our moral position, and
precarious our standing even there. If you have only
your little share in the public conscience, all that
dignifies existence is at the mercy of the veering winds,
and all that consecrates it retires behind the cloud : not
the goodness only, but the beauty and true adornment
of life, oscillate into senseless distortions ; and you will
deck yourself, under Cromwell, in the winding-sheet of
Puritanism, and in the next age in the lascivious robes
of the Restoration, and will helplessly deliver yourself
in our time to those outrages on taste which bespeak
vacuity or shamelessness of character. Unless you
have some selecting principle within, the native affinity,
the incorruptible reverence of a pure and modest nature,
you have nothing to steady you under the swaying

l 2

148 Secret Trust.

movements of custom ; nothing to protect you from any
favourite folly ; nothing to hinder your captivity to the
false admirations that for ever lie in wait for the idle
and the faithless of mankind. It is by looking up
beyond the actual, not by looking down into it, by seek-
ing God within, not consulting men without, that you
will truly measure the divine claims upon you, and find
your duty clear and calm and sacred. Commune with
him, the All-holy, and it will become a secret under-
standing between his spirit and your own, — a trust from
him, answered by assent and love from you ; an escape
from the poor twilight of human mediocrity into the
precincts of a lustre which can never fade. A soul that
goes apart with this divine vision of goodness has that
to feed on which others think not of.

2. There are also invisible capacities in Human
Nature, a latent fund of diviner affection, without an
eye on which we shall ill sustain the depth and fresh-
ness of our charity, and the very fountains of the heart
must dry. Look only at the surface of life, either where
the triflers loiter or the competing crowd pushes its
eager way, and tramples the weak upon the ground ; or
enter just the first stratum of motive immediately
below, where men dress up their seeming to one another,
and invent decorous disguises for their selfishness ; and
you have the scene before you which turns the observer
into the cynic and satirist. And carry that temper
whither you will, you will never see more than this : all

Secret Trust. 149

that turns up will confirm it ; for it elicits what is akin
to itself; it creates its own evidence as it goes, and
publishes it in the journals and the clubs ; and drives
whatever contradicts it to hide in the forest shades of
the inmost spirit and be alone with God. If we have
no trust, and frame our speech and tune our voice as
having none, we shall often find it difficult to love even
our friends as they appear to us : our very presence
will harden them, and put them on their defence ; and
by many a carping word, or chafing, of the spirit, they
will do injustice to themselves. How often may you
hear the querulous dialogue, the mutual complaint, the
artificial fence of hurting speech, between those who, if
they would but burst the barrier of their pride, would
fall into each other's arms, and in dismissing the fiend,
let the reconciling angel in ! The pure and tender eye
which is not arrested by the troubled and broken surface,
but sends its glance behind and within, not only sees
the actual love that lives there, but warms and wakes
the possible love that was asleep and never stirred before.
Our humanity, touched with a divine freedom, has
larger and more liberal limits than its critics and its
students dream : it is not base ; it is not noble : it is a
vast possibility of baseness or of nobleness ; and nothing
so kindles its high spiritual consciousness and trans-
figures it with light divine, as the appeal of trustful
sympathy, and the expectant light of a brother's faith.
Could we not treat the guilt and degradation which

150 Secret Trust.

deform the world as something unnatural, a spoiling of
the idea of God and the possibilities of man, could we
not rely on some supporting response when we bear
down upon them with expostulating call, it would be all
over with our patience and our hope. But when we
pass the poor deforming exterior, and enter the inner
nature, and ever so faintly trace the sleeping lineaments
of the divine image, pity despairs no more, and love
recovers from its recoil.

3. There is, finally, an invisible meaning and Provi-
dence in Life, which alone, through the clashing voices
and dizzying movements of the scene around, can steady
the tremblings of nature, and bring a quietude to the
heart. Were we sent upon this stage with blind
spiritual eye, and committed to our sensibilities alone
to grope about and judge by what the moments bring,
all things would appear confused and fragmentary ; and
however divine the poem of the world, the scattered
shreds would not reveal its thought or the broken strains
its melody. From our own position, simply as we feel
it, all security and peace often seem to pass away : the
ground breaks beneath our feet, and, as in a dream
where there is nothing solid to clutch at, we sink we
know not whither. On the bed of pain, when thought
and will swim feebly away and we are -condensed into
the poignant moments ; when we long for the night,
but, when it comes, the stars glide too slowly and the
silence will not let us moan ; and we watch for the

Secret Trust. 151

morning, but, when it dawns, the soft light mocks us
with its sweetness and the birds with the blitheness of
their song; in the vigils of anxiety, when some life
which is our all trembles in the scale, and we extort a
thousand contradictory oracles from the flush upon the
features or the cloud upon the eye ; — under the sting
of calumny, when things we most abhor are told of us,
and averted faces and sarcastic words show that the lie
has proved too strong and the love of friends too weak ;
— in the countless vicissitudes of broken fortune and
shattered health and disappointed hopes ; all must look
like ruin, if we have no stay beyond the impression of
the hour. And even though we should not be upon the
rack of suffering ourselves, how often, if there were
nothing behind the things we see, might the immediate
aspect and courses of the world disturb us ! When the
minds of men seem to fall into confusion, deserted by
the simple sanctities of their fathers but not yet emerg-
ing into any clearness of their own ; when, for want of
any firm foothold of right, authority quails and rude
forces triumph ; when audacity seizes upon states, yet
is itself afflicted with the wavering of irremediable
doubt ; when churches, enfeebled within by puerile
superstitions, stand amid a rising flood of atheistic
denial ; when the distinctions slip away between veracity
and pretence, between trade and theft, between modesty
and license ; we might well despond, if we did not look
beyond the present, and interpret it by the light of a

152 Secret Trust.

diviner thought than animates its actors. But lifted to
an adequate distance from it, and assigning to it its
place in the Providence of humanity, we discern it but
as a pulsation in the line of time, one of those moments
of alternate tension and relaxation which are separately
dark, but together make the very light by which we
see. Thither, to that divine elevation above momentary
things, let the soul resort in faith ; and the sorrowful
clouds that shut it in are surmounted, and the ever-
lasting sunshine reached. In frailty and in trembling,
we rest in an eternal calm. In loneliness, we have still
an ever living communion. Deserted by the voices of
affection, we are with Him who attuned their sweetness,
and will console their loss. And dying, we do but pass
to the very source and home of life.

XII.

John xii. 27.

" Now is my soul troubled ; and what shall I say ? Father, save me
from this hour ? but for this cause came I unto this hour. Father !
glorify thy name."

In Rome there are ancient catacombs which were used
by the primitive Christians for interment of their dead.
As depositories of the ashes of a lost generation, they
are nought to us : the dust of believer or unbeliever,
of the sinful or the saint, is drifted by the winds of
time into the common wreck of our humanity. But a
single mark made by a living hand is worth all the
remains of death sealed and treasured with so much
care ; especially when traced in moments of truth and
tenderness on the curtain drawn around the sleep of
friends : and the outside of the urn and the sarcophagus
may teach a more instructive lesson than can be learned
from the emptiness within. Now throughout the deco-
rative emblems and inscriptions in the early Christian

154 The Sorrows of Messiah.

cemeteries, it has been remarked, one uniform character
may be observed, — their spirit of cheerfulness and hope.
By some fresh breath, the gloom seems all swept out
from the chamber of so many griefs ; and a sweet and
placid light to fill the place, other than the glare of
earthly day, and like an enclosure of starlight from the
skies. The images and pictures on the walls exclude
all the horrors, and present only the sanctity, of death ;
assuring us that survivors kept over it a secure and
quiet vigil, invested it with peaceful thoughts, and
looked through it to a holy and passionless existence.
There, the evergreen leaf protests, in sculptured silence,
that the winter of the grave cannot touch the saintly
soul : the blossoming branch speaks of vernal suns
beyond the snows of this chill world : the good Shep-
herd shows, from his benign looks, that the mortal way,
so terrible to nature, had become to those Christians as
the meadow path, between the grassy slopes and beside
the still waters. Yet were these mausoleums peopled
by no favoured race. They were the last asylum of the
persecuted ; they opened the first shelter to the weary
and despised : side by side with those who had fallen
asleep on the pillow of domestic care, were many who
had died the martyr's death, and mingled their last sigh,
not with the sobs of affection, but with the fiendish
shouts of the amphitheatre. When this is borne in
mind, the impress of cheerfulness on the symbolic
memorials of the place cannot fail to strike us as re-

The Sorrows of Messiah. 155

markable. That the victims pelted hither by the storms
of a merciless world should be laid down upon the earth
without a mark of anger or a burst of mourning, but
only with the mild farewell of affection and of hope,
attests the power of the new faith to still with its word
the fiercest tempest of grief and passion.

This indication however is in perfect agreement with
other signs of a fearless and glad enthusiasm pervading
the early Church. Eome was startled by the appear-
ance, in her effeminate cities, of a people whom it was
impossible to terrify ; on whom torture and death, con-
secrated by some invisible charm, lost their deterring
power ; who reminded her of her old republican hardi-
hood, only that it was not so much manly as godlike ;
who amid the pestilence, or after the siege, came into
the streets to cool the fevers of death, and soothe the
rage of despair; who escorted the martyr to his end
with envious gratulations, and greeted the earthquake
itself with the hymn of redemption.

And even earlier than any organized Christendom,
we find, in the apostolic writings themselves, abundant
traces of the same spirit. What can be more free and
buoyant, with all their variety, than the writings of
Paul ? Brilliant, broken, impetuous, as the mountain
torrent freshly filled, never smooth and calm, but on
the eve of some bold leap, never vehement but to fill
some receptacle of clearest peace, they present every-
where the image of a vigorous joy. Beneath the form

156 The Sorrows of Messiah.

of their theosophic reasonings, and their hints of deep
philosophy, there may be heard a secret lyric strain of
glorious praise, bursting at times into open utterance
and asking others to join in chorus. "Rejoice in the
Lord always ! and again, I say unto you, Rejoice ! "
His life was a battle ; from which, in intervals of the
good fight, his words arose as the song of victory.

The primitive followers of the faith then were all of
one heart and mind ; and that was a heart of free and
natural joy. Yet they were disciples of one who is
known to all ages as the Man of sorroivs ; of one serene
indeed in spirit, and of a strength divine and clear ; but
with the tinge throughout of a sad earnestness, — some-
times flushing up into a transient glow of hope, — rarely
deepening into the shade of a visible anguish ; and yet
throughout, from the wrestlings in the desert to his cry
upon the cross, showing itself in miracles of pity and
in nights of prayer ; in the light of his love and the
flash of his invective, — his delight in nature and in
childhood, his abhorrence of Pharisees and hypocrites ;
in the deep beauty of his parables, and the melancholy
wisdom of his prophecies ; in the sedate unity of his
life and the quiet majesty of his death. How indeed
is he represented by the emblem in which Christendom
has embodied its veneration ? The crucifix is the
accepted symbol of grief divinely borne.

Whence is this contrast between the disciple and the
Master ? Why, when we look beneath the garment of

TJie Sorrows of Messiah. 157

praise, do we find, at the heart of the religion, the
spirit of sadness? The outward lot of Paul was not
less severe than that of the Crucified himself; and he
had certainly no hope, no trust, no comfort, which had
not been imparted by the author of his faith. Could
Jesus give a gladness it was not permitted him to share,
and by the gentle hand of his religion wipe away all
tears except his own ? All theologies are much per-
plexed to afford any account of this. If he was an
inspired man, why did not his inspiration lift him
beyond the range of grief, and awaken in him the
temper which it produced in others at secondhand?
If, as others say, he was God veiled in the flesh, how
could he have sorrow beyond even the measure of a
man ?

Nothing in truth can be more natural, if we did not
persist in looking for the explanation in the wrong
place. Assuming that, under one name or other, there
was in Christ a blending of divine and human elements,
we fancy that it was his participation in the human
nature which bruised him with sorrow, and that his
higher attributes, by their imperfect amount or occa-
sional retreat, fell short of power to heal the wounds.
Had this been so, then those who, with the disciples,
stood upon a lower level of humanity, would have been
sunk into a deeper darkness, instead of being lifted into
a more cheerful light. No, it was the Divine spirit in
Christ, — as it is in every noble heart, — that subdued

158 The Sorrows of Messiah.

him to that earnest sadness, which, under human im-
pulse only, would have been soon forgot. However true
it may be that "Man is born to trouble," he owes the
distinction not to his inferior, but to his highest powers.
Eeason alone has the privilege of tears : Conscience
trembles with remorse ; creative Thought laments its
poor performance ; and the light of Love casts the long
shadow of death. Lift off these crowning faculties,
and you remove at once our griefs and glory, and let us
down to the poor level of unfallen Adam. If labour
and sorrow come of the lapse in Paradise, we have
reason to bless the sinning mother of all flesh, that she
held not her hand from the forbidden fruit, and ex-
changed the grass and flowers of Eden for the rock, the
thistle, and the thorn. It is not as child of the earth,
but as a Son of God, that man has his heritage of care.
And in proportion as the Divine spirit is transcendent
over the inferior nature, and through higher and higher
brightness becomes a supernatural light of the world,
must the shadow deepen too ; till in Messiah we reach
the limit of inspired sorrow ; where the lot and outward
scope of being is finite as in other men ; but the soul,
immeasurable and infinite.

Far from its being wonderful that the disciples
should have a joy to which the Master was a stranger,
it is the necessary consequence of their relative posi-
tion. He who himself is a religion, must needs miss
the chief solace of religion. Others believe in him ;

The Sorrows of Messiah. 159

but he has no mediator in the immensity that leads
to the Most High. They gather, with reverent affec-
tion, round him, and feel a perfect rest ; finding in him
a representative image of all that is Divine, a mid-
point of clear conception beyond which they cannot
go : but he stands, with uncovered head, beneath the
Infinite, and has no help to God but his own poor
thoughts. They live, as we all do unconsciously, by
communicated religion, the instinctive dependence of
lower souls upon the higher, and the divine right
of the greater to hold the less : but he has no higher,
no greater, and, while ruling systems of minds, floats
through space with no guiding attraction except to the
awful Centre which is everywhere. No Messiah of heaven
can find a disciple's rest at the feet of them who sit
in Moses' seat. And yet no one can be his own Christ.
It is this singular position, beyond all the beaten ways
and city lamps of the habitable earth, on the confines
of eternal night, and amid the breaking lights of a
new world, that fills the prophet's soul, ever genial
and tender beneath its sublime strength, with sorrow
even unto death. He cannot love and have a home in
a sphere which is not yet hung up in heaven, and
which he spends himself in creating : and so, the
meanest things have a shelter denied to him ; and the
saying comes to pass as it is written, " the foxes have
holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son
of Man hath not where to lay his head."

160 The Sorrows of Messiah.

Consider, for instance, the difference there is between
obeying a Law, and following out a heart of Love.
It is poorly represented by the difference between the
piecework of industry and the creation of genius. The
apostles were entrusted with a definite and prescribed
task, requiring indeed alacrity of heart and fidelity of
will and heroism of resolve, but still a task clear and
fixed, and in which settled ways were possible, and
skill and habit would avail them, and visible progress
might be made. And this type of life, viz. of Duty
within appointed limits, and desires coextensive in
their range, is the happiest of all. It has the healthi-
ness of labour in its progress, and the rewards of
labour in its close. It is essentiallv the life of child-
hood, environed with an invisible protection, and with
the freedom of an unreluctant obedience. Tell me
only the burden I have to bear, and weigh it out before
me dav bv dav, and let it but be according to the
measure of a man, and I can lift it up with joy. And
so it was even with the various life of Paul. He had
a thing to say, and then to take the consequences:
his instructions never changed : and in peril and in
prison, he was still an ambassador in bonds. When
he had done at Antioch, he could go to Corinth : when
he had affrighted Diana at Ephesus, he could take
passage over the Jigean and defy Minerva on Mars
hill : having made his defence in Jerusalem, by appeal
to Caesar he could see Rome also, introduce the Prince

The Sorrows of Messiah. 161

of Peace in the metropolis of a nation of soldiers, and
plant the cross above the capitol. And as he went,
he could count the sTnagogues he had converted, and
the centres of Christian light he had left behind. He
had moreover some forty years of toil, in which to see
how the labour of his hands could prosper and grow ;
how the blessed seed could burst the sullen soil and
show its green young life, now here, now there ; till in
the winter of his own age, the seasons of God seemed
to bring a warmer sky, and crown his tillage with a
reproductive blossom ere he dies. But the Master's
mission was different from this. It was a work not to
be reckoned by quantity at all, but by quality alone,
so that one might almost doubt, from any measurable
symptoms, whether it had a real existence. No long
and versatile career was permitted to spread and
multiply its power. He was gone before mid-life ; and
three years at most achieved the work which two
thousand assuredly will not exhaust; and the poor
villages of Galilee, and the precincts of Jerusalem
bounded the steps of him, at whose name the front
ranks of all mankind, for fifty generations, have bent
the knee. And his sorrow, therefore, lay in this ;
that he did not know, and as a consequence of his
inspiration could not know, what he did, except that
it was his best, or whither he went, except that it
was whereto God was sending him. No standard of
usage or habit availed him to compute his way : false

M

1 62 The Sorrows of Messiah.

formulas can no more estimate a true soul, than

equations can solve you the beauty of the morning

light. He could not move for a single step in the

beaten ways which were the high road of hypocrites

and had their ending in destruction ; yet he fell upon

a time over which no other path was traced. So he

had to dispense with the help of custom ; to break

through all dreamy traditional veneration for things

abominable to his inner heart ; to see for himself the

true and divine path of light through the clouds which

his age and place had thrown around him ; content if

he could only discern the next step clearly ; and ready

to follow the pointings of the finger of God, though

it directed his foot upon the sea, or bade him walk

sheer off into the darkness of the abyss. At every

instant he had to find his work by the living spirit

of love and truth and trust, without and against the

dead momentum of habit and of law. It was a moral

life without sleep ; a watch in the great observatory

of nature through a night that never yielded to the

dawn, with eye ever strained on the eternal stars.

Hence the sublime faintness of the inspired soul ; kept

awake by the resistless glory of the Creator ; yet

sinking with the pale exhaustion of the creature.

The prophet's heart, moreover, is rich in deep
affections ; open to all gentleness and beauty ; quick to
pity ; eager to love ; and in spite of its clear percep-
tions of spiritual things, not without a certain distrust

The Sorrows of Messiah. 163

and self-renunciation that make it long for the
answering suffrage of other minds to say ' Amen ' to
all its prayers. Yet, from the necessity of the case,
he lives in absolute loneliness : he stands where
sympathy cannot reach : he leans his head on the
bosom of no equal, and must put up with poor
disciples' blind sorrow at his sighs. He is alone,
except with God ; and God alas ! is silent always ; —
a thing that makes a great difference to a loving and
dependent soul. " Answer me, 0 God ! " is the cry
not only of ancient seers, but of human nature in
its grief and aspiration in every age. The tone of a
living voice, coming across the misgivings of nature,
and rendering response to the aspirations of the
wrestling and solitary spirit, would raise it up in
conscious and joyful power. But this is denied to
the doubts and anguish of the saviours of the world.
Their cries and tears are dissipated and lost in the
immensity into which they are thrown ; and there is
" silence in heaven " unto this hour. This it is that
makes the grandeur, yet the desolation, of a life of
absolute faith ; this, which brings to the Kedeemer the
deep trouble of the soul ; without, however, tempting
him to say " Father, save me from this hour ! " but,
seeing that " for this cause came he unto this hour,"
leaving him content to say " Father, glorify thy
name ! "

m 2

XIII.

ffjp g«ab of fife

Matt. xiv. 19-21.

"And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass ; and took
the five loaves and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven he blessed
and brake ; and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the
multitude. And they did all eat, and were filled ; and they took up of
the fragments that remained twelve baskets full. And they that had
eaten were about five thousand men, beside women and children."

John vi. 49-51.

" Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness and are dead : this is
the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof
and not die ; I am the living bread which came down from heaven."

The Israelitish tradition of the manna in the wilderness
left behind it a long bequest of imagery and doctrine.
To the nation whose romantic history it enriched, this
"angels' food" became the favourite emblem of the
providing care of God ; first, of the affluence of his
natural supplies ; then, of the fulness of his spiritual
grace. To the Poet telling of His pity who hears the
raven's cry, — to the Prophet promising His answer to
the deeper hunger of the soul, no illustration so readily

The Bread of Life. 165

occurred, as the dry desert sparkling in the morning
with his riches as with the dew, and the shower of
plenty that fell as crumbs from the table of infinitude.
The earliest records of our religion cannot otherwise
express the influence which diffused itself from the
presence and spirit of Jesus, than by at once comparing
and contrasting him with the old Lawgiver and his
miraculous supplies. Moses gave the fathers support
adequate to the perishable life of nature : Christ
cherished in their children the undying life of the
soul : — Moses furnished them with an outward food,
gathered on the ground and, not less strange to him
than to themselves : Christ offered them no foreign
discovery, nothing but himself: he found the divine
element within him, and in his own person was the
bread of life. He also, though on the grassy hills of
Galilee instead of among the sands and rocks of Horeb,
was with a mighty multitude in a desert place ; and
there he fed them too, so that they need never want or
thirst again ; but withal gave them nothing but him-
self : when he was there, he was his own sacrament ;
— the most lifegiving element that ever came from
heaven. This is the meaning which, according to the
fourth Gospel, he himself has put upon his feeding the
multitude; and in treating it as expressive of the
essence of his religion and the mode of his influence,
rather than as a bald wonder of the material kind, we
do but obey his injunction to look not at the meat that

1 66 The Bread of Life.

perisheth, but at that which endureth unto everlasting
life. The narrative is evidently emblematic, and finds
its true and permanent significance in the idea which it
embodies, and of which the occurrence it relates is but
the vehicle. If you take the fact as historical, then it
is the picture-writing of Providence, the allegory of
God, by which he represents to us the ministrations of
Christ to the eternal cravings of our secret nature. If
otherwise, then it is the human product of the very
same truth, the attempt to fix and sculpture in the
substance of concrete incident the reality of his creative
energy as the supporter and vivifyer of souls, — the
flowing feeling, congealing itself, as consciousness
grows cold, into the solidity of history; just as the
mystic imagery of Jesus, as he breathed out his last
words of affection, and brake the bread of parting and
handed the wine of his remembrance, has been turned
into physical dogma, and petrified into a eucharistic
incarnation. In any case the fact exists only for the
sake of the divine truth which holds in it a permanent
abode.

The little basket, carried up among the hills, fur-
nished beneath the hand of Christ an ample feast.
And no less a marvel does God work with all the pure
in heart who go up into the lonely place to meet him.
Be they only not quite empty of truth and love ; let
them have but the poorest pilgrim's unleavened cake
of sincerity and faith ; and when they have spread their

The Bread of Life. 167

insufficiency before God, and broken it into its worth -
lessness for his blessing to enter, they shall return
richer than they came and gather more than they had
brought. The rules of quantity, the laws of weight
and measure, do not hold beyond the outward world ;
they disappear wherever the Holy Spirit claims its own.
The smallest spiritual store, taken into the most retired
spot, has a self-multiplying power; and if only used
with holy trust, will pass the dimensions of nature and
betray the resources of the infinite. The great Creative
Spirit is ever ready to touch the merest grain of manna
in the heart, and make it numerous to shine on all the
ground. He to whom space is the seed-plot of stars
has in the human soul a tillage more lustrous in the
sowing and more enduring in the fruits. When he
flings a handful of moral endowments into the furrows
of our nature, he never withholds the mellowing winds
and dews ; and the germs will not perish unless we
deny them root. Within the smallest genuine grace
he has wrapped up boundless possibilities ; and who-
ever will but believe in it and apply it faithfully shall
never fail of more. There is no one so miscreated or
misplaced as to have within him no germs of good,
from which a fruitful circle may be made to spread.
Just as in the Pacific Ocean, if once a coral rock is
built up to the level of the tide and feels the caresses
of the wind, some little speck of life appears, and as
the island rises, widens till it dips into the salt waves ;

1 68 The Bread of Life.

so in the most desolate mind, born furthest from the
main-land of hope and power, there is never wanting
some point of native green, that may creep, as it were,
from stone to stone, till it fairly drive the barrenness
away. If you will but find God's living gift within
you, and simply trust it when it presses into growth,
there is not a waste place of your nature that shall not
become habitable, and even glorious with a wild beauty.
Whatever you may doubt, something there is which you
deem true ; however much is common and unclean, you
have your gleams of what is surely holy ; wherever you
are weak, there is some matter on which your secret
eye is clear, and your foot is firm. Here then is the
ground on which your moral life is to be raised.
Whithersoever others may lead you, here is your native
well-spring of faith and love ; whatsoever others may
teach, this is the divine oracle to you. Sink deeply
into this, and be at one with it, worship in it, live from
it, ere you even try to know or undertake to do aught
else. Till you get down to the foundations of your
natural piety and touch sacred ground, you cannot
raise the superstructure of either your knowledge or
your action. Heed not what is dark, play not with
what is perplexed, believe not your unbelief, till you
have flung yourself into your real faith, and done the
thing you most revere. He that will follow the will of
God where it is clear shall find less than before that is
obscure ; and no step on holy ground will ever bring

The Bread of Life. 169

you nearer to a soil barren and unblest. There is a
wonderful power in simple pure veracity, that knows its
own pretences and can tell its seeing from its dreams ;
that has an ear for the still voice of God, instead of
drowning it in the hum of its own sophistries ; and an
eye to watch his lights and shades, instead of suf-
fusing all things with its own colouring. From such
guileless and open conscience he is never entirely hid ;
some dear and holy secret, minute it may be, but
precious as a known star upon an unknown sea, he
makes distinct and clear : and since his infinite nature,
perfect as a sphere, surrounds us every way, it matters
not from what bright point you begin to trace its
glories : there are a thousand great circles of truth
and goodness stretched across its immensity, any one
of which will take you to fresh lights, yet bring you
whence you came. If a man will but leave off deceiv-
ing himself, lay aside his intellectual and imaginative
arts, and reduce himself to spiritual simplicity ; he will
find a path by light other than his own, — a light from
which doubt and unreality flies away. Faithful to his
first grace, he is enriched with a second: devoutly
serving the authority of this, his gift is still enlarged :
he becomes wiser and nobler and nearer to God, at
every stage ; till at last the very fragments and leavings
of his faithfulness, the dropped words of his insight,
the casual deeds of his affection, exceed the first entire
amount. And he that begins with fasting himself

1 70 The Bread of Life.

leaves enough on the ground to fill the satchel of a
dozen apostles.

The reduction however of the mind to spiritual
simplicity, the return to a childlike transparency, is a
change which, though it seems but the cessation of
art, is often beyond the mere wishes and strivings of
nature. Most men, when they have discovered their
own unreality, and suspected their miserable delusions,
continue in them all the same ; and feel like one who
undergoes shipwreck in a dream, and sees the firm
land close by, yet can put forth neither hand nor foot
to reach it. Strange that, of all possible tasks, simply
to be what we are should prove, not the easiest, but
infinitely the hardest ! It is the saddest evidence, if
not of a " fallen," yet of an abused and sin-beclouded
nature, that to revert to our primitive faith, to come to
ingenuous terms with our genuine love, and live out
of the hearty kernel of our being, is at once the
nearest and the rarest of attainments. Needing only
quiet surrender and bringing only heavenly peace, it
is evaded by incessant efforts and postponed for a
corroding misery. But wherever this pure grace of
simplicity exists, it has for men a secret and irresistible
charm. They recognise in it the traces of God's
immediate presence, — the conditions of his inspiration,
— the light from him which they too have felt and lost.
It is the holy prophet's grace, that keeps from before
his eye every deforming veil, and leaves him face to

The Bread of Life. 171

face with divine things, and gives him communion
with the Spirit of all truth. Quite different from
philosophic reflection, which employs the mediation of
reasoning and the instrument of analysis, and arrives
at its conclusions by methods of which it can render
logical account, that purity of heart which sees God
discerns him by the immediate glance of sympathy.
Standing in front of the great curtain of appearance,
on which the shadows of his thought are thrown, it
watches them as they traverse, and interprets them
with the infallible apprehension of a congenial soul.
How he reads off the meaning and expressiveness of
things and meets in them the very heart of God, such
a one is unable to explain : only, that meaning is plain
and certain to him as sorrow in human tears and
aspiration in the lifted eye. The divine Indwelling in
the mind of man is ever, I believe, in some uncon-
scious grace at first, — some reverence, some love, which
possesses him ; which is not the object of his thought,
but the very colour of his thinking ; which he did not
form by the laws of his movement, but which con-
stitutes his invisible axis of revolution. He does not
know his own gift, but only the duty and the God
to which it bears him. It makes him feel the false-
hood of the world, without being aware of his own
truth : it impels him to be alone, and to go up above
the mists into the solitude of prayer : it places before
him a universe of realities different from that which

172 The Bread of Life.

occupies ordinary men, and throws the great drama
of existence, with all its intense interests, off from the
transient stage of material semblance into the eternal
theatre of invisible justice. He is detected by others
to be a revelation ere he finds it himself ; and when
he retires among the hills for private communion, he
draws all men unto him. They follow him by an
impulse scarcely more conscious of its nature than his
own ; looking indeed with wonder on him, but unaware
what it is in themselves that needs him and looks
up to him for help and guidance. They know not
the depth of their spiritual hunger : he knows not the
riches of his divine supply ; yet by the mystic attrac-
tion of mutual fitness they wend their way to the same
spot, above the world and alone beneath the sky.

