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Title: Twenty-Five Village Sermons
Author: Kingsley, Charles
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Twenty-Five Village Sermons" ***
Transcribed from the 1849 John W. Parker edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org
TWENTY-FIVE
VILLAGE SERMONS.
* * * * *
BY
CHARLES KINGSLEY, JUN.,
RECTOR OF EVERSLEY, HANTS, AND CANON OF MIDDLEHAM, YORKSHIRE.
* * * * *
LONDON:
JOHN W. PARKER, WEST STRAND.
* * * * *
MDCCCXLIX.
* * * * *
LONDON:
Printed by G. BARCLAY, Castle St Leicester Sq.
CONTENTS.
Page
SERMON I.
GOD’S WORLD.
PSALM civ. 24.
O Lord, how manifold are Thy works! in wisdom hast Thou 1
made them all: the earth is full of Thy riches
SERMON II.
RELIGION NOT GODLINESS.
PSALM civ. 13–15.
He watereth the hills from his chambers: the earth is 13
satisfied with the fruit of thy works. He causeth the
grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of
man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth; and
wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his
face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man’s heart
SERMON III.
LIFE AND DEATH.
PSALM civ. 24, 28–30.
O Lord, how manifold are Thy works! in wisdom hast Thou 25
made them all: the earth is full of Thy riches. That Thou
givest them they gather: Thou openest Thine hand, they are
filled with good. Thou hidest Thy face, they are troubled:
Thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to
their dust. Thou sendest forth Thy spirit, they are
created: and Thou renewest the face of the earth
SERMON IV.
THE WORK OF GOD’S SPIRIT.
JAMES, i. 16, 17.
Do not err, my beloved brethren; every good gift and every 35
perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father
of lights
SERMON V.
FAITH.
HABAKKUK, ii. 4.
The just shall live by faith 47
SERMON VI.
THE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH.
GALATIANS, v. 16.
I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the 60
lusts of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the
Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, and these are
contrary the one to the other
SERMON VII.
RETRIBUTION.
NUMBERS, xxxii. 23.
Be sure your sin will find you out 72
SERMON VIII.
SELF-DESTRUCTION.
1 KINGS, xxii. 23.
The Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these 82
thy prophets
SERMON IX.
HELL ON EARTH.
MATTHEW, viii. 29.
And behold the evil spirits cried out, saying, What have we 91
to do with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of God? Art Thou come
hither to torment us before the time?
SERMON X.
NOAH’S JUSTICE.
GENESIS, vi. 9.
Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and 104
Noah walked with God
SERMON XI.
THE NOACHIC COVENANT.
GEN. ix. 8, 9.
And God spake unto Noah, and his sons with him, saying, And 116
I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your
seed after you
SERMON XII.
ABRAHAM’S FAITH.
HEBREWS, xi. 9, 10.
By faith Abraham sojourned in the land of promise as in a 125
strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and
Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise. For he
looked for a city, which hath foundations, whose builder
and maker is God
SERMON XIII.
ABRAHAM’S OBEDIENCE.
HEBREWS, xi. 17–19.
By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac; and 141
he that had received the promises offered up his
only-begotten son, of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall
thy seed be called: accounting that God was able to raise
him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received
him in a figure
SERMON XIV.
OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN.
1 JOHN, ii. 13.
I write unto you, little children, because ye have known 149
the Father
SERMON XV.
THE TRANSFIGURATION.
MARK, ix. 2.
Jesus taketh Peter, and James, and John, and leadeth them 160
up into a high mountain apart, and was transfigured before
them
SERMON XVI.
THE CRUCIFIXION.
ISAIAH, liii. 7.
He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter 173
SERMON XVII.
THE RESURRECTION.
LUKE, xxiv. 6.
He is not here—He is risen 179
SERMON XVIII.
IMPROVEMENT.
PSALM xcii. 12.
The righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree: he shall 191
grow like the cedar in Lebanon. Those that be planted in
the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our
God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they
shall be fat and flourishing
SERMON XIX.
MAN’S WORKING DAY.
JOHN, xi. 9, 10.
Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If 200
any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth
the light of this world. But if a man walk in the night he
stumbleth, because there is no light in him
SERMON XX.
ASSOCIATION.
GALATIANS, vi. 2.
Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of 210
Christ
SERMON XXI.
HEAVEN ON EARTH.
1 COR. x. 31.
Whether ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to 219
the glory of God
SERMON XXII.
NATIONAL PRIVILEGES.
LUKE, x. 23.
Blessed are the eyes which see the things which ye see: for 228
I tell you, that many prophets and kings have desired to
see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and
to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them
SERMON XXIII.
LENTEN THOUGHTS.
HAGGAI, i. 5.
Now, therefore, thus saith the Lord of Hosts, consider your 239
ways
SERMON XXIV.
ON BOOKS.
JOHN, i. 1.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, 248
and the Word was God
SERMON XXV.
THE COURAGE OF THE SAVIOUR.
JOHN, xi. 7, 8.
Then after that saith He to His disciples, Let us go into 259
Judea again. His disciples say to Him, Master, the Jews of
late sought to stone thee, and goest thou thither again?
SERMON I.
GOD’S WORLD.
PSALM civ. 24.
“O Lord, how manifold are Thy works! in wisdom hast Thou made them
all: the earth is full of Thy riches.”
WHEN we read such psalms as the one from which this verse is taken, we
cannot help, if we consider, feeling at once a great difference between
them and any hymns or religious poetry which is commonly written or read
in these days. The hymns which are most liked now, and the psalms which
people most willingly choose out of the Bible, are those which speak, or
seem to speak, about God’s dealings with people’s own souls, while such
psalms as this are overlooked. People do not care really about psalms of
this kind when they find them in the Bible, and they do not expect or
wish nowadays any one to write poetry like them. For these psalms of
which I speak praise and honour God, not for what He has done to our
souls, but for what He has done and is doing in the world around us.
This very 104th psalm, for instance, speaks entirely about things which
we hardly care or even think proper to mention in church now. It speaks
of this earth entirely, and the things on it. Of the light, the clouds,
and wind—of hills and valleys, and the springs on the hill-sides—of wild
beasts and birds—of grass and corn, and wine and oil—of the sun and moon,
night and day—the great sea, the ships, and the fishes, and all the
wonderful and nameless creatures which people the waters—the very birds’
nests in the high trees, and the rabbits burrowing among the
rocks,—nothing on the earth but this psalm thinks it worth mentioning.
And all this, which one would expect to find only in a book of natural
history, is in the Bible, in one of the psalms, written to be sung in the
temple at Jerusalem, before the throne of the living God and His glory
which used to be seen in that temple,—inspired, as we all believe, by
God’s Spirit,—God’s own word, in short: that is worth thinking of.
Surely the man who wrote this must have thought very differently about
this world, with its fields and woods, and beasts and birds, from what we
think. Suppose, now, that we had been old Jews in the temple, standing
before the holy house, and that we believed, as the Jews believed, that
there was only one thin wall and one curtain of linen between us and the
glory of the living God, that unspeakable brightness and majesty which no
one could look at for fear of instant death, except the high-priest in
fear and trembling once a-year—that inside that small holy house, He, God
Almighty, appeared visibly—God who made heaven and earth. Suppose we had
been there in the temple, and known all this, should we have liked to be
singing about beasts and birds, with God Himself close to us? We should
not have liked it—we should have been terrified, thinking perhaps about
our own sinfulness, perhaps about that wonderful majesty which dwelt
inside. We should have wished to say or sing something spiritual, as we
call it; at all events, something very different from the 104th psalm
about woods, and rivers, and dumb beasts. We do not like the thought of
such a thing: it seems almost irreverent, almost impertinent to God to be
talking of such things in His presence. Now does this shew us that we
think about this earth, and the things in it, in a very different way
from those old Jews? They thought it a fit and proper thing to talk
about corn and wine and oil, and cattle and fishes, in the presence of
Almighty God, and we do not think it fit and proper. We read this psalm
when it comes in the Church-service as a matter of course, mainly because
we do not believe that God is here among us. We should not be so ready
to read it if we thought that Almighty God was so near us.
That is a great difference between us and the old Jews. Whether it shews
that we are better or not than they were in the main, I cannot tell;
perhaps some of them had such thoughts too, and said, ‘It is not
respectful to God to talk about such commonplace earthly things in His
presence;’ perhaps some of them thought themselves spiritual and
pure-minded for looking down on this psalm, and on David for writing it.
Very likely, for men have had such thoughts in all ages, and will have
them. But the man who wrote this psalm had no such thoughts. He said
himself, in this same psalm, that his words would please God. Nay, he is
not speaking and preaching _about_ God in this psalm, as I am now in my
sermon, but he is doing more; he is speaking _to_ God—a much more solemn
thing if you will think of it. He says, “O Lord my God, _Thou_ art
become exceeding glorious. Thou deckest Thyself with light as with a
garment. All the beasts wait on Thee; when Thou givest them meat they
gather it. Thou renewest the face of the earth.” When he turns and
speaks of God as “He,” saying, “He appointed the moon,” and so on, he
cannot help going back to God, and pouring out his wonder, and delight,
and awe, to God Himself, as we would sooner speak _to_ any one we love
and honour than merely speak _about_ them. He cannot take his mind off
God. And just at the last, when he does turn and speak to himself, it is
to say, “Praise thou the Lord, O my soul, praise the Lord,” as if
rebuking and stirring up himself for being too cold-hearted and slow, for
not admiring and honouring enough the infinite wisdom, and power, and
love, and glorious majesty of God, which to him shines out in every
hedge-side bird and every blade of grass. Truly I said that man had a
very different way of looking at God’s earth from what we have!
Now, in what did that difference lie? What was it? We need not look far
to see. It was this,—David looked on the earth as God’s earth; we look
on it as man’s earth, or nobody’s earth. We know that we are here, with
trees and grass, and beasts and birds, round us. And we know that we did
not put them here; and that, after we are dead and gone, they will go on
just as they went on before we were born,—each tree, and flower, and
animal, after its kind, but we know nothing more. The earth is here, and
we on it; but who put it there, and why it is there, and why we are on
it, instead of being anywhere else, few ever think. But to David the
earth looked very different; it had quite another meaning; it spoke to
him of God who made it. By seeing what this earth is like, he saw what
God who made it is like: and we see no such thing. The earth?—we can eat
the corn and cattle on it, we can earn money by farming it, and ploughing
and digging it; and that is all most men know about it. But David knew
something more—something which made him feel himself very weak, and yet
very safe; very ignorant and stupid, and yet honoured with glorious
knowledge from God,—something which made him feel that he belonged to
this world, and must not forget it or neglect it, that this earth was his
lesson-book—this earth was his work-field; and yet those same thoughts
which shewed him how he was made for the land round him, and the land
round him was made for him, shewed him also that he belonged to another
world—a spirit-world; shewed him that when this world passed away, he
should live for ever; shewed him that while he had a mortal body, he had
an immortal soul too; shewed him that though his home and business were
here on earth, yet that, for that very reason, his home and business were
in heaven, with God who made the earth, with that blessed One of whom he
said, “Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the
earth, and the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall perish, but
Thou shalt endure; they all shall fade as a garment, and like a vesture
shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed; but Thou art the same,
and _Thy_ years shall not fail. The children of Thy servants shall
continue, and their seed shall stand fast in Thy sight.” “As a garment
shalt Thou change them,”—ay, there was David’s secret! He saw that this
earth and skies are God’s garment—the garment by which we see God; and
that is what our forefathers saw too, and just what we have forgotten;
but David had not forgotten it. Look at this very 104th psalm again, how
he refers every thing to God. We say, ‘The light shines:’ David says
something more; he says, “Thou, O God, adornest Thyself with light as
with a curtain.” Light is a picture of God. “God,” says St. John, “is
light, and in Him is no darkness at all.” We say, ‘The clouds fly and
the wind blows,’ as if they went of themselves; David says, “God makes
the clouds His chariot, and walks upon the wings of the wind.” We talk
of the rich airs of spring, of the flashing lightning of summer, as dead
things; and men who call themselves wise say, that lightning is only
matter,—‘We can grind the like of it out of glass and silk, and make
lightning for ourselves in a small way;’ and so they can in a small way,
and in a very small one: David does not deny that, but he puts us in mind
of something in that lightning and those breezes which we cannot make.
He says, God makes the winds His angels, and flaming fire his ministers;
and St. Paul takes the same text, and turns it round to suit his purpose,
when he is talking of the blessed angels, saying, ‘That text in the 104th
Psalm means something more; it means that God makes His angels spirits,
(that is winds) and His ministers a flaming fire.’ So shewing us that in
those breezes there are living spirits, that God’s angels guide those
thunder-clouds; that the roaring thunderclap is a shock in the air truly,
but that it is something more—that it is the voice of God, which shakes
the cedar-trees of Lebanon, and tears down the thick bushes, and makes
the wild deer slip their young. So we read in the psalms in church; that
is David’s account of the thunder. I take it for a true account; you may
or not as you like. See again. Those springs in the hill-sides, how do
they come there? ‘Rain-water soaking and flowing out,’ we say. True,
but David says something more; he says, God sends the springs, and He
sends them into the rivers too. You may say, ‘Why, water must run
down-hill, what need of God?’ But suppose God had chosen that water
should run _up_-hill and not down, how would it have been then?—Very
different, I think. No; He sends them; He sends all things. Wherever
there is any thing useful, His Spirit has settled it. The help that is
done on earth He doeth it all Himself.—Loving and merciful,—caring for
the poor dumb beasts!—He sends the springs, and David says, “All the
beasts of the field drink thereof.” The wild animals in the night, He
cares for them too,—He, the Almighty God. We hear the foxes bark by
night, and we think the fox is hungry, and there it ends with us; but not
with David: he says, “The lions roaring after their prey do seek their
meat from God,”—God, who feedeth the young ravens who call upon Him. He
is a God! “He did not make the world,” says a wise man, “and then let it
spin round His finger,” as we wind up a watch, and then leave it to go of
itself. No; “His mercy is over all His works.” Loving and merciful, the
God of nature is the God of grace. The same love which chose us and our
forefathers for His people while we were yet dead in trespasses and sins;
the same only-begotten Son, who came down on earth to die for us poor
wretches on the cross,—that same love, that same power, that same Word of
God, who made heaven and earth, looks after the poor gnats in the winter
time, that they may have a chance of coming out of the ground when the
day stirs the little life in them, and dance in the sunbeam for a short
hour of gay life, before they return to the dust whence they were made,
to feed creatures nobler and more precious than themselves. That is all
God’s doing, all the doing of Christ, the King of the earth. “They wait
on Him,” says David. The beasts, and birds, and insects, the strange
fish, and shells, and the nameless corals too, in the deep, deep sea, who
build and build below the water for years and thousands of years, every
little, tiny creature bringing his atom of lime to add to the great heap,
till their heap stands out of the water and becomes dry land; and seeds
float thither over the wide waste sea, and trees grow up, and birds are
driven thither by storms; and men come by accident in stray ships, and
build, and sow, and multiply, and raise churches, and worship the God of
heaven, and Christ, the blessed One,—on that new land which the little
coral worms have built up from the deep. Consider that. Who sent them
there? Who contrived that those particular men should light on that new
island at that especial time? Who guided thither those seeds—those
birds? Who gave those insects that strange longing and power to build
and build on continually?—Christ, by whom all things are made, to whom
all power is given in heaven and earth; He and His Spirit, and none else.
It is when _He_ opens His hand, they are filled with good. It is when
_He_ takes away their breath, they die, and turn again to their dust.
_He_ lets His breath, His spirit, go forth, and out of that dead dust
grow plants and herbs afresh for man and beast, and He renews the face of
the earth. For, says the wise man, “all things are God’s
garment”—outward and visible signs of His unseen and unapproachable
glory; and when they are worn out, He changes them, says the Psalmist, as
a garment, and they shall be changed.
The old order changes, giving place to the new,
And God fulfils Himself in many ways.
But He is the same. He is there all the time. All things are His work.
In all things we may see Him, if our souls have eyes. All things, be
they what they may, which live and grow on this earth, or happen on land
or in the sky, will tell us a tale of God,—shew forth some one feature,
at least, of our blessed Saviour’s countenance and character,—either His
foresight, or His wisdom, or His order, or His power, or His love, or His
condescension, or His long-suffering, or His slow, sure vengeance on
those who break His laws. It is all written there outside in the great
green book, which God has given to labouring men, and which neither taxes
nor tyrants can take from them. The man who is no scholar in letters may
read of God as he follows the plough, for the earth he ploughs is his
Father’s: there is God’s mark and seal on it,—His name, which though it
is written on the dust, yet neither man nor fiend can wipe it out!
The poor, solitary, untaught boy, who keeps the sheep, or minds the
birds, long lonely days, far from his mother and his playmates, may keep
alive in him all purifying thoughts, if he will but open his eyes and
look at the green earth around him.
Think now, my boys, when you are at your work, how all things may put you
in mind of God, if you do but choose. The trees which shelter you from
the wind, God planted them there for your sakes, in His love.—There is a
lesson about God. The birds which you drive off the corn, who gave them
the sense to keep together and profit by each other’s wit and keen
eyesight? Who but God, who feeds the young birds when they call on
Him?—There is another lesson about God. The sheep whom you follow, who
ordered the warm wool to grow on them, from which your clothes are made?
Who but the Spirit of God above, who clothes the grass of the field, the
silly sheep, and who clothes you, too, and thinks of you when you don’t
think of yourselves?—There is another lesson about God. The feeble lambs
in spring, they ought to remind you surely of your blessed Saviour, the
Lamb of God, who died for you upon the cruel cross, who was led as a lamb
to the slaughter; and like a sheep that lies dumb and patient under the
shearer’s hand, so he opened not his mouth. Are not these lambs, then, a
lesson from God? And these are but one or two examples out of thousands
and thousands. Oh, that I could make you, young and old, all feel these
things! Oh, that I could make you see God in every thing, and every
thing in God! Oh, that I could make you look on this earth, not as a
mere dull, dreary prison, and workhouse for your mortal bodies, but as a
living book, to speak to you at every time of the living God, Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost! Sure I am that that would be a heavenly life for
you,—sure I am that it would keep you from many a sin, and stir you up to
many a holy thought and deed, if you could learn to find in every thing
around you, however small or mean, the work of God’s hand, the likeness
of God’s countenance, the shadow of God’s glory.
SERMON II.
RELIGION NOT GODLINESS.
PSALM civ. 13–15.
“He watereth the hills from his chambers: the earth is satisfied with
the fruit of thy works. He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle,
and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of
the earth; and wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to
make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man’s heart.”
DID you ever remark, my friends, that the Bible says hardly any thing
about religion—that it never praises religious people? This is very
curious. Would to God we would all remember it! The Bible speaks of a
religious man only once, and of religion only twice, except where it
speaks of the Jews’ religion to condemn it, and shews what an empty,
blind, useless thing it was.
What does this Bible talk of, then? It talks of God; not of religion,
but of God. It tells us not to be religious, but to be godly. You may
think there is no difference, or that it is but a difference of words. I
tell you that a difference in words is a very awful, important
difference. A difference in words is a difference in things. Words are
very awful and wonderful things, for they come from the most awful and
wonderful of all beings, Jesus Christ, the Word. He puts words into
men’s minds—He made all things, and He makes all words to express those
things with. And woe to those who use the wrong words about things!—For
if a man calls any thing by its wrong name, it is a sure sign that he
understands that thing wrongly, or feels about it wrongly; and therefore
a man’s words are oftener honester than he thinks; for as a man’s words
are, so is a man’s heart; out of the abundance of our hearts our mouths
speak; and, therefore, by right words, by the right names which we call
things, we shall be justified, and by our words, by the wrong names we
call things, we shall be condemned.
Therefore a difference in words is a difference in the things which those
words mean, and there is a difference between religion and godliness; and
we shew it by our words. Now these are religious times, but they are
very ungodly times; and we shew that also by our words. Because we think
that people ought to be religious, we talk a great deal about religion;
because we hardly think at all that a man ought to be godly, we talk very
little about God, and that good old Bible word “godliness” does not pass
our lips once a-month. For a man may be very religious, my friends, and
yet very ungodly. The heathens were very religious at the very time
that, as St. Paul tells us, they would not keep God in their knowledge.
The Jews were the most religious people on the earth, they hardly talked
or thought about anything but religion, at the very time that they knew
so little of God that they crucified Him when He came down among them.
St. Paul says that he was living after the strictest sect of the Jews’
religion, at the very time that he was fighting against God, persecuting
God’s people and God’s Son, and dead in trespasses and sins. These are
ugly facts, my friends, but they are true, and well worth our laying to
heart in these religious, ungodly days. I am afraid if Jesus Christ came
down into England this day as a carpenter’s son, He would get—a better
hearing, perhaps, than the Jews gave him, but still a very bad
hearing—one dare hardly think of it.
And yet I believe we ought to think of it, and, by God’s help, I will one
day preach you a sermon, asking you all round this fair question:—If
Jesus Christ came to you in the shape of a poor man, whom nobody knew,
should _you_ know him? should you admire him, fall at his feet and give
yourself up to him body and soul? I am afraid that I, for one, should
not—I am afraid that too many of us here would not. That comes of
thinking more of religion than we do of godliness—in plain words, more of
our own souls than we do of Jesus Christ. But you will want to know what
is, after all, the difference between religion and godliness? Just the
difference, my friends, that there is between always thinking of self and
always forgetting self—between the terror of a slave and the affection of
a child—between the fear of hell and the love of God. For, tell me, what
you mean by being religious? Do you not mean thinking a great deal about
your own souls, and praying and reading about your own souls, and trying
by all possible means to get your own souls saved? Is not that the
meaning of religion? And yet I have never mentioned God’s name in
describing it! This sort of religion must have very little to do with
God. You may be surprised at my words, and say in your hearts almost
angrily, ‘Why who saves our souls but God? therefore religion must have
to do with God.’ But, my friends, for your souls’ sake, and for God’s
sake, ask yourselves this question on your knees this day:—If you could
get your souls saved without God’s help, would it make much difference to
you? Suppose an angel from heaven, as they say, was to come down and
prove to you clearly that there was no God, no blessed Jesus in heaven,
that the world made itself, and went on of itself, and that the Bible was
all a mistake, but that you need not mind, for your gardens and crops
would grow just as well, and your souls be saved just as well when you
died.
To how many of you would it make any difference? To some of you, thank
God, I believe it would make a difference. Here are some here, I
believe, who would feel that news the worst news they ever heard,—worse
than if they were told that their souls were lost for ever; there are
some here, I do believe, who, at that news, would cry aloud in agony,
like little children who had lost their father, and say, ‘No Father in
heaven to love? No blessed Jesus in heaven to work for, and die for, and
glory and delight in? No God to rule and manage this poor, miserable,
quarrelsome world, bringing good out of evil, blessing and guiding all
things and people on earth? What do I care what becomes of my soul if
there is no God for my soul to glory in? What is heaven worth without
God? God is Heaven!’
Yes, indeed, what would heaven be worth without God? But how many people
feel that the curse of this day is, that most people have forgotten
_that_? They are selfishly anxious enough about their own souls, but
they have forgotten God. They are religious, for fear of hell; but they
are not godly, for they do not love God, or see God’s hand in every
thing. They forget that they have a Father in heaven; that He sends
rain, and sunshine, and fruitful seasons; that He gives them all things
richly to enjoy in spite of all their sins. His mercies are far above,
out of their sight, and therefore His judgments are far away out of their
sight too; and so they talk of the “Visitation of God,” as if it was
something that was very extraordinary, and happened very seldom; and when
it came, only brought evil, harm, and sorrow. If a man lives on in
health, they say he lives by the strength of his own constitution; if he
drops down dead, they say he died by “the visitation of God.” If the
corn-crops go on all right and safe, they think _that_ quite natural—the
effect of the soil, and the weather, and their own skill in farming and
gardening. But if there comes a hailstorm or a blight, and spoils it
all, and brings on a famine, they call it at once “a visitation of God.”
My friends! do you think God “visits” the earth or you only to harm you?
I tell you that every blade of grass grows by “the visitation of God.” I
tell you that every healthy breath you ever drew, every cheerful hour you
ever spent, every good crop you ever housed safely, came to you by “the
visitation of God.” I tell you that every sensible thought or plan that
ever came into your heads,—every loving, honest, manly, womanly feeling
that ever rose in your hearts, God “visited” you to put it there. If
God’s Spirit had not given it you, you would never have got it of
yourselves.
But people forget this, and therefore they have so little real love to
God—so little real, loyal, childlike trust in God. They do not think
much about God, because they find no pleasure in thinking about Him; they
look on God as a task-master, gathering where He has not strewed, reaping
where He has not sown,—a task-master who has put them, very miserable,
sinful creatures, to struggle on in a very miserable, sinful world, and,
though He tells them in His Bible that they _cannot_ keep His
commandments, expects them to keep them just the same, and will at the
last send them all into everlasting fire, unless they take a great deal
of care, and give up a great many natural and pleasant things, and
beseech and entreat Him very hard to excuse them, after all. This is the
thought which most people have of God, even religious people; they look
on God as a stern tyrant, who, when man sinned and fell, could not
satisfy His own justice—His own vengeance in plain words, without killing
some one, and who would have certainly killed all mankind, if Jesus
Christ had not interfered, and said, “If Thou must slay some one, slay
me, though I am innocent!”
Oh, my friends, does not this all sound horrible and irreverent? And yet
if you will but look into your own hearts, will you not find some such
thoughts there? I am sure you will. I believe every man finds such
thoughts in his heart now and then. I find them in my own heart: I know
that they must be in the hearts of others, because I see them producing
their natural fruits in people’s actions—a selfish, slavish view of
religion, with little or no real love to God, or real trust in Him; but a
great deal of uneasy dread of Him: for this is just the dark, false view
of God, and of the good news of salvation and the kingdom of heaven,
which the devil is always trying to make men take. The Evil One tries to
make us forget that God is love; he tries to make us forget that God
gives us all things richly to enjoy; he tries to make us forget that God
gives at all, and to make us think that we take, not that He gives; to
make us look at God as a task-master, not as a father; in one word, to
make us mistake the devil for God, and God for the devil.
And, therefore, it is that we ought to bless God for such Scriptures as
this 104th Psalm, which He seems to have preserved in the Bible just to
contradict these dark, slavish notions,—just to testify that God is a
_giver_, and knows our necessities before we ask and gives us all things,
even as He gave us His Blessed Son—freely, long before we wanted
them,—from the foundation of all things, before ever the earth and the
world was made—from all eternity, perpetual love, perpetual bounty.
What does this text teach us? To look at God as Him who gives to all
freely and upbraideth not. It says to us,—Do not suppose that your crops
grow of themselves. God waters the hills from above. He causes the
grass to grow for the cattle, and the green herb for the service of man.
Do not suppose that He cares nothing about seeing you comfortable and
happy. It is He, He only who sends all which strengthens man’s body, and
makes glad his heart, and makes him of a cheerful countenance. His will
is that you should be cheerful. Ah, my friends, if we would but believe
all this!—we are too apt to say to ourselves, ‘Our earthly comforts here
have nothing to do with godliness or God, God must save our souls, but
our bodies we must save ourselves. God gives us spiritual blessings, but
earthly blessings, the good things of this life, for them we must
scramble and drudge ourselves, and get as much of them as we can without
offending God;’—as if God grudged us our comforts! as if godliness had
not the promise of this life as well as the life to come! If we would
but believe that God knows our necessities before we ask—that He gives us
daily more than we can ever get by working for it!—if we would but seek
first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, all other things would be
added to us; and we should find that he who loses his life should save
it. And this way of looking at God’s earth would not make us idle; it
would not tempt us to sit with folded hands for God’s blessings to drop
into our mouths. No! I believe it would make men far more industrious
than ever mere self-interest can make them; they would say, ‘God is our
Father, He gave us His own Son, He gives us all things freely, we owe Him
not slavish service, but a boundless debt of cheerful gratitude.
Therefore we must do His will, and we are sure His will must be our
happiness and comfort—therefore we must do His will, and His will is that
we should _work_, and therefore we _must_ work. He has bidden us labour
on this earth—He has bidden us dress it and keep it, conquer it and fill
it for Him. We are His stewards here on earth, and therefore it is a
glory and an honour to be allowed to work here in God’s own land—in our
loving Father’s own garden. We do not know why He wishes us to labour
and till the ground, for He could have fed us with manna from heaven if
He liked, as He fed the Jews of old, without our working at all. But His
will is that we should work; and work we will, not for our own sakes
merely, but for His sake, because we know He likes it, and for the sake
of our brothers, our countrymen, for whom Christ died.’
Oh, my friends, why is it that so many till the ground industriously, and
yet grow poorer and poorer for all their drudging and working? It is
their own fault. They till the ground for their own sakes, and not for
God’s sake and for their countrymen’s sake; and so, as the Prophet says,
they sow much and bring in little, and he who earns wages earns them to
put in a bag full of holes. Suppose you try the opposite plan. Suppose
you say to yourself, ‘I will work henceforward because God wishes me to
work. I will work henceforward for my country’s sake, because I feel
that God has given me a noble and a holy calling when He set me to grow
food for His children, the people of England. As for my wages and my
profit, God will take care of them if they are just; and if they are
unjust, He will take care of them too. He, at all events, makes the
garden and the field grow, and not I. My land is filled, not with the
fruit of my work, but with the fruit of His work. He will see that I
lose nothing by my labour. If I till the soil for God and for God’s
children, I may trust God to pay me my wages.’ Oh, my friends, He who
feeds the young birds when they call upon Him; and far, far more, He who
gave you His only-begotten Son, will He not with Him freely give you all
things? For, after all done, He must give to you, or you will not get.
You may fret and stint, and scrape and puzzle; one man may sow, and
another man may water; but, after all, who can give the increase but God?
Can you make a load of hay, unless He has first grown it for you, and
then dried it for you? If you would but think a little more about Him,
if you would believe that your crops were His gifts, and in your hearts
offer them up to Him as thank-offerings, see if He would not help you to
sell your crops as well as to house them. He would put you in the way of
an honest profit for your labour, just as surely as He only put you in
the way of labouring at all. “Trust in the Lord, and be doing good;
dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed;” for “without me,” says
our Lord, “you can do nothing.” No: these are His own words—nothing. To
Him all power is given in heaven and earth; He knows every root and every
leaf, and feeds it. Will He not much more feed you, oh ye of little
faith? Do you think that He has made His world so ill that a man cannot
get on in it unless he is a rogue? No. Cast all your care on Him, and
see if you do not find out ere long that He cares for you, and has cared
for you from all eternity.
SERMON III.
LIFE AND DEATH.
PSALM civ. 24, 28–30.
“O Lord, how manifold are Thy works! in wisdom hast Thou made them
all: the earth is full of Thy riches. That Thou givest them they
gather: Thou openest Thine hand, they are filled with good. Thou
hidest Thy face, they are troubled: Thou takest away their breath,
they die, and return to their dust. Thou sendest forth Thy spirit,
they are created: and Thou renewest the face of the earth.”
I HAD intended to go through this psalm with you in regular order; but
things have happened this parish, awful and sad, during the last week,
which I was bound not to let slip without trying to bring them home to
your hearts, if by any means I could persuade the thoughtless ones among
you to be wise and consider your latter end:—I mean the sad deaths of
various of our acquaintances. The death-bell has been tolled in this
parish three times, I believe, in one day—a thing which has seldom
happened before, and which God grant may never happen again. Within two
miles of this church there are now five lying dead. Five human beings,
young as well as old, to whom the awful words of the text have been
fulfilled: “Thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their
dust.” And the very day on which three of these deaths happened was
Ascension-day—the day on which Jesus, the Lord of life, the Conqueror of
death, ascended upon high, having led captivity captive, and became the
first-fruits of the grave, to send down from the heaven of eternal life
the Spirit who is the Giver of life. That was a strange mixture, death
seemingly triumphant over Christ’s people on the very day on which life
triumphed in Jesus Christ Himself. Let us see, though, whether death has
not something to do with Ascension-day. Let us see whether a sermon
about death is not a fit sermon for the Sunday after Ascension-day. Let
us see whether the text has not a message about life and death too—a
message which may make us feel that in the midst of life we are in death,
and that yet in the midst of death we are in life; that however things
may _seem_, yet death has not conquered life, but life has conquered and
_will_ conquer death, and conquer it most completely at the very moment
that we die, and our bodies return to their dust.
Do I speak riddles? I think the text will explain my riddles, for it
tells us how life comes, how death comes. Life comes from God: He sends
forth His spirit, and things are made, and He renews the face of the
earth. We read in the very two verses of the book of Genesis how the
Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters the creation, and woke
all things into life. Therefore the Creed well calls the Holy Ghost, the
Spirit of God, that is—the Lord and Giver of life. And the text tells us
that He gives life, not only to us who have immortal souls, but to every
thing on the face of the earth; for the psalm has been talking all
through, not only of men, but of beasts, fishes, trees, and rivers, and
rocks, sun and moon. Now, all these things have a life in them. Not a
life like ours; but still you speak rightly and wisely when you say,
‘That tree is alive, and, That tree is dead. That running water is live
water—it is sweet and fresh, but if it is kept standing it begins to
putrefy, its life is gone from it, and a sort of death comes over it, and
makes it foul, and unwholesome, and unfit to drink.’ This is a deep
matter, this, how there is a sort of life in every thing, even to the
stones under our feet. I do not mean, of course, that stones can think
as our life makes us do, or feel as the beasts’ life makes them do, or
even grow as the trees’ life makes them do; but I mean that their life
keeps them as they are, without changing or decaying. You hear miners
and quarrymen talk very truly of the live rock. That stone, they say,
was cut out of the live rock, meaning the rock as it is under ground,
sound and hard—as it would be, for aught we know, to the end of time,
unless it was taken out of the ground, out of the place where God’s
Spirit meant it to be, and brought up to the open air and the rain, in
which it is not its nature to be. And then you will see that the life of
the stone begins to pass from it bit by bit, that it crumbles and peels
away, and, in short, decays and is turned again to its dust. Its
organisation, as it is called, or life, ends, and then—what? does the
stone lie for ever useless? No! And there is the great blessed mystery
of how God’s Spirit is always bringing life out of death. When the stone
is decayed and crumbled down to dust and clay, it makes _soil_—this very
soil here, which you plough, is the decayed ruins of ancient hills; the
clay which you dig up in the fields was once part of some slate or
granite mountains, which were worn away by weather and water, that they
might become fruitful earth. Wonderful! but any one who has studied
these things can tell you they are true. Any one who has ever lived in
mountainous countries ought to have seen the thing happen, ought to know
that the land in the mountain valleys is made at first, and kept rich
year by year, by the washings from the hills above; and this is the
reason why land left dry by rivers and by the sea is generally so rich.
Then what becomes of the soil? It begins a new life. The roots of the
plants take it up; the salts which they find in it—the staple, as we call
them—go to make leaves and seed; the very sand has its use, it feeds the
stalks of corn and grass, and makes them stiff. The corn-stalks would
never stand upright if they could not get sand from the soil. So what a
thousand years ago made part of a mountain, now makes part of a
wheat-plant; and in a year more the wheat grain will have been eaten, and
the wheat straw perhaps eaten too, and they will have _died_—decayed in
the bodies of the animals who have eaten them, and then they will begin a
third new life—they will be turned into parts of the animal’s body—of a
man’s body. So that what is now your bone and flesh, may have been once
a rock on some hillside a hundred miles away.
Strange, but true! all learned men know that it is true. You, if you
think over my words, may see that they are at least reasonable. But
still most wonderful! This world works right well, surely. It obeys
God’s Spirit. Oh, my friends, if we fulfilled our life and our duty as
well as the clay which we tread on does,—if we obeyed God’s Spirit as
surely as the flint does, we should have many a heartache spared us, and
many a headache too! To be what God wants us!—to be _men_, to be
_women_, and therefore to live as children of God, members of Christ,
fulfilling our duty in that state to which God has called us, that would
be our bliss and glory. Nothing can live in a state in which God did not
intend it to live. Suppose a tree could move itself about like an
animal, and chose to do so, the tree would wither and die; it would be
trying to act contrary to the law which God has given it. Suppose the ox
chose to eat meat like the lion, it would fall sick and die; for it would
be acting contrary to the law which God’s Spirit had made for it—going
out of the calling to which God’s Word has called it, to eat grass and
not flesh, and live thereby. And so with us: if we will do wickedly,
when the will of God, as the Scripture tells us, is our sanctification,
our holiness; if we will speak lies, when God’s law for us is that we
should speak truth; if we will bear hatred and ill-will, when God’s law
for us is, Love as brothers,—you all sprang from one father, Adam,—you
were all redeemed by one brother, Jesus Christ; if we will try to live as
if there was no God, when God’s law for us is, that a man can live like a
man only by faith and trust in God;—then we shall _die_, if we break
God’s laws according to which he intended man to live. Thus it was with
Adam; God intended him to obey God, to learn every thing from God. He
chose to disobey God, to try and know something of himself, by getting
the knowledge of good and evil; and so death passed on him. He became an
unnatural man, a _bad_ man, more or less, and so he became a dead man;
and death came into the world, that time at least, by sin, by breaking
the law by which man was meant to be a man. As the beasts will die if
you give them unnatural food, or in any way prevent their following the
laws which God has made for them, so man dies, of necessity. All the
world cannot help his dying, because he breaks the laws which God has
made for him.
