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Liberty , Equality , Fraternity .

THREE DISCOURSES

DELIVERED IN THE MONTH OF APRIL, 1848,

AT HIS OWN CHURCH ,

BY THE

REV. JOHN CUMMING, D.D.

MINISTER OF THE NATIONAL SCOTTISH CHURCH , CROWN COURT,
COVENT GARDEN .

LONDON : 1848.
ARTHUR HALL CO. 25, PATERNOSTER ROW.
 SIT
*

AllNOVI

LONDOX :
R. CLAY , PRINTER , BREAD STRERT HILL.
 LIBERTY,

Ye shall know the truth , and the truth shall make you
free.-- JOHN VIII. 32.

This is one of those beautiful and far-reaching

maxims which are not restricted in their applica
tion to the age in which they were delivered .
It never becomes obsolete - often it comes forth
at a remarkable crisis, with a force and emphasis
that show it to have no human origin or trans
ient import. It is like the Gospel itself, for all
ages ; but like every other truth in the hands
of man , it is liable to misapprehension and
perversion . The medium of fallen humanity
darkens and taints in their transit the purest
emanations of Heaven. In this case it has been
so. Liberty is a precious and inestimable bless
ing ; but it grows not everywhere. It is a
blossom that grows upon truth : “ Ye shall
know the truth , and the truth shall make you
free ."
I do not intend or desire to allude, in the
course of what I am about to say , to anything
that borders on what may be called politics, -
4 LIBERTY.

knowing very little of their nature, and in no

respect competent to discuss them . But that
man must indeed be a stranger to all the events
and movements of the day, who has not heard
sounding across the channel, and borne upon
every breath of popular tumult, the cry, or
rather the shout, of Liberty. I have noticed,
too , associated with liberty, two other words, no
less significant, and not less worthy of analysis.
On the placards on the walls, in the protocols
of foreign ministers, I have read the words,
LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY . These are
noble words, replete with noble and inspiring
truths. The sound is music- the substance is
Christianity.
One feels the influence exerted by popular
cries ; all history attests it . A sentiment may
sustain and strengthen a throne— a well applied
aphorism has been the making of a people—a
successful proverb has very frequently been a
rallying standard for a nation, or the means of
consolidating, strengthening, and perpetuating it.
That I am not acting unscripturally in seizing
a passing occurrence to illustrate a great and
eternal truth, will appear plain to you from the
conduct of the Apostle Paul, who, on visiting
Athens, there to proclaim the gospel of Christ,
saw on one of the stones or altars of the country
the following inscription : " To the Unknown
God ;" and he made this inscription, thus traced
 LIBERTY . 5

upon the stone, a text for the illustration of

the doctrines he was commissioned to convey :
and if an Apostle made an inscription on a
stone the foundation of practical and saving
truth, may not one, in the succession of the
Apostle's spirit and doctrine, if denied by some
the succession of the Apostle's person, make the
aphorism legible so prominently and so publicly,
the vehicle of truths that cannot die ?
There is no sentiment exercising an influence
on the minds of men, possessed of any degree of
power, that has not in it some degree of truth,
and, if it be human in its origin , some mixture
of error . Satan never tries to do mischief by a
pure, unvarnished, palpable lie ; for, fallen as
humanity is, a lie manifestly so, is not palat
able : an alloy needs to be amalgamated with
some gold — the great lie requires a sprinkling of
a great truth - Satan's brass must have struck
upon it the stamp and superscription of Jesus,
before it can have currency or circulation
among mankind. In the sentiment I have
quoted , as in most other maxims popular among
mankind, there is a great truth contained,
though there may be mingled with it, more or
less, the alloy of a great error. May it not be
possible to separate the truth from the fallacy ,
the gold from the alloy ; to leave the one to its
fate - to enshrine the other, and implore upon
its spread the blessing of God ?
6 LIBERTY.

It seems to me that all these cries and echoes,

sounding among the nations of the earth in
their wildest delirium , have in them substantial
truth : nothing is long popular which has not in
it something of substance and reality.
Liberty is a precious blessing : we feel its value
when it flees from us ; nations ask for it with ter
rible energy ; -the French thirst for it, but, in
their ignorance, they are going to broken cisterns
to find it, instead of to the fountain of living
waters. Equality is a noble and Christian truth,
as I shall show you ; but its true meaning,and the
fountain from which it springs, and the people
among whom it exists indeed, are unknown to
most of those who have unfurled its standard .
Fraternity is a truth - a truth that was in the
Bible long before it was heard among the
French revolutionary cries ; and if men would
go to the word of God instead of to Rousseau's
dreams, and Voltaire's sarcasms, they would
find there all the Liberty that man can desire
—all the Equality human nature can enjoy
all the Fraternity that holy hearts feel or
humanity can exemplify.
The first of the three words which I shall dwell
upon this morning is Liberty. It is stated in the
beautiful words adjoining my text, “ If the Son,
therefore, shall make you free , ye shall be free
indeed.” My subject, in other words, is Liberty ,
and the source and nature of true liberty ,
 LIBERTY.

No word has been more frequently uttered on

the earth than “ Liberty .” It has been sounded
forth in the speeches of orators, and awakened
in their audiences echoes of thunder ; it has
been sung from the harps of poets and charmed
the nations ; it has been emblazoned on the
banners of empire ; it has been shouted by the
breath of a peaceful empire , and it has swelled
the tocsins of an agitated and excited people .
It has roused patriots in modern as in ancient
times ; it has steeled the bosom and nerved the
arm of the soldier on the field , of the sailor on
the deck, and the citizen in his home, and
cheered great countries in their struggles. The
gigantic Alps , and the overshadowing Pyrenees,
and the blue hills of the fatherland of many
of us, have been like the altars on which a holo
caust has been offered to the glory of Liberty :
there is not a spot in our native soil which has
not been moistened by the blood of those who
have died for liberty, whose dust and ashes it
contains, waiting for the trumpet of the resur
rection day.
But if liberty has been thus so sacrificed for,
and so popular, you need not be told that no
word or sentiment has been more thoroughly
misinterpreted or wofully perverted . If it has
been the watchword of the patriot, it has been ,
we know, the motto of the demagogue also.
If liberty has been sealed by the death of mar
8 LIBERTY.

tyrs, it has been made the shelter of the crimes

of murderers too. If it be pure and noble in
itself, and worthy of sacrifice, yet under its in
jured and outraged name more wickedness has
been done, God has been more dishonoured, and
the people's privileges have been more trodden
under foot, than under the spell of any other word
or hope embodied in human language. If, for in
stance , I refer to that awful event, the French
Revolution of 1792 , -an analysis of which I have
given you in another place, and for other, though
no less important purposes,—do we not see
perpetrated there the most frightful crimes, and
inhuman outrages, on every rank and degree of
the social state — the holy smitten downthe
really free chained, and all under the name
the injured name, of Freedom ? And do we not
learn from these things that slaves indeed— the
slaves of the most tyrant passions—may shout
most lustily for freedom ?-that it is possible to
plant trees of liberty on every acre of the land ,
and leave those trees to be watered by widows'
tears, and with the best blood of the holy, the
just, the good, and the true ? Or we may , like
a nation beyond the Atlantic, boast ourselves to
be the most free in the habitable globe, and yet
we may say to the descendant of Hannibal, that
because his skin is black, and ours white, we will
not approach the communion table in company
with him, or take at the same time the symbol
 LIBERTY. S

of the broken body, and the cup of the shed

blood, of his and our Saviour, our Lord Jesus
Christ. It is thus that Liberty may be on the
lip, and Tyranny in the heart. We may shout
for freedom with enthusiastic energy, and yet
be the slaves of the most terrible passions that
can corrupt the heart and tyrannize over the soul
of man . The truth is, the reason of this is not
peculiar to any one class, or community, or
country. The deceitfulness of the human heart,
and its desperate wickedness, is not the mono
poly of a monarchy, or a republic, or an aris
tocracy ; wherever human hands hold the
sceptre, or arrange the ballot-box, those hands
belong to that heart which I described on a
previous Sunday as by nature “ deceitful above
all things, and desperately wicked .” It appears
to me most truly that what we need is not that
Frenchmen should be turned into Englishmen ,
or Americans into Germans ; but that corrupt
and fallen humanity should, by God's grace,
be changed into a new and glorious creation .
There is nothing in a Frenchman, in a German ,
or in an American, substantially, essentially
different from what is in us ; the great change
that we all need is not a change of politics, or
a change of constitution, or a change of states
men , or a change of laws; but what we need,
and without possessing which we shall never
be free, nor holy, nor happy, is, a change of
10 LIBERTY .

heart and nature by the Holy Spirit of God.

If the truth make us free, we shall be free
indeed ; if we know not the truth, nothing
can make us really free; and in the absence of
this all earthly freedom is but an empty sound,
or a plausible disguise of the anarchy of pas
sion, and the tyranny of human lusts.
Now I wish to notice first, and to make a
very few remarks upon, the tendency of truth
to promote social , personal, and national free
dom ; and, secondly, to show that the free
dom indicated in the text is not that which
European revolutionists fight and suffer for,
but a freedom which nothing can give save the
Holy Spirit of God . - If the Son shall make
you free, then are ye free indeed .”
The history of ancient and modern nations
proves that Freedom has been enjoyed by a
people, just in the ratio in which they have
possessed the truth. Many of us have been
accustomed when boys to read the classics of
cultivated Greece and of martial Rome, and we
have felt a sympathy with their descriptions of
heroic daring and disinterested sacrifices for
freedom and fatherland ; and some look back to
Greek and Roman republics as if these were the
last and noblest strongholds of liberty. I be
lieve there is much fallacy in all such im
pressions. I believe there is much that needs
to be exposed in the views, the popular views,
 LIBERTY. 11

of the ancient republics of Greece and Rome .

Let me refer, for instance, to Leonidas, and his
triumph at Thermopylæ , where Spartan valour
and Spartan victory were exhibited in their
resistless might. But, that same Leonidas who
conquered at Thermopylæ, whose celebrity
poets have sung and historians and orators have
expatiated upon , in the exercise of that same
Spartan heroism that bore him to conquest at
Thermopylæ, would have gone home to his
own family, and, if his wife had in her arms a
sickly babe, though it bore his own image, he
would have snatched it from her bosom , and
cast it out to be devoured by the wolves of the
Taygetus. Such was the moral feeling of that
country, the exploits of whose heroes, bards
and orators and historians have so frequently
celebrated. And to take another celebrated
case - Marathon , where ten thousand Greeks
repelled ten times that number of invaders from
other lands. Do we recollect that one-- fourth
of those ten thousand Greeks were slaves, let
loose from their chains in order to fight for
their masters upon the plains of Marathon ?
Whilst, therefore, we listen to eulogies pro
nounced on the freedom enjoyed by these
ancient nations, and deem it peculiar to repub
lican institutions, let us not forget that the very
soldiers who fought and conquered to preserve
that freedom were some of them slaves, all
12 LIBERTY.

of them unenlightened, and none of them to be

compared for one moment with the humblest
peasant in our land .
If we then refer to modern nations, we shall
find that their amount of freedom is just pro
portionate to their amount of Christian life and
light. In modern Rome the mere shadow of a
departed glory is all that sustains its tottering
hierarchy : it is renowned as having been once
the capital of the world, and it now is suffered
to exist as the seat of him who assumes to be
the prince of princes, and the sovereign of the
sovereigns of the earth . It has no substance in
itself. Is it not true that kings and rulers in
modern times have paid the Popedom the defer
ence that sustains it, merely from party motives ?
In matters of perplexity each has consulted the
Vatican, as their predecessors consulted the
Apollo or the Pythoness of old, after having
liberally paid the oracle, whether Apollo or the
Pope, to give responses favourable to the parties
who sought it. Is it not true, as many have
experienced to their cost, that the Bible must
not be circulated in that which is called the
capital of the Christian world ? A city Mis
sionary —the humblest and holiest—dare not
whisper the name of the only Saviour to its
wretched people ; the Gospel must not be
preached by me or any other minister of Christ
in any part of Rome ; there is but one Pro
 LIBERTY . 13

testant church or chapel tolerated by the “ « Vicar

of Christ," and that is not in the midst of Rome,
but outside the walls, as if it were an unclean
thing. If a tract were circulated, or a Bible
given, or a sermon preached in the midst of it ,
the parties guilty of such conduct would be
ordered by him, who calls himself the Successor
of Peter, and Prince of the Apostles, to be
removed from the country without delay. There
is not heard “ the truth , ” and therefore free
dom is unknown.
Do we look abroad at other nations of
Europe ? At Spain, for instance : how sad and
disastrous has been its career ! monks long its real
rulers---the Inquisition its parliament - auto-da
fés its victories — bull -fights the pleasures of its
people, and real liberty as unknown as real
religion .
Shall we look again to other states , celebrated
as chief seats of liberty in other days ? the repub
lics of Venice and Genoa, for instance , which
gathered their riches from the waves that washed
their marble palaces, professed to be the arks of
freedom . They never knew the truth, and there
fore they never felt what true freedom is, as the
memorials they have left plainly prove . Who
has not read of the Piombi and the Bridge of
Sighs ? Who has not read of the martyrs who
crossed the one and suffered in the dark depths
of the other ? These republics ruled in succes
14 LIBERTY.

