FROM-THE- LIBRARY-OF 
TRINITYCOLLEGETORDNTO 




From the Library of 

Brian Heeney 
Given by his Family 




HINDEANCES TO THE WORK 



OF THE 



CHURCH IN THE WORLD: 
31 Series of 



THE LORD BISHOP OF BATH AND WELLS, 
PROFESSOR PLUMFTRE, 
CANON WALSHAM How, 
PREBENDARY ERSKINE CLARKE, 
ARCHDEACON SANDFORD, 
PREBENDARY HARRIS, 
PREBENDARY W. R. CLARK, 
PREBENDARY SADLER. 



LONDON : 
WILLIAM WELLS GARDNER, 

2, PATESNOOTKB BUILDINOS. 



133 



1187.88- 

MAY 8 1985 



PREFATORY NOTE. 

TllE occasion on which the following Sermons wore preached 
was the virtual completion of the Renovation of the Church, 
and particularly of the Chancel, of S. Mary Magdalene, 
Taunton. 

The Sermons are themselves on subjects of such vast 
importance that it was thought that the deep interest which 
they excited when they were preached might beneficially be 
extended beyond our own Parish. 1 have to thank the 
Preachers for having added to the first great kindness of 
preaching their Sermons the additional favour of allowing 
and superintending their publication. 

Of three sermons, which were preached extemporaneously, 
I have not been able to obtain copies or reports. My best 
thanks are due to Prebendary Harris and Professor Plumptro 
for their kindness in supplying the two sermons on World- 
liness and Sloth. I added one of my own, on Lukcwvrmness, 
to fill up the remaining gap. May God grant of His mercy 
and grace that the words now sent forth to the Church in 
the World may help in the removal of some of those many 
hindrances which impede its work ! 

W. R. CLARK. 
Taunton, Lent, 1872. 



CONTENTS : 



PAGE. 

I. Th> W<.rk of tht Church in th< World ; by 

the Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells 1 

II. Delays and Difficulties in the Church s Work ; 

by the Rev. E. H. Plumptre . . . . la 

III. Spiritiutl Fiver; by the Rev. W. Walshnm 

How .. .. 31 

IV. Spiritual Paralysis ; by the Rev. W. Walsh am 

How . . 43 

V. Prayer I essness ; by the Rev. J. Erskine Clarke 55 

VI. Intemperance ; by the Ven. Archdeacon Hand- 
ford . . . . . 65 

VII. Wcrldliness ; by the Rev. G. C. Harris 83 

VIII. Lukewarmncss ; by the Rev. W. R. Clark . . 99 

IX. Our Divisions; by the Rev. M. F. Sadler . . 119 

X. Sloth ; by the Rev. E. H. Plumptre . . 135 



I. 

THE WORK OF THE CHURCH IN THE WORLD, 

BY THE 

RIGHT HON. AND RIGHT REV. THE LORD BISHOP OF 
BATH AND WELLS. 



Tho Wank al tho Shujich in the 



MATT, xvi., 18. 
" Upon this liock will I build My Church." 

I SEE before me some hundreds of people men, 
women and children. They are of various ages, 
of various conditions of life, of every station, of every 
variety of intellectual attainment, pursuing different 
callings in life, as different in character as they are 
in dress in short, high, low, rich, poor, learned, 
simple. But, whatever diversities may separate one 
from another, they all are come here in one and the 
same character, on one and the game footing, by one 
and the same right and title : they are all members 
of the Church of God. If we extend our views 
beyond this Church, and embrace all England, we 
shall still find that with all the manifold varieties of 
social position to be found in town and country, and 
all the divergences caused by different pursuits, there 
is still the same bond of union and identity, Tlie 
Church of God. Let people be never so different in 
other respects, they may be one in this, that they are 
fellow-members of the Church of God. 



4 The Work of the Church in the World. 

But we may extend our view far beyond the limits 
of our native land. If we do so, we shall of course 
encounter far greater diversities in human nature. 
We shall come across red men, and yellow men, and 
black men, and white men, savages and civilised 
men speaking divers languages, and not understanding 
one another s speech. We shall find the most diverse 
social and political conditions ; but we shall also find 
interpenetrating all these diversities, and binding in 
one men otherwise most divided, that very same bond 
which binds us into one body here in Taunton, the 
bond of fellowship in Christ s Holy Catholic Church. 
In other words, we find, on examination of the cir 
cumstances of the inhabitants of this world, that there 
is an institution called The Church; that it is co 
extensive with the world ; that it embraces all nations 
within its walls ; that it imposes identical laws, 
confers identical privileges, and bestows identical 
possessions upon them all yes, upon Englishmen, 
Hindoos, Hottentots, New Zealanders, Ked Indians, 
and Chinese alike ! 

But if we enquire further into the origin of this 
Church, we have to track her way backward through 
nearly eighteen and a half centuries. It is as if we 
were tracking some mighty river upwards to its source. 
As we ascend through centuries past we find the area 
of the Church on earth gradually narrowing and 
diminishing, till at length we find it within the four 
walls of an upper chamber at Jerusalem ; or, earlier 
still, till we come on the Divine presence of Jesus 
Christ of Nazareth, and hear Him saying to the twelve 
Apostles, " Upon this liock I will build My Church." 
We have now reached the fountain-head of that 
stream which has gone forth to water the whole 



The Work of the Church in the World. 5 

earth ; or, to pursue the metaphor used by our Lord, 
we have reached the foundation of the great building. 
We find that this mighty institution, whose influence 
embraces all nations, and comprises all ranks in each 
nation, was founded by the Son of God incarnate, 
that it is animated by His Spirit, that He is its Living 
Head, that every part of it is upheld and informed 
and guided by Him, that this Church is His mystical 
Body, and that the steps to the formation of this 
Body were the incarnation of the Word the birth 
into this world of the everlasting Son, the human life 
on earth of Jesus Christ, His cross and passion, His 
burial and descent into Hell, His glorious resurrec 
tion from the dead, and His ascension to the right 
hand of God in glory. Well, then, what is the 
work which the Church, thus founded and thus ex 
tended, has to perform in the world ? 

In order to understand and appreciate this work 
aright we must necessarily first understand the con 
dition of the world itself. Because the Church s 
work is relative relative to man s wants, and to man s 
moral state. The restoration of a building implies 
the knowledge of the architect s original design, and 
of the subsequent deviations from it. The healing of 
a patient requires the knowledge of his disease, and 
of the divergence of his organs from health and 
soundness. So the work of the Church in the world 
is not what it would have been were the world without 
sin, but bears a relation to the fallen, corrupt, and 
sinful state of mankind on earth. In fact, the whole 
institution of the Church by its Divine Founder is in 
thought, as in fact, subsequent to, and conditional 
upon, the fall and ruin of mankind by sin. 

Now a hasty glance at the condition of man as he 



6 The Work of the Church in the World. 

is seen by the light of history in past ages, and as he 
is still to be seen by observation at the present day, 
shows us the evil influence of the fall in these two 
main points : 

(1) In utter ignorance of the true nature and 
character of God ; and (2) in utter deviation from 
the rules of righteousness in the dealings of man 
with man. 

I need not stop to illustrate these two heads. The 
thought of the abominable idolatries and gross super 
stitions, and polluting services of blood and lust of 
the false priesthoods, and idol temples, and blasphe 
mous fables, and childish legends, and debasing con 
ceptions which everywhere have marked the worship 
of the gods of the nations, will at once rise up in your 
minds as proofs of man s ignorance of God. And 
the past and present condition of the world in respect 
of wars, strife, oppression, falsehood, and so on, 
speaks for itself. I may pass on, therefore, to show 
that the Church s work in the world consists mainly 

I. In bearing witness to the true nature and cha 
racter of God ; and 

II. In teaching a true standard of morality 
between man and man. 

I. I conceive that the primary work of the Church 
on earth is to be a witness for God. God s gift of 
Revelation to His Church by the Holy Spirit, by the 
Holy Scriptures, by Apostles and Prophets, is in order 
to constitute His Church as His witness. Conceive 
for a moment how supremely important to man, as a 
reasonable being, the knowledge of God is ; what a 
distortion is caused by false notions of God ; what a 
flood of blessedness comes upon the soul with the 
knowledge of Qoci ! And this knowledge had 



The Work of the Church in the World. 7 

perished. The world by wisdom knew not God. 
The world by worldly wisdom never can know God. 
The Greek with all his acuteness, the Hindoo with 
all his contemplativeness, the Bhuddist with all his 
fine-spun sophistries, the modern philosopher with all 
his scientific accuracy, the Mohammedan with all his 
dogmatic confidence, have never known God. ft is 
the Church s sublime mission to make Him known 
to proclaim His true nature and character ; holy, 
just, and merciful a Spirit, and yet a Person ; a 
Spirit filling all time and all space with His power 
and presence; a Person having the closest and most 
intimate relations to every soul of man. But espe 
cially is it the Church s mission to make known the 
relations of God to man as a sinner. Hence her 
great theme is redeeming love. She teaches that God 
is love ; but she points her teaching by the love of the 
crucified Saviour. She teaches God s holiness ; but 
she points her teaching by proclaiming the awful 
sacrifice of Calvary. She proclaims God s mercy; 
but she brings home the lesson with irresistible power 
by testifying to the gift of God s dear Son to be the 
Saviour of the lost. And in thus bearing witness to 
God s true character, by proclaiming the great truths 
of redemption, what a lever does she bring to bear 
upon the souls of the sinful men whom she teaches ! 
The sinfulness of sin is set forth in the most awful 
colours ; the guilt and danger of sin are shown in all 
their fulness, and yet a door of escape is set before 
the sinner with every inducement to him to escape by 
it. And then how endearing, how inviting, how en 
couraging is the Church s witness concerning God as 
the God who hears prayer, who comforts those that are 
cast down, who does not reject the poor destitute, who 



8 The Work of the Church in the World. 

heals the broken-hearted, who strengthens the weak, 
who upholds those that lean upon Him, and saves 
those who call upon Him ! Contrast the experience 
of Abraham, or l)avid, or St. Paul, in their dealings 
with God, with the heartless speculations of philo 
sophy, and you will see the immense worth of the 
Church s witness to the true character of God, and 
how important a part of her work it is to be God s 
witness in the world. 

I have already pointed out the relation of the great 
facts of redemption to the Divine nature and cha 
racter, and it is almost superfluous to add that it is 
especially by her witness to the death and resurrec 
tion of the Lord Jesus Christ, the propitiation for sin, 
and the Saviour sent by God, that the Church 
exhibits to the world the true character of God. It 
is in the face of Jesus Christ that the glory of God 
shines out with such effulgence. 

But no mean part of the Church s testimony is in 
her offices of public worship. Nothing expresses 
more clearly and fully the worshipper s conception of 
God than the kind of worship which is offered to 
Him. A holy, reasonable, joyful, and spiritual service 
bears witness to a holy God who is a Spirit and who 
is love. It is therefore a grave part of the Church s 
work in the world to keep alive in the world the re 
collection of God by her devout services, and to take 
care that those services are such as becomes the God 
whom we adore. Heathen altars, and heathen sacri 
fices, and heathen idols, tell an unmistakeable tale of 
the gods of the heathen. Christian Churches, and 
Christian worship offered in all faith and love and 
holy joy, should tell no less distinctly of the holiness 
and the mercy of the God of our salvation. 



The Work of the Church in the World. *9 

As regards God, then, the Church is performing 
her work in the world aright, when with all her might, 
by every instrument she possesses with her voice in 
preaching, praying, singing ; by her action in sacra 
ments, rites, ceremonies, ordinances ; by her own holy 
joy in God s service, and her devout reverence in her 
ministrations, she is testifying aloud to the grace and 
goodness of Almighty God, even as the holy ones in 
Heaven do who cease not day and night saying, 
"Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, 
and is, and is to come." Nor do I think that any 
graver charge can be brought against any branch of 
the Church than that by her ordinances of worship 
she has obscured the true character of God, and borne 
false witness before the world concerning His nature 
and attributes, and His kingdom of grace and glory. 

II. The other branch of the Church s work is the 
teaching a true standard of morality between man 
and man. And this is a work only second to her 
witness for God. .Nothing else can for a moment 
compare with it in dignity and in importance. Think 
of all the material improvements that can be effected 
in man s social condition : unhealthy marshes drained 
and turned into fruitful fields ; waste lands culti 
vated and teeming with corn and vines, and gardens, 
and pleasant habitations ; railways opening com 
munication from city to city ; electric telegraphs 
annihilating distance ; sanitajjy reforms producing 
health and cleanliness ; education opening up avenues 
of knowledge to ten thousands, and so on. Place all 
these in the scale with a real advance in righteous 
ness, a real approximation to God s law of love to 
man, a real approximation to the mind and character 
of the Lord Jesus, and they are comparatively but 



10 The Work of tie Church in the World. 

emptiness and vanity. Material improvements with a 
low morality falsehood, licentiousness, selfishness 
leave man but a whited sepulchre, fair without, all 
uncleanness within. They leave an outward show 
of prosperity, with the canker of death gnawing at 
the heart within. It is as if one decked a corpse in 
robes of state and called it life. But restore man s 
nature to the likeness of God in righteousness and 
true holiness ; reinstate his conscience in its rightful 
supremacy ; bring back right as man s rule of conduct, 
and pluck up wrong by the roots out of the soil of 
man s heart, and you have made a contribution to 
human happiness indeed. It is the Church s work on 
earth to do this. In the midst of all the crookedness 
of men s ways she shows the straightness of God s law. 
By the side of human naughtiness she lifts up the 
model of Christ s most holy life. In the face of 
maxims and fashions and customs of man s approval 
she holds out the inimitable beauty of the precepts of 
the blessed Gospel. She persuades men to eschew 
the evil and choose the good to cast off the old man 
with his deceitful lusts, and to put on the new man. 
She handles the besom of purification, and would 
sweep clean out of the world all the defilements 
brought in by sin. As far as her influence extends, 
the night of sin recedes, and the morning of righteous 
ness dawns upon the earth. 

There was a time when this blessed work seemed 
likely to be soon realized when the multitude of 
them that believed were of one heart and of one soul, 
eating their meat with gladness and singleness of 
heart, praising God, and having favour with all the 
people ; and the Lord added to the Church daily such 
as should be saved. And had that work gone on as it 



The Work of the Church in the World. 1 1 

begun, by this time the whole earth had been full of 
the knowledge of the Lord ; every knee would have 
learnt to bow at the name of Jesus, and the golden 
age of universal peace and goodwill amongst men 
would be gladdening the earth. But, alas ! the clear 
shining of that early morn has been followed by a day 
of clouds and darkness. The swelling buds have 
withered before they blossomed ; the fruit has been 
bitten by untimely frosts ; disappointment has trodden 
on the lieels of hope. But the Church still stands ; 
yea, and shall stand for ever. if The gates of Holl 
shall not prevail against her." And her work is still 
the same. He who built her is the same. His pro 
mise is the same. His grace is the same as ever. His 
purpose is the same. Past failures and shortcomings 
and mistakes have been ours. Doubtless they have 
done much mischief, and probably that mischief will 
not cease at once. The children s teeth will be set on 
edge by the sour grapes which their fathers had eaten. 
But taking our stand at the present moment, sur 
rounded by existing circumstances, it becomes us to 
consider the Church s mission from her Divine Head 
and Founder, and to set ourselves in good earnest to 
accomplish her proper work. 

Ana I would remind you, my brethren, that in the 
Church s common work every individual member has 
to bear his part. The body is not one member, but 
many. None can delegate his proper function to 
another. The Church s work in the world is the work 
of the whole body. Every part and every joint must 
supply its due share : every stone in the building has 
its proper place. I showed you in the opening part of 
my sermon how the Church comprises all grades, and 
degrees, and ranks, and conditions of men within her 



12 The WorJc of the Church in the World. 

pale. It follows that each and all has his part of the 
Church s work to do. The vessels of wood and earth 
have their use in the great house, as well as the 
vessels of gold and silver. The humblest Christian 
in this Church can contribute his share to the Church s 
double work of bearing witness for God in the world, 
and holding out a standard of true morality between 
man and man, as truly, and perhaps as effectually, as 
any bishop or any great layman in Christendom. 
The united testimony of a large body of poor working 
men, rising above the temptations and difficulties of 
their station in life, and dignifying their low estate in 
the world by the ennobling graces of a true Christian 
walk before God and man, would have an incalculable 
effect. Try it. 

To conclude, and recapitulate : We have seen that 
the Church s work in the world is 

I. To bear witness for God (a) to His being 
that there is a God that judgeth the earth (~bj, to 
His true nature and character, as opposed to all the 
false creeds of heathenism, false Christianity, and 
philosophy (c) ; to His grace and love as manifested 
in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus 
Christ, and that so as to draw men to God through 
Jesus Christ that they may be saved. 

II. To set up a true standard of morals, and the 
methods by which the Church carries on her work in 
this world is (a) by preaching and teaching (b), by the 
various ordinances of Divine worship, and (c) by the ex 
hibition of true godliness in the lives of her members. 
These methods are simultaneous, mutually supporting 
each other, and dependent for their success upon their 
joint action. The Church s instruments are (a) her 
clergy specially set apart for the work of the ministry 



The Work of the Church in tfo World. 13 

(bj every individual member of the Body of Christ, 
every one in whom is the Spirit of Christ, every one 
who is risen with Christ, every one who is justified by 
the faith of Christ, who, each in their proper place and 
sphere, have the Church s work committed to them by 
tne Great Head Jesus Christ as truly as the clergy 
have theirs. 

And I observe, lastly, that the area within which 
this work has to be done is the world this world of 
God s making, with man upon it. From the hill on 
which God has built this city the Church we, my 
brethren and fellow-citizens, must take a survey of 
the habitable globe. We must look near, and we 
must look far, wherever there are tokens of human 
habitations, wherever there are men men of like 
passions with ourselves, men with souls like our souls, 
men who are God s creatures as we are God s crea 
tures. As we look we shall see sin, sorrow, death. 
But we shall remember, God made those souls ; they 
are His in spite of all their sins. Jesus Christ died 
for those souls. They are His in spite of all their 
sins. And we must resolve that they shall be won 
back to God through Jesus Christ, if God permit. 
Resolving this, we must set the Church s machinery 
to work in good earnest to win them. 

With courage, but with wisdom ; with determina 
tion, but with meekness ; with burning zeal, but with 
kind forbearance ; with utter self-abnegation, with 
entire simplicity of aim, with our whole strength, 
\uth unflagging perseverance, with concentration of 
purpose, and in entire dependence upon the grace and 
strength of Jesus Christ, we must pursue the work 
entrusted to us. The assault must be made on all the 
strongholds of sin. The vices of the rich, the vices of 



14 The JPork of the Church in the World. 

the poor, the evil fashions of a corrupt world, whether 
in high life or low life, the false maxims of a worldly 
morality, the false theology of a spurious philosophy, 
the false tenets of a corrupt religion, the ignorance 
and the wickedness of men wherever they are found 
against these, I say, and every other form of false 
hood and wrong, we must bring the Church s holy 
warfare to bear. Everywhere we must strive to make 
known Almighty God, manifested in His only be 
gotten Son, Jesus Christ. Everywhere we must strive 
to establish Christ s blessed law of truth and purity 
and love. God grant that in the day when the glorious 
Church is presented unto Christ in her bridal beauty 
of spotless holiness it may be found that we in this 
corner of the earth, in this our generation, have not 
wasted our opportunities, but that we have done our 
part, by the grace of God, in forwarding the Church s 
work in the world, of witnessing for God our Heavenly 
Father, and teaching all men the right ways of Jesus 
our Saviour ! 



II. 

DELAYS AND DIFFICULTIES IN THE 
CHURCH S WORK, 

BY THE 

REV. E. H. PLUMPTRE, M.A., 

PBOFK880B OF DlVINITY IN KlNO 8 COLLKGK, LONDON ; PfiKUENDAKY 

or S. PAUL S, AND KISCTOK or PLUCKLKY, KKNT. 



Belays and BiflicuUios in tho 
Church s 



REV. vi., lo. 
"How long, O Lord, holy and true." 

THE cry which the seer of Patmos heard, as in these 
words, from the souls that were beneath the altar, as 
they waited with patience for the unfolding of God s 
purposes and the triumph of His saints, is one which 
has been raised in every tone of sadness, wonder, 
almost despair, by thousands in every age. Its 
exceeding bitterness has for the most part been in 
exact proportion to the intensity of man s belief in 
the holiness and righteousness of God. The man 
who passes through life moved only by the lower 
pleasures and lower pains which he shares with the 
brute creatures round him he who fixes on some 
end in life, power, wealth, honour, and pursues it 
with a restless egotism he who has attained to the 
serener temper which takes men and things as they 
are, and seeks to make the best of them these may 

B 



18 Delays and Difficulties in the Church s Work, 

have other sorrows, other struggles ; but that of this 
perplexity and expectancy, the " hope deferred" that 
" maketh the heart sick," is not of them. It is pre 
cisely because they are "men of desires," craving for 
the kingdom of Heaven, longing for a world in 
order, that the disorders and confusions, in the midst of 
which they live, weigh on the servants of God with 
so intolerable a burden, that the delays and difficulties 
in working out what they are sure is the Divine 
purpose for themselves and for mankind lead to such 
passionate complaints. That feeling is recognised, 
expressed, met as far as it can be met, in the Book 
which is at once so intensely human and so essentially 
divine. Hints and suggestions are thrown out that 
the mystery of permitted evil, and of good thwarted 
or delayed, lies altogether behind the veil, beyond 
the ken even of angelic vision, or prophet s inspira 
tion, or the knowledge of the spirits of the just in the 
Paradise of God. It is not from the prophet s lips, 
in that wondrous vision of Zechariah s, that the cry 
" How long?" proceeds, but from those of "The 
Angel of the Lord." (Zech. L, 12.) It is not from 
those who are fighting the battle and falling in the 
breach that it is heard to rise in the Apocalypse, but 
from the " souls beneath the altar that were slain for 
the Word of God, and for the testimony which they 
held," who were clothed already in the white robes 
of victory. (Rev. vi., 11.) And in each case words 
were spoken in reply, which, if they did not solve 
the problem, or disclose that which can be known only 
to Him who sees the end from the beginning, were 
at least enough to strengthen and sustain the doubting 
heart and give it courage to endure. The prophet 
beard, as from the lips of the Lord of Hosts himself, 



Delays and Difficulties in the Church s Work. 19 

the " good and comfortable words " which assured 
him, as he brooded over the desolation of the Holy 
City, that the Lord would yet " comfort Zion," and 
would yet "choose Jerusalem." (Zech. i., 13, 17.) 
The Apostle heard that it was said to the souls which 
raised that exceeding bitter cry that they should 
u rest yet a little season " in the peace and rest of God, 
which He gives to His chosen ones, till the gathering 
of the Martyrs army had been completed and the ap 
pointed time had come. 

