I suppose there is no metaphor in Holy Scripture that has been so much misunderstood and led to more mischief than this metaphor of the potter and the clay. Do not you know how, if any of us dared to vindicate the ways of God to men, again and again we were referred to the words of St. Paul: "Who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to Him that formed it: Why hast Thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?" And so the offended human conscience was silenced but not satisfied. There is no doubt that the monstrous misrepresentation of Christianity which we call Calvinism arose chiefly from this metaphor; and few things have done more harm to the religion of the world than Calvinism. Those who believe that God is an arbitrary tyrant who simply works as a potter is supposed to work on clay, irrespective of character or any plea for mercy—how can such a person love God, or care for God, or wish to go to church or even pray? You cannot do it!

Thus there sprang up in some men's minds just such a picture of God as is described by that wonderful genius, Browning. Some of you may have read the poem called "Caliban on Setebos," in which the half-savage Caliban pictures to himself what sort of a person God is. He had never been instructed, he knew nothing; but he imagined that God would act towards mankind as he acted towards the animals and the living creatures on his island; and this is a quotation from that poem:

In other words, his picture of God was that of an arbitrary tyrant who rejoiced in his power, who did what he liked, who enjoyed tormenting, who would have looked down in glee upon the pictures that have so touched us in the paper of a woman, as she taught a Bible-class, killed by a Zeppelin bomb; and most touching of all of the little child who, with the stump of his arm, ran in and said: "They've killed daddy and done this to me." These things stir our deepest feelings; but such a God as Caliban pictured his Setebos to be would have rejoiced at them and laughed to see them.

No wonder that this picture of God which has grown up in some minds produces absolute despair. People say, "If God is like that, what is the good of my doing anything? God will do what He likes, irrespective of what I do." Or, again, it produces a spirit of fatalism: "I'm made like that! It's not my fault." Like Aaron when reproached about the golden calf—"I cast the gold they gave me into the fire, and there came out this calf." And all this produces in the mind of mankind a kind of rebellion—nay, a hatred of God ("I hate God," said a man once to me)—which makes it quite impossible for any religion or trust or desire to pray to exist in the human soul. It is well worth while, then, to run this metaphor of the potter and the clay back to its source.

Here in Jeremiah is the original passage about the potter and the clay. Now if you read for yourself this passage in the eighteenth chapter of Jeremiah, you will find an absolutely different picture given. If you go with Jeremiah to the potter's house you find a humble, patient man at work dealing with refractory clay, patiently trying to make the best he can out of it, and when he is defeated in producing one object he makes another. If he cannot make a porcelain vase he will make a bowl; if he cannot produce a beautiful work of art he makes a flower-pot.

The potter has three things to notice about him. First of all, there is his patience. Then there is the fact that he is checked in his design by the clay at every moment. He has no arbitrary power; he is checked because he has to deal with a certain substance. And the last beautiful thing about the potter is his resourcefulness; he has always got the alternative of a second best. Though something has wrecked his first plan he has got another. This is the picture of God, these are the characteristics of God which we are to carry away from the potter and the clay.

1. Now just see, if this is so, what a tremendous light this throws upon the war. There are many to-day who do not think things out deeply, who look on this war as the breakdown of Christianity altogether. They say: All we have been taught, why, look how vain it is! Here are seven Christian nations at war and dragging in the rest of the world. All you have taught us about God, all you say about Christianity, is shown to be futile. We see the breakdown of Christianity indeed.

But wait a moment. Look at the potter and the clay, and see if you do not get some light from this. Here is the Potter, our great God; the great Potter knows what is in His mind; He has in His mind a world of universal peace. He is planning a porcelain vase in which the world is at peace. He meant men to be all of one mind. He made people of one blood to be of one mind in Christ Jesus. That is clearly His plan, His design, and we do well to pray for—

That is His plan, that is His design, and some day He will see it accomplished. "He shall see of the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied."

Meanwhile, because He acts like a potter, He is defeated again and again by the character of the clay, for He will not run counter to the free will of the individual or of a nation. If a great and powerful nation deliberately turns back from Christianity to Paganism, if that nation deliberately declares regret that it took up Christianity in the fourth century, if it has adopted the gospel that Might is Right, if the people turn to Odin as their ideal instead of to Christ, they defeat the plan of the great Potter; and so He cannot have the porcelain vase of universal peace. You have no right to blame God; it is the work of the Devil. God is hindered at every moment by the Devil and all his works; you cannot therefore blame our great and glorious God for the defeat of His design. The great Potter is not to be blamed because of the refractoriness of the clay.

But here comes the splendid resourcefulness of the great Potter. Although He cannot get out His first design of the porcelain vase of universal peace, He is not defeated. He has got a second-best; He will have a beautiful bowl of universal service—a people offering themselves out of sheer patriotism for the service of their country. And that is what He has produced to-day. Who would have thought that five millions of men would have volunteered to fight for their country? Who would have thought that every woman would feel herself disgraced if not doing something for her country as nurse, physician, or in a canteen? Why, the spirit of service abroad to-day among men and women is something we have not seen in our country for a hundred years. The great Potter, then, has produced something from the clay; He has produced the beautiful bowl of service. Let us thank Him for that!

2. But it is not only upon the war that the picture of the potter and the clay throws such light; it also shows what we have to do with our country. There are some people who imagine it is inconsistent to say two things at the same time. People blame me for declaring two things in the same breath. One is that we never have had such a righteous cause; that we are fighting for the freedom of our country, for the freedom of the world; that we are fighting for international honour, for the future brotherhood of nations; we are fighting for the "nailed hand against the mailed fist." But, on the other hand, are we to speak as if we had no faults of our own? Are we to take the tone of Pharisees and say, "We thank God we are not as other men, even as these Germans"? We have to admit that we have grave national sins ourselves, and if we want to shorten the war we have to put these national sins away. That is why we are going to have a national mission this autumn, and we are preparing for it now.

The Church is going to preach this great national mission, and—please God—our Non-conformist brethren will fall in on their own lines and do the same. We have great national sins, and we have to put those away if we would shorten the war. What a disgrace it is still to have a National Drink Bill of 180 millions! What a disgrace it is that we have not yet more thoroughly mastered immorality in London! What shame it is that still there is so much love of comfort, and that there are people making all they can out of the war!

We have to get rid of all this; we must have the spirit of sacrifice from one end of the nation to the other. We have to ask the great Potter to remake the country, to give the Empire a new spirit. Why was it that, when I had myself pressed a Bill to diminish the licensing hours on Sunday from six to three—a harmless reform, you would have thought—to give the barmen and barmaids a chance of Sunday rest, that was shelved in the long run? Why was it that we could not raise the age for the protection of girls even to eighteen? There is much to be purged out of our country, and there could be no greater calamity than for this war to end and England still to be left with her national sins.

Therefore the great Potter must remake us. He may have to break some nations to pieces like a potter's vessel. It is possible for a nation to be so stiffened in national sins that there may be nothing for it but to break it in pieces. We pray God that we may not be so far gone as that, that we may still be plastic clay in the hands of the Potter. That is our prayer, that is our ideal, to be a new England, a new British Empire, and that God may use us as His instrument in freeing the world.

3. But—and let this be my last word—we ourselves individually must be re-created. Have you ever thought, brother or sister, that the great Potter had a design for you? That, when He planned you, He planned a devoted man who would be a powerful influence in the world; that He planned you, my sister, to be an example of attractive goodness. How many people have you brought to Christ? How powerful a witness do you give in this city? Suppose that you, who were meant individually to be powerful instruments in God's hand, vessels He could use, have become middle-aged cynics, or sneer at the religion you profess to believe in, there is only one thing to be done. You must get back to the design the great Potter had for you. We have all some reason to admit that we have been marred in the hands of the Potter, and to ask the Potter to make us into another vessel as it may seem good to the Potter to make us. In this there are only two conditions—to look up and to trust heaven's wheel and not earth's wheel.

We have to realise this, that we can be remade, that God's power can do anything; but that we may go on for ever as we are unless we really put ourselves in the hands of God. What, then, I ask every one of you, is to take the clay of your nature with the prayer, "Just as I am, without one plea," and place it in the great Potter's hands, that He may re-create you into the man or woman God meant you to be. Nothing can more effectually shorten the days for our boys in the trenches.

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II

THE SPLENDOUR OF GOD

"O God, wonderful art Thou in Thy holy places: Thou wilt give strength and power unto Thy people. Blessed be God."—Ps. lxviii. 35.

At the great Convention of all the clergy of London in Advent, 1915, we saw reasons for thinking that what the world had been losing sight of was the majesty of God; the lowered sense of sin, the neglect of worship, the uppishness of man, the pessimism of the day, and the querulous impatience under discomfort, are all signs of the loss of the sense of the majesty of God.

But I want now to go farther than this; I want to prove that the only way to revive praise, hope, peace, sacrifice, and courage, is to revive a belief, not only in the majesty, but in the splendour of God. It was said not long ago that even good Christians believed all the Creed except the first clause of it.

But if we leave out the first clause, "I believe in God," see what happens.

1. Prayer becomes unreal. It is only a delight when it is felt to be communion with a very noble and splendid person.

is only true if that short and glorious hour is spent with an inspiring and glorious personality. When, like Moses, our faces should shine as we come down from the mount.

2. Praise becomes practically impossible. Sometimes we say, "We really must praise God more." But we cannot make ourselves praise, any more than we can move a boat by swinging up and down in it. We must pull against something to make it move. What we want is an adequate idea of the splendour of God. When we come in sight of Mont Blanc or Niagara, or when we hear of some gallant deed on the battlefield, we say "How splendid!" quite naturally. We shall praise quite naturally when we catch sight—if only for a moment—of the true character of God, or believe He has done something great.

3. Religion, which means something which binds us to God, becomes an uninspiring series of detailed scruples about ourselves. Self-examination is most necessary; but it was well said by an experienced guide of souls that, "for every time we look at ourselves, we ought to look nine times at God."

Do some of you feel as I speak that your religion does not help you; that, while you have not given up your prayers, or coming to church, it is rather a burden than a help, or at any rate not such a help as it might be? It is because you have lost sight of the splendour of God.

4. Or, again, are you suffering from depression? You hardly know why, but everything seems to go wrong; you seem oppressed with what old writers called "accidie." Your will has lost its spring; the note of your life has lost its hope and its joyousness. You drag through life rather than "rise up with wings like an eagle" or "run," or even "walk." This is all because you have lost faith or never had faith in the splendour of God.

