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About Google Book Search Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web at |http : //books . google . com/ IN MEMORIAM BERNARD MOSES Digitized by VjOOQIC Digitized by VjOOQIC Digitized by VjOOQIC Digitized by VjOOQIC BT THE SilB ADTIOK. A PRESENT HEAVEN. I volume. i6mo. $ i.oo. TWO FRIENDS. I volume. i6mo. $i.oo. Jh Press. POEMS OUR SINGLE WOMEN. BY THE SAME AUTHOR. TICKNOB AND FIELDS, Publishers. Digitized by VjOOQIC THE Patience of Hope THE AUTHOR OF "A PRESENT HEAVEN" WITH AN INTRODUCTION Br JOHN G. WHITTIER . . W . . - - «T TXNXO XT TENXOR BOSTON TICKNOR AND FIELDS 1863 Digitized by VjOOQIC Entered according to Act of Congreti, in the year 1882, bj TICKNOB AND FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the Diatrict Court for tba District of Massachoaatta. vi^t^at^mms: SBYBNTH BDIl'ION. UNItBRSITY VRBSat WlLOB, BxaSLOW, AND COMPAKI Cambrid&e. Digitized by VjOOQIC aJ^ Introduction. [ HERE are men who, irrespective of the names by which they are called in the Babel confusion of sects, are endeared to the common heart of Christendom. Our doors open of their own accord to receive them. For in them we feel that in some faint degree, and with many lim- itations, the Divine is again manifested : some- thing of the Infinite Love shines out of them ; their very garments have healing and fragrance borrowed from the bloom of Paradise. So of books. There are volumes which perhaps con- tain many things, in the matter of doctrine and illustration, to which our reason does not assent, but which nevertheless seem permeated with a certain sweetness and savor of life. They have the Divine seal and imprimatur; they are fra- grant with heart's-ease and asphodel ; tonic with the leaves which are for the healing of the na- S012ii Digitized by VjOOQIC vi INTRODUCTION. tions. The meditations of the devout monk of Kempen are the common heritage of Catholic and Protestant ; our hearts burn within us as we walk with Augustine under Numidian fig-trees in the gardens of Verecundus 5 Fenelon from his bishop's palace, and John Woolman from his tailor's shop, speak to us in the same lan- guage. The unknown author of that book which Luther loved next to his Bible, the "Theologia Germanica" is just as truly at home in this present age, and in the ultra Prot- estantism of New England, as in the heart of Catholic Europe, and in the fourteenth century. For such books know no limitations of time or place ; they have the perpetual freshness and fitness of truth; they speak out of profound experience: heart answers to heart as we read them ; the spirit that is in man, and the inspira- tion that giveth understanding, bear witness to them. The bent and stress of their testimony are the same, whether written in this or a past century, by Catholic or Quaker : self-renuncia- tion, — reconcilement to the Divine will through simple faith in the Divine goodness, and the love of it which must needs follow its recogni- tion, — the life of Christ made our own by self- denial and sacrifice, and the fellowship df his suffering for the good of others, — the indwell- Digitized by VjOOQIC INTRODUCTION. vii ing Spirit, leading into all truth, — the Divine Word nigh us, even in our hearts. They have little to do with creeds, or schemes of doctrine, or the partial and inadequate plans of salvation invented by human speculation and ascribed to Him who — it is sufficient to know — is able to save unto the uttermost all who trust in him. They insist upon simple faith and holiness of life, rather than rituals or modes of worship; they leave the merely formal, ceremonial, and temporal part of religion to take care of itself, and earnestly seek for the substantial, the neces^ sary, and the permanent. With these legacies of devout souls, it seems to me, the little volume herewith presented is not wholly unworthy of a place. It assumes the life and power of the Gospel as a matter of actual experience ; it bears unmistakable evidence of a realization, on the part of its author, of the truth, that Christianity is not simply historical and traditional, but present and permanent, with its roots in the infinite past and its branches in the infinite future, the eternal spring and growth of Divine love ; not the dying echo of words uttered centuries ago, never to be repeated, but God's good tidings spoken afresh in every soul, — the perennial fountain and unstinted outflow of wisdom and goodness, forever old and forever Digitized by VjOOQIC viii INTRODUCTION. new. It is a lofty plea for patience, trust, hope, and holy confidence, under the shadow, as well as in the light, of Christian experience, whether the cloud seems to rest on the tabernacle, or moves guidingly forward. It is perhaps too ex- clusively addressed to those who minister in the inner sanctuary, to be entirely intelligible to the vaster number who wait in the outer courts ; it overlooks, perhaps, too much the solidarity and oneness of humanity ; * but all who read it will feel its earnestness, and confess to the singular beauty of its style, the strong, steady march of its argument, and the wide and varied learning which illustrates it. To use the lan- guage of one of its reviewers in the Scottish press : — '' Beauty there is in the book ; exquisite glimpses into the loveliness of nature here and there shine out from its lines, — a charm want- ing which meditative writing always seems to have a defect ; beautiml gleams, too, there are of the choicest things of art, and frequent allu- sions by the way to legend or picture of the religious past ; so that, while you read, you • ** The good are not so good as I once thought, nor the bad 80 evil, and in all there is more for grace to make advantage oi^ and more to testify for God and holiness, than I once believed." '■^Baxter, Digitized by VjOOQIC INTRODUCTION. \^ wander by a clear brook of thought, coming far from the beautiful hills, and winding away from beneath the sunshine of gladness and beauty into the dense, mysterious forest of hu-» man existence, that loves to sing, amid the shadow of human darkness and anguish, its music of heaven-born consolation ; bringing, too, its pure waters of cleansing and healing, yet evermore making its praise of holy affec- tion and gladness ; while it is still haunted by the spirits of prophet, saint, and poet, repeat-» ing snatches of their strains, and is led on, as by a spirit from above, to join the great river of God's truth ''This is a book for Christian men, for the quiet hour of holy solitude, when the heart longs and waits for access to the presence of the Master. The weary heart that thirsts amidst its conflicts and its toils for refreshing water, will drink eagerly of these sweet and refreshing words. To thoughtful men and women, especially such as have learnt any of the patience of hope in the experiences of sor- row and trial, we commend this Uttle volume most heartily and earnestly." ** The Patience of Hope " fell into my hands soon after its publication in Edinburgh, some 1* Digitized by VjOOQIC X mTRODUCTION. two years ago. I was at once impressed by its extraordinary richness of language and im agery, — its deep and solemn tone of medi- tation in rare combination with an eminent- ly practical tendency, — philosophy warm and glowing with love. It will, perhaps, be less the fault of the writer than of her readers, if they are not always able to eliminate from her highly poetical and imaginative language the subtle metaphysical verity or phase of religious experience which she seeks to express, or that they are compelled to pass over, without ap- propriation, many things which are nevertheless profoundly suggestive as vague possibilities of the highest life. All may not be able to find in some of her Scriptural citations the exact weight and significance so apparent to her own mind. She startles us, at times, by her novel applications of familiar texts, by meanings re- flected upon them from her own spiritual in- tuitions, making the barren Baca of the letter a well. If the rendering be questionable, the beauty and quaint felicity of illustration and comparison are unmistakable ; and we call to mind Augustine's saying, that two or more widely varying interpretations of Scripture may be alike true in themselves considered. " When one saith, ^ Moses meant as I do,' and an- Digitized by VjOOQIC INTRODUCTION. xi other saith, * Nay, but as I do,' I ask, more reverently, * Why not rather as both, if both be true?" Some minds, for instance, will hesitate to as- sent to the use of certain Scriptural passages, as evidence that He who is the Light of men, the Way and the Truth, in the mystery of his econ- omy, designedly "delays, withdraws, and even hides himself from those who love and follow him." They will prefer to impute spiritual dearth and darkness to human weakness, to the selfishness which seeks a sign for itself, to evil imaginations indulged, to the taint and burden of some secret sin, or to some disease and ex- aggeration of the conscience, growing out of bodily infirmity, rather than to any purpose on the part of our Heavenly Father to perplex and mislead his children. The sun does not shine the less because one side of our planet is in darkness. To borrow the words of Augustine : ^^Thou, Lord, forsakest nothing thou hast made. Thou alone art near to those even who remove far from thee. Let them turn and seek thee, for not as they have forsaken their Creator hast thou forsaken thy creation." It is only by holding fast the thought of Infinite Goodness, and interpreting doubtful Scripture and inward spiritual experience by the light of that central Digitized by VjOOQIC zu INTRODUCTION. idea, that we can altogether escape the dreadful conclusion of Pascal, that revelation has been given us in dubious cipher, contradictory and mystical, in order that some, through miracu- lous aid, may understand it to their salvation, and others be mystified by it to their eternal I might mention other points of probable divergence between reader and writer, and in-^ dicate more particularly my own doubtful pause and hesitancy over some of these pages. But it is impossible for me to make one to whom I am so deeply indebted an offender for a word or a Scriptural rendering. On the grave and awful themes which she discusses, I have little to say in the way of controversy. I would listen, rather than criticise. The utter^ ances of pious souls, in all ages, are to me often like fountains in a thirsty land, strengthening and refreshing, yet not without an after-taste of human frailty and inadequateness, a slight bitterness of disappointment and unsatisfied quest. Who has not felt at times that the letter killeth, that prophecies fail, and tongues cease to edify, and been ready to say, with the author of the "Imitation of Christ": "Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth. Let not Moses nor the prophets speak to me, but speak thou Digitized by VjOOQIC INTRODUCTION. xiii rather, who art the Inspirer and Enlightener of all. I am weary with reading and hearing many things; let all teachers hold their peace; let all creatures keep silence: speak thou alone to me." The writer of "The Patience of Hope" had, previous .to its publication, announced herself to a fit, if small, audience of earnest and thoughtful Christians, in a little volume entitled, " A Pres- ent Heaven." She has recently published a collection of poems, of which so competent a judge as Dr. Brown, the author of *'HoraB Subsecivae" and "Rab and his Friends," thus speaks, in the North British Review: — " Such of our readers — a fast increasing number — as have read and enjoyed *The Pa- tience of Hope,* listening to the gifted nature which, through such depp and subtile thought, and through affection and godliness still deeper and more quick, has charmed and soothed them, will not be surprised to learn that she is not only poetical, but, what is more, a poet, and one as true as George Herbert and Henry Vaughan, or our own Cowper; for, with all our admiration of the searching, fearless spec- ulation, the wonderful power of speaking clear- ly upon dark and all but unspeakable subjects, the rich outcome of ^thoughts that wander Digitized by VjOOQIC xiv INTRODUCTION. through eternity,* which increases every time we take up that wonderful little book, we confess we were surprised at the kind and the amount of true poetic vis in these poems, from the same fine and strong hand. There is a personality and immediateness, a sort of sacredness and privacy, as if they were overheard rather than read, which gives to these remarkable produc- tions a charm and a flavor all their own. With no effort, no consciousness of any end but that of uttering the inmost thoughts and desires of the heart, they flow out as clear, as living, as gladdening as the wayside well, coming from out the darkness of the central depths, filtered into purity by time and travel. The waters are copious, sometimes to overflowing ; but they are always limpid and unforced, singing their own quiet tune, not saddening, though some- times sad, and their darkness not that of obscu- rity, but of depth, like that of the deep sea. "This is not a book to criticise or speak about, and we give no extracts from the longer, and in this case, we think, the better poems» In reading this Cardiphonia set to music, we have been often reminded, not only of Herbert and Vaughan, but of Keble, — a likeness of the spirit, not of the letter ; for if there is any one poet who has given a bent to her mind, it is Digitized by VjOOQIC INTRODUCTION. XV Wordsworth, — the greatest of all our century's poets, both in himself and in his power of mak- ing poets." In the belief that whoever peruses the fol- lowing pages will be sufficiently interested in their author to be induced to turn back and read over again, with renewed pleasure, extracts from her metrical writings, I copy from the volume so warmly commended a few brief pieces and extracts from the longer poems. Here are three sonnets, each a sermon in , itself: — ASCENDINO. They who from mountain-peaks have gazed upon The wide, illimitable heavens, have said. That, still receding as they climbed, outspread. The blue vault deepens over them, and, one By one drawn further back, each starry sun Shoots down a feebler splendor overhead. So, Saviour, as our mounting spirits, led Along Faith's living way to Thee, have won A nearer access, up the difficult track Still pressing, on that rarer atmosphere. When low beneath us flits the cloudy rack. We see Thee drawn within a widening sphere Of glory, from us further, further back, — • Yet is it then because we are more near. Digitized by VjOOQIC xvi INTRODUCTION. LIFE TAPESTRY. Too long have I, methouglit^ with tearful eye Pored o'er this tangled work of mine, and mused Above each stitch awry and thread confused ; Now will I think on what in years gone by I heard of them that weave rare tapestry At royal looms, and how they constant use To work on the rough side, and still peruse The pictured pattern set above them high ; So will I set MY COPY high above. And gaze and gaze till on my spirit grows Its gracious impress j till some line of love. Transferred upon my canvas, faintly glows ; Nor look too much on warp or woof, provide He whom I work for sees their fairer side ! HOPE. Whbn I do think on thee, sweet Hope, and how Thou followest on our steps, a coaxing child Oft chidden hence, yet quickly reconciled. Still turning on us a glad, beaming brow. And red, ripe lips for kisses : even now Thou mindest me of him, the Ruler mild. Who led God's chosen people through the wild. And bore with wayward murmurers, meek as thou That bringest waters from the Rock, with bread Of angels strewing Earth for us ! like him Thy force abates not, nor thine eye grows dim ; But still with milk and honey-droppings fed. Thou leadest to the Promised Country fair. Though thou, like Moses, may'st not enter there ! Digitized by VjOOQIC INTRODUCTION. xvii There is something very weird and striking in the following lines: — GONE. Alone^ at midnight as he knelt, his spirit was aware Of Somewhat falling in between the silence and the prayer j A bell's dull clangor that hath sped so far, it faints and dies So soon as it hath reached the ear whereto its errand lies; And as he rose up from his knees, his spirit was aware Of Somewhat, forceful and unseen, that sought to hold him there ; As of a Form that stood behind, and on his shoulders prest Both hands to stay his rising up, and Somewhat in his breast. In accents clearer far than words, spake, ** Pray yet longer, pray. For one that ever prayed for thee this night hath passed away; *'A soul, that climbing hour by hour the silver- shining stair That leads to God's great treasure-house, grew covet- ous ; and there B Digitized by VjOOQIC xviii INTRODUCTION. '' Was stored no blessing and no boon» for thee she did not claim, (So lowly, yet importunate!) and ever with tby name ''She link'd — that none in earth or heaven might hinder it or stay — One Other Name, so strong, that thine hath never missed its way. ** This very night within my arms this gracious soul I bore Within the Gate, where many a prayer of hers had gone before ; "And where she resteth, evermore one constant song they raise Of * Holy, holy,' so that now I know not if she prays; ** But for the voice of praise in Heaven, a voice of Prayer hath gone From Earth; thy name upriseth now no more; pray on, pray on ! '* The following may serve as a specimen of the writer's lighter, half-playful strain of mor- alizing : — SEEKING. " And where, and among what pleasant places. Have ye been, that ye come again Digitized by VjOOQIC INTRODUCTION. xbc With your laps so full of flowers, and your faces Like buds blown fresh after rain ? '* '* We have been," said the children speaking In their gladness, as the birds chime. All together, — ** we have been seeking For the Fairies of olden time ; For we thought, they are only hidden, — They would never surely go From this green earth all unbidden. And the children that love them so ; Though they come not around us leaping. As they did when they and the world Were young, we shall find them sleeping Within some broad leaf curled ; For the lily its white doors closes But only over the bee. And we looked through the summer roses. Leaf by leaf, so carefully ; But we thought, rolled up we shall find them Among mosses old and dry ; From gossamer threads that bind them. They will start like the butterfly. All winged : so we went forth seeking. Yet still they have kept unseen ; Though we think our feet have been keeping The track where they have been, . For we saw where their dance went flying O'er the pastures, — snowy white Their seats and their tables lying, O'erthrown in their sudden flight. Digitized by VjOOQIC X INTRODUCTION. And they, too, have had their losses. For we found the goblets white And red in the old spiked mosses. That they drank from over-night ; And in the pale horn of the woodbine Was some wine left, clear and bright j But we found," said the children, speaking More quickly, '* so many things. That we soon forgot we were seeking, — Forgot all the Fairy rings. Forgot all the stories olden That we hear round the fire at night. Of their gifts and their favors golden, — The sunshine was so bright ; And the flowers — wc found so many That it almost made us grieve To think there were some, sweet as any. That we were forced to leave ; As we left, by the brook-side lying. The balls of drifted foam. And brought (after all our trying) These Guelder-roses home." ** Then, oh ! " I heard one speaking Beside me soft and low, " I have been, like the blessed children, seeking. Still seeking, to and fro ; Yet not, like them, for the Fairies, — They might pass unmourned away For me, that had looked on angels -— On angels that would not stay ; Digitized by VjOOQIC INTRODUCTION. xri No ! not though in haste before them I spread all my heart's best cheer. And made love my banner o'er them. If it might but keep them here ; They stayed but awhile to rest them ; Long, long before its close. From my feast, though I mourned and prest them. The radiant guests arose ; And their flitting wings struck sadness And silence ; never more Hath my soul won back the gladness. That was its own before. No ; I mourned not for the Fairies When I had seen hopes decay. That were sweet unto my spirit So long ; I said, * If they. That through shade and sunny weather Have twined about my heart. Should fade, we must go together. For we can never part ! * But my care was not availing, I found their sweetness gone ; I saw their bright tints paling ; — They died j yet I lived on. " Yet seeking, ever seeking Like the children, I have won A guerdon all undreamt of When first my quest begun. And my thoughts come back like wanderers. Out- wearied, to my breast ; Digitized by VjOOQIC xxii INTRODUCTION. What they sought for long they found not. Yet was the Unsought best. For I sought not out for crosses, I did not seek for pain 5 Yet I find the heart's sore losses Were the spirit's surest gain." In *' A Meditation," the writer ventures, not without awe and reverence, upon that dim, un- sounded ocean of mystery, the life .beyond. **But is there prayer Within your quiet Homes, and is there care For those ye leave behind ? I would address My spirit to this theme in humbleness : No tongue nor pen hath uttered or made known This mystery, and thus I do but guess At clearer types through lowlier patterns shown ; Yet when did Love on earth forsake its own ? Ye may not quit your sweetness, in the Vine More firmly rooted than of old, your wine Hath freer flow ! ye have not changed, but grown To fuller stature ; though the shock was keen That severed you from us, how oft below Hath sorest parting smitten but to show True hearts their hidden wealth that quickly grow The closer for that anguish, — friend to friend Revealed more clear, — and what is Death to rend The ties of life and love, when He must fade In light of very Life, when He must bend To love, that, loving, loveth to the end ? Digitized by VjOOQIC INTRODUCTION. xxiH I do not deem ye look Upon us now, for be it that your eyes Are sealed or clear, a burden on them lies Too deep and blissful for their gaze to brook Our troubled strife ; enough that once ye dwelt Where now we dwell, enough that once ye felt As now we feel, to bid you recognize 'Our claim of kindred cherished though unseen; And Love that is to you for eye and ear Hath ways unknown to us to bring you near, — To keep you near for all that comes between ; As pious souls that move in sleep to prayer. As distant friends, that see not, and yet share (I speak of what I know) each other's care. So may your spirits blend with ours ! above Ye know not haply of our state, yet Love Acquaints you with our need, and through a way More sure than that of knowledge — so ye pray ! And even thus we meet. And even thus we commune ! spirits freed And spirits fettered mingle, nor have need To seek a common atmosphere, the air Is meet for either ip this olden, sweet. Primeval breathing of Man's spirit, — Prayer! I give, in conclusion, a portion of one of her most characteristic poems, "The Reconciler.'