as the twig, if it be only partially separated from the root, it immediately withers."

When the Apostle Paul wrote to the Galatians, who sought again for justification by outward performances, "Having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh? he marked the stand-point to which their Christian life had sunk back-the reducing of religion to external works, and things which were substituted for the rational service of God, embracing the whole life of the redeemed; and this outward tendency formed one of the greatest obstacles to the progress of real Christianity. What was in itself a proper expression of Christian disposition and feeling, lost its true import, and became injurious to the Christian life, when it was contemplated apart from its connection with this disposition, and a meritoriousness was attributed to it in and for itself. Thus, for example, alms-giving was practised in the confidence that by means of it men could purchase indemnity for their sins, or gifts were made to the church, under the notion that mere outward church-going pilgrimages to holy places at Jerusalem, or the mechanical repetition of the sign of the cross, &c. were meritorious. Those teachers of the church who were animated with Christian zeal, were hence necessitated to combat this overvaluation of externals, and to direct men's minds from the outward to the inward.

Augustin says: "To give alms is of advantage to those who have changed their lives. But if thou givest something, in order to be permitted to sin unpunished, thou dost not feed Christ in the persons of the poor, but thou seekest to bribe thy judge." Elsewhere he says, "When a man has heard that the Lord has said, Offer to God thanksgiving' (Psa. 1. 14), he thinks and says to himself, I will rise early every day, go to church, sing a hymn morning and evening, and a third or fourth in my house; I will daily bring God the offering of my praise. Thou dost well indeed if thou dost this; but take care that thou dost not thereby become more secure because thou dost this, lest while thy tongue praises God thy life blasphemes Him." We love the habitation of

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* Eleemosynæ illis prosunt, qui vitam mutaverunt. . . . . Nam si ideo das, ut liceat tibi semper impune peccare, non Christum pacis, sed judicem corrumpere conaris.-August. Serm. 39, § 6.

THE SOUL THE TRUE TEMPLE OF CHRIST.

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God's house and the place where his honour dwelleth (Psa. xxvi. 8), if we are it ourselves. Whoever loves the habitation of God's house doubtless loves the church,-the church which does not consist in walls and roofs, adorned by art, not in the splendour of marble and of gilded tables, but in believing, holy men, who love God with all their hearts, and their neighbours as themselves."

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Jerome thus writes to a person who sought his advice for the right conduct of a Christian life. "The true temple of Christ is the souls of believers; adorn these,-clothe these, -bring them as offerings,-in them receive Christ. Of what use is it that the walls of the churches are resplendent with jewels, while Christ suffers hunger in the persons of the poor?" In the same epistle, he writes against an over-valuation of pilgrimages. When heaven and earth pass away, certainly all earthly things will pass away. The sites of the crucifixion and the resurrection profit those who take up their cross and rise with Christ daily, and thus show that they are worthy to dwell in such a place. Finally, let those who exclaim, the temple of the Lord,' listen to the apostle: 'Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?' From Jerusalem and from Britain the kingdom of heaven is equally open to you, for the kingdom of God is within you."

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Gregory of Nyssa, when he had returned from a journey to Jerusalem, thus writes: "Before I visited that spot, and since I have professed my faith in Christ as the true God, my faith has neither been increased nor diminished. I believed that the Son of God was born of a virgin before I saw Bethlehem. I believed in the resurrection of Christ before I saw his sepulchre. I confessed the reality of the Ascension without having seen the Mount of Olives. I have only gained thus much from that journey, to know, from actual comparison, that there is far more holiness near us than in foreign places. Hence I call on you who fear the Lord, to praise him in whatever place ye may happen to be. nearer to God by a mere change of place. art God will come to thee, if the habitation prepared that the Lord can dwell in thee But if in the inner man thou art full of evil thoughts, thou mayest be on Golgotha or the mount of Olives, yet thou art

For no one comes .Wherever thou of thy soul is so and walk in thee.

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as far from having received Christ into thy soul, as those who have not yet made a profession of the Christian faith. If the Spirit blows where he wills, then believers here become partakers of the work of grace according to their faith, not in consequence of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem."

Thus Augustin endeavoured to turn the thoughts of men from anxiety after the bodily view of the Redeemer, to spiritual communion with him. "We must hear the gospel in such a state of mind, as if we actually heard the voice of the Redeemer, and we must not say, Blessed were they who could see him!' for many among those who saw him, joined in crucifying him. But many among us who never saw him, have believed on him. The Lord is on high, but the Lord is also here with his truth."