sion by terror, sensuality, and treachery ; and in

these and other Papal lands, the chains of slavery
were the more firmly riveted, because the pro
fessing ministers of religion first hallowed them .
Need I say that where heathenism prevails,
where the worship of Vishnu, and Seeva, and
Brahma exists, nothing like freedom lives ?
Need I add, that where the scimitar and the
Koran , the twins that are never separated, hold
their sway , there freedom has perished from
earth’s fairest regions ? Need I shew, that
where Popery is predominant, there freedom
has been crushed as before the simoom ? And,
perhaps, on the continent of Europe this lesson
is now being taught, that if popes had never
gloried in treading on the necks of kings, a
wild and infidel populace had never attempted,
or succeeded , to overturn their thrones.
Turn from these countries , that know not the
truth , to our own country, where truth is known
and practised : see what a glorious transition it
is ! I admit our poor might be better cared for;
I admit the down -trodden might be more sym
pathized with ; I admit and deplore the misery
and the crime that reign in our great town, and
the want of religion that characterizes many sec
tions of the country ; but, take it as a whole,
and the world has not its like . How glorious
is this fact alone, that let the slave come from
Africa, or from Southern America, the instant
 LIBERTY . 15

that he sets his feet upon British soil, that

instant the chains drop from his limbs, and no
man can call him slave. We may speak any
where, and print, and preach, and promote in this
country any opinion or sentiment, or shade of
opinion, we may believe, or fancy , or prefer, if it
be not subversive of order. We may spread the
Bible, read the Bible, teach the Bible ; and nei
ther priest, nor prelate, nor potentate, nor prince,
dare take that Bible from us, or close it against
our will . Need I tell you that I may preach
from this pulpit what I believe to be true, and
you may hear me preach the truth with nothing
to interfere ? If you do not agree with what
I preach, or are satisfied that I am wrong, you
have only to go to the next church or chapel,
and learn better things there . Can there be a
more enviable privilege, or more thorough free
dom than this, that I can preach from this
pulpit what in my conscience I believe to be
true, and you may hear, and receive, or reject,
according to your conviction and judgment, and
no prince, or potentate, or prelate can scatter or
obstruct you ? But this is not all : our Queen ,
who lives in the hearts of us all, and around
whose throne the best and noblest affections of
her people cluster, and in whose defence , I am
convinced , a hundred thousand swords would
leap from their sheaths were that throne
touched , or that sceptre menaced — that Queen,
16 LIBERTY.

so beloved and so popular, dare not enter the

humblest turf- covered hut in the length and
breadth of her realm without the owner's per
mission. Great freedom , and yet greater order,
are thine, O favoured land ! Yet not unto us, but
unto God , be all the glory. What has built up
this loyalty and love—this attachment to freedom
—this reverence for law - this sympathy with
what is good, and great, and noble ? I answer, it is
the nation that knows the truth most fully that
enjoys freedom most thoroughly. “ Ye shall know
the truth, and the truth shall make you free .”
Now , I admit that this freedom , produced by
the Gospel, is a freedom bounded and restrained
by laws. I cannot conceive that there can be
any true freedom without wise and firm laws.
Freedom under the Gospel has law— the free
dom we enjoy in our homes must have law
the freedom we possess as a nation must have
law. Liberty without law is licence . Law is
the channel through which the stream of free
dom flows, its guide and guardian : but if any
one should object, “ Law says to me , So much
you may do, so much you may not do—how is
this consistent with liberty ?" I answer, in the
first place, law is never a terror to the good , but
only to the bad. It is no restraint to well
doers. Recollect the sentiment of the Gospel,
“ The law is not made for righteous men, but
for the lawless and disobedient, for the un
 LIBERTY . 17

godly, and for sinners . ” The man that does

what is right never feels law ; the moment a
man does what is wrong , it is proper and just
that he should feel law. If any man should say,
I ought to be allowed to go to the full extent
of the prescriptions of my passions, or my pre
judices , or my desires, and nothing should
obstruct me, and this is true freedom , I answer,
it would be licence to the evil, and slavery to
the good . Suppose you are in a ship at sea ; sup
pose in that ship there are two or three hundred
passengers , and they have liberty to walk, or to
speak, or to pray, or to preach, or to hear, or to
do anything which they can reasonably desire
to do ; but suppose one were to say, This, my
liberty, is too restricted ; I wish to have the
liberty of boring a hole in the bottom of the
ship : do you not think it right that law should
prevent the fulfilment of his wish, and that , for
the safety of the whole, the captain should be
empowered to put him in chains for the remain
der of the voyage ?
So it is with civil liberty. While all those
who desire to do good may have unfettered
liberty to do so, law must interpose to prevent
the lawless and the disobedient from inter
fering with the freedom of the good and the
obedient. Did not the Apostle Paul recognise
this as the true and proper effect and action of
law , when he was so impressed with the duty of
B
18 LIBERTY .

maintaining his privileges as a Roman citizen ,

that he hesitated not to appeal from an inferior
to a superior court, though Nero was the
ruler ? and not only so, but, although a cruel
tyrant and persecutor sat upon the throne,
yet the Apostle Paul saw in this monster not
the man, but the office instituted by God ;
and therefore he said, - If I am an offender ,
.or have committed anything worthy of death,
I refuse not to die ; but if there be none
of these things whereof they accuse me, no
man may deliver me unto them. I appeal unto
Cæsar .” The Apostle recognised the law, not
as if it were the best that might be, but as law
for the punishment of those that do wrong, and
for the protection of those that do right. He
recognised the law , and was content to stand
upon his rights as a Roman citizen , and was
prepared to come under its sentence - which
might be too severe, or might be the reverse
because he felt that it was the ordinance of
God. Law is the mother of liberty ; and its
maintenance and improvement , if needs be, the
duty of us all . Wherever national freedom
has been enjoyed in its highest possible per
fection, there religion has been spread to its
greatest possible extent ; and in the ratio in
which a people has known the truth, in the
same ratio that people has enjoyed personal,
social , and national freedom .
 LIBERTY . 19

But there is a freedom of a far loftier

description — the freedom that earth can neither
give nor take away ; and that freedom I con
ceive to be especially intended in the passage
I have selected : “ Ye shall know the truth ,
and the truth shall make you free ; if the Son,
therefore, shall make you free, ye shall be free
indeed .” This freedom is more precious than
all other. It is the pioneer of the other.
We are told in the word of God, that man
by nature is a slave : he is “ sold under sin
he is “ led captive by Satan at his will ,” — he
is under the bondage of iniquity - I quote the
very language of Scripture -he is the “ servant
of sin unto death ; " and as long as this slavery
exists, so long anything like social freedom can
be but imperfectly realised. It seems to me
that the first effect of the Gospel is to remove
the slavery of the soul, and through its be
nignant influence to promote, extend , and sus
tain the social and national freedom of the
outward man . The first thing necessary is,
that we should cease to be the slaves of sin .
and then we shall be incapable of being the
slaves of the demagogue or of the tyrant. We
shall be
“ Freemen whom the truth makes free
When all are slaves besides.”

First, then, I conceive , the Gospel makes us

free from ignorance and superstition. Its light
20 LIBERTY.

dissipates the cloud that darkens and the cor

ruption that oppresses us ; truth triumphs in the
mind, and then freedom reigns in the soul , which
thus enjoys the glorious liberty of the sons of
God . It is the Gospel that teaches us the im
mortality of the soul, the responsibility of man
to God -- salvation , hope, peace. It teaches us
to feel, in all the relationships of life, “ Thou ,
God, seest me !” to fear sin, not because society
condemns it, but because God hates it ; and to
admire and seck after “ whatsoever things are
true, just, lovely, honest, of good report ,” not
because they are profitable and expedient, but
because Scripture pronounces them to be holy,
and acceptable, and lovely in the sight of God.
Teach a man to fear God, it will follow as a
necessary consequence that he will honour the
Queen . Teach him to sustain his position
as an immortal subject, and he will never be
guilty of forgetting his position as an earthly
citizen. It is when the rays of the Sun of
Righteousness fall upon the soul of man that the
chains of sin and the fetters of error are dis
solved, and, knowing the truth , he is thereby
made free .
In the second place, the Gospel of Jesus
Christ, that is, the Truth, removes from us the
curse and condemnation of sin . It is a very
solemn fact, that we are born under a load of
oppression, and a curse far more terrible than
 LIBERTY . 21

was ever felt by prostrate nations, or inflicted

by a Nero's hand. Sin lies on every man, a
crushing load . He is shut up in condemnation ,
each in the great prison - house : the curse is on
us ; we are strangers and aliens from God , and
enemies to him , by reason of wicked works,
and therefore liable to his wrath. This is our
true state ; emancipation from this is worthy of
a struggle. We may have it at once . I hear
murmuring in my ears the first sounds of the
Gospel jubilee, “ There is no condemnation to
them that be in Christ Jesus.” The instant that
I receive the glorious news, “ Christ became
a curse for me that I might be blest ,” - the
moment that I am informed that he died, “ the
just for the unjust, to bring us unto God , " and
also hear him saying, - Come unto me, all ye
that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give
you rest ;" that instant the load is removed from
my heart, the spell is lifted from my pulse , the
crushing curse, the only tyrant, whose tyranny
so many feel and so few protest against, is cast
off. I rejoice while I exclaim , “ There is there
fore now no condemnation to them that are in
Christ Jesus." I can then look round to chains,
and faggot, and prison , and torture , and death,
without fear or pain ; and ask, in the enjoy
ment of a freedom which Cæsar cannot give,
and which Cæsar cannot crush , “ Who is he
that condemneth ? It is Christ that died, yea,
22 LIBERTY .

rather that is risen again, who is ever at the

right hand of God , who also maketh inter
cession for us. Who shall separate us from
the love of Christ ? Shall tribulation, or dis
tress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or
peril, or sword ? I am persuaded that neither
death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor
powers , nor things present, nor things to come,
nor height, nor depth , nor any other creature,
shall be able to separate us from the love of
God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord .”
In the third place, we are freed by the
Gospel from the power and domination of evil
and corrupt passions. The greatest tyranny is
the world within . Man's heart is the greatest
slaveholder, and ascendant sin is the bitterest
despotism ; no tyranny is so terrible as the
anarchy of evil and corrupt passions ; and the
man who has not been emancipated from the
curse of sin , nor yet saved from the power and
pollution of his own passions, that man will
find an enemy in every man , a prison in every
country, tyranny in every form of government.
Let us, therefore, take care to be saved from
the tyrant that reigns within us, and, depend
upon it, the soul so saved and emancipated will
feel little the severest tyrannies that can come
from without.
We are freed by Truth, that is, the Gospel of
Jesus, from the slavery of the world . Strange,
 LIBERTY. 23

that the world should exercise a tyrant sway

over any of its people ! But is it not so ?
There is many a one who will submit to the
most painful sacrifices in order to avoid the
world's frown ; and many a one who will undergo
the most intolerable drudgery, in order to con
ciliate the world's evanescent smile . There are
many who would be Christians, were it not for
the world's censures,—foremost in the Chris
tian Church, and upholders of all that is good
and great within it, were it not that this great
man or that great man would sneer at their
conduct . “ Who is he that overcometh the
world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the
Son of God ? " This is the victory that over
cometh the world, even our faith . 56 Ye shall
know the truth, and the truth shall make you
92
free ."
We are freed by the Gospel, in the next
place, from the slavery of Satan. He is the
universal tyrant , the tyrant to whom we must
pay the heaviest tax ; and yet the tyrant of
whose sceptre men are least weary , and against
whose tyranny the most eloquent advocates of
freedom are the last to protest. The tyrant
that taints the air, shakes thrones, corrupts the
people, ruins souls, shuts or perverts the Bible,
supports all that is bad, and obstructs the good ;
who introduced the curse of sin and the cala
mities of the fall ; is tolerated in monarchies
24 LIBERTY.

and republics alike. The Gospel alone shows

us how to resist, and overcome, and depose him ,
-- Ye shall know the truth, and the truth
shall make you free.”
Lastly, the Gospel shall make us free from
the fear of death . To the unconverted man
death is full of alarm : no unsanctified man
can bear the thought of it ; they are all, through
fear of death , kept in bondage ; but the instant
that one becomes through grace a Christian , he
knows that the sting of death is removed, that
the sceptre of death is broken : he can meet
death either as a friend or as a foe. If he meet
him as a friend , he hails him as a messenger
from his heavenly Master, for whom he has
been waiting and getting ready, as a bride for
the bridegroom . If he meets death as a foe,
he knows that he shall vanquish him ; he can
exclaim, in the language of triumph which his
Master taught him, “ O death , where is thy
sting ? O grave, where is thy victory ?” Thus
the truth enlightens the mind, sanctifies the
heart, purifies the conscience , makes us free
from the ignorance that blinds us, from the
passions that corrupt us, from the stings of
conscience that disquiet us : and he that knows
the truth is made free, not by annulling the
law , or by eluding the law, or by disarming
the law , but by magnifying the law in every
point, and making it honourable. Hence the
 LIBERTY. 25

Christian everywhere has a freedom that is

boundless. He cannot be a slave . Cæsar
placed John as a prisoner in Patmos, and fan
cied he could chain him there , but he rose upon
celestial wings, and held communion with God
in heaven . Paul was placed as a prisoner in a
gaol, but Paul felt, and wrote, and thought,
and prayed , and taught and propagated, the
kindling truth that made nations free .

