Teachings and counsels : twenty baccalaureate sermons, with a discourse on President Garfield

Cv

PRINCETON, N. J.

Shelf....

Division .
Sectio7i .
Ntifuber..

^cc

TEACHINGS AND COUNSELS

CUjentj) lUaccalauaate S^txmon^

IVITIl A DISCOURSE ON PRESIDENT GARFIELD

BY

/

MARK HOPKINS, D.D., LLD.

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1884

Copyright, 1874, 1884,
By mark HOPKINS.

Pressor J.J. I,ittle&Co.,
Nos. 10 to 20 Asior I'lace, New York.

PEI

PREFACE.

THE following baccalaureate sermons were originally-
published in pamphlets at the time they were deliv-
ered. With one exception they were subsequently modi-
fied, their order was changed, and they were published in
a volume entitled " Strength and Beauty. " The exception
was the discourse on " Providence and Revelation," de-
livered in 1865, containing my estimate of President Lin-
coln and some remarks on the war. The texts are now
restored, the discourses are placed in the order in which
they were delivered, and, though the more immediate ad-
dress to the class is still in some instances abbreviated or
modified, they are yet substantially as they were Thus
all the published baccalaureates are now given in their
order, and to these is added, as being in the same line,
and as a tribute to the most distinguished graduate of the
College, the discourse on President Garfield.

The subjects of the discourses are of permanent inter-
est, and the favor with which the former book has been
received leads me to hope for a permanent interest in this.
The change is made in accordance with the expressed
wish of some of those who heard them, and also because
it may be of interest in the future history of the College
to know what final teachings and counsels were given from
1850 onward to so many classes.

M. H.

Williams College, yuiy, 18S4.

iii

CONTENTS.

I.

PAGB

Faith, Philosophy, and Reason, i

II.
Strength and Beauty, - . 24

III.

Receiving and Giving, .... 45

IV.
Perfect Love, .64

V.

Self-Denial, 83

VI.

Higher and Lower Good, 102

VII.
The One Exception, 117

VIII.

The Manifoldness of Man, 135

IX.
Nothing to be Lost, 155

V

VI CONTENTS.

X.

PAGE

God's Method of Social Unity, 177

XI.

Enlargement, 196

XII.

Choice and Service, .... , . 212

XIII.
Providence and Revelation, 230

XIV.
^^/The Bible and Pantheism, 251

XV.

On Liberality in Religious Belief, . . , .265

XVI.
Zeal, 283

XVII.

Spirit, Soul, and Body, ... ... 301

XVIII.
Life, 322

XIX.
The Body the Temple of God, ... . 339

XX.

The Circular and the Onward Movement, . . . 357

XXI.

Memorial Discourse on President Garfield, . . 375

TEACHINGS AND COUNSELS

I.

FAITH, PHILOSOPHY, AND REASON.

Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained prom-
ises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped
the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant
in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens.— Hebrews, xi. 33, 34.

WHAT more heroic action have we on record than
those of the men who through faith subdued king-
doms. The word " hero," does not occur in the Bible.
Nothing can be more opposite to its spirit than that self-
sufficiency and recklessness of human rights and suffer-
ings which are commonly associated with this term. Still,
there are no higher examples of a true heroism than the
Bible presents. These exploits were performed, indeed,
in ancient times, but are such as we should be glad to see
emulated in the midst of the light and advantages of our
day. We have a right to expect, as the stream of time
rolls on and pours its accumulated wealth at the feet of new
generations, that there shall not only be an increase in the
knowledge of nature, but that there shall be, at least, no
failure in the breadth and compass of a comprehensive
wisdom, or in the might of a true manhood that is ready to
do and to suffer in the cause of humanity and of God.

But not only may 7ve expect this ; it is also intimated
by the Apostle that it is expected and watched for by those
who have gone before us. He represents, those worthies
and veterans who had finished their own course, as gathered
into a vast assembly, forming " a cloud of witnesses," and
watching with intense interest the bearing of those who

*:(:* August iS, 1850.

2 FAITH, PHILOSOPHY, AND REASON.

follow them. "Seeing then," says he, "that we are com-
passed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us run
with patience the race that is set before us."

This race, my friends, I would now invite you to run.
Vou are especially called upon to emulate the example of
the great and good, — to do deeds that shall not only cause
joy on earth, but shall send a new thrill through the vast
assembly of those who have gone before you.

But if you are to do the deeds of these ancieni heroes
you must be girded with the same armor, be controlled by
the same principle, must have the same prize in your eye,
and be sustained by the same power. Fruitful as the nine-
teenth century has been in inventions, it yet furnishes none
for making great and good men. The great tree must
grow now from the same earth, and under the same sun,
and by the same processes and ministrations of dew and
rain and storms, as the great tree of old ; and so, now, as
of old, must the life and might of true greatness be drawn
from the same fountains, and work themselves out by es-
sentially the same processes. Were these deeds performed
of old only by faith ? then only by faith will they be per-
formed now.

What then is Faith } Avowed by Christianity as its
peculiar principle of action, ridiculed by the philosophers,
is it indeed some new, or peculiar, or blind, or fanatical
principle ? Or is it one of those grand and universal prin-
ciples which underlie human action, which are necessary
to true heroism, to a right philosophy, to individual and
social perfection, and which must, in the progress of light,
come more and more into distinct recognition and general
acknowledgment ?

Whatever faith may be, it must be conceded that
the accounts given of it by its advocates have been neither
uniform nor consistent. It has been said to be simple

FAITH, PHILOSOPHY, AND REASON. 3

belief founded on evidence, and not differing from any
other belief; to be belief in testimony ; to be belief for
reasons not derived from intrinsic evidence ; to be a belief
on the ground of probable, as distinguished from demon-
strative evidence ; to be a belief in things invisible and
supernatural ; to be a trust ; and more recentl}^, and
transcendentally, it has been said to be an 07'gan of the
soul by which it becomes cognizant of the invisible and
the supernatural.

To some, this diversity of statement may seem to indi-
cate that there can be nothing in faith very definite or
important. To me it indicates the reverse j for while men
do certainly differ about things which are indefinite and
obscure, yet it is also found that they come latest, if at all,
to the investigation of those principles which are the most
intimate and essential, and that they are nowhere less
likely to come to a uniform and satisfactory result. As
in mathematics the truths that are most nearly intuitive
are the last and the most difficult to be demonstrated, so
here the principles and processes which are so essential
that they seem inwoven into our being, are the last to be
investigated and the most difficult to be satisfactorily
explained. Men are no better agreed what reason is, or
what personal identity consists in, than they are what faith
is ; and yet as those who think wrongly on these subjects
may, and do, exercise their reason, and continue the same
persons precisely as they would if they thought rightly, so
those who make different statements in regard to faith,
or exercise faith, receive the benefits of faith in precisely"
the same way.

That the term faith may not be used loosely and popu-
larly to designate the ideas just mentioned, and also
others, I would not say ; but the inquiry now is, What,
generically, and specifically, is that Faith upon which the

4 FAITH, PHILOSOPHY AND REASON.

Bible insists as essential to salvation, and by which the
great deeds it records were performed ? Can this faith be
so defined that our idea of it shall be distinct, that it shall
harmonize with philosophy and with reason, and that it
shall be adequate to the great offices assigned to it in the
Bible ?

I propose, first, to answer these inquiries ; and sec-
ondly, to speak of the offices of faith — more particularly,
of its office as a principle of action to be adopted by every
young man.

The generic definition of faith which I would pro-
pose, is, that it is confidence in a personal being. Faith lives
and moves and has its being only in the region of person-
ality. Whatever we may believe respecting things visible
or invisible, on any other ground than our confidence in a
personal being, does not seem to me to be faith. It
implies the recognition of a moral nature, and a convic-
tion of the trustworthiness of the being possessed of such
a nature.

This definition of faith implies a division of this universe
into two departments, that of persons, and that of things ;
and, in connection with this division, will give us a clear
distinction between philosophy and faith. The sphere
of faith is the region of personality, that of philosophy is
the region of things. Each of these spheres addresses oui
sensibilities and calls for investigation, but in accordance
with its own nature and laws.

By things, are called forth in the region of sensibility,
the emotions of beauty, of sublimity, and of admiration ;
by persons, in addition to these, confidence, affection,
passion.

In her investigations in the department of things, phil-
osophy is concerned, not with all knowledge, but chiefly

FAITI^, PHILOSOPHY AND REASON. 5

with resemblances in those things that exist together, and
with uniformities in those that exist in succession. These
are the basis of all classification, of all inductive reason-
ing— and it is through these that we get all our ideas of
physical order and law.

Philosophy presupposes a knowledge of things as they
exist separately. This being given, she neglects all indi-
vidual peculiarities, and proceeds to group them according
to their resemblances, and to give them collective names.
In doing this she acquires for man power, and practical
guidance, because a resemblance in external signs denotes
a resemblance in essential properties. This gives value to
the signs of nature, and shows that in the department of
resemblances she is constituted on the basis of truth.

But not only does philosophy notice resemblances in
beings and phenomena that exist together, she also notices
uni-fermity of succession ; and is thus enabled to foretell the
future, and to act wisely with reference to it. She believes
in a uniformity of succession according to the order that is
established. She investigates the laws in accordance with
which this succession moves on. As among things that
exist together, she knows nothing of individual peculiar-
ities, so in phenomena that exist in succession, she knows
nothing of exceptions, and admits with great reluctance, or
not at all, that such exceptions really exist.

Such, except as she may be said to investigate causes,
is philosophy,* She stands in the centre of things that co-
exist, and passes onward and outward to the farthest star,
stepping more or less firmly as the resemblances, by which
alone she proceeds, are more or less perfect ; she stands
at the present point in things that succeed each other, and
binds the future to the past by what she conceives to be an
inexorable law.

* When this was written philosophy had not, in this country, been distin-
guished from science, as it has since been. Writing now, the word science
would be substituted for philosophy in many instances in this discourse.

6 FAITH, PHILOSOPHY AND REASON.

But it may be inquired whether philosophy does not
extend to the domain of mind. Yes, so far as mind is a
thing, and hence under the law of an absolute uniformity,
but no farther. The moment a personal being is placed
under that law of nature by which that which follows is
necessarily the product of that which precedes, personality
ceases, and you have mere nature — a thing. The very idea
of that necessary uniformity upon which philosophy is based,
precludes that of personality. It also precludes the idea of
faith ; for whatever we may believe without the range of
personality, and on whatever grounds, there is always want-
ing that element which enters into faith by which a per-
son may be said not only to have confidence, but to be
confiding.

The sphere of faith, as opposed to that of philosophy,
is, as I have said, the region of personality. Here we find
affections, and a moral nature, and a free-will. Ii^ the
sphere of things we deal with similarities, and uniformities
of succession, and laws, and do not necessarily know any-
thing back of these. We may indeed refer them all to a
personal agent, but for the grounds of our belief we are not
necessitated to go beyond the uniformities and laws them-
selves. We have in these nothing of the great element of
character. But in our dealings with personal beings, what-
ever ground we may have for belief, either of what they
say, or of what they will do, must be found, not in any law,
not in any unvarying uniformity conceived of as necessary
but in the character of the personal being. This is an ele-
ment entirely different from any found in the sphere of
philosophy, and it is upon this that faith fixes. This is the
grand peculiarity of faith ; it is confidence in a personal
being. Like belief, it admits of degrees. As the highest
form of belief is certainty, so the highest form of faith is
such a confidence in the character of any being as will lead
us to believe whatever he may say because he says it^ and

FAITH, PHILOSOHPY AND REASON. J

to commit implicitly into his hands every interest of our
being.

And as that without us which calls forth faith, is so
differeni from that which is the basis of philosophy, so, it
may be remarked, is that within us which is brought into
action also different. Doubtless the nature of man is pre-
conformed to the state into which he is to come, and as he
naturally conforms himself to the uniformities of nature, so
does he, though by a different principle, naturally confide
in those to whom his being is intrusted. It is not to be
supposed that that feeling of confidence with which the in-
fant looks up into the eye of its mother, with which the new
formed angel must look up to his God, is the same as that
by which he is adapted to the blind and unvarying move-
ments of nature. It is not to be supposed, as these two
great spheres of persons and of things are so distinct, that
our nature should not be equally preconformed to each.

If the spheres of faith and of philosophy be thus dis-
tinct, it will be obvious that they can come into conflict only
at a single point. A personal being may make assertions
about facts that lie within the domain of philosophy, and
these assertions may seem to conflict, and may conflict,
with evidence respecting those same facts derived from
philosophy. But in such a case man is not left to the
alternative of a blind faith or a presumptuous philosophy.
His reason is to decide. By this he is to ascertain, ori
the one side, that a personal being has spoken, what he
has said, what means he had of knowing the truth, and
what confidence is to be placed in his character. On the
other side, he is to inquire whether he knows all the facts
and their relations, and is sure of his inferences. If, after
this, there shall seem to be a conflict, or a contradiction,
reason must strike the balance, and say whether, under the
circumstances, it is more rational to put confidence in a

8 FAITH, PHILOSOPHY AND REASON.

personal being, or to believe in facts and deductions for
whicli we have another species of evidence. Reason re-
cognizes both these grounds of belief ; and she, and she
only, can decide in cases of apparent conflict between
them.

Having thus considered the relations of faith and phil-
osophy, let us now look at those of faith and reason.

It is strange with what pertinacity the opponents of
Christianity have insisted that there is, and must be, a
conflict between these ; and how readily many advocates
of Christianity have assented to this view. So far has this
been carried, that a recent and much-lauded article in the
Edinburgh Review is entitled, " Reason and Faith ; their
claims and conflicts^ But such conflict is by no means to
be admitted. There is just as much opposition between
.reason and faith, as there is between reason and philos-
ophy, and no more.

If we regard reason as giving us only intuitive and
necessary truths, then it will act equally in the domain of
philosophy and of faith, and there can be no opposition
between either of them ; unless, indeed, a personal being
should assert an absurdity. But if, as is more common,
we regard reason as comprising what is rational in man, —
those high attributes by which he is distinguished from
the brutes, and which must enter into, and preside over,
every legitimate act and process of the mind, — then, the
sphere of faith and philosophy being different, there can be
no conflict between reason as employed in the sphere of
philosophy, and as employed in the sphere of faith. Rea-
son presides over both spheres, and can therefore be in
conflict with neither. The only possible question is, wheth-
er we may, in any case, just as rationally reach conclu-
sions and grounds of action by that process which we calJ

FAITH, PHILOSOPHY AND REASON. 9

faith, as we can by that which we call philosophy. But on
this point there can be no question. We act as necessarily
and as legitimately with reference to personal beings by
faith, as we do in reference to things by a belief in the
uniformity of nature. It is just as rational for a man to
have confidence in the character and consequently in the
word of a personal being, as it is for him to believe in the
facts of observation or experience or in those forms and
systems of knowledge deduced from these which are called
philosophy. It may^ perhaps, be found to be quite as rea-
sonable to believe a fact because it is asserted by God,
as to believe one because it is inferred by ourselves, or
even as to believe a fact made known to us by those senses
which God has given us.

Is there not then such a thing as faith that is not in ac-
accordance with reason ? Certainly, just as there are infer-
ences and philosophies that are not in accordance with
reason, and perhaps it would be difficult to say whether
there has been more folly and absurdity under the name
of faith or of philosophy. My reason tells me that I may
confide in the facts given me by my senses, that I may
classify these, and build up a system of knowledge which
we call philosophy. Under this impression, men have
built up systems of philosophy which we can now see were
exceedingly irrational and foolish, but this does not show
that there is any conflict between reason and philosophy ;
but only that reason is not infallible in this department.
My reason also, all that is rational within me, tells me that
I may, and ought, sometimes to confide in personal beings,
and that such confidence is a rational and sufiicient ground
of knowledge and of action. We may, indeed, here repose
confidence where we ought not, and receive irrational dog-
mas, and submit to useless or ridiculous rites ; but this

lO FAITH, PHILOSOPHY AND REASON.

would only show that reason is not infallible in this de-
partment.

So far then from separating faith from reason and
bringing them into possible and actual conflict, we would
say that the sphere of faith is one of the two great spheres
over which reason presides, and that faith itself is one of
the great and indispensable methods in which reason is
manifested. It is a libel upon religion to say that it re-
quires a blind faith, or any other than a rational faith, or
that it requires us to believe any thing which is not more
rational to believe than it would be to disbelieve it. There
is no tendency in faith to a blind belief. It does not say,
and has no tendency to say, " I believe because it is im-
possible." That is mere Quixotism and folly. Faith may,
indeed, take hold of the hand of a father, and be willing
to step where it does not see ; but then she is willing thus
to step, only because she has a rational ground for believ-
ing that her father will lead her right. Christianity dis-
cards and repudiates altogether, any faith that can come
into conflict with reason.

This view of faith gives it a definite sphere, it shows
distinctly its relations both to philosophy and to reason,
and removes from it all that mysterious or mystical appear-
ance which has sometimes been thrown around religious
faith. As an exercise of the mind it is, generically, no way
different from that to which we are constantly accustomed.
When a child follows implicitly the directions of its father,
when a client puts his case into the hands of an advocate,
there is an element in the act that is different from simple
belief, it is an element that puts honor upon the father and
the advocate. This is faith. Faith, then, generically, is
confidence in a personal being. Specifically, religious
faith is confidence in God, in every aspect and office in
which he reveals himself As that love of which God is

FAITH, PHILOSOPHY AND REASON. jj

the object, is religious love, so that confidence in Him as a
Father, a Moral Governor, a Redeemer, a Sanctifier, in all
the modes of his manifestation, by which we believe what-
ever he says because he says it, and commit ourselves and
all our interests cheerfully and entirely into his hands, is
religious faith. Surely there is in this, nothing irrational,
or hard to be understood.

The distinctive element of faith, then, is not belief, but
it is confidence from that perception and appreciation of
moral character upon which the belief is based. Involved
in this there must always be a belief of the trustworthiness
of the object of our faith. Hence, if faith were perfect, it
would involve, not merely a belief in testimony, but an
obedience like that of Abraham. In his case there was
simply a command, and strictly no testimony ; yet the faith
was perfect.

It is this complex nature of faith that has caused the
confusion respecting it. It does imply a movement of both
the rational and the emotive nature. In this, sometimes
the one, and sometimes the other may predominate, but it
is never due either to the intellect simply, or to the feel-
ings simply. When outward appearances, as in the case
of Abraham, are opposed to the dictates of faith, it will be
an affectionate confidence. When there is no such oppos-
ition, it will be a confiding affection in which the confidence
may seem to be entirely absorbed and transfigured into
love. The belief involved in faith, is based on those very
qualities which necessarily call forth emotion or affection;
and hence, in this act, the two are fused and inseparably
blended. Hence too the moral element in faith, which is
not necessarily in mere belief, and hence its power as a
principle of action. Nor is there any thing strange or
anomalous in this. Pity is a complex act, consisting of
sympathy for distress and a desire to relieve it. These

12 FAITH, PHILOSOPHY AND REASON.

may exist in different proportions, but if either be wanting
there is no pity ; and yet no one finds any difficulty in
understanding what pity is.

Having thus considered the nature of faith, we now
proceed to its offices.

Of faith in general, the great office is to underlie all the
social intercourse of personal beings. It is to this higher
and distinct sphere of personal intercourse, what a belief in
the uniformity of nature is in our intercourse with nature.
Without confidence society is impossible. It is the great
element and condition of social prosperity and happiness.
Universally it will be found that all the ends of society are
reached, in proportion as there is mutual confidence between
husbands and v/ives, parents and children, rulers and sub-
jects, buyers and sellers, friends and neighbors. Remove
but the single element of distrust, and who does not see
that the great cause of human wretchedness would be taken
away. Let but the one element of a general and perfect
confidence be poured into the now heaving mass of human
society, and its agitations would subside, and it would be
at once aggregated and crystalized into its most perfect
forms. In connection with this, every form of human at-
tachment would strike deep root, every mutual affinity
would have free play, and every capacity of man for happi-
ness from intercourse with his fellow-men would be filled.

Of the more specific offices of religious faith we will
first consider that, so much insisted on in the Scriptures,
by which it accepts a gratuitous salvation. From the na-
ture of faiih as now stated, it is easy to see that its relation
to such a salvation is a necessary and not an arbitrary one.
To be accepted, a gift must first be appreciated, and desired
as a gift. This, in the case of salvation from sin, involves
repentance. And then there must be full confidence in

FAITH, PHILOSOPHY AND REASON. 1 3

the sincerity of him who offers the gift. This is faith, and,
the gift being desired, there can be a completion of the
confidence only in its acceptance. In this view of it, faith
is not that in consequence of which we receive the salva-
tion as if the faith existed first and accepted the salvation
afterwards, but faith is the very act of confidence by which
the salvation is accepted. It is a confidence which can be-
come complete only as it accepts the offer, because it is only
as He makes the offer that the Saviour can become the ob-
ject of our confidence. Faith then, in its relation to salva-
tion, is that confidence by which we accept it as a free gift
from the Saviour, and is the only possible way in which this
gift of God could be appropriated. How simple ! how ra-
tional ! how strange it should fail to be understood !

A second office of religious faith, as stated in the
Scriptures, is to unite man to God, and in so doing, to
give him power with God. To this, faith, as now ex-
plained, is perfectly adapted. As our relations to God are
so numerous and intimate, and as confidence in him can
be based only on a perception of those perfect attributes
which would call out the highest affection, it must be an
affectionate confidence. But it is only by an affectionate
confidence that such a being as man can be united to God,
or, indeed, that any one moral being can be united to
another. Let this exist, and everything in the relations of
the two beings must be pleasant, the relation itself will be
the ground of the highest satisfaction which our nature can
know, and will lie at the foundation of a higher and nobler
idea of being and of order than any other. What is the
idea of myriads of orbs circling in harmony together, com-
pared with that of myriads of intelligent and moral beings
united to God and to each other in a mutual and affection-
ate confidence ? Here we find the true end of this universe
' — an order of which all other order is but the symbol.

14 FAITH, PHILOSOPHY AND REASON.

And while faith thus unites us to God, it is natural and
rational to suppose that it should have the great power
ascribed to it in the Scriptures. It is one of the strongest
impulses and principles of a rightly constituted nature
never to disappoint any confidence that is justly reposed
in it. This seems to be even the instinct of a generous
nature without reference to principle. Who is there that
would not protect a dove that should come and nestle in
his bosoin ? An appeal by innocence, by helplessness, by
distress, in which the individual abandons himself with
entire confidence to 7is, is one of the strongest that can be
made to our nature, and will often be met by the greatest
sacrifices, not only by individuals, but by whole nations.
Let Kossuth escape and come to this country, and confide
himself to our protection, and let him be pursued by the
combined power of Russia and of Austria, yea by the
power of the world, and the nation would rise as one man,
would form a living wall around him, and he would be
taken only as his pursuers should pass over the dead
bodies of those who would stand in his defence. Shall
Pien do thus, and shall not God defend those who come to
put their trust under the shadow of his wings ? Shall any
innocent creature of God that is in distress come to him,
and confide in him, and shall not the resources of Omnipo-
tence be held ready for his deliverance ? Shall any guilty
creature of God, however debased and wretched, yea,
though he were dyed and steeped in sin, come to him with
a confidence authorized by the death of Christ, and cast him-
self upon him for pardon and adoption, and not be received
even as the prodigal son ? Shall any servant of God, in
this world of conflict, be hardly beset, and, feeling that his
own strength is weakness, look up to God with an eye of
filial confidence, and shall he not send him succor t Shall
his servants say, in the very face of the flames, " Our God

FAITH, PHILOSOPHY AND REASON. 1 5

whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery
furnace, and he will deliver us, O king," and shall he not
deliver them ? What are the laws of nature in a case like
this ? They are but as a technicality compared with a
mighty principle. One glance of a confiding eye is
mightier than all the laws of nature. Heaven and earth
may pass away, but not a hair of him who puts confidence
in God shall "fall to the earth." Sooner, far sooner,
would God sweep this material framework, with all its laws,
into utter annihiliation, than he would disappoint the
authorized confidence of the most inconsiderable of his
creatures. How different is this universe when thus
viewed by the light of faith in its relation to a controlling
personal being, a Father, and a Friend ; and when viewed
in the light of philosophy, as mere nature — as an unvary-
ing, undiscriminating, crushing uniformity !

The third office of religious faith is to be a principle
of action. And if there be any one thing which a young
man about to enter upon life ought to consider thoroughly,
it is his principles of action. Upon these his own charac-
ter, and that of his enterprises, will depend. As you, my
friends, adopt, from this time, right principles of action,
so, and so only, will you promote your true usefulness,
and permament good.

But certain it is, referring to the distinction already
made, that the highest principles of action cannot be found
in the sphere of things. The study of these may train the
intellect, and make men mere philosophers ; they may
awaken the desire to possess them as property and make
men misers ; they may call forth the emotions of beauty
and sublimity ; and that is all. There is here no confi-
dence, no affection, no sympathy. But bring man, now, into
intercourse with free, personal and moral beings, and every
high faculty of his nature will come into play. The Intel-

1 6 FAITH, PHILOSOPHY AND REASON.

lect, and the heart and the moral nature will act together
and strengthen each other. And as the basis of all such
intercourse must be faith, so the basis of all intercourse
with God must be religious faith.

As a principal of action, religious faith is contrasted
with those adopted by the heroes of this world, because it
tends to form a complete character. Recognizing an
omnipresent and omniscient God, it acts equally at all
times, and bears as well upon the minute, as upon the
greater actions of life. Minute actions and details must
make up the whole life of most men, and the greater
part of the life of all men ; and what we need above
all things, is a principle of action that shall embrace
all acts equally, as the law of gravitation embraces the
atom and the planet, and that may dignify the smallest
act by the principle from which it proceeds. Such a
principle is religious faith ; and nothing but this can carry
the life-blood of principle into those minuter portions of
human conduct on which our happiness here chiefly
depends. This would attune the chords of domestic life
and make them discourse sweet music; it would substi-
tute the freshness of sincerity, and the flush of benevolence,
for the paint and frigidity of a false and conventional
politeness. Carrying out such a principle, an individual
may be truly great, however humble his sphere ; and this
greatness will bear the test, and grow as it is examined ;
while that which takes human opinion as its standard and
reward, dwindles and becomes contemptible the more it is
known. This latter cultivates the art of concealment ; it
is great, and generous, and kind, in public ; and mean,
and selfish, and unamiable, at home. Long enough has
the world been filled with pretences, and shows, and fair
seemings, and whited sepulchres ; but the remedy for
these is to be found, not in any ridicule or denunciation

KAITH, PHILOSOPHY AND REASON. 1/

of hypocrisy, nor in any splenetic or contemptuous decrial
of *' shams," but only in the cultivation of a true religious
fiiith.

This will be the more obvious if we notice a second,
and grand peculiarity of religious faith, which is that it
can work only in harmony with the moral nature. No
man can expect to be aided or sustained by God, when he
is doing any thing which he is conscious is not well pleas-
ing to him. Confidence in God must imply a constant
endeavor to know his will, and must, hence, quicken the
conscience, and, as the Scriptures express it, purify the
heart. I have already spoken of the essential connection
between faith and love, and it is by its intimate alliance
with conscience on the one hand, and love on the other, that
religious faith is capable of becoming a principle of action
so ennobling and so mighty. It is rational and intelligent
as recognizing, sometimes the plans of God, and always
the grounds of trust in Him ; it quickens the conscience
as necessarily adopting the law of God for its rule of action ;
and it gives full play to the affections, by drawing its very
life from the holy and infinitely amiable character of God.
Thus he who is actuated by this principle must have the
strength that comes from the consciousness of acting
rationally ; from peace with God ; and peace of conscience,
Thus has it every element that can be needed to sustain
great and heroic action. Let a man feel that he is in
sympathy with God in the object of his pursuit, that God
approves the means he adopts, and let him have a filial
confidence in him, and what deed of a true heroism is
there, whether of action or of suffering, which he may not
perform ? Thus moved and sustained, is it any wonder
that they of old " subdued kingdoms, wrought righteous-
ness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions,
quenched the violence of fire, escape the edge of the

1 8 FAITH, PHILOSOPHY AND REASON.

sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant
in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens"? And
w^hat this principle was of old, it is now. The same God
is above us, and his response to any confidence reposed
in Him will not be less full. This only can support the
martyr, the moral hero, the hero of meekness, and right-
eousness, and love unconquerable. This only can lead
men to originate and sustain those great moral enterprises,
on the success of which the welfare and progress of the
world must ultimately turn. It cannot be that man should
set himself fully against the wickedness of his own heart,
and the wickedness of the world around him, and resist
the allurements of temptation, and defy the powers of
nature wielded by persecution, and endure to the end,
and overcome except as " seeing him who is invisible."
" This is the victory that overcometh the world even our
faith." Only this can enable the true missionary to for-
sake country and friends, and devote his life, in a heathen
land, to the good of those whom he knows but as
redeemed by the blood of Christ ; only this can sustain him
in attacking forms of sin that seem as ancient and firm as
the hills ; this alone can enable him to labor on till death,
and die in hope, while yet the darkness of midnight lies
upon the mountains. Such a faith has nothing to do with
nature. She comes down from above into the sphere of
nature, she contemplates objects of which nature knows
nothing, and when she acts rationally with reference to
these objects — to a kingdom and laws that are above
nature — nature says she is mad. She is not mad ; the
might of the universe is with her ; God is with her; eter-
nity shall vindicate her. This, not money, not machinery,
or confidence in them, but this it is that the church needs.
Let her come directly to God in the strength of a perfect
weakness, in the power of a felt helplessness and a child-

FAITH, PHILOSOPHY AND REASON. IQ

like confidence, and then, either she has no strength, and
has no right to be, or she has a strength that is infinite.
Then, and thus, will she stretch out the rod over the seas
of diflficulty that lie before her, and the waters shall divide,
and she shall pass through, and sing the song of deliver-
ance.

From the view of faith now taken, it is easy to see
that every system of negations, and distrust, and sceptic-
ism, must tend to lower the tone of human action and
enjoyment, and must be uncongenial to our nature. Such
systems may be useful in pulling down error, but have no
constructive power. Their effect must be like that of
withdrawing the vital element from the air ; and not more
certainly will languor and feebleness creep over the phy-
sical system in one case, than over the spiritual in the
other. There can be no robust and healthy life, either
social or spiritual, without a strong faith.

Let me then first counsel you, my friends, to place a
generous confidence in your fellow-men. Not that you
should be weak, or credulous, but, if you must err at all,
let it be on the side of confidence. For your own sakes
repress the first risings of a suspicious and distrustful tem-
per. It will unstring the nerves of your energy, and cor-
rode your very heart. Far from you be that form of con-
ceit which attributes to itself shrewdness and wisdom by
always suspecting evil. Far sooner would I make it a
part of my philosophy and plan, to be imposed upon and
cheated, up to a certain point. Let not even intercourse
with the world, and the caution of age, congeal the spring
of your confidence and sympathy. So doing, you may find
much that you would wish otherwise, some you may find
that will be as a briar, and sharper than a thorn hedge,
brethren that will supplant, and neighbors that will walk
in slanders ; but you will also find answering confidence.

20 FAITH, PHILOSOPHY AND REASON.

repose for the soul, green spots, and fountains in the des
ert.

Let me also warn you especially against all those pan-
theistic views, virtually atheistic, which are setting in upon
us in these days in connection with certain forms of a tran-
scendental philosophy. The great result, if not the object
of all such schemes, is to obscure and exclude the idea of
personality in God ; and hence, of accountability in man.
It is around this banner, more than any other, that the
migratory hordes of infidelity are gathering, and uniting
against the religion of the Bible. These schemes assume
the garb of a high philosophy ; they put on the sheep's
clothing of a religious phraseology. In their outward as-
pect, they are contemplative, reverent, and especially phi-
lanthropic. Their advocates believe in God — but then all
things are God, and in the working of all things hitherto,
nothing higher than man has been produced. They be-
lieve in inspiration — but then all good books are inspired.
They believe in Jesus Christ — and so they do in Confu-
cius, and Socrates, and Mohammed, and Luther, and in
all earnest and heroic men. They believe in progress — but
in a progress which neither springs from nor leads to,
moral order. They make the ideas of guilt and retribution
a bugbear, redemption an absurdity, repentance unneces-
sary, and faith impossible. Making such pretensions,
to philosophy and giving such license to passio.i, these
schemes have great attractions, and form the chief specu-
lative quicksands which the currents of this age have drifted
up, and on which the young are in danger of being wrecked.
They merge personality into laws, the operations of a wise
agent into necessary uniformities. They make the order
and stability of God's works testify, not to his wisdom and
immutability, but to his non-existence. They change the
truth which the creatures thus tell, into a lie, and say, " No

FAITH, PHILOSOPHY AND REASON. 21

God." Thus are the heavens disrobed of their glory, and
infinite space becomes a blank, and faith finds no object,
and the tendrils of affection find no oak, and human life is
without a providence, and conscience is a lie, and death is an
eternal sleep. To all such schemes, and their abettors, how
appropriate and overwhelming are the reproof and the ar-
gument framed expressly for them long ago : " Understand,
ye brutish among the people ; and ye fools, when will ye
be wise ? He that planted the ear, shall he not hear } He
that formed the eye, shall he not see ? He that chastiseth
the heathen, shall he not correct ? He that teacheth man
knowledge, shall not he know ? "

And now, my Friends, what can I wish better for you
personally, or for the world in your relations to it, than that
you should take for your actuating and sustaining principle
Faith in God. Without this, you will lack the highest ele-
ment of happiness, and the only adequate ground of sup-
port ; life will be without dignity, and death without hope.
Only by faith can you run that race which is set before you,
as before those of old. In this world your courses may be
different ; you will choose different professions, and diverge
widely in your lines of life. To some of you, the race here
may be brief But whatever this may be, and whether longer
or shorter, before you all there is set the same race under
the moral government of God ; to you all is held out the
same prize. Why should you not run this race? Never
was there a time, in the history of the world, when moral
heroes were more needed. The world waits for such. The
providence of God has commanded science to labor and
prepare the way for such. For them she is laying her iron
tracks, and stretching her wires, and bridging the oceans.
But where are they ? W^ho shall breathe into our civil and
political relations the breath of a higher life .'* Who shall

22 FAITH, PHILOSOPHY AND REASON.

couch the eyes of a paganized science, and of a pantheistic
philosophy, that they may see God ? Who shall consecrate,
to the glory of God, the triumphs of science? Who shall
bear the Hfe-boat to the stranded and perishing nations ?
Who should do these things, if not you — not in your rela-
tions to time only, but to eternity, and to the universe of
God?

And as seen in the light of faith, what a race ! what
an arena ! what a prize !

Faith places us under the inspection and care of the
eternal and omnipresent God, and accepts of him as a
Father, a Redeemer, a Sanctifier, and Portion. She en-
thrones Him above all laws, and to that utterance which
she hears coming as the voice of many waters from around
the throne, saying. The Lord God omnipotent reigneth,
she says, Amen. She introduces us to a spiritual family
of our own race, and of superior orders of beings, before
whose numbers and capacities the imagination falters.
She accepts the suggestions of analogy, that the moral and
spiritual universe is commensurate with that physical uni-
verse which night reveals, the outskirts of which no tele-
scope can reach ; and for the unfolding and sweep of a
goverment embracing such an extent, she has an eternity.
Such is the scene in the midst of which this race is to be
run. What is the prize ? It is likeness to God — sonship
— the inheritance of all things to be enjoyed forever.
That such a prize might be offered, Christ died ; that it
nay be striven for, as the one thing needful, the Holy
Spirit pleads. Gird yourselves, then, for this race ; run
it with patience, "looking unto Jesus." The world may
not notice, or know you ; for it knew Him not. It may
persecute you, for it persecuted Him ; but in the Lord
Jehovah is everlasting strength. He will be with you ;

FAITH, PHILOSOHPY AND REASON. 23

He will sustain you ; — the great cloud of witnesses will
encompass you ; they will wait to hail you with acclama-
tion as you shall reach the goal, and receive the prize.
That goal may you all reach, — that prize may you all
receive.

II.

STRENGTH AND BEAUTY.

Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.— Psalm, xcvi. 6.

THERE are some things, both in nature and in cha-
racter, that are incompatible with each other. Such
are light and darkness, moral good and moral evil, hope
and despair. One can exist only as the other is excluded.
There are also some things, as drouth and sterility, inte-
grity and firmness, stealing and lying, which are naturally
associated, and which we expect to find together. Again ;
there are qualities which, though not incompatible, have
yet a tendency to exclude each other, and which are sel-
dom found combined in any high degree. Such are flex-
ibility and firmness, weight and velocity, energy and good
temper, imagination and judgment, judgment and feeling,
versatility and concentration, patience and the power of
rapid combination and execution.

That the highest excellence, either mental or moral,
can be reached only by blending, in their most perfect
proportions, qualities which have thus a tendency to ex-
clude each other, may be easily seen. An acute intel-
lect is justly reckoned a perfection, but there is in it a
tendency to exclude broad and comprehensive views. The
power, on the other hand, of taking the most broad and
comprehensive views, not only tends to exclude, but often
leads us to despise that acuteness and subtlety of analysis

♦** August 17, 1851.

STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 2$

without which no investigation is perfect. But these are
not incompatible, and a perfect mind would be able to act
equally well in either direction. As a perfect eye would
possess both a telescopic and a microscopic power — now
ranging through the universe, and now adjusting itself to
the minutest object — so will mind be perfect only as it can
embrace at once the most expanded generalizations and
the minutest details. In a perfect mind, great logical
power v/ould be united with an affluent imagination ; but
these tend to exclude each other, and the combination is
so rare that he in whom it occurs is always a distinguished
man. In moral character, economy is a virtue ; but there
is in it a tendency to the exclusion of generosity, which is
equally a virtue. Boldness is not easily combined with
caution, nor sternness with a melting pity, nor zeal with
toleration. How seldom is a Boanerges at the same time
a Barnabas !

Among the qualities which may thus exclude each
other, but which are yet often combined both in nature
and in character, are strength and beauty.

In nature, how beautiful is the lily, the tulip, the rose^
the honeysuckle ! How beautiful is the humming-bird,
that poises itself upon its almost viewless wings, and draws
from that same honeysuckle its sweet food ! How beauti-
ful is the oriole, that weaves its hanging nest in the tree
above ! These are beautiful, but have not strength. On
the other hand, how strong is the ox, and the elephant, and
the rhinoceros, and the whale ! These have strength, but
not beauty. The hugeness of these contributes to their
strength, but would seem to exclude beauty ; while the
lightness and fragility and exquisite structure of the others
constitute their beauty, but would seem to exclude strength.
This separation of strength and beauty is perhaps more
striking when they are contrasted. Of this we find

26 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY.

instances in man and woman, in the vine and the oak, in
the violet sheltered in the cleft of the rock, in the rainbow
overhanging the cataract.

But these qualities, so often separated and contrasted in
nature, are also often combined. They are so in the tree.
In the oak strength predominates. Its sturdy and gnarled
trunk is the emblem of strength; and yet an oak, with its
full coronal of glossy leaves, is not without beauty. In
the elm, beauty predominates. With its light form com-
pared with its height, with its symmetrical top and pendent
branches, it stands like a veiled bride in her beauty ; and
yet the elm impresses us with the idea of great strength.
The green valley is beautiful, the mountain is strong. The
mountain covered w^ith verdure, is strength clothed with
beauty. In a horse, to pass to the animal kingdom, these
qualities are sometimes strikingly blended. A fine horse
is among the most powerful of animals ; but when he is left
as nature made him, with his flowing mane and tail, and
moves with the apparent consciousness of the admiration he
excites, he is among the most beautiful. But it is in the
human form that these qualities are capable of their high-
est and most perfect combination. This is the central
idea in that conception of the Apollo by the Greeks, which
must always remain the model of the physical man. In
that, nothing that would contribute to beauty is conceded
to strength, and everything that contributes to strength is
beautiful. Let the body of man combine these qualities as
it may, and it is evidently a fit dwelling for that immortal
spirit which is made in the image of God. Such a body,
filled with life, the features radiant with intelligence and
love, would realize the highest conception that man can
form of the power of the material, both to veil, and to re-
veal the spiritual.

But while we thus find this combination in each

STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 2/

separate department of the works of God, it is per-
haps most striking in the general impression which those
works make upon man. To the whole structure and
movement of nature, the Greeks gave the name " kosmos^^^
signifying beauty ; but looking as they did upon the earth
as fixed, what could give a stronger impression of strength
in the form of stability ? But if we look upon the earth
and planetary system as now understood, this impression
is greatly heightened. While we have the same round of
the seasons, the same " pomp of day " and glories of the
night, the same green hills and sparkling waters, and the
same bow in the heavens with them, nothing can be more
beautiful than the conception which our astronomy gives
us of the uniform, circular, harmonious movements of the
shining orbs above us, and nothing can give us a higher
conception of force, or strength exerted, than their amazing
velocity.

With such a combination of these elements in the
works of God, we might expect that they would be com-
bined in any physical structure which he should direct
men to build. Accordingly we find that strength and
beauty were in his sanctuary. Probably these were more
perfectly combined in the temple of Solomon, than in any
other building ever erected. This, however, was not for
its own sake ; but, under a typical dispensation, it was
doubtless intended to symbolize that spiritual strength and
beauty which were to belong to the spiritual, and only true
temple of God.

Let us then look at strength and beauty as they may
exist and be combined in the character of man.

The idea of strength is simple, admitting of no analysis ;
but strength itself may be manifested in either of two ways.
It may either make an impression, as when the " sun
shineth in his strength ; " k may overcome obstacles,

28 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY.

break down barriers, and march forward to the attainment
of a proposed end; or it may stand firm as the hills, when
it said that " the strength of the hills in his also ; " it may
bear burdens, it may resist impressions that are attempted
to be made upon it.

The whole strength which any man will be able to
exert in either of these modes will depend in part on the
faculties he may possess, and in part on the energy of the
will.

The faculties will vary in their power according to their
original constitution, and their training. Nothing that I
see would lead me to suppose that the powers of all men
are originally alike. In this respect, as well as in others,
God gives to one five talents, and to another one. But
certain original powers being given, their subsequent
strength will depend on their training. Here the great
and only law is, that the legitimate use of any power given
by God strengthens that power. This is true of the body
and of the mind ; and here we see the difference between
the works of God and those of man. The works of man
are impaired by use ; those of God are improved. For
his original faculties man is not responsible, but only for
their improvement.

But while there is nothing praiseworthy in the posses-
sion of great original powers, we yet contemplate them
with admiration and delight, as we do a great tree, a great
mountain, a great river, as we do the ocean. We watch
with delight the march of the mind of Butler, we wonder
at the apparent intuitions of Newton, and at the spon-
taneous creations of the genius of Milton. It is vain to
complain of the admiration of men for talent and genius
as such. That admiration is legitimate. It may be over-
whelmed and merged in sorrow, or in horror from their
perversion ; but interest will concentrate where great

STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 29

power is manifested, whether it be physical or mental,
whether for good or for evil. A tornado, prostrating trees
and unroofing houses, a volcano pouring forth its de-
structive lava, a burning city even, regarded simply as a
display of energy, are witnessed with pleasure. But this
strength of the faculties, this energy with which they are
capable of working, however impelled, is entirely different
from strength of character. This it is for which we are
responsible, and with which we are chiefly concerned.

But man can have strength of character only as he is
capable of controlling his faculties ; of choosing a rational
end ; and, in its pursuit, of holding fast to his integrity
against all the might of external nature.

Without self-control there can be no strength of cha-
racter. Its first condition is the subjection of the impulses
and appetites and passions, of all the faculties, to the con-
trol of the personal power — of the man himself " He
that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is
broken down and without walls." He has no strength to
do, or to resist.

This power of self-control being supposed, strength of
character may be manifested by a continued and concen-
trated energy put forth for the attainment of a given end.
This strength, however, can be manifested fully only as
obstacles are met, and external influences are resisted, and
the power, not only of active effort, but of patient endur-
ance, is tested to the utmost.

Of such strength of character, both in active effort and
in patient endurance, Washington is a good example.
During the long years of the Revolution his activity was
incessant, and that too in the midst of every form of dis-
couragement ; yet he never faltered. Still, strength of
character was not as severely tested in him as it might
have been. There vvcre many who understood his object,

30 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY.

and sympathized with him. The eyes of a nation were
upon him. It never came to be a question whether
he should relinquish his purpose or his life. But if we
suppose one of exquisite sensibility, the most keenly alive
to suffering and to every form of reproach, whose object
is great and worthy but not understood, who has no sym-
pathy from any human being, who is either opposed or de-
serted by all mankind, and that the question with him is
whether he shall abandon his purpose or go to a death of
torture and of ignominy, we shall then have the highest con-
ceivable test of strength of character. Of this there has
been but one perfect example in our nature ; but of this,
man is capable. He was once in harmony with nature
and with all external agencies. In a perfect state he
would be. But through moral, and consequent physical
derangement, all expressed sympath}^, and all external
agencies may be against him, and they may press him to
the last extremity ; but still he may have such a sense
of duty, and such faith in God, as to enable him to stand
firm, and to meet certain death. The spiritual may tri-
umph over the sensual and the material — the immortal
over the mortal. If man is not the master of nature, as
here he is not, he is not yet her slave. Against his own
will, no power on earth or in hell can make him so. As
spiritual and free, he is not properly of nature, but stands
over against her. He is no part of a linked and neces-
sary series of cause and effect, but may find in himself
grounds of activity that will enable him to resist every
impulse and motive that can be brought from without.
When pushed fully up to that line where degradation and
slavery commence, he has only to stand firm, and God
himself, by the hand of death, will open a gate by which
he may pass out unstained and unhumbled into perfect
freedom. Here is his true dignity, here is strength. So

STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 3 1

have the martyrs stood. What is the strength of the hills
compared with this ?

Strength thus shown in resistance to impressions, and
in standing firm, is in some respects less striking, and at
the time is less admired, than that which shows itself in
active effort, producing directly great results ; but it may be
doubted whether, in a world like this, it is not more heroic,
*9hd ultimately more fruitful of good and more honored. To
illustrate this, and express for it the admiration of mankind,
the simile of all ages is that of a rock standing immovable
in the midst of the tumultuous waters. And certainly when
we think of the sea of human passion, and of the fury into
which it may be lashed, and of the strong desire for appro-
bation, and of the fear of death, and of the natural distrust
of men in their own opinions when they stand alone, it is
one of the sublimest of all spectacles to see a man stand
firm against all possible allurements and threatenings,
and, reckless of consequences, hold fast to truth and to
duty.

Perhaps it should be mentioned here, that energy in
active effort, and the power of patient waiting and endur-
ance, may be blended in different proportions, and that
they have some tendency to exclude each other.

Such are the nature and sphere of strength of charac-
ter. What are those of beauty .?

As the idea of strength is simple, so is that of beauty.
The emotion can be known only by being felt, and only
experience can teach us what it is that causes the emo-
tion to arise. Doubtless there is something of inherent
beauty in all the forms of moral goodness, but in some more
than in others. If it be said, as it may be, that there is
beauty in justice, yet other elements preponderate, and it
has far less of beauty than benevolence. On such a sub-
ject, the imperceptible shading of one thing into another

32 STRENGTH AND :CEAUTY.

will not permit us to draw sharp lines ; but it may be said,
in general, that while strength of character depends on
the will, beauty depends on the affections. The affections
are beautiful because they arc spontaneous, and the gene-
ral truth here is that strength is to be found in the voluntary
action of the mind, and beauty in its spontaneous action.

We are all conscious of these two modes in which our
faculties work. A student may pursue a science from fear,
or from the love of praise or of gain. In this case the
faculties will be impelled as by a force from behind, and
the moment that is withdrawn they will cease to act — per-
haps will react with strong aversion towards the science
itself. Here the will must labor — it must row against the
current. Much of the activity in this world is of this kind,
and this it is that makes it labor and drudgery.

But again, a student may pursue a science from a love
of the science itself. In this case there is an affinity —
an attraction. There is a current of the soul setting in
that direction, which the will may indeed resist, may per-
haps wholly arrest ; but it will require an effort to do so.
The will must indeed now give its assent, but it need not
row the boat. The movement of the mind is spontane-
ous, and without apparent effort. It is as when

" The river windeth at it5 own sweet will,"

Such activity and effort are not esteemed a labor. There
will be in it a deep joy. With the movement of the facul-
ties as they perform it, there will be a music like that of
the spheres. It is from the attempt of the will to resist
these currents, that some of the profoundest struggles of
which our nature is capable arise.

Now all such spontaneous movements, if legitimate, are
beautiful. They are beautiful as spontaneous. Such are
all the emotions of taste which respond to the beauties and

STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 33

sublimities of nature and of art. Such are all the natural
affections, and such preeminently are all those high moral
affections which find a complacency in their object from its
own intrinsic character. Thus it is that benevolence is
beautiful, and pity, and tenderness, and a regard for the
feelings of others in the minutest particulars ; thus sympa-
thy is beautiful, and love, and a clinging trust. Let these
be genuine, spontaneous, like the free gushing up of a
fountain, and there is a beauty in them such as there is in
no verdure or sparkling waters. They are to those sterner
qualities which give strength, what the leaves and blossoms
are to the tree, making it beautiful in the eyes of men, and
sending up a fragrance to heaven.

But spontaneousness is not the only element of beauty.
If the beauty be a moral one, as it must, to be strictly a
beauty of character, then the affections must be conformed
to the law of conscience, and will have an intrinsic beauty
as moral. The beauty of holiness is the highest of which
the mind is capable, and this implies the conformity of the
affections to a perfect law.

What has now been said applies to particular affec-
tions ; but beauty of character, as a whole, must include
not only spontaneousness and moral rectitude, but also
symmetry. There is a tendency in spontaneous move-
ments to extravagance and wildness. This must be re-
pressed. The river, to be beautiful, must indeed wind
" at its own sweet will," but it must wind within its banks.
A just proportion must be preserved between the affec-
tions themselves, and between the affections and the other
powers. Symmetry, involving completeness, is a most
important element of beauty of character.

With these elements, individual mind possesses a
beauty far transcending that of nature. And if this be so
in a single individual, how much more in a spiritual system

34 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY.

where every relation is responded to, and every duty met !
What is the harmony of music to the concord of souls in
a true affection ? What is the breaking up of light into
its seven colors as it meets with the surfaces of matter,
compared with the modifications of benevolence as it
meets with the varying forms of sensitive and intelligent
life ? What is the beauty of natural scenery, wiih its clus-
tering objects, and contrasted flowers and trees, compared
with the meeting of a family, upon no member of which a
stain rests, and where you see the gray hairs of the patri-
arch, and the infant of the third generation ? What is the
beauty of satellities circling around primaries, and pri-
maries around the sun, compared with the order of families
and the State — compared with the order of that moral
government of which God is the centre and sun, and of
which a holy love is at once the uniting force and the
glory and beauty?

Thus the strength and the beauty which impress us
most, are the strength of the will, and the beauty
OF the affections.

That the tendency already noticed of strength and
beauty in matter to exclude each other extends also to
mind, is too obvious to need illustration ; and it is equally
obvious that the most desirable character can be reached
only as these are combined in the most perfect manner.
And what is there that this combination would not include ?
As perfect strength and beauty of the body would imply
and include all that is desirable in the body, so would
perfect strength and beauty of the mind and of character
include all that would be desirable in them. What is there
higher or better that we can wish for our friends ? What
higher or better at which a young man can aim ?

The question then arises, how this combination can be

STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 35

reached. And this brings us directly to the assertion of
the Bible, that "strength and beauty are in his sanctuary."
Adopting its spiritual import, the doctrine here indicated,
and which I wish to enforce, is, that it is only within the
fold and under the banner of the religion of Christ, that
strength and beauty of character can be perfectly com-
bined. Aside from Christianity there may be strength
combined with the beauty of the natural affections, but
strength combined with the highest beauty thffre can-
not be.

That true religion would produce this combination
appears because God desires it. This desire he has indi-
cated, as we cannot doubt, in the structure of his works
already referred to. Does he then value strength and
beauty in these } Has he made them the foundation of all
that we admire, and of most that we value in material
forms ? And shall he not value that in mind which is so
analogous as to be called by the same name 1 Yea, is not
nature typical ? Was it not so constituted for the very
purpose of leading us on gradually to ideas of this higher
strength and beauty ? Is it not but as the Mosaic dis-
pensation to lead us to something higher and better than
itself.? As certainly as nature was intended to lead us at
all to a knowledge of the perfections of God, so certainly
were physical strength and beauty intended to reveal to us
that in Him which is the substance, and of which these
are but the reflection. Hence, only as there is spiritual
strength and beauty, can his own image be produced in
his creatures.

But on this point, if nature could leave us in doubt,
revelation does not. We are commanded to "be strong
in the Lord ; " and the Psalmist prays that the beauty of
the Lord our God may be upon us. It is the object of the
Saviour to present to himself a glorious church, without

-6 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY.

spot or wrinkle, or any such thing. Does God then desire
this ? Then must it be the duty and aspiration of every
religious man to strive for it. So only is man religious, so
only ennobled, as he strives in coincidence with the pur-
poses and plans of God — as he works " according to the
pattern showed him in the mount." Does God desire
this? Then will He who is the foundation of all strength
and beauty ultimately impart them to those, ancTTo those
only, who shall come to Him for them. Thus coming,
that process of assimilation will take place, by which, as
they behold the glory of the Lord, they shall be changed
into the same image. Approaching the sun, they will
shine brighter, and the strength of their movement will be
increased. God will clothe them with strength and beauty,
and thus these shall be the completion and glory of his
spiritual, as they are of his material creation.

Again. That the religion of Christ must produce this
combination of strength and beauty, is obvious from the
character of Christ. To be a Christian, a man must not
only receive the doctrines and admire the precepts of
Christ, but must be like him. He can be a Christian only
as he actually follows Christ and is like Christ. In this is
found a grand peculiarity of Christianity as distinguished
from other systems. But there has never appeared on the
earth any character which approximated to that of Christ,
in the union of strength and beauty. In him we see the
strength of achievement, and the strength of endurance.
He moved with calm majest}^, like the sun. The bloody
sweat, and the crown of thorns, and the cross, were full in
his eye, but he was "obedient unto death." In his per-
fect self-sacrifice we see the perfection of strength ; in the
love which prompted it we see the perfection of beauty.
This combination of self-sacrifice and love, thus perfect in
Christ, must be commenced in every Christian ; and when

■ STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 37

it shall be, in its spirit, complete in him, then will he also
be perfect in strength and beauty.

But once more. That this doctrine is true, appears
from the very nature of true religion. This is no mere
impulse ; and strength of character is not a blind obstinacy,
which, if it does show strength of will, shows also, in equal
proportion, weakness of intellect. No : an intelligent
faith is at the foundation of Christian character. Such a
faith will " work," that is, it will produce obedience, and
it will " work by love." But it is in obedience to a perfect
law, from love, that we find the highest expression of
strength and beauty. Law demands the approbation of
the moral nature, and the intelligent action of the will in
obedience ; but it comes as an external force, and when it
conflicts with inclination, obedience will have in it some-
thing of constraint ; it will not be perfect freedom ; it will
be shorn of its beauty. But let a perfect law no longer
stand without as a law of constraint ; let it enter in and
become the internal law of the mind, so that every inclina-
tion and current of the soul — all its love — shall set in the
same direction, and then will there be a confluence of all
in man that is rational and moral, with all that is emotive
— of all the elernents which produce strength with those
which produce beauty. This is the consummation which
the world waits for, the deliverance and the rest. So only
can man be at peace with the law, and at peace with him-
self. So only can the most intense activity become a
harmony and a joy, become rest and peace. So only can
the nuptials be celebrated of inclination with conscience,
of liberty with law. It is of the essence of Christianity to
produce this identification of activity and repose, this
union of inclination and conscience, of liberty and law, and
thus of strength and beauty. So doing, it must be true ;
for it so accords with the nature of man as to embosom his

38 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY.

highest good here, and to contain the elements of heaven.
If it be not true, falsehood is as good as truth, for no truth
could more demonstrably save man. Starting with thest
combinations, the immortal spirit will need nothing but
the expansion of its powers to enable it to move on in its
unending way with the strength of a giant and the beauty
of an angel.

This is a point on which we may well dwell. You
know what a terror to us law is, especially the law of God ;
how severe and onerous, even while it commends itself
to the conscience, its requisitions seem. You know what
that fear of its penalty is that hath torment. Now, could
we come to see the stern features of this law so radiant with
loveliness that we would not have one of them changed ;
could we see within its domain such a perfection of holi-
ness and happiness that no wish would stray beyond that
domain ; could we adopt this external law as the law of the
mind, so that it should become the life of our life, how
plain is it that all the harmonies of the soul would be re-
stored, and that in its every movement there would be
strength and beauty. But this enthronement of the law of
God, or as I would choose to say, of the God of the la^v,
in the centre of the affections, must come from a periec^-
Christianity — it can come from that alone ; no other 'system
even proposes to itself such a result ; and hence we may
regard the doctrine as established, that strength and beauty
are in his sanctuary, and only there.

But if this be so, it may be asked why more of moral
beauty has not been manifested in the lives of Christians.
It is well known that evangelical religion especially has
been regarded by some as distasteful, and the lives of its
professors as severe, and harsh, and the reverse of beau-
tiful.

To this two answers may be given. The first is that

STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 39

the real beauty of Christian character that exists is not
known, nor appreciated. It is not known — for this is no
conservatory plant fostered by human culture and admira-
tion. It springs up under the eye of God on the mountain-
side, and in the retired valley. For Him it blooms, and He
who notices the violet that no human eye ever sees will
notice this. It is not appreciated — for the standards of
this world are wrong. The beauty which the world ad-
mires and idolizes, is that beauty of fashion and of art
which may minister to vanity, to sensuality, to superstition
— that beauty of manners which may cover a corrupt heart
— and that beauty of nature which may become a part of
a pervading pantheism. To these the Christian would
give their due place, but he thinks little of them compared
with the beauty of the affections and the life. To him the
character of Christ is supremely beautiful. He is the
" chief among ten thousand," but how is he to the world?
It was foretold of Him, perfect in beauty as his character
was, that he should be a root out of dry ground, and that
when we should see him there would be no beauty in
him that we should desire him. This was fulfilled. The
beauty of the character of Christ was not appreciated in
his own day ; it is not now ; and it is to be expected that
the disciple shall be as his Lord. It cannot be expected
that the selfish, the sensual, the ambitious, the proud, the
vain, or the frivolous should admire that which is so op-
posed to their own temper and character. Especially can-
not this be expected when holiness lays aside its abstract
form, and is seen in actual life opposing and casting down
cherished corruptions and interests. Then, instead of
admiration and praise, all history shows that moral good-
ness and beauty are vilified ; they are cast out as evil ;
are persecuted and crucified. What do bigoted perse-

40 STRENGTH AND BEAUTY.

cutors and infuriated mobs know or care about moral
beauty ?

A second answer is, that Christianity is here but incipi-
ent, militant, imperfect. It begins in repentance, in tears,
in struggles against sin, in self-denial and renunciation of
what the heart had clung to. In this state of struggle
there is a beauty to the eye of God, but not to that of the
world. But beyond this there are many Christians who do
not get — nay, they seem to cease to struggle, and stereo-
type a form and aspect of religion fit for neither a sinner
nor a saint, that is neither of the law nor the gospel.
There is in it slavery and penance. The face of duty is
austere. They abstain from gayety, from fashion and
folly, too much through fear, or conventionalism. They
have no consistency. They attend church on the Sabbath,
but show little of the spirit of religion during the week.
They have more of the form of religion, than of the spirit
of benevolence. The love of the world in them is not
slain by the cross of Christ. There is no free and full and
joyful consecration of themselves to God. They know
nothing of the "joy of the Lord " as their strength. But
religion — if anything with a preponderance of these ele-
ments can be called such — can be beautiful only as the
conditions of beauty are met. It must be from the heart,
and it must be symmetrical. The miserable notion of
duty as imposing tasks, which is so prevalent, must pass
away. Everything harsh and austere must vanish from
her countenance. The Christian must look upon her with
the eye of a lover. At her voice his heart must throb, and
his chest heave ; her call must be to him as the sound of
the trumpet to the war-horse. Then would each indivi-
dual Christian have not only strength, but beauty; and
that conception in Holy Writ of the embodied church, so
beautiful, and so accordant with the spirit of our text,

2

STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 4I

would be realized. In her beauty, she would be " fair as
the moon and clear as the sun," and in her strength she
would be " terrible as an army with banners."

In the preceding discussion, a distinction has been
indicated between that strength and beauty of the faculties
which belong to genius and talent and taste, and that
strength and beauty of character which involve moral
excellence. This distinction is, perhaps, sufficiently ob-
vious j but genius and talent have been, and still are, so
much deified, and have cast such an illusive attraction
around moral deformity, that I wish to draw to it particu-
lar attention.

The distinction is that between the agent and the
instrument, between a person giving direction and that
which is directed. This relative place of these is to be
carefully noticed, because of the peculiar difficulty there
is, in the present moral state of the world, in combining
talent and genius with a high and reverent regard for duty.
This is not that there is any natural opposition between
them, but because that admiration and influence which are
so dear to men possessing talent and genius are expected
to follow them without much reference to moral integrity.
Now what we say, is, that we are not to over-estimate the
mere instrument, however brilliant. We say that our
chief regard is due to that sacred personality, that moral
presence, which has both the power and the right to direct
talent and genius, and before which it is their place to
wait and to bow. We say that in any other relation talent
is a curse, and that the light of genius can only ''lead to
bewilder, and dazzle to blind." We would honor genius
and talent as gifts of God ; we would make large allow-
ance, if they must have them, or think they must, for their
peculiarities, their idiosyncrasies, their weaknesses even ;

42

STRENGTH AND BEAUTY.

but when those who possess them would regard themselves,
and be regarded by others, as privileged persons, whose
moral delinquencies are to be allowed or winked at, and
that, too, on the very ground that should be their highest
condemnation, we would utter our solemn protest. We
say that the influence of no other men can be so hostile to
the best interests of the community — if they be public
men, to the liberties of a free people. We say that no
rebuke can be too prompt or severe when any man would
practically dignify or even palliate meanness, or trickery,
or falsehood, or profaneness, or licentiousness, or corrup-
tion, by associating them with high intellectual gifts. In
the judgment of God, nothing can compensate for the
want of moral strength and beauty of character ; in com-
parison with these, everything else is as nothing. This
should be so in the judgment of man, and to this position
we would fain hope that public opinion is slowly finding
its way.

These are the great thing. On these your happiness and
influence here will mainly depend ; by these your whole
interest, under the government of God, will be ultimately
decided. My object has been to bring to your definite
apprehension a standard of character at which you might
safely aim, and to show you how that standard might be
reached. I have wished to give you a motto to be in-
scribed upon your banner, which might give you strength in
the hour of conflict. And what can I give you better than
strength atid beauty ? What can you do better than to
seek the highest combinations of these in the characters
you are to form and to manifest ?

And in doing this, you are not to suppose, from anything
that has been said, that you will be laboring to blend
things that are naturally opposed to each other. No; in

STRENGTH AND BEAUTY. 43

the deepest view of them they are but the varying forms
of the manifestation of one force. They are not one as
opposite polar forces are one ; but strength, though not
necessarily manifesting itself in the form of beauty, though
it has a centrifugal force that tends to carry it off from its
true curve, does yet underlie it, and is essential to the
formation of that curve. Rightly directed, strength seems
to attenuate and expand itself into beauty as the trunk of
the tree, which is strong, attenuates and expands itself
into the branches and the leaves, which are beautiful. It
is strength alone that can elaborate itself into beauty ; and
only as it does this can we have evidence of the perfection
of strength. The exquisite finish of the leaf of the tulip,
is from the circulation within it of the divine omnipotence,
and is as essential to the perfect evidence for that, as the
spheres that roll above. So can you give the highest evi-
dence of strength of character only as that strength can
so restrain and control its own workings, as to elaborate
itself into beauty. The strength that we want is not a
brute, unregulated strength; the beauty that we want is
no mere surface beauty, but we want a beauty on the sur-
face of life that is from the central force of principle
within, as the beauty on the cheek of health is from the
central force at the heart. This is the combination and
the character that the world needs, that you need. Going
forth with this, the wildernesses and solitary places of the
earth will be glad for you. With this you will fill, up to
the measure of expectation, and beyond it, every position
of domestic and social and public life. You will be more
appreciated as you are more known. The natural influ-
ence of uncommon powers or acquisitions will not be hin-
dered or marred by those sad blemishes that everybody
must speak of in a whisper, but that everybody will know.
If you should have greatness of character, it will not

44 STRENGTH AND BKAUTY.

shoot up into those isolated and starthng peaks that at-
tract notice indeed, but are barren ; but it will rise up
into those broad table-lands that are covered with ver-
dure, and where the springs arise that gladden the valleys.
You will work in harmony with God, and He will give you
success.

But you are to remember that the strength and beauty
that can do this are not those of nature. The strength is
the strength of faith, and the beauty is the beauty of holi-
ness. As I have said, it is only through the religion of
Christ that this combination can be reached. Here is our
only hope. But through this it may be reached ? This
combination of strength and beauty you may all reach,
every one of you : and eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,
nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive the
blessings that will flow from it in the track of ages. Other
strength will decay, other beauty will fade, but this strength
will only grow stronger and this beauty more beautiful as
eternity shall roll on. " They that wait on the Lord shall
renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as
eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and
not faint \ " and " the beauty oiih.^ Lord " their " God shall
be upon them." This, my friends, this is the strength,
and this the beauty I desire for you. In your characters
may they be blended, and in all the pilgrimage of life that
is now before you, may you be girded with strength from
on high, and may the beauty of the Lord your God bf»
upon you.

III.

RECEIVING AND GIVING.
It is more blessed to give than to receive.— Acts, xx. 35.

AS a dependent being man is, and must be, a receiver.
From God he must receive life and breath, and all
things ; and no one can so elevate or isolate himself, that
he shall not need to receive from his fellow men those
things which only their sympathy and kindness can bestow.

Man being thus necessarily a receiver, we should anti-
cipate, from the goodness of God, that it would be blessed
for him to receive. And so it is. It is blessed for the
creature to receive from the Creator. It is blessed not
only from the enjoyment which the gift itself may confer,
but as awakening admiration, and gratitude, and love. It
is blessed for the child to receive from the parent, for the
friend to receive from his friend. It is always blessed to
receive when the gift is born of affection.

This blessedness our Saviour knew. We are told that
Mary Magdalene, and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod's
steward, and Susanna, and many others, ministered to him
of their substance. He received of them what he needed,
and, so far as appears, he consented thus to receive at the
hands of gratitude and affection, and was doubtless blessed
in so receiving his whole support.

But if it is thus blessed to receive, it is more blessed to
give. This is one of those great truths, uttered by our

♦** August 15, 1852.

4^ RECEIVING AND GIVING.

Saviour, opposed to the whole spirit and practice of the
age in which he appeared, which, like his inculcation of the
forgiveness of enemies, and universal philanthropy, and
seeking first the kingdom of God, showed a divine insight.
It is a great practical truth, which, as it is received or re-
jected, must affect the whole spirit and all the results of
life.

This blessedness was that pre-eminently known by our
Saviour. " The Son of man came, not to be ministered
unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many."
He gave, not property, but himself. He gave instruction,
and gifts of healing, and a divine sympathy. He gave the
energies of his being in activity and in suffering for the
welfare of man.

But here the inquiry arises, what is it to give. As now
used this term carries the mind chiefly, if not wholly, to
property ; but this cannot be its main reference, for
then neither Christ nor his Apostles wrould have illus-
trated their own precepts, or have known, to any great ex-
tent, the blessedness of giving. It is worthy of notice, that
no direct record is made, that either Christ or his Apos-
tles ever gave any thing in the form of property ; and that
would be a sad interpretation which would restrict the
pleasures and benefits of giving, to the rich. To give, is
not merely to transfer property without an equivalent from
him who receives it. This may be done from a regard to
public opinion, to quiet conscience, to purchase heaven, to
get free from annoyance. Property is not affection, it is
not self sacrificing energy, it is not the heart or the life.
No ; to give^ is to iifipart bmcfits freely, out of good will This
Christ and his Apostles did. Said Peter to the impotent
man, " Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have
give I thee. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise
up and walk." Here was a gift which money could not

RECEIVING AND GIVING. 47

purchase, and such were all those great gifts which Christ
came to bring. Thus understood, the pleasures and ben-
efits of giving are open to all, even to her who is poorer
than the poor widow who cast in her two mites. All can
impart benefits of some kind, freely and from good will ;
and the proposition which we now wish to illustrate
is, that thus to give is more blessed than it is to receive.

That this is so may appear, first, because God is giver
ouly, and not a receiver. Of the modes and conditions
of the divine blessedness we know, indeed, very little. To
our conception, God must have been perfectly blessed in
himself, when, as yet, no creative act had rendered the
blessedness of giving possible. We must conceive of God
as self-sufficing in all respects, as having within himself
the spring of his own activity, and finding in that activity
the source of his blessedness. Without activity in some
form, blessedness is inconceivable, for absolute quiescence
is death. But if we know little of the modes of activity
possible to God, and hence of the modes of his blessed-
ness, we may yet be sure that in all the forms of that
activity there is blessedness, and pre-eminent blessedness
in those which are pre-eminently his. But, as has been
said, he manifests himself only as a giver. He is so in
creation. To the universe of matter, overwhelming us as
it does by its vastness and variety and glory, he gave its
being. From the resources of his own omnipotence he
caused that which was not, to be, and no doubt there was
a sublime blessedness not only in the result, when he be-
held and pronounced it good, but also in the energy by
which it was accomplished. And having created this uni-
verse with all its properties and adjustments, he gave it to
his sensitive and rational creatures to be the theatre of
their being and a source of enjoyment. To the sensitive
and spiritual universe also, through all its ranks, from the

48 RECEIVING AND GIVING.

insect up to the seraph, God has given being, with its infi-
nite diversity of forms, and modes of perception, and
capacities, and responsibilities. Throughout the universe
there is nothing that any being is_. or that he possesses,
that is not the gift of God. And net only has God given
in creating, but he gives continually. Whatever we may
say of second causes, he is the constant upholder and gov-
ernor of all things, the ever present, conscious giver of
every good and perfect gift. This is the highest concep-
tion we can form of any being, that he should not only
have the spring of activity within himself and be self-
sufficing, but that he should suffice for a universe, and
find a conscious blessedness in giving without limit and
without exhaustion forevermore. Here we find a con-
ception that bears us far above the glories of night, and
of all telescopic heavens. Here we find the source of the
river of the water of life, clear as crystal, that overflows
and sparkles and spreads itself to the outmost limits of
the creation. What are the starry heavens to Him who is
enthroned as the infinite and only original giver in this
limitless universe !

To give thus without exhaustion, would seem to be the
natural prerogative of God ; but there is also a form of
giving that implies self-denial and self-sacrifice ; it implies
that we forego a good for the sake of the good of others.
How this may be compatible with what we conceive of the
infinite and perfect blessedness of God, it may not be easy
to see ; but that he is capable of this form of giving, the
Scriptures plainly assert when they say, that He "so loved
the world that he gave his only begotten Son." Possibly
the highest blessedness of a benevolent being can be known
only through self-sacrifice. Blessedness is more than
pleasure ; it is the consciousness and exercise of the high-
est goodness. This is the highest form of giving, and con-

RECEIVING AND GIVING. 49

stitutes Christ the great gift of God. It makes him not
merely the outflow of his natural attributes, but the mani-
festation of his heart.

