Page:Sermon at the Church Congress 1902.djvu/11

7 and mean by both alike the same purpose of doing fullest reverence to the real working of God amongst and within us. Well for us if we resolutely decline to focus interest upon questions of definition about which the history of controversy has taught us with utter plainness that there is no thoroughfare, that each added sharpness of assertion means a fresh brusqueness of rejection; that with much speech there comes to each side increasing peril of worshipping the image in their own heart instead of the Truth; and to all sides ever deeper misunderstanding and mistrust of one another.

Thus may Christians who find their secret in the revealed in-working of God understand each other; thus also may they find their union with all that is good and fair everywhere in human life and thought. For there is but one God, in nature and redemption, and one Lord, the Word, Who is, as the old theologians delighted to teach, the through all creation, as well as the Incarnate Jesus Christ.

But is there not in a full and true interpretation of the faith one part and article which should be the special remedy of much of our trouble, the spring of ever fresh hope? "I believe in the Holy Ghost." There, let us strive constantly and passionately to realize, is God's own expression. His own revelation of that by which man's natural sense of God's immanence is fulfilled, of that by which the living presence of the Incarnate is continued and embodied. By this the gift especially promised to prayer; by this, both apart from sacraments and through them; or (to speak more worthily) by Him without Whose help illuminative knowledge of the written Word becomes ingenious scholarship or barren literalism, by Him Who quickens the pulse and kindles the torch of each personal life, while the body corporate is His only adequate temple and instrument—by Him God is present, God works in us. I beseech you think of Him, pray for a right understanding through Him of Himself; leave it not to special leagues or sects to provoke us honourably to jealousy for this great and wealthy truth, to loyalty towards this Spirit of God in our spirits, to this Life of God in our lives. Let it give its own temper, and restraint, and glow, and depth, and force to the whole hie which we call Christian in our Church.

Brethren, this is a great matter, too high for a single speaker—much more for the one who has spoken; not too high and unquestionably right as at once the inspiration and the goal of the devotional, intellectual, and practical effort of the Church.

We know the danger of dwelling on such things without practical conclusion, without moral result. I close, then, with the mention of three things which seem essential to a real reception of the truth and power of God working in us.

The first is contained in the old counsel, "Vacare considerationi." Take time to think, find it, make it, compel it.