“ He is the freeman whom the truth makes free.

The oppressor holds
His body bound, but knows not what a range
His spirit takes, unconscious of a chain ;
And that to bind him is a vain attempt,
Whom God delights in, and in whom he dwells. ”

Such, then, is that precious freedom , that is

the source and spring of all other true and
enduring freedom .
Now I need not say that it is possible for a
man to enjoy the greatest amount of social
freedom , and yet be altogether ignorant of this
freedom . It is quite possible to make speeches
in the name of Liberty— to compose poems full
of the richest sentiment in her praise -- or, like
a neighbouring nation, to plant trees of liberty,
and bring priests obsequiously to bless them ;
and yet be all the while the slaves of sin, the
victims of an inner corruption, the sport and
playthings of the Prince of Evil.
True freedom is the emancipation of the
26 LIBERTY.

heart from its lusts ; the expulsion from the

conscience of the serpents that coil around and
poison it : it is the introduction of celestial life,
of everlasting peace. This is freedom , this is
happiness ; its possessor is free at home, free
abroad, free in solitude and in society, in life,
in death . “ Where the Spirit of the Lord is,
there is liberty .”
Christianity and liberty, like the twins of
ancient story, live and flourish, or wither and
die, together ; they are the warp and woof of
life . If it be true that religion and loyalty
always go together - if it be true that great
social Freedom is always the accompaniment of
the greatest amount of God's Truth — then let
us stand for that Truth - let us cleave to an
open Bible-let us glory in an unveiled cross
let us rejoice in our pure and Protestant Chris
tianity--let us yield it at the bidding of no
priest - let us surrender it at the behest of no
monarch-let us surrender it at the voice of
none. God has made us free in the noblest
sense, and no man shall make us slaves. The
birthplace of true freedom is the individual
heart; its nursery is the sanctuary of God ; its
inspiration is the truth of God.
I believe, my dear friends, this true freedom
is making progress. All real progress is slow,
but sure ; all false progress is rapid , but soon
over. I believe that the progress of this freedom
 LIBERTY. 27

is to be traced , not by great national earth

quakes, nor by volcanic explosions, nor by
overturned thrones, nor by shattered insti
tutions , but by the disappearance of prejudices
the accumulation of ages -by sanguinary laws
being blotted from the statute -book- by greater
sympathy with the poor and distressed by a
greater reverence for the truths of the Gospel
of Jesus, and by a more reverential regard for
God's blessed word. False freedom is like the
mushroom , the growth of a night, and dies in
the morning ; or like the mountain torrent, that
flows swiftly for a time, and then leaves its
channel dry. True Freedom — that Freedom
which is produced by the influence of the
Gospel --is like the oak of our native land, that
grows slowly but surely to maturity ; and
whether the storm beats upon it, or the sun
shine glistens upon it, it draws nutriment and
beauty alike from both .
Let us make sure, my dear friends, of that
true and spiritual freedom which God alone can
bestow. Be the enfranchised of heaven, and
none on earth can disfranchise you ; get rid of the
tyranny that reigns within , and light will be
the chains that any earthly prince can bind
around you .
My dear friends, are you free from the
bondage of corruption ?-are you free from the
curse of God's law ? from the taint of sin ? from
28 LIBERTY .

the prejudices that cloud your minds ? from

the passions that oppress them ? from the power
of Satan ? from the dominion of ignorance, and
superstition, and error ? Are you, in one word ,
invested with the glorious freedom of the sons
of God ? “ In Christ , ” says the Apostle, “ we
have redemption ,” that is freedom , “ through
his blood, even the forgiveness of sins. ” “ Be
lieve on the Lord Jesus Christ, ” and you shall
be saved —that is, free - free from the curse, the
pollution , the power of sin : it is “ the Lamb
of God who taketh away the sin ,” and, thereby,
the slavery “ of the world .” “ Come unto him ,
all ye that labour and are heavy laden , and he
shall give you rest ” from your labour, deliver
ance from your slavery. “ Ye shall know the
truth, and the truth shall make you free .”
Let us bless God, then, for the glorious
liberty that we possess—that in this country
we can preach his word, hear it, read it, learn
it ; and if ever , in the mysterious dispensations
of Providence , our great national and social
privileges shall be swept away, let us know
that they can be swept away by no tyrant from
abroad, but only by the corruption and the
depravity of our own hearts. And if ever
those privileges shall be suspended in just judg
ment for our sins --for, my dear friends, the storm
that has visited other lands may visit ours also
-let us then lift up our heads, and look to that
 LIBERTY. 29

new Jerusalem — that heavenly country—that

city that hath foundations, amid the splendours
and immunities of which our gray - haired fathers
and our beloved babes are resting, and amid
whose glory and blessedness those who are
the freemen of the Lord Jesus shall dwell holy
and happy for ever and ever.
 EQUALITY

The rich and the poor meet together ; the Lord is the
maker of them all. — Prov. xxii . 2 .

Last Lord's-day morning I referred to the

occasion of the adoption of the peculiar subject
on which I addressed you ; I presented also the
apostolic warrant for adopting such subjects as
topics of discourse ; I mentioned that when the
Apostle Paul was once going to preach at
Athens, he read upon a stone, or an altar,
this inscription : “ To the Unknown God ; " and
adopted it as his topic of discourse, the text, if
I might so call it, on which to preach to the
learned and cultivated Athenians. I told you
that with, I trust, some portion of the Apostle's
spirit , and some portion of the Apostle's grace,
and having the same means and lessons of
instruction as the Apostle taught, that I might,
in one respect at least, and in this respect in
particular , follow his example . I said I saw in
scribed on the walls of every portion of the city,
I read in protocols, in letters, in speeches, these
 EQUALITY. 31

words, long obsolete and buried as revolutionary

cries, but now again called from their slumbers,
Liberty,Equality,Fraternity ; and I endeavoured
to show you that the words were beautiful in
meaning, as they are musical in utterance ; and
that it seemed to me, that the whole mistake
perpetrated beyond the Channel was simply
this, that they had the conception in their
minds of great truths , but had gone to broken
cisterns, instead of to the fountain of living
waters, to get the substance and the meaning
of those truths. I thought, therefore, that I
could not show myself more patriotic, or more
full of sympathy with our race, than by laying
hold of these truths thus made so suddenly
popular, and showing you that we have been
blessed with their presence for eighteen cen
turies ; that however short we may have come
of a full exemplification of them , we have been
taught them while we gathered round our
mothers' knees ; and that we who live under a
monarchy, under which it is said they cannot
live, are the only true, consistent, and earnest
advocates of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity .
Last Lord’s-day, I described the nature and
limits of Liberty from the text, “ Ye shall know
the truth , and the truth shall make you free. "
I showed you no nation has been truly free,
except such as knew the truth ; and that just
in proportion as the truth has been enshrined
 32 EQUALITY.

in a people's creed , has Freedom lived in a peo

ple's heart, and unfolded its glorious principles
in a people’s conduct. If God shall make us free,
none can make us slaves ; and it is therefore that
we grieve on this account that some altogether
misapprehend the meaning of that great word
Freedom ; and misapprehending still more the
spring from which it is to be derived, have
groped and plunged around the earth, like ma
niacs, overturning thrones, and unsettling dy
nasties ; and then standing upon the debris and
the chaos they themselves have made, they
fancy they are free, when , in fact, they are
ignorant of that only prescription which can
make them free indeed : “ Ye shall know
the truth , and the truth shall make you free.”
God's word is the charter of our freedom , the
great depository of our hopes ; and prescriptions
taken from it, we may rest assured, are the true
ones, because, like the Author of them , they are
. the same yesterday, to day, and for ever. Give
men the elevation of the Gospel, and they never
can be slaves ; begin freedom in the soul within,
and it soon will radiate until it covers with its
light and lustre all that is without.
What renders these explanations of mine more
important, is the melancholy fact, that great
!
changes, in states, in churches, in communities ,
have been produced simply by the misinterpre
tation and misapplication of words. For instance,
 EQUALITY. 33

that word which we hear in every man's mouth ,

Revolution, some people seem to think means
progress. Now if you will really look into the
derivation of the word, you will see that it means
no such thing : revolution is derived from revolvo,
a Latin word, which means " to roll back ; ” and
therefore, instead of being progress, it is retro
gression, going backward ; and the Revolution
which has taken place beyond the Channel, so
far from being an advance towards millennial
brightness , is really a revolution, or rolling back
of 1848 into 1792 and 1793. It is 1848 putting
on the cast -off robes of 1792. We in this land
are making progress ; our country, like a rock
in the midst of the sea, with sunshine upon it
while all is ferment around, bears on its bosom
an advancing people, free and equal in the right
sense of the word, because the Gospel has made
us so. Nations in the midst of what are called
revolutions, are like criminals on a treadmill,
they move rapidly, and with tremendous expen
diture of strength, but they make no progress.
It is thus that the misapprehension of words
is often the cause of convulsions ; and a right
explanation of words, without being political,
may be socially and religiously practical.
Let me, however, direct your minds to the
second great truth which I specified on a pre
vious occasion - Equality ; and let me show you
how far that word is hopelessly impracticable,
с
34 EQUALITY.

in the popular apprehension of its meaning ;

and how far it is true, and already actualized,
in its right and scriptural sense.
The text evidently implies the existence of
society. What is society ? It is the rich and
the poor meeting together — a combination , a
congregation, a collection of rich and poor, of
all ranks and classes. Now I hold from this
text, as well as from reasons that lie beyond
it, that social life is identical with human
existence. “ It is not good that man should be
alone,” was pronounced amid the sunshine of
paradise ; and “ it is not good that man should be
alone,” either domestically or socially, remains
still true, and yet more expedient, amid the
shadows of the fall. It must also be felt, that
the instinctive feelings of our nature incline us
to adopt a social state . Give to the solitary
recluse all the enjoyments, pleasures, and grati
fications you can invent or bestow, but continue
to sequester him to a state of absolute solitude,
and he will feel his life reſt of half its charms,
and loaded with unendurable weight. Christ
ianity also demands for its development society.
I cannot conceive the Bible to have a meaning,
if man is not to be a social being. Does not
the grace of charity denote objects of that cha
rity ? Does not mercy imply that there shall
be around, and near , real recipients of that
mercy ? Do not forbearance, love, and gene
 EQUALITY. 35

rosity - graces that bloom in richest fragrance

upon the tree of the everlasting Gospel-imply
that there are people who are to enjoy their
fragrance, participate in their shelter, and re
joice in the blessings they diffuse ? Society never
has been maintained circumstantially level, and
it never can be so. Has there ever been a
society without the rich and the poor ; or, in
other words, existing in any country or age for
any length of time, circumstantially level ? It
has been reserved to dreamers only to propose
it . History proves it never has been so ; sober
analysis will show it never, in this dispensation,
can be so. The rich must be one class, the
poor must be another : it has been so from the
beginning, and I conceive it will be so to the
end. In no conceivable state can men start fair.
Suppose a million of men are dropped from the
sky into a deserted city, let it be this great city
in which we live, emptied for the time of all its
previous inhabitants, - suppose, I say , a million
of men are all dropped from the sky into its
midst. The moment they look about them ,
they find palaces and gaols, churches, and prisons,
and huts, and hovels, and streets , and fields :
and the million of men thus placed in the centre
of the forsaken city , resolve to be , and to con
tinue to be, all circumstantially equal ; or, in
other words , not to have only Liberty , but
Equality also ; and they begin to make the ex
36 EQUALITY.

