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STRONG SOULS:

A SERMON,

PREACHED IN

RENSHAW STREET CHAPEL, LIVERPOOL,

ON

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1882.

BY

CHARLES BEARD, B.A.

PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION.




LONDON:
PRINTED BY C. GREEN AND SON,
178, STRAND.




In Memory of

ELIZABETH RATHBONE,

OF GREENBANK,

AGED 92.




STRONG SOULS.

JOHN x. 10 p. (Revised Version):

"I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly."


Life is a gift of very unequal distribution. I am not speaking merely of
length of life, though that is an important element in the case: there
may be sad and quiet years which do not count: we have known existences
which crept on in one dull round, from petty pleasure to petty pleasure,
from monotonous occupation to monotonous occupation, never roused to
storm by any noble passion, never thrilled by an electric touch of
sympathy. Some lives are complete within narrow limits: in the few
years which are all they have, they ripen into perfect sweetness, or
expend themselves in such a flash of heroism, as would make subsequent
days, were they given, mean and poor by contrast. What shall we say of
that nameless engine-driver in America, who last week, measuring his own
life against six hundred more, rushed through the flames and saved them?
Dead of his glorious wounds, who would dare to pity him, or to think his
end untimely? Life may be measured by its breadth as well as by its
length: by the number of its intellectual points of contact with
humanity, by the width of its sympathies, the largeness of its hopes.
Still more, there is a quality of intensity in which lives differ: some
live more in a week than others in a year: it is not that they are
consuming themselves under stress of circumstance or in agony of
passion, but that their fibre is stronger, their central flame
brighter, their power of endurance larger. This inequality of gift may
be a religious difficulty, but it fits in with the whole economy of
Nature, who is a Mother at once bountiful and prodigal, and while
careful of the type, careless of the individual life; bidding one soul
but open unconscious eyes upon the world and close them again, while
another moves through the slow changes of ninety years. But it is easier
to understand when we remember that a just God asks account only of what
He has given. Within the narrowest fate is yet room to round off the
perfect sphere. Of the lily that blooms to-day and fades to-morrow, He
demands only that it shall be sweet and beautiful in its season.

Energy is largely, though perhaps not wholly, a physical quality. It
comes of a certain superb vitality, a power of unconscious living,
well-strung nerves, a quickly-working brain. I know the wonders which an
eager will and a keen conscience can work, with no better instrument
than a frail body, always full of languors, always accessible to pain;
and I bow before them in glad reverence, as tokens of the spirit's
victory over the flesh. But this, though undoubtedly from a moral point
of view not inferior, is not the same thing as the easy swing of mind
and body which is not only always equal to its work, but finds its
keenest delight in strenuous efforts and long-drawn toils, which would
hopelessly overtax weaker men. And there is an obvious connection
between this kind of vitality and that which shows itself in life
prolonged far beyond the usual limits. Men and women do not live the
longer for sparing themselves, even were long life under such
conditions worth having. I admit the wearing power of fretting anxiety,
of sorrow that saps the springs of life, of labour pushed to contempt of
the physical and moral conditions of existence; but honest work for an
honest purpose, the full exercise of all the powers from day to day, the
steady strain of faculties that were meant for strain and which rust in
disuse, never hurt any one yet. But the temptations of exuberant
vitality are all, if not to over-strain, yet to a certain hardness, and
arrogance, and disregard of eternal law. It is not complimentary to
human nature to note that perfectly healthy people, whom nothing tries
and who are ignorant of pain, are seldom tolerant, tender, sympathetic,
with lives that in one important constituent of happiness are far
beneath their own. Upon such the shadow of the infinite seems to fall
but seldom. They succeed in so many things that they undertake, as to
escape the sense of the impassable barriers that hem in all human
existence. The very fact of living is so much to them, that they fail to
see the meaning of the limitations, the shortcomings, the
disappointments of life. They feel no abiding smart of a thorn in the
flesh, and so are never forced back upon a higher strength than their
own. And yet it is when a nature richly endowed with all the elements of
vitality, and living from the first, living to the last, devotes itself
to the highest aims and is supported by the highest helps, that we see
what I will venture to call the finest triumph of grace. Or if the word
triumph seem to imply a struggle, which is not always necessary, and
difficulties which may never have vexed the development of a vigorous
life, I will describe the result as the richest and sweetest harvest of
the Spirit's husbandry. Great things can be accomplished only by great
natures, and even then by the help and under the eye of God.

