The moral value of a mission from Christ : a sermon preached in Christ Church Cathedral : at the General Ordination of the Lord Bishop of Oxford, on the 4th Sunday in Advent, Dec. 22, 1867

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LIDDON

MORAL VALUE OF

A MISSION FROM
CHRIST

THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

THE MORAL VALUE OF A MISSION
FROM CHRIST:

A SERMON,

PREACHED IN CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL,

AT THE

©eneial ©filiation

OF

THE LORD BISHOP OF OXFORD,

ON THE 4th SUNDAY IN ADVENT, DEC. 22, 1867.

H. P. LIDDON, M.A.

STUDENT OF CHKIST CHURCH, AND CHAPLAIN TO THE BISHOP OF SALISBURY.

MINTED BY COMMAND,

RIVINGTONS,

Xonfcon, (DvfortJ, anU Camfcrtoge.
1868.

TO THE

RIGHT KEY. THE LORD BISHOP OF OXFORD,

Cljtsi pennon,

PUBLISHED AT ITIS COMMAND,

IS DEDICATED,

WITH AFFECTIONATE RESPECT.

1972&37

THE MORAL VALUE OF A MISSION
FROM CHRIST.

S. John xv. 16.

" Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you, and ordained
you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your
fruit should remain."

Like many other sayings of our Lord, especially in
His last discourse, these words have a double appli-
cation. They are addressed to the Eleven as being
disciples of Christ, but also as being the first Christian
missionaries. The life of discipleship in the Eleven
was practically inseparable from the ministerial life ;
but it is obvious that Christ chooses and places
Christians in His Church whom He does not call to,
or invest with, any specifically clerical mission. If,
then, to-day we look only to the ministerial bearing
of these words, this will not be supposed to imply any
forgetfulness of the fact that every living Christian
soul must read in them the true, authoritative
explanation of its deepest history. To all Christians
it is said, "Ye have not chosen Me, but I have

6 THE MORAL VALUE OF

chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and
bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain."

At the same time, let it be noted that the purport
of the text is mainly, although not exclusively, minis-
terial. It was addressed to the Eleven alone. It was
addressed to them during those solemn hours, unri-
valled in the moral history of the world, which passed
between the institution of the Eucharist and the
Agony. It was addressed to them, as the context
shows, in the capacity of missionaries, who had been
chosen by Christ, who were soon to learn from the
Comforter a heavenly lesson, and to be braced by Him
with heavenly strength, and then to go forth into the
wide world, that through toil and endurance they
might bring forth fruit for the Master at whosebidding
they went — fruit, as He said, that should remain.
And, thus considered, the words convey our Lord's
own judgment as to the source of ministerial power,
and as to the object with which such power is given
into the hands of men. " Ye have not chosen Me,
but I have chosen you and ordained you" — and
wherefore ? " That ye might go and bring forth
fruit, and that your fruit should remain."

" Ye have not chosen Me." No empty antithesis
to what follows — no admitted, purposeless truism,
we maybe sure, is here. The words evidently guard
against, if they do not condemn, a misapprehension
on the part of the Apostles. True, of course, it was,
and beyond controversy, that they had not chosen
Him. They had not met, after the fashion of some
Jewish disciples of the time, to elect a popular rabbi,
who might teach his pupils with an authority derived
from their free vote in his favour. One by one, Christ
had chosen them (e^eXe^a/x^^) out of the great mass

A MISSION FKOU CHRIST. 7

of their countrymen, to follow Him ; and then, by a
second act, He had associated them with His own
blessed work by appointing them (edr)Ka) to be His
envoys and representatives. It could not be denied :
He had called them from the toll-house or from the
lake-side, and they had simply obeyed. But on the
other hand, they had persevered in following Him,
even until now, when all, as it seemed, was so dark
around Him and them. Was not this perseverance,
nay, was not the original act of obedience itself,
of the nature of a choice ? In form He had called
and they had obeyed : but might not the reality have
been that their obedience was an election ? Was He
not their Master so long only as they willed to serve
Him ? Were not the obligations which bound them to
Him reciprocal ? If they perseveringly followed Him
now, in this hour of trial and darkness, might there
not be even a balance of obligation in their favour ?

" Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen
you." Even in full view of Gethsemane, He will
not consent to misinterpret the past, or to modify
His claim. True, He does not deny their moral
liberty. They had been free to set His original call
at naught. They were free to desert, to betray Him.
He had not forced self-sacrifice upon the rich young
man, or perseverance upon Judas. As moral agents,
with good and evil, truth and its opposite before
them, they were free; and in their freedom they had
chosen and persevered in truth and goodness. But
in a deeper sense, so far as they were saintly, they
were not free ; the yearning after goodness and
truth within them was not free ; and it had con-
quered their whole being and led them captive.
And whence came that yearning? His choice, it.

