Twenty-Five Village Sermons
by Charles Kingsley · English · Gutenberg #7954 · 390,403 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Twenty-Five Village Sermons
Author: Charles Kingsley
Release date: April 1, 2005 [eBook #7954]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2014
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7954
Credits: Transcribed from the 1849 John W. Parker edition by David Price
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWENTY-FIVE VILLAGE SERMONS ***
Transcribed from the 1849 John W. Parker edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org
TWENTY-FIVE
VILLAGE SERMONS.
* * * * *
BY
CHARLES KINGSLEY, JUN.,
RECTOR OF EVERSLEY, HANTS, AND CANON OF MIDDLEHAM, YORKSHIRE.
* * * * *
LONDON:
JOHN W. PARKER, WEST STRAND.
* * * * *
MDCCCXLIX.
* * * * *
LONDON:
Printed by G. BARCLAY, Castle St Leicester Sq.
CONTENTS.
Page
SERMON I.
GOD’S WORLD.
PSALM civ. 24.
O Lord, how manifold are Thy works! in wisdom hast Thou 1
made them all: the earth is full of Thy riches
SERMON II.
RELIGION NOT GODLINESS.
PSALM civ. 13–15.
He watereth the hills from his chambers: the earth is 13
satisfied with the fruit of thy works. He causeth the
grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of
man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth; and
wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his
face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man’s heart
SERMON III.
LIFE AND DEATH.
PSALM civ. 24, 28–30.
O Lord, how manifold are Thy works! in wisdom hast Thou 25
made them all: the earth is full of Thy riches. That Thou
givest them they gather: Thou openest Thine hand, they are
filled with good. Thou hidest Thy face, they are troubled:
Thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to
their dust. Thou sendest forth Thy spirit, they are
created: and Thou renewest the face of the earth
SERMON IV.
THE WORK OF GOD’S SPIRIT.
JAMES, i. 16, 17.
Do not err, my beloved brethren; every good gift and every 35
perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father
of lights
SERMON V.
FAITH.
HABAKKUK, ii. 4.
The just shall live by faith 47
SERMON VI.
THE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH.
GALATIANS, v. 16.
I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the 60
lusts of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the
Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, and these are
contrary the one to the other
SERMON VII.
RETRIBUTION.
NUMBERS, xxxii. 23.
Be sure your sin will find you out 72
SERMON VIII.
SELF-DESTRUCTION.
1 KINGS, xxii. 23.
The Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these 82
thy prophets
SERMON IX.
HELL ON EARTH.
MATTHEW, viii. 29.
And behold the evil spirits cried out, saying, What have we 91
to do with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of God? Art Thou come
hither to torment us before the time?
SERMON X.
NOAH’S JUSTICE.
GENESIS, vi. 9.
Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and 104
Noah walked with God
SERMON XI.
THE NOACHIC COVENANT.
GEN. ix. 8, 9.
And God spake unto Noah, and his sons with him, saying, And 116
I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your
seed after you
SERMON XII.
ABRAHAM’S FAITH.
HEBREWS, xi. 9, 10.
By faith Abraham sojourned in the land of promise as in a 125
strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and
Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise. For he
looked for a city, which hath foundations, whose builder
and maker is God
SERMON XIII.
ABRAHAM’S OBEDIENCE.
HEBREWS, xi. 17–19.
By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac; and 141
he that had received the promises offered up his
only-begotten son, of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall
thy seed be called: accounting that God was able to raise
him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received
him in a figure
SERMON XIV.
OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN.
1 JOHN, ii. 13.
I write unto you, little children, because ye have known 149
the Father
SERMON XV.
THE TRANSFIGURATION.
MARK, ix. 2.
Jesus taketh Peter, and James, and John, and leadeth them 160
up into a high mountain apart, and was transfigured before
them
SERMON XVI.
THE CRUCIFIXION.
ISAIAH, liii. 7.
He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter 173
SERMON XVII.
THE RESURRECTION.
LUKE, xxiv. 6.
He is not here—He is risen 179
SERMON XVIII.
IMPROVEMENT.
PSALM xcii. 12.
The righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree: he shall 191
grow like the cedar in Lebanon. Those that be planted in
the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our
God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they
shall be fat and flourishing
SERMON XIX.
MAN’S WORKING DAY.
JOHN, xi. 9, 10.
Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If 200
any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth
the light of this world. But if a man walk in the night he
stumbleth, because there is no light in him
SERMON XX.
ASSOCIATION.
GALATIANS, vi. 2.
Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of 210
Christ
SERMON XXI.
HEAVEN ON EARTH.
1 COR. x. 31.
Whether ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to 219
the glory of God
SERMON XXII.
NATIONAL PRIVILEGES.
LUKE, x. 23.
Blessed are the eyes which see the things which ye see: for 228
I tell you, that many prophets and kings have desired to
see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and
to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them
SERMON XXIII.
LENTEN THOUGHTS.
HAGGAI, i. 5.
Now, therefore, thus saith the Lord of Hosts, consider your 239
ways
SERMON XXIV.
ON BOOKS.
JOHN, i. 1.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, 248
and the Word was God
SERMON XXV.
THE COURAGE OF THE SAVIOUR.
JOHN, xi. 7, 8.
Then after that saith He to His disciples, Let us go into 259
Judea again. His disciples say to Him, Master, the Jews of
late sought to stone thee, and goest thou thither again?
SERMON I.
GOD’S WORLD.
PSALM civ. 24.
“O Lord, how manifold are Thy works! in wisdom hast Thou made them
all: the earth is full of Thy riches.”
WHEN we read such psalms as the one from which this verse is taken, we
cannot help, if we consider, feeling at once a great difference between
them and any hymns or religious poetry which is commonly written or read
in these days. The hymns which are most liked now, and the psalms which
people most willingly choose out of the Bible, are those which speak, or
seem to speak, about God’s dealings with people’s own souls, while such
psalms as this are overlooked. People do not care really about psalms of
this kind when they find them in the Bible, and they do not expect or
wish nowadays any one to write poetry like them. For these psalms of
which I speak praise and honour God, not for what He has done to our
souls, but for what He has done and is doing in the world around us.
This very 104th psalm, for instance, speaks entirely about things which
we hardly care or even think proper to mention in church now. It speaks
of this earth entirely, and the things on it. Of the light, the clouds,
and wind—of hills and valleys, and the springs on the hill-sides—of wild
beasts and birds—of grass and corn, and wine and oil—of the sun and moon,
night and day—the great sea, the ships, and the fishes, and all the
wonderful and nameless creatures which people the waters—the very birds’
nests in the high trees, and the rabbits burrowing among the
rocks,—nothing on the earth but this psalm thinks it worth mentioning.
And all this, which one would expect to find only in a book of natural
history, is in the Bible, in one of the psalms, written to be sung in the
temple at Jerusalem, before the throne of the living God and His glory
which used to be seen in that temple,—inspired, as we all believe, by
God’s Spirit,—God’s own word, in short: that is worth thinking of.
Surely the man who wrote this must have thought very differently about
this world, with its fields and woods, and beasts and birds, from what we
think. Suppose, now, that we had been old Jews in the temple, standing
before the holy house, and that we believed, as the Jews believed, that
there was only one thin wall and one curtain of linen between us and the
glory of the living God, that unspeakable brightness and majesty which no
one could look at for fear of instant death, except the high-priest in
fear and trembling once a-year—that inside that small holy house, He, God
Almighty, appeared visibly—God who made heaven and earth. Suppose we had
been there in the temple, and known all this, should we have liked to be
singing about beasts and birds, with God Himself close to us? We should
not have liked it—we should have been terrified, thinking perhaps about
our own sinfulness, perhaps about that wonderful majesty which dwelt
inside. We should have wished to say or sing something spiritual, as we
call it; at all events, something very different from the 104th psalm
about woods, and rivers, and dumb beasts. We do not like the thought of
such a thing: it seems almost irreverent, almost impertinent to God to be
talking of such things in His presence. Now does this shew us that we
think about this earth, and the things in it, in a very different way
from those old Jews? They thought it a fit and proper thing to talk
about corn and wine and oil, and cattle and fishes, in the presence of
Almighty God, and we do not think it fit and proper. We read this psalm
when it comes in the Church-service as a matter of course, mainly because
we do not believe that God is here among us. We should not be so ready
to read it if we thought that Almighty God was so near us.
That is a great difference between us and the old Jews. Whether it shews
that we are better or not than they were in the main, I cannot tell;
perhaps some of them had such thoughts too, and said, ‘It is not
respectful to God to talk about such commonplace earthly things in His
presence;’ perhaps some of them thought themselves spiritual and
pure-minded for looking down on this psalm, and on David for writing it.
Very likely, for men have had such thoughts in all ages, and will have
them. But the man who wrote this psalm had no such thoughts. He said
himself, in this same psalm, that his words would please God. Nay, he is
not speaking and preaching _about_ God in this psalm, as I am now in my
sermon, but he is doing more; he is speaking _to_ God—a much more solemn
thing if you will think of it. He says, “O Lord my God, _Thou_ art
become exceeding glorious. Thou deckest Thyself with light as with a
garment. All the beasts wait on Thee; when Thou givest them meat they
gather it. Thou renewest the face of the earth.” When he turns and
speaks of God as “He,” saying, “He appointed the moon,” and so on, he
cannot help going back to God, and pouring out his wonder, and delight,
and awe, to God Himself, as we would sooner speak _to_ any one we love
and honour than merely speak _about_ them. He cannot take his mind off
God. And just at the last, when he does turn and speak to himself, it is
to say, “Praise thou the Lord, O my soul, praise the Lord,” as if
rebuking and stirring up himself for being too cold-hearted and slow, for
not admiring and honouring enough the infinite wisdom, and power, and
love, and glorious majesty of God, which to him shines out in every
hedge-side bird and every blade of grass. Truly I said that man had a
very different way of looking at God’s earth from what we have!
Now, in what did that difference lie? What was it? We need not look far
to see. It was this,—David looked on the earth as God’s earth; we look
on it as man’s earth, or nobody’s earth. We know that we are here, with
trees and grass, and beasts and birds, round us. And we know that we did
not put them here; and that, after we are dead and gone, they will go on
just as they went on before we were born,—each tree, and flower, and
animal, after its kind, but we know nothing more. The earth is here, and
we on it; but who put it there, and why it is there, and why we are on
it, instead of being anywhere else, few ever think. But to David the
earth looked very different; it had quite another meaning; it spoke to
him of God who made it. By seeing what this earth is like, he saw what
God who made it is like: and we see no such thing. The earth?—we can eat
the corn and cattle on it, we can earn money by farming it, and ploughing
and digging it; and that is all most men know about it. But David knew
something more—something which made him feel himself very weak, and yet
very safe; very ignorant and stupid, and yet honoured with glorious
knowledge from God,—something which made him feel that he belonged to
this world, and must not forget it or neglect it, that this earth was his
lesson-book—this earth was his work-field; and yet those same thoughts
which shewed him how he was made for the land round him, and the land
round him was made for him, shewed him also that he belonged to another
world—a spirit-world; shewed him that when this world passed away, he
should live for ever; shewed him that while he had a mortal body, he had
an immortal soul too; shewed him that though his home and business were
here on earth, yet that, for that very reason, his home and business were
in heaven, with God who made the earth, with that blessed One of whom he
said, “Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the
earth, and the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall perish, but
Thou shalt endure; they all shall fade as a garment, and like a vesture
shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed; but Thou art the same,
and _Thy_ years shall not fail. The children of Thy servants shall
continue, and their seed shall stand fast in Thy sight.” “As a garment
shalt Thou change them,”—ay, there was David’s secret! He saw that this
earth and skies are God’s garment—the garment by which we see God; and
that is what our forefathers saw too, and just what we have forgotten;
but David had not forgotten it. Look at this very 104th psalm again, how
he refers every thing to God. We say, ‘The light shines:’ David says
something more; he says, “Thou, O God, adornest Thyself with light as
with a curtain.” Light is a picture of God. “God,” says St. John, “is
light, and in Him is no darkness at all.” We say, ‘The clouds fly and
the wind blows,’ as if they went of themselves; David says, “God makes
the clouds His chariot, and walks upon the wings of the wind.” We talk
of the rich airs of spring, of the flashing lightning of summer, as dead
things; and men who call themselves wise say, that lightning is only
matter,—‘We can grind the like of it out of glass and silk, and make
lightning for ourselves in a small way;’ and so they can in a small way,
and in a very small one: David does not deny that, but he puts us in mind
of something in that lightning and those breezes which we cannot make.
He says, God makes the winds His angels, and flaming fire his ministers;
and St. Paul takes the same text, and turns it round to suit his purpose,
when he is talking of the blessed angels, saying, ‘That text in the 104th
Psalm means something more; it means that God makes His angels spirits,
(that is winds) and His ministers a flaming fire.’ So shewing us that in
those breezes there are living spirits, that God’s angels guide those
thunder-clouds; that the roaring thunderclap is a shock in the air truly,
but that it is something more—that it is the voice of God, which shakes
the cedar-trees of Lebanon, and tears down the thick bushes, and makes
the wild deer slip their young. So we read in the psalms in church; that
is David’s account of the thunder. I take it for a true account; you may
or not as you like. See again. Those springs in the hill-sides, how do
they come there? ‘Rain-water soaking and flowing out,’ we say. True,
but David says something more; he says, God sends the springs, and He
sends them into the rivers too. You may say, ‘Why, water must run
down-hill, what need of God?’ But suppose God had chosen that water
should run _up_-hill and not down, how would it have been then?—Very
different, I think. No; He sends them; He sends all things. Wherever
there is any thing useful, His Spirit has settled it. The help that is
done on earth He doeth it all Himself.—Loving and merciful,—caring for
the poor dumb beasts!—He sends the springs, and David says, “All the
beasts of the field drink thereof.” The wild animals in the night, He
cares for them too,—He, the Almighty God. We hear the foxes bark by
night, and we think the fox is hungry, and there it ends with us; but not
with David: he says, “The lions roaring after their prey do seek their
meat from God,”—God, who feedeth the young ravens who call upon Him. He
is a God! “He did not make the world,” says a wise man, “and then let it
spin round His finger,” as we wind up a watch, and then leave it to go of
itself. No; “His mercy is over all His works.” Loving and merciful, the
God of nature is the God of grace. The same love which chose us and our
forefathers for His people while we were yet dead in trespasses and sins;
the same only-begotten Son, who came down on earth to die for us poor
wretches on the cross,—that same love, that same power, that same Word of
God, who made heaven and earth, looks after the poor gnats in the winter
time, that they may have a chance of coming out of the ground when the
day stirs the little life in them, and dance in the sunbeam for a short
hour of gay life, before they return to the dust whence they were made,
to feed creatures nobler and more precious than themselves. That is all
God’s doing, all the doing of Christ, the King of the earth. “They wait
on Him,” says David. The beasts, and birds, and insects, the strange
fish, and shells, and the nameless corals too, in the deep, deep sea, who
build and build below the water for years and thousands of years, every
little, tiny creature bringing his atom of lime to add to the great heap,
till their heap stands out of the water and becomes dry land; and seeds
float thither over the wide waste sea, and trees grow up, and birds are
driven thither by storms; and men come by accident in stray ships, and
build, and sow, and multiply, and raise churches, and worship the God of
heaven, and Christ, the blessed One,—on that new land which the little
coral worms have built up from the deep. Consider that. Who sent them
there? Who contrived that those particular men should light on that new
island at that especial time? Who guided thither those seeds—those
birds? Who gave those insects that strange longing and power to build
and build on continually?—Christ, by whom all things are made, to whom
all power is given in heaven and earth; He and His Spirit, and none else.
It is when _He_ opens His hand, they are filled with good. It is when
_He_ takes away their breath, they die, and turn again to their dust.
_He_ lets His breath, His spirit, go forth, and out of that dead dust
grow plants and herbs afresh for man and beast, and He renews the face of
the earth. For, says the wise man, “all things are God’s
garment”—outward and visible signs of His unseen and unapproachable
glory; and when they are worn out, He changes them, says the Psalmist, as
a garment, and they shall be changed.
The old order changes, giving place to the new,
And God fulfils Himself in many ways.
But He is the same. He is there all the time. All things are His work.
In all things we may see Him, if our souls have eyes. All things, be
they what they may, which live and grow on this earth, or happen on land
or in the sky, will tell us a tale of God,—shew forth some one feature,
at least, of our blessed Saviour’s countenance and character,—either His
foresight, or His wisdom, or His order, or His power, or His love, or His
condescension, or His long-suffering, or His slow, sure vengeance on
those who break His laws. It is all written there outside in the great
green book, which God has given to labouring men, and which neither taxes
nor tyrants can take from them. The man who is no scholar in letters may
read of God as he follows the plough, for the earth he ploughs is his
Father’s: there is God’s mark and seal on it,—His name, which though it
is written on the dust, yet neither man nor fiend can wipe it out!
The poor, solitary, untaught boy, who keeps the sheep, or minds the
birds, long lonely days, far from his mother and his playmates, may keep
alive in him all purifying thoughts, if he will but open his eyes and
look at the green earth around him.
Think now, my boys, when you are at your work, how all things may put you
in mind of God, if you do but choose. The trees which shelter you from
the wind, God planted them there for your sakes, in His love.—There is a
lesson about God. The birds which you drive off the corn, who gave them
the sense to keep together and profit by each other’s wit and keen
eyesight? Who but God, who feeds the young birds when they call on
Him?—There is another lesson about God. The sheep whom you follow, who
ordered the warm wool to grow on them, from which your clothes are made?
Who but the Spirit of God above, who clothes the grass of the field, the
silly sheep, and who clothes you, too, and thinks of you when you don’t
think of yourselves?—There is another lesson about God. The feeble lambs
in spring, they ought to remind you surely of your blessed Saviour, the
Lamb of God, who died for you upon the cruel cross, who was led as a lamb
to the slaughter; and like a sheep that lies dumb and patient under the
shearer’s hand, so he opened not his mouth. Are not these lambs, then, a
lesson from God? And these are but one or two examples out of thousands
and thousands. Oh, that I could make you, young and old, all feel these
things! Oh, that I could make you see God in every thing, and every
thing in God! Oh, that I could make you look on this earth, not as a
mere dull, dreary prison, and workhouse for your mortal bodies, but as a
living book, to speak to you at every time of the living God, Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost! Sure I am that that would be a heavenly life for
you,—sure I am that it would keep you from many a sin, and stir you up to
many a holy thought and deed, if you could learn to find in every thing
around you, however small or mean, the work of God’s hand, the likeness
of God’s countenance, the shadow of God’s glory.
SERMON II.
RELIGION NOT GODLINESS.
PSALM civ. 13–15.
“He watereth the hills from his chambers: the earth is satisfied with
the fruit of thy works. He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle,
and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of
the earth; and wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to
make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man’s heart.”
DID you ever remark, my friends, that the Bible says hardly any thing
about religion—that it never praises religious people? This is very
curious. Would to God we would all remember it! The Bible speaks of a
religious man only once, and of religion only twice, except where it
speaks of the Jews’ religion to condemn it, and shews what an empty,
blind, useless thing it was.
What does this Bible talk of, then? It talks of God; not of religion,
but of God. It tells us not to be religious, but to be godly. You may
think there is no difference, or that it is but a difference of words. I
tell you that a difference in words is a very awful, important
difference. A difference in words is a difference in things. Words are
very awful and wonderful things, for they come from the most awful and
wonderful of all beings, Jesus Christ, the Word. He puts words into
men’s minds—He made all things, and He makes all words to express those
things with. And woe to those who use the wrong words about things!—For
if a man calls any thing by its wrong name, it is a sure sign that he
understands that thing wrongly, or feels about it wrongly; and therefore
a man’s words are oftener honester than he thinks; for as a man’s words
are, so is a man’s heart; out of the abundance of our hearts our mouths
speak; and, therefore, by right words, by the right names which we call
things, we shall be justified, and by our words, by the wrong names we
call things, we shall be condemned.
