you being of a stronger stomach, continued to
enjoy the security of national endowments. Some of you occupy the very
livings which they resigned for conscience' sake. To others preferment
has fallen which would have fallen to them had they been still eligible.
If, then, any of them are now content to return, you are bound, if not
in justice, then in honour, to do all that you can to testify your
respect for brave conviction, and to repair to them such losses as they
may have suffered, whether for their first secession or their second.
You owe a special duty, not only to the courage that left the Church,
but to the wisdom and moderation that now returns to it. And your sense
of this duty will find a vent not only in word but in action. You will
facilitate their return not only by considerate and brotherly language
but by pecuniary aid; you will seek, by some new endowment scheme, to
preserve for them their ecclesiastical status. That they have no claim
will be their strongest claim on your consideration. Many of you, if not
all, will set apart some share out of your slender livings for their
assistance and support: you will give them what you can afford; and you
will say to them, as you do so, what I dare say to you, that what you
give is theirs--not only in honour but in justice.

For you know that the justice which should rule the dealings of
Christians, how much more of Christian ministers, is not as the justice
of courts of law or equity; and those who profess the morality of Jesus
Christ have abjured, in that profession, all that can be urged by policy
or worldly prudence. From them we can accept no half-hearted and
calculating generosity; they must make haste to be liberal; they must
catch with eagerness at all opportunities of service, and the mere
whisper of an obligation should be to them more potent than the decree
of a court to others who make profession of a less stringent code. And
remember that it lies with you to show to the world that Christianity is
something more than a verbal system. In the lapse of generations men
grow weary of unsupported precept. They may wait long, and keep long in
memory the bright doings of former days, but they will weary at the
last; they will begin to trouble you for your credentials; if you cannot
give them miracles, they will demand virtue; if you cannot heal the
sick, they will call upon you for some practice of the Christian ethics.
Thus people will knock often at a door if