O THE MOBAL VALUE OF

seems, is not a thing of yesterday : His choice
embraces in its range the whole mystery of their
several predestinations. His Eternal Person ex-
plains and illuminates His words. They had obeyed
His call ; they had persevered in obedience, because
the dispositions, the desires, the secret sympathies
within them, had been implanted by Himself. His
choice had been beforehand with them; His love
had been deeper than, and prior to, theirs. And as
He had thus really chosen them, by giving them the
capacity and the will to choose, without suspending
their freedom ; so He had placed them as plants in
His vineyard, that they might bring forth fruit. If
they loved Him, it was because He first had loved
them. Looking to their act of obedience alone,
they had, it might be said, freely chosen Him.
Looking to the vast moral history of which that
act was the consummate expression, a history
penetrated from first to last by the activities of
His Providence and His Grace, His words express
a literal truth — " Ye have not chosen Me, but I
have chosen you."

So indeed it is in every age of the Church of
Christ : so it is at this hour. We speak of Holy
Orders as of a profession, which for sufficient reasons
a man chooses in preference to medicine, or to law,
or to some other walk in life. And this language is
justifiable, if it be taken to represent that final
determination of the will by which a man resolves
to present himself for ordination. Such choice is
strictly within our power to make or to refuse. But
in a deeper sense, none whom Christ will crown here-
after has really been able to do otherwise than obey
Christ's call. He has been the object of a choice rather

A MISSION FBOM CHRIST. \)

than its author. As a moral agent, with good and
evil, a higher and a lower aim before him, he lias,
of course, been free, if he would, to choose the evil
and to refuse the good. But as a Christian, making
the most of the light given him, he has not been
free. He has yielded to a mysterious attraction which
has drawn him on. He has been guided, it may be,
partly by the force of family circumstances, partly
by natural tastes and sympathies, partly by the
direction and results of education, partly by the
influence of minds with which he has come in con-
tact. He has followed, too, the guidance of an in-
ward light, growing stronger in his soul as the years
have passed on; a light which has discovered him in
all his native misery to himself, face to face with the
Eternal Love which has redeemed him, and which
now bids him own and glorify It. And thus, what
was at first a vague hope became more and more a
purpose, and what had been for years only a general,
indefinite purpose, ripened at length, in the strength
of prayer, into a formal resolution, solemnly taken
beneath the eye of the Eedeemer. It was not that he
heard a sensible voice behind him; it was not that
there was a moment in his life when the physical
and the moral in him seemed to blend, he knew
not how, — a moment from which he dates a new
spiritual sensation, the power and nature of which
are beyond analysis. These things may be in the
Church of God ; but they are not common ; they are
not the rule. Yet when he is asked, " Dost thou
believe that thou art called by the will of Our Lord
Jesus Christ to this office of Priest or Deacon in His
Church ?" it is the verdict of his whole moral being
that he can answer confidently, yet humbly, " I trust

10 THE MORAL VALUE OF

so." In such a manner (the order of development
may vary, its main features are invariable) Christ
completes the inward, subjective side of His choice.
But if the process stopped here, it would be neces-
sarily imperfect. The strong aspiration of the soul
must be countersigned by the objective reality of
the Apostolical Commission. It comes to us, that
commission, across the centuries, through the un-
broken hue of the Episcopate, through the sacred
Twelve, straight from the hands and lips of Christ.
As He said eighteen centuries ago, " Receive ye
the Holy Ghost : whosesoever sins ye remit, they are
remitted unto them, and whosesoever sins ye retain,
they are retained;" so presently in this Cathedral
shall we listen to the echo of His creative word,
sanctioning, completing the long, patient travail of
His Spirit in souls which have heard His call, by the
indelible stamp of His authoritative commission.
The complete scope of His announcement will
presently be manifest, " Ye have not chosen Me,
but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye
should go and bring forth much fruit."

The choice of His ministers by Christ is fully mani-
fested only in the sanction of the inward call by the
apostolic authority. Without the inward call, an
episcopal ordination can make a ministerial machine,
through which life may flow to others, while itself is
dead. Without the due episcopal ordination, an in-
ward call is but as the budding of a tree which lacks
the requisite conditions of climate or of soil to produce
its proper flower or fruit. Such calls are among
the mysteries of the spiritual world; they are
spiritual parallels to the vast and mysterious waste
of nature. They are found in the outskirts of, or

A MISSION FROM CHRIST. 11

even beyond, the kingdom of Grace, where the full
meed of spiritual rain or sunshine is wanting. We
mourn as we witness tho efforts around us, produced
by these anomalies — efforts earnest and devoted,
yet, withal, spasmodic and incomplete, — achieving,
undoubtedly, a large measure of well-intentioned dis-
order, but destined surely, as the years pass on, to
wither and die back into weakness and inaction.

The reality of the inward vocation to the ministry
follows upon a preception of the true nature of the
soul, and of the power and work of the Spirit of
Christ. It can only be disputed by a desperate
Pelagianism, which, in our day, is shading off more
and more consistently into sheer materialism. The
reality of the apostolic commission, conveyed by
the episcopate, presupposes a Divine authority in
the promise and words of Christ, and admits of a
moral demonstration as complete and satisfactory
as any parallel fact of history. Whether in the
case of the other branches of the Universal
Church, or in the case of our English Church since
the sixteenth century, it can only be impugned
by arguments, which, if applied consistently, would
be fatal to the authority of at least two or three
books of the New Testament. And in truth, the
temper of these latter days has been somewhat
impatient of the large historical and psychological
considerations which warrant our belief in Christ's
continued choice of His ministers. Men are disposed
to limit the evidence of a doctrine to those moral
results which they themselves can trace as due to
its influence and action. ' What is a man the better,'
we are asked, 'for believing that fie is chosen and
ordained to the ministry by an unseen Being ?