Therefore a difference in words is a difference in the things which those
words mean, and there is a difference between religion and godliness; and
we shew it by our words. Now these are religious times, but they are
very ungodly times; and we shew that also by our words. Because we think
that people ought to be religious, we talk a great deal about religion;
because we hardly think at all that a man ought to be godly, we talk very
little about God, and that good old Bible word “godliness” does not pass
our lips once a-month. For a man may be very religious, my friends, and
yet very ungodly. The heathens were very religious at the very time
that, as St. Paul tells us, they would not keep God in their knowledge.
The Jews were the most religious people on the earth, they hardly talked
or thought about anything but religion, at the very time that they knew
so little of God that they crucified Him when He came down among them.
St. Paul says that he was living after the strictest sect of the Jews’
religion, at the very time that he was fighting against God, persecuting
God’s people and God’s Son, and dead in trespasses and sins. These are
ugly facts, my friends, but they are true, and well worth our laying to
heart in these religious, ungodly days. I am afraid if Jesus Christ came
down into England this day as a carpenter’s son, He would get—a better
hearing, perhaps, than the Jews gave him, but still a very bad
hearing—one dare hardly think of it.
And yet I believe we ought to think of it, and, by God’s help, I will one
day preach you a sermon, asking you all round this fair question:—If
Jesus Christ came to you in the shape of a poor man, whom nobody knew,
should _you_ know him? should you admire him, fall at his feet and give
yourself up to him body and soul? I am afraid that I, for one, should
not—I am afraid that too many of us here would not. That comes of
thinking more of religion than we do of godliness—in plain words, more of
our own souls than we do of Jesus Christ. But you will want to know what
is, after all, the difference between religion and godliness? Just the
difference, my friends, that there is between always thinking of self and
always forgetting self—between the terror of a slave and the affection of
a child—between the fear of hell and the love of God. For, tell me, what
you mean by being religious? Do you not mean thinking a great deal about
your own souls, and praying and reading about your own souls, and trying
by all possible means to get your own souls saved? Is not that the
meaning of religion? And yet I have never mentioned God’s name in
describing it! This sort of religion must have very little to do with
God. You may be surprised at my words, and say in your hearts almost
angrily, ‘Why who saves our souls but God? therefore religion must have
to do with God.’ But, my friends, for your souls’ sake, and for God’s
sake, ask yourselves this question on your knees this day:—If you could
get your souls saved without God’s help, would it make much difference to
you? Suppose an angel from heaven, as they say, was to come down and
prove to you clearly that there was no God, no blessed Jesus in heaven,
that the world made itself, and went on of itself, and that the Bible was
all a mistake, but that you need not mind, for your gardens and crops
would grow just as well, and your souls be saved just as well when you
died.
To how many of you would it make any difference? To some of you, thank
God, I believe it would make a difference. Here are some here, I
believe, who would feel that news the worst news they ever heard,—worse
than if they were told that their souls were lost for ever; there are
some here, I do believe, who, at that news, would cry aloud in agony,
like little children who had lost their father, and say, ‘No Father in
heaven to love? No blessed Jesus in heaven to work for, and die for, and
glory and delight in? No God to rule and manage this poor, miserable,
quarrelsome world, bringing good out of evil, blessing and guiding all
things and people on earth? What do I care what becomes of my soul if
there is no God for my soul to glory in? What is heaven worth without
God? God is Heaven!’
Yes, indeed, what would heaven be worth without God? But how many people
feel that the curse of this day is, that most people have forgotten
_that_? They are selfishly anxious enough about their own souls, but
they have forgotten God. They are religious, for fear of hell; but they
are not godly, for they do not love God, or see God’s hand in every
thing. They forget that they have a Father in heaven; that He sends
rain, and sunshine, and fruitful seasons; that He gives them all things
richly to enjoy in spite of all their sins. His mercies are far above,
out of their sight, and therefore His judgments are far away out of their
sight too; and so they talk of the “Visitation of God,” as if it was
something that was very extraordinary, and happened very seldom; and when
it came, only brought evil, harm, and sorrow. If a man lives on in
health, they say he lives by the strength of his own constitution; if he
drops down dead, they say he died by “the visitation of God.” If the
corn-crops go on all right and safe, they think _that_ quite natural—the
effect of the soil, and the weather, and their own skill in farming and
gardening. But if there comes a hailstorm or a blight, and spoils it
all, and brings on a famine, they call it at once “a visitation of God.”
My friends! do you think God “visits” the earth or you only to harm you?
I tell you that every blade of grass grows by “the visitation of God.” I
tell you that every healthy breath you ever drew, every cheerful hour you
ever spent, every good crop you ever housed safely, came to you by “the
visitation of God.” I tell you that every sensible thought or plan that
ever came into your heads,—every loving, honest, manly, womanly feeling
that ever rose in your hearts, God “visited” you to put it there. If
God’s Spirit had not given it you, you would never have got it of
yourselves.
But people forget this, and therefore they have so little real love to
God—so little real, loyal, childlike trust in God. They do not think
much about God, because they find no pleasure in thinking about Him; they
look on God as a task-master, gathering where He has not strewed, reaping
where He has not sown,—a task-master who has put them, very miserable,
sinful creatures, to struggle on in a very miserable, sinful world, and,
though He tells them in His Bible that they _cannot_ keep His
commandments, expects them to keep them just the same, and will at the
last send them all into everlasting fire, unless they take a great deal
of care, and give up a great many natural and pleasant things, and
beseech and entreat Him very hard to excuse them, after all. This is the
thought which most people have of God, even religious people; they look
on God as a stern tyrant, who, when man sinned and fell, could not
satisfy His own justice—His own vengeance in plain words, without killing
some one, and who would have certainly killed all mankind, if Jesus
Christ had not interfered, and said, “If Thou must slay some one, slay
me, though I am innocent!”
Oh, my friends, does not this all sound horrible and irreverent? And yet
if you will but look into your own hearts, will you not find some such
thoughts there? I am sure you will. I believe every man finds such
thoughts in his heart now and then. I find them in my own heart: I know
that they must be in the hearts of others, because I see them producing
their natural fruits in people’s actions—a selfish, slavish view of
religion, with little or no real love to God, or real trust in Him; but a
great deal of uneasy dread of Him: for this is just the dark, false view
of God, and of the good news of salvation and the kingdom of heaven,
which the devil is always trying to make men take. The Evil One tries to
make us forget that God is love; he tries to make us forget that God
gives us all things richly to enjoy; he tries to make us forget that God
gives at all, and to make us think that we take, not that He gives; to
make us look at God as a task-master, not as a father; in one word, to
make us mistake the devil for God, and God for the devil.
And, therefore, it is that we ought to bless God for such Scriptures as
this 104th Psalm, which He seems to have preserved in the Bible just to
contradict these dark, slavish notions,—just to testify that God is a
_giver_, and knows our necessities before we ask and gives us all things,
even as He gave us His Blessed Son—freely, long before we wanted
them,—from the foundation of all things, before ever the earth and the
world was made—from all eternity, perpetual love, perpetual bounty.
What does this text teach us? To look at God as Him who gives to all
freely and upbraideth not. It says to us,—Do not suppose that your crops
grow of themselves. God waters the hills from above. He causes the
grass to grow for the cattle, and the green herb for the service of man.
Do not suppose that He cares nothing about seeing you comfortable and
happy. It is He, He only who sends all which strengthens man’s body, and
makes glad his heart, and makes him of a cheerful countenance. His will
is that you should be cheerful. Ah, my friends, if we would but believe
all this!—we are too apt to say to ourselves, ‘Our earthly comforts here
have nothing to do with godliness or God, God must save our souls, but
our bodies we must save ourselves. God gives us spiritual blessings, but
earthly blessings, the good things of this life, for them we must
scramble and drudge ourselves, and get as much of them as we can without
offending God;’—as if God grudged us our comforts! as if godliness had
not the promise of this life as well as the life to come! If we would
but believe that God knows our necessities before we ask—that He gives us
daily more than we can ever get by working for it!—if we would but seek
first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, all other things would be
added to us; and we should find that he who loses his life should save
it. And this way of looking at God’s earth would not make us idle; it
would not tempt us to sit with folded hands for God’s blessings to drop
into our mouths. No! I believe it would make men far more industrious
than ever mere self-interest can make them; they would say, ‘God is our
Father, He gave us His own Son, He gives us all things freely, we owe Him
not slavish service, but a boundless debt of cheerful gratitude.
Therefore we must do His will, and we are sure His will must be our
happiness and comfort—therefore we must do His will, and His will is that
we should _work_, and therefore we _must_ work. He has bidden us labour
on this earth—He has bidden us dress it and keep it, conquer it and fill
it for Him. We are His stewards here on earth, and therefore it is a
glory and an honour to be allowed to work here in God’s own land—in our
loving Father’s own garden. We do not know why He wishes us to labour
and till the ground, for He could have fed us with manna from heaven if
He liked, as He fed the Jews of old, without our working at all. But His
will is that we should work; and work we will, not for our own sakes
merely, but for His sake, because we know He likes it, and for the sake
of our brothers, our countrymen, for whom Christ died.’
Oh, my friends, why is it that so many till the ground industriously, and
yet grow poorer and poorer for all their drudging and working? It is
their own fault. They till the ground for their own sakes, and not for
God’s sake and for their countrymen’s sake; and so, as the Prophet says,
they sow much and bring in little, and he who earns wages earns them to
put in a bag full of holes. Suppose you try the opposite plan. Suppose
you say to yourself, ‘I will work henceforward because God wishes me to
work. I will work henceforward for my country’s sake, because I feel
that God has given me a noble and a holy calling when He set me to grow
food for His children, the people of England. As for my wages and my
profit, God will take care of them if they are just; and if they are
unjust, He will take care of them too. He, at all events, makes the
garden and the field grow, and not I. My land is filled, not with the
fruit of my work, but with the fruit of His work. He will see that I
lose nothing by my labour. If I till the soil for God and for God’s
children, I may trust God to pay me my wages.’ Oh, my friends, He who
feeds the young birds when they call upon Him; and far, far more, He who
gave you His only-begotten Son, will He not with Him freely give you all
things? For, after all done, He must give to you, or you will not get.
You may fret and stint, and scrape and puzzle; one man may sow, and
another man may water; but, after all, who can give the increase but God?
Can you make a load of hay, unless He has first grown it for you, and
then dried it for you? If you would but think a little more about Him,
if you would believe that your crops were His gifts, and in your hearts
offer them up to Him as thank-offerings, see if He would not help you to
sell your crops as well as to house them. He would put you in the way of
an honest profit for your labour, just as surely as He only put you in
the way of labouring at all. “Trust in the Lord, and be doing good;
dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed;” for “without me,” says
our Lord, “you can do nothing.” No: these are His own words—nothing. To
Him all power is given in heaven and earth; He knows every root and every
leaf, and feeds it. Will He not much more feed you, oh ye of little
faith? Do you think that He has made His world so ill that a man cannot
get on in it unless he is a rogue? No. Cast all your care on Him, and
see if you do not find out ere long that He cares for you, and has cared
for you from all eternity.
SERMON III.
LIFE AND DEATH.
PSALM civ. 24, 28–30.
“O Lord, how manifold are Thy works! in wisdom hast Thou made them
all: the earth is full of Thy riches. That Thou givest them they
gather: Thou openest Thine hand, they are filled with good. Thou
hidest Thy face, they are troubled: Thou takest away their breath,
they die, and return to their dust. Thou sendest forth Thy spirit,
they are created: and Thou renewest the face of the earth.”
I HAD intended to go through this psalm with you in regular order; but
things have happened this parish, awful and sad, during the last week,
which I was bound not to let slip without trying to bring them home to
your hearts, if by any means I could persuade the thoughtless ones among
you to be wise and consider your latter end:—I mean the sad deaths of
various of our acquaintances. The death-bell has been tolled in this
parish three times, I believe, in one day—a thing which has seldom
happened before, and which God grant may never happen again. Within two
miles of this church there are now five lying dead. Five human beings,
young as well as old, to whom the awful words of the text have been
fulfilled: “Thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their
dust.” And the very day on which three of these deaths happened was
Ascension-day—the day on which Jesus, the Lord of life, the Conqueror of
death, ascended upon high, having led captivity captive, and became the
first-fruits of the grave, to send down from the heaven of eternal life
the Spirit who is the Giver of life. That was a strange mixture, death
seemingly triumphant over Christ’s people on the very day on which life
triumphed in Jesus Christ Himself. Let us see, though, whether death has
not something to do with Ascension-day. Let us see whether a sermon
about death is not a fit sermon for the Sunday after Ascension-day. Let
us see whether the text has not a message about life and death too—a
message which may make us feel that in the midst of life we are in death,
and that yet in the midst of death we are in life; that however things
may _seem_, yet death has not conquered life, but life has conquered and
_will_ conquer death, and conquer it most completely at the very moment
that we die, and our bodies return to their dust.
Do I speak riddles? I think the text will explain my riddles, for it
tells us how life comes, how death comes. Life comes from God: He sends
forth His spirit, and things are made, and He renews the face of the
earth. We read in the very two verses of the book of Genesis how the
Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters the creation, and woke
all things into life. Therefore the Creed well calls the Holy Ghost, the
Spirit of God, that is—the Lord and Giver of life. And the text tells us
that He gives life, not only to us who have immortal souls, but to every
thing on the face of the earth; for the psalm has been talking all
through, not only of men, but of beasts, fishes, trees, and rivers, and
rocks, sun and moon. Now, all these things have a life in them. Not a
life like ours; but still you speak rightly and wisely when you say,
‘That tree is alive, and, That tree is dead. That running water is live
water—it is sweet and fresh, but if it is kept standing it begins to
putrefy, its life is gone from it, and a sort of death comes over it, and
makes it foul, and unwholesome, and unfit to drink.’ This is a deep
matter, this, how there is a sort of life in every thing, even to the
stones under our feet. I do not mean, of course, that stones can think
as our life makes us do, or feel as the beasts’ life makes them do, or
even grow as the trees’ life makes them do; but I mean that their life
keeps them as they are, without changing or decaying. You hear miners
and quarrymen talk very truly of the live rock. That stone, they say,
was cut out of the live rock, meaning the rock as it is under ground,
sound and hard—as it would be, for aught we know, to the end of time,
unless it was taken out of the ground, out of the place where God’s
Spirit meant it to be, and brought up to the open air and the rain, in
which it is not its nature to be. And then you will see that the life of
the stone begins to pass from it bit by bit, that it crumbles and peels
away, and, in short, decays and is turned again to its dust. Its
organisation, as it is called, or life, ends, and then—what? does the
stone lie for ever useless? No! And there is the great blessed mystery
of how God’s Spirit is always bringing life out of death. When the stone
is decayed and crumbled down to dust and clay, it makes _soil_—this very
soil here, which you plough, is the decayed ruins of ancient hills; the
clay which you dig up in the fields was once part of some slate or
granite mountains, which were worn away by weather and water, that they
might become fruitful earth. Wonderful! but any one who has studied
these things can tell you they are true. Any one who has ever lived in
mountainous countries ought to have seen the thing happen, ought to know
that the land in the mountain valleys is made at first, and kept rich
year by year, by the washings from the hills above; and this is the
reason why land left dry by rivers and by the sea is generally so rich.
Then what becomes of the soil? It begins a new life. The roots of the
plants take it up; the salts which they find in it—the staple, as we call
them—go to make leaves and seed; the very sand has its use, it feeds the
stalks of corn and grass, and makes them stiff. The corn-stalks would
never stand upright if they could not get sand from the soil. So what a
thousand years ago made part of a mountain, now makes part of a
wheat-plant; and in a year more the wheat grain will have been eaten, and
the wheat straw perhaps eaten too, and they will have _died_—decayed in
the bodies of the animals who have eaten them, and then they will begin a
third new life—they will be turned into parts of the animal’s body—of a
man’s body. So that what is now your bone and flesh, may have been once
a rock on some hillside a hundred miles away.
Strange, but true! all learned men know that it is true. You, if you
think over my words, may see that they are at least reasonable. But
still most wonderful! This world works right well, surely. It obeys
God’s Spirit. Oh, my friends, if we fulfilled our life and our duty as
well as the clay which we tread on does,—if we obeyed God’s Spirit as
surely as the flint does, we should have many a heartache spared us, and
many a headache too! To be what God wants us!—to be _men_, to be
_women_, and therefore to live as children of God, members of Christ,
fulfilling our duty in that state to which God has called us, that would
be our bliss and glory. Nothing can live in a state in which God did not
intend it to live. Suppose a tree could move itself about like an
animal, and chose to do so, the tree would wither and die; it would be
trying to act contrary to the law which God has given it. Suppose the ox
chose to eat meat like the lion, it would fall sick and die; for it would
be acting contrary to the law which God’s Spirit had made for it—going
out of the calling to which God’s Word has called it, to eat grass and
not flesh, and live thereby. And so with us: if we will do wickedly,
when the will of God, as the Scripture tells us, is our sanctification,
our holiness; if we will speak lies, when God’s law for us is that we
should speak truth; if we will bear hatred and ill-will, when God’s law
for us is, Love as brothers,—you all sprang from one father, Adam,—you
were all redeemed by one brother, Jesus Christ; if we will try to live as
if there was no God, when God’s law for us is, that a man can live like a
man only by faith and trust in God;—then we shall _die_, if we break
God’s laws according to which he intended man to live. Thus it was with
Adam; God intended him to obey God, to learn every thing from God. He
chose to disobey God, to try and know something of himself, by getting
the knowledge of good and evil; and so death passed on him. He became an
unnatural man, a _bad_ man, more or less, and so he became a dead man;
and death came into the world, that time at least, by sin, by breaking
the law by which man was meant to be a man. As the beasts will die if
you give them unnatural food, or in any way prevent their following the
laws which God has made for them, so man dies, of necessity. All the
world cannot help his dying, because he breaks the laws which God has
made for him.
And how does he die? The text tells us, God takes away his breath, and
turns His face from him. In His presence, it is written, is life. The
moment He withdraws his Spirit, the Spirit of life, from any thing, body
or soul, then it dies. It was by _sin_ came death—by man’s becoming
unfit for the Spirit of God.
Therefore the body is dead because of sin, says St. Paul, doomed to die,
carrying about in it the seeds of death from the very moment it is born.
Death has truly passed upon all men!
Most sad; and yet there is hope, and more than hope, there is certain
assurance, for us, that though we die, yet shall we live! I have shewn
you, in the beginning of my sermon, how nothing that dies perishes to
nothing, but begins a new and a higher life. How the stone becomes a
plant,—something better and more useful than it was before; the plant
passes into an animal—a step higher still. And, therefore, we may be
sure that the same rule will hold good about us men and women, that when
we die, we shall begin a new and a nobler life, that is, if we have been
true _men_; if we have lived fulfilling the law of our kind. St. Paul
tells us so positively. He says that nothing comes to life except it
first die, then God gives it a new body. He says that even so is the
resurrection of the dead,—that we gain a step by dying; that we are sown
in corruption, and are raised in incorruption; we are sown in dishonour,
and are raised in glory; we are sown in weakness, and are raised in
power; we are sown a natural body, and are raised a spiritual body; that
as we now are of the earth earthy, after death and the resurrection our
new and nobler body will be of the heavens heavenly; so that “when this
corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have
put on immortality, then death shall be swallowed up in victory.”
