SELECTED BY THE REV. J. H. VINCENT, D.D.

[June 3.]

RELIGION IN COMMON LIFE.[K]

PART I.

By JOHN CAIRD, D.D.[L]

To combine business with religion, to keep up a spirit of serious piety amid the stir and distraction of a busy and active life—this is one of the most difficult parts of a Christian’s trial in this world. It is comparatively easy to be religious in the church—to collect our thoughts, and compose our feelings, and enter, with an appearance of propriety and decorum, into the offices of religious worship, amid the quietude of the Sabbath, and within the still and sacred precincts of the house of prayer. But to be religious in the world—to be pious, and holy, and earnest-minded in the counting-room, the manufactory, the market-place, the field, the farm—to carry out our good and solemn thoughts and feelings into the throng and thoroughfare of daily life—this is the great difficulty of our Christian calling. No man not lost to all moral influence can help feeling his worldly passions calmed, and some measure of seriousness stealing over his mind, when engaged in the performance of the more awful and sacred rites of religion; but the atmosphere of the social circle, the exchange, the street, the city’s throng, amid coarse work and cankering cares and toils, is a very different atmosphere from that of a communion-table. Passing from the one to the other has often seemed as if the sudden transition from a tropical to a polar climate—from balmy warmth and sunshine to murky mist and freezing cold. And it appears sometimes as difficult to maintain the strength and steadfastness of religious principle and feeling, when we go forth from the church into the world, as it would be to preserve an exotic alive in the open air in winter, or to keep the lamp that burns steadily within doors from being blown out if you take it abroad unsheltered from the wind.

So great, so all but insuperable, has this difficulty ever appeared to men, that it is but few who set themselves honestly and resolutely to the effort to overcome it. The great majority, by various shifts or expedients, evade the hard task of being good and holy, at once in the church and in the world.

In ancient times, for instance, it was, as we all know, the not uncommon expedient among devout persons—men deeply impressed with the thought of an eternal world, and the necessity of preparing for it, but distracted by the effort to attend to the duties of religion amid the business and temptations of secular life—to fly the world altogether, and, abandoning society and all social claims, to betake themselves to some hermit solitude, some quiet and cloistered retreat, where, as they fondly deemed, “the world forgetting, by the world forgot,” their work would become worship, and life be uninterruptedly devoted to the cultivation of religion in the soul. In our own day the more common device, where religion and the world conflict, is not that of the superstitious recluse, but one even much less safe and venial. Keen for this world, yet not willing to lose all hold on the next—eager for the advantages of time, yet not prepared to abandon all religion and stand by the consequences, there is a very numerous class who attempt to compromise the matter—to treat religion and the world like two creditors whose claims can not both be liquidated—by compounding with each for a share—though in this case a most disproportionate share—of their time and thought. “Everything in its own place!” is the tacit reflection of such men. “Prayers, sermons, holy reading”—they will scarcely venture to add, “God”—“are for Sundays; but week-days are for the sober business, the real, practical affairs of life. Enough if we give the Sunday to our religious duties; we can not always be praying and reading the Bible.”

Now, you will observe that the idea of religion which is set forth in the text, as elsewhere in Scripture, is quite different from any of these notions. The text speaks as if the most diligent attention to our worldly business were not by any means incompatible with spirituality of mind and serious devotion to the service of God. It seems to imply that religion is not so much a duty, as a something that has to do with all duties—not a tax to be paid periodically and got rid of at other times, but a ceaseless, all-pervading, inexhaustible tribute to him, who is not only the object of religious worship, but the end of our very life and being. It suggests to us the idea that piety is not for Sundays only, but for all days; that spirituality of mind is not appropriate to one set of actions and an impertinence and intrusion with reference to others, but like the act of breathing, like the circulation of the blood, like the silent growth of the stature, a process that may be going on simultaneously with all our actions—when we are busiest as when we are idlest; in the church, in the world, in solitude, in society; in our grief and in our gladness; in our toil and in our rest; sleeping, waking; by day, by night—amid all the engagements and exigences of life. For you perceive that in one breath—as duties not only not incompatible, but necessarily and inseparably blended with each other—the text exhorts us to be at once “not slothful in business,” and “fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.” I shall now attempt to prove and illustrate the idea thus suggested to us—the compatibility of religion with the business of common life.

We have, then, Scripture authority for asserting that it is not impossible to live a life of fervent piety amid the most engrossing pursuits and engagements of the world. We are to make good this conception of life—that the hardest-wrought man of trade, or commerce, or handicraft, who spends his days “‘mid dusky lane or wrangling marl,” may yet be the most holy and spiritually-minded. We need not quit the world and abandon its busy pursuits in order to live near to God—

It is true indeed that, if in no other way could we prepare for an eternal world than by retiring from the business and cares of this world, so momentous are the interests involved in religion, that no wise man should hesitate to submit to the sacrifice. Life here is but a span. Life hereafter is forever. A lifetime of solitude, hardship, penury, were all too slight a price to pay, if need be, for an eternity of bliss: and the results of our most incessant toil and application to the world’s business, could they secure for us the highest prizes of earthly ambition, would be purchased at a tremendous cost, if they stole away from us the only time in which we could prepare to meet our God—if they left us at last rich, gay, honored, possessed of every thing the world holds dear, but to face an eternity undone.

