emn reality. Life has for him a tragic aspect, and he makes the pathos of it felt by the force of his represen tation. He finds himself in a world of conflict. He has been taught to fear and distrust it. There is a great conflict between the church and the world, and perpetual dread of hostile aggressions, that cripple the life of the church and stain its purity, is perhaps an inheritance from the Anglican controversy and very likely bears the mark of Newman's influence. That the world, as we know it, is hostile to the religious life was one of the cardinal teachings of the Anglican revival. Mozley, therefore, did not share the optimistic view of the world and of life which so strongly characterizes the religion of our day. Sin is the dark reality that hovers ever in the background of life and thrusts itself out at every turn. He has, indeed, no extreme views of human depravity, and he is kindly and tolerant in his personal judgments. His conception of the world as a lost world is not so gloomy, and often seemingly contemptuous, as Newman's. He never deals in eschatological terrors. But his world is a sinful and lost world. It is a world of temptations. It is full of delusions and snares, and men should be on guard. We are not to assume that what the world presents to our inclinations is innocent, just because it is in harmony with our inclinations. That we belong to the world does not mean that we are so wholly a normal part of it that it may be regarded by us as a legitimate sphere for self-indulgence. The solicitations of the world may be temptations to be resisted rather than opportunities to be embraced. We are here to resist the world and put it under our feet. Life is a moral conflict, and the drifting life is not a

Ꮓ

moral life. For the man who treats his soul as if it were not held in the grasp of inexorable law; for the man who is all the while growing worse and does not know it, simply because he lets himself alone; for the fatalist who undertakes to eliminate the guilt of sin by calling it the necessary product of the forces of his own nature; for the "midway man," who dallies with temptation, neither on the one hand yielding completely to it, nor on the other wholly resisting its solicitations; for the man who lives in the delusions of sin, and perverts an august and solemn existence into a scene of folly; for any man who in any way treats sin lightly, — Canon Mozley has a most serious message. Life confessedly, as it comes to us through his representation, is not so great an inspiration and joy as it might be. We miss the note of triumph. It is a scene of danger. It cannot be a world of surpassing joy to any man who does not know the remedial grace of God. The choicer joys of life are the joys of grace. And all this is to him the Biblical view of life. Doubtless it is the earlier Biblical view, and it is a view that is true to many of the facts of the life of the present age, and the men of our time are in sore need of the faithful presentation of this truth. The church cannot afford to be deluded with the semblance of godliness. Christianity comes with a tone of distrust. It looks upon the world with a certain air of suspicion. The Bible is a sagacious book, and does not too freely trust the world. It is not easily deceived, and it is a matter of great value that we have a vast repository of truth that is not subject to illusions. It challenges the world. It questions its right to rule. It sets it at naught. In the last conflict it sets it at

complete defiance and puts it beneath its feet. The Bible is not hostile to God's world, but to man's, to the world as it finds it in its sins and delusions. And this, he thinks, is our Lord's view of the world. His pure religion comes into contact with the corrupt, deceitful heart of man, with its hidden selfishness and pride, and a great process of deception begins. The semblance of religion takes the place of its reality. Christ foresaw all this, and warned His disciples against it, and it was this that saddened His life. Of worldly success He would have none. It was to Him a delusion and a snare. He resisted its solicitations as a Satanic temptation. He lived in the shadow of His cross. Every hour of promised worldly success was but a preintimation of His last hour of mortal suffering and of earthly defeat. As He was here to fight this world, so are we. It is a heroic life, yet solemn and tragic in its processes and results.

In all this we may miss the note of triumph. It is rather too gloomy a world for our bright day, and men are likely to turn away from it. Our preacher does not seem to live, as the modern preacher wishes to live, in the kingdom of redemption, and does not seem to behold the world as evermore God's world, struggling onward to the goal of sinlessness and completeness. The victorious Christ is not put into the forefront of the representation, as we might wish. The positive and productive energies of redemption, as they centre in the ever abiding presence of the Spirit of the Eternal, are not brought to our attention as they well might be. The point of view of natural religion, as distinguished from the Christian point of view, is too often apparent. It is the philosophical view of life, such as we find in

Bishop Butler, and with both the evangelical note of redemption and the note of personal conquest in Christ, although everywhere presupposed, are less conspicuous in their representation than might be wished. But for the man who needs to be warned, to know himself, to distrust himself, to stand on guard, or to walk warily, or to fight valiantly, Mozley is a messenger from God. The very reading of his searching words should, indeed, with ministries of grace, be "enough to change the whole life of a man."

But his world is more than a sinful world. It is an inadequate world. The life that now is, as such and in and for itself alone, has for him but little significance and value. It finds its worth in its relation to the life beyond. His point of view is not the eternal life with its present and future as two phases bound indissolubly together, each with its own essential and relatively independent value. The present and the future stand in too strong contrast. Only from its relation to the future does the present life find value. The present, indeed, may have a relative value. But it is the future alone that has absolute worth. Hence he dwells upon the transitoriness of life, upon its inequalities, its inadequacies, its delusions and follies. The future life alone is the real life, and the present life is preparation for it. With all of Robertson's strength of conviction, but not with his intensity of emotion or poetic stateliness of diction, does Mozley set forth the transitoriness of an earthly life, its emptiness and unreality, when it is cut from its connection with the life eternal. The hectic flush of the passing glory of the world we do not see. The pathos of a pageant scene that passes before our

eyes we have not. But with solemn step he treads amid life's inadequacies, and with steady hand he points us to a higher world. His prevailing conception of life is that of a probation. It is set over against the conception of life as a mission. He would not minimize the value of life as opportunity for noble philanthropic achievement. But he is distrustful of some phases of modern altruism, as involving an inadequate representation of life, for it too often loses sight of that conception of life that regards it as a sphere for the training of personal character, and for this reason he sets the probation over in contrast with the mission of life. It is easy to make a great show of life. Men magnify success and minimize the discipline of life. Life becomes a stage and they lose a sense of reality. They act a part and imagine themselves as still living in the realm of reality. Here, then, we find in a strongly socialistic age a sturdy individualist. An institutional religion, High churchman though he is, has for him no permanent value, and just as little a secularistic religion that knows of a mission but of no probation. Personal character is the supreme interest. Without it the world is not saved. According to Froebel what is individual in man is the divine element within him. Mozley advances upon this and makes individuality the product of God's grace. To develop unto perfection what is most individual and distinctive in man is the work of God's Spirit, and this, not less than the unification of men in the body of Christ, is the end of existence. No man knows himself, no man comes to himself, no man is himself, till he is born again. It is the highest mark of the divine in man, that he should be himself, and no man is him