joined in that psalm, but knew that he carried his life in his hand from
year to year, that any day might see him a corpse--drowned at sea. Hardly
a woman who sang that psalm but had lost a husband, a father, a brother,
a kinsman--drowned at sea. And yet they believed that God preserved
them. They were fishers and sailors, earning an uncertain livelihood, on
a wild and rocky coast. A sudden shift of wind might make, as I knew it
once to make, 60 widows and orphans in a single night. The fishery for
the year might fail, and all the expense of boats and nets be thrown
away. Or in default of work at home, the young men would go out on
voyages to foreign parts: and often never came back again, dying far from
home, of fever, of wreck, of some of the hundred accidents which befal
seafaring men. And yet they believed that God preserved them. Surely
their faith was tried, if ever faith was tried. But as surely their
faith failed not, for--if I may so say--they dared not let it fail. If
they ceased to trust God, what had they to trust in? Not in their own
skill in seamanship, though it was great: they knew how weak it was, on
which to lean. Not in the so-called laws of nature; the treacherous sea,
the wild wind, the uncertain shoals of fish, the chances and changes of a
long foreign voyage. Without trust in God, their lives must have been
lives of doubt and of terror, for ever anxious about the morrow: or else
of blind recklessness, saying, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we
die." Because they kept their faith in God, their lives were for the
most part lives of hardy and hopeful enterprise; cheerful always, in bad
luck as in good; thankful when their labours were blest with success; and
when calamity and failure came, saying with noble resignation--"I have
received good from the hand of the Lord, and shall I not receive evil?
Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him."
It is a life like theirs, mixed with danger and uncertainty, which most
calls out faith in God. It is the life of safety and comfort, in which
our wants are all supplied ready to our hand, which calls it out least.
And therefore it is that life in cities, just because it is most safe and
most comfortable, is so often, alas, most ungodly, at least among the
men. Less common, thank God, is this ungodliness among the women. The
nursing of the sick; the cares of a family, often too sorrows, manifold
and bitter, put them continually in mind of human weakness, and of their
own weakness likewise. Yes. It is sorrow, my friends, sorrow and
failure, which forces men to believe that there is One who heareth
prayer, forces them to lift up their eyes to One from whom cometh their
help. Before the terrible realities of danger, death, bereavement,
disappointment, shame, ruin--and most of all before deserved shame,
deserved ruin--all the arguments of the conceited sophist melt away like
the maxims of the comfortable worldling; and the man or woman who was but
too ready a day before to say, "Tush, God will never see, and will never
hear," begins to hope passionately that God does see, that God does hear.
In the hour of darkness; when there is no comfort in man nor help in man,
when he has no place to flee unto, and no man careth for his soul: then
the most awful, the most blessed of all questions is: But is there no one
higher than man to whom I can flee? No one higher than man who cares for
my soul and for the souls of those who are dearer to me than my own soul?
No friend? No helper? No deliverer? No counsellor? Even no judge? No
punisher? No God, even though He be a consuming fire? Am I and my
misery alone together in the universe? Is my misery without any meaning,
and I without hope? If there be no God: then all that is left for me is
despair and death. But if there be, then I can hope that there is a
meaning in my misery; that it comes to me not without cause, even though
that cause be my own fault. I can plead with God like poor Job of old,
even though in wild words like Job; and ask--What is the meaning of this
sorrow? What have I done? What should I do? "I will say unto God, Do
not condemn me; shew me wherefore thou contendest with me. Surely I
would speak unto the Almighty, and desire to reason with God."
"I would speak unto the Almighty, and desire to reason with God." Oh my
friends, a man, I believe, can gain courage and wisdom to say that, only
by the inspiration of the Spirit of God.
But when once he has said that from his heart, he begins to be justified
by faith. For he has had faith in God; he has trusted God enough to
speak to God who made him; and so he has put himself, so far at least,
into his just and right place, as a spiritual and rational being, made in
the image of God.
But more, he has justified God. He has confessed that God is not a mere
force or law of nature; nor a mere tyrant and tormentor: but a reasonable
being, who will hear reason, and a just being, who will do justice by the
creatures whom He has made.
