FOOTNOTES:

Earth's crammed with heavenAnd every common bush afire with God,—

a declaration which otherwise would be held to be but a poet's fickle fancy or a vague philosophical idea. Days are coming, if they are not already upon us, when in the midst of scientific progress and explanation in which men are prone to rest as final, the believer's ceaseless theme must be the Divine indwelling. And the strongest and most telling means of keeping alive this truth for ourselves and others is the sacramental system of the Church.

Thus far we have been thinking of the Godward aspect of the Holy Communion—fellowship with God in Christ. On its manward side it is fellowship with man in Christ. As it sustains us in Divine fellowship and lifts us continually into purer heights, so it assures us of our incorporation in the mystical Body of Christ, "which is the blessed company of all faithful people," and inspires us to deeper love.Here again it is necessary to recall the original simple form of the sacrament, a form so simple that, as Bishop Westcott says somewhere, it is difficult in the earliest references to it to distinguish it from the ordinary family meal. The brethren gather around the common table and partake of the common loaf.[28]And the use of the one loving-cup from which all drink goes beyond the customs of ordinary family life. The Holy Communion, which is a social act, speaks of the transformation of social life.[29]Just as the constant sharing of food at one table is the pledge of loyal service to one anotheron the part of all who partake, as well as a means of gaining strength to fulfil the pledge, so the Holy Communion is a pledge to mutual service and equipment for its accomplishment. "In Christ" a new relationship is established between man and man, or rather an old relationship is deepened and consummated. Brethren after the flesh are made brethren in the Lord.[30]Family and national ties are very sacred and very close, but they reach the full purpose which God designed for them only when they become the basis for spiritual kinship. It is considered a dreadful thing, and rightly so, when men of common blood are at variance with one another; nothing is more shameful than a family feud. And on the other hand, blood relationship is in itself a demand for the most loyal service that men are capable of rendering. Now through the sacramental life a kinship is established and sustained as real and as binding as that consequent upon the accident of birth; so that for Christian to be at variance with Christian is as unnatural as it is for two of one family to strive with one another; for Christian to over-reach Christian is as treacherous as it was for Jacob to steal Esau's blessing. The loyalty which those who are "in Christ" owe one another is the loyaltydue among those who sit at the same board and eat of the same loaf, among those in whose veins runs the blood of a common mother. When men learn the reality and force of spiritual kinship, social problems will be solved and social evils will cease.

But a hasty glance has been bestowed in the foregoing pages on a mystery of unsearchable depth, and many of its aspects have not even been noted. The more obvious aspects are the ones upon which stress has been laid as including in them all others. As with all other forms of approach to God, so here, what a man knows about the Holy Communion is that which God has taught him in his reception of the Sacrament. Those who would fain plumb its depths must come frequently and preparedly to the feast. Nor is preparation a formal act. It is unfortunate that some teachers make it so by laying insistence on a set form. The best, and indeed the only, true preparation is an outcome of a full knowledge of the thing for which we wish to prepare ourselves, just as the best thanksgiving for a blessing is the spontaneous utterance consequent upon a contemplation of the gift received. The man who knows the spiritual significance of the Holy Communion,ipso factoknows how to prepare to receive it.

FOOTNOTES:[22]Works: Vol. viii. p. 8.[23]It is not easy to be understood, it is not lightly to be received; it is not much opened in the writings of the New Testament, but still left in its mysterious nature; it is too much untwisted and nicely handled by the writings of the doctors; and by them made more mysterious, and like a doctrine of philosophy made intricate by explications, and difficult by the apperture and dissolution of distinctions.—Jeremy Taylor, Works, vol. viii, p. 8.[24]Milne.[25]2 Cor. viii: 9.[26]See a valuable little book, Some Titles and Aspects of the Eucharist, by E. S. Talbot, D. D. (Bishop of Rochester). Rivington, Percival & Co., London.[27]Bp. Alexander.[28]Cf. 1 Cor. x: 17.—"We, who are many, are one loaf." The one serious objection to the otherwise convenient custom of using unleavened bread in the shape of wafers is that the symbolism of the common loaf is lost, and the point of contact with common life is somewhat obscured.[29]Our Church, by the title adopted, by the form of service used, by the spirit of her rubrics where they touch upon the subject, plainly declares it to be her intention that the Holy Communion should always be celebrated so as to be a social act. The priest is not a mere representative of the congregation, doing thingsforthem, but a leader actingwiththem. For the priest to act without the congregation is only less anomalous than for the congregation to act without the priest. Not that thewholecongregation present should necessarily receive at any given celebration of the Holy Communion, though in the judgment of the present writer the ideal would be reached only thus.[30]Cf. Philemon 16.

[22]Works: Vol. viii. p. 8.

