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True Words for Brave Men: A Book for Soldiers' and Sailors' Libraries

by Charles Kingsley · English · Gutenberg #20138 · 409,284 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: True Words for Brave Men: A Book for Soldiers' and Sailors' Libraries

Author: Charles Kingsley


        
Release date: December 19, 2006 [eBook #20138]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20138

Credits: Transcribed from the 1884 Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co., edition by David Price


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRUE WORDS FOR BRAVE MEN: A BOOK FOR SOLDIERS' AND SAILORS' LIBRARIES ***



Transcribed from the 1884 Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co., edition by David
Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org





TRUE WORDS FOR BRAVE MEN.


BY
CHARLES KINGSLEY,

LATE RECTOR OF EVERSLEY; CHAPLAIN TO THE QUEEN AND TO THE PRINCE OF
WALES.

_A BOOK FOR SOLDIERS' AND SAILORS' LIBRARIES_.

ELEVENTH THOUSAND.

LONDON:
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, & CO., 1 PATERNOSTER SQUARE.

1884.

_The Rights of Translation and of Reproduction are Reserved_.

Dedicated
BY KIND PERMISSION
TO
GENERAL SIR WILLIAM CODRINGTON, G.C.B.,
AND
ADMIRAL WELLESLEY, C.B.,
IN MEMORY OF
CHARLES KINGSLEY,
WHO WAS PROUD OF THEIR FRIENDSHIP,
AND LOVED AND HONOURED THEM
AS HE LOVED AND HONOURED
ALL BRAVE SOLDIERS
AND SAILORS.

   "Yet was he courteous still to every wight,
   And loved them that did to armes incline."

   SPENSER.




INTRODUCTORY NOTE.


This little volume is selected from the unpublished sermons and addresses
of Charles Kingsley by the request of a Colonel of Artillery, and with
the sanction of an Army Chaplain of long experience, who knew the
influence of his writings on soldiers, and who wish that that influence
may live, though he is no longer here.  The Lecture on Cortez was given
at Aldershot Camp in 1858, and the Address to Brave Soldiers and Sailors
written for and sent out to the troops before Sebastopol in the winter of
1855, when Mr. Kingsley's own heart, with that of all England, was
grieving over the sufferings of our noble army in the Crimea.  F. E. K.




I.  THE GOOD CENTURION; OR, THE MAN UNDER AUTHORITY.


   "And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto Him a
   centurion, beseeching Him and saying, Lord, my servant lieth at home,
   sick of the palsy, grievously tormented.  And Jesus said unto him, I
   will come and heal him.  The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am
   not worthy that Thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word
   only, and my servant shall be healed.  For I am a man under authority,
   having soldiers under me, and I say unto this man, Go, and he goeth;
   and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and
   he doeth it.  When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that
   followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found such great faith,
   no, not in Israel."--MATT. viii. 5-10.

We find in Holy Scripture, that of the seven heathens who were first
drawn to our Lord Jesus Christ and His gospel, three were soldiers.

The first was the Centurion, of whom our Lord speaks in such high terms
of commendation.

The next, the Centurion who stood by His cross, and said, "Truly this was
the son of God."  Old legends say that his name was Longinus, and tell
graceful tales of his after-life, which one would fain believe, if there
were any evidence of their truth.

The third, of course, was Cornelius, of whom we read in the Acts of the
Apostles.

Now these three Centurions--commanding each a hundred men--had probably
risen from the ranks; they were not highly educated men; they had seen
endless cruelty and immorality; they may have had, at times, to do ugly
work themselves, in obedience to orders.  They were doing, at the time
when they are mentioned in Scripture, almost the worst work which a
soldier can do.  For they were not defending their own country against
foreign enemies.  They were keeping down a conquered nation, by a stern
military despotism, in which the soldiery acted not merely as police, but
as gaolers and executioners.  And yet three men who had such work as this
to do, are singled out in Scripture to become famous through all time, as
the first-fruits of the heathen; and of one of them our Lord said, "I
have not found such great faith, no, not in Israel."

Why is this?  Was there anything in these soldiers' profession, in these
soldiers' training, which made them more ready than other men to
acknowledge the Lord Jesus Christ?  And if so; what was it?

Let us take the case of this first Centurion, and see if it will tell us.
We will not invent any reasons of our own for his great faith.  We will
let him give his own reasons.  We will let him tell his own story.  We
may trust it; for our blessed Lord approved of it.  Our Lord plainly
thought that what the soldier had spoken, he had spoken well.  And yet it
is somewhat difficult to understand what was in his mind.  He was plainly
no talker; no orator.  Like many a good English soldier, sailor, yeoman,
man of business, he had very sound instincts in him, and drew very sound
conclusions from them: but he could not put them into words.  He knew
that he was right, but he could not make a speech about it.  Better that,
than be--as too many are--ready to make glib speeches, which they only
half believe themselves; ready to deceive themselves with subtle
arguments and high-flown oratory, till they can give the most
satisfactory reasons for doing the most unsatisfactory and unreasonable
things.  No, the good soldier was no orator: but he had sound sense under
his clumsy words.  Let us listen to them once more.

"I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me.  And I say to this
man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my
servant, Do this, and he doeth it."  Surely the thought which was in his
mind is to be found in the very words which he used--Authority.
Subordination.  Discipline.  Obedience.  He was under authority, and must
obey his superior officer.  He had soldiers under him, and they must obey
him.  There must be not only no mutiny, but no neglect, no arguing, no
asking why.  If he said Go, a man must go; if he said Come, a man must
come; and make no words about it.  Otherwise the Emperor's service would
go to ruin, through laziness, distrust, and mutinous talk.  By
subordination, by discipline, by mutual trust and strict obedience, that
empire of Rome was conquering the old world; because every Roman knew his
place, and every Roman did what he was told.

But what had that to do with our Lord's power, and with the healing of
the child?

This.  The honest soldier had, I think, in his mind, that subordination
was one of the most necessary things in the world; that without it the
world could not go on.  Then he said to himself, "If there must be
subordination on earth, must there not be subordination in heaven?"  If
he, a poor officer, could get his commands obeyed, by merely speaking the
word; then how much more could God.  If Jesus was--as He said--as His
disciples said--the Lord, the God of the Jews: then He had no need to
come and see a sick man; no need to lay His hands on him; to perform
ceremonies or say prayers over him.  The Laws of Nature, by which health
and sickness come, would obey His word of command without rebellion and
without delay.  "Speak the word only, Lord, and my servant shall be
healed."

But how did the Centurion know--seemingly at first sight, that Jesus was
the Lord God?  Ah, how indeed?

I think it was because he had learnt the soldier's lesson.  He had seen
many a valiant officer--Tribunes, Prefects, Consuls, Emperors, commanding
men; and fit to command men.  There was no lack of such men in the Roman
empire then, as the poor, foolish, unruly Jews found out to their cost
within the next forty years.  And the good Centurion had been accustomed
to look at such men; and to look up to them beside, and say not merely--It
is a duty to obey these men, but--It is a delight to obey them.  He had
been accustomed--as it is good for every man to be accustomed--to meet
men superior to himself; men able to guide and rule him.  And he had
learned--as every good soldier ought to learn--when he met such a man,
not to envy him, not to backbite him, not to intrigue against him, not to
try to pull him down: but to accept him for what he was--a man who was to
be followed, if need be, to the death.

There was in that good Centurion none of the base spirit of envy, which
dreads and therefore hates excellence, hates ability, hates authority;
the mutinous spirit which ends, not--as it dreams--in freedom and
equality, but in slavery and tyranny; because it transforms a whole
army--a whole nation--from what it should be, a pack of staunch and
faithful hounds, into a mob of quarrelsome and greedy curs.  Not of that
spirit was the good Centurion: but of the spirit of reverence and
loyalty; the spirit which delights in, and looks up to, all that is brave
and able, great and good; the spirit of true independence, true freedom,
and the true self-respect which respects its fellow men; and therefore it
was, that when the Centurion came into the divine presence of Christ, he
knew at once, instinctively and by a glance, into what a presence he had
come.  Christ's mere countenance, Christ's mere bearing, I believe, told
that good soldier who He was.  He knew of old the look of great
commanders: and now he saw a countenance, in spite of all its sweetness,
more commanding than he had ever seen before.  He knew of old the bearing
of Consuls and of Emperors: and now, in spite of Christ's lowly disguise,
he recognised the bearing of an Emperor of emperors, a King of kings.  He
had learnt of old to know a man when he met one; and now, he felt that he
had met the Man of all men, the Son of Man; and that so God-like was His
presence, that He must be likewise the Son of God.

And so had this good soldier his reward; his reward for the soldierly
qualities which he had acquired; for subordination; for reverence; for
admiration of great and able men.  And what was his reward?  Not merely
that his favourite servant was healed at his request: but that he learnt
to know the Lord Jesus Christ, whom truly to know is everlasting life;
whom the selfish, the conceited, the envious, the slanderous, the
insolent, the mutinous, know not, and never will know; for they are not
of His Spirit, neither is He of theirs.

But more: What is the moral which old divines have drawn from this story?
"If you wish to govern: learn first to obey."  That is a moral lesson
more valuable than even the use of arms.  To learn--as the good Centurion
learnt--that a free man can give up his independence without losing it.
Losing it?  Independence is never more called out than by subordination.
A man never feels himself so much of a free man as when he is freely
obeying those whom the laws of his country have set over him.  A man
never feels so able as when he is following the lead of an abler man than
himself.  Remember this.  Make it a point of honour to do your duty
earnestly, scrupulously, and to the uttermost; and you will find that the
habits of self-restraint, discipline, and obedience, which you, as
soldiers, have learned, will stand you in good stead for the rest of your
lives, and make you each, in his place, fit to rule, just because you
have learned to obey.

But now go on a step, as the good Centurion went on, and say--If there is
no succeeding in earthly things, whether in soldiering or any other
profession, without subordination; without obeying rules and orders
strictly and without question: then perhaps there is no succeeding in
spiritual and heavenly things.  For has not God His moral Laws, His
spiritual Laws, which must be obeyed, if you intend to prosper in this
life, or in the life to come?

"Thou _shalt_ love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul, and thy
neighbour as thyself.  Thou _shalt_ honour thy father and thy mother.
Thou _shalt not_ kill, steal, commit adultery, slander, or covet."  So it
is written: not merely on those old tables of stone on Sinai; but in The
Eternal Will of God, and in the very nature of this world, which God has
made.  There is no escaping those Laws.  They fulfil themselves.  God
says to them, "Go," and they go; "Come," and they come; "Do justice on
the offender," and they do it.  If we are fools and disobey them, they
will grind us to powder.  If we are wise and obey them, they will reward
us.  For in wisdom's right hand is length of days, and in her left hand
riches and honour.  Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths
are peace.  She is a tree of life to them that lay hold of her, and
blessed is every one that retaineth her; as God grant you all will do.

But you, too, in time may have soldiers under you.  Think, I beseech you,
earnestly of this, and for their sake, as well as for your own, try by
God's help to live worthy of Christian English men.  Let them see you
going out and coming in, whether on duty or by your own firesides, as men
who feel that they are "ever beneath their great taskmaster's eye;" who
have a solemn duty to perform, namely, the duty of living like good men
toward your superior officers, your families, your neighbours, your
country, and your God--even towards that Saviour who so loved you that He
died for you on the cross, to set you the example of what true men should
be; the example of perfect duty, perfect obedience, perfect courage,
perfect generosity--in one word--the example of a perfect Hero.

Live such lives, and then, will be fulfilled to you, and to your children
after you, from generation to generation, the promises which God made,
ages since, to the men of Judea of old; promises which are all true
still, and will continue true, in every country of the world, till the
world's end.

"Put thou thy trust in the Lord, and be doing good; dwell in the land,
and verily thou shalt be fed.

The Lord knoweth the doings of the righteous; and their inheritance shall
endure for ever.

They shall not be confounded in the perilous time; and in the days of
dearth they shall have enough.

The Lord ordereth a good man's going; and maketh his way acceptable to
himself.

Though he fall, he shall not be cast down; for the Lord upholdeth him
with his hand.

I have been young, and now I am old; yet saw I never the righteous
forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread.

Flee from evil, and do the thing that is good; and dwell for evermore.

For the Lord loveth the thing that is right; He forsaketh not his that
are godly, but they are preserved for ever."  Amen.




II.  CHRIST IS COME.  A CHRISTMAS SERMON.


   "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the
   government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called
   Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The
   Prince of Peace.  Of the increase of his government and peace there
   shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to
   order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from
   henceforth even for ever."--ISAIAH ix. 6, 7.

It is now more than three thousand years ago that God made to Abraham the
promise, "In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed."
Again the promise was renewed to Moses when he was commanded to tell the
Jews, "a prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you, like unto me.
Hear ye him . . ."  In David's Psalms, again, this same strange person
was spoken of who was already, and yet who was to come.  David calls him
the Son of God, the King of kings.  Again, in the Prophets, in many
strange and mysterious words, is this same being spoken of as a virgin's
child--"Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall
be called Emmanuel, God with us;" and again, "Unto us a child is born,
unto us a son is given, and his name shall be called Wonderful,
Counsellor, the Mighty God--the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace."
And again, "There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a
branch shall grow out of his roots.  And the spirit of the Lord shall
rest upon him,--the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of
knowledge and the fear of the Lord.  And with righteousness shall He
judge the poor," &c.

And again, "Thou Bethlehem, though thou be little among the princes of
Judah, yet out of thee shall come forth He that is to be ruler in Israel,
whose goings forth have been from everlasting.  And He shall be great
unto the ends of the earth."

But time would fail me if I tried to repeat to you half the passages
wherein the old Jewish prophets foretold Him who was to come, and in whom
all the nations of the earth should be blessed, more and more clearly as
the time drew nigh.

Well, my friends, surely you know of whom I have been speaking--of whom
Moses and the prophets spoke--of Him who was born of a village maiden,
laid in a manger, proclaimed of angels to the shepherds, worshipped with
hymns of glory by the heavenly host on the first Christmas day eighteen
hundred and seventy-eight years ago, as we count time.  Aye, strange as
it may seem, _He is come_, and in Him all the nations of the earth are
blessed.  _He is come_--the Conqueror of Evil--the desire of all
nations--the Law-giver--the Lamb which was to suffer for our sins--the
King of kings--the Light which should lighten the heathen--the Virgin's
child, of wondrous wisdom, whose name should be God as well as man--whom
all the heathens, amid strange darkness and mad confusions, had still
been fearing and looking for.

_He is come_--He came on that first Christmas-tide.  And we here on each
Christmas-tide can thank God for His coming, and say before men and
angels, "Unto us a child is born--the Prince of Peace is _ours_--to His
kingdom we belong--He has borne about on Him a man's body, a man's soul
and spirit--He was born like us--like us He grew--like us He rejoiced and
sorrowed--tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin--able to
the uttermost to understand and help all who come to God by Him.  He has
bruised the serpent's head--He has delivered us from the power of
darkness, and brought us into _His_ kingdom.  Through His blood we have
redemption and forgiveness--yes! through Him who, though He was laid in a
manger, was yet the image of the unseen God.  And by Him, and for
Him--that Babe of Bethlehem--were all things created in heaven and
earth--and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist.  All
heaven and earth, and all the powers therein, are held together by Him.
For it pleased the Father that in _Him_ should all fulness dwell; and
having made peace through the blood of His cross, to reconcile by that
child all things unto Himself--all things in heaven--all things in
earth."

This should be our boast--this should be our glory--for this do we meet
together every Christmas day.

But what is all this to us if that Blessed Man be gone away from us?  Our
souls want more than I have told you yet.  Our souls want more than a
beautiful and wonderful story _about_ Christ.  They want Christ Himself.
Preaching is blessed and useful if it speaks of Christ.  Our own thoughts
are blessed and useful if we think of Christ.  The Bible is most blessed
and useful containing all things necessary to salvation, for it speaks of
Christ.  Our prayers are blessed and useful if in them we call and cry
earnestly to Christ.  But neither preaching, nor thinking, nor praying
are enough.  In them we think about Him and speak to Him.  _But we want
Him to speak to us_.  We want not merely a man to say, your sins _may_ be
forgiven you; we want Christ Himself to say, "Your sins _are_ forgiven
you."  We want not merely a wise book to tell us that the good men of old
belonged to Christ's kingdom--we want Christ Himself to tell us that we
belong to His kingdom.  We want not merely a book that tells us that He
promised always to be with us--we want Him Himself to tell us that He is
really now with us.  We want not merely a promise from a prophet of old
that in Him all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, but a sign
from Christ Himself that this nation of England is really now blest in
Him.  In short, we want not words, however true words, however fine
words, _about_ Christ.  We want Christ Himself to forgive us our sins--to
give peace and freedom to our hearts--to come to us unseen, and fill us
with thoughts and longings such as our fallen nature cannot give us--such
thoughts and feelings as we cannot explain in words, for they are too
deep and blessed to be talked about--but thoughts which say to us, as if
the blessed Jesus Himself spoke to us in the depths of our hearts, "Poor,
struggling, sinful brother! _thou art mine_.  For thee I was born--for
thee I died--thee I will teach--I will guide thee and inform thee with
mine eye--I will never leave thee nor forsake thee."

Well--you want _Him_--and you want a sign of Him--a sign of His own
giving that _He is among you this day_--a sign of His own giving that He
has taken you into His kingdom--a sign of His own giving that He died for
you--that He will feed and strengthen your souls in you with His own life
and His own body.

Then--there is a sign--there is the sign which has stood stedfast and
sure to you--and to your fathers--and your forefathers before them--back
for eighteen hundred years, over half the world.  There is the bread of
which He said, "Take, eat, this is my body which is broken for you."
There is the wine of which He said, "This cup is the New Covenant in my
blood, which is shed for you, and for many, for the forgiveness of sins."
There is His sign.  Don't ask _how_.  Don't try to explain it away, and
fancy that you can find fitter, and soberer, and safer, and more gospel-
sounding words than Jesus Christ's own, by which to speak of His own
Sacrament.  But say, with the great Queen Elizabeth of old, when men
tried too curiously to enquire into her opinion concerning this blessed
mystery--

   "Christ made the Word and spake it,
   He took the bread and brake it,
   And what His Word did make it,
   That I believe, and take it."

He said, "This bread is my body which was broken for you."  He said,
"This cup is the New Testament in my blood."  Is it? or is it not?  And
if it is, is not Christ among us now, indeed?  Is not that something
better than all the preaching in the world?  Jesus Christ, the King of
kings--the Saviour--the Deliverer--the Lamb of God--the Everlasting
Son--the Word--the Light--the Life--is here among us ready to feed our
souls in the Holy Sacrament of His body and blood, as surely as that
bread and wine will feed our bodies--yea--to feed our souls and bodies to
everlasting life.  "Ho! every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters
and drink.  Come, buy wine without money and without price."




III.  IS, OR IS NOT, THE BIBLE TRUE?


   "If I say the truth, why do ye not believe Me?"--JOHN viii. 46.

Is, or is not, the Bible true?  To this question we must all come some
day or other.  Do you believe that that book which lies there, which we
call the Bible, is a true book, or a lying book?  Is it true or false?  Is
it right or wrong?  Is it from God, or is it not from God?  Let us answer
that.  If it is not from God, let it go; but if it _is_ from God, which
we know it is, how dare we disobey it?

That _God_, the maker of heaven and earth, should speak to men--should
set His commands down in a book and give it to them--and that they should
neglect it, disobey it--it is the strangest sight that can be seen on
earth! that God in heaven should say one thing, and a human being, six
feet high at most, should dare to do another!

If the Bible is from God, I say, the question is not whether it is
_better_ to obey it or not.  Better? there is no better or worse in the
matter--it is infinitely necessary.  To obey is infinitely right, to
disobey is infinitely wrong.  To obey is infinitely wise, to disobey is
infinite folly.  There can be no question about the matter, except in the
mind of a fool.  Better to obey God's word?  Better indeed--for to obey
is heaven, to disobey is hell.  _That_ is the difference.  And at your
better moments does not the voice within you, witness to, and agree with,
the words of that book?  When it tells you to care more for your soul
than your body--more for the life to come, which is eternity, than for
the present life which lasts but a few years--does not common sense tell
you that?  The Bible tells you to reverence and love God the giver of all
good--does not reason tell you that?  The Bible tells you loyally to
obey, to love, to worship our blessed King and Saviour in heaven.  Does
not common sense tell you that?  Surely if there be such a person as
Jesus Christ--if He is sitting now in heaven as Saviour of all, and one
day to be Judge of all--by all means _He_ is to be obeyed, He is to be
pleased, whoever else we may displease.  Reason, one would think, would
tell us that--and it is just want of reason which makes us forget it.

