ON GOING FORWARD. may cry-as no doubt Moses cried-vehemently and bitterly. But the answer to prayer comes in the invigorated sinew which grasps the weapon, in the inspired soul which wields it, in the heroic resolution to do and dare, in the lessening selfishness, the growing self-sacrifice of the effort we make. No; God will not do things for us-least of all when they become difficult; but He will give us power to do: "As our day our strength will be." "I can do all things through Christ, who strengtheneth me." 66 III. Light again is thrown upon the relations of duty and ability-" Speak unto the people, that they go forward "-do a thing they manifestly cannot do. "Stretch forth my hand," when it is withered! "Take up my couch and walk," when I am palsied! 'Give these five thousand people to eat" when we have only five barley loaves and two small fishes! "Are ye able to drink of my cup, and be baptised with my baptism?" "We are able." And Christ took them at their word. It is a great law of God's kingdom, that we are often called to do things for which we have no measured or calculated ability-things that seem utterly beyond our power. He will never do very much who exactly calculates all demands-that is to walk by sight, not by faith. And yet it is no sin against Christian prudence to say concerning great things, things which may seem inordinately great-" We are able." For it is a demonstrable if not a natural law, that the ability to do comes not only with but through the effort. It is by attempting great things that I develop power to do them. I have not before I begin all the power needful for success. Power comes as I strive, step by step, effort after effort; power is an elastic string, strength increases only by exercise. A man with little faith, and a good deal of self-indulgence, or even prudent calculation, will not develop strength, he will become a practical imbecile. He is so careful about difficulties that he will run no risks. That his left hand may not see what his right hand does he thinks it prudent to do nothing. I do not know a great movement in history, or a great enterprise in the Church, that a "prudent man" originated. "Prudent men" never go forward into Red Seas, they stop in Egypt. They are not prudent men whose achievements are recorded in the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Noah, who built his ark amid the gibes of his generation, was not a prudent man; Abraham, who left his patrimony to go to a land he did not know, was not a prudent man; Moses, who sacrificed his prospects of the Egyptian throne, was not a prudent man. How many things we achieve, that when we look back upon them seemed impossible! They became possible by exercises of large faith, of earnest prayer, of strenuous effort, which developed more 453 and more power. Faith, moral power, grow exceedingly by exercise. No; the men who really "go forward" in the world or the Church are the men who make the occasions they improve, not the men who wait for them, and safely calculate them. David, Nehemiah, Luther, Cromwell, Washington, each struck his blow against enormous odds, in the inspiration of a great faith, not under exact calculations of cold prudence. We shall not " 'go forward" unless we have great faith. He who would greatly do must greatly dare; and when we are doing God's work, and can ask Him to attest our motives and aims, our faith may dare much. Missions, orphanages, churches, what marvels have been done in them by simple faith! IV. Such being the condition of progress, how are we practically to realise it? (1) There must be distinct and strong resolution that progress shall be the law of our life; the "things behind" forgotten, the "things before ' laid hold of; that in personal life, in the house, in the Church, some large attainment of goodness, some large achievement of work, shall be realised. This demands resolution, simple, strong, unwavering. For progress in good is in every way opposed; obstacles within and without have to be Overcome. He who runs the race "keeps his body in subjection." Indolence, selfishness, littleness, must be overcome. Not to advance is to recede; not to struggle forward, is to drift backward. A definite and a worthy thing to be done, let that be our motto and resolve. No peril is so great as that of going back. And not to go forward, not to be and to achieve more than we have ever done before, is to go back. Lot's wife only looked back, and was destroyed where she stood. He that putteth his hand to the plough and looketh back, is not fit for the kingdom of God." (2) The spirit of progress is the spirit of faithfaith in God's sufficient help-"As thy days, thy strength shall be." The faith of the man with the withered hand caused him to stretch it forth; the faith of the palsied man enabled him to take up his couch; the faith of the mistaken and ambitious disciples enabled them to drink of their Master's cup. Practically, alas, our faith does not often surpass our capabilities, more commonly it falls ignominiously short of them. Faith not in ourselves, but in Him who "calls us to glory, honour, and immortality." "We can do all things through Him who strengtheneth us." (3) Hence the spirit of progress will be the spirit of prayer. We