[23]It is not easy to be understood, it is not lightly to be received; it is not much opened in the writings of the New Testament, but still left in its mysterious nature; it is too much untwisted and nicely handled by the writings of the doctors; and by them made more mysterious, and like a doctrine of philosophy made intricate by explications, and difficult by the apperture and dissolution of distinctions.—Jeremy Taylor, Works, vol. viii, p. 8.

[24]Milne.

[25]2 Cor. viii: 9.

[26]See a valuable little book, Some Titles and Aspects of the Eucharist, by E. S. Talbot, D. D. (Bishop of Rochester). Rivington, Percival & Co., London.

[27]Bp. Alexander.

[28]Cf. 1 Cor. x: 17.—"We, who are many, are one loaf." The one serious objection to the otherwise convenient custom of using unleavened bread in the shape of wafers is that the symbolism of the common loaf is lost, and the point of contact with common life is somewhat obscured.

[29]Our Church, by the title adopted, by the form of service used, by the spirit of her rubrics where they touch upon the subject, plainly declares it to be her intention that the Holy Communion should always be celebrated so as to be a social act. The priest is not a mere representative of the congregation, doing thingsforthem, but a leader actingwiththem. For the priest to act without the congregation is only less anomalous than for the congregation to act without the priest. Not that thewholecongregation present should necessarily receive at any given celebration of the Holy Communion, though in the judgment of the present writer the ideal would be reached only thus.

[30]Cf. Philemon 16.

The breadth of the Christian's vision is exceeded only by its height, and his influence is coterminous with nothing less than the human fabric of which he is a part. By faith man penetrates into the heaven of heavens and reaches the very presence of God himself, a privilege and duty which belong not to a favoured few but to the race.

Too low they build, who build beneath the stars,

is a truth of universal application. But just as the stars must not limit man's vision as he gazes up, neither must the horizon limit his vision as he looks abroad. Christian energy is not doing its full work unless it aims at touching the uttermost part of the earth. That which is recorded in Acts 1: 8[31]tells of an abiding principle and not merely of a historic fact. Our Lord is speaking through that group ofrepresentative men who witnessed His Ascension, to all who become his followers. Not the Apostles alone but all Christians are destined to be His witnesses "unto the uttermost part of the earth." It is only to be expected that those who have the power to explore the secrets of the divine Being, will also have this lesser power of world-wide influence, which after all, great as it is, is infinitely less aspiring than the former. The same faith that enables us to love and serve our Lord in heaven, equips us to love and serve the men of the remote parts of the earth. To have the former is to be heir to the latter.

Men who imbibe this principle and make it part of themselves are said to have missionary spirit. But it cannot be too strongly insisted that this spirit is not something over and above the common Christian character; for it is not a possession which we are to claim simply because we are bidden to do so, spurred to it by the "icy purity of the law of duty." The missionary spirit is inherent in Christianity. Even though Christ had never said, "Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations,"[32]even if He had not assured His followers that they were to be witnesses "unto the uttermost part of the earth," it would have made no practical differencein the final issue of Christian truth. The Church would have been missionary just the same—S. Paul, S. Augustine, S. Columba, S. Francis Xavier, would have striven for the Gospel's sake none the less boldly, none the less zealously. The missionary is not a missionary because of a few missionary texts in the Bible. He is a missionary because he is a Christian. All Christ's commands are invitations, which merely put into concise language what the heart already recognizes as its privilege and joy. The missionary commission[33]is the Church's charter, telling all men of her right to dare to make Christianity coterminous with humanity, arresting the attention of those to whom the missionary is sent rather than acting as the sole motive power of the missionary; from it we get definite authority, and so a measure of inspiration, but we do not rest upon it, as though it were by an arbitrary fiat of God that a Christian were converted into a missionary.[34]The latter term tellsof one aspect of the Christian character, that is all. Whoever accepts Christ's Christianity—the redundancy is necessary—forthwith becomes a missionary.[35]Andrew needed no injunction to seek Peter; he did it because, being a follower of Christ, he could not help it. And if he had refrained, he would have ceased at that moment to be a disciple. Christians, whether considered individually or corporately, who are not missionary in desire and intention, are Christians only in name, getting little from and contributing nothing to the religion of the Incarnation. If the foregoing contention be true, the definition of "missionary" stands sadly in need of revision. A missionary is an honourable title not to be reserved only for those who work for God in the waste places of His vineyard, but the coveted possession of every Christian who strives to bear a wide witness, as well as deep, to Christ among men.

Missionary service is apersonalthing; it cannot be deputed to another any more than it can have something else as a substitute for it. Contributing money in order that others may be maintained in their missionary undertakings, does not exemptthe donor from personal service himself. Every Christian is bound to strive to deepen and widen, by the force of his personality in Christ, the Kingdom of God. Of course there is a narrower and a wider missionary spirit. The latter is reached by faithfulness to the former, here as well as elsewhere effective breadth beginning in depth. All missionary power begins (as well as ends) in that unconscious witness[36]which the Christian character bears to Christ. So infectious a thing is God's truth, that to receive it is to spread it.

