Bible Commentaries

The Folly of Strife, Etc.

Proverbs 20:4).

The sluggard has his reason for not acting, and he thinks that reason of sufficient consequence to justify his abstention. He says it is cold, and he will wait until the sun shines. He forgets that the Very act of ploughing overcomes the inconvenience of cold, that if he would exercise himself he would soon be warm, and that it is within the power of man to do without the sun for a certain period and for certain purposes. The sluggard insists upon being warmed from the outside, and not from the inside; he will have his skin warmed by the sun, he will not warm his own blood by exercise. What is the consequence? He will not know the full issue of his conduct until harvest comes, and he finds in desolate fields the rebuke of his indolence and the condemnation of his neglect. Whatever we obtain in this life should be the result of labour: that labour may be of the mind or of the hand, but it must in some way be true labour; otherwise whatever is obtained will bring with it little of sanction and little of blessing. What applies to the sluggard in the culture of a field applies to the sluggard in all the relations and bearings of life. The student who will not study shall beg in examination and have nothing to show as the result of the expenditure which his schooling has occasioned. The man who will not think shall beg in the time of action, and shall have nothing; because his mind was neglected his hands shall be empty. This is the great rule which binds society in happy consolidation. In all labour there is profit, and the profit is oftentimes as surely in the labour itself as in the substantial advantages which it brings. The huntsman declares that it is not for the sake of the prey but for the sake of the exercise that he pursues his sport. Virtue is said to be its own reward; so is study, so is all painstaking, so is all real devotion of heart. If we could apply this doctrine in all its fulness we should destroy a good deal of religious selfishness. Sometimes men are good merely that they may obtain heaven. Where that is the motive goodness is impossible. We are to find heaven in the goodness itself, in the exercise of prayer, in the service of charity, in the cultivation of all virtue. There are many sluggards who are not known by that contemptuous term. He who does not give to philanthropic appeals is a sluggard. He who does not religiously watch the evolution of providence and apply its solemn lessons is a sluggard. He who does not spend the strength which is renewed in sleep in doing good to others is a sluggard. In all cases the issue is the same: the harvest will be a desolation, and in the end there will be emptiness, disappointment, and grievous shame.

"Most men will proclaim every one his own goodness: but a faithful man who can find?" ( Proverbs 20:6).

The "faithful man" is one who carries out what he has promised to do. If he has sworn to his hurt he will still fulfil his vow. He has determined not to preach his goodness, but to realise it, to embody it, to make it the principal fact of his life. Most men will claim theoretical goodness, or acknowledge some philosophy of virtue, or prate about the shortcomings of other men, and thus indirectly magnify and glorify themselves: many men can talk about religion, can enter into controversy respecting its doctrines, and display great zeal and eloquence respecting its dogmas; all this amounts to nothing unless it be followed by that faithfulness which realises, executes, embodies the goodness that is talked about. The wise man in his day found it difficult to discover a faithful man. The question which he asks is proposed in a tone that is deeply pathetic. Who can find a faithful man? Where is the man whose action is equal to his word? whose heroism is equal to his theory? whose self-abnegation is equal to his professions of obedience? Although the wise man asks the question and leaves it without reply, we are not to suppose that it is incapable of being answered. Truly it cannot be answered unless there be a motive higher than any known within the limits of human nature: there must be inspiration from on high: direct action of the Holy Spirit upon the human mind and heart: this is the miracle of Jesus Christ, and it can only be wrought within the shadow of the Cross. It is time men had done talking about goodness. One action is better than a thousand theories. To lead the blind by a way that they know not, to be a helper of the helpless, to give shelter to those who are houseless, is better than to talk fluently and copiously about theories of virtue, philosophies of goodness, and airy schemes of impracticable reformation. One act of charity will outweigh ten thousand romantic dreams of amelioration.

"Divers weights, and divers measures, both of them are alike abomination to the Lord" ( Proverbs 20:10).