lift our hand, and advance our foot, and ask Him to guide our way by the pillar-cloud, to divide the sea for us by His power, to prepare provisions for us in the desert, to fight our battles, and bring us to His rest. If we go forward in His paths, doing His work, He will never leave us ner forsake us. "I will go in the strength of the Lord God: I will make mention of His righteousness, of His only." (4) The spirit of progress is the spirit of gratitude. Memories of past achievement, of past help, a feeling of the great blessing of having achieved. We have achieved what seemed once impossible. Feeble spiritual life has become strong; the little one a thousand." "The Lord hath been mindful of us; He will bless us." (5) The spirit of progress is the spirit of large expectations. We shall achieve, endure, attain yet more and more. God will be with us in our work, however arduous; and in its accomplishment He will give us our reward. When we rest in the strength and joy of achievement we shall feel it was worth the endeavour, and we shall wonder at the fear and hesitation of our own little faith. The Canaan of rest is worth the perils of the Exodus, the hardships of the wilderness. Freedom is more than life; and God's freedom for the soul is the only true life of a man. R THE LATER CHRISTIAN FATHERS. BY THE REV. H. COURTENAY ATWOOL, M.A., M.D., VICAR OF HARLESDEN. EFORM of any kind is seldom effected without disturbance. Men are so constituted that questions of mere order and relative expediency can scarcely be resolved without commotion; and when the foundations of wide-spread notions and customs are examined, with a view to mending them on conviction of error, there is the greatest danger of revolution ending in confusion and ruin. This peril was encountered and felt to the fullest extent in the reformation of Christianity which reached its crisis in the sixteenth century. It is not easy, in the present age, to realise the conditions under which our fathers struggled into religious liberty, and won for us the degree of Christian peace we now enjoy. When we look back upon those times, we are struck most forcibly with the spirit of opposition which seems to have possessed men zealous for God's truth, and the tenacity with which conflicting opinions of things passing all human understanding were held on to at any sacrifice. These were the salient features of excitement, which rose and fell like bubbles on a boiling surface; but the deep religious fervour which sustained the conflict to the end must be sought and acknowledged as, under God, the real secret of success. Even now we cannot tell what further measure of outward agreement and conscious harmony may be growing up within the body of Christians, nourished in secret by the sober, righteous, and godly lives of individuals who seek, not their own distinction, but their brethren's good. Such men were the life of the Reformation. It is only in cases where circumstances forced them to the front that we know even their names. The few of whom much more is known deserve a place of honour in our thoughts as well as our warmest regard. When the Church in England threw off the yoke of Rome it had a battle to fight for very life, with foes attacking it from opposite quarters. It had to face the indignant tyrant who repudiated its claim to existence, and to confront those who accused it of half measures and a timeserving policy. The position was not an easy one to maintain; and this fact throws much light on the history of the period, while it accounts for the prominence of two names which we shall see to be closely connected with each other. Bishop Jewell, the author of the famous "Apology," was one of the chief champions of his Church in the conflict with Rome; while Richard Hooker defended it against those who would have swept all away in his learned and exhaustive books on the "Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity." Hooker was remarkable from his earliest childhood for great gentleness and modesty of disposition. He was grave and deliberate in motion and speech, and evinced a very inquiring turn of mind. Born at Heavitree, near Exeter, in the year 1553, he was intended by his parents, who were respectable people of limited means, to be apprenticed to some trade. However, his schoolmaster, observing his unusual intelligence and fondness for study, persuaded them to continue his education, and eventually succeeded in prevailing upon his uncle, John Hooker, Chamberlain of Exeter, to interest himself in behalf of so promising a lad. This uncle was an intimate friend of John Jewell, then Bishop of Salisbury, who had formerly held an appointment as commissioner to visit the churches in the west of England, and he now went to Salisbury to confer with him about his nephew's prospects. The bishop then invited Richard Hooker and his schoolmaster to an interview at his palace the following Easter, when he was so pleased with the boy's manner and intelligence that he made an allowance for his instruction, and promised to send him to the University. In 1567 he introduced him to Dr. Cole, President THE LATER CHRISTIAN FATHERS. of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, who gave him a clerk's place, in which he continued