Such thoughts as these may help, in some measure, 
to counterbalance the sense of failure and dis 
appointment which comes over us as we survey 
the history of the world, yet more, because we look 
to it as called into being to redress, at least, some 
of the world s disorders, as we trace the history of 
the Church. iSo many high energies wasted and 
misapplied ; so many noble institutions decaying and 
waxing old, losing their life and becoming fruitful 
only in corruption, prejudices, misunderstandings ; the 
bitterness of party dividing those who ought to be ot 
one heart and one soul in the fellowship of God s 
saints ; epochs when there seemed to be a brighter 
future dawning on the destinies of mankind, and men 
heard, as on the mountain heights, the cry of those 
who published glad tidings of salvation, passing away 
and leaving the old evils of the world unredressed ; 
generation after generation forced to utter the same 
wail of lamentation, "The harvest is over, the 
summer is ended, and we are not saved ;" all this is 
dark and depressing enough. The same sentence of 
incompleteness seems to rest alike upon the dreams of 
those who have lived in visions of human progress and 
perfectibility resting on political or social changes, 



20 Delays and Difficulties in the Church s Work. 

and on those who looked to some renewal or revival of 
the Pentecostal gifts and the strength that comes from 
God. If we point to the great revolution which 
closed the last century, and of which we are yet 
feeling the terrible vibrations, as an example of the 
one, we must remember that the Reformation was 
hailed with not less ardent hopes, and has met with no 
less disastrous a frustration that the lesser religious 
movements in the history of our own and other 
churches, which to those who started or shared in 
them seemed to be as the coming of God s kingdom, 
may be reckoned by the score. Do not our own 
experience, the memories of the last few years, the 
history of the life and work of each one of us, in town 
or village, in church or school, bring back to us 
failures, like in kind, which have wounded us yet more 
keenly 1 An impulse has been given to our life, or to 
that of one whose soul was dear to us as our own, 
which seemed to promise a great change for good. 
There was, we hoped, the unfolding of the regenerate 
life. Old things had passed away, and, behold, all 
things were becoming new. And then temptations 
have come, and sin has revived in all its power to 
deceive and to destroy, and the likeness of the old 
evil self has re-appeared in all its foulness, and the 
latter end has been worse than the beginning. Or we 
have seen the commencement of a like work among 
those for whose souls we were called to watch. Some 
new organisation, some mission or revival, some guild 
or association, gave promise of a better future for our 
parish. There was a stirring among the dry bones, 
as if the breath of the Spirit of the Lord was bringing 
them together and infusing life, not into dead forms 
only, but into hearts and souls that were dried up and 



Delays and Difficulties in the Church s Work. 21 

withered, and we trusted that they would rise up " an 
exceeding great army." Services were better at 
tended, communions more visibly and on a larger 
scale means of blessing to the faithful, worship more 
hearty and rejoicing, and then there has come opposi 
tion, and irritation, and rebuke and blasphemy from 
without, or deadness and lukewarmness from within. 
Delays and difficulties have multiplied around us at 
every step. We have been tempted to fold our hands 
in the silent acquiescence of despair, or the cry, 
"How long, O Lord, how long?" has mingled 
with our sighs and tears. 

Thoughts like these may seem sad and depressing, 
out of harmony with the temper of Christian hope. 
But there is, we may be sure, here also, as with all 
facts which we look steadily in the face, a sweetness 
that follows on the bitter, lessons of wisdom and of 
patience not otherwise to be learnt. 

1. It is well not to be over sanguine in the ex 
pectations with which we start. We must not expect 
that the world will be converted, or a Church renew its 
youth like the eagle, in the course of a single genera 
tion, or a parish be of one mind in all things, or an 
individual soul raised to the blessedness of the new 
life by the power of a single sermon or a week such 
as that on which we are now entering. Every age of 
the Church the first not excepted has had, as we 
have seen, its share of such exaggerated hopes. They 
are, perhaps, almost inseparable from the impulse 
which leads men to earnest and self-devoted work. 
Think, for a moment, of that which had floated before 
the minds of the personal disciples of Our Lord, and 
of those who immediately succeeded them. The times 
and the seasons not being revealed to them, they 



22 Delays and Difficulties in the Church s Work. 

were left free, in some measure at least, to draw 
pictures of the future for themselves. And those 
pictures were, as is obvious, altogether wanting in per 
spective. They were already, they thought, in the 
last days. The end was near at hand, the Judge was 
standing at the door. They saw, or thought they 
saw, the Gospel already preached to every nation 
under Heaven ; its heralds already gone out into all 
lands, and their voice unto the ends of the world. 
Events of colossal greatness in God s spiritual order 
were to crowd upon each other in rapid succession. 
The rejection of Israel that the Gentiles might be re 
ceived ; the apostasy that was to end in the revelation 
of the Man of Sin ; the restoration of Israel as life 
from the dead all these entered into their anticipa 
tions of what they, or those who were growing up 
around them, might live to witness. And then there 
came, when the years passed on and the hopes remained 
unfulfilled, and heresies and divisions multiplied 
around and within the Church, the inevitable reaction. 
Scoffers took up their taunting proverb and asked, 
" Where, then, is the promise of His coming ?" The 
hearts of the righteous were made sad as they entered 
on a state of things so different from all they had 
anticipated. First to one and then to another glimpses 
were given as to the possible postponement of the 
closing scene of the world s great drama. At last the 
truth was proclaimed which in its exceeding breadth 
covers these and all like cases "One day is with 
the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as 
one day." (2 Peter in., 8.) Men, even Apostles, 
are impatient and for precipitating things, asking, 
"Wiltthou at this time?" (Acts i., 6.) "How 
long, O Lord, holy and true?" but He, the Author 



Delays and Difficulties t n ihe CJmreh s Work. 23 

of Nature, the Lord and King of that which, though 
supernatural is yet subject to the law of the same 
eternal will, appears to he "deliberate in all His 
operations, accomplishing His ends by slow, successive 
steps." 

The gain of receiving, acting on, living in that truth 
is clearly immense, if we do not expect success 
rapid, unbroken, wide-spreading, as the result of our 
labours, we shall not be disappointed and down 
hearted when we meet with failure. If we lose some 
thing of the brightness and joy of the hopes that 
lead men on, we escape at least the heart-sickness of 
hope deferred. We are led to make, not success, but 
duty, the motive and measure of our work. In pro 
portion as we estimate rightly the instability of the 
praise and sympathy which are at first so pleasant, 
and seem to promise so rapid a fulfilment to our 
highest hopes, it becomes a very small thing to us to 
be judged of man s judgment ; and it becomes more 
ancl more the law of our nature to work ever as in 
the Great Task-Master s eye, and to remember that 
He that judgeth us is the Lord. The old chivalrous 
watchword of Fais ton devoir, awienne que pourra 
may well be emblazoned on the shields and engraved 
on the hearts of the soldiers of the cross. We can 
learn no higher lesson than that which has been 
taught us by a poet of our own, that 

Because rij?ht is ri^ht, to follow right 
Is wisdom, in the scorn of consequence. 

2. But there is a worse evil even than that of 
these exaggerated and feverish hopes, leading to more 



* Bailer s Analogy, part ii., cap 4, ad Jin. 



24 Delays and Difficulties in the ClmrcKs Work. 

utter unreality, against which also we should guard. 
Men affect to have the hopes make-believe, some 
times to others, sometimes even to themselves that 
they do not see the delays and difficulties which 
a clearer vision discerns to be inevitable. We have 
all of us listened to, many of us have been tempted 
to use, language of this nature. Statesmen and 
orators feed the imagination of the fierce democracy 
which they seek to wield at will with prognostica 
tions of a political millennium, the halcyon days of 
peace and plenty, Astrea upon earth again, and the 
golden age returned. The platform rhetoric of 
Church Congresses, and Social Science reformers, 
and missionary meetings, reverberates with platitudes 
of this kind hollow, windy, unsubstantial, which 
those who utter them, and those who hear, alike know 
to be insincere. The reunion of Christendom, the 
healing of the schisms that divide our own portion of 
it, the extinction of pauperism, ignorance, crime, are 
spoken of as if the harvest was already ripe, waiting 
only to be gathered in. We smile at the fault 
when it appears in yet greater and more morbid 
forms in nations of warmer temperament and less 
restrained language than ourselves; but there, for 
the most part, (take, for example, the manifestoes 
of French Communists and Italian Revolutionists,) 
men themselves believe, even with a strong delusion, 
in the dreams with which they deceive others. The 
insincerity is greater in us who, with our cooler, 
more phlegmatic nature, see more clearly how far the 
performance will fall short of the glory of the promise. 
3. Soberness, then, and reticence the self-restraint 
in thought and speech which is the temper of the 
wise of heart are the lessons which we have to learn 



Delays and Difficulties in the Church s Work. 25 

as we look out upon the work which we have to do 
and the impediments which we are sure to meet with. 
But this is not all. We need something more, and, 
thank God, something more has been given us, than 
the philosophic indifference which in life accepts the 
inevitable as in speculation it learns to keep within 
the limits of the knowable, something more even than 
the more heroic temper of the Stoic, who, even though 
the gods seemed on the side of the oppressor, was con 
tent to take his nart with the oppressed. A new 
hope, deeper, brighter, entering into that within the 
veil, takes the place of the hopes, light-minded 
fickle and fantastic, which have become a bye-word 
of reproach. It is given to us to live by faith, not by 
sight, to cherish the belief that we are fellow- workers 
with God, and that His righteous purposes of justice 
or of love will, sooner or later, assuredly fulfil them 
selves. We may well be content with the thought 
that we are labourers in His vineyard, servants of 
whom the Great Master is not unmindful ; called at 
the third, or sixth, or ninth hour ; sent to occupy till He 
come with our ten talents, or five, or one ; casting the 
seed of the Word of Life on the highway, or the rock, 
or among thorns, or on the good ground ; stewards 
of the mysteries of God, of whom it is required that 
they should be found faithful. We should live in the 
belief that He has given us our work, is with us as 
we labour ; gives us the strength needed for our day ; 
will with temptations make a way to escape. Every 
true word spoken, every good deed done, every vic 
tory over one s self, does something how little or how 
much we know not to the fulfilment of His purpose 
and the consummation of His kingdom. A law ful 
filling itself in the midst of apparent anomalies : the 



26 Delays and Difficulties in the Church s TPorL 

maintenance of stability in the strife of seemingly 
conflicting forces ; apparent waste and failure, while 
yet a clearer vision discerns a conservation of force, 
and rejects the thought that failure or waste is possible ; 
the evolution of higher forms of life from lower, 
with intervals which seem to interrupt the succession, 
with a return to the inferior type, this, which science 
has learnt to recognise in the material world, has its 
counterpart, more or less distinctly visible to the 
illumined vision, in God s spiritual kingdom. And 
Pie, in His Word, has taught us some, at least, of 
the laws by which this end is attained. " Herein is 
this saying true, one soweth and another reapeth." 
(John iv., 37.) No man knows on earth the extent 
of the work which he does on earth whether for good 
or evil. If it is sometimes given to those who go on 
their way weeping and bearing precious seed to come 
again with joy and bring their sheaves with them, 
(Psalm cxxvi., 6,) it is yet true that many men 
labour only that others may enter into their labours, 
and see not in what way or to what extent they have 
forwarded the cause for which they have been content 
to labour and to die. Workers in building up the 
Church of God, the Temple not made with hands, 
with the living stones, which are the elect of God, 
they have not known the plans of the Divine Archi 
tect, nor even as a wise master-builder appreciated its 
symmetry and beauty; but if they have been faithful 
in the work assigned them, faithful even in a very 
little, they shall in no wise lose their reward. Even 
mistakes and failures are pardoned where there is the 
willing heart that labours in its love of Christ. Even 
though the wood, hay, stubble may be consumed in 
the fire which tries every man s work of what sort it 



Delays and Difficulties in the Church s Work. 27 

is, the man himself, if he has built on the one 
foundation, shall be saved so as by fire. 

Thus then it stands. The action of many forces 
working in many different ways, rather than im 
mediate and short-lived success progress by anta 
gonism, the conflict of different tendencies bringing 
out the truth which is in each, and revealing the false 
hood which was mingled with it ; change rather than 
lameness, and unity as distinct from uniformity ; 
this is the law of God s kingdom, and the thought 
that it is so will help us to view with calmness what 
might otherwise oppress us with despondency, and to 
face the difficulties which beset us, and the delays 
which are interposed between our hopes and their 
fulfilment. We must be content to see that law of 
change and decay written, now as in past ages, on 
much that is very precious to us on institutions, 
customs, forms of worship, aspects of the truth, which 
have seemed to us inseparably associated with the 
Eternal Truth itself. So it has been always, and so 
it will be to the end. The ideal of the Patriarchs 
was not that of those who lived under the law. 
That which the Prophets saw in vision had a new 
glory of its own. The Apostolic age, the Church 
of the fourth century, Western Christendom in its 
mediaeval period, the Reformed Churches in our own 
and other lands, the founders of Orders and of Mis 
sions, the great teachers and preachers of their time, 
have all had, each of them, their own standards of 
excellence, their own hopes, their own ideals. We 
look back and see that it would not have been well 
for the Church or for mankind if any one of them had 
become dominant. We can see that each has left its 
mark, for good as well as evil yes, for good more than 



2& Belays and Difficulties in the Church s TtforL 

evil on the history of the world ; and if we read the 
past so that it becomes to us, not as an old almanack, but 
a prophecy of the future, we may well believe and even 
hope that it will be so with much that we now wrangle 
and debate about with questions as to words and 
names, and vestments and positions, the relations be 
tween science and religion, between Church and State. 
To work calmly, patiently, steadfastly, at the special 
tasks which God has given us to do to do with our 
might whatever our hand findeth to do to work 
without passion and without panic to remember that 
the truth of God has issued victorious out of more 
terrible conflicts than any that now await it this 
will be at once our wisdom and our blessedness. If 
we sow without reaping, there is also for us the as 
surance that he that soweth and he that reapeth shall 
rejoice together. If things that seemed sacred and 
venerable are decaying and waxing old, and ready to 
vanish away if there are signs of the removal of the 
things that are shaken, it is only that the things 
which cannot be shaken may remain. 80 the world s 
great drama passes through its successive stages to its 
appointed end, and our incompleteness works out 
God s completeness, and our restlessness is hushed and 
quieted in His rest ; so 

" God fulfils Himself in many ways, 
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world." 

In His light we shall see light, though the mist and 
darkness now lie thick around us. What we need 
is enough light to see our path, though it were but 
a single step before us, to lead us, with its kindly 
radiance, through the encircling gloom ; and that 
light is given to us, even as it is given to every man 
that cometh into the world given to us in yet greater 



Delay* and Difficulties in (he Church ft Work. 29 

clearness because we walk in His light who is the 
brightness of His Father s glory and the express 
image of His person. Only while we have the light let 
us walk in the light, and be as children of the light ; 
for if we walk in self-chosen darkness, the darkness 
which we love rather than light because our deeds 
are evil we shall stumble; and on all of us in a few 
years the night cometh the night of death, when no 
man can work. 



III. 

SPIRITUAL FEVER, 

BY THE 

REV. W. WALSHAM HOW, M.A., 

HON. CANON OK S. ASAPH, RECTOB OF WUITTINOTON, SALOP, 
AND RURAL DKAN. 



S. JOHN iv., 52. 
" Yesterday at the seventh hour tho fovor left him." 

IT must bo a familiar thought to all of you that the 
various diseases of the body are types and likenesses 
of corresponding diseases of the soul, and that our 
Lord s many miracles of healing are also parables, 
setting Him forth to us as the Great Healer of all 
spiritual maladies. Thus that terrible scourge of the 
Eastern nations leprosy, spreading, as it did, over 
the whole frame, poisoning the springs of life, and 
eating into every vital power, is, alas ! too faithful a 
likeness of the utter depravity of man s fallen nature, 
when his terrible inheritance of sin is left to bring 
forth its natural fruit, unchecked by Divine grace. 
So, too, in the blind, and the deaf, and the dumb ; we 
see ever pictures of those who, having eyes, will not 
see the things of God ; who are spiritually deaf, so 
that they listen not to the counsels of His will ; and 
spiritually dumb, so that they have no voice of inward 
prayer, no tonmie to set forth the praises of their 
Creator and their Redeemer. Again, the palsied 

c 



Spiritual Fever. 



frame may very fitly set forth to us the soul lying in 
the helpless paralysis of apathy, and coldness, and in 
difference. Of this I propose to speak to you to 
morrow. While the fever of the body may well 
picture to us the more active and violent forms of sin, 
those which belong to the passions, and which are 
not so much sins forming a part of the general cha 
racter and weaving themselves into the whole texture 
of the soul, as sins which appear as occasional inroads 
into the ordinary tenor of the life outbreaks more or 
less frequent of a hidden fire, which smoulders 
within, arid reveals itself only when some new fuel is 
cast upon it. This class of sins, which I have called 
" Spiritual Fever," will be my subject to-night. 

But, first, let me try to picture the scene, from the 
history of which I have taken my text. Our Lord is 
again at Cana in Galilee, where he had performed 
His first miracle that, namely, of changing water 
into wine. A certain " nobleman" came to Him. 
Literally it is a royal personage, one closely connected 
in some way with the court, such as was Chuza, 
Herod s steward. He is a great man ; yet he travels 
all the way from Capernaum, where his home is, to 
Cana, that he may meet Jesus, of whose visit he has 
heard, and make his humble request. He is in great 
trouble, for his son is at the point of death, dying of 
a fever. And how terrible to be away from that bed 
side all those long hours ! How the picture of his 
child, as he has left him in his deadly peril, must 
haunt him all the way ! Those glazed, wandering 
eyes : those sunken, burning cheeks : those dry, 
parched, blackened lips : that quick, panting, gasping 
breath : how the scene must perpetually stand before 
him ! How it muat spur and goad him on ! And so, 



Spiritual Fever. 35 



when Jesus begins to moralise about it, as it would 
seem to him, and says, " Except ye see signs and 
wonders ye will not believe," the poor agonised father 
exclaims, with a pardonable impatience, " Sir, como 
down ere my child die." Yes, it is his only chance. 
If only he may be in time ! If only he can persuade 
this great Healer to come at once, ere his child die ! 
But there is no need for Him to come. He can heal 
near or far off. He can take Peter s wife s mother by 
the hand and raise her up, or speak a single word 
miles away, and the fever is stayed. Even as the 
winds and the waves obeyed His " Peace, be still," so 
the raging fever owns His sway. It is over. The eyo 
rests calmly ; the parched, burning skin is soft and 
cool again ; the panting breath comes gently and 
peacefully ! How startling the change to the watchers 
by that suffering bed, who know not the secret of the 
cure ! Here we behold Jesus the healer of the fever 
of the body. We will now think of Him as the 
healer of the fever of the soul. 

This spiritual fever is chiefly found in characters of 
some force and strength. It besets a very opposite 
class of persons to those I shall speak of to-morrow. 
They, the victims of spiritual palsy, are lying in the 
helpless apathy of perpetual sins of omission ; tliese, 
the fever patients, are struggling under the desperate 
tyranny of masterful sins of commission. They are 
strong, eager, vehement, impetuous natures who 
suffer most from spiritual fever. Well, let them not 
complain. They may have a harder struggle ; yet 
perchance there is in store for them a nobler victory. 
Great saints have often been, like the great St. 
Augustine, men of strong, wilful passions. I think 
St. Peter and St. Paul were men who in their youth 



36 Spiritual Fever. 



were more likely to have had to do battle with the 
assaults of hot passions than with the temptation to 
selfish, apathetic indolence. In all forcible characters 
there must be a great and fierce battle with the powers 
of evil. In one way the parallel between our Lord s 
bodily healings and His spiritual healings does not 
hold good. The fever of the soul is not banished in 
a moment. Even when the patient is recovering, it 
is as with an intermittent fever. The complaint is 
ever renewing itself. It breaks out again and again. 
And yet oh ! believe it, for it is true Jesus will at 
length give you the victory ; He will speak the word 
of healing to your soul. He can, and He will. 
Though the battle be long, though the fever be often 
times renewed, though you may even have to suffer 
from outbreaks of your besetting sin to the very end, 
yet victory is sure. Sooner or later it will come. 
The mighty Healer has not lost His power. I have 
told you the cure will not be sudden. I also tell you it 
may not be wholly wrought out in you on this side of 
the grave. It is not he who has won an old victory 
who is crowned, but he who is found fighting faith 
fully to the end. But this I do promise you, that, 
just as a constitution is strengthened by due dieting 
and proper medicines and tonics to throw off attacks 
of fever which might otherwise have been fatal, so 
will your souls, strengthened and disciplined by the 
wholesome medicines of God s Word and nourished 
by the Bread of Life, be enabled better and better, 
as you go on, to resist the attacks of spiritual fever, 
and to triumph over the violence of your besetting 
sins. 

To deal with this fever of the soul, let us try to 
Understand the real character of the disease. Where 



*~ fe/.i; . 



Spiritual Fevvr. 87 



is its scat in our nature? What is it that really 
makes it dangerous? Mow shall we know whether 
we are getting better or worse ? Now it is of first 
importance to understand that all sin has its true 
seat in the will. The consent of the will is necessary 
to constitute any action either good or bad. Without 
the action of the will there is no moral character in 
anything we do. Therefore in this matter of spiritual 
fover we must look to the will, if we would either 
understand its sinfulness or apply any availing 
remedy. 

If the consent of the will is needful to give to an 
action its character for good or evil, plainly the first 
thing to do, when the assault of sin comes, is, to refuse 
the consent of the will. It is possible you may yet bo 
a victim to the fever that in spite of your resolution 
your will may be overcome, and you may be hurried 
into your old besetting sins. But you have gained 
something at least you have made a beginning 
if you can turn sins of will into sins of weakness. 

The next step is so to strengthen the will as to 
make it able to withstand even sins of weakness. It 
must become strong to resist. Before, it yielded, as it 
were, under protest ; now, it must refuse to yield at 
all. And every victory will make this easier. Every 
time the fire of temptation is crushed down under the 
heel of a resolute will by the grace of God, it will 
be weakened for the next outbreak. 

