New Testament which is not already taught us in the Old? Where is that
new, deeper, higher revelation of the goodness of God, which Jesus of
Nazareth preached, and which John and Paul and all the apostles believed
that they had found in Jesus Himself? They believed, and all those who
accepted their gospel believed, that they had found for that word
"grace," a deeper meaning than had ever been revealed to the prophets of
old time; that grace and goodness, if they were perfect, involved self-
sacrifice.
And does not our own highest reason tell us that they were right? Does
not our own highest reason, which is our moral sense, tell us that
perfect goodness requires, not merely that we should pity our
fellow-creatures, not merely that we should help them, not merely that we
should right them magisterially and royally, without danger or injury to
ourselves: but that we should toil for them, suffer for them, and if need
be, as the highest act of goodness, die for them at last? Is not this
the very element of goodness which we all confess to be most noble,
beautiful, pure, heroical, divine? Divine even in sinful and fallen man,
who must forgive because he needs to be forgiven; who must help others
because he needs help himself; who, if he suffers for others, deserves to
suffer, and probably will suffer, in himself. But how much more
heroical, and how much more divine in a Being who needs neither
forgiveness nor help, and who is as far from deserving as He is from
needing to suffer! And shall this noblest form of goodness be possible
to sinful man, and yet impossible to a perfectly good God? Shall we say
that the martyr at the stake, the patriot dying for his country, the
missionary spending his life for the good of heathens; ay more, shall we
say that those women, martyrs by the pang without the palm, who in secret
chambers, in lowly cottages, have sacrificed and do still sacrifice self
and all the joys of life for the sake of simple duties, little charities,
kindness unnoticed and unknown by all, save God--shall we say that all
who have from the beginning of the world shewn forth the beauty of self-
sacrifice have had no divine prototype in heaven?--That they have been
exercising a higher grace, a nobler form of holiness, than He who made
them, and who, as they believe, and we ought to believe, inspired them
with that spirit of unselfishness, which if it be not the Spirit of God,
whose spirit can it be? Shall we say this, and so suppose them holier
than their own Maker? Shall we say this, and suppose that they, when
they attributed self-sacrifice to God, made indeed a God in their own
image, but a God of greater love, greater pity, greater graciousness
because of greater unselfishness, than Him who really exists?
Shall we say this, the very words whereof confute themselves and shock
alike our reason and our conscience? Or shall we say with St John and
with St Paul, that if men can be so good, God must be infinitely better;
that if man can love so much, God must love more; if man, by shaking off
the selfishness which is his bane, can do such deeds, then God, in whom
is no selfishness at all, may at least have done a deed as far above
theirs as the heavens are above the earth? Shall we not confess that
man's self-sacrifice is but a poor and dim reflection of the
self-sacrifice of God, and say with St John, "Herein is love, not that we
loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation
for our sins;" and with St Paul, "Scarcely for a righteous man would one
die, but God commendeth His love to us in this, that while we were yet
sinners, Christ died for us"? Shall we not say this: and find, as
thousands have found ere now, in the Cross of Calvary the perfect
satisfaction of our highest moral instincts, the realization in act and
fact of the highest idea which we can form of perfect condescension,
namely, self-sacrifice exercised by a Being of whom perfect
condescension, love and self-sacrifice were not required by aught in
heaven or earth, save by the necessity of His own perfect and
inconceivable goodness?
We reverence, and rightly, the majesty of God. How can that infinite
majesty be proved more perfectly than by condescension equally infinite?
We adore, and justly, the serenity of God, who has neither parts nor
passions. How can that serenity be proved more perfectly, than by
passing, still serene, through all the storm and crowd of circumstance
which disturb the weak serenity of man; by passing through poverty,
helplessness, temptation, desertion, shame, torture, death; and passing
through them all victorious and magnificent; with a moral calm as
undisturbed, a moral purity as unspotted, as it had been from all
eternity, as it will be to all eternity, in that abysmal source of being,
which we call the Bosom of the Father? It is the moral majesty of God,
as shewn on Calvary, which I uphold. Shew that Calvary was not
inconsistent with that; shew that Calvary was not inconsistent with the
goodness of God, but rather the perfection of that goodness shewn forth
in time and space: then all other arguments connected with God's majesty
may go for nought, provided that God's moral majesty be safe. Provided
God be proved to be morally infinite--that is, in plain English,
infinitely good; provided God be proved to be morally absolute--that is,
absolutely unable to have His goodness affected by any circumstance
outside Him, even by the death upon the Cross: then let the rest go. All
words about absoluteness and infinity and majesty, beyond that, are
physical--metaphors drawn from matter, which have nothing to do with God
who is a Spirit.