As one lamp lights another nor grows less,So nobleness enkindleth nobleness.

"Yearethe light of the world;" "Yearethe salt of the earth." And it is that part of the character which easily, simply and naturally lays holdon Christ, that first sheds God's light abroad and becomes the preservative element of society.

It is further noticeable that the sphere of Christian influence as alluded to by our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount, corresponds with the sphere of witness-bearing marked out by Him in His parting words before the Ascension—"Ye are the light ofthe world;" "Ye are the salt ofthe earth;" "Ye shall be witnesses unto the uttermost part of the earth." To recognize the fact that the Christian life is the most invincible and the most permeating influence that the world can ever know, is an enormous incentive to consistency and zealous devotion. Christian character is the only force which a man can both leave behind him, and take with him when he comes to die. Nothing can withstand it, and nothing can check its career. It is bound to impress all that it touches, and it touches everything—"the world," "the earth." It is not too much to hold that unconscious influence always exceeds conscious influence, the latter reaching the zenith of its effectiveness only when it has been transformed, by constant use, into the former. It is in the home that the Christian begins that witness-bearing, which is destined to reach so far.

But the widest missionary spirit is inclusive. Itis not a substitute for home work, any more than public life is a substitute for family life. The former is the extension of the latter. The disciples of the first days reached the uttermost part of the earth through Jerusalem and all Judæa and Samaria; while the disciples of these latter days must touch the bounds of the world through the parish, the diocese, the Church of the nation. Nothing, no matter how fine and striking it may be, can take the place of loyalty to the duties that are nearest at hand. Church life may be conceived of as a series of concentric circles, the innermost of which representing parochial relations, the next diocesan missions, then domestic, and the outermost circle foreign missions. Power to traverse the large circumference comes from faithfully treading the round of those that lie within, beginning with that next the centre. The only way to have power and to serve abroad is to live a deep full life at home, and, let it be added, the only way to have large power and to serve at home is to cast the eye far abroad and wind the interests of a whole world around the heart. And the spiritual force of the foreign mission field is no lying index of the spiritual condition of the home Church; it tells the tale as truly as the pulse reports for the heart. It maybe perfectly true of every other society of men that mere concentration is the secret of power, but it is not so with the Church. Any ecclesiastical unit, be it parish, diocese, province, or national Church, which is content to feed itself on rich spiritual food, without regard for the rest of the world, will sooner or later be filled with disease and die. However specious a form self-contemplation may assume, it inevitably ends in ruin, for it leads to isolation; and what is isolation but the most awful and irretrievable of catastrophes? The only true independence is that which is the fruit of interdependence. A given Church may have all the appearance of life—there may be popularity, large property, handsome equipment and other signs of outward prosperity—but within there is nothing but death. It is just as wrong and just as fatal to hold aloof, on any plea soever, from the common life of the entire Church at home and abroad, as it is to cut ourselves off from the Church of the past by a denial of fundamental truth. The former, quite as much as the latter, is a departure from Apostolic Christianity, and so merits the opprobrious name of schism.

It is a strange but inflexible spiritual law, that those who aim at anything short of the best according totheir conception, as God has given them light, will sooner or later come to grief. It is merely a matter of time. The hope of Christianity lies in its boldness. The Church is strong when she is daring, and only then; her strength rises and falls with her courage—victory is faith.[37]What an inspiration to every parish, the lowliest and poorest as well as the numerically strong and financially rich!—the uttermost part of the earth is within the reach of its influence: ay, more than that, is in need of its prayers and its labours. Work for foreign missions is the climax and crown of Christian life, not a sluggish tributary to it. And a parish will be in the vanguard of God's forces or far in the rear, according as it rises to its responsibility in this direction or not.

There is an immense amount of untutored missionary desire. That is to say, there are vast numbers of Christians whose hearts burn towards those who do not know Christ, but there is no man to teach them how to crystallize desire into prayer and action and let the stream of their desire run clear and full; there are many others, too, who have a narrow missionary spirit and who linger in Judæa and Samaria, only because they have neverbeen shown how it is possible to reach unto the uttermost part of the earth. The fire is there, but it smoulders for want of fuel. Men need direction for their missionary aspirations; they need to be instructed in the work that is being done. We cannot expect people to be interested in what they know nothing about. If the cause of missions is presented as an abstraction, and men are urged to give "on principle," the gifts that come will be such as cost the givers nothing. And as for prayers—well, there will be none, for prayers cannot live on abstractions. The clergy should be the leaders in making the missions of the Church a living thing; and it is nothing short of a scandal that so many pulpits are closed to those who wear the title of "missionary." But whatever be the shortcomings of the clergy, there is no more reason why Christian laymen should be ignorant of the general features of Church work in the far West or in China and Japan than that they should be ignorant of international politics; and there is more reason for shame on account of ignorance in the former than in the latter case. Once waken men's interest in the work abroad as a concrete reality, and there will be stronger prayer, more numerous offers for personal service in foreignwork from the best and bravest, more liberal contributions in money.

