SERMON PAGE
I. THE BEATIFIC VISION 1
II. THE GLORY OF THE CROSS 10
III. THE LIFE OF GOD 16
IV. THE SONG OF THE THREE CHILDREN 26
V. THE ETERNAL GOODNESS 34
VI. WORSHIP 43
VII. GOD’S INHERITANCE 51
VIII. ‘DE PROFUNDIS’ 57
IX. THE LOVE OF GOD ITS OWN REWARD 67
X. THE RACE OF LIFE 73
XI. SELF-RESPECT AND SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS 84
XII. TRUE REPENTANCE 94
XIII. THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT 105
XIV. HEROES AND HEROINES 116
XV. THE MEASURE OF THE CROSS 124
XVI. THE PURE IN HEART 132
XVII. MUSIC 140
XVIII. THE CHRIST CHILD 148
XIX. CHRIST’S BOYHOOD 155
XX. THE LOCUST-SWARMS 161
XXI. SALVATION 169
XXII. THE BEGINNING AND END OF WISDOM 174
XXIII. HUMAN NATURE 181
XXIV. THE CHARITY OF GOD 190
XXV. THE DAYS OF THE WEEK 195
XXVI. THE HEAVENLY FATHER 203
XXVII. THE GOOD SHEPHERD 211
XXVIII. DARK TIMES 219
XXIX. GOD’S CREATION 229
XXX. TRUE PRUDENCE 236
XXXI. THE PENITENT THIEF 249
XXXII. THE TEMPER OF CHRIST 258
XXXIII. THE FRIEND OF SINNERS 268
XXXIV. THE SEA OF GLASS 278
XXXV. A GOD IN PAIN 291
XXXVI. ON THE FALL 297
XXXVII. THE WORTHY COMMUNICANT 304
XXXVIII. OUR DESERTS 310
XXXIX. THE LOFTINESS OF GOD 317
SERMON I.
THE BEATIFIC VISION.
MATTHEW xxii. 27.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy
soul, and with all thy mind.
THESE words often puzzle and pain really good people, because they seem
to put the hardest duty first. It seems, at times, so much more easy to
love one’s neighbour than to love God. And strange as it may seem, that
is partly true. St. John tells us so—‘He that loves not his brother whom
he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?’ Therefore many
good people, who really do love God, are unhappy at times because they
feel that they do not love him enough. They say in their hearts—‘I wish
to do right, and I try to do it: but I am afraid I do not do it from love
to God.’
I think that they are often too hard upon themselves. I believe that
they are very often loving God with their whole hearts, when they think
that they are not doing so. But still, it is well to be afraid of
oneself, and dissatisfied with oneself.
I think, too—nay, I am certain—that many good people do not love God as
they ought, and as they would wish to do, because they have not been
rightly taught who God is, and what He is like. They have not been
taught that God is loveable; they have been taught that God feels
feelings, and does deeds, which if a man felt, or did, we should call him
arbitrary, proud, revengeful, cruel: and yet they are told to love him;
and they do not know how to love such a being as that. Nor do I either,
my friends.
Let us therefore think over to-day for ourselves why we ought to love
God; and why both Bible and Catechism bid child as well as man to love
the Lord our God with all our hearts, souls, and minds, before they bid
us love our neighbours. And keep this in mind all through, that the
reason why we are to love God must depend upon what God’s character is.
For you cannot love any one because you are told to love them. You can
only love them because they are loveable and worthy of your love. And
that they will not be, unless they are loving themselves; as it is
written, we love God because he first loved us.
Now, friends, look at this one thing first. When we see any man do a
just action, or a kind action, do we not like to see it? Do we not like
the man the better for doing it? A man must be sunk very low in
stupidity and ill-feeling—dead in tresspasses and sins, as the Bible
calls it—if he does not. Indeed, I never saw the man yet, however bad he
was himself, who did not, in his better moments, admire what was right
and good; and say, ‘Bad as I may be, that man is a good man, and I wish I
could do as he does.’