Therefore, I say, Sorrow not for those who sleep as if you had no hope
for the dead; for “Christ is risen from the dead, and become the
first-fruits of them that slept. For as in Adam all die, even so in
Christ shall all be made alive.”
And I say that this has to do with the text—it has to do with
Ascension-day. For if we claim our share in Christ,—if we claim our
share of our heavenly Father’s promise, “to give the Holy Spirit to those
who ask Him;” then we may certainly hope for our share in Christ’s
resurrection, our share in Christ’s ascension. For, says St. Paul (Rom.
viii. 10, 11), “if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin, but
the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him
who raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ
from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies, by His Spirit that
dwelleth in you!” There is a blessed promise! that in that, as in every
thing, we shall be made like Christ our Master, the new Adam, who is a
life-giving Spirit, that as He was brought to life again by the Spirit of
God, so we shall be. And so will be fulfilled in us the glorious rule
which the text lays down, “Thou, O God, sendest forth Thy Spirit, and
they are created, and Thou dost renew the face of the earth.”
Fulfilled?—yes, but far more gloriously than ever the old Psalmist
expected. Read the Revelations of St. John, chapters xxi. and xxii. for
the glory of the renewed earth read the first Epistle of Paul to the
Thessalonians, chap. iv. 16–18, for the glorious resurrection and
ascension of those who have died trusting in the blessed Lord, who died
for them; and then see what a glorious future lies before us—see how
death is but the gate of life—see how what holds true of every thing on
this earth, down to the flint beneath our feet, holds true ten thousand
times of men that to die and to decay is only to pass into a nobler state
of life. But remember, that just as we are better than the stone, we may
be also worse than the stone. It cannot disobey God’s laws, therefore it
can enjoy no reward, any more than suffer any punishment. We can
disobey—we can fall from our calling—we can cast God’s law behind us—we
can refuse to do His will, to work out our own salvation; and just
because our reward in the life to come will be so glorious, if we fulfil
our life and law, the life of faith and the law of love, therefore will
our punishment be so horrible, if we neglect the life of faith and
trample under foot the law of love. Oh, my friends, choose! Death is
before you all. Shall it be the gate of everlasting life and glory, or
the gate of everlasting death and misery? Will you claim your glorious
inheritance, and be for ever equal to the angels, doing God’s will on
earth as they in heaven; or will you fall lower than the stones, who, at
all events, must do their duty as stones, and not _do_ God’s will at all,
but only _suffer_ it in eternal woe? You must do one or the other. You
cannot be like the stones, without feeling—without joy or sorrow, just
because you are immortal spirits, every one of you. You must be either
happy or miserable, blessed or disgraced, for ever. I know of no middle
path;—do you? Choose before the night comes, in which no man can work.
Our life is but a vapour which appears for a little time, then vanishes
away. “O Lord, how manifold are Thy works! in wisdom hast Thou made them
all: the earth is full of Thy riches. That Thou givest them they gather:
Thou openest Thine hand, they are filled with good. Thou hidest Thy
face, they are troubled: Thou takest away their breath, they die, and
return to their dust. Thou sendest forth Thy Spirit, they are created:
and Thou renewest the face of the earth.”
SERMON IV.
THE WORK OF GOD’S SPIRIT.
JAMES, i. 16, 17.
“Do not err, my beloved brethren; every good gift and every perfect
gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights.”
THIS text, I believe more and more every day, is one of the most
important ones in the whole Bible; and just at this time it is more
important for us than ever, because people have forgotten it more than
ever.
And, according as you firmly believe this text, according as you firmly
believe that every good gift you have in body and soul comes down from
above, from God the Father of lights—according, I say, as you believe
this, and live upon that belief, just so far will you be able to do your
duty to God and man, worthily of your blessed Saviour’s calling and
redemption, and of the high honour which He has given you of being free
and christened men, redeemed by His most precious blood, and led by His
most noble Spirit.
Now, just because this text is so important, the devil is particularly
busy in trying to make people forget it. For what is his plan? Is it
not to make us forget God, to put God _out_ of all our thoughts, to make
us acknowledge God in none of our ways, to make us look at ourselves and
not at God, that so we may become first earthly and sensual, and then
devilish, like Satan himself? Therefore he tries to make us disbelieve
this text. He puts into our hearts such thoughts as these:—‘Ay, all good
gifts may come from God; but that only means all spiritual gifts. All
those fine, deep doctrines and wonderful feelings that some very
religious people talk of, about conversion, and regeneration, and
sanctification, and assurance, and the witness of the indwelling
Spirit,—all those gifts come from God, no doubt, but they are quite above
us. We are straightforward, simple people, who cannot feel fine fancies;
if we can be honest, and industrious, and good-natured, and sober, and
strong, and healthy, that is enough for us,—and all that has nothing to
do with religion. Those are not gifts which come from God. A man is
strong and healthy by birth, and honest and good-natured by nature.
Those are very good things; but they are not gifts—they are not
_graces_—they are not _spiritual_ blessings—they have nothing to do with
the state of a man’s soul. Ungodly people are honest, and good-tempered,
and industrious, and healthy, as well as your saints and your methodists;
so what is the use of praying for spiritual gifts to God, when we can
have all we want by nature?’
Did such thoughts never come into your head, my friends? Are they not
often in your heads, more or less? Perhaps not in these very words, but
something like them.
I do not say it to blame you, for I believe that every man, each
according to his station, is tempted to such thoughts; I believe that
such thoughts are not _yours_ or any man’s; I believe they are the
devil’s, who tempts all men, who tempted even the Son of God Himself with
thoughts like these at their root. Such thoughts are not _yours_ or
mine, though they may come into our heads. They are part of the evil
which besets us—which is _not_ us—which has no right or share in us—which
we pray God to drive away from us when we say, “Deliver us from evil.”
Have you not all had such thoughts? But have you not all had very
different thoughts? have you not, every one of you, at times, felt in the
bottom of your hearts, after all, ‘This strength and industry, this
courage, and honesty, and good-nature of mine, must come from God; I did
not get them myself? If I was born honest, and strong, and gentle, and
brave, some one must have made me so when I was born, or before? The
devil certainly did not make me so, therefore _God_ must? These, too,
are His gifts?’
Did you ever think such thoughts as these? If you did not, not much
matter, for you have all acted, more or less, in your better moments as
if you had them. There are more things in a man’s heart, thank God, than
ever come into his head. Many a man does a noble thing by instinct, as
we say, without ever _thinking_ whether it is a noble thing or
not—without _thinking_ about it at all. Many a man, thank God, is led at
times, by God’s Spirit, without ever knowing whose Spirit it is that
leads him.
But he _ought_ to know it, for it is _willing_, _reasonable_ service
which God wants of us. He does not care to use us like tools and
puppets. And why? He is not merely our Maker, He is our Father, and He
wishes us to know and feel that we are His children—to know and feel that
we all have come from Him; to acknowledge Him in all our ways, to thank
Him for all, to look up lovingly and confidently to Him for more, as His
reasonable children, day by day, and hour by hour. Every good gift we
have comes from Him; but He will have us know where they all come from.
Let us go through now a few of these good gifts, which we call natural,
and see what the Bible says of them, and from whom they come.
First, now, that common gift of strength and courage. Who gives you
that?—who gave it David? For He that gives it to one is most likely to
be He that gives it to another. David says to God, “Thou teachest my
hands to war, and my fingers to fight; by the help of God I can leap over
a wall: He makes me strong, that my arms can break even a bow of
steel:”—that is plain-spoken enough, I think. Who gave Samson his
strength, again? What says the Bible? How Samson met a young lion which
roared against him, and he had nothing in his hand, and the Spirit of the
Lord came mightily upon him, and he tore the lion as he would have torn a
kid. And, again, how when traitors had bound him with two new cords, the
Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and the cords which were on
his arms became as flax that was burnt with fire, and fell from off his
hands. And, for God’s sake, do not give in to that miserable fancy that
because these stories are what you call miraculous, therefore they have
nothing to do with you—that Samson’s strength came to him miraculously by
God’s Spirit, and yet yours comes to you a different way. The Bible is
written to tell you how all that happens really happens—what all things
really are; God is working among us always, but we do not see Him; and
the Bible just lifts up, once and for all, the veil which hides Him from
us, and lets us see, in one instance, who it is that does all the
wonderful things which go on round us to this day, that when we see any
thing like it happen we may know whom to thank for it.
The Great Physician healed the blind and the lame in Judea; and why?—to
shew us who heals the blind and the lame now—to shew us that the good
gift of medicine and surgery, and the physician’s art, comes down from
Him who cured the paralytic and cleansed the lepers in Judea—to whom all
power is given in heaven and earth.
So, again, with skill in farming and agriculture. From whom does that
come? The very heathens can tell us that, for it is curious, that among
the heathen, in all ages and countries, those men who have found out
great improvements in tilling the ground have been honoured and often
worshipped as divine men—as gods, thereby shewing that the heathen, among
all their idolatries, had a true and just notion about man’s practical
skill and knowledge—that it could only come from Heaven, that it was by
the inspiration and guidance of God above that skill in agriculture
arose. What says Isaiah of that to the very same purpose? “Doth the
ploughman plow all day to sow? doth he open and break the clods of his
ground? When he hath made plain the face thereof, doth he not cast
abroad the vetches, and cast in the principal wheat and the appointed
barley and the rye in their place? For his God doth instruct him to
discretion, and doth teach him. This also,” says Isaiah, “cometh from
the Lord of Hosts, who is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in
working.” Would to God you would all believe it!
Again; wisdom and prudence, and a clear, powerful mind,—are not they
parts of God’s likeness? How is God’s Spirit described in Scripture? It
is called the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of prudence
and might. Therefore, surely, all wisdom and understanding, all prudence
and strength of mind, are, like that Spirit, part of God’s image; and
where did we get God’s image? Can we make ourselves like God? If we are
like him, He must have formed that likeness; and He alone. The Spirit of
God, says the Scripture, giveth us understanding.
Or, again; good-nature and affection, love, generosity, pity,—whose
likeness are they? What is God’s name but love? God is love. Has not
He revealed Himself as the God of mercy, full of long-suffering,
compassion, and free forgiveness; and must not, then, all love and
affection, all compassion and generosity, be His gift? Yes. As the rays
come from the sun, and yet are not the sun, even so our love and pity,
though they are not God, but merely a poor, weak image and reflection of
Him, yet from Him alone they come. If there is mercy in our hearts, it
comes from the fountain of mercy. If there is the light of love in us,
it is a ray from the full sun of His love.
Or honesty, again, and justice,—whose image are they but God’s? Is He
not THE Just One—the righteous God? Is not what is just for man just for
God? Are not the laws of justice and honesty, by which man deals fairly
with man, _His_ laws—the laws by which God deals with us? Does not every
book—I had almost said every page—in the Bible shew us that all our
justice is but the pattern and copy of God’s justice,—the working out of
those six latter commandments of His, which are summed up in that one
command, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself?”
Now here, again, I ask: If justice and honesty be God’s likeness, who
made us like God in this—who put into us this sense of justice which all
have, though so few obey it? Can man make himself like God? Can a worm
ape his Maker? No. From God’s Spirit, the Spirit of Right, came this
inborn feeling of justice, this knowledge of right and wrong, to us—part
of the image of God in which He created man—part of the breath or spirit
of life which He breathed into Adam. Do not mistake me. I do not say
that the sense, and honesty, and love in us, _are_ God’s Spirit—they are
the spirit of _man_, but that they are _like_ God’s Spirit, and therefore
they must be given us _by_ God’s Spirit to be used as God’s Spirit
Himself uses them. How a man shall have his share of God’s Spirit, and
live in and by God’s Spirit, is another question, and a higher and more
blessed one; but we must master this question first—we must believe that
our spirits come _from_ God, then, perhaps, we shall begin to see that
our spirits never can work well unless they are joined to the Spirit of
God, from whom they came. From whom else, I ask again, can they come?
Can they come from our bodies? Our bodies? What are they?—Flesh and
bones, made up of air and water and earth,—out of the dead bodies of the
animals, the dead roots and fruits of plants which we eat. They are
earth—matter. Can _matter_ be courageous? Did you ever hear of a
good-natured plant, or an honest stone? Then this good-nature, and
honesty, and courage of ours, must belong to our souls—our spirits. Who
put them there? Did we? Does a child make its own character? Does its
body make its character first? Can its father and mother make its
character? No. Our characters must come from some spirit above
us—either from God or from the devil. And is the devil likely to make us
honest, or brave, or kindly? I leave you to answer that. God—God alone,
my friends, is the author of good—the help that is done on earth, He
doeth it all Himself: every good gift and every perfect gift cometh from
Him.
Now some of you may think this a strange sort of sermon, because I have
said little or nothing about Jesus Christ and His redemption in it, but I
say—No.
You must believe this much about yourselves before you can believe more.
You must fairly and really believe that _God_ made you one thing before
you can believe that you have made yourselves another thing. You must
really believe that you are not mere machines and animals, but immortal
souls, before you can really believe that you have sinned; for animals
cannot sin—only reasonable souls can sin. We must really believe that
God made us at bottom in His likeness, before we can begin to find out
that there is another likeness in us besides God’s—a selfish, brutish,
too often a devilish likeness, which must be repented of, and fought
against, and cast out, that God’s likeness in us may get the upper hand,
and we may be what God expects us to be. We must know our dignity before
we can feel our shame. We must see how high we have a right to stand,
that we may see how low, alas! we have fallen.
Now you—I know many such here, thank God—to whom God has given clear,
powerful heads for business, and honest, kindly hearts, I do beseech
you—consider my words, Who has given you these but God? They are talents
which He has committed to your charge; and will He not require an account
of them? _He_ only, and His free mercy, has made you to differ from
others; if you are better than the fools and profligates round you, He,
and not yourselves, has made you better. What have you that you have not
received? By the grace of God alone you are what you are. If good comes
easier to you than to others, _He_ alone has made it easier to you; and
if you have done wrong,—if you have fallen short of your duty, as _all_
fall short, is not your sin greater than others? for unto whom much is
given of them shall much be required. Consider that, for God’s sake, and
see if you, too, have not something to be ashamed of, between yourselves
and God. See if you, too, have not need of Jesus Christ and His precious
blood, and God’s free forgiveness, who have had so much light and power
given you, and still have fallen short of what you might have been, and
what, by God’s grace, you still may be, and, as I hope and earnestly
pray, still will be.
And you, young men and women—consider;—if God has given you manly courage
and high spirits, and strength and beauty—think—_God_, your Father, has
given them to you, and of them He will surely require an account;
therefore, “Rejoice, young people,” says Solomon, “in your youth, and let
your hearts cheer you in the days of your youth, and walk in the ways of
your heart and in the sight of your eyes. But remember,” continues the
wisest of men,—“remember, that for all these things God shall bring you
into judgment.” Now do not misunderstand that. It does not mean that
there is a sin in being happy. It does not mean, that if God has given
to a young man a bold spirit and powerful limbs, or to a young woman a
handsome face and a merry, loving heart, that He will punish them for
these—God forbid! what He gives He means to be used: but this it means,
that according as you use those blessings so will you be judged at the
last day; that for them, too, you will be brought to judgment, and tried
at the bar of God. As you have used them for industry, and innocent
happiness, and holy married love, or for riot and quarrelling, and
idleness, and vanity, and filthy lusts, so shall you be judged. And if
any of you have sinned in any of these ways,—God forbid that you should
have sinned in _all_ these ways; but surely, surely, some of you have
been idle—some of you have been riotous—some of you have been vain—some
of you have been quarrelsome—some of you, alas! have been that which I
shall not name here.—Think, if you have sinned in any one of these ways,
how can you answer it to God? Have you no need of forgiveness? Have you
no need of the blessed Saviour’s blood to wash you clean? Young people!
God has given you much. As a young man, I speak to you. Youth is an
inestimable blessing or an inestimable curse, according as you use it;
and if you have abused your spring-time of youth, as all, I am afraid,
have—as I have—as almost all do, alas! in this fallen world, where can
you get forgiveness but from Him that died on the cross to take away the
sins of the world?
SERMON V.
FAITH.
HABAKKUK, ii. 4.
“The just shall live by faith.”
THIS is those texts of which there are so many in the Bible, which,
though they were spoken originally to one particular man, yet are meant
for every man. These words were spoken to Habakkuk, a Jewish prophet, to
check him for his impatience under God’s hand; but they are just as true
for every man that ever was and ever will be as they were for him. They
are world-wide and world-old; they are the law by which all goodness, and
strength, and safety, stand either in men or angels, for it always was
true, and always must be true, that if reasonable beings are to live at
all, it is by faith.
And why? Because every thing that is, heaven and earth, men and angels,
are all the work of God—of one God, infinite, almighty, all-wise,
all-loving, unutterably glorious. My friends, we do not think enough of
this,—not that all the thinking in the world can ever make us comprehend
the majesty of our Heavenly Father; but we do not remember enough what we
_do_ know of God. We think of God, watching the world and all things in
it, and keeping them in order as a shepherd does his sheep, and so far so
good; but we forget that God does more than this,—we forget that this
earth, sun, and moon, and all the thousand thousand stars which cover the
midnight sky,—many of them suns larger than the sun we see, and worlds
larger than the world on which we stand, that all these, stretching away
millions of millions of miles into boundless space,—all are lying, like
one little grain of dust, in the hollow of God’s hand, and that if He
were to shut His hand upon them, He could crush them into nothing, and
God would be alone in the universe again, as He was before heaven and
earth were made. Think of that!—that if God was but to will it, we, and
this earth on which we stand, and the heaven above us, and the sun that
shines on us, should vanish away, and be no-where and no-thing. Think of
the infinite power of God, and then think how is it possible to _live_,
except by faith in Him, by trusting to Him utterly.
If you accustom yourselves to think in the same way of the infinite
wisdom of God, and the infinite love of God, they will both teach you the
same lesson; they will shew you that if you were the greatest, the
wisest, the holiest man that ever lived, you would still be such a speck
by the side of the Almighty and Everlasting God that it would be madness
to depend upon yourselves for any thing while you lived in God’s world.
For, after all, what _can_ we do without God? _In_ Him we live, and
move, and have our being. He made us, He gave us our bodies, gave us our
life; what we do _He_ lets us do, what we say He lets us say; we all live
on sufferance. What is it but God’s infinite mercy that ever brought us
here or keeps us here an instant? We may pretend to act without God’s
leave or help, but it is impossible for us to do so; the strength we put
forth, the wit we use, are all His gifts. We cannot draw a breath of air
without His leave. And yet men fancy they can do without God in the
world! My friends, these are but few words, and poor words, about the
glorious majesty of God and our littleness when compared with Him; but I
have said quite enough, at least, to shew you all how absurd it is to
depend upon ourselves for any thing. If we are mere creatures of God, if
God alone has every blessing both of this world and the next, and the
will to give them away, whom _are_ we to go to but to Him for all we
want? It is so in the life of our bodies, and it is so in the life of
our spirits. If we wish for God’s blessings, from God we must ask them.
That is our duty, even though God in His mercy and long-suffering does
pour down many a blessing upon men who never trust in Him for them. To
us all, indeed, God gives blessings before we are old enough to trust in
Him for them, and to many He continues those blessings in after-life in
spite of their blindness and want of faith. “He maketh His sun to shine
on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the
unjust.” He gives—gives—it is His glory to give. Yet strange! that men
will go on year after year, using the limbs, and eating the food, which
God gives them, without ever believing so much as that God _has_ given
them, without so much as looking up to heaven once and saying, “God, I
thank Thee!” But we must remember that those blessings will not last for
ever. Unless a man has lived by faith in God with regard to his earthly
comforts, death will come and put an end to them at once; and then it is
only those who have trusted in God for all good things, and thanked Him
accordingly in this life, who shall have their part in the new heavens
and the new earth, which will so immeasurably surpass all that this earth
can give.
