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saith the Lord of hosts," is the motto inscribed upon their hearts.1
2. One of the greatest dangers of modern life is that we tend to put more faith in the power of machinery than in the power of the Spirit. If we are wise, there will be a growing resentment in our minds at the way in which life is broken up, and rendered shallow and unspiritual, by the mere multitude of good works, by want of depth and concentration. No doubt it is the natural temptation of an active and busy generation that so many workers for good causes are simply lost in the multiplicity of their own doings, immersed in practical and semi-secular affairs, absorbed in the mechanism of their work. We try, in fact, to do too many things ; we have never really taken to heart the story of Martha and Mary ; we forget that nothing will go well with us if the mechanism of our work is more thought of and cared for than the inspiration which alone makes it real and progressive. Men are so accustomed to look on the outward appearance and on material resources, even in Christian work. They are disposed to trust to the might of numbers, of organization, of training, and of experience. They rely also on the ability of their leaders, on their own prestige and past achievements. They make much of high official position, of social rank, of wealth and worldly relationship. These God also takes into His account and uses them ; but He is not confined to them. He has other and mightier powers which He employs to build up His house. In all Christian work there is a tendency for the mind to become concentrated upon the lamp-stand of solid gold, and to forget the olive trees ; to be engrossed in the costly mechanism and to be forgetful of the life. It is well, therefore, for us to be reminded that our most elaborate equipment will be futile without the mystic grace of God.
TJ Amiel'8 Journal Intime is the history of a man told by him- self,— a fine mind and beautiful nature, but on the whole a pathetic story — the conflict, so common in our time, between the intellect and the heart, including in that last word the spirit, which is the Divine side of the heart. He was in heart a believer, in intellect not an agnostic, but perplexed. I suppose the right view is that neither is to be taken by itself. The heart without 1 J. E. C. Welldon, Eevelalion of the Holy Spirit.
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the intellect will lead to superstition, the intellect without the heart to Pantheism, or Materialism or blank Nihilism. The intellect must take the emotional and spiritual part of man into account in forming its theories, as the physicist does with the facts of nature. How to give the intellect and spirit their proper place is the cause of the conflict, and perhaps this conflict is a necessary condition of our progress and of our final establishment in the best way. Without sin the solution would have been easier. The conflict might have been only a keen, friendly dis- cussion. And so the way to get above doubt is to rise into the region of the spirit, carrying our reason with us : " He that doeth his will shall know," etc. " Blessed are the pure in heart." x
3. Nothing aroused the anger of Christ more than this intru- sion of the mechanical into the spiritual, the encroachment of machinery upon life. As He studied with prophetic eye the religion of His day, as exhibited in its most orthodox representa- tives, He saw how fatal that intrusion was. Eeligion had passed from a life into a mechanism. We know how constantly, and how easily, in the history of religion, the spiritual hardens into the mechanical. The prayer-wheel of the Buddhist, the ceaseless repetitions of the Koran, are but symptoms of a disease that has not left Christianity itself unassailed. They have their counter- parts in Christendom to-day. Even the regular attendance at public prayer, even the constant participation in the highest act of Christian worship, carry with them the perils of familiarity. The danger of mechanical religion is that we may lose sight of the end in the means, may even forget that there is an end for each and all of us, here and hereafter — personal righteousness, the realization of the image of God in man, the saving of the soul. Behind the things of sense lie the things of the spirit; behind Nature, God; behind time and the world, death and judgment and eternal life. Let us hold fast to the first principles of our faith, to the things which are not seen but are eternal.
^| Keble was ordained Deacon on Trinity Sunday, 1815, and Priest on Trinity Sunday, 1816, both by the Bishop of Oxford, Dr. William Jackson ; and in July of the latter year, writing to me, he said, " I want your prayers, too ; very much I want them, for every day I feel the dangers and anxieties of my profession increase upon me. Pray for me that I may not pollute God's
1 Letters of the Rev. John Ker, 355.
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