"And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak
in other tongues, according as the Spirit gave them utterance. And
there were sojourning at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every
nation under heaven. Now when this was noised abroad, the
multitude came together; and they were confounded because every
one heard them speaking in his own language."--Acts ii. 4-6.
In that marvellous scene, the anniversary of which coincides on this
Whitsunday with our Centenary, a question long pending between the
Rabbis and the Holy Spirit came to an open issue. They were Aramæan
scholars, and had their Kingdom of Heaven set forth in the best
Hebrew, which, true enough, was of no great human currency, and not
strictly a living tongue at all; but then had been distinguished by
Divine use from the earliest time. Was it not in this that the Call
had come to Abram? and the promises been repeated to the Patriarchs?
and the music been flung from the harp of David? and the burdens of
inspiration been treasured on the Prophet's scroll? Who could quote a
word that God had ever spoken in any other language? It was the one
sacred idiom, from which all others are divergent corruptions, and to
which, when the world's confusion is over, they must again return.
However few in these decadent ages might understand it still, it was
intrinsically fitted to be universal. And who could call _that_ speech
provincial, at whose sound the heavens and earth arose? or esteem it
temporary, when it persevered through the dispersion at Babel, and
was present on the world before the Flood? So there must be nothing
else allowed in the liturgies of the Synagogue, in the reading of
Scripture, or in any intercourse between _man and God_. Only when men
began to converse _with one another_, to compare their human thoughts,
and descend from prophetic to didactic gifts, might they resort to the
media of profaner life. The language of Worship was but one; though
the jargons of Opinion were many. And so the Scribes and the Rabbis of
the written Word supposed themselves to hold the only key of life.
But the Holy Spirit goes into no one's keeping, and is no respecter of
tongues. Free as the wind to blow where it listeth, it sweeps wherever
souls are genial to its breath, and will yield to it their gifts, of
love, of lips, of life. It seemed to have had enough of Hebrew, ever
since it had gone into the hands of the philologists, and been made a
sacred language, and begun to drone. It had long been feeling its way in
other directions, tempting men to pray out of the fresh heart, and never
mind the words, till now at last the secret broke, that on any native
tongue by which souls most freely flow together, may all pass out to
God; that the home-sounds are the devoutest too; that the speech into
which men are born, and which has become to them as a stringed
instrument answering to the faintest touch of their affections, is the
true vehicle by which "the Spirit giveth utterance." The prayer of
faith, ascending in the idioms of every latitude, converges into one in
heaven. And God's truth, descending to this world, breaks into all the
moulds of expression native to our various race.
_One Gospel in many dialects_,--that is the great Pentecost lesson,
construe the miracle as we may. And there are dialects of _Thought_ as
well as speech,--natural differences of temperament and character,--to
which the Gospel, still without prejudice to its unity, adapts itself
with the same divine flexibility. What private observer--still more
what student of history--can doubt that we are not all made in the
same mould,--that the proportions of our humanity are variously
mixed,--that not only do we individually differ in moral
susceptibility and spiritual depth, but fall into permanent groups
marked by distinct and ineradicable characters, and reproducing the
same religious tendencies from age to age? Transpose the souls of
Plato and Pascal into the right place and time, and do you suppose
they would turn up as _Latitudinarian Divines_? Deal as you will with
the lot of Priestley and Belsham, and could you ever enroll them among
the _Christian Mystics_? Close in the fires of Augustine's nature with
what damps you may, and could you ever find him peace in a Gospel of
_Good Works_? No; we touch here on differences deeper than accident,
and irremovable by culture,--differences that vindicate their reality
by crossing the lines of dissimilar religions and reappearing in all
times. They necessarily give us differing wants and experiences; they
set into differing shapes of faith; and on souls equally faithful they
fix very differing expressions. They are so many _vernacular idioms of
the inner mind_: all have divine right to be: no one of them is
entitled to call itself the sacred language alone intelligible between
man and God; and the pretension of any to supersede the rest, and
reign alone, is not less vain than the complaints of ignorance against
foreign dialects, and the ambition to exchange the many running waters
of local literature into the huge tank of a universal language. They
may not be able to understand each other, or even with the key of
outward comparison always bear translation into idioms other than
their own. But let them speak in their own way, and pray their own
prayer. Not only are they all clear to Him that readeth the heart;
there will thus be _more heart for Him to read_: for faith and love,
large as they may be, are ever deepest in their special tones; and the
prayer, the hymn, which is touched with the spirit's local coloring,
comes to us like the aroma of native fields, and assuages our thirst
like the sweet waters of some well given to our fathers and made
sacred by a Saviour's noonday rest.
