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[Illustration: cover]
_The World's Great Sermons_
VOLUME V
GUTHRIE TO MOZLEY
THE
WORLD'S
GREAT
SERMONS
COMPILED BY
GRENVILLE KLEISER
Formerly of Yale Divinity School Faculty;
Author of "How to Speak
in Public," Etc.
With Assistance from Many of the Foremost
Living Preachers and Other Theologians
INTRODUCTION BY
LEWIS O. BRASTOW, D.D.
Professor Emeritus of Practical Theology
in Yale University
IN TEN VOLUMES
VOLUME V--GUTHRIE TO MOZLEY
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
NEW YORK and LONDON
COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
_Printed in the United States of America_
CONTENTS
VOLUME V
GUTHRIE (1803-1873). _Page_
The New Heart 1
MAURICE (1805-1872).
The Valley of Dry Bones 23
MARTINEAU (1805-1900).
Parting Words 45
MANNING (1808-1892).
The Triumph of the Church 61
PARK (1808-1900).
The Prominence of the Atonement 87
SIMPSON (1810-1884).
The Resurrection of Our Lord 119
THEODORE PARKER (1810-1860).
The Transient and Permanent in
Christianity 147
MACLEOD (1812-1872).
The True Christian Ministry 177
MOZLEY (1813-1878).
The Reversal of Human Judgment 205
GUTHRIE
THE NEW HEART
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
THOMAS GUTHRIE, preacher, philanthropist, and social reformer, was
born at Brechin, Forfarshire, Scotland, in 1803. He spent ten years
at the University of Edinburgh and was licensed to preach by the
Presbytery of Brechin in 1825. In 1830 he was ordained minister of
Arbirlot. After a valuable experience in evangelical preaching among
the farmers, weavers and peasants of his congregation, he became one
of the ministers of Old Greyfriars Church, Edinburgh, in 1827. Lord
Cockburn described his sermons in that city as appealing equally
"to the poor woman on the steps of the pulpit" as to the "stranger
attracted solely by his eloquence." He was a great temperance
advocate, becoming a total abstainer in 1844, and has been styled
"the apostle of the ragged school movement." Retiring from the
active work of the ministry in 1864, he still remained in public
life until he died in 1873. Through long practise, Dr. Guthrie
delivered his memorized discourses as tho they fell spontaneously
from his lips. His voice has been described as powerful and musical.
He was fond of vivid illustration, and even on his death bed, as
he lay dying in the arms of his sons, he exclaimed: "I am just as
helpless in your arms now as you once were in mine."
GUTHRIE
1803-1873
THE NEW HEART
_A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put
within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh,
and I will give you an heart of flesh._--Ezekiel xxxvi., 26.
As in a machine where the parts all fit each other, and, bathed in
oil, move without din or discord, the most perfect harmony reigns
throughout the kingdom of grace. Jesus Christ is the "wisdom," as
well as the "power" of God; nor in this kingdom is anything found
corresponding to the anomalies and incongruities of the world lying
without. There we sometimes see a high station disgraced by a man of
low habits; while others are doomed to an inferior condition, who
would shine like gilded ornaments on the very pinnacles of society.
That beautiful congruity in Christ's kingdom is secured by those who
are the objects of saving mercy being so renewed and sanctified that
their nature is in harmony with their position, and the man within
corresponds to all without.
Observe how this property of "new" runs through the whole economy
of grace. When mercy first rose upon this world, an attribute of
Divinity appeared which was new to the eyes of men and angels.
Again, the Savior was born of a virgin; and He who came forth from a
womb where no child had been previously conceived, was sepulchered
in a tomb where no man had been previously interred. The infant had
a new birthplace, the crucified had a new burial-place. Again, Jesus
is the mediator of a new covenant, the author of a new testament,
the founder of a new faith. Again, the redeemed receive a new name;
they sing a new song; their home is not to be in the old, but in
the new, Jerusalem, where they shall dwell on a new earth, and walk
in glory beneath a new heaven. Now it were surely strange, when
all things else are new, if they themselves were not to partake of
this general renovation. Nor strange only, for such a change is
indispensable. A new name without a new nature were an imposture.
It were not more an untruth to call a lion a lamb, or the rapacious
vulture by the name of the gentle dove, than to give the title of
sons of God to the venomous seed of the serpent.
Then, again, unless man received a new nature, how could he sing the
new song? The raven, perched on the rock, where she whets her bloody
beak, and impatiently watches the dying struggles of some unhappy
lamb can not tune her croaking voice to the rich, mellow music of a
thrush; and, since it is out of the abundance of the heart that the
mouth speaketh, how could a sinner take up the strain and sing the
song of saints? Besides, unless a man were a new creature, he were
out of place in the new creation. In circumstances neither adapted
to his nature, nor fitted to minister to his happiness, a sinner
in heaven would find himself as much out of his element as a finny
inhabitant of the deep, or a sightless burrower in the soil, beside
an eagle, soaring in the sky, or surveying her wide domain from the
mountain crag.
