which man might not have been infinitely healthier, happier, more
prosperous, more long-lived than he has been, if he had only believed
that disease, misery, and premature death were not the will of God and of
Christ; and that God had endowed him with an intellect which could
understand the laws of the universe, in order that he might use those
laws for his own health, wealth, and life. Very late is society in
commencing that rational course on which it ought to have entered
centuries ago; and therefore very culpable. And it is not too much to
say, that to the average of persons suffering under preventible disease
or defect, even though it be hereditary, society owes a sacred debt,
which it is bound to pay by making those innocent sufferers from other's
sins as happy as possible; where it has not yet learnt--as it will learn,
please God, some day--to cure them.
There is, thank God, a healthier feeling than of old abroad of late upon
this point. Men are learning more and more to regard such sufferers not
as the victims of God's wrath, but of human ignorance, vice, or folly.
And it was with deep satisfaction that I read in the last Report of the
Schools for the Deaf and Dumb a statement of what were considered the
most probable physical causes of deafness and dumbness, and a hope that
it would be possible, hereafter, to prevent as well as cure those
diseases.
Whether the causes assigned in that Report are the true ones, is a point
of inferior importance for the moment. The really important point is,
that the principle should be allowed, the question raised, by a society,
composed of religious men, and teaching to those poor deaf and dumb as
almost their primary work that true religion which they are just as
capable of receiving as we. The right path has been entered--the path
which is certain in due time to lead to success. And meanwhile our duty
is, while we confess that it is the fault of society and not of God, that
these afflicted ones exist among us--it is our duty, I say, to cultivate
and to develop to the highest every faculty, instinct, and power, in them
which God's order has preserved from the effects of man's disorder; to
feed the eye with fair and noble sights, though the ear be shut to
soothing and inspiring sounds; to cultivate the intellect to such a pitch
that it may be able to perform practical work, and if possible to earn a
sufficient livelihood, even though the want of speech makes it impossible
for them, deaf and dumb, to compete on equal terms with their fellow-men;
to awaken in them, by religious training, teaching and worship, those
purer and more unselfish emotions by which their hearts may become a
field ready and prepared for God's grace. To do this; and to regard
them, whenever we come in contact with them; not merely with pity, while
we remember how much their intellects lose, in losing the whole world of
sound; but with hope, when we see that through the one sense which is
left they take in fully not only the meaning of the voluble hands which
teach them, but more, the meaning of that meaning--the spiritual truths
and feelings which signs express; with wonder, not at the defect, but at
the innate health which almost compensates for the want of hearing by
concentrating its powers upon the sight; and lastly, with admiration for
that humanity which, as it were imprisoned, fettered, maimed, yet can, by
the God-given force of the immortal spirit, so burst its prison-bars, and
rise, through hindrances which seem to us impassable, to the tenderest,
the noblest, the purest, and most devout emotions.
SERMON VI. THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT.
ST JOHN III. 8,
The wind bloweth whither it listeth, and thou hearest the sound
thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, or whither it goeth: so
is every one that is born of the Spirit.
It is often asked--men have a right to ask--what would the world have
been by now without Christianity? without the Christian religion? without
the Church?
But before these questions can be answered, we must define, it is
discovered, what we mean by Christianity, the Christian religion, the
Church.
And it is found--or I at least believe it will be found--more safe and
wise to ask a deeper and yet a simpler question still: What would the
world have been without that influence on which Christianity, and
religion, and the Church depend? What would the world have been without
the Holy Spirit of God?
But some will say: This is a more abstruse question still. How can you
define, how can you analyse, the Spirit of God? Nay, more, how can you
prove its existence?--Such questioners have been, as it were, baptized
unto John's baptism. They are very glad to see people do right, and not
do wrong, from any well-calculated motives, or wholesome and pleasant
emotions. But they have not as yet heard whether there be any Holy
Spirit.