Not here only, but elsewhere, is this doctrine laid down in the Bible. It is indeed laid down in this very chapter, in the23verse, wherein we read, "Divers weights are an abomination unto the Lord; and a false balance is not good." The meaning of this declaration is evident: it cannot be right to have one weight for the rich and another weight for the poor, one weight for those who can test our honesty, and another weight for those who must take our honesty on credit. Men must not tamper with the standard weights and measures of the country. Such standards are not human and social only, they have a direct religious significance, as we infer from the fact that any violation of them is an abomination to the Lord. We need not limit the doctrine actually to weights and measures of a commercial kind; there are weights and measures in speech, in criticism, in moral judgments, in rewards and penalties, and indeed in all the economy of social life. In society we must have certain standards common to the whole body, otherwise disorder will ensue, and misunderstanding may lead to war. Take the doctrine, for example, in the matter of language: there is a national language with which no man may tamper; we must not have words used in other than patent and well-established senses; otherwise we shall have a system of criticism which may lead to endless confusion and practical difficulty of every kind. The English language must be interpreted by the English lexicon. It will not do for moralists to employ common language in uncommon senses, otherwise the populace will be unable to follow their teaching or to determine their meaning. As a man must not interfere with the metallic currency of his country, so he must not interfere with its verbal currency. We can have no mental reservations, no reading between the lines, no saying one thing and meaning another; private glossaries must not be allowed; our Yea must be yea, and our Nay, nay. To this frankness and simplicity and reality of life will the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ conduct us. Many a man who would shrink from the idea of giving short weight in a mercantile sense may be guilty of giving short weight in a moral sense or in a verbal sense. He will so curtail his speech, or reserve himself in the declaration of his vow, or avail himself of recondite criticism in the construction of his utterances, as to destroy their meaning, and turn them in a direction precisely opposite to that in which they are accepted by the common mind. Words are given to us that we may speak the truth, not that we may conceal it or serve a lie.

"The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the Lord hath made even both of them" ( Proverbs 20:12).

The meaning would be, that therefore he who made the ear can hear, he who made the eye can see. Our faculties are all numbered, and their force is precisely determined by the Judge of all the earth. He knows how much we can hear, how much we can see, how much we can do, and when the evening comes and the hour of reckoning strikes he will only expect little from those to whom little has been given, and much will be expected from those to whom great gifts have been entrusted. It is curious to observe how continually the Bible refers to the fact that the ear and the eye are of God's making. There is a great moral conveyed by this fact, namely, the moral just stated, that he who made our faculties understands them, controls them, and exercises them himself on an infinite scale. If we could once realise the idea that God hears every word we utter and every breath we draw, the whole spirit of our life would instantly change. It is because we befool ourselves in these matters, imagining that the Lord can neither see nor hear, that we do the things which are roots of evil and occasions of burning shame. The true man always lives under the distinct conviction that his life is daily judged by heaven. "Thou God seest me" is the motto of the wise man. But even this motto may be perverted, for we may endeavour to serve God with eye-service, and so escape the discipline of the heart, the inner service, the deeper obedience, which can only spring from divine inspiration. We are to do good as certainly and as copiously as if the Lord paid no heed to us. We are to be as careful about our words, whether uttered to ourselves or to others, as if the Lord did not hear our speech. Seeing, however, that we are but of the dust and that our poor life is marked most conspicuously by frailty, it is needful that we should view every motive and impulse of a concrete kind, that we may be lifted out of our moral sluggishness, and become animated by a spirit of hopefulness, a hopefulness which leads us to desire that at the end the Master may say, "Well done, good and faithful servant." It is noticeable, however, that even in that judgment it was the servant who had to return the record of his life. There are two distinct methods pursued in the awarding of honour and shame: in the first instance the servants come forward and tell the Lord what they have done with the talents with which they have been entrusted, and upon their own statement they are appointed to wider rulership: in the other set of cases the Lord himself states the record, points out the good that had been done and the good that had been neglected, and upon his own statement he awards honour and dishonour. That we are under the continual criticism of heaven is an encouragement to us when we are trying to do good, but is a fearful and appalling reflection, if we are endeavouring to deceive the eyes of Omniscience and to find a place where the presence of God is not realised.

"He that goeth about as a talebearer revealeth secrets: therefore meddle not with him that flattereth with his lips" ( Proverbs 20:19).

What relation is there between a flatterer and a talebearer? There may be a subtle flattery in the suggestion that the man is fascinating the attention of the hearer and probably making some inroad upon his confidence. It happens, however, that there is no reference to what is commonly understood as flattery: but the text should be read, He that is open with his lips:—meddle not with a man who cannot keep his lips closed. There are men who are dying of a flux of words. They run themselves out in endless streams of vapid talk; they multiply words to no purpose; what is lacking in moral emphasis they seek to make up by a multiplicity of words or an aggravation of noise, as we speak loudly to those who do not understand our language, thinking that by heightening the voice we are elucidating our meaning. Have nothing to do with wordy men, would seem to be the injunction of the text. Society could not live if it were not for the sacred principle of secrecy, which may be called honour or confidence or trustworthiness; at the same time, there remains the fact that man must be upon confidential terms with Proverbs 20:25).