What have you to say against the pattern of a true and holy man as laid
down in the Bible?  The Bible would have you pure--can you deny that you
ought to be that?  It would have you peaceable--can you deny that you
ought to be that?  The Bible would have you forgiving, honest,
honourable, active, industrious.  The Bible would have you generous,
loving, charitable.  Can you deny that that is right, however some of you
may dislike it?  The Bible would have you ask all you want from God, and
ask forgiveness of God for every offence, great and small, against Him.
Can you deny that that is right and reasonable?  The Bible would have you
live in continual remembrance that the great eye of God is on you--in
continual thankfulness to the blessed Saviour who died for you and has
redeemed you by His own blood--with daily and hourly prayer for God's
Spirit to set your heart and your understanding right on every point.  Can
you deny that that is all right and good and proper--that unless the
Bible be all a dream, and there be no Holy and Almighty God, no merciful
Christ in heaven, this is THE way and the only way to live?  Ay, if there
were no God, no Christ, no hereafter, it would be better for man to live
as the Bible tells him, than to live as too many do.  There would be
infinitely less misery, less heart-burnings, less suffering of body and
soul, if men followed Christ's example as told us in the Bible.  Even if
this life were all, and there were neither punishment nor reward for us
after death--does not our reason tell us that if all men and women were
like Christ in gentleness, wisdom, and purity, the world as long as it
lasted would be a heaven?

And do not your own hearts echo these thoughts at moments when they are
quietest and purest and most happy too?  Have you not said to
yourselves--"Those Bible words are good words.  After all, if I were like
that, I should be happier than I am now."  Ah! my friends, listen to
those thoughts when they come into your hearts--they are not your own
thoughts--they are the voice of One holier than you--wiser than you--One
who loves you better than you love yourselves--One pleading with you,
stirring you up by His Spirit, if it be but for a moment, to see the
things which belong to your peace.

But what can you say for yourselves, if having once had these thoughts,
having once settled in your own minds that the Gospel of God is right and
you are wrong, if you persist in disobeying that gospel--if you agree one
minute with the inner voice, which says, "Do this and live, do this and
be at peace with God and man, and your own conscience"--and then fall
back the next moment into the same worldly, selfish, peevish,
sense-bound, miserable life-in-death as ever?

The reason, my friends, I am afraid, with most of us is, sheer folly--not
want of cunning and cleverness, but want of heart--want of feeling--what
Solomon calls folly (Prov. i. 22-27), stupidity of soul, when he calls on
the simple souls, How long ye simple ones will you love simplicity or
silliness, and the scorners delight in their scorning (delight in
laughing at what is good), and fools hate knowledge--hate to think
earnestly or steadily about anything--the stupidity of the ass, who is
too stubborn and thick-skinned to turn out of his way for any one--or the
stupidity of the swine, who cares for his food and nothing further--or
worse than all, the stupidity of the ape, who cares for nothing but play
and curiosity, and the vain and frivolous amusements of the moment.

All these tempers are common enough, and they may be joined with
cleverness enough.  What beast so clever as an ape? yet what beast so
foolish, so mean, so useless?  But this is the fault of stupidity--it
blinds our eyes to the world of spirits; it makes us forget God; it makes
us see first what we can lay our hands on, and nothing more; it makes us
forget that we have souls.  Our glorious minds and thoughts, which should
be stretching on through all eternity, are cramped down to thinking of
nothing further than this little hour of earthly life.  Our glorious
hearts, which should be delighting in everything which is lovely, and
generous, and pure, and beautiful, and God-like--ay, delighting in God
Himself--are turned in upon themselves, and set upon our own gain, our
own ease, our own credit.  In short, our immortal souls, made in God's
image, become no use to us by this stupidity--they seem for mere salt to
keep our bodies from decaying.

Whose work is that?  The devil's.  But whose _fault_ is it?  Do you
suppose that the devil has any right in you, any power in you, who have
been washed in the waters of baptism and redeemed by Christ from the
service of the devil, and signed with His Cross on your foreheads,
_unless you give him power_?  Not he.  Men's sins open the door to the
devil, and when he is in, he will soon trample down the good seed that is
springing up, and stamp the mellow soil as hard as iron, so that nothing
but his own seeds can grow there, and so keep off the dews of God's
spirit, and the working of God's own gospel from making any impression on
that hardened stupified soil.

Alas! poor soul.  And thy misery is double, because thou knowest not that
thou art miserable; and thy misery is treble, because thou hast brought
it on thyself!

My friends--there is an ancient fable of the Jews, which, though it is
not true, yet has a deep and holy meaning, and teaches an awful lesson.

There lived, says an ancient Jewish Scribe, by the shores of the Dead
Sea, a certain tribe of men, utterly given up to pleasure and
covetousness, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride
of life.  To them the prophet Moses was sent, and preached to them,
warning them of repentance and of judgment to come--trying to awaken
their souls to high and holy thoughts, and bring them back to the thought
of God and heaven.  And they, poor fools, listened to Him, admired his
preaching, agreed that it all sounded very good--but that he went too
far--that it was too difficult--that their present way of life was very
pleasant--that they saw no such great need of change, and so on, one
excuse after another, till they began to be tired of Moses, and gave him
to understand that he was impertinent, troublesome--that they could see
nothing wise in him--nothing great; how could they?  So Moses went his
way, and left them to go theirs.  And long after, when some travellers
came by, says the fable, they found these foolish people were all changed
into dumb beasts; what they had tried to be, now they really were.  They
had made no use of their souls, and now they had lost them; they had
given themselves up to folly, and now folly had taken to her own; they
had fancied, as people do every day, that this world is a great
play-ground, wherein every one has to amuse himself as he likes best, or
at all events a great shop and gambling-house, where the most cunning
wins most of his neighbour's money; and now according to their faith it
was to them.  They had forgotten God and spiritual things, and now they
were hid from their eyes.  And these travellers found them sitting,
playing antics, quarrelling for the fruits of the field--mere
beasts--reaping as they had sown, and filled full with the fruit of their
own devices.

Only every Sabbath day, says the fable, there came over these poor
wretches an awful sense of a piercing Eye watching them from above--a dim
feeling that they had been something better and nobler once--a faint
recollection of heavenly things which they once knew when they were
little children--a blind dread of some awful unseen ruin, into which
their miserable empty beast-life was swiftly and steadily sweeping them
down;--and then they tried to think and could not--and tried to remember
and could not--and so they sat there every Sabbath day, cowering with
fear, uneasy and moaning, and half-remembered that they once had souls!

My friends, my friends, are there not too many now-a-days like these poor
dwellers by the Dead Sea, who seem to have lost all of God's image except
their bodies? who all the week dote on the business and the pleasures of
this life, going on very comfortably till they seem to have quite
hardened their own souls; and now and then on Sabbath days when they come
to church, and pretend to pray and worship, sit all vacant, stupid, their
hearts far away, or with a sort of passing uneasiness and dim feeling
that all is not right--_try to think and cannot_--_try to pray and
cannot_--and, like those dwellers by the Dead Sea, once a week on Sabbath
day half remember that they once had souls?

So true it is, that from him that hath not, shall be taken away even that
which he seemeth to have.  So true it is, that the wages of sin is death;
death to the soul even in this life.  So true it is that why men do not
believe Christ, is because they cannot hear His word.  So true it is,
that only the pure in heart shall see God, or love god-like men and god-
like words.  So true it is, that he that soweth the wind shall reap the
whirlwind, and that he who _will_ not hear Christ's words, shall soon not
be _able_ to hear them; that he who will not have Christ for his master,
must soon be content to have the devil for his master, and for his wages,
spiritual death.  From which sad fate of spiritual death may the blessed
Saviour, in His infinite mercy, deliver us.




IV.  THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE TREE OF LIFE; OR, THE FALL.


   "Now the serpent was more subtile than any beast of the field which
   the Lord God had made.  And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God
   said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?  And the woman
   said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the
   garden: but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the
   garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch
   it, lest ye die.  And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not
   surely die.  For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then
   your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and
   evil.  And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and
   that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one
   wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto
   her husband with her; and he did eat."--GENESIS iii. 1-6.

Here is a lesson for us all.  You and I, and all men brought into the
world with us a nature which fell in Adam; and, as it fell _before_ we
were born, it is certain enough to fall, again and again, after we are
born, in this life; ay, and unless we take care, to fall lower and lower,
every day, acting Adam's sin over again, until we surely die.  This is
what I mean--What God said to Adam and Eve, He says to every one of us.
And what the devil said to Adam and Eve, he will say to every one of us.

First.  God says to us, "Of all the trees of the garden thou mayest
freely eat: but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not
eat, lest thou die."

Of all the trees of the garden thou mayest freely eat.  God grudges you
nothing good for you.  He has put you into this good and pleasant world,
where you will find pleasures enough, and comforts enough, to satisfy
you, if you are wise; but there are things which God has forbidden you,
not out of any spite or arbitrariness, but because they are bad for you;
because they will hurt you if you indulge in them, and sooner or later,
kill both body and soul.

Now, many of those wrong things look pleasant enough, and reasonable
enough, as the forbidden fruit did.  Pleasant to the eyes and good for
food--and to be desired to make you wise.  As people grow up and go out
into life, they are tempted to do many things which their parents forbid,
which the Bible forbids, which the law of the land forbids, and they do
not understand at first why they are forbidden any more than Adam and Eve
understood why they were not to eat of the forbidden fruit.

Then the devil (who is always trying to slander God to us) whispers to
them, as he did to Eve, "How unreasonable! how hard on you.  People say
that this is wrong, and you must not do it, and yet how pleasant it must
be!  How much money you might get by it--how much wiser, and cleverer,
and more able to help yourself you would become, if you went your own
way, and did what you like.  Surely God is hard on you, and grudges you
pleasure.  Never mind--don't be afraid.  Surely you can judge best what
is good for you.  Surely you know your own business best.  Use your own
common sense and do what you like, and what you think will profit you.
Are you to be a slave to old rules which your parents or the clergyman
taught you?"

So says the devil to every young man as he goes out in life.  And to
many, alas!--to many, the devil's words sound reasonable enough; they
flatter our fallen nature, they flatter our pride and our self-will, and
make us fancy we are going up hill, and becoming very fine and manly, and
independent and knowing.  "_Knowing_"!  How many a young man have I seen
run into sin just that he might be _knowing_; and say, "Why should I not
see life for myself?  Why should I not know the world, and try what is
good, and how I like that, and what is bad too, and how I like that--and
then choose for myself like a man, instead of being kept in like a baby?"

So he says exactly what Adam and Eve said in their hearts--"I will eat of
the tree of knowledge of good and evil."  He says in his heart, too, just
what Solomon the wise said, when he, too, determined to eat of the fruit
of the tree of knowledge.

Ay, young people, who love to see the world, and to choose for
yourselves, read that Book of Ecclesiastes, the saddest book on earth,
and get a golden lesson in every verse of it.  See how Solomon determined
to see life, from the top to the bottom of it.  How he "gave his heart to
know, seek, and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done
under heaven.  I have seen all the works that are done under the sun, and
behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit," (Eccles. i. 13).

And then, how he turned round and gave his heart to know mirth, and
madness, and folly, and see whether _that_ was good for him, and, "I said
of laughter, it is mad: and of mirth, what doeth it?" (Eccles. ii. 2-26).
And then he gave himself to wine and revelling, and after that to riches,
and pomp, and glory, and music, and the "fine arts," as we call them.  "I
made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards: I made
me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kind of
fruits: I made me pools of water, to water therewith the wood that
bringeth forth trees: I got me servants and maidens, and had servants
born in my house; also I had great possessions of great and small cattle
above all that were in Jerusalem before me: I gathered me also silver and
gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces: I gat me
men singers and women singers, and the delights of the sons of men, as
musical instruments, and that of all sorts.  So I was great, and
increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem: also my wisdom
remained with me."  And what was the end?  "Then I looked on all the
works that my hand had done, 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."  Therefore, he says, that he hated all the labour he had
taken under the sun, because he must leave it to the men who came after
him, and found out at last, after years of labour and sorrow, trying to
make himself happy with this and that, and finding no rest with any of
them, that the conclusion of the whole matter was to "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
evil" (Eccles. xii. 13).

So said Solomon--and God knows, my dear friends, God knows, he said
truly.  Ay, and I know it to be true; and I entreat you this day, in
God's name, to hear the conclusion of the whole matter.  All this you
will find out by eating of the tree of knowledge, and "_seeing life_,"
and going your own way, and falling into sin, and smarting for it, for
weary years, in anxiety and perplexity, and shame, and sorrow of heart.

All that you will find out thereby--all that Solomon found out
thereby,--is just what you know already, and nothing more--just what you
have been taught ever since you could speak.  "Fear God and keep his
commandments, for this is the whole duty of man."  Why buy your own
experience dear, when you can get it gratis, for nothing already?

Yes; a simple, godly, industrious life, doing the duty which lies nearest
you, avoiding sin as you would an adder, because it is sure sooner or
later to sting you, if you touch it, is the straight road, and the only
road, to happiness, either in this life, or in the life to come.  Pleasure
and amusement, drinking and jollity, will not make you happy.  Money will
not make you happy.  Cleverness, and cunning, and knowledge of the world
will not make you happy.  Scholarship and learning will not.  But plain,
simple righteousness, simply doing right, _will_.

Do right then and be happy.  Obey God's commandments, and you will find
that His commandments are _Life_, and in the pathway thereof there is no
death.

Make up your minds to do right, to be right, to keep right by the help of
God's Right and Holy Spirit, in the right road.  Make up your minds
whether you will go through the world in God's way, or your own
way--whether you will taste what God has forbidden, and so destroy
yourselves, or obey Him and live with Him in bliss.  The longer you
delay, the more difficult you will find it.  Make up your minds now, and
ask God to teach you His own heavenly wisdom which is a Tree of Life to
all that lay hold on it.




V.  I AM.


   "I AM hath sent me into you."--EXODUS iii. 10.

Every day I find it more and more true, that the Bible is full of good
news from beginning to end.  The _Gospel_--that is good news--and the
best of all good news, is to be found in every book of it; perhaps if we
knew how to search the Scriptures, in every chapter and verse of it, from
beginning to end.  For from beginning to end, from Genesis to
Malachi--from the Gospel of St. Matthew to the end of the Revelation--what
our Lord said of the Bible stands true: "They (the Scriptures) are they
which testify of ME" (John v. 39).  The whole Bible testifies, bears
witness of Him, the One Unchangeable Christ, who said to Moses, "Say unto
the people, I AM hath sent me unto you."

Now let us think a while what that text means; for it has not to do with
Moses only, but with all God's prophets, evangelists, preachers.  David
might have said the same to the Jews in his time, "I AM hath sent me unto
you."  Elijah, Isaiah, St. Matthew, St. John, St. Paul, might have said
the same.  And so may God's ministers now.  And I, however sinful, or
ignorant, or unfaithful to my duty I may be, have still a right to say,
as I do now say solemnly and earnestly to you, "I AM hath sent me unto
you" this day.

But what do I mean by that?  That ought to depend on what Moses meant by
it.  Moses meant what God meant, and unless I mean the same thing I must
mean something wrong.  And this is what I think it does mean:

First.  I AM--the Lord Jesus Christ told Moses that his name was I AM.
Now you perhaps think that this is but a very common place name, for
every one can say of himself--I am--and it may seem strange that God
should have chosen for His own especial name, words which you and I might
have chosen for ourselves just as well.  I daresay you think that you may
fairly say "_you are_," and that I can say fairly that "I am."

And yet it is not so.  If I say "I am," I say what is not true of me.  I
must say "I am something--I am a man, I am bad, or I am good, or I am an
Englishman, I am a soldier, I am a sailor, I am a clergyman"--and then I
shall say what is true of me.  But God alone can say "I AM" without
saying anything more.

And why?  Because God alone _is_.  Everybody and everything else in the
world _becomes_: but God _is_.  We are all becoming something from our
birth to our death--changing continually and becoming something different
from what we were a minute before; first of all we were created and made,
_and so became men_; and since that we have been every moment changing,
becoming older, becoming wiser, or alas! foolisher; becoming stronger or
weaker; becoming better or worse.  Even our bodies are changing and
becoming different day by day.

But God never changes or becomes anything different from what He is now.
What He is, that He was, and ever will be.  God does not even become
older.  This may seem very strange, but it is true: for God made Time,
God made the years; and once there were no years to count by, no years at
all.  Remember how long had God Himself been, before He made Time, when
there was no Time to pass over?  Remember always that God must have
created Time.  If God did not create Time, no one else did; for there is,
as the Athanasian Creed says, "One uncreated and One eternal," even God
who made Time as well as all things else.

Am I puzzling you?  What I want to do is to make you understand that
God's life is quite utterly different from our life, or any way of living
and being which we can fancy or think of; lest you make to yourselves the
likeness of anything in heaven above or of the earth beneath, and think
that God is like that and so worship it, and have other gods beside the
true God, and so break the first and second commandments, as thousands do
who fancy themselves good Protestants, and hate Popery and idolatry, and
yet worship a very different sort of god from the "I AM," who sent Moses
to the children of Israel.  Remember then this at least, that God was
before all things, and all worlds, and all Time; so that there was a time
when there were no worlds, and a time when there was no Time--nothing but
God alone, absolute, eternal, neither made nor created, the same that He
is now and will be for ever.

When I say "God is," that is a very different thing from God Himself
saying, "I AM."  A different thing?  Oh! my friends, here is the root of
the whole Gospel, the root of all our hope for this world and for the
world to come--for ourselves, for our own future, and the future of all
the world.  Do you not see how?  Then I will try to explain.

Many heathen men have known that there was one eternal God, and that _God
is_.  But they did not know that God Himself had said so; and that made
them anxious, puzzled, almost desperate, so that the wiser they were, the
unhappier they were.  For what use is it merely knowing that "_God is_"?
The question for poor human creatures is, "But what sort of a being is
God?  Is He far off?  Millions of miles from this earth?  Does He care
nothing about us?  Does He let the world go its own way right or wrong?
Is He proud and careless?  A self-glorifying Deity whose mercy is _not_
over all His works, or even over any of them?  Or does He care for us?
Does He see us?  Will He speak to us?  Has He ever spoken to any one?  Has
He ever told any one about Himself?"  _There is the question_--the
question of all questions.  And if a man once begins thinking about his
own soul, and this world, and God,--till he gets that question answered,
he can have no comfort about himself or the world, or anything--till in
fact he knows whether God has ever spoken to men or not.

And the glory of the Bible, the power of God revealed in the Bible, is,
that it answers the question, and says, "God _does_ care for men, God
_does_ see men, God is not far off from any one of us."  Ay, God speaks
to men--God spoke to Moses and said, not "God is" but "I AM."  God in
sundry times and in divers manners _spoke_ to our fathers by the Prophets
and said "I AM."

But more--Moses said, "I AM hath sent me."  God does not merely love us,
and yet leave us to ourselves.  He sends after us.  He sends to us.  In
old times He sent prophets and wise men one after the other to preach
repentance and righteousness, and to teach men all that was good for
them; and when men would not listen to them, but shut their ears to them
and drove them out, killing some and beating some, God was so determined
to send to men, so unwearied, so patient, so earnest, so loving still,
that He said, "I will send now my own Son, surely they will hear Him."