Once set however face to face, they cannot fail to
find each other out, by the directing instinct of inward
wealth and inward want. Meeting upon that height,
with disturbing voices and deluding sights away, and
only the simplicity of God between, they can hide the
truth from one another and from themselves no more.
Jesus had gone up from the populous valleys with no
view to look on any eye but that of God, or breathe
a word, except of prayer : he went, because there the
hills shut out the lower world, and only space and
silence reigned : he went, to avoid the false press of
human admirations and satisfy the true aspiring of
divine want ; not to distribute, but himself to taste,

The Bread of Life. 1 73

the blessed bread of heavenly communion. But when
the reverence of the people disappointed him, and
they went out afoot from all the cities and preoccupied
the mountain grass, he was moved with compassion,
" because they were as sheep without a shepherd " ;
and he let his soul descend in its abundance on them,
instead of laying it low in its need and sorrow before
God. Wondering, it may be, what he has to give, —
having retreated thither just because he had not
enough for himself, — yet unable to withhold his supply,
he tried how far his store would go, and threw among
them the frugal morsels of heavenly truth he had
collected from the infinite: "he began to teach them
many things," and continued till the day itself was
spent : commencing with the scant estimates of
aspiration and humility, he found what would suffice
for all. So it ever is with the influence of a holy
mind. With the quickness of sympathy and pity, the
prophet's soul so believes in others' eternal hunger
as to take no scrupulous measure of his own supply.
Were he asked, he would say, "it is not much, and
hither I came that it might become more " ; but called
out to make the most of what he has, he finds a
miracle of bounty ; for not one among thousands goes
empty away. In all the higher gifts of the spirit, —
in the graces of a pure, devout, and loving nature,
in a simple and holy faith that takes lonely walks with
God, — there is this marvellous and blessed paradox :

1 74 The Bread of Life.

they are the most absolutely inalienable, yet the most
freely communicable of all treasures. Nothing is so
strictly private, so characteristically personal, as the
temper of a mind lifted above earthly delusions and
filled with a divine and all-reconciling light. Its trust,
its hope, its vision, live in it, it knows not how : it can
tell them, but can show no path to them ; can sing
them out in hymns, but not demonstrate them in
problems ; knows them to be first-hand truth, cut
off from second-hand approach. Yet so far is Religion
from being, on this account, a purely individual thing,
— a reserved account between each worshipper and
God, that it cannot even live at all upon these terms :
as well might you try to condense the lightning into a
chamber-lamp to shine for you and your little tasks
alone : it exists only by flashing from heaven to earth,
from cloud to cloud, down on the sea, up from the
western to the northern sky. Divine faith is the
most diffusive and kindling of all things. Kept as a
private store, it wastes away and perishes ; it becomes
so meagre that you can feed upon it no more : you
yield to a worse temptation than befell your leader in
the desert, and turn the bread of life into a stone.
No one, I suppose, ever deeply believes, or even
thoroughly disbelieves, alone and by himself. He
cannot dispense with others' sympathy; he listens
for what they say of these great things : he looks into
their eyes : he wonders about their thoughts : he waits

The Bread of Life. 175

till they give a sign ; and not till they hint his secret
feeling, does he dare to think it right. If none ever
confirmed the leaning of his affections, he would sus-
pect it was only a distortion in himself; and would
be ashamed to how down and kneel, were there no
bended head but his. No ! faith is no individual
property, to be shut up in the closet of personal
silence ; it is a thing of Catholic consent ; the ultimate
element in which our common human soul exists and
which spans the interval between it and God ; the
spiritual atmosphere in which the vibrations flowing
from the tones of truth and love are propagated from
mind to mind, from region to region, from time into
eternity. Faith is not less an intercommunion and
mutual confession of souls with each other, than of
all with the Father of spirits. The condition of its
vivid existence is, the profound consciousness of com-
mon wants and common aspirings, and the presence
of some clear and faithful heart inspired to express
and interpret them. Where no such earnest want
is felt, where it is suppressed by the ascendency of
sense and the indulgence of ease, to the neglect of
the higher demands of every noble nature, the possi-
bilities of religion are crushed out. To minds in this
state it seems as if there were nothing in it ; and if
Jesus had had with him only a company of well-fed
and self-satisfied Pharisees, assuredly there would
have been no miracle, but only a repudiated basket

1 76 The Bread of Life.

of scanty loaves and small fishes. Let any man only
he satisfied, and God himself can find him no repast.
But Christ relied on the natural hunger of honest
hearts, and trusted to the yearning soul and multiply-
ing grace to make what he had suffice. And lo ! the
answer to his prayer is the great continuous miracle
of Christianity itself; — millions from every height of
history testifying unto this day, that they in their time
have been divinely fed !

XIV.

Is. xlii. 16.

" I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not : I will lead them
in paths they have not known. I will make darkness light before them
and crooked things straight."

Theke is undoubtedly a sense in which all faith is
" blind." Science steps only where she clearly sees ;
faith can dispense with seeing. Science boasts of her
prevision ; faith can advance into the dark. Science is
proud of her power to lead the order of events ; faith
gives the hand and is thankful to be led. If the whole
of life were distinct as a diagram before us and manage-
able as a machine ; if we could command its issues and
measure out its years ; if, by our own skilled choice, we
could determine our health, our genius, our family, our
lot ; if, further, each passing age of the world could lay
out the next and foresee the future as it reads the past ;
we should have attained the Elysium of science and
found the " Happy Islands " of civilized ambition.

N

178 The Unknown Paths.

But in the literature of such a spot would be no poetry,
in its music no hymn, in its architecture no cloister, in
its voices no prayer : amid the staring daylight, no altar
lamp would be trimmed to keep the watch ; and, in the
hard elastic air, no ear would listen for the faint steps
of any Divine visitant. The reality of God would be
still there, as the stars hang over us no less at mid-day
than by night ; but our vision would not suspect him,
his deep would be a dazzling blank ; and for relief the
eye would drop back and rest on the near fields where
the plough is moving, and on the striped sea, and the
outline of the beach and hills. The scene of our own
surveying, the work of our own tillage, would lie as an
empire beneath us and detain us from any apprehension
of a higher authority beyond.

It is ever the ambition of men to walk by sight : it
is the method of God to lead them as the blind by a
way that they know not. They naturally try to diminish
the amount of guess-work in their life, and to make
sure of the grounds of action in whatever they under-
take. To take nothing on trust, — to fasten the thread
of every enterprise on fixed laws of nature, — to venture
into no field that is unexplored, to fill up no blank
with images of thought, but turn away from the invisible
because it is not visible : — constitute their maxims of
highest prudence. Carry out this principle to its
extreme consequences, let it become a universal rule of
living ; and it lands us in a mere secular materialism.

The Unknown Paths. 179

Why trouble ourselves, it suggests, with anything
beyond this world ? Who can tell us anything about
it ? Here we are, in a sphere of which we know some-
thing, abounding with remediable evils and unrealized
possibilities of good ; in the midst of men like our-
selves, to whom we cannot fail to be a blessing or a
curse. Let us hold to the work which we understand ;
make ourselves and our neighbours what is fitting and
worthy here, and leave the hereafter to take care of
itself. With model cottages, well-drained towns, uni-
versal instruction and cheap recreations, protected by
just laws and free institutions, we shall make the most
of the world we have ; and do better than by sighing
after one that we have not. Dealing with the alphabet,
with the account-book, with the laws of health and the
arts of skill, we know what we are about, and cannot
fail to grow cleverer, richer, stronger, and to leave the
earth more habitable than we found it. But when we
propose to operate on a future, whose conditions are un-
seen, and to shape what is given us by that which is as
yet withheld, what is this but to sacrifice the more real
to the less, and to vest in our ignorance the casting vote
against our knowledge ? By appeal to considerations of
this kind, men justify a total disregard of their diviner
relations and encourage in themselves the purely secular
taste which refuses to draw on faith for the sources
either of wisdom or of charity.

Nor are they altogether wrong. Whoever wants to

n 2

180 The Unknown Paths.

find the proper thing to do and how best to do it must
look about him and gather it from the visible scene in
which his lot is cast ; and if, instead, he fixes his eye
beyond, and reckons his task backward from what he
imagines there, he may think a penance more sacred
than plain justice, and a sacrament higher than a
charity. All the matter of our human work must no
doubt be determined by the actual relations in which
we stand today, — by our necessities, our opportunities,
our powers. What a man can do best is the true task
for him ; what his neighbours and his age want most
should prescribe the form of his self-sacrifice. Now is
the time, and here is the world, committed lo our trust ;
and any form of activity that looks another way in
neglect of their pressing appeals, may well be suspected
as an evasion or a romance. If, therefore, any one
comes to us and, under pretext of sanctity, disparages
the business of our working days ; if, as his condition of
anything divine, he wants from us something else than
to drive the plough, to navigate the ship, to order the
house, to teach the child, to help the weak ; — if, in our
labour to remove every canker from the life of men, he
sees nothing to disprove our being aliens from God;
then we may justly assert the claims of our common
human world, and defy him to fetch anything diviner
from the skies. No slight or scorn is to be endured
towards the duties which God has made ready for our
hand; nor is eternity to be railed off from time,

The Unknown Paths. 181

as if that were the high altar and this the profane
street.

But does it follow that, because our business is with
the present, we go astray when we trust and meditate
the future ? — that, since we have to deal with the visible
and finite, all affection is misplaced on the invisible and
infinite ? — that, unless we are surrendered, heart and
soul, to the temporal claims of human life, we shall but
wander from our true end ? Not in the least. This is
indeed the inference drawn by superficial men, who
persuade themselves that dreams of religion are the
great hindrance to the real amelioration of the world.
But its utter falsehood is attested by the whole course
of human and especially of Christian history ; which
rather proclaims, that, if you would improve this world,
you must have the hearts of men set upon another ; if
you would give any grandeur to life, you must pale it
beneath the splendour of an hereafter ; if you would
prevent the waste of industry, the contempt of moral
economy, the indifference to the lesser humanities, you
must train the soul to a worship that goes immeasurably
beyond them. There is not a secular reform in the
whole development of modern civilization which (if it is
more than mechanical) has not drawn its inspiration
from a religious principle. Infirmaries for the body
have sprung out of pity to the soul ; schools for the
letter, that free way may be opened to the spirit ; sani-
tary laws, that the diviner elements of human nature

1 82 The Unknown Paths.

may not become incredible and hopeless from their foul
environment. Who would ever lift a voice for the slave,
that looked no further than his face ? or build a reform-
atory for the culprit child, if he saw nothing but the
slouching gait and thievish eye ? Nay what impulse
would even science itself have had, if sustained only by
the material utilities ? what inspiring zeal, but for that
secret wonder which feels the universe to be sacred and
is a virtual thirst for God ?

I know it sounds like paradox to say that the more
you magnify the present, the less you can make of it ;
and that, if you exalt man to be highest of all, you will
reduce him to the meanest. Yet is it undeniably the
thought of immortality that imparts dignity and depth
to whatever in us is mortal : and were we not fitted for
communion with God, there would be little to revolt us
in the vacant mind, the unchastened habit, the servile
lot. All the pathetic appeals and reverent usages of
life, the patient love, the costly pity, lavished on sorrow
and infirmity, all the graceful ceremonial of the affec-
tions at the birth, the marriage, and the funeral, assume
that everywhere more is than seems ; that whatever
happens has holier meanings than we can tell ; that
the characters written on the screen are flung out by
light behind. Take away the divine symbolism from
our material existence, and let it stand only for what
it can make good on its own account, and what is
there to redeem it from selfishness and insignificance ?

The Unknown Paths. 183

The home sinks into a house, the meal into a mess, the
grave into a pit : honour and veracity are appreciated
chiefly as instruments of trade ; purity and temperance,
as necessities of health ; justice, as the condition of
social equilibrium ; mercy, as the price of a quiet time.
Does this literal aspect really satisfy you ? Does it give
any adequate account of your natural feeling towards
these several elements of life ? If this were all, would
they stir you with such passion of love, of awe, of
admiration, as sometimes carries you off your feet?
No ; we are not made upon this pattern ; and in our
composition are colours mingled which are native to no
earthly clay. In every good man there are affections,
moral impulses, aspirations, far more intense and deep
than would accord with any secular proportions; and
he instantlv becomes aware of this, if he falls into
unsympathising society, where he is put upon his self-
defence. As soon as he tries to justify an enthusiasm,
however true, and casts about for visible and definite
grounds on which to rest it, he is conscious of weaken-
ing it by the argument designed to give it strength ; he
feels that it has rights of its own beyond the reach of
all his words ; he is hurt that his advocacy, vainly
struggling to speak for it, has but spoiled the charm
with which it speaks for itself. Let any one endeavour,
upon a mind of hard, clear surface, to infiltrate some
moral conviction to which it has hitherto been imper-
vious ; and he will find how little he can open the living

184 The Unknown Paths.

pores of conscience by showering down pleas of reason
and interest that turn to dust ere they alight.

What then do we gather from such experience?
That the purest inspirations of men have other grounds
than our secular life presents, and would lose their
justification, were there nothing else ; that it is they,
nevertheless, that have led, and must ever lead, every
worthy enterprise by which the world is ennobled and
adorned ; that, therefore, did we cease to trust them,
did we let the world rule them in place of their claim-
ing to rule the world, the very springs of improvement
would decay; the progress we admire would turn to
retrogression ; and the present life, for which we make
the costly sacrifice, — the finite plot, reserved for such
careful culture on condition of being screened from the
infinite dews, — would become a waste of fallen foliage
and rotting fruits.

In this respect, as in so many others, does God lead
"the blind by a way that they know not." He realizes
other ends than they contemplate ; and the ends which
they contemplate he achieves by other means than
theirs. Ever since the gospel was first preached, of
Christ the risen, his disciples have set their affections
on things above, and held this world in relatively light
esteem : yet the heaven they sought remains as it was,
and the earth they despised is enriched and glorified.
Were we to contrive a way of improving this life, we
should set men to think of nothing else : yet God con-

The Unknown Paths. 185

tradicts this ruinous device, and reaches the end by
drawing men away from it, and pre-engaging them with
a higher. It is the great principle and mystery of all
his Providence : to reach the upper light, we must
follow blind affections ; and to realize the lower kind
of good, we must forget it. The astronomer, in search
of a missing star, looks away from the field in which it
lies, and by side-light it steals into his eye ; and thus
the Christian, with vision directly fixed on one region,
seizes the brilliants of another. While we are intent
on divine things, God accomplishes the human. "We
are always planning how we may govern and mould the
world according to our will : but he has made us sus-
ceptible of affections more powerful than our will, —
passions beneath us that deliver us captive to Satan, —
aspirations above us that lift us to Christ. These it is
that surprise and disappoint our calculations, and snatch
us off to ends other than our own. These it is that so
often seem to deny the race to the swift and the battle
to the strong. These it is by which God rules the
world and leads us in a path we have not known.
These are the trembling strings of our nature on which
his Spirit has but to breathe and play, to change the
rhythm of history and deepen the music of humanity.

While this remains the constitution of the moral
world, it will defy our boastful predictions, slip through
the fingers of rulers and diplomatists, and the Eternal
Father will reserve the times and seasons in his own

i86 The Unknown Paths.

hand. It is of the very essence of these deep faiths
and affections through which he appeals to us and lives
in us, to produce the most astonishing and incalculable
results. When Christianity began to spread through
the cities of the empire, it was pronounced an " un-
social superstition," and was supposed to threaten the
dissolution of all human bonds. The disciples with-
drew from the resorts of gaiety and ambition, and
looked with passionless and neutral eye on every game
in which others lost or won their life, their all. The
Master seemed to let go his rights, and abdicate his
pride ; for he would take of the bread broken by his
bondsman's hand, and chant " Amen " to his impas-
sioned prayer. The Slave emerged from all that was
servile, and walked as a man set free by a divine cap-
tivity. The Woman, repelling the approach of the
frivolous and vain, betrayed a deeper life ; and by a
certain queenly dignity recalled the matronly images
of better days, though without the matron's patrician
pedigree, and patrician scorn. No doubt, a new feeling
had taken possession of the little flock scattered over
that mighty world ; a feeling which in one sense could
not but have a levelling effect on the inequalities of
men ; viz. the consciousness of each one's personal
responsibility to a Holy God, and immortal relation to
the self-sacrifice of Christ. Nothing certainly can so
sanctify the individual, and lift him into integral im-
portance, as this sense of lonely, secret, eternal inter-

The Unknown Paths. 187

communion opened between the soul of each and the
Spirit of all. Yet what has been its working in human
life ? Has it separated each man from his fellow, and
planted him in an insular region of his own ? Has it
rendered Society impossible, and pulverised the moral
fabric into human atoms ? On the contrary, the
Christian individuality has created the intensest social
cohesion ; and of all the combinations of this world,
the churches of Christendom have presented the
examples of greatest tenacity and profoundest faithful-
ness. Nothing else has so conquered the* egotisms and
exorcised the selfishness of men, and kindled in them
the living enthusiasm from which self-sacrifice must
spring. No machinery of party, no sectional interests,
no compact organization, has ever bound, or will ever
bind, a fabric of human elements, like the power of
Christian reverence and Christian love. Thinking of
no union, planning no framework of incorporation, the
true disciples find themselves in mutual relations of
unspeakable sympathy, from the deep intentness of
each separate eye on a heaven and a God overarching
all. The profoundest union sprang direct from a
spiritual individuality. These Christians contemplated
no such thing as a Christendom : they only sought to
take the next step truly on the way to their everlasting
Zion : but, putting themselves into the hand of an
unfailing Guide, they, like all that will trust him, were
led in paths they had not known; and the blindness

1 88 The Unknown Paths.

to them was turned into light for the world. His
greatest things are ever born of their own opposites ;
the highest energy emerges from the lowest self-
surrender ; secular progress, from spiritual aims ; social
cohesion, from lonely dignity of soul.

It is the same in all memorable times. If the
greatest crises of history are full of surprises, it is
because the Providence of God betakes itself to other
channels than the elaborative will of man. For the
control of events and the governance of the world we
resort to what in truth is our only leverage, — the
dominant wish, the collective purpose, of our com-
munity. In stirring up and organizing this, we cast
out from it, in order to arm it with its greatest power,
all that is special to any section of the whole, — all that
is too high for mediocre thought and level feeling ; and
obtain for our end a general support by reducing it to
the measure of general apprehension and interest. A
vast area of opinion is thus secured for the furtherance
of our aims. And if these aims should also be ancient
and familiar, conservative of what exists and is known
rather than new and experimental, they win the
guarantee of long time as well as large range, and
would seem to present an irresistible front, — whether
it be to march aggressively forward and seize the next
station in advance, or to lie defensively intrenched upon
the ground and sweep all the approaches of assault.
Yet, with all our resources, there is that behind with

The Unknown Paths. 189

which we cannot reckon. Human will, in order to have
wide extent and long institution, must dispense with
high elevation; you cannot keep the general host or
the linked generations of mankind on the strain of any
rare and noble vision ; and the force they lend you is
that of consolidated mass rather than of keen intensity.
It never rises into the light which catches the loftier
minds and kindles their enthusiasm ; and on these it
is that each new Divine illumination is shed, — some
greater thought, some deeper faith, some fresh com-
passion, which carries its flash into waiting hearts and
changes for them the whole aspect of life. The in-
spirations of a single soul, at first flung into the winds
without an echo, find their way ere long by elective
affinity into responsive natures, and, creating them
anew, send them also forth with the fire of prophecy :
so that the lonely " dreamer " comes to wield a power
of conversion which the hugest "Propagation Society"
may have reason to envy. It is in the free play of
these surprises of insight and affection that the world
is lifted to higher stages, and led in paths it had not
known. Seek not to organize these revelations of indi-
vidual minds. Fix them by consent and vote, — turn
them into a school, — and their ethereal penetration is
gone ; they fold their wings and perish. Let them fly
as the wind that bloweth where it listeth ; and as they
impinge on this and that, they will wake up consonant
tones, wherever possible, and fill the measure of their

190 The Unknown Paths.

harmonies. Let your own heart also lie for ever open
to their claim : expect them not ; refuse them not ;
only guard their inward springs with reverent heed, —
the secret misgiving of customary wrong, — the dawning
love of a more perfect right, — the incipient glimpse of
purer truth ; for such graces are harbingers of the
Divine approach. Follow them simply, when they
visit you, though they should draw you from the
trodden paths and cherished plans of life. Turn not
to the right or left to see whether others are on the
track : for the call of God must be submitted to no
second voice, but must suffice to take you on your
course alone. And then, if some long-laboured purpose
should pine away unrealized, it will only be that diviner
issues may arise instead : if His way is hid from you
even when your feet are on it, it is only that he may
make the momentary darkness into more glorious light
before you.

XV.

%\t Jfinite anfr % Infinite in Unman
gate.

Rom. viii. 19.

" The earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation
of the sons of God. "

Among the deep yet neglected hints which lie beneath
the surface of Scripture, there is none more searching
than the distinction here assumed between the " crea-
ture " and the " son " of God. The " creature " is
simply the fabric of his skill, related to him as the
texture to the hand that weaves it, indebted to him for
its existence, carrying in itself his purpose, but only
as a thing, — a tool, — an article, — in the outfit of his
world. The " son " is the partaker of his essence, the
repeater of his life, related to him as the child whom
the parents cannot hinder from being like themselves ;
growing up therefore into his image, and betraying,
even in exile and servitude, an irrepressible sympathy
with his affections, and yearning towards him as the

192 The Finite and the Infinite

everlasting home. In man, both these characters are
united. As a product of nature, born to take a place
and pass away among the organisms of this earth, he
is a creature no less than the cattle on a thousand hills,
and God is his Maker. As a vehicle of something
above nature, as lifted into the freedom of personal
existence, as sharing in the life of the Eternal Spirit,
he is a son of divine lineage, and God is his Father.
Observe how the apostle Paul regards these opposite
features in our nature, and connects them with the
person and the life of Christ. Each of the two cha-
racters has its trace within us and makes itself felt by
desires and sufferings of its own : the consciousness of
the natural, ever sinking on the finite, and the con-
sciousness of the spiritual, ever rising towards the
infinite, coexist and wrestle in our nature. In that
pathetic strife, the weight of self and sense would
have borne us down, would even have erased the con-
ception of anything beyond, had not the very spirit of
our Sonship taken human form in Christ, and claimed
us by the appeal of his divine life, his sacrifice of death,
his conquest of the grave. Startled by that perfect
vision, the sleeping ideals wake again within our hearts :
caught up into the current of his filial surrender, we
recover our affinity and cry, " Abba, Father ! " and as
soon as we have courage to live as sons, to trust the
faint longings that bear us homewards, and float away
whithersoever they lead us, we find a sudden witness of

In Human Nature. 193

hope and spring of power. Not that we escape our
lower thraldom at once : the outward oppression of
nature weighs upon us yet, — the panting breast, the
bleeding feet, the dimness on the way, the shadow on
the mind. But there was darker eclipse than this on
Calvary ; and that we have seen clear off into an
immortal glory ; and with the conscious foregleams of
the Spirit within us, we can wait, through the time of
earnest expectation, for the manifestation, still in reserve,
of our sonship to God. Not risen as yet from the out-
ward cross and burden of humanity, we nevertheless
bear his mark upon our brow ; and carrying the holy
secret with us as we toil along, we find whatever is
grievous sweetened and what is humbling glorified.

In thus associating us with the divineness of Christ,
and expanding the term " Son of God " from a Personal
to a Human designation, does the apostle speak to us
in an unknown tongue ? or does he wake some faint
response, some half-heard solemn tones, as from im-
measurably distant corridors ? Are there any real
vestiges in our humanity of something transcending
the fabricated creature, — of some living relationship
with the Parent-spirit,— some real communion with his
holy nature, some melting of our finite life into sym-
pathy with his infinite ? Surely the depth and signifi-
cance of life must be half missed by those who do not
find such vestiges in all the higher endowments and
experiences of our being.

o

194 The Finite and the Infinite

Look, for instance, at the Intellectual instinct; and
consider whether, in its direction and its range, it is
just what you would expect in a " creature " planted only
amid earthly and secular relations and computed to be
worked out in threescore years and ten ? What is it
that men most love and long to know ? If you see
them in multitudes hushed in eager attention, uncon-
scious of the ground beneath their feet, and lost in an
ideal world, what interest, do you suppose, thus holds
them in mid air ? Is it some truth that lies nearest to
them in time and place, and is most in contact with
their lot ? — the arithmetic which will help them to buy
and sell ? the sanitary rules, which will keep them clean
and wholesome ? — the economic laws, which distribute
the produce of their toil? On the contrary, these
things, with everything that is pursued as the outfit of
an art or livelihood, are looked on as a sort of drudgery
and learned in obedience to a necessity ; and to find
these very topics pursued with any enthusiasm, you
must usually go to a circle of enquirers where their
interest is not personal and practical. The true secret
thirst of the mind is never reached by offering selected
draughts of " useful knowledge " : the dietary of
Prudence may adopt and recommend them : but
Wonder finds them dry as ashes to its lips. What is
learned with an express view to its gainful result is
spoiled, by this dominating purpose, of its generous
flavour, and is scarcely a mental enrichment at all.

In Human Nature. 195

It may be skill : it may be capital : it may be power :
but, in the noblest sense, it is not knowledge. Scorning
the narrow measure of individual wants, human curio-
sity flies out, — and with wing more eager as the air
grows strange, — into fields remotest from the home-
steads of personal and social life. To go forth and see
where the stars are and how they lie ; to get round them
and dive into the fountain of their light ; to frustrate
their eternal silence and make them tell their paths ;
to pass from station to station and gain assurance that
there is no end to their geometry ; and then to drop
back on the grass-plot of this world, mentally sublimed
by the sense of physical insignificance ; has ever had a
solemn charm for human intelligence. Nor are we less
subject to the spell of incalculable Time than of im-
measurable Space. What is it that rewards the geolo-
gist for his laborious penetration into the earth's crust,
his dim gropings among archaic forms, and all the
patient steps of his induction ? Mainly this : that
he elongates the pendulum of his time -piece till it
slackens to the rate of races and the organic pulsations
of a world ; that in the field or brow beneath his feet
he reads the depositions of a million years and the
denudations of a million more ; and, setting aside the
seas and continents and even atmosphere of today, can
ride upon the glaciers or peer through the tropic steams
or face the grotesque monsters of the planet destined
to be ours. How is it that the intensest interest hangs

0 2

196 The Finite and the Infinite

around these far-off sciences ? — that we cite them as
among the greatest triumphs of human research ? —
what concern so deep can ice have with lines of thought
that scarcely keep within the limits of the finite ? why
do they strike in upon us and stir us in the very seats
of intellectual romance ? Tell me not of their indirect
utility, though it is indisputable : does a Herschel live
for the sake of the Nautical Almanack, or a Murchison
and Lyell for the sake of Californian mines ? It is
because we love to be spoken to in tones from the
borders of the infinite, and feel them to have a native
sound. Carrying in ourselves secret relationships with
universal space and unbeginning time through Him
that fills them both and lives in us, we know the
tidings which come furthest from them to be nearest
to us : they remind us of our augustest kindred : they
free us from our momentary prison : they show us the
white sail, they breathe on us with the very wind, that
shall take us out of exile. Their awful fascination
bespeaks a nature mysteriously blending in its affections
the finite and the infinite, and standing on the confines
of both.

The same mixed character is still more evident in
the constitution of the human Conscience. Here too
we are well furnished, but at the same time strangely
oi'<?r-furnished, for our immediate work. Moment by
moment, the way of right is never left in the dark:
temptations and duties, taken one by one, are always

In Human Nature. 197

inwardly known for what they are : definite guidance is
ready for us, which, in each case, it is quite practicable
to follow. Yet, though each fidelity is possible in
detail, it would seem impossible to be true to all : to
the most constant and devoted mind their call will
sometimes come in moments of deadened affection or
of weakened will, when their accents cannot pierce the
deafness of spiritual sleep ; and as soon as the waking
hour returns, the eye opens on a lapsed opportunity,
and droops in shame. Who but the dull and blind is
free from this sad burden ? What face is always up-
lifted to the light of life, and never darkened by the
shadow of death ? Is there one of us to whom the
pure law of Christ, so lovely to see, so deep and
musical to hear, lies realized in the past ? or, does it
yet look down on us from the future, through sad and
heavenly eyes, as a distant " Counsel of perfection,"
and still call us, after all these years, " Come unto me,
ye heavy laden, and I will give you rest" ? Were the
human Conscience, like human Prudence, the mere
product of experience ; were it the reflection of the
world's opinion ; were it given only for our temporal
guidance without significance beyond ; why should we
not get rid of our sins as we do of our mistakes, —
commit them and have done with them, — and let the
Dead Past bury its dead, — and leave no ghost behind ?
This is actually the approved wisdom of hard and
driving men whose ethics are but instruments of ex-

198 The Finite and the Infinite

ternal work. But where there is a deeper insight,
where the outer doing is looked on as the symbol of
the inner being, where affection, character, will, have
any life and drama of their own, this discharge of
old compunctions, this cheerful erasure of bankrupt
accounts, is quite impossible. Only when evil is re-
garded as a transitory mishap, can it be thus forgot :
once let the consciousness awake that it is disloyalty to
the Spirit of eternal Holiness, and there is in this a
conservative power which will forbid its awful shadow to
depart. And hence, strange as it may seem, it is not
the guilty that know the most of guilt : it is the pure,
the lofty, the faithful, that are for ever haunted by the
sense of sin, and are compelled by it to throw them-
selves upon a love they never doubt yet cannot claim.
To thoughtless observers of human nature this always
seems the paradox of piety; — that none burst into
such passionate confessions as those who apparently
have nothing to confess; that the more faithful they
become, the less assuredly have they peace with them-
selves ; that the further they retreat from the power of
evil, the more does its sorrow sit upon their brow.
Why do you hear from a Fenelon words of humiliation
that never escape a Richelieu ? why are the prayers of
prophets and the hymns of saintly souls so pathetic in
their penitence, so full of the plaintive music of baffled
aspiration, like the cry of some bird with broken wing ?
It is because to them the truly infinite nature of holi-

In Human Nature. 199

ness has revealed itself, and reveals itself the more, the
higher they rise ; because in its secret breathings to
their hearts they recognise, not any romance of their
own, but the communing Spirit of the Living God;
because they can no more measure evil, than you can
measure hurt affection, by any scale of external magni-
tude, but, like all violated love and honour, by the inner
intensity of its unworthiness and the sanctity of the
personal claims which it insults. And the more they
surrender themselves to the inspiration which calls
them upward and become identified with the infinite
sympathies, the wider grows their spiritual horizon,
and the deeper their yearning for the everlasting hills
that lie folded afar in visionary light. That the blind-
ness of conscience shuts us up in finite comfort, while
its kindled sight throws us open to infinite unrest
and precipitates us on a mingled world of penitential
shadows and brilliant aspirations, — would be an un-
intelligible contradiction, were it not that our life and
nature are more than sentient, more than rational,
more than ethical ; — and that then first do we find in
what a universe we stand, when we gain its spiritual
key, and pass the veil that hides us from the Living
God.

But if this be the meaning of our sense of sin, what
hope, you will say, that it can ever leave us ? If
holiness be infinite, and we are not, is it not an awful
thing to have the susceptibilities, without the powers, of

200 The Finite and the Infinite

infinitude ? And was it not the work of Christ to give
us rest from the strife and sorrows of compunction ?
Yes : not however a rest ivithin ourselves, as if we
either ceased from sin, or could see it with other and
less saddened eyes ; but a rest out of ourselves, a pure
and perfect trust in Him whose spirit draws us from
before and whose pity supports us from behind. It is
an unfaithful attempt, to escape from the burdens of
self-reproach otherwise than by completer surrender.
Shake them not off : ask not to have them taken away :
crave for no peace which they deny : go with them all,
go as you are, to Him of whose light they are the
shadow ; and say to him, " I am a sinful man, 0
Lord : in my short-comings, whilst I live, I can never
acquiesce ; but, whilst thou livest, I can never despair."
This is the condition of an immortal nature within
mortal bounds, of the " son " blended with the " crea-
ture " of God. In a nature like ours the vital beams
of the divine essence must ever shoot and struggle in
their gulf of darkness, and make no white effulgence,
but break into the colours of a stormy glory. Do the
awful splendours terrify rather than inspire you ? — fill
you with personal fear lest the whip of lightnings start
forth from the cloud and fling its lash upon your guilt ?
Do you want ease and self-content on any terms ? You
can sink back into the " creature," and stifle the sighs
of the " son " of God within you. But if you will
claim your divine heritage, if you will take the type of

In Human N attire. 201

being which it gives you, you must be satisfied, now
and for ever, with something else than self-repose : you
must be content with mourning at home and rest
abroad : you must so love God as to be willing to
resemble him in all except his joy ; and then his
answering affection will be more to you than all you
have renounced, and give you an unselfish "peace that
passeth understanding."