It has already been hinted that not only does the uttermost part of the earth need Christianity, but that Christianity needs the uttermost part of the earth. We cannot fully know Christ until all the nations have seen and believed and told their vision. The Church of God is poor, in that it lacks the contribution which the un-Christianized nations alone can give by being evangelized. Just as the speculative East needed in the first days the practical West to balance its concept of the Gospel, andvice versa, so it is now. Before we can see the full glory of the Incarnation, representatives of all nations must blend their vision with that which has already been granted. Every separate stone must be set before the temple reaches its final splendour. Foreign missions are as much for the Church's sake as for the heathen's, as much for the eternal profit of those who are sent as for those to whom they go.

No attempt has been made in these pages to argue as with men who do not believe in the widest missionary enterprise, for missionary spirit is not created by argument. Indeed, many an objection is but the instrument by which persons convict themselvesof being Christian only in name. There is no answer to what they say excepting, "Of course you cannot believe in missions, because it is evident you do not believe in Christ. To believe in Christ is to believe in missions, missions unto the uttermost part of the earth." It would be a shame to appear to apologize for what is of the essence of Christianity. So we turn away from all smaller reasoning, to the one great spring and impulse of mission work far and near. The Christian has to see those whom Christ sees, for the follower looks through his master's eyes; the Christian has to love and serve those whom Christ loves and serves, for the follower lives only in his master's spirit. Consequently, he must see, love and serve unto the uttermost part of the earth. Being a follower of Christ, he cannot help it; he does it for the same reason and with the same naturalness that the sun shines and the rose sheds its fragrance abroad.

FOOTNOTES:[31]Ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judæa, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.[32]St. Matt. xxviii: 19.[33]St. Matt. xxviii:19, 20.[34]The following remarkable phrase occurs in Bp. Andrewes' Devotions:—Who[i. e.,Christ]hath manifested in every place the savour of His knowledge ... by the incredible conversion of the world to the Faith, without assistance of authority, without intervention of persuasion.[35]The Brotherhood of S. Andrew is nothing more than an organized effort to fulfil a common Christian duty.[36]Cf. Emerson's verses on unconscious influence:Little thinks, in the field, yon red cloaked clownOf thee from the hill-top looking down;The heifer that lows in the upland farm,Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,Deems not that great NapoleonStops his horse, and lists with delight,Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;Nor knowest thou what argumentThy life to thy neighbour's creed has lent.[37]1 John v: 4.

[31]Ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judæa, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.

[32]St. Matt. xxviii: 19.

[33]St. Matt. xxviii:19, 20.

[34]The following remarkable phrase occurs in Bp. Andrewes' Devotions:—Who[i. e.,Christ]hath manifested in every place the savour of His knowledge ... by the incredible conversion of the world to the Faith, without assistance of authority, without intervention of persuasion.

[35]The Brotherhood of S. Andrew is nothing more than an organized effort to fulfil a common Christian duty.

[36]Cf. Emerson's verses on unconscious influence:Little thinks, in the field, yon red cloaked clownOf thee from the hill-top looking down;The heifer that lows in the upland farm,Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,Deems not that great NapoleonStops his horse, and lists with delight,Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;Nor knowest thou what argumentThy life to thy neighbour's creed has lent.

[36]Cf. Emerson's verses on unconscious influence:

Little thinks, in the field, yon red cloaked clownOf thee from the hill-top looking down;The heifer that lows in the upland farm,Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,Deems not that great NapoleonStops his horse, and lists with delight,Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;Nor knowest thou what argumentThy life to thy neighbour's creed has lent.

[37]1 John v: 4.

The responsibility of the sons of God has been the theme of this book, and the writer trusts that in dwelling upon the duties of the Christian life he has not failed to bring out something of its glory and inspiration. But the thing out of which we can gather the largest help to fulfil our responsibility is the responsibility itself. If God dwells high up on the hills of difficulty, He has a throne, too, in the heart of every claim made on human character.[38]

The presence in our life of a difficulty is a call to responsibility, and the acceptance of a responsibility is the admittance into personal experience of God in His triumphant march toward the great consummation; it is correspondence with victory. Just as the glory of duty consists, not in its immediate issue, but in its performance, so the main inspiration for responsibility comes not from external goads and spurs, but from the very thing which lies at ourfeet, looking at first sight like a task given to mock rather than inspire, to denude of what little power we have rather than to equip, to undo the would-be doer rather than to be done by him. Responsibility without doubt is a task, but much more is it an inspiration. Of course the measure of inspiration which it imparts is proportionate to the faith and courage with which it is approached. Responsibility handled with dilettante fingers will only cut and wound; grasped in firm embrace, it will bestow so much illumination and vigour that the pain which inaugurates the gift will be forgotten almost before the last ache has faded out. And again, it is not too much to say that the greater a responsibility is, the greater is its power to inspire. In other words, inspiration is always commensurate with responsibility. "As thy days, so shall thy strength be." In the common Christian duty, which has been outlined in the foregoing pages, so great is the responsibility imposed that nothing short of the highest conceivable incentive can carry a man through. And the inspiration lies within the task and will declare itself only in the doing of the task.

