In religion, as in everything else, we are earnest, not by aiming at earnestness, but by aiming at an object. Religious language should be deep and real, rather than demonstrative. It is not safe to play with sacred names. To pronounce them at random for the purpose of being effective and impressive is to take them in vain. What a wealth of reverential love there is in that--"for the sake of the Name!"[393] Old copyists sometimes thought to improve upon the impressiveness of Apostles by cramming in sacred names. They only maimed what they touched with clumsy hand. A deeper sense of the Sacramental Presence is in the hushed, awful, reverence of "not discerning the Body," than in the interpolated "not discerning of the Lord's Body." Even so "The Name," perhaps, speaks more to the heart, and implies more than "His Name." It is, indeed, the "beautiful Name," by the which we are called. And sometimes in sermons, or in Eucharistic "Gloria in Excelsis," or in hymns that have come from such as St. Bernard, or in sick rooms, it shall go up with our sweetest music, and waken our tenderest thoughts, and be "as ointment poured forth." But what an underlying Gospel, what an intense suppressed flame there is behind these quiet words! This letter says nothing of rapture, of prophecy, of miracle. It lies in the atmosphere of the Church, as we find it even now. It has a word for _friendship_. It seeks to _individualise_ its benediction.[394] A hush of evening rests upon the note. May such an evening close upon our old age! NOTES. Ver. 2 ... _thy soul._] Strange difficulty seems to be felt in some quarters about the word ψυχη, as used by our Lord and the Apostles. The difficulty arises from a singular argument advanced by M. Renan. He maintains that Christ and His first followers knew nothing of "the soul" as the immortal principle in man--that in him which is capable of being saved or lost. It was simply, according to him, _either_ the animal natural life[395] (Matt. ii. 20; John xii. 25); _or_ at most the vague Greek immortality of the shadows, as opposed to the later Hebrew Resurrection-life. But there are very numerous passages in the New Testament where "soul" _can_ only be used for "life as created by God;" for the thinking substance, different from the body and indestructible by death, created with possibilities of eternal happiness or misery. (The following passages are decisive--Matt. x. 28, xi. 29; Acts ii. 27; 2 Cor. xii. 13; Heb. xiii. 17; 1 Pet. i. 9, 22, ii. 11, 25; Jas. i. 21, v. 20; 3 John 2; Apoc. vi. 9, xx. 4). Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ltd., London and Aylesbury FOOTNOTES: [372] Caius, a Macedonian (Acts xix. 29); Caius of Derbe (Acts xx. 4); Caius of Corinth (Rom. xvi. 23; 1 Cor. i. 14). [373] Rom. xvi. 23.