Yes, my friends, this is the I AM.  This is God--this is our God--this is
our Heavenly Father; not a proud and selfish Being, who looks down
haughtily from afar off on all the misery and ignorance of the world, but
as a wise man of old said, "A most merciful God, a revealer of secrets,
who showeth to man the things which he knew not."  This is our God--not a
tyrant, but a Deliverer--not a condemning God, but a saving God, who
wills that none should perish, who sends to seek and to save those who
are lost, who sends His sun to shine on the just and the unjust, and is
good to the unthankful and the evil.  A God who so loved the world which
He had made, in spite of all its sin and follies, that He spared not His
only begotten Son, but freely gave Him for it.  A God who sits on His
throne for ever judging right, and ministering true judgment among the
people, who from His throne beholds all those who dwell upon the earth,
and fashions the hearts of them, and understandeth all their works.  A
God who comes out of His place to visit the wrong done on the earth, and
be a refuge for the oppressed, and a help in time of trouble, to help the
fatherless and poor unto their right, that the men of this world be no
more exalted against them.

This is _our God_.  This is our Father--always condescending, always
patient, always loving, always just.  And always active, always working
to _do good_ to all his creatures, like that exact pattern and copy of
Himself, the Lord Jesus Christ, who said, "My Father worketh hitherto,
and I work."  (John v. 17).

But again: "I AM hath sent me unto _you_."

Unto whom?  Who was Moses sent to?  To the Children of Israel in Egypt.
And what sort of people were they?  Were they wise and learned?  On the
contrary they were stupid, ignorant, and brutish.  Were they pious and
godly?  On the contrary they were worshipping the foolish idols of the
Egyptians--so fond of idolatry that they must needs make a golden calf
and worship it.  Were they respectable and cleanly livers?  Were they
teachable and obedient?  On the contrary, they were profligate, stiff-
necked, murmurers, disobedient, unwilling to trust God's goodness, though
He had shown them all those glorious signs and wonders for their sakes,
and brought them out of Egypt with a mighty hand and a stretched-out arm.
Were they high-spirited and brave?  On the contrary, they were
mean-spirited and cowards, murmuring against Moses and against God, if
anything went wrong, for setting them free; ready to go back and be
slaves to the Egyptians rather than face danger and fight; looking back
and longing after the flesh-pots of Egypt, where they eat bread to the
full, and willing to be slaves again and have all their men children
drowned in the river, and themselves put to hard labour in the brick
kilns, if they could only fill their stomachs.  And even at best when
Moses had brought them to the very edge of that rich land of Canaan,
which God had promised them, they were afraid to go into it, and win it
for themselves; and God had to send them back again, to wander forty
years in the wilderness, till all that cowardly, base, first generation,
who came up out of Egypt was dead, and a new generation had grown up,
made brave and hardy by their long training in the deserts, and taught to
trust and obey God from their youth; and so able and willing to conquer
the good land which God had promised them.

Altogether the Children of Israel, to whom God sent Moses, were plainly
an ignorant, brutish, cowardly set of people, fallen lower far than the
negroes of South America, fit to be slaves and nothing better.

Then why did God take such trouble for them?  Why did God care for them,
and help them, and work wonders for them?  Why?  Exactly because they
_were_ so bad.  He that hath ears to hear let him hear, and understand by
this example of all examples what manner of God our God is.  Just because
they were so bad, His goodness yearned over them all the more, and longed
to make them good.  Just because they were so unclean and brutish His
holiness longed all the more to cleanse them.  Because they were so
stupid and ignorant, His wisdom longed to make them wise.  Because they
were so miserable, His pity yearned over them, as a father over a child
fallen into danger.  Because they were sick, they had all the more need
of a physician.  Because they were lost, there was all the more reason
for seeking and saving them.  Because they were utterly weak, God desired
all the more to put His strength into them, that His strength might be
made perfect in weakness.

True, God's goodness seemed of little use to too many of them.  Their
history during the next forty years was a very sad one.  With many of
them God was not well pleased, the Bible tells us, and their carcases
fell in the Wilderness.  A sad forty years they were for Moses also, as
he says in that sad and glorious Psalm of his (Ps. xc. 7, 8): "We consume
away in thy displeasure, and are afraid of thy wrathful indignation.  Thou
hast set our misdeeds before us, our secret sins in the light of thy
countenance, for when Thou art angry our days are gone: we bring our
years to an end as a tale that is told."

But that was all their own fault.  God never left them for all those
forty years.  He fed them with manna in the wilderness, and the angel of
His presence preserved them.

And now, my friends, remember what I have said of God in this text, "I AM
hath sent me unto you," and see how it preaches to you an almighty,
unchangeable Father, whose mercy is over all His works, full of love and
care for all, longing and labouring for ever by His Son Jesus Christ to
raise us from the death of sin (which is the only death we need to be
afraid of) to the life of righteousness--the only life worth living here,
the only life which we can live beyond the grave!  A just God, a merciful
God, a patient God, a generous God, a gracious God; a God whose glory is
to save--a God who is utterly worthy of our love and respect--a God whom
we can trust--a God whom it is worth while to obey--a God who deserves
our thanks from our cradle to our grave--a God to whom we ought honestly,
and from the bottom of our hearts to say, now and for ever:

"We worship Thee, we bless Thee, we praise Thee, we magnify Thee, we give
thanks to Thee for Thy great glory, oh! Lord God, Heavenly King, God the
Father Almighty."




VI.  THE ENGLISHMAN TRAINED BY TOIL.


   "All the commandments which I command thee this day shall ye observe
   to do, that ye may live, and multiply, and go in and possess the land
   which the Lord sware unto your fathers.  And thou shalt remember all
   the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the
   wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in
   thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no.  And
   he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna,
   which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might
   make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word
   that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live. . . . Thou
   shall also consider in thine heart that, as a man chasteneth his son,
   so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee."--DEUT. viii. 1, 2, 3, 5.

As God led the Jews through the wilderness, so He leads us through the
journey of life.  As God called on the Jews to rejoice in Him, and to
bless Him for going with them, and teaching and training them by dangers
and sorrows; so He calls on us to lift up our hearts and bless Him for
teaching and training us in the battle of life.

But some of you may say, "Why do you ask us to thank God for lessons
which we have bought by labour and sorrow?  Are not our sorrows more than
our joys?  Our labour far heavier than our rest can be sweet?  You tell
us to be joyful and thank God for His mercies; but why all this toil?  Why
must we work on, and on, and on, all our days, in weariness and anxiety?
Why must we only toil, toil, till we die, and lie down, fairly conquered
and worn out, on that stern mother earth, from whom we have been wringing
our paltry livelihood from our boyhood to our grave?  What is our life
but labour and sorrow?"

Are not some of you thinking in this way to-day?  Have I not guessed the
hearts of some of you at least?  And is not this a strange way of making
you joyful to remind you of these thoughts?

My friends, be sure I only remind you of these sad thoughts, because they
are _true_ thoughts, because God meant you to bear them and _face_ them
like men; because you must have these thoughts, and let them make you
sad, and make up your minds to face them again and again, before even you
can thank God really like redeemed, immortal Christian men and women.  And
believe me, I would not mention these sad thoughts, if I had not a remedy
for them.  If I had not a message to you from the living God, and Christ
the King of the earth, whereby I tell you now to rejoice and give thanks
to Him in spite of all your labour and sorrow.  Ay more, I say, Rejoice
and give thanks _on account_ of all your labour and sorrow, and count it
all _joy_ when ye fall into divers tribulations.

It is true, my friends, we are a hard working and a somewhat sad race of
men, we English.  The life of the working man is labour and sorrow, and
so is the life of the scholar, and so is the life of even many a rich
man.  All things are full of labour in England.  Man cannot utter it, the
eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing; we are the
wisest of all nations; and yet as Solomon says, behold in much wisdom is
much grief; and in increasing knowledge, we still increase sorrow.

Truly, I may say of us Englishmen, as Paul said of the Christians of his
time, that if Christ be not raised from the dead, and if in this life
_only_ we have hope in Him, we are of all nations one of the most
unhappy.  When we look at all the hundreds of thousands pent up in our
great cities among filth and smoke, toiling in factories, in workshops,
in dark mines under ground--when we think of the soldier on the march
under the sultry sun of India, the sailor on the stormy sea--when we
think of this our bleak inclement climate, our five months of winter
every year;--no man's food and clothing to be gained but by bitter toil,
either of himself or of others--and then when we compare our lot with
that of the dwellers in hot countries, in India and in Africa, and the
islands of the South Seas, where men live with no care, no labour--where
clothes and fire are never needed--where every tree bears delicious food,
and man lives in perpetual summer, in careless health and beauty, among
continual mirth and ease, like the birds which know no care--then it
seems at moments as if God had been unfair in giving so much more to the
savage than He has to us, of the blessings of this earthly life; and we
are led to long that our lot was cast in those fruitful and delicious
climates of the South, in a continual paradise of mirth and plenty, and
beauty and sunshine.

But no, my friends, we are more blest than the careless Indian who never
knows what labour is; his life is but the life of the butterfly, which
flutters from flower to flower and sports in the sunshine, and sucks
sweets for a brief hour, and then perishes without hope.  His life is a
dream, he sees no heaven before him, he knows no glorious God, with the
sight of whom he is to be blest for ever.  His body may be in perpetual
ease, and health, and beauty for a few short years, but what care has he
for his undying spirit, that is blind and dead within him?

But to bring a man's soul to life, to train and educate a man's soul that
it may go on from strength to strength, and glory to glory till it
appears in the presence of God--that wants a stern and a severe training
of sorrow and labour, of which the poor, pampered, luxurious savage knows
nothing.  This is why Christ brought our forefathers into this bleak,
cold, northern land, and forced them to gain their bread by the sweat of
their brows, and the sorrows of their hearts, and to keep their land by
many wars.

Now this is the reason of our carefulness, of our many troubles, that God
is educating and training us English; that He will not have us be
savages, but Christian citizens; He will have us not merely happy, but
_blessed_ through all eternity.  He will not have us to be like the poor
Indians, slaves to our flesh and our appetites--slaves to the pleasant
things around us; but He will have us fill the earth and subdue it; He
will have England the light of the nations--and Englishmen preach
freedom, and wisdom, and prudence, and the gospel of Jesus Christ to all
the nations of the earth.  Therefore Christ afflicts us because He loves
us, because whom He loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He
receiveth.  Because He has ordained England to preach the Cross,
therefore He will have England bear the cross.

It has often struck me, my friends, as a beautiful and a deep sign, a
blessed ordinance of the great and wise God, that the flag of England,
and especially the flag of our navy--the flag which is loved and
reverenced through all the world, as the bringer of free communion
between nation and nation, the bringer of order and equal justice and
holy freedom, and the divine majesty of law, and the light of the blessed
gospel wherever it goes; that this flag, I say, should be the red-cross
flag, the flag of the Cross of Christ--a double sign--a sign to all men
that we are a Christian nation, a gospel people; and a sign, too, to
ourselves, that we are meant to bear Christ's cross--to bear the
afflictions which He lays upon us--to be made perfect through sufferings,
to crucify the flesh with its affections and lusts, that we may be brave
and self-denying; going forth in Christ's strength, remembering that it
is He who gives us power to get wealth; that we ought to fight His
battles, that we ought to spread His name at home and abroad; and rejoice
in every sorrow, which teaches us more and more the blessed meaning of
His saving name, and the share which we have in it.

I have said that we are a melancholy people.  Foreigners all say of us,
that we are the saddest of all people; that when they come to England,
they are struck with our silence, and gloominess, and careworn faces, and
our want of merriment and cheerfulness.  And yet, with all this, we are
the greatest of nations at this day--the strongest and the most
industrious and the wisest.  The gospel of Jesus Christ is preached
oftener, and more simply, and more fully here in England than in any
nation, and I dare to say it, that in spite of all our sins, there are as
many or more of God's true saints, more holy men and women among English
people at this moment, than among any people of the earth.  And why?
because there are so many among us who have hope in Christ beyond this
life, who look for everlasting salvation through all eternity to His
name.  If in this life only we have hope in Christ, truly of all people
we should be most miserable; but Christ is risen from the dead, and He
has ascended up on high, and led captivity captive, and received gifts
for men.  He sits even now at God's right hand praying for us.  To Him
all power is given in heaven and earth, and He is our covenant God and
Saviour, He is our King.  He is ours; and He will have us put on His
likeness, and with Him be made perfect through sufferings--_through
sufferings_, for sorrow is the gate of life.  Through much tribulation we
enter into the kingdom of God; without weary pain none of us is born into
the world; without weary labour not a harvest in England is grown and
reaped; without weary thought, and teaching, and correction, not a child
among us is educated to be a man; without weary thought and weary labour,
not one of us can do his duty in that station of life to which Christ has
called him.  Not without weary struggles and arguings and contentions, by
martyrdoms, by desperate wars, our forefathers won for us our religion,
our freedom and our laws, which make England the wonder of the world.
This is the great law of our life--to be made perfect through sufferings,
as our Lord and Master was before us.  He has dealt with us, as my text
tells you He dealt with the Jews, His chosen people of old, as He deals
with every soul of man on whom He sets His love.  "All the commandments
which I command thee this day shall ye observe to do, that ye may live,
and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the Lord sware unto
your fathers.  And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God
led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to
prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep
His commandments, or no.  And He humbled thee, and suffered thee to
hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy
fathers know; that He might make thee know that man doth not live by
bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the
Lord doth man live . . . Thou shalt also consider in thine heart, that,
as a man chasteneth his son, so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee."

For, believe me, my friends, whatever nation or whatever man Christ
chooses to be His own, and to be holy and noble and glorious with Him, He
makes them perfect through suffering.  First, He stirs up in them strange
longings after what is great and good.  He makes them hunger and thirst
after righteousness, and then He lets them see how nothing on this earth,
nothing beautiful or nothing pleasant which they can get or invent for
themselves will satisfy; and so He teaches them to look to Him, to look
for peace and salvation from heaven and not from earth.  Then He leads
them, as He led the Jews of old, through the wilderness and through the
sea, through strange afflictions, through poverty, and war, and labour,
that they may learn to know that He is leading them and not themselves;
that they may learn to trust not in themselves, but in Him; not in their
own strength: but in the bread which cometh down from heaven; not in
their own courage, but in Him; and just when all seems most hopeless, He
makes one of them chase a thousand, and by strange and unexpected
providences, and the courage which a just cause inspires, brings His
people triumphant through temptation and danger, and puts to flight the
armies of the heathen, and the inventions of the evil fiend, and
glorifies His name in His chosen people.

So He calls out in the heart of men and of the heart of nations, the two
great twin virtues, which always go hand in hand--Faith in God, and Faith
in themselves.  He lets them feel themselves foolish that they may learn
how to be wise in His wisdom.  He lets them find themselves weak that
they may learn how to be strong in His strength.  Then sometimes He lets
them follow their own devices and be filled with the fruits of their own
inventions.  He lets their sinful hearts have free course down into the
depths of idolatry and covetousness, and filthy pleasure and mad self-
conceit, that they may learn to know the bitter fruit that springs from
the accursed root of sin, and come back to Him in shame and repentance,
entreating Him to inform their thoughts, and guide their wills, and
gather them to Him as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wing, that
they may never more wander from Him, their life, their light, and their
Saviour.  Then, sometimes, if His children forsake His laws and break His
covenant, He visits their offences with the rod, and their sin with the
stripes of the children of men.  That is, He punishes them as He punishes
the heathen, if they sin as the heathen sin.  He lets loose upon them His
wrath, war, disease, or scarcity, that He may drive them back to Him.

And all the while He will have them _labour_.  He will make them try
their strength, and use their strength, and improve their strength of
soul and body.  By making them labour, Christ teaches His people
industry, order, self-command, self-denial, patience, courage, endurance,
foresight, thoughtfulness, earnestness.  All these blessed virtues come
out of holy labour; by working in welldoing we learn lessons which the
savage among his delicious fruits and flowers, in his life of golden
ease, and luxurious laziness, can never learn.

And all this Christ teaches us because He loves us, because He would have
us perfect.  His love is unchangeable.  As He swore by Himself that He
would never fail David, so He has sworn that He will never fail any one
of His Churches, or any one of us.  Lo, said He, I am with you always,
even to the end of the world.  Nothing shall separate us from the love of
Christ; neither battle nor famine, nor anything else in heaven or earth.
All He wants is to educate us, because He loves us.  He doth not afflict
willingly nor grieve the children of men.  And because He is a God of
love, He proves His love to us every now and then by blessing us, as well
as by correcting us; else our spirits would fail before Him, and the
souls which He has made.  When He sees our adversity, He hears our
complaint, He thinks upon His covenant and pities us, according to the
multitude of His mercies.  "A fruitful land maketh He barren for the
wickedness of them that dwell therein, yet when they cry unto the Lord in
their trouble, He delivereth them out of their distress.  He maketh the
wilderness standing water, and water springs of dry ground, and there He
setteth the hungry that they may build them a city, that they may sow
their lands and plant vineyards, to yield them fruits of increase.  He
blesseth them, so that they multiply exceedingly, and suffereth not their
cattle to decrease; and again, when they are diminished or brought low
through affliction, through any plague or trouble, though He suffer them
to be evil entreated by tyrants, and let them wander out of the way in
the wilderness; yet helpeth He the poor out of misery, and maketh them
households like a flock of sheep." (Ps. cvii.)

O my friends, have not these words ever been wonderfully fulfilled to
some of you!  Then see how true it is that God will not always be
chiding, neither keepeth He His anger for ever; but He knoweth our frame,
He remembereth that we are but dust, and like as a father pitieth his
children, so does He pity those who fear Him; and oftentimes, too, in His
great condescension, those who fear Him not.

My friends, I have been trying in this sermon to make you feel that you
are under God's guidance, that His providence is trying to train and
educate you.  I have told you that there is a blessed use and meaning in
your very sorrows, and in this life of continual toil which God has
appointed for you; I have told you that you ought to thank God for those
sorrows: how much more then ought you to thank Him for your joys.  If you
should thank Him for want, surely you should thank Him for plenty.  O
thank Him earnestly--not only with your lips, but in your lives.  If you
believe that He has redeemed you with His precious blood, show your
thankfulness by living as redeemed men, holy to God--who are not your
own, but bought with a price; therefore show forth God's glory, the power
of His grace in your bodies and your spirits which are His.  If you feel
that it is a noble thing to be an Englishman--especially an English
soldier or an English sailor--a noble and honourable privilege to be
allowed to do your duty in the noblest nation and the noblest church
which the world ever saw--then live as Englishmen in covenant with God;
faithful to Him who has redeemed you and washed you from your sins in His
own blood.  Do you be faithful and obedient to Christ's Spirit, and He
will be faithful to those promises of His.  Though a thousand fall at thy
right hand, yet the evil shall not come nigh thee.  Blessed are all they
that fear the Lord and walk in His ways.  For thou shalt eat the labours
of thine hand.  O well art thou and happy shalt thou be.  The Lord out of
heaven shall so bless thee, that thou shalt see England in prosperity all
thy life long.  Yea, thou shalt see thy children's children, and peace
upon thy native land.

Oh, remember how God fulfilled that promise to England seventy years ago,
when the French swept in fire and slaughter, and horrors worse than
either, over almost every nation in Europe, while England remained safe
in peace and plenty, and an enemy never set foot on God's chosen English
soil.  Remember the French war, and our salvation in it, and then believe
and take comfort.  Trust in the Lord and be doing good; dwell in the
land, and verily thou shalt be fed.




VII.  HIGHER OR LOWER: WHICH SHALL WIN?


   "Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after
   the flesh.  For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye
   through the spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.
   For as many as are led by the spirit of God, they are the sons of God.
   For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye
   have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba,
   Father."--ROMANS viii. 12-15.

Let us try to understand these words.  They are of quite infinite
importance to us all.

We shall all agree, all of us at least who have thought at all about
right and wrong, and tried to do right and avoid wrong--that there goes
on in us, at times, a strange struggle.  We wish to do a right thing, and
at the very same time long to do a wrong one.  We are pulled, as it were,
two different ways by two different feelings, feel as if we were two men
at once, a better man and a worse man struggling for the mastery.  One
may conquer, or the other.  We may be like the confirmed drunkard who
cannot help draining off his liquor, though he knows that it is going to
kill him; or we may be like the man who conquers his love for drink, and
puts the liquor away, because he knows that he ought not to take it.

