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- THOUGHTS FOR HEART AND LIFE

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Printed at the Edinburgh University Press,

LONDON CAMBRIDGE

GLASGOW

by T. and A. ConsTABLE, m

FOR, an DAVID DOUGLAS. HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO.

MACMILLAN AND BOWES.

. . JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SON.

Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2024

https://archive.org/details/thoughtsforheart0000revj

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EDINBURGH DAVID DOUGE. is

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THOUGHTS

FOR HEART AND LIFE

By Rev. JOHN KER, D.D.

EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION BY THE REV. A. L. SIMPSON, D.D., DERBY

EDINBURGH

DAVID DOUGLAS 1888

‘Theol ogy Library

SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY AT CLAREMONT California

CONTENTS.

Mern and MANNERS, i . : 2 : 1 NATIONS AND PoLitics, . : 5 : 3 40 History, . ; : ; : : : ‘ 43 AUTHORS AND LITERATURE, . * : : 51 LANGUAGE, : : ‘ : ; , . 82 Tue BIBLE AND BIBLE STUDIES, . ; : 87 ReELIGion, TRUE AND FALsE, . : ‘ . 106 RELIGION AS A SCIENCE, . ‘ : : 2) 32 PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY, . , : . 149 CHURCHES, : ‘ : ; ‘ we s2 PREACHERS AND PREACHING, . : : - 196 Lirr, : , : : : . : . 204 Art AND Music, . : : F : ae ta SCIENCE, . ‘ ‘ F : : ‘ . 228 SocraL, . : : : : : 5 Bais MISCELLANEOUS, : : : ; ; 5 Dats)

PoEMS AND TRANSLATIONS, . ‘ ; 5 KS

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INTRODUCTION.

BOOK bearing on its title-page the name of Dr. John Ker needs no formal introduction. His first volume of Sermons published in 1869, and which is now in its thirteenth edition, made such an impression as bespoke the interest of the public on behalf of whatever might afterwards come from his pen. Accordingly, his second volume, care- fully arranged for the press by himself— although not published till some time after his lamented death—found its way prepared for it by the previous success, and was hailed with all the joyous expectancy which the rare beauty and power of the first had led many to cherish.

But his reputation did not wait for his appearing in print. The pulpit may not command as wide an audience as the press ; but the man who occupied it as Dr. Ker did, conld not be hid. What with his

b

vill INTRODUCTION.

stated ministrations as pastor of churches in Alnwick and Glasgow, and his frequent special visits of an official kind to other parts of the kingdom, both north and south, and even beyond the kingdom, he had been long known as a preacher of rare and mani- fold faculty, including keenness of intellect, firm grasp of principles, and their practical bearings; philosophic breadth, deep insight into the human heart, and sympathy with it in all its moods of joy or sorrow. To these must be added a fine poetic sense, coming in frequent gleams like a sudden flush of warmth and light, by which his words were illumined, but not weakened, for he never elaborated his images till they grew cold and formal. The luminosity, though sudden and brief, was effective, at once widening the horizon and shining up to the zenith, and thus giving an impression of truth in its highest relations in that region of the imagination where beauty is added to strength. When such qualities as these are associated with full culture and great knowledge, as they were in Dr. Ker, along with a simplicity and self-oblivious- ness rarely to be found; and all consecrated

INTRODUCTION. = Tig

to highest ends—the glory of God and the best interests of man—one cannot be sur- prised at the high reputation he achieved, and the place which he held, and still holds, in the love and admiration of all who knew him.

With regard to his style it is somewhat difficult to speak; it is so easy, simple, and clear. It can scarcely be called style at all, but rather a medium of such transparency that everything is seen through it but itself. It is the perfection of art, for no art is visible; and yet it has an imperceptibly growing influence, so that after a time one begins to be aware of its spell in a sense of steady gentleness and power.

Besides the two volumes of Sermons referred to, there have been recently issued an interesting work on “The Psalms in History and Biography,” and a volume of Essays on Scottish Nationality and other subjects. There is also in preparation an important volume of Lectures on Preaching at various times, and in various countries, which he delivered, as Professor of Homi- " letics and Pastoral Theology, to the students under his care.

x INTRODUCTION.

The present volume differs considerably from these works, and has the advantage of showing the author in a somewhat new and interesting, because more personal, light. In this respect, however, they are one, — that those who peruse them will find in all the same man; will feel the same grasp of a strong hand, and of a loving heart. But they will be surprised at his manifoldness, This will be to them a new experience. They will find themselves easily carried by him into all manner of thought-fields, sometimes fruitful and firm to the tread ; sometimes soft and treacherous, where every step must be picked; but all apparently familiar to the author, who thus proves a cool and experienced guide, whether in leading into the former, or showing the “way out” from the latter. Bacon said that he took all knowledge for his province. Dr. Ker never said that, but the reader of this book will feel much disposed to say it for him. When we consider the number and variety of subjects which he passes under review; the knowledge which on all of them he seems equally to possess; the historic, ethical, or scriptural light which

INTRODUCTION. xi

he sheds over them, and the lucidity and calmness, free from the spirit of dogmatism, which characterise his carefully balanced judgments, we feel as if we had more of Dr. Ker in the fragmentary but many-sided character of this book than in any other from his hand. It is a kaleidoscopic view, with countless changes in form and colour, but in its constituent. elements always the same.

As might be expected in such a volume, it contains much of the aphoristic element. Its paragraphs show not only large and exact knowledge, but that compressed wisdom which implies the best use of knowledge, and stimulates the reader beyond its utterance, though always in the direction to which the utterance points. It gives him an inclina- tion to advance, while it often surprises him into a feeling of responsibility, and possi- bility of action in ways and quarters which before had been practically non-existent. This is a form of literature which requires deliberate reading, not from any necessary obscurity of expression, but from the num- ber and occasional subtlety of its points, and the condensed form of its lessons, which are

xii INTRODUCTION.

rather suggested than directly taught. ‘The yeader who desires to profit by it will often find himself falling back upon the text, and his own thoughts, ere he is rewarded with the consciousness that the truth and _ its healthful stimulus have become his personal possession. At the same time, as is well known, it is a kind of literature which is by no means uncommon. It has been indorsed by high names: Pascal, Selden, Coleridge, Erasmus, Bacon, and many others have im- parted to it interest and lustre. The present volume, in so far as it is aphoristic, falls in with the works of the writers referred to, in spirit and aim, while, in ability and useful- ness, it is likely to hold its own among all its predecessors and rivals.

Another characteristic feature of the book is its element of Christian Apologetic. This, more or less, runs through it from beginning to end, Dr. Ker was a profound Theologian, and if he refused to fall in with many of the theories which, under the name of the Higher Criticism, have been so rife in recent years, it was neither because he was unac- quainted with them, nor that he under- valued criticism as a means of arriving at

INTRODUCTION. xiii

the exact teaching of Scripture. From his knowledge of continental languages, parti- cularly German and French, in addition to Hebrew and Greek, he was able to follow the critics through all their tracks, and to judge of their findings both by a reference to the original Scriptures and by the spirit and scope of the Bible as a whole. Of this the present volume contains many examples, and these not by any means always unfavour- able to the critics, for he was a fair and honourable polemic, willing to find grounds of approval in his opponents, and more than willing to acknowledge them when found. And this reminds us of another character- istic of the author, namely, the moderation with which he marshals his facts and an- nounces his conclusions. Not that he shows anything like the weakness of vacillation, but that in the manner of his announce- ments he avoids everything calculated to give offence, and trusts for the attainment of his ends to forcible arguments lovingly stated, not to harsh and vehement words. And this, not merely as a matter of policy, but because his benevolent nature, for which he was as remarkable as for intellectual

xiv INTRODUCTION.

power, led him instinctively to it. The fortiter in re and the suaviter in modo have seldom been more beautifully blended.

In a book like the present, where doctrine and dogma must often come under review, it is by no means a simple matter to hold the scales equal as between opponents and friends, and to do justice to truth without wounding charity. “Holding the truth in love” is a valuable and far-reaching maxim, but to carry it out is by no means easy. That Dr. Ker was largely endowed with the spirit of charity is well known. No one acquainted with him would expect to find him failing in this. But he was equally faithful to truth, and jealous of its rights. With an honest doubter he could and did sympathise, even a denier he treated kindly though firmly ; but of “the truth,” as he understood and believed it, he could make no surrender. By nature, as well as by grace, he was large-hearted and charit- able; but the foundations must be main- tained at whatever cost, and he was not one of those who set their foot upon truth, and congratulate themselves that they are so full of charity.

INTRODUCTION. XV

On the other hand, he was careful not to mar truth’s image by giving it an ungracious setting in the utterance, or to raise pre- judice against it by anything like imperious dogmatism. In his dealings with lati- tudinarians of every type, his manner was as kindly as his arguments were cogent and honest, so that he left his opponents with the impression that if he questioned their positions, it was not because he loved them less, but the truth and their acceptance of it more.

Another thing specially fitting Dr. Ker for writing such a book as the present was his sound common-sense. His poetic feel- ing did not mislead him. It was illuminat- ing, not blinding, and held its place in subordination to practical wisdom. Nature, indeed, was to him full of higher mean- ings than the literal. It was a system of symbology which carried up visible things to the sphere of the soul. To him the ma- terial was the shadow of the spiritual—the dim hints and fragmentary intimations of abstract qualities existing in perfection else- where ; while in the spiritual he found both their absolute form and their highest mean-

xvi INTRODUCTION.

ing. Nothing could be more spontaneous and self-evidencing, more elevating and suggestive, than Dr. Ker’s symbolism of nature. It is the transfiguration of the actual; the shining up through it of that ultimate truth which lies at the foundation of things, and gives signs of its presence in all that gleams and glows and waves its myriad banners in the circle of the out- ward; a path of moonshine on the deep, along which nature runs till it touches heaven. But with all this poetic feeling, Dr. Ker was a solid and sagacious man. True genius always carries with it good common-sense. It did so with the author of this book. His judgments are not strained, fantastic, or lop-sided. He kept his foot upon his mother earth, and, Antzeus-like, drew strength from it. With all his poetic feel- ing he was not transcendental or mystic. He looked at things in themselves, in their surroundings, in their tendencies, and in their probable issues, with a keen and prac- tical eye, and dealt with them in a practical way. He was even what we call a good man of business, and as such was ‘not

INTRODUCTION. xvii

seldom consulted by intimate friends, and that to their profit. This strong vein of good sense will be found to characterise his “Thoughts.” They are sagacious as well as ingenious and original; and in his estimate of the outlook of national movements or policy, now many years back, and their pro- bable consequences, the insight displayed seems to have almost bordered on pre- science.

Generally speaking, these “Thoughts” of Dr. Ker’s are of a serious cast, bearing on the heart and its ways, which are often subtle and sophistical enough. But he knew it well, and his dealings with it were honest and faithful. Dr. Ker was a great observer —more so than his quiet, meditative, and introspective habit would have led one to expect. He tracks the human heart through its devious paths with singular patience and precision. He detects its hypocrisies, and exposes its self- deceptions, weaving around it a network of argument and per- suasion such as it finds very hard to dis- entangle and free itself from. And, being for the heart, these “ Thoughts ” are of neces- sity for the life as well; for, “according as

XViil INTRODUCTION.

>

a man thinketh in his heart, so is he,’ and “out of the heart are the issues of life.” There is not a crime or vice in the world which—however huge and blatant it may be now—did not at- one time exist in the heart as a thought both small and hidden. But it is not in the nature of thoughts, whether good or bad, to remain small and hidden. They seek declaration. They want out. Neither a corn-seed nor a thorn-seed will consent to remain underground. Under- ground they gather nourishment, which sets them a-growing ; and although the seed itself perishes, it is only because its vitality is taken up by the plant in its growth, which by and by announces the nature of the seed by the fruit which it carries. It is well that such lessons should be impressed upon all, especially the young; and the collective tendency of this volume, as well as of many of its specific paragraphs, is strongly in this direction.

While, however, seriousness is the pre- vailing colour of the book, it is not without passages of a more neutral tint—light, play- ful, and exhilarating, with touches of humour and even of satire. For Dr. Ker was a man

INTRODUCTION. x1x

of wide and genial humanity, and his con- versation— which was one of his great powers, wonderful for its fulness of know- ledge, its variety and its fluency, with sparkles of wit and humour—constituted such a fascination as reminds one of what was said of Sir Philip Sidney: “He cometh to you with a tale, which holds children from their play, and the old man from the chimney corner.” Humour and _ pathos, which are generally found together, were so conspicuously in our author; but they are never discordant, and neither is ever out of place. The fine sensibility which lies at the root of both, rendered anything like a violation of taste, or lack of sound sense and right feeling, all but impos- sible.

The excellent bust of Dr. Ker by Mr. M‘Bride, placed in the Library of the United Presbyterian College, very success- fully embodies these and other character- istic traits of its subject. The grand mas- sive head and calm grey eyes speak for the intellectual strength, and the awed seriousness with which he looked within and without, before and after, on the great

XX INTRODUCTION.

problems of life; but when we come to the mouth, so placidly closed, we fancy we ean discern at the corners, a coming to- gether of delicate little wrinkles and folds where humour lurks, betokening that its ripple is not far off. The admirable por- trait in this volume, by Mr. Faed, speaks for itself.

Although, as has been seen, Dr. Ker had the poetic sense in a remarkable degree, he did not cultivate it much in the form of versification. Like Bishop Jeremy Taylor, and some other distinguished men, he let it out in the freer rhythm of prose, rather than in the conventional harness of syllables and rhyme, in which there is often more of artificiality than of art. Nevertheless, he did occasionally make incursions into the region of verse, and that with no small success. The original Poems at the end of the volume are, for the most part, of great beauty and tenderness; while the poetical translations—notably that of Vinet’s hymn —show many admirable qualities. It is considered that their insertion will give added interest to the volume, both as pre- senting a new phase of the author’s mind,

INTRODUCTION. XX1

and as a sort of pleasing efflorescence of the more compressed buds of thought which precede them.

It may be proper to add in conclusion, that these “ Thoughts” are not extracts from any printed works of the author, but have been taken from his rich stores of unpub- lished material, written for the most part in note-books, but without any view to publication.

A. L. SIMPSON.

MEN AND MANNERS.

Soe men are kept blind through ignorance,

and some are made blind through their understanding—the understanding separated from the inner life of the heart and spirit. No power will lead a man into more self-con- fident darkness. than bare logic which has taken up a single set of facts—witness Illumi- nati and Rationalists.

beees is a vast difference as to the way

in which temptation affects a man, de- pending on the manner in which he deals with it,—whether he meets it with love, as an end to be sought, or tramples on it in the road to an aim beyond.

“ Can a man take fire in his bosom and not be burnt?” “ When thou passest through the fire, thou shalt not be burnt.”

There is a fire of purity and zeal in the heart that can make innocuous all flames of passion around,

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2 MEN AND MANNERS.

yee relative characters and capabilities of

man and woman are an instance in the moral World of the divine wisdom, —man loving to protect, woman to lean. Hence faith is more powerful in woman, not from her being less rational, but from her being more formed to rely. When woman becomes infidel it is often from having deified some man.

Man passes through sights and sounds of |

sin and shakes them off, where women would

to the place assigned them, and a reason why woman should not be thrust into many parts of life where man must venture. “)

<_Even the seemingly unjust law in society which forgives man many things unpardonable in woman, has a reason in it. She has more to break through, and it is harder to put her again where she was ; the fruit of the forbidden tree is a deadlier poison to her. On woman, too, as the genius of the family, the social structure most depends, and when she sinks ruin is at hand. No sign of a nation perishing is so sure as the corruption of woman,—

Messalina was more ominous than Nero, | Herodias than Herod.

ee people make themselves very un-

pleasant and unprofitable from having their opinions on every subject in ready-made parcels—neither more nor less—ticketed, and to be taken down for inspection at notice. These people may be listened to, but cannot

MEN AND MANNERS. 3

be reasoned with, or even taken into converse. This, I suppose, is what is meant by pragma- tical—a want of sympathy and power of con- tact. The chameleon is much abused ; but it is a good thing, within limits, to harmonise with the colour around. A right man has his principles fixed, but, as Milton says, “opinion in him should be knowledge in the making.” He should be free to alter his views on many things in proportion and shape. Such men get most and give most,

So men find it hard to carry their own

grief. Thoughtful and sympathising natures strive to carry the grief of others, and are often crushed. Jeremiah struggled to bear the grief of his nation, and the Book of Lamentations is his cry. There was only One who could carry the grief of a world, and what was heavier—its sin.

—

ite people spend their life as some

African tribes do,—constructing idols, finding they are not the oracles they fancied, and breaking them in pieces to seek others. They have an uninteresting succession of perfect friends and infallible teachers. How many need the angel’s word, “See thou do it not.”

4 MEN AND MANNERS.

Ae men who judge most harshly the faults of others are those who have sinned and reformed their conduct from a feeling of pride. By their harsh judgment they would prove that they are free from their former sins. Those who have been reclaimed by love, partake of the compassion of Him who has saved them.

OME men are fierce against a neighbour’s

sin while they cherish a sin of their own,

as some of the ancient Egyptians slaughtered

the crocodile while their neighbours worshipped

it; but they had at the same time a reptile of their own canonised.

\e is important to cultivate a taste for com-

mon pleasures. The great effort of men is to chase Something rare, and to vie with one another not in the enjoyment but in the dis- play of it. The elements of enjoyment lie around, in sunsets, clouds, flowers, the sea- shore ; in men and their ways, and the various grotesque shadows of them in the lower creatures that have all the effect at times of Doré’s illustrations of mental moods in outer nature. What is wanted is the eye, if men would only cultivate it in themselves and others. Herein genuine nature and Chris- tianity agree in love of the simple, true, and broadly human. The sensational excites, this soothes ; the sensational must always be in- creased, like an unhealthy opiate, this is con-

MEN AND MANNERS. 5

stantly fresh and open to all, if they would but cherish this inner world of thought and feeling.

j) ee is a common idea that a many-

sided man is a shallow man. The re- verse is more generally true. A man will never be truly great in one thing unless he

give thorough attention to it, pee thorough ..

is not eacluswe. A man great in one thing will be strong in many; witness Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Pascal, Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton, Coleridge, Goethe. A man devoted to one thing may be distinguished in it, but is not for that necessarily a great man.

True, we have sciolism in many who deal with various subjects, but also in those who deal only with one.

HERE are some kinds of pride that are destitute of self-respect. True pride,

or rather nobility of nature, will never fawn on some and trample on others. It will recog- nise in itself that which will not let it stoop to any man, nor seek to have another stoop to it.

ie is not necessary to have had every experi- *

ence in order to recognise the truth of different feelings in human nature, and to have sympathy with them. The possession of a common humanity, with love at the heart, gives the power. Christ did not need to take

6 MEN AND MANNERS.

every place and trial to qualify Himself. Those recorded are more than sufficient to make us feel His oneness with us.

os A SINCERE, narrow-minded, man is more

dangerous in a post of administration than a common-sense man without principle. The latter can be influenced, the former can not. Which of the two is entitled to most respect is another question.

| pee is a craving in every human heart

for sympathy,—to be understood, touched, and able to touch again. He is more or less than man who can do without this. One of the saddest things in poverty and struggle is when it destroys this capability. The mere external things of life very soon cease to affect us either way, but we never become recon- ciled to hardness and uncongeniality. It is not so much where we live as with whom.

jek is a pitiable thing when we see a nature

originally sympathetic driven back on itself, and turned .to bitterness through its surroundings. It reminds one of Pharaoh’s blasted ears of corn which devoured the good.

ejpene first thing for those who live together

is to understand one another. To com- prehend is to know and to embrace. Without the one we cannot have the other.