And then there is a third stage of advance, but 
not given to all. When you have first turned the 
sins of will into sins of weakness, and have then 
strengthened your will to refuse to yield to sins of 
weakness, go on, if God give you strength, to seek 
the opposite grace to the sin which has been once your 



38 Spiritual Fever. 



snare. This is hard, but not too hard for the power 
of God. If you have been violent and rough of 
temper, strive to win the grace of meekness. If you 
have given way to passionate lusts, strive to win the 
grace of purity. Such is the true course of the re 
covery. Although the fever spread through every 
part and every sense, so that the whole head is sick 
and the whole heart faint so that from the sole of 
the foot to the crown of the head there is no sound 
ness yet the treatment must be in the will. We are 
never healed apart from our wills that is, apart from 
ourselves. Christ conquers for us ; but at the same 
time He conquers in us and through us. He, as it 
were, enlists us to fight against ourselves. He makes 
us, in a sense, our own physicians. 

But to work out the cure as I have described it we 
have sore need of two things watchfulness and 
prayer. Take the case of one in whom the fever of 
sin burns perhaps not at this moment, but from time 
to time. He asks, " How shall I escape from this 
miserable disease of my soul ?" His sin troubles him 
in his calmer moments. He looks back upon his out 
breaks of passion violent tempers harsh, bitter, or 
blasphemous words intemperance in drink un 
bridled thoughts or the like. They trouble him 
sorely. He is told to resist and to subdue them. 
But he knows not how. What shall we tell him? 
How shall we treat the case 1 

1. He must watch. He must learn to know the 
first signs of an approaching attack. He must under 
stand the first faint symptoms of the malady. He 
must note what outward things, or persons, or cir 
cumstances, seem to give rise to it; and he must 
guard against these. Many a time a medicine taken 



Spiritual Fever. 39 

at the first sign of approaching sickness has prevented 
it altogether, when at a later stage it would have been 
wholly useless. 

2. He must pray. He must go to Jesus, and 
ask Him to help him ask Him to turn his will 
against his besetting sin, that lie may fight against 
it manfully. He must pray. And when I say this, 
I do not mean only that he must pray at all times: 
this is needful : but I mean that he must pray when 
beset with his malady. I know, my brethren, how 
hard this is. I know how hard it is, when passion is 
firing the heart, and the flame of evil desire or of 
unholy temper is kindling within us, to turn and 
face God. It often seems a wrench too violent to 
make. God holds out to us the very weapon which 
alone can save us, and we turn away and will not 
grasp it. But if we would not perish, the effort must 
DC made. Yes, even in the moment of temptation, 
when the whole soul rebels against the thought of 
God, we must force ourselves to put up the cry, 
" Lord save me ; I perish ! " It is hard to do it ; but 
the Lord is only waiting for the cry, to stretch forth 
His hand and lift us out of the whelming waters. 

And then, lastly, let us know well the difference 
between temptation and sin between natural weak 
ness, aye, and weakness brought on by former sins, 
on the one side, and consent of will on the other. 
Temptation is not sin ; else the Son of God sinned, 
for He was tempted. Natural weakness, though of 
the nature of sin, and though it predisposes to sin, is 
not charged against us as sin so long as it is resisted 
and fought against. Even weakness brought on by 
former indulgence weakness which we owo and can 
trace to former sin and selfishness even this will 



40 Spiritual Fever. 



not be imputed to us as present sin, if the soul hate 
it, and the will withstand. These things are great 
trouble, great grief, great shame, to the sufferer ; but 
they are not of necessity sin. Nothing is really sin 
in which the will gives no consent. Nothing past, 
nothing present, can hurt the soul if the will holds 
fast by God, who will hold it fast. No storm of 
passion rushing over the soul no violence of assault, 
though it shake the soul through and through no 
quickening of the soul s pulse to fever quickness 
no powerlessness even to get rid of the thought which 
the soul hates can hurt the soul, if there be not the 
least consent of will. But, oh ! do not mistake me. 
Dare we be careless then, and suffer lightly the pre 
sence of evil in our souls 1 Nay, this is itself the con 
sent of will. God forbid that I should even seem to 
make light of sin. I only want to comfort and help 
those who are truly striving to be free from sin. I have 
not the least word of comfort for the willing captive 
to sin. You find yourselves very weak and helpless. 
Well, you have brought this on yourselves. All this 
trouble and difficulty in shaking off the attacks of 
sin is too faithful a witness to your past sinful com 
pliance. It tells you how much you have to mourn 
over and confess in former days. If from early youth 
you had stedfastly set yourself to resist, oh ! how 
easy it would have been by this time ! And yet, even 
now, I say, if Jesus is making your will sound, all 
will be well. The root is there in the will. Let 
that become healthy, and the life and actions must 
follow in the end. Only seek that Saviour s help 
more earnestly. Grasp His hand tighter. Cling to 
the hem of His garment. You shall not die of the 
fever. You may be very sick, and very miserable. 



Spiritual Fever. 41 



But, oh ! the day is at hand when you shall put off 
for overall this remaining corruption when you shall 
be delivered indeed from the body of this death. For 
this body, now so full of evil, supplying now the fuel 
on which the fire of spiritual fever feeds this body, 
so sad an instrument in Satan s hands this body 
shall itself be instinct with new life, and the whole 
man, shaking off and leaving behind all that is gross, 
earthly, fallen, shall be conformed for ever to the 
glorious likeness of the sinless One ! And when we 
wake up after that likeness we shall be satisfied. 



IV. 
SPIRITUAL PARALYSIS , 

BY THE 

REV. W. WALSIIAM HOW, M.A., 

HON. CANON OF S. ASAI-H, RECTOU OK WIIITTINOTOX, SAT.OP, 
AND I (URAL DEAN. 



Spiritual 



ST. MATT, ix., C. 
" Ariao, tuko up thy bed and go unto thine house." 

PALSY, or paralysis, as the word in our Bibles 
means, is one of the saddest, most helpless, most 
hopeless, of complaints. We all know, when some 
friend has (as we say) had a stroke, and lost the use 
of his limbs; and when, day after day, and then month 
after month, has passed by without material improve 
ment, how all hope dies out in us. We wait, but for 
the end. We have ceased to think of a cure. We 
are only thankful to know that there is little pain 
and suffering. 

This is a picture of a soul in a state of spiritual 
numbness, and coldness, and deadness. I am to speak 
to you to-night of this state as a hindrance to the 
work of the Church in the world ; and if the line I 
take is more personal than the general subject of 
these sermons might lead you to expect, it is because 
I am deeply impressed with the conviction that there 
is no royal road to the conversion of the world, and 
that the work of the Lord has to be done, not by 



46 Spiritual Paralysis. 

machinery, not by organisation, not by legislation, 
(though, indeed, all these have their place and their 
power,) but by patient dealing with individual souls. 
My brethren, I know not whether the form of spiritual 
disease I am to speak of to-night the soul s deadening 
paralysis or that which I spoke of last night the 
active fever of passion is the greater impediment to 
the advance of holiness. But this I know, that 
among earnest seekers after God, when they open 
their heart s troubles to their ministers, few things 
are more often said than this "I cannot love God." 
" I am so cold," they say, " so dead, so unloving ! 
I do want to love God ; but it seems as if there 
were no power in me to stir the stagnant surface of 
my chill affections or to make their waters flow. 
Prayer, which ought to be so blessed and joyous a 
thing, is a task arid not a joy : the Bible, which ought 
to be an absorbing delight, is far less interesting to 
me than any other book. Even Holy Communions 
themselves, which I well know ought to fill my whole 
soul with loving adoration and to bring me to Jesus 
with the outpouring of tenderest emotions even 
these are dull, dry, formal. Jesus seems so far off! 
I know what I need His warm, loving, healing touch. 
But I can t reach out and grasp His hand. I can t 
even put out my poor palsied hand so far as to touch 
the hem of His garment. Oh ! this dryness of 
spirit ! this hard, insensate, unloving heart of mine ! 
What shall I do to escape from this terrible paralysis 
of soul ? " So speaks many a poor anxious soul, when 
something comes which arouses it to a sense of its own 
state and makes it yearn for release. God sends 
messengers to it to carry it to Jesus, just* as the four 
kind friends carried the poor paralytic man. Perhaps 



Spiritual Paralysis. 47 



(oh ! blessed if it be so, both for me and for thee !) 
perhaps God has sent me this night to some one 
among you to be a bearer to take you to Jesus. 
O thou poor paralysed soul ! I come to thee to call 
thee to Him who only can speak the word of healing 
and set thee free. I come to take thee to thy Saviour, 
to carry thee to His blessed presence, to bring thee 
to His holy feet. 

Now there is one thing you may say, if you will : 
many say it: "Let me alone." Ah! yes; there is 
no acute pain which must be felt ; no burning fever 
which must alarm ; no loss of sight or hearing which 
must cry aloud for recovery. It is the very peril of 
this paralysis that it pains not. " Let me alone" you 
may say ; " I am not so bad as you think ; I am not 
leading a wicked life ; I don t feel so dangerously ill. 
True, I may not be as eager, and earnest, and devout 
as some ; but perhaps that is my nature. I am not 
one of strong emotions ; I am naturally calm and 
cold. Any how I don t want to be disturbed and 
made uncomfortable. Let me alone." You have only 
to go back to the beginning of the chapter from 
which I have taken my text to see what is the sure 
result of such an answer as that. At the end of the 
last chapter we see the whole city of the Gadarenes 
going out to meet Jesus. And no wonder. For had 
He not just conferred upon them the most signal 
mercy t Had He not just delivered them from the 
awful scourge under which they had so long suffered, 
healing that dreadful savage demoniac who had been 
the terror of their neighbourhood 1 No wonder they 
all went out to meet Him. Surely it must be to pray 
Him to come into their city to tell Him of other 
sick and suffering ones, and to beseech Him to come 



48 Spiritual Paralysis. 

and cure them. But can it be true ? " When they 
saw Him " aye, there is the wonder f( when they 
saw Him " when they saw that gentle, loving Face, 
so full of mercy and tenderness, " when they saw 
Him, they besought Him to depart out of their 
coasts. " They did not want to be upset and made 
uncomfortable. Why, He might have said, " Woe 
unto you, ye Gadarenes," as He said, " Woe unto you, 
Chorazin and Bethsaida ! " They had no wish to 
have their sins dragged to light. They did very well 
as they were, and so they said, " Let us alone ;" and 
He let them alone. For, if we read straight on, 
without the break in the chapters, which is in this 
place somewhat unfortunate, we are told that " they 
besought Him that He would depart out of their 
coasts ; and He entered into a ship, and passed over, 
and came into His own city." It is always the law of 
His blessings. They are for those who ask. They 
are withheld from those who are content to be without 
them. 

But I think those who would say " Let us alone " 
will hardly be in this Church to-riight. I believe, if 
I am speaking to any souls lying bound in the chains 
of spiritual paralysis, they are such as bewail their 
unhappy state, and long to be set free. 

Well, then, let us go to the root of the matter; for, 
until we can trace out the cause of a disease we 
are not very likely to find the remedy ; and often 
times the finding of the cause is at the very same 
time the finding of the remedy. 

This paralysis of the soul has many causes. Shall 
I guess at some ? I can but draw my bow at a ven 
ture ; but God may perchance direct the shaft. 

1. Is it wilful sloth and indolence? You know 



Spiritual Paralysis. 49 

sloth has been reckoned one of the seven deadly sins. 
It seems to you, perhaps, a light sin by comparison 
with many others. Ah ! but have you ever thought 
how much that is amiss in you may be traced to this 
one root ? For instance, how often is sloth the true 
cause of that prayerlessness against which you were 
so powerfully warned this morning. It requires 
exertion and effort to put the soul in the posture of 
prayer ; and sloth is an averseness to all exertion and 
effort. Perhaps you cannot test sloth better than by 
your devotions. Are they apt to be short, and weary, 
and cold, and beset by wandering thoughts ? Then 
you may suspect the presence of sloth in your soul. 
Nay, I may go to more outward things ; for, shame 
though it be to say it, even our outward attitude and 
bearing may be a test to us of sloth. Are there none 
whose prayers are prayed not, indeed, standing at 
the comer of the streets, but le.aning on their beds ? 
whose morning prayer is a hurried repetition of a 
scanty form, and whose evening prayer a sleepy 
attempt to say through the appointed words of 
devotion ? 

Do not think outward idleness a necessary sign of 
sloth. Sloth is often found co-existing with great 
outward activity. But how can this oet Simply 
because this outward activity is natural and easy, and 
needs little or no effort. You see a man always busy, 
full of energy, and perhaps devoting that energy to 
good works, and you say, "In that man at least sloth 
can have no place," and you little suspect perhaps 
that all the time in that busy, restless, energetic man 
this deadly sin of sloth may be eating into the very 
core of his heart, and destroying all his fixedness of 
will and power of self-sacrifice. 

D 



50 Spiritual Paralysis. 

2. Is it possible I know that it is possible, but is 
it true ? that in your heart there lurks some secret 
lust, the occasional indulgence of impure thoughts, 
the scarcely acknowledged love of impure fancies, 
such as may be cherished by an unchastened, un 
guarded eye or ear ? Oh ! these things, beloved 
brethren, more than aught else, are destructive of 
spiritual life, and healthfullness, and activity. You 
wonder at your soul s deadness to heavenly things. 
Can it be that this worm is in the bud, eating out its 
life and fair beauty? It is hard to speak of these 
things to a mixed congregation ; yet I dare not be 
silent. I should not be faithful if I were silent, when 
I am trying to point out to you the causes of spiritual 
paralysis. It is no use beating about the bush. It 
is no use mincing matters, when those matters are 
matters of life and death. I will tell you one thing, 
as a sample of the sort of evil I am speaking of. If 
a young man takes pleasure in reading such reading 
as the reports of divorce cases in the newspapers, 
he must not be surprised if he falls into spiritual 
paralysis. He is taking the poison into his system 
which will most surely produce the disease. 

3. Is it the case that you are troubled with doubt 
about your faith ? This is often a cause of soul-palsy. 
I am not going to utter idle denunciations of doubts, 
as though they were invariably a wilful sin ; nay, I 
feel the truest sympathy for the doubter, where his 
doubts are honest, and bring trouble to his own soul, 
and are not the idle dreams of an unchastened fancy, 
or, what is worse, the sinful acceptance of doubt as a 
cloak for licentiousness of living. But, undoubtedly, 
a doubting spirit does destroy the brightness and 
vividness of faith, and paralyse the soul s best energies. 



Spiritual Paralysit. 51 



4. But it may be our natural disposition which 
makes us cold-hearted. God makes not all alike, and 
some are naturally less excitable and less impression 
able than others. Well, if any one can honestly say, 
"I believe I am by constitution cold, and unable to 
feel as deeply and keenly as many others," and if, 
saying this, he mourns that it is so, and would thank 
fully kindle in himself warmer feelings of love and 
devotion, if- he could, surely we may speak com 
fortably to such an one. We would say to him, 
" Religious emotion is no real test of grace. It is 
very blessed and a great help when God vouchsafes 
it; but it is no proof of holiness. Obedience is the 
only real test. " Hereby do we know that we love 
Him if we keep His commandments." Go on, simply 
obeying God s will simply doing what you know to 
be pleasing to Him. It may be you may never ex 
perience any great amount of religious emotion ; but 
you will gradually learn to love God better. As you 
go, you will be healed. The true way to look at 
religious emotion seems to be this : It is a blessed 
help in surmounting the first great difficulties of a 
life of repentance ; it is a solace to the weary tra 
veller a spring of refreshment to the parched lip 
an earthly foretaste of heavenly joy. But it must not 
be trusted in as the sign and evidence of a state of 
favour with God. Warm affections, deep emotions, 
love and joy and peace, these are blessings to thank 
Cjod for; but they are not necessary. Obedience is. 
So let none despair because he cannot arouse himself 
to great fervour of emotion. It may be that what 
you take for paralysis is but a colder constitution, and 
that you are nearer to your Saviour than you think. 



52 Spiritual Paralysis. 

I do not mean that you should be content with cold, 
dull feelings ; nay, strive all you can after more 
warmth of love, more generosity of affection. But, 
if God denies you these graces, still cleave to Him in 
humble trust and hope. Obey now, and the joy and 
peace may be hereafter. 

And now, before we end, a word about the healing. 
Aye, but first we must get to the Healer ; and that 
is just what the poor paralysed soul finds so hard. 
Well, look at the poor paralytic in the Gospel. No 
one seemed more utterly shut out from the great 
Healer than he did. There he was, helpless, motion 
less, borne on his pallet by his four kind friends, but 
wholly unable to reach the presence of Christ. Yet 
he did reach it. Ah ! yes, for no obstacle shall keep 
him back. The house may be full, the doorway 
thronged, the crowd impenetrable ; but there are 
the outside stairs ; there is the roof ; there are ropes 
to be had ; the roof must even be broken away. 
It is a bold, strange way to take. But anything to 
get to Jesus. Yes, my friends, rest not for one 
moment care not what violence you use. He loves 
the gracious violence of importunity. It was once 
said, "The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, 
and the violent take it by force." This means that 
men would not be kept out, in their eager vehemence 
of desire to enter the kingdom of the Messiah. 
Emulate their vehemence ; overcome every impedi 
ment. Ah ! may it not be that one reason why you 
find it so hard to get to your Saviour is that you are 
too low down ? You want to go up higher, to mount 
the stairs of prayer and praise and holy adoration. 
Or, perchance, it is that you want to go down lower 
to let yourself down with the cords of penitence and 



Spiritual Paralysis. 53 

\ 

humiliation and confession and contrition, down to 
the very dust, before the feet of Jesus. Then it will 
come the pardon, the release, the cure. Oh, blessed 
souls ! if only to you is spoken the word of healing, 
" Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house ! " 
Oh ! what joy, to arise with new life and vigour and 
health and energy! to feel the old chains fall off! 
to know that, even as in calling and baptismal grace 
ye are risen with Christ from the dead, so in the 
power of a Divine renewal ye can claim your bap 
tismal standing and say, " I am risen indeed with my 
risen Lord;" "I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth 
in me ! " Oh ! blessed resurrection ! How bright, 
how free, how happy, how heavenly, is now our life ! 
Yes, but the restored paralytic has two things to do ; 
and ye too, dear friends, when Christ sets you free 
from your bonds, will also have two things to do. He 
must take up his bed, and he must go to his house. 
He must take up his bed : he has a burden to carry, 
even when he goes away cured. And you yes, there 
is a cross for you. And one burden you have to bear 
is the bed on which you have lain. The very sloth 
and apathy, the very coldness and deadness, in which 
you have been lying, must be carried by you as a 
burden of past sin, never quite to be forgotten, as you 
go on your way. " My sin is ever before me," is the 
penitent s confession. And even though able now to 
bear away your old sin, which once bore you as its 
victim to destruction, yet it may be the shoulder has 
yet to chafe under the burden. And then the going 
to his house. It sounds so common-place ! Nothing 
heroic to do! Not even " Come, follow Me." Only 
" Go unto thine house." Yes, beloved brethren, it is 
in very truth to your common daily unromantic life 



54 Spiritual Paralysis. 

and occupations that God sends you back. You feel 
a little chill of disappointment. It were so pleasant 
to do some great thing for your dear Lord. Well, 
He has a great thing for you to do a great thing, 
though to be done amidst little things ; for it is a 
great thing to one who has been cold and dead to be 
warm with holy love and alive to the things of 
Heaven. And this is your task. And I think it is 
sometimes a greater thing to live a Heavenly life in 
the midst of common things and ordinary duties, in 
spite of all the depressing hindrances of worldly oc 
cupation and unsympathising companions, than to 
many it would be to give their all to some noble work 
or to leap into the flames of martyrdom. 



V. 
PRAYERLES8NESS, 

BY THB 

REV. J. ERSKINE CLARKE, M.A., 
VICAE OF S. ANDREW S, DKBBY. 



1 SAMUEL xii., 23. 

Samuel said, " As for me, GOD forbid that 1 should sin against the 
Lord in ceaaiug to pray for you." 

And in COLOSSIANS i., 9, 10, 

S. Paul says, " For this cause, we also, since the day we heard it, 
do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be tilled 
with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual under 
standing, that ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, 
being fruitful in every good work." 

I AM desired to address you this morning on the 
subject " Prayerless men, hindrances to the work of 
the Church in the world ;" and I have chosen these 
two texts because they show how Samuel in the Old 
Testament times, and 8. Paul in the New, shrank from 
being reckoned among the prayerless men. 

Israel had sinned in asking Samuel to set a king 
over them, when the Lord God was their King. At 
the call of Samuel the Lord sent thunder and rain 
on the day of wheat harvest to show them that their 
wickedness was great. Then the people feared the 
Lord and Samuel, and all the people said unto Samuel, 
" Pray to the Lord thy God for us that we die not." 
And Samuel said, " Fear not, ye have done this great 
wickedness, yet turn not aside from following the Lord, 
but serve him with all your heart, for the Lord will 



58 PrayerU 



not forsake His people. But as for me, God forbid 
that I should sin against God in ceasing to pray for 
you ; but I will teach you the good and the right way. 

If Samuel had ceased to pray for rebellious Israel, 
he would have become a hindrance to the work of the 
Church in the world, and would have sinned against 
God, as well as been unfaithful to the people, who 
looked up to him as their Judge and Priest. 

S. Paul, writing to the faithful brethren in Christ 
at Colosse, tells them that since he had heard from 
Epaphras of their faith in Christ and love to all the 
saints he and his fellow-labourers had riot ceased to 
pray for them, desiring especially that they might be 
filled with the knowledge of the will of God that in 
all wisdom and spiritual understanding they might 
walk and behave in a manner worthy of that great 
and glorious God whose servants and worshippers they 
were, and that they might be fruitful in every good 
work. 

If S. Paul and his fellow-servants had ceased to 
pray for the converts at Colosse, they would so far 
have become hindrances of the work cf the Church 
and of Christ in the city of Colosse. 

We see, then, from our texts that, alike for 
rebellious Israel and for God-fearing Colossians, the 
prayers of God s servants, Samuel and S. Paul, 
were offered without ceasing ; that Samuel felt that to 
have ceased and become prayerless would have been 
to sin against God and to injure his countrymen ; and 
that S. Paul felt that if the Colossians were to be 
fruitful in good works, he must not cease to pray for 
them. 

Prayerlessness, then, hinders the work of the 
Church in the world. It hinders the rebellious from 



Prayerlessness. 59 



returning to God, and their allegiance to Him ; it 
hinders the weak saints from becoming fruitful in 
good works ; while prayer for others intercessory 
prayer furthers God s work in the world and brings 
down blessings on the brethren. 

True, we cannot tell how this is. Sceptics may scoff 
at it ; philosophers may scorn it ; but there is some 
way beyond the present ken of our understandings 
whereby the determinate counsel and foreknowledge 
of God ts consistent with the efficacy of our prayers 
to Him. 

