Let me illustrate my meaning somewhat more at length by the word 'tribulation.' We all know in a general way that this word, which occurs not seldom in Scripture and in the Liturgy, means affliction, sorrow, anguish; but it is quite worth our while to know how it means this, and to question the word a little closer. It is derived from the Latin ' tribulum,' which was the threshing instrument, or roller, whereby the Roman husbandmen separated the corn from the husks; and 'tribulatio' in its primary significance was the act of this separation. But some Latin writer of the Christian Church appropriated the word and image for the setting forth of an higher truth; and sorrow, distress, and adversity being the appointed means for the separating in men of whatever in them was light, trivial and poor from the solid and the true, their chaff from their wheat,* therefore he called these sorrows and trials 'tribulations,' threshings, that is, of the inner spiritual man, without which there could be no fitting him for the heavenly garner. Now in proof of my assertion that a single word is often a concentrated poem, a little grain of gold capable of being beaten out into a broad extent of gold-leaf, I will quote, in reference to this very word 'tribulation,' a graceful composition by George Wither, an early English poet, which you will at once perceive is all wrapped up in this word, being from first to last only the

1.] HIGHER MEANING OF TRIBULATION.

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expanding of the image and thought which this word has implicitly given; these are his lines :

Till from the straw, the flail, the corn doth beat,
Until the chaff be purged from the wheat,
Yea, till the mill the grains in pieces tear,
The richness of the flour will scarce appear.
So, till men's persons great afflictions touch,
If worth be found, their worth is not so much,
Because, like wheat in straw, they have not yet
That value which in threshing they may get.
For till the bruising flails of God's corrections
Have threshed out of us our vain affections;
Till those corruptions which do misbecome us
Are by Thy sacred Spirit winnowed from us;
Until from us the straw of worldly treasures,
Till all the dusty chaff of empty pleasures,
Yea, till His flail upon us He doth lay,
To thresh the husk of this our flesh away;
And leave the soul uncovered; nay, yet more,
Till God shall make our very spirit poor,
We shall not up to highest wealth aspire;
But then we shall; and that is my desire."

This deeper religious use of the word 'tribulation' was unknown to classical, that is to heathen, antiquity, and belongs exclusively to the Christian writers: and the fact that the same deepening and elevating of the use of words recurs in a multitude of other, and many of them far more striking, instances, is one well deserving to be followed up. Nothing, I am persuaded, would more strongly bring before us what a new power Christianity was in the world than to compare the meaning which so many words possessed before its rise, and the deeper meaning which they obtained, so soon as

they were assumed by it as the vehicles of its life, the new thought and feeling enlarging, purifying, and ennobling the very words which they employed. This is a subject which I shall have occasion to touch on more than once in these lectures, but is itself well worthy of, as it would afford ample material for, a volume.

But it was said just now that words often contain a witness for great moral truths-God having impressed such a seal of truth upon language, that men are continually uttering deeper things than they know, asserting mighty principles, it may be asserting them against themselves, in words that to them may seem nothing more than the current coin of society. Thus to what grand moral purposes Bishop Butler turns the word 'pastime;' how solemn the testimony which he compels the world, out of its own use of this word, to render against itself-obliging it to own that its amusements and pleasures do not really satisfy the mind and fill it with the sense of an abiding and satisfying joy ;* they are only 'pastime ;' they serve only,

*Sermon xiv. Upon the Love of God. Curiously enough Montaigne has in his Essays drawn the same testimony out of the word: "This ordinary phrase of Past-time, and passing away the time, represents the custom of those wise sort of people, who think they cannot have a better account of their lives, than to let them run out and slide away, to pass them over and to baulk them, and as much as they can, to take no notice of them and to shun them, as a thing of troublesome and contemptible quality. But I know it to be another kind of thing, and find it both valuable and commodious even in

I.] BISHOP BUTLER'S USE OF PASTIME.

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as this word confesses, to pass away the time, to prevent it from hanging, an intolerable burden, on men's hands; all which they can do at the best is to prevent men from discovering and attending to their own internal poverty and dissatisfaction and want. He might have added that there is the same acknowledgment in the word 'diversion,' which means no more than that which diverts or turns us aside from ourselves, and in this way helps us to forget ourselves for a little. And thus it would appear that, even according to the world's own confession, all which it proposes is not to make us happy, but a little to prevent us from remembering that we are unhappy, to pass away our time, to divert us from ourselves. While on the other hand we declare that the good which will really fill our souls and satisfy them to the uttermost, is not in us, but without us and above us, in the words which we use to set forth any transcending delight. Take three or four of these words -'transport,' 'rapture,' 'ravishment,' ecstasy'

transport,' that which carries us, as 'rapture,' or 'ravishment,' that which snatches us, out of and above ourselves; and 'ecstasy' is very nearly the same, only drawn from the Greek.

And not less, where a perversion of the moral sense has found place, words preserve oftentimes a

its latest decay, wherein I now enjoy it, and nature has delivered it into our hands in such and so favourable circumstances, that we commonly complain of ourselves, if it be troublesome to us or slide unprofitable away.”

record of this perversion. We have a signal example of this, even as it is a notable evidence of the manner in which moral contagion, spreading from heart and manners, invades the popular language in the use, or rather misuse, of the word 'religion,' during all the ages of Papal domination in Europe. Probably many of you are aware that in those times a "religious person" did not mean any one who felt and allowed the bonds that bound him to God and to his fellow-men, but one who had taken peculiar vows upon him, a member of one of the monkish orders; a 'religious' house did not mean, nor does it now mean in the Church of Rome, a Christian household, ordered in the fear of God, but an house in which these persons were gathered together according to the rule of some man, Benedict, or Dominic, or some other. A 'religion' meant not a service of God, but an order of monkery; and taking the monastic vows was termed going into a 'religion.' Now what an awful light does this one word so used throw on the entire state of mind and habits of thought in those ages! That then was 'religion,' and nothing else was deserving of the name! And 'religious,' was a title which might not be given to parents and children, husbands and wives, men and women fulfilling faithfully and holily in the world the several duties of their stations, but only to those who had devised self-chosen service for themselves.*