12 THE MORAL VALUE OF ]

Why can he not be content to suppose that it is
with the ministry as with other professions in life ?
A man takes, for instance, to the study of the law,
or of medicine, or of politics, or of agriculture,
without supposing that he is moved or authorized to
do so by any supernatural agency. Why cannot the
clergy do likewise ? Surely there is an abundance of
reasons which might induce well-disposed young men
to undertake the duties of the clerical profession
without the historical assumption of the reality of an
apostolically transmitted commission, or the psycho-
logical assumption of the reality of an inward call.
Would it not be more honest — that is the word
employed — to content yourselves with these prac-
tical reasons, re-inforced, as they are in the case of
the clergy of the Church of England, by the official
sanction of the State, and to leave the notions of a
special supernatural virtue in the act of ordination,
or of a real spiritual afflatus touching individual
souls with a heaven-sent impulse, as belonging to
days which are passing or have passed away ? '

As regards the question of "honesty," it of course
depends upon an anterior question of opinion or
rather of fact. As we descend in the scale of
beliefs, we find that the larger faiths above us wear
a necessary semblance either of credulity or knavery.
To the pure materialist nothing seems more foolish
or ' dishonest' than what he regards as the as-
sumptions of spiritualism. A Condillac cannot
understand the empiricism of a Locke ; since Locke
assumes two sources of knowledge, sensation and
reflection, while Condillac can see in all mental
processes, honestly examined, only modified sen-
sations. The religion of nature thinks the super-

A MISSION FROM CHRIST. 13

natural 'dishonest;' so does the Socinian the
doctrine of Christ's literal Godhead; so does the
disciplo of Strauss the assertion of the in-
fallibility of Scripture; so does the theory, which
treats tho Church as a purely human association, a
belief in the reality of the ministerial call and of
the ministerial commission. This use of the word
honest implies, not necessarily ill-will, but only, a
limited imagination on the part of the speaker.
The speaker cannot imagine the possibility of a
larger range of certainties than that which he
himself recognizes. If other men make reference to
truths which he does not recognize, he cannot divest
himself of the idea that they must be wilfully de-
ceiving themselves, or others, or both at once.

So much for the question of honesty; but how
about the moral advantages of the belief before us?
Now, in reply to this question, I answer that belief
in a real ministerial call and mission, received from
Jesus Christ, is not a resultless ecclesiastical fancy.
It is a moral power directly promoting ministerial
work. It is a stimulus to exertion, of which,
without it, a man would be incapable. It is a
protection against an unwillingness to be per-
sonally prominent, which belongs to the highest
type of the Christian character. It is, moreover,
a source of true consolation under the ministerial
disappointments, which are a matter of course in all
careers, even in the most successful. "Ye have not
chosen Me, but I have chosen you, and ordained
you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit." Our
Saviour's words directly connect a strictly moral
result, which He calls "fruit," with His own choice
and ordination of the disciples who will produce it.

14 THE MOEAL VALUE OF

1. It is argued, that ministerial work, of itself, is
a natural attraction to a large class of benevolent
minds, sufficiently powerful to need no such stimulus
as that afforded by a heavenly call and mission. In
other professions, we are reminded, the work itself
and its legitimate rewards constitute a sufficient at-
traction. A man pleads a cause, or he attends a
patient, or he advocates a legislative improvement,
or he drains and fertilizes his broad acres, without
any stronger reason for doing so than is supplied by
the intrinsic advantage arising to society and to
himself from these several occupations. Why should
it not be thus, it is asked, with the clergy also?
Is not the enlightenment of the ignorant, is not the
alleviation of those who mourn and suffer, is not, in
short, the whole staple and cycle of clerical occu-
pations a sufficient reason for undertaking and dis-
charging them ? What can be more welcome and
grateful to a benevolent mind than these large and
varied opportunities of doing good ? To do good is
its own reward ; but if any further reward is needed,
is it not forthcoming? Not to hint at anything beyond
the clouds, beyond the grave ; is not the gratitude
with which ministerial work is welcomed, if there
were nothing else, an ample reason for engaging in it?

At first sight this representation is forcible and
persuasive; but a little consideration will convince
us that it is, upon the whole, at issue with facts.
While it has such an air of common sense about it,
its real weakness is, that it is too idealistic. It
ignores the plain, hard fact, that a great deal of
honest clerical work, of necessary, inevitable clerical
work, brings with it no sort of present reward, and
exposes the worker to much obloquy and distress.

A MISSION FROM CHRIST. 15

If indeed Christianity were a system of teaching in
entiro accordance with the instincts of our fallen
human nature, the work of a clergyman would not
necessarily provoke any opposition ; but at the same
time it is difficult to see how it would raise his fellow-
creatures really in the moral scale. But as a matter
of fact, Christianity is a constant rebuke to man,
being such as he is; and its ministers, therefore, are,
in exact proportion to their faithfulness, perpetually
engaged in a struggle with opposing human wills.
How runs the Apostolic commission to Timothy ?
" Reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and
doctrine1." It is not possible in practice to obey
St. Paul, however tenderly, considerately, humbly,
without at times rousing earnest, nay, fierce op-
position.

