Discipline and Other Sermons

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Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk, from the
1881 Macmillan and Co. edition.

DISCIPLINE AND OTHER SERMONS

SERMON I.--DISCIPLINE

(Preached at the Volunteer Camp, Wimbledon, July 14, 1867.)

NUMBERS xxiv. 9.

He couched, he lay down as a lion; and as a great lion. Who dare
rouse him up?

These were the words of the Eastern sage, as he looked down from the
mountain height upon the camp of Israel, abiding among the groves of
the lowland, according to their tribes, in order, discipline, and
unity. Before a people so organized, he saw well, none of the
nations round could stand. Israel would burst through them, with the
strength of the wild bull crashing through the forest. He would
couch as a lion, and as a great lion. Who dare rouse him up?

But such a people, the wise Balaam saw, would not be mere conquerors,
like those savage hordes, or plundering armies, which have so often
swept over the earth before and since, leaving no trace behind save
blood and ashes. Israel would be not only a conqueror, but a
colonist and a civilizer. And as the sage looked down on that well-
ordered camp, he seems to have forgotten for a moment that every man
therein was a stern and practised warrior. 'How goodly,' he cries,
'are thy tents, oh Jacob, and thy camp, oh Israel.' He likens them,
not to the locust swarm, the sea flood, nor the forest fire, but to
the most peaceful, and most fruitful sights in nature or in art.
They are spread forth like the water-courses, which carry verdure and
fertility as they flow. They are planted like the hanging gardens
beside his own river Euphrates, with their aromatic shrubs and wide-
spreading cedars. Their God-given mission may be stern, but it will
be beneficent. They will be terrible in war; but they will be
wealthy, prosperous, civilized and civilizing, in peace.

Many of you must have seen--all may see--that noble picture of Israel
in Egypt which now hangs in the Royal Academy; in which the Hebrews,
harnessed like beasts of burden, writhing under the whips of their
taskmasters, are dragging to its place some huge Egyptian statue.

Compare the degradation portrayed in that picture with this prophecy
of Balaam's, and then consider--What, in less than two generations,
had so transformed those wretched slaves?

Compare, too, with Balaam's prophecy the hints of their moral
degradation which Scripture gives;--the helplessness, the
hopelessness, the cowardice, the sensuality, which cried, 'Let us
alone, that we may serve the Egyptians. Because there were no graves
in Egypt, hast thou brought us forth to die in the wilderness?'
'Whose highest wish on earth was to sit by the fleshpots of Egypt,
where they did eat bread to the full.' What had transformed that
race into a lion, whom none dare rouse up?

Plainly, those forty years of freedom. But of freedom under a stern
military education: of freedom chastened by discipline, and
organized by law.

I say, of freedom. No nation of those days, we have reason to
believe, enjoyed a freedom comparable to that of the old Jews. They
were, to use our modern phrase, the only constitutional people of the
East. The burdensomeness of Moses' law, ere it was overlaid, in
later days, by Rabbinical scrupulosity, has been much exaggerated.
In its simpler form, in those early times, it left every man free to
do, as we are expressly told, that which was right in his own eyes,
in many most important matters. Little seems to have been demanded
of the Jews, save those simple ten commandments, which we still hold
to be necessary for all civilized society.

And their obedience was, after all, a moral obedience; the obedience
of free hearts and wills. The law could threaten to slay them for
wronging each other; but they themselves had to enforce the law
against themselves. They were always physically strong enough to
defy it, if they chose. They did not defy it, because they believed
in it, and felt that in obedience and loyalty lay the salvation of
themselves and of their race.

It was not, understand me, the mere physical training of these forty
years which had thus made them men indeed. Whatever they may have
gained by that--the younger generation at least--of hardihood,
endurance, and self-help, was a small matter compared with the moral
training which they had gained--a small matter, compared with the
habits of obedience, self-restraint, self-sacrifice, mutual trust,
and mutual help; the inspiration of a common patriotism, of a common
national destiny. Without that moral discipline, they would have
failed each other in need; have broken up, scattered, or perished, or
at least remained as settlers or as slaves among the Arab tribes.
With that moral discipline, they held together, and continued one
people till the last, till they couched, they lay down as a lion, and
as a great lion, and none dare rouse them up.