We can only answer, Just so. This Holy Spirit in Whom we believe defies
all analysis, all definition whatsoever. His nature can be brought under
no terms derived from human emotions or motives. He is literally
invisible; as invisible to the conception of the brain as He is to the
bodily eye. His presence is proved only by its effects. The Spirit
bloweth whither it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but thou
canst not tell whence it cometh, nor whither it goeth.
Such words must sound as dreams to those analytical philosophers who
allow nothing in man below the sphere of consciousness, actual or
possible; who have dissected the human mind till they find in it no
personal will, no indestructible and spiritual self, but a character
which is only the net result of innumerable states of consciousness; who
hold that man's outward actions, and also his inmost instincts, are all
the result either of calculations about profit and loss, pleasure and
pain, or of emotions, whether hereditary or acquired. Ignoring the deep
and ancient distinction, which no one ever brought out so clearly as St
Paul, between the flesh and the spirit, they hold that man is flesh, and
can be nothing more; that each person is not really a person, but is the
consequence of his brain and nerves; and having thus, by logical
analysis, got rid of the spirit of man, their reason and their conscience
quite honestly and consistently see no need for, or possibility of, a
Spirit of God, to ennoble and enable the human spirit. Why need there
be, if the difference between an animal and a man be one of degree alone,
and not of kind?
We answer: That there is a flesh in man, brain and nerves, emotions and
passions, identical with that of animals, we do not deny. We should be
fools if we did deny it; for the fact is hideously and shamefully patent.
None knew that better than St Paul, who gave a list of the works of the
flesh, the things which a man does who is the slave of his own brain and
nerves--and a very ugly list it is--beginning with adultery and ending
with drunkenness, after passing through all the seven deadly sins. And
neither St Paul nor we deny, that in this fleshly, carnal and animal
state the vast majority of the human race has lived, and lives still, to
its own infinite misery and confusion; and that it has a perpetual
tendency, whenever lifted out of that state, to fall back into it again,
and perish.
But St Paul says, and we say: That crushed under this animal nature there
is in man a spirit. We say: That below all his consciousness lies a
nobler element; a divine spark, or at least a divine fuel, which must be
kindled into life by the divine Spirit, the Spirit of God. And we say
that in proportion as that Spirit of God kindles the spirit of man, he
begins to act after a fashion for which he can give no logical reason;
that by instinct, and without calculation of profit or loss, pleasure or
pain, he begins to act on what he calls duty, honour, love,
self-sacrifice. But what these are he cannot analyse. Mere words cannot
define them. He can only obey that which prompts him, he knows not what
nor whence; and say with Luther of old: "I can do no otherwise. God help
me."
And we say that such men and women are the salt of the earth, who keep
society from rotting; that by such men and women, and by their example
and influence, direct and indirect, has Christendom been raised up out of
the accursed slough into which Europe and, indeed, the whole known world,
had fallen during the early Roman Empire; and that to this influence, and
therefore to the Holy Spirit of God alone, and not to any prudential
calculations, combined experiences, or so-called philosophies of men, is
owing all which keeps Europe from being a hell on earth. And we say,
moreover, that those who deny this, and dream of a morality and a
civilization without The Spirit of God, are unconsciously throwing down
the ladder by which they themselves have climbed, and sawing off the very
bough to which they cling.
Duty, honour, love, self-sacrifice--these are the fruits of The Spirit;
unknown to, and unobeyed by, the savage, or by the civilized man who--as
has too often happened--as is happening now in too many lands, on both
sides of the Atlantic, is sinking back into inward savagery, amid an
outward and material civilization.
Moreover--and this appears to us a fair experimental proof that our old-
fashioned belief in A Spirit of God, which acts upon the spirit of man,
is a true belief--moreover, I say: It is a patent fact, that wherever and
whenever there has been a revival of the Christian religion; whenever,
that is, amid whatsoever confusions and errors, men have begun to feel
the need of the Holy Spirit of God, and to pray for that Spirit, a moral
revival has accompanied the religious one. Men and women have not only
become better themselves; and that often suddenly and in very truth
miraculously better: but the yearning has awoke in them to make others
better likewise. The grace of God, as they have called it, has made them
gracious to their fellow-creatures; and duty, honour, love,
self-sacrifice, call it by what name we will, has said to them, with a
still small voice more potent than all the thunders of the law: Go, and
seek and save that which is lost.
