that after he had executed a beautiful statue which not only pleased, but satisfied him, he presently became depressed in mind; because his self-complacency revealed to him that he had reached his highest point, and he would never improve beyond.To love God is little else, than to love the ideal of personate righteousness. He in whom truly this love is active, has a standard higher than his own present attainments. Hence he has a constant self-dissatisfaction, even when in perfect peace of conscience. In the language of Paul, "forgetting the things behind," that is, the virtue which he has reached, "he presses on to the things that are before," namely, to the virtue which he has not yet reached ;-of which moreover he perhaps has no well-defined notion. One thing however he knows distinctly,his own many failures. On account of these his soul bursts out in secret complaint to the God who surrounds him and is ever present. His hunger and thirst after righteousness draw from him spontaneous aspirations and many a self-reproof; but such sorrow is in itself blessed. It softens and enriches the soul: it purifies that temple in which the Spirit of God may dwell, and fits it for less imperfect or loftier virtue. Therefore the very fact of hungering after righteousness leads more and more to the fulness of the hungry soul.

O how lamentable are man's low thoughts and low aims! Necessarily we begin life as nothing but little animals, and our first business is to acquire strength and speed and skill of hand, or skill of various kind. All this is right and commendable. Yet let it ever be remembered by young men, that however strong they become, the bull is stronger; however swift they be, the horse is swifter. Except where the mind plays a large part, brute animals excel us in natural powers. In this form of excellence moderate attainment may suffice us.-Sensual pleasures attract a grievously large number of men, who so fret against moral prohibitions, that they might seem to wish that they were brute animals, unfettered by any law of right and honour. Not but that we may plainly tell them, the brutes are far more self-controuled and truly temperate than they are. Such men dishonour the noble possibilities of our nature, and instead of striving to develop within themselves the image of God, they degrade themselves below the animals which know not God.-In others we may plainly see, that wealth is their great desire. A hundred small indications show, that they account him most blessed, who has most money at command. All wise men will

avow, that wealth may be honourably desired; for it is a great power for good, and especially in this English world may be used actively for the very best purposes: indeed the wiser and more virtuous each is, the better can he use money. But to desire wealth for selfish gratification or pride denotes a mean and paltry state of soul. Moreover, great as is the power of wealth, the power of goodness is greater. Each human soul has in it a treasure unseen, unknown, out of which, if duly elicited, countless blessings may be derived. Each of us can make some little circle happier, if we study to do so, by gentleness and sweetness of temper, by thought for others, by small kindnesses, by checking a rash tongue, by patience and forbearance, by many small ministrations of affection. Daily life has an infinitude of small trials, out of which our virtue is to grow up into strength. Even tenderness to brute animals cherishes sweetness of heart. Let each have the principle deeply fixed within, that to do good and love goodness is the greatest bliss for man, the closest assimilation to the Divine nature. Indeed more than two thousand years ago a Greek philosopher declared, that if a man desired the highest human happiness, he must play the immortal; which we may perhaps interpret into our phrases, by saying, he must put on the heart of God; understanding hereby that we must cultivate his unselfish benevolence, and his entire freedom from all low passions and impulses. To strive daily after this, is to hunger and thirst after righteousness.

One who deliberately enters on this course soon learns how many holy souls have preceded him, as pilgrims seeking the same shrine, the blessed temple of God. It is a great encouragement to find that we are not alone, but are units of a goodly band and partners in the fellowship of saints. How loud and clear do Hebrew Psalmists send forth their longings after a more perfect holiness, in the love of God's holy law! "The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: the statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart: more to be desired are they than gold, sweeter also than the honeycomb. Moreover by them is thy servant warned, and in keeping of them there is great reward. Who can understand his errors ? cleanse thou me from secret faults." again: "Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are they that keep his testimonies and seek him with the whole heart. O that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes! Make me to go in the path of thy commandments, for therein do I delight. I will walk at liberty; for I seek

So

thy precepts. I will delight myself in thy commandments, which I have loved. Blessed is the people that know the joyful sound: they shall walk, O Lord, in the light of thy countenance."

