me, if we were laid down by cholera or fever? He does not say, these
troubles have come upon you from devils, or evil spirits, or by any blind
chance of the world about you. He says, they have come on you from _the
Lord_; from the same good, loving, merciful Lord who brought your fathers
out of Egypt, and made a great nation of you, and has preserved you to
this day. And do not fancy that he is changed. Do not fancy that he has
forgotten you, or hates you, or has become cruel, or proud, or unlike
himself. It is you who have forgotten him, and have shown that by living
bad lives; and all he wishes is, to drive you back to him, that you may
live good lives. Turn to him; and you will find him unchanged; the same
loving, forgiving Lord as ever. He requires no sacrifices, no great
offerings on your part to win him round. All he asks is, that you should
confess yourselves in the wrong, and turn and repent. Turn therefore to
the Lord with all your heart, and with weeping, and with fasting, and
with mourning—(which was, and is still the Eastern fashion); and rend
your heart, and not your garments. And why? Because the Lord is very
dreadful, angry and dark, and has determined to destroy you all? Not so:
but because he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great
kindness, and repenteth him of the evil.
Yes, my friends: and this, you will find, is at the bottom of all true
repentance and turning to God. If you believe that God is dark, and
hard, and cruel, you may be afraid of him: but you cannot repent, cannot
turn to him. The more you think of him the more you will be terrified at
him, and turn from him. But if you believe that God is gracious and
merciful, then you can turn to him; then you can repent with a true
repentance, and a godly sorrow which breeds joy and peace of mind.
So Joel thought, at least; for he tells them, that if they will but turn
to God, if they will but confess themselves in the wrong, all shall be
well again, and better than before.
Now, if Joel had been a heathen, worshipping the false gods of the
Canaanites, he would have spoken very differently; he would have said,
perhaps—Baal, the true God, is angry with you, and he has sent the
drought.
Or, Ashtoreth, the Queen of Heaven, by whose power all seeds grow and all
creatures breed, is angry with you, and she has destroyed the seeds, and
sent the locusts.
Or, Ammon, the Lord of the sheep, is angry, and he has destroyed your
flocks and herds.
But one thing we know he would have said—These angry gods want _blood_.
You cannot pacify them without human blood. You must give them the most
dear and precious things you have—the most beautiful and pure. You must
sacrifice boys and girls to them; and then, perhaps, they will be
appeased.
We _know_ this. We know that the heathen, whenever they were in trouble,
took to human sacrifices.
The Canaanites—and the Jews when they fell into idolatry—used to burn
their children in the fire to Moloch.
We know that the Carthaginians, who were of the same blood and language
as the Canaanites, used human sacrifices; and that once when their city
was in great danger, they sacrificed at one time two hundred boys of
their highest families.
We know that the Greeks and Romans, who had much more humane and rational
notions about their gods, were tempted, in times of great distress, to
sacrifice human beings. It has always been so. The old Mexicans in
America used to sacrifice many thousands of men and women every year to
their idols; and when the Spaniards came and destroyed them off the face
of the earth in the name of the Lord—as Joshua did the Canaanites of
old—they found the walls of the idol temples crusted inches thick with
human blood. Even to this day, the wild Khonds in the Indian mountains,
and the Red men of America, sacrifice human beings at times, and, I fear,
very often indeed; and believe that the gods will be the more pleased,
and more certain to turn away their anger, the more horrible and
lingering tortures they inflict upon their wretched victims. I say,
these things were; and were it not for the light of the Gospel, these
things would be still; and when we hear of them, we ought to bow our
heads to our Father in heaven in thankfulness, and say—what Joel the
prophet taught the Jews to say dimly and in part—what our Lord Jesus and
his apostles taught us to say fully and perfectly—
It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty, at all times and in all
places—whether in joy or sorrow, in wealth or in want, to give thanks to
thee, O Lord, Holy Father, Almighty, Everlasting God.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord, according to whose most true promise the
Holy Ghost came down from heaven upon the apostles, to teach them and to
lead them into all truth, and give them fervent zeal, constantly to
preach the Gospel to all nations, by which we have been brought out of
darkness and error into the clear light and true knowledge of thee and of
thy Son Jesus Christ.
Yes, my friends, this is the lesson which we have to learn from Joel’s
prophecy, and from all prophecies. This lesson the old prophets learnt
for themselves, slowly and dimly, through many temptations and sorrows.
This lesson our Lord Jesus Christ revealed fully, and left behind him to
his apostles. This lesson men have been learning slowly but surely in
all the hundreds of years which have past since; to know that there is
one Father in heaven, of whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ,
by whom are all things; that they may, in all the chances and changes of
this mortal life, in weal and in woe, in light and in darkness, in plenty
and in want, look up to that heavenly Father who so loved them that he
spared not his only begotten Son, but freely gave him for them, and say,
‘Father, not our will but thine be done. All things come from thy hand,
and therefore all things come from thy love. We have received good from
thy hand, and shall we not receive evil? Though thou slay us, yet will
we trust in thee. For thou art gracious and merciful, long-suffering and
of great goodness. Thou art loving to every man, and thy mercy is over
all thy works. Thou art righteous in all thy ways, and holy in all thy
doings. Thou art nigh to all that call on thee; thou wilt hear their
cry, and wilt help them. For all thou desirest, when thou sendest
trouble on them, is to make them wiser and better men. _And that thou
canst only make them by teaching them more about thyself_.’
SERMON XXI.
SALVATION.
ISAIAH lix. 15, 16.
And the Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no
judgment. And he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there
was no intercessor: therefore his arm brought salvation unto him, and
his righteousness it sustained him.
THIS text is often held to be a prophecy of the coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ. I certainly believe that it is a prophecy of his coming, and of
something better still; namely, his continual presence; and a very noble
and deep one, and one from which we may learn a great deal.
We may learn from it what ‘salvation’ really is. What Christ came to
save men from, and how he saves them.
The common notion of salvation now-a-days is this. That salvation is
some arrangement or plan, by which people are to escape hell-fire by
having Christ’s righteousness imputed to them without their being
righteous themselves.
Now, I have nothing to say about that this morning. It may be so; or,
again, it may not; I read a good many things in books every week the
sense of which I cannot understand. At all events it is not the
salvation of which Isaiah speaks here.
For Isaiah tells us very plainly, from _what_ God was going to save these
Jews. Not from hell-fire—nothing is said about it: but simply from their
_sins_. As it is written, ‘Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall
save his people from _their sins_.’
The case is very simple, if you will look at Isaiah’s own words. These
Jews had become thoroughly bad men. They were not ungodly men. They
were very religious, orthodox, devout men. They ‘sought God daily, and
delighted to know his ways, like a nation that did righteousness, and
forsook not the ordinances of their God: they asked of him the ordinances
of justice; they took delight in approaching unto God.’