We know too well, many of us, how painful this inward struggle is,
between our better selves, and our worse selves.  How discontented with
ourselves it makes us, how ashamed of ourselves, how angry with
ourselves.  We all understand too well--or ought to understand, St.
Paul's words: How often the good which he wished to do, he did not do,
but the evil which he did not wish to do, he did.  How he delighted in
the law of God in his inward man; but he found another law in him, in his
body, warring against the law of his mind--that is his conscience and
reason, and making a slave of him till he was ready at times to cry, "Oh
wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this
death?"

We can understand too, surely the famous parable of Plato, the greatest
of heathen philosophers, who says, that the soul of man is like a
chariot, guided by a man's will, but drawn by two horses.  The one horse
he says is white, beautiful and noble, well-broken and winged, too,
always trying to rise and fly upward with the chariot toward heaven.  But
the other horse is black, evil, and unmanageable, always trying to rush
downward, and drag the chariot and the driver into hell.

Ah my friends, that is but too true a picture of most of us, and God
grant that in our souls the better horse may win, that our nobler and
purer desires may lift us up, and leave behind those lower and fouler
desires which try to drag us down.  But to drag us down whither?  To hell
at last, says Plato the heathen.  To destruction and death in the
meanwhile, says St. Paul.

Now in the text St. Paul explains this struggle--this continual war which
goes on within us.  He says that there are two parts in us--the flesh and
the spirit--and that the flesh lusts, that is, longs and struggles to
have its own way against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.
First, there is a flesh in us--that is, a carnal animal nature.  Of that
there can be no doubt: we are animals, we come into the world as animals
do--eat, drink, sleep as they do--have the same passions as they have--and
our carnal mortal bodies die at last, exactly as the animals die.

But are we nothing more?  God forbid.  St. Paul tells us that we are
something more--and our own conscience and reason tell us that we are
something more.  We know that to be a man, we must be something more than
an animal--a mere brute--for when we call any one a brute, what do we
mean?  That he has lost his humanity, his sense of justice, mercy, and
decency, and given himself up to his flesh--his animal nature, till the
_man_ in him is dead, and only the _brute_ remains.  Mind, I do not say
that we are right in calling any human being a brute, for no one, I
believe, is sunk so low, but there is some spark of humanity, some spark
of what St. Paul calls "the spirit," left in him, which may be fanned
into a flame and conquer, and raise and save the man at last--unless he
be a mere idiot--or that most unhappy and brutal of all beings, a
confirmed drunkard.

But our giving way to the same selfish shameless passions, which we see
in the lower animals, is letting the "brute" in us conquer, is giving way
to the works of the flesh.  The shameless and profligate person gives way
to the "brute" within him--the man who beats his wife--or ill-treats his
children--or in any wise tyrannises over those who are weaker than
himself, he too gives way to the "brute" within him.  He who grudges,
envies, tries to aggrandise himself at his neighbour's expense--he too
gives way to the "brute" within him, and puts on the likeness of the dog
which snatches and snarls over his bone.  He who spends his life in
cunning plots and mean tricks, stealthy, crafty, silent, false, he gives
way to the "brute" in him, just as much as the fox or ferret.  And those,
let me say, who without giving way to those grosser vices, let their
minds be swallowed up with vanity, love of admiration, always longing to
be seen and looked at, and wondering what folks will say of them, they
too give way to the flesh, and lower themselves to the likeness of
animals.  As vain as a peacock, says the old proverb.  And shame it is to
any human being so far to forget his true humanity, as to have that said
of him.  And what shall we say of them who like the swine live only for
eating and drinking, and enjoyment?  Or what of those who like the
butterflies spend all their time in frivolous amusement, fluttering in
the sunshine, silly and helpless, without a sense of duty or usefulness,
without forethought for the coming frosts of winter, against which their
gay feathers would be no protection?  Do not all these in some way or
other give way to the animal within them, and live after the flesh?  And
do they not, all of them, of the flesh, reap corruption, and fulfil St.
Paul's words, "If ye live after the flesh ye shall die?"

But some one will say--"Die?--of course we shall all die--good and bad
alike."  Is it so, my friends?  Then why does our Lord say, "He that
liveth and believeth in me shall never die?"  And why does St. Paul say,
"If ye through the spirit do mortify," that is crush, and as it were
kill, "the deeds of the body," all those low animal passions and vices,
"ye shall live."

Let us look at the text again.  "If ye live after the flesh ye shall
die."  If you give way to those animal passions and vices--low and
cruel--or even merely selfish and frivolous, you shall die; not merely
your bodies--they will die in any case--the animals do--for animals they
are, and as animals die they must.  But over and above that--you
yourselves shall die--your character will die, your manhood or your
womanhood will die, your immortal soul will die.  The likeness of God in
you will die.  Oh, my friends, there is a second death to which that
first death of the body is a mere trivial and harmless accident--the
death of sin which kills the true man and true woman within you.  And
that second death may begin in this life, and if it be not stopped and
cured in time, may go on for ever.  The black horse of which I spoke just
now, may get the mastery and drag us down, down, into bogs out of which
we can never rise--over cliffs which we can never climb again--down lower
and lower--more and more foolish, more and more reckless, more and more
base, more and more wretched.  And then there will be no more use in
saying, "The Lord have mercy on my soul," for we shall have no soul left
to have mercy on.

This is the dark side of the matter--a very dark one: but it has to be
spoken of, because it is true; and what is more, it comes true only too
often in this world.  God grant, my dear friends, that it may not come
true of any of you.

But there is also a bright side to the matter--and on that I will speak
now, in order that this sermon may end, as such gospel sermons surely
should end, not with threats and fear, but with hope and comfort.

"If ye through the spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall
live."  If you will be true to your better selves, if you will listen to,
and obey the spirit of God, when He puts into your hearts good desires,
and makes you long to be just and true, pure and sober, kind and useful.
If you will cast away and trample under foot animal passions, low vices,
you shall live.  _You_ shall live.  Your very soul and self shall live,
and live for ever.  Your humanity, your human nature shall live.  All
that is humane in you shall live.  All that is merciful and kind in you,
all that is pure and graceful, all that is noble and generous, all that
is useful.  All in you that is pleasant to yourselves shall live.  All in
you that is pleasant to your neighbours.  All in you that is pleasant to
God shall live.  In one word, all in you that is like Christ--all in you
that is like God--all in you that is spirit and not flesh, shall live,
and live for ever.  So it must be, for what says St. Paul?  "As many as
are led by the spirit of God, they are the sons of God."  Those who let
the spirit of God lead them upward instead of letting their own animal
nature drag them downward, they are the sons of God.  And how can a son
of God perish?  How can that which is like God and like Christ perish?
How can he perish, who like Christ is full of the fruits of the spirit?
of love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
meekness, temperance?  The world did not give them to him, and the world
cannot take them from him.  They were not bestowed on him at his bodily
birth--neither shall they be taken from him at his bodily death--for
those blessed fruits of the spirit belong neither to the flesh nor to the
world, but to Christ's spirit, and to heaven--to that heaven in which
they dwell before the throne of God--yea, rather in the mind of God
Himself, the eternal forms of the truth, the beauty, the goodness--which
were before all worlds--and shall be after all worlds have passed away.

Oh! choose my friends, especially you who are young and entering into
life.  Remember the parable of the old heathen, about the two horses who
draw your soul.  Choose in time whether the better horse shall win, or
the worse; whether your better self, or your worse, the Spirit of God or
your own flesh, shall be your master--whether you will rise step by step
to heaven, or sink step by step to death and hell?  And let no one tell
you.  That is not the question.  That is not what we care about.  We know
we shall do a great many wrong things before we die.  Every one does
that; but we hope we shall be able to make our peace with God before we
die, and so be forgiven at last.

My dear friends, that kind of religion has done more harm than most kinds
of _irreligion_.  It tells you to take your chance of beginning at the
end--that is just before you die.  Common sense tells you that the only
way to get to the end, is by beginning at the beginning, which is _now_.
Now is the accepted time.  _Now_ is the day of salvation, and you are
accepted now, already, long ago.

What do you or any man want with making your peace with God?  You are at
peace with God already.  He has made His peace with you.  An infinitely
better peace than any priest or preacher can make for you.  _You are
God's child_.  He looks down on you with boundless love.  The great heart
of Christ, your King, your Redeemer, your elder brother, yearns over you
with boundless longing to draw you up to Him, that you may be noble as He
is noble, pure as He is pure, loving as He is loving, just as He is just.
Try to be that.  God will at the last day take you as He finds you.  Let
Him find you such as _that_--walking not after the flesh, but after the
Spirit; and then, and then only, there will be no condemnation for you,
for you will be in Christ Jesus.  Do not--do not talk about making your
peace with God some day--like a naughty child playing truant till the
last moment, and hoping that the schoolmaster may forget to punish it.
No, I trust you have received the Spirit.  If you have, then look facts
in the face.  I trust that none of you have received the Spirit of
bondage, which is slavery again unto fear.  If you have God's Spirit you
will see who you are, and where you are, and act accordingly--you will
see that you _are_ God's children, who are meant to be educated by the
Son of God, and led by the Spirit of God, and raised day by day, year by
year, from the death of sin, to the life of righteousness, from the
likeness of the brute animal, to the likeness of Christ, the Son of Man!




VIII.  ST. PETER; OR, TRUE COURAGE.


   "Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that
   they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took
   knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.  And they called
   them, and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of
   Jesus.  But Peter and John answered and said unto them, Whether it be
   right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God,
   judge ye."--ACTS iv. 13, 18, 19.

I think that the quality, the grace of God, which St. Peter's character
and story specially forces on our notice is courage--the true courage
which comes by faith.  The courage which comes by faith, I say.  There is
a courage which does not come by faith.  There is a brute courage which
comes from hardness of heart; from obstinacy, or anger, or stupidity,
which does not see danger, or does not feel pain.  That is the courage of
the brute.  One does not blame it or call it wrong.  It is good in its
place, as all natural things are which God has made.  It is good enough
for the brute; but it is not good enough for man.  You cannot trust it in
man.  And the more a man is what a man should be, the less he can trust
it.  The more mind and understanding a man has, so as to be able to
foresee danger and measure it, the more chance there is of his brute
courage giving way.  The more feeling a man has, the more keen he is to
feel pain of body, or pain of mind, such as shame, loneliness, the
dislike of ridicule, and the contempt of his fellow-men; in a word, the
more of a man he is, the more chance there is of his brute courage
breaking down, just when he wants it more to keep him up, and leaving him
to play the coward and come to shame.

Yes; to go through with a difficult or dangerous undertaking a man wants
more than brute courage.  He wants spiritual courage, the courage which
comes by faith.  He needs to have faith in what he is doing to be certain
that he is doing his duty--to be certain that he is in the right.  To
give one example.  Look at the class of men who in all England in times
of peace undergo the most fearful dangers; who know not at what hour of
any night they may not be called up to the most serious and hard labour
and responsibility, with the chance of a horrible and torturing death.  I
mean the firemen of our great cities, than whom there are no steadier,
braver, nobler-hearted men.  Not a week passes without one or more of
those firemen, in trying to save life and property, doing things which
are altogether heroic.  What do you fancy keeps them up to their work?
High pay?  The amusement and excitement of the fires?  The vanity of
being praised for their courage?  My friends, those would be but weak and
paltry motives, which would not keep a man's heart calm and his head
clear under such responsibility and danger as theirs.

No; it is the sense of duty.  The knowledge that they are doing a good
and a noble work in saving the lives of human beings and the wealth of
the nation--the knowledge that they are in God's hands, and that no evil
can happen to him who is doing right--that to him even death at his post
is not a loss, but a gain.  In short, faith in God, more or less clear,
is what gives those men their strong and quiet courage.  God grant that
you and I, if ever we have dangerous work to do, may get true courage
from the same fountain of ghostly strength.

Yes; it is the courage which comes by faith which makes truly brave men,
men like St. Peter and St. John, who can say, "If I am right, God is on
my side, I will not fear what men can do unto me."  "I will not fear,"
said David, "though the earth be moved, and the mountains carried into
the midst of the sea."  The just man who holds firm to his duty will not,
says a wise old writer, "be shaken from his solid mind by the rage of the
mob bidding him do base things, or the frown of the tyrant who persecutes
him.  Though the world were to crumble to pieces round him, its ruins
would strike him without making him tremble."

Such courage has made men, shut up in prison for long weary years for
doing what was right, endure manfully for the sake of some great cause,
and say--

   "Stone walls do not a prison make,
      Nor iron bars a cage,
   Minds innocent and quiet take
      That for an hermitage.
   If I have freedom in my thought,
      And in my soul am free,
   Angels alone that soar above
      Enjoy such liberty."

Yes; settle it in your hearts, all of you.  There is but one thing you
have to fear in heaven or earth--being untrue to your better selves, and
therefore untrue to God.  If you will not do the thing you know to be
right, and say the thing you know to be true, then indeed you are weak.
You are a coward, and sin against God.  And you will suffer the penalty
of your cowardice.  You desert God, and therefore you cannot expect Him
to stand by you.  But who will harm you if you be followers of that which
is right?

What does David say:--"Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall
dwell in thy holy hill?  He that walketh uprightly, and worketh
righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart.  He that backbiteth
not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbour, nor taketh up a
reproach against his neighbour.  In whose eyes a vile person is
contemned; but he honoureth them that fear the Lord.  He that sweareth to
his own hurt, and changeth not.  He that putteth not out his money to
usury, nor taketh reward against the innocent.  He that doeth these
things shall never be moved."--Psalm xv. 1-5.  Yes, my friends, there is
a tabernacle of God in which, even in this life, He will hide us from
strife.  There is a hill of God in which, even in the midst of danger,
and labour, and anxiety, we may rest both day and night--even Jesus
Christ, the Rock of Ages--He who is the righteousness itself, the truth
itself.  And whosoever does righteousness and speaks truth, dwells in
Christ in this life, as well as in the life to come.  And Christ will
give him courage to strengthen him by His Holy Spirit, to stand in the
evil day, the day of danger, if it shall come--and having done all to
stand.

Pray you then for the Spirit of Faith to believe really in God, and for
the spirit of ghostly strength to obey God honestly.  No man ever asked
honestly for that Spirit but what he gained it at last.  And no man ever
gained it but what he found the truth of St. Peter's own words--"Who will
harm you, if you be followers of what is good?"




IX.  THE STORY OF JOSEPH.


   "I fear God."  GENESIS xlii. 18.

Did it ever seem remarkable to you, as it has seemed to me, how many
chapters of the Bible are taken up with the history of Joseph--a young
man who, on the most memorable occasion in his life, said "I fear God,"
and had no other argument to use?

Thirteen chapters of the book of Genesis are mainly devoted to the tale
of this one young man.  Doubtless his father Jacob's going down into
Egypt, was one of the most important events in the history of the Jews:
we might expect, therefore, to hear much about it.  But what need was
there to spend four chapters at least in detailing Joseph's meeting with
his brethren, even to minute accounts of the speeches on both sides?

Those who will may suppose that this is the effect of mere chance.  Let
us have no such fancy.  If we believe that a Divine Providence watched
over the composition of those old Scriptures; if we believe that they
were meant to teach, not only the Jews but all mankind; if we believe
that they reveal, not merely some special God in whom the Jews believed,
but the true and only God, Maker of heaven and earth; if we believe, with
St. Paul, that every book of the Old Testament is inspired by God, and
profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in
righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished
unto all good works--if we believe this, I say, it must be worth our
while to look carefully and reverently at a story which takes up so large
a part of the Bible, and expect to find in it something which may help to
make _us_ perfect, and thoroughly furnish _us_ unto all good works.

Now, surely when we look at this history of Joseph, we ought to see at
the first glance that it is not merely a story about a young man, but
about the common human relations--the ties which bind any and every man
to other human beings round him.  For is it not a story about a brother
and brothers? about a son and a father, about a master and a servant?
about a husband and a wife? about a subject and a sovereign? and how they
all behaved to each other--some well and some ill--in these relations?

Surely it is so, and surely this is why the story of Joseph has been
always so popular among innocent children and plain honest folk of all
kinds; because it is so simply human and humane; and therefore it taught
them far more than they could learn from many a lofty, or seemingly
lofty, book of devotion, when it spoke to them of the very duties they
had to fulfil, and the very temptations they had to fight against, as
members of a family or as members of society.  "One touch of Nature (says
the poet) makes the whole world kin;" and the touches of nature in this
story of Joseph make us feel that he and his brethren, and all with whom
he had to do, are indeed kin to us; that their duty is our duty too--their
temptations ours--that where they fell, we may fall--where they conquered
we may conquer.

For what is the story?  A young lad is thrown into every temptation
possible for him.  Joseph is very handsome.  The Bible says so expressly;
so we may believe it.  He has every gift of body and mind.  He is, as his
story proves plainly, a very clever person, with a strange power of
making every one whom he deals with love him and obey him--a terrible
temptation, as all God's gifts are, if abused by a man's vanity, or
covetousness or ambition.  He is an injured man too.  He has been basely
betrayed by his brothers; he is under a terrible temptation, to which
ninety-nine men out of one hundred would have yielded--do yield, alas! to
this day, to revenge himself if he ever has an opportunity.  He is an
injured man in Egypt, for he is a slave to a foreigner who has no legal
or moral right over him.  If ever there was a man who might be excused
for cherishing a burning indignation against his oppressors, for brooding
over his own wrongs, for despairing of God's providence, it is Joseph in
Egypt.  What could we do but pity him if he had said to himself, as
thousands in his place have said since, "There is no God, or if there is,
He does not care for me--He does not care what men do.  He looks on
unmoved at wrong and cruelty, and lets man do even as he will.  Then why
should not _I_ do as _I_ will?  What are these laws of God of which men
talk?  What are these sacred bonds of family and society?  Every one for
himself is the rule of the world, and it shall be _my_ rule.  Every man's
hand has been against _me_; why should not my hand be against every man?
_I_ have been betrayed; why should not _I_ betray?  _I_ have been
opprest; why should not _I_ oppress?  I have a lucky chance, too, of
enjoying and revenging myself at the same time; why should I not take my
good luck, and listen to the words of the tempter?"

My dear friends, this is the way in which thousands have talked, in which
thousands talk to this day.  This is the spirit which ends in breaking up
society, as happened in France eighty years ago, in the inward corruption
of a nation, and at last, in outward revolution and anarchy, from which
may God in His mercy deliver us and our fellow-countrymen, and the
generations yet to come.  But any nation or any man, will only be
delivered from it, as Joseph was delivered from it, by saying, "I fear
God."  No doubt it is most natural for a man who is injured and opprest
to think in that way.  Most _natural_--just as it is most natural for the
trapped dog to struggle vainly, and, in his blind rage, bite at
everything around him, even at his own master's hand when it offers to
set him free.  And if men are to be mere children of nature, like the
animals, and not children of grace and sons of God, like Joseph, and like
one greater than Joseph, then I suppose they must needs tear each other
to pieces in envy and revenge, for there is nought better to be done.  But
if they wish to escape from the misery and ruin which envy and revenge
bring with them, then they had better recollect that they are not
children of nature, but children of God--they had best follow Joseph's
example, and say, "I fear God."

For this poor, betrayed, enslaved lad had got into his heart something
above Nature--something which Nature cannot give, but only the
inspiration of the Spirit of God gives.  He had got into his heart the
belief that God's laws were sacred things and must not be broken, and
that whatever befel him he must fear God.  However unjust and lawless the
world looked, God's laws were still in it, and over it, and would avenge
themselves, and he must obey them at all risks.  And what were God's laws
in Joseph's opinion?

These--the common relations of humanity between master to servant, and
servant to master; between parent to child, and child to parent; brother
to brother and sister to sister, and between the man who is trusted and
the man who trusts him.  These laws were sacred; and if all the rest of
the world broke them, he (Joseph) must not.  He was bound to his master,
not only by any law of man, but by the Law of God.  His master trusted
him, and left all that he had in his hand, and to Joseph the law of
honour was the law of God.  Then he must be justly faithful to his
master.  A sacred trust was laid on him, and to be true to it was to fear
God.

After a while his master's wife tempts him.  He refuses; not merely out
of honour to his master, but from fear of God.  "How can I do this great
wickedness," says Joseph, "and sin against God?"  His master and his
mistress are heathen, but their marriage is of God nevertheless; the vow
is sacred, and he must deny himself anything, endure anything, dare any
danger of a dreadful death, and a prison almost as horrible probably as
death itself, rather than break it.

