MR. THOM'S SERMONS.*
Tuts volume is very unlike nineteen out of every score, perhaps we might safely indicate a much larger proportion, of the volumes of sermons that issue from the press, for its contents are evidently- the production of a mind that has lived a long life in medita- tion rarely remitted for any considerable period, on the things of the religious life. You cannot open the volume anywhere without meeting with proof that the atmosphere of Christianity has saturated the mind of the writer, and moulded his thought into sympathy with itself. Mr. Thom is well known as a minister who does not belong to any of the orthodox Churches,. but it would be very difficult to find amongst those who da belong to one or other of those Churches, so profound a grasp of the spiritual aspects of Christianity, and so living a delinea- tion of them. There is no sign in this volume that the destruc- tive criticism of any of the negative schools of theology or exegesis, has exerted any material influence over Mr. Thom's mind. He finds in St. John's Gospel some of the most striking of his Christian lessons, and never appears to suggest the smallest doubt of its authenticity or truth. It is most likely that if we had here any discussion by Mr. Thom of those intellectual assumptions which underlie our belief in Christ,. and without the steady grasp of which the moral authority which Christ exerts over us would be sure gradually to fade away, we should differ from him widely. But this sort of analysis is not within the scope of his present volume, which is devoted wholly to the delineation of the Christian temper and life,—not to any analysis of the basis of conviction which must more or less form itself within that Christian temper and life, if these are to hold their own against a host of objections both practical and intellectual ;—and as the life itself is, after all, the chief end, and the creed which must grow or wither with it, mainly the means, we cannot deny that Mr. Thom's volume• keeps before us the final cause of revelation, while ignoring,. in any dogmatic sense, theology itself.
It is impossible, in any strict sense, to review such a book, or to give anything more than occasional specimens of the insight and help which it contains. But this we may promise our readers, that if they are struck with any of the passages we may cite, they will find other passages as striking in almost every page. Let us, as critics, begin with a sermon on the faults and duties of critics, which is full of striking com- ment, all growing out of the very spirit of our Lord. Mr. Thom is very little satisfied with the tendency of the present day to extract from everybody their opinion of everybody else, simply for the sake of gratifying the curiosity of the rest of the world. He would probably warn the American " interviewer," for instance, that by eliciting so many opinions which would_ not otherwise be given on the condition of American or Euro- pean society, he often does more to precipitate the formation of a false public opinion, than to crystallize the tendencies of one that is sound, natural, and healthy :— • Law of Life after the Mind of Christ. Discourses by John Hamilton Thom. London: Began Paid, Trench, and Co. 1883. "Contrasted with this judging spirit, there is a happy, genial, modest, receptive frame of mind, open to all influences that come— not slighting what a man is, because of something else that he is not. It takes whatever of good any one can give, without the spiteful return of defining the other good things that he has not, and cannot give. It is open to men as it is to God—ready to entertain angels unawares—thankful for such benignant influence as they have the power of breathing—willing to receive of everybody's fullness, eager to judge no one. Unfortunately, to this mellow, grateful, and gracious cast of mind, the tone and temper of common society is constantly applying an irritating treatment. This calm, candid, uncritical, thankfully receptive frame, a man cannot preserve without setting his face against a multitude of questioners. We are daily tempted and solicited into rash and self-fettering lodgments. The mental in- terests of society are too few to suffer personal character and faculty to remain uncanvassed. Conversation runs on persons rather than on things, and you are directly asked for an opinion. Great evils come out of such questions. In the first place, you may have no opinion, nor be entitled to have one. Your opinions of men slowly and silently grow up in you ; and scarcely has this process begun when you are suddenly asked to define them. Yet it is probable, such are our habits, that you will not have the simplicity to resist the snare. You will be hurried into precipitate judgment—mere first impressions will be hardened into permanent conclusions—you will presumptuously speak of the deep inner nature or unknown capacity of a man from slight and insufficient hints—you will commit yourself to some defined view of him, and never again have the free privilege of open, candid, receptive intercourse unbiassed by your own rash judgment. There is a rudeness and irreverence of nature in thus assuming to judge any man. It is a barren attitude. When we have once judged a man, we have as it were closed his access to us at all unexpected avenues. We are pledged to one view of him—he is no more an infinite possibility to us—we have measured him, calculated our expectations from him, and never more can look to him with the freshness and reverence of an undefined hope."