* Our dreams are reconciled. Since Thou didst come to turn them all to Truth j Digitized by VjOOQIC XXIV INTRODUCTION. The World, the Heart, arc dreamers in their youth Of visions beautiful, and strange and wild ; And Thou, our Life's Interpreter, dost still At once make clear these visions and ful£l ; Each dim sweet Orphic rhyme. Each mythic tale sublime Of strength to save, of sweetness to subdue. Each morning dream the few. Wisdom's first lovers told, if read in Thee comes true. • • • • • Thou, O Friend From heaven, that madcst this our heart Thine own. Dost pierce the broken language of its moan — Thou dost not scorn our needs, but satisfy ! Each yearning deep and wide. Each claim, is justified ; Our young illusions fail not, though they die Within the brightness of Thy Rising, kissed To happy death, like early clouds that lie About the gates of Dawn, — a golden mist Paling to blissful white, through rose and amethyst. The World that puts Thee by. That opens not to greet Thee with Thy train. That sendeth after Thee the sullen cry, ** We will not have thee over us to reign " ; Itself doth testify through searchings vain Of ThcjC and of its need, and for the good It will not, of some base similitude Takes up a taunting witness, till its mood^ Digitized by VjOOQIC INTRODUCTION. xxr Grown fierce o'er failing hopes, doth rend and tear Its own illusions grown too thin and bare To wrap it longer ; for within the gate Where all must pass, a veiled and hooded Fate A dark Chimera, coiled and tangled lies. And he who answers not its questions dies, — Still changing form and speech, but with the same Vexed riddles, Gordian-twisted, bringing shamr Upon the nations that with eager cry Hail each new solver of the mystery ; Yet he, of these the best. Bold guesser, hath but prest Most nigh to Thee, our noisy plaudits wrong ; True Champion, that hast wrought Our help of old, and brought Meat from this eater, sweetness from this strong. O Bearer of the key That shuts and opens with a sound so sweet Its turning in the wards is melody. All things we move among are incomplete And vain until we fashion them in Thee ! We labor in the fire. Thick smoke is round about us, through the din Of words that darken counsel clamors dire Ring from thought's beaten anvil, where within Two Giants toil, that even from their birth With travail-pangs have torn their mother Earth, And wearied out her children with their keen Upbraidings of the other, till between 2 Digitized by VjOOQIC XXVl INTRODUCTION. Thou earnest, saying, " Wherefore do ye wrong Each other ? — ye are Brethren." Then these twain Will own their kindred, and in Thee retain Their claims in peace, because Thy land is wide As it is goodly ! here they pasture free. This lion and this leopard, side by side, A little child doth lead them with a song ; Now, Ephraim's envy ceaseth, and no more Doth Judah anger Ephraim chiding sore. For one did ask a Brother, one a King, So dost Thou gather them in one, and bring — Thou, King forevermore, forever Priest, Thou, Brother of our own from bonds released — A Law of Liberty, A Service making free, A Commonweal where each has all in Thee. And not alone these wide. Deep-planted yearnings, seeking with a cry Their meat from God, in Thee are satisfied ; But all our instincts waking suddenly Within the soul, like infants from their sleep That stretch their arms into the dark and weep. Thy voice can still. The stricken heart bereft Of all its brood of singing hopes, and left 'Mid leafless boughs, a cold, forsaken nest With snow-flakes in it, folded in thy breast Doth lose its deadly chill ; and grief that creeps Unto thy side for shelter, finding there Digitized by VjOOQIC INTRODUCTION. xxvii The wound's deep cleft, forgets its moan, and weeps Calm, quiet tears, and on thy forehead Care Hath looked until its thorns, no longer bare. Put forth pale roses. Pain on thee doth press Its quivering cheek, and all the weariness. The want that keep their silence, till from Thee They hear the gracious summons, none beside Hath spoken to the world-worn, " Come to me," Tell forth their heavy secrets. Thou dost hide These in thy bosom, and not these alone. But all our heart's fond treasure that had grown A burden else : O Saviour, tears were weighed To Thee in plenteous measure ! none hath shown That Thou didst smile ! yet hast Thou surely made All joy of ours Thine own ; Thou madest us for Thine ; We seek amiss, we wander to and fro ; Yet are we ever on the track Divine ; The soul confesseth Thee, but sense is slow To lean on aught but that which it may see ; So hath it crowded up these Courts below With dark and broken images of Thee ; Lead Thou us forth upon Thy Mount, and show Thy goodly patterns, whence these things of old By Thee were fashioned ; One though manifold. Glass Thou thy perfect likeness in the soul. Show us Thy countenance, and we are whole I Digitized by VjOOQIC xxviii INTRODUCTION. No one, I am quite certain, will regret that I have made these liberal quotations. Apart from their literary merit, they have a special interest for the readers of **The Patience of Hope/* as more fully illustrating the writer's personal experience and aspirations. It has been suggested by a friend, that it is barely possible that an objection may be urged against the following treatise, as against all books of a like character, that its tendency is to isolate the individual from his race, and to nourish an exclusive and purely selfish per- sonal solicitude ; that its piety is self-absorb- ent, and that it does not take sufficiently into account active duties and charities, and the love of the neighbor so strikingly illustrated by the Divine Master in his life and teachings. This objection, if valid, would be a fatal one. For, of a truth, there can be no meaner type of human selfishness than that afforded by him who, unmindful of the world of sin and suffering about him, occupies himself in the pitiful business of saving his own soul in the very spirit of the miser, watching over his private hoard while his neighbors starve for lack . of bread. But surely the benevolent unrest, the far-reaching sympathies and keen sensitive- ness to the suffering of others, which so nobly Digitized by VjOOQIC INTRODUCTION. XXIX distinguish our present age^ can have nothing to fear from a plea for personal holiness, patience, hope, and resignation to the Divine will. ** The more piety, the more compassion," says Isaac Taylor ; and this is true, if we understand by piety, not self-concentred asceticism, but the pure religion and undeiiled which visits the widow and the fatherless, and yet keeps itself unspotted from the world, — which deals justly, loves mercy, and yet walks humbly before God. Self-scrutiny in the light of truth can do no harm to any one, least of all to the reformer and philanthropist. The spiritual warrior, like the young candidate for knighthood, may be none the worse for his preparatory ordeal of watching all night by his armor. Tauler in mediaeval times, and Woolman in the last century, are among the most earnest teachers of the inward life and spiritual nature of Christianity, yet both were distinguished for practical benevolence. They did not separate the two great commandments. Tauler strove with equal intensity of zeal to promote the tem- poral and the spiritual welfare, of men. In the dark and evil time in which he lived, amidst the untold horrors of the *' Black Plague," he illustrated by deeds of charity and mercy his doctrine of disinterested benevolence. Wool- Digitized by VjOOQIC XXX INTRODUCTION. man's whole life was a nobler *' Imitation of Christ" than that fervid rhapsody of monastic piety which bears the name. How faithful, yet, withal, how full of kind- ness, were his rebukes of those who refused labor its just reward, and ground the faces of the poor ? How deep and entire was his sym- pathy with overtasked and ill-paid laborers ; with wet and ill-provided sailors, with poor wretches blaspheming in the mines, because oppression had made them mad ; with the dyers plying their unhealthful trade to minister to luxury and pride ; with the tenant wearing out his life in the service of a hard landlord ; and with the slave sighing over his unrequited toil ! What a significance there was in his vision of the **dull, gloomy mass" which appeared be- fore him, darkening half the heavens, and which he was told was ** human beings in as great misery as they could be and live ; and he was mixed with them, and henceforth he might not consider himself a distinct and separate being " ! His saintliness was wholly unconscious ; he seems never to have thought himself any nearer to the tender heart of God than the most miser- able sinner to whom his compassion extended. As he did not live, so neither did he die to him- self. His prayer upon his death-bed was for Digitized by VjOOQIC INTRODUCTION. xxxi others rather than himself; its beautiful humility and simple trust were marred by no sensual imagery of crowns and harps and golden streets, and personal beatific exaltations ; but tender and touching concern for suffering humanity, relieved only by the thought of the paternity of God, and of his love and omnipotence, alone found utterance in ever-memorable words.* In view of the troubled state of the country, and the intense preoccupation of the public mind, I have had some hesitation in offering this volume to its publishers. But, on further reflection, it has seemed to me that it might supply a want felt by many among us ; that, in the chaos of civil strife, and the shadow* of mourning which rests over the land, the con- * « O Lord, my God ! the amazing horrors of darkness were gathered about me, and covered me all over, and I saw no way to go forth 5 I felt the depth and extent of the misery of my felloiO' creature* separated from the Divine harmony^ and it was greater than I could hear^ and I was crushed down under it ; I lifted up my hand, I stretched out my arm, but there was none to help mcf J looked round about, and was amazed. In the depths of misery, O Lord, / remembered that Thou art omnipotent ; that I had called thee Father ; and I felt that I loved thee ; and I was made quiet in my will, and waited for deliverance firom thee. Thou hadst pity upon me, when no man could help me; I saw that meekness under suffering was showed to us in the most affecting example of thy Son; and thou taught me to follow him^ and I said, Digitized by VjOOQIC The Patience of Hope. PART I. iN Jesus Christ all contradictions are reconciled ; yet in Him, also, and in all that is connected with his person and office, we are met by a strange contradiction, — a clashing of opposing attri- butes. " "Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah, glorious in his apparel, travelling in the greatness of his strength? He who hath trodden down the people in his wrath, and trampled upon them in his fiiry." Is this oi\e with Him the Man of sorrows and of humiliation, of silence and long-suffering, despised of men and rejected, giving his back to the smiters, and his cheeks to them that plucked off the hair? Is this Lord to whom the Lord hath spoken, " Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool,'* Him concerning whom God speaks Digitized by VjOOQIC 88 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. thus comfortably unto Zion, ** Behold, thy King Cometh, meek, havmg salvation, lowly, riding upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass"? is He, the upholder of the bruised reed, one with Him who shall bruise the nations with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel ? is the Interceder one with the Avenger ? the Lamb that taketh away the sins of the world, one with Him whose wrath a guilty world shall not be able to abide ? " Kiss the Son, lest he be angry." Can we wonder that some among the Jews should have imagined there would be two Messiahs, — the suffering one and the triumphant ? And what is the Incarnation, but the fulfilment of these mighty, yet contending predictions? What is the life of our Lord and Saviour upon earth but the conflict of glory and humiliation ? " The birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise " : glori- ous in feet, yet of ambiguous circumstance ; of kingly descent, yet lowly parentage ; bom in the appointed city, yet called a Nazarene; cradled in a manger, yet worshipped even there by sage and monarch ; dying a death of ignominy, yet even upon the Cross, in Hebrew and Greek and Latin j — the three living, ruling tongues of tune, — proclaimed to be a King and a Saviour. ** Tim w Jems " / possessed through life of Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 89 bonndless resources, and exerting them on be- half of others, yet himself submittmg to the ordinary conations of the Humanity he had taken upon him ; hungering, thirsting, wearied, in all things choosing to be made like unto his brethren ; Lord of nature and of time, yet wait- ing upon the restraints they impose; overcom- ing death, yet obedient to that which he over- came. " He saved others, himself he cannot save/' And as with the Master, so with them that are of his Household. The history of the Christian Church is a hieroglyph or picture- writing, to which the life of Jesus Christ on earth is as it were the Rosetta stone, making, when anee mastered^ all the rest plain. The present aspect of the Church, its past history, the records of individual Christian experience, offer us many sorrowful problems; but how was it in the days when the "Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and man lehdd God's glory, fidl of grace and truth ? Was there not even then something which corresponds with what we now see and feel? — the final and absolute contending with the temporal and accidental, and often apparently overcome by them; lofty principles out of harmony with the things which surround them, — delay, vicis- Digitized by VjOOQIC 40 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. situde, incompleteness, — "the something still which prompts the eternal sigh." Is there not now in Christ something which corresponds with what we trace in the Gospel narrative ; something, I say, which disappoints an apparent^ ly reasonable hope like, that of the devout * Jews for the temporal Messiah ; disappoints it to fiilfil it far more gloriously, more completely, yet in a way that contradicts our natural expectations. Even then, as now, did Christ delay, withdraw, even hide himself from those that loved and followed him, " a deceiver, and yet true." The history of Divine grace in the heart and in the world is illustrated by the book which St. John received from the angel, sweet to the taste, bitter in the working. Is it the Jew only who looks in Christ for the temporal deliverer, the restorer of paths to dwell in, the bringer again, like David, of all that the enemy hath carried away ? What finder of Jesus is there who has not in his first joy exclaimed, with St. Andrew, " We have found the Messias, that is the Christ " ? What follower of Jesus is there who does not learn, as did those first brethren, that " He must be followed to prison and to death"? * It is difficult, perhaps, for a Christian to place himself at the point of view they occupied so as to see how reasonable this hope was. Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PA TIENCE OF HOPE. 41 When Jesus says to his disciples, "In the world ye shall have tribulation," he speaks from insight rather than foresight ; as one who, know- ing what was the heart of man, sees in himself the bringer of a sword within it, that shall never leave it until all things concerning him are ful- filled. Let us consider this, — that when Christ took our nature upon him, he took it as it was; he did not re-create before assuming it, but assumed it in order to its re-creation, so that, being found in fashion as a man, he brought himself into con- nection, yet into collision, with weakness, with error, with decay, with all that belongs to man. The conflict of Christianity is the harder be- cause it is civil ; it has allied itself with that against which it must contend to the death, or be itself overcome of it. Hence its fierce col- lisions, its sorrowful victories ; hence too its still more sad, more fatal compromises, its unholy, unhallowing alliances, " the Woman sitting upon the Beast,"* — the compact between the Church and the World, at the sight of which he who had learnt so many secrets from his beloved Master, yet " wondered with great admiration." And if the world itself is a field too narrow for the meeting-shock of such antagonists as grace * See Williams on the Apocalifpse. Digitized by VjOOQIC « THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. and nature, how &res it in the conflict of whicn all that passes in the outward Church is but the history "writ large"; when these two, con- trary the one to the other, meet and wrestle within the heart as those who contend, not for mastery, but for Hfe itself? Woe, in this battle, to the vanquished 1 woe also to the victor I ** For every battle of the warrior is with con- ftised noise, and garments rolled in blood, but iJiU shall be with burning and fuel of fire." Ellis tells us that during his stay in Madagas- car he was visited by a native of rank, himself friendly to Christianity, and who had suflered deeply in his family relations in the persecution through which, as through a fiery and bloody dawn, its light so lately broke upon that island. This man looked at the brother missionaries long and earnestly, when, after almost mechani- cally giving them his hands, there came over his countenance, Ellis says, " an expression such as I have never witnessed in any human being ; an intensity of feeUng, neither ecstasy nor terror, but an apparent blending of both ; while during the whole interview, which was long, there was a strange uneasiness mingled with an evident satisfaction.^^ Was there not here, even in the twilight of faith and reason, a recognition of Christ and of all that he comes to work ? an Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 48 intuition in this half-enlightened, half-instructed soul of what remains long hidden from Christ's wise and prudent ones, — the stem necessity of the Christian covenant, that Christ in his mem- bers, as once aforetime in his human person, should suffer many tilings before he can entei into his glory ? It is hard for Humanity to re- ceive this lesson, to accept this inevitable condi- tion of its initiation into its true life, — the laying down of that very life^ that we may receive it again in Christ. Hard for us, as it was for the first disciples, even with Christ our Master going "before us" on the foreseen path, to understand him when he speaks of suffering, of humilation, df death itself, shordy to be accomplished. Here too, upon the way, will there be reasonings, surmisings, something too within the heart which, with the ardent spirit of St. Peter, will resist, even rebuke the teaching of its beloved Lord ; which will say unto him, " Be this far from Thee." For what is this which Christ demands from his disciple ? Even that which he himsdf gave. "Sacrifice and meat-offering thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein." The idea of propitiation, or the giving up of something which we hold least precious in order that we may retain that which we prize most of all, upon which the sacrifices under the old law Digitized by VjOOQIC 44 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. and those of all natural religions are founded, finds no place in the Christian Covenant. For to confirm this between God and man, the mast precious thing of all was offered^ and was ac- cepted; " He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second." And thus it is necessary that this Man also should have something to ofier. The need of sacrifice is not taken away, only its nature is changed, exalted, deepened ; and mild as is the genius of the New Dispensation, its knife goes closer to the heart than that of the elder one, which we are accustomed to think of as so stem and exacting. Behold the goodness and sever- ity of Christ 1 " Skin for skin," saith Job of old ; ^' all that a man hath will he give for his life." And it is this very life which Christ asks us to lay down for him ; this life of which he tells us, that he who loveth it shall lose it, and he who loseth it for his sake, shall keep it unto hfe eternal. And when we speak in a spiritual sense of Life, the laying it down and taking it again, we speak not of mere existence, but of that which is to every one of us the root by which we hold ; that which is to each individual heart confessed- ly " no vain thing, for it is our life." Take it away, and all beside is gone; ^^for in the blood Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 45 is the life " ; in the affections, in the energies which send their sap through the whole think- ing, feeling being. And it is to the root of this tree of man^s life, wrapped round with its most intimate fibres, — even this, be it what it may, for which we would give, for which we would forego, all the world beside, — the wiU of many — that the aze of Christ is laid. The disciple must be as his master, the ser- vant as his lord. Why was the sacrifice of Christ's death so pre-eminently meritorious, so infinitely prevailing with God? why do the sacred writers attribute an efficacy to it which it was impossible that the sufferings of uncon- scious though innocent victims could possess? Because, to say nothing of the intrinsic value of this sacrifice, it was, above all others that have been ever offered, a free, conscious, and will- ing one. The Man Christ Jesus was, of all created beings, — as fiir as we know their his- tory, — the only one who chose his own destiny, who foreknew and accepted its full conditions ; who saw a great need, and responded to it, " Lo 1 I come." " My leave," said the acute Frenchwoman, "was not asked before I came into the world," — a saying in which all that the human heart can urge against God and his appointments hes hid. Why should I be called Digitized by VjOOQIC 46 TEE PATIENCE OF HOPE. opon to endure, to forego so much ? Had the choice been permitted me, I might possibly have declined it. Our Saviour^s leave was atked. His fulfilment of his Father's mil was voluntary ; he saw the end from the beginning; saw it even in the beginning^ and walked onwards to that end, seeing his own destiny and feeling his own icoo^ dom. " 1 have power," he says, ** to lay down my life, and I have power to take it again." "But how is Christ's follower to obtain this freedom? How is this great transfer, lying at the very heart of our spiritual life, the exchapge of our own will for a better one, to be effected for a being like Man, impelled alike by the weakness and the strength of his whole nature to cleave unto the dust from whence he was at first taken ? At this point we must pause a moment, feeling that our subject has drawn us into a desolate, even awful region, where, like the traveller high up among the mountains, we would fain hold the breath and hurry onwards, lest a word too lightly spo^n should bring down the impending avalanche. For all thoughts that lead us from the circumference of faith to its centre draw us insensibly, and with a force that becomes irresistible the nearer we approach that centre, to the sacrifice of the death of Christ.^ Motv^ rerum est rapidu% extra locum^ jpladdus Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 47 in loco. There is no rest for tlie soul of the believer till it settles forever on this magnet. No rest ; I would say, also, no progress for the soul until it receives within it this great Motive Power ; receives it not only as a fulfilled fact, but accepts it in its boundless consequences, and recognizes as first among them that of its own ** baptism unto his death." The disciple is not above his master, neither is the servant above his Lord ; nevertheless^ every one that is perfect shall he as his master. O blessed saying I O promise like unto that made to the two chosen disciples, " Ye shall indeed drink of my cup " ; and what if our Lord's cup should prove to be the cup of vinegar mingled with gall, it is none the less the cup of blessing and of full, unr^ served communion. ^^ Kiss me with the kisses of thy mouth, for thy love is better than wine." And it is our personal initiation into this mystery of sacrifice which is, as regards the life which is in Christ Jesus, its true sacrament, enabling the soul to pass into real and intimate communion with him. Christ our Passover has been long slain for us ; but how do his people, for the most part, keep the feast ? By way of commemoration only. . But it is they who eat of the sacrifices, and they only, who are partakers of the Altar. It Digitized by VjOOQIC 48 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. is not enough that we show forth our Lord's death until his coming again ; to draw out the depths of this great act of love, we must so unite ourselves to it as to learn what St. Paul meant when he spoke of filling up that which was behind of the suflferings of Christ. It is the bearing of the cross, the sharing of the passion, that enables the believer to meet and understand his Lord ; " for we being many, are one Body,'* and without participation there can be no com- munion. All that are in Christ must be made to drink into one Spirit, yet often and often perhaps must He return and ask his chosen ones, "Are ye able to drink of my cup ? " before that free, calm answer can be given, " We are able " ; and many offerings must be laid upon his altar with tears and weeping before the sacrijicea of joy are brought there. For as Christ was made like unto us, we must he made like unto him^ even at the cost of much that is grievous to natural feel- ing. His coming within the soul is the bring- ing in of a new order ; and when was there a painless transition, a bloodless revolution? It gives a new aim to the will of man ; it sets a fresh goal before his affections, and one oft- times to be reached only by passing over the dead body of all that made up their former life. Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 49 " Who will lead me into the strong city? who will bring me into Edom ? " Before Christ can gain the citadel of Man's will and affections, many pleasant places must be laid waste before him, many fair and flourishing outworks be brought low. These are hard sayings, and if they are met by the rejoinder, Who can bear them? the answer is already written, They to whom they are addressed by Christy and they only^ " He who forsaketh not all that he hath, cannot be my disciple." Christ does not say he cannot be my servant, does not say he cannot be my son, but he cannot be my disciple. There are many gains, many losses in Christ, over and above that great, inappreciable loss of the salva- tion of the soul in him. This final aim may be attained, and yet the hearers who, for love of a great or of a small possession, depart upon that saying, " Sell that thou hast, and follow me," may have abundant reason for going away sor- rowfiil. We are made poor by what we miss, as well as by what we lose; * a little more patience, * Yon say in one of yonr letters, " I feel a solemn pathos in the lament which the Lord takes np over the defection of his people: * that my people had hearkened nnto me, that Israel had walked in my ways I I shonld soon have subdued their ene- mies, and turned my hand against their adversaries * ; and after this follows, * I should have fed them with the finest wheat flour, and with honey out of the stony rock should I have satisfied them.' And what, but for a like failure in perseverance might 3 D Digitized by VjOOQIC 50 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. a little more constancy, and to what might we not have attained I to what tender intimacy, to what satisfying communications, to what power, what rest, what freedom I The more clearly we follow Christ, the more perseveringly do certain truths present them- selves to us, — truths with which we commune, but dare not for a while receive in their foil import, because we know they would lead us whither we would not. Yet they come again and again, offering themselves to us, like the Sibyl of old, each time under harder conditions, till at last we accept them on their own terms. A Christian may love his Master truly, and be yet unprepared to follow him whithersoever he goeth. How can two wdk in a way unless they be agreed ? and the enmity between Christ and nature is not yet so wholly slain but that there may be on the believer's part conscious shrink- ings and reservations : he knows that it would be hard to take this thing up ; hard, perhaps im- possible, to let this thing go, even at the corn- have been our portion, ' fhe finest of the wheat, and honey oat of the rock/ and ihat Rock^ St Panl tells us, vmt Christ. To hearken diligently unto him, to walk in his ways, is plainly point- ed out as the means through which we first obtain victory over our spiritual enemies, and then arrive at the feast of good things, prepared for those only who have come thus fkr. * I will bring them into my banqueting-house, where my banner over them Bhall be love.