In the works of God we see nothing more beautiful than the divine
skill with which He suits His creatures to their condition. He
gives wings to birds, fins to fishes, sails to the thistle-seed, a
lamp to light the glowworm, great roots to moor the cedar, and to
the aspiring ivy her thousand hands to climb the wall. Nor is the
wisdom so conspicuous in nature, less remarkable and adorable in the
kingdom of grace. He forms a holy people for a holy heaven--fits
heaven for them, and them for heaven. And calling up His Son to
prepare the mansions for their tenants, and sending down His Spirit
to prepare the tenants for their mansions, He thus establishes a
perfect harmony between the new creature and the new creation.
You can not have two hearts beating in the same bosom, else you
would be, not a man, but a monster. Therefore, the very first thing
to be done, in order to make things new, is just to take that which
is old out of the way. And the taking away of the old heart is,
after all, but a preparatory process. It is a means, but not the
end. For, strange as it may at first sound, he is not religious who
is without sin. A dead man is without sin; and he is sinless, who
lies buried in dreamless slumber, so long as his eyes are sealed.
Now, God requires more than a negative religion. Piety, like fire,
light, electricity, magnetism, is an active, not a passive element;
it has a positive, not merely a negative existence. For how is pure
and undefiled religion defined? "Pure religion and undefiled is to
visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction." And on whom
does Jesus pronounce His beatitude? "If ye know these things, happy
are ye if ye do them." And what is the sum of practical piety--the
most portable form in which you can put an answer to Saul's
question, "Lord, what wouldst thou have me to do?" What but this,
"Depart from evil, and do good." Therefore, while God promises to
take the stony heart out of our flesh, He promises more. In taking
away one heart, He engages to supply us with another; and to this
further change and onward stage in the process of redemption, I now
proceed to turn your attention.
By way of general observation, I remark that our affections are
engaged in religion. An oak--not as it stands choked up in the
crowded wood, with room neither to spread nor breathe, but as it
stands in the open field, swelling out below where it anchors its
roots in the ground, and swelling out above where it stretches
its arms into the air,--presents us with the most perfect form of
firmness, self-support, stout and sturdy independence. So perfectly
formed, indeed, is the monarch of the forest to stand alone, and
fight its own battles with the elements, that the architect of
the Bell Rock lighthouse is said to have borrowed his idea of its
form from God in nature, and that, copying the work of a divine
Architect, he took the trunk of the oak as the model of a building
which was to stand the blast of the storm, and the swell of the
winter seas.
Observe, that although the state of the natural affections does
not furnish any certain evidence of conversion, it is the glory
of piety that these are strengthened, elevated, sanctified by the
change. The lover of God will be the kindest, best, wisest lover
of his fellow-creatures. The heart that has room in it for God,
grows so large, that it finds room for all God's train, for all
that He loves, and for all that He has made; so that the Church,
with all its denominations of true Christians, the world, with all
its perishing sinners, nay, all the worlds which He has created,
find orbit-room to move, as in an expansive universe, within the
capacious enlargement of a believer's heart. For while the love of
sin acts as an astringent--contracting the dimensions of the natural
heart, shutting and shriveling it up--the love of God expands and
enlarges its capacity. Piety quickens the pulse of love, warms and
strengthens our heart, and sends forth fuller streams of natural
affection toward all that have a claim on us, just as a strong and
healthy heart sends tides of blood along the elastic arteries to
every extremity of the body.
This new heart, however, mainly consists in a change of the
affections as they regard spiritual objects. Without again traveling
over ground which we have already surveyed, just look at the heart
and feelings of an unconverted man. His mind being carnal, is enmity
or hatred against God. This may be latent, not at first sight
apparent, nor suspected, but how soon does it appear when put to the
proof? Fairly tried, it comes out like those unseen elements which
chemical tests reveal. Let God, for instance, by His providences or
laws, thwart the wishes or cross the propensities of our unrenewed
nature--let there be a collision between His will and ours--and the
latent enmity flashes out like latent fire when the cold black flint
is struck with steel.
In conversion God gives a new spirit. Conversion does not bestow
new faculties. It does not turn a weak man into a philosopher.
Yet, along with our affections, the temper, the will, the judgment
partake of this great and holy change. Thus, while the heart ceases
to be dead, the head, illuminated by a light within, ceases to be
dark; the understanding is enlightened; the will is renewed; and our
whole temper is sweetened and sanctified by the Spirit of God. To
consider these in their order, I remark--
By this change the understanding and judgment are enlightened.
Sin is the greatest folly, and the sinner the greatest fool in
the world. There is no such madness in the most fitful lunacy.
Think of a man risking eternity and his everlasting happiness on
the uncertain chance of surviving another year. Think of a man
purchasing a momentary pleasure at the cost of endless pain. Think
of a dying man living as if he were never to die. Is there a convert
to God who looks back upon his unconverted state, and does not say
with David, "Lord, I was as a beast before Thee."