But God's infinite power too often means, in the minds of men, only some
abstract notion of boundless bodily strength. God's omniscience too
often means, only some physical fancy of innumerable telescopic or
microscopic eyes. God's infinite wisdom too often means, only some
abstract notion of boundless acuteness of brain. And lastly--I am sorry
to have to say it, but it must be said,--God's infinite majesty too often
means, in the minds of some superstitious people, mere pride, and
obstinacy, and cruelty, as of the blind will of some enormous animal
which does what it chooses, whether right or wrong.
If the mystery of the Cross contradict any of these carnal or material
notions, so much the more glory to the mystery of the Cross. One
spiritual infinite, one spiritual absolute, it does not contradict: and
that is the infinite and absolute goodness of God.
Let all the rest remain a mystery, so long as the mystery of the Cross
gives us faith for all the rest.
Faith, I say. The mystery of evil, of sorrow, of death, the Gospel does
not pretend to solve: but it tells us that the mystery is proved to be
soluble. For God Himself has taken on Himself the task of solving it;
and has proved by His own act, that if there be evil in the world, it is
none of His; for He hates it, and fights against it, and has fought
against it to the death.
It simply says--Have faith in God. Ask no more of Him--Why hast Thou
made me thus? Ask no more--Why do the wicked prosper on the earth? Ask
no more--Whence pain and death, war and famine, earthquake and tempest,
and all the ills to which flesh is heir?
All fruitless questionings, all peevish repinings, are precluded
henceforth by the passion and death of Christ.
Dost thou suffer? Thou canst not suffer more than the Son of God. Dost
thou sympathize with thy fellow-men? Thou canst not sympathize more than
the Son of God. Dost thou long to right them, to deliver them, even at
the price of thine own blood? Thou canst not long more ardently than the
Son of God, who carried His longing into act, and died for them and thee.
What if the end be not yet? What if evil still endure? What if the
medicine have not yet conquered the disease? Have patience, have faith,
have hope, as thou standest at the foot of Christ's Cross, and holdest
fast to it, the anchor of the soul and reason, as well as of the heart.
For however ill the world may go, or seem to go, the Cross is the
everlasting token that God so loved the world, that He spared not His
only-begotten Son, but freely gave Him for it. Whatsoever else is
doubtful, this at least is sure,--that good must conquer, because God is
good; that evil must perish, because God hates evil, even to the death.
SERMON II. THE PERFECT LOVE.
1 JOHN IV. 10.
Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent
His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
This is Passion-week; the week in which, according to ancient and most
wholesome rule, we are bidden to think of the Passion of Jesus Christ our
Lord. To think of that, however happy and comfortable, however busy and
eager, however covetous and ambitious, however giddy and frivolous,
however free, or at least desirous to be free, from suffering of any
kind, we are ourselves. To think of the sufferings of Christ, and learn
how grand it is to suffer for the Right.
And why?
Passion-week gives but one answer: but that answer is the one best worth
listening to.
It is grand and good to suffer for the Right, because God, in Christ, has
suffered for the Right.
Let us consider this awhile.
It is a first axiom in sound theology, that there is nothing good in man,
which was not first in God.
Now we all, I trust, hold God to be supremely good. We ascribe to Him,
in perfection, every kind of goodness of which we can conceive in man. We
say God is just; God is truthful; God is pure; God is bountiful; God is
merciful; and, in one word, God is Love.
God is Love. But if we say that, do we not say that God is good with a
fresh form of goodness, which is not justice, nor truthfulness, nor
purity, bounty, nor mercy, though without them--never forget that--it
cannot exist? And is not that fresh goodness, which we have not defined
yet, the very kind of goodness which we prize most in human beings? The
very kind of goodness which makes us prize and admire love, because
without it there is no true love, no love worth calling by that sacred
and heavenly name? And what is that?