5. Or, on the contrary, you are busy from morning till night, and you are too busy for prayer or church; you are immersed in a thousand schemes for making money for yourself or for your family or for the good of mankind. And yet, with all your business abilities, you don't inspire people; you are conscious of a want yourself, and other people are more conscious of it. It is simply that you are without the one thing which matters; you are the planet trying to shine without its sun; you are ignoring the splendour of God.

I. For consider how splendid God is! These writers of the psalms had many limitations. They had a very inadequate belief in the life after the grave; they knew nothing about the Incarnation; they had no Christmas Day, Easter Day, Ascension Day, or Whit Sunday, to inspire them. But they are bursting with glorious song, because of their sense of the splendour of God. "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were made, Thou art God from everlasting, and world without end."

1. He is splendid, first, in His wonderful Power. I should not think of arguing with you as to the existence of God; although, to any thinking mind, the marvellous intricacy of the whole creation, from the largest sun to the smallest insect, demands a Thinking Mind; the thunder of the four hundred million consciences of mankind demands a Righteous Person. And a Creator who is at once wise and good is a God. No! it is not only His existence which should mean so much to us, but His astonishing power.

I remember when I was at Niagara being taken down to the great power-station, and through that power-station the power of Niagara Falls lighted, among other things, the whole of the great province of Ontario so that the solitary worker in some small town was working with the light from a great power-station which he had never seen, and in which he only, perhaps, partly believed.

But think of the Power-Station which works the whole universe; which gives the light to twenty million suns which have been counted and God knows how many which have never been seen, and yet which gives strength to the boy far from home as he leaps across the parapet into the battle. Well may another psalmist cry: "O God, wonderful art Thou in Thy holy places: Thou shalt give strength and power unto Thy people. Blessed be God."

And, surely, even if there were no other characteristic of the splendour of God, this ought to encourage us more than it does. To believe that in prayer you are in touch with unfathomable strength; that if you co-operate with God you have at your disposal His unrivalled and incomparable power—this ought to put heart into the most timid. We understand what Archbishop Trench meant when he said:

"We kneel how weak; we rise how full of power!"

2. But the power of God is really only the beginning of it. The next characteristic of the splendour of God is in His Generosity. "Thou openest Thine Hand, and fillest all things living with plenteousness," says the psalmist. You could scarcely get a more beautiful description of the open-handedness of God, and the ease with which God showers His gifts upon the world.

(a) When you come to think of it, there is no explanation of man's possession of life, except the open-handedness of God. He simply gave him life, and there is nothing more to be said about it. It is at present still a scientific truth that "Life only comes from life." Life has never been yet spontaneously generated. When men thought they had succeeded in creating life, it was discovered that some previous germ of life had been left in the hermetically sealed vessel. But even if, in the years to come, some sort of life was produced from apparently dead matter, would it really have any bearing on the age-long belief that this free, joyous life of man and animal has come from God? When you ask why He gave life, there is only one answer: That so many more living, sentient beings might sun themselves in the sunshine of His own happiness, He opened His Hand and life came out.

(b) But He was not content with giving life. He gave all the colour of life; He painted the most glorious world out of the riches of His marvellous imagination; every variety of flower; every plumage of bird; every species of tree—often brought to the best by the slow process of evolution. He gave it all; He flung it out in all the exuberance of delight in what was "very good." He gave colour to our own life. He gave us our warm friendships; our keen intellectual interest in problems; the love of mother, wife, husband, father, child. He flung it all out, like a joyous giver; "He filled all things living with plenteousness."

(c) But not content with this life, He had another ready when this was over. He knew the boys wanted life, and that this life would not be enough to satisfy them, especially if they died early; so He had another ready for them. And here, again, another psalmist dashes in with his word of praise: "He asked life of Thee, and Thou gavest him a long life, even for ever."

This is our glorious hope to-day. It is only when we have grasped the splendour of the generosity of God that we can really appraise the meanness of man.

Nearly all the ills of our life on earth—the poverty, the class hatred, the wars—come from an unfair grasping at an unfair share of the gifts of the generous God.

some poet sang of the gipsies.

God gave plenty of land, and plenty of water, and plenty of air, and if the New Testament motto had been followed, "Having food and raiment, with these we shall have enough," the generosity of God would have been mirrored in the generosity of man.

3. But even this marvellous power and generosity would not excite the passionate love of mankind, but for His Humility. Power may only awe; the merely generous Lord or Lady Bountiful, kind as they often are, are sometimes felt to do it in a spirit of patronage and self-pleasing; they like to be thought bountiful and kind, and have their reward in the grateful looks and even obsequious demeanour of the recipients of their bounty. But it is Christmas which really stirs the blood. That this powerful, generous Being should manifest His power and shower down His gifts was wonderful; but that He should give Himself—this was sublime! This is what stirred heaven to its depths—"Glory to God in the highest!"

The crowning splendour of God was His Humility. He was great when He said, "Let there be light, and there was light." He was mighty when He opened His Hand and filled all things living with plenteousness. But He was greatest of all when He lay as a babe in the manger. Well may the adoring Christian look up at Christmas and salute this third revelation of the splendour of God:

II. What, then, ought this belief in the splendid power, generosity, and humility of God to produce in us?

1. It must produce Praise. It must make us say: "Praise God in His holiness; praise Him in the firmament of His power."

You have caught sight of Mont Blanc and you have seen Niagara, and you say quite naturally, "How splendid!"

2. It produces Hope. War, slaughter, misery, can't be the end, if such a God exists. It may be inevitable from man's lust, ambition, and greed; but it can't be the end—if God's people work with God: there must be a kingdom coming at last in which dwelleth, not ambition, tyranny, or cruelty, but "righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost."

3. It produces Peace. Once believe in the splendour of God, and you get "the peace of God, which passeth all understanding." "Thou wilt keep him," says the prophet, "in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee." The world is not out of God's Hand, as some people would persuade us, nor any individual in the world. "The very hairs of your head are all numbered," and "ye are of more value than many sparrows."

4. And it produces answering Sacrifice and Courage. What we want to-day is "the warrior's mind," which gives and does not heed the cost, which fights and does not heed the wounds; and we can only be nerved for this by the splendid self-sacrifice of God Himself.

If man is God's child, then it must be a case of "Like Father, like son," and the splendour of God must be answered by the nobility of man. To know such a God is to live, to serve such a God is to reign; with such a faith, death loses its sting, and the grave its terrors. For to die is to pass into the presence of One who has shown Himself powerful and generous and humble. And the response of the grateful soul, with ten times the conviction of the psalmist, when he thinks of what happened on Christmas Day, will be the same words uttered so many thousand years ago:

"O God, wonderful art Thou in Thy holy places.... He will give strength and power unto His people. Blessed be God."

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III

GOD THE KING OF THE WORLD[4]

"God is my King of old; the help that is done upon earth He doeth it Himself."—Ps. lxxiv. 12.

God is either non-existent or His existence is the greatest fact in the universe. Either the secularist is right, and there is nothing but the strong hand and the keen brain of man and woman to better the condition of world, or, if there be a Person who created the great blazing suns that we call stars, whose imagination is so vast that He controls the movements of history, and yet whose knowledge is so detailed that the welfare of the smallest child in a great city is of infinite interest to Him, then the existence of that Person is the greatest fact in all the world. No question is so urgent as what He thinks about a problem; nothing is so vitally important as to know what His mind is, for instance, as to the issue of a great war. No one is quite so foolish as the man or woman who either plans his or her own life, or who propounds schemes for the improvement of the world, without taking the greatest Fact in all the world into account, or keeping in touch with what must be on this hypothesis the ultimate Source and Fount of all power and the Mainspring of all energy. If there be such a Person at all, the wires might as well expect to convey a message apart from the electric current as for the human instrument to avail without God.

Now, I think it is quite likely that among so many busy people, whose brains are all full of practical schemes, there may be some whose minds may have but little hold on God, and may be troubled by doubts, such as I remember my own mind was in the days of my youth. After all, one mind is very much like another; and in speaking to women I have long learnt to speak as if I was speaking to men, and in this I never found myself very much astray. If I tell you, then, how the reality of God gradually dawned upon one mind, it is only in the hope that through what may be similar clouds of vagueness and doubt the light may shine upon another.

1. I think undoubtedly that Nature was, and always will be to most minds, the first help. It does seem more and more impossible that the ordered universe can have been produced by chance. To use an illustration I have often used, especially on Sunday afternoons at the open-air meetings in the parks of East London, if a box of letters cannot throw themselves into a play of Shakespeare because there is clearly the mark of mind in the play, how little credible is it that the atoms of the universe have thrown themselves into the universe as we see it to-day! We feel inclined to add to the trenchant questions in the Book of Job the further question: Who wrapped the atmosphere round the earth and made life possible, and stopped the friction? Was the beauty of the earth the surprise, or the gift to His children of a Being with a beautiful mind? Can the ordered course of the silent stars be produced by any amount of juggling with chance out of the atoms of the world? In other words, Nature drives us not only to God, but to a very strong God and a very present God. If the great astronomer Herschel is right, and every atom has the appearance of a created thing and every law of Nature requires, as he says, the continual application of force, we are "up against"—to use a cant phrase of the day—we are up against the most powerful Person the world has ever known. To swing the smallest planet on its orbit is beyond the power of the greatest superman ever present to the brain of a megalomaniac. But to swing twenty millions of blazing suns, and to swing them every day and every night, and to swing them, as far as we know, for millions of years, requires a Person of surpassing strength and most present power, for it is clear that of this wonderful thing which is done upon earth every day and every night "He doeth it Himself."

2. But if the philosopher Kant was right in saying that the first thing which filled him with awe was the starry heavens without, he went on to say that the second was the moral law within. And if the minds of you women are like my own, the path of the discovery of God lies next through the conscience. What is it, this indistinct knocking, this voice, which though it can be stilled can never be silenced? If it is only a product of mingled self-interest and heredity, as some would uphold, why does it persistently urge us, sometimes in almost bitter tones, against our immediate self-interest?

Why must the boy leave his brilliant prospects and put himself under the bullets and shells in the trenches? Why must the mother let him go? It is only a shallow thinker, I believe, who can remain long under the impression that the "categorical imperative," as Kant called it, or, as we might say, this insistent, imperious voice, can be produced by any process of evolution at all. It speaks like the voice of a person; it argues like a person; it refuses to be silenced like a person. And the argument is more than justified that, if there is a Person who made the world and still carries it on, it is more than probably the same Person who is speaking to us in conscience. The fact that by His warnings and encouragements He clearly cares so much for righteousness is a standing witness that the Person who swings the stars is more than a strong and clever devil, which the author of the material universe alone might conceivably be, but a Person with a passion for goodness. Otherwise, as Dr. Chalmers said, He would not have placed in the breast of every one of His children, of every one of His created beings, a reclaiming witness against Himself.