Now conversion not only restores God to the heart, but reason
also to her throne. Time and eternity are now seen in their just
proportions--in their right relative dimensions; the one in its
littleness, and the other in its greatness. When the light of heaven
rises on the soul, what grand discoveries does she make--of the
exceeding evil of sin, of the holiness of the divine law, of the
infinite purity of divine justice, of the grace and greatness of
divine love. On Sinai's summit and on Calvary's cross, what new,
sublime, affecting scenes open on her astonished eyes! She now, as
by one convulsive bound, leaps to the conclusion that salvation is
the one thing needful, and that if a man will give all he hath for
the life that now is, much more should he part with all for the life
to come. The Savior and Satan, the soul and body, holiness and sin,
have competing claims. Between these reason now holds the balance
even, and man finds, in the visit of converting grace, what the
demoniac found in Jesus' advent. The man whose dwelling was among
the tombs, whom no chains could bind, is seated at the feet of
Jesus, "clothed, and in his right mind."
By this change the will is renewed. Bad men are worse, and good men
are better than they appear. In conversion the will is so changed
and sanctified, that altho a pious man is in some respects less,
in other respects he is more holy than the world gives him credit
for. The attainments of a believer are always beneath his aims; his
desires are nobler than his deeds; his wishes are holier than his
works. Give other men their will, full swing to their passions, and
they would be worse than they are; give that to him, and he would be
better than he is. And if you have experienced the gracious change,
it will be your daily grief that you are not what you not only know
you should be, but what you wish to be. To be complaining with
Paul, "When I would do good, evil is present with me; that which I
would I do not, and what I would not, that I do," is one of the best
evidences of a gracious, saving change.
Children of God! let not your souls be cast down. This struggle
between the new will and the old man--painful and prolonged altho
it be--proves beyond all doubt the advent of the Holy Spirit. Until
the Savior appeared there was no sword drawn, nor blood shed in
Bethlehem, nor murderous decree issued against its innocents--they
slept safely in their mothers' bosoms, Herod enjoyed his security
and pleasure, and Rachel rose not from her grave to weep for her
children because they were not. Christ's coming rouses all the
devil in the soul. The fruits of holy peace are reaped with swords
on the fields of war; and this struggle within your breast proves
that grace, even in its infancy a cradled Savior, is engaged in
strangling the old Serpent. When the shadow of calamity falls on
many homes, and the tidings of victory come with sad news to many
a family, and the brave are lying thick in the deadly breach, men
comfort us by saying, that there are things worse than war. That is
emphatically true of this holy war. Rejoice that the peace of death
is gone.
By conversion the temper and disposition are changed and sanctified.
Christians are occasionally to be found with a tone of mind and a
temper as little calculated to recommend their faith as to promote
their happiness. I believe that there are cases in which this is
due to a deranged condition of the nervous system, or the presence
of disease in some other vital organ. These unhappy persons are
more deserving of our pity than our censure. This is not only the
judgment of Christian charity, but of sound philosophy, and is a
conclusion to which we are conducted in studying the union between
mind and body, and the manner in which they act and re-act upon each
other. So long as grace dwells in a "vile body," which is the seat
of frequent disorder and many diseases--these infirmities of temper
admit no more, perhaps, of being entirely removed, than a defect of
speech, or any physical deformity. The good temper for which some
take credit may be the result of good health and a well-developed
frame--a physical more than a moral virtue; and an ill temper,
springing from bad health, or an imperfect organization, may be a
physical rather than a moral defect--giving its victim a claim on
our charity and forbearance. But, admitting this apology for the
unhappy tone and temper of some pious men, the true Christian will
bitterly bewail his defect, and, regretting his infirmity more than
others do a deformity, he will carefully guard and earnestly pray
against it. Considering it as a thorn in his flesh, a messenger
of Satan sent to buffet him, it will often send him to his knees
in prayer to God, that the grace which conquers nature may be made
"sufficient for him."
I pray you to cultivate the temper that was in Jesus Christ. Is he
like a follower of the Lamb who is raging like a roaring lion? Is
he like a pardoned criminal who sits moping with a cloud upon his
brow? Is he like an heir of heaven, like a man destined to a crown,
who is vexed and fretted with some petty loss? Is he like one in
whose bosom the dove of heaven is nestling, who is full of all
manner of bile and bitterness? Oh, let the same mind be in you that
was in Jesus. A kind, catholic, gentle, loving temper is one of the
most winning features of religion; and by its silent and softening
influence you will do more real service to Christianity than by
the loudest professions, or the exhibition of a cold and skeleton
orthodoxy. Let it appear in you, that it is with the believer under
the influence of the Spirit as with fruit ripened beneath the genial
influences of heaven's dews and sunbeams. At first hard, it grows
soft; at first sour, it becomes sweet; at first green, it assumes
in time a rich and mellow color; at first adhering tenaciously to
the tree, when it becomes ripe, it is ready to drop at the slightest
touch. So with the man who is ripening for heaven. His affections
and temper grow sweet, soft, mellow, loose from earth and earthly
things. He comes away readily to the hand of death, and leaves the
world without a wrench.