And while God thus gives, he does not receive. "Who
hath first given unto Him and it shall be recompensed to
him again ? " By the right of an original creation, and of
a constant preservation, all things are already his. " He
is not worshipped with men's hands as though he needed
any thing, seeing he giveth to all life and breath and all
things." He may be said to accept of our services j that
is, he may be pleased with our dutiful affection, but we can
bestow upon him no gift ; he can receive nothing from us
so as to become the owner of that which was not his before.
We can never requite him by paying back an equivalent;
we can lay him under no obligation.

If then God finds his own blessedness in giving, and
not at all in receiving, we should naturally expect, that
those who are made in his image would find it more blessed
to give than to receive.

But, secondly, it may not be amiss to mention that this
is one of those great truths which seem to find their prefig-
uration and twilight in the material creation. The sun,
the grandest and noblest of all material objects, is only a
giver. Age after age, from his high place, he imparts,
without exhaustion, light and heat, and receives nothing in
return. In the coldness of our philosophy we say, indeed,
that this involves no blessedness. This is true, just as it
is true that there is no color spread over the surface of
bodies ; and yet is the sun a silent preacher of a truth that
is not in him, because we are so made that we must diffuse
over matter our own conceptions and vitalize it with our
feelings. Let the natural emotions speak, and they say at
once, that the sun is "as a bridegroom coming out of his
chamber, and rejokcth as a strong man to run a race." We

50 RECEIVING AND GIVING.

attribute to this sublime body power and dignity, and feel
that, if it were concious, it must rejoice in its greatness and
in its dispensing power. This teaching becomes more im-
pressive by contrast. The sun gives only ; the sandy des-
ert only receives, and hence we regard it with aversion, and
as fit only to symbolize the drearier desert of a heart thor-
oughly selfish and absorbing.

But I observe, thirdly, that this truth is enstamped upon
our very constitution ; it grows out of the frame-work of our
being.

To see this, we have only to examine a little the kinds
and sources of the blessedness of which we are capable.
As has been said, all blessedness must come from activity
and of this there may be three kinds. One of these we
need not consider, because there is in it nothing of giving
or receiving. It is the activity of the mind within itself, in
contemplation and thought, when it receives no impression
from without, and puts forth no outward activity. Laying
this aside, then, we find that man is a centre of activities,
from which influences, originating in his will, flow outward,
and affect the world without ; and also that he is a centre
of susceptibilities, to which influences flow in from the
world without, and by which he is affected. In the first
case he is truly active, putting forth powers, and may be
said, in a large sense, to give ; in the second, he is as
passive as a perceiving and sentient being can be, and he
receives.

It is in conformity with this general idea that the phys-
ical frame, even, is constructed. The nervous system is a
railway with a double track. It is now well known that
there are two sets of nerves, those of motion, and those
of sensation, running side by side, apparently intimately
blended, yet entirely distinct in their origin and office, by
one of which influences pass from within outward, and by

RECEIVING AND GIVING. 51

the other from without inward ; by one of which we re-
ceive, and by the other, give. By the one we receive
materials of instruction, and impressions pleasing or pain-
ful j by the other, we exert our wills as agents, and give
forth our own proper activity.

When we open our eyes to the light, when we behold
the trees and the mountains, the waters and the flowers
the stars and works of art, we receive ; when there comes
to us the perfume of flowers, or the fragrance of the new-
made hay, we receive ; when we taste the strawberry, the
peach, the melon, we receive ; when we hear the song of
birds, the rustling of leaves, the rippling of waters, or the
music of the flute or of the voice, we receive ; when we
open our minds, through the senses, to thoughts and im-
pressions from others, we receive. Here the movement is
from without, inward, and if no folly or wickedness inter-
vene, it is always blessed, and only blessed, thus to receive.

To this process God has attached pleasure, as he has
to that of receiving food, but both the process and the
pleasure are as clearly subordinate in one case as in the
other. We receive food that the body maybe built up and
strengthened, and the pleasure is incidental. So here, the
object of the importing railway, or rather railways, is to
bring to the mind those materials upon which it may work
and be strengthened, which may be elaborated into speech
and action and enable man to become a giver, freighting
the outward railway with the products of knowledge and
of love.

This last is the true sphere of man. He was not made
to be merely a passive receiver of pleasure, a bundle of
sensibilities, to be madly wasted or artistically and pru-
dently exhausted, beginning with a fountain full and spark-
ling, and ending, as all mere pleasure must, with the vapid
and bitter dregs of decay and exhaustion. He was made

52 RECEIVING AND GIVING.

to be an agent, with powers having the spring of their ac-
tivity within themselves, and having it for their law that
they shall increase in strength by their own legitimate ac-
tivity. This it is that allies man to the angels, and makes
him of inappreciable worth, and fits him to become increas-
ingly a giver, and to walk with waxing strength in an up-
ward path, even the path of the just, that shineth more and
more unto the perfect day. This it is in man that lays
the foundation for that most magnificent of all figures, used
by our Saviour concerning the righteous, that they shall
shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.

But if this be so, if the sphere of activity and of giving
be higher than that of passivity and receiving, then must
it be more blessed to give than to receive ; for where
should any being find his highest blessedness but in the legiti-
mate exercise of his highest powers ? This is the law of all
beings ; so, and so only, can their highest blessedness be
reached.

Intimately as the pleasures of receptivity and of activity
are blended, we yet find in the distinction just drawn, a
line of cleavage dividing the race into two classes. To
the one belong the lovers and seekers of pleasure as distin-
guished from blessedness or happiness ; for pleasure arises
from some congruity between us and that which is without.
In it the movement is from without, inward, and we are
receivers. The lovers of pleasure are those who make it
their business to find that without them, which shall act
on their susceptibilities and minister to their passive en-
joyment. To seek this predominatingly is the fatal mis-
take and besetting sin of most. To do so is compatible
with the highest forms of civilization and df worldly respec-
tabilty. It rather imphes the cultivation and patronage of
the elegancies and refinements of life, and skill in the mt^st
agreeable forms which self-love and selfishness can assume

RECEIVING AND GIVING.

53

The elite of the class may worship beauty and art, but the
mass will worship sensual pleasure. What they seek for
on earth is the highest combination of these, and they
would desire no heaven but a Mohammedan paradise.
Give them the means of gratification, and they are court-
eous, liberal and tolerant ; interfere with these, and they
are intolerant, deceitful, malignant, cruel ; and thus vices
and cruelties more shocking than those of barbarism may
mingle and alternate with the highest forms of luxury and
refinement. With such an object of life, immortality and
accountablility disappear from its back-ground, and its
value is estimated in sensations ; the individual loses his
self-respect and his confidence in others ; and though
society may seem to be crowned with verdure and flowers
to its summit, yet that summit will be the crater of a
volcano.

Those, on the other hand, who make their activities
the basis of their character, seeking blessedness rather
than pleasure, need, indeed, to have those activities rightly
directed ; but they are on a basis which is capable of
sustaining the highest and most solid structure of indi-
vidual and social greatness and blessedness.

We have now considered man as having sensibilities
on the one hand, and a will on the other, — a receptivity
and an activity in correspondence with which his physical
frame is formed. But we find a similar correspondence
of faculties in the mind itself, with no corresponding phy-
sical organization. Man has not only sensibilities and a
will, but also desires and affections ; and as he receives
by his sensibilities and gives by his will, so does he receive
by his desires and give by his affections.

Having shown that to give forth activity and influence
is higher and more blessed than to receive impressions,
we mav now leave behind us, in our search for the highest

54 RECEIVING AND GIVING.

blessedness, all mere passive enjoyment, and, while we
estimate that at its proper value, consider only the differ-
ent forms of activity. All activity from within, outward,
can be regarded as a form of giving only in the wide sense
already mentioned ; but all giving is a form of activity
that springs from the affections, and we say that this is
more blessed than any form of receiving through the
desires.

It is of the very nature of the affections that they give,
and of the desires that they receive. The affections have
persons for their object ; they arise in view of worth or
worthiness in them, real or supposed, and we seem in
their exercise to give our very being. They are disinter-
ested, they flow out from us, they give, and appropriate
nothing. That is not affection which is not disinterested,
and it is only because this is not a world of open vision
than any outward token, flowing from a secret regard to
self can ever be supposed to give evidence of affection.
In the sphere of affection every outward token is valued
as the evidence of a gift more precious than itself. When
we give affection we truly give ; and what is commonly
called giving, is really so only as it is an evidence of
this.

The desires, on the other hand, have, as their distin-
guishing characteristics, that they appropriate to themselves
the things desired, and that their object is things and not
persons. They appropriate wholly ; they receive, and
give nothing. Here self is the centre, and nothing is
valued except as it can be made to revolve towards the
vortex of this whirlpool.

And here again it is blessed to receive, and only
blessed, if the desires be kept within their own sphere.
Not alone is there the music of enjoyment from the cor-
relation and adjustment of external things with a sensitive

RECEIVING AND GIVING. ce

organization, of the harp with the breeze, but in the
attainment of its object by each of the desires. There is
a legitimate enjoyment in receiving wealth, and admira-
tion, and fame and power.

But here, no less than previously, do we find an obvious
subordination. Not more obvious is it that food should
be received to be given back in strength and activity,
or that sensation should minister to knowledge, than it is
that the desires were intended to receive that they might
minister to the affections. Let a man pursue wealth and
power, not for their own sakes, but solely that he may do
good to his fellow creatures, and there is no danger that
the desires, thus subordinated, will be in excess. But the
moment he pursues them, I will not say with some refer-
ence to self, for God intended we should provide for our-
selves, but the moment he pursues them selfishly, the ser-
vant becomes the master and slavery begins.

And here, too, there is made a great and general mis-
take. The ends proposed by the desires, instead of being
held subordinate, become ultimate, and thus the desires
become the main spring of activity and the basis of charac-
ter. We all know how each of the desires creates for itself
a world of activity, in which it becomes not only the per-
vading, but too often the dominant principle ; and when
this is so, man seeks to balance himself and society upon
a false centre, and can never be at rest.

In the world of business the desire of wealth rules, and
in the eager pursuit of this the vision of its votaries be-
comes narrowed, so that they see and care for nothing else.
The fraudulent man, the rum-seller, the slave-trader, the
panderer to appetite, the inexorable landlord, have, it may
be, no malignity, but in the intenseness of this desire, they
bow so eagerly to the god of their idolatry that they see not
the scattered wrecks of property and of character strewed

56 RECEIVING AND GIVING.

around them, and hear not the wail of distress that comes
up from fathers and mothers agonized, and from wives and
children made desolate. They hear but the cry of this
desire, saying, Give, give, and all the better forms of intel-
lectual and moral life are contemned and wither away, and
their hearts become as the nether millstone.

In the world of fashion it is the desire of admiration
that reigns. The value of dress as a necessary and a com-
fort, becomes subordinate to that which it receives from the
eyes of others, and from the position it is supposed to give.
Health and comfort are disregarded. Each desires to be-
come a receiving centre, and the party, the ball, tlie assem-
bly, where they have been admired, and especially more
admired than others, has been a pleasant party or ball or
assembly to them. It is in this sphere that vanity, self-
complacent, yet meanly dependent and apprehensive, finds
its food. Here every thing is on the basis of receiving,
and this gives it its heartless and unsatisfying character.
Even all copartnerships for mutual admiration, whether be-
tween individuals or in regular societies, give, only that
they may receive as much again.

In the world of ambition the desire of power is supreme.
No tics of kindred, no obligations of fiiith and sacred honor,
no pleadings of humanity, no fear of a righteous retribution,
can stay the course of him who has once entered the lists
for this glittering prize. Reckless and remorseless as a
cannon-shot, he moves towards his object, shattering and
prostrating every thing in his way. '^The land is as the
garden of Eden before him, and behind him a desolate wil-
derness." A miser of power, if he is less despicable than
the miser of wealth, it is only because he is more formida-
ble ; for though he may be admired by the unthinking, he
is yet equally false to his nature, and to the true ends of
life. He may be a battle-axe in the hand of the Almighty

RECEIVING AND GIVING.

57

to punish the nations, but a true man^ knowing his Maker,
and voluntarily co-operating with him, he cannot be.

And what is true of the desires thus specified, is true
of them all. The slightest knowledge of them will show
that they cannot be the basis of either individual or social
happiness. The isolated summits which they would reach
are glittering and attractive at a distance, but there is there
no spring of water for the thirsty soul, and no green thing.
Their constitution is> such that they grow by what they feed
on, never reaching, like the bodily appetites, a limit of sati-
ety. " He that coveteth silver shall not be satisfied with
silver." He that conquers one world, will weep that there
is not another for him to conquer. Hence a character
which has the desires for its basis, must be hard, and dry,
and unamiable, and selfish ; and the individual must be
restless and unhappy. As, too, the desires are appropri-
ating and necessarily exclusive, if they are the basis of '
character in the community generally, it must become the
theatre of a general conflict, in which every malignant pas-
sion and dissocial element will mingle, and society will be
dissolved into its original elements.

But with the affections, the reverse of all this is true.
In their exercise, we find ultimate ends that are legitimate ;
nor is there in them any tendency to excess and dispropor-
tion from their own activity. They arise from an appre-
hension of some worth or worthiness in the person towards
whom they go forth ; and the only danger is, that the im-
agination will clothe their object in false colors. Let the
person be seen as he is, and the measure of his worth, or of
his worthiness, is the natural measure and limit of the affec-
tion ; and in this there can be nothing exaggerated or ex-
cessive. If the object be greatly worthy, the affection
ought to be great; and the greater the aff"ection, the
greater the blessedness. Among the highest forms of

58

RECEIVING AND GIVING.

blessedness conceivable by us, is that of a perfect affection
resting with full complacency upon a worthy object.

But if the individual will thus be made happy through
the affections, much more will society. This scarcely needs
to be shown. The affections are not only the true bond
of society, the only element and sure guarantee of peace,
but as burning coals burn more brightly when brought
together, so must there be intenser blessedness where the
affections are drawn out by intimate and complex social
relations.

From what has been said under this head, it would ap-
pear that to give, is to put forth power under the guidance
of love. In doing this, there will be a union of the activ-
ities with the affections. Hence giving is the culminating
point, the blending and fusion of those activities and affec-
tions which we have shown to be the two highest sources
of human blessedness. If, therefore, we will but notice it
we shall find, as was already said, that it is enstamped
upon our constitution — that it grows out of the very frame-
work of our being, that it is more blessed to give than to
receive.

I cannot leave the discussion under this head without
observing, that we may gather from it the limit and law of
all our receiving faculties in their relation to those that
give, — of all receptivity in its relation to activity. It is
that that only should be received, which will enable us to
give ; that the limit of receptivity should be the point
where it ceases to minister to activity.

This gives us the law of temperance in all things — its
universal law. Nature is not arbitrary, or capricious, or
cynical. We are at liberty to receive into the body any-
thing, and in any quantity, that will, on the whole, best
minister to the strength and activity of the body. The mis-
take of intemperate men, of every degree, is to receive for

RECEIVING AND GIVING. ^g

the sake of passive impression those things which depress
and injure the powers of activity. The student is at hberty
to receive into his mind as much iDromiscuous reading, and
to hear as many lectures, as will give him the most active
and vigorous mental powers. Let him read as much as
he will, provided it be assimilated, and there be nothing
of the crudities or tumidity of mental indigestion. Let
the desires stretch forth their arms as they may, and
gather wealth and admiration and power, provided there be
nothing gathered to be hoarded and gloated upon and
worshipped ; and that the disposition to communicate go
hand in hand with the ability, and thus the great law of
stewardship come in, and every man, as he has received,
be a good steward of the manifold grace of God.

It is, indeed, in this relation and law of receiving and
giving, that we find the true ground of the suboi"lination
of different enjoyments, and the true theory of human well-
being. This last consists, essentially, in the right activity
of the powers. The right activity of her powers, is that
which makes the King's daughter all glorious within ; and
if this be so, the King will see that her clothing shall be
of wrought gold. For the completeness and fulness of
well-being, there is indeed not only the inward harmony
and joy, but the investment and regalia of a world with-
out, that shall testify through every sense and susceptibil-
ity to the sympathy and approbation of Him by whom
that world was organized and is sustained. We reject
not, nor undervalue the investment j but we find in this
law a necessity, that he who would attain true blessedness
at all, should make the basis of his character the activities
and the affections, and not, as the many do, the sensibil-
ites and the desires. In the prevalent type of character,
reason and conscience and the affections are subordinated
to some one of the desires, pleasure being pursued so far

6o RECEIVING AND GIVING.

as may be compatible with that. But if true blessedness
is to be attained, this order must be reversed ; and the
love that gives, sustained by reason and conscience must
take the place of the desires that would receive ; and all
mere pleasure, all desire for passive impression, must
give way when love, so sustained, shall call for active
exertion.

I have thus illustrated, as I was able, the weighty and
comprehensive saying of our Saviour, that " it is more
blessed to give than to receive ; " and we find it confirm-
ed by the example of God himself; by the mute teachings
of his works ; and by the best examination we can make
of the constitution of man in its relation to the modes and
kinds of possible enjoyment. The essential elements, of
giving are power and love — activity and affection, — and
the consciousness of the race testifies that in the high and
approprate exercise of these there is a blessedness great-
er than any other.

And what is thus taught by precept and confirmed by
philosophy and by consciousness, it is most pleasing to
find perfectly illustrated by example. With the interpre-
tation now given, it could not be more perfectly illustrated
than it was by our Saviour and his apostles. He " loved us
and gave himself for us." He saw that the world was in
such a state, that by giving himself he could save men ; and
with the full knowledge of what was before him, the poverty,
the reproaches, the buffetings, the mockings, the scourging,
the crucifixion, he gave himself freely. This he did in the
conscious exercise of power. He had power to lay down
his life, and he had power to take it again. He gave, not as
\ he gives whom giving does not impoverish, but he gave of
hib heart's blood till that heart ceased to beat. He planted
his cross in the midst of the mad and roaring current of
selfishness aggravated to malignity and uttered from it

RECEIVING AND GIVING. 6l

the mighty cry of expiring love. , And the waters heard
him, and from that moment they began to be refluent
about his cross. From that moment, a current deeper
and broader, and mightier, began to set heavenward, and it
will continue to be deeper and broader, and mightier till
its glad waters shall encompass the earth, and toss them-
selves as the ocean. And not alone did earth hear that
cry. It pierced the regions of immensity. Heaven heard
it, and hell heard it, and the remotest star shall hear it.
testifying to the love of God in his unspeakable gift, and
to the supremacy of that blessedness of giving which could
be reached only through death— the death of the cross.
This joy of giving it was that was set before him, for
which he endured the cross despising the shame.

And not only did our Saviour exemplify this precept,
but also his Apostles. They were first receivers and then
givers. They filled their urns at the fountain of light and
power, and then rayed these forth with an energy that
made them the great benefactors of the race. Standing
simply as men, without wealth, or power, or learning, or
genius, they gave their being in its entireness to the dif-
fusion among men of God's method of salvation, and thus
took their stand at the head of the mightiest moral move-
ment the world has ever seen. Nor have they failed to
have successors in men of a like spirit, faithful, self-deny-
ing, ready at any moment to seal their testimony with
their blood. All down the ages there have been those
who have given, not property only, but themselves, to this
cause of God and of man.

My dear Friends. I would that you should be givers.
To you the exhortation comes with peculiar appropriate-
ness, " Freely ye have received, freely give." You have
received from God high endowments— not merely the

62 RECEIVING AND GIVING.

susceptibilities of the animal, by which you are capable of
pleasure, but the powers of the angel, by which you are
capable of an eternal blessedness — not merely,the desires
which would grasp and appropriate their objects, but also
atfections by which you may give love and its fruits, volun-
tarily joining hands in that line of receiving and giving
which begins at the throne of God and terminates only
with animate being. You have received a country, vast,
prosperous, progressive, whose future towers up into an
undefined magnificence. Freely you have received the
heritage of free institutions bought with blood, for which
the nations of the old world sigh in vain. Above all, you
have received " freedom to worship God," and a knowledge
of the way of life and salvation through Jesus Christ our
Lord. O ye plants in the very garden of the Lord, have
ye thus received his rain and his sunshine, and shall ye
not yield fruit ? Shall there be among you one empty vine,
bringing forth fruit unto himself; one frivolous, pleasure-
loving, self-seeking, world-worshipping idolater ? Are you
not satisfied that the law of giving is the true law of our
being ? And do you not see how hopeless it must be to
go against those deep tendencies which God has wrought
into our frame — that to strike against the adamant of his
laws is to be dashed in pieces?" *' Freely ye have
received, freely give." Poor you may be, and many of you
are, in the riches of this world. But there is a giving
higher than that decorous giving that meets public expec-
tation, but not the requirements of good stewardship ;
there is a giving higher than that of wealth to any extent.
The time has come when a man is " more precious than
fine gold ; even a man, than the golden wedge of Ophir."
Give yourselves, give as Christ gave, as the Apostles gave.
Pierce to the kernel those Christians paradoxes, that we
save by loosing, and live by dying, and receive by giving.

RECEIVING AND GIVING. 63

Go where duty calls, where there is ignorance to be en-
lightened, suffering to be relieved, vice to be reclaimed,
character to be improved. These are works which must
be done by living men. Wealth alone cannot do them ;
the labors of the dead past cannot do them. It is not the
touch of the bones of a dead Prophet that can give moral
life. In every age it is a sympathizing love that must
stretch itself upon the body of this death, and then it will
live. So give, and in the day of the Lord Jesus " you
shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away."

IV.

PERFECT LOVE.
Perfect love casteth out fear,— i John, iv. i8.

THE happiness which men seek, is not like gold
which, when once found, can be kept ; it is the
result of some activity ; it must cease when that activity
ceases; and the happiness that is highest and best,
can spring only from the activity of those faculties tha.
are highest and best. Here is the true theory of human
happiness. With all normal activity, God has connected
enjoyment; and the more exalted the faculties, and the
more intense the activity, the higher the enjoyment. If
then the highest happiness can come only from those
faculties, or forms of activity, that are highest and best,' it
becomes a paramount question what those faculties are.

The general modes of activity are three. We think,
we feel, we will. The will, however, need not be consi-
dered here, because it is a means of good only through
thought and emotion. Aside from mere sensitive good,
it is from thought and emotion that all willing springs,
and it is to thought and emotion that it ministers. We
have, then, in seeking for the immediate sources of enjoy-
ment not sensitive, to compare only our intellectual and
emotive nature ; and our first inquiry is. What is the rela-
tive rank of the intellect and the emotions }

It has been the tendency of the world, and especially
of students, to exalt the intellect. Under this, all agree

*♦* August 15, 1855.

PERFECT LOVE. 55

in including our perceiving and reasoning powers ; and 1
would also include our powers of intuition, and of com-
prehension. These, especially those of intuitive reason
and comprehension, are high powers. By them we are
made in the image of God, we become partakers of his
thoughts and purposes, and are enabled intelligently to
serve him. They place us in the same rank as the angels,
and involve the capacity, and thus the implied promise
of an indefinite progression. In their exercise, there is a
consciousness of inherent and native dignity that sets us
apart from the brutes that perish.

Connected with the activity of the intellect there is
naturally an appropriate and a high enjoyment, that still
has no name as a specific emotion. Its wheels do not
creak and complain, as they revolve ; they sing. Doubt-
less there might have been a cold and unimpassioned per-
ception, a merely dry insight and comprehension ; but we
are not so made. " It is a pleasant thing to behold the
sun;" it is pleasant to perceive and trace relations, to
discover or follow an argument ; all insight and compre-
hension are pleasant. Shall we then say that the pleasure
thus received is itself an emotion ? In its widest sense,
we may ; but not thus can we practically discuss this sub-
ject. The pleasure connected with the mere activity of
the faculties, is one thing ; the specific emotions, as of
admiration, beauty, sublimity, which depend on the activity
of the faculties under certain circumstances, are another;
and there is plainly no fixed ratio between perception or
comprehension on the one hand, and any specific emotion
on the other. There are those with great powers of
insight who feel little admiration ; who can stand before
beautiful and sublime objects with but slight emotion.
An astronomer may weigh a planet, or measure its orbit,
or cast an eclipse, with as little admiration as a shop-

66 PERFECT LOVE.

keeper would weigh a pound of sugar, or measure a yard
of cloth, or cast up his day-book ; while a person with but
little insight, knowing nothing but facts and results, may
contemplate the heavens with constant admiration and
delight. We even hear of the cold philosopher ; as if
there were some incompatibility between intellect and
emotion • and we constantly observe the greatest variety
in the intensity of emotion, when persons are in the pre-
sence of the same beautiful or sublime objects. It is true
that all elevated and worthy emotion must depend on the
intellect ; yet so distinct are they, that we may cultivate
the intellect exclusively, and repress the emotions ; or we
may riot in emotion, while the intellect is comparatively
neglected.

But since both intellect and feeling are essential parts
of our being ; since thought is the condition of feeling, and
feeling stimulates thought ; it may be asked, how we are
to decide their relative rank. This we can do, as in all
other systems of related parts that have reference to an
end. In these, that which precedes as a condition and a
means, is subordinate to that which is accomplished as an
end. Hence, that the intellect is subordinate, appears
from the very fact that it is the condition and basis of the
emotions, and that they are later in the order of nature and
of time. In the order of creation, and of all individual
development,

"Time's noblest ofifspring is the last."

Man, in whom all other things are epitomized and culmi-
nate, came last; and that in him which is highest and
noblest, the powers of reflection and of reason, with their
consequent emotions, also come last to perfection. In the
vegetable, the fruit and the flower come last, and all that
precedes is conditional for these. Emotion is, indeed, as

PERFECT LOVE. 6^

the flower lo the stalk, as the fruit to the flower. It is the
verdure, that clothes the skeleton trees ; it is the expres-
sion, that lives and glows upon features otherwise rigid and
motionless ; it is the sweet-smelling savor of every accept-
able offering, that is laid upon the altar of God's service
or of the service of man ; it is the incense that should go
up as a cloud from this world of marvels and of beauty.
To say that there is no happiness without emotion in some
form, seems hardly adequate. It might be nearer the truth
to say, that it is happiness — for what do we know of hap-
piness, except as an emotion ? And yet there is no dis-
tinct emotion of happiness that is known by that name, and
that can be distinguished from those several emotions by
which it is enwrapped, and which it perfumes.

The emotive nature of man, thus preeminent, has a
wide range ; and we next inquire what it is in that that is
highest and best.

In perceiving external nature, every degree and kind
of perception has its emotion, from the faintest whisper of
beauty, sublimity, admiration, delight, to their highest
notes. It is, however, only when we pass to sentient and
rational beings, that the emotions take the name of affec-
tions, and swell and surge in the passions. Here it is that
we find love ; but in assigning its rank, we must make some
discriminations.

From the poverty of language, things but remotely re-
lated to each other are often indicated by the same word.
So it is with love. In its broadest sense, it indicates the
tendency of beings capable of enjoyment toward that in
which their enjoyment is found, whatever it may be. It
includes all animal appetencies and instinctive affections,
as well as that attachment which has its primal seat in the
will, and involves rational and moral elements. The ox
is said to love the grass, the mother bird its young, the

68 PERFECT LOVE.

ambitious man loves fame, the miser loves money, and the
seraph loves God. It is used to express the purest affec-
tions of spiritual beings, and to sanctify the grossest and
most criminal passions. Like "fitness," it is used to ex-
press a general relation, and not the nature of the things
related ; and the attraction of gravitation is not more un-
like that of two loving hearts, than are some of the differ-
ent forms of what is called love, from each other. But that
perfect love that casteth out fear has no connection with
appetite, or passion, or instinct, or anything sensitive ;
but springs wholly from our rational and moral nature, and
is drawn forth wholly by that which is rational and moral.
It is the love of man for the spiritual and unseen Creator.
It is love, not as an instinctive tendency, or a mere affection,
but as a principle. There is in it a rational apprehension
of both worth and worthiness, an act of choice and commit-
ment, and that peculiar and strong and undefinable emo-
tion which connects itself with this act, and which is modi-
fied by the characteristics and character of the being loved.
These may be distinguished from each other, but they can-
not be separated and the love remain. It is their union
that constitutes the one substantial and working principle
that we call love, as it is the union of oxygen and hydrogen
that constitutes water ; and it is this fusion of the intellect
and the affections, that is called " love " in the text. This
is the highest form of human, and we may say, of rational
activity. The light of the intellect is cold and cheerless ;
it is the warmth of love that brings out the verdure, and
awakens the voice of the swelling song. This is the high
and pure principle by which we are drawn toward all that
is capable of happiness in its proper sense, by which we are
not only attracted toward all that is amiable and generous
and ])ure and holy in character, but by which we abide
steadfast in our attachments. It is the highest form of

PERFECT LOVE. 69

activity drawn out by the highest objects. Taken with the
happiness which it enfolds, which pervades and forms a
part of it, it is the highest result, the brightness, the crown
and consummation of the works of God — nay, it is the great
mode of activity and ground of happiness in God himself.
*' God is love, and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in
God, and God in him." "He that loveth not, knoweth
not God."

But perhaps we may best gain a conception of the true
rank and functions of love, from the agencies of nature
which are required as its symbols. No one of these is
adequate. To symbolize it fully, requires the three great
elements or agents, on which all enjoyment, and life, and
order depend.

Of these, the first is light, which represents the intel-
lectual element in love. How grand a symbol is this
all-encompassing, all-revealing element ! It gives to the
earth and heavens all their beauty and glory. Without it,
the distant universe would be to us as though it were not.
This is the only symbol of that conscious certainty and
satisfying knowledge, without which all affection is de-
graded to an instinct. But as there may be and is, know-
ledge without love, as light without warmth, we will not
dwell upon this.

The second great element needed to symbolize love, is
heat. Not chiefly as concentrated in fire, or as radiating
immediately from it, is heat known as a beneficent agent.
It pervades all matter, giving fluidity to water, to the sap
of vegetables, to the blood of animals, quickening every
seed that germinates, and is an indispensable condition of
all life. Without it the universe would be solidified in
eternal frost, and motionless in death. But suppose, now,
there were in this universe no warmth of aflection, no
throb of kindness in any heart; that God himself were, as

70 PERFECT LOVE.

some would make him, but an iceberg of intellect, chilling
the universe, and that men were made in his image ; and
there would be a frost and a death, which the withdrawal
of its vital heat from the frame of nature could but faintly
shadow forth. Not one pulsation of love in the universe !
How awful the desolation ! But where love is, all icy
chains are dissolved, all dormant life is quickened, every
rivulet sings, every flower opens its petals, and to breathe
is to be happy. An intelligent love is the blended light
and warmth that gives to all things in the spiritual world
their life and beauty.

But not less essential in nature than light and warmth,
nor less perfect as a symbol, is another power that per-
vades the universe, and binds all nature together. This
is the power of attraction. It shows itself in various
forms, now uniting the particles of smaller masses in the
embrace of a cohesion which no force can sever, and now
binding together families of worl'ds as they pay homage to
their centre, and move on with reciprocal attraction and
seeming affection in the fields of space. Without this,
particle would be loosed from particle, and world from
world. The earth, the planets, the sun, the fixed stars
would be sifted into space, and would disappear. Not a
spot where the foot might tread would remain in the uni-
verse. And this does but represent the uniting and har-
monizing power of love, in an intelligent and moral sys-
tem. Within a limited range, and under higher control, a
system of balanced selfishness may move on for a time ;
but as a great uniting principle, that will hold every indi-
vidual in his place and sphere, and work out any rational
good, nothing but love can be imagined. This only can
unite the family, the church, the state. Only this can
insure harmony among nations, only this can bind the
creature to the throne of the Creator. With a God thus

PERFECT LOVE. 7 1

enthroned and reigning by love, and every rank and order
of being walking his circuit by the attraction of love, not
merely around the throne of God, but around all those
social and governmental centres which God has ordained,
we have moral order, the only order that can be perma-
nent, or that has intrinsic worth.

The union thus of three, and perhaps even of two great
elements in nature, as the symbol of a principle or mode
of activity in the spiritual world, is entirely without exam-
ple. Of these three great elements and forces, the sun is,
in our system, the centre. From him goes forth the light,
from him the warmth, from him chiefly, though it be re-
ciprocal, the attraction. What a fountain of radiance !
How does that radiance stream forth as in genial mar-
riage with the vitalizing heat ! What a centre, we might
almost say, of loving attraction ! And when we look at
the splendor and pervasiveness of these elemental forces,
at their gentle, yet ceaseless and resistless agency, and at
their results in the sphere of matter, we may form a con-
ception of the place which that love must hold in a moral
and spiritual system which can be symbolized only by all
of these ; and we may realize more fully the grandeur and
force of those most simple, yet most sublime expressions
of the Bible, " God is a Sun," and, ^'God is Love."

It is to this great principle of love, thus shown to be
the highest form of human, and indeed of rational activity,
that I would now call your especial attention. It is of
this, that I desire you should become radiating centres ; it
is under the control of this, as flowing out from the great
centre of all, that I desire you should fully come. In order
to this, then, let us consider first, what it is that love must
exclude.

And here I observe, in the first place, that love would
exclude fear. "Perfect love casteth out fear." It i^f*

72 PERFECT LOVE.

chiefly in fear, and not without reason, that the son of
Sirach makes that " great travail " to consist, which he
says " is created for every man, and that heavy yoke which
is upon the sons of Adam, from the day that they go out
of their motlier's womb, till the day that they return to the
mother of all things." "Their imagination of things to
come," says he, " and the day of death, trouble their
thoughts, and cause fear of heart ; from him that sitteth
on a throne of glory, unto him that is humbled in earth
and ashes ; from him that weareih purple and a crown,
unto him that is clothed with a linen frock." How then
may fear be removed 1 Its opposite is commonly said to
be hope, and it is by this that most would attempt to ex-
orcise this spectre. But the philosophy of the Bible is
profounder than this. Hope is so far from being the op-
posite of fear, that it implies it. So long as there is that
want of certainty which hope implies, there must be some
lingerings of fear. Nor is it all love that can cast out
fear. On the contrary, much of our love tends to increase
and multiply our fears. The more objects of affection we
have in a world like this, and the more tenderly we love
them, the more open we are to suffering, and the more
ground we have to fear. It is only the love of God as a
Father, involving perfect confidence in his wisdom and
goodness, and almightiness, that can stay the risings of
distrust and apprehension. This, a perfect filial love not
only can, but must so do, that all fear shall flee away, as
the mists of the morning before the sun. To him who
loves thus^ God will be a " refuge and strength." He
need not, and he will not fear, " though the earth be
removed, and though the mountains be carried into the
midst of the sea."

And not only would perfect love exclude fear, but also
hate. This it does toward the being loved, by the very

PERFECT LOVE. 73

force of the terms. But he who has a perfect love of God,
can have no more hatred of any of his creatures, than God
himself has. He may — from the very fact of his loving a
moral quality, he must — have a strong hatred of its oppo-
site ; but in that there will be no corroding passion, no ma-
lignity, which alone is properly hate, and in which alone, and
in remorse, is there involved essential misery. As love is
pervaded by an inseparable happiness which, as an origi-
nal part of it, emanates from it, as the fragrance from the
flower, or the light from the sun ; so malignity is pervaded
by an inseparable and an inevitable misery. This ele-
ment love would exclude ; and thus, under its sway, both
fear and hate, those two great foes of human good, would
disappear.

Once more. The perfect love of God would exclude
that undue regard for self, into which all malignity pro-
perly human strikes its roots. Both fear and hate are pas-
sions, and imply intense feeling ; but selfishness is a prin-
ciple, and may be the basis and substratum of life. Prac-
tically, this is, indeed, the great antagonist force to love.
Consciously or unconsciously, impliedly or avowedly, we
must make either self or God the centre; and in the con-
flict of self with the claims and will and interests of God
consists the great moral battle of this world. Originally
self has the ground ; but the entrance of divine love is as
the opening of spring, where the winter has reigned. The
beginning of the spring is often unperceived ; its progress is
slow; there are long and fierce struggles of contending
forces ; sometimes it may seem to go back. But the sun
does not go back. His advance toward the northern
tropic is steady; the snows disappear, the conflict of the
winds ceases, the earth is quickened, and in due time the
long, quiet, fruitful days of summer are sure to come. Such
is the progress, the triumph, the summer of a divine love

74 PERFECT LOVE.

reigning in the soul. Now it will bring forth fruit unto
God, and all undue regard to self will be excluded.

Having thus spoken of what a perfect love would ex-
clude, we now come to that which is positive, and will
first consider it as a motive to action. As such, it is
higher and purer than any other. To work from fear, is
slavery ; to work under the comiDulsion of animal want, is
a hardship, and if not a positive, yet a relative curse ; to
work for personal ends, as for pride, or ambition, or the
accumulation of property, either for its own sake, or our
own sake, is compatible with freedom, but has in it no-
thing either purifying or ennobling ; it finds and leaves the
soul dry and hard. But activity from love, is the perfec-
tion of freedom and of joy. Love has the power to make
the greatest labors seem light, and the greatest obstacles
trifling. When Jacob served seven years for Rachel,
" they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he
had to her." How free and cheerful is the labor of a
mother for her child ! And even among animals, where
instinct simulates and foreshadows moral love, we are
attracted toward it, we sympathize with it, we think it
beautiful, we regard it as wanton and cruel to disturb its
natural flow. Its very semblance is the highest form of
animal life ; and when the rapt seraph adores and burns,
it is this that gives to the flame its brightness and its
power.

But in a world and a universe where obedience is so
required by the cardinal relations in which we are placed
to parents, to civil society, and to God, the place of love,
as a motive to obedience, requires special attention. In
amoral system it would seem that the point where obedience
is required, must be that and that only, where there can
be pressure, friction, derangement. Obedience requires
the sacrifice of will, of pride, often of apparent self-interest.

PERFECT LOVE. 75

And of these there is no solvent but love. Fear may hold
them in abeyance for a time; policy may disguise and
temper their workings; but only love can come up and
undermine them, and float them away, and dissolve them
in its own depths. Obedience from love, is that alone
which is honorable to him who is obeyed ; and there is no
other principle, there can be no other, that will bind a
free and rational being to obey, and make that obedience
a source of happiness. Hence the Bible, always true to
the constitution and wants of our nature, anticipates and
recognizes no other obedience. " This is the love of God,
that we keep his commandments." " If ye love me, keep
my commandments," making the love first, and the keep-
ing of the commandments a natural fruit and outgrowth of
that. Thus it is that love, where action is not possible,
and where it is, love expressed in action — "love, is the
fulfilling of the lav/."

Nor may I omit to mention the relation of love to
the intellect as a moving power. All high emotion is
indeed preceded by the action of the intellect, yet that
emotion reacts upon the intellect, and from it alone
must come the impulse that will lead to steady and
intense application. Here, as in the body, the powers
act in a circle. Digestion forms the blood, the blood
gives power to digestion. It is a prejudice, as disas-
trous as it is unfounded, that there can be a schism
between the heart and the intellect, to the advantage
of either. The world is not ready to receive it, but it
lies in our structure, and must ultimately appear, that the
love of God is the highest ground of enthusiasm, not only
in the study of his word, but of his works. They may
indeed be studied from curiosity, from ambition, from a
desire even to disprove the being or the moral govern-
ment of God ; and thus we may have sharp, disputatious,

76 PERFECT LOVE.

dogmatical partisans of theories ; but the genial, patient,
comprehensive, all-reconciling thinker, will be most often
found where the pale and dry light of the intellect is tem-
pered by the warm glow of love. How can he who has
no love, interpret a universe that originated in love ? The
works of God are all expressions of his attributes, and
thoughts, and feelings. Through them we may commune
with him. So far as there is thought in the works of God,
it is his thought. He it is that, through uniformities and
resemblances and tendencies, whispers into the ear of a
philosophy, not falsely so called, its sublime truths ; and as
we begin to feel, and trace more and more those lines of
relation that bind all things into one system, the touch of
any one of which may vibrate to the fixed stars, this com-
munion becomes high and thrilling. Science is no longer
cold. It lives, and breathes, and glows, and in the ear of
love its voice is always a hymn to the Creator.

And not only is love a motive of action, it is also a
guide. The modes in which conscious beings are guided
to their good, are two. They either comprehend the good,
and the means of attaining it, and so are guided by reason ;
or, without comprehension, are guided to the good by a
blind and unreasoning instinct. Of these, reason is the
higher, but instinct is the more sure ; and proud as we are
of our reason, it not seldom happens that that very reason
would call upon us to give up the guidance of ourselves,
not merely to faith in God, which some object to, but even
to the instinct of a brute. The traveller on horseback, re-
turning home and losing his way in the darkness, will most
wisely give his horse the reins. He who winds his way
over the fearful passes of the Andes, on the back of a
mule, where a single misstep would precipitate him a
thousand feet, must interpose no suggestions of reason
between the sagacity of instinct and his own safety. Now

PERFECT LOVE. 77

what man needs, is a guiding principle, that shall combine
the security of an instinct with the ardor of passion, and
the freedom and dignity of a rational wisdom. And such
a principle he has in the love of God. It is rational and
free, because, in the fullest light of his reason, man chooses
God as the object of his confidence and love ; it has in it
the element and impulsion of passion, because we are drawn
toward him by his own inherent loveliness, as the river to
the ocean; and it is sure, because God must deny himself,
before he could suffer an action, prompted by genuine love
to him, to result in ultimate disaster. It is through this
irresistible conviction of security, that a perfect love must
cast out all fear and its torment. In a world like this,
where we know so little of the connections and dependent
cies of things, a case can never occur in which the highest
reason would not require us to follow the promptings of
love to God, rather than any calculations of what we may
call prudence, or understanding, or reason. It may lead
to the martyr's stake ; but the end will justify it. It is
from the predominance of love in the character of woman,
that what seem to be her instincts, but which are some-
thing higher, are often so much wiser than the reason of
man. Woman loves, and trusts, and so prays ; man rea-
sons, or thinks he does, and scoffs. The perfection of
character and of action will be found, as it was in Christ,
in the highest combination of reason and of love.

But not only is love a motive and guide of action, it is
the basis and essential element of character. The charac-
teristics of a man, are those things by which he is known ;
his character^ is his moral state, and this depends on the
paramount love that is in him. If the paramount love be
of sensual pleasure, the man is a voluptuary ; if of fame,
ambitious ; if of money, a miser; and if of God, he is a
religious man. According to his paramount love, will be

78 PERFECT LOVE.

the image and superscription that shall be set upon every
spiritual being; according to this the quality of his inner
life, his affinities, his companionships, and his ultimate
destiny. The perfect love of God, is the Christian reli-
gion perfected in us : it gives us affinity for him, com-
placency in him, and gives us naturally, the inheritance
not only of all thmgs which he has made, but also of the
direct brightness and glories of his character.

And this leads me to speak, in the last place, of love as
a source of enjoyment.

Happiness, as has been said, does not consist chiefly
in the possession of anything, but in the activity of the
faculties upon their appropriate objects. The intellect is
not for itself; it apprehends objects adapted to produce
emotion, and the eniotion comes to us loaded with happi-
ness, as the air with fragrance. We seem at times, indeed,
to know it only as happiness.

But of the emotions, the moral love of a Being that is
infinite and perfect, is the highest possible. Has man the
capacity to apprehend such a Being directly, and can such
a Being thus become, by his own presence, the immediate
cause of emotion ? That he can, the Bible clearly asserts ;
and this is the Christian solution, unique and grand as the
telescopic heavens, of the great problem of the highest
good of man. No philosophy and no religion had conceived
of anything so lofty as this. It is his chief distinction, his
highest dignity, that he is capable of such direct com-
munion.

In this life we see all things by reflected light, often in
utter unconsciousness of the source of that light. The
tendency is to see the creature, and forget the Creator.
Men behold all things in their unity and beauty, the
" cosmos," without reference to God. The world is in their
heart. But infinite love has provided for his creatures

PERFECT LOVE. 79

something better than this. We shall not only, as here,
see God by reflected light, we shall behold his face. The
light that is now below the horizon will arise full-orbed,
and shine with direct rays. It shall flood the universe,
and shall never go down. There shall be no night there.
Not that we suppose that the whole joy of heaven will
consist in the direct contemplation of God. Christianity
excludes no source of happiness of which our higher nature
could render us capable. It includes the pleasures of
knowledge, of the social state, and the swelling anthem.
But all must see, that if we are admitted, not only to an
apprehension of the universe, but also to an immediate
and direct apprehension of that goodness in which the
universe originated ; if we may know the Infinite as a
friend knows his friend, the emotion must be far higher.
This is the goal, the limit of imagination and of possibility.
Than this nothing higher, nothing more ultimate or more
satisfying can be conceived.

And now, my friends, what better can I do than to
commend to you the cultivation of the affections, and
especially of that highest of all affections, the love of God.
I do not give you advice, but seek to bring you under the
guidance of a great principle, that will bear you on to your
true good, as the river to the ocean. Adopt this, and I
would simply say to each of you, by way of advice, as
Samuel said to Saul, " Do as occasion shall serve thee, for
God is with thee.' So far as instructors can give direct
aid in education, it is in that of the intellect. In this you
have, to a great extent, walked with each other, and with
us ; and if the way has been toilsome, it has also been
pleasant, and the toil is strengthening. We rejoice to
have walked with you ; we hope it has beeen profitable for
you, and that it may hereafter be pleasant in the remem-
12

80 PERFECT LOVE.

brance, that you have walked with us. But when the
intellectual part is finished, and the point of transition
from thought to emotion and affection is reached, there is
no longer unity. We have then the expression of the in-
dividuality of each, and the same appearances and facts
and knowledge may be transmuted into emotions and
affections, as different from each other as an anthem is
from a sneer. I txhort you to sing the anthem, and if there
must be those who scoff and sneer, not to be of their num-
ber. There is no source of happiness like a loving heart.
He that has found a worthy object of a true affection has
found a treasure, and he that has found one of infinite
worth has found an infinite good. Therefore it is that I
address you in no language of stoicism, of caution, of
repression, such as age and experience often adopt. It is
peculiar to the love of God, that there is in it no danger
or possibility of excess. It is with loving, as with glorify-
ing him. " When you glorify the Lord," says the son of
Sirach, "exalt him as much as you can ; for even yet will
he far exceed : and when you exalt him, put forth all your
strength and be not weary, for you can never go far
enough." Here there is no need of repression, no conflict
of reason with the affections. The highest office of reason
is to minister to a divine love, and if this, in which there
can be no excess, be enthroned, there can be no danger
of excess in any other affection or passion. It is not rea-
son, that is the natural governor of the passions. The
office of reason is to enthrone an affection rightfully su-
preme. When this is done, all other affections take their
proper places. Then light, and warmth, and attraction,
coalesce ; then, not from coercion or repression, but from
co-operation and harmonious action, will there be peace,
and an infinite joy. I exhort you, then, to no cold cau-
don, but to the intensest energy, both of thought and of

PERFECT LOVE. 8 1

feeling. Let reason tread her outermost circuits ; she
shall gather nothing that will not kindle and go up as in-
cense at the touch of divine love. Have zeal, have enthu-
siasm. There is a sphere for you ; there is a true trea-
sure. There are gold and pearls and diamonds and rubies
that perish not. There is something worth living for.
Mount up as on eagles' wings, up — up — to the expanse
above you there is no limit.

But while I thus exhort you to this love, as the perma-
nent good of man, I would also urge it as especially need-
ed now in our relations here — in the present tendency
to sectionalism in politics, and to sectarianism in religion.
If discordant elements are to be fused, it can be only by
love. Entire unity of view, in regard to modes and rites
and forms, may be hopeless ; but may not these be put and
kept where they ought to be ? May not minor points be so
merged in essential truth, that harmony shall not be dis-
turbed.'* May not God be so loved, that all who love him
shall be loved also — that all shall be loved as he loves
them? And who should do this, if not you? This is de-
manded of you by the spirit of your training here ; the age
demands it of you ; God demands it. Who can better
bring the diversity that springs from free thought into the
unity of an intelligent love ? Diversity is before unity, as
chaos is before order, as solution is before the crystal. But
has not diversity touched its limit ? Is it not time that
thoughtful and good men should find a common centre in
Him who foretold the diversity, but prayed for the unity.
To Him we must look. He is the true head, the leader,
the champion, the restorer of the race. Not human sys-
tems or organizations, but Christ only, can be a living
centre of unity. His kingdom is one of obedience and
love — of obedience from love. Of these he set the great
example. He became obedient unto death j he loved us

82 PERFECT LOVE.

unto the end, M}- friends, I feel deeply that the compla-
cency of God in us — that our cooperation with him — that
the results of our living that will stand the fire, will be as
our love. This will purify us. This will strengthen us for
self-denying labors. This will make us missionaries wher-
ever we may be. This will enable us to unite substantially
with all good men. This will make it light when we go
down into the dark valley. And when your work is done ;
when, one by one, you shall go down into that valley, may
that light be around you ; may you each have that "perfect
love" that "casteth out fear."

V.

SELF-DENIAL.

For it became Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in
bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation per-
fect through sufferings.— Hebrews, ii. lo.

If any man will come after me let him deny himself, take up his cross and fol-
low me.— Matthew, xvi. 24.

WHAT is it that makes a hero ? Not simply labors
performed and sufferings endured. The slave
labors and suffers. The labors and sufferings must be
voluntarily assumed. Nor is this enough. The fanatic,
the superstitious devotee, voluntarily assume labors and
sufferings ; but they are not heroes. The labors and suf-
ferings must be voluntarily assumed, from benevolence, a
pure affection, or a sense of duty. Labors and sufferings
thus assumed and perseveringly sustained, make a hero ;
and it is the turning-point in the destiny of men, when
they freely decide whether they will, or will not, assume
that self-denial and suffering, without which nothing great
or good can be accomplished. Not more surely does the
tree come to its flowering and its fruitage, than man comes
to freedom of choice, intelligent action, moral responsibility,
and through these, to that moment of decisive and gov-
erning choice which shall control his professional career
here, to that which shall give direction to the current of
his moral life forever. At this point, the set of the cur-
rent may be undecided. It may be as water on the sum-
mit of the Andes. A pebble, the finger of a child, may
turn it; but that moment decides whether it shall min-
gle with the stormy Atlantic, or rest and glitter on the
bosom of the broad Pacific.

*** August 3, 1856.

84 SELF-DENIAL.

This connection of heroism with labor and suffering
preferred for a high end to ease and pleasure, and this
turning-point in life, heathen mythology has presented in
the choice of Hercules, between Virtue and Pleasure. I
wish to present them to you under the clearer light and
higher sanctions of the religion of Christ. This would
make every man a hero. The work of Christ was accom-
plished through suffering, which we know he chose to
endure, and those who would follow him must deny them-
selves^ must take up the cross ! Is then the end worthy
of these sacrifices ? Are they inherent in the system ?
How does this principle of self-denial compare with those
which regulate the world t That we may answer these
questions, let us look

I. At the object of Christianity, which is, as presented
in the Scriptures, to bring "many sons unto glory."

IL At the process by which this is to be accom-
plished— a process of salvation implying a previous liabil-
ity and tendency to ruin.

IIL At the consequent fact that self-denial and suffer-
ing, voluntarily assumed, must enter as essential elements
into Christianity.

And IV. Compare the principle of self-denial with those
which regulate the enterprise and pleasures of the world.

First, then, the object of Christianity is to bring
" many sons unto glory."

This is its more immediate and direct object, though,
as has been said of the atmosphere, it "consolidates
uses." The atmosphere evaporates water, distributes it,
reflects light, bears up birds, wafts ships, supports com-
bustion, conveys sound, is the breath of our life, and the
azure of our heavens. So Christianity, while it magnifies
the law, and enthrones mercy, and reconciles us to God,

SELF-DENIAL. 85

and makes known to principalities and powers in the
heavenly places his manifold wisdom, is also the regu-
lating and renovating spirit in the relations of time. It
alone inspires and guides progress ; for the progress of
man is movement towards God, and movement towards
God will insure a gradual unfolding of all that exalts and
adorns man. It excludes malignity, subdues selfishness,
regulates the passions, subordinates the appetites, quickens
the intellect, exalts the affections. It promotes industry,
honesty, truth, purity, kindness. It humbles the proud, ex-
alts the lowly, upholds law, is essential to liberty, and would
unite men in one great brotherhood. It is the breath
of life to our social and civil well-being here, and spreads
the azure of that heaven into whose unfathomed depths
the eye of faith loves to look. All this it does, while yet
its great object is in the future. The river passes on, but
the trees upon its banks are green and bear fruit.

The glory spoken of in the text, and which is the
direct object of Christianity, consists in an immortality,
in the moral likeness of God, and in the consequent en-
joyment of him and of all that he has to give. It implies
conscious rectitude, and the approbation and love of all
the good in the universe of God. This is true glory;
and the love of this, Christianity does not repress. That
love is Christianity, and it calls out in its pursuit the whole
strength of the human powers. It opens to the flight of
the eagle a boundless firmament. Here is one difference
between the Christian and the worldly hero. " Now they
do it," says the Apostle, " for a corruptible crown, but we
for an incorruptible." It is a " crown of glory that fadeth
not away." It transcends, as it should to be most effec-
tive, as it must to be adequate, our highest conceptions.
Even inspiration can only say, as only inspiration would
say, " We know not what we shall be." "Eye hath not

86 SELF-DENIAL.

seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart
of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that
love him." This is the highest possible object for man,
and hence there is in it his true end; for the true end of
anything which God has made, is the highest of which
it is capable.

Christianity does not, indeed, claim that it shall bring
all unto glory. Here is a mystery that hangs over this
revelation, and a ground of its rejection by many. It
speaks of sin with a sternness, and of its unaverted re-
sults with a terror, with which those who have but slight
conceptions of the holiness of God have no sympathy.
Still, it is entirely a system of salvation, and will bring
unto glory every one who will receive it. Men may reject
it, and then charge upon it the very ruin from which it
came to deliver them ; but it is wholly beneficent. Through
it must come all the ultimate good that shall come to the
race ; and if there must be those who perish, yet the sons
that shall be brought unto glory shall be many. They
shall be " a great multitude which no man can number,
of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues."

Such is the object of Christianity ; and, in the second
place, this object is to be reached by a process oi salvation^
implying a previous liability and tendency to ruin.

This proposition all do not accept ; and, among those
who believe in the being and agency of a personal God, the
question respecting its truth involves a division more radi-
cal than any other. It involves a difference in the founda-
tion on which men build, in all the aspects of the present
system, in the supposed tendencies of our nature and of hu-
man affairs, and in all plans for reform. This is the parting
point between the Evangelical system of religion and all
others ; for Evangelism, being the proclamation of good

SELF-DENIAL.

87

tidings, can properly involve only what is announced from
without as coming into the system, and not anything already
in the system, and that could be evolved from it. Is the
ship moving toward the port, or drifting upon the rocks.
Left to itself, will that aggregate of capacities and tenden-
cies which we call human nature reach its true good as in-
stinct reaches its end ? Do we become sons of God, and
shall we be brought unto glory by our first birth, or must
we be born again ?

I know well how strange the state is in which this
doctrine supposes our world to be, and into what myste-
ries of the past, and perplexities of the present, and fears
of the future, it must run ; and how strong in us all, is
that naturalism by which we hold, as with the grasp of
death, to what is called the world. I know with what in-
tense hatred and scorn this doctrine and its adjuncts are
regarded, often by learning and philosophy, and especially
by genius, that well knows how to weave its bitter derision
of them into the tissue of its fiction and its poetry. I
know how strong the argument against it is, both from
feeling and from a seeming analogy.

How bright and beautiful is that nature by which we
are surrounded, and with which we feel ourselves in sym-
pathy ? We stand abroad when the day is gone, and the
stars are coming out in the clear heavens, and the crescent
moon hangs in the west, and the dark foliage sleeps in
the still air, and the faint light lies upon mountain and
valley and river like a white veil upon the face of beauty,
and Feeling asks, Can it be this which revelation has v/rit-
ten, " Reserved unto fire ? "

We see the orbs of heaven moving, unerringly, as if of
themselves ; we see the tree pushed upward by an inter-
nal force, and the animal following its instinct-, and thus
reaching their ends. They have no need to be born

88 SELF-DENIAL.

again ; and Analogy asks, Is not our nature also good?
If we give ourselves up to the guidance of its instincts and
impulses and passions, shall it not be well with us ? To
enjoy, is it not to obey ? May we not give nature her
bent, and eat and drink and enjoy ourselves and die, and
feel that death is but a sleep before a pleasant waking ?
Oh, what joy it were to mingle ourselves with the elements
and forces around us, in their on-going, without responsi-
bility, or care, or fear. Can it be that we must deny our-
selves } Have we that in us which needs to be repressed,
crucified, and must we make strenuous effort or be lost ?
Oh, how gladly would we believe that the broad road of
nature does 7wf lead to destruction — that her current
would float us down to no rapids, and to no cataract.

But not so speaks the revealed word. That says that
the broad road does lead to destruction. Not so says
conscience. When the still night of reflection comes, she
does hear the roar of the cataract towards which sin is
floating. Not so say history and fact. When we contrast
the idols of heathen nations, and their objects of worship,
with the true God : and their frivolous and debasing super-
stitions with his holy and spiritual worship ; and their
aims and hopes with the Christian heaven ; and their
wretched forms of intellectual and social life, their wars
and licentiousness and revenge and deceit, with the
intelligence and purity and love which Christianity would
produce ; when we see how Christianity itself is thwarted,
baffled, perverted, rejected ; we must feel that here is
moral perversion and moral ruin. Not so speaks the
voice of nature, in her sterner and more terrific aspects ;
not so in the uncertainty and hazard upon which she puts
us in regard to our interests here ; not so in her unswerv-
ing laws and unpitying inflictions when the fatal point in
transgression is reached. Not so speaks death, in its
13*

SELF-DENIAL. 89

present aspect and form, with its sin-envemoned sting.
Not so speak the law of God, and those dreadful words,
guilt, and remorse, which are in human speech because
what they indicate was first in human consciousness. Not
so, especially, speak Gethsemane and Calvary. There
can be no healing without sickness, no redemption without
captivity, no pardon without guilt, no finding of those that
are not lost, no salvation without exposure to ruin. If
nature and Christianity did so speak, the first altar built
by the gate of Paradise, and every bleeding victim under
the Jewish economy were a lie, and Christianity would
deny the necessity of its own existence. There would
not be, as there is now, a salvation, and a Captain of our
salvation made perfect through sufferings.

With such ground for the proposition that the process
of Christianitv is one of salvation, let us look,

in. At the consequent fact that self-denial and suffer-
ing, voluntarily assumed, must enter as essential elements
into Christianity.

The self-denial and sufferings essential to Christianity
as redemptive and restorative are those of Christ, and of
his people. Both were necessary, but on different grounds.
When the Apostle says of Christ that he was made perfect
through sufferings, he must mean, not that he was made
perfect as a man — for as a man he was always perfect —
but that by these he became officially perfect, that is, qual-
ified for his work. Why it became God thus to qualify
him, we are not here told j but this expression implies that
in his qualification the sufferings were an indispensable
element. That they did meet an exigency in the divine
government, and are of peculiar efficacy, appears from the
fact that he did so suffer ; from the whole sacrificial econ-
omy, patriarchal and Jewish j from most direct assertions

90 SELF-DENIAL.

of the Bible ; from the peculiar basis of Christian obliga-
tion ; and from the songs of the redeemed.

But all the sufferings of Christ were not redemptive.
He met with opposition and reproach, and fell under them
as man may feel. He "was in all points tempted like as
we are," and there are self-denials and sufferings which his
people must share with him. The soldier must follow his
Captain.

That self-denial enters into the preceptive part of Chris-
tianity, no one can doubt. It is remarkable how unflinch-
ingly she proclaims her gate of entrance to be strait, and
her path to be trodden, narrow. She calls upon men to
count the cost before they begin to build. Unqualifiedly
and universally does Christ announce the condition of dis-
cipleship: "If any ma?t will come after me, let him deny
himself, and take up his cross and follow me." "It is enough
that the disciple be as his master." " If they have persecuted
me, they will also persecute you."

But is not this a harsh and an unexpected feature in a
religion w^hich originated in love ? Is there not in it some-
thing of arbitrary appointment ? Might not Christ have
endured all ? We say, No. We say that self-denial not
only may, but must enter into Christian life — that so far
as Christianity is redemptive and restorative, every act
originating under it is, and must be, an act of self-denial.
Christianity is not the absolute religion. That is freedom,
health, strength, joy. That is the religion of heaven, where
every power sings in the joy of a spontaneous activity. But
as redemptive and restorative, Christianity exists only as
antagonistic to sin ; and hence there must be conflict and
consequent self-denial till sin shall be eradicated.

Self-denial is not, as some seem to suppose, a conflict
between different forms of selfishness. It is not self-denial
when the miser concentrates his selfishness into one

SELF-DENIAL. 9 1

absorbing passion, and through that denies and subjugates
his appetites; but self-denial is the triumph in man of that
which is higher over that which is lower. It is, first, the
exclusion of selfishness, and then the renunciation of any
form of enjoyment, or of natural good, from duty or from
love. Christian self-denial is the denial of self for Christ's
sake. It is love going forth to reclaim the sinful, and re"
lieve the wretched.

Now Christianity finds man in the intense activity of
a spiritual death, and her work is to make him spiritually
alive and healthful ; but all moral death and moral disease
so involved a love of sin and its pleasures, a wrong bias
of the will, that conflict must attend every step of the
process in eradicating sin and restoring the image of God.
The disease is in the will — in the very self. Hence that
self must be denied ; and it is the beauty of Christianity
that the great transition-acts by which man passes over to
it are not abitrary, but imply just this denial. Repentance,
especially in that element of it by which we forsake sin, is
always the denial of self; and this must continue as long
as sin shall remain. The very act of faith by which we
receive Christ is an act of the utter renunciation of self,
and all its works, as a ground of salvation. It is really a
denial of self, and a grounding of its arms in the last
citadel into which it can be driven, and is, in its principle,
inclusive of every subsequent act of self-denial by which
sin is forsaken or overcome.

But if it must require self-denial to resist and overcome
sin in ourselves, so must it when the sin is in others. To
a sinner, the very life of his life seems involved in the
selfish bent of his will, and hence the war between sin and
holiness is one of extermination. The true expression of
the opposition of sin to reproof, of its blind determination
and unfaltering malignity, is to be foUnd in the crucifixion

92 SELF-DENIAL.

of Christ. It slew the Son of God. When man saw perfect
goodness, he crucified it. That act showed the character of
man ; the life and sufferings of Christ showed the kind of
effoit needed to reclaim him. His mission was wholly for
the good of others, including their radical reformation, and
was therefore one stupendous act and manifestation of self-
denial. Of the same general character were the labors
of the Apostles and their successors, and such must be all
true missionary labor. In doing this, men renounce the
love of property, of ease and enjoyment, and give, and
labor, and suffer, for the good of others.

This essential inherence of self-denial in the Chris-
tian system is a doctrine that has faded, perhaps is
fading, from the consciousness of the church, and greatly
needs to be freshened and revived. Having its root in
the moral ruin of man and his possible restoration, it must
enter into the elimination of sin and its consequences
from any system. It is the distinctive characteristic of
Christian activity as opposed to a life of mere nature, or
of absolute wickedness. It excludes, on the one hand,
all penances and self-righteousness; and, on the other,
the love of ease and self-indulgence. Thus viewed, there
is about it nothing arbitrary, or harsh, or austere. It is
no mere negation of good for the sake of the negation,
but rather the regimen necessary for the restoration of
health. Not with the eye of a cynic or of a stoic is any
enjoyment scorned or rejected, but only as duty and love
fix their eye upon something higher and better. God
is not a hard master. The infinite love of the gospel is
dashed with no spirit averse to enjoyment, or that would
mar the unspeakable gift.

But if self-denial must thus enter into the Christian
life, let us, as was proposed in the fourth place, compare-

SELF-DENIAL. 93

it with the principles which govern the world, especially
with that which governs it in its enterprise and business.

The principle which regulates the enterprise and busi-
ness of the world, is that of demand and supply; and the
spirit of the time requires, when this would come in con-
flict with self-denial, that they should be brought fully
into contrast, that you may choose intelligently betvveen
them.

That this principle of demand and supply has a legiti-
mate sphere, I do not question. Among beings capable
of supplying each other's wants and demanding nothing
injurious, it would be wholly legitimate. It does now, and
must always, regulate trade, as gravity does the level of
the ocean ; and to apply it skilfully, is the great means of
success in honorable traffic and in all forms of business.
The young man inquires what it is that the world demands
and is willing to pay for — whether to supply its wants, or
to gratify its tastes — and as he can furnish this, and the
world is willing to pay for it more than it costs, his gains
will increase. In doing this, he can meet with no opposi-
tion from the very fact that there is a demand ; and
though he may thus accumulate a fortune, he is often
regarded, if not as a benefactor, yet with complacency and
approbation. Especially is this so if he have met a want
unsupplied before, thus opening new sources of enjoyment,
and new channels of industry. How long did the ice of
our rivers and lakes form and dissolve, and contribute
nothing to industry or comfort ? And he who first had
the enterprise to take it to the tropics, deserved a fortune.
Thus we trust it will be, more and more ; that as the great
ocean currents circulate the waters of all zones and equal-
ize temperature, heat creating the demand and cold sup-
plying it, so, in the legitimate application of this principle,
the productions of all zones shall more and more contri

94 SELF-DENIAL.

bute to bring unity into the seeming diversity of nature, to

supply the wants and augment the comforts of man.

But wholly legitimate as this principle would be in a
race unperverted, it has its root in the doctrine that the
world needs no moral change — that we are to take it as it
is, and make the most of it. This it is that supplies, and
insists on its right to supply whatever demand may exist,
regardless of the wickedness or the woe it may cause.
This it is that will sell the assassin his knife, and the
drunkard his drink, and the slave-dealer his slave. It
says, there is a demand ; I only supply it ; if I do not,
another will. Thus the business of great companies and
firms, nay the very institutions of society become impreg-
nated and cemented by iniquity, till interest conspires
with appetite and passion to blind the conscience and
silence rebuke. Confining yourselves prudently within the
range of this principle, you may pass on easily, and gain
wealth, and be respected. Men will praise him that doeth
well for himself. You will not be of those who turn the
world upside-down. You will not trouble the world, and
the world will not trouble you.

But, my friends, when the Captain of our salvation
came into this world, he came not to supply a demand.
There was none. He came to meet a deep, though unac-
knowledged want. He came to those who did not receive
him, who rejected him and his teachings, and crucified
him. Universally it is the characteristic of wickedness
and of the ignorance it engenders, that they desire to be let
alone. Unhallowed traffic says, let me alone, and slavery
says, let me alone, and drunkenness, and licentiousness,
and Sabbath-breaking say, let us alone, and superstition
and heathenism say, let us alone. If we wait till there
come up from these a call for reclaiming influences, we
shall wait forever. And not only do they not demand these,

SELF-DENIAL.

95

but they will resist them, and persecute those who bring
them, and the unconsciousness of need and the strength of
lesistance will be in proportion to the depth of the igno-
rance and of the wickedness. In the face of a state of
things like this^ what is your sagacious, prudent, prosper-
ous, demand-and-supply man good for ? His principle is
that the supply should be as the demand, and when the
demand is great his labors are great, and so is his har-
vest. But just the opposite of this is the principle of self-
denial. Not in proportion to the demand but to the want
of it ; to the depth of the insensibility, or the fierceness
of the opposition, will its sensibilities be quickened, and
its energies stirred. It will run at the articulated cry for
help ; but when there is no cry, it will abide long, even as
the missionaries in the South Sea islands sixteen years,
and chafe the temples of seeming death. Said one who
proposed to be a missionary, " Send me to the darkest
and hardest and most degraded place in your field."
There spoke the spirit of the Captain of our salvation ;
there the spirit of every true missionary and minister and
pastor. Where is the pastor even, who so preaches the
truth as to search the conscience, and enforce every duty
and exalt God, and lead to a life of humility and self-
denial because there is a demand for such preaching ?
Where is there one who is not constantly tempted to sub-
stitute the principle of demand and supply that calls for
smooth, or learned, or entertaining, or exciting preaching,
instead of that which would fix his eye steadily on the true
end of preaching ? The object of this principle is, not to
take the world as it is and make the most of it, but to
transform the world; and it can never rest till that woild
shall reflect the image of heaven. The leaven, if it be
leaven, must work and c^lmsq ferme?itation till the whole be
leavened.

g6 SELF-DENIAL.

After the contrast now drawn, it will hardly be neces-
sary to compare this principle of active and voluntary self-
denial with those which govern the seekers of pleasure and
of personal distinction. For the principle of demand and
supply, there is a legitimate sphere ; but a love of plea-
sure or of personal distinction as a paramount end, has no
such sphere. They have self for their centre. Their ob-
ject is to use all things, not to improve them. Incidentally
and casually useful, they are necessarily disturbing forces
in any great system of order. They link not themselves
with God, or with any rightly constituted community, and
so, when the springs of nature fail, they wither. There is
about them nothing redolent of immortality. No man,
whatever his wealth, or position, has a right thus to live
in himself No man has a right to excuse himself from
active self-denial for Christ's sake. " If any man will
come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross,
and follow me."

From what has been said, it appears that if there is in
Christianity an element of self-denial and suffering, it is
because there is also in it the heroic, and the redemptive
element.

The heroic element is a firm purpose to do and to
endure all that love may prompt and duty require ; and
implies obstacles great and long continued. It is born of
conflict, is manifested through labors and sufferings, and
hence, but for sin and its consequent evils, could have had
no place. It is not rash, or quixotic, or vain ; it is not
superstitious or ascetic. Needless conflict or suffering it
avoids ; but when its hour is come, it dares to the utmost,
it endures unto death. Its full perfume is known only
when it is crushed. What wonder, then, that there has
been hero-worship ? What has the pantheist that is

SELF-DENIAL. 97

nobler ? Yea, what is the very highest manifestation of
being, the sublimest object of contemplation ? Not oceans,
not mountains, or precipices, or cataracts, or storms. Not
the blue vault above us, with planets and satellites and
countless suns ; not the awful depths of infinite space.
It is not power in its creative or upholding agency ; it is
not skill in its minutest or in its broadest exhibitions ; it
is not even God himself ruling by love over an intelligent,
free, harmonious, happy universe. No ; it is self-sacrificiiig
Love. Clothe this and the issues connected with it, as
does Christianity, with the attributes of infinity and eter-
nity, and you have a manifestation of God such as nothing
else can give. It is Love unto death ; Love conquering
through death ; Love conquering death itself, and bringing
up from the struggle, and bearing aloft the. gift of eternal
life for a race that was lost. Here is the power of a divine
Redeemer — in this the voice of the Captain of our salvation
to a redeemed race, calling upon them to follow him. For
something of this — for self-sacrificing love according to his
measure, there is a capacity in every man, and to this, in the
great conflict between moral good and evil of which this
world is' the theatre, every man is called. It requires no
favoring exigency, no special endowment, no applauding
throng, no results even which may not seem to sleep with
the body of the humblest Christian till the resurrection.
Its theatre is time, its issues are in eternity. This is the
true battle of life. That is, not with the elements, to gain
food and shelter ; it is, not with the selfishness around us, to
gain wealth and position ; it is the conflict of every man
with that within and around him which would drag him and
others down, and would debar him and them from their
rightful inheritance and position as children of God. And
what element of heroism can there be which does not here
find theatre and scope ? There is an enemy to be con-

98 SELF-DENIAL.

quered, great struggles are required, great results are pend-
ing. Here are needed both endurance and achievement ;
and if hitheito, in Christian heroism, endurance has seemed
to preponderate over achievement, it is to be remembered .
that they spring from the same root, that endurance is
often the nobler and more difficult, and that in this cause
endurance is achievement. *' He that endureth unto the
end, shall be saved." Wonderful is it that Christianity,
which so humbles man, should also stimulate and exalt
him — that it should be the only thing that brings within
the reach of all, the struggles and rewards of a true
heroism.