But the very impossibility of such a sacrifice proves that no such sacrifice is demanded. He who rules the world is no arbitrary tyrant prescribing impracticable labors. In the material world there are no conflicting laws; and no more, we may rest assured, are there established in the moral world, any two laws, one or the other of which must needs be disobeyed. Now one thing is certain, that there is in the moral world a law of labor. Secular work, in all cases a duty, is, in most cases, a necessity. God might have made us independent of work. He might have nourished us like “the fowls of the air and the lilies of the field,” which “toil not, neither do they spin.” He might have rained down our daily food, like the manna of old, from heaven, or caused nature to yield it in unsolicited profusion to all, and so set us free to a life of devotion. But, forasmuch as he has not done so—forasmuch as he has so constituted us that without work we can not eat, that if men ceased for a single day to labor, the machinery of life would come to a stand, and arrest be laid on science, civilization, and progress—on every thing that is conducive to the welfare of man in the present life—we may safely conclude that religion, which is also good for man, which is indeed, the supreme good of man, is not inconsistent with hard work.

And that this is so—that this blending of religion with the work of common life is not impossible, you will readily perceive, if you consider for a moment what, according to the right and proper notion of it, Religion is. What do we mean by “Religion?”

Religion may be viewed in two aspects. It is a Science, and it is an Art; in other words, a system of doctrines to be believed, and a system of duties to be done. View it in either light, and the point we are insisting on may, without difficulty, be made good. View it as a science—as truth to be understood and believed. If religious truth were, like many kinds of secular truth, hard, intricate, abstruse, demanding for its study, not only the highest order of intellect, but all the resources of education, books, learned leisure, then indeed to most men, the blending of religion with the necessary avocations of life would be an impossibility. In that case it would be sufficient excuse for irreligion to plead, “My lot in life is inevitably one of incessant care and toil, of busy, anxious thought, and wearing work. Inextricably involved, every day and hour as I am, in the world’s business, how is it possible for me to devote myself to this high and abstract science?” If religion were thus, like the higher mathematics or metaphysics, a science based on the most recondite and elaborate reasonings, capable of being mastered only by the acutest minds, after years of study and laborious investigation, then might it well be urged by many an unlettered man of toil, “I am no scholar—I have no head to comprehend these hard dogmas and doctrines.”

But the gospel is no such system of high and abstract truth. The salvation it offers is not the prize of a lofty intellect, but of a lowly heart. The mirror in which its grand truths are reflected is not a mind of calm and philosophic abstraction, but a heart of earnest purity. Its light shines best and fullest, not on a life undisturbed by business, but on a soul unstained by sin. The religion of Christ, while it affords scope for the loftiest intellect in the contemplation and development of its glorious truths, is yet, in the exquisite simplicity of its essential facts and principles, patent to the simplest mind. Rude, untutored, toil-worn you may be, but if you have wit enough to guide you in the commonest round of daily toil, you have wit enough to learn to be saved. The truth as it is in Jesus, while, in one view of it, so profound that the highest archangel’s intellect may be lost in the contemplation of its mysterious depths, is yet, in another, so simple that the lisping babe at a mother’s knee may learn its meaning.

Again: view religion as an Art, and in this light, too, its compatibility with a busy and active life in the world, it will not be difficult to perceive. For religion as an art differs from secular arts in this respect, that it may be practiced simultaneously with other arts—with all other work and occupation in which we may be engaged. A man can not be studying architecture and law at the same time. The medical practitioner can not be engaged with his patients, and at the same time planning houses or building bridges—practicing, in other words, both medicine and engineering at one and the same moment. The practice of one secular art excludes for the time the practice of other secular arts. But not so with the art of religion. This is the universal art, the common, all-embracing profession. It belongs to no one set of functionaries, to no special class of men. Statesman, soldier, lawyer, physician, poet, painter, tradesman, farmer—men of every craft and calling in life—may, while in the actual discharge of the duties of their varied avocations, be yet, at the same moment, discharging the duties of a higher and nobler vocation—practicing the art of a Christian. Secular arts, in most cases, demand of him who would attain to eminence in any one of them, an almost exclusive devotion of time and thought, and toil. The most versatile genius can seldom be master of more than one art; and for the great majority the only calling must be that by which they can earn their daily bread. Demand of the poor tradesman or peasant, whose every hour is absorbed in the struggle to earn a competency for himself and his family, that he shall be also a thorough proficient in the art of the physician, or lawyer, or sculptor, and you demand an impossibility. If religion were an art such as these, few indeed could learn it. The two admonitions, “Be diligent in business,” and “Be fervent in spirit, serving the Lord,” would be reciprocally destructive.