"I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly." Life is
the characteristic word of the great spiritual Gospel from which my text
is taken. And no word can penetrate more deeply into the secret of
Christ than this does. He was the sweetest, the most persuasive of moral
teachers; but ethical principles and precepts are the common possession
of humanity; and that in which Christ is pre-eminent over all sages is
not so much that he gives us new matter of obedience, as that he infuses
into us a fresh power to obey. I fail to see that he anywhere presents
to us a dogmatic theological system: I do not believe that his apostles
succeed in throwing his teaching into this shape. But supposing that it
were so, as so many men believe, life is still the ultimate object, the
life of God in man, the life which quickens all faculties, and casts off
all impurities, and rises into a higher stage of vitality from year to
year. "I am the way, the truth, and the life." "I came that they may
have life, and may have it abundantly." "The bread of God is he which
cometh down from heaven and giveth life unto the world." "I am the bread
of life." So, too, the author of this Gospel, speaking in his own
person: "In him was life, and the life was the light of men." So Paul:
"The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus." "Your life is hid with
Christ in God." And last of all, in that antithesis so full of
instruction: "The first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam
was made a life-giving spirit."

Adam's children we all are in the possession of a physical nature full
of possibilities of moral good and evil: the question for us is, shall
we be Christ's children too? I cannot assert that this is the only line
in which we can inherit life: heroes and saints before and apart from
Christ would rise up to rebuke me if I did. God's tender mercies, even
of the most intimately spiritual kind, are over all His human children.
But it is the line in which we naturally stand; and to stand in it I
count the highest privilege of our humanity. I will lay down no
conditions of salvation where I believe Christ has laid none down: I
will not attempt to compare his disciples with those of other masters: I
am content to know that here is a fountain of living waters, which flows
for us, and at which those who drink shall never thirst again. I will
not even try to define the process by which a strong, bright,
master-soul pours itself into poorer and narrower spirits, for I rest
joyfully in the certain knowledge that it is so. Is it not possible to
forget the fact too much in discussing the rationale of the process? "In
the last day, that great day of the feast," when the silver trumpets
were sounding, and the priests were bearing up to the temple court the
water which they had drawn from that brook Siloam which "flows fast by
the oracles of God," "Jesus stood and cried, 'If any man thirst, let him
come unto me and drink. He that believeth in me, as the Scripture has
said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.'" There is the
whole secret. All true life is contagious. Not the dull and dead, but
only the living, can quicken. Fragrance makes fragrant: sweetness
imparts sweetness: strength begets strength. How many of us have
learned integrity from an upright father, and breathed in the confidence
of faith at a mother's knee? They gave because they had; and Christ was
their fountain-head.

The religious life, to some imaginations, presents itself as inclining
largely to the side of the passive and the negative. It is abstinence
from evil quite as much as eager realization of good. On this view, an
air of cloistered sanctity hangs about it: it is full of prayers and
mystic raptures: its eye is fixed within, or, if not within, only upon
God. It is sweet rather than strong: more meditative than active: a
faint fragrance exhales from it, but it does not forget itself to
grapple with wrong, or descend upon the arena of human woes and
oppressions, full of the heat of battle, or, with a careless heroism,
spend itself to the last for the kingdom of God. I do not deny the
reality and the sweetness of this type of goodness; but it is not the
only type, and much less the type produced by the contagion of Christ
upon a strong nature and an eager vitality. I have said that the
abundant physical gift of life may carry with it a certain temptation to
an unsympathizing self-sufficiency. It is difficult not to be proud of
an untiring energy, and faculties that are always abreast of the demands
made upon them, and an immunity from pain and languor which is like a
double portion of strength. But what if all these things are only a
larger gift to lay upon the altar of humanity? What if strength be used
only to follow with swifter stride in the self-denying footsteps of
Christ? What if the sense of joyous energy only fortifies the soul
against disappointment, and makes light of hindrances, and enables
patience to have her perfect work? We envy the strong because we think
they can do more than we, and enjoy more than we--in a word, because
they live more than we. Let us envy them, if at all, because they have
more than we to give to God and men, and answer with a fuller and more
eager impulse to the breath of inspiration, and can throw a less
infinitesimal weight into the scale of the Divine purpose.