But unfortunately for them, and for all with whom they had to do, after
they had asked of God the ordinances of justice, they never thought of
doing them; and in spite of all their religion, they were, Isaiah tells
them plainly, rogues and scoundrels, none of whom stood up for justice,
or pleaded for truth, but trusted in vanity, and spoke lies. Their feet
ran to evil, and they made haste to shed innocent blood; the way of peace
they knew not, and they had made themselves crooked paths, speaking
oppression and revolt, and conceiving and uttering words of falsehood; so
that judgment was turned away backward, and justice stood afar off, for
truth was fallen in the street, and equity could not enter. Yea, truth
failed; and he that departed from evil made himself a prey (or as some
render it) was accounted mad.
And this is in the face of all their religion and their church-going.
Verily, my friends, fallen human beings were much the same then as now;
and there are too many in England and elsewhere now who might sit for
that portrait.
But how was the Lord going to save these hypocritical, false, unjust men?
Was he going to say to them, Believe certain doctrines about me, and you
shall escape all punishment for your sins, and my righteousness shall be
imputed to you? We do not read a word of that. We read—not that the
Lord’s righteousness was imputed to these bad men, but that it sustained
the Lord himself.—Ah! there is a depth, if you will receive it—a depth of
hope and comfort—a well-spring of salvation for us and all mankind.
You may be false and dishonest, saith the Lord, but I am honest and true.
Unjust, but I am just; unrighteous, but I am righteous. If men will not
set the world right, then I will, saith the Lord. My righteousness shall
sustain me, and keep me up to my duty, though man may forget his. To me
all power is given in heaven and earth, and I will use my power aright.
If men are bringing themselves and their country, their religion, their
church to ruin by hypocrisy, falsehood, and injustice, as those Jews
were, then the Lord’s arm will bring salvation. He will save them from
their sins by the only possible way—namely, by taking their sins away,
and making those of them who will take his lesson good and righteous men
instead. It may be a very terrible lesson of vengeance and fury, as
Isaiah says. It may unmask many a hypocrite, confound many a politic,
and frustrate many a knavish trick, till the Lord’s salvation may look at
first sight much more like destruction and misery; for his fan is in his
hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather the wheat into
his garner: but the chaff he will burn up with unquenchable fire.
But his purpose is, to _save_—to save his people from their sins, to
purge out of them all hypocrisy, falsehood, injustice, and make of them
honest men, true men, just men—men created anew after his likeness. And
this is the meaning of his salvation; and is the only salvation worth
having, for this life or the life to come.
Oh my friends, let us pray to God, whatsoever else he does for us, to
make honest men of us. For if we be not honest men, we shall surely come
to ruin, and bring all we touch to ruin, past hope of salvation.
Whatsoever denomination or church we belong to, it will be all the same:
we may call ourselves children of Abraham, of the Holy Catholic Church
(which God preserve), or what we will: but when the axe is laid to the
root of the tree, every tree that brings not forth good fruit is hewn
down, and is cast into the fire; and woe to the foolish fowl who have
taken shelter under the branches of it.
And we who are coming to the holy communion this day—let us ask
ourselves, What do we want there? Do we want to be made good men, true,
honest, just? Do we want to be saved from our sins? or merely from the
punishment of them after we die? Do we want to be made sharers in that
everlasting righteousness of Christ, which sustains him, and sustains the
whole world too, and prevents it from becoming a cage of wild beasts,
tearing each other to pieces by war and oppression, falsehood and
injustice? _Then_ we shall get what we want; and more. But if not, then
we shall not get what we want, not discerning that the Lord’s body is a
righteous and just and good body; and his blood a purifying blood, which
purifies not merely from the punishment of our sins, but from our sins
themselves.
And bear in mind, my friends, when times grow evil, and rogues and
hypocrites abound, and all the world seems going wrong, there is one arm
to fall back upon, and one righteousness to fall back upon, which can
never fail you, or the world.—
The arm of the Lord, which brings salvation to him, that he may give it
to all who are faithful and true; which cannot weaken or grow weary, till
it has cast out of his kingdom all which offends, and whosoever loveth or
maketh a lie.—
And the eternal righteousness of the Lord, which will do justice by every
living soul of man, and which will never fail or fade away, because it is
his own property, belonging to his own essence, which if he gave up for a
moment he would give up being God. Yes, God is good, though every man
were bad; God is just, though every man were a rogue; God is true, though
every man were a liar; and as long as that is so, all is safe for you and
me, and the whole world:—_if we will_.
SERMON XXII.
THE BEGINNING AND END OF WISDOM.
PROVERBS ii. 2, 3, 5.
If thou incline thine ear to wisdom, and apply thine heart to
understanding; yea, if thou criest after wisdom, and liftest up thy
voice for understanding; then shalt thou understand the fear of the
Lord, and find the knowledge of God.
WE shall see something curious in the last of these verses, when we
compare it with one in the chapter before. The chapter before says, that
the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. That if we wish to be
wise at all, we must _begin_ by fearing God. But this chapter says, that
the fear of the Lord is the _end_ of wisdom too; for it says, that if we
seek earnestly after knowledge and understanding, _then_ we shall
understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God.
So, according to Solomon, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of
wisdom, and the end likewise. It is the starting point from which we are
to set out, and the goal toward which we are to run.
How can that be?
If by wisdom Solomon meant high doctrines, what we call theology and
divinity, it would seem more easy to understand: but he does not mean
that, at least in our sense; for his rules and proverbs about wisdom are
not about divinity and high doctrines, but about plain practical
every-day life; shrewd maxims as to how to behave in this life, so as to
thrive and prosper in it.
And yet again they must be about divinity and theology in some sense.
For what does he say about wisdom in the text? ‘If thou search after
wisdom, thou shalt understand the fear of the Lord;’ and is that all?
No. He says more than that. Thou shalt find, he says, the knowledge of
God. To know God.—What higher theology can there be than that? It is
the end of all divinity, of all religion. It is eternal life itself, to
know God. If a man knows God, he is in heaven there and then, though he
be walking in flesh and blood upon this mortal earth.
How can all this be?
Let us consider the words once again.
Solomon does not say, To understand the fear of the Lord is the beginning
of wisdom, but simply the fear of the Lord is the beginning of it. But
the end of wisdom, he says, is not merely to fear the Lord, but to
understand the fear of the Lord.
This then, I suppose, is his meaning: We are to begin life by fearing
God, without understanding it: as a child obeys his parents without
understanding the reason of their commands.