* '' ~ J. £. B. Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 51 mand of Christ himself* This crisis of spiritual life, ftdl of pain and perplexity, is one with which our Saviour may deeply sympathize, for he knoweth what is in Man ; yet it is none the less a temper which " is not worthy of Him." He does not trust himself to a divided heart, and of this the owner of such a heart is well aware. So that there arises within it a secret craving for whatever may detach and loosen these bonds, from which no eflFort of its own can free it, — a desire like that which St. Paul so fervently expresses for ike fellowship of Us Jj0t3!% mffer^ ing%^ the conformity to his Lord^s deaths so that by any means it may attain to spiritual resurrec- tion with him. There comes a moment in which the soul, awaking up into the sense of the deep antagonism between grace and nature, will exclaim, as seeing no other way of deliver- ance, " Let us go unto JUm^ that we may also die with him"; let us know tiiat we live in Christ, if it be through being sharers in his pain. " They were all baptized in the cloud and in the sea " ; this is the register of all Christ's chosen ones, the pledge of their initiation into that covenant *' whose promises, whose rewards, whose very beatitudes are sufferings." Why does St. Paul so rejoice,* so delight himself in » Note A. Digitized by VjOOQIC 52 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. weakness, in persecution, in affliction, but be- cause he knows that mthout these he can attain to no close intimacy with his beloved Lord? And if this be a sore lesson, is it not one for which the heart may be in some degi'ee pre- pared, even by its own natural experience? Do not trials and sorrows (also, it is true, deep joys) shared between two friends, partings, dangers, above all, the having stood together in the pres- ence of death, deepen the channel of our affec- tion in deepening that of our existence ? Are not such moments as it were sacramental, bring- ing us nearer each other in bringing us nearer God, from whom the poor unrealities of time, unworthy of us as they are of JUrrij too much divide us ? It is often through some keen, even desolating shock, the blasting of the breath of God's chiding, that the deep foundations of our nature are first discovered to us. When the veil of the temple, even this poor worn garment of our Humanity, is rent from the top to the bottom, we catch glimpses of the inner glory : the rocks are riven, the graves open, they who have long slept in the dust come forth, and reveal to us awftil and tender secrets, of which otherwise we should have known nothing. '*They who love," as says St. Chrysostom, "if it be but man, not God," will know what 1 Digitized by VjOOQIC TEE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 53 mean, when I speak of joys springing out of the very heart of anguish, and holdmg to it by a common and inseparable life; will under- stand how it comes that the pale flowers which thrust themselves out of the ruins of hope, of endeavor, of aflfection, — yes, even out of the mournful wreck of intellect itself, — should breathe out a deep and intimate fragrance, such as the broad wealth of air and sunshine never yet gave,— "For in things That move past atterance, tears ope all their springs, Nor are there in (he powers that all Ufe heart More true irUerpretere of all than iearsJ'* It needs but a httle consideration to perceive that devotion, self-sacrifice, all the higher moods and energies even of natural feeling, are only possible to seasons of adversity. " Deep calleth unto deep." We need not look far into Man's nature to see that its true wealth does not lie so near the surface, but that the smooth, grassy levels of prosperity hide riches such as only a shock can develop. The history of both nations and churches shows us how the very strain and pressure of calamity can force up social existence to an otherwise unimaginable height of noble- ness ; but we must look yet deeper than this, to understand the strange aflinity which Chris- tianity has at all times betrayed with whatever Digitized by VjOOQIC 64 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. is most contradictory to natural feeling, making it to choose pain and weakness and infirmity as its natural soil and climate. And here experi- ence, rather than reason, roust be our guide ; finr what is there in pain, considered in itself, that is pimfying, far less ennobling? Its connection with all that is most precious to Christian life is incidental rather than inherent, and is to be traced to that deep original wound of our nature which has set the ideals of Christ and Hmnanity so far apart, that the wealth of the one can only be attained through the minishing of the other. If the house of David is to wax stronger, the house of Saul must wax weaker from day to day. And hence it is that every fuller development of Christ's spirit within man neeeasarily takes a self-subduing character, making asceticism under one form or other inseparable from the true Christian life. For the glory of the terrestrial is one, the glory of the celestial is another. The triumph of Nature lies in the carrying out of its own will, in identification with some great object, in adhesion to some lofty aim. The triumph of Christ is placed in the subjugation of that very will, in acquiescence, in disen- tanglement; in the stretching forth of the hands, so that another may gird us and carry us whither we would not.* * Note B. Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 65 Tkc character which Christ forms within the hieart is one at variance with our ideas of natu- ral greatness ; His rule opposes itself as much to the higher as to the lower instincts of nature. And that this should have been most clearly seen by thinhers looking at Christianity from without, ought not to make us careless of the truths they disclose ; for intellectual and spiritual contemplation alike lead up to clear, calm sum- mits, and upon them are strange meetings un- dreamt of by the dwellers in the valleys and the plains below. The keen intuition of the Thinker places him in possession of truths which the lowly Christian has learned upon his knees; and though these two may distrust and be mutu- ally repelled from each other, they have none the less a common standing-ground, — " Their speech is one, their witnesses agree." The sober Christian may possibly feel a shock in finding Novalis describe his faith as a foe *' to art, to science, even to enjoyment " ; yet does not his own daily experience prove that the holding of the one thing needful involves the letting go of many things lovely and desirable, and that in thought, as well as in action, he must go on ** ever narrowing his way, avoiding much^*?* And this, not because his intellect ♦ W. B. Scott. Digitized by VjOOQIC 56 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. is darkened to perceive beauty and exceUence, or his affections dulled to embrace them, but because human life and human capacity are bounded things ; the heart can be devoted but to one object, and the winning of the great prizes of earthly endeavor asks for an intensity of purpose, which in the Christian has found another centre. And more than this, the rule of Christ is not only exclusive but restrictive, and though it would carry us among too wide and distant fields to enter upon this subject as it deserves, we need not look far into either literature or art to see to how many of their happiest energies this rule opposes itself. Their spirit is a free spirit, impatient of any yoke. How much, for instance, of the greatness of Shakespeare and Goethe consists in a wide Naturalism, which, as it were, finds room within it for all things, not only depicting them, but in some measure delighting in them, a« they are. Could this genial abandonment coexist with a deepened moral consciousness, far less, surely, with the simplicity and severity of Christ ? Again: to a person who has seen in Chris- tianity a certain engaging moral and social as- pect, and has not looked into it much deeper, what Goethe says of it as being " founded upon Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 57 the reverence for that which is beneath us, the veneration of the hated, the contradictory, and the avoided," will appear perverse and one- sided. Yet not so, surely, to him who has been accustomed to recognize his Lord's features in those of the forlorn, the ignorant, and the de- spised, — to him who has found that the print of his Master's footsteps, if tracked with any degree of faithfulness, will carry his own far out of the path of pleasure and distinction, and leave him amid scenes and among objects in which, save for this powerful attraction, he would have found nothing to delight in or to desire. For Chris- tianity, though it may at certain periods and in certain persons reveal itself under a splendid and engaging aspect, so as to command the homage * of the world with which it is at vari- ance, remains true to its first conditions, begin- ning at Bethlehem, " small among the cities of Judah," and ending upon Calvary between the two thieves. Whenever it has been joined, as it has been joined so often, with the pomp and riches and glory of this world, this has been but a State-alliance, from which its heart has fled, to the cell of the lonely monk, to the workshop of the humble artisan, to some little band of perse- cuted men, — to such as, whether solitary or in families, — 8* *NoteC. Digitized by VjOOQIC 58 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. ** LoTing Jesus for his own sake,*' have be^i content for his sake to be men won- dered at.* How many of the sparks at which great fires have been kindled, even now enlight- ening and warming the world, have been struck from the hearts and brains of men counted fools and fanatics in their own generation ! Christ is favorable to the simple and needy. Wheii we look into His kingdom, we see that many of its mightiest enterprises, now ripening to evident perfection, have been begun by a few gathered together in his name, and these few, perhaps, neither wise nor rich nor noble. Yet even now, as during our Lord's life on earth, all the lowliness of his aspect does not conceal the lofti- ness of his claims, nor blind the world to the • " He who far off beholds another dancing, Even he who dances best, and all the time Hears not the music that he dances to, Thinks him a madman, apprehending not The law which moves his else eccentric motion; So he that *s in himself insensible Of love's sweet influence misjudges him Who moves according to love's melody. And knowing not that all these sighs and tears, I^aculations and impatiences. Are necessary changes of a measure Which ike divine musician playSj may call The lover crazy, which he would not do. Did he within his own heart hear the tune Played by the great musician of the toorW^ Galdebok, translated by Fitzoebauk Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPK 59 fact that these are the claims of one who, com- ing in to sojomn, has made himself aUogether a ruler and a judge over it. ** Whom makest thou thyself? " it will still ask. And this ques- tion will be followed by a demand, prompted by kindred enmity, "Why makest thou us to doubt? if thou be the Christ, show thyself openly." And there is much, truly, in the condition of the Church since our Saviour left it to remind us of the plant Linnaeus speaks of, — perfect in its structure, yet showing neither fruit nor blos- som above the earth, though it puts forth many beneath it, blanched from the darkness of their life. **It doth not yet appear what we shall be.** Humanity, even at the voice of Christ, comes forth bound hand and foot with grave- clothes, and as one that hath been dead four days. Therefore we need not wonder if in such a resurrection there should be paroxysms; if there should be in every great awakening unto Christ something to give room for the scoffings of the profane, the doubts and surmisings of the prudent. Christ does not at once remove the enmity which he finds. He must first bind the strong man ; and before the strength of nature is subdued and disciplined to carry out the behests of grace, there is a struggle, — revealing Digitized by VjOOQIC 60 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. itself among the poor of Christ's flock, unused to restrain or analyze their own emotions, in forms which may appear strange and exceptionable, but from which, under one form or another, none in whose spirit Christ lives can escape. For the heart and the world, until renewed after His likeness, are still heathen in all but in name ; exorcism must precede baptism, and the baptism from our Lord's hand is that wherewith he himself was baptized, — signed with the sign of the cross.* And while these thoughts throw an incidental light upon much that is mysterious in our spirit- ual life, they draw us to the consideration of that deeper mystery which underlies it all, — the structure, the schematism of our faith, which reveals itself through the fair and often smiling surface of Christianity as the gray rock in some mountain district crowns every summit, and thrusts itself even through the sheep-covered slopes, in keen contrast with their peace and verdure. When man finds that, if he would do God's will, however imperfectly, he must offer up this continual sacrifice, the sacrifice of his own * Adalbert, the martyred apostle of Prussia, slain by the fierce Wends, stretched forth both his arms in dying, saying, " Jesus, receive thou me,*' and fell with his face to the ground in the form of a crucifix, thus, Carlyle says, setting his mark upon that heathen country. Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 61 will^ his thoughts are irresistibly carried to rest upon that One offering np of a higher than any hnman will,* by which Christ has perfected for- ever them that are sanctified. The more deeply we feel the existing contradiction between God's will and that of his creature, the deeper becomes our sense of the need of somewhat to take it away, so that the heart draws near to a truth unapproachable by the intellect, — the necessary death of Christ All things in nature, as well as all things in grace, point to a Redeemer. Nature struggles, but cannot speak ; she remains in bondage with her children, dumb like them, and beautiful. Humanity has found a voice ; but where, save for Christ, woirid she find an answer? She has showed him of her wound, her grievous, incurable hurt; and how has he consoled her? Even by showing her His, — " Reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side." And as the law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, so does our daily experience be- come a school, teaching us the same deep lesson which the book of the Old Testament unfolds. The events of human life, and the great facts which revelation discloses, cast reciprocal light upon each other, so that the beUever's course • See Hebrews x. 10. Digitized by VjOOQIC 62 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. as lie advances is ever instructing him, like the Earlier Dispensation, through hint and sign and shadow, in the mysteries on which all the visible deaUngs of God are grounded. We begin to see that the whole teaching of the human race by God is based, Hke the pro^ phetic songs of the Old Covenant, upon a gigan- tic parallelism ; * that as the Type is not a mere Sign, but has a real^ ihmigh ww«een connection with the fact it shadows forth, so has that fact also its correlative lying deep in the nature of God and man, and tei^ifying to the essentiai unity of those natures. And as through the awful imagery which, undar the rites and cere- monies of the Old Dispensation, prefigured th« stupendous event of Redemption, we discern a mighty underworking which threw liiese figures of sacrifice and atonement to the surface, avkd could not have appeared in any other ; so, as our Christian consciousness deepens, do the things • Note D. t Differing in this from a STmbol, which, being merely an Hea shown^ a species of shorthand or figure-writing, need possess, it is obvious, no other than an arbitrary connection with the thing it stands for. A rose, for instance, once adopted, for whatever reason, as the emblem of secrecy, always conveys that idea to the mind which, in the absence of any natural association be- tween the two things, has once received them in connection. But it is far otherwise with a Type, which is, as Warburtoij says, " a prophecy in action, one in nature with that which it represents." — See on this subject the Divint Legation^ 9th Book. Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 63 with which we are dailj conversant take up a mute significance ; so does all in life, that onc9 appeared without bearing on our higher desti" nies, b^n to arrange itself in the pattern of heavenly things, " the pattern showed us in the mount." And though the great events of Incarnation and Redemption, casting light upon all that had gone before them, need themselves^* according to Gaussen's fine saying, to be iUumined by a light w>t yet risen^ though the Dispensation of glory has yet to illustrate that of grace, it is in the heart that the day-star must now arise. And in every believing heart, the gradual turning of that heart to Christ casts as it were an oblique light on the sacred revelations of Scripture, by awakening within it the sense of sin, the need of expiaticm, and the want c^ a better righteousness than our own to meet a standard which even man, when once renewed in aim and feeling, consciously aspires to. So that the heart accepts Christ because it needs him, even while the mind may be unable to receive him fiilly, because the orbit of this Star is so extended as to carry beyond it the sphere of human inteUigence. ** For to this end Jesus Christ both died and suffered, and rose again, • NoteE. Digitized by VjOOQIC 64 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. that he might be Lord both of the living and the dead." We know not upon how many points Redemption touches ; what unseen worlds, what unborn generations, what unde- veloped forms of being it embraces. We know not to what Warfare, to what Accomplish- ment, our Lord referred when he spoke those words, " It is finished." We know not, in short, as Butler says, what in the works and coun- sels of God are ends, and what means to a fur- ther end, or how what appears to us as final may be initial with Him. But we see enough around us, and within us, to show that it was necessary that Christ should sufier many things, and after that enter into his glory ; enough to learn that we shall find no higher thing above, shall pierce to no deeper thing below, than the Cross and its solemn and tender teachings. If we would cUmb up into heaven, it is there ; if we would go down into hell, it is there also. He alone among men who has clasped this great mystery of grief and love to his bosom sees, if it be as yet but through a glass darkly, how pain and love, yes, joy also, all things that have a living root in humanity come to bloom under its shadow. And how love that cannot die, and faith that grows to certainty, and hope that maketh not ashamed, root themselves about it, Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 65 with all fair things that wither in life, and noble things for which it has no room. "I took," said Luther, "for the symbol of my theology, a seal on which I had engraven a cross with a heart in its centre; the cross is black, to indicate the sorrows, even unto death, through which the Christian must pass, Ivt the heart preserves its natural colore for the cross does not extinguish nature, it does not kill, but gives life. Justus fide vivet^ sed fide crucifixi. The heart is placed in the midst of a white rose, which signifies the joy, peace, and consolation that faith gives; but i^ rose is white, and not redj because it is not the joy and peace of the world, but that of spirits." ** Whoso is wise will ponder these things, and he shall un- derstand the loving- kindness of the Lord." Digitized by VjOOQIC Show me more love, my dearest Lord, 0, tarn away thy clouded face t Giye me some secret look or word That may betoken loye and grace; No day or time is black to me Bat that wherein I see not Thee; Show me more love; a ctoudedface Strikes deeper Ihan an angry blow. Love me and kill me by thy grace, I shall not much bewail my woe. But even to be In heaven onloved of Thee Were hell in heaven for to see; Then hear my cry, and help afford; Show me more love, my dearest Lord. Show me more love, my dearest Lord, I cannot think, nor speak, nor pray; Thy work stands still; my strength is stored In Thee alone; O come away! Show me thy beaaties, call (hem mine. My heart and tongue wiU toon be (AtiM. Show me more love, or if my heart Too common be for such a guesl^ Let thy good Spirit by its art Make entry and put oat the rest For *tis thy nest; Then he*s of heaven possest That heaven hath in his breast Then hear my cry, and help afford; Show me more love, my dearest Lord! Digitized by VjOOQIC Part Second. Digitized by VjOOQIC ^And Joseph knew his brethren^ But they knew not him.** Gin. xm.8. tJO^^ Digitized by VjOOQIC PART 11. >HEN the Past and the Future cheat us, it is through a charm to which we consciously abandon ourselves: we know how much the landscape gains in each case from the atmosphere through which we view it. But the Present is the true deceiver; its clear, cold daylight hides much, in appearing to conceal nothing from us, for it is possible to look at things so closely as not to see what they really are. We catch the mean detail ; we miss the grand, comprehensive out- line. We must stand farther off, so that we may see the whole. ** When the great Athanasius lived on earth," says Pascal, " he did not appear in the light in which we now regard him ; he was only a man called Athanasius." Yet was the great Athanasius the true Athanasiua. And even thus greatness ever stands among us, as ** one whom we know not " ; know not, even because we think we know it so well. Digitized by VjOOQIC 70 * THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. And as of individaals, so of ages. It seems hard to be generous, not easy even to be just, to the tunes upon which our lot is cast. The very expression " our present day " conveys with it somewhat of disparagement, implying a contrast with other ages in whose very silence we find an eloquence rebuking the clamor that surrounds us. Yet much that we now look upon as prosaic, and perhaps decry as unreal, if read as history, would enchain our imaginations ; if spoken as prophecy, would stir our very souls. Future chroniclers will make it their wisdom to decipher the Runes we are now dinting, and will understand their import better than we who leave them on the rock. Ours is a sober enthusiasm, patient because it is so strong. A Work is set before the day we live in, a Necessity is laid upon it ; it sees and accepts its calling, content to labor in the thick smoke, and weary itself among the very fires of speculation. Let but our age apprehend a cause, or an idea, as worthy of its devotion, and it win not fail to be furnished with apostles, with confessors, yesj if need be, with martyrs ; so strong is the passion of its onward march, so steadfast the ardor of its perseverance. And thus in how many a fair and still extending region of human thought and labor we have already arrived Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. * 71 ** At the winning and the holding of a prize, The hope of which would have been once deemed madness." But with onr spiritual and moral conquests it has surely fared less brightly; here, among many leaders, we have as yet no Columbus, " the naked pilot, promisor of kingdoms," be- stowing more than he had promised ; no proph- ets, such as science has been blessed with, who have lived to see the wonder of their dream surpassed by its sober interpretation. Yet ours is none the less an age of generous experi-? ments, of failures more noble than the successes to which the world decrees a Triumph. How many laborers are now among us, literally water- ing God's garden with their foot I — a holy and blessed work ; but one in which we must not forget that the country in which our work lies is a land rich in iUdf, foil of fountains and depths springing out of its own hills and valleys, " a land that drinketh water of the rain of heaven." You say to me in one of your letters, ** We hear so much around us of doings, so much of Christian exertion and charitable en- deavor, that in witnessing the comparatively small result of much devoted labor, I have been led to believe that we work too much upon the surface. The waters of life lie below it, and few pierce deep enough to unlock them for them- Digitized by VjOOQIC 72 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. selves or others. Our endless external reforms are, after all, only channels, too often dry ones, while every believer in whom his Lord's promise has been ftdfilled, * I will be to him a well of water, springing up into everlasting life,* is a fountain, hidden it may be to the eye, but dis- cernible in the greenness and moisture that sur- round it." We have more than enough of systems, of macliineiy, which, whether more or less perfect, will not go of itself. We may have done all that of ourselves we can do, and the moving spring may yet be wanting.* " The spirit of the living creature in the wheeh.^^ And just where our national dread of enthu- siasm is the strongest, we have surely many enthusiasts among us ; soldiers who go upon a spiritual warfare at their own cost, and builders who expect with such materials as earth can ftimish to reach even unto heaven. Yet God is a spirit, and Man is also a spirit, and all work that is done between God and Man must be done in the spirit, — must be wrought from the centre outwards. The life that lies at the cir- cumference of its guiding idea lies there but in faint outline, feebly drawn, like the outermost ripple on disturbed waters. We are anxious to • Ezekiel i. 19, 20; x. 16, 17. Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 73 spread the knowledge of God. This is our fjuorh^ the end to which Christian exertion is chiefly directed, but before we can pursue it to any true result, God must also work a work within us, upon the deepening of which the ex- tension of Christ's kingdom naturally, inevitably follows. For they who are rooted in the Lord will in him bud and blossom, and fill the face of the earth with fruit. All who have ever been strong for God, have been strong in Bim^ and have known too, as Samson did, where the secret of their strength lay, — in a dependence out of which they would have been consciously weak, and as other men. The Church has always borne witness to this truth; her every prayer and confession proves that she has seen how it is that which binds her to her Lord, that strengthens her in him, so that the chains which are about her neck have become " an ornament of grace upon her head." But here, too, she may take a lesson where her Lord has sent her to look for it. Even from this Generation. Full of faith and power in the resources of human energy, and in that faith and power working marvels, if it behoved in God as firmly as it does in itself, the seed it would raise to serve Him would be of no degenerate stock, and the Church would 4 Digitized by VjOOQIC 74 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. once more, as in the days of its youth, take up its ancient hero-song, sweeter than was ever earthly Saga. But are we as Christians what we are as men? God has showed us earthly things, and we have believed. Man has taken his own meas- ure, and found it " the measure of an angel." * Human intelligence, once a bold guesser after unproven truth, has learned the extent of its own resources; hence its sure, yet extended aims, and hence its glorious acquisitions. Opin- ions with us are rooted and seeded things, able to raise up the life which they contain within them. We embrace facts, not abstractions ; we live OB men in the reality of that which we specur latively accept as trite. But can we say this for ourselves as Christians? Have we believed when God has showed us heavenly things, or yet taken the measiure of a man in Christ? Are we as conversant with the Second Adam as with the First ; as familiar with the capabilities of the renewed spirit, as with those of the liv- ing soul ? The facts of revelation are accepted. The Gospel is made the basis of law and of society ; it is a framework holding all together ; a code, like the great Roman one, upon which the mediaeval world kept its hold so long after • E. B. Browning. Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 75 the power and spirit of the empire were but a tradition. • • • • But how few among us are of it upholden. How few, fastening upon God through the aw- ful relations it discloses, can say from the deep and ground of the heart, ** O Lord, hy these men live, and in them is the life of the Spirit." And thus a strange weariness overtakes us;* • I leave these words as they were written. Yet, since then, even within the last few years, a change has come, far more grad- ually than is generally supposed, over the climate of the Chris- tian world; as if some mighty current, like the Gulf Stream, had set in, sending a warm breath across the universal Church, and breaking up the deadly ice of ages of unbelief and indifference. And though this change may be, and will be, accompanied with shocks and splittings, it is surely the prudent, not the wise Chris- tian, who will on this account withdraw himself from its wide, soul-enlarging influence. For it is evident that this is not a work of extension only; in every community, and in every heart where God has already had a work, that work has been lately deepened. " The river of God is full of water." He has not only sent rain i\pon the dwellings in the wilderness, but caused it to descend into furrows long since drawn. Experienced Christians are the nature guides and comforters of those whose hearts have been but lately made soft with the drops of heaven ; in every Pente- costal outpouring there is something to recall the deep uncon- scious truth of that saying, " These men are full of new wine ** ; and it is Vieir part to see that the wine is not spilled, neither the bottles marred. And while it is easy to cavil at the phenomena connected more or less remotely with this change, the fact, not to be affected by any of tkemy remains, that a great moral and spiritual change is taking place at our very doors; that the poor among men are rejoicing in their Maker; that multitudes of people are at this very moment lifting up praying hearts, and this, for no temporal blessing, no sectarian end, but simply for the clearer Digitized by VjOOQIC 76 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. uneasy in onrselves, we do not find rest in God, and become aware of a deep question, underly- ing all the shallow ones that now vex the cur- rent of religious speculation. We feel, each one of us for himself, that the point at issue is Btill concerning '* one Jesus," whether we shall Bay with the world that he is dead, or with Paul steadfastly affirm him to be alive, and still the resurrection of the spiritually dead, the life of them that believe. For human society is even now, as in the days when the Gospel was first preached, made up of Greeks enthralled by outward sense, of Jews resting in an outward law ; and out of the midst of these a people has light of Christ's Cross, the ftiller manifestation of His Presence. "I will hear, saith the Lord; I will hear the heavens, and ihejf tkaU hear the earth " ; the heart of man seems set npon attaining to this closer correspondence with his Maker, set, too, upon ob- taining it throngh the Man whom he hath sent They who $etk ihe Lord thaU praise him. On all sides there is a sound of abun» dance of rain; so that the Christian feels that, deep and many as may be the trials yet in store for the Church, it has turned over, perhaps forever, one leaf of sorrowful experience, that of its long ploughing in the cold, each laborer apart, and uncommunicating. The days of harvest are sultry and arduous, but the reapers work in bands, and are cheered by many a song: — ♦* * Brother, take thy brothers with thee,' Speak the silver-winding brooklets To the mighty mountain torrent; * Take us with thee to the ocean That with outstretched arms awaits us,— Oft, alas 1 in vain awaits us. Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 11 need to be yet more fully called, to find Him who is the end of the law to every one that believeth: "Christ the power of God, and Christ the wisdom of God." Even now, said St. John, speaking of his own day, there are many Antichrists. Since then there have been many forms of denial, sundry kinds of spiritual death. Christ has long stood in this world's judgment-hall, and suflfered many things from them that throng it. From age to age false witnesses have risen up, laying to his charge things that he knew not. He has heard the de&ming of the multitude, and borne in his bosom the rebukes of many peoples long gath-i For in sandy wastes we filter Drop by drop, until the sunbeams Drink our blood; until some hillock Locks us to a pooL take us, Brother, with thee I * Then for answer Swells the Flood, and ou its bosom Lifts its kindred, lifts and bears them In its rolling triumph down. Lands take Name, and cities Being From its ceaseless march; behuid it Tower and turret rise; upon it Float the goodly ships of cedar, Fair, with many a flying pennon Wavmg witness to its pride. Bearing in iU joyful tumuUj Bearing sUU its brothers with tf, These its treagwes, these its children, To ihe waiting Father's heart,'* Digitized by VjOOQIC 78 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. ered to' the dost of silence. But the day of in* Solent derision is over, and it is after another manner that we behold Christ rejected, and set at naught by this generation. We are met, comparatively speaking, by little direct opposi- tion to revealed religion ;• its moral teaching is respected ; the sacred person of its Founder is held in reverence ; it is as a power that Chris- tianity is denied.* Our age has nothing in com- mon with the degrading scepticism of the past century, which cast its scorn up to God through the foul dishonoring of His image. We believe, as I have said, in Man ; and our noble and ten- der faith in Humanity is one which works by love, showing itself in persevering and arduous efforts after social amelioration. But here also we may find a ftdfilment of our Lord's saying, — * The lightest leaf will show the way the wind is setting, and I know not where we are met by a plainer expression of this tacit, and in some degree respectfol denial, than in the popular literature of oar day. Here we see a systematic ignoring of Christianity, combined with a rather inconsistent exaltation of the benevolent aspect peciUiarly belonging to it We find in such writings many flowers to please as, bat see that, as in a child*s garden, they are stuck into the ground by their stalks only, and have not groum where we now see ihem. We know that even the lily floating on the waters, the orchid hanging in the air, keeps a tenacious yet unseen hold upon something beyond itself, without which its nourishment and life would fail; and all this bloom and verdure is suggestive of a root, possessing, it may be, no beauty for which we should desire it, yet detached fiom which the leaf of humanity will wither and its flower &de. Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 79 ** I am come in my Father's name, and ye re- ceive me not; another will come in his own name, him shall ye receive." The prophets who come in their own name, the apostles of hnman development, of social progress, find a wilUng hearing ; but where is our recognition of a divinely appointed agency? where is our faith in that which hath appeared to man ? But because we believe in Man ; because we reason, if not always aright, of truth, of beauty, of perfection, and are full of reverence, full of pily for the nature in which we find om*selves so fearfully and wonderfully fashioned ; because our age, with all its wants and errors, is still a lov- ing, a believing, an essentially human age, there shall yet come to pass concerning it the sajring which is written, '^ Li that day shall a man be more precious than gold, than the golden wedge of Ophir." The heart of this age is in its right place, and with that heart it may yet believe unto righteousness, and escape the downward path towards which so many of its intellectual tendencies are dragging it. We have not yet drawn forth the true bitterness of the finit whose mortal taste is already so plainly to be discerned among us, or many a yet noble and tender spirit would exclaim, " Let not the pit shut her mouth upon me," -— Materialism, the Digitized by VjOOQIC 80 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. grave of all that is human, as well as of all that is heavenly, within man. The heart craves what the world would take from it ; Man needs what no system invented by man has yet prom- ised, far less given, — a Comforter, an enlight- ening, guiding Spirit, wanting which he remains a mockery even to himself, the sport of circum- stance, a Samson blind and fettered in the hall of the Philistines. "jPA« world knows but a OreatoTj spirits claim Father.^^ And O that we could see that He has already come forth to meet us ; that we could, even in this our day, perceive the season of our heavenly visitation, and see to what its rejection tends, — a moral atheism, blotting out God from the region of spiritual life, as surely as the denial of a Per- sonal cause excludes Him from the visible world. ^* There is a Spirit in man," faithful to its in- stincts even when astray as to their true object ; it wanders often, yet feels through very sadness and weariness how far it has got from home. And hence come those utterances (of which you tell me), strange prophetic voices, a groaning and travail-pain of Humanity, which, even in the hearts of th6se who reject revelation, testify to its waiting for some great Redemption. If man refizses the bread which came down from heav- Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 81 en, never was it so hard for him to live "by bread alone " as now. His very wealth and in- crease has brought with it a sense of poverty, — because he has become rich, and increased in goods, he knows, as he did not before, that he is wretched, and miserable, and blind, and naked. The energy of his wrestling with the things of time and sense has awakened instincts of which but for the ardor of that struggle he might have known Uttle. He conquers kingdoms, and weeps like the ancient conqueror. The world which he has vsCnqmshed cannot satisfy him. He feels himself to be greater than the universe, yet feebler than the meanest thing within it which can follow the appointed law of its being. The splendor of his material acquisitions is but a robe too short and thin to wrap him from cold and shame. He can do great things, but what w he ? To have all, and to die saying, " Is this aUf " is the epitaph of many a rich and wasted life. Every fresh region man breaks into re- veals new wonders, and with them new enig- mas, calling upon him to solve them or perish. There is a social comphcation, a pressure in our present day, which is not to be answered by an unmeaning clamor against rational enlighten- ment. We cannot stay the current that is bear- ing us onwards so swiftly, but we may guide 4* » Digitized by VjOOQIC 82 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. our course upon it, looking to the stars above* " Light is good," good for its own sake, what- ever it may show us. In an anxious and inquir- ing age, *^ when men shall run to and &o, and knowledge be increased," we are told that " the wise shall understand." They shall find their safety, not in placing faith and science in an un- real opposition, not in closing their eyes to the revelation of God's power, but in opening their hearts to the secrets of his wisdom " double to that which is."* And, now especially that thought and authori- ty are at open issue upon many questions, may not some among us, ever ready to judge those who are without, lay to heart the solemn decla- ration of the Apostle, that judgment must begin at the house of God I It is so easy to be ortho- dox in creed and statement ; so safe to rest in a merely traditionary belief, that many a deco- rous Christian fails to perceive the sure though invisible connection between the lip-confession and life-denial of a merely outward profession, and the broader form of denial by which all such profession is derided. Yet between Christ jnocked and Christ rejected there is but a step j — who shall say how easily it is taken, or how quickly we may pass from the hollow homage, • Jobxi.6. Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 68 the " Hail, Master 1 " which mocks our Lord, to the smiting and buflfeting of open outrage? When Christ is invested with but the show of sovereignty, the reed placed in his hands will be quickly taken, as by the soldiers, to smite his head. This reed is nominal Christianity, a strange slip of a degenerate vine, beneath whose blighting shadow a poison-growth of unbelief never fails to root itself. And it is certain that this most mournful characteristic of our age — the disposition to think slightingly of Christianity,* to ask it what it has done or can do for the world — has been helped forward by a want on the part of the professing Church of whole-hearted faith in its renewing, transforming energies. Is it strange that the supernatural revelations of the Gospel should be looked upon as foolishness by the world, while they remain — who shall say to how many among us — a stumbUng-block, one that we dare not remove ? but surely there are * When Jesus was taken before Herod, the king hoped, it is said, to have seen some great thing done by him, ** and he ques- tioned him in manj words, and He answered him nothing.*' The attitude of our day is not that of an utter rejection of Christianity. Like Herod we appreciate and examine into it, questioning it in many words as to what it can do for the world, just as we put the same question to the schemes of science and philosophy. But to an age which, like Herod, is deficient in real faith in its Author, Christianity often answers — nothing. — J. £. B. Digitized by VjOOQIC 84 THE PATIENCE OF HOPK systems now in favor, temples made wilh Ttaneb^ into which we find it hard to fit the stone cut firom the rock without hands. Human nature has been ever in love with a modified Chris- tianity, slow to receive Divine truth simply, and as it is given. Hence the dressings and un- dressings to which Christianity has been sub- jected. Roman Catholicism has accommodated it to human sense; Rationalism accommodates it to human intelligence, or rather strives to do so ; for are those who would make man the measure of all things sure that they have foxmd man's true measure ? If the doctrines of Reve- lation are mysterious, are the facts of Life less so ? Are " the things of a man" and the things of God fitted^ so to speak, by the mere cutting off of all that transcends reason, — itself but a part of man ? Reason has its outposts, fi*om which it is continually driven back defeated ; it rules, but under a perpetual check; it cannot take account of its own wealth, or fill the region it presides over. It is but a noble vassal, ** one that knoweth not what his lord doeth." Man reverences his reason, and trusts it, as far as it will lead him, but that is not his whole lengthy for he feels that he, the reasonable Man, is something greater than it is. Sometimes his dreams are truer than its oracles, and this he Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 85 knows. Therefore one deep calleth to another, and the answer to this call is Faith. Faith ad* dresses itself to man's whole heing, — it sounds «very depth; it touches every spring; it calls back the soul firom its weary search within itself, foil of doubt and contradiction ; it presents it with an object, impUcit, absolute, greater than itself, — " One that knoweth all things." It pro- vides for every affection, every want and aspira- tion. Faith stretches itself over humanity as the prophet stretched himself above the child, — eye to eye, mouth to mouth, heart to heart ; and to work a kindred miracle, to bring back life to the dead, by restoring the One to the One, — the whoU nature of Man to the whole nature of Q-od. Christianity, under its merely preceptive char- acter, has done much for the world ; received as a law, it has contributed greatly to social order and well-being ; but thus received, it is, like the Law, too weak to accomplish for any individual soul the mighty change through which it be- comes alive unto God. For this work is more than reformative ; it asks for a renewing element — "fire upon earth" — which none save One coming down from heaven can kindle. Our cold, decaying Humanity must be fed by a fuller life than its own, must be nourished in a warm- er bosom, before it can attain to any enduring Digitized by VjOOQIC 86 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. heat of nobleness or love. If we look through the long generations that have gone before us, we shall find that every nobler deed has been wrought, every fairer life lived, " not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life." The sum of that great unwritten history lies folded in few words, — "-4.K iheBe lived in faiihi^ in Uving faith in a living Person. Shall we look for those who have done great things for Christ or for the world among the philosophical admirers of Christianity, among its formal adherents ? Shall we find them even among those just persons to whose righteous hearts it is indeed a law and honorable, but not as yet the law in which is the spirit of Ufe? Nay, rather among such as have sought and have received a Sign, the sign of the Son of Man in heaven, and in this sign have fought and conquered. Among superstitious men, believing in many things, yet believing in Him; among ignorant men, knowing literally nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified, yet knowing* him upon no earthly testimony. Here too lies the quiet, per- haps unspoken secret of those lives of holy, un- selfish beauty, in which no communion has been more rich than our own, — to all of these Christ has come, not by water only, but by blood.* * Note F. Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 87 The foolishness of God, that which man counts dark and incomprehensible, is stronger than man, and nothing else is stronger. Man loves his own ease, his own labors; there is a sweetness in the natural vine which he wiU not leave, even at the call to a kingdom, except for a cause shovm. And hence comes the power of that mighty appeal, the attraction of which He who knew what was in Man prophesied when he said, " I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me." When God, says Bunyan, would tune a soul. He most commonly begins at the lowest note ; so has it been in the tuning of the world's wide discord. In the depths of the great atonement God has sounded the low- est note, and to this every life, lived during the last eighteen hundred years in harmony with him, has been attuned. In heaven and upon earth there are " Two vast spacious things, rhe wHich to measure it doth man behoove, Tet few there be that sound them> — Sin and Love." We know little of either until we learn of them at the Cross. There are abysses whose depths ' can only be guessed at by the weight of the plununet which is required to sound them. Such is sin; it remains, as it has been from the beginning; a dark enigma, drawing thought. Digitized by VjOOQIC 88 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. as through some terrible fascmation, to fasten itself on the problem of its existence.* Here Reason has transgressed its limits, and Faith ontnin her heavenly guidance. Wise men, in their despair of accounting for the origin of evil, have been driven to deny its existence in theories too thin to cheat any heart that has been pierced, yet enlightened, by its sharp re- ality ; and pious men, falling into the snare which Job's integrity declined, have "spoken lies for God, and argued deceitfully for him." Hence dreams like that of Optimism,! fictions, such as evil being but the privation of good; — names matter little ; sin desolates as widely, pain racks as keenly, whether we account for their exist- ence upon a positive or a negative theory. Yet it is remarkable that our Saviour, while he does ♦ Note by the Editor. — " And I inquired what iniquity was, and found it to be no substance, but the perversion of man's will from Thee, the Supreme, towards lower things." ~ Su AugttsUne. "The Scripture, and the Faith, and the Truth say, Sm is naught else but that the creature tumeth away from the un- changeable Good, and betaketh itself to the changeable, that it tumeth away from the Perfect to that which is in part and im- perfect, and most often to itself." -— Theologtca Germanica, " There is no sin but selfishness, and all selfishness is sin." — JuUui Midler, t It is scarcely necessary to observe that the Christian opti- mism is as unsatisfactory as the philosophic, and must remain so, as long as there is no sight so common as that of unsanctifie^ sorrow and unchastening pain. Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 89 not explain this awful problem, does not explain it away. To the old, ever-recurring question, "Whence these tares?" he answers simply, " An enemy hath done this." Man has striven to bridge over this chasm between his soul and God with theories contradictory to the reason they profess to satisfy, and false to the moral sense they desire to soothe ; but He who spake as never man spake does not reason upon this subject. He sees this great gulf set ; he knows what its mouth has devoured of earth's best and noblest: one thing most precious of all remains; — he flings Himself within it. And though this gulf still yawns wide, and stretches itself even unto hell, though it still underlies Nature's fairest scenes, and earth's pomp and beauty and rejoicing descend into it daily, the beginning of the end has been made. Sin and pain and death continue their rav- ages, upheld by him from whom their strength is derived. The Beast lives, yet it has re- ceived a deadly wonnd; its dominion is taken away, though its life is prolonged for a season and a time. Although the work of renovation is a hid- den work, a slow one, "for there are many adversaries " ; though it proceeds as yet among checks and hinderances, as a fair city might Digitized by VjOOQIC 90 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. rise from its ruins behind a broken and still beleaguered wall, yet the sure foundation has been laid. Deep and wide as decay has struck, the remedy has pierced still deeper. If we must come to the Cross to learn of sin, here too must we come to learn of love, — a love of which we know but little imtil we see it in its crowning work. For our God is one that hideth himself. Nature, yea also Providence, is thick with dark anomalies ; day unto day these utter speech, and night unto night de- clare knowledge, — a language of sign and parable, where the voice i% not heard; One is there, only One, who has shown us plainly of the Father. God's bow lies upon the cloud of Circumstance, yet light does not break through it until we see it in the face of Him in whom the excellency of His glory shines. Human life is beset with contradictions, at the solution of which we are but guessers, until Christ solves the riddle that was too hard for us, — bringing forth food and sweetness from the very jaws of the devouring lion. " If thou wouldst have me weep," said one of old, "thou must first weep thyself." Q-od has wept In the strong crying and tears of the Son, in the great drops of sweat as it were blood falling down to the ground, lie the witness to the travail of the Digitized by VjOOQIC TRE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 91 Father's soul. "Herein is love," consoling, rebuking love, — love that has no consolation so strong as the rebuke it administers. "Behold my hands and my feet 1 " these testify to a ne- cessity endured, an anguish shared. It is our brother's blood that cries unto us from the ground: "A spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me to have." I often think of George Herbert's homely and affecting verse, — ** Death, thou wast once an uncouth, hideous thing; But since our Saviour's death Has put some blood into thy face, Thou hast grown sure a thing to be desired And full of grace." Our Saviour's death has put blood also into the face of life. That which robs death of its sting robs life of its bitterness. When we once realize that the Son of God, in taking humanity upon himself, took something which he keeps stilly and will not relinquish throughout eternity, we become alive to an awful consolation. We see Creation and its great High-Priest standing as^ those whom God hath joined together never to be sundered ; and through this living bond, "even his flesh," the anguish of the burden laid upon us, down to the groaning of mere animal existence, arises through a softening Digitized by VjOOQIC 92 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. medium. An old Greek Ktany supplicates Christ by "His known and unknown suffer- ings." Who shall say how much the first were exceeded by the last, or fathom the depth of those words, ** He tasted death for every man " ? Of the intensity of Christ's sufferings we know and can know little ; as little, perhaps^ of their limits and duration. What was the weight of the burden He took upon him in being found as man, and is it altogether laid aside ? Has He who was once acquainted with grief unlearnt that lesson ? Has the Man of sorrows, in the persons of his aflSicted members, altogether ceased to grieve ? Was it only for those three and thirty years that the chastisement of our peace was laid up- on Him? only upon the cross that he bore the weight of that which he takes away, — the sins of the whole world ? The Word on this subject contains utterances into whose depth of meaning only the Spirit can admit us. I allude to say- ings like that of the Master, " Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me ? " to declarations like that wherein the servant afltens his rejoicing in the sufferings which fill up that which is left behind of the afflictions of Christ.* These intimations ♦ How are we to understand the words which tell us of Christ being omcified a&esh, and put to open shame by our backslid- Drgitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 93 are not dark, neither are they thinly scattered ; they witness to a union more close and intimate than that through which Christ, before his com- ing in the flesh, redeemed and pitied his people, and carried them all the days of old. Yet when we cease to hold to things by the heart, how little of them do we really retain 1 We let liv- ing facts stiffen into doctrinal abstractions, until ings? of the Spirit grieved, interceding for ns with nnntterable groanings? Are rach expressions to be received as merely fig- urative ? Are we, as so many divines have taught us, to believe that God in using them is but accommodating himself to the weakness of our human conceptions, and allow ourselves to be cheated out of the assurance of a Divine sympathy, through the shallow glosses which have robbed so many Scriptures of their meaning ? God*s anger, as inward and outward desolation testify, is a real thing; so are His love and His pity real, — real as the nature they spring from, the misery they meet; ^ and his com- passions fail not, his mercy endureth forever.*' '* Veritas est maxima caritas.** The Keformers lay such an almost exclusive stress upon the work of Christ, that which he does for us, that an outside feeling has crept within the heart of Protestantism; we have light blaz- ing on us from many windows, but we miss the warmth wh5ch Cathoticismj even Roman Catholicism, has retained, because it recognizes far more fully than we do the intimate personal com- munion ever existing between Christ and his body of Elect And in this, and not in any idea of meritorious works (a tree twice dead, plucked up from the very roots), lies the secret of their extraordinary sacrifices for Him ; more particularly as ■hown in outward beneficence, and sympathy with the wants and woes of the human body, — that body of our Humiliation which He who once condescended to its weakness still bean npon Him in power. Digitized by VjOOQIC 94 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. Truth itsdf begins to wear a cold and fictitious aspect : it is not in fact true /or us until we have made it our own through needing it, and loving it. It is not through a merely intellectual recog- nition that the human spirit can give its Amen to the yea of God. We see how firm a hold the Church of the Early and Middle Ages kept upon this great truth, — the actual presence of Christ with his people ; how this belief revealed, and as it were transfigured itself in legends which superstition itself cannot rob of their undying significance. When St. Francis stoops down to kiss the leper's wound, and sees that his place has been taken by the Saviour ; when St. Mar- tin hears these words in his vision, " Behold, Martin, who hath clothed me with his cloak," we see that the Church to these men is not the mere tomb of Christ, but his warm and living body, sending a pulsation through every mem- ber. There is now among us a disposition to separate the principles of Christianity from the facts upon which they are founded. We might as well attempt to separate the soul fi-om the body without destroying the Man. For these, its supernatural facts, are the very life and breath and blood of Christianity ; iU prindplea can only take root in a re-created humanity, " Give me a point," said the mechanician, " and Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 95 I will remove the world." When Man's soul is effectually moved, it is from a stand-point beyond itself. Experience shows ns (as I have said) that Humanity has never been truly built up unto God, but upon the foundation rejected of earthly builders, the mysteries of the Christian faith. Christianity is a building of which as much lies sunk beneath the surface as is reared above it. It is a tree whose roots strike down as deep into the earth as its branches spread wide in the air above, and when we seek to pluck up any one of these roots, a groan goes through its uni- versal frame. We say of earthly things, " that which comes from the heart goes to the heart " ; so it is with heavenly. When Man's heart is touched, it is through that which comes straight from the heart of God. These mysteries, the life and death of God in the flesh, his spiritual resurrection in the reconciled soul of Man, are messages^ they are God's authentic ^ love-letters, showing us plainly of the Father. ♦ Joseph Alleyne, in dying, would often commend the love of Christ, '* often speaking of his sufferings and of his glory, of hit lovt4etter$, as he called the holy history of his life, death, resur- rection, ascension, and his second coming, the thoughts of which would ever much delight him." And to say that the mystery of our Saviour*s passion lies at the heart of the whole of man's life in Him is to say little, for it it ihat heart itself; let love or sorrow pierce but a little deeper, and we shall find it even in our own. There is surely something Digitized by VjOOQIC 96 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE, Those who were first in Christ Kved very near the heart of these awfiil yet tender mys- teries. We find them connecting every function of the soul's renewed life with what has been suffered and obtained for it through another life, " of whose fiilness we have all received." It is scarcely possible to read the Epistles with- out feeling that Luther's often-quoted remark, " There is much religion in the possessive pro- nouns," may be fairly extended to prepositions, so threaded are the whole apostolic writings with these minute, adhesive fibres, — small members of our universal speech, yet boasting great things, as steps in the ladder by which the human spirit ascends even unto heaven. very affecting in the fact that the sufferings of Christ should lie BO much closer to the hearts of his people than all that those sufferings have won for them; that it should be ever the Anguish endured, and not the Glory obtained, which touches all the fin- est, deepest chords of the renewed nature. I find a proof of this in the fact that dying believers, soon to enter upon " Zion*s habitation, Zion, David's sure foundation," seem to care comparatively little for hynms descriptive of the joys and glories of heaven, beautiful as many of these are. It is to the cross, not to the crown, that the last look turns, the linger- ing grasp cleaves; and the latest conscious effort of the believer is sometimes to lift himself to Him who was lifted up, through, the half instinctive repetition of some words like those of Gerhardt*s Hymn on the Passion, the grandest of uninspired compositions: ^ head so full of bruises. So full of scorn and pain.** Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 97 By and through and of and in One " of whom are all things, and we m him." It is interesting to observe that, while the Saints of old appeal simply to God through his revealed attributes, his mercy, his faithftilness, his goodness which endureth forever, it is upon God manifested in the flesh, in the facts of our Lord's life, and iJie rdations which that life has established^ that the Apostles found their claim. They rest not so much upon what God is, as what he has become to men, their neighbor in Christ Jesus, and as such bound, as an old divine says, to love them even as Himself. ** What hath man done that man may not nndo, Bince God to man hath grown so near akin f Did his foe slaj him? he shall slay his foe; Hath he lost all? he all again shall win; Is sin his mastw? he shall master sin.** And if here, as elsewhere, the congregations of the ungodly have robbed us ; if in the confu- sion which reigns in the visible churches, it has become hard for believers to recognize the fact of their living membership with Christ and with each other, let lis seek more earnestly for the light* which makes these relations manifest. We shall not find it in the phosphorescence of any dead man's candle; exhalations from the tombs, though they be the tombs of saint and • 1 John i. r. Digitized by VjOOQIC 98 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. martyr, give but an uncertain glimmer. For it is not galvanic, but organic life we need, and this is not to be obtained by descending into the Past to touch the ashes even of a prophet's bones. They who stand by the grave, even of Christ himself, may behold, with the devout women, a Vision of Angels, hut Mm they see not " He is not here, he is risen. Behold, he goeth before you into Galilee." "Man's soul has widened with his world." It is evident that prescriptive authority must have BOW less weight with him than in ruder, less thoughtful ages. A cMld bdievea things because he is told them; a man believes them because they are true. To the human spirit is now that word spoken, — " He is of age ; ask himself." And it is plain that there was never in this world's history a time in which, to speak after a human manner, it was so easy to miss Christy so hard to do toithout him^ as now. For it is not only the outward courts that have become wide, yet crowded ; science continues to open up infi- nite yet densely peopled spaces, lengthening out, although every link be golden, the chain between man's soul and God, so that even the Christian thinker must respond with sadness to the bold and satirical saying of Hazlitt, " In the days of Jacob there was a ladder between heaven and Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 99 earth, but now the Jieavens have gone farther off^ and are become astronomical." The very rev- elation of God's power has tended to weaken the sense of his immediate presence ; yet it is not here^ but in another region, still richer, fairer, and more perilous, that our peculiar danger lies. Man, within the limits of his own nature, has broken into a world of which former ages, and these the most intellectually subtile and refined, knew nothing. The time is past when all things within that nature could be mapped out in broad and even lines ; how many motives and impulses do we find at work within us of which we can- not say that they are good or evil, only that they are natural, human. Therefore is there a diffi- culty, ofttimes an agony, introduced into the Christian life, of which earlier ages were uncon- scious; partly because the forms of good and evil were then more definite, and partly because what Goethe says of the individual holds true for the race he belongs to; the easy-hearted, even reckless simplicity of youth, carries it unawares past many a danger where to pause and to inves- tigate would be to be lost. For there are voices that even to hear is bewilderment ; shapes that but to look upon is madness. Our path is beset with such, alluring, beckoning, inviting us. we know not whither; must we parley, must we Digitized by VjOOQIC 100 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE wrestle with each of these to compel it to ntter a clear message, to assmne a certain likeness? The way is long, the day is short ; we must on- wards, though the leaves above our head mut- ter, though the flowers that we would pluck are charactered, though each simple and familiar thing beside our way has become instinct with a terrible consciousness, linking it with our own being. Literature and art, even Nature herself,— these which for freer spirits had a charm of their own, and needed not any other, — now breathe and bum in the ftdness of a parasitical life ; the fever of man's conflict has passed across them ; their bloom and fragrance feeds and is fed by fire kindled far down at the central heart* The shadow of Humanity falls wide, darkening the world's playground, and games, be they those of Hero and Demigod, can no more enthral us. What is Science itself but a gigantic toy, which may delight but can never satisfy the heart, which, even through its sadness and perplexity, has learnt that/ it is greater than all that sur- rounds it? Which confesses that, though the light within it is too often darkness, still is that very light " more worthy than the things which are shown by it " ; still are Man's errors greater than Nature's order, his miseries nobler than her splendor ; still is he Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PA TIENCE OP * BOTE. ^^ ' loi ' »* Chief Of fhings 6od*8 hand hath fashioned, sorest curst, Yet holding still the First-Bom's birthright, first In grandeur and in grief/* To know more of ourselves, and to know meanwhile no more of God, makes our present aguish and desolation. But what if even here were our safety ? What if it were through this very wound that the good Samaritan as he jour- neys designs to pour in the ^dne and oil of his consolation ? What if, in learning* more of the awful and tender mystery of our own nature, we become acquainted with the yet more awfiil, more tender mystery that encompasses it? Never did the heart assert itself so strongly as now ; highly strung and sensitive, it finds inward con- tradiction and outward circumstance bear hard upon it ; yet, beset by a thousand warring im- pulses, it has learnt its own weakness and its own strength, and out of the pressure and strait- ness of this siege it can take up its appeal to Christ out of the depths and into the depths of a common Nature. It can say, with the blind man, " Jesus, thou Son of Davids have mercy upon me." It has had its own voice thrown back upon it from the rocks; has seen its own form transfigured upon the mountains; it has had enough of echoes, of illusions ; it seeks comr • Note G. Digitized by VjOOQIC Vo2'' f6^ pXtience of hope. xnnnion, reciprocity; it needs that which can alone understand, alone answer it ; therefore the one flies to the one, — the heart to Christ. And let the heart of man be comforted ; it cannot outgrow its Christ ; yes, let the heart be comforted in him out of its poverty and its riches aUke. When we remember that Christ, in taking unto himself Man's nature, took upon Mm aU that it would become^ in how glorious and serene a light do the acquisitions of science standi This thought gives, as it were, music and measure to the onward march of humanity ; changes it from an outbreak of tumultuous forces to steady and disciplined progress. And if, turning from the world of action, we flash the light of this truth within the dim and many- chambered region that lies beneath it all, here also we shall discover that in Christ there is a provision, though we may not at once find it, for the growth and expansion which has made Hiunanity without him like a fruit too heavy for the stalk it hangs on, dragged and trailed to dust by its very weight and splendor. Even through the wealth and apparent waste of ten- drils and suckers it is now putting forth, it may cleave closer, drink deeper unto Him. For all that awakens a sense of need within us draws us by so much nearer Christ j no spiritual truth Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 103 bdng our own until we have needed it ; as long as we can do without these Divine friends, they stand in some degree aloof from usj — feeble, wounded, even despairing, we must cast our- selves upon their very bosoms before they will receive or return our clasp. And let us not be discouraged because the life in Christ has grown less simple than it once was. In earlier ages, even in times not very fiu* removed from our own, the Christian's course was "as straight as a rule could make it," because the license which surrounded him compelled him to cast aside all things so as to secure the one thing alone needful; to use a simile of your own, he was Hke a swimmer cast- ing off his garments, a hard-pressed rider throw- ing aside his weapons, — to breast the wave, to win the goal, was all in all. When the pressure upon faith comes chiefly from without, this very pressure forces up the life in a direct, unswerving line like that of the palm-tree, lifting up its gdden abundant crown to heaven; the same life would now resemble that of a banyan, touching earth at many points, but at every one drawing forth fresh life and vigor ; less commanding in austere majesty, but more resembling the tree of prophetic vision, " a harbor for fowl of every wing." We must Digitized by VjOOQIC 104 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. open our minds to this great fact, that all exist- ence is organic ; we cannot he, so to speak, one thing mentally and socially, and another thing Christianly, as if the life in Christ and the life in Adam flowed on together yet distinct, like two unmingling currents. The rational man will see Christ, as he sees all things, from the level upon which he, the rational man, stands* Man cannot see Christ at all except hy light from above ; on the hill, as in the valley, we are in darkness imtil the dawn breaks ; but if sun- rise finds us upon the mountain-peak, is it not evident that the prospect its light discloses must be infinitely wider and more glorious than if it had overtaken us many degrees lower down ? Now that the whole table-land of existence is lifted into a higher region, we must discard such commonplaces as this, that there is no belief like that of the peasant and the child, and with them the dark and confused notions of Faith upon which all such axioms are foimded. Faith is not an extrinsic thing, an outgrowth of the mind opposed to its rational convictions, its clear and intimate intuitions. It is reason enlightened by its Lord and Giver ; it is feeling reconciled with its great object ; it is in an emphatic sense " the right opinion of that which isJ*^ As Christ is a living Person, so is Truth a living thing, that Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 105 cannot be nailed like some foreign substance to the mind, but must permeate it, as like draws near to like. Until we see clearly that there is a harmony between that which we receive and that which we are ; until we admit that Divine, like human influences, can only do their work upon the soul through finding a point of contact within ity we are scarcdy so alive to the deep moral significance * of life as to see how it is through that which we believe, approve, yes, even through that which we UkCy that the soul is prepared to receive the impress of Caesar or of God. " He that is of the truth, heareth my voice." This is a deep saying ; so also is that of the prophetic psalm which declares plainly that our Lord reveals himself under aspects varying with the moral and spiritual conditions of those who look upon him : " With the merci- * A significftnce which nins throngh it alL Every book, for instance, has a moral expression, thoogh, as in ther human face, it may not be easy to say what it consists in. We may take np some exquisite poem or story, with no directly religious bear- ing, and/eel (hat it is reUgunu^ because it strikes a chord so deep in human nature that we feel it is only the Divine nature, " God who encompasses us/* that can respond to what it calls forth. From some books, especially such as treat of sin with levity, an odor of death escapes; about others there is an almost sensible savor of life unto life. Some quaint old English poems and devout essays send a fragrance into the very soul; to look into them is to open the tomb of a saint, and find it full of roses. 6* Digitized by VjOOQIC 106 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. fill, thou wilt show thyself merciful ; with the upright man, thou wilt show thyself upright; with the pure, thou wilt show thyself pure ; and with the froward, thou wilt show thyself fro- ward." If spiritual truths were things self-evident, like mathematical propositions compelling the assent of the mind they are addressed to, it would be hard to understand the extraordinary value which, under the Gospel dispensation, is attached to Faith. It would be hard to see how the possession of this one attribute could embalm as it were a man's whole soul and life ; how a human being could become dear to his Maker, simply because he saw that which those around him were not sufficiently enlightened to perceive. But is it not evident that this gracious disposition is one in which the whole man is included ? Is there not something in the very nature of spirit- ual Truth which demands for its reception more than the mere intellect, let it strive as it will, can compass, and something, too, in our own nature which makes us, as responsible beings, amwerable for what, as regards this Divine truth, we see and hear ? To put this in other words. Can a spiritual truth be apprehended otherwise than sacramentdUj/ ? Li all cases there will surely be a proportion between the soul's receptivity Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 107 and the fulness that is poured within it; a meaS' v/re between what it brings and what it finds. And this St. Paul intimates, when he desires for his Ephesian converts that they may be so rooted and grounded in love as to be able to know that which passeth knowledge; to enter into that which he in vain attempts to shadow forth be- neath the figures of length and breadth and height and depth, — the love of Christ, — Love's secret, which only love itself can make intelligi- ble. " The love of God," saith one of old, "pass- eth all things for illumination." One drop of this love shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost ; one expansion of the renewed mind in pity, in forgiveness, in love to the Father, in good-will towards men, will teach us more of what God really is than we could learn from a thousand disquisitions upon the Divine char- acter and attributes. And that which is the fulfilling of the law is also, in a great degree, the understanding of that which it fulfils : for love has an access, an intuition, of its own ; it attains the end while others are disputing about the means; it needs not to have every word explained, defined, interpreted ; it is enough for it to know the voice^ the voice of the Beloved, to follow whithersoever that voice leads. And the voice of a stranger the heart will not Digitized by VjOOQIC 108 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. follow, even though it be the voice of Christ himself; therefore would it see more, know more, have more of Him, fiadth's sole, sufficing Object, without whom love in this world would be too sorrowful, and hope too vague a thing. It is interesting to observe how the practical spirit of our day asserts itself in this great demand, already audible to ears that Usten to the under* swell that rises faint, yet clearly, above the agi- tating tumult of opinion. We need the livings spiritual Christ ; and ours are not the needs which can be satisfied by gazing on his lifeless body, however curiously embalmed by formalism with rite and ceremony, neither will we allow mysti- cism to come by night to steal away his body, and fill its place with ideas and imaginations of its own. For that great demand, " a philosophy of fruit," has been moved from the kingdom of na-> ture to that of grace ; here too we ask for a vin- tage, and desire to pass from speculation to that intimacy with its occupying subject which alone deserves the name of knowledge.