And so the very act of prayer justifies God, and honours God, and gives
glory to God; for it confesses that God is what He is, a good God, to
whom the humblest and the most fallen of His creatures dare speak out the
depths of their abasement, and acknowledge that His glory is this--That
in spite of all His majesty, He is one who heareth prayer; a being as
magnificent in His justice, as He is magnificent in His majesty and His
might.
All this is argued out, as it never has been argued out before or since,
in the book of Job: and for seeing so much as this, was Job approved by
God. But there is a further question, to which the book of Job gives no
answer; and to which indeed all the Old Testament gives but a partial
answer. And that is this--This just and magnificent God, has He also
human pity, tenderness, charity, condescension, love? In one word, have
we not only a God in heaven, but a Father in heaven?
That question could only be answered by the coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Truly He said--No one cometh to the Father, but by me. No man
hath seen God at any time: but the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom
of the Father, He hath revealed Him. He revealed Him in part to Abraham,
in part to Moses, to Job, to David, to the prophets. But He revealed Him
perfectly when He said--I and the Father are one. He that hath seen me
hath seen the Father. Yes. Now we can find boundless comfort in the
words, "Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy
Ghost"--Love and condescension without bounds. Now we know that there is
A Man in the midst of the throne of God, who is the brightness of God's
glory and the express image of His character; a high priest who can be
touched with the feeling of our infirmities, seeing that He was tempted
in all things like as we are, yet without sin.
To Him we can cry, with human passion and in human words; because we know
that His human heart will respond to our human hearts, and that His human
heart again will respond to His divine Spirit, and that His divine Spirit
is the same as the divine Spirit of His Father; for their wills and minds
are one; and their will and their mind is--boundless love to sinful man.
Yes, we can look up by faith into the sacred face of Christ, and take
refuge by faith within His sacred heart, saying--If it be good for me, He
will give what I ask: and if He gives it not, it is because that too is
good for me, and for others beside me. In all the chances and changes of
this mortal life we can say to Him, as He said in that supreme hour--"If
it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless not my will, but
thine, be done," sure that He will present that prayer to His Father, and
to our Father, and to His God and to our God; and that whatsoever be the
answer vouchsafed by Him whose ways are not as our ways, nor His thoughts
as our thoughts, the prayer will not have gone up to Christ in vain.
And in such a case as this of missions to the heathen--If we believe that
Christ died for these poor heathen; if we believe that Christ loves these
poor heathen infinitely more than we, or than the most devoted missionary
who ever lived or died for them: shall we say--Then we may leave them in
Christ's hands to follow their own nature. If He is satisfied with their
degradation, so may we be? Shall we not rather say--Their misery and
degradation must pain His sacred heart, far more than our sinful hearts;
and if He does not come down again on earth to help them Himself, it must
be because He means to help them through us, His disciples? Let us ask
Him to teach us and others how to help them; to enable us and others to
help them. Let us pray to Him the one prayer which, unless prayer be a
dream, is certain to be answered, because it is certainly according to
God's will; the prayer to be taught and helped to do our duty by our
fellow-men. And for the rest: let us pray in the words of that most
noble of all collects, to pray which is to take refuge from our own
ignorance in the boundless wisdom of God's love--"Thou who knowest our
necessities before we ask, and our ignorance in asking: Have compassion
on our infirmities, and those things which for our unworthiness we dare
not, and for our blindness we cannot ask, condescend to give us, for the
worthiness of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."
SERMON V. THE DEAF AND DUMB.
ST MARK VII. 32-37.
And they bring unto Jesus one that was deaf, and had an impediment in
his speech; and they beseech Him to put His hand upon him. And He
took him aside from the multitude, and put His fingers into his ears,
and He spit, and touched his tongue; and looking up to heaven, He
sighed, and said, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. And straightway his
ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he
spake plain. . . . And they were beyond measure astonished, saying, He
hath done all things well: He maketh both the deaf to hear, and the
dumb to speak.