Such lives, believe me, are eminently happy. They have their full
measure of sensibility, and therefore their full share of trouble too.
What sorrows come to all, do not spare them; and it is the quickly
throbbing heart that is the tenderest. They cannot take life with dull
acquiescence, being neither keenly glad nor greatly sorry: to them, its
brightness is like opening Paradise; its gloom, a very valley of the
Shadow of Death. And as they emerge out of the narrowness of their
personal lot, to go down into the ringing battle of the world, they
encounter blows and bruises which more selfish lives are able to avoid;
they lay bare their hearts to sorrows not their own, and are stricken
with the disappointments of mankind. Was it not a part of the secret of
Christ that his affections were so wide, his sympathies so keen, his
identification with humanity so complete, that sin not his own cast a
shadow upon him almost like remorse, and all his tears were for others'
sorrows? So is it with his strong and eager disciples: they lay their
breast against the thorn, and would not have it otherwise. And yet they
are happy. If it be happiness to have life filled to the brim with
occupation that never tires and always brings with it its own reward: to
be conscious of the easy movement of power, the strong putting forth of
faculty: to be secure against disappointment in reliance upon the
righteous purposes of God, which must prevail at last: to have a sure
escape from personal grief in the largeness of human sympathy and the
vista of universal hope: to feel, as life wears away, no disenchantment
of purpose, no stealing languor upon the will, no freezing chill upon
the heart, but only a passionate desire to live to the last in the full
glow of service, and an absolute completeness of self-renunciation--then
are these strong souls happy. They cannot but find life good, because
everywhere in it they feel the touch of God's hand; they see the skirt
of Christ's garment as he goes before them in the way.

"He that believeth on me, out of him shall flow rivers of living water."
The privilege of giving life is not Christ's alone, though still his in
the first instance and the greatest degree: it is shared by all who are
truly one with him in spirit and in work. And I am not sure that a large
part of the value to humanity of these bright and strong souls does not
lie in the inspiration which goes out of them. The weaker ones are
always apt to take life in too low a key. They are easily daunted: they
resign themselves, as they say, to the inevitable: they have too keen a
sense of evils to be overborne and difficulties to be confronted: they
learn to distrust, if not to smile at, the ideal, to call acquiescence
common sense, and cowardice prudence. And upon them the presence of a
strong soul, with its carelessness of toil, its contempt of danger, its
faith in the better things that shall be, its trust in God, its generous
self-abandonment to men, passes like a breath of inspiration, bringing
shame at once and strength with it. Before such an one, not only does
selfishness hold its peace, and cynicism forget to be sarcastic, but a
new vigour steals into the irresolute will, a fresh power of
self-sacrifice takes possession of the heart. The kingdom of God no
longer seems a dimly glorious dream, far off in a new strange world, but
an ideal that may be realized, here, upon the ruins of innumerable
failures, now, in the depths of living human hearts. It is as if God
himself were somewhat nearer to us: a strong faith seems to draw Him
down from heaven, to build His tabernacle among men: or if this cannot
be, and we know that He is always round about us, at least the mists
scatter, the clouds clear away, and we catch a glimpse of His unceasing
activity, of His eternal rest. I cling to the thought that at some time
or other the soul of every one of His children is in direct
communication with Him; but for the most part He speaks to us by other
human lips, and strong, clear, white lives are the ladder by which we
climb to Him. So down the ages we trace the golden thread of the
succession of Saints, Christ the first, afterwards they that are his, in
turn receiving, in turn giving life, blessed and blessing--till at last
the kingdom comes.

       *       *       *       *       *

You know of whom I have been speaking, friends and fellow-worshippers:
though I have named no name, you have interpreted my meaning, you have
read between my lines. And now that we are about to part, with regretful
love and honour freely paid, with the oldest of those who have loved
this place,--and, in parting with her, to bid good-bye for ever to a
generation of pious men and women who in their day served God and
wrought righteousness,--I have one last appeal to make. And I make it
far less to the middle-aged, whose habits are fixed, whose principles
chosen, and who have taken a course in life which they will not lightly
abandon, than to the young, whose nature is yet plastic, and who may
make of their existence what they will. I ask them, Is the life which I
have tried to describe worth living? or is there any other method by
which they think the highest objects of existence can be more completely
attained? Is there any finer discipline for their powers than the
service of God, any nobler education than the fellowship of Christ? I do
not plead with them for allegiance to any particular form of
Christianity, though we have a right to rejoice in the strength and
sweetness of our own Saints, and I might argue that the faith which
issues in such fruit of holy living cannot be without its just claim to
respect. But my interest is at once deeper and wider than this: I plead
for Christianity, I plead for Religion; for the awe of God, for the love
of Christ, for the service of man. We are falling upon careless times,
when the world is too much with us, and the love of ease seduces us, and
we flit--thinking, God help us! that it is pleasure--from one facile
excitement, from one selfish gratification, to another. We live in a
sceptical age, when knowledge and faith find it hard to come to terms,
and there is always an excuse for disbelieving truths which startle the
soul into seriousness and make a painful demand upon the will. But
whatever else is false, one thing remains true--that the service of God
is strength and peace and freedom. Christ still holds the secret of
life: "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up
his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it,
and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it." Amen.