* Is there not among us, even amid the very heat and dust of contending opinion, a manifest weariness of dis- • " There is only one kind of knowledge which can justly be called wisdom, — tapientiaf meaning properly a knowledge par* taking properly of the nature of a taste ; an inieSigere in which there is at the same time a eapere which appropriates and takes in its object with a lively relish." — ULLMAmr. Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 109 cnssion ? And this from no indifference to dog- matic truth, the fmre^ the only foundation for aU that we can know or can receive of Christy but grounded upon the deep, ever-increasing convic- tion that even Truth itself, according to Locke's fine saying, will not profit us so long as she is but held in the hand, and taken upon trust from other men's minds, not wooed and won and wedded by our own. And here it is that, as regards many ques- tions now at issue, the plain matter-of-fact think- er and the ardent, inquiring Christian^ find a common standing-ground. The first will often ask of those who, whether for scriptural truth or for apostolic discipline, call upon him to come and behold their zeal for the Lo|xl, " Where, among so many notions about the thing, is the thing itself? Has the fire gone out, or is it still smouldering beneath the fagots that have been brought to mend it?" The other, with a deeper meaning, will inquire, " What is the difference between placing our confidence in something which we do, or placing it in something which we think? We may as well rest in an ordinance as in an opinion, so long as we rest in either for its own sakcy and not for the sake of that which the confession encloses, the form embodies, — even the Spirit, which, not to be contained in Digitized by VjOOQIC 110 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. these, yet working through them all, converts them into things having life." And thus we have begun to tire of watchwords, to suspect that there is no necessary antagonism between the word which God has spoken and the sign which he has ordained. The Word itself has been made flesh, and has dwelt among us : will objective truth be less valued, Catholic institu- tions less loved, when each is held dear for the sake of that which it conveys ? — even that in- ward and spiritual grace, the gift obtained by our Lord for us men, the breath, the soul of spiritual life, — a soiil which we shall not surely expect to possess more, simply through possess- ing less of its body. For it is not by rejecting what is formal, but by interpreting it, that we advance in true spirituality ; the Spirit of God, even as the spirit of a man, works, and, as far as we yet understand the conditions of our being, lives^ only through "the body which has been prepared for it." By thmgs which we can see and hear, by things which our hands can handle, by words and forms, by doctrines and institu- tions, men live, and in them is the life of man. For it is neither by that which is merely natural, nor by that which is purely spiritual, that man's complex nature is nourished and sustained: he lives neither by bread alone, nor yet upon angePs Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. HI food, but upon that in which the properties of each are included, — "the bread which came down from heaven to give life unto the world." With regard to many of the truths of Christ, we are surely learning to be no more children, ever looking at things " in part," but men, able to appreciate them as they bear upon each other, and upon the facts with which life brings them into relation. And tliat peculiar condition of our being which makes it hard for us to be alto- gether "without partiality," which renders it certain that there will be to each believer some one aspect under which his Lord is, above all others dear, some ordinance in which He is above all others present, may, on the whole, help forward the perfect apprehension of Christ. Each individual soul, from the very constitution of our nature, will fasten upon that portion of Divine Truth which meets and answers to its own peculiar need ; and when we learn to look at Christianity as a living, organic whole, Tnade for man^ and corresponding with what he ig, we shall the better understand that deep saying of the Apostie's, " There are differences of admiu' istrations, but the same Lord " ; and understand also how it is that Christianity assumes a dis^* tinctive character * in certain ages, among cer- •NoteH. Digitized by VjOOQIC 112 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. tain races, even in certain individuals. Christ does not so unite himself to Humanity as to obliterate its native characteristics. Personality is a sacred thing, being the very stamp and print of God upon each human soul: I would say also, it is an awful thing, being that which, whatever else we may gain or lose, we keep through time and through eternity, through it Tmomng and being known. And sacred also is that characteristic impress which, whether in rehgious or national society, gives life and indi- vidual expression to the community that bears it. " Common sense," " public spirit," — are these mere words ? Words truly, but testifying, used or misused as they may be, to the fact of our being, in Adam and in Christ, members one of another, enjoying not only a separate but a corporate existence, the functions of which can only be exerted through fellowship and union. "Have we not one Father? hath not one God created us ? and did Se not make one ? " * All civil, as well as all Christian society, is based upon this confession, yet with this diflFerence, that the social is the outward, and in some de- gree conventional, recognition of Brotherhood ; tiie Christian, its hearty, inward acceptance, without which the distinctive mark of savage or • Mai. IL 10, 16. Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 113 animal life will reassert itself in the very bosom of civilization. Selfishness, or sdfism (as it stands in its old form), tends continually to sepa- ration, — solitariness. Nature, it is true, tells us that we cannot do without each other, if we would advance or prosper ; she bids us use each other, Christ bids us love each other, " even as he hath loved us," with no single, no self-cen- tred aim. He alone setteth the solitary in fami- lies^ by giving, in his own Person, that common centre for hopes, interests, and aflFections, which is the principle of family, — united life. Nature draws men together, but even in this drawing there is a disuniting principle at work ; in social life, for instance, so admirable in its ideal out- line, we find practically something in ourselves and in others which makes it hard, even impossi- ble, to fulfil the obligations that we see most clearly. We find ourselves in the midst of con- tending wills, of confused, sometimes contradic- tory relations, — a strain is laid upon Humanity which, weak through a civil discord, it is not strong enough to bear unaided. " In Adam all dies " ; the flaw runs through to the foundations, the sword reaches even to the life* "The earth," saith Christ, "is weak, and all the inhabiters thereof; / bear up the pillars of it." Nature and humanity fail ; their Digitized by VjOOQIC 114 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. great charter is written in fiiding characters, dis tinct, it is true, in outline, but not clearly legi- ble till held to the warmth of a heaven-kindled flame. In nature, even as in Christ, no man liveth, no man dieth, to himself; and of this human sodety, even under its most limited con- ditions, makes us aware, by showing the action and reaction ever at work between the individ- ual and the community he belongs to. We see that a man really becomes better or worse mor- ally, advances or retrogrades socially, according to the standard of life which prevails around him, — a standard which he himself is at the same time helping to depress or raise. This is a truth which we meet by the wayside, and as often pass without heedmg it. Yet once in the course of this world, in the history of a Man who lived, who died for tie people, who had no personal interests (as we are accustomed to con- ceive of them), cmd wkoBe life^ on any materialise Uc theory^ would have been an impossibility^ this truth has been taken up upon the Mount, and there so transfigured and glorified, that men who toil and strug^e below, seeing it in its beauty, "running to it, salute it." In the life and in the teaching of Christ j a clew: ideal has dawned upon men, and we must not be discouraged though we should find it. Wee all other idealSj hard to be realized in this present life. Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 115 The pang of all true spirits in political, in social, in Christian life alike is this, to see clearly what we cannot as yet embrace wholly. Nor must we despair if this pang should grow keener with increasing light; *'As the day lengthens, the cold strengthens.'* Two principles are at work within Christianity , twin-existent, of wbkh as yet, travailing and in haste to be delivered, she crieth out, — the de^ sire for unity, and the passionate love for truth. These desires, under the present limitations <^ human nature, are antagonistic, and have often, in darker ages, torn the bosom at which they were fed. Yet they are no less of Christ, brings ing, according to his prophecy, a Sword into the world. We see in the Gentile world no desire for unity, — a desire ever founded on the love, either in earnest or in possession, of some fixed, indisputable truth. And of this they had so little conception, that Pilate's Question, " What is truth?" expresses, as it were, the sense of the ancient world. He did not wait for an answe^, because he did not believe there was any to be found ; all things being true for those who held them to be so. We see how sociable, to use their own expression, the old religions were in this; how ready to adopt and ingraft Digitized by VjOOQIC 116 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. any new idea or form of belief which seemed good for use, or even for ornament, in social life. We see, too, how opposed to this plastic genius of the Old World is that, the arrow of the Chris- tian Church, which has rankled so sorely in past ages, and even now diflftises a bitterness which, however, if rightly probed, discloses less the bit- terness of hatred than that of love, — of love, chilled and mortified, desiring to knit up the ancient bond, yet repelled even while it is at- tracted, because the iron and the clay are so mixed together that only the heat of charity at its whitest glow can weld them into one. The bosom of Christ is the grave, the only grave of religious acrimony ; we learn secrets there which render it possible for us to be of one heart, if we may not yet be of one mind, with all who lean upon it with us. For, slightly as we may think to heal long-festering hurts, there is no cure* for religious dissension except that of spiritual ac- quaintance with God, as revealed to us in the mind and spirit of Christ Jesus. To " acquaint ourselves " thu% with God is " to be at peace," for it is to learn how far more strong than all * Of this the sours good Physician makes us aware in His memorable answer to his disciples, Luke ix. 64, 66. Even in rebuking their imcharitable temper, he reveals to them its cause and remedy: ^ Ye know not the Spirit of whom ye ar« the children.*' Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 117 which separates is that which luiites us in Him. So long as the external is more to us than the vital, the accidental dearer than the essential, so long, in short, as we are more Churchmen, more Protestants, more anyiJdng than Christians, re- ligious acerhity will continue. It ceases so soon as the pure language becomes more familiar to our lips than the dialects in which we are apt to merge it, and they who are in Christ, heanng each other speak plainly j discover that they are one in Him, even as he is one with the Fa- ther. *' Jerusalem is built as a city that is at unity with itself" ; that which-moulds itself from with- in is free. Who that knows anything of what unity really is, — how deep its rctot, how kindly and unconstrained its expansion, — can be very solicitous for uniformity, — the outward union of " cold and neutral and inwardly divided mindsj'* the rigid, corpse-like symmetry of that which cannot of itself either live or go, but must be ever kept up by that by which it can be alone produced, — the strong pressure of the compelling hand ? Human spirits are only to be drawn to- gether and held together by the living bond of having found something in which they really do agree. And, though we may yet be far from &e dawning of that day, known unto the Lord, Digitized by VjOOQIC 118 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. when Opinion and Truth will be no more at variance, the "One Day* when there shall be One Lord and his Name One," we are, perhaps, not so far removed from a time when devout men, although they be of every nation under heaven, may hear each other speak of the won- derful works of God in their own tongue, — the tongue in which they were hom^ — a speech after which many among us have begun to yearn too fervently to be any longer occupied in framing shibboleths to prove our Brethren. Is not a day coming — yea, unto them who watch for the Morning, has it not already dawned? — when we shall grow so covetous of good, of grace, as to turn our swords, too often sharpened against each other's bosoms, into ploughshares, to break up the fellow ground that lies within and around us ? when we shall beat our spears into pruning-hooks to dress the abimdant increase of the days, when the sower shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed? Already we are beginning to attach a spirit- ual meaning to the prophecy, "Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim"; to look forward to a time when enmity mthin God's kingdom shall so &r cease • See the oonclosion of Zechariah's pioj^ieoj. Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 119 as to allow the kindred zeal of bis people, — zeal which is but love luider its more ardent aspect, — to be turned against the common enemies of their king, and to find there its triumphs. "They shall fly upon the shoulders of the Philistines towards the west; they shall spoil them of the east together ; they shall lay their hand upon Edom and Moab, and the children of Ammon shall obey them." "In the evening time there shall be light." Evening brings with it the thought of home and rest, the desire for communing round the hearth with those of our own family and household. Many steps are now surely,* though perhaps ♦ " The second Pentecost preceding the coming of our Sav- iour promises to be of a very universal character. Blessed time! I now read the Old Testament promises of a great bless- ing * on oS flesh * as if I had never read them before: they appear in a new light. Is not that prophecy of Zecharioh striking, — * And the inhabitants of one city shall go to another, saying, Let ns go speedily to pray before the Lord, and to seek the Lord of Hosts: IvoUl go alto. Yea, many people and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord ' ? ** Those beautiful, questioning words of Isaiah about the Gen- tiles often occur to me : * Who are these who fly as doves to their windows ? ' — a flock of doves speeding to their home, their ark of refuge. Noah*s one dove, like the solitary Jewish Church, took refuge there from the wild waste of .waters ; but all kindreds, peoples, tongues, and nations shall fly to their stronghold in latter times, their feathers of gold and their wings covered with silver, white and lovely, though they have lien among the pots.'*— J. £. B. Digitized by VjOOQIC 120 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. half instinctavely, seeking the Father's house , there is a sound of home-going feet, a murmur of anxious, loving recognition. The approach of ni^t brings with it a sense of need and dependence, and in this, the World's great evening, the heart has become more alive to the puliation which is ever at work throughout the whole of Christ's Mystical Body, a secret per- haps not to be entered upon very early in the believer's day. For the characteristic of the religious or seeking soul is soUtariness. It is the withdrawal of the soul into the wilderness, there, in that deepened sense of personal ac- countability in which most religious convictions begin, to plead with God face to face, of indi- vidual sin, for individual redemption ; its cry is, "Lord, save mcy for I perish." The characteristic of the godly, the accepted soul, so joined unto the Lord as to be of one spirit with him, is fellowship; in awaking up into Christ it awakes unto its brethren ; its ex- clamation is that of the Psalmist, "Behold, there are many with me." And though the believer often seems, like his Master, to tread the wine-press alone, neither his conflicts nor his triumphs are ever really soli- tary. " Multitudes, multitudes," if unseen, are ever round him. Our Lord in his last solemn Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 121 hour speaks of sanctifying himself /or the sake of those whom his Father had given him, that they also might be sanctified through the truth ; and though we may be unable as yet to pierce to the heart of all that is included in those words, ** Because I live^ ye shdl live alsoy^ * we know enough even now to be aware that heaven and earth are drawn so much the nearer each other for every soul in living communion with Christ. As every waste and barren spot becomes a centre for noisome exhalations to gather in, a haunt for doleful creatiu'es to repair to, so for every piece of territory reclaimed unto God the whole garden of the Lord advances by so much nearer its final blossoming as the rose. And as our seasons grow milder and more healthful because a marsh has been drained or a forest cleared in some remote district, so will the blessing which faith draws down extend far beyond the age or region whence its voice arose. Our warfare with the sins and sorrows of our * Oar Lord says, " I am come tiiat ye might have life, and that ye might have it more abundantly " ; life in its abundance, not in its mere continuity, which, at least to some spirits, would offer little to attract or satisfy. But what if we receive the say- ing in its intensity t — " the fulness of life," — extended capacities, enlarged affections, with infinite wisdom and love to meet and answer them? '* My people shall be satisfied with my goodness, for I have satiated the weary soul, and replenished every sorrow- tul soul.** 6 Digitized by VjOOQIC 122 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. spirits may be accomplished in some far-distant field, and they who have tarried at home may thus divide the spoil with the mighty. The lowly Christian, lifting up holy hands to God, is at that moment strengthening those of some im- seen brother ; the ground upon which he kneels may continue dry as was the fleece of Gideon ; the object upon which his heart's desire and prayer is set may fail; yet his labor has not therefore been in vain in the Lord. The bless- ing he has sought may drop far hence upon the dweUings in the wilderness, may help to bring down floods upon the dry ground which has not of itself craved after the increase from on high. And knowing that neither the word which God sends forth, nor the holy impulse which that word quickens, can ever return to him void, are we not justified in much hope, in long patience? Tou say to me, "We ask for the continual dew of God's blessing ; but need we, in days when the enemy breaketh in like a flood, despair of seeing floods descend upon a waiting world in answer to secret, persevering prayer?" "I will pour floods upon the dry ground." The ground is dry, yet it still con- tains within it that Root which sprung of old " out of a dry ground " ; a root which at the Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 123 scent of water will bud and bring forth bonghs like a plant. " Revive, O Lord, thy work in the midst of the years I " ^^ Awake, O north wind, and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out.'* Digitized by VjOOQIC Digitized by VjOOQIC Part Third. Digitized by VjOOQIC ^TJberefbrey bdbold, I will allure her. And bring her into the wilderness. And speak comfortably to horj jittd I toill give her her vineyards from thenee^ And the valley of Trouble for a door of Hope.** HossA ii. 14, 15. Digitized by VjOOQIC PART III. pT sotil is athirst for God,'* saith the Psalmist, " even for the living God." There is a point beyond which neither the . experience of others, nor even the utterances of the inspired Word can instruct or comfort the heart; it must have rejoicing in itself, and not in any other ; it must learn of its Lord as none save himself can teach. Its prayer is, " -MaJfce me to hear thy voiceJ*^ It knows much about Jesus, but it desires to know him; it can no longer rest in opinions, in ordinances, in Chris- tianity received as a system, in anything save in Christ, and in actual communion with him. But whence comes this sigh, the broken lan- guage of every Christian heart, "More of Christ I " How is it that our Lord hath been so long time with us, and yet we have not known him? Digitized by VjOOQIC 128 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. Who among us has not experienced moments, and these perhaps often recurring, in which the heart has communed with itself and been sad, desiring that Jesus would himself draw near, yet ready, in its discouragement, to ask whether, in the very urgency of its desire and its endeavor, it may not be exacting too much of itself, may not be expecting too much of God ? For have we, in this urgency, enough consid- ered that saying of our Saviour's, " I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot hear them now " ? The natural man dies hard within us ; the man from heaven is not bom * without a pang ; first the Anguish, then the Joy. Are our souls willing, yea, are they a6fe, to endure that anguish, ardently as we may desire the joy which makes it to be remembered no more? When the fulness of time is come, the fulness of strength will be given to meet it, and not before ; and, meanwhile, the way of life continues to have its own ache,f a sadness peculiar to itself. A certain degree of impatience seems natural, even befitting to Man, a being of keen though limited vision, of stringent though narrow grasp. *^We know notj" says Bacon, speaking of natural life, " vikeSier to be bom may not be as painful as to d!r«." t Eein Reisen ist ohn Ungemach, J Das Lebensweg hat auch sein Ash* Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 12^ His mind, as one who has sounded its yery depths has taught us, is naturally enamored of order and system ; he finds within himself the Surmise of a perfection which outward nature does not respond to, and for this he the more delights to trace a sequence through all her ap- parent confusion ; to discover that hy earth and air and ocean there is a path such as the vul- ture's eye hath not known. And if science, as has been truly said, mourns to find a gap, eveiy here and there, in her great chain of cause and consequence, — a link broken, perhaps dropt through forever, — how is it with the Christian, if in the ladder which joins earth to heaven there should be some rounds wanting? How is it when Man, who loves to track the end from the beginning, to see the flower wrapt up in the bud, finds that the life of the soul, Uke that of the insect, must pass through strange metamor- phoses, through sundry successive kinds of deaths ? when he discovers that the Ufe of the Divine seed, set so deep in the heart and in the world, instead of being one of consistent growth, of free, harmonious development, may be the most fitly illustrated by the well-known simile of an acorn set within a jar of porcelain; a mighty plant that must shatter its firail earthen tabernacle in its growing. 