Such being the foundation of the "Church of the New Jerusalem," are we to be considered irrational if we deem it a preposterous waste of time to examine the superstructure? Do you decide to build your religion on controversy, to challenge all comers, to accept only what you have independently proved, and believe only what you have personally verified? Be it so-but how long do you propose to live? Are you sure that you can be released from every other occupation? You must first make good your position against the materialists and atheists and pantheists, and against all the separate forms of their Protean errors. You must decide the "divine legation" of Moses, and the Messiahship of Jesus. You must go through the details of the Arian heresy and the Donatist schism. You must decide upon the claims of the Papacy and the justification of the Reformers. Of these last you must do separate battle with Luther and Calvin, with Laud and the Puritans, with Wesley and Pusey. You must further investigate the conflicting pretensions of the different sorts of Presbyterians and Methodists, Quakers and Baptists. And while these are the main lines of the road along which you propose to travel militant, you will find innumerable bypaths at the end of every one of which is lurking a foe. And when you have fought your good fight with other people's opinions, and arrived at a truth which will really satisfy your intellect, you will then have to begin the real business of life-which is to fear God and to keep His Commandments. If this long research be included in the duty of every intelligent Christian, it is perfectly obvious that there lives not on the face of the whole earth one intelligent Christian who has even approximately discharged his duty. A duty impossible is a contradiction even in terms; and this were an impossible duty. No, my dear brethren, we are called to no task so idle and at the same time so presumptuous, so monstrously beyond our powers. It is by no means clear that any formal proof of our religion is generally needed -it only becomes necessary when our souls are sick. It is the dyspeptic that gets his food analyzed and consults his physician about the processes of digestion. Blessed, rather, is the man who has never need to ask whether his food is nutritious, and who "does not know that he has a system"!* But even if it should become necessary for us to prove our own belief, it is by no means necessary for us to disprove other people's misbelief. Our religion comes to us like a mother's love, like a father's protecting care. It is ready for us at our birth. It proves its power by being the guide of our spiritual energy. It brings God near to us, and us near to God. It expresses and deepens our piety. It orders our lives. It comforts us amid the troubles of life, in sickness, in bereavement, in the valley of the shadow of death. It needs no other proving; and if any one should feel it his duty-for what will conscience not require ?-to disprove for us our religion, we should receive him with the feeling with which we should listen to the accusations of a candid friend who should endeavour to persuade us of a father's dishonour or of the unchastity of a mother. Granted that we take our religion on trust-that most of us accept it on the * Cf. Carlyle's "Characteristics" (Essays, III 329, et seqq. Library Edition). unexamined but continuous evidence of twenty centuries-what more does infidelity or heresy or schism offer to us? Not, assuredly, an independent judgment; but that we shall exchange faith in the Church for faith (shall I say?) in Wesley or Swedenborg, in Mr. Huxley or Mr. Robert Ingersoll. But, assuredly, to avoid speculation is not the whole duty of man. Our Lord's question to S. Peter-" What is that to thee ?"-should be forever sounding in our ears. But far more important still is His command, "Follow thou Me." This must be the secret of our own life; it is the secret of the life of the Church. May God give us grace to set Him before men neither by our orthodoxy alone, nor by the simplicity of our acceptance of the truth, but by utter obedience and by "endeavouring ourselves to follow the blessed steps of Christ's most holy life"! "For the Kingdom of God is not in word, but in power";.... "not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." MANLY STRENGTH.* Now the days of David drew nigh that he should die; and he charged Solomon his son, saying, I go the way of all the earth be thou strong therefore, and show thyself a man.— I. KINGS ii. 1-2. Nothing is more common than for men to perceive and rebuke in others the vices and neglects which they fail to notice in themselves. Time glides so noiselessly away from them, and the changes produced by a single hour or day are so slight, that it is only at some critical period of their lives, when they are compelled to compare the present with a somewhat distant past of their history and experience, that they discover how much. has come to them and how much has gone forever. When they revisit the scenes of their childhood; when they read over again some book, once a favourite, now almost forgotten; when they meet an old friend who has achieved some great commercial success, or reached a proud eminence in literature or scholarship; when they have to decide where their children shall be educated, or what shall be the trade or profession by which they shall seek to make their way in the world -at such times they are startled to find what vast changes have silently been wrought in them by the greatest of all innovators, Time. They get that rare and exceptional view of themselves which is their common view of others they see themselves after an absence. *This sermon was addressed especially to young men (London, 1863). It would be a strange life indeed that could be reviewed without thankfulness. They are very few, and must have been very unfortunate, who would ask for the doubtful privilege of living life over again. Yet, though we are increasingly diffident of ourselves, we think we can see the folly of others, and warn and help them. Moreover, we cannot avoid the regrets which, alas! are now unavailing. We see how a little more diligence and care would have made us as rich as our wealthiest friends; how more patient and persevering study would have raised us also to literary eminence. And we mourn and fret that now we must die obscure, no grand victory won, either material or spiritual. Is there no path left to an immortality of fame?—no road still open to commercial prosperity, to intellectual culture, to moral and spiritual greatness? Must we, indeed, die and be forgotten because we have done nothing to deserve remembrance? It is not religion only—it is our very human nature that longs for immortality. Our power of thought, our affections, shrink back from nothingness with the utmost horror. Every unsolved problem, every unaccomplished purpose, every dear and loving friend, demands that we should still live on; our pleasures we would live to enjoy, our griefs and misfortunes we would live to master; we would live to serve our friends, we would live to wring even from our enemies the acknowledgment that we deserved better from them than hatred or scorn. Whatever crazy Sorrow saith, No life that breathes with human breath |