Doubtless there are theories afloat on the subject of
the clerical office, which would regard any like duties
'rith these as unnecessary, if not as impertinent.
For instance, a clergyman is sometimes described as
being merely an official lecturer upon the text of
Scripture, capable of imparting useful information
once a week to persons who have not leisure to study
Scripture for themselves. Sometimes, too, he is said
to be only an official philanthropist, an accredited
agent of the largest charitable society in the world,
whose one business it is to stimulate charity and
to organize schemes for the relief of want and pain.
Doubtless — it is a noble privilege — we clergy are,
by the terms of our office, instructors and philan-
thropists. But we are this, because we are more,
because we have duties towards our fellow-men

1 2 Tim. iv. 2.

16 THE MORAL VALUE OF

considered as immortal beings, duties for which we
are fitted by a special mission and by a supernatural
grace. The conversion, the building up of souls, one
by one ; — this is our real business. To this all else
is subservient. A clerical life which is spent upon
literature, even upon sacred literature, without
a practical spiritual object, or upon material
philanthropy, without that higher philanthropy
which loves the human soul, is a wasted life.
Possibly a Divine call and a Divine commission
are not needed in order to master a certain amount
of biblical scholarship, or to direct a well-con-
sidered effort for relieving poverty. But to deal
with the human soul, with one human soul ; to
reveal it to itself; to reveal God to it ; to lead it
in the light of that revelation to the cross of Jesus
Christ, that it may be washed in His Blood and
renewed by His Spirit ; to make it thus taste of the
good "Word of God and the powers of the world to
come; to watch earnestly for it; to struggle in prayer
for it; to take frequent thoughts and to labour for it ;
to translate into the daily work of life that ideal of
thought and care embodied in the word Pastor, — of
care and thought which guides and feeds the flock
of Christ ; — this does require a Divine stimulus, that
a man may undertake and persevere in it. For it
requires, beyond every thing else, enthusiasm, fer-
vour. We are told, indeed, that even the most
abstract of the sciences cannot be efficiently taught
without a certain enthusiasm on the part of the
teacher, on the ground that the successful teacher
must not merely exercise and inform the learner's
intellect, but must contrive to rouse and invigorate
his will. Much more true is this of religion, with

A MISSION FROM CHRIST. 17

regard to which the learners' will is often not merely
sluggish, but warped and hostile. Now this necessary
fervour is created by nothing so effectively, as by that
feeling of personal devotion to Jesus Christ which is
natural to a man who believes that he has been really
chosen and sent forth by Him. That He in His love
and condescension should have singled out one of
His servants to take special charge of His interests,
and to forward His work, must be to that servant
a sourco of moral impulse, of the strongest and
most lasting kind. This sense of attachment and
responsibility to a living Person, which results
from a belief in clerical mission, does really avail to
create and maintain that vigorous fervour, which is
the raw material that prudence and knowledge must
fashion unto effective clerical action. The mere lec-
turer chooses his subject, and in time grows tired of
it. The mere philanthropist organizes his scheme: he
is satisfied when it has succeeded ; he is out of heart
when it has failed. But — " Ye have not chosen Me,
but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye
should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit
should remain."

2. Again, belief in the reality of a Divine call
and mission affords a real support and protection
in the work to which it impels an ordained man.
This support is required, not merely as a make-weight
against the pressure of opposition, but to counteract
the promptings of natural modesty, which shrinks
from personal prominence and leadership. It is not
merely required for the effective discharge of such
grave and sacred duties as are involved in the celebra-
tion of the Holy Sacrament and in dealing with the con-
sciences of men. It is specially required in the pulpit.

B

18 THE MORAL VALUE OF

A belief in Ms call and commission from Christ can
alone make his pnlpit ministrations tolerable to a man
of common sense and modesty. The more a man
knows of God, of the human soul, of the vast range of
spiritual truth ; the more he knows of the attain-
ments, intellectual or moral, of those around him, and
of his own far-reaching and radical shortcomings ; the
more must he shrink, if left to himself, from such a
part as that of enforcing spiritual truths — even the
truths of which he is most certain — upon a large as-
semblage of his fellow-men. He must feel that the aged
may well despise his youth, that the learned may take
the measure of his ignorance, and the self-disciplined
of his moral inconsistencies, and the thoughtful of
his superficiality. Apart from his recollection of the
presence of the all-wise God, he is sensitively con-
scious of being face to face with a phalanx of critics,
each of whom might fairly be his instructor. He
knows that if his personal qualifications alone are to
decide the question, his appearance in the pulpit as the
spiritual educator of his fellow-men can only be re-
garded as an impertinence. Rarely, indeed, can it ever
happen that a parish priest is absolutely,in all respects,
moral and spiritual, as well as mental, the natural chief
and leader of his flock ; and when he becomes aware
of his inferiority, in any one respect, to one of his
hearers, ho must perforce fall back in his conscience
upon some justification for presuming to address them,
higher than any which personal fitness affords.

