Page images
PDF
EPUB

goes forth with new strength to conquer. Enormous distance comes between the experience of Pythagoras and the scientific computations of Newton, between common minds and the genius of Shakespeare, between profane persons and men of piety. Throes arise out of the long travail of centuries; from the trouble and struggle of a million workers; and, by passionate exercise concentrating light and power, turn commonplaces of effort into miracle-scenes of wonderful life. This accounts for Moses, the son of a slave, delivering a nation of slaves-rendering them free men; and giving laws which preserved them as a pure race and a peculiar people. This shows how holy Apostles, not having movement and tone from their age, received world-enlightening thought from Jesus Christ.

Timid souls, alarmed at the complicated nature and vast extent of inquiry, exclaim--"Let us leave one another alone; keep to your province, do not enter ours; let there be peace between us." That will never do: the pact can be observed only so long as neither party is quite in earnest. By no treaty can the domain of truth be divided. No bargaining, nor fencing off, nor any form of process, will maintain artificial barriers against inquiry, nor bar the right of way : blessed right, enforced by rightful power. The natural world and spiritual world, the intellectual and the emotional, cannot be separated in any such fashion. That fatal objection-"It is not true," will cast down any system. Truth will not conceal nor allow a lie. Every truth is connected with all other truth. Science must be allowed, without suspicion or hindrance, to pursue her own proper work. The Church will certainly, despite all hindrance, do hers; nor is it limited to purely spiritual consolation, academic speculation, mere philosophy. Her work is of a very practical nature-to make men honest, true, and pure. You cannot make it cease from the pulpit, nor from the hearth, nor from the printing press, it will win and replenish the earth.

The clergy count it their special office to teach and exhort concerning Redemption, Sanctification, Everlasting Life. Not the precise antiquity of the human race—not the exact line separating allegory from history in Scripture—not the interval between miraculous operation and natural cause

Character is the Chief Thing.

419

not the reconciliation of the Supernatural with ordinary law -are to be greatly enforced on the Holy Day; though it were well for fit men to show what a good and holy thing is Physical Science. Most of them, and rightly, will enforce simple Bible Truth: that every man, as he lives and when he dies, may use Professor Henslow's prayer-" Washed in the Blood of the Lamb: enable me to submit to Thy Holy Will: sanctify me with Thy Spirit." Faith and Prayer will exist despite scientific difficulties, and outlive them: for "God fulfils Himself in many ways." Truths, that seem simplest, are deepest; and in guiding those who have gone astray, helping the tempted, consoling the troubled, our clergy tell what God has done, what Christ has done, what the Holy Spirit has done; and these truths breathe in the thoughts, burn in the words, are the power of God to the soul. They make character; character is the chief thing; when a man dies we ask what he was.

True teaching throws light into many dark places of the Bible, shows that the face which answered to our face in childhood, becomes, as we grow, a reflection of manhood in Christ an unseen intelligence becoming visible. The enlargement of meaning is in relation to our growth of understanding. Accurate scientific thought leads to conviction that those parts also which address our reason possess equal power of enlargement. The Bible is the boldest and truest book in the world. It says "Go with the antiquary among ancient ruins, you will find confirmation of my veracity on every medal and in all inscriptions. I love light, hate darkness, rejoice in true science-for it is death to superstition and life to faith." This excellency of the Bible above all other books, and its peculiarity as the Word of God, prove it to be a spiritual organism (Heb. iv. 12). The words are not chosen and arranged as by a scientific man, but, when scientific facts become known, and the letter seems to err, the letter is found to be true as a symbol. An artist beholds spirit and life in that which, to a common eye, is dead; the sculptor sees genius live and move in the marble that, to another man, is lifeless; the believer knows the chambers of Scripture to be full of true and holy living things. He says "I am not great, yet I feel some far-off touch of greatness, not mine own, but of a Heavenly Friend, by whom I shall be great." There are some rare human

countenances in which an honest homely look might be counted all; but in a moment, as if light from heaven shone, depths of soul are revealed glowing with love and truth: so is it with the Bible.