periment. One looks around him, and he sees

a beautiful palace on the right ; and another
looks and sees a very mean house upon the
left ; and another looks forward, and sees a
noble's hall ; and another sees what is a disgrace
to us -- one of those underground cellars in which
human beings now live ; another looks about
him, and sees beautiful streets, spacious, well
paved, and well drained ; and another sees an
alley, ill drained, narrow, dark , and replete with
poisonous malaria . Who is to dwell at the
East - end, and who is to live at the West- end ?
Who is to inhabit the palace ? who to take
the hovel ? Who to dwell in the kitchen under
ground ? and who in the garret far above ?
Who is to have the broad well-paved street ?
who the narrow and confined street ? Do you
not see that if dropped from the clouds into the
midst of this city, it would be impossible to
prevent inequality instantly developing itself,
and in its worst form ? The strongest would be
plunged into collision with the weak, and force
would take the place of justice and charity.
But let us place the matter in another point
of view : Suppose the million of men dropped
from the sky, not into the midst of such a city
as this, all prepared and ready for their reception
--but suppose they are dropped upon the earth,
where not one stone has been dug from the
quarry, nor one broad acre sown, nor any signs
 EQUALITY. 37

significant of civilization or social order to be

seen. A million of men thus dropped from the
sky, or introduced from any other quarter, in
order to live, must begin instantly to do some
thing ? They must perish of hunger, unless they
begin to work . The difficult question at the
outset of their existence will be, Who is to do
the humble work ? who the noble work ? who
is to make laws ? and who is to make clothes ?
who is to right wrongs, and who is to judge,
or sit in judgment and pronounce upon those
wrongs ? Who, in short, is to do the work which
every man would wish to be rid of ? and who
is to be allowed to do the work that every man
would feel a pleasure in engaging in ? Do you
not see the difficulty arises even there ? Unless
lots are cast , ambition and physical power will
interpose, and in either case there must be a
classification or inequality in the social system ;
in other words, the old truth must evolve,
the rich on one hand , and the poor on the other,
and both meeting together .
But suppose that all, in this last case , have
agreed on an arrangement, and start perfectly
equal, and thus begin to work : suppose they
have got it thoroughly arranged that one shall
judge, and another shall make laws, and another
shall make raiment, and another cultivate the
field , and another be a merchant, and the whole
body be separated and subdivided into the various
38 EQUALITY.

subdivisions of society, but all equally rich

what then takes place ? One man is indolent,
and, in the course of five years, becomes poor ;
another man is full of energy and vigour, and,
in the course of five years, he becomes rich.
Here you see inequality taking place. After
seven years the poor are developed , and the
rich are developed also . After this deprecated
but inevitable inequality takes place, what is to
be done ? Shall they do as the savans, who
have recently arisen to illuminate the world,
suggest—divide again ? But what would be the
result of this ? Would it not give the highest
rewards to indolence, and the severest punish
ment to energy and virtue ? Would not war
and ruin follow ? So, by the very necessity of
human nature, the old result would take place
again , and my text receive another proof, the
rich and the poor shall be, and meet together.
God has made men unequal. We do not
start fair. It is matter of fact we do not . One
man has a towering and gigantic intellect, which
exercises a sovereignty that others must obey.
Another man has great physical strength, and
that strength can command obedience when
obedience is not given . Another man has un
interrupted health , and needs none to minister
to him , and therefore can be the monarch
amidst them . These distinctions, which are at
the very root of the social system , render it
 EQUALITY. 39

impossible that there shall be neither rich nor

poor, neither subjects nor rulers .
And not only do these aboriginal distinctions
exist at the commencement of life, but sin has
introduced differences which God never intro
duced . Avarice breaks forth here in your social
equality ; ambition will break forth there ; pas
sion will burst forth elsewhere ; and thus the sin
ful passions of mankind will split the primitive
dead level into all the heights on which a Nero
or a Napoleon have ruled as tyrants ; and into
all the hollows in which widows have wept,
and orphans moan and are in bitterness.
Such seem conclusive proofs that social life
cannot be without rich and poor. Analogies are
not reasons, but they are sometimes presumptive
evidences . In this case they are so. God has
not made every star in the firmament of the
same magnitude ; but one star different from
another star in glory . God has made hills and
valleys in every portion of the earth — he has
made fathers to rule, and children , by the very
instincts of nature, to obey ; both creation and
revelation concur in testifying to the great
truth - all cannot be the highest — some must
be subordinate. He tells us himself, “ The
body is not one member, but many ; if the
foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am
not of the body : is it therefore not of the
body ? and if the ear shall say, Because I am
40 EQUALITY.

not the eye, I am not of the body : is it there

fore not of the body ? If the whole body were
an eye, where were the hearing ? If the whole
body were hearing, where were the smelling ?
But now God hath set the members, every one
of them in the body, as it hath pleased him . ”
And even in Paradise inequality was created ;
for man was made first, and meant to com
mand ; and woman was made second , and there
fore to obey.
And, in the next place, the plain assertions
of the Word of God show that he did not
contemplate all being circumstantially— I re
peat the word, circumstantially - equal. “ The
blessing of the Lord maketh rich ; " there is
the immediate power of God , making an in
equality ; " promotion cometh not from the
east nor from the west. ” “ God is judge. He
putteth down one and setteth up another .”
“ God raiseth the poor out of the dust, and
setteth him with princes.” And again , " The
poor shall never cease out of thy land.” I know
but one exception to all this ; and even this is
not an exception, if we carefully examine it.
It occurred at the first promulgation of the
Gospel, at which we read that all things were
in common — that is, at a dead level- in the
Christian congregation . It is said, “ And all
that believed were together, and had all things
in common ; and sold their possessions and parted
 EQUALITY. 41

them to all men, as every man had need . ” And

again, in chapter iv. 34, “ Neither was there any
among them that lacked : for as many as were
possessors of land and houses, sold them , and
brought the price of the things that were sold,
and laid them down at the Apostles' feet : and
distribution was made unto every man accord
ing as he had need . ” Now this took place at
the first promulgation of the Gospel ; but it is
apparent from subsequent laws, and rules, and
exhortations , that it was merely a temporary
arrangement, arising from the necessity of the
crisis, and not a permanent basis on which
society was to be constructed . And, more
over , to show you that even this having of
things in common was not enforced by a law,
but was the spontaneous and deliberate offering
of the people, and therefore totally different
from that coercive legislation that would press
all circumstantially into one level , I will read,
from the fifth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles ,
Peter's address to Ananias, “ Why hath Satan
filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and
to keep back part of the price of the land ? ” Now
notice what Peter says : “ Whiles it remained ,
was it not thine oun ? and after it was sold, was
it not in thine oren power ? ” Now, he could not
have spoken thus to Ananias if this community
of goods was meant to be obligatory, or a result
of compulsion ; it is plain, therefore, that it was
42 EQUALITY.

a spontaneous offering of the people in the pro

spect of persecution, and, being temporary, was
discontinued the moment the Christian Church
came to encounter sin among the nations ; for
the Apostle Paul tells us immediately after of
rich and poor, of kings that are to govern , and
of subjects that are to obey : and thus, there
fore, we conclude that this arrangement was
purely of a temporary and spontaneous nature,
and is no precedent for us, except in spirit.
If again , in the various provinces of Creation ,
we try to produce that equality in circum
stances (for I am speaking of circumstantial
equality as distinguished from essential equality,
of which I shall speak by and by) , the attempt
will prove equally a failure. Suppose you try
to equalize the globe on which you live - sup
pose you labour, under the impulse of your
visionary dreams, to make this globe a perfect
spheroid, with no hills or valleys, or the least
intimation of inequality , that it may thus pro
test against the inequality in circumstances,
which you would banish from society : you have
no sooner done so, if it were possible, than the
lightnings strike here, and the earthquake ex
plodes there : the hills are increased, and the
valleys deepened, and the very equality you
tried to create turns out, in the lapse of years,
to be the inequality that the great Creator had
originally, and well and wisely made.
 EQUALITY . 43

Suppose you try the same plan in another

sphere. Go, in the season of autumn, into some
of the forests of our world, place a man at each
tree, and tell him to cut it exactly twelve feet
square ; and suppose, when all the forest is thus
completely squared, you write upon it, Equality ,
intending it to be the type of the equality you
want to create in the circumstances of human
society : wait five months : the juice begins to
rise from the root, and suns and rains begin to
descend upon the forest ; you will then find
each tree throwing out its branches at “ its own
sweet will,” and laughing to scorn the levelling
efforts that you have made in the midst of them ,
and the dead ones alone remain as you left
them .
The very inequalities that exist in the globe
physically are the sources of the springs we
drink from — of the fertile valleys of the shel
tering hills of the shadowing rocks—so that
equality on the surface of the earth is not only
impossible, but also inexpedient. Should not,
therefore, all these analogies convince us that
circumstantial equality is impossible, undesir
able, and inexpedient ?
Shall we quote those parts of the world
where this equality has been most paraded as
a national characteristic ? Go to the Southern
States of America, for instance, where repub
lican rule exists . There, one would suppose, all
44 EQUALITY .

its beauties, and all its glories, would flash con

viction upon the mind of every disinterested
monarchical spectator ; but what is the fact ?
The man who may be the descendant of illus
trious sires, and has as noble a heart and as good
a head as any of you , because there is a certain
tinge in his under-skin created by the sun
beams, is not allowed to come to the same
communion table, or to travel in the same
steam -boat with the man whose skin has been
bleached a little whiter by northern winds
and colder suns, and who has no other real
ground of superiority.
Whereas, in this old country, where what is
called inequality in circumstances exists, the
blackest child of Africa, who shows a sanctified
heart , would be as welcome to take the Lord's
Supper in any cathedral, church, or chapel in
the land, as the greatest noble, or the richest
man in the midst of it . Thus, where all is said
to be circumstantially equal, the most unscrip
tural inequality exists ; where all is plainly ,
circumstantially unequal, there the noblest
equality reigns.
Or suppose I go to the last specimen of this
attempt at equality, without touching upon
anything in the least degree political, which ,
as I said, I am incompetent to discuss - sup
pose we take the very last instance of it, one
single fact that has followed events which have
 EQUALITY. 45

so recently taken place in a sister country,

I speak the more of this, because I myself
visited the factories and workshops of Boulogne
last summer ; and there I saw some two or
three hundred of my countrymen, chiefly I
think natives of Dundee, who came over to
work at the mills ; they were enabled, through
their superior talent, their enlightened minds,
and industry, to earn twice as much wages as a
Frenchman ; I saw , only last summer, these
people assembled in their church ,the Church
of Scotland having sent out a missionary to
preach among them, and also a schoolmaster
to educate their children ; and I have myself
preached collection sermons for the mainte
nance of that mission. Well, these Scotch
men, by their diligence, and industry, and per
severance, and integrity, had amassed some of
them 401., and some even 601. , which they de
posited in the savings' bank in that town . The
reign of Equality came, and these men were
swept from the place for no other crime than
that they were Scotchmen, and all their little
savings were seized by the advocates of Equality.
I am sure that when Frenchmen come to this
country, there is not a master tradesman in this
assembly who would not employ the cleverest
workmen, and encourage the most industrious,
whether Frenchmen or Englishmen . I am
sure, in this city, where inequality is supposed
46 EQUALITY.

to exist, talent, industry, and integrity may

rise to the noblest positions, whoever may
possess these—be he English or French, or
prince's or peasant's son. The son of a draper
now occupies the episcopal throne of York ,
almost the highest office in the ministry of the
Church of England .
Thus then I have given you these illustra
tions — first, of the impossibility of circumstan
tial equality either beginning or continuing in
this dispensation ; and, secondly, specimens of
the effects of the reign of equality where it has
been purchased at a high rate. But, in the midst
of all circumstantial inequality, I admit there
exists an essential, all -pervading equality. Those
who know the geological structure of the earth ,
may perhaps be aware that the granite occu
pies the lowest place ; is, in other words, the
primitive rock in the structure of our globe ; so
that, if we dig deep at the bottom of the deepest
mines, you will find the granite there ; or go
up to the highest peak of the loftiest of the
Alps, or of the Apennines, we shall find the
granite there . So it is with the essential
equality of human nature : descend into the
lowest depths of the social system, and you
find humanity there ; ascend to its loftiest pin
nacles, and in nobles , in princes, in kings, you
find the same common and essential humanity
there : the distinctions are wholly and solely in ,
 EQUALITY. 47

outward and superficial circumstances. Man is

the plant, the queen is but the flowering of that
plant. The great sea is the symbol of our
common humanity ; the inequalities in rank
are but the rolling waves and ripples on its
surface . Are there not many things to remind
us it is so ? Does not the peasant breathe the
same air that the queen breathes ? Does not
the same sun that shines into the oriel window
of the palace shine into the casement of the
cottage ? Does not the poorest widow in the
land read her Bible by the same sunbeam by
which the queen reads hers ? Does not the
same law of gravitation keep the beggar sitting
by the roadside, and the queen upon her throne ?
Are there not to balance circumstantial inequal
ities, great, essential, all -pervading equalities
that we should do well to remember ?
I believe, too, that the rich are more dependent
on the poor than the poor are upon the rich .
Both are dependent the one upon the other ;
but the former, I believe, most upon the latter.
It is the poor that fight our battles — that man
our decks — that sow our fields — that reap our
harvests : then reverence the poor man ; he is
noble in his rags, for he is still a man ; and he
is more noble in his Christianity, for he is a son
of God . Let not the rich look down contemp
tuously upon the poor, but let him see in a
Christian beggar his equal in reality, his in
48 EQUALITY .

