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Title: The Water of Life, and Other Sermons
Author: Kingsley, Charles
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Water of Life, and Other Sermons" ***
Transcribed from the 1890 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org
THE WATER OF LIFE
_AND OTHER SERMONS_
* * * * *
BY
CHARLES KINGSLEY.
* * * * *
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
1890
_The right of translation is reserved_
* * * * *
First Edition (Fcap. 8vo), 1867.
New Edition 1872, Reprinted 1873, 1875.
New Edition, Crown 8vo, 1879, Reprinted 1881, 1885.
New Edition 1890.
* * * * *
CONTENTS.
SERMON I.
Page
THE WATER OF LIFE. (_Revelation_ xxii. 17.) 1
SERMON II.
THE PHYSICIAN’S CALLING. (_St. Matthew_ ix. 35.) 14
SERMON III.
THE VICTORY OF LIFE. (_Isaiah_ xxxviii. 18, 19.) 27
SERMON IV.
THE WAGES OF SIN. (_Romans_ vi. 21–23.) 40
SERMON V.
NIGHT AND DAY. (_Romans_ xiii. 12.) 56
SERMON VI.
THE SHAKING OF THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH. (_Hebrews_ xii. 68
26–29.)
SERMON VII.
THE BATTLE OF LIFE. (_Galatians_ v. 16, 17.) 83
SERMON VIII.
FREE GRACE. (_Isaiah_ lv. 1.) 90
SERMON IX.
EZEKIEL’S VISION. (_Ezekiel_ i. 1, 26.) 98
SERMON X.
RUTH. (_Ruth_ ii. 4.) 111
SERMON XI.
SOLOMON. (_Ecclesiastes_ i. 12–14.) 123
SERMON XII.
PROGRESS. (_Ecclesiastes_ vii. 10.) 134
SERMON XIII.
FAITH. (_Habakkuk_ ii. 4.) 143
SERMON XIV.
THE GREAT COMMANDMENT. (_Matthew_ xxii. 37, 38.) 153
SERMON XV.
THE EARTHQUAKE. (_Psalm_ xlvi. 1, 2.) 164
SERMON XVI.
THE METEOR SHOWER. (_Matthew_ x. 29, 30.) 176
SERMON XVII.
CHOLERA, 1866. (_Luke_ vii. 16.) 189
SERMON XVIII.
THE WICKED SERVANT. (_Matthew_ xviii. 23.) 203
SERMON XIX.
CIVILIZED BARBARISM. (_Mattthew_ ix. 12.) 213
SERMON XX.
THE GOD OF NATURE. (_Psalm_ cxlvii. 7–9.) 233
SERMON I.
THE WATER OF LIFE.
(_Preached at Westminster Abbey_)
REVELATION xxii. 17.
And the Spirit and the Bride say, Come. And let him that heareth
say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will,
let him take the water of life freely.
THIS text is its own witness. It needs no man to testify to its origin.
Its own words show it to be inspired and divine.
But not from its mere poetic beauty, great as that is: greater than we,
in this wet and cold climate, can see at the first glance. We must go to
the far East and the far South to understand the images which were called
up in the mind of an old Jew at the very name of wells and water-springs;
and why the Scriptures speak of them as special gifts of God, life-giving
and divine. We must have seen the treeless waste, the blazing sun, the
sickening glare, the choking dust, the parched rocks, the distant
mountains quivering as in the vapour of a furnace; we must have felt the
lassitude of heat, the torment of thirst, ere we can welcome, as did
those old Easterns, the well dug long ago by pious hands, whither the
maidens come with their jars at eventide, when the stone is rolled away,
to water the thirsty flocks; or the living fountain, under the shadow of
a great rock in a weary land, with its grove of trees, where all the
birds for many a mile flock in, and shake the copses with their song; its
lawn of green, on which the long-dazzled eye rests with refreshment and
delight; its brook, wandering away—perhaps to be lost soon in burning
sand, but giving, as far as it flows, Life; a Water of Life to plant, to
animal, and to man.
All these images, which we have to call up in our minds one by one,
presented themselves to the mind of an Eastern, whether Jew or heathen,
at once, as a well-known and daily scene; and made him feel, at the very
mention of a water-spring, that the speaker was telling him of the good
and beautiful gift of a beneficent Being.
And yet—so do extremes meet—like thoughts, though not like images, may be
called up in our minds, here in the heart of London, in murky alleys and
foul courts, where there is too often, as in the poet’s rotting sea—
‘Water, water, everywhere,
Yet not a drop to drink.’
And we may bless God—as the Easterns bless Him for the ancestors who
digged their wells—for every pious soul who now erects a
drinking-fountain; for he fulfils the letter as well as the spirit of
Scripture, by offering to the bodies as well as the souls of men the
Water of Life freely.
But the text speaks not of earthly water. No doubt the words ‘Water of
Life’ have a spiritual and mystic meaning. Yet that alone does not prove
the inspiration of the text. They had a spiritual and mystic meaning
already among the heathens of the East—Greeks and barbarians alike.
The East—and indeed the West likewise—was haunted by dreams of a Water of
Life, a Fount of Perpetual Youth, a Cup of Immortality: dreams at which
only the shallow and the ignorant will smile; for what are they but
tokens of man’s right to Immortality,—of his instinct that he is not as
the beasts,—that there is somewhat in him which ought not to die, which
need not die, and yet which may die, and which perhaps deserves to die?
How could it be kept alive? how strengthened and refreshed into perpetual
youth?
And water—with its life-giving and refreshing powers, often with
medicinal properties seemingly miraculous—what better symbol could be
found for that which would keep off death? Perhaps there was some
reality which answered the symbol, some actual Cup of Immortality, some
actual Fount of Youth. But who could attain to them? Surely the gods
hid their own special treasure from the grasp of man. Surely that Water
of Life was to be sought for far away, amid trackless mountain-peaks,
guarded by dragons and demons. That Fount of Youth must be hidden in the
rich glades of some tropic forest. That Cup of Immortality must be
earned by years, by ages, of superhuman penance and self torture.
Certain of the old Jews, it is true, had had deeper and truer thoughts.
Here and there a psalmist had said, ‘With God is the well of Life;’ or a
prophet had cried, ‘Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters,
and buy without money and without price!’ But the Jews had utterly
forgotten (if the mass of them ever understood) the meaning of the old
revelations; and, above all, the Pharisees, the most religious among
them. To their minds, it was only by a proud asceticism,—by being not as
other men were; only by doing some good thing—by performing some
extraordinary religious feat,—that man could earn eternal life. And
bitter and deadly was their selfish wrath when they heard that the Water
of Life was within all men’s reach, then and for ever; that The Eternal
Life was in that Christ who spoke to them; that He gave it freely to
whomsoever He would;—bitter their wrath when they heard His disciples
declare that God had given to men Eternal Life; that the Spirit and the
Bride said. Come.
They had, indeed, a graceful ceremony, handed down to them from better
times, as a sign that those words of the old psalmists and prophets had
once meant something. At the Feast of Tabernacles—the harvest feast—at
which God was especially to be thanked as the giver of fertility and
Life, their priests drew water with great pomp from the pool of Siloam;
connecting it with the words of the prophet: ‘With joy shall ye draw
water out of the wells of salvation.’ But the ceremony had lost its
meaning. It had become mechanical and empty. They had forgotten that
God was a giver. They would have confessed, of course, that He was the
Lord of Life: but they expected Him to prove that, not by giving Life,
but by taking it away: not by saving the many, but by destroying all
except a favoured few. But bitter and deadly was their wrath when they
were told that their ceremony had still a living meaning, and a meaning
not only for them, but for all men; for that mob of common people whom
they looked on as accursed, because they knew not the law. Bitter and
deadly was their selfish wrath, when they heard One who ate and drank
with publicans and sinners stand up in the very midst of that grand
ceremony, and cry; ‘If any man thirst, let him come to Me and drink. He
that believeth on Me, as the scripture hath said, Out of him shall flow
rivers of living water.’ A God who said to all ‘Come,’ was not the God
they desired to rule over them. And thus the very words which prove the
text to be divine and inspired, were marked out as such by those bigots
of the old world, who in them saw and hated both Christ and His Father.
The Spirit and the Bride say, Come. Come, and drink freely.
Those words prove the text, and other texts like it in Holy Scripture, to
be an utterly new Gospel and good news; an utterly new revelation and
unveiling of God, and of the relations of God to man.
For the old legends and dreams, in whatsoever they differed, agreed at
least in this, that the Water of Life was far away; infinitely difficult
to reach; the prize only of some extraordinary favourite of fortune, or
of some being of superhuman energy and endurance. The gods grudged life
to mortals, as they grudged them joy and all good things. That God
should say Come; that the Water of Life could be a gift, a grace, a boon
of free generosity and perfect condescension, never entered into their
minds. That the gods should keep their immortality to themselves seemed
reasonable enough. That they should bestow it on a few heroes; and, far
away above the stars, give them to eat of their ambrosia, and drink of
their nectar, and so live for ever; that seemed reasonable enough
likewise.
But that the God of gods, the Maker of the universe should say, ‘Come,
and drink freely;’ that He should stoop from heaven to bring life and
immortality to light,—to tell men what the Water of Life was, and where
it was, and how to attain it; much more, that that God should stoop to
become incarnate, and suffer and die on the cross, that He might purchase
the Water of Life, not for a favoured few, but for all mankind; that He
should offer it to all, without condition, stint, or drawback;—this,
this, never entered into their wildest dreams.
And yet, when the strange news was told, it looked so probable, although
so strange, to thousands who had seemed mere profligates or outcasts; it
agreed so fully with the deepest voices of their own hearts,—with their
thirst for a nobler, purer, more enduring Life,—with their highest idea
of what a perfect God should be, if He meant to show His perfect
goodness; it seemed at once so human and humane, and yet so superhuman
and divine;—that they accepted it unhesitatingly, as a voice from God
Himself, a revelation of the Eternal Author of the universe; as, God
grant you may accept it this day.
And what is Life? And what is the Water of Life?
What are they indeed, my friends? You will find many answers to that
question, in this, as in all ages: but the one which Scripture gives is
this. Life is none other, according to the Scripture, than God Himself,
Jesus Christ our Lord, who bestows on man His own Spirit, to form in him
His own character, which is the character of God.
He is The one Eternal Life; and it has been manifested in human form,
that human beings might copy it; and behold, it was full of grace and
truth.
The Life of grace and truth; that is the Life of Christ, and, therefore,
the Life of God.
The Life of grace—of graciousness, love, pity, generosity, usefulness,
self-sacrifice; the Life of truth—of faithfulness, fairness, justice, the
desire to impart knowledge and to guide men into all truth. The Life, in
one word, of charity, which is both grace and truth, both love and
justice, in one Eternal essence. That is the life which God lives for
ever in heaven. That is The one Eternal Life, which must be also the
Life of God. For, as there is but one Eternal, even God, so is there but
one Eternal Life, which is the life of God and of His Christ. And the
Spirit by which it is inspired into the hearts of men is the Spirit of
God, who proceedeth alike from the Father and from the Son.
Have you not seen men and women in whom these words have been literally
and palpably fulfilled? Have you not seen those who, though old in
years, were so young in heart, that they seem to have drunk of the
Fountain of perpetual Youth,—in whom, though the outward body decayed,
the soul was renewed day by day; who kept fresh and pure the noblest and
holiest instincts of their childhood, and went on adding to them the
experience, the calm, the charity of age? Persons whose eye was still so
bright, whose smile was still so tender, that it seemed that they could
never die? And when they died, or seemed to die, you felt that THEY were
not dead, but only their husk and shell; that they themselves, the
character which you had loved and reverenced, must endure on, beyond the
grave, beyond the worlds, in a literally Everlasting Life, independent of
nature, and of all the changes of the material universe.
Surely you have seen such. And surely what you loved in them was the
Spirit of God Himself,—that love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness,
goodness, which the natural savage man has not. Has not, I say, look at
him where you will, from the tropics to the pole, because it is a gift
above man; the gift of the Spirit of God; the Eternal Life of goodness,
which natural birth cannot give to man, nor natural death take away.
You have surely seen such persons—if you have not, _I_ have, thank God,
full many a time;—but if you have seen them, did you not see this?—That
it was not riches which gave them this Life, if they were rich; or
intellect, if they were clever; or science, if they were learned; or
rank, if they were cultivated; or bodily organization, if they were
beautiful and strong: that this noble and gentle life of theirs was
independent of their body, of their mind, of their circumstances? Nay,
have you not seen this,—_I_ have, thank God, full many a time,—That not
many rich, not many mighty, not many noble are called: but that God’s
strength is rather made perfect in man’s weakness,—that in foul garrets,
in lonely sick-beds, in dark places of the earth, you find ignorant
people, sickly people, ugly people, stupid people, in spite of, in
defiance of, every opposing circumstance, leading heroic lives,—a
blessing, a comfort, an example, a very Fount of Life to all around them;
and dying heroic deaths, because they know they have Eternal Life?
And what was that which had made them different from the mean, the
savage, the drunken, the profligate beings around them? This at least.
That they were of those of whom it is written, ‘Let him that is athirst
come.’ They had been athirst for Life. They had had instincts and
longings; very simple and humble, but very pure and noble. At times, it
may be, they had been unfaithful to those instincts. At times, it may
be, they had fallen. They had said ‘Why should I not do like the rest,
and be a savage? Let me eat and drink, for to-morrow I die;’ and they
had cast themselves down into sin, for very weariness and heaviness, and
were for a while as the beasts which have no law.
But the thirst after The noble Life was too deep to be quenched in that
foul puddle. It endured, and it conquered; and they became more and more
true to it, till it was satisfied at last, though never quenched, that
thirst of theirs, in Him who alone can satisfy it—the God who gave it;
for in them were fulfilled the Lord’s own words: ‘Blessed are they that
hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.’
There are those, I fear, in this church—there are too many in all
churches—who have not felt, as yet, this divine thirst after a higher
Life; who wish not for an Eternal, but for a merely endless life, and who
would not care greatly what sort of life that endless life might be, if
only it was not too unlike the life which they live now; who would be
glad enough to continue as they are, in their selfish pleasure, selfish
gain, selfish content, for ever; who look on death as an unpleasant
necessity, the end of all which they really prize; and who have taken up
religion chiefly as a means for escaping still more unpleasant
necessities after death. To them, as to all, it is said, ‘Come, and
drink of the water of life freely.’ But The Life of goodness which
Christ offers, is not the life they want. Wherefore they will not come
to Him, that they may have life. Meanwhile, they have no right to sneer
at the Fountain of Youth, or the Cup of Immortality. Well were it for
them if those dreams were true; in their heart of hearts they know it.
Would they not go to the ends of the earth to bathe in the Fountain of
Youth? Would they not give all their gold for a draught of the Cup of
Immortality, and so save themselves, once and for all, the trouble of
becoming good?
But there are those here, I doubt not, who have in them, by grace of God,
that same divine thirst for the Higher Life; who are discontented with
themselves, ashamed of themselves; who are tormented by longings which
they cannot satisfy, instincts which they cannot analyse, powers which
they cannot employ, duties which they cannot perform, doctrinal
confusions which they cannot unravel; who would welcome any change, even
the most tremendous, which would make them nobler, purer, juster, more
loving, more useful, more clear-headed and sound-minded; and when they
think of death say with the poet,—
‘’Tis life, not death for which I pant,
’Tis life, whereof my nerves are scant,
More life, and fuller, that I want.’
To them I say—for God has said it long ago,—Be of good cheer. The
calling and gifts of God are without repentance. If you have the divine
thirst, it will be surely satisfied. If you long to be better men and
women, better men and women you will surely be. Only be true to those
higher instincts; only do not learn to despise and quench that divine
thirst; only struggle on, in spite of mistakes, of failures, even of
sins—for every one of which last your heavenly Father will chastise you,
even while He forgives; in spite of all falls, struggle on. Blessed are
you that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for you shall be filled.
To you—and not in vain—‘The Spirit and the Bride say, Come. And let him
that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever
will, let him drink of the water of life freely.’
SERMON II.
THE PHYSICIAN’S CALLING.
(_Preached at Whitehall for St. George’s Hospital_.)
ST. MATTHEW ix. 35.
And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their
synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing
every sickness and every disease among the people.
THE Gospels speak of disease and death in a very simple and human tone.
They regard them in theory, as all are forced to regard them in fact, as
sore and sad evils.
The Gospels never speak of disease or death as necessities; never as the
will of God. It is Satan, not God, who binds the woman with a spirit of
infirmity. It is not the will of our Father in heaven that one little
one should perish. Indeed, we do not sufficiently appreciate the
abhorrence with which the whole of Scripture speaks of disease and death:
because we are in the habit of interpreting many texts which speak of the
disease and death of the body in this life as if they referred to the
punishment and death of the soul in the world to come. We have a perfect
right to do that; for Scripture tells us that there is a mysterious
analogy and likeness between the life of the body and that of the soul,
and therefore between the death of the body and that of the soul: but we
must not forget, in the secondary and higher spiritual interpretation of
such texts, their primary and physical meaning, which is this—that
disease and death are uniformly throughout Scripture held up to the
abhorrence of man.
Moreover—and this is noteworthy—the Gospels, and indeed all Scripture,
very seldom palliate the misery of disease, by drawing from it those
moral lessons which we ourselves do. I say very seldom. The Bible does
so here and there, to tell us that we may do so likewise. And we may
thank God heartily that the Bible does so. It would be a miserable
world, if all that the clergyman or the friend might say by the sick-bed
were, ‘This is an inevitable evil, like hail and thunder. You must bear
it if you can: and if not, then not.’ A miserable world, if he could not
say with full belief; ‘“My son, despise not thou the chastening of the
Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him. For whom the Lord loveth
He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.” Thou knowest
not now why thou art afflicted; perhaps thou wilt never know in this
life. But a day will come when thou wilt know: when thou wilt find that
this sickness came to thee at the exact right time, in the exact right
way; when thou wilt find that God has been keeping thee in the secret
place of His presence from the provoking of men, and hiding thee
privately in His tabernacle from the spite of tongues; when thou wilt
discover that thou hast been learning precious lessons for thy immortal
spirit, while thou didst seem to thyself merely tossing with clouded
intellect on a bed of useless pain; when thou wilt find that God was
nearest to thee, at the very moment when He seemed to have left thee most
utterly.’
Thank God, we can say that, and more; and we will say it. But we must
bear in mind, that the Gospels, which are the very parts of Scripture
which speak most concerning disease, omit almost entirely that cheering
and comforting view of it.
And why? Only to force upon our attention, I believe, a view even more
cheering and comforting: a view deeper and wider, because supplied not
merely to the pious sufferer, but to all sufferers; not merely to the
Christian, but to all mankind. And that is, I believe, none other than
this: that God does not only bring spiritual good out of physical evil,
but that He hates physical evil itself: that He desires not only the
salvation of our souls, but the health of our bodies; and that when He
sent His only begotten Son into the world to do His will, part of that
will was, that He should attack and conquer the physical evil of
disease—as it were instinctively, as his natural enemy, and directly, for
the sake of the body of the sufferer.
Many excellent men, seeing how the healing of disease was an integral
part of our Lord’s mission, and of the mission of His apostles, have
wished that it should likewise form an integral part of the mission of
the Church: that the clergy should as much as possible be physicians; the
physician, as much as possible, a clergyman. The plan may be useful in
exceptional cases—in that, for instance, of the missionary among the
heathen.
But experience has decided, that in a civilized and Christian country it
had better be otherwise: that the great principle of the division of
labour should be carried out: that there should be in the land a body of
men whose whole mind and time should be devoted to one part only of our
Lord’s work—the battle with disease and death. And the effect has been
not to lower but to raise the medical profession. It has saved the
doctor from one great danger—that of abusing, for the purposes of
religious proselytizing, the unlimited confidence reposed in him. It has
freed him from many a superstition which enfeebled and confused the
physicians of the Middle Ages. It has enabled him to devote his whole
intellect to physical science, till he has set his art on a sound and
truly scientific foundation. It has enabled him to attack physical evil
with a single-hearted energy and devotion which ought to command the
respect and admiration of his fellow-countrymen. If all classes did
their work half as simply, as bravely, as determinedly, as unselfishly,
as the medical men of Great Britain—and, I doubt not, of other countries
in Europe—this world would be a far fairer place than it is likely to be
for many a year to come. It is good to do one thing and to do it well.
It is good to follow Christ in one thing, and to follow Him utterly in
that. And the medical man has set his mind to do one thing,—to hate
calmly, but with an internecine hatred, disease and death, and to fight
against them to the end.
The medical man is complained of at times as being too materialistic—as
caring more for the bodies of his patients than for their souls. Do not
blame him too hastily. In his exclusive care for the body, he may be
witnessing unconsciously, yet mightily, for the soul, for God, for the
Bible, for immortality.
Is he not witnessing for God, when he shows by his acts that he believes
God to be a God of Life, not of death; of health, not of disease; of
order, not of disorder; of joy and strength, not of misery and weakness?
Is he not witnessing for Christ when, like Christ, he heals all manner of
sickness and disease among the people, and attacks physical evil as the
natural foe of man and of the Creator of man?
Is he not witnessing for the immortality of the soul when he fights
against death as an evil to be postponed at all hazards and by all means,
even when its advent is certain? Surely it is so. How often have we
seen the doctor by the dying bed, trying to preserve life, when he knew
well that life could not be preserved. We have been tempted to say to
him, ‘Let the sufferer alone. He is senseless. He is going. We can do
nothing more for his soul; you can do nothing more for his body. Why
torment him needlessly for the sake of a few more moments of respiration?
Let him alone to die in peace.’ How have we been tempted to say that?
We have not dared to say it; for we saw that the doctor, and not we, was
in the right; that in all those little efforts, so wise, so anxious, so
tender, so truly chivalrous, to keep the failing breath for a few moments
more in the body of one who had no earthly claim upon his care, that
doctor was bearing a testimony, unconscious yet most weighty, to that
human instinct of which the Bible approves throughout, that death in a
human being is an evil, an anomaly, a curse; against which, though he
could not rescue the man from the clutch of his foe, he was bound, in
duty and honour, to fight until the last, simply because it was death,
and death was the enemy of man.
But if the medical man bears witness for God and spiritual things when he
seems exclusively occupied with the body, so does the hospital. Look at
those noble buildings which the generosity of our fellow-countrymen have
erected in all our great cities. You may find in them, truly, sermons in
stones; sermons for rich alike and poor. They preach to the rich, these
hospitals, that the sick-bed levels all alike; that they are the equals
and brothers of the poor in the terrible liability to suffer! They
preach to the poor that they are, through Christianity, the equals of the
rich in their means and opportunities of cure. I say through
Christianity. Whether the founders so intended or not (and those who
founded most of them, St. George’s among the rest, did so intend), these
hospitals bear direct witness for Christ. They do this, and would do it,
even if—which God forbid—the name of Christ were never mentioned within
their walls. That may seem a paradox; but it is none. For it is a
historic fact, that hospitals are a creation of Christian times, and of
Christian men. The heathen knew them not. In that great city of ancient
Rome, as far as I have ever been able to discover, there was not a single
hospital,—not even, I fear, a single charitable institution. Fearful
thought—a city of a million and a half inhabitants, the centre of human
civilization: and not a hospital there! The Roman Dives paid his
physician; the Roman Lazarus literally lay at his gate full of sores,
till he died the death of the street dogs which licked those sores, and
was carried forth to be thrust under ground awhile, till the same dogs
came to quarrel over his bones. The misery and helplessness of the lower
classes in the great cities of the Roman empire, till the Church of
Christ arose, literally with healing in its wings, cannot, I believe, be
exaggerated.
Eastern piety, meanwhile, especially among the Hindoos, had founded
hospitals, in the old meaning of that word—namely, almshouses for the
infirm and aged: but I believe there is no record of hospitals, like our
modern ones, for the cure of disease, till Christianity spread over the
Western world.
And why? Because then first men began to feel the mighty truth contained
in the text. If Christ were a healer, His servants must be healers
likewise. If Christ regarded physical evil as a direct evil, so must
they. If Christ fought against it with all His power, so must they, with
such power as He revealed to them. And so arose exclusively in the
Christian mind, a feeling not only of the nobleness of the healing art,
but of the religious duty of exercising that art on every human being who
needed it; and hospitals are to be counted, as a historic fact, among the
many triumphs of the Gospel.
If there be any one—especially a working man—in this church this day who
is inclined to undervalue the Bible and Christianity, let him know that,
but for the Bible and Christianity, he has not the slightest reason to
believe that there would have been at this moment a hospital in London to
receive him and his in the hour of sickness or disabling accident, and to
lavish on him there, unpaid as the light and air of God outside, every
resource of science, care, generosity, and tenderness, simply because he
is a human being. Yes; truly catholic are these hospitals,—catholic as
the bounty of our heavenly Father,—without respect of persons, giving to
all liberally and upbraiding not, like Him in whom all live, and move,
and have their being; witnesses better than all our sermons for the
universal bounty and tolerance of that heavenly Father who causes the sun
to shine on the evil and the good, and his rain to fall upon the just and
on the unjust, and is perfect in this, that He is good to the unthankful
and the evil.
And, therefore, the preacher can urge his countrymen, let their opinions,
creed, tastes, be what they may, to support hospitals with especial
freedom, earnestness, and confidence. Heaven forbid that I should
undervalue any charitable institution whatever. May God’s blessing be on
them all. But this I have a right to say,—that whatever objections,
suspicions, prejudices there may be concerning any other form of charity,
concerning hospitals there can be none. Every farthing bestowed on them
must go toward the direct doing of good. There is no fear in them of
waste, of misapplication of funds, of private jobbery, of ulterior and
unavowed objects. Palpable and unmistakeable good is all they do and all
they can do. And he who gives to a hospital has the comfort of knowing
that he is bestowing a direct blessing on the bodies of his fellow-men;
and it may be on their souls likewise.
For I have said that these hospitals witness silently for God and for
Christ; and I must believe that that silent witness is not lost on the
minds of thousands who enter them. It sinks in,—all the more readily
because it is not thrust upon them,—and softens and breaks up their
hearts to receive the precious seed of the word of God. Many a man, too
ready from bitter experience to believe that his fellow-men cared not for
him, has entered the wards of a hospital to be happily undeceived. He
finds that he is cared for; that he is not forgotten either by God or
man; that there is a place for him, too, at God’s table, in his hour of
utmost need; and angels of God, in human form, ready to minister to his
necessities; and, softened by that discovery, he has listened humbly,
perhaps for the first time in his life, to the exhortations of a
clergyman; and has taken in, in the hour of dependence and weakness, the
lessons which he was too proud or too sullen to hear in the day of
independence and sturdy health. And so do these hospitals, it seems to
me, follow the example and practice of our Lord Himself; who, by
ministering to the animal wants and animal sufferings of the people, by
showing them that He sympathised with those lower sorrows of which they
were most immediately conscious, made them follow Him gladly, and listen
to Him with faith, when He proclaimed to them in words of wisdom, that
Father in heaven whom He had already proclaimed to them in acts of mercy.
And now, I have to appeal to you for the excellent and honourable
foundation of St. George’s Hospital. I might speak to you, and speak,
too, with a personal reverence and affection of many years’ standing, of
the claims of that noble institution; of the illustrious men of science
who have taught within its walls; of the number of able and honourable
young men who go forth out of it, year by year, to carry their blessed
and truly divine art, not only over Great Britain, but to the islands of
the farthest seas. But to say that would be merely to say what is true,
thank God, of every hospital in London.
One fact only, therefore, I shall urge, which gives St. George’s Hospital
special claims on the attention of the rich.
Situated, as it is, in the very centre of the west end of London, it is
the special refuge of those who are most especially of service to the
dwellers in the Westend. Those who are used up—fairly or unfairly—in
ministering to the luxuries of the high-born and wealthy: the groom
thrown in the park; the housemaid crippled by lofty stairs; the workman
fallen from the scaffolding of the great man’s palace; the footman or
coachman who has contracted disease from long hours of nightly exposure,
while his master and mistress have been warm and gay at rout and ball;
and those, too, whose number, I fear, are very great, who contract
disease, themselves, their wives, and children, from actual want, when
they are thrown suddenly out of employ at the end of the season, and
London is said to be empty—of all but two million of living souls:—the
great majority of these crowd into St. George’s Hospital to find there
relief and comfort, which those to whom they minister are solemnly bound
to supply by their contributions. The rich and well-born of this land
are very generous. They are doing their duty, on the whole, nobly and
well. Let them do their duty—the duty which literally lies nearest
them—by St. George’s Hospital, and they will wipe off a stain, not on the
hospital, but on the rich people in its neighbourhood—the stain of that
hospital’s debts.
The deficiency in the funds of the hospital for the year 1862–3—caused,
be it remembered, by no extravagance or sudden change, but simply by the
necessity for succouring those who would otherwise have been destitute of
succour—the deficiency, I say, on an expenditure of 15,000_l._ amounts to
more than 3,200_l._ which has had to be met by selling out funded
property, and so diminishing the capital of the institution. Ought this
to be? I ask. Ought this to be, while more wealth is collected within
half a mile of that hospital than in any spot of like extent in the
globe?
My friends, this is the time of Lent; the time whereof it is written,—‘Is
not this the fast which I have chosen, to deal thy bread to the hungry,
and bring the poor that is cast out to thine house? when thou seest the
naked that thou cover him, and that thou hide not thyself from thine own
flesh? If thou let thy soul go forth to the hungry, and satisfy the
afflicted soul, then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness
be as the noonday. And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and
satisfy thy soul, and make fat thy bones, and thou shalt be like a
watered garden, and as a spring that doth not fail.’
Let us obey that command literally, and see whether the promise is not
literally fulfilled to us in return.
SERMON III.
THE VICTORY OF LIFE.
(_Preached at the Chapel Royal_.)
ISAIAH xxxviii. 18, 19.
The grave cannot praise thee, death cannot celebrate thee: they that
go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth. The living, the
living, he shall praise thee.
I MAY seem to have taken a strange text on which to speak,—a mournful, a
seemingly hopeless text. Why I have chosen it, I trust that you will see
presently; certainly not that I may make you hopeless about death.
Meanwhile, let us consider it; for it is in the Bible, and, like all
words in the Bible, was written for our instruction.
Now it is plain, I think, that the man who said these words—good king
Hezekiah—knew nothing of what we call heaven; of a blessed life with God
after death. He looks on death as his end. If he dies, he says, he will
not see the Lord in the land of the living, any more than he will see man
with the inhabitants of the world. God’s mercies, he thinks, will end
with his death. God can only show His mercy and truth by saving him from
death. For the grave cannot praise God, death cannot celebrate Him;
those who go down into the pit cannot hope for His truth. The living,
the living, shall praise God; as Hezekiah praises Him that day, because
God has cured him of his sickness, and added fifteen years to his life.
No language can be plainer than this. A man who had believed that he
would go to heaven when he died could not have used it.