You who are here to-day--I speak to those in uniform--are the
representatives of more than one great body of your countrymen, who
have determined to teach themselves something of that lesson which
Israel learnt in the wilderness; not indeed by actual danger and
actual need, but by preparation for dangers and for needs, which are
only too possible as long as there is sin upon this earth.

I believe--I have already seen enough to be sure--that your labour
and that of your comrades will not be in vain; that you will be, as
you surely may be, the better men for that discipline to which you
have subjected yourselves.

You must never forget that there are two sides, a softer and a
sterner side, to the character of the good man; that he, the perfect
Christ, who is the Lion of Judah, taking vengeance, in every age, on
all who wrong their fellow men, is also the Lamb of God, who shed his
own blood for those who rebelled against him. You must recollect
that there are virtues--graces we call them rather--which you may
learn elsewhere better than in the camp or on the drilling ground;
graces of character more devout, more pure, more tender, more humane,
yet necessary for the perfect man, which you will learn rather in
your own homes, from the innocence of your own children, from the
counsels and examples of your mothers and your wives.

But there are virtues--graces we must call them too--just as
necessary for the perfect man, which your present training ought to
foster as (for most of you) no other training can; virtues which the
old monk tried to teach by the stern education of the cloister; which
are still taught, thank God, by the stern education of our public
schools; which you and your comrades may learn by the best of all
methods, by teaching them to yourselves.

For here, and wherever military training goes on, must be kept in
check those sins of self-will, conceit, self-indulgence, which beset
all free and prosperous men. Here must be practised virtues which
(if not the very highest) are yet virtues still, and will be such to
all eternity.

For the moral discipline which goes to make a good soldier or a
successful competitor on this ground,--the self-restraint, the
obedience, the diligence, the punctuality, the patience, the
courtesy, the forbearance, the justice, the temperance,--these
virtues, needful for those who compete in a struggle in which the
idler and the debauchee can take no share, all these go equally
toward the making of a good man.

The germs of these virtues you must bring hither with you. And none
can give them to you save the Spirit of God, the giver of all good.
But here you may have them, I trust, quickened into more active life,
strengthened into more settled habits, to stand you in good stead in
all places, all circumstances, all callings; whether you shall go to
serve your country and your family, in trade or agriculture, at home;
or whether you shall go forth, as many of you will, as soldiers,
colonists, or merchants, to carry English speech and English
civilization to the ends of all the earth.

For then, if you learn to endure hardness--in plain English, to
exercise obedience and self-restraint--will you be (whether regulars
or civilians) alike the soldiers of Christ, able and willing to fight
in that war of which He is the Supreme Commander, and which will
endure as long as there is darkness and misery upon the earth; even
the battle of the living God against the baser instincts of our
nature, against ignorance and folly, against lawlessness and tyranny,
against brutality and sloth. Those, the deadly enemies of the human
race, you are all bound to attack, if you be good men and true,
wheresoever you shall meet them invading the kingdom of your Saviour
and your God. But you can only conquer them in others in proportion
as you have conquered them in yourselves.

May God give you grace to conquer them in yourselves more and more;
to profit by the discipline which you may gain by this movement; and
bequeath it, as a precious heirloom, to your children hereafter!

For so, whether at home or abroad, will you help to give your nation
that moral strength, without which physical strength is mere violent
weakness; and by the example and influence of your own discipline,
obedience, and self-restraint, help to fulfil of your own nation the
prophecy of the Seer -

'He couched, he lay down as a lion; and as a great lion. Who dare
rouse him up?'

SERMON II.--THE TEMPLE OF WISDOM

(Preached at Wellington College, All Saints' Day, 1866.)

PROVERBS ix. 1-5.

Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars:
she hath killed her beasts; she hath mingled her wine; she hath also
furnished her table. She hath sent forth her maidens; she crieth
upon the highest places of the city, Whoso is simple, let him turn in
hither: and to him that wanteth understanding, she saith to him,
Come, eat of my bread, and drink of the wine which I have mingled.

