_THE BAN IN MODERN LIFE_
In our modern time this practice of the ban has, of course, become
antiquated and impossible. The _Cherem_, or ban, of the modern
synagogue is a different thing, based upon different motives, and is
directed to the same ends as Christian excommunication. But though
the thing has ceased, the principles underlying it, and the view of
life which it implies, are of perpetual validity. These belong to
the essential truths of religion, and especially need to be recalled
in a time like ours, when men tend everywhere to a feeble, lax, and
cosmopolitan view of Christianity. As we have seen, the fundamental
principle of the _Cherem_ was that, however precious, however
sacred, however useful and helpful in ordinary circumstances a thing
might be, whenever it became dangerous to the higher life it should
at once be given up to Yahweh. The lives of human beings, even
though they were men's dearest and nearest, should be sacrificed;
the richest works of art, the weapons of war, and the wealth which
would have adorned life and made it easy, were equally to be given
up to Him, that He might seclude them and render them harmless to
men's highest interests. Neighbourliness to the Canaanites was
absolutely forbidden, and the Church of the Old Testament was
commanded to take up a position of hostility, or at best of armed
neutrality, to all the pleasures, interests, and concerns of the
peoples who surrounded them. Now the prevailing modern view is
that not only the ban itself, but these principles have become
obsolete. Notwithstanding that the Church of the New Testament is
the bearer of the higher interests of humanity, we are taught that
when it is least definite in its direction ἄas to conduct, when it
is most tolerant of the practices of the world, then it is most
true to its original conception. We are told that an indulgent
Church is what is wanted; rigour and religion are now supposed to be
finally divorced in all enlightened minds. This view is not often
categorically expressed, but it underlies all fashionable religion,
and has its apostles in the golden youth who forward enlightenment
by playing tennis on Sundays. Because of it too, Puritan has become
a name of scorn, and careless self-gratification a mark of cultured
Christianity. Not only asceticism, but ἄσκησις has been discredited,
and the moral tone of society has perceptibly fallen in consequence.
In wide circles both within and without the Church it seems to be
held that pain is the only intolerable evil, and in legislation as
well as in literature that idea has been registering itself.
For much of this progress, as some call it, no reasoned
justification has been attempted, but it has been defended in part
by the allegation that the circumstances which make the "ban"
necessary to the very life of the ancient people of God have passed
away, now that social and political life has been Christianised.
Even those who are outside the Church in Christian lands are no
longer living at a moral and spiritual level so much below that
of the Church. They are not heathen idolaters, whose moral and
religious ideas are contagiously corrupting, and nothing but
Pharisaism of the worst type, it is said, can justify the Church
in taking up a position to society in any degree like that which
was imposed upon ancient Israel. Now it cannot be denied that
there is truth here, and in so far as the Christian Church or
individual Christians have taken up precisely the same position to
those without as is implied in the Old Testament ban, they are not
to be defended. Modern society, as at present constituted, is not
corrupting like that of Canaan. No one in a modern Christian state
has been brought up in an atmosphere of heathenism, and what an
incredible difference that involves only those who know heathenism
well can appreciate. If spiritual life is neither understood
nor believed in by all, yet the rules of morals are the same in
every mind, and these rules are the product of Christianity. As a
consequence, the Church is not endangered in the same way and to
the same degree by contact with the world as in the ancient days.
Indeed to the Israelite of the post-Mosaic time our "world," which
some sects at least would absolutely ignore and shut out, would
seem a very definite and legitimate part of the Church. The Jewish
Church was certainly to a very large extent made up of precisely
such elements, while those who were to be put to the ban were far
more remote than any citizens of a modern state, except a portion of
the criminal class. Further, those not actively Christian are, on
account of this community of moral sentiments, open to appeal from
the Church as the heathen Canaanites were not. In English-speaking
lands, while there are multitudes indifferent to Christianity, most
acknowledge the obligation of the Christian motives. In nations at
least nominally Christian, therefore, both because the danger of
corruption is greatly less, and because the world is more accessible
to the leaven of Christian life, no Church can, or dare, without
incurring terrible loss and responsibility, withdraw from or show
a merely hostile front to the world. The sects which do so live an
invalid life. Their virtues take on the sickly look of all "fugitive
and cloistered virtue." Their doctrines become full of the "idols
of the cave," and they cease to have any perception of the real
needs of men.