In many of the Psalms, likewise, you will find words of exactly the same
kind, which show that the men who wrote them had no clear conception, if
any conception at all, of a life after death.
Solomon’s words about death are utterly awful from their sadness. With
him, ‘that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; as one
dieth, so dieth the other. Yea, they have all one breath, so that a man
hath no pre-eminence over a beast, and all is vanity. All go to one
place, all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knoweth the
spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth
downward to the earth?’
He knows nothing about it. All he knows is, that the spirit shall return
to God who gave it,—and that a man will surely find, in this life, a
recompence for all his deeds, whether good or evil.
‘Remember therefore thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil
days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no
pleasure in them. Fear God, and keep His commandments; for this is the
whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with
every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.’
This is the doctrine of the Old Testament; that God judges and rewards
and punishes men in this life: but as for death, it is a great black
cloud into which all men must enter, and see and be seen no more. Only
twice or thrice, perhaps, a gleam of light from beyond breaks through the
dark. David, the noblest and wisest of all the Jews, can say once that
God will not leave his soul in hell, neither suffer His holy one to see
corruption; Job says that, though after his skin worms destroy his body,
yet in his flesh he shall see God; and Isaiah, again, when he sees his
countrymen slaughtered, and his nation all but destroyed, can say, ‘Thy
dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake
and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of the
morning, which brings the parched herbs to life and freshness
again.’—Great and glorious sayings, all of them: but we cannot tell how
far either David, or Job, or Isaiah, were thinking of a life after death.
We can think of a life after death when we use them; for we know how they
have been fulfilled in Jesus Christ our Lord; and we can see in them more
than the Jews of old could do; for, like all inspired words, they mean
more than the men who wrote them thought of; but we have no right to
impute our Christianity to them.
The only undoubted picture, perhaps, of the next life to be found in the
Old Testament, is that grand one in Isaiah xiv., where he paints to us
the tyrant king of Babylon going down into hell:—
‘Hell from beneath is moved for thee, to meet thee at thy coming; it
stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it
hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. All they
shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? art thou
become like unto us? Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the
noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover
thee. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!
how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the
nations!’—Awful and grand enough: but quite different, you will observe,
from the notions of hell which are common now-a-days; and much more like
those which we read in the old Greek poets, and especially, in the
Necyomanteia of the Odyssey.
When it was that the Jews gained any fuller notions about the next life,
it is very difficult to say. Certainly not before they were carried away
captive to Babylon. After that they began to mix much with the great
nations of the East: with Greeks, Persians, and Indians; and from them,
most probably, they learned to believe in a heaven after death to which
good men would go, and a fiery hell to which bad men would go. At least,
the heathen nations round them, and our forefathers likewise, believed in
some sort of heaven and hell, hundreds of years before the coming of our
blessed Lord.
The Jews had learned, also—at least the Pharisees—to believe in the
resurrection of the dead. Martha speaks of it; and St. Paul, when he
tells the Pharisees that, having been brought up a Pharisee, he was on
their side against the Sadducees.—‘I am a Pharisee,’ he says, ‘the son of
a Pharisee; for the hope of the resurrection of the dead I am called in
question.’
But if it be so,—if St. Paul and the Apostles believed in heaven and
hell, and the resurrection of the dead, before they became Christians,
what more did they learn about the next life, when they became
Christians? Something they did learn, most certainly—and that most
important. St. Paul speaks of what our Lord and our Lord’s resurrection
had taught him, as something quite infinitely grander, and more blessed,
than what he had known before. He talks of our Lord as having abolished
death, and brought life and immortality to light; of His having conquered
death, and of His destroying death at last. He speaks at moments as if
he did not expect to die at all; and when he does speak of the death of
the Christian, it is merely as a falling asleep. When he speaks of his
own death, it is merely as a change of place. He longs to depart, and to
be with Christ. Death had looked terrible to him once, when he was a
Jew. Death had had a sting, and the grave a victory, which seemed ready
to conquer him: but now he cries, ‘O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave,
where is thy victory?’ and then he declares that the terrors of death and
the grave are taken away, not by anything which he knew when he was a
Pharisee, but through our Lord Jesus Christ.
All his old Jewish notions of the resurrection, though they were true as
far as they went, seemed poor and paltry beside what Christ had taught
him. He was not going to wait till the end of the world—perhaps for
thousands of years—in darkness and the shadow of death, he knew not where
or how. His soul was to pass at once into life,—into joy, and peace, and
bliss, in the presence of his Saviour, till it should have a new body
given to it, in the resurrection of life at the last day.
This, I think, is what St. Paul learned, and what the Jews had not
learned till our blessed Lord came. They were still afraid of death. It
looked to them a dark and ugly blank; and no wonder. For would it not be
dark and ugly enough to have to wait, we know not where, it may be a
thousand, it may be tens of thousands of years, till the resurrection in
the last day, before we entered into joy, peace, activity or anything
worthy of the name of life? Would not death have a sting indeed, the
grave a victory indeed, if we had to be as good as dead for ten thousands
of years?
What then? Remember this, that death is an enemy, an evil thing, an
enemy to man, and therefore an enemy to Christ, the King and Head and
Saviour of man. Men ought not to die, and they feel it. It is no use to
tell them, ‘Everything that is born must die, and why not you? All other
animals died. They died, just as they die now, hundreds of thousands of
years before man came upon this earth; and why should man expect to have
a different lot? Why should you not take your death patiently, as you
take any other evil which you cannot escape?’ The heart of man, as soon
as he begins to be a man, and not a mere savage; as soon as he begins to
think reasonably, and feel deeply; the heart of man answers: ‘No, I am
not a mere animal. I have something in me which ought not to die, which
perhaps cannot die. I have a living soul in me, which ought to be able
to keep my body alive likewise, but cannot; and therefore death is my
enemy. I hate him, and I believe that I was meant to hate him.
Something must be wrong with me, or I should not die; something must be
wrong with all mankind, or I should not see those I love dying round me.
Yes, my friends, death is an enemy,—a hideous, hateful thing. The longer
one looks at it, the more one hates it. The more often one sees it, the
less one grows accustomed to it. Its very commonness makes it all the
more shocking. We may not be so much shocked at seeing the old die. We
say, ‘They have done their work, why should they not go?’ That is not
true. They have not done their work. There is more work in plenty for
them to do, if they could but live; and it seems shocking and sad, at
least to him who loves his country and his kind, that, just as men have
grown old enough to be of use, when they have learnt to conquer their
passions, when their characters are formed, when they have gained sound
experience of this world, and what man ought and can do in it,—just as,
in fact, they have become most able to teach and help their
fellow-men,—that then they are to grow old, and decrepit, and helpless,
and fade away, and die just when they are most fit to live, and the world
needs them most.
Sad, I say, and strange is that. But sadder, and more strange, and more
utterly shocking, to see the young die; to see parents leaving infant
children, children vanishing early out of the world where they might have
done good work for God and man.
What arguments will make us believe that that ought to be? That that is
God’s will? That that is anything but an evil, an anomaly, a disease?
Not the Bible, certainly. The Bible never tells us that such tragedies
as are too often seen are the will of God. The Bible says that it is not
the will of our Father that one of these little ones should perish. The
Bible tells us that Jesus, when on earth, went about fighting and
conquering disease and death, even raising from the dead those who had
died before their time. To fight against death, and to give life
wheresoever He went—that was His work; by that He proclaimed the will of
God, His Father, that none should perish, who sent His Son that men might
have life, and have it more abundantly. By that He declared that death
was an evil and a disorder among men, which He would some day crush and
destroy utterly, that mortality should be swallowed up of life.
And yet we die, and shall die. Yes. The body is dead, because of sin.
Mankind is a diseased race; and it must pay the penalty of its sins for
many an age to come, and die, and suffer, and sorrow. But not for ever.
For what mean such words as these—for something they must mean?—
‘If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.’ And again, ‘He that
believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and he that
liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.’
Do such words as these mean only that we shall rise again in the
resurrection at the last day? Surely not. Our Lord spoke them in answer
to that very notion.
‘Martha said to Him, I know that my brother shall rise again, in the
resurrection at the last day. Jesus said unto her, I _am_ the
resurrection and the life;’ and then showed what He meant by bringing
back Lazarus to life, unchanged, and as he had been before he died.
Surely, if that miracle meant anything, if these words meant anything, it
meant this: that those who die in the fear of God, and in the faith of
Christ, do not really taste death; that to them there is no death, but
only a change of place, a change of state; that they pass at once, and
instantly, into some new life, with all their powers, all their feelings,
unchanged,—purified doubtless from earthly stains, but still the same
living, thinking, active beings which they were here on earth. I say,
active. The Bible says nothing about their sleeping till the Day of
Judgment, as some have fancied. Rest they may; rest they will, if they
need rest. But what is the true rest? Not idleness, but peace of mind.
To rest from sin, from sorrow, from fear, from doubt, from care,—this is
the true rest. Above all, to rest from the worst weariness of
all—knowing one’s duty, and yet not being able to do it. That is true
rest; the rest of God, who works for ever, and yet is at rest for ever;
as the stars over our heads move for ever, thousands of miles each day,
and yet are at perfect rest, because they move orderly, harmoniously,
fulfilling the law which God has given them. Perfect rest, in perfect
work; that surely is the rest of blessed spirits, till the final
consummation of all things, when Christ shall have made up the number of
His elect.
I hope that this is so. I trust that this is so. I think our Lord’s
great words can mean nothing less than this. And if it be so, what
comfort for us who must die? What comfort for us who have seen others
die, if death be but a new birth into some higher life; if all that it
changes in us is our body—the mere shell and husk of us—such a change as
comes over the snake, when he casts his old skin, and comes out fresh and
gay, or even the crawling caterpillar, which breaks its prison, and
spreads its wings to the sun as a fair butterfly. Where is the sting of
death, then, if death can sting, and poison, and corrupt nothing of us
for which our friends have loved us; nothing of us with which we could do
service to men or God? Where is the victory of the grave, if, so far
from the grave holding us down, it frees us from the very thing which
holds us down,—the mortal body?
Death is not death, then, if it kills no part of us, save that which
hindered us from perfect life. Death is not death, if it raises us in a
moment from darkness into light, from weakness into strength, from
sinfulness into holiness. Death is not death, if it brings us nearer to
Christ, who is the fount of life. Death is not death, if it perfects our
faith by sight, and lets us behold Him in whom we have believed. Death
is not death, if it gives us to those whom we have loved and lost, for
whom we have lived, for whom we long to live again. Death is not death,
if it joins the child to the mother who is gone before. Death is not
death, if it takes away from that mother for ever all a mother’s
anxieties, a mother’s fears, and lets her see, in the gracious
countenance of her Saviour, a sure and certain pledge that those whom she
has left behind are safe, safe with Christ and in Christ, through all the
chances and dangers of his mortal life. Death is not death, if it rids
us of doubt and fear, of chance and change, of space and time, and all
which space and time bring forth, and then destroy. Death is not death;
for Christ has conquered death, for Himself, and for those who trust in
Him. And to those who say, ‘You were born in time, and in time you must
die, as all other creatures do; Time is your king and lord, as he has
been of all the old worlds before this, and of all the races of beasts,
whose bones and shells lie fossil in the rocks of a thousand
generations;’ then we can answer them, in the words of the wise man, and
in the name of Christ who conquered death:—
‘Fly, envious time, till thou run out thy race,
And glut thyself with what thy womb devours,
Which is no more than what is false and vain
And merely mortal dross.
So little is our loss, so little is thy gain.
For when as each bad thing thou hast entombed,
And, last of all, thy greedy self consumed,
Then long eternity shall greet our bliss
With an individual kiss,
And joy shall overtake us as a flood,
When everything that is sincerely good
And perfectly divine,
And truth, and peace, and love shall ever shine
About the supreme throne
Of Him, unto whose happy-making sight alone
When once our heavenly-guided soul shall climb,
Then all this earthly grossness quit,
Attired with stars, we shall for ever sit
Triumphant over death, and chance, and thee, O Time!’
SERMON IV.
THE WAGES OF SIN.
(_Chapel Royal June_, 1864)
ROM. vi. 21–23.
What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed?
for the end of those things is death. But now being made free from
sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness,
and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death; but the
gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
THIS is a glorious text, if we will only believe it simply, and take it
as it stands.
But if in place of St. Paul’s words we put quite different words of our
own, and say—By ‘the wages of sin is death,’ St. Paul means that the
punishment of sin is eternal life in torture, then we say something which
may be true, but which is not what St. Paul is speaking of here. For
wages are not punishment, and death is not eternal life in torture, any
more than in happiness.
That, one would think, was clear. It is our duty to take St. Paul’s
words, if we really believe them to be inspired, simply as they stand;
and if we do not quite understand them, to explain them by St. Paul’s own
words about these matters in other parts of his writings.
St. Paul was an inspired Apostle. Let him speak for himself. Surely he
knew best what he wished to say, and how to say it.
Now St. Paul’s opinions about death and eternal life are very clear; for
he speaks of them often, and at great length.
He considered that the great enemy of God and man, the last enemy Christ
would destroy, was death; and that, after death was destroyed, the end
would come, when God would be all in all. Then came the question, which
has puzzled men in all ages—How death came into the world. St. Paul
answers, By sin. He says, as the author of the third chapter of Genesis
says, that Adam became subject to death by his fall. By one man, he
says, sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed
upon all men, for that all have sinned. And thus, he says, death reigned
even over those who had not sinned after the likeness of Adam’s
transgression.
That he is speaking of bodily death is clear, because he is always
putting it in contrast to the resurrection to life,—not merely to a
spiritual resurrection from the death of sin to the life of
righteousness; but to the resurrection of the body,—to our Lord’s being
raised from the dead, that He might die no more.
Then he speaks of eternal life. He always speaks of it as an actual
life, in a spiritual body, into which our mortal bodies are to be
changed. Nothing can be clearer from what he says in 1 Cor. xv., that he
means an actual rising again of our bodies from bodily death; an actual
change in them; an actual life in them for ever.
But he says, again and again,—As sin caused the death of the body, so
righteousness is to cause its life.
‘When ye were the servants of sin,’ he says to the Romans, ‘what fruit
had ye in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? For the end of those
things is death. But now being made free from sin, and become servants
to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.
For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life
through Jesus Christ our Lord.’
This is St. Paul’s opinion. And we shall do well to believe it, and to
learn from it, this day, and all days.
The wages of sin and the end of sin is death. Not the punishment of sin;
but something much worse. The wages of sin, and the end of sin.
And how is that worse news? My friends, every sinner knows so well in
his heart that it is worse news, more terrible news, for him, that he
tries to persuade himself that death is only the arbitrary punishment of
his sin; or, quite as often, that the punishment of his sin is not even
death, but eternal torment in the next life.
And why? Because, as long as he can believe that death, or hell, are
only punishments arbitrarily fixed by God against his sins, he can hope
that God will let him off the punishment. Die, he knows he must, because
all men die; and so he makes up his mind to that: but being sent to hell
after he dies, is so very terrible a punishment, that he cannot believe
that God will be so hard on him as that. No; he will get off, and be
forgiven at last somehow, for surely God will not condemn him to hell.
And so he finds it very convenient and comfortable to believe in hell,
just because he does not believe that he is going there, whoever else may
be.
But, it is a very terrible, heartrending thought, for a man to find out
that what he will receive is not punishment, but wages; not punishment
but the end of the very road which he is travelling on. That the wages
of sin, and the end of sin, to which it must lead, are death; that every
time he sins he is earning those wages, deserving them, meriting them,
and therefore receiving them by the just laws of the world of God. That
does torment him, that does terrify him, if he will look steadfastly at
the broad plain fact—You need not dream of being let off, respited,
reprieved, pardoned in any way. The thing cannot be done. It is
contrary to the laws of God and of God’s universe. It is as impossible
as that fire should not burn, or water run up hill. It is not a question
of arbitrary punishment, which may be arbitrarily remitted; but of wages,
which you needs must take, weekly, daily, and hourly; and those wages are
death: a question of travelling on a certain road, whereon, if you travel
it long enough, you must come to the end of it; and the end is death.
Your sins are killing you by inches; all day long they are sowing in you
the seeds of disease and death. Every sin which you commit with your
body shortens your bodily life. Every sin you commit with your mind,
every act of stupidity, folly, wilful ignorance, helps to destroy your
mind, and leave you dull, silly, devoid of right reason. Every sin you
commit with your spirit, each sin of passion and temper, envy and malice,
pride and vanity, injustice and cruelty, extravagance and
self-indulgence, helps to destroy your spiritual life, and leave you bad,
more and more unable to do the right and avoid the wrong, more and more
unable to discern right from wrong; and that last is spiritual death, the
eternal death of your moral being. There are three parts in you—body,
mind, and spirit; and every sin you commit helps to kill one of these
three, and, in many cases, to kill all three together.
So, sinner, dream not of escaping punishment at the last. You are being
punished now, for you are punishing yourself; and you will continue to be
punished for ever, for you will be punishing yourself for ever, as long
as you go on doing wrong, and breaking the laws which God has appointed
for body, mind and spirit. You can see that a drunkard is killing
himself, body and mind, by drink. You see that he knows that, poor
wretch, as well as you. He knows that every time he gets drunk he is
cutting so much off his life; and yet he cannot help it. He knows that
drink is poison, and yet he goes back to his poison.
Then know, habitual sinner, that you are like that drunkard. That every
bad habit in which you indulge is shortening the life of some of your
faculties, and that God Himself cannot save you from the doom which you
are earning, deserving, and working out for yourself every day and every
hour.
Oh how men hate that message!—the message that the true wrath of God,
necessary, inevitable, is revealed from heaven against all
unrighteousness of men. How they writhe under it! How they shut their
ears to it, and cry to their preachers, ‘No! Tell us of any wrath of God
but that! Tell us rather of the torments of the damned, of a frowning
God, of absolute decrees to destruction, of the reprobation of millions
before they are born; any doctrine, however fearful and horrible: because
we don’t quite believe it, but only think that we ought to believe it.
Yes, tell us anything rather than that news, which cuts at the root of
all our pride, of all our comfort, and all our superstition—the news that
we cannot escape the consequences of our own actions; that there are no
back stairs up which we may be smuggled into heaven; that as we sow, so
we shall reap; that we are filled with the fruits of our own devices;
every man his own poisoner, every man his own executioner, every man his
own suicide; that hell begins in this life, and death begins before we
die:—do not say that: because we cannot help believing it; for our own
consciousness and our own experience tell us it is true.’ No wonder that
the preacher who tells men that is hated, is called a Rationalist, a
Pantheist, a heretic, and what not, just because he does set forth such a
living God, such a justice of God, such a wrath of God as would make the
sinner tremble, if he believed in it, not merely once in a way, when he
hears a stirring sermon about the endless torments: but all day long,
going out and coming in, lying on his bed and walking by the way, always
haunted by the shadow of himself, knowing that he is bearing about in him
the perpetually growing death of sin.
And still more painful would this message be to the sinner, if he had any
kindly feeling for others; and, thank God, there are few who have not
that. For St. Paul’s message to him is, that the wages of his sin is
death, not merely to himself, but to others—to his family and children
above all. So St. Paul declares in what he says of his doctrine of
original or birth sin, by which, as the Article says, every man is very
far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined
to evil, so that the flesh lusteth against the spirit.
St. Paul’s doctrine is simple and explicit. Death, he says, reigned over
Adam’s children, even over those who had not sinned after the likeness of
Adam’s transgression; agreeing with Moses, who declares God to be one who
visits the sins of the fathers on the children, to the third and fourth
generation of those who hate Him. But how the sinner will shrink from
this message—and shrink the more, the more feeling he is, the less he is
wrapped up in selfishness. Yes, that message gives us such a view of the
sinfulness of sin as none other can. It tells us why God hates sin with
so unextinguishable a hatred, just because He is a God of Love. It is
not that man’s sin injures God, insults God, as the heathen fancy. Who
is God, that man can stir Him up to pride, or wound or disturb His
everlasting calm, His self-sufficient perfectness? ‘God is tempted of no
man,’ says St. James. No. God hates sin. He loves all, and sin harms
all; and the sinner may be a torment and a curse, not only to himself,
not only to those around him, but to children yet unborn.
This is bad news; and yet sinners must hear it. They must hear it not
only put into words by Moses, or by St. Paul, or by any other inspired
writer; but they must hear it, likewise, in that perpetual voice of God
which we call facts.
Let the sinner who wishes to know what original sin means, and how actual
sin in one man breeds original sin in his descendants, look at the world
around him, and see. Let him see how St. Paul’s doctrine and the
doctrine of the Ten Commandments are proved true by experience and by
fact: how the past, and how the present likewise, show us whole families,
whole tribes, whole aristocracies, whole nations, dwindling down to
imbecility, misery, and destruction, because the sins of the fathers are
visited on the children.
Physicians, who see children born diseased; born stupid, or even idiotic;
born thwart-natured, or passionate, or false, or dishonest, or
brutal,—they know well what original sin means, though they call it by
their own name of hereditary tendencies. And they know, too, how the
sins of a parent, or of a grand parent, or even a great-grandparent, are
visited on the children to the third and fourth generation; and they say
‘It is a law of nature:’ and so it is. But the laws of nature are the
laws of God who made her: and His law is the same law by which death
reigns even over those who have not sinned after the likeness of Adam;
the law by which (even though if Christ be in us, the spirit is life,
because of righteousness) the body, nevertheless, is dead, because of
sin.
Parents, parents, who hear my words, beware—if not for your own sakes, at
least for the sake of your children, and your children’s children—lest
the wages of your sin should be their death.
And by this time, surely, some of you will be asking, ‘What has he said?
That there is no escape; that there is no forgiveness?’
None whatsoever, my friends, though you were to cry to heaven for ever
and ever, save the one old escape of which you hear in the church every
Sunday morning: ‘When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness
that he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he
shall save his soul alive.’
What, does not the blood of Christ cleanse us from all sin?
Yes, from all sin. But not, necessarily, from the wages of all sin.
Judge for yourselves, my friends, again. Listen to the voice of God
revealed in facts. If you, being a drunkard, have injured your
constitution by drink, and then are converted, and repent, and turn to
God with your whole soul, and become, as you may, if you will, a truly
penitent, good, and therefore sober man,—will that cure the disease of
your body? It will certainly palliate and ease it: because, instead of
being drunken, you will have become sober: but still you will have
shortened your days by your past sins; and, in so far, even though the
Lord has put away your sin its wages still remain, as death.
So it is, my friends, if you will only believe it, or rather see it with
your own eyes, with every sin, and every sort of sin.
You will see, if you look, that the Article speaks exact truth when it
says, that the infection of nature doth remain, even in those that are
regenerate. It says that of original sin: but it is equally true of
actual sin.
Would to God that all men would but believe this, and give up the too
common and too dangerous notion, that it is no matter if they go on wrong
for a while, provided they come right at last!
No matter? I ask for facts again. Is there a man or woman in this
church twenty years old who does not know that it matters? Who does not
know that, if they have done wrong in youth, their own wrong deeds haunt
them and torment them?—That they are, perhaps the poorer, perhaps the
sicklier, perhaps the more ignorant, perhaps the sillier, perhaps the
more sorrowful this day, for things which they did twenty, thirty years
ago? Is there any one in this church who ever did a wrong thing without
smarting for it? If there is (which I question), let him be sure that it
is only because his time is not come. Do not fancy that because you are
forgiven, you may not be actually less good men all your lives by having
sinned when young.
I know it is sometimes said, ‘The greater the sinner, the greater the
saint.’ I do not believe that: because I do not see it. I see, and I
thank God for it, that men who have been very wrong at one time, come
very right afterwards; that, having found out in earnest that the wages
of sin are death, they do repent in earnest, and receive the gift of
eternal life through Jesus Christ. But I see, too, that the bad habits,
bad passions, bad methods of thought, which they have indulged in youth,
remain more or less, and make them worse men, sillier men, less useful
men, less happy men, sometimes to their lives’ end: and they, if they be
true Christians, know it, and repent of their early sins, not once for
all only, but all their lives long; because they feel that they have
weakened and worsened themselves thereby.
It stands to reason, my friends, that it should be so. If a man loses
his way, and finds it again, he is so much the less forward on his way,
surely, by all the time he has spent in getting back into the road. If a
child has a violent illness, it stops growing, because the life and
nourishment which ought to have gone towards its growth, are spent in
curing its disease. And so, if a man has indulged in bad habits in his
youth, he is but too likely (let him do what he will) to be a less good
man for it to his life’s end, because the Spirit of God, which ought to
have been making him grow in grace, freely and healthily, to the stature
of a perfect man, to the fulness of the measure of Christ, is striving to
conquer old bad habits, and cure old diseases of character; and the man,
even though he does enter into life, enters into it halt and maimed; and
the wages of his sin have been, as they always will be, death to some
powers, some faculties of his soul.
Think over these things, my friends; and believe that the wages of sin
are death, and that there is no escaping from God’s just and everlasting
laws. But meanwhile, let us judge no man. This is a great and a solemn
reason for observing, with fear and trembling, our Lord’s command, for it
is nothing less, ‘Judge not, and ye shall not be judged; condemn not and
ye shall not be condemned.’
For we never can know how much of any man’s misconduct is to be set down
to original, and how much to actual, sin;—how much disease of mind and
heart he has inherited from his parents, how much he has brought upon
himself.
Therefore judge no man, but yourselves. Search your own hearts, to see
what manner of men you really wish to be; judge yourselves, lest God
should judge you.
Do you wish to go on as you like here on earth, right or wrong, in the
hope that, somehow or other, the punishment of your sins will be forgiven
you at the last day?
Then know that that is impossible. As a man sows, so shall he reap; and
if you sow to the flesh, of the flesh you will reap—corruption. The
wages of sin are death. Those wages will be paid you, and you must take
them whether you like or not.
But do you wish to be Good? Do you see (I trust in God that many of you
do) that goodness is the only wise, safe, prudent life for you because it
is the only path the end of which is not death?
Do you see that goodness is the only right and honourable life for you,
because it is the only path by which you can do your duty to man or to
God; the only method by which you can show your gratitude to God for all
His goodness to you, and can please Him, in return for all that He has
done by His grace and free love to bless you?
Do you, in a word, repent you truly of your former sins, and purpose to
lead a new life? Then know, that all beyond is the free grace, the free
gift of God. You have to earn nothing, to buy nothing. The will is all
God asks. Eternal life is the gift of God through Jesus Christ.
Freely He forgives you all your past sins, for the sake of that precious
blood which was shed on the cross for the sins of the whole world.
Freely He takes you back, as His child, to your Father’s house. Freely,
He gives you His Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Goodness, the Spirit of Life,
to put into your mind good desires, and enable you to bring those desires
to good effect, that you may live the eternal life of grace and goodness
for ever, whether in earth or heaven.
Yes, it is the Gift of God, which raises you from the death of sin to the
life of righteousness; and if you have that gift, you will not murmur,
surely, though you have to bear, more or less, the just and natural
consequences of your former sins; though you be, through your own guilt,
a sadder man to your dying day. Be content. You are forgiven. You are
cleansed from your sin; is not that mercy enough? Why are you to demand
of God, that He should over and above cleanse you from the consequences
of your sin? He may leave them there to trouble and sadden you, just
because He loves you, and desires to chasten you, and keep you in mind of
what you were, and what you would be again, at any moment, if His Spirit
left you to yourself. You may have to enter into life halt and maimed:
yet, be content; you have a thousand times more than you deserve, for at
least you enter into Life.
SERMON V.
NIGHT AND DAY.
(_Preached at the Chapel Royal_.)
ROMANS xiii. 12.
The night is far spent, the day is at hand; let us therefore cast off
the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.
CERTAIN commentators would tell us, that St. Paul wrote these words in
the expectation that the end of the world, and the second coming of
Christ, were very near. The night was far spent, and the day of the Lord
at hand. Salvation—deliverance from the destruction impending on the
world, was nearer than when his converts first believed. Shortly the
Lord would appear in glory, and St. Paul and his converts would be caught
up to meet Him in the air.
No doubt St. Paul’s words will bear this meaning. No doubt there are
many passages in his writings which seem to imply that he thought the end
of the world was near; and that Christ would reappear in glory, while he,
Paul, was yet alive on the earth. And there are passages; too, which
seem to imply that he afterwards altered that opinion, and, no longer
expecting to be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, desired to depart
himself, and be with Christ, in the consciousness that ‘He was ready to
be offered up, and the time of his departure was at hand.’
I say that there are passages which seem to imply such a change in St.
Paul’s opinions. I do not say that they actually imply it. If I had a
positive opinion on the matter, I should not be hasty to give it. These
questions of ‘criticism,’ as they are now called, are far less important
than men fancy just now. A generation or two hence, it is to be hoped,
men will see how very unimportant they are, and will find that they have
detracted very little from the authority of Scripture as a whole; and
that they have not detracted in the least from the Gospel and good news
which Scripture proclaims to men—the news of a perfect God, who will have
men to become perfect even as He, their Father in heaven, is perfect; who
sent His only begotten Son into the world, that the world through Him
might be saved.
In this case, I verily believe, it matters little to us whether St. Paul,
when he wrote these words, wrote them under the belief that Christ’s
second coming was at hand. We must apply to his words the great rule,
that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation—that is,
does not apply exclusively to any one fact or event: but fulfils itself
again and again, in a hundred unexpected ways, because he who wrote it
was moved by the Holy Spirit, who revealed to him the eternal and
ever-working laws of the Kingdom of God. Therefore, I say, the words are
true for us at this moment. To us, though we have, as far as I can see,
not the least reasonable cause for supposing the end of the world to be
more imminent than it was a thousand years ago—to us, nevertheless, and
to every generation of men, the night is always far spent, and the day is
always at hand.
And this, surely, was in the mind of those who appointed this text to be
read as the Epistle for the first Sunday in Advent.
Year after year, though Christ has not returned to judgment; though
scoffers have been saying, ‘Where is the promise of His coming? for all
things continue as they were at the beginning’—Year after year, I say,
are the clergy bidden to tell the people that the night is far spent,
that the day is at hand; and to tell them so, because it is true.
Whatsoever St. Paul meant, or did not mean, by the words, a few years
after our Lord’s ascension into heaven, they are there, for ever, written
by one who was moved by the Holy Ghost; and hence they have an eternal
moral and spiritual significance to mankind in every age.
Whatever these words may, or may not have meant to St. Paul when he wrote
them first, in the prime of life, we may never know, and we need not
know. But we can guess surely enough what they must have meant to him in
after years, when he could say—as would to God we all might be able to
say—‘I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept
the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness,
which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day: and not
to me only, but unto all them that love His appearing.’
To him, then, the night would surely mean this mortal life on earth. The
day would mean the immortal life to come.
