the nature and strength of the influences which, whether rightly or wrongly, do as a matter of fact govern numbers of human lives, he must feel that religion is a subject well worth careful attention. He may himself know, at least practically, little or nothing about it. He may be wanting in the moral and spiritual sympathies which alone enable us to understand what it is in itself as at once the purest passion and the highest virtue of which man is capable. And yet, if he have only, in ever so little a degree, the eye of a statesman, he must see that it is a mighty power swaying the minds, and purifying and strengthening the affections, and invigorating the wills of millions of men, and that as such it is a most worthy subject for careful inquiry. At this very day, read the newspapers, or listen to the ordinary run of conversation, and consider how much of current interest in religion is this interest of curiosity. Why religious people act as they do; what it is that impels them; how they have come to cherish such convictions; who are the persons, and what the books and opinions and states of feeling, which most influence them now ;-all this moves the curiosity of the intelligent world. The world stands outside the Sacred Temple, but it strains its eyesight very hard in order to see as much of the interior as it possibly can through the windows, or the half-open door. If, indeed, religion is dormant; if the Church is possessed by a spirit of lethargy; public curiosity takes little heed of it, except in the way of an occasional expression of languid contempt. But when life and activity return, there is a change, and that quickly. In George III.'s time the public prints in this country scarcely alluded to religion in any way. whatever, except as a sort of decoration of the body politic, which came into view on state occasions. We have but to read the papers of our own day, whatever their principles, to appreciate the change. Jesus has come into the city in the two great religious movements which have taken place during this century. He first reanimated faith in His own precious Atonement for sin, and in the converting and sanctifying work of His Spirit; and then He recalled men to what He had revealed respecting the nature and the constitution of His Body, the Church, and the value of those Sacraments by which we are united to Him. And so for good or evil, from one motive or another, but very largely from a curious wish to learn what it is all about, "all the city is moved."

II.

A second element in the excitement was assuredly fear. The ruling sect of the Pharisees, which largely, although by no means entirely, influenced the opinions and conduct of the priesthood, was alarmed at the moral influence of Jesus. They felt that between Him and themselves there was a fundamental opposition; and they instinctively foresaw that, in the long-run, He would be stronger than they. Thus they were quite prepared to persecute Him to the death. They had actually issued a public notice, that information might be given as to His residence, with a view to arresting Him.1 The Herodians, who viewed the success of Jesus as likely to interfere with their political plans, would have agreed with the Pharisees in fearing the influence of Jesus, though for another reason. Fear, of course, is a form of interest; it tends to be very practical. For irrational fear, if it is armed, soon becomes cruel. Persecution is more frequently the resource of the timid than the counsel of the strong to persecute is to make a public confession of weakness. In rare cases persecution may succeed, but it can only succeed on the condition of literally exterminating its victims. Still you must take a great interest in any religion in order to persecute it. The Pharisees, who hated the religious teaching of Jesus, and the Herodians, who thought that it would injure their cherished plans for the political future, eyed the entry into Jerusalem with sincere anxiety.

In all ages this is the case. Is not much of the public interest in religion at the present day dictated by secret fear? Men who are not themselves religious, and who see the vast power of religion upon other minds, do fear religion; just as savages suspect witchcraft in a new scientific apparatus or discovery. Thus, for example, the Jews said that our Lord had a devil.2 Thus it was that St. Paul was accused in Corinth of want of straighforwardness. When men do not understand the real secret of the power which religion exerts over simple and purified hearts, they go about to invent an imaginary one. In truth, they are frightened; and the violence of their language when they have no power, and of their acts when they have, is the measure of their alarm. Still this alarm is undoubtedly a species of interest: it is a 1 St. John xi. 57. 3 2 Cor. xii. 16.

2 Ibid. vii. 20.

protest against the notion that religion is insignificant. And when, as in the first ages, it is taken as a matter of course by the servants of Christ, who are in nothing terrified by their adversaries, this is to such adversaries a manifest "token of perdition," of a virtually ruined cause, while to Christians it is "of salvation, and that," as the Apostle says, "of God."

III.

A third element in the general excitement would have been due to the imitative habit which influences so many people in all ages and countries. They are always anxious to keep pace with the most recent enthusiasm, not because it is the best, but because it is the most recent. They have a stock of sympathy ready in hand to be lavished on any promising eccentricity that may present itself, and that may be sufficiently recognized by persons whom they think of weight. They are sensitively afraid of being behind the age-behind its last phase of opinion or of fashion. They do not originate, but they are always at the disposal of those who do. Jerusalem would have contained many such; indeed, that it must have contained them is plain, if we compare the scene of the great entry with the scene at the foot of the Cross. Many a man must have cried "Crucify!" on the Friday who had cried "Hosanna!" on the previous Sunday; and in each case only because the majority of other people whom he saw about him on those very different days had cried "Hosanna!" or Crucify!" before him.