So again, in the prison.  If ever man had excuse for despairing of God's
providence, for believing that right-doing did _not_ pay, it was poor
Joseph in that prison.  But no.  God is with him still.  He believes
still in the justice of God, the providence of God, and therefore he is
cheerful, active--he can make the best even of a dungeon.  He can find a
duty to do even there; he can make himself useful, helpful, till the
keeper of the prison too leaves everything in his hand.

What a gallant man! you say.  Yes, my friends, but what makes him
gallant?  That which St. Paul says (in Hebrews xi.) made all the old
Jewish heroes gallant--faith in God; real and living belief that God
is--and that He is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.

At last Joseph's triumph comes.  He has his reward.  God helps
him--because he will help himself.  He is made a great officer of state,
married to a woman of high rank, probably a princess, and he sees his
brothers who betrayed him at his mercy.  Their lives are in his hand at
last.  What will he do?  Will he be a bad brother because they were bad?
Or will he keep to his old watchword, "I fear God?"  If he is tempted to
revenge himself, he crushes the temptation down.  He will bring his
brothers to repentance.  He will touch their inward witness, and make
them feel that they have been wicked men.  That is for their good.  And
strangely, but most naturally, their guilty consciences go back to the
great sin of their lives--to Joseph's wrong, though they have no notion
that Joseph is alive, much less near them.  "Did I not tell you," says
Reuben, "sin not against the lad, and ye would not hearken?  Therefore is
this distress come upon us."

Joseph punishes Simeon by imprisonment.  It may be that he had reasons
for it which we are not told.  But when his brothers have endured the
trial, and he finds that Benjamin is safe, he has nothing left but
forgiveness.  They are his brethren still--his own flesh and blood.  And
he "fears God."  He dare not do anything but forgive them.  He forgives
them utterly, and welcomes them with an agony of happy tears.  He will
even put out of their minds the very memory of their baseness.  "Now,
therefore, be not grieved nor angry with yourselves that ye sold me
hither, he says; for God sent me before you, to save your lives with a
great deliverance."

Is not that Divine?  Is not that the Spirit of God and of Christ?  I say
it is.  For what is it but the likeness of Christ, who says for ever, out
of heaven, to all mankind, "Be not grieved nor angry with yourselves that
ye crucified me.  For God, my Father, sent me to save your souls by a
great salvation."

My friends, learn from this story of Joseph, and the prominent place in
the Bible which it occupies--learn, I say, how hateful to God are family
quarrels; how pleasant to God are family unity and peace, and mutual
trust, and duty, and helpfulness.  And if you think that I speak too
strongly on this point, recollect that I do no more than St. Paul does,
when he sums up the most lofty and mystical of all his Epistles, the
Epistle to the Ephesians, by simple commands to husbands and wives,
parents and children, masters and servants, as if he should say,--You
wish to be holy? you wish to be spiritual?  Then fulfil these plain
family duties, for they, too, are sacred and divine, and he who despises
them, despises the ordinances of God.  And if you despise the laws of
God, they will surely avenge themselves on you.  If you are bad husbands
or bad wives, bad parents or bad children, bad brothers or sisters, bad
masters or servants, you will smart for it, according to the eternal laws
of God, which are at work around you all day long, making the sinner
punish himself whether he likes or not.

Examine yourselves--ask yourselves, each of you, Have I been a good
brother? have I been a good son? have I been a good husband? have I been
a good father? have I been a good servant?  If not, all professions of
religion will avail me nothing.  If not, let me confess my sins to God,
and repent and amend at once, whatever it may cost me.  The fulfilling
these plain duties is the true test of my faith, the true sign and test
whether I really believe in God and in Jesus Christ our Lord.  Do I
believe that the world is Christ's making? and that Christ is governing
it?  Do I believe that these plain family relationships are Christ's
sacred appointments?  Do I believe that our Lord Jesus was made very man
of the substance of His mother, to sanctify these family relationships,
and claim them as the ordinances of God His Father?

In one word--copy Joseph; and when you are tempted say with Joseph, "Can
I do this great wickedness, and sin--not against this man or this woman,
but against--_God_."

Take home these plain, practical words.  Take them home, and fear God at
your own firesides.  For at the last day, the Bible tells us, the Lord
Jesus Christ will not reward you and me according to the opinions we held
while in this mortal body, whether they were quite right or quite wrong,
but according to the deeds which we did in the body, whether they were
good or bad.




X.  SLAVES OF FREE?


   "Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he
   will show to you to-day: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen to day,
   ye shall see them again no more for ever.  The Lord shall fight for
   you, and ye shall hold your peace."--EXODUS xiv. 13, 14.

Why did God bring the Jews out of Egypt?  God Himself told them why.  To
fulfil the promise which He made to Abraham, their forefather, that of
his children He would make a great nation.

Now the Jews in Egypt were not a nation at all.  A nation is free,
governed by its own laws, one body of people, held together by one fellow
feeling, one language, one blood, one religion; as we English are.  We
are a nation.  The Jews were none in Egypt, no more than Negro slaves in
America were a nation.  They served a people of a different blood, as the
Jews did in Egypt.  They had no laws of their own; they had no fellow-
feeling with each other, which enabled them to make common cause
together, and help each other, and free each other.

Selfishness and cowardice make some men slaves.  Above all, ungodliness
makes men slaves.  For when men do not fear and obey God, they are sure
to obey their own lusts and passions, and become slaves to them.  They
become ready to sell themselves soul and body for money, or pleasure, or
food.  And their fleshly lusts, their animal appetites, keep them down,
selfish, divided, greedy, and needy, at the mercy of those who are
stronger and cunninger than themselves, just as the Jews were kept down
by the strong and cunning Egyptians.

They had slavish hearts in them, and as long as they had, God could not
make them into a nation.  The Jews _had_ slaves' hearts in them.  They
were glad enough to get free out of Egypt, to escape from their heavy
labour in brick and mortar, from being oppressed, beaten, killed at the
will and fancy of the Egyptians, from having their male children thrown
into the river as soon as they were born, to keep them from becoming too
numerous.  They were glad enough, poor wretches, to escape from all their
misery and oppression of which we read in the first three chapters of
Exodus.  But if they could do that, that was all they cared for.  They
did not want to be made wise, righteous, strong, free-hearted--they did
not care about being made into a nation.  We read that when by the Red
Sea shore (Exodus xiv.), they saw themselves in great danger, the army of
Pharaoh, King of Egypt, following close upon them to attack them, they
lost heart at once, and were sore afraid, and cried unto Moses, "Is not
this the word which we did tell thee in Egypt, saying, Let us alone that
we may serve the Egyptians?  For it had been better for us to serve the
Egyptians than to die in the wilderness."

Cowards and slaves!  The thing they feared above all, you see, was death.
If they could but keep the miserable life in their miserable bodies, they
cared for nothing beyond.  They were willing to see their children taken
from them and murdered, willing to be beaten, worked like dumb beasts for
other men's profit, willing to be idolaters, heathens, worshipping the
false gods of Egypt, dumb beasts and stocks and stones, willing to be
despised, wretched, helpless slaves--if they could but keep the dear life
in them.  God knows there are plenty like them now-a-days--plenty who do
not care how mean, helpless, wicked, contemptible they are, if they can
but get their living by their meanness.

"_But a man must live_," says some one.  How often one hears that made
the excuse for all sorts of meanness, dishonesty, grasping tyranny.  "_A
man must live_!"  Who told you that?  It is better to die like a man than
to live like a slave, and a wretch, and a sinner.  Who told you that, I
ask again?  Not God's Bible, surely.  Not the example of great and good
men.  If Moses had thought that, do you think he would have gone back
from Midian, when he was in safety and comfort, with a wife and home, and
children at his knee, and leave all he had on earth to face Pharaoh and
the Egyptians, to face danger, perhaps a cruel death in shame and
torture, and all to deliver his countrymen out of Egypt?  Moses would
sooner die like a man helping his countrymen, than live on the fat of the
land while they were slaves.  And forty years before he had shown the
same spirit too, when though he was rich and prosperous, and high in the
world, the adopted son of King Pharaoh's daughter (Exodus ii. 11), he
disdained to be a slave and to see his countrymen slaves round him.  We
read how he killed an Egyptian, who was ill-treating one of his brothers,
the Jews--and how he then fled out of Egypt into Midian, houseless and
friendless, esteeming as St. Paul says, "the reproach of Christ"--that is
the affliction and ill-will which came on him for doing right, "better
than all the treasures of Egypt" (Heb xi. 24-27).

_A man must live_?  The valiant Tyrolese of old did not say that (more
than seventy years ago), when they fought to the last drop of their blood
to defend their country against the French invaders.  They were not
afraid to die for liberty; and therefore they won honour from all
honourable men, praise from all whose praise is worth having for ever.

_A man must live_?  The old Greeks and Romans, heathens though they were,
were above so mean a speech as that.  They used to say, it was the
noblest thing that can befall a man to die--not to live in clover, eating
and drinking at his ease--to die among the foremost, fighting for wife
and child and home.

_A man must live_?  The martyrs of old did not say that, when they
endured the prison and the scourge, the sword and the fire, and chose
rather to die in torments unspeakable than deny the Lord Jesus who bought
them with His blood, rather than do what they knew to be _wrong_.
(Hebrews xi.)  They were not afraid of torture and death; but of doing
wrong they were unspeakably afraid.  They were _free_, those holy men of
old, truly free--free from their own love of ease and cowardice and
selfishness, and all that drags a man down and makes a slave of him.  They
knew that "life is more than meat, and the body more than raiment."  What
matter if a man gain the whole world and lose his own soul?  Their souls
were free whatever happened to their bodies--the tormentor could not
touch _them_, because they believed in God, because they did not fear
those who could kill the body, and after that had no more that they could
do.

And do you not see that a coward can never be free, never be godly, never
be like Christ?  For by a coward I mean not merely a man who is afraid of
pain and trouble.  Every one is that more or less.  Jesus Himself was
afraid when He cried in agony, "Father, if thou be willing, remove this
cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done." (Luke xxii.
42.)  But a coward is a man who is so much afraid that to escape pain and
danger, he will do what he _ought not_--do what he is ashamed of doing--do
what lowers him; and therefore our Lord Jesus had perfect courage when He
tasted death for all men, and endured the very agony from which He
shrank, and while He said, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup
pass," said also, "Nevertheless not my will, but Thine, be done."

The Jews were cowards when they cried, "Let us alone that we may serve
the Egyptians."  While a man is in that pitiful mood he cannot rise, he
cannot serve God--for he must remain the slave of his own body, of which
he is so mightily careful, the slave of his own fears, the slave of his
own love of bodily comfort.  Such a man does not _dare_ serve God.  He
dare not obey God, when obeying God is dangerous and unpleasant.  He dare
not claim his heavenly birthright, his share in God's Spirit, his share
in Christ's kingdom, because that would bring discomfort on him, because
he will have to give up the sins he loves, because he will have to endure
the insults and ill-will of wicked men.  Thus cowards can never be free,
for it is only where the Spirit of God is that there is liberty.

But the Jews were not yet fit to be made soldiers of.  God would not
teach them at once not to be afraid of men.  He did not command them to
turn again and fight these Egyptians, neither did He lead them into the
land of Canaan the strait and short road, through the country of the
Philistines, lest they should be discouraged when they saw war.

Now what was God's plan for raising the Jews out of this cowardly,
slavish state?  First, and above all, to make them trust in _Him_.  While
they were fearing the Egyptians, they could never fear Him.  While they
were fearing the Egyptians, they were ready to do every base thing, to
keep their masters in good humour with them.  God determined to teach
them to fear Him more than they feared the Egyptians.  God taught them
that He was stronger than the Egyptians, for all their civilisation and
learning and armies, chariots and horsemen, swords and spears.  He would
not let the Jews fight the Egyptians.  He told them by the mouth of
Moses, "Stand you still, and the Lord shall fight for you," and he
commanded Moses to stretch out his rod over the sea. (Exodus xiv.)  The
Egyptians were stronger than the Jews--they would have cut them to pieces
if they had come to a battle.  For free civilised men like the Egyptians
are always stronger than slaves, like the Jews; they respect themselves
more, they hold together better, they have order and discipline, and
obedience to their generals, which slaves have not.  God intended to
teach the Jews that also in His good time.  But not yet.  They were not
fit yet to be made soldiers.  They were not even _men_ yet, but miserable
slaves.  A man is only a true man when he trusts in God, and none but
God--when he fears God and nothing _but_ God.  And that was the lesson
which God had to teach them.  That was the lesson which He taught them by
bringing them up out of Egypt by signs and wonders, that _God was the
Lord_, _God_ was their deliverer, _God_ was their King--that let _them_
be as weak as they might, _He_ was strong--that if they could not fight
the Egyptians God could overwhelm them--that if they could not cross the
sea, God could open the sea to let them pass through.  If they dreaded
the waste howling wilderness of sand, with its pillars of cloud and fire,
its stifling winds which burn the life out of man and beast, God could
make the sand storms and the fire pillars and the deadly east wind of the
desert work for their deliverance.  And so He taught them to fear
Himself, to trust in Him, to look up to Him as their deliverer whose
strength was shown most gloriously when they were weakest and most
despairing.

This was the great lesson which God meant to teach the children of
Israel, that the root and ground of all other lessons, is that this earth
belongs to the Lord alone.  That had been what God had been teaching them
already, by the plagues of Egypt.  The Egyptians worshipped their great
river Nile, and thought it was a god, and the Lord turned the Nile water
into blood, and showed that He could do what He liked with it.  The
Egyptians worshipped dumb beasts and insects, and fancied in their folly
that they were gods.  The Lord sent plagues of frogs and flies and
locusts, and took them away again when He liked, to show them that the
beasts and creeping things were His also.

The Egyptians worshipped false gods who as they fancied managed the
seasons and the weather.  God sent them thunder and hail when it pleased
Him, and showed the Jews that _He_, not these false gods of Egypt, ruled
the heavens.  The Egyptians and many other heathen nations of the earth
used to offer their children to false gods.  I do not mean by killing
them in sacrifice, but by naming them after some idol, and then expecting
that the idol would ever afterwards prosper and strengthen them.  Thus
the kings were called after the sun.  Pharaoh means the Sun-king; for
they fancied that the sun was a god, and protected their kings one after
the other.  And God slew all the first-born of Egypt, even the first-born
of King Pharaoh on his throne.  The Sun-god could not help him.  The
idols of Egypt could not take care of their worshippers--only the
children of the Jews escaped. (Exodus xii.)  What a lesson for the Jews!
And they needed it; for during the four hundred years that they had been
in Egypt they had almost forgotten the one true God, the God of their
forefathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; at least they thought Him no
better than the false gods of Egypt.  After all these wondrous proofs of
God's almighty power, and His jealousy for His own name, they fell away
to idols again and again.  They worshipped a golden calf in Horeb (Exodus
xxxii.); they turned aside to worship the idols of the nations whom they
passed through on their way to Canaan.  Idolatry had been rooted in their
hearts, and it took many years of severe training and teaching on God's
part to drive it out of them--to make them feel that the one God, who
made heaven and earth, had delivered them--that they belonged to Him,
that they had a share in Him--to make them join with one heart and voice
in the glorious song of Moses:

"I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse
and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.  The Lord is my strength and
song and he is become my salvation: he is my God and I will prepare him
an habitation; my father's God, and I will exalt him.  The Lord is a man
of war: the Lord is his name.  Pharaoh's chariots and his host hath he
cast into the sea: his chosen captains also are drowned in the Red Sea.
The depths have covered them: they sank into the bottom as a stone.  Thy
right hand, O Lord, is become glorious in power: thy right hand, O Lord,
hath dashed in pieces the enemy.  And in the greatness of thine
excellency thou hast overthrown them that rose up against thee: thou
sentest forth thy wrath, which consumed them as stubble.  And with the
blast of thy nostrils the waters were gathered together, the floods stood
upright as an heap, and the depths were congealed in the heart of the
sea.  The enemy said, I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the
spoil; my lust shall be satisfied upon them; I will draw my sword, my
hand shall deliver them.  Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered
them: they sank as lead in the mighty waters.  Who is like unto thee, O
Lord, among the gods? who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in
praises, doing wonders?  Thou stretchedst out thy right hand, the earth
swallowed them.  Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou
hast redeemed: thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy
habitation.  The people shall hear, and be afraid: sorrow shall take hold
on the inhabitants of Palestina.  Then the dukes of Edom shall be amazed;
the mighty men of Moab, trembling shall take hold upon them; all the
inhabitants of Canaan shall melt away.  Fear and dread shall fall upon
them; by the greatness of thine arm they shall be as still as a stone;
till thy people pass over, O Lord, till the people pass over, which thou
hast purchased.  Thou shalt bring them in and plant them in the mountain
of thine inheritance, in the place, O Lord, which thou hast made for thee
to dwell in, in the Sanctuary, O Lord, which thy hands have established.
The Lord shall reign for ever and ever.  For the horse of Pharaoh went in
with his chariots and with his horsemen into the sea, and the Lord
brought again the waters of the sea upon them; but the children of Israel
went on dry land in the midst of the sea." (Exodus xv. 1-19.)

This was God's first lesson to the Jews; the first step towards making
them a free nation.  For believe me, my friends, the only thought which
can make men feel free and strong, the only thought which can keep them
from being afraid of each other, afraid of the seasons, and the elements,
and the chances and changes of this mortal life, the only thought which
can teach them that they are brothers, bound together to help and love
each other, in short the only thought which can make men citizens--is the
thought that the one God is their Father, and that they are all His
children--that they have one God, one religion, one baptism, one Lord and
Saviour, who has delivered them, and will deliver them again and again
from all their sins and miseries; one God and Father of all, who is in
all, and for all, and over all, to whom they all owe equal duty, in whom
they all have an equal share.

That lesson God began to teach the Jews by the Red Sea.  That lesson God
has taught our English forefathers again and again; and that lesson He
will teach us, their children, as often as we forget it, by signs and
wonders, by chastisements and by mercies, till we all learn to trust in
Him and Him only, and know that there is none other name under heaven by
which we can be saved from evil in this life or in the life to come, but
the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Angel of the Covenant, who
led the Jews up out of the land of Egypt.




XI.  DANGERS--AND THE LITANY.


   "Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them
   out of their distresses.  And he led them forth by the right way, that
   they might go to a city of habitation.  Oh that men would praise the
   Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of
   men."--PSALM cvii. 6-8.

This 107th Psalm is a noble psalm--a psalm which has given comfort to
thousands in suffering and in danger, even in the sorrows which they have
brought on themselves by their own folly.  For it tells them of a Lord
who hears them when they cry to Him in their trouble, and who delivers
them from their distress.

It was written on a special occasion, as all the most important words of
the Bible are written--written seemingly, after some band of Jews
struggling across the desert, on their return from the captivity in
Babylon, had been in great danger of death.  They went astray in the
wilderness out of their way, and found no city to rest in; hungry and
thirsty their soul fainted in them, so they cried unto the Lord in their
trouble, and He delivered them from their distress.  He led them forth by
the right way, that they might go to the city where they dwelt.  That was
the plain fact, on which the psalmist built up this noble psalm.

In the blazing sandy desert, without water, food, or shade, they had lost
their path, and were at their wit's end.  And they cried unto the Lord
their God for guidance, for they could not guide themselves.  And the
Lord answered their prayer and guided them.  We do not read that God
worked a miracle for them, or sent an angel to lead them.  Simply,
somehow or other, they found their way after all, and got safe out of the
desert; and they believed that it was God who enabled them to find their
way, and praised the Lord for His goodness; and for His goodness not only
to them, but to the children of men--to all men who had the sense to call
on Him in trouble, and to put themselves in their right place as
men--God's children, calling for help to their Father in heaven.

Therefore the psalmist goes on to speak of the cases of God's goodness,
which he seems to have seen, or at least heard of.  Of wretched
prisoners, bound fast in misery and iron, and that through their own
fault and folly, who had cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and been
delivered by Him from the darkness of the dungeon.  Of foolish men who
had ruined their health, or at least their prospects in life, by their
own sin and folly, till their soul abhorred all manner of meat, and they
were hard at death's door.  But of them, too, he says, when they cried
unto the Lord in their trouble, He delivered them from their distress.  He
sent His word--what we now foolishly call the laws of Nature, but which
the Psalmist knew to be the ever-working power and providence of God--and
healed them, and they were saved from their destruction.

