loved and glorified for its superior moral excellence and religious truth; only on account of that superiority was the proselyting of foreigners desired and prophesied. Nothing more was hoped from weapons of war, than barely to sustain the national worship upon its own area. Any further honour and glory to Jerusalem and its Temple was anticipated solely from the favour and blessing of a holy God on just and pious institutions. Towards foreigners indeed the eccentric and arbitrary ceremonies called Levitical were unpropitious; for they gave so much advantage at all times. to the more narrow-minded of Jewish teachers, that the largehearted and philanthropic side of the law was with difficulty kept in predominance. Nevertheless, the patriotism of Jews after the Babylonian era was the noblest national influence known to us in antiquity, and deserves to be mentioned with far higher respect than is unhappily traditional with our historians. The triumphant Joy so rapturously expressed in the sublime strains of prophecy appended* to our Isaiah thrilled from heart to heart through the whole nation for centuries;-an honourable, noble, heart-filling joy, which both elevated and strengthened those through whom it breathed; though alas! it fostered high expectations of national glory which deluded them. When Judaism was preached to the Gentiles, as it certainly sometimes was, without its ceremonies, a happy beginning seemed to be made of a fruitful career. But Christianity, on entering the same field as a rival, diffused a new medium of vision, through which the zeal to establish Truth and Justice on earth was absorbed in anxiety to rescue an Elect Remnant from the Wrath to come. After a very short interval Roman violence had crushed Judaism everywhere, so that Christianity was left alone to execute the task of enlightening the world: disembarrassed indeed of the clog of Jewish ceremonies, but entangled in a new and complex mysticism. Nevertheless, through the haze of legend glorious principles shone out, fruitful of all goodness. Such was the announcement, well known to Hebrew Psalmists,-that God is LOVE. Compassion for the miserable soon became a cardinal influence, perhaps a motive power, to Christianity. The belief was early current that the great business of life with Jesus himself had been to rescue the wretched, to succour the weak and to do good. Christian fantasy depicted him with miraculous power to heal sickness; a power in which if any sick man in Judea had faith, the recovery of such a one during the lifetime of Jesus had been easy. It was

* I refer especially to the chapters numbered as liv., lx., lxi., lxii.

even taught, that every disciple who had faith was able to outshine the Master in these miraculous deeds: but good sense largely kept down such ambition, and simply riveted itself on the idea, that of all action the most Divine is, to do good, and for this object we ought all to live. Individuals could not indeed change institutions, could not remedy public injustice, could not redress the wrongs of classes and nations: but in that first age of Christianity, which produced the documents thenceforward held as sacred, Christ himself was expected soon to come down from heaven for the overthrow of Pagan thrones, and to take the government of the whole world into his own hands. Hence it was enough for Christians to devote themselves to the relief of suffering in detail, without trying to investigate and remove its deep-seated causes. Among the real saints of those early days. two passions became dominant, each wholly unselfish, the passion of proselyting others to Christianity, and the passion of relieving the distressed. It must be confessed; this noble movement was soon blighted by a double strife,-namely, by dissensions concerning the limits of Messianic dignity, and by ambition to aggrandize the Church. Hereby the history of Christendom became mixed of elements prodigiously diverse. Yet the new and sinister passions of the controversy were awhile unselfish. Erring Zeal had its Agony or its Joy, and maintained (in theory at least) the supremacy of the soul over the body. And even when fanaticism became fiercer, and struggle more selfish, yet through the clouds of ever-increasing folly bright gleams of fruitful truth did not fail to flash;- such as, the Goodness of God, the equality of all nations in his sight, the privilege of being Servants for good, the divine quality of Compassion, and other maxims scarcely known or never widely spread among the educated classes of older time. When after a millennium of confusion civil freedom began to win upon tyranny, and infantine free thought made inroads on mythology, the glorious coming future of Europe dawned in the midst of war and struggle.

We are very slow to learn the supremacy of affection over intellect, of gentleness, love and humility over ambition and stern pride: yet these truths are the jewels enshrined in an inner casket of the proud and persecuting mythological church. Despite of errors which Paul would have called old women's fables, despite of Paul's own wild visions and perverse logic, despite of anathemas, excommunications, crusades, wars and the horrible Inquisition, despite of Augustinian and Calvinistic error, magical

sacraments and other pretences of sacerdotalism;-the still small voice has continued to thrill through men's hearts, insisting that man's best service to God is to revere and cherish God's workmanship, by self-restraint for others' benefit, and by every form of mercy and kindness. Philanthropy, in its modern sense, was scarcely imagined by antiquity. It is true, that before John Howard's wonderful career. Sisters of Mercy had made the idea of Philanthropy visible; but it was narrowed by ecclesiastical trammels, and seems to have been blurred by a prevalent hope of such Sisters to earn by it their salvation from Purgatory. Be this as it may, we now see the happy spectacle, that all sincere unpretending philanthropy receives honour from high and low, and even from mercantile companies. Of religious mendicants we no longer approve, and only the few can make the welfare of others the unpaid business of their lives. But the universal reverence for a life, which, while devoted to the welfare of others, seeks nothing for itself, reveals a critical change in world-wide convictions. Ecclesiasticism has had its day. For Bloody Conquest the future has no honours in reserve: and even now each of us separately can do something towards establishing the supremacy of mercy and tenderness. The use of Power shows the man. Towards everything weaker than ourselves we may be kind, trying to make every child and every animal happier. We may seek to be peace-makers among our equals, large-hearted and sweet-minded to all. It is often said justly, that the happiness of life is marred by small daily rubs: much may be done by each to avoid whatever needlessly frets another. The little Coral insects, acting for one end, build up walls which defy the waves of an ocean: so too the temperament of the millions, though singly weak, controuls sometimes the violence of the powerful.