MEN AND MANNERS. 7

O-DAY I heard a very obstinate, irrational man say of a broad-minded, reasonable one,—“ He has no mind of his own.” The other might have retorted that some people keep their mind their own by making it so narrow that nobody else can get into it. They mistake wilfulness for reason, and make sure of being right by shutting their eyes to everything that can be urged against their opinion.

Weceame rn IH

HE manifestation of unselfish affection, ota even the expression of it, is a token of a higher nature in man and a presage of im- mortality. Where there is a love stronger than death there must be a soul stronger also. a

N° man is so ready for a quarrel with another as he who has a quarrel with himself.

[pte is nothing more opposed to real

friendship, and the sacrifice that it re- quires, than avarice. A man may be a dis- interested friend who has many other vices,— such as pride, ambition, vanity, or even sensu- ality,—and he may do a generous act out of true attachment. But a man who strongly loves money will not, or, if he seems to do it, is urged by some constraint he cannot avoid.

Ae ea

8 MEN AND MANNERS.

Many a friend has been sacrificed since the time of Judas to the love of money. ‘There- fore, in choosing friends let there not be the absence in them of all generosity.

A MAN can frequently recognise and praise

a noble action which he is incapable of performing. God has put this testimony to the true and heroic into the heart of humanity. It is a great thing to hold aloft the most exalted standard of the ideal, though in its highest form it is above the mass of men,— above all but the few who at rare intervals are “called and chosen.” The ideal prevents utter degradation, for it constantly reminds us of what should be, and of what would be, but for the base within us. The worst sign of an age is not evil living, but low standards and cynical judgments—though, indeed, these two go together.

“ QEEING many things, but thou observest “* “not.” The difference between sight and observation is the perpetual distinction which turns up among men, and is at the root of all growth in the lower or the higher wisdom. Many go through life as the figurehead of a ship goes round the world, and end the voyage with no effect from it, but that they return more battered and weather-beaten.

MEN AND MANNERS. 9

ie some people, self is not so much a vice _ of the heart as of the mind. They are not selfish, but self-absorbed. They would not do a dishonest or dishonourable thing to gain an individual profit, perhaps the reverse ; but they are so constituted that they cannot take interest in anything beyond their own immediate circumstances and plans, and how they may levy contributions for these. It is a sad defect when the centripetal force of the mind overbalances the centrifugal and makes it, like a whirlpool, draw all to the point of self. It is divine wisdom that urges the habit of “looking not on our own things, but also — on the things of others.” Herein Christianity

and true courtesy are one. eee

SOME people never know when they are

tiresome in their talk. It is not so much self-absorption in them as a want of sympa- thetic tact. They are not en rapport, and

they radiate dulness.

(Pee are people entirely unsuitable for

constant activity who, nevertheless, are pressed into it by? a dull sense of duty, without a spark of sentiment.

The opposite of this is sometimes seen in people who love excitement, but who are so indolent that they lie passive and demand amusement from others.

The first are mill-horses, the second wind- mills.

—

10 MEN AND MANNERS.

HE man who would take an unfair advan- tage of an enemy cannot be trusted as a friend. venerane

“ae ANY a man who would shrink from a ee acim false statement will give a false colour A fiat ee” st

—which is still more unfair, because more difficult to correct. \

ee

epee things make men polite: fear of

offending fashion, love of approbation, or, genuine kindness, It is generally easy to know the last.

dpe are some people who understand

courtesy so little, that when you write “Your hitimble servant” they take you pre- cisely at your word.

So have a habit of differing from the

opinions of others from their constitu- tional téiiperament, others from an idea that they keep up their importance and show their independence. The last reveals a weak mind, the first a contorted one.

EN should not indulge in boasts of their

religious assurance. False lives have

no right, saintly lives have no need, and in or- dinary lives it is out of place.

MEN AND MANNERS. 11

Le is a minority of men who translate good inclinations into principles, a still smaller minority who translate principles into acts. ret

ane are many men who denounce the Pharisee and affect the Publican, but they ee omit his penitence and prayer. ~~

| MET a man who, in the midst of a Paes interesting narrative to which we were

listening, rushed in to correct an immaterial

date, and, after circumstantial proof and worry- ei!

ing the whole story into inextricable confusion, ” |

looked round with the conviction of having

done a service. At first it seemed like vanity,

or a diseased scrupulosity for correctness, but

it turned out to be a sheer inability to com-

prehend the relations of things. To see the nee of things, and let the little be oe

ittle, lies at the root of common sense, and

makes a man as pleasant a listener as a re-

hearser. For these men, in their turn, take

revenge on themselves by their endless self-

corrections, and confuse the plainest tale by

an infinitude of particulars. The best way is

not to oppose them, and to call up Pope’s

lines :—

“Why has not man a microscopic eye ? For this plain reason, man is not a fly.” 4

\\/ HAT is wanted for graphic narrative is aoe not many details, but characteristic ones, allowing the imagination to fill up the rest.

12 MEN AND MANNERS.

Some men gain this so far by study, but I have heard numbers of uneducated men who had it by natural tact. The old ballads have it so. The most perfect of all are some of the Bible narratives —so brief, yet so endlessly sug- gestive to the fancy, no less than to the spirit ! :

i is worth remarking how much the poco pit—a little more—will add to a whole character. Two persons may seem to have equal eléments of mental power, but there is an indescribable somewhat in the one which gives a flavour to all he has, or a certain direc- tion to it, and which makes him more diverse, or even opposite. Mood is its passive form, _purpose its active. It is like the perfume of a plant, or the amalgam in a conglomerate stone, and gives the man his individuality. By the first of these—what may be called the per- fume of a character—our likings and friend-

_ ships are determined; by the second—the

purpose of it—we guide our moral judgment. If we are to have a true friend these should

go together.

So grace is a new and higher individu- ality, having its resemblance to the above— the new fragrance and higher aim which take the natural and consecrate it. It is exceed- ingly beautiful when it descends on the naturally fair, and it is with peculiar regret we have sometimes to say, “One thing thou lackest.”

MEN AND MANNERS. 13

M ANY go through David’s sins without

his repentance, and Solomon’s experi- ence without his conclusions, and these are the men who rail at both.

WEAK nature is injured by prosperity, a finer, by adversity,—the finest, by neither, aaa

~

MAN is sometimes ridiculed as womanly —

effeminate. The true man should have

some of the woman’s soul within him, as a

woman should have some of the man’s. A

man who wants tenderness and tact wants a

complete nature ; he is waimed, and in emer- gencies blind.

ARCUS AURELIUS, the good Roman Emperor, desired that he might be pre-

vented by law from, having the power to ,

injure his fellow-men.

We should wish this both from distrust of ourselves, and for the sake of the independent feeling of our fellows.

fee longer we live the less we are inclined

to be hero-worshippers, seeing more fail- ings in the men and things we revered in the enthusiasm of youth. “I have seen an end of

Sony

14 MEN AND MANNERS.

all perfection; ” but it is well if we can add, “thy commandment is exceeding broad.” The more, however, we get to know the tempta- tions and trials of men, and feel how our own accomplishment falls short of our ideal, the

more charitable we become. =

A KEEN sense of actual life and things

sometimes indisposes a man to the ideal and the spiritual. A kind of incredulity about them is apt to creep over him. This is the

to cultivate the imaginative side—for this also is a true side—as a counterpoise.

WE are often surprised that men remark-

able for their power in dialectics, or their skill in analysis, are led into mistakes from which the plain common-sense of their fellow-men is a protection. Men may become the captives of their own strength and subtlety.

Nene

ges are people affecting high fashion

who resemble the Pharisees in giving tithes of mint, and anise, and cumin, while they neglect the weightier matters. They are punctilious about words and little ceremonials, and they make up for this by showing no

MEN AND MANNERS.’ 15

regard for the deeper feelings of their fellow- &

men. Feebleness of mind and smallness of soul find in this their natural outcome.

A SICKLY vanity and lofty dogmatism go very well together, and are never more prominent than in those who declaim against

AON

Merrenanirs Sa

HE use a man makes of his “adjectives” shows his ¢aste, the use he makes of his “conjunctions” shows his logic.

“HE fanatic and enthusiast are often con- founded, but they differ widely.

The fanatic has a hot head and a cold heart.

The enthusiast, a warm heart and a head that may be cold or warm.

The enthusiast will go to the martyr’s pile.

The fanatic will kindle it.

But sometimes they meet in one. Richard Cameron was an enthusiast ; Philip the Second, a fanatic ; Ignatius Loyola was both.

HE old word of Nehemiah comes often true, “But their nobles put not their necks to the work of the Lord.” The more honour to those who break through the laws

fe iy i ry } RS ohn af yt pee HAE NR, ie f yt | laa qa Fa) § t } t o #G i ¥ ¢ fp Coty f = a! bé-#

¢ =

16 MEN AND MANNERS.

of caste and fashion, and the temptations of sensual ease or selfish esthetic tastes.

je is surprising how many ambitious men

when mounting the Capitol in triumph, forget that the Tarpeian rock is on the other side.

A VERY narrow man cannot be a very

candid man. He must either deny good in people who are outside his circle, or must attribute it to something else than real prin- ciple. An uncandid man, conversely, is a narrow man; and those self-called broad people who find only Pharisaism in principle, are narrower than the sincere Pharisee.

ol Pate who are most anxious to get pos- session of secrets are least to be trusted with the keeping of them.

A MAN may be aware of his want of almost

everything but common-sense. Why ? Because he needs common-sense to discern his want of it. It is this want which gives us impregnable dogmatists and _ infallible critics.

pes part of a Chairman is to bring forward others and secure them a hearing—no more. He may err by obtruding himself as

MEN AND MANNERS. 17

much as by allowing the intrusion of others. The part of a host is the same to his com- pany. Bacon says, “The honourable part of talk is to give the occasion.”

— is a class of men who see a great

many things to be said against their own side, and a great deal for its adversaries. They fulfil the precept, “ Love your enemies,” but we could almost wish they were among them, that we might have some chance of im- partiality, and a small portion of their favour.

ie speaks of the extreme people

who argue “for the rights of bigots to think for others, and for the rights of fools to think for themselves.” This seems very con- clusive against the poor fools, but somebody will then have to think for them, and the bigots will naturally put in their claim. The only line of safety is the right of every man to think for himself, and it is to be hoped that, in a fair field, wisdom will carry the day.

A MAN may be hindered from attempting great works in action or literature by a low view of the world’s destiny. (What avails it? It comes to nothing.) In other cases, by high views of his ideal, and low views of himself. B

18 MEN AND MANNERS.

The first of these is often overcome by vanity. The second should be overcome by duty.

But there are cases in which latent pride is the cause of inaction. True humility forgets itself and cares not for the world’s estimate, if duty be done.

gp ee many young people are like an Afolian

harp—open to all passing breezes, and sending out beautiful responses to them, but without any ground melody of their own. This is some one’s definition of a poet—a very false one, for it requires that the highest utterance be characterless.

1h reading Arctic voyages, or the lives of

seafaring men in general, one sees more of the fear of God than in many other ranks of life. “They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; these see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep.”

—

ape understand another’s opinions we must

not look, as it were, at the windows of the house, we must get, with some measure of human sympathy, inside. Some people stand at a distance and see only the glare on the glass; others go up and look in, with their faces to it, and are surprised that this is resented,

aetince

MEN AND MANNERS. 19

HERE are some natures that move with great intensity and vehemence, but they

have hard, contracted views and sympathies— a torrent between high and narrow banks. Others spread out into a kind of limitless latitude, and scarcely move, breadth having made them stagnate into a shallow indiffer- ence, A third class manages to maintain a broad indifference with a very narrow move- ment, like those two dead-looking lakes in the west of Ireland that touch each other by a strait channel, and flow through it first one way, then the other, according to the rainfall or the wind—a combination of latitudinarian- ism and limitation not uncommon. Those natures are rare and lofty that unite expan- sion and earnestness in the true way, and become rivers that fertilise continents. In One they meet in the most perfect manner, and realise the ancient figure, “The glorious Lord will be unto us a place of broad rivers

and streams.” Christ is so far above the narrow-._

ness and prejudice of His surroundings, so much broader than all time, that His Chureh j is only slowly growing into the comprehensiveness of His heart, and yet He is equally intense in moral purpose,—* The zeal of Thine house hath devoured me,’—watchful over the ful- ness of truth in its rounded perfection, and yet tolerant of every man who is faithful to a single beam of it! His followers in general carry off fragments from some one side of His character, and set these in opposition to each other. They tear the perfect robe in pieces,

20 MEN AND MANNERS.

and these they use as contending ensigns. We have had the broad mind and the fervid heart in individuals; when shall we have them in the Church as a whole?

Ayesha some men speak of nailing their

flag to the mast, they would be more correct if they spoke of nee their ships to the quay.

y V HEN some great man dies, there is often

a class of men who entrench their opinions behind his grave, because they think regard for the dead will protect them. They remind one of the Communists of Paris taking refuge at last in the cemetery of Pere-la-Chaise,

MAN who receives the truth of God to

give it forth again is like the Sea of Galilee, through which the river Jordan flows. He is kept clear and sweet by the passage of the stream. He who absorbs without giving back is like the Dead Sea, which is left stag- nant and bitter because it has no outlet.

AN without the Christian Sabbath would

be reduced to a caterpillar for six days,

to become a butterfly on the seventh—if not a caterpillar all through.

(Gi es we do not see the value and beauty of a friend until death has taken him away, as ancient patriarchs recognised the

MEN AND MANNERS. 2)

angel when he turned to leave, or the prophet his ascending Master. How tender and beau- tiful the light that comes from them! What wistful arms we stretch! My father! My mother! My sister!

Ne MAN must not seek happiness as his chief end, or he finds it not; It fol- lows duty as waves flow in on the furrow of the ship’s strong keel. This is the deduction of right reason, of morals, of experience, of Scripture. God first, then, all in Him.

A sey ar

IRCUMSTANCES seem to control and make men, but men can control and bend circumstances. Scipio stumbled as he landed “on the coast of Africa; his soldiers were terrified at the omen, but ‘ine seized the ground and said, “I seize thee, Africa; thou

shalt not escape me.”

“pe only way to give ease in society is to feel it. Over-affectation of it is as re- straining as its opposite.

\ X 7HATEVER a man can put on he is not, and to the extent to which he can put it on he wants it.

L HE efforts of an unregenerate man to resist evil may be compared to the waves that break away from the receding

22 MEN AND MANNERS.

tide: they are vain and constantly declining struggles against the backward movement of the heart. The falls of a regenerate man, on the other hand, are the recessions of the wave in an advancing tide; the great progression will still be Godward. What we want is the flow of the new nature to overbear all the obstacles of wind and sand, and this must be given by attraction from above. |

UNYAN, no doubt, had his reasons for making Christian precede Christiana in the pilgrimage to the Celestial City, but the reverse order is the more general one. If the woman was “first in the transgression,” it is now, more frequently, her faith which is the helper of man’s reason or unreason. In the . picture of a German artist (Friedrich) a cross is seen standing on a rocky peak which towers up from a gloomy depth, through thick mists, into the clear heaven. To the cross a woman is seen clinging with the one hand, while she stretches out the other to the man who is struggling to ascend behind her. It is a picture often verified in life, and worthy to be pondered by wives, sisters, and mothers. “Her children rise up and call her blessed ; her husband also, and he praiseth her.”

OILEAU’S brother said “that he did not like the Jesuits, because they were people who lengthen the creed and shorten the com-

MEN AND MANNERS. 23

mandments.” Do not all those pursue the same course, who in their zeal for orthodoxy forget brotherly love, who immolate charity on the altar of faith, and imagine the incense acceptable to God ?

EER is a second growth sometimes on

grain, in abnormal seasons, which blights the good of the harvest ; and there is occa- sionally a re-appearance of youthful follies in ‘old men which is one of the most painful sights in human nature. It is a happy thing when men come to their graves neither before their time nor after it, but “in a full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in, in his season.” May not the ancients have been thinking of such an aftergrowth in old age when they framed their proverb, “Whom the gods love die young” ?

HAT the world should admire its own heroes and not God’s, is natural enough. It is merely a case of mutual flattery. The world praises those who show that they value its praise. It can understand them and ap- preciate their motives, but not those of the others, unless it is ready to follow them in self-sacrifice.

Not to join in the world’s flattery of success, when it is unaccompanied by moral worth— not to bow at the shrine of mere wealth, how- ever it may have been gained, or however it

Wail ig =| HOSE Christians are blessed who need to i. Lek

a

PY, 4

24 MEN AND MANNERS.

may be used, is one Scriptural token of a good and brave man ;—‘“‘In whose eyes a vile person is contemned ; but he honoureth them that fear the Lord.” The judgment of the common mind is struck in this :—‘ Men will praise thee, when thou doest well to thyself.”

leave their simple views of childhood’s faith no more than the field-lark-does “her nest—rising right over it to look at God’s morning sun, and his wide, beautiful world, singing a clear, happy song, and then sinking straight down again to their heart’s home. But those are not less blessed who, like the dove, lose their ark for a while, and return to it, having found no rest for the sole of their foot save there. They have a deeper experi- ence within, and carry a higher and wider message to the world. The olive leaf in the mouth, plucked from the passing flood, is more than the song at coming daylight. It is as Paul’s “Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory,” compared with the children’s

as Hosannah.”}

I CAN quite sympathise with Charles Lamb

when he joined the audience in heartily hissing his own play, for no one sometimes is more disgusted with a production and more alive to its shortcomings than the author; but one can, notwithstanding, see in the tone of the

| ; mend

MEN AND MANNERS. 25

criticism where the offence lies. Heterodoxy, or the affectation of it, would cover a multi- tude of sins with a class of men at present, who all the while deplore the misery to which earnest thought (?) has brought them, and will take no word of comfort that implies faith in anything real in God or in His universe.

SOuE minds suffer from rough contact

with the world as does the bloom of a peach. Cowper is a type of them. Others are improved like a stone in which the finest veins lie hidden till friction brings them into view. We should be careful how we handle natures till we know something of their con- stitution.

i is a much easier thing to form schemes

for the regeneration of humanity and the reconstruction of the map of knowledge, than it is to go into one’s own heart, and to work quietly for the improvement of human beings around us.

HICH sees most of a stream? The

leaf that circles in an eddy and looks out, or that which floats with the current ? The last moves amid the same surroundings, the first sees the change as it passes by. A man may lose view of the world in the battle of its movement, while another, from a quiet corner, observes it all.

wee pra

[~ VAedhs sip

a of.

(>

26 MEN AND MANNERS. \ X THEN ready to be disturbed in our self-

possession by the pressure of conven- tional rules and social forms, it is a source of confidence to reflect that human nature is broader and deeper than them all, and that what is dictated by natural good feeling is in the main right. To respect ourselves and question our heart is the way to be delivered from this fear. This will give a uniform bear- ing wherever we are, and make us respect what is genuine in any other. “Be pitiful, be courteous.” The heart is the true spring for the right manner.

If a young person has an admiration of an

exaggerated kind for some hero in litera- ture or life, it is better not to break it rudely. It might injure the power of being enthusi- astic in anything, and throw distrust into the exercise of personal judgment, Rather supply higher models, and let the mind correct its own mistakes. This supposes, however, that the object of admiration is not immoral or untruthful—that it is only falsetto, not false. In this last distinction lies the difference between wise Christian training and Jesuitism.

N OST men act from inclination and find grounds afterwards.

It is important in dealing with men to know

whether we have to deal with reasons or pre-

teats. An inexperienced man presses in on

MEN AND MANNERS. 27

pretexts and refutes them, but he lays bare a deeper repugnance and rouses irritation.