Therefore, says Solomon to the young man, begin with that—with the
solemn, earnest, industrious, God-fearing frame of mind—without that you
will gain no wisdom. You may be as clever as you will, but if you are
reckless and wild, you will gain no wisdom. If you are violent and
impatient; if you are selfish and self-conceited; if you are weak and
self-indulgent, given up to your own pleasures, your cleverness will be
of no use to you. It will be only hurtful to you and to others. A
clever fool is common enough, and dangerous enough. For he is one who
never sees things as they really are, but as he would like them to be. A
bad man, let him be as clever as he may, is like one in a fever, whose
mind is wandering, who is continually seeing figures and visions, and
mistaking them for actual and real things; and so with all his
cleverness, he lives in a dream, and makes mistake upon mistake, because
he knows not things as they are, and sees nothing by the light of Christ,
who is the light of the world, from whom alone all true understanding
comes.
Begin then with the fear of the Lord. Make up your mind to do what you
are told is right, whether you know the reason of it or not. Take for
granted that your elders know better than you, and have faith in them, in
your teachers, in your Bible, in the words of wise men who have gone
before you: and do right, whatever it costs you.
If you do not always know the reason at first, you will know it in due
time, and get, so Solomon says, to _understand_ the fear of the Lord. In
due time you will see from experience that you are in the path of life.
You will be able to say with St. Paul, I _know_ in whom I have believed;
and with Job, ‘Before I heard of thee, O Lord, with the hearing of the
ear: but now mine eye seeth thee.’
And why? Because, says Solomon, God himself will show you, and teach you
by his Holy Spirit. As our Lord says, ‘The Holy Spirit shall take of
mine, and show it unto you, and lead you into all truth.’ And therefore
Solomon talks of wisdom, who is the Holy Ghost the Comforter, as a person
who teaches men, whose delight is with the sons of men. He speaks of
wisdom as calling to men. He speaks of her as a being who is seeking for
those that seek her, who will teach those who seek after her.
Yes, this, my friends, is, I believe, the secret of life. At least it is
the secret both of Solomon’s teaching, and our Lord’s, and St. Paul’s,
and St. John’s, that true wisdom is not a thing which man finds out for
himself, but which God teaches him. This is the secret of life—to
believe that God is your Father, schooling and training you from your
cradle to your grave; and then to please him and obey him in all things,
lifting up daily your hands and thankful heart, entreating him to purge
the eyes of your soul, and give you the true wisdom, which is to see all
things as they really are, and as God himself sees them. If you do that,
you may believe that God will teach you more and more how to do, in all
the affairs of life, that which is right in his sight, and therefore good
for you. He will teach you more and more to see in all which happens to
you, all which goes on around you, his fatherly love, his patient mercy,
his providential care for all his creatures. He will reward you by
making you more and more partaker of his Holy Spirit and of truth, by
which, seeing everything as it really is, you will at last—if not in this
life, still in the life to come—grow to see God himself, who has made all
things according to his own eternal mind, that they may be a pattern of
his unspeakable glory; and beyond that, who needs to see? For to know
God, and to see God, is eternal life itself.
And this true wisdom, which lies in knowing God, and understanding his
laws, is within the reach of the simplest person here. As I told you,
cleverness without godliness will not give it you; but godliness without
cleverness may.
Therefore let no one say, ‘We are no scholars, nor philosophers, and we
never can be. Are we, then, shut out from this heavenly wisdom?’ God
forbid, my friends. God is no respecter of persons. Only remember one
thing; and by it you, too, may attain to the heavenly wisdom. I said
that the fear of the Lord was the beginning of wisdom. I said that the
fear of the Lord was the end of wisdom. Now let the fear of the Lord be
the middle of wisdom also, and walk in it from youth to old age, and all
will be well.
That is the short way, the royal road to wisdom. To be good and to do
good. To keep the single eye—the eye which does not look two ways at
once, and want to go two ways at once, as too many do who want to serve
God and mammon, and to be good people and bad people too both at once.
But the single eye of the man, who looks straightforward at everything,
and has made up his mind what it ought to do, and will do, so help him
God. As stout old Joshua said, ‘Choose ye whom ye will serve: but as for
me and my house, we will serve the Lord.’ That is the single eye, which
wants simply to know what is right, and do what is right.
And if a man has that he may be a very wise man indeed, though he can
neither read nor write.
It is good for a man, of course, to be able to read, that he may know
what wiser men than he have said: above all, that he may know what his
Bible says. But, even if he cannot read, let him fear God, and set his
heart earnestly to know and do his duty. Let him keep his soul pure, and
his body also (for nothing hinders that heavenly wisdom like loose
living), and he will be wise enough for this world, and for the world to
come likewise.
I tell you, my friends, I have known women, who were neither clever
women, nor learned women, nor anything except good women, whose souls
were pure and full of the Holy Spirit, and who lived lives of prayer, and
sat all day long with Mary at the feet of Jesus.—I have known such women
to have at times a wisdom which all books and all sciences on earth
cannot give. I have known them give opinions on deep matters which
learned and experienced men were glad enough to take. I have known them
have, in a wonderful degree, that wisdom which the Scripture calls
discerning of spirits, being able to see into people’s hearts; knowing at
a glance what they were thinking of, what made them unhappy, how to
manage and comfort them; knowing at a glance whether they were honest or
not, pure-minded or not—a precious and heavenly wisdom, which comes, as I
believe, from none other than the inspiration of the Spirit of Christ,
who is the discerner of the secret thoughts of all hearts: and when I
have seen such people, altogether simple and humble, and yet most wise
and prudent, because they were full of the fear of the Lord, and of the
knowledge of God, I could not but ask—Why should we not be all like them?
My friends, I believe that we may all be more or less like them, if we
will make the fear of the Lord the beginning of our wisdom, and the
middle of our wisdom, and the end of our wisdom.
Nine-tenths of the mistakes we make in life come from forgetting the fear
of God and the law of God, and saying not, I will do what is right: but—I
will do what will profit me; I will do what I like. If we would say to
ourselves manfully instead all our lives through, I will learn the will
of God, and do it, whatsoever it cost me; we should find in our old age
that God’s Holy Spirit was indeed a guide and a comforter, able and
willing to lead us into all truth which was needful for us. We should
find St. Paul had spoken truth, when he said that godliness has the
promise of _this_ life, as well as of that which is to come.
SERMON XXIII.
HUMAN NATURE.
(_Septuagesima Sunday_.)
GENESIS i. 27.
So God created man in his own image; in the image of God created he
him; male and female created he them.
ON this Sunday the Church bids us to begin to read the book of Genesis,
and hear how the world was made, and how man was made, and what the world
is, and who man is.
And why?
To prepare us, I think, for Lent, and Passion week, Good Friday, and
Easter day.
For you must know what a thing ought to be, before you can know what it
ought not to be; you must know what health is, before you can know what
disease is; you must know how and why a good man is good, before you can
know how and why a bad man is bad. You must know what man fell from,
before you can know what man has fallen to; and so you must hear of man’s
creation, before you can understand man’s fall.