And it is the same with the life of our spirits; in it, too, we must live
by faith. The life of our spirits is a gift from God the Father of
spirits, and He has chosen to declare that unless we trust to Him for
life, and ask Him for life, He will not bestow it upon us. The life of
our bodies He in His mercy keeps up, although we forget Him; the life of
our souls He will not keep up: therefore, for the sake of our spirits,
even more than of our bodies, we must live by faith. If we wish to be
loving, pure, wise, manly, noble, we must ask those excellent gifts of
God, who is Himself infinite love, and purity, wisdom and nobleness. If
we wish for everlasting life, from whom can we obtain it but from God,
who is the boundless, eternal, life itself? If we wish for forgiveness
for our faults and failings, where are we to get it but from God, who is
boundless love and pity, and who has revealed to us His boundless love
and pity in the form of a man, Jesus Christ the Saviour of the world?
And to go a step further; it is by faith in Christ we must live—in
Christ, a man like ourselves, yet God blessed for ever. For it is a
certain truth, that men cannot believe in God or trust in Him unless they
can think of Him as a man. This was the reason why the poor heathen made
themselves idols in the form of men, that they might have something like
themselves to worship; and those among them who would not worship idols
almost always ended in fancying that God was either a mere notion, or
else a mere part of this world, or else that He sat up in heaven neither
knowing nor caring what happened upon earth. But we, to whom God has
given the glorious news of His Gospel, have the very Person to worship
whom all the heathen were searching after and could not find,—one who is
“very God,” infinite in love, wisdom, and strength, and yet “very man,”
made in all points like ourselves, but without sin; so that we have not a
High Priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities,
but one who is able to help those who are tempted, because He was tempted
Himself like us, and overcame by the strength of His own perfect will, of
His own perfect faith. By trusting in Him, and acknowledging Him in
every thought and action of our lives, we shall be safe, for it is
written, “The just shall live by faith.”
These things are true, and always were true. All that men ever did well,
or nobly, or lovingly, in this world, _was done by faith_—by faith in God
of some sort or other; even in the man who thinks least about religion,
it is so. Every time a man means to do, and really does, a just or
generous action, he does it because he believes, more or less clearly,
that there is a just and loving God above him, and that justice and love
are the right thing for a man—the law by which God intended him to walk:
so that this small, dim faith still shews itself in practice; and the
more faith a man has in God and in God’s laws, the more it will shew
itself in every action of his daily life; and the more this faith works
in his life and conduct, the better man he is;—the more he is like God’s
image, in which man was originally made;—and the more he is like Christ,
the new pattern of God’s image, whom all men must copy.
So that the sum of the matter is this, without Christ we can do nothing,
by trusting in Christ we can do every thing. See, then, how true the
verse before my text must be, that he whose soul is lifted up in him is
not upright; for if a man fancies that his body and soul are his own, to
do what he pleases with them, when all the time they are God’s gift;—if a
man fancies that he can take perfect care of himself, while all the time
it is God that is keeping him out of a thousand sins and dangers;—if a
man fancies that he can do right of himself, when all the time the little
good that he does is the work of God’s Spirit, which has not yet left
him;—if a man fancies, in short, that he can do without God, when all the
time it is in God that he lives, and moves, and has his being, how can
such a man be called upright? Upright! he is utterly wrong;—he is
believing a lie, and walking accordingly; and, therefore, instead of
keeping upright, he is going where all lies lead; into all kinds of low
and crooked ways, mistakes, absurdities, and at last to ruin of body and
soul. Nothing but truth can keep a man upright and straight, can keep a
man where God has put him, and where he ought to be; and the man whose
heart is puffed up by pride and self-conceit, who is looking at himself
and not at God, that man has begun upon a falsehood, and will soon get
out of tune with heaven and earth. For consider, my friends: suppose
some rich and mighty prince went out and collected a number of children,
and of sick and infirm people, and said to them, “You cannot work now,
but I will give you food, medicine, every thing that you require, and
then you must help me to work; and I, though you have no right to expect
it of me, will pay you for the little work you can do on the strength of
my food and medicine.”—Is it not plain that all those persons could only
live by faith in their prince, by trusting in him for food and medicine,
and by acknowledging that that food and medicine came from him, and
thanking him accordingly? If they wished to be true men, if they wished
him to continue his bounty, they would confess that all the health and
strength they had belonged to him of right, because his generosity had
given it to them. Just in this position we stand with Christ the Lord.
When the whole world lay in wickedness, He came and chose us, of His free
grace and mercy, to be one of His peculiar nations, to work for Him and
with Him; and from the time He came, all that we and our forefathers have
done well has been done by the strength and wisdom which Christ has given
us. Now suppose, again, that one of the persons of whom I spoke was
seized with a fit of pride—suppose he said to himself, “My health and
strength does not come from the food and medicine which the prince gave
me, it comes from the goodness of my own constitution; the wages which I
am paid are my just due, I am a free man, and may choose what master I
like.” Suppose any one of _your_ servants treated you so, would you not
be inclined to answer, “You are a faithless, ungrateful fellow; go your
ways, then, and see how little you can do without my bounty?” But the
blessed King in heaven, though He is provoked every day, is more
long-suffering than man. All He does is to withdraw His bounty for a
moment, to take this world’s blessings from a man, and let him find out
how impossible it is for him to keep himself out of affliction—to take
away His Holy Spirit for a moment from a man, and let him see how
straight he rushes astray, and every way but the right; and then, if the
man is humbled by his fall or his affliction, and comes back to his Lord,
confessing how weak he is and promising to trust in Christ and thank
Christ only for the future, _then_ our Lord will restore His blessings to
him, and there will be joy among the angels of God over one sinner that
repents. This was the way in which God treated Job when, in spite of all
his excellence, _his_ heart was lifted up. And then, when he saw his own
folly, and abhorred himself, and repented in dust and ashes, God restored
to him sevenfold what He had taken from him—honour, wisdom, riches, home,
and children. This is the way, too, in which God treated David. “In my
prosperity,” he tells us, “I said, I shall never be moved; thou, Lord, of
Thy goodness hast made my hill so strong”—forgetting that he must be kept
safe every moment of his life, as well as made safe once for all. “Thou
didst turn Thy face from me, and I was troubled. Then cried I unto Thee,
O Lord, and gat me to my Lord right humbly. And THEN,” he adds, “God
turned my heaviness into joy, and girded me with gladness,” (Psalm xxx.)
And again, he says, “_Before_ I was troubled I went wrong, but _now_ I
have kept Thy word,” (Psalm cxix.) And this is the way in which Christ
the Lord treated St. Peter and St. Paul, and treats, in His great mercy,
every Christian man when He sees him puffed up, to bring him to his
senses, and make him live by faith in God. If he takes the warning,
well; if he does not, he remains in a lie, and must go where all lies
lead. So perfectly does it hold throughout a man’s whole life, that he
whose soul is lifted up within him is not upright; but that the just must
live by faith.
Now there is one objection apt to rise in men’s minds when they hear such
words as these, which is, that they take such a “low view of human
nature;” it is so galling to our pride to be told that we can do nothing
for ourselves: but if we think of the matter more closely, and, above
all, if we try to put it into practice and live by faith, we shall find
that there is no real reason for thus objecting. This is not a doctrine
which ought to make us despise men; any doctrine that _does_, does not
come of _God_. Men are not contemptible creatures—they are glorious
creatures—they were created in the image of God; God has put such honour
upon them that He has given them dominion over the whole earth, and made
them partakers of His eternal reason; and His Spirit gives them
understanding to enable them to conquer this earth, and make the beasts,
ay, and the very winds and seas, and fire and steam, their obedient
servants; and human nature, too, when it is what God made it, and what it
ought to be, is not a contemptible thing: it was noble enough for the Son
of God to take it upon Himself—to become man, without sinning or defiling
Himself; and what was good enough for Him is surely good enough for us.
Wickedness consists in _unmanliness_, in being unlike a man, in becoming
like an evil spirit or a beast. Holiness consists in becoming a _true
man_, in becoming more and more like the likeness of Jesus Christ. And
when the Bible tells us that we can do nothing of ourselves, but can live
only by faith, the Bible puts the highest honour upon us which any
created thing can have. What are the things which cannot live by faith?
The trees and plants, the beasts and birds, which, though they live and
grow by God’s providence, yet do not know it, do not thank Him, cannot
ask Him for more strength and life as we can, are mere dead tools in
God’s hands, instead of living, reasonable beings as we are. It is only
reasonable beings, like men and angels, with immortal spirits in them,
who _can_ live by faith; and it is the greatest glory and honour to us, I
say again, that we _can_ do so—that the glorious, infinite God, Maker of
heaven and earth, should condescend to ask us to be loyal to Him, to love
Him, should encourage us to pray to Him boldly, and then should
condescend to hear our prayers—_we_, who in comparison of Him are smaller
than the gnats in the sunbeam in comparison of men! And then, when we
remember that He has sent His only Son into the world to take our nature
upon Him, and join us all together into one great and everlasting family,
the body of Christ the Lord, and that He has actually given us a share in
His own Almighty Holy Spirit that we may be able to love Him, and to
serve Him, and to be joined to Him, the Almighty Father, do we not see
that all this is infinitely more honourable to us than if we were each to
go on his own way here without God—without knowing anything of the
everlasting world of spirits to which we now belong? My friends, instead
of being ashamed of being able to do nothing for ourselves, we ought to
rejoice at having God for our Father and our Friend, to enable us to “do
all things through Him who strengthens us”—to do whatever is noble, and
loving, and worthy of true men. Instead, then, of dreaming conceitedly
that God will accept us for our own sakes, let us just be content to be
accepted for the sake of Jesus Christ our King. Instead of trying to
walk through this world without God’s help, let us ask God to help and
guide us in every action of our lives, and then go manfully forward,
doing with all our might whatsoever our hands or our hearts see right to
do, trusting to God to put us in the right path, and to fill our heads
with right thoughts and our hearts with right feeling; and so our faith
will shew itself in our works, and we shall be justified at the last day,
as all good men have ever been, by trusting to our Heavenly Father and to
the Lord Jesus Christ, and the guidance of His Holy Spirit.
SERMON VI.
THE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH.
GALATIANS, v. 16.
“I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of
the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit
against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the other.”
THE more we think seriously, my friends, the more we shall see what
wonderful and awful things words are, how they mean much more than we
fancy,—how we do not make words, but words are given to us by one higher
than ourselves. Wise men say that you can tell the character of any
nation by its language, by watching the words they use, the names they
give to things, for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks,
and by our words, our Lord tells us, we shall be justified and condemned.
It is God, and Christ, the Word of God, who gives words to men, who puts
it into the hearts of men to call certain things by certain names; and,
according to a nation’s godliness, and wisdom, and purity of heart, will
be its power of using words discreetly and reverently. That miracle of
the gift of tongues, of which we read in the New Testament, would have
been still most precious and full of meaning if it had had no other use
than this—to teach men from whom words come. When men found themselves
all of a sudden inspired to talk in foreign languages which they had
never learnt, to utter words of which they themselves did not know the
meaning, do you not see how it must have made them feel that all language
is God’s making and God’s giving? Do you not see how it must have made
them feel what awful, mysterious things words were, like those cloven
tongues of fire which fell on the apostles? The tongues of fire
signified the difficult foreign languages which they suddenly began to
speak as the Spirit gave them utterance. And where did the tongues of
fire come from? Not out of themselves, not out of the earth beneath, but
down from the heaven above, to signify that it is not from man, from
man’s flesh or brain, or the earthly part of him, that words are bred,
but that they come down from Christ the Word of God, and are breathed
into the minds of men by the Spirit of God. Why do I speak of all this?
To make you feel what awful, wonderful things words are; how, when you
want to understand the meaning of a word, you must set to work with
reverence and godly fear—not in self-conceit and prejudice, taking the
word to mean just what suits your own notions of things, but trying
humbly to find out what the word really does mean of itself, what God
meant it to mean when He put it into the hearts of wise men to use that
word and bring it into our English language. A man ought to read a
newspaper or a story-book in that spirit; how much more, when he takes up
the Bible! How reverently he ought to examine every word in the New
Testament—this very text, for instance. We ought to be sure that St.
Paul, just because he was an inspired apostle, used the very best
possible words to express what he meant on so important a matter; and
what _are_ the best words? The clearest and the simplest words are the
best words; else how is the Bible to be the poor man’s book? How, unless
the wayfaring man, though simple, shall not err therein? Therefore we
may be sure the words in Scripture are certain to be used in their
simplest, most natural, most everyday meaning, such as the simplest man
can understand. And, therefore, we may be sure, that these two words,
“flesh” and “spirit,” in my text, are used in their very simplest,
straightforward sense; and that St. Paul meant by them what working-men
mean by them in the affairs of daily life. No doubt St. Peter says that
there are many things in St. Paul’s writings difficult to be understood,
which those who are unlearned and unstable wrest to their own
destruction; and, most true it is, so they do daily. But what does
“wresting” a thing mean? It means twisting it, bending it, turning it
out of its original straightforward, natural meaning, into some new
crooked meaning of their own. This is the way we are all of us too apt,
I am afraid, to come to St. Paul’s Epistles. We find him difficult
because we won’t take him at his word, because we tear a text out of its
right place in the chapter—the place where St. Paul put it, and make it
stand by itself, instead of letting the rest of the chapter explain its
meaning. And then, again, people use the words in the text as unfairly
and unreasonably as they use the text itself, they won’t let the words
have their common-sense English meaning—they must stick a new meaning on
them of their own. ‘Oh,’ they say, ‘that text must not be taken
literally, that word has a spiritual signification here. Flesh does not
mean flesh, it means men’s corrupt nature;’ little thinking all the while
that perhaps they understand those words, spiritual, and corrupt, and
nature, just as ill as they do the rest of the text.
How much better, my friends, to let the Bible tell its own story; not to
be so exceeding wise above what is written, just to believe that St. Paul
knew better how to use words than we are likely to do,—just to believe
that when he says flesh he means flesh. Everybody agrees that when he
says spirit he means spirit, why, in the name of common sense, when he
says flesh should he not mean flesh? For my own part I believe that when
St. Paul talks of man’s flesh, he means by it man’s body, man’s heart and
brain, and all his bodily appetites and powers—what we call a man’s
constitution; in a word, the _animal_ part of man, just what a man has in
common with the beasts who perish.
To understand what I mean, consider any animal—a dog, for instance—how
much every animal has in it what men have,—a body, and brain, and heart;
it hungers and thirsts as we do, it can feel pleasure and pain, anger and
loneliness, and fear and madness; it likes freedom, company, and
exercise, praise and petting, play and ease; it uses a great deal of
cunning, and thought, and courage, to get itself food and shelter, just
as human beings do: in short, it has a fleshly nature, just as we have,
and yet, after all, it is but an animal, and so, in one sense, we are all
animals, only more delicately made than the other animals; but we are
something more, we have a spirit as well as a flesh, an immortal soul.
If any one asks, what is a man? the true answer is, an animal with an
immortal spirit in it; and this spirit can feel more than pleasure and
pain, which are mere carnal, that is, fleshly things; it can feel trust,
and hope, and peace, and love, and purity, and nobleness, and
independence, and, above all, it can feel right and wrong. There is the
infinite difference between an animal and a man, between our flesh and
our spirit; an animal has no sense of right and wrong; a dog who has done
wrong is often terrified, but not because he feels it wrong and wicked,
but because he knows from experience that he will be punished for doing
it: just so with a man’s fleshly nature;—a carnal, fleshly man, a man
whose spirit is dead within him, whose spiritual sense of right and
wrong, and honour and purity, is gone, when he has done a wrong thing is
often enough afraid; but why? Not for any spiritual reason, not because
he feels it a wicked and abominable thing, a sin, but because he is
afraid of being punished for it, because he is afraid that his body, his
flesh will be punished by the laws of the land, or by public opinion, or
because he has some dim belief that this same body and flesh of his will
be burnt in hell-fire; and fire, he knows by experience, is a painful
thing—and so he is _afraid_ of it; there is nothing spiritual in all
that,—that is all fleshly, carnal; the heathens in all ages have been
afraid of hell-fire; but a man’s spirit, on the other hand, if it be in
hell, is in a very different hell from mere fire,—a spiritual hell, such
as torments the evil spirits, at this very moment, although they are
going to and fro on this very earth. This earth is hell to them; they
carry about hell in them,—they are their own hell. Everlasting shame,
discontent, doubt, despair, rage, disgust at themselves, feeling that
they are out of favour with God, out of tune with heaven and earth,
loving nothing, believing nothing, ever hating, hating each other, hating
themselves most of all—_there_ is their hell! _There_ is the hell in
which the soul of every wicked man is,—ay, is now while he is in _this_
life, though he will only awake to the perfect misery of it after death,
when his body and fleshly nature have mouldered away in the grave, and
can no longer pamper and stupify him and make him forget his own misery.
Ay, there has been many a man in this life who had every fleshly
enjoyment which this world can give, riches and pleasure, banquets and
palaces, every sense and every appetite pampered,—his pride and his
vanity flattered; who never knew what want, or trouble, or contradiction,
was on the smallest point; a man, I say, who had every carnal enjoyment
which this earth can give to a man’s selfish flesh, and yet whose spirit
was in hell all the while, and who knew it; hating and despising himself
for a mean selfish villain, while all the world round was bowing down to
him and envying him as the luckiest of men. I am trying to make you
understand the infinite difference between a man’s flesh and his spirit;
how a man’s flesh can take no pleasure in spiritual things, while man’s
spirit of itself can take no pleasure in fleshly things. Now, the spirit
and the flesh, body and soul, in every man, are at war with each
other,—they have quarrelled; that is the corruption of our nature, the
fruit of Adam’s fall. And as the Article says, and as every man who has
ever tried to live godly well knows, from experience, “that infection of
nature does remain to the last, even in those who are regenerate.” So
that as St. Paul says, the spirit lusteth against the flesh, and the
flesh against the spirit; and it continually happens that a man cannot do
the things which he would; he cannot do what he knows to be right; thus,
as St. Paul says again, a man may delight in the law of God in his inward
man, that is, in his spirit, and yet all the while he shall find another
law in his members, _i.e._ in his body, in his flesh, in his brain which
thinks, and his heart which feels, and his senses which are fond of
pleasure; and this law of the flesh, these appetites and passions which
he has, like other animals, fight against the law of his mind, and when
he wishes to do good, make him do evil. Now how is this? The flesh is
not evil; a man’s body can be no more wicked than a dumb beast can be
wicked. St. Paul calls man’s flesh sinful flesh; not because our flesh
can sin of itself, but because our sinful souls make our flesh do sinful
things; for, he says, Christ came in the likeness of sinful flesh, and
yet in him was no sin. The pure and spotless Saviour could not have
taken man’s flesh upon him if there was any sinfulness in it. The body
knows nothing of right and wrong; it is not subject to the law of God,
neither, indeed, can be, says St. Paul. And why? Because God’s law is
spiritual; deals with right and wrong. Wickedness, like righteousness,
is a spiritual thing. If a man sins, his body is not in fault; it is his
spirit; his weak, perverse will, which will sooner listen to what his
flesh tells him is pleasant than to what God tells him is right; for
this, my friends, is the secret of the battle of life. We stand between
heaven and earth. Above is God’s Spirit striving with our spirits,
speaking to them in the depths of our soul, shewing us what is right,
putting into our hearts good desires, making us long to be honest and
just, pure and manful, loving and charitable; for who is there who has
not at times longed after these things, and felt that it would be a
blessed thing for him if he were such a man as Jesus Christ was and
is?—Above us, I say, is God’s Spirit speaking to our spirits, below us is
this world speaking to our flesh, as it spoke to Eve’s, saying to us,
“This thing is pleasant to the eyes—this thing is good for food—that
thing is to be desired to make you wise, and to flatter your vanity and
self-conceit.” Below us, I say, is _this_ world, tempting us to ease,
and pleasure, and vanity; and in the middle, betwixt the two, stands up
the third part of man—his _soul_ and _will_, set to choose between the
voice of God’s Spirit and the temptations of this world—to choose between
what is right and what is pleasant—to choose whether he will obey the
desires of the spirit, or obey the desires of the flesh. He must choose.