But religion is no such art, for it is the art of being, and of doing good; to be an adept in it, is to become just, truthful, sincere, self-denied, gentle, forbearing, pure in word and thought and deed. And the school for learning this art is not the closet, but the world—not some hallowed spot where religion is taught, and proficients, when duly trained, are sent forth into the world—but the world itself—the coarse, profane, common world, with its cares and temptations, its rivalries and competitions, its hourly, ever-recurring trials of temper and character. This is, therefore, an art which all can practice, and for which every profession and calling, the busiest and most absorbing, afford scope and discipline. When a child is learning to write, it matters not of what words the copy set to him is composed, the thing desired being that whatever he writes, he learn to write well. When a man is learning to be Christian, it matters not what his particular work in life may be; the work he does is but the copy-line set to him; the main thing to be considered is that he learn to live well. The form is nothing, the execution is everything. It is true, indeed, that prayer, holy reading, meditation, the solemnities and services of the church are necessary to religion, and that these can be practiced only apart from the work of secular life. But it is to be remembered that all such holy exercises do not terminate in themselves. They are but steps in the ladder of heaven, good only as they help us to climb. They are the irrigation and enriching of the spiritual soil—worse than useless if the crop be not more abundant. They are, in short, but means to an end—good, only in so far as they help us to be good and do good—to glorify God and do good to man; and that end can perhaps be best attained by him whose life is a busy one, whose avocations bear him daily into contact with his fellows, into the intercourse of society, into the heart of the world.

Away, then, with the notion that ministers and devotees may be religious, but that a religious and holy life is impracticable in the rough and busy world! Nay rather, believe me, that is the proper scene, the peculiar and appropriate field for religion—the place in which to prove that piety is not a dream of Sundays and solitary hours; that it can bear the light of day; that it can wear well amid the rough jostlings, the hard struggles, the coarse contacts of common life—the place, in one word, to prove how possible it is for a man to be at once not “slothful in business,” and “fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.”

[June 10.]

RELIGION IN COMMON LIFE.

PART II.

Another consideration which I shall adduce in support of the assertion that it is not impossible to blend religion with the business of common life, is this: that religion consists not so much in doing spiritual or sacred acts, as in doing secular acts from a sacred or spiritual motive.

There is a very common tendency in our minds to classify actions according to their outward form, rather than according to the spirit or motive which pervades them. Literature is sometimes arbitrarily divided into “sacred” and “profane” literature, history into “sacred” and “profane” history—in which classification the term “profane” is applied, not to what is bad or unholy, but to every thing that is not technically sacred or religious—to all literature that does not treat of religious doctrines and duties, and to all history save Church history. And we are very apt to apply the same principle to actions. Thus, in many pious minds there is a tendency to regard all the actions of common life as so much—an unfortunate necessity—lost to religion. Prayer, the reading of the Bible and devotional books, public worship—and buying, selling, digging, sowing, bartering, money-making, are separated into two distinct, and almost hostile, categories. The religious heart and sympathies are thrown entirely into the former, and the latter are barely tolerated as a bondage incident to our fallen state, but almost of necessity tending to turn aside the heart from God.

But what God hath cleansed, why should we call common or unclean? The tendency in question, though founded on right feeling, is surely a mistaken one. For it is to be remembered that moral qualities reside not in actions, but in the agent who performs them, and that it is the spirit or motive from which we do any work that constitutes it base or noble, worldly or spiritual, secular or sacred. The actions of an automaton may be outwardly the same as those of a moral agent, but who attributes to them goodness or badness? A musical instrument may discuss sacred melodies better than the holiest lips can sing them, but who thinks of commending it for its piety? It is the same with actions as with places. Just as no spot or scene on earth is in itself more or less holy than another; but the presence of a holy heart may hallow—of a base one, desecrate—any place where it dwells; so with actions. Many actions, materially great and noble, may yet, because of the spirit that prompts and pervades them, be really ignoble and mean; and, on the other hand, many actions, externally mean and lowly, may, because of the state of his heart who does them, be truly exalted and honorable. It is possible to fill the highest station on earth, and go through the actions pertaining to it in a spirit that degrades all its dignities, and renders all its high and courtly doings essentially vulgar and mean. And it is no mere sentimentality to say, that there may dwell in a lowly mechanic’s or household servant’s breast a spirit that dignifies the coarsest toils and “renders drudgery divine.” Herod of old was a slave, though he sat upon a throne; but who will say that the work of the carpenter’s shop at Nazareth was not noble and kingly work indeed?

And as the mind constitutes high or low, so secular or spiritual. A life spent amid holy things may be intensely secular; a life, the most of which is passed in the thick and throng of the world, may be holy and divine. A minister, for instance, preaching, praying, ever speaking holy words and performing sacred acts, may all the while be doing actions no more holy than those of a printer who prints Bibles, or of the bookseller who sells them; for, in both cases alike, the whole affair may be nothing more than a trade. Nay, the comparison tells worse than the former, for the secular trade is innocent and commendable, but the trade which traffics and tampers with holy things is, beneath all its mock solemnity, “earthly, sensual, devilish.” So, to adduce one other example, the public worship of God is holy work: no man can be living a holy life who neglects it. But the public worship of God may be—and with multitudes who frequent our churches is—degraded into work most worldly, most unholy, most distasteful to the great Object of our homage. He “to whom all hearts be open, all desires known,” discerns how many of you have come hither to-day from the earnest desire to hold communion with the Father of spirits, to open your hearts to him, to unburden yourselves in his loving presence, of the cares and crosses that have been pressing hard upon you through the past week, and by common prayer and praise, and the hearing of his holy Word, to gain fresh incentive and energy for the prosecution of his work in the world; and how many, on the other hand, from no better motive, perhaps, than curiosity or old habit, or regard to decency and respectability, or the mere desire to get rid of yourselves and pass a vacant hour that would hang heavy on your hands. And who can doubt that, where such motives as these prevail, to the piercing, unerring inspection of him whom outwardly we seem to reverence, not the market place, the exchange, the counting-room, is a place more intensely secular—not the most reckless and riotous festivity, a scene of more unhallowed levity, than is presented by the house of prayer?