Then he goes on to speak of the dangers of the sea which were especially
strange and terrible to him--a Jew.  For the Jews were no sailors; and if
they went to sea, would go as merchants, or supercargoes in ships manned
by heathens; and the danger was really great.  The ships were clumsy;
navigation was ill-understood; the storms of the Mediterranean sea were
then as now, sudden and furious; and when one came on, the heathen
sailors would, I doubt not, be at their wit's end, their courage melting
away because of the trouble, and call on all their gods and idols to help
them; but the men of whom the Psalmist speaks, though they were no
seamen, knew on whom to call.  It was by the word of the Lord that the
stormy wind arose which lifted up the billows.  He could quell the storm
if He would, and when He would; and to Him they cried and not in vain.
"And He made the storm to cease so that the waves thereof were still.
Then were they glad, because they were at rest, and so He brought them to
the haven where they would be."

My friends, this was the simple faith of the old Jews.  And this was the
simple faith of our forefathers by land and sea.  And this faith, as I
believe, made England great.  The faith that there was a living God, a
living Lord, who would hear the cry of poor creatures in their trouble,
even when they had brought their trouble on themselves.  Our forefathers
were not mere landsmen like the Jews, but the finest seamen the world has
ever seen.  And yet they were not ashamed in storm and danger to cry like
the Jews unto the Lord, that He might make the storm to cease, and bring
them to the haven where they would be.  Yes! faith in God did not make
them the less brave, skilful, cautious, scientific; and it need not make
us so.  Skill and science need not take away our faith in God.  I trust
it will not take it away, and I believe it will not take it away, as long
as we can hear what I once heard, on board of one of the finest men of
war {80a} in the British Navy--the ship in which and from which, all
British sailors may learn their duty--when I saw some six or eight
hundred men mustered on the deck for daily morning prayer, and heard the
noble old prayer, which our forefathers have handed down to us, to be
said every day in Her Majesty's navy: {80b}

"O eternal God who alone spreadest out the heavens, and rulest the raging
of the sea; who hast compassed the waters with bounds, until day and
night come to an end; be pleased to receive into Thy Almighty and most
gracious protection, the persons of us Thy servants, and the fleet in
which we serve.  Preserve us from the dangers of the sea, and from the
violence of the enemy, that we may be a safeguard unto our most gracious
Sovereign Lady Queen Victoria and her dominions, and a security for such
as pass on the seas upon their lawful occasions; that the inhabitants of
our island may in peace and quietness serve Thee our God, and that we may
return in safety to enjoy the blessings of the land, with the fruits of
our labours, and with a thankful remembrance of Thy mercies, to praise
and glorify Thy holy name; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen."

Then, as I stood upon that deck, and heard that solemn appeal to God,
before each man went about his appointed duty for the day, said I to
myself, "The ancient spirit is not dead.  It may be that it is sleeping
in these prosperous times.  But it is not dead, as long as this nation by
those prayers confesses that we ought at least to believe in a God who
hears our prayers, by land and sea.  Those grand words were perhaps
nothing but a form to most of the men who heard them.  But they were a
form which bore witness to a truth which was true, even if they forgot
it--a truth which they might need some day, and feel the need of, and
cling to, as the sailors of old time clung to it.  Those words would
surely sink into the men's ears, and some day, it might be, bear fruit in
their hearts.  In storm, in wreck, in battle, and in the hour of death,
and in the day of judgment, these words would surely rise in many a brave
fellow's memory, and help him to do his duty like a man, because there
was a living Lord and God above him who knew his weakness and would hear
his prayers."

And we, my friends, here safe on land, we have a national prayer, or
rather a series of prayers, to Christ as God, which ought to remind us of
that noble truth which the 107th Psalm is meant to teach.  You hear it
all of you every Sunday morning.  I mean the Litany.  That noble
composition, which seems to me more wise as a work of theology, more
beautiful as a work of art, the oftener I use it--That Litany, I say, is
modelled on the 107th Psalm; and it expresses the very heart and spirit
of our forefathers three hundred years ago.  It bids us pray to be
delivered from every conceivable harm, to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
And then it prays for every conceivable blessing, not only for each of us
separately, but for this whole nation of England, Great Britain, and
Ireland, and for all the nations on earth, and for the heathen and the
savage.

Of course, just because it is a National prayer, and meant for all
Englishmen alike, all of it does not suit each and every one of us at the
same time.  Each heart knows its own bitterness.  Each soul has its own
special mercy to ask.  But there is a word in the Litany here, and
another there, which will fit each of us in turn, if we will but follow
it.  One may have to pray to be delivered from pride, vain-glory, and
hypocrisy--another to be delivered from foul living and deadly
sin--another to be delivered, or to have those whom he loves delivered,
from battle, murder, and sudden death.  Another to be delivered from the
dangers of affliction and tribulation; another from the far worse danger
of wrath; but all have to pray to be delivered from something.  And all
have to pray to the same deliverer--Christ, who was born a Man, died a
man, and rose again a man, that He might know what was in man, and be
able to succour those who are tempted, seeing that He was tempted in all
things like as we are, yet without sin.

But there is a part--the latter part--of that Litany which, I think, many
do not understand or feel.  Perhaps they have reason to thank God that
they do not understand or feel it; yet, the day may come--a day of
sadness, fear, perplexity, sorrow, when they will understand it, and
thank God that their forefathers placed it in the prayer-book, for them
to fall back upon, as comfort and hope in the day of trouble; putting
words into their mouths and thoughts into their hearts, which they,
perhaps, never would have found out for themselves.

I mean that latter part of the Litany which talks of the evils which the
craft and subtilty of the devil or men work against us, that they may be
brought to nought, and by the providence of God's goodness be dispersed,
that we may be hurt by no persecutions--which calls on Christ to arise
and deliver us, for His name's sake and His honour, which pleads before
God the noble works which He did in the days of our forefathers; and
which continues with short prayers, almost cries, which have something in
them of terror, almost of agony.  What have such words to do with us?  Why
are they put into the mouths of us English, safe, comfortable,
prosperous, above almost all the nations upon earth?

Ah! my friends, those prayers, when they were first put into our prayer-
book, were spoken for the hearts of Englishmen.  They were not prayers
for one afflicted person here, and another there,--they, too, were
National prayers.  They were the cries of the English nation in agony--in
the time when, three hundred years ago, the mightiest nations and powers
of Europe, temporal and spiritual, were set against this little isle of
England, and we expected not merely to be invaded and conquered, but
destroyed utterly and horribly with sword and fire, by the fleets and
armies of the King of Spain.  In that great danger and war our
forefathers cried to God; and they cried all the more earnestly, because
they felt that their hands were not clean; that they had plenty and too
many sins to be "mercifully forgiven," and that at best they could but
ask God "mercifully to look upon their infirmities," and, "for the glory
of His name, turn from them those evils which they most righteously had
deserved."  But nevertheless they cried unto God in their great agony,
because they had the spirit of the old Psalmist, who said, "They cried
unto the Lord in their trouble, and He delivered them out of their
distress."

And what answer God made to their prayers all the world knows, or should
know.  For if He had not answered their prayer, we should not be here
this day, a great, and strong, and prosperous nation, with a pure Church
and a free Gospel, and the Holy Bible if he wills, in the hands of the
poorest child.  Unless prayer be a dream, and there be no God in heaven
worth calling a God--then did God answer the prayers of our forefathers
three hundred years ago, when they cried unto Him as one nation in their
utter need.

But some will say--this may be all very true and very fine, but we are in
no such utter need now.  Why should we use those prayers?

My dear friends, let me say, if you are not now in utter need, in terror,
anxiety, danger, if you have no need to cry to Christ, "Graciously look
upon our afflictions; pitifully behold the sorrows of our hearts," how do
you know that there is not some one in any and every congregation who is?
And you and I, if we have said the Litany in spirit and in truth, have
been praying for them.  The Litany bids us speak as members of a Church,
as citizens of a nation, bound together by the ties of blood and of laws,
as well as self-interest.  The Litany bids us say, not selfishly and
apart, Graciously look on _my_ afflictions, but on _our_ afflictions--the
afflictions of every English man, and woman, and child, who is in
trouble, or ever will be in trouble _hereafter_.  Oh, remember this last
word.  Generations long since dead and buried have prayed for you, and
God has heard their prayers; and now you have been praying for your
children, and your children's children, and generations yet unborn, that,
if ever a dark day should come over England, a time of want and danger
and perplexity and misery, God would deliver them in their turn out of
their distress.  And more; you have been teaching your children, that
they may teach their children in turn, and pray and cry to God in their
trouble; and thus this grand old Litany is to us, and to those we shall
leave behind us a precious National heir-loom, teaching us and them the
lesson of the 107th Psalm--that there is a Lord in heaven who hears the
prayers of men, the sinful as well as the sorrowful, that when they cry
unto the Lord in their trouble, He delivers them out of their distress,
and that men should therefore praise the Lord for His goodness, and
declare the wonders which He doeth for the children of men.




XII.  WILD TIMES, OR DAVID'S FAITH IN A LIVING GOD.


   "David therefore departed thence, and escaped to the cave Adullam: and
   when his brethren and all his father's house heard it, they went down
   thither to him.  And every one that was in distress, and every one
   that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered
   themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them: and there were
   with him about four hundred men."--1 SAM. xxii. 1, 2.

In every country, at some time or other, there have been evil days--days
of violence, tyranny, misrule, war, invasion, when men are too apt, for
want of settled law, to take the law into their own hands; and the land
is full of robbers, outlaws, bands of partizans and irregular
soldiers--wild times, in which wild things are done.

Of such times we here in England have had no experience, and we forget
how common they are; we forget that many great nations have been in this
state again and again.  We forget that almost all Europe was in that wild
and lawless state in our fathers' times, and therefore we forget that the
Bible, which tells man his whole duty, must needs tell men about such
times as those, and how a man may do his duty, and save his soul therein.
For the Bible is every man's book, and has its lesson for every man.  It
is meant not merely for comfortable English folk, who sit at home at
ease, under just laws and a good government.  It is meant just as much
for the opprest, for the persecuted, for the man who is fighting for his
country, for the man who has been found fighting in vain, and is simply
waiting for God's help, and crying, "Lord, how long? how long ere Thou
avenge the blood that is shed?"  It is meant as much for such as for you
and me; that every man, in whatever fearful times he may live, and
whatever fearful trials he may go through, and whatever fearful things he
may be tempted to do, and, indeed, may have to do, in self-defence, may
still be able to go to the Bible, there to find light for his feet, and a
lantern for his path, and so that he may steer through the worst of times
by Faith in the Living God.

Again, such lawless times are certain to raise up bold and adventurous
men, more or less like David.  Men of blood--who are yet not altogether
bad men--who are forced to take the law into their own hands, to try and
keep their countrymen together, to put down tyrants and robbers, and to
drive out invaders.  And men, too, suffering from deep and cruel wrongs,
who are forced for their lives' sake, and their honour's sake, to
escape--to flee to the mountains and the forests, and to foreign lands,
and there live as they can till times shall be better.  There have been
such men in all wild times--outlaws, chiefs of armed bands, like our
Robin Hood, whose name was honoured in England for hundreds of years as
the protector of the poor and the opprest, and the punisher of the Norman
tyrants: a man made up of much good and much evil, whom we must not
judge, but when we think of him, only thank God that we do not live in
such times now, when no man's life or property, or the honour of his
family was safe.

Such men, too, in our fathers' days, were the Tyrolese heroes, Hofer and
the Good Monk who left, the one his farm and the other his cloister, to
lead their countrymen against the invading French; men of blood, who were
none the less men of God.  And such is, in our own days, that famous
Garibaldi, whose portrait hangs in many an English cottage, for a proof
that though we, thank God, do not need such men in peaceful England, our
hearts bid us to love and honour them wherever they be.  There have been
such men in all bad times, and there will be till the world's end, and
they will do great deeds, and their names will be famous, and often
honoured and adored by men.

Now, what does the Bible say of such men?  Does it give any rule by which
we may judge them? any rule which they ought to obey?  Can God's blessing
be on them?  Can they obey God in that wild and dark and dangerous
station to which He seems to have called them--to which God certainly
called Hofer and the Good Monk?

I think if the Bible did not answer that question it would not be a
complete book--if it spoke only of peaceful folk, and peaceful times;
when, alas! from the beginning of the world, the earth has been but too
full of violence and misrule, war and desolation.  But the Bible _does_
answer that question.  A large portion of one whole book is actually
taken up with the history of a young outlaw--of David, the shepherd boy,
who rises through strange temptations and dangers to be a great king, the
first man who, since Moses, formed the Jews into one strong united
nation.  It does not hide his faults, even his fearful sins, but it shows
us that he _had_ a right road to follow, though he often turned aside
from it.  It shows us that he could be a good man if he chose, though he
was an outlaw at the head of a band of ruffians; and it shows us the
secret of his power and of his success--_Faith in the Living God_.

Therefore it is that after the Bible has shown us (in the Book of Ruth)
worthy Boaz standing among his reapers in the barley field, it goes on to
show us Boaz's great-grandson, David, a worthy man likewise, but of a
very different life, marked out by God from his youth for strange and
desperate deeds; killing, as a mere boy, a lion and a bear, overthrowing
the Philistine giant with a sling and a stone, captain of a band of
outlaws in the wilderness, fighting battles upon battles; and at last a
king, storming the mountain fortress of Jerusalem, and setting up upon
Mount Zion, which shall never be removed, the Throne of David.  A strange
man, and born into a strange time.  You all know the first part of
David's history--how Samuel secretly anoints David king over Israel, and
how the Spirit of the Lord comes from that day forward upon the young lad
(1 Samuel xvi. 12).  How king Saul meanwhile fell into dark and bad
humours.  How the Spirit of the Lord--of goodness and peace of mind--goes
from him, and an evil spirit from the Lord troubles him.  Then how young
David is sent for to play to him on his harp (1 Samuel xvi.), and soothe
his distempered mind.  Already we hear of David as a remarkable person;
we hear of his extraordinary beauty, his skill in music; we hear, too,
how he is already a man of war, and a mighty valiant man, and prudent in
matters, and the Lord is with him.

Then follows the famous story of his killing Goliath the Philistine (1
Samuel xvii.).  Poor, distempered Saul, it seems, had forgotten him,
though David had cured his melancholy with his harp-playing, and had
actually been for a while his armour-bearer, for when he comes back with
the giant's head, Saul has to ask Abner who he is; but after that he will
let him go no more home to his father.

Then follows the beautiful story of Jonathan, Saul's gallant son (1
Samuel xviii.), and his love for David.  Then of Saul's envy of David,
and how, in a sudden fit of hatred, he casts his javelin at him.  Then
how he grows afraid of him, and makes him captain of a thousand men, and
gives him his daughter, on condition of David's killing him two hundred
Philistines.  And how he goes on, capriciously, honouring David one day
and trying to kill him the next.  While David rises always, and all
Israel and Judah love him, and he behaves himself more wisely than all
the servants of Saul.  At last comes the open rupture.  Saul, after
trying to murder David, sends assassins to his house, and David flees for
his life once and for all.  He has served his master Saul loyally and
faithfully.  There is no word of his having opposed Saul, set himself up
against him, boasted of himself, or in any way brought his anger down
upon him.  Saul is his king, and David has been loyal and true to him.
But Saul's envy has grown to hatred, and that to murder.  He murders the
priests, with all their wives and children, for having given bread and
shelter to David.  And now David must flee into the wilderness and set up
for himself, and he flees to the cave of Adullam (1 Samuel xxii.); and
there you see the Bible does not try to hide what David's position was,
and what sort of men he had about him--his brethren and his father's
house, who were afraid that Saul would kill them instead of him, after
the barbarous Eastern fashion, and among them the three sons of Zeruiah,
his sister; and everyone who was discontented, and everyone who was in
debt, all the most desperate and needy--one can conceive what sort of men
they must have been.  The Bible tells us afterwards of the wicked men and
men of Belial who were among them--wild men, with weapons in their hands,
and nothing to prevent their becoming a band of brutal robbers, if they
had not had over them a man in whom, in spite of all his faults, was the
Spirit of God.

We must remember, meanwhile, that David had his temptations.  He had been
grievously wronged.  Saul had returned him evil for good.  All David's
services and loyalty to Saul had been repaid with ingratitude and
accusations of conspiracy against him.  What terrible struggles of rage
and indignation must have passed through David's heart!  What a longing
to revenge himself!  He knew, too, for Samuel the prophet had told him,
that he should be king one day.  What a temptation, then, to make himself
king at once!  It was no secret either.  The people knew of it.  Jonathan,
Saul's son, knew of it, and, in his noble, self-sacrificing way, makes no
secret of it (1 Samuel xx.).  What a temptation to follow the fashion
which is too common in the East to this day, and strike down his tyrant
at one blow, as many a man has done since, and to proclaim himself king
of the Jews.  Yes, David had heavy temptations--temptations which he
could only conquer by faith in the Living God.  And, because he masters
himself, and remains patient and loyal to his king under every insult and
wrong, he is able to master that wild and desperate band of men, and set
them an example of patience and chivalry, loyalty and justice; to train
them to be, not a terror and a scourge to the yeomen and peasants round,
but a protection and a guard against the Philistines and Amalekites, and,
in due time, his trusty bodyguard of warriors--men who have grown grey
beside him through a hundred battles, who are to be the foundation of his
national army, and help him to make the Jews one strong and united
prosperous kingdom.

All this the shepherd lad has to do, and he does it, by faith in the
Living God, and so makes himself for all ages to come the pattern of
perfect loyalty.  And now, let us take home this one lesson--That the
secret of David's success is not his beauty, his courage, his eloquence,
his genius; other men have had gifts from God as great as David's, and
have misused them to their own ruin, and to the misery of their fellow-
men.  No; the secret of David's success is his faith in the Living God;
and that will be the secret of our success.  _Without_ faith in God, the
most splendid talents may lead a man to be a curse to himself and to his
neighbours.  _With_ faith in God, a very common-place person, without any
special cleverness, may do great things, and make himself useful and
honoured in his generation.




XIII.  DAVID AND NABAL, OR SELF-CONTROL.


   "And David said to Abigail, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, which
   sent thee this day to meet me: And blessed be thy advice, and blessed
   be thou, which hast kept me this day from coming to shed blood, and
   from avenging myself with mine own hand."--1 SAMUEL xxv. 32, 33.

The story of David and Nabal needs no explanation.  It tells us of part
of David's education--of a great lesson which he learnt--of a great
lesson which we may learn.  It is told with a dignity and a simplicity,
with a grace and liveliness which makes itself understood at once, and
carries its own lesson to any one who has a human heart in him.

"And there was a man in Maon, whose possessions were in Carmel"--the park
grass upland with timber trees--not the northern Carmel where Elijah slew
the prophets of Baal, but the southern one on the edge of the desert.
"And the man was very great, and he had three thousand sheep, and a
thousand goats: and he was shearing his sheep in Carmel.  Now the name of
the man was Nabal; and the name of his wife Abigail: and she was a woman
of good understanding, and of a beautiful countenance: but the man was
churlish and evil in his doings; and he was of the house of Caleb."  Caleb
was Joshua's friend, who had conquered all that land in Joshua's time.
Nabal, therefore, had all the pride of a man of most ancient and noble
family--and no shame to him if he had had a noble, courteous, and
generous heart therewith, instead of being, as he was, a stupid and
brutal person.

"And David heard in the wilderness that Nabal did shear his sheep.  And
David sent out ten young men, and David said unto the young men, Get you
up to Carmel, and go to Nabal, and greet him in my name: And thus shall
ye say unto him that liveth in prosperity, Peace be to thee, and peace be
to thine house, and peace be to all that thou hast.  And now I have heard
that thou hast shearers: now thy shepherds which were with us, we hurt
them not, neither was there ought missing unto them, all the while they
were in Carmel.  Ask the young men, and they will show thee.  Wherefore
let the young men find favour in thine eyes: for we come in a good day:
give, I pray thee, whatsoever cometh to thine hand unto thy servants, and
unto thy son David.  And when David's young men came, they spake to
Nabal, according to all thee words of David, and ceased."