In no case has this instinctive tendency to practical benevolence been
more striking, than in the case of that great religious revival
throughout England at the beginning of this century, which issued in the
rise of the Evangelical school: a school rightly so called, because its
members did try to obey the precepts of the Gospel, according to their
understanding of them, in spirit and in truth.
The doctrines which they held are a matter not for us, but for God and
their own souls. The deeds which they did are matter for us, and for all
England; for they have left their mark on the length and breadth of the
land. They were inspired--cultivated, highborn, and wealthy folk many of
them--with a strange new instinct that God had bidden them to feed the
hungry, to clothe the naked, to visit the prisoner and the sick, to bind
up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and to preach
good tidings to the meek. A strange new instinct: and from what cause,
save from the same cause as that which Isaiah assigned to his own like
deeds?--Because "The Spirit of the Lord was upon him."
Yes, if those gracious men, those gracious women, did not shew forth the
Spirit and grace of God with power, then there is either no Spirit of
God, no grace of God; or those who deny to them the name of saints forget
the words of Him Who said: By their fruits ye shall know them; of Him Who
said, too: That the unpardonable sin, the sin which shewed complete moral
perversion, the sin against the Holy Spirit of God, was to attribute good
deeds to bad motives, and say: He casteth out devils by Beelzebub, the
prince of the devils.
Yes, that old Evangelical School may now have passed its prime. It may
now be verging toward old age; and other schools, younger and stronger,
with broader and clearer knowledge of dogma, of history, civil and
ecclesiastical, of the value of ceremonial, of the needs of the human
intellect and emotions, may have passed it in a noble rivalry, and
snatched, as it were, from the hands of the old Evangelical School the
lamp of truth, to bear it further forward in the race. But God forbid
that the spiritual children should be ungrateful to their spiritual
parents, though God may have taught them things which their parents did
not know.
And they were our spiritual parents, those old Evangelicals. No just and
well-informed man who has passed middle age, but must confess, that to
them we owe whatsoever vital religion exists at this moment in any school
or party of the Church of England; that to them we owe the germs at
least, and in many cases the full organization and the final success, of
a hundred schemes of practical benevolence and practical justice, without
which this country, in its haste to grow rich at all risks and by all
means, might have plunged itself ere now into anarchy and revolution. And
he must confess, too, if he is one who has seen much of his
fellow-creatures and their characters, that that school numbered among
its disciples--and, thank God, they are not all yet gone home to their
rest--some of the loveliest human souls, whose converse has chastened and
ennobled his own soul. Ah, well--
The old order changeth, giving place to the new;
And God fulfils Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
And new methods and new institutions have arisen, and will yet arise, for
seeking and saving that which is lost. God's blessing on them all, to
whatsoever party, church, or sect they may belong! Whosoever cast out
devils in Christ's name, Christ has forbidden us to forbid them, whether
they follow us or not. But yet shall we not still honour and love the
old Evangelical School, and many an Institution which it has left behind,
as heirlooms to some of us, at least, from our mothers, or from women to
whom we owed, in long past years, our earliest influences for good, our
earliest examples of a practical Christian life, our earliest proofs that
there was indeed a Spirit of God, a gracious Spirit, Who gave grace to
the hearts, the deeds, the very looks and voices of those in whom He
dwelt; Institutions, which are too likely some of them to die, simply
from the loss of old friends?