Nevertheless the austere spirit inculcated in this chapter must be
kept alive, if the Church is to be the spiritual leader of humanity,
for strenuousness is the great want of modern life. Dr. Pearson,
whose book on _National Life and Character_ has lately expounded the
theory that the Church, "being too inexorable in its ideal to admit
of compromises with human frailty, is precisely on this account
unfitted for governing fallible men and women," i.e. governing them
in the political sense, has elsewhere stated his view of the remedy
for one of the great evils of modern life.[60] "The disproportionate
growth of the distributing classes, as compared with the producing,
is due, I believe, to two moral causes--the love of amusement and
the passion for speculation. Men flock out of healthy country lives
in farms or mines into our great cities, because they like to be
near the theatre and the racecourse, or because they hope to grow
rich suddenly by some form of gambling. The cure for a taint of
this kind is not economical but religious, and can only be found,
I am convinced, in a return to the masculine asceticism that has
distinguished the best days of history, Puritan or Republican." This
is emphatically true of Australia, where and of which the words were
first spoken; and masculine asceticism of the Puritan type would
cure many another evil there besides these. But the same thing is
true everywhere; and if religion is to cure slackness in social or
political life, how much more must it cultivate this austere spirit
for itself! The function of the Church is not to govern the world;
it seeks rather to inspire the world. It should lead the advance
to a higher, more ennobling life, and should exhibit that in its
own collective action and in the kind of character it produces.
Its greatest gift to the world should be itself, and it is useful
only when it is true to its own _ethos_ and spirit. To keep that
unimpaired must therefore be its first duty, and to fulfil that duty
it must keep rigorously back from everything which, in relation to
its own existing state, would be likely to lower the power of its
peculiar life. The State must often compromise with human frailty.
Often there will be before the legislator and the statesman only
a choice between two evils, or at least two undesirable courses,
unless a worse thing is to be tolerated. The Church, on the other
hand, should keep close to the ideal as it sees it. Its reason for
existence is that it may hold up the ideal to men, and exhibit it
as far as that may be. Compromise in regard to that is impossible
for the Church, for that would be nothing else than disloyalty to
its own essential principle. The spirit, therefore, that inspired
the "ban" must always be living and powerful in the Church. Whatever
is dangerous to the special Christian life must cease to exist for
Christians. It should be laid at the feet of their Divine Head, that
He may seclude it from His people and render it innocuous. Many
things that are harmless or even useful at a lower level of life
must be refused a place by the Christian. Gratifications that cannot
but seem good to others must be refused by him; for he seeks to be
in the forefront of the battle against evil, to be the pioneer to a
more whole-hearted spiritual life.
[60] _The Social Movements of the Age_, by Professor Pearson,
Melbourne Church Congress, 1882.
But that does not imply that we should seek to renew the various
imperfect and external devices by which past times sought to attain
this exceedingly desirable end. Experience has taught the folly
and futility of sumptuary laws, for example. Their only effect
was to do violence to the inwardness which belongs of necessity
to spiritual life. They externalised and depraved morality, and
finally defeated themselves. Nor would the later Puritanism, with
its rigidity as regards dress and deportment, and its narrow and
limited view of life, help us much more. It began doubtless with
the right principle; but it sought to bind all to its observances,
whether they cared for the spirit of them or not; and it showed a
measureless intemperance in regard to the things which it declared
hostile to the life of faith. In that form it has been charged with
"isolation from human history, human enjoyment, and all the manifold
play and variety of human character." For a short time, however,
Puritanism did strike the golden mean in this matter, and probably
we could not in this present connection find a better example for
modern days than in the Puritanism of Spenser, of Colonel Hutchinson
(one of the regicides so called), and of Milton. Their united lives
covered the heroic period of Puritanism, and taken in their order
they represent very fairly its rise, its best estate, and its
tendencies towards harsh extremes, when as yet it was but a tendency.
Spenser, born in the "spacious times of great Elizabeth," was
politically and nationally a Puritan, and in aim and ideal, at
least, was so in his stern view of life and religion.[61] His
attachment to Lord Grey of Wilton, that personally kind yet
absolutely ruthless executor of the English "ban" against the
untamable Irish, and his defence of his policy, show the one;
while his _Fairy Queen_, with its representation of religion as
"the foundation of all nobleness in man" and its dwelling upon
man's victory over himself, reveals the other. But he had in him
also elements belonging to that strangely mingled world in which
he lived, and which came from an entirely different source. He
had the Elizabethan enthusiasm for beauty, the large delight in
life as such even where its moral quality was questionable, and
the artist's sensitiveness and adaptability in a very high degree.