We have come, then, a good way out of sceptical vagueness when we have arrived at a Person of appalling power, and yet of equally appalling righteousness, who is thundering His will through every conscience in the world, as though standing in the midst of the universe and striking at the same time four hundred million gongs; not leaving it for someone else to do, but doing it Himself.

But, alas! we are still far from loving Him, for indeed He is still far from being lovable. Love is the only thing which we cannot command at will and which we cannot give at will; and the world would be in a sorry plight so far as loving God is concerned, if nothing more had been done by God than this.

3. After all, there are many things which might make us inclined to hate this immensely strong and righteous Person. With all His strength and with all His righteousness, there is a terrible amount of suffering in the world. The old question that some of your children may have asked you who are mothers has far more in it than appears upon the surface: "Oh, mother, why does not God kill the devil?" The world is filled with injustice and cruelty, and especially so to-day. Ypres Cathedral and the Cloth Hall, as I have seen with my own eyes, are in ruins. So are thousands of homes in Belgium, France, and Poland, and yet not one single thing was done by the innocent inhabitants to deserve this fate. Who is going to give life again to the hundreds shot in cold blood in Louvain and Aerschott and elsewhere, and seen shot by one of the clergy of the diocese of London; or honour again to the outraged women and girls; or restore the dead children—born and unborn—to the mothers who lost their children in the last Zeppelin raid? Where is the God of the fatherless and of the widow? It is all very well to say, "It is God in His holy habitation." But why does He sit up there in His holy habitation while such things are being done upon earth? Is He reclining, as Tennyson pictured the ancient gods,

He may stay there; but if He does, who is going to love Him? Whom do we love in England to-day? Is our popular hero the man who, while he remains safe in the shelter of his home, suggests that someone else should go and do something to save the country? For myself, if I thought God was like that, I should not love Him. Browning, with that piercing insight which has helped so many, puts the matter in a sentence. Is it possible, he asks in that great argument contained in the poem "Saul,"

"Would I suffer for him that I love?" cries David, as he looks with love and pity on stricken Saul. "Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldest Thou, so wilt Thou." And it is an argument that no petty quibbles can affect. For instance, if the boys in the trenches every day and every night so give their lives for their friends; if the mother every day so loves the world that she gives her only begotten son, and God either cannot or will not, then man is greater than God; then the creature surpasses the Creator; the parts in the great drama have changed indeed.

And that brings us straight up to the New Testament, expecting the very story—yes, asking for the very chapters—to carry on the great witness of Nature and of conscience. And there we find the story just as we should expect, only more so. To use Archbishop Temple's phrase, the character depicted in the New Testament educates our conscience instead of merely satisfying it. It is a more glorious exhibition of the character of God than we had any right to ask, and all carried out personally by Himself. The help that was brought to earth, He brought it Himself. And just as, on a gloomy day, when bright sunshine bursts through clouds, it changes everything, so this revelation changes everything. It does not do away with difficulties; it lights them up. It does not do away with suffering, but lights it up. It is quite another thing to suffer or to see suffering if God suffered. "Then I can feel the bullet tear out my eyes and still believe," as a young officer to whom this happened still believes. It does not do away with the crime of the men who have wantonly produced this unnecessary war, and who have trampled underfoot every law of chivalry and humanity in carrying it out. But it does give great inspiration to those who die for what has been called the nailed hand against the mailed fist. "As Christ died for the salvation of the world, my two boys have died according to their lights for the same cause. May I not think"—asked a Colonel who lost both his sons in one week—"that Christ counts them as His comrades in arms?"

And what that thought did for him it will do for others. It does not do away with the inequalities of human life, but like a trumpet note it summons every man and woman to come and rally round Him who sprang into the midst of them and gave His life, and who, while employing human minds and hearts for His work, means that the help that is done upon earth He doeth it Himself.

What, then, has all this to say to a conference of women workers? It suggests a warning, and flashes an inspiration to you. It suggests a warning. It is possible that the keenest, ablest women, like the keenest, ablest men, may make a mistake which might more clearly be seen to be ludicrous if it were not so common, that they imagine they can accomplish great things without God. History is strewn with the failures of those who have made this tragic and hopeless mistake. Many humble and noble souls who in infinite distress have found faith impossible have been really in touch with this wonderful and righteous and loving Person without knowing it, and have left behind them on earth the work which God did through them, and who acknowledge now in a clearer atmosphere that the work that they had done He did it Himself. But the merely busy men and women, the man or woman who deliberately believes like Nebuchadnezzar: "Is not this great Babylon that I have built by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty?" have been the failure, the laughing-stock of the world; they have been out of touch with the Source of all power, and wisdom, and grace, and the world, when they have passed, will be the same as it was before.

But if it suggests a warning, what inspiration, dear sisters, it flashes before you! not so much to do something you have never done before, but possibly to do it in a different spirit; for the first time in your life, perhaps, to be consciously fellow-workers with God, to come again and again to God, and to fill yourselves with great heartfuls of His power and love, to unite yourself in sacramental union to Him who came to seek for the lost, to lift up all work into a new atmosphere, and to find a joy in it which the world can neither give nor take away.

That is the glorious prospect which opens out before us all. God has no favourites; He is the same for all, and invites all to join in the great comradeship which changes life. It is the chance of our life to accept His offer. "The help that is done upon earth He doeth it Himself;" and as you find the reality of that help at your disposal more and more, day by day and year by year, you will look up as trench after trench is taken in a power obviously not yours, to gladly acknowledge: "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but to Thy name give the praise."

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IV

MISSIONARY WORK THE ONLY FINAL CURE FOR WAR[5]

"They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain: for the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea."—Isa. xi. 9.

It is with a pathetic wistfulness we hear described by the prophet this Advent picture of the reign of peace, in which the wolf is to dwell with the lamb, and the leopard to lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and the sucking child to play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child to put his hand on the cockatrice' den, and in which the special feature of the holy mountain was to be that they should not hurt nor destroy. For we look round after nineteen hundred years of the religion which was to bring this "peace on earth and good will among men," and we see an outpouring of more blood and an outbreak of viler passions than has been seen in this world for a thousand years.

One can little wonder that the cynics scoff, and those who refuse or fail to look below the surface speak openly of the breakdown of Christianity, and that some of the most earnest and loving of God's children are deeply moved and disturbed. Is this beautiful picture a Will-of-the-wisp? they ask. Is it a mirage in the desert? or are the longing eyes of God's children some day to see it realized?

I. "They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain." And first we see Belgium stabbed in the back and ravaged, then Poland, and then Serbia, and then the Armenian nation wiped out—five hundred thousand at a moderate estimate being actually killed; and then as a necessary consequence, to save the freedom of the world, to save Liberty's own self, to save the honour of women and the innocence of children, everything that is noblest in Europe, everyone that loves freedom and honour, everyone that puts principle above ease, and life itself beyond mere living, are banded in a great crusade—we cannot deny it—to kill Germans: to kill them, not for the sake of killing, but to save the world; to kill the good as well as the bad, to kill the young men as well as the old, to kill those who have shown kindness to our wounded as well as those fiends who crucified the Canadian sergeant, who superintended the Armenian massacres, who sank the Lusitania, and who turned the machine-guns on the civilians of Aerschott and Louvain—and to kill them lest the civilisation of the world should itself be killed.

And no doubt for many to-day this belief in Christianity is trembling in the balance; the world seems to have returned to the primitive chaos of paganism from which it came.

But this awful nightmare only besets those who fail to look below the surface. Two small publications will help those who are in this frame of mind; one is an excellent lecture by the Dean of Westminster (Dr. Ryle), entitled "The Attitude of the Church towards War," and the other a brilliant little book by the well-known American writer, Owen Wister, called "The Pentecost of Calamity."

In the first it is clearly shown that, although Christianity and War are ideally opposed to one another, and although when the world is wholly Christian there can be no war, yet the writers of the Bible and the Fathers of the Church have always held that, until that ideal time arrives, a Christian man might have to go to war.

In the New Testament itself, as the Dean points out, we must balance "They who take the sword shall perish by the sword" with the words from the lips of the same Divine Teacher, "He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one."

Later on, Christians are found in the Roman Army in increasing numbers, and St. Ambrose's and St. Augustine's words quoted by the Dean may be taken as typical of the teaching of the early Church. "The courage which protects one's country in war against the raids of barbarians is completely righteous," says St. Ambrose ("De Offic.," i. 61). And St. Augustine says ("Ep.," 227): "Provided they are really good men, those who are fighting are unquestionably engaged in the pursuit of peace, even though the quest be prosecuted through bloodshed."

And in Mr. Wister's brilliant essay, after a delightful picture of Germany as it appeared to be on the surface in June, 1914, with its efficiency, its comfort, its culture, and after especially describing a delightful children's festival in Frankfurt to celebrate the bicentenary of GlÜck, he then portrays the awful horror which seized him and all the educated Americans who had learnt to love their holiday in Germany, when the wild beast suddenly appeared from among the flowers, and, to use his own words, made his spring at the throat of an unsuspecting, unprepared world.

"Suppose a soul arrived on earth from another world, wholly ignorant of events, and were given its choice, after a survey of the nations, which it should be born in and belong to. In May, June, and July, 1914, my choice," he says, "would have been, not France, not England, not America, but Germany.

"It was on the seventh day of June, 1914, that Frankfurt assembled her school-children in the opera-house to further their taste and understanding of Germany's supreme national art.

"But exactly eleven months later, on May 7, 1915, a German torpedo sank the Lusitania, and (this was the awful revelation) the cities of the Rhine celebrated this also for their school-children."

He then gives the Prussian creed, sentence by sentence, compiled from the utterances of Prussians, the Kaiser and his Generals, professors, and editors, of which I can only quote these sentences:

"War in itself is a good thing. God will see to it that war always recurs. The efforts directed towards the abolition of war must not only be termed foolish, but absolutely immoral. The peace of Europe is only a secondary matter for us. The sight of suffering does one good; the infliction of suffering does one more good. This war must be conducted as ruthlessly as possible."

Now, I do not quote this (and you will find four pages of similar sayings) to stir up unchristian hatred of the German race, many of whom as individuals would repudiate such sayings as their own personal belief, but I do it to defend Christianity. I only heard just before coming here, in the home of one of the many mourning families I visit, that a son who had died in Germany testified in his last letter to the great kindness with which he had been treated in hospital.