Here it may be hinted that such a justification is
supplied, in the case of the clergy of the Church of
England, by the sanction of the State. The State, it
is argued, comes to the aid of individual shortcomings
with the gift of official dignity and position. If the

A MISSION FROM CHRIST. J 9

individual, as such, has no title to speak to his fellow-
men, on questions of spiritual truth, in the tone of
authority; yet we are told that the individual, mantled
with the prestige and authority of the Nation or the
Crown, may claim that title. The State, considered as
a rational whole, is said to have its religious as well as
its civil and military representatives ; and its clergy
can need no higher sanction than that which suffices
for its soldiers, its diplomatists, its police.

Now, to a certain number of peculiarly-constituted
minds in our day and generation, this may appear to
be satisfactory. Nor do I wish to depreciate, even
indirectly, the many blessings arising to the Church,
as well as to the nation, over and above the mere nia-
terial protection which the nation affords to the Church's
property, from the fact of the union of Church and
State. These blessings, indeed, may be over-esti-
mated, and they are not without a heavy balance of
attendant disadvantages ; but they are certainly not to
be remembered without gratitude, orpartedwith, if they
must be parted with, without anxiety and reluctance.
But it should never for one moment be forgotten that
the sanction which the State gives to the Church is not
a source of any spiritual authority. No spiritually-
minded man can suppose, since the coming of our
Lord, that mankind, organized in a civil capacity as the
State, can really confer any properly religious sanction
upon a spiritual society, acting and teaching inthename
of God. If, in certain parts of his great work, Hooker
might seem to countenance some like supposition,
tli is is because, in Hooker's days, the Church and
State of England were strictly co-extensive; the
Suite of the Ecclesiastical Polity is only the Church
acting in a civil capacity, among a people which

b 2

20 THE MORAL VALUE OF

wholly belongs to it. It is impossible to argue from
the circumstances of the Elizabethan age to those of
the present day ; nor is the general principle, that
religion, whether recognized by the State or not, is
not indebted to the State for its true authority among
men, other than certain. " Every where, before the
time of Jesus Christ," says M. Guizot, "the civil
and the religious life of mankind were confounded
with each other; they were mutually oppressive of each
other. Religion or religions were institutions incor-
porate with the State, and ruled or repressed by the
State, as its interests might dictate." In " the indepen-
dence of religious society," proclaimed by the Gospel,
M. Guizot is constrained to recognize a sublime inno-
vation, a ray of the very light of God. This, he con-
tends, was the true meaning of Christ's answer to the
Pharisees and Herodians : " Render therefore unto
Cassar the things which be Caesar's, and unto God the
things which be God's." Human society was thence-
forth to rest on a double basis ; it was to rest upon
obedience to the civil law, going hand in hand with the
independence of a faith which had come from heaven2.
It follows that the sanction of the State, valuable as
it is for civil and social reasons, cannot afford to the
clergy that support in the discharge of strictly reli-
gious functions which their sense of personal weak-
ness so eminently needs. The nation may invest her
officers, her ambassadors, her statesmen, with a
dignity and consideration, which really supports them
because they represent and embody her action;
and she may give, as in this country for so many
ages she has given, welcome, countenance, temporal

s Cf. Guizot, "Meditations sur l'Essence de la Religion Cluv-
fcienne." Paris, 1864, pp. 306, 307.

A MISSION FROM CHBIST. 21

place and consideration, to the ministers of Christ.
Spiritual power or mission she never has given, she
never could give. Her relation towards spiritual
power is exactly identical with her relation towards
the gifts of natural genius. She may recognize and
reward, she cannot create, either. " His Majesty,"
it was once said by a statesman who has since be-
come famous in English history, — " his Majesty can
make a Lord Lieutenant, but it requires God Almighty
to make an Author." And in like manner the State
can give peerages and an income ; but a true inward
call to the priesthood and the commission which
descends from the Apostles, are alike the gifts of
Jesus Christ alone.

Therefore I say, a higher sanction is needed than
that of the State for the public duties of a clergy-
man. And a clergyman finds it in his conviction
of the reality of his call and of the validity of his
orders. His individuality is thus merged in the
majestic commission which he bears ; and he ac-
quires a healthy indifference to criticism, or rather
a devotion to duty, which is too engrossing to be
conscious that it is criticised at all. Of himself, he
shrinks from prominence ; all that is best, if I may
so say, in his natural, as still more in his regenerate,
man, conspires to bid him keep in the background
among his fellows, and to hold his peace. But a neces-
sity is laid upon him from heaven, which continually
does violence to this inclination. The never-forgotten
consciousness of the mission which hehasreceived whis-
pers to him, as of old to the prophet by the river of
Chebar, that he may not, if he would, be silent. There
may be many better men unordained than he; but
still his responsibilities are not theirs. " And he said

22 THE MORAL VALUE OF

unto me, Son of man, go, get thee unto the house of
Israel, and speak with My words unto them. . . . But
the house of Israel will not hearken unto thee ; for
they will not hearken unto Me : for all the house of
Israel are impudent and hardhearted. Behold, I
have made thy face strong against their faces, and
thy forehead strong against their foreheads. As an
adamant harder than flint have I made thy forehead :
fear them not, neither be dismayed at their looks. . . .
Speak unto them and tell them, Thus saith the
Lord God, whether they will hear, or whether they
will forbear V

