and was a summary of his doctrine, life, and character. The text was
taken from St. Luke, iii. 9. to 14.; in which St. John answers the
question of the people, “what shall we do then?” by a brief exposition
of their several duties.
“What is most remarkable in all this,” said the priest, “is truly that
there is nothing very remarkable in it. The Baptist required from his
hearers very simple and very familiar duties,—such as he was not the
first to preach, such as had been recognised as duties by all religions;
and do you think that those who were neither Jews nor Christians
were therefore left without any religion? No! never did God leave any
of his creatures without religion; they could not utter the words right,
wrong,— beautiful, hateful, without recognising a religion written by
God on their hearts from the beginning—a religion which existed
before the preaching of John, before the coming of Christ, and of
which the appearance of John and the doctrine and sacrifice of
Christ, were but the fulfilment. For Christ came to fulfil the law, not to
destroy it. Do you ask what law?
177
Not the law of Moses, but the universal law of God’s moral truth
written in our hearts. It is, my friends, a folly to talk of natural religion
as of something different from revealed religion.
“The great proof of the truth of John’s mission lies in its
comprehensiveness: men and women, artisans and soldiers, the rich
and the poor, the young and the old, gathered to him in the
wilderness; and he included all in his teaching, for he was sent to all;
and the best proof of the truth of his teaching lies in its harmony with
that law already written in the heart and the conscience of men.
When Christ came afterwards, he preached a doctrine more sublime,
with a more authoritative voice; but here, also, the best proof we have
of the truth of that divine teaching lies in this—that he had prepared
from the beginning the heart and the conscience of man to harmonise
with it.”
This was a very curious sermon; quiet, elegant, and learned, with a
good deal of sacred and profane history introduced in illustration,
which I am sorry I cannot remember in detail. It made, however, no
appeal to feeling or to practice; and after listening to it, we all went in
to luncheon and discussed our newspapers.
178
III.
Fragments of a Sermon (Anglican Church).
Text, Luke iv., from the 14th to the 18th, but more especially the 18th
verse. This sermon was extempore.
T
he preacher began by observing, that our Lord’s sermon at Nazareth
established the second of two principles. By his sermon from the
Mount, in which he had addressed the multitude in the open air,
under the vault of the blue heaven alone, he has left to us the
principle that all places are fitted for the service of God, and that all
places may be sanctified by the preaching of his truth. While, by his
sermon in the Synagogue (that which is recorded by St. Luke in this
passage), he has established the principle, that it is right to set apart
a place to assemble together in worship and to listen to instruction;
and it is observable that on this occasion our Saviour taught in the
synagogue, where there was no sacrifice, no ministry of the priests,
as in the Temple; but where a portion of the law and the prophets
might be read by any man; and any man, even a stranger (as he was
himself), might be called upon to expound.
Then reading impressively the whole of the narrative down to the
32nd verse, the preacher closed the sacred volume, and went on to
this effect:—
179
“There are two orders of evil in the world—Sin and Crime. Of the
second, the world takes strict cognisance; of the first, it takes
comparatively little; yet that is worse in the eyes of God. There are
two orders of temptation: the temptation which assails our lower
nature—our appetites; the temptation which assails our higher
nature—our intellect. The first, leading to sin in the body, is punished
in the body,—the consequence being pain, disease, death. The
second, leading to sins of the soul, as pride chiefly, uncharitableness,
selfish sacrifice of others to our own interests or purposes,—is
punished in the soul—in the Hell of the Spirit.”
(All this part of his discourse very beautiful, earnest, eloquent; but I
regretted that he did not follow out the distinction he began with
between sin and crime, and the views and deductions, religious and
moral, which that distinction leads to.)
He continued to this effect: “Christ said that it was a part of his
mission to heal the broken-hearted. What is meant by the phrase ‘a
broken heart?’” He illustrated it by the story of Eli, and by the wife of
Phineas, both of whom died broken in heart; “and our Saviour himself
died on the cross heart-broken by sorrow rather than by physical
torture.”—
(I lost something here because I was questioning and doubting within
myself, for I have always had the thought that Christ must have been
glad to die.)
180
He went on:—“To heal the broken-hearted is to say to those who are
beset by the remembrance and the misery of sin, ‘My brother, the
past is past—think not of it to thy perdition; arise and sin no more.’”
