the Father, and the Spirit of the Son likewise. For when by that Spirit
of love the Father sent the Son into the world that the world through Him
might be saved, then the Son, by the same Spirit of love, came into the
world, and humbled Himself, and took on Him the form of a slave, and was
obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross.
The Spirit of God, then, is the Spirit of love.
But the text describes this Spirit in different words. According to
Isaiah, the Spirit of the Lord is the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of Counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear
of the Lord--in one word, that I may put it as simply as I can--the
spirit of wisdom.
Now, is the spirit of wisdom the same as the spirit of love?
Sound theology, which is the highest reason, tells us that it must be so.
For consider:
If the spirit of love is the Spirit of God, and the spirit of wisdom is
the Spirit of God, then they must be the same spirit. For if they be two
different spirits, then there must be two Holy Spirits; for any and every
Spirit of God must be holy,--what else can He be? Unholy? I leave you
to answer that.
But two Holy Spirits there cannot be; for holiness, which is wisdom,
justice, and love, is one and indivisible; and as the Athanasian Creed
tells us, and as our highest reason ought to tell us, there is but one
Holy Spirit, who must be at once a spirit of wisdom and a spirit of love.
To suppose anything else; to suppose that God's wisdom and God's love, or
that God's justice and God's love, are different from each other, or
limit each other, or oppose each other, or are anything but one and the
same eternally, is to divide God's substance; to deny that God is One:
which is forbidden us, rightly, and according to the highest reason, by
the Athanasian Creed.
But more; experience will shew us that the spirit of love is the same as
the spirit of wisdom; that if any man wishes to be truly wise and
prudent, his best way--I may say his only way--is to be loving and
charitable.
The experience of the apostles proves it. They were, I presume, the most
perfectly loving and charitable of men; they sacrificed all for the sake
of doing good; they counted not their own lives dear to them; they
endured--what did they not endure?--for the one object of doing good to
men; and--what is harder, still harder, for any human being, because it
requires not merely enthusiasm, but charity, they made themselves (St
Paul at least) all things to all men, if by any means they might save
some.
But were they wise in so doing? We may judge of a man's wisdom, my
friends, by his success. We English are very apt to do so. We like
practical men. We say--I will tell you what a man is, by what he can do.
Now, judged by that rule, surely the apostles' method of winning men by
love proved itself a wise method. What did the apostles do? They had
the most enormous practical success that men ever had. They, twelve poor
men, set out to convert mankind by loving them: and they succeeded.
Remember, moreover, that the text speaks of this Spirit of the Lord being
given to One who was to be a King, a Ruler, a Guide, and a Judge of men;
who was to exercise influence over men for their good. This prophecy was
fulfilled first in the King of kings, our Lord Jesus Christ: but it was
fulfilled also in His apostles, who were, in their own way and measure,
kings of men, exercising a vast influence over them. And how? By the
royal Spirit of love. In the apostles the Spirit of love and charity
proved Himself to be also the Spirit of wisdom and understanding. He
gave them such a converting, subduing, alluring power over men's hearts,
as no men have had, before or since. And He will prove Himself to have
the same power in us. Our own experience will be the same as the
apostles' experience.
I say this deliberately. The older we grow, the more we understand our
own lives and histories, the more we shall see that the spirit of wisdom
is the spirit of love; that the true way to gain influence over our
fellow-men, is to have charity towards them.
That is a hard lesson to learn; and those who learn it at all, generally
learn it late; almost--God forgive us--too late.
Our reason, if we would let the Spirit of God enlighten it, would teach
us this beforehand. But we do not usually listen to our reason, or to
God's Spirit speaking to it. And therefore we have to learn the lesson
by experience, often by very sad and shameful experience. And even that
very experience we cannot understand, unless the Spirit of God interpret
it to us: and blessed are they who, having been chastised, hearken to His
interpretation.
Our reason, I say, should teach us that the spirit of wisdom is none
other than the spirit of love. For consider--how does the text describe
this Spirit?