Even on the natural side man finds attraction and inspiration in problems, puzzles and difficulties.[39]No sooner is one problem solved or one difficulty surmounted than another is eagerly sought for and grappled with. The spice of life lies in its antagonisms.[40]It is not the prospect of some reward of wealth or honour that carries men to the crown of their task; it is the joy of the doing, a joy that is felt even in those preliminary experimentations which only pave the way to the real undertaking. Men—we are not thinking of butterflies—cannot exist without difficulty. To be shorn of it means death, because inspiration is bound up with it, and inspiration is the breath of God, without the constant influx of which man ceases to be a living soul. Responsibility is the sacrament of inspiration. The miracles of Christ, whatever else they did, suggested new responsibility to the race, opened up a new field of daring and enlarged thescope of human operations. They encouraged men to attempt the impossible; and without question the hidden but no less effective cause of all scientific development has been and is Christian aspiration, roused to its highest pitch by the marvels performed by the Man Christ Jesus. Christian faith has educated us to a belief that the first promise of order lies in the discovery of chaos, and that every problem carries in its own pocket a key formed to fit the hand of man. Thus interest in the sorrows and perplexities of the multitudes rises from a nerveless compassion that of yore worked laboriously with its "law-stiffened fingers," to a wide-reaching ministration of power; the secrets of nature become invitations to knowledge; and effort that was once merely instinctive and random becomes rational and triumphant.

But Christ enabled men to achieve what before they had only sighed after, not by releasing from, but on the contrary by adding to human responsibility. He saw the inspiration of responsibility, so by making the latter great He made the former reach its height; He equipped man to do the smaller duties of life by giving larger ones. It will for ever hold true that to bring men up to their best, we must call them to the highest. They are to be won,not by the promise of a gift, but by a ringing call to duty, not by something to eat, but by something to do. One reason at least why Christianity is bound to supersede all other religions is because of the supreme largeness of its demands on human character and the supreme inspiration that those demands contain. The fault of most modern prophets is not that they present too high an ideal, but an ideal that is sketched with a faltering hand; the appeal to self-sacrifice is too timid and imprecise, the challenge to courage is too low-voiced, with the result that the tide of inspiration ebbs low. The call to each soul to contribute its quota toward the realization of the most remote ideal so far from being depressing is stimulating, and a necessary goad to the promotion of individual as well as corporate development. Mr. Kipling's prophetic voice rings out above the Babel of a garrulous age and inspires men in the only way they can be inspired, by pointing out human responsibility and bidding men take up their burden.

Go to your work and be strong, halting not in your ways,Baulking the end half-won for an instant dole of praise.Stand to your work and be wise—certain of sword and pen,Who are neither children nor gods, but men in a world of men!

Clothed with the conviction that true inspiration lies in responsibility, what better words of inspiration can this closing chapter bear than what will come from a final insistence upon the vastness of the ordinary man's spiritual responsibility and the grandeur of his opportunity? In these days a true man rises instinctively to a broad outlook. He does not labour for his own self-fulfillment and nothing more. Of course, every act of self-sacrifice for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake helps toward that end, for self-sacrifice for the promotion of whatever cause is always the negative aspect of self-fulfillment. But Christians strive toward the best not from selfish motives, not merely because what God commands must be done, but because He has opened up to our gaze a vision of His world-purposes and shown us that obedience means coöperation with Him in their fulfillment. Thus small actions become big with import. Personal purity means a contribution toward the solution of the divorce question which exceeds in its constructive influence the most wisely worded canon of marriage. The commercial honour of the individual is the forging of a ward in the key that will some day unlock the closed door of the industrial problem. Faithfulness in spiritual duties in themost circumscribed life is a voice that reaches the uttermost part of the earth and gives its undying witness to all who have ears to hear. Loyalty and charity working hand in hand in the Christian soul will do as much as the most carefully framed and comprehensive formula of agreement, to bring about that Christian unity for which our Lord prayed[41]when His time was short and His thoughts only upon that which was the objective point of the Incarnation.

