The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1873-11-22 00:00:00

Autumns oongresiattunsawmablekei Westminster Abbey
ou Sunday aftertwon to hear Ca.'s* lisussley, who preaches
for upwan s of WI hour 111WII mitt. IlltliVido.lll*lllld personal
responsibility :

Man (said the CIU300) is not • thing, but a person, a
living soul ; the thought of personality comes to the
chil i as a distinct revelation from God, and from that
period it feels that it Is no longer it but!. This realis s-
Hon of personal responsibility is very awl ol ; I cannot
enema, In m it, as the grett Getman poet saps, any
more than I can spring off my own shadow. And
yet men try to escape from it by varied means, forget-
Ling that it in Impossible ; for, as a great and pions
poet whose monument stand,' in the Abbey has said,
" our hermit spirits dwoll and range apart." It must
no : I Dallet be I, thou most be thou, he must be he,
alp mutt le she, throughout oar mortal lives, and, ass
ir..Ce Seenia to tell Us, alone for ever. Yes ! sad alone
with one more, alone with God, without the interven-
tion of any priest or fathenomtessor, aye or of angel or
a:change!, if twit could ae—alone with Gob But this
idea, though awful, may be full of comfort if we can
say like the pealnibt, "I am Thine; oh, nave me."
There are those, continued the preacher, who assert it
to be an impoetibility thus to fancy yourself to lw an 1,
individual and indivieible; each one, say these extreme
nominabsta, is many things—the net result of all the
organic (omit, in his body or of the forces that have
acted on his =keit-orb througn conntless ages. That
man is the name being when he is old that he was win-n
a child, while his physical being changes its every atom,
Is, these, philosophers tell UP, a delusion which people
hold just as they talk of the sun's rising in the east
and setting in the west. Man, they argue, is no more
an individual than the coral or the fungus. That there
I. some truth underlying this theory, added Mr,
Kingsley, Ism the last to deny; for who does not know
how much of a man is inherited, and how much changes
with the physical changes of his body ? But it is only
half the truth, and there philosophers cannot state
, even this half-truth without using the very personal
' prouounis which they repudiate—l. thou, he or she;
thee proving their view to he, as we may say. unthink-
able except by thinking individually. After pointing
out how universal is the belief in individuality, bayou-
leg more fixed as man becomes more civilized, the
preacher showed how strong personality may be dove-
loped either for good or evil; anti instanced Medea, the I
im wrions sorceress, who lived in the assertion of
self, and Satan, who when he fell became, not a brute,
but • fiend, his individuality, which was so strong
within him as an angel—nay, as an arehanvel—re.
waning, when, like Medea, befell back on the strength
of his own personality and only became more ptwertul
for eviL So it is with us, and it is only faith in God
and loyalty to Him that can keep us from being a tor-
ment to ourselves and others. But Cheri are those
who fancy that there is something abject and undig-
nified in thus looking to God for nelp instead of
belpint yourself and bearing your burden stoically.
Stoically! I answer (raid the Canon) that he does bear
it stocially ; because the oldest and purest Moic did cry
for help. Look at the writings of Epictetus. Do not
they show on the very face that what enabled him to
assert his own individuality and to maintain his own
purity was his faith in God? If any man has learned
to undervalue psalmist or prophet, let him turn to
Epictetus, and learn trout that heathen that faith in
God is the true dignity of man. But, for her, it is a
questh in whether ungodliness is ever dignified, whether
the dignified Satan of Milton be not an imp risibility,
and whether Goethe's Mephistopheles is not a truer
ideal; and, indeed, 'here is something lodicrous in the
view that trust in God is undignified. I leave it to you
to Folic., which is the mire dignified; this little
thing of flesh and blood, at most not more
than six feet high, standing self-poised and self
complacent, the fancied centre of a unive ree like this,
ansierting that he needs no help; or the same being ac-
knowledging his own faults and needs, and by •
lamniii.y whinh is the highest daring, by self-distrust
whi.h is the noblett eelf-ansertion, taking service under
that Noblest of all personages who made this universe,
and crying, "I am thine; oh, save me" Make up
your mino (said the Canon) on this point, who is the
most abject, who the most tlgnified • as for me, I had
too good cause long since to make tip mine. Mr.
Kingsley conclnded a most powerful sermon, the effect
of which wee distinctly visible, many of the congrega-
tion standing instead of sitting in order to catch every
word, by • lengthened eulogy of the Church Cate.
einem.