We see also, from the preceding discussion, the pecu-
liar source and character of Christian joy.

Man is naturally capable of joy in its lighter forms.
There is a joy in wit, and pleasantry, and mirth ; and with
these Christianity is not incompatible, except as the sight
of the great mountains, or the piloting of a boat down the
rapids, or earnest engagement in any business is incom-
patible with them. They are a part of our humanity ;
they have their place, and let them have it, varying with
temperaments and with times. There are also the more
serious and deeper joys of success, of gratified desire and
affection in any form. But Christian joy is joy under the
Christian system, which exists only in opposition to sin
and in conflict with it. It is not, therefore, the joy of the
'absolute religion, when the kingdom shall be delivered up
to God, even the Father, but of a cause yet militant, mov-
ing on in discouragement and perplexity, and often meet-
ing with apparent defeat. It is the joy of repentance, of
humility, of hope, of conflict ; for in the conflict itself there
is often a stern joy not to be exchanged for those that are
lighter. There is in it the joy of earnestness, which is
man's natural element. Negation, skepticism, distrust,

SELF-DENIAL. 99

have no joy. There is joy as the truth grows brighter, as
temptation is overcome, as appetite and passion and evil
habits succumb, as there is news of success and of the
power of God's Spirit over the vast and varied field. An
Apostle could say, " I have no greater joy than to hear
that my children walk in truth." The Christian is in
sympathy with Christ ; and as the captive Jews remem-
bered Jerusalem, so he remembers his cause, and weeps
and rejoices with the alternations of its success. He is as
the patriot soldier watching the turns of parties and the
fate of battles. This may give him a sober and an appre-
hensive eye, but there is in it a deep and solemn joy.
This is high in itself, but is chiefly to be regarded as pro-
phetic of that which shall be, when these straits and shoals
and currents of time shall be past, and we shall look upon
the calm ocean. That will be the time for joy. And oh,
what joy, when, in view of the full range of this mighty
conflict, of the parties engaged, and of the issues involved,
we shall see the last enemy destroyed, and many sons
shall be brought unto glory. That will be the time for
joy ; now is the time for labor, self-denial, if need be, for
sufl"ering.

Once more, we may see what must be the characteristic
of effective labor in the Christian ministry.

Something is said at the present day, perhaps not too
much as it is intended, of making the ministry an inviting
field of labor to young men, and thus in these days, when
the world draws so strongly, of inducing more to enter it.
But nothing is gained by fighting the world with its own
weapons. The ministry has its own joys and rewards,
higher than any other ; but let me say to you, my friends,
who propose to enter it, that in its true spirit it can never
be made an inviting field to flesh and blood ; and unless
you expect to take upon you this burden of self-denial, and

100 SELF-DENIAL.

to look for your reward chiefly to the Captain of your sal-
vation when the conflict shall be over, let me entreat you
not to enter it.

But not only in the ministry is self-denial required ;
there is one rule and standard for all. And now, my dear
friends, let me ask each of you, standing where you now
do. Will you deny yourselves in this world for Christ's
sake ? I call you to no superstition, to no austerity, to no
fostering of pride and self-righteousness, but to the accept-
ance of this essential element of the Christian system
as Christ left it. As you answer this question, you will
settle the cast and general direction of your influence for
life. So far as you are Christian men, and have insight
into your own state and moral wants, you must adopt this
as an element of your own secret, spiritual life. Only thus
can you be transformed into the image of Christ. Only
thus, too, can you do anything to hasten the triumphs of
a redemptive and restorative system on the earth. In pro-
portion to this, must be your interest and ownership in the
future kingdom of Christ. This is the spirit in which Paul
prayed and labored, the spirit in which Mills and his com-
panions prayed under the " hay-stack " fifty years ago, and
devoted themselves personally to the work of missions ;
and only in this spirit can you be associated with them.

The voice of your great Captain is calling you to other
posts in the ranks of his army. Go to your posts. Vou
are needed there. Long has that army marched in feeble-
ness and in gloom. Through the long night of the past
I hear its muffled tread, and the low notes of its complain-
ing music. I hear the groanings of its prisoners, and see
the light of its martyr fires. But now the morning is
spread upon the mountains. Catching the strains of pro-
phecy, the music strikes up inspiring notes, and the tramp
of the host as it emerges from the gloom, begins to shake

SELF-DENIAL. 10 1

the earth. Eveiy where the standard of the Captain of
our salvation is thrown to the breeze, and the ranks are
defiling as on the plain of the final battle. Go to your
posts ; take unto you the whole armor of God ; watch the
signals and follow the footsteps of your Leader. That
Leader is not now in the form of the man of sorrows ;
not now does the sweat of agony rain from him. Him
the armies of heaven follow, and he "hath on his vesture
and on his thigh a name written, King of kings, and Lord
of lords." The conflict may be long, but its issue is not
doubtful. You may fall upon the field before the final
peal of victory, but be ye faithful unto death, and ye shall
receive a crown of life.

VI.

HIGHER AND LOWER GOOD.

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these
things shall be added unto you.— Matthew, vi. 33.

THE blessings which man can enjoy may be divided
into two classes. Of these, one class comes to him
without his seeking them. If he is to live at all, he jnust
see the light and feel the warmth of the sun ; he must
breathe the air, and smell the fragrance of flowers, and
hear the voices of men and of birds. These things he may,
indeed, seek ; but for the most part they come to him with-
out any seeking or agency of his.

But there is another class of blessings in respect to
which the voice of nature and of revelation is, " Seek, and
ye shall find." They are to be had only by seeking — often
only by the most assiduous and energetic application of
those powers which God has given for their attainment.
To most men this is true of wealth and its advantages ;
and it is universally true of all high knowledge and of all
those personal acquisitions and qualities of mind by which
a man becomes truly great.

But these blessings that must thus be sought, may also
be divided into two classes, according to the direction in
which they are sought. We may either seek to produce
outward changes and to acquire possessions, or we may
seek to produce inward changes — to become wiser and
better. We may seek to derive our happiness chiefly from

*** August 4, 1857.

HIGHER AND LOWER GOOD.

103

what wej^ossess, or from what we are. The greater part
of men evidently direct their activity chiefly to the produc-
tion of outward changes and the acquisition of posses-
sions. This, as it is the sin, is also the great error of the
race. A few only seek first to make the tree good, and
leave the result with God.

That " the kingdom of God and his righteousness " are
among those blessings that must be sought, is very plain.
In this respect they diifer even from knowledge. Some
knowledge is gathered unconsciously and involuntarily,
but the kingdom of God and righteousness can come only
through the activity and consent of the affections and the
will. It Is also equally plain, that the direction of the
activity to be put forth in attaining these must be within.
" The kingdom of God," says our Saviour, " is within you."
It does not consist, in any degree, in the possession of
anything. It has nothing to do with wealth, or station,
or learning, or place, or time. It consists wholly in our
state ; in what we really are in our relations to God as he
is revealed in his law, and in his gospel.

And such a state— a right state in our relations to
God — is not only to be sought, but is the highest end
which man can seek. That this is so regarded by God,
is evident from the very fact and plan of redemption.
All the motives and efforts and energies of his moral gov-
ernment have been, and are, adapted to produce in man a
change of sfafe. For this Christ came ; for this the Spirit
is given ; for this the gospel is preached ; for this angels
minister ; this causes joy in heaven ; in this God is more
glorified than in all the works of his hands. What God
desires of us, is a right state of the affections and the will
— that we should take the place of his children, and de his
children. Such a state, moreover, is the perfection of man
himself in that which is most intimate and essential to

104 HIGHER AND LOWER GOOD.

him. It constitutes him a centre of light and of power.
It is the brilliancy of the diamond, and all else is but the
setting.

Having thus seen what the kingdom of God is, in what
direction we are to seek it, and that it is the highest end
at which we can aim, we now proceed to inquire whether
it is not a general truth, that he who in any department
aims at and attains the highest good, will also, and in so
doing, attain, not merely an adequate amount, but the
highest amount of subordinate good ? This we suppose
to be a general principle, and we propose to show that it
is confirmed, first, by the Scriptures ; secondly, by all that
we observe in life ; and thirdly, by the very constitution
and processes of nature itself.

And first, if we test this principle by the Scriptures, we
shall find it fully confirmed in the Old Testament. Of
this no more striking instance could be given than that of
Solomon. When he was permitted to ask what he would,
and asked an understanding heart, " the speech pleased
the Lord, that Solomon had asked this thing. And God
said unto him, Because thou hast asked this thing, and
hast not asked for thyself long life ; neither hast asked
riches for thyself, nor hast asked the life of thine enimies;
but hast asked for thyself understanding to discern judg-
ment ; behold, I have done according to thy words ; lo, I
have given thee a wise and an understanding heart ; so
that there was none like thee before thee, neither after
thee shall any arise like unto thee. And I have also
given thee that which thou hast not asked, both riches, and
honor." He sought that which was higher, and God ad-
ded the lower.

But of this principle the whole history of the Israelites
is an exemplification. During the periods of the Judges,
whenever they sought the Lord and served him, they pros-

HIGHER AND LOWER GOOD.

105

pered. The earth yielded her increase, and their enemies
were subdued ; but when, ceasing to seek the higher
blessings, they turned to idolatry, the lower were also
removed. So in the history of the Kings, whenever one of
them " did that which was right in the sight of the Lord,"
the Lord was with him and made his way prosperous ;
and when one of them " did evil in the sight of the Lord,"
disaster was sure to follow. This is the one great lesson
taught by their whole history, and intended for the warn-
ing of individuals and of nations.

In the New Testament, spiritual blessings are more
regarded; but even there, this principle does not fail of
being announced in its general form. We are told that
"godliness is profitable unto all things, having the promise
of the life that now is" as well as " of that which is to
come.''

Being thus confirmed by Scripture, let us test this
principle by a reference to the common objects of desire
and pursuit in life.

Health is a subordinate good. To some extent, cer-
tainly, it is a good in itself, but it is chiefly so as enabling
us to perform fully the duties and labors of life. How
then is health best promoted ? Not by making it a direct
object, and exercising for the sake of exercise, but by seek-
ing, through all the exercise of body and mind which they
involve, to accomplish those higher ends for the attain-
ment of which health was given. It was not by attention
to health, but by labor, that our fathers secured the con-
stitutions they had. It is when people have little to do,
or do little, that they become nervous, and make out a
daily bulletin of their feelings ; and if they are not sick
think they are, and in the end become so. It is recognized
by every physician as a general principle, that the best

I06 HIGHER AND LOWER GOOD.

condition and means of health is such activity in the pur-
suit of other ends as shall cause health to be unthought of.
Again, sensitive pleasure is a subordinate good, and
how may this be best obtained ? The body may be used
either for the higher purpose of promoting the moral ends
of life, or as a machine with the direct object of manufac-
turing the various forms of pleasurable sensation ; and
what we say is, that it will yield more of this form of good
in its higher, than in its lower use. Pleasure results, not
from the body alone, nor from that which acts upon it
alone, but from the relation of the two. It is as the music
from the ^olian harp. Let the harp be well strung, and
it matters little what wind may blow. So of the body. It
is only when this is well strung by temperance, and has
that general vigor and perfection of all the senses by
which it is best fitted to serve the mind, that it is most
perfectly in harmony with all those natural objects which
are adapted to give it pleasure. The sensitive organiza-
tion of man was made to respond to the whole of nature.
It is all his counterpart, and natural inheritance. But
when he begins to make upon his system drafts of artificial
excitement for the express purpose of pleasure, his rela-
tions to those sources of temperate and lasting pleasure
which God has provided are changed. Quiet and simple
pleasures become insipid ; passive impressions become
weaker ; stronger and still stronger excitement is required ;
and the dividends of pleasure are increased only by draw-
ing on the capital stock. The natural birthright of the
senses is then rejected — sold for a mess of pottage.
Thenceforward the man knows nothing of sun-risings and
sun-settings, and the glories of night, and the march of the
seasons, and the singing of birds. Sensation is more and
more divorced from that union with intellect and senti-
ment by which it may be transfigured. Instead of being

HIGHER AND LOWER GOOD. lO/

mingled in the feast of life as a condiment, it is concen-
trated into an unwholesome drug that stimulates and
bewilders its victim for a time, and then palls upon the
sense. Even Epicurus could say, that the greatest amount
of pleasure could be reached only by temperance.

Thus it is that the use of the sensitive organization for
a purpose lower than that for which it was intended, is not
only wickedness but folly. This point should be fully
settled by every young man, for it is just here that many
make shipwreck.

We next inquire how this principle applie^ to the ac-
quisition of wealth. Would a lawyer, or a physician, or an
artist gain wealth, how will he do it most successfully?
Certainly by attaining something higher — great excellence
in his profession or skill in his art — and then wealth will
flow in as a matter of course. But if any should say that
the skill is subordinate to the wealth, let me speak of a cha-
racter for prudence, for energy, for high integrity and honor,
for righteousness generally. To such a character wealth is
certainly subordinate, and yet the cultivation of that will
be found one of the surest ways of acquiring wealth. This
includes all that is meant by the proverb, that " honesty
is the best policy," and something more. Not only is
honesty the best policy, but there is a tendency in all
righteousness, or, as the Scriptures term it, wisdom, to
produce wealth and the outward means of enjoyment.
" Length of days is in her right hand, and in her left hand
riches and honor." Righteousness must exclude all habits
of vice and of vain and injurious expense ; it would insure
industry and a sense of responsibility, and would secure
that confidence which is so important an element of suc-
cess with business men.

In the present disordered state of things, there may be,
and are exceptions to this in individual cases ; but, on a

I08 HIGHER AND LOWER GOOD.

large scale, where alone the principle can be fairly tested,
there can be no exception. Let a nation, let this nation
become righteous, and it is as certain as any law in phy-
sics, that it would be the most effectual means of increasing
its wealth and worldly prosperity. The heavy weights of
crime and pauperism, that now drag society down, would
fall off; its productive power would be greatly increased;
property would be more valuable as more secure ; and the
imagination can hardly conceive the extent to which such
a nation might enjoy all that can make this life happy.

Again, how may a man best take care of and extend
his reputation ? Not by aiming at it directly, by anxiously
nursing it, eager to show every unfavorable rumor to be
false, and to fan every spark of good opinion into a flame ;
but by going on in an independent course of duty, leaving
unfounded reports to die out of themselves, and the sparks
to kindle into a flame, or not, as they may.

And if this be true of mere reputation, it is much more
so of any great and lasting fame. The highest form of
greatness, and, of course, the highest legitimate fame, can
never belong to a man who has fame for his chief object.
He is no true artist, who pursues his art for the sake of
fame. The patriot, whose highest object is fame, is no
patriot.

Health, pleasure, wealth, reputation, fame, these are all
subordinate objects, and to them all the principle now laid
down applies. As a general rule, they are best attained
when some higher end is the immediate object of pursuit.

Here, then, we have a great law for human action. It
is also a law which God has prescribed for himself, which
runs through nature, and is incorporated into all the pro-
cesses and methods of his natural and moral government.'*
Does he always, in securing higher ends, incidentally
secure the lower ?

HIGHER AND LOWER GOOD. iqq

In securing specific ends, and giving unity to his works,
God has two methods. One of these we may call the
method of additions, the other that of development. In
the first, he passes onward and upward, from step to step ;
at each step adding something new, but also bringing for-
ward, either in itself or its results, all that had preceded.

To illustrate this, we must go back to the beginning
of time, when we may suppose matter to have existed
chaotically in space, having properties but not laws. And
it may be well for our present purpose, to represent the
world to be constructed as a pyramid with a broad base,
and ascending by successive steps or platforms, each above
less extensive than that below.

What then, in such a state, must have been the first
and lowest step by which matter could have been rendered
available ? Evidently it was to bring it together into
masses ; and so the first law in the order of nature, if not
of time, must have been that of gravitation. This lies at
the foundation. It is simple, universal, and seems to per-
vade all space ; but, acting alone, it would simply hold the
particles in proximity.

The object next higher would be, to form from these
loose particles solid bodies. This is done by what is
called the attraction of cohesion ; and bodies united by this
will form the second platform. But here it will be observed,
that the higher includes the lower. Not all particles that
gravitate cohere, but all that cohere gravitate.

The object next higher would be, to cause particles not
merely to cohere, but to combine and to form compounds.
Bodies thus united would form the third platform. But
here, again, this higher is not attained without the two
lower. All bodies united by chemical affinity also cohere
and gravitate.

The next higher and more specific object would be,

no HIGHER AND LOWER GOOD.

the production of regular forms, as in crystals ; but every
body that has a regular form also gravitates and coheres,
and has its particles united by chemical affinity.

These are the first four platforms in the upward pro-
gress of the creation, and they include inorganic matter.

The platform next higher is composed of regular forms
endowed with organic life. This includes all plants — the
whole vegetable creation. But in every plant we find not
only organic life, and regular form, but also chemical
affinity, and cohesion, and gravitation.

The next step upward is to sensitive life — that which
is capable of enjoyment and of suffering, with the instincts
necessary for its preservation. This greatly narrows our
platform ; but here again the attainment of the higher
both includes and presupposes that of the lower. In
every being possessed of sensitive life, we find also organic
life, and regular form, and chemical affinity, and cohesion
and gravitation.

There is but one step more. It is that which carries us
from the sensitive life with its instincts, up to the higher
rational and moral life of man. Here we find every end
attained that we had below, and something added. Man is
subject to every law to which the minutest portion of mat-
ter is subject, and has, generically, every characteristic
of every order of being from the animalcule up to himself.
In him we find operating gravitation, and cohesion, and
chemical affinity; in him we find regular form, and sensitive
life, and instinct, and, added to these, the higher gifts of
reason and of conscience, by which he is made in the
image of God.

Thus do WQ pass from that which is subject to law, to

that which also comprehends law. Thus is man placed on

the summit of the pyramid of these lower works, and fitted

to link himself with that which is above. Thus is he the

15

HIGHER AND LOWER GOOD. m

natural ruler, the epitome and crown of this lower world.
Thus is he fitted, as partaking of the nature of all, to be
the representative and priest of everything below him,
and to gather up and give a voice to that inarticulate
praise which goes up from every part of it to the Creator.
Thus it is that the seven steps of the creation up which
I have endeavored to lead you, may be compared to seven
notes in music sounded successively, and then in harmony.
In the first step, there was a single note ; in the second,
the same note was taken up and another that accorded
with it was added; in the third, another still was added to
these, till man came, and everything was prepared for the
full chorus that rang through the arches of heaven when
the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God
shouted for joy.

We see then how perfectly, in this method. of addi-
tions, God adheres to the principle which we are now
considering. He never does secure, according to the con-
stitution which he has adopted it would seem impossiple
he ever should secure, a higher end or good, without
securing at the same time, incidentally, every subordinate
end and good.

But, besides the method of additions, I have spoken
of that of development. This applies only to organized
beings, each of which is a system having parts and func-
tions, some of which are subordinate and others ultimate.
To such a system nothing is added from without, except
as there is development from within. It supposes some-
thing to be enveloped ; and that to which all the other
parts are subservient, will be that which is originally
enclosed in all the rest, and which is the last to come to
perfection. So it is with the brain in man, so with the
flower and the fruit in the plant.

But that the principle in question must hold under

112 HIGHER AND LOWER GOOD.

this method is evident because, here, that which is highest
becomes perfect only through the ministration of the parts
that are lower ; and the more perfect the parts are that
minister, the more efficient must their ministration be.
This is the general rule. Limitations there may be, but
not exceptions. Would God secure to any man the high-
est, the best balanced, and the longest continued action
of the intellectual and moral powers, he does it only by
giving him a sound physical constitution. When Moses,
the servant of the Lord, was a hundred and twenty years
old, " his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated."
So has God constituted every organic being, that " if one
member suffer, all the members suffer with it, and if one
member rejoice, all the members rejoice with it ; " and if
he would secure the perfection of the higher parts that are
ministered unto, he must do it by securing the perfection
of the lower parts that minister.

So far, then, as we can observe the works and methods
of God, there is no exception to the principle now stated.
Within the sphere of this world, it is evidently a great,
guiding idea, in all that he does. It was so in its con-
struction, giving it unity; it is so in its government, and
how much farther it may extend, we cannot say. It may
be, taking the universe together, and going back to the
very birth of time — not of our time, but of all time — that
the first world, or sun, or system that came into being, gave
the keynote to the whole. It may be that that note has
been repeated with additions from that time onward, till
at length it may require the ken of the highest archangel
to read the extended scale, and the voices, as of many
waters, that surround the throne, to utter the swelling
anthem.

But, it may be asked, is not the great doctrine of vol-
untary self-denial, a doctrine taught equally by nature and

HIGHER AND LOWER GOOD. 113

by Christianity, an exception to this principle ? Is it not
of the very essence of self-denial, that instead of attaining
a subordinate good by pursuing one that is higher, we
attain the higher only by renouncing the subordinate ?

This is a difficulty ; but it will be observed that it
arises wholly from the disorder and unnatural state -intro-
duced by sin. This disorder and perversion are some-
times so great, as in martyrdom, that it is necessary to
sacrifice every subordinate good, even life itself, for the
attainment of that which is higher. Paul found it neces-
sary to suffer, and did suffer, the loss of all things for
Christ's sake.

Still, a fair statement of what is required by the law of
Christian self-denial, will show that such cases are but
exceptions. This law is not arbitrary. It is no law of
fanaticism, or enthusiasm, or self-torture. It simply re-
quires, first, that we deny ourselves everything that is
sinful in itself; and, second, that we deny ourselves sub-
ordinate good not sinful in itself only so far as it would
exclude a higher good. The first of these is no exception
to the principle of the text, because pleasures, sinful in
themselves, are not a subordinate but an incompatible
good — incompatible with any true good. Under the sec-
ond requisition there may be exceptions, but they commend
themselves to our reason and give us our true law at a
point where there has been serious error. The Christian
may attain any subordinate end, as wealth, may enjoy any
subordinate pleasure, as that of the senses, to the highest
point of non-interference with that which is higher and
better. You are at liberty, my friends, to pursue wealth,
and pleasure, and fame, as far as you please, provided that
pursuit be not incompatible with the attainment of a higher
good. You are at perfect liberty to follow amusements to

114 HIGHER AND LOWER GOOD.

any extent, if there be nothing higher or better, which, as
men, and as Christians, you can do.

While, then, we admit that exceptions may arise in this
way, still, the general rule will hold that suboidinate good
is best attained by the pursuit of that which is higher.

Having thus illustrated and confirmed the general
doctrine implied in the text, from the Scriptures, from what
we observe in life, and from the constitution of nature, I
wish to put into your hands an infallible chart. Here it
is : " Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteous-
ness." Since the world began, there was never a sentence
penned or uttered which I should prefer to give you as
your guide. In it is the essence of all wisdom for man,
for the individual and for society, the wisdom of all reform
and of all growth.

In following this chart you will, first, see the necessity
of seeking something. " Seek ye," says our Saviour,
"seek." Have an aim, definite, specific. Without this
there can be no comprehensive plans, no unity, no true
decision, no earnestness, no moral power. The whole
history of the race, the arrangements of nature, the con-
stitution of man, all proclaim that man can reach his true
good only by the voluntary activity of his highest powers in
seeking a chosen end. Some things you may have with-
out seeking ; some you may seek, and not find ; but there
are things, and those which you most need, that you will
never find without seeking.

Seek ye — ye, who are placed on the summit of the
pyramid of these lower works ; ye, who may, if you will,
link yourselves with that which is still higher ; ye, who
have but one life in which to make the great choice ; ye^
who have been redeemed by the precious blood of the Son
of God, seek ye.

But what will ye seek ? This is the great question,

HIGHER AND LOWER GOOD. II 5

here and now. What will ye seek? What will ye seek
first "i Not for its own sake, but for its bearing upon this
question, have I asked your attention to the preceding dis-
cussion. I wished that my appeal to you to seek first the
kingdom of God, might come, not only from his word, but
that it might be seconded by a voice from all his works.
I wished you to see that the principle involved is so in-
wrought into all those works, that it cannot fail to avenge
itself upon those who shall disregard it. I wished you to
see that the works of God are but as a great whispering-
gallery, along which, if you will but put your ear to it, the
words of Christ are constantly echoing. Seek, then, not that
which is below you — you were not made for that — but that
" which is above, where Christ sitteth, at the right hand
of God." Seek first the kingdom of God, and his right-
eousness. Seek it first in the order of time. Let no busi-
ness preclude it. Seek it first in the strength of that pur-
pose by which you devote yourselves to its pursuit. The
kingdom of God ! His glorious and eternal kingdom !
His righteousness ! The moral likeness of God ! Seek
these, and all other things, tmly good, shall be added unto
you. That this shall be so, there comes a voice, not from
the word of God only, but from the very beginning of
time, and it is uttered with increased force at every step in
the process of the creation. No, my friends, it is not /
that speak to you ; it is the whole process and method and
structure of the creation of God. For Him all his works
testify. When the Saviour says, " Seek ye first the king-
dom of God, and his righteousness ; and all these things
shall be added unto you," there is not one of them that
does not utter its Amen.

And why should not he who attains the kingdom of
God and his righteousness, have all other things added ?
It must be so. If there may be exceptions and limitations

Il6 HIGHER AND LOWER GOOD.

in the present temporary scene of sin and disorder, I be-
seech you think not so of God as to suppose there can be
any ultimate exception, " Though it tarry, wait for it ; it
will surely come ; it will not tarry." Think not of God as
unwilling that his creatures should enjoy all from his
works that they can enjoy, without sin. Vast as this uni-
verse is, he has made it, the whole of it, for his creatures.
He owns, not the earth only and the planets, but the sun,
and the milky-way, and the far-off nebulae. And what
use has he for all these but to make his creatures happy ?
And whom should he make happy but those who, in his
appointed way, seek first his kingdom and righteousness ?
So doing, you shall become his children ; and if children,
then heirs ; and then it is the voice of reason as well as of
Scripture, that utters that promise — the most magnificent
that language can embody — ye " shall inherit all things."
Ye shall be children and citizens in the kingdom of God
and shall have the free range and use of all his works.
The clouds and darkness which now seem to rest over his
moral government, you shall see roll away ; and from the
first faint whisper at the birth of time, to the full and tri-
umphant chorus of a finished creation and redemption, you
shall catch and repeat the song that shall come up to God
from all his works of creation and providence and grace.
With wonder and joy you shall witness every new step in
the process of creative power, and of the manifestation of
the divine character. You shall be present at that next
and higher manifestation to which all things are now tend-
ing and hastening, and of which he speaks when he says,
" Behold, I make all things new." You shall sit down at
the marriage supper of the Lamb.

VIL

THE ONE EXCEPTION.

Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fail ;
but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength ; they shall
mount up with wings as eagles ; they shall run and not be weary j and
they shall walk and not faint.— Isaiah, xl. 30, 31.

IS there anything that begins to be, and grows,
that does not reach an appointed limit, and then
go back ? Is not the daily movement of the sun in
the heavens the fit emblem of every living thing that he
looks upon in his circuit? He comes out of his chamber
in the morning ; he climbs the eastern sky ; he reaches
his meridian height, and then declines to his setting. So
it is with every blade of grass, with every shrub, with every
tree ; so with every insect and animal, from the animalcule
to the elephant ; so it is with the physical system of man,
and so with his mental faculties. And not only do change
and decay affect every organized being, but also the em-
pires of men and their monuments, and even the face of
nature itself " And surely the mountain falling cometh
to nought, and the rock is removed out of his place ; the
waters wear the stones ; thou washest away the things that
grow out of the dust of the earth ; and thou destroyest the
hope of man." Throughout this universe nothing is at
rest. There is permanence only from change. The sta-
bility of the heavens is from their motion ; the permanence
of our bodies is by constant waste and supply. Whether
(he movements in the heavens will be perpetual we know

*** August i, 1858.

Il8 THE ONE EXCEPTION.

not, but in the march of life every step is towards death.
The movement there tends to a cessation, and that cessa-
tion is death.

It is this certainty of decay that gives a tinge of sad-
ness to the scenes that are most full of life. In the deep-
est green of the mountain-side, the prophetic eye sees the
"sere and yellow leaf;" in the gayest assembly of the
young, it sees the gray hair and tottering age.

But to this law we find an exception in the Bible
representation of the moral growth and progress of the
righteous. We are told that "the path of the just is as
the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the per-
fect day" — that " the righteous shall hold on his way, and
he that hath clean hands shall be stronger and stronger " —
— that " they shall go from strength to strength " — that
" they shall mount up with wings as eagles ; they shall
run, and not be weary ; and they shall walk, and not faint.''

So, likewise, the kingdom of Christ is not to be subject
to the decays of other kingdoms. " Of the increase of his
government and peace there shall be no end." " And the
kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break
in pieces and consume all other kingdoms, and it shall
stand forever." " His throne shall be established forever
as the moon, and as a faithful witness in heaven." "His
dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass
away; and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed."

Here, in those who wait on God, we have an alleged
exception to the law of decay.

What then is it to wait on God ? It is not to wait/^r
him in an indolent passivity. It supposes that " all our
springs are in him," and that there is an open channel of
communication between him and us ; so that the resources
of his omnipotence may flow in to us, and supplement our
tveaknesses and infumities. Its elements are expectation
'5*

THE ONE EXCEPTION. Ho

and trust. It implies ends sought in sympathy with God,
and a sense of dependence on him actively expressed. It
is as when a captive, who cannot redeem himself, waits on
and earnestly implores the help of one who can redeem
him. We do not suffice to ourselves. On every side we
are surrounded by agents and elements that we cannot
control. Beset where we stand, opposed when we would
go forward, we find ourselves powerless in the presence
of obstacles and foes. Then we wait upon God ; our
strength is renewed, and we go forward. Plainly, those
"who wait on the Lord" are the same as "the just,"
"the righteous; " and the doctrine is, that the moral and
spiritual nature of man is an exception to everything else
on this earth ; and that moral goodness not only need not
wane, but that it may have an uninterrupted progress.

To establish the doctrine just stated will be our first
object; and to do this, we must find the ground on which
the exception is made. This is found in the very nature
of moral goodness. Moral goodness has its seat in the
affections and the will, and these do not so decay with
the strength of the body and the power of the intellect,
that that goodness is impaired.

It is a brave and a beautiful thing, if indeed it be not
rather sublime, when a man, in the fulness of health and
of strength, is required to abjure his faith in Christ, and in
the face of the tyrant he says boldly, and even defiantly,
No. But when the inquisition puts its victim on the rack,
and the power of endurance is tested to the utmost, and
there remains only strength of mind to apprehend the
question, and only strength of body to whisper the feeblest
No, there is in that JVo, a power that is mighty in propor-
tion to the very feebleness of its utterance. Yea, if we
suppose any power of apprehension, and of expression
even by the feeblest sign, to remain, the indication of

I20 THE ONE EXCEPTION.

firm principle and enduring affection and moral goodness
can become strongest and most affecting only at the point
where the powers of the body and of the mind flicker on
the very verge of death, and at the moment when they go
out in its darkness. The love of the Saviour for this
world reached the crowning point of its expression only at
the moment when he " bowed his head and gave up the
ghost."

In these cases the exhaustion and feebleness are
indeed from torture, but the principle is the same in natu-
ral decay. Had the affections of that aged and dying
Christian grown weaker as his powers decayed, who,
when he was asked if he knew his friend who spoke to
him, said, " No," — if he knew his children, " No," — if he
knew his wife, " No," — if he knew the Lord Jesus Christ,
"Yes," and a smile from heaven lighted up his counte-
nance; "Yes, he is all my hope." In such cases, the
embers of a wasting animal life gather over the " vital
spark of heavenly flame," and obscure it. It seems to be
lost ; but when it can be thus reached, as sometimes it
may, it is seen to be all aglow, and the light which it shoots
up is but the brighter from the darkness out of which it
comes.

It is conceded that the strength of virtue and of trust
are most tried in adversity, and when the natural desires
are thwarted. " Though he slay me, yet will I trust in
him," is the strongest possible expression of confidence.
Let, then, the decay of the powers from age commence
and go on, and let there be perfect acquiescence in this
till their apparent cessation ; and how does the power of
goodness, as thus seen, differ from that which is seen in
submission to a voluntary death, and in holding on, through
exhaustion from torture, till the very end .?

The truth seems to be, that an accountable being,

THE ONE EXCEPTION. 121

remaining such, can be placed in no circumstances in
which moral goodness, the principle of duty, of submission,
of faith, may not be brought into exercise ; and if exer-
cised, then, by a natural law, must they be strengthened ;
and the more difficult and trying the circumstances are,
the more strength may be gained. It is through and in
the very weakness of the natural powers, that the moral
powers may show their strength. Only at the moment of
the seeming triumph of the tyrant, of disease, of decay, can
humanity pay its highest homage to goodness and to God.
In the struggle of men against evil and for the right,
there is doubtless given the special and supernatural aid
of God j but, in addition to this, it would seem, from what
has been said, that the exception made by the Scriptures
to the great natural law of decay, is itself sustained by a
natural law.

Having thus shown that there maybe constant progress
in moral goodness, we next inquire whether such progress
is not a condition of the highest possible strength and per-
fection of the intellectual faculties. If we regard man
simply as intellectual, will he not, both as an individual
and as a race, mount higher, in proportion as he cultivates
his moral powers, and waits upon God ?

This is a question that deeply concerns every scholar ;
and that it should be answered rightly, is of much conse-
quence, both because it lies at the basis of all right edu-
cation, and of all true self-culture ; and because there is,
to some extent, an impression that skepticism and wicked-
ness are naturally associated with intellectual power.

In what has been said it has been taken for granted
that the powers of the intellect really decay. This may
be doubted. Of mind in its essence we know nothing, and
of the laws of its connection with the body, very little.

122 THE ONE EXCEPTION.

What seems decay may be from the body, and be only as
a temporary drowsiness. Certain it is that the intellectual
are indispensable to the moral powers ; that in the nature
and sphere of each, there is equally a provision for an in-
definite progress ; and that the aged must be supposed to
carry into another state, not the imbecility of a second child-
hood, but the results of their mental, as well as of their
moral action. Still, these powers do secfn to decay ; be-
tween them and the moral powers, as has been shown,
there is a broad distinction ; and what we say, in either
case, is, that the condition of their highest attainment is
the cultivation of the moral powers.

That this is true we believe, first, because of the
obstacles to intellectual growth and progress that would be
removed by the ascendency of the moral powers.

These obstacles are prejudice and vice, both of which
are inseparable from the sway of passion and appetite, and
both of which would disappear in the full ascendency of
the moral powers. If prejudice may not be said to weaken
the mental powers, it misdirects, perverts, and limits their
action. The power of the eye is one thing ; a clear atmo-
sphere is another. Prejudice is, to the mental eye, an in-
distinct, a colored, a distorting medium. But while pre-
judice misdirects, vice enfeebles, or wholly prevents the
action of the intellect. From the drunkard, the glutton,
the licentious man, the gambler, we do not look for con-
tinuous thought, or for any rich fruit of intellectual cul-
ture. They have the instincts and sagacity of the animal,
heightened by their connection with rational powers ; but
they are engrossed by their vices, and their intellects have
no range beyond the activity necessary for self-gratifica-
tion. Through these vices much of the finest intellect of
the race has been lost. And so it must be. If the swal-
low would fly, its wing must not be draggled in the mud ;

THE ONE EXCEPTION. I23

if the eagle would continue to mount up, the animal thai
is sucking his blood must drop from under his wing.

But that the intellect will be most successfully culti-
vated through the moral powers, appears, secondly, be-
cause it is lower than those powers, and subordinate to
them ; and because, in securing a higher good, we best
secure that which is subordinate and lower.

That the intellect is lower than the moral powers ap-
pears, because it is conditional for their activity. And
here we find a criterion which may be universally applied
in determining, both in matter and in mind, what agencies
and powers are higher, and what are lower. Always that
which is conditional for another thing, and so serves it, is
lower than that thing. The foundation of a house is con-
ditional for a house, and is lower, in more senses than one.
It is indispensable, but of no value without something be-
yond itself. So of all the powers and agencies of inani-
mate matter. They are conditional for vegetable life, and
are lower. So, again, vegetable is conditional for animal
life, and it is lower ; so with the heart and the brain ; so
with the body and the mind; and so with the intellect and
the moral powers. The intellect is conditional for choice
and activity, in which are the end of man, but it does not
choose. It does not even know ends, as such. It can
judge of their attainability, and of the fitness of means ;
but the apprehension and choice of an end, and especially,
that highest act of the mind, the choice of a supreme end,
belongs to a higher power.

The inferiority of the intellect is also manifest, because
it is an instrumental and not a governing power.

We cannot too carefully discriminate those powers in
us, by which we choose ends, from those that are merely
instruments in their attainment. In the one is wisdom, in
the other talent ; in the one is character, in the other capa-

124 THE ONE EXCEPTION.

city ; in the one, the man himself acts in his whole being,
and very personality j in the other, the faculties play on
the surface. The end is already chosen, and the whole
work is simply executive. But, as has been said, the in-
tellect does not choose. It is an axe, a saw, a hammer, a
a piece of machinery to be worked by a power back of
tself. It is a Swiss mercenary, that may be enlisted in
iny cause, good or bad, and, as such, is inferior to the
employing and directing power.

It appearing thus that the intellect is lower than the
moral powers, it remains to show that the well-being of
that which is lower can be best attained only as we secure
that of the higher.

This was shown in the discourse of last year to be true of
health, and pleasure, and wealth, and reputation, and fame ;
and also thai the principle implied is incorporated into all
the works of God. It is a great law of nature, with as few
exceptions as there are to most of her laws ; and we may
fairly presume, till the contrary shall be shown, that the
intellect is no exception.

But, that the intellect will be best cultivated through
the moral powers will appear, if we compare those powers
with any other force by which it can be worked.

As has been said, the intellect must be worked by
something back of it. It is as the muscle, that is nothing
without the nerve ; and its efficiency will depend partly
on original structure and on training, and partly on the
power that lies behind. That power must be some in-
stinct, tendency, appetite, passion, taste, feeling, some
capacity of emotion or enjoyment ; and if we make a com-
parison among these, we shall find that the moral powers
have the advantage, both in strength and continuance,
and also in the unity and harmony that result from their
working.

THE ONE EXCEPTION. 125

Man's nature is not a hive of faculties without a queen
bee. It is not a mob. It is rather a commonweaUh
where each has its place, and where there can be strength
and continuance and harmony of action only as the moral
nature is made central, and as all move and cluster about
that.

If any force can com.pare favorably with the moral
nature, it must be ambition. But ambition refers, for its
standard, to the opinions and attainments of others;
when it has gained its end, or become hopeless of gaining
it, its efforts cease. Let that end be but gained, and it
does not require the improvement of time ; it knows no-
thing of working in harmony with God, and so nothing of
healthy, symmetrical, beautiful growth and development,
as good in themselves. It has no power of self-regulation,
and so is often consuming and self-destructive. It puts
the mind in conflict with itself, and makes it anxious for
the result. It is selfish, repellent, and tends to isolation.
That follows here which follows always when the lower
faculty is disengaged from the higher, and ceases to act in
its light. That which was intended to walk erect by hold-
ing on to something above it, becomes a serpent going
upon its belly and eating dust.

But the moral nature is stronger than ambition. It
underlies all true heroism, all martyrdom, and, by uniting
us to God, was intended to be the paramount and immor-
tal force of oar nature. Let this, then, lie back of intel-
lectual effort, and we have a permanent, constant, self-
regulating principle, that will always bring the faculties up
to the full glow of a healthful activity, and forbid them to
go beyond. Now, the standard will be fixed, not with
reference to others, but by capacity and opportunity. The
mind will act in its unity, with no conflict of its higher and
lower faculties, and with no fear of the result. Hence

126 THE ONE EXCEPTION.

there will be, not only strength, but balance and complete-
ness and order and beauty. Not only will there be har-
mony among the faculties themselves, with no tendency to
a repellency of others, or to isolation ; but it will be felt
that the activity is with all, and for all. It will be felt to
be a struggling towards that absolute perfection of one
which is necessary to the perfection of all.

But whatever may be said of individuals, of communi-
ties there can be no doubt. The spiritual and moral ele-
vation of a people would certainly secure their general
enlightenment. It would not make every individual intel-
lectual, but it would create a summer atmosphere for the
quickening and growth of intellect, that would rest alike
upon the hilltop and in the valley, and would solicit every
latent capacity. The higher faculties would so strike down,
and stimulate and appropriate the lower, that there would
be, if not technical intellectualism, yet a broad, balanced,
directive intelligence which would, as by instinct, bear
society on to its right ends ; and in the light and under
the stimulus of which, individual growth, whether humble
or gigantic, would be most favored. Then would the
necessity of toil be no longer a blessing to man by keep-
ing him from mischief Leisure would be a blessing. A
community let loose into that, would rise like a bird.
Under the power of moral motives, leisure — the power to
do what we please — would be equivalent to a college edu-
cation, and the works of God would be to every man a
university. Without these motives, even a college educa-
tion becomes, within the limits of possible graduation, a
systematic evasion of study, the works of God are a blank,
and this furnished world becomes a pigsty or a pande-
monium. It is in the use to be made of its leisure, that
the problem of the race lies. Who shall drain this bog ?
— hitherto a bog bearing weeds and sending up miasm —

THE ONE EXCEPTION. 12/

who shall drain it, and make it healthful and fruitful?
Tell me what is to be done with the leisure that a machin-
ery, gigantic and tiny, myriad-handed and half- reasoning,
is beginning to give, and will yet give more fully to the
race, and I will tell you what the destiny of the race will
be. To the opportunities and facilities it will furnish for
intellectual and social elevation there is scarcely a limit ;
there is none to the sensuality and degradation which may
grow from its abuse. But intellect in the service of the
passions tends downwards. Only from the sense of obli-
gation and the free play of those spiritual affinities by
which we are united to God, will there be the broad light
of an intellectual day.

We conclude, then, that the higher intellectual power,
whether of the individual or of the community, can be
reached only by waiting on God, and by the culture,
through that, of the spiritual and moral powers.

If, now, it be inquired how the impression of intellec-
tual power has come to be associated with skepticism and
wickedness, an answer may be found, first in the fields of
literature and speculation commonly entered by the skep-
tical and licentious. These are those of imagination, wit,
ridicule, and trancendental metaphysics. Often, pervaded
by a sneer, and quietly assuming the falseness of religion
and the weakness or h3'pocrisy of those who profess it,
we have, in novels, in poetry, in essays, a combination of
all these. Their object, the last excepted, is not truth, but
impression ; and this last is as yet so overrun with strange
terms, so the common ground of truth, falsehood, and non-
sense, each aping the profound, that it is difficult to say
whether it is better as a hunting-ground for truth, or a
stalking-ground for vanity, or a hiding-place for falsehood.
That there is power in this literature, is not denied ; but

128 THE ONE EXCEPTION.

the power of imagination, wit, assumption, and even of
bathos, it is not distinguished from that of fair and search-
ing investigation.

A second answer we find in the effect upon the mind
of all irregular action, especially when combined with
daring, or fool-hardiness. The utmost power of a horse,
exerted in the true line of draft, will excite no attention.
Half the power put forth in rearing and plunging, will
draw a crowd about him. A cheap method of notoriety,
the world over, is this rearing and plunging. Sam Patch,
leaping over Genesee Falls, could gather a greater crowd
than Daniel Webster. The great powers of nature, those
by which she wheels up her sun, and navigates her planets,
and lifts vegetation, and circulates her waters, by which
she holds herself in her unity and manifests her diversity,
are regular, quiet, within the traces of law, and excite no
attention. Here and there the quiet eye of a philosopher
expands in permanent wonder, but from the very fact, the
greatest wonder of all, that these forces are so clothed in
order and tempered with gentleness, they are to the multi-
tude nothing. Not so with volcanoes and earthquakes,
with hurricanes and thunder-storms, with water-spouts and
cataracts. These are irregular manifestations of the great
forces that lie back of them. Compared with those forces,
they are only as the eddy to the river ; only as the open-
ing of the side-valve and the hiss of the steam compared
with the force of the engine that is bearing on the long
train ; and yet these are the wonders of the world. So
with the mind. When it respects order and law, when it
seeks the ends and moves in the channels appointed by
God, its mightiest and most beneficent movements excite
comparatively little attention. But combine now irregu-
larity with audacity ; open a side valve ; assail the founda-
tions of belief; make it impossible for God to work a

THE ONE EXCEPTION. 1 29

miracle, or to prove it if he should ; turn history into a
myth ; show your consciousness of power by setting your-
self against the race ; flatter the nineteenth century ; de-
throne God ; if you make the universe God, yourself being
a part of it, so much the better, — do thus, and there will
not be wanting those who will despise the plodders, and
hail you as " the coming man."

I have thus endeavored to show, first, that moral good-
ness is the only exception, on this earth, to the law of
decay ; and, secondly, that it is the condition of the high-
est intellectual power, both for the individual and the race.

In the light of these propositions we may see, first,
what must be the essential elements in the promised king-
dom of our Lord Jesus Christ.

They must be righteousness and knowledge. So says
the prophet. " The people shall be all righteous : they
shall inherit the land forever." "And the work of right-
eousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness,
quietness and assurance forever." " And wisdom and
knowledge shall be the stability of thy times, and strength
of salvation." This gives the line and order of effort for
all who would labor for Christ. Not for an unintelligent
piety — well-meaning, but blundering — are they to labor ;
not for a superstition without knowledge, calling itself
righteousness, but weak, sentimental and showy — bolstered
up by fine arts and wire-pulled by a hierarchy; not for
knowledge without righteousness, sensualized, self-con-
ceited and presumptuous ; but for a combination of right-
eousness and knowledge working together like the warmth
and the light, everywhere pervading society in its free,
oceanic, and multitudinous action, and building it up into
the order and beauty of heaven.

130

THE ONE EXCEPTION.

In the second place you will see what you are to do in
carrying out your ow!i education.

That education you have, I trust, entered upon not
wholly from worldly ends, but with some reference to the
state of your permanent being, and to an immortal pro-
gress. For it, many of you have made sacrifices, and have
applied yourselves laboriously and faithfully. Grow, my
friends ; seek to grow. But as a condition of a growth
that shall be permanent, healthful, symmetrical, do not
ignore that interaction of the higher and lower powers
which is like that of the leaves and the trunk of the tree.
As in that, elaboration, assimilation and ultimate growth
are from above, so it is only through the higher moral
nature that the sap of knowledge is converted into wis-
dom. If your chief sphere of study were to be the abstract
sciences, cold and passionless, where, as in mathematics,
the relations depend on no will, your moral state would be
of less moment ; but your chief sphere is to be nature and
man, where everything is constituted by design, and where
the key to the whole structure and to each particular
department is to be found in ends and uses. Here love,
trust, sympathy, will be stimulants of thought and elements
of moral power. Nature is from God no less than mind.
It was made for mind. It reflects the thoughts and feel-
ings of God. It is understood only as the thoughts of
God in it are reached, and it must be that, as we are in a
right moral state, and in sympathy with God, we shall
have a finer sense and a quicker sympathy on the side of
nature. She will open herself to us more fully, and be-
come, in a far higher sense, a companion and an educat-
ing power. But let now a man study nature with a scoff-
ing spirit, and he must fail of insight. His stand-point
will be wrong. Movements that are onward and beauti-
ful when seen from the centre, will seem to him retrograde

THE ONE EXCEPTION. I31

and perplexing. The sweetest voices of nature, her hymns,
he cannot hear ; her highest beauties he cannot see, her
profouudest teachings are to him mere babble. Jeers,
sarcasm, fault-finding, exciting no enthusiasm, with no re-
action on thought, with no element of satisfaction except
as they minister to notoriety, will take the place of admi-
ration, love, adoration, by which thought is naturally quick-
ened and rewarded. Would you study the works of God,
and yourselves as a part of those works, be in harmony
with yourselves, and in sympathy with God.

But thirdly. Not only are you to educate yourselves,
opening your minds to all light, and putting forth all effort,
but directly and indirectly you will have much to do in
educating the community, and you will see, in the light of
this subject, your duty in that regard.

You will neither form, nor encourage, any extravagant
expectations from what is commonly called education.
Not so will society grow up into its true life. If there be
that above the intellect to which it ought to be subser-
vient, but is not, then there will be a law of degradation
even in its own activity. Education will become, either
simply an accomplishment, or a drudge. It will do no-
thing towards removing the follies and weaknesses of soci-
ety ; so that you will find, as we now do, communities
claiming to be the most highly educated, pervaded, even
more than others, with a credulity and a superstition that
would have disgraced the days of witchcraft, but without
the earnestness which saved those from being contemptible.
This we may satirize and deplore, but, under the system,
it cannot be helped. The only true method is that of our
Saviour. Nothing now on the earth, or that ever has been,
can compare with Christianity in its educating power.
Wherever it has been in its purity, the standard of general
education has always been highest. It is so now. You

i;: THE OXE EXCEPTION.

cannot h.ive a pure Christianity without general education,
while yet education, as such, is not the object of Chris-
tianity at all. Its educating power results solely from its
reaching and controlling that which is highest, and from
the necessar}- stimulus and rectitication through that, ac-
cording to the principle laid down, of all that is lower.
So has it wrought from the beginning ; so will it work, and
only in and through this can you work ettectually. Hence
you will make, simply as educators, a capital mistake, if
you do not seek to enthrone Christianity in all our seats
of learning, and to extend and deepen its intiuence in
ever)- possible way. Hence no institution, not pen-aded
by Christianity, can do much in really educating and ele-
vating the CO mm unit}'.

Finally, we see from this subject where lies the perma-
nent strength and the true good of man.

It is much to know, that there is any one thing on this
earth that does not decay ; that while the body is con-
stant only by change, and its identity is only similarity,
there is in the mind a central point that is unchangeable,
and an identit}* that is absolute. It is more to know that
in this we tind our true selves, that by this we are allied
to God. This takes us out of the sphere of that law of
uniformities, in the light of which we have hitlierto chiefly
regarded the subject, and brings us into that of free per-
sonalities. Made in the image of God, allied to him as
personal and free, we have faculties, call them moral, call
them spiritual, by which we apprehend him, and through
which we become receptive of influences from him.
These influences imply no inspiration of particular truths
as to prophets and seers, but are open to the race.
They come as the tide to the stranded vessel that
gradually surrounds it, and lifts it up, and bears it
into the depths and boundlessness of its appropriate

THE ONE EXCEPTION. 1 33

eiement. By these influences, respecting the laws of our
freedom, and the bounds of our individuality, the Spirit of
God enlightens, sustains, purifies, exalts us, and makes us
partakers of his own blessedness. This is the Scripture
doctrine of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, that last link
in the work of human salvation, by which, all incompati-
bilities of justice and mercy having been removed, the law
becomes written in the heart, and we are brought to rest
in the activity of a full and unceasing complacency in a
holy and infinite God. Thus God himself becomes the
portion of the soul. Thus do we enter into the " fulness
of him that filleth all in all." Beyond this, nothing of good
can be conceived of. This is our rest — our ultimate goal.
This it is that we yearn after ; in the congruity of this to
the mind, and in the deep, conscious want of it, it is that
we find the solution of those enthusiasms, and extrava-
gancies, and distortions of the religious nature, which have
made religion a by-word. These suppose a capacity and
need of communion with God just as insanity supposes
reason, and they will cease only when that communion
returns.

Do you, my friends, accept this doctrine .'' Will you
accept it practically ? Will you open the way for the com-
ing into your own souls of divine light and divine help.
Will you put away sin .'' This is the one condition of a
pure light and a true elevation. You must begin with the
heart, for only the pure in heart can see God, and only as
we see him, and in his light, can we see all other things
in their true proportions. Will you then open yourselves
fully to the divine teachings, and to the intimacy of a
divine communion ? Not only morally, but intellectually,
will the answer to this question be the turning-point in
your destiny. The question involved in this doctrine of a
divine communion and help, is the cardinal one for the

134 THE ONE EXCEPTION.

race. At every point this doctrine meets not only our
weaknesses and wants, but also our sinfulness^ and so
transcends all transcendentalism, and all possible philoso-
phies and devices of man. It is not merely a philosophy,
but a redemption and a remedy, a companionship and a
portion. Without this doctrine, man is but a waif upon
the waters, a severed branch that must perish. With it
he is united to God, and so there is nothing too great for
him to hope. With it he may mount up as with the wings
of an eagle, may run and not be weary, and walk and not
faint.

VIII.

THE MANIFOLDNESS OF MAN.
What manner of child shall this be ?— Luke, i. 66.

THE circumstances preceding and attending the
birth of John the Baptist, were extraordinary. As
his father, Zacharias, then "well stricken in years,"
" executed the priest's office before God in the order of
his course," " there appeared unto him an angel of the
Lord standing on the right hand of the altar of incense,"
and foretold the birth of the child. When Zacharias
did not believe him, "the angel answering said unto
him, I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God,
and am sent to speak unto thee, and to show thee these
glad tidings. And behold, thou shalt be dumb, and not
able to speak, until the day that these things shall be
performed." Accordingly Zacharias was dumb until the
time came for naming the child. Then, after he had
written the name given by the angel, " his mouth was
opened immediately, and his tongue loosed, and he
spake and praised God." These things "were noised
abroad throughout all the hill-country of Judea;" and
it is not strange that " all they that heard them laid
them up in their hearts," or that they said, " What man-
ner of child shall this be?" Of a child whose birth was
thus heralded and signalized, something extraordinary
could not fail to be expected.

♦+* July 31, 1859.

136 THE MANIFOLDNESS OF MAN.

But while this inquiry was thus naturally made res-
pecting John, may it not also be appropriately made res-
pecting every child that is born ? There may be noth-
ing extraordinary, either in connection with the birth
of the child, or with the child itself, and yet that child
shall be different from every other child that ever was
born, or ever shall be ; and its capacities of develop-
ment, and the possibilities of its future, shall run in lines
of such divergency from those of every other, that we
may well ask respecting it, " What manner of child
shall this be ? "

There is nothing in the works of God more striking
than the differences there are of things that are similar,
and the similarities of things that are different. In the
perception of these two we have the element of science
on the one hand, and of practical skill on the other.
So far as beings or things are similar, they may be
named alike, and treated alike, and so a knowledge
of one becomes the knowledge of all. This is science.
Through this the individuals which God has made, vast
as they are in number and variety, are marshalled, and
ranged in regiments, and battalions, and companies.
In this, and so far as it goes, exceptions and individual-
ities disappear ; what seemed promiscuous and irregular
falls into order, and the universe assumes the appear-
ance of troops marching and countermarching in a grand
review. But so far as things are different, each individ-
ual must be studied by itself, and treated by itself; and
as differences constantly appear, they furnish the occa-
sion of constant study. Thus it is that through simil-
arities the dictionary of human knowledge is greatly
abridged, while through diversities, the faculties are kept
constantly awake. At the point where we cease to dis-
criminate differences, all interest ceases from uniformity

THE MANIFOLDNESS OF MAN. 1 37

and monotony. At the point where we cease to discern
similarities, interest again ceases from diversity and
confusion.

But while these elements pervade the works of God,
while our scientific interest in those works and practical
power over them are from these, yet are they nowhere
more striking, and nowhere as interesting to us, as in
man. Every man has, and as a man must have, the
great features and characteristics which make him a
man, and yet how infinite the diversity ! No two are
there that look alike, no two that think alike, no two
that act alike ; and doubtless this diversity will become
greater and greater, so long as they shall exist. Here,
and here only in this diversity ever increasing yet not
divorced from unity, do we find the basis of a harmony
that shall also ever increase.

This diversity it was which was implied in the ques-
tion of the text. That referred not merely to the child-
hood, but to the whole career of John. What manner
of man should he become ? What part should he per-
form in the great drama of human affairs ? Should he be
a monarch, a conqueror, a sage, a lawgiver ? Should he
play over again the old games of ambition, and pleasure,
and gain ? or should he be something new and fresh in
the world's history.

The question supposes a great difference between
the child then, and what he would become. And how
great was that difference ! Now he is an infant of eight
days, with no visible distinction from other infants ; just
as helpless and dependent. A Pharisee might have
taken him under the enlarged border of his garments,
and have borne him through the streets of Jerusalem,
and no one have known it. But pass on now thirty
years, and what is he? He is "the voice of one crying

138 THE MANIFOLDNESS OF MAN.

in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make
his paths straight." He cries, and all Judea, and Jeru-
salem, and the region round about Jordan are stirred,
and go out to him. He is the fulfillment of prophecies
made centuries before, the forerunner of the Messiah, a
bright and shining light, one of whom it could truly be
said, that of those born of women, there had been none
greater than he.

But great as this change was, there was nothing in
it so unusual as to attract attention. The man attracted
attention, but not the change. This was so gradual,
that wonder was superseded by familarity. It was but a
single exemplification of a general law. Hence I ob-
serve, in the first place.

That there is a great difference in all organic beings,
between what they are at first, and what we see them
become.

We might ask of any seed just germinating. What
manner of plant shall this be ? See ; here is a point of
green just visible. Look again. It has become a violet,
with its eye on the sun, suffused with beauty, and throb-
bing with the pulses of the universal life. Here is a filmy
substance ; it lies upon the palm of your hand, and a
breath will blow it away. From this, too, emerges a point
of green no larger than the other, and with no perceptible
difference between them. But this shall become the elm
with its pendent branches, towering and spreading, the
pride of the meadow. We may ask the egg, "What man-
ner of creature shall this be .? " Now there is in it a beat-
ing speck — a mere point that pulsates. The philosopher
is peering at it through his microscope, searching for the
principle of life, as the child chases the foot of the rainbow.
That principle he finds not, he shall not find it, but it em-
bodies and perfects itself, and from points undistinguish

THE MANIFOLDNESS OF MAN. 1 39

able, it becomes now a wren, chattering and vivacious ; now
a golden oriole, warbling and weaving its pendent nest ;
now a solemn owl ; a peacock, with its " goodly wings ; "
an ostrich, with its " wings and feathers," fleet and power-
ful ; an eagle, screaming and breasting the storm-cloud flir
in the sky. It is indeed now said, that every plant, from
the lichen to the oak, and every animal, from the insect to
man, has its beginning in a single cell. It is in these cells,
undistinguishable by us, that Omniscience can see the fu-
ture, and from them that Omnipotence can call " the things
that are not, as though they were."

This capacity of transformation and growth, by which
beings seem to us to pass from the very verge of nonentity
to great perfection and magnitude and power, is among the
most striking characteristics of the present state. It is also
one which we think of, and Revelation confirms the impres-
sion, as belonging to this state alone. There are not want-
ing those who believe that this world is the nursery for
peopling this planetary system at least, if not the worlds
scattered through all space.

The individuals thus starting from what seems a com-
mon point, are different in rank, and fall into different
classes ; and we next inquire what the rank of each will
be.

The rank of each will be determined, first, by its rank
in its own class ; and, secondly, by the rank of the class.

The rank of an individual in its own class will be de-
termined by its capacity of development, and by its actual
development in one direction. The California pine may
reach a circumference of thirty feet, and a height of three
hundred and fifty, and so be the first of its class ; but it
is by a repetition always of the same processes, an exten-
sion and increase in one line. Between the greatest and
the least of them there is no difference, except that of de

I40 THE MANIFOLDNESS OF MAN.

velopment in a particular direction. Among men, a man
will be really first, who possesses most perfectly what is
distinctively human ; and in general, whatever individual
of a class shall manifest most fully its distinctive charac-
teristic, will be the first in that class.

But while rank in a class is determined by develop-
ment in one direction, the rank of a class is determined
by the capacity of individuals in it for development in dif-
ferent directions j thus giving wide scope to the imagin-
ation in answering the question, " What manner of being
shall this be ? " The power in a tree of varying from a
given line is as nothing. So it can grow, so only. In
animals, this power is greater ; in man, greater still — and
the more things it is possible for him to become, the more
complex must be his nature, and the higher his rank. As
the scheme of the creation is, that that which is above takes
up into itself all that is below, the more complex the nature
is, the higher it must be, the more directions it may take,
and the greater is the uncertainty that must hang about its
final destiny.

And here I observe, in the third place, that, in sensitive
and moral beings, a capacity of development in one direc-
tion involves its opposite, and that in an equal degree. In
this we find startling indications respecting the possibili-
ties of our future. In creatures merely sensitive, perhaps
a different constitution was possible, but we know of no in-
stance of it. A capacity for pleasure always involves that
of pain, and, so far as we can judge, in a degree precisely
correspondent. But whatever may be possible in the region
of simple enjoyment, in a moral being the capacity of de-
velopment in one direction must imply that in the other.
He who is capable of moral elevation, must also be of
moral degradation. He, and he only, who is capable of
great moral excellence, is capable of great sin. This is the

THE MANIFOLDNESS OF MAN. 141

basis of the maxim universally true, that the best things
corrupted,. become the worst. The better, the higher, the
purer, the nobler any being is capable of becoming, the
more utter and awful may be its downfall and ruin. It
requires an angel to make a devil.

From what has been said, it appears that the rank of
man will be determined by the range of his possible devel-
opment in different directions. And how wide is that range !
How different in this is man from any other being on the
earth 1 Let us look at the breadth of this range, first, in
respect to belief. An animal cannot be said to believe at
all, but for an infant how wide is the range of possible be-
lief! Wonderful is it, that with the same faculties, thrown
into the same world, with the same phenomena, and orders
of succession, and similarities and differences, such a range
should be possible. Especially is this true of religious
belief, where the range is the widest conceivable.

Here are two infants just opening their eyes upon the
light, and beginning to gather those materials which are to
be the basis of their belief. What manner of men shall
they be? They seem alike; but when manhood comes,
one of them shall stand upon this earth so full of the good-
ness of God, under these heavens which declare his glory,
he shall see all there is in them of order, and beauty, and
beneficence, and yet be an atheist. Causeless, aimless,
fatherless, hopeless, with nothing to respond to his deepest
wants, for him the universe shall be whirled in the eddies
of chance, or swept on by the current of a blind and re-
morseless fate. The other shall believe that there is one
God, infinite, eternal and unchangeable, omnipotent and
omnipresent, holy, just and merciful, the Creator and Gov-
ernor of all things, to whom he may look up and say. My
Father. For him, compared with this God, the universe

142 THE MANIFOLDNESS OF MAN.

is as nothing. In Him it has its being. It is irradiated
with his gloiy, as the evening cloud with the glory of the
setting sun. Except as expressing his attributes and indi-
cating his purposes, it had no grandeur and no significance.
One of these again shall look forward to death, and
see in it the end of man. For him, the sullen sound sent
back from his coffin when the sod falls upon it, is the last
which the conscious universe is to know of each individual
man, unless, indeed, the geologist of some future era may
find in the impression of his bones, a record of this. For
him, man has, in death, no pre-eminence over the beast.
By the other, death shall be welcomed as a friend. It shall
be for him the beginning of a higher life, of clearer insight,
of purer joys, of a greater nearness to God, and of an
unending progression. He shall

' The darkening universe defy.
To quench his immortality."

He shall believe with a certainty that shall enable him to
say with one of old, that he knows " that if this earthly house
of his tabernacle were dissolved he has a building of God,
a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens," and
so his great hope shall lie beyond the tomb. One of these,
again shall believe in no accountability after death ; the
other shall believe, that " every idle word that men shall
speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judg-
ment."

So these two may come to believe, and yet be men.
These three great doctrines — of God, of a future life, and
of accountability — without which there can be neither
religion nor morality, one shall receive, and the other
shall reject. Side by side they may stand, separated by
scarcely a point in space ; but in that whole interior life

THE MANTFOLDNESS OF MAN. 143

which is most intimate and essential to them, they are as
wide asunder as the poles.

But here it is to be noticed, that while the possibility
of this divergence in belief indicates elevation in rank, yet
the fact of such divergence indicates for some a low posi-
tion in that rank. A perfect instinct is uniform. So is
perfect reason, and these would coincide. These are the
extremes, and between these, imperfection and diversity
lie. Truth is one, and a failure to see it is always the
result either of feebleness or of sin. Hence, diversity of
belief is not among those needed for harmony, but the
reverse. A measure of it is compatible with harmony,
that is, such as this world admits of, but the harmony of
the universe will be perfect only when all rational crea-
tures, so far as they see at all, shall see eye to eye.

But if the divergence of men in religious belief, and in
all belief, is great, it is not less, and is even more striking,
in their objects of worship.

One " planteth an ash, and the rain doth nourish it.
Then shall it be for a man to burn. He burneth part there-
of in the fire, and the residue thereof he maketh a god,
even his graven image ; he falleth down and worshippeth
it ; he prayeth unto it and saith. Deliver me, for thou art
my god." He may worship, as men have done, flies, and
serpents, and crocodiles, and oxen, and the sun, and moon,
and stars, and heroes, and devils ; and worshipping these, he
becomes, so far as is possible, assimilated to them. How
different these from Him, who is " the Lord, the true God,
the living God, and an everlasting King ; who hath made
the earth by his power, who hath established the world by
his wisdom, and hath stretched out the heavens by his
discretion." And can the intelligent worshipper of this
God, the holy prophet, or apostle, rapt in vision, or swal-
lowed up in adoration, be of the same race with the idola-

144 THE MANIFOLDNESS OF MAN.

ter casting himself beneath the car of Juggernaut, or with
the cannibal savage eating his victim, and dancing before
a carved, besmeared, and hideous log? Can it be that
those who do thus, might have changed places ?

Here, again, diversity is not the basis of harmony. If
harmony requires diversity, it has its root in unity, the
unity of truth and of God ; and so, of belief and of wor-
ship.

We may further ask what any child shall be in pos-
ition, in attainments, and in the extent of his influence.
Shall he be a miner, thousands of feet beneath the earth's
surface, untaught, unknown, unthanked, uncared for, with
a mind as narrow and as dark as the sphere of his labors ?
Shall he be a slave, whose range is the plantation, and to
whom cupidity and fear forbid the knowledge of letters ?
Shall he be a misanthrope, self-exiled from society, who
dies alone, and whose body is found by accident ? Shall
he be, as probably he will, neither rich nor poor, neither
learned nor ignorant, neither widely known nor wholly
obscure — one of the countless throng on life's thoroughfare
of whom the casual observer would take no note ? Or,
shall he tread the high places of art, of learning, and of
power ? Shall the canvas or the marble wait for his touch
to become immortal? Shall he be a poet, "soaring in the
high region of his fancy, with his garland and singing
robes about him ? " Shall he govern nations, command
armies, sway senates, wrest from nature her secrets, lead
the van of progress, and make his thought and will felt
over the globe ?

But chiefly may we ask concerning any infant, What
manner of child shall this be in character, and in the kind
of influence he shall exert. Upon character every thing
depends, and from this, influence flows. And shall these
be in the line, and on the level of sensuality and of sense

THE MANIFOLDNESS OF MAN. 145

or of a selfish and all-absorbing ambition ? or of a pure
philanthropy ? or of a whole-hearted consecration to the
will of God ? Shall the child be an apostle of righteous-
ness ? a martyr missionary ? a preacher like Whitfield,
whose eloquence and zeal shall set a continent on fire ?
Shall he be a fashionable exquisite, admiring himself, and
supposing himself admired by others ? Shall he be a
political intriguer? an adroit depredator upon society?
Shall he be a drunkard, and die in a ditch ? Shall he be
a thief? a murderer? a pirate? Can it be that he who
sails under the black flag of death, and whose motto is,
that " dead men tell no tales," once drew his life from the
breast of a human mother, returned her caress, and an-
swered to her smile ? Who is this upon whom every eye in
the vast multitude is fixed ? Over his face the fatal cap is
drawn, and he stands upon the drop just ready to fall. It
is but a few years, and his tiny hand held the finger of his
mother, and in him were garnered up her fond hopes and
high expectations.

At this point the import of the question is deepest,
because the dread issues involved in our immortality are
here at stake. Here are harnessed the forces that are to
move on the plains of eternity. Everything indicates that
in the mind, as well as in the body, there is a possibility
of RUIN ; that there are there also processes that are can-
cerous and leprous ; and that they may gradually pervade,
and at length utterly pervert and corrupt the whole being.
Awful and significant it is, to see such a disease spreading
itself over the body, tainting the fluids more widely, and
implicating more tissues, till deformity becomes only the
more obtrusive, and hideous, and persistent, as the forces
of nature were originally greater and more beneficent.
And so it may be in mind. Whatever the fact may be, no
ane can doubt the fearful capacity for this. It belongs to

146 THE MANIFOLDNESS OF MAN,

our conception of spiritual forces that they are indefinite
or without limit in their capacities, in whatever direction
they may move. It is the natural pledge of their immor-
tality, that whatever point they may reach in knowledge or
affection, in virtue or in vice, it will always be possible for
them to advance still further. This point, whatever it be,
must be reached under the law of habit, and under that
still more general law that "to him that hath shall be
given," and thus the time must come when there can be
no return. For the same reason that the path of the just
shall be as the shining light, that shines more and more,
the gloom of to-day shall become the darkness of to mor-
row, and the deep midnight of the day following. Selfish-
ness, passion, hate, shall gain a permanent ascendancy,
and the reign of retribution begin. The immutability of
law is the rock to which the sinner shall be bound ; the
ceaseless action of the spiritual powers is the immortal
liver that shall grow as it is consumed, and the diseased
action is the vulture that shall prey upon it. The worm
shall gnaw till it shall become undying, the fire shall burn
till it " cannot be quenched." This, not crumbling arches,
not mouldering cities, but this, this is ruin.

What a contrast between this and the possibilities we see
before us and in us, when we look at the man Christ Jesus.
In him, in him alone, can we form a right estimate of our
nature ; and that he has enabled us to do this, is no small
ground of our indebtedness to him. So far as he was man
only, there was in him no excellence or perfection which
we may not attain ; and the perfections in him were not
only an example to us, but were a pledge to his followers
that they shall attain the same. The disciple shall be as
his Master. They shall be like him, for they shall see him
as he is. Christ was the Son of God as Adam was not ;
and in him humanity was glorified as it could have been in

THE MANIFOLDNESS OF MAN. 147

no other way. There was stamped upon it the seal of an
infinite value. It was so taken into union with God as to
show that God can dwell with it, and that the highest di-
vine perfections may be manifested through it. Christ was
the '• brightness of his glory," as manifested on the earth,
" the express image of his person," and whoever would see
the capacities there are in man for elevation and excellence
must look to him. " Looking unto Jesus," is the motto of
the Christian. He is the only type of normal development
for the race. I point you to no heroes or sages, but to
Him ; to no abstract conception, but to embodied excel-
lence, living, walking, speaking, sympathizing, suffering
among men. The divine image, marred in Adam, was
restored in Christ, and is so held in him that it can be lost
never more. The gem is now set forever. It will belong
to the riches of eternity. This image we 7nay attairi. Be-
tween the attainment of this and any thing else, the differ
ence is infinite. This is the true good. And O how great,
how infinite is this good ! In view of it, how forcible the
question of our Saviour, " What shall it profit a man if he
shall gain the whole world and lose his soul ? Or what
shall a man give in exchange for his soul? " Fully attained,
this good is heaven. Whatever outward circumstances
may be, potentially, substantially, ultimately, this is heaven.
He that is like God shall dwell with God. The son shall
be in his father's house. He shall abide forever. For
this we bless thee, O our Father. Cease, my friends, your
disputes about religion. He that is like God shall dwell
with God, and he that is not like God, shall not dwell with
him.