Nabal refuses; and in a way that shows, as his wife says of him, how well
his name fits him--a fool is his name, and folly is with him.  Insolently
and brutally he refuses, as fools are wont to do.  "And Nabal answered
David's servants, and said, Who is David? and who is the son of Jesse?
there be many servants now-a-days that break away every man from his
master.  Shall I then take my bread, and my water, and my flesh that I
have killed for my shearers, and give it unto men whom I know not whence
they be?"

"As slaves break away from their master."  This was an intolerable
insult.  To taunt a free-born man, as David was, with having been a slave
and a runaway.  It is hard to conceive how Nabal dared to say such a
thing of a fierce chieftain like David, with six hundred armed men at his
back; but there is no saying what a fool will not do when the spirit of
the Lord is gone from him, and his own fancy and passions lead him
captive.

So David's young men came and told David.  "And David said to his men,
Gird every man on his sword.  And they girded on every man his sword; and
David also girded on his sword: and there went up after David about four
hundred men; and two hundred abode by the stuff."

That is a grand passage--grand, because it is true to human nature, true
to the determined, prompt, kingly character of David.  He does not
complain, bluster, curse over the insult as a weak man might have done.
He has been deeply hurt, and he is too high-minded to talk about it.  He
will do, and not talk.  A dark purpose settles itself instantly in his
mind.  Perhaps he is ashamed of it, and dare not speak of it, even to
himself.  But what it was he confessed afterwards to Abigail, that he
purposed utterly to kill Nabal and all his people.  David was wrong of
course.  But the Bible makes no secret of the wrong-doings of its heroes.
It does not tell us that they were infallible and perfect.  It tells us
that they were men of like passions with ourselves, in order that by
seeing how they conquered their passions we may conquer ours.

Meanwhile, Nabal's young men, his servants and slaves, see the danger,
and go to Abigail.  "One of the young men told Abigail, saying, Behold,
David sent messengers out of the wilderness to salute our master; and he
railed on them.  But the men were very good unto us, and we were not
hurt, neither missed we any thing, as long as we were conversant with
them, when we were in the fields: They were a wall unto us both by night
and day, all the while we were with them keeping the sheep.  Now
therefore know and consider what thou wilt do; for evil is determined
against our master, and against all his household: for he is such a son
of Belial, that a man cannot speak to him.  Then Abigail made haste, and
took two hundred loaves, and two bottles of wine, and five sheep ready
dressed, and five measures of parched corn, and an hundred clusters of
raisins, and two hundred cakes of figs, and laid them on asses.  And she
said unto her servants, Go on before me; behold, I come after you.  But
she told not her husband Nabal."

And then follows the beautiful scene which has been the subject of many a
noble picture.  The fair lady kneeling before the terrible outlaw in the
mountain woods, as she came down by the covert of the hill, and softening
his fierce heart with her beauty and her eloquence and her prayers, and
bringing him back to his true self--to forgiveness, generosity, and
righteousness.

"And when Abigail saw David, she hasted, and lighted off the ass, and
fell before David on her face, and bowed herself to the ground, and fell
at his feet, and said, Upon me, my lord, let this iniquity be: and let
thine handmaid, I pray thee, speak in thine audience, and hear the words
of thine handmaid.  Let not my lord, I pray thee, regard this man of
Belial, even Nabal: for as his name is, so is he; Nabal is his name, and
folly is with him; but I, thine handmaid, saw not the young men of my
lord, whom thou didst send.  Now therefore, my lord, as the Lord liveth,
and as thy soul liveth, seeing the Lord hath withholden thee from coming
to shed blood, and from avenging thyself with thine own hand, now let
thine enemies, and they that seek evil to my lord, be as Nabal. . . . I
pray thee forgive the trespass of thine handmaid: for the Lord will
certainly make my lord a sure house; because my lord fighteth the battles
of the Lord, and evil hath not been found in thee all thy days."

And she conquers.  The dark shadow passes off David's soul, and he is
again the true, chivalrous, God-fearing David, who has never drawn sword
yet in his own private quarrel, but has committed his cause to God who
judgeth righteously, and will, if a man abide patiently in Him, make his
righteousness as clear as the light, and his just-dealing as the noonday.
Frankly he confesses his fault.  "Blessed be thy advice, and blessed be
thou which has kept me this day from coming to shed blood, and from
avenging myself with mine own hand.  For in very deed, as the Lord God of
Israel liveth, which has kept me back from hurting thee, except thou
hadst hasted and come to meet me, surely there had not a man been left
unto Nabal by the morning light."  Then follows the end.  Abigail goes
back to Nabal.  Then the bully shows himself a coward.  The very thought
of the danger which he has escaped is too much for him.  His heart died
within him.  "And Abigail came to Nabal; and behold, he held a feast in
his house like the feast of a king; and Nabal's heart was merry within
him, for he was very drunken: wherefore she told him nothing less or more
until the morning light.  But it came to pass in the morning, when the
wine was gone out of Nabal, and his wife had told him these things, that
his heart died within him, and he became as a stone.  And it came to
pass, about ten days after, that the Lord smote Nabal, that he died."  One
can imagine the picture for oneself.  The rich churl sitting there in the
midst of all his slaves and his wealth as one thunderstruck, helpless and
speechless, till one of those mysterious attacks, which we still rightly
call a stroke, and a visitation of God, ends him miserably.  And when he
is dead, Abigail becomes the wife of David, and shares his fortunes and
his dangers in the wilderness.

Now, what may we learn from this story?  Surely what David learnt--the
unlawfulness of revenge.  David was to be trained to be a perfect king by
learning self-control, and therefore he has to learn that he must not
punish in his own quarrel.  If he must not lift up his hand against Saul,
on the ground of loyalty, neither must he lift up his hand against Nabal,
on the deeper ground of justice and humanity.

But from whom did David learn this?  From himself.  From his own heart
and conscience, enlightened by the Spirit of God.  Abigail gave him no
commandment from God, in the common sense of the word.  She only put
David in mind of what he knew already.  She appeals to his known
nobleness of mind, and takes for granted that he will hear reason--takes
for granted that he will do right--and so brought him to himself again.
The Lord was withholding him, she says, from coming to shed blood, and
avenging himself with his own hand.  But that would have been of no avail
had there not been something in David's own heart which answered to her
words.  For the Spirit of God had not left David; and it was the Spirit
of God which gave him nobleness of heart--the Spirit of God which made
him answer, "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel who sent thee this day to
meet me; and blessed be thy advice, and blessed be thou which hast kept
me this day from shedding of blood."

Though Abigail did not pretend to bring a message from God, David felt
that she had brought one.  And she was in his eyes not merely a suppliant
pleading for mercy, but a prophetess declaring to him a divine law which
he dare not resist.  "It has been said by them of old time," our blessed
Lord tells us, "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth; thou shalt
love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy."  This is the first natural law
which a savage lays down for himself.  There is a rude sense of justice
in it, mixed up with the same brute instinct of revenge which makes the
wild beast turn in rage upon the hunter who wounds him.  But our Lord
Jesus Christ brings in a higher and more spiritual law.  Punishment is to
be left to the magistrate, who punishes in God's name.  And where the law
cannot touch the wrongdoer, God, who is the author of law, can and will
punish.  "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord."  Yes! if
punishment must be, then let God punish.  Let man forgive.  I say unto
you, said our Lord, "Love your enemies.  Do good to them that hate
you--bless them that curse you--pray for them that despitefully use you
and persecute you, that you may be the children of your Father which is
in heaven, for He maketh His sun to shine upon the evil and the good, and
sendeth rain on the just and the unjust."

It is a hard lesson.  But we must learn it.  And we shall learn it, just
as far as we are guided by the Spirit of God, who forms in us the
likeness of Christ.  And men are learning it more and more in Christian
lands.  Wherever Christ's gospel is truly and faithfully preached, the
fashion, of revenge is dying out.  There are countries still in
Christendom in which men think nothing every day of stabbing and shooting
the man who has injured them; and far, very far, from Christ and His
Spirit must they be still.  But we may have hope for them; for if we look
at home, it was not so very many years ago that any Englishman, who
considered himself a gentleman, was bound by public opinion to fight a
duel for any slight insult.  It was not so many years ago that among
labouring men brutal quarrels and open fights were common, and almost
daily occurrences.  But now men are learning more and more to control
their tempers and their tongues, and find it more and more easy, and more
pleasant and more profitable, as our Lord forewarned them when He said,
"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, for my yoke is easy, and my
burden is light."  And Christ's easy yoke is the yoke of self-control, by
which we bridle the passions which torment us.  Christ's light burden is
the burden and obligation laid on every one of us, to forgive others,
even as God for Christ's sake has forgiven us.  And the rest which shall
come to our souls is the rest which David found, when he listened to the
voice of God speaking by the lips of Abigail; the true and divine rest of
heart and peace of mind--rest and peace from the inward storm of
fretfulness, suspicion, jealousy, pride, wrath, revenge, which blackens
the light of heaven to a man, and turns to gall and wormwood every
blessing which God sends.

Ah! my friends, if ever that angry storm rises in our hearts, if ever we
be tempted to avenge ourselves, and cast off the likeness of God for that
of the savage, and return evil for evil,--may God send to us in that day
some angel of His own, as He sent Abigail to David--an angel, though
clothed in human flesh and blood, with a message of peace and wisdom.  And
if any such should speak to us words of peace and wisdom, soothing us and
rebuking us at once, and appealing to those feelings in us which are
really the most noble, just because they are the most gentle, then let us
not turn away in pride, and wrap ourselves up in our own anger, but let
us receive these words as the message of God--whether they come from the
lips of a woman, or of a servant, or even of a little child, for if we
resist them we surely resist God--who has also given to us His Holy
Spirit for that very purpose, that we may hear His message when He
speaks.  It was the Spirit of God in David which made him feel that
Abigail's message was divine.  The Spirit of God, hidden for a while
behind his dark passions, like the sun by clouds, shone out clear again,
and filled all his soul with light, showing him his duty, and giving back
peace and brightness to his mind.

God grant that whenever we are tried like David we may find that that
Holy Spirit has not left us, but that even if a first storm of anger
shall burst, it shall pass over quickly, and the day star arise in our
hearts, and the Lord lift up the light of His countenance upon us, and
give us peace.




XIV.  DAVID'S LOYALTY; OR, TEMPTATION RESISTED.


   "So David and Abishai came to the people by night: and, behold, Saul
   lay sleeping within the trench, and his spear stuck in the ground at
   his bolster; but Abner and the people lay round about him.  Then said
   Abishai to David, God hath delivered thine enemy into thine hand this
   day: now therefore let me smite him, I pray thee, with the spear even
   to the earth at once, and I will not smite him the second time.  And
   David said to Abishai, Destroy him not: for who can stretch forth his
   hand against the Lord's anointed, and be guiltless?  David said
   furthermore, As the Lord liveth, the Lord shall smite him; or his day
   shall come to die; or he shall descend into battle, and perish.  The
   Lord forbid that I should stretch forth mine hand against the Lord's
   anointed; but, I pray thee, take thou now the spear that is at his
   bolster, and the cruise of water, and let us go."--1 SAM. xxvi. 7-11.

David stands for all times as the pattern of true loyalty--loyalty under
the most extreme temptation.  Knowing that he is to be king himself
hereafter, he yet remains loyal to his king though unjustly persecuted to
the death.  Loyal he is to the end, because he has _faith_ and
_obedience_.  Faith tells him that if king he is to be, king he will be,
in God's good time.  If God had promised, God will perform.  He must not
make himself king.  He must not take the matter into his own hand.
Obedience tells him that Saul is still his master, and he is bound to
him.  If Saul be a bad master, that does not give him leave to be a bad
servant.  The sacred bond still remains, and he must not break it.  But
Saul is more.  He is king--the Lord's anointed, the general of the armies
of the living God.  His office is sacred; his person is sacred.  He is a
public personage, and David must not lift up his hand against him in a
private quarrel.

Twice David's faith and obedience are tried fearfully.  Twice Saul is in
his power.  Twice the temptation to murder him comes before him.  The
first time David and his men are in one of the great branching caves of
Engaddi, the desolate limestone cliffs, two thousand feet high, which
overhang the Dead Sea--and Saul is hunting him, as he says, as a
partridge on the mountains.  "And it came to pass when Saul had returned
from following the Philistines, that it was told him saying, Behold David
is in the cave of Engedi.  And Saul took three thousand chosen men out of
all Israel, and went to seek David and his men upon the rocks of the wild
goats.  And he came to the sheepcotes, and by the way there was a cave;
and Saul went in, and David and his men remained in the sides of the
cave.  And the men of David said unto him, Behold the day of which the
Lord said unto thee, Behold I will deliver thine enemy into thy hand, and
thou mayest do to him as seemeth good unto thee.  Then David arose, and
cut off the skirt of Saul's robe privily.  And it came to pass
afterwards, that David's heart smote him, because he had cut off Saul's
skirt.  And he said unto his men, The Lord forbid that I should do this
thing unto my master, the Lord's anointed, to stretch forth mine hand
against him, seeing he is the anointed of the Lord.  So David stayed his
servants."  And afterwards Saul rose up, not knowing what had happened,
and David followed him.  And when Saul looked back, David stooped down
with his face to the earth and bowed himself before Saul, and spoke many
noble words to his king (1 Sam. xxiv. 1-8).

_And David's nobleness has its reward_.  It brings out nobleness in
return to Saul himself.  It melts his heart for a time.  "And it came to
pass that when David had made an end of speaking, that Saul said, Is this
thy voice, my son David?  And Saul lifted up his voice, and wept.  And he
said to David, 'Thou art more righteous than I--for thou hast rewarded me
good, whereas I have rewarded thee evil.  And thou hast shewed me this
day how thou hast dealt with me; for as much as when the Lord delivered
me into thine hand, thou killedst me not.  For if a man find his enemy,
will he let him go well away?  Wherefore the Lord reward thee good for
that thou hast done unto me this day.  And now, behold, I know well that
thou shalt surely be king, and that the kingdom of Israel shall be
established in thine hand.'"

And so it will be with you, my friends.  "If thine enemy hunger, feed
him; if he thirst, give him drink, for so thou shalt heap coals of fire
on his head."  Thou shalt melt the hardness of his heart.  Thou shalt
warm the coldness of his heart.  Nobleness in thee shall bring out in
answer nobleness in him, and if not, thou hast done thy duty, and the
Lord judge between him and thee.

But Saul's repentance does not last.  Soon after we find him again
hunting David in the wilderness, seemingly from mere caprice, and without
any fresh cause of offence.  The Ziphites--dwellers in the forests of the
south of Judea--came to Saul and said, "Doth not David hide himself in
the hill of Hachilah.  Then Saul arose and went down to the wilderness,
having three thousand chosen men of Israel with him, to seek David in the
wilderness of Ziph.  And Saul pitched in the hill of Hachilah.  But David
abode in the wilderness, and he saw that Saul came after him into the
wilderness."  Again Saul lies down to sleep--in an entrenched camp, and
David and Abishai, his nephew, go down to the camp at night as spies.
Then comes the story of my text--how Abishai would have slain Saul, and
David forbade him to lift his hand against the Lord's anointed, and left
Saul to the judgment of God, which he knew must come sooner or later--and
merely took the spear from his bolster and the cruse of water to show he
had been there.

Once again Saul's heart gives way at David's nobleness: for when David
and Abishai got away while Saul and his guards all slept, David calls to
Abner (verse 14-25), and rebukes him for not having guarded his king
better.  "Art not thou a valiant man?  Wherefore, then, hast thou not
kept thy lord the king?  The thing is not good that thou hast done: As
the Lord liveth, ye are worthy to die, because you have not kept your
master, the Lord's anointed.  And now see where the king's spear is, and
the cruse of water that was at his bolster.  And Saul knew David's voice,
and said, Is this thy voice, my son David?  And David said, It is my
voice, my lord, O king.  Wherefore does my lord then thus pursue after
his servant? for what have I done?  Now therefore, let not my blood fall
to the earth, for the king of Israel is come out to seek a flea, as when
one doth hunt a partridge.  Then said Saul, I have sinned: return, my son
David, for I will no more do thee harm, because my soul was precious in
thine eyes.  Behold, I have played the fool, and have erred exceedingly."

But David can trust him no longer.  Weak, violent, and capricious, Saul's
repentance is real for the time, but it does not last.  He means what he
says at the moment; but when some fresh base suspicion crosses his mind,
his promises and his repentance are all forgotten.  A terrible trial it
is to David, to have his noble forgiveness and forbearance again and
again bring forth no fruit--to have to do with a man whom he cannot
trust.  There are few sorer trials than that for living man.  Few which
tempt him more to throw away faith and patience, and say, "I cannot
submit to this misconduct over and over again.  It must end, and I will
end it, by some desperate action, right or wrong."

And, in fact, it does seem as if David was very near yielding to
temptation, the last and worst temptation which befalls men in his
situation--to turn traitor and renegade, to go over to the enemies of his
country and fight with them against Saul.  That has happened too often to
men in David's place; who have so ended a glorious career in shame and
confusion.  And we find that David does at last very nearly fall into it.
It creeps on him, little by little, as it has on other men in his place,
but it does creep on.  He loses patience and hope.  He says, I shall
perish one day by the hand of Saul, and he goes down into the low
country, to the Philistines, whose champion, Goliath, he had killed, and
makes friends with them.  And Achish, king of Gath, gives him a town
called Ziklag, to live in, he and his men.  From it he goes out and
attacks the wild Arabs, the Amalekites.  And then he tells lies to
Achish, saying, that he has been attacking his own countrymen, the Jews.
And by that lie he brings himself into a very great strait--as all men
who tell lies are sure to do.

When Achish and his Philistines go next to fight against the Jews, Achish
asks David and his men to go with him and his army.  And then begins a
very dark story.  What David meant to do we are not told; but one thing
is clear, that whatever he did, he must have disgraced himself for ever,
if God had not had mercy on him.  He is forced to go.  For he can give no
reason why he should not.  So he goes; and in the rear with the
Philistine king, in the post of honour, as his bodyguard.  What is he to
do?  If he fights against his own people, he covers himself with eternal
shame, and loses his chance of ever being king.  If he turns against
Achish and his Philistines in the battle he covers himself with eternal
shame likewise, for they had helped him in his distress, and given him a
home.

But God has mercy on him.  The lords of the Philistines take offence at
his being there, and say that he will play traitor to them in the battle
(which was but too likely), and force king Achish to send him home to
Ziklag, and so God delivers him out of the trap which he has set for
himself, by lying.

But God punishes him on the spot.  When he comes back to his town, it is
burnt with fire, utterly desolate, a heap of blackened ruins, without a
living soul therein.  And now the end is coming, though David thinks not
of it.  He had committed his cause to God.  He had said, when Saul lay
sleeping at his feet, and Abishai would have smitten him through, "Who
can stretch forth his hand against the Lord's anointed.  As the Lord
liveth, the Lord shall smite him, or he shall come to die, or he shall go
down into battle and perish."

And on the third day a man--a heathen Amalekite--comes to Ziklag to David
with his clothes rent, and earth upon his head.  Israel has been defeated
in Mount Gilboa with a great slaughter.  The people far and wide have
fled from Hermon across the plain, and the Philistines have taken
possession, cutting the land of Israel in two.  And Saul and Jonathan,
his son, are dead.  The Amalekite has proof of it.  There is the crown
which was on Saul's head, and the bracelet that was on his arm.  He has
brought them to David to curry favour with him.  Saul, he says, was
wounded, and asked him to kill him (2 Sam. i. 6-10).  It is a lie.  Saul
had killed himself, falling on his own sword, to escape torture and
insult from the Philistines, and the Amalekite is caught in his own trap.
Out of his own mouth will David judge him.  How dare he stretch forth his
hand against the Lord's anointed?  Let one of the young men fall on him,
and kill him.  And so the wretch dies.