Our greatest living philologer has said, and said truly--"If wonder
arises from ignorance, it is from that conscious ignorance which, if we
look back at the history of most of our sciences, has been the mother of
all human knowledge. Till men began to wonder at the stratification of
rocks, and the fossilization of shells, there was no science of Geology.
Till they began to wonder at the words which were perpetually in their
mouths, there was no science of Language."
He might have added, that till men began to wonder at the organization of
their own bodies, there was no science of healing; that in proportion as
the common fact of health became mysterious and marvellous in their eyes,
just in that proportion did they become able to explain and to conquer
disease. For there is a deep difference between the wonder of the
uneducated or half-educated man, and the wonder of the educated man.
The ignorant in all ages have wondered at the exception; the wise, in
proportion as they have become wise, have wondered at the rule.
Pestilences, prodigies, portents, the results of seeming accidents,
excite the vulgar mind. Only the abnormal or casual is worthy of their
attention. The man of science finds a deeper and more awful charm in
contemplating the results of law; in watching, not what seem to be
occasional failures in nature: but what is a perpetual and calm success.
The savage knows not, I am told, what wonder means, save from some
prodigy. Seeing no marvel in the daily glory of the sunlight, he is
startled out of his usual stupidity and carelessness by the occurrence of
an eclipse, an earthquake, a thunderbolt. The uneducated, whatever their
rank may be, are apt to be more interested by the sight of deformities,
and defects or excesses in nature, than by that of the most perfect
normal and natural beauty.
Those, in the same way, who in the infancy of European science, thought
it worth while to register natural phenomena, registered exclusively the
exceptions. Eclipses, meteors, auroras, earthquakes, storms, and
especially monstrosities, animal or vegetable, exercised their barbaric
wonder. The mystery and miracle which underlies the unfolding of every
bud, the development of every embryo, the growth of every atom of tissue,
in any organism, animal or vegetable--to all this their intellectual eye
was blind. How different from such a state of mind, that calm and
constant wonder, humbling and yet inspiring, with which the modern man of
science searches into the "open mystery" of the universe; and sees that
the true marvel lies, not in the infringement of law, but in its
permanence; not in the imperfect, but in the perfect; not in disease, but
in health; not in deformity, but in beauty.
These words are true of all nature; and specially true, it seems to me,
of our outward senses and faculties; true of sight, hearing, speech. The
wonder, I think, with the wise man will be, not that there are deaf and
dumb persons to be found here and there among us: but that the average,
nay, the majority of mankind, are not deaf and dumb. Paradoxical as this
assertion may seem at first, a little thought I believe will prove it to
be reasonable.
Whatever view you take of the origin of sight, hearing, voice, the wonder
to a thoughtful mind is just the same; how, under the storm of
circumstances, and through the lapse of ages, those faculties have not
been lost again and again, by countless individuals, nay, by the whole
species. For we must confess that those faculties are gradually
developed in each individual; that every animal and every human being
which is born into the world, has built up, unconsciously, involuntarily,
and as it were out of nothing, those delicate and complex organs, by
which he afterwards learns to see, hear, and utter sounds. Is not the
wonder, that he should, in the majority of cases, succeed without any
effort of his own?
And if I am answered, that the success is owing to hereditary tendencies,
and to the laws by which the offspring resembles the parents, I answer:
Is not that a greater wonder still? A wonder which all the discoveries
of the scalpel and the microscope have been as yet unable, and will be, I
believe, to the last unable, to unravel, even to touch? A wonder which
can be explained by no theories of vibratory atoms, vital forces, plastic
powers of nature, or other such phrases, which are but metaphysical
abstractions, having no counterpart in fact, and only hiding from us our
ignorance of the vast and venerable unknown. The physiologist, when he
considers the manifold combination of innumerable microscopic
circumstances which are required to bring any one creature into the world
with a perfectly hearing ear, ought to confess that the chances--if the
world were governed by chance--are infinitely greater in favour of a
child's being born with an imperfect ear rather than with a perfect one.