We thus see that man must be in the highest rank of
created beings, and how it is that his manifoldness is a
proof of his greatness. Touching the extremes of being,
he is capable of development on the level of any nature of

148 THE MANIFOLDNESS OF MAN.

which he is partaker, and at any point along a line that
reaches from the instinct of the animal up to God himself.
He may become an animal, or simply human, or devilish,
or divine. Made in the image of God, capable of indefin-
ite progress, of falling to a depth profound in proportion to
the height to which he can rise, no wider scope could be
given to the imagination than is now given, when the ques-
tion is asked concerning any child, "What manner of child
shall this be ? " You my friends are no longer children,
but men, and in view of the wide range of possibilities now
presented before you, I ask you. What manner of men will
you be? I come to you individually, and with affectionate
earnestness and deep solicitude, ask each one of you. What
manner of man will you be ?

The question, observe, is not. What will you get ? but,
What will you be? The first is the paramount question
with selfishness ; the second, with reason and religion.
In asking the first, you are not necessarily selfish ; in
making it paramount, you are. In seeking, on the other
hand, to be great, good, noble like God, you are indeed
consulting your own good most wisely, but are not selfish,
for how can a man be selfish, when his very object is to be
benevolent. How be selfish in seeking to be like God, for
God is love. This question, then, I ask with emphasis,
for under the government of God your all must depend
upon it. And not only do I ask it. Your parents and
near friends, to whom you owe every thing, ask it. Your
country asks it. The church of God asks it. The na-
tions that are in ignorance, and under oppression, ask it.
And I doubt not there is, at this solemn moment in your
own hearts, a " still small voice," in which God is, that
asks it. What manner of men will you be ?

This question, as put to you, I desire to limit as I have
not done in the general discussion. That was in view of

THE MANIFOLDNESS OF MAN. 1 49

two kinds of diversity that must be discriminated. There
is one having its root in repugnance and opposition,
involving elements that can never be brought into har-
mony, and that can have no unity even, except as there is
fixed between them a great and impassable gulf. For this
gulf there is provision in the essential difference of moral
good and evil ; and while these may be embraced in the
unity of one government of eternal righteousness, yet this
can be only on the condition that that gulf shall h^ fixed.

But there is also a diversity which springs from unity,
and is the basis of harmony ; and within this limit diver-
sity is a good. Only through this can we have the riches
and beauty, as well as the harmony of the universe. In
this we have the one light refracted into its seven colors,
making the earth green, and the sky blue, and the clouds
gorgeous. In this is the one sound now parting itself into
its seven notes for music, now articulating itself in speech,
now becoming the chirp of the cricket, and now the roar
of the thunder. In this is the one water seen in mist, in
dew, in steam, in ice, in snow, in the green heaving ocean,
and in the rainbow that spans it. In this is the one body
with its organs, the one tree with its branches, the one
universe with its suns, and planets, and satellites, and
comets. Within this limit, the wider the diversity, the
richer are the fields opening to us in science, in beauty,
and in character.

And now, when I put this question to you, I would
have all your diversity within this limit. I wish to speak
with you of no other. This will involve no restriction,
no monotony, or tameness, or repression of any manly
energy, no abatement of the zest and foam and sparkle
of life. It will only lift you above obstructions, and enable
you to move calmly and freely, as the balloon that floats in
the long upper currents, instead of being whirled in the

150 THE MANIFOLDNESS OF MAN.

lower tempests, and wrecked among the branches. O,
could 1 but know that all your diversity would range with-
in this limit, that you would all be Christians, true follow-
ers of the Lord Jesus, almost would T say to you, Be what
you please. Certainly I should prefer, since one star
differs from another star in glory, that you should not be
among those less bright. But only be a star. Shine and,
choose your own shade of light. Be Paul, or Peter, or
John, or James, or even Thomas ; any of them but Judas.
Be a Luther, or Melancthon ; be Jonathan Edwards, or
Plarlan Page ; be — but I will go no further ; I will rather
recall what I have said, and say to you, Be yourselves.
Bring out your own individuality. It is your own. As
such, respect and cherish it, only avoiding all affected
singularity. If it be different from that of others, do not
be troubled. It ought to be. Bring it out in its sim-
plicity, anywhere within the broad light and expanse of
the one perfect example. Christ was peculiar, but not
singular, except as Mount Blanc and the Ocean are singu-
lar. So be you, and you shall polish a gem for its setting
in the diadem of Him who weareth many crowns, that
shall have in it shades and lines that no other can have.

And while I thus call upon you to bring out your own
individuality, let me say to you also. Respect that of
others ; and not only so, appreciate it, and rejoice in its
manifestation. Nothing is more needed among men than
the power and readiness to do this, and to accept in relig-
ion, in politics, and in social life, those diversities of
belief and of forms which spring from this, but which yet
have their root in essential unity, and no more cease
to be of it than men of different colors cease to be of the
race. To do this, is liberality, in distinction from lax-
ness and indifference to the truth. This God intended
should be. It is not for nothing, that the notes of birds;

THE MANIFOLDNESS OF MAN. 15 1

and the colors of flowers, and the outlines of mountains
differ yet are all pleasing. It is not for nothing, that we
are told that the foundations of the New Jersualem are of
twelve manner of precious stones ; and the Jasper is not
better than the sapphire, nor the sapphire than the emer-
ald, nor the emerald than the amethyst, and all are better
than any one would be, and all are one in their common
nature as gems, and in their common office of adorning
and supporting the heavenly city. How to draw the line
rightly in particular cases, no rules can be given ; but you
see the general principle, and I beseech you to do this
wisely and liberally, remembering that it is the tendency
of egotism and selfishness to fall into clannishness, and
into a party and sectarian spirit, and to magnify non-
essentials.

In the light of what has been said, let me turn your
thoughts to the provision God has made for the growth and
enjoyment of his creatures as intelligent, and aside from
the affections. For these the great conditions, in the con-
struction of his works, are, first, unity. By this is not
meant an indivisible unit of which there may be any num-
ber without either unity or harmony, and which must re-
main unfruitful ; but a unity like those spoken of above,
capable of being parted into diversity, and of returning to
itself again. The second condition is diversity — not mere-
ly numerical, but that which is implied in parts having
relation to a common whole. The third condition is har-
mony, that is, such a relation of parts to each other and to
the whole, as to realize and complete our conception of that
whole. For intellectual growth and enjoyment, a percep-
tion of these is all that is needed ; and how inexhaustible
these are, and how wonderfully blended in this universe, I
need not say. In this view of it, the universe is an organ
that constantly discourses music to angels and to God.
6

152 THE MANIFOLDNESS OF MAN.

The relations of its parts at a given moment, in their ad-
justment to each other and to ends, are its harmony, and
the succession of its events are its melody. Its harmony
we can begin to study. Of the melody we can know com-
paratively nothing:, for our time is too brief; but we may
be sure that both will forever increase.

In view of what has been said, you will also be able,
not only to estimate the place and value of diversity in the
universe, but also of what has been called many-sidedness,
in the individual. Plainly this is a proof of greatness.
At times the admiration for this has been overdone, and
there has been about it, in certain quarters, something of
cant. On the other hand, there are those who say that a
man can excel in but one thing, and should attend to but
one. Doubtless the greatest effect requires concentration,
and there should be no attempt at varied excellence that
would diminish this ; but there are few occupations iu
which all that a man can do may not be done with less
than his whole energies ; the use of the powers in different
directions gives diversion and strength, and there seems
no good reason why a man may not gain excellence in all
the directions in which he is capable of development.
Why may not a man cultivate both muscle and mind, both
mathematics and music, both poetry and philosophy ? I
trust you will shrink into no one channel, but will continue
to advance in a liberal culture.

Once more, if the rank of man be so high and his
capacities so great, then is this world a fit theatre for that
great redemption which the Scriptures reveal. Between
him and that redemption there is no want of congruity or
proportion. Some there are who speak of this world as a
mere speck in the universe, and of man as too inconsider-
able to be the object of such regard as is implied in the
coming and death, for him, of the Son of God. But so far

THE MANIFOLDNESS OF MAN. 153

as is possible for any creature, man takes hold on infinity.
He is a child oi God, and in the dealings of God with him
there may be involved all those principles of wisdom and
righteousness and mercy which can be involved in the di-
vine government any where, and so the whole universe,
mighty as it is, may be brought, through man, to the "light
of the knowledge of the glory of God." Little can they
who think thus, have meditated upon those sublime and
consoling words of the Apostle, " Beloved, now are we thf ■
sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be 3
but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like
him ; for we shall see him as he is."

Finally, my friends, if there is, in the capacities of man
a fit occasion and ground for the redemption revealed in
the Scriptures, so is there in his diversities a fit occasion
and ground for that future and final Judgment which they
also reveal. How could these diversities be greater ?
How is everything respecting God and his government,
even to his very being, denied, questioned, challenged,
ridiculed, mocked ? Taken by itself, how tangled, per-
plexed, and insoluble by reason, is the present state?
What shades of character ! What modifications of respon-
sibility ! What wrongs unredressed ! What questions cut
short by death ! And in connection with these, what scope
for the application, in every delicate adjustment, of every
principle of moral government ! Probably in no other way
than by such a Judgment, could these diversities be re-
duced to the comprehension of finite minds, and the ways
of God to man be vindicated. Here, as elsewhere, the
reality of what God does, and proposes to do, transcends
all that man could have imagined to be possible, and hence
many deny this also. They say, " Where is the promise
of his coming? " " But the day of the Lord will come as
a thief in the night." "The Son of man shall sit on the

154 THE MANIFOLDNESS OF MAN.

throne of his glory, and before him shall be gathered all
nations." This we believe, will be the next great epoch
in this world's history. And in view of it, I ask the ques-
tion no longer in regard to this world. What manner of
men will you be? This world and its scenes, now so bright
before you, will be nothing then. I ask this question in
view of that day when there will be but one alternative.
What manner of men will you then be?

IX.

NOTHING TO BE LOST.

Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.— John, vi. 12.

A MONG the more striking miracles wrought by our
-^^ Saviour, was that of feeding five thousand men from
five barley loaves and two small fishes. But, striking as it
was, it was simply a reproduction, in a different form, of
the great miracle of nature that is constantly going on
around us. The miracle was not at all in the things made,
but wholly in the manner of making them. Bread had been
made before, and as good bread ; and there had been fish
before ; but never before had they been formed at once, by
the energy of will, from their original and simple elements.
In both cases the elements existed. There was no new
creation ; but in the miracle they were brought together in
a manner entirely different.

When the sower sows the seed in which is the nucleus,
the possibility, and the promise of all the bread that is to
be eaten the succeeding year, where are the materials out
of which that bread is to be made ? They exist, but are
dispersed hither and thither, and are held in different affin-
ities. No human eye can see, and no skill can detect them
They are like an army in ambush, ready to come at the
appointed signal, but answering only to that.

And now the earth receives the seed. It is buried, but
not forgotten. Small as it is, the ocean knows of it and

*** July 29, i860.

1^6 NOTHING TO BE LOST.

offers it moisture ; and the atmosphere knows of it, and is
ready with its invisible fingers to lift the mist, and fashion
the cloud-car, and transport the moisture to it. The sun,
too, distant as it is, remembers it, and sends it heat and
light. These provoke its hidden life^ and the roots shoot
downwards, and the stem, upwards. But in those roots,
and in that stem, there is no particle that will make bread.
There must first be a blossom, and then a receptacle form-
ed, and then the stalk of grain must set itself at work, and
the earth, and the air, and the sun, electricity and magnet-
ism, agents, visible and invisible, must give their aid ; and
then the particles of oxygen and hydrogen, and nitrogen
and carbon, will come from their hiding places and mar-
shal themselves into starch and gluten, and the full seed
will be formed. The yellow harvest shall lift itself towards
heaven, and wave and toss itself in the wind, a gift from
all the elements and agencies of nature to man. So do
they all serve him. Then comes the harvesting, and thresh-
ing, and winnowing, and grinding, and leavening ; and then
the fire does its work, and it is bread. Through the pro-
cesses of a year, through changes so slow and minute as to
escape observation at the time, by the combined agencies
of the earth, and air, and ocean, of the sun and the fire, the
materials that were scattered and hidden, have heard the
call that was made for them, and have come forth ; tliey
have entered into their new combinations, and have become
the " bread that strengtheneth man's heart."

But in all this there is no miracle. There is nothing
strange. Oh, no. We have seen it all, and have eaten
such bread all our lives. It is nature that does all this;
or nature and art ; though in reality, art, human art and
skill, can do nothing but to give the opportunity, and pro-
vide the conditions for nature to work. Nature it is, and
there is nothing strange about it.

NOTHING TO BE LOST. 157

But now, instead of this complicated and mighty agency
extending over months of time, and reaching millions of
miles into space, implicating, indeed, the whole planetary
system, instead of sympathies and interactions between
materials where there is no direct evidence of personality,
and so, of anything above what we call nature, there comes
One who claims to be the Lord of nature, and as quietly
as the sun shines, without even indicating that he is work-
ing a miracle, he calls for the elements to come from their
hiding places, and enter into their new combinations, and
they obey. The materials were all around him, and he
controlled their affinities at once, as nature controls the
same affinities in her long processes. The simple record
is, that " Jesus took the loaves ; and when he had given
thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to
them that were set down ; and likewise of the fishes as much
as they would." There was no seeming effort, no ostent-
ation, no production of anything but barley bread, just such
bread as was made by the people, and of fish such as were
caught in their waters. But this was a miracle, a strange
thing, so strange that many cannot believe it. But obvious-
ly, if we had been accustomed to this, and then had seen
the other for the first time, it would have been accounted
by far the greater miracle.

And here we may remark what a testimony the mira-
cles of our Saviour, generally, were to the perfection of the
works of God in nature, and so to his own oneness with
God. As the bread which he made by a miracle was no
better than that made by the ordinary processes, so when
he raised men to life, it was to the same life that they had
before, and that other men have. When he restored a pal-
sied limb, or a blind eye, it only became as it was before,
or like other limbs and eyes. A miracle could make them
no better. In this consists the simplicity and grandeur of

158 NOTHING TO BE LOST.

our Saviour's miracles, and in this the force of their inter-
nal evidence for his divine mission. He honored nature,
while he showed that he was her Lord.

Thus calling the materials together without effort, the
Saviour provided for the wants of five thousand men. Nor
was the provision scanty; it was ample and bountiful.
They took as much as they would, and the fragments left
were more than the original loaves and fishes.

And what the Saviour did at that time, he was able to
do at any time. To his power in this respect there was no
restriction. Always he could provide for himself and for
his disciples in the same free and magnificent manner.
And now, when he had just made such a provision, and
had it in his power to do so at any time, shall he care for
the remnants, the fragments that remain ? Not so should
we have done. But, and this is not the least remarkable
part of the transaction, the Saviour did thus care. " When
they were filled, he said unto his disciples, Gather up the
fragments that remain, that nothing be lost." The same
thing also he did on another occasion, when he had fed a
multitude in a similar manner.

What then have we here ? Something of penuriousness
and smallness ? of an undue desire of saving ? That can
hardly be in him who never owned property, and who had
just dispensed his bounties so freely. Have we then a
command appropriate only to that time and place? or
have we, as in so many other instances of the sayings of
our Saviour, clothed in a particular and individual form, a
universal maxim, a great principle of the government of
God, and one that should regulate the conduct of men ?
Are these words as the index of a partial and local force ?
or are they as the magnetic needle that indicates the polar
forces of this planet, and, so far as we may conjecture, of
all planets and systems ? Are they the word of the indi-

NOTHING TO BE LOST. 1 59

vidual speaking for that time and place, or of the Lawgiver,
speaking for all times and for all places ? " Gather up
the fragments that remain that nothing be lost." Why
should anything be lost ?

Anything once possessed is said to be lost, when it is so
concealed or removed from us that we do not know where it
is. The piece of silver in search of which the woman
swept the house, was lost. The sheep which had wan
dered away, and which the owner brought back rejoicing
had been lost.

Anything is also said to be lost, when it fails to
accomplish the end for which it was made or given. A
journey is lost, when the end for which it was undertaken
is not accomplished. A day is lost, when in it, no good
is done ; an education is lost when no use is made of
it ; a man is lost when he becomes hopelessly a drunkard,
or is given over to any vice. We know where to find him,
but he is lost.

That a thing should be lost in the first sense is acci-
dental, and incident to us from the limitation of our facul-
ties. Not so with God. To the Omniscient, nothing can
be hidden, or obscure, or remote ; and if in his agency he
shall fail to cause any past event to be brought to its bear-
ings, or any existing thing to accomplish its end, it will
not be because he does not know what it is, or where to
find it. In our agency a thing may be, and often is lost
in the second sense, because it is in the first. We fail to
put a thing to its use because we do not know where to
find it.

It is plainly in the second sense, that the term " lost "
was used by our Saviour in the text. It was not that there
was danger of concealment, but of waste. It is in this
sense that God would have nothing lost.

The principle involved in the text manifests itself in
4

l60 NOTHING TO BE LOST.

two forms, both in human affairs and in the divine admin-
istration. In the one it respects economy of force when
any thing is to be done ; and in the other the waste of
material or of means when anything is possessed. Let us
look at the Divine administration with reference to both
of these.

And first, of the economy of force.

If we consider those forces that operate in free space,
by which the planets and planetary systems are moved
with such velocity, and guided with such precision, we
have no means of measuring any thing except by the
results. But these will suffice for us. When the earth
comes round to a given star at the appointed and predicted
moment, we must know that not one iota of the force that
brought it there could have been spared. It is just brought
there, and no more. When gravitation draws the earth to
the sun, it is by a force that just retains it in its orbit, and
no more ; and the opposite force that would drive it into
lawlessness and seclusion, is but just sufficient to prevent
it from falling into the sun. As the avalanche is suspended
by a balance of forces so delicate that the traveller who
walks beneath fears even to whisper lest it should be
launched upon him, so hang the heavens. The slightest
difference of adjustment, the least diminution of force, in
any direction, would ultimately bring the system rushing
together to the centre, or scatter it hopelessly.

And what is true of the forces that act at such vast
distances, is equally true of those that are acting around
us, and at distances that are inappreciable. The affinities
by which solid bodies and gases are held together are so
balanced that a less amount in any direction would unchain
their elements, and the atmosphere would be decomposed,
and the earth would effervesce and boil like lime when it
is slackin^r.

NOTHING TO BE LOST. l6r

We may notice, also, not only a balance of forces, im-
plying a minimum in both directions, but also the different
and apparently opposite offices which the same agents and
forces subserve. Under precisely the same outward con-
ditions, acted upon by the same outward agents — the same
atmosphere, and storms, and sunshine — a tree that is grow-
ing shall be carried up to its perfection, and one that is
decaying shall be resolved into its original elements. It
is in this way that the constant circuit, and interdependent
succession of life and death is kept up.

But perhaps the economy of force is best illustrated in
the structure of animals, where there is not, in the same
way, a balance of forces, but simply mechanism. Take
the skeleton of any animal, and let the problem be to cause
it to perform the same variety of motions that the animal
can perform, and with the same rapidity, and the forces
can be applied only as they are in the animal. In every
animal, regarding its structure, and its position and sur-
roundings relative to that, in the bird that flies, the fish
that swims, the worm that crawls, the insect that creeps,
in the four-footed animal, and in man, the economy offeree
is absolutely perfect. In no instance has any mechanician
been able to show how this economy could be greater.
On the contrary, mechanicians have borrowed many hints
from the structure of animals for the economy of force, and
might borrow more ; for her motors are all perfect, both
in their principle and in the mode of its application.
Guided by the principle that nature does nothing in vain,
Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood ; and
guided by the principle that she does everything in the
simplest and best way, the mechanician, if he will but al-
low for the difference of circumstances, may safely adopt
any of her models and methods.

But on this point there is no need of detail. The

1 62 NOTHING TO BE LOST.

principle contended for is involved in one of those broad
inductions of Newton, which has been universally accepted
as a law of philosophizing. The law is, " That no more,
and no other causes are to be allowed, than are sufficient
to explain the appearances."

Having thus considered the economy of force, we next
look at that of material and of means. Between these,
the relation is intimate, since all material used, and all
means put in operation, require force.

As an illustration of economy in both, as thus related,
but especially of material, we may take the stems of grasses
and of grain. Contrive, if you can, a support for an ear
of wheat that shall be adequate, and yet have in it less of
material than that now provided. It is hollow and jointed,
because, with a given amount of material, it is thus strong-
er. The same principle applies to the bones of animals,
and to the quills of feathers. How perfectly discriminat-
ing, how illustrative of the principle involved, is the differ-
ence here between a stem of wheat and the trunk of a
tree ! As intended but for a season, the one, though ade-
quate, is hollow and fragile ; but the other, as solid, has
not too much material for the support of its top, and to
withstand the storms ; and then it is needed, and was
intended, as a supply for the permanent wants of man. The
provision that surrounds the germ of a seed is just enough
to support the young plant till it can strike its roots into
the earth, and no more. The same is true of that about
the vital point in an egg. The quantity of the atmosphere
is just sufficient for the density needed to bear up clouds
and birds, to give force to winds, that they may waft ships,
and for the pressure needed upon animal bodies. The
amount of heat and of light are in exact accordance with the
demands of vitality and of vision. Vast as it is, the ocean
is not too large for the evaporation needed to supply vege-

NOTHING TO BE LOST. 163

tation, and wells and springs; and certain it is that the earth,
as a whole, is not a particle too large in its relation to
other bodies to hold its place firmly, and exert its due
influence amidst the perturbations and actions and reac
tions of the system.

Another form of this economy may be noticed in the
use of the same structure or substance to subserve differ-
ent purposes, and those independent of each other. The
lungs have an adequate end in the oxygenation of the
blood, a function wholly within us, and so vital that a very
brief suspension of it is death. They might seem to have
sole reference to that. But see the same lungs in their
connection with the voice, circulating fresh thought and
sentiment through society, a function wholly without us,
and not less vital to it than the renovation of the blood is
to the body. The one substance, oxygen, is a main con-
stituent of water, of the atmosphere, of all acids, of all
vegetable products, and of most mineral substances and
rocks as found in nature. It gives its heat to fire, its acidity
to vinegar, and to potash its caustic power. It is the vital
element of the atmosphere, and its destructive element.
Water ! How common it is, yet how manifold in its uses !
It becomes ice, and so a reservoir of cold for the summer .
it becomes steam and so a power in locomotion and in
manufacturing ; it becomes vapor, and so fits the air to be
breathed, and descends in dew ; it becomes clouds, and
so transports the rain ; it becomes snow, and so gives the
earth its winter robe. It is the element and home of all
fish, and of the monsters of the deep ; it is the chief con-
stituent of all fluids of plants and of animals ; it quenches
thirst ; it is the great cleanser and purifier ; it is an ele-
ment of beauty. With no running water, with no tossing
ocean, with no cataracts, no dew, no changing clouds, now
dark and seamed with lightning, now fleecy and mottled

164 NOTHING TO BE LOST.

with the blue beyond, and now gorgeous in the sunset,
with no showers, and no rainbow, where would the beauty
of the earth be ? And all this from the one substance,
water ! What economy of material ! It would seem as if
no property or capacity of usefulness in this substance
could be lost.

The same principle also appears in the results of all
decomposition. This seems a destruction ; but in the
sense of annihilation there is no destruction. In this sense
nothing has ever been lost. The materials merely change
their forms, and enter into new combinations. The ser-
vants retire, and reappear in a different garb. The part-
ners are changed ; and so, like a star in the heavens, each
changing particle of matter walks its appointed round. Of
this economy in connection with apparent destruction, we
find large evidence in geology. There have, it seems, been
creations and epochs long since that have come to an end ;
but when they did so, the command was given to the earth,
"Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be
lost," and the earth heard and obeyed. And now we have
these fragments in the form of soil and drift ; in granite
and marble ; in mines and coal-beds ; in foot-prints and
fossils, for the profit and instruction of those who now
live ; and probably much more, of those who shall live
hereafter.

But while these instances are sufficient to establish the
principle, there are objections and difficulties. There is
apparent waste. Large portions of the earth are mere
sandy plains, deserts, or inaccessible mountains ; and upon
these the sunshine and rain and dews descend. There is
also an apparent and great waste of the germs of life.

In reply, it may be said that deserts and mountains are
of use physically. " Were it not," says Maury, "for the
Great Desert of Sahara, and other arid plains of Africa the

NOTHING TO BE LOST. 165

western shores of that continent, within the trade-wind
region, would be almost, if not altogether, as rainless and
sterile as the desert itself. We are to regard the sandy
deserts, and arid plains, and the inland basins of the earth,
as compensations in the great system of atmospherical cir-
culation." The inaccessible and snow-capped mountains
condense the moisture and form water-sheds. They are
as a hand lifted up to compress the distended atmosphere^
and to return to the ocean in long, and fertilizing, and
navigable rivers, the tribute it had given.

But aside from this, if we admit, as we must, moral con-
siderations and reasons, these difficulties vanish ! Those
deserts are not too large, or sterile, to be a mirror in which
the man who receives the blessings of God and makes no
return, may see his own features reflected. Those moun-
tains of rock are not too hard and unimpressible to repre-
sent that adamant that can resist a Saviour's love. Those
germs of life destroyed are not too many, or too precious,
to show what is possible in regard to those powers and ca-
pabilities which every man has, and which he may dwarf
and ruin. Without a correspondence between external
nature and the character of man, the end of probation here
could not be reached; and without these and similar fea-
tures and facts in nature, that correspondence could not
exist.

To many, the above would be a sufficient solution of
the difficulties. It is so to me. But there is another.

It is plain that there is, in this world, a great work car-
ried on through, or in accordance with, what we call gen-
eral laws. It is thus that the rain and the sunshine descend,
and that the current of life, broad and deep, is kept in its
even flow. To this the earth as a whole and the elements
minister. In this great work it could not be expected that
whe sun should withhold his beams from every barren spot,

l66 NOTHING TO BE LOST.

or that the rain should skip and shun every stone and sand-
bank. This would be petty, not in accordance with the
nature of general laws, or with the dignity of the divine
government. The great work is done. The current of
life flows on, and no more. The nations are fed ; and if
there are outlying facts, the bearing of which upon the re-
sult we do not see, we may well class them with fragments
that remain, which will be used at another time, or are used
in other connections.

On the whole, then, we conclude that the economy of
God, both with respect to force and to material, is perfect.
In so wide a reach, where we confessedly know so little, it
is not reasonable that a conclusion so borne out by the
great mass and current of facts should be held in abeyance
out of respect to mere exceptional eddies. Sustained,
therefore, by the science of the nineteenth century, we ven-
ture with the fullest confidence, in regard to every particle
of this universe, the assertion implied in the sublime inter-
rogatories of the prophet : " Who hath measured the waters
in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the
span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure,
and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a
balance } "

The principle of economy thus regarded in the divine
administration, ought to be equally regarded by man in the
conduct of life. It ought to be thus regarded, but is not.
Not only is there indolence, and so dormancy of capacity,
but there is great misdirection of force and waste of ma-
terial. Who is there that gathers what he might } that be
comes what he might ? that acheives what he might.? In
doing each and all of these, and in that only, would be the
highest success ; and to this, economy is no less necessary
than energy. The monarch who conquers a country pro-

NOTHING TO BE LOST. 167

vides for retaining it ; without this his victories would be
fruitless, and they become available only as he can incor-
porate it into his own dominions, and, if need be, make it
the means of still further conquests. So it is with us.
The two elements or factors of success in life, mental ca-
pacity being given, are the energy, the will, needed for get-
ting, and for achivement ; and the economy needed for so
keeping what is thus gained, that nothing shall be lost. Of
these elements the first is more exciting, more naturally
attractive of sympathy, and has received, by far, greater
attention. Young men are constantly exhorted to energy
and enterprise, to perseverance and force of will, while the
power of a wise economy and husbandry of resources is
disregarded.

This general principle needs to be applied, first, in re-
gard to health and physical energy. In the management
of these there has been, and still is, unspeakable loss.
Let the pressure of necessity be removed, and men have
not sufficient resolution and self-control to comply with the
conditions of physical vigor. Civilization, the accumula-
tion of wealth, refinement, leisure, bring facilities for vari-
ous forms of indulgence incompatible with this vigor in its
highest form j and so uniform is this, that no nation, high-
ly civilized, has escaped physical deterioration. They
have not learned the secret of gaining in refinement, without
losing in a robust manhood. The population of cities, it is
said, requires to be renovated by men fresh from the coun-
try every third generation, and that it is such men, or their
descendants of the second generation, who hold the wealth
and places of influence there. Of course there are excep-
tions, but this is the general rule. The third generation
are inferior, both physically and mentally. They are sec-
ond or third rate men. Instead of being judges of soils
and of oxen, they are judges of actors, and singers, and

4*

IO« NOTHING TO BE LOST.

neck-ties ; instead of being leaders in a town meeting, they
are leaders of fashion. They become dilettanti. They
drink, they gamble, they give themselves up to pleasure,
they are of no particular use in the world, and not seldom
either they or their children are beggars in the streets
where their fathers were merchant princes. Meantime,
everywhere, in the city and in the country, in the count-
ing house, and in the college, men are drawn into " the
old way," or rather, ways " which wicked men have trod-
den." They becomes victims of licentiousness, or of some
form of artificial stimulation : and with various alterna-
tions of hope and fear on the part of their friends, and of
successful struggle and defeat, they become a curse to
society, and go down to dishonored graves. The promises
of early life are not met. The parental hand is pierced by
the reed that it leans upon. Instead of fruit, awakened
hope finds ashes in her grasp.

Of this loss something is due to ignorance, but there is
scarcely any one whose knowledge is not in advance of his
practice ; and where that is the case, the root of the evil,
and generally of the ignorance itself, lies deeper. It lies in
the insane purpose to secure present enjoyment, regardless
of consequences. From this no mere regard to self-culture,
to the laws of health, to enjoyment on the whole, will hold
the masses back when solicitation stands at every corner,
and addresses every sense. Restraint will be spurned, and
caution mocked at, and a pure and efficient manhood will
disappear. This, a pervasive Christianity can prevent,
and nothing else can. Nothing but the cross of Christ can
so startle the spiritual nature from its torpor as to make
it an effectual counterpoise to the debasing and sensual
tendencies of the race. Favored by temperament and edu-
cation, individuals may measurably escape, but if the race
is to triumph in the conflict between the flesh and the spirit,

NOTHING TO BE LOST. ^ 1 69

between the lower propensities and the higher nature, they
must, as Constantine is said to have done, see the cross,
and on it the motto, "//z hoc signo vmces^ By this sign
you shall conquer.

But, secondly, this principle is peculiarly applicable in
its relation to time.

There is a low philosophy which says that time is money.
It is more ; it is the interval between two eternities ; it is
life ; it is opportunity ; it is salvation. It is that which,
once past, comes not again. It fixes the past. It moulds
the future. Money cannot buy it. A dying queen may
exclaim, " Millions of money for an inch of time," but the
millions will not buy the inch. Money has no relation to
it. To waste it costs no effort. We have only to wrap our
talent in a napkin and sit still ; but to improve it requires
both effort and wisdom, for it may be, and most often is,
laboriously wasted.

*' Gather up the fragments " of time, " that nothing be
lost." This can be addressed only to those who are em-
ploying the greater portion of their time in some earnest
work. He who floats loosely and aimlessly in society has
no fragments of time, as related to a whole. It is all frag-
ments. He himself is a fragment, lying useless, and his
whole life requires to be recast. But whatever the great
business of a man may be, however engrossing, there will
always be some fragments of time that will remain ; and
with most men these are so considerable, that the dispos-
ition made of them will greatly modify the results of life.
The secret of doing much is to do a little at a time, but to
persevere in doing it. A half an hour a day, in the service
of an earnest purpose, has been sufficient for the acquisition
of languages and the writing of books, and for laying the
foundation of a lasting fame. Even the minute fragment
required for drawing his waxed ends, was employed by

170 NOTHING TO BE LOST.

Roger Sherman in looking on his book open before him ;
and it was thus that he became a sage, and a signer of the
Declaration of Independence. Let a professional man, or
any man, when he starts in life, have a side study, be it
History, or a Language, or Poetry, or any branch of Na-
tural History, as Geology, and let him give to it the frag-
ments of his time, and he will be surprised at his own ac-
quisitions ; the whole tone of his thoughts and life will be
elevated, and the change of subject will be his best recrea-
tion. Of such a pursuit of Minerology and Geology, we
have a striking instance in this vicinity. And what is thus
true in literature and science, is still more so in religion,
and in all that relates to duty. There is no time too brief
for an ejaculatory prayer. When the countenance of Ne-
hemiah was sad for the desolations of Jerusalem, and the
king asked him, "What is thy request?" there was time
between the question and the answer for him to pray " to
the God of heaven." If the object of this world had been
to furnish opportunities for doing good, it could hardly
have been arranged better than it is ; and whoever has a
heart set upon that, will have no need that any fragments
of time he may gather up, should be lost.

But once more, you will expect me to say that this
principle applies also to property.

Owing to the undue estimate of wealth, this has indeed
been supposed to be the special field and domain of eco-
nomy, and there are those who make it their chief business
to practice and to inculcate a small economy in this depart-
ment. Certainly the principle applies here as elsewhere,
Why should any property be lost ? If it is worth the get-
ting, why not the keeping ? It is by saving, no less than by
getting, that accumulation comes ; and failure in this is
oftenerfrom a want of economy than of enterprise. Should
there then be accumulation ? Certaialy. The right of

NOTHING TO BE LOST. 17I

property is given by God. Property itself, that is, some-
thing accumulated and kept, is a necessity for society. It
not only confers comfort and independence, but is a great
and desirable power for good. It is a duty to give ; we
are commanded to give ; but he who has nothing can give
nothing. This is commonly thought a sufficient excuse. It
may, or may not be. It is so, just as it is a sufficient ex-
cuse for begging, that a man has nothing to eat. But how
came he to have nothing to eat ? How came the man to
have nothing to give .? If there has been a want, either of
industry, or of the strictest economy, it is not a sufficient
excuse. Of the extent of this accumulation, with its temp-
tations and dangers, I am not now to speak. Of that every
man must judge for himself But be it greater or less, there
need be no hesitation in saying that any loss of property,
any want of economy in spending it, any failure to save any
portion of it, must be the result either of human imperfec-
tion or of sin.

But in this attention to minute things, this regard to
fragments, is there not something of smallness and narrow-
ness ; of a carefulness and painstaking not compatible
with enjoyment ^ Is there not something alien from the
tone and temper of a high free and generous spirit .'*
That there are such associations, in connection with what
is called enonomy, cannot be denied. But we must here
make distinctions. There is that, if v/e call it economy at
all, which must be called a wicked economy. It is that
of the miser. He saves for the sake of saving, and so
loses by his very keeping. The fragments were to be
gathered up, not that they should be carried about in bas-
kets and kept till they should be mouldy, for then they
would have been lost by being kept ; but that, subsequent-
ly, and on the first fit occasion, they should be put to the
use for which they were made.

1/2 NOTHING TO BE LOST.

There is^ also, as I have said, a small economy — a
careful parsimoniousness, not exactl}' miserliness, but
bordering upon it. It is born of fear, has reference to
self, and does not contemplate use, except for low and
personal ends.

There is, again, an honorable economy, having for its
end the gratification of the natural affections, opportunities
for mental improvement, position in society, and all these
in connection with the highest manhood and most perfect
personal independence. For a parent to be economical,
to the point of severe self-denial, for the education of a
child ; for a young man to be thus economical for his own
education ; for one accustomed or seeking to associate
with the wealthy and the fashionable, to conform to no
habit of expense that would require dishonesty or mean-
ness in any direction, implies high qualities ; and the
economy thus practiced is an honorable economy.

But besides these, there is what may be called a sub-
lime economy. This is not confined to money, or property,
but is in imitation of the method of God, and from a per-
ception of its connection with beneficence. It includes
the employment and expenditure of whatever would bear
on human well-being, and its principle is, " That noihiiig
be losty It sees that the water must be gathered in clouds
before it can be poured out in rain ; that the reservoir
must be filled before the city can be supplied ; that every
where God gathers by little and little what he dispenses
with a liberal hand, and thus, instead of being connected
with smallness or narrowness, this economy becomes the
very spring and fountain-head of generosity and liberality
and beneficence. He who adopts this principle looks
around him, and over the earth, and sees hunger to be
fed, and nakedness to be clothed, and ignorance to be
instructed, and vice to be reclaimed, and talent and worth

NOTHING TO BE LOST. 1 73

to be encouraged, and institutions to be aided ; he hears
the cry of heathen nations calling for the gospel ; and now a
regard for the least thing that can work towards either, or
all of these for which God is working, is dignified and con-
secrated by the principle that gave it birth. Now, nothing
that can thus work is small to him. Of the cold water
that he is bearing to the wounded and perishing on the
battle-field of life, and which he knows to be far short of
their necessities, he would not lose a drop. Now he works
for God, and with God ; and he finds enlargement both
of mind and of heart just in proportion as he is able to
comprehend in his working plans, as God does in his,
every instrumentality and means, however apparently in-
significant and minute.

In what I have just said, it has been my wish to place
before you one great element of all success, whether it be
of that outward but delusive success, that belongs only to
time, or of that inward and true success, that lays up its
treasures in heaven. In connection with both, the princi-
ple applies, that nothing should be lost. This element
of success is not the primitive, or the greatest. I have
no wish to magnify it at the expense of the power of attain-
ment and acquisition, but call your attention to it as equally
indispensable with that, and because its character is often
misapprehended, and its value not appreciated.

Between the two elements of success just mentioned,
as between the great forces of nature, there is a tendency
to opposition, and you will need to balance them carefully,
if you would preserve the true course and orbit of life.
With some the constitutional tendency is towards energy,
attainment, acquisition ; and as the consciousness of
power in this direction is greater, it is natural there should
be a certain profusion and recklessness in expenditure.
To the young and self-confident, their resources of time

1/4 NOTHING TO BE LOST.

of health, of energy, if not of money, seem exhaustless ;
and why should they care for loss ? With others, the ten-
dency is towards caution. They gain by saving. They
never either pay, or give, too much for anything. They
are in danger of withholding more than is meet, even when
it tendeth to poverty. Of these elements, if there must
be a preponderance of either, let it be of the first. But,
rightly viewed, these are not conflicting, but complemen-
tary elements. If there were no gathering, their could be
neither saving nor giving ; if there were no saving, there
could be no systematic, far-sighted, effective' use or dis-
tribution. Here, as everywhere, the example of our
Saviour is perfect. How grand the energy by which he
controlled the elements ! How adequate, and more than
adequate, the provision for all that use required ! And
yet how perfect the economy — an economy, you will be
careful to observe, that in no degree restricted use, but
simply provided against loss. Here we have the whole
principle. Everything for use^ nothing to be lost. Why
should any thing, that can be used, be lost ? How can
it be, but from recklessness, or weakness, or wicked-
ness ?

You, my Beloved Friends, have rich endowments, a
rich inheritance, a capital of priceless worth, no part of
which ought to be lost. You have youth, and health, and
education, and freedom, personal, civil, and rehgious.
You inherit the past, and stand on the threshold of a
future that must be richer in thronging events and in
opportunities for good, than any past has been. Your
fathers inherited a continent that required to be subdued.
You, one that requires to be cultivated ; they inherited
the printing press worked by hand, and the stage coach,
and the sailing vessel ; you inherit the cylinder press

NOTHING TO BE LOST. 1 75

worked by steam, and the railroad car, and the steamship,
and the electric telegraph. It was for them to lift up
their eyes upon the varied forms of destitution and crime in
our land, and upon the darkness and woes of heathendom,
and to form the associations, and gain the knowledge
necessary for effective working. It is for you to take these
instrumentalities and work them. Work them with accel-
erated speed, and with mightier power. Meliorate the
physical condition of man. Bring back a revolted world
to its allegiance to God. And when you look at the mag-
nitude of this work, is there anything, whether of time, or
health, or money, or influence, or of capability in any
direction, which you can afford to lose ? No. Oh, no.
In such a work every resource is needed ; '' Hold fast
what thou hast ; " for such a work, *' Gather up the frag-
ments, that nothing be lost."

But my friends, if it be the will of God that you should
lose nothing of time, or health, or even of money, how
much more must it be his will that you should not lose
yourselves. This you can do. You can lose yourselves ;
and such a loss, you will observe, implies not merely de-
privation, but all there is of suffering and of penalty under
the moral laws of God. As the loss of health is sickness,
and of light, darkness, so is the loss of hope, despair, and
the loss of heaven is hell. You can throw yourselves
away. You can become of no use in this universe except
for a warning. You can lose your souls. Oh, what a loss
is that ! The perversion and degradation of every high
and immortal power for an eternity ! And shall this be
true of any one of you ? Will you be lost when One has
come from heaven, travelling in the greatness of his
strength, and with garments dyed in blood, on purpose to
guide you home — home to a Father's house — to an eternal

176 NOTHING TO BE LOST.

home ? Will you not rather, on this day of interest, it may
be of final decision, when all the world, and all choices are
open before you, hear his voice saying, "Follow me."
" For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole
world, and lose his own soul ? "

X.

GOD'S METHOD OF SOCIAL UNITY.

To whom coming as unto a living stone disallowed indeed of men but chosen of
God, and precious, ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house.
—I Peter, ii. 4, 5.

IN building a house, materials of great diversity are
brought into unity. They are placed in such relations
as to be mutually subservient, and become one thing.
This is what is done in all construction. It is what God
has done in building this material universe. The process
of this, as conducted by him, is expressly compared to the
building of a house by man. "For," says the Apostle,
" every house is builded by some man, but he that built
all things is God."

As thus constructed, the universe is no mulitudinous
mass of unrelated units baffling all comprehension. The
separate beings and facts are, indeed, without number, and
are infinitely diversified ; but they may yet be partitioned
off into divisions, assorted into groups, the ligament which
binds each of these into unity may be distinctly traced, and
each group, thus assorted and bound together, becomes the
field of a separate science. And not only are the facts
within each group related to each other, but the groups
themselves. Not, as the ancients supposed, are the
heavens, and the earth, and the regions beneath, consti-
tuted and governed each on different principles. The
light from the farthest star is the same as that which comes
from the sun, and which is struck from the flint ; the par-

*** August 3, 1862.

1/8 god's method of social unity.

tide of dust that floats in the air is governed by the same
laws as the earth that floats in space and is enveloped by
that air ; the spire of grass at our feet requires not only
the sun and the rain, but all those laws of electricity, ana
magnetism, and cohesion, and affinity, by which the globe
itself, and the solar system, and the far vaster stellar sys-
tems cohere and stand ap together. Not only, therefore, is
there a unity of each science, but a unity of the sciences.
The farther we investigate the more do we find of unity in
the works of God, and nothing seems left to science but to
accept that instinctive and universal conviction which has
recorded itself in language, and which calls these works of
God, so varied and so vast, a uni-verse.

With this constitution of the external universe, that of
the mind is in harmony. It is a necessity for it to seek to
reduce its knowledge to unity. Before science can begin,
we must observe separate facts ; but as soon as these are
observed, there is an effort to bring them into system, that
is, into unity ; and when this is fully done, there is a com-
pleted science. No man can observe a new and strange
fact, without seeking to bring it into relation with facts
already known and classfied.

But it is not solely as speculative that man desires, and
is required, to reduce all things to unity. As a practical
being, it is his groat business to do this. As the beings
and facts of nature are given to him, as speculative, that
he may find their mutual relations, and thus their unity,
so are the substances of nature given to him, as a practi-
cal being, that he may find their capabilities, and bring
them into such relations of convergence and unity as shall
subserve his purposes. Like the facts and phenomena,
these substances are given separately. The air is given
by itself, and the iron, and the fuel, and the fire, and the
water, and all these are to be brought into such conver-

god's method of social unity. 179

gence and unity of action as to cause the locomotive and
the steam-ship to be, and to speed them on their won-
drous way. In all contrivances, from the simple lever to
those marvelous combinations of machinery that seem
endowed not only with hands, but with thought, there is
always to be found a unity in the subservience of every
part to the purpose of the designer, and it is this unity
which he designs, to produce. As a creature made in
the image of God, man not only finds in his works unity
with reference to an end, but he wishes to produce such
unity.

But this is not all. If we pass from matter to mind
we find another, a spiritual universe, to which the first is
subservient. We can scarcely avoid the conclusion,
favored as it is by the Scriptures and by all analogy, that
there is a spiritual universe corresponding in vastness and
variety to the material one ; and if so, the great object of
God, in the whole, must be such an arrangement and
government of this as shall secure for it the highest social
and spiritual unity. This, too, is favored by the Scriptures.
Christians are to be built up a spiritual house. Christ
prayed that they might all be one ; and the Apostle,
glancing, it would seem, at that wider range of which we
have spoken, says : " That in the dispensation of the full-
ness of times he might gather together in one all things in
Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth ;
even in him."

And here, also, in this spiritual universe, man is not
merely to find a unity produced by God ; he is also, and
tn this chiefly, to seek to produce unity.

In doing this, the first sphere of action for every man
is his own spirit. Blessed is he who can bring into that,
that unity which is at once peace and power. This is the
first condition of all true rest and of all healthful activity.

l8o GOD'S METHOD OF SOCIAL UNITY.

The more complex man is ; the more incompatible are his
desires ; the more deeply opposed are the flesh and the
spirit ; the more needful, and the more beautiful is that
unity which belongs to the original design of God, and
which is brought in by one overmastering purpose subor-
dinating all things to itself. In this is singleness of eye ;
in this consistency, efficiency, a ground for self-respect, and
for the respect of others :

But this unity of the individual spirit is not only a con-
dition of individual peace and joy, but also of those bonds
of peace by which individuals are united to each other.
This brings us to a wider and more complex field, to that
social and spiritual unity which we now propose to con-
sider.

In this field the first and most perfect unity is to be
found in the marriage union. In marriage, according to
its original idea, there is the most perfect social unity known
on earth. They twain become one flesh. It is based on
a diversity in the Vv^hole being, — a diversity, not of opposi-
tion, but of correspondence, by which each supplements
the other, and in which there is always the basis for the
truest and deepest unity.

It is from such a unity that society springs, branching
out into families, communities, and nations. Here, again,
unity is needed not only within each family, community
and nation, but also between families, communities, and
nations. This is possible. Despite the isolations, the
alienations, the enmities there are, it is the law, it is the
only condition of social good, and it is the production of
this that is the end of all constitutions, and legislation, and
government. A solution of all social problems, those which
have taxed the powers of man from the beginning, can end
in nothing better than this. That the race of man should
recognize its own unity in a spirit of brotherhood, overlook-

god's method of social unity. i8i

ing no one having the attributes of man, and thus, under
the government of God, become fitted for a unity with other
races, trained in other planets, in other systems, related to
us by the correspondence of diversity, they fitted to supple-
ment us, as we them, gives us the grandest conception of
a social system which it is possible for us to form. It is
towards this that all true reformers look ; as they approx-
imate this, their end is attained ; as they find the principle
of this, they find the principle of all real reforms.

It is of this complex social unity that the text speaks
under the figure of a house built up of separate stones.
*'Ye are byilt up a spiritual house." And this unity men
have sought, and still seek to secure, chiefly in two ways.

The first is by the balance of mutual interests and
selfishnesses.

Interest and selfishness are not, like malignity, neces-
sarily repellent. So far as two selfish persons are either
necessary to each other from the conditions of their being,
or can make use of each other, they can go on together ;
and, by a skillful adjustment of checks and balances, much
may be done to make it for the immediate interest of all
to go on thus. Selfishness may do good to others, that
others may do good to it ; it may lend to others, "hoping
to receive as much again." It may, for its own sake, do
much for the upbuilding and perfection of society; and
with this as its controlling principle, together with the gre-
gariousness common to man with the animals, society may
exist and have a degree of unity. But with a governing
selfishness, held in check, and known to be, solely by ex-
pediency, there must be constant distrust. Thus governed
men will overstep the limits of right when they dare, and
the individuals of society will resolve themselves into an
armed neutralit}', with a constant outlook for opportunities
of safe aggression. Outward peace there may be, but it

1 82 god's method of social unity.

will be from mutual dread, as when two prize-fighters sur-
vey each other, and each perfers to decline the contest. It
will be on the principle that a certain gun, supposed to be
very destructive, was named " the peacemaker." There
will be sought a balance of power like that so long made
the object of European politicians. Such a political bal-
ance required for its maintenance standing armies, and
navies, and fortifications, and constant watchfulness. And
such a balance in society will require the division of powers,
and a police, and courts, and prisons, and written contracts,
and securities. Such a unity maybe better than none. It
is far better ; but there must be something better than
this.

A second mode of producing unity among men is by
power, or pressure from without.

This involves the first, to some extent, and is superin-
duced upon it. It is the method adopted by all despot-
isms, whether of one man, of a few, or of many. The great
object of ambition has been to exercise the power of a des-
potic will over masses of men organized as armies, and
through these to hold in subjection, as one empire, vast
regions, peopled, it may be, by nations the most discord-
ant. Such was the empire of Nebuchadnezzar, who sent
forth his decree "to every people, and nation, and lan-
guage." Such was the Persian empire under Ahasuerus,
whose letters were sent " to the rulers of the provinces
which were from India to Ethiopia, a hundred and twenty
and seven provinces, unto every province according to the
writing thereof, and unto every people after their language."
Such was the empire of Alexander, that fell in pieces by its
own weight, as soon as his strong grasp upon it was relaxed.
Such, emphatically, was the Roman empire. Extending
from the African deserts to Britain, and from India to the
pillars of Hercules, it held in a forced unity nations utterly

god's method of social unity. 183

diverse in language, and habits, and interests. It was a
mere aggregation, a conglomerate, whose parts were held
in position by Roman legions. Such, indeed, were the
republics of antiquity, when they became extensive. Of
the rights of man as such, they knew nothing : they did
not extend citizenship with their conquests, but held their
provinces in subjection, and so preserved unity by power.
Such has been, and still is, to a great extent, the condition
of Europe : much more of countries less enlightened.
Different nationalities are forced together. Every where
there is the pressure of power as an external force. The
free play of affinities, whether laterally, or vertically, is
checked ; and the spirit, if not the laws of caste, is rigidly
maintained. Hence the unity, such as there is, being en-
forced, is unquiet ; not peaceful, spontaneous and fruitful.
In opposition to these methods, now tried so long that
the world is weary, is that adopted by God, and beautifully
indicated in the text, The figure in this passage is remark-
able, as bringing into coalesence objects and qualities
seemingly the most incompatible. A stone is passive.
You may lift it, toss it, hurl it, smite it, lay it in a wall,
and it will resist only in virtue of its inertia and cohesion
A stone is dead — so dead, that when we would speak of
the perfection and intensity of death in other things, we
say of them that they are stone-dead. A stone is solid,,
permanent, a fit material to enter into structures that are
to endure for ages. How opposite is all this to that vital-
ity, and sensibility, and self-assertion, and transient char-
acter that belong to all organic and living things ! How
opposite, especially, is it to spirituality. Nothing could
be more opposite, and yet it is precisely in the blending of
these opposites that the power and beauty of the figure are
found. That the building should be of stone, was required
to indicate its perpetuity; for its turrets are to gleam for-

l84 GOD S METHOD OF SOCIAL UNITY.

ever in the light of eternity. That the stones should be
living, was required to indicate their union, each in its
place ; not by mechanical means, or outward pressure, but
by vital affinity.

Here it is that we reach the peculiarity of this struct-
ure. It is that the materials are living, and are united by
a vital affinity. If now we suppose this affinity to spring
from that which is deepest and most essential in the ma-
terials, we shall have the whole method of God in produc-
ing social unity : we shall have that which we must adopt
in seeking to produce it, if we are ever to succeed.

Of this method of union by vital affinity, there are two
conditions. The first and indispensable one is, that the
materials should be vitalized, or be alive. The second is,
that they should be free to move in accordance with the
laws of vitality.

What it is to be vitalized in mere matter, and how this
is done, we know. It is to have life communicated to that
which was dead ; and this is done by bringing the mater-
ials, not in masses, but particle by particle, into contact
with that which already has vitality. It is done as by a
leavening power, a kind of sacred contagion ; and when it
is done, the materials are ready to be marshaled into their
places, and to perform their functions under the vital laws.

So far the process is beautiful and typical, but the mar-
shaling is perhaps more so. Here the second condition,
that of freedom, comes in. In matter, fluidity is freedom.
It is the freedom of the individual particle to move in any
direction ; and strange as it may seem, that a fluid should
be alive, yet it is, and the Scripture doctrine, that the
blood "is the life thereof," is a philosophical necessity.
Having then materials for the upbuilding of every part of
the body, vitalized, and free, as held in solution, what is to
be done? There are to be formed bone, muscle, tendon,

god's method of social unity. 185

brain, nerves, skin, hair, nails, the transparent humors of the
eye, and its dark pigment. The materials are undistinguish-
able, and mixed in utter confusion. But now the affinity
shows itself, and the miracle of bringing order out of chaos,
as seen in the first creation, is repeated. Each particle goes
to its own place, stands in its own lot, performs just the
office it is fitted to perform ; and thus, to a body constantly
changing in its matter, there is given permanence, and
strength and beauty.

Of the process now mentioned all materials are not ca-
pable, but only food. It is the capability of this that makes
them food. But whether capable of it or not, any substance
not actually vitalized, or in a position to be so, is a foreign
substance. As such it is either an encumbrance or an
irritant, and is expelled by the vital force. This power of
rejection and expulsion is no less essential than that of
assimilation.

All this perfectly represents what occurs, or should
occur, in the higher social region. Every particle thus
vitalized becomes a living stone to build up a living house,
and in thus helping to build the whole, its own place is
found, and its appetency satisfied.

In passing to the higher spiritual region, if we find
differences, it is only those required by the nature of the
subject. We have here the same indispensible conditions
of vitality and freedom, and the same expulsive power.
But life here, in accordance with the usage of the Scrip-
tures, and with all usage, is something more than life, and
death is not merely its absence. Life here is consciousness
sensibility, sympathy, affection. It is consent and har-
mony, and the more intense the life in one direction, the
more perfect the death in another. To be alive to God is
to have every faculty active and quick in apprehending his
perfections, and in doing his will ; and one wholly in this

1 86 GOr/S METHOD OF SOCIAL UNITY.

state would be dead to sin. Its allurements would awaken
no more response than an appeal to the senses of the dead.
They would be viands set at the mouth of a tomb. On the
other hand, no life is more intense than that of him who
is " dead in trespasses and sins." He is so engrossed in
his own selfish plans that no voice of the word, or prov-
idence, or Spirit of God, makes any impression upon him.
Call as you may, there is no response. There is no voice,
nor any that answers or regards. He is dead. In the
same way men may be alive to the beauties of nature, or
of art, to the behests of duty, the calls of compassion, the
voice of their country ; and they may be dead to all these.
They may be wholly engrossed in business, or in pleasure.
Men may be so alive to the wages of unrighteousness as to
become, as the Apostle says, " trees twice dead, plucked
up by the roots."

We say, then, that for a social structure, he is a living
stone who is capable of being so inwrought into it as to
add, and only add, to its strength and symmetry. This
will imply that he be permeated by those ideas which are
the life of the system, that he be plastic to its forces, and
responsive to its instinctive wants. He must be an agent,
and not an instrument. It is the characteristic of vital
methods, as opposed to mechanical, that the movement is
from within. The moment the interior appetency, and im-
pulse, and choice, cease to be respected, there is social
death ; the idea of mutual subserviency through vital action,
which is God's idea, is lost, and society, instead of moving
like the heavens, becomes a crazy mechanism, whirling and
crashing on with the blindness and unsteadiness of human
passion and power.

Such is the idea of vitality in a social system. It im-
plies a sympathy, a rational consent and harmony of the
individual with the movements and ends of the system,

god's method of social unity. 187

that will lead him to seek and to keep, not office, but just
that place for which he is best fitted.

The idea of freedom, figurative in matter, is literal here.
It implies both the immediate absence of arbitrary power,
and security against it. The lion must not only be sated
for the moment, or accidentally sluggish, he must be caged.
There must be no intervention of mere will, seeking, for a
side and selfish purpose, to wield the masses as instruments
or to prevent any living stone from finding its true place.
The idea of freedom also implies the absence of any hor-
izontal and petrified strata in society, as caste, or fixed
classes, which would prevent a free movement, upwards or
downwards, horizontally or obliquely. Such strata may
exist without arbitrary power ; it may exist without them,
but they naturally go together and mutually aid each other.
Established orders are a frame-work to support the throne,
and the throne concentrates power to guard these orders
from the encroachments of each other, and of the people.

Of such a combination of concentrated power and es-
tablished orders, great public works, and high civilization
and refinement in the favored classes, are the natural re-
sult, while the lower classes are degraded. In such a form
of society there may be much of beauty, and power, and
beneficence. Once originated, it readily perpetuates it-
self, and becomes venerable. From this, with the vast
wealth accumulated, public and private, though in few
hands, and from the consequent magnificence, it appeals
strongly to the imagination and tends to control the asso-
ciations. Being born into it, children are overshadowed
by it, and their associations are conformed to its order as
they are to that of nature. Both seem to come from a
power above them, and to belong almost equally to an or-
der of things over which they have no control. Institutions,
just those established, with their settled order, are every-

1 88 god's method of social unity.

thing ; the individual is nothing. There is no longer room
for an appeal to original rights and fitnesses. The sphere
of choice and of action provided by God, and needed for
the best development of the life of all, becomes limited.
There is no fiuidity, and for a man to pass up through the
orders of society by merit, is a marvel. If he choose to
fall in with the prescribed course, well ; but if Bonaparte
is to rise from the lower strata of society to its top, it can
be only as the metallic vein is shot up through the earthy
strata by an underlying force that would convulse a con-
tinent.

Of the two great elements of social order now spoken
of, vitality and freedom, freedom has been most prominent
in the thoughts and in the speech of men. Freedom has
been the battle-cry of the race. For this heroes have fought.
Men seek scope, that is freedom, for the action of vitality,
but do not so readily feel the deficiency of that or seek its
increase. This is natural, because the absence of freedom
is a restraint that is instantly felt, and naturally resisted ;
but the absence of vitality is insensibility, and the less life
a man has, of any kind, physical, intellectual, spiritual, the
less inclined will he be to struggle for more.

But while freedom is thus more prominent than vitality,
it is not at all in the same rank. All good is from vitality.
Freedom is only the condition of its best exercise. For a
good man, freedom is a good ; for a bad man, it is an evil.
Without vitality in the sense of the text, freedom becomes
anarchy. With it, pervading the whole social system,
there will be essential freedom, whatever the outward
form of society may be. If every stone in the house be
living, there will be nothing to originate mechanical
methods and obstructions; vital laws will rule, and the
rule of these is freedom.

All that has now been said will apply to social unity

GOD S METHOD OF SOCIAL UNITY. 1 89

of any kind ; but that here spoken of is spiritual. '* Ye
are built up a spiritual house." Let there be vitality and
freedom, and there may be unity after God's method ; but
its strength and value will be as the life from which it
springs. Spiritual unity must be from spiritual life, and
in these we find the sphere and method of God in his
grandest work.

Of spiritual unity the peculiarities are two. The first
is, that it springs from that life which is deepest.

Surely, if man is made in the image of God, that by
which he is thus made must be that which makes him man,
and so is his very being. If so, his natural affinities —
using the word natural in its highest sense — will be for
God and those who are like him. If so, as union with
God and those who are like him is essential to this life, it
must expel every interest, or life, or love, incompatible
with it. No love of father or mother may compete with it.
It will move on as the river towards the ocean. Not to
do this, would be to deny its own nature.

The second peculiarity of spiritual life, at least in
man, is, that Christ is, for him, both the source of vitality
and the centre of unity.

Without Christ, men are destitute of spiritual life.
They are " without God, and without hope." This is the
cardinal fact in the moral history of the world. The
recognition or non-recognition of this, will determine the
character of all speculative theologies, and also the char-
acter and results of all efforts for the good of man. This
fact the world do not admit ; and hence they disallow
Christ, both as a source of life and as the centre of unity.
He is " disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God and
precious." It is on this that the whole method of God in
the restoration of man is based, and it is for the recogni-
ti:n of this by men, and their adoption of God's method

190 god's method of social unity.

of vitality and unity, that the tardy and laboring and dis-
tracted times wait. No partial reform will do ; no "com-
ing man." Every where men are divergent, repellent.
The bond of a common humanity has been found to be
but a bond of tow to bind the Samson of human selfish-
ness and passion. There must be a divine life, a divine
centre, a more than human bond. This life is in Christ.
He is " the life." This bond is from him. In him are
condensed all human relationships, as of *' brother and
sister and mother ; " and to these — higher and holier —
that of Saviour is added. In him, as the second Adam ;
in his matchless character, human, yet divine ; in his
all-embracing and self-sacrificing love ; in him as the
champion of humanity in its weakness and guilt, able and
willing to bring succor in the hour of its direst need, and
to raise it up from the darkness and the dust of death,
there is every requisite for a centre of unity for the race,
so that " all things which are on earth," as well as " those
which are in heaven, may be gathered together in one,
even in him." In this, in this only, is there an object
worthy of God. He has created worlds, and families of
worlds, of mere matter, and given them a unity of unspeak-
able beauty and grandeur ; but without sensation or recog-
nition, without enjoyment or praise, what would they be
worth ? Nothing. No, the only work worthy of God is
one crowned by creatures made in his image, with their
vitality from him, and himself the centre of their unity- -
unity in love, fitly represented by the marriage union.
This work, we believe, will correspond in its vastness to
that of the stellar hosts, and as far transcend them in
glory as mind transcends the inanimate clod. It will
embrace all orders of rational intelligences, in all worlds ;
sin and its consequences will be eliminated, and it shall
stand in its glorious order forever. The promised new

god's method of social unity. 191

heavens and earth do not so much respect any new com-
binations and unity of matter, as of conscious agents; and
they will be such that all that has gone before in the works
of God will be as nothing. " For behold," says God, " I
create new heavens and a new earth ; and the former shall
not be remembered, nor come into mind. But be ye glad
and rejoice forever in that which I create ; for, behold, I
create Jerusalem a rejoicing and her people a joy."

It is of such a social system, my friends that you are
to fit yourselves to form a part ; it is into such a system
that you are to seek to bring others. This will compre-
hend your whole duty. This you will best do, not by
ignoring or disregarding those lower social systems on
earth which God has ordained, but by filling your places
as living stones in them all. That you may do this rightly
I have wished, to furnish you both with a test of systems,
and with guiding principles.

First, then, it will follow, from what has been said, that
if you are either to fit yourselves for such a system, or to
aid in fitting others, an indispensable condition must be,
that you should be alive.

What can a dead man do i-' In the first place, death
can enjoy nothing. And then, what place has a cold, un-
conscious, apathetic stone, where everything is vital, and
responsive, and eager to meet the wants of the whole ? It
is an obstruction not merely, but an offense, and cannot
be permanently suffered. So is it in the family; so in
the college — what is the use of a dead student? so in
the state ; so in the church ; so, emphatically, must it be
in heaven. With little vitality, such offenses may be en-
dured, but the more intense the life, the more does it array
itself against all death, and seek to free itself from its con-
tact. The very pavement of heaven would rise against the
5*

192 GOD S METHOD OF SOCIAL UNITY.

foot of the wicked ; it would cast them out. " Without
are dogs." And what, again, can a dead man do in com-
municating life ? Life comes from life. God is its author;
but, having originated it, it spreads from centres according
to laws, and those centres must be alive. In the spiritual,
as in the natural world, there is no spontaneous generation.
Would you communicate knowledge? You must have it.
So of life. Christianity does not spring up of itself; it
must be borne by the living preacher. Yes, by a /ivmg
preacher, and not by one that is dead.

If, then, you would enjoy any thing ; if you would not
be an offense ; if you would communicate any thing, you
must be alive.

You will also find, in what has been said, a test of all
social organizations. Of these, the present emergency re-
quires that I should refer especially to those that are na-
tional, and to your duty to the government in which you
are to have a part.

Organizations express life, and react upon it. Of these,
some are better than others. It is not true, that, '' that is
the best government which is best administered." That
government is the best, and is likely to be best adminis-
tered, which is constructed most nearly after God's method.
That, accordingly, is the best government which combines
most perfectly vitality, freedom, and unity. We are wont
to think of the excellence of our government as from free-
dom. Not so, except as there is vitality back of the free-
dom, and as it leads to unity. Its excellence is that its
methodic vital, and not mechanical. It is self-government,
working out, as by an instinct of life, the common good.
It is a common-wealth. It casts the character in the
mould of freedom, and becomes a great educating and for
motive power. It makes a radical difference whether the
people have a government distinct from themselves and

god's method of social unity. 193

exercised over them, or whether they are the government,
expressing their will through constitutional forms. In the
one case the people will be recipients and instruments, re-
ceiving a provision made for them by those whose business
it is to take care of them ; in the other they will be vital,
and will perform a high function of vitality by which, if they
perform it well, they must grow into a larger manhood. If
they perforin it well! Just here it is that the voice of patri-
otism, of oppressed humanity every where, that the voice
of God reaches every young man, and especially every edu-
cated young man. You inherit a government more con-
formed to the methods of God than any other. There is
in it more of freedom in all directions ; we trust there is
also more of vitality, of unity, and of power to expel what
would be destructive of its life. But this is yet to be tested,
and the result will depend on the present generation of
young men. There is no strength like that of unity from
vitality and freedom. There is no beauty like it. Go forth,
then, and do what you can in giving to the nation this
strength and beauty. Be true to God's methods ; be true
to the interests of freedom, and to the rights of man.

Again, as we have seen that vitality is the chief thing
in order to social unity, it will follow that your highest aim
will be to communicate that.

This was done by our Saviour. He had life in himself
He was the Life, and his great object was to give life to
the world. For this he gave himself This principle was
original with him. It is distinctive. It is this, and this
only, that has made his religion a power in the world,
working like leaven. Overlooked by the world, " disal-
lowed of men," it is yet demonstrably the only true prin-
ciple of reform. If a living house is to be built, there
must be living stones. The difficulty hi social structures is
in the material. If this nation is to fail, it will be from

194

that. Ambition, selfishness, human wisdom, take such
materials as they find and use them as they may, often
skillfully, for their own ends. Christ says, begin with the
materials. " Make the tree goody Go to the ignorant, the
vicious, the proud, the sensual, the selfish in every form,"
and teach them that wisdom of God which consists, not in
getting any thing, or in achieving any thing, but in beco??iing
as little children before him. Thus shall they enter, by
love, into his kingdom, and into the heirship of all things.
This is totally different from any achievement for admira-
tion, or from any exercise of power, as by the great ones
of the earth. It is wholly alien from the spirit of the
world, and yet from this only can there be renovation in
society, or fruit unto life everlasting. This will preclude
all monkish seclusion, it will bring you heart to heart with
your fellow-men, no matter who, so they be men, and will
call for all you may have of life to communicate. Your
usefulness will not be as your talents, but as you may com-
municate vitality. I rejoice, my friends, in the confidence
that you will adopt this principle. Apply it in your lives,
unmoved by the sneers of skepticism, or by the success and
self-complacency of the worldly wise.

Once more, in view of the discordance and divisions in
the world, it will readily occur to you, from what has been
said, how important it is that your centres of unity should
be rightly chosen.

Both your influence and peace will depend much upon
this. Here your wisdom v/ill be to choose only those
which God has established. God has established the
family, and not communism ; the state, and not party ;
the church, the one living, spiritual church, and not sects ;
Christ and not popes, or theological doctors and teachers.
The true ground of union is vitality with reference to a
common centre ; and distant as it may seem, we hope

god's method of social unity. 195

and believe the time will come when men will every where
swing away from centres false, artificial, divisive, and
revolve only, with mutual attraction, around those that are
God-appointed.

Finally, while I exhort you to enter, as a vital part,
into every social unity instituted by God, the great ques-
tion with you, as with us all, is whether you have come lo
Christ. " Unto whom coming." Have you come to him
as unto a living stone, and so been made yourselves living
as to be fit to become a part of that spiritual house which
God is building ? Christ is still " disallowed of men."
The builders refused him. So do not you. You are
building for eternity ; look well to your foundation. Christ
is "chosen of God," and other foundation can no man lay.
He is precious to him as " the Head-stone of the corner."
"He is precious to them that believe." If you have not
done so, come to him now, in this hour of transition, and
of look-out upon tlie future, and he will be precious to you.
Is it to be to any of you that your strength will be weak-
ened in the way and that death will claim you early ?
Christ will be precious, O how precious ! Are you to bear
the responsibilities of life, and wage its battles till old age ?
Little do you know of your own weakness, and of the
besetments and fierce struggles of the long v/ay, if a divine
Helper would not be precious to you. He will be precious
to you in the final hour. When you shall walk through
the valley of the shadow of death, his rod and his staff, they
shall comfort you. And when the present order shall come
to an end, and that building of God, whose stones are now
preparing, shall go up without a sound of the axe or the
hammer, till " the head-stone thereof shall be brought forth
with shoutings," you shall be there, and cry, " Grace,
grace, unto it."

XL

ENLARGEMENT.

Now for a recompense in the same, (I speak as unto my children,) be ye also
enlarged.— 2 Corinthians, vi. 13.

THAT is a slow process by which enlargement comes
to man in his apprehension of himself, and of his
wider relations. At his birth he is often spoken of as a
stranger. He is a stranger in a strange world — how
strange ! — but to no one is he a greater stranger than to
himself. How little does the infant know or suspect of the
capacities that are in him for apprehension, for joy and
suffering, for varied emotion and passion, for action, and
for an eternal duration. He is a point that is to enlarge
into a capacity to reflect the universe, but that capacity is
revealed only as he is brought face to face with that which
is to act upon him, and upon which he is to act, and few
men, if any, learn, during a life-time, their own capacities.
Among the last things that a man comes to know thorough-
ly, is himself

Then of the past, of the future, of things around him,
what does he know ? Of that endless duration that is back
of him, he knows nothing. He does not know that there
has been such a duration, much less what has taken place
during its countless ages. Whether he is the first child
of the first man, or the last in a succession of myriads of
generations, he knows not. So of the space around him,
and what is in it. To him, the walls that his eyes rest upor

♦** August 2, 1863.

ENLARGEMENT. I97

are the limit of the universe, and those around him are all
the beings it contains. Of wide plains, and high moun-
tains, and broad oceans, of an infinite space with its count-
less suns and systems, of the multitudes of men, and the
myriads of the heavenly hosts, he has no apprehension or
suspicion. So also of the great future. Shall all things
continue as they are forever .? Shall the earth and the
things that are therein be burnt up } When will the mil-
lenium begin ? Where will he be after myriads of ages .-*
These, and such as these, are questions that do not as yet
disturb him.