3. Once more, a belief in the truth of his call and
commission affords true and solid consolation to a
clergyman, under the disappointments which are
inevitable in every ministry. It may seem thought-
less or heartless in a preacher, on such an occasion
as this, to suggest that, of the many hopes which
are gathered around this altar, some are certainly
doomed to die away unrealized, or to be cut short
by ruder blows. Yet to look this contingency in
the face is only part of that wisdom which does not
" build a house," or " make war with another king,"
without previously calculating its moral resources.
After all, my brethren, we are the servants, not of
success, but of Jesus Christ and His Blessed Will,
whatever that may be ; and we can bear to be told
that it may be our appointed portion to be sanctified
rather by failure than by victory. Still, when it
comes, the failure of bright hopes is hard to bear ;
it is hard in proportion to the enthusiasm which
first begat them. We enter upon active life; we are
alive to the great needs, the great resources, the great
3 Ezek. iii. 4, 7—9, 11.

A MISSION FROM CHRIST. 23

opportunities around us; alive to the crying de-
ficiencies and the gaping wounds of the Church our
Mother ; alive to the vast possibilities for active good
which are within our reach ; alive, not to our own
natural strength, whether of wit or of will, but to
the illuminating and invigorating force of the grace
of Christ. We do not see, perhaps wo do not
suspect, the obstacles before us ; and our immediate
foreground is filled with ideals of ecclesiastical, and
national, and social, and personal improvement, in
realizing which, as we humbly hope, we may have,
at least, a hand. Yet failure and disappointment
have constantly been the portion of those, who, as
we see, on looking back upon their lives, have
really been master-builders among the workmen,
through whom in past ages most has been con-
tributed to the splendour and dimensions of the
House of God. Moses leads Israel out of Egypt,
and dies in view of that land of promise, from
which he is excluded, in consequence of a personal
fault. Samuel reforms the disorders of Israel, yet
lives to witness the election and the downward
course of Saul. Isaiah strengthens Hezekiah to
resist Sennacherib, and dies amid the excesses and
at the hands of his son. The career of Jeremiah
opens with the hopeful reign of Josiah, with, the
destruction of idolatry, by the royal authority,
throughout the kingdom. Jeremiah is conspired
against by the populace of Jerusalem ; he is in
danger of his life at the hands of his townsmen of
Anathoth ; he is seized by a powerful party of priests
and prophets, and hardly rescued; he is imprisoned by
Zedekiah; he is smitten and tortured by Pashur; he is
imprisoned again, on the charge of treason, by the

24 THE MORAL VALUE OF

besieged Jews; he is then carried down to Egypt with
feigned marks of deference, but in reality, as it would
seem, to his martyrdom. Jeremiah is the type of those
who hope for much and are conspicuous, at least to the
eye of man, in failure. In the distance, such failure
has a splendour of its own ; ages of veneration have
traced around it a nimbus which diverts attention
from the historic reality. At the time it is hard,
very hard, to bear : it brings with it a world of new
temptations, unexperienced before. It brings temp-
tations to impatient words and to impatient action,
or, worse still, to suppressed gloom which issues in
chronic discontent with work or with life, or even in
the gradual growth of an indifference to truth once
held as most precious and sacred. He had felt the
beginning of these temptations who cried — " Woe is
me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of
strife and a man of contention to the whole earth. .

0 Lord, Thou hast deceived me, and I was

deceived : Thou art stronger than I, and hast pre-
vailed : I am in derision daily, every one mocketh

me Cursed be the day wherein I was

born : let not the day wherein my mother bare me be
blessed4." And another, in a later age, not, most
assuredly, the least noble among the servants of
Christ, although living under circumstances, and
labouring for some ends, which are not ours —
he, too, had known these sore temptations, and he
had conquered them when he exclaimed — " I have
loved righteousness and hated iniquity, therefore I
die in exile5."

Doubtless there are general considerations of

4 Jcr. xv. 10 ; xx. 7, 14.

6 See 'The Disappointed Prophet,' in "Plain Sermons," vol. v.

A MISSION FROM CHRIST. 25

God's wisdom and goodness upon which the faith
of a good man will fall back in all times of trial.
But the confidence with which he does so must de-
pend, in no slight degree, upon the question, whether
he has himself invited these trials, or whether they
have come upon him through contingencies which
were practically beyond his control. A general who
fails after volunteering to command, fails in a
totally distinct sense from the leader who accepts a
post of great responsibility at the bidding of his
sovereign. If Jeremiah is constant amid the
temptations of failure, this is because he is not
responsible for having attempted a work which was
destined to fail by the Providence of God. He had
prophesied, against his natural bent of character,
and in obedience to a heavenly call and mission.
The words of that first commission must have
strengthened him even in his dying hour, forty years
later, in a land of idolaters. " Then the word of the
Lord came unto me, saying, Before I formed thee in
the belly I knew thee ; and before thou earnest forth
out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained
thee a prophet unto the nations. Then said I, Ah,
Lord God ! behold, I cannot speak : for I am a
child. But the Lord said unto me, Say not, I am a
child : for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee,
and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak 6."
With these convictions, a man can indeed do his
duty, and leave results, bo they what they may, to
Him Who sent him forth.