These diverse elements were never fully interfused in him. Amid
all the gracious beauty of his work, there is the trace of discord
and the mark of conflict; and at times perhaps his life fell into
courses which spoke little of self-control. But his face was always
in the main turned upwards. In the main, too, his life corresponded
with his aspirations. He combined his poetic gift, his love of
men and human life, with a faithfulness to his ideal of conduct
which, if not always perfect, was sincere, and was, too, as we may
hope, ultimately victorious. The Puritan in him had not entire
victory over the worldling, but it had the mastery; and the very
imperfection of the victory kept the character in sympathy with the
whole of life.
[61] Vide Church's _Spenser_, p. 16.
In Colonel Hutchinson,[62] as depicted in that stately and tender
panegyric which speaks to us across more than two centuries
so pathetically of his wife's almost adoring love, we see the
Puritan character in its fullest and most balanced form. We do
not, of course, mean that his mind had the imaginative power of
Spenser's, or his character the force of Milton's; but partly from
circumstances, partly by singular grace of nature, his character
possessed a stability and an equilibrium which had not come when
Spenser lived, and which was beginning to go in the evil days upon
which Milton fell. At the root of all his virtues his wife sets
"that which was the head and spring of them all, his Christianity."
"By Christianity," she says, "I intend that universal habit of
grace which is wrought in a soul by the regenerating Spirit of God,
whereby the whole creature is resigned up into the Divine will and
love, and all its actions designed to the obedience and glory of its
Maker." He had been trained in a Puritan home, and though when he
went out into the world he had to face quite the average temptations
of a rich and well-born youth, he fled all youthful lusts. But he
did not retire from the world. "He could dance admirably well,
but neither in youth nor riper years made any practice of it; he
had skill in fencing such as became a gentleman; he had a great
love to music, and often diverted himself with a viol, on which he
played masterly; he had an exact ear, and judgment in other music;
he shot excellently in bows and guns, and much used them for his
exercise; he had great judgment in painting, graving, sculpture,
and all liberal arts, and had many curiosities of value in all
kinds. He took much pleasure in improvement of grounds, in planting
groves and walks and fruit-trees, in opening springs and making
fishponds. Of country recreations he loved none but hawking, and
in that was very eager, and much delighted for the time he used
it." Hutchinson was no ascetic, therefore, in the wrong sense, but
lived in and enjoyed the world as a man should. But perhaps his
greatest divergence from the lower Puritanism lay in this, that
"everything that it was necessary for him to do he did with delight,
free and unconstrained." Moreover, though he adopted strong Puritan
opinions in theology, "he hated persecution for religion, and was
always a champion for all religious people against all their great
oppressors. Nevertheless self-restraint was the law of his life, and
he many times forbore things lawful and delightful to him, rather
than he would give any one occasion of scandal." In public affairs
he took the courageous part of a man who sought nothing for himself,
and was moved only by his hatred of wrong to leave the prosperity
and peace of his home-life. He became a member of the Court which
tried the King against his will, but signed the warrant for his
death, simply because he conceived it to be his duty. When the
Restoration came and he was challenged for his conduct, scorning the
subterfuges of some who declared they signed under compulsion, he
quietly accepted the responsibility for his acts. This led to his
death in the flower of his age, through imprisonment in the Tower;
but he never flinched, "having made up his accounts with life and
death, and fixed his purpose to entertain both honourably." From
the beginning of his life to the end there was a consistent sanity,
which is rare at any time, and was especially rare in those days.
His loyalty to God kept him austerely aloof from unworthiness, while
it seemed to add zest to the sinless joys which came in his way.
Above all, it never suffered him to forget that the true Christian
temper and character was the pearl of price which all else he had
might lawfully be sacrificed to purchase.
[62] _Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson_, by his wife.