Such teaching as this is not Christianity; this is the spirit of Antichrist. You, poor brother and sister, who are allowing your faith to be shattered by the war—you are not looking deep enough.

Only one nation wanted war, as the pathetic want of preparation of every other nation proves to demonstration; only one nation has set at naught the Christian principles which have slowly been gaining ground in the conduct of war; and only one spirit has produced the war, and that a spirit avowedly and in so many words passionately opposed to the Spirit of the New Testament.

And, therefore, it is the grossest injustice to lay the blame on religion for what has been produced by its avowed opposite, and to talk about the breakdown of Christianity for what is due to the revival of avowed paganism.

II. But I can imagine my distressed brethren saying: "The answer is good as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. Why, after nearly two thousand years, has Christianity not progressed farther? Why is not the world more completely Christian? Why was the wild beast left among the flowers? Nay, why is the wild beast still so active in our midst? Why did the Drink Bill of our country go up eight millions in the first six months of 1915? Why have the scenes in the streets of darkened London been worse than they have been for twenty years? You do not meet me fully," he says, "when you prove that it was not Christianity which produced this war; what I want to know is why it was not strong enough to stop it."

And my answer shall be given to that, not in anger, but in sadness: "And have you during this last twenty-five years fought the wild beast yourself in this great city? Have you yourself practised strict self-denial to the point of sacrifice, in dealing with the drink question, to help the weak brethren for whom Christ died? Have you crushed down the wild beast of lust in yourself, and grappled with the haunts of vice, as many in London have done for twenty-five years? Have you seen that there is a Mission Church among every eight thousand people as they have come into London, and given of your substance to plant one? Have you done your best to see that every sailor that goes from our ports is a Christian, and that every trader who trades throughout the world, and every bank clerk who has been to work in Berlin or Paris, lives up to his religion? Have you given every available penny to spread the Gospel, the failure of which you now deplore, throughout the world? Or have you spoken of 'sending money out of the country,' of the uselessness of Christian servants, and repeated the travellers' tales about Missions of those who have never visited a missionary station in their lives, when you have been asked to support Mission work abroad?"

Then, until you have done that, I refuse you the right to speak of the weakness of the religion which you have failed to support. It is only promised that "they shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain" when "the earth is filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea."

But what if we have never really attempted to fill the earth with the knowledge of the Lord? What if we have only very feebly attempted to know this ourselves? What if, as a consequence of spending less than a million a year on Foreign Missions, we are now having to spend five millions a day on a war made necessary by the neglect of our Christian duty?

No one believes more absolutely than I do in the righteousness of the present war; as I have said a thousand times, I look upon it as a war for purity, for freedom, for international honour, and for the principles of Christianity. I look on everyone who fights for this cause as a hero, and everyone who dies in it as a martyr; but, at the same time, I believe that if every Christian throughout the world had fully risen to his responsibilities and had fully lived up to his Christianity, for the last hundred years, we might have done more to avert it. You cannot say more than that. Slavery was undoubtedly as much opposed as war to Christianity, but it took eighteen hundred years to abolish that; it may take another eighteen hundred years to abolish war. We must not hurry God, but we must not fail to help Him; we can hasten the kingdom. It is no good praying "Thy kingdom come" by itself; we must also make it come, and the only sure way to make the kingdom come, and with the kingdom the extinction of war, is to spread throughout the world the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.

We were beginning to find this out before the war.

A striking pamphlet by Canon Holland, "The White Man's Burden," has been published by the great Society which for two hundred years has tried, amidst much indifference, apathy and discouragement, to propagate the Gospel throughout the world. He showed how our skilled and devoted Governors and statesmen throughout the world found after a time that their ability and hard work reached a point at which they could go no farther.

For instance, quite naturally their system of education broke down the old beliefs of India; quite naturally the ideals and ideas of freedom and personal responsibility which they taught produced a desire among individuals also to be free, and a longing in every nation to realise itself. The great statesman rubbed his eyes; he couldn't quarrel with this result of his own teaching. But who was to bind this transformed nation with new cords? where was he to find the new restraints to take the place of the old ones which had been broken through from sheer life and vigour? Where were the new wine-skins to hold the new wine?

And, pathetically, even before the war such men were turning to the religion which they had been partially taught at their public school, but which in their blindness they had half despised, as having no bearing on a practical workaday world; but, lo! practical common sense had broken down; could the secret be, after all, in what they had heard in their Confirmation preparation, in that school sermon to which they had only half attended, in the prayers which they had said rather as a matter of form ever since they were taught them at their mothers' knees?

From end to end of the world the revelation was coming, and, as one of those who has borne this white man's burden, Lord Selborne, in his preface to the pamphlet, endorses what it says. There is only one set of rules which will hold the new nation, and only one set of wine-skins which will hold the new wine; and that is the rules of God's Commandments as interpreted and extended in the New Testament, the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount; and the only wine-skins which will hold the new wine are those produced by the Gospel of the Incarnate, Risen, and Ascended Christ, with the miracles which He worked believed, and the Sacraments which He gave accepted and used. "Let the new wine be put into new wine-skins, and both are preserved."

All this was before the war. But since the war began, just as you see against the dark thunderclouds the brilliancy of the sunshine, which even lights up those clouds and turns them into a glory and a radiance themselves, so all that was chivalrous and noble in Europe has suddenly leaped to light. Christianity has been rediscovered. Censors have been converted by reading soldiers' letters. Many a man who professed himself an atheist has now seen what Christianity really means. "Even an atheist must have believed if he had seen my father die," wrote a young officer of a father who was buried yesterday. "Could you sing me a hymn?" asked a young officer, dying in the last battle, of the chaplain, who in the very thick of the shells and the bullets was at his work. And, with his arm round him, the chaplain sang with him "Jesu, Lover of my soul," until he died.

In this great Day of God, things are beginning to appear as they are, and not as they are represented. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." That simple and sincere Christian, the Czar of Russia, went to the heart of things at the beginning of the war, when he gave that as the motto of the war to his troops; and every boy since then, who, as depicted in the picture entitled "The Great Sacrifice," has laid down his life, with his dead hand resting on the foot of the crucifix, has sealed with his life the great saying of Sir Henry Newbolt:

It comes round, then, to this: the Advent picture is not a mockery; it is not a mirage in the desert; it is a true picture let down from heaven to cheer us to-day with a prophecy of what some day shall be.

Let that picture at once encourage us while it shames us.

As we watch it, away with all those foolish old sayings about "not believing in Foreign Missions," "sending money out of the country," "converting Whitechapel and Bethnal Green before we attempt China or Japan"; for the knowledge of the Lord—before war can be no more—is to cover the whole earth as the waters cover the sea.

But, on the other hand, let it encourage us:

We may behold the land, although it may seem at present "very far off."

Once crush for ever the revived paganism, which perhaps for the last time has challenged the supreme claim of Christ to His own world; when that is in the dust, once astonish the world by the beauty of a chivalry and Christian manhood which shall be seen by contrast to be as day compared to night, and light to darkness; once "placard Christ" through every tribe in Africa and Asia, and preach Him effectively in every island of the sea; and as the last hand slipped down in death the flagstaff of the Black Flag at Omdurman, so shall the last hand at last be lifted, in this world, of one man against a brother-man in fratricidal strife, and the great picture shall be true at last:

"They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain": for at last the earth is filled with "the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea."

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V

GOD THE CHAMPION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS[7]

"O Lord, Thou hast been our refuge from one generation to another. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were made, Thou art God from everlasting and world without end."—Ps. xc. 1, 2.

The story is told of Archbishop Temple that as he was walking away from the House of Lords, after the defeat of the Bill he had brought in for the advancement of Temperance, some well-meaning person was endeavouring to comfort him in his natural disappointment, although, needless to say, he was himself as strong and brave and confident as ever. Was he looking, asked the questioner, to the verdict of posterity? No. Was he looking to the gradual change of public opinion? No. Was he looking to a verdict in another House which would influence the opinion of the house which he had just left? No. What was it he looked to, then? "I look to God."

It was the answer of a true, brave, and believing Christian man; if the God of the Christians exists at all, He is so strong and so powerful and so wise that to be on His side is worth all other aid in the world, and to defy God, apart from its blasphemy, is the most colossal mistake which can be made.

There is a sense, of course, in which the cynic was right when he said that God is on the side of the strongest battalions, for the raising of those battalions means a self-sacrifice and a self-denial which God honours and recognizes; but to imagine that those battalions by themselves represent God, and can be used successfully to further causes which God has beforehand denounced and proclaimed, is to make, in the long-run, the mistake of the ages.

Now we are keeping Trafalgar Day in a most critical week of the greatest war waged in the world for a thousand years. I have visited the long battle-line mile by mile in Flanders. I have also seen the grey Dreadnoughts watching, watching, watching day and night; it is idle bluster for the enemy to say that the ships of the Fleet are hiding from them; they know only too well where to find them when they want to meet them. As in great Nelson's day, the Fleet is the girdle of the Empire; the seas which Nelson swept are clear to-day; not an enemy flag dare show itself from one hemisphere to the other; under the mighty Ægis of the Grand Fleet, transports in hundreds carry troops all over the world, food-ships pour in from every port; even when the submarine danger was formidable there was no appreciable slackening of the wonderfully brave mercantile marine, and now that the Navy has that peril, too, well in hand, men sail the seas to-day, except for the necessary restrictions with regard to contraband, with greater freedom and security than they sailed the seas long after the Battle of Trafalgar.

In this great conflict on what are we to found our hopes? To what are we to look? Are we to trust only to the strength of our battleships and the perfect training of our sailors? Are we to look to the new armies produced with such marvellous skill by Lord Kitchener's patient hand? Are we to look to the three millions whose services will be asked for, and no doubt offered, in the next six weeks? No doubt we are to look to all these things; God does only help those who help themselves. But, standing before you as your Bishop, I tell you frankly that my belief in the final victory of our arms is founded on something far beyond these things. I am full of unshakable confidence and hope, because, like Archbishop Temple, I look to God. I try to say with the psalmist every morning:

Notice I do not claim that God is some tribal deity who with partial favouritism supports our side; but I claim, with the great Lincoln, that we are on the side of God.

1. I do so in the first place (and this comes out the more clearly the more you study the previous history of the question), because this is a wantonly provoked war, planned and desired and finally launched by one Power, and one Power alone—that is, Germany.

Now, if God is a God who "makes men to be of one mind in a house," if He made of one blood every nation in the world, and meant them to dwell at peace together; if the teaching of Christ is really the teaching of God's own Son—then the nation which wantonly plans and provokes war, and war on such a scale, must be against God.