But, on the other hand, carry holy principles with you into the world, and the world will become hallowed by their presence. A Christlike spirit will Christianize everything it touches. A meek heart, in which the altar-fire of love to God is burning, will lay hold of the commonest, rudest things of life, and transmute them, like coarse fuel at the touch of fire, into a pure and holy flame. Religion in the soul will make all the work and toil of life—its gains and losses, friendships, rivalries, competitions, its manifold incidents and events—the means of religious advancement. Marble or coarse clay, it matters not much which of these the artist works, the touch of genius transforms the coarser material into beauty, and lends to the finer a value it never had before. Lofty or lowly, rude or refined as life’s work to us may be, it will become to a holy mind only the material for an infinitely nobler than all the creations of genius—the image of God in the soul. To spiritualize what is material, to Christianize what is secular—this is the noble achievement of Christian principle. If you are a sincere Christian it will be your great desire, by God’s grace, to make every gift, talent, occupation of life, every word you speak, every action you do, subservient to Christian motive.

As a last illustration of the possibility of blending religion with the business of common life, let me call your attention to what may be described as the mind’s power of acting on latent principles.

In order to live a religious life in the world, every action must be governed by religious motives. But in making this assertion, it is not, by any means, implied that in all the familiar actions of our daily life religion must form a direct and conscious object of thought. To be always thinking of God, and Christ, and eternity, amid our worldly work; and however busy, eager, interested we may be in the special business before us, to have religious ideas, doctrines, beliefs, present to the mind—this is simply impossible. The mind can no more consciously think of heaven and earth at the same moment than the body can be in heaven and earth at the same moment. Moreover, there are few kinds of work in the world that, to be well done, must not be done heartily; many that require, in order to excellence, the whole condensed force and energy of the highest mind.

But though it be true that we can not, in our worldly work, be always consciously thinking of religion, yet it is also true that, unconsciously, insensibly, we may be acting under its ever-present control. As there are laws and powers in the natural world, of which, without thinking of them, we are ever availing ourselves—as I do not think of gravitation when, by its aid, I lift my arm, or of atmospheric laws when, by means of them, I breathe, so in the routine of daily work, though comparatively seldom do I think of them, I may yet be constantly swayed by the motives, sustained by the principles, living, breathing, acting in the invisible atmosphere of true religion. There are undercurrents in the ocean which act independently of the movements of the waters on the surface; far down too in its hidden depths there is a region where, even though the storm be raging on the upper waves, perpetual calmness and stillness reign. So there may be an undercurrent beneath the surface movements of your life—there may dwell in the secret depths of your being the abiding peace of God, the repose of a holy mind, even though, all the while, the restless stir and commotion of worldly business may mark your outer history.

And, in order to see this, it is to be remembered, that many of the thoughts and motives that most powerfully impel and govern us in the common actions of life, are latent thoughts and motives. Have you not often experienced that curious law—a law, perhaps, contrived by God, with an express view to this its highest application—by which a secret thought or feeling may lie brooding in your mind, quite apart from the particular work in which you happen to be employed? Have you never, for instance, while reading aloud, carried along with you in your reading the secret impression of the presence of the listener—an impression that kept pace with all the mind’s activity in the special work of reading; nay, have you not sometimes felt the mind, while prosecuting without interruption the work of reading, yet at the same time carrying on some other train of reflection apart altogether from that suggested by the book? Here is obviously a particular “business” in which you were “diligent,” yet another and different thought to which the “spirit” turned.

If the thought of an earthly auditory—of human minds and hearts that shall respond to his thoughts and words—can intertwine itself with all the activities of a man’s mind, and flash back inspiration on his soul, at least as potent and as penetrating may the thought be, of him, the great Lord of heaven and earth, who not only sees and knows us now, but before whose awful presence, in the last great congregation, we shall stand forth to recount and answer for our every thought and deed.