On every side then, the relation of our life to the
supernatural which penetrates and enfolds it, betrays
itself in our consciousness. The intellect, which seeks
to transcend the finite in space and time and truth ;
the conscience, which owns the infinite in duty and
stays itself on the infinite in love ; indicate the scale
of our affinities, and attest a nature that liveth not
by bread alone but by every Word of communion with
God. Moulded of perishable and imperishable ele-
ments, we sink and rise, we sleep and wake, we faint
and struggle on ; toiling outwardly for transitory wants,
pining inwardly with everlasting thirst. Be it not in
blind unconsciousness that we carry in us the seal of
the Eternal. Shall God's Spirit plead with us every
day, and never reduce us to a sweet and holy mind ?
Because our feet are in the dust, shall our heart never
go up into the mountain to pray, and our thought
never pace the heights of meditation ? Shall the
years sweep by and take from us all that is mortal,
without waking the immortal life within us from the

202 The Finite and the Infinite, etc.

winter in which it sleeps ? Shall we wait to die into
the surprise of God, instead of taking his dear and
solemn converse now and for ever ? Shall we dream
of a future eternity, and be blind to that which
surrounds us every instant, — which brings its judg-
ments to our conscience, its present God to our trust,
its mighty company of saints to our affection ? Ah !
let the film of the carnal mind fall from our eyes ;
and yielding ourselves to be led by the Spirit of God,
let us claim our divine Sonship and enter on its
glorious liberty. There will be no sadness then in
the flow of life and change : time will take nothing
but our delusions away ; will enfold us in a warmer
light of divine affection ; and clear the everlasting air,
till we see even as we are seen.

XVI.

Citttt to Ifetae, 600, hh0 % Soul

Ps. lxxxix. 47.

" Remember how short my time is : wherefore hast thou made all men
in vain ? "

Whether or not a man is made in vain depends
however very little on his allowance of time. " Long
life " may be needful to " satisfy him," — to prevent
disappointment of a natural instinct and give a certain
completeness to his existence on the personal side ;
but is far from necessary to God's purposes in creating
him, or to the intensest and fullest action of his being
on the sphere into which he is born. The divinest
life that ever took the form of humanity, — the life
above all others least " in vain," — hung upon the cross
ere half our proverbial term was spent ; and with a
few months of love and sorrow profusely sowed the
whole seed-field of human history. The cravings of
ease and comfort may dictate the prayer for protracted
freedom from disturbance : the passionate cry of

204 Time to Nature, God, and the Soul.

desolate affection may protest against the abrupt
quenching of its familiar lights, brilliant and unex-
hausted still: but, by the measures of the Spirit,
moments may often suffice for years; and many a
soul, though not outwardly stricken, yet inwardly
weighed down by the cross of too great a life, is so
far from desiring " length of days," as to have no
lingerings but for others' sake, and to stand ever eager
for the vioce, " Lift up your head, for your redemption
draweth nigh " !

Nothing indeed is more wonderful to think of than
the different values of Time to different orders of
existence. To mere physical natures it is nothing,
except the element that contains their successions ; —
the element that is always there, and always uni-
form ; the empty receptacle of their changes ; producing
nothing, destroying nothing ; the mere open door of
all possibilities. The heavens and the earth are
insensible to their own vicissitudes, and have neither
pride nor fear at their longevity. They measure time
for others, but know nothing of it themselves : they
move in order to render its march perceptible, but are
blind and deaf to the rhythm which they beat. To
the rising sun it is nought what day in the world's
calendar it glorifies : the transit of the stars is calm
alike, whether they look down on the young Paradise
or on the trodden latitudes of guilt and sorrow : the
clock in the sick chamber does not stop to listen to

Time to Nature, God, and the Soul. 205

the parting breath, but ticks on, whether to count the
pulses of life, or to sharpen the silence of death. The
particular objects in creation have indeed their period :
they pass through various stages of a career, all lying
between a beginning and an end ; and if you come
upon them to-morrow, they are not the same that you
would find them to-day. The difference however is
for you and not for them ; and is lost when you restore
them to their place in the great organism of nature.
The universe as a whole is always sure to be; and
to its life, which has all space to roam in, it matters
not whether the pulsation be due here or there. To
the physical elements, history is nothing: the young
oak, if its roots be only fed, is indifferent, whether
its sap is from the juices of the new earth, or drawn
from the fallen foliage of ten thousand years; and
the full moon would as soon look down on a Geth-
semane as on an Eden. In the fields of creation every
hour is equally full, with neither more nor less than
what is due : indeed it is this very evenness that
makes and counts the hours and gives them equal
length; and we set off its constancy against our
contingent and passionate existence, because assured
that we can rely on its relentless neutrality. Nature,
in short, as a phenomenon in time, serves only to
mark it for higher beings ; and neither makes it nor
minds it. Duration, already on the field, does but use
the cycles of Nature as its ministers and interpreters.

206 Time to Nature, God, and the Soul.

If Nature is below any perception of time, God, at
the other extremity of being, is above it. He is the
great " I Am": his verbs have no tenses: his expe-
rience is never past ; his knowledge never future :
with him nothing fades away and sets : nothing dawns
and brings surprise. Whatever enters into his being
is not phenomenal, but real ; not transient and finite,
but permanent and infinite. Truth, the expression of
what unchangeably is ; beauty, the conception of a
fixed ideal ; holiness, the love of voluntary perfection ;
these, which meet in his personality, are not historical
and incidental, but unsuccessive and spiritual, the
ground-thought of the universe itself, the law and
life that underlie the course and determine the drift
of its development. He is the essence of all the
eternities : before his eye the accidents of being fall
away, and the inner significance alone is present to
his view. Only that which is always true and fair and
holy belongs to him ; not learned by him afterwards
from the form of its manifestation, but known before-
hand in itself ; not read off from the face of the world
by his perceiving eye, but created into the transitory
universe by his everlasting thought. His intellect
is not like ours, that climbs upward from fact to law,
from law to cause, from cause to the abiding ground
of all ; but, inversely, meditates downwards from
its own infinite essence into specific and multiform
expression ; and out of its still ocean volatilizes the

Time to Nature, God, and the Soul.. 207

clouds, and keeps alive the running waters, of all
earthly good. For him, who embraces the ages, they
can bring nothing, and take nothing away.

God, then, includes time without being affected by
it, and time includes Nature which is unaware of it.
He too completely transcends it, his works are too
profoundly subject to it, to be otherwise than indif-
ferent to its lapse. But we stand at an intermediate
point and bear affinity with both extremes. We are
akin to nature, inasmuch as we are born and grow
and die : we are akin to God, as we bear the stamp
of living thought, and wield the power of creative will.
As natural products, we pass through time and suffer
all its seasonal changes : as supernatural souls, time
passes through us, and becomes tributary to a life
beyond change. It is in a mixed being like ours, —
in the meeting of the physical and the spiritual, the
touch of the divine upon the human, — that duration
ceases to stand and begins to flow; that the hours
count themselves off aloud, and mingle with grief and
joy, and ring out by turns the chime and the dirge.
We cannot pretend to be mere organisms, to which
each period comes alike ; ready to bloom in the spring
or wither in the wintry wind; or to be passive and
unconscious, like the sea, whether glancing in the
moonlight, or sweeping wildly under the darkened
sky. We cannot pretend to be " as gods," lifted above
the reach of change, exempt from sleep and waking,

2o8 Time to Nature, God, and the Soul.

and lost in constancy of light and love. Life has its
perspective for us ; bright forms and slanting gleams
and soft shadows in the past ; a haze not without its
glory in the future ; both, looked at with a sigh from
thorny ways and wasting heats in the present. In
relation to lower existence, our human consciousness
of time is a prerogative : in comparison with God's
life, it is an infirmity, or at least a limitation. And
according as we use or abuse it, we may verge towards
either extreme, sinking ourselves into nature or merg-
ing into God. Do we use change, or does change
use us? Do we drift into the currents of necessity,
or keep the open sea, where, with the good winds of
heaven, a course may yet be steered? Do we sur-
render the eternal in us to the temporal, and yield
the soul to the seasonal pressures of life ? Then do
we go over to the side of mere nature, and claim
our slave-lineage with pride. Or do we convert the
temporal in us into the eternal, and appropriate all
change and loss to feed imperishable love and glorify
divinest truth ? Then do we draw nearer unto God
and humbly own our heavenly filiation.

It is with good reason that we are accustomed to put
a high estimate upon experience ; to give heed to men
who have it; and expect from them counsels rich in
wisdom. But experience, in any high and comprehen-
sive sense, is the rarest, as it is the choicest of human
qualities. More must go to make it than we are apt to

Time to Nature, God, and the Soul. 209

suppose ; not habit and opportunity alone, which can
only give a narrow dexterity of hand or mind ; but some
breadth of faculty to seize relations, and depth of con-
science to read life truly, and quickness of affection to
sympathise with it largely ; and a cultivated reverence
of mind to know its own ignorance and find the way
to others' wisdom. The materials and occasions of
experience may often abound ; and yet may remain
without moral result, for want of the living mind and
moulding love to elaborate and shape them. Some men
there are whom no lapse of time seems to soften or
expand; from whom whole floods of experience will
flow off and leave them dry ; who pass through events,
and remember them, and like to call back their outward
image again, but are just the same as if the events had
been different ; who reproduce in age the very senti-
ments and prejudices they had looked up in youth, and
gather nothing from the past but a mood ungenial to
the present. They repeat the story of their early days,
not as a poem, but as an almanac ; can give you the
dates but not the meaning of the changes they have
seen ; and of the men they have admired can tell as
much as the register and the coffin-plate. To such
natures, case-hardened against the elements, time and
the seasons come in vain : winter and summer, not a
crevice opens in the rock where a green thing can push
its root. Wanting susceptibility to appropriate what is
given and work it up into the organism of the personal

P

210 Time to Nature, God, and the Soul.

existence, they can only by an abuse of terms be said to
have " experience ,s at all : they want its diviner con-
ditions, though supplied with its natural vicissitudes;
and were life to come over again, they would do and be
essentially the same. Nor is this hardness of mind,
this resistance to the solicitations of time, at all peculiar
to the rough and working world. In the intellectual as
in the practical sphere of human affairs the same fact
may be observed. To some minds knowledge itself
seems to come, not as a nutriment, but as an incrusta-
tion : they take it up and keep it, yet are scarce wiser
than before : they let themselves serve as mere organs
for its elaboration ; and when the honeycomb is ready,
the insects come out as they had gone in. It is amazing
to find how few there are whom knowledge enters as
living truth, and moulds to higher beauty ; how often it
proves but a Satan's promise to those who taste the
fruit, " Ye shall be as gods." The littleness that may
stand in face of the widest field of thought, the in-
sensibility that hears no Saviour's voice when tender
griefs stand at the door and knock, the self-will that can
hold its stiff footing and deny its prayer when God is
waiting for the surrendered heart ; too clearly show how
many, of all that are born, yet remain to be born again.
It would almost seem that, for different souls, there are
different periods for opening, and different rates of
ripening ; and that while some welcome the first breath
of spring, and strike their eager fibres into the mellow

Time to Nature, God, and the Soul. 211

soil, others never in this world burst the capsule of their
self-enclosed humanity; or at least make only such
tardy and reluctant growth as to stint the glory of
God's natural year, and reserve for another clime its
grace, its foliage, and its fruit. Not always however
are we doomed to fear that the heavenly birth is thus
delayed. There are some to whom the tearful atmo-
sphere of this world early brings the dew and sprinkling
of regeneration ; and to whom, thenceforth, no event is
simply physical, no experience chiefly external ; but an
inner fire takes up and kindles whatever is offered, and
is sure to be nurtured by it into a purer and diviner
flame. To such souls every element of life is sacred,
and every momentary change is rich ; and the transient
brush of sunshine that but touches the grass and flits
away, will show them more than the longest and the
most staring summer-day can give to the shrewd open
eye. Whatever happens to them or passes before them
becomes a part of them : their tablet of the past is not
the memorandum -book of business and affairs, but the
illuminated calendar of the affections, where the names
are holy and the days are bright. The legends they
have to tell are not superficial anecdotes that fools can
understand as well as wise ; but snatches from the great
drama of reality, strophes flung out from its chords of
joy or grief, moving and significant to those only who
know it as a whole. Where there is in the soul this
living mood of watchfulness and response, it needs no

p2

2 1 2 Time to Nature, God, and the Soul.

large knowledge to give the finest wisdom, no length of
days to enrich the heart with the deepest experience.
Let the mind be only pure and tender with the love of
God, large with his presence, and free in the quietude
of faith, and its faculties move upon the slightest hint,
and find more in an ordinary year than sharp -sighted-
ness and sound-headedness alone could discern from
beneath their knitted brows in half a century. I know
not indeed which is the more marvellous ; — the frequent
ripeness of the young, where their nature is well
directed, in moral and spiritual wisdom ; or the apparent
failure, equally frequent, of the longest life to awaken
the most elementary sentiments of religion. In either
case we learn how little mere Time has to do with things
divine ; how, when we keep near to God, the smallest
allowance may suffice ; and, when we quit him for the
mere natural life, the largest is of no avail.

Indeed, that Time is no measure of value in the
deeper concerns of our humanity, is apparent from a
comparison, not only of different persons, but even of
different parts of our own individual experience. No
hour-glass, no diary, can estimate for you the "fulness
of time": it is the soul that fills it: if the soul lie
asleep, it is not filled at all ; if she be awake, in the
vigils of suspense, of sorrow, of aspiration, there may be
more in an hour than you can find in a dozen empty lives.
As it is with place, so is it with time. Often it happens
that some one spot, uncoveted by others, visited by no

Time to Nature, God, and the Soul. 2 1 3

pilgrim feet, may be more to you than all the world
besides : it maybe but a bit of meadow-land with a path
beneath the elms ; or an old house that looks upon a
street ; or a bench in a plain village church. But if it
be there that your childish steps ran free ; if through
those windows you looked ere the tint of wonder had
yet flown ; if at that shrine you knelt in your first deep
sorrow; if shadowy forms surround you there with
benign and holy looks, and tones are in the air that
you alone can hear; the place will have for you a
sacredness quite unique and immeasurable ; a magni-
tude of interest that no lines of longitude can define.
In like manner may a weight truly unlimited be con-
densed into a speck of time. In Gethsemane itself it
needed but three cries of briefest prayer, and the most
pathetic crisis had passed from the sublimest of his-
tories. Less pregnant, and yet of immeasurable con-
tents, was the point of suspense for the Christian
confessor, while the Eoman tribunal paused on the
verdict — " To the release," or, — " To the lions" ! And
in the private house where, as you gaze up to the
chamber aloft, the unaccustomed lamp, the soft-flitting
shadows on the blind, and an indescribable look of
hushed intensity betray the vigils over some life quiver-
ing on the verge, what, think you, would you learn
from the pale watcher of those fading eyes, if you
asked her how much she lived in the hour ere they
closed? The patriot, snatching from his courier the

214 Time to Nature, God, and the Soul.

news of the decisive battle lost or won ; the widow,
when her son's ship has foundered, asking at the
broker's office for the list of the shipwrecked and the
saved ; — these can tell you, — or rather cannot tell, —
what may be comprised in the twinkling of an eye.
Nor, for this experience, is there need of any startling
external vicissitudes ; it belongs no less to the purely
internal story of the mind. As Newton, in testing his
theory, approached the end of his calculations, and
foresaw that it would be verified, the rush of thought
became too great for even his tranquillity, and with
trembling hand ho delivered to another the task he
could not complete himself. Such a burst of sudden
discovery, — the solution of a life-long problem, — comes
charged with a meaning in excess of human strength.
Nay, even the simple student, who discovers nothing,
but only finds the wise whom he may follow, can never
forget the hour when first he felt the power of the higher
mind that wakened up his nature and revealed him to
himself ; if by the living voice, the memory of its tones
will make all others seem empty ; if by the silent page,
it will look up with a deep and tender light which
brighter genius will never eclipse. Still more marked
are the nodal points of the spiritual history; when
from our penitential prayers the shell of custom breaks
away, and floods the heart with all their meaning ; or
when, after long darkness on a trackless sea of doubt,
the cloud passes from the pole-star of our life, and

Time to Nature, God, and the Soul. 215

gives us our true way ; or when we are caught up into
self-forgetfulness and enter on the freedom of a sur-
rendered will. The magnitude of these moments,
their real proportion to the whole story of our days, no
dial-plate can show. The pendulum may beat but
once, ere all be over ; yet that instant may carry in it
the burden of years. For the higher regions of our
nature, the true measures of time are found, not, as
with physical changes, in any ratio of traversed arcs,
but in the relation of events to our affections ; and in a
focus, which is only a point, may burn a light of the
spirit greater than you can find diluted through indefi-
nite wastes of dull and hazy life.

Magnitude of life then stands not in mere length of
days. That is but one of its dimensions ; and only
" in our haste " can we protest, when it is abridged,
that God has " created us in vain." It is not larger
time that we want, so much as the more capacious soul
to flow through every pore of the little which we have.
So long as we shrink within the fence of selfish ease,
and see nothing, feel nothing, think nothing, beyond
the drowsy range of personal routine, our lot will be so
empty, that no amount of it can ever seem enough ;
and our complaint of its brevity would not be cured
by the gift of centuries. While the spirit sleeps, the
longest time-piece will be running down, and can count
nothing but its own lessening distance from stoppage
and death. But to the insight and affections of a mind

2i6 Time to Nat* -:. Goof, and the Saul.

awake there is no end to the plenitude of things ; it
overcL. ■.:■_.- :he hours thai try to give its reckoning.
Shall we forger in what a world we have our place ?
Ere our pulse beats thrice., the neighbouring air vibrates
with the cry of every passion, the tones of every sorrow,
of human::- ;.nd sun and moon look down on the
incidents of unnumbered moving dramas : and he who
dwells in this air with susceptible ear and looks on this
- a vdth open eye may well lose all heed for his own
life, while it is multiplied and melted by sympathy in a
£h is ". others. A single instant of the Divine Life,
spread over all that is simultaneous, is worth an
eternity of ours, which at least begins by taking all
things one by one. And in proportion as we emerge
from this childhood of the mind, and claim our ap-
proach towards union with God, will the contents of
our experience enrich themselves, and its area corr:
its evanescence ; till a mere moment may become worth
a millennium before ; and the Transient may be to the
large soul more than the Everlasting to the little : and
then whether our Time be long or short by Sun and
Moon may well remain in different , since the life that
is beyond time and nature is vivid within us.

xvn.
.fsrgrfotuss to |?obi.

Lt~ce Tii 47.

' ' I say unto thee, Her sins, -which are many, are f orgiven ; for she loved
much : but to 'whom little is forgiven, the same loreth little, "

Ix order to appreciate aright the sentiment here meant
to be conveyed, we roust, I snppose, slightly correct
the form of words, and restore to the two clauses their
due balance and contrast : ' Her sins are forgiven, for
her love is great ; but he to whom little is forgiven, — it
is because he loveth little.' That is to say, there is
a perfect parity of movement between God's receiving
affection and our trustful advance ; profuse attachment
on our part being met by free reconciliation on his ;
whilst the cautious and frugal heart scarcely reduces
its estrangement in the least. In this great lesson lies
the whole point of the incident : to lead on to this are
the figures, — at the head of the feast and at the feet of
Christ, — presented in such elaborate opposition; — the
cold politeness of the Pharisee, content to be civil to

2i8 Forgiveness to Love.

the Son of God ; and the passionate reverence of the
woman, who forgets the restraints of usage in her
gratitude and tears. The evident intention of Jesus is,
to plead her intense devotedness as a sufficient ground
for Divine forgiveness ; and not, as the historian in-
versely supposes, to account for her attachment hy a
prior act of pardon : for it is not till the last moment
of the scene that he winds up with the announcement
" Thy sins are forgiven " ; and silences all murmurs
hy again referring to her fervour of trust as the reason
of her release ; " Thy faith hath saved thee ; go in
peace." No doubt, the same tender and susceptible
soul that wins forgiveness by depth of love will also
repay it with devoted gratitude : the imploring faith at
first, and the resulting joy at last, will be of the same
rich tone ; and, in his words to Simon, Jesus may have
touched on both relations, and spoken of forgiveness
as at once the answer to a love spontaneous and the
awakener of a love responsive ; and with this he may
have contrasted the hopeless case of the insensible and
formal mind, which for want of love goes without for-
giveness, and, unmellowed by forgiveness, flows down
in no love. And this double turn to the thought may
explain the evangelist! s wavering and confusion between
the two directions. But whoever will set himself at a
little distance from the incident and look at its character
as a whole, cannot fail to seize its essential spirit in this
truth ; that in heaven there is mercy for the reverent

Forgiveness to Love. 219

and loving, and a strict account for the critical and
cold.

Perhaps the historian would have kept this lesson
more clearly in his eye, had he not apparently taken
too dark a view of the woman's character, and been
misled by Christ's words about her " many sins " into
the inference that she was living a life of outward
shame. The appearance of such a person, with atti-
tudes of such vehement enthusiasm, in the dining-
room of the fastidious Simon, would present a manifest
improbability. And we are relieved of the difficulty by
the other three evangelists,* who relate an incident so
similar to this that it can be nothing else ; an incident
in which the entertainer is still Simon, and a woman in
devoted discipleship expends her precious spikenard on
the Lord, and the guests find fault with his permission
of the act. If these are features which could hardly
occur twice, we must suppose the same fact to be
the common base of all the narratives, and must use
them to correct and supplement each other. We thus
learn from the other gospels that the scene was in
Bethany, and from the fourth evangelist that the
woman was no other than Mary the sister of Lazarus.
If so, it is no wonder that her act is regarded by
the narrators as the simple expression of reverential
homage, apart from all penitential meaning ; and that
no reference is made to any sins in her that asked

* Matt. xxvi. 6-13. Mark xiv. 3-9. John xii. 1-8.

220 Forgiveness to Love.

forgiveness. By taking our stand at a mid-point
between the two accounts, we may perhaps discern the
truth of both. To the outward eye of the spectators
at Bethany there would appear no ground for contri-
tion in that gentle Mary who had long sought, and well
knew where to find, " the one thing needful " ; and they
would see nothing in her demeanour but the outpouring
of an unsparing veneration. Yet in the inner relations
of that susceptible soul might there not have been
many burdens of self-reproach, — many grievous failures
and transgressions which she had longed to confess, and
now at length had laid at his feet ? Those good sisters,
as we know, were not always quite genial together ; and
the brisk hand and the tender heart, being human both,
might well make sins for themselves and sorrows for
each other, that needed the eye of Christ to clear them
away. But as this would be all among themselves, —
private as the confessional, — any words of re-assurance
that might escape the lips of Christ would fall upon
the hearers without their key; and an expression of
forgiveness, repeated to those who knew nothing of the
persons or the scene, might be misconstrued to imply
that she to whom it was addressed must have been " a
sinner " in human sight as well as in Divine. Let us,
however, who know that it was Mary of Bethany, not
so misunderstand those bitter tears, and the gracious
words that dried them at their fountain-head. "We
cannot penetrate the spiritual confidences which so

Forgiveness to Love. 221

humbled and moved her at the feet of Christ. But
this we know assuredly ; that the same eager suscepti-
bility which was so quick to choose " the good part "
and follow whither the heavenly thirst might lead, would
also cause her to feel as if " her sins were many " : for
the ideal wing is often broken against the barrier of the
real : the holiest light in the upper region of the soul
flings the deepest shadow on the ground; and the
depth of contrition is proportioned to the height of
aspiration. Nor let us dare to call this an illusion :
for it is the most certain of all moral laws, that every
sin brings a film upon the inner vision and sets the
soul more nearly in the dark ; that in the heart where
evil is faintest, there is it best known ; and that none
can take the full measure of its shadow but He that
sees it from the Light of lights. And what, accord-
ingly, is the consolation which the Saviour offers to her
contrition ? Does he treat it as a mistake ? does he
say, she need not distress herself, for in reality there is
but little amiss, and Lazarus and Martha declare she is
the best creature in the world ? On the contrary, he
respects her self-abasement ; he adopts and repeats her
remorseful estimate; he owns the sins to be many,
only not too many for the reconciling love of God.

Here then we have the distinctest contrast between
two types of mind and character, with a direct verdict
from the lips of Christ on their relative nearness to the
heart of God. There is the apparently correct and

222 Forgiveness to Love.

i>

unobjectionable Simon, honest enough to risk the
imputation of discipleship by opening his house to the
Galileans, and worthy to be on intimate terms with the
good family of Bethany. Evidently sensitive about the
proprieties, and vexed that he cannot avoid " a scene,"
he has no insight below the surface, — no sympathy
with the hidden source of those silent tears. Cold and
even in himself, he has an aversion to the language of
intense affection, and likes to see the gloss of decorous
moderation spread over all things. His ethical self-
management guards the balance of his habits and
keeps him negatively right ; and, having no real
appreciation of sin or sigh for inner consecration, he
probably finds the " pleasures of a good conscience "
just upon his level. Though self-righteousness can
never be without a touch of pride, we know nothing
against his morals, his charity, or his outward religion.
One single feature, — and that a want and not an enor-
mity,— arrested and fixed the eye of Christ : his love
was little. On the other hand, there is the devoted
and affectionate Mary, known to us only by her con-
trition, aspiration, and reverence ; of whom we can
only think as of a face now uplifted and receptive, now
downcast and in tears. Her outer life remains for us
in the dark : we can only see that that passionate inner
nature must have passed through many a strife, and
may well have been betrayed into many a fall. We can
by no means feel sure that she never was surprised into

Forgiveness to Love. 223

the sharp and bitter word, or was always punctual with
the outward task ; that she did not miss the near duty in
quest of a far wisdom ; that, where her love was strong,
no golden mist ever dimmed her clearness of eye or
purity of conscience. But, whatever her delusions or
sins, they were not those of a dead hut of a living
heart : they had no canker of selfishness : they were
the weeds of a vernal nature, so green as scarce to be
told from promised flowers, — not autumn spawn, grow-
ing where the sap is gone and the rot begun. The
upper springs of her soul, however troubled in their
later flow, were pure and untainted yet : humility and
trust had not ceased to be habitual, or self-complacency
to be impossible. The vision of a higher sanctity stood
ever at one remove, and kept alive a secret light within
the eye, and moulded the very features into reverence.
If her will was weak and knew not how to rule, it was
not stiff with pride, but could resign itself and serve.
Sad and confused as may be the accounts of such a one
with God, there is an open hope, — a source of power, —
a likeness with himself yet uneffaced, — so long as the
hove is great.

The emphatic preference which Christ evinces for
this form of character above the ethical and self-reliant
is no accident, exceptionally appearing in this passage
of his life. It pervades the whole expression of his
mind. He would not let this same Mary be withdrawn
from sitting at his feet : he blessed the wondering heart

224 Forgiveness to Love.

of the young child : he told how the voice of the con-
trite publican reached the ear of God : he opened the
Divine arms to the prodigal returning and subdued : he
sorrowfully saw the rich youth go away, who had obeyed
the commandment without joy, yet had not faith to
take the cross. It is indeed the one essential charac-
teristic of his religion, — that which distinguishes the
gospel from the law, from natural morals, from self-
spun philosophy, — that it insists on the doctrine of
reconciliation by love. To teach the rewards of obe-
dience may be simply Deistic : to proclaim pardon on
repentance is only Jewish : to announce forgiveness to
affection and trust is distinctively Christian. Short of
this truth we have not entered on our discipleship.
This thought it is which makes the difference between
the new ages and the old, between true churches and
false, between Christian and Pagan art, between a
Magdalen and a Cleopatra, between a Saviour and a
Nemesis. And if the consciousness of Christendom,
after passing through Paul and John, through Clement
and Augustine, through Tauler and Luther, has not
brought this truth home to our hearts, we have yet to
lay ourselves open to the benignest breath of a regener-
ated world.

" Her sins are forgiven ; for she loved much ": — does
the reason seem to you inadequate to the result ?
Remember what Divine forgiveness is, and alone can
be. It is not a rescinding of the appointed sufferings

Forgiveness to Love. 225

of guilt. It is not a treatment of moral wrong as
though it were moral right, or only neutral. It cannot
alter the sinful past, or relieve it, by a single shade, of
God's disapproval : he can never be brought to see it
other than it is. But the act which is evil in itself is
also an offence against Him who identifies his will
with all that is good. And of this personal alienation
forgiveness is the removal. Is it strange that it should
be removed by personal love, and not removed icithout
it ? How should sympathy and communion be re-
stored, while the offender's face is averted in distrust ?
How should they fail to be restored, when the inner
discordance has now ceased, when the stain on the past
looks alike to both, and the same loves and aversions
render the human and the Divine mind again congenial ?
What is it that ever separates us from God ? It is
simply the unlikeness of our minds to his ; — their low
tastes and disproportioned desires ; — their pride in what
is nought to him, their indifference to what is all in
all ; — their devotion to the perishable self amid the
flow of his everlasting love ; — their slight of the truth
he has so magnificently shown, and the holiness he has
yet more awfully secreted in the very heart of things.
We throw around us the self-evolved clouds of a nature
neglected or debased, and then complain that his beams
are hid : we plunge into ever deeper shades, and marvel
that the Sun is under permanent eclipse. But the
light of his countenance is steady and eternal ; and it

Q

226 Forgiveness to Love.

«i

is ready to shine in again upon us, whenever affections
go forth from us intense enough to perforate the mist.
Nay, He himself, with the breath that bloweth where it
listeth, often sweeps mercifully by, and makes inlets
for gleaming lights and tender colours not our own.
To remove the estrangement, it only needs that, on
such invitation, we set our face the other way, and look
to him with free response and trust ; that we reflect
him instead of darkening ourselves ; that we let him
show us our delusions as they really are ; and, stripping
away reserve and self -enclosure, pass into affectionate
communion with him. The return of sympathy is the
removal of ungenial separation ; and he that is not
separated is forgiven.

Thus and thus only is the personal relation which
has been disturbed by sin re-adjusted and rectified.
As for the outward penalties incurred, they yet remain ;
and it would be a thing furthest from the wish of a
restored and purified mind, that any act of oblivion
should blot them out. Nay, were they not already
there, provided in the legislation of the universe, the
regenerate heart would never rest without creating and
suffering them, self-imposed. With or without the
contrite love, the consequences of our sin have to be
borne. Only, without it, they come upon us as dry
and unrelieved suffering, — a parching fever untended
and alone, consuming us in exile, with no tender looks
hovering near us, and no home tones floating on the

Forgiveness to Love. 227

ear. With it, they light indeed their fires within us
still; but they are cooled and well-nigh quenched in
the joy of reconciliation and the floods of living sym-
pathy. Wherever there is a true thirst for God and
that thirst is not in vain, hell itself is fresh with water-
brooks, and so bursts into green as to be hell no more.

And as it is with the peace, so is it with the power,
of the spirit of awakened love. We are helpless and
paralysed without it. The mere regret for past and
irrevocable wrong only gnaws the mind with unpro-
ductive self-contempt, or works upon a feeble prudence
that cannot lift itself from its own flat : and even true
shame and remorse, while only retrospective and mel-
lowed by no personal trust and present sympathy, rather
prostrate than inspire the soul. They are the needful
weakness by which we are brought low and made clear,
in preparation for the access of a higher strength. It
is only in the guise of a deep love that that higher
strength enters to possess us. It is only when the
force of conscience ceases to be a propulsion in the
dark, and stands before us transfigured with the glory
of a Divine form, — only when it is discovered to be no
mere part of ourselves, but the immediate real presence
of the Holiest of all, that we are touched and caught
up by its inspiration. Then it wins to itself the tran-
scending power of a personal affection ; and the spiritual
impulse and the deepest love fall into coalescence.
Instead of distant obedience arises near communion :

Q 2

228 Forgiveness to Love.

in place of a precarious and trembling will, toiling on
the dust, we find the transporting wing of aspiration,
and leave detaining weights behind. As for mere
human strength and self-reliance, it cannot hold
through this high race. Not long shall even young
resolve press on without being weary ; and the youth-
ful spirits too often utterly fall. But they that, with
trustful love, " wait upon the Lord, shall renew their
strength "; " they shall mount up on wings like eagles ;
they shall run and not be weary ; they shall walk and
shall not faint."

XVIII.

SRft to % CJnJGttm of % |)r0pjr£ts.