This is a peculiar expression, greatly in need of simplification. The idea is that a man gets himself into trouble when he rashly says concerning anything, "it is holy": having thus put himself into a thoughtless relation to his property, he afterwards vows to inquire whether he can keep his word: he plays fast and loose with religious principles and obligations. In order to escape a duty he pleads that he has nothing wherewith to respond to the appeal of charity or the claim of righteousness, because he says that all he is possessed of is "holy," that is to say, dedicated to religious uses. When the appellant has gone away and left the man in the possession of his gain, the man begins to enquire whether after all his property is really dedicated; then he begins to shuffle, to change his ground, to trifle with principles, and to proceed to a selfish use of that which he had declared to be sanctified. So the man gets wrong through a profession of over-religiousness. He is a hypocrite. He assumes a most pious air in the presence of men who seek his assistance, and no sooner are they gone than he recalls his vow and declares that he has a right to do what he will with his own. Is it not true that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked? Is not piety sometimes put on as the protection of selfishness? Is it not needful for us to place ourselves constantly under the scrutiny and inspiration of the Holy Ghost, lest we tell lies to ourselves and to God?

"A wise king scattereth the wicked, and bringeth the wheel over them" ( Proverbs 20:26).

A passage of this kind may easily be perverted by being used for the purpose of supporting a doctrine of persecution. To bring the wheel over a man seems to be a figurative expression for the very direst cruelty. If a man is wicked, crush him with the wheel, tear him limb from limb, decapitate him, in some way show that there is a power that can terminate not only his enjoyment and his liberty, but his life. That, however, is not the meaning of the text We are not urged by these words to persecute those who differ from us, or who are even desperately wicked. Always distinguish between persecution and righteous penalty: between mere oppression and the assertion of that righteousness which is essential to the consolidation of society. When the stacks of corn were spread upon the threshing-floor the grain was separated from the husk by a sort of sledge or cart which was driven over them. The process was for the purpose of separating the chaff from the wheat; the process therefore was purely beneficent: so with the wise king; he winnows out evil persons, he signalises them, he gives them all the definiteness of a separate position, and by bringing them into startling contrast with persons of sound and honest heart he seeks to put an end to their mischievous power. Indiscrimination is the ruin of goodness. We have only to bring evil men into the conspicuousness of their real character—that Proverbs 20:9

This is a gospel question before the time of the gospel. Every indication of great human pain and unrest, fierce trouble and tumult that will not be calm, is of the greatest consequence as enabling us to form some opinion of the mysteriousness of human nature and the purpose of God in its constitution. It would be a false supposition that all this moral pain, fear, shame, distress, and sense of moral impotence came upon men in consequence of the birth of Christ into the world, who came with a new revelation of human nature, and consequently to suppose that if Christ had not come into the world no such self-humiliation and self-despair would have been experienced. All the great conditions of the human mind we find as distinctly in the Old Testament as in the New: all the questions that sharpen themselves into fierce agonies are in the nature of man and part of the mystery of his constitution. They are not learned from books or derived from external teaching; they rise up in the heart of man to assert a mysterious purpose and an incalculable and solemn destiny. It would be impossible for any man seated at the Lord's table, or seated at the Cross itself, to put a more intensely evangelical question than is put in the text, which occurs actually in the Proverbs—"Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin?"

When the lawyer stood up and tempted Christ, saying: "Master, which is the great commandment in the law? What shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?" Jesus Christ did not make a new answer for the occasion: he threw the mocking inquirer back upon the first ages—upon the law, his favourite study, thus showing that all the great questions of the human heart were anticipated in the Old Testament, and that, properly read, the Old Testament is in its own degree as evangelical a book as is the New Covenant written with the precious blood of Christ. Does any man suppose that if we did not come to church we should not be troubled by great and solemn inquiries? Let us first of all do away with that mischievous sophism in our moral thinking. A man has only to look into his own heart, as the enlightened and foremost pagans did, to find in that heart questions that demand a Proverbs 20:23