But it may be rejoined : Granting that belief in
the reality of a call and commission from Christ is
an incentive, a support, and an encouragement to
0 Jer. i. 4—7.

26 THE MORAL VALUE OF

ministerial work in the way described ; is it not true
that this belief has also a dangerous side ? Does it
not tend to foster an exaggerated sense of self-
importance in those who hold it ? Does it not lead
many a man to think more of himself than of his
work, more of his order than of his mission, more of
his place and position in the Church than of the
honour of Jesus Christ ?

Undoubtedly, all forms of the conviction that we
are specially privileged or responsible, have their
dangers. To know this a man need not be in holy
orders. Pharisaism and self-assertion in sacred
things are older than the day of Pentecost, and are
not confined to the Apostolical Churches of Christen-
dom. The moral sense of personal predestination,
of redemption, of sanctification, the exercised privi-
lege of almsgiving, the known power of prayer, the
felt delight in Scripture and in holy things, have all
in turn been perverted by the human heart to
augment the sense of personal importance.

So, too, it has been with the calling and gifts of the
clergy. The clergy are but men, and their faults are
conspicuously thrown out into relief by the sacredness
of their office. But is self-importance the natural
result of belief in the reality of the ministerial call and
commission ? Is it certain that a clergy, which should
profess to have no authority or powers whatever
beyond their lay-brethren, and should nevertheless
undertake to teach and feed Christ's people solely on
the ground of individual personal merit, would be more
entirely free from self-importance than are the clergy
of the Church ? Is not that which is personal, indi-
vidual, proper to a man himself, more likely to minister
to this sense of self-importance, than that which he

A MISSION FROM CHRIST. 27

only enjoys in common with every member of a vast
corporation, and which implies nothing that distin-
guishes him among his clerical brethren ? Surely, in
every true Christian soul the felt contrast between the
high commission received, and the feeble, grovelling
efforts of the personal life, is a perpetual warning
against self-exaltation, a constant stimulant of that
sense of sin and weakness which forbids the words and
thoughts that belong to pride. " Unto me, who am
less than the least of all saints, is this grace given,
that I should preach among the Gentiles the un-
searchable riches of Christ V So wrote an Apostle
to whom it was natural to speak of himself as the
chief of sinners, and who yet surpasses all other
writers in the New Testament in the vigour with
which he magnifies the office which he had received
from Christ.

But the precious words remain as a perpetual re-
minder of the purpose with which Christ our Lord
commits to human hands the responsibihties of a
Divine commission. " I have chosen you, and
ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth
much fruit and that your fruit should remain."
If any in the Church of Christ have higher capa-
cities, whether of nature or of grace, than others ;
these capacities are not a title to high thoughts of
self or to lordly leisure ; they constitute an obligation
to proportionate humility and exertion. Far better
is it never to have received the talent than to
have received and wasted it. They indeed whose
ministry brings forth no fruit, are under the strongest
of temptations to think and say that their ordi-
nation has given them no powers of doing so.
7 Ephes. iii. 8. Compare 1 Tim. i. 12, 13.

28 THE MORAL VALUE OF

They who abound in work for God and for souls,
find in that work the evidence of a strength within
them which is not their own, and which assures
them of the reality of their heavenly mission.

And surely, if ever in Christian history, the clergy
of the Church of Christ need that strength in our
day and country. Whether we look to the world of
thought or to the world of social human life,
towards each of which we have duties ; how vast
is the work before us, how ample the opportunities,
how great the necessity ! Never before in this gene-
ration have we Englishmen felt civil society so shaken
as by the political events of the last two months,
(may it not be added ?) as by the tragic revelations
of the last fortnight. It is a time when all who love
their country would fain gather in duty and loyalty
around her, that each should contribute whatever he
may of hearty support to the throne and to the law.
But what is at the root of the anxiety felt and
expressed on all sides of us ? Is it only that there
has been an assault here, a procession or a riot
there, a deadly explosion in the heart of our metro-
polis ? These things are grave enough ; but their
gravity consists not in themselves, but in that of
which they are the symptoms. The recent violence
may not be so tragical in its immediate results as
the loss of a steamship or a railway accident; it
is more alarming, because it points to a moral and
social disease, which is of itself a terrible evil, and is
likely to produce other similar catastrophes. If
indeed there was only a question of race between
ourselves and our Celtic fellow-subjects beyond St.
George's Channel, or only a question of law and
order between the Government and a disloyal as-

A MISSION FEOM CHRIST. 29

sociation, it might be improper to allude to such a
subject on this occasion. But it is felt and stated
that our reasons for anxiety are wider and deeper ;
that old faith in principles has been generally
weakened, and that old attachment to institutions
has largely died out ; that there is no great positive
enthusiasm to oppose to the social solvents at work
amongst us. It is felt and stated by keen observers,
who have no clerical interest in stating what they
feel, that there are rottennesses and sores in the moral
structure of English society at this hour, which
render it less able to sustain the shock of possible
war or revolution than was the England of thirty
years ago. And if this be so, have not we of the
clergy a great duty towards our country, lying in
that very path of sacred work which we are bound
to tread in virtue of the commission we have re-
ceived from Christ ? The more we can implant,
restore, deepen faith; faith in fixed truth, faith in
God, faith in duty; dread of sin as the one great and
only evil, honour and obedience towards constituted
authorities (yet this, in the spirit which becomes the
' Evangelical tribunes of the people,') the better shall
we strengthen those social bands which are the real
strength of our country. The remotest hamlet contri-
butes something, however indirectly, to the stability of
the empire; and it contributes most when it is the scene
of a ministry, which, in the confidence and strength
of a heavenly mission, brings forth much fruit in
rescued and sanctified souls.