We can confront reasons, we must take pretexts in flank; or, rather, where we find pretexts we must try to act on the nature and change it.

At the same time, a true man may often have to give a lower reason than the chief one for not yielding to a particular course. But it should never be a false reason. We may use a shield, we should not wear a mask.

“Pn are two ways in which small

natures accept the generous sacrifices of others. The one is, with a feigned remon- strance at the greatness of the sacrifice ; the other, with ingenious reasons diminishing its greatness to the person who makes it. The last of these may have less hypocrisy than the first, but it shows even greater coldness of heart, with absence of moral perception.

[GrowtH or Minp AND CHARACTER. ]

UILDING a character is like building a house,—we cannot make it broader than

the foundation, though it is easy to make it narrower. Yet we can build upward and make the most of the ground we have. Here the

danger lies in over-building till we overbalance.

ia

ape capacity of growth is that which, more than anything else, distinguishes one mind from another.

Nn

on

28 MEN AND MANNERS.

INDS which derive their chief stimulus from passion come quickly to maturity. It is questionable whether if Burns and Byron had lived, the world would have had much more from them. They had worked out their vein. Minds that have the materialistic bent, sustained by reason, grow longer, but their growth is one of accretion,—addition of parts,—not swelling out into new forms of life. Hobbes studied Greek when above eighty. Where feeling and the love of simple nature prevail there is the progress of a living soul. Wordsworth, for example, had freshness to the end, and where true religion enters with its real power there is seen the presage of immortality. “They renew their youth as the eagle,” and “bring forth fruit in old age,”

ORE important way of growing in know-

ledge is not to be ashamed of our ignorance. Many will not inquire lest they be thought not to know, and they profess to be satisfied with an explanation, from fear of being considered obtuse.

T is not isolated great deeds which do most to form a character, but small, continuous acts, touching and blending into one another. The greenness of a field comes not from trees, but from blades of grass,

MEN AND MANNERS. 29

pipet are no anomalies in the universe, but there are what miners call faults. The faults are the entrances of deeper law. The entrance of the deepest is beyond man, and here lies the supernatural. The greatest part of philosophy, as Matthias Claudius? says, is “on the other side of the churchyard.” Thus man is taught reverence, humility, and all the virtues that stream in from the unknown infinite. The best thing for our growth is not darkness nor light, but chiaroscuro.

1 Matthias Claudius, born 1743, died 1815, His works, deeply spiritual, written in an age of rationalism, appeared chiefly in the Wandsbecker Bote, a Journal edited by him- self in Wandsbeck, near Hamburg, where he spent the greater part of his life.—Eb.

NATIONS AND POLITICS.

NATION cannot remain satisfied in

“material prosperity when it is kept in chains, any more than man can live “ by bread alone.” It will awake to the desire of liberty and self-government. Mammon-worship, how- ever successful, palls. A despot may be sincerely desirous of promoting the interests of the nation, material, intellectual, moral, but, refusing freedom, he will always fail, for he refuses the necessary atmosphere. God has made man’s nature to aspire after self-govern- ment, and it is better for him to meet with mishaps and miseries in this course than to be governed by another in comfort. The one has a future, the other has not. He is becom- ing by his errors wiser and greater, and ful- filling more the end of his being. A child shows the nature of the man by desiring to do a thing himself. It is the great principle of personality struggling in the human heart, and this protests equally against despotism and

communism in the political domain, and their 30

NATIONS AND POLITICS. 31

parallels, Romanism and Pantheism, in the spiritual. The principle of personality will always, in the end, revolt against the tyranny either of the one or of the many. It is made to be subject to One, but to Him as the absolute centre of reason, righteousness, and love; and even to Him, only through its own free sur- render. A free personal God on the part of the government, and reasonable service, with liberty, on the part of the governed. This highest sovereignty Romanism would eclipse and Pantheism would supplant.

NE sees a constant succession of families rising and falling. The religious prin- ciple of one generation gives it habits of in- dustry, economy, and moderation. Then fol- lows in the next the influence of the worldly spirit, in luxury, self-indulgence, perhaps vice, till it is pushed aside by a new and more vigorous race as yet untainted.

So it is with nations. Poor and religious they rise, till luxury and materialism pervade them, and some other takes the lead. The nation is longer in sinking, as it takes longer time to be entirely affected. It is like water, which does not freeze until each layer, cooled at the surface, sinks to the bottom, and uniform coldness pervades the mass. May we hope that the influence of Christianity, though it fails in many families, will save the nation as a whole ?

32 NATIONS AND POLITICS.

FEATURE of modern civilisation, as

distinguished from ancient, is the num- ber of rival powers that balance and keep each other wakeful and energetic. A universal monarchy seems now impossible, and therein is security from any great collapse. When- ever Rome was left without a rival she began to decline.

Another feature is the greater variety of forces at work in each nation. Ancient com- monwealths represented much more one idea— absolute power, democracy, art, commerce, or warlike genius. These now are found inter- mingled, checking one another, and securing a longer national life.

Still another is the diffusion of knowledge wider through the world, and deeper among the masses. And, more than all, the vitalising influence of Christianity.

ATIONAL vanity is diverse in form but

one at heart. In America the history

of the world begins with the American Revolu-

tion. Among Spaniards the history of Spain commences with Noah’s deluge.

IBERTY has a mighty power in elevat- ' ing a nation—see Greece, the Italian Republics, etc.,—but liberty has tended also to their fall through the feuds it has brought. It does not give toleration of one another's views, nor does it free from lust of conquest.

NATIONS AND POLITICS. 33

How many nations once possessed of liberty have lost it! It needs moral principle to guide liberty.

Nor will even Gospel truth preserve a people from destruction. Many nations who once enjoyed it have it no more. We must live the truth, and for this the Spirit of God is needed, and prayer for His influence. “ The holy seed is the substance thereof.”

1°T°HE causes of disaffection in Ireland are

various ; partly religious, for there is no doubt the priests have long fostered discon- tent, though now setting their faces against it because it threatens to go against themselves ; partly national, the old Anglo-Saxon grudge ; and partly social, the poverty of masses of the people who blame the Government for their misery, and having nothing to lose would be glad of any change, and give ear to any scheme however wild. When one asks the cause of Irish poverty it opens up a wide question. It arises in part from the unhappy effects of Romanism, and ignorance allied with it; partly from long misgovernment, perpetu- ated not now in the laws, but in a selfish landlordism ; and partly from the improvident and careless habits of large masses of the people, which some think a vice of the blood, and some the result of causes above referred to. Altogether it is a perplexing case, and as hard to cure as to patch up a poor Irishman’s tatters into a whole suit again. After all, I

1 This paragraph is an extract from a letter dated March

Cc

34 NATIONS AND POLITICS.

have a kindly feeling to the poor fellow, and think much might be made of him by kindness and judicious treatment. Of course Fenianism must be put down, it is bad every way; but something should be done after that, with the Irish Church, and I see nothing for it but a clean sweep. I trust there is principle enough in England and Scotland to prevent a general endowment of all sects. This would be con- fusion worse confounded. Then something should be done to put the tenants on a better footing. I do not mean tenant-right, for that asks too much, but something that would check landlord-wrong. We have a right to say to these men, “If we are to protect your property from Fenians and marauders, we have a right to require that you do not pro- voke men by your standing on the edge of what you call your privileges. The owner has certain rights in the land, but the country at large has certain rights also, and where would your rights be if we did not guard them? Let us have no entail, nor game laws, nor interference with the religious and _ political rights of tenants, and let there be arrangement for leases which shall make a tenant know how he stands, and give him an equitable title to the fruit of his improvements.” But this is a large question, and I should not have opened it.

HERE is a favourite idea with some at present that latitude determines forms of religion, and this is employed to disparage

NATIONS AND POLITICS. 35

all attempts to diffuse Christian truth in what we believe to be its purer form. It is said that the Celtic and Southern nations tend to more sensuous forms of faith, the Teutonic and Northern to simpler and more spiritual. Motley gives this as one reason why the Southern Netherlands (Belgic) have remained Romanist, while the Northern (Dutch) became Protestant. Macaulay, with his easy off-hand generalisations and wholesale antitheses, makes much of this idea, and Buckle does the same everywhere.

It is an illustration of how anything can be made out by choosing half the facts—a com- fortable and easy method, too much indulged in by our press and periodical literature, but unworthy of historians.

As to the Netherlands, the Flemings of Antwerp, Ghent, and Bruges, have as little Celtic blood as the Dutch, and yet they are more bigoted in Romanism than the Walloons or French Belgians. Their country was not so defensible as Holland against the blood- thirsty legions of Alva, else the case might have been different. They were crushed from with- out, and gave soldiers and martyrs to the Protestant faith as few countries have done.

In Spain it is difficult to say whether the Celtic or Gothic element prevails, or a race different from either (Iberian), so that it is not a question of blood. The enthusiasm of the people was roused for Christianity against the Moors, and the inquisitors used it against Protestants as non-Catholic, and therefore un-

36 NATIONS AND POLITICS.

national—the same thing that makes Ireland intensely Roman Catholic.

In France, as is well known, the balance wavered, till Catherine de Medicis, for political reasons, and the St. Bartholomew massacre, swayed it to the side it has since maintained. The faults committed by the Protestant leaders in Cardinal Richelieu’s time, and then the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes completed the prostration of the Huguenots. But French Protestantism found its warmest adherents in the south, and its forms were simpler than those adopted by most of the Teutonic races. It gave shape to Calvinism and Presbyterianism, and where the French Protestant mind becomes earnestly religious it still takes this direction.

As to Germany, parties were at first nearly balanced, as in France, but the division of the country into well-nigh independent princi- palities gave the opportunity of religious liberty. The Emperor had not the power of repression possessed by the French monarch ; where he had—in his own paternal states of Austria—we find prevailing Romanism. Hun- gary was saved from this because it had guaranteed liberties of its own, and it is half Protestant. This is not like a question of race.

In England it was Henry the Eighth’s quarrel with the Pope which gave the Reforma- tion time to establish itself. The mass of the people were no more moved by zeal for Protes- tant truth than many populations in Europe that have been driven back to Rome. A vast mass of the clergy and laity held fast to

NATIONS AND POLITICS. 37

Romanism, as Froude shows, and it was their action on the church, and the inheritance of it, as shown in portions of the Prayer-Book, which have caused the ritualism of our day.

In Scotland, a country which more than any other has had its history moulded by religious movements, we were favoured by Providence. We had a blessing where the wise man has pronounced a woe—in having a child for our king, and nobles jealous of each other. This gave the reforming party time to establish their position. In Scotland, the rising against Rome had no such persecu- tions and martyrdoms as had Flanders, France, and even Spain.

Italy has not been mentioned. Like France and Spain, it was kept Roman Catholic chiefly by force ; also, however, by the motives of lucre and pride, and by the fact that more than in any other country great numbers of the upper and middle classes had become infidel, and were indifferent to any questions of religious reform. This is the great difficulty in the way of Bible truth among all these popula- tions in our day—not their love of sensuous worship, but their indifference.

As to Celtic blood in the United Kingdom, it is to be remembered that Scotland has more of it than England, yet it is more decidedly Protestant. If the Irish Celts are Romanist, the Welsh and Scottish Celts are fervidly and almost universally Protestant.

As to northern latitudes, if Scotland has adopted a simpler form of worship than its

38 NATIONS AND POLITICS.

southern neighbour, it is not so elsewhere. In Germany the northerns are more Lutheran, the southerns more Calvinistic. The Swedish and Danish races are Lutheran, while the French, Italian, and Spanish, when they become Pro- testant, almost invariably take the simpler forms. In Switzerland, the northern and Teu- tonic cantons are divided between Romanism and the simple Protestant forms—the old German cantons, Lucerne, Uri, Schwytz, are strongly Romanist. The southern or French are divided in like manner, but the Protes- tantism of Vaud, Neufchatel, and Geneva is still simpler.

If we come to a wider range, Mohammed- anism, which is the simplest of all religions in external worship, being without priesthood and ritual, prevails only among southern races. Compare, for example, the religion of the Turks, Persians, and Arabs, with the cere- monial of the Russian church, and see how this theory of latitude holds.

On the whole, then, it is not so much a thing of blood and climate as these hasty generalisers would have us believe. The more we go into history the more we see in national character, a mingling of providential arrange- ment and the working of human will—turn- ing-points here and there, where some grand opportunity is given, or some great man rises, and the stream of national life takes its colour for generations. History points not to race so much as to the power of personalities, acting freely and gathering round them free agencies—

NATIONS AND POLITICS. 39

Luther, Calvin, Knox, and suchlike—and these are shadows of the existence and living influence of One great personal Being who has touched the world in its centre in Christ, and touches it again and again in God-given men. So much is true in “hero-worship,” if above it we put a God who gives the hero, and below it, responsible men who admire and are grateful.

ACAULAY attributes the intelligence and energy of Scotsmen to the system of parish schools, and men who have no other praise for Knox make this his crowning glory. But the parish schools were not the cause of Scotland being what it is; they were only an effect of the great movement which gave Scot- land life, and then they contributed in their own way—important, but still subordinate. That movement was the Reformation and the form it took.

It sprang from the heart of the people at the stroke of God’s Word, and it had always to go back to the people for protection. Its friends had to defend it against the aristocracy and monarchs supported by the High Church power in England, and there was, under God, no safety except in making the people ac- quainted with their own principles, and appeal- ing to them to stand by them. Happily these principles touched the great questions of the heart and conscience, by which, more than any other, men can be roused to enthusiasm. The preaching of every Sabbath, while it made

40 NATIONS AND POLITICS.

them God-fearing, Christian men, helped to make them also friends of freedom and right. Each secession from the National Church went in the same direction. It had to justify itself before the national conscience on the ground of the Bible, and it could not stand without making its adherents intelligent and inquiring. The sermon, if at times too polemical, sent them away discussing it, and it became the topic of thought and argument in every group and family. In this way more than any other, the national mind of Scotland has been fashioned, hard-headed and combative to an extreme, but thoughtful, inquiring, and self- reliant. It was this which made the people send their children to the schools, and taught them to exercise the knowledge they had gained there. The intellect was stirred through the conscience. Let those who attribute Scot- tish intelligence to the parish school, ask them- selves how the existence of national schools is doing so little in the Roman Catholic parts of Treland? It is the want of a strong national life to kindle the love of thought and inquiry. One may make a fire here and there in a moor, but without a wind the heather will never take flame. Yet there may be another flame petroleum-kindled—intelligence of its kind, divorced from conscience.

ee Scottish people, I believe, are by nature sceptical. Their shrewdness, caution, sus- picion of appearances, are the worldly forms of

NATIONS AND POLITICS. 4]

it. If they have been saved from infidelity it is because, deep down, there is a strong emo- tional nature and a moral sense to which the Bible has made its appeal.

pee project of making the mass of the

Scottish people members of the Episcopal Church could only succeed were their history blotted out.

It could never be by conversion—only by a materialistic indifference creeping over them ; and then I should fear they would slide into scepticism. But better things are in store.

le is a matter of frequent remark, that bad

systems are destroyed, not when they are at their worst, but when they are in the pro- cess of an attempted reform. Witness the French monarchy at the Revolution, compared with its state under Louis xv. The reason of this seems to be, that the reform is forced on by a change in public opinion which goes for- ward at an accelerated rate, faster than the reform can be effected. If the improvement could be made freely from within, it might still be in time. There is the same difference in the individual between a forced restitution which has no merit in it, and a genuine spon- taneous repentance. Some have concluded that it is better not to reform, since providence and history seem against it ; but the true lesson is, Reform in time ; providence and history have their “ Too late ! ”

42 NATIONS AND POLITICS.

aaa is great danger, in contending for freedom, either civil or religious, of our making it the end instead of the means. The end is righteousness in things civil, truth in things sacred. Liberty, without the considera- tion that truth is its end, becomes libertinism, which turns in a circle to despotism again.

Liberty, or the pursuit of it, must also be founded on truth. There is an attempt by some to base it on the view that truth is uncertain, and that we should therefore give tolerance to anything. But the true ground is, that the individual right of conscience is indestructible, because divine, and that its freedom is the necessary condition of attain- ing truth.

Lessing has put, in his paradoxical way, the false view of freedom. “If God had all truth in His right hand, and in His left the search for truth, I should fall before Him reverently and say, Father, give the left.” It expresses the fact that truth without the search for it would be but half truth, and would leave the man unformed ; but it forgets that search for truth can be maintained only by the belief that it can be found. The sub- jective could not exist without the objective, the objective would lose its full value without the subjective.

PSEEDOM without truth is anarchy; truth without freedom is stagnation.

HISa ORY.

HE knowledge of history is perhaps the most efficient safeguard against vain and windy theories of social regeneration and theological discovery. If men would read they would find that social advance is rooted in the wise use of the past, and that most theological novelties are very old. It is so Much easier to spin fancies from the inner consciousness and attach them to little sprigs like gossamer webs, than to go down to the roots of things in the slow growth of know- ledge. F SE EE stages of history can be traced in almost every country. 1. The bare Chronicles—notes of striking events, brief and disjointed. 2. The Romantic— pictorial description (Herodotus). 3. The Critical— events in their causes and effects (Thucy- dides).

HERE never was a greater untruth

uttered than the saying attributed to

Frederick the Great, that “Providence is 43

44 HISTORY.

always with the strongest battalions.” All history shows that mere physical force is dominated by intelligence, and that intellect is conquered in the end by moral power.

af pee Making of England,’ by John

Richard Green, is a book of wonder- ful painstaking and great research, containing the Conquest of England by the Saxons, Jutes, and Angles, and their wars with one another, till they were merged in one, from 449, when the Jutes landed in Kent, till 829, when the Northumbrians submitted to Ecgberth, king of Mercia or Mid-England. A good deal of it is inference and conjecture, and dry confused reading, impossible to remember with its endless battles and changes of boundaries. It is comparatively free from the assumption of Palgrave and Freeman about overlordship and wperia, but somewhat overcharged with laudation of the Anglo-Saxon race.

HERE are two great periods in the history

of Scotland—the one, the struggle for national, the other for religious independence, as represented by Wallace and Knox. The first made a nation, the second a people. The first welded Scotland into one, and gave that desperate earnestness and tenacity—vperfervi- dum ingenium et dwrum—to the character, which continued ever after to mark it. The nobles, almost every one in succession, deserted their country and sold themselves to England, the

HISTORY. 45

nation, never. There, beneath, was the same stubborn will to be themselves, and the first step taken by any noble, however honoured and powerful, over to our “auld enemies of Eng- land,” destroyed all his influence. This may be regarded as the preparation for that second and greater conflict with religious despotism in the Romish and English Church, against king and noble, that brought out the people self-poised and self-reliant under God, and that has given Scotland a name in the world far beyond her population and resources. “If Providence,’ an eminent Frenchman said, “had been pleased to make thirty millions of Scotsmen instead of three, they would have conquered the world.’ The Scottish nation owes little to its royalty, as little to its nobility, but much to its own indomitable spirit of independence, and still more to the

Bible.

=PHE great Adrian who constructed the Roman wall which is still a wonder to beholders, with its fosse, vallum, and earth- works, who looked across to the dark fastnesses of our rude fathers with that antique iron soul of his, is the same who gazed into the thick obscurity of the future in the pathetic lines— Animula, vagula, blandula, Hospes, comesque corporis, Quz nunc abibis in loca Pallidula, rigida, nudula ? Nec, ut soles dabis jocos.!