What--save self-sacrifice? For what is the love worth which does not
shew itself in action; and more, which does not shew itself in Passion,
in the true sense of that word, which this week teaches us: namely, in
suffering? Not merely in acting for, but in daring, in struggling, in
grieving, in agonizing, and, if need be, in dying for, the object of its
love?
Every mother in this church will give but one answer to that question;
for mothers give it among the very animals; and the deer who fights for
her fawn, the bird who toils for her nestlings, the spider who will
rather die than drop her bag of eggs, know at least that love is not
worth calling love, unless it can dare and suffer for the thing it loves.
The most gracious of all virtues, therefore, is self-sacrifice; and is
there no like grace in God, the fount of grace? Has God, whose name is
Love, never dared, never suffered, even to the death, in the mightiness
of a perfect Love?
We Christians say that He has. We say so, because it has been revealed
to us, not by flesh and blood, not by brain or nerves, not by logic or
emotions, but by the Spirit of God, to whom our inmost spirits and
highest reasons have made answer--A God who has suffered for man? That
is so beautiful, that it must be true.
For otherwise we should be left--as I have argued at length elsewhere--in
this strange paradox:--that man has fancied to himself for 1800 years a
more beautiful God, a nobler God, a better God than the God who actually
exists. It must be so, if God is not capable of that highest virtue of
self-sacrifice, while man has been believing that He is, and that upon
the first Good Friday He sacrificed Himself for man, out of the intensity
of a boundless Love. A better God imagined by man, than the actual God
who made man? We have only to state that absurdity, I trust, to laugh it
to scorn.
Let us confess, then, that the Passion of Christ, and the mystery of Good
Friday, is as reasonable a belief to the truly wise, as it is comfortable
to the weary and the suffering; let us agree that one of the wisest of
Englishmen, of late gone to his rest, spoke well when he said, "As long
as women and sorrow exist on earth, so long will the gospel of
Christianity find an echo in the human heart." Let it find an echo in
yours. But it will only find one, in as far as you can enter into the
mystery of Passion-week; in as far as you can learn from Passion-week the
truest and highest theology; and see what God is like, and therefore what
you must try to be like likewise.
Let us think, then, awhile of the mystery of Passion-week; the mystery of
the Cross of Christ. Christ Himself was looking on the coming Cross,
during this Passion-week; ay, and for many a week before. Nay rather,
had He not looked on it from all eternity? For is He not the Lamb slain
from the foundation of the world? Therefore we may well look on it with
Him. It may seem, at first, a painful bight. But shall it cast over our
minds only gloom and darkness? Or shall we not see on the Cross the full
revelation of Light; of the Light which lightens every man that comes
into the world: and find that painful, not because of its darkness, but
as the blaze of full sunshine is painful, from unbearable intensity of
warmth and light? Let us see.
On the Cross of Calvary, then, God the Father shewed His own character
and the character of His co-equal and co-eternal Son, and of The Spirit
which proceeds from both. For there He spared not His only-begotten Son,
but freely gave Him for us. On the Cross of Calvary, not by the will of
man, but by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, was offered
before God the one and only full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice,
oblation, and satisfaction for the sin of the whole world. God Himself
did this. It was not done by any other being to alter His will; it was
done to fulfil His will. It was not done to satisfy God's anger; it was
done to satisfy God's love. Therefore Good Friday was well and wisely
called by our forefathers Good Friday; because it shews, as no other day
can do, that God is good; that God's will to men, in spite of all their
sins, is a good will; that so boundless, so utterly unselfish and
condescending, is the eternal love of God, that when an insignificant
race in a small and remote planet fell, and went wrong, and was in danger
of ruin, there was nothing that God would not dare, God would not suffer,
for the sake of even such as us, vile earth and miserable sinners.
Yes, this is the good news of Passion-week; a gospel which men are too
apt to forget, even to try to forget, as long as they are comfortable and
prosperous, lazy and selfish. The comfortable prosperous man shrinks
from the thought of Christ on His Cross. It tells him that better men
than he have had to suffer; that The Son of God Himself had to suffer.