And how does he die? The text tells us, God takes away his breath, and
turns His face from him. In His presence, it is written, is life. The
moment He withdraws his Spirit, the Spirit of life, from any thing, body
or soul, then it dies. It was by _sin_ came death—by man’s becoming
unfit for the Spirit of God.
Therefore the body is dead because of sin, says St. Paul, doomed to die,
carrying about in it the seeds of death from the very moment it is born.
Death has truly passed upon all men!
Most sad; and yet there is hope, and more than hope, there is certain
assurance, for us, that though we die, yet shall we live! I have shewn
you, in the beginning of my sermon, how nothing that dies perishes to
nothing, but begins a new and a higher life. How the stone becomes a
plant,—something better and more useful than it was before; the plant
passes into an animal—a step higher still. And, therefore, we may be
sure that the same rule will hold good about us men and women, that when
we die, we shall begin a new and a nobler life, that is, if we have been
true _men_; if we have lived fulfilling the law of our kind. St. Paul
tells us so positively. He says that nothing comes to life except it
first die, then God gives it a new body. He says that even so is the
resurrection of the dead,—that we gain a step by dying; that we are sown
in corruption, and are raised in incorruption; we are sown in dishonour,
and are raised in glory; we are sown in weakness, and are raised in
power; we are sown a natural body, and are raised a spiritual body; that
as we now are of the earth earthy, after death and the resurrection our
new and nobler body will be of the heavens heavenly; so that “when this
corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have
put on immortality, then death shall be swallowed up in victory.”
Therefore, I say, Sorrow not for those who sleep as if you had no hope
for the dead; for “Christ is risen from the dead, and become the
first-fruits of them that slept. For as in Adam all die, even so in
Christ shall all be made alive.”
And I say that this has to do with the text—it has to do with
Ascension-day. For if we claim our share in Christ,—if we claim our
share of our heavenly Father’s promise, “to give the Holy Spirit to those
who ask Him;” then we may certainly hope for our share in Christ’s
resurrection, our share in Christ’s ascension. For, says St. Paul (Rom.
viii. 10, 11), “if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin, but
the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him
who raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ
from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies, by His Spirit that
dwelleth in you!” There is a blessed promise! that in that, as in every
thing, we shall be made like Christ our Master, the new Adam, who is a
life-giving Spirit, that as He was brought to life again by the Spirit of
God, so we shall be. And so will be fulfilled in us the glorious rule
which the text lays down, “Thou, O God, sendest forth Thy Spirit, and
they are created, and Thou dost renew the face of the earth.”
Fulfilled?—yes, but far more gloriously than ever the old Psalmist
expected. Read the Revelations of St. John, chapters xxi. and xxii. for
the glory of the renewed earth read the first Epistle of Paul to the
Thessalonians, chap. iv. 16–18, for the glorious resurrection and
ascension of those who have died trusting in the blessed Lord, who died
for them; and then see what a glorious future lies before us—see how
death is but the gate of life—see how what holds true of every thing on
this earth, down to the flint beneath our feet, holds true ten thousand
times of men that to die and to decay is only to pass into a nobler state
of life. But remember, that just as we are better than the stone, we may
be also worse than the stone. It cannot disobey God’s laws, therefore it
can enjoy no reward, any more than suffer any punishment. We can
disobey—we can fall from our calling—we can cast God’s law behind us—we
can refuse to do His will, to work out our own salvation; and just
because our reward in the life to come will be so glorious, if we fulfil
our life and law, the life of faith and the law of love, therefore will
our punishment be so horrible, if we neglect the life of faith and
trample under foot the law of love. Oh, my friends, choose! Death is
before you all. Shall it be the gate of everlasting life and glory, or
the gate of everlasting death and misery? Will you claim your glorious
inheritance, and be for ever equal to the angels, doing God’s will on
earth as they in heaven; or will you fall lower than the stones, who, at
all events, must do their duty as stones, and not _do_ God’s will at all,
but only _suffer_ it in eternal woe? You must do one or the other. You
cannot be like the stones, without feeling—without joy or sorrow, just
because you are immortal spirits, every one of you. You must be either
happy or miserable, blessed or disgraced, for ever. I know of no middle
path;—do you? Choose before the night comes, in which no man can work.
Our life is but a vapour which appears for a little time, then vanishes
away. “O Lord, how manifold are Thy works! in wisdom hast Thou made them
all: the earth is full of Thy riches. That Thou givest them they gather:
Thou openest Thine hand, they are filled with good. Thou hidest Thy
face, they are troubled: Thou takest away their breath, they die, and
return to their dust. Thou sendest forth Thy Spirit, they are created:
and Thou renewest the face of the earth.”
SERMON IV.
THE WORK OF GOD’S SPIRIT.
JAMES, i. 16, 17.
“Do not err, my beloved brethren; every good gift and every perfect
gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights.”
THIS text, I believe more and more every day, is one of the most
important ones in the whole Bible; and just at this time it is more
important for us than ever, because people have forgotten it more than
ever.
And, according as you firmly believe this text, according as you firmly
believe that every good gift you have in body and soul comes down from
above, from God the Father of lights—according, I say, as you believe
this, and live upon that belief, just so far will you be able to do your
duty to God and man, worthily of your blessed Saviour’s calling and
redemption, and of the high honour which He has given you of being free
and christened men, redeemed by His most precious blood, and led by His
most noble Spirit.
Now, just because this text is so important, the devil is particularly
busy in trying to make people forget it. For what is his plan? Is it
not to make us forget God, to put God _out_ of all our thoughts, to make
us acknowledge God in none of our ways, to make us look at ourselves and
not at God, that so we may become first earthly and sensual, and then
devilish, like Satan himself? Therefore he tries to make us disbelieve
this text. He puts into our hearts such thoughts as these:—‘Ay, all good
gifts may come from God; but that only means all spiritual gifts. All
those fine, deep doctrines and wonderful feelings that some very
religious people talk of, about conversion, and regeneration, and
sanctification, and assurance, and the witness of the indwelling
Spirit,—all those gifts come from God, no doubt, but they are quite above
us. We are straightforward, simple people, who cannot feel fine fancies;
if we can be honest, and industrious, and good-natured, and sober, and
strong, and healthy, that is enough for us,—and all that has nothing to
do with religion. Those are not gifts which come from God. A man is
strong and healthy by birth, and honest and good-natured by nature.
Those are very good things; but they are not gifts—they are not
_graces_—they are not _spiritual_ blessings—they have nothing to do with
the state of a man’s soul. Ungodly people are honest, and good-tempered,
and industrious, and healthy, as well as your saints and your methodists;
so what is the use of praying for spiritual gifts to God, when we can
have all we want by nature?’
Did such thoughts never come into your head, my friends? Are they not
often in your heads, more or less? Perhaps not in these very words, but
something like them.
I do not say it to blame you, for I believe that every man, each
according to his station, is tempted to such thoughts; I believe that
such thoughts are not _yours_ or any man’s; I believe they are the
devil’s, who tempts all men, who tempted even the Son of God Himself with
thoughts like these at their root. Such thoughts are not _yours_ or
mine, though they may come into our heads. They are part of the evil
which besets us—which is _not_ us—which has no right or share in us—which
we pray God to drive away from us when we say, “Deliver us from evil.”
Have you not all had such thoughts? But have you not all had very
different thoughts? have you not, every one of you, at times, felt in the
bottom of your hearts, after all, ‘This strength and industry, this
courage, and honesty, and good-nature of mine, must come from God; I did
not get them myself? If I was born honest, and strong, and gentle, and
brave, some one must have made me so when I was born, or before? The
devil certainly did not make me so, therefore _God_ must? These, too,
are His gifts?’
Did you ever think such thoughts as these? If you did not, not much
matter, for you have all acted, more or less, in your better moments as
if you had them. There are more things in a man’s heart, thank God, than
ever come into his head. Many a man does a noble thing by instinct, as
we say, without ever _thinking_ whether it is a noble thing or
not—without _thinking_ about it at all. Many a man, thank God, is led at
times, by God’s Spirit, without ever knowing whose Spirit it is that
leads him.
But he _ought_ to know it, for it is _willing_, _reasonable_ service
which God wants of us. He does not care to use us like tools and
puppets. And why? He is not merely our Maker, He is our Father, and He
wishes us to know and feel that we are His children—to know and feel that
we all have come from Him; to acknowledge Him in all our ways, to thank
Him for all, to look up lovingly and confidently to Him for more, as His
reasonable children, day by day, and hour by hour. Every good gift we
have comes from Him; but He will have us know where they all come from.
Let us go through now a few of these good gifts, which we call natural,
and see what the Bible says of them, and from whom they come.
First, now, that common gift of strength and courage. Who gives you
that?—who gave it David? For He that gives it to one is most likely to
be He that gives it to another. David says to God, “Thou teachest my
hands to war, and my fingers to fight; by the help of God I can leap over
a wall: He makes me strong, that my arms can break even a bow of
steel:”—that is plain-spoken enough, I think. Who gave Samson his
strength, again? What says the Bible? How Samson met a young lion which
roared against him, and he had nothing in his hand, and the Spirit of the
Lord came mightily upon him, and he tore the lion as he would have torn a
kid. And, again, how when traitors had bound him with two new cords, the
Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and the cords which were on
his arms became as flax that was burnt with fire, and fell from off his
hands. And, for God’s sake, do not give in to that miserable fancy that
because these stories are what you call miraculous, therefore they have
nothing to do with you—that Samson’s strength came to him miraculously by
God’s Spirit, and yet yours comes to you a different way. The Bible is
written to tell you how all that happens really happens—what all things
really are; God is working among us always, but we do not see Him; and
the Bible just lifts up, once and for all, the veil which hides Him from
us, and lets us see, in one instance, who it is that does all the
wonderful things which go on round us to this day, that when we see any
thing like it happen we may know whom to thank for it.
The Great Physician healed the blind and the lame in Judea; and why?—to
shew us who heals the blind and the lame now—to shew us that the good
gift of medicine and surgery, and the physician’s art, comes down from
Him who cured the paralytic and cleansed the lepers in Judea—to whom all
power is given in heaven and earth.
So, again, with skill in farming and agriculture. From whom does that
come? The very heathens can tell us that, for it is curious, that among
the heathen, in all ages and countries, those men who have found out
great improvements in tilling the ground have been honoured and often
worshipped as divine men—as gods, thereby shewing that the heathen, among
all their idolatries, had a true and just notion about man’s practical
skill and knowledge—that it could only come from Heaven, that it was by
the inspiration and guidance of God above that skill in agriculture
arose. What says Isaiah of that to the very same purpose? “Doth the
ploughman plow all day to sow? doth he open and break the clods of his
ground? When he hath made plain the face thereof, doth he not cast
abroad the vetches, and cast in the principal wheat and the appointed
barley and the rye in their place? For his God doth instruct him to
discretion, and doth teach him. This also,” says Isaiah, “cometh from
the Lord of Hosts, who is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in
working.” Would to God you would all believe it!
Again; wisdom and prudence, and a clear, powerful mind,—are not they
parts of God’s likeness? How is God’s Spirit described in Scripture? It
is called the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of prudence
and might. Therefore, surely, all wisdom and understanding, all prudence
and strength of mind, are, like that Spirit, part of God’s image; and
where did we get God’s image? Can we make ourselves like God? If we are
like him, He must have formed that likeness; and He alone. The Spirit of
God, says the Scripture, giveth us understanding.
Or, again; good-nature and affection, love, generosity, pity,—whose
likeness are they? What is God’s name but love? God is love. Has not
He revealed Himself as the God of mercy, full of long-suffering,
compassion, and free forgiveness; and must not, then, all love and
affection, all compassion and generosity, be His gift? Yes. As the rays
come from the sun, and yet are not the sun, even so our love and pity,
though they are not God, but merely a poor, weak image and reflection of
Him, yet from Him alone they come. If there is mercy in our hearts, it
comes from the fountain of mercy. If there is the light of love in us,
it is a ray from the full sun of His love.
Or honesty, again, and justice,—whose image are they but God’s? Is He
not THE Just One—the righteous God? Is not what is just for man just for
God? Are not the laws of justice and honesty, by which man deals fairly
with man, _His_ laws—the laws by which God deals with us? Does not every
book—I had almost said every page—in the Bible shew us that all our
justice is but the pattern and copy of God’s justice,—the working out of
those six latter commandments of His, which are summed up in that one
command, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself?”
Now here, again, I ask: If justice and honesty be God’s likeness, who
made us like God in this—who put into us this sense of justice which all
have, though so few obey it? Can man make himself like God? Can a worm
ape his Maker? No. From God’s Spirit, the Spirit of Right, came this
inborn feeling of justice, this knowledge of right and wrong, to us—part
of the image of God in which He created man—part of the breath or spirit
of life which He breathed into Adam. Do not mistake me. I do not say
that the sense, and honesty, and love in us, _are_ God’s Spirit—they are
the spirit of _man_, but that they are _like_ God’s Spirit, and therefore
they must be given us _by_ God’s Spirit to be used as God’s Spirit
Himself uses them. How a man shall have his share of God’s Spirit, and
live in and by God’s Spirit, is another question, and a higher and more
blessed one; but we must master this question first—we must believe that
our spirits come _from_ God, then, perhaps, we shall begin to see that
our spirits never can work well unless they are joined to the Spirit of
God, from whom they came. From whom else, I ask again, can they come?
Can they come from our bodies? Our bodies? What are they?—Flesh and
bones, made up of air and water and earth,—out of the dead bodies of the
animals, the dead roots and fruits of plants which we eat. They are
earth—matter. Can _matter_ be courageous? Did you ever hear of a
good-natured plant, or an honest stone? Then this good-nature, and
honesty, and courage of ours, must belong to our souls—our spirits. Who
put them there? Did we? Does a child make its own character? Does its
body make its character first? Can its father and mother make its
character? No. Our characters must come from some spirit above
us—either from God or from the devil. And is the devil likely to make us
honest, or brave, or kindly? I leave you to answer that. God—God alone,
my friends, is the author of good—the help that is done on earth, He
doeth it all Himself: every good gift and every perfect gift cometh from
Him.
Now some of you may think this a strange sort of sermon, because I have
said little or nothing about Jesus Christ and His redemption in it, but I
say—No.
You must believe this much about yourselves before you can believe more.
You must fairly and really believe that _God_ made you one thing before
you can believe that you have made yourselves another thing. You must
really believe that you are not mere machines and animals, but immortal
souls, before you can really believe that you have sinned; for animals
cannot sin—only reasonable souls can sin. We must really believe that
God made us at bottom in His likeness, before we can begin to find out
that there is another likeness in us besides God’s—a selfish, brutish,
too often a devilish likeness, which must be repented of, and fought
against, and cast out, that God’s likeness in us may get the upper hand,
and we may be what God expects us to be. We must know our dignity before
we can feel our shame. We must see how high we have a right to stand,
that we may see how low, alas! we have fallen.
Now you—I know many such here, thank God—to whom God has given clear,
powerful heads for business, and honest, kindly hearts, I do beseech
you—consider my words, Who has given you these but God? They are talents
which He has committed to your charge; and will He not require an account
of them? _He_ only, and His free mercy, has made you to differ from
others; if you are better than the fools and profligates round you, He,
and not yourselves, has made you better. What have you that you have not
received? By the grace of God alone you are what you are. If good comes
easier to you than to others, _He_ alone has made it easier to you; and
if you have done wrong,—if you have fallen short of your duty, as _all_
fall short, is not your sin greater than others? for unto whom much is
given of them shall much be required. Consider that, for God’s sake, and
see if you, too, have not something to be ashamed of, between yourselves
and God. See if you, too, have not need of Jesus Christ and His precious
blood, and God’s free forgiveness, who have had so much light and power
given you, and still have fallen short of what you might have been, and
what, by God’s grace, you still may be, and, as I hope and earnestly
pray, still will be.
And you, young men and women—consider;—if God has given you manly courage
and high spirits, and strength and beauty—think—_God_, your Father, has
given them to you, and of them He will surely require an account;
therefore, “Rejoice, young people,” says Solomon, “in your youth, and let
your hearts cheer you in the days of your youth, and walk in the ways of
your heart and in the sight of your eyes. But remember,” continues the
wisest of men,—“remember, that for all these things God shall bring you
into judgment.” Now do not misunderstand that. It does not mean that
there is a sin in being happy. It does not mean, that if God has given
to a young man a bold spirit and powerful limbs, or to a young woman a
handsome face and a merry, loving heart, that He will punish them for
these—God forbid! what He gives He means to be used: but this it means,
that according as you use those blessings so will you be judged at the
last day; that for them, too, you will be brought to judgment, and tried
at the bar of God. As you have used them for industry, and innocent
happiness, and holy married love, or for riot and quarrelling, and
idleness, and vanity, and filthy lusts, so shall you be judged. And if
any of you have sinned in any of these ways,—God forbid that you should
have sinned in _all_ these ways; but surely, surely, some of you have
been idle—some of you have been riotous—some of you have been vain—some
of you have been quarrelsome—some of you, alas! have been that which I
shall not name here.—Think, if you have sinned in any one of these ways,
how can you answer it to God? Have you no need of forgiveness? Have you
no need of the blessed Saviour’s blood to wash you clean? Young people!
God has given you much. As a young man, I speak to you. Youth is an
inestimable blessing or an inestimable curse, according as you use it;
and if you have abused your spring-time of youth, as all, I am afraid,
have—as I have—as almost all do, alas! in this fallen world, where can
you get forgiveness but from Him that died on the cross to take away the
sins of the world?
SERMON V.
FAITH.
HABAKKUK, ii. 4.
“The just shall live by faith.”
THIS is those texts of which there are so many in the Bible, which,
though they were spoken originally to one particular man, yet are meant
for every man. These words were spoken to Habakkuk, a Jewish prophet, to
check him for his impatience under God’s hand; but they are just as true
for every man that ever was and ever will be as they were for him. They
are world-wide and world-old; they are the law by which all goodness, and
strength, and safety, stand either in men or angels, for it always was
true, and always must be true, that if reasonable beings are to live at
all, it is by faith.
And why? Because every thing that is, heaven and earth, men and angels,
are all the work of God—of one God, infinite, almighty, all-wise,
all-loving, unutterably glorious. My friends, we do not think enough of
this,—not that all the thinking in the world can ever make us comprehend
the majesty of our Heavenly Father; but we do not remember enough what we
_do_ know of God. We think of God, watching the world and all things in
it, and keeping them in order as a shepherd does his sheep, and so far so
good; but we forget that God does more than this,—we forget that this
earth, sun, and moon, and all the thousand thousand stars which cover the
midnight sky,—many of them suns larger than the sun we see, and worlds
larger than the world on which we stand, that all these, stretching away
millions of millions of miles into boundless space,—all are lying, like
one little grain of dust, in the hollow of God’s hand, and that if He
were to shut His hand upon them, He could crush them into nothing, and
God would be alone in the universe again, as He was before heaven and
earth were made. Think of that!—that if God was but to will it, we, and
this earth on which we stand, and the heaven above us, and the sun that
shines on us, should vanish away, and be no-where and no-thing. Think of
the infinite power of God, and then think how is it possible to _live_,
except by faith in Him, by trusting to Him utterly.
If you accustom yourselves to think in the same way of the infinite
wisdom of God, and the infinite love of God, they will both teach you the
same lesson; they will shew you that if you were the greatest, the
wisest, the holiest man that ever lived, you would still be such a speck
by the side of the Almighty and Everlasting God that it would be madness
to depend upon yourselves for any thing while you lived in God’s world.
For, after all, what _can_ we do without God? _In_ Him we live, and
move, and have our being. He made us, He gave us our bodies, gave us our
life; what we do _He_ lets us do, what we say He lets us say; we all live
on sufferance. What is it but God’s infinite mercy that ever brought us
here or keeps us here an instant? We may pretend to act without God’s
leave or help, but it is impossible for us to do so; the strength we put
forth, the wit we use, are all His gifts. We cannot draw a breath of air
without His leave. And yet men fancy they can do without God in the
world! My friends, these are but few words, and poor words, about the
glorious majesty of God and our littleness when compared with Him; but I
have said quite enough, at least, to shew you all how absurd it is to
depend upon ourselves for any thing. If we are mere creatures of God, if
God alone has every blessing both of this world and the next, and the
will to give them away, whom _are_ we to go to but to Him for all we
want? It is so in the life of our bodies, and it is so in the life of
our spirits. If we wish for God’s blessings, from God we must ask them.
That is our duty, even though God in His mercy and long-suffering does
pour down many a blessing upon men who never trust in Him for them. To
us all, indeed, God gives blessings before we are old enough to trust in
Him for them, and to many He continues those blessings in after-life in
spite of their blindness and want of faith. “He maketh His sun to shine
on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the
unjust.” He gives—gives—it is His glory to give. Yet strange! that men
will go on year after year, using the limbs, and eating the food, which
God gives them, without ever believing so much as that God _has_ given
them, without so much as looking up to heaven once and saying, “God, I
thank Thee!” But we must remember that those blessings will not last for
ever. Unless a man has lived by faith in God with regard to his earthly
comforts, death will come and put an end to them at once; and then it is
only those who have trusted in God for all good things, and thanked Him
accordingly in this life, who shall have their part in the new heavens
and the new earth, which will so immeasurably surpass all that this earth
can give.
And it is the same with the life of our spirits; in it, too, we must live
by faith. The life of our spirits is a gift from God the Father of
spirits, and He has chosen to declare that unless we trust to Him for
life, and ask Him for life, He will not bestow it upon us. The life of
our bodies He in His mercy keeps up, although we forget Him; the life of
our souls He will not keep up: therefore, for the sake of our spirits,
even more than of our bodies, we must live by faith. If we wish to be
loving, pure, wise, manly, noble, we must ask those excellent gifts of
God, who is Himself infinite love, and purity, wisdom and nobleness. If
we wish for everlasting life, from whom can we obtain it but from God,
who is the boundless, eternal, life itself? If we wish for forgiveness
for our faults and failings, where are we to get it but from God, who is
boundless love and pity, and who has revealed to us His boundless love
and pity in the form of a man, Jesus Christ the Saviour of the world?
And to go a step further; it is by faith in Christ we must live—in
Christ, a man like ourselves, yet God blessed for ever. For it is a
certain truth, that men cannot believe in God or trust in Him unless they
can think of Him as a man. This was the reason why the poor heathen made
themselves idols in the form of men, that they might have something like
themselves to worship; and those among them who would not worship idols
almost always ended in fancying that God was either a mere notion, or
else a mere part of this world, or else that He sat up in heaven neither
knowing nor caring what happened upon earth. But we, to whom God has
given the glorious news of His Gospel, have the very Person to worship
whom all the heathen were searching after and could not find,—one who is
“very God,” infinite in love, wisdom, and strength, and yet “very man,”
made in all points like ourselves, but without sin; so that we have not a
High Priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities,
but one who is able to help those who are tempted, because He was tempted
Himself like us, and overcame by the strength of His own perfect will, of
His own perfect faith. By trusting in Him, and acknowledging Him in
every thought and action of our lives, we shall be safe, for it is
written, “The just shall live by faith.”
These things are true, and always were true. All that men ever did well,
or nobly, or lovingly, in this world, _was done by faith_—by faith in God
of some sort or other; even in the man who thinks least about religion,
it is so. Every time a man means to do, and really does, a just or
generous action, he does it because he believes, more or less clearly,
that there is a just and loving God above him, and that justice and love
are the right thing for a man—the law by which God intended him to walk:
so that this small, dim faith still shews itself in practice; and the
more faith a man has in God and in God’s laws, the more it will shew
itself in every action of his daily life; and the more this faith works
in his life and conduct, the better man he is;—the more he is like God’s
image, in which man was originally made;—and the more he is like Christ,
the new pattern of God’s image, whom all men must copy.
So that the sum of the matter is this, without Christ we can do nothing,
by trusting in Christ we can do every thing. See, then, how true the
verse before my text must be, that he whose soul is lifted up in him is
not upright; for if a man fancies that his body and soul are his own, to
do what he pleases with them, when all the time they are God’s gift;—if a
man fancies that he can take perfect care of himself, while all the time
it is God that is keeping him out of a thousand sins and dangers;—if a
man fancies that he can do right of himself, when all the time the little
good that he does is the work of God’s Spirit, which has not yet left
him;—if a man fancies, in short, that he can do without God, when all the
time it is in God that he lives, and moves, and has his being, how can
such a man be called upright? Upright! he is utterly wrong;—he is
believing a lie, and walking accordingly; and, therefore, instead of
keeping upright, he is going where all lies lead; into all kinds of low
and crooked ways, mistakes, absurdities, and at last to ruin of body and
soul. Nothing but truth can keep a man upright and straight, can keep a
man where God has put him, and where he ought to be; and the man whose
heart is puffed up by pride and self-conceit, who is looking at himself
and not at God, that man has begun upon a falsehood, and will soon get
out of tune with heaven and earth. For consider, my friends: suppose
some rich and mighty prince went out and collected a number of children,
and of sick and infirm people, and said to them, “You cannot work now,
but I will give you food, medicine, every thing that you require, and
then you must help me to work; and I, though you have no right to expect
it of me, will pay you for the little work you can do on the strength of
my food and medicine.”—Is it not plain that all those persons could only
live by faith in their prince, by trusting in him for food and medicine,
and by acknowledging that that food and medicine came from him, and
thanking him accordingly? If they wished to be true men, if they wished
him to continue his bounty, they would confess that all the health and
strength they had belonged to him of right, because his generosity had
given it to them. Just in this position we stand with Christ the Lord.
When the whole world lay in wickedness, He came and chose us, of His free
grace and mercy, to be one of His peculiar nations, to work for Him and
with Him; and from the time He came, all that we and our forefathers have
done well has been done by the strength and wisdom which Christ has given
us. Now suppose, again, that one of the persons of whom I spoke was
seized with a fit of pride—suppose he said to himself, “My health and
strength does not come from the food and medicine which the prince gave
me, it comes from the goodness of my own constitution; the wages which I
am paid are my just due, I am a free man, and may choose what master I
like.” Suppose any one of _your_ servants treated you so, would you not
be inclined to answer, “You are a faithless, ungrateful fellow; go your
ways, then, and see how little you can do without my bounty?” But the
blessed King in heaven, though He is provoked every day, is more
long-suffering than man. All He does is to withdraw His bounty for a
moment, to take this world’s blessings from a man, and let him find out
how impossible it is for him to keep himself out of affliction—to take
away His Holy Spirit for a moment from a man, and let him see how
straight he rushes astray, and every way but the right; and then, if the
man is humbled by his fall or his affliction, and comes back to his Lord,
confessing how weak he is and promising to trust in Christ and thank
Christ only for the future, _then_ our Lord will restore His blessings to
him, and there will be joy among the angels of God over one sinner that
repents. This was the way in which God treated Job when, in spite of all
his excellence, _his_ heart was lifted up. And then, when he saw his own
folly, and abhorred himself, and repented in dust and ashes, God restored
to him sevenfold what He had taken from him—honour, wisdom, riches, home,
and children. This is the way, too, in which God treated David. “In my
prosperity,” he tells us, “I said, I shall never be moved; thou, Lord, of
Thy goodness hast made my hill so strong”—forgetting that he must be kept
safe every moment of his life, as well as made safe once for all. “Thou
didst turn Thy face from me, and I was troubled. Then cried I unto Thee,
O Lord, and gat me to my Lord right humbly. And THEN,” he adds, “God
turned my heaviness into joy, and girded me with gladness,” (Psalm xxx.)
And again, he says, “_Before_ I was troubled I went wrong, but _now_ I
have kept Thy word,” (Psalm cxix.) And this is the way in which Christ
the Lord treated St. Peter and St. Paul, and treats, in His great mercy,
every Christian man when He sees him puffed up, to bring him to his
senses, and make him live by faith in God. If he takes the warning,
well; if he does not, he remains in a lie, and must go where all lies
lead. So perfectly does it hold throughout a man’s whole life, that he
whose soul is lifted up within him is not upright; but that the just must
live by faith.
Now there is one objection apt to rise in men’s minds when they hear such
words as these, which is, that they take such a “low view of human
nature;” it is so galling to our pride to be told that we can do nothing
for ourselves: but if we think of the matter more closely, and, above
all, if we try to put it into practice and live by faith, we shall find
that there is no real reason for thus objecting. This is not a doctrine
which ought to make us despise men; any doctrine that _does_, does not
come of _God_. Men are not contemptible creatures—they are glorious
creatures—they were created in the image of God; God has put such honour
upon them that He has given them dominion over the whole earth, and made
them partakers of His eternal reason; and His Spirit gives them
understanding to enable them to conquer this earth, and make the beasts,
ay, and the very winds and seas, and fire and steam, their obedient
servants; and human nature, too, when it is what God made it, and what it
ought to be, is not a contemptible thing: it was noble enough for the Son
of God to take it upon Himself—to become man, without sinning or defiling
Himself; and what was good enough for Him is surely good enough for us.
Wickedness consists in _unmanliness_, in being unlike a man, in becoming
like an evil spirit or a beast. Holiness consists in becoming a _true
man_, in becoming more and more like the likeness of Jesus Christ. And
when the Bible tells us that we can do nothing of ourselves, but can live
only by faith, the Bible puts the highest honour upon us which any
created thing can have. What are the things which cannot live by faith?
The trees and plants, the beasts and birds, which, though they live and
grow by God’s providence, yet do not know it, do not thank Him, cannot
ask Him for more strength and life as we can, are mere dead tools in
God’s hands, instead of living, reasonable beings as we are. It is only
reasonable beings, like men and angels, with immortal spirits in them,
who _can_ live by faith; and it is the greatest glory and honour to us, I
say again, that we _can_ do so—that the glorious, infinite God, Maker of
heaven and earth, should condescend to ask us to be loyal to Him, to love
Him, should encourage us to pray to Him boldly, and then should
condescend to hear our prayers—_we_, who in comparison of Him are smaller
than the gnats in the sunbeam in comparison of men! And then, when we
remember that He has sent His only Son into the world to take our nature
upon Him, and join us all together into one great and everlasting family,
the body of Christ the Lord, and that He has actually given us a share in
His own Almighty Holy Spirit that we may be able to love Him, and to
serve Him, and to be joined to Him, the Almighty Father, do we not see
that all this is infinitely more honourable to us than if we were each to
go on his own way here without God—without knowing anything of the
everlasting world of spirits to which we now belong? My friends, instead
of being ashamed of being able to do nothing for ourselves, we ought to
rejoice at having God for our Father and our Friend, to enable us to “do
all things through Him who strengthens us”—to do whatever is noble, and
loving, and worthy of true men. Instead, then, of dreaming conceitedly
that God will accept us for our own sakes, let us just be content to be
accepted for the sake of Jesus Christ our King. Instead of trying to
walk through this world without God’s help, let us ask God to help and
guide us in every action of our lives, and then go manfully forward,
doing with all our might whatsoever our hands or our hearts see right to
do, trusting to God to put us in the right path, and to fill our heads
with right thoughts and our hearts with right feeling; and so our faith
will shew itself in our works, and we shall be justified at the last day,
as all good men have ever been, by trusting to our Heavenly Father and to
the Lord Jesus Christ, and the guidance of His Holy Spirit.
SERMON VI.
THE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH.
GALATIANS, v. 16.
“I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of
the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit
against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the other.”
THE more we think seriously, my friends, the more we shall see what
wonderful and awful things words are, how they mean much more than we
fancy,—how we do not make words, but words are given to us by one higher
than ourselves. Wise men say that you can tell the character of any
nation by its language, by watching the words they use, the names they
give to things, for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks,
and by our words, our Lord tells us, we shall be justified and condemned.
It is God, and Christ, the Word of God, who gives words to men, who puts
it into the hearts of men to call certain things by certain names; and,
according to a nation’s godliness, and wisdom, and purity of heart, will
be its power of using words discreetly and reverently. That miracle of
the gift of tongues, of which we read in the New Testament, would have
been still most precious and full of meaning if it had had no other use
than this—to teach men from whom words come. When men found themselves
all of a sudden inspired to talk in foreign languages which they had
never learnt, to utter words of which they themselves did not know the
meaning, do you not see how it must have made them feel that all language
is God’s making and God’s giving? Do you not see how it must have made
them feel what awful, mysterious things words were, like those cloven
tongues of fire which fell on the apostles? The tongues of fire
signified the difficult foreign languages which they suddenly began to
speak as the Spirit gave them utterance. And where did the tongues of
fire come from? Not out of themselves, not out of the earth beneath, but
down from the heaven above, to signify that it is not from man, from
man’s flesh or brain, or the earthly part of him, that words are bred,
but that they come down from Christ the Word of God, and are breathed
into the minds of men by the Spirit of God. Why do I speak of all this?
To make you feel what awful, wonderful things words are; how, when you
want to understand the meaning of a word, you must set to work with
reverence and godly fear—not in self-conceit and prejudice, taking the
word to mean just what suits your own notions of things, but trying
humbly to find out what the word really does mean of itself, what God
meant it to mean when He put it into the hearts of wise men to use that
word and bring it into our English language. A man ought to read a
newspaper or a story-book in that spirit; how much more, when he takes up
the Bible! How reverently he ought to examine every word in the New
Testament—this very text, for instance. We ought to be sure that St.
Paul, just because he was an inspired apostle, used the very best
possible words to express what he meant on so important a matter; and
what _are_ the best words? The clearest and the simplest words are the
best words; else how is the Bible to be the poor man’s book? How, unless
the wayfaring man, though simple, shall not err therein? Therefore we
may be sure the words in Scripture are certain to be used in their
simplest, most natural, most everyday meaning, such as the simplest man
can understand. And, therefore, we may be sure, that these two words,
“flesh” and “spirit,” in my text, are used in their very simplest,
straightforward sense; and that St. Paul meant by them what working-men
mean by them in the affairs of daily life. No doubt St. Peter says that
there are many things in St. Paul’s writings difficult to be understood,
which those who are unlearned and unstable wrest to their own
destruction; and, most true it is, so they do daily. But what does
“wresting” a thing mean? It means twisting it, bending it, turning it
out of its original straightforward, natural meaning, into some new
crooked meaning of their own. This is the way we are all of us too apt,
I am afraid, to come to St. Paul’s Epistles. We find him difficult
because we won’t take him at his word, because we tear a text out of its
right place in the chapter—the place where St. Paul put it, and make it
stand by itself, instead of letting the rest of the chapter explain its
meaning. And then, again, people use the words in the text as unfairly
and unreasonably as they use the text itself, they won’t let the words
have their common-sense English meaning—they must stick a new meaning on
them of their own. ‘Oh,’ they say, ‘that text must not be taken
literally, that word has a spiritual signification here. Flesh does not
mean flesh, it means men’s corrupt nature;’ little thinking all the while
that perhaps they understand those words, spiritual, and corrupt, and
nature, just as ill as they do the rest of the text.
How much better, my friends, to let the Bible tell its own story; not to
be so exceeding wise above what is written, just to believe that St. Paul
knew better how to use words than we are likely to do,—just to believe
that when he says flesh he means flesh. Everybody agrees that when he
says spirit he means spirit, why, in the name of common sense, when he
says flesh should he not mean flesh? For my own part I believe that when
St. Paul talks of man’s flesh, he means by it man’s body, man’s heart and
brain, and all his bodily appetites and powers—what we call a man’s
constitution; in a word, the _animal_ part of man, just what a man has in
common with the beasts who perish.