Whether or not men recognize the extent of their influence, that influence tells. But what a source of inspiration and strength is lost when these things are hidden and one sees only the natural side of life, the prison-house of environment and the task without its incentive! The Architect of life would have His least workman know the full plan and not merely that of the small bit of it which is his special care. Once to discern our personal relation to God's world-purposes is to be for ever purged of dilettantism; is to be for ever emancipated from a certain religious littleness that shackles so many Christian feet, and to move out into a breadth which involves no loss of depth; is to shake non-essentials into the background, and bring fundamentaltruths to the fore, where they can burn themselves into our very being; is to receive a new motive for living and doing.

Fired by a sense of large responsibility, sustained spiritual effort on a high plane becomes possible for each in his own little corner. The demand upon men to pray well, to seek to make the moral life blameless, and to deepen and enlarge the sphere of service,—in a word, to aspire to the stars and reach out to the four corners of the world, suggests privilege rather than hardship to the rank and file of the Christian army. The layman may not look to the priest as a vicarious man of prayer and of righteousness. The priesthood is representative, not exclusive, in character and service. The priest is a man of prayer not because he is a priest, but because he is a Christian, his priesthood but determining the accidental features of his devotional life. He is a holy man not because he is a priest, but because he is a Christian, his priesthood but determining the sphere in which his holiness is to be expressed. The priest does spiritual work not because he is a priest, but because he is a Christian, his priesthood but making him a leader in service,primus inter pares. Faithfulness in prayer, righteousness in life, full spiritual service, are the responsibilityas much of the layman as of the priest. Failure in any one of these departments of life is as culpable in the layman as in the priest. It is notable that of all the vows in the Ordinal, whether in the ordering of priest or deacon, or in the consecration of a bishop, the majority are but the expansion of common Christian duty and could be as well taken by layman as by cleric. The functional peculiarities are as few as the representative duties are many. The priestly life is mainly, though not solely, the intensification of fundamental relations with God and man, as the Ordinal testifies, and the ideal priesthood, so far as it touches devotion, morals and common service, is but the perpetual and living reminder to the laity of what they should be and do. There are many ready to decry sacerdotalism; but few of these have sufficient logic to recognize that the more completely the ministry is denuded of all but its representative character, the more fully is the layman weighted with spiritual responsibility.[42]

And spiritual work is as wide as human activity. The tendency to make religion a department of life instead of the Christian synonym for the whole of life, has given rise to such a redundancy as"applied Christianity." The life of common activities, social and industrial, is as truly the sphere of religion as the sanctuary. The natural is not the antithesis but the foundation of the spiritual. First that which is natural and afterward that which is spiritual—by transformation, not by substitution. The Resurrection of Christ is a parable as well as a fact. And it is for the layman, whether he be the thinker in his study or the labourer in his ditch, to exercise his priesthood in the sphere of his occupation, lifting to God for His transforming touch each transaction in which he is engaged, recognizing that all life is divine, and all business God's business. It is for the layman to enter into the bent of his age and train it to God, not holding aloof from popular movements and ambitions, but laying hold of them and labouring for their conversion and sanctification. Thus will the natural become the spiritual. The witness that the world of to-day is most in need of is that which will testify that if God is the God of the supernatural and extraordinary, just as really is He the God of the natural and ordinary, revealing Himself through and using common things as the general rule, turning to what is uncommon as the exception. Who can bear this witness so well as the layman in the homeand in the market? Certain it is that until this is done and theology has become much more than now part of the web and woof of common life among common men, theological assent or ecclesiastical unity will accomplish but little toward unifying life in Christ in any worthy sense.

This, then, is the ordinary duty of a Christian layman. It is not something optional, to be assumed or not as we prefer. It is what we must accept as our responsibility, if we accept Christ and look for acceptance in Him. The Church of to-day is coming to recognize this more and more, and is settling down to the work before her with wisdom and zeal. Even beneath the reaction against "organized Christianity," which has appeared of late, and partially explanatory of it, is moral earnestness, an earnestness that deprecates that conventional religion which, narrow in both its vision and methods, fails to touch life with a hand of power. Men of action wish a Christianity which is weighted with responsibilities. Here and there one finds a nerveless Amiel who can speak fine phrases, but who shrinks from responsibility. And here and there, too, is a doctrinaire philosopher or an idle onlooker who croaks of degeneration and declares that life lacks inspiration. But all the while the workers,with eyes gleaming with hope, plunge into the most hopeless problems, and reap their inspiration from their toil.

FOOTNOTES:[38]See Appendix.[39]See Prof. William James in, Is Life Worth Living? "Too much questioning and too little active responsibility lead, almost as often as too much sensualism does, to the edge of the slope, at the bottom of which lie pessimism and the nightmare or suicidal view of life."[The Will to Believe and other Essays.][40]See Dr. John Fiske in his recently published, Through Nature to God, where in a study of the Mystery of Evil, he developes this thought most admirably, though making the unnecessary deduction that God is the creator of moral evil.[41]St. John xvii.[42]See Moberly's Ministerial Priesthood, chap. ii.