As the spirit of wisdom and understanding; that is, as the knowledge of
human nature, the understanding of men and their ways. If we do not
understand our fellow-creatures, we shall never love them.
But it is equally true that if we do not love them, we shall never
understand them. Want of charity, want of sympathy, want of good-feeling
and fellow-feeling--what does it, what can it breed, but endless mistakes
and ignorances, both of men's characters and men's circumstances?
Be sure that no one knows so little of his fellow-men, as the cynical,
misanthropic man, who walks in darkness, because he hates his brother. Be
sure that the truly wise and understanding man is he who by sympathy puts
himself in his neighbours' place; feels with them and for them; sees with
their eyes, hears with their ears; and therefore understands them, makes
allowances for them, and is merciful to them, even as his Father in
heaven is merciful.
And next; this royal Spirit is described as "the spirit of counsel and
might," that is, the spirit of prudence and practical power; the spirit
which sees how to deal with human beings, and has the practical power of
making them obey.
Now that power, again, can only be got by loving human beings. There is
nothing so blind as hardness, nothing so weak as violence. I, of course,
can only speak from my own experience; and my experience is this: that
whensoever in my past life I have been angry and scornful, I have said or
done an unwise thing; I have more or less injured my own cause; weakened
my own influence on my fellow-men; repelled them instead of attracting
them; made them rebel against me, rather than obey me. By patience,
courtesy, and gentleness, we not only make ourselves stronger; we not
only attract our fellow-men, and make them help us and follow us
willingly and joyfully: but we make ourselves wiser; we give ourselves
time and light to see what we ought to do, and how to do it.
And next; this Spirit is also "the spirit of knowledge, and of the fear
of the Lord." Ay, they, indeed, both begin in love, and end in love. If
you wish for knowledge, you must begin by loving knowledge for its own
sake. And the more knowledge you gain, the more you will long to know,
and more, and yet more for ever. You cannot succeed in a study, unless
you love that study. Men of science must begin with an interest in, a
love for, an enthusiasm, in the very deepest sense of the word, for the
phaenomena which they study. But the more they learn of them, the more
their love increases; as they see more and more of their wonder, of their
beauty, of the unspeakable wisdom and power of God, shewn forth in every
blade of grass which grows in the sunshine and the rain.
And if this be true of things earthly and temporary, how much more of
things heavenly and eternal? We must begin by loving whatsoever things
are true, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, honest,
and of good report. We must begin, I say, by loving them with a sort of
child's love, without understanding them; by that simple instinct and
longing after what is good and beautiful and true, which is indeed the
inspiration of the Spirit of God. But as we go on, as St Paul bids us,
to meditate on them; and "if there be any virtue and if there be any
praise, to think on such things," and feed our minds daily with
purifying, elevating, sobering, humanizing, enlightening thoughts: then
we shall get to love goodness with a reasonable and manly love; to see
the beauty of holiness; the strength of self-sacrifice; the glory of
justice; the divineness of love; and in a word--To love God for His own
sake, and to give Him thanks for His great glory, which is: That He is a
good God.
This thought--remember it, I pray--brings me to the last point. This
Spirit is also the spirit of the fear of the Lord. And that too, my
friends, must be a spirit of love not only to God, but to our
fellow-creatures. For if we but consider that God the Father loves all;
that His mercy is over all His works; and that He hateth nothing that He
has made: then how dare we hate anything that He has made, as long as we
have any rational fear of Him, awe and respect for Him, true faith in His
infinite majesty and power? If we but consider that God the Son actually
came down on earth to die, and to die too on the cross, for all mankind:
then how dare we hate a human being for whom He died: at least if we have
true honour, gratitude, loyalty, reverence, and godly fear in our hearts
toward Him, our risen Lord?
