Tf Let us go back a century and a half ago, and compare the condition of things then with the condition of things to-day. In the year 1724 " gin-drinking infected the mass of the population with the violence of an epidemic." It is said that every sixth house in London was a gin-palace. Hogarth's cartoon retains the sign which stood outside the doors of these drinking dens — " Here you may get drunk for a penny ; dead drunk for twopence — straw provided." The public-houses were open all night. Public opinion did not hold the character of any man to suffer through drunken- ness. Dr. Johnson says to Boswell : " I remember, sir, when every decent person in Lichfield got drunk every night and nobody thought the worse of them." It was the mark of a gentleman to get drunk, and the standard of comparison was as " drunk as a lord." Again, in the social habits of the upper classes profane swearing was held to be a mark of good breeding, and to take the name of God in vain in almost every sentence was the mark of a gentle- man and even of a lady. Look again at the sports of the people, perhaps the truest index to their character. On the Sunday the people gathered for cock-fighting, bull-baiting, and other cruel sports. If we could have stepped into the midst of the eager and excited crowd we might have cried indignantly — " This ought to be put down by law." But how impossible it would have seemed. How indignantly it would have been scouted. The members of Parliament were the ringleaders of the sport. The clergy thought themselves fortunate to own a winning bird. Now where is all that gone ? What has made drunkenness a low and beastly
1 The Guardian, 3rd February 1911. a Swete, The Ascended Christ,
ACTS ii. 4 43
habit ? What has made swearing an utterly vulgar thing ? Why has the law stepped in and put down cruel sports ? Do you say that education has become more general, and that culture has brought in other and more refined tastes ? No ; it was the educated and cultured classes who led the fashion in these things. There is but one explanation. Wesley and Whitefield were filled with the Holy Ghost, and as they preached here and there a little company of men and women were converted — not many in comparison with the masses of the nation. And these converted men and women went forth amongst the neighbours and began to live a Christlike life. Each became a new moral standard amongst them. Each was a skylight through which the heavens shone down into the midst of the little community. Each of them witnessed that there was another life than that to which they had been accustomed, and that in every way a better and happier life. Each became a living conscience in which things were so much more definitely black or white than they used to be — blessedly good or uncomfortably bad. Each was a window through which men and women saw beyond the little present out into the eternities and the infinities. That wrought the reforma- tion— witnesses unto Me.1
Oh, turn me, mould me, mellow me for use.
Pervade my being with thy vital force,
That this else inexpressive life of mine
May become eloquent and full of power,
Impregnated with life and strength divine.
Put the bright torch of heaven into my hand,
That I may carry it aloft
And win the eye of weary wanderers here below
To guide their feet into the paths of peace.
I cannot raise the dead,
Nor from this soil pluck precious dust,
Nor bid the sleeper wake,
Nor still the storm, nor bend the lightning back,
Nor muffle up the thunder,
Nor bid the chains fall from off creation's long enfettered limbs.
But I can live a life that tells on other lives,
And makes this world less full of anguish and of pain;
A life that like the pebble dropped upon the sea
Sends its wide circles to a hundred shores.
May such a life be mine.
Creator of true life, Thyself the life Thou givest,
Give Thyself, that Thou mayest dwell in me, and I in Thee.2
1 M. G. Pearse. 2 Horatius Bonar.
Apostolic Christianity.
45
Literature.
Alexander (W.), Verbum Cruris, 147.
Arnold (T.), Sermons, ii. 24.
Bamford (J. M.), The Burning Heart, 151.
Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Women, and Children, iii. 610.
Fairbairn (R. B.), College Sermons, 264.
Gilmore (J. D.), The Church and its Privileges, 25.
Goodwin (H.), Parish Sermons, 3rd Ser., 242.
Henson (H. H.), Godly Union and Concord, 90.
Hort (F. J. A.), Judaistic Christianity, 39.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions of Holy Scripture : Acts, i. 79.
Martyn (H. J.), For Christ and the Truth, 168.
Mylne (R. S.), TJie True Ground of Faith, 57.
Reichel (C. P.), Cathedral and University Sermons, 185.
Talbot (E. S.), Some Titles and Aspects of the Eucharist, 75.
Tholuck (A.), Hours of Christian Devotion, 227.
Vaughan (C. J.), The Church of the First Days, 41.
Wilson (J. M.), Sermons in Clifton College Chapel, 2nd Ser., 21.
Christian World Pulpit, lvi. 145 (Scott Holland).
Contemporary Pulpit, 2nd Ser., ii. 257 (Alexander).
Examiner, 9th February 1905 (Jowett).
Plain Sermons by Contributors to Tracts for the Times, i. 295.