"All the commandments which I command thee this day shall ye observe
to do, that ye may live, and multiply, and go in and possess the land
which the Lord sware unto your fathers. And thou shalt remember all
the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the
wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in
thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no. And
he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna,
which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might
make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word
that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live. . . . Thou
shall also consider in thine heart that, as a man chasteneth his son,
so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee."--DEUT. viii. 1, 2, 3, 5.
As God led the Jews through the wilderness, so He leads us through the
journey of life. As God called on the Jews to rejoice in Him, and to
bless Him for going with them, and teaching and training them by dangers
and sorrows; so He calls on us to lift up our hearts and bless Him for
teaching and training us in the battle of life.
But some of you may say, "Why do you ask us to thank God for lessons
which we have bought by labour and sorrow? Are not our sorrows more than
our joys? Our labour far heavier than our rest can be sweet? You tell
us to be joyful and thank God for His mercies; but why all this toil? Why
must we work on, and on, and on, all our days, in weariness and anxiety?
Why must we only toil, toil, till we die, and lie down, fairly conquered
and worn out, on that stern mother earth, from whom we have been wringing
our paltry livelihood from our boyhood to our grave? What is our life
but labour and sorrow?"
Are not some of you thinking in this way to-day? Have I not guessed the
hearts of some of you at least? And is not this a strange way of making
you joyful to remind you of these thoughts?
My friends, be sure I only remind you of these sad thoughts, because they
are _true_ thoughts, because God meant you to bear them and _face_ them
like men; because you must have these thoughts, and let them make you
sad, and make up your minds to face them again and again, before even you
can thank God really like redeemed, immortal Christian men and women. And
believe me, I would not mention these sad thoughts, if I had not a remedy
for them. If I had not a message to you from the living God, and Christ
the King of the earth, whereby I tell you now to rejoice and give thanks
to Him in spite of all your labour and sorrow. Ay more, I say, Rejoice
and give thanks _on account_ of all your labour and sorrow, and count it
all _joy_ when ye fall into divers tribulations.
It is true, my friends, we are a hard working and a somewhat sad race of
men, we English. The life of the working man is labour and sorrow, and
so is the life of the scholar, and so is the life of even many a rich
man. All things are full of labour in England. Man cannot utter it, the
eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing; we are the
wisest of all nations; and yet as Solomon says, behold in much wisdom is
much grief; and in increasing knowledge, we still increase sorrow.
Truly, I may say of us Englishmen, as Paul said of the Christians of his
time, that if Christ be not raised from the dead, and if in this life
_only_ we have hope in Him, we are of all nations one of the most
unhappy. When we look at all the hundreds of thousands pent up in our
great cities among filth and smoke, toiling in factories, in workshops,
in dark mines under ground--when we think of the soldier on the march
under the sultry sun of India, the sailor on the stormy sea--when we
think of this our bleak inclement climate, our five months of winter
every year;--no man's food and clothing to be gained but by bitter toil,
either of himself or of others--and then when we compare our lot with
that of the dwellers in hot countries, in India and in Africa, and the
islands of the South Seas, where men live with no care, no labour--where
clothes and fire are never needed--where every tree bears delicious food,
and man lives in perpetual summer, in careless health and beauty, among
continual mirth and ease, like the birds which know no care--then it
seems at moments as if God had been unfair in giving so much more to the
savage than He has to us, of the blessings of this earthly life; and we
are led to long that our lot was cast in those fruitful and delicious
climates of the South, in a continual paradise of mirth and plenty, and
beauty and sunshine.
But no, my friends, we are more blest than the careless Indian who never
knows what labour is; his life is but the life of the butterfly, which
flutters from flower to flower and sports in the sunshine, and sucks
sweets for a brief hour, and then perishes without hope. His life is a
dream, he sees no heaven before him, he knows no glorious God, with the
sight of whom he is to be blest for ever. His body may be in perpetual
ease, and health, and beauty for a few short years, but what care has he
for his undying spirit, that is blind and dead within him?
But to bring a man's soul to life, to train and educate a man's soul that
it may go on from strength to strength, and glory to glory till it
appears in the presence of God--that wants a stern and a severe training
of sorrow and labour, of which the poor, pampered, luxurious savage knows
nothing. This is why Christ brought our forefathers into this bleak,
cold, northern land, and forced them to gain their bread by the sweat of
their brows, and the sorrows of their hearts, and to keep their land by
many wars.
Now this is the reason of our carefulness, of our many troubles, that God
is educating and training us English; that He will not have us be
savages, but Christian citizens; He will have us not merely happy, but
_blessed_ through all eternity. He will not have us to be like the poor
Indians, slaves to our flesh and our appetites--slaves to the pleasant
things around us; but He will have us fill the earth and subdue it; He
will have England the light of the nations--and Englishmen preach
freedom, and wisdom, and prudence, and the gospel of Jesus Christ to all
the nations of the earth. Therefore Christ afflicts us because He loves
us, because whom He loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He
receiveth. Because He has ordained England to preach the Cross,
therefore He will have England bear the cross.