Texts of this kind show the quality of the Bible. No man can in one sentence adequately represent the contents of the Book of God. When we say "Bible," what part of the Bible do we mean? There are many Bibles in one. It is possible to admire the Bible. Admiration is an offence to God. God does not seek admiration, he seeks worship. When we admire and praise the Bible we may be thinking of its comforts and promises, its minor music, its tender speeches to the heart. That is not the Bible; that is part of the great Book—an essential, beautiful, indispensable part, because it is fitted to the valley and the darkness, the pain and the restlessness of life: but it would be a poor Bible if it were a Bible of promise only. We must go into other books it we would know what the Bible is in its totality. The bad man must hate the Book of Proverbs; the low-lived business man never looks into the book that rebukes him, the book that knows his little tricks, the book that exposes him in every line. He wonders who wrote the Proverbs. He is content to make it a historical question whilst he goes on with his low villainy. We think of the Bible as a Book of spiritual metaphysics, dealing with the unknown and the unknowable, the unthought and the unthinkable. The Bible does deal with these lofty subjects, but it also comes in and tests your yard-wand, saying, You thought this wand was thirty-six inches long, it is only thirty-five and a half. How glad we should be then if the Bible would deal with the unthinkable! Then we could be Agnostics in relation to it; but when it impertinently, with divine rudeness, takes up the yard-wand, what becomes of our little theory that "business is business, and religion is religion."? Not in the estimation of the Bible. We do not want men who talk so to know the Bible in any sense of patronising it; we do not want such men, we want them to be infidels. To have the Bible and disobey it is agnosticism; to cry, The Bible for ever! and never to practise its morality, is the direst, shame-fullest atheism. We do not want such people to come to church unless they come in the spirit of penitence, the spirit of men who are ashamed of themselves and want to be better and to do better. This Book of Proverbs should be the business man's book: then he would sweat nobody, injure nobody; would help everybody; would say, The loaf of bread is mine to share with a man who has no loaf. The Book of Proverbs would soon make a new society. When the Bible is discussed, in what parts do men take refuge when they would oppose it? Why do they not go into those parts which they can understand and apply, and wait until the other door is open? There is a good deal in the Bible that men might do, and whilst they are doing that they might be waiting in holy expectation for brighter visions, for widening horizons; meanwhile, what doth thy God require of thee, O Proverbs 20:24

Man is bound to be religious. Even atheism is a religion. In proportion to its supposed intelligence and sincerity is it one of the religions of the world. We cannot escape mystery. It has occurred to some minds, if they may be dignified by that appellation, that if we could close the Bible and burn the Church we should escape all mystery, and get into fine weather, and under clear skies, and breathe an air full of health The Bible does not make mysteries, it recognises them. That there is a Force somewhere, and of some kind, that controls and limits us, is undeniable. I will not ask you to give that Force any name. I simply ask you to recognise what has been recognised by the greatest and calmest thinkers of all times—the fact that there is above, below, behind all things a Force that limits us. I will not ask at this point whether that unknown Force directs us or blesses us. I confine my remarks in the first instance to the simple fact that it limits us. We cannot do all that we want to do. Sometimes we are mocked because our actions are less than our prayers. What say you to the taunt that your actions are less than your desires, your accomplishments are less than your ambitions? Who would you like to take his own medicine? That is exactly how the case stands. Some say in mocking tones, "Are these the men who pray? Behold, how inconsistent they are, how self-contradictory." So it is. "And are those the men that plot, and plan, and scheme, and go out on noble adventures, and come back with empty hands?" We must not taunt one another. The taunt is as complete on the one side as on the other, and it adds nothing to the illumination of the mystery which deeply concerns us all. Granted that there is such a Force, and, compared with inquiry into its nature, compass, and laws, all other investigation not only becomes common, but becomes contemptible. Consider that point well. If we get hold of that doctrine, we have got hold of a key that ought to open many a difficult lock. Let me repeat in other words this grand conviction. Granted that there is such a Force watching us, limiting us, guiding and directing our life, and finally bent on judging it; then inquiry into the nature and compass of that Force dwarfs all other inquiry; it becomes the supreme inquiry of the human mind. How little, how abject, how contemptible is every other inquiry as compared with the inquest into the unseen Spring and Secret of things. There is a learned book upon "Heat Considered as a Mode of Motion." Very good; but extremely trifling compared with this inquiry, What is it that moves and moulds and inspires all things? Whilst you are outside counting the bricks of the house, measuring them one by one, and making memoranda of what you call the phenomena of the building, I want to know who lives in it. It is the life that interests me, not the outer habitation. Do not suppose, therefore, that religion undervalues any inquiry on its own merits. Keeping upon its own ground, it may be excellent and useful, but no inquiry can touch the supremacy of religious investigation reverently conducted. It is customary to laugh at the religious fanatics; but granted that there is such a Force, written with very large capitals, and you have granted all I want to have admitted to justify me in the statement that, in inquiring into the nature of that Force, I take the leading position in human investigation. I may bring you false reports, and you may bring me false reports from your inquiries as well. I may in my little book write many things I must expunge, but your note-book is full of interrogations and marks indicating points that must be Proverbs 20:24