If he lets his flesh conquer his spirit, he falls; if he lets his spirit
conquer his flesh, he rises; if he lets his flesh conquer his spirit, he
becomes what he was not meant to be—a slave to fleshly lust; and _then_
he will find his flesh set up for itself, and work for itself. And where
man’s flesh gets the upper hand, and takes possession of him, it can do
nothing but evil—not that it is evil in itself, but that it has no rule,
no law to go by; it does not know right from wrong; and therefore it does
simply what it likes, as a dumb beast or an idiot might; and therefore
the works of the flesh are—adulteries, drunkenness, murders,
fornications, envyings, backbitings, strife. When a man’s body, which
God intended to be the servant of his spirit, has become the tyrant of
his spirit, it is like an idiot on a king’s throne, doing all manner of
harm and folly without knowing that it _is_ harm and folly. That is not
_its_ fault. Whose fault is it, then? _Our_ fault—the fault of our
wills and our souls. Our souls were intended to be the masters of our
flesh, to conquer all the weaknesses, defilements of our constitution—our
tempers, our cowardice, our laziness, our hastiness, our nervousness, our
vanity, our love of pleasure—to listen to our spirits, because our
spirits learn from God’s Spirit what is right and noble. But if we let
our flesh master us, and obey its own blind lusts, we sin against God;
and we sin against God doubly; for we not only sin against God’s
commandments, but we sin against ourselves, who are the image and glory
of God.
Believe this, my friends; believe that, because you are all fallen human
creatures, there must go on in you this sore life-long battle between
your spirit and your flesh—your spirit trying to be master and guide, as
it ought to be, and your flesh rebelling, and trying to conquer your
spirit and make you a mere animal, like a fox in cunning, a peacock in
vanity, or a hog in greedy sloth. But believe, too, that it is your sin
and your shame if your spirit does not conquer your flesh—for God has
promised to help your spirits. Ask Him, and His Spirit will teach
them—fill them with pure, noble hopes, with calm, clear thoughts, and
with deep, unselfish love to God and man. He will strengthen your wills,
that they may be able to refuse the evil and choose the good. Ask Him,
and He will join them to His own Spirit—to the Spirit of Christ, your
Master; for he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit with Him. Ask
him, and He will give you the mind of Christ—teach you to see and feel
all matters as Christ sees and feels them. Ask Him, and He will give you
wisdom to listen to His Spirit when it teaches your spirit, and then you
will be able to walk after the spirit, and not obey the lusts of the
flesh; and you will be able to crucify the flesh with its passions and
lusts, that is, to make it, what it ought to be, a dead thing—a dead tool
for your spirit to work with manfully and godly, and not a live tyrant to
lead you into brutishness and folly; and then you will find that the
fruit of the spirit, of your spirit led by God’s Spirit, is really, as
St. Paul says, “love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness,
honesty”—“whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honourable
and of good report;” and instead of being the miserable slaves of your
own passions, and of the opinions of your neighbours, you will find that
where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty, true freedom, not only
from your neighbours’ sins, but, what is far better, freedom from your
own.
These are large words, my friends, and promise mighty things. But I dare
speak them to you, for God has spoken to you. These promises God made
you at your baptism; these promises I, on the warrant of your baptism,
dare make to you again. At your baptism, God gave you the right to call
Him your loving Father, to call His Son your Saviour, His Spirit your
Sanctifier. And He is not a man, that He should lie; nor the son of man,
that He should repent! Try Him, and see whether He will not fulfil His
word. Claim His promise, and though you have fallen lower than the
brutes, He will make men and women of you. He will be faithful and just
to forgive you your sins, and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness.
SERMON VII.
RETRIBUTION.
NUMBERS, xxxii. 23.
“Be sure your sin will find you out.”
THE full meaning of this text is, that every sin which a man commits is
certain, sooner or later, to come home to him with fearful interest.
Moses gave this warning to two tribes of the Israelites,—to the
Reubenites and Gadites, who had promised to go over Jordan, and help
their countrymen in war against the heathen, on condition of being
allowed to return and settle on the east bank of Jordan, where they then
were; but if they broke their promise, and returned before the end of the
war, they were to be certain that their sin would find them out; that God
would avenge their falsehood on them in some way in their lifetime: in
their lifetime, I say, for there is no mention made in this chapter, or
in any part of the story, of heaven or hell, or any world to come. And
the text has been always taken as a fair warning to all generations of
men, that their sin also, even in their lifetimes, will be visited upon
them.
Now, it is strange, at first sight, that these texts, which warn men that
their sins will be punished in this life, are just the most unpleasant
texts in the whole Bible; that men shrink from them more, and shut their
eyes to them more than they do to those texts which threaten them with
hell-fire and everlasting death. Strange!—that men should be more afraid
of being punished in this life for a few years than in the life to come
for ever and ever;—and yet not strange if we consider; for to worldly and
sinful souls, that life after death and the flames of hell seem quite
distant and dim—things of which they know little and believe less, while
this world they _do_ know, they are quite certain that its good things
are pleasant and its bad things unpleasant, and they are thoroughly
afraid of losing _them_. Their hearts are where their treasure is, in
this world; and a punishment which deprives them of this world’s good
things hits them home: but their treasure is _not_ in heaven, and,
therefore, about losing heaven they are by no means so much concerned.
And thus they can face the dreadful news that “the wicked shall be turned
into hell, and all the people that forget God;” while, as for the news
that the wicked shall be recompensed on the earth, that their sins will
surely find them out in this life, they cannot face that—they shut their
ears to it,—they try to persuade themselves that sin will _pay_ them
_here_, at all events; and as for hereafter, they shall get off
somehow,—they neither know nor care much how.
Yet God’s truth remains, and God’s truth must be heard; and those who
love this world so well must be told, whether they like or not, that
every sin which they commit, every mean, every selfish, every foul deed,
loses them so much enjoyment in this very present world of which they are
so mighty fond. That is God’s truth; and I will prove it true from
common sense, from Holy Scripture, and _from the witness_ of men’s own
hearts.
Take common sense. Does not common sense tell us that if God made this
world, and governs it by righteous and God-like laws, this must be a
world in which evil-doing cannot thrive? God made the world better than
that, surely! He would be a bad law-giver who made such laws, that it
was as well to break them as to keep them. You would call them bad laws,
surely! No, God made the world, and not the devil; and the world works
by God’s laws, and not the devil’s; and it inclines towards good, and not
towards evil; and he who sins, even in the least, breaks God’s laws, acts
contrary to the rule and constitution of the world, and will surely find
that God’s laws will go on in spite of him, and grind him to powder, if
he by sinning gets in the way of them. God has no need to go out of His
way to punish our evil deeds. Let them alone, and they will punish
themselves. Is it not so in every thing? If a tradesman trades badly,
or a farmer farms badly, there is no need of lawyers to punish him; he
will punish himself. Every mistake he makes will take money out of his
pocket; every time he offends against the established rules of trade or
agriculture, which are God’s laws, he injures himself; and so, be sure,
it is in the world at large,—in the world in which men and the souls of
men live, and move, and have their being.
Next, to speak of Scripture. I might quote texts innumerable to prove
that what I say Scripture says also. Consider but this one thing,—that
there is a whole book in the Bible written to prove this one thing,—that
our good and bad deeds are repaid us with interest in this life—the
Proverbs of Solomon I mean—in which there is little or no mention of
heaven or hell, or any world to come. It is all one noble, and awful,
and yet cheering sermon on that one text, “The righteous shall be
recompensed in the earth, much more the wicked and the sinner,”—put in a
thousand different lights; brought home to us a thousand different roads,
comes the same everlasting doom,—“Vain man, who thinkest that thou canst
live in God’s world and yet despise His will, know that, in every
smiling, comfortable sin, thou art hatching an adder to sting thee in the
days of old age, to poison thy cup of sinful joy, even when it is at thy
lips; to haunt thy restless thoughts, and dog thee day and night; to rise
up before thee, in the silent, sleepless hours of night, like an angry
ghost! An awful foretaste of the doom that is to come; and yet a
merciful foretaste, if thou wilt be but taught by the disappointment, the
unsatisfied craving, the gnawing shame of a guilty conscience, to see the
heinousness of sin, and would turn before it be too late.”
What, my friends,—what will you make of such texts as this, “That he who
soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption?” Do you not see
that comes true far too often? Can it help _always_ coming true, seeing
that God’s apostle spoke it? What will you make of this, too, “That the
wicked is snared by the working of his own hands;”—“That _evil_”—the evil
which we do of its own self—“shall slay the wicked?” What says the whole
noble 37th Psalm of David, but that same awful truth of God, that sin is
its own punishment?
Why should I go on quoting texts? Look for yourselves, you who fancy
that it is only on the other side of the grave that God will trouble
Himself about you and your meanness, your profligacy, your falsehood.
Look for yourselves in the book of God, and see if there be any writer
there,—lawgiver, prophet, psalmist, apostle, up to Christ the Lord
Himself,—who does not warn men again and again, that here, on earth,
their sins will find them out. Our Saviour, indeed, when on earth, said
less about this subject than any of the prophets before Him, or the
apostles after Him, and for the best of reasons. The Jews had got rooted
in their minds a superstitious notion, that all disease, all sorrow, was
the punishment in each case of some particular sin; and thus, instead of
looking with pity and loving awe upon the sick and the afflicted, they
were accustomed, too often, to turn from them as sinners, smitten of God,
bearing in their distress the token of His anger. The blessed One,—He
who came to heal the sick and save the lost,—reproved that error more
than once. When the disciples fancied a certain poor man’s blindness to
be a judgment from God, “Neither did he sin,” said the Lord, “nor his
parents, but that the glory of God might be made manifest in him.” And
yet, on the other hand, when He healed a certain man of an old infirmity
at the pool of Bethesda, what were His words to him? “Go thy way, sin no
more, lest a worse thing come unto thee;”—a clear and weighty warning
that all his long misery of eight-and-thirty years had been the
punishment of some sin of his, and that the sin repeated would bring on
him a still severer judgment.
What, again, does the apostle mean, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, when
he tells us how God scourges every son whom he receives, and talks of His
chastisements, whereof all are partakers. Why do we need chastising if
we have nothing which needs mending? And though the innocent _may_
sometimes be afflicted to make them strong as well as innocent, and the
holy chastened to make them humble as well as holy, yet if the good
cannot escape their share of affliction, how will the bad get off? “If
the righteous scarcely be saved, where will the ungodly and the sinner
appear?” But what use in arguing when you know that my words are true?
You _know_ that your sins will find you out. Look boldly and honestly
into your own hearts. Look through the history of your past lives, and
confess to God, at least, that the far greater number of your sorrows
have been your own fault; that there is hardly a day’s misery which you
ever endured in your life of which you might not say, ‘If I had listened
to the voice of God in my conscience—if I had earnestly considered what
my _duty_ was—if I had prayed to God to determine my judgment right, I
should have been spared this sorrow now?’ Am I not right? Those who
know most of God and their own souls will agree most with me; those who
know little about God and their own souls will agree but hardly with me,
for they provoke God’s chastisements, and writhe under them for the time,
and then go and do the same wrong again, as the wild beast will turn and
bite the stone thrown at him without having the sense to see why it was
thrown.
Think, again, of your past lives, and answer in God’s sight, how many
wrong things have you ever done which have _succeeded_, that is, how many
sins which you would not be right glad were undone if you could but put
back the wheels of Time? They may have succeeded _outwardly_; meanness
will succeed
so—lies—oppression—theft—adultery—drunkenness—godlessness—they are all
pleasant enough while they last, I suppose; and a man may reap what he
calls substantial benefits from them in money, and suchlike, and keep
that safe enough; but has his sin succeeded? Has it not _found him
out_?—found him out never to lose him again? Is he the happier for it?
Does he feel freer for it? Does he respect himself the more for it?—No!
And even though he may prosper now, yet does there not run though all his
selfish pleasure a certain fearful looking forward to a fiery judgment to
which he would gladly shut his eyes, but cannot?
Cunning, fair-spoken oppressor of the poor, has not thy sin found thee
out? Then be sure it will. In the shame of thine own heart it will find
thee out;—in the curses of the poor it will find thee out;—in a
friendless, restless, hopeless death-bed, thy covetousness and thy
cruelty will glare before thee in their true colours, and thy sin will
find thee out!
Profligate woman, who art now casting away thy honest name, thy
self-respect, thy womanhood, thy baptism-vows, that thou mayest enjoy the
foul pleasures of sin for a season, has not thy sin found thee out? Then
be sure it will hereafter, when thou hast become disgusted at thyself and
thine own infamy,—and youth, and health, and friends, are gone, and a
shameful and despised old age creeps over thee, and death stalks nearer
and nearer, and God vanishes further and further off, then thy sin will
find thee out!
Foolish, improvident young man, who art wasting the noble strength of
youth, and manly spirits which God has given thee on sin and folly,
throwing away thine honest earnings in cards and drunkenness, instead of
laying them by against a time of need—has not thy sin found thee out?
Then be sure it will some day, when thou hast to bring home thy bride to
a cheerless, unfurnished house, and there to live from hand to
mouth,—without money to provide for her sickness,—without money to give
her the means of keeping things neat and comfortable when she is
well,—without a farthing laid by against distress, and illness, and old
age:—_then_ your sin will find you out: then, perhaps, my text,—my
words—may come across you as you sigh in vain in your comfortless home,
in your impoverished old age, for the money which you wasted in your
youth! My friends, my friends, for your own sakes consider, and mend ere
that day come, as else it surely will!
And, lastly, you who, without running into any especial sins, as those
which the world calls sins, still live careless about religion, without
loyalty to Christ the Lord, without any honest attempt, or even wish, to
serve the God above you, or to rejoice in remembering that you are His
children, working for Him and under Him,—be sure your sin will find you
out. When affliction, or sickness, or disappointment come, as come they
will, if God has not cast you off;—when the dark day dawns, and your
fool’s paradise of worldly prosperity is cut away from under your feet,
then you will find out your folly—you will find that you have insulted
the only Friend who can bring you out of affliction—cast off the only
comfort which can strengthen you to bear affliction—forgotten the only
knowledge which will enable you to be the wiser for affliction. Then, I
say, the sin of your godlessness will find you out; if you do not intend
to fall, soured and sickened merely by God’s chastisements, either into
stupid despair or peevish discontent, you will have to go back, to go
back to God and cry, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before
Thee, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son.”
Go back at once before it be too late. Find out your sins and mend
them—before they find you out, and break your hearts.
SERMON VIII.
SELF-DESTRUCTION.
1 KINGS, xxii. 23.
“The Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy
prophets.”
THE chapter from which my text is taken, which is the first lesson for
this evening’s service, is a very awful chapter, for it gives us an
insight into the meaning of that most awful and terrible word—temptation.
And yet it is a most comforting chapter, for it shews us how God is
long-suffering and merciful, even to the most hardened sinner; how to the
last He puts before him good and evil, to choose between them, and warns
him to the last of his path, and the ruin to which it leads.
We read of Ahab in the first lesson this morning as a thoroughly wicked
man,—mean and weak, cruel and ungodly, governed by his wife Jezebel, a
heathen woman, in marrying whom he had broken God’s law,—a woman so
famous for cruelty and fierceness, vanity and wickedness, that her name
is a by-word even here in England now—“as bad as Jezebel,” we say to this
day. We heard of Ahab in this morning’s lesson letting Jezebel murder
the righteous Naboth, by perjury and slander, to get possession of his
vineyard; and then, instead of shrinking with abhorrence from his wife’s
iniquity, going down and taking possession of the land which he had
gained by her sin. We read of God’s curse on him, and yet of God’s
long-suffering and pardon to him on his repentance. Yet, neither God’s
curse nor God’s mercy seem to have moved him. But he had been always the
same. “He did evil,” the Bible tells us, “in the sight of the Lord above
all that were before him.” He deserted the true God for his wife’s idols
and false gods; and in spite of Elijah’s miracle at Carmel—of which you
heard last Sunday—by which he proved by fire which was the true God, and
in spite of the wonderful victory which God had given him, by means of
one of God’s prophets, over the Syrians, he still remained an idolater.
He would not be taught, nor understand; neither God’s threats nor mercies
could move him; he went on sinning against light and knowledge; and now
his cup was full—his days were numbered, and God’s vengeance was ready at
the door.
He consulted all his false prophets as to whether or not he should go to
attack the Syrians at Ramoth-Gilead. They knew what to say—they knew
that their business was to prophesy what would pay them—what would be
pleasant to him. They did not care whether what they said was true or
not—they lied for the sake of gain, for the Lord had put a lying spirit
into their mouths. They were rogues and villains from the first. They
had turned prophets, not to speak God’s truth, but to make money, to
flatter King Ahab, to get themselves a reputation. We do not hear that
they were all heathens. Many of them may have believed in the true God.
But they were cheats and liars, and so they had given place to the devil,
the father of lies: and now he had taken possession of them in spite of
themselves, and they lied to Ahab, and told him that he would prosper in
the battle at Ramoth-Gilead. It was a dangerous thing for them to say;
for if he had been defeated, and returned disappointed, his rage would
have most probably fallen on them for deceiving them. And as in those
Eastern countries kings do whatever they like without laws or
parliaments, Ahab would have most likely put them all to a miserable
death on the spot. But however dangerous it might be for them to lie,
they could not help lying. A spirit of lies had seized them, and they
who began by lying, because it paid them, now could not help doing so
whether it paid them or not.
But the good king of Judah, Jehoshaphat, had no faith in these flattering
villains. He asked whether there was not another prophet of the Lord to
inquire of? Ahab told him that there was one, Micaiah the son of Imlah,
but that he hated him, because he only prophesied evil of him. What a
thorough picture of a hardened sinner—a man who has become a slave to his
own lusts, till he cares nothing for a thing being true, provided only it
is pleasant! Thus the wilful sinner, like Ahab, becomes both fool and
coward, afraid to look at things as they are; and when God’s judgments
stare him in the face, the wretched man shuts his eyes tight, and swears
that the evil is not there, just because he does not choose to see it.
But the evil was there, ready for Ahab, and it found him. When he forced
Micaiah to speak, Micaiah told him the whole truth. He told him a
vision, or dream, which he had seen. “Hear thou therefore the word of
the Lord: I saw the Lord sitting on His throne, and all the host of
heaven standing by Him. And the Lord said, Who shall persuade Ahab, that
he may go up and fall at Ramoth-Gilead? And there came forth a spirit,
and said, I will go forth, and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his
prophets. And the Lord said, Thou shalt persuade him, and prevail also:
go forth, and do so. Now therefore, behold, the Lord hath put a lying
spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets, and the Lord hath spoken
evil concerning thee.”