It has often struck me, my friends, as a beautiful and a deep sign, a
blessed ordinance of the great and wise God, that the flag of England,
and especially the flag of our navy--the flag which is loved and
reverenced through all the world, as the bringer of free communion
between nation and nation, the bringer of order and equal justice and
holy freedom, and the divine majesty of law, and the light of the blessed
gospel wherever it goes; that this flag, I say, should be the red-cross
flag, the flag of the Cross of Christ--a double sign--a sign to all men
that we are a Christian nation, a gospel people; and a sign, too, to
ourselves, that we are meant to bear Christ's cross--to bear the
afflictions which He lays upon us--to be made perfect through sufferings,
to crucify the flesh with its affections and lusts, that we may be brave
and self-denying; going forth in Christ's strength, remembering that it
is He who gives us power to get wealth; that we ought to fight His
battles, that we ought to spread His name at home and abroad; and rejoice
in every sorrow, which teaches us more and more the blessed meaning of
His saving name, and the share which we have in it.
I have said that we are a melancholy people. Foreigners all say of us,
that we are the saddest of all people; that when they come to England,
they are struck with our silence, and gloominess, and careworn faces, and
our want of merriment and cheerfulness. And yet, with all this, we are
the greatest of nations at this day--the strongest and the most
industrious and the wisest. The gospel of Jesus Christ is preached
oftener, and more simply, and more fully here in England than in any
nation, and I dare to say it, that in spite of all our sins, there are as
many or more of God's true saints, more holy men and women among English
people at this moment, than among any people of the earth. And why?
because there are so many among us who have hope in Christ beyond this
life, who look for everlasting salvation through all eternity to His
name. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, truly of all people
we should be most miserable; but Christ is risen from the dead, and He
has ascended up on high, and led captivity captive, and received gifts
for men. He sits even now at God's right hand praying for us. To Him
all power is given in heaven and earth, and He is our covenant God and
Saviour, He is our King. He is ours; and He will have us put on His
likeness, and with Him be made perfect through sufferings--_through
sufferings_, for sorrow is the gate of life. Through much tribulation we
enter into the kingdom of God; without weary pain none of us is born into
the world; without weary labour not a harvest in England is grown and
reaped; without weary thought, and teaching, and correction, not a child
among us is educated to be a man; without weary thought and weary labour,
not one of us can do his duty in that station of life to which Christ has
called him. Not without weary struggles and arguings and contentions, by
martyrdoms, by desperate wars, our forefathers won for us our religion,
our freedom and our laws, which make England the wonder of the world.
This is the great law of our life--to be made perfect through sufferings,
as our Lord and Master was before us. He has dealt with us, as my text
tells you He dealt with the Jews, His chosen people of old, as He deals
with every soul of man on whom He sets His love. "All the commandments
which I command thee this day shall ye observe to do, that ye may live,
and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the Lord sware unto
your fathers. And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God
led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to
prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep
His commandments, or no. And He humbled thee, and suffered thee to
hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy
fathers know; that He might make thee know that man doth not live by
bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the
Lord doth man live . . . Thou shalt also consider in thine heart, that,
as a man chasteneth his son, so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee."
For, believe me, my friends, whatever nation or whatever man Christ
chooses to be His own, and to be holy and noble and glorious with Him, He
makes them perfect through suffering. First, He stirs up in them strange
longings after what is great and good. He makes them hunger and thirst
after righteousness, and then He lets them see how nothing on this earth,
nothing beautiful or nothing pleasant which they can get or invent for
themselves will satisfy; and so He teaches them to look to Him, to look
for peace and salvation from heaven and not from earth. Then He leads
them, as He led the Jews of old, through the wilderness and through the
sea, through strange afflictions, through poverty, and war, and labour,
that they may learn to know that He is leading them and not themselves;
that they may learn to trust not in themselves, but in Him; not in their
own strength: but in the bread which cometh down from heaven; not in
their own courage, but in Him; and just when all seems most hopeless, He
makes one of them chase a thousand, and by strange and unexpected
providences, and the courage which a just cause inspires, brings His
people triumphant through temptation and danger, and puts to flight the
armies of the heathen, and the inventions of the evil fiend, and
glorifies His name in His chosen people.