Or, to take but one other example, have we not all felt that the thought of anticipated happiness may blend itself with the work of our busiest hours? The laborer’s evening release from toil—the schoolboy’s coming holiday, or the hard-wrought business-man’s approaching season of relaxation—the expected return of a long-absent and much loved friend—is not the thought of these, or similar joyous events, one which often intermingles with, without interrupting, our common work? When a father goes forth to his “labor till the evening,” perhaps often, very often, in the thick of his toils, the thought of home may start up to cheer him. The smile that is to welcome him, as he crosses his lowly threshold when the work of the day is over, the glad faces, and merry voices, and sweet caresses of little ones, as they shall gather round him in the quiet evening hours—the thought of all this may dwell, a latent joy, a hidden motive, deep down in his heart of hearts, come rushing in a sweet solace at every pause of exertion, and act like a secret oil to smooth the wheels of labor. And so, in the other cases I have named, even when our outward activities are the most strenuous, even when every energy of mind and body is full strung for work, the anticipation of coming happiness may never be absent from our minds. The heart has a secret treasury, where our hopes and joys are often garnered—too precious to be parted with even for a moment.

And why may not the highest of all hopes and joys possess the same all-pervading influence? Have we, if our religion be real, no anticipation of happiness in the glorious future? Is there no “rest that remaineth for the people of God,” no home and loving heart awaiting us when the toils of our hurried day of life are ended? What is earthly rest or relaxation, what that release from toil after which we so often sigh, but the faint shadow of the saint’s everlasting rest—the repose of eternal purity—the calm of a spirit in which, not the tension of labor only, but the strain of the moral strife with sin, has ceased—the rest of the soul in God! What visions of earthly bliss can ever—if our Christian faith be not a form—compare with “the glory soon to be revealed;” what joy of earthly reunion with the rapture of the hour when the heavens shall yield our absent Lord to our embrace, to be parted from us no more forever! And if all this be not a dream and a fancy, but most sober truth, what is there to except this joyful hope from that law to which, in all other deep joys, our minds are subject? Why may we not, in this case too, think often, amid our worldly work, of the home to which we are going, of the true and loving heart that beats for us, and of the sweet and joyous welcome that awaits us there? And, even when we make them not, of set purpose, the subject of our thoughts, is there not enough of grandeur in the objects of a believer’s hope to pervade his spirit at all times with a calm and reverential joy? Do not think all this strange, fanatical, impossible. If it do seem so, it can only be because your heart is in the earthly hopes, but not in the higher and holier hopes—because love to Christ is still to you but a name—because you can give more ardor of thought to the anticipation of a coming holiday than to the hope of heaven and glory everlasting. No, my friends! the strange thing is, not that amid the world’s work we should be able to think of our home, but that we should ever be able to forget it; and the stranger, sadder still, that while the little day of life is passing—morning, noontide, evening—each stage more rapid than the last, while to many the shadows are already fast lengthening, and the declining sun warns them that “the night is at hand, wherein no man can work,” there should be those among us whose whole thoughts are absorbed in the business of the world, and to whom the reflection never occurs that soon they must go out into eternity—without a friend—without a home!

[June 17.]

RELIGION IN COMMON LIFE.

PART III.

Such, then, is the true idea of the Christian life—a life not of periodic observances, or of occasional fervors, or even of splendid acts of heroism and self devotion, but of quiet, constant, unobtrusive earnestness, amid the common-place work of the world. This is the life to which Christ calls us. Is it yours? Have you entered upon it, or are you now willing to enter upon it? It is not, I admit, an imposing or an easy one. There is nothing in it to dazzle, much in its hardness and plainness to deter the irresolute. The life of a follower of Christ demands not, indeed, in our day, the courage of the hero or the martyr, the fortitude that braves outward dangers and sufferings, and flinches not from persecution and death. But with the age of persecution the difficulties of the Christian life have not passed away. In maintaining a spirit of Christian cheerfulness and contentment—in the unambitious routine of humble duties—in preserving the fervor of piety amid the unexciting cares and wearing anxieties—in the perpetual reference to lofty ends amid lowly toils—there may be evinced a faith as strong as that of the man who dies with the song of martyrdom on his lips. It is a great thing to love Christ so dearly as to be “ready to be bound and to die” for him; but it is often a thing not less great to be ready to take up our daily cross, and to live for him.

But be the difficulties of a Christian life in the world what they may, they need not discourage us. Whatever the work to which our Master calls us, he offers us a strength commensurate with our needs. No man who wishes to serve Christ will ever fail for lack of heavenly aid. And it will be no valid excuse for an ungodly life that it is difficult to keep alive the flame of piety in the world, if Christ be ready to supply the fuel.

To all, then, who really wish to lead such a life, let me suggest that the first thing to be done—that without which all other efforts are worse than vain, is heartily to devote themselves to God through Christ Jesus. Much as has been said of the infusion of religious principle and motive into our worldly work, there is a preliminary advice of greater importance still—that we be religious. Life comes before growth. The soldier must enlist before he can serve. In vain, directions how to keep the fire ever burning on the altar, if first it be not kindled. No religion can be genuine, no goodness can be constant or lasting, that springs not, as its primary source, from faith in Jesus Christ. To know Christ as my Savior—to come with all my guilt and weakness to him in whom trembling penitence never fails to find a friend—to cast myself at his feet in whom all that is sublime in divine holiness is softened, though not obscured, by all that is beautiful in human tenderness; and, believing in that love stronger than death, which, for me, and such as me, drained the cup of untold sorrows, and bore without a murmur the bitter curse of sin, to trust my soul for time and eternity into his hands—this is the beginning of true religion. And it is the reverential love with which the believer must ever look to him to whom he owes so much, that constitutes the main-spring of the religion of daily life. Selfishness may prompt to a formal religion, natural susceptibility may give rise to a fitful one, but for a life of constant fervent piety, amid the world’s cares and toils, no motive is sufficient save one—self-devoted love to Christ.