In conversion God gives a heart of flesh. "I will give you a heart
of flesh."
Near by a stone, a mass of rock that had fallen from the overhanging
crag, which had some wild flowers growing in its fissures, and
on its top the foxglove, with its spike of beautiful but deadly
flowers, we once came upon an adder as it lay in ribbon coil,
basking on the sunny ground. At our approach the reptile stirred,
uncoiled itself, and raising its venomous head, with eyes like
burning coals, it shook its cloven tongue, and, hissing, gave
signs of battle. Attacked, it retreated; and, making for that gray
stone, wormed itself into a hole in its side. Its nest and home
were there. And in looking on that shattered rock--fallen from its
primeval elevation--with its flowery but fatal charms, the home
and nest of the adder, where nothing grew but poisoned beauty, and
nothing dwelt but a poisoned brood, it seemed to us an emblem of
that heart which the text describes as a stone, which experience
proves is a habitation of devils, and which the prophet pronounces
to be desperately wicked. I have already explained why the heart
is described as a stone. It is cold as a stone; hard as a stone;
dead and insensible as a stone. Now, as by the term "flesh" we
understand qualities the very opposite of these, I therefore remark
that--
In conversion a man gets a warm heart.
Let us restrict ourselves to a single example. When faith receives
the Savior, how does the heart warm to Jesus Christ! There is music
in His name. "His name is an ointment poured forth." All the old
indifference to His cause, His people, and the interests of His
kingdom, has passed away; and now these have the warmest place in a
believer's bosom, and are the object of its strongest and tenderest
affections. The only place, alas! that religion has in the hearts
of many is a burial-place; but the believer can say with Paul,
"Christ liveth in me." Nor is his heart like the cottage of Bethany,
favored only with occasional visits. Jesus abides there in the
double character of guest and master, its most loving and best loved
inmate; and there is a difference as great between that heart as it
is, and that heart as it was, as between the warm bosom where the
Infant slept or smiled in Mary's arms and the dark, cold sepulcher
where weeping followers laid and left the Crucified.
Is there such a heart in you? Do you appreciate Christ's matchless
excellences? Having cast away every sin to embrace him, do you set
him above your chiefest joy? Would you leave father, mother, wife,
children, to follow Him, with bleeding feet, over life's roughest
path? Rather than part with Him, would you part with a thousand
worlds? Were He now on earth, would you leave a throne to stoop
and tie His latchet? If I might so speak, would you be proud to
carry His shoes? Then, indeed, you have got the new, warm heart
of flesh. The new love of Christ, and the old love of the world,
may still meet in opposing currents; but in the war and strife of
these antagonistic principles, the celestial shall overpower the
terrestrial, as, at the river's mouth, I have seen the ocean tide,
when it came rolling in with a thousand billows at its back, fill
all the channel, carry all before its conquering swell, dam up the
fresh water of the land, and drive it back with resistless power.
In conversion a man gets a soft heart.
As "flesh," it is soft and sensitive. It is flesh, and can be
wounded or healed. It is flesh, and feels alike the kiss of kindness
and the rod of correction. It is flesh; and no longer a stone,
hard, obdurate, impenetrable to the genial influences of heaven.
A hard block of ice, it has yielded to the beams of the sun, and
been melted into flowing water. How are you moved now, stirred now,
quickened now, sanctified now, by truths once felt no more than
dews falling out of starry heavens, in soft silence upon rugged
rock. The heart of grace is endowed with a delicate sensibility, and
vibrates to the slightest touch of a Savior's fingers. How does the
truth of God affect it now! A stone no longer, it melts under the
heavenly fire--a stone no longer, it bends beneath the hammer of the
word; no longer like the rugged rock, on which rains and sunbeams
were wasted, it receives the impression of God's power, and retains
the footprints of His presence. Like the flowers that close their
eyes at night, but waken at the voice of morning, like the earth
that gapes in summer drought, the new heart opens to receive the
bounties of grace and the gifts of heaven. Have you experienced such
a change? In proof and evidence of its reality, is David's language
yours--"I have stretched out my hands unto thee. My soul thirsteth
after thee as a thirsty land"?
In conversion a man gets a living heart.
The perfection of this life is death--it is dead to be sin, but
alive to righteousness, alive to Christ, alive to everything which
touches His honor, and crown, and kingdom. With Christ living in
his heart, the believer feels that now he is not himself, not his
own; and, as another's, the grand object of his life is to live to
Christ. He reckons him an object worth living for, had he a thousand
lives to live; worth dying for, had he a thousand deaths to die. He
says with Paul, "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live."