And in this diocese there are generally some, often
many, candidates for ordination, who are admitted
to the diaconate or to the priesthood as holders of a
fellowship. Too often a college title is contrasted

30 THE MORAL VALUE OP

with a parochial one, as if a life spent within college
walls here in Oxford afforded no opportunities for
strictly clerical work. Yet how great is the need of
men chosen and ordained by Jesus Christ, that they
should go and bring forth fruit in such a field as that of
this University, they best know who live here. Here,
as elsewhere, sin is rife; here, as elsewhere, the
eternal contest between good and evil rages unin-
terruptedly ; here, souls are to be won by the same
spiritual activities, by the same heart- subduing truths,
as elsewhere. But here, there are special anxieties
which may well invite the earnest attention of those
among Christ's servants who have opportunities of
grappling with them. Elsewhere, attention may be
concentratedupon controversies, which are not without
grave importance, yet which certainly are less funda-
mental than thosewhichhavebecome well-nigh chronic
here. Elsewhere, questions are raised between prin-
ciples that have confronted each other for centuries,
while both are within the Christian pale; between
importance ascribed and importance denied to sacra-
ments ; between the advocacy and the repudiation of
Church ceremonial. In these discussions, doubtless,
much is really at stake; but surely less, far less, than
in the controversies whispered of late years around
these walls, which, for so many ages, have sheltered
the faith and love of Christian students. Not merely
whether the death of Jesus have any atoning virtue ;
not merely whether Jesus be God, or only a sinful
creature; but whether those theistic truths which
Christianity found in the world, and sanctioned by
repetition, be themselves true ; — these are the ques-
tions in debate. Whether prayer lias any efficacy
with God ; whether the conception of a Provi-

A MISSION FROM CHRIST. 31

dence be more than a fond dream of human
self-importance j whether to affirm the freedom of
the human will be not to reject the last and most
triumphant conclusion of the inductive philosophy;
whether to assert positively the existence of God
be not to place at the summit of human thought a
dogmatic statement, so vast and exacting, as to bo
inconsistent with the needs of that highest culture,
which, it would seem, demands, as a condition of its
perfect development, nothing less than a strictly uni-
versal scepticism; — these are points here agitated,
and, in too many instances, decided in a manner which
proves that the most fundamental Christian and
theistic truth is engaged in nothinglessthan a struggle
for its existence. Who can watch, even distantly,
the oft-repeated spectacle of intellectual perplexity,
struggle, anguish, and even despair, without praying
the Lord of the Vineyard to choose and ordain
among His servants, in this place, men who can
bring effective help in our present deep necessities ?
For, from this centre of English intellectual life, truth
or falsehood alike radiate, with terrible swiftness,
throughout our Church and country. What is here
said in the ear, by a tutor, to a group of pupils, is
soon, through the vast machinery by which educated
thought finds expression, proclaimed, for good or evil,
upon the housetops of the land. Surely, if the sense
of a mission from Christ be needed any where, to give
zeal, decision, encouragement, patience, it is needed
in a clerical fellow of a college of our day in Oxford.
" And your fruit shall remain." If more be required
to make us do Christ's work than the fact that He
sends us, it is here. The work of human hands and
human brains, done for and in this passing world,

32 THE MORAL VALUE OF A MISSION FROM CHRIST.

passes also. It is with thought as with manua
labour; it is with greatness as with obscurity; i
is with genius as with mediocrity. An earthly im
mortality is only relative, after all ; and centuries
or decades of centuries, are as nothing in the histor
of an Universe. It may seem, too, to the servant
of Christ, amid the steady monotony of their dail
work and their incessant conflict with evil, that the
are but as children writing on the sands of time the
little alphabet, which must presently be effaced b
the waters of the rising tide. Brethren, it is not so
The tide of human thought and life ebbs as well a
flows ; but the message which we write upon th
mind of a generation would be indelible, even if i
were not destined to be re-written by our successors
For spiritual fruit, even the humblest, is assured oij
preservation in the Eternal storehouse. Love.l
courage, truth, purity — these cannot die. As eachl
soul passes from a pastor's care, enlightened, repent-l
ant, sanctified, to wait awhile and then to enter upoul
its rest in that better world beyond the stars, itj
bears with it the spiritual results of sanctified toil,!
which are as immortal as itself. Happy and blessed!
are they who, whether in themselves or with others,!
labour for that which alone does not suffer from!
the moth and rust of time ! Happy and blessed are!
the servants of a Master so bountiful and indulgent
Who, when He comes to take account of the produce!
of His vineyard, will crown, as we know full well,
with eternal distinctions, not our poor efforts o
merits, but His own fruitful and majestic gifts.

GILBERT AND KIV1NOTON, PRINTKKS. ST. JOHN'S SQUARE, LONDON.

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