6* I Digitized by VjOOQIC 130 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. And here we are reminded of what the prophet tells us, that God's thoughts are not our thoughts, neither His ways our ways. God has time for everything, and he has room for every- thing ; but it is far otherwise with his creature, and the tendency of all* human effort is to go straight to a desired aim, putting on all possible strain and pressure. Thus, adding what we conceive of infinite power to what we hnow of finite willj we have arrived at an idea of Om- nipotence,* the exact opposite, surely, of that to * An idea in which we lose sight of the fact that God, no less than man, has a nature, and within that nature laws by which he is irresistibly governed, and ends to which his designs infal- libly tend ; and it is probable, indeed certain, that, if we could see clearly into the depths of the Divine counsels, we should find nothing arbitrary or adventitious in any of the works or de- crees of the Almighty ; nothing, I mean, which could have been othertoise than that which it is. Choice is the glory of humanity, its distinctive attribute j raising a man as high above the inferior creatures as it sinks him below Deity, for to choose is obviously as human as is to err ; infinite wisdom can see and take but one way. God, as his Apostle tells us, cannot deny or contradict himself; and upon this, His moral obligation, the moral freedom of man is founded, — a freedom which the gospel of life and immortal- ity has brought to light, and which it alone reveals. All systems founded upon nature gender to bondage ; behind which of these, whether Pagan or Pantheistic, do we not see, or rather feel, the dark background of power orUyj — in other words. Fate, decree- ing, creating, devouring all things, — the blind, impassive womb and grave of rational and sensitive life ? " God is a spirit." What is Predestination, the Christian form • of Fatalism, but this, — the everlasting purpose of God towards Digitized by VjOOQIC * THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 131 which all we Bee of the Almighty's works would lead. "We accustom ourselves to speak of his dealings, whether in grace or nature, as being sudden, irresistible, one in design and in execu- good, which sin by its very nature contradicts, and naturally opposes, so that that which is exceeding good becomes the ex- ceeding evil ("anguish, tribiUation, and wrath") of those who resist it. The ungodly, unless, through repentance and faith in Christ, they fall back, as it were, upon God's plan, must perish with all that runs counter to it. Consider in this light the male- dictory passages in the Psalms, and the awful denunciations of the Prophets against national sins; they are declaratory, having to do with what is, as much as with what will be. The spirit instructed in God's unchanging counsels (knowing His mind and purpose) reads the Present and Future by one light, and is able to interpret the one by the other. What has been (in this sense) will be, must be; under certain conditions certain results follow. NoTB BT THE EDITOR. — The awful question here touched upon has been too often presented by theologians in such a way as to shock the moral sense, by a necessary inference that the Divine economy is alike conservative of evil and good, misery and happiness. Implacable hate, immeasurable revenge, insatia- ble cruelty, — all that is abhorrent in man, — have been attribut- ed by the veriest blasphemy of logic to God. Eternity of evil, an endless, aimless horror of discord, torment, and despair, believed in as an end and purpose of creation, would seem to make heaven itself impossible. Our author, while admitting the fact of future suffering and loss, refers it to that conscious freedom of choice in- separable from man as a moral being, the denial of which in this life or the next involves the loss of his personal identity and ac- countability. The dark problem has no other solution than that which is reached through simple faith in the Divine Goodness. Shall not He do right? Can we not leave all in His hands? If we, when nearest to Him in feeling, yearn with tenderest pity after the sin-sick and suffering, how much more He whose name is Love ? Overwhelmed by a sense of our own moral infirmitiet Digitized by VjOOQIC 132 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. ticm ; yet Nature, so soon as ever we pierce below her broad surface-smile, betrays on every hand the marks ci care, of patience, and adaptation. AU that we learn of God in this region tends and the evfl about us, we are too prone to question the sufficiency of His love; bound down, as it were, in the grave-clothes of spiritual death, we too often distrust '* the power of His resur rection." '* Infinite Goodness,*' says the Ck)untess de Gasparin, « finds us more sceptical than infinite justice.'* Sin indeed throws a baleful shadow upon the future; but who shall set limits of time and place to the mercy of God, which '* endureth fortver »» ? ** When," asks the author of this book in her closing paragraph, ''were Love's arms stretched so wide as upon the cross?" Looking thitherward, may we not tremblingly and reverently trust the larger hope, which, secretly cherished in the inmost heart of Christendom from the times of OHgen and Duns Scotus to those of Foster and Maurice, has found its fitting utter- anoe in the noblest poem of the age? *' yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill. To pangs of nature, sins of will, Defects of doubt and taints of blood: ** That nothing walks with aimless feet. That not one life shall be destroyed Or cast as rubbish to the void When God hath made the pile complete: '* That not a worm is cloven in vain; That not a moth with vain desire Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire, Or but subserves another's gain. "Behold I we know not anything: I can but trust that good shall fall At last, — far off, — at last, to an. And every winter change to spring.** Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 138 more and more to bring his works out of the domain of the magical^ to convince us that it is the human, and not the Divine energy, which craves for its purposes the signet-stamp of fiill and speedy accomplishment ; " For we are hasty bnilders, incomplete; Our Master follows after, far more slow And far more sure than we, for frost, and heat, And winds that breathe, and waters in their flow, Work with Him sUently." And turning to God's inner kingdom ; here, too, where the good to be desired is so great, the evil to be avoided so imminent, even here, also, we must confess that God wraps up his great designs in a husk or envelope, which will not fidl from ofiP them until the appointed time be come. What is the sacred history, from its very beginning, but that of a labor working to a mighty, far-seen, and remote end ? What is Christianity, though it has in its cradle contend- ed with and crushed the serpent ? — even now but "an infant of days." We think, naturally, that God might make all things as he wishes them to be at once ; but we find that it is not his way to do so. God does not heal us with a touch. He uses means and processes, tedious often and peculiarly afflicting, — "He giveth medicine'' for our mortal sickness; a life-long Digitized by VjOOQIC 184 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. remedy for a Ufe-hng iU. And when we feel — as what Christian at times does not? — an im- patience with the slowness of our own growth, let us look from ourselves into the universal Church of Christ, and ask this self-answering question of our hearts. How shall the growth of the part be rapid, when that of the whole has been so slow? Let us consider the nature of the Earher Dispensation, and recollect under how many costly and cumbrous folds of rite and ceremony the treasure of the world lay hid. Let us remember that this is still a hid treas- ure; that to the outwardly Christian, no less than to the Heathen World, the great mystery of redeeming love remains that world's Open Secret, declared, yet uncommunicated, plain to the ear, yet dark to the sense. Let us con- sider the slow, the uneven, the painfiil advance of the Mystic Spouse, — she that cometh up from the wilderness, leaning upon the arm of Her Beloved, — and, we shall see that she, Uke her Lord, is wounded in her heart, her hands, and her feet. And that these things are so, the Christian must fain confess. Yet he would fain see them otherwise; would fain behold if it were but the initial fulfilment of those deep, instinctive prophecies which overcharge his heart, — a Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 185 "heart too large for the hody through which it must for the present work. Yet, amoDg many yet unfiilfiUed predictions, he must look upon one evermore fulfilling itself, and read in all that passes within him and around him a comment upon the Eldest-bom of Prophecy : " Thou shalt bruise his head, and he shall bruise thy hed.^^ He must see evil following hard upon good, following because of good; Satan exalting himself against Christ; the Gates of Hell ad- vancing upon that against which they shall never prevail. Therefore is he often in this life perplexed and baffled, as one that knoweth not what his Lord doeth. And it is this which gives such terrible, even blighting power to the words and writings of unbelievers, which barbs and sends home many a dull scoff that would otherwise fall harmless, — that they touch a con- scious, ever-rankhng wound. What they urge against Christianity is true. The believer knows, already knows, all that the infidel can tell him ; the eye of love can see as clearly as that of hate, and it has already mourned over all that the other exults in ; has seen springs sink down suddenly among the sands of the desert; has looked upon bare and stony chan* nels, now ghastly with the wreck and drift of ages, yet showing where once a ftdly fidr river Digitized by VjOOQIC 136 THE PATIENCE OP HOPE. bore down life and gladness to the ocean. Thd Christian would &in explain, account for, these long delays, this partial efficacy, this intermit^ tent working. He feels that he is in possession of the key which is to open all these intricacies^ but at present he finds that, like that of the Pil- grims, ** it grinds hard in the lock." He sees Jesus, but he sees not yet all things put under him. The world around him is the same world which crucified his beloved Lord, and he must listen from age to age to its insulting cry, " If thou be the Christ, come down from the Cross, and we will believe." There is something sorrowftd, even perplex- ing, in every life which is guided by a standard which those around us do not recognize ; to be living by the dial, when all around us go by the clocks brings a contradiction into the life of which the lives of those who are in league with circumstance, ^'the slaves and the masters of every day," know nothing. There is a sadness in all Idealism ; it lifts the soul into a region where it cannot now dwell ; it must return to earth, and it is hard for it not to do so at the shock of a keen revulsion, the dashing of the foot against a stone. But in no life does the secret of all tragedy,* the conflict * Interior freedom and exterior necessity, these are the two poles of the Tra^o World.— F. ScHLBOEii. Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OP HOPE. 137 between the "Will and Circumstance, so unfold itself as in that of the Christian ; he, of all men, feels and mourns over that sharp, ever-recur- ring contrast of our existence, — the glorious capabilities, the limited attainments, of man's nature and destiny below. For Ub possibilities are at once more glorious and more assured than those of other men ; yet, as regards actu- alities, he among all men must be content to have the least to show. And this, if we ex- amine deeply, will be found at the root of all sincere fanaticism. It is the agony of the spirit, its strict, convulsive embrace of some glorious truth, the soul's first love,* for the sake of which it refuses to perceive the limitations to which all things here have been made subject. Having tasted of the firuit of the tree of life, " good for food, pleasant to the eyes, and to be desired to make one wise," it forgets that old, unrepealed statute, that man, in the Second Adam as in the First, must till the ground from whence he was taken.f Until he returns to the earth, he must turn to it, nourishing and being nourished by it; if he would stretch forth his hand and live by what he can reach of absolute truth, he will quickly come across the flaming sword turning every way to keep the way of the Tree of Life. * Note L t Genesis iiL 19. 28. Digitized by VjOOQIC 188 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. ** We trusted it had been He which should have redeemed Israel." Under whatever form this hope encounters us, — from the wild ex- cesses of the Fifth-Monarchy Men and Munster Anabaptists, to the simple expectation of the Dorsetshire peasant, who in Monmouth's rebel- lion talked about " King Jesus," — there is al- ways something affecting in its expression ; and the more so, because the foreseen sadness of its disappointment is one which connects itself with the natural experience of Christian life. How much is there in this to remind the believer of what the two chosen disciples must have felt when they descended from the Mount of Trans- figuration 1 For he, too, has known moments, perhaps hours, on which the calm of eternity seemed already to rest, — still, blessed seasons in which he has beheld, not only Moses and Elias, but his own life also, transfigured in his beloved Lord ; times in which things p'esent were inteUigi" 6fe, things distant clear. And he, too, has come down, like them, to meet the full shock of this life's perplexity, to be met by human anguish, the struggles of the demoniac, the tears of his father, to witness and perhaps share the discom- fiture of his brethren, " Why could not we cast him out ? " to listen to their perverse disputings as to "who among them should be greatest." Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 139 To wfiom shall he declare the glorious revela- tion? to whom shall he even speak* of the things which he has seen and heard? Yea, even while he thinks upon the Vision, even be- fore it has had time to fade, he may find, by a sudden blank and stillness in his own spirit, that *' it has been received up again into heaven." " A little while I" said the disciples ; " what is this he saith ? A little while I — we cannot un- derstand what he saith." A little while^ and ye shall not see me^ — a hard saying to the loving, confiding heart, which would fain abide forever where it has foimd it so good to be, — a hard but * " AU ihat I hold worthiest^" says David Scott, of the high ideal objects to which his life was devoted, ^^ seems to remove me from the sphere of other men.^* A kindred sense of isolation must often overtake the Christian, and it is one which he must learn to meet with a prepared and patient heart We must be content faithfully to speak out what we feel and know, without expecting that others will be proportionably affected. These things Have been shown to us by God himself, worked by His Hand into the very frame and texture of the soul; can the mere teJUng^ even though of truth itself, affect as sensibly? Besides this, we must remember that it is not only spiritual things that appear ** foolishness " in the absence of enlightened receptivity. Young people, for instance, do not, cannot^ believe what the old tell them of life and its trials; and what mere ' jargon, to one uninitiated, appears the talk of two enthusiasts upon literature and art I It gives him a secret irritation; he is not only uninfluenced by their zeal, but scarcely believes that they themselves really feel what they express so strongly, knowing that the world to him goes on very well without this foreign element, and could dispense with it forever. Digitized by VjOOQIC 140 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. inevitable saying. There is a severity in onr Lord's inner discipline which reminds the be- liever of Joseph's making himself strange unto his brethren. For it is not the natural man only that has to be humbled and chastened by Him, the spiritual man also must become as a weaned child, and for him there is " a secret, low fire " kept Icmg burning. In Christ, as well as for Christ, they are to be counted happy who endure; who bear all things, — silence, delay, aridity, for thus he trains his Athletes. The spiritual life is a world within itself; with joys, with sorrows, I would say also with temp* tations^ peculiarly its own ; and he has not ad- vanced far within its borders who has not learnt the truth of that saying, " I beheld, and, lo I by the very gate of heaven was there a road to hell," who has no*t prayed with holy Herbert for deliverance ^^from the arrow that flfeth by wxmday,^'^ There is much even in the renewed mind which, if su£Pered to remain there, would gradually eat away the heart of its strength and purity; something in each believer, which he imagined he had left behind when he forsook all and gave himself up to follow Christ, but he finds that it has rushed after him, like Care in the ancient proverb, and holds to him with as tight a grasp as ever. Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 141 How many tendencies, and these not to be numbered among such as are the least worthy, will seek, like Clovis and his Paladins, for a hollow, hasty baptism, that they may be called by Christ's name, and fight his battles, remain-^ ing just what they were at first 1 Therefore the believer, as he advances in self-knowledge, learns to bless and to adore those piercing yet enlightening experiences of his own weakness, which, as it were, let daylight within his whole spiritual being. He learns, even in exclaiming, " Who shall dehver me fi:om the body of this death ? " to rejoice in those its deep-seated in- firmities, against which he continually prays and strives, — he finds many things within him, piti- able rg,ther than sinful ; hinderances fi:om which he longs to free himself, yet learns even in these to recognize his true though humble friends and helpers ; him they compd to hear the cross ; and even in that compulsory bearing, his heart so grows to it, as to desire no independent strength or virtue. " Blessed are ye poor" Blessed are the souls in whom not the strength of nature only, but that of grace, has been so brought low, even to the very dust, that they have learnt to call nothing that they have their own. Often must the behever, like Antasus, grow stronger for having touched the ground; often Digitized by VjOOQIC 142 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. must he experience the sentence of death m himself^ — must feel himself a Being without heart or hope, incapable and even insensible, so that he may learn to trust, not in himself or in any other, but in Him who raises the spiritually dead. The Christian must hold on to God, through conflicts and agonies; he must fight while his blood runs down and glues his hand to his sword, so must he hold on, when that hand* is benumbed and stiflF with cold; when strength and consciousness seem gone together, and only an instinct remains through which the soul is able to fling itself like a dead weight upon Christ. Yet even here is • The flnctuations to which spiritual life is subject show the wisdom and goodness of Grod in making so much of it to reside in duty, a principle independent of the variaUons of/eeting. There are long seasons of banishment from God's presence, uncon- nected, perhaps, with any sense of His displeasure, in which the 80ul must say, " Make me as one of thy hired servants," and during which, even in the absence of sensible love and joy and fervor, it may be able to testify that " Great is the peace of them that love thy law," There are spaces and silences in the Christian life, times which it is impossible to describe, because ** fiill desertness '* in souls, as in countries, ** lieth bare," — times when the soul seems devoid of the capacity, even of the desire, for communion with its Lord, yet even during these its delight in His service may continue, because the excellency of His commandment has truly, however imperfectly, become its chief and chosen good. " The poor,** saith our Master, ** ye have ever with you, but Me ye have not aiwaya." A continual service of love, but a oonmiunion not as yet abiding. Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 143 *• An overthrow Worth many victories." Through being chilled and mortified in the small- est, most inwardly humiliating things ; through being beaten away from the broken cisterns of self and of all creatures, we learn, as we could never without this have done, to look to Christ as our well of life, and so to find all our jfresh springs in him, as to be able to say with a simple and sincere heart, " Lord, give me evermore of 1Mb watery so that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw." "He that believeth shall not make haste." Blessed are they, thou good Joseph, who love thee even as thou art ; who trust thee in spite of thy silence and thy strangeness, thy long de- lays, thy repeated questionings, thy withdrawal into thy secret chamber, thy protracted tarrying there. " Blessed is he who shall not be ofiended in Me." For Wisdom, even in this world, is justified of her children ; most so of all in Him, her chief, her only beloved Son, without Whom was not anything made that was made, yet who rejoices in the habitable parts of the earth, and whose dehghts are with the sons of men. I know not how to speak of that great era in the Christian's soul when, whether through the Strength of a Digitized by VjOOQIC 144 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. patient following, or tlirough the sweetness of a loving recognition, it finds Him whom it has long loved, and passes,* in that finding, from the straitened life within itself into the £rce outlook* ing from self into Christ. When it ceases to confer with flesh and blood, to watch over its own changes and fluctuations, for the sake of attaching itself impUcitlj to Him who is the whole of what we have in part ; when it lives no longer by faith,t but by Christ, holding Him * " I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee." After long conscientious serving of God, refreshed by little feeling of joy or comfort, there are moments when the soul seems suddenly made aware of its own happiness, — when, either through outward circumstances or without them, an aj^eal is borne in upon it as direct, as pleading, as distinct, as that which was made of old to Peter, ** Simon, so9 of Jonas, lovest thou me?" and it Is able to answer out of its very depths, " Lord, thou knowest" Its love for its Lord being as surely felt, as little to be doubted as its ewn being, it answers as steadfastly as if aslsed whether a parent or child was loved --^ it dares even to appeal to the omniscience of the heart-searching God, — " Thou knowest,^* Such moments are surely more to us than a passing comfort Do they not teach us something of the depth of those words, '*TFe love him because he Jirtt loved us. For is not this also of the Lord, — this tender attraction, this warmth, at which the frozen waters of the heart break up and flow forth as at the breath of spring? And does not this seeking of our love on Christ's part convince us that he is ever loving us in our colder as well as nM)re fervent seasons, and that, in being drawn by his loving-kindness, we have laid hold on his everkst^ ing love, — a chain which runs backwards and forwards through all eternity?—!. E.B. t KoteK. Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 145 too surely to think of that it holds by, — it has done with self-questioning, with self-analy- sis; it believes in the hve by which it lives^ and can appeal for all answer to the fact of its own life. And I know not what should more cheer and gladden a Christian than to see his spiritual life losing everything of an exotic character ; to have it set in the open air, welcoming the wind from every quarter ; acquiescing in all things because depending only upon one. A free and sustained spirit becomes habitual to him, who, in the break- ing of his daily bread, has found that Real Pres- ence which sanctifies and glorifies our life's poor Elements. When the heart has found its true gravitation, it leaves that Rest slowly and re- turns to it quickly; disturbing influences will be felt from time to time, but their power is gone, — ^^that which is the strongest must tvin.^^ A firm, assured patience grows upon the Chris- tian, enabling him to hold upon his way, unde- terred, unchilled, by whatever he may meet upon it; enabling him also, I know not to what inner music, to build up his spirit to a Strength of calm, reliant conviction, even with the stones he finds there, as a brook lifts up a more clear and rapid voice for flowing over pebbles. Roughness and littleness, indifferenco Digitized by VjOOQIC 146 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. and contradiction, for all of these the heart that has made room for Christ finds room, in a stead- fitst, not scomfiil allowance. The strain upon the inner life has passed over from self to Christ, and with that strain the onea^ pressure which may once have tended to something of exaggeration and eccentricity. Time was when the believer was often fein, with the G^ul of old, to decide a doubtful ques- tion by violence, to fling his sword within the wavering balance. He can now afford, like the practised archer in sending home his arrow, to allow for the set of the wind it flies through. His heart has grown wise, instructed, tolerant, tender with weakness, patient of imperfection : ^ Who is blind as he that is perfect, And blind as the Lord's servant? ** How quiet such a life is I how fruitftil I — fruit- ful because it is so quiet; it works not, but lives and grows. The uneasy effort has passed out of it ; unre%ting^ because it rests always^ it has done with task-work and anxiety; it serves, yet is not cumbered with much serving ; it has ceased from that sad complaint, — ^'Thou hast left me to serve alone^ Such a life will seem less spiritual only be- cause it has grown more natural ; the soul moves in an atmosphere which of itself brings it into Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. Ul contact with all great and enduring things, and it has only to draw in its breath to he filled and satisfied. I know not how to describe the grand- eur and simplicity of the state that is no longer self-bounded, self-referring; how great a thing to such a freed and rejoicing spirit the life in Christ Jesus seems ; a temple truly " not of this building," too great to be mapped out and meas- ured;* too great to he perfect here. A thought for which our mortal life, — a language as yet too broken and confiised to " Catch up the whole of love and utter it," — can find no corresponding word.f Yet Experience, even the deep assurance of our present imperfectibility, worketh Hope. Though the Church, like the moon, seldom reflects the clear outline, never the full splendor of the light she shines by ; though the shadow • Note L. t De Quincey, speaking of the grandeur and Bubtilty of the human spirit, says most beautifully, that all of our thoughts have not words corresponding to them; many of them in our yet im- perfectly developed nature can never express themselves in acts, but must lie, appreciable hy God only^ like the silent melodies in a great Musician's heart, never to roll forth from harp or organ. In connection with this idea, in how sublime a light does His Name — Thb Word — place our Saviour. Jesus Christ is the Word of God, him in Whom the Father's thought has found full and perfect utterance. ** For I know the thoughts that I think concerning you," saith the Lord, ** thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected etuf.'