In the highest sense alive, he is dead, dead to things he was once
alive to; and he wishes that he were more dead to them, thoroughly
dead. He wishes that he could look on the seductions of the world,
and sin's voluptuous charms, with the cold, unmoved stare of death,
and that these had no more power to kindle a desire in him than in
the icy bosom of a corpse. "Understandest thou what thou readest?"
It is a mark of grace that the believer, in his progress heavenward,
grows more and more alive to the claims of Jesus. If you "know the
love of Christ," His is the latest name you will desire to utter;
His is the latest thought you will desire to form; upon Him you will
fix your last look on earth; upon Him your first in heaven. When
memory is oblivious of all other objects--when all that attracted
the natural eye is wrapt in the mists of death, when the tongue is
cleaving to the roof of our mouth, and speech is gone, and sight is
gone, and hearing gone, and the right hand, lying powerless by our
side, has lost its cunning, Jesus! then may we remember Thee! If the
shadows of death are to be thrown in deepest darkness on the valley,
when we are passing along it to glory, may it be ours to die like
that saint, beside whose bed wife and children once stood, weeping
over the wreck of faded faculties, and a blank, departed memory. One
had asked him, "Father, do you remember me?" and received no answer;
and another, and another, but still no answer. And then, all making
way for the venerable companion of a long and loving pilgrimage--the
tender partner of many a past joy and sorrow, his wife draws near.
She bends over him, and as her tears fall thick upon his face, she
cries, "Do you not remember me?" A stare, but it is vacant. There
is no soul in that filmy eye; and the seal of death lies upon these
lips. The sun is down, and life's brief twilight is darkening fast
into a starless night. At this moment, one calm enough to remember
how the love of Christ's spouse is "strong as death," a love that
"many waters can not quench," stooped to his ear, and said, "Do
you remember Jesus Christ?" The word was no sooner uttered than it
seemed to recall the spirit, hovering for a moment, ere it took
wing to heaven. Touched as by an electric influence, the heart beat
once more to the name of Jesus; the features, fixt in death, relax;
the countenance, dark in death, flushes up like the last gleam of
day; and, with a smile in which the soul passed away to glory, he
replied, "Remember Jesus Christ! dear Jesus Christ! He is all my
salvation, and all my desire."
By conversion man is ennobled.
While infidelity regards man as a mere animal, to be dissolved at
death into ashes and air, and vice changes man into a brute or
devil, Mammon enslaves him. She makes him a serf, and condemns him
to be a gold-digger for life in the mines. She puts her collar
on his neck, and locks it; and bending his head to the soil, and
bathing his brow in sweat, she says, Toil, toil, toil; as if this
creature, originally made in the image of God, this dethroned and
exiled monarch, to save whom the Son of God descended from the
skies, and bled on Calvary, were a living machine, constructed of
sinew, bone, and muscle, and made for no higher end than to work to
live, and live to work.
Contrast with these the benign aspect in which the gospel looks
on man. Religion descends from heaven to break our chains. She
alone raises me from degradation, and bids me lift my drooping
head, and look up to heaven. Yes; it is that very gospel which by
some is supposed to present such dark, degrading, gloomy views of
man and his destiny, which lifts me from the dust to set me among
princes--on a level with angels--in a sense above them. To say
nothing of the divine nobility grace imparts to a soul which is
stamped anew with the likeness and image of God, how sacred and
venerable does even this body appear in the eye of piety! No longer
a form of animated dust; no longer the subject of passions shared in
common with the brutes; no longer the drudge and slave of Mammon,
the once "vile body" rises into a temple of the Holy Ghost. Vile in
one sense it may be; yet what, although it be covered with sores?
What, although it be clothed in rags? What, although, in unseemly
decrepitude, it want its fair proportions? That poor, sickly,
shattered form is the casket of a precious jewel. This mean and
crumbling tabernacle lodges a guest nobler than palaces may boast
of; angels hover around its walls; the Spirit of God dwells within
it. What an incentive to holiness, to purity of life and conduct,
lies in the fact that the body of a saint is the temple of God,
a truer, nobler temple than that which Solomon dedicated by his
prayers, and Jesus consecrated His presence! In popish cathedrals,
where the light streamed through painted window, and the organ
pealed along lofty aisles, and candles gleamed on golden cups and
silver crosses, and incense floated in fragrant clouds, we have
seen the blinded worshiper uncover his head, drop reverently on his
knees, and raise his awestruck eye on the imposing spectacle; we
have seen him kiss the marble floor, and knew that sooner would he
be smitten dead upon that floor than be guilty of defiling it. How
does this devotee rebuke us! We wonder at his superstition; how may
he wonder at our profanity! Can we look on the lowly veneration he
expresses for an edifice which has been erected by some dead man's
genius, which holds but some image of a deified virgin, or bones of
a canonized saint, and which, proudly as it raises its cathedral
towers, time shall one day cast to the ground, and bury in the
dust; can we, I say, look on that, and, if sensible to rebuke,
not feel reproved by the spectacle? In how much more respect, in
how much holier veneration should we hold this body? The shrine
of immortality, and a temple dedicated to the Son of God, it is
consecrated by the presence of the Spirit--a living temple, over
whose porch the eye of piety reads what the finger of inspiration
has written: "If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God
destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are."