You have only to read two such books as "J'Accuse," said to be written by a German, and "Ordeal by Battle," by Mr. Oliver, to see that this is no idle assertion or party statement, but the literal truth. If I mistake not, "J'Accuse" will be for all time the accusing finger of the civilised world pointing at Germany as Nathan pointed at David, saying, "Thou art the man"; and as to "Ordeal by Battle," while it suggests many political questions which I should not think of discussing here and now, as to why we were so unprepared after the warnings given us, the fact stands out as plainly as daylight that Russia, France, and Great Britain one and all made every effort short of national dishonour to keep the peace.

This, then, is my first ground for claiming that we are on the side of God. Those who wantonly provoke war act against God, and those who honestly try to prevent war act on His side. But this is only the beginning of the matter.

2. There has always, up to now, been a kind of chivalry in war which has lighted up the more terrible aspects of it. All through history there have been bright flashes of this chivalry even among non-Christians: the conduct of Saladin in the Crusades, the chivalrous bearing of the Black Prince to the captured French King, and many similar incidents, testify to the fact that you need not cease to be a Christian or a gentleman because you have to fight. Many of these laws of chivalry were embodied by the great Christian nations in the Hague Convention; certain modes of warfare were not to be allowed; women and children must be tenderly and chivalrously treated; the wounded of the other side must be treated as fallen comrades; the dead must be decently buried; the Red Cross must be respected; civilians must be spared; the rights of neutrals guarded.

No one can doubt that God must have approved of such humane regulations, for they are all founded upon the New Testament; they are a softening, and a valuable softening, of the horrors of war.

All other nations began the war by scrupulously respecting them: Mr. Stanley Washburn, who has closely followed the Russian armies, described the kindness and consideration which they displayed to the peasantry of Poland; our own soldiers have never even been accused by the enemy of violating any of them, and one of the Generals at the Front told me with pride that, though his great brigade had been out from the beginning, no accusation of injuring a French woman or girl had been brought against a single member of it.

But, on the other hand, while time shall last the iniquities committed in Belgium by the Germans, as attested by Lord Bryce's Committee, will ring through history; the very invasion of Belgium itself was a breach of international faith. A friend of mine saw with his own eyes, while a prisoner among the Germans, forty civilians shot in cold blood in one town alone; the gallant Cardinal-Archbishop Mercier has recorded a damning list of other murders in his famous charge. The sinking of the Lusitania will always stand out as one of the greatest crimes in history, although, if I am not mistaken, the judicial murder of a poor Englishwoman[8] for harbouring some poor refugees will run it hard in the opinion of the civilised world. There is one thing about that last incident which perhaps was not taken into account by those who perpetrated the crime: it will settle the matter once for all about recruiting in Great Britain; there will be no need now of compulsion.

I wonder what Nelson would have said if he had been told that an Englishwoman had been shot in cold blood by a member of any other nation; he would have made more than the diplomatic inquiries which have been made by a great neutral nation into this crime, right and proper as those inquiries are. He would have made his inquiries with the thunder of the guns of the British Fleet, and pressed the question home with the Nelson touch which won Trafalgar, as indeed our Fleet at this moment is only too ready to do. But is it possible that there is one young man in England to-day who will sit still under this monstrous wrong?

There is a famous old rhyme which has come down from the time of the imprisonment of the seven Bishops who risked their lives for the liberties of Britain, as, please God, the Bishops of to-day are still prepared to do:

The spirit of Nelson must indeed have died out of our young men, which it certainly has not, if the answer is not the same to-day; the three millions of new recruits asked for will be there. Why was she put to death? Why was she murdered? Three thousand thousand Englishmen—ay, and Scotsmen and Irishmen, too—will know the reason why.

My second reason, then, for trusting to God is that, according to the whole revelation of His character and will, His curse is on the nation, however disciplined and efficient, that tramples underfoot and openly defies the laws of chivalry which once relieved the horrors of war; and that His ultimate blessing must be upon the nation or nations which, however foolishly unprepared, and therefore, for a time, suffering from the want of preparation, in the main are fighting for the weak against the strong.

3. But if this is the negative side what about the positive? I am almost ashamed to ask and answer the question in public again, "For what are we fighting?" If we are fighting for the freedom of the world, for the right to live for the small nations of the earth, for nationality against pan-German tyranny, for international honour as the essential condition of a future brotherhood of nations, then the God who has been the refuge from generation to generation of the down-trodden and oppressed, who planted in us the love of liberty, and who has been the champion of the free, must be the God on whose side we are to-day.

4. We are right, then, to look for victory and help to a God who through one generation to another has shown Himself a lover of peace and chivalry and mercy and liberty, against a delight in war, against brutality and massacre and tyranny; yet we should have ill-read the lessons of Trafalgar Day if we were to stop here.

Nelson never dreamt that God was on his side in the sense that he could relax for an instant his vigilance, or ruin his whole settled plan by impatience, or win a final victory without the self-sacrifice and trust of the nation behind him. If we do look to God, then we must remember this bracing fact that "God helps those who help themselves."

It is a far-reaching saying that the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light; certainly it is a formidable fact to be faced that for a thoroughly bad cause, carried out in a thoroughly bad way, the authors of this greatest crime in history have succeeded in evoking from the hard-working people of Germany, who are under the impression, doubtless, that they are "saving the Fatherland," a far more universal spirit of organised and efficient self-sacrifice than in the most glorious cause ever entrusted to man has yet[9] been evoked from all in these islands. It was one of our great statesmen who truly said that he feared what he called the "potato spirit" in Germany more than all their guns and shells—the spirit, that is, which was content with potato bread, content to make any sacrifice, if only their cause would be victorious; and it is unwise as well as ungenerous not to recognise the gallantry with which both the individual sailors and soldiers of the enemy have fought.

To look to God, then, puts a great responsibility upon those who do so; it means to rise to the level of the sacrifice of God. If it is true that, as you will remember, another great English statesman once quoted on a famous occasion, "Who sups with the devil must have a long spoon," then, Who fights with God must have a high standard. Is this a time, asked the prophet of the trembling Gehazi, to receive oliveyards, vineyards, menservants and maidservants? Is this a time, we may ask to-day, to haunt night clubs[10] or to spend separation allowances in drinking? Is this a time to ignore Sunday and turn your back upon God's House of Prayer? Is this a time to spend anything which can be saved for the nation on personal comfort or extravagant dress? The nation that looks to God must come back to God; it must come back to God at once and come back to Him for good; it is a question whether we at home have yet as a nation deserved the victory which our righteous cause demands. The sailors of the Fleet have deserved it; the soldiers in the trenches have earned it; and when the nation at home has equally deserved it, all will receive together their well-merited reward.

5. But more than this; those that look to God must definitely and persistently seek God's help. How many of those here to-day pray earnestly and persistently to God for help and grace? How many plead in the greatest service of all the one Great Sacrifice, once offered for the sins of the whole world?

How constantly the faith of our fellow-countrymen amounts to little more than a vague Deism, instead of a living faith in an Incarnate Christ. They are learning more than that in the trenches, and I hope also that the same truth is being revealed to those who remain in the broad sea. These beautiful lines, entitled "Christ in Flanders," the Editor of the Spectator gave me leave to reproduce in the diocesan magazine:

What it comes to is the old truth which we have learnt from Foreign Missions—the centre must be converted by the circumference; it is the self-sacrifice of its Mission work abroad which has saved the Church from "fatty degeneration of the heart" at home; it is the growing change of mind among the defenders of our country which must permeate and ennoble the country itself.

Do I look to God? But I could only see Him in Christ, for He says Himself—and it is either the greatest blasphemy or the greatest truth in the world—"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the Father but by Me."

Trafalgar Day, 1915, then, should be not only the turning-point of the world's history, but the inauguration of a new Britain. If the war stopped at this moment, should we really be a changed nation?—would not the old miserable internal disputes break out again?—might we not again be as we were in July, 1914, on the verge of civil war in Ireland, of a revolution among women, and of the greatest industrial strike of modern times? I come back at the end of so many months of the war to the picture which I tried to hold up to London in its first week—"Facing the war is drinking the cup"—"The cup which My Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" We have to repeat the very words of our Lord Himself.

Have we drunk the cup, and drunk it to its dregs? Only then will the angels come and strengthen us for victory; we shall deserve victory then, and we shall be ready for it, for the cup which we shall drink will be the cup to which the Son of God Himself put His lips, and the courage and fortitude of Gethsemane leads on to the overwhelming victory of Easter Day.

It is then "Our Day" in an even deeper sense than those mean who so rightly ask our alms to-day for those splendid sister societies of St. John and the Red Cross. Of course we shall pour out into their lap, for the sake of our wounded heroes at the Front, all that we can; but it is "Our Day" because it is the day when the nation is tested to the roots of its being. "If thou hadst known, even thou, in the midst of this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace, but now they are hid from thine eyes." They are not hid from our eyes yet; it is still Our Day; but let it pass, and it has gone for ever.

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VI

THE KNOCKING AT THE DOOR[11]

"Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear My voice and open the door, I will come and sup with him, and he with Me."—Rev. iii. 20.

I will come unto him and sup with him, and he with Me. I think sometimes that we dwell in our Advent meditation too exclusively on the thought of the coming Judgment. Of course we have to dwell on it. "Behold, the Judge standeth before the door." A tremendous truth that is. "Behold, the Judge standeth before the door." There is going to come a time when the door will come down with a crash, and we shall be face to face with the Judge. And this affects every single period of our lives. We sometimes imagine that we are going—dare I say the word?—to dodge the Judgment. Not at all; we are going to look into those Eyes like a Flame of Fire, and every man will give an account of himself before God. And every day is making up the Judgment. Every thought, every word, every act, every service, every decision we make, it all goes into the judgment, it all goes into the verdict. And when the Judge who stands before the door comes inside, He registers the verdict and the sentence we have been preparing all our lives. We go to our own place—the place that we have prepared for ourselves.

Now that is a tremendous thought, and it is one that we cannot possibly ignore. What is a person, what is a Church-worker, to do who realises that the Judge standeth before the door? What am I to do when I realise that He stands before the door of my heart? The answer can only be: Ask Him in as the Saviour, before He comes as the Judge that is to be.