And if he should evade the difficulty; and try to explain the usual
success by saying that nature is governed by law: I answer--What is
nature? What is law? You never saw nature nor law either under the
microscope. They too are metaphysical abstractions, necessary notions
and conceptions of your own brain. You have seen nothing but the fact
and the custom; and all you can do, if you be strictly rational, is with
a certain modern school to say, with a despairing humility, which I
deplore while I respect--deploring it because it is needless despair, and
yet respecting it because it is humility, which is the path out of
despair and darkness into hope and light--to say with them, "Man can know
nothing of causes, he can only register positive facts." This, I say, is
one path--one which I trust none here will tread. The only other path, I
believe, is, to go back to the lessons which we ought to have learnt in
our childhood, for those to whom the human race owes most learnt them
thousands of years ago; and to ascribe the ever successful miracles of
nature to a Will, to a Mind, to a Providence so like that which each of
us exercises in his own petty sphere, that we are not only able to
understand in part the works of God, but to know from the very fact of
being able to understand them--as one of our greatest astronomers has so
well said lately--that we are made in the image of God. To say with the
old Psalmist, that the universe is governed by "a law which cannot be
broken:" but why? Because God has given it that law. To say "All things
continue as they were at the beginning:" but why? Because all things
serve Him in whom we live and move and have our being. To confess the
mystery and miracle of our mortal bodies, and say with David, "I am
fearfully and wonderfully made; such knowledge is too wonderful and
excellent for me, I cannot attain unto it:" but to add the one only
rational explanation of the mystery which, thank God, common sense has
taught, though it may be often in confused and defective forms, to the
vast majority of the human race in all times and all lands--that He who
grasps the mystery and works the miracle is God; that "His eye sees our
substances yet being imperfect; and in His book are all our members
written, which day by day were fashioned, when as yet there were none of
them."
And then to go forward with the Psalmist, and with the common sense of
humanity; to conclude that if there be a Creator, there must also be a
Providence; that that life-giving Spirit which presided over the creation
of each organism presides also over its growth, its circumstances, its
fortunes; and to say with David, "Whither shall I go then from Thy
Spirit, or whither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I climb up to
heaven, Thou art there. If I go down to hell, Thou art there also. If I
take the wings of the morning, and remain in the uttermost parts of the
sea; even there Thy hand shall lead me; Thy right hand shall hold me
still."
Yes. To this--to faith and adoration--ought right and reason to lead the
physical philosopher. And to what ought it to lead us, who are most of
us, I presume, not physical philosophers? To gratitude, surely, not
unmixed with fear and trembling; till we say to ourselves--Who am I, to
boast? Who am I, to pride myself on possessing a single faculty which
one of my neighbours may want? What have I, that I did not receive?
Considering the endless chances of failure, if the world were left to
chance; and I may say, the absolute certainty of failures, if the world
were left to the blind competition of merely physical laws, is it not
only of the Lord's mercies that we are not failures too? that we have not
been born crippled, blind, deaf, dumb--what not?--by the effect of
circumstances over which we have had no control; which have been working,
it may be, for generations past, in the organizations of our ancestors?
But what shall we say of those who have not received what we have
received? What shall we say of those who, like the deaf and dumb, are,
in some respects at least, failures--instances in which the laws which
regulate our organization have not succeeded in effecting a full
development?
We can say this, at least, without entangling and dazzling ourselves in
speculations about final causes; without attempting to pry into the
mystery of evil.
We can say this: That if there be a God--as there is a God--these
failures are not according to His will. The highest reason should teach
us that; for it must tell us that in the work of the Divine Artist, as in
the work of the human, imperfection, impotence, disorder of any kind,
must be contrary to the mind and will of the Creator. The highest
reason, I say, teaches us this. And Scripture teaches it like wise. For
if we believe our Lord to have been as He was--the express image of the
Almighty Father; if we believe that He came--as He did come--to reveal to
men His Father's will, His Father's mind, His Father's character: then we
must believe that He acted according to that will and according to that
character, when He made the healing of disease, and the curing of
imperfections of this very kind, an important and an integral part of His
work on earth.