One sees the same, but far more strongly, in little children. From their
earliest years, as far as I have ever seen, children like and admire what
is good, even though they be naughty themselves; and if you tell them of
any very loving, generous, or brave action, their hearts leap up in
answer to it. They feel at once how beautiful goodness is.
But why?
St. John tells us. That feeling comes, he tells us, from Christ, the
light who is the life of men, and lights every man who comes into the
world; and that light in our hearts, which makes us see, and admire, and
love what is good, is none other than Christ himself shining in our
hearts, and showing to us his own likeness, and the beauty thereof.
But if we stop there; if we only admire what is good, without trying to
copy it, we shall lose that light. Our corrupt and diseased nature (and
corrupt and diseased it is, as we shall surely find, as soon as we begin
to try to do right) will quench that heavenly spark in us more and more,
till it dies out—as God forbid that it should die out in any of us. For
if it did die out, we should care no more for what is good. We should
see nothing beautiful, and noble, and glorious, in being just, and
loving, and merciful. And then, indeed, we should see nothing worth
loving in God himself:—and it were better for us that we had never been
born.
But none of us, I trust, are fallen as low as that. We all, surely,
admire a good action, and love a good man. Surely we do. Then I will go
on, to ask you one question more.
Did it ever strike you, that goodness is not merely _a_ beautiful thing,
but THE beautiful thing—by far the most beautiful thing in the world; and
that badness is not merely _an_ ugly thing, but the ugliest thing in the
world?—So that nothing is to be compared for value with goodness; that
riches, honour, power, pleasure, learning, the whole world and all in it,
are not worth having, in comparison with being good; and the utterly best
thing for a man is to be good, even though he were never to be rewarded
for it: and the utterly worst thing for a man is to be bad, even though
he were never to be punished for it; and, in a word, goodness is the only
thing worth loving, and badness the only thing worth hating.
Did you ever feel this, my friends? Happy are those among you who have
felt it; for of you the Lord says, Blessed are they that hunger and
thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled. Ay, happy are you
who have felt it; for it is the sign, the very and true sign, that the
Holy Spirit of God, who is the Spirit of goodness, is working in your
hearts with power, revealing to you the exceeding beauty of holiness, and
the exceeding sinfulness of sin.
But did it never strike you besides, that goodness was one, and
everlasting? Let me explain what I mean.
Did you never see, that all good men show their goodness in the same way,
by doing the same kind of good actions? Let them be English or French,
black or white, if they be good, there is the same honesty, the same
truthfulness, the same love, the same mercy in all; and what is right and
good for you and me, now and here, is right and good for every man,
everywhere, and at all times for ever. Surely, surely, what is noble,
and loveable, and admirable now, was so five thousand years ago, and will
be five thousand years hence. What is honourable for us here, would be
equally honourable for us in America or Australia—ay, or in the farthest
star in the skies.
But, some of you may say, men at different times and in different
countries have had very different notions—indeed quite opposite notions,
of what men ought to be.
I know that some people say so. I can only answer that I differ from
them. True, some men have had less light than others, and, God knows,
have made fearful mistakes enough, and fancied that they could please God
by behaving like devils: but on the first principles of goodness, all the
world has been pretty well agreed all along; for wherever men have been
taught what is really right, there have been plenty of hearts to answer,
‘Yes, this is good! this is what we have wanted all along, though we knew
it not.’ And all the wisest men among the heathen—the men who have been
honoured, and even worshipped as blessings to their fellow men, have
agreed, one and all, in the great and golden rule, ‘Thou shalt love God,
with all thy heart and soul, and thy neighbour as thyself.’
Believe about this as you may, my friends, still I believe, and will
believe; I preach, and will preach, this, and nought else but this:—That
there is but one everlasting goodness, which is good in men, good in all
rational beings—yea, good in God himself.
These last are solemn words, but they are true; and the more you think
over them, the more, I tell you, will you find them true. And to them I
have been trying to lead you; and will try once more.