But again, if you would lead a Christian life in the world, let me remind you that that life must be continued as well as begun with Christ. You must learn to look to him not merely as your Savior from guilt, but as the friend of your secret life, the chosen companion of your solitary hours, the depository of all the deeper thoughts and feelings of your soul. You can not live for him in the world unless you live much with him apart from the world. In spiritual as in secular things, the deepest and strongest characters need much solitude to form them. Even earthly greatness, much more moral and spiritual greatness, is never attained but as the result of much that is concealed from the world—of many a lonely and meditative hour. Thoughtfulness, self-knowledge, self-control, a chastened wisdom and piety, are the fruit of habitual meditation and prayer. In these exercises heaven is brought near, and our exaggerated estimate of earthly things corrected.

But, further, in availing yourself of this divine resource amid the daily exigences of life, why should you wait always for the periodic season and the formal attitude of prayer? The heavens are not open to the believer’s call only at intervals. The grace of God’s Holy Spirit falls not like the fertilizing shower, only now and then; or like the dew on the earth’s face, only at morning and night. At all times, on the uplifted face of the believer’s spirit, the gracious element is ready to descend. Pray always; pray without ceasing. When difficulties arise, delay not to seek and obtain at once the succor you need. Swifter than by the subtle electric agent is thought borne from earth to heaven. The Great Spirit on high is in constant sympathy with the spirit beneath, and in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the thrill of aspiration flashes from the heart of man to God. Whenever anything vexes you—whenever, from the rude and selfish ways of men, any trials of temper cross your path; when your spirits are ruffled, or your Christian forbearance put to the test, be this your instant resource! Haste away, if only for a moment, to the serene and peace-breathing presence of Jesus, and you will not fail to return with a spirit soothed and calmed. Or when the impure and low-minded surround you—when, in the path of duty, the high tone of your Christian purity is apt to suffer from baser contacts—O, what relief to lift the heart to Christ! to rise on the wings of faith—even for one instant to breath the air of that region where the infinite Purity dwells, and then return with a mind steeled against temptation, ready to recoil with the instinctive abhorrence of a spirit that has been beside the throne, from all that is impure and vile. Say not, then, with such aid at your command, that religion can not be brought down to Common Life!

In conclusion, let me once more urge upon you the great lesson upon which we have been insisting. Carry religious principle into every-day life. Principle elevates whatever it touches. Facts lose all their littleness to the mind which brings principle and law to bear upon them. The chemist’s or geologist’s soiled hands are no sign of base work; the coarsest operations of the laboratory, the breaking of stones with a hammer, cease to be mechanical when intellectual thought and principle govern the mind and guide the hands. And religious principle is the noblest of all. Bring it to bear on common actions and coarse cares, and infinitely nobler even than the philosophic or scientific, becomes the Christian life. Live for Christ in common things, and all your work will become priestly work. As in the temple of old, it was holy work to hew wood or mix oil, because it was done for the altar-sacrifice or the sacred lamps; so all your coarse and common work will receive a consecration when done for God’s glory, by one who is a true priest to his temple.

Carry religion into common life, and your life will be rendered useful as well as noble. There are many men who listen incredulously to the high-toned exhortations of the pulpit; the religious life there depicted is much too seraphic, they think, for this plain and prosaic world of ours. Show these men that the picture is not a fancy one. Make it a reality. Bring religion down from the clouds. Apply to it the infallible test of experiment, and, by diffusing your daily actions with holy principles, prove that love to God, superiority to worldly pleasure, spirituality, holiness, heavenly-mindedness, are something more than the stock ideas of sermons.

The world’s scenes of business may fade on our sight, the noise of its restless pursuits may fall no more upon our ear, when we pass to meet our God; but not one unselfish thought, not one kind and gentle word, not one act of self-sacrificing love done for Jesus’ sake, in the midst of our common work, but will have left an indelible impress on the soul, which will go out with it to its eternal destiny. So live, then, that this may be the result of your labors; so live that your work, whether in the Church or in the world, may become a discipline for that glorious state of being in which the Church and the world shall become one; where work shall be worship, and labor shall be rest; where the worker shall never quit the temple, nor the worshipper the place of work, because “there is no temple therein, but the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple thereof.”

[June 24.]

THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT—MANNERS.

By ABEL STEVENS, LL.D.

With most of us manners are a chief ministry of life. If love is the very element, the essence of holiness, then holiness should produce sweetness of both mind and manners. Amiability means, etymologically, loveliness, loveableness. But is it not too often the misfortune of piety, especially in its more earnest forms, to be accompanied by unamiable severity, not to say sourness—by introspective moodiness; unnecessary rigor in petty or indifferent things; uncharitable crimination of those whose opinions of spiritual experience do not conform to our own, habitual obtrusion of our own opinions—not only repelling individual brethren, but sometimes annoying and agitating whole churches?

