REV. W. R. INGE, D.D., ON FREEDOM AND DISCIPLINE. 257 



If they live in obedience, they will have their reward hereafter. 

 Tauler says very well, " He who serveth God with fear, it is 

 good. He who serveth Him with love, it is better. But he 

 who in fear can love, serveth Him best of all." It is only perfect 

 love that casteth out fear ; and perfect love is, even for the 

 holiest saint, an unrealized ideal. 



Further, though the Founder of our religion was certainly 

 no institutionalist, neither was He an individualist. Among 

 all the brotherhood worketh one and the self -same Spirit, 

 dividing to every man severally as He will. We are members 

 one of another, bound to bear others' burdens, and to allow 

 others to bear ours. Christianity promises to make us free ; 

 it never promises to make us independent. That is the funda- 

 mental difference between Christianity and Stoicism ; and for 

 minds of a strong and self-reliant temper it is a very important 

 difference indeed. Christian humility largely consists in willing- 

 ness to depend on others, and to receive from them what they 

 are able to give. This applies to the intellectual life as much as 

 to the social life. Pride isolates a man ; and an isolated man is 

 a very small and cramped man, a poor creature. Personality 

 only reaches its true nature, that is to say, its true end, by free 

 giving and receiving, by wide and deep sympathy. Ultimately, 

 we are what we understand and what we love. No man can 

 really march to heaven alone. Thus, however much we hug 

 the idea of freedom, we must not deny our interdependence 

 on each other. 



That Christianity is at bottom a religion of freedom is shown 

 by the prominent place which it gives to love and joy. Love 

 is essentially free service, rendered willingly and gladly. It is 

 to the credit of human nature that a slave may love his master ; 

 but in loving him he ceases to be a slave, except externally. 

 Augustine's " ama, et fac quod vis " is one of those Christian 

 paradoxes which may be dangerous to non-Christians, but not 

 to anyone who understands what Christianity is. The perfect 

 law, the law of liberty, is not tolerant of antinomianism 

 Freedom begins with, posse non peccare ; it is consummated only in 

 non posse peccare. It is the Apostle of love who says curtly 

 " Sin is lawlessness." As for joy, which no one before St. Paul 

 had erected into a moral virtue, it is the fine flower of the Christian 

 life, and its disappearance is the surest token that we have lost 

 our way. It was an unmistakable attribute of the Christian 

 character, through all the ages of persecution. It was one of the 



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