Church with Him." You need not fear to be disloyal to your Church, if you are loyal to that Ideal: We are all members of Christ; all hold office under Christ; all are consecrated to that universal priesthood of believers. And what is that office? It is to minister to His body-the Church; it is to do something for His body-the nominally Christian England, for that is the Church of England. "What have ye done for Me?" will be the question that will fall on our ears at last ;—not "What did ye think about Me, and My ministers, and My Church, and My sacraments, and My Word?" but "What have ye done for Me: done, even though ye knew not that it was done for Me? 'For inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these my brethren, ye did it unto me.'" We all have the same noble dream of what our religion ought to be the health-bringing life-blood of the whole nation, circulating through all parts of our great social organism, bringing purity, justice, redemption from evil, and that love that springs from a community of joy. Let us try to make that dream a reality. Hasten the time, O Lord Jesus! hasten the time, ye servants of His that try to do His pleasure! G VII RELIGION AND REVELATION1 "And they took Paul, and brought him unto Areopagus." THIS scene suggests a comparison of Christianity with the old world religions. It might be the text for a sermon on comparative religion. But I do not intend to preach such a sermon, but rather to invite your attention to this phrase “comparative religion," with which most of us are very familiar, and to explain its meaning. It is a somewhat modern phrase, and it has begun to exercise great influence over the thought of our time. Books are written on "the great religions of the world"; Christianity being of course mentioned as one of them. And though in such books it is always pointed out that Christianity is the highest and the purest, yet the mere fact of classifying Christianity with other religions leaves inevitably the impression that Christianity is like the others, a local, temporary religion; a mere passing stage in the evolution of the religious faculty of man. It is, therefore, an extremely important phrase, and conception, and one that is worth thoroughly examining. 1 Preached in St. Paul's Cathedral on Sunday evening, 23d March 1884. What is religion? I will not give you the various definitions that have been given of religion by philosophers, because their definitions concern its idea rather than its expression; and therefore do not throw much light on those elements of religion which enter into its comparative study. But the expression of religion may be defined as consisting of a cultus and a dogma. And hence comparative religion, which deals with the expression, consists in tracing the history and development of cultus and dogma in the different ages and races of the world: it is the history of forms of worship, and of speculative opinions on the relations of man to unseen powers. That is the sphere of comparative religion; and in this historical survey Christianity, in so far as it consists of a cultus and a dogma, must of course be included. In so far as it consists of a cultus and a dogma. But the important question is whether this would not be a very superficial view of Christianity; whether indeed the historical development of Christianity in cultus and dogma does not conceal more than it reveals of the true nature of the work of Christ; whether in fact cultus and dogma, with which alone. comparative religion deals, are not the accidents, and something else the essence of Christianity. The fact is that, unless we watch our thoughts very closely, we are apt to ignore a most fundamental characteristic of Christianity; and the phrase "comparative religion" has tended, along with other causes, to obscure this characteristic. Christianity is essentially a revelation, not a religion; and the difference is enormous. Religion, to use the word in its more precise and limited sense, religion, Opŋoxeía, that is cultus and dogma, is the expression of a universal human instinct. Revelation is some transmuting, transforming influence in man or on man, which is usually antagonistic to this instinct. Religion is a subject of history; cultus and dogma are born and grow and perish. Revelation is spiritual, accumulative, imperishable. This was one of the truths of which the world caught a glimpse at the Reformation; and now a far clearer view is opening on this generation. We have to disentangle our thoughts on this contrast of religion and revelation before we can rightly understand the limited sphere of comparative religion; endless confusions cluster round these two words. We cannot of course alter or limit the meaning which popular usage assigns to the word religion; but we can remember that it is ambiguous; and that in the phrase "comparative religion" the word has a precise and limited meaning. The origin of religion, in this precise and limited sense, is to be sought for deep in the instincts and circumstances of human nature: all races, savage and civilised, show these instincts. Much has been made, and truly made, of the witness they bear to the spiritual powers of the world. But we are still more familiar in history with other manifestations of these powerful instincts; in fear and superstition; in fatalism, in cruelty; in lust, in persecution; in priestcraft, and in hostility to all science and light. The history of "religion" is a dark and terrible history. We instinctively remember how Lucretius speaks of religion as "Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans," and that other line that can never be forgotten, "Tantum relligio potuit suadere malorum." We recall terrible scenes in the history of nation after nation. But with the lower instinct of religion some force, some illumination, has plainly ever been contending. This force, this illumination, is revelation. It may throw a fresh light on the study of the Bible, if you look at it with this thought of the contrast and contest between religion and revelation. The Old Testament is not chiefly a record of the divine origin and establishment and sanctions of a religion. To represent it as this is to lose sight of its most instructive aspect. The Jewish nation, when they first appear in the dawn of history, already were possessed of strong religious traditions and instincts, inherited from their less enlightened far-off ancestors, and modified by the peoples with whom they had been brought in contact. Ritual and sacrifice and traditional beliefs were not unfamiliar to them. Some of these traditions were by no means of a high order. Through their long history, so far as it is known, from Moses to Ezra, may be traced the two contending forces: one, the religious instinct, which was always turning them to externals; sometimes taking the form of idolatry and polytheistic nature-worship, at other times that of an unspiritual temple-worship: the other, the antagonistic voice, that ceaselessly strove with man; that spoke in Moses, and made the two great commandments of the law-love to God and man—stand out above all else: that spoke in Samuel, and taught the nations that "to obey was better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams"; that spoke in David, and in the prophets, again and again, in words too familiar to need quotation; and so made, |