1 Tmitated by Pope—“ Vital spark of heavenly flame.”

46 HISTORY.

The strong heart that fights the outward battle is not incompatible with deep pensive thought. In the sphere of revelation, Moses, David, and Paul were men of this build. If Adrian and Paul could in some way have met! There was but half-a-century between them! There was stern persecution of Christians in his reign, and yet his marches and battles in Britain prepared the Gospel way.

T is curious to trace the wall of Adrian with its front against the open enemy, and its vallum behind for the half-subdued barbarians. Must it not be so with the Christian heart ? The difficulty is to hold the ground we have gained.

(pee is a very ancient ode in Latin on

the death of Wallace, attributed by some to his friend and chaplain, John Blair. It is evidence of the scholarship of Scotland at an early period, and that the struggles of our forefathers were not “battles of kites and crows,” but that meaning and principle governed their war for independence. Religious men should feel that, but for this, we should have been an adjunct of England, and there would have been no platform possible for Knox, Melville, and others, and for that free development of Scotland in its own way, which has enabled it to give a higher con- tribution to the British Empire and to the

HISTORY. 47

world. It is only prejudice which cannot see this, and which tries to override and sneer down a national spirit which has created not only a religious feeling, but a literature and art having an independence as marked as that which the swords of our ancestors fought out for the country. Fair-minded Englishmen like Froude have owned this. The original Latin of the ode is given in Irving’s Scotish Poets, vol. i. p. 33, and may be thus rendered—-

Unsparing Death, envious of merit’s crown,

With cruel blow has struck our noblest down. For Wallace we have left a little dust,

And for his country’s champion but a tomb, And for his sword, which case did never rust,

And gleaming arms, a pall of funeral gloom.

He left this lower world, for him too low,

And conquered Fate when bending to its blow ; He moves in brighter form through earth and sky, His fame o’er earth, his soul mid worlds on high,

Southron ! If generous spark were in thy heart, For noble foe by treachery in thy hand, Vengeance had stooped not to so base a part As scatter, town by town, through all thy land, Those limbs and features which deserved a shrine In proudest temples. Yet what gain is thine? Thou giv’st these members voice through time and space, To speak our hero’s glory, and thine own disgrace.

HE men who have done the greatest work

in the world as the founders and reno- vators of States, have been men imbued deeply with the spirit of religion. We set aside con-

48 HISTORY.

querors such as Alexander and Napoleon, although they have their place in the designs of Providence. They were burning devastators that prepared the way. We set aside also re- formers, martyrs, and preachers, as they worked directly in the religious sphere ; but we refer to such men as Gustavus Adolphus, Columbus, William of Orange the liberator of the Nether- lands, Oliver Cromwell, Washington, Gustavus Vasa, and others. Religion nerved them in action, and formed their great consolation amid the difficulties with which they had to struggle. A few exceptions, such as Frederick 11. of Prussia, might be adduced, but the other is the preponderating rule. These men have gener- ally been greatest in their adversities, and contrast wonderfully with a man like Napoleon in his childish and petulant conduct in Elba and St. Helena,

HETHER there be some ordained sym- pathy between great human crises and

the events of nature, is a question that has been asked in all time, and by men who have no superstition—a word easily used by ignor- ance to scoff at ignorance ; but certainly the human mind has been accustomed to remark appearances of it. Man believes in sympathy beyond himself, which is something,—the rain which continued for six weeks after the death of Wellington; the storm which raged all round the English coast when Cromwell was dying in the night; the storm which seemed

AISTOLRY. 49

as if it would uproot St. Helena on the night of Napoleon’s death, and when his own spirit was engaged in a fiercer conflict, with the words “Ja tée darmée” heard muttered by him; the convulsions of nature at the death of Julius Cesar; the Black Saturday, with its dark thunderstorms, when the Articles of Perth were passed; the gloom over the first Free Assembly till Chalmers gave out the , words, “O send Thy light forth and Thy truth.” Livy relates it regularly in the puerile forms of the omens in the Punic War, and Shakespeare gives it as true to nature when Duncan was being murdered.

ee Renaissance and the Reformation ap-

pealed to different parts of human nature —the one to taste, culture, humanism ; the other to conscience, heart, spirit. The first ever since has had its followers outside Chris- tianity and in it—Erasmus, Rabelais, Von Hiitten, down to Stanley and Matthew Arnold. If the one becomes sometimes hard and for- mal, the other becomes fade and falsetto.

Three great worlds open round man at the period of the Reformation,

The discovery of America—the strange, new, romantic, and kindling the imagination, giving new ideas of the habitable earth, and even of Church and State, since there was here so much that past empires, Assyrian, Roman, etc., though called universal, had never touched. Galileo’s views followed, en-

D

50 HISTORY.

larging the scope of the universe and altering man’s relation to it.

The revival of Greek and Roman literature, of the classics and humanism—a new style of taste, new ideas of liberty and law, ending the disputes of Scholastics, Scotists, Thomists, and the absolute rule of Aristotle.

The Reformation—opening up the Bible and a new world of wants and aspirations in man.

AUTHORS AND LITERATURE.

OETHE’S highest idea of duty is self- culture, to make the most of his own nature. But what he claims for himself he does not accord to others. He immolates their weakness to his strength. This enthrones force, and brings in endless struggle.

Christ puts the crown on rightly, and teaches us to love our neighbour as ourselves. He goes further, and surrenders self for others. Which of these principles is the more human, in the true sense (humane), not to say divine? It could be shown that the Christian principle gives a development to the nature incom- parably superior to the other, and a peace which passes its understanding. “And that ye remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

eye (eg. Froude) think it would have been better for Europe if the mind of

Erasmus had gained the empire over men 61; ee

52 AUTHORS

rather than Luther’s—calm literary and scientific investigation rather than religious fervour. We might have so been saved the bloody wars of opinion that followed. Very true, but it would have been by the Erasmus’ mind yielding all that needed to be fought for. Such a mind cannot fight out the battle for liberty through ages of imprisonments and scaffolds. Erasmus said, “Let others affect martyrdom, as for me I am unworthy of the honour.” “I am not of a mind to venture my life for the truth’s sake.” Galileo recanted, while poor simple men and women went to the stake with unblenched faces because they had Stephen’s vision in their souls. So little thanks do they now receive from literature for the freedom they have given it with their blood. But they neither lived nor died for such thanks, and they and literature are quits. Yet Erasmus, though he compromised, did service in preparing Luther’s way. Something more, however, than literature is needed for a nation’s emancipation. See Milton’s description of “ Zeal.”

dpe is a soft tenderness in the pathos

of Uhland which marks him off very distinctly from Heine, with his passion and impatience. Yet the dissatisfaction of the latter is more edifying than the complacency of Goethe. Better be dissatisfied with a world where God is not found than at ease in it. Both Heine and Goethe are intensely

AND LITERATURE. 53

self-conscious and self-exhibitive,—the one of his griefs, the other of his composure. The redeeming feature in Heine’s scorn is his love for his mother. It binds him to humanity like that wonderful touch of the rich man in torment, “Send to my brethren.”

D> NTE marks the progress and defect of ~the religion of his time. There is such thorough earnestness and entire conviction of another life, and of its connection with this life morally, as a judgment. This thorough conviction is at the root of the vivid material picture of it. He is so far away from the in- difference of the Epicureans and the scepticism of the Academy, that we can see there has been an immense change of spiritual atmo- sphere, a deepening of the moral nature. Contrast Horace, the Montaigne of his day, Sermonum i. 5-100, “ Credat Judzus Apella,” etc.—

“He may believe it who likes, not I. My faith is that the gods are fond of a quiet life, and if nature starts up in some prodigy, it is not my idea that the gloomy gods are showing their anger from their far- off skies.”

Dante is far away from this. See also Inferno, Canto iii., where he shows the misery of neutrality, the necessity of decision for God, and that he has apprehended the lesson of the hesitating young man, of Dives, and of the rich, godless barn-builder.

The materialism of Dante’s punishment is,

54 AUTHORS

however, a great blot. He seems to gloat over torture, and is far behind Milton in the view of sin’s punishment. “ Me, miserable, which way shall I fly?” It is the Inquisition carried into another world, and revolts our moral sense. Whence has it come? It is the Tartarus of the old Greeks strangely wedded to the Christian doctrine of moral retribution. It is slowly that the Gospel removes this, and makes clear the truth that sin 7s misery.

Canto IV.—In putting souls in the Inferno who have only had original sin—unbaptized infants, and all the heathen, Virgil, his guide, included—we see how a great and good man could be blinded by his time, both to natural feeling of divine justice, and to the way in which God’s moral law must execute its own punishment.

Dante has been blamed for the sentiment, “There is no greater pain than in our present wretchedness to remember past joy.” But it should be noted that it is put in the mouth of Francesca da Rimini, and that the tempo felice was one of guilt.

HERE is a curious contrast between the

hard Yankee practicality and the ethereal

unworldly imagination of some of their poets and writers, like Hawthorne.

PAE Emerson’s Lecture on Immortality in Dr. Stebbin’s Church, San Francisco, the following criticism appeared in the lead-

AND LITERATURE. 55

ing newspaper, Alta California :—“ All left the church feeling that an elegant tribute had been paid to the creative genius of the Great First Cause, and that a masterly use of the English language had contributed to that end.” It is almost a parallel to the critique said to have been made on the prayer of the Rey. Horace Holley by the Columbian Sentinel, “The most eloquent prayer ever addressed to a Boston audience.” ”

— says in his Diary, 1831 :—

“JT think I have got rid of Materialism. Matter no longer seems to me so ancient, so unsubduable, so certain and palpable as mind. Jam mind; whether matter or not I know not and cannot know. Glimpses into the spiritual world I have sometimes had (about the true nature of religion), the possibility after all of supernatural (really natural) in- fluences. Would they could but stay with me, and ripen into a perfect view.”

Had he followed up these glimpses he might have reached a point of view which would have given him faith in the Bible as (to us meanwhile) supernatural yet (from the supreme Divine order) natural, and accordant with laws. For the old Hebrew clothes philosophy he might have got “ Who coverest Thyself (it) with light as with a garment.”

Ciao says of Dr. Samuel Johnson— “Tf England has escaped the blood-bath of a French Revolution, and may yet, in

56 AUTHORS

virtue of this delay, and of the experience it has given, work out her deliverance calmly into a new era, let SAMUEL JOHNSON, beyond all contemporary or succeeding men, have the praise for it.”

Surely a very small cause for so great a result. The divergence of the histories must be sought much further back. If the Stuarts could have expelled the Puritan element, as Louis xiv. did the Huguenot one, the histories might have come to resemble each other. It was the religious element in Britain on the side of human right and freedom which made the movement peacefully progressive. So far as Johnson was concerned, his tendencies would have helped a French Revolution from the stormy reaction they would have produced, and they did indeed confirm the despotic character of George 111, which led to the American Revolution.

[EnauisH LitERATURE. |

| Gea remarks that Bunyan’s charac-

ters are formed not by abstracting in- dividual traits, and so leaving some one quality by itself, but by throwing in strong individual traits from common life. This is true, and marks his characters from Spenser’s, which want flesh and blood, and do not cast a shadow. And, if we can compare things so far apart, from those of Dickens, which are fre- quently galvanised peculiarities. Bunyan has the humour and sometimes grotesqueness which

AND LITERATURE. 57

show interest in real life, with a broad view of it, and at the same time a height and depth that can be given only by the light and shadow which fall from a higher sphere. The characters of Dickens, and even of Thackeray, are “men of the world who have their portion in this life”—frequently proper and moral in their way, for which we are duly thankful, but having nothing to suggest the infinite ideal. Spenser and Dickens are at two oppo- site poles: the ideal without the real—the real without the ideal.

ACON is perhaps the highest type of English thought—wide, sagacious, prac- tical, but deficient in spiritual insight—master in a wonderful measure of the wisdom of the understanding—close on the steps of Aristotle, but with little of Plato. When the English mind is unbelieving it goes by the road of rationalism, the doubts of the critic.

ARLYLE’S vision of things has intensity,

but is frequently defective in propor-

tion and shading. He sees the world in a

glare. As to his religion, some one has said

that “he had a large capital of faith not yet invested.”

ajpHe profusion of Shelley’s imagination, as well as its subtlety, is marvellous. There is amazing power in personifying

58 AUTHORS

nature, ¢g. ‘‘The Cloud” and “The Sensi- tive Plant,’ among his minor pieces. But it is of the Oriental or Indian cast, where man is absorbed in Nature. In Tennyson, Nature is made subservient to man—Nature the harmonious background. The one is Narcissus losing consciousness as it contem- plates its own mirrored reflection; the other, Pygmalion’s statue warmed into life by human feeling. In Wordsworth, the human figures fill up the foreground, much as in Claude Lorraine’s landscapes.

[April 1879. ]

par FEW weeks ago, died at Madeira, in his

thirty-fourth year, of consumption, W. K. Clifford, Professor of Mathematics, and high in his science. He was a frequent writer in the monthly periodicals, and a passionate opponent of the existence of a God. He affirmed with confidence that in a few years this would be disproved as certainly as that there is no large planet between Mercury and the sun—another striking instance, like Tyn- dall’s test of prayer, of the way in which some physicists carry their modes of proof, and ways of looking at things, into the moral and spiritual universe. They seem to become in- capable of realising even in imagination that there can be another world, pervading the material beyond the reach of physical tests, but open to an inner eye. “Verily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself.” “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

AND LITERATURE. 59

Professor Clifford had been a pronounced Ritualist, on the verge of Romanism, and then swung to the other pole-——and yet not an unnatural change, for in both there is the attempt to materialise spirit.

We have had the curious antithesis of the brothers F. W. Newman and J. H. Newman, of Matthew Arnold and Thomas Arnold, but seldom do we find the two related halves in one brief life.

MV{tEtoN tells us he studied every day on

till midnight from the age of twelve. But he lost his eyesight early. It began to fail at the age of thirty-six. Besides his well- known sonnet, references to it are found in Paradise Lost, the opening of Book Iv. The doubt whether it was cataract or gutta serena is expressed by himself. It must have been the latter, as the eye remained clear to view. His description of Michael anointing the eyes of Adam is drawn from himself. Probably their dim vision was natural to him. His descriptions go more to sound, music, etc., than to sight, and dwell upon the invisible. See that of the conflict of the angels, where the hissing and hurtling are prominent. In Dante it is the opposite—his descriptions are visible, palpable in colour and size. Compare Dante’s Satan with three heads differently coloured, and Milton’s, huge, vague, variable, and far grander. Milton’s view of God is much below the Scriptural. It is theologic and confes-

60 AUTHORS

sional, not like the “High and lofty One in- habiting eternity,” clouds and darkness round His throne.

Milton’s Paradise Lost came out of his blindness. Compare the Pilgrim’s Progress out of Bunyan’s prison, the Apocalypse out of Patmos, Luther’s Translation of the Bible from Eisenach, and many others.

[From a Letter.]

WAS reading at Tinna Park Newman’s

Apology for hs Life—how he was led to Rome. I was disappointed in it. He is an earnest, honest man, but with a narrowness that lost itself in subtleties till the plainest facts of the case were hid out of sight. It all grows out of sacramentarianism and apostolical succession, which he takes for granted, and then, of course, Rome is the goal, and he is at rest. Deny his starting-point, and he is powerless.

[From a Letter. TINNA PARK, 1866.]

RESSENSE'S Life of Christ is out, and highly spoken of. It is not aimed directly against Renan, but has him in view. The great battle of the Bible will revolve round this point, as that of Nature is coming to do round a personal God. What a sad thing to see so many of our men of science openly denying or calmly ignoring this! It is a relief when reading of it to come back and see the hand of a Creator all around one.

AND LITERATURE. 61

The primroses are sown on every bank at present, the violets peeping out from the stones, the wood-sorrel and anemone nodding to one another, and the bright, fresh green flushing up as a background to the whole.

[From a Letter, Tinna Park, 1866.]

eee Hebrew psalter and Shakespeare are

the two books I have been taking out with me lately—not incongruous, I hope, for the one reveals God, the other man, and these must unite somewhere.

[From a Letter. Tinna Park, 1866.]

I HAVE been reading Carlyle’s Inaugural

Address. It contains a number of good things, but many as one-sided and untrue. A deal of his power lies in distortion of some simple truth into undueness, and in neglecting all counter-truths. What nonsense he talks about the Eternal Silence, and a man holding his tongue! What did he come to Edinburgh for? Or is writing books not speaking just as much as moving his lips, supposing he means his books to be read? His idolatry of Goethe I cannot away with, nor his doctrine that success is the test of the true. In the end certainly it is, for God will conquer; but not as he puts it.

Gane poe ELIOT speaks of G. H. Lewes in Jersey as “at this moment in all the bliss of having discovered a parasitic worm in

62 AUTHORS

a cuttle-fish.” At the same time Mr. Lewes was quite contented to leave alone the ques- tion of a God and a future immortal life, and he had brought George Eliot to the same equanimity—was it magnanimity ?

“ There is One great society alone on earth ; The noble living and the noble dead !””—

Wordsworth, quoted by George Eliot in a letter to Frederic Harrison, but how hollow without One who is Lord of the living and the dead !—clouds on a background of air, a painted sun on a painted ocean, dust to dust with the unceasing ring of earth on coffin-lids, and no words above of “I am the Resurrec- tion and the Life.”

H UXLEY, in his Lectures to Christian Young

Men, wishes himself a “clock that would always go right.” This, if taken seriously, would imply that he wishes he were not a man—wishes to be without reverence, love, — faith, self-sacrifice, and all that belongs to heart and spirit.

[¢ has been said by some that there is no

religion in Shakespeare, or, what is the same thing, no element of the divine in his view of the world. To this it may be said, there is the same element of the divine which

AND LITERATURE. 63

is to be seen in the world itself. Shake- speare’s purpose is to give a section of the real world that we may read the whole world by it. He does not moralise himself, but lets the picture speak.

But a poet may do much without moralis- ing. He may indicate the presence of two elements, destiny, or what Christians call pro- vidence, and free-will, not always harmonis- ing—for this would not be tree—but always present, and therefore urging a wish for so- lution, which can only be found finally in a right view of God and of man. Next, he may indicate how moral faults and weaknesses bring catastrophes in good characters—irreso- lution in Hamlet, jealousy in Othello, parental partiality in Lear, etc. Further, he may make us prefer, like Cato, to share the lot of the good man in adversity rather than that of the bad man in success, to love the right and hate the wrong, whatever circumstances surround them. And lastly, he may give such views of man’s nature as exalt our conceptions of it, admiring without deifying it in some of its aspects, condemning without despising it in others. Besides, there may be the introduc- tion of touches of Christian truth, which make us feel that the heart of the author was with the speaker :—

‘* Those holy fields Over whose acres walk’d those blessed feet Which, fourteen hundred years ago, were nail’d For our advantage on the bitter cross.” King Henry IV., Part 1. Act 1. Se. 1.

AUTHORS

64 ee poetry of the Eastern mystics, Persian and Arabian, impresses us with a sense of the indestructible religiousness that lies in man’s soul. Brahminism and Buddhism, in- deed, are evidence of the same feeling dis- torted. But the mystics of Western Asia (Sufis) base their thoughts on primitive Mono- theism, which sometimes verges on Pantheism. The language not unfrequently takes the form with which we are acquainted in the Song of Solomon, and might be used to cast light on that book, as showing that the Easterns were accustomed to veil their longings for union with the Divine under this kind of imagery. Here are two specimens of the clearer order, translated from a German collection of frag- ments :—

‘* Death is the close of all Life’s pain and toil, Yet timid Death from Life will still recoil. The heart shrinks trembling from that hand of Love Which leads through Death to higher Life above.”

