I say the acknowledgment of God in Christ, Accepted by the reason, solves for thee All questions in the earth or out of it.
That is to say, if this is true then is life a great thing, with a Divine meaning in it and a Divine end for it. The horizon of our nature lifts, and spreads out and takes in heaven itself within its scope. Forgiveness becomes a mighty fact and a mighty power. Duty takes on a warmer look ; trouble ceases to be a real calamity ; death loses its ultimate terror ; immortality becomes a sure hope. The Incarnation transfigures the universe for all who can really accept it in its fullest implications. And therefore let us live in the light of this great fact — that in Jesus Christ God has come to us, and spoken with us, and offered Himself for us and to us, that we may offer ourselves to Him, and so be filled with His fulness. Let its light shine on our daily path. Let its glory
GAL. IV. 4, 5 379
pierce our darkest moments. Let its grace meet all our need. Let its hope brighten all our shadows. " Great is the mystery " of religion, that God should become human; but greater its inspiration, for its end is that man might become Divine.
^ She was within a very little of the end, we thought, even then while it was still possible to carry her into the garden and lay her in the shelter of her tree, where, the last time but one that she was out, she wrote the second paper of this part. She thought so herself, as her meditation shows. " I feel not so much desire for the beauty to come," she says, " as a great longing to open my eyes a little wider during the time which remains to me in this beautiful world of God's making where each moment tells its own tale of active, progressive life in which there is no undoing. Nature knows naught of the web of Penelope, that acme of anxious pathetic waiting, but goes steadily on in ever widening circle towards the fulfilment of the mystery of God. There are, I take it, two master keys to the secrets of the universe, viewed suh specie ceternitatis, the Incarnation of God, and the Personality of Man : with these it is true for us as for the pantheistic little* man of contemptible speech, that ' all things are ours,' yea, even unto the third heaven." ^
The world is a bubble, and Death shall die: Love shines longer than lights in the sky.
The moon is a cinder; the sun grows old: Love's fire only shall never wax cold.
The stars burn out, but the lamp of Love Illumines for ever the Blessed above.
Love is the soul of the song they sing Through the day that fears not an evening.
The song of their love shall for ever resound
In the ears of the Love whom their God hath crowned.
Crowned in heaven is the Love who came For love of the loveless to sorrow and shame.
Deathless in heaven is the Love who died; Adored, whom Caiaphas crucified.
' Michael Fairies: : Her Lift and Writings, 84.
38o THE MISSION OF THE SON
Here by His love is His Church led forth
From the east and west, from the south and north,
Ever a pilgrim, through snow, through heat.
Through life, through death, till she kiss Love's feet —
Yea, my God, till her glad eyes see Love, the Lord of Eternity ! ^
* G. A. Ohadwick, Poems OMefly Sacred, 8.
True Religion.
3S1
Literature,
Blackie (J. S.), Lay Sermons^ 299. Clifford (J.), T}ie Dawn of Manhood, 152. Cooper (E.), Fifty-Two Family Sermons, 42. Gibbon (J. M.), Evangelical Heterodoxy, 228. Hatch (E.), Memorials, 89. Hiley (R. W.), A Yearns Sermons, 55. Home (C. S.), The SouVs Awakening, 61. Iverach (J.), The Other Side of Greatnesa, 52. Liddon (H. P.), Bampton Lectures for 1866, 284. Maclaren (A.), Christ in the Heart, 229.
„ „ Sermons Preached in Manchester, ii. 207.
Murphy (E. G.), The Larger Life, 121. Pusey (E. B,), Selected Occasional Sermons, 1. Robinson (C. S.), Studies in the New Testament, 169. Ryle (H. E.), On the Church of England, 253. Seeker (T,), Sermons, v. 355, 383. Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxii. (1876), No. 1280 ;
xxvi.(1880), No. 1553 ; xiix. (1883), No. 1750. Stanley (A. P.), Canterbury Sermons, 190, 205, 222. Temple (F.), Rugby Sermons, iii. 181. Tholuck (A.), Hours of Christian Devotion, 296. Voysey (C), Sermons (1876), No. 26. Wilson (S. L.), Helpful Words for Daily Life, 46. Woodward (H.), Sermons, 352.
Christian World Pulpit, xix. 26 (H. W. Beecher) ; xxi. 251 (H. W. Beecher) ; xlvii. 342 (J. Iverach) ; 1, 262 (J. Iverach).
Church of England Magazine, xxxiv. 8 (R. Harvey).
Chwrqhman's Pulpit : The Lenten Season, v. 207 (B, Compton).
383
True Religion.
For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision avsiileth anything, nor uncircuni< cision ; but faith working through love.— Gal. v. 6.
It is remarkable to notice how large a space in the history of mankind is occupied by controversies about religion; they have existed at almost all times, and in almost all countries ; and some- times, as, for example, in the early days of Christianity, and at the period of the Eeformation in Europe, they have absorbed all other controversies into themselves, and have gathered, as it were, into a single focus all the scattered energies of men.