And he does not like suffering; he prefers comfort. The lazy, selfish
man shrinks from the sight of Christ on His Cross; for it rebukes his
laziness and selfishness. Christ's Cross says to him--Thou art ignoble
and base, as long as thou art lazy and selfish. Rise up, do something,
dare something, suffer something, if need be, for the sake of thy fellow-
creatures. Be of use. Take trouble. Face discomfort, contradiction,
loss of worldly advantage, if it must be, for the sake of speaking truth
and doing right. If thou wilt not do as much as that, then the simplest
soldier who goes to die in battle for his duty, is a better man than
thou, a nobler man than thou, more like Christ and more like God. That
is what Christ's Cross preaches to the lazy, selfish man; and he feels in
his heart that the sermon is true: but he does not like it. He turns
from it, and says in his heart--Oh! Christ's Cross is a painful subject,
and Passion-week and Good Friday a painful time. I will think of
something more genial, more peaceful, more agreeable than sorrow, and
shame, and agony, and death; Good Friday is too sad a day for me.
Yes, so a man says too often, as long as the fine weather lasts, and all
is smooth and bright. But when the tempest comes; when poverty comes,
affliction, anxiety, shame, sickness, bereavement, and still more, when
persecution comes on a man; when he tries to speak truth and do right;
and finds, as he will too often find, that people, instead of loving him
and praising him for speaking truth and doing right, hate him and
persecute him for it: then, then indeed Passion-week begins to mean
something to a man; and just because it is the saddest of all times, it
looks to him the brightest of all times. For in his misery and confusion
he looks up to heaven and asks--Is there any one in heaven who
understands all this? Does God understand my trouble? Does God feel for
my trouble? Does God care for my trouble? Does God know what trouble
means? Or must I fight the battle of life alone, without sympathy or
help from God who made me, and has put me here? Then, then does the
Cross of Christ bring a message to that man such as no other thing or
being on earth can bring. For it says to him--God does understand thee
utterly. For Christ understands thee. Christ feels for thee. Christ
feels with thee. Christ has suffered for thee, and suffered with thee.
Thou canst go through nothing which Christ has not gone through. He, the
Son of God, endured poverty, fear, shame, agony, death for thee, that He
might be touched with the feeling of thine infirmity, and help thee to
endure, and bring thee safe through all to victory and peace.
But again, Passion-week, and above all Good Friday, is a good time,
because it teaches us, above all days, what it is to be good, and what
goodness means. Therefore remember this, all of you, and take it home
with you for the year to come. He who has learnt the lesson of Passion-
week, and practises it; he and he only is a good man.
Nay more, Passion-week tells us, I believe, what is the law according to
which the whole world of man and of things, yea, the whole universe, sun,
moon, and stars, is made: and that is, the law of self-sacrifice; that
nothing lives merely for itself; that each thing is ordained by God to
help the things around it, even at its own expense. That is a hard
saying: and yet it must be true. The soundest Theology and the highest
Reason tell us that it must be so. For there cannot be two Holy Spirits.
Now the Spirit by which the Lord Jesus Christ sacrificed himself upon the
Cross is The Holy Spirit. And the Spirit by which the Lord Jesus Christ
made all worlds is The Holy Spirit. But the spirit by which He
sacrificed Himself on the Cross is the spirit of self-sacrifice. And
therefore the spirit by which He made the world is the spirit of self-
sacrifice likewise; and self-sacrifice is the law and rule on which the
universe is founded. At least, that is the true Catholic faith, as far
as my poor intellect can conceive it; and in that faith I will live and
die.
There are those who, now-a-days, will laugh at such a notion, and
say--Self-sacrifice? It is not self-sacrifice which keeps the world
going among men, or animals, or even the plants under our feet: but
selfishness. Competition, they say, is the law of the universe.
Everything has to take care of itself, fight for itself, compete freely
and pitilessly with everything round it, till the weak are killed off,
and only the strong survive; and so, out of the free play of the self-
interest of each, you get the greatest possible happiness of the greatest
possible number.
Do we indeed? I should have thought that unbridled selfishness, and the
internecine struggle of opposing interests, had already reduced many
nations, and seemed likely to reduce all mankind, if it went on, to that
state of the greatest possible misery of the greatest number, from which
our blessed Lord, as in this very week, died to deliver us. At all
events, if that is to be the condition of man, and of society, then man
is not made in the likeness of God, and has no need to be led by the
Spirit of God. For what the likeness of God and the Spirit of God are,
Passion-week tells us--namely, Love which knows no self-interest; Love
which cares not for itself; Love which throws its own life away, that it
may save those who have hated it, rebelled against it, put it to a
felon's death.