For is not this mortal life, compared with that life to come, as night
compared with day? I do not mean to speak evil of it. God forbid that
we should do anything but thank God for this life. God forbid that we
should say impiously to Him, Why hast thou made me thus? No. God made
this mortal life, and therefore, like all things which He has made, it is
very good. But there are good nights, and there are bad nights; and
there are happy lives, and unhappy ones. But what are they at best?
What is the life of the happiest man without the Holy Spirit of God? A
night full of pleasant dreams. What is the life of the wisest man? A
night of darkness, through which he gropes his way by lanthorn-light,
slowly, and with many mistakes and stumbles. When we compare man’s vast
capabilities with his small deeds; when we think how much he might
know,—how little he does know in this mortal life,—can we wonder that the
highest spirits in every age have looked on death as a deliverance out of
darkness and a dungeon? And if this is life at the best, what is life at
the worst? To how many is life a night, not of peace and rest, but of
tossing and weariness, pain and sickness, anxiety and misery, till they
are ready to cry, When will it be over? When will kind Death come and
give me rest? When will the night of this life be spent, and the day of
God arise? ‘Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord. Lord,
hear my voice. My soul doth wait for the Lord, more than the sick man
who watches for the morning.’
Yes, think,—for it is good at times, however happy one may be oneself, to
think—of all the misery and sorrow that there is on earth, and how many
there are who would be glad to hear that it was nearly over; glad to hear
that the night was far spent, and the day was at hand.
And even the happiest ought to ‘know the time.’ To know that the night
is far spent, and the day at hand. To know, too, that the night at best
was not given us, to sleep it all through, from sunset to sunrise. No
industrious man does that. Either he works after sunset, and often on
through the long hours, and into the short hours, before he goes to rest:
or else he rises before daybreak, and gets ready for the labours of the
coming day. The latter no man can do in this life. For we all sleep
away, more or less, the beginning of our life, in the time of childhood.
There is no sin in that—God seems to have ordained that so it should be.
But, to sleep away our manhood likewise,—is there no sin in that? As we
grow older, must we not awake out of sleep, and set to work, to be ready
for the day of God which will dawn on us when we pass out of this mortal
life into the world to come?
As we grow older, and as we get our share of the cares, troubles,
experiences of life, it is high time to wake out of sleep, and ask Christ
to give us light—light enough to see our way through the night of this
life, till the everlasting day shall dawn.
‘Knowing the time;’—the time of this our mortal life. How soon it will
be over, at the longest! How short the time seems since we were young!
How quickly it has gone! How every year, as we grow older seems to go
more and more quickly, and there is less time to do what we want, to
think seriously, to improve ourselves. So soon, and it will be over, and
we shall have no time at all, for we shall be in eternity. And what
then? What then? That depends on what now. On what we are doing now.
Are we letting our short span of life slip away in sleep; fancying
ourselves all the while wide awake, as we do in dreams—till we wake
really; and find that it is daylight, and that all our best dreams were
nothing but useless fancy? How many dream away their lives! Some upon
gain, some upon pleasure, some upon petty self-interest, petty quarrels,
petty ambitions, petty squabbles and jealousies about this person and
that, which are no more worthy to take up a reasonable human being’s time
and thoughts than so many dreams would be. Some, too, dream away their
lives in sin, in works of darkness which they are forced for shame and
safety to hide, lest they should come to the light and be exposed. So
people dream their lives away, and go about their daily business as men
who walk in their sleep, wandering about with their eyes open, and yet
seeing nothing of what is really around them. Seeing nothing: though
they think that they see, and know their own interest, and are shrewd
enough to find their way about this world. But they know nothing—nothing
of the very world with which they pride themselves they are so thoroughly
acquainted. None know less of the world than those who pride themselves
on being men of the world. For the true light, which shines all round
them, they do not see, and therefore they do not see the truth of things
by that light. If they did, then they would see that of which now they
do not even dream.
They would see that God was around them, about their path and about their
bed, and spying out all their ways; and in the light of His presence,
they dare not be frivolous, dare not be ignorant, dare not be mean, dare
not be spiteful, dare not be unclean.
They would see that Christ was around them, knocking at the door of their
hearts, that He may enter in, and dwell there, and give them peace;
crying to their restless, fretful, confused, unhappy souls, ‘Come unto
Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart:
and ye shall find rest unto your souls.’
They would see that Duty was around them. Duty—the only thing really
worth living for. The only thing which will really pay a man, either for
this life or the next. The only thing which will give a man rest and
peace, manly and quiet thoughts, a good conscience and a stout heart, in
the midst of hard labour, anxiety, sorrow and disappointment: because he
feels at least that he is doing his duty; that he is obeying God and
Christ, that he is working with them, and for them, and that, therefore,
they are working with him, and for him. God, Christ, and Duty—these, and
more, will a man see if he will awake out of sleep, and consider where he
is, by the light of God’s Holy Spirit.
Then will that man feel that he must cast away the works of darkness;
whether of the darkness of foul and base sins; or the darkness of envy,
spite, and revenge; or the mere darkness of ignorance and silliness,
thoughtlessness and frivolity. He must cast them away, he will see.
They will not succeed—they are not safe—in such a serious world as this.
The term of this mortal life is too short, and too awfully important, to
be spent in such dreams as these. The man is too awfully near to God,
and to Christ, to dare to play the fool in their Divine presence. This
earth looks to him, now that he sees it in the true light, one great
temple of God, in which he dare not, for very shame, misbehave himself.
He must cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armour of light,
now in the time of this mortal life; lest, when Christ comes in His glory
to judge the quick and the dead, he be found asleep, dreaming, useless,
unfit for the eternal world to come.
Then let him awake, and cry to Christ for light: and Christ will give him
light—enough, at least, to see his way through the darkness of this life,
to that eternal life of which it is written, ‘They need no candle there,
nor light of the sun: for the Lord God and the Lamb are the light
thereof.’ And he will find that the armour of light is an armour indeed.
A defence against all enemies, a helmet for his head, and breastplate for
his heart, against all that can really harm his mind our soul.
If a man, in the struggle of life, sees God, and Christ, and Duty, all
around him, that thought will be a helmet for his head. It will keep his
brain and mind clear, quiet, prudent to perceive and know what things he
ought to do. It will give him that Divine wisdom, of which Solomon says,
in his Proverbs, that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.
The light will give him, I say, judgment and wisdom to perceive what he
ought to do; and it will give him, too, grace and power faithfully to
fulfil the same. For it will be a breastplate to his heart. It will
keep his heart sound, as well as his head. It will save him from
breaking his good resolutions, and from deserting his duty out of
cowardice, or out of passion. The light of Christ will keep his heart
pure, unselfish, forgiving; ready to hope all things, believe all things,
endure all things, by that Divine charity which God will pour into his
soul.
For when he looks at things in the light of Christ, what does he see?
Christ hanging on the cross, praying for His murderers, dying for the
sins of the whole world. And what does the light which streams from that
cross show him of Christ? That the likeness of Christ is summed up in
one word—self-sacrificing love. What does the light which streams from
that cross show him of the world and mankind, in spite of all their sins?
That they belong to Him who died for them, and bought them with His own
most precious blood.
‘Beloved, herein is love indeed. Not that we loved God, but that He
loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation of our sins.’
‘Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.’
After that sight a man cannot hate; cannot revenge. He must forgive; he
must love. From hence he is in the light, and sees his duty and his path
through life. ‘For he that hateth his brother walketh in darkness, and
knoweth not whither he goeth: because darkness has blinded his eyes. But
he that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is no occasion
of stumbling in him. For he who dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and
God in him.’
Therefore cast away the works of darkness, and put you on the armour of
light, and be good men and true.
For of this the Holy Ghost prophesies by the mouth of St. Paul, and of
all apostles and prophets. Not of times and seasons, which God the
Father has kept in His own hand: not of that day and hour of which no man
knows; no, not the Angels in heaven, neither the Son; but the Father
only: not of these does the Holy Ghost testify to men. Not of
chronology, past or future: but of holiness; because he is a Holy Spirit.
For this purpose God, the Holy Father, sent His Son into the world. For
this God, the Holy Son, died upon the cross. For this God, the Holy
Ghost—proceeding from both the Father and the Son—inspired prophets and
apostles; that they might teach men to cast away the works of darkness,
and put on the armour of light; and become holy, as God is holy; pure, as
God is pure; true, as God is true; and good, as God is good.
SERMON VI.
THE SHAKING OF THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH.
(_Preached at the Chapel Royal_, _Whitehall_.)
HEBREWS xii. 26–29.
But now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth
only, but also heaven. And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the
removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made,
that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Wherefore, we
receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby
we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: for our
God is a consuming fire.
THIS is one of the Royal texts of the New Testament. It declares one of
those great laws of the kingdom of God, which may fulfil itself, once and
again, at many eras, and by many methods; which fulfilled itself
especially and most gloriously in the first century after Christ; which
fulfilled itself again in the fifth century; and again at the time of the
Crusades; and again at the great Reformation in the sixteenth century;
and is fulfilling itself again at this very day.
Now, in our fathers’ time, and in our own unto this day, is the Lord
Christ shaking the heavens and the earth, that those things which are
made may be removed, and that those things which cannot be shaken may
remain. We all confess this fact, in different phrases. We say that we
live in an age of change, of transition, of scientific and social
revolution. Our notions of the physical universe are rapidly altering
with the new discoveries of science; and our notions of Ethics and
Theology are altering as rapidly.
The era looks differently to different minds, just as the first century
after Christ looked differently, according as men looked with faith
towards the future, or with regret towards the past. Some rejoice in the
present era as one of progress. Others lament over it as one of decay.
Some say that we are on the eve of a Reformation, as great and splendid
as that of the sixteenth century. Others say that we are rushing
headlong into scepticism and atheism. Some say that a new era is dawning
on humanity; others that the world and the Church are coming to an end,
and the last day is at hand. Both parties may be right, and both may be
wrong. Men have always talked thus at great crises. They talked thus in
the first century, in the fifth, in the eleventh, in the sixteenth. And
then both parties were right, and yet both wrong. And why not now? What
they meant to say, and what they mean to say now, is what he who wrote
the Epistle to the Hebrews said for them long ago in far deeper, wider,
more accurate words—that the Lord Christ was shaking the heavens and the
earth, that those things which can be shaken may be removed, as things
which are made—cosmogonies, systems, theories, fashions, prejudices, of
man’s invention: while those things which cannot be shaken may remain,
because they are eternal, the creation not of man, but of God.
‘Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.’ Not merely
the physical world, and man’s conceptions thereof; but the spiritual
world, and man’s conceptions of that likewise.
How have our conceptions of the physical world been shaken of late, with
ever-increasing violence! How simple, and easy, and certain, it all
looked to our forefathers! How complex, how uncertain, it looks to us!
With increased knowledge has come—not increased doubt—that I deny; but
increased reverence; increased fear of rash assertions, increased awe of
facts, as the acted words and thoughts of God. Once for all, I deny that
this age is an irreverent one. I say that an irreverent age is an age
like the Middle Age, in which men dared to fancy that they could and did
know all about earth and heaven; and set up their petty cosmogonies,
their petty systems of doctrine, as measures of the ways of that God whom
the heaven and the heaven of heavens, cannot contain.
It was simple enough, their theory of the universe. The earth was a flat
plain; for did not the earth look flat? Or if some believed the earth to
be a globe, yet the existence of antipodes was an unscriptural heresy.
Above were the heavens: first the lower heavens in which the stars were
fixed and moved; and above them heaven after heaven, each peopled of
higher orders, up to that heaven of heavens in which Deity—and by Him,
the Mother of Deity—were enthroned.
And below—What could be more clear, more certain, than this—that as above
the earth was the kingdom of light, and joy, and holiness, so below the
earth was the kingdom of darkness, and torment, and sin? What could be
more certain? Had not even the heathens said so, by the mouth of the
poet Virgil? What could be more simple, rational, orthodox, than to
adopt (as they actually did) Virgil’s own words, and talk of Tartarus,
Styx, and Phlegethon, as indisputable Christian entities. They were not
aware that the Buddhists of the far East had held much the same theory of
endless retribution several centuries before; and that Dante, with his
various _bolge_, tenanted each by its various species of sinners, was
merely re-echoing the horrors which are to be seen painted on the walls
of any Buddhist temple, as they were on the walls of so many European
churches during the Middle Ages, when men really believed in that same
Tartarology, with the same intensity with which they now believe in the
conclusions of astronomy or of chemistry.
To them, indeed, it was all an indisputable or physical fact, as any
astronomic or chemical fact would have been; for they saw it with their
own eyes.
Virgil had said that the mouth of Tartarus was there in Italy, by the
volcanic lake of Avernus; and after the first eruption of Vesuvius in the
first century, nothing seemed more probable. Etna, Stromboli, Hecla,
must be, likewise, all mouths of hell; and there were not wanting holy
hermits who had heard within those craters, shrieks and clanking chains,
and the shouts of demons tormenting endlessly the souls of the lost. And
now, how has all this been shaken? How much of all this does any
educated man, though he be pious, though he desire with all his heart to
be orthodox—and is orthodox in fact—how much of all this does he believe,
as he believes that the earth is round, or, that if he steals his
neighbour’s goods he commits a crime?
For, since these days, the earth has been shaken, and with it the heavens
likewise, in that very sense in which the expression is used in the text.
Our conceptions of them have been shaken. The Copernican system shook
them, when it told men that the earth was but a tiny globular planet
revolving round the sun. Geology shook them, when it told men that the
earth has endured for countless ages, during which whole continents have
been submerged, whole seas become dry land, again and again. Even now
the heavens and the earth are being shaken by researches into the
antiquity of the human race, and into the origin and the mutability of
species, which, issue in what results they may, will shake for us,
meanwhile, theories which are venerable with the authority of nearly
eighteen hundred years, and of almost every great Doctor since St.
Augustine.
And as our conception of the physical universe has been shaken, the old
theory of a Tartarus beneath the earth has been shaken also, till good
men have been glad to place Tartarus in a comet, or in the sun, or to
welcome the possible, but unproved hypothesis, of a central fire in the
earth’s core, not on any scientific grounds, but if by any means a spot
may be found in space corresponding to that of which Virgil, Dante, and
Milton sang.
And meanwhile—as was to be expected from a generation which abhors
torture, labours for the reformation of criminals, and even doubts
whether it should not abolish capital punishment—a shaking of the heavens
is abroad, of which we shall hear more and more, as the years roll on—a
general inclination to ask whether Holy Scripture really endorses the
Middle-age notions of future punishment in endless torment? Men are
writing and speaking on this matter, not merely with ability and
learning, but with a piety, and reverence for Scripture which (rightly or
wrongly employed) must, and will, command attention. They are saying
that it is not those who deny these notions who disregard the letter of
Scripture, but those who assert them; that they are distorting the plain
literal text, in order to make Scripture fit the writings of Dante and
Milton, when they translate into ‘endless torments after death,’ such
phrases as the outer darkness, the undying worm, the Gehenna of
fire—which manifestly (say these men), if judged by fair rules of
interpretation, refer to this life, and specially to the fate of the
Jewish nation: or when they tell us that eternal death means really
eternal life, only in torments. We demand, they say, not a looser, but a
stricter; not a more metaphoric, but a more literal; not a more careless,
but a more reverent interpretation of Scripture; and whether this demand
be right or wrong, it will not pass unheard.
And even more severely shaken, meanwhile, is that mediæval conception of
heaven and hell, by the question which educated men are asking more and
more:—‘Heaven and hell—the spiritual world—Are they merely invisible
places in space, which may become visible hereafter? or are they not
rather the moral world—the world of right and wrong? Love and
righteousness—is not that the heaven itself wherein God dwells? Hatred
and sin—is not that hell itself, wherein dwells all that is opposed to
God?’
And out of that thought, right or wrong, other thoughts have sprung—of
ethics, of moral retribution—not new at all (say these men), but to be
found in Scripture, and in the writings of all great Christian divines,
when they have listened, not to systems, but to the voice of their own
hearts.
‘We do not deny’ (they say) ‘that the wages of sin are death. We do not
deny the necessity of punishment—the certainty of punishment. We see it
working awfully enough around us in this life; we believe that it may
work in still more awful forms in the life to come. Only tell us not
that it must be endless, and thereby destroy its whole purpose, and (as
we think) its whole morality. We, too, believe in an eternal fire; but
we believe its existence to be, not a curse, but a Gospel and a blessing,
seeing that that fire is God Himself, who taketh away the sins of the
world, and of whom it is therefore written, Our God is a consuming fire.’
Questions, too, have arisen, of—‘What _is_ moral retribution? Should
punishment have any end but the good of the offender? Is God so
controlled that He must needs send into the world beings whom He knows to
be incorrigible, and doomed to endless misery? And if not so controlled,
then is not the other alternative as to His character more fearful still?
Does He not bid us copy Him, His justice, His love? Then is that His
justice, is that His love, which if we copied we should be unjust and
unloving utterly? Are there two moralities, one for God, and quite
another for man, made in the image of God? Can these dark dogmas be true
of a Father who bids us be perfect as He is, in that He sends His sun to
shine on the evil and the good, and His rain on the just and unjust? Or
of a Son who so loved the world that He died to save the world and surely
not in vain?’
These questions—be they right or wrong—educated men and women of all
classes and denominations—orthodox, be it remembered, as well as
unorthodox—are asking, and will ask more and more, till they receive an
answer. And if we of the clergy cannot give them an answer which accords
with their conscience and their reason; if we tell them that the words of
Scripture, and the integral doctrines of Christianity, demand the same
notions of moral retribution as were current in the days when men racked
criminals, burned heretics alive, and believed that every Mussulman whom
they slaughtered in a crusade went straight to endless torments,—then
evil times will come, both for the clergy and the Christian religion, for
many a yeas henceforth.
What then are we to believe? What are we to do, amid this shaking of the
earth and heaven? Are we to degenerate into a lazy and heartless
scepticism, which, under pretence of liberality and charity, believes
that everything is a little true, everything is a little false—in one
word, believes nothing at all? Or are we to degenerate into unmanly and
faithless wailings, crying out that the flood of infidelity is
irresistible, that the last days are come, and that Christ has deserted
His Church?
Not if we will believe the text. The text tells us of something which
cannot be moved, though all around it reel and crumble—of a firm
standing-ground, which would endure, though the heavens should pass away
as a scroll, and the earth should be removed, and cast into the midst of
the sea.
We have a kingdom, the Scripture says, which cannot be moved, even the
kingdom of Him whom it calls shortly after ‘Jesus Christ, the same
yesterday, to-day and for ever.’ An eternal and unchangeable kingdom,
ruled by an eternal and unchangeable King. That is what cannot be moved.
Scripture does not say that we have an unchangeable cosmogony, an
unchangeable theory of moral retribution, an unchangeable system of
dogmatic propositions. Whether we have, or have not, it is not of them
that Scripture reminds the Jews, when the heavens and the earth were
shaken; when their own nation and worship were in their death-agony, and
all the beliefs and practices of men were in a whirl of doubt and
confusion, of decay and birth side by side, such as the world had never
seen before. Not of them does it remind the Jews, but of the changeless
kingdom, and the changeless King.
My friends, lay it seriously to heart, once and for all. Do you believe
that you are subjects of that kingdom, and that Christ is the living,
ruling, guiding King thereof? Whatsoever Scripture does not say,
Scripture speaks of that, again and again, in the plainest terms. But do
you believe it? These are days in which the preacher ought to ask every
man whether he believes it, and bid him, of whatever else he repents of,
to repent, at least, of not having believed this primary doctrine (I may
almost say) of Scripture and of Christianity.
But if you do believe it, will it seem strange to you to believe this
also,—That, considering who Christ is, the co-eternal and co-equal Son of
God, He may be actually governing His kingdom; and if so, that He may
know better how to govern it than such poor worms as we? That if the
heavens and the earth be shaken, Christ Himself may be shaking them? if
opinions be changing, Christ Himself may be changing them? If new truths
and facts are being discovered, Christ Himself may be revealing them?
That if those truths seem to contradict the truths which He has already
taught us, they do not really contradict them, any more than those
reasserted in the sixteenth century? That if our God be a consuming
fire, He is now burning up (to use St. Paul’s parable) the chaff and
stubble which men have built on the one foundation of Christ, that, at
last, nought but the pure gold may remain? Is it not possible? Is it
not most probable, if we only believe that Christ is a real, living King,
an active, practical King,—who, with boundless wisdom and skill, love and
patience, is educating and guiding Christendom, and through Christendom
the whole human race?
If men would but believe that, how different would be their attitude
toward new facts, toward new opinions! They would receive them with
grace; gracefully, courteously, fairly, charitably, and with that
reverence and godly fear which the text tells us is the way to serve God
acceptably. They would say: ‘Christ (so the Scripture tells us) has been
educating man through Abraham, through Moses, through David, through the
Jewish prophets, through the Greeks, through the Romans; then through
Himself, as man as well as God; and after His ascension, through His
Apostles, especially through St. Paul, to an ever-increasing
understanding of God, and the universe, and themselves. And even after
their time He did not cease His education. Why should He? How could He,
who said of Himself, “All power is given to me in heaven and earth;” “Lo,
I am with you alway to the end of the world;” and again, “My Father
worketh hitherto, and I work?”
‘At the Reformation in the sixteenth century He called on our forefathers
to repent—that is, to change their minds—concerning opinions which had
been undoubted for more than a thousand years. Why should He not be
calling on us at this time likewise? And if any answer, that the
Reformation was only a return to the primitive faith of the Apostles—Why
should not this shaking of the hearts and minds of men issue in a still
further return, in a further correction of errors, a further sweeping
away of additions, which are not integral to the Christian creeds, but
which were left behind, through natural and necessary human frailty, by
our great Reformers? Wise they were,—good and great,—as giants on the
earth, while we are but as dwarfs; but, as the hackneyed proverb tells
us, the dwarf on the giant’s shoulders may see further than the giant
himself.’
Ah! that men would approach new truth in that spirit; in the spirit of
godly fear, which is inspired by the thought that we are in the kingdom
of God, and that the King thereof is Christ, both God and man, once
crucified for us, now living for us for ever! Ah! that they would thus
serve God, waiting, as servants before a lord, for the slightest sign
which might intimate his will! Then they would look at new truths with
caution; in that truly conservative spirit which is the duty of all
Christians, and the especial strength of the Englishman. With
caution,—lest in grasping eagerly after what is new, we throw away truth
which we have already: but with awe and reverence; for Christ may have
sent the new truth; and he who fights against it, may haply be found
fighting against God. And so would they indeed obey the Apostolic
injunction—Prove all things, hold fast that which is good,—that which is
pure, fair, noble, tending to the elevation of men; to the improvement of
knowledge, justice, mercy, well-being; to the extermination of ignorance,
cruelty, and vice. That, at least, must come from Christ, unless the
Pharisees were right when they said that evil spirits could be cast out
by Beelzebub, prince of the devils.
How much more Christian, reverent, faithful, as well as more prudent,
rational, and philosophical, would such a temper be than that which
condemns all changes _à priori_, at the first hearing, or rather, too
often, without any hearing at all, in rage and terror, like that of the
animal who at the same moment barks at, and runs away from, every unknown
object.
At least that temper of mind will give us calm; faith, patience, hope,
charity, though the heavens and the earth are shaken around us. For we
have received a kingdom which cannot be moved, and in the King thereof we
have the most perfect trust: for us He stooped to earth, was born, and
died on the cross; and can we not trust Him? Let Him do what He will;
let Him teach us what He will; let Him lead us whither He will. Wherever
He leads, we shall find pasture. Wherever He leads, must be the way of
truth, and we will follow, and say, as Socrates of old used to say, Let
us follow the Logos boldly, whithersoever it leadeth. If Socrates had
courage to say it, how much more should we, who know what he, good man,
knew not, that the Logos is not a mere argument, train of thought,
necessity of logic, but a Person—perfect God and perfect man, even Jesus
Christ, ‘the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever,’ who promised of old,
and therefore promises to us, and our children after us, to lead those
who trust Him into all truth.
SERMON VII.
THE BATTLE OF LIFE.
GALATIANS v. 16, 17.
I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of
the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit
against the flesh: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.
A GREAT poet speaks of ‘Happiness, our being’s end and aim;’ and he has
been reproved for so doing. Men have said, and wisely, the end and aim
of our being is not happiness, but goodness. If goodness comes first,
then happiness may come after. But if not, something better than
happiness may come, even blessedness.
This it is, I believe, which our Lord may have meant when He said, ‘He
that saveth his life, or soul’ (for the two words in Scripture mean
exactly the same thing), ‘shall lose it. And he that loseth his life,
shall save it. For what is a man profited if he gain the whole world,
and lose his own life?’
How is this? It is a hard saying. Difficult to believe, on account of
the natural selfishness which lies deep in all of us. Difficult even to
understand in these days, when religion itself is selfish, and men learn
more and more to think that the end and aim of religion is not to make
them good while they live, but merely to save their souls after they die.
But whether it be hard to understand or not, we must understand it, if we
would be good men. And how to understand it, the Epistle for this day
will teach us.
‘Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.’ The
Spirit, which is the Spirit of God within our hearts and conscience,
says—Be good. The flesh, the animal, savage nature, which we all have in
common with the dumb animals, says—Be happy. Please yourself. Do what
you like. Eat and drink, for to-morrow you die.
But, happily for us, the Spirit lusts against the flesh. It draws us the
opposite way. It lifts us up, instead of dragging us down. It has
nobler aims, higher longings. It, as St. Paul puts it, will not let us
do the things that we would. It will not let us do just what we like,
and please ourselves. It often makes us unhappy just when we try to be
happy. It shames us, and cries in our hearts—You were not meant merely
to please yourselves, and be as the beasts which perish.
But how few listen to that voice of God’s Spirit within their hearts,
though it be just the noblest thing of which they will ever be aware on
earth!
How few listen to it, till the lusts of the flesh are worn out, and have
worn them out likewise, and made them reap the fruit which they have
sowed—sowing to the selfish flesh, and of the selfish flesh reaping
corruption.
The young man says—I will be happy and do what I like; and runs after
what he calls pleasure. The middle-aged man, grown more prudent, says—I
will be happy yet, and runs after money, comfort, fame and power. But
what do they gain? ‘The works of the flesh,’ the fruit of this selfish
lusting after mere earthly happiness, ‘are manifest, which are
these:’—not merely that open vice and immorality into which the young man
falls when he craves after mere animal pleasure, but ‘hatred, variance,
emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies’—_i.e._, factions in
Church or State—‘envyings, murders, and such like.’
Thus men put themselves under the law. Not under Moses’ law, of course,
but under some law or other.
For why has law been invented? Why is it needed, with all its expense?
Law is meant to prevent, if possible, men harming each other by their own
selfishness, by those lusts of the flesh which tempt every man to seek
his own happiness, careless of his neighbour’s happiness, interest,
morals; by all the passions which make men their own tormentors, and
which make the history of every nation too often a history of crime, and
folly, and faction, and war, sad and shameful to read; all those passions
of which St. Paul says once and for ever, that those who do such things
‘shall not inherit the kingdom of God.’
These are the sad consequences of giving way to the flesh, the selfish
animal nature within us: and most miserable would man be if that were all
he had to look to. Miserable, were there not a kingdom of God, into
which he could enter all day long, and be at peace; and a Spirit of God,
who would raise him up to the spiritual life of love, joy, peace,
long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance; and a
Son of God, the King of that kingdom, the Giver of that Spirit, who cries
for ever to every one of us—‘Come unto Me, ye that are weary and heavy
laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke on you, and learn of Me,
for I am meek and lowly of heart; and ye shall find rest unto your
souls.’
Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness,
temperance; these are the fruits of the Spirit: the spirit of
unselfishness; the spirit of charity; the spirit of justice; the spirit
of purity; the Spirit of God. Against them there is no law. He who is
guided by this Spirit, and he only, may do what he would; for he will
wish to do nought but what is right. He is not under the law, but under
grace; and full of grace will he be in all his words and works. He has
entered into the kingdom of God, and is living therein as God’s subject,
obeying the royal law of liberty—‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as
thyself.’
‘The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh,
so that ye cannot do the things that ye would,’ says St. Paul.
My friends, this is the battle of life.
In every one of us, more or less, this battle is going on; a battle
between the flesh and the Spirit, between the animal nature and the
divine grace. In every one of us, I say, who is not like the heathen,
dead in trespasses and sins; in every one of us who has a conscience,
excusing or else accusing us. There are those—a very few, I hope—who are
sunk below that state; who have lost their sense of right and wrong; who
only care to fulfil the lusts of the flesh in pleasure, ease, and vanity.
There are those in whom the voice of conscience is lead for a while,
silenced by self-conceit; who say in their prosperity, like the foolish
Laodiceans, ‘I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of
nothing,’ and know not that in fact and reality, and in the sight of God,
they are ‘wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.’
Happy, happy for any and all of us,—if ever we fall into that dream of
pride and false security,—to be awakened again, however painful the
awakening may be! Happy for every man that the battle between the Spirit
and the flesh should begin in him again and again, as long as his flesh
is not subdued to his spirit. If he be wrong, the greatest blessing
which can happen to him is, that he should find himself in the wrong. If
he have been deceiving himself, the greatest blessing is, that God should
anoint his eyes that he may see—see himself as he is; see his own inbred
corruption; see the sin which doth so easily beset him, whatever it may
be. Whatever anguish of mind it may cost him, it is a light price to pay
for the inestimable treasure which true repentance and amendment brings;
the fine gold of solid self-knowledge, tried in the fire of bitter
experience; the white raiment of a pure and simple heart; the eye-salve
of honest self-condemnation and noble shame. If he have but these—and
these God will give him, in answer to prayer, the prayer of a broken and
a contrite heart—then he will be able to carry on the battle against the
corrupt flesh, with its affections and lusts, in hope. In the assured
hope of final victory. ‘For greater is He that is with us, than he that
is against us? He that is against us is our self, our selfish self; our
animal nature; and He that is with us is God; God and none other: and who
can pluck us out of His hand?
My friends, the bread and the wine on that table are God’s own sign to us
that He will not leave us to be, like the savage, the slaves of our own
animal natures; that He will feed not merely our bodies with animal, but
our souls with spiritual food; giving us strength to rise above our
selfish selves; and so subdue the flesh to the Spirit, that at last,
however long and weary the fight, however sore wounded and often worsted
we may be, we shall conquer in the battle of life.
SERMON VIII.
FREE GRACE.
(_Preached before the Queen at Windsor_, _March_ 12, 1865.)
ISAIAH lv. 1.
Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath
no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without
money and without price.
EVERY one who knows his Bible as he should, knows well this noble
chapter. It seems to be one of the separate poems or hymns of which the
Book of Isaiah is composed. It is certainly one of the most beautiful of
them, and also one of the deepest. So beautiful is it, that the good men
of old who translated the Bible into English, could not help catching the
spirit of the words as they went on with their work, and making the
chapter almost a hymn in English, as it is a hymn in Hebrew. Even the
very sound of the words, as we listen to them, is a song in itself; and
there is perhaps no more perfect piece of writing in the English
language, than the greater part of this chapter.