This allegory has been a favourite one with many deep and lofty
thinkers. They mixed it, now and then, with Greek fancies; and
brought Phoebus, Apollo, and the Muses into the Temple of Wisdom.
But whatever they added to the allegory, they always preserved the
allegory itself. No words, they felt, could so well express what
Wisdom was, and how it was to be obtained by man.

The stately Temple, built by mystic rules of art; the glorious Lady,
at once its Architect, its Priestess, and its Queen; the feast spread
within for all who felt in themselves divine aspirations after what
is beautiful, and good, and true; the maidens fair and pure, sent
forth throughout the city, among the millions intent only on selfish
gain or selfish pleasure, to call in all who were not content to be
only a more crafty kind of animal, that they might sit down at the
feast among the noble company of guests,--those who have inclined
their heart to wisdom, and sought for understanding as for hid
treasures:- this is a picture which sages and poets felt was true;
true for all men, and for all lands. And it will be, perhaps, looked
on as true once more, as natural, all but literally exact, when we
who are now men are in our graves, and you who are now boys will be
grown men; in the days when the present soulless mechanical notion of
the world and of men shall have died out, and philosophers shall see
once more that Wisdom is no discovery of their own, but the
inspiration of the Almighty; and that this world is no dead and dark
machine, but alight with the Glory, and alive with the Spirit, of
God.

But what has this allegory, however true, to do with All Saints' Day?

My dear boys, on all days Wisdom calls you to her feast, by many
weighty arguments, by many loving allurements, by many awful threats.
But on this day, of all the year, she calls you by the memory of the
example of those who sit already and for ever at her feast. By the
memory and example of the wise of every age and every land, she bids
you enter in and feast with them, on the wealth which she, and they,
her faithful servants, have prepared for you. They have laboured;
and they call you, in their mistress's name, to enter into their
labours. She taught them wisdom, and she calls on you to learn
wisdom of them in turn.

Remember, I say, this day, with humility and thankfulness of heart,
the wise who are gone home to their rest.

There are many kinds of noble personages amid the blessed company of
All Saints, whom I might bid you to remember this day. Some of you
are the sons of statesmen or lawyers. I might call on you to thank
God for your fathers, and for every man who has helped to make or
execute wise laws. Some of you are the sons of soldiers. I might
call on you to thank God for your fathers, and for all who have
fought for duty and for their country's right. Some of you are the
sons of clergymen. I might call on you to thank God for your
fathers, and for all who have preached the true God and Jesus Christ
His only-begotten Son, whether at home or abroad. All of you have
mothers, whether on earth or in heaven; I might call on you to thank
God for them, and for every good and true woman who, since the making
of the world, has raised the coarseness and tamed the fierceness of
men into gentleness and reverence, purity, and chivalry. I might do
this: but to-day I will ask you to remember specially--The Wise.

For you are here as scholars; you are here to learn wisdom; you are
here in what should be, and I believe surely is, one of the fore-
courts of that mystic Temple into which Wisdom calls us all. And
therefore it is fit that you should this day remember the wise; for
they have laboured, and you are entering into their labours. Every
lesson which you learn in school, all knowledge which raises you
above the savage or the profligate (who is but a savage dressed in
civilized garments), has been made possible to you by the wise.
Every doctrine of theology, every maxim of morals, every rule of
grammar, every process of mathematics, every law of physical science,
every fact of history or of geography, which you are taught here, is
a voice from beyond the tomb. Either the knowledge itself, or other
knowledge which led to it, is an heirloom to you from men whose
bodies are now mouldering in the dust, but whose spirits live for
ever before God, and whose works follow them, going on, generation
after generation, upon the path which they trod while they were upon
earth, the path of usefulness, as lights to the steps of youth and
ignorance. They are the salt of the earth, which keeps the world of
man from decaying back into barbarism. They are the children of
light whom God has set for lights that cannot be hid. They are the
aristocracy of God, into which not many noble, not many rich, not
many mighty are called. Most of them were poor; many all but unknown
in their own time; many died, and saw no fruit of their labours; some
were persecuted, some were slain, even as Christ the Lord was slain,
as heretics, innovators, and corruptors of youth. Of some, the very
names are forgotten. But though their names be dead, their works
live, and grow, and spread, over ever fresh generations of youth,
showing them fresh steps toward that Temple of Wisdom, which is the
knowledge of things as they are; the knowledge of those eternal laws
by which God governs the heavens and the earth, things temporal and
eternal, physical and spiritual, seen and unseen, from the rise and
fall of mighty nations, to the growth and death of the moss on yonder
moors.