"And they brought unto Jesus one that was deaf, and had an impediment in
his speech, and besought Him to put His hand upon him. And Jesus took
him aside from the multitude, and put His fingers into his ears; and He
spit, and touched his tongue; and looking up to heaven, He sighed, and
said unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. And straightway his ears
were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain
. . . And they were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all
things well: He maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak."
Consider this story awhile. He healed the man miraculously, by means at
which we cannot guess, which we cannot even conceive. But the healing
signified at least two things--that the man could be healed, and that the
man ought to be healed; that his bodily defect--the retribution of no sin
of his own--was contrary to the will of that Father in Heaven, who
willeth not that one little one should perish.
But Jesus sighed likewise. There was in Him a sorrow, a compassion, most
human and most divine.
It may have been--may He forgive me if I dare rashly to impute motives or
thoughts to Him--that there was something too of a divine weariness--I
dare not say impatience, seeing how patient He was then and how patient
He has been since for more than 1800 years--of the folly and ignorance of
man, who brings on himself and on his descendants these and a hundred
other preventible miseries, simply because he will not study and obey the
physical laws of the universe; simply because he will not see that those
laws which concern the welfare of his body, are as surely the will of God
as those which concern the welfare of his soul; and that therefore it is
not merely his interest but his solemn duty to study and to obey them,
lest he bear the punishment of his own neglect and disobedience.
It is not for man even to guess what thoughts may have passed through the
mind of Christ when He sighed over the very defect which He was healing.
But it is surely not irreverent in us to say that our Lord had cause
enough to sigh, if He foresaw the follies of mankind during an age which
was too soon to come.--How men, instead of taking the spirit of His
miracles and acting on it, would counterfeit the mere outward signs of
them, to feed the vanity or the superstition of a few devotees. How,
instead of looking on His miracles as rebukes to their own ignorance and
imbecility; instead of perceiving that their bodily afflictions were
contrary to the will of God, and therefore curable; instead of setting
themselves to work manfully, in the light of God, and by the help of God,
to discover and correct the errors which produced them, mankind would
idle away precious centuries in barbaric wonder at seeming prodigies and
seeming miracles, and would neglect utterly the study of those far more
wondrous laws of nature which Christ had proved to be under His
government and His guidance, and had therefore proved to be working for
the good of those for whom He came to die. Christ had indeed sown good
seed in His field. He had taught men by His miracles, as He had taught
them by His parables, to Whom nature belonged, and Whose laws nature
obeyed. And the cessation of miracles after the time of Christ and His
Apostles had taught, or ought to have taught, mankind a further lesson;
the lesson that henceforth they were to carry on for themselves, by the
faculties which God had given them, that work of healing and deliverance
which He had begun. Miracles, like prophecies, like tongues, like
supernatural knowledge, were to cease and vanish away: but charity,
charity which devotes itself for the welfare of the human race, was to
abide for ever.
Christ, as I said, had sown good seed: but an enemy--we know not whence
or when--certainly within the three first centuries of the Church--came
and sowed tares among that wheat. Then began men to believe that devils,
and not their Father in Heaven, were, to all practical intents, the lords
of nature. Then began they to believe that man's body was the property
of Satan, and his soul only the property of God. Then began they to
fancy that man was to be delivered from his manifold earthly miseries,
not by purity and virtue, reason and knowledge, but by magic, masked
under the sacred name of religion. No wonder if, in such a temper of
mind, the physical amelioration of the human race stood still. How could
it be otherwise, while men refused to see in facts the acted will of God;
and sought not in God's universe, but in the dreams of their own brains,
for glimpses of that divine and wonderful order by which The eternal
Father and The eternal Son are working together for ever through The
eternal Spirit for the welfare of the universe?
We boast, my friends, at times, of the rapid triumphs of modern science.
Were we but aware of the vast amount of preventible misery around us, and
of the vast possibility of removing it, which lies in the little science
which we know already, we should rather bewail the slow departure of
modern barbarism.