“For, where Love wakens to the raptured eye, Self, gloomy tyrant of the soul, shall die. Leave self to perish in eternal night, Free thou shalt breathe in Life, and Love, and Light.”

pee Life of F. D. Maurice, by his Son.

A book confusedly and uninterestingly written, yet the sincerity 4nd devoutness of the subject is everywhere apparent. Maurice’s own style is not clear or pointed, but he has deep religious convictions that draw out one’s heart to him. He wishes to be fair to all

AND LITERATURE. 65

men, but it seems to be the fate of the Church of England to give her clergy of all kinds, broad as well as high, a contempt more or less gentle for any orders but her own. The same tone pervades Kingsley, who had a more manly nature than Maurice. Maurice objects to the removal of the Athanasian Creed, opposes Mansel as a Christian agnostic, opposes Colenso and the impugners of the Pentateuch, defends the creeds and formulas of the Church of Eng- land, but on peculiar grounds, insists strongly on “eternal” life as being a present thing. This fs indéed his gospel, to which he is never weary of recurring, and he holds that the question of time does not enter it, though he neither affirms nor denies change as a_prob- able thing in the future. (It is, however, surely impossible to overlook the fact that “eternal” looks not merely to the essence of the life but to its dwration—* age-lasting ;” and indeed what is divine in this sense must be abiding. He himself was at one time im- pressed by the fact that the same word is ap- plied to the misery of the wicked and the blessedness of the righteous.)

Maurice must have exercised great influence by his earnest and devout personality. His arguments and lines of thought do not impress one so as to account for the school of thought he formed. There is frequently much incon- clusiveness and vagueness about them. His views of church and state are purely Erastian. His theological standpoint is that men are all the children of God by birth into the world :

E

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that theocracy manifesting itself in all human institutions is the status quo of things, and that all short of this is atheism.

epsSERe were two prevalent ways among

the later Greeks, which are still existent among the moderns, of dealing with the ancient legends; the first, historical, called Euhem- erian, from Euhemerus, which cut off all that seemed extravagant and found history beneath, heroes deified and events diminished; the second, allegorical, which sought truths, some- times moral and philosophical, lying under- neath. At times the two were combined, the age of heroes being treated historically, that of God allegorically.

Grote discredits both ; reckons the allegoric fanciful, the historic possible, but nothing more. He prefers to consider the myths as a growth of feeling and imagination developing itself gradually in an age when men did not require evidence nor apply criticism. He thinks it best to relate them as they are given, merely as illustrations of the manners and modes of thinking of the age, and as influencing power- fully the times that followed.

Grote is right enough in so acting as a his- torian, but the philosopher may use them for further purposes; and one cannot but think that there must have been some central facts, or religious ideas, round which these legends crystallised.

AND LITERATURE. 67

HE difference between the Greek and Teu- tonic mythology was chiefly this—that the Greek attained a full development within itself, and Christianity struck it in the process of decay, while the Teutonic was disturbed abruptly by the invasion of Roman influence and the entrance of Christianity. This gave the strange mixture of Ethnic and Christian, which we find in the “Niebelungen,” and produced the long roll of saint-legends and chivalric myths. Only in Scandinavia, and especially Iceland, do we find the Sagas un- mixed, owing to the later entrance there of Christianity.

“The Greek myths were produced in an age which had no records, no philosophy, no criticism, no canon of belief, and scarcely any tincture either of astronomy or geography.” — GROTE.

The same may be said of the Hindu, Teu- tonic, and chivalric myths and saint-legends of the seventh and eighth centuries. When Chris- tianity arose it was the reverse on all these points, as might be shown in detail. It was an age of record, history, criticism ; and the early Christians were in contact with it. They lived close up to the events ; take for example Paul, whose age, acts, and chief letters are undis- puted even by the Mythicists. These facts were given out in the face of obloquy and per- secution, not borne like myths on the tide of a popular feeling. They were entirely alien to the spirit of the age, whether Jewish or Gentile, and above all they carry in their centre a

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personality that distinguishes them from every other history, feigned or authentic.

Would it not be strange if all other stories of the supernatural were false and these alone true? No more than that every truth must have many counterfeits.

HEN Goethe read the account of the

earthquake of Lisbon it shook his belief in a Divine providence. Many have the same feeling, if they would confess it, when some dreadful shipwreck, such as that of the Lon- don or La Plata, freezes the blood with horror. Such catastrophes are not indeed easily reconcileable with the mere Deistic view of the universe, and a man may be carried by them to the pessimism of Schopenhauer— to the feeling that the world is a planless failure.

The Christian view is different. On its premisses the history of the world must be cata- clysmic. It would be inconsistent to expect anything else. Sin is the ever-present, all- pervading disturbance, and it cannot exist in the spiritual without making itself felt in the material. A world at peace, and the heart at war with God, would be unnatural. That these catastrophes befal men without regard to character is part also of the present constitu- tion of things, which has regard to the general state of the world, and does not judge indi- viduals. Were it to do so it would antedate the judgment. And yet these calamities have their meaning to the ear that will listen.

AND LITERATURE. 69

When men become unmoved by deaths that come one by one, God’s providence gathers them into crowds. “ Thou carriest them away as with a flood!” His own are safely housed in His ark, and in regard to them all the word is the same as spoken by Christ. These men are not sinners above others, but “except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish.” ©

EORGE ELIOT belonged decidedly to

the school of agnosticism, but sought a

basis for life in a stoical view of duty. In

speaking to Mr. Myers she took three words—

God, Immortality, Duty—and said, “ How in-

conceivable the first, how unbelievable the

second, and yet how peremptory and absolute the third.”

Certainly the second is unbelievable without the first, but the first is necessitated by the third, and Kant, who bound the whole three together, was right.

In the change of view which came over George Eliot, it may be remarked :—

Her first religious impressions seem to have been of a very narrow and surface kind, as is seen in her life, presented in her letters, by her husband, J. W. Cross.

They were of the Church of England evan- gelical type, with a prejudice against “the world,” novels, oratorios, etc., a tendency to ascetic life and doing good. One of her friends notices a disappointment that a book she liked was by a Dissenter.}

1 Tsaac Taylor.

begin

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The change which took place in her religious views was sudden. The overthrow was accom- plished in a fortnight, under the influence of Mr. Bray of Coventry.

It took place without any visible sense of particular loss felt by her, no expression of pain at the departure of the faith and hope which an awakened conscience and heart have found in the spiritual possessions and promises of Christianity. There is no appearance of these having ever been realised by her.

The throwing herself into a new circle of friendship and the colour she takes from it, is another feature. Her letters are filled to painful monotony with demands for assurances of affection, indicating a want of trustfulness and rest in the deep communion of Spirit. If a post-office could have been established with another world she might have come to believe in it. She complains that the evidence for it is not of the mathematical kind, as if this very fact did not belong to its nature. The objects of faith, love, reverence, are not under the laws of scientific demonstration, but of life, “ Whom having not seen we love.”

A woman of wonderful intellect and pene- tration, of fancy and imagination, with a strong sense of duty ; but wanting in the region of the heart and the spirit, in the infinite long- ings of the soul, and the perception of the holy, which brings with it a deep sense of the im- perfect and impure in the mere earthly life, and awakens a desire for what the Bible alone gives to the life and work of Christ.

AND LITERATURE. 71

This view of Christ never seems to have come within her vision. Exalted intellect, with a delight and pride in it ; imagination, sensibility and sentiment without much depth, with per- severance of a stoical kind in duty, were her leading characteristics.

The want of central depth brought its limi- tations in comprehensiveness.

£i.g., Inability to look fairly at an argument. Much is made of Matt. xxviii. 17, against the truth of Christ’s Resurrection : “And when they saw him they worshipped him: but some doubted,’ as if the very admission of this did not show that there were those who looked fully into the case. This is also seen in the omitting ver. 18, which shows how the doubts disappeared.

Inability to feel where the deepest comfort of bereavement is found. She consoles Miss Sarah Hennell for the death of her sister by the reflection that she will by and bye find other sources of happiness and profit. There was also limitation of range in charity and culture, as well as in discernment of moral duty. Her rela- tions to G. H. Lewes were regulated by her own sense of what befitted herself, not by regard for the social rights and interests of others.

[RENAN. | le is difficult to define his position, except by saying that he is the indifferentist, on whom Pascal looks with a strange pitying

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wonder ; who has no conviction about a God or immortality, and who has no concern and no regret. He is an Epicurean sceptic—Epi- curean, i.e. as Epicurus himself was, not born with the baser sensual instincts, but with the more refined tastes which enable him to take the pleasure of the world in a higher and more prolonged way; who drinks champagne, while others betake themselves to brandy and absinthe. This has been a very good, plea- sant world to him, he has enjoyed himself on the whole, and been amused, whether there be another world or not—and he thanks his stars or God, if there be a God, for the good seat that has fallen to him at the “spectacle.” When the play finishes, and the lights are put out, he says “good-night” to his neighbour, without caring about “Aw revoir.” “Cest tout,” he says, with a smile and a shrug.

His Reminiscences, written with admirable taste and skill—entrainant, as the French say, —drawing one along with an irresistible interest, leave the mind fascinated and sad— a rocket dying with brilliant sparks into the darkness. When one has read the Reminis- cences 1t 18 more easy to understand how he should have written his Vie de Jésus, such as it is, a charming Galilean Pastoral, with enough of the tragic to give a gentle stimulus, but with no thought of sin, and no view of a Saviour.

One of the last articles of Renan on the Journal Intime of Amiel, a Genevese pro- fessor, who was agonising for a faith, lets us

AND LITERATURE. 73

see what we may look for from the easy-going, self-satisfied school of Renan for the improve- ment of the world. “It is not of sin, of atonement, of redemption that we need hence- forth speak to men; it is of happiness, gaiety, indulgence, good humour, and_ resignation. Amiel asks, with concern, ‘ Who is to save us?” Good heaven, it is whatever gives a man a wish to live. For one it is virtue ; for another, pursuit of truth ; for another, love of art; for others, curiosity, ambition, travel, pleasant indulgences, luxury, riches ; and on the lowest stage, alcohol and morphine. The masses must amuse themselves. For my part, I feel no need of external amusements, but I feel the need of people round me being amused, and I enjoy their gaiecty.” M. Renan pushes his logic so far as to say that temperance societies do harm in seeking to take from people the consolations of drunkenness. M. de Pressensé, from whom we have taken this extract, says that ‘“‘one can see how the refined zstheticism of a writer celebrated for his elevation of tone may end in epicureanism the most miserable. Delicate or sensual pleasure is the solution of the enigma of a life which has no hereafter.” Another incident gives an idea of the posi- tion of Renan. When M. Pasteur was received as a member of the Academy of Sciences he delivered an address in which he avowed his adherence to the spiritual school, and declared that man’s conception of the infinite is the greatest part of his nature, greater than all miracles, and at the root of them all. The

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address was received with warm approbation. Renan, who was appointed to give the reply, said that “‘when he heard anything said against faith he felt inclined to believe ; when he heard anything for it he was disposed to doubt.” But the breath of cynicism with which he sought to dim the lofty beauty of M. Pasteur’s address met with little response, and there is hope for France while such names as Pasteur, Janet, and Caro are to be found on the spiritual side.

A GOOD prose style should have in it

something that makes the poet—the necessity of expressing the thought in a cer- tain condensed way—crystallising it into firm lines and a sharp point, so that it stands out clear, distinct, and penetrating.

There are certain heavy, tortuous styles which remind one of roads in the Alps, or our own Highlands, that wind zig-zag down a hill, while our alert foot-traveller cuts the corners, and goes straight to the bridge. If to this can be added that which the poet has, the mea- sured beauty of form, it is a still higher quality. This should follow the other and be subor- dinate, as elegance should be to force.

There are poets who find themselves at ease only in verse, their prose is laboured and cum- brous—such was Burns. There are others whose prose is superior to their poetry—such as Scott and Macaulay. Some in whom they are equal—Milton. And some in whom the

AND LITERATURE. 75

poetic power of expression has assumed the form of prose— Bunyan, Jeremy Taylor, Ruskin.

[PopvuLaR Cuitpren’s TALes oF DIFFERENT CouNTRIES. |

(fragmentary. )

A GOOD lecture might be made from these,

giving their characteristics, lessons, and use. First vindicate them from being childish. Once believed by all, they are now by many despised ; it is reckoned a sign of enlighten- ment by the common people to despise them, but better intelligence sees in them a value. We may study them as we study Druid circles, British camps, vitrified forts, with this differ- ence, that in these tales we have the mind of the past still living,—as if we saw the wor- shippers in the circle, and the warriors in the ring, on the hillside. From this it will be seen we believe them not to be modern, or even middle-age inventions, but relics of a very olden time. . This is now a settled point. (See Grimm, Dasent, etc.) They go back as far as we can trace them in our own history, they are found in all European countries,—in Ger- many, Scandinavia, Iceland, Russia, Finland, etc., and so go back to the time when the in- habitants of these countries came from a com- mon cradle. In Persia and India it is the same. We find them thus wherever the Indo- Germanic race exists, along with the roots of that great, common language. Then we can

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trace still a wider circuit in Thibet, China, Borneo, Bechuana, etc., so that we have a testimony in these tales to a common origin of the race. The stories of childhood take us back to one cradle. Here we might refer to some traces in old Greek and Roman tales, and “Reinecke Fuchs” in the catacombs of Egypt.

The origin of these—fragments of old reli- gions and beliefs, primitive views of nature and human life put into parables and figures by the wise of that day, heroic tales brought down to common life, efforts of fancy for amusement of the leisure hours of the shep- herd and hunter life, or of the long winter evenings.

We might attempt to classify them as— Tales of life of the earnest kind, such as “Cinderella,’’“ Briiderchen und Schwesterchen,” etc., where the fabulous mingles, — fairies, witches, enchanted woods and castles. Tales of the heroic, as “Jack the Giant-killer,” “Horned Siegfried,” remnants of primitive epics. Tales of humour, as of the “ Master Thief,” to show the play of dexterity; of the lazy fellow, of the liar, of the easy, good- humoured fellow, who seeks only comfort and pleasure. These are found mostly among Serfs, and also among the Celts. Personifica- tions of nature, or tales that have sprung from this, as “ Beauty and the Beast” (see Vilmar’s History of German Literature), the story of Brunhild and Chrimhild in the Miebelungen Lied. ‘To this class belong very much the Indian tales of North America, Hindu, Scan-

AND LITERATURE. 77

dinavian with the Tree of Life,—early views of Nature, God, and man, showing how man’s spirit struggles with them, or distorts the original view. (See the origin of different tongues, Grimm, iil. 385.) <A large class is the Tales of Animals. They are represented as having speech, and, to a large extent, reason. Man sees the order which exists everywhere, and puts his own reason into the creatures. They have a king, alliances, wars, treaties. “Reinecke Fuchs” is a full illustration. The Tales of Alsop are the early working up of this, but they want the life of the people’s tales—Lukman among Persians, Hitopadesa of Hindus, also tales of the Bechuanas. The different animals have their character and office. The bear is king in the northern regions, but as the lion becomes known the bear is dethroned, and made stupid,—some- what like other monarchs when unfortunate, as Louis Philippe or King Log. Livingstone thinks that if the Bengal tiger had been known in the middle ages he would have taken the place of the lion. The fox is the rogue and speaker, but earlier, the weasel; the jackal is the priest; the dog has a peculiar place,— sometimes despised as in the East, from which we take our term of contempt; sometimes the faithful friend of man; we find his bones and those of the horse buried in the hero’s grave. The dog is the earliest friend and helper of man, his worshipper. The wonder with which man looks on the lower animals, and their life,—their wonderful instinct, migra-

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tions, etc. We might show a period when man was near to them in the shepherd and hunter life, and could observe them. When man does them a favour he comes to know their language, and is saved by them in danger; so by love one enters into the secret of the laws of nature, and into harmony with it. Man recognises the fact that God has not placed him over against a dead world, but with living links between, that he has not only rights but duties, and that in neglecting duties he injures his own interests. See “L/Oiseau” by Michelet. “The bird can live without man, but not man without the bird.” Man, the statue on the pedestal of nature, is resting on what is beneath him. Neglect of this ruined the French harvest of 1801, costing £12,000,000 through the destruction of little birds, and the consequent multiplication of insects and vermin. The people should have remembered the tales which their old Frank ancestors brought with them from the forests of Germany. This shows, too, the old inex- tinguishable love of man for Nature,—he can- not live in a desert,—the Arab must have his horse, the Esquimaux his dog. How the child’s eyes glisten to the dog or the lamb. How literature springs from this,—Phaedrus, La Fontaine, Gay. How we hear wisdom from their mouths. How it is not only reason but Scripture to look on the ant, the raven, the bird. See the closing chapters of Job. And how the tales of dogs and their habits from the Ettrick Shepherd, or Dr. John Brown,

AND LITERATURE. 79

come to the heart. The love of the marvellous in these tales. It is true to man’s heart; he feels a supernatural all round, something above and beyond the common daily life, a sentiment of wonder in his heart, the simplest and ear- liest. This is in all his religion, and it lies at the root of faith. It takes all sorts of dis- torted forms, and plays its fantastic freaks, but there it is, and it cannot be crushed out,+—like the electric fluid which is in the child’s toy, but also in the telegraph and in the clouds, where it gathers and shapes itself beyond man’s ken.

Akin to this is the love of power beyond the present laws of nature. Man does not like to be controlled and hemmed in, so he delights in power over the world and space and time—to feel himself free and great. This is the consciousness of a spirit within him which is above all material things, and which will yet show that it is. We see this in the rude, terrible energy of the northern Sagas, and along with it a melancholy feeling, as if men and gods were at length to be crushed by fate. They did not feel and see that fate and will, power and freedom, meet at last in the one true God, the God who was revealed just as their systems were dying out. Yet, here are the heart and fancy of man struggling towards that greatest truth — the power superior to matter, and yet accordant with law, which shall yet belong to man redeemed.

Then there are the earnest tales of common life, ae. those not strictly heroic. In others the superiority of mind to brute force is shown

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in the way in which the diminutive hero overcomes the stupid giant. Thus man con- quers in the strife with matter, and is recon- ciled to the superiority of size in these forces. In this they are very different from Gulliver’s Tales, which are full of bitterness. Compare the story of Thor and Loki with the “ Nifelm” of Howitt. There is the same wild fancy, even higher, but with loyalty to reason and man; the youngest son always the hero, the spirit of chivalry and generosity against that of primogeniture. It is as if literature had fallen into the hands of younger sons, while the heir lived on the estate and kept himself to the paternal acres. The most prominent points are the following :—The younger sons are the most adventurous. The poorest inn and house are chosen, as if to show that appearances should not be taken. The seem- ingly meanest turn out often the best. Kind- ness is shown to the poor and old who turn out to be beneficent fairies, so that we cannot tell how a good deed is to meet us again. The love of nature in woods and _ springs, which is in the heart of the Teutonic race and of all men, we feel its breath all around us in these tales. The spirit of trust in Provi- dence and God; the strength of innocence. Nothing of the modern French novel which makes the villain succeed and vice attractive, is to be found here. We can see God working by the natural conscience, with its faults and failures, its want of depth, and its blindness to the grand reason and motive, but still the

“AND LITERATURE. 81

natural conscience coming up in these tales of the childhood of the human race, bearing testimony to the great truth of a law in man and a Lawgiver, in whose education of the race even these could form a part; for the tales as well as songs of a nation influence it more powerfully than its written laws.

I

LANGUAGE.