For, did it never strike you, again—as it has me—and all the world has
looked different to me since I found it out—that there must be ONE, in
whom all goodness is gathered together; ONE, who must be perfectly and
absolutely good? And did it never strike you, that all the goodness in
the world must, in some way or other, come from HIM? I believe that our
hearts and reasons, if we will listen fairly to them, tell us that it
must be so; and I am certain that the Bible tells us so, from beginning
to end. When we see the million rain-drops of the shower, we say, with
reason, there must be one great sea from which all these drops have come.
When we see the countless rays of light, we say, with reason, there must
be one great central sun from which all these are shed forth. And when
we see, as it were, countless drops, and countless rays of goodness
scattered about in the world, a little good in this man, and a little
good in that, shall we not say, there must be one great sea, one central
sun of goodness, from whence all human goodness comes? And where can
that centre of goodness be, but in the very character of God himself?
Yes, my friends; if you would know what God is, think of all the noble,
beautiful, loveable actions, tempers, feelings, which you ever saw or
heard of. Think of all the good, and admirable, and loveable people whom
you ever met; and fancy to yourselves all that goodness, nobleness,
admirableness, loveableness, and millions of times more, gathered
together in one, to make one perfectly good character—and then you have
some faint notion of God, some dim sight of God, who is the eternal and
perfect Goodness.
It is but a faint notion, no doubt, that the best man can have of God’s
goodness, so dull has sin made our hearts and brains: but let us comfort
ourselves with this thought—That the more we learn to love what is good,
the more we accustom ourselves to think of good people and good things,
and to ask ourselves why and how this action and that is good, the more
shall we be able to see the goodness of God. And to see that, even for a
moment, is worth all sights in earth or heaven.
Worth all sights, indeed. No wonder that the saints of old called it the
‘Beatific Vision,’ that is, the sight which makes a man utterly blessed;
namely, to see, if but for a moment, with his mind’s eye what God is
like, and behold he is utterly good!
No wonder that they said (and I doubt not that they spoke honestly and
simply what they felt) that while that thought was before them, this
world was utterly nothing to them; that they were as men in a dream, or
dead, not caring to eat or to move, for fear of losing that glorious
thought; but felt as if they were (as they were most really and truly)
caught up into heaven, and taken utterly out of themselves by the beauty
and glory of God’s perfect goodness. No wonder that they cried out with
David, ‘Whom have I in heaven, O Lord, but Thee? and there is none on
earth whom I desire in comparison of Thee.’ No wonder that they said
with St. Peter when he saw our Lord’s glory, ‘Lord, it is good for us to
be here,’ and felt like men gazing upon some glorious picture or
magnificent show, off which they cannot take their eyes; and which makes
them forget for the time all beside in heaven and earth.
And it was good for them to be there: but not too long. Man was sent
into this world not merely to see, but to do; and the more he sees, the
more he is bound to go and do accordingly. St. Peter had to come down
from the mount, and preach the Gospel wearily for many a year, and die at
last upon the cross. St. Augustine, in like wise, though he would gladly
have lived and died doing nothing but fixing his soul’s eye steadily on
the glory of God’s goodness, had to come down from the mount likewise,
and work, and preach, and teach, and wear himself out in daily drudgery
for that God whom he learnt to serve, even when he could not adore Him in
the press of business, and the bustle of a rotten and dying world.
But see, my dear friends, and consider it well—Before a man can come to
that state of mind, or anything like it, he must have begun by loving
goodness wherever he saw it; and have settled in his heart that to be
good, and therefore to do good, is the most beautiful thing in the world.
So he will begin by loving his brother whom he has seen, and by taking
delight in good people, and in all honest, true, loving, merciful,
generous words and actions, and in those who say and do them. And so he
will be fit to love God, whom he has not seen, when he finds out (as God
grant that you may all find out) that all goodness of which we can
conceive, and far, far more, is gathered together in God, and flows out
from him eternally over his whole creation, by that Holy Spirit who
proceeds from the Father and the Son, and is the Lord and Giver of life,
and therefore of goodness. For goodness is nothing else, if you will
receive it, but the eternal life of God, which he has lived, and lives
now, and will live for evermore, God blessed for ever. Amen.
