ourselves and reminding others that the form is inadequate, that it ceases to be misleading. But for the vast mass of mankind it is of far more importance to hand down to them and through them the leading truths of revelation in any form, than to insist on the inadequacy of the form. Of course men trained, as men ought to be trained, to criticise and question everything, may feel that the cultus and dogma of Christianity in its present form, if put forward and insisted on as absolute, authoritative, exhaustive truths, are a concealment of the higher light; and their honesty compels them to renounce, and even to denounce, them. But when such men come in contact with their less critical brethren, whose convictions and hopes and faiths must be clear, defined, emphatic, dogmatic, to whom vaguer and more philosophical expressions convey no meaning, they will discover that the language in which revelation is transferable to them is, to a far larger extent than they anticipated before trial, the current language of cultus and dogma. They will be powerless to find another shell for the kernel. Nevertheless, such men will fearlessly purify their teaching from the grosser dogmas from which Christian teaching is by no means wholly free, and will try to contend, to a certain extent, with the lower religious instinct in the true spirit of their Master, educating their people to feel the spirit, and not only see the letter.

Surely we shall feel more and more that revelation includes the great teachings of history, of morality, and of science; that these, rightly read, strengthen our conviction of the spiritual brotherhood of man and sonship to God, which were in an especial sense the work of our Lord Jesus Christ to reveal.

He

revealed them-He drew aside the veil, and showed us that these truths were there for us to see; and more than ever we shall find in Him the revelation of truths which history, ethics, and science by themselves fail to make plain. Where else shall we find writ plain the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God? How phantasmal are the forms in which it can be deduced from any source except the living Christ! So at least it seems to me.

But I have travelled somewhat far in my endeavour to contrast the limited sense in which religion is used in this phrase, "comparative religion," as a mutable expression of a part of man's nature, with revelation, that ever-broadening light that is illuminating the world: and now I must at last conclude.

In treating, then, of comparative religion, we must not be misled when we treat Christianity as one of the great "religions" of the world. We now know what we mean. We mean that the revelation of God was universal, but was pre-eminently seen in the Jewish nation, among whom according to the flesh Christ came; that the revelation of God made in Him was, so far as we know, final, supplemented only by the continuous educating influence of His Holy Spirit on man. But that in the nations which have most fully adopted the Christian revelation there has developed itself a cultus and dogma, in other words a "religion," derived by no means exclusively from revelation, but in large measure from sources which it is the function of history to trace, and of philosophy to examine; and that these developments form the mutable dress of the immutable and ever-accumulating revelation of God.

What a guide, my friends, is there here to our

conduct and our thoughts; what hope, what inspiration! The pages of history open themselves for our guidance. Had you lived in the days of the prophets, had you lived in the days of Christ, had you lived in the days of St. Paul, of the Reformation-had you lived in any great age when new light streamed on the world-would you not long with a consuming desire to have been among the few who opened eyes and hearts to that light, and bravely sided with the few against the many-with light and charity and revelation and God, against darkness and cruelty and obscurantism and human passion even though they took the sacred name of "religion"? Would you not long for this with a consuming desire? Then remember that the struggle is incessant, and is quite as plain now as ever it was. Remember that it is a great age in which you are living; try to contribute to its greatness. We are called on by all the voices of the past, by the solemn duties we owe to the future, to conquer our lower selves, to subdue "the child that is in us" that craves exclusively for the external and the positive; we are called on to use these things as not abusing them, and to live as Christ bids us, in the spirit, and not to entangle ourselves again in the yoke of bondage. "Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free"; for that is the good news of the Gospel of Christ.

NOTE.-Some of the later paragraphs were omitted or shortened in the delivery.

VIII

THE PRESENT CHURCH REVIVAL1

"Can these bones live ?"-Ezek. xxxvii. 3.

The

THERE are two periods in our recent Church history which offer a suggestive comparison to the present time. One was the period of a hundred years ago, towards the close of the much-abused eighteenth century, the century of spiritual deadness and of theoretical morality in the Church of England. question of the prophet was then asked in different tones of incredulity by sceptics, by statesmen, and by Churchmen-" Can these bones live?" And yet they were then moving with an altogether new life. The great influence of the Wesleys and Whitfield, visible during fifty years only on the masses outside the Church, was at last felt in the Church itself: below all the deadness there was a stir among the young; and in the persons of Scott and Milner and Venn and Simeon and many another there was a real revival of corporate life and of personal religion in the Church itself. Slowly and almost unnoticed the stream of influence poured in, and in a few

1 Preached in St. Mary's Church, Oxford, on Sunday evening, 8th February 1885.

years transfused into the Church a new ideal of holiness and of zeal for the souls of men, an ideal which has never been lost.

Fifty years passed away, and with them all the early heroes and fathers of that movement. Somehow the wave seemed to die away. Perhaps they lost their great principle of evangelisation and brotherhood of the saints; perhaps they reached the limit of their possible influence; but what had been a spirit of life fixed itself as a party, and the party crystallised itself where it was left by its early chiefs, and its life began to dwindle, and its voice to be less sturdy; and once more, fifty years ago, the inadequacy of the English Church to meet the vast and varied needs of the English nation began to press on many an earnest soul. Once more was asked the same question in the same varied tones, from within, from without-"Can these bones live?"

Yet you know that even then there was in full young life in Oxford a movement ridiculed by some few, dreaded and suspected by a few more, but ignored by the great majority of Churchmen, which, nevertheless, flooded the Church of England with a new power and energy which makes this nineteenth century a great epoch in our Church history.

Nevertheless, now again, within and without our Church, in the same tones of anxiety, of indifference, of triumph, is asked the same question-" Can these bones live?"

I am speaking to Churchmen in the strongest centre of Church feeling; and you may perhaps wonder that I so speak of the Church now. But be not deceived. We must not be under the illusion that fresh activity, and more churches, and more