Faith in Christ an Assurance of Hope. 51

in earth is given, contains an assurance which is the perennial nourishment of all that is strenuous and hopeful. The eye of the Church does not droop over the memory of a dead hero, or of a martyr who speaks only through the effect of His martyrdom. It turns, with a gaze always bright and ardent, to a living Lord, Brother, Friend. The confirmation of all that hope leaps forward to claim is its confidence that He is the true King and Leader of men. Even when wrong seems to triumph, this is the pledge, that whatsover is right eternally is; that the wrong is only as the black cloud which, drifting athwart the firmament, temporarily obscures the azure beyond. There can be no pessimism where there is the stout heart of the preacher in East London, whom Matthew Arnold has sketched in one of his most beautiful sonnets

"Ill and o'erworked, how fare you in this scene?' So the poet asked, and the answer came—

"Bravely, for I of late have been much filled

With thoughts of Christ the living Bread.”

The mind much filled with these thoughts calls sin sin, and sees in it an exceeding sinfulness. It beholds with tears the city in its woes and sorrows. But because its God is the God of

hope, because its Lord is the Christ Who was and is and is to come, because it believes in a kingdom of grace which is active in the midst of social confusions and upheavals, and, even by means of them, is working out larger and fuller measures of good, it can be patient in tribulation, nay, in the dark and cloudy day it cannot be otherwise than sanguine. Men protest that the harvest will not come, if it ever comes at all, until millenniums have passed. The Church, lifting up its eyes to the heaven where its Lord is, replies, "Lo, the fields are white already to harvest," and courageously it works and restfully it waits.

CHAPTER IV.

THE AGGRESSIVE SOCIAL ACTION OF THE CHURCH.

THOSE Who are observant of the movement of great social forces in directions which they anxiously scrutinise, who feel the pressure of great problems the solution of which they are unable to discover, are apt to take an exaggerated view of the burdens and difficulties of their time. Now, for the encouragement of faith, it is good to cast the eye backward over the centuries during which the Church of Christ has been fulfilling the vocation of her Lord and Head. History," it has been said, "is the chart and compass of national endeavour.” 1 The history of the Church is the chart and compass of Christian endeavour. It indicates the paths along which, under the guidance of the Spirit of Truth, it has travelled and is called to travel. It tells us of the rocks and

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1 Friends in Council, p. 227.

reefs to be avoided, of the forces which have interrupted, and still interrupt, its legitimate progress. It brings us into relation to those master spirits of the ages who, by their inspiration and service, shaped the best action of their day, and it opens up to us the secret of the strength by which they "subdued kingdoms and wrought righteousness." It proves to us that, though they may vary in form, the struggles we must face, the aims we must pursue, are, after all, the perennial struggles and aims of the higher life in Christ, in its conflict with the inferior purposes and ambitions of men. And thus, by all the testimony of the ages gone, we are encouraged to "take up the whole armour of God, that we may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand."1

But, for two reasons, a retrospect of ecclesiastical history may repel rather than attract.

In the first place, the features most prominent in the retrospect are far from inviting. We might expect gardens of the Lord, watered everywhere, beautiful with flowers, fragrant with spices, and enriched with trees yielding all manner of fruit, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. Instead of this, we are

1 Eph. vi. 13.

Real Interest of Ecclesiastical History. 55

introduced to a succession of wide tracts swept bare by storms of passion, of arid wastes of controversy, of scenes in which priestcraft is beheld borrowing the carnal weapons of the most despicable statecraft, and creating atmospheres of wile, intrigue, and oppression. This is true. But let us bring the eyes of Christian wisdom and love to our study. Neander has rightly observed that "our understanding of the history of Christianity will depend on the conception we have formed in our own minds of Christianity itself." If we have formed the conception of a society the law of whose development is, that the authority on which it must depend is a moral authority, that the truth with which it is charged can be unfolded only through frictions, through the cleavages caused by the sword which Christ announced that He had come to send, that the divine treasure, moreover, is deposited in earthen vessels, in weak and imperfect men; then, we shall not only cease to wonder at the battles whose stains and traces are evident in every generation, but we shall feel that these battles are full of pathos and interest, we shall see in them the resistances. of the darkness which is always seeking to overtake the light, and the often slow, but ulti1 Church History, Introduction.