And to return to the main thread of this discourse, if we wish to attain an abiding Joy, we must cultivate, as a fixed passion, desire for the welfare of others: not ambition, not vanity, not greed, not envy, not bigotry, not insane idolatry of a thing, a person, a family, an institution, a dogma. Some of these impulses may yield high joy, a fanatical but not a divine joy. But those who would "enter into the joy of their Lord; " the joy of HIM who is above anger and resentment, above partiality or any weakness, -such must cherish divine love and divine equanimity, side by side with a sober sense of their own insignificance. Then they will die, leaving the world better for their life; for they will have lived as co-workers with God in its purification and ennoblement.

THE NEW CRUSADES OF THE CHURCH

FOR THE WORLD.

[1886.]

SECTION I.

66

WHAT IS HERE MEANT BY THE CHURCH."

MANY persons cannot admit a division of mankind into the

World and the Saints. They see in it nothing but intolerable and mischievous conceit. They call it ridiculous priggishness to imagine any "peculiar people of God:" and we need not feel surprize at it; so common among persons, whom perhaps it is impossible not to esteem, is the notion that without holding their special creed, no one can belong to the True Church of God; no one can be "a saint." But no weakness of good people, no mistake of judgment, no conceit, no unamiable arrogance, will annihilate existing facts. It is a fact, that out of a thousand persons taken at random are more than a few, in whom kindness habitually overcomes selfishness; and of these there are (at least among us) some who have consciously and deliberately devoted themselves to pursue all goodness and all virtue, as their reasonable service to God. In the language of Paul, these are "Fellow-Workers with God." It certainly is not rash to assume confidently that Man is created for virtue, and that the Creator designs the welfare of mankind as a whole. Those who in this sense seek to be servants of God, are (not unjustly) entitled "the peculiar people" of God, and his "invisible Church" (ekkλnoia, [sacred] assembly); peculiar, because alas they never have been a majority; invisible, in the sense that no visible clique, club, company or set of companies is commensurate with them. The conceit is lamentable, when any corporation or visible society says, or thinks, "The Temple of the Lord are we, and we alone:" nevertheless there exists, and eminently in our favoured land, a select number bound together by the unseen spiritual tie of supreme allegiance to God, as the rightful Lord, who loveth righteousness.

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These are his conscious servants, and, in spite of the ignorance which generates bigotry, they are by no means without a certain Freemasonry, whereby one recognizes another. Moreover outside of these is a large margin of estimable persons who are God's unconscious servants, through the kindliness, generosity, and purity which predominate in their characters, even while they have no well-defined religion. If these to the eye of man have nothing saintly, yet at least they are saints in embryo; and where the public institutions favour virtue, they are (perhaps always) more numerous than the former class, and are an immense material aid that can scarcely be overvalued. However others may estimate these, the present writer does not class them with the "World" in opposition to the "Church;" not even when (perhaps from some intellectual reaction against errors of religion) they profess no religion at all. To do the will of God zealously, lovingly, though unconsciously, is far better than languid and inactive orthodoxy. Thus by THE CHURCH in the Title of this tract those are meant who are actual Fellowworkers against vice and injustice, whether with conscious or unconscious religion; and by the World (as contrasted with the Church) are meant the Selfish, the Covetous, the Impure, the Unscrupulous, in whom lower impulses habitually overcome the higher, the benevolent, and the spiritual.

To be early in life aware that Mankind falls into these two classes, is in itself an instruction, indeed a beneficial incitement. Among the old Greeks, Prodicus produced his famous allegory, "The Choice of Hercules between Virtue and Vice." He aimed to set forth the contrast here pointed at; though the crude barbarism of Greek mythology did not allow him to shed over it the beautiful halo of Holiness and the inspiring sense of an Omnipresent Righteous Overseer, which we have learned in Jewish and Christian schools. Surely it is a glorious direction of ambition, in youth or in age alike, when the aspiration rises out of the depth of the heart,-"One thing have I desired of the Lord; that will I seek after; that I may be conscious of God's presence all the days of my life, and become his servant and fellowworker."

SECTION II.

THE CHURCH IN AGONY.

FULL eight centuries before the Christian era Jerusalem was keenly aware of her religious superiority to her Gentile neighbours, whether Phoenician, Syrian or Egyptian. First perhaps in Egypt