[38]See Appendix.

[39]See Prof. William James in, Is Life Worth Living? "Too much questioning and too little active responsibility lead, almost as often as too much sensualism does, to the edge of the slope, at the bottom of which lie pessimism and the nightmare or suicidal view of life."[The Will to Believe and other Essays.]

[40]See Dr. John Fiske in his recently published, Through Nature to God, where in a study of the Mystery of Evil, he developes this thought most admirably, though making the unnecessary deduction that God is the creator of moral evil.

[41]St. John xvii.

[42]See Moberly's Ministerial Priesthood, chap. ii.

There is no truth so thrilling as that which speaks of God's abiding presence, not merelywithbutinHis creation, though He is neither limited by nor dependent upon it. Having created, He sustains, sustains from within, so that the most recent manifestation of energy, whether in the radiance of a sunrise or the smile on a child's face, is not the reflection of a far-off movement of God, but an indication of His present working. God is behind the world of things, controlling and using all that is visible, so that the voiceless speaks and the lifeless lives and imparts life. But His delight is among the sons of men. He dwells in men, making their bodies His temple and their souls His throne. He dwells in nature because He dwells in man, as well as dwelling in man because man is part of nature. What will help a man to honour his own body and to reverence the bodies of others,more than the thought that the Spirit of God fills the human frame as light fills the room, leaving no part untouched? It is not sufficient to think ofGod as being in some organ of the body—the most worthy part, such as the heart or the brain. God's Spirit fills His temple with His glory and His power, making the least comely parts noble. He sanctifies each member in the fulfillment of its proper function. To misuse or abuse any power or faculty, is to drive the Spirit of God from His chosen resting-place; whereas to surrender the members of the body and the faculties of the soul to His influence, is to lift up the whole man into increasing glory and beauty.

But it is not difficult to accept the truth that God lives within His wonderful creation. The earliest dawn of religion perceived Him in His works of beauty and majesty,—the sun, the stars, the river, the tempest. And if He is immanent in that which is less, it is only logic to say that He must of necessity be in that which is greater—if in the world of things, much more then in the world of men, in the individual and in society. But so deep is man's instinctive reverence, so abiding his sense of unworthiness, that it needed the Incarnation to convince man that he was destined to become the heaven of God. Yes, the heaven of God, for heaven is where God is rather than God where heaven is.

All this has become an elementary truth of religion.Only it has to be expressed in new terms from time to time. The thought has to be recoined as the edges of language wear smooth, that its force and value may be recognized. The immanence of God, as thus considered, is not difficult for men to accept, unless indeed they wander into the barren wastes of a deistic thought, which banishes God from life as we know it, and makes Him a transcendent unreality.

Whatdoesstagger men is the existence in a world in which God dwells, of the dark mysteries from which none can escape,—the disastrous storms, the difficulties, the pains of life. If, they argue, God dwells in the world, why does He not sweep away these heavy shadows, this over-much grief? There is only one answer, and it is this: God does not annihilate these things because He has a high use for them; He cannot destroy that which He can inhabit; God dwells in the dark places, in the wilderness, in the storms; He has taken possession of them, and they are His just as much as the sunshine and the fertile land. In short, God dwells in everything short of sin, even in the fiercest, gloomiest penalty of sin. The angel of vengeance is the angel of God's blessing for all penitents who will accept him as such.

When our Lord came in the flesh, He entered into every human experience to abide in it all the days. He invested temptation, so that temptation is henceforth man's highest opportunity. He seized upon difficulty, and behold, it becomes a revelation. He invested responsibility till it became inspiration, duty till it became privilege. He wrapped Himself in sorrow, and sorrow is turned into joy. He explored the darkest recesses of death, and death is the gate to life immortal. And these transformations are for all time.

It is a process of transformation, let it be noted, which these mysteries undergo. It is not that the temptation in time is swept away and an opportunity substituted in its place; but the temptationbecomesan opportunity, and man mounts upon it to a higher level of self-sacrifice, or purity or honour. It is not that the difficulty is burned up by God's fire and a revelation comes gliding in as a sunbeam athwart the ashes of the difficulty; but the difficulty itself becomes the revelation. The pain of Rebekah in child-birth as the children struggled in her womb, made her inquire of the Lord, and God flashed back the reply from the heart of her difficulty: "Two nations are in thy womb." Joseph brooded over the condition ofMary, his espoused wife, until, in the night vision, the angel of the Lord appeared, and said: "That Which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost." His difficulty became a revelation. Similarly the dominant feature of responsibility becomes not its weight but its inspiration, of duty not its 'ought' but its 'may.' And so it is with sickness, and sorrow, and death. S. Paul's sickness, whether it was a malady of the eyes or Asiatic malaria is of little consequence, became to him spiritual health and power; "My grace is sufficient for thee; my strength is made perfect in weakness." As for sorrow, it is turned into joy,—the very thing that caused tears becoming the spring of smiles. And death, the king of shadows, is shorn of its horrors and becomes the entrance chamber to introduce into the presence of the King of Light.