In very deed has he any way that is his own if he be at all moved by the spirit of obedience and trust? What we call our own may not after all be so very much our own. May not a man do what he will with his own? Let us grant that; but the further question will occur, what is his own? Will a man say that what he has in his hand is his own? Instantly that would be disputed, because though what he has in his hand may be his own, his hand is not his own. "Ye are not your own." The question is fundamental, vital, inclusive. What property we have may be our own in a certain sense, but we ourselves who have it are not our own. Thus the smaller is swallowed up of the larger, and he only takes the true view of life who says, "I am nothing, I have nothing but what I have been made and what I have received; you do not see the whole when you see me. Behind me, above me, beyond me, is the all-explaining but never-explained Secret." When a man touches that region of thinking, we call him a religious man. He is no longer a flippant creature or a person moved by such calculations as he can make upon a slate; he belongs to the general assembly and church of the firstborn. He is a point in a cir-cumference—a little light in a great firmament of planets—he belongs to the whole family. He Proverbs 20:27

What is the Scripture doctrine of conscience? The Bible is before us; let us look at it, simply as a record, and inquire what is its particular doctrine on conscience. Does it recognise conscience at all? Does it concern itself about conscience? Does it ever become very earnest about conscience? Is the matter treated incidentally, in a measure casually and offhandedly, or remotely referred to? or does it constitute what may be called a principal line in the record? Observe, we treat the Bible in this initial argument simply as a document. We do not ask who wrote it, where it came from, by whose authority it speaks; we simply want to know, in the first instance, what the Bible says in reference to this great and anxious question of the human conscience.

It cannot be denied that from beginning to end the Bible recognises the fact that man has a conscience. I am not aware that the Bible says, There is a God; or that the Bible begins human history by saying, There is a conscience: in both respects it would seem that a great assumption is made. The very first sentence in the Bible is the greatest sentence in all literature. There Is nothing else that can cover it wholly for pregnancy, suggestiveness, comprehensiveness, sublimity; and so certain words were spoken to man which could not have been spoken to him except under certain assumptions and conditions. It is better that it is so. There would have been, perhaps, a more dignified formality in a specific sentence to the effect, There is a God: there is a conscience: there is a heaven; but the Bible, by whomsoever inspired or incited, makes great assumptions, starts upon certain conditions and propositions, and works its way from these, and so works its way as to justify the reasonableness and truthfulness of the assumptions upon which its mystery, argument, and exhortation are founded. Does a child come into the world with a conscience? That might be turned into a metaphysical inquiry, and might occasion the human mind great trouble as to analysis and specific statement. But there is a practical way of dealing even with an inquiry so profound. Does a child come into the world with responsibility, judgment, imagination, faculty of any kind? Verily appearances are against it. Looking fairly upon a child, without prejudice, appearances go heavily against it as to its being a responsible creature, as to its having any poetic fire, moral sense, spiritual faculty, or destiny beyond the little day in which its body breathes. But can we limit the argument to the area of appearances? Must we not go further? Must we not interpret one life by another? We have not to deal with a solitary or isolated infant, and get up a large amount of wonder about it, conjecturing whatever can it be, wherever has it come from, to what end can it be moving? Human history is now old enough to fall back upon itself, with certain lights and explanations. Therefore I do not see that language would be outraged, or reason put to any extremity, if we said, The child belongs to the human family; being a member of the human family, it must possess certain instincts, germs of reason, certain hints of faculty, certain suggestions of possibility: at present they amount to next to nothing; if you had to set them all down on paper by a separate estimate, and in easily-added figures, you would not have much to do in an arithmetical way. No doubt appearances are so far against the child. But human history is all in its favour. Who will believe that the child is dumb? When all the world has given the child up as dumb, the mother will still expect to hear some little articulation, and she will be quite sure she has heard it. So who will say the child has no conscience?—give it time. No understanding?—give it time: let it be developed. God has never spoken to lion or eagle, to whale, or largest, finest beast of the forest, as he has spoken to man. Every speech made to man has assumed that man could answer. "There is a spirit in man"—a ghost, another, truer self than is seen by the eye. You can find an oak in an acorn: no man ever found an oak in a paving-stone. We must, therefore, look into the plasm, that very first hint of life and purpose and issue; and so looking I, for one, cannot see, let me repeat, that language would be outraged if we said, standing over a little child, This child has judgment, sense, moral faculty, spiritual power,—all in germ, all undeveloped, all unawakened; but give time, bring the right ministries to bear upon the child, and then the issue will show how the child is constituted.

The Bible proceeds upon the assumption that man has what may be called a conscience, a moral sense, a faculty that can in some measure understand, worship, and serve God. I am not aware that there is any hint in the Bible that would serve as a proof that this moral sense is the gift of society or of law. It would seem to precede all society, and to be its beginning and extension; it would seem to lie deeper than all law, and to give law whatever real value it possesses. Society does not give a man imagination, or talent, or genius, or high faculty; it may sharpen all these, create opportunities for the exercise of all these, but the gift is within, the secret of God is in the heart, some sign, token, pulse, throb,—call it by what name we may—something in the man that says, I was made to keep society with God. One man says, I can think, therefore I am. Another might add, I can pray, and therefore I am spiritual, almost divine. It cannot but be interesting to find in ourselves—not round about ourselves, like so many decorations and investitures made by society—certain elements, pulsations, aspirations, which attest that we are better than the best beast, that between us and the greatest of the unintelligent creation there lies the diameter of an unmeasured universe. It seems to me, therefore, on reading the Bible through, that everywhere the existence of conscience is assumed, not as having been created by society or law, but as being in man, part of man without which, indeed, he could not be man in the truest and highest sense of that complex term.