So He calls out in the heart of men and of the heart of nations, the two
great twin virtues, which always go hand in hand--Faith in God, and Faith
in themselves. He lets them feel themselves foolish that they may learn
how to be wise in His wisdom. He lets them find themselves weak that
they may learn how to be strong in His strength. Then sometimes He lets
them follow their own devices and be filled with the fruits of their own
inventions. He lets their sinful hearts have free course down into the
depths of idolatry and covetousness, and filthy pleasure and mad self-
conceit, that they may learn to know the bitter fruit that springs from
the accursed root of sin, and come back to Him in shame and repentance,
entreating Him to inform their thoughts, and guide their wills, and
gather them to Him as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wing, that
they may never more wander from Him, their life, their light, and their
Saviour. Then, sometimes, if His children forsake His laws and break His
covenant, He visits their offences with the rod, and their sin with the
stripes of the children of men. That is, He punishes them as He punishes
the heathen, if they sin as the heathen sin. He lets loose upon them His
wrath, war, disease, or scarcity, that He may drive them back to Him.
And all the while He will have them _labour_. He will make them try
their strength, and use their strength, and improve their strength of
soul and body. By making them labour, Christ teaches His people
industry, order, self-command, self-denial, patience, courage, endurance,
foresight, thoughtfulness, earnestness. All these blessed virtues come
out of holy labour; by working in welldoing we learn lessons which the
savage among his delicious fruits and flowers, in his life of golden
ease, and luxurious laziness, can never learn.
And all this Christ teaches us because He loves us, because He would have
us perfect. His love is unchangeable. As He swore by Himself that He
would never fail David, so He has sworn that He will never fail any one
of His Churches, or any one of us. Lo, said He, I am with you always,
even to the end of the world. Nothing shall separate us from the love of
Christ; neither battle nor famine, nor anything else in heaven or earth.
All He wants is to educate us, because He loves us. He doth not afflict
willingly nor grieve the children of men. And because He is a God of
love, He proves His love to us every now and then by blessing us, as well
as by correcting us; else our spirits would fail before Him, and the
souls which He has made. When He sees our adversity, He hears our
complaint, He thinks upon His covenant and pities us, according to the
multitude of His mercies. "A fruitful land maketh He barren for the
wickedness of them that dwell therein, yet when they cry unto the Lord in
their trouble, He delivereth them out of their distress. He maketh the
wilderness standing water, and water springs of dry ground, and there He
setteth the hungry that they may build them a city, that they may sow
their lands and plant vineyards, to yield them fruits of increase. He
blesseth them, so that they multiply exceedingly, and suffereth not their
cattle to decrease; and again, when they are diminished or brought low
through affliction, through any plague or trouble, though He suffer them
to be evil entreated by tyrants, and let them wander out of the way in
the wilderness; yet helpeth He the poor out of misery, and maketh them
households like a flock of sheep." (Ps. cvii.)
O my friends, have not these words ever been wonderfully fulfilled to
some of you! Then see how true it is that God will not always be
chiding, neither keepeth He His anger for ever; but He knoweth our frame,
He remembereth that we are but dust, and like as a father pitieth his
children, so does He pity those who fear Him; and oftentimes, too, in His
great condescension, those who fear Him not.
My friends, I have been trying in this sermon to make you feel that you
are under God's guidance, that His providence is trying to train and
educate you. I have told you that there is a blessed use and meaning in
your very sorrows, and in this life of continual toil which God has
appointed for you; I have told you that you ought to thank God for those
sorrows: how much more then ought you to thank Him for your joys. If you
should thank Him for want, surely you should thank Him for plenty. O
thank Him earnestly--not only with your lips, but in your lives. If you
believe that He has redeemed you with His precious blood, show your
thankfulness by living as redeemed men, holy to God--who are not your
own, but bought with a price; therefore show forth God's glory, the power
of His grace in your bodies and your spirits which are His. If you feel
that it is a noble thing to be an Englishman--especially an English
soldier or an English sailor--a noble and honourable privilege to be
allowed to do your duty in the noblest nation and the noblest church
which the world ever saw--then live as Englishmen in covenant with God;
faithful to Him who has redeemed you and washed you from your sins in His
own blood. Do you be faithful and obedient to Christ's Spirit, and He
will be faithful to those promises of His. Though a thousand fall at thy
right hand, yet the evil shall not come nigh thee. Blessed are all they
that fear the Lord and walk in His ways. For thou shalt eat the labours
of thine hand. O well art thou and happy shalt thou be. The Lord out of
heaven shall so bless thee, that thou shalt see England in prosperity all
thy life long. Yea, thou shalt see thy children's children, and peace
upon thy native land.
Oh, remember how God fulfilled that promise to England seventy years ago,
when the French swept in fire and slaughter, and horrors worse than
either, over almost every nation in Europe, while England remained safe
in peace and plenty, and an enemy never set foot on God's chosen English
soil. Remember the French war, and our salvation in it, and then believe
and take comfort. Trust in the Lord and be doing good; dwell in the
land, and verily thou shalt be fed.