(All this, and more to the same purpose, wonderfully beautiful! and I
became all soul—subdued to listen.) “There are two ways of meeting
the pressure of misery and heart-break: first, by trusting to time” (then
followed a quotation from Schiller’s “Wallenstein,” in reference to
grief, which sounded strange, and yet beautiful, from the pulpit, “Was
verschmerzte nicht der Mensch?”—what cannot man grieve down?);
“secondly, by defiance and resistance, setting oneself resolutely to
endure. But Christ taught a different way from either—by
submission—by the complete surrender of our whole being to the will
of God.
“The next part of Christ’s mission was to preach deliverance to the
captives.” (Then followed a most eloquent and beautiful exposition of
Christian freedom—of who were free; and who were not free, but
properly spiritual captives.) “To be content within limitations is
freedom; to desire beyond those limitations is bondage. The bird
which is content within her cage is free; the bird which can fly from
tree to tree, yet desires to soar like the eagle,—the eagle which can
ascend to the mountain peak yet desires to reach the height of that
sun on which his eye is
181
fixed,—these are in bondage. The man who is not content within his
sphere of duties and powers, but feels his faculties, his position, his
profession; a perpetual trammel,— he is spiritually in bondage. The
only freedom is the freedom of the soul, content within its external
limitations, and yet elevated spiritually far above them by the inward
powers and impulses which lift it up to God.”
IV.
Recollections of another Church of England Sermon preached
extempore.
The text was taken from Matt. xii. 42.: “The Queen of the South shall rise
up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it,” &c.
T
he preacher began by drawing that distinction between knowledge
and wisdom which so many comprehend and allow, and so few apply.
He then described the two parties in the great question of popular
education. Those who would base all human progress on secular
instruction, on knowledge in contradistinction to ignorance, as on light
opposed to darkness;—and the mistake of those who, taking the
contrary extreme, denounce all secular instruction imparted to the
poor as dangerous, or contemn it as useless. The error of those who
sneer at the triumph
182
of intellect he termed a species of idiocy; and the error of those who
do not see the insufficiency of knowledge, blind presumption. Then
he contrasted worldly wisdom and spiritual; with a flow of gorgeous
eloquence he enlarged on the picture of worldly wisdom as exhibited
in the character of Solomon, and of intellect, and admiration for
intellect, in the character of the Queen of Sheba. “In what consisted
the wisdom of Solomon? He made, as the sacred history assures us,
three thousand proverbs, mostly prudential maxims relating to
conduct in life; the use and abuse of riches; prosperity and adversity.
His acquirements in natural philosophy seem to have been confined
to the appearances of material and visible things; the herbs and
trees, the beasts and birds, the creeping things and fishes. His
political wisdom consisted in increasing his wealth, his dominions,
and the number of his subjects and cities. On his temple he lavished
all that art had then accomplished, and on his own house a world of
riches in gold, and silver, and precious things: but all was done for his
own glory—nothing for the improvement or the happiness of his
people, who were ground down by taxes, suffered in the midst of all
his magnificence, and remained ignorant in spite of all his knowledge.
Witness the wars, tyrannies, miseries, delusions, and idolatries which
followed after his death.”
183
“But the Queen of Sheba came not from the uttermost parts of the
earth to view the magnificence and wonder at the greatness of the
King, she came to hear his wisdom. She came not to ask anything
from him, but to prove him with hard questions. No idea of worldly
gain, or selfish ambition was in her thoughts; she paid even for the
pleasure of hearing his wise sayings by rare and costly gifts.”
“Knowledge is power; but he who worships knowledge not for its own
sake, but for the power it brings, worships power. Knowledge is
riches; but he who worships knowledge for the sake of all it bestows,
worships riches. The Queen of Sheba worshipped knowledge solely
for its own sake; and the truths which she sought from the lips of
Solomon she sought for truth’s sake. She gave, all she could give, in
return, the spicy products of her own land, treasures of pure gold, and
blessings warm from her heart. The man who makes a voyage to the
antipodes only to behold the constellation of the Southern Cross, the
man who sails to the North to see how the magnet trembles and
varies, these love knowledge for its own sake, and are impelled by
the same enthusiasm as the Queen of Sheba.” He went on to analyse
the character of Solomon, and did not treat him, I thought, with much
reverence either as sage or prophet. He remarked that, “of the
thousand songs of Solomon one only survives, and that both
184
in this song and in his proverbs his meaning has often been
mistaken; it is supposed to be spiritual, and is interpreted
symbolically, when in fact the plain, obvious, material significance is
the true one.”