And then bursts forth all the nobleness of David's heart.  He thinks of
Saul no longer as the tyrant who has hunted him for years, who has put on
him the last and worst insult of taking away his wife, and giving her to
another man.  He thinks of him only as his master, his king, the grand
and terrible warrior, the terror of Ammonites, Amalekites, and
Philistines, the deliverer of his country in many a bloody fight, and he
bursts out into that fine old lamentation over Saul and Jonathan,
sentences of which have been proverbs in the mouths of men to this day.
"How are the mighty fallen!  Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the
streets of Askelon; lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest
the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph.  Ye mountains of Gilboa, let
there be no dew, neither let there be rain, upon you, nor fields of
offerings: for there the shield of the mighty is vilely cast away, the
shield of Saul, as though he had not been anointed with oil.  From the
blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty, the bow of Jonathan
turned not back, and the sword of Saul returned not empty.  Saul and
Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they
were not divided: they were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than
lions.  Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you in
scarlet, with other delights, who put on ornaments of gold upon your
apparel.  How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle!  O
Jonathan, thou wast slain in thine high places.  I am distressed for
thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love
to me was wonderful, passing the love of woman.  How are the mighty
fallen, and the weapons of war perished!" (2 Sam. i. 19-27).

Let each and every one of us, my friends, imitate David's loyalty, and be
true to our duty, true to our masters, true to our country and true to
our queen, through whatever trials and temptations.  Above all, let us
learn from David to obey; and remember that to obey we need not become
cringing and slavish, or give up independence and high spirit.  David did
neither.  Unless you learn to obey, as David did, you will never learn to
rule.  Imitate David--and so you will imitate David's greater son, even
our Lord Jesus Christ.  For herein David is a type of Christ.

One might say truly that David's spirit was in Christ--if the very
opposite was not the fact, that the spirit of Christ was in David, even
the spirit of loyalty and obedience, toward God and man.  The spirit
which made our Lord fulfil the whole law of Moses--though quite
unnecessary, of course, for him--simply because He had chosen to be born
a Jew, under Moses' law; the spirit which made Him obedient to the
ordinance of the country in which He was born, made Him even pay tribute
to Caesar, the heathen conqueror, because the powers that ruled, were
ordained of God.  And yet that same spirit kept Him lofty and
independent, high-minded and pure-minded.  He could tell the people to
observe and to do all that the scribes and Pharisees told them to do,
because they sat in Moses' seat, and yet He could call those very scribes
and Pharisees hypocrites, who made the law of no effect, and were
bringing on themselves utter destruction.

That spirit, too, made Him loyal and obedient to God His Father in
heaven.  Doing not His own will, but the will of the Father who sent Him.
Of Him it is written, that though He were a Son, yet learned He
"obedience by the things which He suffered;" and that He received the
perfect reward of perfect loyalty, because He had humbled and emptied
Himself, and became obedient unto death even the death of the cross.
Therefore God highly exalted Him, and gave Him a name which is above
every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in
heaven, of things in the earth, and things under the earth, and every
tongue confess that He is Lord and God, to the glory of God the Father.

This is a great mystery!  How can we understand it?  How can we
understand the Divine and eternal bond between Father and Son?  But this
at least we can understand, that loyalty and obedience are Divine
virtues, part of the likeness of Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God,
and therefore divine graces, the gift of God's holy Spirit.

May God pour out upon us that Spirit, as He poured it out on David, and
make us loyal and obedient to our queen, and to all whom He has set over
us; and loyal and obedient above all to Christ our heavenly king, and to
God the Father, in whom we live, and move, and have our being.




XV.  DAVID'S DEATH SONG.


   "And David spake unto the Lord the words of this song in the day that
   the Lord had delivered him out of the hand of all his enemies, and out
   of the hand of Saul: And he said, The Lord is my rock, and my fortress
   and my deliverer; the God of my rock; in him will I trust: he is my
   shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower, and my refuge, my
   saviour; thou savest me from violence."--2 SAM. xxii. 1-3.

This is the death song of David; the last words of the great man--warrior,
statesman, king, poet, prophet.  A man of many joys and many sorrows,
many virtues, and many crimes; but through them all, every inch a man.  A
man--heaped by God with every gift of body, and mind, and heart, and
especially with strong and deep intense feeling.  Right or wrong, he is
never hard, never shallow, never light-minded.  He is in earnest.
Whatever happens to him, for good or evil, goes to his heart, and fills
his whole soul, till it comes out again in song.

This it is which makes David the Psalmist.  This it is which makes the
Psalter a text book still for every soldier or sailor, for all men who
have human hearts in them.  This it is which will make his psalms live
for ever.  Because they are full of humanity, of the spirit of man,
awakened and enlightened, and ennobled, by the Spirit of God.

Looking through these psalms of David, one is struck with astonishment at
their variety.  At what is called the versatility of his mind, that is,
his ability to turn himself to every kind of subject, as it comes before
him, and to sing of it--as man has never sung since.  And one is the more
astonished, when one remembers that many of the most beautiful of these
Psalms must have been written while David was still a very young man.
Though we have them, of course, only in a translation--though many of the
words and phrases in them are difficult, sometimes impossible to
understand, though they were written in a kind of verse which would give
our English ears no pleasure, and were set to a music so utterly
different from our own, that it would not sound like music to us.  Yet,
with all these disadvantages, they are beautiful as they stand, they sink
into the ear, and into the heart, as what they are, the words of one
inspired by God, who found beauty in every sight which he beheld, in
every event which happened, even in every sorrow and every struggle in
his own soul, and could sing of each and all of them in words and
thoughts fresh from God, the fountain of all beauty and all truth.

But the peculiarity of David's psalms, after all, is from his intense
faith in God.  God is in all his thoughts.  God is near him, guiding him,
trying him, educating him, punishing him, sometimes he thinks for a
moment, deserting him.  But even then his mind is still full of God.  It
is God he wants, and the light of God's countenance, without which he
cannot live, and leaving him in misery, and shame, and darkness, and out
of the darkness he cries--My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?  And,
therefore, everything which happens to him shapes itself not into mere
poetry, but into a prayer, or a hymn.

It is this which has made David for Christians now, as well as for Jews
of old, the great master and teacher of heart religion.  In the early
church, in the middle ages, as now, Catholic alike and Protestant,
whosoever has feared God and sought after righteousness; whosoever has
known and sorrowed over the sinfulness and weakness of his own heart;
whosoever has believed that the Lord God was dealing with him as with a
son, educating him, chastening him, purifying him and teaching him, by
the chances and changes of his mortal life; whosoever, I say, has had any
real taste of vital experimental religion--to David's Psalms he has gone,
as to a treasure house, to find there his own feelings, his own doubts,
his own joys, his own thoughts of God and His providence--reflected as in
a glass; everything which he would say, said for him already, in words
which will never be equalled on earth.

There are psalms among them of bitter agony, cries as of a lost child,
like that 6th psalm--"Oh Lord, rebuke me not in Thine anger, neither
chasten me in Thy hot displeasure," &c.  And yet ending like that, with a
sudden flash of faith, and hope, and joy, which is a peculiar mark of
David's character, faith in God triumphing over all the chances and
changes of mortal life.  "The Lord hath heard the voice of my weeping.
The Lord will receive my prayer, all mine enemies shall be confounded and
sore vexed.  They shall be turned back and put to shame."

There are psalms again which are prayers for guidance and teaching like
the 5th Psalm--"Lead me, O Lord, in thy righteousness because of mine
enemies: make thy way plain before my face."

There are psalms, again, of Natural Religion, such as the 8th and the
19th and the 29th, the words of a man who had watched and studied nature
by day and night, as he kept his sheep upon the mountains, and wandered
in the desert with his men.  "I will consider thy heavens, the works of
thy hand, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained . . . the fowls
of the air and the fishes of the sea" . . . (Ps. viii. 3-8).  "The
heavens declare the glory of God: and the firmament sheweth his handi-
work" (Ps. xix. 1-6).  "It is the Lord that commandeth the water: it is
the glorious God that maketh the thunder: it is the Lord that ruleth the
sea: the voice of the Lord breaketh the cedar trees: the voice of the
Lord divideth the flames of fire: the voice of the Lord shaketh the
wilderness: the Lord sitteth above the water flood," &c. (Ps. xxix.).

There are psalms of deep religious experience like the 32d.--"Blessed is
he whose unrighteousness is forgiven, and whose sin is covered . . . Thou
art a place to hide me in. . . . Thy hand is heavy upon me day and night
. . . I will acknowledge my sin unto Thee."

There are psalms, and these are almost the most important of all, such as
the 9th, the 24th and 36th Psalms, which declare the providence and the
kingdom of the Living God, with that great and prophetic 2d Psalm (ver. 1-
5): "Why do the heathen so furiously rage together, and the people
imagine vain things.  The kings of the earth stand up, and the rulers
take counsel together against the Lord, and against his anointed," &c.

There are psalms of deep repentance, of the broken and the contrite
heart, like that famous 51st Psalm, which is used in all Christian
churches to this day, as the expression of all true repentance, and
which, even in our translation, by its awful simplicity, its slow
sadness, expresses in its very sound the utterly crushed and broken
heart.  "Have mercy upon me, O God, after thy great goodness, according
to the multitude of thy mercies do away mine offences. . . . Behold, I
was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive. . . . The
sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, O
God, thou wilt not despise. . . ."  Then there are psalms, like the 26th,
of a manful and stately confidence.  The words of one who is determined
to do right, who feels that on the whole he is doing it, and is not
ashamed to say so.  "Be thou my judge, for I have walked innocently. . . .
Examine and prove me: try out my reins and my heart.  I have not dwelt
with vain persons, neither will I have fellowship with the deceitful. . . .
I have hated the congregation of the wicked.  I have loved the
habitation of thy house."  There are political psalms, full of weighty
advice, to his sons after him, like the 115th Psalm.

There are psalms of the most exquisite tenderness, like the 23d Psalm,
written perhaps while he himself was still a shepherd boy, and he looked
upon his flocks feeding on the downs of Bethlehem, and sang, "The Lord is
my shepherd, I shall not want," &c.  And lastly, though I should not say
lastly, for the variety of this wonderful man's psalms is past counting,
there are psalms of triumph and thanksgiving, which are miracles of
beauty and grandeur.  Take, for instance, the 34th, one of the earliest,
when David was not more than twenty-five years old, when Abimelech drove
him away, and he departed and sang, "I will bless the Lord at all times.
. . . My soul shall make her boast in the Lord. . . . I sought the Lord,
and he heard me, and delivered me out of all my fear.  Lo the poor man
crieth and the Lord heareth him. . . . The angel of the Lord tarrieth
round about them that fear him, and delivereth them."  And, as the
grandest of all, as, indeed, it was meant to be, that wonderful 18th
Psalm which David, the servant of the Lord, spake to the Lord in the day
when the Lord delivered him out of the hand of all his enemies.  "I will
love thee, O Lord, my strength.  The Lord is my strong rock and defence:
my Saviour, my God, and my might, in whom I will trust, my buckler, the
horn also of my salvation, and my refuge."  This is, indeed, David's
masterpiece.  The only one which comes near it is the 144th.  The
loftiest piece of poetry, taken as mere poetry, though it is more, much
more, in the whole world.  Even in our translation, it rushes on with a
force and a swiftness, which are indeed divine.  Thought follows thought,
image image, verse verse, before the breath of the Spirit of God, as wave
leaps after wave before a mighty wind.  Even now, to read that psalm
rightly, should stir the heart like a trumpet.  What must it have been
like when sung by David himself?  No wonder that those brave old Jews
hung upon the lips of their warrior-poet and felt that the man who could
sing to them of such thoughts, and not only sing them, but feel them
likewise, was indeed a king and a prophet sent to them by God.  A
prophet, I say.  They loved his songs not merely on account of the beauty
of their poetry.  Indeed, one hardly likes to talk of David's psalms as
beautiful poetry.  It seems unfair to them.  For though they are
beautiful poetry, they are far more, they are prophecy and preaching
concerning God.  They preach and declare to the Jews the Living God.  They
are the speech of a man whose thoughts and works were begun, continued,
and ended in God.  A man who knew that God was about his path, and about
his bed, and spying out all his ways.  A man whose one fixed idea was,
that God was leading and guiding him through life.  That idea, "The Lord
leads me," is the key-note of David's psalms, and makes them what they
are, an inspired revelation of Almighty God.

But is that idea true?  Of course, you answer, it is true, because it is
in the Bible.  But that is not the question.  That is rather putting the
question aside, which is, Do _we_ believe it to be true, and find it to
be true?  We believe that God was leading David because we read it in the
Bible.  But do we believe that God is leading _us_?  If not, what is the
use of our reading David's psalms, either in private or publicly in
church every Sunday?  You all know how largely we use them, but why?  If
we are not in the same case as David was, what right have we to take
David's words into our mouths?  We do not fancy that there is any magical
virtue in repeating the same words, as foolish people used to repeat
charms and spells.  Our only right, our only excuse for saying or singing
David's psalms in public or in private, must be, that as David was, so
are we in this world, under the continual guidance of God.

And therefore it is that the Church bids us to use these psalms in our
devotions, day by day, all the year round--that we may know that our God
is David's God, our temptations David's temptations, our fears David's
fears, our hopes David's hopes, our struggles and triumphs over what is
wrong in our hearts and in the world around us, are the same as David's.
That we are not to fancy, because David was an inspired prophet, that
therefore he was in a different case from us, of different passions from
ours, or that his words are too sacred and holy for us to use.  Not so,
we are to believe the very contrary.  We are to believe that no prophecy
of Scripture is of any private interpretation--that is--has not merely to
do with the man who spoke it first--but that because David spoke by the
Spirit of God, who is no respecter of persons, therefore his words apply
to you, and to me, and to every human being--that David is revealing to
us the everlasting laws of God's Spirit, and of God's providence, whereby
He works alike in every Christian soul, and then, therefore, whatever our
sin may be, whatever our sorrows may be, whatever our station in life may
be, we have a right to offer up to God our repentance, our doubts, our
fears, our hopes, our thanksgivings, in the very words which David used
two thousand years and more ago, certain that they are the right words,
better words than we can find for ourselves, exactly fitting our own
souls, and fitting too the mind and will of Almighty God, because they
are inspired by the same Spirit of God who descended on us, when we were
baptized unto Christ's Church.

And for that, my friends, we have an example--as we have for everything
else--in our Lord Jesus Christ Himself.  For He, in the hour of His
darkest agony, when He hung upon the cross for our sins, and the sin of
all mankind, and when (worse than all other agony, or shame), there came
over Him the deepest horror of all--the feeling, but for a moment, that
God had forsaken Him--even then, He who spake as never man spake, did not
disdain to use the words of David, and cry, in the opening verse of that
22d psalm, every line of which applies so strangely to Him himself, "My
God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?"  So did our Lord bequeath, as it
were, with His dying breath, to all Christians for ever, as the fit and
true expression of all that they should ever experience, the psalms of
His great earthly ancestor, David, the sweet singer of Israel.

My friends, neglect not that precious bequest of your dying Lord.  Read
those psalms, study them, tune your hearts and minds to them more and
more; and you will find in them an inexhaustible treasury of wisdom, and
comfort, and of the knowledge of God, wherein standeth your eternal life.




XVI.  AHAB AND MICAIAH--THE CHRISTIAN DEAD ALIVE FOE EVERMORE.


   "And the King of Israel said to Jehosaphat, There is yet one man,
   Micaiah the son of Imlah, by whom we may enquire of the Lord: but I
   hate him; for he doth not prophesy good concerning me, but evil." . .
   .--1 KINGS xxii. 8.

If you read the story of Micaiah the Prophet, and King Ahab in the 22d
chapter of the 1st Book of Kings, you will, I think, agree that Ahab
showed himself as foolish as he was wicked.  He hated Micaiah for telling
him the truth.  And when he heard the truth and was warned of his coming
end, he went stupidly to meet it, and died as the fool dies.  Foolishness
and wickedness often go hand in hand.  Certainly they did in that
miserable king's case.

But now, my friends, while we find fault with wretched Ahab, let us take
care that we are not finding fault with ourselves also.  If we do what
Ahab did, we have no right to despise him for doing what we do.  With
what judgment we judge we shall be judged, and the same measure which we
measure out to Ahab, God will measure out to us.  All these things are
written for our example, that we may see our faults in other men, as in a
glass, and seeing how ugly sin and folly is, and to what misery it leads,
may learn to avoid it, and look at home, and see that we are not treading
the same path.  Else what use in reading these stories of good men and
bad men of old times?  The very use of them is to make us remember that
they were men of like passions with ourselves, and learn from their
example; as we may do easily enough from that of Ahab.

"There remaineth yet one prophet--but I hate him."  How often have we
said that in our hearts!  Do you think not?  Let me show you then.

How often when we are in trouble or anxiety do we go everywhere to get
comfort, before we go to God's word?  When a young lad falls into wild
ways, and gets into trouble by his own folly, then to whom does he go for
comfort?  Too often, to other wild lads like himself, or to foolish and
wicked women, who will flatter him, and try to make him easy in his sins,
and say to him as the false prophets said to Ahab, "Go on and prosper--why
be afraid?  Why should you not enjoy yourself?  Never mind what your
father and mother say, never mind what the parson says.  You will do well
enough.  All will come right somehow.  Come and drink, and drive away
sorrow."

And all the while the poor lad gets no comfort from these false friends.
He likes to listen to them, because they flatter him up in his sins; but
all the while his heart is heavy.  Like Ahab, he has a secret fear that
all will _not_ come right; he feels that he will _not_ do well enough;
and he knows that there remaineth yet a prophet of the Lord, who will not
prophesy good of him but evil--and that is the Bible, and the
prayer-book, and the sermon he hears at church--and therefore he hates
them.  And so, many a time he will not go to church for fear of hearing
there that he is wrong, perhaps something in the sermon, which hits him
hard, and makes him ashamed of himself, and angry with the preacher.  So
for fear of hearing the truth, and having his sins set before his face,
he stays away from church, and passes his Sundays like a heathen, because
he has no mind to repent and mend, and be a good Christian.

Foolish fellow!  As if he could escape God's judgment by shutting his
ears to it.  As well try to stop the thunder from rolling in the sky, by
stopping his ears to that!  The thunder is there, whether he choose to
hear it or not.  And whether he comes to church or not, God's law stands
sure, that the wages of sin is death.  Does the man fancy that God's law
is shut up within the church walls, and that so he can keep clear of it
by staying away from church?  My friends, God's law is over the whole
country, and over every cottage and field in it--about our path and about
our bed, and spying out all our ways.  The darkness is no darkness to
God.  God's judgments are in all the earth; and whether or not we choose
to find them out, they will find us out just the same, as they found out
Ahab, when his cup was full, and his time was come.

How many a poor lad, too, who has got into trouble, thinks he shall
escape God's judgments by going across the sea; but he finds himself
mistaken!  He finds that the wages of sin are misery and shame and ruin,
in Australia just as much as in England, and that all the gold in the
diggings cannot redeem his soul, or prevent his being an unhappy self-
condemned man if he does wrong.

How many a poor lad, too, who has got into trouble, has fancied that he
could escape God's judgments by going for a soldier, and has found out
that he too was mistaken!  Perhaps God's judgment has found him out, as
it found out Ahab, on the field of battle, and a chance shot has taught
him, as it taught Ahab, that there is no hiding-place from the Lord who
made him.  Or perhaps God's judgments have come in fever, and hunger, and
cold, and weariness, and miserable lonely labour; and with that hunger of
body has come a hunger of his soul--a hunger after the bread of life, and
the word of God!  Ah! how many a poor fellow in his pain and misery has
longed for the crumbs which used to fall from God's table, when he was a
boy at home! for a word of good advice, though it were never so sharp and
plain spoken--or a lesson such as he used to hear at school, or a tract,
or a bit of a book, or anybody or anything which will put his poor
wandering soul in the right way.  He used to hate such things when he was
at home, because they warned him of his bad ways; but now he feels a
strange longing for that very good talk which he hated once, and so like
David of old, out of the deep he cries unto the Lord.  And when that cry
comes up out of a sinful conscience-stricken, self-condemned heart, be
sure it does not come up in vain.  The Lord hears it, and the Lord
answers it.  Yes, I know it for certain; for many a sad and yet pleasant
story I have heard, how brave men who went

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