What warning could be more awful, and yet more plain? Ahab was told that
he was listening to a lie. He had free choice to follow that lie or not,
and he did follow it. After having put Micaiah into prison for speaking
the truth to him, he went up to Ramoth-Gilead; and yet he felt he was not
safe. He had his doubts and his fears. He would not go openly into the
battle, but disguised himself, hoping that by this means he should keep
himself safe from evil. Fool! God’s vengeance could not be stopped by
his paltry cunning. In spite of all his disguises, a chance shot struck
him down between the joints of his armour. His chariot-driver carried
him out of the battle, and “he was stayed up in his chariot against the
Syrians, and died at even: and the blood ran out of his wound into the
midst of the chariot. And one washed the chariot in the pool of Samaria;
and the dogs licked up his blood there,” according to the word of the
Lord, which He spoke by the mouth of His prophet Elijah, saying, “In the
place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, whom thou slewest, shall
dogs lick thy blood, even thine.”
And do not fancy, my friends, that because this is a miraculous story of
ancient times, it has nothing to do with us. All these things were
written for our example. This chapter tells us not merely how Ahab was
tempted, but it tells us how _we_ are tempted, every one of us, here in
England, in these very days. As it was with Ahab, so it is with us.
Every wilful sin that we commit we give room to the devil. Every wrong
step that we take knowingly, we give a handle to some evil spirit to lead
us seven steps further wrong. And yet in every temptation God gives us a
fair chance. He is no cruel tyrant who will deliver us over to the
devil, to be led helpless and blindfold to our ruin. He did not give
Ahab over to him so. He sent a lying spirit to deceive Ahab’s prophets,
that Ahab might go up and fall at Ramoth-Gilead; but at the very same
time, see, he sends a holy and a true man, a man whom Ahab could trust,
and did trust at the bottom of his heart, to tell him that the lie was a
lie, to warn him of his ruin, so that he might have no excuse for
listening to those false prophets—no excuse for following his own pride,
his own ambition, to his destruction. So you see, “Let no man say, when
he is tempted, I am tempted of God, for God tempteth no man, but every
one is tempted when he is led away by his own lust and enticed.” Ahab
was led away by his own lust; his cowardly love of hearing what was
pleasant and flattering to him, rather than what was true—rather than
what he knew he deserved; that was what enticed him to listen to Zedekiah
and the false prophets, rather than to Micaiah the son of Imlah. _That_
is what entices us to sin—the lust of believing what is pleasant to us,
what suits our own self-will—what is pleasant to our bodies—pleasant to
our purses—pleasant to our pride and self-conceit. Then, when the lying
spirit comes and whispers to us, by bad thoughts, by bad books, by bad
men, that we shall prosper in our wickedness, does God leave us alone to
listen to those evil voices without warning? No! He sends His prophets
to us, as He sent Micaiah to Ahab, to tell us that the wages of sin is
death—to tell us that those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind—to
set before us at every turn good or evil, that we may choose between
them, and live or die according to our choice. For do not fancy that
there are no prophets in our days, unless the gift of the Holy Spirit,
which is promised to all who believe, be a dream and a lie. There are
prophets nowadays,—yea, I say unto you, and more than prophets. Is not
the Bible a prophet? Is not every page in it a prophecy to us,
foretelling God’s mercies and God’s punishments towards men. Is not
every holy and wise book, every holy and wise preacher and writer, a
prophet, expounding to us God’s laws, foretelling to us God’s opinions of
our deeds, both good and evil? Ay, is not every man a prophet to
himself? That “still small voice” in a man’s heart, which warns him of
what is evil—that feeling which makes him cheerful and free when he has
done right, sad and ashamed when he has done wrong—is not that a prophecy
in a man’s own heart? Truly it is. It is the voice of God within us—it
is the Spirit of God striving with our spirits, whether we will hear, or
whether we will forbear—setting before us what is righteous, and noble,
and pure, and what is manly and God-like—to see whether we will obey that
voice, or whether we will obey our own selfish lusts, which tempt us to
please ourselves—to pamper ourselves, our greediness, covetousness,
ambition, or self-conceit. And again, I say, we have our prophets.
Every preacher of righteousness is a prophet. Every good tract is a
prophet. That Prayer-book, those Psalms, those Creeds, those Collects,
which you take into your mouths every Sunday, what are they but written
prophecies, crying unto us with the words of holy men of old, greater
than Micaiah, or David, or Elijah, “Hear thou the word of the Lord?” The
spirits of those who wrote that Prayer-book—the spirits of just men made
perfect, filled with the Spirit of the Lord—they call to us to learn the
wisdom which they knew, to avoid the temptations which they conquered,
that we may share in the glory in which they shared round the throne of
Christ for evermore.
And if you ask me how to try the spirits, how to know whether your own
thoughts, whether the sermons which you hear, the books which you read,
are speaking to you God’s truth, or some lying spirit’s falsehood, I can
only answer you, “To the law and to the testimony”—to the Bible; if they
speak not according to that word, there is no truth in them. But how to
understand the Bible? for the fleshly man understands not the things of
God. The fleshly man, he who cares only about pleasing himself, he who
goes to the Bible full of self-conceit and selfishness, wanting the Bible
to tell him only just what he likes to hear, will only find it a sealed
book to him, and will very likely wrest the Scriptures to his own
destruction. Take up your Bible humbly, praying to God to shew you its
meaning, whether it be pleasant to you or not, and then you will find
that God will shew you a blessed meaning in it; He will open your eyes,
that you may understand the wondrous things of His law; He will shew you
how to try the spirit of all you are taught, and to find out whether it
comes from God.
SERMON IX.
HELL ON EARTH.
MATTHEW, viii. 29.
“And behold the evil spirits cried out, saying, What have we to do
with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of God? Art Thou come hither to torment
us before the time?”
THIS account of the man possessed with devils, and of his language to our
Lord, of our Lord’s casting the devils out of the poor sufferer, and His
allowing them to enter into a herd of swine, is one that is well worth
serious thought; and I think a few words on it will follow fitly after my
last Sunday’s sermon on Ahab and his temptations by evil spirits. In
that sermon I shewed you what temper of mind it was which laid a man open
to the cunning of evil spirits; I wish now to shew you something of what
those evil spirits are. It is very little that we can know about them.
We were intended to know very little, just as much as would enable us to
guard against them, and no more. The accounts of them in the Scriptures
are for our use, not to satisfy our curiosity. But we may find out a
great deal about them from this very chapter, from this very story, which
is repeated almost word for word in three different Gospels, as if to
make us more certain of so curious and important a matter, by having
three distinct and independent writers to witness for its truth. I
advise all those who have Bibles to look for this story in the 8th
chapter of St. Matthew, and follow me as I explain it. {92}
Now, first, we may learn from this account, that evil spirits are real
persons. There is a notion got abroad that it is only a figure of speech
to talk of evil spirits, that all the Bible means by them are certain bad
habits, or bad qualities, or diseases. There are many who will say when
they read this story, ‘This poor man was only a madman. It was the
fashion of the old Jews when a man was mad to say that he was possessed
by evil spirits. All they meant was that the man’s own spirit was in an
evil diseased state, or that his brain and mind were out of order.’
When I hear such language—and it is very common—I cannot help thinking
how pleased the devil must be to hear people talk in such a way. How can
people help him better than by saying that there is no devil? A thief
would be very glad to hear you say, ‘There are no such things as thieves;
it is all an old superstition, so I may leave my house open at night
without danger;’ and I believe, my friends, from the very bottom of my
heart, that this new-fangled disbelief in evil spirits is put into men’s
hearts by the evil spirits themselves. As it was once said, ‘The devil
has tried every plan to catch men’s souls, and now, as the last and most
cunning trick of all, he is shamming dead.’ These may seem homely words,
but the homeliest words are very often the deepest. I advise you all to
think seriously on them.
But it is impossible surely to read this story without seeing that the
Bible considers evil spirits as distinct persons, just as much as each
one of us is a person, and that our Lord spoke to them and treated them
as persons. “What have _we_ to do with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of God?
Art Thou come hither to torment _us_ before the time?” And again, “If
Thou cast _us_ out, suffer us to go into the herd of swine.” What can
shew more plainly that there were some persons in that poor man, besides
himself, his own spirit, his own person? and that _he_ knew it, and Jesus
knew it too? and that He spoke to these spirits, these persons, who
possessed that man, and not to the man himself? No doubt there was a
terrible confusion in the poor madman’s mind about these evil spirits,
who were tormenting him, making him miserable, foul, and savage, in mind
and body—a terrible confusion! We find, when Jesus asked him his name,
he answers “_Legion_,” that is an army, a multitude, “for we are many,”
he says. Again, one gospel tells us that he says, “What have _I_ to do
with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of God?” While in another Gospel we are told
that he said, “What have _we_ to do with Thee?” He seems not to have
been able to distinguish between his own spirit, and these spirits who
possessed him. They put the furious and despairing thoughts into his
heart; they spoke through his mouth; they made a slave and a puppet of
him. But though he could not distinguish between his own soul and the
devils who were in it, Christ could and Christ did.
The man says to Him, or rather the devils make the man say to Him, “If
Thou cast us out, suffer us to go into the herd of swine, and drive us
not out into the deep.” What did Christ answer him? Christ did not
answer him as our so-called wise men in these days would, ‘My good man,
this is all a delusion and a fancy of your own, about your having evil
spirits in you—more persons than one in you—for you are wrong in saying
_we_ of yourself. You ought to say “I,” as every one else does; and as
for spirits going out of you, or going into a herd of swine, or anything
else, that is all a superstition and a fancy. There is nothing to come
out of you, there is nothing in you except yourself. All the evil in you
is your own, the disease of your own brain, and the violent passions of
your own heart. Your brain must be cured by medicine, and your violent
passions tamed down by care and kindness, and then you will get rid of
this foolish notion that you have evil spirits in you, and calling
yourself a multitude, as if you had other persons in you besides
yourself.’
Any one who spoke in this manner nowadays would be thought very
reasonable and very kind. Why did not our Lord speak so to this man, for
there was no outward difference between this man’s conduct and that of
many violent mad people whom we see continually in England? We read,
that this man possessed with devils would wear no clothes; that he had
extraordinary strength; that he would not keep company with other men,
but abode day and night in the tombs, exceeding fierce, crying and
cutting himself with stones, trying in blind rage, which he could not
explain to himself, to hurt himself and all who came near him. And,
above all, he had this notion, that evil spirits had got possession of
him. Now every one of these habits and fancies you may see in many
raging maniacs at this day.
But did our Lord treat this man as we treat such maniacs in these days?
He took the man at his word, and more; the man could not distinguish
clearly between himself and the evil spirits, but our Lord did. When the
devils besought Him, saying, “If thou cast us out, suffer us to go into
the herd of swine,” our Lord answers “Go;” and “when they were cast out,
they went into the herd of swine; and, behold, the whole herd of swine
ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the
waters.”
It was as if our Lord had meant to say to the bystanders,—ay and to us,
and to all people in all times and in all countries, ‘This poor possessed
maniac’s notion was a true one. There were other persons in him besides
himself, tormenting him, body and soul: and, behold, I can drive these
out of him and send them into something else, and leave the man
uninjured, _himself_, and only himself, again in an instant, without any
need of long education to cure him of his bad habits.’ It will be but
reasonable, then, for us to take this story of the man possessed by
devils, as written for our example, as an instance of what _might_, and
perhaps _would_, happen to any one of us, were it not for God’s mercy.
St. Peter tells us to be sober and watchful, because “the devil goes
about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour;” and when we look at
the world around, we may surely see that that stands as true now as it
did in St. Peter’s time. Why, again, did St. James tells us to resist
the devil if the devil be not near us to resist? Why did St. Paul take
for granted, as he did, that Christian men were, of course, not ignorant
of Satan’s devices, if it be quite a proof of enlightenment and superior
knowledge to be ignorant of his devices,—if any dread, any thought even,
about evil spirits, be beneath the attention of reasonable men? My
friends, I say fairly, once for all, that that common notion, that there
are no men now possessed by evil spirits, and that all those stories of
the devil’s power over men are only old, worn-out superstitions has come
from this, that men do not like to retain God in their knowledge, and
therefore, as a necessary consequence, do not like to retain the devil in
their knowledge; because they would be very glad to believe in nothing
but what they can see, and taste, and handle; and, therefore, the thought
of unseen evil spirits, or good spirits either, is a painful thing to
them. First, they do not really believe in angels—ministering spirits
sent out to minister to the heirs of salvation; then they begin not to
believe in evil spirits. The Bible plainly describes their vast numbers;
but these people are wiser than the Bible, and only talk of _one_—of
_the_ devil, as if there were not, as the text tells us, legions and
armies of devils. Then they get rid of that one devil in their real
desire to believe in as few spirits as possible. I am afraid many of
them have gone on to the next step, and got rid of the one God out of
their thoughts and their belief. I said I am afraid, I ought to have
said I _know_, that they have done so, and that thousands in this day who
began by saying evil spirits only mean certain diseases and bad habits in
men, have ended by saying, “God only means certain good habits in man.
God is no more a person than the evil spirits are persons.”
I warn you of all this, my friends, because if you go to live in large
towns, as many of you will, you will hear talk enough of this sort before
your hairs are grey, put cleverly and eloquently enough; for, as a wise
man said, “The devil does not send fools on his errands.” I pray God,
that if you ever do hear doctrines of that kind, some of my words may
rise in your mind and help to shew to you the evil path down which they
lead.
We may believe, then, from the plain words of Scriptures, that there are
vast numbers of evil spirits continually tempting men, each of them to
some particular sin; to worldliness, for instance, for we read of the
spirit of the evil world; to filthiness, for we read of unclean spirits;
to falsehood, for we read of lying spirits and a spirit of lies; to
pride, for we read of a spirit of pride;—in short, to all sins which a
man _can_ commit, to all evil passions to which a man can give way. We
have a right to believe, from the plain words of Scripture, that these
spirits are continually wandering up and down tempting men to sin. That
wonderful story of Job’s temptation, which you may all read for
yourselves in the first chapter of the book of Job, is, I think, proof
enough for any one.
But next, and I wish you to pay special attention to this point: We have
no right to believe,—we have every right _not_ to believe, that these
evil spirits can make us sin in the smallest matter against our own
wills. The devil cannot put a single sin into us; he can only flatter
the sinfulness which is already in us. For, see; this pride, lust,
covetousness, falsehood, and so on, to which the Bible tells us they
tempt us, have roots already in our nature. Our fallen nature of itself
is inclined to pride, to worldliness, and so on. These devils tempt us
by putting in our way the occasion to sin, by suggesting to us tempting
thoughts and arguments which lead to sin; so the serpent tempted Eve, not
by making her ambitious and self-willed, but by using arguments to her
which stirred up the ambition and self-will in her: “Ye shall be as gods,
knowing good and evil,” the devil said to her.
So Satan, the prince of the evil spirits, tempted our Lord. And as the
prince of the devils tempted Christ, so do _his_ servants tempt _us_,
Christ’s servants. Our tempers, our longings, our fancies, are not evil
spirits; they are, as old divines well describe them, like greedy and
foolish fish, who rise at the baits which evil spirits hold out to us.
If we resist those baits—if we put ourselves under God’s protection—if we
claim strength from Him who conquered the devil and all His temptations,
then we shall be able to turn our wills away from those tempting baits,
and to resign our wills into our Father’s hand, and He will take care of
them, and strengthen them with His will; and we shall find out that if we
resist the devil, he will flee from us. But if we yield to temptations
whenever they come in our way, we shall find ourselves less and less able
to resist them, for we shall learn to hate the evil spirits less and
less; I mean we shall shrink less from the evil thoughts they hold out to
us. We shall give place to the devil, as the Scripture tells us we
shall; for instance, by indulging in habitual passionate tempers, or
rooted spite and malice, letting the sun go down upon our wrath: and so a
man may become more and more the slave of his own nature, of his own
lusts and passions, and therefore of the devils, who are continually
pampering and maddening those lusts and passions, till a man may end in
_complete possession_; not in common madness, which may be mere disease,
but as a savage and a raging maniac, such as, thank God, are rare in
Christian countries, though they were common among our own forefathers
before they were converted to Christianity,—men like the demoniac of whom
the text speaks, tormented by devils, given up to blind rage and malice
against himself and all around, to lust and blasphemy, to confusion of
mind and misery of body, God’s image gone, and the image of the devil,
the destroyer and the corrupter, arisen in its place. Few men can arrive
at this pitch of wretchedness in a civilised country. It would not
answer the evil spirit’s purpose to let them do so. It suits _his_
spirits best in such a land as this to walk about dressed up as angels of
light. Few men in England would be fools enough to indulge the gross and
fierce part of their nature till they became mere savages, like the
demoniac whom Christ cured; so it is to respectable vices that the devil
mostly tempts us,—to covetousness, to party spirit, to a hard heart and a
narrow mind; to cruelty, that shall clothe itself under the name of law;
to filthiness, which excuses itself by saying, “It is a man’s nature, he
cannot help it;” to idleness, which excuses itself on the score of
wealth; to meanness and unfairness in trade, and in political and
religious disputes—these are the devils which haunt us Englishmen—sleek,
prim, respectable fiends enough; and, truly, _their_ name is Legion! And
the man who gives himself up to them, though he may not become a raving
savage, is just as truly possessed by devils, to his own misery and ruin,
that he may sow the wind and reap the whirlwind; that though men may
speak well of him, and posterity praise his saying, and speak good of the
covetous whom God abhorreth, yet he may go for ever unto his own, to the
evil spirits to whom his own wicked will gave him up for a prey. I
beseech you, my friends, consider my words; they are not mine, but the
Bible’s. Think of them with fear;—and yet with confidence, for we are
baptised into the name of Him who conquered all devils; you may claim a
share in that Spirit which is opposite to all evil spirits,—whose
presence makes the agony and misery of evil spirits, and drives them out
as water drives out fire. If He is on your side, why should you be
afraid of any spirit? Greater is He that is in you than he that is
against you; and He, Christ Himself, is with every man, every child, who
struggles, however blindly and weakly, against temptation. When
temptation comes, when evil looks pleasant, and arguments rise up in your
mind, that seem to make it look right and reasonable, as well as
pleasant, _then_, out of the very depths of your hearts, cry after Him
who died for you. Say to yourselves, ‘How can I do this thing, and
offend against Him who bought me with His blood?’ Say to Him, ‘I am
weak, I am confused; I do not see right from wrong; I cannot find my way;
I cannot answer the devil; I cannot conquer these cunning thoughts; I
know in the bottom of my heart that they are wrong, mere temptations, and
yet they look so reasonable. Blessed Saviour, _Thou_ must shew me where
they are wrong. Thou didst answer the devil Thyself out of God’s Word,
put into _my_ mind some answer out of God’s Word to these temptations;
or, at least, give me spirit to toss them off—strength of will to thrust
the whole temptation out of my head, and say, I will parley no longer
with the devil; I will put the whole matter out of my head for a time. I
don’t know whether it is right or wrong for me to do this particular
thing, but there are twenty other things which I _do_ know are right.
I’ll go and do _them_, and let this wait awhile.’
Believe me, my friends, you _can_ do this—you can resist these evil
spirits which tempt us all; else why did our Lord bid us pray, “Lead us
not into temptation, but deliver us from evil?” Why? Because our Father
in heaven, if we ask Him, will _not_ lead us _into_ temptation, but
_through_ it safe. Tempted we _must_ be, else we should not be men; but
here is our comfort and our strength—that we have a King in heaven, who
has fought out and conquered all temptations, and a Father in heaven, who
has promised that He will not suffer us to be tempted above that we are
able, but will, with the temptation, make a way to escape, that we may be
able to bear it.