Though in the great cities of the Grecian empire many sought to find a religious pretext for the splendour of their dress, and thus fancied they could combine the claims of vanity and of religion, yet Asterius, of Amasea in Pontus, remarked in a sermon: "Those among rich men and women who wish to be pious have chosen the evangelical history itself and given it to the weavers; I mean our Lord Jesus Christ, with all of his disciples, and every one of his miracles as it is narrated. There thou wilt see the marriage at Cana and the water-pots of stone, the paralytic who carried his bed on his shoulders, the blind man restored to sight with clay, the woman with the bloody issue who was cured by touching the hem of Christ's garment, the penitent sinner who fell at his feet, and Lazarus whom he raised from the dead. And when they have done this, they think they are pious and wear a dress acceptable to God. If they would take my counsel, they would part with these clothes, and hold in honour the living images of God. not have pictures of Christ on thy garments, but bear his spiritual image in thy soul. Do not have the paralytic painted on thy walls, but find out the sick that are lying or the ground. Do not always have before thy eyes the woman who was cured of the bloody issue, but give relief to suffering widows. Gaze not continually on the penitent woman falling at the Lord's feet, but feel contrition on account of thy own sins."

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Against the mechanical use of the sign of the cross,

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Augustin says: Many make the sign of the cross, and are not disposed to understand its meaning. God desires a person who will bring this sign into the life, not one who merely describes it with his finger. If thou bearest on thy forehead the mark of Christ's humility, then bear in thy heart the imitation of Christ's humility." When Augustin missed many of his usual hearers in his church, who had resorted to the public games at the circus, preferring noisy amusements to devotion, he said of them: "If they are alarmed by anything at the circus, they make at once the sign of the cross, and yet they would not stand there if they bore in their hearts what they carry on their foreheads.”

Vigilantius attacked, with passionate zeal for the honour of God, that outward direction of the religious spirit which bordered on heathenism; but he was so far carried away by his feelings, as not to observe a tender consideration for the religious sentiment which was at the basis of the error; and without such forbearance no attempt at reformation can succeed. The man whose superstitious feeling is justly opposed, feels himself injured in that which in his mind is associated with the sacred feelings of devotion. That which is despised, as something merely outward and belonging to the senses, becomes partly internal by its relation to his religious feelings; the point to be considered is not what this outward thing is in and for itself, but what it has become by the admixture of religious feeling. Vigilantius justly combated the reverence, bordering on heathenism, which was shown to the relics of men who in their life-time were witnesses of the truth and organs of the Holy Spirit. He justly opposed to this the true nature of religious worship. But he forgot the feeling of love and piety, the due respect and consideration for the memory of the men of God, when he ridiculed persons for adorning ashes and bones with gold and silver, or wrapping them up in costly clothes. Jerome could here justly object to him that the devotion of believers saw something more than this in it; that there was something higher in the feeling; that to believers there was nothing dead, but that they were raised in spirit by the sight of these relics to the saints who were living with God; that God was not the God of the dead but of the living. Yet even this remark could not take from Vigilantius his right to combat superstitious

devotion. Superstition could not be approved of merely because there was something Christian lying at its basis, nor was it on that account less dangerous. A certain religious feeling is originally at the basis of all idolatry, which only wanders from its proper object and attaches itself to sensible appearances. Zeal for the truth and for the honour of God cannot be without forbearing, recognising love, neither can love exist without holy zeal for the truth,

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*

CHAPTER VII.

ON PRAYER.

PRAYER," says Ambrose, "is the nourishment of the soul; by it the seat of vice is transformed into a sanctuary of virtue." "The aim of prayer itself," says Augustin, "ennobles and purifies the heart, and makes it receptive of the divine gifts which are imparted by the Spirit. God, indeed, is always ready to impart his spiritual illumination to us, but we are not always capable of receiving it, when we incline to other things and are darkened by desires after worldly objects. In prayer the heart is turned towards him who is always ready to give if we only receive what he gives; and in this very act of turning there is a purging of the inward eye when temporal objects of desire are excluded, so that the vision of a simple heart is rendered able to receive the simple light." The prayer of the Christian must not exist as an isolated thing, as an act dissevered from the rest of life and self-enclosed; it must proceed from the innermost ground of the whole Christian life, be its animating principle, and react upon it with sanctifying power. Thou must pray without ceasing," says Basil, "not in words,

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*Fit ergo in oratione conversio cordis ad eum, qui semper dare paratus est, si nos capiamus quod dederit; et in ipsa conversione purgatio interioris oculi, cum excluduntur ea quæ temporaliter cupiebantur, ut acies cordis simplicis ferre possit simplicem lucem.-August. de Sermone Domini in Monte 2, § 14.