* Digitized by VjOOQIC 148 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. of earth is too often cast between her orb and Him, she is still ^^the &itliM witness in heaven," weakness girt about with power, the Woman clothed with the Sun, a Wonder in earth and in heaven. Though the believer is no plant grown up in his youth, fair and flourishing, without blight or mildew; though he may be far indeed from sealing up the sum, **ftdl of wisdom and perfect in beauty," still, in spite of every warp and hinderance, he has grown^ and his life has become to him but a Prophecy of the life it keeps warm within it, — " Close comprest, Onr Present holds onr Future, like a Rose That may not yet its perfect Soul unclose, Lest angry winds should scatter or molest'* And as the Christian advances upon his way, a sweet and solemn sense of the unity of life grows upon his spirit. "We are complete in Him " ; much of our life, if viewed in itself only, would appear purposeless and broken, yet Christ has said, "(Jather up these fragments that remain, so that nothing be lost." We learn to look at hfe as a whole thing ; not to be discouraged by this or. that adverse circum- stance, remembering how much there is and will be in that life which is "like frost and snow, kindly to the rootj though hurtfiil to the Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 149 flower/' fatal to the bloom and fragrance, the lovely and enjoyable part of our nature, but friendly to its true, imperishable life. Looking at ourselves, we may see that, under a slight, sometimes a very sUght, modification of inward bent, or outward circumstance, we should have been fer more happy, more beloved, apparevMy more useful than now ; yet we may also see as plainly, as we confess it humbly, that we have attained, through all these losses, to that to which every gain is even present, appreciable loss. And here I would gladly say something of those gracious outward providences through which God will sometimes visibly visit and refi'esh the spirit, turning over, perhaps for- ever, a tear-stained page of contradiction, and unfolding a fresh leaf of richer, happier experi- ence; ** For not forever wQl he eontinae thns to thresh it, Not to vex it with the wheel of his wain, Nor to bmise it with the hoofs of his cattle. In just measure when thoa faiflictest the stroke, thou wilt debate with her. With due deliberation even in the rough tempest.*' Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the believer will find tbe current of his existence sweeping into a broader channel ; will find " doors open- ing" upon him, doors of happiness, doors of Digitized by VjOOQIC 150 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. usefulness, which will be to him a Gate of Heaven; "windows opening," letting in the breath of summer upon his soul, filling it with sunshine and sweet air; suddenly too, in the deep emergencies of life, some new interest, some fiiend, will appear like the Great Twin Brethren, or Saint of old, in the thick of the battle, vanishing perhaps when the fight is over, yet blessing him even in vanishing from his sight. For that terrible saying of Anne of Austria to Richelieu holds true for mercy as well as for judgment : " My Lord Cardinal, Gtxi does not pay at the end of every week, but at the last he pay%y God may put his fidthfiil ones upon a long and painful apprenticeship, during which they learn much and receive little, — food only, and "that in a measure," — often the bread and water of afiOiiction. Yet at the last he pay% ; pays them into their hearts, pays them into their hands also. We may remember long seasons of faint yet honest endeavor ; the pray- ers of a soul yet without strength ; the sacrifices of an imperfectly subdued will, bound even with cords to the altar; we may remember such times, or we may forget them, but their result is with us. Some* of the good seed sown in tears is now shedding a heavenly fragrance Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 151 within our lives, and some of it will blossom, perhaps bear fruit, over our graves.* There are moments in the Christian life upon which the spoil of a long conflict seems heaped, in which it can rejoice even with the joy of a late yet abounding harvest. Seasons, too, sometimes prolonged ones, which recall what the historians of the Middle Ages tell us of the Truce of God, — set, appointed times when the land had rest, and war and violence were no more heard within its borders; so are there blessed intervals, wherein the soul reckons up many desolated Sabbaths, and enjoys a God- given, God-protected rest. Light is good, and it is a pleasant thing to behold the sun. Yet &r dearer than outward peace, far sweeter than inward consolation, is that, the ever-during stay, the solace of the Christian's heart, the imperishable Root of which all else that gladdens it is but the bloom and * ** I have remarked,** says Palissj, ''trees and plants which felt their decay approaching, and which before death hastened to bring forth fruit and grain before the aocnstomed time. — What if I spoke of men?** We may compare what onr Saidonr says, "Except a com ci wheat die, it abideth alone, but if it die, it bringeth forth mnch frnit/* with the fact that his brethren, who did not believe on him during his life, were, after his death, in two known and other probable cases, hlB devoted followers and martyrs. Digitized by VjOOQIC 152 THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. odor; the dry tree* that shall flourish when every green tree of delight and of desire feik. It is to the Cross that the heart must turn for that which will reconcile it to all conflicts, all privations ; which will even enable it, foreseeing them^ to exclaim, "Yet more." When Christ is lifted up within the believing soul, nothing is too hard for it to venture upon or endure; it rests upon a power beyond itself, and can bring its whole strength to bear upon generous, ex- alted enterprise. Show thy servant thy workj and his own will be indeed easy I Let this powerful attraction be once felt, the heart's, the world's great and final Overcoming, and all other bonds will weaken, all other spells decay. ^^ Mxdnight is past^^^ sings the sailor on the Southern Ocean, — ^^MidnigM is past ; the Cross begins to hend.^^ Outward duties weary, inward consolations fail, dhariti/ never faiUth. Let us now turn aside and look upon this great sight, — of Love that bumeth with fire, yet is not consumed ; of Love that, having poured out its soul unto death, yet liveth to see of that soul's long travail and to be satisfied with it. " Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world." When were Love's arms stretched so wide as upon the * Ezek. zviL 24. Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 153 Cross? When did they embrace so much as when thou, O Christ, didst gather within thy bosom the spears and arrows of the mighty to open us a Lane for Freedom I ^^ Thou art gone up on high; thou hast led captivity captive: thou hast received gifts for men ; yea, for the rebeUious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them." Digitized by VjOOQIC Digitized by VjOOQIC Notes. Digitized by VjOOQIC Digitized by VjOOQIC Notes. Note A. — Page 51. LORD, what a wonderful spirit was tliat which made St. Paul, in setting forth of himself against the vanity of Satan's false apostles, hand in his claim here that he in Christ's cause did excel and surpass them all? What wonderful spirit was that, I say, that made him to reckon up all his troubles and labors, his beatings, his whippings, his scourgings, his ship- wrecks, his dangers and perils by water and by land, famine, hunger, nakedness and cold, with many more, and the daily care of all the congregations of Christ, among whom every man's pain did pierce his heart, and every man's grief was grievous unto him? Lord^ is this PavTs primacy y whereof he thought so much good that he did excel aU others f Is not this Paul's saying unto Timothy, his own scholar, and doth it not pertain to whosoever will be Christ's true sol- diers ? Bear thou, saith he, affliction like a true sol- Digitized by VjOOQIC 158 NOTES. dier of Jesus Christ This is trae ; if we die with Christ, we shall live with him ; if we suffer with him, we shall reign with him ; if we deny him, he shall deny as ; if we be faithless, he remaineth faithful : he cannot deny himself. This Paul would have known to everybody ; far there is no other way to heaven hut Christ and his way,** — Bishop Ridlet's Farewell Letter to his Fellow-Prisoners^ and those who were exiled for the Gospel of Christ. NoTB B. — Page 54. * Tjy'^NOW you what our Saviour says to his dear J^L. Peter? * When thou wast young y thou didst gird thyself and didst wcdk where thou wouldst: hut when thou shalt he old, thou shaU stretch forth thy hand, and another shaU gird thee, and lead thee whith- er thou wouldst not.* (St John xxi. 18.) "The young scholars in the love of Grod gird them- selves ; they choose their penance, resignation, devo- tion ; they do their own will in doing the will of Gk)d. But the old masters in that love suffer themselves to be bound and ^rded by another ; they go by ways which they would not choose according to their own inclinations ; they stretch forth their hands, allowing themselves to be governed willingly against their will; they say that ^ohedience is hetter than sacri" Jlces*; they glorify Grod, crucifying not only their flesh but their spirit**— iSi(. Francis de Sales. Digitized by VjOOQIC NOTES. 159 Note CX — Page 57. IN one of Vinef s works on the Christian Kfe are some excellent remarks on St. Paul's words, "the feeble members are the more necessaiy." Then* silent, unseen work, so humble in its mode of action that sometimes its value is first learnt through the sensible blank its withdrawal leaves, is lasting work because it is real work, done and followed, if fol- lowed at all, " for the work's sake." But it is evident- ly far otherwise when genius, learning, or extraordi- nary force of character, things which have a 'powerful attraction in themselves j are consecrated to the service of Christ In spirits thus gifted — its burning and shining lights — ^the Church must be willing to rejoice " for a season," for much that they bring with them will depart when they go ; the foreign elements will break up and scatter when the cord which binds them together is slackened by absence or unloosed by death. We see this in the lives of all men who have been, like Xavier and Schwartz, greatly be- loved by man as well as by God. Much of their work seems to vanish with them, reappearing after a time under humbler forms. Digitized by VjOOQIC ICO NOTES. Note D. — Page 62. « rx^HE poetry of the Psalms is formed, not like X that of modem languages, by the response of answering syllables, but of answering thoughts. This peculiar form of composition was perhaps originally founded upon that correspondence which a devout soul perceives to exist in all the creation of Grod, between the thing seen and unseen, — a correspond- ence upon which the teaching of all our Lord's parables is grounded. The two things, the thing ex- pressing and the thing expressed, exiit together^ side by tide infactj and so they fall together, by a natural process, tide by tide^ in the poetry which describes them. Thus in Psalm ciiL verses 11 — 13 : The height of the heayens iUostrates the boundless nature of 6od*s mercy: The expanse from east to west the distance to which he has removed our sins. The love and pity of an earthly father: The love and pity of a Heavenly one. " * So consider the works of the Most Mgh^ and there are two and two, one against another,' (Ecclus. xxxiii. 15.) " — Plain Commentary on the Psalms. Digitized by VjOOQIC NOTES. 161 Note E. — Page 63, OBSERVE what vivid brightness was cast upon all parts of the Old Testament at the first ap- pearing of the Son of God, and learn from this what will be the radiance of the Sariptures at His Second Advent The true disciples under the Old Covenant were ever waiting,. " searching," as St Peter says, *' to discover what the Spirit which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory which should follow." But looking back to the time of Jeremiah, the Maccabees, or that of the Second Temple, how strange must many passages of Scripture, now sparkling before our eyes with divine lustre, have appeared to the rationalist of the ancient synagogue! How puerile in some parts, how exaggerated and inexplicable in others, how devoid of learning and utility must have appeared to them many chapters and verses which at this day feed our faith, and fill us with a sense of ' the majestic unity of Scripture, cause our tears to flow, and bring weary and heavy-laden sinners to the feet of Jesu3. What said they to Isaiah liii., to Psalms xxii., Ixix., and many others ? How strange and little ^rorthy of the Lord must have appeared much that was contained in these, and in other psalms, prophecies, and types descriptive of Him. Yet what gospel truth has come forth from these! What unfolding of redeeming love I Let us there* Digitized by VjOOQIC 162 NOTES. fore await even more glorious revelations in the day when our Master shall descend from heaven, for, says Irenaeus, "the Scriptures contain difficulties which grace even now enables us to resolve ; but there are others which we leave to God, not only as respects this generation, but those to come, in order that it may be God perpetually teaching, and man perpetu- ally teaming from God the things that are of God." Yet then shall we see the full meaning of many prophecies, facts, and instructions, whose Divine char- acter is now only seen in detached features: then wiU be known the import of those parables, even now so impressive, of the fig-tree, — of the master returning from a far country, — of the bridegroom and bride, — of the net drawn to the shore of eternity, — of Lazarus, — of the guests, — of the husbandmen and of the marriage-feast Then will be known all the glory of such expressions as these : " The Lord said unto my Lord, * Sit thou at my right hand, until thine enemies be made thy footstool/*' "Thy people. Lord, shall be willing in the day of thy power." " The dew of thy youth shall be of the womb of the morning." " He shall wound the head of him who rules over a great country." " He shall drink of the brook in the way, therefore shall he lift up the head." Then also thou wilt reveal thyself to us in all thy glory. Lord Jesus, Saviour, Comforter, Friend of the desolate, our Lord and our God! Thou who hast seen death, but who art alive forevermore. Then Digitized by VjOOQIC NOTES. 163 will all the knowledge of heaven be centred in Thy- self, — the knowledge which the Holy Ghost even now imparts, the knowledge in which Scripture even pow instructs us, for " the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy!* — See conclusion of Theopneustia. Note F. — Page 86. ( EE on this text a sermon by Krummacher. -~ ) Tower Church Sermons* Note G. — Page 101. IT is often through the sore trouble of the soul that the spirit, the part of us in which God lives, is renewed from day to day. When " God," says Jeremy Taylor, " would save man, he did it by way of a man ** ; yet devotional authors seem little famil- iar with that fearful and beautiful thing, our sensitive and rational nature, and in their writings slender allowance is made for all that middle region of feel- ings and tendencies which, themselves neither good nor evil, blend with and color for evil and for good our whole spiritual life, with which they are linked far more intimately than we imagine. In such writ- ers, we trace but little communion with the joy and Digitized by VjOOQIC 164 NOTES. sorrow and beautj of this earth, ^glad, sad, and sweet,** 80 that we sometimes wonder if they have known any enjoyments, pajigs, or conflicts, bu^ such as belong to the life that is in God. To be assured that they had joyed and sorrowed, and loved as men and women, and (is mch had felt Christ's unspeakable consolations, would be a touch of nature making them our kin. But it seldom comes.' St Thomas k Kempis, for instance, dismisses a whole world of feel- ing in two lines, ^ Love no woman in particular, but commend all good women in general to God.** In Madame Guyon and Edwards we long, and long in vain, to see the hand of a man under the wings of the cherubim, and to feel its pressure. There is some- thing deeply consoling in a betrayal of personal feeling, as when Doddridge laments for his little daughter. ^This day my heart hath been almost torn in pieces by sorrow, yet sorrow so softened and so sweetened, that I number it among the best days of my life. Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd ? G^ knows I am not angry, &m< sorrowful he mreJy allows me to he. Lord, give unto me a holy acquiescence of soul in thee, and now that my gourd is withered, shelter me under the shadow of thy wings.** Here we see the man (most a saint in being most a man) agonized like his Master, and like him strengthened from on high, but by One greater than the angeL Digitized by VjOOQIC NOTES. 165 Note H. — Page 111. WHILE, as regards the great essentials of Ghristianily, things remain as they are,* not as we wish, conceive, or think of them, we cannot but perceive a diversity in the way in which we are led up to them, which answers to the infuiite variety of the human spirit We see how the great Apostle of the Gentiles, determined as he was to know and preach nothing among them but Christ and Him crucified, knew at the same time how to be all things to all men, meeting each one upon his peculiar ground, while he held his own with immovable tenaci- ty. As that which he had to declare remained fixed and absolute, he did not change the truth to render it acceptable to his hearers, but, as he himself words it, he chcmged his wnce^ so as to bring truth before them under the aspect to which native bias or (h^- vu)us training rendered them most open. We find in Mysticism a tendency to trample out rather than to train and modify the bent of nature, and this from an ardent desire for union with the Divine essence, which touches at every point upon Pantheistic absorption, and tends to substitute a blank uniformity for the energy and feature of Christian life. "Because I live," saith our Lord, "ye shall live also,'' and as living, be partakers in that which belongs to Life« — freedom, expansion, and variety. ♦ Taylor. Digitized by VjOOQIC 166 NOTES. It has been often remarked, that each one among the branches of our Lord's great family preserves some portion of His teaching more faithfully, reflects some aspect of his character more clearly, than is done by the rest ; and passing &om churches to individuals, we shall find that they who are in Christ will resemble each other in so much a$ they resemble him; they will be like each other (as in earthly relationships) without being alike. Our natural characteristics are not obliterated; rather is the man renewed after Christ's likeness restored to Exmedf^ that excellent thing for which God made him at the first, the type from which he had consciously £Billen away. NoTB L — Page 137. WHEN, and to whom, has the perfect circle of Truth been visible? Certain portions of it seem always in the shade, though no portion of it can remain there long. It seems Grod's will that earnest and faithful-minded men should be continually from age to age bringing forward such fragments of it as have fastened on their own minds in such strong and (relatively) undue prominence, that they are con- strained to present them to the world as they arise, where, like plants set in the ground with reference to fitness of clime and season, they wither, but not before they have fructified and shed seed, which, falling on a more prepared soil, brings forth fruit to perfection. Digitized by VjOOQIC NOTES. 167 The heat and extravagance with which it was at first accompanied fall off like husks from the ripened ear, and the truth which these have kept wann, while it had to push its way through cold, earthy obstructions, unfolds in its fulness. In the physical world this holds true of the secrets which disentangled them- selves from the follies of alchemy, and perhaps ap- plies to many systems of our present day, which, con- taining a vital essence of truth, overlaid with much that is fantastic, will themselves die out ; yet, under other conditions, exert an influence on general science. So in the moral and spiritual world we see forms perishing because of the life that is in them. We say Quakerism has decayed and dwindled ; but why ? even because the wide and loving principles it pro- mulgated in an age of dreary spiritual exclusivism, have been, since the days of the Early Friends (the first apostles of so many a holy cause), gradually and silently incorporated into the thoughts of Christian men in general. They, as Howitt says, have missed being a. great people, but the truths they so simply and perseveringly advocated have not failed of their mark. Neander, speaking of reformers of the heart only, guided by the pure will without the reflective wisdom, says, " Their efforts are as a fire catching rapidly at all around it, but working rather destruc- tively than as an abiding warmth or a clear, diffusive blaze. • • . Before the coming of a great light, ita approach is heralded by lesser lights, which, after shining ih the darkness, seem to disappear. Before Digitized by VjOOQIC 1«8 NOTES. a decisive and general triumph of the right, its waj is first cleansed bj the blood of victims who have &llen in its cause, and bj attempts that miscarry be^ cause they were untimely. But a voice fix)m the Past (the world's history) assures us that he who goeth forth to do battle for the right simply is sure of victory, as, although he should be himself over- powered, and his work for a season defeated, he has yet thereby contributed to the final triumph of the right in its proper time.** The design of die Almighty is like that of the vast cadiedrals of old at which many generations of work- men were content to labor in succession ; each help- ing to carry out some part of the magnificent plan, each building up some part of his life and strength in the mighty structure whose completicm he could never hope to witness. ** They shall perish, but thon remainest; And they all shall wax old as a garment, And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, And they are changed; But thou art the same; and thy years shall not fail; The chUdren of (hy servants skaU continue. And thdr $eed shcUl tkmd fast in thy »ghL** Note K — Page 144 <* A N^ ^> ™y loving Brentius," writes Lutiber, jl\. "to the end that I may the better under- stand this case, do use to think in this manner, name- Digitized by VjOOQIC NOTES. 169 Ij, as if in my heart were no quality or virtue at all which is called faith or love, hut I set all on Christ, and say, my formcdis justitiaj that is my sure, my constant and complete righteousness, in which there is no want or failing, hut is, as before God it ought to be, Christ my Lord and Saviour." Faith saves us ; but how? — by making us aware of Christ, who saves. Faith does not mahe things what they are, but shows us them as they are in Christ Certain systems lay a pressure upon the subjective side greater than the spirit of man is at all times able to bear; working out all things from the depths of individual consciousness, as if truths were not there at all until they are (manifesth/) there for us, Wesley, for instance, felt and preached Christ both freely and fully; yet, from the central importance his teaching gives to a conscious spiritual work in man, it tends, in some degree, to withdraw the souFs eye from Christ, to fix it upon what is going on within itself. Happy for us, if Christ can look there and find his own image reflected, however faintly ; but we must look at Him, at the sun in the heavens, not at the sun in the brook, its broken and ever-varying reflection. So long as we are resting in anything within our- selves, be it even in a work of grace, there remains, at least to honest hearts, a ground for continual rest- lessness and continual disappointment To know that wo have nothing, are nothing out of Christ, is to know the truth which makes us free. 8 Digitized by VjOOQIC 170 NOTES. NoTB L. — Page 147. THE Christian's life is no Drama planned to correspond with certain prescribed Unities of time and situation ; but, because it is a life, it is too solemn, too real a thing to be bounded bj any such limitations. The Bible prescribes no fixed routine of religious experience, and I know not how to express my sense of the crudity, I would also say cruelty, of such religious writings as insist upon cer* tain phases of feeling as being essential to every true conversion ; thus making sad the heart of the right- eous whom Grod hath not made sad. ^' The Gods,' said the wise Heathen, ^ give not aU things to men at aU times.*' Have Christians yet to learn that certain feelings are only proper, say rather are only possible to certain stages of experience ? That when we are able to receive things we do receive them, and until then must be content to wait, oMding in the truths growing up in it from day to day, but forcing nothing either upon ourselves or others. How carefully should we guard against the passing of a religious truth into a religious conventionalism I The deepest expressions of feeling, as when St. Paul, seeing so far into his own nature, and into God's purity, is able to call himself the chief of sinners, become fahe, commonplace, when taken up by those who do not feel, but merely repeat them — when they are out of all harmony with the life and conscious^ ness of the speaker. Digitized by VjOOQIC NOTES. 171 We may apply this also to the crude admonitions 60 often addressed to afflicted people ; the set phrases in which, without any consideration of his fitness to receive such sayings, the sufferer is referred to the will of God, the love of Christ, for compensation. Yet the loss of a felt, experienced good, even of an earthly kind, can only be made up for by a comfort equally felt and experienced, and how can that he a comfort which has never been a joy ? Cambridge : Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigeloir, ft Co. 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