^ We may be too ready to identify the political interests of the nation, as they appear to ourselves, with the cause of God. We are all naturally disposed to elevate our personal judgment in practical affairs into a standard of essential right, like George iii., who confessed that "since he had no wish but the prosperity of his own dominions, he must look upon all who would not heartily assist him as bad men, as well as bad subjects." I need not point out that this attitude of mind is quite inconsistent with genuine tolerance : indeed, the reason why intolerance has been so frequently associated with religion is simply the fact that the identification of personal perceptions of truth and right with the cause of God is, within the religious sphere, eminently natural and, therefore, extremely frequent. ^
f There is a famous passage in one of Edmund Burke's speeches — which are the classics of English political literature — which describes what in those days of corruption was a familiar phenomenon of public life, the decline of virtue in a politician. In a more general sense, we may borrow his words as true not of politicians only, but of us all, as we in turn pass into public life in one or other form of social activity : " I believe," he said, " the instances are exceedingly rare of men immediately passing over a clear, marked line of virtue into declared vice and corruption. There are a sort of middle tints and shades between the two extremes ; there is something uncertain on the confines
^ Canon Hensley Henson.
JUDGES V. 23 177
of the two empires which they first pass through, and which renders the change easy and imperceptible. There are even a sort of impositions so well contrived that, at the very time the path of rectitude is quitted for ever, men seem to be advancing into some higher and nobler road of public conduct."
A cause like ours is holy, And it useth holy things; While over the storm of a righteous strife, May shine the angel's wings.
Where'er our duty leads us, The grace of God is there, And the lurid shrine of war may hold The Eucharist of prayer.
iv. Religion is the Progress of the Kingdom.
1. It is Christ's spiritual kingdom against which Satan directs his fiercest assaults, and to which Christians owe their most devoted service. Devotion to Eeligion should be another name for devotedness to Christ. " Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me " ; — this is the motive and the blessing of all forms of work in the Church of God.
The great struggle of good and evil, of truth and error, which was raging when Deborah judged Israel rages still. The great laws of the moral world do not vary, however different, under different dispensations, may be the authoritative enunciation of truth, or the means of propagating and defending it. Jabin and Sisera never really die ; Deborah is always despairing, triumphing, hoping, judging by turns. And the opportunities of generously serving Jesus Christ are few; perhaps not more than one in a lifetime. They come, they do not return. The day before Meroz failed there was no warning of the coming trial ; the day after, there was no reversal of its moral doom.
^ As I think over why it is that the curse of God comes down on- the indifferent man in St. Pancras who does nothing and cares nothing, it is because there is standing among us One whom we see not, who cries as He cried in the very Gospel for this Sunday : " He that is not with me is against me ; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth." The man who stands there in the
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178 THE SIN OF MEROZ
office, in the parish, in the workshop, and who does nothing, is an influence dead against the influence of Jesus Christ — an inert friend is counted an enemy. " He that is not with me is against me ; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth." Those are His own words.^
Arise, my soul! nor dream the hours
Of life away; Arise ! and do thy being's work
While yet 'tis day.
The doer, not the dreamer, breaks
The baleful spell, Which binds with iron bands the earth
On which we dwell.
Up, soul ! or war, with fiery feet,
Will tread down men; Up ! or his bloody hands will reap
The earth again.
O dreamer, wake! your brother man
Is still a slave ; And thousands go heart-crushed this morn
Unto the grave.
The brow of wrong is laurel-crowned,
Not girt with shame : And love and truth and right as yet
Are but a name.
From out time's urn your golden hours
Flow fast away: — Then dreamer, up ! and do life's work
While yet 'tis day.
2. To believe with all our hearts in the Gospel of Jesus Christ is to believe that we ourselves have been commissioned to do His work in the world ; we are surely called so to act in our several stations that they become serviceable in the interest of the world's redemption. We are to know, to understand, even to possess "the Mind of Christ"; and then to express that mind in the