This may not seem a very important matter; and yet those good men of old
must have felt that there was something in this chapter which went home
especially to their hearts, and would go home to the hearts of us for
whose sake they translated it.
And those good men judged rightly. The care which they bestowed on
Isaiah’s words has not been in vain. The noble sound of the text has
caught many a man’s ears, in order that the noble meaning of the text
might touch his heart, and bring him back again to God, to seek Him while
He may be found, and call on Him while He is near; that so the wicked
might forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and return
to God, for He will have compassion, and to our God, for He will
abundantly pardon; and that he might find that God’s thoughts are not as
man’s thoughts, nor His ways as man’s ways, saith the Lord; for as the
heavens are higher than the earth, so are His ways and thoughts higher
than ours.
Yes—I believe that the beauty of this chapter has made many a man listen
to it, who had perhaps never cared to listen to any good before; and
learn a precious lesson from it, which he could learn nowhere save in the
Bible.
For this text is one of those which have been called the Evangelical
Prophecies, in which the prophet rises far above Moses’ old law, and the
letter of it, which, as St. Paul says, is a letter which killeth; and the
spirit of it, which is a spirit which, as St. Paul says, gendereth to
bondage and slavish dread of God: an utterance in which the prophet sees
by faith the Lord Jesus Christ and His free grace revealed—dimly, of
course, and in a figure—but still revealed by the Spirit of God, who
spake by the prophets. As St. Paul says, Moses’ law made nothing
perfect, and therefore had to be disannulled for its unprofitableness and
weakness, and a better hope brought in, by which we draw near to God.
And here, in this text, we see the better hope coming in, and as it were
dawning upon men—the dawn of the Sun of Righteousness, Jesus Christ our
Lord, who was to rise afterwards, to be a light to lighten the Gentiles,
and the glory of His people Israel.
And what was this better hope? One, St. Paul says, by which we could
draw nigh to God; come near to Him; as to a Father, a Saviour, a
Comforter, a liege lord—not a tyrant who holds us against our will as his
slaves, but a liege lord who holds us with our will as His tenants, His
vassals, His liege men, as the good old English words were; one who will
take His vassals into His counsel, and inform them with His Spirit, and
teach them His mind, that they may do His will and copy His example, and
be treated by Him as His friends—in spite of the infinite difference of
rank between them and Him, which they must never forget.
But though the difference of rank be infinite and boundless—for it is the
difference between sinful man and God perfect for ever—yet still man can
now draw near to God. He is not commanded to stand afar off in fear and
trembling, as the old Jews were at Sinai. We have not come, says St.
Paul, to a mount which burned with fire, and blackness, and darkness, and
storm, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words, which those
who heard entreated that they should not be spoken to them any more: for
they could not endure that which was commanded: but we are come to the
city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to the Church of the
first-born which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and
to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the
new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling.
We are come to God, the Judge of all, and to Christ—not bidden to stand
afar off from them. That is the point to which I wish you to attend.
For this agrees with the words of the text, ‘Ho, every one that
thirsteth, come ye to the waters.’
This message it is, which made this chapter precious in the eyes of the
good men of old. This message it is, which has made it precious, in all
times, to thousands of troubled, hard-worked, weary, afflicted hearts.
This is what has made it precious to thousands who were wearied with the
burden of their sins, and longed to be made righteous and good; and knew
bitterly well that they could not make themselves good, but that God
alone could do that; and so longed to come to God, that they might be
made good: but did not know whether they might come or not; or whether,
if they came, God would receive them, and help them, and convert them.
This message it is, which has made the text an evangelical prophecy, to
be fulfilled only in Christ—a message which tells men of a God who says,
Come. Of a God whom Moses’ law, saying merely, ‘Thou shalt not,’ did not
reveal to us, divine and admirable as it was, and is, and ever will be.
Of a God whom natural religion, such as even the heathen, St. Paul says,
may gain from studying God’s works in this wonderful world around us—of a
God, I say, whom natural religion does not reveal to us, divine and
admirable as it is. But of a God who was revealed, step by step, to the
Psalmists and the Prophets, more and more clearly as the years went on;
of a God who was fully and utterly revealed, not merely by, but in Jesus
Christ our Lord, who was Himself that God, very God of very God begotten,
being the brightness of His Father’s glory, and the express image of His
person; whose message and call, from the first day of His ministry to His
glorious ascension, was, Come.
Come unto me, ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will refresh you.
Come unto Me, and take My yoke on you: for My yoke is easy, and My burden
is light.
I am the bread of life. He that cometh to Me shall never hunger, and he
that believeth in Me shall never thirst.
All that the Father hath given Me shall come unto Me. And he that cometh
to Me I will in no wise cast out.
Nay, the very words of this prophecy Christ took to Himself again and
again, speaking of Himself as the fountain of life, health and light;
when He stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come to Me,
and drink.
Come unto Me, that ye may have life, is the message of Jesus Christ, both
God and man. Come, that you may have forgiveness of your sins; come,
that you may have the Holy Spirit, by which you may sin no more, but live
the life of the Spirit, the everlasting life of goodness, by which the
spirits of just men, and angels, and archangels, live for ever before
God.
And what says St. Paul? See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh. For
if they escaped not, who refused Him that spake on earth, much more shall
not we escape, if we turn away from Him that speaketh from heaven.
Yes. The goodness of God, the condescension of God, instead of making it
more easy for sinners to escape, makes it, if possible, more difficult.
There are those who fancy that because God is merciful—because it is
written in this very chapter, Let a man return to the Lord, and He will
have mercy; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon,—that,
therefore, God is indulgent, and will overlook their sins; forgetting
that in the verse before it is said, Let the wicked forsake his ways, and
the unrighteous man his thoughts, and then—but not till then—let him
return to God, to be received with compassion and forgiveness.
Too many know not, as St. Paul says, that the goodness of God leads men,
not to sin freely and carelessly without fear of punishment, but leads
them to repentance. And yet do not our own hearts and consciences tell
us that it is so? That it is more base, and more presumptuous likewise,
to turn away from one who speaks with love, than one who speaks with
sternness; from one who calls us to come to him, with boundless
condescension, than from one who bids us stand afar off and tremble?
Those Jews of old, when they refused to hear God speaking in the thunders
of Sinai, committed folly. We, if we refuse to hear God speaking in the
tender words of Jesus crucified for us, commit an equal folly: but we
commit baseness and ingratitude likewise. They rebelled against a
Master: we rebel against a Father.
But, though we deny Him, He cannot deny Himself. We may be false to Him,
false to our better selves, false to our baptismal vows: but He cannot be
false. He cannot change. He is the same yesterday, to-day, and for
ever. What He said on earth, that He says eternally in heaven: If any
man thirst, let him come to Me and drink.
Eternally, and for ever, in heaven, says St. John, Christ says, and is,
and does, what Isaiah prophesied that He would say, and be, and do,—I am
the root and offspring of David, and the bright and morning star. And
the Spirit and the Bride (His Spirit and His Church) say, Come. And let
him that is athirst, Come: and whosoever will, let him take of the water
of life freely. For ever He calls to every anxious soul, every afflicted
soul, every weary soul, every discontented soul, to every man who is
ashamed of himself, and angry with himself, and longs to live a soberer,
gentler, nobler, purer, truer, more useful life—Come. Let him who
hungers and thirsts after righteousness, come to the waters; and he that
hath no silver—nothing to give to God in return for all His bounty—let
him buy without silver, and eat; and live for ever that eternal life of
righteousness, holiness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit, which is
the one true and only salvation bought for us by the precious blood of
Christ, our Lord.
SERMON IX.
EZEKIEL’S VISION.
(_Preached before the Queen at Windsor_, _June_ 26, 1864.)
EZEKIEL i. 1, 26.
Now it came to pass, as I was among the captives by the river of
Chebar, that the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God. And
upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of
a man.
EZEKIEL’S Vision may seem to some a strange and unprofitable subject on
which to preach. It ought not to be so in fact. All Scripture is given
by Inspiration of God, and is profitable for teaching, for correction,
for reproof, for instruction in righteousness. And so will this Vision
be to us, if we try to understand it aright. We shall find in it fresh
knowledge of God, a clearer and fuller revelation, made to Ezekiel, than
had been, up to his time, made to any man.
I am well aware that there are some very difficult verses in the text.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to understand exactly what presented
itself to Ezekiel’s mind.
Ezekiel saw a whirlwind come out of the north; a whirling globe of fire;
four living creatures coming out of the midst thereof. So far the
imagery is simple enough, and grand enough. But when he begins to speak
of the living creatures, the cherubim, his description is very obscure.
All that we discover is, a vision of huge creatures with the feet, and
(as some think) the body of an ox, with four wings, and four faces,—those
of a man, an ox, a lion, and an eagle. Ezekiel seems to discover
afterwards that these are the cherubim, the same which overshadowed the
ark in Moses’ tabernacle and Solomon’s temple—only of a more complex
form; for Moses’ and Solomon’s cherubim are believed to have had but one
face each, while Ezekiel’s had four.
Now, concerning the cherubim, and what they meant, we know very little.
The Jews, at the time of the fall of Jerusalem, had forgotten their
meaning. Josephus, indeed, says they had forgotten their very shape.
Some light has been thrown, lately, on the figures of these creatures, by
the sculptures of those very Assyrian cities to which Ezekiel was a
captive,—those huge winged oxen and lions with human heads; and those
huge human figures with four wings each, let down and folded round them
just as Ezekiel describes, and with heads, sometimes of the lion, and
sometimes of the eagle. None, however, have been found as yet, I
believe, with four faces, like those of Ezekiel’s Vision; they are all of
the simpler form of Solomon’s cherubim. But there is little doubt that
these sculptures were standing there perfect in Ezekiel’s time, and that
he and the Jews who were captive with him may have seen them often. And
there is little doubt also what these figures meant: that they were
symbolic of royal spirits—those thrones, dominations, princedoms, powers,
of which Milton speaks,—the powers of the earth and heaven, the royal
archangels who, as the Chaldæans believed, governed the world, and gave
it and all things life; symbolized by them under the types of the four
royal creatures of the world, according to the Eastern nations; the ox
signifying labour, the lion power, the eagle foresight, and the man
reason.
So with the wheels which Ezekiel sees. We find them in the Assyrian
sculptures—wheels with a living spirit sitting in each, a human figure
with outspread wings; and these seem to have been the genii, or guardian
angels, who watched over their kings, and gave them fortune and victory.
For these Chaldæans were specially worshippers of angels and spirits; and
they taught the Jews many notions about angels and spirits, which they
brought home with them into Judæa after the captivity.
Of them, of course, we read little or nothing in Holy Scripture; but
there is much, and too much, about them in the writings of the old
Rabbis, the Scribes and Pharisees of the New Testament.
Now Ezekiel, inspired by the Spirit of God, rises far above the old
Chaldæans and their dreams. Perhaps the captive Jews were tempted to
worship these cherubim and genii, as the Chaldæans did; and it may be
that Ezekiel was commissioned by God to set them right, and by his vision
to give a type, pattern, or picture of God’s spiritual laws, by which He
rules the world.
Be that as it may. In the first place, Ezekiel’s cherubim are far more
wonderful and complicated than those which he would see on the walls of
the Assyrian buildings. And rightly so; for this world is far more
wonderful, more complicated, more cunningly made and ruled, than any of
man’s fancies about it; as it is written in the Book of Job,—‘Where wast
thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast
understanding. Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who
laid the corner-stone thereof; when the morning stars sang together, and
all the sons of God shouted for joy?’
Next (and this is most important), these different cherubim were not
independent of each other, each going his own way, and doing his own
will. Not so. Ezekiel had found in them a divine and wonderful order,
by which the services of angels as well as of men are constituted.
Orderly and harmoniously they worked together. Out of the same fiery
globe, from the same throne of God, they came forth all alike. They
turned not when they went; whithersoever the Spirit was to go, they went,
and ran and returned like a flash of lightning. Nay, in one place he
speaks as if all the four creatures were but one creature: ‘This is the
living creature which I saw by the river of Chebar.’
And so it is, we may be sure, in the world of God, whether in the earthly
or in the heavenly world. All things work together, praising God and
doing His will. Angels and the heavenly host; sun and moon; stars and
light; fire and hail; snow and vapour; wind and storm: all fulfil His
word. ‘He hath made them fast for ever and ever: He hath given them a
law which shall not be broken.’ For before all things, under all things,
and through all things, is a divine unity and order; all things working
towards one end, because all things spring from one beginning, which is
the bosom of God the Father.
And so with the wheels; the wheels of fortune and victory, and the fate
of nations and of kings. ‘They were so high,’ Ezekiel said, ‘that they
were dreadful.’ But he saw no human genius sitting, one in each wheel of
fortune, each protecting his favourite king and nation. These, too, did
not go their own way and of their own will. They were parts of God’s
divine and wonderful order, and obeyed the same laws as the cherubim.
‘And when the living creatures went, the wheels went with them; for the
spirit of the living creature was in the wheels.’ Everywhere was the
same divine unity and order; the same providence, the same laws of God,
presided over the natural world and over the fortunes of nations and of
kings. Victory and prosperity was not given arbitrarily by separate
genii, each genius protecting his favourite king, each genius striving
against the other on behalf of his favourite. Fortune came from the
providence of One Being; of Him of whom it is written, ‘God standeth in
the congregation of princes: He is the judge among gods.’ And again,
‘The Lord is King, be the people never so impatient: He sitteth between
the cherubim, be the earth never so unquiet.’
And is this all? God forbid. This is more than the Chaldæans saw, who
worshipped angels and not God—the creature instead of the Creator. But
where the Chaldæan vision ended, Ezekiel’s only began. His prophecy
rises far above the imaginations of the heathen.
He hears the sound of the wings of the cherubim, like the tramp of an
army, like the noise of great waters, like the roll of thunder, the voice
of Almighty God: but above their wings he sees a firmament, which the
heathen cannot see, clear as the flashing crystal, and on that firmament
a sapphire throne, and round that throne a rainbow, the type of
forgiveness and faithfulness, and on that throne A Man.
And the cherubim stand, and let down their wings in submission, waiting
for the voice of One mightier than they. And Ezekiel falls upon his
face, and hears from off the throne a human voice, which calls to him as
human likewise, ‘Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will speak to
thee.’
This, this is Ezekiel’s vision: not the fiery globe merely, nor the
cherubim, nor the wheels, nor the powers of nature, nor the angelic
host—dominions and principalities, and powers—but The Man enthroned above
them all, the Lord and Guide and Ruler of the universe; He who makes the
winds His angels, and the flames of fire His ministers; and that Lord
speaking to him, not through cherubim, not through angels, not through
nature, not through mediators, angelic or human, but speaking direct to
him himself, as man speaks to man.
As man speaks to man. This is the very pith and marrow of the Old
Testament and of the New; which gradually unfolds itself, from the very
first chapter of Genesis to the last of Revelation,—that man is made in
the likeness of God; and that therefore God can speak to him, and he can
understand God’s words and inspirations.
Man is like God; and therefore God, in some inconceivable way, is like
man. That is the great truth set forth in the first chapter of Genesis,
which goes on unfolding itself more clearly throughout the Old Testament,
till here, in Ezekiel’s vision, it comes to, perhaps, its clearest stage
save one.
That human appearance speaks to Ezekiel, the hapless prisoner of war, far
away from his native land. And He speaks to him with human voice, and
claims kindred with him as a human being, saying, ‘Son of man.’ That is
very deep and wonderful. The Lord upon His throne does not wish Ezekiel
to think how different He is to him, but how like He is to him. He says
not to Ezekiel,—‘Creature infinitely below Me! Dust and ashes, unworthy
to appear in My presence! Worm of the earth, as far below Me and unlike
Me as the worm under thy feet is to thee!’ but, ‘Son of man; creature
made in My image and likeness, be not afraid! Stand on thy feet, and be
a man; and speak to others what I speak to thee.’
After that great revelation of God there seems but one step more to make
it perfect; and that step was made in God’s good time, in the Incarnation
of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Forasmuch as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also—He
whom Ezekiel saw in human form enthroned on high—He took part of flesh
and blood likewise, and was not ashamed, yea, rather rejoiced, to call
Himself, what He called Ezekiel, the Son of Man.
‘And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us; and we beheld His
glory.’ And why?
For many reasons; but certainly for this one. To make men feel more
utterly and fully what Ezekiel was made to feel. That God could
thoroughly feel for man; and that man could thoroughly trust God.
That God could thoroughly feel for man. For we have a High Priest who
has been made perfect by sufferings, tempted in all points like as we
are; and we can
‘Look to Him who, not in vain,
Experienced every human pain;
He sees our wants, allays our fears,
And counts and treasures up our tears.’
Again,—That man could utterly trust God. For when St. John and his
companions (simple fishermen) beheld the glory of Jesus, the Incarnate
Word, what was it like? It was ‘full of grace and truth;’ the perfection
of human graciousness, of human truthfulness, which could win and melt
the hearts of simple folk, and make them see in Him, who was called the
carpenter’s son, the beauty of the glory of the Godhead.
‘He is the Judge of all the earth.’ And why? Let Him Himself tell us.
He says that the Father has given the Son authority to execute judgment.
And why, once more? Because He is the Son of God? Our Lord says
more,—‘Because,’ He says, ‘He is the Son of Man;’ who knows what is in
man; who can feel, understand, discriminate, pity, make allowances, judge
fair, and righteous, and merciful judgment, among creatures whose
weakness He has experienced, whose temptations He has felt, whose pains
and sorrows He has borne in mortal flesh and blood.
Oh, Gospel and good news for the weak, the sorrowful, the oppressed; for
those who are wearied with the burden of their sins, or wearied also by
the burden of heavy responsibilities, and awful public duties! When all
mortal counsellors fail them, when all mortal help is too weak, let them
but throw themselves on the mercy of Him who sits upon the throne, and
remember that He, though immortal and eternal, is still the Son of Man,
who knows what is in man.
There are times in which we are all tempted to worship other things than
God. Not, perhaps, to worship cherubim and genii, angels and spirits,
like the old Chaldees, but to worship the laws of political economy, the
laws of statesmanship, the powers of nature, the laws of physical
science, those lower messengers of God’s providence, of which St. Paul
says, ‘He maketh the winds His angels, and flames of fire His ministers.’
In such times we have need to remember Ezekiel’s lesson, that above them
all, ruling and guiding, sits He whose form is as the Son of Man.
We are not to say that any powers of nature are evil, or the laws of any
science false. Heaven forbid! Ezekiel did not say that the cherubim
were evil, or meaningless; or that the belief in angels ministering to
man was false. He said the very opposite. But he said, All these obey
one whose form is that of a man. He rules them, and they do His will.
They are but ministering spirits before Him.
Therefore we are not to disbelieve science, nor disregard the laws of
nature, or we shall lose by our folly. But we are to believe that nature
and science are not our gods. They do not rule us; our fortunes are not
in their hands. Above nature and above science sits the Lord of nature
and the Lord of science. Above all the counsels of princes, and the
struggles of nations, and the chances and changes of this world of man,
sits the Judge of princes and of peoples, the Lord of all the nations
upon earth, He by whom all things were made, and who upholdeth all things
by the word of His power; and He is man, of the substance of His mother;
most human and yet most divine; full of justice and truth, full of care
and watchfulness, full of love and pity, full of tenderness and
understanding; a Friend, a Guide, a Counsellor, a Comforter, a Saviour to
all who trust in Him. He is nearer to us than nature and science: and He
should be dearer to us; for they speak only to our understanding; but He
speaks to our human hearts, to our inmost spirits. Nature and science
cannot take away our sins, give peace to our hearts, right judgment to
our minds, strength to our wills, or everlasting life to our souls and
bodies. But there sits One upon the throne who can. And if nature were
to vanish away, and science were to be proved (however correct as far as
it went) a mere child’s guess about this wonderful world, which none can
understand save He who made it—if all the counsels of princes and of
peoples, however just and wise, were to be confounded and come to nought,
still, after all, and beyond all, and above all, Christ would abide for
ever, with human tenderness yearning over human hearts; with human wisdom
teaching human ignorance; with human sympathy sorrowing with human
mourners; for ever saying, ‘Come unto me, ye that are weary and heavy
laden, and I will give you rest.’
Cherubim and seraphim, angels and archangels, dominions and powers,
whether of nature or of grace—these all serve Him and do His work. He
has constituted their services in a wonderful order: but He has not taken
their nature on Him. Our nature He has taken on Him, that we might be
bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh; able to say to Him for ever, in
all the chances and changes of this mortal life—
‘Thou, O Christ, art all I want,
More than all in thee I find;
Raise me, fallen; cheer me, faint;
Heal me, sick; and lead me, blind.
Thou of life the fountain art,
Freely let me drink of Thee;
Spring Thou up within my heart,
Rise to all eternity.’
SERMON X.
RUTH.
RUTH ii. 4.
And, behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem, and said unto the reapers, The
Lord be with you. And they answered him, The Lord bless thee.
MOST of you know the story of Ruth, from which my text is taken, and you
have thought it, no doubt, a pretty story. But did you ever think why it
was in the Bible?
Every book in the Bible is meant to teach us, as the Article of our
Church says, something necessary to salvation. But what is there
necessary to our salvation in the Book of Ruth?
No doubt we learn from it that Ruth was the ancestress of King David; and
that she was, therefore, an ancestress of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ:
but curious and interesting as that is, we can hardly call that something
necessary to salvation. There must be something more in the book. Let
us take it simply as it stands, and see if we can find it out.
It begins by telling us how a man of Bethlehem has been driven out of his
own country by a famine, he and his wife Naomi and his two sons, and has
gone over the border into Moab, among the heathen; how his two sons have
married heathen women, and the name of the one was Ruth, and the name of
the other Orpah. Then how he dies, and his two sons; and how Naomi, his
widow, hears that the Lord had visited His people, in giving them bread;
how the people of Judah were prosperous again, and she is there all alone
among the heathen; so she sets out to go back to her own people, and her
daughters-in-law go with her.
But she persuades them not to go. Why do they not stay in their own
land? And they weep over each other; and Orpah kisses her mother-in-law,
and goes back; but Ruth cleaves unto her.
Then follows that famous speech of Ruth’s, which, for its simple beauty
and poetry, has become a proverb, and even a song, among us to this day.
And Ruth said, ‘Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following
after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I
will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God:
‘Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so
to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.’
So when she saw that she was steadfastly minded to go to her, she left
speaking to her.
And they come to Bethlehem, and all the town was moved about them; and
they said, Is this Naomi?
‘And she said unto them, Call me not Naomi, call me Mara: for the
Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full, and the Lord
hath brought me home again empty: why then call ye me Naomi, seeing the
Lord hath testified against me, and the Almighty hath afflicted me?’
And they came to Bethlehem about the passover tide, at the beginning of
barley harvest, and Ruth went out into the fields to glean, and she
lighted on a part of the field which belonged to Boaz, who was of her
husband’s kindred.
And Boaz was a mighty man of wealth, according to the simple fashions of
that old land and old time. Not like one of our great modern noblemen,
or merchants, but rather like one of our wealthy yeomen: a man who would
not disdain to work in his field with his own slaves, after the wholesome
fashion of those old times, when a royal prince and mighty warrior would
sow the corn with his own hands, while his man opened the furrow with the
plough before him. There Boaz dwelt, with other yeomen, up among the
limestone hills, in the little walled village of Bethlehem, which was
afterwards to become so famous and so holy; and had, we may suppose, his
vineyard and his olive-garden on the rocky slopes, and his corn-fields in
the vale below, and his flock of sheep and goats feeding on the downs;
while all his wealth besides lay, probably, after the Eastern fashion, in
one great chest—full of rich dresses, and gold and silver ornaments, and
coins, all foreign, got in exchange for his corn, and wine, and oil, from
Assyrian, or Egyptian, or Phœnician traders; for the Jews then had no
money, and very little manufacture, of their own.
And he would have had hired servants, too, and slaves, in his house;
treated kindly enough, as members of the family, eating and drinking at
his table, and faring nearly as well as he fared himself.
A stately, God-fearing man he plainly was; respectable, courteous, and
upright, and altogether worthy of his wealth; and he went out into the
field, looking after his reapers in the barley harvest—about our
Easter-tide.
And he said to his reapers, The Lord be with you. And they answered, The
Lord bless thee.
Then he saw Ruth, who had happened to light upon his field, gleaning
after the reapers, and found out who she was, and bid her glean without
fear, and abide by his maidens, for he had charged the young men that
they shall not touch her.
‘And Boaz said unto her, At meal-time come thou hither, and eat of the
bread, and dip thy morsel in the vinegar. And she sat beside the
reapers: and he reached her parched corn, and she did eat, and was
sufficed, and left.
‘And when she was risen up to glean, Boaz commanded his young men,
saying, Let her glean even among the sheaves, and reproach her not: and
let fall also some of the handfuls of purpose for her, and leave them,
that she may glean them, and rebuke her not.
‘So she gleaned in the field until even, and beat out that she had
gleaned: and it was about an ephah of barley.’
Then follows the simple story, after the simple fashion of those days.
How Naomi bids Ruth wash and anoint herself, and put on her best
garments, and go down to Boaz’ floor (his barn as we should call it now)
where he is going to eat, and drink, and sleep, and there claim his
protection as a near kinsman.
And how Ruth comes in softly and lies down at his feet, and how he treats
her honourably and courteously, and promises to protect her. But there
is a nearer kinsman than he, and he must be asked first if he will do the
kinsman’s part, and buy his cousin’s plot of land, and marry his cousin’s
widow with it.
And how Boaz goes to the town-gate next day, and sits down in the gate
(for the porch of the gate was a sort of town-hall or vestry-room in the
East, wherein all sorts of business was done), and there he challenges
the kinsman,—Will he buy the ground and marry Ruth? And he will not: he
cannot afford it. Then Boaz calls all the town to witness that day, that
he has bought all that was Elimelech’s, and Ruth the Moabitess to be his
wife.
‘And all the people that were in the gate, and the elders, said, We are
witnesses. The Lord make the woman that is come into thine house like
Rachel and like Leah, which two did build the house of Israel: and do
thou worthily in Ephratah, and be famous in Bethlehem.’
And in due time Ruth had a son. ‘And the women said unto Naomi, Blessed
be the Lord, which hath not left thee this day without a kinsman, that
his name may be famous in Israel.
‘And he shall be unto thee a restorer of thy life, and a nourisher of
thine old age: for thy daughter-in-law, which loveth thee, which is
better to thee than seven sons, hath born him.
‘And Naomi took the child, and laid it in her bosom, and became nurse
unto it.
‘And the women her neighbours gave it a name, saying, There is a son born
to Naomi; and they called his name Obed: he is the father of Jesse, the
father of David.’
And so ends the Book of Ruth.
Now, my friends, can you not answer for yourselves the question which I
asked at first,—Why is the story of Ruth in the Bible, and what may we
learn from it which is necessary for our salvation?
I think, at least, that you will be able to answer it—if not in words,
still in your hearts—if you will read the book for yourselves.
For does it not consecrate to God that simple country life which we lead
here? Does it not tell us that it is blessed in the sight of Him who
makes the grass to grow, and the corn to ripen in its season?
Does it not tell us, that not only on the city and the palace, on the
cathedral and the college, on the assemblies of statesmen, on the studies
of scholars, but upon the meadow and the corn-field, the farm-house and
the cottage, is written, by the everlasting finger of God—Holiness unto
the Lord? That it is all blessed in His sight; that the simple dwellers
in villages, the simple tillers of the ground, can be as godly and as
pious, as virtuous and as high-minded, as those who have nought to do but
to serve God in the offices of religion? Is it not an honour and a
comfort, to such as us, to find one whole book of the Holy Bible occupied
by the simplest story of the fortunes of a yeoman’s family, in a lonely
village among the hills of Judah? True, the yeoman’s widow became the
ancestress of David, and of his mighty line of kings—nay, the ancestress
of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. But the Book of Ruth was not written
mainly to tell us that fact. It mentions it at the end, and as it were
by accident. The book itself is taken up with the most simple and
careful details of country life, country customs, country folk—as if that
was what we were to think of, as we read of Ruth. And that is what we do
think of—not of the ancestress of kings, but of the fair young heathen
gleaning among the corn, with the pious, courteous, high-minded yeoman
bidding her abide fast by his maidens, and when she was athirst drink of
the wine which the young men have drawn, for it has been fully showed him
all she has done for her mother-in-law; and the Lord will recompense her
work, and a full reward be given her of the Lord God of Israel, under the
shadow of whose wings she is to come to trust. That is the scene which
painters naturally draw; that is what we naturally think of; because God,
who gave us the Bible, meant us to think thereof; and to know, that
working in the quiet village, or in the distant field, women may be as
pure and modest, men as high-minded and well-bred, and both as full of
the fear of God, and the thought that God’s eye is upon them, as if they
were in a place, or a station, where they had nothing to do but to watch
over the salvation of their own souls; that the meadow and the
harvest-field need not be, as they too often are, places for temptation
and for defilement; where the old too often teach the young, not to fear
God and keep themselves pure, but to copy their coarse jests and foul
language, and listen to stories which had better be buried for ever in
the dirt out of which they spring. You know what I mean. You know what
field-work too often is. Read the Book of Ruth, and see what field-work
may be, and ought to be.
Yes, my dear friends. Pure you may be, and gentle, upright, and godly,
about your daily work, if the Spirit of God be within you.
Country life has its temptations: and so has town life, and every life.
But there has no temptation taken you save such as is common to man.
Boaz, the rich yeoman; Naomi, the broken-hearted and ruined; Ruth, the
fair young widow—all had the very same temptations as are common to you
now, here; but they conquered them, because they feared God and kept His
commandments; and to know that, is necessary for your salvation.
And, looked at in this light, the Book of Ruth is indeed a prophecy; a
forecast and a shadow of the teaching of the Lord Jesus Himself, who
spake to country folk as never man spake before, and bade them look upon
the simple, every-day matters which were around them in field and wood,
and open their eyes to the Divine lessons of God’s providence, which also
were all around them; who, born Himself in that little village of
Bethlehem, and brought up in the little village of Nazareth, among the
lonely lanes and downs, spoke of country things to country folk, and bade
them read in the great green book which God has laid open before them all
day long. Who bade them to consider the lilies of the field, how they
grew, and the ravens, how God fed them; to look on the fields, white for
harvest, and pray God to send labourers into his spiritual harvest-field;
to look on the tares which grew among the wheat, and know we must not try
to part them ourselves, but leave that to God at the last day; to look on
the fishers, who were casting their net into the Lake of Galilee, and
sorting the fish upon the shore, and be sure that a day was coming, when
God would separate the good from the bad, and judge every man according
to his work and worth; and to learn from the common things of country
life the rule of the living God, and the laws of the kingdom of heaven.
One word more, and I have done.