Now in Lent we lament and humble ourselves for man’s fall. In Passion
week we remember the death and suffering of our blessed Lord, by which he
redeemed us from the fall. On Easter day we give him thanks and glory
for having conquered death and sin, and rising up as the new Adam, of
whom St. Paul writes, ‘As in Adam all died, even so in Christ shall all
be made alive.’
And therefore to prepare us for Lent and Passion week, and Easter day, we
begin this Sunday to read who the first man was, and what he was like
when he came into the world.
Now we all say that man was created good, righteous, innocent, holy. But
do you fancy that man had any goodness or righteousness of his own, so
that he could stand up and say, I am good; I can take care of myself; I
can do what is right in my own strength?
If you fancy so, you fancy wrong. The book of Genesis, and the text,
tell us that it was not so. It tells us that man could not be good by
himself; that the Lord God had to tell him what to do, and what not to
do; that the Lord God visited him and spoke to him: so that he could only
do right by faith: by trusting the Lord, and believing him, and believing
that what the Lord told him was the right thing for him; and it tells us
that he fell for want of faith, by not believing the Lord and not
believing that what the Lord told him was right for him. So he was holy,
and stood safe, only as long as he did not stand alone: but the moment
that he tried to stand alone he fell. So that it was with Adam as it is
with you and me. The just man can only live by faith.
And St. John explains this more fully, when he tells us that the voice of
the Lord, the Word of God whom Adam heard walking among the trees of the
garden, was our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, who was the life of Adam and
all men, and the light of Adam and all men. All death and misery, and
all ignorance and darkness, come at first from forgetting the Lord Jesus
Christ, and forgetting that he is about our path and about our bed, and
spying out all our ways; as St. John says, that Christ’s light is always
shining in the darkness of this world, but the darkness comprehendeth it
not; that he came to his own, but his own received him not; but as many
as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, as he
gave to man at first; for St. Luke says, that Adam was the Son of God.
But a son must depend on his father; and therefore man was sent into the
world to depend on God. So do not fancy that man before he fell could do
without God’s grace, though he cannot now. If man had never fallen, he
would have been just as much in need of God’s grace to keep him from
falling. To deny that is the root of what is called the Pelagian heresy.
Therefore the Church has generally said, and said most truly, that ‘Adam
stood by grace in Paradise;’ and had a ‘supernatural gift;’ and that as
long as he used that gift, he was safe, and only so long.
Now what does supernatural mean?
It means ‘above nature.’
Adam had a human nature: but he wanted something to keep him above that
nature, lest he should die, as all natural things on earth must. Trees
and flowers, birds and beasts, yea, the great earth itself must die, and
have an end in time, because it has had a beginning.
Man had and has still a human nature; the most beautiful, noble, and
perfect nature in the world; high above the highest animals in rank,
beauty, understanding, and feelings. Human nature is made, so the Bible
tells us, in some mysterious way, after the likeness of God; of Christ,
the eternal Son of man, who is in heaven; for the Bible speaks of the
Word or Voice of God as appearing to man in something of a human voice:
reasoning with him as man reasons with man; and feeling toward him human
feelings. That is the doctrine of the Bible; of David and the prophets,
just as much as of Genesis or of St. Paul.
That is a great mystery and a great glory: but that alone could not make
man good, could not even keep him alive.
For God made man for something more noble and blessed than to follow even
his own lofty human nature. God made the animals to follow their natures
each after its kind, and to do each what it liked, without sin. But he
made man to do more than that; to do more than what he _likes_; namely,
to do what he _ought_. God made man to love him, to obey him, to copy
him, by doing God’s will, and living God’s life, lovingly, joyfully, and
of his own free will, as a son follows the father whose will he delights
to do.
All animals God made to live and multiply, each after their kind: and man
likewise: but the animals he made to die again, and fresh generations,
ay, and fresh kinds of animals to take their place, and do their work, as
we know has happened again and again, both before and since man came upon
the earth. But of man the Bible says, that he was not meant to die: that
into him God breathed the breath, or spirit, of life: of that life of men
who is Jesus Christ the Lord; that in Christ man might be the Son of God.
To man he gave the life of the soul, the moral and spiritual life, which
is—to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with his God; the
life which is always tending upward to the source from which it came, and
longing to return to God who gave it, and to find rest in him. For in
God alone, in the assurance of God’s love to us, and in the knowledge
that we are living the life of God, can a man’s spirit find rest. So St.
Augustine found, through so many bitter experiences, when (as he tells
us) he tried to find rest and comfort in all God’s creatures one after
another, and yet never found them till he found God, or rather was found
by God, and illuminated (so he says himself) with that grace which by the
fall he lost.
What then does holy baptism mean? It means that God lifts us up again to
that honour from whence Adam fell. That as Adam lost the honour of being
God’s son, so Jesus Christ restores to us that honour. That as Adam lost
the supernatural grace in which he stood, so God for Christ’s sake freely
gives us back that grace, that we may stand by faith in that Christ, the
Word of God, whom Adam disbelieved and fell away.
Baptism says, You are not true and right men by nature; you are only
fallen men—men in your wrong place: but by grace you become men indeed,
true men; men living as man was meant to live, by faith, which is the
gift of God. For without grace man is like a stream when the fountain
head is stopped; it stops too—lies in foul puddles, decays, and at last
dries up: to keep the stream pure and living and flowing, the fountain
above must flow, and feed it for ever.
And so it is with man. Man is the stream, Christ is the fountain of
life. Parted from him mankind becomes foul and stagnant in sin and
ignorance, and at last dries up and perishes, because there is no life in
them. Joined to him in holy baptism, mankind lives, spreads, grows,
becomes stronger, better, wiser year by year, each generation of his
church teaching the one which comes after, as our Lord says, not only,
‘If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink;’ but also, ‘He that
believeth in me, out of him shall flow rivers of living water.’
Yes, my brethren, if you want to see what man is, you must not look at
the heathens, who are in a state of fallen and corrupt nature, but at
Christians, who are in a state of grace; for they only (those of them, I
mean, who are true to God and themselves), give us any true notion of
what man can be and should be.
Heathendom is the foul and stagnant pool, parted from Christ, the Fount
of life. Christendom, in spite of all its sins and short-comings, is the
stream always fed from the heavenly Fountain. And holy baptism is the
river of the water of life, which St. John saw in the Revelations, clear
as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb, the
trees of which are for the healing of the nations. And when that river
shall have spread over the world, there shall be no more curse, but the
throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in the city of God; and the
nations of them that are saved shall grow to glory and blessedness, such
as eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath entered into the heart of
man to conceive, but God hath prepared for those who love him.