Let simple folk accept simply and hold firmly the 
words of Holy Writ the precepts to pray, and the 
promises that God will hear and answer prayer ! 
Our Lord would never have taught us to pray if 
prayer were useless. Our Lord would never have 
prayed Himself, as He so often did, if prayer were 
not acceptable to the Father. 

Wherefore let not the simple-hearted be disturbed 
by the sophistries of those who boast themselves as 
wiser than the ancients. Let them believe their 
Bibles ; let them believe the Church ; let them 
believe with Tennyson 

More things are wrought by prayer 

Than this world dreams of. Therefore let thy voice 

Kise like a fountain for me night and day. 

For what are men better than the sheep or goats 

That nourish a blind life within the brain, 

If, knowing God, they lift not hands in prayer, 

Both for themselves and them that call them friend ? 

For so the whole round world is every way 

Bound by gold chains about the feet of God. 

Or in the words of another 

The salt preserveth the sea, and the saints uphold the earth : 
Their prayers are the thousand pillars that prop the canopy of Nature ; 
Verily an hoar without prayer from lipn of some child of man 
Wereacurae iu the kaleudar of Time a spot of tho blackness of 
darkueea. 



60 Prayerlessness. 



The prayerless man contributes nothing to the 
golden chains that bind the world to the footstool of 
God. He contributes nothing to the thousand pillars 
that uphold the earth. He contributes no single ray 
to lighten the darkness of this life. He is a non 
conductor of Divine blessings. 

He may be clever, learned, rich and active, kindly 
and benevolent ; but he does not really confer so great 
blessings on mankind as the godly maid-servant who 
offers her pleading prayer from her garret, or the 
child that whispers in earnest the Lord s Prayer into 
the ear of God. 

And it is well for some of us to remember that 
even the busy Church-worker, frequent at committee- 
meetings and the like, may not do as much for God 
as the invalid whose prayers go up for the work of 
the Church from the couch of pain and weakness 

Behold that fragile form of delicate, transparent beauty, 

"Whose light blue eye and hectic cheek are fed by the bale fires of 

decline ; 

All droopingly she lieth as a dew -laden lily. 
Hath not thy heart said of her, Alas ! po?>r child of weakness, 
Thou hast erred ? Goliath of Gath stood not with half her strength, 
For Seraphim rally at her side ; and the Captain of that, host is God. 
And the seried ranks of evil are routed by the lightning of her eye ; 
For that weak fluttering heart is strong in faith assured : 
Dependence is her might ; and behold she prayeth. 

Seeing, then, brethren, how. great the power of 
prayer, why are men so prayerless ? 

Some, not likely to be represented in Church, are 
prayerless because they have said in their heart and 
with their lips, There is no God. Or, if they do not 
deny the being of God, they deny His moral provi 
dence and government ; they deny a future state. 
Content to be like dogs, dead and done with, they 
deny the revelation which God has given as if it were 
no better than a cunningly-devised fable. 



Prayerlessncw. 61 



Such persons do not, and cannot, pray. 

Others are prayerless from sheer carelessness and 
earthliness. Heaven is hid from their view, and 
earth contains all they desire. To get money and to 
spend it to deck and adorn the body, to nurse it in 
sickness, to pamper it in health to answer the ques 
tion, " What shall we eat, and what shall we drink, 
and wherewithal shall we be clothed" this engrosses 
their whole attention. The lusts of the flesh and the 
pride of life so absorb them that they do not pray. 

Others do not pray because their lives are so 
stained with sin. They so sin against their con 
sciences that they feel it irksome to put themselves 
consciously into the presence of God. They feel that 
their prayers are a mockery while they persist in 
wilful sin ; and so they put off prayer, as they put off 
amendment, to a future season. 

Others pray not because they are so self-contained 
and self-reliant that they do not realise their need. 
They are as God unto themselves. 

A little child had finished its evening prayer, and 
turned to its father, a godless man, with the unex 
pected question, " Father, Tve said my prayers. 
Have you said yours ? Are you too big to pray ?" 

How many there are who think in their hearts 
I m too big to pray. 

But others (ah! how many of MS) are really prayer- 
less, though they say their prayers. 

They kneel down without thought, and utter pious 
falsehoods, in solemn language, to the truth-loving 
God. They are mere formalists, and draw nigh to 
God with their lips while their hearts are far from Him, 
and they insult Him with their prayerless prayers. 

Others are prayerless from lack of excitement. 



62 Prayerlessness. 



Their s is a religion of fits and starts. They begin 
in the spirit, but end in the flesh. Their religion 
depends on external excitement, not on internal 
principle ; and it fails when these excitements cease. 
Their religion is like the tree without root, that soon 
withers, or like the land flood, which soon runs off, 
because it has no living stream to supply it. 

How is it, then, with each of us, in the matter of 
prayer I For our own soul s sake let us see to it. If 
we pray not, we can have no hope. We refuse the 
one way by which alone our souls can live ; for 
prayer is the Christian s vital breath the Christian s 
native air our watchword at the gates of death we 
enter Heaven by prayer. 

But my subject is, rather the effect of lack of 
prayer on the welfare of others on the work of the 
Church. 

By his irreligious spirit, by his evil example, the 
prayerless man depraves those amongst whom he 
lives. He frustrates efforts made to guide the young 
and ignorant into the ways of holiness. And, 
moreover, he does nothing to draw down the Divine 
blessings on the world and on the Church. 

Be not ye, brethren, of the number of these 
prayerless men. 

Pray ye for the wicked that forget God and pray 
not for themselves. We know that God heareth such 
prayers ; for (as we read in Job xlii., 37) He said to 
Eliphaz and his two friends, " My wrath is kindled 
against you ; but my servant Job shall pray for you ; 
for him will I accept, lest I deal with you after your 
sins." 

Samuel said that he dared not sin against God by 
ceasing to pray for rebellious Israel. 



Prayerletsnwa. 63 



S. James says " That the effectual fervent prayer of 
a righteous man availeth much." 

And pray also and specially for the servants and 
ministers of God, that they may be filled with the 
knowledge of His will and be fruitful in good works. 
Sometimes in Northern seaports scores of richly- 
laden vessels are lying in the river a few miles below 
the city, anxiously waiting to reach the wharves. 
Why are they delayed? Because the channel is 
closed with ice. Thus is it with the exceeding great 
and precious promises of God. He is waiting, and 
willing to bestow them ; but even He cannot bestow 
them, because the appointed channel is not open, by 
which God is pleased to communicate them to us, 
and by which we receive His blessings. 

Wherefore, let us pray that the work of God s 
Church may not be hindered by our restraining our 
supplications. 

If in our consciences we feel that our prayers have 
been formal and careles s, let us seek the gift of God s 
Spirit; for when God pours His Spirit on a man, then 
man will pour out his spirit before God. The breath 
of prayer comes from the life of faith ; and, if we 
have not the spirit of prayer, let us begin with the 
spirit of confession and the spirit of praise ; so that 
our faith may be quickened, and thus our prayers 
may become more real and sincere. 

And, if we do pray somewhat, let us seek for more 
of what the Yoruba Christians call " the gift of the 
knees" the spirit of prayer ! 

Bishop Hall saith, " An arrow, if it be drawn up 
but a little way, goes not far ; but, if it be pulled up 
to the head, it flies swiftly and pierces deep." Thus 
prayer, if it be dribbled forth from careless lips, falls 



64 Prayerlessness. 



at our feet. It is not the arithmetic of our prayers, 
how many they be ; nor the rhetoric of our prayers, 
how eloquent they be ; nor the geometry of our 
prayers, how long they be ; nor the music of our 
prayers, how sweet our voice may be ; nor the logic 
of our prayers, how argumentative they be; nor 
even the Divinity of our prayers, how good the 
doctrine may be, which God cares for; but it is 
fervency of spirit that availeth much. It is not so 
much the length as the strength of prayer that is 
needed ; not so much the labour of the lip as the 
travail of the soul. 

It is a tradition of the British Army that the 
Infantry when in squares has never given way 
before a foe ; and when formed in squares the front 
rank steady themselves on one knee. Let us, who 
aim to carry the truth of God into the enemy s 
midst, steady ourselves on both knees, and by prayer 
let us wrestle from the Everlasting a blessing upon 
our work. 

How few, in this restless age, practice in their 
prayer the seven times a-day of David the three 
times a-day of set prayer and giving of thanks of 
Daniel the praying to God always of Cornelius 
the waiting on God continually ; and, therefore, few 
triumph in the Lord few know the joy of true 
content ; and many a good work in the Church fails 
and languishes because men are prayerless and faint 
hearted, arid do not besiege Heaven with prayer, so 
that the Lord may open the gates of Heaven, and 
pour down His blessing from on high. 



VI. 
INTEMPERANCE, 

BY THE 

YEN. J. SANDFORD, B.D., 
ABCHDEACON OF COVENTRY, AND EECTOB OF ALVECHUBCII. 



1 SAMUEL, xvii., 2 J. 
"Is there not u cause? 

To enlighten, reform, and elevate their fellow- 
creatures, and thus to make them good and happy, 
has been the aim of righteous and heroic men in 
every age of the world, and never more notably than 
in our own. 

All honour, therefore, to those, whether associated 
or single-handed, who, without the patronage of the 
great or even the countenance of religious bodies, 
have withstood in any place the Moloch of intempe 
rance, which has inflicted more evil and brought more 
shame on our fatherland than any other cause what 
ever. 

Such benefactors of their species toiled, not long 
ago, one or two in a parish a few, it might be, in a 
city or, as obscure societies, in different parts of the 
country to call the attention of the Legislature, and 
the magistracy, and the clergy, and other notables in 
our land, to what was working such deadly mischief 
in our midst ; and those whom they addressed, for 
the most part, stood aloof from them, and pooh- 



68 Intemperance. 

poohed them, and regarded them as childish, and 
officious, and fanatical. 

As with every great movement in this country, the 
cause of Temperance began in weakness and ob 
scurity, and struggled with contempt, and was ridiculed 
and laughed at. 

But it was the cause of suffering humanity ; and 
when education spread, and reading was diffused, 
and religion revived, and multitudes awoke to a 
sense of what God and Society require at every 
man s hand, this state of thoughtlessness and apathy 
could exist no more. Good arid sensible men could 
not but perceive that a vice which degraded, and 
embruted, and pauperised the population which 
caused so much distress and crime, and wrecked the 
peace of families, and retarded industry, and increased 
the public burdens, and filled our gaols and poor- 
houses and lunatic asylums, and impaired the 
efficiency of our armies and our fleets was not a 
thing to be overlooked or trifled with. And of late 
the question before us to-night has assumed its due 
importance ; and all who wish well to their country, 
and well to religion, are beginning to inquire as to 
the extent of the mischief, and as to the manner in 
which it is to be coped with ; and a great authority 
has pronounced that " publicans profits represent 
mis-spent money, and that this is the great point to 
be recognised on both sides." 

There is, in fact, a growing conviction that health, 
and economy, and national progress of any sort, are 
incompatible with intemperance. The Nation is pre 
pared to go into the facts, conscious that it has a 
solemn duty in connection with them that to treat 
intemperance as irremediable is at once criminal and 



Intemperance. 69 



suicidal that, unless we grapple with it, the crimes 
and the miseries caused by it will be chargeable on 
ourselves. 

As to the facts, they are patent and undeniable, 
and admitted by all who will look into the ouestion. 
You have them in epitome in this volume the Con 
vocation Report the result of minute and exhaustive 
inquiry, containing the testimonies of our judges, our 
magistrates, the heads of our police, our governors of 
prisons and masters of workhouses and medical 
authorities, throughout the kingdom, and the parochial 
clergy of the whole province of Canterbury. And, 
considering its contents and its cost, I may be per 
mitted to say that it ought to be in the hands of 
every one interested in the welfare of his country. 

Thank God! the National Church to-day is in the 
van of inquiry. Its clergy no longer treat intempe 
rance as a question with which they have nothing to 
do. Our prelates are prepared to deal with it both in 
Parliament and on the platform. Our synods have 
already made, or are about to make it the subject of 
their anxious deliberation. Our noblest minsters and 
parish churches are opened for its discussion ; and the 
incumbent of this parish, with the manliness and 
large heartedness which distinguish him, has allowed 
it to-night a place in his Octave and a voice in his 
pulpit. 

My subject is The evils of intemperance and its 
corrective ; and I ask a candid hearing while I state 
them. 

And first, the Evils of Intemperance. They 
are matters of public notoriety, matters of national 
statistics, known in every locality, and, alas I in multi 
tudes of our homes. And pauperism, disease, 



70 Intemperance. 



lunacy, premature decay and death, domestic misery, 
atrocious crimes, are the fruits seen and read of all 
men, and which no one in this country now attempts 
either to deny or to extenuate. 

Intemperance impairs the national strength. In 
temperance obstructs the national trade. Intempe 
rance degrades the national character. Intemperance 
has made the national name a bye-word amongst 
the peoples of the earth. 

There is no country in the world so debased by 
drunkenness as our own ! Neither amongst Hindoo, nor 
Buddhist, nor fire-worshipper, nor Mahometan (such 
was the testimony of Sir John Bowring to myself), 
is there anything approaching to the intemperance of 
our countrymen. u I have seen more drunkenness," 
said another witness on whom I could rely, "in six 
days in England, than during six months journey 
across the continent of Europe." 

Moreover, it is the complaint of Hindoo philan 
thropists now traversing the land, that their heathen 
compatriots learn drunkenness, and the vices to which 
it leads, from English Christians. 

And in these days of wars and rumours of wars it 
may well claim attention, that there is nothing so 
destructive of the discipline or so injurious to the 
strength of our forces, both by land and sea, as in 
temperance. It demoralises and disintegrates our 
armies, and under-mans and endangers our navies, and 
covers our coast every winter with wrecks and with 
corpses. 

Above all, intemperance degrades human nature ; 
for it deprives man of that in which his real dignity 
consists his reason and his self-respect. In the 
words of a truly noble advocate of the temperance 



Intemperance. 71 



cause (Thomas Barker), u it obliterates the linea 
ments of a high and Divine life, and sinks a being, 
created in the image of God, to the level of the 
brute, the savage and the fiend." We read of a 
people in ancient times who, in order to instil into 
their children an abhorrence of this revolting vice, 
used to exhibit their slaves in a state of intoxication. 
They set bfefore them one of a degraded race, still 
more debased by the loathsome signs of inebriety. 
" Look," said they, " how drunkenness disfigures the 
human form divine. Observe the staggering gait, 
the unseemly gestures, the idiotic features of that 
creature. See how drunkenness disguises a man, 
un-mans a man, makes a man a beast! What can be 
more shocking or degrading ? You see it makes a 
man more debased than a slave, sinks him below the 
level of a brute. Would you be like him ?" And 
yet thus do Christian men degrade themselves in the 
sight of God, of angels, of their fellow-creatures. 
Tnus do husbands degrade themselves in the eyes of 
their wives, fathers in the eyes of their children. 
Think of a wife, who has vowed at the altar to honour 
and obey her husband ; think of little children, or of 
grown-up sons and daughters, who are bound to 
reverence theii parents, and who, in the person of a 
parent, ought to revere the image and authority of 
God Himself; think of such gazing on him who 
ought to claim their reverence and love, and train 
them in the nurture and the fear of God, outraging 
the sanctities of home and wallowing in intoxication ! 
Again, intemperance betrays men into the commis 
sion of the most revolting crimes. Look at the 
annals of guilt, or the diurnal statements of offences 
against society. Look at the police reports, or the 



72 Intemperance. 



trials at the sessions or assizes. Read the testimonies 
of our judges, or of the officers of justice in this 
volume. Recall the outrages against person and 
property that are recorded in every journal, or have 
come under your own immediate notice. Are they 
not almost all to be traced to excess in drink? 
Adultery, fornication, theft, embezzlement, strife, 
manslaughter ; these are its fruits ! How many a 
robbery, how many a murder, how many a suicide, 
has been committed at its instigation ! How many a 
criminal when in the hands of justice, when expiating 
his crimes on the ignominious scaffold, has exclaimed, 
" It was drink that brought me here !" How 
many an unhappy maniac has it confined within 
the walls of a mad-house! Drink makes the 
chaste man sensual, the honest man a thief, the 
mild man a fury, the humane man a murderer ! 
When a man is in liquor the Spirit of God leaves 
him, and the Devil takes possession of him. He 
becomes a ready prey to diabolical suggestions, and 
is led captive by Satan at his will. He is hurried on 
to embrue his hands in a fellow- creature s blood or 
to turn them against his own life ; and when he 
recovers from his frenzy and awakes from his stupe 
faction, and finds that he has lost his character, 
damaged his worldly prospects, incurred the penalties 
of the law, and has, perhaps, a scaffold to look to, the 
conviction, which enters like iron into his soul, is this, 
u See to what drink has brought me." 

In a word, the love of drink ruins both body and 
soul. No strength of constitution can long with 
stand the inroads of this destructive vice. It impairs 
the intellect, and abridges life, and brings on prema 
ture decrepitude, and makes young men old. It has 



Intemperance. 73 



slain more of our manhood than the sword ever did 
more in one city in one year than fell on the field of 
Waterloo more than all the natural diseases to which 
the frame of man is subject. 

It is the source of half the misery and almost all 
the crimes that have filled the world with tears. Ask 
the officers of justice, ask our medical advisers, ask 
those who tend on lunatic asylums, ask the gaoler and 
executioner ; and they will all confess, as they revolve 
the page of human misery and guilt, that intemperance 
is the great scourge of humanity that the pothouse 
is the nursery of the hospital, the prison, the hulks, 
and the gallows ! 

It would, indeed, be easy to trace the progress of 
this dreadful vice through its successive stages of sin 
and degradation, till it terminates as I have described ; 
and I should only rcall what your own experience 
would confirm. 

Of all the fallacies that mislead men there never 
was a grosser than that the drunkard is no man s 
enemy but his own. He is not only miserable him 
self, but the cause of misery and ruin to all connected 
with him. No one can place any confidence in him, 
or have any peace with him. llis vice renders him 
the pest of the neighbourhood in which he lives, and 
is the utter bane of domestic happiness. Farewell 
respectability, comfort, and peace in that dwelling of 
which the inmate is given to drink. As Archbishop 
Thomson graphically observed " When drunkenness 
comes in at the door, happiness flies out at the 
window." 

Yes ! point out to me the dwelling of a drunkard, 
and I will draw for you the picture within the wife 
wan, emaciated, and neglectful of her person; the 



74 Intemperance. 



children half-starved and in tatters ; the apartments 
dingy, dirty, and despoiled of furniture ; everything 
wearing an aspect of discomfort and desolation ; 
everything proclaiming, " This is the dwelling of a 
man given to drink" 

Need I add to all this that intemperance obstructs the 
entrance of the Gospel and the work of the Church ; 
that it thins our congregations, thwarts our clergy, is 
an utter foe to both morals and religion. To quote a 
few of my clerical correspondents : " Sabbath- 
breaking, swearing, and drunkenness are vices that go 
together." et Intemperance keeps numbers from 
Church." " Persons who are addicted to intempe 
rance rarely attend upon the ordinances of religion." 
" Intemperance keeps men from Church, and renders 
them indifferent to religion." " Practical atheism ispro- 
duced by it." " People are hardened and brutalised 
by the constant spectacle of drunkeDness." " Religion 
is at a discount," l( public ordinances are despised, and 
Sunday is grossly neglected." Lastly, to quote one 
who is well entitled to speak, " the clergy every 
where, but in our large towns especially, are dis 
couraged, cast down, almost driven to despair, through 
the universal prevalence of the vice of drinking, and 
the temptations that are multiplied for its encourage 
ment on every hand under the protection of law. It 
thwarts, defeats and nullifies their Christian schemes 
and philanthropic efforts to such an extent that it is 
becoming a matter of grave question whether infi 
delity, religious indifference, and social demoralisation 
are not making head against us, in defiance of all our 
churches, our clergy, our Scripture-readers, and our 
schools." 

How, in fact, can it be otherwise, when our people 



Intemperance. 75 



are plied with legalised temptations on every side ; 
when more than a hundred millions sterling are an 
nually consumed in this country in intoxicating 
drink; when the liquor trade has assumed such 
gigantic dimensions that it beards the Legislature 
and defies both the power of the Government and 
the voice of public opinion ! 

But I can neither do justice to this branch of the 
subject nor exhaust it ; and I have said enough, I 
trust, on it, to secure your sympathy and, it may be, 
your co-operation. 

I will only add that I have not been handling it 
rhetorically or from hearsay ; for I have gone into 
this question in all its details, seeking information 
wherever I could obtain it and conversing in our 
prisons with the unhappy criminals whom excess had 
brought there, some of whom I sought out at the 
request of their friends, whom their excess had re 
duced from competence to penury. More than this, 
I have received the dying confession of one who 
committed murder and other atrocious crimes when 
inflamed by drink ; have stood upon the felon s grave 
of one who, though the child or pious parents, was 
brought in early manhood to the scaffold by an act of 
drunkenness, in which he took the life of his bosom 
friend. And amongst the most painful recollections 
of my life are instances of self-destruction caused by 
drink, of which, as a pastor, I have had harrowing 
and multiplied experience. And when, in addition 
to all this, I ascertained that women of condition, and 
even ladies of fashion, are often the slaves of drink ; 
when one of them, who on what she supposed her 
death-bed, had renounced this loathsome vice, ex 
pressing deep contrition, returned to what has since 



76 Intemperance. 



cast her from husband and from home, and reduced 
her to the level of the vilest of her sex, told me, 
when I put life and death before her, that she would 
risk her soul to indulge in drink ; I felt that I had no 
alternative, all uncongenial as it was to my tastes and 
habits as a student and a pastor, but to set myself, even 
in the decline of life, to the task with which I have been 
recently engaged. And on this behalf I appeal con 
fidently to my brethren of the English clergy and 
of the English laity. I know their aversion to any 
thing like cant, or hyperbole, or sensational excite 
ment. But I also know that, when their judgment is 
convinced and their hearts are touched, there is 
nothing in the way of effort or of sacrifice from 
which they will draw back. 

And this brings me to my second head the cor 
rective or the remedy, and the spirit in which it must 
be applied. 

