aspiration dies, for consciousness itself ceases. The Positive creed, whether of Confucius or of Comte, has nothing better to offer man than the best known. Mahomedanism would supply the faithful with "bright maidens and unfailing vines, such as in dreams would hardly soothe a soul that once had tasted of immortal truth." Judaic Christianity has its new Jerusalem. Popular Theology has a cunningly contrived scale of rewards and punishments. The revelation of Jesus is the revelation of a development of aspiration after One better than the best conceivable, a development which can therefore have no end, and which can be ensured by every single child of the eternal Father, in loyalty to the new and living way opened up unto him; ideal sonship; free loving obedience. The gospel of the hereafter is then, like the others, a common gospel; not for the few favoured ones, not for a class or for a caste, but for the whole family of the All Father. Its glory is not to burst on us, as though some new and strange thing had happened unto us; but it will be the gradual development of our present, however rare, moments of communion with our Divine ideal. Rare enough they are, God knoweth, for we are so much taken up with our business, or our pleasure, or our sins, that there is but little time for even the contemplation of an ideal; still, to all of us, let us hope that, "Good God, not only reckons, The moments when we do His will Assuredly He does; how can it be otherwise? for is not the one, as much as the other, the influence of the Divine within us? These aspirations after the glory of the hereafter, are for all men in all the circumstances of their life; they come to us in our Work, and make the music of the heavens sound above the hum of machinery and the hubbub of the street. They whisper to us in Sorrow, drawing us out of ourselves, with the thought that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which is about to be revealed in us. They throng around us in Worship, like bands of angels, ready to bear us far away from the seen and temporal. They speak also of the glory of Sonship, for they are common to the malefactor and the saint, and thus testifying to the reality of the brotherhood of Jesus, they bring within the grasp of our apprehension that supremest glory of the Fatherhood of the Eternal One which, knowing neither beginning nor end, embraces creation as with the perfection of the circle. Aspirations after the One better than the best conceivable are indeed the birthright of humanity, and evidence relationship with their source. The gospel of Jesus, whom we call the Christ, makes its appeal to these aspirations, recognises the truth of our birthright and bids us be loyal to it. It does not demand acceptance on the ground of "authority;" it does not come disguised as an ecclesiastical system; it does not depend upon wonders and miracles, save so far as it works wonders and miracles in ourselves and those around us; it does not separate us, as do the creeds of men, but it binds in one brotherhood the whole family of man. It offers "reasonable satisfaction to the religious sentiment in the nature of man," because it gives an explanation of those aspirations which are ourselves; making them the never-ending steps of a Divine progression. This is an age of materialists, they tell us, and the clergy warn and threaten, forgetting that the churches have become materialistic to the very core. The success of science may for the time attract too great attention to the seen and temporal, but if the revelation be true, if the universal consciousness of the race does not lie, the aspirations after the unseen and eternal will not cease to make their voices heard. In place of the material, Jesus offers us the ideal and nothing on earth can withstand it. Creeds may rot and crumble away; churches may rock to their centre, but the "immovable basis of the religious sentiment " must abide; earth's joys may dim, its glories pass away; but the gospel of the hereafter which tells of Divine aspiration filled and yet never fulfilled; an everlasting approach to One better than the best conceivable remaineth for us all; for every child of the Eternal who through the new and living way draws near unto the Father. Turnbull and Spears, Printers. Chaplain in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen, and Minister The Fight of Faith: A New Volume of Sermons. Theology in the English Poets.-Cowper, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Burns. Third Edition. Post 8vo, price 9s. Christ in Modern Life. Ninth Edition. Crown 8vo, price 7s. 6d. Sermons. First Series. Ninth Edition. Cr. 8vo, price 6s. Sermons. Second Series. Third Edition. Cr. 8vo, price 7s. Frederick Denison Maurice: The Life and Work of. A Memorial Sermon. Crown 8vo, sewed, price Is. Life and Works of the late F. W. ROBERTSON, M.A. Notes on Genesis. Crown 8vo, price 5s. Sermons. Four Series. Small crown 8vo, price 3s. 6d. Expository Lectures on St Paul's Epistles to the Corinthians. A New Edition. Small crown 8vo, price 5s. Lectures and Addresses, with other literary remains. A New Edition. Crown 8vo, price 5s. An Analysis of Mr Tennyson's 'In Memoriam.' (Dedicated by permission to the Poet-Laureate.) Fcap. 8vo, price 2s. The Education of the Human Race. Translated from the German of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Fcap. 8vo, price 2s. 6d. Life and Letters of. Edited by the Rev. Stopford Brooke, M.A., Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen. * I. Two vols., uniform with the Sermons. With Steel II. Library Edition, in Demy 8vo, with Two Steel III. A Popular Edition, in I vol. Crown 8vo, price 6s. The above Works can also be had, bound in half-morocco. * A Portrait of the late Rev. F. W. Robertson, mounted for framing, can be had, price 2s. 6d. C. KEGAN PAUL & Co., LONDON. Works by the Rev. SAMUEL DAVIDSON, D.D., LL.D. The New Testament, translated from the latest Greek Text of Tischendorf. A New and thoroughly revised Edition. Post 8vo, price 10s. 6d. Canon of the Bible: its Formation, History, and Fluctuations. Second Edition. Small crown 8vo, price 5s. Works by the Rev. H. R. HAWEIS, M.A. Current Coin. Materialism The Devil - Crime Drunkenness - Pauperism - Emotion - Recreation- The Sabbath. Crown 8vo, price 6s. Speech in Season. Third Edition. Crown 8vo, price 9s. Thoughts for the Times. Ninth Edition. Crown 8vo, price 7s. 6d. Unsectarian Family Prayers for Morning and Evening for a Week. With short selected passages from the Bible. Square crown 8vo, price 3s. 6d. Works by the Rev. J. BALDWIN BROWN, B.A. The Higher Life. Its Reality, Experience, and Destiny. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo, price 7s. 6d. Doctrine of Annihilation in the Light of the Gospel of Love. Five Discourses. Second Edition. Crown 8vo, price 2s. 6d. Works by EDWARD CLODD, F.R.A.S. The Childhood of the World: a Simple Account of Man in Early Times. Third Edition. Crown 8vo, cloth, price 3s. The Childhood of Religions. Including a Simple Account of the Birth and Growth of Myths and Legends. Crown 8vo, cloth, price 5s. The Life and Words of Christ. By CUNNINGHAM Prayers, with a Discourse on Prayer. By GEO. Womanhood: its Duties, Temptations, and Privileges. By Rev JOSEPH SHILLITO. A Book for Young Women. Crown 8vo, price 3s. 6d. C. KEGAN PAUL & Co., LONDON. |