The story of Ruth is also the consecration of woman’s love. I do not
mean of the love of wife to husband, divine and blessed as that is. I
mean that depth and strength of devotion, tenderness, and self-sacrifice,
which God has put in the heart of all true women; and which they spend so
strangely, and so nobly often, on persons who have no claim on them, from
whom they can receive no earthly reward;—the affection which made women
minister of their substance to our Lord Jesus Christ; which brought Mary
Magdalene to the foot of the Cross, and to the door of the tomb, that she
might at least see the last of Him whom she thought lost to her for ever;
the affection which has made a wise man say, that as long as women and
sorrow are left in the world, so long will the Gospel of our Lord Jesus
live and conquer therein; the affection which makes women round us every
day ministering angels, wherever help or comfort are needed; which makes
many a woman do deeds of unselfish goodness known only to God; not known
even to herself; for she does them by instinct, by the inspiration of
God’s Spirit, without self-consciousness or pride, without knowing what
noble things she is doing, without spoiling the beauty of her good work
by even admitting to herself, ‘What a good work it is! How right she is
in doing it! How much it will advance the salvation of her own
soul!’—but thinking herself, perhaps, a very useless and paltry person;
while the angels of God are claiming her as their sister and their peer.
Yes, if there is a woman in this congregation—and there is one, I will
warrant, in every congregation in England—who is devoting herself for the
good of others; giving up the joys of life to take care of orphans who
have no legal claim on her; or to nurse a relation, who perhaps repays
her with little but exacting peevishness; or who has spent all her
savings, in bringing up her brothers, or in supporting her parents in
their old age,—then let her read the story of Ruth, and be sure that,
like Ruth, she will be repaid by the Lord. Her reward may not be the
same as Ruth’s: but it will be that which is best for her, and she shall
in no wise lose her reward. If she has given up all for Christ, it shall
be repaid her ten-fold in this life, and in the world to come life
everlasting. If, with Ruth, she is true to the inspirations of God’s
Spirit, then, with Ruth, God will be true to her. Let her endure, for in
due time she shall reap, if she faint not;—and to know that, is necessary
for her salvation.
SERMON XI.
SOLOMON.
ECCLESIASTES i. 12–14.
I the Preacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I gave my
heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are
done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to the sons of
man to be exercised therewith. I have seen all the works that are
done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of
spirit.
ALL have heard of Solomon the Wise. His name has become a proverb among
men. It was still more a proverb among the old Rabbis, the lawyers and
scribes of the Gospels.
Their hero, the man of whom they delighted to talk and dream, was not
David, the Psalmist, and the shepherd-boy, the man of many wanderings,
and many sorrows: but his son Solomon, with all his wealth, and pomp and
magic wisdom. Ever since our Lord’s time, if not before it, Solomon has
been the national hero of the Jews; while David, as the truer type and
pattern of the Lord Jesus Christ, has been the hero of Christians.
The Rabbis, with their Eastern fancy—childishly fond, to this day, of
gold, and jewels, and outward pomp and show—would talk and dream of the
lost glories of Solomon’s court; of his gilded and jewelled temple, with
its pillars of sandal-wood from Ophir, and its sea of molten brass; of
his ivory lion-throne, and his three hundred golden shields; of his
fleets which went away into the far Indian sea, and came back after three
years with foreign riches and curious beasts. And as if that had not
been enough, they delighted to add to the truth fable upon fable. The
Jews, after the time of the Babylonish captivity, seem to have more and
more identified Wisdom with mere Magic; and therefore Solomon was, in
their eyes, the master of all magicians. He knew the secrets of the
stars, and of the elements, the secrets of all charms and spells. By
virtue of his magic seal he had power over all those evil spirits, with
which the Jews believed the earth and sky to be filled. He could command
all spirits, force them to appear to him and bow before him, and send
them to the ends of the earth to do his bidding. Nothing so fantastic,
nothing so impossible, but those old Scribes and Pharisees imputed it to
their idol, Solomon the Wise.
The Bible, of course, has no such fancies in it, and gives us a sober and
rational account of Solomon’s wisdom, and of Solomon’s greatness.
It tells us how, when he was yet young, God appeared to him in a dream,
and said, Ask what I shall give thee. And Solomon made answer—
‘ . . . O Lord my God, Thou hast made Thy servant king instead of David
my father; and I am but a little child: I know not how to go out or come
in.
‘Give therefore Thy servant an understanding heart to judge Thy people,
that I may discern between good and bad: for who is able to judge this
Thy so great a people?
‘And the speech pleased the Lord, that Solomon had asked this thing.
‘And God said unto him, Because thou hast asked this thing, and hast not
asked for thyself long life; neither hast asked riches for thyself, nor
hast asked the life of thine enemies; but hast asked for thyself
understanding to discern judgment;
‘Behold, I have done according to thy words: lo, I have given thee a wise
and an understanding heart; so that there was none like thee before thee,
neither after thee shall any arise like unto thee.
‘And I have also given thee that which thou hast not asked, both riches
and honour: so that there shall not be any among the kings like unto thee
all thy days.’
And the promise, says Solomon himself, was fulfilled.
In his days Judah and Israel were many, as the sand which is by the
sea-shore, for multitude, eating and drinking and making merry; and
Solomon reigned over all kings, from the river to the land of the
Philistines and the border of Egypt; and they brought presents, and
served Solomon all the days of his life. And he had peace on all sides
round about him. And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his
own vine and his own fig-tree, all the days of Solomon.
‘I was great,’ he says, ‘and increased more than all that were before me
in Jerusalem; also my wisdom remained with me. And whatsoever mine eyes
desired I kept not from them; I withheld not my heart from any joy; for
my heart rejoiced in all my labour . . .
‘Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the
labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and
vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.
‘And I turned myself to behold wisdom, and madness, and folly: for what
can the man do that cometh after the king? even that which hath been
already done.’
Yes, my dear friends, we are too apt to think of exceeding riches, or
wisdom, or power, or glory, as unalloyed blessings from God. How many
are there who would say,—if it were not happily impossible for them,—Oh
that I were like Solomon! Happy man that he was, to be able to say of
himself, ‘I was great, and increased more than all that were before me in
Jerusalem. And whatsoever mine eyes desired, I kept not from them; I
withheld not my heart from any joy, for my heart rejoiced in all my
labour.’
To have everything that he wanted, to be able to do anything that he
liked—was he not a happy man? Is not such a life a Paradise on earth?
Yes, my friends, it is. But it is the Paradise of fools.
Yet, Solomon was not a fool. He says expressly that his wisdom remained
with him through all his labour. Through all his pleasure he kept alive
the longing after knowledge. He even tried, as he says, wine, and mirth,
and folly, yet acquainting himself with wisdom. He would try that, as
well as statesmanship, and the rule of a great kingdom, and the building
of temples and palaces, and the planting of parks and gardens, and his
three thousand Proverbs, and his Songs a thousand and five; and his
speech of beasts and of birds and of all plants, from the cedar in
Lebanon to the hyssop which groweth on the wall. He would know
everything, and try everything. If he was luxurious and proud, he would
be no idler, no useless gay liver. He would work, and discern, and
know,—and at last he found it all out, and this was the sum
thereof—‘Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher; all is vanity.’
He found no rest in pleasure, riches, power, glory, wisdom itself; he had
learnt nothing more after all than he might have known, and doubtless did
know, when he was a child of seven years old. And that was, simply to
fear God and keep His commandments; for that was the whole duty of man.
But though he knew it, he had lost the power of doing it; and he ended
darkly and shamefully, a dotard worshipping idols of wood and stone,
among his heathen queens. And thus, as in David the height of chivalry
fell to the deepest baseness; so in Solomon the height of wisdom fell to
the deepest folly.
My friends, the truth is, that exceeding gifts from God like Solomon’s
are not blessings, they are duties; and very solemn and heavy duties.
They do not increase a man’s happiness; they only increase his
responsibility—the awful account which he must give at last of the
talents committed to his charge. They increase, too, his danger. They
increase the chance of his having his head turned to pride and pleasure,
and falling shamefully, and coming to a miserable end. As with David, so
with Solomon. Man is nothing, and God is all in all.
And as with David and Solomon, so with many a king and many a great man.
Consider those who have been great and glorious in their day. And in how
many cases they have ended sadly! The burden of glory has been too heavy
for them to bear; they have broken down under it.
The great Charles the Fifth, Emperor of Germany and King of Spain and all
the Indies: our own great Queen Elizabeth, who found England all but
ruined, and left her strong and rich, glorious and terrible: Lord Bacon,
the wisest of all mortal men since the time of Solomon: and, in our own
fathers’ time, Napoleon Buonaparte, the poor young officer, who rose to
be the conqueror of half Europe, and literally the king of kings,—how
have they all ended? In sadness and darkness, vanity and vexation of
spirit.
Oh, my friends! if ever proud and ambitious thoughts arise in any of our
hearts, let us crush them down till we can say with David: ‘Lord, my
heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty; neither do I exercise myself
in great matters, or in things too high for me.
‘Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of
his mother; my soul is even as a weaned child.’
And if ever idle and luxurious thoughts arise in our hearts, and we are
tempted to say, ‘Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take
thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry;’ let us hear the word of the Lord
crying against us: ‘Thou fool! This night shall thy soul be required of
thee. Then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?’
Let us pray, my friends, for that great—I had almost said, that crowning
grace and virtue of moderation, what St. Paul calls sobriety and a sound
mind. Let us pray for moderate appetites, moderate passions, moderate
honours, moderate gains, moderate joys; and, if sorrows be needed to
chasten us, moderate sorrows. Let us long violently after nothing, or
wish too eagerly to rise in life; and be sure that what the Apostle says
of those who long to be rich is equally true of those who long to be
famous, or powerful, or in any way to rise over the heads of their
fellow-men. They all fall, as the Apostle says, into foolish and hurtful
lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition, and so pierce
themselves through with many sorrows.
And let us thank God heartily if He has put us into circumstances which
do not tempt us to wild and vain hopes of becoming rich, or great or
admired by men.
Especially let us thank Him for this quiet country life which we lead
here, free from ambition, and rash speculation, and the hope of great and
sudden gains. All know, who have watched the world, how unwholesome for
a man’s soul any trade or occupation is which offers the chance of making
a rapid fortune. It has hurt the souls of too many merchants and
manufacturers ere now. Good and sober-minded men there are among them,
thank God, who can resist the temptation, and are content to go along the
plain path of quiet and patient honesty; but to those who have not the
sober spirit, who have not the fear of God before their eyes, the
temptation is too terrible to withstand; and it is not withstood; and
therefore the columns of our newspapers are so often filled with sad
cases of bankruptcy, forgery, extravagant and desperate trading, bubble
fortunes spent in a few years of vain show and luxury, and ending in
poverty and shame.
Happy, on the other hand, are those who till the ground; who never can
rise high enough, or suddenly enough, to turn their heads; whose gains
are never great and quick enough to tempt them to wild speculation: but
who can, if they will only do their duty patiently and well, go on year
after year in quiet prosperity, and be content to offer up, week by week,
Agur’s wise prayer: ‘Give me neither poverty nor riches, but feed me with
food sufficient for me.’
They need never complain that they have no time to think of their own
souls; that the hurry and bustle of business must needs drive religion
out of their minds. Their life passes in a quiet round of labours. Day
after day, week after week, season after season, they know beforehand
what they have to do, and can arrange their affairs for this world, so as
to give them full time to think of the world to come. Every week brings
small gains, for which they can thank the God of all plenty; and every
week brings, too, small anxieties, for which they can trust the same God
who has given them His only-begotten Son, and will with Him freely give
them all things needful for them; who has, in mercy to their souls and
bodies, put them in the healthiest and usefullest of all pursuits, the
one which ought to lead their minds most to God, and the one in which (if
they be thoughtful men) they have the deep satisfaction of feeling that
they are not working for themselves only, but for their fellow-men; that
every sheaf of corn they grow is a blessing, not merely to themselves,
but to the whole nation.
My friends, think of these things, especially at this rich and blessed
harvest-time; and while you thank your God and your Saviour for His
unexampled bounty in this year’s good harvest, do not forget to thank Him
for having given the sowing and the reaping of those crops to you; and
for having called you to that business in life in which, I verily
believe, you will find it most easy to serve and obey Him, and be least
tempted to ambition and speculation, and the lust of riches, and the
pride which goes before a fall.
Think of these things; and think of the exceeding mercies which God heaps
on you as Englishmen,—peace and safety, freedom and just laws, the
knowledge of His Bible, the teaching of His Church, and all that man
needs for body and soul. Let those who have thanked God already, thank
Him still more earnestly, and show their thankfulness not only in their
lips, but in their lives; and let those who have not thanked Him, awake,
and learn, as St. Paul bids them, from God’s own witness of Himself, in
that He has sent them fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with food
and gladness:—let them learn, I say, from that, that they have a Father
in heaven who has given them His only-begotten Son, and will with Him
freely give them all things needful: only asking in return that they
should obey His laws—to obey which is everlasting life.
SERMON XII.
PROGRESS.
(_Preached before the Queen at Clifden_, _June_ 3, 1866.)
ECCLESIASTES vii. 10,
Say not thou, What is the cause that the former days were better than
these? for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this.
THIS text occurs in the Book of Ecclesiastes, which has been for many
centuries generally attributed to Solomon the son of David. I say
generally, because, not only among later critics, but even among the
ancient Jewish Rabbis, there have been those who doubted or denied that
Solomon was its author.
I cannot presume to decide on such a question: but it seems to me most
probable, that the old tradition is right, even though the book may have
suffered alterations, both in form and in language: but any later author,
personating Solomon, would surely have put into his month very different
words from those of Ecclesiastes. Solomon was the ideal hero-king of the
later Jews. Stories of his superhuman wealth, of magical power, of a
fabulous extent of dominion, grew up about his name. He who was said to
control, by means of his wondrous seal, the genii of earth and air, would
scarcely have been represented as a disappointed and broken-hearted sage,
who pronounced all human labour to be vanity and vexation of spirit; who
saw but one event for the righteous and the wicked, and the wise man and
the fool; and questioned bitterly whether there was any future state, any
pre-eminence in man over the brute.
These, and other startling utterances, made certain of the early Rabbis
doubt the authenticity and inspiration of the Book of Ecclesiastes, as
containing things contrary to the Law, and to desire its suppression,
till they discovered in it—as we may, if we be wise—a weighty and
world-wide meaning.
Be that as it may, it would certainly be a loss to Scripture, and to our
knowledge of humanity, if it was proved that this book, in its original
shape, was not written by a great king, and most probably by Solomon
himself. The book gains by that fact, not only in its reality and
truthfulness, but in its value and importance as a lesson of human life.
Especially does this text gain; for it has a natural and deep connection
with Solomon and his times.
The former days were better than his days: he could not help seeing that
they were. He must have feared lest the generation which was springing
up should inquire into the reason thereof, in a tone which would
breed—which actually did breed—discontent and revolution.
But the fact seemed at first sight patent. The old heroic days of Samuel
and David were past. The Jewish race no longer produced such men as Saul
and Jonathan, as Joab and Abner. A generation of great men, whose names
are immortal, had died out, and a generation of inferior men, of whom
hardly one name has come down to us, had succeeded them. The nation had
lost its primæval freedom, and the courage and loyalty which freedom
gives. It had become rich, and enervated by luxury and ease. Solomon
had civilised the Jewish kingdom, till it had become one of the greatest
nations of the East; but it had become also, like the other nations of
the East, a vast and gaudy despotism, hollow and rotten to the core;
ready to fall to pieces at Solomon’s death, by selfishness, disloyalty,
and civil war. Therefore it was that Solomon hated all his labour that
he had wrought under the sun; for all was vanity and vexation of spirit.
Such were the facts. And yet it was not wise to look at them too
closely; not wise to inquire why the former times were better than those.
So it was. Let it alone. Pry not too curiously into the past, or into
the future: but do the duty which lies nearest to thee. Fear God and
keep His commandments. For that is the whole duty of man.
Thus does Solomon lament over the certain decay of the Jewish Empire.
And his words, however sad, are indeed eternal and inspired. For they
have proved true, and will prove true to the end, of every despotism of
the East, or empire formed on Eastern principles; of the old Persian
Empire, of the Roman, of the Byzantine, of those of Hairoun Alraschid and
of Aurungzebe, of those Turkish and Chinese-Tartar empires whose dominion
is decaying before our very eyes. Of all these the wise man’s words are
true. They are vanity and vexation of spirit. That which is crooked
cannot be made straight, and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.
The thing which has been is that which shall be, and there is no new
thing under the sun. Incapacity of progress; the same outward
civilization repeating itself again and again; the same intrinsic
certainty of decay and death;—these are the marks of all empire, which is
not founded on that foundation which is laid, even Jesus Christ.
But of Christian nations these words are not true. They pronounce the
doom of the old world: but the new world has no part in them, unless it
copies the sins and follies of the old.
It is not true of Christian nations that the thing which has been is that
which shall be; and that there is no new thing under the sun. For over
them is the kingdom of Christ, the Saviour of all men, specially of them
which believe, the King of all the princes of the earth, who has always
asserted, and will for ever assert, His own overruling dominion. And in
them is the Spirit of God, which is the spirit of truth and
righteousness; of improvement, discovery, progress from darkness to
light, from folly to wisdom, from barbarism to justice, and mercy, and
the true civilization of the heart and spirit.
And, therefore, for us it is not only an act of prudence, but a duty; a
duty of faith in God; a duty of loyalty to Jesus Christ our Lord, not to
ask, Why the former times were better than these? For they were not
better than these. Every age has had its own special nobleness, its own
special use: but every age has been better than the age which went before
it; for the Spirit of God is leading the ages on, toward that whereof it
is written, ‘Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into
the heart of man to conceive, the things which God hath prepared for
those that love Him.’
Very unfaithful are we to the teaching of God’s Spirit; many and heavy
are our sins against light and knowledge, and means, and opportunities of
grace. But let us not add to those sins the sin (for such it is) of
inquiring why the former times were better than these.
For, first, the inquiry shows disbelief in our Lord’s own words, that all
dominion is given to Him in heaven and earth, and that He is with us
always, even to the end of the world. And next, it is a vain inquiry,
based on a mistake. When we look back longingly to any past age, we look
not at the reality, but at a sentimental and untrue picture of our own
imagination. When we look back longingly to the so-called ages of faith,
to the personal loyalty of the old Cavaliers; when we regret that there
are no more among us such giants in statesmanship and power as those who
brought Europe through the French Revolution; when we long that our lot
was cast in any age beside our own, we know not what we ask. The ages
which seem so beautiful afar off, would look to us, were we in them,
uglier than our own. If we long to be back in those so-called devout
ages of faith, we long for an age in which witches and heretics were
burned alive; if we long after the chivalrous loyalty of the old
Cavaliers, we long for an age in which stage-plays were represented, even
before a virtuous monarch like Charles I., which the lowest of our
playgoers would not now tolerate. When we long for anything that is
past, we long, it may be, for a little good which we seem to have lost;
but we long also for real and fearful evil, which, thanks be to God, we
have lost likewise. We are not, indeed, to fancy this age perfect, and
boast, like some, of the glorious nineteenth century. We are to keep our
eyes open to all its sins and defects, that we may amend them. And we
are to remember, in fear and trembling, that to us much is given, and of
us much is required. But we are to thank God that our lot is cast in an
age which, on the whole, is better than any age whatsoever that has gone
before it, and to do our best that the age which is coming may be better
even than this.
We are neither to regret the past, nor rest satisfied in the present;
but, like St. Paul, forgetting those things that are behind us, and
reaching onward to those things that are before us, press forward, each
and all, to the prize of our high calling in Jesus Christ.
And as with nations and empires, so with our own private lives. It is
not wise to ask why the former times were better than these. It is
natural, pardonable: but not wise; because we are so apt to mistake the
subject about which we ask, and when we say, ‘Why were the old times
better?’ merely to mean, ‘Why were the old times happier?’ That is not
the question. There is something higher than happiness, says a wise man.
There is blessedness; the blessedness of being good and doing good, of
being right and doing right. That blessedness we may have at all times;
we may be blest even in anxiety and in sadness; we may be blest, even as
the martyrs of old were blest—in agony and death. The times are to us
whatsoever our character makes them. And if we are better men than we
were in former times, then is the present better than the past, even
though it be less happy. And why should it not be better? Surely the
Spirit of God, the spirit of progress and improvement, is working in us,
the children of God, as well as in the great world around. Surely the
years ought to have made us better, more useful, more worthy. We may
have been disappointed in our lofty ideas of what ought to be done. But
we may have gained more clear and practical notions of what can be done.
We may have lost in enthusiasm, and yet gained in earnestness. We may
have lost in sensibility, yet gained in charity, activity, and power. We
may be able to do far less, and yet what we do may be far better done.
And our very griefs and disappointments—Have they been useless to us?
Surely not. We shall have gained, instead of lost, by them, if the
Spirit of God be working in us. Our sorrows will have wrought in us
patience, our patience experience of God’s sustaining grace, who promises
that as our day our strength shall be; and of God’s tender providence,
which tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, and lays on none a burden
beyond what they are able to bear. And that experience will have worked
in us hope: hope that He who has led us thus far will lead us farther
still; that He who brought us through the trials of youth, will bring us
through the trials of age; that He who taught us in former days precious
lessons, not only by sore temptations, but most sacred joys, will teach
us in the days to come fresh lessons by temptations which we shall be
more able to endure; and by joys which, though unlike those of old times,
are no less sacred, no less sent as lessons to our souls, by Him from
whom all good gifts come.
We will believe this. And instead of inquiring why the former days were
better than these, we will trust that the coming days shall be better
than these, and those which are coming after them better still again,
because God is our Father, Christ our Saviour, the Holy Ghost our
Comforter and Guide. We will toil onward: because we know we are toiling
upward. We will live in hope, not in regret; because hope is the only
state of mind fit for a race for whom God has condescended to stoop, and
suffer, and die, and rise again. We will believe that we, and all we
love, whether in earth or heaven, are destined—if we be only true to
God’s Spirit—to rise, improve, progress for ever: and so we will claim
our share, and keep our place, in that vast ascending and improving scale
of being, which, as some dream—and surely not in vain—goes onward and
upward for ever throughout the universe of Him who wills that none should
perish.
SERMON XIII.
FAITH.
(_Preached before the Queen at Windsor_, _December_ 5, 1865)
HABAKKUK ii. 4.
The just shall live by his faith.
WE shall always find it most safe, as well as most reverent, to inquire
first the literal and exact meaning of a text; to see under what
circumstances it was written; what meaning it must have conveyed to those
who heard it; and so to judge what it must have meant in the mind of him
who spoke it. If we do so, we shall find that the simplest
interpretation of Scripture is generally the deepest; and the most
literal interpretation is also the most spiritual.
Let us examine the circumstances under which the prophet spake these
words.
It was on the eve of a Chaldean invasion. The heathen were coming into
Judea, as we see them still in the Assyrian sculptures—civilizing, after
their barbarous fashion, the nations round them—conquering, massacring,
transporting whole populations, building cities and temples by their
forced labour; and resistance or escape was impossible.
The prophet’s faith fails him a moment. What is this but a triumph of
evil? Is there a Divine Providence? Is there a just Ruler of the world?
And he breaks out into pathetic expostulation with God Himself:
‘Wherefore lookest Thou upon them that deal treacherously, and holdest
Thy tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is more righteous than
he? And makest men as the fishes of the sea, as the creeping things,
which have no ruler over them? They take up all of them with the line,
they gather them with the net. Therefore they sacrifice unto their net,
and burn incense to their line; for by it their portion is fat, and their
meat plenteous. Shall they therefore empty their net, and not spare to
slay continually the nations?’
Then the Lord answers his doubts: ‘Behold, his soul which is lifted up is
not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith.’
By his faith, plainly, in a just Ruler of the world,—in a God who avenges
wrong, and makes inquisition for innocent blood. He who will keep his
faith in that just God, will remain just himself. The sense of Justice
will be kept alive in him; and the just will live by his Faith.
The prophet believes that message; and a mighty change passes over his
spirit. In a burst of magnificent poetry, he proclaims woe to the unjust
Chaldean conqueror. All his greatness is a bubble which will burst; a
suicidal mistake, which will work out its own punishment, and make him a
taunt and a mockery to all nations round. ‘Woe to him who increaseth
that which is not his, and ladeth himself with thick clay! Woe to him
that coveteth an evil covetousness to his house, that he may set his nest
on high, and be delivered from the power of evil! Woe to him that
buildeth a town with blood, and stablisheth a city with iniquity!
Behold, is it not of the Lord of hosts that the people shall labour in
the very fire, and the people shall weary themselves for very vanity?’
There is a true civilization for man; but not according to the unjust and
cruel method of those Chaldeans. The Law of the true Civilization, the
prophet says, is this: ‘The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the
Lord, as the waters cover the sea.’
But what is this to us? Are we like the Chaldeans? God forbid. But are
we not tried by the same temptations to which they blindly yielded? A
nation, strong, rich, luxurious, prosperous in industry at home, and
aggressive (if not in theory, certainly in practice) to less civilized
races abroad—are we not tempted daily to that habit of mind which the
prophet calls—with that tremendous irony in which the Hebrew prophets
surpass all writers—looking on men as the fishes of the sea, as the
creeping things which have no ruler over them, born to devour each other,
and be caught and devoured in their turn, by a race more cunning than
themselves? There are those among us in thousands, thank God, who nobly
resist that temptation; and they are the very salt of the land, who keep
it from decay. But for the many—for the public—do not too many of them
believe that the law of human society is, after all, only that
internecine conflict of interests, that brute struggle for existence,
which naturalists tell us (and truly) is the law of life for mere plants
and animals? Are they not tempted to forget that men are not mere
animals and things, but persons; that they have a Ruler over them, even
God, who desires to educate them, to sanctify them, to develop their
every faculty, that they may be His children, and not merely our tools;
and do God’s work in the world, and not merely their employer’s work?
Are they not—are we not all—tempted too often to forget this?
And, then, are we not tempted, all of us, to fall down like the Chaldeans
and worship our own net, because by it our portion is fat, and our meat
plenteous? Are we not tempted to say within ourselves, ‘This present
system of things, with all its anomalies and its defects, still is the
right system, and the only system. It is the path pointed out by
Providence for man. It is of the Lord; for we are comfortable under it.
We grow rich under it; we keep rank and power under it: it suits us, pays
us. What better proof that it is the perfect system of things, which
cannot be amended?’
Meanwhile, we are sorry (for the English are a kind-hearted people) for
the victims of our luxury and our neglect. Sorry for the thousands whom
we let die every year by preventible diseases, because we are either too
busy or too comfortable to save their lives. Sorry for the savages whom
we exterminate, by no deliberate evil intent, but by the mere weight of
our heavy footstep. Sorry for the thousands who are used-up yearly in
certain trades, in ministering to our comfort, even to our very luxuries
and frivolities. Sorry for the Sheffield grinders, who go to work as to
certain death; who count how many years they have left, and say, ‘A short
life and a merry one. Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.’
Sorry for the people whose lower jaws decay away in lucifer-match
factories. Sorry for all the miseries and wrongs which this Children’s
Employment Commission has revealed. Sorry for the diseases of artificial
flower-makers. Sorry for the boys working in glass-houses whole days and
nights on end without rest, ‘labouring in the very fire, and wearying
themselves with very vanity.’—Vanity, indeed, if after an amount of
gallant toil which nothing but the indomitable courage of an Englishman
could endure, they grow up animals and heathens. We are sorry for them
all—as the giant is for the worm on which he treads. Alas! poor worm.
But the giant must walk on. He is necessary to the universe, and the
worm is not. So we are sorry—for half an hour; and glad too (for we are
a kind-hearted people) to hear that charitable persons or the government
are going to do something towards alleviating these miseries. And then
we return, too many of us, each to his own ambition, or to his own
luxury, comforting ourselves with the thought, that we did not make the
world, and we are not responsible for it.
How shall we conquer this temptation to laziness, selfishness,
heartlessness? By faith in God, such as the prophet had. By faith in
God as the eternal enemy of evil, the eternal helper of those who try to
overcome evil with good; the eternal avenger of all the wrong which is
done on earth. By faith in God, as not only our Father, our Saviour, our
Redeemer, our Protector: but the Father, Saviour, Redeemer, Protector,
and if need be, Avenger, of every human being. By faith in God, which
believes that His infinite heart yearns over every human soul, even the
basest and the worst; that He wills that not one little one should
perish, but that all should be saved, and come to the knowledge of the
truth.
We must believe that, if we wish that it should be true of us, that the
just shall live by his faith. If we wish our faith to keep us just men,
leading just lives, we must believe that God is just, and that He shows
His justice by the only possible method—by doing justice, sooner or
later, for all who are unjustly used.
If we lose that faith, we shall be in danger—in more than danger—of
becoming unjust ourselves. As we fancy God to be, so shall we become
ourselves. If we believe that God cares little for mankind, we shall
care less and less for them ourselves. If we believe that God neglects
them, we shall neglect them likewise.
And then the sense of justice—justice for its own sake, justice as the
likeness and will of God—will die out in us, and our souls will surely
not live, but die.
For there will die out in our hearts, just the most noble and God-like
feelings which God has put into them. The instinct of chivalry; horror
of cruelty and injustice; pity for the weak and ill-used; the longing to
set right whatever is wrong; and, what is even more important, the Spirit
of godly fear, of wholesome terror of God’s wrath, which makes us say,
when we hear of any great and general sin among us, ‘If we do not do our
best to set this right, then God, who does not make men like creeping
things, will take the matter into His own hands, and punish us easy,
luxurious people, for allowing such things to be done.’
And when a man loses that spirit of chivalry, he loses his own soul. For
that spirit of chivalry, let worldlings say what they will, is the very
spirit of our spirit, the salt which keeps our characters from utter
decay—the very instinct which raises us above the selfishness of the
brute. Yea, it is the Spirit of God Himself. For what is the feeling of
horror at wrong, of pity for the wronged, of burning desire to set wrong
right, save the Spirit of the Father and the Son, the Spirit which
brought down the Lord Jesus out of the highest heaven, to stoop, to
serve, to suffer and to die, that He might seek and save that which was
lost?
Some say that the age of chivalry is past: that the spirit of romance is
dead. The age of chivalry is never past, as long as there is a wrong
left unredressed on earth, and a man or woman left to say, ‘I will
redress that wrong, or spend my life in the attempt.’
The age of chivalry is never past, as long as men have faith enough in
God to say, ‘God will help me to redress that wrong; or if not me, surely
he will help those that come after me. For His eternal will is, to
overcome evil with good.’