Acts iii. 25.
"Ye are the children of the prophets."

It is an old problem, to determine the characters which
most clearly distinguish man from the other tribes that
share with him the occupancy of this world. I will
venture to add one to the many answers it has received :
he can tell what o'clock it is. His nature indeed has
few more discriminating symbols than that small instru-
ment, the watch. Other creatures travel down the path
of time : but he alone can count the steps. They too
are liable to season and to change : but he only can mark
the cycle and anticipate the end. They also bear within
them the vestige of the past, and can dream again of
some old sight or sound : but in him alone, from know-
ledge of its source, is it ripened into memory. They
belong to duration : but duration rather belongs to him ;
not indeed to change its empty form, but to mark its
divisions, to glorify its spirit, and determine its contents.

230 Life to the Children of the Prophets.

He would have no name by which to describe the present
moment, were not the past and the future simulta-
neously before his thought. It is a high prerogative, —
this meeting of the three elements in his mind at once :
nor does he often appear to me in closer affinity to the
Divine nature, than when I hear the church-clock
beneath the midnight skies, — man's hour-bell striking
on the ear, — and watch God's time-piece of stars gliding
before the eye.

Yet how little true to this prerogative does he
practically seem ! If you place him before you in
idea, as the only known being, save God, who can
measure the flow of time, and discern the relation of
his Now to a heretofore and a hereafter; you think
his position august and sublime, and expect a nature
widened and calmed by that breadth of duration which
seems to claim him. But if you turn from his chro-
nometer to himself, if you look for the past and the
future in his own mind, extending his sympathy and
tranquillizing his passions, the solemnity of your
expectation is sadly disappointed : you see almost the
same slavery to the moment, the same blindness to all
beyond, as in creatures who are aware of nothing else.
He seems delivered over from instant to instant, like a
helpless tradition moulded by small pressures of the
time, and losing permanent truth at every point. He
burns away with self-consuming care in the running
focus of the present, fusing down his life into drops

Life to the Children of the Prophets. 231

that no man cares to gather ; and shows nothing of that
large lustre of the soul which resembles the spacious
and unwasting light of electric skies. Nay, his very
privilege of seeing fore and aft is corrupted by him into
a means of heating up, instead of cooling down, the
interest of the moment : his dexterity, his experience,
his power of anticipation, are freely applied to deepen
his immediate stake, and make the instant game more
desperately engaging to his passions ; but not to give
the quiet heart and steady hand of one who frequents
it only as the gymnastic of a divine skill, and is un-
dazzled by its showy prize. Instead of abating the
vehemence of his short-sighted wishes by the sense of
larger and more enduring good, he directly imports all
the resources of memory and the fervours of hope into
his momentary desire, and thus doubles his slavery
instead of attaining his freedom.

This habit of living for the moment is, even in its
best forms, narrowing to the mind and withering to the
heart. It cannot coexist with the sense of God upon
the soul. It makes the difference between the blindness
of passion and the long sight of affection, — betweer the
evanescent haste of impulse and the permanent aspira-
tion of enthusiasm, — between the heats of the natural
and the intensity of the spiritual man. This is readily
admitted in the case of one who lives for imme-
diate pleasure. The common feeling of mankind looks
with contemptuous pity at his inability to resist the

232 Life to the Children of the Prophets.

bait that dances before his eye, — his fickle purposes,
changed by each bright colour which the prism of life
may throw upon the wall of thought, — his feeble cap-
tivity to stronger wills, — his quick spirits and his lin-
gering repentances.

Could such a one be persuaded to change immediate
pleasure for immediate interest, it would be more difficult
to procure his condemnation from the verdict of men :
for the inconsistency which most offends them would be
replaced by a steady and prudent self-command. Yet
the improvement, though fitting him for the competitions
of the world, may leave him absolute stranger as before
to the love and life of God ; nay, may even be the sign
of a more hopeless alienation : for I believe there is no
hell so far from God, no exile so total, as the cares of
sordid self-interest. Under that spell the very language
of recall becomes an unintelligible jargon, and, amid the
sleep of the interpreting soul, is taken for unmeaning
cant. There are men voluntarily delivered over to the
work of mere livelihood and gain, — men who, without
the sad necessities and redeeming inspiration of affection,
dwarf their whole nature to the scale of retail trade,
who, instead of withstanding by a noble spirit the little-
ness of life, fall into it with glee and relish ; the paradise
of whose hopes is a comfortable business, and the idol
of whose admiration is the shrewd neighbour sure to
make his fortune. To such a man all the depth and
beauty of life are closed. The sweetest relations suggest

*bov

Life to the Children of the Prophets. 233

nothing but shapes in his secular affairs ; his daughters
are emblems of so many marriage chances, and his sons
of so many apprentice-fees ; and his charities and his
church, an investment in decent reputation. Friends,
there is nothing degrading in the humblest and the
hardest fate ; nothing much nobler in this world than a
meek true soul struggling against the narrow bounds of
the sphere assigned it, and faithful to cherish the light
of God in the inglorious darkness of a bitter lot. But
to find the smallness of affairs a relief from any higher
strain, to hug the degradation and make ourselves at
home with it, to plead it in excuse for the unresisting
meanness of our nature, to preach from its low plat-
form a crusade of blind unbelief against the visions of
prophets and the breathings of the devout, — this is a
direct betrayal of the post of life, and treason against
the holy Providence of all. Whoever fixes himself upon
the centre of mere prudential interest forfeits thereby
his title to speak, because his power to judge, of anything
divine : for heaven pays small respect to our poor taste
for plain truths, and so withdraws from the earthly eye
the "deep things of God," that "the natural man
cannot discern them."

Nay, this blindness may befall a far worthier class
than the votaries of pleasure or of interest : it is the
penalty of all who concentrate themselves upon the
present, — who live for the moment, even though it
be the momentary Duty. Conscience also has its

234 Life to the Children of the Prophets.

narrowness ; its scrupulous, microscopic gaze, that
looks for the animalcules of obligation till it grows
blind to the stars of faith, and the free heaven swims
dizzily before it. The anxieties of the merely dutiful
mind show that there is yet a barrier leaving it outside
the union with God. Those cautious steps betray the
deterring fear, and are unlike the free movements of a
confiding love. I know at once whose steps they are :
they belong to one who appreciates religion as the
means of good morals, instead of morals as the germ
and condition of religion ; whose very faith therefore is
a worship of prohibition, a conservatism of limits, an
apprehension of the escape of some fugitive desires;
and can never fling itself in pure enthusiasm and with
fearless trust upon a large career where no rule can
guide it but only love impel. The small scale of affec-
tion in these honest and rigid minds shows itself in
censorious thoughts : they cannot see beyond the cir-
cumference of their own rules : they have no sympathy
for other types of life, — no large eye for good if God
should hide it under strange costume : and so, as the
world will grow into unexpected shapes, they are
amazed at the perverseness of the world ; treating it
indeed with no greater rigour than they would severely
apply to themselves ; only forgetting that the Lord of
Omniscience gathers himself not into their centre, but
rather calls them out into his circumference. In short,
the soul which foregoes its privilege of spreading itself

Life to the Children of the Prophets. 235

out on past and future, and lives for the moment,
whether of pleasure, of interest, or even of duty, suffers
a dwindling in its nature. In helpless irritability, in
miserable egotism, in ungenial rigour, in uneven spirits,
does the exaggeration of the present betray itself. By
continuance in it a man inevitably becomes ever smaller
in soul, while, by losing sight more and more of any-
thing beyond him, he feels as though he were greater ;
till at length he becomes incapable of learning, of
trusting, of looking up at all ; and exhibits all the
littleness of the child, only without the child's tender-
ness and faith. Nor is this result at all prevented
by any magnitude in the mere scale of a man's
outward and personal life. It is as true of master
as of man, of merchant as of clerk. Be the outline
and circumference of occupation large or small, the
contents, taken one by one, are not dissimilar; and
while the minds that penetrate them remain alike, the
only difference will be between a taller and a lower
stature of the same type of character.

There are times, I suppose, to every thoughtful man,
when the impression of this littleness in his actual life
comes upon him with a startling force. A touch of
sorrow which wakes the faded forms of old affection, — a
poet's strain at which some high enthusiasm vibrates in
the heart again, — a night upon the mountain or the
ocean where a Presence greater than the whole field of
worlds is felt in the rush of the waters and the silence

236 Life to the Children of the Prophets.

of the air, — or the sight of some secret sufferer who
meekly bears a cross unknown to us, — surprises us
into the humbling discovery, that we have been dead to
the sublimities that lie as a cloud of glory around us
and within us. Something deeper than the senses
show or the hand can touch gleams upon us every-
where,— an expressiveness behind the features of life
and nature which we had never seen before ; and scenes
quite often looked at now seem to look at us, and
with the living light of a Divine eye. Something that
was eternal we had always supposed that there must
be ; now we find that there is Some One who is eternal ;
and the drawing near to him, the penetration to him
through his universe, the saying of a true word, the lifting
of a clear face, to him, appears to have a meaning we did
not suspect. Compared with this meaning, how poor
seems all that we had taken to be most real ! how
empty the contents of our busiest day, too troubled
about many things to leave any opening for the one
thing needful ! Yet what is a day, but a sample of the
eternity in which we are and are to be ? — If this
arousing of the soul is not faithfully followed up, habit
will reassert its power, and contradict the divine call
by a positive relapse ; and an utter scepticism of every-
thing infinite will ensue, and the mind will look back
on its only waking experience as a brilliant dream.
But if, by perpetuity in the change, this proves to be
a true regenerative hour, the opposite effect will follow.

Life to the Children of the Prophets. 237

Finite things will be despised and disbelieved; will
suffer vengeance for their long tyranny, and be spurned
as mere deceptive shows ; and the more intense their
despotism has been, the more thorough will be the
renunciation of their sway. When the scales first fall
from the eyes of one who has been living for the
moment, that which lies before his astonished view
is the eternal depth of God, towards which the currents
of a resistless spirit appear to draw him. If he have
a strong impetuous soul, like Augustine or Luther, he
plunges in and loses himself in quest of the everlasting
point of view. The conversions of such minds from
the life for the moment to the life for eternity are facts
to be treated with a hearty reverence. Nevertheless,
the sweep at once from egotism to God is too vast not
to bring some giddiness, some loss of equilibrium, into
a nature like ours. The sudden transfer from the
exclusively personal point to the exclusively divine is
not free from the illusion of vehement contrast. Finite
things are too absolutely quenched, and sink away from
even their just rights. All that is human is dwarfed
and slighted ; and every mild and gracious light, of
natural pity, of domestic affection, of cultivated art,
is put out by the intense splendours of the beatific
vision. Hence, periods distinguished by a rapid burst
of religious consciousness have rarely been unmarked
by wild and tragic features, by a life deepening into
vivid colours and shaping itself into gigantic forms. A

238 Life to the Children of the Prophets.

taste and feeling for greatness unsoftened by beauty bas
developed itself. The immensity of the divine ends
pursued has swallowed up the scrupulous care of con-
science about the means employed. The curbs on
human passion, the respect for human life, the rights
of human thought, have given way. And breathing
in a region of transcendent air, men have lost the
gentleness and warmth of a kindred and considerate
heart. The new-born soul, carried aloft by the fiery
steeds of preternatural affection, is apt to be stripped,
in the mighty wind of its ascent, of the mantle of its
humanities, and let it drop on less glorious prophets,
still toiling on the level of this world.

Behold then the opposite dangers between which
we stand. He who lives for the moment never finds
his soul and is alien from God : he who springs out
of this darkness to live straightway for eternity wins a
giddy height which only the most balanced minds can
safely hold, and whence the lesser graces and charities
are apt to pass out of sight. Have we nothing then to
mediate for us between these two, — between the simply
natural and the simply spiritual, — between the purely
personal and the absolutely Divine ? Are there but these
two foci of position for our nature, the solid darkness
of self, and the ethereal effulgence of God, — the one
blinding from its gloom, the other from its brilliancy ?
Far from it. There is an intermediate realm, or rather
an interposed path spreading from the one to the other,

Life to the Children of the Prophets. 239

with stages of sweet rest for weary souls, and many a
loving help on the way from earth to heaven. For
those who cannot take the whole distance at a bound,
God has prepared, between the natural and the
spiritual, the heroisms, the martyrdoms, the sancti-
ties, of History. If we cannot live at once and alone
with him, we may at least live with those who have
lived with him ; and find, in our admiring love for
their purity, their truth, their goodness, an intercession
with his pity on our behalf. To study the lives, to
meditate the sorrows, to commune with the thoughts, of
the great and holy men and women of this rich world,
is a sacred discipline which deserves at least to rank
as the forecourt of the temple of true worship, and may
train the tastes, ere we pass the very gate, of heaven.
It is an exercise which neither permits us to remain in
self-idolatry, nor yet plunges us into self-annihilation.
It strengthens what is weak in our souls by the
sympathy of ages : it supports us against the derisive
face of living fools by the sublime gaze of whole cen-
turies of the wise : it relieves the sense of our life's
littleness by showing us the possibility of greatness.
Above all, it corrects and inverts our delusive estimates
of what is solid and powerful in this world. In our
own individual experience we are ever tempted to think
nothing real, nothing positive and practical, except our
material business, the visible produce of our pains, the
outward administration of our life ; while the inner and

240 Life to the Children of the Prophets.

ideal life is deemed so unsubstantial a dream that those
who speak of it are supposed to be beating the air.
The experience of nations and ages reverses this. The
glories of the past are not in huge trades, or fine pro-
perties, or even in laws and rites and institutions which
in their day kindled the passions of party strife : these,
chafed into dust by the mouldering hand of time, suc-
cessively fall away with the earthly conditions from
which they come ; while the mere impulses of expres-
sion, through which affection and admiration pour
themselves forth and heart appeals to heart, mould
themselves into imperishable Arts, though asking only
for the most perishable of materials, — forms and tones,
colour and language ; and precisely the most ethereal
and interior of thoughts, which visit us only in
evanescent gleams, — of something terrible in sin,
of something infinite in duty, of a possible union
with God through love and a mastery of life
through entire surrender, — prove the most perma-
nent realities in history ; constructing themselves into
faiths which have been the cradle of nations and the
divine nurse of the most vivifying individual minds.
The ink of Virgil on its thin leaf outlasts the Roman
walls and aqueducts : nay, the unwritten words of
Homer survive the cities where they were sung, and
are our only guide to the rivers and plains which he has
made immortal, but which nature and history could not
keep. Of nothing does the aspect change more with

Life to the Children of the Prophets. 241

time than of that wealth and station for which such
sacrifices are made. Who now cares for all that
Kallias had, in comparison with the least part of what
Socrates was ? or would save the banking credit of all
the Fuggers at the cost of a table-talk of Luther's ?
Who would envy the pontificate of Leo, if he could
have the pencil of Kaffaelle ? And in spiritual things,
when they steal from their true retreats and dare to
speak, it is the simplest truth and love that are surest
to endure ; and ages that can no longer yield the heart
to the ceremonial of St. Peter's or Notre Dame or West-
minster, will still surrender to the persuasive piety of a
St. Francis, a Fenelon, a Leighton. Next to the judg-
ments of God himself are the estimates of the human
mind exposed to the long tests of history. And the
pure insight of religion, if not intuitively present, may
be reached perhaps by a silent circuit through the elite
of generations gone.

Shall it then make no difference to us, — except to
our accumulated capital, — that we live in an old human
world, rich in the memory of ancient dynasties of
thought ? We are " the children of the prophets " ;
and are fond of owning it by rebuilding their tombs
or raising memorials of a century's gratitude and
honour. Shall the record of their genius and graces
be fixed on the marble or the bronze, and tell no story
except when there is sunshine to show it and an eye
to read it ? Shall it have no transcript on " the living

B

242 Life to the Children of the Prophets.

tables of the heart," to be ever with us and gleam by
night as well as day ? We forfeit the chief source of
dignity and sweetness in life, next to the direct com-
munion with God, if we do not seek converse with the
greater minds that have left their vestiges on the world.
Rather let us keep a constant eye upon the light of
their spirits, and never quit our hold of the shadowy
hands, of which the nearest is almost at our door and
the furthest feels the touch of Christ and disappears in
the effulgence of God. If it is not given us, with the
inspired apostle, to reach " the third heaven " in the
twinkling of an eye, or, with the rapt mystic, to spring
aloft on the wing of prayer and float straight into the
arms of the Infinite Love, they will draw our feebler
spirits upward by insensible attraction, and bring us to
the same end at last. This blessed dependence, this
holding on of link to link, of soul to soul, of age to
age, is the true " communion of saints," which bridges
the waters of death, and embraces its opposite banks in
one City of God.

XIX.

Cjre (SobltJ Pair.

Psalm xii. 1.
"Help, Lord; for the godly man ceaseth."

With many a bright child, many a high-minded youth,
restive under Puritanical guardianship, it would seem,
I fear, no bad news that " the godly " were ceasing ;
and his suppressed feeling would be that they could
very well be spared. For the phrase has become
appropriated to a type of character far from lovely in
even its best aspects, and so adverse to natural joy and
dreary in its idea of perfectness as to repel all large
and genial minds. It is the standing infatuation of
divines, first to spoil the poetic depth of religion by
reducing its speech to technical use, and then to charge
on human corruption the repugnance which the dismal
product excites. The kind of person to whom they
would award the epithet "godly" is familiar to us
all ; — the man of evangelical piety, whose life is ruled
by gratitude for unmerited salvation and desire to

R 2

244 TJie Godly Man.

rescue others from the perdition which he has escaped ;
who can glibly say the creeds without a pause of doubt,
and is duly shocked with the superstition that adds any-
thing to them or the heresy that takes anything away ;
who looks on his Church as the great agency by which
God is in contact with the world, and measures by its
rule all men and things, all history, all life, all pro-
gress ; who pours his gifts into its treasury, and makes
it the almoner of all his bounty. That a character of
this form is compatible with many excellences, — nay, is
even a pledge of them, — we need not deny : but the
selection is narrow and peculiar ; it carries with it
grave deformities and faults which it consecrates as
sanctities ; and it omits, as if profane, many human
characteristics which must for ever remain objects of
admiration and trust.

Even apart from its abuse in the religious dialect of
a school, the word " godly " has come to mean some-
thing vastly more limited and less certainly significant
of nobleness, than it once denoted. It marks only one
special aspect of character, — one order of feelings and
habits, — viz., those which are directed towards God.
No doubt these ought to carry in them all else that is
pure and good, and to refine and perfect every other
side of the moral nature. And wherever God is present
to the thought as the everlasting life of beauty, truth,
and goodness, and kindles their faint authority with
the glow of personal affection, there, to live in con-

The Godly Man. 245

scious relations with him will sustain the whole action
of the soul at its highest, and be equivalent to right-
eousness all round; and secret communion with him
will take the mind to the very well-spring of every
better love, and revive the aspirations drooping in the
heat and dust. A spirit always rightly disposed towards
a perfect Being can neither be in disorder within itself,
nor be wrongly disposed towards any other. But then
religious susceptibility is often keen, where the con-
ditions, intellectual or moral, of so manly and compre-
hensive a piety are wanting ; and a worship may be
paid which sanctifies the discord of the passions and
confirms the confusion of the conscience. And, on the
other hand, there are secular forms of character, un-
deniably high and noble, which seem to have no
sympathies on the spiritual side, and are unconscious
of light from above. It would be a monstrous and a
monkish rule to measure men in our time by their
devotions ; to admit to the glory of godliness every
assured intimate of heaven, and exclude from it every
one from whom the living presence of the Most High
is hid.

It may check this overbalance of our estimates on
the side of piety to remember that the word "godly,"
in its primitive intent, means only " godlike." It
expresses, not the personal affections which have God
for their object, but the characteristics which may bring
a human soul into resemblance to him. To the strong

246 The Godly Man.

and simple builders of our speech lie was a godly
man who drew their reverence, not whom they found
constantly expressing his own ; with whom they felt
themselves in the presence of something divine ; whom
they trusted as a rock of righteousness ; to whose
shelter they could fly in every storm of wrong. Such
a one they would doubtless take to be "the Friend of
God"; but the sign of it to them was not in his
devotions and private demeanour towards the world
above ; rather in this, that he stood to them in the
place of God, and was the chosen Organ of eternal
Eight. If, with this clue, we seek for the central
essence of the character, we shall certainly not rest
with the pieties exercised in conscious worship. For
precisely here it is that we stand on purely human
ground, and are disposed of by affections which the
Supreme Spirit cannot share. To look up, to aspire,
to adore, to weep the tears of failure and breathe the
sighs of hope, are the pathetic privilege of finite na-
tures, planted on the open borders of the infinite. God
lives without personal relations above him : He has no
prayers to say, no creed to repeat ; and the beauty of
holiness in him can have no fitting emblem in the
uplifted eyes and patient looks of the true saint. Of
his perfection we can think only as of a spontaneous
conformity with an inward righteousness and a pure
preference of the best ; as an inherent love of planting
out the germs of this moral order iu other minds;

The Godly Man. 247

as an ever-during sympathy with its growth there,
bringing them nearer to himself. If, then, Goodness,
in its culmination, is something other than devotion to
a higher nature, and is divested of its character of
personal affection, how can I disown it as the Divine
in miniature when it appears under the same aspect in
a human mind ? If I see a man living out of an inner
spring of inflexible right and pliant pity ; if he refuses
the colour of the low world around him ; if his eye
flashes with scorn at mean and impure things which
are a jest to others ; if high examples of honour and
self-sacrifice bring the flush of sympathy upon his
cheek; if in his sphere of rule he plainly obeys a
trust instead of enforcing an arbitrary will, and in his
sphere of service takes his yoke without a groan, and
does his work with thought only that it be good ; I
shall not pry into his closet or ask about his creed, but
own him at once as the godly man. Godliness is the
persistent living out an ideal preconception of the
Right, the Beautiful, the Good. Wherever this is
dominant, it ensures —

1. A certain perfection and thoroughness of personal
work. There are two ways in which all human
achievements may be carried out, according as you
elaborate them from within or from without. It is
the boast of the practical man that he adapts his
operations to the external conditions which shut him
in, takes accurate measurement both of his exigencies

248 The Godly Man.

and of his possibilities, avails himself of opportunity and
evades difficulty, and never permits himself to be run
away with by impracticable aims ; and he perpetually
confirms his opinion of his own adroitness by his
visible success. Life, thus administered, is like a
game of skill, in which every move is computed by
balancing the values of surrounding contingencies, and
making it an advance or a retreat according as there
may be a better chance to win. On the other hand, it
is the habit of a creative mind to spend its chief labour
in the field of thought, to clear its designs, to fix its
standard, to mature its projects there ; and not till
then, except by an unconscious tact seldom absent from
such a nature, to take account of the allies and foes
encamped upon the outer plain ; and when baffled in
the struggle, as it often is, to withdraw with quiet and
abstracted look, unaware of the obtrusive laughter
which proclaims the enthusiast's defeat. Life, thus
administered, is like a poem or a meditation overheard ;
which finds a deeper meaning for what else were shallow
noise, and haunts the world that is with the spectre of
what ought to be. These opposite methods have no
doubt, to a great extent, their separate spheres ; the
one prevailing in works of adaptation and convenience,
the other in works of genius. But neither can afford
to dispense with the other : and, above all, there is no
human function so purely mechanical, no task so poor
and common, no drudgery so dry, as to admit of being

The Godly Man. 249

performed at its best by manipulation and arithmetic,
without a directing idea in the mind and zeal in the
heart. Take this away, — let there be no image in the
thought of the perfect product as it should ensue from
the hand, — no sense of shame if it be inferior, no joy
if it transcend ; and industry is bereft of its very soul,
and, in the selfish attempt to shirk its obligations, sinks
into veritable slavery. Once measure your diligence by
mere outward necessity, with no anxiety but to get
passably to the other side of it, and the root of all
dishonesty has struck within you, and will bear its
fruit. If you build, the hidden stones will be rubble ;
if you plead, your language will become suggestive of
falsehood, and your ingenuity degenerate into tricks;
if you rule in public affairs, you will learn the arts of
shiftiness and evasion, and will lapse into that shrink-
ing from responsibility which is the modern form of
treason to the State. The one security for personal
fidelity and effective achievement lies in the ascendant
habit of working from within ; from the native love of
order, beauty, right ; from faith in them as the master-
ing powers of the outer world ; from reverent allegiance
to them, which makes acquiescence in their defeat im-
piety. As God eternally thinks out his universe into a
perfection more divine, so does the godly, shaping the
scene around him from the life within, turn it into a
completer kosmos, as his time flows on.
2. This godliness again it is, this inward stay upon

250 The Godly Man.

the right and true, which gives authority over dependent
natures, and most wins obedience, while most frugal
and tranquil in demanding it. It is sometimes said,
that the gift of command goes with strength of will ;
and certain it is, that from weakness of will it passes
entirely away. But it is little that can he effected in
the affairs of men, and nothing in the higher depart-
ments of human life, by mere driving force of purpose,
and intolerance of personal defeat. It was never meant
that in this world, or any other where responsible minds
are found, the pleasure of one should be the law for
all ; and wherever that pretension is set up, we all
turn rebels on the instant, and the push begins of will
against will ; and, submit as we may, it is with protest,
and keen watching to slip the tyranny. In the armed
pleasure of one mind there is no natural authority over
the unarmed of another ; and if the helpless yields, it
will be as the captive, to work in chains, and plan
revenge in tears. It is not stronger Will, but higher
Right, that bears the title to rule in the societies of
men ; and only he who visibly forgets himself, and
becomes the organ of a law he did not make and cannot
alter, whose will is firm because it is not his own, but
is backed by a divine adamant that cannot yield, can
win a loyal and glad obedience. He is not enforcing
his personal preferences, but vindicating the just and
good, which he at once embodies and obeys. This
total retreat of self, this advance to the front of an

The Godly Man. 251

august and invisible moral necessity, is the secret of
that quiet dignity with which effective authority is
invariably exercised. Kebuke itself acquires a solemn
weight where it falls with impersonal gentleness, spoiled
by no heats of fluttered egotism, and tinged only with
the sorrow of disappointed trust. Whoever lives out
of any inward faith in good, is involuntarily disposed
to presume it in others even while it is yet latent, and
is the first to see it when its incipient expression comes ;
and in dealing with them he addresses himself to it,
and confides in the response. The very light of his
eye kindles into life the spot on which it falls : he
looks for the conscience, and it is there. All who come
into his presence learn to feel that they have more than
justice done to them ; that the best they have is seen
in them, and the best they can is expected from them ;
and under this warmth of appreciation every promise of
good hastens its growth, opens into the upper air, and
is nourished into strength. Yet, if they even fail, they
know it is a part of the same faith which led him to
expect the good, that he will make tender allowance
for the ill, and not surrender the hope baffled for the
moment, but true for ever. No induction of experience,
no life computed by the outward look of men and
things, would ever attain this mingled authority and
sweetness. They are the natural expression of that
godliness which works out of an inward faith in
beauty, truth, and good.

252 The Godly Man.

3. The same principle carries with it a grace which
at first view might seem to contradict the claim of
natural authority over dependent natures ; — a certain
deference towards others which refrains from self-
assertion, and rather becomes receptive of their good.
Where there is no deep faith in the spiritual bases of
human life, in the revelation and the power of Right
in the conscience of mankind, there is in the heart no
certain source of " honour towards all men," no patient
hope of future nobleness for them to soothe the dis-
appointment at their unworthiness. Unsustained by
moral trust and reverence, the gentle respect, the
gracious amenities of life are left to rest only on the
personal affections ; and scarcely go beyond the private
circle, except when misfortune startles compassion and
wakes the generosity which the sunshine sends to sleep.
In how many a family may you see the most loving
interior relations, the quick discernment of each other's
good, the modest self-estimate, the mutual sacrifice of
personal desire, the joy in opportunities of help ; yet,
towards the outer circle of the world, a critical attitude
from which every line of tenderness, nay, every look
of justice, has disappeared ; the censorious talk, the
malignant hint, the suspicious prophecy, the mean
construction, the eager tale of some shame at which
the heart might weep ! All this would seem to con-
tradict the first impression of that gentle home. It is
simply that the affections are near-sighted, and have

The Godly Man. 253

no faith ; they are ready, clear and true, so far as
their vision goes ; every soft light arrests them, every
blossom of beauty charms them; but where the dis-
tance lies beyond their organ and the mist closes
round, they believe only in darkness and all that it
may hide. They are unconscious of their strange
illusion ; that in a world all human, a world which in
its breadth does but repeat their little plot, they should
see so much that is lovely at home, and believe in so
much deformity abroad. God save us from the bitter-
ness and scorn of the cynical spirit, by giving us the
faith of the godly in the secret springs of good ! For
him, in his intercourse with men, the presumption is
always on the side of simplicity and rectitude ; he does
not believe in knavery till his keen search has been
pushed through all the title-deeds of good repute ; he
recognises a provisional claim in humanity itself, and
allows his respect to enter into possession, until some
fatal flaw compels its retreat. As it is the theory of
habitual distrust, the perpetual need of exceptional
vigilance, that makes the City vulgar, so it is the
natural ease of a pure and confiding mind which
imports true refinement and composure to the person
in whom it dwells. Surrounded by those whom he
respects, if not for what they are, for .what they may
be, he is drawn out towards them on the lines of genial
appreciation ; he converses only with their good ; the
egotism possible to us all sleeps and never stirs within

254 The Godly Man.

him ; its insolence of thought, its rudeness of speech,
its selfishness of act, are impossible to him ; and the
dignified stability of a mind that lives from within is
naturally clothed with the modest grace of reverence
and charity.

Wherever these lineaments of character appear, we
look upon the face of righteousness, and cannot join in
the desponding cry " Help, Lord, for the godly man
ceaseth." If they do not reflect the Divine likeness,
I know not where we are to seek it. Shall I then say a
strange thing if I affirm that, nevertheless, the picture
is not perfect ? Its features take no notice of God, and
mould themselves as if he were not. They would
complete the human lines of excellence and beauty, if
Man were the highest of beings and stood upon the
world as its god ; but does not complete them, since
they leave without trace his relation to the Infinite
Mind, whose love he unconsciously shares and whose
trust he blindly executes. To live " like gods," when
we are not so, is a condition which no virtues or affec-
tions can redeem from distortion and mistake. And
were we really "gods," yet embraced in the empire of
a " God of gods," it is plain that to ignore or forget
this feature of our position could only weaken and
mutilate our moral nature, leaving it without the
energy of loyalty and the graces of confiding obedience.
To consummate, therefore, the adjustment of our
character to our place, we need to own the Divine Spirit

The Godly Man. 255

above us as well as to have it within us, and to let its
brightness in ourselves be the reflection of our com-
munion with him ; to transform what was before a
self-asserting impulse of right into personal reverence
and love ; to learn what it is to lean on an invisible
support, to find a living Guide in every darkness, and
to hear an inspiration that is not carried on the wind.
He who thus recognises his human position, and takes
its new affections into his heart, is not weakened, but
incredibly strengthened by his conscious dependence ;
and will the better serve as a stay to others, when his
own feet are planted on the Rock.

XX.

8% Jmwr anb (Dufer Jahtrjbom of (5otf.

Rom. x. 14, 15.

" How shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and
how shall they hear without a preacher? and how shall they preach,
except they be sent ? — As it is written, How beautiful are the feet of
them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tiding3 of good
things."