So, my dear friends, it will not be so difficult for you to love God, if
you will only begin by loving goodness, which is God’s likeness, and the
inspiration of God’s Holy Spirit. For you will be like a man who has
long admired a beautiful picture of some one whom he does not know, and
at last meets the person for whom the picture was meant—and behold the
living face is a thousand times more fair and noble than the painted one.
You will be like a child which has been brought up from its birth in a
room into which the sun never shone; and then goes out for the first
time, and sees the sun in all his splendour bathing the earth with glory.
If that child had loved to watch the dim narrow rays of light which shone
into his dark room, what will he not feel at the sight of that sun from
which all those rays had come Just so will they feel who, having loved
goodness for its own sake, and loved their neighbours for the sake of
what little goodness is in them, have their eyes opened at last to see
all goodness, without flaw or failing, bound or end, in the character of
God, which he has shown forth in Jesus Christ our Lord, who is the
likeness of his Father’s glory, and the express image of his person; to
whom be glory and honour for ever. Amen.
SERMON II.
THE GLORY OF THE CROSS.
JOHN xvii. 1.
Father, the hour is come. Glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may
glorify thee.
I spoke to you lately of the beatific vision of God. I will speak of it
again to-day; and say this.
If any man wishes to see God, truly and fully, with the eyes of his soul:
if any man wishes for that beatific vision of God; that perfect sight of
God’s perfect goodness; then must that man go, and sit down at the foot
of Christ’s cross, and look steadfastly upon him who hangs thereon. And
there he will see, what the wisest and best among the heathen, among the
Mussulmans, among all who are not Christian men, never have seen, and
cannot see unto this day, however much they may feel (and some of them,
thank God, do feel) that God is the Eternal Goodness, and must be loved
accordingly.
And what shall we see upon the cross?
Many things, friends, and more than I, or all the preachers in the world,
will be able to explain to you, though we preached till the end of the
world. But one thing we shall see, if we will, which we have forgotten
sadly, Christians though we be, in these very days; forgotten it, most of
us, so utterly, that in order to bring you back to it, I must take a
seemingly roundabout road.
Does it seem, or does it not seem, to you, that the finest thing in a man
is magnanimity—what we call in plain English, greatness of soul? And if
it does seem to you to be so, what do you mean by greatness of soul?
When you speak of a great soul, and of a great man, what manner of man do
you mean?
Do you mean a very clever man, a very far-sighted man, a very determined
man, a very powerful man, and therefore a very successful man? A man who
can manage everything, and every person whom he comes across, and turn
and use them for his own ends, till he rises to be great and glorious—a
ruler, king, or what you will?
Well—he is a great man: but I know a greater, and nobler, and more
glorious stamp of man; and you do also. Let us try again, and think if
we can find his likeness, and draw it for ourselves. Would he not be
somewhat like this pattern?—A man who was aware that he had vast power,
and yet used that power not for himself but for others; not for ambition,
but for doing good? Surely the man who used his power for other people
would be the greater-souled man, would he not? Let us go on, then, to
find out more of his likeness. Would he be stern, or would he be tender?
Would he be patient, or would he be fretful? Would he be a man who
stands fiercely on his own rights, or would he be very careful of other
men’s rights, and very ready to waive his own rights gracefully and
generously? Would he be extreme to mark what was done amiss against him,
or would he be very patient when he was wronged himself, though indignant
enough if he saw others wronged? Would he be one who easily lost his
temper, and lost his head, and could be thrown off his balance by one
foolish man? Surely not. He would be a man whom no fool, nor all fools
together could throw off his balance; a man who could not lose his
temper, could not lose his self-respect; a man who could bear with those
who are peevish, make allowances for those who are weak and ignorant,
forgive those who are insolent, and conquer those who are ungrateful, not
by punishment, but by fresh kindness, overcoming their evil by his
good.—A man, in short, whom no ill-usage without, and no ill-temper
within, could shake out of his even path of generosity and benevolence.