My good friends, instead of believing the carnal and selfish philosophy
which cries, Every man for himself--I will not finish the proverb in this
Holy place, awfully and literally true as the latter half of it
is--instead of believing that, believe the message of Passion-week, which
speaks rather thus: telling us that not selfishness, but unselfishness,
mutual help and usefulness, is the law and will of God; and that
therefore the whole universe, and all that God has made, is very good.
And what does Passion-week say to men?
"Could we but crush that ever-craving lust
For bliss, which kills all bliss; and lose our life,
Our barren unit life, to find again
A thousand lives in those for whom we die:
So were we men and women, and should hold
Our rightful place in God's great universe,
Wherein, in heaven and earth, by will or nature,
Nought lives for self. All, all, from crown to footstool.
The Lamb, before the world's foundation slain;
The angels, ministers to God's elect;
The sun, who only shines to light a world;
The clouds, whose glory is to die in showers;
The fleeting streams, who in their ocean graves
Flee the decay of stagnant self-content;
The oak, ennobled by the shipwright's axe;
The soil, which yields its marrow to the flower;
The flower which breeds a thousand velvet worms,
Born only to be prey to every bird--
All spend themselves on others; and shall man,
Whose twofold being is the mystic knot
Which couples earth and heaven--doubly bound,
As being both worm and angel, to that service
By which both worms and angels hold their lives--
Shall he, whose very breath is debt on debt,
Refuse, forsooth, to see what God has made him?
No, let him shew himself the creatures' lord
By freewill gift of that self-sacrifice
Which they, perforce, by nature's law must suffer;
Take up his cross, and follow Christ the Lord."
And thus Passion-week tells all men in what true goodness lies. In self-
sacrifice. In it Christ on His Cross shewed men what was the likeness of
God, the goodness of God, the glory of God--to suffer for sinful man.
On this day Christ said--ay, and His Cross says still, and will say to
all eternity--Wouldest thou be good? Wouldest thou be like God? Then
work, and dare, and, if need be, suffer, for thy fellow-men. On this day
Christ consecrated, and, as it were, offered up to the Father in His own
body on the Cross, all loving actions, unselfish actions, merciful
actions, generous actions, heroic actions, which man has done, or ever
will do. From Him, from His Spirit, their strength came; and therefore
He is not ashamed to call them brethren. He is the King of the noble
army of martyrs; of all who suffer for love, and truth, and justice'
sake; and to all such he says--Thou hast put on my likeness, and followed
my footsteps; thou hast suffered for my sake, and I too have suffered for
thy sake, and enabled thee to suffer in like wise; and in Me thou too art
a son of God, in whom the Father is well pleased.
Oh, let us contemplate this week Christ on His Cross, sacrificing Himself
for us and all mankind; and may that sight help to cast out of us all
laziness and selfishness, and make us vow obedience to the spirit of self-
sacrifice, the Spirit of Christ and of God, which was given to us at our
baptism. And let us give, as we are most bound, in all humility and
contrition of heart, thanks, praise, and adoration, to that immortal
Lamb, who abideth for ever in the midst of the throne of God, the Lamb
slain before the foundation of the world, by Whom all things consist; and
Who in this week died on the Cross in mortal flesh and blood, that He
might make this a good week to all mankind, and teach selfish man that
only by being unselfish can he too be good; and only by self-sacrifice
become perfect, even as The Father in heaven is perfect.
SERMON III. THE SPIRIT OF WHITSUNTIDE.
ISAIAH XI. 2.
The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him; the spirit of wisdom and
understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of
knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.
This is Isaiah's description of the Spirit of Whitsuntide; the royal
Spirit which was to descend, and did descend without measure, on the
ideal and perfect King, even on Jesus Christ our Lord, the only-begotten
Son of God.
That Spirit is the Spirit of God; and therefore the Spirit of Christ.
Let us consider a while what that Spirit is.
He is the Spirit of love. For God is love; and He is the Spirit of God.
Of that there can be no doubt.