To understand what I mean, consider any animal—a dog, for instance—how
much every animal has in it what men have,—a body, and brain, and heart;
it hungers and thirsts as we do, it can feel pleasure and pain, anger and
loneliness, and fear and madness; it likes freedom, company, and
exercise, praise and petting, play and ease; it uses a great deal of
cunning, and thought, and courage, to get itself food and shelter, just
as human beings do: in short, it has a fleshly nature, just as we have,
and yet, after all, it is but an animal, and so, in one sense, we are all
animals, only more delicately made than the other animals; but we are
something more, we have a spirit as well as a flesh, an immortal soul.
If any one asks, what is a man? the true answer is, an animal with an
immortal spirit in it; and this spirit can feel more than pleasure and
pain, which are mere carnal, that is, fleshly things; it can feel trust,
and hope, and peace, and love, and purity, and nobleness, and
independence, and, above all, it can feel right and wrong. There is the
infinite difference between an animal and a man, between our flesh and
our spirit; an animal has no sense of right and wrong; a dog who has done
wrong is often terrified, but not because he feels it wrong and wicked,
but because he knows from experience that he will be punished for doing
it: just so with a man’s fleshly nature;—a carnal, fleshly man, a man
whose spirit is dead within him, whose spiritual sense of right and
wrong, and honour and purity, is gone, when he has done a wrong thing is
often enough afraid; but why? Not for any spiritual reason, not because
he feels it a wicked and abominable thing, a sin, but because he is
afraid of being punished for it, because he is afraid that his body, his
flesh will be punished by the laws of the land, or by public opinion, or
because he has some dim belief that this same body and flesh of his will
be burnt in hell-fire; and fire, he knows by experience, is a painful
thing—and so he is _afraid_ of it; there is nothing spiritual in all
that,—that is all fleshly, carnal; the heathens in all ages have been
afraid of hell-fire; but a man’s spirit, on the other hand, if it be in
hell, is in a very different hell from mere fire,—a spiritual hell, such
as torments the evil spirits, at this very moment, although they are
going to and fro on this very earth. This earth is hell to them; they
carry about hell in them,—they are their own hell. Everlasting shame,
discontent, doubt, despair, rage, disgust at themselves, feeling that
they are out of favour with God, out of tune with heaven and earth,
loving nothing, believing nothing, ever hating, hating each other, hating
themselves most of all—_there_ is their hell! _There_ is the hell in
which the soul of every wicked man is,—ay, is now while he is in _this_
life, though he will only awake to the perfect misery of it after death,
when his body and fleshly nature have mouldered away in the grave, and
can no longer pamper and stupify him and make him forget his own misery.
Ay, there has been many a man in this life who had every fleshly
enjoyment which this world can give, riches and pleasure, banquets and
palaces, every sense and every appetite pampered,—his pride and his
vanity flattered; who never knew what want, or trouble, or contradiction,
was on the smallest point; a man, I say, who had every carnal enjoyment
which this earth can give to a man’s selfish flesh, and yet whose spirit
was in hell all the while, and who knew it; hating and despising himself
for a mean selfish villain, while all the world round was bowing down to
him and envying him as the luckiest of men. I am trying to make you
understand the infinite difference between a man’s flesh and his spirit;
how a man’s flesh can take no pleasure in spiritual things, while man’s
spirit of itself can take no pleasure in fleshly things. Now, the spirit
and the flesh, body and soul, in every man, are at war with each
other,—they have quarrelled; that is the corruption of our nature, the
fruit of Adam’s fall. And as the Article says, and as every man who has
ever tried to live godly well knows, from experience, “that infection of
nature does remain to the last, even in those who are regenerate.” So
that as St. Paul says, the spirit lusteth against the flesh, and the
flesh against the spirit; and it continually happens that a man cannot do
the things which he would; he cannot do what he knows to be right; thus,
as St. Paul says again, a man may delight in the law of God in his inward
man, that is, in his spirit, and yet all the while he shall find another
law in his members, _i.e._ in his body, in his flesh, in his brain which
thinks, and his heart which feels, and his senses which are fond of
pleasure; and this law of the flesh, these appetites and passions which
he has, like other animals, fight against the law of his mind, and when
he wishes to do good, make him do evil. Now how is this? The flesh is
not evil; a man’s body can be no more wicked than a dumb beast can be
wicked. St. Paul calls man’s flesh sinful flesh; not because our flesh
can sin of itself, but because our sinful souls make our flesh do sinful
things; for, he says, Christ came in the likeness of sinful flesh, and
yet in him was no sin. The pure and spotless Saviour could not have
taken man’s flesh upon him if there was any sinfulness in it. The body
knows nothing of right and wrong; it is not subject to the law of God,
neither, indeed, can be, says St. Paul. And why? Because God’s law is
spiritual; deals with right and wrong. Wickedness, like righteousness,
is a spiritual thing. If a man sins, his body is not in fault; it is his
spirit; his weak, perverse will, which will sooner listen to what his
flesh tells him is pleasant than to what God tells him is right; for
this, my friends, is the secret of the battle of life. We stand between
heaven and earth. Above is God’s Spirit striving with our spirits,
speaking to them in the depths of our soul, shewing us what is right,
putting into our hearts good desires, making us long to be honest and
just, pure and manful, loving and charitable; for who is there who has
not at times longed after these things, and felt that it would be a
blessed thing for him if he were such a man as Jesus Christ was and
is?—Above us, I say, is God’s Spirit speaking to our spirits, below us is
this world speaking to our flesh, as it spoke to Eve’s, saying to us,
“This thing is pleasant to the eyes—this thing is good for food—that
thing is to be desired to make you wise, and to flatter your vanity and
self-conceit.” Below us, I say, is _this_ world, tempting us to ease,
and pleasure, and vanity; and in the middle, betwixt the two, stands up
the third part of man—his _soul_ and _will_, set to choose between the
voice of God’s Spirit and the temptations of this world—to choose between
what is right and what is pleasant—to choose whether he will obey the
desires of the spirit, or obey the desires of the flesh. He must choose.
If he lets his flesh conquer his spirit, he falls; if he lets his spirit
conquer his flesh, he rises; if he lets his flesh conquer his spirit, he
becomes what he was not meant to be—a slave to fleshly lust; and _then_
he will find his flesh set up for itself, and work for itself. And where
man’s flesh gets the upper hand, and takes possession of him, it can do
nothing but evil—not that it is evil in itself, but that it has no rule,
no law to go by; it does not know right from wrong; and therefore it does
simply what it likes, as a dumb beast or an idiot might; and therefore
the works of the flesh are—adulteries, drunkenness, murders,
fornications, envyings, backbitings, strife. When a man’s body, which
God intended to be the servant of his spirit, has become the tyrant of
his spirit, it is like an idiot on a king’s throne, doing all manner of
harm and folly without knowing that it _is_ harm and folly. That is not
_its_ fault. Whose fault is it, then? _Our_ fault—the fault of our
wills and our souls. Our souls were intended to be the masters of our
flesh, to conquer all the weaknesses, defilements of our constitution—our
tempers, our cowardice, our laziness, our hastiness, our nervousness, our
vanity, our love of pleasure—to listen to our spirits, because our
spirits learn from God’s Spirit what is right and noble. But if we let
our flesh master us, and obey its own blind lusts, we sin against God;
and we sin against God doubly; for we not only sin against God’s
commandments, but we sin against ourselves, who are the image and glory
of God.
Believe this, my friends; believe that, because you are all fallen human
creatures, there must go on in you this sore life-long battle between
your spirit and your flesh—your spirit trying to be master and guide, as
it ought to be, and your flesh rebelling, and trying to conquer your
spirit and make you a mere animal, like a fox in cunning, a peacock in
vanity, or a hog in greedy sloth. But believe, too, that it is your sin
and your shame if your spirit does not conquer your flesh—for God has
promised to help your spirits. Ask Him, and His Spirit will teach
them—fill them with pure, noble hopes, with calm, clear thoughts, and
with deep, unselfish love to God and man. He will strengthen your wills,
that they may be able to refuse the evil and choose the good. Ask Him,
and He will join them to His own Spirit—to the Spirit of Christ, your
Master; for he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit with Him. Ask
him, and He will give you the mind of Christ—teach you to see and feel
all matters as Christ sees and feels them. Ask Him, and He will give you
wisdom to listen to His Spirit when it teaches your spirit, and then you
will be able to walk after the spirit, and not obey the lusts of the
flesh; and you will be able to crucify the flesh with its passions and
lusts, that is, to make it, what it ought to be, a dead thing—a dead tool
for your spirit to work with manfully and godly, and not a live tyrant to
lead you into brutishness and folly; and then you will find that the
fruit of the spirit, of your spirit led by God’s Spirit, is really, as
St. Paul says, “love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness,
honesty”—“whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honourable
and of good report;” and instead of being the miserable slaves of your
own passions, and of the opinions of your neighbours, you will find that
where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty, true freedom, not only
from your neighbours’ sins, but, what is far better, freedom from your
own.
These are large words, my friends, and promise mighty things. But I dare
speak them to you, for God has spoken to you. These promises God made
you at your baptism; these promises I, on the warrant of your baptism,
dare make to you again. At your baptism, God gave you the right to call
Him your loving Father, to call His Son your Saviour, His Spirit your
Sanctifier. And He is not a man, that He should lie; nor the son of man,
that He should repent! Try Him, and see whether He will not fulfil His
word. Claim His promise, and though you have fallen lower than the
brutes, He will make men and women of you. He will be faithful and just
to forgive you your sins, and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness.
SERMON VII.
RETRIBUTION.
NUMBERS, xxxii. 23.
“Be sure your sin will find you out.”
THE full meaning of this text is, that every sin which a man commits is
certain, sooner or later, to come home to him with fearful interest.
Moses gave this warning to two tribes of the Israelites,—to the
Reubenites and Gadites, who had promised to go over Jordan, and help
their countrymen in war against the heathen, on condition of being
allowed to return and settle on the east bank of Jordan, where they then
were; but if they broke their promise, and returned before the end of the
war, they were to be certain that their sin would find them out; that God
would avenge their falsehood on them in some way in their lifetime: in
their lifetime, I say, for there is no mention made in this chapter, or
in any part of the story, of heaven or hell, or any world to come. And
the text has been always taken as a fair warning to all generations of
men, that their sin also, even in their lifetimes, will be visited upon
them.
Now, it is strange, at first sight, that these texts, which warn men that
their sins will be punished in this life, are just the most unpleasant
texts in the whole Bible; that men shrink from them more, and shut their
eyes to them more than they do to those texts which threaten them with
hell-fire and everlasting death. Strange!—that men should be more afraid
of being punished in this life for a few years than in the life to come
for ever and ever;—and yet not strange if we consider; for to worldly and
sinful souls, that life after death and the flames of hell seem quite
distant and dim—things of which they know little and believe less, while
this world they _do_ know, they are quite certain that its good things
are pleasant and its bad things unpleasant, and they are thoroughly
afraid of losing _them_. Their hearts are where their treasure is, in
this world; and a punishment which deprives them of this world’s good
things hits them home: but their treasure is _not_ in heaven, and,
therefore, about losing heaven they are by no means so much concerned.
And thus they can face the dreadful news that “the wicked shall be turned
into hell, and all the people that forget God;” while, as for the news
that the wicked shall be recompensed on the earth, that their sins will
surely find them out in this life, they cannot face that—they shut their
ears to it,—they try to persuade themselves that sin will _pay_ them
_here_, at all events; and as for hereafter, they shall get off
somehow,—they neither know nor care much how.
Yet God’s truth remains, and God’s truth must be heard; and those who
love this world so well must be told, whether they like or not, that
every sin which they commit, every mean, every selfish, every foul deed,
loses them so much enjoyment in this very present world of which they are
so mighty fond. That is God’s truth; and I will prove it true from
common sense, from Holy Scripture, and _from the witness_ of men’s own
hearts.
Take common sense. Does not common sense tell us that if God made this
world, and governs it by righteous and God-like laws, this must be a
world in which evil-doing cannot thrive? God made the world better than
that, surely! He would be a bad law-giver who made such laws, that it
was as well to break them as to keep them. You would call them bad laws,
surely! No, God made the world, and not the devil; and the world works
by God’s laws, and not the devil’s; and it inclines towards good, and not
towards evil; and he who sins, even in the least, breaks God’s laws, acts
contrary to the rule and constitution of the world, and will surely find
that God’s laws will go on in spite of him, and grind him to powder, if
he by sinning gets in the way of them. God has no need to go out of His
way to punish our evil deeds. Let them alone, and they will punish
themselves. Is it not so in every thing? If a tradesman trades badly,
or a farmer farms badly, there is no need of lawyers to punish him; he
will punish himself. Every mistake he makes will take money out of his
pocket; every time he offends against the established rules of trade or
agriculture, which are God’s laws, he injures himself; and so, be sure,
it is in the world at large,—in the world in which men and the souls of
men live, and move, and have their being.
Next, to speak of Scripture. I might quote texts innumerable to prove
that what I say Scripture says also. Consider but this one thing,—that
there is a whole book in the Bible written to prove this one thing,—that
our good and bad deeds are repaid us with interest in this life—the
Proverbs of Solomon I mean—in which there is little or no mention of
heaven or hell, or any world to come. It is all one noble, and awful,
and yet cheering sermon on that one text, “The righteous shall be
recompensed in the earth, much more the wicked and the sinner,”—put in a
thousand different lights; brought home to us a thousand different roads,
comes the same everlasting doom,—“Vain man, who thinkest that thou canst
live in God’s world and yet despise His will, know that, in every
smiling, comfortable sin, thou art hatching an adder to sting thee in the
days of old age, to poison thy cup of sinful joy, even when it is at thy
lips; to haunt thy restless thoughts, and dog thee day and night; to rise
up before thee, in the silent, sleepless hours of night, like an angry
ghost! An awful foretaste of the doom that is to come; and yet a
merciful foretaste, if thou wilt be but taught by the disappointment, the
unsatisfied craving, the gnawing shame of a guilty conscience, to see the
heinousness of sin, and would turn before it be too late.”
What, my friends,—what will you make of such texts as this, “That he who
soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption?” Do you not see
that comes true far too often? Can it help _always_ coming true, seeing
that God’s apostle spoke it? What will you make of this, too, “That the
wicked is snared by the working of his own hands;”—“That _evil_”—the evil
which we do of its own self—“shall slay the wicked?” What says the whole
noble 37th Psalm of David, but that same awful truth of God, that sin is
its own punishment?
Why should I go on quoting texts? Look for yourselves, you who fancy
that it is only on the other side of the grave that God will trouble
Himself about you and your meanness, your profligacy, your falsehood.
Look for yourselves in the book of God, and see if there be any writer
there,—lawgiver, prophet, psalmist, apostle, up to Christ the Lord
Himself,—who does not warn men again and again, that here, on earth,
their sins will find them out. Our Saviour, indeed, when on earth, said
less about this subject than any of the prophets before Him, or the
apostles after Him, and for the best of reasons. The Jews had got rooted
in their minds a superstitious notion, that all disease, all sorrow, was
the punishment in each case of some particular sin; and thus, instead of
looking with pity and loving awe upon the sick and the afflicted, they
were accustomed, too often, to turn from them as sinners, smitten of God,
bearing in their distress the token of His anger. The blessed One,—He
who came to heal the sick and save the lost,—reproved that error more
than once. When the disciples fancied a certain poor man’s blindness to
be a judgment from God, “Neither did he sin,” said the Lord, “nor his
parents, but that the glory of God might be made manifest in him.” And
yet, on the other hand, when He healed a certain man of an old infirmity
at the pool of Bethesda, what were His words to him? “Go thy way, sin no
more, lest a worse thing come unto thee;”—a clear and weighty warning
that all his long misery of eight-and-thirty years had been the
punishment of some sin of his, and that the sin repeated would bring on
him a still severer judgment.
What, again, does the apostle mean, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, when
he tells us how God scourges every son whom he receives, and talks of His
chastisements, whereof all are partakers. Why do we need chastising if
we have nothing which needs mending? And though the innocent _may_
sometimes be afflicted to make them strong as well as innocent, and the
holy chastened to make them humble as well as holy, yet if the good
cannot escape their share of affliction, how will the bad get off? “If
the righteous scarcely be saved, where will the ungodly and the sinner
appear?” But what use in arguing when you know that my words are true?
You _know_ that your sins will find you out. Look boldly and honestly
into your own hearts. Look through the history of your past lives, and
confess to God, at least, that the far greater number of your sorrows
have been your own fault; that there is hardly a day’s misery which you
ever endured in your life of which you might not say, ‘If I had listened
to the voice of God in my conscience—if I had earnestly considered what
my _duty_ was—if I had prayed to God to determine my judgment right, I
should have been spared this sorrow now?’ Am I not right? Those who
know most of God and their own souls will agree most with me; those who
know little about God and their own souls will agree but hardly with me,
for they provoke God’s chastisements, and writhe under them for the time,
and then go and do the same wrong again, as the wild beast will turn and
bite the stone thrown at him without having the sense to see why it was
thrown.
Think, again, of your past lives, and answer in God’s sight, how many
wrong things have you ever done which have _succeeded_, that is, how many
sins which you would not be right glad were undone if you could but put
back the wheels of Time? They may have succeeded _outwardly_; meanness
will succeed
so—lies—oppression—theft—adultery—drunkenness—godlessness—they are all
pleasant enough while they last, I suppose; and a man may reap what he
calls substantial benefits from them in money, and suchlike, and keep
that safe enough; but has his sin succeeded? Has it not _found him
out_?—found him out never to lose him again? Is he the happier for it?
Does he feel freer for it? Does he respect himself the more for it?—No!
And even though he may prosper now, yet does there not run though all his
selfish pleasure a certain fearful looking forward to a fiery judgment to
which he would gladly shut his eyes, but cannot?
Cunning, fair-spoken oppressor of the poor, has not thy sin found thee
out? Then be sure it will. In the shame of thine own heart it will find
thee out;—in the curses of the poor it will find thee out;—in a
friendless, restless, hopeless death-bed, thy covetousness and thy
cruelty will glare before thee in their true colours, and thy sin will
find thee out!
Profligate woman, who art now casting away thy honest name, thy
self-respect, thy womanhood, thy baptism-vows, that thou mayest enjoy the
foul pleasures of sin for a season, has not thy sin found thee out? Then
be sure it will hereafter, when thou hast become disgusted at thyself and
thine own infamy,—and youth, and health, and friends, are gone, and a
shameful and despised old age creeps over thee, and death stalks nearer
and nearer, and God vanishes further and further off, then thy sin will
find thee out!
Foolish, improvident young man, who art wasting the noble strength of
youth, and manly spirits which God has given thee on sin and folly,
throwing away thine honest earnings in cards and drunkenness, instead of
laying them by against a time of need—has not thy sin found thee out?
Then be sure it will some day, when thou hast to bring home thy bride to
a cheerless, unfurnished house, and there to live from hand to
mouth,—without money to provide for her sickness,—without money to give
her the means of keeping things neat and comfortable when she is
well,—without a farthing laid by against distress, and illness, and old
age:—_then_ your sin will find you out: then, perhaps, my text,—my
words—may come across you as you sigh in vain in your comfortless home,
in your impoverished old age, for the money which you wasted in your
youth! My friends, my friends, for your own sakes consider, and mend ere
that day come, as else it surely will!
And, lastly, you who, without running into any especial sins, as those
which the world calls sins, still live careless about religion, without
loyalty to Christ the Lord, without any honest attempt, or even wish, to
serve the God above you, or to rejoice in remembering that you are His
children, working for Him and under Him,—be sure your sin will find you
out. When affliction, or sickness, or disappointment come, as come they
will, if God has not cast you off;—when the dark day dawns, and your
fool’s paradise of worldly prosperity is cut away from under your feet,
then you will find out your folly—you will find that you have insulted
the only Friend who can bring you out of affliction—cast off the only
comfort which can strengthen you to bear affliction—forgotten the only
knowledge which will enable you to be the wiser for affliction. Then, I
say, the sin of your godlessness will find you out; if you do not intend
to fall, soured and sickened merely by God’s chastisements, either into
stupid despair or peevish discontent, you will have to go back, to go
back to God and cry, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before
Thee, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son.”
Go back at once before it be too late. Find out your sins and mend
them—before they find you out, and break your hearts.
SERMON VIII.
SELF-DESTRUCTION.
1 KINGS, xxii. 23.
“The Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy
prophets.”
THE chapter from which my text is taken, which is the first lesson for
this evening’s service, is a very awful chapter, for it gives us an
insight into the meaning of that most awful and terrible word—temptation.
And yet it is a most comforting chapter, for it shews us how God is
long-suffering and merciful, even to the most hardened sinner; how to the
last He puts before him good and evil, to choose between them, and warns
him to the last of his path, and the ruin to which it leads.
We read of Ahab in the first lesson this morning as a thoroughly wicked
man,—mean and weak, cruel and ungodly, governed by his wife Jezebel, a
heathen woman, in marrying whom he had broken God’s law,—a woman so
famous for cruelty and fierceness, vanity and wickedness, that her name
is a by-word even here in England now—“as bad as Jezebel,” we say to this
day. We heard of Ahab in this morning’s lesson letting Jezebel murder
the righteous Naboth, by perjury and slander, to get possession of his
vineyard; and then, instead of shrinking with abhorrence from his wife’s
iniquity, going down and taking possession of the land which he had
gained by her sin. We read of God’s curse on him, and yet of God’s
long-suffering and pardon to him on his repentance. Yet, neither God’s
curse nor God’s mercy seem to have moved him. But he had been always the
same. “He did evil,” the Bible tells us, “in the sight of the Lord above
all that were before him.” He deserted the true God for his wife’s idols
and false gods; and in spite of Elijah’s miracle at Carmel—of which you
heard last Sunday—by which he proved by fire which was the true God, and
in spite of the wonderful victory which God had given him, by means of
one of God’s prophets, over the Syrians, he still remained an idolater.
He would not be taught, nor understand; neither God’s threats nor mercies
could move him; he went on sinning against light and knowledge; and now
his cup was full—his days were numbered, and God’s vengeance was ready at
the door.
He consulted all his false prophets as to whether or not he should go to
attack the Syrians at Ramoth-Gilead. They knew what to say—they knew
that their business was to prophesy what would pay them—what would be
pleasant to him. They did not care whether what they said was true or
not—they lied for the sake of gain, for the Lord had put a lying spirit
into their mouths. They were rogues and villains from the first. They
had turned prophets, not to speak God’s truth, but to make money, to
flatter King Ahab, to get themselves a reputation. We do not hear that
they were all heathens. Many of them may have believed in the true God.
But they were cheats and liars, and so they had given place to the devil,
the father of lies: and now he had taken possession of them in spite of
themselves, and they lied to Ahab, and told him that he would prosper in
the battle at Ramoth-Gilead. It was a dangerous thing for them to say;
for if he had been defeated, and returned disappointed, his rage would
have most probably fallen on them for deceiving them. And as in those
Eastern countries kings do whatever they like without laws or
parliaments, Ahab would have most likely put them all to a miserable
death on the spot. But however dangerous it might be for them to lie,
they could not help lying. A spirit of lies had seized them, and they
who began by lying, because it paid them, now could not help doing so
whether it paid them or not.
But the good king of Judah, Jehoshaphat, had no faith in these flattering
villains. He asked whether there was not another prophet of the Lord to
inquire of? Ahab told him that there was one, Micaiah the son of Imlah,
but that he hated him, because he only prophesied evil of him. What a
thorough picture of a hardened sinner—a man who has become a slave to his
own lusts, till he cares nothing for a thing being true, provided only it
is pleasant! Thus the wilful sinner, like Ahab, becomes both fool and
coward, afraid to look at things as they are; and when God’s judgments
stare him in the face, the wretched man shuts his eyes tight, and swears
that the evil is not there, just because he does not choose to see it.
But the evil was there, ready for Ahab, and it found him. When he forced
Micaiah to speak, Micaiah told him the whole truth. He told him a
vision, or dream, which he had seen. “Hear thou therefore the word of
the Lord: I saw the Lord sitting on His throne, and all the host of
heaven standing by Him. And the Lord said, Who shall persuade Ahab, that
he may go up and fall at Ramoth-Gilead? And there came forth a spirit,
and said, I will go forth, and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his
prophets. And the Lord said, Thou shalt persuade him, and prevail also:
go forth, and do so. Now therefore, behold, the Lord hath put a lying
spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets, and the Lord hath spoken
evil concerning thee.”
What warning could be more awful, and yet more plain? Ahab was told that
he was listening to a lie. He had free choice to follow that lie or not,
and he did follow it. After having put Micaiah into prison for speaking
the truth to him, he went up to Ramoth-Gilead; and yet he felt he was not
safe. He had his doubts and his fears. He would not go openly into the
battle, but disguised himself, hoping that by this means he should keep
himself safe from evil. Fool! God’s vengeance could not be stopped by
his paltry cunning. In spite of all his disguises, a chance shot struck
him down between the joints of his armour. His chariot-driver carried
him out of the battle, and “he was stayed up in his chariot against the
Syrians, and died at even: and the blood ran out of his wound into the
midst of the chariot. And one washed the chariot in the pool of Samaria;
and the dogs licked up his blood there,” according to the word of the
Lord, which He spoke by the mouth of His prophet Elijah, saying, “In the
place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, whom thou slewest, shall
dogs lick thy blood, even thine.”
And do not fancy, my friends, that because this is a miraculous story of
ancient times, it has nothing to do with us. All these things were
written for our example. This chapter tells us not merely how Ahab was
tempted, but it tells us how _we_ are tempted, every one of us, here in
England, in these very days. As it was with Ahab, so it is with us.
Every wilful sin that we commit we give room to the devil. Every wrong
step that we take knowingly, we give a handle to some evil spirit to lead
us seven steps further wrong. And yet in every temptation God gives us a
fair chance. He is no cruel tyrant who will deliver us over to the
devil, to be led helpless and blindfold to our ruin. He did not give
Ahab over to him so. He sent a lying spirit to deceive Ahab’s prophets,
that Ahab might go up and fall at Ramoth-Gilead; but at the very same
time, see, he sends a holy and a true man, a man whom Ahab could trust,
and did trust at the bottom of his heart, to tell him that the lie was a
lie, to warn him of his ruin, so that he might have no excuse for
listening to those false prophets—no excuse for following his own pride,
his own ambition, to his destruction. So you see, “Let no man say, when
he is tempted, I am tempted of God, for God tempteth no man, but every
one is tempted when he is led away by his own lust and enticed.” Ahab
was led away by his own lust; his cowardly love of hearing what was
pleasant and flattering to him, rather than what was true—rather than
what he knew he deserved; that was what enticed him to listen to Zedekiah
and the false prophets, rather than to Micaiah the son of Imlah. _That_
is what entices us to sin—the lust of believing what is pleasant to us,
what suits our own self-will—what is pleasant to our bodies—pleasant to
our purses—pleasant to our pride and self-conceit. Then, when the lying
spirit comes and whispers to us, by bad thoughts, by bad books, by bad
men, that we shall prosper in our wickedness, does God leave us alone to
listen to those evil voices without warning? No! He sends His prophets
to us, as He sent Micaiah to Ahab, to tell us that the wages of sin is
death—to tell us that those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind—to
set before us at every turn good or evil, that we may choose between
them, and live or die according to our choice. For do not fancy that
there are no prophets in our days, unless the gift of the Holy Spirit,
which is promised to all who believe, be a dream and a lie. There are
prophets nowadays,—yea, I say unto you, and more than prophets. Is not
the Bible a prophet? Is not every page in it a prophecy to us,
foretelling God’s mercies and God’s punishments towards men. Is not
every holy and wise book, every holy and wise preacher and writer, a
prophet, expounding to us God’s laws, foretelling to us God’s opinions of
our deeds, both good and evil? Ay, is not every man a prophet to
himself? That “still small voice” in a man’s heart, which warns him of
what is evil—that feeling which makes him cheerful and free when he has
done right, sad and ashamed when he has done wrong—is not that a prophecy
in a man’s own heart? Truly it is. It is the voice of God within us—it
is the Spirit of God striving with our spirits, whether we will hear, or
whether we will forbear—setting before us what is righteous, and noble,
and pure, and what is manly and God-like—to see whether we will obey that
voice, or whether we will obey our own selfish lusts, which tempt us to
please ourselves—to pamper ourselves, our greediness, covetousness,
ambition, or self-conceit. And again, I say, we have our prophets.
Every preacher of righteousness is a prophet. Every good tract is a
prophet. That Prayer-book, those Psalms, those Creeds, those Collects,
which you take into your mouths every Sunday, what are they but written
prophecies, crying unto us with the words of holy men of old, greater
than Micaiah, or David, or Elijah, “Hear thou the word of the Lord?” The
spirits of those who wrote that Prayer-book—the spirits of just men made
perfect, filled with the Spirit of the Lord—they call to us to learn the
wisdom which they knew, to avoid the temptations which they conquered,
that we may share in the glory in which they shared round the throne of
Christ for evermore.
And if you ask me how to try the spirits, how to know whether your own
thoughts, whether the sermons which you hear, the books which you read,
are speaking to you God’s truth, or some lying spirit’s falsehood, I can
only answer you, “To the law and to the testimony”—to the Bible; if they
speak not according to that word, there is no truth in them. But how to
understand the Bible? for the fleshly man understands not the things of
God. The fleshly man, he who cares only about pleasing himself, he who
goes to the Bible full of self-conceit and selfishness, wanting the Bible
to tell him only just what he likes to hear, will only find it a sealed
book to him, and will very likely wrest the Scriptures to his own
destruction. Take up your Bible humbly, praying to God to shew you its
meaning, whether it be pleasant to you or not, and then you will find
that God will shew you a blessed meaning in it; He will open your eyes,
that you may understand the wondrous things of His law; He will shew you
how to try the spirit of all you are taught, and to find out whether it
comes from God.
SERMON IX.
HELL ON EARTH.
MATTHEW, viii. 29.
“And behold the evil spirits cried out, saying, What have we to do
with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of God? Art Thou come hither to torment
us before the time?”
THIS account of the man possessed with devils, and of his language to our
Lord, of our Lord’s casting the devils out of the poor sufferer, and His
allowing them to enter into a herd of swine, is one that is well worth
serious thought; and I think a few words on it will follow fitly after my
last Sunday’s sermon on Ahab and his temptations by evil spirits. In
that sermon I shewed you what temper of mind it was which laid a man open
to the cunning of evil spirits; I wish now to shew you something of what
those evil spirits are. It is very little that we can know about them.
We were intended to know very little, just as much as would enable us to
guard against them, and no more. The accounts of them in the Scriptures
are for our use, not to satisfy our curiosity. But we may find out a
great deal about them from this very chapter, from this very story, which
is repeated almost word for word in three different Gospels, as if to
make us more certain of so curious and important a matter, by having
three distinct and independent writers to witness for its truth. I
advise all those who have Bibles to look for this story in the 8th
chapter of St. Matthew, and follow me as I explain it. {92}
Now, first, we may learn from this account, that evil spirits are real
persons. There is a notion got abroad that it is only a figure of speech
to talk of evil spirits, that all the Bible means by them are certain bad
habits, or bad qualities, or diseases. There are many who will say when
they read this story, ‘This poor man was only a madman. It was the
fashion of the old Jews when a man was mad to say that he was possessed
by evil spirits. All they meant was that the man’s own spirit was in an
evil diseased state, or that his brain and mind were out of order.’
When I hear such language—and it is very common—I cannot help thinking
how pleased the devil must be to hear people talk in such a way. How can
people help him better than by saying that there is no devil? A thief
would be very glad to hear you say, ‘There are no such things as thieves;
it is all an old superstition, so I may leave my house open at night
without danger;’ and I believe, my friends, from the very bottom of my
heart, that this new-fangled disbelief in evil spirits is put into men’s
hearts by the evil spirits themselves. As it was once said, ‘The devil
has tried every plan to catch men’s souls, and now, as the last and most
cunning trick of all, he is shamming dead.’ These may seem homely words,
but the homeliest words are very often the deepest. I advise you all to
think seriously on them.
But it is impossible surely to read this story without seeing that the
Bible considers evil spirits as distinct persons, just as much as each
one of us is a person, and that our Lord spoke to them and treated them
as persons. “What have _we_ to do with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of God?
Art Thou come hither to torment _us_ before the time?” And again, “If
Thou cast _us_ out, suffer us to go into the herd of swine.” What can
shew more plainly that there were some persons in that poor man, besides
himself, his own spirit, his own person? and that _he_ knew it, and Jesus
knew it too? and that He spoke to these spirits, these persons, who
possessed that man, and not to the man himself? No doubt there was a
terrible confusion in the poor madman’s mind about these evil spirits,
who were tormenting him, making him miserable, foul, and savage, in mind
and body—a terrible confusion! We find, when Jesus asked him his name,
he answers “_Legion_,” that is an army, a multitude, “for we are many,”
he says. Again, one gospel tells us that he says, “What have _I_ to do
with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of God?” While in another Gospel we are told
that he said, “What have _we_ to do with Thee?” He seems not to have
been able to distinguish between his own spirit, and these spirits who
possessed him. They put the furious and despairing thoughts into his
heart; they spoke through his mouth; they made a slave and a puppet of
him. But though he could not distinguish between his own soul and the
devils who were in it, Christ could and Christ did.
The man says to Him, or rather the devils make the man say to Him, “If
Thou cast us out, suffer us to go into the herd of swine, and drive us
not out into the deep.” What did Christ answer him? Christ did not
answer him as our so-called wise men in these days would, ‘My good man,
this is all a delusion and a fancy of your own, about your having evil
spirits in you—more persons than one in you—for you are wrong in saying
_we_ of yourself. You ought to say “I,” as every one else does; and as
for spirits going out of you, or going into a herd of swine, or anything
else, that is all a superstition and a fancy. There is nothing to come
out of you, there is nothing in you except yourself. All the evil in you
is your own, the disease of your own brain, and the violent passions of
your own heart. Your brain must be cured by medicine, and your violent
passions tamed down by care and kindness, and then you will get rid of
this foolish notion that you have evil spirits in you, and calling
yourself a multitude, as if you had other persons in you besides
yourself.’
Any one who spoke in this manner nowadays would be thought very
reasonable and very kind. Why did not our Lord speak so to this man, for
there was no outward difference between this man’s conduct and that of
many violent mad people whom we see continually in England? We read,
that this man possessed with devils would wear no clothes; that he had
extraordinary strength; that he would not keep company with other men,
but abode day and night in the tombs, exceeding fierce, crying and
cutting himself with stones, trying in blind rage, which he could not
explain to himself, to hurt himself and all who came near him. And,
above all, he had this notion, that evil spirits had got possession of
him. Now every one of these habits and fancies you may see in many
raging maniacs at this day.
But did our Lord treat this man as we treat such maniacs in these days?
He took the man at his word, and more; the man could not distinguish
clearly between himself and the evil spirits, but our Lord did. When the
devils besought Him, saying, “If thou cast us out, suffer us to go into
the herd of swine,” our Lord answers “Go;” and “when they were cast out,
they went into the herd of swine; and, behold, the whole herd of swine
ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the
waters.”
It was as if our Lord had meant to say to the bystanders,—ay and to us,
and to all people in all times and in all countries, ‘This poor possessed
maniac’s notion was a true one. There were other persons in him besides
himself, tormenting him, body and soul: and, behold, I can drive these
out of him and send them into something else, and leave the man
uninjured, _himself_, and only himself, again in an instant, without any
need of long education to cure him of his bad habits.’ It will be but
reasonable, then, for us to take this story of the man possessed by
devils, as written for our example, as an instance of what _might_, and
perhaps _would_, happen to any one of us, were it not for God’s mercy.
St. Peter tells us to be sober and watchful, because “the devil goes
about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour;” and when we look at
the world around, we may surely see that that stands as true now as it
did in St. Peter’s time. Why, again, did St. James tells us to resist
the devil if the devil be not near us to resist? Why did St. Paul take
for granted, as he did, that Christian men were, of course, not ignorant
of Satan’s devices, if it be quite a proof of enlightenment and superior
knowledge to be ignorant of his devices,—if any dread, any thought even,
about evil spirits, be beneath the attention of reasonable men? My
friends, I say fairly, once for all, that that common notion, that there
are no men now possessed by evil spirits, and that all those stories of
the devil’s power over men are only old, worn-out superstitions has come
from this, that men do not like to retain God in their knowledge, and
therefore, as a necessary consequence, do not like to retain the devil in
their knowledge; because they would be very glad to believe in nothing
but what they can see, and taste, and handle; and, therefore, the thought
of unseen evil spirits, or good spirits either, is a painful thing to
them. First, they do not really believe in angels—ministering spirits
sent out to minister to the heirs of salvation; then they begin not to
believe in evil spirits. The Bible plainly describes their vast numbers;
but these people are wiser than the Bible, and only talk of _one_—of
_the_ devil, as if there were not, as the text tells us, legions and
armies of devils. Then they get rid of that one devil in their real
desire to believe in as few spirits as possible. I am afraid many of
them have gone on to the next step, and got rid of the one God out of
their thoughts and their belief. I said I am afraid, I ought to have
said I _know_, that they have done so, and that thousands in this day who
began by saying evil spirits only mean certain diseases and bad habits in
men, have ended by saying, “God only means certain good habits in man.