Dear friends, brethren and sisters, younger and elder, who come hither (I presume) for some spiritual benefit, receive kindly a word of exhortation. The grace of God that bringeth salvation can be nothing but a freeing of us from the bondage of sin and selfishness, from materialism, sensuality and every form of degrading worldliness. We are made for goodness, for righteousness, for true holiness; which alone is worthy of our high nature, and alone can yield any permanent happiness. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double-minded. Young or old, resolve to be co-workers with God, which is your reasonable service. Dedicate your hearts to him, striving to conform your conduct to everything that is lovely and pure, beneficent and just. The chains of habit are so strong, that only a spiritual passion can break them, a noble enthusiasm like lightning from heaven. Let philosophers puzzle over the phenomenon as they may, certain it is, that the out-bursting of the heart in ejaculation to a holy God eminently nurtures the passion for holiness, and strengthens the weak soul. Whatever your necessary worldly pursuits, if they are lawful and innocent, they do not interfere with deliberately choosing, as your chief object of desire, that Virtue for which God has formed us. To do so, is to place yourself on his side by submitting to his wise laws, and to bring yourself into harmony with your own inmost nature. Lay aside all known sins, all known follies, whatever impedes moral and spiritual growth, especially all habits which lessen the comfort or invade the rights of others. Seek after righteousness and moral wisdom as the pearl of great price, and you shall find God in your heart. You shall walk with him by day: you shall sleep in his arms by night. Your heart shall make sweet melody of gratitude to him; and, seeking earnestly to do his will, you shall become blessed in yourselves, and a blessing to others.

MORAL THEISM.

FROM THE "LANGHAM MAGAZINE."

[1876.]

A RECENT writer in one of our foremost reviews, while under

taking to refute Theism, and scornfully claiming that he has fulfilled his task, yet in the close asserts that "all the essentials of religion can be retained by the so-called Atheist." The so-called! A man who tramples on Theism is unwilling to be called an Atheist! He has to define Religion in his own way, in order to make out that an Atheist may be religious. Mr. John Stuart Mill preceded him in this, and has been followed by many; but it certainly is very unfair to go back to the derivation of a word for its sense, when for ages a well-defined meaning has been given to it, which cannot be deduced from its derivation or its earliest use in a foreign tongue. No sensible Englishman, however learned in Greek, will employ the word sycophant to mean one who gives information concerning figs; no one goes to the Latin derivation to determine the sense of a king's prerogative. It is quite true that religio originally meant a reflecting or reconsidering, and hence a scruple; whence religious meant "reflective and scrupulous," as a first sense; but a secondary sense, even in Latin, was coupled with a belief in Gods or God, insomuch that Cicero applies the epithet to things and buildings which are peculiarly sacred, as, "a most religious temple." Under Christianity, the words religious, religion, have been from the first used as translations of the Greek Opĥokos, Opηokia in St. James's epistle, and universally imply reverence and devotion to a superior power; hence no one feels any contradiction if he hear a Greek pirate or Italian brigand called "very religious, but very unscrupulous." Louis XI. of France was not morally scrupulous, but he was highly devout, highly religious to the saints whom he revered. When a word has thus assumed for very many centuries in various nations a sharply-defined sense, it can only promote

confusion and sophistry to try to alter it. We have a right to insist on retaining for "religious" the traditional sense of devout towards some superior unseen being; and if any one is scornful against the belief in any super-human mind, he has no right to deny that he is irreligious. He ought rather to boast that the epithet is justly applied to him. But this is said only as a protest against the sophistry of confusion; just as against the denying of Theism and yet resenting the epithet Atheist.

Christians in general have been absurdly apt to confound Deists or Theists with Atheists. One might indeed almost think that the writer just quoted mistook Voltaire, Hume, and Paine for Atheists. But it may be hoped that such attacks on Theism, and such contempt of Theists will do us the service of at length teaching Christians how vast is the chasm between us and Atheists. It is indeed high time that this matter were published clearly everywhere. When we sympathize a hundred-fold more with Swedenborgians or Evangelicals than with any who renounce the idea of a Holy God, it ought not to cause surprize that we are unwilling to be confounded with those who really, avowedly, and, as they boast, successfully, cut away the roots of devout faith, confounding indeed faith with wilfulness, and maintaining that it has no root in the soul,* but is only a prejudice retained from Christian tradition.

Against the formula, "Personal God," the main attack is directed. Many condescend to the meanness of asserting that by a personal God is understood a God who has a body, while well aware that even the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles open with declaring that God is Three Persons, but without body, parts, or passions. Others dogmatically assert that a Person can only be said of one who is limited, which is a subtle attempt to assume Atheism as an axiom. Of the same kind was Mr. J. S. Mill's calm assumption, that "of course, we can know nothing but phenomena;" well knowing that no Theist is frantic enough to say that God is a phenomenon. One might have thought nothing was plainer than the popular sense of the word Person. No one calls a dog or a horse a Person, much less an unthinking and unfeeling force, such as gravitation or cohesion. Hardly do we call an infant a Person, but only those who have Mind in the higher sense; so that to call God a Person is just equivalent to entitling him a Mind or a Spirit. Mr. Matthew Arnold, who, in

* I am glad to add the caution that Herbert Spencer here distinctly maintains the contrary. But his position is peculiar and quite his own.