They made their mistakes; they had their sins; for they were men of
like passions with ourselves. But this they did--They cried after
Wisdom, and lifted up their voice for understanding; they sought for
her as silver, and searched for her as hid treasure: and not in
vain.

For them, as to every earnest seeker after wisdom, that Heavenly Lady
showed herself and her exceeding beauty; and gave gifts to each
according to his earnestness, his purity and his power of sight.

To some she taught moral wisdom--righteousness, and justice, and
equity, yea, every good path.

To others she showed that political science, which--as Solomon tells
you--is but another side of her beauty, and cannot be parted, however
men may try, from moral wisdom--that Wisdom in whose right hand is
length of days, and in her left hand riches and honour; whose ways
are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.

To others again she showed that physical science which--so Solomon
tells us again--cannot be parted safely from the two others. For by
the same wisdom, he says, which gives alike righteousness and equity,
riches and long life--by that same wisdom, and no other, did the Lord
found the heavens and establish the earth; by that same knowledge of
his are the depths broken up, and the clouds drop down the dew.

And to some she showed herself, as she did to good Boethius in his
dungeon, in the deepest vale of misery, and the hour of death; when
all seemed to have deserted them, save Wisdom, and the God from whom
she comes; and bade them be of good cheer still, and keep innocency,
and take heed to the thing that is right, for that shall bring a man
peace at the last.

And they beheld her, and loved her, and obeyed her, each according to
his powers: and now they have their reward.

And what is their reward?

How can I tell, dear boys? This, at least can I say, for Scripture
has said it already. That God is merciful in this; that he rewardeth
every man according to his work. This, at least, I can say, for God
incarnate himself has said it already--that to the good and faithful
servant he will say,--'Well done. Thou hast been faithful over a few
things: I will make thee ruler over many things. Enter thou into
the joy of thy Lord.'

'The joy of thy Lord.' Think of these words a while. Perhaps they
may teach us something of the meaning of All Saints' Day.

For, if Jesus Christ be--as he is--the same yesterday, to-day, and
for ever, then his joy now must be the same as his joy was when he
was here on earth,--to do good, and to behold the fruit of his own
goodness; to see--as Isaiah prophesied of him--to see of the travail
of his soul, and be satisfied.

And so it may be; so it surely is--with them; if blessed spirits (as
I believe) have knowledge of what goes on on earth. They enter into
the joy of their Lord. Therefore they enter into the joy of doing
good. They see of the travail of their soul, and are satisfied that
they have not lived in vain. They see that their work is going on
still on earth; that they, being dead, yet speak, and call ever fresh
generations into the Temple of Wisdom.

My dear boys, take this one thought away with you from this chapel
to-day. Believe that the wise and good of every age and clime are
looking down on you, to see what use you will make of the knowledge
which they have won for you. Whether they laboured, like Kepler in
his garret, or like Galileo in his dungeon, hid in God's tabernacle
from the strife of tongues; or, like Socrates and Plato, in the whirl
and noise--far more wearying and saddening than any loneliness--of
the foolish crowd, they all have laboured for you. Let them rejoice,
when they see you enter into their labours with heart and soul. Let
them rejoice, when they see in each one of you one of the fairest
sights on earth, before men and before God; a docile and innocent boy
striving to become a wise and virtuous man.