He continued to this effect,—but with a power of language and
illustration which I cannot render. “We see in Solomon’s own
description of his dominion, his glory, his wealth, his fame, what his
boasted wisdom achieved; what it could, and what it could not do for
him. What was the end of all his magnificence? of his worship of the
beautiful? of his intellectual triumphs? of his political subtlety? of his
ships, and his commerce, and his chariots, and his horses, and his
fame which reached to the ends of the earth? All—as it is related—
ended in feebleness, in scepticism, in disbelief of happiness, in
sensualism, idolatry, and dotage! The whole ‘Book of Ecclesiastes,’
fine as it is, presents a picture of selfishness and epicurism. This was
the King of the Jews! the King of those that know! ( Il maestro di color
chi sanno. ) Solomon is a type of worldly wisdom, of desire of
knowledge for the sake of all that knowledge can give. We imitate him
when we would base the happiness of a people on knowledge. When
we have commanded the sun to be our painter, and the lightning to
run on our errands, what reward have we? Not the increase of
happiness,
185
nor the increase of goodness; nor—what is next to both—our faith in
both.”
“It would seem profane to contrast Solomon and Christ had not our
Saviour himself placed that contrast distinctly before us. He
consecrated the comparison by applying it—‘Behold a greater than
Solomon is here.’ In quoting these words we do not presume to bring
into comparison the two natures, but the two intellects—the two
aspects of truth. Solomon described the external world; Christ taught
the moral law. Solomon illustrated the aspects of nature; Christ
helped the aspirations of the spirit. Solomon left as a legacy the
saying that ‘in much wisdom there is much grief;’ and Christ preached
to us the lowly wisdom which can consecrate grief; making it lead to
the elevation of our whole being and to ultimate happiness. The two
majesties—the two kings—how different! Not till we are old, and have
suffered, and have laid our experience to heart, do we feel the
immeasurable distance between the teaching of Christ and the
teaching of Solomon!”
Then returning to the Queen of Sheba, he treated the character as
the type of the intellectual woman. He contrasted her rather
favourably with Solomon. He described with picturesque felicity, her
long and toilsome journey to see, to admire, the man whose wisdom
had made him renowned;—the mixture of
186
enthusiasm and humility which prompted her desire to learn, to prove
the truth of what rumour had conveyed to her, to commune with him
of all that was in her heart. And she returned to her own country rich
in wise sayings. But did the final result of all this glory and knowledge
reach her there? and did it shake her faith in him she had bowed to
as the wisest of kings and men?
He then contrasted the character of the Queen of Sheba with that of
Mary, the mother of our Lord, that feminine type of holiness, of
tenderness, of long-suffering; of sinless purity in womanhood,
wifehood, and motherhood: and rising to more than usual eloquence
and power, he prophesied the regeneration of all human communities
through the social elevation, the intellect, the purity, and the devotion
of Woman.
187
V.
From a Sermon (apparently extempore) by a Dissenting Minister.
T
he ascetics of the old times seem to have had a belief that all sin was
in the body; that the spirit belonged to God, and the body to his
adversary the devil; and that to contemn, ill-treat, and degrade by
every means this frame of ours, so wonderfully, so fearfully, so
exquisitely made, was to please the Being who made it; and who, for
gracious ends, no doubt, rendered it capable of such admirable
development of strength and beauty. Miserable mistake!
To some, this body is as a prison from which we are to rejoice to
escape by any permitted means: to others, it is as a palace to be
luxuriously kept up and decorated within and without. But what says
Paul (Cor. vi. 19.),—“Know ye not that your body is the temple of the
Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have from God, and which is not
your own?”
Surely not less than a temple is that form which the Divine Redeemer
took upon him, and deigned, for a season, to inhabit; which he
consecrated by his life, sanctified by his death, glorified by his
transfiguration, hallowed and beautified by his resurrection!
188
It is because they do not recognise this body as a temple, built up by
God’s intelligence, as a fitting sanctuary for the immortal Spirit, and
this life equally with any other form of life as dedicate to Him, that
men fall into such opposite extremes of sin:—the spiritual sin which
contemns the body, and the sensual sin which misuses it.
VI.
W
hen I was at Boston I made the acquaintance of Father Taylor, the
founder of the Sailors’ Home in that city. He was considered as the
apostle of the seamen, and I was full of veneration for him as the
enthusiastic teacher and philanthropist. But it is not of his virtues or
his labours that I wish to speak. He struck me in another way, as a
poet; he was a born poet. Until he was five-and-twenty he had never
learned to read, and his reading afterwards was confined to such
books as aided him in his ministry. He remained an illiterate man to
the last, but his mind was teeming with spontaneous
189
imagery, allusion, metaphor. One might almost say of him,
“He could not ope
His mouth, but out there flew a
trope!”