“Be courteous:” The sentence, though brief, is full of significance, and is divinely authoritative. It is a commandment.

Stanley, in his “Lectures on the Scotch Church,” tells a fine story about Archbishop Usher, the chronologist of sacred history. Hearing of the great genius and saintliness of Rutherford, the celebrated Scotch divine, he went incognito to the rural parsonage of the good pastor, and was received to its hospitality as a belated traveler. The household was “catechised” that evening, and the stranger took his seat among them to share the exercise. “How many commandments are there?” asked Rutherford. “Eleven,” replied Usher. Rutherford rebuked him severely for his ignorance. What had been his education, that he could make such a blunder? The next morning was Sunday, and, as the pastor went on his way through the woods toward his church, he heard fervent prayer in a thicket, and was deeply affected. Usher soon appeared coming out of it, and Rutherford had an explanation. His heart was still more deeply touched, and the archbishop was constrained to preach for him that morning. He did so on the text, “A new commandment,” etc. Rutherford was now still more deeply affected; there was, indeed, an eleventh commandment—“that ye love one another”—and he had unintentionally broken it, for he had not been courteous to his eminent visitor, in his Saturday evening catechetical rebuke, and the command to be courteous was certainly implied in the new commandment—if not, it must be a twelfth one.

It is, indeed, a “commandment” whether the eleventh modified, or a twelfth. Hannah Moore, in her essay on St. Paul, delineates him as a veritable gentleman. He knew how to rebuke audacious sin; but his writings teem with maxims inculcating gentle behavior. There was a fine touch of courtesy in his retraction of that sudden rebuke to the Jewish priest—of courteous respect for the office, if not the officer.

Manners are admitted to be, at least, “minor morals.” Minor morals! How often are they indeed major morals! As making up a great proportion of the habitual conduct of life, their influence on ourselves, as well as on others, is habitual, and, therefore, must be proportionately strong and important. Shall we, then, deem them mere minor morals? Do they not fashion us, to a great extent, for both worlds? “As a man thinketh, so is he,” is an old proverb; as a man acteth, so is he, may be more surely affirmed, especially as he acteth habitually, in the common intercourse of life, so thoroughly modified by our demeanor.

You “know a man by the company he keeps,” says another maxim; you know him still more by the habitudes which accompany him.

You know him by his manners, not merely because manners are the most habitual effect, or expression, of his character, but because they have really, to a great extent, formed his character. They are cause as well as effect.

There is, then, a profound ethical importance in manners, for their educational, their moral, effect on the man himself. A truly courteous man, a true gentleman, and especially a Christian gentleman, is the better for every act of good manners in his daily life. There is sentiment, and, in a sense, moral sentiment, at the bottom of all manners. Respect for others has some very subtle and vital affinity with self-respect; and self-respect is not self-conceit, it is respect for the moral claims of our own nature on our own conduct.

Courtesy is, then, we repeat, ethical—and much more deeply and broadly so than is usually supposed. We can not habitually violate its requisitions without injuring ourselves, as well as others. Discourtesy reacts and degenerates.

But manners are not only important as self-educational; they are powerful in their influence on others, and have, in this respect, an ethical importance: to them attaches an unavoidable responsibility.

Our children are more effectively educated at home than in the school or in the world. The daily, insinuating influence of a mother’s voice, or glance, on the morale of her child, is like the gentle air and sunlight to young plants. The roughness or gentleness of a father’s demeanor in the household may make “roughs” or gentlemen of his boys. Mutual petulance or affectionateness between the children of a family may depend almost entirely on the same qualities in the father and mother. There is scarcely anything, however apparently trivial, in the manners of the home that is not irresistibly educational. The ladder heavenward, visioned in the mind of the patriarch, is planted at the domestic hearth, and inclines over the very cradle. Are manners minor morals, then? Nay, they are the most effective education, they form one of the most potent influences of the common, human life. There are cases in which defective manners inflict an evil equivalent to certain more apparent violations of morality.

Manners are the physiognomy of the soul. Rudeness, and especially ill-tempered severity, show an inferior morale. The personal revelation of character, particularly in familiar life, is one of the most influential forces for good or ill that acts upon men. It is in life what it is in literature, only incomparably more influential, as it is more habitual and affects our more direct and more sacred relations and intercourse. We know that in literature it is the great, the distinctive, power of an author. It is the individuality, the intellectual and moral personality of a writer, that mostly makes his productions classical or otherwise. Milton, Shakspere, Goethe, Schiller, Byron, we read themselves in their style of both language and thought; and they thus mold the souls of their readers after their own image. Pascal says, that “When we see a natural style we are surprised and delighted, for, in expecting to see an author, we find a man; while those who have good taste, often, in opening a book, expecting to see a man, find only an author.” “Style is the man,” says another great French writer. And so manners are the man—the style of the man’s conduct, and immeasurable in their silent, unconscious influence on all around us. Not only do parents thus mold the hearts and lives of their children, children the hearts and lives of one another, but pastors thus act on their churches, neighbors on neighbors, and even nations on nations. “Be courteous,” is, then, we may repeat, an important moral law—a divine commandment.