Oh let us open our eyes this Whitsuntide to the experience of our past
lives. Let us see now--what we shall certainly see at the day of
judgment--that whenever we have failed to be loving, we have also failed
to be wise; that whenever we have been blind to our neighbours'
interests, we have also been blind to our own; whenever we have hurt
others, we have hurt ourselves still more. Let us, at this blessed
Whitsuntide, ask forgiveness of God for all acts of malice and
uncharitableness, blindness and hardness of heart; and pray for the
spirit of true charity, which alone is true wisdom. And let us come to
Holy Communion in charity with each other and with all; determined
henceforth to feel for each other and with each other; to put ourselves
in our neighbours' places; to see with their eyes, and feel with their
hearts, as far as God shall give us that great grace; determined to make
allowances for their mistakes and failings; to give and forgive, live and
let live, even as God gives and forgives, lives and lets live for ever:
that so we may be indeed the children of our Father in heaven, whose name
is Love. Then we shall indeed discern the Lord's body--that it is a body
of union, sympathy, mutual trust, help, affection. Then we shall, with
all contrition and humility, but still in spirit and in truth, claim and
obtain our share in the body and the blood, in the spirit and in the
mind, of Him Who sacrificed Himself for a rebellious world.
SERMON IV. PRAYER.
PSALM LXV. 2.
Thou that hearest prayer, unto Thee shall all flesh come.
Next Friday, the 20th of December, 1871, will be marked in most churches
of this province of Canterbury by a special ceremony. Prayers will be
offered to God for the increase of missionary labourers in the Church of
England. To many persons--I hope I may say, to all in this
congregation--this ceremony will seem eminently rational. We shall not
ask God to suspend the laws of nature, nor alter the courses of the
seasons, for any wants, real or fancied, of our own. We shall ask Him to
make us and our countrymen wiser and better, in order that we may make
other human beings wiser and better: and an eminently rational request I
assert that to be.
For no one will deny that it is good for heathens and savages, even if
there were no life after death, to be wiser and better than they are. It
is good, I presume, that they should give up cannibalism, slave-trading,
witchcraft, child-murder, and a host of other abominations; and that they
should be made to give them up not from mere fear of European cannon, but
of their own wills and consciences, seeing that such habits are wrong and
ruinous, and loathing them accordingly; in a word, that instead of living
as they do, and finding in a hundred ways that the wages of sin are
death, they should be converted--that is, change their ways--and live.
Now that this is the will of God--assuming that there is a God, and a
good God--is plain at least to our reason, and to our common sense; and
it is equally plain to our reason and to our common sense that, as God
has not taught these poor wretches to improve themselves, or sent
superior beings to improve them from some other world, He therefore means
their improvement to be brought about, as moral improvements are usually
brought about, by the influence of their fellow-men, and specially by us
who have put ourselves in contact with them in our world-wide search for
wealth; and who are certain, as we know by sad experience, to make the
heathen worse, if we do not make them better. And as we find from
experience that our missionaries, wherever they are brought in contact
with these savages, do make them wiser and happier, we ask God to inspire
more persons with the desire of improving the heathen, and to teach them
how to improve them. I say, how to improve them. All sneers, whether at
the failure of missionary labours, or at the small results in return for
the vast sums spent on missions--all such sneers, I say, instead of
deterring us from praying to God on this matter, ought to make us pray
the more earnestly in proportion as they are deserved. For they ought to
remind us that we possibly may not have gone to work as yet altogether in
the right way; that there may be mistakes and deficiencies in our method
of dealing with the heathen. And if so, it seems all the more reason for
asking God to set us and others right, in case we should be wrong; and to
make us and others strong, in case we should be weak.
We thus commit the matter to God. We do not ask God to raise up such
missionary labourers as we think fit: but such as He thinks fit. We do
not pray Him to alter His will concerning the heathen: but to enable us
to do what we know already to be His will. And this course seems to me
eminently rational; provided always, of course, that it is rational to
believe that there is a God who answers prayer; and that if we ask
anything according to His will, He hears us.