Again, I say, draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Resist the
devil, and he will flee from you.
SERMON X.
NOAH’S JUSTICE.
GENESIS, vi. 9.
“Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked
with God.”
I INTEND, my friends, according as God shall help me, to preach to you,
between this time and Christmas, a few sermons on some of the saints and
worthies of the Old Testament; and I will begin this day with Noah.
Now you must bear in mind that the histories of these ancient men were,
as St. Paul says, written for our example. If these men in old times had
been different from us, they would not be examples to us; but they were
like us—men of like passions, says St. James, as ourselves; they had each
of them in them a corrupt _nature_, which was continually ready to drag
them down, and make beasts of them, and make them slaves to their own
lusts—slaves to eating and drinking, and covetousness, and cowardice, and
laziness, and love for the things which they could see and handle—just
such a nature, in short, as we have. And they had also a spirit in each
of them which was longing to be free, and strong, and holy, and wise—such
a spirit as we have. And to them, just as to us, God was revealing
himself; God was saying to their consciences, as He does to ours, ‘This
is right, that is wrong; do this, and be free and clear-hearted; do that,
and be dark and discontented, and afraid of thy own thoughts.’ And they
too, like us, had to live by faith, by continual belief that they owed a
_duty_ to the great God whom they could not see, by continual belief that
He loved them, and was guiding and leading them through every thing which
happened, good or ill.
This is faith in God, by which alone we, or any man, can live
worthily,—by which these old heroes lived. We read, in the twelfth
chapter of Hebrews, that it was by faith these elders obtained a good
report; and the whole history of the Old-Testament saints is the history
of God speaking to the hearts of one man after another, teaching them
each more and more about Himself, and the history also of these men
listening to the voice of God in their hearts, and _believing_ that
voice, and acting faithfully upon it, into whatever strange circumstances
or deeds it might lead them. “By faith,” we read in this same
chapter,—“by faith Noah, being warned of God, prepared an ark to the
saving of his house, and became heir of the righteousness which is by
faith.”
Now, to understand this last sentence, you must remember that Noah was
not under the law of Moses. St. Paul has a whole chapter (the third
chapter of Galatians) to shew that these old saints had nothing to do
with Moses’ law any more than we have, that it was given to the Jews many
hundred years afterwards. So these histories of the Old-Testament saints
are, in fact, histories of men who conquered by faith—histories of the
power which faith in God has to conquer temptation, and doubt, and false
appearances, and fear, and danger, and all which besets us and keeps us
down from being free and holy, and children of the day, walking
cheerfully forward on our heavenward road in the light of our Father’s
loving smile.
Noah, we read, “was a just man, and perfect in his generations;” and why?
Because he was a faithful man—faithful to God, as it is written, “The
just shall live by his faith;” not by trusting in what he does himself,
in his own works or deservings, but trusting in God who made him,
believing that God is perfectly righteous, perfectly wise, perfectly
loving; and that, because He is perfectly loving, He will accept and save
sinful man when He sees in sinful man the earnest wish to be His
faithful, obedient servant, and to give himself up to the rule and
guidance of God. This, then, was Noah’s justice in God’s sight, as it
was Abraham’s. They believed God, and so became heirs of the
righteousness which is by faith; not their own righteousness, not growing
out of their own character, but given them by God, who puts His righteous
Spirit into those who trust in Him.
But, moreover, we read that Noah “was perfect in his generations;” that
is, he was perfect in all the relations and duties of life,—a good son, a
good husband, a good father: these were the fruits of his faith. He
believed that the unseen God had given him these ties, had given him his
parents, his children, and that to love them was to love God, to do his
duty to them was to do his duty to God. This was part of his walking
with God, continually under his great Taskmaster’s eye,—walking about his
daily business with the belief that a great loving Father was above him,
whatever he did; ready to strengthen, and guide, and bless him if he did
well, ready to avenge Himself on him if he did ill. These were the
fruits of Noah’s faith.
But you may think this nothing very wonderful. Many a man in England
does this every day, and yet no one ever hears of him; he attends to all
his family ties, doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God,
like one who knows he is redeemed by Christ’s blood; he lives, he dies,
he is buried, and out of his own parish his name is never known; while
Noah has earned for himself a worldwide fame; for four thousand years his
name has been spreading over the whole earth as one of the greatest men
who ever lived. Mighty nations have worshipped Noah as a God; many
heathen nations worship him under strange and confused names and
traditions to this day; and the wisest and holiest men among Christians
now reverence Noah, write of him, preach on him, thank God for him, look
up to him as, next to Abraham, their greatest example in the Old
Testament.
Well, my friends, to understand what made Noah so great, we must
understand in what times Noah lived. “The wickedness of men was great in
the earth in those days, and every imagination of the thoughts of their
heart was only evil continually, and the earth was filled with violence
through them.” And we must remember that the wickedness of men before
the flood was not outwardly like wickedness now; it was not petty, mean,
contemptible wickedness of silly and stupid men, such as could be
despised and laughed down; it was like the wickedness of fallen angels.
Men were then strong and beautiful, cunning and active, to a degree of
which we can form no conception. Their enormous length of life (six,
seven, and eight hundred years commonly) must have given them an
experience and daring far beyond any man in these days. Their bodily
size and strength were in many cases enormous. We read that “there were
giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of
God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them,
the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.” Their
powers of invention seem to have been proportionably great. We read, in
the fourth chapter of Genesis, how, within a few years after Adam was
driven out of Paradise, they had learned to build cities, to tame the
wild beasts, and live upon their milk and flesh; that they had invented
all sorts of music and musical instruments; that they had discovered the
art of working in metals. We read among them of Tubal-Cain, an
instructor of every workman in brass and iron; and the old traditions in
the East, where these men dwelt, are full of strange and awful tales of
their power.
Again, we must remember that there was no law in Noah’s days before the
flood, no Bible to guide them, no constitutions and acts of parliament to
bind men in the beaten track by the awful majesty of law, whether they
will or no, as we have.
This is the picture which the Bible gives us of the old world before the
flood—a world of men mighty in body and mind, fierce and busy, conquering
the world round them, in continual war and turmoil; with all the wild
passions of youth, and yet all the cunning and experience of enormous old
age; with the strength and the courage of young men to carry out the
iniquity of old ones; every one guided only by self-will, having cast off
God and conscience, and doing every man that which was right in the sight
of his own eyes. And amidst all this, while men, as wise, as old, as
strong, as great as himself, whirled away round him in this raging sea of
sin, Noah was stedfast; he, at least, knew his way,—“he walked with God,
a just man, and perfect in his generations.”
To Noah, living in such a world as this, among temptation, and violence,
and insult, no doubt, there came this command from God: “The end of all
flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with violence through
them, and I will destroy them with the earth. And behold I, even I, do
bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh wherein is
the breath of life; but with thee will I establish my covenant, and thou
shalt make thee an ark of wood after the fashion which I tell thee; and
thou shalt come into the ark, thou and thy family, and of every living
thing, two of every sort, male and female, shalt thou bring into the ark,
and keep them alive with thee; and take thou of all food that is eaten
into the ark, for thee and for them.” What a message, my friends! If we
wish to see a little of the greatness of Noah’s faith, conceive such a
message coming from God to one of us! Should we believe it—much less act
upon it? But _Noah_ believed God, says the Scripture; and “according as
God commanded him, so did he.” Now, in whatever way this command came
from God to Noah, it is equally wonderful. Some of you, perhaps, will
say in your hearts, ‘No! when God spoke to him, how could he help obeying
Him?’ But, my friends, ask yourselves seriously,—for, believe me, it is
a most important question for the soul and inner life of you and me, and
every man—how did Noah know that it was God who spoke to him? It is easy
to say God appeared to him; but no man hath seen God at any time. It is
easy, again, to say that an angel appeared to him, or that God appeared
to him in the form of a man; but still the same question is left to be
answered, how did he know that this appearance came from God, and that
its words were true? Why should not Noah have said, ‘This was an evil
spirit which appeared to me, trying to frighten and ruin me, and stir up
all my neighbours to mock me, perhaps to murder me?’ Or, again; suppose
that you or I saw some glorious apparition this day, which told us on
such and such a day such and such a town will be destroyed, what should
_we_ think of it? Should we not say, I must have been dreaming—I must
have been ill, and so my brain and eyes must have been disordered, and
treat the whole thing as a mere fancy of ill-health; now why did not Noah
do the same?
Why do I say this? To shew you, my friends, that it is not apparitions
and visions which can make a man believe. As it is written, “If they
believe not Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe though one
rose from the dead.” No; a man must have faith in his heart already. A
man must first be accustomed to discern right from wrong—to listen to and
to obey the voice of God within him; _that_ word of God of which it is
said, “the word is nigh thee, in thy heart, and in thy mind,” before he
can hear God’s word from without; else he will only explain away
miracles, and call visions and apparitions sick men’s dreams.
But there was something yet more wonderful and divine in Noah’s faith,—I
mean his patience. He knew that a flood was to come—he set to work in
faith to build his ark—and that ark was in building for one hundred and
twenty years,—one hundred and twenty years! It seems at first past all
belief. For all that time he built; and all the while the world went on
just as usual; and, before he had finished, old men had died, and
children grown into years; and great cities had sprung up perhaps where
there was not a cottage before; and trees which were but a yard high when
that ark was begun had grown into mighty forest-timber; and men had
multiplied and spread, and yet Noah built and built on stedfastly,
believing that what God had said would surely one day or other come to
pass. For one hundred and twenty years he saw the world go on as usual,
and yet he never forgot that it was a doomed world. He endured the
laughter and mockery of all his neighbours, and every fresh child who was
born grew up to laugh at the foolish old man who had been toiling for a
hundred years past on his mad scheme, as they thought it; and yet Noah
never lost faith, and he never lost _love_ either—for all those years, we
read, he preached righteousness to the very men who mocked him, and
preached in vain—one hundred and twenty years he warned those sinners of
God’s wrath, of righteousness and judgment to come, and no man listened
to him! That, I believe, must have been, after all, the hardest of all
his trials.
And, doubtless, Noah had his inward temptation many a time; no doubt he
was ready now and then to believe God’s message all a dream—to laugh at
himself for his fears of a flood which seemed never coming, but in his
heart was “the still small voice” of God, warning him that God was not a
man that he should lie, or repent, or deceive those who walked faithfully
with him; and around him he saw men growing and growing in iniquity,
filling up the cup of their own damnation; and he said to himself,
‘Verily there is a God who judgeth the earth—for all this a reckoning day
will surely come;’ and he worked stedfastly on, and the ark was finished.
And then at last there came a second call from God, “Come thou and all
thy house into the ark, for thee have I seen righteous before me in this
generation. Yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth,
and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the
earth.” And Noah entered into the ark, and seven days he waited; and
louder than ever laughed the scoffers round him, at the old man and his
family shut into his ark safe on dry land, while day and night went on as
quietly as ever, and the world ran its usual round; for seven days more
their mad game lasted—they ate, they drank, they married, they gave in
marriage, they planted, they builded; and on the seventh day it came—the
rain fell day after day, and week after week—and the windows of heaven
were opened, and the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the
flood arose, and swept them all away!
SERMON XI.
THE NOACHIC COVENANT.
GEN. ix. 8, 9.
“And God spake unto Noah, and his sons with him, saying, And I,
behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after
you.”
IN my last sermon on Noah I spoke of the flood and of Noah’s faith before
the flood; I now go on to speak of the covenant which God made with Noah
after the flood. Now, Noah stood on that newly-dried earth as the head
of mankind; he and his family, in all eight souls, saved by God’s mercy
from the general ruin, were the only human beings left alive, and had
laid on them the wonderful and glorious duty of renewing the race of man,
and replenishing the vast world around them. From that little knot of
human beings were to spring all the nations of the earth.
And because this calling and destiny of theirs was a great and
all-important one—because so much of the happiness or misery of the new
race of mankind depended on the teaching which they would get from their
forefathers, the sons of Noah, therefore God thought fit to make with
Noah and his sons a solemn covenant, as soon as they came out of the ark.
Let us solemnly consider this covenant, for it stands good now as much as
ever. God made it “with Noah, and his seed after him,” for perpetual
generations. And _we_ are the seed of Noah; every man, woman, and child
of us here were in the loins of Noah when the great absolute God gave him
that pledge and promise. We must earnestly consider that covenant, for
in it lies the very ground and meaning of man’s life and business on this
earth.
“And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful and
multiply, and replenish the earth; and the fear of you and the dread of
you shall be upon every living creature. Into your hand they are
delivered. Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you, even as
the green herb have I given you all things. But flesh with the life
thereof, which is the blood thereof shall ye not eat. And surely your
blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I
require it, and at the hand of men; at the hand of every man’s brother
will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall
his blood be shed; for in the image of God made He man.”
Now, to understand this covenant, consider what thoughts would have been
likely to grow up in the mind of Noah’s children after the flood. Would
they not have been something of this kind: ‘God does not love men; He has
drowned all but us, and we are men of like passions with the world who
perished, may we not expect the like ruin at any moment? Then what use
to plough and sow, and build and plant, and work for those who shall come
after us?’ ‘Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.’
And again, they would have been ready to say, ‘This God, whom our
forefather Noah said sent floods, we cannot see Him; but the floods
themselves we can see. All these clouds and tempests, lightning, sun,
and stars, are we _stronger_ than them? No! They may crush us, drown
us, strike us dead at any moment. They seem, too, to go by certain
wonderful rules and laws; perhaps they have a will and understanding in
them. Instead of praying to a God whom we never saw, why not pray to the
thunderclouds not to strike us dead, and to the seas and rivers not to
sweep us away? For this great, wonderful, awful world in which we are,
however beautiful may be its flowers, and its fruits, and its sunshine,
there is no trusting it; we are sitting upon a painted sepulchre, a
beautiful monster, a gulf of flood and fire, which may burst up any
moment, and sweep us away, as it did our forefathers.’
Again, Noah’s children would have begun to say, ‘These beasts here round
us, they are so many of them larger than us, stronger than us, able to
tear us to atoms, eat us up as they would eat a lamb. They are
self-sufficient, too; they want no clothes, nor houses, nor fire, like us
poor, weak, naked, soft human creatures. They can run faster than we,
see farther than we; their scent, too, what a wonderful, mysterious power
that is, like a miracle to us! And, besides all their cunning ways of
getting food and building nests, they never do _wrong_; they never do
horrible things contrary to their nature; they all abide as God has made
them, obeying the law of their kind. Are not these beasts, then, much
wiser and better than we? We will honour them, and pray to them not to
devour us—to make us cunning and powerful as they are themselves. And if
they are no better than us, surely they are no worse than us. After all,
what difference is there between a man and a beast? The flood which
drowned the beasts drowned the men too. A beast is flesh and blood, what
more is a man? If you kill him, he dies, just as a beast dies; and why
should not a man’s carcase be just as good to eat as a beast’s, and
better?’ And so there would have been a free opening at once into all
the horrors of cannibalism!
Again, Noah’s descendants would have said, ‘Our forefathers offered
sacrifices to the unseen God, as a sign that all they had belonged to
Him, and that they had forfeited their own souls by sin, and were
therefore ready to give up the most precious things they had—their
cattle, as a sign that they owed all to that very God whom they had
offended. But are not human creatures much more precious than cattle?
Will it not be a much greater sign of repentance and willingness to give
up all to God if we offer Him the best things which we have—human
creatures? If we kill and sacrifice to Him our most beautiful and
innocent things—little children—noble young men—beautiful young girls?’
My friends, these are very strange and shocking thoughts, but they have
been in the hearts and minds of all nations. The heathens do such things
now. Our own forefathers used to do such things once; they were tempted
to worship the sun and the moon, and the rivers, and the thunder, and to
look with superstitious terror at the bears, and the wolves, and the
snakes, round them, and to kill their young children and maidens, and
offer them up as sacrifices to the dark powers of this world, which they
thought were ready to swallow them up. And God is my witness, my
friends, when one goes through some parts of England now, and sees the
mine-children and factory-children, and all the sin and misery, and the
people wearying themselves in the fire for very vanity, we seem not to be
so very far from the same dark superstition now, though we may call it by
a different name. England has been sacrificing her sons and her
daughters to the devil of covetousness of late years, just as much as our
forefathers offered theirs to the devil of selfish and cowardly
superstition.
But see, now, how this covenant which God made with Noah was intended
just to remedy every one of those temptations which I just mentioned,
into which Noah’s children’s children would have been certain to fall,
and into which so many of them did fall. They might have become
reckless, I said, from fear of a flood at any moment. God promises
them—and confirms it with the sign of the rainbow—never again to destroy
the earth by water. They would have been likely to take to praying to
the rain and the thunder, the sun and the stars; God declares in this
covenant that it is _He_ alone who sends the rain and thunder, that He
brings the clouds over the earth, that He rules the great, awful world;
that men are to look up and believe in God as a loving and thinking
_person_, who has a will of His own, and that a faithful, and true, and
loving, and merciful will; that their lives and safety depend not on
blind chance, or the stern necessity of certain laws of nature, but on
the covenant of an almighty and all-loving person.
Again, I said, that Noah’s sons would have been ready to fear, and, at
last, to worship the dumb beasts; God’s covenant says, “No; these beasts
are not your equals—they are your slaves—you may freely kill them for
your food; the fear of you shall be upon them. The huge elephant and the
swift horse shall become your obedient servants; the lion and the tiger
shall tremble and flee before you. Only claim your rights as men;
believe that the invisible God who made the earth is your strength and
your protector, and that He to whom the earth belongs has made you lords
of the earth and all that therein is. But,” said God’s covenant to
Noah’s sons, “you did not _make_ these beasts—you did not give them life,
therefore I forbid you to eat their blood wherein their life lies; that
you may never forget that all the power you have over these beasts was
given you by God, who made and preserves that wonderful, mysterious, holy
thing called life, which you can never imitate.” Again, I said, that
Noah’s children, having been accustomed to the violence and bloodshed on
the earth before the flood, might hold man’s life cheap; that, having
seen in the flood men perish just like the beasts around them, they might
have begun to think that man’s life was not more precious than the
beasts’. They might have all gone on at last, as some of them did, to
those horrors of cannibalism and human sacrifice of which I just now
spoke. Now, here, again comes in God’s covenant, “Surely the blood of
your lives will I require. At the hand of every beast will I require it,
and at the hand of every man’s brother will I require it. Whoso sheddeth
man’s blood by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made
He man.” This, then, is the covenant which God made with Noah for
perpetual generations, and therefore with us, the children of Noah. In
this covenant you see certain truths come out into light; some, of which
you read nothing before in the Bible, and other truths which, though they
were given to Adam, yet had been utterly lost sight of before the flood.
This has been God’s method, we find from the Bible, ever since the
creation,—to lead man step by step up into more and more light, up to
this very day, and to make each sin and each madness of men an occasion
for revealing to Him more and more of truth and of the living God. And
so each and every chapter in the Bible is built upon all that has gone
before it; and he that neglects to understand what has gone before will
never come to the understanding of what follows after. Why do I say
this? Because men are continually picking out those scraps of the Bible
which suit their own fancy, and pinning their whole faith on them, and
trying to make them serve to explain every thing in heaven and earth;
whereas no man can understand the Epistles unless he first understand the
Gospels. No man will understand the New Testament unless he first
understands the pith and marrow of the Old. No man will understand the
Psalms and the Prophets unless he first understands the first ten
chapters of Genesis; and, lastly, no one will ever understand any thing
about the Bible at all, who, instead of taking it simply as it is
written, is always trying to twist it into proofs of his own favourite
doctrines, and make Abraham a high Calvinist, or Noah a member of the
Church of England. Why do I say this? To make you all think seriously
that this covenant on which I have been preaching is your covenant; that
as sure as the rainbow stands in heaven, as sure as you and I are sprung
out of the loins of Noah, so surely this covenant which binds us is part
of our Christian covenant, and woe to us if we break it!