ferior only through circumstances. And, if the

rich are dependent upon the poor, let the poor
know too that they are dependent upon the
rich . If there were no rich men—I speak in
the midst of a congregation, many of whom are
the tradesmen of this great metropolis—I say,
if there were no rich men, what would become
of your prosperous trades, your flourishing
warehouses ? If no man wore silk, what would
the silk-weavers of Spitalfields do ? If none
wore lace, what would the lace-makers of Not
tingham and Honiton do ? If none had carriages,
there would be no grooms nor coachmen. If
there were no rich men to enjoy luxuries (which
I would neither envy nor deny them ), there
would be no poor men to be benefited by the
expenditure of the rich . The truth is, we are
all dependent upon each other, and the very in
equalities that some protest against, as injurious
to the welfare of mankind, do in fact contribute
to the very existence and maintenance of our
social prosperity and well-being . I believe that
those who fancy they are injured by the con
stitution of society, so think from misappre
hension and mistake. Look at things at the
right angle and in the right mind, and every
man is a king if he only will but see it. Instead
of being the slave of all , I am really and truly
the governor of all.
of all. I am no sooner born, than
I find streets and houses built by my fore
 EQUALITY . 49

fathers, all waiting and ready to receive me.

I look around me at the world, and I see that
I am not a slave : those barristers that plead in
the courts , they do my work -- they are pleading
for me : those physicians have been educated
and are prescribing for me. The post-office
waits for me till I put in my message ; and the
instant I have done so, a thousand postmen run
to deliver it. The railroads are useless till I
come to make use of them . The Queen's
cabinet consults for me ; the parliament debates
for me ; and when I look into the paper in the
morning, it is to see how my servants have con
ducted my business, and what they have done
that conduces to my comfort, and happiness,
and peace . The Queen sits upon that throne
for me, and sways that sceptre for me ; and she,
who is the greatest of all, is really the servant
of all ; and every contribution to her Majesty's
household - every prince that is born -- every
princess that comes into the world — is only a
fresh guarantee to me that my children shall
be happy and protected beneath the same shel
tering constitution under which I and my fathers
lived. Open those eyes, 0 discontented and
seditious man, and see that, instead of being
the servant of all, you are the end and ruler
of all !

For, us the winds do blow,

The earth doth rest, heaven move, and fountains flow :
D
50 EQUALITY.

Nothing we see but means our good,

As our delight or as our treasure,
The whole is either our cupboard of food ,
Or cabinet of pleasure.

« The stars have us to bed,

Night draws the curtain which the sun withdraws,
Music and light attend our head ;
All things unto our flesh are kind
In their descent and being, to our mind
In their ascent and cause.

“ More servants wait on man

Than he'll take notice of. In every path
He treads down that which doth befriend him
When sickness makes him pale and wan.
Oh, mighty love ! Man is one world, and hath
Another to attend him .”

There are some things that we can enjoy

which cannot be monopolized by the rich. For
instance, I stand upon some lofty hill in the
midst of our land ; I look around at some wide
spread and glorious landscape ; and when I
look at that beautiful and flowery landscape,
with its meandering streams, and its blue hills,
and its wide-spread and fertile valleys, I say ,
such a nobleman has that part of it - such a
baronet claims that part of it , such a country
gentleman has a third part of it , but the land
scape - the cream , and beauty, and bloom of
all — that does not enter into any of their title
deeds or inventories ; they have the profit
I the pleasure . The great, the rich, and the
 EQUALITY. 51

noble have only the inferior portion of the land

scape ; and I, a common traveller, look from the
hill-top, see, and taste, and enjoy all the sweet
and beautiful variety . I believe, too, that rank,
and greatness, and title, are not contributions
to one's happiness ; I do not believe that the
nobleman who rolls past in his carriage is one
whit happier than the poor mechanic who earns
his wages, and lives within the wages that he
earns. It is a great law that desires increase
always with their indulgence. What seems to
me a great luxury when I look at it in the dis
tance , no sooner becomes mine by possession,
than it ceases to be a luxury, and becomes an
absolute necessity. At present I can do with
out a carriage, and I think that if I had one it
would be a great enjoyment ; but if I had it, I
should soon find that I could not do without
it ; and thus, what appears to be a luxury in
prospect, comes to be in possession a positive
and absolute necessity. Depend on it, the
shoe is best, not when it is too large or too
small, but when it fits exactly. He is happiest,
not who has two or six staves to walk by,
but he who has one, and that one just strong
enough to support him. Hence happiness pre
vails, not, on the whole, so much among the
rich and the great, as among the middle classes
of society .
I have thus, then , shown the unavoidable
52 EQUALITY.

existence of circumstantial inequality. Let me

look now at that real, lasting equality that is
revealed by the Gospel, and by the Gospel alone.
It is Christianity that shows us the secret of
real equality, not by depressing all to an equally
low level , but by exalting all to a common and
a glorious platform . It is the Gospel that
reveals to us this great truth, that we all meet
in one common human nature. The peer of
the greatest standing cannot trace his pedigree
beyond Adam , and the poorest beggar in this
city knows that his descent does not come short
of Adam ; the stamp and impress of the great
original stands forth as visible upon a poor
man's brow as it is upon the brow or coronet
of a prince. We were all made by the same
God ; we have one root in Adain , and one
maker , God ; are by nature the children of the
same father, and therefore brethren .
The Gospel tells us also what experience
confirms; we all meet in the same common
grave. What is the difference between the
rich man's grave and the poor man’s ? Do
you think that purple keeps the dead flesh
from corruption ? Does the grave of the rich
man feel softer to his remains than the grave
of the poor man beneath the green turf ? Is
one more spacious than the other ? or does not
the very ornament upon the sculptured monu
ment only convey , by the contrast, a more
 EQUALITY. 53

intense mockery of the attempt to make a dif

ference ?

“ The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

And all that beauty , all that wealth e'er gave,
Await alike the inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”

There are the rich and the poor, the small and
the great. They rise like clouds ; one gilded for a
moment by the sunbeams, and another darkened
by the shadows of earth , but both equally dis
solved . We brought nothing into the world,
and it is certain we can carry nothing out.
Again : we all meet together in the same
providential care of God ; God does not take
more care of a cherub than he does of a child.
The sparrow and the eagle, the hair of the
head and the distant comet, are under his care.
God takes no more care of the monarch that
sways the most illustrious sceptre, than he does
of the poorest subject in that monarch's realm .
There is none so small as to be beneath God's
care, and none so great as to be beyond the
range and the reach of his almighty control .
A sparrow cannot fall to the ground without
his permission ; and we have his own word con
cerning every Christian, that the very hairs of
his head are all numbered . “ God accepteth
not the persons of princes, nor regardeth the
rich more than the poor .” God's great care, like
54 EQUALITY.

God's great atmosphere, surrounds, envelopes,

and encircles us all.
Christianity tells us, in the next place, that
all meet in the same common fall. It is not
the poor that have fallen , and the rich that are
exempt. That babe — that princess born into
the world the other day, for whom , and for
whose illustrious mother, we pray, that they
may long, long, long be spared—was born with
a heart just the counterpart of that which I
described to you as “ deceitful above all things,
and desperately wicked . ” Sin has smitten the
monarch on his throne, and has not spared the
beggar by the wayside : sin cleaves to the
person that wears the royal purple, just as it
cleaves to him or her that is covered with rags.
God's sentence is pronounced on all : all have
sinned — all have gone astray ; “ there is none
righteous, no not one :" “ Cursed is the man
that continueth not in all the words of this law
to do them ."
Thus, then , we all meet in the same parent
age -- we all meet in the same fall — we all meet
under the weight and pressure of the same curse .
And in the next place, Christianity shows us
that we all meet together in the same Christian
privileges. There ought not to be any distinc
tion in a Christian congregation ; but if there
be any, it is not the man with the gold ring
who hąs the first claim upon the Christian
 EQUALITY. 55

minister, but the poor man in vile raiment.

For what does God's word say ? “ God hath
chosen the foolish things of the world to con
found the wise ; and God hath chosen the weak
things of the world to confound the things which
are mighty ; and base things of the world, and
things which are despised, hath God chosen,
yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought
things that are : that no flesh should glory in
his presence .” I hold, that in the sanctuary
“ there is neither Greek, nor Jew , barbarian ,
Scythian, bond nor free , ” but all are equal
and upon the same level in God's house..
This is the true and grand republic - the
noblest of all republics—the model republic
where Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity dis
play themselves with all the charms that Chris
tianity itself can impart.
We meet, again , in the enjoyment of the same
Sabbath . Poor men, I beseech you, reverence the
Sabbath ! But let the spirit of Voltaire come
and expunge our Christian Sabbath , and you
may plant trees of liberty , and shout Equality
as long as you like ; you have swept away that
beautiful day that comes once in the seven ,
when you can stand up in the congregation for
the worship of God, and feel that the proudest
of Britain's peers is your brother and your
equal in the sight of God. I like, therefore, to
see a congregation in which the greatest and
56 EQUALITY.

the poorest meet, that circumstantial distinc

tions may be visibly lost in Christian equality.
The moment there comes to be a poor man's
church on one side, and a rich man's church on
the other, the two opposite poles are created,
the sky assumes a negative and positive state ,
and the thunder's burst, and the lightning's
flash , will soon be the issue. A Christian con
gregation is in its highest possible perfection ,
apart from spiritual characteristics , when all,
from the Queen upon the throne down to the
meanest of her subjects, meet, and worship, and
communicate . What a noble spectacle was that
that was presented the other year at Blair
Atholl, when the Queen sat in the midst of an
humble Scotch parish church , surrounded by a
Christian peasantry - a peasantry not the least
loyal of her subjects! thus reminding us of the
beautiful text, “ The rich and the poor meet
together ; and truly the Lord is the maker of
them all."
Again : they all meet in the same Christian
rites and privileges. They are all married by
the same ceremony, substantially with the same
words, in the same Christian congregation . I
recollect, when the Queen was married, some
years ago, reading the account of the cere
mony, in which was something to my mind
ineffably grand when the presiding minister said
to her, “ Wilt thou have this man to be thy
 ÈQUALITY . 57

husband ? " and when he said to him, “ Wilt

thou have this woman to be thy wife ? ” There
was the true levelling influence of the Gospel
of Jesus ; and yet it was not levelling, it was
adding a new lustre to the crown, a new gran
deur to the Queen.
All, I say, are married substantially in the
same form ; all, again, are baptized at the same
font, in the same name, of Father , Son , and
Holy Spirit. And all approach the same com
munion - table : there is not one cup for the rich
and one for the poor ; or one bread broken for
the one, and one bread broken for the other.
All are married by the same rites, baptized in
the same form , and approach together the same
communion -table ; and all worship at the same
throne of grace : there is not a prayer for the
great, and a prayer for the poor, or a throne of
grace for the one, and another throne of grace
for the other. God hears on the throne of grace,
not the cry of the Queen, or the cry of the
beggar alone, but the imploring cry of our com
mon , lost, and fallen humanity. We are to
approach that throne, not in the pride of circum
stance , but in the conscious humility of common
want, common doom, and common sin.
And again , we must all meet together at the
common judgment-seat of God. Pharaoh, that
sleeps beneath the stone pyramid , shall hear
the voice of the archangel's trump, and shall
58 EQUALITY

rush to the judgment-seat ; and the poor man

that rests beneath the green turf shall hear no
less distinctly, and accompany with no less
alacrity, the monarch to that common tribunal.
He whose grave is in the silent depths of the
ocean , and whose requiem has been the chime
of the waves of the desert sea - he whose wind
ing -sheet has been the sands of the desert, and
he who has been torn in pieces by the wild
beasts, all shall hear that trump, and all shall
rush to the judgment-seat; with nothing of the
earth upon them but their awful responsibility
in the sight of God . And on whom will the
responsibility lie heaviest ? The responsibility
will lie heaviest upon the rich, and the noble,
and the royal; for to whomsoever much is given,
of him shall much be required.
And, blessed be God ! we all meet, and
all may meet, in one common Saviour. An
ancient king wished to be taught geometry ,
and he asked the great master geometrician of
the age to teach him by some way which was
more speedy and less difficult than the ordinary
one ; the reply of the geometrician was , “ There
is no royal road to geometry .” What is true
in geometry is true in Christianity : there is no
royal road to heaven ; we must walk all in the
same road, we must agree in the same belief
we must be clothed with the same righteous
ness ; “ there is none other name given among
 EQUALITY. 59

men whereby we can be saved , but the name

of Jesus.” We must be enlightened by the
same Sun-we must drink from the same foun
tain ; we were wrecked in the same vessel, we
can be restored now in the same common
Christianity ; and we must all be equally the
subjects of the same great change. There is
no exception ; there is not a great man in this
congregation that can get to heaven with any
other qualification upon earth but this one ;
66
" Except a man be born again, he cannot enter
into the kingdom of heaven ! ” There is not a
poor man who can do with anything less, or a
man who needs anything more, than a new heart
to fit him for heaven.
I ask you all , then , in this congregation , -a
mixture of all classes - are you trusting in the
same Lord ? - have you applied by Faith simply
as sinners to that common Saviour ?—are you
regenerated and renewed by the same Holy
Spirit ? -- have you placed all your confidence
upon the righteousness of a crucified Lord ?
-have you your fitness for the skies in the
renewal of your once corrupted and depraved
hearts ?
Let the poor learn their dignity in the sight
of God. Rags make not a man low ; ermines
and lawn, and purple do not make a man
great . Man gives circumstances their tone ; it
is not the circumstances that change the man .
60 EQUALITY .