Now the older I grow, and the more I see of the chances and changes of
this mortal life, and of the needs and longings of the human heart, the
more important seems this question, and all words concerning it, whether
in the Bible or out of the Bible--
Is there anywhere in the universe any being who can hear our prayers? Is
prayer a superfluous folly, or the highest prudence?
I say--Is there a being who can even hear our prayers? I do not say, a
being who will always answer them, and give us all we ask: but one who
will at least hear, who will listen; consider whether what we ask is fit
to be granted or not; and grant or refuse accordingly.
You say--What is the need of asking such a question? Of course we
believe that. Of course we pray, else why are we in church to-day?
Well, my friends, God grant that you may all believe it in spirit and in
truth. But you must remember that if so, you are in the minority; that
the majority of civilized men, like the majority of mere savages, do not
pray, whatever the women may do; and that prayer among thinking and
civilized white men has been becoming, for the last 100 years at least,
more and more unfashionable; and is likely, to judge from the signs of
the times, to become more unfashionable still: after which reign of
degrading ungodliness, I presume--from the experience of all history--that
our children or grandchildren will see a revulsion to some degrading
superstition, and the latter end be worse than the beginning. But it is
notorious that men are doubting more and more of the efficacy of prayer;
that philosophers so-called, for true philosophers they are not--even
though they may be true, able, and worthy students of merely physical
science--are getting a hearing more and more readily, when they tell men
they need not pray.
They say; and here they say rightly--The world is ruled by laws. But
some say further; and there they say wrongly;--For that reason prayer is
of no use; the laws will not be altered to please you. You yourself are
but tiny parts of a great machine, which will grind on in spite of you,
though it grind you to powder; and there is no use in asking the machine
to stop. So, they say, prayer is an impertinence. I would that they
stopped there. For then we who deny that the world is a machine, or
anything like a machine, might argue fairly with them on the common
ground of a common belief in God.
But some go further still, and say--A God? We do not deny that there may
be a God: but we do not deny that there may not be one. This we say--If
He exists, we know nothing of Him: and what is more, you know nothing of
Him. No man can know aught of Him. No man can know whether there be a
God or not. A living God, an acting God, a God of providence, a God who
hears prayer, a God such as your Bible tells you of, is an inconceivable
Being; and what you cannot conceive, that you must not believe: and
therefore prayer is not merely an impertinence, it is a mistake; for it
is speaking to a Being who only exists in your own imagination. I need
not say, my friends, that all this, to my mind, is only a train of
sophistry and false reasoning, which--so I at least hold--has been
answered and refuted again and again. And I trust in God and in Christ
sufficiently to believe that He will raise up sound divines and true
philosophers in His Church, who will refute it once more. But meanwhile
I can only appeal to your common sense; to the true and higher reason,
which lies in men's hearts, not in their heads; and ask--And is it come
to this? Is this the last outcome of civilization, the last discovery of
the human intellect, the last good news for man? That the soundest
thinkers--they who have the truest and clearest notion of the universe
are the savage who knows nothing but what his five senses teach him, and
the ungodly who makes boast of his own desire, and speaks good of the
covetous whom God abhorreth, while he says, "Tush, God hath forgotten. He
hideth away his face, and God will never see it"?
True: these so-called philosophers would say that the savage makes a
mistake in his sensuality, and the worldling in his covetousness and his
tyranny; that from an imperfect conception of their own true
self-interest, they carry their philosophy to conclusions which the
philosopher in his study must regret. But as to their philosophy being
correct: there can be no question that if providence, and prayer, and the
living God, be phantoms of man's imagination, then the cynical worldling
at one end of the social scale, and the brutal savage at the other, are
wiser than apostles and prophets, and sages and divines.