MAURICE
THE VALLEY OF DRY BONES
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE, English divine and author, was born in
1805. He was the son of a Unitarian clergyman, and after studying
in Cambridge began a literary career in London, where his friend
Coleridge and others persuaded him to take orders in the Church of
England. In 1836 he was appointed chaplain to Guy's Hospital. In
1840 he was elected professor of English literature and history
and in 1846 of divinity at King's College, London, but lost both
positions in 1853 because of his radical views. He was professor of
moral philosophy at Cambridge from 1860 until his death in 1872.
MAURICE
1805-1872
THE VALLEY OF DRY BONES
_The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit
of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was
full of bones, and caused me to pass by them round about. And behold
there were very many in the open valley, and lo, they were very
dry. And he said unto me, "Son of man, can these bones live?" And I
answered, "O Lord God, thou knowest."_--EZEK. xxxvii., 1-3.
We are naturally curious to know whether two contemporary prophets
ever conversed with each other. In Micah we found such evident
indications of sympathy with the mind of Isaiah as warranted the
supposition that he was his pupil. I can not trace any signs of
a similar relation, or indeed of any personal relation, between
Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Tho they were passing through the same crisis;
tho they had both to witness the evils which were destroying their
nation; both to share its miseries; tho the false prophets were the
common enemies of both; yet their circumstances, their character,
and their work were entirely distinct, in some points even
contrasted. Their very differences, however, show us that they were
both alike prophets and priests.
The Book of Lamentations exhibits the spirit of the individual man
Jeremiah more transparently than his longer book, which is so mixed
up with historical details, with anticipations of a ruin not yet
accomplished, with hopes, however faint and soon dispelled, of a
national repentance. Most of those whom the prophet had denounced
were banished or dead. Men could talk no more about the temple of
the Lord, could boast no more that the word of the Lord was with
them; the vessel which the potter was shaping had been broken to
pieces. The sadness of the prophet, which had been checked sometimes
by indignation, sometimes by the consciousness of a word which must
still be spoken, of a work which must be done, became complete and
absorbing. Heretofore his intense sympathy with his country might
seem to be qualified by his lively apprehension of its crimes;
now both feelings were blended into one. When he looked upon the
desolation of the city there sat upon his soul a weight of sorrow
and evil, as if he were representing his whole people, as if there
was no wrong which they had committed, no evil habits which they
had contracted, which did not cling to him, for which he was not
responsible. And this was no imaginary fictitious state of mind into
which he had worked himself. God had made him inwardly conscious of
the very corruptions which had destroyed the land. If he had made
any fight against them; if they did not actually overpower him and
enslave him, this was God's work and not his; the promise of the
covenant made with his fathers, which was as good for every one as
for himself, was fulfilled to him. And now he was realizing the full
effect of this discipline. The third chapter of the Lamentations,
beginning "I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of His
wrath," contains the climax of his experience. In the memorable
passages which follow, the history of a life is gathered up. "I
said, My strength and my hope is perished from the Lord; remembering
mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall. My soul
hath them still in remembrance. This I recall to mind, therefore
have I hope. It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed.
They are new every morning; great is thy faithlessness. The Lord is
my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him. The Lord
is good unto them that wait for him. It is good that a man should
both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord. It is good
for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. He sitteth alone and
keepeth silence, because he hath borne it upon him. He putteth his
mouth in the dust if so be there may be hope. He giveth his cheek to
him that smiteth him, he is filled full with reproach. The Lord will
not cast off for ever; but tho he cause grief, yet will he have
compassion according to the multitude of his mercies for he doth not
afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men."
Anything more individual than these utterances it is impossible
to conceive; and yet it is just by these that one understands the
sacerdotal work to which Jeremiah was called. There was no longer
any temple. The priests as well as the princes had been for the most
part carried away by Nebuchadnezzar. But there was a man walking
about in the deserted city to which the twelve tribes had come
up,--in the midst of the ruins of the holy place into which the
sons of Aaron had gone with the memorial of their names on their
breastplates,--who really entered into the meaning of that function,
who really bore the iniquities of the children of Israel before the
Lord;--one to whom it was given to translate the ceremonies and
services of the divine house into life and reality. He had been
taught more perfectly, perhaps, than anyone who had served in the
temple, what was implied in its worship and sacrifices. He felt the
burden to which those sacrifices pointed, the burden of individual
and national sins. Yet, with that burden resting upon him, he could
enter into the presence of the Holy One of Israel. He was sure there
was a deliverance for his people as well as for himself; that there
could not be one for him if there was not also one for them. Thus
when part of his work was over, when he had nothing more to say in
the ears of kings or priests or people, this office,--which had been
so closely connected with his prophetical office, and which, if it
had depended upon outward conditions, must have been more entirely
at an end than that,--still remained in all its original power. And
the words of the prophet remained to explain to all generations the
spiritual character and acts of the priest.