Circumstance is but the mean wrappage ; essen

tial Christian character is the noble and the
precious element within . Be Christians, and
God gives you crowns that shall never fade,
and mitres that shall never be stained ; for he
will make you “ kings and priests unto God,
and to his Christ.” Honour to whom honour
is due, for it is the safety of society ; glory,
and praise, and worship, only to God, for it is
the demand of the Gospel of Jesus. Fear God
as sons ; love all, enemies included, for it is
right; honour the Queen as subjects, and God
will bless us in the one, and prosper us in the
other, and we shall know that they are a happy
people “ whose God is the Lord .”
Let the rich, in the next place -meaning by
that word the noble, the great, the titled, the
wealthy - learn humility. “ The grass wither
eth ,” it is true ; but the same passage that re
cords that truth adds also, as the sequel to it,
“ the flower fadeth ;" if you are the flower, and
we are the grass, the flower is most exposed to
the -biting winds of winter, and to the lightning
flash of summer ; and the very dignity that you
possess not only involves you in weightier
responsibility, but exposes you to greater peril.
Whilst the poor reverence all that are superior
to them in the world, you recollect that your
true support is not in circumstances, but in
kindness and consideration for the poor. Let the
 EQUALITY. 61

nobles of this land be but examples of probity,

of truth, of generosity, of charity, of purity,
and love, and their persons will be loved, and
their halls will stand secure . God's great instru
ment for the regeneration of the world is love :
let the greater love the less — let the upper
strata love the lower, and the lower will respond
to that love in loyalty and returning love.
There is no way of keeping the ploughshare of
anarchy out of your country but by love. The
bayonet, and the musket, and the hulks, never
will keep nations right. These are Sinai's
weapons — the true weapon is love. Love the
poor- minister to their wants, provide schools
for the education of their children, and places
for the poor to worship in ; support our great
national charities ; and just in proportion to the
extent of your liberality to the poor, will be
your returning recompense in their conduct.
Have they not shown it ? did they not show it
last Monday ? did not a vast population, all as
one man , rally round you to maintain , sustain,
and strengthen our great national institutions ?
Was not that a recompense for such kindness
as you have shown ? Show more than the much
you have shown, and display greater bene
volence, and they will rally round you a yet
more affectionate, loyal, and loving people. Let
us learn to value more the blessed Gospel that
makes not all subjects, but all kings ; that
62 EQUALITY.

teaches us to live royally, and to die nobly ;

that proclaims to us that God himself is our
Father - Christ our glorious Saviour - infinitude
our common home -eternity our common life
time. We have provided in the Gospel that
equality which France labours to dig with
bayonets from the earth ; an equality that
exalts and dignifies all, and degrades none ;
that binds all into a glorious republic, where
all are princes and peers ; whose atmosphere
is life —whose laws are love — whose being is
immortality and glory.
 7
FRATERNITY ,

Love as Brethren. - I PETER iii . 8.

To-Day I address you from the text, “ Love as

brethren ; " or , as I may render it, Exhibit and
develope in your heart and life, fraternity.
This fraternity may be a recent discovery in
France, but it is an old one in England. It
may be there first disclosed by the flame of a
revolution ; it has been sealed among us by the
blood of the cross, preached in many pulpits,
and cherished in the recesses of many a happy
heart, during eighteen hundred years. Paris
seems the echoing centre of Europe, and from
it , as from a centre , Fraternity has resounded .
Jerusalem is the echoing centre of the universe ,
and from it, Fraternity has long resounded also.
It must be determined by its parentage, its
fruits, its effects, its accompaniments, which
springs from beneath, and which is an emanation
from above. Certainly , the Liberty of which we
have lately heard so much, seems, if we may
judge from circumstances, the least free ; and the
64 FRATERNITY,

Equality which has been blazoned so widely is

certainly the least equal, and the Fraternity ,
as far as I have been able to trace it, the least
fraternal, of any. I do not speak merely of
recent revolutions, but of early ones also. In
1793 , those words, Liberty, Equality , Frater
nity, were the rallying cries of an agitated and
a convulsed nation : but who do you imagine first
raised them ? I find they sprang partly from
the sensual sentimentalism of Rousseau, partly
from the sarcastic atheism of Voltaire, partly
from the sanguinary fanaticism of Marat ; and
were borne through the length and breadth of
the land , mingled with the undertone of widows'
cries and orphans' wailings, by Saint Pierre,
and La Harpe, and others of the same dread
and terrible school; and were followed, wherever
they were heard, (as any one will find by reading
that admirable commentary on prophecy, as
well as instructive lesson-book for the day,
Alison's History of the French Revolution , ) by
confiscation , murder, and death, till Paris be
came almost a Pandemonium , whose successive
volcanic explosions shook Europe to its centre,
and made many feel what a terrible place a
world would become from which God was de
liberately banished . And even now I perceive,
by those means of information which you all
have access to, that a hundred thousand fixed
bayonets , and loaded muskets, are required to
 FRATERNITY . 65

keep up Fraternity in that country. We need

no such support here ; we think that unless it
springs spontaneously from the heart, it is not
worth keeping. Unless it be created in the
depths of the heart by the Spirit of God, and
thence pour out its waters, it is but a sham , a
formula , a name. Certainly, if Fraternity mean
outward embraces amid enthusiastic troops ; if it
mean the most perfumed compliments, and sen
timental expressions of reciprocal good -will; if
it mean endearing appellations and eloquent
vives, there can be no question that there is plenty
of it beyond the Channel ; but if it mean some
thing more than this—something deeper, richer,
more glorious than this—if it be something that
the heart of man alone can receive, and that
God alone can implant, neither the world nor
France has very much of it. I think we can
show , not only our neighbours, but all mankind ,
sa more excellent way. ” If we have it not in the
degree we ought- anything but that still we do
think we have it in some degree, in our hearts,
in our own homes, in our sanctuaries, in our
land , a measure of real substantial Fraternity .
I open a very old - fashioned book , thought so
by modern philosophy, a book that is too little
known here, and infinitely less known beyond
the Channel ; it is called the Bible. I open that
blessed book, and in it I find the biography of
one whose very name is Love. His birth was
E
66 FRATERNITY.

the birth of love, his sermons were the words of

love, his miracles were the wonders of love, his
tears the outgushings of love, his crucifixion
the agony of love, his resurrection the triumph
of love. He was living, speaking, breathing,
all-atoning love. I find, too, that what Christ
is, the system he has established is, and must
be so too. Christianity is Christ unfolded ,
and Christ is Christianity personated. What
ever Christ is, that Christianity must be.
I contend , therefore, that in the glorious
Gospel of the Son of God we have, in all its
perfume, its beauty, and its force, that true
Fraternity, which shall make way in spite of all
the prejudices of the ignorant, and the passions
of the depraved, until it bursts into the imper
ishable splendours of that millennial noon , the
glory, and the beauty, and the perfection of
which is universal Fraternity.
This Gospel which I have said is imperson
ated Fraternity, seeks to promote the spread of
that Fraternity by weapons, not carnal, but
mighty ; by faith, by patience, by charity, by
sacrifices, and by sufferings, —and, if needs be,
by death. These are its chief weapons. The
Gospel promotes this Fraternity, by the songs
of Zion , so eloquent of mercy and of truth ; not
with the Marseillaise, now symbolic of all that is
dreadful, and associated in the past with all
that is tragic. Christianity promotes Fraternity,
 FRATERNITY. 67

by leaving temples for the living, not tombs for

the dead. It shines in forgiveness, it does not
burn in the Saturnalia of vengeance ; it teaches
men to cluster around a centre of infinite love,
not to coagulate around centres of terrible hate .
It is the Gospel of love, and therefore the Gospel
of Fraternity. Hence those graces, real graces,
though they have been watered with blood, and
dragged upon the streets, and misrepresented and
maligned, those true graces, Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity, are blossoms that grow upon the tree
of life, and there only do they retain their
greatest beauty, and their enduring fragrance ;
but if torn from that tree, like all such blossoms,
they wither in the hand that grasps them , turn
to corruption , and cease to be either beau
tiful or fragrant. This, I believe, is what our
neighbours have done ; they have seized the
blossom , whilst they refuse the tree ; they have
tried to perpetuate the beauty and the fragrance
of the one, whilst they reject and anathema
tize the other ; but they will find what their
forefathers found, that the choicest blossoms,
by a law which no power can resist, when torn
from the branch that feeds them, cease to be
fragrant and beautiful, and become only the
prey and propagators of corruption and decay.
In estimating the Fraternity of the Gospel, I
may state that it is of two kinds : the Fraternity
of Benevolence, that loves all men , and the Fra
68 FRATERNITY .

ternity of Complacency, that loves like men. I

say it is of two kinds, —the one what we feel to
enemies and friends, and all mankind ; the other
what we feel to brethren . The one is the love
of benevolence ; the other , of complacency : the
one we feel toward men as they are the subjects
of misfortune ; the other, toward men as they
are the subjects of Divine grace. Let me look
at the first, and then at the second.
The first was manifested, and is expressed in
the beautiful text, “ God so loved the world
that he gave his only-begotten Son, that who
soever believeth in him should have eternal life.”
Hence, the gift of Christ was the expression of
love to all mankind, without limitation or ex
ception of any kind ; the love that shines in
universal and all -comprehensive benevolence,
which , like the atmosphere we breathe, reaches
to the highest, descends to the lowest, and em
braces the remotest of mankind. It was under
the inspiration of this feeling that Howard visited
the dungeons of the criminal, to mitigate his
punishment, and reform , if possible, his character.
It was on its untiring wings that Wilberforce
moved, and spoke, and strove, and wrestled,
until the chains were struck from the limbs of
the African slave, and England ceased to be
the patroness of that which degraded, and soon
would have ruined her. It was in this feeling
that Paul, and Peter, and John went forth to
 FRATERNITY. 69

1
distant and barbarous lands, ready to lay down
their lives, if needs be, and expecting to be
called upon to do so ; and emancipated the
thralls of intellectual and moral ignorance, and
taught kings and peasants that they were peers
in the sight of God . It was under this feeling
too, and animated by this spirit, that Augus
tine, and Vigilantius, and the Waldenses in the
West, and the Paulicians in the East, kept the
altar- flame of freedom and of faith burning in
the valleys of Piedmont, and that these devoted
ministers and servants of Christ laid down their
lives, and shed their blood like water, in order
to promote and perpetuate the Gospel , which is
the only spring and source of all true Fraternity
and enduring love.
Such, I humbly submit, is the first species of
Fraternity ; and this fraternity, or love, is sus
tained, and strengthened , and regulated, by the
most powerful law on which any truth can
possibly be placed. It is regulated thus : “ Thou
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself ;” and I
wish you to see clearly how complete an equi
poise in the social world this law is. Every
man , according to its requirement, must love
his neighbour, whosoever that neighbour is,
just as much as he does himself ; and if this
law, therefore, were the basis of the Fraternity
of France , then it would be a fraternity worthy
of the name ; for it must follow that wherever
70 FRATERNITY.