66

Imitative religion is capable of doing a great deal of work upon occasion; it is far better than no interest in religion at all. It may always lead on to something deeper and more solid than itself. But do not let us mistake-it is not deep. It has no root in the soul; it belongs strictly to the social atmosphere. It will not stand a strain or shock; it dies with the occasion or influence that has provoked it. Like other fashions, it arises and wanes and disappears; and then men who have gone through it imagine that they have made a real trial of religion, and have discovered its weakness, and, as they say, 66 see through" it, and are entitled to speak on the subject from experience. Alas! they were merely swept away by a current which was too strong for them; they had been using religious language

1 Phil. i. 28.

and going through religious acts, and trying, perhaps, to fan themselves into phases of religious feeling, because they were in hard reality being carried down by a strong social tide which swept them before it, and they only did not wish to be wanting to the supposed proprieties of their position. The wonder would be if their interest had lasted; still, while it did last, it was a bonâ fide interest, and contributed, perhaps, some real ingredients to this or that movement of the day. What it would be worth on their death-beds, or beyond, is quite another

matter.

IV.

These three elements in the movement of Jerusalem on the day of Christ's entry would have implied a fourth. Curiosity on the subject of religion is only aroused when religion has power at the least over some persons. Hostility to religion is only possible when religion is felt to be a real influence in some quarters; shaping principles and habits, and determining lines of conduct. Nor do the imitative care to follow any who are not themselves really moved. So it would have been on the day of the great entry. There was an inner circle around our Lord, consisting of disciples from Galilee, and of some of the inhabitants of the Holy City itself. They had reflected on the miracles which they had witnessed, or of which they had heard. They had opened their understandings to the force and range of Christ's teaching, and their hearts to the beauty of His human character. Putting these things together-the impression made by a faultless Life, by a teaching which carried its own evidence of a superhuman origin, by a series of miracles which ratified the anticipations alike of the understanding and the heart-they believed in Him. Whether their faith was, as yet, as clear and definite as St. John's, when he wrote his Gospel half a century later, or St. Paul's, when he wrote his great Epistles, may very well be questioned. It was a faith in process of growth. But it was strong enough to move social mountains, to excite curiosity, apprehension, imitation, in the masses around. These men were, in point of numbers, by far the weakest, in point of moral force, by far the strongest of the various elements in the movement of that eventful day. Moral and spiritual strength has no more necessary relation to numbers, than our mental power has to the size of our bodies; it belongs to a different order of being, and acts not seldom as if in an

inverse ratio to natural energy. This little company was the heart and centre of all that passed on that eventful day—it was the only permanent element in the general movement. The curious would soon sate their curiosity when Jesus had declared Himself in the temple. The hostile would gratify their vengeance before the week was over, only to find themselves irrecoverably defeated. The imitative would cease to imitate when imitation became dangerous; and, indeed, during the dark hours of the Passion a cloud would pass over the faith even of the small and devoted band which was bound to the Heart of Jesus. But this would be but temporary; with the morning of the Resurrection their faith would burn more brightly than before. They were the real motive power of the present; they alone had at command the secret of the future. So it was then; so, depend upon it, it is now.

It is, I know, the fashion to treat this sort of language as a kind of conventional rhapsody in which clergymen, from whatever motive, indulge in the pulpit, but in which it is not to be supposed that they will command the assent of the sensible and educated laity, for the simple reason that there is nothing to correspond to their ecstasies in the world of fact. And yet, my brethren, is there nothing? Who of us has not heard within the last week1 of the death of one of the noblest and greatest of contemporary Englishmen, Bishop Patteson, who perished some two or three months since by a murderous hand in one of the Melanesian Islands of the Pacific? Well do I remember him, two and twenty years ago, in the full flush of youthful manhood, commanding the admiration of his friends by the qualities which win a young man's love most readily-by activity of body as well as activity of mind, by geniality, by large-heartedness, by all that is included in that most inclusive quality-generosity. Well do I remember how it was believed, even then, that beneath that simple, unaffected, unpretending exterior, there were in contemplation deeper and nobler schemes of life than those of ordinary men; although, indeed, he was the last man to make any unnecessary display of his religious convictions of those "still waters which run deep" in great souls. He went on, apparently, like other people ;—and then one day he astonished the world by leaving his college, his

1 John Coleridge Patteson, Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian Islands, was killed by the natives at Nukapu on the Eve of St. Matthew, Sept. 20, 1871. See his "Life," by C. M. Yonge, 3rd edit., vol. ii. p. 383. Macmillan: 1874.