T[ Do you not think that the ordinary standpoint of so-called Christian teaching is undergoing a destruction, and that the
1 George John Romanes, Life and Letters, 267.
8 J. A. Clapperton, Culture of the Christian Heart, 68.
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devil's travesty is waning? Terrorism is no real factor in Christianity. Surely Christianity is the response which follows the recognition of Love and its beneficent purpose of Universal beatitude. In that atmosphere the heart beats freely and fully, for it breathes the Hope which Love begets. We ought to breathe the Hope before we attempt to deal with the distresses of life; then should we be armed with the Sympathy that is powerful, and not merely with the sympathy that is the recog- nition of a common woe.1
K Yesterday, after reading Romance of Rose, thought much of the destruction of all my higher power of sentiment by late sorrow; and considered how far it might be possible to make love, though hopeless, still a guide and strength.2
Is any grieved or tired? Yea, by God's will: Surely God's Will alone is good and best: 0 weary man, in weariness take rest,
0 hungry man, by hunger feast thy fill.
Discern thy good beneath a mask of ill, Or build of loneliness thy secret nest: At noon take heart, being mindful of the west;
At night wake hope, for dawn advances still.
At night wake hope. Poor soul, in such sore need Of wakening and of girding up anew, Hast thou that hope which fainting doth pursue? No saint but hath pursued and hath been faint;
Bid love wake hope, for both thy steps shall speed, Still faint yet still pursuing, 0 thou saint.3
4. Faith, Hope, Love. — When St. Paul takes three words, and couples them with a verb in the singular, he is not making a slip of the pen, or committing a grammatical blunder which a child could correct. But there is a great truth in that piece of apparent grammatical irregularity; for the faith, the hope, and the love, for which he can afford only a singular verb, are thereby declared to be in their depth and essence one thing, and it, the triple star, abides, and continues to shine; the three primitive colours are unified in the white beam of light. Do not correct the grammar, and spoil the sense, but discern what he means when he says, " Now abided faith, hope, love." For this is what
1 R. W. Corbet, Letters from a Mystic of the Present Day, 150. 8 Ruskin in E. T. Cook's Life of Buskin, ii. 267. ■ Christina G. Rossetti, Poems, 164.
430 THESE THREE
he means, that the two latter come out of the former, and that without it they are naught, and that it without them is dead.
(1) Faith is the rightful attitude of self and our neighbour to God : Hope is the recognition and welcome of God's purpose for self, and our neighbour: Love binds God, self, and our neighbour in the perfect bond of the Divinely purposed harmony.
If You have seen that famous picture of the French artist Millet, "The Angelus." You remember the scene which it depicts — a very homely and, at the first glance, prosaic scene : a potato-field and two figures, a man and a woman, surrounded by the implements of their toil. It is a dull, bleak landscape, and away across the level tract you see a village with the church - spire rising above the lowly roofs. It is evening, and the bell has rung out its call to prayer. Its silvery chime has reached the ears of the two labourers, and after the devout manner of their country they have hearkened to its call. They have dropped their tools, and they are standing erect, with bowed heads and folded hands, in the attitude of prayer. I once heard an interpretation of this picture from my old teacher, the late Professor Henry Drummond. There, he said, are the three elements of a complete life — Work, God, and Love. The field, the spade, the basket, and the barrow — there is Work ; the bowed heads and the folded hands — there is Eeligion ; the two, a man and a woman, whatever be their relationship — there is Love. And this is precisely the idea of the saying of St. Paul in our text.1
So Faith shall build the boundary wall, And Hope shall plant the secret bower,
That both may show magnifical With gem and flower.
While over all a dome must spread, And Love shall be that dome above;
And deep foundations must be laid, And these are Love.
(2) Though separated in the representation, faith, hope, and love are really inseparable companions, closely united, not only to every Christian, but also to each other. What, indeed, is faith without hope and love ? A cold conviction of the intellect, but without life-awakening power in the heart, or mature fruit in the life. Without hope, faith would never behold heaven;
1 D. Smith, Mans Need of God, 16.
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but even if it could enter therein, heaven would lack its highest bliss. What is hope without faith and love ? At most, an idle dream from which we soon shall sadly wake ; a fragrant blossom in the garden, fading before it has brought forth fruit. And, lastly, what is love without hope or faith ? The welling forth, perhaps, of natural feeling, but in no degree a spiritual principle of life. If love believes not, it must die; and if it hopes not in the same measure as it loves, it is then the source of unparalleled suffering. Thus, whichever of these three sisters we would separate from the others, in so doing we have subscribed her death-warrant ; nay, even if two of them remain together, the brightness of their beauty is dimmed whenever the third has disappeared.