Is not that the truly magnanimous man; the great and royal soul? Is not
that the stamp of man whom we should admire, if we met him on earth?
Should we not reverence that man; esteem it an honour and a pleasure to
work under that man, to take him for our teacher, our leader, in hopes
that, by copying his example, our souls might become great like his?
Is it so, my friends? Then know this, that in admiring that man, you
admire the likeness of God. In wishing to be like that man, you wish to
be like God.
For this is God’s true greatness; this is God’s true glory; this is God’s
true royalty; the greatness, glory, and royalty of loving, forgiving,
generous power, which pours itself out, untiring and undisgusted, in help
and mercy to all which he has made; the glory of a Father who is perfect
in this, that he causeth his rain to fall on the evil and on the good,
and his sun to shine upon the just and on the unjust, and is good to the
unthankful and the evil; a Father who has not dealt with us after our
sins, or rewarded us after our iniquities: a Father who is not extreme to
mark what is done amiss, but whom it is worth while to fear, for with him
is mercy and plenteous redemption;—all this, and more—a Father who so
loved a world which had forgotten him, a world whose sins must have been
disgusting to him, that he spared not his only begotten Son, but freely
gave him for us, and will with him freely give us all things; a Father,
in one word, whose name and essence is love, even as it is the name and
essence of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
This, my friends, is the glory of God: but this glory never shone out in
its full splendour till it shone upon the cross.
For—that we may go back again, to that great-souled man, of whom I spoke
just now—did we not leave out one thing in his character? or at least,
one thing by which his character might be proved and tried? We said that
he should be generous and forgiving; we said that he should bear
patiently folly, peevishness, ingratitude: but what if we asked of him,
that he should sacrifice himself utterly for the peevish, ungrateful men
for whose good he was toiling? What if we asked him to give up, for
them, not only all which made life worth having, but to give up life
itself? To die for them; and, what is bitterest of all, to die by their
hands—to receive as their reward for all his goodness to them a shameful
death? If he dare submit to that, then we should call his greatness of
soul perfect. Magnanimity, we should say, could rise no higher; in that
would be the perfection of goodness.
Surely your hearts answer, that this is true. When you hear of a father
sacrificing his own life for his children; when you hear of a soldier
dying for his country; when you hear of a clergyman or a physician
killing himself by his work, while he is labouring to save the souls or
the bodies of his fellow-creatures; then you feel—There is goodness in
its highest shape. To give up our lives for others is one of the most
beautiful, and noble, and glorious things on earth. But to give up our
lives, willingly, joyfully for men who misunderstand us, hate us, despise
us, is, if possible, a more glorious action still, and the very
perfection of perfect virtue. Then, looking at Christ’s cross, we see
that, and even more—ay, far more than that. The cross was the perfect
token of the perfect greatness of God, and of the perfect glory of God.
So on the cross, the Father justified himself to man; yea, glorified
himself in the glory of his crucified Son. On the cross God proved
himself to be perfectly just, perfectly good, perfectly generous,
perfectly glorious, beyond all that man could ever have dared to conceive
or dream. That God must be good, the wise heathens knew; but that God
was so utterly good that he could stoop to suffer, to die, for men, and
by men—that they never dreamed. That was the mystery of God’s love,
which was hid in Christ from the foundation of the world, and which was
revealed at last upon the cross of Calvary by him who prayed for his
murderers—‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ That
truly blessed sight of a Saviour-God, who did not disdain to die the
meanest and the most fearful of deaths—that, that came home at once, and
has come home ever since, to all hearts which had left in them any love
and respect for goodness, and melted them with the fire of divine love;
as God grant it may melt yours, this day, and henceforth for ever.
I can say no more, my friends. If this good news does not come home to
your hearts by its own power, it will never be brought home to you by any
words of mine.
SERMON III.
THE LIFE OF GOD.