[CuRist1aniry MouLpinc LANGUAGE. ]

i has been remarked that Christianity has

shown its wonderful power in the way in which it has moulded the bare, stern Latin language to its own purpose. One cannot read Augustine’s Confessions, the Latin hymns “Salve Caput,” “ Dies Ire,” without being struck by this. Very different they are from the classical forms of Caesar or Cicero, but how much warmer and richer! The Hellenic Greek bears the same relation to the old classic, though Greek naturally has more power of adaptation. The form is broken through to gain the spirit and life. It is like Raphael’s transgression of perspective in his “ 'Transfigur- ation,” or, in a small way, like the Divine life and Person breaking through the ordinary laws of nature. Even a sceptic must see that it was an extraordinary crisis which could leave its mark so widely and deeply on tongues and peoples.

82

LANGUAGE. 83

HERE are two different views as to the origin of language—the one, that it is a mere human development, an imitation of the sounds of nature, growing up by a slow pro- cess into what it now is; the other, that it was at the first the gift of God. Those who hold to the creation of man by God will naturally incline to the latter. The impulse to language, the capacity of expression, physical and mental, are God-given, and, as there was an immediate necessity for it, we may readily believe in a Divine influence that made lan- guage spring up at first in some primitive form. The outward world, however, is the great in- strument of the development of language, and so it is said, “God brought the beasts to Adam to see what he would call them,”— language being thus both Divine and human. Speech everywhere bears the tokens of this. The names of animals, of their cries, of natural objects, as river, breeze, primitive verbs, espe- cially of action, all show it, and this in the Anglo-Saxon as much as in any.

Language is not incidental, but essential to man. Without it he could not be what he is, either socially or individually.

The question of the origin of, language comes, however, to be only a question of the time required for its formation.

The change that took place at Babel was probably not radical but dialectic. Separation, new scenes, new wants, and, perhaps more than all, the tendency of parents to adopt a child’s modification of words with the absence of a

84 LANGUAGE.

literature, would produce rapid and wide divergence. In Lapland every family has its dialect, and in some parts of Africa the language changes in a generation so as to be unintel- ligible to one who has been so long absent. Languages must borrow much from climate ; those of the North are harsher than those of the South, although to this there are exceptions.

The differences of language have left fuller scope for national character, and at the same time national character has impressed itself on language. Good has thus come from the attempts at Babel, as from the different de- nominations into which Christianity is broken. Will there ever be a universal speech? Scarcely. With closer communication, and the spread of a common literature in each language, dialects may disappear, but the great varieties of national character repre- sented in language will always remain; and no one speech has such a superiority as to entitle it to become the one.

The defects of English are the monosyllabic form of many of its primitives, the prevailing dentals and sibilants, its want of flexibility and power of combination, also of diminutives and shading terms. Its compensations are its clearness, its force, its simplicity of construc- tion, which is neither so complicated as the German nor so idiomatic as the French. Its composite character also helps it to shades of difference in words originally synonymous, and enables it to add to its stores from other lan- guages without destroying its own character.

LANGUAGE. 85

The language in this respect is like the country, open to all foreigners who will conform to its free laws. Its composite nature, too, gives it an interest in other tongues, as its commerce does in other countries. The great future of the English language lies in the character of its people, their energy and enterprise, their position as the world’s merchants, their wide- spread colonies and daughter-nations, and, above all, their literature—so rich and glorious in the past, and with such promise in the future—from new forms of thought and illus- tration in other hemispheres. It is matter of thankfulness that in a language destined to such a place the great principles of God’s truth and man’s freedom have been consecrated as nowhere else. It is a great thing, then, that like the sunlight its words should go to the ends of the world.

i pees is an important instrument of growth in man’s nature. Its signs are even more to thought than those of the calculus are to mathematics. But it is not, as some would almost say, the cause of man’s growth. It is not language which has given reason (the power of abstraction), but reason which has given language. The deaf and dumb left to themselves would form a language of signs.

HE Latin language was the ark that carried the treasures of the old world across the deluge of barbarism into the new,—broken up

86 LANGUAGE.

at last into fragments to be incorporated in many other tongues. To Latin we are indebted for Roman law, for municipalities, for the classic culture that has formed taste, sensibility, style, and given an essential unity to habits of thought throughout Europe, and for the pre- servation of Christianity (mediately) in the Western world. Theology, liturgy, hymns in Latin, were the spiritual sustenance of many generations. If the language became petrified in the service of the Romish Church, we must not forget these claims. One of the titles of the cross was in Latin.

A NUMBER of English words seem to be

derived from the Spanish, and this may be accounted for in two ways: more lately from the commercial intercourse with Spain since the time of Elizabeth and James L, and earlier from the intercourse in the time of Edward I. and the Black Prince, and from the songs of the Troubadours, whose language— the Langue d’oc or Catalonian—has close simi- larity to the Spanish. Some specimens are— barril, a barrel ; eslinga, a sling ; jaula, a cage (gaol) ; and others.

THE BIBLE AND BIBLE STUDIES.

a[e read the whole Bible with profit needs

either simple faith or large wisdom. The first can lay aside difficulties, the second can solve many of them. It is best when a man has both, it is a poor case if he have neither.

The Bible has a breadth like that of nature. It passes through time with varied develop- ments, and has something for each age and each man in their time, somewhat as nature has its different climates and products. It is not like a human book, where everything in it may be of the same value to each individual.

Yet the broader and stronger a man is spiritually, the more he will derive benefit from all the Bible, just as the more many-sided a man is, the more will he be at home in any part of the world.

From this it would follow, that as there are some people who should not travel far from home, there are some Christians who should chiefly read certain parts of the Bible—at

least till they are rooted and grounded. 87

THE BIBLE

[PHERE are two ways of reading the Bible ;

bringing it all down to the bareness of our every-day conception, or lifting ourselves to the height of its views of life. The first is our constant temptation (rationalising), the second needs continuous struggle, spiritual per- ception, and appropriation.

[‘ has been said that the Bible gives expres-

sion to moral and religious scepticism (Job and Ecclesiastes). ‘True, the Bible reveals the heart with its doubts, that it may deal with them. It is a human book while it is divine, and the wisdom of its plan is seen in its view of the sins, struggles, and doubts of good men, while it advances to the great cure in divine life.

A SIGN of divinity in the Bible is the way

in which it steers clear of mysticism, while travelling along the edge of the deepest feeling ; and of materialism, while dealing with the plainest practicalities.

ae Bible is like a transparent vase, seen to perfection only when lig ehted up within by God’s Spirit.

HE Old Testament and the New are the two grand parallels that stretch across the Word of God, the second, according to the

AND BIBLE STUDIES. 89

usual law, re-affirming the first with clearer and stronger emphasis. “Once have I spoken, yea twice ;”’ ‘that in the mouth of two wit- nesses every word may be established.”

Te is said we should approach the study of the Bible critically, as if it were any other book. Is this possible? When we study the Bible we must take it as a whole— its moral and spiritual character and its effects on the individual and the world. If I have come to know a man of high character, and if there occur some incidents that perplex me and that seem inconsistent, is it reasonable to say, you must judge of these apart from the rest of his character? Must I not take his character as a whole? What is called coming to the study of the Bible with a prejudice in its favour, means that we bring to its parts the impression of the whole book. On the other hand, are not those guilty of a more unreasonable prejudice who come with the resolve to believe nothing that is super- natural, i.¢. who come to a professed revelation with the fixed conclusion that there can be no revelation, or with their minds made up as to what form it shall take ?

AVATER has written a book, “ Pontius Pilate,’ into which he poured his heart,

and has said of it, “It is myself; he who hates this book must hate me; he who loves it must

90 THE BIBLE

love me.” May we not say this emphatically of God’s book ?

ie would be better to confess our ignorance

of some parts of the Bible than to attempt hasty and ill-digested explanations. Calvin was not ashamed to confess that he did not understand the Apocalypse.

|p ee are two ways of being original in

the interpretation of the Bible—the one, by the picking up of a fancied novelty, the other by the profounder perception of an old truth. “The old is better.”

je has been said there are parts of the Bible which should not be put into the hands of children. Better let them see the evil of the world where it is put in proper relation to the good, neutralised and exposed by it, than meet the evil unarmed, and with the full power of passion awakened within them. Where is social purity highest? In China, India, Turkey? Ancient Greece and Rome? Or where it can be said, “ And that from a child thou hast known the Scriptures” ?

Beste great prophet in the Old Testament

was, to the ancient believers, a herald of the dawn. But for this the night would have been very long. Of each one it could be

AND BIBLE STUDIES. 91

said, “ He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.”

\ 7 HERE are millions on millions of men who might struggle and pray all their lives to understand and see the beauty of the poems of Homer and Shakespeare, and all in vain. But there is not one, poor or rich, who can ask God sincerely to let him know the deepest meaning of the Bible and the words of Christ, without being answered by receiving a spirit of understanding and love. And why? Not because the Bible is less profound and beautiful, but because we are made to share the self-same spirit. He who taught comes to interpret. This may appear mysticism or fanaticism, but it is the faith of all real Chris- tians, and attested by its effects as seen in the humblest intellects.

And there is a-veason for it in the nature of the case. The things of the mere intellect can wait. The things of the Spirit are urgent, and of universal moment. So they enter first of all by the door of the heart. This is the law of God-like wisdom and kindness for which Christ gives thanks (Matt. xi. 25), and which the Psalmist admires (Ps. vill. 2, xxv. 9, 14).

HE conflict of the Old Testament with the religions around was not only one of Monotheism against idolatry, but of the moral and spiritual influence of belief in a living God against the immorality of naturalism

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among Phoenicians and Assyrians, which showed itself in worship of Baal, Astarte, etc., and later, of Bacchus and Venus. This deep, ethical element is unmistakable in Jewish history, and in the prophets, and is the answer to the superficial objection that Jehovah was only the national God of the Jews.

HAT varieties are in the Bible, side by side! The book of Ruth, with its pastoral quiet after the wars of the Judges, like an innocent child which has crept between the ranks of hostile armies; the intense devo- tion of the Psalms after the speculative discus- sions of Job, and before the practical wisdom of Proverbs; the gloom of Ecclesiastes, and then the luscious sweetness of the Song of Songs, as sharply divided as the eastern morn- ing which leaps from the night, or, as an old Greek might have said, Silver-footed Thetis rising from the bed of old Tithonus; Isaiah’s majestic sweep of eagle-pinion, with Jeremiah’s dove-like plaint ; the cloud-like obscurities of Ezekiel, to be solved, as one might expect, by piercing light from the sky; and the perplexi- ties of Daniel, to be opened by the movements of the nations!

i away the Old Testament, and even

though the Christianity of the New were left, there would be an immense want in meeting the different moods of feeling and

AND BIBLE STUDIES. 93

stages of thought in human nature. The deep sense of sin inwrought by the ceremonial of purification has its value to many minds, apart from the light it casts on the doctrine of atonement; and the fiery denunciations of © the prophets will be needed till we are nearer the millennium than we seem to be. There is an energetic patriotism and a strong national life which the Gospel comes to broaden and ‘enlighten, but not to destroy. There is the tender and pathetic—in view of man’s frailty and of the nothingness of his earthly life— musings on the dim future in Job and some of the Psalms, such as float in on the soul only in the twilight and with the sound of evening bells. The New Testament is in some aspects more cheerful, and filled with brighter sun- shine ; but the other has its time and truth to many hearts—to all hearts at certain hours. “The evening and the morning” are still needed, as at first, to make the full day.

HE Old Testament, as well as the New, is, when it is rightly understood, for all time.

It contains a long extended march of advanc- ing truths at different points, which even Christian men may still be found searching for. They are great who have grasped the latest development, but the greatest are those who have passed intelligently along the whole line, and who see its bearing on that develop- ment; as those scholars are most mature who have gone through all the subordinate classes.

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HE Bible has been constructed on the principle of leaving room everywhere for the exercise of faith. A man sees in its events what his heart leads him to see. That which to one is divinely ordered is to another acci- dental. The angel of God to some eyes is a human stranger; the voice of the Father to the Son brings the remark, “It thundered ;” those around Saul of Tarsus heard “a voice ” not articulate—saw no man; the eternal Son of God on Calvary was, and is to many, an innocent enthusiast. The eye within makes the difference, the soul helps the shape of the outward. Faith withal is not fancy. It knows as it looks and listens that this is the real and true, and it, verifies itself in growing peace and power.

HE stars bring out the depths of space and make them more profound and awful, and the revelations of Scripture render the mysteries around them more deep and solemn. We do not complain of the stars that they leave those fathomless gulfs,—this is one of their ends, to educate the sense of the infinite inus. Let us not complain of Scripture re- velations that they leave many things incom- prehensible. We thank God that the half has not been told nor attempted. Through these chasms the soul rises to a grander eternity. This is not the world of manhood but of childhood and faith; wonder, awe, are its appropriate lessons.

AND BIBLE STUDIES. 95

Meanwhile revealed lights, like the stars, serve also to guide our course on earth,—lamps on the lower sphere, (Ps. cxix. 105,) pathway guides on to the full illumination. This is to be remembered, however, that they are lights for a practical purpose, set along a road, and therefore their use is to walk by them. The error of many is that they wander out from this straight diameter road, and seek by a circle to encompass truth absolute—to do what belongs to God, “set a circle on the face of the deep.” This is to stumble into darkness right and left. Absolute truth is above us now, but relative truth is near. “Now, O man, what doth the Lord require of thee?” Truth absolute will be found at last most fully by those who have attended to truth relative. “Iam the way ”—then “ the truth.”

[Paou’s EPISTLES AND THE GOSPELS. ]

T has been thought strange that Paul in his Epistles—which are granted on all hands

to be authentic—does not quote the Gospels, while he quotes the Old Testament. The answer is; the Old Testament was familiar to him from youth up, and such quotations came first and most naturally. They were, besides, acknowledged by those to whom he wrote, and were in their hands, whether Christians, Jews, or proselytes. Copies of the Gospels were not so diffused and acknowledged, and had not taken their place in a fully-accepted

96 THE BIBLE

canon. Let this be fully granted. But the full image and life of Christ are reflected in Paul’s Epistles. He could not have written of Him as he does unless he had before him the Christ of the Gospels in word, and deed, and death, and higher life.

There are, moreover, quotations from the Old Testament parallel to parts of the Gospels which show that these parts were present to Paul’s mind, ¢.g. 1 Cor. v. 7. Compare Luke xxii. 15, and the institution of the Supper, 1 Cor. xi.

A collection of these would be interesting.

Seu said of the philosophy of one be-

fore him, “that what he understood of it was so good that he was sure what he did not understand was equally good.” Are we not entitled to say this more fully of the Bible ? Matthias Claudius says: “Ido not understand all that John (the Evangelist) says; but even in the darkest passages 1 have the feeling that there is a great and glorious meaning which I shall understand one day.”

mac what purpose is this waste? It might

have been given to the poor,” Matt. xxvi. 8. The Bible is such a friend of the poor, such an enemy of luxury, prodigality, and mere bodily gratification, that it seems an unnatural thing to have, even in appearance, Judas taking the side of the poor, and Christ standing in his way. But the position of the

AND BIBLE STUDIES. 97

parties has a deep truth underlying it. Judas, the thief, takes the side of poverty that he may plunder it, and Christ, who became poor that he might make many rich, teaches that there are more ways of doing good than alms- giving. All heavenly charity is not to be bound up in bags of flour. “Not that he cared for the poor,” is the truth about the one ; “ because He cared for the poor,” is the motive of the other. Try to measure the amount of bread which would have been pro- vided by the three hundred pence, with the fragrance that has exhaled from this woman’s deed into millions of weary hearts and abject homes among the poorest ofthe poor. And so the Saviour, who had compassion on the famishing multitude, and fed the five thou- sand, casts also the shield of His defence over the heart with its perfume, over grace and beauty of thought and feeling, against the hard utilitarianism of a materialistic economy. And the form which God has given to the world we live in is in harmony with this judgment. The earth is not constructed merely on the principle of producing so much food for man’s bodily wants. It has its corn-fields, but it has also its wild-flowers on hill and moorland to give us the sense of a touching and simple beauty ; it has its precipices, and wastes, and seas to inspire us with a feeling of the sublime and infinite. The utilitarian looking on this side of things may say, and has said, “To what purpose is this waste? It might have been given to the poor.” But the world was G

98 THE BIBLE

made by One who had in view not merely the physical wants of man but his intellectual and spiritual nature, and who has constructed his dwelling-place so as to train that nature above the animal and earthly. The golden glory of the furze that brought tears to the eyes of Linnzus is as true a gift of God as the joy of the harvest, and it is a most Chris- tian endeavour to make the poor partakers of both. There is a “life which is more than meat,” and herein les part of the significance of this incident in the house of Bethany.

[MEPHIBOSHETH. ]

Me ND Jonathan, Saul’s son, had a son that

was lame of his feet. He was five years old when the tidings came of Saul and Jonathan out of Jezreel,[their death at Gilboa, | and his nurse took him up, and fled: and it came to pass, as she made haste to flee, that he fell, and became lame. And his name was Mephibosheth ” (2 Sam. iv. 4). This verse is one of those little windows in the Bible narra- tive through which we can look away into the distant past, and see it living before us. In Wordsworth’s beautiful address to Kilchurn Castle upon Loch Awe, he peoples the lonely, silent ruin with the passions and struggles of bygone centuries, and his imagination is aided by the sight of a torrent behind it which reveals its rage in its white foam, but

** Whose dizzy turbulence eludes the eye, Frozen by distance.”

AND BIBLE STUDIES. 99

This touching little episode lies behind the greatest disaster of early Jewish history, and enables us to realise it—the consternation it brought into Israelitish homes, the cries of women and children, the confusion and the flight—we can see it all. It reminds us of Flodden in Scottish history, the slaughter of king and nobles, the lamentations that broke out from every house as the messenger rode up the High Street of the capital, and the stories and songs that still ring over the land like funeral bells. Observe also the manifold ways in which national calamities leave their mark—the carnage of Gilboa in the feet of this poor boy. How often, no doubt, the story was rehearsed, and pitying mothers told how the incident occurred as they saw him creep along! The kindly traits of our poor human nature should not remain unobserved in the frightful tumult. The nurse is terrified for her own life, but she has a still more engrossing concern for the safety of the child.

The stern Saul is dead, and the boy’s father, the gentle-souled Jonathan, and there is no one to punish or reward her; but she cannot desert her charge, though it should cost her her life. True, warm-hearted woman! She did not think of the honour, but her fidelity is written down where its record cannot fade. Does not God mean to show that the smallest acts of loyalty and love are great before Him ? Eliezer of Damascus, the little maid of Naaman, and the nurse in the family of Jonathan, have their honourable place in the Book of God.

100 THE BIBLE

They had all of them masters in whom there was avery true and deep humanity, and no doubt this had its share in drawing to them a like service of love. One way of restoring the good old domestic relations of servants, who do service with goodwill, is the remembrance of the precept, “ And ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening : knowing that your Master also is in heaven.”

And yet there is another side to the picture. How difficult it is to do our fellow-creatures good without some drawback! She saved the boy’s life, but left him for all his days maimed and dependent. In haste to do it quickly— and, as it would seem, without his own help— she bequeathed to him and to herself lasting pain. How thoughtful we need to be in our ways of doing good! We try to confer a favour, and perhaps lacerate the tenderest sus- ceptibilities; we seek to give comfort, and through our want of gentle tact wound the most sensitive nerves of grief.

“ T hastily seized it, unfit as it was, For a nosegay, all dripping and drowned, And swinging it rudely, too rudely, alas ! I snapped it—it fell to the ground.

‘Just such,’ I exclaimed, ‘is the pitiless part Some act by the delicate mind.’” CowPeER’s Rose.