These men talk of facts, the facts of human nature. Why do they ask us
to ignore the most striking fact of human nature, that man, even if he
were a mere animal, is alone of all animals--a praying animal? Is that
strange instinct of worship, which rises in the heart of man as soon as
he begins to think, to become a civilized being and not a savage, to be
disregarded as a childish dream when he rises to a higher civilization
still? Is the experience of men, heathen as well as Christian, for all
these ages to go for nought? Has it mattered nought whether men cried to
Baal or to God; for with both alike there has been neither sound nor
voice, nor any that answered? Has every utterance that has ever gone up
from suffering and doubting humanity, gone up in vain? Have the prayers
of saints, the hymns of psalmists, the agonies of martyrs, the
aspirations of poets, the thoughts of sages, the cries of the oppressed,
the pleadings of the mother for her child, the maiden praying in her
chamber for her lover upon the distant battle-field, the soldier
answering her prayer from afar off with, "Sleep quiet, I am in God's
hands"--those very utterances of humanity which seemed to us most noble,
most pure, most beautiful, most divine, been all in vain?--impertinences;
the babblings of fair dreams, poured forth into nowhere, to no thing, and
in vain? Has every suffering, searching soul which ever gazed up into
the darkness of the unknown, in hopes of catching even a glimpse of a
divine eye, beholding all, and ordering all, and pitying all, gazed up in
vain? For at the ground of the universe is "_not a divine eye_, _but
only a blank bottomless eye-socket_;" {39} and man has no Father in
heaven; and Christ revealed Him not, because He was not there to reveal;
and there was no hope, no remedy, no deliverance, for the miserable among
the sons of men?
Oh, my friends, those who believe, or fancy that they believe such
things, must be able to do so only through some peculiar conformation
either of brain or heart. Only want of imagination to conceive the
consequences of such doctrines can enable them, if they have any love and
pity for their fellow-men, to preach those doctrines without pity and
horror. They know not, they know not, of what they rob a mankind already
but too miserable by its own folly and its own sin; a mankind which, if
it have not hope in God and in Christ, is truly--as Homer said of
old--more miserable than the beasts of the field. If their unconscious
conceit did not make them unintentionally cruel, they would surely be
silent for pity's sake; they would let men go on in the pleasant delusion
that there is a living God, and a Word of God who has revealed Him to
men; and would hide from their fellow-creatures the dreadful secret which
they think they have discovered--That there is none that heareth prayer,
and therefore to Him need no flesh come.
Men take up with such notions, I believe, most generally in days of
comfort, ease, safety. They find the world so well ordered outwardly,
that it seems able enough to go on its way without a God. They have
themselves so few sorrows, struggles, doubts, that they never feel that
sense of helplessness, of danger, of ignorance, which has made the hearts
of men, in every age, yearn for an unseen helper, an unseen deliverer, an
unseen teacher.
And so it is--and shameful it is that so it should be--that the more God
gives to men, the less they thank Him, the less they fancy that they need
Him: but take His bounties, as they take the air they breathe,
unconsciously, and as a matter of course.
And therefore adversity is wholesome, danger is wholesome; so wholesome,
that in all ages, as far as I can find, the godliest, the most moral, the
most manful, and therefore the really happiest and most successful
nations or communities of men, have been those who were in perpetual
danger, difficulty, struggle; and who have thereby had their faith in God
called out; who have learned in the depth, to cry out of the depth to
God; to lift up their eyes unto the Lord, and know that their help comes
from Him.
I know a village down in the far West, where the 121st Psalm which I just
quoted, was a favourite, and more than a favourite. Whenever it was
given out in church--and the congregation used often to ask for it--all
joined in singing it, young and old, men and maidens, with an
earnestness, a fervour, a passion, such as I never heard elsewhere; such
as shewed how intensely they felt that the psalm was true, and true for
them. Of all congregational singing I ever heard, never have I heard any
so touching as those voices, when they joined in the old words they loved
so well.
Sheltered beneath the Almighty wings
Thou shall securely rest,
Where neither sun nor moon shall thee
By day or night molest.
At home, abroad, in peace, in war,
Thy God shall thee defend;
Conduct thee through life's pilgrimage
Safe to thy journey's end.
Do you fancy these people were specially comfortable, prosperous folk,
who had no sorrows, and lived safe from all danger, and therefore knew
that God protected them from all ill?