I want now to take with you another kind of Advent—may I say a more delightful kind of Advent?—that is, the Advent of Jesus Christ Himself into the soul. "Behold, I stand at the door and knock, and if any man will hear My voice and open the door, I will come in to him and sup with him, and he with Me." It seems at first sight too good to be true, when you think who Jesus Christ was—the Lord of Angels, the Son of God, the supreme Captain of the heavenly host, the most perfect beautiful Character that ever lived—that He is going Himself to come. Think of it—that He is going to come within me, within you, to live there, to dominate your consciousness, dominate your mind, your life, so that you will speak with His words, think with His thoughts, judge with His judgment; that He will live in you. It seems almost too much to believe; and yet this is precisely the thing which, when we study the New Testament, we find is promised, not only in this passage, but in St. John's Gospel. "My Father and I, We will come unto him and make Our abode with him." St. Paul's favourite motto is: "Christ in you the hope of glory." Christ in you, through the Holy Spirit. He, of course, brings Jesus with Him. It is said in St. John's Gospel: "He is with you, but He shall be in you." And when I speak to a number of Confirmation candidates, I believe it is perfectly true to say before the Confirmation: "He is with you, but He shall be in you." For that is the great gift of Confirmation, the falling of the Holy Ghost. "Then laid they their hands on them, and the Holy Ghost came upon them, for as yet He had fallen on none of them."

There is no doubt that this tremendous gift is the special promise given by Christianity. Christ wants to live in me. He wants to come inside. He stands outside the door, but if I ask Him He will come inside. And notice, secondly, that this tremendous promise is not made to a few selected people. You might suppose that it was meant for a few Sisters of Mercy, very devoted, who live their lives among the poor, or to a few particular saints among the clergy. But you all have this promise. This tremendous promise comes in the midst of the message to the Church in Laodicea, the people who were neither cold nor hot, the people who were uplifted when they ought to have been humble, the people who had to be chastened and rebuked that they might be made humble, the people who had not a chance of overcoming in their own strength—in fact, people just like you and me. And it is just because we know this, that I have to give this message of love to you. It is just because we know that we are neither cold nor hot, but lukewarm—the churchwardens, workers, sidesmen, Sunday-School teachers—it is just because we are conscious, and because we know that we do want chastening, that we may be perfected and purified; in fact, it is just because we are like the people to whom that message was given that we need to pay heed to the warning of the message. Christ says: "I stand at the door and knock, and if any of you will open the door and hear My voice, I will come in and sup with you, and you with Me."

And, therefore, you see, that sets us thinking, does it not? as to what this knocking at the door can mean. Is it possible, you say, that Christ has been knocking at the door, and I never knew it was He who was knocking? The whole thing is wonderfully symbolised at the consecration of a church. Perhaps you have not seen the consecration of a church. The Bishop, representing Jesus Christ, knocks three times at the door, and says: "Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of Glory shall come in." The churchwardens and sidesmen say: "Who is the King of Glory?" And the Bishop outside replies: "The Lord of Hosts. He is the King of Glory." Then the doors are flung open, and the Bishop enters, symbolising the entrance of Christ into His Church. That happens every time a new church is consecrated in the diocese of London or anywhere else. Who is the King of Glory? Who is He? Is it possible that He has been knocking at my heart and I have never known?

How does He knock? 1. First of all, and perhaps most commonly, by what we call smiting the conscience. You notice we use the very words in our popular language which represents knocking—smiting the conscience. Is it possible, for instance, that even now some of you have been conscious that you are not what you ought to be, that your life is not what it ought to be, that there is something wrong with you? People sometimes come to me and say: "Bishop, I want to see you. I am not right. There is something not right with me; something tells me I have not done my work as I ought. There seems to be something between me and God." Well, you must cherish that smiting of the conscience. Do not ignore it or despise it. It is the knocking, knocking at the door, of Jesus Christ Himself. There is not a doubt about it. Sometimes He knocks the door very loudly. Sometimes His knocks are soft, just like taps. When some pure-hearted boys or girls are going to be confirmed, it is a very gentle knock that Christ makes at the door of their young hearts. He feels sure they will attend. He does not have to rouse them by loud thundering knocks. He comes quietly because that heart is made for Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ is made for that heart. And therefore at a Confirmation of well-prepared candidates it is lovely to think how He comes up and knocks at the young soul, and the soul recognises the knock, and says: "Come in." No loud knock is wanted. We were meant to grow up with "our days bound each to each by natural piety." Christ, who has taken us up in His arms at Baptism, is made to come gently, quietly, and happily, into the young soul at Confirmation. There is not meant to be some great break in our lives. We are meant to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. But if there comes this knocking, a smiting of the conscience, I do pray you to remember that it is meant in love, that it is Christ who wants to come within us.

2. Sometimes the knock is a very heavy one, the heavy dull knocking of a great sorrow. I have seen a great deal of it, when people have lost their dear ones in this Great War. One who had lost the light of her eyes said to me the other day: "I somehow feel nearer God in spite of it all." No doubt in that heavy, sad knock at the door you can hear Jesus Christ's own knocking. He may come into the soul through the sorrow in a way in which He has never come when all is right and bright and happy. If some of you have heard that heavy knocking at the door, do not think God has forgotten you and forsaken you. Rise and open the door, and Christ will come into your soul in a way in which He has never come before in all your life.

3. Sometimes it is the quick happy knocking of joy. Someone wrote to me the other day that he had had a great joy. All the darkness seemed now to have cleared away. He said: "I see my path in the light of God's love." There was the quick knocking of joy, and Christ came in with the joy. The clearer knock of joy was the knocking of Jesus Christ.

4. Sometimes it is some friend who comes into the life, some influence, perhaps a parish priest, who knocks at the door. Perhaps only too unwillingly at first you open the door, and you find that in the parish priest who comes you have found your best friend on earth, and he by his coming in brings Christ to you; he brings Him with him, and he leaves Him with you, if he is a faithful steward. If the parish priest is a faithful steward, he leads you to the Master. Then, perhaps, the sudden call comes. I have seen this happen to many young soldiers. I lately spent two months with those who were just going out—they are now in the trenches. They crowded in every evening to have a talk or they lay down on the ground and drank in every word at some Church Parade service. I could see, as I watched their faces, that they were hearing the call of their country to risk their lives, their all. It brought them near to Jesus Christ. In the knocking of their country's call Jesus Christ knocked, and I believe there are many fighting in the trenches now every day borne up by a faith they did not have until this summer—a belief in the immediate presence of their Saviour with them. It would not have happened but for this sudden necessity of facing the ordeal of their lives.

Is it possible that all these things, or some of them, have been happening to you—or something different that I have not mentioned—and you have never recognised it as yet as being what it is, Jesus Christ knocking at the door? Now what are you to do? What are any of us to do, for I am just one among you? It seems clear there are three things that we are bound to do, if this great miracle (and it is nothing else) is to take place. The first thing is to listen for and recognise the voice of Jesus Christ outside the door, that we may be ready and prepared to open the door. And do you not think that the reason that many of us never hear Jesus Christ's voice is that we never listen for it, that we have no quiet time, that we have provided no time for meditation and prayer? We are too busy. We get up in the morning just in time to start off for our work; we never have this quiet time, or only a very few moments to think, in which the voice will be heard.

Now, I cannot tell you how much I believe in what I call listening to the voice of God. We pray, indeed—we all of us pray. But it is the ten minutes after prayer that matters, it is the ten minutes' listening to what He is going to say back, and often we do not give that time at all, and so we never get the answer. Is it not fair to say that some of you Church-workers just kneel down for a few hurried moments, and then are up again from your knees, off to some duty on earth, and that possibly a few minutes each day would constitute all the time we devote to listening to the voice of God? If that is all, can you wonder when you take your Sunday-School lesson that it is rather dry, or that your mission sermons do not seem to have much inspiration about them, and gradually the voice of Jesus Christ fades away and becomes very vague? You do not give time. Do not tell me that in the twenty-four hours you cannot find time for the most vital thing in this world. We are only here for a few passing years. Five minutes after death it matters more than I can say—these quiet times in our lives, they are worth more than gold, quiet times when we listen to the voice of God. After death how still it is!

One moment will not be different from the next in the stillness and quiet of Paradise. And in the quiet of the other world how much we shall regret having had so few quiet times on earth! Why, one of the very busiest merchants in the City used to be very regular at a daily service. I said to him once: "How can you find time, you, one of the very busiest merchants in the City, to attend daily service?" He said: "I am so busy I must go to the daily service." He felt his business would simply sweep him away if he did not get a quiet time. And Mr. Gladstone, you will remember, kept his Sundays in unbroken quiet, waiting upon God during the very busiest period of his life. Without it he would have lost the quiet and strength of his soul. Therefore make your first resolution. "I will listen to what the Lord God will say concerning my soul." "Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth." If you want to have strength and happiness in your spiritual work, wait upon God. And in the silence you will hear the voice of Jesus Christ; you will hear His knock.

Then, when we have heard the voice and recognised the knock, the next thing to do is to open the door. How simple that sounds, does it not? and how difficult it often is! Picture some who have had the door of their souls closed tightly for years. You have to prise the door open, and you have to break down the fixed habits of the man who has never prayed except for a few moments or two in his life; how hard he finds it to reverse the habits of a lifetime! Someone who has an old quarrel, through jealousy or something else, with another worker—how hard it is to forgive and begin all over again! But it has got to be done, the door has to be prised or forced, because if Christ is to come in we have to open the door—that is our part in it—and Christ will come in. And if only we realised how eager He is to come in, and what a power He has to change the heart and control the thoughts and purify the conscience, we should all want Him to come, and we should not spare any time and trouble to get the door open.

And when He has come in, notice this wonderful phrase: "I will sup with him, and he with Me." He does not come in as a transient guest to stay for a little while, and go away, but He comes on a permanent visit, to take up His permanent residence. And although we should not have dared to use the words ourselves, the words "I will sup with him, and he with Me," describe the most delightful friendship. Do you desire His presence? How often do you come to Holy Communion, how carefully do you prepare for the great gift of the presence of Jesus Christ in your soul? Why, I would press this on you, that the supping with Jesus Christ and He with you which takes place in the Holy Communion is the most glorious moment of your whole day. The first Christians never thought of spending Sunday without going first to Holy Communion. It was the special service on the Lord's Day. It may be that some of you who used to be regular have drifted away from this way of receiving the presence of Christ into the soul. We know no better way for cherishing the presence of Christ in the soul than being regular at Communion. The humblest communicant comes away from his Communion with the thought: "Christ lives in me; I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me."

Will you, then, take from me these three thoughts, Listening, Opening, and Cherishing the Presence: Devotion, Consecration, Communion? And if you do, I tell you what will happen to your deanery. It will gradually become the most Christian fellowship in London. You will be drawn to one another in a way in which you never have been before. We want more unity in every deanery, so that the parishes may take an interest in one another, and that all Church gatherings may be keen and well attended as by a band of brothers and sisters.