What critic can read that passage, and not remember with a pang the many hasty sentences which he has passed on others,—some of them sentences which very mischievously pre- possessed the world against men of great moral and intellectual resource, whose usefulness was thereby materially injured ; but much oftener, probably, sentences which have prepossessed the critic's own mind against light and help which might otherwise have entered it P At the same time, we think that Mr. Thom's last sentence somewhat exaggerates the influence of pre- mature judgments over minds of any candour. More and more, as we hope, are critics to be found who are not ashamed to take back their false prejudgments, and to admit, with something even of penitent enthusiasm, the greatness of their error, in having sometime underrated a man of power. The logic of critics is no more inflexible than the logic of common life. Criticism would be a fatal pursuit, indeed, if it were so. Still, as Mr. Thom says, it is very much to be desired that we should cultivate the simplicity which refuses to be dragged into hasty judgments. " The habit of society in these things is, in fact, a constant subornation of rash judgments and an irreverent temper. To look upon ourselves as standards of measure is to cherish smallness, presumption, and contempt." Fortunately, there is nothing with which the better criticism of the day is more deeply imbued than the spirit of self-distrust, —the desire to find any trace of what is above the critic, and not to dwell too exclusively on what seems below him.
Let us pass next to the very fine sermon on " Circumstance, ' the unspiritual god,' " as Byron called it, though it was a god to which Byron sacrificed as much as any poet who ever lived. It would be difficult to expose the falsehood of this worship with more subtle moderation than Mr. Thom displays in the follow. ing passage:—
"Reliance on Circumstance, on the nnspiritnal god,' has for its natural fellow the common system of excuses which finds the explanation of evil in the element of temptation. But temptation is an occasion, not a cause, and no more an occasion for shameful transgression than for magnanimous duty. Since the first man said, It was the woman did it,' the men of Adam's mould have not been ashamed to acknowledge that, when tempted, in their own soul was no virtue, in their own will no resistance. If temptations justify sin, then the spiritual life, and Christianity, and man's strength in God, are words that signify nothing; for no man could sin if no man was tempted, and only in resistance to the tempter can the spirit's allegi- ance have existence or exercise. A Christian man, indeed, when most strict with himself, will yet be tender to another, not knowing all the case ; but what if our tenderness relax that other's strength, —though it is not tenderness, but only looseness and remissness, that will have this effect. Let our tenderness spring freely from our justice, our humility, our self-knowledge, our generous insight, but never from &relaxed holiness, an ungodly concession to the might of Circumstance. No reasonable man will deny that Circumstance ought to be considered, and wisely marshalled, and tenderly dealt with,—but every spiritual man will deny that it ought to rule, or that to it ever can belong the right to shrive and justify. It was not denied that man lives by bread, when it was declared that he lives not by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God, by every inspiration from on high, every holy
prompting, every exalting hope, every sense of responsibility to the- Source of our being, and that from these is drawn an crder of strength that comes not from food or wine. ' I have meat to eat that ye know not of.' The same spirit of outward dependence is shown• in the undue importance attached to what is called Experience. It would appear a general belief that all valuable wisdom comes from an extensive acquaintance with men and things, and knowledge of life as it is more to be trusted than the great primal teachers, the authoritative voices in our nature, the original shapings and directions of our being, the whispers and leadings of God. The wisdom that is from above,' the wisdom from within, is a fountain of goodness, ' full of mercy and of all good fruits.' It would not be untrue to say, that in all essential things Experience is the teacher only of fools, of those- who have gone astray through turning a deaf ear to the voice of a prior and more legitimate teacher. There are invaluable lessons of life—much skill, much helpfulness, knowledge of where the need is and sympathy should be—which Experience alone can supply ; but alas for him who has got his virtues from his experience of life, for then his first experiences must have been of wrong-doing, and hie later experience but the corrector of errors, or of vices, through penal consequences. To our spiritual being the experience of life is not the fountain of right, the source of law, though it ever confirms and seals with its testimony the teachings of nature and of God. In these fundamental things, he who, constrained by experience, at last comes to himself,' has first fled from himself ; he who, coerced by trouble, reduced to the coarse and bitter husks of a wasted life, says at last, will arise, and go to my Father,' has first known, and been obdurate to, his father's voice. That Honesty is the best Policy ' is a teaching of experience ; but it was well said, that he who has waited for this experience to teach him honesty, or who is honest only in the faith of this experience, the first began his course in knavery, and the second remains a knave at heart. It is not knowledge of the world that makes a child's heart shrink from meanness, falsehood, dishonour ; this wisdom is not borrowed from experience, but that which shapes experience when it is best shaped. It would be dan- gerous error to inculcate on the young, as a lesson in modesty, such deference to older experience as might weaken their reliance on the- primal teachings of God. In no way has spiritual life been so much dwarfed, severed from its feeding spring, as by the substitution of the wisdom of man for the fresh inspirations of God. In truth, in the highest things experience of life is not our guide, but rather the touchstone of our weakness, for we all degenerate, if not from the attainments, certainly from the ideals of our youth. The best man is worse than his thought ; and the worst has not extinguished the inciting light. that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. Experience is a mighty helper, bat sometimes a timid counsellor, an nnspiritual leader."