The Bible is full of phrases (in the Old Testament, of course, they are prophetic, pointing to Messianic days) that tell of God's transforming power. Darkness shall be turned into light; the desert shall blossom as a rose; the barren shall be a mother of children; the glowing sand shall become a pool; and the thirsty ground, springs of water; the deaf shall hear, and the blind see; defeat becomes victory; and the instrument of shame andtorture, the symbol of glory and joy. And all this, which, through the Incarnation, has become a fact in common life, is a revelation of God's power, not to say love, which far exceeds in wonder whatever we knew before. It is appalling to think of a power so strong that it can annihilate with the irresistible force of its grinding heel; but it is inspiring to consider an Almightiness that transforms the works of evil into the hand-maidens of righteousness and converts the sinner into the saint. And it is this latter power which eternal Love possesses and exhibits. He persistently dwells in the sinner until the sinner wakes up in His likeness and is satisfied with it; He enters into the shadows and holds them until they become first as the morning clouds fingered by the earliest rays of the rising sun, and eventually as the brightness of the noonday light.

But men must not accept this as a mere poetic fancy, beautiful but not of practical value. It is nothing, if not a source of power. We must experiment with our own difficulties, sickness, sorrows—yes, and our own death. There are those, Christian scientists and others, that espouse a false idealism, who meet the grim realities of life with a courage that is born of a lie. They deny the existence of everything they do not like, saying thatsorrow and sin and death are not, that they are phantoms. They are not unlike the silly bird, which, finding itself hard pressed, buries its head in the nearest bush, and being unable to see its pursuers, deceives itself into thinking that it is not pursued. But "things and actions are what they are," so why should we desire to deceive ourselves? The Christian's course of action is to say that these dark mysteries are real, but the Spirit of God in us will enable us to find the Spirit of God in them.

Our Lord on the Mount of the Transfiguration, and later on in the Passion, tells the whole story. Calmly contemplating His own approaching death, which He had just foretold, and bringing it before the Father in prayer, He sees the transfiguration of the king of terrors, and, in a blaze of spiritual exaltation, speaks of His own decease so soon to be accomplished. Then afterward in the Garden of Gethsemane, on the way of sorrow, and upon the Cross, He was in every detail the victor. These final experiences of life did not seize upon Him; it was He who seized them; He wrung them dry of all that they had to give and for ever changed their character. Frowning monarchs they can never be to the followers of our Lord, but, on the contrary, powerful servants. Christ's victory was not in theResurrection any more completely than in the Passion. It was in the former because it had been in the latter. Good desires brought to good effect, as the Easter Collect puts it, end in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Victory is not only a thing of to-morrow; it belongs to to-day. The Christian's life is victory all along the line.

Let men, then, take their own hard, grim, specific pain or difficulty, and face it fearlessly and expectantly, and they will find that the "worst turns the best to the brave." Let them throw their arms about it, and say with Jacob: "I will not let Thee go except Thou bless me." And, lo! they will find that their arms are about God and His about them. If we pray God to sanctify our sickness, it is not that we expect Him to touch it from without. No, we look for more than that, much more. We expect Him to reveal Himself out of the depths of the suffering, so that the more earnestly we look at it the more clearly shall we see Him and His Face of Love. Men who have done this with the lesser of the dark mysteries will be quite ready when the time comes to act in the same way toward death, and say triumphantly: "Thanks be to God which giveth us the victory."

What is true of personal difficulties, perplexitiesand sorrows, is equally true of the sorrows of a world. Let men remember that those who hold back timidly or discouraged from hand-to-hand conflict with social, political and industrial difficulties, are forfeiting their share in the largest kind of revelation. God dwells there, in corporate sorrows, as well as in those of the individual experience, and, if one may say so, in a fuller measure. The world needs brave men to-day, men who are determined to see God wherever He is, and He is in everything, everything short of actual sin. There is no philosophy so false to facts as pessimism, except perhaps cheap and unthinking optimism. It is only the Christian philosophy that is equal to the situation, a philosophy which ignores nothing, howsoever gruesome, but which sees God master of His world, and nowhere in such complete possession as in its darkest corners.

When God's storms come sweeping along, it is the Christian alone who can lift his head, look up, and stand erect as they enshroud him, for a Christian cannot fear where God is. Elijah could not find God in the storm that swept by him. But the youngest Christian can do what the stern prophet of old could not; he can find God in all storms, for all storms are God's.

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