The spirit of romance will never die, as long as there is a man left to
see that the world might and can be better, happier, wiser, fairer in all
things, than it is now. The spirit of romance will never die, as long as
a man has faith in God to believe that the world will actually be better
and fairer than it is now; as long as men have faith, however weak, to
believe in the romance of all romances; in the wonder of all wonders; in
that, of which all poets’ dreams have been but childish hints, and dumb
forefeelings—even
‘That one far-off divine event
Towards which the whole creation moves;’
that wonder of which prophets and apostles have told, each according to
his light; that wonder which Habakkuk saw afar off, and foretold how that
the earth should be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters
cover the sea; that wonder which Isaiah saw afar off, and sang how the
Lord should judge among the nations, and rebuke among many people; and
they should beat their swords into plough-shares, and their spears into
pruning-hooks; nation should not rise against nation, neither should they
learn war any more; that wonder of which St Paul prophesied, and said
that Christ should reign till He had put all His enemies under His feet;
that wonder of which St. John prophesied; and said, ‘I saw the Holy City,
new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven. And the nations of
them that are saved shall walk in the light of it, and the kings of the
earth bring their glory and their honour unto it;’ that wonder, finally,
which our Lord Himself bade us pray for, as for our daily bread, and say,
‘Father, thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.
‘Thy will be done on earth.’ He who bade us ask that boon for
generations yet unborn, was very God of very God. Do you think that He
would have bidden us ask a blessing, which He knew would never come?
SERMON XIV.
THE GREAT COMMANDMENT.
MATT. xxii. 37, 32.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy
soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great
commandment.
SOME say, when they hear this,—It is a hard saying. Who can bear it?
Who can expect us to do as much as that? If we are asked to be
respectable and sober, to live and let live, not to harm our neighbours
wilfully or spitefully, and to come to church tolerably regularly—we
understand being asked to do that—it is fair. But to love the Lord our
God with all our hearts. That must be meant only for very great saints;
for a few exceedingly devout people here and there. And devout people
have been too apt to say,—You are right. It is we who are to love God
with all our hearts and souls, and give up the world, and marriage, and
all the joys of life, and turn priests, monks, and nuns, while you need
only be tolerably respectable, and attend to your religious duties from
time to time, while we will pray for you. But, my friends, if we read
our Bibles, we cannot allow that. ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God,’
was spoken not to monks and nuns (for there were none in those days), not
to great saints only (for we read of none just then), not even to priests
and clergymen only. It was said to all the Jews, high and low, free and
slave, soldier and labourer, alike—‘Thou, a man living in the world, and
doing work in the world, with wife and family, farm and cattle, horse to
ride, and weapon to wear—thou shalt love the Lord thy God.’
And therefore these words are said to you and me. We English are neither
monks nor nuns, nor likely (thank God) to become so. We are in the
world, with our own family ties and duties, our own worldly business.
And to us, to you and me, as to those old Jews, the first and great
commandment is, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.’
What, then, does it mean? Does it mean that we are to have the same love
toward God as we have toward a wife or a husband?
Certainly not. But it means at least this—the love which we should bear
toward a Father. All, my friends, turns on this. Do you look on God as
your Father, or do you not? God is your Father, remember, already. You
cannot (as some people seem to think) make Him your Father by believing
that He is one; and you need not, thanks to His mercy. Neither can you
make Him not your Father by forgetting Him. Be you wise or foolish,
right or wrong, God is your Father in heaven; and you ought to feel
towards Him as towards a father, not with any sentimental, fanciful,
fanatical affection; but with a reverent, solemn, and rational affection;
such as that which the good old Catechism bids us have, when it tells us
our duty toward God.
‘My duty towards God is to believe in Him, to fear Him, and to love Him
with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my soul, and with all my
strength; to worship Him, to give Him thanks, to put my whole trust in
Him, to call upon Him, to honour His holy Name and His Word, and to serve
Him truly all the days of my life.’
Now, I ask you—and what I ask you I ask myself,—Do we love the Lord our
God thus? And if not, why not?
I do not ask you to tell me. I am not going to tell you what is in my
heart; and I do not ask you to tell me what is in yours. We are free
Englishmen, who keep ourselves to ourselves, and think for ourselves,
each man in the depths of his own heart; and who are the stronger and the
wiser for not talking about our feelings to any man, priest or layman.
But ask yourselves, each of you,—Do I love God? And if not, why not?
There are two reasons, I believe, which are, alas! very common. For one
of them there are great excuses; for the other, there is no excuse
whatsoever.
In the first place, too many find it difficult to love God, because they
have not been taught that God is loveable, and worthy of their love.
They have been taught dark and hard doctrines, which have made them
afraid of God.
They have been taught—too many are taught still—not merely that God will
punish the wicked, but that God will punish nine-tenths, or
ninety-nine-hundredths of the human race. That He will send to endless
torments not merely sinners who have rebelled against what they knew was
right, and His command; who have stained themselves with crimes; who
wilfully injured their fellow-creatures: but that He will do the same by
little children, by innocent young girls, by honourable, respectable,
moral men and women, because they are not what is called sensibly
converted, or else what is called orthodox. They have been taught to
look on God, not as a loving and merciful Father, but as a tyrant and a
task-master, who watches to set down against them the slightest mishap or
neglect; who is extreme to mark what is done amiss; who wills the death
of a sinner. Often—strangest notion of all—they have been told that,
though God intends to punish them, they must still love Him, or they will
be punished—as if such a notion, so far from drawing them to God, could
do anything but drive them from Him. And it is no wonder if persons who
have been taught in their youth such notions concerning God, find it
difficult to love Him. Who can be frightened or threatened into loving
any being? How can we love any being who does not seem to us kind,
merciful, amiable, loving? Our love must be called out by God’s love.
If we are to love God, it must be because He has first loved us.
But He has first loved us, my friends. The dark and cruel notions about
God—which are too common, and have been too common in all ages—are not
what the world about us teaches, nor what Scripture teaches us either.
Look out on the world around you. What witness does it bear concerning
the God who made it? Who made the sunshine, and the flowers, and singing
birds, and little children, and all that causes the joy of this life?
Let Christ Himself speak, and His apostles. No one can say that their
words are not true; that they were mistaken in their view of this earth,
or of God who gave it to us that it might bear witness of Him. What said
our Lord to the poor folk of Galilee, of whom the Scribes and the
Pharisees, in their pride, said, ‘This people, who knoweth not the law,
is accursed.’—What said our Lord, very God of very God? He told them to
look on the world around, and learn from it that they had in heaven not a
tyrant, not a destroyer, but a Father; a Father in heaven who is perfect
in this, that He causeth His sun to shine upon them, and is good to the
unthankful and the evil.
What of Him did St. Paul say?—and that not to Christians, but to
heathens—That God had not left Himself without a witness even to the
heathen who knew Him not—and what sort of witness? The witness of His
bounty and goodness. The simple, but perpetual witness of the yearly
harvest—‘In that He sends men rain and fruitful seasons, filling their
hearts with food and gladness.’
This is St. Paul’s witness. And what is St. James’s? He tells men of a
Father of lights, from whom comes down every good and perfect gift; who
gives to all liberally, and upbraideth not, grudges not, stints not, but
gives, and delights in giving,—the same God, in a word, of whom the old
psalmists and prophets spoke, and said, ‘Thou openest Thine hand, and
fillest all things with good.’
And if natural religion tells us thus much, and bears witness of a Father
who delights in the happiness of His creatures, what does revealed
religion and the Gospel of Jesus Christ tell us?
Oh, my friends, dull indeed must be our hearts if we can feel no love for
the God of whom the Gospel speaks! And perverse, indeed, must be our
minds if we can twist the good news of Christ’s salvation into the bad
news of condemnation! What says St. Paul,—That God is against us? No.
But—‘If God be for us, who can be against us?
‘Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that
justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea
rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who
also maketh intercession for us.
‘Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or
distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
‘As it is written, For Thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are
accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
‘Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that
loved us.
‘For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor
height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us
from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’
What says St. John? Does he say that God the Father desires to punish or
slay us; and that our Lord Jesus Christ, or the Virgin Mary, or the
saints, or any other being, loves us better than God, and will deliver us
out of the hands of God? God forbid! ‘We have known and believed,’ he
says, ‘the love that God hath to us. God is love, and he that dwelleth
in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.’
My friends, if we could believe those blessed words—I do not say in all
their fulness—we shall never do that, I believe, in this mortal life—but
if we could only believe them a little, and know and believe even a
little of the love that God has to us, then love to Him would spring up
in our hearts, and we should feel for Him all that child ever felt for
father. If we really believed that God who made heaven and earth was
even now calling to each and every one of us, and beseeching us, by the
sacrifice of His well-beloved Son, crucified for us, ‘My son, give Me thy
heart,’ we could not help giving up our hearts to Him.
Provided—and there is that second reason why people do not love God, for
which I said there was no excuse—provided only that we wish to be good,
and to obey God. If we do not wish to do what God commands, we shall
never love God. It must be so. There can be no real love of God which
is not based upon a love of virtue and goodness, upon what our Lord calls
a hunger and thirst after righteousness. ‘If ye love Me, keep My
commandments,’ is our Lord’s own rule and test. And it is the only one
possible. If we habitually disobey any person, we shall cease to love
that person. If a child is in the habit of disobeying its parents, dark
and angry feelings towards those parents are sure to arise in its heart.
The child tries to forget its parents, to keep out of their way. It
tries to justify itself, to excuse itself by fancying that its parents
are hard upon it, unjust, grudge it pleasure, or what not. If its
parents’ commandments are grievous to a child, it will try to make out
that those commandments are unfair and unkind. And so shall we do by
God’s commandments. If God’s commandments seem too grievous for us to
obey, then we shall begin to fancy them unjust and unkind. And then,
farewell to any real love to God. If we do not openly rebel against God,
we shall still try to forget Him. The thought of God will seem dark,
unpleasant, and forbidding to us; and we shall try, in our short-sighted
folly, to live as far as we can without God in the world, and, like Adam
after his fall, hide ourselves from the loving God, just because we know
we have disobeyed Him.
But if, in spite of many bad habits, we desire to get rid of our bad
habits; if, in spite of many faults, we still desire to be faultless and
perfect; if, in spite of many weaknesses, we still desire to be strong;
if, in one word, we still hunger and thirst after righteousness, and long
to be good men; then, in due time, the love of God will be shed abroad in
our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
For that will happen to us which happens to all those who have the pure,
true, and heroical love. If we really love a person, we shall first
desire to please them, and therefore the thought of disobeying and
paining them will seem more and more grievous unto us.
But more. We shall soon rise a step higher. The more we love them, and
the more we see in them, in their characters, things worthy to be loved,
the more we shall desire to be like them, to copy those parts of their
characters which most delight us; and we shall copy them: though
insensibly, perhaps, and unawares.
For no one can look up for any length of time with love and respect
towards a person better, wiser, greater than themselves, without becoming
more or less like that person in character and in habit of thought and
feeling; and so it will be with us towards God.
If we really long to be good, it will grow more and more easy to us to
love God. The more pure our hearts are, the more pleasant the thought of
God will be to us; even as it is said, ‘Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they shall see God,’—in this life as well as in the life to come. We
shall not shrink from God, because we shall know that we are not wilfully
offending Him.
But more. The more we think of God, the more we shall long to be like
Him. How admirable in our eyes will seem His goodness, how admirable His
purity, His justice, and His bounty, His long-suffering, His magnanimity
and greatness of heart. For how great must be that heart of God, of
which it is written, that ‘He hateth nothing that He hath made, but His
mercy is over all His works;’ ‘that He willeth that none should perish,
but that all should be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth.’
Although He be infinitely high and far off and we cannot attain to Him,
yet we shall feel it our duty and our joy to copy Him, however faintly,
and however humbly; and our highest hope will be that we may behold, as
in a glass, the glory of the Lord, and be changed into His image from
glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord; that so, whether in
this world or in the world to come, we may at last be perfect, even as
our Father in heaven is perfect, and, like Him, cause the sunlight of our
love to slime upon the evil and on the good; the kindly showers of our
good deeds to fall upon the just and on the unjust; and—like Him who sent
His only begotten Son to save the world—be good to the unthankful and to
the evil.
SERMON XV.
THE EARTHQUAKE.
(_Preached October_ 11, 1863.)
PSALM xlvi. 1, 2.
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though
the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.
NO one, my friends, wishes less than I, to frighten you, or to take a
dark and gloomy view of this world, or of God’s dealings with men. But
when God Himself speaks, men are bound to take heed, even though the
message be an awful one. And last week’s earthquake was an awful
message, reminding all reasonable souls how frail man is, how frail his
strongest works, how frail this seemingly solid earth on which we stand;
what a thin crust there is between us and the nether fires, how utterly
it depends on God’s mercy that we do not, like Korah, Dathan, and Abiram
of old, go down alive into the pit.
What do we know of earthquakes? We know that they are connected with
burning mountains; that the eruption of a burning mountain is generally
preceded by, and accompanied with, violent earthquakes. Indeed, the
burning mountains seem to be outlets, by which the earthquake force is
carried off. We know that these burning mountains give out immense
volumes of steam. We know that the expanding power of steam is by far
the strongest force in the world; and, therefore, it is supposed
reasonably, that earthquakes are caused by steam underground.
We know concerning earthquakes two things: first, that they are quite
uncertain in their effects; secondly, quite uncertain in their
occurrence.
No one can tell what harm an earthquake will, or will not, do. There are
three kinds. One which raises the ground up perpendicularly, and sets it
down again—which is the least hurtful; one which sets it rolling in
waves, like the waves of the sea—which is more hurtful; and one, the most
terrible of all, which gives the ground a spinning motion, so that things
thrown down by it fall twisted from right to left, or left to right. But
what kind of earthquake will take place, no one can tell.
Moreover, a very slight earthquake may do fearful damage. People who
only read of them, fancy that an earthquake, to destroy man and his
works, must literally turn the earth upside down; that the ground must
open, swallowing up houses, vomiting fire and water; that rocks must be
cast into the sea, and hills rise where valleys were before. Such awful
things have happened, and will happen again: but it does not need them to
lay a land utterly waste. A very slight shock—a shock only a little
stronger than was felt last Wednesday morning, might have—one hardly dare
think of what it might have done in a country like this, where houses are
thinly built because we have no fear of earthquakes. Every manufactory
and mill throughout the iron districts (where the shock was felt most)
might have toppled to the earth in a moment. Whole rows of houses,
hastily and thinly built, might have crumbled down like packs of cards;
and hundreds of thousands of sleeping human beings might have been buried
in the ruins, without time for a prayer or a cry.
A little more—a very little more—and all that or more might have
happened; millions’ worth of property might have been destroyed in a few
seconds, and the prosperity and civilization of England have been thrown
back for a whole generation. There is absolutely no reason whatever, I
tell you, save the mercy of God, why that, or worse, should not have
happened; and it is only of the Lord’s mercies that we were not consumed.
Next, earthquakes are utterly uncertain as to time. No one knows when
they are coming. They give no warning. Even in those unhappy countries
in which they are most common there may not be a shock for months or
years; and then a sudden shock may hurl down whole towns. Or there may
be many, thirty or forty a-day for weeks, as there happened in a part of
South America a few years ago, when day after day, week after week,
terrible shocks went on with a perpetual underground roar, as if brass
and iron were crashing and clanging under the feet, till the people were
half mad with the continual noise and continual anxiety, expecting every
moment one shock, stronger than the rest, to swallow them up. It is
impossible, I say, to calculate when they will come. They are altogether
in the hand of God,—His messengers, whose time and place He alone knows,
and He alone directs.
Our having had one last week is no reason for our not having another this
week, or any day this week; and no reason, happily, against our having no
more for one hundred years. It is in God’s hands, and in God’s hands we
must leave it.
All we can say is, that when one comes, it is likely to be least severe
in this part of England, and most severe (like this last) in the coal and
iron districts of the west and north-west, where it is easy to see that
earthquakes were once common, by the cracks, twists and settlements in
the rocks, and the lava streams, poured out from fiery vents (probably
under water) which pierce the rocks in many places. Beyond that we know
nothing, and can only say,—It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not
consumed.
Why do I say these things? To frighten you? No, but to warn you. When
you say to yourselves,—Earthquakes are so uncommon and so harmless in
England that there is no need to think of them, you say on the whole what
is true. It has been, as yet, God’s will that earthquakes should be
uncommon and slight in England; and therefore we have a reasonable ground
of belief that such will be His will for the future. Certainly He does
not wish us to fold our hands, and say, there is no use in building or
improving the country, if an earthquake may come and destroy it at any
moment. If there be an evil which man can neither prevent or foresee,
then, if he be a wise man, he will go on as if that evil would never
happen. We ever must work on in hope and in faith in God’s goodness,
without tormenting and weakening ourselves by fears about what may
happen.
But when God gives to a whole country a distinct and solemn warning,
especially after giving that country an enormous bounty in an abundant
harvest, He surely means that country to take the warning. And, if I
dare so judge, He means us perhaps to think of the earthquake, and
somewhat in this way.
There is hardly any country in the world in which man’s labour has been
so successful as in England. Owing to our having no earthquakes, no
really destructive storms,—and, thank God, no foreign invading
armies,—the wealth of England has gone on increasing steadily and surely
for centuries past, to a degree unexampled. We have never had to rebuild
whole towns after an earthquake. We have never seen (except in small
patches) whole districts of fertile land ruined by the sea or by floods.
We have never seen every mill and house in a country blown down by a
hurricane, and the crops mown off the ground by the mere force of the
wind, as has happened again and again in our West India Islands. Most
blessed of all, we have never seen a foreign army burning our villages,
sacking our towns, carrying off our corn and cattle, and driving us into
the woods to starve. From all these horrors, which have, one or other of
them, fallen on almost every nation upon earth, God has of His great
mercy preserved us. Ours is not the common lot of humanity. We English
do not know the sorrows which average men and women go through, and have
been going through, alas! ever since Adam fell. We have been an
exception, a favoured and peculiar people, allowed to thrive and fatten
quietly and safely for hundreds of years.
But what if that very security tempts us to forget God? Is it not so?
Are we not—I am sure I am—too apt to take God’s blessings for granted,
without thanking Him for them, or remembering really that He gave them,
and that He can take them away? Do we not take good fortune for granted?
Do we not take for granted that if we build a house it will endure for
ever; that if we buy a piece of land it will be called by our name long
years hence; that if we amass wealth we shall hand it down safely to our
children? Of course we think we shall prosper. We say to ourselves,
To-morrow shall be as to-day, and yet more abundant.
Nothing can happen to England, is, I fear, the feeling of Englishmen.
Carnal security is the national sin to which we are tempted, because we
have not now for forty years felt anything like national distress; and
Britain says, like Babylon of old, the lady of kingdoms to whom
foreigners so often compare her,—‘I shall be a lady for ever; I am, there
is none beside me. I shall never sit as a widow, nor know the loss of
children.’
What, too, if that same security and prosperity tempts us—as foreigners
justly complain of us—to set our hearts on material wealth; to believe
that our life, and the life of Britain, depends on the abundance of the
things which she possesses? To say—Corn and cattle, coal and iron, house
and land, shipping and rail-roads, these make up Great Britain. While
she has these she will endure for ever.
Ah, my friends—to people in such a temptation, is it wonderful that a
good God should send a warning unmistakeable, though only a warning; most
terrible, though mercifully harmless; a warning which says, in a voice
which the dullest can hear—Endure for ever? The solid ground on which
you stand cannot do that. Safe? Nothing on earth is safe for a moment,
save in the long-suffering and tender mercy of Him of whom are all
things, and by whom are all things, without whom not a sparrow falls to
the ground. Is the wealth of Britain, then, what she can see and handle?
The towns she builds, the roads she makes, the manufactures and goods she
produces? One touch of the finger of God, and that might be all rolled
into a heap of ruins, and the labour of years scattered in the dust. You
trust in the sure solid earth? You shall feel it, if but for once, reel
and quiver under your feet, and learn that it is not solid at all, or
sure at all; that there is nothing solid, sure, or to be depended on, but
the mercy of the living God; and that your solid-seeming earth on which
you build is nothing less than a mine, which may bubble, and heave, and
burst beneath your feet, charged for ever with an explosive force, as
much more terrible than that gunpowder which you have invented to kill
each other withal, as the works of God are greater than the works of man.
Safe, truly! It is of God’s mercy from day to day and hour to hour that
we are not consumed.
This, surely, or something like this, is what the earthquake says to us.
It speaks to us most gently, and yet most awfully, of a day in which the
heavens may pass away with a great noise, and the elements may melt with
fervent heat, and the earth and the works which are therein may be burnt
up. It tells us that this is no impossible fancy: that the fires
imprisoned below our feet can, and may, burst up and destroy mankind and
the works of man in one great catastrophe, to which the earthquake of
Lisbon in 1755—when 60,000 persons were killed, crushed, drowned, or
swallowed up in a few minutes—would be a merely paltry accident.
And it bids us think, as St. Peter bids us: ‘When therefore all these
things are dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in holy
conversation and godliness?’
What manner of persons?
Remember, that if an earthquake destroyed all England, or the whole
world; if this earth on which we live crumbled to dust, and were blotted
out of the number of the stars, there is one thing which earthquake, and
fire, and all the forces of nature cannot destroy, and that is—the human
race.
We should still be. We should still endure. Not, indeed, in flesh and
blood: but in some state or other; each of us the same as now, our
characters, our feelings, our goodness or our badness; our immortal
spirits and very selves, unchanged, ready to receive, and certain to
receive, the reward of the deeds done in the body, whether they be good
or evil. Yes, we should still endure, and God and Christ would still
endure. But as our Saviour, or as our Judge? That is a very awful
thought.
One day or other, sooner or later, each of us shall stand before the
judgment-seat of Christ, stripped of all we ever had, ever saw, ever
touched, ever even imagined to ourselves, alone with our own consciences,
alone with our own deserts. What shall we be saying to ourselves then?
Shall we be saying—I have lost all: The world is gone—the world, in which
were set all my hopes, all my wishes; the world in which were all my
pleasures, all my treasures; the world, which was the only thing I cared
for, though it warned me not to trust in it, as it trembled beneath my
feet? But the world is gone, and now I have nothing left!
Or, shall we be saying,—The world is gone? Then let it go. It was not a
home. I took its good things as thankfully as I could. I took its
sorrows and troubles as patiently as I could. But I have not set my
heart on the world. My treasure, my riches, were not of the world. My
peace was a peace which the world did not give, and could not take away.
And now the world is gone, I keep my peace, I keep my treasure still. My
peace is where it was, in my own heart. My peace is what it was: my
faith in God,—faith that my sins are forgiven me for Christ’s sake: my
faith that God my Father loves me, and cares for me; and that
nothing,—height or depth, or time or space, or life or death, can part me
from His love: my faith that I have not been quite useless in the world;
that I have tried to do my duty in my place; and that the good which I
have done, little as it has been, will not go forgotten by that merciful
God, by whose help it was done, who rewards all men according to the
works which He gives them heart to perform. And my treasure is where it
was—in my heart; and what it was,—the Holy Spirit of God, the spirit of
goodness, of faith and truth, of mercy and justice, of love to God and
love to man, which is everlasting life itself. That I have. That time
cannot abate, nor death abolish, nor the world, nor the destruction of
the world, nor of all worlds, can take away.
Choose, my friends, which of these two frames of mind would you rather be
in when the great day of the Lord comes, foretold by that earthquake, and
by all earthquakes that ever were.
Will you be then like those whom St. John saw calling on the mountains to
fall on them, and the hills to hide them from the wrath of Him that sat
on the throne, and from the anger of the Lamb?
Or will you be like him who saith—God is my hope and strength, my present
help in trouble. Therefore will I not fear, though the earth be shaken,
and though the mountains be carried into the depth of the sea?
SERMON XVI.
THE METEOR SHOWER.
(_Preached at the Chapel Royal_, _St. James’s_, _Nov._ 26, 1866.)
ST. MATTHEW x. 29, 30.
Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not
fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your
head are all numbered.
IT will be well for us to recollect, once for all, who spoke these words;
even Jesus Christ, who declared that He was one with God the Father;
Jesus Christ, whom His apostles declared to be the Creator of the
universe. If we believe this, as Christian men, it will be well for us
to take our Lord’s account of a universe which He Himself created; and to
believe that in the most minute occurrence of nature, there is a special
providence, by which not a sparrow falls to the ground without our
Father.
I confess that it is difficult to believe this heartily. It was never
anything but difficult. In the earliest ages, those who first thought
about the universe found it so difficult that they took refuge in the
fancy of special providence which was administered by the planets above
their heads, and believed that the affairs of men, and of the world on
which they lived, were ruled by the aspects of the sun and moon, and the
host of heaven.
Men found it so difficult in the Middle Age, that they took refuge in the
fancy of a special providence administered by certain demi-gods whom they
called ‘The Saints;’ and believed that each special disease, or accident,
was warded off from mankind, from their cattle, or from their crops, by a
special saint who overlooked their welfare.
Men find it so difficult now-a-days, that the great majority of civilized
people believe in no special providence at all, and take refuge in the
belief that the universe is ruled by something which they call law.
Therein, doubtless, they have hold of a great truth; but one which will
be only half-true, and therefore injurious, unless it be combined with
other truths; unless questions are answered which too many do not care to
answer: as, for instance,—Can there be a law without a law-giver? Can a
law work without one who administers the law? Are not the popular
phrases of ‘laws impressed on matter,’ ‘laws inherent in matter,’ mere
metaphors, dangerous, because inaccurate; confirmed as little by
experience and reason, as by Scripture?
Does not all law imply a will? Does not an Almighty Will imply a special
providence?
But these are questions for which most persons have neither time nor
inclination. Indeed, the whole matter is unimportant to them. They have
no special need of a special providence. Their lives and properties are
very safe in this civilized country; and their secret belief is that,
whatever influence God may have on the next world, He has little or no
influence on this world; neither on the facts of nature, nor on the
events of history, nor on the course of their own lives; and that a
special providence seems to them—if they dare confess as much—an
unnecessary superstition.
Only poor folk in cottages and garrets—and a few more who are, happily,
poor in spirit, though not in purse—grinding amid the iron facts of life,
and learning there by little sound science, it may be, but much sound
theology—still believe that they have a Father in heaven, before whom the
very hairs of their head are all numbered; and that if they had not, then
this would not only be a bad world, but a mad world likewise; and that it
were better for them that they had never been born.
Nevertheless, it is difficult to believe in the special providence of our
Father in heaven. Difficult: though necessary. Just as it is difficult
to believe that the earth moves round the sun. Contrary, like that fact,
to a great deal of our seeming experience.
It is easy enough, of course, to believe that our Father sends what is
plainly good. Not so easy to believe that He sends what at least seems
evil.
Easy enough, when we see spring-time and harvest, sunshine and flowers,
to say—Here are ‘acts of God’s providence.’ Not so easy, when we see
blight and pestilence, storm and earthquake, to say,—Here are ‘acts of
God’s providence’ likewise.
For this innumerable multitude of things, of which we now-a-days talk as
if it were one thing, and had an organic unity of its own, or even as if
it were one person, and had a will of its own, and call it Nature—a word
which will one day be forgotten by philosophers, with the ‘four
elements,’ and the ‘animal spirits;’—this multitude of things, I say,
which we miscall Nature, has its dark and ugly, as well as its bright and
fair side. Nature, says some one, is like the spotted panther—most
playful, and yet most treacherous; most beautiful, and yet most cruel.
It acts at times after a fashion most terrible, undistinguishing,
wholesale, seemingly pitiless. It seems to go on its own way, as in a
storm or an earthquake, careless of what it crushes. Terrible enough
Nature looks to the savage, who thinks it crushes him from mere caprice.
More terrible still does Science make Nature look, when she tells us that
it crushes, not by caprice, but by brute necessity; not by ill-will, but
by inevitable law. Science frees us in many ways (and all thanks to her)
from the bodily terror which the savage feels. But she replaces that, in
the minds of many, by a moral terror which is far more overwhelming. Am
I—a man is driven to ask—am I, and all I love, the victims of an
organised tyranny, from which there can be no escape—for there is not
even a tyrant from whom I may perhaps beg mercy? Are we only helpless
particles, at best separate parts of the wheels of a vast machine, which
will use us till it has worn us away, and ground us to powder? Are our
bodies—and if so, why not our souls?—the puppets, yea, the creatures of
necessary circumstances, and all our strivings and sorrows only vain
beatings against the wires of our cage, cries of ‘Why hast thou made me,
then?’ which are addressed to nothing? Tell us not that the world is
governed by universal law; the news is not comfortable, but simply
horrible, unless you can tell us, or allow others to tell us, that there
is a loving giver, and a just administrator of that law.
Horrible, I say, and increasingly horrible, not merely to the
sentimentalist, but to the man of sound reason and of sound conscience,
must the scientific aspect of nature become, if a mere abstraction called
law is to be the sole ruler of the universe; if—to quote the famous words
of the German sage—‘If, instead of the Divine Eye, there must glare on us
an empty, black, bottomless eye-socket;’ and the stars and galaxies of
heaven, in spite of all their present seeming regularity, are but an
‘everlasting storm which no man guides.’
It was but a few days ago that we, and this little planet on which we
live, caught a strange and startling glimpse of that everlasting storm
which—shall I say it?—no one guides.
We were swept helpless, astronomers tell us, through a cloud of fiery
stones, to which all the cunning bolts which man invents to slay his
fellow-man, are but slow and weak engines of destruction.
We were free from the superstitious terror with which that meteor-shower
would have been regarded in old times. We could comfort ourselves, too,
with the fact that heaven’s artillery was not known as yet to have killed
any one; and with the scientific explanation of that fact, namely, that
most of the bolts were small enough to be melted and dissipated by their
rush through our atmosphere.
But did the thought occur to none of us, how morally ghastly, in spite of
all its physical beauty, was that grand sight, unless we were sure that
behind it all, there was a living God? Unless we believed that not one
of those bolts fell, or did not fall to the ground without our Father?
That He had appointed the path, and the time, and the destiny, and the
use of every atom of that matter, of which science could only tell us
that it was rushing without a purpose, for ever through the homeless
void?
We may believe that, mind, without denying scientific laws, or their
permanence in any way. It is not a question, this, of a living God,
whether He interferes with His own laws now and then, but whether
interference is not the law of all laws itself. It is not a question of
special providences here and there, in favour of this person or that; but
whether the whole universe and its history is not one perpetual and
innumerable series of special providences. Whether the God who ordained
the laws is not so administering them, so making them interfere with,
balance, and modify each other, as to cause them to work together
perpetually for good; so that every minutest event (excepting always the
sin and folly of rational beings) happens in the place, time, and manner,
where it is specially needed. In one word, the question is not whether
there be a God, but whether there be a living God, who is in any true and
practical sense Master of the universe over which He presides; a King who
is actually ruling His kingdom, or an Epicurean deity who lets his
kingdom rule itself.
Is there a living God in the universe, or is there none? That is the
greatest of all questions. Has our Lord Jesus Christ answered it, or has
He not? Easy, well-to-do people, who find this world pleasant, and whose
chief concern is to live till they die, care little about that question.