On this principle,--that different types of natural genius in men
cannot but throw their Christianity into different forms,--we may not
only justify the divisions of Christendom, but even cease to wish that
they should disappear. Unity no doubt there must be: God is one; Truth
is one; the Gospel is one; and a mind that could take in the whole,
and spread its insight and affections in all dimensions at once, would
reach the Divine equilibrium, in which nothing partial preponderates.
But from our watch-tower we can look through only one window at once;
the blind walls of our mental chamber shut out all the rest; and as we
kneel, like Daniel, at the open light, the breeze upon our face seems
sacred, because it comes from our Jerusalem. The question is not,
whether there is such a thing as truth, rounded off, self-balanced,
and complete; in the mind of God,--the final seat of reality,--of
course there is. Nor is it a question, whether each individual man can
attain a faith consistent in its parts, agreeable to fact, and
adequate to his nature. This also is possible. But when he has
attained it, on what terms is it to co-exist with other faiths
presenting parallel pretensions? Is he in his heart to identify his
own with the absolute truth, sufficient for _all_ as for himself? Is
he to expect them to come round to it, and altogether throw away their
own? Or is he to confess to himself his own limitations, to suspect
that he may have his blind sides, and reverently to seek something he
has missed in that which others persist in seeing? In which direction
is he to seek unity? By antipathy to all beliefs save one?--or by
inviting all of them to live their life and show their place in human
nature? It is the genius of Romanism to seek unity by _suppression_;
of Protestantism, by free _development_;--of the former, to protect
the consistency it has; of the latter, to press forward to one that it
has not. Are we taunted with our "Protestant variations"? Why, the
more they are, the richer is our field of experience, the finer our
points of comparison; provided, however, that we hold fast to the
noble trust in a Gospel of identity at bottom, and seek it rather in
the religious heart of all the churches, than in the theologic wisdom
of our own. No man can proclaim the principle of "_One Gospel in many
dialects_," unless he is prepared to admit that his own faith is _one
of the dialects, and nothing more_; to presume a meaning in the
others, however hid from him; and while they remain to him a mere
inarticulate jargon, to ascribe it sooner to his own incapacity than
to their insignificance. When God's truth, refracted on its entrance
into our nature, shall emerge into the white light again, not one of
these tinted beams can be spared. Let us for a moment arrest and
examine them. Let us look at the chief varieties which Christianity
assumes as it penetrates the soul; at once recognizing our own place,
and appreciating that of others.
There are three great types of natural mind on which the Spirit of
Christ may fall; and each, touched and awakened by him, "utters the
wonderful works of God" in a language of its own.
(1.) There is the _Ethical_ mind, calm, level, and clear; chiefly
intent on the good-ordering of this life; judging all things by their
tendency to this end; and impatient of every oscillation of our nature
that swings beyond it. There is nothing low or unworthy in the
attachment which keeps this spirit close to the present world, and
watchful for its affairs. It is not a selfish feeling, but often one
intensely social and humane; not any mean fascination with mere
material interests, but a devotion to justice and right, and an
assertion of the sacred authority of human duties and affections. A
man thus tempered deals chiefly with this visible life and his
comrades in it, because, as nearest to him, they are the better known.
He plants his standard on the present, as on a vantage-ground, where
he can survey his field, and manœuvre all his force, and compute the
battle he is to fight. Whatever his bearing towards fervors beyond his
range, he has no insensibility to the claims that fall within his
acknowledged province, and that appeal to him in the native speech of
his humanity. He so reverences veracity, honor, and good faith, as to
_expect them_ like the daylight, and hear of their violation with a
flush of scorn. His word is a rock, and he expects that yours will not
be a quicksand. If you are lax, you cannot hope for his trust; but if
you are in trouble, you easily move his pity. And the sight of a real
oppression, though the sufferer be no ornamental hero, but black,
unsightly, and disreputable, suffices perhaps to set him to work for
life, that he may expunge the disgrace from the records of mankind.
Such men as he constitute for our world its moral centre of gravity;
and whoever would compute the path of improvement that has brought it
thus far on its way, or trace its sweep into a brighter future, must
take account of their steady mass.