Ever since Civil Society has been an object of study
and reflection, it has affected thoughtful minds with
a strange mixture of admiration and compassion. It
seems at once the glory of our nature, and its shame.
Other races are rendered gregarious by various wants
and common affections; but man alone balances yet
deepens the mutual dependence by the arts of exchange.
Other races submit to be led by the strong, and combine
their toil for co-operative works ; but with him alone
does Law ascend from force to Right, and union pass
from blind instinct to conscious self-devotion, and the
mere nest or hive is replaced by the City and the State.
To detect any clear improvement in other creatures, you
must take your survey by geologic time ; but, for him,

The Inner and Outer Kingdom of God. 257

the little span of history suffices ; and while the swallow,
the beaver, and the ant build and live as they did before
he began to note their ways, he needs but a few cen-
turies to move with accelerated pace from the rudeness
that keeps no record of itself to a civilization crowded
with material resources, and rich in its jurisprudence,
literature, and art. A human commonwealth with its
hierarchy of mutual service, its army of tamed passions,
its invisible guard of ideal restraints, its traditions of
heroism, its hopes of greatness, its sympathy with the
moral life of the world, is the highest product of the
Providence of God, and the most impressive witness to
the possibilities of Man. Yet within this glorious
product, as it grows and spreads, there lurks a canker
that feeds on its exuberance, and perforates its substance
with misery and decay. The expansion and consolida-
tion of the State, which give a grander career to genius
and power, leave no shelter for the maimed and weak,
but turn them out into a battle where they are sure to
fall ; and in some form or other, — the slave-quarter, —
the serf- village, — or the poor-house, — the sign has never
been absent, from any nation that has a history, of a
crushed or unreclaimed humanity. It seems as though
the distances widened as the education of the world
advanced ; and while our nature at one end moved on a
vaster scale, at the other it shrivelled and rotted away.
Only in a ripe community can the statesman, the poet,
the philosopher, the artist, appear, or any product of

s

258 The Inner and Outer

the Mind go forth that shall be "a possession for
ever." Yet the great cities which they immortalize
hide, behind their temples and their courts, a thousand
festering ills ; they are the birth-place of new diseases,
the nursery of hateful vices, and afford in their densest
parts but a crowded solitude of unpitied miseries. This
contrast of brilliant resource with humiliating failure,
of a society blossoming at the head and pining at the
root, has always affected thoughtful minds with a
"noble discontent." The joint spectacle of high capa-
bilities and mean sufferings is intolerable to every
generous heart : the light of inward hope conflicts with
the darkness undeniable without, and tries to penetrate
it and touch it with some colours of ideal promise.
From this impulse have sprung all social theories ; —
philosophical republics, Eutopias, socialisms, kingdoms
of heaven ; all aspire to realise the ascertained possi-
bilities, and exclude the saddest disappointments, of our
human union.

No relief, said Plato, will ever reach the ills of men,
till either statesmen become philosophers, or philoso-
phers assume the government of states. This saying
indicates the direction in which the Greek mind sought
the solution of the social problem. You must deal, it
was thought, with the commonwealth as a whole, and
put a reconstructing hand upon it from the place of
power. The scene is all wrong on which you plant
men, and where you train them : you leave it open to

Kingdom of God. 259

unprincipled competitions : you make its bribes to private
selfishness too great, its demands on public sacrifice too
small : you place its supreme interests at the disposal
of incompetence, setting over its tribunals those who
have no knowledge of justice, and over its schools those
who have false notions of education : you let the poets
tell mischievous fables about the gods, and the orators
talk flattering sophistry to the people : you foster the
taste which admires successful ambition, and scorns the
abstinence of incorruptible rectitude. You must sweep
all this away, and rebuild the theatre of life ; per-
mitting none to come upon it who do not bid fair for
manly strength and virtue ; assigning to each his place
and career, and precluding him from functions for which
he is not fit ; and so disciplining all for the character
possible to them, — the workers for industry and temper-
ance, the soldiers for bravery and obedience, the rulers
for wisdom and integrity, — that the whole may exhibit
a partnership and equilibrium of goodness like the
unity of a single harmonious Soul. Schemes of this
kind for mending the world rested all their hopes
on arrangement, and computed simply the forceb of
environing influence. In dealing with the problem,
men, as they were found in experience to be, constituted
the immutable factor, which was to be let alone, and
made to yield a new result only by being worked into
new conditions. A revolution in the world was re-
quired, to change any individual man.

s 2

260 The Inner and Outer

The method of Christianity appears the very opposite
to this; and has at all events become so in its
administration now. It is not, with us, a theory of
reorganised society, the dream of a new Polity, through
the establishment of which character is to attain its
true proportions ; but a direct appeal to the individual
conscience, which aims to redeem men, one by one,
and bring them, just where they stand, into inner
harmony with God. And it is true that, in its origin
also, Christianity left the existing constitution of the
world alone, and, unlike the philosophers, propounded
no projects for modelling it anew. This however arose,
not from any better opinion of it, but from a worse ;
not from indifference towards it, but from despair of
it ; not from retreat into the citadel of the inner man
to defy the enemies without, but from the vision of a
City of God in which already the disciples were enrolled,
and which, without aid of theirs, would soon replace
the Empire of the seven hills. It was not for want of
the old dream of a divine commonwealth, but because
that dream, as they believed, God would realise for
them, that they were neutral to the existing State, and
wasted on it neither zeal nor enmity. They too had
their image of perfect life, their sacred allegiance, their
society swayed by eternal justice and secure of right-
eous order ; and, possessed by the faith and expectation
of it, they so lived in it as to become " dead " to this
world, and carry all their thought and heart into the

Kingdom of God. 261

relations of " another country, even a heavenly." Their
despair of the actual and historic scene of things was
thus deeper than the philosopher's : for they never
thought of mending or reconstructing it : they simply
left it to perish. And in withdrawing from it, they
meant to retire, not into a mystic inward life of indivi-
dual piety, much less into any Stoic strength of personal
isolation, but into the citizenship of a better community,
soon to be realized, and blending in itself meanwhile
the seen with the unseen, and animating the posts of
duty below with the living inspiration of Christ and God
above.

This death to the actual world, this life in an ideal
which replaced it without conflicting with it, inciden-
tally brought into existence the highest characteristic
of Christian civilization. The image of a holier life,
of a kingdom of God where wrong and sin should
never come, touched the sleeping springs of higher
affection and spiritual power in the heart, and lifted
men into a new birth of character. New tastes, new
love, new hopes broke upon them from depths of
their nature never reached before, and delivered them
from the thraldom of outward things and the strife of
the passions they had served. Snatched from them-
selves, and carried off by a spirit diviner than their
own, they see their own past which was hid from them
before, and hear and answer many a call of God that
had come to their deaf ear in vain. A consecration

262 The Inner and Outer

falls upon the walks of daily duty and the place of
nightly rest : a beauty enters for them into the
simplest task that only has a better and a worse ; and
there is a Presence that allays the troubles, and puts a
sweetness into the discords of life. Looking away from
the scattered and broken fragments of goodness among
men to the perfect natures of a supernal sphere, the
disciple was carried clear past the ancient standards of
piety and moral strength ; and, leaving behind him the
piece-meal distribution of virtues among classes and
ranks, rose to the great idea of One Righteousness,
realized in heaven, approached on earth, alike possible,
alike necessary, for all minds. This is the true and
indestructible ground of Christian brotherhood and
unity, — this recognition of a common capacity for re-
semblance to God, a common liability to fall away
from it, a common trust to press into greater near-
ness to it. And this was found in the fervour of that
first age, when the Christians died to the fermenting
world around them, and flung themselves into the
affections of an ideal state, and tried the tender ties
of mutual sacrifice, and rehearsed the life of a holy
and perfect world. And the experiment, once tried,
vindicated itself by the permanent elevation which it
produced in human thought and character. The acci-
dents of the conception fell away, the essence remained :
unsuspected depths of the moral nature were revealed :
indefinite possibilities of the spirit burst the bounds of

Kingdom of God. 263

expectation, and showed where the living germs of good
were lurking unseen ; and it became the settled expe-
rience of Christendom, that humanity and God are
never hopelessly estranged from one another ; but that,
if the true congenial point of any single soul can be
reached and touched, even the dead will be alive again,
and the lost will be found.

Thus, from the lonely life of the first Christians, which
could only work internally upon itself, came to light
the great truth that, without waiting to reconstruct his
world, man in himself may become a new creature, and
take the initiative at home in introducing the kingdom
of heaven. Renouncing the maxims of prudent despair,
— that you must take men as they are, that you must
suit the scene around them to their proved weakness
and make the best of their inevitable sin, — Christianity
has ever charged its missionaries thus : "Go forth to
this people, and speak to them from the level, not of
what they are, but of what they ought to be : take with
you the measure, not of outward existence, but of the
inner sanctuary : abate no claim of God upon them,
but tell them all his righteous will : remember that
you are his, rather than theirs, or theirs only for his
sake : fling yourself on the tide of his love, and fear
not that you will be borne in upon some hidden inlet
of their nature : nay, his compassion in your heart
will make a way where there was none before, and
shake the dull souls till they start up and prophesy."

264 The Inner and Outer

This faith in the spiritual possibilities of every indivi-
dual conscience has passed, as an inseparable constit-
uent, into the permanent life of Christendom. Only,
it now acts on a world which is no longer expected to
perish, which we cannot dismiss from our attention
as delivered over to Satan, which we are not permitted
tc escape as foreign to us ; but which, as the abiding
school of our humanity, we are bound to set in order
and to recover for God. So that the scene of things is
returned upon our hands, and the social problems of
the old philosophy renew themselves upon a larger
and more complicated world. The two rival proposals,
which Pagan wisdom and Evangelic zeal divided be-
tween them, — to redeem the life of persons, and to
amend the scene of things, have lost their enmity, have
fallen into partnership, and devolve upon us together.
In dealing with them, however, there must still remain
a division of labour ; seeing that, in spite of their
unity at last, the agencies and faculties that are needed
for the one are seldom qualified to serve the other. It
must ever be the function of the secular State to re-
adjust the things that furnish forth the theatre of life,
to settle institutions, economy, police and laws, and see
to it that they constitute a fitting school for just and
righteous habits. But to the spiritual agency of the
Church it must be left to address itself to persons, one
by one, to reach the secret springs of better life, and
speak for God to the languid but undying conscience of

Kingdom of God. 265

humanity. Of this divine work we must never weary,
and never despair ; hut carry into it the eternal patience
of God ; who, age after age, solicits with his grace
every soul of man ; and now here, now there, stands
at the door, and knocks, and would lift the latch on
the first hospitable hint. With one and another, nay
with multitudes, the Christian appeal may seem to be
made in vain : but, if only the true beat of the heart
goes with it, it will find some hiding-place in many a
mind that for the moment owns it not ; and, like a
phrase of forgotten music or the snatches of a perished
dream, will steal forth in some tender twilight hour,
when there are none to see the tears of compunction,
or to mock at the returning tones of prayer. This
trust in the living Spirit of God, which finds some
crevice still open in the hardest heart, this persistency
of appeal that cannot listen to despair, is the true
prophetic gift, without which the Church is a pretence
and the preacher had better hold his peace. It is the
first requisite of Eeligion, the primary inspiration of all
Faith, that the witness to the higher life must never
falter and never cease : if once it grows ashamed before
the face of unawakened men, and, like the timid poet,
shrinks from the laugh of the dull and blind and can
only nurse itself in solitude, it is living faith no more ;
and is equally unlike the apostle, who, amid the
splendid idolatries of Athens, remonstrated " daily in
the market place with such as met with him " ; and

266 The Inner and Outer

the Son of Man himself who, even in the retirement of
the hills, when he saw the multitudes " as sheep with-
out a shepherd," had compassion on them, and poured
forth to them his divinest words.

To reach the springs of inner life where they are
sealed up, and keep them clear where they are flowing,
the one great agency is, the personal power of an
earnest and sympathetic mind, living itself in a higher
order of ideas, and above the danger of being dragged
down to the level where they are lost. There lies the
true pastoral gift; deep faith in God, deep pity for
man ; and strength to carry the vision of a divine order
into the clash and confusion of the world : and wher-
ever you meet with any good measure of this gift,
thank God that the prophets are not dead : arm it
freely with your outward help, and confide in it from
your inmost heart. Send it, — better still take it, — as
the messenger alike of humanity and God, into the
City recesses, where the struggle of life is fiercest, and
brightened least by either physical or spiritual light.
There is nothing like the living breath of conviction
and trust, for fanning every latent suspicion and heal-
ing compunction that else would die. Tell me not
that the weight of ill is too heavy to be lifted; the
greater the burthen, the more elastic force is needed to
heave it off. Do you say, the material conditions of
our poor neighbourhoods are too oppressive to give
encouragement ? then are they too oppressive to permit

Kingdom of God. 267

desertion and neglect. The more they stifle the
spiritual possibilities, the more must they be counter-
balanced by persistency of culture, and intensity of
appeal. "Would you really plead the density of the
darkness as the reason of withholding the sparse and
only light ? Be assured, if we speak thus of our poor,
they are no darker than we. It is all a fancy that,
even in their lot, different as it looks, they are much
other than ourselves in their temptations, in their
affections, and in their victories. Who that knows
them, in their troubles and their strivings, would dare
to give the counsels of hopelessness ? Are there not,
there as elsewhere, inequalities of character, ranging
over every grade, from the mean to the heroic ? marvels
of unselfishness, fortitude, and temperance, attesting
the noblest force of conscience, as well as the yielding
habits by which indigence itself may rot away in
luxury? From such a field, at once of sadness and
of promise, would you recall every reminder of higher
obligation, every aid to struggling goodness, every
nurture of divine hope and love ? Can no father be
sustained by self-sacrifice to prolong the education of
his children ? no mother be helped to make her sons
and daughters truthful, brave, and modest ? no youth
be braced up to manly self-government amid the temp-
tations of the City ? The more tainted the atmo-
sphere around, surely all the more need is there for a
loving friend of every righteous effort to pass, as a

268 The Inner and Outer

breath of moral wholesomeness, through the unventi-
lated courts of life. Nor is it true that this personal
dealing with men, one by one, stands in the way of any
larger reform of the field on which they live. On the
contrary, it justifies the reformer's enthusiasm and
accelerates his work ; and brings to every problem that
minute and practical insight without which it cannot
be wisely solved. Indeed every religious mission that
carries the cleansing spirit of Christ where it was un-
known before, reforms its own field in little, and re-
hearses the experiments that must pass on to a greater
stage. Not till the outward and the inward agencies
understand each other and go to their work together,
will men be relieved from the pressures which keep
them in their littleness and sin and suffering ; or their
nature expand in all dimensions together, and justify
the ideal hopes of Christian faith. But in this
partnership, it is and must ever remain the peculiar
function of Christian societies to deal, not so much
with the things that surround and influence human
life, as with the living persons themselves that con-
stitute it ; to see them in their individuality ; to hold
them in presence of sympathy which feels not only for
them but with them ; to find in them, by searching
appeal, the higher capacities and lovelier features of
that humanity which Christ sanctified for us all. The
Church which abdicates this office or turns it into a
pretence is in the eye of God a Church no more ; and

Kingdom of God. 269

in abandoning its divinest function will soon discover
that its own life is withering away. Some sincere and
natural intercourse with the poor and suffering, some
vivifying contact with struggles and sorrows not our
own, is indispensable to the discipline of character as
well as to the fulfilment of duty; and the frequent
tendency to substitute, for the real compassions and
executed labours of love, the fictitious griefs of the
drama or the tale which genius fetches from scenes of
misery to fling into the lap of ease, will be found, if it
lead to no personal action, not a source of strength, but
an enervating delusion. Not so, but by standing face
to face with the injured natures and grievous lot we
would redeem, by meeting them eye to eye and speak-
ing to them in the vernacular language of the true
heart, can we vindicate the communion of all orders
and ages of men with one another and with God, as
kindred branches of the great family of souls.

XXI.

gfciigton in parable.

Matthew xiii. 34, 35.

' ' All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables ; and
without a parable spake he not unto them ; that it might be fulfilled which
was spoken by the prophet, saying, ' I will open my mouth in parables ;
I will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world.' "

The parable, then, is a mode of uttering " things
hidden"; of bringing to the light the deep-buried
secrets of the heart ; and drawing forth into conscious-
ness those divine and primitive truths which have been
set from the beginning in the firmament of the soul,
but, for want of an interpreter, have been taken for
sparkles instead of suns. All the critics in the world,
with their learned disquisitions on allegory and apologue
and metaphor and simile, can never mend the prophet's
idea of a parable, — so brief, so exact, so profound, — as
a way of indicating realities hidden from the foundation
of the world. The critics will tell you that the use of
this mode of instruction in ancient times was a conse-
quence of the oral teaching then prevalent ; that printing

Religion in Parable. 271

being unknown, and writing uncommon, it was neces-
sary to strike deep into the mind at once the lesson
which vanished on the lips; that so, the prophets in
the palace or the street, the seer in the desert, the man
of God on the beach or the hill-side, borrowed hints
from the scene around, and painted sacred things in
visual and dramatic forms on the imagination of
monarch or of multitude. But now that art has clipped
the " winged words," and memory betakes itself to
books, we are more elaborately and precisely taught by
argument and precept ; and human nature, emerging
from its childhood, exchanges its love of fable and
similitude for moral and religious philosophy. I rather
suspect a different cause for the phenomenon in ques-
tion ; and doubt whether, even if Jesus of Nazareth
were living among us now, amid all the advantages of
cheap tracts and daily journals, he would teach us
much otherwise than after the old fashion, — not with
the dead page and laboured disquisition, but with the
living voice, and the artless parable. For, I take it,
different conceptions of the work to be achieved lie at
the root of his method and of ours : ours assuming
that religion is to be put into the mind ; his, that it is
to be brought out of it ; ours aiming to teach the truth
by intellectual judgment; his, to inspire it by moral
sympathy ; ours speaking with didactic baldness, as to
the ignorant ; his, with mystic hints and deep sug-
gestions, as to a fraternity already taught of God, and

272 Religion in Parable.

needing but a new touch of holy light to re-awaken
trust and wonder from their sleep. He who instructs
by indirect and figurative methods, and, avoiding literal
statements, delights in allusion and analogy, supposes
one or both of two things ; viz. that his subject is
incapable of direct presentation ; or, that his hearers
possess its fundamental ideas, and require, not its form
within their thought, but its spirit in their souls. Both
these assumptions appear to me to pervade the whole
ministry of Christ ; to have opened his lips in parables,
as the natural speech of religion ; and to explain in
part, why " never man spake like this man."

The essence of parable obviously consists in this ;
that its representations are typical and mediate, not
literal and direct ; special and picturesque, not abstract
and philosophic ; moral in their unity and movement,
not logical. Hence it will be found the fittest instru-
ment in religion for the expression of Belief, of "Worship,
and of the sanctities of Conscience.

Religious belief is obliged to resort to the language
of emblems, simply because its objects are all in-
finite in their nature, and respecting infinite things the
literal truth is unattainable and incommunicable. God,
heaven, responsibility, are beyond the measure of our
experience ; vast as the atmosphere to the bird or the
forest to the child ; regions whose circuit we cannot
make, but which embrace us always, yet never shut us
in. We were created in their midst ; we dwell within

Religion in Parable. 273

them now ; we can emerge from them no more. Our
souls are subjects, and not lords within this realm, —
permitted only to do its appointed service, and obey its
nearest law. Not unless they transcend the confines
of our experience can any objects of thought become
religious. If we could discover the country of departed
spirits, — hold daily converse with the sainted blest, and
grow familiar with the everlasting hills, the reality of
the better land would so far cease to be a religious
truth, and be transferred from our faith to our
geography. And when we ourselves have emigrated
thither in death, be its experience what it may, it will
become our earth ; divine perhaps and holy, but, if so,
only through a discernment equally possible here, of
some invisible sanctity, some secret awe within its
scenes ; while this world, as it falls into the retrospect,
will sink into the celestial hues ; and we shall live
between one heaven of reminiscence, and still perhaps
another of hope. So again, if the work of life pre-
sented itself to us only as an external and mechanical
task, — a routine of dry and calculative habit, there
would be nothing devout in duty. It is the boundless
depth of obligation, — the infinite beauty of holiness,
the sigh for a sinless devotion of heart and will, that
fling the conscience into penitence and prayer. And
were it not that obligation enlarges with capacity, and
the tension of the will must maintain an everlasting
strife, and the ease of living well bids us begin to

T

274 Religion in Parable.

live better, there would be no permanent sacredness, no
heavenly allegiance, in the moral ties that bind us.
Nay, God himself is adorable in his perfections, in that
they are unapproachable. Behind their visible splen-
dour they pass into the deeps and hide themselves in
mystery. From the outlines of daylight he seems to
vanish away ; and he made night on Sinai's top ere he
could appear : and though on the mount of transfigura-
tion it was a bright cloud by which he overshadowed
his servants, yet cloud there was to veil his glory still.
We are not indeed to suppose that there is any piety
in mere ignorance, or anything but impiety in with-
holding attainable knowledge : but assuredly only that
can permanently remain venerable to us which is above
us, — which puts forth power, and life, and light upon
us : and so wonderful is the universe that lies before
the worshipper's thought, that the more he knows, the
more seems the province left unknown, and every new
world that he detects appears to deepen the abyss in
which it floats. Religion, in truth, in all its forms,
announces a series of realities surpassing experience and
conception : all its terms, in every language, are so con-
trived as to denote this. At one time it describes divine
things in negatives, venturing only to say what they
are not, and confessing the inadequacy of our ideas ;
speaking of the immensity of God, that is, his tran-
scending all our measures of thought; of the immor-
tality of man, that is, his outliving all our limits of

Religion in Parable. 275

time ; of the immaculate sanctity of Christ and the
spirits of the just, — that is, their maintenance of an
ideal perfection. At another time it has recourse to
superlatives, and turns to God as the Best, the Greatest,
the Most Holy. And it is clearly impossible that
things transcendental and superlative can come before
us in literal definition : they would then belie their own
character, and become determinable by the formulas of
experience. They can only express themselves symboli-
cally ; and how truly they then present themselves will
depend on the vastness and grandeur of the emblem,
and the wealth of the soul among whose thoughts and
affections it runs with suggestive power. At best, our
approximation is humbling enough. By the law of
our mind, the natural perfections of God seem to elude
our distinct conception. For we are obliged to assign
to all objects a position in time and space : we cannot
speak of the Divine existence without assigning to it a
when and a where ; yet are assured by reflection that
this is an illusion of our own ; that these relations
belong only to our perception, not to Him whom we
perceive ; before whom duration and dimension are
nought ; and in whose Absolute Being dwell all things
in a universal Here, and all events in the everlasting
Now.

Nor is it in mere magnitude of scale that the immen-
sity of God consists. We cannot coldly satisfy ourselves
with the mere physical belief which diffuses his being

t2

276 Religion in Parable.

among the stars, and perpetuates it through the courses
of eternity. In this kind of sublimity there is nothing
truly divine : the atheist's mechanic force, or dead
dumb nothingness, might have the same ; and it were
heathenish thus to confound the gigantesque with the
godlike. God is a Spirit : and, besides this boundless-
ness of dimension, is infinite also in moral intensity ;
not, if we may say so, in quantity merely, but in
quality too. "Wisdom, beauty, holiness, are immeasurable
things, which are appreciable by pure perceptions, but
which no rule can gauge, and no argument demonstrate.
That the blush of morning is fair, that the quietude of
grief is sacred, that the heroism of conscience is noble,
— who will undertake to prove to one that does not see
it ? Nor can you say in terms of measurement how
good and right it is to pity the wretched, and maintain
fidelity and truth. In everything which we profoundly
revere and love, there appears a certain infinitude which
fills us with untiring wonder and draws us into per-
petual aspiration. What unfathomable depth of sanctity
and sorrow in the features of a Madonna ! What ex-
haustless sublimity streams upon the eye that gazes
devoutly on the crucifix ! What fields of unspeakable
freshness and purity lie open in the full eyes of a
thoughtful and loving child ! and these things reside
not in the mere material form, or colour, or size, or in
anything that knowledge can estimate or words define ;
but in a spirit gleaming with mysterious expressiveness

Religion in Parable. 277

through them all. It is in no mere hyperbolic sense
that we speak of the infinitude of the moral perfections
of God. And to feel this is to feel that there is a
profundity entirely beyond our present view ; that the
thoughts of him we now possess are significant of
more than we can reach ; that to set before us what-
ever is most perfect is, for the time being, to approach
him nearest; and that still our musings are always
in parable ; a symbolic presentation, perhaps logically
false, yet most divinely true. Religion is the manifes-
tation of the heart's indestructible faith in perfection ;
and so it must ever dwell at the summit ; and that
which ceases to be our highest belongs no more to our
religion, and yields to the conception that transcends
it. In no slight sense, therefore, the superior truth of a
religion consists in its greater majesty and loveliness ;
and he who best awakens the sleeping perceptions of
the conscience and the heart and penetrates their actual
life with a quickening ideal, reveals the most of God
and heaven. And what has ever wrought so effectually
for this end, as the tales of inimitable beauty, by which
Jesus melted the soul of nations and of ages ?

Worship too, as well as belief, naturally frames itself
into parable. It instinctively avoids the vain and harsh
attempt at literal speech ; and abandons to a petty
rationalism that critical precision which, in dread of
the forms of error, wanders altogether from the spirit
of truth. At best, when we try to speak to God,

278 Religion in Parable.

religion sinks with the utterance, and seems to become
poor : the pure celestial thoughts, the deep and solemn
wants, the sad and lowly confession, seem to come with
intolerable friction from our rough human voice ; and the
inner skies of meditation, so vast and clear in silence,
becloud themselves in speech. When Jesus loosened
the imprisoned tongue, the noisy praises of the healed
man were less expressive than the dumb looks with
which before he had gazed up on the face of Jesus.
Language hides too little and defines too much, to
bring forth truly the things of God within us : so that
spoken religion is apt to pass into theology ; and those
who have it most upon their lips are very apt to have it
least within their hearts. Its constant external exposure
to the petty commerce of words destroys its vastness
and ideality within. Hence it is not surprising that
the shallowest religion has been usually the most
voluble, and the deepest has maintained the greatest
frugality of speech ; has resorted rather to the worship
of signs and emblems, beneath whose vagueness the
sanctities of faith find quiet shelter. The stately
minster, whose vault overarches the dead, and whis-
pers the sighs and plaints of the living ; the picture
of sacred story, giving to the present the silent beauty
of the past without its familiarity ; the gestures of holy
men bending low in prayer; the organ's chant, con-
tradicting no man's thought, and praying for all hearts
with a sweet and mighty voice ; these have been spon-

Religion in Parable. 279

taneous creations from the soul of Christendom, heaving
with the inspiration of God, and labouring to speak,
without spoiling a love so holy. These symbols have
the breadth needful for the affections, and cover far
more than any words. They commit no one to thoughts
that may not be true to him ; they speak, not to him
from others, but from himself to God, taking up his
own emotions more faithfully than he could tell them.
They awaken within him his own highest, without
taking it out of his hands, and shaping it precisely for
him. It is the same with all the deep affections of our
nature. Who can dare to speak to sorrow bowed to the
earth, or to penitence in its inconsolable shame ? The
lips seem to insult the heart ; and, after vain attempts,
we give up to silence, and are content to grasp the hand
or kiss away the tears. Of death too we feel that we
cannot fitly speak ; and the flowers upon the grave, or
the sculptured emblem in the church significantly hint
at cherished memories and griefs sharply graven on the
soul ; or if words are used, we love to take the conse-
crated phrase of Scripture, or at least the unsoiled and
hidden beauty of an ancient tongue. All which may
show us clearly, that there is no prose religion ; that
it demands an ideal beauty as its native and rightful
dress ; and cannot purely worship except in emblem
and in parable.

Nor can even our Moral Life dispense with reflected
images and similitudes. In its first and unspoiled

280 Religion in Parable. >

simplicity indeed, the intuition of conscience is direct
and true, and in the competitions of impulse never
mistakes the better for the worse ; nor does it need,
ere it can rightly judge them, to see them thrown into
an external picture, or dramatised upon a foreign stage.
We cannot meet, standing face to face in our own mind,
compassion and anger, or the prompting to truth and
the gain of a lie, without knowing their relative claims
upon our will. And so long as this insight is healthily
followed, and character unfolds itself with unstained
purity, this immediate discernment of the right will
continue unimpaired, and grow in clearness and in
range. Nay, it is not even lost by the first sin ; for
what is the remorse that follows it but the straight and
true vision still, only of the shadowed instead of the
illumined side of the reality, — the sorrowful eclipse of
the same glorious and hopeful light ? But just here is
the crisis ; it is the last chance of the simple unper-
verted vision. Will you throw yourself open to all
your compunction, and go back with it at once, though
with bare feet and over thorny ways, to the station you
have left ? Then shall you retain your direct perception
of the good, only with enfeebled power to act on it.
But if, as must be feared, you haste away from your
sorrow and smother the keen shame, you will shift from
the moral to the sentient and selfish point of view, and,
bribing your better feeling into silence, will dress up
your case in such false lights as to deceive yourself.

Religion in Parable. 28 1

And thus it is that by unfaithfulness we are delivered
over to self-justification, and forfeit the native capacity
for looking eye to eye at the presence and proportions
of our duty. The clear discriminative apprehension
once surrendered, we are at the mercy of the accidents
of emotion ; till, swaying to and fro as the waves may
swing, we lose our count, and measure our course no
more, but drift upon the current, we know not whither.
When the moral order has thus fallen to pieces in
the mind, the ruins choke the avenues of direct
entrance to the conscience, and self-deception resents
the very approach of remonstrance. Who does not
know the blinding power of pride ? who will undertake,
by mere onset of rebuke, to carry the entrenchments
of egotism ? It is rare indeed that others' righteous
indignation draws the tears of penitence from the
wrong-doer; so quick is the demon of self-excuse to
leap in between and freeze them at their fount. But,
while it is the curse of sin that it spreads a film on the
eye turned inwards, and works in the darkness it has
made, it leaves the outward gaze of moral discernment
for a longer time undimmed : so that fallen men can
still be critics of the upright, and the conscience, blind
to its own wreck, can mark even a slight deflection
in another. Shall we be angry at this, and forbid the
worse to pronounce judgment on the better ? See rather
to what happy use you may turn this feature, if only
you have the ingenuity of love and the clearness of

282 Religion in Parable.

the prophet's insight. You can avail yourself of the
offender's remaining perception to make him judge
himself. Instead of dwelling on his own individual
case, and so touching the springs of vanity and resent-
ment, you can withdraw him from the personal point
of view, and let its confusing disquietudes sleep. You
have but to set up before him the portrait of another
personality, into which you weave the colours and
adjust the relations of his character; and in that
mirror he sees the deformities he had not felt, and
abhors himself at secondhand. The child who yields
to a burst of anger or a seduction of selfishness without
a twinge of reproach will be rivetted by the tale from
which the same passions look at him from another's
eyes : his cheek will flush, his sobs will quicken, with
the thrill of a true moral sympathy; and when at
last it breaks upon him, as the terrible resemblance
deepens, that for that picture he might himself have
sat, the inward wave of retributive justice is beaten
back upon his own conscience and floods it with re-
pentance. Every wise parent is led by the tact of love
to discover the power of such dramatic presentations of
life, and acquire the skill to place them on the stage of
the child's fancy. And when, in Jerusalem, the poet-
king, wrapt in a cloud of passion, added crime to crime
without a touch of shame, — treachery to license and
murder to both, — the prophet, with ready insight into
that rich ideal nature, drew the picture of the poor

Religion in Parable. 283

man's ewe-lamb that grew up with his children and
drank of his cup, only to be slain for the rich man's
table ; and by' the tension of indignant pity shivered
the crust of guilty illusion, and flashed conviction
home upon the conscience with the words " Thou art
the man ! " Thus may the parables of the moral life
beguile us out of our darkness, and force us once
more to be impartial witnesses of our own character.
They fix in a secondary image what we had let slip in
immediate feeling. They plant us clear of the fierce
crossing rays of the momentary position, and serve as
optical purifiers to ward off all except the light we
need ; and show us again, at visual distance, some of
the " things hidden " from us by their very closeness to
ourselves. Their function is thus like that of expe-
rience itself; which is never a present, but always a
posthumous teacher ; and delivers its lesson by chang-
ing the position which misleads us, and in parting us
from the past reveals it more distinctly to the view.

