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A Plea for True Religion.

PART II.

A SERMON,

PREACHED AT ST. GEORGE'S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
SEPTEMBER 19, 1875, BY THE

REV. CHARLES VOYSEY.

JEREMIAH XXIX., 11.-" For I know the thoughts that I think towards you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an expected end."

OU will remember that our meditations were brought

to a close last Sunday, in considering the moral advantages of a truly religious life.

In the endeavour to put forth this "Plea for true religion we shall have to contrast it now with the religion of orthodoxy, now with irreligion; for it is between these two prevailing conditions that we stand and work. Yet I would not have it forgotten that a truly religious life may be led by many who hold orthodox opinions, while some of the best and brightest traits of character may be exhibited by those who have no religion at all. To say nothing of the duty of fairness to opponents, our arguments are strengthened and not weakened by the admission of every fact which comes within range of our observation.

While, however, there are these noble exceptions on both sides, we maintain broadly that whereas irreligion involves enormous losses, and even the starvation of man's spiritual nature, orthodox views when prominent and influential over the life miserably distort and disfigure it, and add to it excrescences and diseases which weaken the mind and wither the heart.

To-day I will endeavour to show the advantages of true

Rev. C. Voysey's sermons are to be obtained at St. George's Hall, every Sunday morning, or from the Author (by post), Camden House, Dulwich, S.E. Price one penny postage a halfpenny.

religion under the aspects of faith and hope. Now almost everything good becomes evil when in excess, and it is just as true of religion itself. Let us take faith, e.g., by which we mean, a sense of dependence on God as the Author, Ruler, and Finisher of our life and destiny-a sense of dependence which has grown into perfect trust in the goodness of His purposes and the wisdom of His methods. If this sense of dependence be so exaggerated as to obscure the necessity for self-reliance and personal energy, then it becomes an evil, weakening the very powers which it is intended to strengthen, and at length superseding manliness by an infantile imbecility. Bnt true religion teaches us the happy medium between excessive dependence and presumptuous independence. The natural bearing of man in the presence of the visible universe must be ever that of awe and reverence; never can he forget the magnitude of those forces which play around him; never can he, while in his senses, forget that their might is irresistible and that he is perpetually at their mercy. Even in temperate climes like ours, he cannot reckon on absolute security from their violence or caprice; much less in the torrid and frigid zones where vicissitudes are more frequent, catastrophes more sudden. Under the influence of false religion this sense of perpetual danger and helplessness becomes absolute fear-fear of the malignity and personal hostility of the unseen powers towards himself. In the absence of all religion whatever it becomes in most cases sullen defiance and a perpetual conviction of the utter want of moral purpose in the course of the universe. But the truly religious man will be neither fearful, nor defiant. He believes that all these alarming forces are under the control of one God, the same Being who bids him in his heart to do justly and to love mercy.

"He

is not afraid of any terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day." "His heart is fixed trusting in the Lord." He does not close his eyes to the pain and torture around him, nor is he insensible to these when they fall upon himself; but he maintains a constant calm in the assurance that everything is working together for good, that whether we can see the good or not it must be there and will some day be revealed. He sees no hostile hand in any physical catastrophe, nor any devil at work marring the loveliness

and disturbing the serenity of the garden of the Lord. Well may he be at rest amid the storms and convulsions of nature, for a Father's hand is over it all. Take away this faith in the overruling power of a loving God, and I will grant all that the unbeliever predicates of the forces of nature. I will then go heart and soul with Winwood Reade and similar writers and thinkers who are simply outraged by the apparent immorality of the world's order. I do not say the faith of which I speak must be true because it is consolatory; but I simply affirm that it is consolatory; that to possess it is being lifted out of darkness into marvellous light, a waking up from a horrid nightmare into the sweet reality of the morning sunshine; and he who can believe in a God of love and wisdom by whose Will everything happens and for whose good purpose everything has been pre-ordained, stands on a rock from which no raging billows can displace him, and is unspeakably more independent of time and change than those who believe that God has a powerful and malignant rival; and those who believe that there is no God at all.