Now the business of education for this incipient being,
certainly its first business, is simply enlargement — enlarge-
ment in the apprehension of things past, and future, and
around him ; and the comprehension of them so as to bring
them all into unity.

But to this enlargement there are great natural obsta-
cles ; and if man be left to himself, it must, whether we
regard the individual or the race, be slow. In part, it is
indeed spontaneous. The child, let alone, will grow up to
such apprehension and enlargement as will enable him to
meet his animal wants, and something more. But in its
relation to the human faculties, this universe is so consti-
tuted that enlargement soon ceases, unless there be volun-
tary, rational, persistent, and organized effort. From the
great number of objects around us, their complexity, the
magnitude of some and the minuteness of others; from the
subtlety of natural agents, the interaction of laws and the
long cycles of nature ; and from the necessity of labor and
the brevity of life, it is clear that one individual, or one
generation, could do but little. How could the first man,
or the first generations of men, have known that the earth
is round, or that it revolves round the sun, or that its sur-
face lies in strata, or have calculated an eclipse ? How

igS ENLARGEMENT.

could they have known the composition of bodies, and the
subtle agents of chemistry ? Clearly man was placed here
as in a school, and both the individual and the race were
to be gradually educated into such an enlargement as to
comprehend and use wisely the substances and forces
around him, and to know something of his position, among
the stars, and as related to other worlds.

Owing to the obstacles just mentioned, this process
of enlargement could not have been rapid, but it might
have been more so than it has been. Men are sluggish,
and gravitate towards sensuality ; they fall into habits and
routine, and run in ruts ; they carry the grain on one side
of the horse, and a stone on the other because their fathers
did. Notions indolently taken up gather about them a
crust of antiquity that no one dares to break through.
There is nothing that men have been so reluctant to do as
to think. They would go on pilgrimages, hang on hooks,
accept dogmas, bow down to power, but they have been
slow to put forth their powers in an earnest effort after
comprehension and enlargement.

And not indolence only, but pride and selfishness have
arrayed and organized themselves against this enlargement.
Once accepted, a dogma links itself with modes of thought
and habits of association ; it becomes a part of the systems
of the schools, or of religious teaching. Then pride comes
in, and the will is up, and men contend, not for truth, but
for victory. Often also a dogma is so inwoven with the
structure of society, that if you overthrow it, men's occupa-
tion will be gone. Then interest takes the lead, and pride
and passion fall in, and the whole guild of silversmiths,
with whatever rabble they can collect, are full of wrath,
and cry out, saying, " Great is Diana of the Ephesians."
Again, knowledge is power. Ignorant men may be held
in subjection, and used as instruments ; and whole classes,

ENLARGEMENT. I99

nay, the mass of mankind, have been so held of set pur-
pose and by law, that those thus holding them might rule
over them and avail themselves of their labor.

From these causes there has been little zeal for truth ;
and men zealous for it, and especially those in advance of
their age, have been persecuted. Leaders of the race, and
those set for the advancement of truth, have been its worst
enemies. Holding the key of knowledge, they have not
entered in themselves, and them that were entering in,
they have hindered. Seats of learning, the very fortresses
erected to guard and advance truth, have turned their
guns against her.

• But now there is a change. The bonds are relaxed.
Henceforth no coming Galileo shall need to smite with his
foot the floor of a dungeon when he says the earth moves.
If not the summer, yet the spring-time of truth is come.
The few are greatly enlarged, and the mass of humanity is
quickened. A feeling that gropes for the light, is pervad-
ing it, a dim thought that it is coming out into enlarge-
ment. Always there has been a voice from every thing
that could supply want, or gratify curiosity, or enlarge
science, or adorn life, from the flower on the earth and
the star in the heavens, saying, Be ye enlarged ; but now
that voice is heard by the alert sense of very many. Now,
too, it begins to be felt that truth is one. The different
angles and walls of her temple are seen to belong to one
building, and instead of scowls and reproaches, the work-
men more often send greetings to each other, and feel that
they are working together.

To this wide enlargement there are, as has been said,
natural obstacles; but there is also a tendency to it, and
with right affections progress would be indefinite. From
the first, the affections are complicated with the intellect,
they react upon it as the brain upon the stomach, and when

200 ENLARGEMENT.

these are disordered and dwarfed, it is not possible that the
general intellectual level should be high. Society will soon
reach a point where it will become stationary, and will
begin to go back. Hence the great thing needed is enlarge-
ment of the affections, and it is accordingly of this that the
Apostle Paul speaks when he says. " O, ye Corinthians,"
"our mouth is open unto you, our heart is enlarged. Ye
are not straitened in us, but ye are straitened in your own
bowels. Now for a recompense in the same, (I speak as
unto my children,) be ye also enlarged." Be enlarged in
your affections. Give as you receive ; love as you are
loved.

For the Apostle Paul to say this to the Corinthians,
was a great thing — how great, we can understand only by
going back to his position. Socially, the world was in a
state of disintegration. Men were divided into clans
tribes, nationalities, with diversities of language, customs,
interests, that were constant grounds of alienation and of
settled antipathies ; and, to human view, any common
ground or centre of unity for the race was hopeless. Ex-
cept in dreams of conquest and subjugation, the very idea
of such unity did not exist. But of nations thus diverse
and hostile, the Jews were the most exclusive, and the
Apostle was not only a Jew, but had belonged to their
straitest religious sect. As a Jew, his pride, and self-com-
placency, and zeal for Judaism, were boundless, and he
looked upon Gentiles with contempt and aversion. Yet
we here find him offering his fraternal regards, and warm-
est love, and intimate fellowship to Gentiles, and seeking
theirs in return, and this without regard to the previous
rank, or cultivation, or character of those Gentiles. Of
some we know that their origin was low, and that their
character had been vile. This too he did on a principle
that would include all, for we hear him saying to other

ENLARGEMENT. 201

Gentiles, " There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither
bond nor free, there is neither male nor female ; for ye
are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ's, then
are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the pro-
mise.

Now here was a moral miracle. I do not hesitate to
say it. To one who has observed the tenacity of national
pride and hate, and the virulance of religious bigotry, and
who knows the state of feeling at that time in regard to
women and slaves and barbarians, this transition from the
extreme of narrowness to enlargement and absolute uni-
versality of affection, and to the recognition of all as
entitled to common privileges, is as unaccountable on
merely natural principles as any miracle of the New Tes-
tament. Now, the sympathies of this former bigot em-
braced the race. He knew no man after the flesh. To
him every man was a man^ made in the image of God,
redeemed by Christ, exposed to the second death, but
capable of being saved, and so he preached Christianity
to all men alike, and received all men alike, for so must it
be preached, and so must men be received, if it is to
have its full power.

In adopting the above principle, the Apostle was sim-
ply faithful to the system he had espoused, which stood
self-vindicated as from God by its recognition of man as
man, and through that, by its fitness and tendency to
become universal. Hence its leavening power. Did the
Apostle preach at Rome ? Why not in Spain also .'* If
in Spain, why not in Britian and to our barbarous ances-
tors there t By ignoring every thing incidental, and seiz-
ing, as the material of its system and the ground of its
regards upon humanity itself as it must exist under all
modifications, it passed at once through all barriers of
nationality, and clanship, and caste, and condition, and

202 ENLARGEMENT.

showed itself to have an assimulating^an organizing power
that was capable of bringing all people into unity. This
was the wonderful fact about it. As related to ultimate
success it was the cardinal fact, and one not to be com-
promised. It is the fact that has made Christianity revolu-
tionary from that day to this. If at times the giant has
seemed to be quiet, as if pressed down by the mountains
of human wickedness, it has only been to gather strength
for the upheaval, and the earthquake. And so it will be,
for in this fact is the principle of all true progress.

Marvellous then as this enlargement of the Apostle
would appear on any other ground, it is yet perfectly
natural when we look at him as a disciple of Christ both
comprehending his system, and in sympathy with him.
As in sympathy with Christ he could not do otherwise
The example of Christ was the great miracle of love, both
in its intensity and in its enlargement. In its intensity it
was unto death, in its enlargement it was for the whole
world. Receiving such a spirit of enlargement as this from
the Master, how could there be in the diciple any thing of
restriction or limitation ? How could he refuse to preach
Christ's gospel to any for whom He died ? How could
he refuse to receive any whom Christ received ? No
longer do we wonder when we find this former bigot and
persecutor exulting in this universality, and saying so
freely, and fully, and grandly, " Where there is neither
Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Bar-
barian, Scythian, bond nor free ; but Christ is all, and
in all.

From this example of the Apostle, we readily see what
that enlargement is of which he speaks. It is a coming
out from all narrowness and restriction of nationality, or
clanship, or sect, or caste, or local prejudice, or prejudice
from color, and so apprehending the rights of man as God-

ENLARGEMENT. 203

given, and his dignity and destiny as made in the image
of God, that we shall always feel towards every man, and
treat him as a man. This is no glittering generality, bar-
ren and impracticable. It is the great want and claim of
this age in which we live. It is the law of God. It is the
claim of humanity,

This enlargement, which is that of Christianity, some,
especially French writers, have sought to identify with
democracy ; but while Christianity is the only foundation
of a quiet and permanent democracy, they are yet rather
in contrast. Democracy respects political rights and re-
lations ; Christianity respects all relations, and may exist
under all forms of government. Democracy looks chiefly
at rights ; Christianity at duties. Democracy respects
this world ; Christianity includes both worlds, but looks
chiefly at ultimate destiny. Democracy concedes rights,
but requires no enlargement of the affections; Christianity
is, itself, in its very essence, an enlargement of the affec-
tions. Democracy is compatible with great individual
corruption within a nation, and with hostility and bound-
less ambition in the relations of nations to each other ;
Christianity involves individual integrity and good-will to
all. Democracy may be atheistic — men have sought to
make it so; the very principle and foundation of Chris-
tianity and the enlargement it implies, is from the relation
of each to all as in the image of God, and so from their
common relation to him.

To the enlargement now spoken of there is not, as to
that of apprehension, any natural obstacle. Enlargement
of aff"ection might, and should accompany that of the in-
tellect as naturally as the heat of the sun accompanies its
light. But in this world it is not thus, and it is both sad
and amazing — if it were not so sad it would be amusing —
to trace the history of the world as it is related to this

204 ENLARGEMENT.

want of enlargement. There is no conceivable differance
by which men are separated from each other that has not
been made a ground of alienation in affection and often
of positive hostility.

" Lands intersected by a narrow frith
Abhor each othei. Mountains interposed
Make enemies of nations. "

A difference in name, nation, color, language, clan,
occupation, residence, as in different towns, or even, at
different ends of the same street, and especially a differ-
ence of belief and opinion, become the ground of alien-
ations, divisions, and of settled, hereditary and unreasoning
hate. Passions thus excited have been strong enough to
override both humanity and self-interest. Often, as in
families and clans, 'these passions have been intense and
persistent in proportion as their range has been narrow ;
often too as the point of difference has been frivolous, and
and as the opponents resembled each other the more,
except in the one point of difference.

Such differences must, of course, respect points that are
capable of drawing in by association the deep feelings of
our nature, and will have more power as those feelings are
deeper.

Hence it is that, in this respect, religion has furnished
so sad a chapter in the history of the world. When its
grand beliefs, tending only to enlargement, are displaced
by superstition, and those deep feelings in which true reli-
gion chiefly consists, concentrate themselves about trifles
and forms, we might expect a narrowness more intense
than any other, and a bigotry more unscrupulous and cruel.
And so it has been, and is now. So great has been this
narrowness that it has been impossible to caricature it, be-
cause the imagination could conceive of nothing more nar-

ENLARGEMENT. 20$

row. The Little-Endians and the Big-Endians of Swift,
whose difference was on the question whether they should
break their eggs at Easter at the little or the big end, were
not a whit beyond the four-year-olds and the five-year-olds
in Ireland, whose feuds have often led to murder, and be-
tween whom it became necessary for the bishop to inter-
pose his authority. But more wonderful than this, we have
seen, in our own country, large and intelligent bodies of
Christians whose differences touched, and were conceded
to touch, no vital point of Christianity, withholding all
tokens of Christian communion and fellowship, and holding
each other as heathen men and publicans ; and we have
even heard prescribed, as the way of peace, the putting
up of high fences and keeping them in good repair. What
a work for the followers of Him who " broke down the
middle wall of partition " between the Jews and the Gen-
tiles, " having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the
law of commandments contained in ordinances " — that is
in external rites and things unessential — "for to make in
himself oi twain, one new man, so making peace ! "

It is also impossible to conceive of bigotry more un-
scrupulous and cruel than there has been. In connection
with no one of its elements, save that of religion, could
human nature have either originated or endured such an
institution as the Inquisition ; and the imagination may be
drawn on in vain to exceed in its conceptions the horrid en-
ginery that has been devised to do professedly the work
of Christian love.

But as much ground as there is for discouragement in
regard to this form of enlargement, yet here, too, the bonds
are relaxed. Not alone is there light on the mountain
tops, there is more of quickening warmth in the valleys,
and here and there a deeper verdure. That the perfection
of the world requires that the two forms of enlargement

206 ENLARGEMENT.

should go on together, we can see. But as there are in
the way of this no natural obstacles, so neither is there for
it, any law of progress, except as love naturally follows
light, which all experience shows that in this world it does
not in fact do. Hence, for such a training of the race as
shall effect this enlargement, we must rely wholly on the
special providence and grace of God.

The two points to be reached are — the one, that every
man shall so respect manhood as to treat every other man
as a man — the other, that every Christian shall so respect
Christianhood, as to treat every Christian as a Christian.
Manhood in man ; Christ in the Christian — these are to
be the objects of our regard, and nothing selfish or sec-
tarian, nothing local or accidental may prevent our enlarge-
ment to the full recognition of every right and claim which
these would involve. It is not that the claims of self-
interest rightly viewed, and of nearer relationship are to
be disregarded. These have their place, primary, imper-
ative, sacred ; but these claims are met with the broadest
wisdom only when they are met in full compatibility with
the claims of the widest enlargement. Towards these two
points the movement has been slow. It is wonderful with
what diflficulty men have broken away from the narrowness
of family, and clan, and tribe, and party, and caste, and
sect, and nationality. But there has been movement.
Feudalism melted into nationalities, often ill-assorted, and
mere aggregates, but always with some increase of enlarge-
ment. Clanship, as in Scotland, that seemed to inhere as
by some special mordant, has faded out. The Thugism
of Ireland has well-nigh passed away. The French Em-
peror has kissed the English Queen, and the English and
French have fought side by side. A new continent, this
American continent, has been opened, where men might
stand and see in the distance, and in a way to cause en-

ENLARGEMENT.

207

largement, arbitrary distinctions and conventionalities that
had become chronic and hopeless, and where they might
begin anew on a broader basis. To this continent and to
this country have been swept, as by a vast diluvial current,
English, and Irish, and Scotch, and French, and Germans,
and Hollanders, and Swedes, and Jews ; and in the sur-
ging of free institutions they have been rolled together, and
rounded, and smoothed. No experiment devised for the
purpose could have been better adapted to promote en-
largement.

And if we turn from nationalities and political relations
to the church and to sects, there too there is movement.
The cave whence Giant Pope formerly came out to seize
pilgrims on the King's highway, has become his prison,
where he is guarded by foreign soldiers, and must needs
be defended from his own subjects. The Inquisition can-
not be reproduced. Even Turks are converted to Christ,
and avow it, and their heads remain on their shoulders.
Nay, Turkey may well put Spain to the blush, for there
the Bible may be freely sold and read. In England there
is progress. The intolerance of the Established Church
is waning, and, both politically and socially, Dissenters
are less under ban. And then there is one country where
there is no alliance of church and state, and no civil dis-
ability, or liability to taxation, or social ban with a court
to sanction it, on account of religious belief, or form of
worship. If, to some of these things there are tendencies
here ; if we are in danger, as we are, from ecclesiasticism ;
if the old aristocratic leaven, driven from politics, tends to
pass into the church ; there are also opposite tendencies,
and we hope the spirit of enlargement will gain the mas-
tery. It must gain it in the end.

Having thus seen what full enlargement would be 1
observe in the first place, that the Bible method of reach-
6

208 ENLARGEMENT.

ing this is the reverse of that adopted by the world. The
world seeks first intellectual enlargement. Its education
is for that, and the ends secured through that. For en-
largement of the heart it cares little, and supposes that
will follow of course. But not thus can even a general
enlightenment be reached. The interworkings and coun-
teractions of selfishness w^ould prevent that. Those who
would gain such enlightenment must first seek a higher
end, as he who would have all other things added must
first seek the kingdom of God. Hence the method of the
Bible is to begin with the heart. Any enlargement of
the intellect without this it reckons as nothing. For the
guidance of a moral being it is nothing. The doctrine of
the Bible is, that " he that loveth his brother walketh in
the light," but that " he that hateth his brother is in dark-
ness^ and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he
gocthy because that darkness hath blinded his eyes.'' This
doctrine the world has yet to learn. A general enlarge-
ment of intellect in any community can be reached only
by bringing to bear upon the heart of that community the
great motives of Christ's Gospel.

And now it has not escaped the observation of many,
that the point of enlargement to which the providence of
God is pressing us in this war, is the full recognition of
the manhood of the negro in all its rights as a man.
This point as fully as the laws of the Union would allow,
was reached in this State, immediately after the Revolu-
tion. In the eye of the law the negro was placed on an
equality with other men. From this no harm came, and
if this point could be reached throughout the whole coun-
try to-morrow, our troubles would cease. When the black
man shall be permitted to go where he pleases, to earn
his own honest living in his own way, to enjoy all the
natural rights of a man, and such civil rights as he is fitted

ENLARGEMENT. 209

for, the country will be quiet. We may not wish this ;
probably we should not have ordered it so ; we may strug-
gle against it. But this distinction of color and of race is
from God ; these people are here by his appointment, and
we are not to narrow ourselves by prejudice, and fear that
the heavens will fall, if we apply impartially and fully
those great principles of natural right which are surely
from God, and which we have avowed before the world.
It is these principles that are now in question, and it is the
struggle between these and their opposites that is convuls-
ing, and is yet to convulse the nations.

It is into that double enlargement of the intellect and
the heart which has been presented in this Discourse, that
I now invite you, to enter more fully. With the enlarge-
ment of your sphere of action, he ye also enlarged.

But, as you will have inferred already, my chief desire
is that you should be enlarged in your hearts. There has
been enlargement of heart towards you. You little know
how you have been loved and cared for by parents and
friends. There has been enlargement on the part of the
public in providing for your education ; there has been
enlargement towards you in the hearts of your teachers —
and now what we ask you is, " For a recompense in the
same." The best recompense of love is love in return,
and the deeds which love prompts. What a recompense
that is which you can make to your parents and friends !
How will your parents rejoice, how will your friends, to
see you giving back love for love, care for care, and fill-
ing every enlarged sphere with an enlargement of intellect
and of heart like that of the Apostle himself.

For this enlargement there is ample scope in this
world ; but in that which is to come, O the illimitable
enlargement of which you are capable ! O the wealth

210 ENLARGEMENT.

which God has provided ! The wealth of this universe is
not in the things that may be possessed, though they be
gold and gems, though they be suns and systems ; nor yet
in the sciences that may be known, though they branch
out into infinity ; but it is in the beings that may be
loved — God himself and his holy kingdom. Possessions,
^ knowledge, are but the pedestal to be crowned with love.y
It is because there is excellence to be loved that heaven
is possible, and the possibilities of heaven itself are to be
measured by the possible enlargement of love.

At this point, however, perhaps a caution is needed.
The enlargement to which I call you is not to be con-
founded with what is sometimes called liberality. This is
a term under which, with the pretence of enlargement,
men often cover indifference to the truth, and, if the truth
be pressed, essential narrowness and even bitterness.
With such liberality, the enlargement to which I call you has
no affinity. It is its opposite. The more enlargement
there is, the more vivid the apprehension will be of the
beauty of truth, and of the dignity and excellence and
unutterable value of righteousness. You are called to an
enlargement of comprehension and of love like that of
Paul, with a corresponding opposition to all fundamental
error and essential wickedness. The enlargement to
which I call you is that of Christianity itself, which is at
once the most universal and cathoHc, and the most exclu-
sive of all systems. If it had not been broad and catholic,
it would not have been fitted to include all nations ; if it
had not been exclusive, it would not have revolutionized
the world — it would not have had martyrs. Christ him-
self would not have died, if there had not been something
to stand up for, and to hold on to, with the whole energy
of our being. What this is we may know. God has not
shut men up to the alternative of the frigidity and imbec-

ENLARGEMENT. 211

ility of indifference on the one hand or to a narrow and
fierce bigotry on the other. No ; there is an open way
of enlargement in comprehension, and in the love of God
and of man, and in hating nothing that love and righteous-
ness do not compel us to hate.

With this caution, the word that I would leave with you,
that I ask you to carry with you through life, is enlargement
— enlargement of intellect, enlargement of the heart, en-
largement of the intellect through that of the heart.

From this combination there will naturally, but not
necessarily follow, an enlargement of personal influence.
To insure this there must be added, energy of will. With
that added, your preparation for the work of life will be
complete. Then, not only will you yourselves grow by the
exertion of your own activities in the right direction — grow
to be more like God, and so more truly human — but in the
same proportion you will have an influence for good over
others ! This is the object of a legitimate ambition ; and
in this you will find, what so few have found, the point of
coincidence between the highest ambition and the highest
duty.

And now, my dear friends, in view of what has been
done for you, of what is expected of you ; of the wants of
a lost world ; in view of your capacities, and of the scope
there is for them in the infinities that surround you ; in
view of the call of God himself, and of Redeeming Love, I
speak to you as unto my children, and I say to you, " Be
ye also enlarged."

XII.

CHOICE AND SERVICE.
Choose you this day whom ye will serve.— Joshua, xxiv. 15.

PROBABLY Joshua is the most illustrious example on
record of a great warrior who was also a thoroughly
religious man. Chosen by God to bring Israel into the
promised land, he had under him a people trained as no
other had ever been. With the exception of Caleb the
son of Jephunneh, not a man of them was over sixty years
old. The faint-hearted and the murmurers of a former
generation had perished, every one of them, from among
them, and the nation, instinct with one life and one pur-
pose, were ready to follow their leader. The faith of that
leader never faltered, and with the single exception when
there was an Achan in the camp, he led them to uniform
victory. Having conquered the country, he divided to
each tribe its inheritance, and for a time the land rested
in quiet.

In this quiet the Israelites did not relapse into idolatry.
They remained steadfast in their allegiance to God. That
generation and the succeeding one received a higher testi-
mony than any other that has been on the face of the earth.
It is said, "And Israel served the Lord all the days of
Joshua, and all the days of the elders that overlived Joshua,
and which had known all the works of the Lord that he
had done for Israel." Still, the heathen were not entirely

*♦* July 31, 1864.

CHOICE AND SERVICE. 213

expelled ; the Israelites were the descendants of those who
had made the golden calf at the foot of Sinai, and as the
time for his death drew near, Joshua desired to do some-
thing to guard the people against that departure from the
living God which was the only thing they had to fear.

Accordingly he " gathered all the tribes of Israel to
Shechem, and called for the elders of Israel, and for their
heads, and for their officers ; and they presented them-
selves before God." Then was seen one of the most
solemn and imposing spectacles in the history of the nation.
This leader, whose success had been so great, whose
authority had never, like that of Moses, been questioned,
now more than a hundred years old, stood before the assem-
bled nation, and surrounded by its chief men, recounted to
them what God had done for them, and required them to
choose deliberately and solemnly the service of the God of
their fathers ; or, if they would reject that, to choose whom
they would serve. The question was to whom they would
render supreme allegiance, and that question they were
then to decide. This decision Joshua was careful should
be made only with the fullest light. He not only told
them what God had done, but also that he was a holy
God, and the difficulty of his service on that account.
They heard, they understood, and decided that they would
serve the Lord. ^' And the people said unto Joshua, Nay,
but we will serve the Lord." That was decisive of the
histor} of that generation. So far as the choice was from
the heart it decided the influence and destiny of every
individual during the whole course of his being.

In this transaction with the Israelites one thing was
required and another implied. It was required that they
should choose their supreme object of affection and wor-
ship ; it was implied, that, having chosen, they would serve
him. The choice was to be made once and forever; the

214 CHOICE AND SERVICE.

service was to be perpetual, involving volitions and acts
constantly repeated. In this choice and these volitions
the radical character of the Israelites found expression ;
in a similar choice and the consequent volitions our char-
acter will do the same, and on these our destiny will de-
pend. Let us therefore look a little at these acts of choice
and of volition, as they are in themselves ; as related to
each other; and to human character and well-being.

Taking then the act of choice, I observe, in the first
place, that we must choose.

There are certain original and necessary forms of
activity through which man knows himself. These are
commonly said to be three — thinking, feeling, willing. In
reality there are four, thinking, feeling, choosing^ willing.
These were never taught us. They are not the product of
will. We do not think because we will to think, or choose
because we will to choose, any more than we will because
we will to will. We think and choose and will by a neces-
sity of our nature immediately and directly when the occa-
sion arises. These forms of activity we find originally in
us, and a part of us ; they go back with us to our first
remembrance and conception of ourselves. If man did
not find in himself each of these he would not be man.
Free we may be in choosing, but not whether we will
choose. This is so a condition of our being, that the very
refusal to choose is itself choice.

And not only must man choose, he must also choose
an object of supreme affection. A supreme object of wor-
ship, an object of worship at all, he need not choose, but
of affection he must.

This belongs to the constitution of our nature. If a
man were compelled to part with the objects of his affec-
tion one by one, as the master of a vessel is sometimes
obliged to throw overboard his cargo, it must be that there

CHOICE AND SERVICE. 21 5

would be a last thing to which he would cling. Without
this our nature could have neither consistency nor dignity.
In this the great masters of thought agree, and through it
they account for the apparent anomalies of human con-
duct.

" vSearch then the master passion — there alone
The wild are constant and the cunning known."

As a river, if it be a river, despite backwater and
eddies, must flow some whither, and as those eddies and
the backwater are caused by the very current they seem
to contradict, so must there be in man some current of
affection, bearing within its sweep all others, and that
would, if known, reconcile all seeming contradictions. In
this too the Scriptures agree. It is only a statement in
another form of the great doctrine announced by our
Saviour, that in the moral sphere there can be no neutrality
and no double service. " He that is not with me is against
me." "Ye cannot serve God and mammon."

How far God so reveals himself to each man as he did
to the Israelites that there must be a distinct acceptance
or rejection of him, he only can know, but every being
having a moral constitution must be either in harmony
with, or in opposition to the great principles of his moral
government, and thus virtually either choose or reject him.

To know what the supreme object thus chosen and
the master passion is, is the capital point in the most diffi-
cult and valuable of all knowledge, the knowledge of our-
selves. Not our capacities alone do we need to know, but
the set and force of that current within us which is deepest.
But what the object thus chosen is, or even that he does
thus choose, a man may not distinctly state to himself,
and it may come out into clear consciousness only as he
is brought to a test. The covetous man may go on for

2i6 CHOICE AND SERVICE.

years amassing property; the upas tree of avarice may
grow till every generous affection is withered beneath it,
and yet no test may have been so applied as to compel him
to say to himself, " I am a miser." He may not even sus-
pect it. If told the truth he may honestly, in one sense
honestly, as well as indignantly and reproachfully deny
it, and say with one of old, " Is thy servant a dog that he
should do this thing ? " A Christian may be in doubt
whether he loves God supremely. But let persecution
come and demand his property, and that will be one test;
let it demand his liberty, that will be another ; let it
demand his life to be given up through reproach and tor-
ture, and that will be a third and a final test. Then will
there be a felt ground of consistency and of dignity. The
ship will right itself in the storm, and with its prow toward
its haven, the fiercer the winds the faster will it be driven
thither.

But while we are thus necessitated to choose, and to
choose an object of supreme affection, the choice itself is
free. There is always in it an alternative. In this it dif-
fers from all that precedes it either in nature or in our-
selves. Here it is indeed that we find the birth-place and
citadel of that great element and royal prerogative. Free-
dom, which underlies all moral action and accountability.
This it is which brings us into ^a moral and spiritual
sphere wholly out of and above that of mere nature. The
sphere of nature has for its characteristics uniformity and
necessity, but here is freedom. This element is typified
indeed, and foreshadowed in nature through all her forms
of unconscious life. Very beautiful it is to see a multi-
form life working spontaneously toward its ends. Won-
derful is that selective power by which the root and leaf
of each vegetable, and the sense and digestive apparatus
of each animal, appropriate that which will build up the
9*

CHOICE AND SERVICE. 21/

life of each, and reject all else. But here is no freedom.
And the same may be said of all that precedes choice in
our own life. We must previously have knowledge, but
we know by necessity. No man can help knowing his
own existence and acts of consciousness. We must pre-
viously have desire. Hunger and thirst, the desire for
food and drink, are necessary ; and there are hungerings
and thirstings, appetencies and cravings so running
through our whole nature that if we do not hunger and
thirst after righteousness even, we cannot be filled. But
here too the congruities are prearranged, and the desire is
necessary. As such it has a wider range than choice.
We desire many things which we do not and cannot
choose. We desire wealth, position, power ; we may
desire the possession of the stars, or of universal dominion,
but we can choose only that which is offered to our accept-
ance. There is in choice appropriation, and the thing
chosen must be in such a relation to us that it may, in
some sense, become our own.

But the peculiarity of an act of choice is that there is
in it an alternative. This belongs to its definition. There
is an overlooking of the whole ground, a comparison, and
a felt power of turning either way. We must indeed
choose, but we are under no necessity of choosing any one
thing. When but a single object is offered us we may
choose or reject it; when two are offered both of which we
cannot have, as learning and ease, power and quiet, plea-
sure and virtue, we may choose between them. Thus,
through the whole range of faculties which God has given
us, we may choose which shall be brought into predomi-
nant activity; and through the whole range of objects
which he has set before us, including himself, we may
choose which we will appropriate as the source of nutri-
ment to our inmost life.

2l8 CHOICE AND SERVICE.

In this act of choice, having thus an alternative, every
man so stands forth to his own consciousness as free, that
a conviction of his freedom must cling to that conscious-
ness forevermore. The freedom is so a part of the act,
and enters into the very conception of it, that men gene-
rally would as soon think of denying the act itself as
of denying its freedom. No man can honestly deny it.
Hence, as being known at once, and certainly, just as is
the act itself, freedom can neither be proved nor disproved,
but must be accepted on the immediate testimony of con-
sciousness. A man might as well deny the fact that he
exists, as to deny those characteristics of his being which
enter into his conception of himself; and of these, free-
dom of choice is one. " We lay it down," says Dr. Archi-
bald Alexander,* " as a first principle — from which we
can no more depart than from the consciousness of exist-
ence— that MAN IS free; and therefore stand ready to
embrace whatever is fairly included in the definition of
freedom." Let the few then impugn as they may this
great element and fact of freedom, they can never lead the
mass of men to disbelieve it. They can never really
disbelieve it themselves, they can never practically dis-
card it.

And this leads me to observe that as freedom finds in
an act of choice its cradle, so does it also its citadel.

Interfere with a man in his outward acts, restrain him
from passing the limits of a town, shut him up in a prison,
fetter his limbs, and you are said to deprive him of his
freedom. You do invade it in its outer sphere, and in the
sense in which it is generally understood, but there is still
a freedom which you do not and cannot touch. There is
in choice an activity of the spirit that abides wholly within
itself. It neither requires nor admits of means, or instru-

* Mor^.l Science, p. iii.

CHOICE AND SERVICE. * 219

mentalities, or outward agencies. Hence no power, hu-
man or div'ne, that does not change the essential nature
of the spirit itself, can reach the prerogatives of this
power. Here is the inner circle of freedom, its impreg-
nable fortress. Within this, man is a crowned king.
Here, though but a beggar, he may retire, and without his
own consent, no man can take his diadem. Retaining
the powers which make it what it is, nothing can prevent
the spirit from choosing and willing, from loving and hat-
ing, and so nothing out of itself can prevent it from being
loyal to duty and to God. But while we thus claim for
man full powers of free agency, we also assert the power
of God to govern free agents ; and the necessity of the
Divine Spirit to quicken and regenerate those whose
choice of evil is so exclusive and intense that they are
" dead in trespasses and sins."

We thus see what choice is. But the Israelites were
not only to choose, they were to serve. By distinct and
separate acts of volition, or of will, they were to cause the
choice thus made to find expression in all their outward
life. Let us then, as was proposed, look at these acts of
volition, and their relations to choice.

Almost universally, and by the leading philosophers,
as Kant and Hamilton, choice and volition have been
confounded under the common name of Will. As more
immediately connected with action, volition has been
made the more prominent, and obscurity and sad misap-
prehension have been the result. But not only are choice
and volition, or an act of the will, not the same, they are
totally different. To this I ask special attention.

And first, choice must precede volition. No man can
intelligently will an act except with reference to some
object previously chosen.

Secondly, choice, and not volition, is the primary seat

220 CHOICE AND SERVICE.

of freedom. In a sense we are free in our volitions.
They are wholly within ourselves, they require no means
or instrumentalities, and no earthly power can interfere
with them ; but yet they must be in accordance with some
choice that predominates at the time, and can be changed
only by a change of the choice. But are not men com-
pelled to will what they do not choose ? Not strictly.
By force unjustly used they are said to be compelled to
will what they would not but for that, and this is slavery ;
still the will will be in accordance with the choice on the
whole, else a man could not become a martyr. A patriot,
having chosen as his end, and with his whole heart, the
good of his country, and while thus choosing, cannot will
acts in known opposition to that good. He may die, but
he cannot do that.

Again, choice and will respect different objects. In
strictness, we never choose what we will, or will what we
choose. The objects of choice are persons, things, ends.
The object of volition is an act ; always an act. We
choose God, we choose a friend, a house, a profession, an
ultimate end, but we do not will these. To say that we
will a house would be absurd. We choose health, we will
exercise ; we choose learning, we will study ; we choose
an apple that hangs with its fellows upon the bending
bough, we will the act by which we pluck it.

And as the objects of choice are different from those
of volition, so are its grounds. We choose the apple be-
cause it is good ; we choose a friend for his intrinsic qual-
ities ; we choose an end as good in itself j we choose God
as infinitely excellent in himself, and as meeting through
that excellency every capacity of our rational being.

Always we choose an object for something in itself—
some beauty, some utility, some grace, some excellence,
by which it awakens emotion or desire, and comes into

CHOICE AND SERVICE. 221

some relation to our well-being. But an action we never
will for anything in itself, but only as it is related to an
end. An action tending to no end would be a folly, and
one abstractly right without reference to an end, is incon-
ceivable. We do indeed will actions as right, but we
mean by that, sometimes simply their fitness to gain an
end, and sometimes, also, that the end is good. If the end
be good, and be chosen because it is good, the action will
be morally right ; if not, it will be right simply from its
relation to the end. An act of choice is itself right when
the true end for man is chosen, and the choice is made, not
merely because it is right, but, as all choice must be, in
view of some good in the end. Universally, then, it is
true that we choose objects and ends because they are
good, and will actions because they tend to secure such
objects and ends.

Once more, in choice man is not executive, in volition
he is.

We think, feel, choose, and though active in these, are
not conscious of putting forth energy. Every one knows
the difference between a mere choice, or even purpose,
and that putting forth of energy, by which we attempt to
realize our purpose. This gives a new element. Before,
the man was contemplative, choosing an end, maturing
plans ; now he is executive, working for an end. Choice
and purpose are known in themselves, volition by its ef-
fects, and what these may be, experience only can reveal.

Thus at all points do we find a difference between
choosing and serving, that is, of willing. Choice is pri-
mary— volition.secondary; choice is directly free — volition
indirectly; choice respects persons, objects, ends — volition
acts ; choice is not executive — volition is ; choice too has
the common relation of source to both willing and loving ;
volition is not a source at all; choice fixes on ultimate ends

222 CHOICE AND SERVICE.

and absolute value, which is a good and not a utility. The
very idea of utility is excluded from this sphere. A Sys-
tem of Morals based on the choice of a supreme end as
good in itself, cannot be one of utility. In choosing the
supreme end appointed by God for the good there is in
it, there can be no undue reference to self. If this had
been seen, much misapprehension would have been saved.
Ultimate ends we choose for the sake of an absolute
value ; a utility is a relative value. It belongs to means
and instrumentalities, to volitions and acts as related to
ends.

We have now considered choice and volition as they
are in themselves, and as related to each other. If any
one should say that these points are too elementary, or, if
you please, metaphysical, for an occasion like this, I should
agree with him if their connection were less vital with hu-
man character and well-being. That connection it remains
for us to consider.

And first, I observe that choice, free as we have seen
it to be, is the radical element in rational love. In this
is the difference between rational and instinctive love. I
know that mere emotion has stolen the name of love, and
that the impulsive affections have been made identical with
the heart. I know that there are affinities, and attractions,
and a magnetism between persons as well as things, that
there are subtle and inexplicable influences by which in-
dividuals are strangely drawn together, and that under the
domination of these they think they love. And so they
may ; but not from these alone. So long as attractions
are balanced by defects of character, or incongruities of
temper, so long as there is a parleying between the better
judgment and the feelings, and while as yet there is no
ratifying choice, thei e is no rational love. Let this choice

CHOICE AND SERVICE. 223

be withheld, and however emotion may eddy and surge, it
is not love, and in time it will die away. But when the
deliberate and full choice is made, the heart is given.
Then objections become impertinent, imperfections disap-
pear, and the full tide of emotion flows on, tranquil, it may
be, but deepening and widening. Choice is not emotion,
nor a part of it, but it opens and shuts the gate for its flow.
It is the personality determining where it shall bestow
those affections that are its life. It is the nucleus of a train
that sets the spiritual heavens aglow. Emotion fluctuates ;
it comes and goes with times and moods and health, but
love is constant, and this is the constant part of love. It
is principle as opposed to emotion. In these two — choice
and emotion — it is that we find what is called in Scripture
" the heart." " His heart is fixed," says the Psalmist.
There is the choice and the principle. " Trusting in the
Lord ; " there is the emotion. The heart is not the affec-
tions regarded simply as emotion ; it is not the will except
as will and choice are confounded. It is the affections,
including choice ; born of choice and nurtured by it.
Hence, under moral government the heart may be rightly
subjected, not only as emotion, to indirect regulation, but
as choice, to direct and positive command. For God to
say, '' My son, give me thy heart," is wholly within his
prerogative as a righteous moral Governor. This is a point
of the utmost moment, and often but imperfectly appre-
hended.

Again, if choice be thus an element of love, I need
hardly say that it must determine character.

This follows because the character is as the paramount
love. If this be of money, the man is a miser, if of power,
he is ambitious, if of God, he is a religious man. It is
said by some that character depends on the governing
purpose. It does proximately, but purpose depends upon

224 CHOICE AND SERVICE.

choice. We first choose, then purpose. On this, too,
depends disposition, so far as it is moral. A supreme
choice is the permanent disposing by a man of himself, in
a given direction. This is the trunk of that tree spoken
of by our Saviour, when he said, *' Make the tree good,
and his fruit will be good." From this will flow a sap
that will reach the remotest twig and leaf of outward ex-
pression, and give its flavor to every particle of the fruit.
Such a choice will determine not only the disposition, but
the subjects of thought, the habits of association, the
whole furniture of the mind. Hence those expressions
of the Bible, " the thoughts of the heart," " the imagi-
nations of the heart," are perfectly philosophical.
Thoughts, imaginations, fancies, castle-buildings, take
their whole body and form from those choices and
affections which are the heart. These come and go, but
they swarm out as bees from the home of the aflec-
tions, and there they settle again. So it is that " out of
the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, forni-
cations, thefts, false witness, blasphemies ; " and so it is
that "out oiit are the issues of life." But it is in these,
as thus springing from the heart, that character is ex-
pressed, and hence it is that the heart, having its nucleus
and salient point in choice, is the character.

But if character thus depends upon choice, then the
connection of choice with human well-being opens at once
upon us. Under a moral government — and if we are not
under that we can have no hope of anything — if we are
not under that there is no God — under a moral govern-
ment character and destiny must correspond. Whatever
apparent and temporary discrepancies there may be, ulti-
mately they must correspond. That they should do this
enters into the very conception of moral government.
Settle it therefore, I pray you, once and forever, that as

CHOICE AND SERVICE. 22$

your character is, so will your destiny be. Whatever ca-
pacities there may be for enjoyment or for suffering m this
strange being of ours, and God only knows what they are,
they will be drawn out wholly in accordance with char-
acter. There shall be no inheritance of possessions, or
felicity of outward condition, no river of life, or gate of
pearl,'or street of gold, there there shall be no serenity of
peace, or fulness of joy, or height of rapture, or ecstasy
of love ; there shall be no hostile and vengeful element,
no lake of fire, no gnawing worm, no remorse or despair,
that will not depend upon character. It is by their bear-
ing upon this that we are to test every claim made upon
us"* in the name of religion for outward observance and
self-denial ; and we are to sweep away as superstitions all
forms and observances that do not tend to the purification
and elevation of character, because it is this alone that
bears upon destiny. This is destiny.

We thus see the amazing import and responsibility
attached to this prerogative of choice. As we are active
and practical it is the one distinguishing prerogative of
our being. Entering into it, not as that which we viay
do, but as that which we must do, it is so a part of our
being that it cannot be separated from us, and that its
responsibility cannot be shared by another. It is that by
which we make ourselves known for what we are. It is by
choice only that our proper personality, ourself, acts back
upon the forces that act upon us. As an original primitive
act, admitting no use of means, it requires no one to teach
us how to choose ; no one can teach us. If I am reqmred
to kindle a fire I can be taught how, because means must
be used, and there must be a process; but I must think
and choose before I can be taught how.

As a moral act the results of choice are immediate and
inevitable because it is in that that morality is. Outward

226 CHOICE AND SERVICE.

results and general coniequences will depend on powers
and agencies out ol ourselves, but this is wholly between
man and his God, and reacts upon the soul, leaving its own
impress forever. To that impress all things outward will
come to correspond, and thus it is that maa decides his
own destiny. His destiny is as his choice, and his choice
is his own. In this, not alone in immortality — immortality
without this would be but the duration of a thing — in this,
crowned by immortality, is the grandeur of our being. All
below us is driven to an end which it did not choose, by
forces which it cannot control. But for us there are mo-
ments, oh, how solemn, when destiny trembles in the bal-
ance, and the preponderance of either scale is by our own
choice. Do you deny this, ye who speak of the littleness
and weakness of man, and of the power of circumstances ?
Ye who scoff at freedom, and sneer at human dignity, and
mock at the strivings of a poor insect limited on all sides,
and swept on by infinite forces, do ye deny this ? Then
do you deny that man is made in the image of God. You
deny that he can serve him. You destroy the paternal
relation of the Godhead, you blot out a brighter sun than
that which rules these visible heavens. If God is to be
served it must be by a free choice ; by a free choice it
must be if his service is to be rejected. Other service
would do him no honor, other rejection would involve no
guilt. Feeble as man is, and we admit his feebleness ;
limited as he is, and we admit the limitation, it has yet
pleased God to endow him with the prerogative of choos-
ing or rejecting Him and his service. Therefore do I call
upon you, every one of you, to choose this day whom you
will serve. I call upon you to choose God, the God in
whom you live and move and have your being, the God
who has made you, and redeemed you, and would sanctify
you. Him I call upon you to choose and to serve as that

CHOICE AND SERVICE. 22/

service is revealed in the Gospel of his Son. " If the Lord
be God, follow Him, and if Baal, then follow him."

Choice and service — these were demanded of the Israel-
ites, these are demanded of you; these only. Choice and
service — in these are the whole of life, and heeding prac-
tically the characteristics belonging to each, your life must
be a success.

To choice belongs wisdom. Here, indeed, and in the
choice of ends rather than of means, is the chief sphere of
wisdom. The whole of wisdom is the choice and pursuit of
the best ends by the best methods and means. But in the
choice of methods and means to secure their ends " the
children of this world are often wiser in their generation
than the children of light." The difference is in their
choice of ends. The ends of the children of this world
are madness, and this, in the eye and language of the
Bible, stamps them as fools.

But while wisdom belongs to choice, to service belong
energy and firmness tempered by skill. You will be care-
ful here not to mistake for energy a prevalent reckless and
boastful tendency to " go ahead," or for firmness, a dogged
obstinacy without candor. Indiscriminate antagonism is
easy. Denunciation, indignant or sarcastic, coarse denun-
ciation mistaking elegance for sin, is easy. By these a
reputation as a reformer may be cheaply gained. But to
be energetic and firm where principle demands it, and
tolerant in all else, is not easy. It is not easy to abhor
wickedness and oppose it with every energy, and at the
same time to have the meekness and gentleness of Christ,
becoming all things to all men for the truth's sake. The
energy of patience, the most godlike of all, is not easy.

But while energy is to be tempered, it must still be
energy, and, service being wisely chosen, failure in this is
your chief danger. It is one thing to make a choice and

228 CHOICE AND SERVICE.

adopt a principle, another to carry it out fully, wholly,
entirely, giving it all its scope. It is one thing to say, and
to believe that " all men are born free and equal," and
another to give to four millions of slaves all their rights.
Here, I repeat it, is your danger. Here it was that the
Israelites failed. Their choice was right ; their resolution
was good ; they promised well, but they failed to take
full possession of the promised land. Will you fail *' after
the same example " ? Before you, as there was before
them, there is a promised land ; shall I not say there are
promised lands, to be possessed .? There is outward pros-
perity and honor ; there is the inward peace that comes
from well-doing ; there is a country to be made united,
peaceful, prosperous, free, wholly free ; there is that better
time coming for which the whole world waits ; there is,
above all, a promised land beyond the dark river. All
these are a promised land to you, and wait with more or
less of dependence on your wisdom and energy. They
are no illusions. Bright as any or all of them, except the
first, may seem to you to-day, if you do your part, the
reality will be brighter. Always the realities of God tran-
scend the imaginations of man. " Eye hath not seen, nor
ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the
things that God hath prepared for them that love him."

Wisdom and energy — this is the watch-word that I would
give you as you go down into the battle. Do any of you
say, we have not wisdom ? I say to you, " If any man
lack wisdom let him ask of God that giveth to all men
liberally and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him."
Do you say, we have not strength ? I say to you, " Lo,
He is strong," and " underneath are the everlasting
arms." Guided by his wisdom, strong in his strength,
there may yet be for you struggle and suffering, the dark-

CHOICE AND SERVICE. 229

ness and the storm. " The disciple is not above his Mas-
ter." There may be weeping that shall endure for a night,
but joy shall come in the morning. If the night cometh,
so also the morning, " a morning without clouds," the
morning of an eternal day.

XIII.

PROVIDENCE AND REVELATION.

C"^ OD has always enforced the teachings of his word by
T his providence. When, however, as in these grand
times in which we hve, he does this signally, it becomes us
*'to give the more earnest heed." Especially does this
become those who are just entering upon life, and who
hope to control its wider and higher issues.

Among the great changes wrought within the last four
years, is a wider and fuller recognition of a Divine Provi-
dence. So apt and critical have been the conjunctures
throughout the war, so evident the purpose when events
have lingered and when they have hastened, so convergent
seeming opposites, that to very many who had been either
thoughtless or skeptical, the hand of a personal God work-
ing out his high purposes through fixed laws and human
agency has become visible. The mass of the people have
had a growing conviction that God was dealing with this
nation in a special manner, as with Israel of old, and shap-
ing events for moral ends. Nor need it be thought
strange, if, as the providence of God moves toward its
consummation, the coincidence between it and his word
should become more obtrusive ; if, more and more, there
should be glimmerings through that veil, ere long to be
lifted, which separates the visible from the invisible.

*** July 30, 1865.

PROVIDENCE AND REVELATION. 23 1

Hence I ask, on this occasion, the attention of this
audience, and especially of the Graduating Class, to the
summary by our Saviour of the second table of the Law,
and to the enforcement of its teachings in our day by the
Providence of God.

This summary will be found in the 2 2d chapter of Mat-
thew and the 39th verse

"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

And here, with the lawyer willing to justify himself, we
inquire, "And who is my neighbor?" "And Jesus an-
swering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to
Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his
raiment and wounded him, and departed leaving him half
dead. And by chance there came down a certain priest
that way ; and when he sav/ him he passed by on the other
side. And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place,
came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.
But a certain Samaritan as he journeyed came where he
was, and when he saw him he had compassion on him, and
went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and
wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an
inn and took care of him. And on the morrow, when he
departed, he took out two pence and gave them to the
host, and said unto him. Take care of him, and whatsoever
thou spendest more, when I come again I will repay thee.
Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbor
unto him that fell among the thieves ? And he said, he
that showed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him,
Go, and do thou likewise." The Samaritan is thy neigh-
bor— the man with whom " the Jews had no dealings."
The man of all others on the face of the earth farthest
removed from you by national and religious prejudice is
thy neighbor. In principle, and for us, the answer of

V

232 PROVIDENCE AND REVELATION.

Christ is, that whoever, without regard to nation, or race,
or color, or even to character, shares our common human-
ity, and can be reached by our sympathies and kind offices,
is our neighbor.

Of this neighborhood the basis is to be found, not
simply in a community of nature, but of such a nature.
The key-note of the teachings of the Bible in regard to
man, and of God's dealings with him, is to be found in
the account of his creation. " So God created man in his
own image, in the image of God created he him." Hence
it is that this world is furnished and adorned as for a child.
Hence the sacredness of human life, so early proclaimed :
" Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be
shed ; for in the image of God created he hi7n'' Hence
brotherhood in Christ, and a common heirship with him
of God. Hence the worth of that nature which makes
rational love possible, and so furnishes a ground for the
command of the text.

Seeing thus who our neighbor is, and the ground of the
command of the text, we next inquire what is implied in,
and what is meant by, loving our neighbor as ourselves.

I observe, then, that in loving our neighbor as our-
selves, it is implied that we do and should love ourselves.
Some seem to think it wrong to love ourselves. Not so
the Bible. That gives the formula of human duty precisely
right. " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, and thy neighbor as thyself." This takes it for
granted that we are to love ourselves, and that this love is
to be the measure of our love to others. This is indeed
the only possible starting point ; for if we had not in our-
selves some consciousness of the worth of being as our own,
we could have no regard for it in others, and so no rational
love.

So much is implied in this love. What is meant ? Not

PROVIDENCE AND REVELATION. 233

natural affection. The difference between natural and
moral affection is that the one does not, and the other
does, involve the element of a free and rational choice.
Moral affection has its basis in a free and rational choice,
and without such choice it cannot be. We love ourselves,
according to the command of the text, when we choose
for ourselves the end for which God made us, and are
willing to sacrifice all things, even life, for its attainment.
We also love others as ourselves when we choose for them
the end for which God made them, and are willing, accord-
ing to the spirit of Christ, and of martyrs and missionaries,
to lay dov/n our lives that they may attain that end.

Of this love the demand is not, as some say, simply to
give others their rights. It is that, that first, but also
more. It is in the family, self-sacrificing kindness ; in the
State it is patriotism; in the world it is philanthropy, and
in the church it is missionary zeal.

This law of God is styled in the Scriptures " the royal
law. " It is so. As a law for the regulation of society it
is perfect ; that is, from its observance, and from that only,
a perfect state of society would result. Let all the mem-
bers of society be controlled by this law, and co-operatio7i
would take the place of competitio7t. This would revo-
lutionize society. There could be no intentional injury,
and there would be a full and hearty co-operation by each
for the welfare of all. Evils there might be from other
sources, physical evils, but there is no institution, or form
of government, or arrangement of political economy
favorable to society that would not spring, as by a
divine instinct and without effort, from such a love, and
through it reach its highest efficiency. The reason of
this is that love is wisdom. Always, love is wisdom and
selfishness is folly. Practically, therefore, it is the same
whether men are governed by wisdom or by love. Hence,

V

234 PROVIDENCE AND REVELATION.

in all governmental and social arrangements, and in politi-
cal economy, wisdom will consist in establishing and
sustaining those forms of government, those institutions
and methods of exchange with which love would most
naturally clothe itself, and through which it could best
work. Not that the form without the spirit can avail
anything. All history shows that it cannot. Nor, on
the other hand, that any form where the spirit is, is to be
blindly and rabidly attacked ; but as the spirit is invisible
and intangible, the struggle must be for forms. The long
battle for freedom, which is only another name for
society organized in the spirit of the text, has been for
its forms. And so it must be. The outward contest
must be for forms ; the thing needed is forms moulded
and vitalized by the spirit.

But to this spirit of love, thus beneficent, there is an
opposite. It is the spirit of selfishness, becoming when
opposed, domination and hate. Protean and pervasive,
this spirit has been everywhere ; but its great organic and
permanent forms of manifestation have been three :

In connection with government, it has shown itself as
despotism.

In connection with industry and social relations, as
caste J and

In connection with races, as a general antagontsifi.

In connection with each of these, or with them in com-
bination, this spirit has entrenched itself, it would almost
seem, impregnably. Availing itself of the necessity of
government and of labor, it has divided society into
permanent strata ; with surprising art it has balanced the
interests of class against class, and denying the possibility
of either government or industry under free forms, it has
for the most part, ruled the world. The people it has
despised and refused to trust because of their ignorance

PROVIDENCE AND REVELATION. 235

and vice, and it has kept them in ignorance and vice lest they
should become worthy of being respected and trusted.

Now what we claim is, that God has, in our day,
by his providence, signally rebuked this spirit in each of
its great organic forms. We claim that he has set the
seal of his approbation to free forms of government and
of social organization ; that he has vindicated the claims
of simple humanity, and justified to its utmost limit the
broad interpretation given by our Saviour to the word
" neighbor."

First, then, we say that God has by his providence, not
incidentally, but distinctly and signally, as with forecast
and method and by a prearranged test, set the seal of his
approbation to that free form of government, which, as
giving men all their rights, is the natural outgrowth of the
spirit of the text. Evidently he has been repeating, on a
larger scale and under new conditions, the experiment
that was tried and failed three thousand years ago. God
then established for the Israelites a free commonwealth.
Under himself this was a government by the people, for
the people. When they desired a king, he regarded it as a
rejection of himself, and foretold the servitude that would
follow. "They have not," said he to Samuel, "rejected
thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign
over them." A commonwealth is virtually the reign of
God, because it is possible only as the lav/s of God are
voluntarily accepted up to that point which will give it
stability. But the people were unfit for freedom. Servitude
followed, and from that time till this freedom has been
militant. It has been regarded askance, and persecuted
as opposed to Law and Order. Law and Order ! Names
venerable and sacred ! Ordained of God ! and yet of no
avail except as guards and channels of a rational freedom.

236 PROVIDENCE AND REVELATION.

For such a freedom — a freedom not to do wrong, but
to enjoy every right — there was no congenial home in the
old world. Kingcraft, priestcraft, feudalism, caste, had
everywhere entwined their roots, and no garden of free-
dom could be planted where offshoots from these were
not ready to spring up. Then it was that God lifted this
western continent above the horizon, and brought hither
those whose central idea was a religious commonwealth.
To that movement, having its remote origin in Judea, but
for us in the Mayflower, attention was more and more
drawn, because it came to be felt that the experiment of
liberty for the world was to be made here. If not here,
where ? Here it had a fair beginning. Here was a free
Christianity. The complications and impediments of the
old world had been left behind. If men could not have
here a government of the people strong enough for secur-
ity and not too strong for liberty, where could they ?
Then came the long colonial probation, the Revolution,
the Union. This seemed a success, but till the rebellion,
neither we, nor those across the water who wished us well,
nor those who feared and hated us, had ceased to call our
government an experiment. It was that, — made so mainly
through malign influences, which, it did seem, need not
have come in, but which were in and had to be ac-
cepted.

If now it had been the purpose of God to apply, at
this juncture, a decisive test to our government, I ask
whether one more perfect could have been conceived. Is
there an element of stress and pressure that could be
brought to bear on any government that was not brought
to bear upon ours. Confessedly there was a stress upon
it which no other government could have borne. Upon
a people, all whose habits and interests and tastes were
those of peace, there was suddenly sprung a war, and not

PROVIDENCE AND REVELATION. 237

merely that, but a civil war, and one unprecedented in its
gigantic proportions. Then, at a moment, and under cir-
cumstances of the greatest disadvantage, came the call for
men, and they went. It came for more, and more, " six
hundred thousand more ; " and the men were ready.
Next, and to a people always charged with loving money
overmuch, came the call for money ; and the money was
ready. Taxes came in new forms, but not only were they
paid, the people were clamorous for them. Money was
poured out like water, and as never before, for bounties,
as a loan to the government, for the Sanitary and Chris-
tian Commissions, for the refugees and the freedmen.
Meantime battles were disastrous ; faint-heartedness
and even treason were not wanting at the North ; our
English friends pronounced our cause hopeless, and did
what they could to make it so ; homes were desolated ;
the wounded and maimed walked our streets, and the
sickening wail of exposure and starvation came up from
Southern prisons. In the midst of all this came a new
and unheard-of trial — the popular election of a chief-magis-
trate by a great nation in time of civil war. How solemn,
how grand, how quiet, how decisive was that day ! It
was the noblest triumph of the war — its turning-point —
the turning-point in the destiny of the country. Then
came that second Inaugural, and the final campaign.
After four years of hope deferred. President Lincoln
walked the streets of Richmond, and the old flag was re-
placed upon Sumter.

And was not this enough ? No. The very day that
flag was raised, the Head of the nation, beloved, revered,
trusted, rested on in that critical moment of transition, was
smitten down by assassination. This was the final trial.
Was a greater possible ? In most nations such an event
would have been the signal for convulsions, if not for a

238 PROVIDENCE AND REVELATION.

revolution. Here, with the exception of the universal
grief and indignation, everything went on as usual. The
government did not reel for a moment. No interest re-
ceived a shock. Vast as was the country, heterogeneous
as was the population, yet so organized and compacted
had the institutions of freedom become that no one man
could be essential to them. The world had seen nothing
like this. The experiment of freedom was made ; it was
an experiment no longer.

We now pass to caste, or permanent classes, the second
organic form in which the spirit opposed to that of the
text has shown itself.

The spirit of the text requires that every man shall be
regarded for what he is as a man, and that no one shall be
debarred by artificial and arbitrary arrangements from any
employment or position. But in some countries, as in
India, besides a permanent governing class, society has
been so organized with reference to all occupations as to
hold the laboring classes in complete subjection for ages.
In most countries in Europe, and particularly in England,
much of this runs through the structure of society. This,
free institutions cannot allow in form, but the spirit of it
lingered in our society, and was fast becoming a ruling
element at the South. Moreover there grow up in artificial
society distinctions from wealth, culture, manners, con-
ventionalism, that by an infusion of the same spirit, inter-
fere with a broad and fair recognition of simple manhood
in whatever form it may appear. It was to correct
this narrowing tendency and give humanity as such its
true place, that Christ came as he did, clothed with that
only. He was "found" simply *'in fashion as man'';
and that fact has done, and will do, more to break up this
spirit than all things else.

PROVIDENCE AND REVELATION. 239

Not a little had this spirit to do with fostering the
rebellion, both at the South and at the North. That
word " mudsills " meant much. If Abraham Lincoln was
not one of these, he had been. Humble in his origin, in
his early occupations, associations and advantages, he was
ungainly in person, awkward in manners, and homely in
speech. He had no elegance of literature, no foreign
travel, no arts of diplomacy, no drawing-room accomplish-
ments. If there was ever a man who came up out of the
soil and had the odor of it, it was he. He had nothing
splendid or striking about him, and it was especially said
that he lacked the heroic element. Unspeakable was the
contempt with which he was regarded in aristocratic and
fashionable circles. There were whole classes at the South,
and many individuals at the North, who could not abide
institutions that could bring such a man into such a posi-
tion. Their taste was outraged. He would disgrace us
in the eyes of those who had seen foreign courts.

How, now, might this narrow and supercilious spirit be
providentially and most effectively rebuked ? How could it
be but by taking just such a man, and despite these imper-
fections and disadvantages, which we confess and pro-
claim them to be, by lifting him up into our political
heavens, revealing gradually as he should rise an orb of
manhood so grand and so bright that these spots should
disappear, and till he should take his place in the hearts
of his countrymen and in the eyes of the world by the side
of Washington himself? This has been done. Made
President of the United States at the most critical period
of our history, by his thorough honesty, by his singleness
of purpose to uphold the Constitution and save the Union,
by a common sense that became to him an instinct of
statesmanship, by the even balance of his conservative and
progressive tendencies, caution predominating ; by his

240 PROVIDENCE AND REVELATION.

firmness in holding his positions when he made those
grand steps onward ; by the simpHcity of his character,
free from all affectation and pretence and egotism ; by the
fitness and weight of his words on great occasions ; by his
gentleness and tenderness ; by his reverent recognition of
God and of Christianity, he won his way to the hearts of
the people as no other man had. On his second nomina-
tion the old feeling lingered. Many opposed him. More
would have done so if they could with hope. But the in-
stinct of the people was right. Widows and mothers
blessed him. Three milHons of people hailed him as their
emancipator. The nation trusted him wholly. They
rested on him as with a filial feeling, and when he died the
continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific was draped in
such a mourning as the sun had never looked down upon.
The lesson of such an elevation, and the elements of just
such a character, were needed in the new life of the nation.
Henceforth his character will blend with that of Washing-
ton in its moulding influence on the times to come.

Nor in all this do we see anything that could lead us to
undervalue culture, or that would encourage any manifes-
tation of coarseness. Abraham Lincoln had nothing of
this. We see simply the diffusive power of culture under
free institutions, opening up to the humblest, avenues to
distinction ; and an assertion of the paramount worth of
those sterling qualities that belong to a true manhood as
compared with all that is artificial and adventitious. This
paramount worth it is that God has providentially vindicat-
ed, together with the right of all who possess it to means
for its increase and a fair opportunity for its recognition.

We next consider the third form in which the spirit
oi)posed to that of the text has manifested itself. This has
been in connection with races.

PROVIDENCE AND REVELATION. 24I

The division of men of the same race into permanent
governing and laboring classes is artificial and horizontal ;
the division into races is natural and vertical. How far,
or whether at all, such a division should be a bar to inter-
marriage, or to any form of social intercourse, does not
now concern us. Other races are our neighbor, and no
less than our own, are to be loved as ourselves. We
are bound to give them every right, and to seek their
good. But instead of this, difference of race has been
the occasion of prejudice, contempt, oppression, and of the
most bitter and long-continued hostilities. But for this
the English and French would not have been called natu-
ral enemies. But for this the nationalities of Europe
might coalesce. The great wars have been those of
races.

In this country we had made, in this, a great step on-
ward. Not only all religions, but, with a single exception,
all nationalities and races were received on an equal foot-
ing. But that exception was so flagrant, and so opposed
to our avowed principles, as to draw to it universal atten-
tion. Nor was race alone in question. There was
color ; and both were combined with caste intensified into
the form of chattel slavery. Here, then, was a fortress
with a triple line of defence. The institution, too, had
prestige as transmitted. It was so incorporated with the
industry and supposed interests of the South ; was so
allied to the spirit of caste both abroad and at the North ;
was so supported by prejudice and pride and indolence ;
was so an element of politics, and so claimed by the
churches as a divine institution, that its removal seemed
hopeless. Ah ! if the rights of the black man had never
been violated, how simple the problems of our society
would have been. If, having been violated, we had heeded
the law of the text, how facile and bloodless the remedy ?

242 PROVIDENCE AND REVELATION.

But no ; there stood the fortress growing more and more
defiant and insolent.

But if the hand of God had been unmistakable in re-
buking the spirit opposed to that of the text in the forms
already mentioned, it has been still more so in this. Not
more conspicuous was it in leading the children of Israel
out of Egypt. The destruction of slavery within four
years is a moral miracle. Many present will remember
when the first haze from this sea of death began to spread
itself in our political sky, and how from that time the
heavens continued to grow darker. Compromise availed
nothing. Attempted suppression of petitions and of dis-
cussion availed nothing. The negro was passive, quietly
at work among the rice and the cotton, the sugar and the
tobacco, but he was everywhere. You all remember how
inevitable he became. Was there a political or ecclesi-
astical convention anywhere from Maine to Texas, he was
there. No threats and no coaxing could keep him out.
He was in every railroad car and steamboat, and bar-
room. Were two excited men talking at the corner of the
street, you might be sure he was there. It was he that
put the President in the White House, and the Speaker of
the House of Representatives in his chair. He unsettled
ministers, broke up churches, perplexed the action of
religious societies, and rent asunder great denominations
of Christians. He was in the struggles of Kansas, and
when ruffianism and treason showed themselves in the
Senate Chamber he was not far off.

Then came the first gun, the great uprising, the tramp
of armed men, the 19th of April, the War. Nobody
wanted it, everybody dreaded it, but majestic, resistless,
as when God flings out the banner of the storm and bids
it move, it swept on. No man guided it, no man could
foretell its duration or issues. So tumultuous and per-

PROVIDENCE AND REVELATION. 243

plexed were the movements, that the avowed and wise
policy of the President was to have no policy, but simply
an end sought as wisdom might be given moment by
moment. It came to that, that all that men knew was
that there was nothing to do but to fight on. And they
did fight. And Oh ! the agony of those days ! ^' We
waited for light, but behold obscurity ; for brightness, but
we walked in darkness." We cried out, ^' O, thou sword
of the Lord, how long will it be ere thou be quiet ; put
thyself up into thy scabbard, rest and be still." But the
voice came, " How can it be quiet seeing the Lord hath
given it a charge ?" And what that charge was, those who
watched began after a time to discover. It was, first, to
lift the negro up into manhood by bringing him into line
with the white man in fighting the battles of freedom.
We all know how this was resisted and scoffed at. It could
not be. But the pressure did not lift ; it waxed heavier
and heavier and it was done. The negro fought and was
welcomed. A second charge was to make the Proclamation
of Emancipation, ridiculed as the Pope's bull against the
comet, to make that as the breath of the Almighty to
sweep away slavery. That was done. Again, the charge
was to bring the South, the chivalry, to recognize by public
act the manhood of the negro by making him a soldier,
and by confessing the dependence of their cause upon
him. This was all ; it was enough. When this v/as done,
the war ceased.

And now, I put it to you, if the antagonism of races,
intensified by caste and by color, was to be providentially
rebuked, could it have been done more signally or more
effectually ?

Of the three forms of providential testimony now pre-
sented, each is distinct and emphatic. There is another,
and carried out too with the same completeness. Slavery

244 PROVIDENCE AND REVELATION.

may stand as the type and culmination of all oppressive
systems, and the testimony consists in a manifestation of
its legitimate and matured fruits.

Till our armies went South, and Southern prisoners
came North, there was but a slight impression among us
of the general ignorance under such a system — of the
number who could not read or sign their names. But for
this ignorance there could have been no rebellion. There
had been no adequate conception of the want of thrift
and general behindhandedness, nor of the pervading
spirit, at once of license and of despotism. What were
called the abuses of the system were more frequent and
foul than had been supposed. But these are little, com-
pared with the spirit of the system as revealed, First, by
atrocities in the treatment of Southern Union men, not
exceeded by anything in the Sepoy rebellion ; second, by
the massacre at Fort Pillow, intended to be the inaugura-
tion of a policy; third, by preparations to blow up Libby
prison ; fourth, by the deliberate, systematic, long con-
tinued exposure, neglect and starvation of Union pris-
oners ; and finally, by the assassination of the President.
These things we do not charge to all the people of the
South. They are like other men. Many are better than
their system. But we do charge them to the spirit of the
system ; and we say that by these exposures and revela-
tions, culminating as they did in a way to send a thrill of
horror through the civilized world, God has pilloried the
system before the nations, and all that has affinity with it.

That there were atrocities on our side we do not deny
They are incident to war. But we do deny anything that
can be at all an offset to such a record. It is to be said
further on the part of the North that the war was carried
on here chiefly without proscription, and that in connec-
tion with it there were the Sanitary and Christian Com-

PROVIDENCE AND REVELATION. 245

missions, that furnished by voluntary contribution mill-
ions for the aid of wounded and sick soldiers, to be ap-
plied equally, so far as might be, to friend and foe. Any
thing like these, in connection with war, no institutions or
form of government had ever before developed.

I have thus presented four simultaneous processes in-
dicating a providential testimony in favor of free insti-
tutions and of equal rights, both for all classes of the same
race and for all races. If any one of these had been con-
trived by man for this express purpose, could it have been
more elaborate, I had almost said artificial and dramatic ?
But when we see them combined as these have been, all
bearing virtually on this one point of loving our neighbor
as ourselves, and in connection with events that have so
lifted them up to the gaze of the world, we cannot doubt
the presence of a divine hand. It is the providence of
God enforcing his word.

Possibly we may now find some explanation of the
presence and condition of the negro in this land. Who
has not wondered that these have been permitted ? Who
has not felt irritated that there should be such an obstacle
to the facile working of our principles and institutions ?
But in no other way could the broad requisitions of the
gospel have been so interpreted to us, and so enforced
upon us. Race, color, caste, interest — all were needed
for the fullest possible test of those requisitions. The
negro in Africa it would have been an easy thing to love
as ourselves. But to take him by the hand here, and lift
him up into the enjoyment in all respects of equal rights
with ourselves is quite another thing. This we were not
prepared to do, and it was needful that this very race, the
farthest of all removed from us in physical, and if you
please, in mental characteristics, should so become pas-

246 PROVIDENCE AND REVELATION.

sively an obstruction and a clog in the working of our polit-
ical and ecclesiastical machinery, as to compel us to see
the difference between an abstract profession of principles
and their practical application. We needed to learn what
that meaneth, " I will have mercy and not sacrifice," and
to be made to know how any failure to carry out the prin-
ciple of the text must work its own retribution. May the fu-
ture show that this nation has learned the lesson thus taught
of God. If not, we may be sure that retribution will come.

In view of the providences above-mentioned as bearing
on the text, let me inquire of you, my Dear Friends of
the Graduating Class, whether the second table of the
law has its true relative place in your minds. Has it in
the mind of the religious public of this land ? That place
it has not always had. There has been a one-sided
piety. Duties toward God have been emphasized while
those towards men have been slighted. There has been
something calling itself piety that has been dissociated, not
merely from beneficence, but from kindliness and honor,
and a high morality. Of all caricatures of the religion of
Christ none is more repulsive than a combination of high
pretension to piety with a narrowness and meanness bor-
dering on dishonesty. From such a type of piety the
natural recoil has been to mere philanthropy. This, if less
repulsive, is hardly less mischievous. Having no root in
the love of God, it runs into sentimentalism and self-seek-
ing and even into malignity. There is nothing sourer than
a soured philanthropist. The second table of the law has
no power without the first. That must stand in its grand
pre-eminence. Its summary is, and must be, " the first
and great commandment." But the second is like unto
it, and every failure to carry out its principles fully, is a
failure in one of the highest forms of a rational piety.

PROVIDENCE AND REVELATION. 247

Let me, then, especially commend to you at this time
the love of your fellow-men. Take for your motto,
Love is Wisdom. Always love is wisdom. Rational love
is the central, plastic, unconsciously organizing and ad-
justing force of a rational society, as natural law and in-
stinct are of the inanimate and animal creation. Hold
on, I entreat you, to this. Abide steadfast in it, and you
shall be the men needed for these times. You shall
work with the providence of God.

