THE DAILY PURIFYING.

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weakness and errors and mistakes-as often upon the positive sins of the day, a Christian man may pause to ask himself whether he indeed belongs to the little flock, or whether he does not more fitly find his place in the world that lieth in wickedness. He is quite right in any measure of repentance and rebuke.

But if beyond this he goes still further, and, in moody despondency, imagines that he has forfeited his stake in Christ, then, thank God, he is quite mistaken. Though the child may wander from the father, yet the relationship is not destroyed-the son is still the son, and, with repentance and confession, may still cry, Abba, Father. Our blessed Saviour, as it were, has considered the needs of our frailty, and has made provision for such. The same prayer that tells us to ask for our daily bread bids us pray, "forgive us our trespasses." The same Lord who makes his disciples clean every whit, tells them also that they need to wash their feet. Evermore there is the fountain open for sin and for uncleanness, in which we may wash

and be clean.

From day to day our feet will be soiled by the inevitable contact with the earth. By the feet is signified "the lower nature, in the constant necessity of a renewal unto holiness" (Meyer). The hands may be pure, the heart cleansed, the brow uplifted to heaven; but while we are in the world there must be perpetual sinfulness, and therefore a perpetual repentance and a perpetual cleansing. How much more is this cleansing necessary if we have forgotten

330

HERBERT'S CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE.

that we have been purged from old sins (2 Pet. i. 9), and have returned to them again!

Now look at that beautiful poem of George Herbert's, "The Flower," for which Coleridge entertained an especial affection, and which is so peculiarly full, as are all Herbert's poems, of Christian experience. In that noble religious literature which so nourishes the Christian life, there are hardly any writings so fraught with instruction and consolation as those of Herbert. How aptly do Herbert's lines recall the experience of so many of us! The heart has become darkened in heavenly things, callous, hardened, worldly; the sense of distance is interposed between the soul and God, which we feel we cannot of ourselves bridge over. But, in the great mercy of God, light has broken through the cloud, and peace has once more brooded on the disquieted heart.

"How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean

Are Thy returns! ev'n as the flowers in spring;

Who would have thought my shrivell❜d heart
Could have recovered greenness? It was gone
Quite under ground: as flowers depart

To see their mother-root, when they have blown;

These are Thy wonders, Lord of power!
Killing, and quick'ning; bringing down to hell,
And up to heav'n, in an hour;

Fast in Thy Paradise, where no flow'r can wither!
Many a spring I shoot up fair,

Off'ring at heaven, growing and groaning thither:

THE FLOWER.

Nor doth my flower

Want a spring-shower;

My sins and I joining together.

And now in age I bud again:
After so many deaths I live and write:
I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing. O my only Light,
It cannot be

That I am he

On whom Thy tempests fell all night!,

These are Thy wonders, Lord of love!
To make us see we are but flow'rs that glide;
Which when we once can find and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us where to 'bide.",

331

THAT which makes the difference between the foolish and the wise virgins in the parable is that the wise have oil in their vessels, and the foolish have none. The whole parable turns upon this; and thus it becomes necessary to settle the meaning which we should attach to the mention of the oil. Now, two classes of expositors have given two sorts of interpretation. It will answer my purpose if I briefly discuss each of these, as each contains a portion of substantial truth; each may serve to correct the other, and each may teach us a lesson of toleration and catholicity. One class of interpreters explain thus: By those who are virgins, who have taken their lamps and gone forth to meet the bridegrooom, we understand those who indeed possess the external characteristics of our holy faith, but have no oil in their lamps-are destitute of good works. Other expositors take the converse: These persons, indeed, perform all the exterior acts of religion; they may possess an abundance of good works, but there is no oil; they are destitute of a living faith. And these lines of thought have a real

THE PARABLE OF THE VIRGINS.

333

correspondence with theological schools, both in ecclesiastical history and in the religious history of the day. There have always been men who have laid an emphatic and superior stress on the doctrine of works, and those who have laid this stress on the doctrine of faith. There are those who distrust what is simply speculative or merely emotional; they have found for themselves the advantage of a strict rule of life, of ììxed religious forms, of self-denial, self-mortification, self-discipline; they have, perhaps, sought to fashion themselves after the example of the austere purity of an earlier age. God forbid that we should throw a doubt on the excellence of such piety, when exercised with the limitations taught by a right mind. Others there are who rest in that liberty wherewith Christ has made His people free,-who look with suspicion upon practices which, founded on fervent piety in their first phase, have degenerated into unmeaning formalism in a subsequent phase,-whose leading thought is not so much of their Church, but of their individual responsibility before God, and their individual acceptance in Christ,-who hold fast the doctrine of justification by faith, and in their system do not assign a coördinate importance to good works. And these differences might by some be maintained to be as old as the Bible itself; the doctrine of faith being urged by St. Paul, and that of works by St. James. By those who have espoused extreme views, these doctrines have been pressed into an attitude of