^ The late George Eomanes, one who himself stood in the first rank of scientific knowledge, and who enjoyed a singularly large range of acquaintance among men of light, has put it on record in his posthumous thoughts about religion that he has found it in his own experience true, — and he passed the greater part of his life in unbelief, though, thank God, that unbelief passed into belief at the end — and in that of his friends, that wide knowledge does not make a man happy ; for man is personal, he was made for God, "and unquiet is the heart of man until it rests in Thee." ^
^ Only the other day a well-known man told me that some years ago he had sent a copy of his first book, then just published, to a prominent master of finance, a man who, from nothing, had amassed a colossal fortune. Some time after, my friend met this man, who, in congratulating the author, re- marked that "he should feel particularly flattered by the fact that he had read the book at all." " Why so ? " inquired my 1 R. W. Dale, » Bishop Gore.
2o6 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
friend. " Because," replied the millionaire, " it is the only book of any kind I have read in five years ! " ^
3. The Moral and Social Life. — The records of recent days, involving the downfall of so many men high up in public estimation, have revealed, as with flaming fingers, how possible it is in these days to secure reputation and wealth and influence at the expense of integrity and honour. In the fierce struggle for wealth men have deliberately trampled their principles, and in gaining a world they have forfeited their moral ideals.
And what is true of the moral life of the individual is not less true of the social life. There is the steady effort which the capitalists in England are now making for mastery ; there is the effort which labour is making against the capitalists. It is not my business here to approve or to blame either section, but it is my business to say that if either side, during the strife, or after the victory, lose their soul — if they lose the sense of justice between man and man; if they forget that men, being God's children, are brothers one of another, knit together by love ; if in victory, they are greedy of self- interest or cruel ; if they do wrong to freedom, if they are not magnanimous, if they become incapable of forgiveness — there will be no true advantage to themselves in their success, and they will do harm to mankind.^
^ There was one living who, scarcely in a figure, might be said to have the whole world. The Eoman Emperor Tiberius was at that moment infinitely the most powerful of living men, the absolute, undisputed, deified ruler of all that was fairest and richest in the kingdoms of the earth. There was no control to his power, no limit to his wealth, no restraint upon his pleasures. And, to yield himself still more unreservedly to the boundless self-gratification of a voluptuous luxury, not long after this time he chose for himself a home on one of the loveliest spots on the earth's surface, under the shadow of the slumbering volcano, upon an enchanting islet in one of the most softly delicious climates of the world. What came of it all ? He was, as Pliny calls him, " tristissimus ut constat hominum," confessedly the most gloomy of mankind. And there, from this home of his hidden infamies, from this island where on a scale so splendid he had tried the experiment of what happiness can * D, Sage Mackay. ' Stopford Brooke.
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be achieved by pressing the world's most absolute authority, and the world's guiltiest indulgences, into the service of an exclusively selfish life, he wrote to his servile and corrupted Senate, "What to write to you, Conscript Fathers, or how to write, or what not to write, may all the gods and goddesses destroy me worse than I feel that they are daily destroying me, if I know." Earely has there been vouchsafed to the world a more overwhelming proof that its richest gifts are but fairy gold that turns to dust and dross, and its most colossal edifices of personal splendour and greatness no more durable barrier against the encroachment of bitter misery than are the babe's sandheaps to stay the mighty march of the Atlantic tide.^
4. The Spiritual Life. — But it is of the diviner regions of life that our Lord was especially thinking. If the signs of failing health, of approaching death, are not hard to recognise in the physical, they are not harder to recognise in the spiritual, sphere. There is less reverence in worship, there is less care for it, there is less heart in it ; Christ, the living Christ, is not so constantly present to the thought ; there is less of ex- ultation in Him ; His glory is gradually becoming dim, and it seems to have descended from the heights, and to have taken its place with no splendours about it among common men. Faith in Christ is less vigorous and intense, and there is less concern that other men should have faith in Him. If a man who was an effective Sunday-school teacher at twenty is only a Bank Director or a Town Councillor at fifty, if he has no spiritual gift and can do no spiritual work, honourable and Christian as his present function is if fulfilled in a spirit of loyalty to Christ, he has suffered loss of life, loss of rank. If, however, with the public functions he still possesses and exercises the spiritual gift, and exercises it faithfully, then it is well with him, his life is fuller and richer than before.^