It has, my friends, been one result of our studies the
past year to bring the teachings of the human constitu-
tion into harmony with the revealed law of God. To-
day I close my instructions to you by seeking to show
you the harmony of the Providence of God with the
second table of that law. In their relations to the well-
being of the individual, and of society, the two tables are
very different. For the individual, the great good must
be from conformity to the first table, that is, from love
to God. That fits us for heaven. But for the com-
munity, that good must be from conformity to the second
table, that is, from love to man. Whether God providen-
tially favors piety, as such, may be doubted. It was,
in the time of Job, and has been since. But in giving
men rights he has pledged himself to favor those forms of
society in which such rights are conceded. This he does
in the long lines of his providence, because natural rights
tend to their own vindication and enjoyment with the con-
stancy of natural law, and till they are conceded society
cannot be in a state of stable equilibrium. Whatever may
be said of the first table of the law, I hold it to be demon-
strable that the second table is the only law of a stable
society. It is radical. There is in it the intensest radi-
calism. The very essence of it is to give to every human
being his rights — To every human being. What more can

248 PROVIDENCE AND REVELATION.

radicalism ask ? It is also conservative. There is in it
the intensest conservatism; for to give to every one his rights
is the work of righteousness, and " The work of righteous-
ness is peace, and the effect of righteousness, quietness and
assurance forever." When society shall be established on
a right basis, and every man shall have his rights, conser-
vatism will be the true doctrine, or rather radicalism and
conservatism will be identified. Then, too, in the peace
and prosperity that shall follow, will be found a perfect
coincidence between the word and the providence of God.
Of that coincidence do not you doubt. Labor for it. It
must come. God is not on the side of the strongest bat-
talions. He is on the side of the oppressed. The rights
that he has given he will vindicate.

This coincidence of Providence with Revelation, is
the great lesson of history read in the world's unrest.
That is the long, silent protest of God against the violation
of his fundamental social law. It is more distinct and
emphatic now than in former times. The march of Provi-
dence is slow. Its early lessons are dim. There is no
convergence. But the times in which we live feel the
quickening impulse of an approaching consummation.
Events converge and hasten. Mighty physical agencies
are wheeled into line ; ocean depths are a highway for
thought ; providences reveal a divine hand ; a deeper
sense both of rights and of responsibilities is leavening the
masses ; the thunderstorm of a war has cleared the moral
atmosphere ; slavery is swept away as by the breath of
God ; " God is marching on." Fall in, my friends, fall
in!

It is to do this, to work with and for God, that you go
from us. You go with our prayers and blessing. For me
it has been a great satisfaction to tread with you some of
the highest fields of thought. The truths we have reached,

PROVIDENCE AND REVELATION. 249

and the spirit of our studies, will abide with you. Nor
will the bond between us, formed by communion in those
truths, and not by that alone, be soon sundered. But
now, we part. The staff is in your own hands. Before
you is the upward and limitless way. Move on.

The four years of your college course have been
almost synchronous with those of the war. All honor to
the six of your present number, to the fourteen in all, who
have taken a part in this. Of these, one was killed in
battle, one died at Andersonville, one in camp of fever,
and two were wounded. These years have opened a new
era to the country and to the world. As years of solemn
feeling and of deep excitement in regard to great principles
they should have toned you up — I trust they have — to a
deeper sense of responsibility, to greater earnestness, to a
higher manhood. All these you will need, for into your
keeping will go these institutions that have been bought
with so much of blood and treasure, and woe to you if you
do not do your part in carrying on to its completion that
which has been so grandly begun. Such a trust no
preceding generation has ever received.

Nor has the excitement and solemn feeling during
your course respected solely human government and the
interests of time. Your attention has also been drawn
to the great principles of the divine government, and
to their bearing upon you as the subjects of a spiritual and
an eternal kingdom. In view of these, many of you have
professed to enter upon that nobler warfare of all time, for
the establishment, universally and forever, of the principles
of freedom and of righteousness. This is the true arena of
human labor and conflict. Into this I welcome you.
Into this the church of God welcomes you. She needs
standard bearers. Upon what you shall do in this arena,
a great cloud of witnesses will look down. " Run, then.

250 PROVIDENCE AND REVELATION.

with patience, the race that is set before you, looking
unto Jesus ;' and when the goal shall be reached, may-
each one of you, " crowned with victory," be permitted, at
his feet,, to " lay your laurels down."

XIV.

THE BIBLE AND PANTHEISM.

Behold I stand at the door and knock ; if any man hear my voice and open the
door, I will come in to him and will sup with him, and he with me.— Reve-
lation, iii. 20.

EVERYTHING which God has made he treats accord-
ing to the nature he has given it. Willing it to be,
he respects its essential attributes, and concedes to it its
own sphere. This he must do or each thing would either
cease to be, or to be that thing. Take the smallest particle
of matter. It enters into the conception and definition of
this that it occupies space. This prerogative it must as-
sert and vindicate to itself or cease to be. A crystal
ground to powder would cease to be a crystal, and in thus
grinding it its nature as a crystal would be wholly ignored.
But in governing matter God does not thus ignore any
essential property. All physical problems he works out
under physical conditions, and it would be an imputation
upon his wisdom to suppose that mere omnipotence must
be called in to break down those conditions in order to the
successful working of such problems. It belongs to our
conception of the divine perfection that God should be able
to govern his physical universe in accordance with the
properties which he has himself bestowed. Accordingly,
if we ascertain the essential properties of any material
thing with which God begins to deal, we shall find that it
will be through those properties, and not by ignoring or
destroying them, that he will work out his purposes.

*+* July 29, i866.

252

THE BIBLE AND PANTHEISM.

And what is thus true of matter that has properties, is
also true of persons that have will and freedom and rights.
Here the problems are higher. Grand and complex as are
the problems connected with matter, taking hold as they
do on infinity and eternity, unsolved, and apparently un-
solvable by science, they are as nothing compared with
those that arise in the government of beings conscious, free
and responsible. And if, in solving physical problems God
always works under the physical conditions implied in the
nature he has given, we may be sure that in solving moral
problems he will not disregard any right, nor trench on any
original endowment or prerogative on which such right is
based. We may be sure that here too his purposes will be
wrought out through the fullest exercise of those very pre-
rogatives and endowments in which the problems origi-
nated.

Does God then govern man as responsible ? Is respon-
sibility the one element without which moral government
could not be ? Then we have only to ascertain what the
conditions of responsibility are, and we may be sure that
they will be held inviolate by Him.

And here we say that the one condition of responsibil-
ity is the power of rational choice. I do not say freedom,
because that is ambiguous. Freedom is a condition, but
that is involved in this power of choice. This is the cen-
tral power in our personality, the point of moral responsi-
bility. In this, all processes of the soul that precede it and
pass into outward activity culminate. All that precedes this
is spontaneous, irresponsible, subjective. All that succeeds
this is but its projection into outward act, and its being mir-
rored there. In a true life, in all moral life as God sees it,
the outward act is but the reflection and image of the inward
choice. Without this power we cannot conceive that a
moral nature should be brought into activity. We may,

THE BIBLE AND PANTHEISM.

253

and must be constantly affected by events, as the rising of
the sun, that have no relation to our choice, but we cannot
feel responsible for them ; and if God begins to govern us
as responsible, we should, as has been said, anticipate with
certainty that no crisis or emergency could arise in which
he would not hold every condition of responsibility sacred.
The point of harmony between the divine omnipotence and
the divine wisdom is that the omnipotence creates the con-
ditions of every problem, physical and moral, and that the
wisdom works within and under those conditions.

Under human government each man has his own sphere
to which he has a right. It is a maxim of English law
that a man's house is his castle. Within this nor curiosity,
nor caprice, nor malice may intrude. Unless in the inter-
est of the state, and armed with the authority of law, no
one may enter unbidden. This is his home, it is his own.
Bating crime, he has a right to do in it as he pleases. He
has a right to its exclusion and privacy, and if any one
would enter, he must stand at the door and knock.

And so under divine government, there is a deeper
and more intimate sphere of the thoughts and affections
and sympathies and choices. This is the true sanctuary
of our nature, where are celebrated the nuptials of the soul
with its chosen good, and which is known only to the man
himself and to God. Into this even God himself does not
come except with freest consent. When he would enter
here, he does not merge the attributes of the Moral Gov-
ernor in those of the Creator and Proprietor, but respect-
ing the constitution he has given, he says, " Behold I
stand at the door and knock : if any man hear my voice,
and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup
with him, and he with me."

What then have we here ? Have we not a prerogative
that makes man independent of God ? So it seems to

254 THE BIBLE AND PANTHEISM.

some, and hence they hesitate to claim for it the entire-
ness implied. Let us then inquire after those limitations
and conditions by which this prerogative is harmonized
with divine government.

And first. The power of choice is limited by endow-
ments and capacities. A brute cannot choose between
books, or statues, or pictures, or steam-engines, because
it has no capacity to know them as such. A man cannot
choose between walking and flying. One born blind can-
not choose between sight and touch. But capacities and
endowments, both in kind and degree, are wholly in the
hand of God.

Again, with given capacities there is a limitation to
choice in the objects presented. These as adapted to
man, it was for God to create or not as it pleased him.
In providing for physical wants and gratifications he might
have held forever the orange and the melon and the peach
in his creative capacity. The present variety is solely of
his goodness. And so the objects and range of the desires
and affections were provided and meted out by him. For
the race, and on the whole, God may have created objects
suited to meet every want, and to draw out every capac-
ity. No doubt he has, but the limitation of choice through
the objects presented is specially noticeable in his deal-
in:^s with individuals. From birth, sex, education, health,
the structure of society, the objects within the scope of
individual choice are greatly limited and infinitely divers-
ified. The objects of desire are numberless, of choice but
few. Who of us has had it presented to his choice whether
he would be President of the United States, or be worth a
million of dollars ? Capacities and opportunities seem
thrown together promiscuously. Capacity often lacks op-
portunity, opportunity waits for capacity. All this God
orders as seemeth him good. In this is much of his pro-
6*

THE BIBLE AND PANTHEISM.

255

vidential discipline, and through it his creatures are
governed.

Again, choice is limited not only by capacity and the
objects presented, but also by the time within which they
are presented. Sometimes the time is long. "The long-
suffering of God waited in the days of Noah," a hundred
and twenty years. Sometimes the opportunity is given
but for one bright moment and passes forever. In the his-
tory of every life and in relation to every interest, there
are periods within which the choice must be made on
which those interests turn. There comes a last and deci-
sive moment. After that the offer is withdrawn ; the door
is shut ; the harvest is past ; the opportunity is gone, and
will return no more. This element of time God holds in
his sovereign hand, abbreviating or extending as he pleases
the period of choice.

Capacities, objects, time — controlling these God hedges
choice within certain limits. Still, if we admit of plenary
freedom within those limits, it may be said that we have
an element if not irreducible under the divine government,
yet capable of so setting itself against the will of God that
that will shall not be done. And so we have ; and the
will of God is not done. If that will were done, there
would be no sin ; if that will were done, why did our
Saviour command us to pray that it might be done ? It is
the one great characteristic of this world, controlling all
its moral and physical phenomena, that the will of God is
not done in it. For what did Christ come, for what do
his ministers labor, and the church pray, and the Holy
Spirit strive, but that the will of God may be done ? No,
my hearers, the will of God is not done.

But if not, how is he omnipotent? Is it not said that
" he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and
among the inhabitants of the earth"? Here we need the

256 THE BIBLE AND PANTHEISM.

distinction, made on a former occasion, between choice
and volition, or between will as choice and will as volition,
The choice of God is free, his volition is omnipotent. As
volition, the will of God is always done, as choice it is not
His choice is indicated by his commands. If these do not
indicate choice there is no meaning in words, there is no
sincerity in God. The opposite doctrine would be mon-
strous. No man will dare to say that there is not indicated
by his commands a choice of God which the Bible calls
will. But choice in itself, or as expressed in command,
has no efficiency. It abides in the mind choosing, and a
choice in the mind of God has no more efficiency beyond
himself than a choice in any other mind. The choice of
man, followed by his volition, originates that future for
which he is responsible ; and the choice of God, followed
by his volition, and only then, originates that future for
which, so far as we may apply the term to Him, He is re-
sponsible. Omnipotence pertains to the volition of God,
freedom to his choice. To the volition of man, omnipo-
tence does not pertain, but to his choice freedom does.
Omnipotence may create a being with the power of ration-
al choice, and fix the conditions under which choice may
be made; but it must then stand in abeyance while that
being is governed by laws to which omnipotence has no
relation. It is not implied in an infinite attribute that it
can perform contradictions. Omniscience cannot know
the number of square feet in infinite space. Omnipotence
cannot give solidity to thought or to time. By definition
where a hill is, a valley cannot be; and so, where omnipo-
tent will is exerted as volition, finite choice cannot be. If
we make the ocean fluid by definition, then God cannot
govern it by congealing it into ice by his omnipotence, for
it would no longer be the ocean. And he does not so gov-
ern it. No. He respects that condition of fluidity by

THE BIBLE AND PANTHEISM. 257

which it is the ocean. He permits it to heave and toss,
and assay its utmost ; he lets its billows assault the
heavens, and wreck navies, and thunder upon the shore ;
and it is then, at the very moment when the tempest is
wildest, and those billows are mightiest that he says,
" hitherto shalt thou come but no farther, and here shall
thy proud waves be stayed." And so, respecting perfectly
that power of rational choice which makes him man, does
He govern man. "Z^ stilleth the noise of the seas, and the
tumult of the people.'' It is the glory of his government, not
that this earth and these heavens are marshalled by om-
nipotence in an order that is faultless, but that he so gov-
erns a universe of free intelligences without trenching upon
their freedom, that the glory of the physical heavens shall
be as nothing compared with that moral glory which shall
illustrate forever in results of unspeakable beauty and joy,
his wisdom, his justice and his grace.

But can such results be reached by God through the
choice of his creatures with no control by him except
through the above limitations? No. Whatever may have
been true originally, we fail to reach through these limita-
tions, a full conception of the dependence of a sinner upon
God.

As a sinner, man must be wholly dependent upon God
for forgiveness. Forgiveness is God's act, and must rest
with him. Grace must be free, or it would not be grace,
and as free, it must be sovereign.

As a sinner dead in trespasses and sins, man must also
be dependent on God for quickening. His death is not
one of mere negation requiring omnipotence to originate a
new mode of being, but a death of chosen and intense ac-
tivity in trespassing and sinning. So intense is this death,
so absorbing the activity in it, that left to itself it would go
on forever. Hence the necessity of positive interposition

258 THE BIBLE AND PANTHEISM.

on the part of God, and, in connection with that, of the
doctrines of grace. Hence the necessity that Christ should
stand at the door and knock.

What then is this knocking? In its broadest sense it
consists of every influence that addresses man's higher na-
ture and tends to bring him into right relations to God.
Christianity is a great redemptive and remedial system.
Under it not only is a way of salvation opened for those who
may, of their own accord, choose to enter, but there is also
provided a system of means and influences to bring men to
enter into that way. It is, indeed, for this that the world
stands. The end of this world is not, as some seem to
think, progress — the boasted and hackneyed progress of
this age — progress, and an ultimate state of high civiliza-
tion, or even of millennial perfection and glory for that
portion of the race that may then live. No. Christian-
ity respects the whole race with its myriads from the be-
ginning, and its object is to bring together in one perma-
nent community, and with surroundings corresponding with
their moral character, all who have aflinity with each other
through the love of God. To this end God weaves the
bright lines of his beneficence into the web of his provi-
dence. Suffering all nations to walk in their own ways, he
yet does not leave himself without witness in that he does
good and gives them rain from heaven and fruitful seasons,
filling their hearts with food and gladness. To this end he
revealed himself to patriarchs and prophets. To this end
Christ came, and taught, and suffered, and died, and rose
again. To this end the Holy Spirit, in his powerful and
special influences, is given. And now, throughout this
whole system, whether under what is called providence or
grace, whatever ought to appeal to the moral nature of
man, and, with his co-operation, would lead or fit him to
be a member of the great family of God, is God's voice, as,

THE BIBLE AND PANTHEISM. 259

in the person of Christ, and under a mediatorial system,
he stands at the door of man's heart and knocks.

In the call implied in this knocking two things are re-
quired, just those that respect the two great crises in the
spiritual history of every Christian. One is that he should
hear the voice of the Saviour ; the other that he should
open the door.

For the most part men are engrossed in the things of
time. So intense and exclusive is their devotion to them
that their insensibility to the things of the Spirit is, as I
have said, characterized by inspiration as death. Seeing
they see not, and hearing they hear not. Now it is an era
in any life when this engrossment and Hmitation of thought
are broken up and the powers of the world to come assert
their claims. Before, the man saw only the river on which
he seemed to be sailing ; now he sees the ocean, and feels
the ground-swell of a mightier movement than that of time.
Now the Saviour knocks, and hearing, he hears. He hears
his voice.

And now comes the second great crisis in his spiritual
history. Can he, will he open the door?

That he can in the proper sense of that word is implied
in the fact that Christ knocks. If he do indeed knock,
then to argue the question of ability is an impeachment
of his sincerity.

But if he can, and do not choose to do it, can God so
knock as to bring him thus to choose ? Can God, with-
out infringing upon the prerogatives of choice, cause all
choices to be coincident with his ? We think he can.
The term omnipotence we do not regard as applicable
here, because moral results must be reached by moral
causes, and within the sphere of freedom ; but yet we do
not believe that God has let loose a power which is either
in itself, or in its results, beyond his prevision and control.

260 THE BIBLE AND PANTHEISM.

We prefer to say that the limit of his interposition has been
from the beginning, and is now, not the limit of his resources,
but one imposed by his infinite wisdom. What do we know
of the possible modes of interaction between spirit and
spirit? Between the Infinite spirit and finite spirits?
What do we mean by the drawings of divine love — the
drawing of the Father ? What by the power of the Holy
Ghost ; These cannot be physical. Omnipotence cannot
be predicated of them, and yet, if God so please, they may
be made as adequate within their sphere as omnipotence
in its sphere. God can come to his creatures, and can
manifest himself to them and in them ineffably. He can
work in them " fo wilV as well as "to do," and yet such
working may not be, it is not a limitation of freedom ; it
is its purification and exaltation to that point where it
reaches the certainty and the security of heaven. It may
be effectual, and yet of all that pertains to it God may be
able to say, " Behold I stand at the door and knock."

You are entering now life at a period when the thought
of the world, so far as it separates itself from the Bible,
tends towards pantheism. Modern infidelity has various
names and forms, but the substance is that ; and under
whatever form, it is sure to chill and dwarf man, and dis-
integrate society. Of old, with the uniformities of nature
unknown, and her forces unsubdued, pantheism was im-
possible. The tendency then was to polytheism, and
idolatry, and superstition. But as science advanced, and
that sense of uniformity which has been called the scien-
tific instinct, prevailed, pantheism became possible. Go-
ing in the direction opposite to polytheism, and not accept-
ing one personal God, this is the last term which, a mind
alien from God can reach, and which, without the Bible, it is
sure to reach. Polytheism, idolatry, superstition, on the
Due hand ; or pantheism on the other, I regard as inevit-

THE BIBLE AND PANTHEISM. 26 1

able for man without the direct revelation and recognition
of a personal God. Against both these the Bible guards
equally and marvellously. Its denunciations of idolatry
could not be more contemptuous and terrific ; its antag-
onism to pantheism and all affinity with it, could not be
more absolute. During the height and pressure of the first
tendency it was the Bible alone that preserved in the world
the knowedge of the One God, with such attributes as to
make him a worthy object of worship ; and it is the Bible
alone that now holds men back from pantheism.

Of pantheism as a system the mass of the people as
yet know nothing, and for it they care nothing ; but,
through conversation, the press, the lecture, the tendency
reaches them, coming in like a mist, and affecting, chill-
ing, deoxydizing their whole atmosphere of thought. It
comes in two forms, with different origin, but similar result.
Beginning at the lowest point and working up, the pan-
theism of Natural Science is reached, which attributes all
things to principles, and laws, and to development. Of this
man is the highest result and expression. This is the
heathenism of science, and is just as much opposed to the
religion and God of the Bible as the polytheism of old, or
as fetichism is now. Beginning, on the other hand, with
God, and working down, a metaphysical, or theological
pantheism is reached, that, either from the difficulty of
conceiving of creation, or under the guise of exalting God,
merges all things in him. It makes God virtually the only
being, and his will the only will. But it matters little
whether you make God everything, or everything God ;
whether you destroy the freedom of something called God
in exalting man, or the freedom of man in exalting God.
In either case, instead of freedom, with responsibility, and
moral government, the majesty of a personal God, the
beauty of holiness and the joy of willing obedience, you

262 THE BIBLE AND PANTHEISM.

have a system of blind tendencies and dead uniformities j
or, under the name of will, of an iron and remorseless
fatalism.

Against both these you are to be guarded, against both
to guard others, and both your shield and weapon will be
found in that revelation which God makes of himself in
Christ, and in the attitude towards man which he assumes
when he says. " Behold /— ." Ah, that word ^ that lit-
tle word ! Nature does not know it. Except through
man, pantheism does not know it ; in its high sense fatal-
ism does not know it ; positiveism does not know it.
Behold I — . Who? "Immanuel. God with us." Not
from works now, not from laws, blind laws bringing all
things alike to all, not by inferences do we know God ;
but, both condescending to our weakness, and meeting
our wants. He stands before us, "God manifest in the
flesh." This is the highest expression of personality
which it is possible God should give. This will hold
men to their moorings when nothing else could. If God
has appeared " in fashion as a man " and spoken to us, to
doubt his personality is no longer possible. Thus has he
appeared and spoken.

And not only has he thus affirmed his own personality,
but in saying, " Behold I stand at the door and knock^' he
recognizes the distinct personality of others, and all the
conditions of responsibility. Everywhere the Bible asserts
the distinct personality and supremacy of God ; every-
where the separate agency and responsibility of man.
These are the truths to be received. Settle as you please,
or not at all, let others settle as they please, or not at all,
the questions that grow out of a transmitted life, of an
inherited nature, of the relations of spirit to matter, and
of the finite to the infinite, questions about which the
Bible never troubles itself at all, but hold you fast to a

THE BIBLE AND PANTHEISM. 263

personal God, a Father in heaven, and to his supremacy ;
and also to a realm of freedom and supernatural power
wide as his works, and as much grander than they as
spirit is higher than matter. You cannot reconcile the
two? Then let the legitimate supremacy of the practi-
cal nature assert itself, ahd with entire faith act on
both. This must you often do in life. Often, with
limited capacity, must your whole rational nature de-
mand that you should act upon facts well authenticated,
though seemingly discrepant, without waiting to reconcile
them.

Finding rest then either in full comprehension, or in
rational faith, with such a God above you, with a cloud of
witnesses around you, with your freedom of choice
respected even by omnipotent power, with the love that is
in Christ taking in its higher sphere, the place of omnipo-
tence in that which is lower, your whole nature is met.
It only remains for you to choose for yourselves what
guidance and companionship you will have. What I
desire for you all, the one thing, is the guidance and com-
panionship of Him who offers himself to you. " If any
man hear my voice." You, my friends, need not, you can-
not fight the battles that are before you — the battles of
life, and the battles with death, — alone. It is the one great
fact of our human life that its Giver and Lord offers him-
self to us in a form in which we can apprehend him not
merely for redemption, but for help and guidance, for com-
panionship and sympathy. In taking our nature upon him
he has come near to us ; having been tempted he knows
how to succor us ; in him " are hid," for us " all the treas-
ures of wisdom and knowledge." And now as you look
out upon life, full of interests so precious, and forward to
the future life, with issues so momentous, He, the Saviour

264 THE. BI]]LE AND TANTHEISM.

of men, offers himself to you. With infinite tenderness he
stands at the door of your hearts and knocks. O, open
the door. Open it fully. In this is all your wisdom.
Open the door, and he will come in to you, and will sup
with you, and you with Him.

XV.

ON LIBERALITY IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF.

If there come any unto you and bring not this doctrine, receive him not in your
house, neither bid him God-speed ; for he that biddeth him God-speed is
partaker of his evil deeds. — 2 John, 10, n.

IS it possible that this passage was written by the beloved,
and the loving Apostle John ? Is it he whose Epistles so
commend and command love, who exhorts a kind-hearted
woman disposed to hospitality to close her doors against
men simply on account of the doctrine they bring ? Not
on account of their character, or their life, but on account
of their doctrine ! Yes, their doctrine ! ! How strange !
Was it that he was a Jew, and had but recently emerged
from a system avowedly narrow and exclusive, and did not
as yet comprehend the breadth and freedom into which
Christianity was ultimately to expand ? Did the new wine
of that freer and more liberal system which Christ
brought, find in him an old bottle? True, the doctrine to
which he refers " was the doctrine of Christ." It involved
the validity of His claims, and seemed to be in peril.
" For," says he, " many deceivers are entered into the world
who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the^ flesh.
This is a deceiver and' an anti-Christ. . . . Whosoever
transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ,
hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ,
he hath both the Father and the Son." It is true, too,
that the customs of society, the relations of parties, and

*** July 28, 1867.

266 ON LIBERALITY IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF.

the import of such acts were different then. Still, making
every allowance, if we judge from this passage and its
connections, the Apostle John did not belong to "the
broad church."

Freedom, liberality, breadth, liberal Christianity, broad
church ; narrowness, illiberality, bigotry, superstition, or,
to concentrate all in one word, orthodoxy,— these are the
terms that we hear bandied on every side, and we would
gladly know their import.

These terms are applied to men on the ground of their
belief — not their belief on all subjects, but

First, as they believe less or more in the existence and
agency of invisible personal beings, including God.

Secondly, As they believe less or more in the impor-
tance of religious truth.

And thirdly, As they believe in conditions of salvation
that requires a life of less or greater strictness, and that
thus include a smaller or larger number.

First, then, men are said to be liberal and broad as
they believe little in invisible personal agency ; and to be
narrow and superstitious as they believe more in such
agency.

Of belief in such agency we have had, and still have,
every shade from the drivelling superstition of African
Fetishism to a blank atheism. In a state of ignorance
and barbarism, men attribute to personal agency many of
those movements and changes in nature which, as society
advances, are resolved into the operation of general laws,
implying but a single agent. The supernatural agency
thus believed in is multifarious, capricious, with more of
malignity than of good-will, often wholly malignant, and is
made by artful men a means of terror, or subjection, and
of degradation to the people. There have been no despo-
tisms like those based on superstition, and no lower deep

ON LIBERALITY IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 267

of degradation than that caused by it, unless it be the
degradation of a sensual and bloody infidelity caused by
its rebound.

It is in this belief in the supernatural connected with
fear and with irrational and debasing practices from that
that we find the essence of superstition. Superstition is
not, as is said by Charles Kingsley in a recent lecture on
that subject, " the fear of the unknown." It is the fear of
the supernatural vci the unknown. Take away from super-
stition the element of the supernatural, and the residuum
is simply error. To dislodge this fear as a cause of degra-
dation to the masses, it does not appear that anything but
Christianity can avail, and even that has not been able to
do it fully as yet in any country. It is surprising how
many superstitions still linger even in the most enlightened
parts of Christendom, showing the natural and ineradicable
affinity of man for the supernatural, and the certainty of a
region, somewhere, and in some form, corresponding to
that affinity.

But relatively, since the coming of Christ, —

" The Oracles are dumb ;

No voice or hideous hum
Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving."
" Peor and BaaUm

Forsake their temples dim."
" Nor is Osiris seen.

In Memphian grove or green."

Wherever the Bible is fully received, the brood of super-
stition is dispersed.

" The flocking shadows pale
Troop to the infernal jail."

Through the light and impulse given by Christian-
ity, science has taken the place of superstition, and men

268 ON LIBERALITY IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF.

have thus reached a position that has enabled them
to go beyond the limits allowed by Christianity, and to
repudiate that without which no such science had been
possible.

In this whole movement there have been marked points
of transition. There has been the transition from heathen-
ism to Christianity. This involved no denial of super-
natural personal agency, but a change from a belief in the
" gods many and the lords many " of that system, to a
belief in the one living and true God, and in the system of
revelation and redemption made known in the Bible.

Then there is the transition from a belief in God as
revealed in the Bible to deism. Deism acknowledges
God. It may, or may not, believe in providence ; but it
knows of no revelation except through nature, and denies
that personal interposition ever comes in to change her
uniformities.

From deism there is a transition to pantheism, and
from pantheism — though it may not be easy to see the
difference — to absolute atheism. According to either of
these systems both revelation and miracles are impossible
and absurd.

According to Comte, the apostle of positivism, these
transitions, and the necessary steps of the human mind
towards its enlargement, are from supernatural agency to
metaphysical causation, and from that to positivism. Pos-
itivism knows nothing of God. It regards as illegitimate
all investigations concerning causes, efficient or final ; and
would confine philosophy to a knowledge of facts and
their order.

Now it is to be observed that at each of these steps
those who make them, or opproximate towards them, claim
that they become more liberal and broad, and look upon
those they leave behind as narrow and superstitious. Li

ON LIBERALITY IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 269

those thus left hold to their views strongly, they call them
bigoted. Those, on the other hand, who retain their pos-
ition, call the party of movement latitudinarians, infidels,
heretics. These terms, whether used for commendation
or reproach, thus become wholly relative. To a believer
in revelation, a deist is an infidel; to the atheist, or panthe-
ist, he is still in trammels, limited, narrow ; and it is the
atheist alone who has come out into perfect freedom and
enlargement.

I have said that these terms are applied on the ground
of a belief or disbelief in supernatural agency. This is
true ; but it is to be observed that when this belief is so
held as to lose its hold upon the conscience and its control
of conduct the intense meaning that belonged to the terms
originally, especially those of reproach, is discharged.
They so fade out as to be used with indifference, or in jest,
and it is practically regarded, as it really is, of little con-
sequence what a man believes.

And this leads me to observe, in the second place,
that the terms mentioned are applied to men as they be-
lieve less or more in the importance of religious truth, and
so are less or more strenuous respecting it.

We here find an anomaly. On other practical subjects
men regard the truth as vital. Truth is but an expression
of the actual state of things, and if men do not act in
accordance with that they fail. Who goes to California
for gold except as he is assured of the truth that gold is
there.'' The Bible, too, attaches great importance to truth.
It says: " Buy the truth and sell it not." "Contend ear-
nestly for the faith once delivered to the saints." It makes
truth the means of sanctification : " Sanctify them through
thy truth;" It makes salvation depend on belief: "He
that believeth shall be saved." *' He that believeth not
shall be damned." And yet it is not, perhaps, strange

270 ON LIBERALITY IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF.

that the idea of liberality should attach itself to a light
estimate of religious truth.

For what do we see ? We see a belief in dogmas made
a substitute for a Christian life, — loud profession and high
orthodoxy in connection with lax and questionable moral-
ity. We see dogmas maintained with bitterness, and by
means subversive of all the principles of the Gospel. We
see in most countries a belief in them connected with a
settled order of things, and so with power and place. We
see how numerous and slight the points are — some of doc-
trine, some of dicipline, extending even to ecclesiastical
millinery — on the ground of which men divide and become
hostile sects. We see points of difference magnified, and
feeling concerning them intense, as they are of less im-
portance. We become, perhaps, confused by the diversity
and clamor ; and it cannot be thought strange if these
exhibitions of weakness and of wickedness should cause
a rebound in the opposite direction. They have caused
this ; and here, as before, the utmost extreme claims for
itself the greatest liberality. One cardinal proposition,
and but one, those who make this claim do hold to. It is
that religious belief, articles of faith, creeds, are of no con-
sequence provided the life be right.

•* For forms and creeds let graceless bigots fight,
lie can't be wrong whose life is in the right."

This they hold ; and as a corollary they hold that those
who do not believe it are narrow and bigoted, and not fit
to belong to the broad church. It is, indeed, questionable
whether they are fit to belong to this nineteenth century.

But in the third place, the terms in question are
applied to men as they believe in conditions of salvation
that require a life of less or greater strictness, and that
7

ON LIBERALITY IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 2/1

will thus include a smaller or larger number. It is as thus
applied that these terms excite the most intense feeling.

Some believe that all men will be saved do what they
may. They believe in self-indulgence till the world is
exhausted, and in suicide then as the shortest road to
heaven. These are as liberal and broad in their sphere
as the atheist is in his. Between this point and the fast-
ings, the flagellations, the hair shirts of monasticism, or
the precise bead-telling and genuflexions of lighter forms
of superstition, there is every variety both of view and of
practice.

In the early stages of all religious movements, whether
dispensations, reformations, or the origin of sects, the
tendency is to a definite belief and strict practice. But
in time the force of the original movement dies out.
" The letter that killeth " displaces " the spirit that giveth
life." Forms stiffen into formalism, and under this there
will lurk, first indifference, then infidelity, and then con-
tempt. After this no human power can renew the move-
ment. For human systems, decay is death ; while in
God's system, apparent decay is simply winter. But dur-
ing such a process of relaxation, men who had seemed
molten together, separate, and re-combine as by elective
affinity. As some become rich and self-indulgent, and
more desirous of the fashions and gaieties of the world,
they gravitate towards certain denominations ; and denom-
inations themselves, as the Quakers and Methodists within
the last two generations, become greatly modified. As
such changes go on, the more strict lament the degener-
acy of the times, while those thought to be degenerate
regard themselves as coming into greater freedom and
enlargement. They have become more liberal, and look
back upon their former state as one of narrowness, or
superstition, or bigotry. Perhaps they remain with the

272 ON LIBERALITY IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF.

denomination in which they were born, but they will more
likely take or make an occasion to pass into one where the
general standard is more lax.

In this state of things, with lines not sharply drawn,
with indefinite standards, with customs objected to and
denounced, not as sinful in themselves, but on account
of their associations and liabilities to abuse, we hear the
terms in question applied quite promiscuously, and often
with intense feeling. One man re£;ards his own standard
as scriptural and rational ; that of his neighbor as lax and
worldly. His neighbor regards his own standard as en-
lightened and liberal, and that of his neighbor as narrow
and bigoted. He thinks him over-scrupulous and that he
makes Christ's yoke heavier than Christ himself made it.

We have thus three spheres and standards of liberality.
In the first the relation of man and of nature to super-
natural agency is immediately in question ; in the second
it is the relation of a belief in truth to practice that is in
question ; and in the third it is the relation of the practical
life to the spirit of Christianity and to the moral govern-
ment of God. But while the questions are thus apparently
different, their central point is the same. They all find
their unity and interest in the relation of the human will
to supernatural control. Eliminate but this one idea, and
the crested waves of these controversies will subside to
the merest ripple ; and the terms that may be used, how-
ever intense in form, will be charged with no divisive
elements. The real questions are, the existence of a holy
God claiming control over the human will, and the extent
of the control thus claimed.

Is there then any criterion of liberality in these several
spheres.'* May we know where narrowness ends on the
one side, and laxness begins on the other ?

And first, what is our criterion in the sphere of belief

ON LIBERALITY IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF.

273

respecting supernatural agency, involving a belief in
efficient causation and in final causes or ends intelligently
proposed and pursued in nature ? If we begin with Fetish-
ism and pass up, resolving phenomena that had been at-
tributed to spiritual agency into general laws, where shall
we stop ?

We must stop at the poifit where negation begins to affect
the sum and grarideiir of being. This is the criterion. In
passing up from Fetishism we do indeed constantly deny,
but we also constantly affirm. As we diminish the num-
ber of supernatural agents we increase their greatness, till
we resolve all natural laws and forces directly or indirectly
into the will of the one infinite God. If now we clothe
Him in our conceptions with perfect moral attributes, we
have the highest conceivable sum and mode of being.
This is the condition, and the only condition, of the per-
fect working and indefinite progress of the human faculties.
Here we reach the point of the liberality without narrow-
ness and without laxness. Beyond this we pass into nega-
tion and tenuity.

The criterion is one not merely to be seen by the
intellect, but to be felt as a condition of growth. The
condition of indefinite growth in intellect is thoughts of
God still unfathomed ; and the condition of growth in the
moral nature is a recognized goodness in God that trans-
cends ours. Man cannot live in negations. If he could
reach a point where the imagination even could transcend
the possibilities of being, he would begin to be dwarfed.
As in passing upwards we reach a point where breathing
becomes less effective from the thinness of the atmosphere,
so the moment we begin to deny intelligent will to God,
or to impair his moral attributes, or to limit his control
over the universe by anything but the conditions which
he has himself imposed, we come into a mental atmos-

274 ON LIBERALITY IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF.

phere of less vitality. All history shows that from that
point constructive power wanes, and moral torpor begins.

What we say then is, that our criterion here must be
the condition of highest activity and fullest growth for the
human powers ; that that condition is the complement and
perfection of being as recognized in an infinite and per-
sonal God ; and that for man to apply terms of commen-
dation to virtual negations that must stifle his own life and
dwarf his own growth is to call evil good.

But secondly, what is the criterion of liberality in
regard to the importance of religious truth .''

It is here virtually the same as before. Truth is of
importance only as it ministers to life, and as it is the only
thing that can thus minister. What we claim for truth in
the religious sphere, is the same that we claim for it else-
where— ^just that and no more. Everywhere it is the basis
of all rational action, the very light in which man must
walk if he would not stumble. Men hold truth that is not
acted upon. There is much that cannot be the basis of
action, and that which may, and should be, is often held, or
rather imprisoned, in indolence and unrighteousness. Be
its adaptions what they may, let any truth lie in the mind
undigested, unassimilated, giving no impulse or guidance,
and it might as well not be there. Still, whatever rational
action there may be, is, and must be based on the belief
of something as true. Men do something because they
believe something ; and in religion no less than in other
things they must believe in order to do, unless, indeed, we
resolve the religious life into that mere muddle of unintel-
ligent feeling called mysticism. Men may believe in God
and not worship him, but they cannot worship him unless
they believe in him. Unless they believe that " Christ has
come in the flesh," they cannot follow him. Unless they
believe in a moral government, they cannot fear to sin ;

ON LIBERALITY IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 275

nor can they " flee from the wrath to come," unless they
believe that there is a coming wrath. A man may conduct
his secular business with a degree of success under some
misapprehension of the facts on which it is based, but if he
misconceive them wholly he must fail ; and a man who
wholly denies or perverts the facts on which a religious life
is based, must fail in that. But in either case the more per-
fectly the truth is seen, that is, all truth that can bear upon
results, the more the man acts in his true element as a
man, and the more sure he is of success.

We believe then in no weak liberality, or pretence of
breadth that would ignore the vital connection of truth
with life ; and our criterion here, the point of liberality
without narrowness and without laxity, is such a belief in
all religious truth as shall be the condition of the highest life.

But we are here met by another despairing and debili-
tating assertion. We are told that the human mind has
not the power to separate the truth that is essential and
vital from that which is not.

If by this it be meant that the human mind cannot
know how little truth a man may believe and yet be saved,
it is true. Nor are we required to know this. It is not
our business to judge men, but systems, and neither libe-
rality nor charity can require us to confound these, or
to fail to discriminate them by sharp lines. Charity may
make large allowance, but may not require us to confound
things that differ. It may believe that a Mohammedan,
or a Deist, may have truth enough to save him, but it
cannot deny the power and the right to say that neither
Mohammedanism nor Deism is Christianity. And so, if
among those who call themselves Christians, any profess
a Christianity that has no redemption in it ; and if, on the
best comparison he can make of it with the New Testa-
ment, any man shall conclude that that is not Christianity ;

2/6 ON LIBERALITY IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF.

it is no more a want of charity to say so, than it is for a
chemist, after testing it, to say that an acid is not an
alkali. Let men use their intellects freely, fairly, modestly,
and yet with a confidence that shall honor God, as imply-
ing that the faculty he has given for the discovery of truth
is neither impotent nor delusive ; let them thus decide
what Christianity is, and then receive to Christian fellow-
ship those who accept what they conceive to be its essen-
tial doctrines, and who show that they submit their hearts
to its claims. If, in doing this, some should include doc-
trines not essential to Christianity, it is to be imputed, not
to a want of charity or liberality, but to the imperfection
of human judgment.

Our criterion here will then require us not only to hold
to the vital connection of truth with life, but to the power
of man to separate the truths that are essential, not to the
salvation of an individual man as he may be dealt with by
the Spirit of God, but to Christianity as distinguished from
any other system. In such a belief there is no narrowness.
In anything beyond this there is laxity and feebleness.

But thirdly, we inquire for the criterion of liberality in
respect of conduct.

The criterion of liberality in belief as respects conduct
must refer, either to the law which is the standard of con-
duct, or to the results of transgressions.

If we suppose a being morally perfect, the standard of
his conduct must be a perfect moral law. Such a law is
required both as an expression of the moral character of
God, and as a condition of the moral perfection of his crea-
tures. It is the fountain of order, the guardian of rights,
the only impregnable basis of security for the universe.
Can it then be asked in the interest of anything claiming
to be liberality, that the perfection of such a law shall be

ON LIBERALITY IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 2/7

impaired ? Ask rather that the brightness of the sun
should be dimmed. Ask that God should abdicate his
throne. If, as we have seen, liberality can have nothing
to do in impairing the rights and prerogatives of intellect
in its relation to truth, much less may it obhterate moral
distinctions and lower the standard of moral action.

But the real question respects conduct under a law
trangressed, with a possibility still remaining of forgive-
ness and restoration to full obedience. The question for
every man, the one question on which his destiny turns,
is whether he shall ever be brought into full harmony with
a perfect moral law ?

The law remaining, this must be so ; and being so, the
principle here is obvious. It is that nothing can be allowed
tfi conduct, whether in principle or in outward form, that
would prevent the speediest possible restoration of ourselves or
others to a full obedience.

But is not God merciful ? Does he not wish his crea-
tures to be happy ? Yes ; but " shall we continue in sin
that grace may abound ? God forbid." Little do they
know of God's mercy who speak of it in such a connection.
There is in it a depth and tenderness of which they have
no conception. But then its first element is a regard for
law, and any act of seeming mercy that would, in the
slightest degree, impair the power of law, would not be
mercy, but an act of indifference or of weakness. These,
indifference and weakness^ especially the former, are con-
stantly confounded with mercy, but no contrast could be
greater. Mercy is not compassion ; it is not simply bene-
volence. It is favor shown in accordance with the honoi
of the law to the guilty whose punishment is demanded by
the law ; and the weakness and indifference that are in it
find their measure in the agony of the garden and the
death-cry of the cross. What Christ did, is the measure

273 ON LIBERALITY IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF.

at once of the value of the law and of the depth of love
there is in the divine mercy. Yes, God is merciful ; so
merciful that he gave his Son for us, but not so merciful
that he will pardon one sin except through Him. It is on
mercy thus shown, revealing at once a love unutterable
and a firmness unalterable, that we rely for quickening the
consciences of men and bringing them up to new obe-
dience ; and God forbid that we should give a fair name
to anything that would weaken their sense of its need, or
diminish its power. Yes, God desires the happiness of
his creatures ; and therefore sets himself with the whole
force of his nature against trangression. He has provided
for every inlet of pleasure, and for every spontaneity of
joy ; but these can be permanent only for those who have
never wandered from the inclosure of his law, or who have
been brought back by One who has sought them with
weary and bleeding feet upon the dark mountains.

Let men but draw the inspiration of their lives from
such an apprehension of the cross of Christ, thus coming
into full sympathy with mercy in its end as restoring them
to obedience, and they will easily dispose of many ques-
tions regarding conduct which perplex those who discuss
them on a lower plane. On the one side there is a tend-
ency to austerity and to forms in a legal or a superstitious
spirit ; and on the other to ignore the inherent and essen-
tial law of self-denial, and the fact that a Christian is not
of this world even as Christ was not of this world. But
he who has it for his end to be conformed to a spiritual law,
will not rest in any physical suffering or outward form ;
nor^ on the other hand, will he either make amusements,
now so much spoken of, an essential part of his life, or rail
at them. The question with him will be where his heart
is, whither he is tending, and he will find both liberty
and liberality under the great law of Christian self-denial,
7*

ON LIBERALITY IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 279

that permits a man to do anything which will not hinder
his restoration to moral soundness in the sight of God.
Yes, my friends, you may do anything which will ?iot counter-
work in yourselves or others the work which Christ came to do.
In this is liberty, and any liberality that would go beyond
this is license.

Thus are our criteria all practical. They are simply
the conditions requisite for the highest mental and moral
efficiency. Take away anything from the sum or the excel-
lence of being, or from the value of truth, or from the
power of the mind to attain it, and by the very laws of
mind you put it under conditions less favorable for mental
robustness and efficiency. And so, if you lower the stan-
dard of moral law; or take from the conditions of mercy
their legal element ; especially if any indulgence be allow-
ed that iox you dims the light, or impairs the power of a
self-denying, humble, prayerful, spiritual life, you preclude
the possibility of the highest moral efficiency. But it is in
and through moral perfection that man finds his true end,
and no liberality that would lower the tone of this can be
admitted.

To some it may appear that the criteria proposed are
not legitimate, because they do not respect directly what
is true, but infer truth from that which is best adapted to
perfect man. But such an inference will be least distrust-
ed by those who know most of the works of God. If we
may not make it, the desire for truth and goodness will
thwart that for perfection, and there is, in the constitution
of man, a contradiction found nowhere else.

Permit me to caution you, young men, since your period
of life and the whole drift of the times is likely to lead you
to sympathize with those who make liberality and broad
church their watchword, that you do not abuse liberty. An
Apostle tells us there were those of old, and possibly there

280 ON LIBERALITY IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF.

may be some such now, who spoke " great swelling words
of vanity," and promised liberty to others, while they were
themselves "the servants of corruption." Always liber.ty
has been assailed in the name of liberty. There is no-
thing new in this claim of liberality and demand for it.
It has existed from the time that a holy God laid claim to
exclusive worship, and established a church that should
recognize that claim. In that claim was the root of a
conflict that has been waged, and will be, till one party or
the other shall triumph. Let men yield to that claim as
children, and we ask no more. We can be satisfied with
nothing less. In opposition to that claim there was always
a party among the Jews inclined to affinity in their religion
with the nations around them. Were not those religions
equally religion? Did they not bring into activity the
religious nature ? Were not the people sincere ? And
then the creed was less exclusive, and the worship more
attractive, and artistic, and compatible with freedom in
certain practices not allowed by the Jewish law. Why
should they be so narrow as to stand aloof from all others ?
The whole history of the Jews under the Judges and the
Kings is little else than an account of the different phases
of this struggle, the liberal party being generally in the
ascendant ; and it was only through the Babylonish cap-
tivity that God vindicated his supremacy and eliminated
the tendency to idolatry.

Nor is Christianity, as claiming the absolute supremacy
of God over both the life and the heart, less exclusive than
was Judaism. It did, indeed, throw down all barriers
between the Jews and others ; but it abated nothing of the
moral claims of God. So Christ regarded it. He spoke
of the "strait gate and the narrow way;" and there is
something ominous in the sound of " broad church " when
we hear Him saying, " broad is the road that Icadeth to

ON LIBERALITY IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 28 1

destruction." So the Apostles regarded it ; and when
that same principle of exclusiveness that had been quies-
cent in Judaism became aggressive in Christianity, then a
liberality that could tolerate and fellowship everything
else revealed its quality in the bitter hate of ten bloody
persecutions. And so it has been since. Of everything
else but a church that represents the uncompromising
and exclusive claims of God, liberality has spoken with a
bland voice; but that she on the one hand, and bigotry
and intolerance on the other, have equally persecuted.
That it is that ecclesiasticism has frowned upon and im-
prisoned, and that literature and genius have caricatured
and mocked at, and do still. Be it that in such a church
there may be found hypocrisies, pretence, dishonesty, mean-
ness, narrowness, and even inelegance. These are fair
game, but can never account for the intense venom that
has tipped the arrows that have been shot at the church ;
nor for the spiteful and persistent vigor with which they
have been sped. These have come only as a part of that
" irrepressible conflict " of all time, that has never failed
to show itself where the claims of God have been set up.

In connection with this conflict, in which no man can
be neutral, I wish for you, my friends, no needless antag-
onism. Whatever may stand in the way of a life under
the inspiration of love to God and men, and in sympathy
M^ith the remedial power of Christianity, that meet and
oppose ; but have no mere anti-isms, and make nothing a
point unless required by loyalty to truth and to God, All
wilfulness and false issues are mischievous, and suffering
from them, or for them, is at best useless. But I do wish
for you in this conflict such a belief, and such an attitude
toward it, as not to imply that the martyrs were fools ;
and as to make it possible that you should yourselves be-
come martyrs. No belief— no, I do not say belief, I say

282 ON LIBERALITY IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF.

faith involving trust — no faith can give to life its highest
inspiration that a man would not die for. Have such a
faith. Live for it ; if need be, die for it ; for in losing
your life thus you shall " keep it unto life eternal."

But shall we not, you say, belong to the party of pro-
gress ? Yes, progress in light, in discrimination, in the
detection of all shams and hypocrisies, and out of the
church as well as in it; but especially progress in love,
love to God and love to man. In this only is the root of
a liberality that is not pretentious and hollow, that will
despise no one and persecute no one. Through this you
shall grow into a liberality that will embrace all that can be
embraced without defilement ; and all narrowness, bigotry,
sectarianism, will fall from you as naturally as its chrys-
alis covering falls from the insect that is finding its wings.
Come out then from all incrustations of narrowness into
full Christian light and liberty. Whomsoever God loves,
love ye ; whomsoever he receives, receive ye. Join that
great party that is now seeking, as by a divine instinct, a
HIGHER UNITY IN CHRIST. Poudcr morc the import and
the implications of his prayer, " That they all may be one.'*
Progress ? Yes, progress in all in which that is possible ;
but remember that our great business here, our whole busi-
ness as practical, is progress in conformity to those fixed
conditions of growth and well-being in which, as in the
brightness of the sun, there is no progress, but which God
has perfected forever. Learn what those conditions are.
Accept your place under them as creatures and as chil-
dren ; comprehend, if you please, and if you can, how
conformity to those conditions promotes growth, but know
that except in conformity to them there can be progress
only in barren knowledge, or in delusion and folly.

XVI.

ZEAL.

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest
not the beam that is in thine own eye ? or how wilt thou say to thy brother,
let me pull out the mote out of thine eye, and behold a beam is in thine own
eye ? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and
then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
Woe unto you scribes and pharisees, hypocrites ! for ye compass sea and
land to make one proselyte, and when he is made ye make him twofold
more the child of hell than yourselves.— Matthew, vii. 3, 4, 5 ; xxiii. 15.

THE most dangerous foe to Christianity to-day is not
open infidelity, not a false liberality, but a zeal that
puts on the form of Christianity, that works under its
semblance, that seeks its own ends, not only reckless of the
degradation and perversion of the religious nature, but
through that very degradation and perversion.

What then ? Shall we disparage zeal ? No. We but'
need it the more. Without zeal for the enlightenment,
the reformation and salvation of men, we have none of
the spirit of Him of whom it was said, " The zeal of thine
house hath eaten me up." Without zeal we can do no
good. The danger is, that we shall not be zealous
enough ; and yet, if we consult either Scripture or his-
tory, we shall perhaps feel that there is equal danger of
our being wrongly so. We do not need to disparage or
diminish ^eal, but we do need to understand the charac-
teristics of that which is legitimate ; and the causes and
modes of possible deviation from it. It is to these that
I now ask your attention : — The characteristics of a

LEGITIMATE ZEAL ; AND THE CAUSES AND MODES OF POSSI-
BLE DEVIATION FROM IT.

Legitimate zeal has two great characteristics, — one,
ds it is related to the Intellect ; the other, to the Heart.

*** July 26, 1868.

284 ZEAL.

As related to the Intellect, zeal must be enlightened.
is is
imate.

This is the first great characteristic of a zeal that is legit-

And zeal must be enlightened, First, That its end
may be good.

It is not that the end sought by a false zeal must be
avowedly bad, or is even known in distinct consciousness
to be so, for then the zeal would not be ignorant, — but
that the real end, and that which a thorough honesty would
discriminate as such, is not good. The origin of the igno-
rance is in the heart ; on moral subjects it generally is,
but still it is ignorance. So was it with the Jews of whom
the Apostle Paul speaks. " For I bear them record," says
he, " that they have a zeal of God, but not according to
knowledge. For they, being ignorant of God's righteous-
ness, and going about to establish their own righteousness,
have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of
God." Avowedly they would submit to the mode of justi-
fication established by God, but really their end was to
establish one of their own. So was it with the Scribes
and Pharisees in compassing sea and land to make pros-
elytes. Whatever their ultimate end was, it was not good,
and they so far knew it as to be hypocrites. Still their
zeal was not enlightened. They neither chose a good end
because it was good, nor a bad end because it was bad,
saying to evil, " Be thou my good ; " but, seeking to grat-
ify their desires, they ignored the light of conscience and
reason and revelation, and worked in a twilight which ena-
bled them to call evil good and good evil, and at the
same time maintain a good opinion of themselves. Such
was the zeal of Paul which he enumerates among his
Pharisaic accomplishments when he says, " Concerning
zeal, persecuting the church." This was an ignorant

ZEAL. 285

zeal, for he says, " But I obtained mercy because I did it
ignorantly in unbelief." The ignorance was from the
heart, and therefore criminal, but still it was ignorance.
Such was the zeal of the crusades that again and again
precipitated Europe upon Asia. Such has persecuting
zeal generally been. It is really some form of selfish
desire becoming malignant, and blindly seeking to destroy
whatever may oppose it.

Secondly, Zeal must be enlightened, that the means
may be good.

We may not do evil that good may come. We may not
enslave negroes out of pity to Indians. This, it is said,
was the origin of the African slave trade. We may not
deprive men of their rights in order to Christianize them.
We may not do anything that will injure the bodies or
degrade the souls of men that we may get money for the
spread of the Gospel. We may not rob or defraud that
we may be able to give in charity. The essential evil of
this world, and of all worlds, is sin, and to think of
destroying sin by committing it, is absurd.

Thirdly, Zeal must be enlightened, that its ends may
be practicable.

Human power works within limits and under condi-
tions that make it necessary to consider not merely what
it is desirable we should do, but what we can do, and it
is the part of wisdom to undertake only that. But men
very early undertook the impracticable project of building
a tower whose top should reach to heaven, and since then
there has been no lack of visionary schemes, or of zeal in
their prosecution. Mathematically and morally, individu-
ally and in communities, men have been at work to square
the circle, and to make a weight lift itself They have

286 ZEAL,

sought n univeisal solvent, and the philosopher's stone,
and an elixfr of health. They have sought universal em-
pire, and uniformity of belief, and an equal division of
property, and an absolute equality. Defeated as a race in
raising a tower that should reach to heaven, individuals
still make the attempt. With the original builders they
say, " Let us make us a name." Let those do it who can.
Effort that is not folly I would not discourage. Let zeal
touch the limit of the possible, but let it be so enlightened
as to waste no energy on what lies beyond.

Fourthly, Zeal must be enlightened, that it may not be
sectarian or narrow.

Sectarianism is blind to good except under its own
forms. When Eldad and Medad prophesied in the camp,
Joshua said, " My lord Moses, forbid them." But Moses
said, " Enviest thou for my sake ? W^ould God that all
the Lord's people were prophets." Here, in the man who
stood nearest to the founder of the Old dispensation, we
have the spirit of sectarianism in all its elements, and the
rebuke of it by that founder shows that it did not belong
to the system. So too was it, and it is worthy of notice
that it was so in each dispensation, with the man who
stood nearest to Christ. " Master," said the beloved
disciple, " we saw one casting out devils in thy name, and
he foUoweth not us ; and we forbade him because he
followeth not us." This man, whoever he was, cast out
devils j he did it in the name of Christ, but he did not
"follow us." But Jesus said, "Forbid him not." "He
that is not against us is on our part." That God's people
should be prophets, and that devils should be cast out,
were the things to be desired. It was for these that
Joshua and John should have been zealous for their own
sake and as good in themselves, whereas they were zeal-

ZEAL. 287

ous for them only under a narrow aspect, and as related
directly or indirectly to themselves, and under all other
aspects they were opposed to them. That this spirit does
not belong to the New dispensation, this rebuke of our
Saviour will forever testify. Utterly alien is it from the
whole spirit of its Founder and of the dispensation itself.
And yet this it is that has so rent the seamless garment of
Christ, and so rends it now. In the time of the Apostles
even, so prevalent was this spirit that Paul asked, " Is
Christ divided ? " And from that time till this, the question
has been pertinent. There has been, and is now, zeal
for Christ, but for Christ divided ; for Christ, but only as
he is related to the man through his own church. Men
will be zealous in promoting the cause of Christ if they
can do it under their own form ; but form and substance
they cannot separate, and under any other form they have
for it no eye and no heart.

For the removal and prevention of this great evil,
greater than any other in the church, we need to substi-
tute an enlightened for a sectarian zeal.

But again, Zeal needs to be enlightened that it be not
partial, taking up some one object to the neglect of all
others.

Would you then, you ask, disparage men of one idea.?
Yes, if they really have but one idea. Just so far as they
fail of comprehending the true relation of the different
branches of reform, I would disparage them. Intelligent
concentration I would not disparage. That is a condition
of efficiency ; it is wisdom. The want of it is the great
want. Let a man say, if he will. This is my field ; here I
will concentrate my efforts ; for this object I will labor ;
but I will hold it in its true place. I will labor for it as a
part of the great work to be done, central or incidental.

288 ZEAL.

If central, I will labor for it as central ; if incidental, as
incidental; but I will not so estimate it as to be thrown
from my just bearings as an intelligent Christian man
toward any other part of the work. Let a man say this,
and do this, and the more zealous he may be in any one
branch of reform the better.

Once more, Zeal must be enlightened that it be not
frivolous.

" Ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin." The
Scribes and Pharisees held to the " washing of cups and
pots and brazen vessels and tables." To eat with un-
washed hands defiled them. To heal the sick on the Sab-
bath they esteemed a crime. In things external, ceremo-
nial, unessential as not involving the state of the heart,
they were precise and exacting. Want of conformity in
these they visited with exclusion and persecution. They
strained at a gnat, but passed over judgment and the love
of God.

Marvellous it is how this folly and sin has repeated
itself, and does still. The Apostles were men of large
views working for spiritual ends. The New Testament,
more than any other book, insists upon principles and
ends, regardless of accessories and details. It is impos-
sible that these latter should be less regarded, and be
regarded at all. "What then.?" said Paul, "notwith-
standing, every way, whether in pretence or in truth, Christ
is preached, and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will
rejoice." And that was the spirit of all the Apostles.
But passing from the New Testament to church history,
we find ourselves in another atmosphere. We find men
so contending and dividing on points incidental and
trivial, that the " Big-endians " and " Little-endians " of
Swift, whose controversy was at which end the eggs eaten

ZEAL. 289

at Easter should be broken, were hardly a caricature.
And so, in large measure, it is still. Now, the zeal is for
some shibboleth of doctrine ; now, for some form of
church-government ; now, for the mode of an ordinance :
now, for vestments and the shape of a garment ; now, for
church-architecture and altar forms ; now for the parapher-
nalia and artistic arrangement of a liturgical service ; and
now, for the sacredness of consecrated grounds and parish
limits. Sometimes this zeal manifests itself in the earnest-
ness of a genuine superstition, impetuous and uncompro-
mising in proportion to its narrowness ; and sometimes it
is modified by a predominating sentimentalism and dilet-
tanteism and foppery.

These things may be thought trifles, and in themselves
they are. " An idol," as the Apostle says, " is nothing in
the world." It is nothing till it becomes an idol. And
these things are nothing, unless, as they always have done
and will do, they obscure the truth, and lead men to "omit
the weightier matters of the law : judgment, mercy, and
faith."

We have now considered Zeal as related to the Intel-
lect. We proceed to consider it as related to the Heart.

As related to the Heart, the great characteristic of
legitimate zeal is, that // must spring from love.

Love is the actuating principle in the divine mind.
" God is love." Love moved him to create the world ; a
greater love moved him to redeem it. The whole mission,
and work, and sufferings of Christ, were from love ; the
zeal that consumed him was from that, and from that the
zeal of his followers ought to be. It is only a zeal spring-
ing from love, and manifesting itself in self-sacrifice, that
can make the professed followers of Christ really like him.
Such a zeal — zeal from love — would be in opposition.

290 ZEAL.

First, To an interested zeal.

" Ye seek me," said our Saviour, " not because ye saw
the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves and were
filled." They sought him ; they had taken shipping and
crossed the lake to find him ; they had zeal, but it was ^
inspired by the loaves and fishes. "Ye know," said
Demetrius to the silversmiths of Ephesus, and to the work-
men of like occupation, " that by this craft we have our
wealth," This was the undertow that bore the mob of
Ephesus on to that pitch of zeal which led them to cry out
with one voice about the space of two hours, " Great is
Diana of the Ephesians." How far this subtle element
has mingled, and does now, with zeal apparently religious,
man cannot know. In primitive times, when the con-
fessing of Christ involved the loss of all things, it could
hardly come in ; but let any system be once established
and the pecuniary interests of large numbers will become
involved in it, and will be affected by its prosperity or
decline. From that moment there comes in a conservative
element — mainly conservative, but sometimes aggressive
and destructive — that is aside from the interests of truth
and righteousness, and may usurp their place. From that
moment it becomes possible that everything connected
with religion should be conducted on mercenary princi-
ples, until the very temple of God shall pass into the
hands of the money-changers, and it shall be supposed
*' that the gift of God can be purchased with money." Is
there an established church ? Men are trained for its min-
istry with reference to its emoluments as they would be
for the law. Is the system voluntary ? The zeal of rival
churches and the eagerness to secure converts to them-
selves, is often not without reference, conscious or uncon-
scious, and sometimes painfully evident, to pecuniary inter-
ests. Religion is not discarded. It is professed. Every-

ZEAL. 291

thing is done in its name. There is zeal for it, more or
less, but individual men and whole churches fall into the
equivocal state of some of old, of whom it is said, " So
these nations feared the Lord, and served their graven
images, both their children and their children's children ;
as did their fathers so do they unto this day." It is a
state of things that perpetuates itself, only with a tendency
downward. To overcome this tendency, to resist wholly
this pervasive influence, requires a singleness of purpose
and strength of zeal that can spring only from a deep
love.

Secondly. Zeal from love will be in opposition to an
ambitious zeal.

" They desire," says Paul, " to have you circumcised,
that they may glory in your flesh." " Diotrephes, who
loveth to have the preeminence," will be zealous for
everything that will give him that. This is less general
than an interested zeal, but often more intense. It be-
longs to heads of sects, or those who aspire to be, and
to leaders, and men in place. It originates sects and
divisions, and perpetuates them. Instead of giving due
honor to that only name by which we can be saved, it per-
petuates those distinctive names by which men so early
began to call themselves, saying, " I am of Paul, and I of
Apollos, and I of Cephas." Occasion for this is found in
connection with all organization, but the more extensive
and permanent the organization, and the greater the power
to be gained under it, the stronger will be the temptation
to this kind of zeal. Especially will this be the case if tem-
poral be conjoined with spiritual power, thus adding to the
fascinations of that, those of wealth and pomp. In this
way the most tempting prizes of earthly ambition have
been offered in the name of the Him who was meek and

292 ZEAL.

lowly in heart and had not where to lay his head. But
with or without the temporal power, it is possible for an
ambitious zeal to hold the same place in the leading
minds of the church that an interested zeal may in the
minds of the many, and for the church thus to become
the arena to which shall be transferred, under another
name, the passions, and factions, and compromises, and
management of politics.

In opposition to this, how beautiful is the spirit of
Christian preeminence as presented in the Bible ! "Tak-
ing the oversight, not for filthy lucre, neither as being
lords over God's heritage, but as ensamples to the fiock."
" And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in
the midst of them."

Thirdly. Zeal from love will be in opposition to an
ostentatious zeal.

"Come," said Jehu, " and see my zeal for the Lord."
Ostentatious, is to ambitious zeal, what vanity is to ambi-
tion. Vanity is the more common, but to gratify it by mani-
festing religious zeal, requires that we should meet with
some Jehonadab, as Jehu did, or be surrounded by those
who approve such zeal. This may seldom happen. Hence,
though vanity be more frequent, zeal from it is less so.
Being also a weakness as well as a sin, it tends less to
mischief, and may pass without further notice.

Fourthly. Zeal from love will be in opposition to that
from envy and personal ill-will.

" Some, indeed," says Paul, " preach Christ even of
envy and strife ; supposing to add affliction to my bonds."
That zeal is often heightened and embittered by personal
feeling is well understood. But what an exhibition of our
nature is this ! Truth is impersonal and immutable, the

ZEAL. 293

capacity of knowing it is for the sake of goodness, and yet
a rational being professedly pursuing both truth and good-
ness will sacrifice both from personal feeling. Controver-
sialists turn from argument to vituperation. Luther and
Henry the Eighth call each other hard names. The ques-
tion between the champions of rival doctrines and sects,
and between the sects themselves, comes to be, not, What
is truth ? and What does goodness require ? but, Which
party shall triumph ? This is not peculiar to the church,
but is there more intense and unseemly — more intense,
because religion is deeper and more central in man than
anything else ; and more unseemly, because it is so utterly
opposed to the whole spirit and end of the religion of
Christ. So early and intensely did this form of zeal mani-
fest itself in the church in the controversy about circumci-
sion, that the Apostle Paul was constrained to say, " But if
ye ln'fe " — yes, dife — as if they had laid aside their rational
nature and become dogs — "if ye bite and devour one
another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another."
This is a point that needs to be specially guarded.

Fifthly. Zeal from love is in opposition to a malignant
and persecuting zeal.

" Ye know not,^' said our Saviour, when the disciples
would call down fire from heaven, " what manner of spirit
ye are of." Of this zeal Paul, before his conversion, was
a conspicuous example. He was in earnest ; so much so,
that he was exceedingly mad against the disciples, and
when they were put to death gave his voice against them.
He was as sincere as a man can be who has the means
of knowledge and yet is in the wrong. He verily " thought
that he ought to do many things contrary to the name of
Jesus of Nazareth." He was an example of what our
Saviour had said, " He that killeth you will think that he

294 ZEAL.

doeth God service." Here we have religious persecution.
What a phenomenon ! A man arrogating the right to
come between other men and their God — the right to pun-
ish them for their offences, not against themselves or
against society, but against Him. A man who would jDro-
duce conviction by stripes, and love by torture, A man
who thinks he is doing God service when he is putting his
servants to death. A civilized, educated, professedly reli-
gious man and religious teacher doing this. And in this
Paul was a representative man — representative of the
most envenomed and unrelenting class of persecutors from
that time onward — representative especially of priestly
persecutors clothed with civil authority. Strange that
frhere should be such a phenomenon — and yet not strange.
Strange, when we look at man as the child of God directly
responsible to him, and see that every man must stand or
fall to his own master. Strange, when we look at the
meekness and gentleness of Christ, and know that his reli-
gion— that all true religion is love. But not strange when
we see what power the heart, and custom, and a glozing of
fair names have to suborn and subsidize the conscience,
making it call evil good and good evil. Not strange, when
we see how intense and unscrupulous, and even self-com-
placent, selfishness and malignity may become when they
can thus seem to carry the conscience with them. And
when, in addition, we see how other forms of perverted
zeal, an ignorant, a sectarian, an interested, an ambitious
zeal may become tributary to this, swelling its rushing
tide, we no longer wonder that the most awful scenes this
earth has witnessed, the tortures of the Inquisition, the
massacre of St. Bartholomew's day, have been perpetrated
in the name of religion. Nor is it strange, while ecclesias-
tics, as Luther, have often been the first to catch the light,
that they, and especially those claiming to be priests,
8

ZEAL. 295

together with all whose living may depend on their minis-
trations, should cling the most strongly to that which is
established, and, if not thoroughly Christian, should be the
most ready to persecute those who refuse conformity, or
would make innovations. So has it always been ; so is it
now. Do our missionaries meet with opposition, or their
converts with persecution, whether in heathen or nomi-
nally Christian lands ? it is from the priests. Are sects
and divisions perpetuated in Protestant Christendom ?
Who does it ? Certainly the ministers of religion, of all
men, have need to pray to be delivered from a selfish and
persecuting zeal.

Sixthly. I will only add, that zeal from love will be
opposed to a temporary and periodical zeal.

" It is good," says the Apostle, " to be zealously
affected always in a good thing, and not only when I am
present with you." So early did this unsteady and falter-
ing zeal show itself. And there has been no lack of it
since. It is now one of the standing reproaches of Chris-
tendom. Its causes are many. It is, perhaps, better
than no zeal at all, but love is a principle, and as that
gains ascendency, zeal becomes pure and burns with a
steady flame. This is the perfection of Christian life — an
intelligent, affectionate, constant zeal for the glory of God,
and the good of men.

This, my friends, is the zeal and the life that I com-
mend to you. Your value to the world will be from the
changes that you work in it — changes in the world of matter
around you, in yourselves, and in your fellow-men. You
are born into a state of perpetual and uniform on-going.
Nothing is still. The very stability of the earth, all stabil-
ity but that of God, is from movement. Into this state we

296 ZEAL.

are born, not simply to be borne alone with it, but as
agents, voluntarily and intentionally to produce changes
that but for us would not have been. This we can do.
We can make two spears of grass grow where, but for us,
there would have been but one. We can turn our own
thoughts, which otherwise would have wandered with the
fools eyes to the ends of the earth, to the comprehension
of the works of God and of his attributes and character;
and our deepest love, which tends so strongly to earth, we
can fix upon God. We can feed the hungry, and clothe
the naked, and instruct the ignorant, and lead lost men to
Christ. The changes we can work are wide enough and
far-reaching enough to awaken our highest zeal.

But zeal distinctively, and that here contemplated, has
relation to the changes to be wrought in our fellow-men.
To work these rightly is the highest test of human power.
Not the direct control of will, which men so much seek,
but the transformation and moulding of character is the
highest test of human power. And now, that you may do
this as you should, having pointed out the lines of possible
misdirection, I call your attention to a great principle laid
down by our Saviour, which will guard your from them all,
and secure to you the condition of successful work accord-
ing to your power. That principle is, that if you would
hope to reform others^ you must begin with yourselves.
^'' First cast out the beam out of thine own eye^ Failure in
this has been the great failure hitherto. Till this is
adopted, there must be failure ; and for two reasons.

The first of these reasons is that he who would reform
others and does not begin with himself is a hypocrite.
*' Thou hypocrite," says our Saviour. The reason is, that
a genuine opposition to evil must strike at it wherever it
finds it, and there most directly and vigorously where it
can be most readily and effectually reached. But this is

ZEAT,. 297

by every man within himself. For this every man is
especially intrusted to himself. His business is to keep
his own vineyard first. For the detection of evil within
himself, nothing is needed but a thorough honesty ; and
to its removal the only obstacle is in the will. Just so
far, therefore, as a man really hates evil, he will begin the
attack upon it within himself, and will carry it on as vig-
orously there as elsewhere. Not doing this, he is a hypo-
crite, and from hypocrisy no reformation of others can
come. How can it ? " Who can bring a clean thing out
of an unclean ? Not one." Reformation is not the thing
intended, and like produces like. There may be zeal,
persistent and self-denying. Proselytes may be made ;
but water does not rise higher than its source. They will
be proselytes to the principles and tempers of those who
make them ; only, with that vivacity of a new-born zeal
which belongs to all proselytes, they will be more active
and worse than they. " And when he is made, ye make
him two-fold more the child of hell than yourselves."