God is no more a person than the evil spirits are persons.”
I warn you of all this, my friends, because if you go to live in large
towns, as many of you will, you will hear talk enough of this sort before
your hairs are grey, put cleverly and eloquently enough; for, as a wise
man said, “The devil does not send fools on his errands.” I pray God,
that if you ever do hear doctrines of that kind, some of my words may
rise in your mind and help to shew to you the evil path down which they
lead.
We may believe, then, from the plain words of Scriptures, that there are
vast numbers of evil spirits continually tempting men, each of them to
some particular sin; to worldliness, for instance, for we read of the
spirit of the evil world; to filthiness, for we read of unclean spirits;
to falsehood, for we read of lying spirits and a spirit of lies; to
pride, for we read of a spirit of pride;—in short, to all sins which a
man _can_ commit, to all evil passions to which a man can give way. We
have a right to believe, from the plain words of Scripture, that these
spirits are continually wandering up and down tempting men to sin. That
wonderful story of Job’s temptation, which you may all read for
yourselves in the first chapter of the book of Job, is, I think, proof
enough for any one.
But next, and I wish you to pay special attention to this point: We have
no right to believe,—we have every right _not_ to believe, that these
evil spirits can make us sin in the smallest matter against our own
wills. The devil cannot put a single sin into us; he can only flatter
the sinfulness which is already in us. For, see; this pride, lust,
covetousness, falsehood, and so on, to which the Bible tells us they
tempt us, have roots already in our nature. Our fallen nature of itself
is inclined to pride, to worldliness, and so on. These devils tempt us
by putting in our way the occasion to sin, by suggesting to us tempting
thoughts and arguments which lead to sin; so the serpent tempted Eve, not
by making her ambitious and self-willed, but by using arguments to her
which stirred up the ambition and self-will in her: “Ye shall be as gods,
knowing good and evil,” the devil said to her.
So Satan, the prince of the evil spirits, tempted our Lord. And as the
prince of the devils tempted Christ, so do _his_ servants tempt _us_,
Christ’s servants. Our tempers, our longings, our fancies, are not evil
spirits; they are, as old divines well describe them, like greedy and
foolish fish, who rise at the baits which evil spirits hold out to us.
If we resist those baits—if we put ourselves under God’s protection—if we
claim strength from Him who conquered the devil and all His temptations,
then we shall be able to turn our wills away from those tempting baits,
and to resign our wills into our Father’s hand, and He will take care of
them, and strengthen them with His will; and we shall find out that if we
resist the devil, he will flee from us. But if we yield to temptations
whenever they come in our way, we shall find ourselves less and less able
to resist them, for we shall learn to hate the evil spirits less and
less; I mean we shall shrink less from the evil thoughts they hold out to
us. We shall give place to the devil, as the Scripture tells us we
shall; for instance, by indulging in habitual passionate tempers, or
rooted spite and malice, letting the sun go down upon our wrath: and so a
man may become more and more the slave of his own nature, of his own
lusts and passions, and therefore of the devils, who are continually
pampering and maddening those lusts and passions, till a man may end in
_complete possession_; not in common madness, which may be mere disease,
but as a savage and a raging maniac, such as, thank God, are rare in
Christian countries, though they were common among our own forefathers
before they were converted to Christianity,—men like the demoniac of whom
the text speaks, tormented by devils, given up to blind rage and malice
against himself and all around, to lust and blasphemy, to confusion of
mind and misery of body, God’s image gone, and the image of the devil,
the destroyer and the corrupter, arisen in its place. Few men can arrive
at this pitch of wretchedness in a civilised country. It would not
answer the evil spirit’s purpose to let them do so. It suits _his_
spirits best in such a land as this to walk about dressed up as angels of
light. Few men in England would be fools enough to indulge the gross and
fierce part of their nature till they became mere savages, like the
demoniac whom Christ cured; so it is to respectable vices that the devil
mostly tempts us,—to covetousness, to party spirit, to a hard heart and a
narrow mind; to cruelty, that shall clothe itself under the name of law;
to filthiness, which excuses itself by saying, “It is a man’s nature, he
cannot help it;” to idleness, which excuses itself on the score of
wealth; to meanness and unfairness in trade, and in political and
religious disputes—these are the devils which haunt us Englishmen—sleek,
prim, respectable fiends enough; and, truly, _their_ name is Legion! And
the man who gives himself up to them, though he may not become a raving
savage, is just as truly possessed by devils, to his own misery and ruin,
that he may sow the wind and reap the whirlwind; that though men may
speak well of him, and posterity praise his saying, and speak good of the
covetous whom God abhorreth, yet he may go for ever unto his own, to the
evil spirits to whom his own wicked will gave him up for a prey. I
beseech you, my friends, consider my words; they are not mine, but the
Bible’s. Think of them with fear;—and yet with confidence, for we are
baptised into the name of Him who conquered all devils; you may claim a
share in that Spirit which is opposite to all evil spirits,—whose
presence makes the agony and misery of evil spirits, and drives them out
as water drives out fire. If He is on your side, why should you be
afraid of any spirit? Greater is He that is in you than he that is
against you; and He, Christ Himself, is with every man, every child, who
struggles, however blindly and weakly, against temptation. When
temptation comes, when evil looks pleasant, and arguments rise up in your
mind, that seem to make it look right and reasonable, as well as
pleasant, _then_, out of the very depths of your hearts, cry after Him
who died for you. Say to yourselves, ‘How can I do this thing, and
offend against Him who bought me with His blood?’ Say to Him, ‘I am
weak, I am confused; I do not see right from wrong; I cannot find my way;
I cannot answer the devil; I cannot conquer these cunning thoughts; I
know in the bottom of my heart that they are wrong, mere temptations, and
yet they look so reasonable. Blessed Saviour, _Thou_ must shew me where
they are wrong. Thou didst answer the devil Thyself out of God’s Word,
put into _my_ mind some answer out of God’s Word to these temptations;
or, at least, give me spirit to toss them off—strength of will to thrust
the whole temptation out of my head, and say, I will parley no longer
with the devil; I will put the whole matter out of my head for a time. I
don’t know whether it is right or wrong for me to do this particular
thing, but there are twenty other things which I _do_ know are right.
I’ll go and do _them_, and let this wait awhile.’
Believe me, my friends, you _can_ do this—you can resist these evil
spirits which tempt us all; else why did our Lord bid us pray, “Lead us
not into temptation, but deliver us from evil?” Why? Because our Father
in heaven, if we ask Him, will _not_ lead us _into_ temptation, but
_through_ it safe. Tempted we _must_ be, else we should not be men; but
here is our comfort and our strength—that we have a King in heaven, who
has fought out and conquered all temptations, and a Father in heaven, who
has promised that He will not suffer us to be tempted above that we are
able, but will, with the temptation, make a way to escape, that we may be
able to bear it.
Again, I say, draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Resist the
devil, and he will flee from you.
SERMON X.
NOAH’S JUSTICE.
GENESIS, vi. 9.
“Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked
with God.”
I INTEND, my friends, according as God shall help me, to preach to you,
between this time and Christmas, a few sermons on some of the saints and
worthies of the Old Testament; and I will begin this day with Noah.
Now you must bear in mind that the histories of these ancient men were,
as St. Paul says, written for our example. If these men in old times had
been different from us, they would not be examples to us; but they were
like us—men of like passions, says St. James, as ourselves; they had each
of them in them a corrupt _nature_, which was continually ready to drag
them down, and make beasts of them, and make them slaves to their own
lusts—slaves to eating and drinking, and covetousness, and cowardice, and
laziness, and love for the things which they could see and handle—just
such a nature, in short, as we have. And they had also a spirit in each
of them which was longing to be free, and strong, and holy, and wise—such
a spirit as we have. And to them, just as to us, God was revealing
himself; God was saying to their consciences, as He does to ours, ‘This
is right, that is wrong; do this, and be free and clear-hearted; do that,
and be dark and discontented, and afraid of thy own thoughts.’ And they
too, like us, had to live by faith, by continual belief that they owed a
_duty_ to the great God whom they could not see, by continual belief that
He loved them, and was guiding and leading them through every thing which
happened, good or ill.
This is faith in God, by which alone we, or any man, can live
worthily,—by which these old heroes lived. We read, in the twelfth
chapter of Hebrews, that it was by faith these elders obtained a good
report; and the whole history of the Old-Testament saints is the history
of God speaking to the hearts of one man after another, teaching them
each more and more about Himself, and the history also of these men
listening to the voice of God in their hearts, and _believing_ that
voice, and acting faithfully upon it, into whatever strange circumstances
or deeds it might lead them. “By faith,” we read in this same
chapter,—“by faith Noah, being warned of God, prepared an ark to the
saving of his house, and became heir of the righteousness which is by
faith.”
Now, to understand this last sentence, you must remember that Noah was
not under the law of Moses. St. Paul has a whole chapter (the third
chapter of Galatians) to shew that these old saints had nothing to do
with Moses’ law any more than we have, that it was given to the Jews many
hundred years afterwards. So these histories of the Old-Testament saints
are, in fact, histories of men who conquered by faith—histories of the
power which faith in God has to conquer temptation, and doubt, and false
appearances, and fear, and danger, and all which besets us and keeps us
down from being free and holy, and children of the day, walking
cheerfully forward on our heavenward road in the light of our Father’s
loving smile.
Noah, we read, “was a just man, and perfect in his generations;” and why?
Because he was a faithful man—faithful to God, as it is written, “The
just shall live by his faith;” not by trusting in what he does himself,
in his own works or deservings, but trusting in God who made him,
believing that God is perfectly righteous, perfectly wise, perfectly
loving; and that, because He is perfectly loving, He will accept and save
sinful man when He sees in sinful man the earnest wish to be His
faithful, obedient servant, and to give himself up to the rule and
guidance of God. This, then, was Noah’s justice in God’s sight, as it
was Abraham’s. They believed God, and so became heirs of the
righteousness which is by faith; not their own righteousness, not growing
out of their own character, but given them by God, who puts His righteous
Spirit into those who trust in Him.
But, moreover, we read that Noah “was perfect in his generations;” that
is, he was perfect in all the relations and duties of life,—a good son, a
good husband, a good father: these were the fruits of his faith. He
believed that the unseen God had given him these ties, had given him his
parents, his children, and that to love them was to love God, to do his
duty to them was to do his duty to God. This was part of his walking
with God, continually under his great Taskmaster’s eye,—walking about his
daily business with the belief that a great loving Father was above him,
whatever he did; ready to strengthen, and guide, and bless him if he did
well, ready to avenge Himself on him if he did ill. These were the
fruits of Noah’s faith.
But you may think this nothing very wonderful. Many a man in England
does this every day, and yet no one ever hears of him; he attends to all
his family ties, doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God,
like one who knows he is redeemed by Christ’s blood; he lives, he dies,
he is buried, and out of his own parish his name is never known; while
Noah has earned for himself a worldwide fame; for four thousand years his
name has been spreading over the whole earth as one of the greatest men
who ever lived. Mighty nations have worshipped Noah as a God; many
heathen nations worship him under strange and confused names and
traditions to this day; and the wisest and holiest men among Christians
now reverence Noah, write of him, preach on him, thank God for him, look
up to him as, next to Abraham, their greatest example in the Old
Testament.
Well, my friends, to understand what made Noah so great, we must
understand in what times Noah lived. “The wickedness of men was great in
the earth in those days, and every imagination of the thoughts of their
heart was only evil continually, and the earth was filled with violence
through them.” And we must remember that the wickedness of men before
the flood was not outwardly like wickedness now; it was not petty, mean,
contemptible wickedness of silly and stupid men, such as could be
despised and laughed down; it was like the wickedness of fallen angels.
Men were then strong and beautiful, cunning and active, to a degree of
which we can form no conception. Their enormous length of life (six,
seven, and eight hundred years commonly) must have given them an
experience and daring far beyond any man in these days. Their bodily
size and strength were in many cases enormous. We read that “there were
giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of
God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them,
the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.” Their
powers of invention seem to have been proportionably great. We read, in
the fourth chapter of Genesis, how, within a few years after Adam was
driven out of Paradise, they had learned to build cities, to tame the
wild beasts, and live upon their milk and flesh; that they had invented
all sorts of music and musical instruments; that they had discovered the
art of working in metals. We read among them of Tubal-Cain, an
instructor of every workman in brass and iron; and the old traditions in
the East, where these men dwelt, are full of strange and awful tales of
their power.
Again, we must remember that there was no law in Noah’s days before the
flood, no Bible to guide them, no constitutions and acts of parliament to
bind men in the beaten track by the awful majesty of law, whether they
will or no, as we have.
This is the picture which the Bible gives us of the old world before the
flood—a world of men mighty in body and mind, fierce and busy, conquering
the world round them, in continual war and turmoil; with all the wild
passions of youth, and yet all the cunning and experience of enormous old
age; with the strength and the courage of young men to carry out the
iniquity of old ones; every one guided only by self-will, having cast off
God and conscience, and doing every man that which was right in the sight
of his own eyes. And amidst all this, while men, as wise, as old, as
strong, as great as himself, whirled away round him in this raging sea of
sin, Noah was stedfast; he, at least, knew his way,—“he walked with God,
a just man, and perfect in his generations.”
To Noah, living in such a world as this, among temptation, and violence,
and insult, no doubt, there came this command from God: “The end of all
flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with violence through
them, and I will destroy them with the earth. And behold I, even I, do
bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh wherein is
the breath of life; but with thee will I establish my covenant, and thou
shalt make thee an ark of wood after the fashion which I tell thee; and
thou shalt come into the ark, thou and thy family, and of every living
thing, two of every sort, male and female, shalt thou bring into the ark,
and keep them alive with thee; and take thou of all food that is eaten
into the ark, for thee and for them.” What a message, my friends! If we
wish to see a little of the greatness of Noah’s faith, conceive such a
message coming from God to one of us! Should we believe it—much less act
upon it? But _Noah_ believed God, says the Scripture; and “according as
God commanded him, so did he.” Now, in whatever way this command came
from God to Noah, it is equally wonderful. Some of you, perhaps, will
say in your hearts, ‘No! when God spoke to him, how could he help obeying
Him?’ But, my friends, ask yourselves seriously,—for, believe me, it is
a most important question for the soul and inner life of you and me, and
every man—how did Noah know that it was God who spoke to him? It is easy
to say God appeared to him; but no man hath seen God at any time. It is
easy, again, to say that an angel appeared to him, or that God appeared
to him in the form of a man; but still the same question is left to be
answered, how did he know that this appearance came from God, and that
its words were true? Why should not Noah have said, ‘This was an evil
spirit which appeared to me, trying to frighten and ruin me, and stir up
all my neighbours to mock me, perhaps to murder me?’ Or, again; suppose
that you or I saw some glorious apparition this day, which told us on
such and such a day such and such a town will be destroyed, what should
_we_ think of it? Should we not say, I must have been dreaming—I must
have been ill, and so my brain and eyes must have been disordered, and
treat the whole thing as a mere fancy of ill-health; now why did not Noah
do the same?
Why do I say this? To shew you, my friends, that it is not apparitions
and visions which can make a man believe. As it is written, “If they
believe not Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe though one
rose from the dead.” No; a man must have faith in his heart already. A
man must first be accustomed to discern right from wrong—to listen to and
to obey the voice of God within him; _that_ word of God of which it is
said, “the word is nigh thee, in thy heart, and in thy mind,” before he
can hear God’s word from without; else he will only explain away
miracles, and call visions and apparitions sick men’s dreams.
But there was something yet more wonderful and divine in Noah’s faith,—I
mean his patience. He knew that a flood was to come—he set to work in
faith to build his ark—and that ark was in building for one hundred and
twenty years,—one hundred and twenty years! It seems at first past all
belief. For all that time he built; and all the while the world went on
just as usual; and, before he had finished, old men had died, and
children grown into years; and great cities had sprung up perhaps where
there was not a cottage before; and trees which were but a yard high when
that ark was begun had grown into mighty forest-timber; and men had
multiplied and spread, and yet Noah built and built on stedfastly,
believing that what God had said would surely one day or other come to
pass. For one hundred and twenty years he saw the world go on as usual,
and yet he never forgot that it was a doomed world. He endured the
laughter and mockery of all his neighbours, and every fresh child who was
born grew up to laugh at the foolish old man who had been toiling for a
hundred years past on his mad scheme, as they thought it; and yet Noah
never lost faith, and he never lost _love_ either—for all those years, we
read, he preached righteousness to the very men who mocked him, and
preached in vain—one hundred and twenty years he warned those sinners of
God’s wrath, of righteousness and judgment to come, and no man listened
to him! That, I believe, must have been, after all, the hardest of all
his trials.
And, doubtless, Noah had his inward temptation many a time; no doubt he
was ready now and then to believe God’s message all a dream—to laugh at
himself for his fears of a flood which seemed never coming, but in his
heart was “the still small voice” of God, warning him that God was not a
man that he should lie, or repent, or deceive those who walked faithfully
with him; and around him he saw men growing and growing in iniquity,
filling up the cup of their own damnation; and he said to himself,
‘Verily there is a God who judgeth the earth—for all this a reckoning day
will surely come;’ and he worked stedfastly on, and the ark was finished.
And then at last there came a second call from God, “Come thou and all
thy house into the ark, for thee have I seen righteous before me in this
generation. Yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth,
and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the
earth.” And Noah entered into the ark, and seven days he waited; and
louder than ever laughed the scoffers round him, at the old man and his
family shut into his ark safe on dry land, while day and night went on as
quietly as ever, and the world ran its usual round; for seven days more
their mad game lasted—they ate, they drank, they married, they gave in
marriage, they planted, they builded; and on the seventh day it came—the
rain fell day after day, and week after week—and the windows of heaven
were opened, and the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the
flood arose, and swept them all away!
SERMON XI.
THE NOACHIC COVENANT.
GEN. ix. 8, 9.
“And God spake unto Noah, and his sons with him, saying, And I,
behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after
you.”
IN my last sermon on Noah I spoke of the flood and of Noah’s faith before
the flood; I now go on to speak of the covenant which God made with Noah
after the flood. Now, Noah stood on that newly-dried earth as the head
of mankind; he and his family, in all eight souls, saved by God’s mercy
from the general ruin, were the only human beings left alive, and had
laid on them the wonderful and glorious duty of renewing the race of man,
and replenishing the vast world around them. From that little knot of
human beings were to spring all the nations of the earth.
And because this calling and destiny of theirs was a great and
all-important one—because so much of the happiness or misery of the new
race of mankind depended on the teaching which they would get from their
forefathers, the sons of Noah, therefore God thought fit to make with
Noah and his sons a solemn covenant, as soon as they came out of the ark.
Let us solemnly consider this covenant, for it stands good now as much as
ever. God made it “with Noah, and his seed after him,” for perpetual
generations. And _we_ are the seed of Noah; every man, woman, and child
of us here were in the loins of Noah when the great absolute God gave him
that pledge and promise. We must earnestly consider that covenant, for
in it lies the very ground and meaning of man’s life and business on this
earth.
“And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful and
multiply, and replenish the earth; and the fear of you and the dread of
you shall be upon every living creature. Into your hand they are
delivered. Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you, even as
the green herb have I given you all things. But flesh with the life
thereof, which is the blood thereof shall ye not eat. And surely your
blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I
require it, and at the hand of men; at the hand of every man’s brother
will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall
his blood be shed; for in the image of God made He man.”
Now, to understand this covenant, consider what thoughts would have been
likely to grow up in the mind of Noah’s children after the flood. Would
they not have been something of this kind: ‘God does not love men; He has
drowned all but us, and we are men of like passions with the world who
perished, may we not expect the like ruin at any moment? Then what use
to plough and sow, and build and plant, and work for those who shall come
after us?’ ‘Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.’
And again, they would have been ready to say, ‘This God, whom our
forefather Noah said sent floods, we cannot see Him; but the floods
themselves we can see. All these clouds and tempests, lightning, sun,
and stars, are we _stronger_ than them? No! They may crush us, drown
us, strike us dead at any moment. They seem, too, to go by certain
wonderful rules and laws; perhaps they have a will and understanding in
them. Instead of praying to a God whom we never saw, why not pray to the
thunderclouds not to strike us dead, and to the seas and rivers not to
sweep us away? For this great, wonderful, awful world in which we are,
however beautiful may be its flowers, and its fruits, and its sunshine,
there is no trusting it; we are sitting upon a painted sepulchre, a
beautiful monster, a gulf of flood and fire, which may burst up any
moment, and sweep us away, as it did our forefathers.’
Again, Noah’s children would have begun to say, ‘These beasts here round
us, they are so many of them larger than us, stronger than us, able to
tear us to atoms, eat us up as they would eat a lamb. They are
self-sufficient, too; they want no clothes, nor houses, nor fire, like us
poor, weak, naked, soft human creatures. They can run faster than we,
see farther than we; their scent, too, what a wonderful, mysterious power
that is, like a miracle to us! And, besides all their cunning ways of
getting food and building nests, they never do _wrong_; they never do
horrible things contrary to their nature; they all abide as God has made
them, obeying the law of their kind. Are not these beasts, then, much
wiser and better than we? We will honour them, and pray to them not to
devour us—to make us cunning and powerful as they are themselves. And if
they are no better than us, surely they are no worse than us. After all,
what difference is there between a man and a beast? The flood which
drowned the beasts drowned the men too. A beast is flesh and blood, what
more is a man? If you kill him, he dies, just as a beast dies; and why
should not a man’s carcase be just as good to eat as a beast’s, and
better?’ And so there would have been a free opening at once into all
the horrors of cannibalism!
Again, Noah’s descendants would have said, ‘Our forefathers offered
sacrifices to the unseen God, as a sign that all they had belonged to
Him, and that they had forfeited their own souls by sin, and were
therefore ready to give up the most precious things they had—their
cattle, as a sign that they owed all to that very God whom they had
offended. But are not human creatures much more precious than cattle?
Will it not be a much greater sign of repentance and willingness to give
up all to God if we offer Him the best things which we have—human
creatures? If we kill and sacrifice to Him our most beautiful and
innocent things—little children—noble young men—beautiful young girls?’
My friends, these are very strange and shocking thoughts, but they have
been in the hearts and minds of all nations. The heathens do such things
now. Our own forefathers used to do such things once; they were tempted
to worship the sun and the moon, and the rivers, and the thunder, and to
look with superstitious terror at the bears, and the wolves, and the
snakes, round them, and to kill their young children and maidens, and
offer them up as sacrifices to the dark powers of this world, which they
thought were ready to swallow them up. And God is my witness, my
friends, when one goes through some parts of England now, and sees the
mine-children and factory-children, and all the sin and misery, and the
people wearying themselves in the fire for very vanity, we seem not to be
so very far from the same dark superstition now, though we may call it by
a different name. England has been sacrificing her sons and her
daughters to the devil of covetousness of late years, just as much as our
forefathers offered theirs to the devil of selfish and cowardly
superstition.
But see, now, how this covenant which God made with Noah was intended
just to remedy every one of those temptations which I just mentioned,
into which Noah’s children’s children would have been certain to fall,
and into which so many of them did fall. They might have become
reckless, I said, from fear of a flood at any moment. God promises
them—and confirms it with the sign of the rainbow—never again to destroy
the earth by water. They would have been likely to take to praying to
the rain and the thunder, the sun and the stars; God declares in this
covenant that it is _He_ alone who sends the rain and thunder, that He
brings the clouds over the earth, that He rules the great, awful world;
that men are to look up and believe in God as a loving and thinking
_person_, who has a will of His own, and that a faithful, and true, and
loving, and merciful will; that their lives and safety depend not on
blind chance, or the stern necessity of certain laws of nature, but on
the covenant of an almighty and all-loving person.
Again, I said, that Noah’s sons would have been ready to fear, and, at
last, to worship the dumb beasts; God’s covenant says, “No; these beasts
are not your equals—they are your slaves—you may freely kill them for
your food; the fear of you shall be upon them. The huge elephant and the
swift horse shall become your obedient servants; the lion and the tiger
shall tremble and flee before you. Only claim your rights as men;
believe that the invisible God who made the earth is your strength and
your protector, and that He to whom the earth belongs has made you lords
of the earth and all that therein is. But,” said God’s covenant to
Noah’s sons, “you did not _make_ these beasts—you did not give them life,
therefore I forbid you to eat their blood wherein their life lies; that
you may never forget that all the power you have over these beasts was
given you by God, who made and preserves that wonderful, mysterious, holy
thing called life, which you can never imitate.” Again, I said, that
Noah’s children, having been accustomed to the violence and bloodshed on
the earth before the flood, might hold man’s life cheap; that, having
seen in the flood men perish just like the beasts around them, they might
have begun to think that man’s life was not more precious than the
beasts’. They might have all gone on at last, as some of them did, to
those horrors of cannibalism and human sacrifice of which I just now
spoke. Now, here, again comes in God’s covenant, “Surely the blood of
your lives will I require. At the hand of every beast will I require it,
and at the hand of every man’s brother will I require it. Whoso sheddeth
man’s blood by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made
He man.” This, then, is the covenant which God made with Noah for
perpetual generations, and therefore with us, the children of Noah. In
this covenant you see certain truths come out into light; some, of which
you read nothing before in the Bible, and other truths which, though they
were given to Adam, yet had been utterly lost sight of before the flood.
This has been God’s method, we find from the Bible, ever since the
creation,—to lead man step by step up into more and more light, up to
this very day, and to make each sin and each madness of men an occasion
for revealing to Him more and more of truth and of the living God. And
so each and every chapter in the Bible is built upon all that has gone
before it; and he that neglects to understand what has gone before will
never come to the understanding of what follows after. Why do I say
this? Because men are continually picking out those scraps of the Bible
which suit their own fancy, and pinning their whole faith on them, and
trying to make them serve to explain every thing in heaven and earth;
whereas no man can understand the Epistles unless he first understand the
Gospels. No man will understand the New Testament unless he first
understands the pith and marrow of the Old. No man will understand the
Psalms and the Prophets unless he first understands the first ten
chapters of Genesis; and, lastly, no one will ever understand any thing
about the Bible at all, who, instead of taking it simply as it is
written, is always trying to twist it into proofs of his own favourite
doctrines, and make Abraham a high Calvinist, or Noah a member of the
Church of England. Why do I say this? To make you all think seriously
that this covenant on which I have been preaching is your covenant; that
as sure as the rainbow stands in heaven, as sure as you and I are sprung
out of the loins of Noah, so surely this covenant which binds us is part
of our Christian covenant, and woe to us if we break it!
This covenant tells us that we are made in God’s likeness, and,
therefore, that all sin is unworthy of us and unnatural to us. It tells
us that God means us bravely and industriously to subdue the earth and
the living things upon it; that we are to be the masters of the pleasant
things about us, and not their slaves, as sots and idlers are; that we
are stewards and tenants of this world for the great God who made it, to
whom we are to look up in confidence for help and protection. It tells
us that our family relationships, the blessed duties of a husband and a
father, are sacred things; that God has created them, that the great God
of heaven Himself respects them, that the covenant which He makes with
the father He makes with the children; that He commands marriage, and
that He blesses it with fruitfulness; that it is He who has told us “Be
fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth;” that the tie of
brotherhood is His making also; that _He_ will require the blood of the
murdered man _at his brother’s hand_; that a man’s brothers, his nearest
relations, are bound to protect and right him if he is injured; so that
we all are to be, in the deepest sense of the word, what Cain refused to
be, our _brothers’ keepers_, and each member of a family is more or less
answerable for the welfare and safety of all his relations. Herein lies
the ground of all religion and of all society—in the covenant which God
made with Noah; and just as it is in vain for a man to pretend to be a
scholar when he does not even know his letters, so it is mockery for a
man to pretend to be a converted Christian man who knows not even so much
as was commanded to Noah and his sons. He who has not learnt to love,
honour, and succour his own family—he who has not learnt to work in
honest and manful industry—he who has not learnt to look beyond this
earth, and its chance, and its customs, and its glittering outside, and
see and trust in a great, wise, loving God, by whose will every tree
grows and every shower falls, what is Christianity to him? He has to
learn the first principles which were delivered to Noah, and which not
even the heathen and the savage have utterly forgotten.
SERMON XII.
ABRAHAM’S FAITH.
HEBREWS, xi. 9, 10.
“By faith Abraham sojourned in the land of promise as in a strange
country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with
him of the same promise. For he looked for a city, which hath
foundations, whose builder and maker is God.”
IN the last sermon which I preached in this church, I said that the Bible
is the history of God’s ways with mankind, how He has schooled and
brought them up until the coming of Christ; that if we read the Bible
histories, one after another, in the same order in which God has put them
in the Bible, we shall see that they are all regular steps in a line,
that each fresh story depends on the story which went before it; and yet,
in each fresh history, we shall find God telling men something
new—something which they did not know before. And that so the whole
Bible, from beginning to end, is one glorious, methodic, and organic tree
of life, every part growing out of the others and depending on the
others, from the root—that foundation, other than which no man can lay,
which is Christ, revealing Himself, though not by name, in that wonderful
first chapter of Genesis,—up to the _fruit_, which is the kingdom of
Christ, and Gospel of Christ, and the salvation in which we here now
stand. I told you that the lesson which God has been teaching men in all
ages is faith in God—that the saints of old were just the men who learnt
this lesson of faith. Now this, as we all know, was the secret of
Abraham’s greatness, that he had faith in God to leave his own country at
God’s bidding, and become a stranger and a pilgrim on the earth,
wandering on in full trust that God would give him another country
instead of that which he had left—“a city which hath foundations, whose
builder and maker is God.” This was what Abraham looked for. Something
of what it means we shall see presently.
You remember the story of the tower of Babel? How certain of Noah’s
family forgot the covenant which God had made with Noah, forgot that God
had commanded them to go forth in every direction and fill the earth with
human beings, solemnly promising to protect and bless them, and took on
themselves to do the very opposite—set up a kingdom of their own fashion,
and herded together for selfish safety, instead of going forth to all the
quarters of the world in a natural way, according to their families, in
their tribes, after their nations, as the eleventh chapter of Genesis
says they ought to have done. “Let us build us a city and a tower, and
make us a name, lest,” they said, “we be scattered abroad over the face
of the whole world.” Here was one act of disobedience to God’s order.
But besides this they had fallen into a slavish dread of the powers of
nature—they were afraid of another flood. They set to to build a tower,
on which they might worship the sun and stars, and the host of heaven,
and pray to them to send no more floods and tempests. They thus fell
into a slavish fear of the powers of nature, as well as into a selfish
and artificial civilisation. In short, they utterly broke the covenant
which God had made with Noah. But by miraculously confounding their
language, God drove them forth over the face of the whole earth, and so
forced them to do that which they ought to have done willingly at first.
Now, we must remember that all this happened in the very country in which
Abraham lived. He must have heard of it all—for aught we know he had
seen the tower of Babel. So that, for good or for evil, the whole Babel
event must have produced a strong effect on the mind of a thoughtful man
like Abraham, and raised many strange questionings in his heart, which
God alone could answer for him, _or for us_. Now, what did God mean to
teach Abraham by calling him out of his country, and telling him, “I will
make of thee a great nation?” I think He meant to shew him, for one
thing, that that Babel plan of society was utterly absurd and accursed,
certain to come to naught, and so to lead him on to hope for a city which
had foundations, and to see that _its_ builder and maker must be, not the
selfishness or the ambition of men, but the will, and the wisdom, and
providence of God.
Let us see how God led Abraham on to understand this—to look for a city
which had foundations; in short, to understand what a State and a nation
means and ought to be. First, God taught him that he was not to cling
coward-like to the place where he was born, but to go out boldly to
colonise and subdue the earth, for the great God of heaven would protect
and guide him. “Get thee out of thy country and from thy father’s house
unto a land which I will shew thee. And I will bless them that bless
thee, and curse them that curse thee.” Again; God taught him what a
nation was: “_I_ will make of thee a great nation.” As much as to say,
‘Never fancy, as those fools at Babel did, that a nation only means a
great crowd of people—never fancy that men can make themselves into a
nation just by feeding altogether, and breeding altogether, and fighting
altogether, as the herds of wild cattle and sheep do, while there is no
real union between them.’ For what brought those Babel men together?
Just what keeps a herd of cattle together—selfishness and fear. Each man
thought he would be _safer_, forsooth, in company. Each man thought that
if he was in company, he could use his neighbours’ wits as well as his
own, and have the benefit of his neighbours’ strength as well as his own.
And that is all true enough; but that does not make a nation.
Selfishness can join nothing; it may join a set of men for a time, each
for his own ends, just as a joint-stock company is made up; but it will
soon split them up again. Each man, in a merely selfish community, will
begin, after a time, to play on his own account as well as work on his
own account—to oppress and overreach for his own ends as well as to be
honest and benevolent for his own ends, for he will find ill-doing far
easier, and more natural, in one sense, and a plan that brings in quicker
profits, than well-doing; and so this godless, loveless,
every-man-for-himself nation, or sham nation rather, this joint-stock
company, in which fools expect that universal selfishness will do the
work of universal benevolence, will quarrel and break up, crumble to dust
again, as Babel did. “But,” says God to Abraham, “I will make of thee a
great nation. I make nations, and not they themselves.” So it is, my
friends: this is the lesson which God taught Abraham, the lesson which we
English must learn nowadays over again, or smart for it bitterly—that God
makes nations. He is King of kings; “by Him kings reign and princes
decree judgment.” He judges all nations: He nurtureth the nations. This
is throughout the teaching of the Psalms. “It is He that hath made us,
and not we ourselves; we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture;”
for this I take to be the true bearing of that glorious national hymn the
100th Psalm, and not merely the old truism that men did not create
themselves, when it exhorts _all_ nations to praise God because it is He
that hath made them nations, and not they themselves. The Psalms set
forth the Son of God as the King of all nations. In Him, my friends,—in
Him all the nations of the earth are truly blessed.
He the Saviour of a few individual souls only? God forbid! To Him _all
power_ is given in heaven and earth; by Him were all things created,
whether in heaven or earth, visible and invisible, whether they be
thrones or dominions, or principalities or powers;—all national life, all
forms of government, whether hero-despotisms, republics, or monarchies,
aristocracies of birth, or of wealth, or of talent,—all were created by
Him and for Him, and He is before all things, and by Him all things
_consist_ and hold together. Every thing or institution on earth which
has systematic and organic life in it—by _Him_ it consists—by Him, the
Life and the Light who lighteneth every man that cometh into the world.
From Him come law, and order, and spiritual energy, and loving
fellow-feeling, and patriotism, the spirit of wisdom, and understanding,
and prudence—all, in short, by which a nation consists and holds
together. It is not constitutions, and acts of parliament, and social
contracts, and rights of the people, and rights of kings, and so on,
which make us a nation. These are but the effects, and not the
consequences, of the national life. _That_ is the one spirit which is
shed abroad upon a country, whose builder and maker is God, and which
comes down from above—comes down from Christ the King of kings, who has
given each nation its peculiar work on this earth, its peculiar
circumstances and history to mould and educate it for its work, and its
peculiar spirit and national character, wherewith to fulfil the destiny
which Christ has appointed for it.
Believe me, my friends, it takes long years, too, and much training from
God and from Christ, the King of kings, to make a nation. Everything
which is most precious and great is also most slow in growing, and so is
a nation. The Scripture compares it everywhere to a tree; and as the
tree grows, a people must grow, from small beginnings, perhaps from a
single family, increasing on, according to the fixed laws of God’s world,
for years and hundreds of years, till it becomes a mighty nation, with
one Lord, one faith, one work, one Spirit.
But again; God said to Abraham, when He had led him into this far
country, “Unto thy seed will _I give this land_.” This was a great and a
new lesson for Abraham, that the earth belonged to that same great
invisible God who had promised to guide and protect him, and make him
into a nation—that this same God gave the earth to whomsoever He would,
and allotted to each people their proper portion of it. “He (said St.