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But faith would be but a poor, crutch if it were ours only to nerve our hearts in personal danger or to console us for personal discomfort. Men, as men, whether they believe truly, or falsely, or not at all, are more concerned at heart about the injustice, cruelty, and vice that abound than about the countless "ills that flesh is heir to." They could have borne with the pain, and sorrow, and death, had there been no moral evil, no tyranny, no falsehood, no fierce passions, no greed or lust, no brutality, no murder. And here the question arises, which of the three theories is the best for us to hold? That God tried to make the world without moral evil, but was defeated by the devil, so that evil not only rages on the earth against God's will, but will have eternal triumph in hell? or (2), that there is no God at all, and that evil came like everything else-by chanceand has no just cause for its issue? or (3), that the same wise and loving God who overrules all things has chosen a plan, of which temporary moral evil forms a leading part, by which man shall be infinitely elevated above the animal world and endowed with virtues otherwise unknowable and unattainable? The religious man, even without any well

defined theories as to the origin of evil, leaps per saltum to the happy conclusion that it is the best chosen means to the best devised end; and so he goes strait to the point, and identifying all goodness with God, says to himself. "This evil is here only for us to conquer-to fight with perpetually and finally to trample under our feet. God has some good end in calling us to the fierce conflict, and we will do our best and quit ourselves like men. Though evil is here and at His bidding, for nothing can come by chance or against His will-it is for us who feel with Him to fight against it and overcome it. We are not fighting with fearful odds against a devil and his infernal legions in the dark; nor are we left here alone beating our weary way in a stormy sea which has no shore; but we are soldiers marching to the music of a heavenly clarion, marshalled by a voice which inspires our courage, and led on to victory by a Leader who never knew defeat."

Before long I hope to deliver a course of lectures on this subject of moral evil, but at present I need only say that faith in a righteous God who cannot fail of His good purpose is enough to inspire both courage and endurance. It animates our desire to contend with evil and extinguish it, and yet makes us patient under seeming reverses, and slow progress.

For what does simple faith in God beget but Hope? "Hope, the anchor of the soul sure and stedfast-" Hope for things we cannot see, for fruition we cannot even describe. Here again we see the frightful alternatives on either hand. The Christian's hope is limited to the final perfection of the members of his Church or sect, or to that of Christendom alone, or at all events to that of a small portion of mankind; while for the world at large there is little or none; or at best that insignificant residuum of bliss called "the uncovenanted mercies of God." The doom of the damned is of course hardly to be included among the hopes of the Christian, though some orthodox writers have so far forgotten their humanity and their piety as to express a hope that some people will be everlastingly damned for the glory of God, and to enhance their own bliss in having escaped the doom.

That such a statement should be received with horror or

incredulity shows how far and how rapidly we have been lately travelling out of the line of orthodox beliefs.

On the other hand the irreligious man has no hope at all. I do not say anything so false or so unjust as that all those who have no hope for the future life are irreligious. I know more than one person who thoroughly believes in God and adores His wisdom and love who is yet unable to hope for any life to come. Their thoughts and arguments are not to be despised, they ought to be carefully and seriously weighed, but it is not of such persons I am now speaking but of those who have no faith in God at all and no care for religion. These have no hope, and would fain place themselves in the attitude of that jaded cynic who said "that which befalleth the sons of men, befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath. So that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast-for all is vanity."--(Eccles., iii, 19.) If there be no God, I am sure there is nothing to hope for in a future life. One or two of us whose courage was supplemented by a great deal of curiosity might perhaps like to try life again elsewhere; but it would be a hazardous experiment after tasting the gall and wormwood of this life's care and trouble with no God to fall back upon, with no prospect of an ultimate issue of goodness by which to fortify our patience and perseverance.

But a future in which we hope to see the tangled thread of Divine Providence unravelled, the minutest as well as the greatest injustices and wrongs to be set right and their occurrence vindicated, to have all our longings after knowledge and accomplished skill realized; best of all, to have our characters purified and exalted, so that God might rejoice in us afresh day by day; and to see all our fellowmen, each in his various stage of being, actually developing and growing, however slowly, still from good to better and from better ever more onwards to perfection-this, I trow, is a hope worth fanning and keeping alive in this world of unfinished, disappointed and broken things. It is a hope too which the religious man feels ought to be a hope and nothing more. He, for one, is not impatient of the Divine silence; nor would he, if he could, force from the shrine of eternal mystery a single utterance that would solve the

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