Oh, may God hasten that day! May he accomplish the number of his elect
and hasten his kingdom, and the day when there shall not be a heathen
soul on earth, but all shall know him from the least to the greatest, and
the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth, as the waters cover the
sea!
Then—when all men are brought into the fold of Christ’s holy Church—then
will they be men indeed; men not after nature, but after grace, and the
likeness of Christ, and the stature of perfect men: and then what shall
happen to this earth matters little; no, not if the earth and all the
works therein, beautiful though they be, be burned up; for though this
world perish, man would still have his portion sure in the city of God
which is eternal in the heavens, and before the face of the Son of man
who is in heaven.
Oh, my friends, think of this. Think of what you say when you say, ‘I am
a man.’ Remember that you are claiming for yourselves the very highest
honour—an honour too great to make you proud; an honour so great that, if
you understand it rightly, it must fill you with awe, and trembling, and
the spirit of godly fear, lest, when God has put you up so high, you
should fall shamefully again. For the higher the place, the deeper the
fall; and the greater the honour, the greater the shame of losing it.
But be sure that it was an honour before Adam fell. That ever since
Christ has taken the manhood into God, it is an honour now to be a man.
Do not let the devil or bad men ever tempt you to say, I am only a man,
and therefore you cannot expect me to do right. I am but a man, and
therefore I cannot help being mean, and sinful, and covetous, and
quarrelsome, and foul: for that is the devil’s doctrine, though it is
common enough. I have heard a story of a man in America—where very few,
I am sorry to say, have heard the true doctrine of the Catholic Church,
and therefore do not know really that God made man in his own image, and
redeemed him again into his own image by Jesus Christ—and this man was
rebuked for being a drunkard; and what do you fancy his excuse was?
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘you should remember that there is a great deal of human
nature in a man.’ That was his excuse. He had been so ill-taught by his
Calvinist preachers, that he had learnt to look on human nature as
actually a bad thing; as if the devil, and not God, had made human
nature, and as if Christ had not redeemed human nature. Because he was a
man, he thought he was excused in being a bad man; because he had a human
nature in him, he was to be a drunkard and a brute.
My friends, I trust that you have not so learned Christ. And if you
have, it is from no teaching of your Bible, of your Catechism, or your
Prayer-book; and, I say boldly, from no teaching of mine. The Church
bids you say, Yes; I have a human nature in me; and what nature is that
but the nature which the Son of God took on himself, and redeemed, and
justified it, and glorified it, sitting for ever now in his human nature
at the right hand of God, the Son of man who is in heaven? Yes, I am a
man; and what is it to be a man, but to be the image and glory of God?
What is it to be a man? To belong to that race whose Head is the
co-equal and co-eternal Son of God. True, it is not enough to have only
a human nature which may sin, will sin, must sin, if left to itself a
moment. But you have, unless the Holy Spirit has left you, and your
baptism is of none effect, more than human nature in you: you have divine
grace—that supernatural grace and Spirit of God by which man stood in
Paradise, and by neglecting which he fell.
Obey that Spirit; from him comes every right judgment of your minds,
every good desire of your hearts, every thought and feeling in you which
raises you up, instead of dragging you down; which bids you do your duty,
and live the life of God and Christ, instead of living the mere
death-in-life of selfish pleasure and covetousness. Obey that Spirit,
and be men: men indeed, that you may not come to shame in the day when
Christ the Son of Man shall take account of you, how you have used your
manhood, body, soul, and spirit.
SERMON XXIV.
THE CHARITY OF GOD.
(_Quinquagesima Sunday_.)
LUKE xviii. 31, 32, 33.
All things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of man
shall be accomplished. For he shall be delivered unto the Gentiles,
and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on: and
they shall scourge him and put him to death; and the third day he
shall rise again.
THIS is a solemn text, a solemn Gospel; but it is not its solemnity which
I wish to speak of this morning, but this—What has it to do with the
Epistle, and with the Collect? The Epistle speaks of Charity; the
Collect bids us pray for the Holy Spirit of Charity. What have they to
do with the Gospel?
Let me try to show you.
The Epistle speaks of God’s eternal charity. The Gospel tells us how
that eternal charity was revealed, and shown plainly in flesh and blood
on earth, in the life and death of Jesus Christ our Lord.
But you may ask, How does the Epistle talk of God’s charity? It bids men
be charitable; but the name of God is never mentioned in it. Not so, my
friends. Look again at the Epistle, and you will see one word which
shows us that this charity, which St. Paul says we must have, is God’s
charity.
For, he says, Charity never faileth; that though prophecies shall fail,
tongues cease, knowledge vanish away, charity shall never fail. Now, if
a thing never fail, it must be eternal. And if it be eternal, it must be
in God. For, as I have reminded you before about other things, the
Athanasian Creed tells us (and never was truer or wiser word written)
there is but one eternal.
But if charity be not in God, there must be two eternals; God must be one
eternal, and charity another eternal; which cannot be. Therefore charity
must be in God, and of God, part of God’s essence and being; and not only
God’s saints, but God himself—suffereth long, and is kind; envieth not,
is not puffed up, seeketh not his own, is not easily provoked, thinketh
no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but in the truth; beareth all things,
believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
So St. Augustine believed, and the greatest fathers of old time. They
believed, and they have taught us to believe, that before all things,
above all things, beneath all things, is the divine charity, the love of
God, infinite as God is infinite, everlasting as God is everlasting; the
charity by which God made all worlds, all men, and all things, that they
might be blest as he is blest, perfect as he is perfect, useful as he is
useful; the charity which is God’s essence and Holy Spirit, which might
be content in itself, because it is perfectly at peace in itself; and yet
_cannot_ be content in itself, just because it is charity and love, and
therefore must be going forth and proceeding everlastingly from the
Father and the Son, upon errands of charity, love, and mercy, rewarding
those whom it finds doing their work in their proper place, and seeking
and saving those who are lost, and out of their proper place.
But what has this to do with the Gospel? Surely, my friends, it is not
difficult to see. In Jesus Christ our Lord, the eternal charity of God
was fully revealed. The veil was taken off it once for all, that men
might see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and know that the
glory of God is charity, and the Spirit of God is love.
There was a veil over that in old times; and the veil comes over it often
enough now. It was difficult in old times to believe that God was
charity; it is difficult sometimes now.
Sad and terrible things happen—Plague and famine, earthquake and war.
All these things have happened in our times. Not two months ago, in
Italy, an earthquake destroyed many thousands of people; and in India,
this summer, things have happened of which I dare not speak, which have
turned the hearts of women to water, and the hearts of men to fire: and
when such things happen, it is difficult for the moment to believe that
God is love, and that he is full of eternal, boundless, untiring charity
toward the creatures whom he has made, and who yet perish so terribly,
suddenly, strangely.