The effect of this style of thought and taste on the _religion_ of its
possessor is not difficult to trace. It _may_, no doubt, stop short of
avowed and conscious religion altogether; its basis being simply
moral, and its scene temporal, its conditions may be imagined as
complete, without any acknowledgment of higher relations. But,
practically, this is an exceptional case. A deep and reverential sense
of Moral Authority passes irresistibly into Faith in a Moral Governor;
and Conscience, as it rises, culminates in Worship. And to such
natural religion, the hearty reception of the revealed Gospel is so
congenial a sequel, that Christianity has enlisted its chief
body-guard--its band of Immortals--from the writers of this school. In
the _form_ which they give to the faith, they are true to themselves,
still keeping close to the human, and, except to sanction and glorify
this, not apt to dwell upon the Divine. The second table of
commandment has more reality to them than the first; and the whole of
religion presents itself to their mind under the idea of _Law_. God in
Christ teaches us his Will; publishes the punishment and the reward;
and requires our obedience; aiding us in it by the perfect example of
Christ, and reassuring us under failure by the offer of pardon on
repentance. Now this is a true Gospel; not a proposition of it can be
gainsaid; and whoever from his heart can repeat this creed;--God is
holy; morality, divine; penitence, availing; goodness, immortal;
guilt, secure of retribution; and Christ, our pattern for both
lives,--is not far from the kingdom of Heaven, and has a faith as much
beyond the practice, as it is short of the professions, of the great
mass of Christians. If he has an equable, rational, and balanced
nature; if he can depend on himself, and reduce his will to the
discipline of rules; if he have affections temperate enough to follow
reason instead of lead it, and to love God by sense of fitness and
word of command; if moral prudence is so strong in him that he can
bear the idea of "doing good for the sake of everlasting happiness";
if no wing ever beats in his soul that takes him off his feet;--his
wants are provided; he has guidance for the problems that will meet
him on his way,--indications of duty,--grounds of trust,--and a path
traced through every Gethsemane and Calvary of this world, to the
saintly peace of another.
But while this is a _true Gospel_, is it the _whole_ Gospel? Not so;
unless the voice of the Saviour is to reach only a part of our
humanity, and in response draw but a "little flock." For not many of
our race are made of this even and unfermenting clay. Who can deny
that there abound,--and among the greatest names of Christian
history,--
(2.) _Passionate_ natures, that cannot thus work out _their own
salvation_, but ever pray to be taken whither of themselves they cannot
go? It is not that they are necessarily weak of will, deficient in
self-control, and unequal to the human moralities. Rather is it, that
they get through all these, and yet can find no peace. Duty, as men
measure it, may be satisfied; but still the face of God does not lift up
its light. For want of that answering look, it is all as the tillage of
the black desert; digging by night without a heaven above, and sowing in
sands which no dew shall fertilize. Intense and effectuating resolve was
certainly not wanting in Luther; what his young conscience imposed, his
will achieved,--wasting asceticism, persevering devotion, humble
charities; yet the shadow of death brooded around his irreproachable
obedience. Is it not that the same sorrow which, in more level minds, is
brought by a fall of the will, arises in these men from the ascent of
their aspirations? Haunted by the image of God's _Holiness_, drawn to
it, yet fluttering helplessly at immeasurable depths below it, they
strain after an obedience they cannot reach, and never lose the sense of
infinite failure. Measured by their aims, their power is nothing. Did
the law of Christ require nothing but works which the hand could do, its
conditions would be finite, and might be satisfied. But its claims sweep
through the affections of the soul; and who can _make himself love_
where he is cold? who set himself behind his own thoughts, and keep
guilty intruders outside the door of his nature? Impossible! the inner
life, which is the special seat of our divine concerns, evades our
laboring prudence, and tortures conscience without obeying it. How then
do these sufferers find their emancipation? They have a Gospel,
according to which Christ is not given as the Teacher of Law, but set up
as the personal object of pure Trust and Love. God sent his Son in the
likeness of sinful flesh, to mitigate the Divine into gentleness, to
elevate the Human into holiness, and show how there is one moral
perfection for both; surrendered him to humiliation and self-sacrifice;
placed him in heaven; and offered to accept pure _faith and love towards
him_ as the reconciling term for the human soul,--as the substitute for
an unattainable ideal of obedience. Here then is the salvation of these
passionate natures. This simple trust, this intense affection, is
precisely what they have to give. They cannot direct themselves; but
only fix their love, and you may lead them as a child. Self-discipline
is impossible; self-escape triumphant. Try from within to hold the
struggling winds of their nature with iron bands of law, and you do but
stir the sleeping storms. Set in the heavens without an orb of divine
attraction,--a new star in the East,--and you carry their whole
atmosphere away. Engage their faith; and for the first time they will
prevail over their work. Let there be an appeal of Grace to their
enthusiasm,--a whispered word, "_Lovest thou me?_"--and the very burden
that was too heavy to be borne loses all its weight; and the drudging
mill of habit, that seemed so servile once, they pace with songs and
joy. There are men who so need to be thus carried out of themselves,
that without it their nature runs to waste, or burns away with
self-consuming fires. They are like one who, in a dream, should set
himself to climb a far-off mountain-top; if he tries to run, he cannot
even creep, and only wakes himself to find that he lies still on the bed
of nature. But if the thought of his mind should be, that an
overmastering power--chariot of fire and horses of fire--lifts him away,
he floats through the clear space, till, without effort, his feet stand
upon the visionary hills.