The office of the priest must have seemed to be more utterly extinct
for Ezekiel than even for Jeremiah. He was forcibly removed from
all the associations of the temple while it was yet standing. When
he was called to be a prophet to the captives by the river Chebar,
he might have supposed that the earlier designation which belonged
to him as one of the Levitical family, had been extinguished in
the later one. Yet we have seen how he was instructed, at the
very commencement of his work as a prophet, that the glory of
Him who filled the temple was surrounding him in Mesopotamia as
it surrounded him when he went up to present the morning or the
evening sacrifice in Jerusalem. Such a vision was given him of
that glory as he had never beheld in the holy place. He found that
the earth,--that common, profane, Babylonian earth upon which he
dwelt,--was filled with it. All the powers of nature, the forms of
animals, man as the highest of the animals, the motions and order
of the outward world and of human society, were pointing towards it.
And the central object, the highest object which he could behold,
tho there was an ineffable brightness beyond, was a Man upon a
throne, One who could command him, in whose name he was to go forth,
whose words he was to speak.
This was no isolated revelation or dream. The very name which the
prophet thenceforth bore, the name by which he was to know himself,
depended upon it. "Son of man, stand upon thy feet and I will speak
unto thee," were the first words which he heard after he fell upon
his face. That great title is bestowed upon him through all the time
in which he was prophesying. It was in many ways more suitable to
him than to those who had gone before him. There was now no Hezekiah
or Josiah to represent the Divine king. The witnesses for the
kingdom seemed to be at an end. Nebuchadnezzar was the lord of the
earth. At such a time the natural position of the Jewish seer became
a human position. The Israelite's glory was to be a "Son of man."
Yet he was not absolved from any of the obligations of the older
prophets; he was not to expect a more willing or attentive audience
among captives than they had found at home; briars, thorns would be
with him; he must dwell among scorpions. Lamentations and mourning
and woe filled his roll as much as that which Baruch wrote out for
Jeremiah. And he must eat this roll; it must become a part of his
very soul; its words must come forth living and burning out of
himself.
He must understand, besides, all the fearful responsibilities of
the prophet. He was to speak whether the men about him would hear
or whether they would forbear. There were times when his tongue
would cleave to the roof of his mouth, when he should be dumb and
should not be to them a reprover. But when God opened his lips,
the blood of those to whom he was sent was upon him; it would be
required at his hands if they died in their iniquity and he had
not warned them. He must submit to do all symbolical acts, however
strange and fantastical they might seem in themselves, which might
bring the feeling of coming judgments home to a sense-bound people.
He must act a mimic siege, he must eat defiled bread; he must cut
off his hair and weigh it in balances, if so the people could be
made to understand,--in spite of their false prophets who spoke of
coming peace and enacted their signs, which of course involved no
discomfort or humiliation to themselves,--that the city would really
be destroyed and the sanctuary laid waste. He was to persuade his
brother captives that they were a remnant in which the nation still
lived, a stock out of which it should hereafter grow and flourish,
even tho they were most rebellious, dreaming of good things which
would never come, not waiting for that good which God had designed
for them. There was to be the same end in all the punishments which
were coming upon the land and in all its deliverances. God was
saying in all "I am the Lord."
This sentence recurs again and again in the prophecies of Ezekiel.
It is the thought of his mind, the one which gives all the sublimity
and all the practical worth to his discourses,--that the knowledge
of God is the supreme good of man, and that the desolation of his
countrymen has come from their not liking to retain it. He is
transported in spirit to the temple. There the same vision of the
glory of God which he had seen by the river returns to him. The
light of it shows him, portrayed upon the wall of the temple round
about, the abominable beasts and creeping things, and the idols
of the house of Israel; what the ancients of the house of Israel
did in the dark, every one in the chambers of his imagery; how the
women were weeping for Tammuz; how the men were worshiping the sun
towards the east. Whether such abominations as these were actually
to be seen in the temple, or whether the prophet's eye opened by the
divine Spirit saw that they were possessing the hearts of those who
seemed to others, perhaps to themselves, to be worshiping the God
of their fathers, it is clear that the mind of Ezekiel was led back
to the place in which he had ministered, that he might be taught
how little the sacred building could preserve the truth which was
enshrined in it.
What Ezekiel has seen in the temple enables him to answer the elders
of Israel when they come to consult him in his own house. Just what
was going on among those who worshiped in Jerusalem, was going on
in the hearts of those who sought his oracles. They were setting
up idols there. They wanted to know what God would do with them or
against them; they did not want to know Him. And therefore Ezekiel
announces to them a great and eternal moral law, one of the most
varied application; "God will answer you according to your idols."