XXII.

Uei%r gta not Mamnn m Christ festts.

Luke xx. 35, 36.

"They who shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world and the
resurrection of the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage ; neither
can they die any more ; for they are equal to the angels ; and are the
children of God, being the children of the resurrection."

In the representations of Christ by the great masters
of sacred art, it is seldom that you complain of any
preponderance of manly strength. The fault is rather
of the opposite kind ; an excess of feminine gentleness
and grace ; a fineness of feature and clearness of brow
and soft-flowing hair, that give too much to beauty,
and leave not enough for force. It is far from being
true, indeed, that this prevailing character carries with
it of necessity the impression of weakness. It is
redeemed however from this danger by the infusion
not of manlike but of godlike elements; intellectual
majesty, heavenly serenity, spiritual depth. Even in
the portraiture of his sufferings, — the Ecce Homo,
the garden, and the cross — it is usual to find an

Neither Man nor Woman in Christ Jesus. 285

intense passive susceptibility, immediately combined
with a divine repose ; without any intervention of
wrestling energy and personal power. It is as if a
kind of slight was put upon the special attributes of
men, — the moral solidity, the resolute will, the strenu-
ous fidelity to trust, which are the noblest of their
more distinctive marks ; — as if these, however justly
held in honour in human society as the main reliance
of the world, were incapable of being worked up into
the type of sublimest life.

Nor can we fail to trace the same peculiarity of
Christian ideal in the legends of his birth and the
doctrine of his double nature. Whatever was human
in him was his heritage from Mary ; and could be
nothing but the pure, the gracious, the tender and
trustful, the suffering and patient. And the higher
attributes that mingled an ineffable dignity with these
and turned them from weaknesses into powers, belonged
to his celestial nature, and proclaimed him Son of
God. What is this but to say that in him the love
and pity of the woman's heart were straightway blended
with the thought and holiness of God; passing by
and omitting the more voluntary energies and self-
asserting personality of men ? The Christendom which
invented these legends must evidently have been
wearied with a world of violence, passion, and selfish-
ness,— of masculine ambitions and grasping resolve;
must have sighed for some form of strength which

286 Neither Man nor Woman

might consist with reverence and affection ; and have
felt that only He who, while consciously at one with
the Highest, was touched also hy sympathy with the
frail, could escape the self-idolatry of an age that had
hardened itself against both. In a world trodden down
by Roman legions, and ruled by competition of cor-
ruption, a world where all the force seemed Satanic and
the refinement enervating and impure, it is intelligible
that refreshment should be found in an image of
humanity carrying divine insight and resource into
the domestic retreats of sorrow and affection.

The picture which has thus set itself in the Christian
imagination, though owing some of its lineaments to
after-touches of grateful thought, is legitimate and
historical in its outline. Even Paul, who otherwise
knows nothing of the personal portraiture of his Lord,
appeals to the disciples " by the meekness and gentle-
ness of Christ " ; and though the gospels are not
without examples of authoritative energy and terrible
invective, still it is not these that we feel to be half
so characteristic as the blessing on the child, the call
to the weary, the look upon the guilty, the lesson of
the field-flower, and the forgiveness on the cross.
When he corrects the morals of his time, it is to
render them passionless and self-denying; when he
ascends to the springs of its devotion, it is to make
them overflow with more copious love and clearer trust ;
when he opens the contents of human hope, and lets us

In Christ Jesus. 287

see his image of final and perfect life, it is a vision of
natures pure as the angels, and not called to die any
more. Himself the Lamb of God, meekly led away
to sacrifice, he has so endeared and consecrated the
forms of affectionate and self-forgetful goodness, that
the old Pagan and even Hebrew notions of God's
character have become uncongenial to a Christian
mood: we feel it cold and hard to speak exclusively
of " virtue," — (the right life of manhood), — of justice,
of rectitude, — and require to ascend into the higher
and warmer conceptions of sanctity and holy peace, —
of faith, and hope, and charity.

This gentle, feminine type of religious character
owes nothing to the Jewish parentage of the gospel ;
and it is in proportion as you take your impression
from John and Paul rather than from the Judaic
records of Matthew and Mark, that the ideal disengages
itself into clearness. It is the general tendency of
strict monotheistic religions to bring-- out the force,
but overpower the finer susceptibilities of our nature ;
to make zealots of firm will, to bind hosts together by
a conquering purpose, to form brotherhoods of intimate
fidelity, rather than to melt the soul with compre-
hensive pity, or inspire a tender reverence for even
the weak and wandering. The monarchy of God in
heaven repeats or realizes itself in a theocracy on
earth : he commands rather than inspires, or inspires
chiefly to command: his prophets are always men,

288 Neither Man nor Woman

and their message is 'political: nature and mankind
are bis fabric and bis instrument, detached from bis
being, but subject to his sovereignty, and constrained
to do his will. The relation of man to God is one of
obedience more than of communion : its sentiment is
founded, not on their nearness and kindred, but on their
distance and contrast : far as the heaven is from the
earth, incapable of blending as the East is with the
"West, are the thoughts of the human spirit in respect
of the Divine. The Hebrew imagination is ever on
the strain to put an infinite space between the majesty
of the Creator and the subjection of the creatures ; to
magnify him and humble them ; to seat his presence
above the circle of the sky and spread the inhabitants
of the earth "as grasshoppers" beneath him. Nor
is this conception of natural distance contradicted or
removed by the closer and tenderer images with which
prophets sweeten and diversify their song. They all
imply, not inward congeniality, but outward protection ;
the father of the son, the mother of the nurseling, the
husbandman of his favourite vine ; and all are founded
on the feeling of interval between two natures, not
of resemblance ; affinity itself being used to express
not so much the identity of kind as the affection of
individuals. Quite in harmony with this conscious-
ness of natural distance, is the belief that God's com-
munications with our race are always through some
mediation, of angel or prophet, empowered to bridge

In Christ Jesus. 289

the chasm, and open a way into nature from the realm
beyond. The Arab learns of Mahomet, and Mahomet
of Gabriel, and Gabriel alone of Allah. The Catholic
listens to the priest ; the priest to the apostles ; the
apostles to Christ; and Christ himself to Moses and
Elijah, who come to him from the Lord and world of
life. Special interposition implies ordinary separation ;
and only in the absence of immediate communion can
mediate messages find room to pass to and fro.

This Judaic conception, of perfect distinction be-
tween God and man, as of two individuals existing
quite apart, unless by exceptional provision for meet-
ing, is favourable to strong moral conviction and
masculine resolve. It is of the very essence of the
sentiment of duty, to feel that we are charged with a
trust from God ; and a trust can be devolved upon us
only from one who is outside of us, and knows that we
have an isolated power of our own. He gives the law,
for us to execute : he is there, and we are here : he
leaves us a field whose tillage or whose barrenness
is ours ; and conscience, in every utterance of self-
reproach, confesses the power of self-command. This
consciousness, that he is lord of something, inspires a
man with self-asserting energy ; quickens his sense of
obligation ; and makes him aware, as he casts his eye
over that which is committed to his charge, that he has
much to answer for in the good or evil administration
of this world. His sphere of duty is his sphere of

u

290 Neither Man nor Woman

•power : in ruling it, he holds a kingly attitude towards
all that it contains ; and whether it be a household, — a
business, — a tenantry, — or an empire, that is given him
to keep in order, it lies beneath him, subject to his
will, trusting to his fidelity, appealing to his affection.
The delegate of a law above him, he has to give and
be a law to those beneath him ; rendering it flexible to
their nature and capacity, yet ever true to the measure
of eternal right. This is always the peculiarity of the
purely moral view of life : man, deputed for his
separate work, it sets apart from God, and each
man, as bearing his own burden, from every other.
It produces the sense of inalienable, lonely responsi-
bilities, giving infinite importance to every soul that
carries them. It sees around it a universe of detached
persons, to no two of whom is just the same shade
of sentiment and action due. It is founded on the
differences of beings and of things, and directs a dis-
criminating regard to each according to its nature and
character. The conscientious, turning the eye within,
feel distinctions and scruples which others slur; and,
directing the gaze without, perceive moral lights and
shadows hid from less fastidious vision. It is ever their
tendency to remain at a critical distance, just and self-
possessed ; severe to themselves and not tender to the
world. Or, if God has given them, not only the pure
conscience, but also the gentle heart, they will perhaps
have pity to spare for sin as well as sorrow ; provided

In Christ Jesus, 291

however it be sin deep and dark enough to look like
misery, and baffle all estimate : for an ethical benevo-
lence will often spread a profuse compassion on the
lowest wickedness, while habitually censorious to the
slight faults of neighbours, or, it may be, to the mere
divergent tastes of a younger generation.

That this temper of mind and mode of regarding
life is rather Stoical than specifically Christian, and
more properly Jewish than either, must be felt by
every one whose gospel is defined by John or Paul. It
gives us simply human morality, with a divine sanc-
tion : — a noble gift, truly ; but still securing only half
our life, its manly vigour, its self-regulation, its clear
justice and fidelity; and leaving as yet untraced the
other half, its feminine dependence, its tact of love, its
flush of enthusiasm, and whatever is characteristic of
Him who opened his lessons with the beatitudes and
closed them with the legacy of peace. To fall into
any harmony with these, the soul must assume quite
another attitude, and enter into quite another thought
of God ; — an attitude, not of lordship over the duties
beneath, but of captivity to the divine solicitations
above ; — a thought of God, not as sending instructions
through an outer medium, or from afar in time or
place, but as our immediate living Light, as the holy
Spirit of our spirits, the everlasting ground of grace
and beauty and love. In contrast with the moral
impulse of the mind which looks at the differences of

u 2

292 Neither Man nor Woman

things, is the devout which seeks their unity ; which
ascends beyond all diffracted or intercepted rays to the
primal light that flings them ; and, instead of remain-
ing outside spectator of other beings, delights to lose
itself in the embrace of the AH in All, and become the
organ of the Eternal Will. We sigh for a conscious
union with God, which is far from being implied in
mere obedience to him ; nay, which is excluded till
obedience gives place to a freer and less reluctant
harmony with him. To know that we belong to
another, and that other, God ; to hear him ever claim-
ing us in low, near whispers, dissolved through every
silence and still shooting on us amid the voices of
men; to see him gleaming on us, not only in the
exposed places of solitude, but through the thick
foliage of events, like the horizontal sun, flooding the
open desert with crimson, or piercing the forest with a
patterned glory ; to read a meaning that is his in
every aspect of life and nature, and go forth to meet it
when it is hopeful and reconciled, or droop our eyes
before it, if it be sad with a shade of pity ; to feel our
whole being dipped in his spirit and imbued with the
sacred tincture ever more : — this is the surrender to
him that makes the life of holy communion, — that
completes and balances the soul on its diviner side,
and that gave that feminine depth and gentleness to
Christ. Without this mood of contemplative oneness
with God, — this genial melting of our life in his, there

In Christ Jesus. 293

may be in us no want of masculine sense and energy,
of clear truth and honour, of faithful constancy under
temptation ; but there will also be a Jewish hardness
and narrowness of mind, a dry unmellowed temper, an
egotistic and critical irreverence for all that will not
submit to our survey. If aspiration is not to die out
from our religion, — if affection and self-oblivion are not
to fly away and leave it empty of all diviner habitant, —
if the love of God, as a passion and a power, is not to
be insultingly dismissed among the romances of the
past, we must open a more hospitable heart to the
gospel of the Spirit, and more deeply enter into the
life of the living God. It is a significant fact, that in
all religious systems which, instead of representing
God chiefly as moral Laivgiver, are fond of dwelling
on him as the Holy Spirit, there the prophets are, or
at least may be, women. So was it among the Phry-
gian Christians of old, who developed the doctrine of
the Paraclete. So has it ever been among the Society
of Friends, who keep silence till the Spirit speaks. So
is it when the Catholic estatica attests the supernatural
grace that still penetrates and consecrates the organism
of the visible Church. If the fact shows, on the one
hand, the dangers of a faith overbalanced on this oppo-
site side, it shows, on the other, that the view of God
most cherished by a tender piety, and most cherishing
it again, is the mystic rather than the moral, — that
which envelopes us in communion, rather than sends

294 Neither Man nor Woman

us out on errands of obedience, — which takes up our
personality into a higher sphere instead of detaching
it for separate work in a lower. Morality defines down-
ward the duty of each; lives in the midst of human
and natural details ; attaches itself to the particular
persons and concrete businesses of life. Devotion
opens its arms upwards to the Source of all; merges
itself in the divine and supernatural Infinity; sighs
after the universal spirit of all reality and ground of
all appearance and secret tincture of all good and
beauty. For neither the masculine concentration of
the one, nor the feminine diffusion of the other, is
our nature exclusively designed ; to neither can it be
given up without one-sidedness and perilous excess. If
they are rarely harmonised, it is not for want of a
visible ideal or of a fitting capacity. In Christ, at
once the Son of Man and Son of God, they were
blended without discord or interference, — the majesty
and the meekness, — the force for this world, the tender
mingling with another, — the percussion upon human
evil and the melting into divine communion. And in
the higher mind of us all the possibility exists of
similarly blending all the seeming opposites that make
up the equilibrium of goodness, and drawing into one
nature the fair and happy contrasts that begin with
distribution, only that mutual fascination may help
them to union. What but our own low ideal is to
hinder the moulding of our defective and broken

In Christ Jesus. 295

humanity into more Christ-like completeness ? Shall
we never rise to an inflexible moral enthusiasm, un-
tainted by personal passion; to an indignation at
wrong, kindled only by reverence for the right, and
made persuasive by sympathy with the wronged ; to a
transparent simplicity unspoiled by the deepest insight
and the largest intellectual view ; to the fusion of
quick affections with unconquerable will ; to a passion
for beauty so loving as to labour in the midst of
deformity; to such inward union with the Highest
as shall brace the soul to undismayed compassion for
the lowest ? Are the graces of character never to have
any vigour, or its vigour any grace ? Are the heroes to
be for ever rude, and the saints for ever sickly ? Not
unless the cross is to be forgotten, and its very shadow
to vanish from the earth. So long as it stands visible
and fixes any venerating look, no poor fragment of
spiritual good can ever content the conscience : without
aspiring to the whole, we fall at once from the disciple's
place ; and when our all is done, we must still feel
ourselves a great way off. To have neither restlessness
nor apathy, but pass freely between energy and repose,
at the call to act or the need to suffer; to bind the
wounds without indulgence to the sins of men; to
have no tears but those of pity, — to utter no reproach
but as the true interpreter of conscience, — to send
forth no cry that does not soften into prayer ; to mingle
with the beauty of the world, yet find it but the symbol

296 Neither Man nor Woman in Christ Jesus.

of a more transcendent glory ; — only brings us some-
what nearer to that marvellous life in which the
contradictions of thought and the conflicts of feeling
formed the very harmony of a nature lifted into perfect
peace. His own picture of the kingdom of heaven is
the unconscious reflection of himself; — the finished
and all-blending sphere, where the differences are not
indeed lost, but separated no more, between the woman
and the man, the elder and the child; and all are as
the angels of God, that serve him with the wholeness
of a balanced nature. So conceived, that kingdom is
neither distant nor future ; in its germ and possibility,
it is already within us. And when, in realizing it,
we have " risen from the death of sin to the life of
righteousness," we shall have passed, through that
resurrection, into the singleness of spirit which belongs
to the " children of God that cannot die any more."

XXIII.

Gal. v. 22.
"The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace."

If these be the fruit of the Spirit, they cannot be
mere matters of temperament. They have a higher
origin than a physical frame happily moulded, or even
a will dutifully disposed. There is something in them
of more heavenly fire ; lighting up our human nature,
but not entirely kindled there ; leaving with us the
blessing, but rendering back to God the praise. When
philosophy gives an account of the human soul, it
can find only constitutional propensities and voluntary
acquisitions. When we interrogate Christianity, we
are told, besides, of communicated sanctities; states
of mind which inheritance cannot give, or resolution
command ; which need some touch of God to wake
them up ; which are above us, and yet ours ; which
do our work, and yet are better than our will ; and

298 The Powers of Love.

seem to lie on the border-land of communion between
the finite and the Infinite spirit. That this language,
which has approved itself to the deepest and devoutest
men in Christendom, should be all a senseless mys-
ticism, is an opinion which modest thought will be
reluctant to maintain. There is something strange
and unintelligible in the anxiety of a pretended ration-
alism to get rid of the inspiring God, to make sure
that our nature will be quite let alone, to environ it
with an impassable ring-fence, and plant sentry-boxes
of argument all round, to exclude the possible encroach-
ments of anything Divine. If the apostolic language
expressed no other truth, it would at least describe,
with simplicity and faithfulness, the complete trans-
formation which religion effects in the original instincts
and feelings ; how, by conquering, it glorifies them ;
and turns them from animal impulses into moral and
spiritual powers. To a mind uplifted in divine con-
version, and, through past toil and patience, dwelling
in a light above the storms of sin and sorrow, a new
being seems to have arisen ; a thick dream to have
broken away ; a drowsy pressure to have flown from
the head, a sultry leaden cloud to have been swept
from off the freshened heart. Its old affections, though
called by the same names, appear but counterfeits of
those which are ascendant now ; poor masks, serving
for the mimicry, but mocking the reality, of life. How
indeed is it possible to disguise from ourselves the

The Powers of Love. 299

pretences of which, till the spirit wakes to the inner
truth of things, we are half- willing dupes ? how much
society there is without communion, and laughter
without gladness, and quiet without escape from care !
The acts and habits which should flow from the affec-
tions of the soul, spring often only from its misery.
The good fellowship that seems so cordial, warming
the lips and brightening the eye, — how often is it a
flight from self rather than a quest of others, the
opiate of conscience rather than the wine of Love !
The mirth that rings with so genial a sound, and seems
to flash from heart to heart, is it all like the true glee
of childhood ? or can you not discern a false and eager
heat, as though something were thrust down that the
gladness may leap up ? And the composure and self-
possession of men, is it not sometimes a mere negative
tranquillity, — the calm of them that sleep ? — and at
others, a triumph of intellect smoothing the troubled
fancy, and of will refusing to betray ? — in neither case,
the serenity of inward affection and living content ?
The retreat from secret thought, the restlessness of
wasted power, the suspicions of injured nature, the
aching of unsatisfied capacity, are always at work with
silent free -masonry among men ; hurrying them about
to clasp hands with one another in conspiracy against
themselves ; and leading them to mimic the look of
things that would appear, were they a world of faithful
souls. The disguise is transparent to the eye of purity ;

300 The Powers of Love.

which looks on the drama as on children acting the
wedding and the funeral in the nursery ; occupied with
the scenery and the pageantry, heedless of the meaning
and the pathos.

Even the genuine instincts and healthy sentiments of
men, freed from all corruption of pretence, undergo a
complete and noble change, when living in the atmo-
sphere of a religious soul; and always fail of some
portion of their grace and power, till breathed upon by
this, their natural air. We are glad enough indeed,
in a world like ours, to welcome a loving heart on
almost any terms. When the sickness is at its height,
we do not ask the physician for his diploma ; when the
bleeding lie so thick upon the field, we must accept
any nurse that will bind their wounds ; and of him
that lifts the faint we demand not whether he be a
Samaritan. It were ungracious to complain of such
charity as can be found to soothe the grievances, and
shame the selfishness, of life. Only, the gentle mind
is ever open and docile too ; they that love well are
thankful to love better ; and in precipe proportion as
the spirit of affection is elevated, is its work more
surely achieved, and its experience more truly peaceful.

There is a humane love, which constitutes the hum-
blest and most frequent form of unselfish feeling. It
finds its objects among the miserable, and attaches
itself to them in proportion to their woes. In human
pity there is a strange combination of repulsion and

The Powers of Love. 301

attraction, which it is the paradox of philosophy to
state, and the mercy of God to ordain : it cannot en-
dure the sight of wretchedness, and yet can never leave
it. To no ear are the cries of anguish so piercing;
yet it hovers within the circle where they wander,
and flies to the centre whence they come. To no eye
does manhood struck down in its strength and wasting
on its bed, or the child decrepid with hunger and
neglect, or the wife deserted and broken beneath the
burden of life, present a sight so sad; but it is
fascinated to the spot, and lives amid the haunts it
dreads. To stop that ear, to shut that eye, would
seem to give an easy promise of relief; nor is there
anything to hinder except that they would cease to be
the organs of humanity, and would be degraded into
the instruments of selfishness : and so, it is no more
possible to get them closed, than to persuade the
sobbing child to put aside the story that draws forth
its tears. It is needless to say what we owe to the
soul of compassion ; of how many infant ills it has
rocked the cradle till they fell into the sweet sleep of
recovery; of how many a cruel passion it has stayed
the uplifted arm ; what old and giant oppressions it
has challenged to the lists, and laid low with the sling
and stone of its youthful indignation. It is indeed an
emotion, to be incapable of which were to be less than
human. It is the great power which lifts the heavy
mass of mankind above the gross interests, the un-

302 The Powers of Love.

worthy sloth, the heartless indifference, towards which
they are else continually sinking. And just when the
low temper of society and greedy negligence of men
have brought us to believe in self-love alone, some
sudden outbreak of this passion breaks through the
crust of our philosophy, and proclaims the hidden fires
of our nature that fuse the cement and shatter the
structures of our selfishness. Pity certainly fulfils one
of the conditions of all the noblest love : it is not a
lonely and unproductive feeling : it cannot pass (except
through imaginative abuse) into an empty luxury. It
looks a brother in the face : it puts a consolation into
his heart : it fans into a flame the embers of dying
hope; and thus, it awakens a grateful return. In
place of an affliction that looked up, and a sorrow that
looked down, there is a reciprocal sympathy standing
eye to eye with a mild and manly brotherhood. But,
with all this, there is work ordained for us which this
impulse will not suffice to do. Fastening itself on
suffering alone, it sees nothing else. It looks on man
exclusively as a being capable of pleasure and pain ;
and until it perceives the trace of pain, till it is roused
by the sigh from behind it, or moved by wringing hands
before it, it remains at rest as if all were well. Yet
suffering is not the only or the greatest ill : beneath
the smooth and glossy surface of easy life there may
hide itself many an inward disease which the mere
glance of pity does not discern. Flourishing iniquity

The Powers of Love. 303

that gives no seeming pain it lets alone : invisible cor-
ruption may spread without arrest. Even suffering is
commiserated by quantity rather than by quality, being
estimated by the scale of the sentient nature, more
than by that of the rational spirit; and a blind in-
stinctive treatment is administered, destructive of the
higher discipline, — like that of the ignorant nurse,
who, at any price of indulgence, hushes the cries of
the wayward child. Any way, the character of animal
impulse clings too much to this feeling, to allow of its
satisfying the demands of a good heart.

In minds of a higher culture, — at the present day
in the minds of an immense class, — there is a very
different order of affection, for which great claims have
been advanced, as though it might assume the empire
of the soul, and wield the very sceptre of religion.
I refer to imaginative or (esthetic love, which attaches
itself to objects in proportion as they are beautiful,
kindles the enthusiasm of Art, and completes itself in
the worship of genius. Let us not be provoked by the
exaggerations of others to think slightingly of a power
which is of a very high order in the combinations of
our world, and owes its sickliness only to its isolation.
Our life would be but a poor affair without it, — a
miserable succession of present instants, with no land-
scape sleeping in the past, no perspective enshadowed
in the future ; with light to cut our corn, and fell our
timber, and steer our ship, but not to play upon the

304 The Powers of Love.

waving fields, and paint the forest stems, and glance
upon the sea ; with an intelligible task before us, and
worthy neighbours near us, but no solemn expressive-
ness in the one, no feature of inspiring heroism in the
other ; with a kindliness at heart, that would not stand
still and see a creature die, but with no eye to see
further than the suffering flesh, or ear to catch more
than the uttered words ; so that the plaint of deepest
pathos is reduced to prose, dumb sorrows are uninter-
preted, and the light hand of a graceful love is but
a dull prehensile limb. In this affection there is a
feature, not found in our compassion, but never absent
from the noblest love. It makes us like and more like
the object that engages it. The rays it sheds upon us
touch our features with transformation, till the coun-
tenance of the soul glows like that of the prophet who
has been with God. This assimilating power cannot
remain involuntary in a self-conscious being like man :
it is not a blind tendency, but a confessed desire, an
intentional effort, wherever realization is possible. No
one can admire without wishing to resemble, and
tracing in his spirit the lineaments that transfigure
him "into the same image, from glory to glory."
Hence, to this feeling for what is beautiful we owe the
temper of aspiration, the pressure towards a perfection
that, with our ascending nature, ever rises and recedes.
What more, you will say, do we want than this ? the
tact of love below, and the urgency of desire above,

The Powers of Love. 305

seem to complete the graces possible to our limited
souls. Yet is this affection very barren, until thrown
into the midst of others, to harmonise and glorify
them : by itself it is but as the spread of colour with-
out design, which may turn the canvas into atmosphere,
but represents only the airy conditions of a scene that
might be or that is to be. No reciprocal sympathy is
requisite to this sentiment : that which is admired as
beautiful, does not admire in return. And, above all,
there is a direct tendency to turn with indifference or
even merciless repugnance from what is unlovely in
human life ; to stipulate for interesting objects of
compassion ; and to shrink from the harsh tasks, the
mean cares, the repulsive sights, the obscure dangers,
which patient goodness encounters without a word.
The early Christians were very sensible of this, and
left a curious proof how profoundly they distrusted a
feeling which has since attained unrivalled energy in
Christendom. They interpreted with literal severity
the words which they accepted as prophetic of their
Lord: "He hath no form nor comeliness; and when
we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should
desire him;" and they consistently made the first
images of Christ objects frightful to behold. Whence
an enthusiasm so strange and barbarous ? It was a
violent reaction from the Pagan worship of beauty,
which had ennobled Art, and corrupted nature ; ex-
tracted wonders from the quarries of Pentelicus, and

x

306 The Powers of Love.

horrors from the populace of Rome and Corinth ; per-
fected the marbles of the temple, and degraded the
humanity of the worshipper. Heathenism had brought
into monstrous combination physical beauty and moral
deformity : the Christians retaliated by reconciling
moral beauty with physical deformity. But the union
was not permanently possible to the human heart.
For, that ugly Christ of the early disciples was also
most sacred and beloved ; the hiding-place of a divine
grace, the covered centre of whole galaxies of holy
light; and that was a secret which human nature
could not for ever keep : some gleam would fain shine
through to rebuke the scoffing eye of the profane : the
features must now and then be touched with a holy
radiance : the divinity, enclosed in so inadequate a
cell, would conquer the feeble humanity at last, and
by the perseverance of inward sublimity, change it
into visible and undisputed glory. And thus, as in
nature, so in faith, love becomes the source of beauty ;
and so refines the forms and deepens the expressive-
ness of things, that matter grows transparent, and
earth is but the transitory film veiling an eternal
heaven.

There is however a higher mood of affection than
this idealizing thought. We are conscious of a moral
love, which has reference to persons only, not to
things ; which attaches itself to them, in proportion as
they are good; judges them by the standard of an

The Powers of Love. 307

internal Law; and expresses itself in tones, not of
tenderness as in pity, or of admiration as in the trance
of beauty, but of grave and earnest approval. This it
is that first sweeps with a healthful and invigorating
breath through every other sympathy, turning it from
a consuming excitement into a productive faculty. But
for this, life would be only piteous as an infirmary, or
fair as a gallery of art; not a theatre of strenuous
action, where conflict gives birth to noblest deeds, and
to many a sorrow too glorious for compassion. This it
is that makes the world a drama of deep and often
breathless interest ; that forces us to take sides in every
struggle and stretch forward with looks of suspense
and prayers for victory, as the hosts sway to and fro
in the thick fight ; that draws out our favourites and
heroes in history, and makes of them a perspective of
great spirits through the past. But for this, the martyr
would be only a man burnt ; and the confessor on the
rack of inquisition but as the patient on the surgeon's
table. This puts a mighty courage into the woman
and the child, and turns the gentlest nature into heart
of oak ; and even fills us with a tempestuous glory at
the sufferings of the good. Inspired by this, we can
stand by and see the prophets sawn asunder; can
cheer on the apostles hunted from city to city ; can
feel, as we watch the Christian maidens waiting for the
tiger's spring, the defiance of a dreadful joy ; can cling
to the robe of Stephen and say, ' Hold on, Brave

x 2

308 The Powers of Love.

heart,' while they shout ' Stone him to death,' and

lay bare our head, " that we also may die with him."

The moral affection unites the separated excellencies of

the others ; at once creating reciprocal sympathy, and

exercising the strongest assimilating power. To be

approved by our brother is to hear the trembling hope

of conscience confirmed, to know that there is another

nature like our own, to feel that our vows and prayers

are lonely no more ; and we are conscious of that

mutual intelligence, which is at once the secret and the

solace of affection. And to approve a being as good is

to acknowledge a claim to become like him : and the

claim implies desire ; and the desire pushes itself into

tendency. I know not indeed a more serious thing

than the responsibility thus incurred by all human

affection. Only think of this : whoever loves you is

growing like you ! neither you nor he can hinder it,

unless at the cost of alienation. Is the resemblance

worth creating ? should you be pleased to see in your

own friend another self? would he appear to you with

an added light of excellence, or with a duller shade as

of disappointment and saddened hope ? 0, if you are

not a desolate being in this world, if you are grateful

for but one creature's love, if a child's trust or a

parent's shelter, a sister's pride or a brother's manly

joy, rests upon you, rise to the height of so pure a

blessing : reverence the sanctity of those dear souls :

drag them not down by the very embrace with which

The Powers of Love. 309

they cling to you; but, in requital of their faithful
cares,, strive, if it be possible, to lift them to a mood
they will rejoice to reach, and through their gentleness
secure their consecration.