In the character of Milton we find the same essential elements, the
same purity in youth, which, with his beauty, won for him the name
of the Lady of his College; the same courage and public spirit in
manhood; the same love of music and of culture. After his University
career he retired to his father's house, and read all Greek and
Latin literature, as well as Italian, and studied Hebrew and some
other Oriental languages. All the culture of his time, therefore,
was absorbed by him, and his mind and speech were shot through and
through with the brilliant colours of the history and romance of
many climes. Almost no kind of beauty failed to appeal to him, but
the austerity of his views of life kept him from being enslaved by
it. In his earlier works even, he caught in a surprising way all the
glow, and splendour, and poetic fervour of the English Renaissance;
but he joined with it the sternest and most uncompromising
Puritan morality, not only in theory and desire like Spenser,
but in the hard practice of actual life. When the idea of duty
comes to dominate a man, the grace and impetuosity of youth, the
overmastering love of beauty, and the appreciation of the mere joy
of living are apt to die away, and the poetic fire burns low. But it
was not so with Milton. To the end of his life he remained a true
Elizabethan, but an Elizabethan who had always kept himself free
from the chains of sensual vice, and had never stained his purity
of soul. That fact makes him unique almost in English history, and
has everywhere added a touch of the sublime to all that his works
have of beauty. "His soul was like a star, and dwelt apart:" and we
may entirely believe what he tells us of himself when he returned
from his European travels: "In all the places in which vice meets
with so little discouragement, and is protected with so little
shame, I never once turned from the path of integrity and virtue,
and perpetually reflected that, though my conduct might escape the
notice of men, it could not elude the inspection of God." Like the
true Puritan he was, Milton not only overcame evil in himself, but
he thought his own life and health a cheap price to pay for the
overthrow of evil wherever he saw it. When the civil war broke out,
he returned at once from his travels, to help to right the wrongs
of his country. In the service of the Government he sacrificed his
poetic gift, his leisure for twenty years, and finally his sight, to
the task of defending England from her enemies. But he did not stop
there. His severity became excessive, at times almost vindictive.
When he wrote prose he scarcely ever wrote without having an enemy
to crush, and much that he uttered in this vein cannot possibly be
approved. His pamphlets are unfair to a degree which shows that
his mind had lost balance in the turmoil of the great struggle,
so that he approached at moments the narrower Puritanism. But he
still proved himself too great for that, and emerged anew as a
great and lofty spirit, held down very little by earthly bonds, and
strenuously set against evil as a true servant of God.
Now the temper of Puritanism such as this of these old English
worthies is precisely what Christians need most to cultivate in
these days. They must be animated by the spirit which refuses to
touch, and refers to God, whatever proves hostile to life in God;
but they must also combine with this aloofness a sympathetic hold
on ordinary life. It is easy on the one hand to solve all problems
by cutting oneself off from any relation with the world, lest
the inner life should suffer. It is also easy to let the inner
life take care of itself, and to float blithely on with all the
currents of life which are not deadly sins. But it is not easy to
keep the mind and life open to all the great life-streams which
tend to deepen and enrich human nature, and yet to stand firm in
self-control, determined that nothing which drags down the soul
shall be permitted to fascinate or overpower. To this task Christian
men and the Christian Church seem at present to be specially called.
It is admitted on all hands that the ordinary Puritanism became
too intolerant of all except spiritual interests; so that it could
not, without infinite loss, have been accepted as the guide for all
life. But hence what was good in it has been rejected along with the
bad; and it needs to be restored, if a weak, self-indulgent temper,
which resents hardship or even discipline, is not to gain the upper
hand. In social life especially this is needful, otherwise so much
debate would never have been expended on the question of amusements.
On the face of it, a Christianity which can go with the world in
all those of its amusements which are not actually forbidden by the
moral law must be a low type of Christianity. It can be conscious
of no special character which it has to preserve, of no special
voice which it has to utter in the antiphony of created things.
Whatever others allow themselves, therefore, the vigilant Christian
must see to it that he does nothing which will destroy his special
contribution to the world he lives in. It is precisely by that
that he is the salt of the earth; and if the salt have lost its
savour wherewith will you season it? No price is too great for the
preservation of this savour, and in reference to the care of it each
man must ultimately be a law unto himself. No one else can really
tell where his weakness lies. No one else can know what the effect
of this or that recreation upon that weakness is.
When men lose spiritual touch with their own character they are
apt to throw themselves back for guidance in such matters upon
the general opinion of the Christian community, or the tradition
of the elders. In doing so they are in danger of losing sincerity
in a mass of formalism. But if a vivid apprehension of the need
of individuality in the regulation of life is maintained, the
formulated Christian objection to certain customs or certain
amusements may be a most useful substitute for painful experience
of our own. Some such amusements may have been banned in the
past without sufficient reason; or they may have been excluded
only because of the special openness to temptation of a certain
community; or they may have so changed their character that they do
not now deserve the ban which was laid upon them once justly enough.