his studies in quiet till he was about eighteen years of age. About that time Hooker suffered from a dangerous illness, which lasted for two months, during which we are told that his mother was constant in her prayers for his recovery. His affection for her was very great; and it is recorded that when he heard of her anxiety he would pray that he might never live to occasion any sorrow to so good a mother, of whom he would often say that he loved her so dearly that he would endeavour to be good, as much for her sake as for his own. As soon as his health was sufficiently restored he undertook a journey on foot to Exeter, to pay his mother a visit, and he passed through Salisbury on his way to see his kind friend and patron Bishop Jewell. Here we meet with a little incident that shows us something of the good bishop's genial disposition. It had not occurred to him to give Hooker any money until he had left the palace; but he sent after him, and on his return, he put a walking-stick into his hand, telling him he had called him back to lend him a horse which had carried him well on his own travels, and that he must be sure to bring it to him again. He then took out his purse, and gave him something to spend on his journey home, and back to Oxford, as well as a sum to give to his mother, with a bishop's blessing. The stick was duly returned; but not long afterwards Bishop Jewell died, and Dr. Cole became young Hooker's only patron at Oxford. However, shortly before his death Jewell had been speaking of Hooker to his friend Edwin Sandys, Bishop of London, and afterwards Archbishop of York, who was SO favourably impressed with his account that he resolved to send his son to Oxford as Hooker's pupil. This gave him the opportunity of forming a friendship which continued throughout his life. Thus the names of Jewell and Hooker are closely connected in more ways than by the fact of their both having written works in defence of their faith. The modesty and gentleness which characterised Hooker as a child seem to have increased as he arrived at man's estate. He is described as meek and bashful to a degree, so that his pupils could easily look him out of countenance, and while preaching his sermons, even in later years, he used to keep his eyes fixed on some distant point, as though he could not bear the gaze of his congregation. This trait in his nature may go far to account for the unhappy domestic position in which he was shortly placed by a most unsuitable marriage. Soon after his ordination he was appointed to preach at St. Paul's Cross, in London. In those days provision was made for the board and lodging of the preachers for two days before and one after the Sunday of the sermon. The inn 455 at which they used to stay was commonly called, on that account, the "Shunammites' house," and it was kept by a family named Churchman. Hooker had intended to walk from Oxford, but a friend induced him to accept the use of a horse, which turned out to be a great hindrance to him, for it would not trot a step, and, as it rained all the time, he arrived at the "Shunammites" thoroughly drenched and chilled. He felt sure that he must have caught such a cold that it would be impossible for him to fulfil his engagement on the Sunday. But Mrs. Churchman was so assiduous in providing for his comfort, and airing his clothes, that after a day's rest and care he was as well as ever. The good lady's interest in her guest did not cease with these kind attentions, for she told him that so mild and studious a person as he seemed to be ought to provide himself with a wife, who should be always at hand to attend to those wants which he was too unselfish to think of. He replied that there might be reason in what she said, but that he had no opportunities of meeting with one who would undertake such a charge. The result of their conversation was that Mrs. Churchman undertook to find one for him, and Mr. Hooker promised to return to London as soon as she should advise him of the arrangement. This she did in the following year; and he forsook the quiet repose of the university to marry the "Shunammite's" daughter Joan. Leaving Oxford, where he had for some time been a fellow of his college and Hebrew lecturer, Hooker was now presented to the small living of Drayton Beauchamp, near Aylesbury. About a year afterwards, Edwin Sandys, son of the archbishop, came with another friend and former pupil, George Cranmer, to pay their respected tutor a visit. They found him in a field, minding a few sheep, which he said he could not leave until his servant returned from dinner. That, however, was not very long, and on arriving at the parsonage the friends hoped they should enjoy a quiet chat together. But very soon a shrill voice was heard calling Richard to rock the baby; and altogether he was in such domestic request, and even apparent disgrace, that his friends were forced on the morrow to look out for a more quiet lodging. But they were not satisfied with leaving their host to his fate, for Sandys, on his return home, represented the matter to his father, and begged him to place his old tutor in some position where his talents might find more scope and his means be less straitened. It was thus by the archbishop's influence that