This service now may be the beginning of a new life for the deanery, not only of a new fellowship, and of far greater devotion in your work, and of a joy which you never had before. Christmas in war time is not going to be a merry Christmas for any of us. But there is no reason, if we understand what happiness means, why it should not be a happy one. If these three lessons are taken home, you will as a deanery and individually and as parishes have a joy which the world can neither give nor take away.

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VII

IMMORTALITY[12]

"Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die."—St. John xi. 25, 26.

"Whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die." If a man die, shall he live again? There is no time in our history when that has been a more pressing question than it is to-day. Men are dying in hundreds. I can think myself of some as dear to me as if they were my own sons, whose bodies are lying to-day in some Belgian or French grave. And I spend much of my time in going to comfort the widows and the mothers. If a man die, shall he live again? I wonder whether you have ever read or heard read this little poem called "The Army of the Dead":[13]

And will they live again? I think that what chills our faith, and forms really the only argument that they will not live again, is the dead appearance of the dead. I am perfectly certain it is that that chills the faith of hundreds. The dead look so dead. There is "no voice nor any that answers, nor any that regardeth," and all the attempts, foolish, often even mischievous, to reach those in the other world have ended in utter failure. And, therefore, when we are facing the dead appearance of the dead, we are facing the only argument there is that they do not live again.

I want to say now one or two things that I hope will help you to have a happy view of death, to make you absolutely certain that when a man dies he does live again.

1. And, first of all, remember how deceptive are appearances in Nature. We might be absolutely certain, might we not? if we did not know to the contrary, that this earth was quite still. It does not seem to move in the slightest degree, but we really know that the earth is travelling at the terrific speed of nineteen miles a second through space—nineteen miles every second. It does look, does it not? as if the sun was going round the earth quite quickly. But actually the earth is going round the sun. Again, when you blow a candle out, it does seem as if you really put it out. But do you? It is just the one thing you do not do. You do not blow it out. The force in the flame passes into another form. The conservation of force or energy is one of the great truths of science. You do not blow the candle out at all. Therefore even from this lowest ground there is nothing whatever in science that makes it improbable that when a man dies he shall live again. But you may go farther, without leaving what we are taught by scientific knowledge. A man's body is changed every seven years. Yet the man does not change. I look back and remember myself perfectly well as a boy who went to a certain school. And yet not a fragment of my present body went to that school. There must be someone in me that persists, that goes on when the body changes. If I were to cut off my hand I should still be myself; if I were to cut off my arm, my leg, still I should remain. And so if the whole body goes, I am still myself. If we had not anything more than this, we could not prove that men live after death; but there is nothing whatever in the whole teaching of science to disprove that we do. You might, for instance, notice that an instrument in a room is perfectly silent, but that may be because he who has been playing upon it has gone into another room. There would be no argument in the silence of the instrument for the non-existence of the player. I say that because one of the most touching incidents in my life was when a poor little girl said to me (I have often quoted this): "I feel so afraid of death. I seem to see it coming down on me like a great shadow." For a moment or two I prayed for the right word to say to her, and it seemed to come to me, as it does come at these moments, from the Holy Spirit. I said to her: "You would not be afraid if I were to come and carry you into the next room." "No," she said, "I should not." "Well, then," I said, "would you be afraid if someone ten thousand times kinder, and with ten thousand times more strength, should carry you into another room?" When I next saw her she was dead, with a smile on her face. If the player has gone away into the next room, no wonder the instrument does not sound. And therefore, if the body seems dead, it only seems dead because the owner of the body has gone into the next room. It is said in the hospital, as the nurse comes out from behind the screen: "He is gone." He is gone—quite so, he is gone—therefore no wonder his body looks dead.

2. And this becomes all the more certain when you notice that ever since man has existed he has always believed and felt perfectly certain that he is going to survive death. This is one of the great instincts in humanity. Such convictions always point to some great truth that corresponds to them. For instance, the prayer instinct in man demands God. It has been beautifully said that, just as the fin of the fish demands the water, and just as the wing of the bird demands air, so the instinct of prayer in man demands God. Man is a praying animal. He always has prayed, and that great instinct of prayer demands satisfaction. He always has believed he is going to live after death, and the very fact that that instinct has been planted in him everywhere demands that he shall. There is a very touching story in ancient literature about the great Greek philosopher Socrates. Although he knew nothing about Christ or the Christian revelation, he had a long conversation, recorded in one of the most ancient writers, before he drank the fatal poison, hemlock. Although he had not the Christian revelation, he gave all the arguments necessary to make everyone around him certain that five minutes after death he would be the same as five minutes before.

3. And this becomes all the more certain when you consider the character of God. People often do not realise how much the character of God is bound up with this question of immortality. No good man would implant a living instinct in a child's nature and then love to tantalise and disappoint it. No good man would do it, or think for a moment of doing it; and do you suppose God would? Let me read you the first portion of a beautiful letter which I have received from one of the highest in the land, who lost her husband last year, and has lost her splendid son this year in battle. She writes: "Dear and kindest friend, Lord Bishop—I have lingered in thanking you for your letter, because it was so precious, and is always beside me to inspire and comfort. England has gone forth 'obedient unto death' in the honour that befits her, and we must try and be worthy. It does not seem lonely, for they have gone in good company, that great band of brave, shining knights who have given all." That beautiful trust inspires the "Farewell of the Dead," which was written during the early weeks of the war:

Now, do you suppose—this is to me an absolutely irrefragable argument—do you suppose that God would have planted the love of that son in that mother's heart, and given her that faith, and then mean to disappoint her? All I can say is that, if He does, He is no God I could love, nor that anyone could love. The world is in the hand of some foul fiend, who loves to disappoint and blast the hopes of his children. That is not the God of the New Testament. No, our Lord says something very touching about that. He says: "In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you." "I would have told you." I would not have let you live all your lives and see your sons die, and your husbands die, and then disappoint you. "If it were not so, I would have told you."

4. And so we are prepared—you see now why I chose that particular text—we are prepared for the great revelation when it comes. Even science has prepared us. This great instinct of the soul, that it will live again, has prepared us. Our belief in a good God prepared us. We were all ready to hear it, and at last it comes from heaven. "I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die."

And now we have got it. It has been all led up to; we were all prepared for it. We could not have been certain till we were told it by One who came from heaven. This is the Christian religion. It is no miserable half-and-half Gospel about a good man that once lived. That view of Jesus Christ has nothing to do with Christianity. The Son of God came Himself from heaven.

That is the Christian religion. And, having come from heaven, He knows what is in heaven. And He speaks with the certainty of knowledge: "In My Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you." And "I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die."

And, mark you, to prove it, to get the whole truth this morning, not only for your own selves, but for the mourners who abound in our midst, and must abound more and more as the weeks pass—to prove this doctrine that He rose Himself from the dead, we must have the full gospel of Easter. Alas! a new theology has been whittling away the faith of some in this country. But the old doctrine of Easter was this, "David saw corruption, but He whom God raised up saw no corruption." And as He died and was buried, so He rose again. Why do we keep Sunday, do you suppose, if there was no Resurrection? Why not keep as the sacred day Friday, if nothing happened on Sunday? If Christ did not rise on that day, why do we have at our Eucharists the Body broken and the Blood shed? How could any people enshrine in their Eucharistic service the tokens of a shameful death unless the body buried had risen again? How did the Cross get to the top of the dome of St. Paul's? Why should we have the old gallows erected over the finest city in the world, unless it was the symbol, not only of death, but of glorious resurrection?

Therefore, we have not got to put our reason behind our backs in believing that He who said "I am the resurrection and the life" raised Himself from the grave. It is with our reason as well as with our hearts that we say, in answer to the question, "If a man die, shall he live again?" "Yes, thank God, he has never really died."

5. And what sort of life is it going to be on the other side of the veil, the veil which hides this unseen world? Those young men who are dying are not always specially religious. They come to church sometimes, and some come to Communion. I had from the front the other day an account of how two hundred and fifty of the Artists' Corps received the Communion before they went into battle. But, still, we know many of our soldiers are not what we should call specially religious men. What, therefore, are we to think of the life awaiting them on the other side of the veil? Well, I will tell you what I think. I pin my faith to this: Jesus Christ knows them through and through. "Jesus beholding him loved him" was said of one young man. Jesus beheld all these boys of ours, all these young comrades, and He loved them. And He knows what kind of life they will enjoy, and He prepares them for the life that is for them. He has something for each that they will be fit for, when, strengthened in character and purified in soul, they are ready to inherit the kingdom prepared for them. You can trust them with Him, you can trust your boy to Christ, who understands him better than you do.

What shall we have in the other world which will correspond to what we have here? One thing at least that we shall have is memory. You remember, in the parable of Dives and Lazarus, Abraham says to Dives: "Son, remember." "Son, remember." Resolve to lay up something in your life here to which your thoughts will turn happily and find pleasure in, in the quiet times beyond death. In that stillness there must be no bitter quarrels to remember, no bitter jealousies, no unkindnesses. Make to yourselves, while here, friends from your use of the mammon of unrighteousness, so that when it fails those friends may receive you into everlasting habitations.

And then with memory will come love, all the old beautiful love and friendship which makes us so happy here. But, mark you, the right kind of love—not lust. "Love is the fulfilling of the law," says St. John.

The two are absolutely different. Love thinks of the interests of the loved one, and is full of self-control and self-restraint. But lust only thinks of self, and is unbridled and unrestrained. Love goes on into the other world.

Therefore cultivate here in your Church life, in your home life, this wonderful, pure, beautiful thing, this love which will last for ever. "They sin who tell us Love can die." And, above all, keep that love pure, absolutely pure and true. Let nothing be substituted for it which calls itself love, but which is not love. Then with this love, this unselfish, disinterested love, the prayer instinct goes on. Do not be afraid of thinking of and praying for your dear boy in Paradise; pray for him. Do you suppose the mother in Paradise ceases to pray for her son here? You know that, in the old beautiful prayers of the Church for her dead, we pray that God will give them eternal rest and peace, and that everlasting light will shine upon them. That prayer instinct that lies so deep here goes on behind the veil. They are praying for us there as we are praying for them here. As St. Augustine says so beautifully, "The Church above loves and helps its pilgrim brothers."

And, then, one thing more must go on—energy and activity of soul. Can you imagine a man like the late Archbishop Temple doing nothing for ever and ever? No. The greatest rest is delightful exercise of the faculties of the soul. And there must be in that other world work for those who have been active here below. Such souls when they are taken from us are being promoted to some work that they are specially fitted to do by the experience which has long worked itself into their souls. I think of two cases of Christians suffering patiently week after week, one for thirteen, the other for fifteen, years. The beautiful patience being worked into their character will be wanted in the other world.