And, first, we must diminish temptation in other 
words, restrict the liquor trade. And remember the 
demand for this as a leading journal, wise in its 
generation, significantly observes " comes from the 
chief victims, or the working classes themselves. * 
There is nothing new in what that journal says; but 
its utterance is ominous now, as coming from such a 
source, and may best be given in its very words 
" They, the working classes, declare that the facilities 
for getting liquor in any quantity are so great that 
they amount practically to the encouragement of in 
temperance. A man, who might not care to walk half 
a mile to a public-house, would turn into one of half a 
dozen placed right in his way. The consumption of 
drink, as of all other articles, must be increased by 
bringing it home to every man s door. That is the 



Intemperance. 77 



assertion of those who know where the shoe pinches, 
and ask to be saved from the temptations they ex 
perience. If legislation, whatever be its form, does 
not restrict the expenditure upon intoxicating drinks, 
it will simply be a dead letter. If it does so, and ac 
cording to the measure in which it does so, it will 
diminish the profits and damage the property of the 
liquor trade. ... It is absolutely impossible to pro 
tect or advance the morality of the people without 
doing direct and proportionate injury to the liquor 
trade. . . . The wish of all thinking persons in this 
country is, that half the money now spent in drink 
should be spent in something better. Unless the new 
bill does this, or something towards it, it will be of no 
effect at all ; and if it does as much, it will be open 
substantially to precisely the same objections on the 
part of the Trade as the bill of 1871. ( 1 ^imes, Monday, 
September 4, 1871). 

Such are the arguments of our leading journal, 
which, for reasons which I need not enunciate, is 
always a significant exponent of national opinion. 
As a legislative question I go beyond its present 
utterances, for I claim for the majority of the rate 
payers themselves the power of restriction ; and till 
this is granted there seems little likelihood of a satis 
factory legislative settlement. 

Secondly, there is the force of example. In former 
days I used to discourage, and even scout, what I 
now rely on, and utter what I now consider platitudes. 
In former days I had faith in schemes of education, 
and rational pastime, or innocent diversion, and more 
comfortable dwellings for the working classes, and 
other benevolent devices, as sufficient to wean men 
from public-houses and correctives to intemperance, 



78 Intemperance. 



in the efficacy of all which counter attractions, we 
are told by high authority, the liquor-dealers have as 
little faith as myself; and my sole argument with 
temperance advocates used to be that the Gospel re 
ceived into the heart is the only and all-sufficient 
remedy for moral evil of every sort ; and I was 
zealous in urging this, as some of you, no doubt, are 
in all sincerity, to-night. 

But I have learnt that educated men, and literary 
men, arid some of the most skilled and intelligent of 
our workmen yes, and scholars and divines may 
be the slaves of drink ; and that the persons whom 
we want to reach seldom enter either places of harm 
less recreation or of worship, preferring to these the 
glare and the glee of the public-house, where they 
spend in vicious self-indulgence what might provide 
comforts, and even luxuries, for their families. I 
have cumulative and conclusive testimonies in this 
volume, from men of the largest practical experience 
and constantly in contact with the victims of intem 
perance to wit, our constabulary and governors of 
prisons, and masters of workhouses that with multi 
tudes there is no power of self-restraint, and that for 
such total abstinence is the only cure ; that before 
they can be taught self-respect, or brought within the 
reach of religion, they must be restrained from drink. 
And I have now no faith at all in moderation among 
habitual frequenters of public-houses, or on the part 
of any that have once been the slaves of intemperance. 

It is, besides, a well-authenticated fact that such 
persons, who have abandoned habits of total absti 
nence, when once adopted on conviction, have gene 
rally been again entangled and overcome, arid thier 
last state has been worse than the first. 



Intemperance. 79 



And, therefore, for conscience sake, as an example 
to weaker brethren " for the present necessity," as S. 
Paul speaks, with a view to recover souls out of the 
snares of the devil, and for national reformation, I am 
an abstainer. I believe this to be the only stand 
point for a minister of religion, or, indeed, for any 
one who, like myself, would plead the cause of 
temperance with any prospect of success. 

That alcohol may be useful as a stimulant, and, 
when medically prescribed, may even save life, 1 
should be the last man to deny. .But as long as 
alcohol is a narcotic poison, and, even as a stimulant, 
only acts as a spur in the flank of a jaded horse, to 
use it habitually as an article of diet is quite a 
different thing, as our medical men would be the first 
to admit ; while, on the other hand, that abstinence 
from intoxicating drink is promotive of health, that 
it tends to impart vigour, and prolong life, is the ex 
perience of multitudes who have wrought hard and 
continuously without any stimulant whatever, and 
effected more without it than they could have done 
by its aid. 

It was thus that the patriotic Cobden prosecuted 
his laborious mission that the conqueror of Scinde 
achieved his triumphs in the East that the heroic 
Havelock ran his career of glory. It may not be 
impertinent to add, as I do at the request of high 
medical authorities, that, had I not myself been in 
these later years an abstainer, I never could, at my 
time of life, have accomplished the task I had under 
taken in connection with the question before us, and 
that the stimulant, which was recently administered 
to me at the crisis of a dangerous disease, would in all 
probability have failed of its effects. 



80 Intemperance. 



And if it be said that more can be effected for the 
national reformation by an example of moderation, I 
ask who are the men that plead the cause of tempe 
rance on our platforms and in our pulpits that 
grapple with the destroyer of our people on every 
possible occasion but the men who practise the noble 
self-denial commended by S. Paul, when he says, 
" If meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no 
flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother 
to offend?" 

Brethren, would you redeem your fatherland from 
intemperance ? Would you have the blessings of those 
who are ready to perish resting on you while you 
live, and gilding your graves when you die, and 
restore peace and consolation to homes that are deso 
late and hearts that are breaking? You must abjure 
alcoholic drink, except when prescribed just as 
arsenic or strychnine or any other poison may be 
in minute quantities as a medicine. 

And if you say that this is enthusiasm, when, I 
would ask, was society ever redeemed without this ? 
Who shall in any day wake a church or a people to a 
sense of duty, without a charge of enthusiasm ? Were 
not Howard and Wilberforce, in their days, de 
nounced as enthusiasts ? And shall any who follow, 
however distantly, in the wake of these benefactors 
of their species escape the taunts of those who are 
too shallow-minded to appreciate their motives, and 
too worldly to follow their example? With what 
awful significance do the words of our Lord apply to 
this very question, when he says, " Except a man 
deny himself and take up his cross daily, and follow 
me, he cannot be my disciple." 

Brethren ! if I ever wish to be young again, it is 



Intemperance. 81 



that I might traverse my fatherland with the message 
which you have heard from me to-night. There will 
be no lightening of its burdens, no reduction of its 
pauperism, no diminution of its crimes, no abatement 
of its miseries while it is enslaved by drink. Our 
schemes of national education, our dreams of moral 
and social reform, our plans for the enlightenment 
and amelioration of our people, our efforts at Church 
extension will come to nought, till the demon of 
intemperance is crushed beneath our feet. 



VII. 
WOBLDLINESS, 

BY THE 

KEV. G. C. HARRIS, M.A., 
PREBENDARY OF EXETER, AJTD VICAR OF S. LUKE S, TORQUAY. 



Wurldlinoss. 

ACTS xvii., 18. 

"Then certain philosophers of the Ep : cureans und of the Stoics en 
countered him, and some said, What will this babbler uy r Others 
said, He seemetb to be a setter forth of strange Gods: because he 
preuched unto them Jesus and the Resurrection." 

" WHEN we could no longer forbear, we thought it 
good to be left at Athens alone." To a mind so 
keen, so versatile, so large, so sympathetic, as S. 
Paul s, solitude must needs have been a trial ; and 
this especially when the solitude was such as he 
means when, after sending back to his beloved Silas 
and Timotheus those who had brought him from 
Thessalonica, he remained by himself in Athens. 

Now in what sense was S. Paul alone ? In a great 
and crowded city, full of the most educated intellects 
of the day, the storehouse of the art-treasures of the 
world, the home of literature, and the shrine of poetry 
and tradition in such a place how could S. Paul be 
alone ? He was alone in the isolation of his soul, in 
the utter absence of sympathy with any of those 
among whom he found himself. Every principle that 
actuated his conduct was ignored or violated by the 
tendencies of thought and action around him. The 



86 JPorldlmete. 



concentrated worship of the One God with all the 
powers of man s being ; the true and depreciatory 
sense of individual merit, coupled with the priceless 
value of the human soul ; the probationary character 
of this life ; the law of love from God to His creatures, 
and of sympathy between man and man ; the need, the 
existence, of a personal Saviour ; the life beyond the 
grave ; the surrender of things present ; the hope of 
things to come ; all this was directly contradicted by 
the voluptuous idolatry or the philosophic speculations 
of Athenian life. It was, in fact, either " nonsense," 
which the worldly man would scorn, or it was a novel 
speculation, which the restless spirit of free inquiries 
viewed half with defiant incredulity, half with a 
hopeless longing that it might be true, that presented 
itself to the Athenian mind when Paul, alone in his 
belief against the world around, " preached unto them 
Jesus and the Eesurrection." 

For his " soul was stirred within him," knowing 
what was at stake. And pitying the souls of men, 
and feeling that he had the answer to all their ques 
tions, the remedy for all their ills, he spoke to one and 
another of that knowledge-loving crowd, as they 
loitered around the philosophic haunts or thronged the 
busy forum ; and amid all the monuments of their 
ancestral glory, and the deathless triumphs of their 
national arts, he recognised among themselves the 
unconscious confession of their spiritual needs, and 
selected a vantage ground on their own territory on 
which to do battle with his bitterest foes. 

They were " certain philosophers of the Epicureans 
and of the Stoics" which " encountered him." We 
may leave out of the question the other influences which 
hindered the work of the Church as represented by 



Worldtiness. 87 



S. Paul. The religion, so-called, of Athens, in which 
it abounded, could afford no real opposition to the soul- 
awakening appeals of the Gospel. It was falling 
already before the assaults of philosophy. Men who 
could think discarded the old superstitions ; and 
though the altars of a thousand deities might smoke 
on every hand, and every public building be the 
temple of some presiding deity and every nearth be 
a domestic shrine, yet the characters of the gods whose 
history was embalmed in their legends was the 
strongest argument against their worship ; and man 
with an immortal soul would crave something larger, 
greater, better than himself, if he is to worship any 
thing at all. Thus the city, while it retained with 
duteous love the traditions of the past, was eagerly 
gathering from every land, with a sort of despairing 
curiosity, the offers of the most varied worship ; and 
even the personifications of qualities of the soul and 
mind, Faith, Fortitude-, Truth and Justice were begin 
ning to have their altars, as if men were stretching out 
their desires to, at least, a standard of moral and 
mental improvement. But all would not satisfy. 
The worship of cold abstractions can kindle no enthu 
siasm ; and in the despair of anything which their 
own experience had as yet discovered they raised 
their altar still " to the unknown God." 

But philosophy had no such weaknesses. The 
Greek sage confidently told men to look in on them 
selves and find or frame their own chief good. I 
need not remind you there were many sects. But 
two only demand our present attention. " Certain 
philosophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics en 
countered him." There were greater schools, which 
have left more lasting murks upon human thought; 



88 Worldliness. 



but they rather prepared the way for Christianity. 
These two, however, contain in their principles so 
much of the wisdom that " is earthly, sensual, 
devilish" so much that commends itself to the intel 
lect and the passions of unreclaimed humanity so 
much of the most successful state-craft of the Prince 
of this world that we can easily see the lesson that 
underlies the statement that philosophers of these 
schools " encountered" S. Paul. In them and in him 
we have the chosen champions of the world and of 
the Church. In their encounter we have one typical 
incident in that deadly struggle, which can never end 
till the world itself shall have crumbled into ruin at 
the word of the Church s Lord. 

Now let us note the combatants, and examine their 
tactics. The Epicureans were virtually Atheists. 
They did acknowledge the existence of some of the 
old gods of mythology ; but they mocked their charac 
ters, and they denied their influence. The soul 
was to them but a part of the body, scarcely less 
material than its earthly dwelling-place. Death was 
to each man the end of all things. The body perished; 
the soul was scattered by decomposition into the 
elements of the world. Life was a short period, into 
which was to be compressed the greatest amount of 
indolence, leisure, or of sensual enjoyment. Chance 
was the only and the relentless directing power ; and 
their creed was contained in brief in S. Paul s words, 
" Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." 

Their place of gathering was a garden near the 
Agora, or great market-place, at Athens ; and there, 
with everything that was beautiful around them, they 
formed the pursuit of present ease and enjoyment into 
a system which was called philosophy. Self-advan- 



Worldlinesa. 89 



tage was the only motive; vice was to be shunned 
when it caused uneasiness ; and trouble and ills 
should be ignored or avoided rather than overcome. 
In one word, they were the votaries of pleasure. 

But there was the other school. Along the Agora, 
where S. Paul resorted daily, was a long colonnade or 
portico ; and in this porch or " stoii" met another 
school of philosophers the Stoics. Their creed was 
different. Wrapped in the mantle of their own self- 
esteem they scorned all the conditions of mortal life. 
They lived ; and that was all they thought worthy 
their own recognition. Deity there was ; but He was 
but revealed in all the world around them. Creative 
power he had none. He impressed form upon matter 
eternal as Himself; and wherever existence was, there 
was in it the Deity. They were Pantheists. They de 
graded God to the level of identity with the material 
world around them ; and as they degraded God they 
exalted themselves. Calm in the assumed majesty of 
their own perfection, they held pleasure and pain to 
be alike contemptible. Life might have terrors for 
them if they were too weak to grapple with its ills ; 
but death had none. Their soul at death was either 
destroyed ; burned, some of them imagined ; or else 
it was absorbed into the Deity that is, into the 
material universe, which to them was God. Picture 
to yourselves, my brethren, if you can, on your day 
of mutual joy and Christian congratulation, these 
stony-hearted men. No sense of Nature s beauty 
filled them with enjoyment ; no tale of heroism 
thrilled them with admiration ; no note of sorrow 
ever woko an echo of sympathy in their souls. If 
they looked out of themselves, they saw nothing in 
man that drew them nearer to him ; they saw 



90 Worldliness. 



nothing which they recognised as God that had a 
nature superior to their own. Isolation forbade them 
to " rejoice with them that do rejoice, or to weep with 
them that weep." Pantheism showed them nothing 
that could claim their homage as God- For all, them 
selves, and the nature round them, were but so many 
varying manifestations of the same universal essence. 

Hence they stood, each separated from their fellows 
each ignoring the claims of submission to God on 
the pedestal of their pride. 

Pleasure and Pride, then, in the persons of these 
philosophers, encountered S. Paul alone at Athens. 
What did he oppose to them? "Jesus and the 
Resurrection." 

Jesus that is, God One and incarnate. He 
preached God in His unity, strictly separate from the 
manifold forms of pseudo-theology, which held out 
their pretensions on every side. He declared the true 
connection between God and man, not arrived at by 
degrading God to the level of the brute nay, to the 
sharing a common nature with the things of earth, 
and air, and sea; but the recognition of the One 
Eternal God ; proclaiming Him the Lord of the 
spirits of all flesh Creator of all things visible 
and invisible ; yet assuming the nature of man, 
and raising, purifying, ennobling, consecrating that 
nature by so doing ; redeeming man from that curse 
of which even Grecian lore found many a fanciful 
explanation as it recognised its existence in all the 
changes and chances of this mortal life ; redeeming 
him and opening before him a career which had 
Heaven for its goal, and perfection for its ultimate 
condition. He preached Jesus, too, not only God, 
but man; and, as man, showing by His example 



91 



how the redemption He offered was to be won ; the per 
fect man the one example overcoming the world, but 
overcoming it by love conquering, by the ingrafting 
of His own holy nature, all evil in the lives of men 
teaching them to trample mercilessly on their lusts 
and passions, to deny themselves, to aim after hap 
piness in another world instead of this, and yet to be 
possessors of a peace here which the world can neither 
give- nor take away ; Jesus, emphatically as an 
example, not solely a teacher, not merely one who 
thought and then said, " Do this," while I watch 
you; but one who did nay, who suffered, willingly 
Himself, and then said, "Follow me." And he 
spoke to them also of that which gives force to the 
precepts of Jesus and meaning to this present life. 
He told them of the Kesurrection. Oh, common 
subject! oh, familiar word ! But how must it have 
thrilled in the hearts of these, his hearers, when it 
was boldly and plainly said to them that death was 
but a moment of transition, and the real life was then 
beginning a life in which that which is always 
longing here might attain its desire in which cer 
tainty will succeed to doubt, knowledge to ignorance, 
safety to temptation where " the wicked cease from 
troubling, and the weary are at rest," not in the 
cold stillness of the grave, but in the blessed expecta 
tion of Paradise. And also, as involved in this idea, 
or, rather, flowing from the two Jesus and the Ke 
surrection he told them how God would "judge the 
world by that man whom He had appointed," and 
how, therefore, this life became no longer a time of 
brief and thoughtless sojourn, where all the care of 
each succeeding moment was to make it merry as it 
sped, nor yet a field, where eatch mau ruled supreme, 



92 Worldliness. 



owning no sovereignty but the dictates of his own 
heart and will ; but rather a working-place, a time of 
trial, an exercise ground not of ingenuity or strength, 
not of taste nor insensibility, but of truth and love, 
of humility and faith. How think you, brethren, that 
these doctrines pleased the luxurious Epicurean or 
the cold, proud Stoic ? The doctrine of the Cross 
was to the Greek foolishness, and he neglected it for 
his pleasure, or he laughed it to scorn in his pride. 

And, brethren, in the present day, wherever Paul is 
preaching, there will encounter him " certain philo 
sophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics." The 
same evil influences reproduce themselves in opposition 
to the work of Christ. They hinder His work when 
it is hindered in your souls as individuals ; they 
encounter those who stand alone in the great battle 
field of life, who wish to preach Jesus and the Resur 
rection, as their strength and hope, to those among 
whom, we must own, there is for all practical purposes 
but "an unknown God." 

For, I say, what is the real hindrance to the 
Church s work, to the work of God, in your own 
hearts arid lives, brethren, and in the general work? 
What is it really that paralyses exertion, or diverts 
attention, or intercepts the means for prosecuting the 
great campaign for conquering souls for Christ ? 

It is the same, brethren, as encountered S. Paul 
pleasure and pride. They are still the two great 
forces of the world. They showed bravely, it is true, 
on the height of the Acropolis, amid the splendid 
statues of the market-place or the plane trees of the 
garden, where lust and beauty openly hunted the 
souls of men, or pride nursed them as the darlings of 
the world. Yes, it was the attractive side of sin that 



Worldline**. 93 



there blazed forth to dazzle and to scorch. And you 
would say that very different from the Athenian sky 
is the close atmosphere of the crowded towns, where 
the chief struggle of the Church must lie. No 
sculptor s art, no poet s song, throws a halo round the 
vices of the Haymarket, or the outrages of the 
Commune ; and it is with such as these we have to deal. 
True, my brethren, I have spoken to you of Athens 
of all the classic haunts of the most favoured spot 
of the heathen world. I have shown you, however, 
in that only the pleasant side of sin. Sweep away 
the garden and the portico, the marble and the gold ; 
hush into silence the orator s voice and the poet s song ; 
bring the matter from the distant nages of history, 
where the gloomiest crimes often shine with a bor 
rowed light ; bring the matter from Greece and anti 
quity ; bring it to the present day and the common 
place ; bring it to your own hearts, brethren ; and if 
then there is anything that chills your sympathy, that 
holds it back from caring whether Christ s Church 
or the present world be victor in the strife, it is still 
the same as it was of old pleasure and pride en 
counter you Pleasure, with all its effeminacy and 
self-indulgence; pleasure, with its studied consideration 
of taste, and ease, and excitement ; pleasure, in its 
purple and fine linen, faring sumptuously every day, 
while Lazarus, not hated but forgotten, is starving 
at the gate ; pleasure, which lavishes on a present 
for a favourite a sum that would support a missionary 
for a year, or on a night of enjoyment that which 
would feed a starving family ; pleasure, that thinks 
of the present and would drive the future far away 
as an unpleasant possibility, and asks for nothing 
more but to be left unchecked by word of warning or 



94 Worldlmess. 



tale of sorrow " to live without God in the world. * 
And pride, too, gives us a hardened heart a heart 
steeled against entreaty, a quiverful of refusals to any 
appeal. There is the man who marches stately in the 
path of this life. Not like the votary of pleasure, im 
moral, or self-indulgent, or frivolous, or forgetful, 
he is correct in his outward conduct ; he defies the 
world to cast an imputation on his character ; he even 
affects to despise those who, professing religion, fall, 
as fall they must. If he owns a God nay, start not, 
my brethren, at the height to which human audacity 
will soar if he owns a God, it is one of his own 
making, a creature of his own, a being that in his 
heart he despises. In his philosophy he circumscribes 
the attributes of his God ; he limits His powers ; he 
explains His nature ; he banishes Him from His Word, 
His Church, His Sacraments ; he would keep Him a 
prisoner within the limits of human thought, while 
he denies Him the power to regulate His own laws or 
to fulfil His own promises. Oh, save us from this 
dreary Pantheism from this cruel system, which 
leaves us without a single woe alleviated, a single tear 
drop dried, a single difficulty explained ; which leaves 
us without any being to look up to, no Almighty 
Father watching over His children in love, with 
nothing but an abstract being brought within the 
compass of our senses in the shape of a world 
inferior to the mind which contemplates it ; nothing 
but a cold isolation, which makes each man a God 
unto himself, with no thought for another s weal or 
woe. 