Well, then, we must fall back on the Gospel. We must not be afraid of
the terror of such awful events, but sanctify the Lord God, in our
hearts, and say, Whatever may happen I know that God is love; I know that
his glory is charity; I know that his mercy is over all his works; for I
know that Jesus Christ, who was full of perfect charity, is the express
image of his Father’s person, and the brightness of his Father’s glory.
I know (for the Gospel tells me), that he dared all things, endured all
things, in the depth of his great love, for the sake of sinful men. I
know that when he knew what was going to happen to him; when he knew that
he should be mocked, scourged, crucified, he deliberately, calmly, faced
all that shame, horror, agony, and went up willingly to Jerusalem to
suffer and to die there; because he was full of the Spirit of God, the
spirit of charity and love. I know that he was _so_ full of it, that as
he went up on his fatal journey, with a horrible death staring him in the
face, still, instead of thinking of himself, he was thinking of others,
and could find time to stop and heal the poor blind man by the way side,
who called ‘Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me.’ And in him and
his love will I trust, when there seems nothing else left to trust on
earth.
Oh, my friends, believe this with your whole heart. Whatever happens to
you or to your friends, happens out of the eternal charity of God, who
cannot change, who cannot hate, who can be nothing but what he is and
was, and ever will be—love.
And when St. Paul tells you, as he told you in the Epistle to-day, to
have charity, to try for charity, because it is the most excellent way to
please God, and the eternal virtue, which will abide for ever in heaven,
when all wisdom and learning, even about spiritual things, which men have
had on earth, shall seem to us when we look back such as a child’s
lessons do to a grown man;—when, I say, St. Paul tells you to try after
charity, he tells you to be like God himself; to be perfect even as your
Father in heaven is perfect; to bear and forbear because God does so: to
give and forgive because God does so; to love all because God loves all,
and willeth that none should perish, but that all should come to the
knowledge of the truth.
How he will fulfil that; how he fulfilled it last summer with those poor
souls in India, we know not, and never shall know in this life. Let it
be enough for us that known unto God are all his works from the
foundation of the world, and that his charity embraces the whole
universe.
SERMON XXV.
THE DAYS OF THE WEEK.
JAMES i. 17.
Every good gift, and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh
down from the Father of lights, with whom is neither variableness,
nor shadow of turning.
IT seems an easy thing for us here to say, ‘I believe in God.’ We have
learnt from our childhood that there is but one God. It seems to us
strange and ridiculous that people anywhere should believe in more gods
than one. We never heard of any other doctrine, except in books about
the heathen; and there are perhaps not three people in this church who
ever saw a heathen man, or talked to him.
Yet it is not so easy to learn that there is but one God. Were it not
for the church, and the missionaries who were sent into this part of the
world by the church, now 1200 years ago, we should not know it now. Our
forefathers once worshipped many gods, and not one only God. I do not
mean when they were savages; for I do not believe that they ever were
savages at all: but after they were settled here in England, living in a
simple way, very much as country people live now, and dressing very much
as country people do now, they worshipped many gods.
Now what put that mistake into their minds? It seems so ridiculous to us
now, that we cannot understand at first how it ever arose.
But if we will consider the names of their old gods, we shall understand
it a little better. Now the names of the old English gods you all know.
They are in your mouths every day. The days of the week are named after
them. The old English kept time by weeks, as the old Jews did, and they
named their days after their gods. Why, would take me too much time to
tell: but so it is.
Why, then, did they worship these gods?
First, because man must worship something. Before man fell, he was
created in Christ the image and likeness of God the Father; and therefore
he was created that he might hear his Father’s voice, and do his Father’s
will, as Christ does everlastingly; and after man fell, and lost Christ
and Christ’s likeness, still there was left in his heart some remembrance
of the child’s feeling which the first man had; he felt that he ought to
look up to some one greater than himself, obey some one greater than
himself; that some one greater than himself was watching over him, doing
him good, and perhaps, too, doing him harm and punishing him.
Then these simple men looked up to the heaven above, and round on the
earth beneath, and asked, Who is it who is calling for us? Who is it we
ought to obey and please; who gives us good things? Who may hurt us if
we make him angry?
Then the first thing they saw was the sun. What more beautiful than the
sun? What more beneficent? From the sun came light and heat, the growth
of all living things, ay, the growth of life itself.
The sun, they thought, must surely be a god; so they worshipped the sun,
and called the first day of the week after him—Sunday.
Next the moon. Nothing, except the sun, seemed so grand and beautiful to
them as the moon, and she was their next god, and Monday was named after
her.
Then the wind—what a mysterious, awful, miraculous thing the wind seemed,
always moving, yet no one knew how; with immense power and force, and yet
not to be seen; as our blessed Lord himself said, ‘The wind bloweth where
it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence
it cometh or whither it goeth.’ Then—and this is very curious—they
fancied that the wind was a sort of pattern, or type of the spirit of
man. With them, as with the old Jews and Greeks, the same word which
meant wind, meant also a man’s soul, his spirit; and so they grew to
think that the wind was inhabited by some great spirit, who gave men
spirit, and inspired them to be brave, and to prophesy, and say and do
noble things; and they called him Wodin the Mover, the Inspirer; and
named Wednesday after him.
Next the thunder—what more awful and terrible, and yet so full of good,
than the summer heat and the thunder cloud? So they fancied that the
thunder was a god, and called him Thor—and the dark thunder cloud was
Thor’s frowning eyebrow; and the lightning flash Thor’s hammer, with
which he split the rocks, and melted the winter-ice and drove away the
cold of winter, and made the land ready for tillage. So they worshipped
Thor, and loved him; for they fancied him a brave, kindly, useful god,
who loved to see men working in their fields, and tilling the land
honestly.
Then the spring. That was a wonder to them again—and is it not a wonder
to see all things grow fresh and fair, after the dreary winter cold? So
the spring was a goddess, and they called her Freya, the Free One, the
Cheerful One, and named Friday after her; and she it was, they thought,
who gave them the pleasant spring time, and youth, and love, and
cheerfulness, and rejoiced to see the flowers blossom, and the birds
build their nests, and all young creatures enjoy the life which God had
given them in the pleasant days of spring. And after her Friday is
named.
Then the harvest. The ripening of the grain, that too was a wonder to
them—and should it not be to us?—how the corn and wheat which is put into
the ground and dies should rise again, and then ripen into golden corn?
That too must be the work of some kindly spirit, who loved men; and they
called him Seator, the Setter, the Planter, the God of the seed field and
the harvest, and after him Saturday is named.
And so, instead of worshipping him who made all heaven and earth, they
turned to worship the heaven and the earth itself, like the foolish
Canaanites.
But some may say, ‘This was all very mistaken and foolish: but what harm
was there in it? How did it make them worse men?’