It is a fallacy to suppose that manners are matters merely of social life; they belong to a man’s whole life—his public as well as his private life. They have infinitely more to do with the success of public men than is usually supposed. They affect especially and profoundly the pastoral character and success. It is a great thing to be a true evangelist; but can you be completely so without obedience to the injunction of one who was more than an evangelist, who was an apostle—“Be courteous?” A public man who outrages good manners may not be altogether a moral nuisance, but he can not well be a salutary moral power in the community. His best theoretical instruction, if he be a public teacher, may not compensate for the continuous, insidious, demoralizing influence of his manners on his habitual hearers, especially on the incipient character of children and youth. The public teacher should, above all things, be, as Cicero insisted in regard to the orator, a good man; but, next to this, he should be a genuine gentleman. This phrase ordinarily has a somewhat ambiguous application: we need not say that we are not using it in its equivocal, conventional sense. We use it in the sense of the apostle’s command—“Be courteous,”—maintain your manners, he would say. Gentleness, so incessantly enjoined in holy Scripture, is an equivalent phrase—because genuine politeness itself always includes, as its central element, gentleness (gentility), kindliness; that is to say, a certain moral sentiment of tenderness and goodwill toward all men. It is a fact, worthy of the attention of the ethical philosopher, that true manners, genuine politeness, in not only polished life, but even in the chivalry of the age of knighthood, has thus been identified with a certain moral sentiment; that “gentility” essentially means gentleness; that even the chivalry, the bravery, of the hero, has proverbially been associated with generosity. How can a public man, then, dispense with these qualities? There is not merely a conciliatory influence in good manners on the part of the public man—an influence to win a candid hearing—but there is a positive moral power in them, a power which enhances all other power.

Let us not misunderstand the word. It is courtesy, not merely the manner or appearance of courtesy, that is enjoined. What may be manners in one country or age may not be such in another. Courtesy is the same everywhere and always. Courtesy, as meant by the apostle, and instinctively recognized by refined minds, is not so much manners, as it is the underlying sentiment of manners. And manners themselves should be distinguished from mannerisms. Mannerism is sometimes a mere perversion, a caricature of manners. The highest courtesy is often seen in the avoidance of manners—in the intercourse of true gentlemen, who have so much hearty regard for one another, so much confidence in their mutual good understanding, that they spontaneously dispense with all mere forms of courtesy. Courtesy is thus supreme in its spirit, while unconcerned about its expression. It is a sort of compliment to an intimate friend for you to show that you so far confide in his courtesy as to believe that he expects not the forms of courtesy from you. Lovers are never fastidious about the etiquette of manners. The etiquette of manners seldom enters into the most holy sanctuaries or intimacies of life. It is left outside, as in the East the sandals are left at the door; but courtesy always enters, and is most at home in the homes of the heart.

Great was Paul as a theologian, all the world acknowledges; but he was equally great as an ethical philosopher. What a fine discernment of moral distinctions he had! Love was with him the “fulfilling of the law,” and love is, in his writings, the essential principle of courtesy—gentleness, kindness, sweetness of soul. When were ever better ethics given to the world than in his discourse to the Corinthians on charity? That discourse should certainly rank next to his divine Master’s Sermon on the Mount, the second great religious document in the possession of the world. Any candid skeptic must acknowledge that, would all the world conform to it, the human race would be as perfect in morals and manners as it could be. And what is this but acknowledging the divine fitness, and, therefore, truthfulness, of the document, and, indeed, of the religion which gave it birth? What courtesy could transcend that which “thinketh no evil,” which “envieth not,” which “seeketh not its own,” which “is not puffed up,” which “believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things!”

“A holy life is made up,” says Bonar, “of a number of small things. Little words, not eloquent speeches or sermons; little deeds, not miracles nor battles, nor one great heroic act, or mighty martyrdom, make up the true Christian life. The little, constant sunbeam, not the lightning; the waters of Shiloh, ‘that go softly’ in their meek mission of refreshment, not the waters of the ‘river, strong and many,’ rushing down in torrents, noise and force, are the true symbols of a holy life. The avoidance of little evils, little sins, little inconsistencies, little weaknesses, little follies, little indiscretions and imprudences, little foibles, little indulgences of self and the flesh—the avoidance of such little things as these goes far to make up, at least, the negative beauty of a holy life.”

The aim of Christianity is to produce a sanctified and noble manhood in this world, preparatory for angelhood in a higher world. He that works well for his religion honors it, but he that lives it well honors it more, for such a life is itself the best work, and empowers all other work.

The God who created these fair heavens with the same facility as yon green sapling: he who hath bestowed on man a life of toil, of transient joys and fleeting pains, that he might not forget the higher worth of his enduring soul, and might feel that immortality waited for him beyond the grave,—he, he is one only God! his mighty name Jehovah! earth’s Creator and Judge! adored by Adam, first of men, and Adam’s sons; then by Abraham, our father. But the rites by which we serve him are obscure and dark even to our wisest men. Yet God himself prescribed our sacred types, and will in time disclose their purport.—Klopstock.