It would be difficult to preach a more weighty lesson, even to the politician, than is contained in this sermon on the dangers of trusting to circumstance alone for the regeneration of human society. But not even in such sermons as this do we find Mr. Thom at his highest. The kind of subject on which he speaks with the most wisdom and the most power is such a one as the singular absence of joy from the religious life of the world- The sermon on " Spiritual Counterparts to Temptation and Despondency," in which Mr. Thom insists that Christ's life was, in its essence, not so much the life of sorrow, as the life which. taught what joy there was in the heart of sorrow truly borne ; not so much the life of affliction, as the life of power elicited from affliction ; not so much the life of humiliation, the life of the Cross, as the life of him who could transmute humiliation and the Cross into the symbol of glory and triumpb,—will give our readers the best conception of Mr. Thom's unique power as a Christian preacher. We will give a single passage :—
" The world is fall, not of suffering only, nor of sympathy with suffering—for these are from God and for good—bat of a much worse thing—of depression, of fear, of sighing and lamentation, of the weakness and the piteousness of suffering. Even sympathy has so narrowed its meaning, that it hardly conveys any other idea than that of sensibility to another's sorrow ; and to rejoice with those who rejoice is considered the part rather of constitutional good-hearted. ness, of natural than of spiritual fellowship. Men will detail their until troubles as if there was no sin in adding to the burdens of existence, no shame or selfishness in needlessly saddening the hearts of the tender ; or if they do not speak, they carry into public the air of their most private cares ; their sad countenances proclaim their woes, and present silent petitions for compassion But it is said that Christ was characteristically a Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief. Yes; but interpret this aright. He was a. Man of Sorrows in no sense which implies that fear, or distrust, or spiritual lassitude had entered into him. A good man will bear all men's griefs, until he has borne them away. Sorrows, disappoint- ments, were around him, moulding him on all sides, the element in which his strength was made, his life lived ; but love, faith, hope, the joy of the soul in God, were the inspirations from which they came, and to which they rose. It is entirely a false impression that the designation, a Man of Sorrows—one indeed of no authoritative application to the individual person of Christ—describes the hue of his sentiments. It is spiritually impossible that one who led his life of love and prayer should ever be long out of God's clear sunlight and if we search his history, there is nothing more evident than that gloom or asceticism made no part of the temper of his soul. We remember the reproach, whence it came, and how it was met. The Son of Man is come eating and drinking ; why do the disciples of John fast often and make prayers, and likewise the disciples of the Pharisees; but thine eat and drink f And he said unto them : Why should the children of the bride-chamber fast while the Bridegroom is with them P' There is, indeed, ever some sadness in all aspiration that has not yet attained ; but he who was made perfect by suffering never could succumb to suffering, nor permit the sense of it to be dominant in his nature. We hear twice, perhaps three times, in all that tasked life, of a cloud passing over his mind, floating between him and God, and each time no sooner is mention of it made than we are introduced to the fountains of his strength, and behold him taking instant refuge with the Source of Peace. In the most suffer- ing momenta of his life, suffering never gives the direction to his feelings, nor suggests his thoughts. When he is departing from the Temple for the last time, the Rejected for ever, he sees the widow with her mite—the beauty of the offering takes possession of his heart, and instead of mourning for himself, he is blessing her. At the Last Supper no word of sorrow is breathed by him—no fear but for the imperfect fidelity of those whom, on the morrow, he was to leave to their own strength—whilst the sorrow of the disciples is gently reproved as far from the occasion Let not your hearts be troubled : ye believe in God, believe also in me.' Peace I leave with you : my peace I give unto you.' If you loved me ye would rejoice, because I go unto my Father.' Whilst bearing his own cross, there is solicitude for others, but peace for himself: Women of Jerusalem ! weep not for me • weep for yourselves and for your children ;' and on the cross itself all suffering leads to the suggestions of mercy, the prayer of forgiveness, the last directions of love, the consciousness of being perfectly safe in the hands of God. When, then, we call Christ the Man of Sorrows, let us remember what we mean : that he was one whose spiritual nature suffering never ruled —whose peace, hope, and love sorrow could perfect, but could not disturb—not a dejected and pensive, but a strong and untroubled man, full of the spirit of Power and of God. He passed through the fulness of sorrow as he passed through the fulness of temptation, and had the brightness of his spiritual love dimmed by neither."
Nor is this fine sermon by any means unique in this volume. There are half-a-dozen, at least, on the same level of power and truth; indeed, it is difficult to open the volume anywhere without lighting on the traces of a powerful intellect, as fully imbued with the spirit of Christ, and as keenly critical of the Christian deficiencies of the age with which it is the preacher's duty to deal, as could be found among some of the greatest preachers of the past.
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