Or, perhaps, we give physical relief in some inconsiderate way, and break down independ- ence of spirit, and destroy the power of self- help. When we can aid others to walk we

AND BIBLE STUDIES. 101

should not try to carry them. It is well to study God’s dealing with ourselves, if we are Christians, which saves the soul, while it weakens none of its powers. He delivers from the curse and terror, and then restores to soundness, that we may walk at liberty, “keeping His commandments.”

al HE Israelites, marching up to the edge ee)

the Red Sea till the waves parted before their feet, step by step, are often taken as an illustration of what our faith should do— advance to the brink of possibility, and then the seemingly impossible may be found to open. eo

But there is another illustration in the New Testament, more sacred and striking—the women going to the sepulchre of our Lord. With true woman’s nature, they did not begin to calculate the obstacles till on the way. On the road, reason met them with the objection, “Who shall roll us away the stone?” And faith itself could not help them, but love did. A bond stronger than death drew them on, and, “when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away.”

We may bless God that He can put into men’s hearts impulses stronger than reason, — and more powerful even than faith—such impulses that, if they are going to Himself, they shall find ‘He is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think.” Reason, faith, love, but the greatest

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of these is love. We cannot help thinking of the instinct in the young blade of grass, which presses past the hard clod—its “ great stone ”—and finds itself in the midst of sun- light and spring.

oe

HERE are two classes of men who equally maltreat the Bible—those who cut it to pieces by irreverent criticism, and those who conserve it in an ice-safe—the callous rational- ists and the cold, orthodox formalists.

NE is struck in reading the account of the purifying of the temple by Christ (Matt.

xxi. 12), that He should have bestowed so much thought on what was so soon to become obsolete by His own word, “It is finished! ” We do not read elsewhere of the indignation of our Lord rising to such a height, and taking the form of outward compulsion. It is the seal of Christ set on the sacredness of the Old Testament worship, all the more needed that He is about to remove it; but still more it is a vivid warning beforehand against the union between covetousness and religion, or rather the form of religion. That evil reached a visible height when the sale of indulgences and the building of St. Peter’s went hand in hand. But it has appeared so often, and in all sections of the Church, that the entrance of the money-changers into the temple may be called the normal danger of Christianity.

AND BIBLE STUDIES. 103

Drunkenness and sensuality, which had their shrines in the old pagan Pantheon, have still a place in the hearts of many professed worshippers in the house of God, but it is Mammon who still sets up his tables in the open court.

HE French lady who was asked why she

believed in the divinity of the Bible,

answered the question well: “Because I have become acquainted with the Author.”

HERE is an inspiration needed for receiv-

ing divine truth,—“ The inspiration of

the Almighty giveth them understanding.”

Therefore, say some, we are inspired as Paul

or John was. But though I can see light I

cannot create it. It is in God’s light we see light.

The Bible is the sky in which God has set Christ, the Sun. I can be sure that they are above my power to make, and yet I can receive their illumination.

It may be shown to me that the sky is so much oxygen, and the sun so much of chemical admixture; but “the vision and the faculty divine,’ what analysis can resolve or disprove them? The Bible may be dealt with critically, the -historical Christ submitted to tests, but “one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.”

?

104 THE BIBLE

ene are two extreme ways of looking at

the Bible and the world—the mystic and the rationalistic. The first is nearest the truth, because we feel there must be depth somewhere. Mysticism errs in finding it at the wrong place, rationalism in finding it nowhere. Rationalism may be right in form, and in the particular case; mysticism is right in spirit, and in the general. The true way is the rational-spiritual. The spiritual nature gives the essence, the rational sifts and shapes.

y aR Ey in all points like as we are, yet

without sin.” It might seem-as if the sin- lessness of Christ deprived Him of that capacity of sympathy which the apostle represents Him as possessed of. How can He who is so sin- less feel with sinners? And yet it is sin which

\more than aught else blunts the tender edge

of sympathy, whereas sinlessness which has struggled with temptation gains power to understand it, without losing sensitiveness to feel. “Tempted in all points!” But are there not infinite varieties of trial in which we are placed which have no exact parallel in the life of Christ? Yes; but the soul of man through one experience can transfer itself into many. A great poet, through the humanity that is in him, can realise endless types of humanity.

“¢ Children—I never lost one, But my arm’s round my own little son ; And love knows the secret of grief.”

AND BIBLE STUDIES. 105

Christ, through His human experience, has infinite powers of such realisation. In regard to sin, He took upon Him all connected with it, except that which would have unfitted Him for being our Saviour—an actual participation | in sin. 4

RELIGION, TRUE AND FALSE.

AITH in almost any religion, spiritual or

~~" political, to use a modern phrase, will make a man die for it. This is so far a testi- mony to the power of an idea, and to a soul. But the way of dying, like the way of living, is the mark of the true religion.

Nie people make their religion consist

in weak and querulous lamentations over the want of religion in others, and the decay and deadness of the age. In another sense than that of the Psalmist, “they are as a sparrow alone on the house-top.” <A good Christian will be grieved at heart, but his grief will be more “altd mente repostwm,” and for feeble murmuring he will substitute calm work. Many need the admonition “to be quiet and do their own business.” Work is the best cure for heart-care of all kinds.

Ape final test of every religion comes to be its moral strength—its power to set before

man the right and good, and to induce him to 106

RELIGION, TRUE AND FALSE. 107

follow them. By this, religion, whatever its formal evidences and its promises, must consent to be tried. This does not destroy the value of doctrine, it only subjects it to a practical proof: ‘“‘What do ye more than others?” It will be a dangerous day for Christianity when philosophy can show as good fruits, or better. God’s Christianity will never be in danger, but our form of it may suffer much, and many minds confound these two.

HRISTIANITY is the religion of revivals ;

~ pronounced dying or dead it comes out into a higher life. It bears imprinted on it, Resurrection.

RELIGION of the intellect alone makes

“us feel everything disputable; of the feelings, everything vague; of the conscience, everything hard. Intellect gives form to feel- ing, feeling gives warmth to conscience, and conscience gives basis to both.

NE reason why Christianity has so little success in the world is, because profess-

ing Christians subordinate it to so many other considerations. Residence, occupation, friend- ship, marriage, are settled, and the question of religion goes for little or nothing. It is com- promised, and a compromise is close to a sur- render. Were it the ruling principle with

108 RELIGION,

Christians, it would be on the sure way to the world’s throne, though it might be through suffering. “Art thou a king, then? He answered, Thou sayest. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.”

SRE pitiless anathema belongs to ecclesias- .

ticism, the hard sneer to infidelity. True religion does not curse, and honest doubt will not scoff.

es we to postpone the duties of religious life till all the objections of infidelity are put down? Did Christ take this way and set Himself to draw out a line of battle against the Pantheists? The religious life which springs from the Gospel is the best practical disproof of infidelity, and takes it in flank.

HERE are three views of religion,—the ra- tionalistic, the ritualistic (sacramentarian),

and the evangelical. The rationalistic looks to man’s reason for the discovery of religious truth and for the application of it. It has various shades, from Socinianism to bare natur- alism. The ritualistic looks to the Church, de- claring what is true through its authority, and applying it through its rites, and has various shades from High Church to Romanism. The evangelical looks to the Bible, or to Christ in

TRUE AND FALSE. 109

the Bible. This last is the friend of higher freedom, for it gives a constitutional basis which secures the man against philosophical as well as ecclesiastical despotism, and it has the certainty of experience from the contact of the entire nature with divine truth.

UPERSTITION leads a man to look to the gains of religion rather than to its duties, to its duties only as they help its gains.

purr: is a prevalent view among extreme

doctrinal Christians that mendes: is good in human nature until it acts in full view of the Gospel plan. It is surely better to hold that goodness everywhere is good if it be sincere, and that grace is at its source. The whole world is under the government of God in Christ, and all good comes from one root. The more we bring our acts into the highest views of God the better, but they may be on the road at different stages. All true good is Christian by its goal and by its origin, though neither may be seen by the doer. Christ, “whom He hath appointed heir of all things ” (the goal), “by whom also He made the worlds ” (the origin).

The development of the race corresponds to this. There was a world travelling to Christ, of which it is said, “ These all died in faith.”

They were judged by their direction.

The life of the best of men is largely made

110 RELIGION,

up of unconscious faith. A man does his work by sunlight without always looking at the sun, A man loves his family in labouring for them, even when he is so busy that he cannot think of them. On what does a man fall back in a crisis? What is his last reserve in fight? This gives the decision.

There is a great difference between saying that God accepts acts done from any motive, and that He accepts only acts done from the highest motive.

The Holiest had its Holy place before it, and there was an outer court where the true worshipper was accepted though he did not see the Shechinah.

“He that is not against Me is with Me.”

(Unconscious faith.) “He that is not with Me is against Me.” (Conscious opposition.)

[Farru, UNBELIEF, AND TRUTH. ]

S doubt a sin? Not always. We should not, to begin with, say that doubt is the proper state for any mind; for if things were right, belief in the great spiritual realities would be as natural as seeing the light : there- fore doubt is unnatural, something that should not be, and from which we ought to seek escape. But doubt may be called at first a tempta- tion rather than a sin—a temptation ready to recur from outward events and inward states

TRUE AND FALSE. ie,

of mind, and infections of thought from other spirits. These are not necessarily sinful. It is wrong not to seek deliverance from doubt— it is wrong to cherish it as an excuse for sin, to inquire captiously, to press frivolous objec- tions, to seek evidence which is impossible or which we do not require in similar cases for practical action in life, to scatter doubt where we have no hope or wish for a solution of our own, and it is wrong not to feel for ever the pressure and misery of it. How shall we seek deliverance ?

By calm, reverential inquiry in the depths of the nature God has given us, and of that Word which professes to be the revelation of it and of Him—by humble, hopeful prayer to the Father of lights, whose will cannot be that any soul He has made should walk in dark- ness; by holding to the nearest, clearest truth, whatever it may be, and acting upon it, assured that every truth leads up; by an effort to be true ourselves and thoroughly genuine,— “Unto the upright there ariseth light in the © darkness ;” and if we think we have found great truths, but are troubled with difficulties on the edges, then by a constant recurrence to the centre and soul of things, where we feel we can repose,—the great assured character of God as a God of justice, love, and mercy, who will bring all right, and enable the soul to realise that prophecy which shall yet come to the world, “But there the glorious Lord will be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams.”

112 RELIGION,

—

| HE doubts of some are more indicative

of a love of truth than the belief of

others. They arise from a sense of the awful

importance of the issue and an agonising desire

to be sure. But wherever this interferes with

practical duty it is wrong; for duty is always

_ incumbent, and generally clear, and it is God’s way of leading to truth.

ie See men seem to think they strengthen

themselves against unbelief by multiply- ing the number of things they believe. They turn Romanists for fear of infidelity, as if a man should think that by filling the bottom of the boat with stones he keeps the sea further from him.

F HERE is such a thing as “ unconscious

faith,’ but those who ae it in their own behalf do not possess it. With them it is conscious unbelief.

NE spiritual truth heartily believed is of far more worth than the whole of the creed received from custom or complaisance , as one Artesian well piercing to the spring, is of more value than a hundred tubes thrust into the surface.

TRAVELLER belated in Canada on a

fine winter evening, and riding by the margin of a wide lake, says :

“T heard the most faint and mournful wail

TRUE AND FALSE. 113

that could break a solemn silence, and which seemed to pass through me like a dream. I stopped my horse and listened. For some time I could not satisfy myself whether the wail was in the air or in my owndream. I thought of the pine-forest which was not far off, but the tone was not harp-like, and there was not a breath of wind. Then it swelled and approached, and then it seemed to be miles away in a moment. It was the winds that had been imprisoned by a night of frost which had settled down upon the lake.” These winds must have seemed wailing for the summer they had left, and the spring which was to relieve them and give them liberty once more to play over hill and valley among leaves and flowers. It is a fit emblem of the mournful feelings which may seize a heart that can think, if brought unhappily under the icy power of unbelief,—robbed of ~ the most glorious hopes that can fill the soul of man. They have been expressed un- consciously by some in the views they take of life and nature, and consciously by others. (See S. A. Hennell’s Thoughts in Aid of Faith.) The feeling has been found to some extent in the aspirations of Plato and Cicero. Yet they could not feel it so deeply, not knowing the hopes which Christianity has raised. To see them and lose them, imprisoned under the freezing barriers of Atheism, how sad beyond all other sadness! Nothing can relieve it but the emancipating spring of God’s breath, and the beams of His spiritual sun. What a different H

114 _ RELIGION,

world does this bestow ; and its life and light, its liberty and beauty, are the attestation of its reality to those who move in it !

E often catch a truth by a side glance

when we have failed to see it by a full,

direct gaze—as we perceive a star with the side of the eve sooner than with the centre.

HA ALF-TRUTHS are very attractive to some

“minds. They admit of forcible state- ment, from the absence of all attempt at modi- fication, and they appear to possess simplicity and unity. They can be overcome not by the other half-truth, but by the presentation of the whole.

Truth consists not only in the elimination of error, that is, in contraction, but also in comprehension, the taking of what is true in error into our truth.

Another way of stating this is, that error is always more or less superficial, and the most effectual way of supplanting it is to go deeper. The mine, as in military matters, is best met by the countermine.

yA GREAT Christian truth may be dropped

in its essence, and may yet seem for a time to remain. ‘The feelings it created survive for a while in those trained under its power; they

TRUE AND FALSE. 115

may appear even to be intensified from the half-conscious fear of losing them through the change of doctrinal position. The setting of the summer sun leaves a long glow behind it, and men may walk in the legacy of sunset, with a heightened brilliancy in the gathering clouds. The full darkness falls on those who follow. We cannot therefore judge of the effect of abandoning Bible truth by the life of any one man. We must study it through longer periods of time. “The fathers eat the sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”

[RELIGION AND PATRIOTISM. ]

(2 has been said that the Bible, especially the New Testament, does not recognise patriotism. M. Renan says that Christianity kills patriotism. (See—his—London—Con- ferences.) “ Religion,” he says, “is the organi- sation of self-devotement and renunciation— the State- patriotism is the organisation of egoism.’ ~ One answer to this is by reference to fete Have the most religious nations and times been the most unpatriotic? Or the most religious men? On the contrary, the grandest national movements have had the inspiration of religion. The Commonwealth and Puritans in England, the Covenanters in Scotland. Cromwell, Milton, Rutherfurd, James Guthrie, had an intense national feeling. The Cavaliers, with Church and King, associated the two. Abra-

116 RELIGION,

ham Lincoln was a religious man, and there

was a deep feeling of religion in Stonewall

Jackson. How it ranged them on opposite

sides is another question ; but that the senti-

ments can unite, and generally have done so, ie written in all history.

It is quite true that religion gives a man something he cannot sacrifice to what some call patriotism—meaning by patriotism national pride or material advantage. But this is not patriotism. Unless a man loves something higher than these, he cannot love his country wisely and worthily. He must do for his country what he would do for himself, love truth and justice most, seeking these for his country and himself at the cost of lower and passing interests. The Alexanders, Cesars, Louis the Fourteenths, Napoleons, and inflated Victor Hugos are not true patriots. In most of them patriotism was exaggerated self-love, in the form of ambition or vanity.

The other answer to M. Renan is that the word “egoism” which he uses may mean two very different things. It may mean egotism, or it may mean individuality. Egotism is the false and undue love of self, and is to be

_excluded from patriotism and religion alike. Individuality is the consciousness of self as the commencement of all true thinking and action, and it should enter into religion and patriotism alike. It may become egotism by the sur- render of the higher to the lower. It may become self-sacrifice by the surrender of the lower to the higher—to truth, to righteousness,

TRUE AND FALSE. 117

to mercy; and these are recognised as being’ above self, as eternal and absolute, as being in God. The renunciation of self, then, is not refined selfishness, as if we only gave up one part of our nature to another, but it is the giving up of self to what is higher than self, to God, and so finding self again in Him. “He that loseth his life shall find it.” This is religion, and this is humanity, this is patrio- tism, this is family affection. It is the sur- render of the lower self to the gaining of the higher ends in all these relations of life. Reli- gion gives the principle, and these others show the applications in various degrees, beginning in an inner circle, which must necessarily be more intense, and widening out to the whole world. But the principle of the sacrifice of the lower self to the higher is in all, and can- not change. The paradox of Renan, then, rises from this, that in the word “ egoism” he makes the State the organisation of egotism, and religion the sacrifice of the individual, both of which are false. It is quite true, however, that there is a difference between religion and the State as regards the individual or ego. Religion leaves to the individual the law of self-sacrifice, the State protects the individual in the exercise of this law, #.¢. it does not allow the egotism of others to encroach upon it. It leaves the man free to give what is his own, because it does not allow others to take it. It is thus that law becomes a provision for the exercise and growth of love. Religion and the State are not therefore opposed, and

}

118 RELIGION,

‘mutually exclusive; they are in alliance, and

the State is the ring-fence within which love is destined to rise up and spread out, and gradually to supersede it.

Religion is not therefore the loss of self in the sense of individuality, and patriotism is not the assertion of self in the sense of egotism.

It is quite true also that the Bible does not deal directly with the question of patriotism and the State, any more than it does with science and art. It is friendly to all that is human, and it touches it from time to time. But the one pervading purpose of the Bible is the moral and spiritual cure of man from the disease of sin. This is the key to the under- standing of it, to its silences as well as its speech. If this is put right, man may be left to the application of the central light and life.

But the State is touched in the Bible. Moses was a patriot and so was Paul, and Paul did not love his nation less than Moses did, though he had come to see that it had wider relations to men.»

“The Old Testament is stronger in its national spirit, as became the stage and manner of revelation; but whatever was unselfish and pure in Jewish patriotism is carried into the New. The later does not supersede theformer truth. It absorbs it, and guards it against the danger of particularism.

From such considerations, too, we may see how false to Scripture and true human nature is the doctrine of some, that for a man to seek

TRUE AND FALSE. 119

his own salvation is selfishness, and that we are not Christians till we leave self out of account. If by self be meant the lower self, it is true; if by self be meant individuality, it is false. The universal can be reached only through the individual, and no man is in a position to put others right till he is in a right position for himself.

Nay more, love is possible only through individuality. We cannot give unless we have, and we cannot love unless we are self-conscious. True love is the perpetual surrender of self to something beyond self, and so, for the continu- ance of love there must be the permanence of individuality. All human affections, even when unworthy, glorify their object, and find in them something better than self—a decep- tion, but a deception which is the shadow of a truth.

[THE UnsrEN WoRLD AND A FutToRE LIFE. ]

as sea is the emblem of mystery, and each

wave unfolding itself from its bosom seems about to tell the secret. But it falls back, and man cannot catch its whispers ; “the sea saith, It is not in me.” But the time is coming when the ocean of mystery shall

”

open its breast and “the sea give up its hae vil

pee soul may learn in the separate state, and so be fit for association with the glorified body which receives its development

120 RELIGION,

at once. But what of those who die im- mediately before the resurrection? ‘‘ They,” it may be answered, “ have had more of the lessons of the past on earth, and rise from a higher state of the- Church.”

{pee ose in his Wages, says that virtue,

even if she seek no rest (reward), seeks the wages of “ going on and still to be.” This is the real answer to those who speak of the hope of a future life as selfish.

apPERE will be nothing grander in the

revelation of the future than the way in which God will reconcile the material and spiritual world’s fixed law with perfect liberty, and show how, in the midst of, and through the first, the second grows up to full stature. The pity is that the two are so often set in opposition, the men of law doubting spirit and denying freedom, the men of spirit looking suspiciously on the discoveries of law. To a Christian man both are united in the holiest, inmost shrine of his religion, the Incarnation. Believing in the harmony of those two natures there, we believe also in the other, though unable to combine them in the system of thought ; and when we stand before the shrine —God manifest—we shall have the key to the union of the two worlds, in all the temple, to its utmost walls and deepest base, in all space, through all time.