And whenever you are tempted to idleness and frivolity; whenever you
are tempted to profligacy and low-mindedness; whenever you are
tempted--as you will be too often in these mean days--to join the
scorners and the fools whom Solomon denounced; tempted to sneering
unbelief in what is great and good, what is laborious and self-
sacrificing, and to the fancy that you were sent into this world
merely to get through it agreeably;--then fortify and ennoble your
hearts by Solomon's vision. Remember who you are, and where you are-
-that you stand before the Temple of Wisdom, of the science of things
as God has made them; wherein alone is health and wealth for body and
for soul; that from within the Heavenly Lady calls to you, sending
forth her handmaidens in every art and science which has ever
ministered to the good of man; and that within there await you all
the wise and good who have ever taught on earth, that you may enter
in and partake of the feast which their mistress taught them to
prepare. Remember, I say, who you are--even the sons of God; and
remember where you are--for ever upon sacred ground; and listen with
joy and hope to the voice of the Heavenly Wisdom, as she calls--
'Whoso is simple, let him come in hither; and him that wanteth
understanding, let him come and eat of my bread, and drink of the
wine that I have mingled.'

Listen with joy and hope: and yet with fear and trembling, as of
Moses when he hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God. For
the voice of Wisdom is none other than the voice of The Spirit of
God, in whom you live, and move, and have your being.

SERMON III.--PRAYER AND SCIENCE

(Preached at St. Olave's Church, Hart Street, before the Honourable
Corporation of the Trinity House, 1866.)

PSALM cvii. 23, 24, 28.

They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great
waters; these see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.
Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and he bringeth them
out of their distresses.

These are days in which there is much dispute about religion and
science--how far they agree with each other; whether they contradict
or interfere with each other. Especially there is dispute about
Providence. Men say, and truly, that the more we look into the
world, the more we find everything governed by fixed and regular
laws; that man is bound to find out those laws, and save himself from
danger by science and experience. But they go on to say,--'And
therefore there is no use in prayer. You cannot expect God to alter
the laws of His universe because you ask Him: the world will go on,
and ought to go on, its own way; and the man who prays against
danger, by sea or land, is asking vainly for that which will not be
granted him.'

Now I cannot see why we should not allow,--what is certainly true,--
that the world moves by fixed and regular laws: and yet allow at the
same time,--what I believe is just as true,--that God's special
providence watches over all our actions, and that, to use our Lord's
example, not a sparrow falls to the ground without some special
reason why that particular sparrow should fall at that particular
moment and in that particular place. I cannot see why all things
should not move in a divine and wonderful order, and yet why they
should not all work together for good to those who love God. The
Psalmist of old finds no contradiction between the two thoughts.
Rather does the one of them seem to him to explain the other. 'All
things,' says he, 'continue this day as at the beginning. For all
things serve Thee.'

Still it is not to be denied, that this question has been a difficult
one to men in all ages, and that it is so to many now.

But be that as it may, this I say, that, of all men, seafaring men
are the most likely to solve this great puzzle about the limits of
science and of religion, of law and of providence; for, of all
callings, theirs needs at once most science and most religion; theirs
is most subject to laws, and yet most at the mercy of Providence.
And I say that many seafaring men have solved the puzzle for
themselves in a very rational and sound way, though they may not be
able to put thoughts into words; and that they do show, by their
daily conduct, that a man may be at once thoroughly scientific and
thoroughly religious. And I say that this Ancient and Honourable
Corporation of the Trinity House is a proof thereof unto this day; a
proof that sound science need not make us neglect sound religion, nor
sound religion make us neglect sound science.

No man ought to say that seamen have neglected science. It is the
fashion among some to talk of sailors as superstitious. They must
know very little about sailors, and must be very blind to broad
facts, who speak thus of them as a class. Many sailors, doubtless,
are superstitious. But I appeal to every master mariner here,
whether the superstitious men are generally the religious and godly
men; whether it is not generally the most reckless and profligate men
of the crew who are most afraid of sailing on a Friday, and who give
way to other silly fancies which I shall not mention in this sacred
place. And I appeal, too, to public experience, whether many, I may
say most, of those to whom seamanship and sea-science owes most, have
not been God-fearing Christian men?

Be sure of this, that if seamen, as a class, had been superstitious,
they would never have done for science what they have done. And what
they have done, all the world knows. To seamen, and to men connected
with the sea, what do we not owe, in geography, hydrography,
meteorology, astronomy, natural history? At the present moment, the
world owes them large improvements in dynamics, and in the new uses
of steam and iron. It may be fairly said that the mariner has done
more toward the knowledge of Nature than any other personage in the
world, save the physician.

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