this law has effect, there he that does most for

himself, is bound to do most for his neighbour
also. He that loves himself the most, is bound
to love his neighbour the most also . The man
that toils most for his own pleasure, is just the
man who incurs the greatest responsibility to
toil most for his brother's pleasure also ; so
much so, that there is no man in this assembly
so responsible for his fellow-creature's well
being, as the man that loves and labours for
himself the most heartily ; for you are called
upon to love your neighbour exactly as you
love yourself. Were this law universally felt,
society would be under a glorious equipoise ; it
would be regulated by the great equilibrium of
love ; its machinery would be under the regu
lating power of a Divine compensation balance,
made by God himself ; and its fraternity would
make it seen that in the ratio in which man is
attached to himself, in the same ratio he would
be attached to his brother also .
But this is not the full range and reach of the
Fraternity of the Gospel ; you are not only to love
your neighbour as yourself, according to a law
that was enunciated from the midst of Sinai ; but,
according to the law that was unfolded and in
vigorated at Calvary, we are required not only
to love our neighbour, but to love also our
enemies. “ If ye love them that love you ,
what reward have ye ? What do you more
 FRATERNITY. 71

than others ?” “ Love your enemies ; pray for

them that despitefully use you , and persecute
you. And not only is the Christian's Fra
ternity strengthened by the law I have told
you-namely, loving your neighbour as your
self, and enforced by the prescriptions I have
quoted, “ Love your enemies ,” but it is sustained
and invigorated too by the highest possible
motive that can influence a man who believes
that he has been reconciled, saved, and forgiven
through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Hear then , what the Fraternity of the Gospel
is ; what a sustaining motive it has : “ For I
was an hungered , and ye gave me meat; I was
thirsty, and ye gave me drink ; I was a stranger,
and ye took me in ; naked , and ye clothed me ,
I was sick, and in prison, and ye visited me. ”
Then shall the righteous answer him, saying,
“ Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, and fed
thee ? or thirsty, and gave thee drink ? when saw
we thee a stranger, and took thee in ? or naked,
and clothed thee ? Or when saw we thee sick,
or in prison, and came unto thee ? ” And the

King shall answer , and say unto them , “ Verily,

I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it
unto one of the least of these my brethren , ye
have done it unto me.” Here is nutriment for
the noblest grace, -a motive powerful, as the
model is splendid.
Knowledge, as far as it is inspired, shall
72 FRATERNITY .

vanish away ; faith , as far as it is miraculous ,

has ceased ; but love, or charity, remains illu
minated by the splendour of a perfect model,
and sustained , and stimulated , by the highest
spring and motive that can actuate the heart of
mankind.
I have, then, thus spoken of the first
division of Christian Fraternity ; let me now
speak of the second, the Fraternity of Com
placency. The first consists in loving all men,
whether they live in cells, in dungeons, in
cellars, in streets, or in palaces, as brethren ;
ministering to their wants—redressing their
wrongs emancipating them from their chains,
whether they are black or white, or Greek or
rbarian -- from the most powerful and ani
mating motives. I now refer to that Fraternity
which contemplates those who are in character
like ourselves ; and I do so on the supposition
that I am addressing Christians. “ Love as
brethren , ” is the prescription given to true
believers. Those who are the possessors, and
the subjects of this love, are “ born again ; ” they
have “ one Father in heaven ; " they have “one
Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ ;" they are
the “ children of the One God ;" they are mem
bers of the same family ; Christian brethren are
welded together in bonds that never shall be
broken, but that shall grow , on the contrary,
in strength with the rolling cycles of eternity.
 FRATERNITY . 73

You are commanded to show mankind this

Fraternity in its state of noblest development,
in its richest and most glorious aspect. We
are to love, dear brethren , not only those who
are of the same denomination, or who use the
same forms, or worship in the same sanctuary,
or subscribe to the same creed ; nor merely
those who are under the same government,
be it a monarchy, a republic, or a fierce demo
cracy ; nor is it to be bounded by those who
are our own relatives ; or, if such were existing
upon earth , to the relatives, according to the
flesh , of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
He himself has told us, when one said unto him
“ Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand
without, desiring to see thee ;" he said ,—now
hear what is the Fraternity the Gospel teaches-
“ he said unto them, Who is my mother ? and
who are my brethren ? and he stretched forth
his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold
my mother and my brethren ! For whosoever
shall do the will of my Father, which is in
heaven, the same is my mother, and sister, and
brother.” This is Fraternity — this is Christian
Fraternity, “ for whosoever shall do the will of
my Father which is in heaven, the same is my
brother, and sister, and mother . ” Such, then,
is the range —such the limit of this Fraternity.
Surely, those who belong to parties that here
tofore have quarrelled most disgracefully to
74 FRATERNITY.

gether, are just those who are called upon to

exhibit, for the instruction of the world, the
greatest possible Fraternity. Oh ! let it not be
told in Gath, proclaim it not in the streets of
Askelon, lest the Philistines triumph, and the
uncircumcised rejoice, that the national guard,
and garde mobile, and soldiers of the line, of
France, have met upon the streets of Paris and
fraternized together , and that those who re
cently were members of the same communion ,
and worshipped under the same fig -tree, because
one boasts himself free, and the other glories in
the privilege that he is established , let it not
be heard — let it not be published before the
world-let not angels see and weep at the
spectacle -let not demons rejoice at it, that
they who know such ennobling truths - whose
souls are illuminated by such glorious light
who drink of a stream so rich, so full, so re
freshing , cannot, will not , meet around the
same communion - table, and show that they feel
the ennobling influences of a common and a
glorious brotherhood. Can you wonder, my
dear friends, can you wonder, that men have
lost all idea of true Fraternity, when we, conse
crated to be its models --baptized in its flood
-we, who are God's witnesses to it in the
world, exhibit so little of it ? Take care lest
the Revolution that has rolled like an earthquake
through the length and breadth of Europe, be
 FRATERNITY . 75

not the consequence of this ,—that the visible

Church of God , instead of being the great and
attractive model of the truest and most exalted
Fraternity to all mankind, has been the con
tagious model of hate, and malice, and enmity,
and ill-will, and all uncharitableness.
This Fraternity, then, is not to be limited by
any narrow bounds : it is to fasten upon the be
liever as such : it is to penetrate the circum
stance , however thick and multiplied its folds,
and rest upon the man : you must see the
Christian in the Churchman , and recognise a
brother in a Dissenter. We must see Christ's
sheep, however they may be marked ; we must
recognise Christ's people, in whatever form they
may appear ; and, my dear friends, when I have
thought of the great rallying centres of union
that are among us, and compare them with the
grounds of diversity between us, I confess I
am shocked at the spectacle that Christendom
at this moment presents. What ! have we not
one Father ? have we not one Saviour, one
Bible, one sanctuary, one baptism ? one Lord's
table, around which we can assemble and break
the bread, and take the symbol of the shed blood
of our common Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ ?
But there is a badge, without which we are not
Christians. What is that badge ? I wish you
specially to notice what I am now going to
state.
76 FRATERNITY.

All societies in the world have some distin

guishing badge or form ; some have a catch-word,
some a sign, some a dress, others a ribbon, others
a seal, others a tonsure, others a mystic word;
others a hieroglyphic symbol ; and, in our
Saviour's days, the Pharisee had his badge,
which was his phylactery. If Christ had been
a mere man, if the system he had come to esta
blish had been a mere earthly system, adapting
itself to circumstances, not shaping them , he
would have had his badge too ; he would have
said, My people shall wear a crown of thorns,
or, they shall wear a peculiar dress ; or, they
shall have on their breasts a cross, or a mitre, or
some other external symbol of that kind : but
he did not do so ; he instituted one badge, as
splendid as it is new, as glorious as it is signifi
cant ; and that badge is Love. And hear how
absolute it is : “ By this shall all men know that
ye are my disciples, if ye ” wear a cross ? if ye
wear a crown ? No. “ By this shall all men
know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love
one to another ,” if ye have Fraternity : “ We
know that we have passed from death unto life,
because we love the brethren . ” “ If any man
say , I love God , and loveth not his brother, he
is a liar, and the truth is not in him .” 66 As
touching brotherly love ye have no need that I
write unto you, for ye yourselves are taught of
God to love one another." Thus, then, as the
 FRATERNITY. 77

Pharisee is known by his phylactery, the soldier

by his sword, the monk by his cowl, the noble
by his coronet, the king by his crown, so the
Christian is known by his fraternity. And this
great moral badge was remarkably developed in
the history of the early Church. I read in the
Acts of the Apostles, “ All that believed were
together, and had all things common ; and sold
their possessions and goods, and parted them
to all men, as every man had need. ” And
again I read , “ With great power gave the
Apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord
Jesus, and great grace was upon them all;
neither was there any among them that lacked,
for as many as were possessors of lands, or
houses, sold them, and brought the prices of
the things that were sold , and laid them at the
Apostles' feet.”
And , as if to show the grandeur of the Fra
ternity of the Christian, it is not restricted to
earth, it stretches beyond the stars and culmi
nates in glory. My brethren are beyond the
skies as well as in the Church below ; my
brethren are “ the innumerable company of
angels, and the spirits of just men made per
fect .” I cannot gaze upon a spot in the bound
less universe where I have not a brother. I
cannot tread an acre of the earth where I see
not the traces and the footprints of a brother. I
cannot see man in all the varied forms of his
 78
FRATERNITY .

existence, from the beggar by the way -side, to

the monarch on his throne, without seeing a
brother. I cannot see in the Church of England,
or in the Church of Scotland, or in a Free
Church , or in a United Presbyterian Church,
or in a Congregational Church, or among the
Baptists, or among the Wesleyans — I cannot
gaze into their respective circles, without seeing
rise from the floor, and hail me with warm
hearts, a thousand brothers ; and if they will
not see in me a brother, I will rejoice it is my
privilege to see brethren in them.
The Gospel has broken the fetters of sect ; it
has taken down the middle walls of partition ;
it allows regenerated man's great heart to beat
till the pulsations of its love are felt where the
bounds of existence cease.
This Fraternity, where it is felt, will show
itself by ministering to the temporal necessities of
men. “ If there be among you a poor man of one
of thy brethren within any of thy gates in thy
land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou
shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand
from thy poor brother : but thou shalt open
thine hand wide unto him, and shalt surely lend
him sufficient for his need, in that which he
wanteth. Beware that there be not a thought
in thy wicked heart, saying, The seventh year,
the year of release, is at hand ; and thine eye be
evil against thy poor brother, and thou givest
 FRATERNITY. 79

him nought ; and he cry unto the Lord against

thee, and it be sin unto thee. Thou shalt surely
give him, and thine heart shall not be grieved
when thou givest unto him : because that for
this thing the Lord thy God shall bless thee in
all thy works, and in all that thou puttest thine
hand unto. For the poor shall never cease out of
the land : therefore I command thee, saying, Thou
shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to
thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land .” Deut.
xv. 7-11 .
The Gospel elevates a Christian's humblest
charity into a sublime priestly offering. This is
very strongly set forth when it is said, “ Whoso
hath this world's goods, and seeth his brother
hath need , and shutteth up his bowels of com
passion from him , how dwelleth the love of
God in him ? "
I wish I could teach the rich that they have
it in their power to spread their influence like a
sea, from one end of the land to the other, and
to render it lasting as humanity. Let the rich
be less selfish , let the great be less sequestered ;
let them come down and meet their fellow
men as brethren, amid the hospitalities of the
anniversaries of our charitable institutions. It
is morally good when the Duke of Buccleugh,
the Duke of Argyle, and other great peers
of the realm , meet with all ranks around the
same board , on some anniversary of benevo
80 FRATERNITY .

lence or religion, and interchange the words

and sentiments which show a common fra
ternity of heart and feeling. Show the poor
that you sympathize with them in their
toils and victories ; be a shower of blessings
to them ; and they will respond to that shower
in return with love, and loyalty, and devoted
ness . It is love from above that is responded
to by love from below .
We have this love beautifully exhibited in
one chapter, which I think ought to be trans
lated into French, and circulated through the
length and breadth of that country, as a most
eloquent and faithful picture of a fraternity, so
little known in France, that its novelty would
charm them . Our neighbours are very much to
be pitied ; they have lost the true thing, and
have got only the mockery and the shadow of it ;
they have lost the gold, and have but the glit
tering and gilded brass ; and it would, therefore,
be a blessed thing if they knew that Fraternity
which bears upon it the stamp and the super
scription of the Gospel, and reigns wherever
regenerated hearts are found to receive it.
I hope some one will just be at the trouble to
translate a few extracts from these addresses
into French, and circulate them among the
French people ; not from the importance of my
descriptions, but from the infinite value and
seasonableness of these truths. Hear, then , a
 FRATERNITY . 81

truly eloquent, and unrivalled, because inspired,

account of Fraternity ; it is in 1 Cor. xiii.
The word used so often in this chapter, is un
fortunately translated in our Bible charity : this
is a great pity ; charity , in its modern sense,
means liberality to the poor , but its significa
tion here is Love or Fraternity.
Now hear what is said of it . “ Though I
speak with the tongues of men and of angels,
and have not ” (you will allow me to substitute
an equally good, and equally strict, translation)
66
Fraternity, I am become as sounding brass,
and a tinkling cymbal. And though I have
the gift of prophecy, and understand all mys
teries, and all knowledge; and though I have
all faith, so that I could remove mountains,
and have not Fraternity, I am nothing. And
though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor ;
and though I give my body to be burned, and
have not Fraternity, it profiteth me nothing.
Fraternity suffereth long, and is kind ; Fra
ternity envieth not ; Fraternity vaunteth not
itself - is not puffed up - doth not behave itself
unseemly ; seeketh not her own ; is not easily
provoked ; thinketh no evil ; rejoiceth not in
iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth ; beareth
all things, believeth all things, hopeth all
things, endureth all things .” ( 1 Cor. xiii. 1—7 . )
66
Though I speak with the tongues of men and
of angels ; " though I were acquainted with all
F
82 FRATERNITY.