Here then, again,--in this doctrine of Faith,--we have a true Gospel,
speaking to many hearts impenetrable by the doctrine of Works. But
have we even yet the _whole_ Gospel? Has the Good Shepherd, in these
two words, made his voice known to all that are his? Or are there
other sheep still to be gathered that are not of these folds? I
believe _there are_. For thus far we have looked only at the _moral_
side of Christian doctrine,--at its different answers to the problem
of Sin,--at the conditions of ultimate acceptance with God,
notwithstanding deep unworthiness. Whether you say, Patiently obey,
and you shall grow into perfection of faith and love; or, Fling
yourself on faith and love, and you will find grace for patient
obedience;--in either case you are prescribing terms of salvation; you
have the _future life_ specially in mind, and are anxious to make
ready the soul _there_ to meet her God. But there are persons who
cannot fix any particular solicitude upon that crisis, as if all
before were probation, and all after were judgment,--as if here were
only faith in an absent, and there sight of a present God;--who cannot
dramatically divide existence into a two-act piece, first Time, then
Eternity, and wait for the Infinite Presence, till the curtain rises
between them; but are haunted by the feeling that, as Time is in
Eternity, so is Man already shut up in God. This is the indigenous
sentiment of another natural type of mind, which may be called,--
(3.) The _Spiritual_. God is a Spirit; man has a spirit; both, _Now_;
both, _Here_; and shall they never meet? shall they remain without
exchange of looks? shall nothing break the seal of eternal silence? is
there really love between them, and thought, and purpose, and yet all
recognition dumb? Why tell us of God's Omniscience, if it only sleeps
around us like dead space, or at most lies watching, like a sentinel
of the universe, not free to stir? Who could ever pray to this
motionless Immensity? who weep his griefs to rest on a Pity so secret
and reserved? Surely if He is a Living Mind, he not merely remains
over from a Divine Past to appear again in a Divine Future, but moves
through the immediate hours, and awakens a thousand sanctities to-day.
Urged by such questionings as these, men of meditative piety have
thirsted for conscious communion with the All-holy;--communion _both
ways_: appeal and response; a crossing line of light from eye to eye;
a quiet walk with God, where all the dust of life turns, at his
approach, into the green meadow, and its flat pools into the gliding
waters. They have retired _within_ to meet him; have believed that all
is not ours that it is ours to feel; that there is Grace of his
mingling with the inner fibres of our nature, and flinging in, across
the constant warp of our personality, flying tints of deeper beauty,
and hints of a pattern more divine. And all have agreed, that, in
order to reach this Holy Spirit, and through its vivifying touch be
born again, the one thing needful is a stripping off of self, an
abandonment of personal desire and will, a return to simplicity, and a
docile listening to the whispers spontaneous from God. They find all
sin to be a rising up of self; all return to holiness and peace a
sinking down from self, a free surrender of the soul,--that asks
nothing, possesses nothing, that relaxes every rigid strain, and is
pliant to go whither the highest Will may lead. Nature, of her own
foolishness, ever goes astray in her quest of divine things; wandering
away in flights of laboring Reason to find her God; panting with
over-plied resolve to do her work; scheming rules, and artifices, and
bonds of union for forming her individuals into a Church. Reverse all
this, and fall back on the centre of the Spirit, instead of pressing
out in all radii of your own. Let Intellect droop her ambitious wing,
and come home; there, in the inmost room of conscience, God seeks you
all the while. Lash your wearied strength no more; sit low and weak
upon the ground, with loving readiness hitherward or thitherward, and
you shall be taken through your work with a sevenfold strength that
has no effort in it. Leave yourself awhile in utter solitude, shut out
all thoughts of other men, yield up whatever intervenes, though it be
the thinnest film, between your soul and God; and in this absolute
loneliness, the germ of a holy society will of itself appear, a temper
of sympathy and mercy, trustful and gentle, suffuses itself through
the whole mind: though you have seen no one, you have met all; and are
girt for any errand of service that love may find. So then, if there
were twenty or a thousand in this case, their wills would flow
together of their own accord, and find themselves in brotherhood
without a plan at all.