The Bible further declares that the conscience or moral sense may be trained upward or downward, may be sanctified or corrupted, strengthened or weakened. Conscience does not stand apart, taking no interest in the fray of life; it is in some sense the most active and energetic of all the ministries of our nature, and it cannot escape the general atmosphere in which we live. Even conscience may be desecrated; the choicest golden vessels of the temple may be stolen and may be carried away to the tents of the Philistines. Paul says, "Herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God, and toward men;" "Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience." There is a history of adjectives. There is a moral history and a natural history of epithets. Who could imagine that "good" would have come and set itself against "conscience," to explain it and to help it? Who would gild refined gold? Is not this painting the lily that a word like "good" should attach itself to conscience? Is not this a despicable patronage? Does "conscience" want adjectival commendation or exposition? Is not the very word itself a star to which nothing can be added by way of completing its magnitude or increasing its radiance? You will find in answer to this inquiry that many epithets or explanatory words have been attached to the high term conscience to show what was meant in particular relations and conditions and at special times. The natural history of words finds a copious and instructive chapter at this point. Conscience is not necessarily good, but it may be trained to goodness. I have so read the Bible as to believe that the Bible will never allow there can be a good conscience towards man until there is first a good conscience towards God. Am I right in my reading? I am not using the word in any secondary sense, as socially tolerable, decent, useful; but good in its own true sense—all pure, without flaw, sincere, transparent, profound goodness. The Bible always insists that there must be first a right relation to God before there can be a right relation to man. Thus the Bible is unlike any other book. It will not be content with secondaries, except as recognising them as such, saying, You are secondary, you are but reformers, you are helps, but what you must be at and get at is a right relation towards God. In no official or institutional sense, but in the profoundest sense, a man must be religious before he can be philanthropic. Man cannot understand man's value until he has held communion with God. May we not justify this by Christ's words? "On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets,"—namely: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself." The process cannot be reversed or inverted. Attempts may be made in that direction, but how much do those very attempts owe to high religious and Christian education in the first instance? To love your neighbour is impossible, in Christ's sense of the term, until you have first loved God. The religious love brings with it all the ""acuity and fervour of the soul, makes the soul realise itself, and then sends it back into the world, solemn with reverence, tender with pity, hopeful with God's own love, sacrificial as in sympathy with the very Cross of Christ. Meanwhile, observe how we stand. We are not asking, Is all this true or not true? We are simply endeavouring to find the doctrine of a particular book on a particular subject; and the contention is that Jesus Christ would never allow the possibility of neighbourly love, in its highest, deepest, and fullest sense, except as sequential upon true, honest, deep, sacrificial love of God. What applies to love would seem to apply at least to conscience. "Herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God, and toward men." Life is not a trick, a social arrangement, a series of attitudes, or exchanges of courtesies; social life itself is a great religious mystery when properly treated, and can only be handled effectually and beneficently by men who have been closeted with God in long solitude, in the solitude of a dual companionship—an irony and a contradiction in words, but easily reconciled by the soul who has spent much time with the Father. If this be at all true, it is simply vain for any man to attempt to have a good social conscience without his first having an honest religious conscience. Not that he may not be intermediately and secondarily very good, most useful, reliable in many respects, calculated to bear a certain amount of pressure with mathematical exactness; but the man who can endure all things, and can bear all sorrow, is the man who has been with God and learned of Jesus Christ; then no mathematician can calculate the amount of pressure which he can bear; then the mathematicians do not gather around the pillars of his life, and say, By so much may the rivers run without injuring the pedestal on which he stands;—they fall back and say, This is an equation that has never fallen within our mathematical reasoning; the man must be explained by God; he is right in the sanctuary, he has been weighed in the heavenly places, his heart is ideally, and by the law of aspiration at least, right with God; therefore he comes down and handles the affairs of life with a mastery and a beneficence impossible to any man who has not connected himself with the living fountain, the unseen and eternal spring. A poor, shifty, thriftless life, a surface pool, a little thing that the sunbeam can dry up, is that life that does not come up out of the Rock of Ages or flow down from the fountains of eternity. We live and move and have our being in God: otherwise we are plucked flowers, or artificial creations, and our destiny is to die.