And if we drive the question backward back 
from the luxurious drawing-room or the scholar s 
retreat; back from the comfortable home or the 



Worldlines*. 95 



profitable shop; back from the realms of fashion, 
where hearts, happiness, lives, principles are bartered 
for place, or title, or position, or fortune ; back from 
the expensive habits of polished society or the vice 
which calls itself respectable ; back to the dark alley 
and the crowded court, "where the filthy bye-lane 
rings to the shriek of the trampled wife," brethren, 
it is in another form that the same hideous pair of 
twin evils, to which we too often are slaves, are 
lording it there. See pleasure in the flaring gin 
palace, the bloated drunkard, or that poor creature 
with the faded finery and the hectic cheek ; see pride 
in the reckless villain, who tells you plainly and 
there are thousands such that he believes in neither 
God nor Devil, neither Heaven nor Hell, and that 
what his passion covets or his will demands, nothing 
but want of opportunity shall stop him from attaining. 
And, amid this all, what is the antidote to the evil ? 
While worldliness with its thorny growth is choking 
the produce of the good seed and preventing that 
perfection of fruit which marks the saintly life, what 
nas the Church to offer in opposition ? Still the same 
means as the great Apostle relied on at Athens 
Jesus and the Resurrection. Pride may scorn the 
idea of faith ; pleasure may rebel against the very 
notion of self-denial ; the world in its wisdom may 
mock at the " babbling" of the Gospel, and in its 
habitual selfishness may reprobate the strangeness of 
any religion that really necessitates the Cross. But 
we know no new thing. The good news of the birth, 
the life, the death of Christ, is eighteen centuries old. 
In an age as busy, among intellects as keen, against 
opposition as bitter, amid thought as licentious and 
vice as fashionable as S. Paul confronted at Athens, 



96 Worldliness. 



we still, as he did, in a power not our own, preach 
forth Jesus and the Resurrection. It is the mission 
of the Church now, as it has ever been, to hold up 
the Cross in the face of that world that slew her 
Lord, and dare it to be indifferent. Jesus and the 
Resurrection ; the example of Jesus, the meek and 
lowly, as the corrective to our swelling pride ; the 
thought of the Resurrection as the touchstone of 
every undertaking. And not only the example and 
the thought, but the presence and the power. Again 
and again let it be repeated the secret of the Chris 
tian s guidance and safety in this world is, life in the 
presence of Christ that presence, which is ours, 
and which we in our recklessness carry from the font 
into the treacherous maze of life ; nay dare I say it ? 
can anything but painful conviction of the existence 
of such an evil justify me in saying it? which *ve 
carry from the Altar, where He gave Himself to us, 
back to the world which hates Him, or at the best 
returns His love with cold unconcern ; not that we 
may leaven it, but that it may gather us into the 
throng, where those who say they love Him, and 
those who do not deny they despise Him, may be 
mingled in an urfdistinguishable crowd. But the 
presence of Jesus is ours, dear brethren, around us, 
in us. It not only surrounds us to remind us and 
rebuke us ; it dwells in us to strengthen us and to 
comfort us. And the power of the Resurrection, too 
riot only the hope, but the power. The daily death 
to sin and self is complemented by the dailv rising to 
newness of life. In the thought of the Resurrection 
the Quickening Spirit enables us to sit in judgment 
on act and motive ; in the power of the Resurrection 
the Risen Lord, who is the Head of the Church, 



JPortdtiness. 9? 



raises His members daily from that dying world 
which lieth in wickedness. Are these hard or unreal 
words ? There is no subject on which it is easier to 
be unreal, or harder to be too hard, than this. The 
world M the sworn foe of Christ and His Church 
deadlier to His children when she smiles than when 
she frowns. But ever let the thought of that loving 
eye which melted Peter when he sat among the 
servants round the fire be present with us, and 
much of the glamour of the world will fade away. 
Grasp with unrelaxing faith the last words of the 
Church s creed "I look for the resurrection of the 
dead, and the life of the world to come ;" and then 
there will be no hesitation, no lack of meaning, in the 
fervour of that prayer " From all the deceits of the 
WORLD, the llesh, and the Devil, good Lord, 
deliver us." 



VIII. 
LUKEWARMNEKS, 

BY THB 

REV. W. II. CLARK, M.A., 

PRKBKNDABY OF WELLS, VICAB OF TAUNTON, 
A*D RURAL DKAN. 



REV. in., 15, 16. 

" I know thy works, that thou ttrt noitlwr cold nor hot : I would thou 
wer t uol i or hot. So then, because thou art lukowurm, uud neither cold 
nor h <t, I will spue thee out of my mouth." 



THOSE who believe that these seven Churches of 
Asia represent seven successive ages in the history 
of the Church have, undoubtedly, some apparent 
grounds for their opinion, even it we cannot allow 
that it rests upon a solid foundation. The age after 
that of the Apostles is not unfitly represented by the 
Church of Ephesus, which had left its first love. 
The prophecies respecting the times immediately pre 
ceding the second advent of our Lord would lead us 
to expect some such state of things as existed in the 
Church of Laodicea. 

A large number of those who advocate the 
prophetical interpretation of these seven Epistles 
believe that the coming of Christ is very near at 
hand, and, consequently, that we have now entered 
the Laodicean age. It may possibly be, although I 
should be inclined to doubt it, that lukewarmness is 
the prominent feature in the religious character of the 
present age. No age is competent to judge of its 



102 Lukewarmness. 



own faults or virtues. But whatever may be the 
truth on this subject it will hardly be doubted that 
lukewarmness is a very common vice of our own day, 
and that it is a charge to which many of us are 
liable. At a time when education and civilisation 
have made great progress, when men are tempted to 
overlook the Divine Cause and Source of every 
blessing in the material results, there is a peculiar 
danger of the well-disciplined spirit of moderation 
degenerating into the vice of lukewarmness. In days 
when a large portion of men s thoughts is given to 
temporal prosperity and advancement apd to outward 
display, the ardour of the pursuit of wealth and in 
fluence is very likely to beget lukewarmness about the 
things of God. It may be well for us, then, to study 
with deep prayerfulness and with earnest self-applica 
tion the solemn lessons of this passage. 

These words are some of the most impressive and 
awful in the whole Bible, whether we consider the 
class of persons to whom they are addressed, the 
character which they condemn, or the terrible expres 
sions in which that condemnation is conveyed. 

I will ask you to consider with me, by God s help, 
these three points:!, the character of lukewarm- 
ness ; 2, what we are to think of it ; and, 3, how we 
are to deal with it. 

I. The character of lukewarmness. 

There is no definition needed of the word itself. 
It is simple and intelligible enough. The lukewarm 
is neither hot nor cold. It has not the fervour of 
true and deep devotion to God, nor yet the coldness 
of absolute enmity to Him. But although the word 
requires neither definition nor explanation, there is 
need of some caution in judging of the existence or 



Lukewarmness. 103 



absence of the character, and some points connected 
with it may usefully be dwelt upon. 

Great mistakes are made about this character. 
Violence and impetuosity are sometimes mistaken for 
fervour in the service of God when they really pro 
ceed from quite another cause, and are lying side by 
side in the same nature with lukewarmness and re 
ligious indifference. Moderation is sometimes set 
down as lukewarmness, when it springs out of the 
deepest devotion to God and receives its temper from 
love to Him and charity towards man. Vehemence 
of spirit and of speech may proceed from the fervour 
of sincere and deep devotion to God ; but it may also 
proceed from natural impetuosity of disposition, and 
from a hot zeal for one s own party and opinions. A 
man may be a warm partisan and a very bad Christian. 
He may be a fierce controversialist, with little real 
zeal for truth, for the glory of God, or the good of man. 

On the other hand, a sanctified moderation may be 
mistaken by unspiritual men for lukewarmness in the 
cause of God. Moderation is, however, no more a 
proof of lukewarmness than violence is a proof of 
loving zeal and fervent devotion. Self-control and 
self-denial, a giving-up of one s own will, and a con 
sideration for the wishes and the well-being of others, 
are as much Christian duties as fidelity to the truth 
and earnestness in making it known. A true and 
Christian moderation a moderation which is not cold 
and lukewarm, but which is loving and devout is 
one of the most precious and beautiful fruits of the 
Holy Spirit of God. 

We must go deeper if we would understand the 
real nature and bearings of the evil spirit of luke 
warmness. 



104 Lukewarmness. 



1. It is a spirit which is deficient in the great 
Christian graces of faith, and hope, and love. 
Instead of being controlled by the powerful Divine 
influence of faith, its chosen guide is prudence. 
For the Christian grace of hope it bases its expected 
future upon a mere calculation of probable conse 
quences. Of course it knows little of love as a main 
spring of action. Instead of this greatest of the 
gifts of God, it follows the dictates of self-interest or 
of common sense, or perhaps it is directed by a 
vague sense of duty. In any case its favourite 
maxim is, " Above all, no zeal." 

2. Then, again, the lukewarm are satis/led with a 
very low standard of life. To such the ideal of the 
Gospel seems to be quite unattainable, or, at the 
least, an object which they neither hope nor desire to 
attain. They delight to quote the words of the 
Christian Year, although they use them in a very- 
different sense from that which was intended by their 
saintly author. They will not ** strive to wind them 
selves too high for sinful men beneath the sky," nor 
do they appreciate the great Christian watchword of 
progress. It may, perhaps, be suitable for an Apostle 
who had renounced the world and the things of the 
world to forget the things which are behind, and to 
press onwards to those which are before. Growth in 
grace may be a beautiful aspiration for men who are 
aiming at the perfection of the saints, but not for 
them. They are contented with something short of 
this. They don t think of pretending to be better 
than their neighbours. The average common sense 
religion, which suits the average man of the world, is 
good enough for them. They go so far as to fear that 
people who profess more are either hypocrites or 



Lukewamnnew. 105 



enthusiasts. A great deal of this has a very plausible 
sound. It sometimes imposes upon unthinking 
minds. There can be no doubt that such language 
often arises from a deep self-deception on the part of 
those who use it. 

3. Observe another feature in this character. It is 
destitute of all real and earnest devotion* And this 
is true, whatever meaning of that word we may 
adopt. 

(1.) The lukewarm are either negligent or perfunc 
tory in their use of Divine ordinances. They com 
monly neglect them, caring little for them, and 
making little use of them. They do not actually 
leave off prayer ; but they spend as little time over it 
as they possibly can. The Bible is not altogether 
unread, and it is not treated with open disrespect. 
But it is little used, and is never a constant and valued 
companion. The Holy Communion may not be 
entirely neglected. It is often virtually so ; but in 
many cases it would not be thought decent to neglect 
a duty which others perform. It would not be 
respectable ; and the lukewarm character aims at 
respectability. But if these various duties are recog 
nised they are placed in a position quite secondary to 
one s own convenience or one s worldly engagements. 
If the two things at any time seem to clash, it is the 
world which has the preference. 

And even when such duties are not neglected, they 
are performed in a cold, listless, and perfunctory 
manner. The lukewarm may say their prayers ; but 
they do not pray earnestly, trustfully, hopefully. 
They read their Bibles, but it is not in the spirit of 
one who says, u Speak, Lord ; thy servant heareth." 
It is not with the eagerness of one who is seeking for 



106 Luketvarmness. 



hidden treasure. They go to the altar of God, but 
it is not to " the God of their joy and gladness." 
There is no earnest, searching, self-examination before 
their approach ; there is no hungering and thirsting 
after righteousness as they prepare to receive the 
bread of life ; there is no joyful lifting up of the 
head after they have drunk of the brook by the way. 

2. Nor is their devotion greater in the way of 
practical well-doing. This is more surprising. The 
lukewarm are apt to boast that they are practical men, 
and not theorists. They have no high-flown notions 
of religion. They do not profess to know anything 
of the self-abasement which cries out, " God be 
merciful to me, a sinner ;" of the longing desire 
which exclaims, " Like as the hart desireth the 
water-brooks so longeth my soul after Thee, O 
God ;" of the rapture which says, " To me to live is 
Christ, and to die is gain." But they may boast, 
they imagine, of their devotion to practical duties. 
Like many other boasts, this one of theirs is false. 
They are as destitute of sincere devotion in the prac 
tical life as in the contemplative in the side which 
is turned towards men as in that which turns towards 
God. 

Speak to them of work which may be done for the 
glory of Almighty God, or the good of men, and 
they will tell you that they are not sure that any 
good can be done. If it can, they feel sure and here 
perhaps they are not so far wrong that they are not 
the people to do it. At any rate they will make no 
considerable sacrifice for it. Zeal asks, What can I 
do ? Its chief difficulty is not in finding a disposition 
for work, but in finding occasions for exercising it. 
Lukewarmness evades every demand made upon its 



Lukewarmness. 107 



devotion. It asks not how much can it do, but how 
little. If a duty is pressed home upon it, it discovers, 
after mature consideration, that it is not bound to do 
it. Even if it cannot altogether deny the duty, it 
seeks and finds quite easily abundant excuses for 
neglecting it. 

You ask for a sacrifice of its time ; but its time is 
entirely occupied in other business. It might like 
to be more diligent in the use of Divine ordinances, 
more active in works of benevolence, of charity, of 
mercy ; but it has no time for them, although it lias 
plenty for pleasure, for relaxation, for doing its own 
will. 

You ask for money to be spent in the building of 
churches or of schools, in sending missions to the 
heathen abroad, or to the heathen at home. It has 
money ; but it spends it all in more necessary work, 
or it does not see any use in promoting the objects for 
which its interest is solicited. It is the same with 
its ease and leisure. It may admit, with a languid 
acquiescence, that all that we are and all that we 
have are of God, belong to Him, and should be 
consecrated to Him. In practice His claims are dis 
regarded and His demands are ignored. 

Such was the character which was predominant in 
the Church of Laodicea, and which is found very 
widely among ourselves. Such is the character to 
which our blessed Lord calls our attention in this 
epistle. Let us ask, under the guidance of His 
solemn words, 

II. What are we to think of this character ? 

What does the world think of it ? V\ hat does it 
think of itself? What does our Lord think of it? 

1. The world generally thinks well of it. It is 



108 JJukewarmness. 



one of the world s chief favourites. And this is quite 
intelligible. It has some merits. It is frequently 
distinguished by a fair average consistency of de 
portment. It has not a high standard, so that it is 
in less danger of falling below it. Besides, it aims at 
respectability, and is a little sharp on the failings of 
those who profess more, or aim at more than itself. 
Then it is reasonable and moderate in its demands, 
and gives other people little trouble, neither rebuking 
them by its theories nor shaming them by its practice. 
The world can hardly fail to like it, since it adopts 
the principles and rules and maxims of the world, 
and not those of Jesus Christ. 

It has been remarked that of all the seven Churches 
of Asia there were only two which were free from 
persecution in some form or shape Sardis and Lao- 
dicea. They were the two worst. Sardis had a 
name that it lived, and was dead. Laodicea was 
apparently prosperous, but was lukewarm. The 
world and the devil let them alone. They were their 
friends : it was safer not to disturb them. It is the 
same now. The lukewarm really belong to the 
world and not to Christ, although they may profess 
His name ; and the world loves its own. This is a 
character which it holds in special favour. 

2. It is, moreover, a character which is generally 
well pleased with itself. This feature is brought out 
very strikingly in the Epistle before us : " Thou sayest, 
I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need 
of nothing." It is a very natural accompaniment of 
such a character, and proceeds in a measure from the 
same causes which conciliate for it the favour of the 
world. When men have a high standard of life a 
lofty ideal to which they feel bound to conform them- 



Lukewarmne**. 109 



selves they feel the need of earnest effort in order to 
attain to it, and they are sure to meet with many dis 
appointments on the wav. It is, of course, otherwise 
with the lukewarm. With them there is little effort, 
and therefore a very slight realisation of the struggle 
which is involved in pressing on to the work which is 
set before us. They compare themselves, not with 
something which is far above them, but with them 
selves and with their neighbours, especially with those 
whom they consider worse than themselves. The 
natural result is an increased self-complacency. We 
see it in the Pharisee of our Lord s parable. The 
poor Publican, who could only beat upon his breast 
and utter the humble cry for mercy, went down to 
his house justified rather than the other. And yet 
that other formed a totally different judgement of their 
state before the Most High : " God, I thank Thee 
that I am not as other men are, or even as this 
Publican. It is the same with the Church of 
Laodicea : u Thou sayest, 1 am rich, and increased 
with goods, and have need of nothing." Self- 
righteousness is the almost inseparable characteristic 
of lukewarmness. 

3. This is man s judgement of the character. It 
is more important that we should know what Christ 
thinks of it, if we are to decide how we as Christians 
must regard it. And He tells us His estimate, in lan 
guage clear and strong and terrible to think of. We 
nave read it. Let us meditate upon it. 

Does it not sound almost more like the language 
of human impatience than of Divine love ? Nothing 
is more insipid or distasteful than lukewarm food or 
drink. We can eat and drink that which is hot, and 
that which is cold ; but we find the tepid or hike- 



1 1 LukeWafmness. 



warm sickening. We apply the comparison to men 
who are neither warm friends nor pronounced enemies. 
You know what to do with an enemy. You have to 
guard against him, and take care that he does not do 
you an injury. You know how to think of a true 
and constant friend. He is to be trusted in your 
presence, or in your absence. But a lukewarm friend 
you never know what to do with him. He is 
ardently with you in prosperity ; and in adversity he 
falls away from you, even when he does not turn 
against you. When all men speak well of you his 
voice joins readily and lustily to swell the chorus ; 
but when the tide turns against you, he has not a 
word to say in your defence. Such people are not so 
uncommon in the world as we might wish ; and 
perhaps most of us have had experience of them. 
We have used language respecting them not unlike 
the words of this epistle : " I would thou wert cold 
or hot ! 

Such language, one feels, is very natural, and per 
haps not very culpable, in the lips of men : is it 
worthy of the Son of God ? We must carefully ex 
amine it It was certainly employed by our blessed 
Lord ; and if there are seeming difficulties connected 
with it, that is the greater reason for studying it 
closely. 

One thing we are quite sure it does not mean. It 
does not mean that weak grace is worse than no grace. 
Our Lord rejoices to see the faint and feeble begin 
ning of the life of faith, never checks or discourages 
it, but adds strength and energy to it by every means. 
The bruised reed He will not break ; the smoking 
flax He will not quench. 

We shall understand who the lukewarm is when 



Lukeicannnes*. Ill 



we consider who are the cold and the hot. The hot 
are those who have a true and fervent love for God. 
The cold are those who have never truly experienced 
the grace of Christ. The lukewarm is one with 
whom the Gospel has failed. He has become hot, 
perhaps, but has immediately lost the fervour of love ; 
or he has never advanced further from the state of 
coldness than to lukewarmness. He has " tasted of 
the heavenly gift," but he has abandoned it and 
turned away from it. The three classes come out in 
the ministry of our Lord : the Disciples are the hot, 
the Publicans and Harlots are the cold, the Scribes 
and Pharisees are the lukewarm.* In one sense the 
cold are worse than the lukewarm ; but they are more 
hopeful. 

We may now better understand the awful words 
which are spoken by Christ ; and the more shall we 
be impressed by their truth, the more closely we con 
sider the foundation on which they rest. The lukewarm 
are the most offensive to Him, for various reasons : 

1. Such a character is more dishonouring to God 
than either of the other two. The lukewarm are taken 
as representatives of the spirit and life of the family 
of God. This, then, it is thought, is all that the 
grace of Christ can do. This is the effect of the 
work of redemption. This is the return which the 
loved ones of God make for the love with which He 
has loved them. We love Him, they say, because 
He first loved us ; and this is the proof of it. The 
cold cannot dishonour God in this way. They do 
Him great wrong ; but at least they are His enemies 
in name and position. In the other case " Wisdom 
is wounded in the house of her friends." 

Anhbuhop Trench. 



2. Such a character is also most hurtful to others. 
The cold, the sinner, the ungodly, the mere man of 
the world these characters are mischievous enough. 
But we know them for what they are. Their example 
is pernicious, and their influence is destructive ; but 
the snare is spread in the sight of the bird, and he 
sees it while he suffers himself to be entangled in it. 
It is quite otherwise with the evil and pestilential 
influence of the lukewarm. They profess to be 
Christians, and they pass for Christians sometimes 
for the best of that class ; and they do deadly injury 
to the unwary who see their manner of life. In some 
they create a profound dislike for the Gospel itself; 
in others they produce the impression that a man 
may be a Christian without even trying to be like 
Christ. 

It must needs be so with the untaught and inex 
perienced. One man says: Why should I be a 
Christian ? It is a mere farce to take that name and 
remain the same as I was before. I am as good a 
man now as I should be then ; nay, better, for then I 
should be just as bad, and a hypocrite into the bargain. 
With another the effect is different. He perhaps had 
serious thoughts of being a Christian, because he felt 
sure, in some vague kind of way, that there were 
advantages connected with it. Christianity, he may 
say, is the religion of the country ; it is professed in 
some fashion by all my friends, neighbours, acquain 
tances. Nay, more, I am assured that men die more 
peacefully and more hopefully for being Christians. 
Perhaps, if I am one, it may be better for me in the 
next world. And then I can be a Christian without 
in any way changing my manner of life; for my 
friend is exactly the same as I am in principles, in 



Lukewarmness. 113 



sentiments, in life ; and he considers himself an emi 
nently consistent Christian, and is so regarded by the 
world around him. My brethren, let us look well at 
this ; let us earnestly consider it. This is a kind of 
injury which cannot be inflicted on his fellow man by 
the hot or the cold. This mischief can be done only 
by the lukewarm. 

3. But, once more on this point : it is a character 
which is most dangerous to itself. It offers an obstacle 
to the communication and reception of Divine grace, 
which neither of the other states can present. It has 
no consciousness of need, and therefore no longing 
for the supply which God in His mercy has provided. 
It is obviously the most difficult of all characters to 
alarm and arouse. The thunders of the law cannot 
arouse it from its sense of security. The fire of 
heavenly love which issues from the Gospel message 
does not melt its rocky self-complacency. Our blessed 
Lord told the lukewarm religionists of His day 
" The Publicans and Harlots go into the Kingdom of 
Heaven before you." 

And, then, it is a character which ever goes from 
bad to worse, which quenches more and more the 
good Spirit of God, and falls increasingly under the 
power of evil. There is but one end for it. It is 
that which is announced with such awful solemnity 
by our Lord : " So then because thou art lukewarm, 
and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my 
mouth." It is a threat of utter rejection and destruc 
tion, and of rejection with the most intense disgust. 
My brethren, our question was: What are we to 
think of this character ? And we have seen what 
the world thinks of it, what it thinks of itself, and 
what our Lord thinks of it. Let us concentrate our 

H 



114 LuTcewarmness . 



attention, for the present, on one point. What shall 
we think of it, if perchance it is to be found in our 
selves ? Are you of those who are neither cold nor 
hot ? Am I among the lukewarm ? What a fearful 
possibility does such a question suggest ! What an 
inward horror and fear should be aroused within us 
lest our Lord should so judge of us, and so judging 
should of us speak that terrible sentence of repro 
bation ! 

III. We seem almost to stand in doubt as to 
whether we have a right to advance to the third 
question. How are we to deal with this character ? 
It may seem as though the considerations to which 
we have just referred forbade our entertaining such a 
question. A character like this, of which such things 
are said by Christ, must surely be hopeless. It is 
very nearly so, we must admit more nearly so than, 
perhaps, any other character that we can readily think 
of; at least, I do not know another of which such 
awful words are spoken. But it is not absolutely 
hopeless, because we have no right to say that of any 
character but one ; and, moreover, at the very moment 
that our Lord utters His terrible threat, He adds 
words which prove that the sentence is not irreversible 
that there is still hope even for the lukewarm. Even 
they may be dealt with, for Christ actually counsels 
them what they are to do, and sets before them a 
promise in case they are victorious. 