Paul on the Areopagus) hath determined the times before appointed for all
nations, and the bounds of their habitation, that they may seek after the
Lord and find Him.” Ah! this must have been a strange and a new feeling
to Abraham; but, stranger still, though God had given him this land, he
was not to take possession of a single foot of it; the land was already
in the hands of a different nation, the people of Canaan; and Abraham was
to go wandering about a sojourner, as the text says, in this very land of
promise which God had given him, without ever taking possession of his
own, simply because it belonged to others already. How this must have
taught Abraham that the rights of property were sacred things—things
appointed by God; that it was an awful and a heinous sin to make wanton
war on other people, to drive them out and take possession of their land;
that it was not mere force or mere fancy which gave men a right to a
country, but the providence of Almighty God! Now Abraham needed this
warning, for the men of Babel seem from the first to have gone on the
plan of driving out and conquering the tribes round them. They seem to
have set up their city partly from ambition. “Let us make us a name,”
they said, meaning, ‘Let us make ourselves famous and terrible to all the
people around us, that we may subdue them.’ And we read of Nimrod, who
was their first king and the founder of Babel, that he was a mighty
hunter before the Lord, that is, as most learned men explain it, a mighty
conqueror and tyrant in defiance of God and His laws, as the poet says of
him,
“A mighty hunter, and his game was man.”
The Jews, indeed, have an old tradition that Nimrod cast Abraham into a
fiery furnace for refusing to worship the host of heaven with him. The
story is very likely untrue, but still it is of use in shewing what sort
of reputation Nimrod left behind him in his own part of the world. We
may thus see that Abraham would need warning against these habits of
violence, tyranny, and plunder, into which the men of Babel and other
tribes were falling. And this was what God meant to teach him by keeping
him a stranger and a pilgrim in the very land which God had promised to
him for his own. Thus Abraham learnt respect for the rights and
properties of his neighbours; thus he learnt to look up in faith to God,
not only as his patron and protector, but as the lord and absolute owner
of the soil on which he stood.
Now in the 14th chapter of Genesis there is an account of Abraham’s being
called on to put in practice what he had learnt, and, by doing so,
learning a fresh lesson. We read of four kings making war against five
kings, against Chedorlaomer, king of Elam or Persia, who had been
following the ways of Nimrod and the men of Babel, and conquering these
foreign kings and making them serve him. We read of Chedorlaomer and
four other kings coming down and wantonly ravaging and destroying other
countries, besides the five kings who had rebelled against them, and at
last carrying off captive the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, and Lot,
Abraham’s nephew. We read then how Abraham armed his trained servants,
born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen men, and pursued after
these tyrants and plunderers, and with his small force completely
overthrew that great army. Now that was a sign and a lesson to Abraham,
as much as to say, ‘See the fruits of having the great God of heaven and
earth for your protector and your guide,—see the fruits of having men
round you, not hirelings, keeping in your company just to see what they
can get by it, but born in your own house, who love and trust you, whom
you can love and trust,—see how the favour of God, and reverence for
those family ties and duties which He has appointed, make you and your
little band of faithful men superior to these great mobs of selfish,
godless, unjust robbers,—see how hundreds of these slaves ran away before
one man, who feels that he is a member of a family, and has a just cause
for fighting, and that God and his brethren are with him.’
Here, you see, was another hint to Abraham of what it was and who it was
that made a great nation.
And now some of you may say, ‘This is a strange sermon. You have as yet
said nothing of Christ, nothing of the Holy Spirit, nothing of grace,
redemption, sanctification. What kind of sermon is this?’
My friends, do not be too sure that I have not been preaching Christ to
you, and Christ’s Spirit to you, and Christ’s redemption too, most truly
in this sermon, although I have mentioned none of them by name. There
are times for ornamenting the house, there are times for repairing the
wall, there are times, too, for thoroughly examining the foundation,
because, if that be not sound, it is little matter what fine work is
built up upon it; and there are times when, as David says, the
foundations of the earth are out of course, when men have forgotten sadly
the very first principles of society and religion.
And, surely, men are doing so in these days; men are forgetting that
other foundation can no man lay save that which _is_ laid, which is
Christ; they laugh at the thought of a city, that is, a state and form of
government, “not made with hands, eternal in the heavens;” they have
forgotten that St. Paul tells them in the Hebrews that we _have_ “a city
which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God,” a kingdom which
cannot be moved. Yes, men who call themselves learned and worldly wise,
and good men too, alas! who fancy that they are preaching God’s gospel,
go about and tell men, ‘The men of Babel were right after all. What have
nations to do with God and religion? Nations are merely earthly, carnal
things, that were only invented by sinful men themselves, to preserve
their bodies and goods, and make trading easy. Religion has only to do
with a man’s private opinions, his single soul; the government has
nothing to do with the Church: a Christian has nothing to do with
politics.’ And so these men most unwittingly open a door to all sorts of
covetousness and meanness in the nation, and all sorts of trickery and
cowardice in the government. Tell a man that his business has nothing to
do with God, and you cannot wonder if he acts without thinking of God.
If you tell a nation that it is selfishness which makes it prosperous, of
course you must expect it to be selfish. If you tell us Englishmen that
the duties of a citizen are not duties to God, but only duties to the
constable and the tax-gatherer, what wonder if men believe you and become
undutiful to God in their citizenship? No, my friends, once for all, as
sure as God made Abraham a great nation, so if we English are a great
nation, God has made us so—as sure as God gave Abraham the land of Canaan
for his possession, so did _He_ give us this land of England, when He
brought our Saxon forefathers out of the wild barren north, and drove out
before them nations greater and mightier than they, and gave them great
and goodly cities which they builded not, and wells digged which they
digged not, farms and gardens which they planted not, that we too might
fear the Lord our God, and serve Him, and swear by His name;—as sure as
He commanded Abraham to respect the property of his neighbours, so has He
commanded us;—as sure as God taught Abraham that the nation which was to
grow from him owed a duty to God, and could be only strong by faith in
God, so it is with us: we, English people, owe a duty to God, and are to
deal among ourselves, and with foreign countries, by faith in God, and in
the fear of God, “seeking first the kingdom of God and His
righteousness,” sure that then all other things—victory, health,
commerce, art, and science—will be added to us, as the first Lesson says.
For this is your wisdom and understanding in the sight of the nations,
which shall say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding
people! For what nation is grown so great, that hath statutes and
judgments so righteous as these laws, this gospel, which God sets before
us day by day?—us, Englishmen!
And I say that these are proper thoughts for this place. This is not a
mere preaching-house, where you may learn every man to save his own soul;
this is a far nobler place; this building belongs to the National Church
of England, and we worship here, not merely as men, but as men of
England, citizens of a Christian country, come here to learn not merely
how to save ourselves, but how to help towards the saving of our
families, our parish, and our nation; and therefore we must know what a
country and a nation mean, and what is the meaning of that glorious and
divine word, “a citizen;” that by learning what it is to be a citizen of
England, we may go on to learn fully what it is to be a citizen of the
kingdom of God.
For this is part of the whole counsel of God, which He reveals in His
Holy Bible; and this also we must not, and dare not, shun declaring in
these days.
SERMON XIII.
ABRAHAM’S OBEDIENCE.
HEBREWS, xi. 17–19.
“By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac; and he that
had received the promises offered up his only-begotten son, of whom
it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called: accounting that
God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he
received him in a figure.”
IN this chapter we come to the crowning point of Abraham’s history, the
highest step and perfection of his faith; beyond which it seems as if
man’s trust in God could no further go.
You know, most of you, doubtless, that Isaac, Abraham’s son, was come to
him out of the common course of nature—when he and his wife, Sarah, were
of an age which seemed to make all chance of a family utterly hopeless.
You remember how God promised Abraham that this boy should be born to him
at a certain time, when He appeared to him on the plains of Mamre, in
that most solemn and deep-meaning vision of which I spoke to you last
Sunday. You remember, too, no doubt, most of you, how God had promised
Abraham again and again, that in his seed, his children, all the nations
of the earth should be blessed; so that all Abraham’s hopes were wrapped
up in this boy Isaac; he was his only son, whom he loved; he was the
child of his old age, his glory and his joy; he was the child of God’s
promises. Every time Abraham looked at him he felt that Isaac was a
wonderful child: that God had a great work for him to do; that from that
single boy a great nation was to spring, as many in multitude as the
stars in the sky, or the sand on the sea-shore, for the great Almighty
God had said it. And he knew, too, that from that boy, who was growing
up by him in his tent, all the nations in the earth should be blessed: so
that Isaac, his son, was to Abraham a daily sacrament, as I may say, a
sign and a pledge that God was with him, and would be true to him; that
as surely as God had wonderfully and beyond all hope given him that son,
so wonderfully and beyond all hope He would fulfil all His other
promises. Conceive, then, if you can, what Abraham’s astonishment, and
doubt, and terror, and misery, must have been at such a message as this
from the very God who had given Isaac to him: “And it came to pass after
these things that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and
he said, Behold, here I am. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only
son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and
offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I
will tell thee of.”
What a storm of doubt it must have raised in Abraham’s mind! How unable
he must have been to say whether that message came from a good or bad
spirit, or commanded him to do a good action or a bad one; that the same
God who had said, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be
shed;” who had forbidden murder as the very highest of crimes, should
command him to shed the blood of his own son; that the same God who had
promised him that in Isaac all the nations of the earth should be
blessed, should command him to put to death that very son upon whom all
his hopes depended! Fearful, indeed, must have been the struggle in
Abraham’s mind, but the good and the right thought conquered at last.
His feeling was, no doubt, ‘This God who has blessed me so long, who has
guided me so long, whom I have obeyed so long, shall I not trust Him a
little further yet? how can I believe that He will do wrong? how can I
believe that He will lead me wrong? If it is really wrong that I should
kill my son, He will not let me do it: if it really is His will that I
should kill my son, _I will do it_. Whatever He says must be right; it
is agony and misery to me, but what of that? Do I not owe Him a thousand
daily and hourly blessings? Has He not led me hither, preserved me,
guided me, taught me the knowledge of Himself,—chosen me to be the father
of a great nation? Do I not owe Him everything? and shall I not bear
this sharp sorrow for His sake? I know, too, that if Isaac dies, all my
hope, all my joy, will die with him; that I shall have nothing left to
look for, nothing left to work for in this world. Nothing! shall I not
have God left to me? When Isaac is dead will the Lord die? will the Lord
change? will He grow weak?—Never! Years ago did He declare to me that He
was the Almighty God; I will believe that He will be always Almighty; I
will believe that though I kill my son, my son will be still in God’s
hands, and I shall be still in God’s hands, and that God is able to raise
him again, even from the dead. God can give him back to me, and if He
will _not_ give him back to me, He can fulfil His promises in a thousand
other ways. Ay, and He will fulfil His promises, for in Him is neither
deceit, nor fickleness, nor weakness, nor unrighteousness of any kind;
and, come what will, I will believe His promise and I will obey His
will.’
Some such thoughts as these, I suppose, passed through Abraham’s mind.
He could not have had a man’s heart in him indeed, if not only those
thoughts, but ten thousand more, sadder, and stranger, and more pitiful
than my weak brain can imagine, did not sweep like a storm through his
soul at that last and terrible temptation, but the Bible tells us nothing
of them: why should the Bible tell us anything of them? the Bible sets
forth Abraham as the faithful man, and therefore it simply tells us of
his faith, without telling us of his doubts and struggles before he
settled down into faith. It tells us, as it were, not how often the wind
shifted and twisted about during the tempest, but in what quarter the
wind settled when the tempest was over, and it began to blow steadily,
and fixedly, and gently, and all was bright, and mild, and still in
Abraham’s bosom again, just as a man’s mind will be bright, and gentle,
and calm, even at the moment he is going to certain death or fearful
misery, if he does but know that his suffering is his duty, and that his
trial is his heavenly Father’s will: and so all we read in the
Old-Testament account is simply, “And Abraham rose up early in the
morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and
Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt-offering, and rose up,
and went unto the place of which God had told him. Then on the third day
Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off. And Abraham said
unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go
yonder and worship, and come again to you. And Abraham took the wood of
the burnt-offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son: and he took the fire
in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together. And Isaac
spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father, and he said, Here am
I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the
lamb for a burnt-offering? and Abraham said, My son, God will provide
Himself a lamb for a burnt-offering. So they went both of them together.
And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built
an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and
laid him on the altar upon the wood. And Abraham stretched forth his
hand, and took the knife to slay his son.”
Really if one is to consider the whole circumstances of Abraham’s trials,
they seem to have been infinite, more than mortal man could bear; more
than he could have borne, no doubt, if the same God who tried had not
rewarded his strength of mind by strengthening him still more, and
rewarded his faith by increasing his faith; when we consider the struggle
he must have had to keep the dreadful secret from the young man’s mother,
the tremendous effort of controlling himself, the long and frightful
journey, the necessity, and yet the difficulty he seems to have felt of
keeping the truth from his son, and yet of telling him the truth, which
he did in those wonderful words, “God shall provide Himself a lamb for a
burnt-offering” (on which I shall have occasion to speak presently); and,
last and worst of all, the perfect obedience and submission of his son;
for Isaac was not a child then, he was a young man of nearly thirty years
of age; strong and able enough, no doubt, to have resisted his aged
father, if he had chosen. But the very excellence of Isaac seems to have
been, that he did not resist, that he shewed the same perfect trust and
obedience to Abraham that Abraham did towards God; for he was led “as a
lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he
opened not his mouth,” for we read, “Abraham bound Isaac his son and laid
him on the wood.” Surely that was the bitterest pang of all, to see the
excellence of his son shine forth just when it was too late for him to
enjoy him—to find out what a perfect child he had, in simple trust and
utter obedience, just at the very moment when he was going to lose him:
“And Abraham stretched forth his hand and took the knife to slay his
son.”
At that point Abraham’s trial finished. He had shewn the completeness of
his faith by the completeness of his works, that is, by the completeness
of his obedience. He had utterly given up all for God. He had submitted
his will completely to God’s will. He had said in heart, as our Blessed
Lord said, “Father, if it be possible, let this woe pass from me,
nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt;” and thus I say, he was
justified by his works, by his actions; that is, by this faithful action
he proved the faithfulness of his heart, as the Angel said to him, “Now I
know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine
only son from me:” for as St. James says, “Was not Abraham our father
justified by works when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar?
Seest thou,” says he, “how his faith wrought with his works;” how his
works were the tool or instrument which his faith used; and by his works
his faith was brought to perfection, as a tree is brought to perfection
when it bears fruit. “And so,” St. James continues, “the scripture was
fulfilled, which says, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed to him
for righteousness; and he was called the friend of God. Ye see then,” he
says, “how that by works a man is justified,” or shewn to be righteous
and faithful, “and not by faith only;” that is, not by the mere feeling
of faith, for, as he says, “as the body without the spirit is dead, so
faith without works is dead also.” For what is the sign of a being dead?
It is its not being able to do anything, not being able to work; because
there is no living and moving spirit in it. And what is the sign of a
man’s faith being dead? his faith not being able to _work_, because there
is no living spirit in it, but it is a mere dead, empty shell and form of
words,—a mere notion and thought about believing in a man’s head, but not
a living trust and loyalty to God in his heart. Therefore, says St.
James, “shew me thy faith without thy works,” if thou canst, “and I will
shew thee my faith by my works,” as Abraham did by offering up Isaac his
son.
Oh! my friends, when people are talking about faith and works, and trying
to reconcile St. Paul and St. James, as they call it, because St. Paul
says Abraham was justified by faith, and St. James says Abraham was
justified by works, if they would but pray for the simple, childlike
heart, and the head of common sense, and look at their own children, who,
every time they go on a message for them, settle, without knowing it,
this mighty difference of man’s making between faith and works. You tell
a little child daily to do many things the meaning and use of which it
cannot understand; and the child has faith in what you tell it; and,
therefore, it does what you tell it, and so it shews its faith in you by
obedience in working for you.
But to go on with the verses: “And the angel of the Lord called unto
Abraham out of heaven the second time, and said, By myself have I sworn,
saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not
withheld thy son, thine only son: that in blessing I will bless thee, and
in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and
as the sand which is upon the sea-shore; and thy seed shall possess the
gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth
be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.”
Now, here remark two things; first, that it was Abraham’s obedience in
giving up all to God, which called forth from God this confirmation of
God’s promises to him; and next, that God here promised him nothing new;
God did not say to him, ‘Because thou hast obeyed me in this great
matter, I will give thee some great reward over and above what I promised
thee.’ No; God merely promises him over again, but more solemnly than
ever, what He had promised him many years before.
And so it will be with us, my friends, we must not expect to _buy_ God’s
favour by obeying Him,—we must not expect that the more we do for God,
the more God will be bound to do for us, as the Papists do. No; God has
done for us all that He will do. He has promised us all that He will
promise. He has provided us, as He provided Abraham, a lamb for the
burnt-offering, the Lamb without blemish and without spot, which taketh
away the sins of the world. We are His redeemed people—we _have_ a share
in His promises—He bids us believe _that_, and shew that we believe it by
living as redeemed men, not our own, but bought with a price, and created
anew in Christ Jesus to do good works; not that we may buy forgiveness by
them, but that we may shew by them that we believe that God _has_
forgiven us already, and that when we have done all that is commanded us,
we are still unprofitable servants; for though we should give up at God’s
bidding our children, our wives, and our own limbs and lives, and shew as
utter faith in God, and complete obedience to God, as Abraham did, we
should only have done just what it was already our duty to do.
SERMON XIV.
OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN.
1 JOHN, ii. 13.
“I write unto you, little children, because ye have known the
Father.”
I PREACHED some time ago a sermon on the whole of these most deep and
blessed verses of St. John.
I now wish to speak to those who are of age to be confirmed three
separate sermons on three separate parts of these verses. First to those
whom St. John calls little children; next, to those whom He calls grown
men. To the first I will speak to-day; to the latter, by God’s help,
next Sunday. And may the Blessed One bring home my weak words to all
your hearts!
Now for the meaning of “little children.” There are those who will tell
you that those words mean merely “weak believers,” “babes in grace,” and
so on. They mean that, no doubt; but they mean much more. They mean,
first of all, be sure, what they say. St. John would not have said
“little children,” if he had not meant little children. Surely God’s
apostle did not throw about his words at random, so as to leave them open
to mistakes, and want some one to step in and tell us that they do not
mean their plain, common-sense meaning, but something else. Holy
Scripture is too wisely written, and too awful a matter, to be trifled
with in that way, and cut and squared to suit our own fancies, and
explained away, till its blessed promises are made to mean anything or
nothing.
No! By little children, St. John means here children in age,—of course
_Christian_ children and young people, for he was writing only to
Christians. He speaks to those who have been christened, and brought up,
more or less, as christened children should be. But, no doubt, when he
says little children, he means also all Christian people, whether they be
young or old, whose souls are still young, and weak, and unlearned. All,
however old they may be, who have not been confirmed—I do not merely mean
confirmed by the bishop, but confirmed by God’s grace,—all those who have
not yet come to a full knowledge of their own sins,—all who have not yet
been converted, and turned to God with their whole hearts and wills, who
have not yet made their full choice between God and sin,—all who have not
yet fought for themselves the battle which no man or angel can fight for
them—I mean the battle between their selfishness and their duty—the
battle between their love of pleasure and their fear of sin—the battle,
in short, between the devil and his temptations to darkness and shame,
and God and His promises of light, and strength, and glory,—all who have
not been converted to God, to them St. John speaks as little
children—people who are not yet strong enough to stand alone, and do
their duty on God’s side against sin, the world, and the devil. And all
of you here who have not yet made up your minds, who have not yet been
confirmed in soul,—whether you were confirmed by the bishop or not,—to
you I speak this day.
Now, first of all, consider this,—that though St. John calls you “little
children,” because you are still weak, and your souls have not grown to
manhood, yet he does not speak to you as if you were heathens and knew
nothing about God; he says, “I have written unto you, little children,
because ye have known the Father.” Consider that; that was his reason
for all that he had written to them before; that they had known the
Father, the God who made heaven and earth—the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ—the Father of little children—my Father and your Father, my
friends, little as we may behave like what we are, sons of the Almighty
God. That was St. John’s reason for speaking to little children, because
they had already known the Father. So he does not speak to them as if
they were heathens; and I dare not speak to you, young people, as if you
were heathens, however foolish and sinful some of you may be; I dare not
do it, whatever many preachers may do nowadays; not because I should be
unfair and hard upon you merely, but because I should lie, and deny the
great grace and mercy which God has shewn you, and count the blood of the
covenant, with which you were sprinkled at baptism, an unholy thing; and
do despite to the spirit of grace which has been struggling in your
hearts, trying to lead you out of sin into good, out of light into
darkness, ever since you were born. Therefore, as St. John said, I say,
I preach this day to you, young people, because you have known your
Father in heaven!
But some of you may say to me, ‘You put a great honour on us; but we do
not see that we have any right to it. You tell us that we have a very
noble and awful knowledge—that we know the Father. We are afraid that we
do not know Him; we do not even rightly understand of whom or what you
preach.’
Well, my young friends, these are very awful words of St. John; such
blessed and wonderful words, that if we did not find them in the Bible,
it would be madness and insolence to God of us to say such a thing, not
merely of little children, but even of the greatest, and wisest, and
holiest man who ever lived; but there they are in the Bible—the blessed
Lord Himself has told us all, “When ye pray, say, Our Father in
heaven;”—and I dare not keep them back because they sound strange. They
may _sound_ strange, but they _are not_ strange. Any one who has ever
watched a young child’s heart, and seen how naturally and at once the
little innocent takes in the thought of his Father which is in heaven,
knows that it is not a strange thought—that it comes to a little child
almost by instinct—that his Father in heaven seems often to be just the
thought which fills his heart most completely, has most power over
him,—the thought which has been lying ready in his heart all the time,
only waiting for some one to awaken it, and put it into words for him;
that he will do right when you put him in mind of his Father above the
skies sooner than he will for a hundred punishments. For truly says the
poet,—
“Heaven lies about us in our infancy,
Not in complete forgetfulness,
Nor yet in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come,
From God who is our home!”
And yet more truly said the Blessed One Himself, “That children’s angels
always behold the face of our Father which is in heaven;” and that “of
such is the kingdom of heaven.” Yet you say, some of you, perhaps,
‘Whatever knowledge of our Father in heaven we had, or ought to have had,
when we were young, we have lost it now. We have forgotten what we
learnt at school. We have been what you would call sinful; at all
events, we have been thinking all our time about a great many things
beside religion, and they have quite put out of our head the thought that
God is our Father. So how have we known our Father in heaven?’
Well, then, to answer that,—consider the case of your earthly fathers,
the men who begot you and brought you up. Now there might be one of you
who had never seen his father since he was born, but all he knows of him
is, that his name is so and so, and that he is such and such a sort of
man, as the case might be; and that he lives in such and such a place,
far away, and that now and then he hears talk of his father, or receives
letters or presents from him. Suppose I asked that young man, Do you
know your father? would he not answer—would he not have a right to
answer, ‘Yes, I know him. I never saw him, or was acquainted with him,
but I know him well enough; I know who he is, and where to find him, and
what sort of a man he is.’ That young man might not know his father’s
face, or love him, or care for him at all. He might have been
disobedient to his father; he might have forgotten for years that he had
a father at all, and might have lived on his own way, just as if he had
no father. But when he was put in mind of it all, would he not say at
once, ‘Yes, I know my father well enough; his name is so and so, and he
lives at such and such a place. I know my father.’
Well, my young friends, and if this would be true of your fathers on
earth, it is just as true of your Father in heaven. You have never seen
Him—you may have forgotten Him—you may have disobeyed Him—you may have
lived on your own way, as if you had no Father in heaven; still you know
that you have a Father in heaven. You pray, surely, sometimes. What do
you say? “Our Father which art in heaven.” So you have a Father in
heaven, else what right have you to use those words,—what right have you
to say to God, “Our Father in heaven,” if you believe that you have no
Father there? That would be only blasphemy and mockery. I can well
understand that you have often said those words without thinking of
them—without thinking what a blessed, glorious, soul-saving meaning there
was in them; but I will not believe that you never once in your whole
lives said, “Our Father which art in heaven,” without believing them to
be true words. What I want is, for you _always_ to believe them to be
true. Oh young men and young women, boys and girls—believe those words,
believe that when you say, “Our Father which art in heaven,” you speak
God’s truth about yourselves; that the evil devil rages when he hears you
speak those words, because they are the words which prove that you do not
belong to him and to hell, but to God and the kingdom of heaven. Oh,
believe those words—behave as if you believed those words, and you shall
see what will come of them, through all eternity for ever.
Well, but you will ask, What has all this to do with confirmation? It
has all to do with confirmation. Because you are God’s children, and
know that you are God’s children, you are to go and confirm before the
bishop your right to be called God’s children. You are to go and claim
your share in God’s kingdom. If you were heir to an estate, you would go
and claim your estate from those who held it. You are heirs to an
estate—you are heirs to the kingdom of heaven; go to confirmation, and
claim that kingdom, say, ‘I am a citizen of God’s kingdom. Before the
bishop and the congregation, here I proclaim the honour which God has put
upon me.’ If you have a father, you will surely not be ashamed to own
him! How much more when the Almighty God of heaven is your Father! You
will not be ashamed to own Him? Then go to confirmation; for by doing so
you own God for your Father. If you have an earthly father, you will not
be ashamed to say, ‘I know I ought to honour him and obey him;’ how much
more when your father is the Almighty God of heaven, who sent His own Son
into the world to die for you, who is daily heaping you with blessings
body and soul! You will not be ashamed to confess that you ought to
honour and obey Him? Then go to confirmation, and say, ‘I here take upon
myself the vow and promise made for me at my baptism. I am God’s child,
and therefore I will honour, love, and obey Him. It is my duty; and it
shall be my delight henceforward to work for God, to do all the good I
can to my life’s end, because my Father in heaven loves the good, and has
commanded me, poor, weak countryman though I be, to work for Him in
well-doing.’ So I say, If God is your Father, go and own Him at
confirmation. If God is your Father, go and promise to love and obey Him
at confirmation; and see if He does not, like a strong and loving Father
as He is, confirm you in return,—see if He does not give you strength of
heart, and peace of mind, and clear, quiet, pure thoughts, such as a man
or woman ought to have who considers that the great God, who made the sky
and stars above their heads, is their Father. But, perhaps, there are
some of you, young people, who do not wish to be confirmed. And why?
Now, look honestly into your own hearts and see the reason. Is it not,
after all, because you don’t like the _trouble_? Because you are afraid
that being confirmed will force you to think seriously and be religious;
and you had rather not take all that trouble yet? Is it not because you
do not like to look your ownselves in the face, and see how foolishly you
have been living, and how many bad habits you will have to give up, and
what a thorough conversion and change you must make, if you are to be
confirmed in earnest? Is not this why you do not wish to be confirmed?
And what does that all come to? That though you know you are God’s
children, you do not like to tell people publicly that you are God’s
children, lest they should expect you to behave like God’s children—that
is it. Now, young men and young women, think seriously once for all—if
you have any common _sense_—I do not say grace, left in you—think! Are
you not playing a fearful game? You would not dare to deny your fathers
on earth—to refuse to obey them, because you know well enough that they
would punish you—that if you were too old for punishment, your
neighbours, at least, would despise you for mean, ungrateful, and
rebellious children! But because you cannot _see_ God your Father,
because you have not some sign or wonder hanging in the sky to frighten
you into good behaviour, therefore you are not afraid to turn your backs
on him. My friends, it is ill mocking the living God. Mark my words!
If a man will not turn He will whet His sword, and make us feel it. You
who can be confirmed, and know in your hearts that you ought to be
confirmed, and ought to be _really_ converted and confirmed in soul, and
make no mockery of it,—mark my words! If you will not be converted and
confirmed of your own good will, God, if He has any love left for you,
will convert and confirm you against your will. He will let you go your
own ways till you find out your own folly. He will bring you low with
affliction perhaps, with sickness, with ill-luck, with shame. Some way
or other, He will chastise you, again and again, till you are forced to
come back to Him, and take His service on you. If He loves you, He will
drive you home to your Father’s house. You may laugh at my words now,
see if you laugh at them when your hairs are grey. Oh, young people, if
you wish in after-life to save yourselves shame and sorrow, and perhaps,
in the world to come eternal death, come to confirmation, acknowledge God
for your Father, promise to come and serve Him faithfully, make those
blessed words of the Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father in heaven,” your glory
and your honour, your guide and guard through life, your title-deeds to
heaven. You who know that the Great God is your Father, will you be
ashamed to own yourselves His sons?
SERMON XV.
THE TRANSFIGURATION.
MARK, ix. 2.
“Jesus taketh Peter, and James, and John, and leadeth them up into a
high mountain apart, and was transfigured before them.”
THE second lesson for this morning service brings us to one of the most
wonderful passages in our blessed Saviour’s whole stay on earth, namely,
His transfiguration. The story, as told by the different Evangelists, is
this,—That our Lord took Peter, and John, and James his brother, and led
them up into a high mountain apart, which mountain may be seen to this
very day. It is a high peaked hill, standing apart from all the hills
around it, with a small smooth space of ground upon the top, very fit,
from its height and its loneliness, for a transaction like the
transfiguration, which our Lord wished no one but these three to behold.
There the apostles fell asleep; while our blessed Lord, who had deeper
thoughts in His heart than they had, knelt down and prayed to _His_
Father and _our_ Father, which is in heaven. And as He prayed, the form
of His countenance was changed, and His raiment became shining, white as
the light; and there appeared Moses and Elijah talking with Him. They
talked of matters which the angels desire to look into, of the greatest
matters that ever happened in this earth since it was made; of the
redemption of the world, and of the death which Christ was to undergo at
Jerusalem. And as they were talking, the apostles awoke, and found into
what glorious company they had fallen while they slept. What they felt
no mortal man can tell—that moment was worth to them all the years they
had lived before. When they had gone up with Jesus into the mount, He
was but the poor carpenter’s son, wonderful enough to _them_, no doubt,
with His wise, searching words, and His gentle, loving looks, that drew
to Him all men who had hearts left in them, and wonderful enough, too,
from all the mighty miracles which they had seen Him do, but still He was
merely a man like themselves, poor, and young, and homeless, who felt the
heat, and the cold, and the rough roads, as much as they did. They could
feel that He spake as never man spake—they could see that God’s spirit
and power was on Him as it had never been on any man in their time. God
had even enlightened their reason by His Spirit, to know that He was the
Christ, the Son of the living God. But still it does seem they did not
fully understand who and what He was; they could not understand how the
Son of God should come in the form of a despised and humble man; they did
not understand that His glory was to be a spiritual glory. They expected
His kingdom to be a kingdom of this world—they expected His glory to
consist in palaces, and armies, and riches, and jewels, and all the
magnificence with which Solomon and the old Jewish kings were adorned;
they thought that He was to conquer back again from the Roman emperor all
the inestimable treasures of which the Romans had robbed the Jews, and
that He was to make the Jewish nation, like the Roman, the conquerors and
masters of all the nations of the earth. So that it was a puzzling thing
to their minds why He should be King of the Jews at the very time that He
was but a poor tradesman’s son, living on charity. It was to shew them
that His kingdom was the kingdom of heaven that He was transfigured
before them.
They saw His glory—the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full
of grace and truth. The form of His countenance was changed; all the
majesty, and courage, and wisdom, and love, and resignation, and pity,
that lay in His noble heart, shone out through His face, while He spoke
of His death which He should accomplish at Jerusalem—the Holy Ghost that
was upon Him, the spirit of wisdom, and love, and beauty—the spirit which
produces every thing that is lovely in heaven and earth: in soul and
body, blazed out through His eyes, and all His glorious countenance, and
made Him look like what He was—a God. My friends, what a sight! Would
it not be worth while to journey thousands of miles—to go through all
difficulties, dangers, that man ever heard of, for one sight of that
glorious face, that we might fall down upon our knees before it, and, if
it were but for a moment, give way to the delight of finding something
that we could utterly love and utterly adore? I say, the delight of
finding something to worship; for if there is a noble, if there is a
holy, if there is a spiritual feeling in man, it is the feeling which
bows him down before those who are greater, and wiser, and holier than
himself. I say, that feeling of respect for what is noble is a heavenly
feeling. The man who has lost it—the man who feels no respect for those
who are above him in age, above him in knowledge, above him in wisdom,
above him in goodness,—_that_ man shall in no wise enter into the kingdom
of heaven. It is only the man who is like a little child, and feels the
delight of having some one to look up to, who will ever feel delight in
looking up to Jesus Christ, who is the Lord of lords and King of kings.
It was the want of respect, it was the dislike of feeling any one
superior to himself, which made the devil rebel against God, and fall
from heaven. It will be the feeling of complete respect—the feeling of
kneeling at the feet of one who is immeasurably superior to ourselves in
every thing, that will make up the greatest happiness of heaven. This is
a hard saying, and no man can understand it, save he to whom it is given
by the Spirit of God.
That the apostles _had_ this feeling of immeasurable respect for Christ
there is no doubt, else they would never have been apostles. But they
felt more than this. There were other wonders in that glorious vision
besides the countenance of our Lord. His raiment, too, was changed, and
became all brilliant, white as the light itself. Was not _that_ a lesson
to them? Was it not as if our Lord had said to them, ‘I am a king, and
have put on glorious apparel, but whence does the glory of my raiment
come? _I_ have no need of fine linen, and purple, and embroidery, the
work of men’s hands; _I_ have no need to send my subjects to mines and
caves to dig gold and jewels to adorn my crown: the earth is mine and the
fulness thereof. All this glorious earth, with its trees and its
flowers, its sunbeams and its storms, is _mine_. _I_ made it—_I_ can do
what I will with it. All the mysterious laws by which the light and the
heat flow out for ever from God’s throne, to lighten the sun, and the
moon, and the stars of heaven—they are mine. _I_ am the light of the
world—the light of men’s bodies as well of their souls; and here is my
proof of it. Look at Me. I am He that “decketh Himself with light as it
were with a garment, who layeth the beams of His chambers in the waters,
and walketh upon the wings of the wind.” This was the message which
Christ’s glory brought the apostles—a message which they could never
forget. The spiritual glory of His countenance had shewn them that He
was a spiritual king—that His strength lay in the spirit of power, and
wisdom, and beauty, and love, which God had given Him without measure;
and it shewed them, too, that there was such a thing as a spiritual body,
such a body as each of us some day shall have if we be found in Christ at
the resurrection of the just—a body which shall not hide a man’s spirit,
when it becomes subject to the wear and tear of life, and disease, and
decay; but a spiritual body—a body which shall be filled with our
spirits, which shall be perfectly obedient to our spirits—a body through
which the glory of our spirits shall shine out, as the glory of Christ’s
spirit shone out through His body at the transfiguration. “Brethren, we
know not yet what we shall be, but this we do know, that when He shall
appear, we shall be _like Him_, for we shall see Him as He is.” (1 John,
iii. 3.)
Thus our Lord taught them by His appearance that there is such a thing as
a spiritual body, while, by the glory of His raiment, in addition to His
other miracles, He taught them that He had power over the laws of nature,
and could, in His own good time, “change the bodies of their humiliation,
that they might be made like unto His glorious body, according to the
mighty working by which He is able to subdue all things to Himself.”
But there was yet another lesson which the apostles learnt from the
transfiguration of our Lord. They beheld Moses and Elijah talking with
Him:—Moses the great lawgiver of their nation, Elijah the chief of all
the Jewish prophets. We must consider this a little to find out the
whole depth of its meaning. You remember how Christ had spoken of
Himself as having come, not to destroy the Law and the Prophets, but to
fulfil them. You remember, too, how He had always said that He was the
person of whom the Law and the Prophets had spoken.
