The Jews were always thinking of their exclusive religious privileges, of the sacredness of the Temple and of the law, and of the questionable and dangerous position of those who were outside the covenant. Now this habit of mind, undoubtedly religious as it was, is not held up to our admiration in the New Testament, but the contrary. It is denounced as being the opposite of a true spirituality. It is shown to us as associated with intolerance, bigotry, hardness, cruelty, as most offensive to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and fruitful of mischief in the world. St. Paul had to undergo the reproach of being disloyal to the religion of his fathers, because he contended against this ecclesiastical spirit. But the reproach was as unjust as it was painful to him. He loved the holy city and the temple and the ordinances of the law and his kindred according to the flesh; but he knew that the proper aim of a devout man was not to hedge round an organization, but to glorify and bear witness to the Divine Spirit.

CXLI

Not St. Paul only, but all the Apostles and Evangelists, were continually contemplating the heavenly glory of a brotherhood of men in full harmony with each other because all joined to Christ, of men walking in humility and meekness and love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is nothing in such an ideal less suited to us to-day than to the Christians of the first age. For ourselves, and for our neighbors and fellow-men, this hope should be in our hearts, this Divine ideal before our eyes. Let us believe that it is the Divine purpose, and that we are called to the fulfilment of it.

CXLII

Is it not an express principle in the teaching of our Lord himself and of his Apostles, that means and instruments and agencies are not to be worshipped in themselves but to be estimated with reference to the end they are to promote? Think, for example, what is implied in that pregnant sentence, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.” Means and instruments are not dishonored by this principle. If the end they serve is high and precious, they also will deserve to be valued. If the spiritual freedom of man is important, then the ordinance of a Day of Rest, which ministers to it, may well be sacred. But it is often appointed in the Providence of God that an apparent dishonor should be cast on means, that the minds of men may be forced away from resting upon them. And means may be varied, according to circumstances, whilst the same permanent end is to be sought.

CXLIII

Wherever there is good, in whatever Samaritan or heathen we may see kindness and the fear of God, there we are to welcome it and rejoice in it in our Father’s name.

There is no respect of persons with God, no acceptance of any man on account of his religion or his profession; under whatever religious garb, he that loveth is born of God, he that doeth righteousness is born of God. There is no danger in being ready to appreciate simple goodness and to refer it to the working of the Divine Spirit wherever we may find it; there is the greatest danger in failing to appreciate it. This is doctrine of unquestionable Divine authority, which we may often have opportunities of putting into practice. Let us remember to cherish it in all our dealings with those who do not belong to our own church. Let us be afraid lest nature and the flesh should make us intolerant and unsympathetic; let us be sure that Christ and the Spirit would win us to modesty and reverence and sympathy.

CXLIV

“There is one body and one spirit, even as ye were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.” With this unity, there are distinctions of function; and each member, St. Paul holds, has his own gift of endowment to enable him to fill his own place. Christ is the great Giver, and besides these gifts to the several members of the body, he gave to the body as a whole the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, by whose various ministries sinful and self-willed men were to be moulded into true members, and ultimate perfecting of the body to be accomplished. St. Paul looked forward in hope to the time when the Body of Christ might be not only ideally perfect, but actually perfect also, in its adult growth and in the harmonious co-operation of all its parts.

CXLV

There may be every sort of defect and irregularity in the men and women whom Christ has called to be his members. The unity is not made by them, and does not depend upon them. Their business is to keep the unity, to conform themselves to it. The supernatural body of Christ is the ideal one, and it is realized with various degrees of imperfection wherever men acknowledge Christ as their head.

CXLVI

As I understand the word “politician,” it means a man who, whatever his other engagements in life may be, and however he may earn his daily bread, feels above all things deeply interested, feels that he is bound to be deeply interested, and to take as active a part as he can, in the public affairs of his country. I believe that every Englishman, if he is worth anything at all, is bound to be a politician, and can’t for the life of him help taking a deep interest in the public affairs of his country. The object of politics is the well-being of the nation, or in other words to make “a wise and understanding people.” Now, what are the means by which a wise and an understanding people is to be made? Well, of course, the chief means of making a wise and understanding people is by training them up in wisdom and understanding. The State wants men who are brave, truthful, generous; the State wants women who are pure, simple, gentle. By what means is the State to get citizens of that kind?