Then, again, man is born for a Church. He is born to worship here in companionship with others. I hope that this church will be every Sunday morning as full as it is now, that you will more and more join in the fellowship of the saints, and that you will more and more learn to love this spiritual home, and to cheer one another on in your spiritual lives, and so be ready, when the time comes, to worship in the other world with angels and archangels, and all the company of heaven. Lift up your heads and the hands that hang down, all ye mourners! For death is not that miserable, terrible thing which some people think it is. We are born into the other world as quietly as we are born into this. And the other life there is full of happiness, full of love, full of joyous and beautiful activities. And so, when we are called upon to die, it will only be a gentle passing from life here to life there, and from the fulness and the happiness of this life to the still deeper fulness and still greater happiness of the life of the world to come.

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VIII

THE PEACE OF JERUSALEM[16]

"O pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee."—Ps. cxxii. 6.

There is no place in the world to be compared to Jerusalem, if you consider its romantic position, its historical interest, and its spiritual significance. What a relief it is to breathe its mountain air after the hot plains of Egypt! On what a glorious position it stands, more than two thousand feet above the sea, surrounded by hills even higher than the hill on which it stands itself! Truly, still "the hills stand about Jerusalem"—a true image of the way the Lord stands about His people.

But it is not the romantic position of Jerusalem which gives it its chief claim to fame, but, even more, its marvellous history. Really, to uncase Jerusalem, to dig down from one Jerusalem to another, to be able to explain the history which would attach to each layer of it, would be to unravel the history of the ancient world. Volumes have been written, and will continue to be written, on this entrancing theme; but suffice it to say that the man who stands, say, at the centre of the Temple site of Jerusalem is standing on one of the most historic spots in the world.

But, after all, when one is speaking in a Christian church at the consecration of a Christian Bishop, it is neither of these things which makes Jerusalem absolutely unique. The Seven Hills of Rome and its Forum might compete with Jerusalem from the point of view of geography or history. No! it is the supreme fact that here, and here alone, on the world's surface, in JudÆa and Galilee, the feet of the Son of God actually trod the earth, which makes Jerusalem unique. Rightly has Palestine been called ever since the Holy Land. When the guardian of the traditional site of the Ascension points out to you the spot which the feet of the Lord last trod before He ascended behind the cloud, of course you know that such tradition is too detailed to be necessarily accurate with regard to the actual spot; but that His feet did tread the earth about that spot, that He did walk over the Mount of Olives, that He did agonise somewhere near those trees in the Garden of Gethsemane, that on one or other of those skull-shaped mounds He did die for the sins of the whole world, that either at the traditional site or somewhere near He did rise again from the dead—this it is that makes Jerusalem the joy of the whole earth. With ten times the depth of meaning with which even the ancient Jews could say it, the Christian will say: "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning; yea, if I prefer not Jerusalem in my mirth." "O pray for the peace of Jerusalem; they shall prosper that love thee."

I. The consecration, then, of a Bishop of the great Anglo-Catholic Church, who is to live in Jerusalem, is an event which concerns the whole of Christendom, and especially every branch of the Anglo-Catholic Church throughout the world; for it is clear that such a Bishop in Jerusalem has three great and important functions to discharge to the whole Christian world:

1. In the first place, he has to represent worthily, by personal conduct and by reverent and dignified ceremonial, the great branch of the Catholic Church to which he belongs. All branches of the Church meet at Jerusalem; several have their altars by the Holy Sepulchre. How can the other branches of the great Catholic Church learn what is the teaching and the practice of the Anglican branch except from the Bishop who represents her there, and from the cathedral over which he presides? If the Bishop himself has no dignity, no influence, no se??t??, among all those dignified and grey-bearded Patriarchs who represent other Churches, the Church of England will suffer in the opinion of the whole Christian Church. If the cathedral church is poor in worship, feeble in life, unspiritual in tone, the Church of England loses caste among the Churches of the world. If, on the other hand, the Bishop and his cathedral worthily maintain the best traditions of the ancient and apostolic Catholic Church of England, then will the representatives of other ancient Churches gladly acknowledge that "the Lord is with her of a truth."

2. But not only has the Bishop in Jerusalem to be a worthy witness to the doctrine of his Church, and in his cathedral to display a winning example of its ceremonial and worship, but he also has to respect and foster the spiritual life in the ancient Churches of the East. He is to be no proselytiser, seeking to take away members of other Churches to form his Church; he is rather the kindly brother, ever ready to lend a hand to fan the embers of spiritual life in other Churches, or to rejoice in the fervent glow on other altars besides his own. No Bishop would be a fit Bishop in Jerusalem who had not some knowledge of the history of the ancient Churches of Christendom, an interest in their varying liturgies, and a deep respect for their history and the special significance each has in the life of the Catholic Church. On the other hand, that Bishop would have a peculiar glory in his episcopate who most succeeded by brotherly sympathy and inspiring example in stimulating life in an ancient Church, where, perhaps, life was running low, or was able to send up the sap once again through the fibres of an apparently withered tree.

3. But his efforts must not stop there. The Bishop in Jerusalem must be a missionary. If from the first the Gospel was to spread throughout the world, "beginning at Jerusalem," Jerusalem must never cease to be a missionary centre. There must be no faithless despair as to the eventual conversion both of Jews and of Mohammedans; the great heathen tribes of the Shellooks and the Dinkas of the Upper Nile, up to which the diocese, with its centre at Jerusalem, at present extends, even though it must be exercised for the most part through the presence of an assistant Bishop in Khartoum, must feel the missionary zeal of the Bishop in Jerusalem. Every missionary agency within thousands of miles must be certain of his fatherly interest. I have visited myself nearly every mission station from El Obeid, five hundred miles beyond Khartoum, to Beyrout, and seen how greatly was appreciated the genuine interest of even a passing Bishop; but those mission stations must feel sure of the interest of the Bishop whose "sedes" is at Jerusalem, and above all, of course, those must feel sure of it whose missions are connected with our own Church. Few people can have visited the magnificent mission hospital of the London Jews' Society in Jerusalem, which is said to be the finest mission hospital in the world, or seen the devoted work of the representatives of the Church Missionary Society in Cairo, or watched the mission schools of the Hosanna League on the Lebanon, without being proud of the missionary zeal and spiritual efforts of our own Church.

II. But on a day like this we are at liberty to see visions and to dream dreams, and one can imagine missionary efforts which have their centre at Jerusalem on a far more extensive scale than any which have been possible as yet—missionary efforts which may include the revival of the ancient Churches of Asia Minor, the linking up with the work done by the Archbishop's Mission to the Assyrian Church, and a far more complete subjugation to Christ of the Lebanon district, to which Canon Parfit's and Canon Campbell's schools seem to point the way.

Such, then, seem to be the possibilities and prospects of a Bishop in Jerusalem, and we are encouraged to raise our hopes high to-day, first by the wonderful blessing which has been granted to the work of him who is laying down the pastoral staff, wielded with so much tact and love and winning influence by Bishop Blyth for a quarter of a century; and, secondly, by the experience and attainments and standing of him who this day takes up the pastoral staff which Bishop Blyth lays down.

1. And first with regard to Bishop Blyth himself. It was said to me in Jerusalem of the Bishop, by one who has long been the superintendent of the Church missionary work in Palestine: "He has laid a splendid foundation on which a success can be built." Few can realise, who have not been at Jerusalem, the dignity and beauty of St. George's Cathedral, which Bishop Blyth has built, and the charm of the daily services in it, morning and evening, at which the choir consists of the delightful Syrian boys and girls who form the schools. I have never seen boys more like English boys in their keenness for games (they were quite invincible at football) and their general manliness of tone, and under the gentle tutelage of English ladies the Syrian girls are being trained to be well-mannered, and capable teachers, whom I frequently found teaching either in Palestine, on the Lebanon, or in the schools of Egypt and the Soudan. But, in order to understand the influence accumulated by Bishop Blyth during these long years of residence in Jerusalem, you had to visit with him the Patriarchs of other branches of the Church; everywhere you found him trusted and loved; to come with his introduction was to be welcomed by all the ancient Churches of the East, and it is certain that, just as it was said of Livingstone that "he left the door open in Africa for all the white men who should come after," so it is certainly true that Bishop Blyth has left behind him, among all the representatives of the ancient Churches of the East, open hearts into which his successor can enter. And we are glad to think that we still have the Bishop resident with us here in London, to give us his counsel and advice.[17]

2. And then, with regard to his successor, he is no tyro going out to learn his work for the first time; he is already one of the best-known missionaries in the whole of the nearer East; he has for years been the superintendent of the Church missionary work in Egypt and the Soudan; he has had the control of many workers, and has had, moreover, thousands of pounds passing annually through his hands. He is a good Arabic scholar, and can not only take services, but can speak and preach freely in Arabic, and what that means in the East every traveller knows. His long experience of dealing with the Coptic Church in Egypt, and the great respect in which he and his colleague, Mr. Gairdner, are held in it, are a certain guarantee of the respect and loving reverence with which he will treat the other ancient Churches of the East; and he has himself assured us, in words which have been printed and circulated, that, so far from wishing in any way to alter the simple and beautiful service in St. George's Cathedral, he will love to fan and foster the flame of devotion which will always burn, it is hoped, more and more brightly at the central shrine of the Anglo-Catholic Church in this city of Jerusalem, which is itself the cradle of the Christian Church.

It is therefore, dear brother, with very high hopes and many earnest prayers we send you forth to-day. The horizon is clouded at present with the heavy clouds of war; Christ's work will be crippled for a time, and further extension for a time will be impossible; but when the great clouds of war have, in the mercy of God, rolled away, and the Sun of Righteousness has arisen with healing in His wings, and Christianity has been proved to be more than ever essential to the prosperity and well-being of the world, then we believe that you are singularly fitted in the providence of God to avail yourself of the mighty opportunity which will open out.

"O pray for the peace of Jerusalem; they shall prosper that love thee." There will be many who will pray for its peace from to-day more fervently than ever, and they will uphold your hands as they pray it, as Aaron and Hur held up the hands of Moses; and if, as we believe from the bottom of our souls, God will hear that prayer, then Jerusalem shall once again be built as a city at unity with itself, and from the farthest bounds of the earth there shall come, at least in spirit, "turning their faces thitherward," more and more every year, the converted, thankful and adoring "tribes of the Lord."

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