" I counsel thee," he says. u Wise as thou art, thou 
still needest my counsel ; and I, slighted as I have 
been, give it freely." And what is His advice 1 " Buy 
of Me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; 
and white raiment that thou mayest be clothed, and 
that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear ; and 



Lukewarmnets. 115 



anoint thine eyes with eye-salve, that thou mayest see." 
The words which He adds are words of wonderful 
tenderness. " As many as I love, I rebuke and 
chasten." I still love thee, in spite of all thy unfaith 
fulness, in spite of the disgust with which I regard 
thy sin. " Be zealous, therefore, and repent ; " for 
the way of repentance is still open to thee, and thou 
mayest tread it. 

1. The lukewarm are directed to Christ. " Buy 
of Me." It was through turning from Him that they 
had fallen : it is only by coming back to Him that 
they can rise again. Jesus Christ alone can give the 
remedy for the evils of sin and unbelief, and He has 
it and can give it. 

2. But He further tells them what they are to seek 
for "eye-salve, that" they "may see." It is the 
last mentioned, but it is the first thing needed. 
Perhaps there is not one of us who does not need 
to ask for this gift of Christ. We may not be so 
miserably blind as this lukewarm character which 
says it is rich, and knows nothing of its own poverty 
and blindness. But we are all of us afflicted in some 
measure with a blindness to our own faults and frail 
ties. And only the eye-salve which Christ can give 
to anoint our eyes with has power to restore to us 
the spiritual vision which we have lost ; only the light 
of the Holy Spirit, promised to lead us into all truth, 
to convince men of sin, of righteousness, and of 
judgment, can drive away the darkness of nature 
and the thick darkness of self-esteem and self- 
righteousness. 

Then they are to buy gold, the gold of faith, which 
alone is the true riches of the Christian, and which 
they had exchanged for the pinchbeck of prudence 



116 Lukewarmness. 



and worldly wisdom ; and the white raiment of 
righteousness, of justification and sanctification, the 
white robe of Christ, which covers the nakedness 
of our fallen state ; and the wedding garment, 
wrought in us and on us by the Holy Spirit of God, 
that we may be prepared to sit down at the wedding 
supper of the Lamb. What is the meaning of it all 
but this ? We must restore our Lord Jesus Christ 
to His rightful place of supremacy in our heart and 
life ; and we must seek for, and depend upon, the 
grace of His Holy Spirit, to turn us more and more 
to Him, and to transform us into His likeness. 

3. And all this He says we are to buy. Let us 
mark the word. It needs and demands consideration. 
The grace of God is free. We could not merit it or 
gain it in any way, and yet our Lord says we are to 
buy of Him. It is not here alone that this seeming 
contradiction appears. The prophet Isaiah summons 
all who thirst to come to the waters, and he bids them 
come and buy wine and milk u without money and 
without price." It is quite clear that we can give to 
Almighty God and to our Blessed Lord no equivalent 
for the good things with which we are supplied by- 
Divine grace. " .Nothing in my hand I bring" is 
the sentiment expressed or implied in every humble 
and trustful approach to the throne of grace. 

And yet we are to buy. What does it mean ? It 
means, it must mean there is, in fact, no other 
meaning imaginable under the circumstances that 
we must part with something in order to appropriate 
these blessings to ourselves. They must cost us 
something, although we can give God nothing, 
certainly not a fair equivalent, for what He gives us. 
And what must we part with I We must part with 



Lukewarmnet*. 117 



our self-righteousness. We must abandon our flatter 
ing opinions of ourselves. We must become emptied 
of self, poor in spirit, humble, and contrite. We 
must learn from our heart to say with S. Paul, 
" What things were gain to me, those I counted loss 
for Christ. Yea, doubtless, and I count all things 
but loss, for the excellency of the knowledge of 
Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the 
loss of all things, and do count them but dung, 
that I may win Christ, and be found in Him, not 
having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, 
but that which is through the faith of Christ, the 
righteousness which is of God by faith." 

We must part with our sloth and self-will. The 
Christian life, to be a reality, must be a sacrifice from 
beginning to end. The ways of wisdom are " ways 
of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace." The 
< yoke" of Christ "is easy;" His " burden is light." 
And yet we can truly come after Him only as we 
deny ourselves, and take up our cross and follow Him. 
We must crucify the world and the flesh. The sloth, 
which would bid us defer or omit the accustomed hour 
of prayer, must be sacrificed. The self-indulgence, 
which would bid us make light of the duties which, 
as faithful servants, we owe to our Master, must be 
sacrificed. We must have no ruler and no law of 
life but Jesus Christ, His example, and His Holy 
Spirit. This is the price we must pay ; and although, 
when we have done all, we must confess ourselves 
unprofitable servants, yet He will not refuse to 
accept it. 

My brethren, it is a very solemn subject on which 
I have endeavoured to speak to you. I have been 
trying to produce in you the same disgust for this 



118 Lufowarmness. 



horrid vice of lukewarmness which is entertained for 
it by our Lord. I have meant to induce you to strive 
against it with all your might by the power of the 
Spirit of Christ Jesus. It is a fearful evil : an in 
dignity to the God of Love, a fruitful source of evil to 
the Church and to the world, a plague-spot in the life 
of him who is infected with it. It is the enemy of 
God and of man. Christ is seeking to bring the 
charge home to us this night. " Behold," he says, 
" I stand at the door and knock." Are we keeping 
Him out, or are we opening and letting Him in ? 
Let none of us say that he is not one of the luke 
warm. Let us examine ourselves in the light of God, 
and if we find in ourselves this evil thing, let us lay 
it before Him for destruction ; let us open wide the 
door of our hearts, that He may enter in, and take 
whole and undisputed possession of them ; for thus 
alone shall no place be found for this accursed thing 
within us. 



rx. 

OUR DIVISIONS, 

BY THE 

EEV. M. F. SADLER, M.A., 

PRBBEXDABY OF WELLS, AND RECTOS OF HONTTON. 



EPHESIANS iv.. 4. 
"One body, und one spirit" 

DIVISIONS : whence come they ? whither tend they 
to good or to evil ? 

If we had only the New Testament, and no history 
of the Church from the time of the Apostles to the 
present, there would be little difficulty about these 
questions; for the Lord Himself is one with the 
Father and the Holy Ghost in the highest and most 
perfect of all unities the unity of the Trinity ; and 
He came to make His people one, for He came to 
gather together into one the children of God which 
were scattered abroad. If we are to judge of what 
were the cravings of His heart from that wondrous 
unbosoming of all that is in His soul to His Father, 
which He poured forth on the way to Gethsemane, 
then the oneness of His Church was " the thing that 
He longed for." u Holy Father," He prays, " keep 
through Thine own name those whom Thou hast 
given Me, that they may be one, as we are. Neither 
pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall 
believe on Me through their word ; that they all may 
be one, as Thou, O Father, art in Me, and I in Thee ; 



122 Our Divisions. 



that they also may be one in us, that the world may 
believe that Thou hast sent Me." And again : " I in 
them, and Thou in Me ; that they may be made per 
fect in one, that the world may believe that Thou hast 
sent Me." See, I beseech you, how earnestly He 
pleads for unity. 

Then the sacrifice He offered was a sacrifice of re 
conciliation, not only to bring about reconciliation 
between God and man, but between man and his 
fellow-man. As His great servant and Apostle tells 
us, " He gave Himself, that He might reconcile both 
i.e.) the two divisions of mankind unto God in 
one body by the Cross, having slain the enmity 
thereby. (Ephesians ii., 16.) 

The prayer which He taught is a prayer of unity 
"OuR Father forgive us OUR trespasses, as we forgive 
them that trespass against us." 

The Sacraments He instituted are sacraments of 
unity. In the one, " by One Spirit we are all bap 
tised into one body." In the other, "we, being 
many, are one bread and one body ; for we are all 
partakers of that one bread." (I Cor, xii., 13; 
and x., 17.) The Church He instituted is one 
in the sense of being one organisation. " There is 
one body ;" not only one spirit, one faith, one hope, 
one baptism, but one body ; and this not as a matter 
of mere dogma, or of speculation, but as a practical 
matter, which, if a man realised, he would, in the 
eyes of the Apostle, be in the way of being a better 
Christian. For instance, the Apostle writes, "I 
beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation 
wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meek 
ness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in 
love, endeavouring to keep the unity of the spirit in 



Our Divisions. 123 



the bond of peace ; for there is one body and one 
spirit." Here it would seem that the Apostle 
reminds the Christian that one body cannot have two 
spirits, just as two bodies (in the sense of two 
organisations) cannot have one spirit; so that if a 
Christian would endeavour to keep the unity of the 
spirit, he can only do it by realising the unity of the 
organisation of which Christ is the Head. 

This is the positive doctrine which, beyond all con 
tradiction, is set forth in the New Testament ; and 
there is a counterpart doctrine in all respects answer 
ing to it, which is this that any divisions whatsoever, 
whether in the shape of a schism creating a new 
external body or in the shape of a party or school 
existing in the one body, are not from God, but 
" come of evil." 

First of all, consider that among the works of the 
flesh, which you heard enumerated in the Epistle for 
the first day of this very week, we have " hatred, 
variance, wrath, strife, sedition, heresies, envyings." 
(Gal. v., 20.) 

Then remember that the Apostle writes to a 
Church in which divisions were rife in such terms as 
these " Ye are yet carnal ; for whereas there is 
among you envyings, strife, and divisions, are ye not 
carnal 1 For while one says, I am of Paul ; and 
another, I am of Apollos ; are ye not carnal ? " 
(1 Cor., iii., 4.) 

But it may be said Were not men then as they 
are now? Have they not differently-constituted 
minds, and so must they not, of necessity, take dif 
ferent views of Divine truth ? Now, whatever truth 
there is in this objection (and that there is much 
truth in it I shall presently show), the Apostle, in the 



124 Our Divisions. 



case of his Corinthian converts, ignores it as irrele 
vant, and lays down a law of unity in speech and 
thought as absolute as can well be conceived. 

" Now I beseech you, brethren, in the name of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, 
and that there be no divisions among you, but that ye 
be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in 
the same judgment." Such is the utterance of this 
greatest of merely human teachers ; such is, rather, 
the utterance of that Spirit of God that Spirit of 
unity, sevenfold in His actings, but one in His Divine 
essence, Who spake by the Apostle. 

I have now given what, I think, all must acknow 
ledge to be the view of this matter contained in the 
New Testament. There is nothing that I can re 
member contrary to this ; nothing that I can remem 
ber which even modifies or relaxes it. I do not for a 
moment deny indeed, I wish to assert it that there 
are indications of much freer action, especially in the 
matter of teaching ; but the free action, if it be 
from God, is supposed to assist in the building-up of 
one body not in the multiplication of bodies or 
Churches without the Church. And, of course, 
it is always assumed to teach the one faith once 
delivered to the saints ; so that all may come in the 
unity of that faith and of the knowledge of the Son 
of God, to a perfect man. 

Such, I repeat, is the teaching of the New Testa 
ment. 

How are we now to apply it ? Are we to say that 
our Church alone, even though it has the most indu 
bitable marks of the one body or organisation, is the 
Church, and our way of thinking alone is the truth ? 
Must we protest vehemently, must we rebuke with 



Our Division*. 125 



sharpness, must we call upon all at once to conform 
to our view, both outwardly and in the spirit. 

My brethren, the Church has not only a book to 
direct it ; it has a history a history in which it has 
been guided by a special Providence, which history it 
is impossible to ignore in any bona-Jide attempt which 
we may make to ascertain the will of God. 

Now the first thing which strikes us in this history 
is the declension from its original purity, and fervour, 
and love, of the body, which, if there be any such 
thing as a visible Church at all, is entitled from its 
history and from its genealogy, so to speak, to be 
called the Church. Take what was undoubtedly the 
Church in Western Europe at the time of the Refor 
mation. What was the cause of that division the 
precedent, be it remembered, and justification of 
every other division since then ? Not dogma, not 
transubstantiation, not even want of definite views on 
justification, but shameless corruption. The Sovereign 
Pontiff who drove Luther into what is called schism 
was an infidel ; his court at least that of some of 
his immediate predecessors the most shameless in 
Europe ; archbishoprics were given to boys, the 
very priests at the altar not believing, in any sense, 
the very words of institution. 

One who assuredly has not (and never had) the 
smallest leaning to Lutheranism has written " In 
behalf of the Foreign Communities it may be 
pleaded that they were excluded by unjust excom 
munication, and that their exclusion was perpetuated 
by an iron necessity, galling their conscience to the 
very quick."* But, you may rejoin, we have to speak 

Manning ou the Unity of the Church, page 344. 



126 Our Divisions. 



about our divisions; and all this was nigh four 
hundred years ago. Yes ; but this was the letting 
out of the waters. This was the time of the asser 
tion, not merely of private judgment, but of the 
right of any person who chose to form an organisation 
independent of, or antagonistic to, the one Christian 
organisation then existing. 

And now let us look at home. Let us take the 
Church of seventy or a hundred years ago in this 
country. How did it fulfil the command of the 
Saviour, " Feed my sheep ?" The sheep of Christ 
have to be fed both with doctrine and Eucharist. The 
doctrine with which they have to be fed is the doc 
trine of His Body how God became Incarnate, took 
a Body, was made flesh, gave that Body in sacrifice, 
rose again in that Body in token of the acceptance of 
the sacrifice, ascended in that Body into Heaven, made 
that blessed natural Body the root of a mystical Body, 
so identified with Himself that He is in them, and they 
in Him. This is the truth which the sheep of Christ 
have to be fed with, that they may grow up in Christ. 

But along with this mental feeding this appeal to 
the faith of the heart and spirit there is also a sacra 
mental feeding never to be disjoined from it ; nay, 
the sacramental feeding embodies the first truths of 
the other, so that if we would eat " discerning the 
Lord s body" we must realise Church crucified in the 
heart. Well, now, how did the Church of Christ in 
this country, at the time I allude to, feed the flock of 
Christ ? Why, if the truth respecting the person and 
work of Christ be the food of the Christian s soul, she 
starved them. If the Eucharist be the means whereby 
we feed on the flesh of the Son of Man, she fed them 
four times a-year ; and very, very often, not that. 



Our Divisions. 127 



But, you will say, was there not then the Liturgy? 
Yes, there was not only the Liturgy, but the Bible. 
But the Liturgy, as well as the Bible, has to be 
taught, has to be worked, has to be lived; and, 
however perfect the Church may be on paper, the 
priest of each parish is the agent through 
whom she acts, through whom the people know her ; 
without whom, in fact, she is, to all intents and pur 
poses, a dead letter. 

Well, as we all know as we have been reminded 
times without number as we have, perhaps, some of 
us reminded others times without number there was 
a stirring-up of the religious heart of the people both 
within and without the Church. The stirring, both 
within and without, was of the same character, of 
the same pattern or type. It was a stirring-up of 
men s minds and hearts to embrace the truth that 
each one who has the use of his faculties must for 
himself come to Christ, believe in Christ, accept 
Christ, be washed in the blood of Christ, mentally or 
spiritually feed on Christ, and at the last be found in 
Christ. 

Those in the Church who thus had their eyes 
opened to the most precious truths of the Gospel 
naturally found one another out, held together, en 
couraged one another, took means to spread the know 
ledge of salvation, and so far as they were able, whilst 
within the Church, instituted organisations for the 
spread of the truth at home and abroad. 

But there was an external movement also. The 
movements under Wesley and Whitfield, contrary to 
the wish and prayers of one at least of these, took a 
more independent course, and gradually became com* 
pact and well-organised bodies without the Church. 



128 Our Divisions. 



Other bodies, such as those popularly called the 
Irvingites and the Plymouth Brethren, sprung up at 
a later period, and are far more powerful from the 
talent, influence, position, wealth, and earnestness of 
their members than their numbers would lead us to 
expect. 

A town in which till very lately I was a minister 
may be taken as a type of the results of all this. 

This town contained six Churches. The ministers of 
some of these, though living on the most Christian 
terms, and also having, I may testify, a strong per 
sonal friendship for one another, never exchanged 
pulpits. Among those external to the Church of 
England there were three Episcopal bodies Roman 
Catholic, Irvingite, Moravian. There was a meeting 
house, which was originally the one in which the 
greatest name in Nonconformity once ministered, 
which was composed of Baptists and Independents ; 
and there was another, of Independents only. There 
were four Baptist places of worship, three out of the 
four not holding communion with one another ; and 
during the few years of my residence there the small 
band of the " Brethren," as they were called, was 
divided, the one part ceasing to hold communion 
with the other. 

I suppose that this is not an exaggerated type, in the 
matter of religious division, of most English or 
American towns. You will understand, I trust, that 
I am not, in drawing attention to all this, trying to 
make out a case for our Church. On the contrary, for 
the first thing I drew attention to was the party divi 
sions in that Church ; and I may also mention that in 
by far the most populous and poorest parish of the 
town I allude to there were, twenty or thirty years 



Our Divisions. 129 



ago, not fifty free seats in which the poor could come 
and worship God without the danger of being turned 
out into the aisles. In the memory of many living men 
two, if not more, of the older Churches were held by 
one person ; and there had scarcely been ever known 
such a thing as a resident incumbent of the principal 
Church. 

Such is our present state. East and West divided ; 
and the principal Bishop of the West asserting his 
own infallibility, and making this and the Immaculate 
Conception terms of communion. 

Protestants hopelessly divided ; German Lutheran- 
ism more than naif rationalistic ; all the principal 
national Churches of the Continent Socinianised ; 
Calvin s own pulpit occupied by men symbolising 
more with Servetus than with himself; and the state 
of England and America such as I have described by 
the case of one town. 

Such is the state of things in which we live. Need 
it have been so ? What is the effect of it all ? 
What is our duty ? 

Need it have been so? You see I do not say, 
"Need it be so?" Past generations have sown. We 
are now reaping the harvest of which they have sown 
the seed. But need all this have been ? 

Now I desire you to remember the evidence I 
brought forward from the New Testament respecting 
the design of God and the desire of Christ that 
there should be one body, one organisation, one 
fellowship ; and I ask you to look upon the fall of the 
Church from her first unity in the light of that well- 
known passage of God s word u God is faithful, who 
will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are 
able, but will with the temptation make a way to 

I 



130 Our Divisions. 



escape, that ye may be able to bear it." (1 Cor., x., 
13.) We know that in the case of temptation to 
other breaches of God s law this will be found at the 
last great day to have been true in every case. Then 
God, when He confronts men with their sin, will bring 
to mind how in each case there was a way of escape ; 
and they knew it, for it was open before them ; and 
when they fell, it was because they turned themselves 
away from the deliverance God had set before them. 
And can we suppose for a moment that in this matter 
of unity, for which Christ prayed so earnestly, there 
has ever been a necessity laid upon men to divide the 
Church of Christ ? No. Let us us believe that God 
is faithful in this, as in all else. 

1 could mention several facts in the history of great 
leaders of thought or religion in the Church, which 
show that in the most remarkable crises of their 
spiritual lives God so dealt with them that if 
they would have remembered His dealings they 
would have impressed quite another spirit on those 
who had followed them. Take, first of all, Simeon, 
the great leader of Evangelical religion in Cambridge. 
How, according to his biographer, was it that he 
found " peace with God ?" In reading a book of 
the High Church Wilson, Bishop of Sodor and Man, 
on preparation for the Eucharist. 

Again, how was J. H. Newman first led to see the 
truth of the first of all Church principles, the doctrine 
of grace in Baptism I From reading a work of the 
late Archbishop Sumner. How did Chalmers, 
a great party leader in the Kirk of Scotland, get 
his religion 1 From reading Wilberforce s " Practical 
Yiew of Christianity." 

Again: take two other facts. You all doubtless 



Our Divisions. 131 



remember well the great Advent Mission of two years 
ago in London. Consider the character of the preach 
ing then resorted to of a distinctly revival character, 
the most advanced Churchmen using extempore 
prayers in Church, and Bible classes in the vestry. 
And almost immediately after this there was a 
great meeting of the leading clergymen of the opposite 
school in Islington, at which a Canon of your own 
Cathedral of Wells begged his Evangelical brethren to 
consider whether, though they had abundantly called 
upon their hearers to make good each one for him 
self his individual interest in Christ, there had not 
been amongst them as a party an almost total ignor 
ing of Christ as the Head of a Church, the Saviour 
of a Body in fact, an almost total ignoring of the 
Church principle of the New Testament. 

Again : within the last year or so certain hymns of 
Wesley have been reprinted, with the strongest 
approval of the party reprinting them, as beinp the very 
best hymns he is acquainted with for enabling those 
who use them to realise a great doctrinal truth. What 
doctrine do you suppose that to be ? No other than the 
Sacrifice in the Eucharist. And who is the reprinter 
and recommender of these hymns ? The Editor of 
the most advanced Ritualistic newspaper the Church 
Times. Now take the significance of the first of 
these facts the Rev. Charles Simeon obtaining a sense 
of peace from a book of Bishop Wilson s. Surely 
that was a message to him to give at least patient 
attention to other truths which that saintly bishop 
taught ! And, if he had done so, God knows how 
much nearer the two great parties of the Church 
would have now been to one another. 

What is the effect of the divisions of the Church ? 



132 Our Divisions. 



We have the terrible effect indicated in the prayer 
of our great Head. 

He prays " that they all may be one, as Thou Father 
art in me, and I in Thee, that the world may believe 
that Thou hast sent Me." The Church has not been, 
as yet, one ; and the world does not believe that God 
has sent Christ. At this very day, in this 1871st year 
of grace think of that word "year of grace/ year, 
that is, since the great fountain of grace has been 
opened in this world for its cleansing of life, in this 
very year of grace, I say, two-thirds (some say more) 
of the dwellers upon this redeemed earth do not believe 
that God sent Christ ; and this because of the divisions 
of the Church. 

But, it may be rejoined, have not the divisions of 
Christendom multiplied the organisations of Christen 
dom for the conversion of the heathen ? 

Yes, but what, putting all together, have they 
done I mean, of course, compared to the work to be 
done ? What impression has been made upon the 
mass of Mahomedanism, the mass of Brahminism, the 
mass of Budhism ? I say this remembering the work 
done among the simple impressible islanders of the 
South Seas, and among the negroes of West Africa and 
the West, and the noble work among the Malagasays 
in Madagascar, and the Karens of the Burman Em 
pire. Here, then, I grant, 1 thankfully grant, that 
God has shown His power. But the great masses 
of heathenism seem untouched ; and if the continued 
existence of heathenism abroad is due to our divisions, 
what must we say of heathenism at home of the 
heathen masses of our large towns ? Can we apply 
one rule or principle to account for the continued 
existence of old heathenism in India and China, and 



Our Divisions. 133 



another to account for the new heathenism of London 
and Birmingham and New York? 