We respectfully ask whether cold, mechanical, narrow conception and interpretation of the Book are not as scientifically wrong as some old conceptions of Nature are actually false? whether the difficulties in Scripture do not arise, for the most part, from low state of knowledge in translators, expositors, readers? Can a book excite holy emotion; quicken pious resolve; overcome fear of death; enable the low, the vicious, the cruel, to attain elevation, sanctity, mercifulness; and its powers be accounted for by mechanical arrangements? Are peculiar construction, sometimes setting aside modern rules of grammar; splendour of imagery, adorning every chamber of our mind; array of facts and historic narration, delighting to confound our theories; to be interpreted, or corrected, or rejected, because some of our systems are not yet in accord with its statements? Ought it not to be meted by another measure than the hard analysis of criminal court procedure? Surely, godly emotions, sense of the Supreme, desire for immortality in purity and truth, are valuable parts of human nature, more worthy of cultivation and reliance than the carnal instincts which crave only to eat, drink, and be merry? He who makes virtue his chief end, can turn all things into means. Develop the high, as it is a necessity to appease the low. Let mastery of logical methods and accuracy of experiment, partake of those elaborate, delicate, comprehensive processes of thought and emotion which during long ages have drawn the pure in heart to Scripture, to Faith, to God. If a critic asserts- Shakespeare had no genius, and Milton no imagination," men smile at his folly. It is greater folly to call Moses, the most wonderful of men, a semi-barbarous Hebrew;" to account the Prophets, enthusiasts; Jesus, as wholly human; the Apostles, as deceived or deceivers. We hope that He who, in compassionate and unfaltering love, prayed for His enemies— Father, forgive them ;" will look from the Cross on those who count themselves wise, turn His sublime suffering countenance upon them, draw them with His love, save them in His mercy.

66

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

STUDY XXII.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD.

"Institutions are to be judged by their great men; in the end they take their line from their great men. The Christian Church, and the line which is natural to it, and which will one day prevail in it, is to be judged from the saints and the tone of the saints."-MATTHEW ARNOLD, The Church of England.

"Deus est homo factus; quid futurus est homo,
Quem propter Ipse factus est homo Deus?"

"FROM the consideration of ourselves, and what we infallibly find in our constitutions, our reason leads us to the knowledge of this certain and evident truth, that there is an eternal, most powerful, and most knowing Being "—these are the words of John Locke.1 The existence of God is a verity real as are mathematical axioms: so thought Descartes— "the Infinite, Eternal, Unchangeable, Self-existent, Omniscient, Omnipotent, Creator, is God."2 Add the belief of Malebranche, that God acts in all things by the counsels of wisdom, and by inspiration of love. Take Newton's words -"He is not eternity and infinity, but Eternal and Infinite; not time and space, but the Ever-Living and Ever-Present, in whom time and space have existence and foundation; "Non est æternitas et infinitas, sed æternus et infinitus ; non est duratio et spatium, sed durat et adest. Durat semper et adest ubique, et existendo semper et ubique, durationem et spatium constituit." 8 We thus form that idea of God which conscience and Holy Scripture approve, and conclude with

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]
[ocr errors]

Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Scholium Generalc."

Descartes-"God is the first and eternal of all the truths which can possibly exist, and the One whence all others proceed." 1

On this fact, the First Study--" Intelligence is not divorced from Piety," was established.

The same truth takes another form.

The perfect human life is that most conformed, not to blind appetite, but to enlightened desires of wisdom. Consciousness of this wisdom leads to conviction that an infinite guiding Mind holds all events within control, and says to every surging wave- "Hitherto shalt thou come, no further." This intelligent Governor is a personal God: for knowing, well as we know anything, that our wisdom cannot spring from a world of blind fatality; we also know that the world is not one huge terror, rolling on with mighty speed and energy, mind-less, reason-less, soul-less, crumbling our every hope into disappointment; but a world in which we reach through everything felt and seen, to strength of inwardness, to springs of life, to law of knitted purport. Not a thing is too minute for Infinite care, nor too stupendous for Divine strength. The sun in heaven, the lowly life rejoicing in his beams; the destiny of an empire, a tear on infant's cheek; are cared for by One omniscient to guide, omnipotent to save. To know and serve such a God, love and obey Him with fervent emotion and clear intelligence, is highest, happiest, fullest life: it satisfies the purest desire of our being, gives reality to virtue, truth to religion, unity to mankind. The existence of God is written as a law in human nature, and is the immortal original which men have sought to transcribe in all their faiths.2 "No fantastical art of juggling with words," no sensuality of low animal-men, ever stifled our consciousness of the Supernatural. "We have a more certain knowledge of the existence of a God, than of anything our senses have not immediately discovered to us." "3 The desire of all nations for freedom of conscience is not because of unbelief, but a yearning for inquiry to establish more life and fuller faith. The best man, the man in whom piety and intelligence are duly combined, will say, as Plato did long ago—“The world is guided by an

1 "Letters," i. p. 112.

.

2 "Descartes' Ethics-Liberty," part v. prop. xx.
John Locke, "Human Understanding," book iv. ch. x.

« EelmineJätka »