My friends, among these very woodlands here, some thirteen hundred years
ago, you might have come upon one of the places where your forefathers
worshipped Thor and Odin, the thunder and the wind, beneath the shade of
ancient oaks, in the darkest heart of the forest. And there you would
have seen an ugly sight enough.
There was an altar there, with an everlasting fire burning on it; but why
should that altar, and all the ground around be crusted and black with
blood; why should that dark place be like a charnel house or a butcher’s
shambles; why, from all the trees around, should there be hanging the
rotting carcases, not of goats and horses merely, but of _men_,
sacrificed to Thor and Odin, the thunder and the wind? Why that
butchery, why those works of darkness in the dark places of the world?
Because that was the way of pleasing Thor and Odin. To that our
forefathers came. To that all heathens have come, sooner or later. They
fancy gods in their own likeness; and then they make out those gods no
better than, and at last as bad as themselves.
The old English and Danes were fond of Thor and Odin; they fancied them,
as I told you, brave gods, very like themselves: but they themselves were
not always what they ought to be; they had fierce passions, were proud,
revengeful, blood-thirsty; and they thought Thor and Odin must be so too.
And when they looked round them, that seemed too true. The thunder storm
did not merely melt the snow, cool the air, bring refreshing rain; it
sometimes blasted trees, houses, men; that they thought was Thor’s anger.
So of the wind. Sometimes it blew down trees and buildings, sank ships
in the sea. That was Odin’s anger. Sometimes, too, they were not brave
enough; or they were defeated in battle. That was because Thor and Odin
were angry with them, and would not give them courage. How were they to
appease Thor and Odin, and put them into good humour again? By giving
them their revenge, by letting them taste blood; by offering them sheep,
goats, horses in sacrifice: and if that would not do, by offering them
something more precious still, living men.
And so, too often, when the weather was unfavourable, and crops were
blasted by tempest or they were defeated in battle by their enemies,
Thor’s and Odin’s altars were turned into slaughter-places for wretched
human beings—captives taken in war, and sometimes, if the need was very
great, their own children. That was what came of worshipping the heaven
above and the earth around, instead of the true God. Human sacrifices,
butchery, and murder.
English and Danes alike. It went on among them both; across the seas in
their old country, and here in England, till they were made Christians.
There is no doubt about it. I could give you tale on tale which would
make your blood run cold. Then they learnt to throw away those false
gods who quarrelled among themselves, and quarrelled with mankind; gods
who were proud, revengeful, changeable, spiteful; who had variableness in
them, and turned round as their passions led them. Then they learnt to
believe in the one true God, the Father of lights, in whom is neither
variableness nor shadow of turning. Then they learnt that from one God
came every good and perfect gift; that God filled the sun with light;
that God guided the changes of the moon; that God, and not Thor, gave to
men industry and courage; God, and not Wodin, inspired them with the
spirit which bloweth where it listeth, and raised them up above
themselves to speak noble words and do noble deeds; that God, and not
Friga, sent spring time and cheerfulness, and youth and love, and all
that makes earth pleasant; that God, and not Satur, sent the yearly
wonder of the harvest crops, sent rain and fruitful seasons, filling the
earth with food and gladness.
But what was there about this new God, even the true God, which the old
missionaries preached, which won the hearts of our forefathers?
This, my friends, not merely that he was one God and not many, but that
he was a Father of lights, from whom came good gifts, in whom was neither
variableness nor shadow of turning.
Not merely a master, but a Father, who gave good gifts, because he was
good himself; a God whom they could love, because he loved them; a God
whom they could trust and depend on, because there was no variableness in
him, and he could not lose his temper as Thor and Odin did. That was the
God whom their wild, passionate hearts wanted, and they believed in him.
And when they doubted, and asked, ‘How can we be sure that God is
altogether good?—how can we be sure that he is always trustworthy, always
the same?’—Then the missionaries used to point them to the crucifix, the
image of Christ upon his cross, and say, ‘There is the token; there is
what God is to you, what God suffered for you; there is the everlasting
sign that he gives good gifts, even to the best of all gifts, even to his
own self, when it was needed; there is the everlasting sign that in him
is neither darkness, passion, nor change, but that he wills all men to be
saved from their own darkness and passions, and from the ruin which they
bring, and to come to the knowledge of the truth, that they have a Father
in heaven.’
SERMON XXVI.
THE HEAVENLY FATHER.
ACTS xvi. 24–28.
God that made the world, and all that therein is, seeing that he is
Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands . . .
For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also
of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.
I TOLD you last Sunday of the meaning of the days of the week; but one
day I left out—namely, Tuesday. I did so on purpose. I wish to speak of
that day by itself in this sermon.
I told you how our forefathers worshipped many gods, by fancying that
various things in the world round them were gods—sun and moon, wind and
thunder, spring and harvest.
But if that seems to you at times wrong and absurd, it seemed so to them
also. They, like all heathens, had at times dreams of one God.
They thought to themselves—All heaven and earth must have had a
beginning, and they cannot have grown out of nothing, for out of nothing
nothing comes. They must have been made in some way. Perhaps they were
made by some _One_.
The more they saw of this wonderful world, and all the order and
contrivance in it, the more sure they were that one mind must have
planned it, one will created it.
But men—they thought—persons, living souls—are not merely made; they are
begotten; they must have a Father, whose sons they are. Perhaps, they
thought, there is somewhere a great Father; a Father of all persons, from
whom all souls come, who was before all things, and all persons, however
great, however ancient they may be. And so, like the Greeks and Romans,
and many other heathen nations, they had dim thoughts of an All-Father,
as they called him; Father of gods and men; the Father of spirits.
They looked round them too, in this world, and saw that everything in it
must die. The tree, though it stood for a thousand years, must decay at
last; the very rocks and mountains crumbled to dust at last: and so they
thought—truly and wisely enough—Everything which we see near us, perishes
at last: why should not everything which we can see, however far off,
however great, perish? Why should not this earth come to an end? Why
should not sun and moon, wind and thunder, spring and harvest, end at
last? And then will not these gods, who are mixed up with the world, and
live in it, and govern it, die too? If the sun perishes, the sun-god
will perish too. If the thunder ceases for ever, then there will be no
more thunder-god. Yes, they thought—and wisely and truly too—everything
which has a beginning must have an end. Everything which is born, must
die. The sun and the earth, wind and thunder, will perish some day; the
gods of sun and earth, wind and thunder, will die some day. And then
what will be left? Will there be nothing and nowhere? That thought was
too horrible. God’s voice in their hearts, the word of the Lord Jesus
Christ, who lights every man who comes into the world, made them feel
that it was horrible, unreasonable; that it could not be.