The loss of old friends. Yes, so it is always in this world. The old
earnest hearts go home one by one to their rest; and the young earnest
hearts--and who shall blame them?--go elsewhere; and try new fashions of
doing good, which are more graceful and more agreeable to them. For the
religious world, like all other forms of the world, has its fashions; and
of them too stands true the saying of the apostle: That this world and
the fashion thereof pass away. Many a good work, which once was somewhat
fashionable in its way, has become somewhat unfashionable, and something
else is fashionable in its place; and five-and-twenty years hence
something else will have become fashionable; and our children will look
back on our ways of doing good with pity, if not with contempt, as narrow
and unenlightened, just as we are too apt to look back on our fathers'
ways. And all the while, what can they teach worth teaching, what can we
teach worth teaching, save what our fathers and mothers taught, what the
Spirit of God taught them, and has taught to all who would listen since
the foundation of the world, "shewing man what was good:" and what was
that--"What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love
mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"
Ah! why do we, even in religious and moral matters, even in the doing
good to the souls and bodies of our fellow-creatures, allow ourselves to
be the puppets of fashions? Of fashions which even when harmless, even
beautiful, are but the garments, or rather stage-properties, in which we
dress up the high instincts which God's Spirit bestows on us, in order to
make them agreeable enough for our own prejudices, or pretty enough for
our own tastes. How little do we perceive our own danger--so little that
we yield to it every day--the danger of mistaking our fashion of doing
good for the good done; aye, for the very Spirit of God Who inspires that
good; mistaking the garment for the person who wears it, the outward and
visible sign for the inward and spiritual grace; and so in our hearts
falling actually into that very error of transubstantiation, of which we
repudiate the name!
Why, ah why, will we not take refuge from fashions in Him in Whom are no
fashions--even in the Holy Spirit of God, Who is unchangeable and eternal
as the Father and the Son from Whom He proceeds; Who has spoken words in
sundry and divers manners to all the elect of God; Who has inspired every
good thought and feeling which was ever thought or felt in earth or
heaven; but Whose message of inspiration has been, and will be, for ever
the same--"Do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with thy God"?
Could we but utterly trust Him, and utterly believe in His presence: then
we should welcome all truth, under whatever outward forms of the mere
intellect it was uttered; then we should bless every good deed, by
whomsoever and howsoever it was done; then we should rise above all party
strifes, party cries, party fashions and shibboleths, to the
contemplation of the One supreme good Spirit--the Spirit of Jesus Christ,
the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; and hold to the One Fashion of
Almighty God, which never changes, for it is eternal by the necessity of
His own eternal character; namely,--To be perfect, even as our Father in
Heaven is perfect; because He causes His sun to shine on the evil and on
the good, and His rain to fall on the just and on the unjust.
SERMON VII. CONFUSION.
PSALM CXIX. 31.
I have stuck unto thy testimonies: O Lord, confound me not.
What is the meaning of this text? What is this which the Psalmist and
prophets call being confounded; being put to shame and confusion of face?
What is it? It is something which they dread more than death; which they
dread as much as hell. Nay, it seems in the mind of some of them to be
part and parcel of hell itself; one of the very worst things which could
happen to them after death: for what is written in the Book of the
Prophet Daniel?--"Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall
awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting
contempt."
And we Christians are excusable if we dread it likewise. How often does
St Paul speak of shame as an evil to be dreaded; just as he speaks, even
more often, of glory and honour as a thing to be longed for and striven
after. That one word, "ashamed," occurs twelve times and more in the New
Testament, beside St John's warning, which alone is enough to prove what
I allege, "that we have not to be ashamed before Christ at his coming."
And how does the Te Deum--the noblest hymn written by man since St John
finished his Book of Revelations--how does that end, but with the same
old cry as that of the Psalmist in the 119th Psalm--
"O Lord, in thee have I trusted, let me never be confounded"?
Now it is difficult to tell men what being confounded means; difficult
and almost needless; for there are those who know what it means without
being told; and those who do not know what it means without being told,
are not likely to know by my telling, or any man's telling. No, not if
an angel from heaven came and told them what being confounded meant would
they understand him, at least till they were confounded themselves; and
then they would know by bitter experience--perhaps when it was too late.