Do you say that this application of the principle will
extend fearfully the domain of hypocrisy? So be it. The
principle must be so applied. Truth requires it. If it be
not, reform has no starting point, and the condition of this
world is hopeless. Let me say then unequivocally, that
just so far as you shall profess a zeal to reform others
beyond the point at which you are honestly laboring to
reform yourselves, you will be hypocrites. Let me say
also that there must be a weak point in all attempts
at reform, and in all organizations for that end, where
the principle of reform is not, as in the church of God,
universal.

The second reason why you must begin with yourselves
if you would reform others is, that clearness of moral
vision can be attained in no other way. " First cast out

298 ZEAL.

the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see
clearly. ''' This involves the great principle that clearness
of moral perception depends, not so much upon power of
intellect, as upon the state of the heart. This is a great
principle, and I ask your recognition of it in all your
attempts to reform yourselves or others. I ask your aid
in correcting the prevailing undue estimate of intellect
alone. From that is knowledge only. From that, in a
right combination with the heart, is wisdom. This it is,
this only, that lifts us into the region of clear vision. Not
from imbecility of intellect is the Babel of opinions on
moral subjects. The power and the laws of intellect were
not different on different sides of Mason and Dixon's line
in the days of slavery. It is not from lack of intellect
that the rumseller pleads for his nefarious traffic as right
An intellect with a bias in it is an eye with a beam in it
and however strong, cannot be trusted. First then purge
your own vision, and then you shall see clearly how to
remove even motes from the eyes of others. Your vision
being clear, comprehensively so, your method will be right.
Instead of a biassed intellect, applied to remove what
intellect did not cause, the blind leading the blind, there
will be " the meekness of wisdom." Instead of the weap-
ons of controversy, there will be the pleadings of love
instead of saying of your brother that you have gained him
to your party or sect, you shall say of him, " Behold, he
prayeth." Instead of the low and solitary joy of a selfish
success, you shall have a pure joy, shared by angels, over
sinners that repent.

Beginning thus with yourselves, being always as severe
toward yourselves as toward others, permitting no severity
to become harshness, but cultivating " the meekness of wis-
dom," your zeal for the reformation of others cannot be too
great. Let such a zeal be fostered. Make your lives more

ZEAL. -99

and more fountains of good influences. As I have said,
your value to the world will depend on the nature and extent
of the changes you will work, and that, but for you, would
not have been. But of all changes those wrought in char-
acter are highest in their nature, widest in their influence,
and most enduring. Change matter if you will ; chisel the
marble into a statue ; build palaces and pyramids. You
do but change the relative position of particles and masses,
and the moment the product is completed it is touched by
the finger of decay. Not solidity, or that intrusted to it,
is most enduring ; but the reverse. The blind old poet
of Scio utters his words. The thin air receives them.
Brass and marble have perished, but they live. It was
mind changing mind in the realm of thought. Change
mind there. You may and must ; but go deeper ; aim
higher ; seek to change character. See all faults. Yes,
see motes. See them, but not in a spirit of pride, or
satire, or censoriousness. In these may be ability, but
they do no good. See sins and faults and follies only in
a spirit of love and helpfulness, desiring to remove them.
So shall you enter the moral domain, and work changes
there. And changes there shall not only be permanent
but progressive, passing on farther, and spreading wider
forever.

In this moral domain it is, that we find the stress and
pressure of the battle that is being waged in this world.
This is central. Of the seeming conflicts of matter this
is the origin. They are but the reflection of this, and in
it find their significance. Without this no waves of ocean
would be proud, no tempest would wail, no thunder mut-
ter wrath. Of this battle the forces are organized, and
the Leader is in the field. On his hands, and his feet, and
in his side, are the scars of that great conflict, in which
by dying he conquered death, and " is now alive forever-

300 ZEAL.

more." His voice it is that calls you, saying, " Follow me."
Follow Him. Add, if you may, your names to the list of
those who have gone to bear salvation to heathen shores.
But if that may not be, wherever you are, and in whatever
you engage, follow Him ; He is the hope of the race.
Finding first for yourselves the light and strength that
come from Him, lead to the same source of light and
strength every ignorant, tempted, struggling brother.
Keeping near to Him, you need not fear to be in the
thickest of the battle, for above its tumult you shall hear
a voice saying, " Lo, I am with you." How long this
battle is to rage we know not, but He knows, and victory
is sure. When that shall come, this earth and these
heavens shall be reorganized in sympathy with moral
order. In their order and beauty they shall correspond
with the higher moral order and beauty of those who
shall dwell in them, and that order and beauty shall be
perfect.

But what place will there then be for your zeal .-'
Must it not fail with prophecies, and cease with tongues,
and with knowledge vanish away? In its present form
there will be no place for it. Beholding the countless
throng that shall walk in the smile of God, each perfect
in beauty, with no mote even in any eye, " without spot,
or wrinkle, or any such thing," zeal shall expire. Bu,^
expiring thus, it shall not perish. It shall be only to
revive and live again forever, transfigured, glorified, to be
known no more as zeal, but as the joy of a perfect com-
placency.

XVII.

SPIRIT, SOUL, AND BODY.

And I pray God your whole spirit, and soul, and body, be preserved blameless,
UQto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.— i Thessalonians, v. 23.

IF man would know what he may hope, or attempt,
under God's natural government, he must know what
he is in his nature, and in the powers which God has given
him. If, again, he would know what he may hope for
under God's moral government, he must know what his
character is. He must know his tendencies, and the
direction of his voluntary activity.

Hence self-knowledge is in two directions. The ques-
tion may be, What am I ? What nature have I ? What
powers ? Am I in the image of God as created by Him ?
Am I in the image of the brute as developed from him ;
or rather from that ? Have these powers immortality as
separate and conscious ? Or are they mere upheavals of
an infinite, underlying, unconscious force into which they
will again 'sink, and all separate consciousness be lost?
Or again, the question may be, What is my real charac-
ter ? Disguises aside, and the glozings of self-love, What
are my deepest tendencies ? What is that supreme end to
which all else is subordinated ?

If a man would know himself fully, both these ques-
tions must be fully answered. He must know his powers,
and he must know the direction of their activity.

To which of these forms of knowledge the injunction

*+* June 20, 1869.

302 SPIRIT, SOUL, AND BODY.

of the ancient oracle, " Know thyself," referred, or whe-
ther to both, it may be difficult to say. Probably to the
fiist chiefly, because a knowledge of character could have
no such place or importance under any heathen system
as under Christianity. Such knowledge would not have
been philosophy, and could have gratified no pride ; it
would not have been religion, and could have secured
no reward. There was among the heathen generally no
such knowledge of sin as to reveal to them either the
importance or the difficulty of this kind of knowledge.
Accordingly the current of speculation, so far as it had
man for its object, was in the direction of the powers.
So was it with Plato, and so has it been with the philoso-
phers since. They have sought, and are still seeking, to
give us the constituents, and to unfold the nature of man.
Here, as in other sciences, the obstacle is chiefly igno-
rance, or a limitation of our powers.

With Christianity, however, this is reversed. That
assumed that man is in the image of God, and is to live
hereafter. Arid then, assuming also sin, and making des-
tiny turn upon character, it gives to the knowledge of
that an importance impossible under any other system.
Hence the apostolic precept, " Examine yourselves," and
the great standing duty of self-examination inculcated by
the church, refer, not at all to the nature and powers, but
wholly to the character and moral state of the man.
Here, however, the obstacle is not simply ignorance from
limitation of the powers, but from a liability to self-
deception. The most difficult honesty in this world for a
man to practise is to be honest with himself when he has
done wrong, or desires to do so.

From this importance of character, and the difficulty
thus originating, there has arisen a great department of
Christian literature, that of self-examination for religious
8*

SPIRIT, SOUL, AND BODY. 303

ends, to which there is nothing similar in heathen litera-
ture. There is, perhaps, something analogous to it, as the
blindness, and inconsistencies, and folly of vice and of
self-love have been made the objects of analysis and
of satire. Into this region of character, of desire and
passion and purpose, the satirist and the philosopher
look, and, according to their temperament, find food for
self-complacency, or scorn, or misanthropy. Not so the
Saviour. Into this region He looks, and beholding with
an infinite pity its agitations and turbid tossings as of a
troubled sea that cannot rest, he says, "Peace, be still."

But while the Scriptures thus magnify the knowledge
of character, and assume, rather than teach, the truths of
philosophy, they do not, in thus assuming, ignore those
truths. They rather receive them in the most radical
and effectual way, making them pervasive, as the atmo-
sphere, so that while they will never be obtrusive, their
presence will be always felt, and their true nature will be
constantly though incidentally, gleaming out. So it is
with the Apostle Paul. Incidentally, he teaches us the
true theory of our nature. In opposition to the current
philosophy of our day certainty, if not of his, which
teaches that man is composed of soul and body, the Apostle
teaches that he is composed of spirit, and soul, and body.
" And I pray God that your whole spirit, and soul, and
body, be preserved blameless unto the coming of our
Lord Jesus Christ."

Let us then inquire for a little into the grounds of this
distinction — a distinction not new, but generally accepted,
in the primitive church. That we accept it is not neces-
sary to our salvation ; still, if Christianity is to stand in
its full beauty, and reach its full power, its implied and
underlying truths must be rightly held. If they are not,
there will be constant outcroppings of errors and incon-

304 SPIRIT, SOUL, AND BODY.

sistencies on which skeptics and scoffers will take their
stand, and jeer and mock the passing pilgrim.

The difficulties in the way of comprehending those
underlying powers or parts of our nature of which the
Apostle speaks, and which have thrown and still throw
obscurity around them, are found in three words, as they
are applicable to man and related to each other. These
are imity^ complexity^ Tund J)rogressive7iess. Man is a unity ;
he is also complex, and progressive.

First, then, man is a unity. This we know by our con-
sciousness. We affirm it by necessity, and cannot doubt
it. He is a unity, but not a unit. What a unit is, or
rather what is a unit, and whether there be one in this uni-
verse, I know not. A grain of sand is no more a unit
than the universe is. A unit has no parts. A unity is
made up of parts that find their unity in their relation to
each other and to their common end. The eye is a unity.
It is one thing, one eye, but it is made up of six princi-
pal parts, and if any one, or certainly two of these be
removed, it will cease to be an eye. And so man is a unity,
commonly supposed to be constituted of soul and body.
The body is not the man, the soul is not the man, but the
two united.

Such is the unity. But even as thus regarded, what
complexity have we. For first, the body is a unity ; and
in it is a system for digestion, and that is a unity ; and
one for circulation, and that is a unity ; and there are sys-
tems for secretion, and respiration, and locomotion, and
sensation, and thought, and each of these is a unity.
Then also the soul is a unity. But that is made up of intel-
lect, and sensibility, and will ; and each of these is a unity,
while all are to be combined into the higher unity that is
to make the one man.

What now is that one thing which binds together these

SPIRIT, SOUL, AND BODY. 305

several systems and makes them one ? Whatever it be, the
complexity is so great that the mystery of the unity will
not be increased if we make it greater. It is to be said,
too, that beings are higher in the scale in proportion to
their complexity. This is on the principle that that which
is higher becomes so by having all that is below it with
something added. If, therefore, to body and soul we add
spirit, we raise man in dignity, and increase no difficulty
or mystery.

But besides this difficulty in comprehending man from
the complexity of his unity, we find another from his pro-
gressiveness. This requires the unity to be preserved not
only in the midst of complexity, but through such changes
in the mode of life and forms of the being that it is difficult
to recognize its identity. At birth, all the instrumentali-
ties of a former life are dropped. At that point there is
not merely progression, but a new mode of being. There
are objects, and instrumentalities, and forms of being
inconceivable before. And then, from that point, what
progression ! What a change from the infant uttering its
first faint cry, to a Newton trembling with joy as he grasps
the problem of the heavens ! What a change again from
that same infant, still preserving its unity, to the coffined
dust, and to the possibilities for the spirit of the untried
and unending scenes that lie beyond death !

The full problem of man then is, first — first practically,
though not logically — that of his end and of his law as
derived from that. This is the problem of Moral Philoso-
phy, and is for all. It is therefore explicitly revealed.
Here we have the moral law, the great law of love. We
have secondly the problem of what man has been, and is,
and may become, in the unity of a complex and progres-
sive being that has undergone one entire change in the
mode of its life, and is destined either to undergo another.

306 SPIRIT, SOUL, AND BODY.

or to go out in annihilation. This involves the problems
of metaphysical philosophy, around which a sea of contro-
versy has always surged. To be truly man, the being
must retain throughout, the constituents which make him
man. Are these, then, body and soul ? Or are they body,
soul, and spirit? Is there a spirit distinguishable from the
soul, though perhaps not separable from it, as the soul is
distinguishable from the body? When the ruins of the
fall shall be retrieved, and the ravages of a penal death
shall be repaired, is it these three, spirit, soul, and body,
instinct with an immortal vigor, and in a union attempered
to the harmonies of heaven, that shall go to make up the
one redeemed and perfect man ? This is our inquiry, for
so the Apostle seems to say.

First, then, reversing, for convenience, the order of the
text, what is the body ? and what is its relation to the soul ?

The body is commonly supposed to be mere matter.
It is not. It is organized living matter built up by uncon-
scious force, and includes both the matter and the force.
A tree is nothing but body. A tree is not the mere mat-
ter which we see. It is far rather that unseen force that
has worked from the first moment of germination, and de-
posited every particle, and protruded every branch, and
scalloped every leaf, and has made the tree to be a maple-
tree instead of an elm. In every living organism it is this
mimic soul working out the pattern of its home after its
kind, that is the wonder of nature and the ground of our
sympathy with her. This unconscious force it is, with the
organism it thus holds in its grasp and charge, that is the
body. This is the same in us as in the tree, except that in
us it is made movable, and is taken up into relation to a
higher life. In us, indeed, the body is a double set of
organs, one of which builds up and repairs by an involun-
tary force another set for the use of the soul.

SPIRIT, SOUL, AND BODY. 30/

This force then that builds the house I live in, that
digests my food and circulates my blood, and fashions
organs for my use, this house and these organs — are they a
part of myself? For the time being, yes, and so a part of
myself that without them I am not a man. They are not
my personality, but without them that unity which makes
me a man is gone. Except as a part of myself that house
and these organs become a corpse and return to their origi-
nal elements ; and as separated from these the soul passes
we know not where, and exists we know not how.

What the link may be between this life of nutrition
and the higher life of the soul, I know not. Let those
who are troubled by the mystery of a Trinity in unity,
resolve the mystery of a unity of two hundred and four
bones, each separately formed ; and of the muscles, more
numerous still, that cover them ; and of the stomach and
blood-vessels that build them up ; and of the nerves that
run through them ; and of the brain that crowns them ;
and of all these, moved and built up by an unconscious
force with the higher life of the conscious and intelligent
soul, so as to become its servant. That was its purpose.
It was that all these, in their unity, should become the
servant of the soul. So it ought, but the reality and power
of the higher unity is seen in the fact that the soul may,
instead, become the servant of it. It is possible for the
life of the whole man to be centred, and by deliberate
choice, in the nutritive life and the passions that connect
themselves immediately with that. So is it with whole
tribes of savages, I say not nations, for at this point of
elevation the idea of a nation does not dawn. So is it with
gluttons, gourmands, epicures. The stomach is the centre
of life, and the intelligence is used to serve that. The
soul keeps house in its kitchen. This is the point to be
noticed here, that that which gives unity to the whole, and

308 SPIRIT, SOUL, AND BODY.

is truly man, can, and does take up its abode and find its
life in this lower part of our complex being to the neglect
of all that is above, and so becomes "of the earth, earthy."
In the language of Scripture, the man becomes " carnal."

With the intelligence thus employed, the higher aesthe-
tic, and moral, and religious powers can find no proper
objects or scope, and all their manifestations in the direc-
tion of art and of religion will be either fantastic or hide-
ous. Voluntarily placing himself on a level with the brute,
passion will run riot, and through superstitions, and un-
natural cruelties and lusts, the higher powers will avenge
themselves by degrading the man below the brute.

Such is the body, consisting of the power that builds
it, and the structure built. In its present materials and
functions — some of them at least — it cannot be permanent;
but with some material, and with some functions through
which the soul shall be in relation to a material universe
it must be forever a constituent of a complete humanity.

We next inquire respecting the soul. In inquiring
after the body, we simply needed to transfer to man the
nutritive life of plants, adding however the organs built up
by that life for the use of the soul. In inquiring after the
soul, we transfer to him again the sensitive, instinctive,
and directive life of the animal, adding all that is built up
by these and that may be conjoined with them for the use
of the spirit. Animals have instincts, and directive pow-
ers, and natural affections, and something of what Kant
and Coleridge call understanding. They have powers cor-
related to this fixed order of nature by which they provide
for themselves in it, and for the most part secure to them-
selves all the good of which they are capable. This is the
special characteristic of the soul, that under the guidance
of instinct and of intelligence in the form of prudence, it
deals consciously with a fixed order of things — a nature.

SPIRIT, SOUL, AND BODY. 309

In respect to this, the animal and man run into each
other by imperceptible shades. In its lower forms instinct
is perfect. There is a tendency on the one hand, and a
provision on the other, and well-being is secured. But
among the higher animals there is diversity. Different ani-
mals of the same species will pursue different courses under
the same circumstances. They have diversities of feature
and of characteristics. They have some power of general-
ization and of inference. They assume what are called
first truths. If an animal does not state to itself the pro-
position that causation and the laws of nature are uniform,
it yet proceeds upon it. If a bee does not put it into a
geometrical treatise that a straight line is the shortest dis-
tance between two points, it yet takes a bee line when it
has freighted itself with honey, and would go to its home.
Here man has all that the animal has and something more,
though of the same kind. Rooted in the same soil, he is
as the towering tree with its branches and leaves and tas-
selled blossoms tossing and fragrant, beside the lichen hard
by on the rock, or the moss at its root. Through his un-
derstanding, and the instruments with which he is endowed,
especially the hand, man is perfectly fitted to deal intelli-
gently with a fixed order of things, to profit by experience,
and to subdue such an order wholly to himself; and
whatever powers may be necessary to put him into rela-
tion with this order, and to give him dominion over it,
belong to the soul. To this belongs the recognition and
articulate statement of what have been called the first
truths of pure reason, those necessary affirmations, always
the same, which are implied in reasoning, and through
which alone reasoning can fully understand itself. On
these, however, the brutes act as well as ourselves, and they
have been unduly exalted into the highest ground of dif-
ference between man and the brutes. To this belongs the

3IO SPIRIT, SOUL, AND BODY.

reasoning power, and so the power of controlling the
mightiest forces through a knowledge of their laws, and of
combining materials anew at the behest of use and of
beauty. Through this, man can construct machinery, and
use fire, and the metals, and steam, and lightning, and the
printing-press; can act on the distant and the future, and
can rise to the conception of law. Through language,
experience and all knowledge can be diffused and trans-
mitted, so that not only, as with the brutes, the individual
may be improved, but the race may make progress.

Finding his centre and life in the soul and in nature,
man looks no longer downward, but outward. At first he
cowers before the forces of nature and deifies them ; but
at length he comes to know them as uniform and controls
them ; and how far this control may go it is impossible to
say. Through machinery man is already laying off on to
nature his heaviest burdens. Already he spans continents
with the iron track. He makes the bed of the ocean the
track of his thought. He evokes from a drop of water
the power to send that thought with a speed that makes
the swift-rolling earth but a laggard, and confounds our
notions of time. He takes apart the mechanism of
nature, analyzing it into its elements. He traces force
through its subtle transformations. He seizes the light
from the farthest star and wrenches from it the secrets of
its home. He may yet, who knows .'* navigate the air,
and parties be seen careering and bicycling through it.
Through chemistry he may combine the elements into
food without the labor of tilling the soil.

With such a world for his home, and such powers at
his command, civilization will have ample materials and
scope. Now there will be nations, and cities, and wealth,
and art ; now the Parthenon and the Coliseum. Now re-
finement will take the place of barbarism, manners will be

SPIRIT, SOUL, AND BODY. 311

polished, and nothing that can minister to comfort, or
taste, or 1 ixury will be wanting. Now the full capacity
of man for achievement and enjoyment within the limits
of nature will be reached. Here we have the sphere of
what, in the Scriptures, is called " the natural man."

But in all this man can know nothing but this round-
ed, limited, necessitated frame-work of uniformities. Ex-
cept in the mere notion of it, sapless and powerless, he
can know nothing of anything that will put him in relation
with what is above or beyond the horizon of time. What
can such a system know, what can it utter, of anything
beyond itself ? Hence the time has come for the reign of
sense, and of experiment, and of positive science. Now,
what man can see, and touch, he knows, and only that.
What belongs to the on-goings of this visible system is
real to him, and only that. Now art is not fantastic ; it
may reach high perfection : but what of religion ? Reli-
gion ! what need have we of that ? God ! what need of
him ? Have we not force, uniform force, and do not aP
things continue as they were from the beginning of the
creation, if it ever had a beginning? Have we not the
To Pan, the universal All, the soul of the universe work-
ing itself up from unconsciousness through molecules, and
maggots, and mice, and marmots, and monkeys, to its
highest culmination in man ? Certainly no God is needed,
a miracle is impossible, or if possible it cannot be proved
even by the senses, and the idea of a revelation is absurd.
If the religious nature must find some resting-place, let it
make the unconscious universe with its sleeping capabili-
ties its god ; or let it frame to itself the conception of a
god whose work is finished, and who is enjoying himself in
everlasting repose. This is, indeed, just what those who
practically ignore the spirit have always done and are doing
now. Yearning and groping after something higher, yet

312 SPIRIT, SOUL, AND BODY.

recognizing only necessary relations as in mathematics,
and the uniform and unconscious forces of nature, they
transfer what they thus find, and only that, over to the
infinite. Of this the result may reveal itself in different
forms, and under different names. In India it may be
Brahminism or Eudhism. In Germany it may be transcen-
dentalism, or positivism, or pantheism. In this country it
may be an humble imitation and jumble of them all; but
the thing itself and its paralyzing effect on the religious
character will be essentially the same, whether at Benares,
at Berlin, or at Boston.

Such is the soul. Some would make it include only
instinct and sensation. I would make it include the intel-
lect of man, perceptive, and combinative, with those
endowments which fit him to be a denizen of this world,
to serve himself of its substances, and to have dominion
over it by the adjustment of its forces for the accomplish-
ment of his own ends. It knows of nature, and of
science and art within that, but of nothing beyond.

We next turn to the spirit. We here pass into an
entirely different region, and hence infer a difference of
soul and spirit. If there be a distinct function, there must
be a distinct organ ; and certainly sense is not more differ-
ent from intellect than intellect is from the power of spir-
itual apprehension. We here pass entirely away from and
above anything that belongs to the animal, or to which his
acts can have relation, and come to the immediate know-
ledge of moral law, of a personal God, of our filial relation
to him as made in his image, and of our responsibility to
him. We come to all that is involved in prayer, in com-
munion with God, in loving him, and in making him our
portion. We come also to that brotherly kindness of which
the Apostle speaks, and by which we love our fellow-men
as the spiritual children of a common Father. This is the

SPIRIT, SOUL, AND BODY. 313

region of the spirit, and of all this the brute knows aoso-
lutely nothing. He has nothing in common with us in it.
We here reach the region of personalities, and sanctities,
of that which calls for respect, and awe, and veneration,
and worship. Of all this the experience is impossible,
not only to the brutes, but to mere intellect, or to taste
knowing only beauty. The logical faculty with its concepts
and notions cannot compass it. The intuitions of the pure
reason do not give it, for " that which is spiritual is spir-
itually discerned." There is a discernment by the spirit,
not merely of ideas and relations, as by the intellect, but
of qualities as meeting a taste and a want. " O taste and
see that the Lord is good." The brute cannot say that ;
the intellect cannot say it ; nothing can say it but that
which has immediate apprehension in the region of spirit
as sense has in that of matter. Either this is, or there is
for us no personality, no God. It is through sensation,
which is feeling, and perception, which is knowledge, that
we are conversant with matter, and in our knowledge of
the material world these are blended. So they are in the
meaning of the words that express that knowledge. The
word house, includes both a sensation and a perception.
And so it is with the spirit in its knowledge of spiritual
things. There is intuition, apprehension, knowledge, but
so blended with feeling that they become one and receive
a common name. Only thus could we have such words
as obligation, righteousness, adoration, love, that is, rational
love, holiness, and godliness. These imply spirit in im-
mediate communication with spirit, as sense-perception
and words from that, imply intelligence in immediate
communication with matter. And as we have from our
intercourse with matter, sense-perception, including both
feeling and knowledge, so do we have from our intercourse
with spirit, senti-;;z^;//, that is. from its etymology, imme-

314 SPIRIT, SOUL, AND BODY.

diate apprehension of mind or spirit, and including both
intuition and emotion. Tliis is the characteristic of spirit,
that it does not deal with gross matter, touching, tasting,
handling; that it does not analyze, and abstract, and com-
bine, and induce, and deduce logically ; but that it blends
and fuses the intuition of that which is highest, with
emotion ; and so approves, and condemns, and loves, and
rejoices with a "joy unspeakable and full of glory," and
wonders, and adores. So does it become " the rapt seraph
that adores and burns."

This immediate apprehension just spoken of in the
region of the invisible and the spiritual, is said by some to
be by faith, and it is on this that they base their definition
of faith. But since evil as well as good spirits must have
this apprehension, such faith, if it be faith at all, cannot be
that required by the Gospel.

But would not man be a moral being without the know-
ledge of God ? Yes. His moral nature would affirm obli-
gation to choose as between higher and lower ends, but
it would, as I think, be so without light and sanctions,
that its impulses would either simply take their turn with
others, or be wholly disregarded as an impertinence. Such
a nature without God would be an organ and a function
without its proper element and sphere. Man is a spirit in
the image of God. It is as a spirit preeminently that he
is in that image. God is his supreme end and good ; and
if this be not known there may be moral phenomena as
blind gropings, but no working in distinct light, and no
moral law recognized as supreme.

Such is the spirit. It gives us a sphere above that of
nature, in which there is intuition of personality, and of
what pertains to that ; and in which emotion is always
blended with intuition. In it there may be a consciousness
of the immediate presence of God with us. In it we have

SPIRIT, SOUL, AND BODY. 315

a basis for the operation in us of the Holy Spirit in his
quickening and sanctifying and comforting influences ; and
here it is that we find the sphere of those who, in the Scrip-
tures, are called spiritual. And as we have seen it to be
possible for man to concentrate his life in the lower region
of the body, or again within the on-goings and fixed laws
of nature, so also is it possible for him to concentrate his life
in the region of the spirit. He may " live in the spirit, and
walk in the spirit." He may not only look downward, and
outward, but also upward. The failure to do this is the
great failure and apostasy of man.

The view just stated seems implied throughout the
Bible ; and whoever will notice it will find it implied in a
large portion of the evangelical sermons he hears. If we
accept it, besides throwing light on important doctrines
which cannot now be specified, it will give us first, a clear
distinction between man and the brutes. We can then give
the brutes all that is claimed for them, and still not rank
with them. Let them generalize, and contrive, and even
reason if you will, it will yet not be claimed that they
have the capacity of knowing, or loving, or worshipping
God, or of working under moral law. It will not be
claimed that the alternative necessary for moral freedom is
possible for them. This distinction is of special importance
just now. This view will also give us a clear distinction
between nature and the supernatural. Nature is necessi-
tated, spirit is free, and all operation of free spirit within
nature is supernatural. This is the only consistent line
that can be drawn. The operation is supernatural, but
not miraculous. If it be directly by the will of God, and
the course of nature be reversed or suspended by it, it is a
miracle, and, if we admit a personal God, any supposition
that this is impossible is absurd.

To the view now presented objections may be made —

3i6 SPIRIT, SOUL, AND BODY.

some perhaps which would not lie against the common view.
It may be asked whether the spirit can exist separate from
the soul, as the soul from the body. It may be said that
our Saviour spoke of the soul rather than of the spirit,
asking what a man should give in exchange for his soul,
and warning us to fear Him who can destroy both soul and
body in hell. But it is to be said, also, that the words Spirit,
and soul, and their cognates, cannot, for the most part, be
used interchangeably even in English, and that the contrast
between the Greek words signifying these is much stronger,
the word for spirit and its derivatives being generally used
in a higher sense ; and that after the Holy Spirit was given,
the use of the word spirit greatly predominates. It was
his spirit, not his soul, that our Saviour commended into the
hands of God ; and the first Christian martyr said, " Lord
Jesus, receive my spirit." No angel, or devil, is said to
have a soul. They are spirits ; and it is the " spirits of
just men " that are " made perfect."

But whatever may be thought of this division of our na-
ture by the Apostle, and I suspect the Apostle was right, it is
certain that the three spheres of Hfe based on this division
are recognized, not only in the Scriptures, as they are most
fully, but also by mankind generally. These spheres are,
First, The Sensual, having its seat and centre in the body ;
Secondly, The Worldly, in which life is centred within
the compass of nature and of time, and in which, as I sup-
pose, the soul may be greatly cultivated while the spirit is
neglected and dwarfed ; and Thirdly, The Spiritual, in which
man "lives in the spirit, and walks in the spirit." In the
first of these spheres the appetites bear sway ; in the
second, the desires ; in the third, the moral and spiritual
affections. Into these three classes, in Scripture language
the carnal, the natural, and the spiritual, mankind may be
divided. These three spheres of life there are, and what-

SPIRIT, SOUL, AND BODY. 317

ever may be their basis in our complex nature, it is to
these, my beloved friends, that I wish to call your attention
as you are about to enter upon the new and wider respon-
sibilities of life.

But is it possible that any one of you shall go down
and abide on the low plane of animal life, and sink into its
indulgences and the vices that riot there ? I trust it may not
be, and yet it is possible. Strange as it may appear, experi-
ence and observation hardly seem to diminish the number
of travellers in this road to destruction, and many educated
and strong men go in at the gate that stands wide open
at its entrance. Accordingly, we still see gluttons that
come to poverty. We still see those who " tarry long at
the wine," or what they suppose to be wine, and who have
"woe," and "sorrow," and "contentions," and "babbling,"
and "wounds without cause," and "redness of eyes ; " who
say " they have beaten me and I felt it not, when shall I
awake, I will seek it yet again." Yes, and those lips of
the strange woman that of old dropped " as an honey-
comb," and the mouth that was "smoother than oil," are
speaking still ; and the feet that went down to death, and
the steps that took hold on hell are still travelling the same
dreadful way ; and there are victims who " mourn at the
last when their flesh and their body are consumed, and say,
How have we hated instruction, and have not obeyed the
voice of our teachers." But whoever may enter this gate
of sensuality, be not you of the number. Dally not with
the allurements at its entrance. "Avoid it, pass not by it,
turn from it and pass away."

But if I may be hopeful of your escape from low sensual-
ity, what shall I say of worldiness — of that world which the
Scriptures put in opposition to God and to Christ.? " Love
not the world, neither the things that are in the world.
If any man love the world the love of the Father is

3i8 SPIRIT, SOUL, AND BODY.

not in him." What world is this? As an object of
love, it i-s that world of nature and of time of which I
have spoken, seen out of its relation to God, and idolized.
As consisting of persons, it is those who thus idolize this
world of nature and of time, whether speculatively recog-
nizing God or not. They may be formalists, or supersti-
tious, or skeptics, or even atheists, and yet the radical
character be the same. Most men love and idolize the
world in pursuing the ordinary objects of gain and of ambi-
tion, but do not justify it to themselves. This you will be
tempted to do, and this is your great danger. But as edu-
cated, you may be tempted to do it, and to justify it, in the
name, and under the authority of science ; and the temper
of the times requires that you be specially guarded against
this.

You live in a day when science is making great progress,
and you are called upon to advance and honor science.
Science is simply a knowledge of the works of God as they
are revealed under uniform laws of succession and con-
struction. This knowledge the Bible favors. It tells us
that " the works of God are great, sought out of all them
that have pleasure therein." Let them be thus sought
out. They ought to be. But when men suppose that sci-
ence is all ; when they begin to talk about the majesty of
impersonal law in the place of a personal God ; when, in-
stead of making this magnificent and amazing scene of
uniformities but the outer court of God's temple, they
make it a finality, cutting it off from the sanctities of reli-
gion and the higher glories of the upper temple ; they
dwarf both it and themselves, and not only make that which
is so beautiful in its place to be an insolvable enigma, but,
as offering itself to meet the highest human wants, they
make it to be a failure and a deformity. Science is good,
but with no revealed system to meet the higher wants of

SPIRIT, SOUL, AND BODY. 319

man, it is a pillar crowned by no capital, an avenue termi-
nated by no mansion ; and ignoring that which is highest,
it falls back into rejections and pettinesses. There is no
narrower man, often none more bigoted, than he who
thinks that science is all. With his spiritual faculties
undeveloped, self-complacent from defect, plodding and
sneering in his little round of uniformities, he is but half
a man. You may see him where scientific conventions
gather, with his plant-box across his shoulder and his
geologic hammer in his hand, on his way to spend God's
day as a naturalist, instead of honoring him by spiritual
worship with his people ; and as he goes he shall meet a
woman aged and blind, who can see no plants, who cannot
see even him, but whose lips move in prayer ; and he
shall think of her only as a poor specimen of Natural
History ; and he may be the greatest among naturalists,
and she may be the least in the kingdom of heaven ; bi*t
she is greater than he. She is greater because she
belongs, and he does not, to a kingdom of purity and joy
and free service, having God for its light and centre, and
love for its gravitating force, and in which science but fur-
nishes the ground under their feet from which its subjects
may rise into their true life. Science is good. It gives
control over nature. It is the basis of art. It ministers
to comfort and to taste. But it eradicates no evil passion.
It does not reach the deep springs of human action, so as
to control character; and hence it cannot renovate soci-
ety. It can assuage no grief It stands at the door of
the tomb and is dumb. It knows nothing of sin, or of
redemption, or of prayer and communion with God, or of
a judgment day. It has not one property of a corner-stone
on which you can build for eternity. Give science then
its place and full scope. Study the works of God j but

320 SPIRIT, SOUL, AND BODY.

Study them as his works, and so as to bring you nearer to
Him.

Nearer to God — that is what we need. God is a spirit.
We are in his image. A spiritual life pervaded by the
worship of Him in spirit and in truth is therefore our true
life. Away from the life of the flesh, and the love of the
world, I now call you to this. I call you to walk, like one
of old, with God. Failing of this you will fail of that
which is highest, and, severed from the source of life, your
failure will be final and utter. " To be carnally minded is
death ; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace." If
the race could but be lifted up to this, the great adjust-
ments needed would take place of themselves. Knowing
himself, and knowing the Bible as God's provision for his
spiritual life as nature is for his animal life, the higher
and lower natures of man, man and nature, and nature
and the Bible would come into accord. Knowledge,
and the inventions and power rhat come through that,
would be greatly increased. Soliciting her by the hand
of a more skilful and loving science, man would be
nourished at the breasts of a nature more plastic and
richer than now. No longer infidel, like the Hebrew
mother of old, nature would take man as at once her own
and her foster child, and bring him up for God. The
region of spiritual life would no longer be, or seem to any,
one of mysticism, or uncertainty, or gloom. So it was
not to the Apostle. So it will not be to you, my friends,
if, holding body and soul, nature and science in their own
place, you shall centre your life in the spirit, and seek in
yourselves and in others the welfare of that. So doing,
all other ends must fall into subordination to moral and
spiritual ends, and your first and most urgent need will be
seen to be, not wealth or honor ; not even what you shall
eat, or what you shall drink, or wherewithal you shall be

SPIRIT, SOUL, AND BODY. 32 1

clothed ; but that blamelessness of the " whole spirit and
soul and body " for which the Apostle prays. Guilt,
guilt, and not ignorance or poverty, you will see to be the
great obstacle to be taken out of the way.

And as moral and spiritual ends will subordinate all
things to themselves in your own life, so will they, as they
shape the future revealed in the Bible, shape all your
expectations of the future. You will not look forward, as
many do, to the continuance forever of a nature, embosom-
ing physical science indeed, and beautiful in many of its
aspects, but yet evidently out of harmony with man and sym-
pathizing with his unrest. You will heed the prophecies in
nature herself from former upheavals and overturnings, of
another yet to come ; and you will look for this, not from
any upward movement of blind forces, but from the com-
ing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will raise the dead, and
judge the world, and bring in everlasting righteousness.

NOTE.

The doctrine of the foregoing discourse is not newly adopted by
me. On the 158th page of my Lectures on Moral Science it is
said : — '* Here it is that we find the ground and necessity of a three-
fold division of man into body, soul, and spirit, which the Scriptures
seem to recognize, and which philosophy will be compelled to adopt."
The doctrine is now awakening increased interest, and I desire to
call attention to an able English work upon it which I have recently
seen— The " Tripartite Nature of Man," by the Rvv. J. B. Heard.

XVIII.

LIFE.

For whosoever will save his life, shall lose it ; and whosoever will lose his life
for my sake shall find it.— Matthew, xvi. 25.

NO less than six times is this passage, or its equiv-
alent, given us by the Evangelists : " For whosoever
will save his life, shall lose it : and whosoever will lose his
life for my sake, shall find it." This indicates its deep
significance and central position in the Christian system.
This significance and position it has, whether we consider
the subject spoken of, or the principle involved. The
subject spoken of is Life. The principle involved is self-
renunciation, even to the loss of life, for Christ's sake, and
the gain through that of life eternal.

To this subject, and this principle, I now invite your
attention.

And first, of Life. What is that life which we are to
lose that we may gain one that is better ? What is that
better life which we are thus to gain ?

Life ! What is life ? Life is a force. What is force ?
With this, and the idea of it, we are early familiar. The
infant knows it when it first stretches forth its little hand,
or feels the pressure of its mother's arms ; and a large
portion of the experience of subsequent life consists either
in the putting forth of force, or in feeling and observing its
effects. No change that we observe, no movement is pro-
duced without it. At first many things around us, as the

*** June 26, 1870.

LIFE. 323

rock and the earth, seem devoid of force and at rest. But
smite the rock and you will find a force of cohesion that
will prevent its particles from flying asunder ; and as for
the earth, we know that it is rolled on its axis, and whirled
in its orbit, by a force for which we have no measure. In-
vestigating further, we find that without force, matter
has no consistency, and that, in its wider relations, it has
no stability except through uniform motion, produced by
uniform force.

Thus does this familiar acquaintance of our infancy not
only reveal itself where it was least expected, in the inner-
most constitution of matter, but it spreads itself through
immensity, urging the planets on their way, and holding
the stellar heavens in its grasp.

Here we have two things, matter and force, and it will
be seen that force reveals itself only through motion or the
resistance of motion, and equally through each. The mo-
tion, therefore, is not the force. The force is the cause
both of the motion and of the resistance, and till we reach
a power to originate motion we have no original force.
To say, as some do, that motion is force, is to make mo
tion the cause of motion, and any beginning of motion
impossible.

As revealed through motion, force is manifested undei
three aspects — as aimless ; as orderly, but necessitated ;
and as under the guidance of choice and will.

Of force as operating, or seeming to operate aimlessly,
we have examples in chaos, in the winds, and in the ocean
when it tosses and whirls matter, and causes it to heave
and surge without order, and with no apparent reference
to an end. So far as we can see, this might be, and go
on forever. Here we have matter and force simply, and
and all that belongs to them of their own right.

Before these, as thus exhibited, the human mind stands

324

LIFE.

hopelessly. It knows the spectacle as a fact, but can
have no communion with it. There is in it no thought,
and no basis for science.

We also see force necessitated, but acting, by what is
equivalent to an instinct, in subordination to the idea of
order. Order reveals itself in regularity of form, or of move-
ment. Primarily it is regularity of movement. This may
either petrify its material in fixed forms, as in the crystal,
or become established, as in the heavens, and abide from
age to age, a spectacle of force acting permanently in sub-
ordination to the idea of order.

With matter and force thus manifested, the human
mind comes into sympathy. Form and movement now
express ideas, and science becomes possible.

Groping among a shapeless mass, an explorer lights
upon a crystal. It delights the eye by its brilliancy, but
it delights the mind more by the regularity of its form.
At once the man seizes the crystal. It satisfies no animal
want, but he admires it, exhibits it, and lays it up among
his treasures.

Searching now into the manifestation of force as seen
in the crystal, we find a force in different kinds of matter
tending to crystallize it in different forms. These forms
we find to be geometric, as the cube, the rhomboid, the
hexahedron. Toward one of these we find that the car-
bon of the diamond is striving, toward another the quartz
of the rock cyrstal, and toward another the lime of the
calc-spar. Thus do we find through this form of force, not
merely ideas, but ideals^ and we find each kind of matter
striving after its own ideal. That ideal is seldom reached
perfectly, but it is never lost sight of, and it is one of the
delights of science to trace the doublings and disguises
under which it is sought.

But while we thus find in the crystal a basis for science,

TO

LIFE. 325

we also find that which baffles science. Analyze it.
You have the same particles, the same weight, but they
are only the corpse of the crystal. That you have not, and
human power can no more restore it than it can raise a
dead body to life. True, there is a power of reproduc-
tion which may be said to answer to the seed in the
plant. Place these same particles so that they can move
freely among themselves ; plant them, and they will again
assume the same form. There will be a resurrection.
There will be that, and that is all we know about it. No
microscope, no test will enable us to discover any fit-
ness or tendency in the particles to assume this form, or
to detect the force which controls them. We may say, if
we please, that it is 2.property of such matter to combine
thus, but that is only another mode of stating the fact.
We simply know from observation that there is an uncon-
scious, necessitated movement subordinated to the idea of
order. That movement and its result we record, and call
it science.

And this is 7iature and the whole of it. Wherever we
have a force that gives no evidence of self-comprehension,
or of comprehending its end as compared with other ends,
we have nature; and physical science is nothing more
than a record of the movements and results of matter con-
trolled by such a force. With favoring conditions such a
force will go on to its end with a precision that mocks
human skill. Baffle it, and it will go on still, and work out
monstrosities. Such a force is not aimless, but it is un-
swerving. It hears no cry, and recks of no consequences.

Of force acting thus there are as many varieties as there
are forms of matter, perhaps more. Recently some forces
of this kind have been supposed to be correlated; which
means that they are fundamentally one thing manifesting
tself under different forms of motion. It is supposed, and

326 LIFE.

some think proved, that it is the same agent or force that,
as heat, cooks the dinner of the mariner ; and as magnet-
ism, gives direction to the needle of his compass ; and as
electricity, runs of errands miles down under his ship;
and as light, gives him promise of fair weather in the
bow that is set in the sky. This may, or may not be.
For our purpose it matters not, so long as they come
within that unconscious necessitated sphere which we
call nature.

It is among these forces, possibly correlated with them,
that I have long ranked that of life. Thirty years ago I
said in a public discourse that " the principle of life is one
of the great principles of nature," and "when we see it
acting with the same uniformity and at times with the
same apparent blindness as the other powers of nature,
we can neither doubt that it is to be ranked as one of
those powers, nor that is among the greatest and most
striking of them." It is the highest of those powers, and
subordinates all others to itself. It breaks up strong
cohesions ; it picks the lock of chemical affinity ; it mocks
at gravitation as it lifts the top of its pine three hundred
feet into the air. It is an artist, a Prae-Raphaelite. It
gives the shell in the deep sea its voluted form, and its
polish. It snatches colors from the faint light and ingrains
them in lines and patterns of beauty. It scallops the
edge of the leaf and paints the corol of the tulip ; it brings
from the shapeless mass of the egg the bird that is perfect
in beauty ; it builds up the huge form of the elephant, and
chisels the lineaments of him who is made in the image
of God. Still it has all the characteristics of a purely
natural force. If not as wholly blind as the lower forms
of force, it is never more than instinctive, or somnambulic
in its ways, and will work at a wen as readily as at an eye.
Except as we supply it with material it is wholly independ-

LIFE.

327

ent of our will, and builds up and takes down its structurcb
in its own way.

like other natural forces, this of life is manifested
only in connection with a particular kind of matter. This
has always been known, but a sensation has been created
of late, by discovering what kind of matter this is, and
calling it protoplasm. This amounts to just as much as it
does to analyze the matter of a crystal and call it carbo-
nate of lime, and no more. Here, as in the crystal, analy-
sis gives us only the corpse. Of the formative force we
know nothing in either case ; but that it must be different
here is clear from the difference of the result. Before we
had a crystal ; now we have organization. This is a new
thing, embodying the new idea of a whole made up of parts
that are mutually means and ends ; and also of the per-
petuation of the species while the individual perishes.
Here is a radical difference, and the attempt to slur it is
vain. So, also, is there a radical difference between the
two divisions of that force which we call life. Under one,
nutriment is taken directly from inorganic matter, and we
have the vegetable ; under the other, it is taken from food
prepared by vegetables, and we have the animal. In each
of these cases we have not only a new mode of working,
but a new idea and product, and these must be from some-
thing new in the cause. In that cause, whatever it is, is
our life. Working in the blind way of a natural force, it
builds up and takes down our bodies. In connection with
it we come to the knowledge of ourselves. In connection
with it we live this earthly life. It thus becomes our life
— the life of our bodies — and this is the life that we are to
lose, if need be, for Christ's sake.

What, then, we inquire secondly, is that better life for
the sake of which we are to lose the life of the body .?

We here reach the phenomena to which the scalpel, the

328 LIFE.

microscope, and the chemical test have no relation. We
reach the life of self-consciousness, of the personality, of
that in every man which he calls I^ and which is, in truth,
the man himself. Of this life the phenomena are known
immediately, as they are in themselves, and with a certainty
greater than facts of observation. Here we find a unit.
There is no unit in matter. It divides itself endlessly
into molecules and atoms. But we are one. We know
ourselves to be one being. Here, too, we find ^Dcrmar
nence. This we do not find in the matter of the body—
we call it the same, as we do a river, but its particles flow
like those of a river. I hold myself to be the same being
I was thirty-four years ago, when I became president of
this College. If I know anything, I know this. But the
protoplasm is not the same. That has changed many
times. How, then, can the protoplasm of to-day remem-
ber what happened to that of thirty-four years ago? It
would almost seem as if God had anchored this conscious-
ness of permanence in a flowing stream of matter, to show
that it could not be the product of that matter.

In connection with this one, permanent, self-conscious
being, we find thought, feeling, love, hate, will. We find
the idea of God, of eternity, of moral law, of retribution.
We find a power of comprehending ends, of freedom
in choosing between them, and of acting, not blindly,
or instinctively, but with a wisdom and adaptation in
emergencies of which no natural power knows anything.
In connection with this prerogative of freedom, we know
ourselves as having the power of originating motion, of a
true causation, of which we not only see no trace in
nature, but the very conception of which is opposed to the
definition of nature. We are, moreover, able to overlook
and comprehend, as they are related to ourselves, all natu-
ral forces, and to make them our servants.

LIFE.

329

Through these powers it is, and their corresponding
objects, that we find ourselves capable of living a perma-
nent life of thought and of increasing knowledge ; a life
of emotion, as of admiration, wonder, joy ; a life of the
social affections, and of rational love in the appreciation
of all that has value or worthiness, and a life of voluntary
activity in the pursuit of chosen ends. This life, endowed
by the beneficence, and irradiated by the smile of God,
we feel that we are capable of living forever ; and this is
the life for the sake of which we are to lose the life of the
body.

But is not this life the same as that of the body ?
This is held. " The difference," says Mr. Huxley, " be-
tween the powers of the lowest plant or animal and
those of the highest, is one of degree, not of kind." Ex-
cept that plants take their nutriment from inorganic, and
animals from organic matter, he says, " it may be truly
said that the acts of all living things are fundamentally
one." Indeed ! The act of a tree is to grow, of a worm
to crawl, of a man to reason, to love and hate, and sin and
repent ; and so growing, and crawling, and reasoning, and
loving, and hating, and sinning, and repenting, are all fun-
damentally one ! The doctrine is that thought results
from certain combinations of matter as hardness does,
and is its property in those combinations in the same
way. As well might we say that thought is the property
of a telegraphic machine when in motion. Such a ma-
chine, not in motion, is as dead protoplasm. Here is a
dead body. It is protoplasm ; it is organized. As mere
matter, its combinations are the same as in life. But it is
dead. It is a telegraphic machine before the electricity
comes. That is the life of the machine. Let that come —
not a property of the machine, remember — and it will go.
Ah, you say, but is not electricity matter too ? Yes, but

330

LIFE.

to say nothing of the origination of the machinery, you
have no thought yet. It only clicks. At best it is but a
vegetable. To have thought, you as much need an agent
other than electricity, higher and totally different, as you
needed electricity to start the dead machine. If the
clicking were to go on a hundred thousand years it would
not develop itself into thought. The machine would not
come to self-consciousness and stand above itself, and
interpret the product of its own working. No. What we
say is that the moment you have a formative force that
works under the idea of order, you have what mere mat-
ter cannot account for.

We say there is a difference in kind between a crystal
and a vegetable, a vegetable and an animal, an animal and
a man. A vegetable has life, a crystal has not, an animal
has sensation, a vegetable has not, a man has a conscience,
an animal has not. We say that there is a difference in
kind between motion and thought, and that it is not " fun-
damentally one " to demolish the argument of an opponent,
and to knock him down with your fist. We say, not only
that there is a difference in kind between the mineral
and the vegetable, the vegetable and the animal, the
animal and man, but that the mineral, the vegetable, the
animal, and the rational kingdoms are so ordered rela-
tively to each other as to show unity of purpose, super-
intending wisdom, and an origin from an intelligent will.
Admit this, and everything is. accounted for. Deny it, and
nothing is accounted for. You may observe, and record,
and classify, but you account for nothing. And not only
so, but you have the higher from the lower, unity from
multiplicity, life from death, thought from motion, some-
thing from nothing; and you make God impossible.
Whoever says, "no phosphorus, no thought," says there
is no God. God cannot be matter or force and be God

LIFE. 331

He must be a person, rational, free, moral, causative, and
so "the living God, and an everlasting King" — living in
that life of which I have just spoken, and by partaking of
which we are in his image.

Unless then we say that the higher in kind is from the
lower, that is, something from nothing, that thought is
motion, and that matter is God, we must allow that the self-
conscious life is different in kind from that of the body.

But allowing that the self-conscious life is different in
kind from that of the body, we have not yet reached the
full meaning of the word life^ as used by our Saviour, for
this self-conscious life may itself differ in quality. It may
be a curse. It may be death in its highest meaning, for
death is not merely a cessation of existence, but moral
putrefaction and misery. This is the second death, as the
life spoken of by our Saviour is truly life — the life ever-
lasting. That is not merely self-consciousness continued,
but continued in holiness, in happiness from holiness, that
is, in blessedness. It is a life of love, of fulness of joy in
the presence of God, and of participation in those plea-
sures which are at his right hand forevermore.

Having thus seen what life is, we turn to that princi-
ple of self-renunciation by which we are to lose the earth-
ly life, if need be, for Christ's sake, and gain one that is
better. Whatever this principle may be, the text makes it
certain that it is not one which requires the renunciation
by us of our highest good. The self we are to renounce is
the lower self, as the life we are to lose is the lower life.
It is the selfish self. The self we are to deny is the self
that is opposed to God. Our highest good, Christ every-
where calls upon us to labor for, and to secure at all haz-
ards, even of the loss of life itself. We are to " lay up
treasure in heaven," and Christ requires no renunciation
of anything except in relation to that. This is universal

332 LIFE.

with him, and peculiar to him. Does he forewarn his
disciples of persecution for his sake, he tells them their
reward shall be great in heaven. Does he call upon
them to forsake all and follow Him ? He promises mani-
fold more in this Hfe, and in the world to come life ever-
lasting. Are they to seek first the kingdom of God ?
Other things shall be added. Does he command them to
love their enemies, and do good, and lend hoping for
nothing again ? He immediately adds, '• and your reward
shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the High-
est." Even the giving of a cup of cold water for his sake
is not to be without its reward. Everywhere a recogni-
tion of enjoyment and of suffering as depending on con-
duct, is involved in his teaching and gives it weight. The
first verse of his first discourse as recorded by Matthew is
the promise of a reward, even the first word implies it ;
and in the last verse of his last discourse as given by
the same Evangelist, he speaks of everlasting punishment
and of life eternal.

But is this prominence of reward thus held forth as a
motive, compatible with an appeal to that which is no-
blest in man ? Does it not make goodness mercenary ?

This might be if the condition of the reward were other
than it is. The essential good is holy happiness, or hap-
piness from holiness. This can be increased only as the
holiness is increased, and external rewards will be added
in proportion. Christ had no fear of lowering the dignity
of man, or the tone of morals, by a regard to that good
the conception of which so underlies morals that without it
no moral idea can be formed. If there be no sensibility,
no possible enjoyment or suffering, there can be nothing
light or wrong, nothing that ought, or ought not to be done.

It maybe asked again, how this prominence of reward
is compatible with the requirement to do what we do for

LIFE. 333

Christ's sake. If we are to do it for the reward, then not
for Christ's sake; if for Christ's sake, then not for the
reward. Is there not contradiction here ? No, not con-
tradiction, but one of those Christian paradoxes which
abound in the New Testament, by which the many-sided
wisdom of Christ brings our whole complex nature into
harmony ; and by which his teachings are so distinguished
from those of abstractionists and logical system makers.
Two things the Saviour does. He requires disinterested
service, and he promises reward. But if happiness in any
form was to be the reward, it was necessary that we should
be required to seek it disinterestedly, that is, to seek, not
that, but something else. This is a law of our being.
Happiness is the spontaneous product of every faculty
acting directly upon its appropriate object for the sake of
that object. If we are to have happiness from knowledge,
we must seek knowledge and not happiness. This would
be seeking it, not uninterestedly, but disinterestedly, un-
selfishly. So of love, only that love is disinterested in its
own nature. Knowledge may be sought selfishly, but
love, to be love, must be disinterested. It must therefore
produce happiness to ourselves as well as to others. It
will always do this, and is the only thing we can always
do that will. We can always love God and our neighbor.
We can always work, or suffer for Christ's sake. If there-
fore we were to be happy at all through our own activity,
or rewarded for it, the requisition of our Saviour could
not have been otherwise. It is based on the deepest
knowledge of our frame ; and when we know the two facts,
that happiness cannot be had by seeking it directly, and
that love must be disinterested, the paradox is solved.

What has now been said is true of all moral love— of
the love of enemies. But in loving Christ, and so suffer-
ing for his sake, there is something more. In him we

334 LIFE.

find every ground of love, whether from complacency or
personal relalionship. In him all moral excellence is
marvellously combined, and marvellously expressed — all
the more so from that lowliness of form which has dimmed
its radiance in the eyes of men. In loving him, too, we
love a friend who has loved us, a benefactor through suf-
fering unto death — a redeemer, a leader and captain of
our salvation, who is identified with a great cause ; and in
loving him we identify ourselves with that cause, as a
patriot soldier identifies himself with the cause of his
leader. Casting in our lot with him, choosing him, loving
him, we seek the promotion of that blessedness which is
the object of his kingdom. In the prosperity of that
kingdom is the hope of the world. Whatever we do for
that we do for Christ's sake, and the principle of self-re-
nunciation is that we are to renounce and suffer whatever
the prosperity of that kingdom may require us to renounce
and suffer, and nothing else. Here are no negations, or
abstractions, or mere intellections ; no self-sacrifice as
meritorious, or for its own sake, but a universe of living
beings, personal beings, with glorious capacities and un-
speakable interests, and Christ taught no self-renunciation
which should not find its inspiration in the well-being of
such a universe.

But what ! I think I hear you say to me, What ! seek
a higher end by renouncing the lower! Have you not
taught us that the lower is the condition of the higher,
and is best secured through that ? Have you not taught
us that this is the law which gives unity both to nature
and to life ? Yes. But while I have taught you that
there is a natural law of self-denial based on condition,
ing and conditioned forces and faculties, and on the law
of limitation from that, I have also taught you that there

LIFE. 335

is a Christian law of self-denial that may become para-
mount to this. Christianity is a remedy. It deals with
sin, and it is the exceptional and atrocious nature of that
that brings in an exception to the great natural law of har-
mony. If there were no sin there would be no call for the
cutting off of a right hand, and the plucking out of a right
eye ; there could be no persecution for righteousness'
sake, no losing of life for Christ's sake. Sin is the primal
disorder. But for this, reflecting itself in the misadjust-
ment of nature to our physical being, this earthly life,
instead of being maintained by struggle and going down
at length into the darkness of death, would have passed
into the life of heaven as the morning twilight brightens
into day. What may be before you in this life I know
not, but I do know that if you are to gain that better life,
you must, in spirit, renounce this. You may not be per-
secuted for Christ's sake. You may be. In either case,
since the spirit of this world is opposed to that of Christ,
you must, in your inmost souls, renounce this world as a
portion, and not count your life dear if Christ calls for it.
This martyr spirit, ready to reveal itself in little things
as well as in great, as occasion may call for it, up to the
great height of the sacrifice of the earthly life, is what the
world needs in you ; is what you need for your own high-
est good. This spirit is itself that life eternal which all
external splendor waits to crown.

It is because this spirit, so the inspiration of all that
is noble in this life, and of all good hope for the future,
cannot co-exist, logically at least, with materialistic ten-
dencies, that I have desired to draw your attention to
those tendencies as they now exist. In themselves they
are nothing new. More than two thousand years ago
they and their results were as well stated, by a writer of
that day, as they can be now. " For we are born," says

336 LIFE.

he, " at all adventure : and we shall be hereafter as though
we had never beeit: for the breath in our nostrils is as
smoke, and a little spark in the moving of our heart ;
which, being extinguished, our body shall be turned into
ashes, and our spirit shall vanish as the soft air ; and our
life shall pass away as the trace of a cloud, and shall be
dispersed as a mist that is driven away with the beams
of the sun, and overcome with the heat thereof.'* Now
the results : " Come on, therefore, let us enjoy the good
things that are present ; let us fill ourselves with costly
wine and ointment ; let us crown ourselves with rose-buds
before they be withered ; let none of us go without his
part of our voluptuousness." This, that is sensuality, is
the first result. The second is malignity and abuse of
power. *' Let us oppress the poor righteous man, let
us not spare the widow, nor reverence " — why should
they reverence anything ? How can they reverence a
mere piece of dissolving protoplasm ? — " nor reverence
the ancient gray hairs of the aged. Zef our strength be the
law of justice^ for that which is feeble is found to be
nothing worth." This is the inevitable logic and result
of materialism in whatever form. Let the spirit of this
people but become materialistic, and you insure, on a
scale proportioned to the bounties of God, if not a gross,
yet an utter sensuality, and either anarchy or despotism.

In itself, as I have said, this spirit is the same now as
in ancient times. It only differs in using the vocabulary,
and wearing the livery, and claiming the authority of
physical science. It claims, indeed, to be physical science,
but it is not. Force and life, and thought and feeling,
are not matter, and any assertion that they can be the
product or result of mere matter, must be hypothesis, and
not science.

Very different from this philosophy of dust and of death

LIFE. 337

is that which teaches that the beginning was from above, not
from beneath ; that if there be everywhere the reign of law,
there is, also, everywhere the reign of One who has origi-
nated, and who sustains all law, and who reigns by no law
of necessity, but by that moral law which presupposes free-
dom. I trust you are convinced that there is a region of life
and of knowledge above the uniformities of natural science,
a region of self-consciousness, of personality, of freedom,
of holiness, of perfect love, and of the fulness of joy in a
social state unmarred by sin. In such a state the conscious
life may be connected — it will be in the future — not as now
with a body that lives only by dying, but with one that is
unwasting, so as that it can "hunger no more, neither
thirst any more." Such a body may have senses respond-
ing as ours do now, to the more glorious objects around
it, it may be flexible to every touch of the spirit, and may
be endowed with the untiring energy that we see in the
great forces of nature.

It is, my friends, to a life in this region, and thus
endowed, that the Saviour calls you from above ; and that
call finds an echo and enforcement in every work of God
beneath you. I have said to you that the carbon of the
diamond, and the quartz of the rock-crystal, and the lime
of the calc-spar are seeking their ideal. After this too it
is that the oak and the elm are struggling and battling
with the elements. It is the tendency to this in the move-
ments of all things in nature that gives them their beauty,
and they all call to you to come into harmony with them,
and to struggle toward that higher ideal of your higher
nature, which is the glory and crown of these lower works
of God. It is to a life of struggle toward this ideal that
the Saviour calls you, and he calls you to suffering only
as it may be incidental to that. That ideal he himself

33S LIFE.

was, and is. You are to "grow up into him in all things."
Will you do this ? Will you love him, and be like him ?
Will you love his cause, and have his spirit, and devote
your lives, cheerfully, joyfully, to the good of men, and to
the glory of God ?

XIX.

THE BODY THE TEMPLE OF GOD.

What ! know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in
you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own ?— i Corinthians, vi. 19.

THERE are three great ideas, each resting back on
the fact of sin, that have controlled the religious
history of the world. As revealed in the Scriptures each
of these has assumed three forms. It has first been pre-
sented as a type, then in its antitype, and then, in a modi-
fied form, in its consummation and results in Christian life.
These ideas we need to see in their relation to each other,
if we would apprehend fully the place and use which
Christianity assigns to the body.

Of these the first and central idea is that of sacrifice.
An innocent being comes directly to God, and needs no
sacrifice. But a guilty being, not yet given over to de-
spair, naturally asks, ''Wherewith shall I come before
the Lord ? " The practical answer to this question given
by those unenlightened by revelation, is the saddest and
most awful chapter in the history of man. It reveals to
us not only the sacrifice of animals with no conception of
its true relation to the divine government, but also the
sacrifice of human victims in vast numbers, and often the
association of cannibalism with religious rites. It shows
us a ferocious superstition combining itself with sensuality
and a lust for power, with an utter disregard of human
rights, and an utter subjection to it of every natural affec-
tion. It shows us how great the darkness in man may be
when " the light that is in him has become darkness."

340 THE BODY THE TEMPLE OF GOD.

But to the question, "Wherewith shall I come before
the Lord ? " God himself gave an answer under the old
dispensation by appointing a system of bloody sacrifices.
These, it would seem, must have originated with God, for
the thought of pleasing him by taking the life of an inno-
cent being, which life God himself gave, and by destroying
with fire everything left of that being that could be useful
to man, is too alien from reason to have been suggested by
it. As typical and inculcatory, nothing could have been
more admirable than these sacrifices. Nothing could have
so pointed forward to the Antitype.

The Antitype! The Lamb of God! Jesus Christ!
In him we have the idea in its true form, the consumma-
tion and fulfilment of all that was signified by the sacri-
fices of the Old Testament. Whatever significance or effi-
cacy there may have been in the idea of sacrifice, as
expressed in preceding ages, it all centred in the one
"offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." In
him, and him alone, all sacrifices of the old dispensation
find their Antitype.

But while the idea of sacrifice in its high sense, as
making atonement, must be confined to the work of
Christ, yet that work was not for its own sake, but for the
sake of its spiritual results, carried over into Christian life.
And those results are substantially the same to us as they
were to those under the old dispensation. Did they,
under the form of their sacrifices, recognize the holiness
of God, and his perfect requirements, and their own sin-
fulness, and a forfeited life, and the idea of substitution,
and of a perfect consecration ? So do we. Did they, in
the recognition of these ideas, bring to God sacrifices and
offerings which were acceptable to him ? So do we, even
"spiritual sacrifices," the very things which are "accept-
able to God," for their own sake. In these sacrifices

THE BODY THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 341

there is nothing outward, material, visible, but there is
that v/hich has value in itself, and without which no-
thing that is outward, or material, or visible, has any value.
The dispensations of God do not go backwards. To the
rjye of sense they may seem to, as outward forms disap-
pear, but to the eye of reason and of faith, it is the real,
the permanent, the eternal taking the place of the sha-
dowy and the transient.

Thus have we the idea of sacrifice in its three forms —
as typical ; as seen in its antitype ; and as expressed in
spiritual worship and full consecration.

The second great idea which has controlled the history
of the world, is that of 2, priesthood.

This removes man still further from God. At first
men brought their own sacrifices and offerings, as Cain
and Abel, but when a priesthood was established, not
only could they not come directly to God without an
offering, but another, and one specially consecrated, was '-*
required to bring the offering. And so consonant was
this idea, also, with the wants of man as conscious of guilt,
that a priesthood, however originated, became permanent
and universal. Everywhere there was a class of men
who intervened between the people and God, and the
exactions and oppressions from them, to which the people
have submitted, are an indirect testimony to their con-
sciousness of alienation from God, to their felt need of
access to him, and to their sense of unfitness to approach
him directly.

This want God met under the old dispensation by
establishing the Levitical priesthood with its magnifi-
cent vestments and imposing ceremonial. That this was
wholly typical was obvious, because the priests were
obliged " to offer up sacrifices first for their own sins,"

342 THE EODV THE TEMPLE OF GOD.

whereas a real priest must be one who can stand before
God in his own name, and that can offer a sacrifice that
shall avail on the ground of its own merits. Therefore,
magnificent though it was, and appointed of God, and
national, and long continued, it yet availed nothing except
as pointing to an antitype.

And here again this antitype is Jesus Christ. He was
both the sacrifice and the priest. '-'He offered up himself"
He was the priest, he offered the sacrifice. Whatever
difficulty we may have in comprehending the mode of it,
if the sacrifice of Christ did not avail as between God and
us for our salvation, the Old Testament is an absurdity,
and salvation by faith is impossible. Christ was the only
real priest that ever stood on this earth, and without him no
other sacrifices or ministrations could avail anything. " By
one offering he perfected forever them that are sanctified."

But here, again, as in the case of sacrifice, the office of
priest passes over to the people of God in a modified form.
Every Christian is a priest as he is permitted to approach
directly to God with no earthly mediator ; as he is per-
mitted to offer up spiritual sacrifices, even himself, and as
he stands between God and nature, the only intelligent
being on the earth capable of gathering into articulate
utterance the praises that go up to him from his works,
and of offering them as incense to Him. In this high sense
all Christians are priests, all are equally so, and the attempt
to perpetuate a priesthood and a continued sacrifice, in
distinction from a ministry for teaching and for edification,
has not only been a dishonor to the one priesthood and
sacrifice of Christ, but has been among the greatest sources
of disaster and corruption to the church.

We thus have the idea of a priesthood in its three forms.
We have the typical priests, the true Priest, and then
Christ has made his followers "priests unto God."

THE BODY THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 343

The third great idea which has controlled the religious
history of the world, is that of the temple. This removes
man still farther from God. Not only must there now be
a sacrifice and an intervening priest, but the sacrifice must
be made in a consecrated place.

If this idea has been less universal and influential than
the others, it has yet had such an affinity for the human
mind, as to prompt some of the most astonishing labors
that have been performed by man. With the exception of
the pyramids, the grandest, the costliest, and the most
permanent structures built by man, have been temples.
So has it been in India and China, so in Asia Minor and
Egypt, so in Greece and Italy, so in Central and South
America. Nothing that art or labor could do has been
spared in erecting and decorating the temples of the gods.
To them pilgrimages have been made, and they have been
among the wonders of the world.

This idea is also presented by God in the Scriptures
under its three forms. As typical he presents it with pecu-
liar magnificence, even more than that of the priesthood,
thus showing not only his recognition of the idea, but the
importance he attaches to it. There is no scene in history
more striking than that in which God took possession of
the temple built by Solomon. The building was more
magnificent than the world had then seen, perhaps than it
has ever seen. The religious feelings and patriotism of a
nation, whose work it was, were centred in it. It was a
marvel of architectural skill, having been so planned, and
the materials so prepared in the mountains, that " neither
hammer, nor axe, nor any tool of iron was heard in the
house while it was building." When the building that
went up thus quietly and as by magic was completed, the
whole nation was assembled by special proclamation.
Religious services were instituted, innumerable sacrifices

344 THE BODY THE TEMPLE OF GOD.

were offered. The ark of the covenant was brought by
the priests in solemn procession and placed in the temple,
*' in the most holy place, even under the wings of the cheru-
bims." Then King Solomon stood on a brazen scaffold
which he had set in the midst of the court of the temple,
"and kneeled down upon his knees before all the congre-
gation of Israel and spread forth his hands toward heaven"
and prayed. What a scene ! A whole nation assembled,
standing with bowed heads and in solemn silence ! Its
monarch, surrounded by a magnificence such as earth has
not seen, kneeling in prayer ! That prayer we have. It
met the grandeur of the occasion, and closed by calling
upon God to take possession of his house. " Now there-
fore, arise O Lord into thy resting place, thou and the ark
of thy strength." This invocation God heard, for "when
Solomon had made an end of praying," while the hush yet
continued and every mind was expectant, "the fire came
down from heaven and consumed the burnt-offering and
the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the Lord's
house."

But if such was the type, what was the antitype ? Ex-
ternally it was in wonderful contrast. Looking forward a
thousand years we see, standing upon the banks of the
Jordan, surrounded by a rugged nature, a human form, a
man simply clad. He prays, and the heavens are opened,
and the Holy Spirit descends " in a bodily shape like
a dove upon him." He was the Antitype. " In him dwelt
the fulness of the Godhead bodily." In his body God
dwelt, and through that manifested his glory as in no other
way. The glory of the first temple was simply a bright-
ness showing the presence of God ; the glory of the true
temple was such a manifestation of the divine attributes,
especially his moral attributes, as the world had never

THE BODY THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 345

witnessed. It was the " light of the knowledge of the
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

What now is the spiritual idea here to be carried
over into Christian life ? The Scriptures express it thus :
" What ! know ye not that your body is the temple of the
Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God ? "
There is now, there has been since the coming of Christ,
no temple of God on the earth except the body of man.
Christianity had no temple nor anything that resembled
one. Christ stood before the old temple and declared
that not one stone of it should be left upon another. That
was fulfilled, and there was nothing to take its place. For
hundreds of years Christians worshipped in obscure places,
in concealment, in the catacombs, wherever they could
find security.

But was not that a going back of the dispensations ?
So it would almost seem when we look at the vagueness
of nature, and at the difficulty man has in apprehending
a spiritual and an infinite God. It was a great thing for
God to manifest himself visibly and permanently as he did
to the Israelites, and to choose a place where he might be
found ; and it is not, perhaps, surprising that attempts
have been made since, and are still made, to connect with
Christianity temples, and a temple worship ; to establish
sacred places, and to localize the presence of God. This
has been done on the ground, or under the pretence, that
spiritual worship was cold, and that something warmer was
needed. Warmer — yes, in the sense in which the ancient
idolatries were warmer than the worship of a spiritual and
holy God as instituted by him.

But all this proceeded on a misapprehension of the
genius of Christianity and ended in its perversion. As
the types centred in Christ and had their significance in
him, so we are not to go back of him in finding that sig-

346 THE BODY THE TEMPLE OF GOD.

nificance. In him the letter that killeth was dropped, and
all became spiritual. But instead of stopping at the anti-
type and drawing Christianity wholly from Christ, the pomp,
the show, the formality, the outwardness of the type have
been carried over into Christian life, and each of the three
great ideas mentioned has been the basis of a preva-
lent and disastrous superstition. A regard for places and
forms, once legitimate, became, under Christianity, a super-
stition, and through it Christianity lost its spiritual power
and took on the formality of Judaism blended with the
license of paganism. The new wine of a spiritual reli-
gion was spoiled, and always will be, in the old bottles of
places and forms. What we need, and all that we need,
is the realization within us, in its full import, of the great,
the precious, the indispensable doctrine of the indwelling
of the Spirit of God with man.