Even this moral love, however, is not without imper-
fections, leaving something still to be supplied. Its
characteristic sentiment of Approbation has always in
it a certain patronizing air, not welcome to the mercy of
a true heart, and more like the rigour of a Zeno, than
the grace of Christ. True it is that the eye of con-
science penetrates readily to inconspicuous excellence,
and lifts the poor out of the dust, if he be but a strug-
gling saint. But, should he be a lost sinner, it puts
him, with severe justice, by the side of rich and gaudy
wickedness, as a creature joined to idols, that must be
let alone. Nor can it admire anything but efforts of
the will, the battle of resolution with temptation, the
strife after a harmony of spirit yet unattained. Trans-
plant it to a scene where that harmony is already won,
where evil shows off its attraction all in vain, where
angel-minds find nothing to resist, but love and do
with one accord whatever is fair and holy and sing at
their work the glad strains of emancipated natures, and
this feeling finds itself in a strange land, where its
plaudits would be a coarse intrusion, and die away
upon the sainted air. Nor in any of the forms of love
which we have named, is there adequate provision for
suppressing the discords, and quieting the troubled

310 The Powers of Love.

passions, of mankind. Pity grieves over the suffering
they give ; but, not going to their heart, can only hush
them up, and charm the delirium to temporary sleep.
Imagination dislikes the jar, and evades it by escape
into its dreams. Conscience disapproves, and scolds
the uneasiness into sullen silence, but cannot exorcise
the demons of the heart. This is a kind of human ill
that goeth not out except by the voice of prayer and in
recompense of faith. Not till we call down the Spirit
of God himself, can we find the consummate fruit of
love, and joy, and peace. There is an affection higher
than we have named ; — a Divine Love, directed first
upon God himself, and thence drawn into the likeness
of his own love, and going forth upon other natures,
in proportion to their worth and claims. This is the
crowning and calming term of all prior affections ; pre-
supposing them, and lifting them up from clashing and
unrest to harmony and peace. Who can show us any
grace or power which it does not include? One who
lives in converse with Infinite Perfection can neither be
without the sympathies that ennoble minds on a lower
level, nor surrender itself to any as tyrant over the rest.
The springs of his tenderness and strength are ready to
be touched by whatever has native claims upon a human
heart, — by suffering, by beauty, by goodness ; nay, — so
ready, that the fitting love will not be driven back
though the suffering be ugly, and the beauty wicked,
and the goodness narrow and unattractive. He is not

The Powers of Love. 311

insensible to the shadows of imperfection, but is carried
with intenser feeling to the lights of character; for
they alone are the soul's realities, and there it is that
the promise lies ; and as they brighten and spread, the
shadows will flee away. This faith, which naturally
flows into him from contact with the All-holy Mind,
saves him from the bitterness of cynicism and the de-
spondency of romance. No preferential love, it is true,
— not even the Divine, — can be without its aversions ;
but when they fall upon remediable and perishable ill,
while the heart is engaged upon an everlasting good,
their harshness is softened and their dejection relieved.
He that is taken up into true love for God dwells at the
fountain-head of perfect life, and has there, not only an
ever-present Kefuge from his disappointment in partial
natures, but the goal of hope, the purifying and pene-
trating force, whither the most distant wanderer tends.
The higher his conception of the Soul of souls, the less
is his surprise that in our humanity the image is broken
and the resemblance faint : he stands at an elevation
where impatience is impossible, and from the consum-
mate end of all good a joy goes forth to greet its
smallest beginnings. Yet, quick as his sympathy will
be to detect the germs of every grace, he will no more be
carried away with enthusiasm for detached and limited
excellence than be flung into despair by the uncancelled
wrongs and grievous sins of men ; for he lives where he
can be shut up with neither, and both are transcended

3 1 2 The Powers of Love.

and seen only in their true relations. Entranced with
the vision of the Supreme Good, he can never fail to
recognise and embrace its broken reflections everywhere ;
also he can never cease to demand the missing features
that are yet withheld ; and so it is that this love of his
is generous and exacting too ; meeting the achievements
already made with refreshing response, yet pressing for
all that yet remain behind, with a grave arrest of sym-
pathy and an expressive silence till they come. This
highest form of love is as well proportioned and discrim-
inative as it is quick and copious ; and while flowing
freely in to cherish every actual grace, still fixes an
asking look upon the possible, under which no earnest
conscience can ever sleep. It is a prospective affection,
grateful for the present, but thirsting towards the
future; and is thus, if not the source, at least the
foster-parent of all progressive righteousness. It will
suffer no slight to the little child, and casts a tender
eye on the rudimentary heaven of his nature ; yet
will give no rest to the noble youth who had kept all
the commandments and yearned for something more.
When I am contemplated by this Christ-like spirit, I
know that I am regarded with an interest measured by
the capacities of my being ; and with a love which is
in perfect tune with my inward character and has no
reservations but from my own unfaithfulness. In pro-
portion as the conditions of my life-problem are fulfilled,
as my powers put themselves forth in adequate and

The Powers of Love 3 1 3

fitting activity, as I promptly and truly respond to the
demands upon my will, am I animated and upheld by
support of the divinest sympathy. And just as far as
my nature fails and flags, as I forfeit strength by
unresisted temptations and incur shame by degrading
compliances and shrink from required sacrifice, do I
feel upon me a look which deepens all my guilt and
doubles the sadness of my infirmity, and yet silently
pleads with me to re-assert the rights which I have
impaired, and overtake the march from which I had
fallen away.

Thus, from this highest term, of divine love, there
is nothing omitted : it covers, it blends, it modulates,
it dignifies, it sweetens all the rest. Hence the chief
religious minds have a largeness of their own which,
as history shows, gives them a mysterious grasp of
other and minor natures, and lifts them, in the moral
world, into the same relation to partial forms of
character, that, in the intellectual world, the philoso-
pher bears to the specialist, and, in the sphere of Art,
Michael Angelo bears to a pattern-designer. The soul
in which this commanding affection remains silent may
breathe out this or that rich tone, and even its snatches
of broken melody ; but it is as a lyre without its chief
string, or an organ with its central octave dumb ; and
it can never be adequate to deliver the great master-
pieces of human creation, which tax all the powers of
performance and comprise all the resources of harmony.

3 H The Powers of Love.

The humane, the beautiful, the right, remain only
scattered elements of good, till they are gathered into
the Divine, and blended into one by the combining
love of God.

XXIV.

Job xiii. 24 (part), 25 (part).

"Wherefore hidest Thou thy face ? Wilt Thou break a leaf driven to
and fro?"

As the Book of Job and Lockyer's Astronomy lay
together on my table, I could not help contrasting in
them the genius of the ancient East and of the modern
West. Only the Mediterranean longitudes lay between
the authors ; yet in the face of how different a world
did they live ! To the one, as he looked up on the
heavens from the Arabian plains, the vault of night
seemed written all over with mysteries : to the other,
scanning it from his observatory, it is inscribed with
diagrams that may be worked and periodic times that
may be registered. The Patriarch (if we may sub-
stitute him for his poet) had never, it is plain, been
lectured to at any Eoyal Institution, and looked with
superfluous awe at many things in nature which we
' perfectly understand.' Orion and Pleiades above, the

316 The Discipline of Darkness.

forests and the torrents below, the wild creatures of the
mountain and the floods, the speed of the ostrich, the
flight of the bird, the neck of the war-horse, the scales
of Leviathan, are marvels in his eyes, — the speaking
fragments of an almighty life behind. From us, the
wonder of these things is gone. That " He hangeth
the earth upon nothing " is no less a matter of course
than that the stone flies from the sling. " The way
for the lightning of thunder," far from being " hid
from the eyes of all the living," we may see on every
church steeple. Since our lessons in geology, we know
it is the " raised beaches," instead of " the Almighty,"
that have " set bars and doors to the sea and said,
' Hitherto shalt thou come and no further, and here
shall thy proud waves be stayed.' " We have " mea-
sured the breadth of the earth," and ascertained what
a trifle it is. "We have " entered the way where light
dwelleth," and can name the incandescent chemicals
from which it comes. The " wild ass " and the
"unicorn," — are they not stuffed in our museums?
and in the nearest Zoological Gardens may you not
see Behemoth in his reeds, " moving his tail like a
cedar " ? We have got so familiar with the place and
plan of things, that nothing looks in upon us with a
quickening eye, and our wonder is all used up.

This habituation to the order of the world, the result
of long and large experience, satisfies our natural desire
to see into the Law of all that is and happens. We

The Discipline of Darkness. 3 1 7

do not like to be taken unawares : we prefer the track
clear and open into the distance, and gladly escape the
starts of the thicket which hides we know not what :
we deem it a gain to reduce the surprises of life, and
stand on a field where nothing is unforeseen. Nor is
this the mere craving of our sentient nature, seeking
for repose. It is no less the ambition of the intellect
to unravel the seeming tangle of events, to lay out
here and there the many-coloured threads, and trace
how the parts make up the pattern of the whole. If
Science ever indulges an Elysian dream, I suppose it
is to live in a scene where all can be predicted for the
future and interpreted in the past ; where the intricate
shall be only a cluster of the simple, and the mysterious
a forgotten haze that once veiled the plain ; where no
duration can hide anything and no distance dwarf it ;
and from the perspective of thought the shadowed
glades, and the curving sea, . and the dip of the
horizon, shall take themselves away.

With this ideal, in its application to the work of our
hand and the range of our research, there is no fault to
be found. To be out of gear with the system to which
we belong, is to be displaced from its movements, or to
feel them only as a shock. The more insight we can
obtain into its rules, the more shall we fall in with its
power, as if it were our own ; and be prepared for its
certainties, as if they lay in our design ; and be saved
all struggle for what is not to be, and all anxiety about

3 1 8 The Discipline of Darkness.

what is sure to come. In proportion as we grow into
the scheme of nature, making our understanding its
copy and our will its servitor, do we extend our know-
ledge, secure our action, economise our strength : no
error, no waste, no frustration, confuses our career;
and, suffer as we may, it is the quiet endurance of
calculated ill, with no added pang of horror and alarm.
Wherever then we can push our conquests over the
darkness of the world, it is not for us to pause in the
advance : wherever the way is open, we are free and
bound to go. But it is another question, whether we
have reason to complain of the many paths we cannot
enter, and of the impassable limits that baffle us and
turn us back. Must we deplore it as a spoiling of our
life, that not all its elements are uniform ; that the
date of death hovers over four-score years, and alights
now here now there; that the birth of children, the
incidence of disease, the specialities of mental consti-
tution, nay, even such outward things as the shipwreck
and the fire and the missile's flight, defy our foresight,
and, though intensely affecting our well-being, hide
themselves in the inscrutable order? That in one
sense we feel a grievance in such irreducible uncer-
tainties, is evident from this; that by the method of
insurance we endeavour to get rid of them, and find an
equivalent for the prescience we cannot exercise. The
advantage we thus win is still of the same kind. "We
secure ourselves against a shock, and establish a base

The Discipline of Darkness 319

to make our reckoning safe ; and though we cannot
steady the uncertain sea on which we ride, we place in
equilibrium a compass that shall direct the helm. And
so, if all our life's interests could be reduced to rule, if
everything human could be predicted like the phases
of the moon, we should doubtless become completely
adapted to a world without alternative ; every hour
would find us ready ; our place might depend upon us
with the certainty of fate ; no step would ever have to
be retraced ; habit would be perfected with us. But
then, Habit would become supreme. "We should be
worked up into the mechanism of nature, and what else
would be our Personal powers would be yoked into the
same team with the weights, and damps, and winds.
Wherever such a state is approached, we turn out
more work, but exercise less Soul ; inasmuch as Rule
in nature becomes Routine in man. If, to perfect this,
and make it all in all, fulfils our ideal of humanity,
and the largest outer product gives the greatest life,
then we must lament that an uncertainty remains to
strain the cords of our hearts, and fling forth music
from the swaying air. But if our life have another
measure, taken from within, if it may be judged, not
wholly by what it successfully does, but in part by
what it intrinsically is, if moreover it has other attri-
butes than it takes from the intellect and the will, if,
with rights transcending these, it have a trust of duty,
and a pleading of pity, and a flood of great affections,

320 The Discipline of Darkness.

then we must see, in the irreducible uncertainties, the
very school and discipline of this side of our humanity,
where its glory and its sorrow blend.

In truth, for the birth and the freshening of human
Love, the conditions most essential are just the con-
ditions we most resist : — the inequalities, and the un-
certainties of life. It is because we are not all alike,
but a great mixed company of weak and strong, of men
and women, of young and old, of bright and sad, nay,
of ancient and modern, of native and foreign, that our
dull souls awake into sympathies which carry them out
of themselves in all directions, and that reverence, trust,
compassion, rise and spread through all the spheres.
And it is because, thus taught to love, we cannot see
what will befall, that we are driven to love the more.
There are times, no doubt, when we forget that anything
is precarious, and for the moment accept the unbroken
health of things as if it were a pledge that so they
would always be ; and these are apt to be bold and
wanton times, when the voice is loud, and the laugh is
rude, and the words not free from insolence. If ever,
in such an hour, we have borne hard upon a friend,
let but an illness stretch him before us, and his life
begin to look frail, how instantly we know that we
have too little prized it, and all the harsh tones dis-
appear ! Wherein lies the magic of that look of his ?
Whence do those pale features draw the persuasion
they do not mean to Bpeak ? If we knew for certain

The Discipline of Darkness 321

that in a month he would be on Change again, and that
the bell would not toll for hirn till after thirty years,
would the turn of his eye equally smite upon our
heart ? were there no crisis sitting on his face, no
suggested moment of trembling between life and death,
should we move around him with the same reverent
step, and speak to him with the same meaning in the
voice ? No : it is not from what we see with the out-
ward eye, but from the questioning visions of the mind,
the haunting dread, the half-ready tears, the shadow
of the morrow behind the light of today, that the
thoughtful tenderness all comes ; and a rigid certainty
would soon crystallize upon the soul and bring the
hardness back again. And as it is when fears are
deepening, so is it when they are waning too, yet not
forgot. Let the crisis pass, and the days of conva-
lescence come, when the faint glance grows bright,
and the languid cheek begins to glow, and the feet are
planted firm again, and the sunshine and the rustling
leaves, and the children's merry voices, are charged with
a new joy ; why do we linger near our friend, as if a
sacred fascination held us ? why gaze at him with an
insight we never had before ? why feel an old weight
lifted from the heart, and spring to him with the
trust and promise of a fresh vow ? It is because the
trembling scales have turned, and we are purified by
the wonder of deliverance ; snatched from the com-
punctions of inadequate affection, and placed on the

Y

322 The Discipline of Darkness.

threshold of better hopes. It is ever the secret back-
ground of possibilities we cannot read, which invests
the forms in the front light with mellowing tints of
mystery, and a veil of unearthly beauty ; and did these
never reach us with their appeal, we might know the
actual, and do the palpable and safe ; but we should
aspire to nothing, and venture nothing, bear nothing
with high trust, and take no vow of self-devotion.

In trying then to eliminate uncertainty, we strive,
through the instinct of the understanding and the
will, to destroy the very discipline appointed for the
conscience and affections ; and as, morally, we conquer
in our intellectual defeat, and repair our defects of
knowledge by nobleness of love, it may well be believed
that we shall never push our lines of foresight to the
further limits of our human world, but, in the last
days as in the first, find ourselves on the bounding
shore of the seen and the unseen, with our nature
competed for by the finite light and the infinite
shadows, and wrung into its glory by the conflict and
its sorrows. Had not Life the interest of an ever-
opening plot, with catastrophe preparing every instant
but hidden to the last, with how little care should we
see its curtain rise, with how little sympathy watch its
actors play their part, with how slight a sigh perceive
its drop-scene fall ! Why, as you look upon a group of
children at their play, — why does the ringing laughter
bring you, along with the response of happy affection,

The Discipline of Darkness. 323

a graver and a tenderer mood ? It is the contrast of
the thoughtless present and the hidden future : you
know there is a drama writ, but with invisible ink, and
reserved in the casket of each young life ; and the
images throng upon you of the countless moving vicis-
situdes of our humanity ; and upon the ear of thought,
the peal of the happy marriage bells, or the toll for
the early death, rings out ; and you wonder which is on
the first step of manly faithfulness or womanly devoted-
ness, and which on the slippery incline that descends
into untraceable ruin. And so in every emergency of
later years, in the last embrace before the long voyage,
or in the parting before the war, it is the alternative
images peering in upon the mind, of happy greeting,
or of a silent spot for ever sacred in the far waters or
on the foreign field, that deepen the moment with a
meaning it cannot speak ; and though the voice per-
haps is cheery and the heart beats firm, the strength
of each friend is only in the other, and in the high
trust they carry into the dark. If you take the dan-
ger and the doubt away, where would be the gentle
reverence of the surrender ? Let there be no arrow
by night, no malady by day, let the three-score years
and ten be assured to the last hour, and the eyes fall
punctually asleep with the setting sun entered on the
calendar ; and would anything tender and divine hang
around this death by the clock ? No watchful love
could hover round the invulnerable : they might go

T 2

324 The Discipline of Darhiess.

forth on their enterprise alone, and be forgotten ; fol-
lowed by no musing fancy, that is flushed with their
triumph or anguished at their fall. Between us and
God it may be true that " there is no fear in perfect
love " ; for the Eternal is for ever safe : the All-holy
is for ever good : but among ourselves it would be a
shallow love that was without its fear; for the very
goodness and sanctity to which we look up are noble
because secured by no necessity ; and the lives that
are the joy of ours would shine with a drier light, were
they less precarious ; and it is the refraction of tears
ever possible, that breaks the rays into colours soft
and beautiful. If we are faithful to one another in
our onward march, it is because there is not one who
may not fall : our road lies through a perpetual am-
bush ; and whoever has a friend to keep step with him
on the way will try to place him on the sheltered side.
Of our moral nature it is the very essence, that it
is given to meet alternatives; of our affections, that
they have to live in the actual with eye upon the pos-
sible ; and the whole wisdom and magnanimity of life
consist in a will conformed to what is, with a heart
ready for what is not. Unless all character is to
perish, the contingencies must stay. The tacit mutual
dependence, the secret suspicion that here or there the
ground which looks so solid is undermined, the con-
stant possibility of a total change of parts in the
drama of our life, and so the silent wonder that

The Discipline of Darkness. 325

mingles with every scene, these are the freshening
powers breathing on what else were common or un-
clean, and meeting and startling us like angels encoun-
tered in the street. Whatever depth there may he in
our poor love, whatever reverence speaks in our rough
voice, flows into us from that world unseen.

All our private experience goes to soothe our com-
plaints of darkness, and reconcile us to the conditions
of a precarious existence. The witness of history is
on the same side. In the education of mankind, what
races have played the most quickening and effective
part ? Is it the industrial and gainful, that, in the
interests of prosperity, have cultivated isolation, and
have evaded the conflicts of honour, lest they should
raise the rates of insurance ? Phoenicia, who treated
the world as an Exchange, and crowded every port with
her ships, could not even hand down her maritime
discoveries, and died without a bequest, except of her
colonies, her superstitions, and her crimson dye. Egypt,
by the very uniformity of her physical fertility, re-
mained in moral barrenness : and, with a monopoly
of the arts and sciences, sat for ages, like her own
Sphinx upon the desert, placidly gazing on an unfer-
tilized world. Her stereotyped civilization aimed, not
without success, to reproduce in society the inflexible
order of natural law, and to bar out the contingen-
cies of affairs. If you would estimate such stationary
periodicity, compare its fruitless longevity with the

326 The Discipline of Darkness.

brief flash of the Hellenic States, which still lights up
the thought and thrills the hearts of men. And in
lands where freer and larger play is conceded to human
capacities, is it, do you think, the safe and quiet times
when risk is absent and ease secured, that cut the
distinctive lines into their character, and give them a
physiognomy in history ? On the contrary, it is in the
days of peril, in the crises of anguish, that the force of
character steps forth and constitutes itself, and under
some high and daring guidance, finds a footing upon
the rock and retakes the citadel of hope. Had Thebes
never been humbled, she would have found in Epami-
nondas no deliverer to illuminate her page in history.
Had Athens never been abandoned to the Persian in-
vader, there would have been no magic in the names of
Marathon and Salamis: her writers would have been
without their most telling allusions, her orators without
their most kindling appeals ; and her people would not
have risen to that ideal type of life which makes them
the wonder of all time. Had Home seen nothing but
an Augustan age, she might have had historians, if
there had been any history to tell ; and poets, if they
could dispense with great admirations, and sing without
the material of great actions ; and philosophers, if the
problems of the world had ever agitated the sleepy
experience of men. But it was the tyranny of Tarquin
that created the Eepublic : it was from the cloud of
Carthaginian invasion that Scipio emerged: it was

The Discipline of Darkness. 327

amid the shame of spreading corruption that the noble
protest of Stoic virtue arose, and mingled a melancholy
majesty with the empire's fall. Nor is it otherwise
with any State that has earned a remembrance of
itself. Of every great City, the memorials of fallen
heroes and the trophies of dread strife, are among the
chief works of art. Every legislative hall is guarded
by the figures of those who once braved the dangers
of their country's darkest hours. In every national
tradition, the popular favourite is the captive king, the
chained patriot, the unflinching martyr.

And if it is the great crises of peril that, as they are
passing, train a people's character, so is it their reflec-
tion in literature that, ages after they are gone, still
spreads and perpetuates the ennobling influence. The
inspiration that descends on us from the Past, and makes
us heirs of accumulated thought and enriched affections,
— from whom chiefly does it come ? Is it from the
uniformly happy and the untempted good ? from those
who have most realized the lot for which our sentient
and intellectual instincts cry aloud ? No : but from the
central figures of the great tragedies of our humanity ;
from the conquerors of desolating monsters ; from the
creators of Law and tamers of the people ; from love
beyond death, that carried its plaintive music to the
shades ; from the avengers of wrong ; from the martyrs
of right ; from the missionaries of mercy ; from the
pass of Thermopylae ; from the Sublician bridge ; from

328 The Discipline of Darkness.

the fires of Smithfield ; from the waters of Solway ;
from the cross of Calvary. A world without a contin-
gency or an agony could have no hero and no saint,
and enable no Son of Man to discover that he was a
Son of God. But for the suspended plot that is folded
in every life, history is a dead chronicle of what was
known before as well as after ; Art sinks into the
photograph of a moment that hints at nothing else ;
and poetry breaks the cords and throws the lyre away.
There is no Epic of the certainties ; and no lyric without
the surprise of sorrow and the sigh of fear. Whatever
touches and ennobles us in the lives and in the voices of
the past is a divine birth from human doubt and pain.
Let then the shadows lie, and the perspective of the
light still deepen beyond our view ; else, while we walk
together, our hearts will never burn within us as we
go ; and the darkness, as it falls, will deliver us into
no hand that is Divine.

XXV.

-♦♦-

Psalm xxrvii. 7.
" Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him."

It is difficult for the young, and not less so for those
who yet remain children in soul, to believe the startling
assertion, by religious writers, of the universal misery
of men. The sad music of the prophets, the passionate
outpourings of an Augustin, the plaintive meditations
of a Pascal, and even the tender voice of the Man of
Sorrows, appear to them pitched in too deep a key and
to wander over notes too far from the brilliancy of joy.
The impression is thus very prevalent, that devout
persons take melancholy views of things, and throw
the unreal shadows from their own minds on the
outward scene of their existence. Yet if you will but
turn over the page and consult the expression of the
same mind in another mood, you may find words
transparent with an infinite depth of peace, or dashing
on in a torrent of rejoicing. The same Paul who now

33° -Rest in the Lord.

wrings bis drooping bands and cries, " 0 vrretcbcd
man tbat I am," ere long flings tbem aloft to exclaim,
" Rejoice in tbe Lord always ; and again I say unto
you, Rejoice!" Tbe same Wesley wbo now deplores
bis " vain repentances," — bis life grown " fruitless at
its end," — in lines tbat bear tbe trace of tears, tben
bursts into tbe triumpb of bis watcb-nigbt songs, and
glories in tbe awful joys of deatb, in strains tbat make
tbe passing bell appear to ring witb victory. To tbe
inexperienced, botb tbe sadness and tbe joy seem
strange and unintelligible, — vebement and opposite
outrages upon trutb and reality, — tbe alternations of
a tumultuous and ill-regulated mind. And yet tbey
not only co-exist witbout any tendency to mutual ex-
clusion ; but are found in men most remarkable for
tbeir calmness and constancy of soul, for tbe clearness
of tbeir purposes, and tbe force and patience of tbeir
will.

Tbe fact is, tbe cbildisb and tbe saintly mind form
different judgments of life because tbey look on it from
opposite mental stations ; tbe one from a condition of
unawahened aspiration, tbe otber from tbat of aspira-
tion that has found its path and touched its limits:
wbile tbe great mass of men on wbom tbeir observa-
tion is made fill an intermediate field, of uneasy and
neglected aspiration. Tbe cbild, gazing at tbe grown
world, and seeing men's outward possessions and not
tbeir inward wants, tbinks admiringly of tbeir lot,

Rest in the Lord. 331

regards it as a powerful and cheerful thing, and longs
to press into it. The saint, discerning an inward want
beyond all the measure of outward possession, pities
the infinite thirst that feeds only on ashy and juiceless
fruits. And in this deep compassion, with which he
looks on life, he from time to time includes himself;
for though he has reached the head-spring of ever-
living waters, he is not always there : he wanders from
them and often becomes as he was when he knew them
not, and is then not less parched and sick at heart than
all the rest. The three stages of character are not so
separated, that when we have emerged into the higher,
we cannot relapse into the lower : we cannot ascend,
till the atmosphere of God is spread around us ; but to
descend in its very midst, we have only to droop the
wing. And so it is, that those who have touched the
summit know the sunshine and the cloud of every
elevation ; while they who are yet below listen, as to
strange tales, to the glories and the terrors of the
height.

The great secret of all peace lies in the ascendency
of some strong love. Love, — the admiring or reverent
direction of the heart on some object, — is the positive
power of our life ; and on its free action, on its due
match against the problems it undertakes, depend the
tranquillity and unity of existence. The child is happy,
because his love is well proportioned to its ends: it
ranges over the little circle of good before his eyes ;

332 Rest in the Lord.

and goes unanxiously forth to embrace and realize its
aim. He is checked by a venerated control from with-
out, not by shameful hesitancies within : he sighs for
little that is out of reach ; and he lives ever pursuing
and ever winning his pursuit. The man, at least of
the present and all similar ages, is unhappy, because
in this he has ceased to be a child. The balance of
his nature is destroyed. He has more understanding,
and has no more love. The great motive energy of
his soul is overchecked, — regulated by exacting scruples
into an uneasy incapacity. He can no longer surrender
himself freely into the possession of a great truth, or
plunge into the tides of a glorious passion. He has
the wish to take the right course, and the discernment
to avoid the wrong, but no impulse to bear him hither
or thither ; and so he sits, like a pilot in a calm, with
infinite skill to direct his helm, but not a breath to
swell his sails. The office of the intellect is purely
regulative, that of the conscience mainly prohibitive :
they speak to us in negatives ; — " not this way, for it
is foolish "; "not that, for it is wrong." They supply
no power, but, assuming it to be there, prevent its
waste and its abuse. An age that develops them to
the neglect of all else, and attempts to live by them
alone, finds itself therefore wise in the cure of all
diseases, yet without the freshness of natural health,
poising its existence on dietetic niceties and not breast-
ing the winds of the mountain and facing the driving of

Rest in the Lord. 333

the snow. We have surely fallen on such a time of
feebleness and unrest. We have the critic everywhere :
the lover nowhere. Nothing so cheap as the intelli-
gence which suffices to contradict and the conscientious-
ness which prompts to object : but the heart-wisdom
that can light us on our way by the lustre of sweet
and earnest affection, the holy zeal that can melt our
doubts away and make our duty a march of common
joy instead of a skirmish of individual scruples, are
little less than obsolete. Disintegration is at work in
every church : irresolution marks every party in the
state : isolation enfeebles every man apparently fitted
to lead in thought or action. Sects keep together by
external repulsion rather than by internal attraction ;
and the only fervours that appear seem to be the in-
spirations of antipathy. In private life the lines of
care are deepened : a certain anxiety of mind, a visible
susceptibility of temper, the absence of a genial and
trustful spirit, betray the unsatisfied nature and the
dearth of guiding sympathies within. Thought, grown
too quick and active for love, becomes a painful rest-
lessness. It is incapable of any flight of steady aim
that shall enable it to migrate from clime to clime of
truth ; but is like the swallow that has lost its nest,
wheeling in idle circles through the air, sweeping the
grass or tipping the water with its wing, still hovering
round its place of loss, with a cry that proclaims it
desolate.

334 fosi in the Lord.

Wherever this source of unrest exists, there is no
remedy but in restoring the lost proportions of the
soul : — by disciplining the affections into a greatness
suitable to the control of so critical a judgment and so
scrupulous a conscience. In the absence of anything
of nobler scope, limited loves, particular enthusiasms,
mere fancies of the mind, be they only innocent, are a
great good ; breaking the threads of detaining hesita-
tions, and in one direction at least delivering the heart
from contempt. The active votary of any harmless
object is better than the passive critic of all ; and the
dullest man who lives only to collect shells or coins is
worthier than the shrewdest who lives only to laugh at
him. And if his pursuit, instead of fastening on a
mere dead product of nature or history, attach itself
to some human object, if it be the pride of a father in
a child, or the guardianship of a mother by her son, it
redeems life from the curse of sterility, and enriches it
with many spots of gentle beauty : it turns the soul
out from its own close centre and gives it the free air
of disinterestedness : it imparts strength for wholesome
self-denial ; and smooths out the hard lines upon the
features with the softening touch of pity and of joy.
In these days it is a wiser and more difficult skill in
education to preserve the enthusiasms of nature, than
to regulate them by the artifices of reason ; to savB
the moral admirations from false shame at their own
earnestness than to restrain them from rash excess.

Rest in the Lord. 335

Let the fresh dew lie undisturbed upon 'the young
child's soul : only by drinking it eagerly in during the
early hours can it bear the noonday heats and lend an
unwithered smile to the evening shades.