And who are they? What sort of people are they?
First, silly persons; whom Solomon calls fools--though they often think
themselves refined and clever enough--luxurious and "fashionable" people,
who do not care to learn, who think nothing worth learning save how to
enjoy themselves; who call it "bad form" to be earnest, and turn off all
serious questions with a jest. These are they of whom Wisdom says--"How
long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity, and the scorners delight
in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge? I also will laugh at your
calamity, and mock when your fear cometh."
Next, mean and truly vulgar persons; who are shameless; who do not care
if they are caught out in a lie or in a trick. These are they of whom it
is written that outside of God's kingdom, in the outer darkness wherein
are weeping and gnashing of teeth, are dogs, and whosoever loveth and
maketh a lie.
And next, and worst of all, self-conceited people. These are they of
whom Solomon says, "Seest thou a man who is wise in his own conceit?
There is more hope of a fool than of him." They are the people who will
not see when they are going wrong; who will not hear reason, nor take
advice, no, nor even take scorn and contempt; who will not see that they
are making fools of themselves, but, while all the world is laughing at
them, walk on serenely self-satisfied, certain that they, and they only,
know what the world is made of, and how to manage the world. These are
they of whom it is written--"He that being often reproved, hardeneth his
neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy." Then they
will learn, and with a vengeance, what being confounded means by being
confounded themselves, and finding themselves utterly wrong, where they
thought themselves utterly right. Yet no. I do not think that even that
would cure some people. There are those, I verily believe, who would not
confess that they were in the wrong even in the bottomless pit, but, like
Satan and his fallen angels in Milton's poem, would have excellent
arguments to prove that they were injured and ill-used, deceived and
betrayed, and lay the blame of their misery on God, on man, on anything
but their own infallible selves.
Who, then, are the people who know what being confounded means; who are
afraid, and terribly afraid, of being brought to shame and confusion
efface?
I should say, all human beings in proportion as they are truly human
beings, are not brutal; in proportion, that is, as they are good or have
the capacity of goodness in them; that is, in proportion as the Spirit of
God is working in them, giving them the tender heart, the quick feelings,
the earnestness, the modesty, the conscientiousness, the reverence for
the good opinion of their fellow-men, which is the beginning of eternal
life. Do you not see it in the young? Modesty, bashfulness,
shame-facedness--as the good old English word was--that is the very
beginning of all goodness in boys and girls. It is the very material out
of which all other goodness is made; and those who laugh at, or torment,
young people for being modest and bashful, are doing the devil's work,
and putting themselves under the curse which God, by the mouth of Solomon
the wise, pronounced against the scorners who love scorning, and the
fools who hate knowledge.
This is the rule with dumb animals likewise. The more intelligent, the
more high-bred they are, the more they are capable of feeling shame; and
the more they are liable to be confounded, to lose their heads, and
become frantic with doubt and fear. Who that has watched dogs does not
know that the cleverer they are, the more they are capable of being
actually ashamed of themselves, as human beings are, or ought to be? Who
that has trained horses does not know that the stupid horse is never
vicious, never takes fright? The failing which high-bred horses have of
becoming utterly unmanageable, not so much from bodily fear, as from
being confounded, not knowing what people want them to do--that is the
very sign, the very effect, of their superior organization: and more
shame to those who ill-use such horses. If God, my friends, dealt with
us as cruelly and as clumsily as too many men deal with their horses, He
would not be long in driving us mad with terror and shame and confusion.
But He remembers our frame; He knoweth whereof we are made, and
remembereth that we are but dust: else the spirit would fail before Him,
and the souls which He hath made. And to Him we can cry, even when we
know that we have made fools of ourselves--Father who made me, Christ who
died for me, Holy Spirit who teachest me, have patience with my stupidity
and my ignorance. Lord, in thee have I trusted, let me never be
confounded.