Here was an actual sign and witness that His words were true—here was
Moses, the giver of the Law, and Elijah, the chief of the Prophets,
talking with Him, bearing witness to Him in their own persons, and
shewing, too, that it was His death and His perfect sacrifice that they
had been shadowing forth in the sacrifices of the law and in the dark
speeches of prophecy. For they talked with Him of His death, which He
was to accomplish at Jerusalem. What more perfect testimony could the
apostles have had to shew them that Jesus of Nazareth, their Master, was
He of whom the Law and the Prophets spoke—that He was indeed the Christ
for whom Moses and Elijah, and all the saints of old, had looked; and
that He was come not to destroy the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfil
them? We can hardly understand the awe and the delight with which the
disciples must have beheld those blessed Three—Moses, and Elias, and
Jesus Christ, their Lord, talking together before their very eyes. For
of all men in the world, Moses and Elias were to them the greatest. All
true-hearted Israelites, who knew the history of their nation, and
understood the promises of God, must have felt that Moses and Elias were
the two greatest heroes and saviours of their nation, whom God had ever
yet raised up. And the joy and the honour of thus seeing them face to
face, the very men whom they had loved and reverenced in their thoughts,
whom they had heard and read of from their childhood, as the greatest
ornaments and glories of their nation—the joy and the honour, I say, of
that unexpected sight, added to the wonderful majesty which was suddenly
revealed to their transfigured Lord, seemed to have been too much for
them—they knew not what to say. Such company seemed to them for the
moment heaven enough; and St. Peter first finding words exclaimed, “Lord,
it is good for us to be here. If thou wilt let us build three
tabernacles, one for Thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias.” Not, I
fancy, that they intended to worship Moses and Elias, but that they felt
that Moses and Elias, as well as Christ, had each a divine message, which
must be listened to; and therefore, they wished that each of them might
have his own tabernacle, and dwell among men, and each teach his own
particular doctrine and wisdom in his own school. It may seem strange
that they should put Moses and Elias so on an equality with Christ, but
the truth was, that as yet they understood Moses and Elias better than
they did Christ. They had heard and read of Moses and Elijah all their
lives—they were acquainted with all their actions and words—they knew
thoroughly what great and noble men the Spirit of God had made them, but
they did _not_ understand Christ in like manner. They did not yet _feel_
that God had given Him the Spirit without measure—they did not understand
that He was not only to be a lawgiver and a prophet, but a sacrifice for
sin, the conqueror of death and hell, who was to lead captivity captive,
and receive inestimable gifts for men. Much less did they think that
Moses and Elijah were but His servants—that all _their_ spirit and
_their_ power had been given by Him. But this also they were taught a
moment afterwards; for a bright cloud overshadowed them, hiding from them
the glory of God the Father, whom no man hath seen or can see, who dwells
in the light which no man can approach unto; and out of that cloud, a
voice saying, “This is my beloved Son; hear ye Him;” and then, hiding
their faces in fear and wonder, they fell to the ground; and when they
looked up, the vision and the voice had alike passed away, and they saw
no man but Christ alone. Was not that enough for them? Must not the
meaning of the vision have been plain to them? They surely understood
from it that Moses and Elijah were, as they had ever believed them to be,
great and good, true messengers of the living God; but that their message
and their work was done—that Christ, whom they had looked for, was
come—that all the types of the law were realised, and all the prophecies
fulfilled, and that henceforward Christ, and Christ alone, was to be
their Prophet and their Lawgiver. Was not this plainly the meaning of
the Divine voice? For when they wished to build three tabernacles, and
to honour Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets, as separate from
Christ—that moment the heavenly voice warned them: ‘_This—this_ is my
beloved Son—hear ye _Him_, and Him only, henceforward.’ And Moses and
Elijah, their work being done, forthwith vanished away, leaving Christ
alone to fulfil the Law and the prophets, and all other wisdom and
righteousness that ever was or shall be. This is another lesson which
Christ’s transfiguration was meant to teach and us, that Christ alone is
to be henceforward our guide; that no philosophies or doctrines of any
sort which are not founded on a true faith in Jesus Christ, and His life
and death, are worth listening to; that God has manifested forth His
beloved Son, and that Him, and Him only, we are to hear. I do not mean
to say that Christ came into the world to put down human learning. I do
not mean that we are to despise human learning, as so many are apt to do
nowadays; for Christ came into the world not to destroy human learning,
but to fulfil it—to sanctify it—to make human learning true, and strong,
and useful, by giving it a sure foundation to stand upon, which is the
belief and knowledge of His blessed self. Just as Christ came not to
destroy the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfil them—to give them a
spirit and a depth in men’s eyes which they never had before—just so, He
came to fulfil all true philosophies, all the deep thoughts which men had
ever thought about this wonderful world and their own souls, by giving
_them_ a spirit and a depth which _they_ never had before. Therefore let
no man tempt you to despise learning, for it is holy to the Lord.
There is one more lesson which we may learn from our Lord’s
transfiguration; when St. Peter said, “_Lord_! it is good for us to be
here,” he spoke a truth. It _was_ good for him to be there;
nevertheless, Christ did not listen to his prayer. He and his two
companions were not allowed to _stay_ in that glorious company. And why?
Because they had a work to do. They had glad tidings of great joy to
proclaim to every creature, and it was, after all, but a selfish prayer,
to wish to be allowed to stay in ease and glory on the mount while the
whole world was struggling in sin and wickedness below them: for there is
no meaning in a man’s calling himself a Christian, or saying that he
loves God, unless he is ready to hate what God hates, and to fight
against that which Christ fought against, that is, sin. No one has any
right to call himself a servant of God, who is not trying to do away with
some of the evil in the world around him. And, therefore, Christ was
merciful, when, instead of listening to St. Peter’s prayer, He led the
apostles down again from the mount, and sent them forth, as He did
afterwards, to preach the Gospel of the kingdom to all nations. For
Christ put a higher honour on St. Peter by that than if He had let him
stay on the mount all his life, to behold His glory, and worship and
adore. And He made St. Peter more like Himself by doing so. For what
was Christ’s life? Not one of deep speculations, quiet thoughts, and
bright visions, such as St. Peter wished to lead; but a life of fighting
against evil; earnest, awful prayers and struggles within, continual
labour of body and mind without, insult and danger, and confusion, and
violent exertion, and bitter sorrow. This was Christ’s life—this is the
life of almost every good man I ever heard of;—this was St. Peter, and
St. James, and St. John’s life afterwards. This was Christ’s cup, which
they were to drink of as well as He;—this was the baptism of fire with
which they were to be baptised of as well as He;—this was to be their
fight of faith;—this was the tribulation through which they, like all
other great saints, were to enter into the kingdom of heaven; for it is
certain that the harder a man fights against evil, the harder evil will
fight against him in return: but it is certain, too, that the harder a
man fights against evil, the more he is like his Saviour Christ, and the
more glorious will be his reward in heaven. It is certain, too, that
what was good for St. Peter is good for us. It is good for a man to have
holy and quiet thoughts, and at moments to see into the very deepest
meaning of God’s word and God’s earth, and to have, as it were, heaven
opened before his eyes; and it is good for a man sometimes actually to
_feel_ his heart overpowered with the glorious majesty of God, and to
_feel_ it gushing out with love to his blessed Saviour: but it is not
good for him to stop there, any more than it was for the apostles; they
had to leave that glorious vision and come down from the mount, and do
Christ’s work; and _so have we_; for, believe me, one word of warning
spoken to keep a little child out of sin,—one crust of bread given to a
beggar-man, because he is your brother, for whom Christ died,—one angry
word checked, when it is on your lips, for the sake of Him who was meek
and lowly in heart; in short, any, the smallest endeavour of this kind to
lessen the quantity of evil, which is in yourselves, and in those around
you, is worth all the speculations, and raptures, and visions, and
frames, and feelings in the world; for those are the good _fruits_ of
faith, whereby alone the tree shall be known whether it be good or evil.
SERMON XVI.
THE CRUCIFIXION.
ISAIAH, liii. 7.
“He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter.”
ON this day, my friends, was offered up upon the cross the Lamb of
God,—slain in eternity and heaven before the foundation of the world, but
slain in time and space upon this day. All the old sacrifices, the lambs
which were daily offered up to God in the Jewish Temple, the lambs which
Abel, and after him the patriarchs offered up, the Paschal Lamb slain at
the Passover, our Eastertide, all these were but figures of Christ—tokens
of the awful and yet loving law of God, that without shedding of blood
there is no remission of sin. But the blood of dumb animals could not
take away sin. All mankind had sinned, and it was, therefore, necessary
that all mankind should suffer. Therefore He suffered, the new Adam, the
Man of all men, in whom all mankind were, as it were, collected into one
and put on a new footing with God; that henceforward to be a man might
mean to be a holy being, a forgiven being, a being joined to God, wearing
the likeness of the Son of God—the human soul and body in which He
offered up all human souls and bodies on the cross. For man was
originally made in Christ’s likeness; He was the Word of God who walked
in the garden of Eden, who spoke to Adam with a human voice; He was the
Lord who appeared to the patriarchs in a man’s figure, and ate and drank
in Abraham’s tent, and spoke to him with a human voice; He was the God of
Israel, whom the Jewish elders saw with their bodily eyes upon Mount
Sinai, and under His feet a pavement as of a sapphire stone. From Him
all man’s powers came—man’s speech, man’s understanding. All that is
truly noble in man was a dim pattern of Him in whose likeness man was
originally made. And when man had fallen and sinned, and Christ’s image
was fading more and more out of him, and the likeness of the brutes
growing more and more in him year by year, then came Christ, the head and
the original pattern of all men, to claim them for His own again, to do
in their name what they could never do for themselves, to offer Himself
up a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world: so that He is the real
sacrifice, the real lamb; as St. John said when he pointed Him out to his
disciples, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the
world!”
Oh, think of that strong and patient Lamb, who on this day shewed Himself
perfect in fortitude and nobleness, perfect in meekness and resignation.
Think of Him who, in His utter love to us, endured the cross, despising
the shame. And what a cross! Truly said the prophet, “His visage was
marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men:” in
hunger and thirst, in tears and sighs, bruised and bleeding, His forehead
crowned with thorns, His sides torn with scourges, His hands and feet
gored with nails, His limbs stretched from their sockets, naked upon the
shameful cross, the Son of God hung, lingering slowly towards the last
gasp, in the death of the felon and the slave! The most shameful sight
that this earth ever saw, and yet the most glorious sight. The most
shameful sight, at which the sun in heaven veiled his face, as if
ashamed, and the skies grew black, as if to hide those bleeding limbs
from the foul eyes of men; and yet the noblest sight, for in that death
upon the cross shone out the utter fullness of all holiness, the utter
fullness of all fortitude, the utter fullness of that self-sacrificing
love, which had said, “The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which
was lost;” the utter fullness of obedient patience, which could say,
“Father, not My will but Thine be done;” the utter fullness of generous
forgiveness, which could pray, “Father, forgive them, for they know not
what they do;” the utter fullness of noble fortitude and endurance, which
could say at the very moment when a fearful death stared Him in the face,
“Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to the Father, and He will send me
at once more than twelve armies of angels? But how then would the
Scriptures be fulfilled that thus it must be?”
Oh, my friends, look to Him, the author and perfecter of all faith, all
trust, all loyal daring for the sake of duty and of God! Look at His
patience. See how He endured the cross, despising the shame. See how He
endured—how patience had her perfect work in Him—how in all things He was
more than conqueror. What gentleness, what calmness, what silence, what
infinite depths of Divine love within Him! A heart which neither shame,
nor torture, nor insult, could stir from its Godlike resolution. When
looking down from that cross He beheld none almost but enemies, heard no
word but mockery; when those who passed by reviled Him, wagging their
heads and saying, “He saved others, Himself He cannot save;” His only
answer was a prayer for forgiveness for that besotted mob who were
yelling beneath Him like hounds about their game. Consider Him, and then
consider ourselves, ruffled and put out of temper by the slightest cross
accident, the slightest harsh word, too often by the slightest pain—not
to mention insults, for we pride ourselves in not bearing them. Try, my
friends, if you can, even in the dimmest way, fancy yourselves for one
instant in His place this day 1815 years. Fancy yourselves hanging on
that cross—fancy that mocking mob below—fancy—but I dare not go on with
the picture. Only think—think what would have been _your_ temper there,
and then you may get some slight notion of the boundless love and the
boundless endurance of the Saviour whom _we_ love so little, for whose
sake most of us will not endure the trouble of giving up a single sin.
And then consider that it was all of His own free will; that at any
moment, even while He was hanging upon the cross, He might have called to
earth and sun, to heaven and to hell, “Stop! thus far, but no further,”
and they would have obeyed Him; and all that cross, and agony, and the
fierce faces of those furious Jews, would have vanished away like a
hideous dream when one awakes. For they lied in their mockery. Any
moment He might have been free, triumphant, again in His eternal bliss,
but He would not. He Himself kept Himself on that cross till His
Father’s will was fulfilled, and the sacrifice was finished, and we were
saved. And then at last, when there was no more human nobleness, no more
agony left for Him to fulfil, no gem in the crown of holiness which He
had not won as His own, no drop in the cup of misery which He had not
drained as His own; when at last He was made perfect through suffering,
and His strength had been made perfect in weakness, then He bowed that
bleeding, thorn-crowned head, and said, “It is finished. Father, into
Thy hands I commend my spirit.” And so He died.
How can our poor words, our poor deeds, thank Him? How mean and paltry
our deepest gratitude, our highest loyalty, when compared with Him to
whom it is due—that adorable victim, that perfect sin-offering, who this
day offered up Himself upon the altar of the cross, in the fire of His
own boundless zeal for the kingdom of God, His Father, and of His
boundless love for us, His sinful brothers! “Oh, thou blessed Jesus!
Saviour, agonising for us! God Almighty, who did make Thyself weak for
the love of us! oh, write that love upon our hearts so deeply that
neither pleasure nor sorrow, life nor death, may wipe it away! Thou hast
sacrificed Thyself for us, oh, give us the hearts to sacrifice ourselves
for Thee! Thou art the Vine, we are the branches. Let Thy priceless
blood shed for us on this day flow like life-giving sap through all our
hearts and minds, and fill us with Thy righteousness, that we may be
sacrifices fit for Thee. Stir us up to offer to Thee, O Lord, our
bodies, our souls, our spirits, in all we love and all we learn, in all
we plan and all we do, to offer our labours, our pleasures, our sorrows,
to Thee; to work for Thy kingdom through them, to live as those who are
not their own, but bought with Thy blood, fed with Thy body; and enable
us now, in Thy most holy Sacrament, to offer to Thee our repentance, our
faith, our prayers, our praises, living, reasonable, and spiritual
sacrifices,—Thine from our birth-hour, Thine now, and Thine for ever!”
SERMON XVII.
THE RESURRECTION.
LUKE, xxiv. 6.
“He is not here—He is risen.”
WE are assembled here to-day, my friends, to celebrate the joyful memory
of our blessed Saviour’s Resurrection. All Friday night, Saturday, and
Saturday night, His body lay in the grave; His soul was—where we cannot
tell. St. Peter tells us that He went and preached to the spirits in
prison—the sinners of the old world, who are kept in the place of
departed souls—most likely in the depths of the earth, in the great
fire-kingdom, which boils and flames miles below our feet, and breaks out
here and there through the earth’s solid crust in burning mountains and
streams of fire. There some say—and the Bible seems to say—sinful souls
are kept in chains until the judgment-day; and thither they say Christ
went to preach—no doubt to save some of those sinful souls who had never
heard of Him. However this may be, for those two nights and day there
was no sign, no stir in the grave where Christ was laid. His body seemed
dead—the stone lay still over the mouth of the tomb where Joseph and
Nicodemus laid him; the seal which Pilate had put on it was unbroken; the
soldiers watched and watched, but no one stirred; the priests and
Pharisees were keeping their sham Passover, thinking, no doubt, that they
were well rid of Christ and of His rebukes for ever.
But early on the Sunday morn—this day, as it might be—in the grey dawn of
morning there came a change—a wondrous change. There was a great
earthquake; the solid ground and rocks were stirred—the angel of the Lord
came down from heaven, and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat
upon it, waiting for the King of glory to arise from His slumber, and go
forth the conqueror of Death.
His countenance was like lightning, and His raiment white as snow; and
for fear of Him those fierce, hard soldiers, who feared neither God nor
man, shook, and became as dead men. And Christ arose and went forth.
How he rose—how he looked when he arose, no man can tell, for no man saw.
Only before the sun was risen came Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary,
and found the stone rolled away, and saw the angels sitting, clothed in
white, who said, “Fear not, for I know that ye seek Jesus, who was
crucified. He is not here, for He is risen. Come, see the place where
the Lord lay.”
What must they have thought, poor, faithful souls, who came, lonely and
broken-hearted, to see the place where _He_, their only hope, was, as
they thought, shut up and lost for ever, to hear that He was risen and
gone? Half terrified, half delighted, they went back with other women
who had come on the same errand, with spices to anoint the blessed body,
and told the apostles. Peter and John ran to the sepulchre, and saw the
linen clothes lie, and the napkin that was about his blessed head,
wrapped together by itself. They then believed. Then first broke on
them the meaning of His old saying, that He must rise from the dead; and
so, wondering and doubting what to do, they went back home.
But Mary—faithful, humble Mary—stood without, by the sepulchre, weeping.
The angels called to her, “Woman, why weepest thou?” “They have taken
away my Lord,” said she; “and I know not where they have laid him.”
Then, in a moment, out of the air, He appeared behind her. His body had
been changed; it was now a glorified, spiritual body, which could appear
and disappear when and how he liked. She turned back, and saw Him
standing, but she knew Him not. A wondrous change had come over Him
since last she saw Him hanging, bleeding, pale, and dying, on the cross
of shame. “Woman,” said He, “why weepest thou?” She, fancying it was
the gardener, said to Him, “Sir, if thou hast borne Him hence, tell me
where thou hast laid Him, and I will take Him away.” Jesus said to her,
“Mary.” At the sound of that beloved voice—His own voice—calling by her
name, her recollection came back to her. She knew Him—knew Him for her
risen Lord; and, falling at His feet, cried out, “My Master!”
So Jesus Christ, the Son of God, rose from the dead!
Now come the questions, _Why_ did Christ rise from the dead?—and _how_
did he rise? And, first, I will say a few words about how he rose from
the dead. And this the Bible will answer for us, as it will every thing
else about the spirit-world. Christ, says the Bible, was put to death in
the flesh; but quickened, that is, brought to life, by the Spirit. Now
what is the Spirit but the Lord and Giver of Life,—life of all sorts—life
to the soul—life to the body—life to the trees and plants around us?
With that Spirit Christ is filled infinitely without measure; it is _His_
Spirit. He is the Prince of Life; and the Spirit which gives life is His
Spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son. _Therefore_ the gates of
hell could not prevail against Him—_therefore_ the heavy grave-stone
could not hold Him down—_therefore_ His flesh could not see corruption
and decay as other bodies do; not because His body was different from
other bodies in its substance, but because _He_ was filled, body and
soul, with the great Spirit of Life. For this is the great business of
the Spirit of God, in all nature, to bring life out of death—new
generations out of old. What says David? “When Thou, O God, turnest
away Thy face, things die and return again to the dust; when Thou lettest
Thy breath (which is the same as Thy spirit) go forth, they are made, and
Thou renewest the face of the earth.” This is the way that seeds,
instead of rotting and perishing, spring up and become new plants—God
breathes His spirit on them. The seeds must have heat, and damp, and
darkness, and electricity, before they can sprout; but the heat, and
damp, and darkness, do not make them sprout; they want something more to
do that. A philosopher can find out exactly what a seed is made of, and
he might make a seed of the proper materials, and put it in the ground,
and electrify it—but would it grow? Not it. To grow it must have
life—life from the fountain of life—from God’s Spirit. All the
philosophers in the world have never yet been able, among all the things
which they have made, to make a single living thing—and say they never
shall; because, put together all they will, still one thing is
wanting—_life_, which God alone can give. Why do I say this? To shew
you what God’s Spirit is; to put you in mind that it is near you, above
you, and beneath you, about your path in your daily walk. And also, to
explain to you how Christ rose by that Spirit,—how your bodies, if you
claim your share in Christ’s Spirit, may rise by it too.
You can see now, how Christ, being filled with God’s Spirit, rose of
Himself. People had risen from the dead before Christ’s time, but they
had been either raised in answer to the prayers of holy men who had God’s
Spirit, or at some peculiar time when heaven was opened, and God chose to
alter His laws (as we call it) for a moment.
But here was a Man who rose of Himself. He was raised by God, and
therefore He raised Himself, for He was God.
You all know what life and power a man’s own spirit will often give him.
You may have heard of “spirited” men in great danger, or “spirited”
soldiers in battle; when faint, wounded, having suffered enough,
apparently, to kill them twice over, still struggling or fighting on, and
doing the most desperate deeds to the last, from the strength and courage
of their spirits conquering pain and weakness, and keeping off, for a
time, death itself. We all know how madmen, diseased in their spirits,
will, when the fit is on them, have, for a few minutes, ten men’s
strength. Well, just think, if a man’s own spirit, when it is powerful,
can give his body such life and force, what must it have been with
Christ, who was filled full of _the_ Spirit—God’s Spirit, the Lord and
Giver of life. The Lord could not _help_ rising. All the disease, and
poison, and rottenness in the world, could not have made His body decay;
mountains on mountains could not have kept it down. His body!—the Prince
of Life!—He that was the life itself! It was impossible that death could
hold Him.
And does not this shew us _why_ He rose, that we might rise with Him?
What did He say about His own death? “Except a corn of wheat fall into
the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die it bringeth forth
much fruit.” He was the grain which fell into the ground and died, and
from His dead body sprung up another body—His glorified body; and we His
Church, His people, fed with that body—His members, however strange it
may sound—St. Paul said it, and therefore I dare to say it, little as I
know what it means—members of His flesh and of His bones.
But think! Remember what St. Paul tells you about this very matter in
that glorious chapter which is read in the burial-service, “how when thou
sowest seed, thou sowest not that body which it will have, but bare
grain; but God gives it a body as it hath pleased Him, and to every seed
its own body.” For the wheat-plant is in reality the same thing as the
wheat-seed, and its life the same life, different as the outside of it
may look. Dig it up just at this time of year, and you will find the
seed-corn all gone, sucked dry; the life of the wheat-seed has formed it
into a wheat-plant—yet it is the same individual thing. The substance of
the seed has gone into the root and the young blade; but it is the same
individual substance. You know it is, and though you cannot tell why,
yet you say “What a fine plant that seed has grown into,” because you
feel it is so, that the seed is the very same thing as the plant which
springs up from it, though its shape is changed, and its size, and its
colour, and the very stuff of which it was made is changed, since it was
a mere seed. And yet it is at bottom the same individual thing as the
seed was, with a new body and shape.
So with Christ’s body. It was changed after He rose. It had gone
through pain, and weakness, and death, gone down to the lowest depth of
them, and conquered them, and passed triumphant through them and far
beyond their power. His body was now a nobler, a more beautiful, a
glorified body, a spiritual body, one which could do whatever His Spirit
chose to make it do, one which could never die again, one which could
come through closed doors, appear and vanish as He liked, instead of
being bound to walk the earth, and stand cold and heat, sickness and
weariness.
Yet it was the very same body, just as the wheat-plant is the same as the
wheat-seed—the very same body. Every one knew His face again after His
resurrection. There was the very print of the nails to be seen in His
hands and feet, the spear-wound in His blessed side. So shall it be with
us, my friends. We shall rise again, and we shall be the same as we are
now, and yet not the same; our bodies shall be the same bodies, and yet
nobler, purer, spiritual bodies, which can know neither death, nor pain,
nor weariness. Then, never care, my friends, if we drop like ripe grain
into the bosom of mother earth,—if we are to spring up again as seedling
plants, after death’s long winter, on the resurrection morn. Truly says
the poet, {187} how
“Mother earth, she gathers all
Into her bosom, great and small:
Oh could we look into her face,
We should not shrink from her embrace.”
No, indeed! for if we look steadily with the wise, searching eye of faith
into the face of mother earth, we shall see how death is but the gate of
life, and this narrow churchyard, with its corpses close-packed
underneath the sod, would not seem to us a frightful charnel-house of
corruption. No! it would seem like what it is—a blessed, quiet,
seed-filled God’s garden, in which our forefathers, after their long-life
labour, lay sown by God’s friendly hand, waiting peaceful, one and all,
to spring up into leaf, and flower, and everlasting paradise-fruit,
beneath the breath of God’s Spirit at the last great day, when the Sun of
Righteousness arises in glory, and the summer begins which shall never
end.
One and all, did I say? Alas! would God it were so! We cannot hope as
for all, but they are dead and gone, and we are not here to judge the
dead. They have another Judge, and all shall be as He wills.
But we—we in whose limbs the breath of life still boils—we who can still
work, let us never forget all grain ripens not. There is some falls out
of the ear unripe, and perishes; some is picked out by birds; some
withers and decays in the ear, and yet gets into the barn with it, and is
sown too with the wheat, of which I never heard that any sprang up
again—ploughed up again it may be—a withered, dead husk of chaff as it
died, ploughed up to the resurrection of damnation to burn as chaff in
unquenchable fire; but the good seed alone, ripe, and safe with the
wheat-plant till it is ripe, that only will _spring up_ to the
resurrection of eternal life.
Now, consider again that parable of the wheat-plant. After it has sprung
up, what does it next, but _tiller_?—and every new shoot that tillers out
bears its own ear, ripens its own grain, twenty, thirty, or forty stems,
and yet they are all the same plant, living with the life of that one
original seed. So with Christ’s Church—His body the Church. As soon as
he rose, that new plant began to tiller. He did not keep His Spirit to
Himself, but poured it out on the apostles, and from them it spread and
spread—Each generation of Christians ripening, and bearing fruit, and
dying, a fresh generation of fruit springing up from them, and so on, as
we are now at this day. And yet all these plants, these millions and
millions of Christian men and women, who have lived since Christ’s
blessed resurrection, all are parts of that one original seed, the body
of Christ, whose members they are, and all owe their life to that one
spirit of Christ, which is in them all and through them all, as the life
of the original grain is in the whole crop which springs from it.
And what can you learn from this? Learn this, that in Christ you are
safe, out of Christ you are lost. But _really_ in Christ, I mean—not
like the dead and dying grains, mildewed and worm-eaten, which you find
here and there on the finest wheat-plant. Their end is to be burned, and
so will ours be, for all our springing out of Christ’s root, if the angel
reapers find us not good wheat, but chaff and mildew. Every branch in
Christ which beareth not fruit, His heavenly Father taketh away.
Therefore, never pride yourself on having been baptised into Christ,
never pride yourself on shewing some signs of God’s Spirit, on being
really good, right in this and right in that,—the question is, not so
much, Are you _in Christ_ at all, are you part of His tree, a member of
His body? but, Are you ripening there? If you are not ripening, you are
decaying, and your end will be as God has said. And do you wish to know
whether you are in Christ, safe, ripening? see whether you are like Him.
If the young grain does not shew like the seed grain, you may be sure it
is making no progress; and as surely as a wheat-plant never brought forth
rye, or a grape-tree thistles, so surely, if you are not like Christ in
your character, in patience, in meekness, in courage, truth, purity,
piety, and love, you may be of His planting, but you are none of His
ripening, and you will not be raised with Him at the last day, to flower
anew in the gardens of Paradise, world without end.
SERMON XVIII.
IMPROVEMENT.
PSALM xcii. 12.
“The righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree: he shall grow like
the cedar in Lebanon. Those that be planted in the house of the Lord
shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bring
forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing.”
THE Bible is always telling Christian people to _go forwards_—to grow—to
become wiser and stronger, better and better day by day; that they ought
to become better, and better, because they can, if they choose, improve.
This text tells us so; it says that we shall bring forth more fruit in
our old age. Another text tells us that “those who wait on the Lord
shall renew their strength;” another tells us that we “shall go from
strength to strength.” Not one of St. Paul’s Epistles but talks of
growing in grace and in the knowledge of God, of being _filled_ with
God’s Spirit, of having our eyes more and more open to understand God’s
truth. Not one of St. Paul’s Epistles but contains prayers of St. Paul
that the men to whom he writes may become holier and wiser. And St. Paul
says that he himself needed to go forward—that he wanted fresh
strength—that he had to forget what was past, and consider all he had
done and felt as nothing, and press forward to the prize of his high
calling; that he needed to be daily conquering himself more and more,
keeping down his bad feelings, hunting out one bad habit after another,
lest, by any means, when he had preached to others, he himself should
become a castaway. Therefore, I said rightly, that the Bible is always
bidding us go forwards. You cannot read your Bibles without seeing this.
What else was the use of St. Paul’s Epistles? They were written to
Christian men, redeemed men, converted men, most of them better I fear
than ever we shall be; and for what? to tell them not be content to
remain as they were, to tell them to go forwards, to improve, to be sure
that they were only just inside the gate of God’s kingdom, and that if
they would go on to perfection, they would find strength, and holiness,
and blessing, and honour, and happiness, which they as yet did not dream
of. “Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect,”
said our blessed Lord to all men. “Be ye perfect,” says St. Paul to the
Corinthians, and the Ephesians, and all to whom he wrote; and so say I to
you now in God’s name, for Christ’s sake, as citizens of God’s kingdom,
as heirs of everlasting glory, “Be you perfect, even as your Father in
heaven is perfect.”
Now I ask you, my friends, is not this reasonable? It is reasonable, for
the Bible always speaks of our souls as living things. It compares them
to limbs of a body, to branches of a tree, often to separate plants—as in
our Lord’s parable of the tares and the wheat. Again, St. Paul tells us
that we have been planted in baptism in the likeness of Christ’s death;
and again, in the first Psalm, which says that the good man shall be like
a tree planted by the waterside; and again, in the text of my sermon,
which says “that those who are planted in the house of the Lord shall
flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bring forth fruit in
old age; they shall be fat and flourishing.”
Now what does all this mean? It means that the life of our souls is in
some respects like the life of a plant; and, therefore, that as plants
grow, so our souls are to grow. Why do you plant anything, but in order
that it may _grow_ and become larger, stronger, bear flower and fruit?
Be sure God has planted us in His garden, Christ’s Church, for no other
reason. Consider, again—What is life but a continual growing, or a
continual decaying? If a tree does not get larger and stronger, year by
year, is not that a sure sign that it is unhealthy, and that decay has
begun in it, that it is unsound at heart? And what happens then? It
begins to become weaker and smaller, and cankered and choked with scurf
and moss till it dies. If a tree is not growing, it is sure in the long
run to be dying; and so are our souls. If they are not growing they are
dying; if they are not getting better they are getting worse. This is
why the Bible compares our souls to trees—not out of a mere pretty fancy
of poetry, but for a great, awful, deep, world-wide lesson, that every
tree in the fields may be a pattern, a warning, to us thoughtless men,
that as that tree is meant to grow, so our souls are meant to grow. As
that tree dies unless it grows, so our souls must die unless they grow.
Consider that!
But how does a tree grow? How are our souls to grow? Now here, again,
we shall understand heavenly things best by taking and considering the
pattern from among earthly things which the Bible gives us—the tree, I
mean. A tree grows in two ways. Its roots take up food from the ground,
its leaves take up food from the air. Its roots are its mouth, we may
say, and its leaves are its lungs. Thus the tree draws nourishment from
the earth beneath and from the heaven above; and so must our souls, my
friends, if they are to live and grow, they must have food both from
earth and from heaven. And this is what I mean—Why has God given us
senses, eyes, and ears, and understanding? That by them we may feed our
souls with things which we see and hear, things which are going on in the
world round us. We must read, and we must listen, and we must watch
people and their sayings and doings, and what becomes of them, and we
must try and act, and practise what is right for ourselves; and so we
shall, by using our eyes and ears and our bodies, get practice, and
experience, and knowledge, from the world round us—such as Solomon gives
us in his Proverbs—and so our eyes, and ears, and understandings, are to
be to us like roots, by which we may feed our souls with earthly learning
and experience. But is this enough? No, surely. Consider, again, God’s
example which He has given us—a tree. If you keep stripping all the
leaves off a tree, as fast as they grow, what becomes of it? It dies,
because without leaves it cannot get nourishment from the air, and the
rain, and the sunlight. Again, if you shut up a tree where it can get
neither rain, air, nor light, what happens? the tree certainly dies,
though it may be planted in the very richest soil, and have the very
strongest roots; and why? because it can get no food from the sky above.
So with our souls, my friends. If we get no food from above, our souls
will die, though we have all the wit, and learning, and experience, in
the world. We must be fed, and strengthened, and satisfied, with the
grace of God from above—with the Spirit of God. Consider how the Bible
speaks of God’s Spirit as the breath of God; for the very word _spirit_
means, originally, breath, or air, or gas, or a breeze of wind, shewing
us that as without the airs of heaven the tree would become stunted and
cankered, so our souls will without the fresh, purifying breath of God’s
Spirit. Again, God’s Spirit is often spoken of in Scripture as dew and
rain. His grace or favour, we read, is as dew on the grass; and again,
that God shall come unto us as the rain, as the first and latter rain
upon the earth; and again, speaking of the outpourings of God’s Spirit on
His Church, the Psalmist says that “He shall come down as the rain upon
the mown grass, as showers that water the earth;” and to shew us that as
the tree puts forth buds, and leaves, and tender wood, when it drinks in
the dew and rains, so our hearts will become tender, and bud out into
good thoughts and wise resolves, when God’s Spirit fills them with His
grace.
But again; the Scripture tells us again and again that our souls want
light from above; and we all know by experience that the trees and plants
which grow on earth want the light of the sun to make them grow. So,
doubtless, here again the Scripture example of a tree will hold good.
Now what does the sunlight do for the tree? It does every thing, for
without light, the soil, and air, and rain, are all useless. It stirs up
the sap, it hardens the wood, it brings out the blossom, it colours the
leaves and the flowers, it ripens the fruit. The light is the life of
the tree;—and is there not one, my friends, of whom these words are
written—that He is the Life, and that He is the Light—that He is the Sun
of Righteousness and the bright and morning Star—that He is the light
which lighteth every man that cometh into the world—that in Him was life,
and the life was the light of men? Do you not know of whom I speak?
Even of Him that was born at Bethlehem and died on the cross, who now
sits at God’s right hand, praying for us, offering to us His body and His
blood;—Jesus the Son of God, He is the Light and the Life. From Him
alone our light must come, from Him alone our life must come, now and for
ever. Oh, think seriously of this—and think, too, how a short time
before He died on earth He spoke of Himself as the Bread of life—the
living Bread which comes down from heaven; how He declared to men, that
unless they eat His flesh and drink His blood, they have no life in them.
And, lastly, consider this, how the same night that He was betrayed, He
took bread, and when He had given thanks, He brake it, and said, “Take,
eat; this is my body, which is given for you; this do in remembrance of
me.” And how, likewise, He took the cup, and when He had blessed it, He
gave it to them, saying, “Drink ye all of this, for this is the new
covenant in my blood, which is shed for you and for many, for the
forgiveness of sins; this do, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of
me.” Oh, consider these words, my friends—to you all and every one they
were spoken. “Drink ye _all_ of this,” said the Blessed One; and will
you refuse to drink it? He offers you the bread of life, the sign and
the pledge of His body, which shall feed your souls with everlasting
strength and life; and will you refuse what the Son of God offers you,
what He bought for you with His death? God forbid, my friends! This is
your blessed right and privilege—the right and the privilege of every one
of you—to come freely and boldly to that holy table, and there to
remember your Saviour. At that table to confess your Saviour before
men—at that table to shew that you really believe that Jesus Christ died
for you—at that table to claim your share in the strength of His body, in
the pardon of His blood, which cleanses from all sin—and at that table to
receive what you claim, to receive at that table the wine, as a sign from
Christ Himself, that His blood has washed away your sins; and the bread,
as a sign that His body and His spirit are really feeding your spirits,
that your souls are strengthened and refreshed by the body and blood of
Christ, as your bodies are with the bread and wine. I have shewn you
that your souls must be fed from heaven,—that the Lord’s Supper is a sign
to you that they _are_ fed from heaven. You pray to God, I hope, many of
you, that He would give you His Holy Spirit, that He would change, and
renew, and strengthen your souls—you pray God to do this, I hope—Well,
then, there is the answer to your prayers. There your souls _will_ be
renewed and strengthened—there you will claim your share in Christ, who
alone can renew and strengthen them. The bread which is there broken is
the communion, the sharing, of the body of Christ; the cup which is there
blessed is the communion of the blood of Christ: to that heavenly treat,
to that spiritual food of your souls, Jesus Himself invites you, He who
is the life of men. Do not let it be said at the last day of any one of
you, that when the Son of God Himself invites you, you would not come to
Him that you might have life.
SERMON XIX.
MAN’S WORKING DAY.
JOHN, xi. 9, 10.
“Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man
walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this
world. But if a man walk in the night he stumbleth, because there is
no light in him.”
THIS was our blessed Lord’s answer to His disciples when they said to
Him, “Master, the Jews of late tried to stone Thee, and goest Thou among
them again?” And “Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day?
If any man walk in the day he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light
of this world. But if a man walk in the night he stumbleth, because
there is no light in him.”
