history of the whole human race. The very first man who was ever guilty of actual sin was precisely the man who neither had, nor could have had, any inherited corruption. Therefore inherited corruption does not account for actual sin. I offer this argument not as a contribution to theology, but as a reason for hesitating to go far beyond our tether" in an attempt to explain mysteries which we ourselves admit to be utterly inexplicable. Even theologians would not be the worse for a careful study of Mill's Logic, Book III., Chapters viii. and ix. SPECULATION AND OBEDIENCE.* Then Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved following; which also leaned on His breast at supper, and said, Lord, which is he that betrayeth Thee? Peter seeing him saith to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do? Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou Me.—S. JOHN xxi. 20–23. Is it, then, really nothing ruin or the salvation, of "What is that to thee ?" to us, the weal or woe, the those whom we love? Is it enough that our own souls are safe, and that "we can read our title clear to mansions in the sky"? Is the great achievement of religion an intenser selfishness, all the more incurable because it has received a Christian sanction? To ask these questions is to answer them. They have been answered, moreover, both in word and deed, by all the Saints of God, and by Him who is "the Author and Finisher of our faith."+ "Moses returned unto the Lord and said, Oh! this people have sinned a great sin and have made them gods of gold. Yet now if Thou wilt forgive their sin-and if not, blot me, I pray Thee, out of Thy book which Thou hast written." "I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart," says S. Paul; "for I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kins*Preached before the Convocation of Baltimore, Md., May 24th, 1878. † Hebrews xii. 2. Exodus xxxiii. 31-32. "He that is greatest men according to the flesh."* among you," said Jesus to His disciples-for even at the Last Supper "there was a strife among them which of them should be accounted the greatest"—"let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve. For . . . . I am among you as he that serveth." "He saved others, Himself He cannot save." I But there is scarcely need to prove what nobody will soberly deny. Even if S. James's doctrine that " a man is justified by works and not by faith only "§ has been too often grossly perverted, it still remains true that the works by which men have sought to make sure their own salvation have been for the most part works for the good of others. Crusades for the recovery of the Holy Land; the building and endowment of cathedrals and religious houses; Confraternities and Sisterhoods devoted by life-long vows to the service of the sick and poor; Masses for the suffering souls in Purgatory-these, and such as these, may seem to some of us, perhaps, the splendid follies or contemptible delusions of an obsolete superstition, as to others they have seemed the fading glories of a too rapidly departing faith. But they witness to all of us alike what every age has recognized as the very core and centre of Christian life-that "all our doings without charity are nothing worth," and that "he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law." || Was it not well, then, that S. Peter should manifest so loving an interest in "the disciple whom Jesus loved"? "You have told me of my future; what can I do for the help *Romans ix. 2-3. S. Mark xv. 31. †S. Luke xxii. 24-27. Romans xiii. 8. and comfort of my fellow-disciple? If he also has to be guided by another and carried whither he would. not,' cannot I protect or console him? Thou hast graciously forgiven me, and granted me this token of Thy grace that I may feed Thy sheep and lambs; is there no service that I can specially render for one so faithful and so well beloved as the disciple who is following us?" But this, unfortunately, was not the question which S. Peter really asked. It was not " What can I do for this man?" but "What shall this man do?" Nay, rather, it was a question more rash and intrusive still. It meant "What wilt Thou do with this man? What is to be his future life, what his end ?" And it is this question which our Lord so emphatically, though so gently, reproves: "If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou Me." Our duties to our neighbours arise, indeed, out of the arrangements of God's providence; but this is true not only of their form, but also, and equally, of their occasion and their time. Our duties yesterday, whether discharged or neglected, are now over. Our duties to-morrow are not yet come; and sufficient for the day are its own evil, its own responsibilities, even its own good. Religion is, for the immense majority of mankind, through the whole of life-and for everybody in by far the greater part of his life-not speculative, but practical. And whereas the possible results of speculation are forever widening, as we read and think and argue, till at last we almost begin to doubt whether there is any answer to our questions, any solution of the riddle of life, any sure dogma, any discoverable truth, the alternatives. of duty become narrower and narrower as the necessity of action is pressed closer and closer upon us, till one single path at last is left open to us, and all our uncertainties and hesitations are silenced by "Follow thou Me." If only, my dear brethren, we could believe it! But it must be obvious to every one of us that Christian people are for the most part of a far different way of thinking. They are not sunk so low, indeed, as to repudiate obedience, but they prefer what they call "the right of private judgment." When an enlightened Christian man has duly examined the claims of all rival authorities; when he has critically investigated the theology and ethics, the science and common sense, of all competing religions; when, in a word, he has accomplished individually and separately what has never yet been accomplished by the whole human race put together-then, and then only, we are assured he will be in a position to begin to determine the first of his practical religious duties. Then, without bias or prejudice, he can offer his first rational prayer; repeat for the first time a creed that he really means; sing his first unimpassioned hymn; adore a God whom he understands; look forward, with a fearless and aweless eye, into a future that he has weighed and measured and analyzed. He will have constructed a religion of his own, liable indeed to reconstruction; provisional, modest, undogmatic; held, therefore, loosely, with an "openness to conviction" that it may be mere moonshine and absurdity-but fairly available for such very moderate practical application as belongs to that residuum of real religion which is left when you have removed, by precipitation or evaporation, everything in human life that anybody cares for. Is religion, forsooth, |