the tongues that Mithridates spoke ; though I

could speak these tongues with the golden
mouth , with the fervid eloquence of a Chry
sostom ; though, like Orpheus, I could move
the stones, and collect together the dumb brutes
of the earth by the force of my persuasive
eloquence, if I have not Fraternity, all is vain .
66
Though I have all knowledge ; " though my
head were a library, a university, an ency
clopædia, yet if I had not Fraternity in my
heart, all were vain . “ Though I had faith to
remove mountains ,” by saying to the mountain,
“ Be thou removed and cast into the sea , a
miracle of faith, without the mystery of Fra
ternity, is nothing. “ Though I should give all
my goods to feed the poor," doing it from
ostentation, and not from the principle of Fra
ternity within me, I should be a lamp without
>
oil. 66 Though I give my body to be burned ;
the fire of martyrdom itself, without the fire of
Fraternity , is worthless. “ Fraternity is kind ;"
literally , “ full of good works,” like fruit upon
a tree . “ Fraternity is not puffed up ; ” does not
sound a trumpet before it : lays aside the trum
pet , and assumes the veil . “ Fraternity seeketh
not her own ; " is diffusive, circulates around
her what she has ; begins, but does not stagnate,
at home ; “ and is not easily provoked ;" glows
with the flame of benevolence , and takes every
thing in the best light; “ rejoiceth not in
 FRATERNITY . 83

iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth ;” pained at

all outbursts of the one, rejoiced at the victories
of the other. “ Believeth all things ;" always
believes the best ; puts the best construction
upon everything. “ Hopeth all things;" hopes
that matters are not so bad as they are repre
sented . And it never fails . ” But whether
there be tongues, they shall cease ; whether
there be knowledge, it shall vanish away ; but
Fraternity shall never fail.
Lest we should not be attracted by these
descriptions, we are elsewhere placed under it
as a rigid obligation, for it is represented as
a debt. There is no man, I am sure, before
me, who does not wish to pay his debts, and
who does not rejoice to be able to do so ; but
there is one debt we never have paid, and we
never can pay : “ Owe no man anything, but to
love one another.” This is the debt which we
ought ever to be discharging, and yet shall
never be able to pay. All that society , the
Church, and nations, have done, are but poor
instalments of the infinite debt. I believe that
if the Christian Church were what it should be,
the great embodiment of this grace, this vital
principle of the Gospel—the great visible model
of a pure and sublime Fraternity in the world ,
--men would never have plunged into such
terrible excesses, seeking from forbidden trees
that fruit which grows upon the tree of the
84 FRATERNITY .

Gospel of Jesus . Revolutions would be less

the rage of nations, if Fraternity were more the
characteristic of the Church. Were the Church
free, indeed, in the pure and lofty sense in
which I have explained that word ; were the
ministers of the Church not to assume the
sovereign, but contented to discharge the pas
toral office ; were the whole body of the Church
like a society of brethren set upon a hill, illu
minated by the light and pervaded by the
atmosphere of the glorious Gospel, nations
from afar, smitten by the unearthly spectacle,
would say , “ Come, and let us go up into the
mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God
of Jacob ; and he will teach us of his ways, and
we will walk in his paths.” Let the world see
and feel that in the sanctuary of the Christian
is hospitality for all that is benevolent and
good ; an asylum for sorrow - a ministry to
want ; and, therefore, my dear friends, in order
the more to exhibit Fraternity as it should be,
in order to draw the sceptic to our churches, we
ought to identify ourselves with every proper
attempt that has for its object to right the
wrongs, alleviate the sufferings, or advance the
interests, not of a sect, but of all mankind. I
have long felt that Christians do not act judi
ciously, to say the least, when they think they
are to isolate themselves from the mass of man
kind, and promote only spiritual things, and be
 FRATERNITY . 85

lights and blessings in their own little sphere,

but not beneficiaries to the world at large. I
would ask you to lend your influence to all
that does humanity good ; identify yourselves
with the poor overworked shopman ; have a
word to say, or a song to write, for the crushed
and pining needlewoman ; try to minister to the
Sundayless journeyman baker. Wherever the
servant is crushed in order that the master may
become rapidly rich — wherever the poor suffers
unrighteously, in order that capital may be
vastly increased—there is a call upon the fol
lowers of Christ to interpose, and say, " It is
forbidden by the Fraternity of the Gospel ; my
sympathies and defence as a man are inspired by
my experience as a Christian . ” I am quite sure
that if Christians would show more of these
and kindred feelings, it would do more to rally
round us the rejecters of the truth , than the
best written defences we can draw up. I know
that many, who are unacquainted with the
Gospel, and do not understand its principles,
judge of it simply by what they see in the con
duct of Christians ; they see us contribute to
Bible Societies, Missionary Societies, and other
societies of that kind, and all this is most im
portant ; but they do not see Christians stand
ing forward to the same extent to sympathize
with the down -trodden, with the slave, with the
oppressed , and the suffering. I believe Wil
86 FRATERNITY.

berforce, by his intense and untiring humanity,

made his spiritual and Christian character to be
popular where it was unpopular before ; and that
he taught this great nation that the highest Chris
tianity is the highest Fraternity ; and that
wheresoever man shall unjustly suffer, or hu
manity pine, it shall not be between the horns
of the altar, or amid the light and love of the
Gospel of the Son of God.
Come, then , let us love all men more and
more, let us love one another unfeignedly.
Our distrust and our suspiciousness are the most
expensive passions we can indulge ; it is this
suspicion and this distrust that fill our gaols,
and turn our children into criminals, that stir
up the depths of society, and bring on , like a
clap of thunder, those revolutions that rend the
social fabric, and turn all things upside down.
Begin then to love men ; you have long enough
spoken to humanity from Mount Sinai : speak to
its heart a true word or two from Calvary : huma
nity will hear you, and love you. You have long
enough spoken to men in thunder, and written
you “ shall, ” and “ shall not,” in the lightning : try
a new way ; speak to man's heart in the endear
ing accents of everlasting love, and with the
sympathy of those who know what true Fra
ternity is ; congratulate the poor on their
success ; help those who have no situation, to
find one ; make your servants love you, not by
 FRATERNITY, 87

threats, but by showing that you appreciate

their services, and hail them as your equals in
the sight of God, your inferiors only by cir
cumstances. Bring back the olden times of our
Scottish forefathers, when the master of the
household felt that he was the father and the
instructor of that household. Let every hearth
have an altar, every home a God. Bring your
servants to kneel at the same throne, and hear
the lessons of the same Bible ; and let them
find that there is a nook in this great , crushed ,
and unequal globe, where the rich and the poor,
and the great and the small, may meet together .
You will be no losers,—you will gain by it.
If the Gospel be what I have endeavoured
to prove—the true fount of Liberty, Equality,
and Fraternity, is it not a question which
we are constrained to put, Why has this
fact been so painfully overlooked ? why have
men tried a thousand sources save the right
one ? why have not all people taken the Bible
as their glorious and blessed charter ? why have
they not moved beneath its flag as beneath a
banner all radiant with love ? why has not
humanity panted for the millennial glory as the
reign of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity ? why
has man, quack- like, tried all the nostrums of
empiricism , and never had recourse to the true
Physician, the only balm ? The answer is this :
It is because the Gospel, while it proclaims the
 88 FRATERNITY .

equality of all, proclaims also the radical and

deep -seated corruption of all because it tells
us holiness alone is the pathway to happiness
because it tells us that there must be purity in
the individual heart before there can be purity
running in the channels of the national life
because it insists that each shall be a reformer
of himself before he becomes a reformer of the
world — because it claims, as the field for its ex
pansion , and development, and exercise, not the
arena of politics, but the recesses of the indivi
dual heart-because, in one word, it bids us
begin at home, where we are most anxious that
we should not begin : for the most sounding
advocates of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity
in the nation , are the men in whose homes it
has been discovered there is the least liberty,
equality, and fraternity of all. All earthly,
political, and social efforts, in order to produce
liberty, equality, and fraternity, have failed,
because they have not taken into calculation the
fact of the corruption of human nature, and the
absolute necessity of a Divine cure, by which
alone Christians can be free, equal, fraternal ,
and eternally so. The Greek, the Macedonian,
the Roman , the Persian empires have all passed
away : Alexander, and Cyrus, and Casar, and
Napoleon, and others, whose names shone like
stars, or meteors, or balefires, in the history of
mankind, are gone for ever . Nations that rose
 FRATERNITY . 89

and bled for Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,

and that wrote their charters in royal and rem
publican blood, have all passed away. Com
munism, Socialism , Fourrierism , Chartism , and
other isms, have been tried , and all have signally
and disastrously failed ; and the secret of it all
is this, that each system has been the reproduc
tion of man just as he was, not as he should be.
Each scheme for the regeneration of man has
left out this vital and essential truth, that man's
“ heart is deceitful above all things, and despe
rately wicked ; " and therefore each system has
ended in mischief, and in misery to its sup
porters .
My dear friends, the world's restoration is
within the boards of the Bible. Its culminating
glory will be when the Bible is in every man's
hand, and its page is perused by every man's
eye, and a nobler sun shines on both. It is a
leaf from the tree of life, which must be laid to
the heart of humanity before that heart shall
thrill with love . There is no hope in the world ,
there is no hope for the world, but in the Gospel
of Jesus ; nor for the universal reign of Liberty ,
Equality, Fraternity, till He comes who will
come. Institutions, states, communities, nations,
till united by the cohesive cement of the Gospel,
are but like ropes of sand kept together by a
mechanical pressure ab extra , ready to dissolve
the moment that the convulsion comes.
90 FRATERNITY:

And if these things be so, what a call is

addressed this day to the ministers of everlasting
truth ! Standing on an earth that rocks with
the throes of successive earthquakes—the dark
clouds that indicate the world's eve rising as from
everlasting snows, and gathering rapidly around
us and the first sounds of the chariot wheels

of an approaching Lord vibrating from sea to

sea, and from land to land— “ men's hearts fail
ing them for fear of the things that are coming
>
upon the earth ” wars and rumours of wars ,
and the nations bowed down, smitten , and shaken
as if the breath of God swept over them and
made them feel that they are, but frail reeds
in the hurricane - what a call, I say, is made
upon all the ministers of the Gospel at such a
crisis, to expand their energies in missions of
truth and love to all, instead of wasting them
in disputing and quarrelling with one another
about robes, and rituals, and rubrics !-- which is
just as if a number of physicians in the midst
of an hospital, standing at the bedsides of the
dying, were to dispute and quarrel whose di
ploma was the best, or whose school of medicine
was the most excellent. Standing, as we do,
like Aaron, between the living and the dead
hearing the piercing cry of the wrecked
voyagers , amid the tramp of the surf, and the
noise of the breakers living in a day fraught
with so startling and significant results - stand
 FRATERNITY . 91

ing midway between heaven and earth, between

God and a world revolted,—drawing our argu
ments from three worlds, heaven, earth, and
hell ; our object the immense, the infinite, the
eternal—let us hold up Christ and him cru
cified as the world's Saviour, in whom Liberty,
Equality, and Fraternity have met together.
And, brethren, in conclusion, let us, next
Lord's- day morning, show, by surrounding one
board, by taking into our hands the memo
rials of a common Saviour, and the symbols of
his death, that we know what true Fraternity
is. If there be one spectacle upon earth that
is more fitted to show it than any other, it is a
Scottish communion - table : if there be one rite ,
or ceremony, or sign more beautifully exempli
fying it, it is when we all surround that table,
and say together, “ We have all sinned, and we
all deserve to die ; but we are saved , and will
rejoice, for Christ, our elder Brother, was sacri
ficed for us.”

THE END.

R. CLAY, PRINTER, BREAD STREET HILL .

ΠΛΟΝ ΠΙ
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