Hooker was appointed Master of the Temple, and became involved in those controversies which led him to undertake his great work on "Ecclesiastical Polity." The position to which he was promoted was in the gift of the queen, and had been sought by Walter Travers, who was Evening Lecturer at the Temple, and had been recommended by the late Master on his death-bed as his successor. Archbishop Whitgift had opposed this appointment, on the ground that Travers was of a turbulent disposition, and for other reasons; at the same time the primate suggested the name of Dr. Bond, one of Her Majesty's chaplains, as a more suitable person for the office; but the queen thinking him disqualified by failing health, was glad to take the Archbishop of York's advice, and give the appointment to Richard Hooker. Travers continued to hold his former office, and so, as it was quaintly expressed at the time, "The forenoon sermon spake Canterbury, and the afternoon Geneva." Travers lost no opportunity of finding fault with the teaching of Hooker; but the controversy seems to have been carried on with very little bitterness on either side; Hooker, at least, is known to have spoken throughout of his opponent in the kindest terms, and simply to have maintained his cause with "quiet learning and humility." reason but to live to finish his three remaining books of Polity; and then, Lord, let Thy servant depart in peace," which was his usual expression. He lived just long enough to accomplish this cherished desire, though it is probable that his death was hastened by such constant application. But those last three books, upon which he spent his failing strength, were not destined to appear before the world in the state to which their author had brought them, for they, with many of his other papers, seem to have been destroyed through malace or misguided zeal; and it was not till many years afterwards that they were published in such form as could be given them by careful study of the original drafts and notes which remained. Hooker was, as we have seen, a very modest and unassuming man, and yet no one can read many lines of his great book without being impressed with the depth and extent of his learning. Though the object of the work is to defend the system of the Church of England against those who would overthrow it, it contains much that must interest and instruct those who might not assent to its general argument. We cannot in a few words convey a more correct idea of the impression produced by the study of Hooker than by repeating what King James said to Archbishop Whitgift on hearing of his death. "I have," said he, "received more satisfaction in reading a leaf or paragraph in Mr. Hooker, though it were but about the fashion of churches, or church music, or the like, but especially of the sacraments, than I have had in the reading particular large treatises written but of one of those subjects by others, though very learned men; and I observe there is in Mr. Hooker no affected language, but a grave, comprehensive, clear mani The publication of some of Hooker's best sermons was due to this opposition; and when we consider that the invaluable treatise with which his name is connected with reverence by theologians of every shade of opinion was undertaken on the same account, we must admit that evil was here overruled for good. The active contest was cut short by the primate's prohibiting Travers from preaching at the Temple; and Hooker very soon wisely begged to be removed to some more tranquil sphere, where he might carry on the work he had commenced in such trying scenes. In 1591 he was presented to the living of Boscombe, and on July 17th he was appointed to the minor prebendal stall of Netheravon in Salisbury cathe-festation of reason, and that backed with the dral. There he wrote the first four books of the authority of the Scripture, the Fathers, and school"Ecclesiastical Polity," which were entered at men, and with all law, both sacred and civil; and Stationers' Hall on the 9th of March, 1592, but though many others write well, yet in the next age not published till 1594. In July 1595 he was ap- they will be forgotten. But doubtless there is in pointed Rector of Bishopsbourne, near Canter-every page of Mr. Hooker's book the picture of a bury, where he remained till the time of his death, in the year 1600. The fifth book of his great work was published separately in 1597, and dedicated to the Archbishop of Canterbury. The whole work consists of eight books; and during his last illness, which was long and painful, he was very anxious for its completion. A friend who was with him every day relates that all the time he was most solicitous in his study, and often said "that he did not beg a long life of God for any other Divine soul, such pictures of truth and reason, and drawn in so sacred colours, that they shall never fade, but give an immortal memory to the author." We might easily enlarge upon this testimony, and quote the opinions of other royal and equally eminent persons to the same effect. The simple fact, however, that his own and after ages have, as it were by common consent, conferred upon him the title of the "judicious Hooker" may lead some of our readers to consult his writings for themselves. |