The truth which is presented to you, will be colored, distorted,
inverted by the eye which receives it. The covetousness which you
are cherishing will make the best and divinest word you hear, a
minister of covetousness. Your pride and your lust will make it a
minister of lust and pride. No bolder or more awful paradox was ever
enunciated than this, nor one which the conscience of everyone will
more surely verify. And there was this special proof of courage in
making such an announcement, that it must have destroyed Ezekiel's
reputation as a prophet. The elders came in terror, feeling that
they wanted guidance and expecting some ready-made answer, such as
the regular traders in prophecy could always furnish. The truly
inspired man answers, "I can tell you nothing,--nothing at least
that will not deceive you and become a lie in your minds. For you
bring lies in your minds, and except they be extirpated, they
must convert whatever is added to them from without, to their own
quality."
Ezekiel himself illustrates in another case this great principle.
No commandment had established itself more completely by the
experience of the people to whom it was addrest, than the second.
The idolatries of the land had accumulated with each generation.
Each had cause to complain of the last as bequeathing it a stock
of corrupt habits and traditions; the sins of the fathers had been
visited upon the children. These were facts not to be gainsaid. The
captives had leisure to reflect upon them. It might have been a most
profound and profitable reflection.
The use they made of it was to prove they were under a necessary law
of degeneracy. How could they help themselves? The fathers had eaten
sour grapes, and their teeth were set on edge. Who dared dispute it?
There was God's own word for it. Had he not told them the plan and
method of His own government? Such language addrest to one of the
favorite preachers or prophets of the people, would have silenced
him altogether. He would have said, "It is a mystery, no doubt; we
must take the words of the commandment tho we can not understand
them. God is Sovereign; He can do what He likes. If it pleases
Him that each generation should be more corrupt than the last, we
must submit and not dispute His will." Others there would be who
would complain boldly and with good reason of a will that compelled
to evil, but yet would lazily submit to it, supposing it to be
inevitable, tho feeling the absurdity of calling it divine. Ezekiel
boldly stands forth to dispute and deny the whole principle. He does
not dispute or deny the second commandment,--that was probably the
text of his discourse. But he will not let the second commandment
or any other words in the world be pleaded against the character of
God. Righteousness and equity he maintains to be the foundations
of the divine character and of the divine acts. He will tolerate
no resolution of them into a heathenish notion of sovereignty or
self-will. "The ways of God are equal," he says, "and your ways are
unequal." The sins of the father only descend upon the son, they
are only punished in the son, when the son accepts them, entertains
them, makes them his own. At any time he may turn round and
repudiate them and cleave to the God who doth not will the death of
the sinner, but desires that he should return and live. The doctrine
of the second commandment and of the whole law, is that a man is
righteous so long as he cleaves to the righteous God who has made
a covenant with him, unrighteous when he forsakes that covenant
and acts independently. Therefore the notion of any perpetuity in
righteousness, or in evil, is equally cut off. Every man has the
capacity of righteousness, the capacity of evil. Let him be ever so
righteous, he must become evil the moment he ceases to trust in God
and begins to trust in himself. Let him be ever so evil, he must
become righteous the moment he begins to trust in God and ceases to
trust in himself.
The enunciation of laws or principles seems more especially to
belong to Ezekiel, as the experience of personal evil and the
sympathy with national sorrow belong more to the tender and womanly
nature of Jeremiah. Nevertheless, Ezekiel was to be a priest in this
sense also, as well as in that higher sense of beholding the glory
of God and proclaiming His name. Suffering was not the destination
of one prophet; it was the badge of all the tribe. Ezekiel's life
was to be a continual parable, illustrative of the life of the
nation. A man scrupulously careful of the law, was to violate the
precepts of it respecting food, and to eat what was loathsome. A man
sensitive probably as to his reputation, and with that kind of lofty
imagination which makes attention to details and all petty acts
unspeakably painful, must submit, for the sake of his countrymen,
to such as seemed most ignominious to himself and perplexing to
them. Finally, the desire of his eyes must be taken from him with a
stroke, and he must not mourn or weep. Even at such a time he must
be a sign to the people, tho by doing so he should seem to refuse
the sympathy that he most wants, and should only lead the captives
to say, "Wilt thou not tell us what these things are to us that thou
doest so?"
Apart from these sufferings which concern him individually and
domestically, the vision of the desolation of Israel became every
day more overwhelming to him. Nor was it only the desolation of
Israel. He who was called "Son of man," was not likely to speak less
of Egypt and Tyrus and the land in which he was himself dwelling,
than those older prophets who had so many more reasons for regarding
Judea as the one garden of the Lord. The arms of Nebuchadnezzar had
been turning the earth upside down and making it waste. Everything
must have seemed to him disjointed, incoherent, withered. Could it
ever be renovated? Was it possible even for that country which God
had blest above all others and man had curst above all others, to
breathe and live again?