THE KING’S BUSINESS
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causes which really engender them, of the direction in which they are really moving, of the influence which they are destined permanently to exert upon soul's, men know little or nothing. The accidental symptom is mistaken for the essential characteris tic; the momentary expression of feeling for the inalienable conviction of certain truth. The day may come, perhaps, when more will be known; when practice and motive, accident and substance, ,the lasting and the transient, will be seen in their true relative proportions; but for the time this can hardly bp- He is passing by, whose way ià in the Sea, and His paths in the deep waters, and His footsteps unknown. The Eternal Spirit is passing; and men can only say, “He bloweth where He listeth.” III. Our Lord’s words apply especially to Christian character. There are some effects of the living power of the Holy Spirit which are invariable. When He dwells with a Christian soul, He contin ually speaks in the voice of conscience ; He speaks in the voice of prayer. He pro duces with the ease of a natural process, without effort, without the taint of self- consciousness, “love, joy, peace, long- suffering, j gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.” Sòme of these graces must be1found where He makes His home. There is no mistaking the atmos phere of His presence; in its main features it is the same now as in the days of the apostles. Just as in natural morality the main elements of “goodness” do not chaiige; so in religious life, spirituality is, amid great varieties of detail, yet, in its leading constituent features, the same thing from one generation to, another. But in the life of the individual Christian, or in that of the Church, there is legitimate room for irregular and exceptional forms of activity or excellence. Natural society is not strengthened by the stern repression of all that is peculiar in individual thought or practice; and this is not less true of spiritual or religious society, Erom the first, high forms of Christian excellence
of men of the people. Or, again, they are so occupied with controversy as to forget the claims of devotion, or so engaged in leading souls to a devout life as to forget the unwelcome but real necessities of con troversy.. They are intent on particular moral improvements so exclusively as to forget what is due to reverence and order ; or they are so lient upon rescuing the Church from chronic slovenliness and indecency in public worship as to do less than justice to the paramount interests of moral truth. Sometimes these movements ¡are all feeling; sometimes they are all thought; sometimes they are, as it seems, all outward energy. In one age they pro duce a literature like that of the fourth and fifth centuries; in another they found orders of men devoted to preaching or to works of mercy, as in the twelfth; in another they éntér the . lists, as in the thirteenth century, with a hostile philos ophy ; in another they attempt a much- needed reformation of the Church ; in another they pour upon the heathen world a flood of light and warmth from the heart of Christendom. It is easy, as we survey them, to say that something else was needed ; or'that what was done could have been done better or more completely ; or that, had we been there, we should not ha,ve been guilty of this one-sidedness, or ' of that exaggeration. We forget, perhaps, who really was there, and whose work it is, though often overlaid and thwarted by human weakness and human passion, that we are really criticizing. If it was seem ingly one-sided, excessive or defective, impulsive or sluggish, speculative or prac tical, esthetic or experimental, may not this have been so because in His judgment, who breatheth where He listeth, this particular characteristic was needed for the Church of that day ? All that contemporaries know of such movements is “thé sound thereof;” the names with which they are associated, the controversies which they precipitate, the hostilities which they rouse or allay, as the case may be. Such knowledge is super ficial enough; of the profound spiritual
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