Now, at first sight, one does not see what this has to do with the
disciples’ question—it seems no answer at all to it. But we must
remember who it was who gave that answer. The Son of God, from whom all
words come, who came to do good, and only good, every minute of His life.
And, therefore, we may be sure that He never threw away a single word.
And we must remember, too, to whom He spoke—to His disciples, whom He was
training to be apostles to the whole world, teaching them in every thing
some deep lesson, to fit them for their glorious calling, as preachers of
the good news of His coming. So we may be sure that He would never put
off any question of theirs; we may be certain, that whatever they asked
Him, He would give them the best possible answer; not, perhaps, just the
answer for which they wished, but the answer which would teach them most.
Therefore I say, we must believe that there is some deep, wonderful
lesson in this text—that it is the very best and fullest answer which our
Lord could have made to His disciples when they asked Him why He was
going again to Judea, where He stood in danger of His life.
Let us think a little about this text in faith, that is, sure that there
is a deep, blessed meaning in it, if we can but find it out. Let us take
it piece by piece; we shall never get to the bottom of it, of course, but
we may get deep enough into it to set us thinking a little between now
and next Sunday.
“Are there not twelve hours in the day?” said our Lord. We know there
are, and we know, too, that if any man walks in the day, and keeps his
eyes open, he does not stumble, because he has the light of this world to
guide him. Twelve hours for business, and twelve for food, and sleep,
and rest, is our rule for working men, or, indeed, not our rule, but
God’s. He has set the sun for the light of this world, to rule the day,
to settle for us how long we are to work. In this country days vary. In
summer they are more than twelve hours, and then men work early and late;
but that is made up to us by winter, when the days are less than twelve
hours, and men work short time. In the very cold countries again, far
away in the frozen north, the sun never sets all the summer, and never
rises all the winter, and there is six months day and six months night.
Wonderful! But even there God has fitted the land and men’s lives to
that strange climate, and they can gather in enough meat in the summer to
keep them all the winter, that they may be able to spend the long six
months’ night of winter warm in their houses, sleeping and resting, with
plenty of food. So that even to them there are twelve hours in the day,
though their hours are each a fortnight long,—I mean a certain fixed time
in which to walk, and do the business which they have to do before the
long frozen night comes, wherein no man can work, because the sun, the
light of this world, is hid from them below the ice for six whole months.
So that our Lord’s words hold true of all men, even of those people in
the icy north. But in by far the most parts of the world, and especially
in the hot countries, where our Lord lived, there are twelve common hours
in every day, wherein men may and ought to work.
Now what did our Lord mean by reminding His disciples of this, which they
all knew already? He meant this,—that God His Father had appointed Him a
certain work to do, and a certain time to do it in; that though His day
was short, only thirty-three years in all, while we have, many of us,
seventy years given us, yet that there were twelve hours in His day in
which He must work—that God would take care that He lived out His
appointed time, provided He was ready and earnest in doing God’s work in
it—and that He _must_ work in that time which God had given Him, whatever
came of it, and do His appointed work before the night of death came in
which no man can work.
There was a heathen king once, named Philip of Macedon, and a very wise
king he was, though he was a heathen, and one of the wisest of his plans
was this:—he had a slave, whom he ordered to come in to him every morning
of his life, whatever he was doing, and say to him in a loud voice,
“Philip, remember that thou must die!”
He was a heathen, but a great many who call themselves Christians are not
half so wise as he, for they take all possible care, not to remember that
they must die, but to _forget_ that they must die; and yet every living
man has a servant who, like King Philip’s, puts him in mind, whether he
likes it or not, that his day will run out at last, and his twelve hours
of life be over, and then die he must. And who is that servant? A man’s
own body. Lucky if his body is his servant, though—not his _master_ and
his tyrant. But still, be that as it may, every finger-ache that one’s
body has, every cough and cold one’s body catches, ought to be to us a
warning like King Philip’s servant, “Remember that thou must die.” Every
little pain and illness is a warning, a kindly hint from our Father in
heaven, that we are doomed to death; that we have but twelve hours in
this short day of life, and that the twelve must end; and that we must
get our work done and our accounts settled, and be ready for our long
journey, to meet our Father and our King, before the night comes wherein
no man can work, but only takes his wages; for them who have done good
the wages of life eternal, and for them who have done evil—God help them!
we know what is written—“the wages of sin is death!”
Now, observe next, that those who walk in the day do not stumble, because
they see the light of this world, and those who walk in the night
stumble—they have no light in them. If they are to see, it must be by
the help of some light outside themselves, which is not part of
themselves, or belonging to themselves at all. We only see by the light
which God has made; when that is gone, our eyes are useless.
So it is with our souls. Our wits, however clever they may be, only
understand things by the light which God throws on those things. He must
explain and enlighten all things to us. Without His light—His Spirit,
all the wit in the world is as useless as a pair of eyes in a dark night.
Now this earthly world which we do see is an exact picture and pattern of
the spiritual, heavenly world which we do not see, as Solomon says in the
Proverbs, “The things which are seen are the doubles of the things which
are not seen.” And as there is a light for us in this earth, which is
_not ourselves_, namely the sun, so there is a light for us in the
spirit-world, which is _not ourselves_. And who is that? The blessed
Lord shall answer for Himself. He says, “I am the light of the world;”
and St. John bears witness to Him, “In Him was life, and the life was the
light of men.” And does not St. Paul say the same thing, when he blessed
God so often for having called him and his congregations out of darkness
into that marvellous light? If you read his Epistles you will find what
he meant by the darkness, what he meant by the light. The darkness was
heathendom, knowing nothing of Christ. The light was Christianity,
knowing Christ the light; and, more, being _in_ the light, belonging to
Christ—being joined to Him, as the leaves are to the tree,—living by
trust in Christ, being taught and made true men and true women of, by the
Noble and Holy Spirit of Christ—seeing their way through this world by
trust in Christ and His promises,—That was light.
And there is no other light. If a man does not work trusting in Christ,
whom God has set for the light of the world, he works in the night, where
God never set or meant him to work; and stumble he will, and make a fool
of himself, sooner or later, because he is walking in the night, and sees
nothing plainly or in a right view. For as our Lord says truly, “There
is no light in him.” No light in him? In one sense there is no light in
any one, be he the wisest or holiest man who ever lived. But this is
just what three people out of four will not believe. They will not
believe that the Spirit of God gives man understanding. They fancy that
they have light in themselves. They try, conceitedly and godlessly, to
walk by the light of their own eyes—to make their own way plain before
their face for themselves. They will not believe old David, a man who
worked, and fought, and thought, and saw, far more than any one of us
will ever do, when he tells them again and again in his Psalms, that the
Lord is his light, that the Lord must guide a man, and inform him with
His eye, and teach him in the way in which he should go. And, therefore,
they will not pray to God for light—therefore they will not look for
light in God’s Word, and in the writings of godly men; and they are like
a man in the broad sunshine, who should choose to shut his eyes close,
and say, ‘I have light enough in my own head to do without the sun;’ and
therefore they walk on still in darkness, and all the foundations of the
earth are out of course, because men forget the first universal ground
rules of common sense, and reason, and love, which God’s Spirit teaches.
I tell you, all the mistakes that you ever made—that ever were made since
Adam fell, came from this, that men will not ask God for light and
wisdom; they love darkness rather than light, and therefore, though God’s
light is ready for every man, shining in the darkness to shew every man
his way, yet the darkness will not comprehend it—will not take it in, and
let God change its blindness into day.
Now, then, to gather all together, what better answer could our Lord have
given to His disciples’ question than this, “Are there not twelve hours
in the day? If a man walk in the day he does not stumble, because he
seeth the light of this world; but if a man walk in the night, he
stumbleth, because there is no light in him.”
It was as if He had said, “However short my day of life may be, there are
twelve hours in it, of my Father’s numbering and measuring, not of mine.
My times are in His hand, as long as He pleases I shall live. He has
given me a work to do, and He will see that I live long enough to do it.
Into His hands I commend my spirit, for, living or dying, He is with me.
Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, He will be with
me. He will keep me secretly in His tabernacle from the strife of
tongues, and will turn the furiousness of my enemies to His glory; and as
my day my strength will be. And I have no fear of running into danger
needlessly. I have prayed to Him daily and nightly for light, for His
Spirit—the spirit of wisdom and understanding, of prudence and courage;
and His word is pledged to keep me in all my ways, so that I dash not my
foot against a stone. Know ye not that I must be about my Father’s
business? While I am about that I am safe. It is only if I go about my
own business—my own pleasure; if I forget to ask Him for His light and
guidance, that I shall put myself into the night, and stumble and fall.”
Well, my friends, what is there in all this, which we may not say as well
as our Lord? In this, as in all things, Christ set Himself up as our
pattern. Oh, believe it!—believe that your time—your measure of life, is
in God’s hand. Believe that He is your light, that He will teach and
guide you into all truth, and that all your mistakes come from not asking
counsel of Him in prayer, and thought, and reading of His Holy Bible.
Believe His blessed promise that He will give His Holy Spirit to those
who ask Him. Believe, too, that He has given you a work to do—prepared
good works all ready for you to walk in. Be you labourer or gentleman,
maid, wife, or widow, God has given you a work to do; there is good to be
done lying all round you, ready for you. And the blessed Jesus who
bought you, body and soul, with His own blood, commands you to work for
Him: “Whatsoever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.”
“Work ye manful while ye may,
Work for God in this your day;
Night must stop you, rich or poor,
Godly deeds alone endure.”
And then, whether you live or die, your Father’s smile will be on you,
and His everlasting arms beneath you, and at your last hour you shall
find that “Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord, for they rest from
their labour, and their works do follow them.”
SERMON XX.
ASSOCIATION.
GALATIANS, vi. 2.
“Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.”
IF I were to ask you, my friends, why you were met together here to-day,
you would tell me, I suppose, that you were come to church as members of
a benefit club; and quite right you are in coming here as such, and God
grant that we may meet together here on this same errand many more
Whit-mondays. But this would be no answer to my question; I wish to know
why you come to church to-day sooner than to any other place? what has
the church to do with the benefit club? Now this is a question which I
do not think all of you could answer very readily, and therefore I wish
to make you, especially the younger members of the club, think a little
seriously about the meaning of your coming here to-day. You will be none
the less cheerful this evening for having had some deep and godly
thoughts in your heads this morning.
Now these benefit clubs are also called provident societies, and a very
good name for them. You become members of them, because you are prudent,
or provident, that is, because you are careful, and look forward to a
rainy day. But why does not each of you lay up his savings for himself,
instead of putting them into a common purse, and so forming a club?
Because you have found out, what every one else in the world, but madmen,
ought to have found out, that two are better than one; that if a great
many men join together in any matter, they are a great deal stronger when
working together, than if they each worked just as hard, but each by
himself; that the way to be safe is not to stand each of you alone, but
to help each other; in short, that there is no getting on without bearing
one another’s burdens.
Now this plan of bearing one another’s burdens is not only good in
benefit clubs—it is good in families, in parishes, in nations, in the
church of God, which is the elect of all mankind. Unless men hold
together, and help each other, there is no safety for them.
Let us consider what there is bearing on this matter of prudence, that
makes one of the greatest differences between a man and a brute beast.
It is not that the man is prudent, and the beast is not. Many beasts
have forethought enough; the very sleepmouse hoards up acorns against the
winter; a fox will hide the game he cannot eat. No, the great difference
between man and beast is, that the beast has forethought only for
himself, but the man has forethought for others also; beasts have not
reason enough to bear each others’ burdens, as men have. And what is it
that makes us call the ant and the bee the wisest of animals, except that
they do, in some degree, behave like men, in helping one another, and
having some sort of family feeling, and society, and government among
them, by which they can help bear each other’s burdens? So that we all
confess, by calling them wise, how wise it is to help each other.
Consider a family, again. In order that a family may be happy and
prosperous, all the members of it must bear each other’s burdens. If the
father only thought of himself, and the mother of herself, and each of
the children did nothing but take care of themselves, would not that
family come to misery and ruin? But if they all helped each other—all
thought of each other more than of themselves—all were ready to give up
their own comfort to make each other comfortable, that family would be
peaceful and prosperous, and would be doing a great deal towards
fulfilling the law of Christ.
It is just the same in a parish. If the rich help and defend the poor,
and the poor respect and love the rich, and are ready to serve them as
far as they can,—in short, if all ranks bear each other’s burdens, that
parish is a happy one, and if they do not, it is a miserable one.
Just the same with a nation. If the king only cares about making himself
strong, and the noblemen and gentlemen about their rank and riches, and
the poor people, again, only care for themselves, and are trying to pull
down the rich, and so get what they can for themselves,—if a country is
in this state, what can be more wretched? Neither a house, nor a
country, divided against itself, can ever stand. But if the king and the
nobles give their whole minds to making good laws, and seeing justice
done to all, and workmen fairly paid, and if the poor, in their turns,
are loyal, and ready to fight and work for their king and their nobles,
then will not that country be a happy and a great country? Surely it
will, because its people, instead of caring every man for himself only,
help each other and bear one another’s burdens.
And just in the same way with Christ’s Church, with the company of true
Christian men. If the clergymen thought only of themselves, and
neglected the people, and forgot to labour among them, and pray for them,
and preach to them; and if the people each cared for himself, and never
prayed to God to give them a spirit of love and charity, and never helped
their neighbours, or did unto others as they wished to be done by; and
above all, if Christ, our Head, left His Church, and cared no more about
us, what would become of Christ’s Church? What would happen to the whole
race of sinful man, but misery in this world, and ruin in the next? But
if the people love and help each other, and obey their ministers, and
pray for them; and if the ministers labour earnestly after the souls and
bodies of their people; and Christ in heaven helps both minister and
people with His Spirit, and His providence and protection; in short, if
all in the whole Church bear each other’s burdens, then Christ’s Church
will stand, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
Thus you see that this text of bearing one another’s burdens is no new or
strange commandment, but the very state in which every man is meant to
live, both in his family, his parish, his country, and his Church—all his
life helping others, and being helped by them in turn. And because
families and nations, and the Church of Christ above all, are good, and
holy, and beautiful, therefore any society which is formed upon the same
plan—I mean of helping each other—must be good also. And, therefore,
benefit societies are right and reasonable things, and among all the good
which they do they do this one great good, that they teach men to
remember that there is no use trying to stand alone, but that the way to
be safe and happy is to bear each other’s burdens.
Thus benefit societies are patterns of Christ’s Church. But now, my
friends, there is another point for each of you to consider, which is
this—the benefit club is a good thing, but are you a good member of the
club? Do you do your duty, each of you, in the club as Christian men
should?
I do not ask whether you pay your subscriptions regularly or not—that is
quite right and necessary, but there is something more than that wanted
to make a club go on rightly. Mere paying and receiving money will never
keep men together any more than any other outward business. A man may
pay his club-money regularly and yet not be a really good member. And
how is this? You remember that I tried to shew you that a family, and a
nation, and a church, all were kept together by the same principle of
bearing one another’s burdens, just as a benefit club is. Now, what
makes a man a good member of Christ’s Church,—a good Christian, in short?
A man may pay his tithes to the rector, and his church-rates to repair
God’s house, and his poor-rates to maintain God’s poor, all very
regularly, and yet be a very bad member of Christ’s Church. These
payments are all right and good; but they are but the outside, the letter
of what God requires of him. What is wanted is, to serve God in the
_spirit_, to have the spirit—_the will_, of a Christian in him; that is,
to do all these things for _God’s_ sake—not of constraint, but
willingly—“not grudgingly, for God loveth a cheerful giver.” No! If a
man is a really good member of Christ’s Church, he lives a life of faith
in Jesus Christ, and of thankfulness to Him for His infinite love and
mercy in coming down to die for us, and thus the love of God and man is
shed abroad in his heart by God’s Spirit, which is given to him.
Therefore, that man thinks it an honour to pay church-rates, and so help
towards keeping God’s house in repair and neatness. He pays his tithes
cheerfully, because he loves God’s ministers, and feels their use and
worth to him. He pays his poor-rates with a willing mind, for the sake
of that God who has said, “that he who gives to the poor lends to the
Lord.” And so he obeys not only the letter but the spirit of the law.
But the man does more than this. Besides obeying not only the letter but
the spirit of the law, he helps his brethren in a thousand other ways.
He shews, in short, by every action that he believes in God and loves his
neighbour.
And why should it not be just the same in a benefit club? There the good
member is _not_ the man who pays his money merely to have a claim for
relief when he himself is sick, and yet grudges every farthing that goes
to help other members. That man is not a good member. He has come into
the club merely to take care of himself, and not to bear others’ burdens.
He may obey the letter of the club-rules by paying in his subscriptions
and by granting relief to sick members, but he does not obey the spirit
of them. If he did, he would be glad to bear his sick neighbour’s burden
with so little trouble to himself. He would, therefore, grant club
relief willingly and cheerfully when it was wanted,—ay, he would thank
God that he had an opportunity of helping his neighbours. He would feel
that all the members of the society were his brothers in a double sense;
first, because they had joined with him to help and support each other in
the society; and, next, that they were his brothers in Christ, who had
been baptised into the same Church of God with himself. And he would,
therefore, delight in supporting them in their sickness, and honouring
them when they died, and in helping their widows and orphans in their
affliction; in short, in bearing his neighbour’s burdens, and so
fulfilling the law of Christ. And do you not see, that if any of you
subscribe to this benefit society in such a spirit as this, that they are
the men to give an answer to the question I asked at first, “Why are you
all here at church to-day?” They come here for the same reason that you
all ought to come, to thank God for having kept them well, and out of the
want of relief for the past year, and to thank Him, too, for having
enabled them to bear their sick neighbours’ burdens. And they come,
also, to pray to God to keep them well and strong for the year to come,
and to raise up those members who are in sickness and distress, that they
may all worship God here together another year, as a company of faithful
friends, helping each other on through this life, and all on the way to
the same heavenly home, where there will be no more poverty, nor sorrow,
nor sickness, nor death, and God shall wipe away tears from all widows
and orphans’ eyes.
And now, my friends, I have tried to put some new and true thoughts into
your head about your club and your business in this church to-day. And I
pray, God grant that you may remember them, and think of this whole
matter as a much more solemn and holy one than you ever did before.
SERMON XXI.
HEAVEN ON EARTH.
1 COR. x. 31.
“Whether ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory
of God.”
THIS is a command from God, my friends, which well worth a few minutes’
consideration this day;—well worth considering, because, though it was
spoken eighteen hundred years ago, yet God has not changed since that
time;—He is just as glorious as ever; and Christian men’s relation to God
has not changed since that time; they still live, and move, and have
their being in God; they are still His children—His beloved; Christ, who
died for us, is still our King; God’s Spirit is still with us, God’s
mercy still saves us: we owe God as much as any people ever did. If it
was ever any one’s duty to shew forth God’s glory, surely it is our duty
too.
Worth considering, indeed, is this command, for though it is in the
Bible, and has been there for eighteen hundred years, it is seldom read,
seldomer understood, and still more seldom put into practice. Men eat
and drink, and do all manner of things, with all their might and main;
but how many of them do they do to the glory of God? No; this is the
fault—the especial curse of our day, that religion does not mean any
longer, as it used, the service of God—the being like God, and shewing
forth God’s glory. No; religion means, nowadays, the art of getting to
heaven when we die, and saving our own miserable, worthless souls, and
getting God’s wages without doing God’s work—as if that was godliness,—as
if that was any thing but selfishness; as if selfishness was any the
better for being everlasting selfishness! If selfishness is evil, my
friends, the sooner we get rid of it the better, instead of mixing it up
as we do with all our thoughts of heaven, and making our own enjoyment
and our own safety the vile root of our hopes for all eternity. And
therefore it is that people have forgotten what God’s glory is. They
seem to think, that God’s highest glory is saving them from hell-fire.
And they talk not of God and of the wondrous majesty of God, but only of
the wonder of God’s having saved them—looking at themselves all the time,
and not at God. We must get rid of this sort of religion, my friends, at
all risks, in order to get rid of all sorts of irreligion, for one is the
father of the other.
It is a wonder, indeed, that we are saved from hell, much more raised to
heaven, such peevish, cowardly, pitiful creatures as the best of us are:
and yet the more we think of it, the less wonder we shall find it. The
more we think of the wonder of all wonders,—God Himself, His majesty, His
power, His wisdom, His love, His pity, His infinite condescension, the
less reason we shall have to be surprised that He has stooped to save us.
Yes, do not be startled—for it is true, that He has done for sinful men
nothing contrary to Himself, but just what was to be expected from such
unutterable condescension, and pity, and generosity, as God’s is. And so
recollecting this, we shall begin to forget ourselves, and look at God;
and in thinking of Him we shall get beyond mere wondering at Him, and
rise to something higher—to worshipping Him.
Yes, my friends, this is what we must try at if we would be really
godly—to find out what God is—to find out His likeness, His character, as
He is: and has He not shewn us what He is? He who has earnestly read
Christ’s story—he who has understood, and admired, and loved Christ’s
character, and its nobleness and beauty—he who can believe that Jesus
Christ is now, at this minute, raising up his heart to good, guiding his
thoughts to good, he has seen God; for he has seen the Son, who is the
exact likeness of the Father’s glory, in whom dwells all the fulness of
the Godhead in a bodily shape. Remember, he who knows Christ knows
God,—and that knowledge will help us up a noble step farther—it will help
us to shew forth God’s glory. For when we once know what God’s glory is,
we shall see how to make others know it too. We shall know how to _do
God justice_, to set men right as to their notions of God, to give them,
at all events, in our own lives and characters, a pattern of Christ, who
is the Pattern of God; and whatsoever we do we shall be able to do all to
God’s glory.
For what is doing every thing to the glory of God? It is this;—we have
seen what God’s glory is: He is His own glory. As you say of any very
excellent man, you have but to know him to honour him; or of any very
beautiful woman, you have but to see her to love her; so I say of God,
men have but to see and know Him to love and honour Him.
Well, then, my friends, if we call ourselves Christian men, if we believe
that God is our Father, and delight, as on the grounds of common feeling
we ought, to honour our Father, we should try to make every one honour
Him as He deserves. In short, whatever we do we should make it tend to
His glory—make it a lesson to our neighbours, our friends, and our
families. We should preach God’s glory to them day by day, not by
_words_ only, often not by words at all, but by our conduct. Ay, there
is the secret.—If you wish other men to believe a thing, just behave as
if you believed it yourself. Nothing is so infectious as example. If
you wish your neighbours to see what Jesus Christ is like, let them see
what He can make _you_ like. If you wish them to know how God’s love is
ready to save them from their sins, let them see His love save _you_ from
_your_ sins. If you wish them to see God’s tender care in every blessing
and every sorrow they have, why let them see you thanking God for every
sorrow and every blessing you have. I tell you, friends, example is
every thing. One good man,—one man who does not put his religion on once
a-week with his Sunday coat, but wears it for his working dress, and lets
the thought of God grow into him, and through and through him, till every
thing he says and does becomes religious, that man is worth a ton of
sermons—he is a living Gospel—he comes in the spirit and power of
Elias—he is the image of God. And men see his good works, and admire
them in spite of themselves, and see that they are Godlike, and that
God’s grace is no dream, but that the Holy Spirit is still among men, and
that all nobleness and manliness is His gift, His stamp, His picture; and
so they get a glimpse of God again in His saints and heroes, and glorify
their Father who is in heaven.
Would not such a life be a heavenly life? Ay, it would be more, it would
be heaven—heaven on earth: not in versemongering cant, but really. We
should then be sitting, as St. Paul tells us, in heavenly places with
Jesus Christ, and having our conversation in heaven. All the while we
were doing our daily work, following our business, or serving our
country, or sitting at our own firesides with wife and child, we should
be all that time in heaven. Why not? we are in heaven now—if we had but
faith to see it. Oh, get rid of those carnal, heathen notions about
heaven, which tempt men to fancy that, after having misused this
place—God’s earth—for a whole life, they are to fly away when they die,
like swallows in autumn, to another place—they know not where—where they
are to be very happy—they know not why or how, nor do I know either.
Heaven is not a mere _place_, my friends. All places are heaven, if you
will be heavenly in them. Heaven is where God is and Christ is. And
hell is where God is not and Christ is not. The Bible says, no doubt,
there is a place now—somewhere beyond the skies—where Christ especially
shews forth His glory—a heaven of heavens: and for reasons which I cannot
explain, there must be such a place. But, at all events, here is heaven;
for Christ is here and God is here, if we will open our eyes and see
them. And how?—How? Did not Christ Himself say, ‘If a man will love Me,
My Father will love him; and we, My Father and I, will come to him, and
make our abode with him, and we will shew ourselves to him?’ Do those
words mean nothing or something? If they have any meaning, do they not
mean this, that in this life, we can see God—in this life we can have God
and Christ abiding with us? And is not that heaven? Yes, heaven is
where God is. You are in heaven if God is with you, you are in hell if
God is not with you; for where God is not, darkness and a devil are sure
to be.
There was a great poet once—Dante by name—who described most truly and
wonderfully, in his own way, heaven and hell, for, indeed, he had been in
both. He had known sin and shame, and doubt and darkness and despair,
which is hell. And after long years of misery, he had got to know love
and hope, and holiness and nobleness, and the love of Christ and the
peace of God, which is heaven. And so well did he speak of them, that
the ignorant people used to point after him with awe in the streets, and
whisper, There is the man who has been in hell. Whereon some one made
these lines on him:—
“Thou hast seen hell and heaven? Why not? since heaven and hell
Within the struggling soul of every mortal dwell.”
Think of that!—thou—and thou—and thou!—for in thee, at this moment, is
either heaven or hell: and which of them? Ask thyself—ask thyself,
friend. If thou art not in heaven in this life, thou wilt never be in
heaven in the life to come. At death, says the wise man, each thing
returns into its own element, into the ground of its life; the light into
the light, and the darkness into the darkness. As the tree falls so it
lies. My friends, who call yourselves enlightened Christian folk, do you
suppose that you can lead a mean, worldly, covetous, spiteful life here,
and then the moment your soul leaves the body that you are to be changed
into the very opposite character, into angels and saints, as fairy tales
tell of beasts changed into men? If a beast can be changed into a man,
then death can change the sinner into a saint,—but not else. If a beast
would enjoy being a man, then a sinner would enjoy being in heaven, but
not else. A sinful, worldly man enjoy being in heaven? Does a fish
enjoy being on dry land? The sinner would long to be back in this world
again. Why, what is the employment of spirits in heaven, according to
the Bible (for that is the point to which I have been trying to lead you
round again)? What but glorifying God? Not _trying_ only to do every
thing to God’s glory, but actually succeeding in _doing_ it—basking in
the sunshine of His smile, delighting to feel themselves as nothing
before His glorious majesty, meditating on the beauty of His love,
filling themselves with the sight of His power, searching out the
treasures of His wisdom, and finding God in all and all in God—their
whole eternity one act of worship, one hymn of praise. Are there not
some among us who will have had but little practice at that work? Those
who have done nothing for God’s glory here, how do they expect to be able
to do every thing for God’s glory hereafter? (Those who will not take
the trouble of merely standing up at the psalms, like the rest of their
neighbours, even if they cannot sing with their voices God’s praises in
this church, how will they like singing God’s praises through eternity?)
No; be sure that the only people who will be fit for heaven, who will
like heaven even, are those who have been in heaven in this life,—the
only people who will be able to do every thing to God’s glory in the new
heavens and new earth, are those who have been trying honestly to do all
to His glory in this heaven and this earth.
Think over, in the meantime, what I have said this day; consider it, and
you will have enough to think of, and pray over too, till we meet here
again.
SERMON XXII.
NATIONAL PRIVILEGES.
LUKE, x. 23.
“Blessed are the eyes which see the things which ye see: for I tell
you, that many prophets and kings have desired to see those things
which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which
ye hear, and have not heard them.”
THIS is a noble text, my friends—and yet an awful one, for if it does not
increase our religion, it will certainly increase our condemnation. It
tells us that we, even the meanest among us, are more favoured by God
than the kings, and judges, and conquerors of the old world, of whom we
read this afternoon in the first lesson; that we have more light and
knowledge of God than even the prophets David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and
Ezekiel, to whom God’s glory appeared in visible shape. It tells us that
we see things which they longed to see, and could not; that words are
spoken to us for which their ears longed in vain; that they, though they
died in hope, yet received not the promises, God having provided some
better things for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.
Now, what was this which they longed for, and had not, and yet we have?
It was this,—a Saviour and a Saviour’s kingdom. All wise and holy hearts
for ages—as well heathens as Jews—had had this longing. They wanted a
Saviour,—one who should free them from sin and conquer evil,—one who
should explain to them all the doubt and contradiction and misery of the
world, and give them some means of being freed from it,—one who should
set them the perfect pattern of what a man should be, and join earth and
heaven, and make godliness part of man’s daily life. They longed for a
Saviour, and for a heavenly kingdom also. They saw that all the laws in
the world could never make men good; that one half of men broke them, and
the other half only obeyed them unwillingly through slavish fear, loving
the sin they dared not do. That men got worse and worse as time rolled
on. That kings, instead of being shepherds of their people, were only
wolves and tyrants to keep them in ignorance and misery. That priests
only taught the people lies, and fattened themselves at their expense.
That, in short, as David said, men would not learn, or understand, and
all the foundations of the earth, the grounds and principles of society,
politics and religion, were out of course, and the devil very truly the
king of this lower world; so they longed for a heavenly kingdom—a kingdom
of God, one in which men should obey God for love, and not for fear, and
man for God’s sake; a spiritual kingdom—a kingdom whose laws should be
written in men’s hearts and spirits, and be their delight and glory, not
their dread. They longed for a King of kings, who should teach all kings
and magistrates to rule in love and wisdom. They longed for a
High-priest, who should teach all priests to explain the wonder and the
glory that there is in every living man, and in heaven and earth, and all
that therein lies, and lead men’s hearts into love, and purity, and noble
thoughts and deeds. They longed, in short, for a kingdom of God, a
golden age, a regeneration of the world, as they called it, and rightly.
Of course, the Jewish prophets saw most clearly how this would be brought
about, and how utterly necessary a Saviour and His kingdom was to save
mankind from utter ruin. They, I say, saw this best. But still all the
wise and pious heathens, each according to his measure of light, saw the
same necessity, or else were restless and miserable, because they could
not see it. So that in all ages of the world, in a thousand different
shapes, there was rising up to heaven a mournful, earnest prayer,—“Thy
kingdom come!”
And now this kingdom is come, and the King of it, the Saviour of men, is
Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Long men prayed, and long men waited, and
at last, in the fulness of God’s good time, just when the night seemed
darkest, and under the abominations of the Roman Empire, religion,
honesty, and common decency, seemed to have died out, the Sun of
Righteousness rose on the dead and rotten world, to bring life and
immortality to light. God sent forth His Son made of a woman, not to
condemn the world, but that the world, through Him, might be saved. He
sent Him to be our Saviour, to die on the cross for our sins and our
children’s, that all our guilt might be washed away, and we might come
boldly to the throne of grace, with our hearts sprinkled from an evil
conscience, and our bodies washed in the waters of baptism. He sent Him
to be our Teacher in the perfect law of love, our pattern in every thing
which a man should be, and is not. He sent Him to conquer death by
rising from the dead, that He might have power to raise us also to life
and immortality. He sent Him to fill men with His Spirit, the Spirit of
reason and truth, the Spirit of love and courage, that he might know the
will of God, and do it as our Saviour did before us. He sent Him to
found a Church, to join all men into one brotherhood, one kingdom of God,
whose rulers are kings and parliaments, whose ministers are the clergy,
whose prophets are all poets and philosophers, authors and preachers, who
are true to their own calling; whose signs and tokens are the sacraments;
a kingdom which should never be moved, but should go on for ever, drawing
into all honest and true hearts, and preserving them ever for Christ
their Lord.
And that we might not doubt that we, too, belonged to this kingdom, He
has placed in this land His ministers and teachers, Christ’s sacraments,
Christ’s churches in every parish in the land, Christ’s Bible, or the
means of attaining the Bible, in every house and every cottage; that from
our cradle to our grave we might see that we belonged, as sworn servants
and faithful children, to the great Father in heaven and Jesus Christ,
the King of the earth.
Thus, my friends, all that all men have longed for we possess; we want no
more, and we shall have no more. If, under the present state of things,
we cannot be holy, we shall never be holy. If we cannot use our right in
this kingdom of Christ, how can we become citizens of God’s everlasting
kingdom, when Christ shall have delivered up the dominion to His Father,
and God shall be all in all? God has done all for us that God will do.
He has given us His Son for a Saviour, and a Church in which and by which
to worship that Saviour; and what more would we have? Alas! my friends,
have we yet used fairly what God has given us? and if not, how terrible
will be our guilt! “How shall we escape if we neglect so great
salvation?” And yet how many do neglect—how few live as if they were
citizens of Christ’s kingdom! It seems as if God had been too good to
us, and heaped us so heavily with blessings, that we were tired of them,
and despised them as common things. Common things? They are the very
things, as I said, which the great and the wise in all ages have longed
for and prayed for, and yet never found! Surely, surely, God may well
say to us, “What could have been done unto my vineyard which has not been
done to it?” What, indeed? I wish I could take some of you into a
heathen country for a single week, that you might see what it is not to
know of a Saviour—not to be members of His Church, as we are. Why, we
here in England are in the very garden of the Lord. We have but to
stretch out our hand to the tree of life, and eat and live for ever.
From our cradle to our grave, Christ the King is ready to guide, to
teach, to comfort, to deliver us. When we are born, we are christened in
His name, made members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors by hope
of the kingdom of heaven. Is that nothing? It is, alas! nothing in the
eyes of most parents! As we grow older, are we not taught who we
are—taught call God our Father—taught about Jesus Christ, who He is, and
what He is? Is that, too, nothing? Alas! that knowledge is generally a
mere meaningless school-lesson, cared for neither by child nor by man.
At confirmation, again, we solemnly declare that we belong to Christ’s
kingdom, and that we will live as His subjects, and His alone. And we
are brought to His bishops, to be received as free, reasonable, Christian
people, to claim our citizenship in the kingdom of God. Is that nothing?
Yet that, too, is nothing with three-fourths of us. Nothing? Hear me,
young people—as I have often told you—you are ready enough to excuse
yourselves from your confirmation vows, by saying you were not taught to
understand them—were not taught how to put them into practice. That may
be true, or it may not; your sin is just the same. No one with any
common honesty or common sense could answer as you have to the bishop’s
questions at confirmation, without knowing that you did make a promise,
and knowing well enough what you promised—and you who carried to
confirmation a careless heart and a lying tongue, have only yourselves to
blame for it!—But to proceed. Is not Christ present, or ready to be
present, with us? Sunday after Sunday, for years, have not the churches
been opened all around us, inviting us to enter and worship Christ,
knowing that where two or three are gathered together, there is Christ in
the midst of them. Is that nothing? This Creed—these Lessons—these
prayers, which Sunday after Sunday you have used;—are they nothing? Are
they not all proofs that the kingdom of God is come to you, and means
whereby you can behave like children of the kingdom? And not on Sundays
alone. Have we not been taught daily, in our own houses, in our own
hearts, in all danger, and trouble, and temptation, to pray to Jesus
Christ, our King, knowing that He will hear and save all them that put
their trust in Him?
Is that nothing? On our happy marriage morn, too, was it not in God’s
house, before Christ’s minister, in Christ’s name, that we were married?
Surely the kingdom of God is come to us, when our wedlock, as well as our
souls and bodies, is holy to the Lord. Is that nothing? How few think
of their marriage-joys as holy things—an ordinance of Christ’s kingdom,
which He delights in and blesses with His presence and His special smile,
seeing that it is the noblest and the purest of all things on earth—the
picture of the great mystery which shall be the bridal of all bridals,
the marriage of Christ and His Church! People do not, nowadays, believe
in marriage as a part of their religion; and so, according to their want
of faith it happens to them; their marriage is not holy, and the love and
joy of their youth wither into a peevish, careless, lonely old age;—and
yet over their heads these words were said, “They are man and wife
together, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost!” comes of not believing in Christ’s presence and Christ’s favour;
of not believing, in short, in what the Creed truly calls the Holy
Catholic Church. Neither after that does Christ leave us. Every time a
woman is churched, is not that meant to be a sign of thankfulness to
Christ, the great Physician, to whom she owes her life and health once
more? Then, season after season, is the sacrament of Christ’s body and
blood offered you. Is that no sign that Christ is here among us? Ah!
blessed are the eyes which see that—blessed are the ears which hear those
words, “Take, eat; this is My body which is given for you.” Truly, if
that honour—that blessing—is so vast, the love and the condescension of
Christ, the Lamb of God, so unutterable, that prophets and kings,
whatever they believed, never could have desired, never could have
imagined, that the Son of God should offer to the sons of men, year after
year, in their little parish churches, His most precious body, His most
precious blood. And another thing, too, those prophets and kings would
never have imagined,—that when Christ, in those churches, offers His body
and His blood, nine-tenths of the congregation, calling themselves
Christians, should quietly walk out, and go home, and leave the
sacraments of Christ’s body and Christ’s blood behind as a useless and
unnecessary matter! That, indeed, the old prophets and kings never saw,
and never expected to see—but so it is. Christ is among us, and our eyes
are holden, and we know Him not.