But it was all dim to them, and uncertain. Of one thing only they were
certain, that death reigned, and that death had passed upon all men, and
things, and even gods. Evil beasts, evil gods, evil passions, were
gnawing at the root of all things. A time would come of nothing but rage
and wickedness, fury and destruction; the gods would fight and be slain,
and earth and heaven would be sent back again into shapeless ruin: and
after that they knew no more, though they longed to know. They dreamed,
I say, at moments of a new and a better world, new men, new gods: but how
were they to come? Who would live when all things died? Was there not
somewhere an All-Father, who had eternal life?
Then they looked round upon the earth, those simple-hearted forefathers
of ours, and said within themselves, Where is the All-Father, if
All-Father there be? Not in this earth; for it will perish. Not in the
sun, moon, or stars, for they will perish too. Where is He who abideth
for ever?
Then they lifted up their eyes and saw, as they thought, beyond sun, and
moon, and stars and all which changes and will change, the clear blue
sky, the boundless firmament of heaven.
That never changed; that was always the same. The clouds and storms
rolled far below it, and all the bustle of this noisy world; but there
the sky was still, as bright and calm as ever. The All-Father must be
there, unchangeable in the unchanging heaven; bright, and pure, and
boundless like the heavens; and like the heavens too, silent, and afar
off.
So they named him after the heaven, Tuith, Tuisco, Divisco—The God who
lives in the clear heaven; and after him Tuesday is called: the day of
Tuisco, the heavenly Father. He was the Father of gods and men; and man
was the son of Tuisco and Hertha—heaven and earth.
That was all they knew; and even that they did not know; they
contradicted themselves and each other about it. After a time they began
to think that Odin, and not Tuisco, was the All-Father; all was dim and
far off to them. They were feeling after him, as St. Paul says he had
intended them to do: but they did not find him. They did not know the
Father, because they did not know Jesus Christ the Son; as it is written,
‘No man cometh to the Father, but through me;’ and, ‘No man hath seen God
at any time; only the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the
Father, he hath declared him.’
Many other heathens had the same thought and the same word; the old
Greeks and Romans, for instance, who many thousand years ago spoke the
same tongue as we did then, called him Zeus or Deus Pater; Jupiter; the
heavenly Father, Father of gods and men; using the same word as our
Tuisco, a little altered. And that same word, changed slightly, means
God now, in Welsh, French, and Italian, and many languages in Europe and
in Asia; and will do so till the end of time.
That, I say, was all they knew of their Father in heaven, till
missionaries came and preached the Gospel to them, and told them what St.
Paul told the Greeks in my text.
Now, what did St. Paul tell the Greeks? He came, we read, to Athens in
Greece, and found the city wholly given to idolatry, worshipping all
manner of false gods, and images of them. And yet they were not content
with their false gods. They felt, as our forefathers felt, that there
must be a greater, better, more mighty, more faithful God than all: and
they thought, ‘We will worship him too: for we are sure that he is,
though we know nothing about him.’ So they set up, beside all the altars
and temples of the false gods ‘To the Unknown God.’ And St. Paul passed
by and saw it; and his heart was stirred within him with pity and
compassion; and he rose up and preached them a sermon—the first and the
best missionary sermon which ever was preached on earth, the model of all
missionary sermons; and said, ‘That God whom you ignorantly worship, Him
I will declare unto you.’
Now, here was a Gospel; here was good news. St. Paul told them—as the
missionaries afterwards told our forefathers—that one, at least, of their
heathen fancies was not wrong. There was a heavenly Father. Mankind was
not an orphan, come into the world he knew not whence, and going, when he
died, he knew not whither. No, man was not an orphan. From God he came;
to God, if he chose, he might return. The heathen poet had spoken truth
when he said, ‘For we are the offspring of God.’
But where was the heavenly Father? Far away in the clear sky, in the
highest heaven beyond all suns and stars? Silent and idle, caring for no
one on earth, content in himself, and leaving sinful man to himself to go
to ruin as he chose?
‘No,’ says St. Paul, ‘He is not far off from any one of us; for in him we
live, and move, and have our being.’
Wonderful words! Eighteen hundred years have past since then, and we
have not spelt out half the meaning of them. It is such good news, such
blessed news, and yet such awful news, that we are afraid to believe it
fully. That the Almighty God should be so near us, sinful men; that we,
in spite of all our sins, should live, and move, and have our being in
God. How can it be true?
My friends, it would not be true, if something more was not true. We
should have no right to say, ‘I believe in God the Father Almighty,’
unless we said also, ‘I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.’
St. Paul, after he had told them of a Father in heaven, went on to tell
them of _a man_ whom that Father had sent to judge the world, having
raised him from the dead.—And there his sermon stopped. Those foolish
Greeks laughed at him; they would not receive the news of Jesus Christ
the Son; and therefore they lost the good news of their Father in heaven.
We can guess from St. Paul’s Epistle what he was going on to tell them.
How, by believing in Jesus Christ the Son, and claiming their share in
him, and being baptized into his name, they might become once more God’s
children, and take their place again as new men and true men in Jesus
Christ. But they would not hear his message.
Our forefathers did hear that message, and believed it; they had been
feeling after the heavenly Father, and at last they found him, and
claimed their share in Christ as sons of the heavenly Father; and
therefore we are Christian men this day, baptized into God’s family, and
thriving as God’s family must thrive, as long as it remembers that God
dwelleth not in temples made with hands, and needs nothing from man,
seeing that he gives to all life and breath and all things; and is not
far from any one of us, seeing that in him we live, and move, and have
our being, and are the offspring, the children of God.
Bear that in mind. Bear it in mind, I say, that in God you live, and
move, and have your being. Day and night, going out and coming in, say
to yourselves, ‘I am with God my Father, and God my Father is with me.
There is not a good feeling in my heart, but my heavenly Father has put
it there: ay, I have not a power which he has not given, a thought which
he does not know; even the very hairs of my head are all numbered.
Whither shall I go then from his presence? Whither shall I flee from his
Spirit? For he filleth all things. If my eyes were opened, I should see
at every moment God’s love, God’s power, God’s wisdom, working alike in
sun and moon, in every growing blade and ripening grain, and in the
training and schooling of every human being, and every nation, to whom he
has appointed their times, and the bounds of their habitation, if haply
they may seek after the Lord, and find him in whom they live, and move,
and have their being. Everywhere I should see life going forth to all
created things from God the Father, of whom are all things, and God the
Son, by whom are all things, and God the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver
of that life.’
A little of that glorious sight we may see in this life, if our hearts
and reasons are purified by the Spirit of God, to see God in all things,
and all things in God: and more in that life whereof it is written,
‘Beloved, we are now the sons of God; and it doth not yet appear what we
shall be: but this we know, that when he appears, we shall be like him,
for we shall see him as he is.’ To that life may he in his mercy bring
us all. Amen.
SERMON XXVII.
THE GOOD SHEPHERD.
JOHN x. 11.