That this is a doctrine of the Bible, there can be no
doubt. The Apostle Paul is explicit on this point : " Know
ye not," he says, " that ye are the temple of God, and that
the Spirit of God dwelleth in you ? If any man defile the
temple of God him shall God destroy, for the temple of
God is holy, which temple ye are?'' This doctrine is also
directly asserted by our Saviour, and everywhere implied.
" If ye love me, keep my commandments, and I will pray
the Father and he shall give you another Comforter, even
the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because
it seeth him not neither knoweth him, but ye know him
for he dwelleth with you and shall be in you." "If a man
love me he will keep my words, and my Father will love
him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with
him."

Thus do these three great ideas result and culminate
in making the body of man the temple of God. This is

THE BODY THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 347

the end, the consummation ; beyond this nothing can go.
With t-his the kingdom of God will be, as it must be if it
be at all, within every man, and formality and supersti-
tion will be impossible. God dwelling with man, work-
ing in him and with him ! Man yielding himself as a child
to God ! For this were the sacrifices, for this the priest-
hood. Not by his own unaided strength, but through this,
and this only, will man reach whatever of perfection and
happiness is possible for him. Christ opened the way for
the presence and indwelling of the Holy Ghost in every
man who will receive him. Let him be received, and let
the " fruit of the Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, long-suf-
fering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance,"
be manifested in their fulnesb, and there will be a glory
shining through this temple of the body transcending that
of the Shekinah. Where these thus produced are, there
the temple of God is, and where these are not, there the
temple of God is not.

I have thus presented to you, my friends, the place
which the body holds under the Christian system. Ac-
cording to Christianity, it is the office of the body to
stand over against the ancient temple, magnificent as that
was, and to be the dwelling place of God under this dis-
pensation as that was under the old, the only temple of
God now on earth.

And lightly as we may esteem it in our familiarity and
want of spiritual insight, this body is worthy to stand
there. It is the only temple worthy of God. Be it, that
it is that which is lowest in man ; it is yet highest in the
handiworks of God. The heavens do, indeed, " declare
the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handi-
work." For the impression they make upon us of gran*
deur and of a broad order, there is noihing that can be
compared with them. But these heavens are made up

348 THE BODY THE TEMPLE OF GOD.

of unorganized bodies floating in space with adjustments
relatively simple. They can never manifest the skill re-
quired for the construction of the eye which beholds them,
and which, in beholding them, epitomizes infinity within a
space less than the half of a square inch. But the eye is
only a single organ of that body, so complex in its unity,
which is set over against the universe to be acted upon
by it, and to react upon it. Moreover, the parts of the
universe, so far as they are related to the body, are for it,
it is not for them ; and we might expect that greater skill
and wisdom would be found in that for which the things
are made than in the things themselves.

And as the body of man thus transcends all arrange-
ments of inorganic matter, so does it all other forms of
organization. Naturalists are agreed that from the first
appearance of organization on this planet there was a
movement onward and upward till man was reached.
They are agreed that of the four great classes in Zoology,
that to which man belongs is the highest, and that man
stands at theJhead of that class. In the first fin of the first
fish they find a foreshadowing of the hand of man ; but
while that fin was perfectly adapted to its use, they find in
the hand, as more complicated and capable of wider uses,
an instrument vastly more perfect. And so of the body
of man as a whole. When it is perfect and of the highest
type, there is nothing like it. Whatever superiority any
animal may claim in some specialty, there is no one
whose body can be compared with that of man in the com-
bined delicacy and strength and beauty of its organization,
in its wide range of possible activities, in its erect pos-
ture, in its power of articulate speech, and in that general
power of expression by which it may become as the oeolian
harp to the wind, and give forth the whole range of emo-
tion that nature can awaken, or that can stir the depths
II

THE BODY THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 349

of a being that is above nature. It was in the form of
man that the ancients represented the gods, and it was in
the form of man that He appeared who " thought it not
robbery to be equal with God." And if he could say of
the simple lilies of the field that " Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed like one of these," much more may we say
of the body of man, which was the body of Christ, that
the temple of Solomon, in all its magnificence, was not
to be compared with it.

Has Christianity, then, assigned the body, thus fitted to
be the temple of God, its true place ? We say, Yes. We
say that it has revealed its highest end, and that, in doing
this, it has given us the clue to its whole regimen and use.
According to the law of limitation this must be so. The
higher can be attained only through the lower. Society
can make no permanent progress in connection with habits
and practices that deteriorate the body. This should be
understood. The body is so a part of ourselves that it
reacts upon us, and we become enfeebled, degraded, para-
lyzed by its abuse. The effects of such abuse, perhaps
unsuspected, may pervade society as a choke-damp, lower-
ing its susceptibility to truth, and stifling its higher life.
This will be so with society ; it will be so with you. Hence
I call your attention to it. If you are to be men, and to
do the work of men, the relations of the body to the spirit
must be known, and the laws of physical well-being must
be conformed to.

Looking at the systems of which the body is composed,
we see that there are two to which all others are subordi-
nate. These are the muscular and the nervous systems —
muscle and brain. As an instrument, and controlled by
us, each of these has its great function. That of the mus-
cles is motion, giving power and expression ; that of the
brain is thought : and whoever can so control the body as

350 THE BODY THE TEMPLE OF GOD.

to produce all desired movements in the easiest and most
graceful way, and so as to think by it with all possible
facility and power, has attained perfection in the control
of the body. He will only need the choice of right ends,
to the attainment of which his thoughts and movements
shall be directed.

These two systems, that of thought and of movement,
are capable of being developed in harmony. They are also
capable of separate, and in a measure, antagonistic devel-
opment. A man may make it his main object, so to culti-
vate his muscles that he may walk, or run, or wrestle, or
row, or fight better than others. He may train himself to
be a prize-fighter, and so draw off the energy of the system
in this direction, that there shall be none left for thought
and the higher feelings. To this there is a tendency, and
of it a danger in modern physical culture, in gymnasiums,
and boating, and ball-playing, and muscular Christianity,
which is no Christianity at all.

On the other hand, the nervous system may be devel-
oped to the neglect and attenuation of the muscles. It is
not my belief that this is often done by sheer study, with
no self-indulgence or wrong physical habits otherwise, but
it is done ; and when it is, the end is lost by the means
taken to attain it. With brains over-wrought, and nerves
over-sensitive, and digestion impaired, the man is too
feeble to carry out into expression and act, the thought and
the will that are in him.

But in whichever line the body is to be developed,
there must be a submission to fixed conditions. This
they understand who train it solely with reference to its
muscular power. They require men to rise at such an
hour, to eat only such food, to exercise so much, to abstain
from intoxicating drinks, from tobacco, perhaps from other
things. And this men submit to. These trainers have

THE BODY THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 351

understood, as the athletes of old did, what the Apostle
means when he says, "Every man that striveth for the
mastery, is temperate in all things." He does nothing,
and indulges in nothing which will unfit the body as an
instrument for that for which he is to use it.

Now this is what we ask, and all that we ask, with ref-
erence to the use of the body for higher ends. In the
mterest of learning and of thought^ as you are scholars
and beneficiaries of the public through an institution
endowed by them, we ask you not to fall back into a mere
animal life. Except from the exigencies of want, we ask
that no muscular development shall be sought beyond the
point where the best conditions of thought are reached ;
and also that such training and regimen, such diet and
abstinence shall be submitted to as shall make you ath-
letes in the field of intellect. Here also we ask you to be
" temperate in all things," and to keep your body under,
not in the way of austerity, but as rational, self-controlled
beings acting for higher ends. The end will determine
the limit of your liberty. Whatever use you can make of
your body and not deteriorate it as an instrument of
thought, that, as under the law of thought, you are at lib-
erty to make.

And this is, perhaps, the highest law that could be
known to philosophy. Philosophy could see that the
intellectual was higher than the animal life, and that it
must be a degradation to use the body simply as an in-
strument of sensation w^hen it might be an instrument of
intelligence, comprehension, reason. Philosophy might
la}' down rules, as the old philosophers did, as may well
be done now, for the regulation of the body for the ends
of philosophy, but it could know of nothing higher than
itself. If man might consecrate his body as a temple for
God to dwell in, and God would accept it, that could be

352 THE BODY THE TEMPLE OF GOD.

known only from God. But while philosophy could not
know the fact, because, as the act of a personal God, it is
outside of its sphere, that fact is yet fully in accordance
with philosophy. It just meets a want, and carries out
the doctrine of divine aid in such a way as to restore in
substance the communion with God that was lost in Eden,
and as to complete Christianity as a redemptive system.
Anything else would make God external to us, and Chris-
tianity a form. But now God is the living God, present
with us, working with all who will work with him ; and
Christianity is so the dispensation of the Spirit that every
Christian may properly be said to be the temple of God,
and that every man who will, may so consecrate his body
as a temple to God that God will dwell with him.

I am aware of the little favor with which what I have
said, and am to say, will be received by many. I know
how much there is in the deformities and diseases, and
perversions by men of their bodies to cast discredit, per-
haps ridicule, on this doctrine. I know it will be said
that it is mystical, and not adapted to a practical age, and
that it trenches too much on the enjoyment of life. But I
know, too, that the apprehensions of men respecting what
God has designed for them here are still greatly inade-
quate ; that their standards, and tone of feeling, and
whole plane of action are low : and I believe they will
hereafter be looked back upon as we look back upon bar-
barism. I know that civilized, and cultivated, and nomi
nally Christian men use their bodies, if with more saga-
city, yet on the same principle as pagans and savages, for
mere animalism. They eat and drink and to-morrow
they die. I know, too, that except as you bring your
bodies, as well as your spirits, under the law of that which
is highest for them, you will walk all your lives in disas-
trous echpse, you will go halting through your pilgrimage.

THE BODY THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 353

It is this principle, that of bringing your bodies under the
law of their highest end, that is in question here. Will
you accept it ? No hard service is required of you, no
austerity, no penance, no maceration of the body for its
own sake, but simply the application of the principle on
which the athlete trains himself. So the Apostle puts it ;
he kept his body under and brought it into subjection,
but only that he might " so run, not as uncertainly," and
" so fight, not as one that beateth the air." Precisely as
the old athletes placed the regimen of the body under the
law of its end so did he its Christian regimen. " Now,"
says he, *' they do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we
an incorruptible." Whatever use you can make of the
body and not impair its fitness and efficiency in enabling
you to obtain that incorruptible crown, you are at liberty
to make. That crown will come, if it come at all, in con-
nection with an incorruptible body ; and you are to in-
quire what would be the fitting antecedents of such a
body and such a crown.

Shall then, your bodies be brought under the law of that
which is highest, and so become the temples of God ? If so,
you must submit to the regimen required by that; just that,
and nothing more. And here we should expect that while
the positive training would be different, yet that whatever
would be excluded by the lower as obstructive of perfec-
tion, would also be excluded by the higher, I believe that
whatever would be excluded in the best training for the
physical perfection of the body, would also be excluded
from that for intellectual power ; and much more for spir-
itual insight and communion with God. But this is ques-
tioned theoretically, so far as intellect is concerned, and dis-
regarded practically throughout. It is said that a German
professor can soak his system in lager beer, and saturate it
with tobacco, and be as profound a student, and live as long

354 THE BODY THE TEMPLE OF GOD.

as he would otherwise. Be it so. The question here is
not that. It is on a higher plane. It is whether he can
do these things and consecrate his body as he might other-
wise to be a temple of the Holy Ghost. A temple may
stand as long as it would otherwise, and be as strong, and
yet be defiled. It is of defilement rather than of impaired
strength that a temple is in danger, and he who would hold
his body as a temple must study and heed in its broadest
import the injunction "keep thyself pure.'*

At this point it is not for me to judge others. I would
make every allowance for prejudices of education and dif-
ferences of temperament. If there are exceptions I would
admit them. But I may express my conviction, that ha-
bitual alcoholic or narcotic stimulation of the brain is not
compatible with the fullest consecration of the body as a
temple of God. Good men may do this in ignorance, as
other things prevalent at times have been done, and not
offend their consciences, but I believe that greater earn-
estness, more searching self-scrutiny, fuller light, would
reveal its incompatibility with full consecration, and sweep
it entirely away. The present position on this point of the
Christian Church as a whole, and largely of the Christian
ministry, I regard as obstructive of the highest manhood,
and of the spread of spiritual religion. I know that
strong men have, in this connection, been bound as in fet-
ters of brass, and cast down from high places, and have
found premature prostration and premature graves, and
that this process is going on now. Let me say, therefore,
to those who expect to be ministers, that I believe that
sermons, even those called great sermons, which are the
product of alcoholic or narcotic stimulation, are a service
of God by " strange fire ; " and that for men to be scrupu-
lous about their attire as clerical, and yet to enter upon
religious services with narcotized bodies, and a breath

THE BODY THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 355

that " smells to heaven " of anything but incense, is an
incongruity and an offence, a cropping out of the old
Phariseeism that made clean " the outside of the cup and
the platter." Not that abstinence has merit, or secures
consecration. It is only its best condition.

But whatever may be said of particular practices or
habits, or conditions, what I ask your attention to is the
thing itself, the principle, the consecration of your bodies,
under the law of that which is highest, and according to
your best light, to be the temples of God. If they are to
be temples they must be consecrated. Will you do that ?
When this is done on the part of any one it involves that
which is of higher significance and more acceptable to
God than the consecration of any cathedral that ever has
been or will be built on the earth. How grand a thing it
is for any one in the freshness of youth and the fulness of
strength to say, " This body, which God has given me, I
hold as a temple for his indwelling. These senses, these
hands, these feet, this whole organization shall be held
as sacred, and shall be devoted to no purpose that I do
not conscientiously believe will be pleasing to God."
Can you do better ? Does God, indeed, come to you and
offer to dwell with you, and will you not welcome him ?
Welcome Him, and his presence shall be to you an infinite
joy. When the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity,
whose name is Holy, who dwelleth in the high and holy
place, says that He will also dwell with him that is of a
contrite and humble spirit, it is not for dismay, or sadness,
or repression, but in sympathy, and with an unutterable
tenderness, to " revive the spirit of the humble, and to
revive the heart of the contrite ones."

I have only to add that whatever course you may take,
whether you do, or not recognize the claims of God, " you
are not your own." You may seek, as most do, to appro-

356 THE BODY THE TEMPLE OF GOD.

priate yourselves to your own selfish ends, and thus rob
God, but " ye are not your own." These are the words
that I would leave sounding in your ears, "Ye are not your
own." You do not belong to yourselves. You belong to
God. You belong to humanity. You belong to a world
that is waiting for your help. You belong thus to God
and to humanity as the creatures and children of God, and
members in common of his great rational and moral fam-
ily and kingdom. You also belong to God and to human-
ity by a more tender tie. Not only are you not your own
as the creatures of God, but " Ye are not your ov^n^for yg
are bought with a price — therefore glorify God in your body
and in your spirit, which are God's."
II*

XX.

THE CIRCULAR AND THE ONWARD MOVEMENT.

That which hath been is now, and that which is to be hath already been ; and
God requireth that which is past.— Ecclesiastes, iii. 15.

'\ T .^E are told by astronomers, that our planetary sys-
V V tern has two movements ; one circular, by which
the motions return upon themselves ; and the other, on-
ward in infinite space. By the first of these the system is
maintained as a system. The circling bodies composing
it now approach each other, and now recede till they
return to their first position, thus perpetuating from age
to age, the mystic dance of the heavens.

Of these movements, those that are circular can be
calculated, and in regard to them the astronomer, relying
upon the stability of the order of nature, may say, " That
which hath been is now, and that which is to be hath
already been." But the onward movement cannot be
calculated. By that the whole system, the sun and all
his train of planets and secondaries and comets, is moving
on in space, perhaps in a right line, perhaps around
some centre at an inconceivable distance ; and of this
movement, its object and its limit, we know nothing. We
have no data for calculation, and the mighty secret must
rest with God till He shall please to reveal it.

Not unlike these are the two great movements of
human life. There is a succession of events, making up
much of what we call life, constantly beginning, never end-

35^ CIRCULAR AND ONWARD MOVEMENT.

ing, which is repeated over and over every generation.
There is also a progressive movement, both of the indivi-
dual and of the race, which does not return upon itself,
the objects and limits of which are known to man only as
it has pleased God to reveal them. It is with this latter
UKn'ement that man is connected as responsible under the
moral and permanent government of God. That which is
once past here, is fixed forever, and God requireth it.

It is only as we keep in view these two movements,
that we have a key to the apparently discrepant assertions
of the wise man. Now we hear him say that " all things
come alike to all ; " that " there is one event to the right-
eous and to the wicked." And so, for the most part, there
is in the circular movement. But again we hear him say,
" I know that it shall be well with them that fear God,
which fear before Him ; but it shall not be well with the
wicked." And so it always is with the onward movement.

Looking at the circular movement, permanent indeed in
its successions, yet so transient for the individual, Solomon
speaks of* all things as " vanity and vexation of spirit,"
and " full of labor." And, regarding life in this aspect,
how striking are the emblems chosen by him to represent
it. He compares it to the sun that " ariseth, and goeth
down, and hasteth again to the place where he arose ; ''
to the wind " that goeth toward the south, and turneth
about unto the north, that whirleth about continually, and
returneth again according to its circuits ; " to the rivers
that " are taken from the sea, and return again to the
place whence they arose." But not so does he speak
when he surveys the whole of life. Looking also at the
onward movement and its issues, he condenses all wisdom
into one brief utterance, and says, " Let us hear the con-
clusion of the whole matter. Fear God, and keep his
commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For

CIRCULAR AND ONWARD MOVEMENT. 359

God will bring every work into judgment, with every
secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil,"
*' God requireth that which is past."

It is as they are brought within the sweep of this circu-
lar, or, if you please, iterated movement, that the genera-
tions come and go, each another, and yet the same. In
its great features the succession of events is recurrent, and
" that which hath been is now." To those who went before
us there were the same senses and the same gifts of intel-
lect as to us. Their eyes beheld the same sun j they
watched the same seasons as they came and went ; the
trees, the mountains, the streams, the flying clouds, the
stars of night, were the same to them as to us. There was
to them the same period of helpless, ignorant infancy ; of
curious, wondering, wayward childhood ; of inexperienced
and perilous youth, and then the time came, which among
some ancient nations was celebrated as a festival, when the
manly robe was put on, and they were committed to their
own guidance. And, "That which hath been is now." As
young men you now stand where others have stood before
you, and the same doubts, and hopes and fears that agi-
tated them now agitate you. The same veil of futurity that
once rested over their prospects, now rests over yours.
Can that veil be raised ? In some measure it may, for we
are told not only that " that which hath been is now," but
that " that which is to be hath already been."

In illustrating this part of the subject I observe, First,
that it is to be with you as it has already been with those
who have gone before you, in the diminution of your num-
bers by death, and in the physical changes that are to pass
upon you.

It has been in time past that one and another from the
ranks of those who have been associated as friends has been
14

360 CIRCULAR AND ONWARD MOVEMENT.

arrested in his career at no distant period, and has found
an early grave. And so it will be with some of you. By
consumption, by fever, by accident, slowly, or suddenly,
the grasp of the destroyer will be fixed upon you. And can
it be that to any of you the bright morning shall be over-
cast, and your sun go down before it is noon ? Ah, if we
could but know whose eye must first be dim, whose heart
first cease to beat, whose account must first be rendered
up ! We cannot know, but there is One who does, and
the days may be few that shall reveal the fearful secret to
the startled consciousness of him who least expects it.
Thus one will go, and the time of another, and of another
will come. Meanwhile the finger of Time will begin to trace
its furrows upon the brow of those of you who remain, and
his hand to scatter its frosts upon your heads. You will
see another generation coming up to take your places, and
will think it wonderful how fast they come. You will be-
gin to be called old men, and be surprised at it ; you will
begin to be old men, till one and another shall pass away
and the last man shall be left alone bending with years,
and tottering upon the brink of the grave.

In view, then, of the certainty of death, and the un-
certainty of the time, lay no plan of life into which provi-
sion for it as possible at any time, does not enter. " Watch,
for you know not at what hour the house may be broken
through."

And as there are physical changes which are common
and inevitable to the race, so also there are mental
changes.

It has been said that when the mind takes its own
course, the ruling passion in youth is pleasure, in middle
life fame, and in old age avarice. And probably, if the
character be not formed on fixed principles under the
moral government of God, some such change of object does

CIRCULAR AND ONWARD MOVEMENT. 36 1

usually take place. Certainly as age comes on the ardor
of the passions will cool, the imagination will be chastened,
and the judgment will predominate more. Then the power
of habit will reveal itself more strongly. Your thoughts,
your feelings, your associations, your pursuits will run on
in settled courses that will not be easily broken up. The
metal now so ready to fluctuate and so impressible, will
harden, and will be taking its final- impress for eternity.
As the body decays so will the mind, or seem to, just as
the sun seems to be going out when the cloud thickens
before him. First, the perceiving faculties will fail, then
the memory, then the judgment, and then second childhood
will have come.

Whether it is desirable for any one to reach this point
God only knows, but they are to be pitied who do reach
it, having earned no title to the respect and love of those
who come after.

I observe, again, that it is to be with you as it has
already been with those who have gone before you, in your
failure to carry out your plans of life.

Young men generally form to themselves some plan of
life, and this is right, but it should be only in a general
way. The two forces by which the direction of human life
is determined, and which act and react upon each other,
are the human will, and the course of events. But the
course of events is under the control of God, and it is by
means of this that " He turneth the hearts of men as the
rivers of water are turned." So influential, indeed, is this,
that the Prophet could say, " I know, O Lord, that it is
not in man that walketh to direct his steps." By the
course of events God can hedge up your way in any par-
ticular'direction ; He can take off the chariot- wheels of
your ambition, and can open to you new and unexpected

7i^^ CIRCULAR AND ONWARD MOVEMENT.

vistas of hope and of effort. Few are there, much ad-
vanced in life, who cannot look back to unexpected events
that have so become turning-points in their lives that they
have been led in a way they knew not.

And so, doubtless, it will be with you. While, there-
fore, you heed duly the fixed course of God's providence,
and use vigorously your faculties in studying its indications,
falling into no indolence or imbecility as those do who
wait for things to turn up, you are yet not to map the
future with unchanging lines. Mistake not for a long line
of coast, the headland that may round you into another
sea. Go up no hill before you come to it. Live in the
spirit of the petition which asks for daily bread Thus
doing, the failure to carry out your plans may be the
source, not only of no regret, but of thankfulness and joy.

These things have been in times past; they will be in
time to come. They do not depend upon chance, or the
will of man, but upon the settled laws of Divine Provi-
dence. There are, however, other things which " have
been " so universally that we expect them with almost the
same certainty as the rising of the sun, and yet we see no
necessity for them. Of these it may be said, as our Sa-
viour said of offences, " it must needs be that they come,
but woe to the man by whom they come." We may cer-
tainly expect them, but they may be avoided by each
individual.

Judging, then, from the past, it will be that some of you
will so far find in the circular movement the chief objects
of study as to become one-sided and narrow.

It is the circular movement that is the ground and
sphere of science ; and as we found in the two movements
a key to the seeming discrepancies in the Book of Eccle-
siastes, so do we find in them a key to the alleged want of
harmony between science and religion. Science, that is,

CIRCULAR AND ONWARD MOVEMENT. 363

natural science, which alone is in question here, has its
basis in those works of God which are the expression ot
his natural attributes, as his intelligence and power, and
which reveal themselves in the circular movement. Reli-
gion, on the other hand, has for its basis the moral attri-
butes of God, which find their scope and distinctive sphere
in the onward movement. The harmony, therefore, be-
tween science and religion must be, and must ultimately
be found to be, just as perfect as it is between the natural
and the moral attributes of God.

In science, as based on the circular movement, the
instruments are observation, experiment, and experience.
Making use of these, and assuming the uniformity of
nature, science claims the right to proceed outwards in
space, and from that which is here, and can be observed,
to affirm uniformity of agency and of structure where ob-
servation cannot go. It also claims, and on the same
ground, to proceed onwards in time, and from that which
is observed now, to affirm uniformity of succession in
events yet to come. And this is all that natural science
can do. It knows of force, stability, order, uniformity ; it
bases itself on these, but of a Being back of all, of a cause,
of uniformity with a purpose and as the result of will, it
knows nothing. Of a miracle, of anything free and super-
natural, it knows and can know nothing. These are,
indeed, the very things that modern science seeks to
ignore and exclude.

Religion, on the other hand, has revelation in the
place of observation and experience ; and, as has been
said, has the moral attributes of God finding their distinc-
tive sphere in the onward movement, for its basis. It is
within this sphere that we find occasion for the superna-
tural. Indeed, the movement itself is supernatural. To
this the circular movement, nature, uniform, improgressive.

364 CIRCULAR AND ONWARD MOVEMENT.

necessitated, is wholly subordinate. It is but as the
staging to the building, the theatre to the drama, the field
to the battle. Therefore any, the least miracle for amoral
purpose, is of higher significance than the whole of nature
as indicating the presence and supremacy of a personal
being who is other than nature, and is its Lord. The har-
mony, therefore, of the natural with the supernatural, and
so of science with religion, will be found in the subordina-
tion of the lower to the higher ; and when this subordina-
tion shall be seen to be complete, the harmony of science
with religion will be perfect, and not till then.

But if this be so, how obvious is it that those who re-
cognize only the lower movement must be one-sided and
narrow. Nor is this always the worst. Not a few votaries
of mere science, especially positivists, become not only
narrow, but bitter, and make it their special function to
stand at the entrance of the paths to the higher knowledge
and scoff at those who would enter in. While, therefore,
you give science its proper place, and that a high place,
you will not, I trust, fail to find enlargement and com-
pleteness in that which is higher.

But if there is danger that you will find within the cir-
cular movement the sole objects of the intellect, much
more is there that you will find in connection with that the
sole objects of affection and of choice. Not apprehending
rightly the relation between the circular and the onward
movement, it is greatly to be feared that some of you will
either pursue some phantom that cannot be grasped, or
will grasp that which will turn to ashes in your hand.
Then will come disappointment, and a temper irritated
against Providence, and soured towards the world. Then
the chill and the gloom for which nature knows of no
morning, will begin to set in.

So has this been with many in the past. Shall it be

CIRCULAR AND ONWARD MOVEMENT. 365

SO with you ? Shall not the experience of the past benefit
you ? Do you not live in the ninteenth century, after two
hundred generations of men with their hopes and fears and
follies have come and gone, and shall you be no wiser for
witnessing the things that have been ? Most obvious is it
that mankind as a race, have not been thus made wiser.
Is not vanity as much enamored of itself as it was at the
beginning ? Are the votaries of fashion, and the slaves of
conventional forms, diminished in number ? Is the race
of mere pleasure-seekers coming to an end? Do not
young men start in the race of ambition, and strive to be
great men as much as if there had not been a great man
in every town and neighborhood since the time of the
flood ? Is not un happiness still imputed to the condition
in life rather than to the moral state ? And hence, do not
men still say, " When we have removed such an inconve-
nience, have attained such an object, we shall be happy " ?
Are there more than of old who come to a pause in all this,
and deliberately say to themselves, as most men might,
*' So far as worldly good is concerned, I am as happy now
as I can expect to be. Having food and raiment, I will
therewith be content." Is there less than formerly of
insane disregard of death, and judgment, and eternity?
In all these respects the experience of others seems to do
the mass of men little more good than it does the fishes
and the birds ; for, " as the fishes that are taken in an
evil net, and the birds that are caught in the snare, so,"
even yet, " are the sons of men snared in an evil time,
when it falleth suddenly upon them." Notwithstanding
the experience of the past, when the necessary result of
their own conduct reaches them, when the net comes over
them, it comes suddenly ; they are amazed ; they supposed
that they should escape. But shall this be so with you ?
You may succeed in the lower sense of that word. You

366 CIRCULAR AND ONWARD MOVEMENT.

may become rich ; may come to be the first man in a vil-
lage, or a member of Congress, or the Governor of a State,
or the President of the United States, and may suppose
yourselves to be engaged, as ten thousands have before
you, in the most important and momentous concerns that
have ever transpired. But, however high you may rise,
you will be borne up by a wave that has risen quite as
high before, and when it subsides it will strand you where
it has stranded others, and leave you to neglect, while the
popular gaze is waiting for him who is to succeed you.
Thus have all schemes of life based on the circular move-
ment, failed hitherto. They must in the time to come.
" The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be."

Do I, then, disparage the world ? Far from it. It is
God's world. He made it : not in mockery of his crea-
tures, or for their disappointment, but for their use. It is
just such a world as is adapted to man in his present con-
dition^ and, so viewed, every creature in it is good. It is
marvellous in its adjustments and in its provisions. It is
pleasant to live in it. It is pleasant to behold the sun, to
investigate truth, to feel the glow and warmth of the domes-
tic and social affections, to be in sympathy with the inter-
ests and struggles of our humanity in this transient state,
and to work for its advancement. The world is good for
what it was intended to be ; but an inn is not a home.
It is no disparagement of it to say so ; and when he who
would make it one is disappointed, it is his own fault. If
the world shall disappoint you, it will be your own fault.
It will be because you attempt to make of it what He did
not intend it should be; and what you may know, if you
will, that He did not intend it should be. The great mis-
take of men is, that they do not rightly adjust their plans
to the relation between the circular and the onward move-
ment. The relation here, as in the intellect and in science,

CIRCULAR AND ONWARD MOVEMENT. 367

is one of subordination. Here the law of limitation comes
in and gives you your key. Make as much as you will of
the objects and interests of the circular movement if you
do but so subordinate them to those of the onward move-
ment that they shall contribute in the highest degree to
the interests involved in that. This it is that Christianity
would teach you to do ; and in thus harmonizing the two
movements to reach the highest results possible in con-
nection with each. The circular movement is subordi-
nate. It was intended to be. If that movement were all ;
if life were but the same round over and over ; we might
well go about, as Solomon did when he looked at it in this
aspect, to cause our hearts to despair of all the labor that
we take under the sun. But that is not all —

" 'Tis not the whole of life to live,
Nor all of death to die."

There is an onward movement in which that which
hath been, is not now ; and that which is now, shall never
be again. It is that which gives to life its dignity. Con-
nected with that are the higher hopes, the nobler purposes,
and the supreme end of man.

And here there opens to us the grandest subject of
thought in the universe of God. It might seem, when we
dwell upon infinite space that has no centre and no circum-
ference, and upon those worlds of light within it which the
night reveals, and upon those myriads more which the tele-
scope calls up, that the feeling of grandeur must arise to
its highest point. But no ; that all belongs to the circular
movement. It is but matter and its forces — the domain of
mere science, with no power to reveal anything outside of
itself, or above itself. View it as you will, investigate it as
you will, and what can any progress man may make in the

368 CIRCULAR AND ONWARD MOVEMENT.

knowledge of processes and results within this movement
amount to? Progress ! Is not death a part of this same
movement ? and is not all progress here accompanied by
a progress towards that?

Yes, Death ! That is a word at the sound of which
science is dumb. Here is a man standing under the array
which night reveals. By his side is a new-made grave.
He has come there to mourn ; and pointing to that grave,
and looking up, he asks of the blue depths, and of the
starry hosts, " What does that mean ? " The heavens do
not hear him ; the depths and the stars are silent ; no tele-
scope can pierce so far as to read an answer. Turning
then, from these vast spaces and forces to that opposite
sphere of science, where she delves and peers, and seems
to be seeking for that nothing out of which all things
were made, and pointing to the same grave, he asks the
microscope, and the crucible, and the retort, " What does
that mean ? " and they make no reply. Then, looking
around, and below, and above him, he cries out, " O
thou mysterious circling, pitiless, all-engulphing Nature,
speak. What does that mean ? " And the moon glides
on in her course, and the stars shine, and "there is no
voice nor any that regardeth." But who is this that has
heard the question, not of this man only, but of humanity,
and stands by his side ? He wears the form of a man,
but his words imply the resources of omnipotence, and
He says, " Thy brother shall rise again." " I am the resur-
rection and the life : he that liveth and believeth in me,
shall never die." Now Nature and its laws, matter and
its forces, death and its terrors, are under our feet. We
have now found Him " who has abolished death, and
brought life and immortality to light." Now, being lifted
above the circular movement, and released from the bonds
of necessity, we come up into the region of freedom and

CIRCULAR AND ONWARD MOVEMENT. 369

of personality. Now we find a personal God ; now a uni-
verse, not merely strewn with suns and planets, fixed, or
in orderly movement, but peopled with intelligences in the
likeness of God — an innumerable company of angels and
the spirits of just men made perfect. Now we reach the
true sublimities ; now the onward movement.

As has been said, the onward movement connects
itself with the moral government of God, and with man as
responsible. It is within this that we find the supernatural.
Within this, and as a part of this, we find miracles. Here,
also, we find prophecy, properly so called. Science can
prophesy, but only within her own domain. She can tell us
that the sun will rise to-morrow, andean predict an eclipse.
She can even foretell the weather, because " the wind re-
turneth again according to his circuits," but she could not
foretell the coming of Christ, nor his crucifixion, nor his
resurrection and ascension ; nor does she know anything
of the time of his second coming, or of his coming at all. It
was as a part of this movement, and wholly in its interest,
that Christ came ; and He is its central figure. This pre-
cludes comparison between him and any philosopher. Ex-
cept as a condition of something higher and as holding it
in subjection, he had nothing to do with the circular move-
ment. As that movement is known by science and con-
trolled by its methods, he had nothing to do with it. His
method of knowledge within it was not induction, but
insight ; his method of control was not through law, but
through will manifesting itself in miracle. He simply said
to one and another of the elements and forces of nature,
as the centurion said to his servant, " Go," and it went ;
" Come," and it came. For Him to have discovered, or to
have propounded scientific methods, or to have controlled
nature after the manner of science, would have been a
degradation. With Him everything was on another plane,

3/0 CIRCULAR AND ONWARD MOVEMENT.

and only as his miracles were subservient to the interests
within the onward movement, to the establishment of truth
within that, and to moral progress, are they lifted practi-
cally above juggleries and mere wonders.

]\Ioral progress — character, a character radically right, *
and then improvement in that — this gives us progress in
connection with a movement that turns not back upon
itself, that always records itself, and in which the past is
always required. It is to this progress that I wish to call
your special attention, and concerning it, I have three
things to say.

The first is, that it is the only progress worth making ;
or, at least, that without this all other progress is relatively
worthless.

The second is, that this progress will draw after it all
other progress, and make it permanent ; and that nothing
else can. And just here it is that we find the special wis-
dom and glory of Christ, in that while he seems to ignore
science and art, and in a sense to disregard the interests
of the circular movement, he yet initiated and put himself
at the head of a movement that has but to become univer-
sal to draw within its sweep the most rapid and only per-
manent progress in all things else. The planets follow
the sun. The greater includes the less, the higher the
lower. In that saying of his, " Seek ye first the kingdom
of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be
added unto you," there is not only the sum of religion,
but more of philosophy than in all heathendom. It shows
a knowledge of the structure of God's universe from foun-
dation to turret ; and of its administration from the begin-
ning throughout all ages. Moral progress must take the
lead. This is Christ's method. With this, progress in all
else will follow ; will be permanent and perpetual. With
out this, the generations will but perform the labor ol

CIRCULAR AND ONWARD MOVEMENT. 37 1

Sisyphus. When a given point is reached there will be
retrogression. Itself the one thing needful, it involves
the wisdom and method of all reform that can avail much ;
and when reformers learn this, and begin at home, the
wheels of progress will begin to revolve rapidly, and their
grating and jarring, now so dissonant, will cease.

The third thing which I wish to say is, that as this
progress must be through Christ's method, so also must
it be through his power and leadership. He must be
recognized as the head of the race. He is its head. For
all who shall fulfil, and, under Him, more than fulfil the
destiny of our original humanity, He is the second Adam;
and the one thing needed by those who would make pro-
gress in the onward movement, is a personal relation to
Him, through which they may receive His guidance and
aid. For the race in its anticipations of a happier future
on earth, no less than for the individual in the great fu-
ture, He must be " the Captain of our salvation." With-
out Him we can do nothing.

In connection with what social or physical convulsions
this progress is to go forward, or whether in quietness,
we can know only from revelation. Unaided by that, we
find ourselves, in our attempt to take the bearings of this
onward movement, without a chart in the open sea. It is
all sky above with no polar star, and all ocean below.
Respecting this movement science knows nothing. But
from revelation w^e do know, whatever may intervene, that
there is to come at some point an arrest to the present
order of things, a solution of the perplexing problems con-
nected with it, and a new adjustment on the basis of a final
separation of the righteous and the wicked. It is by
revelation alone that we know the astronomy of the moral
heavens, and that the movement of our whole system is
towards a day of reckoning and a judgment seat. Upon

372 CIRCULAR AND ONWARD MOVEMENT.

that seat — the throne of His glory — we know that He will
be seated who was once crowned with thorns, and that
"before Him shall be gathered all nations." We shall
be there; and God will require of each one of us that
which is past.

To me, the thought of this responsibility, in the onward
movement, is especially solemn as I look back. Oh, how
much that needs to be forgiven ! How much that might
have been more wisely, and faithfully, and better done !
But for you, while the thought must indeed have solem-
nity as you look back, yet, entering as you are upon life,
with the power to make of that which is to be your past what
you please, it will, perhaps, have more solemnity as you
look to the future. The past which you will thus make,
you will look back upon without regret in proportion as
you subordinate, in accordance with the doctrine of this
discourse, the circular to the onward movement — as you
seek first the kingdom of God.

Nor, if you understand the relation of these two move-
ments as Christianity presents them, will the doing of this
diminish your interest in anything that pertains to the
lower and circular movement. Here, again, it is the glory
of Christianity, and a demonstration of its truth, that it
so brings these two movements into harmony, that, while
it presents in the strongest possible light the vanity of
passing objects and scenes considered as an end, it does
not lessen our interest or activity in them. Not only, as
has been said, does Christianity make the most of the two
movements in their result — so that we gain our lives by
losing them — it also makes the most of them as they call
forth our energies, so that we become more active in the
duties of time as we care less for its objects. It makes
us more "diligent in business " as we become "fervent in
spirit, serving the Lord." It is thus that all human em-

CIRCULAR AND ONWARD MOVEMENT. 3/3

ployments may become equal in the sight of God, for He
regards them as there is manifested through them a pur-
pose and temper that conspire with the onward movement
of his moral government. Whatever stands related to that,
and as it stands thus related, has grandeur in it. What
man is this who is so earnestly at work in the very humble
employment of making a fine powder still more fine by
constant attrition.? It is Michael Angelo, grinding the
paints with which he is to paint for eternity. The humble
duties must be done ; the paints must be ground ; but they
will be ground all the better if we feel that we are to paint
for eternity with them. There are duties towards God, in-
dispensable, the highest of all, but they can never be ac-
ceptably performed in the wilful disregard or neglect of any
duty toward man. You are never to forget that the best
preparation for heaven is in that character which will fit
you for the greatest usefulness on earth.

Since, then, the problems — the great problems in life
— that come from the intersection and blending of the
circular and onward movements are solved theoretically
by Christianity ; and since, through that, you can make the
most practically, of the interests involved in each move
ment, the one thing needful for you is to be Christians.
At this hour, when so many voices are calling you, the
one voice which you are to hear is that of Him, who
says, " Follow Me." Hear that voice, and then you wil
take your places under His banner by the side of those
who are waging with Him the great battle of all time. It
is around Him that the thick of this battle has always
been. Around Him it always will be. Take, then, your
places. You are needed. The veterans are falling. Who
shall take their places? The strong men are fainting.
Who shall succor them ? Go ye, and the earth shall be
better and happier for your having lived in it. Go ; and

374 CIRCULAR AND ONWARD MOVEMENT.

when the time of your departure shall come, you will be
able to say what he said who was a standard-bearer in this
College for more than forty years, and for whom both its
chapel and this desk are now draped in mourning.* When
consciously dying, and but just able to speak, he said —
" If we view it scripturally, death is but stepping out of one
room in our Father's house into another ; and, in this in-
stance, without doubt, into a larger and pleasanter room.''

* Professor Albert Hopkins.

XXL

MEMORIAL DISCOURSE ON PRESIDENT GARFIELD,

Prepared at the Request of the Trustees of Williams College.

ONE year ago to-day ! Who does not remember the
scenes of that Fourth of July, and of the two days
preceding? Who does not remember the darkness and
chill of that eclipse into which our Commencement passed
so suddenly from the sunshine of brightest hope ?

One year ago to-day — and to-day it is the heart that
should speak. It is only the tribute of our hearts that is
called for in response to a heart that then beat warmly for
us, but now is still. Certainly no further biography or
encomium of President Garfield can be needed for his own
sake. Probably— I think I may say certainly— no equal
number of spoken and pubHshed tributes was ever called
forth by the life and death of any man within so short a
time. The chosen orator of the nation has spoken — grandly
spoken. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the
English Church, has spoken. The most eloquent pulpit
orator of France, Father Hyacinthe, has spoken, and re-
peated his discourse. Embassadors, senators, the pulpit,
the bar, friendship, admiration, patriotism, have spoken,
and no words of mine, were that my aspiration, could
reach the height of those already uttered.

Nor is anything more needed for the general public.
The excitement, wonderful as it was, and long-continued,

*** Because of sickness in the family of the Author, read before the trustees
and the alumni at Williamstown, Mass., by Rev. Dr. S. I. Prime, July 4, 1882.

375

376 DISCOURSE ON PRESIDENT GARFIELD.

is past. When President Garfield, as he lay on his bed of
suffering, was told how intense and extensive the sympathy
for him was, he said : " This cannot last. No one nian
can long hold the attention of the nation." But it did
last. For seventy-7iine days the tension was not relaxed.
Every day the beating of his pulse was felt from Maine to
Florida, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Every-
where there was the anxious look, there was secret weep-
ing, prayers went up, and there was the constant alterna-
tion of hope and fear. And not only did it last in this
country, but throughout the civilized world. In England
and on the continent, as I can testify, the daily and eager
inquiry among all classes was for the health of President
Garfield. It did last as long as the life of the heroic
sufferer lasted, and then it reached its culmination. The
cities in this land and in other lands were darkened by
tokens of mourning. In every town through which the
body passed from Elberon to lie in state under the dome
of the Capitol the people gathered in crowds and stood
with uncovered heads. As he lay under that dome the
long procession passed to view his face for the last time.
There, too, at an appointed hour, while the city held its
breath, the stricken wife was alone with her dead. On
the day of the funeral business was suspended ; the peo-
ple gathered in their places of worship; there was a hushed
sympathy throughout the Union ; to this the Atlantic was
no barrier, and it has been estimated that not less than
300,000,000 of people were reached by the shadow, and
touched by the spell of that hour. Every State was pres-
ent at Cleveland by its representatives. Twenty govern-
ors of States, each with his staff, were present. Side by
side with those of the Union, the Queen of England laid
her floral tribute on the bier. And so, with an attendance of
60,000 people, his body was borne to its final resting place.

DISCOURSE ON PRESIDENT GARFIELD. 377

But nothing violent or intense can last always. The
tomb had received him, and the gloom became less. There
were rifts in the clouds. The waters began to return to
their accustomed channels. The government, as only such
a government could have done, moved on without a ripple.
The period of mourning appointed for the army and navy
passed away, and the second great tragic scene in the
drama of our historic life came to its close.

But though the general course of nature after storms
and floods may be as before, yet how often is it found, not
only that hopes are blighted by harvests destroyed, but
that here a field, and there a garden, that before had been
green and fruitful, or beautiful and fragrant, have been
swept by a desolation from which they can never recover.
And so it has been here. Ours is not the desolation of the
home, but our most illustrious graduate, a member of the
board of Trustees, whose interest in the subject of educa-
tion was special, and who greatly loved and honored the
college, has been taken from us at a moment when he had
attained the highest honor in the gift of the nation. He
has been taken from us at a moment when we hoped for
inspiration from his zeal, and guidance from his counsels,
and that his annual visits here, where he had arranged that
his sons should tread the same walks trodden by himself,
would make the college conspicuous throughout the coun-
try. Be it then that all has been said that can be said,
all that is demanded by the fame of President Garfield,
or by the general public, it has yet seemed to the Trustees
to be most fit that at this their first meeting since his
death, at this first gathering of the alumni since then, there
should be some commemorative service in which we may
place ourselves by the side of those more deeply bereaved,
may look for a little at that in him which so fixed the at-
tention of the world ; may recognize his love for the col-

378 DISCOURSE ON PRESIDENT GARFIELD.

lege ; and, possibly, may gather from his career some les-
sons for our own guidance.

I have spoken of the intense and extended sympathy
there was in connection with the sickness and death of
President Garfield. That sympathy made him the con-
spicuous figure in the opening of a new chapter — perhaps
I may say a new era — in the history of our race. There
was never anything like it. There never could have been.
Up to that time that quick and diffusive element in nature
which symbolizes human sympathy had not so lent itself to
man that such sympathy had been possible. For ages the
gambols of electricity in the clouds had awakened the thun-
der, its bolts had smitten the earth, it had streamed up in
long lines in the aurora, but it had waited for a Franklin, a
Henry, a Morse, a Field, so to tame it and bring it under
the yoke of service to man that its slightest whisper
should far outleap the thunder, and that the long wires
for its instantaneous transit should become bands of steel
to bind and hold fast in amity nations whom oceans had
separated. Up to that time such sympathy could not
have been. Then it could be ; and through it new pos-
sibilities of the union of the whole race through common
sympathies in one brotherhood, were revealed.

When a new era is to be opened there is needed pre
vious preparation. There must be, first, the essential
conditions. There is then needed the right man to stand
at its opening — one in whom its elements shall be in-
carnated, and who shall illustrate its spirit. And not
more signally was Luther fitted to stand at the opening of
the Reformation, or Washington at the opening of a new
era of civil liberty, than was Garfield to stand at the open-
ing of this new era in that movement toward brotherhood
which had been originated nearly 1900 years ago.

How well fitted he was thus to stand will appear in

DISCOURSE ON PRESIDENT GARFIELD. 379

part if we look at the number of points in himself, or in
his career, at which he touched our common humanity or
some one of its phases. In this he was without a par-
allel.

There were first, his early struggles. In these — and
perhaps it is the only point — he had an advantage not
common to all. For some, for the many, early poverty is
a misfortune ; but in this country, or at least in this part
of it, a poverty with no taint of low vice or of vulgarity,
an incident of pioneer life having often in it a heroic
element, and inherited by one who has the strength to face
and overcome the obstacles it brings, is an advantage,
especially if he is to enter political life. When party
capital was to be made, Lincoln was the railsplitter, and
Garfield was the canal-boy. This could not have been
among an ignorant people, or one where society was
stratified by caste or class distinctions, and where honest
labor was not honored. But among an intelligent people
pervaded by the ideas of liberty and equality, the coming
up from a log cabin of a barefooted boy — barefooted be-
cause of poverty-^was a delight, and the more so as they
saw it to be a legitimate result of free institutions by
means open to all.

In these early struggles President Garfield resembled
President Lincoln, but his struggles were more steady in
their aim and more diversified in their means, and so were
adapted to awaken a wider sympathy. President Lincoln
was a rail- splitter, but he was not a carpenter, or a school-
master. He did not aim at high literary culture, and
sweep the floor, and make the fires, and ring the bell, for
his tuition. But these things President Garfield did. He
did them cheerfully, faithfully, as means to an end,
pushing them behind him as the swimmer pushes the
water that bears him forward. In doing this he conferred

38o DISCOURSE ON PRESIDENT GARFIELD.

a benefit upon the whole people by giving new emphasis
to the truth that high aims ennoble all legitimate means
for their attainment. This truth Christianity teaches in
connection with the higher aims and deeper struggles that
pertain to a future life ; but we need to have it taught,
also, and illustrated in connection with political and
social life. With this truth practically accepted we have
a /^^//^ self-respecting, stable, capable of self-government ;
with it ignored, we have a populace^ with no steady aim,
the prey of despotism, or the seat of anarchy.

But as President Garfield had, from his early struggles,
in common with President Lincoln, a ground for the
sympathy of the masses, so had he, from his broad
scholarship and varied attainments, in common with John
Quincy Adams, a ground for sympathy with persons of
the highest culture. It was a common remark, at the
time of his inauguration, and has been since — I heard it
from a Judge of the Supreme Court — that no President
except John Quincy Adams had been equally equipped in
scholarship and statesmanship. He was president of the
Literary Society of Washington. If a rare book was absent
from the congressional library, Mr. Spofford was wont to
say that either Mr. Sumner or Mr. Garfield must have it.
He not only kept up his classics, but studied the old
Latin authors. Hence his high appreciation of the
scholarly sympathy of Mr. Evarts, in sending him from
England, when he was on his sick bed, a copy of a rare
edition of Horace. He acquired modern languages, and
while he was leader of the House, and during its stormiest
times, he wrote for the magazines. It was but twenty-
five years after his graduation, and yet in that brief time he
had not only risen to be the chosen ruler of 50,000,000 of
people, and thus the peer of the greatest monarch on
earth, but by his speeches and his words, that have been

DISCOURSE ON PRESIDENT GARFIELD. 38 1

caught up and made imperishable, he has already taken
his place among

" The great of old,

The dead, but sceptred sov'reigns who still rule

Our spirits from their urns."

Between these two extremes, the early struggles of
which John Quincy Adams knew nothing, and the broad
scholarship and literary culture of which President
Lincoln knew nothing, President Garfield was in po-
sitions and performed duties of which neither of them
knew anything, and which brought him into that special
sympathy with large classes which comes from being
one of them. He was an under-teacher ; the head
of a college ; after the manner of the disciples, a
preacher ; a member of the State Senate ; a colonel in the
army ; a brigadier-general ; a major-general ; a member-
elect of Congress ; and all this before he had been out
of college eight years. A rise so rapid in both civil and
military life is without example in the country. He was
thus brought into close sympathy with the great body of
teachers, and especially with the great body of soldiers
who were then, from the prevalent war spirit, and who
continue to be, a controlling element in the country.

His election to Congress in 1863 was while he was in
the army, and from no agency of his ; and it was only by
the earnest wish of President Lincoln and Secretary
Stanton that he was induced to abandon his military career
and prospects. He was poor, the pay of a major-general
was double that of a member of Congress ; he had been
successful, the soldierly element was in him, and he felt
within himself the power to succeed ; but at the call of
duty he made the sacrifice.

Entering the House of Representatives at the age of
thirty-two, with a single exception its youngest member,

382 DISCOURSE ON PRESIDENT GARFIELD.

he soon became prominent, and on the election of Mr.
Blaine to the Senate, became the leader of the House. In
Congress he continued seventeen years, having been
elected nine times in succession by a constituency as in-
telligent and exacting as any in the Union. During that
time he was far more a statesman than a partisan, and both
by his speeches and his labors on committees became
known and felt throughout the country as one of the con-
trolling forces of the government.

It was during this period that he became known as a
lawyer • and here again his course was without a parallel.
His first plea was before the Supreme Court of the United
States. There, without fee or reward, in a case that en-
dangered his popularity, but in the cause of civil liberty,
with the Attorney-General and General Butler opposed to
him, and associated with Judge Black and the Hon. David
Dudley Field, he made his first plea. The cause was
won, and this plea gave him at once a high standing and
continued practice in the Supreme Court.

Of his election to the Senate of the United States, and
his nomination for the presidency, both unsought by him,
I will not speak, but pass to his campaign speeches, for
in them we have our best illustration of the versatility of
his powers, of their perfect training, and of that hidden
force which brought his hearers into sympathy with him.
Of his making these speeches Mr. Blaine speaks par-
ticularly. There were seventy of them — not ordinary
campaign speeches that could be prepared and repeated,
but speeches impromptu, made to delegations and assem-
blies of the utmost diversity. They were made in opposi-
tion to the advice of his party friends, in disregard of the
discreet and successful silence of General Grant and of the
failure of others ; made at a time when the opening of his
mouth by a candidate was eagerly watched for by his

DISCOURSE ON PRESIDENT GARFIELD. 383

opponents, and dreaded by his party. But Gen. Garfield
knew his own powers and made no mistake. He met
every occasion freely and frankly, till at length apprehen-
sion passed into confidence and confidence into surprise
and admiration. Probably not another man in the Union
could have done that.

From this uniform, and equal, and great success in
such diversified lines, it will appear that there must have
been in the powers of President Garfield not only strength
but symmetry. That is what we need— strength and
symmetry— a combination of these. Without this in him
sympathy must have been impaired, and this he had in an
eminent degree. Hence his greatness was not that of the
Swiss Matterhorn— the elevation of a single shaft, inac-
cessible in its height, and that dwarfs everything about it-
It was rather that of a broad table-land, where there is
equal elevation, but by gradual ascent, and with verdure
all the way up. Hence, too, though his rise was so rapid,
there was no point of transition where he lost the sym-
pathy of those about him. There were emergencies and
crises. They came thick and fast. But when the hour
struck that called for the man, the man was there, and he
was so the man that it seemed perfectly natural he should
be there and rule the spirit of the hour.

In thus touching our humanity at so many points and
so evenly, there was nothing in President Garfield, as
there has been in so many other great men, that awakened
repulsion or was obstructive of sympathy. There was no
affectation, or assumption, no coldness of manner. There
was just the simplicity and earnestness and sincerity, the
naturalness and true gentility of an unspoiled and large
manhood.

We have thus a remarkable combination of qualities in
connection with great achievements. Was anything more

384 DISCOURSE ON PRESIDENT GARFIELD.

needed to account for the sympathy mentioned ; or to fit
President Garfield to stand at the opening of the new era
of brotherhood now made possible ? Yes, two things.
There was needed, first, a wealth of affection — a develop-
ment of the heart on the same plane with that of the in-
tellect and the will. And this there was. Of this the first
sphere was the home. Into that we m^ay not enter, but
we know how he honored both his mother and his wife,
and the kiss which he gave them on inauguration day was
not more a token of affection than a public and deserved
recognition of their helpfulness in the struggles through
which he had passed. His attachments were strong, his
friendships faithful and lasting, and there was a general
kindliness that impressed all with whom he was associ-
ated.

And here, perhaps, I may be permitted to mention,
especially since I have seen a statement of it in print
not entirely accurate, how I first came fully to the knowl-
edge of this affectionate element as taking its equal place
in the trinity of his nature. He had become one of the
great men of the nation, had returned to visit the college
at its commencement, and, the evening after, attended the
reception at my house. In the midst of the throng he put
his arm around me and said, *' I don't believe you know
how much we love you." Few men who have ever lived
could have done that.

But the illustration especially in point here is from the
regard he showed for his classmates and the alumni in
connection with his inauguration. Quite a number of his
classmates were in the city, and when we remember the
cares that had been on him, and the scenes that were be-
fore him, it is not a little remarkable that, in accordance
with his own wish and suggestion, he should have met with
them the evening before the inauguration at a social sup-

DISCOURSE ON PRESIDENT GARFIELD. 385

per where he was one among them precisely as of old.
Still more remarkable was it that he should have arranged
for a reception of the alumni of the college at the White
House immediately after the inauguration. To appreciate
this rightly one must have witnessed the scenes of the day.
In the morning, escorted by the elite of the army, he
passed through the huzzahing crowd from the White House
to the Capitol. There, in the presence of each depart-
ment of the government, and of a multitude, vast and
surging like the sea, he took the oath of office and pro-
nounced that grand inaugural. Returning as he went, he
stood before the White House with uncovered head while
the gleaming forest of bayonets that filled Pennsylvania
Avenue from end to end passed in review before him.
Then, before the sun went down, he turned and gave his
first reception to the alumni of his college. No one who
was present can ever forget it. Beautiful it was, and next
to the kiss of his mother.

One thing more was needed. He who had never known
defeat, whose physical powers were exuberant, who had
such a family about him, who had just reached the highest
position this great country had to give, and who had such
prospects before him was to be struck down in a moment
by the hand of an assassin, and be obliged to look death
in the face for seventy-nine days, under the gaze of two
continents. That was such a test as no man had before
been brought to. He needed the power to stand that test,
and that power he had. He had had a Christian mother,
and from a child had known the Holy Scriptures, At
eighteen he had intelligently accepted and professed Chris-
tianity, and had sought to commend it to others. On the
top of Greylock, when the hour came to read a chapter in
the Bible with his absent mother, he proposed to his com-
panions to read it aloud, and called for prayer. He did

386 DISCOURSE ON PRESIDENT GARFIELD.

not know Christianity simply as a creed, but also as a ser-
vice and a ground of support. He put his hand into the
hand of one who had said, " When thou passest through
the waters I will be with thee, and through the rivers they
shall not overflow thee ; when thou walkest through the
fire thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame
kindle upon thee." And so it was. The waters did not
overflow him, neither was there the smell of fire on his
garments. Deprived, as I think, unwisely, of the presence
of his pastor, and of the near friend with whom he had
been wont to hold Christian communion, his hope in God
did not falter. The anchor had been cast within the vail,
and it held. There was no bravado, or stoicism, or indif-
ference. He wished to live. When told there was but
one chance he said, " I will take that chance." But he
also said : " I am not afraid to die ; " and so, with no move-
ment or word that could impair sympathy, but with the
sympathy and admiration of the waiting continents con-
stantly augmenting, he passed into the shadow of that
valley which we call dark, but which was light to him.

Thus was his life rounded out up to that point. There
are those who think that if he had lived he would have
been less distinguished for executive, than for intellectual
power. For this I see no reason except the rarity of the
combination it would have required, I know, indeed, no
instance in history of a man great in debate, or as an
orator even, who has been equally distinguished for execu-
tive capacity. One reason for this may have been that the
opportunity for distinction in both is seldom offered to the
same man ; but the chief reason is that the habits of mind
required for debate and for prompt and decisive action in
emergencies are entirely different, and in most men incom-
patible. Still, they are no more incompatible than strong
imagination and sound judgment, or than coolness and in-

DISCOURSE ON PRESIDENT GARFIELD. 387

tense action, and from every indication of his military-
life, and his bearing before dissenting conventions and
opposing majorities, especially from the speeches he made
and the stand he took on the vital question of finance, we
may well believe that in him intellect would have found
its true function in ministering to both wise and efficient
action, and that his administration would have been as
efficient as it would have been wise.

And while President Garfield touched our humanity at
so many points, it is noticeable how entirely he touched it
by that in him which is essential to our humanity. It
does not seem possible that anyone should reach the posi-
tion he attained with less that is extraneous or factitious.
He did not attain wealth. He was not in the ranks of
fashion. He did not disregard its conventionalities, but he
was not their slave. In everything pertaining to his relig-
ious life there was the utmost simplicity. He was of a
denomination little known in the country at large ; the
Bible was his creed, and during the whole time he was in
Washington, and while he was President, surrounded as he
was by elegant and fashionable churches, he worshipped in
a house hardly equal to the ordinary school-houses in New
England. There was in him simple manhood battling as
best it might.

I make no attempt to interpret the providence which
permitted the death of President Garfield at such a time
and in such a manner. To me clouds and darkness are
round about it. But that he was eminently fitted in him-
self, and in the circumstances of his death, to be the object
of a gaze which should illustrate the power of sympathy in
the new conditions under which the race is placed will not
be denied. Through their common sympathy with him
men were brought into sympathy and permanent kindly
relations with each other. The good accomplished by this

388 DISCOURSE ON PRESIDENT GARFIELD.

we have no means of measuring, but that it was great we
know. The common sympathy with him united the North
and the South as nothing else could. That was a great
thing. It so loosened the fastenings of old grudges be-
tween this country and England, and allayed more recent
irritations, as to make war at that time impossible, and to
diminish the probability of it for a long time to come. The
messages of the Queen will not soon be forgotten, and the
fragrance of the flowers which the telegraph enabled her
to lay upon the bier will last for a generation. In other
countries of Europe, as Germany, and Austria, in Turkey
even, there was a similar sympathy through which there
was a fuller apprehension and a better appreciation of our
free institutions than could otherwise have been.

Under former conditions, it has been impossible to
unite men of distant countries and different nations.
There has been no common centre of a sympathy through
which divisive elements might be dissolved, and no quick
and effective means of transmitting any sympathy there
may have been. But now, if there were such a centre
of sympathy, the possibility of a felt brotherhood and of
a unity of the race through the heart would be indicated
by the results of which I have just spoken. Such a centre
of sympathy we believe there will be, and that the short-
sighted views of interest, and the antipathy of races, and
difference of religions and of creeds under the same
religion, will melt away in a common sympathy with Him,
and a common love for Him, who has been lifted up and
will draw all men unto Him, and in drawing them unto
Himself, will draw them to each other.

We have thus seen what President Garfield came to be
and some of its results. How he came to be what he was
is of little moment except as it may aid others who wish
to make full men of themselves, and may aid the friends

DISCOURSE ON PRESIDENT GARFIELD. 389

of education in providing the best means to enable them
to do that. In neither respect does his career suggest
anything absolutely new, but in both respects much that
needs enforcement.

What he did will aid others chiefly as a fresh illustra-
tion of two principles that no successful student can
ignore. One is, that nothing that lives can grow except
by its own activity. This is because, in all growth, life
works from itself outward. That is its law. The other
principle is, that all mental discipline and symmetrical
growth are from activity of the mind under the yoke of
the will or personal power. Activity of the mind in which
the attention is held steady to one point, going out it may
be in many directions, but always holding the thread and
returning, is mental labor. It is work, and may be of the
hardest and most exhausting kind. Say what you will of
genius, or of gifts and aptitudes in particular directions,
no man can come to the front in any line of business or
of thought and hold his position there without a thorough
study of principles and of details under them. Especially
can no man become a legislator, or debater on the broad
field of statesmanship, without a wide knowledge, not only
of principles, but of what has been, of what ought to be,
and of what, under the circumstances, is the best that can
be. As no two cases are precisely alike, strict experience
cannot be a guide. The man must be governed, not by
rules, but by principles, and the power to comprehend
principles and to apply them under new and varying
circumstances, is the last result of patient and comprehen-
sive thought. It is through such processes as I have
mentioned, silent and long continued, that great efforts
are made that seem extemporaneous. In a sense they are,
but the reservoir must have been filled before the waters
could flow. It is, too, by such processes that what are

390 DISCOURSE ON PRESIDENT GARFIELD.

called self-made men are made ; but no man reaches high
power in this line who is not essentially self-made. The
two principles I have mentioned were perfectly understood
by President Garfield. Of strenuous and persistent work
in accordance with them we have no more conspicuous
example than was he, and that example will, no doubt, be
a stimulus and a guide to very many.

Suggestions from his career that would aid us in
training upon this ground such men as he was, there is
little time to consider. By such men I do not mean men
who shall fill similar positions. The positions men are to
fill must be determined by the times in which they live.
I mean men who shall make the most of themselves, and
be equal to any position to which they may be called.
Whether such men shall be formed here will depend
partly on the material furnished from which to form them,
and partly on the college. In President Garfield, when a
student, we had the right material. Eighteen years ago,
v/riting to Mr. Gilmore, who desired to write his life at
that early day, I said : " Gen. Garfield gave himself to
study with a zest and delight wholly unknown to those
who find in it a routine. A rehgious man and a man of
principle, he pursued of his own accord the ends proposed
by the Institution. He was prompt, frank, manly, social
in his tendencies, combining active exercise with habits of
study, and thus did for himself what it is the object of a
college to enable every young man to do — he made him-
self a man, ^' He pursued of his own accord the ends proposed
by the Institutioiir Give us students who will do that and
it is all we ask. To teach a class of such young men
would be a joy. Full co-operation throughout between
teachers and students is the one thing needed for the best
results of a college. For this nothing can be a substitute.
But this cannot be unless llie students have been well

DISCOURSE ON PRESIDENT GARFIELD. 39I

trained at home. The family, not the school or the college,
is the seed-plot of society. If the students sent us are in-
different, or averse to study, if they are of the calibre and
taste to do hereditary tricks, and perpetuate hereditary
annoyances, if they tend to mischief or dissipation and
vice, or even to distinction in inter-collegiate games rather
than in collegiate studies, they may be advised to leave
college, or patience and hope may tide them over the four
years, but the ends proposed by the founders and bene-
factors of our colleges, and sought by their trustees and
teachers, will not be reached.

But while so much depends on the student, much also
depends on the college. Be it that every man is self-
made through his own mental activity, yet his processes
will vary with his associates, his teachers, and his sur-
roundings. The affection of President Garfield for this
college was based on what it had done for him. Of this
he often and freely spoke. The years he spent here were
formative, and years of rapid and extensive acquisition.
And what the college did for him we would have it do
for others, only more and better. The problem of the
college, by no means solved as yet, is to furnish the best
possible means of growth during its period of education.

As furnishing such means of growth during that period,
the college may be compared to the nutriment that sur-
rounds the living germs in a seed during the first period
of the growth of a plant. During that period of vegetable
life the proper nutriment is provided. The germ does
not select it for itself. It is pravided, and the germ feeds
upon it till it forms roots and leaves, and the plant is
ready to enter, as its second stage, upon its own inde-^
pendent life. Then it selects its own food, it explores
the soil for it, it absorbs it from the atmosphere, it battles
with the winds, and the promise with which it enters upon

392 DISCOURSE ON PRESIDENT GARFIELD.

this second stage of its life will depend on the vitality of
the germ, and the fitness and abundance of the nutriment
it has received.

The two things, then, to be attended to are the sur-
rounding nutriment, and the living germ.

In the surrounding nutriment — in whatever goes to
make up opportunity, in buildings, and apparatus and
cabinets, and the library, there has been a great advance
in this college within my remembrance. These we must
have to some extent, and we need them to such an extent
and in such a form as shall keep us in close relation with
advancing literature and science, and as shall correspond
with the tastes and wants of our day. To these, additions
have just been made in the Clark building, presented by
an alumnus and trustee of the college, and remarkable for
its combined solidity and elegance; in the Wilder cabinet
that worthily fills it; in the Field observatory, an addition
to various gifts that have gone before ; and, through a
donation unexampled in its amount in the history of the
college, an addition that will be magnificent when it is
finished, has been provided for by Governor Morgan. In
these the friends of this college, and the friends of educa-
tion everywhere, have reason to rejoice.

But the student is not an unconscious germ with no
alternative possible. These provisions being made, and
teachers being provided, how far shall we go in prescrib-
ing the use to b^. made of them ? Here wisdom is needed.
No doubt the changed relation of the sciences, and the
ample and more diversified fields for action, demand
changes in the course of study. But, if the course of
study is to be liberal^ rather than professional and tech-
nical, it would seem that, from the wealth of new fields,
and the pressure of new studies, there would be more
need than ever before of a wise selection and proportion-

DISCOURSE ON PRESIDENT GARFIELD. 393

ing of the studies to be chosen, and that, aside from indo-
lence and caprice, this could be better done by those who
had been over the ground than by those who had not.
Some room for option there should be, especially in
branches where original bent counts for much, and in the
later years. I could wish the range for it enlarged to
include at least music and drawing, but would not have
it interfere with a fixed course that should secure breadth.
Breadth was a special characteristic of President Garfield,
and I should hope that the tendency to that in college
education might not be impaired. I would not have
the college become a school for training specialists in-
stead of men. I would neither have a blur cast upon
the meaning of its diploma, nor have that diploma de-
graded to the level of a certificate of progress in specific
studies.

We now turn to the living germ. It is for this that
provision is made ; on this anxiety centres. Can anything
be done directly to quicken and strengthen this ? If so,
it must be by the teacher. Only life acts directly upon
life. We here reach the vital point in a college, and also
a special difficulty. Up to this point what was required
money could buy, and there are some things required in
a teacher that money can buy. A teacher needs to k7umK
With money enough we can secure teachers who know the
subjects they are to teach. But that is not enough. It
may be, especially on some subjects, that the more a man
knows the poorer teacher he is. He needs not only to
know, but to know hmv — how to teach, and how to manage
a class. Can this be bought ? Not always. The teacher
needs aptitude, and discrimination of character, and
patience, and self-control, and these money will not always
secure. In general, however, it may be said, that with
proper provision for salaries — and this is the point at which

394 DISCOURSE ON PRESIDENT GARFIELD.

our colleges need money — the culture of the intellect and
of taste may be, in a good measure, secured.

But it is the moral nature, and not the intellect, that
lies deepest in man. That is central. In that we find the
living and immortal germ. Quickened by the beams of
the Sun of righteousness it is from that that we have the
blossom, the fragrance and the fruit of our humanity.
The intellect may be stimulated by appetite, or desire, or
passion, and the results in literature and the arts may be
admirable, but without the inspiration and guidance of
the moral nature there will be no broad wisdom. In
ignoring that, an attempt is made to educate the man with
the man left out ; and theorists and educators, with their
endless systems and methods, will continue to roll the
stone of Sisyphus up the mountain to have it return upon
themselves. It is that, then, in the student that needs
to be quickened and strengthened. But if this is to be
done by the teacher it cannot be by any action of the mere
intellect. It must be through the action of his moral nat-
ure. There must be love exerting itself wisely with ref-
erence to the whole good of the student. This will be
valuable in the individual, but where it exists in a body of
teachers working together there will be an atmosphere that
can be created in no other way, and that is invaluable in
education. This money cannot buy. But without it our
colleges are liable to become hotbeds of corruption ; and
they never can become what they should be till both
teachers and students hear the voice of the great Teacher,
saying, ''''Learn of Me.'' That voice President Garfield
heard before he came to college. " That," as he said,
** settled canal, and lake, and sea, and everything." Under
the influence of that his whole nature came into harmony.
Not the intellect only, but the ??ia?i, the whole man to-
gether, with the powers in right relation, entered on a

DISCOURSE ON PRESIDENT GARFIELD. 395

course of education. Hence the temptations of college
life he scarcely knew as temptations, and with such aids as
every one may have, he went on from step to step till he
became the man he was. Encouraged by such a result, due
in part and so largely to the college, it remains for us, the
alumni and the friends of education, to make provision on
this ground such that the college shall continue to be hon-
ored as it has been, or even more, in its alumni, and shall do
its full proportion in the time to come, in raising up for the
country and the world such men as President Garfield was.
I have thus, in accordance with the wish of the Trus-
tees, sought to pay, in some measure, the tribute of affec-
tion and honor due from the College, and I may add, es-
pecially from myself, to one who so honored the College,
a beloved fellow alumnus, one of its trustees, one who was
honored and mourned by the nation and the world. On
the day of his inauguration, addressing him in behalf of
the alumni then present, I said to him that I was the only
president of a college who had ever lived to see one who
had graduated under him President of the United States.
How little did I then think that I should survive him, and
be called to such a service as this ! But so it is, and in
view of the mystery that enshrouds his assassination as
permitted under the Providence of God, I can only adopt,
in closing, the words used by him on a great occasion
in immediate connection with the assassination of Presi-
dent Lincoln : '' Fellow-citizens ! Clouds and darkness
are round about Him ! His pavilion is dark waters and
thick clouds of the skies ! Justice and judgment are the
habitation of His throne ! Mercy and truth shall go be-
fore His face ! Fellow-citizens ! God reigns, and the
government at Washington still lives." Yes, God reigns ;
and, " Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be re-
moved, and though the mountains be carried into the
midst of the sea.'*

'uoisiaiQ

'/PHS

'^ mhin\\% nu >^

tw^