Any plea, therefore, for the revisal or abolition of standing
conventions on such grounds must be listened to and judged. But,
on the whole, these standing prohibitions of the Church represent
accumulated experience, and all young people especially will do
wisely not to break away from them. What the mass of Christians in
the past have found hurtful to the Christian character will in most
cases be hurtful still. For if it can be said of the secular world
in all matters of experience that "this wise world is mainly right,"
it may surely be said also of the Christian community. In our time
there is a quite justifiable distrust of conventionality in morals
and in religion; but it should not be forgotten that conventions
are not open to the same objection. They represent, on the whole,
merely the registered results of actual experience, and they may be
estimated and followed in an entirely free spirit. It is not wise,
therefore, to revolt against them indiscriminately, merely because
they may be used cruelly against others, or may be taken as a
substitute for a moral nature by oneself. Thackeray in his constant
railing at the judgment of the world seems to make this mistake.
He is never weary in pointing out how unjust the broad general
judgments of the world are to specially selected individuals. Harry
Warrington in _The Virginians_, for instance, though innocent,
lives in a manner and with associates which the world has generally
found to indicate intolerable moral laxity; and because the world
was wrong in thinking that to be true in his case which would
have been true in ninety-five out of a hundred similar cases, the
moralist rails at the evil-hearted judgments of the world. But "this
wise world is mainly right," and its rough and indiscriminating
judgments fit the average case. They are part of the great sanitary
provision which society makes for its own preservation. And the case
is precisely similar with the conventions of the religious life.
They too are in the main sanitary precautions, which a conscience
thoroughly alive and a strong intelligence may make superfluous,
but which for the unformed, the half-ignorant, the less original
natures, in a word, for average men and women, are absolutely
necessary. Spontaneity and freedom are admirable qualities in
morals and religion. They are even the conditions of the highest
kinds of moral and religious life, and the necessary presuppositions
of health and progress. But something is due to stability as well;
and a world of original and spontaneous moralists, trusting only to
their own "genial sense" of truth, would be a maddening chaos. In
other words, conventions if used unconventionally, if not exalted
into absolute moral laws disobedience to which excludes from
reputable society, if taken simply as indications of the paths in
which least danger to the higher life has been found to lie, are
guides for which men may well be thankful.
In the world of thought too, as well as in the world of action,
a wise austerity of self-control is absolutely necessary. The
prevailing theory is that every one, young men more especially,
should read on all sides on all questions, and that they should
know and sympathise with all modes of thought. This is advocated
in the supposed interests of freedom from external domination and
from internal prejudice. But in a great number of cases the result
does not follow. Such catholicity of taste does produce a curious
_dilettante_ interest in lines of thought, but as a rule it weakens
interest in truth as such. It delivers from the domination of a
Church or other historic authority; but only, in most cases, to
hand over the supposed freeman to the narrower domination of the
thinker or school by which he happens to be most impressed. For
it is vain and impotent to suppose that in regard to morals and
religion every mind is able to find its way by free thought, when in
regard to bodily health, or even in questions of finance, the free
thought of the amateur is acknowledged to end usually in confusion.
Those only can usefully expose their minds to all the various
currents of modern thought who have a clear footing of their own.
Whatever that may be, it gives them a point on which to stand,
and a vantage-ground from which they can gather up what widens or
corrects their view. But to leave the land altogether, and commit
oneself to the currents, is to render any after-landing all but
impossible. With regard to the books read, the lines of thought
followed, and the associations formed, the Christian must exercise
self-denial and self-examination. Whatever is manifestly detrimental
to his best life, whatever he feels to be likely to taint the purity
of his mind or lower his spiritual vitality, should be put under
the "ban," should be resolutely avoided in all ordinary cases. Of
course modes of thought that deserve to be weighed may be found
mingled with such elements; also views of life which have a truth
and importance of their own, though their setting is corrupt. But it
is not every one's business to extricate and discuss these. Those
who are called to it will have to do it; and in doing it as a duty
they may expect to be kept from the lurking contagion. Every one
else who investigates them runs a risk which he was not called upon
to run. The average Christian should, therefore, note all that tends
to stunt or deprave him spiritually, and should avoid it. It is not
manliness but folly which makes men read filthy literature because
of its style, or sceptical literature because of its ability, when
they are not called upon to do so, and when they have not fortified
themselves by the purity of the Scriptures and the power of prayer.
To make such literature or such modes of thought our staple mental
food, or to make the writers or admirers of such books our intimate
friends, is to sap our own best convictions and to disregard our
high calling.