This world suits them well enough, whether there be a living God or not;
and as for the next world, they will be sure to find some preacher or
confessor who will set their minds easy about it.
Fanatics and bigots, of all denominations, care little about that
question. For they say in their hearts—‘God is our Father, whosesoever
Father He is not. We are His people, and God performs acts of providence
for us. But as for the people outside, who know not the law, nor the
Gospel, either, they are accursed. It is not our concern to discuss
whether God performs acts of providence for them.’
But here and there, among rich and poor, there are those whose heart and
flesh—whose conscience and whose intellect—cry out for the living God,
and will know no peace till they have found Him.
A living God; a true God; a real God; a God worthy of the name; a God who
is working for ever, everywhere, and in all; who hates nothing that He
has made, forgets nothing, neglects nothing; a God who satisfies not only
their heads, but their hearts; not only their logical intellects, but
their higher reason—that pure reason, which is one with the conscience
and moral sense. For Him they cry out; Him they seek: and if they cannot
find Him they know no rest. For then they can find no explanation of the
three great human questions—Where am I? Whither am I going? What must I
do?
Men come to them and say, ‘Of course there is a God.—He created the world
long ago, and set it spinning ever since by unchangeable laws.’ But they
answer, ‘That may be true; but I want more. I want the living God.’
Other men come to them and say, ‘Of course there is a God; and when the
universe is destroyed, He will save a certain number of the elect, or
orthodox. Do you take care that you are among that number, and leave the
rest to Him.’ But they answer, ‘That may be true; but I want more. I
want the living God.’
They will say so very confusedly. They will often not be able to make
men understand their meaning. Nay, they will say and do—driven by
despair—very unwise things. They will even fall down and worship the
Holy Bread in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and say, ‘The living
God is in that. You have forbidden us, with your theories, to find the
living God either in heaven or earth. But somewhere He must be. And in
despair, we will fall back upon the old belief that He is in the wafer on
the altar, and find there Him whom our souls must find, or be for ever
without a home.’ Strange and sad, that that should be the last outcome
of the century of mechanical philosophy. But before we blame the
doctrine as materialistic,—which, I fear, it too truly is,—we should
remember that, for the last fifty years, the young have been taught more
and more to be materialists; that they have been taught more and more to
believe in a God who rules over Sundays, but not over week-day business;
over the next world, but not over this; a God, in short, in whom men do
not live, and move, and have their being. They have been brought up, I
say, unconsciously, but surely, as practical materialists, who make their
senses the ground of all their knowledge; and therefore, when a revulsion
happens to them, they are awakened to look for the living God—they look
for him instinctively in visible matter.
But for the living God thoughtful men will look more and more. Physical
science is forcing on them the question, Do we live, and move, and have
our being in God? Is there a real and perpetual communication between
the visible and the invisible world, or is there not? Are all the
beliefs of man, from the earliest ages, that such there was, dreams and
nothing more? Is any religion whatsoever to be impossible henceforth?
And to find an answer, men will go, either backward to superstition, or
forward into pantheism; for in atheism, whether practical or theoretical,
they cannot abide.
The Bible says that those old beliefs, however partial or childish, were
no dreams, but instincts of an eternal truth; that there is such a
communication between the universe and the living God. Prophets,
Psalmists, Apostles, speak—like our Nicene Creed—of a Spirit of God, the
Lord and Giver of Life, in words which are not pantheism, but are the
very deliverance from pantheism, because they tell us that that Spirit
proceeds, not merely from a Deity, not merely from a Creator, but from a
Father in heaven, and from a Son who is His likeness and His Word.
And from this ground Natural Theology must start, if it is ever to revive
again, instead of remaining, as now, an extinct science. It must begin
from the keyword of the text, ‘Your Father.’ As long as Natural Theology
begins from nature, and not from God Himself, it will inevitably drift
into pantheism, as Pope drifted, in spite of himself, when he tried to
look from nature up to nature’s God. As long as men speculate on the
dealings of a Deity or of a Creator, they will find out nothing, because
they are searching under the wrong name, and therefore, as logicians will
tell you, for the wrong thing.
But when they begin to seek under the right name—the name which our Lord
revealed to the debased multitudes of Judæa, when He told them that not a
sparrow fell to the ground without—not the Deity, not the Creator, but
their Father; then, in God’s good time, all may come clear once more.
This at least will come clear,—a doubt which often presents itself to the
mind of scientific men.
This earth—we know now that it is not the centre, not the chief body, of
the universe, but a tiny planet, a speck, an atom among millions of
bodies far vaster than itself.
It was credible enough in old times, when the earth was held to be all
but the whole universe, that God should descend on earth, and take on Him
human nature, to save human beings. Is it credible now? This little
corner of the systems and the galaxies? This paltry race which we call
man? Are they worthy of the interposition, of the death, of Incarnate
God—of the Maker of such a universe as Science has discovered?
Yes. If we will keep in mind that one word ‘Father.’ Then we dare say
Yes, in full assurance of Faith. For then we have taken the question off
the mere material ground of size and of power; to put it once and for
ever on that spiritual ground of justice and love, which is implied in
the one word—‘Father.’
If God be a perfect Father, then there must be a perpetual intercourse of
some kind between Him and His children; between Him and that planet,
however small, on which He has set His children, that they may be
educated into His likeness. If God be perfect justice, the wrong, and
consequent misery of the universe, how ever small, must be intolerable to
Him. If God be perfect love, there is no sacrifice—remember that great
word—which He may not condescend to make, in order to right that wrong,
and alleviate that misery. If God be the Father of our spirits, the
spiritual welfare of His children may be more important to Him than the
fate of the whole brute matter of the universe. Think not to frighten us
with the idols of size and height. God is a Spirit, before whom all
material things are equally great, and equally small. Let us think of
Him as such, and not merely as a Being of physical power and inventive
craft. Let us believe in our Father in heaven. For then that higher
intellect,—that pure reason, which dwells not in the heads, but in the
hearts of men, will tell them that if they have a Father in heaven, He
must be exercising a special providence over the minutest affairs of
their lives, by which He is striving to educate them into His likeness; a
special providence over the fate of every atom in the universe, by which
His laws shall work together for the moral improvement of every creature
capable thereof; that not a sparrow can fall to the ground without his
knowledge; and that not a hair of their head can be touched, unless
suffering is needed for the education of their souls.
SERMON XVII.
CHOLERA, 1866.
LUKE vii. 16.
There came a fear on all: and they glorified God, saying, That a
great prophet is risen up among us; and, That God hath visited his
people.
YOU recollect to what the text refers? How the Lord visited His people?
By raising to life a widow’s son at Nain. That was the result of our
Lord’s visit to the little town of Nain. It is worth our while to think
of that text, and of that word, ‘visit,’ just now. For we are praying to
God to remove the cholera from this land. We are calling it a visitation
of God; and saying that God is visiting our sins on us thereby. And we
are saying the exact truth. We are using the right and scriptural word.
We know that this cholera comes by no miracle, but by natural causes. We
can more or less foretell where it will break out. We know how to
prevent its breaking out at all, save in a scattered case here and there.
Of this there is no doubt whatsoever in the mind of any well-informed
person.
But that does not prevent its being a visitation of God; yea, in most
awful and literal earnest, a house-to-house visitation. God uses the
powers of nature to do His work: of Him it is written, ‘He maketh the
winds His angels, and flames of fire His ministers.’ And so this minute
and invisible cholera-seed is the minister of God, by which He is
visiting from house to house, searching out and punishing certain persons
who have been guilty, knowingly or not, of the offence of dirt; of filthy
and careless habits of living; and especially, as has long been known by
well-informed men, of drinking poisoned water. Their sickness, their
deaths, are God’s judgment on that act of theirs, whereby God says to
men,—You shall not drink water unfit for even dumb animals; and if you
do, you shall die.
To this view there are two objections. First, the poor people themselves
are not in fault, but those who supply poisoned water, and foul
dwellings.
True: but only half true. If people demanded good water and good houses,
there would soon be a supply of them. But there is not a sufficient
supply; because too many of the labouring classes in towns, though they
are earning very high wages, are contented to live in a condition unfit
for civilized men; and of course, if they are contented so to do, there
will be plenty of covetous or careless landlords who will supply the bad
article with which they are satisfied; and they will be punished by
disease for not having taken care of themselves.
But as for the owners of filthy houses, and the suppliers of poisoned
water, be sure that, in His own way and His own time, God will visit
them; that when He maketh inquisition for blood, He will assuredly
requite upon the guilty persons, whoever they are, the blood of those
five or six thousand of her Majesty’s subjects who have been foully done
to death by cholera in the last two months, as He requited the blood of
Naboth, or of any other innocent victim of whom we read in Holy Writ.
This outbreak of cholera in London, considering what we now know about
it, and have known for twenty years past, is a national shame, scandal,
and sin, which, if man cannot and will not punish, God can and will.
But there is another objection, which is far more important and difficult
to answer. This cholera has not slain merely fathers and mothers of
families, who were more or less responsible for the bad state of their
dwellings; but little children, aged widows, and many other persons who
cannot be blamed in the least.
True. And we must therefore believe that to them—indeed to all—this has
been a visitation not of anger but of love. We must believe that they
are taken away from some evil to come; that God permits the destruction
of their bodies, to the saving of their souls. His laws are inexorable;
and yet He hateth nothing that He hath made.
And we must believe that this cholera is an instance of the great law,
which fulfils itself again and again, and will to the end of the
world,—‘It is expedient that one die for the people, and that the whole
nation perish not.’
For the same dirt which produces cholera now and then, is producing
always, and all day long, stunted and diseased bodies, drunkenness,
recklessness, misery, and sin of all kinds; and the cholera will be a
blessing, a cheap price to have paid, for the abolition of the evil
spirit of dirt.
And thus much for this very painful subject—of which some of you may
say—‘What is it to us? We cannot prevent cholera; and, blessed as we are
with abundance of the purest water, there is little or no fear of cholera
ever coming into our parish.’
That last is true, my friends, and you may thank God for it. Meanwhile,
take this lesson at least home with you, and teach it your children day
by day—that filthy, careless, and unwholesome habits of living are in the
sight of Almighty God so terrible an offence, that He sometimes finds it
necessary to visit them with a severity with which He visits hardly any
sin; namely, by inflicting capital punishment on thousands of His beloved
creatures.
But though we have not had the cholera among us, has God therefore not
visited us? That would surely be evil news for us, according to Holy
Scripture. For if God do not visit us, then He must be far from us. But
the Psalmist cries, ‘Go not far from me, O Lord.’ His fear is, again and
again, not that God should visit him, but that God should desert him.
And more, the word which is translated ‘to visit,’ in Scripture has the
sense of seeing to a man, overseeing him, being his bishop. If God do
not see to, oversee us, and be our bishop, then He must turn His face
from us, which is what the Psalmist beseeches Him again and again not to
do; praying, ‘Hide not Thy face from me, O Lord,’ and crying out of the
depths of anxiety and trouble, ‘Put thy trust in God, for I shall yet
give Him thanks for the light of His countenance;’ and again, ‘In Thy
presence is’—not death, but—‘life; at Thy right hand is fulness of days
for evermore.’ And again, the Psalmist prays to God to visit him, and
visit his thoughts,—‘Search me, O Lord, and try the ground of my heart.
Search me, and examine my thoughts. Look well if there be any wickedness
in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.’ Shall we pray that prayer,
my friends? Shall we, with the Psalmist, pray God to visit, and, if need
be, chasten and correct what He sees wrong in us? Or shall we, with the
superstitious, pray to God not to visit us? to keep away from us? to
leave its alone? to forget us? If He did answer that foolish prayer,
there would be an end of us and all created things; for in God they live
and move and have their being—as it is written, ‘When Thou hidest thy
face, they are troubled; when Thou takest away their breath, they die,
and are turned again to their dust.’ But, happily for us, God will not
answer that foolish prayer. For it is written, ‘If I go up to heaven,
Thou art there; if I go down to hell, Thou art there also.’ Nowhither
can we go from God’s presence: nowhither can we flee from His Spirit.
This is the Scripture language. Is ours like it? Have we not got to
think of a visitation of God as a simple calamity? If a man die suddenly
and strangely, he has died by the visitation of God. But if he be saved
from death strangely and suddenly, it does not occur to us to call that a
visitation, and to say with Scripture, ‘The Lord has visited the man with
His salvation.’ If the cholera comes, or the crops fail, we say,—God is
visiting us. If we have an especially healthy year, or a glorious
harvest, we never say with Scripture, ‘The Lord has visited His people in
giving them bread.’ Yet Scripture, if it says, ‘I will visit their
transgressions,’ says also that the Lord visited the children of Israel
to deliver them out of Egypt. If it talks of death as the visitation of
all men, it speaks of God visiting Sarah and Hannah to give them
children. If it says, ‘I will visit the blood shed in Jezreel,’ it says
also, ‘Thy visitation hath preserved my spirit.’ If it says, ‘At the
time they are visited they shall be cast down,’ it says also, ‘The Lord
shall visit them, and turn away their captivity.’
If we look through Scripture, we find that the words ‘visit’ and
‘visitation’ are used about ninety times: that in about fifty of them the
meaning of the words is chastisement of some kind or other: in about
forty it is mercy and blessing: and that in the New Testament the words
never mean anything but mercy and blessing, though we have begun of late
years to use them only in the sense of punishment and a curse.
Now, how is this, my friends? How is it that we, who are not under the
terrors of the Law, but under the Gospel of grace, have quite lost the
Gospel meaning of this word ‘visitation,’ and take a darker view of it
than did even the old Jews under the Law? Have we, whom God hath
visited, indeed, in the person of His only-begotten Son Jesus Christ, any
right or reason to think worse of a visitation of God than had the Jews
of old? God forbid. And yet we do so, I fear; and show daily that we do
so by our use of the word: for out of the abundance of the heart man’s
mouth speaketh. By his words he is justified, and by his words he is
condemned; and there is no surer sign of what a man’s real belief is,
than the sense in which lie naturally, as it were by instinct, uses
certain words.
And what is the cause?
Shall I say it? If I do, I blame not you more than I blame myself, more
than I blame this generation. But it seems to me that there is a
little—or not a little—atheism among us now-a-days; that we are growing
to be ‘without God in the world.’ We are ready enough to believe that
God has to do with the next world: but we are not ready to believe that
He has to do with this world. We, in this generation, do not believe
that in God we live, and move, and have our being. Nay, some object to
capital punishment, because (so they say) ‘it hurries men into the
presence of their Maker;’ as if a human being could be in any better or
safer place than the presence of his Maker; and as if his being there
depended on us, or on any man, and not on God Almighty alone, who is
surely not so much less powerful than an earthly monarch, that He cannot
keep out of His presence or in it whomsoever He chooses. When we talk of
being ‘ushered into the presence of God,’ we mean dying; as if we were
not all in the presence of God at this moment, and all day long. When we
say, ‘Prepare to meet thy God,’ we mean ‘Prepare to die;’ as if we did
not meet our God every time we had the choice between doing a right thing
and doing a wrong one—between yielding to our own lusts and tempers, and
yielding to the Holy Spirit of God. For if the Holy Spirit of God be, as
the Christian faith tells us, God indeed, do we not meet God every time a
right, and true, and gracious thought arises in our hearts? But we have
all forgotten this, and much more connected with this; and our notion of
this world is not that of Holy Scripture—of that grand 104th Psalm, for
instance, which sets forth the Spirit of God as the Lord and Giver of
life to all creation: but our notion is this—that this world is a
machine, which would go on very well by itself, if God would but leave it
alone; that if the course of nature, as we atheistically call it, is not
interfered with, then suns shine, crops grow, trade flourishes, and all
is well, because God does not visit the earth. Ah! blind that we are;
blind to the power and glory of God which is around us, giving life and
breath to all things,—God, without whom not a sparrow falls to the
ground,—God, who visiteth the earth, and maketh it very plenteous,—God,
who giveth to all liberally, and upbraideth not,—God, whose ever-creating
and ever-sustaining Spirit is the source, not only of all goodness,
virtue, knowledge, but of all life, health, order, fertility. We see not
God’s witness in His sending rain and fruitful seasons, filling our
hearts with food and gladness. And then comes the punishment. Because
we will not keep up a wholesome and trustful belief in God in prosperity,
we are awakened out of our dream of unbelief, to an unwholesome and
mistrustful belief in Him in adversity. Because we will not believe in a
God of love and order, we grow to believe in a God of anger and disorder.
Because we will not fear a God who sends fruitful seasons, we are grown
to dread a God who sends famine and pestilence. Because we will not
believe in the Father in heaven, we grow to believe in a destroyer who
visits from heaven. But we believe in Him only as the destroyer. We
have forgotten that He is the Giver, the Creator, the Redeemer. We look
on His visitations as something dark and ugly, instead of rejoicing in
the thought of God’s presence, as we should, if we had remembered that He
was about our path and about our bed, and spying out all our ways,
whether for joy or for sorrow. We shrink at the thought of His presence.
We look on His visitations as things not to be understood; not to be
searched out in childlike humility—and yet in childlike confidence—that
we may understand why they are sent, and what useful lesson our Father
means us to learn from them: but we look on them as things to be merely
prayed against, if by any means God will, as soon as possible, cease to
visit us, and leave us to ourselves, for we can earn our own bread
comfortably enough, if it were not for His interference and visitations.
We are too like the Gadarenes of old, to whom it mattered little that the
Lord had restored the madman to health and reason, if He caused their
swine to perish in the lake. They were uneasy and terrified at such
visitations of God incarnate. He seemed to them a terrible and dangerous
Being, and they besought Him to depart out of their coasts.
It would have been wiser, surely, in those Gadarenes, and better for
them, had they cried—‘Lord, what wilt Thou have us to do? We see that
Thou art a Being of infinite power, for mercy, and for punishment
likewise. And Thou art the very Being whom we want, to teach us our
duty, and to make us do it. Tell us what we ought to do, and help us,
and, if need be, compel us to do it, and so to prosper indeed.’ And so
should we pray in the case of this cholera. We may ask God to take it
away: but we are bound to ask God also, why He has sent it. Till then we
have no reason to suppose that He will take it away; we have no reason to
suppose that it will be merciful in Him to take it away, till He has
taught us why it was sent. This question of cholera has come now to a
crisis, in which we must either learn why cholera comes, or incur, I
hold, lasting disgrace and guilt. And—if I may dare to hint at the
counsels of God—it seems as if the Almighty Lord had no mind to relieve
us of that disgrace and guilt.
For months past we have been praying that this cholera should not enter
England, and our prayers have not been heard. In spite of them the
cholera has come; and has slain thousands, and seems likely to slay
thousands more. What plainer proof can there be to those who believe in
the providence of God, and the rule of Jesus Christ our Lord, than that
we are meant to learn some wholesome lesson from it, which we have not
learnt yet? It cannot be that God means us to learn the physical cause
of cholera, for that we have known these twenty years. Foul lodging,
foul food, and, above all, natural and physical, foul water; there is no
doubt of the cause. But why cannot we save English people from the curse
and destruction which all this foulness brings? That is the question.
That is our national scandal, shame, and sin at this moment. Perhaps the
Lord wills that we should learn that; learn what is the moral and
spiritual cause of our own miserable weakness, negligence, hardness of
heart, which, sinning against light and knowledge, has caused the death
of thousands of innocent souls. God grant that we may learn that lesson.
God grant that He may put into the hearts and minds of some man or men,
the wisdom and courage to deliver us from such scandals for the future.
But I have little hope that that will happen, till we get rid of our
secret atheism; till we give up the notion that God only visits now and
then, to disorder and destroy His own handiwork, and take back the old
scriptural notion, that God is visiting all day long for ever, to give
order and life to His own work, to set it right whenever it goes wrong,
and re-create it whenever it decays. Till then we can expect only
explanations of cholera and of God’s other visitations of affliction,
which are so superstitious, so irrational, so little connected with the
matter in hand, that they would be ridiculous, were they not somewhat
blasphemous. But when men arise in this land who believe truly in an
ever-present God of order, revealed in His Son Jesus Christ; when men
shall arise in this land, who will believe that faith with their whole
hearts, and will live and die for it and by it; acting as if they really
believed that in God we live, and move, and have our being; as if they
really believed that they were in the kingdom and rule of Christ,—a rule
of awful severity, and yet of perfect love,—a rule, meanwhile, which men
can understand, and are meant to understand, that they may not only obey
the laws of God, but know the mind of God, and copy the dealings of God,
and do the will of God; and when men arise in this land, who have that
holy faith in their hearts, and courage to act upon it, then cholera will
vanish away, and the physical and moral causes of a hundred other evils
which torment poor human beings through no anger of God, but simply
through their own folly, and greediness, and ignorance.
All these shall vanish away, in the day when the knowledge of the Lord
shall cover the land, and men shall say, in spirit and in truth, as
Christ their Lord has said before,—‘Sacrifice and burnt-offering thou
wouldest not. Then said I, Lo, I come. In the volume of the book it is
written of Me, that I should do the will of God.’ And in those days
shall be fulfilled once more, the text which says,—‘That the people
glorified God, saying, A great Prophet, even Christ the Lord Himself,
hath risen up among us, and God hath visited His people.’
SERMON XVIII.
THE WICKED SERVANT.
ST. MATTHEW xviii. 23.
The kingdom of heaven is likened to a certain king, which would take
account of his servants.
THIS parable, which you heard in the Gospel for this day, you all know.
And I doubt not that all you who know it, understand it well enough. It
is so human and so humane; it is told with such simplicity, and yet with
such force and brilliancy that—if one dare praise our Lord’s words as we
praise the words of men—all must see its meaning at once, though it
speaks of a state of society different from anything which we have ever
seen, or, thank God, ever shall see.
The Eastern despotic king who has no law but his own will; who puts his
servant—literally his slave—into a post of such trust and honour, that
the slave can misappropriate and make away with the enormous sum of ten
thousand talents; who commands, not only him, but his wife and children
to be sold to pay the debt; who then forgives him all out of a sudden
burst of pity, and again, when the wretched man has shown himself base
and cruel, unworthy of that pity, revokes his pardon, and delivers him to
the tormentors till he shall pay all—all this is a state of things
impossible in a free country, though it is possible enough still in many
countries of the East, which are governed in this very despotic fashion;
and justice, and very often injustice likewise, is done in this rough,
uncertain way, by the will of the king alone.
But, however different the circumstances, yet there is a lesson in this
story which is universal and eternal, true for all men, and true for
ever. The same human nature, for good and for evil, is in us, as was in
that Eastern king and his slave. The same kingdom of heaven is over us
as was over them, its laws punishing sinners by their own sins; the same
Spirit of God which strove with their hearts is striving with ours. If
it was not so, the parable would mean nothing to us. It would be a story
of men who belonged to another moral world, and were under another moral
law, not to be judged by our rules of right and wrong; and therefore a
story of men whom we need not copy.
But it is not so. If the parable be—as I take for granted it is—a true
story; then it was Christ, the Light who lights every man who cometh into
the world, who put into that king’s heart the divine feeling of mercy,
and inspired him to forgive, freely and utterly, the wretched slave who
worshipped him, kneeling with his forehead to the ground, and promising,
in his terror, what he probably knew he could not perform—‘Lord, have
patience with me, and I will pay thee all.’
And it was Christ, the Light of men, who inspired that king with the
feeling, not of mere revenge, but of just retribution; who taught him
that, when the slave was unworthy of his mercy, he had a right, in a
noble and divine indignation, to withdraw his mercy; and not to waste his
favours on a bad man, who would only turn them to fresh bad account, but
to keep them for those who had justice and honour enough in their hearts
to forgive others, when their Lord had forgiven them.
We must bear in mind, that the king must have been right, and acting
(whether he knew it or not) by the Spirit of God; else his conduct would
never have been likened to the kingdom of heaven: that is, to the laws by
which God governs both this world and the world to come.
The kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of God—Would that men would believe
in them a little more! It seems, at times, as if all belief in them was
dying out; as if men, throughout all civilized and Christian countries,
had made up their minds to say—There is no kingdom of God or of heaven.
There will be one hereafter, in the next world. This world is the
kingdom of men, and of what they can do for themselves without God’s
help, and without God’s laws.
My friends, the Jewish rulers of old said so, and cried, ‘We have no king
but Cæsar.’ And they remain an example to all time, of what happens to
those who deny the kingdom of God. Christ came to tell them that the
kingdom of heaven was at hand, and the kingdom of God was among them.
But they would have none of it. And what said our Lord of them and their
notion? ‘The prince of this world,’ said He, ‘cometh, and hath nothing
in me. This is your hour and the power of darkness.’ Yes; the hour in
which men had determined to manage the world in their way, and not in
Christ’s, was also the hour of the power of darkness. That was what they
had gained by having their own way; by saying—The kingdom is ours, and
not God’s. They had fallen under the power of darkness, not of light.
The very light within them was darkness. They utterly mistook their road
on earth. At the very moment that they were trying to make peace with
the Roman governor, by denying that Christ was their King, and demanding
that He should be crucified,—at that very moment the things which
belonged to their peace were hid from their eyes. Never men made so
fatal a mistake, when they thought themselves most politic and prudent.
They said among themselves—‘Unless we put down this man, the Romans will
come and take away our place,’ _i.e._ our privileges, and power, and our
nation. And what followed? That the Romans did come and take away their
place and nation, with horrible massacre and ruin: and so they lost both
the kingdom of this world, and the kingdom of God likewise. Never, I
say, did men make a more fatal mistake in the things of this world than
those Jews to whom the kingdom of God came, and they rejected it.
And so shall we, my friends, if we forget that, whether we like it or
not, the kingdom of God is within us, and we within it likewise.
1. The kingdom of God is within us. Every gracious motive, every noble,
just, and merciful instinct within us, is a sign to us that the kingdom
of God is come to us; that we are not as the brutes which perish; not as
the heathen who are too often past feeling, being alienated from the life
of God by reason of the ignorance which is in them: but, that we are
God’s children, inheritors of the kingdom of heaven; and that God’s
Spirit is teaching us the laws of that kingdom; so that in every child
who is baptized, educated, and civilized, is fulfilled the promise, ‘I
will write my laws upon their hearts, and I will be to them a Father.’
God’s Spirit is teaching our hearts as He taught the heart of that old
Eastern king. It may be, it ought to be, that He is teaching us far
deeper lessons than He ever taught that king.
2. We are in the kingdom of God. It is worth our while to remember that
steadfastly just now. Many people are ready to agree that the kingdom of
God is within them. They will readily confess that religion is a
spiritual matter, and a matter of the heart: but their fancy is that
therefore religion, and all just and noble and beautiful instincts and
aspirations, are very good things for those who have them: but that, if
any one has them not, it does not much matter.
They do not see that there are not only such things as feelings about
God; but that there are also such things as laws of God; and that God can
enforce those laws, and does enforce them, sometimes in a very terrible
manner. They do not believe enough in a living God, an acting God, a God
who will not merely write His laws in our hearts, if we will let Him, but
may also destroy us off the face of the earth, if we would not let Him.
They fancy that God either cannot, or will not, enforce His own laws, but
leaves a man free to accept them, or reject as he will. There is no
greater mistake. Be not deceived; God is not mocked. As a man sows, so
shall he reap. God says to us, to all men,—Copy Me. Do as I do, and be
My children, and be blest. But if we will not; if, after all God’s care
and love, the tree brings forth no fruit, then, soon or late, the
sentence goes forth against it in God’s kingdom, ‘Cut it down; why
cumbereth it the ground?’
There is a saying now-a-days, that nations and tribes who will not live
reasonable lives, and behave as men should to their fellow-men, must be
civilized off the face of the earth. The words are false, if they mean
that we, or any other men, have a right to exterminate their
fellow-creatures. But they are true, and more true than the people who
use them fancy, if they are spoken not of man, but of God. For if men
will not obey the laws of God’s kingdom, God does actually civilize them
off the face of the earth. Great nations, learned churches, powerful
aristocracies, ancient institutions, has God civilized off the face of
the earth before now. Because they would not acknowledge God for their
King, and obey the laws of His kingdom, in which alone are life, and
wealth, and health, God has taken His kingdom away from them, and given
it to others who would bring forth the fruits thereof. The Jews are the
most awful and famous example of that terrible judgment of God, but they
are not the only ones. It has happened again and again. It may happen
to you or me, as well as to this whole nation of England, if we forget
that we are in God’s kingdom, and that only by living according to God’s
laws can we keep our place therein.
And this is what the parable teaches us. The king tries to teach the
servant one of the laws of his kingdom—that he rules according to
boundless mercy and generosity. God wishes to teach us the same. The
king does so, not by word, but by deed, by actually forgiving the man his
debt. So does God forgive us freely in Jesus Christ our Lord.
But more than this, he wishes the servant to understand that he is to
copy his king; that if his king has behaved to him like a father to his
child, he must behave as a brother to his fellow-servants. So does God
wish to teach us.
But he does not tell the man so, in so many words. He does not say to
him, I command thee to forgive thy debtors as I have forgiven thee. He
leaves the man to his own sense of honour and good feeling. It is a
question not of the law, but of the heart. So does God with us. He
educates us, not as children or slaves, but as free men, as moral agents.
He leaves us to our own reason and conscience, to reap the fruit which we
ourselves have sown. Therefore, about a thousand matters in life He lays
on us no special command. He leaves us to act according to our good
feeling, to our own sense of honour. It is a matter, I say, of the
heart. If God’s law be written in our hearts, our hearts will lead us to
do the right thing. If God’s law be not in our hearts, then mere outward
commands will not make us do right, for what we do will not be really
right and good, because it will not be done heartily and of our own will.
But the servant does not follow his lord’s example.
Fresh from his lord’s presence, he takes his fellow-servant by the
throat, saying—Pay me that thou owest. His heart has not been touched.
His lord’s example has not softened him. He does not see how beautiful,
how noble, how divine, generosity and mercy are. He is a hard-hearted,
worldly man. The heavenly kingdom, which is justice and love, is not
within him. Then, if the kingdom of heaven is not in him, he shall find
out that he is in it; and that in a very terrible way:—‘Thou wicked
servant, unworthy of my pity, because there is no goodness in thine own
heart. Thou wilt not take into thy heart my law, which tells thee, Be
merciful as I am merciful. Then thou shalt feel another and an equally
universal law of mine. As thou doest so shalt thou be done by. If thou
art merciful, thou shalt find mercy. If thou wilt have nothing but
retribution, then nothing but retribution thou shalt have. If thou must
needs do justice thyself, I will do justice likewise. Because I am
merciful, dost thou think me careless? Because I sit still, that I am
patient? Dost thou think me such a one as thyself?’ And his lord
delivered him to the tormentors till he should pay all that was due unto
him.