This covenant tells us that we are made in God’s likeness, and,
therefore, that all sin is unworthy of us and unnatural to us. It tells
us that God means us bravely and industriously to subdue the earth and
the living things upon it; that we are to be the masters of the pleasant
things about us, and not their slaves, as sots and idlers are; that we
are stewards and tenants of this world for the great God who made it, to
whom we are to look up in confidence for help and protection. It tells
us that our family relationships, the blessed duties of a husband and a
father, are sacred things; that God has created them, that the great God
of heaven Himself respects them, that the covenant which He makes with
the father He makes with the children; that He commands marriage, and
that He blesses it with fruitfulness; that it is He who has told us “Be
fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth;” that the tie of
brotherhood is His making also; that _He_ will require the blood of the
murdered man _at his brother’s hand_; that a man’s brothers, his nearest
relations, are bound to protect and right him if he is injured; so that
we all are to be, in the deepest sense of the word, what Cain refused to
be, our _brothers’ keepers_, and each member of a family is more or less
answerable for the welfare and safety of all his relations. Herein lies
the ground of all religion and of all society—in the covenant which God
made with Noah; and just as it is in vain for a man to pretend to be a
scholar when he does not even know his letters, so it is mockery for a
man to pretend to be a converted Christian man who knows not even so much
as was commanded to Noah and his sons. He who has not learnt to love,
honour, and succour his own family—he who has not learnt to work in
honest and manful industry—he who has not learnt to look beyond this
earth, and its chance, and its customs, and its glittering outside, and
see and trust in a great, wise, loving God, by whose will every tree
grows and every shower falls, what is Christianity to him? He has to
learn the first principles which were delivered to Noah, and which not
even the heathen and the savage have utterly forgotten.
SERMON XII.
ABRAHAM’S FAITH.
HEBREWS, xi. 9, 10.
“By faith Abraham sojourned in the land of promise as in a strange
country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with
him of the same promise. For he looked for a city, which hath
foundations, whose builder and maker is God.”
IN the last sermon which I preached in this church, I said that the Bible
is the history of God’s ways with mankind, how He has schooled and
brought them up until the coming of Christ; that if we read the Bible
histories, one after another, in the same order in which God has put them
in the Bible, we shall see that they are all regular steps in a line,
that each fresh story depends on the story which went before it; and yet,
in each fresh history, we shall find God telling men something
new—something which they did not know before. And that so the whole
Bible, from beginning to end, is one glorious, methodic, and organic tree
of life, every part growing out of the others and depending on the
others, from the root—that foundation, other than which no man can lay,
which is Christ, revealing Himself, though not by name, in that wonderful
first chapter of Genesis,—up to the _fruit_, which is the kingdom of
Christ, and Gospel of Christ, and the salvation in which we here now
stand. I told you that the lesson which God has been teaching men in all
ages is faith in God—that the saints of old were just the men who learnt
this lesson of faith. Now this, as we all know, was the secret of
Abraham’s greatness, that he had faith in God to leave his own country at
God’s bidding, and become a stranger and a pilgrim on the earth,
wandering on in full trust that God would give him another country
instead of that which he had left—“a city which hath foundations, whose
builder and maker is God.” This was what Abraham looked for. Something
of what it means we shall see presently.
You remember the story of the tower of Babel? How certain of Noah’s
family forgot the covenant which God had made with Noah, forgot that God
had commanded them to go forth in every direction and fill the earth with
human beings, solemnly promising to protect and bless them, and took on
themselves to do the very opposite—set up a kingdom of their own fashion,
and herded together for selfish safety, instead of going forth to all the
quarters of the world in a natural way, according to their families, in
their tribes, after their nations, as the eleventh chapter of Genesis
says they ought to have done. “Let us build us a city and a tower, and
make us a name, lest,” they said, “we be scattered abroad over the face
of the whole world.” Here was one act of disobedience to God’s order.
But besides this they had fallen into a slavish dread of the powers of
nature—they were afraid of another flood. They set to to build a tower,
on which they might worship the sun and stars, and the host of heaven,
and pray to them to send no more floods and tempests. They thus fell
into a slavish fear of the powers of nature, as well as into a selfish
and artificial civilisation. In short, they utterly broke the covenant
which God had made with Noah. But by miraculously confounding their
language, God drove them forth over the face of the whole earth, and so
forced them to do that which they ought to have done willingly at first.
Now, we must remember that all this happened in the very country in which
Abraham lived. He must have heard of it all—for aught we know he had
seen the tower of Babel. So that, for good or for evil, the whole Babel
event must have produced a strong effect on the mind of a thoughtful man
like Abraham, and raised many strange questionings in his heart, which
God alone could answer for him, _or for us_. Now, what did God mean to
teach Abraham by calling him out of his country, and telling him, “I will
make of thee a great nation?” I think He meant to shew him, for one
thing, that that Babel plan of society was utterly absurd and accursed,
certain to come to naught, and so to lead him on to hope for a city which
had foundations, and to see that _its_ builder and maker must be, not the
selfishness or the ambition of men, but the will, and the wisdom, and
providence of God.
Let us see how God led Abraham on to understand this—to look for a city
which had foundations; in short, to understand what a State and a nation
means and ought to be. First, God taught him that he was not to cling
coward-like to the place where he was born, but to go out boldly to
colonise and subdue the earth, for the great God of heaven would protect
and guide him. “Get thee out of thy country and from thy father’s house
unto a land which I will shew thee. And I will bless them that bless
thee, and curse them that curse thee.” Again; God taught him what a
nation was: “_I_ will make of thee a great nation.” As much as to say,
‘Never fancy, as those fools at Babel did, that a nation only means a
great crowd of people—never fancy that men can make themselves into a
nation just by feeding altogether, and breeding altogether, and fighting
altogether, as the herds of wild cattle and sheep do, while there is no
real union between them.’ For what brought those Babel men together?
Just what keeps a herd of cattle together—selfishness and fear. Each man
thought he would be _safer_, forsooth, in company. Each man thought that
if he was in company, he could use his neighbours’ wits as well as his
own, and have the benefit of his neighbours’ strength as well as his own.
And that is all true enough; but that does not make a nation.
Selfishness can join nothing; it may join a set of men for a time, each
for his own ends, just as a joint-stock company is made up; but it will
soon split them up again. Each man, in a merely selfish community, will
begin, after a time, to play on his own account as well as work on his
own account—to oppress and overreach for his own ends as well as to be
honest and benevolent for his own ends, for he will find ill-doing far
easier, and more natural, in one sense, and a plan that brings in quicker
profits, than well-doing; and so this godless, loveless,
every-man-for-himself nation, or sham nation rather, this joint-stock
company, in which fools expect that universal selfishness will do the
work of universal benevolence, will quarrel and break up, crumble to dust
again, as Babel did. “But,” says God to Abraham, “I will make of thee a
great nation. I make nations, and not they themselves.” So it is, my
friends: this is the lesson which God taught Abraham, the lesson which we
English must learn nowadays over again, or smart for it bitterly—that God
makes nations. He is King of kings; “by Him kings reign and princes
decree judgment.” He judges all nations: He nurtureth the nations. This
is throughout the teaching of the Psalms. “It is He that hath made us,
and not we ourselves; we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture;”
for this I take to be the true bearing of that glorious national hymn the
100th Psalm, and not merely the old truism that men did not create
themselves, when it exhorts _all_ nations to praise God because it is He
that hath made them nations, and not they themselves. The Psalms set
forth the Son of God as the King of all nations. In Him, my friends,—in
Him all the nations of the earth are truly blessed.
He the Saviour of a few individual souls only? God forbid! To Him _all
power_ is given in heaven and earth; by Him were all things created,
whether in heaven or earth, visible and invisible, whether they be
thrones or dominions, or principalities or powers;—all national life, all
forms of government, whether hero-despotisms, republics, or monarchies,
aristocracies of birth, or of wealth, or of talent,—all were created by
Him and for Him, and He is before all things, and by Him all things
_consist_ and hold together. Every thing or institution on earth which
has systematic and organic life in it—by _Him_ it consists—by Him, the
Life and the Light who lighteneth every man that cometh into the world.
From Him come law, and order, and spiritual energy, and loving
fellow-feeling, and patriotism, the spirit of wisdom, and understanding,
and prudence—all, in short, by which a nation consists and holds
together. It is not constitutions, and acts of parliament, and social
contracts, and rights of the people, and rights of kings, and so on,
which make us a nation. These are but the effects, and not the
consequences, of the national life. _That_ is the one spirit which is
shed abroad upon a country, whose builder and maker is God, and which
comes down from above—comes down from Christ the King of kings, who has
given each nation its peculiar work on this earth, its peculiar
circumstances and history to mould and educate it for its work, and its
peculiar spirit and national character, wherewith to fulfil the destiny
which Christ has appointed for it.
Believe me, my friends, it takes long years, too, and much training from
God and from Christ, the King of kings, to make a nation. Everything
which is most precious and great is also most slow in growing, and so is
a nation. The Scripture compares it everywhere to a tree; and as the
tree grows, a people must grow, from small beginnings, perhaps from a
single family, increasing on, according to the fixed laws of God’s world,
for years and hundreds of years, till it becomes a mighty nation, with
one Lord, one faith, one work, one Spirit.
But again; God said to Abraham, when He had led him into this far
country, “Unto thy seed will _I give this land_.” This was a great and a
new lesson for Abraham, that the earth belonged to that same great
invisible God who had promised to guide and protect him, and make him
into a nation—that this same God gave the earth to whomsoever He would,
and allotted to each people their proper portion of it. “He (said St.
Paul on the Areopagus) hath determined the times before appointed for all
nations, and the bounds of their habitation, that they may seek after the
Lord and find Him.” Ah! this must have been a strange and a new feeling
to Abraham; but, stranger still, though God had given him this land, he
was not to take possession of a single foot of it; the land was already
in the hands of a different nation, the people of Canaan; and Abraham was
to go wandering about a sojourner, as the text says, in this very land of
promise which God had given him, without ever taking possession of his
own, simply because it belonged to others already. How this must have
taught Abraham that the rights of property were sacred things—things
appointed by God; that it was an awful and a heinous sin to make wanton
war on other people, to drive them out and take possession of their land;
that it was not mere force or mere fancy which gave men a right to a
country, but the providence of Almighty God! Now Abraham needed this
warning, for the men of Babel seem from the first to have gone on the
plan of driving out and conquering the tribes round them. They seem to
have set up their city partly from ambition. “Let us make us a name,”
they said, meaning, ‘Let us make ourselves famous and terrible to all the
people around us, that we may subdue them.’ And we read of Nimrod, who
was their first king and the founder of Babel, that he was a mighty
hunter before the Lord, that is, as most learned men explain it, a mighty
conqueror and tyrant in defiance of God and His laws, as the poet says of
him,
“A mighty hunter, and his game was man.”
The Jews, indeed, have an old tradition that Nimrod cast Abraham into a
fiery furnace for refusing to worship the host of heaven with him. The
story is very likely untrue, but still it is of use in shewing what sort
of reputation Nimrod left behind him in his own part of the world. We
may thus see that Abraham would need warning against these habits of
violence, tyranny, and plunder, into which the men of Babel and other
tribes were falling. And this was what God meant to teach him by keeping
him a stranger and a pilgrim in the very land which God had promised to
him for his own. Thus Abraham learnt respect for the rights and
properties of his neighbours; thus he learnt to look up in faith to God,
not only as his patron and protector, but as the lord and absolute owner
of the soil on which he stood.
Now in the 14th chapter of Genesis there is an account of Abraham’s being
called on to put in practice what he had learnt, and, by doing so,
learning a fresh lesson. We read of four kings making war against five
kings, against Chedorlaomer, king of Elam or Persia, who had been
following the ways of Nimrod and the men of Babel, and conquering these
foreign kings and making them serve him. We read of Chedorlaomer and
four other kings coming down and wantonly ravaging and destroying other
countries, besides the five kings who had rebelled against them, and at
last carrying off captive the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, and Lot,
Abraham’s nephew. We read then how Abraham armed his trained servants,
born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen men, and pursued after
these tyrants and plunderers, and with his small force completely
overthrew that great army. Now that was a sign and a lesson to Abraham,
as much as to say, ‘See the fruits of having the great God of heaven and
earth for your protector and your guide,—see the fruits of having men
round you, not hirelings, keeping in your company just to see what they
can get by it, but born in your own house, who love and trust you, whom
you can love and trust,—see how the favour of God, and reverence for
those family ties and duties which He has appointed, make you and your
little band of faithful men superior to these great mobs of selfish,
godless, unjust robbers,—see how hundreds of these slaves ran away before
one man, who feels that he is a member of a family, and has a just cause
for fighting, and that God and his brethren are with him.’
Here, you see, was another hint to Abraham of what it was and who it was
that made a great nation.
And now some of you may say, ‘This is a strange sermon. You have as yet
said nothing of Christ, nothing of the Holy Spirit, nothing of grace,
redemption, sanctification. What kind of sermon is this?’
My friends, do not be too sure that I have not been preaching Christ to
you, and Christ’s Spirit to you, and Christ’s redemption too, most truly
in this sermon, although I have mentioned none of them by name. There
are times for ornamenting the house, there are times for repairing the
wall, there are times, too, for thoroughly examining the foundation,
because, if that be not sound, it is little matter what fine work is
built up upon it; and there are times when, as David says, the
foundations of the earth are out of course, when men have forgotten sadly
the very first principles of society and religion.
And, surely, men are doing so in these days; men are forgetting that
other foundation can no man lay save that which _is_ laid, which is
Christ; they laugh at the thought of a city, that is, a state and form of
government, “not made with hands, eternal in the heavens;” they have
forgotten that St. Paul tells them in the Hebrews that we _have_ “a city
which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God,” a kingdom which
cannot be moved. Yes, men who call themselves learned and worldly wise,
and good men too, alas! who fancy that they are preaching God’s gospel,
go about and tell men, ‘The men of Babel were right after all. What have
nations to do with God and religion? Nations are merely earthly, carnal
things, that were only invented by sinful men themselves, to preserve
their bodies and goods, and make trading easy. Religion has only to do
with a man’s private opinions, his single soul; the government has
nothing to do with the Church: a Christian has nothing to do with
politics.’ And so these men most unwittingly open a door to all sorts of
covetousness and meanness in the nation, and all sorts of trickery and
cowardice in the government. Tell a man that his business has nothing to
do with God, and you cannot wonder if he acts without thinking of God.
If you tell a nation that it is selfishness which makes it prosperous, of
course you must expect it to be selfish. If you tell us Englishmen that
the duties of a citizen are not duties to God, but only duties to the
constable and the tax-gatherer, what wonder if men believe you and become
undutiful to God in their citizenship? No, my friends, once for all, as
sure as God made Abraham a great nation, so if we English are a great
nation, God has made us so—as sure as God gave Abraham the land of Canaan
for his possession, so did _He_ give us this land of England, when He
brought our Saxon forefathers out of the wild barren north, and drove out
before them nations greater and mightier than they, and gave them great
and goodly cities which they builded not, and wells digged which they
digged not, farms and gardens which they planted not, that we too might
fear the Lord our God, and serve Him, and swear by His name;—as sure as
He commanded Abraham to respect the property of his neighbours, so has He
commanded us;—as sure as God taught Abraham that the nation which was to
grow from him owed a duty to God, and could be only strong by faith in
God, so it is with us: we, English people, owe a duty to God, and are to
deal among ourselves, and with foreign countries, by faith in God, and in
the fear of God, “seeking first the kingdom of God and His
righteousness,” sure that then all other things—victory, health,
commerce, art, and science—will be added to us, as the first Lesson says.
For this is your wisdom and understanding in the sight of the nations,
which shall say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding
people! For what nation is grown so great, that hath statutes and
judgments so righteous as these laws, this gospel, which God sets before
us day by day?—us, Englishmen!
And I say that these are proper thoughts for this place. This is not a
mere preaching-house, where you may learn every man to save his own soul;
this is a far nobler place; this building belongs to the National Church
of England, and we worship here, not merely as men, but as men of
England, citizens of a Christian country, come here to learn not merely
how to save ourselves, but how to help towards the saving of our
families, our parish, and our nation; and therefore we must know what a
country and a nation mean, and what is the meaning of that glorious and
divine word, “a citizen;” that by learning what it is to be a citizen of
England, we may go on to learn fully what it is to be a citizen of the
kingdom of God.
For this is part of the whole counsel of God, which He reveals in His
Holy Bible; and this also we must not, and dare not, shun declaring in
these days.
SERMON XIII.
ABRAHAM’S OBEDIENCE.
HEBREWS, xi. 17–19.
“By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac; and he that
had received the promises offered up his only-begotten son, of whom
it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called: accounting that
God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he
received him in a figure.”
IN this chapter we come to the crowning point of Abraham’s history, the
highest step and perfection of his faith; beyond which it seems as if
man’s trust in God could no further go.
You know, most of you, doubtless, that Isaac, Abraham’s son, was come to
him out of the common course of nature—when he and his wife, Sarah, were
of an age which seemed to make all chance of a family utterly hopeless.
You remember how God promised Abraham that this boy should be born to him
at a certain time, when He appeared to him on the plains of Mamre, in
that most solemn and deep-meaning vision of which I spoke to you last
Sunday. You remember, too, no doubt, most of you, how God had promised
Abraham again and again, that in his seed, his children, all the nations
of the earth should be blessed; so that all Abraham’s hopes were wrapped
up in this boy Isaac; he was his only son, whom he loved; he was the
child of his old age, his glory and his joy; he was the child of God’s
promises. Every time Abraham looked at him he felt that Isaac was a
wonderful child: that God had a great work for him to do; that from that
single boy a great nation was to spring, as many in multitude as the
stars in the sky, or the sand on the sea-shore, for the great Almighty
God had said it. And he knew, too, that from that boy, who was growing
up by him in his tent, all the nations in the earth should be blessed: so
that Isaac, his son, was to Abraham a daily sacrament, as I may say, a
sign and a pledge that God was with him, and would be true to him; that
as surely as God had wonderfully and beyond all hope given him that son,
so wonderfully and beyond all hope He would fulfil all His other
promises. Conceive, then, if you can, what Abraham’s astonishment, and
doubt, and terror, and misery, must have been at such a message as this
from the very God who had given Isaac to him: “And it came to pass after
these things that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and
he said, Behold, here I am. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only
son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and
offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I
will tell thee of.”
What a storm of doubt it must have raised in Abraham’s mind! How unable
he must have been to say whether that message came from a good or bad
spirit, or commanded him to do a good action or a bad one; that the same
God who had said, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be
shed;” who had forbidden murder as the very highest of crimes, should
command him to shed the blood of his own son; that the same God who had
promised him that in Isaac all the nations of the earth should be
blessed, should command him to put to death that very son upon whom all
his hopes depended! Fearful, indeed, must have been the struggle in
Abraham’s mind, but the good and the right thought conquered at last.
His feeling was, no doubt, ‘This God who has blessed me so long, who has
guided me so long, whom I have obeyed so long, shall I not trust Him a
little further yet? how can I believe that He will do wrong? how can I
believe that He will lead me wrong? If it is really wrong that I should
kill my son, He will not let me do it: if it really is His will that I
should kill my son, _I will do it_. Whatever He says must be right; it
is agony and misery to me, but what of that? Do I not owe Him a t
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