Lastly, however common it may be for men to sit down in selfish
isolation and devote themselves to their own interests, even though
these be spiritual, in the face of remediable evils, that is not
the Christian manner of acting. Of the great Puritans we mentioned,
Spenser endured hardness in that terrible Irish war which the men of
Elizabeth's day regarded as the war of good against evil; Hutchinson
fought for and died in the cause of political and religious freedom;
and Milton devoted his life and health to the same cause. All of
them, the two latter especially, might have kept out of it all,
in the peace and comfort of private life; but they judged that
the destruction of evil was their first duty. At the trumpet call
they willingly took their side, and prepared to give their lives,
if necessary, for the righteous cause. Now it is not enough for
us to avoid evil any more than it was for them. Though personal
influence and example are undoubtedly among the most potent weapons
in the warfare for the Kingdom of God, there must be, besides
these, the power and the will to put public evils under the ban.
Whatever institution or custom or law is ungodly, whatever in our
social life is manifestly unjust, should stir the Christian Church
to revolt against it, and should fill the heart of the individual
Christian with an undying energy of hatred. It is not meant that
the Christian Churches as such should transform themselves into
political societies or social clubs. To do that would simply be
to abdicate their only real functions. But they should be the
sources of such teaching as will turn men's thoughts towards social
justice and political righteousness, and should prepare them for
the sacrifice which any great improvement in the social state must
demand of some. Further, every individual Christian should feel
that his responsibility for the condition of his brethren, those
of his own nation, is very great and direct; that to discharge
municipal and political duty with conscientious care is a primary
obligation. Only so can the power be gained to "ban" the bad laws,
the unjust practices, the evil social customs, which disfigure our
civilisation, which degrade and defraud the poor.
A militant Puritanism here is not only a necessity for further
social progress, but it is also a necessity for the full exhibition
of the power and the essential sympathies of Christianity. For
want of it the working classes in their movement upward have not
only been alienated from the Churches, but they have learned to
demand of their leaders that they shall "countenance the poor man
in his cause." They are tempted to require their leaders to share
not only their common principles, but their prejudices; and they
often look with suspicion upon those who insist upon applying the
plumb-line of justice to the demands of the poor as well as to the
claims of the rich. The whole popular movement suffers, for it is
degraded from its true position. From being a demand for justice,
it becomes a scramble for power--power too which, when gained, is
sometimes used as selfishly and tyrannically by its new possessors
as it sometimes was by those who previously exercised it. Into all
branches of public life there is needed an infusion of a new and
higher spirit. We want men who hate evil and will destroy it where
they can, who seek nothing for themselves, who feel strongly that
the kind of life the poor in civilised countries live is intolerably
hard, and are prepared to suffer, if by any means they may improve
it. But we want at the same time a type of reformer who, by his hold
upon a power lying beyond this world, is kept steady to justice even
where the poor are concerned, who, though he passionately longs for
a better life for them, does not make more food, more leisure, more
amusement, his highest aim. Men are needed who think more nobly of
their brethren than that: men, on the one hand, who know that the
Christian character and the Christian virtues may exist under the
hardest conditions, and that the Christian Church exists mainly to
brighten and rob of its degradation the otherwise cheerless life of
the multitude; but, on the other, who recognise that our present
social state is fatal in many ways to moral and spiritual progress
for the mass of men, and must be in some way recast.
All this means the entrance into public life of Christian men of the
highest type. Such men the Christian community must supply to the
State in great numbers, if the higher characteristics of our people
are not to be lost. Through a long and eventful history, by the
manifold training afforded by religion and experience, the English
nation has become strong, patient, hopeful, and self-reliant, with
an instinct for justice and a hatred of violence which cannot easily
be paralleled. It has, too, retained a faith in and respect for
religion which many other nations seem to have lost. That character
is its highest achievement, and its decay would be deplorable.
Christianity is specially called to help to preserve it, by bringing
to its aid the power of its own special character, with its great
spiritual resources. The sources of its life are hid, and must be
kept pure; the power of its life must be made manifest in actual
union with the higher elements in the national character for mutual
defence. Above all, Christianity must not, timidly or sluggishly,
draw upon itself the curse of Meroz by not coming to the help of the
Lord against the mighty. Nor can it permit the immediate interests
of the respectable to blind or hold it back. That which is best
in its own nature demands all this; and in seeking to answer that
demand the Churches will attain to a quite new life and power. The
Lord their God will be in the midst of them, and they will feel it;
for they will then have made themselves channels for the Divine
purity and power.