Work of the Clergy. 437 do her work; nor is it limited to purely spiritual consolation, to academic speculation, or to mere philosophy; her work is of a very practical nature: you cannot cause it to cease from the pulpit, nor from the hearth, nor from the printing press, it will win and replenish the earth. The Clergy, well aware of this, count it their special office to teach from the pulpit, and exhort in the house, concerning the great facts; 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— not the reconciliation of the Supernatural with ordinary law —are to be enforced on the Holy Day; though it were well for fit men, with leisure, to show at the "week-evening services" what a good and holy thing is Physical Science. Most of them, and rightly, will do that they love most; and for which they are best fitted; 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 of this sort will exist despite scientific difficulties, and outlive them. Truths, that seem simplest, are deepest; and in guiding those who have gone astray, helping the tempted, and consoling the troubled, our Clergy tell us what God has done, what Christ has done, what the Holy Spirit has done; and these truths-if they breathe in the thoughts, and burn in the words-are the power of God to the soul. This teaching, throwing 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 intelligence, long unseen, becoming visible. This enlargement of meaning with our growth of understanding, and the rising of precept and doctrine into rules of higher discipline for the advancement of purity, had long been a matter of spiritual experience to devout minds; but the accurate scientific positive thought of the age has led to inquiry, whether those parts also which address our reason, and not so much the emotional and reverential faculties, do not possess equal power of enlargement. What have we found? We have found that the excellency of the Bible above all other Books, and its peculiarity as the word of God, render it, what for want of better name may be called a spiritual organism (Heb. iv. 12). The words are not chosen and arranged as by a scientific man, nor do they contain latent systems of science; but, when scientific facts become known, the very truth of them confirms the old letter. As an artist beholds spirit and life on that canvas which, to a common eye, is but a dead picture; or as the sculptor sees genius live and move in the marble that, to another man, is lifeless; the believer finds the chambers of Scripture to be full of true and holy living things. 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 all a glow with love and truth: so is it with the Bible. We respectfully ask scientific men whether cold mechanical narrow conception and interpretation of the Holy Book is not as scientifically wrong as some old conceptions of nature are actually false? Can a book exciting holy emotion, quickening pious resolve, overcoming the fear of death, enabling the low, the vicious, the cruel, to attain elevation sanctity and mercifulness, have its powers accounted for by mechanical arrangements? Are its peculiar construction-often setting aside our modern rules of grammar; its splendour of imagery -adorning every chamber of our mind; its array of facts and historic narration-delighting to confound our theories; to be interpreted, or corrected, or rejected, because some of us find that our systems are not in accord with its statements? Ought it not to be meted by another measure than the hard analysis of criminal-court procedure? We ask even the undevout-for surely godly emotions sometime move in them, a sense of the Supreme sometime possesses them, a desire for immortality in purity and truth sometime lives in them-whether these high spiritual parts are not more valuable parts of their nature, and more worthy of cultivation and reliance, than the carnal instincts which crave only to eat drink and be merry? Let it be a matter of duty to develop the high, as it is a necessity to appease the low: with the mastery of logical methods and the accuracy of experiment, partake of those more elaborate delicate and comprehensive processes of thought and emotion which draw even scientific specialists to Scripture, to Faith, to God. If a critic asserts, "Shakespeare had no genius and Milton no imagination," will not men smile at his folly? Is it not greater folly to call Moses, one of the greatest of men, "a semi-barbarous Hebrew;" to account the Prophets enthusiasts, Jesus as wholly human, and the Apostles as deceived or deceivers? We cannot but hope that He who, in compassionate and unfaltering love, prayed for his enemies-" Father forgive them," will look from the Cross with His sublime suffering Human countenance upon the ignorant, draw them to Him and save them; and from the Throne regard them gloriously. 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.”—The Church of England—MAtt. Arnold. "FROM the consideration of ourselves, and what we infallibly find in our own 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. 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. If we add the belief of Malebranche, that God acts in all things by the counsels of wisdom, and by inspiration of love; taking also 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 eternitas 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." s We form that idea of God which our conscience and Holy Scripture approve; and conclude with Descartes-"God is the first and eternal of all the truths which can possibly exist, and the One from whence all others proceed." On this fact, the First Study-"Intelligence is not divorced from Piety," was established. 1 "Human Understanding," Book iv., Chap. x. "Discourse on Method," i. p. 161. 3 44 'Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Scholium Generale." The same truth may take another form. The perfect life is that most conformed, not to blind appetite, but to the enlightened desires of wisdom. Consciousness of this leads to the conviction that an infinite guiding Mind holds all events within its control, and says to every surging wave-" Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further." This intelligent Governor is a personal God: for knowing, as well as we can know anything, that our own wisdom cannot spring from a world of blind fatality, without intellect, feeling, will; 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 under the control of God. Of this God are all things. All things are not God, for then there would be no God separate from the world, or above the world: our God energizes in all, through all, over all; is beautiful with a love sublime beyond human conception, glorious with magnificence of goodness, of wisdom, of might, so that not one living thing is too minute for His care or too stupendous for His strength; the sun in the midst of heaven or a mote in his beams, the destiny of an empire or a tear that glistens in an infant's eye, are cared for by One infinite to feel, omniscient to guide, omnipotent to Life, conscious of such a God, loving and obeying Him with fervent emotion and clear intelligence, is highest life; the happiest, the fullest; because it satisfies the purest desire of our being, gives reality to virtue, truth to religion, and sacred unity to society. To this may be added 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.1 "No fantastical art of juggling with words," nor 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."2 The desire of all nations for freedom of conscience is not because of unbelief, but a yearning for inquiry to establish more belief. The best man, the man in whom piety and intelligence are combined, will save. 1 "Descartes' Ethics-Liberty," part v., prop. xx. |