So speaks this doctrine of the Spirit. It matters not now under which of
its many theologic forms we conceive it; simplest perhaps, that the
Indwelling God, who in Christ was the Word, is in us the Comforter. But
surely, this also is not altogether a false Gospel. It rescues the
conception of direct communion between the human spirit and the
Divine,--a conception essential to the Christian life,--which an Ethical
Gospel does not adequately secure: for communion must be between like
and like, while obedience may be from slave to lord, nay, in some sense,
from machine to maker. Nor is it a slight thing to take the scales from
our eyes that hide from us the sanctities of our _immediate_ life; to
abolish the postponement of eternity; and, wayfarers as we are, make us
feel, as we rise from our stony pillow and pass on, that here is the
abode of God, and here does the angel-ladder touch the ground! Yet this
too is not the _whole_ Gospel. It absorbs too much in God. It scarcely
saves human personality and responsibility. It does no justice to
nature, which it regards as the negative of God. It melts away Law in
Love, and hides the rocky structure of this moral world in a sunny haze
that confuses earth and air.
What, then, shall we say of these three types of Christian faith? Do
you doubt their reality? It is demonstrated within the century which
we close this day. For while our forefathers were dedicating this
house of prayer to the first, the Gospel of Christian Duty, Wesley
had already become the prophet of the last,--the new birth of the
Spirit; and erelong Evangelicism started up, and proclaimed the
second,--the Salvation by Faith. Do you doubt their durability and
permanence? It is proved by eighteen centuries' experience, for the
New Testament is not older. _There_, within the group of sacred books
themselves, do they all lie; the Jewish Gospels represent the first;
the Gentile Apostle's letters, the second; the writings of the beloved
disciple, the third. Matthew, as every reader must remark, is for the
Law; Paul, for Faith; and John, for the Spirit. And, in every age, the
great mass of Christian tendencies break themselves into these three
forms:--Ebionite, Pauline, and contemplative Gnostic; Pelagian,
Augustinian, and Mystic; Jesuit, Jansenist, and Quietist; Arminian,
Lutheran, and Quaker; all proclaim the perseverance of the same
essential types, wherever the spirit of Christ alights upon the
various heart of man.
Is Christ then divided? Is he not equal to the _whole_ of our
humanity? Rather let us say, that we are small and weak for the
measure of his heavenly wisdom. Doubtless, if we take what we can
hold, and put it to faithful application, we have grace enough for
every personal exigency. But there is, surely, an evil inseparable
from all _partial_ developments of religion, which only satisfy the
immediate cravings of the mind, and leave parts of our nature--asleep
perhaps at the moment--liable to wake and thirst again. Such _separate
growths_ run out their resources and exhaust themselves in a few
generations. At first, they answer to some felt want; they collect a
congenial multitude, and open to them a spiritual refuge that ends
their wanderings. But the sentiment, once brought into a contented
state, ceases to be importunate and prominent; and by its abatement
gives opportunity for other feelings to vindicate their existence.
When the wound is bound up and has lost its smart, the natural hunger
begins to tell. The children grow up other than the fathers, perhaps
quite as limited, only in different ways,--with affections pressing
into just the vacant places of an earlier age. Meanwhile, the
imperfection of the original basis has provoked reactions equally of
narrow scope,--equally incapable of permanently filling the capacities
of the Christian mind. Hence the danger, if the separate veins of
thought be still worked on as they thin away, that the sects should
degenerate into poor theological egotisms, and wear themselves
insensibly out. It cannot be denied that all the three religious
movements of the last century--represented by Taylor, by Wesley, by
Cowper--exhibit the symptoms of spent strength, and are little likely
to play again the part they have played before.