And then at last, after all these blessed privileges, these tokens of
God’s kingdom have been neglected through a long life, does Christ
neglect us in the hour of death? Ah, no! He is at the grave, as He was
at the font, at the marriage-bed, at His own holy table in God’s house;
and the body is laid in the ground by Christ’s minister, in the certain
hope of a joyful resurrection. But what—a sure and certain hope for each
and all? The resurrection is a joyful hope—but is it so for all? Only,
too often, a faint, dim longing that clings to the last chance, and dares
not confess to itself how hopeless must be the death of that man or woman
whose life was spent in the kingdom of God, in the midst of blessings
which kings said prophets desired in vain to see, and yet who neglected
them all, never entered into the spirit of them—never loved them—never
lived according to them, but despised and trampled under foot the kingdom
of God from their childhood to their grave, as three-fourths of us do.
Christ came to judge no man, and therefore Christ’s ministers judge no
man, and read the Christian funeral service over all, and pray Christ to
be there, and to remember His blessed promise of raising up the body and
soul to everlasting life. But how can they help fearing that Christ will
not hear them—that after all His offers and gifts in this life have been
despised, He will give nothing after death but death; and that it were
better for the sinful, worldly sham Christian, when lying in his coffin,
if he had never been born? How can those escape who neglect such great
salvation?
Ah, my friends—my friends, take this to heart! Blessed, indeed, are the
eyes which see what you see, and hear what you hear; prophets and kings
have desired to see and hear them, and have not seen or heard! But if
you, cradled among all these despised honours and means of grace, bring
forth no fruit in your lives—shut out from yourselves the thought of your
high calling in Jesus Christ; what shall be your end but ruin? He that
despises Christ, Christ will despise him; and say not to yourselves, as
many do, We are church-goers—we are all safe. I say to you, God is able,
from among the Negro and the wild Irishman—ay, God is able of these
stones to raise up children to the Church of England, while those of you,
the children of the kingdom, who lived in the Church of your fathers, and
never used or loved her, or Christ, her King, shall be cast into outer
darkness, where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
SERMON XXIII.
LENTEN THOUGHTS.
HAGGAI, i. 5.
“Now, therefore, thus saith the Lord of Hosts, consider your ways.”
NEXT Wednesday is Ash-Wednesday, the first day of Lent, the season which
our forefathers have appointed for us to consider and mend our ways, and
return, year by year, heart and soul to that Lord and Heavenly Father
from whom we are daily wandering. Now, we all know that we ought to have
repented long ago; we all know that, sinning in many things daily, as we
do, we ought all to repent daily. But that is not enough; we do want,
unless we are wonderfully better than the holy men of old,—we do want, I
say, a particular time in which we may sit down deliberately and look our
own souls steadily in the face, and cast up our accounts with God, and be
thoroughly ashamed and terrified at those accounts when we find, as we
shall, that we cannot answer God one thing in a thousand. It is all very
well to say, I confess and repent of my sins daily, why should I do it
especially in Lent? Very true—Let us see, then, by your altered life and
conduct that you have repented during this Lent, and then it will be time
to talk of repenting every day after Lent. But, in fact, a man might
just as well argue, I say my prayers every day, and God hears them, why
should I say them more on Sundays than any other day? Why? not only
because your forefathers, and the Church of your forefathers, have
advised you, which, though not an imperative reason, is still a strong
one, surely, but because the thing is good, and reasonable, and right in
itself. Because, as they found in their own case, and as you may find in
yours, if you will but think, the hurry and bustle of business is daily
putting repentance and self-examination out of our heads. A man may
think much, and pray much, thank God, in the very midst of his busiest
work, but he is apt to be hurried; he has not set his thoughts especially
on the matters of his soul, and so the soul’s work is not thoroughly
done. Much for which he ought to pray he forgets to pray for. Many sins
and feelings of which he ought to repent slip past him out of sight in
the hurry of life. Much good that might be done is put off and laid by,
often till it is too late. But now here is a regular season in which we
may look back and say to ourselves, ‘How have I been getting on for this
twelvemonth, not in pocket, but in character? not in the appearance of
character in my neighbour’s eyes, but in real character—in the eyes of
God? Am I more manly, or more womanly—more godly, more true, more
humble, above all, more loving, than I was this time last year? What bad
habits have I conquered? What good habits have grown upon me? What
chances of doing good have I let slip? What foolish, unkind things have
I done? My duty to God and my neighbours is so and so, how have I done
it? Above all, this Saviour and King in heaven, in whom I profess to
believe, to whom I have sworn to be loyal and true, and to help His good
cause, the cause of godliness, manliness, and happiness among my
neighbours, in my family, in my own heart,—how have I felt towards Him?
Have I thought about Him more this year than I did last? Do I feel any
more loyalty, respect, love, gratitude to Him than I did? Ay, more, do I
think about Him at all as a living man, much less as my King and Saviour;
or, is all really know about Him the sound of the words Jesus Christ, and
the story about Him in the Apostles’ Creed? Do I really _believe_ and
trust in “Jesus Christ,” or do I not? These are sharp, searching
questions, my friends,—good Lenten food for any man’s soul,—questions
which it is much more easy to ask soberly and answer fairly now when you
look quietly back on the past year, than it is, alas! to answer them day
by day amid all the bustle your business and your families. But you will
answer, ‘This bustle will go on just as much in Lent as ever. Our time
and thoughts will be just as much occupied. We have our livings to get.
We are not fine gentlemen and ladies who can lie by for forty days and do
nothing but read and pray, while their tradesmen and servants are working
for them from morning to night. How then can we give up more time to
religion now than at other times?
This is all true enough; but there is a sound and true answer to it. It
is not so much more _time_ which you are asked to give up to your souls
in Lent, as it is more _heart_. What do I talk of? _Giving up_ more
time to your souls? And yet this is the way we all talk, as if our time
belonged to our bodies, and so we had to rob them of it, to give it up to
our souls,—as if our bodies were ourselves, and our souls were
troublesome burdens, or peevish children hanging at our backs, which
would keep prating and fretting about heaven and hell, and had to be
quieted, and their mouths stopped as quickly and easily as possible, that
we might be rid of them, and get about our true business, our real
duty,—this mighty work of eating and drinking, and amusing ourselves, and
making money. I am afraid—afraid there are too many, who, if they spoke
out their whole hearts, would be quite as content to have no souls, and
no necessity to waste their precious time (as they think) upon religion.
But, my friends, my friends, the day will come when you will see
yourselves in a true light; when your soul will not seem a mere hanger-on
to your body, but you will find out _that you are your soul_. Then there
will be no more forgetting that you have souls, and thrusting them into
the background, to be fed at odd minutes, or left to starve,—no more talk
of _giving up_ time to the care of your souls; your souls will take the
time for themselves then—and the eternity, too; they will be all in all
to you then, perhaps when it is too late!
Well, I want you, just for forty days, to let your souls be all in all to
you now; to make them your first object—your first thought in the
morning, the last thing at night,—your thought at every odd moment in the
day. You need not neglect your business; only for one short forty days
do not make your business your God. We are all too apt to try the
heathen plan, of seeking first every thing else in the world, and letting
the kingdom of God and His righteousness be added to us over and above—or
_not_ as it may happen. Try for once the plan the Lord of heaven and
earth advises, and seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,
and see whether every thing else will not be added to you. Again, you
need not be idle a moment more in Lent than at any other time. But I
dare say, that none of you are so full of business that you have not a
free ten minutes in the morning, and ten minutes at night, of which the
best of uses may be made. What do I say? Why, of all men in the world,
farmers and labourers have most time, I think, to themselves; working, as
they do, the greater part of their day in silence and alone; what
opportunities for them to have their souls busy in heaven, while they are
pacing over the fields, ploughing and hoeing! I have read of many, many
labouring men who had found out their opportunities in this way, and used
them so well as to become holy, great, and learned men. One of the most
learned scholars in England at this day was once a village carpenter, who
used, when young, to keep a book open before him on his bench while he
worked, and thus contrived to teach himself, one after the other, Latin,
Greek, and Hebrew. So much time may a man find who _looks_ for time!
But after all, and above all, believe this—that if your business or your
work does actually give you no time to think about God and your own
souls,—if in the midst of it all you cannot find leisure enough night and
morning to pray earnestly, to read your Bible carefully,—if it so
swallows up your whole thoughts during the day, that you have no
opportunity to recollect yourself, to remember that you are an immortal
being, and that you have a Saviour in heaven, whom you are serving
faithfully, or unfaithfully,—if this work or business of yours will not
give you time enough for that, then it is not God’s business, and ought
not to be yours either.
But you have time,—you have all time. When there is a will there is a
way. Make up your minds that there shall be a will, and pray earnestly
to God to give it you, if it is but for forty days: and in them think
seriously, slowly, solemnly, over your past lives. Examine yourselves
and your doings. Ask yourselves fairly,—‘Am I going forward or back? Am
I living like a child of God, or like a mere machine for making food and
wages? Is my conduct such as the Holy Scripture tells me that it should
be? You will not need to go far for a set of questions, my friends, or
rules by which to examine yourselves. You can hardly open a page of
God’s blessed Book without finding something which stares you in the face
with the question, ‘Do I do thus?’ or, ‘Do I not do thus?’ Take, for
example, the Epistle of this very day. What better test can we have for
trying and weighing our own souls?
What says it? That though we were wise, charitable, eloquent—all that
the greatest of men can be, and yet had not charity—_love_, we are
nothing!—nothing! And how does it describe this necessary,
indispensable, heavenly love? Let us spend the last few minutes of this
sermon in seeing how. And if that description does not prick all our
hearts on more points than one, they are harder than I take them for—far
harder, certainly, than they should be.
This charity, or love, we hear, which each of us ought to have and must
have—“suffers long, and is kind.” What shall we say to that? How many
hasty, revengeful thoughts and feelings have risen in the hearts of most
of us in the last year?—Here is one thought for Lent. “Charity envies
not.”—Have we envied any their riches, their happiness, their good name,
health, and youth?—Another thought for Lent. “Charity boasts not
herself.” Alas! alas! my friends, are not the best of us apt to make
much of the little good we do,—to pride ourselves on the petty kindnesses
we shew,—to be puffed up with easy self-satisfaction, just as charity is
_not_ puffed up?—Another Lenten thought. “Charity does not behave
herself unseemly;” is never proud, noisy, conceited; gives every man’s
opinion a fair, kindly hearing; making allowances for all mistakes. Have
we done so?—Then there is another thought for Lent. “Charity seeks not
her own;” does not stand fiercely and stiffly on her own rights, on the
gratitude due to her. While we—are we not too apt, when we have done a
kindness, to fret and fume, and think ourselves deeply injured, if we do
not get repaid at once with all the humble gratitude we expected? Of
this also we must think. “Charity thinks no evil,” sets down no bad
motives for any one’s conduct, but takes for granted that he means well,
whatever appearances may be; while we (I speak of myself just as much as
of any one), are we not continually apt to be suspicious, jealous, to
take for granted that people mean harm; and even when we find ourselves
mistaken, and that we have cried out before we are hurt, not to consider
it as any sin against our neighbour, whom in reality we have been
silently slandering to ourselves? “Charity rejoices not in iniquity,”
but in the truth, whatever it may be; is never glad to see a high
professor prove a hypocrite, and fall into sin, and shew himself in his
true foul colours; which we, alas! are too apt to think a very pleasant
sight.—Are not these wholesome meditations for Lent? “Charity hopes all
things” of every one, “believes all things,” all good that is told of
every one, “endures all things,” instead of flying off and giving up a
person at the first fault. Are not all these points, which our own
hearts, consciences, common sense, or whatever you like to call it (I
shall call it God’s spirit), tell us are right, true, necessary? And is
there one of us who can say that he has not offended in many, if not in
all these points; and is not that unrighteousness—going out of the right,
straightforward, childlike, loving way of looking at all people? And is
not all unrighteousness sin? And must not all sin be repented of, and
that _as soon as we find it out_? And can we not all find time this Lent
to throw over these sins of ours?—to confess them with shame and
sorrow?—to try like men to shake them off? Oh, my friends! you who are
too busy for forty short days to make your immortal souls your first
business, take care—take care, lest the day shall come when sickness, and
pain, and the terror of death, shall keep you too busy to prepare those
unrepenting, unforgiven, sin-besotted souls of yours for the kingdom of
God.
SERMON XXIV.
ON BOOKS.
JOHN, i. 1.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God.”
I DO not pretend to be able to explain this text to you, for no man can
comprehend it but He of whom it speaks, Jesus Christ, the Word of God.
But I can, by God’s grace, put before you some of the awful and glorious
truths of which it gives us a sight, and may Christ direct you, who is
_the_ Word, and grant me words to bring the matter home to you, so as to
make some of you, at least, ask yourselves the golden question, ‘If this
is true, what must we _do_ to be saved?’
The text says that the Word was from the beginning with God,—ay, God
Himself: who the Word is, there is no doubt from the rest of the chapter,
which you heard read this morning. But why is Christ called the Word of
all words—the Word of God? Let us look at this. Is not Christ _the
man_, the head and pattern of all men who are what men ought to be? And
did He not tell men that He is _the_ Life? That all life is given by Him
and out of Him? And does not St. John tell us that Christ the Life is
the light of men,—the true light which lighteth every man who cometh into
the world?
Remember this, and then think again,—what is it which makes men different
from all other living things we know of? Is it not speech—the power of
words? The beasts may make each other understand many things, but they
have no speech. These glorious things—words—are man’s right alone, part
of the image of the Son of God—the Word of God, in which man was created.
If men would but think what a noble thing it is merely to be able to
speak in words, to think in words, to write in words! Without words, we
should know no more of each other’s hearts and thoughts than the dog
knows of his fellow dog;—without words to think in; for if you will
consider, you always think to yourself in _words_, though you do not
speak them aloud; and without them all our thoughts would be mere blind
longings, feelings which we could not understand our own selves. Without
words to write in, we could not know what our forefathers did;—we could
not let our children after us know what to do. But, now, books—the
written word of man—are precious heirlooms from one generation to
another, training us, encouraging us, teaching us, by the words and
thoughts of men, whose bodies are crumbled into dust ages ago, but whose
words—the power of uttering themselves, which they got from the Son of
God—still live, and bear fruit in our hearts, and in the hearts of our
children after us, till the last day!
But where did these words—this power of uttering our thoughts, come from?
Do you fancy that men first, began like brute beasts or babies, with
strange cries and mutterings, and so gradually found out words for
themselves? Not they; the beasts have been on the earth as long as man;
and yet they can no more speak than they could when God created Adam: but
Adam, we find, could speak at once. God spoke to Adam the moment he was
made, and Adam understood Him; so he knew the power and the meaning of
words. Who gave him that power? Who but Jehovah—Jesus—the Word of God,
who imparted to him the word of speech and the light of reason? Without
them what use would there have been in saying to him, “Thou shalt not eat
of the tree of knowledge?” Without them what would there have been in
God’s bringing to him all the animals to see what he would call them,
unless He had first given Adam the power of understanding words, and
thinking of words, and speaking words? This was the glorious gift of
Christ—the Voice or Word of the Lord God, as we read in the second
chapter of Genesis, whom Adam heard another time with fear and
terror,—“The voice of the Lord walking in the garden in the cool of the
day.”—A text and a story strange enough, till we find in the first
chapter of St. John the explanation of it, telling us that the Word was
in the beginning with God—very God, and that He was the light which
lighteth every man who cometh into the world. So Christ is the light
which lighteth every man who cometh into the world. How are we to
understand that, when there are so many who live and die heathens or
reprobates,—some who never hear of Christ,—some, alas! in Christian
lands, who are dead to every doctrine or motive of Christianity? yet the
Bible says that Christ lights _every man_ who comes into the world.
Difficult to understand at first sight, yet most true, and simple too, at
bottom.
For how is every one, whether heathen or Christian, child or man,
enlightened or taught, to live and behave? Is it not by the words of
those round him, by the words he reads in books, by the thoughts which he
thinks out and puts into shape for himself? All this is the light which
every human being has his share of. And has not every man, too, the
light of reason and good feeling, more or less, to tell him whether each
thing is right or wrong, noble or mean, ugly or beautiful? This is
another way by which the light which lighteth every man works. And St.
John tells us in the text, that he who works in this way,—he who gives us
the power of understanding, and thinking, and judging, and speaking, is
the very same Word of God who was made flesh, and dwelt among men, and
died on the Cross for us; “the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of
the world!”
He is the Word of God—by Him God has spoken to man in all ages. He
taught Adam,—He spoke to Abraham as a man speaketh with his friend. It
was He Jehovah, whom we call Jesus, whom Moses and the seventy elders
saw—saw with their bodily eyes on Mount Sinai, who spoke to them with
human voice from amid the lightning and the rainbow. It must have been
only He, the Word, by whom God the Father utters Himself to man, for no
man hath seen God at any time; only the Word, the only-begotten Son, who
is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him. And who put into
the mouth of David those glorious Psalms—the songs in which all true men
for three thousand years have found the very things they longed to speak
themselves and could not? Who but Christ the Word of God, the Lord, as
David calls Him, put a new song into the mouth of His holy poet,—the
sweet singer of Israel? Who spake by the prophets, again? What do they
say themselves?—“The Word of the Lord came to me, saying.” And then,
when the Spirit of God stirred them up, the Word of God gave them speech,
and they said the sayings which shall never pass away till all be
fulfilled. And who was it who, when He was upon earth, spake as never
man spake,—whose words were the simplest, and yet the deepest,—the
tenderest, and yet the most awful, which ever broke the blessed silence
upon this earth,—whose words, now to this day, come home to men’s hearts,
stirring them up to the very roots, piercing through the marrow of men’s
souls,—whose but Christ’s, the Word, who was made flesh and dwelt among
us, full of grace and truth? And who since then, do you think, has it
been who has given to all wise and holy poets, philosophers, and
preachers, the power to speak and write the wonderful truths which, by
God’s grace, they thought out for themselves and for all mankind,—who
gave them utterance?—who but Christ, the Lord of men’s spirits, the Word
of God, who promised to give to all His true disciples a mouth and
wisdom, which their enemies should not be able to gainsay or resist?
Well, my friends, ought not the knowledge of this to make us better and
wiser? Ought it not to make us esteem, and reverence, and use many
things of which we are apt to think too lightly? How it should make us
reverence the Bible, the written word of God’s saints and prophets, of
God’s apostles, of Christ, the Word Himself? Oh, that men would use that
treasure of the Bible as it deserves;—oh, that they would believe from
their hearts, that whatever is said there is truly said, that whatever is
said there is said to them, that whatever names things are called there
are called by their right names. Then men would no longer call the vile
person beautiful, or call pride and vanity honour, or covetousness
respectability, or call sin worldly wisdom; but they would call things as
Christ calls them—they would try to copy Christ’s thoughts and Christ’s
teaching; and instead of looking for instruction and comfort to lying
opinions and false worldly cunning, they would find their only advice in
the blessed teaching, and their only comfort in the gracious promises, of
the word of the Book of Life.
Again, how these thoughts ought to make us reverence all books.
Consider! except a living man, there is nothing more wonderful than a
book!—a message to us from the dead—from human souls whom we never saw,
who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away; and yet these, in those
little sheets of paper, speak to us, amuse us, terrify us, teach us,
comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers.
Why is it that neither angels, nor saints, nor evil spirits, appear to
men now to speak to them as they did of old? Why, but because we have
_books_, by which Christ’s messengers, and the devil’s messengers too,
can tell what they will to thousands of human beings at the same moment,
year after year, all the world over! I say, we ought to reverence books,
to look at them as awful and mighty things. If they are good and true,
whether they are about religion or politics, farming, trade, or medicine,
they are the message of Christ, the Maker of all things, the Teacher of
all truth, which He has put into the heart of some man to speak, that he
may tell us what is good for our spirits, for our bodies, and for our
country.
And at the last day, be sure of it, we shall have to render an account—a
strict account, of the books which we have read, and of the way in which
we have obeyed what we read, just as if we had had so many prophets or
angels sent to us.
If, on the other hand, books are false and wicked, we ought to fear them
as evil spirits loose among us, as messages from the father of lies, who
deceives the hearts of evil men, that they may spread abroad the poison
of his false and foul messages, putting good for evil, and evil for good,
sweet for bitter, and bitter for sweet, saying to all men, ‘I, too, have
a tree of knowledge, and you may eat of the fruit thereof, and not die.’
But believe him not. When you see a wicked book, when you find in a book
any thing which contradicts God’s book, cast it away, trample it under
foot, believe that it is the devil tempting you by his cunning, alluring
words, as he tempted Eve, your mother. Would to God all here would make
that rule,—never to look into an evil book, a filthy ballad, a
nonsensical, frivolous story! Can a man take a snake into his bosom and
not be bitten?—can we play with fire and not be burnt?—can we open our
ears and eyes to the devil’s message, whether of covetousness, or filth,
or folly, and not be haunted afterwards by its wicked words, rising up in
our thoughts like evil spirits, between us and our pure and noble
duty—our baptism-vows?
I might say much more about these things, and, by God’s help, in another
sermon I will go on, and speak to you of the awful importance of spoken
words, of the sermons and the conversation to which you listen, the awful
importance of every word which comes out of your own mouth. But I have
spoken only of books this morning, for this is the age of books, the
time, one would think, of which Daniel prophesied that many should run to
and fro, and knowledge should be increased. A flood of books,
newspapers, writings of all sorts, good and bad, is spreading over the
whole land, and young and old will read them. We cannot stop that—we
ought not: it is God’s ordinance. It is more: it is God’s grace and
mercy, that we have a free press in England—liberty for every man, that
if he have any of God’s truth to tell he may tell it out boldly, in books
or otherwise. A blessing from God! one which we should reverence, for
God knows it was dearly bought. Before our forefathers could buy it for
us, many an honoured man left house and home to die in the battle-field
or on the scaffold, fighting and witnessing for the right of every man to
whom God’s Word comes, to speak God’s Word openly to his countrymen. A
blessing, and an awful one! for the same gate which lets in good lets in
evil. The law dare not silence bad books. It dare not root up the tares
lest it root up the wheat also. The men who died to buy us liberty knew
that it was better to let in a thousand bad books than shut out one good
one; for a grain of God’s truth will ever outweigh a ton of the devil’s
lies. We cannot then silence evil books, but we can turn away our eyes
from them—we can take care that what we read, and what we let others
read, shall be good and wholesome. Now, if ever, are we bound to
remember that books are words, and that words come either from Christ or
the devil,—now, if ever, we are bound to try all books by the Word of
God,—now, if ever, are we bound to put holy and wise books, both
religious and worldly, into the hands of all around us, that if, poor
souls! they must need eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, they may
also eat of the tree of life,—and now, if ever, are we bound to pray to
Christ the Word of God, that He will raise up among us wise and holy
writers, and give them words and utterance, to speak to the hearts of all
Englishmen the message of God’s covenant, and that he may confound the
devil and his lies, and all that swarm of vile writers who are filling
England with trash, filth, blasphemy, and covetousness, with books which
teach men that our wise forefathers, who built our churches and founded
our constitution, and made England the queen of nations, were but
ignorant knaves and fanatics, and that selfish money-making and godless
licentiousness are the only true wisdom; and so turn the divine power of
words, and the inestimable blessing of a free press, into the devil’s
engine, and not Christ’s the Word of God. But their words shall be
brought to nought.
May God preserve us and all our friends from that defilement, and may He
give you all grace, in these strange times, to take care what you read
and how you read, and to hold fast by the Book of all books, and Christ
the Word of God. Try by them all books and men; for if they speak not
according to God’s law and testimony, it is because there is no truth in
them.
SERMON XXV.
THE COURAGE OF THE SAVIOUR.
JOHN, xi. 7, 8.
“Then after that saith He to His disciples, Let us go into Judea
again. His disciples say to Him, Master, the Jews of late sought to
stone thee, and goest thou thither again?”
WE all admire a brave man. And we are right. To be brave is God’s gift.
To be brave is to be like Jesus Christ. Cowardice is only the devil’s
likeness. But we must take care what we mean by being brave. Now, there
are two sorts of bravery—courage and fortitude. And they are very
different: courage is of the flesh,—fortitude is of the spirit. Courage
is good, but dumb animals have it just as much as we. A dog, a tiger,
and a horse, have courage, but they have no fortitude,—because fortitude
is a spiritual thing, and beasts have no spirits like ours.
What is fortitude? It is the courage which will make us not only fight
in a good cause, but suffer in a good cause. Courage will help us only
to give others pain; fortitude will help us to bear pain ourselves. And
more, fortitude will make a fearful person brave, and very often the more
brave the more fearful they are. And thus it is that women are so often
braver than men. We, men, are made of coarser stuff; we do not feel pain
as keenly as women; and if we do feel, we are rightly ashamed to shew it.
But a tender woman, who feels pain and sorrow infinitely more than we do,
who need not be ashamed of being frightened, who perhaps is terrified at
every mouse and spider,—to see her bearing patiently pain, and sorrow,
and shame, in spite of all her fearfulness, because she knows it is her
duty—that is Christ’s likeness—that is true fortitude—that is a sight
nobler than all the “bull-dog courage” in the world. For what is the
courage of the bull-dog after all, or of the strong quarrelsome man? He
is confident in his own strength, he is rough and hard, and does not care
for pain; and when he thrusts his head into a fight, like a surly dog, he
does it not because it is his duty, but because he likes it, because he
is angry, and then every blow and every wound makes him more angry, and
he fights on, forgetting his pain from blind rage.
That is not altogether bad; men ought to be courageous. But, oh! my
friends, is there not a more excellent way to be brave? and which is
nobler, to suffer bravely for God’s sake, or to beat men made in God’s
image bravely for one’s own sake? Think of any fight you ever saw, and
then compare with that the stories of those old martyrs who died rather
than speak a word against their Saviour. If you want to see true
fortitude, think of what has happened thousands of times when the heathen
used to persecute the Christians.—How delicate women, who would not
venture to set the sole of their foot to the ground for tenderness, would
submit, rather than give up their religion and deny the Lord who died for
them, to be torn from husband and family, and endure nakedness, and
insult, and tortures which make one’s blood run cold to read of, till
they were torn slowly piecemeal, or roasted in burning flames, without a
murmur or an angry word,—knowing that Christ, who had borne all things
for them, would give them strength to bear all things for Him, trusting
that if they were faithful unto death, He would give them a crown of
life. There was true fortitude—there was true faith—there was God’s
strength made perfect in woman’s weakness! Do you not see, my friends,
that such a death was truly brave? How does bull-dog courage shew beside
that courage—the courage which conquers grief and pain for duty’s-sake,
instead of merely forgetting them in rage and obstinacy?
And do you not see how this bears on my text? How it bears on our Lord’s
whole life? Was he not indeed the perfectly brave man—the man who
endured more than all living men put together, at the very time that he
had the most intense fear of what he was going to suffer? And stranger
still, endured it all of His own will, while He had it in His power to
shake it all off any instant, and free Himself utterly from pain and
suffering.
Now, this speech of our Lord’s in the text is just a case of true
fortitude. He was beyond Jordan. He had been forced to escape thither
to save His life from the mad, blinded Jews. He had no foolhardiness; He
knew that He had no more right than we have to put His life in danger
when there was no good to be done by it. But now there _was_ good to be
done by it. Lazarus was dead, and He wanted to raise him to life.
Therefore He said to His disciples, “Let us go into Judea again.” They
knew the danger; they said, “Master, the Jews of late sought to stone
Thee, and goest Thou thither again?” But He would go; He had a work to
do, and He dared bear anything to do His work. Ay, here is the secret,
this is the feeling which gives a man true courage—the feeling that he
has a work to do at all costs, the sense of duty. Oh! my friends, let
men, women, or children, once feel that they have a duty to perform, let
them once say to themselves, ‘I am bound to do this thing—it is right for
me to do this thing; I owe it as a duty to my family, I owe it as a duty
to my country, I owe it as a duty to God, who called me into this station
of life; I owe it as a duty to Jesus Christ, who bought me with His
blood, that I might do His will and not my own pleasure.’—When a man has
once said that _honestly_ to himself, when that glorious heavenly
thought, ‘_It is my duty_,’ has risen upon his soul, like the sun upon
the earth, warming his heart and enlightening it and making it bring
forth all good and noble fruits, then that man will feel a strength come
to him, and a courage from God above, which will conquer all his fears
and his selfish love of ease and pleasure, and enable him to bear
insults, and pain, and poverty, and death itself, provided he can but do
what is right, and be found by God, whatever happens to him, working
God’s will where God has put him. This is fortitude—this is true
courage—this is Christ’s likeness—this is the courage which weak women on
sick beds may have as well as strong men on the battle-field. Even when
they shrink most from suffering, God’s Spirit will whisper to them, ‘It
is _thy_ duty, it is thy Father’s will,’ and then they will find His
strength made perfect in their weakness, and when their human weakness
fails most God will give them heavenly fortitude, and they will be able,
like St. Paul, to say, “When I am weak, then I am strong, for I can do
all things through Christ, who strengtheneth me.”
And now, remember that there was no pride, no want of feeling to keep up
our Lord’s courage. He has tasted sorrow for every man, woman, and
child, and therefore He has tasted fear also; tempted in all things, like
as we are, that in all things He might be touched with the feeling of our
infirmities,—that there might be no poor soul terrified at the thought of
pain or sorrow, but could comfort themselves with the thought, Well, the
Son of God knows what fear is. He who said that His soul was troubled—He
who at the thought of death was in such agony of terror, that His sweat
ran down to the ground like great drops of blood,—He who cried in His
agony, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me,”—He
understands my pain,—He tells me not to be ashamed of crying in my pain
like Him, “Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me”—for He
will give me the strength to finish that prayer of His, and in the midst
of my trouble say, “Nevertheless, Father, not as I will, but as Thou
wilt.” Remember, again, that our Lord was not like the martyrs of old,
forced to undergo His sufferings whether He liked them or not. We are
too apt to forget that, and therefore we misunderstand our Lord’s
example; and therefore we misunderstand what true fortitude is. Jesus
Christ was the Son of God; He had made the very men who were tormenting
Him; He had made the very wood of the cross on which He hung, the iron
which pierced His blessed hands; and, for aught we know, one wish of His,
and they would all have crumbled into dust, and He have been safe in a
moment. But He would not; He _endured_ the cross. He was the only man
who ever really endured anything at all, because He alone of all men had
perfect power to save Himself, even when He was nailed to the tree,
fainting, bleeding, dying. It was never too late for Him to stop. As He
said to Peter when he wanted to fight for Christ, “Thinkest thou that I
cannot pray to my Father, and He will send me instantly more than twelve
legions of angels?” But _He would not_. He had to save the world, and
He was determined to do it, whatever agony or fear it cost Him. St.
Peter was a _brave_ man. He drew his sword in the garden, and attacked,
single-handed, that great body of armed soldiers; cutting down a servant
of the high-priest’s. But he was only brave, our Lord was more. The
blessed Jesus had true fortitude; He could _bear_ patiently, while Peter
could only rage and fight uselessly. And see how Christ’s fortitude
lasted Him, while Peter’s mere courage failed him. While our Lord was
witnessing that glorious confession of His before Pilate, bearing on
through, without shrinking, even to the cross itself, where was Peter?
He had denied his Master, and ran shamefully away. He had a long lesson
to learn before he was perfect, had Peter. He had to learn not how to
fight, but how to suffer—and he learnt it; and in his old age that
strong, fierce St. Peter had true fortitude to give himself up to be
crucified, like his Lord, without a murmur, and preach Christ’s gospel as
he hung for three whole days upon the torturing cross. There was
fortitude; that violence of his in the garden was only courage as of a
brute animal,—courage of the flesh, not the true courage of the spirit.
Oh, my friends, that we could all learn this lesson, that it is better to
suffer than to revenge, better to be killed than to kill. There are
times when a man must fight—for his country, for just laws, for his
family, but for himself it is very seldom that he must fight. He who
returns good for evil,—he who when he is cursed, blesses those who curse
him,—he, who takes joyfully the spoiling of his goods, who submits to be
cheated in little matters, and sometimes in great ones, sooner than ruin
the poor sinful wretch who has ill-used him; that man has really put on
Christ’s likeness, that man is really going on to perfection, and
fulfilling the law of love; and for everything he gives up for the sake
of peace and mercy, which is for God’s sake, God will reward him
sevenfold into his bosom. There are times when a man is bound to go to
law, bound to expose and punish evil-doers, lest they should, being
unpunished, become confident and go on from bad to worse, and hurt others
as well as him. A man sometimes is bound by his duty to his neighbours
and to society to defend himself, to go to law with those who injure
him,—sometimes; but never bound to revenge himself, never bound to say,
‘He has hurt me, and I will pay him off for it at law;’ that is abusing
law, which is God’s ordinance, for mere selfish revenge. You may say, it
is difficult to know which is which, when to defend oneself, and when
not. It is difficult; without the light of God’s Spirit, I think no man
will know. But let a man live by God’s Spirit, let him pray for
kindliness, mercifulness, manliness, and patience, for true fortitude to
bear and to forbear, and God will surely open his eyes to see when he is
called on to avenge an injury, and when he is called on to suffer
patiently. God will shew him—if a man wishes to be like Christ, and to
work like Christ, at doing good, God will teach him and guide him in all
puzzling matters like this. And do not be afraid of being called cowards
and milksops for bearing injuries patiently—those who call you so will be
likely to be the greatest cowards themselves. Patience is the truest
sign of courage. Ask old soldiers, who have seen real war, and they will
tell you that the bravest men, the men who endured best, not in mere
fighting, but in standing still for hours to be mowed down by
cannon-shot; who were most cheerful and patient in shipwreck, and
starvation and defeat,—all things ten times worse than fighting,—ask old
soldiers, I say, and they will tell you that the men who shewed best in
such miseries, were generally the stillest and meekest men in the whole
regiment: that is true fortitude; that is Christ’s image—the meekest of
men, and the bravest too. And so books say, and seem to prove it, by
many strange stories, that the lion, while he is the strongest and
bravest of beasts of prey, is also the most patient and merciful. He
knows his own strength and courage, and therefore he does not care to be
shewing it off. He can afford to endure an affront. It is only the
cowardly cur who flies out and barks at every passer-by. And so with our
blessed Lord. The Bible calls Him the Lion of Judah; but it also calls
Him the Lamb dumb before the shearers. Ah, my friends, we must come back
to Him, for all the little that is great and noble in man or woman, or
dumb beast even, is perfected in Him; He only is perfectly great,
perfectly noble, brave, meek. He who to save us sinful men, endured the
cross, despising the shame, till He sat down at the right hand of the
Majesty on high, perfectly brave He is, and perfectly gentle, and will be
so for ever; for even at His second coming, when He shall appear the
Conqueror of hell, with tens of thousands of angels, to take vengeance on
those who know not God, and destroy the wicked with the breath of His
mouth, even then in His fiercest anger, the Scripture tells us, His anger
shall be “the anger of the Lamb.” Almighty vengeance and just anger, and
yet perfect gentleness and love all the while.—Mystery of mysteries!—The
wrath of the Lamb! May God give us all to feel in that day, not the
wrath, but the love of the Lamb who was slain for us!
FOOTNOTES
{92} “And when He was come to the other side, into the country of the
Gergesenes, there met Him two possessed with devils, coming out of the
tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man might pass by that way. And,
behold, they cried out, saying, What have we do with Thee, Jesus, Thou
Son of God? Art Thou come hither to torment us before the time? And
there was a good way off from them an herd of many swine feeding. So the
devils besought him, saying, If Thou cast us out, suffer us to go away
into the herd of swine. And He said unto them, Go. And when they were
come out, they went into the herd of swine: and, behold, the whole herd
of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in
the waters.”
{187} Von Stolberg.
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