My dear friends, this is an awful story. Let us lay it to heart. And to
do that, let us pray God to lay it to our hearts; to write His laws in
our hearts, that we may not only fear them, but love them; not only see
their profitableness, but their fitness; that we may obey them, not
grudgingly or of necessity, but obey them because they look to us just,
and true, and beautiful, and as they are—Godlike. Let us pray, I say,
that God would make us love what He commands, lest we should neglect and
despise what He commands, and find it some day unexpectedly alive and
terrible after all. Let us pray to God to keep alive His kingdom of
grace within us, lest His kingdom of retribution outside us should fall
upon us, and grind us to powder.
SERMON XIX.
CIVILIZED BARBARISM.
(_Preached for the Bishop of London’s Fund_, _at St. John’s Church_,
_Notting Hill_, _June_ 1866.)
ST. MATTHEW ix. 12.
They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.
I HAVE been honoured by an invitation to preach on behalf of the Bishop
of London’s Fund for providing for the spiritual wants of this
metropolis. By the bishop, and a large number of landowners, employers
of labour, and others who were aware of the increasing heathendom of the
richest and happiest city of the world, it was agreed that, if possible,
a million sterling should be raised during the next ten years, to do what
money could do in wiping out this national disgrace. It is a noble plan;
and it has been as yet—and I doubt not will be to the end—nobly responded
to by the rich laity of this metropolis.
More than 100,000_l._ was contributed during the first six months; nearly
60,000_l._ in the ensuing year; beside subscriptions which are promised
for the whole, or part of the ten years. The money, therefore, does not
flow in as rapidly as was desired: but there is as yet no falling off.
And I believe that there will be, on the contrary, a gradual increase in
the subscriptions as the objects of this fund are better understood, and
as its benefits are practically felt.
Now, it is unnecessary—it would be almost an impertinence—to enlarge on a
spiritual destitution of which you are already well aware. There are, we
shall all agree, many thousands in London who are palpably sick of
spiritual disease, and need the physician. But I have special reasons
for not pressing this point. If I attempted to draw subscriptions from
you by painting tragical and revolting pictures of the vice, heathendom,
and misery of this metropolis, I might make you fancy that it was an
altogether vicious, heathen, and miserable spot: than which there can be
no greater mistake. These evils are not the rule, but the exceptions.
Were they not the exceptions, then not merely the society of London, and
the industry of London, and the wealth of London, but the very buildings
of London, the brick and the mortar, would crumble to the ground by
natural and inevitable decay. The unprecedentedly rapid increase of
London is, I firmly believe, a sure sign that things in it are done on
the whole not ill, but well; that God’s blessing is on the place; that,
because it is on the whole obeying the eternal laws of God, therefore it
is increasing, and multiplying, and replenishing the earth, and subduing
it. And I do not hesitate to say, that I have read of no spot of like
size upon this earth, on which there have ever been congregated so many
human beings, who are getting their bread so peaceably, happily, loyally,
and virtuously; and doing their duty—ill enough, no doubt, as we all do
it—but still doing it more or less, by man and God.
I am well aware that many will differ from me; that many men and many
women—holy, devoted, spending their lives in noble and unselfish
labours—persons whose shoes’ latchet I am not worthy to unloose—take a
far darker view of the state of this metropolis. But the fact is, that
they are naturally brought in contact chiefly with its darker side.
Their first duty is to seek out cases of misery: and even if they do not,
the miserable will, of their own accord, come to them. It is their first
duty too—if they be clergymen—to rebuke, and if possible, to cure, open
vice, open heathendom, as well as to relieve present want and
wretchedness: and may God’s blessing be on all who do that work. But in
doing it they are dealing daily—and ought to deal, and must deal—with the
exceptional, and not with the normal; with cases of palpable and shocking
disease, and not with cases of at least seeming health. They see that,
into London, as into a vast sewer, gravitates yearly all manner of vice,
ignorance, weakness, poverty: but they are apt to forget, at times—and
God knows I do not blame them for it in the least—that there gravitates
into London, not as into a sewer, but as into a wholesome and fruitful
garden, a far greater amount of health, strength, intellect, honesty,
industry, virtue, which makes London; which composes, I verily believe,
four-fifths of the population of London. For if it did not, as I have
said already, London would decay and die, and not grow and live.
Am I denying the spiritual destitution of this metropolis? Am I arguing
against the necessity of the Bishop of London’s Fund? Am I trying to
cool your generosity towards it? Am I raising against it the text—‘They
that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick?’ Am I trying
to prove that the sick are fewer than was fancied, the healthy more
numerous; and, therefore, the physician less needed? Would to heaven
that I dare so do. Would to heaven that I could prove this fund
unnecessary and superfluous. But instead thereof, I fear that I must
say—that the average of that health, strength, intellect, honesty,
industry, virtue, which makes London—that the average of all that, I
verily believe, is to be counted (though it knows it not) among the sick,
and not among the sound. It is sick, over and above those personal sins
which are common to all classes; it is sick of a great social disease; of
a disease which is very dangerous for the nation to which we belong;
which will increase more and more, and become more and more dangerous,
unless it is stopped wholesale, by some such wholesale measure as this.
That disease is (paradoxical as it may seem) Want of Civilization;
Barbarism, which is the child of ungodliness. And that can, I verily
believe again, be cured only (as far as we in the nineteenth century have
discovered) by an extension of the parochial system.
And yet—let us beware of that expression—Parochial System. It seems to
imply that the parish is a mere system; an artificial arrangement of
man’s invention. Now that is just what the parish is not. It is founded
on local ties; and they are not a system, but a fact. You do not
assemble men into parishes: you find them already assembled by fact,
which is the will of God. You take your stand upon the merest physical
ground of their living next door to each other; their being likely to
witness each other’s sayings and doings; to help each other and like each
other, or to debauch each other and hate each other; upon the fact that
their children play in the same street, and teach each other harm or
good, thereby influencing generations yet unborn; upon the fact that if
one takes cholera or fever, the man who lives next door is liable to take
it too—in short, on the broad fact that they are members of each other,
for good or evil. You take your stand on this physical ground of mere
neighbourhood; and say—This bond of neighbourhood is, after all, one of
the most human—yea, of the most Divine—of all bonds. Every man you meet
is your brother, and must be, for good or evil: you cannot live without
him; you must help, or you must injure, each other. And, therefore, you
must choose whether you will be a horde of isolated barbarians—your
living in brick and mortar, instead of huts and tents, being a mere
accident—barbarians, I say, at continual war with each other: or whether
you will go on to become civilized men; that is, fellow-citizens, members
of the same body, confessing and exercising duties to each other which
are not self-chosen, not self-invented, but real; which encompass you
whether you know them or not; laid on you by Almighty God, by the mere
fact of your being men and women living in contact with each other.
Out of this great and true law arises the idea of a parish, a local
self-government for many civil purposes, as well as ecclesiastical ones,
under a priest who—if he is to be considered as a little constitutional
monarch—has his powers limited carefully both by the supreme law, by his
assessors the church-wardens, and by the democratic constitution of the
parish—influences which he is bound, both by law and by Christianity, to
obey.
Arising, in the first place, from the fact that our forefathers colonized
England in small separate families, each with its own jurisdiction and
worship; our country parish churches being, to this day, often the sites
of old heathen tribe-temples, and this very place, Notting-hill, being
possibly a little colony of the Nottingas—the same tribe which gave their
name to the great city of Nottingham; arising from this fact, and from
the very ancient institution of frank-pledge between local neighbours,
this parochial system, above all other English institutions, has helped
to teach us how to govern, and therefore how to civilize, ourselves. It
was overlaid, all but extinguished, by the monastic system, during the
latter part of the Middle Ages. It re-asserted itself, in fuller vigour
than ever, at the Reformation. But with its benefits, its defects were
restored likewise. The tendency of the mediæval Church had been to
become merely a church for paupers. The tendency of the Church of
England during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, was
to become merely a church for burghers. It has been, of late, to become
merely a church for paupers again. The causes of this reaction are
simple enough. Population increased so rapidly that the old parish
bounds were broken up; the old parish staff became too small for working
purposes. The Church had (and, alas! has still) to be again a missionary
church, as she became in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when
feudal violence had destroyed the self-government of the parishes—often
the parishes themselves—and filled the land with pauperism and barbarism.
But that is but a transitional state. Her duty is now becoming more and
more (and those who wish her well must help her to fulfil her duty) to
reorganize the ancient parochial system on a deeper and sounder footing
than ever; on a footing which will ensure her being a church, not merely
for pauper, nor merely for burgher, but for pauper and for burgher
equally and alike.
But some will say that parochial civilization is only a peculiar form of
civilization, because its centre is a church. Peculiar? That is the
last word which any one would apply to such a civilization, if he knows
history. Will any one mention any civilization, past or present, whose
centre has not been (as long as it has been living and progressive) a
church? All past civilizations—whether heathen or Mussulman, Jew or
Christian—have each and every one of them, as a fact, held that the
common and local worship of a God was a sign to them of their common and
local unity; a sign to them of their religion, that is, the duties which
bound them to each other, whether they liked or not. To all races and
nations, as yet, their sacred grove, church, temple, or other place of
worship, has been a sign to them that their unity and duties were not
invented by themselves, but were the will and command of an unseen Being,
who would reward or punish them according as they did those duties or
left them undone. So it has been in the civilizations of the past. So
it will be in the civilization of the future. If the Christian religion
were swept away—as it never will be, for it is eternal—and a civilization
founded on what is called Nature put in its place, then we should see a
worship of something called Nature, and a temple thereof, set up as the
symbol of that Natural civilization. So the Jacobins of France—when they
tried to civilize France on the mere ground of what they called
Reason—had, whether they liked it or not, to instal a worship of Reason,
and a goddess of Reason, for as long as they could contrive to last.
To the world’s end, a church of some kind or other will be the centre and
symbol of every civilization which is worthy of the name; of every
civilization which signifies, not merely that men live in somewhat better
houses, travel rather faster by railway, and read a few more books (which
is the popular meaning of civilization), but which means—as it meant
among the Greeks, the Romans, the Jews, the Christians, among those who
discovered the idea and the very words which express it—that each and
every truly civilized man is a civis, a citizen, the conscious and
obedient member of a corporate body which he did not make, but which (in
as far as he is not a savage) has made him.
How far from this idea are the great masses of our really wealthy and
well-to-do Londoners? How much is it needed, that wise men should try to
re-awaken in them the sense of corporate life, and literally civilize
them once more!
Consider the case, not of the average wretched, but of the average
comfortable man. The small shopkeeper, the workman, skilled or
unskilled—how small a consciousness has he of citizenship. What few
incentives to regard civism as a solemn duty. For consider, of what is
he a member?
He is a member of a family; and, in general, he fulfils his family duties
well.
Yes, thank God, the family life of Englishmen is sound. The hearts of
the children do not need to be turned to their fathers, or the hearts of
the fathers to the children, as they did in Judea of old. Family life,
which is the foundation of all national life—nay, of all Christian and
church life—is, on the whole, sound. And having that foundation we can
build on it safely and well, if we be wise.
But of what else is the average Londoner a member? Of a benefit-club, of
a trades’ union, of a volunteer corps. Each will be a valuable element
of education, for it will teach him that self-government, which is the
school of all freedom, of all loyalty, of all true civilization.
Or he may be a member of some Nonconformist sect. That, too, will be a
valuable element, for it will teach him the solemn fact of his own
personality; his direct responsibility to God for his own soul.
And I cannot pass this point of my sermon without expressing my sense of
the great work which the Dissenting sects have done, and are doing, for
this land (with which the Bishop of London’s plan will in no wise
interfere), in teaching this one thing, which the Church of England,
while trying to carry out her far deeper and higher conception of
organization, has often forgotten; that, after all, and before all, and
throughout all, each man stands alone, face to face with Almighty God.
This idea has helped to give the middle classes of England an
independence, a strong, vigorous, sharp-cut personality, which is an
invaluable wealth to the nation. God forbid that we should try to weaken
it, even for reasons which may seem to some devout and orthodox.
But all these memberships, after all, are only voluntary ones, not
involuntary. They are assumed by man himself—the worldly associations on
the ground of mutual interest; the spiritual associations on that of
identity of opinions. They are not instituted by God, and nature, and
fact, whether the man knows of them or not, likes them or not. They are
of the nature of clubs, not of citizenship. They are not founded on that
human ground which is, by virtue of the Incarnation, the most divine
ground of all. And for the many they do not exist. The majority of
small shopkeepers, and the majority of labourers too, are members, as far
as they are aware, of nothing, unless it be a club at some neighbouring
public-house. The old feudal and burgher bonds of the Middle Age, for
good or for evil, have perished by natural and necessary decay; and
nothing has taken their place. Each man is growing up more and more
isolated; tempted to selfishness, to brutal independence; tempted to
regard his fellow-men as rivals in the struggle for existence; tempted,
in short, to incivism, to a loss of the very soul and marrow of
civilization, while the outward results of it remain; and therefore
tempted to a loss of patriotism, of the belief that he possesses here
something far more precious than his private fortune, or even his family;
even a country for which he must sacrifice, if need be, himself. And if
that grow to be the general temper of England, or of London, in some
great day of the Lord, some crisis of perplexity, want, or danger,—then
may the Lord have mercy upon this land; for it will have no mercy on
itself: but divided, suspicious, heartless, cynical, unpatriotic, each
class, even each family, even each individual man, will run each his own
way, minding his own interest or safety; content, like the debased Jews,
if he can find the life of his hand; and—
‘Too happy if, in that dread day,
His life he given him for a prey.’
Our fathers saw that happen throughout half Europe, at a crisis when,
while the outward crust of civilization was still kept up, the life of
it, all patriotism, corporate feeling, duty to a common God, and faith in
a common Saviour, had rotted out unperceived. At one blow the gay idol
fell, and broke; and behold, inside was not a soul, but dust. God grant
that we may never see here the same catastrophe, the same disgrace.
Now, one remedy—I do not say the only remedy—there are no such things as
panaceas; all spiritual and social diseases are complicated, and their
remedies must be complicated likewise—but one remedy, palpable, easy, and
useful, whenever and wherever it has been tried, is this—to go to these
great masses of brave, honest, industrious, but isolated and uncivilized
men, after the method of the Bishop of this diocese, and his fund; and to
say to them,—‘Of whatever body you are, or are not members, you are
members of that human family for which our Lord Jesus Christ was
contented to be betrayed, and to suffer death upon the Cross; over which
He now liveth and reigneth, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, one God,
world without end. You are children of God the Father of spirits, who
wills that all should be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth.
You are inheritors—that is, members not by your own will, or the will of
any man, but by the will of God who has chosen you to be born in a
Christian land of Christian parents—inheritors, I say, of the kingdom of
heaven, from your cradles to your graves, and after that, if you will,
for ever and ever. Behave as such. Claim your rights; for they are
yours already: and not only claim your rights, but confess your duties.
Remember that every man, woman, and child in your street is, primâ facie,
just as much a member of Christ as you are. Treat them as such;
associate yourselves with them as such. Accept the simple physical fact
that they live next door to you, as God’s will toward you both, and as
God’s sign to you that you and they are members of the same human and
divine family. Enter with them, in that plain form, into the free
corporate self-government of a Christian parish. Fear no priestly
tyranny; from that danger you are guaranteed by the fact, that the great
majority of the promoters of this fund are laymen, of all shades of
opinion. You are guaranteed, still further, by the fact, that in the
parochial system there can be no tyranny. It is one of the very
institutions by which Englishmen have learnt those habits of
self-government, which are the admiration of Europe.
‘Do, then, the duty which lies nearest you; your duty to the man who
lives next door, and to the man who lives in the next street. Do your
duty to your parish; that you may learn to do your duty by your country
and to all mankind, and prove yourselves thereby civilized men.
‘And confess your sins in this matter, if not to us, at least to God.
Confess that while you, in your sturdy, comfortable independence, have
been fancying yourselves whole and sound, you have been very sick, and
need the physician to cure you of the deadly and growing disease of
selfish barbarism. Confess that, while you have been priding yourselves
on English self-help and independence, you have not deigned to use them
for those purposes of common organization, common worship, for which the
very savages and heathens have, for ages past, used such freedom as they
have had. Confess that, while you have been talking loudly about the
rights of humanity, you have neglected too often its duties, and lived as
if the people in the same street had no more to do with you than the
beasts which perish.
‘Confess your sins. We monied men confess ours. We ought to have
foreseen the rapid growth of this city. We ought to have planned and
laboured more earnestly for its better organization. And we freely offer
our money, as a sign of our repentance, to build and establish for you
institutions which you cannot afford to establish for yourselves. We
excuse you, moreover, in very great part. You have been gathered
together so suddenly into these vast new districts, or rather chaos of
houses, and you have meanwhile shifted your dwellings so rapidly, and
under the pressure of such continual labour, that you have not had time
enough to organize yourselves. But we, too, have our excuse. We have
actually been trying, at vast expense and labour to ourselves, for the
last forty years, to meet your new needs. But you have outgrown all our
efforts. Your increase has taken us by surprise. Your prosperity has
outrun our goodwill. It shall do so no more. We are ready to do our
part in the good work of repentance. We ask you to do yours. You are
more able to do it than you ever were: richer, better educated, more
acquainted with the blessings of association. We do not come to you as
to paupers, merely to help you. We come to you as to free and
independent citizens, to teach you to help yourselves, and show
yourselves citizens indeed.’
I hope, ay, I believe, that such an appeal as this, made in an honest and
liberal spirit, which proves its honesty and liberality by great and
generous gifts out of such private wealth as no nation ever had before,
will be met by the masses of London, in the same spirit as that in which
it has been made.
I am certain of it, if only the ecclesiastical staff employed by this
Fund will keep steadfastly in mind what they have to do. True it is, and
happily true, that they can do nothing but good. If they confine
themselves to the celebration of public worship, to teaching children, to
giving the consolations of religion to those with whom want and
wretchedness bring them in contact—all that will be gain, clear gain,
vast gain. But that, valuable, necessary as it is, will not be
sufficient to evoke a full response from the people of London.
But if they will, not leaving the other undone, do yet more; if they will
attempt the more difficult, but the equally necessary and more permanent
labour—that of attacking the disease of barbarism, not merely in its
symptoms, but in its very roots and its causes; if they will recognise
the fact, that with the disease there coexists a great deal of sturdy and
useful health; if they will have courage and address to face, not merely
the non-working, non-earning, and generally non-thinking hundreds, but
the working, earning, thinking thousands of each parish; in fact, the men
and women who make London what it is; if they will approach them with
charity, confidence, and respect; if they will remember that they are
justly jealous of that personal independence, that civil and religious
liberty, which is theirs by law and right; if they will conduct
themselves, not as lords over God’s heritage, but as examples to the
flock; if they will treat that flock, not as their subjects, but as their
friends, their fellow-workers, their fellow-counsellors—often their
advisers; if they will remember that ‘Give and take, live and let live,’
are no mere worldly maxims, but necessary, though difficult Christian
duties; then, I believe, they will after awhile receive an answer to
their call such as they dare not as yet expect; such an answer as our
forefathers gave to the clergy of the early Middle Age, when they showed
them that the kingdom of God was the messenger of civilization, of
humanity, of justice and peace, of strength and well-being in this world,
as well as in the next. The clergy would find in the men and women of
London not merely disciples, but helpers. They would meet, not with
fanatical excitement, not even with enthusiasm, not even with much
outward devotion; but with co-operation, hearty and practical though slow
and quiet—co-operation all the more valuable, in every possible sense,
because it will be free and voluntary; and the Bishop of London’s Fund
would receive more and more assistance, not merely of heads and hands,
but of money when money was needed, from the inhabitants of the very
poorest and most heathen districts, as they began to feel that they were
giving their money towards a common blessing, and became proud to pay
their share towards an organization which would belong to them, and to
their children after them.
So runs my dream. This may be done: God grant that it may! For now, it
may be, is our best chance of doing it. Now is the accepted time; now is
the day of salvation. If these masses increase in numbers and in power
for another generation, in their present state of anarchy, they may be
lost for ever to Christianity, to order, to civilization. But if we can
civilize, in that sense which is both classical and Christian, the masses
of London, and of England, by that parochial method which has been
(according to history) the only method yet discovered, then we shall have
helped, not only to save innumerable souls from sin, and from that misery
which is the inevitable and everlasting consequence of sin, but we shall
have helped to save them from a specious and tawdry barbarism, such as
corrupted and enervated the seemingly civilized masses of the later Roman
empire; and to save our country, within the next century, from some such
catastrophe as overtook the Jewish monarchy in spite of all its outward
religiosity; the catastrophe which has overtaken every nation which has
fancied itself sound and whole, while it was really broken, sick, weak,
ripe for ruin. For such, every nation or empire becomes, though the
minority above be never so well organized, civilized, powerful, educated,
even virtuous, if the majority below are not a people of citizens, but
masses of incoherent atoms, ready to fall to pieces before every storm.
From that, and from all adversities, may God deliver us, and our children
after us, by graciously beholding this His Family, for which our Lord
Jesus Christ was content to suffer death upon the Cross; and by pouring
out His Spirit upon all estates of men in His holy Church, that every
member of the same, in his calling and ministry, may freely and godly
serve Him; till we have no longer the shame and sorrow of praying for
English men and women, as we do for Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics,
that God would take from them all ignorance, hardness of heart, and
contempt of His Word, and fetch them home to that flock of His, to which
they all belong!
SERMON XX.
THE GOD OF NATURE.
(_Preached during a wet harvest_.)
PSALM cxlvii. 7–9.
Sing unto the Lord with thanksgiving; sing praise upon the harp unto
our God: who covereth the heaven with clouds, who prepareth rain for
the earth, who maketh grass to grow upon the mountains. He giveth to
the beast his food, and to the young ravens which cry.
THERE is no reason why those who wrote this Psalm, and the one which
follows it, should have looked more cheerfully on the world about them
than we have a right to do. The country and climate of Judea is not much
superior to ours. If we suffer at times from excess of rain and wind,
Judea suffers from excess of drought and sunshine. It suffers, too, at
times, from that most terrible of earthly calamities, from which we are
free—namely, from earthquakes. The sea, moreover, instead of being
loved, as it is by us, as the highway of our commerce, and the producer
of vast stores of food—the sea, I say, was almost feared by the old Jews,
who were no sailors. They looked on it as a dangerous waste; and were
thankful to God that, though the waves roared, He had set them a bound
which they could not pass.
So that there is no reason why the old Jews should think and speak more
cheerfully about the world than we here in England ought. They had, too,
the same human afflictions, sicknesses, dangers, disappointments, losses
and chastisements as we have. They had their full share of all the ills
to which flesh is heir. Yet look, I beg you, at the cheerfulness of
these two Psalms, the 147th and 148th. In truth, it is more than
cheerfulness; it is joy, rejoicing which can only express itself in a
song.
These Psalms are songs, to be sung to music, and even in our translation
they are songs still, sounding like poetry, and not like prose.
And why is this? Because the men who wrote these Psalms had faith in
God.
They trusted God. They saw that He was worthy of their trust. They saw
that He was to be honoured, not merely for His boundless wisdom and His
boundless power: for a being might have them, and yet make a bad use of
them. But He was to be trusted, because He was a good God. He was to be
honoured, not for anything which men might get out of Him (as the heathen
fancied) by flattering Him, and begging of Him: but He was to be honoured
for His own sake, for what He was in Himself—a just, merciful, kind,
generous, magnanimous, and utterly noble and perfect, moral Being, worthy
of all admiration, praise, honour, and glory.
The Psalmist saw that God was good, and worthy to be praised. But he
saw, too, that he and his forefathers would never have found out that for
themselves. It was too great a discovery for man to make. God must have
showed it to them. God had showed His word to Jacob, His statutes and
ordinances to Israel.
He had not done so to any other nation, neither had the heathen knowledge
of His laws. And, therefore, they did not trust God; they did not
consider Him a good God, and so they worshipped Baalim, the sun and moon
and stars, with silly and foul ceremonies, to procure from them good
harvests; and burnt their children in the fire to Moloch, the fire-king,
to keep off the earthquakes and the floods. God had not taught them what
He had taught Israel—to trust in Him, and in His word which ran very
swiftly, and in His laws, which could not be broken: a faith which, my
friends, we must do our best to keep up in ourselves, and in our children
after us. For it is very easy to lose it, this faith in God. We are
tempted to lose it, all our lives long.
Our forefathers, in the days of Popery, lost it; and because they did not
trust in God as a good God, who took good care of the world which He had
made, they fell to believing that the devil, and witches, the servants of
the devil, could raise storms, blight crops, strike cattle and human
beings with disease. And they began, too, to pray, not to God, but to
certain saints in heaven, to protect them against bodily ills.
One saint could cure one disease, and one another; one saint protected
the cattle, another kept off thunder, and so forth—I will not tell you
more, lest I should tempt you to smile in this holy place; and tempt you,
too, to look down on your forefathers, who (though they made these
mistakes) were just as honest and virtuous men as we.
And even lately, up to this very time, there are those who have not full
faith in God; though they be good and pious persons, and good Protestants
too, who would shrink with horror from worshipping saints, or any being
save God alone. But they are apt to shut their eyes to the beauty and
order of God’s world, and to the glory of God set forth therein, and to
excuse themselves by quoting unfairly texts of Scripture. They say that
this world is all out of joint; corrupt, and cursed for Adam’s sin: yet,
where it is out of joint, and where it is corrupt, they cannot show.
And, as for its being cursed for Adam’s sin, that is a dream which is
contradicted by Holy Scripture itself. For see. We read in Genesis iii.
17, ‘Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it
all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth
to thee.’
Now, that the ground does not now bring forth thorns and thistles to us,
we know. For it brings forth whatsoever fair flower, or useful herb, we
plant therein, according to the laws of nature, which are the laws of
God. Neither do men eat thereof in sorrow; but, as Solomon says, ‘eat
their bread in joyfulness of heart.’ And so did they in the Psalmist’s
days; who never speak of the tillage of the land without some expression
of faith and confidence, and thankfulness to that God who crowns the year
with His goodness, and His clouds drop fatness; while the hills rejoice
on every side, and the valleys stand so thick with corn, that they laugh
and sing—of faith, I say, and gratitude toward that God who brings forth
the grass for the cattle, and green herb for the service of men; who
brings food out of the earth, and wine to make glad the heart of man, and
oil to give him a cheerful countenance, and bread to strengthen man’s
heart. Those well-known words are in the 104th Psalm; and I ask any
reasonable person to read that Psalm through—the Psalm which contains the
Jewish natural theology, the Jew’s view of this world, and of God’s will
and dealings with it—and then say, could a man have written it who
thought that there was any curse upon this earth on account of man’s sin?
But more. The Book of Genesis says that there is none; for, after it has
said in the third chapter, ‘Cursed is the ground for thy sake,’ it says
again, in the eighth chapter, verse 21, ‘And the Lord said in His heart,
I will not again curse the ground for man’s sake. While the earth
remaineth, seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, shall
not cease.’
Can any words be plainer? Whatever the curse in Adam’s days may have
been, does not the Book of Genesis represent it as being formally
abrogated and taken away in the days of Noah, that the regular course of
nature, fruitful and beneficent, might endure thenceforth?
Accordingly, we hear no more in the Bible anywhere of this same curse.
We hear instead the very opposite; for one says, in the 119th Psalm,
speaking indeed of God, ‘O Lord, Thy word endureth for ever in heaven.
Thy truth also remaineth from one generation to another. Thou hast laid
the foundation of the earth, and it abideth. They continue this day
according to Thine ordinance: for all things serve Thee.’ And so in the
148th Psalm, another speaks by the Spirit of God; ‘Let all things praise
the name of the Lord: for He commanded, and they were created. He hath
also established them for ever and ever: He hath given them a law which
shall not be broken.’
Yes, my friends, God’s law shall not be broken, and it is not broken.
And that faith, that the laws which govern the whole material universe,
cannot be broken, will be to us faith full of hope, and joy, and
confidence, if we will remember, with the Psalmist, that they are the
laws of the living God, and of the good God.
They are the laws of the living God: not the laws of nature, or fate, or
necessity—all three words which mean little or nothing—but of a living
God in whom we live, and move, and have our being; whose word—the
creating, organizing, inspiring word—runneth very swiftly, making all
things to obey God, and not themselves.
And they are the laws of a good God; of a moral God; of a generous,
loving, just, and merciful God, who, as the Psalmist reminds us (and that
is the reason of his confidence and his joy), while He telleth the number
of the stars, and calleth them all by their names, condescends at the
same time to heal those who are broken in heart; of a God who, while He
giveth fodder to the cattle, and feedeth the young ravens who call on
Him, at the same time careth for those who fear Him, and put their trust
in His mercy; of a God who, while His power is great and His wisdom
infinite, at the same time sets up the meek, and brings the ungodly down
to the ground; of a Father in heaven who is perfect in this—that He sends
His sun and rain alike on the just and the unjust, and is good to the
unthankful and the evil; of a Father, lastly, who so loved the world,
that He spared not His only-begotten Son, but freely gave Him for us, and
has committed to that Son all power in heaven and earth;—all power over
the material world, which we call nature, as well as over the moral
world, which is the hearts and spirits of men—to that Word of God who
runneth very swiftly, who is sharper than a two-edged sword, and yet more
tender than the love of woman; even Jesus Christ the Saviour, the Word of
God, who was in the beginning with God, and was God; by whom all things
were made; who is the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh
into the world, if by any means he will receive the light of God, and see
thereby the true and wise laws of Nature and of Spirit.
This is our God. This is He who sends food and wealth, rain and
sunshine. Shall we not trust Him? If we thank Him for plenty, and fine
weather, which we see to be blessings without doubt, shall we not trust
Him for scarcity and bad weather, which do not seem to us to be
blessings, and yet may be blessings nevertheless? Shall we not believe
that His very chastisements are mercies? Shall we not accept them in
faith, as the child takes from its parent’s hand bitter medicine, the use
of which it cannot see; but takes it in faith that its parent knows best,
and that its parent’s purpose is only love and benevolence? Shall we not
say with Job—Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him? He cannot mean
my harm; He must mean my good, and the good of all mankind. He must—even
by such seeming calamities as great rains, or failure of crops—even by
them He must be benefiting mankind. Recollect, as a single instance,
that the great rains of 1860, which terrified so many, are proved now to
have saved some thousands of lives in England from fever and similar
diseases. Take courage; and have, as the old Psalmist had, faith in God.
Believe that nothing goes wrong in this world, save through the sin, and
folly, and ignorance of man; that God is always right, always wise,
always benevolent: and be sure that you, each and all, are—
‘Safe in the hand of one disposing Power,
Or in the natal, or the mortal hour,
All nature is but art, unknown to thee;
All chance, discretion which thou can it not see.
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good;
And spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite,
One truth is clear—whatever is, is right.’
And pray to God that He may fill you with His Spirit, the spirit of
wisdom and understanding, of knowledge and grace of the Lord, and show to
you, as He showed to the Jews of old, His laws and judgments, and so
teach you how to see that the only thing on earth which is not right,
is—the sin of man.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Water of Life, and Other Sermons" ***
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