Such a politician looking around him and seeing how the national conscience is to be touched – for unless the national conscience be touched you can never raise citizens of that kind – finds that the great power which alone can do it, is that which goes by the name of religion.

CXLVII

The true work of the Liberal Party in a Liberal age is, with singleness of purpose and all its might, to lift the people to a fair and full share of all the best things of this life, – its highest culture, hopes, aspirations, burdens – as well as its loaves and fishes – and, setting before them a truly noble ideal of citizenship, to help them to attain it. Whatever goes beyond that, or beside that, savors of Jacobinism, for then comes in that jealousy which is the bane of true democracy. The true democrat has no old scores to pay, covets no man’s good things, wants nothing for himself which is not open to his neighbors, will destroy nothing which others value merely because he doesn’t value it himself, unless it is palpably and incurably unjust and unrighteous. I need not go on to contrast the Jacobin with him, beyond saying that the one is before all things constructive, the other destructive.

CXLVIII

A liberal politician is a man who looks to the future and not to the past; he looks for progress; he desires to see the whole nation raised; he desires to go on from better things to better things, and he is not afraid of new things; he holds that every institution must be tried by its worth and its value to the nation; – he holds above all things that there should be equality before the law for every institution, for every society, and for every individual citizen.

CXLIX

Alfred the Great had his problems of anarchy, widespread lawlessness, terrorism, to meet. After the best thought he could give to the business, he met them and prevailed. Like diseases call for like cures; and we may assume without fear that a remedy which has been very successful in one age is at least worth looking at in another.

We too, like Alfred, have our own troubles – our land-questions, labor-questions, steady increase of pauperism, and others. In our struggle for life we fight with different weapons, and have our advantages of one kind or another over our ancestors; but when all is said and done there is scarcely more coherence in the English nation of to-day than in that of 1079. Individualism, no doubt, has its noble side; and “every man for himself” is a law which works wonders; but we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that under their action English life has become more and more disjointed, threatening in some directions altogether to fall to pieces. What we specially want is something which shall bind us more closely together. Every nation of Christendom is feeling after the same thing. The need of getting done in some form that which frank-pledge did for Alfred’s people expresses itself in Germany in mutual-credit banks, open to every honest citizen; in France, in the productive associations of all kinds; at home, in our co-operative movements and trades-union.

No mere machinery, nothing that governments or legislatures can do in our day, will be of much help, but they may be great hindrances. The study of the modern statesman must be how to give such movements full scope and a fair chance, so that the people may be able without let or hindrance to work out in their own way the principle which Alfred brought practically home to his England, that in human society men cannot divest themselves of responsibility for their neighbors, and ought not to be allowed to attempt it.

CL

The more attentively we study Alfred’s life, the more clearly does the practical wisdom of his methods of government justify itself by results. Of strong princes, with minds “rectified and prepared” on the Machiavellian model, the world has had more than enough, who have won kingdoms for themselves, and used them for themselves, and so left a bitter inheritance to their children and their people. It is well that, here and there in history, we can point to a king whose reign has proved that the highest success in government is not only compatible with, but dependent upon, the highest Christian morality.

CLI

Think well over your important steps in life, and having made up your minds, never look behind.

CLII

A gentleman should shrink from the possibility of having to come on others, even on his own father, for the fulfilment of his obligations, as he would from a lie. I would sooner see a son of mine in his grave than crawling on through life a slave to wants and habits which he must gratify at other people’s expense.

CLIII

No two men take a thing just alike, and very few can sit down quietly when they have lost a fall in life’s wrestle, and say, “Well, here I am, beaten no doubt this time. By my own fault too. Now, take a good look at me, my good friends, as I know you all want to do, and say your say out, for I mean getting up again directly and having another turn at it.”

CLIV

No man who is worth his salt can leave a place where he has gone through hard and searching discipline, and been tried in the very depths of his heart, without regret, however much he may have winced under the discipline. It is no light thing to fold up and lay by for ever a portion of one’s life, even when it can be laid by with honor and in thankfulness.