Yet every one of their Gospels is _true at heart_; and the tree that
holds that pith is a tree of life, which the Eternal husbandman hath
planted; and if he prune it, it is only that it may bear more fruit.
The weakness of these faiths is in their isolation; and if their sap
could but mingle, if no element were lost which they can draw from the
root of the vine, a young frondescent life would show itself again.
Those who think that the future can only repeat the past, will deem
this impossible; though least of all should it appear so to _us_ who
profess ourselves "_Christians and only Christians_," pledged to
nothing but to lie open to all God's truth. For myself I indulge a
joyful hope that the next century of Christendom will be nobler than
the last; that the great Faiths which have struggled separately into
the light of the one, will flow together on the broader and less
broken surface of the other. If, however, this is to be, it will arise
from no mere _intellectual_ scrutiny, whose function will ever be to
_distinguish_, and not to _unite_, and, in proportion as it dominates
alone, to trace ever-new lines of critical divergency. When the
problem of Christendom is, to deliver the individual mind from the
operation of an overwhelming social power, then it is seasonable to
insist on the principle of free inquiry; because then you have a dead
mass to disintegrate, ere any young and living force can urge its way.
But when you have won this victory, and when individualism ceases to
be devout and tends to party self-will, the hour comes to proclaim
the converse lesson, and break up the vain reliance on mere liberty
of thought. Depend upon it, Unity lies in profounder strata of our
nature than any tillage of the mere intellect can reach. Sink deeply
into the inmost life of _any_ Christian faith, and you will touch the
ground of _all_. Did we do nothing with our religion except live by
it; did we forget the presence of doubt and contradiction; did it
cease to be a creed about God and become simply an existence in God;
did we exchange self-assertion before men for self-surrender to
him;--we should find ourselves side by side with unexpected friends,
should be astonished at our petulant divisions, and replace the poor
charity of mutual forbearance by the free consciousness of inward
sympathy. For _us_ especially, who feel the temptations of an
exceptional position, is it the prime duty to live and move and have
our being in the divine sanctities that hold us, in that which we have
_not_ been obliged to throw away; else might our Gospel be no
fruit-bearing branch, drinking from the root of the vine, but a dead
residuum, withered and hopeless. Remember that, if Sin be not
_original_, all the more must it be _actual_, and the deeper should
its shadow lie upon the Conscience, and touch us with the mood of
faithfulness and prayer. If, in reconciling man with God, there is no
_vicarious_ sacrifice possible, so much the more remains over for
_self-sacrifice_, as the only path of communion and peace. If you will
have it that Christ is only _human_, so much the more Divine is your
humanity to be; you cannot assume _that_ as the type of your nature,
without at least owning that its essence lies, and its glory is found,
not in the natural man, but in the spiritual man; and by this very
confession, you renounce the low aims of the worldly mind, and take on
yourself the vows of the saintly. Let believers only be true to the
grace they have, and more will be given; and enter where they may the
many-gated sanctuary of the Christian life, they will tend ever
inwards to the same centre, and meet at last in the holiest of all.
Keeping a reverent eye fixed on the person and spirit of Christ, they
cannot but find their partial apprehensions corrected and enlarged;
for his divine image is complete in its revelation, and rebukes every
narrower Gospel. Moral perfectness, divine communion, free
self-sacrifice,--all blend in him,--indistinguishable elements of one
expression. In that august and holy presence, our divisions sink
abashed, and hear, as of old, the word of recall, "Ye know not what
spirit ye are of." Or if, through our infirmities, that gracious form,
appearing in the midst as we discourse among ourselves and are
perplexed and sad, do not suffice to open our eyes and make us less
slow of heart to one another and to him, at least in that higher
world, whither our forerunners are gone, his living look will perfect
the communion of saints. There at length the guests of his bounty will
find that, though at separate tables, they have all been fed by the
same bread of life, and touched their lips with the same wine of
remembrance: there, the voices of the wise, often discordant here,--of
Taylor and Wesley, of Enfield and Cowper, of Heber and Channing,--will
blend in harmony;--and the notes of the last age will not be the least
in that mighty chorus which crowds the steps of eighteen centuries,
and, converging to their immortal Head, sings the solemn strain,
"Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty! Just and true
are all thy ways, thou King of Saints!"