These images and allusions had a freshness, an originality, and
sometimes an oddity that was quite startling, and they were generally,
but not always, borrowed from his former profession—that of a sailor.
One day we met him in the street. He told us in a melancholy voice
that he had been burying a child, and alluded almost with emotion to
the great number of infants he had buried lately. Then after a pause,
striking his stick on the ground and looking upwards, he added,
“There must be something wrong somewhere! there’s a storm
brewing, when the doves are all flying aloft!”
One evening in conversation with me, he compared the English and
the Americans to Jacob’s vine, which, planted on one side of the wall,
grew over it and hung its boughs and clusters on the other side,—“but
it is still the same vine, nourished from the same root!”
On one occasion when I attended his chapel, the sermon was
preceded by a long prayer in behalf of an afflicted family, one of
whose members had died
190
or been lost in a whaling expedition to the South Seas. In the midst of
much that was exquisitely pathetic and poetical, refined ears were
startled by such a sentence as this,—“Grant, O Lord! that this rod of
chastisement be sanctified, every twig of it, to the edification of their
souls!”
Then immediately afterwards he prayed that the Divine Comforter
might be near the bereaved father “when his aged heart went forth
from his bosom to flutter round the far southern grave of his boy!”
Praying for others of the same family who were on the wide ocean,
he exclaimed, stretching forth his arms, “O save them! O guard them!
thou angel of the deep!”
On another occasion, speaking of the insufficiency of the moral
principles without religious feelings, he exclaimed, “Go heat your
ovens with snowballs! What! shall I send you to heaven with such an
icicle in your pocket? I might as well put a millstone round your neck
to teach you to swim!”
He was preaching against violence and cruelty:—“Don’t talk to me,”
said he, “of the savages! a ruffian in the midst of Christendom is the
savage of savages. He is as a man freezing in the sun’s heat, groping
in the sun’s light, a straggler in paradise, an alien in heaven!”
191
In his chapel all the principal seats in front of the pulpit and down the
centre aisle were filled by the sailors. We ladies, and gentlemen, and
strangers, whom curiosity had brought to hear him, were ranged on
each side; he would on no account allow us to take the best places.
On one occasion, as he was denouncing hypocrisy, luxury, and
vanity, and other vices of more civilised life, he said emphatically, “I
don’t mean you before me here,” looking at the sailors; “I believe you
are wicked enough, but honest fellows in some sort, for you profess
less, not more, than you practise; but I mean to touch starboard and
larboard there!” stretching out both hands with the forefinger
extended, and looking at us on either side till we quailed.
He compared the love of God in sending Christ upon earth to that of
the father of a seaman who sends his eldest and most beloved son,
the hope of the family, to bring back the younger one, lost on his
voyage, and missing when his ship returned to port.
Alluding to the carelessness of Christians, he used the figure of a
mariner, steering into port through a narrow dangerous channel,
“false lights here, rocks there, shifting sand banks on one side,
breakers on the other; and who, instead of fixing his attention to keep
the head of his vessel right, and to obey the instructions of the pilot
as he sings out from the
192
wheel, throws the pilot overboard, lashes down the helm, and walks
the deck whistling, with his hands in the pockets of his jacket.” Here,
suiting the action to the word, he put on a true sailor-like look of
defiant jollity;—changed in a moment to an expression of horror as he
added, “See! See! she drifts to destruction!”
One Sunday he attempted to give to his sailor congregation an idea
of Redemption. He began with an eloquent description of a terrific
storm at sea, rising to fury through all its gradations; then, amid the
waves, a vessel is seen labouring in distress and driving on a lee
shore. The masts bend and break, and go overboard; the sails are
rent, the helm unshipped, they spring a leak! the vessel begins to fill,
the water gains on them; she sinks deeper, deeper, deeper! deeper!
He bent over the pulpit repeating the last words again and again; his
voice became low and hollow. The faces of the sailors as they gazed
up at him with their mouths wide open, and their eyes fixed, I shall
never forget. Suddenly stopping, and looking to the farthest end of
the chapel as into space, he exclaimed, with a piercing cry of
exultation, “A life boat! a life boat!” Then looking down upon his
congregation, most of whom had sprung to their feet in an ecstasy of
suspense, he said in a deep impressive tone, and extending his
arms, “Christ is that life boat! ”
193
VII.
RELI