Thus far and in this way have I read the Bible. So strong is the apostolic conviction upon this point that the apostle will insist upon the conscience itself being brought under what may be called evangelical conditions and discipline. Says he, "How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?" "Having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience." So then he would treat life as being wrong at its very centre and spring; whether by personal conduct, whether by some mysterious action of the law of heredity, however it is, the apostles all concur in saying, The work must be done within, and all reforms that are to be complete and lasting must be interior reforms and must work out towards the exterior, carrying life, health, and beauty with them. Except the heart be clean the life cannot be pure; except the conscience adjust itself by the meridian of eternity it cannot tell to life what time it is, what duty is, and how duty is to be done. The apostle is, therefore, by so much argumentatively clear; he will not hold any dispute with us, or any conference that implies acquiescence and friendliness, unless we yield at once to the doctrine that we must be born again, we must pass through a regenerative process. Name it as you please, attach what verbal definition you may to the mere way of saying it, there must, according to apostolic doctrine, be a great mystery of re-birth accomplished in the soul, heart, spirit, conscience, before the hands can be clean, or may put themselves lawfully forward to serve the altar of heaven.

But the conscience, on the other hand, may be corrupted, ill-used, slain. I have referred to the use of certain qualifying terms. Take another—"Having their conscience seared with a hot iron,"—having the pith taken out of it—the life, the fibre, the vitality, the meaning; having a conscience like a withered leaf, like a piece of burning wood; everything taken out of it that was divinely created, with voices and ministries meant to inspire and direct, control and ennoble, the whole life. Take another qualifying term—"Even their mind and conscience is defiled": the wreck is within, the ruin is spiritual, the tremendous collapse—whatever the theologians may choose to name it—has taken place within the man; his are no flesh-wounds, no cutaneous diseases; there is something the matter with him that cannot be touched by earthly physicians, or by invention or ingenuity of his own. The Bible says that all redeeming help must come from the creating God. This doctrine is applied to the conscience as well as to the soul in its more general and comprehensive definitions.

Then the conscience may not only be corrupted, seared, defiled, but it may be turned into a pedant and be forced to ridiculous uses. "If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!" The conscience may be made to do servile work, to patronise bad things. The conscience may be appointed managing-director of the most accursed confederacies ever invented by the depravity of man. Conscience, therefore, requires continual culture, watching, assistance; it must for ever draw its vitality from the God of righteousness.

Now we must in the uses of conscience distinguish between the eternal right and the secondary right. The word "right" requires continual definition. It does not always stand for the same thing. Like the term "law," in the apostolic reasoning, it must be distinguished in its uses, and only by an analytical discrimination can it be saved from perversions the most disastrous. But how are we to ascertain the eternal right? There should be no difficulty about that. How are we to ascertain the institutional or secondary right? There ought to be no difficulty about that. Let us see whether we can render one another any little assistance in that direction. I should say that rest is the eternal right: that the time when it should be taken is the institutional right. Never must we trifle with the eternal right of every human being to rest. As to whether it shall be on the first day, or on the last, or in the middle of the week, there you touch what is secondary and institutional; there you may have change, modification to your heart's content; there indeed you may enjoy fullest liberty: but you have no liberty in the matter of treating the rest itself. One man esteemeth one day, another man esteemeth another day: let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind; but let no man lay wicked or violent hands upon the divine gift and ordinance of rest to every human creature.

Faith I should declare to be the eternal quantity—that mysterious life which may be called the faith-life, the living out of oneself, the tender dependence, the filial expectation, the assured relationship to God; that is the eternal quantity: but creed, catechism, church, institution, organisation,—these are secondary and intermediate, and there what liberty is offered by the very genius of the Bible! How the Apostle Paul gives lavishly of this gift of liberty, about eating, and washing, and fasting, and observance, and ceremony! He says: Be kind to one another; make allowances for one another: we cannot all think alike upon these matters; but no man must interfere with the central and eternal quantity of faith, larger than any creed, larger than any church. The creed is temporary. It may have been up to date the very best thing that could be written. But no creed can be permanent unless it be inspired. And when did God inspire a creed-maker? If we claim inspiration for the miscellaneous Bible, the multitudinous Bible, the unmethodised, unsystematised, yet coherent and harmonious Bible, we must not be claiming it too lavishly for mechanisms, formulas, human inventions. Change the creed as civilisation changes; readjust your terms as education advances; re-set all your theological positions and dogmas if you please: but you must not interfere with the eternal quantity, Faith—that upper soul, that deeper life, that truer-self; that marvellous system of tentacles that hooks on to the Eternal Life—call him Jehovah, Jove, or Lord. You must not take away the idolater's faith when you take away his idol. Even the idolater may know the mystery of self-translation, and may have no explanation of the mystery which makes his spiritual life august and grand. Do not destroy his idol even until you can substitute it with the living God. Destruction may be carried too far, unless you are prepared with the work of construction, which ought to go on almost concurrently with the destructive process.