TRUE AND FALSE. 121

So shall be solved those questions of the supernatural in the natural, of miracle, of prayer and its answer, that vex many; the breathings and heavings of the inner life that start up through the body of nature.

He is the great, the happy man, who can have his heart of faith at the centre of life, and pursue the search into law with his mind, feeling that life and light agree. ‘ With Thee | is the fountain of life, in Thy light shall we see light.”

HE lower creatures do not see death await-

ing them; man does, and is thereby

more unhappy. Unless there were a future

life for man, to balance this knowledge, that

compensation would be wanting which we see in all the ways of God.

ape desire for posthumous fame is the

shadow of the desire for.immortality in man’s heart, which survives after the substance is gone. There is a dim presentiment in it that man was made to live longer than the term of his: earthly life. Yet when closely examined by reason it will not stand the test. If man perishes at death, what matters it though his memory lives; and if he survives for ever with God, the brief life of fame that his fellow-creatures can give him shrinks into insignificance. Wordsworth says, “I am standing on the brink of that vast ocean, over

122 RELIGION,

which I must sail so soon; I must speedily lose sight of the shore; and I could not once have conceived how little I am now troubled by the thought of how long or how short a time they who remain on that shore may have a sight of me.” It is only the desire of the honour that comes from God that will stand examination.

lyy this world we recognise our friends by the face, and form of the body. This slowly changes, till at death it utterly disappears in the common dust. In the world to come we shall recognise each other by the soul. Even here there are indications of it. “That word, that act, was like himself.”

a

pee love of God requires a divine per- sonality. Pantheism in logical issue is the annihilation of love, as well as the deifica- tion of sin, and the sublimated renunciation of individuality is simply Buddhism.

But if love is the surrender of self to some- thing higher, what shall we say of the love of God? Could He love any one, anything, higher than Himself? This leads us into the mystery of divine existence, where we are lost.

We might say this—if it were possible to conceive a higher perfection than the divine, God would love it; but this is impossible, and He loves the infinite truth and righteousness which are found in His own nature. He has

TRUE AND FALSE. 123

made a universe in which it is possible for Him to go out of Himself in the path of love, i.€. to practise self-sacrifice, which is the high- est form of love, and to practise it for what is weak, and fallen, and lost, which is the highest form of self-sacrifice. “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that God loved us, and sent His Son that He might be the pro- pitiation for our sins.”

ITHOUT the real no ideal, without the ideal no real. Christianity gives both ; Atheism, neither.

(DEATH. ]

ie is very difficult for us to realise our

own death. After the thought of it, we are still there looking on. It may be said, and has been said, that from this has arisen the conception of immortality. Is it not equally reasonable to say that we have it because we are immortal ?

ee one has said, “ Nothing is nearer to

every man than death.” Let us be thankful we can interpose, “save God.” “Be not far from me, O God, when trouble is near.”

[Sorrow AND CoNSOLATION. | [ease Op like the spear of Achilles, ~ has the power of healing the wounds it gives.

124 RELIGION,

ee the spiritual support and comfort we

receive in this world are the tinklings of the silver bells of the great High Priest, proving that He lives within the veil.

as night brings out light from the stars

of heaven and perfume from the flowers of earth. Light and fragrance are the gift of trial.

jee tendency of) affliction in not a few is to

harden the heart and to make the man more entirely selfish. It needs the presence of a large, loving nature, and the grace of God, to make a man forgetful of self and mindful of others in long affliction. What a model have we in Christ, His thoughts of His grand cause, His friends, His mother, the careless onlookers, His enemies,—when He was dying such a death !

HEN one is recovering from severe ill- ness, a new brightness is spread over

the world, and a new love to all men poured into the heart. How much more if one feels recovery from the deep root of every disease ! If we fully realised it nothing could make us sad, and we would burn to make all menas happy as we. What a glad burst that is,— “Thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from fall-

’ 4 ' :

Bee rhe ial

TRUE AND FALSE 125

ing. I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.”

GREAT sorrow after a time becomes

idealised. It presses at first with overpowering weight, but gradually it rises till it becomes a thing of contemplation on which we can dwell with calmness, and which leaves a mellowing influence behind. One has seen the dew, bequeathed by the darkness, weigh down the flowers’ heads, but sunlight relieves the pressure, dries up the tears, and leaves only their memory in refresh- ment and fragrance.) Then the departed are not forgotten, but seen in a higher light. “Time beautifies the dead.”

ery

pons is a melancholy that enervates, but ( there is one also that, tempers fine souls to keenness and actionY/ It is easy to dis- criminate the weak sentimentality of Sterne from true, noble pathos that does not nurse its tears, but wipes them away that it may see to help. Jesus wept, but what succour followed ! The life of Lazarus was the result in one case, His own death as a ransom, in the other. [

a |

1? H OW is it that the Gospel urges on Chris- tians the being prepared for tribulation, and yet assures us that godliness has the pro- mise of the life that now is? It is not so

126 RELIGION,

easy to give the fair Scriptural view without exaggeration on either side. It requires us to grasp both the inner and the outer life, and show how Christianity brings trouble and compensation.

it F there were no clouds we should not con- sult the barometer ; if we had no suffering

we should not turn our thoughts upon ourselves. Health leads out, sorrow leads in; and from within we learn to look up. “ Because they have no changes, therefore they fear not

God.” j

s qeuey, have taken away my Lord, and at know not where they have laid Him.”

—Many a word of lamentation covers what

should be, if we knew it, cause of deepest joy. |

year

T is a difficult matter oftentimes drawing the line between these two,—“ a time to to speak and a time to be silent.” As to Christian conversation, it should, before all things else, be true and then natural ; only then can it do good. In general company silence may frequently be best; religion dragged in unsuitably defeats a good inten- tion, and repels instead of attracting. Only let the silence be from wisdom not cowardice, and let it seek to turn the conversation to improving channels, though not directly reli- gious. The world feels when there is a solid

TRUE AND FALSE. 127

basis of principle. beneath the most common talk,—like the ointment of the right hand it “bewrayeth itself.” A man will generally do most good by first gaining an influence through quiet, unobtrusive demeanour and acts of un- selfish kindness, and then speech will come with power. A little word so commended is like a point with the weight of all the sword to drive it home, while a world of talk, if the life lags behind, is like chaff; this “talk of the lips” also “tendeth to penury.” Cases may arise where opportunity is pressing and sin flagrant, and a man must speak at all hazards.

The Pharisees were rebuked for making their religion public. Daniel would have sinned had he made his private. So different is duty when religion is popular or unpopular. Sometimes a man has no religion if he does not show it; sometimes very little if he obtrudes it. One thing we must always show —the fruits in the life.

There are things in religion not for common talk, which a delicate mind will no more thrust in than it will its heart’s deepest affections. David says, “ Come near all ye that fear God : I will tell what He hath done for my soul.” Those that “fear God” are invited, and they must “come near.” As—the—poet—says—of- grief, so-of religion here: “let her-be-her- own mistress—stit-” Claudius says: “My son, Jet not pietisers but pious men be thy companidsn. The true fear of God in the heart is like the sun which shines and warms though it does

128 RELIGION,

?

not speak;” and what Johnson says of all conversation applies specially to that which is Christian : “It is happiest when there is no - competition and no vanity, but a quiet inter- | change of sentiments.”

Our Saviour was thirty years in the world before He said much in it, as far as we know. Then He spoke “ as one having authority.” He bade some of the healed speak, others to be silent, as suited character and circumstance. He kept silence on occasions—when He stooped and wrote on the ground, when the Syro- Pheenician woman cried after Him, when His accusers testified against him. There are many seasons for silence as well as for speech.

When Paul was in the storm he does not seem to have spoken much for days, but he was gaining a power by his bearing, and when he spoke he was listened to. “ Let your | speech be always with grace,” but be not iv “ always speaking.” 4 Much must depend on ( Christian temperament, much on circum- stances; only let us never speak for display, and never be silent through fear.

—

{eo urging Christian duty on others it is not

implied that we have reached the stand- ard we enforce, but /we must be honestly and earnestly aiming at it. We begin by preaching to ourselves. A physician may treat himself and another for the same disease. In prayer we should not breathe greater fervour and attainment than we have

TRUE AND FALSE. 129

reached ; but we may desire them, and thus our lower frames that tell of deficiency, may meet the cases of the more advanced. In prayer and preaching the great thing is to “speak

that we do know.” ey,

AN MAN may profitably at times withdraw

himself from the outer world, leaving his heart open only to the higher light, and thus permit God’s voice to descend into his soul, as stars dart their light to the bottom of a mine. No one can be very strong and sure in the reality of heavenly things who has not to some extent learned to do this. Witness Moses, Elijah, Paul, John, and above all, the great Head of Humanity, who in this too was human. Mysticism, which represents this attitude of the soul, has kept alive a sense of the reality of the divine in the Christian Church and out of it. So even Buddhism and Brahminical contemplation have their use. But there may be too much of this. There must be contact with the practical reason— with the daylight thoughts and business of men, else there will be strange perversions of truth. In the depths where sunlight cannot penetrate, phosphorescent sparks gather, which men mistake for God’s stars.

the virtues of others. The rationalism of this age blames the puritanism of the past I

;

130 RELIGION,

and its bigotry, but it has itself as much bigotry, and less strength and tenacity.

The bigotry of latitudinarianism is as ready to strike an opponent as the old bigotry of superstition. It spares the blow when it deems its enemy contemptible, and substitutes a sneer.

Some wonder that latitudinarianism should be bigoted, but it is easy to see why it should be so. Latitudinarianism founds upon the individual will or intuition, and acknowledges no higher guide. This exalts self. True tolerance must come from the acknowledgment ‘of the right of conscience, as God-given, and from its allegiance to God himself. To claim freedom on this ground is in a clear mind in- separable from granting it. Every man holds his right under a charter, and stands on the same level before God. Latitudinarianism substitutes the right of the strongest, with no court of appeal.

T is much easier for a man to do harm in the world than good. A fool’s hand can in a moment shatter a vase which it took the skill and labour of years to finish. How easy to take a life the whole world cannot restore ! It seems as if the great lesson of this life were to keep from wrong. The first test of obedience was abstinence, and the greater part of the Decalogue is prohibition. Some have depreciated the Decalogue by contrasting with it the positive precepts of the

TRUE AND FALSE. 131

Gospel, but they forget that the first command of Christ includes all prohibitions—“ Let a man deny himself”—and that the great bless- ings of the Sermon on the Mount are for those who feel want. “Renunciation begins life ” (Carlyle). At the same time it is true that the best way to satisfy prohibitions is to observe posi- tive duties; but this does not alter the fact that doing harm in this world is easier than doing good.

Man cannot unaided put evil out, or even limit it. That belongs to God. ‘Thou hast destroyed thyself. In Me is thy help.”

Ys:

RELIGION AS A SCIENCE.

ELIGION has its basis in the heart and

spiritual nature. Does this prevent us

from treating it scientifically, and making its

principles and doctrines questions for the

understanding? We might as well forbid

natural science, because it has its basis in the facts of nature.

No doubt it is a more difficult thing to settle what are the facts of the spiritual nature, because the mind there is both active and pas- sive. It has to turn round and contemplate itself, discriminate what is original from what is derived—what lies as innate in its structure from what it adds through its own experience, or the experience of others. But this is only a reason for greater caution and delicacy of research. The natural philosopher can never mistake the original facts of matter—they are outside and independent of him (i.e. leaving the one-sided Idealist theory out of. count)— but the mental and religious philosopher finds his greatest difficulty in settling what are the facts of mind. Religious science has to deal

with this—with the origin of our convictions 132

RELIGION AS A SCIENCE. 133

of true and false, of right and wrong, cause and effect, God, the soul, immortality—how far these are original, how far derived or developed. And then having laid its founda- tion-stones it can begin to build. I do not despair of seeing these more clearly and firmly posited than they yet are, and then religious science will be a more certain thing; though even then there will still be room left for men to doubt and deny. It was intended it should be so, for it was not God’s purpose that reli- gious conviction should come through science, but through life. We must live first, and know that we live, and science comes to clarify and arrange life.

Many of the doubts of educated men arise in the act of passing over from religion as a life to religion as a science—striving to make it a thing of the reason, and turning their eye from it meanwhile as athing of the soul. For their sakes it is desirable that the scientific view should be thoroughly dealt with, and that human nature should be so analysed as to show that there are great spiritual facts in its struc- ture. When a man has reached this ground clearly and firmly, he is on the way to have all his doubts solved.

After all, however, he only reaches the ground where simple natures stand at first— he accepts the facts of the inner life as facts. He comes to know what they feel by taking a circuit to the original starting-point.

Is it worth our while to go round the whole painful course, and find that the goal is where

134 RELIGION

we began? Ans.—With some minds it is inevitable. They could not keep their footing in their first faith unless they reached it as a goal. In their circuit, too, they have learned much, and risen to a higher platform—a spiral ascent. Happy are those who have not had their affections chilled in rising to the thinner

atmosphere of thought, and blessed also those ——

“who have not seen, and yet have believed.”

T is curious to observe how many modern philanthropies. and philosophies that dis- claim Christianity have borrowed its terms, such as regeneration of society, brotherhood, humanity (as embracing the race of man—an idea that came in only with the Gospel), but at the same time the life is taken from them— the spiritual and divine element which alone gives them real meaning and power. Christianity or the Bible, on the other hand, has been charged with borrowing from heathen- dom,—the cherubim and ark, for example, being symbols from Egypt—but then a new life and meaning have been put into them. Christianity borrows jewels of the Egyptians, and they find their way into divine symbols, as the Israelites borrowed for the tabernacle. Men have carried off the sacred vessels from God’s temple, and use them, like Belshazzar, as common things.

aN COMMON objection of infidels is to the

sin of Adam bringing misery and evil consequences to his posterity. Ans.—The

AS A SCIENCE. 135

facts are the same to the infidel as to the Christian. There are misery and sin in the world, and men are born into the midst of it. They are there without their own act, account for it as men will. Whether it be the conse- quence of the sin of one or of many antecedent is the same.

Infidels say, If Christianity be true, why is it believed by so few? The proofs should have been so clear that all would admit it. Ans.—Deism is believed by still fewer, though Deists say the proofs of God’s existence from Nature are so clear, and the mass of men who believe in God do so not as naturalists but as supernaturalists.

The objection made against the late origin of the human race from the high civilisation of the Egyptians, which would require a long period, may be answered from the progress made by the Spanish Arabs in less than two centuries. They entered Spain as wandering tribes, and ere long Cordova was a centre of high civilisation.

ACOBI stood opposed to the philosophers of his day in holding that there is a power

in man beyond dialectics (logic), which gives him religious truth. This he at first called faith, afterwards reason (Vernunft). He held that when the dialectic power seeks to realise the conceptions (Begriffe) of God, and to establish them on its own grounds, it falls into pantheism, and so he retreated on the deep

136 RELIGION

ground of the inmost nature of man, which pro- tests against pantheism. He held also that there is a weakness in man which prevents him reaching divine truth by the path of thought, but this weakness he did not account for by the fall of man. He was one of those not far from the kingdom of God.t

Jacobi was right in holding the validity of faith, but surely wrong in affirming the impossibility of realising its data in thought, and in setting this inner ground and the under- standing in antagonism. Man’s nature cannot be in hopeless conflict with itself. If there be such principles in the nature of man, thought is bound to accept them as it does the laws of the external universe. It cannot overturn them, but it must be able to know them as not opposed to the laws of its own nature. Faith and reason cannot always be reconciled, but they must not be felt to be irreconcilable. The great error, however, lies in not accepting the fact of sin. This accounts for the weak-. ness of man’s perception, and it is at the same time that which makes it impossible for us to accept pantheism. Our instinct recoils from a system that would make sin inherent in God. Pantheism constantly struggles to destroy the positive element in sin, and reduce it to a mere negation—the absence of good—but this can only be attained by obliterating conscience. The only system that meets all the parts of human nature is Christianity, and it begins with an appeal to the deepest. The soul

1 See Perthes’ Leben, i. 68.

AS A SCIENCE. 137

knows its voice as a lost child its parent’s. “The world by wisdom knew not God,” but “Wisdom is justified of her children.”

fee has been objected to Christianity (Lecky’s

History of Morals in Europe) that while it has given new moral life it has its drawbacks. Its moral purity led to asceticism (St. Anthony, Simeon Stylites) such as never was in heathen- ism, and its power of conscience, to persecution.

It is granted that the best thing, abused, becomes the worst; but the question is, how stands it in Christianity itself, not what has human nature made of it? Is asceticism or persecution found there, or was it not just when primitive Christianity was forgotten that these entered ?

Then, have not these tended to cure them- selves? Is there not a corrective power in Christianity leading to amendment, such as no other system possesses—a power which is not yet exhausted ?

RINCESS GALLITZIN, possessed with

a strong love of knowledge, became one

of the most remarkable women of her time. She was under the guidance of Hemsterhuis, and had no faith in Christianity, chiefly be- cause she thought that people could not act as they did if they had any faith in its threat- enings and promises. She found after a severe

138 RELIGION

illness that her heart, under the guise of truth- seeking, was filled with ambition and vanity. She felt compelled to read the Bible, to teach her children, and became a sincere Christian (Roman Catholic). The Catholicism of that period, 1790, where it was earnest, laid hold of the great thought of redemption, recoiling from the scepticism that accompanied the Revolution, and so joined hands in some cases with earnest Protestantism struggling against Rationalism. Catholicism has since become more Roman and outward, running, on the one hand, into the channel of sentiment and art ; on the other, into politics.

HY should God, it is asked, be con- sidered bound to grant immortality to His spiritual creatures? Are they treated unjustly or unkindly if they have life given to them in this world alone? God might have been pleased to deny the first life, and what claim would they have had? No more than the countless possibilities who might have been called into being, the unnumbered slum- berers in the womb of the ALL who never awake. Have these a right to say, “I should have been summoned to the world of life”

Yet we can truly speak of God as being bound when we reason from one part of his action to another. He has done one thing, therefore we may expect that He will do another. Now, He has given spiritual life

AS A SCIENCE. 139

to some of His creatures, therefore He will attend to its claims and wants. One of these is more truth, more goodness, “more life, and fuller.” Having given life to lower creatures, He provides for them suitable nourishment. Will He not, for the higher? and till they reach the perfection of their nature ?

aieHe Hesiodic spirit of morality runs through

Greek literature as one of its elements. It is “the law written in the heart,’ of which the Apostle speaks. This gave Christianity a point for its lever to destroy the Greek idolatry. Those who would obliterate all conscience and morality in heathenism deprive Christianity of the witness that is in man, or reduce it to the bald assent of the under- standing to external evidence. There is a witness enfeebled, hesitating, often perverted, but still ready to be awakened. The Platonic doctrine of reminiscence may be applied to the great truths of ethics and natural theology. Christianity brings them to remembrance, and its original inheritance dawns upon humanity —“T knew this before.” The Gospel sweeps away the inrooted moss from the old inscrip- tion, takes out the earth, deepens and sharpens the characters, and writes above them a new word—*“ Redemption.”

When the tables of the law that came from God’s own hand have been broken, they are written over again from God, but by man’s hand—through humanity, an Incarnation.

a

140 RELIGION

ROMETHEUS = forethought.

~~ Epimetheus=afterthought, his brother.

The first, consulting for man’s good but sometimes absent; the second, erring, to find vain regrets. This legend seems conceived in an angry and