But it is only in contrast with no love that we can
thus accept any love as a good. It cannot be morally
indifferent what the object of affection is. It would
be a weak and sentimental abuse of Christian doctrine
to suppose that, because " love is the fulfilling of the
law," any sort of feeling that carries us out of our-
selves satisfies the demands of divine obligation and
completes the conditions of a holy peace. The objects
offered to the heart are very variously worthy of its
attachment ; and only when each has its just share
and place and, however dear, recedes before more
venerable claims, can we cease to be among the weary
and heavy-laden, and find the true disciple's inner rest.
It is the vice of amiable fanatics to treat love as in
itself the supreme good, the end of the Christian life ;
to pray always and only for the melting of the stony
heart ; as if, when this were done, all was surely right,
and nothing remained for vigilance and aspiration.
Love is a good, not on its own account, but on account
of the excellence to which it clings ; not because it sets
the heart at one with something, but with something
noble, true and holy. Nobleness, truth and holiness
must therefore be higher than affection, being that to
which it ought to spring. Where they are not made

336 Rest in the Lord.

supreme and paramount, -wherever love stays with
mixed and lower objects and intercepts the clear view
of these, wherever it learns to be satisfied with its
tenderness and heedless of its purity, not only is its
influence tainted, but its peace is spoiled by utter
instability. A heart entirely surrendered to its human
and earthly relations, without throwing around them
the hallowed atmosphere of faith, is indeed redeemed
from the dry pining of a bark-bound and unmellowed
nature ; but has no security from the sorrows and sins
of impulse, no shelter from the storms of tumultuous
anguish. The domestic love which is a mere enlarge-
ment of instinct, without moral appreciation, without
reverence, providing the tender care, but unconscious
of a holy trust, is detained with the earthly form, and
never catches the heavenly spirit, of its lot. No sacred-
ness mingles with the daily task : no angel-hand wipes
the tears of weariness away : no treasured hope beguiles
the bereft and mourning heart with visions sweet and
calm. For want of a supporting reverence, the truest
affection loses its clearness and misses its proper end.
The parent, for instance, loves his children : nor was
there ever perhaps a country or an age in which this
relation had more power than with us. Too often,
however, he loves them with no tincture of respect or
restraining sense of sanctity ; but more and more with
the tenderness of indulgent instinct ; less and less with
that quiet strength to deny them and authority to

Rest in the Lord. 337

guide them, which springs from the consciousness of
a trust and the presence of a Divine eye. Hence, the
natural distance between souls, — the very thing that
makes the beauty of life's perspective and the whole-
someness of its discipline, — is disappearing from recog-
nition : young and old, wise and foolish, are brought to
the level of a kindly but prosaic equality ; and the
hoary head turns coward, whilst the young child grows
bold. Hence, too, a spectacle more and more common,
especially in the families of the affluent, which a
thoughtful observer finds it sad to behold. Often you
may see the earliest years of children cared for with a
studious conscience; not merely a well-adjusted phy-
sical management, and a steady mechanism of habit
and good instruction; but a nice vigilance over the
temper and dispositions, a scrupulous regard for truth
and purity, an anxiety to train the moral taste aright ;
giving you every hope that the parents know their
sacred trust, and feel their house to be a shrine of
devout service. What fairer sight can there be than
the children of such a home ? — the open brow, the
clear confiding eye, the gracious ways, the artlessness
moulded into beauty, present a frequent picture which
it is a joy to behold. Thus far the purest desires of
the home, the prayers that the children may be good,
have no hindrance : they regulate the hours, they choose
the instructor, they form the speech, they determine the
companions, they select the tale. But the nursery does

z

338 Rest in the Lord.

30

not last for ever. The time comes when its threshold
must he passed, and from a distance the hum and mur-
mur begin to flow upon the ear from the great halls of
life ; and how often does that dizzying sound act with
a fatal charm and confuse the native religion of the
parent's heart ! He no longer offers these young
souls only to goodness and to God, hut now limits his
higher wishes by the conditions of fashion and success.
That his sons should he pure, manly, noble ; that his
daughters should be guileless, modest, and of loving
earnest heart ; that both should be so true to their best
aspirings as to meet any Christ-like eye and lie open to
any holiest spirit ; — these wishes are qualified now by the
resolve that no disadvantage shall be suffered in the hot
race of life, and no unskilfulness endured in the usages
and ideas of the surrounding world. And so, from that
moment, the tyranny of custom intrudes upon the serious
sanctities of parental choice ; and on the minds hitherto
so protected a thousand influences are permitted to pour
which shock their purity and bewilder their veracity and,
with a false dazzle of frivolity, put out the earnest stars
of heavenly contemplation. It is of all things the
most melancholy to watch the moral clouding over of
life's early dawn ; to trace the dim veil stealing over the
artless look ; to notice how the earnest tone begins to
leave the voice, and every worthy enthusiasm dies away
into indifference; how it comes to be thought a fine
thing to speak coolly of what is odious for its vice,

Rest in the Lord. 339

and critically of what is awful for its beauty. Thus
to see the young that had filled us with love and
hope growing out of their simplicity and intuitive clear-
ness instead of maturing into depth and enlarging into
greatness, is like the disappointing passage from the
fresh spring to the mid-summer in the precincts of a
large town instead of in the open country and amid the
breezy hills ; the brilliant foliage, the joyous grass, the
sportive light, fading in the one case into a dingy
grimace of nature, ripening in the other into a massive
fulness and splendour. Where this spoiling takes
place, I believe it is because we mingle no reverence with
our affection, and accept without awe the solemn trust of
a child's conscience. "Were there a deeper reality in our
cares for religious training, we should feel committed to
us a soul new as if born in Paradise, and should watch
to see the divine features come out; should fear to
quench any aspiration, to contradict any protest, to hurt
any sacred instinct, of a spirit nearer perhaps to God
than ours. Do you plead the necessity, urged for so
many questionable things, of giving the youth betimes
"a knowledge of the world"? Aye; but of what
"world"? — for that is a large name, which covers
several different things. Do you mean the crowd of
contemporaries on the same level with himself, his
equals or inferiors in principle and character, who by
their tendencies and habits vote into existence the
customs amid which he is to live ? If bo, you propose

z 2

- 4 o Rest in the Lord.

:

to bring him down to the average standard created by
the mixed multitude of good and bad, to kfll ont
expostulation of the soul, and undo as he
advances the hopeful work of earlier years. No : be
a 9k afraid to scorn so poor an ambition- Let him grow
familiar with an elder and a better " world " than this ;
with the men of g re, who constitute the

honour and lustre of Inatory ; who will rebuke in him
all mean enclosure in the present and make him con-
scious of high communion - L .he past ; who «
kindle him with veneration for h mature given hfm to
adorn ; who wiL impair . e wise

an I and touch hirr - shame, if he be not

wot The minds

bin of patriots and saints, i_ of truth,

apostles .eousness, — these are the "world," in

the " knowk Ige of which it is enn d,

though :: .o passport to the assemblies of fashicL,

and supplies a .Ity.

mUk domestic love, so is it with every affec~
that can set i possess the soul : if it escapes the

■et taken up by at

!th, it i .- safe from becoming wavering, wild, or

- ."=. If frustr :ment is without

rails with crushing blow ind then lies still as

a dead and irremo- It. If satisfied, — the joy

success, spoiled by self-gratolation, becomes a mere
exuberance of spirits, and has none of the serene

Rest in the Lord. 341

dignity of a thankful soul. Where there is no quieting
perception of a Divine Presence in the world, the sense
of justice, the indignation at wrong, sinks into a revolu-
tionary passion, fantastic in its speech and reckless in
its ways, instead of a grave and considerate obedience
to the eternal Law of God. All human enthusiasms,
permitted to become ultimate and disown their divine
subordination, invariably degenerate into restlessness
and precipitation ; fret and chafe impatiently against
the obstacles that stay their course ; and where they
cannot win a happy way. waste and corrode themselves
with inner scorns and vexations. A vehement tempera-
ment may no doubt be externally subdued by considera-
tions of policy, or the discipline of good taste and
intellect. But how paltry is this decent self-control,
compared with the real internal calm when the Christ-
like spirit has walked over the wild waters of the soul!
No sublimer spectacle do I know on earth, than the
faculties of a grand and passionate nature, as in a
Socrates or a Paul, falling into stillness before the
face of God. and by the awful light of his countenance
turned from a stormy nobleness into a loving and work-
ing power. It is a spectacle which emerges painfully
and rarely from the battle of the will, spontaneously
and often from the repose of faith.

In thus seeking a divine transfiguration for all our
natural impulses. T am far from wishing to set up. like
our older divines, the love of the Creator in opposition

342 Rest in the Lord.

to what was called "the love of the creatures"; as
though the mind intent on God must find every other
sympathy absorbed, and feel itself alone and without
relation amid the Infinite. This fancied antagonism
between the human and divine yearnings of our nature
is a cold metaphysic sublimation so false to reality that
the gentlest spirit, we may safely affirm, will ever come
more gentle and loving from its prayers ; and the first
trace by which God marks his path across the soul is
the new tenderness in every tint of pure affection, and
the quicker movement in each work of kindly service.
But this I do profoundly believe ; that all finite loves
are only half -born, wandering in a poor twilight, un-
knowing of their peace and power, till they He within
the encompassing and glorifying love of God. "Where
there is no reference to him, our pictures of the moral
universe become as much mere local distortions as the
systems of nature which misplace the stationary Sun.
The soul, drawn out by filial sympathy into his infini-
tude and blended by aspiration with his absolute perfec-
tion, sees the inner orbits of dependent good precisely
as they are, fair and true in themselves, but borrowing a
more solemn beauty from their relation to the whole.
Held to their centre of equilibrium, and facing his light
from their several distances, the lesser affections observe
their proportions and do not fly from their tracks. How
can they ever look away from him ? He is the element
in which they live. Though they were to, perish, he

Rest in the Lord. 343

would endure. While all else rises and flows by, he
is and ever stays. Amid the fleeting shows and dis-
appointed promises of good, he abides with us, the in-
exhaustible Essence and reality of all. In him alone,
but in him for ever, there is Rest. In evil days,
when just men strive in vain to beat back the hosts of
wrong, and mad tyrannies gall the heart with shouts of
triumph, the Sentinel of every world is on his sleep-
less watch, and knows how to protect it from surprise.
He is the continuous thread of all our years, and his
love throws in each pattern of beauty woven into their
texture : and when the images of the past, the distant
fields, the dear abode, the gracious forms, the vivid
hopes, the earnest heroisms, of our young days, gleam
with a fairer light through the sorrows and failures of
maturity, it is his breathing spirit that dissipates the
cloud of time, and sends his reviving sunshine through.
Only let us be at one with him, and our life gathers
down upon it the strength of his infinite serenity. The
simple thought, that ' Grod is here,' — that the august
Ordainer of our trust and supporter of our faithfulness
is present in the very hiding-places of the soul, — con-
tains within it the most powerful agencies of religion.
Warning, sympathy and rest are treasured in it to in-
exhaustible amount. Amid the fatigues of life's inces-
sant struggle, under the sense that we can never sleep or
all things will go wrong, refreshment is instantly gained
when we ascend to the fountain of all affection, and touch

344 Rest in the Lor'd.

the parching lips with the draft of life. In temptations
to unfaithfulness witnessed by no human eye, let us
but say, ' Ah ! Lord, but thou art here,' and the failing
purpose springs to its feet again. And under the en-
croachments of fretfulness or despondency from the
frequent perverseness of men, what can so soon check
the hasty thought, soothe the unquiet passion, and put
a music of patience into the soul, as the look of that
pure and loving eye from its depth of infinite calm ?
In the trembling of age and the stealthy approaches
of the last sleep, the dear presence of an Almighty
Guardian, to whom age is as childhood and who unites
the future with the past, fills the deepening shadows
with a mild and holy light. Let him only be near ; and
the obscuring veil of mortal ill that sometimes seems to
shut us in, and tempts us to believe in nothing but the
sad rain, is soon withdrawn, like the cloud lifting itself
from out the glen ; and the sunshine first glorifies, then
dissipates the haze ; leaving the mountain -range of im-
movable goodness and beauty clear against the ever-
lasting sky. So pass the storms away, so deepens the
heavenly view, to the soul that will but "rest in the
Lord and wait patiently for him."

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Stanley's Familiar History of British Birds. Crown 8vo. 6*.
Text-Books of Science, Mechanical and Physical.

Abney's Photography, 3*. Gd.

Anderson's (Sir John) Strength of Materials, 3*. Gd.

Armstrong's Organic Chemistry, 3*. Gd.

Ball's Astronomy, 6*.

Barry's Railway Appliances, 3*. Gd. Bloxam's Metals, 3*. Gd.

Bauennan's Systematic Mineralogy, 6*.

Goodeve's Principles of Mechanics, 3*. Gd.

Gore's Electro-Metallurgy, 6*.

Griffin's Algebra and Trigonometry, 3*. Gd.

Jenkin's Electricity and Magnetism, 3*. Gd.

Maxwell's Theory of Heat, 3*. Gd.

Merrifleld's Technical Arithmetic and Mensuration, 3*. Gd.

Miller's Inorganic Chemistry, 3*. Gd.

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General Lists of New "Works.

Test-Books of Science, Mechanical and Physical— continued.

Preeoe & Sivewright's Telegraphy, 3*. 6d.

Rutley's Study of Kocks, 4s. Gd.

Shelley's Workshop Appliances, 3*. Gd.

Thomfi's Structural and Physiological Botany, 6*.

Thorpe's Quantitative Chemical Analysis, 4*. id.

Thorpe & Muir's Qualitative Analysis, 3*. Gd.

Tilden'8 Chemical Philosophy, 3*. Gd.

Unwin's Machine Design, 3*. 6a.

"Watson's Plane and Solid Geometry, 3*. 6a*.
Tyndall on Sound. New Edition in the press.
Tyndall's Floating Matter of the Air. Crown 8vo. 7*. Gd.

— Fragments of Science. 2 vols, post 8vo. 16*.

— Heat a Mode of Motion. Crown 8vo. 12*.

— Notes on Electrical Phenomena. Crown 8vo. 1*. sewed, Is. Gd. cloth.

— Notes of Lectures on Light. Crown 8vo. Is. sewed, Is. Gd. cloth.

— Lectures on Light delivered in America. Crown 8vo. 7s. Gd.

— Lessons in Electricity. Crown 8vo. Is. Gd.
Von Cotta on Rocks, by Lawrence. Post 8vo. 14*.
Woodward's Geology of England and Wales. Crown 8vo. lis.
Wood's Bible Animals. With 112 Vignettes. 8vo. 14*.

— Homes Without Hands. 8vo. 14*. Insecta Abroad. 8vo. 14*.

— Insects at Home. With 700 Illustrations. 8vo. 14*.

— Out of Doors. Crown 8vo. 7*. Gd. Strange Dwellings. Crown 8vo. 7*. Gd.

CHEMISTRY & PHYSIOLOGY.

Buckton's Health in the House, Lectures on Elementary Physiology. Cr. 8vo. 2*.
Crookes's Select Methods in Chemical Analysis. Crown 8vo. 12*. Gd.
Jago's Practical Inorganic Chemistry. Fcp. 8vo. 2*.
Kingzett's Animal Chemistry. 8vo. 18*.

— History, Products and Processes of the Alkali Trade. 8vo. 12*.
Miller's Elements of Chemistry, Theoretical and Practical. 3 vols. 8vo. Part I.

Chemical Physics, 16*. Part II. Inorganic Chemistry, 24*. Part III. Organic

Chemistry, Section I. price 31*. Gd.
Reynolds'i Experimental Chemistry, Part I. Fcp. 8vo. 1*. Gd.
Thndiohum's Annals of Chemical Medicine. Vols. I. & II. 8vo. 14*. each.
Tilden's Practical Chemistry. Fcp. 8vo. 1*. Gd.
Watts's Dictionary of Chemistry. 7 vols, medium 8vo. £10. 16*. Gd.

— Third Supplementary Volume, in Two Parts. Part I. 36*. Part II. 50*.

THE FINE ARTS & ILLUSTRATED EDITIONS.

Doyle's Fairyland ; Pictures from the Elf- World. Folio, 15*.
Dresser's Arts and Art Industries of Japan. [In preparation.

Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art. 6 vols, square crown 8vo.
Legends of the Madonna. 1 vol. 21*.

— — — Monastic Orders. 1 vol. 21*.

— — — Saints and Martyrs. 2 vols. 31*. Gd.

— — — Saviour. Completed by Lady Eastlake. 2 vols. 42*.

Longman's Three Cathedrals Dedicated to St. Paul. Square crown 8vo. 21*.
Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Home, illustrated by Scharf. Fcp. 4to. 21*. imp.
16mo. 10*. Gd.

— — — illustrated by Weguelin. Crown 8vo. 6*.
Macfarren's Lectures on Harmony. Svo. 12*.

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Moore's Irish Melodies. With 161 Plates by D. Maclise, E.A. Super-royal 8vo. 21*.

— Lalla Rookh, illustrated by TennieL Square crown 8vo. 10*. Gd.
Perry on Greek and Roman Sculpture. With over 300 Illustrations. Square

crown 8to. 31*. Gd.

THE USEFUL ARTS, MANUFACTURES &c.

Bourne's Catechism of the Steam Engine. Fcp- 8vo. 6*.

— Examples of Steam, Air, and Gas Engines. 4to. 70*.

— Handbook of the Steam Engine. Pep. 8vo. 9*.

— Recent Improvements in the Steam Engine. Fcp. 8vo. 6*.

— Treatise on the Steam Engine. 4to. 42*.

Brassey's English and Foreign Ships of War. 2 vols. 8vo. Plates. [In preparation.

Cresy's Encyclopaedia of Civil Engineering. 8vo. 25*.

Cnlley's Handbook of Practical Telegraphy. 8vo. 16*.

Eastlake's Household Taste in Furniture, &c. Square crown 8vo. 14*.

Fairbairn's Useful Information for Engineers. 3 vols, crown 8vo. 31*. Gd.

— Applications of Cast and Wrought Iron. 8vo. 16*.

— Mills and Millworb. 1 vol. 8vo. 25*.
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Hoskold's Engineer's Valuing Assistant. 8vo. 31*. Gd.

Kerl's Metallurgy, adapted by Crookes and Rbhrig. 3 vols. 8vo. £4. 19*.
Loudon's Encyclopaedia of Agriculture. 8vo. 21*.

— — — Gardening. 8vo. 21*.
Mitchell's Manual of Practical Assaying. 8vo. 31*. Gd.
Northcott's Lathes and Turning. 8vo. 18*.

Payen's Industrial Chemistry Edited by B. H. Paul, Ph.D. 8vo. 42*.
Piesse's Art of Perfumery. Fourth Edition. Square crown 8vo. 21*.
Stoney's Theory of Strains in Girders. Royal 8vo. 36*.

Tire's Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, & Mines. 4 vols, medium 8vo. £7. Is.
Ville on Artificial Manures. By Crookes. 8vo. 21*.

RELIGIOUS & MORAL WORKS.

Abbey & Overton's English Church in the Eighteenth Century. 2 vols, 8vo. 36*.

Arnold's (Rev. Dr. Thomas) Sermons. 6 vols, crown 8vo. 5*. each.

Bishop Jeremy Taylor's Entire Works. With Life by Bishop Heber. Edited by

the Rev. C. P. Eden. 10 vols. 8vo. £5. 5*.
Boultbee's Commentary on the 39 Articles. Crown 8vo. 6*.

— History of the Church of England, Pre-Reformation Period. 8vo. 15*.
Browne's (Bishop) Exposition of the 39 Articles. 8vo. 16*.
Bunsen's Angel-Messiah of Buddhists, &c. 8vo. 10* Gd.
Colenso's Lectures on the Pentateuch and the Moabite Stone. 8vo. 12*.
Colenso on the Pentateuch and Book of Joshua. Crown 8vo. 6*.

— — Part VII. completion of the larger Work. 8vo. 24*.
Conder*s Handbook of the Bible. Post 8vo. 7*. Gd.
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Library Edition, with all the Original Illustrations, Maps, Landscapes oa
Steel, Woodcuts, &c. 2 vols. 4to. 42*.

Intermediate Edition, with a Selection of Maps, Plates, and Woodcuts.
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Student's Edition, revised and condensed, with 46 Illustrations and Maps.
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EUicott's (Bishop) Commentary on St. Paul's Epistles. 8vo. Galatians, 8*. Gd.

Ephesians, 8*. Gd. Pastoral Epistles, 10*. Gd. Philippians, Colossians, and

Philemon, 10*. Gd. Thessalonians, 7*. Gd.
Ellicott's Lectures on the Life of our Lord. 8vo. 12*.
Ewald's History of Israel, translated by Carpenter. 5 vols. 8vo. 63*.

— Antiquities of Israel, translated by Solly. 8vo. 12*. Gd.
Gospel (The) for the Nineteenth Century. 4th Edition. 8vo. 10*. Gd.
Hopkins's Christ the Consoier. Fcp. 8vo. 2*. Gd.

Jukes's Types of Genesis. Crown 8vo. Is. Gd.

— Second Death and the Restitution of all Things. Crown 8vo. 3*. Gd.
Kalisch's Bible Studies. Part I. the Prophecies of Balaam. 8vo. 10*. Gd.

— — — Part II. the Book of Jonah. 8vo. 10*. Gd.

— Historical and Critical Commentary on the Old Testament; with a
New Translation. Vol. I. Genesis, 8vo. 18*. or adapted for the General
Reader, 12*. Vol. II. Exodus, 15*. or adapted for the General Reader, 12*.
Vol. IH. Leviticus, Part I. 15*. or adapted for the General Reader, 8*.
Vol. IV. Leviticus, Part H. 15*. or adapted for the General Reader, 8*.

Lyra Germanica : Hymns translated by Miss Winkworth. Fcp. 8vo. 5*.
Martineau's Endeavours after the Christian Life. Crown 8vo. 7*. Gd.

— Hymns of Praise and Prayer. Crown 8vo. is. Gd. 32mo. 1*. Gd.

— Sermons, Hours of Thought on Sacred Things. 2 vols. 7*. Gd. each.
Mill's Three Essays on Religion. 8vo. 10*. Gd.

Monsell's Spiritual Songs for Sundays and Holidays. Fcp. 8vo. 6*. 18mo. 2*.
MUller's (Max) Lectures on the Science of Religion. Crown 8vo. 10*. Gd.
Newman's Apologia pro Vita Sua. Crown 8vo. 6*.
Passing Thoughts on Religion. By Miss Sewell. Fcp. 8vo. 3*. Gd.
Sewell's (Miss) Preparation for the Holy Communion. 32mo. 3*.

— — Private Devotions for Toung Persons. 18mo. 2*.
Smith's Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul. Crown 8vo. 7*. 6d.
Supernatural Religion. Complete Edition. 3 vols. 8vo. 36*.
Thoughts for the Age. By Miss Sewell. Fcp. 8vo. 3*. Gd.
Whately's Lessons on the Christian Evidences. 18mo. Gd.

White's Four Gospels in Greek, with Greek-English Lexicon. 32mo. 5*.

TRAVELS, VOYAGES, &c.

Baker's Rifle and Hound in Ceylon. Crown 8vo. 7*. Gd.

— Eight Tears in Ceylon. Crown 8vo. 7*. Gd.
Ball's Alpine Guide. 3 vols, post 8vo. with Maps and Illustrations : — I. Western

Alps, 6*. Gd. H. Central Alps, 7*. Gd. III. Eastern Alps, 10*. 64.
Ball on Alpine Travelling, and on the Geology of the Alps, 1*.
Brassey's Sunshine and Storm in the East. Crown 8vo. 7*. Gd.

— Voyage in the Vacht ' Sunbeam.' Crown 8vo. 7*. Gd. School Edition,

fcp. 8vo. 2*. Popular Edition, 4to. Gd.
Hassall's San Remo and the Western Riviera. Crown 8vo. 10*. Gd.
Macnamara's Medical Geography of India. 8vo. 21*.
Miller's Wintering in the Riviera. Post 8vo. Illustrations, 7*. Gd.
Packe's Guide to the Pyrenees, for Mountaineers. Crown 8vo. 7*. Gd.

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10

General Lists of New Works.

Shore's Flight of the ' Lapwing ', Sketches in China and Japan.
The Alpine Club Map of Switzerland. In Pour Sheets. 42*.
Tozer's Turkish Armenia and Eastern Asia Minor. 8vo. 16*.
Weld's Sacred Palmlands. Crown 8vo. 10*. Gil.

8vo. 15s.

WORKS OF FICTION.

Buried Alive, Ten Years of Penal Servitude in Siberia.
Hawthorne's (J.) Yellow-Cap and other Fairy Stories.

Crown 8vo. C.«.
Crown 8vo. 6*.

Cabinet Edition of Novels and Tales by the Right Hon. the Earl of Beaoonsfiekl,
K.G. 11 vols, crown 8vo. price 6*. each.

Cabinet Edition of Stories and Tales by Miss Sewell. Crown 8vo. cloth extra,
gilt edges, price 3*. dd. each : —

Amy Herbert. Ivors

Cleve Hall. Katharine Ashton

The Earl's Daughter. Laneton Parsonage.

Experience of Life.

Gertrude.

Margaret Percival.
Ursula.

Novels and Tales by the Right Hon. the Earl of Beaconsfield, K.G.
Edition, Eleven Volumes, crown 8vo. price £2. 2s.

Hughenilen

Lothair.

Coningsby.

Sybil.

Tancred.

Venetia.

Henrietta Temple.
Contarini Fleming.
Alroy, Ixion, &c.
The Young Duke, &c.
Vivian Grey.

Endymion.

The Modern Novelist's Library. Each Work in crown 8vo.
complete in itself, price 2s. boards, or 2*. 6d. cloth : —

A Single Volume,

By Major Whyte-Melville.

Digby Grand.

General Bounce.

Kate Coventry.

The Gladiators.

Good for Nothing.

Holmby House.

The Interpreter.

The Queen's Maries.
By the Author of ' the Atelier du Lys.'

Mademoiselle Mori.

The Atelier du Lys.
By Various Writers.

Atherstone Priory.

The Burgomaster's Family.

Elsa and her Vulture.

The Six Sisters of the Valleys.

Whispers from Fairy Land. By the Right Hon. Lord Brabourne. With Nine
Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 3*. 6<2.

Higgledy-Piggledy ; or, Stories for Everybody and Everybody's Children. By
the Right Hon. Lord Brabourne. With Nine Illustrations from Designs by
R. Doyle. Crown 8vo. 3*. 6d.

By the Earl of Beaconsfield, K.G.

Lothair.

Coningsby.

Sybil.

Tancred.

Venetia.

Henrietta Temple.

Contarini Fleming.

Alroy, Ixion, &c.

The Young Duke, &c.

Vivian Grey.
By Anthony Trollope.

Barchester Towers.

The Warden.
By the Author of ' the Rose Garden.'

Unawares.

London, LONGMANS & CO.

General Lists of New "Works. 11

POETRY & THE DRAMA.

Bailey's Festus, a Poem. Crown 8vo. 12*. Gd.

Bowdler's Family Shakspeare. Medium 8vo. 14*. 6 vols. fcp. 8vo. 21*.
Cayley's Iliad of Homer, Homometrically translated. 8vo. 12*. Gd.
Conington's .ffineid of Virgil, translated into English Verse. Crown 8vo. 9*.
Goethe's Faust, translated by Birds. Large crown 8vo. 12*. 6d.

— — translated by Webb. 8vo. 12*. Gd.

— — edited by Selss. Crown 8vo. 5*.
Ingelow'a Poems. New Edition. 2 vols. fcp. 8vo. 12*.

Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Koine, with Ivry and the Armada. 16mo. 3*. Gd.
Moore's Poetical Works, 1 vol. ruby type. Post 8vo. C*.
Ormsby's Poem of the Cid. Translated. Post 8vo. 5*.
Southey's Poetical Works. Medium 8vo. 14*.
Turner's Hypermnestra, a Tragedy. Crown 8vo.

RURAL SPORTS, HORSE & CATTLE MANAGEMENT &c.

Blaine's Encyclopaedia of Rural Sports. 8vo. 21*.

Fitzwygram's Horses and Stables. 8vo. 10*. 6rf.

Francis's Treatise on Fishing in all its Branches. Post 8vo. 15*.

Horses and Roads . By Free-Lance. Crown 8vo. 6*.

Miles's Horse's Foot, and How to Keep it Sound. Imperial 8vo. 12*. Gd.

— Plain Treatise on Horse-Shoeing. Post 8vo. 2*. 6d.

— Stables and Stable-Fittings. Imperial 8vo. 15*.

— Remarks on Horses' Teeth. Post 8vo. 1*. Gd.
Nevile's Horses and Riding. Crown 8vo. 6*.
Ronalds's Fly-Fisher's Entomology. 8vo. 14*.

Steel's Diseases of the Ox, being a Manual of Bovine Pathology. 8vo. 15*.
Stonehenge's Dog in Health and Disease. Square crown 8vo. 7*. Gd.

— Greyhonnd. Square crown 8vo. 15*.
Youatt's Work on the Dog. 8vo. 6*.

— — — — Horse. 8vo. 7*. Gd.

Wilcocks's Sea-Fisherman. Post 8vo. 12*. Gd.

WORKS OF UTILITY 6c GENERAL INFORMATION.

Acton's Modern Cookery for Private Families. Fcp. 8vo. 6s.

Black's Practical Treatise on Brewing. 8vo. 10*. Gd.

Buckton's Food and Home Cookery. Crown 8vo. 2*.

Bull on the Maternal Management of Children. Fcp. 8vo. 2*. Gd.

Bull's Hints to Mothers on the Management of their Health during the Period of

Pregnancy and in the Lying-in Room. Fcp. 8vo. 2*. Gd.
Campbell-Walker's Correct Card, or How to Play at Whist. Fcp. 8vo. 2*. Gd.
Edwards on the Ventilation of Dwelling-Houses. Royal 8vo. 10*. Gd.
Johnson's (W. & J. H.) Patentee's Manual. Fourth Edition. 8vo. 10*. Gd.
Johnston's Land Law Ireland Act. Crown 8vo. 1*.
Longman's Chess Openings. Fcp. 8vo. 2*. Gd.
Macleod's Economics for Beginners. Small crown 8vo. 2*. Gd.

— Elements of Economics. 2 vols, small crown 8vo. Vol. I. 7*. Gd.
Macleod's Theory and Practice of Banking. 2 vols. 8vo. 26*.

— Elements of Banking. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. 5*.
M'Culloch's Dictionary of Commerce and Commercial Navigation. 8vo. 63*.

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12 General Lists of New Works.

Matmder's Biographical Treasury. Pep. 8vo. 6*.

— Historical Treasury. Fcp. 8vo. 6*.

— Scientific and Literary Treasury. Fcp. 8vo. 6*.

— Treasury of Bible Knowledge, edited by Ayre. Fcp. 8vo. 6*.

— Treasury of Botany, edited by Lindley & Moore. Two Parts, 12*.

— Treasury of Geography. Fcp. 8vo. 6*.

— Treasury of Knowledge and Library of Reference. Fcp. 8vo. 6j.

— Treasury of Natural History. Fcp. 8vo. 6*.
Perelra's Materia Medica, by Bentley and Redwood. 8vo. 25*.

Pewtner's Comprehensive Specifier ; Building-Artificers' Work. Crown 8vo. 6*.
Pole's Theory of the Modern Scientific Game of Whist. Fcp. 8vo. 2*. Gd.
Quain's Dictionary of Medicine. 1 vol. 8vo. in the press.
Reader's Time Tables. Third Edition. Crown 8vo. 7*. Gd.
Scott's Farm Valuer. Crown 8vo. 6*.

— Rents and Purchases. Crown 8vo. 6s.
Smith's Handbook for Midwives. Crown 8vo. 5s.

The Cabinet Lawyer, a Popular Digest of the Laws of England. Fcp. 8vo. 9/.
West on the Diseases of Infancy and Childhood. 8vo. 18*.
Willich's Popular Tables, by Marriott. Crown 8vo. 10*.
Wilson on Banking Reform. 8vo. 7*. Gd.

— on the Resources of Modern Countries 2 vols. 8vo. 24*.

MUSICAL WORKS BY JOHN HULLAH, '^LL.D.

Hullah's Method of Teaching Singing. Crown 8vo. 2*. Gd.

Exercises and Figures in the same. Crown 870. 1*. sewed, or 1*. 2d. limp cloth ;

or 2 Parts, Gd. each sewed, or Sd. each limp cloth.
Large Sheets, containing the 'Exercises and Figures in Hullah's Method,' J in

Two Parcels of Eight, price 6*. each.
Chromatic Scale, with the Inflected Syllables, on Large Sheet. 1*. Gd .
Card of Chromatic Scale. Id.
Grammar of Musical Harmony. Royal 8vo. price 3*. sewed and 4*. Gd. cloth ; or

in 2 Parts, each 1*. Gd.
Exercises to Grammar of Musical Harmony. 1*.
Grammar of Counterpoint. Part I. super-royal 8vo. 2*. Gd.
Wilhem's Manual of Singing. Parts I. & II. 2*. Gd. or together, 5*.
Exercises and Figures contained in Parts I. and II. of Wilhem's Manual. Books

I. & H. each 8d.
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in a Parcel, 6*.
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Manual, in Four Parcels of Eight Nos. each, per Parcel, 6*.
Large Sheets, Nos. 41 to 52, containing the Figures in Part II. in a Parcel, 9*.
Hymns for the Young, set to Music. Royal 8vo. 8<J. sewed, or 1*. Gd. cloth.
Infant School Songs. Gd.

Notation, the Musical Alphabet. Crown 8vo. Gd.
Old English Songs for Schools, Harmonised. Gd.
Rudiments of Musical Grammar. Royal 8vo. 8*.
School Songs for 2 and 3 Voices. 2 Books, 8vo. each Gd.
A Short Treatise on the Stave. 2*.
Lectures on the History of Modern Music. 8vo. 8*. Gd.
Lectures on the Transition Period of Musical History. 8vo. 10*. Gd.

London, LONGMANS & CO.

Spottiswoode & Co. Printers, New-street Square, London.

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