I should say that worship is the eternal right, but that methods of worship are the secondary right. Worship with a written formula, if you so please, and can realise most profitably, and God bless you in the exercise and use of a noble, all but inspired liturgy; if you can worship God better by free, spontaneous, unprepared addresses to the throne of the heavenly grace, by all means approach your Father along the broadest, amplest, most hospitable way: but you must never interfere with the right of worship. You can address yourselves wisely to methods, operations, systems, plans, mechanisms,—all these may undergo continual change; you may change your form of worship every day in the week: but the worship itself abides, the eternal quantity.

Take a simple illustration which even a child can understand. Suppose we appoint that worship should begin at eleven o"clock in the morning. There you have two rights. There is nothing in the eleven o"clock; that is a point agreed upon, partly by compromise, partly by study of the situation, partly by cognisance of special circumstances in the city, in the parish: but it is right we should be there at eleven o"clock, because we have agreed upon it. What is the eternal right? Punctuality. No man must interfere with that He is a thief who palters with that. Punctuality is the eternal quantity, the eternal right; the eleven o"clock is but the point at which that right takes visible effect, or embodies itself in concrete realisation. But punctuality abides. You may change the eleven o"clock, you may change your time of meeting every Sabbath in the year, but having changed it you cannot interfere with the spirit of punctuality. There is a substance; there is also a shadow: there is the eternal right; there is the secondary accommodation.

But let us beware how we make a pedant of conscience, how we expend our strength on punctilios when we ought to spend it upon principle,—real things. Never have a conscience that is not founded upon reason. In so far as conscience can vindicate itself by reason it will make headway in society. Reason always triumphs. It has a long weary fight, a destructive struggle sometimes, but it comes up at the last, and sits by right upon the throne, judging all men. Do not judge another man's conscience by your own on all these secondary matters. In proportion as you are addicted—and here we come back to the central principle—in love and loyalty to the eternal right will you be large and liberal in the uses of the secondary right. Find a man who is punctilious about little things, about details, about passing matters, and you find a man who has never been in the sanctuary of the inner right. Find a man who has communed with God, drunk the very spirit of Christ, become imbued with the very meaning of the gospel, and he, Paul-like, gives great liberty, looks with magnanimous complacency even upon the controversies of the Church, asking only that they shall be conducted gently, quietly, lovingly, and that a good deal of allowance should be made by one man for the peculiarities of another. When did Paul—a Pharisee of the Pharisees—learn this lesson? To what school did he repair to study this philosophy? The man who said this, who gave this liberty, also said, "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." Out of such lofty tabernacles he came to distribute amongst men rights and franchises and opportunities and privileges with the lavish hand of a princely donor. But about this conscience in the house, and in business. You may be killing your children with your conscience, because it may be an irrational conscience. Children will have amusement. You never can put down drama and dancing and recreation and jubilance; you never can cut off the foam and efflorescence and blossoming of life without doing great injury; and in attempting to do all this you may defeat yourself. That child of yours, whom you have oppressed with your conscience because you will not allow certain recreations, comes quietly in every night after having been enjoying them, and looks at you in the face with a blankness which you would understand if you were not so conscientiously stupid. Why not make your home the great joy of life, saying, Boys and girls, let us all do here what we can to alleviate life's burdens and life's darkness, and let us all be children together, so far as we may: do nothing behind me you would not do before me, and if I can join you I will, and the old man shall be as young as any of you? Then home will be church, and church will be almost heaven. Beware of the perverted conscience, the soured conscience, the right that is only secondary being put in place of the right that is primary and eternal. How is all this to be learned? Only by communion with Christ. Blessed Christ, Son of God! what liberty he gives; he said, If you like to wash your hands, well; if you prefer not to do so because the ceremony is unmeaning and fruitless, then sit down and enjoy the hospitality of the house. The Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath. When men rebuked him because he went to eat with publicans and sinners, He said, "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." When they said, "This man eateth with sinners," he did not disdain the sneer; he took it as the highest eulogium that could be pronounced upon him by such lips. But let us beware lest we enjoy the secondary liberty without sustaining the primary relation. Do not play with sacred things. Be right at both ends. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself:" "On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." Do not live an empty, superficial, linear life, but live a full, solid, cubic, square, all-round life—the very life of God. If any man says, "Such a life would I live," all God's angels will take up their abode with him; yea, the Spirit of God will be his instructor, and sanctifier, and loving friend.