When God first, on the Day of Pentecost, rained 
down the spirit and founded the Church, to what had 
He listened ? To the continuous united prayer of the 
then united Church ; and it may be He waits for the 
same now. 

The Apostle St. Peter writes to his converts a sen 
tence which seems to be wonderfully suggestive of tho 
effect of our divisions. " Give honour," he says to 
husbands ; " give honour to the wife, as the weaker 
vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life ; 
that your prayers be not hindered." 

If divisions in a family hinder prayers and restrain 
blessings, so must divisions in a parish, in a diocese, 
in the national church, in the Church of God. 

And surely you must have experienced, brethren^ 
at least I have, how distracting to devotion is a 
controversial frame how Satan amuses us and 
draws off our minds in public prayer, even at tho 
Eucharist, by trains of controversial thought, which 
perhaps a word in the very service suggests, but 
which trains of thought we must at once put out of 
our minds, if we would lift up our hearts to God, as 
we would put out a worldly or an unclean thought. 

And now, brethren, what is our duty ? Our duty 
is not to compromise the truth, or to withhold the 
truth, or to water down the truth which God, we be 
lieve, has shown to us ; but our duty is to remember 
that truth is many-sided, and that a man may hold 
the very truth which we do, and yet not express it in 
the same way. Let us also remember that one aspect 
of the truth lays hold of one mind, and another of 
another. Look at the college of the Apostles. There 



134 Our Divisions. 



can be no doubt that there are three modes of ex 
pressing Divine truth in the very New Testament itself, 
viz., those adopted by St. Paul, St. John, and St. 
James respectively. 

Again : let us glorify God whenever we see or read 
of the fruits of faith, even in those who differ most 
widely from us. 

We can do this in almost every case without com 
promising our own principles. 

I suppose no Christian can withhold his thanks to 
God when he reads of the martyrdom of Romish mis 
sionaries in the 17th century in Japan, or in this cen 
tury in Cochin China ; just as he must thank God 
for the faithfulness unto death of those converted to 
Christ by Congregational missionaries in Madagascar. 

And surely we can avow our convictions that 
these were genuine fruits of faith without being sup 
posed, on the one hand, to lean towards the Immacu 
late Conception of the Virgin ; or, on the other, 
to the opinion that Christ has left no organisation in 
His Church except the organisation of the separate 
and ever separating congregation. 

But, lastly, let us for our own souls sake remember 
that before we can think of, much less pray for, unity, 
our souls must be in union with God. Unity, as well 
as charity, must begin at home. First of all, our own 
souls must be reconciled to God, must partake of the 
atonement, must be united to Him through his Son 
by His Spirit ; and then our souls must be at peace 
with our neighbours and brethren ; and then, and not 
till then, can we pray for, hope for, work for. unity in 
the Church of Goi 



X. 

S I, O T II , 

BY THE 

REV. E. H. PLUMP TRIO, M.A., 

PROFK880R OF DIVINITY IN KlNQ S COLLEGE, LONDON J 

PREBENDARY OF S. PAUL S. AND RECTOR OF PLUCKLEY, KENT. 



Statb. 



Puov. xxiv., 30, 31, 32. 

"I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man 
void of understanding, nd lo! it was nil grown over with thorns, and 
oettlea bad covered the fuce thereof, uiul the stone wall thereof was 
broken down. Then I BUW, und considered it well ; I looked upon it, 
and received instruction." 



You will observe that in this, as in other instances, 
the Proverbs take chiefly the starting-point of 
prudence. They dwell on sin so far as it is folly on 
its consequences as affecting a man s fortune or reputa 
tion. They speak of sloth, wrath, hastiness, as mis 
takes blunders in life the extreme of secular, as 
well as spiritual, unwisdom. This was natural 
enough, in harmony with the general character of 
proverbial instruction. Proverbs always do address 
themselves to the broad, popular, common-sense judg 
ment of the intellect. They may rest on the 
ground-work of a deep, universal truth, as those of 
Scripture for the most part do ; but they do not bring 
it prominently forward. They may admit of manifold 
applications to the higher life of man ; but the imme 
diate range of application is, for the most part, limited 
to the common work and circumstances of his lower 
life, and meant to guide him safely through them. 



138 Sloth. 



This was the measure of truth given to the writers of 
the Proverbs of Israel. There is no irreverence in 
saying that it was not the same measure as that which 
was revealed to Prophets whose eyes had seen the 
King, the Lord of Hosts to Apostles to whom it was 
given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of 
Heaven. Every day s experience shows us, indeed, 
that such teaching can never become obsolete can 
never safely be dispensed with. We need it because 
we have not yet attained to the higher knowledge, 
and are slowly climbing up the hill of truth, and 
require the discipline of prudence to prepare us for 
the capacity of faith. Here also the law holds good, 
that " first cometh that which is natural, and after 
wards that which is spiritual." Or we need it because 
that knowledge has been given to us, and there is 
danger lest, while we look upwards and gaze on its 
exceeding brightness, we may fall unawares into some 
of the traps and pitfalls which still lie round our path. 
It is simply the blindness of unwisdom for the most 
advanced and illuminated disciple to think that he is 
above the rules of prudence and the current judg 
ments of mankind. Proverbs, inspired or uninspired, 
are often wholesome checks on the self-deception of the 
dreamer, or the pride of the formalist. Prudence in 
earthly things is a condition not, of course, the 
only one of forethought in spiritual, just as 
honesty in the workshop or the market-place 
is a condition of the blessedness of the upright 
and the pure in heart. "If ye have not been 
faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will 
commit to your charge the true riches. And if 
ye have not been faithful in that which is another 
man s, who shall give you that which is your own." 



Skth. 139 



But he is a poor student of proverbs and parables who 
does not see that in well-nigh all cases they branch 
out into manifold applications, and go deeper down 
into the root and ground of things than at first sight 
appeared. All things are double one against another. 
The natural world is the parable of the simply 
human the human of the spiritual. Each com 
parison, drawn from either, has many points of 
affinity with the other two. In those old forms of 
speech which belong to the universal language of man 
kind, and have become so familiar to us that we have 
well nigh forgotten the boldness of the comparisons on 
which they rest the keenness of insight implied in 
the perception of resemblances, where, at first sight, 
there seemed only differences we may find examples 
by which the mind of man passes from one stage 
to another, and, as its own experience becomes higher, 
finds it possible to translate whatever is new, 
wonderful, transcendent, into the old and simple 
language. 

In this parable of the sluggard there lie ac 
cordingly meanings that are below the surface. To 
every man who lias become conscious of his humanity 
to every Christian, therefore, who has been solemnly 
called to the knowledge of his glorious inheritance 
there has been allotted a field, which he may make 
fruitful a vineyard, which the Lord has planted. 
Like the first created man, he is set in the garden of 
the Lord to dress it and to keep it. In that garden of 
the soul, as in the Paradise of old, there is every 
tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food 
wide regions of beauty and fertility, able to fill the 
hungry soul with fatness and to refresh the weary. 
There also grow the tree of life and the tree of the 



140 Sloth. 



knowledge of good and evil. We may understand 
the full wretchedness of the picture which the teach 
ing of the wise man brings before us by comparing 
that scene of desolation with the beauty and bright 
ness which, however seldom realised, are, at least, in 
their measure possible which come in some degree 
as the reward of all honest and hearty effort to obtain 
them. We may think of the man as soon as he takes 
any cognisance of the work before him, devoting him 
self to it with a vigorous and stedfast will. The 
words of one who sought the Kingdom of God and 
His righteousness may be taken as the type and 
pattern of this blameless life "When I was yet 
young, or ever I went abroad, I desired wisdom 
openly in my prayer. I prayed for her before the 
Temple, and will seek her out even unto the end. 
Even from the flower till the grape was ripe has my 
heart delighted in her. My foot went the right way : 
from my youth up sought I after her." (Ecclus. 
li., 13 15.) To such a man the culture of his 
own heart (what a whole world of parables, too, 
lies in that single phrase!) is no light or trivial 
matter. It is the task to which God has called 
him to which his whole life must be devoted. 
It is in that field that the Sower, who is the Son of 
Man, has scattered freely that seed of the Word of 
God which may bring forth fruit unto life eternal. 
There the seed which has been so sown springs up : 
first the blade the tender, weak beginnings of good 
thoughts and purposes of amendment ; then the ear 
the acts that give good promise of the future, arid 
help in the development of character; after that the 
full corn in the ear the ripened and completed holi 
ness of the saints of God. There is the vineyard, 



Sloth. 141 

which God has planted with the choicest vine, out of 
which, in the season of the vintage, comes the wine 
that maketli glad the heart of man that blood of the 
grape which is worthy to be poured out as an 
acceptable offering unto the Most High, the King 
of all the earth. He who would be a faithful 
labourer in that vineyard a fellow-worker in that 
husbandry of God must be active, watchful, faithful ; 
for there also the enemy comes and sows tares in the 
field, and plants the wild vines that bear but bitter fruit. 
There also the foxes spoil the tender vines. The boar 
out of the w r ood doth waste it, and the wild beast of 
the field doth devour it. And in this inward hus 
bandry this tillage of the soul that is possible 
which the Great Lord of the harvest has declared to 
be impossible in the field which answers to the great 
heritage of the Church. No command has gone forth 
here bidding us to let both wheat and tares grow 
together unto the harvest. It is the work of every 
man to anticipate so far as he is able the final sentence 
to judge himself that he be not judged of the Lord, 
and to root out from his soul every plant of which he 
is sure that it is of evil, and not of good, and that, 
therefore, his Heavenly Father has not planted it. 
And here, too, that is the very law of growth which, 
in the world of Nature, is a rare and marvellous ex 
ception. Here the prayer, not only of the righteous 
man, but of the humblest seeker after righteousness, 
availeth much, and the rain of heaven falls in answer 
to it ; and so the fields are clothed with their spring 
tide apparel, and " the Spirit is poured from on high, 
and the wilderness becomes a fruitful field, and the 
fruitful field is counted as a forest." The endea 
vour of the true husbandman is to draw upon that 



142 Sloth. 

field of his the abundant, life-giving showers of the 
grace of God. He seeks that through it his heart 
may never be hard like the wayside soil, that the 
ground may be deep and rich. He guards against the 
growth of the thorns which, even in the most fruitful 
soil, may spring up and choke the seed of the Word 
of Life, so that it becomes unfruitful. And he who 
has taken a true measure of the extent and nature of 
the work before him who has, as it were, surveyed 
the field which is given him as an heritage will know 
that each region of it has its own special growth, and 
that none must be neglected. The soul of the wise 
of heart is like the garden of Solomon, which the 
Song of Songs brings before us in all its loveliness. 
There the flowers appear upon the earth, and the fig- 
tree putteth forth her green figs, and the tender grape 
appears, and the pomegranates bud forth ; and at the 
gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, 
which he has laid up even the Lord for his 
beloved. Knowledge, and wisdom, and strength, 
and courage, and purity, and truth, and meek 
ness, and kindness, largeness of heart and inten 
sity of love, reverence for the past and hope for the 
future, the sympathy which shuts out none from fel 
lowship, the firmness which continues stedfast and 
immovable against evil all these we may picture to 
ourselves as the elements of the perfect character ; 
all these are found in the soul which, watered by the 
continual due of God s blessing, has become fair and 
fruitful as the Paradise of God. But that this may 
be the result there must be care, activity, discernment. 
" I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vine 
yard of the man void of understanding ; and lo ! it 
was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had 



Sloth. 143 

covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof 
was broken down." There, in that neglected garden 
of the heart and spirit of man, all is disorder, unsight- 
liness, decay. " Things rank and gross in nature 
possess it merely." The elements of good which 
oelonged to the natural character have spread out 
beyond their proper bounds, and so have lost their 
beauty and are no longer fruitful. The vine, which 
God had planted wnolly right, has become "as 
the degenerate plant of the wild vine," and its clusters 
are few, and the wine that is pressed from them is 
harsh and sour. Thorns (we know at once how to in 
terpret these), the cares of this life, and the deceitful- 
ness of riches the low aims and miserable anxieties 
which mix themselves with secular activity, but are 
just as liable to take root and grow in secular indo 
lence and neglect these are there, choking the good 
seed, rendering it altogether unfruitful. But negli 
gence has yet worse results " Nettles had covered 
the face thereof." Where there is no watchfulness, 
no activity in good, evil grows unbidden and diffuses 
itself with a terrible rapidity sins against love, and 
purity, and truth; the rankest outgrowths of the 
lowest elements of our nature these take possession 
of the soul. Unbelief, scorn, malignity these are the 
unsightly, harmful products of the heritage, which 
might have been beautiful and fragrant as a field 
which the Lord has blessed. 

Yes; and, to complete the scene of waste and 
utter desolation, "the stone wall thereof was 
broken down." That also was an essential con 
dition of the husbandry. Without that there 
could be no security, no fruitfulness. It must 
strike every reader of the parables of Scripture, 



144 



that in all which have the idea of the vineyard for their 
ground- work a very prominent position is assigned to 
that which is a simply defensive barrier, " My 
well-beloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful 
hill, and he fenced it made a wall about it." 
(Isaiah v., 2.) " There was a certain householder 
which planted a vineyard and hedged it round about." 
(Matt. 21, 33.) Must we not believe that this 
also has a meaning ? Does it not point to a truth 
of immense importance in its bearings upon the 
spiritual life, upon all self-culture, upon all national 
and individual training ? What is needed for the 
perfect growth of goodness is not merely the capacity 
for receiving good which answers to the fertile soil ; 
nor the desire and purposes of good, which are to us 
the seed of eternal life, planted by the Heavenly 
sower ; nor the help and strength of the grace of 
God s Holy Spirit, which is as the soft dew from 
Heaven. There must be also the defence of an outw r ard 
discipline the restraints of a rule which keeps us 
shut in from the attacks of the more hateful and 
deadly sins, which do their work of destruction 
rapidly. The discipline may seem simply formal; 
the restraints arbitrary and conventional. They are 
powerless to give life. The fence may encircle a 
barren as well as a fruitful vineyard ; and yet we 
cannot spare it are not safe without it. To the Jews 
as a nation the ordinances and customs which kept 
them a separate people, which made them in spite of 
themselves a witness against themselves, and were 
designed to hinder their adoption of the dark rites 
and hateful vices of the heathen, were for them the 
fence of the vineyard. The Church of Christ 
has in different ages had its fence of an 



Sloth. 145 

established ritual laws of discipline, fixed ob 
servances, the recurrence of holy seasons. Every 
society of men, aiming in ever so low a degree at the 
establishment of righteousness and truth, recognises 
the same necessity. You find it, I need hardly say, 
in the rules of every school and college. The con 
ventional decencies which are to be found in all com 
panionship but that of the most depraved have essen 
tially the same character. That which makes the re 
presentation of the vineyard of the slothful so utterly 
dreary and hopeless is that this also is broken down. 
Indolence has passed into utter recklessness. It is an 
evil thing for a man to care only for the outward 
forms which guard the well-being of the Church, or 
of society, or of his own soul. It is still more evil 
and more perilous for him to become indifferent to 
them to think that he may disregard them safely. 
Thus it is that first the foxes, and then the wild boar 
out of the wood, and the beast of the field, complete 
their work of devastation. There may be barrenness, 
and thorns, and nettles within the barrier ; but remove 
the fence, and a thousand evils rush in which other 
wise might have been kept off. 

Small sins the heart first desecrate ; 
At last despair persuades to great. 

The sight of that utter waste of that transformation 
of the garden of the Lord into a howling wilderness 
the spectacle of a soul over which the Tempter 
seems to have triumphed so completely, and evil to 
be altogether dominant cannot but be a very sad and 
awful one. It fills us with many questions, many 
fears. In what did all this originate ? Could this 
have been foreseen as it actually is, and then chosen 
in preference to the peace and blessedness of a life 

K 



146 Sloth. 



acceptable to God? Those questionings also have 
their counterpart in the parable "Then I saw, and 
considered it well ; I looked upon it, and received in 
struction." And the answer to them is found in the 
well-known, familiar words with which the chapter 
closes " Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little 
folding of the hands to sleep. So shall thy poverty 
come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an 
armed one." There was, to start with, no intention to 
forfeit the inheritance of God s Kingdom and waste 
all gifts so utterly no wish to be the object of winder 
and pity to the good, of scorn or malignant satisfac 
tion to the bad. There was no foresight of the middle 
life of shifts, and dishonour, and loss of self-respect 
of the old age bankrupt in health, and purse, and 
character, and hope. In all the steps of this miserable 
descent the man sees but a little way before him. 
The idler, the shuffler, the equivocator with himself 
or others, is blind to what others discern clearly, that 
the course on which he has entered must end, here or 
elsewhere, in failure and disgrace. The man of weak, 
unstable character, who has no power to keep his 
ground, to say "No" firmly and persistently when 
tempted to run with others to their excess of riot, does 
not see that the drunkard s revelry must end in the 
drunkard s madness. He who yields to temptations of 
another kind would shudder, did he see himself, as he 
may one day be, at no remote future, the betrayer and 
the destroyer of innocence, the convicted and branded 
adulterer. In all these cases the evils to which a man 
has once consented gains upon him with a terrible 
rapidity. It is at first only sloth, and delay, and pro 
crastination. He cannot rouse himself from the indo 
lence which makes all efforts painful. Whatever rest- 



Sloth. 147 

lessness there may bo in outward things whatever 
seeming activity for a time, though that in most cases 
soon disappears, there is no real energy of will, no 
watchfulness and diligence in the soul. Its eyes are 
closed. It dreams away its life, and takes its visions 
for realities. It folds its hands to slumber, not saying 
to itself that it will never wake, only asking for a 
little more sleep, a little more folding of the hands. 

As regards our own spiritual life, the culture of our 
own souls, the lesson is very simple and obvious. 
" Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and 
Christ shall give thee light." Now it is high time to 
awake out of sleep ; the night is far spent, the day is 
at hand. * Be not slothful in your pursuit of good ; be 
fervent in spirit, serving the Lord." Resolve from the 
first dawnings of a conscious power to choose between 
good and evil that you will do the work to which God 
has called you faithfully ; that you will do the tasks of 
each day in singleness of heart; that you will main 
tain, unbroken, the barriers of discipline and order 
which here or elsewhere are set up in the human or 
Divine society of which you are members, for your 
protection. Suffer not the thorns to grow up in 
their thick and rank luxuriance ; grasp the nettles with 
a firm hand, and root them out ; seek for and welcome 
the dew of God s grace ; and then the Lord of 
the vineyard, the beloved of thy soul, shall in due time 
come into thy garden and eat its pleasant fruits. 
After the season of toil, endurance, faithfulness, there 
shall come the rich reward, and the gleaning of the 
grapes in that autumn of the soul shall be better than 
the whole vintage of those who labour for the rewards 
of earth. 

All that I have said, brethren, admits of another 



148 Sloth. 

and a wider application. The parable is but half 
interpreted. I may not venture now on the region where 
its lessons are of greatest moment, in which the types 
find their most adequate fulfilment. The vineyard of 
the Lord of Hosts is the House of Israel, and the men 
of Judah his pleasant plant. It is into that vineyard 
into the Church of God that its Lord calls us to 
be labourers. Some portion of that is given to us all, 
that we may dress it and keep it. Thither also will the 
Lord come that He may receive the fruits thereof. 
There, too, are the same duties, risks, responsibilities. 
Here, also, there are the thorns, and the nettles, and 
the broken wall the same scene of shame, and loss, 
and dishonour, in the field of the slothful and the 
vineyard of the man void of understanding. The 
history of the Church of Christ your own experience, 
which, small as it may be, is a fragment of that great 
history present manifold examples of the fruits of 
inactivity, blindness, procrastination. Do not let the 
lessons of the past be lost upon you. Now, if ever, 
do we need the spirit of prompt, persevering energy. 
Vast problems lie before us, and with them the open 
ing of immense possibilities for good. The question 
whether the Church of England can re-model her 
services, her organisation, her discipline, so as to meet 
the wants of the age in which we live, and profit by 
the experience of her past failures ; whether she can 
remove the stumbling-blocks of the debris of past con 
troversies, and take her place once again as the 
leader of the religious life of the English nation ; 
whether she is to retain any hold on the education of 
the people ; whether she can help the State in its work, 
or must fall into a profitless antagonism, or an idle 
querulousness ; all these are brought before us by the 



Sloth. 149 

pressing exigencies of the hour. It is worse than 
fruitless, it is a blunder as well as a crime, to shrink 
from facing them. These cries of "The Church in 
danger;" the panic dread of change; the over- 
caution which leads to a policy of laissez-faire, which 
strives to keep everything in ritual or teaching as it 
is that would fain fold its hands once more, and for 
ever, in the tranquil slumber of self-satisfied repose 
this resistance to the counsels of wise and faithful re 
formers ; what is this but to reproduce the sluggard of 
the Proverbs, who says that " there it a lion in the way 
a lion is in the street ;" who, when he is roused 
from sleep, turns upon his bed as " a door turneth 
upon its hinges ;" who " is wiser in his own conceit 
than seven men that can render a reason." (Prov. 
xxvi., 13 16.) For us there is reserved, let us hope, 
a better and a nobler future. Whatever signs of 
decay there may have been in the past ; whatever 
perils there may be in the present ; there is no lack of 
energy and zeal. If that energy be rightly directed 
if the zeal be according to knowledge we, the 
clergy and laity of the Church of England, may yet 
take our place, no longer among those whose vineyard 
is neglected and its wall in ruins, but among those 
who shall u build the old waste places" and " raise 
up the foundations of many generations." For us 
there may be in store the blessing which belongs to 
" the repairers of the breach, and the restorers of 
paths to dwell in." (Isaiah Iviii., 12.) 



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Plain Words ; Second Series : Short Sermons for the Sundays ani 
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We rave a hearty welcome to Mr. HOW H first series of Plain Words, 
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for the words are quite aa plain, while the theology is more exact." 
English Churchman. 

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Plain Words ; Third Series : Forty Meditations with a view to the 
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LONDON : W. WELLS OAKDNEB, 10, PATERNOSTER BOW. 



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" A very useful guide in Pastoral visitation. The present book, the 
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him during many years ; and he trusts that what has been of practical 
use to himself may be the same to others, especially to the younger of his 
brethren. The contents are varied and numerous, and the Appendix 
especially useful. Like everything that proceeds from Mr. How, this 
book is of great value, and will be found an excellent companion to the 
clergyman in his arduous duties." Church Opinion. 

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Three All -Saints Summers, and other Teachings of Nature to a 
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Counsels of a Godfather. Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo, cloth, 

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