"Fear not, I am the first and the last, I am He that liveth, and was
dead; and behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of
hell and of death. He that believeth in Me, though he die, yet shall he
live; and he that liveth and believeth in Me shall never die."
For every one of us, according to his character and his needs, Christ
speaks a fitting word from God, because He is The Word of God; and every
word which He speaks to us is true, and sure, and eternal, according to
the laws of God His Father. For He is The Word who endures for ever in
heaven; and though heaven and earth may pass away, His words cannot pass
away.
Yes; Christ The Word speaks to all: but most of all to children: to the
children, of whom He said--"Suffer the little children to come to me, and
forbid them not;"--of whom He said to grown-up people, not--Except these
children be converted and become as you--He left that message for the
Pharisees of His own time, and of every age and creed: but--Except you
grown people be converted and become as little children, you, and not
they, shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Let us tell children that--that Christ Himself is speaking to them. That
The Word of God is educating them. That the Light who lightens every man
who comes into the world is labouring to enlighten them, their intellect
and memory, their emotions and their consciences. Let that be the ground
of all our education of children. Then it will matter little to us who
teaches them what is miscalled secular knowledge. For we shall tell our
children--In it, too, Christ is teaching you. The understanding by which
you understand the world about you is Christ's gift. The world which you
are to understand is Christ's world; for He laid the foundation of the
earth, and it abideth. The physical laws of the universe are Christ's
laws; for all things serve Him, and continue this day according to His
ordinance. Every natural object is a result of Christ's will, and its
organization a product of Christ's mind; for without Him was not anything
made that was made. The whole course of events, great and small, is
Christ's providence; for to Him all power is given in heaven and earth.
So far, therefore, from being afraid to teach our children Natural
Science, we shall hold it a sacred duty to teach it; for it is the will
and mind of Christ, The Word of God.
And as for morality--we shall be ready to teach that, as far as the
prudential and paying virtues are concerned, as boldly and on the very
same grounds as the merest Utilitarian. For we shall teach honesty,
courtesy, decency, self-restraint, patience, foresight, on the warrant of
the Bible; which is, that Christ has made the world so well, that sooner
or later every wise and just act rewards itself, every foolish and unjust
act punishes itself, by the very constitution of nature and society,
which again are laid down by Christ. But what of the nobler, the non-
prudential, and non-paying virtues?--call them rather graces.--Them we
shall teach our children--as I believe we can only teach them rationally
and logically, either to children or to grown-up people--by pointing them
to Christ upon His cross, and saying to them, "Behold your God!"
For so we shall be able to train them in the orthodox doctrine of morals,
which is--
That there is nothing good in man which is not first in God.
We shall be able to make them comprehend what we mean when we tell them
that they are members of Christ, and must live the Life of Christ; that
they are children of God, and as such must imitate their Father, and
become perfect, even as their Father in heaven is perfect.
For we shall say--The pure and perfect graces, the disinterested virtues,
the unselfish virtues--obedience, mercy, chivalry, beneficence,
magnanimity, heroism,--in one word, self-sacrifice--beautiful these are:
but are they necessary? are they mere ornaments? or are they sacred
duties? The duty which dares and suffers for the thing it ought to do;
the love which dares and suffers for the thing it loves; the unselfish
spirit which looks for no reward:--why should these dwell in man? To
that we shall answer--Because they dwell for ever in God. If we are
asked--Why are they beautiful in man? we shall answer--Because they are
the very beauty and glory of God; the glory which the Incarnate Word of
God manifested to men, when He hung on the cross of Calvary; and was more
utterly then, if possible, than ever, The Word of God: because He then
declared most utterly to men the character and essence of God. Love
which is not content--as what true love is?--to be a passive sentiment, a
self-contained possibility, but which must go out of itself, pitying,
yearning, agonizing, to seek, to struggle, to suffer, and, if need be, to
die for the creature which it loves, even if that creature love it not
again.
We need not say this to children. We need only point them to Christ upon
His cross, and trust Christ to say it to them, in their heart of hearts,
through instincts too deep for words. All we need say to our children
is--"Behold your God! He it is who inspires you with every dutiful,
generous, and unselfish impulse you have ever felt; for they are the
fruits of His Spirit. By that Spirit He was once unselfish even to the
death. By that Spirit He will enable you to carry out in action, as He
did, the unselfish instincts which He has given you; and to live the
noble life, the heroic life, the life of self-sacrifice; the life of God;
the life of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; and
therefore the only life fit for those who are baptized into that Holy
Name."
This is the ground and method on which we should educate our children;
for it is the ground and method on which The Word of God is educating us.
SERMON XV. I.
PSALM CXIX. 94.
I am Thine, oh save me.
Let us think seriously this afternoon of one word; the word which is the
key-note of this psalm. A very short word; for in our language there is
but one letter in it. A very common word; for we are using it all day
long when we are awake, and even at night in our dreams; and yet a very
wonderful word, for though we know well whom it means, yet what it means
we do not know, and cannot understand, no, nor can the wisest philosopher
who ever lived; and a most important word too; for we cannot get rid of
it, we cannot help thinking of it, cannot help saying it all our life
long from childhood to the grave. After death, too, we shall probably be
saying that word to ourselves, each of us, for ever and ever. If the
whole universe, sun, moon, and stars, and all that we ever thought of, or
can think of, were destroyed and became nothing, that word would probably
be left; and we should be left alone with it; and on what we meant by
that little word would depend our everlasting happiness or misery. And
what is this wonderful little word? What but the word I? Each one of us
says I--I think, I know, I feel, I ought, I ought not, I did that, and
cannot undo it: and why? Because we are not things, nor mere animals,
but persons, living souls, though our bodies are like the bodies of
animals, only more perfect, that they may be fit dwelling-places for more
perfect souls. The animals, as far as we know, do not think of
themselves each as I. Little children do not at first. They call
themselves by names by which they hear others call them: not in the first
but in the third person. After a while there grows up in them the
wonderful thought that they are persons, different from any other person
round them, and they begin to say--I want this, I like that. I trust
that I shall not seem to you as one who dreams when I say that I believe
that is a revelation from God to each child, and just what makes the
difference between him and an animal; that God teaches each child to say
I; to know that it is not a mere thing, but a person, a living soul, with
a will of its own, and a duty of its own; responsible for itself; which
ought to do some things, and ought not to do other things. And what a
solemn and awful revelation that is, we shall see more clearly, the more
we think of it.
It may be a very dreadful and tormenting thought. It does not torment
the mere savage, who has no sense of right and wrong; who follows his own
appetites and passions, and has never learnt to say, "I ought," and "I
ought not." But it does torment the heathen when they begin to be
civilized, and to think; it has tormented them in all ages. It tormented
the old Greeks and Romans; it torments some Eastern peoples still--that
terrible thought--I am I myself, and cannot be any one else. I am
answerable for all that I ever did, or shall do; and no one can be
answerable for me. All the bad deeds I ever did, the bad thoughts I ever
thought, are mine, parts of me, and will be for ever. I can no more
escape from them than I can spring off my own shadow. But men have been
always trying to escape; to escape from the burden of their own self, and
the dread of an evil conscience; and have invented religion after
religion, often fantastic enough, often pathetic enough likewise, in
hopes of hiding from themselves the secret thought--I am I, and must be
myself for ever. But I am not what I ought to be, and therefore I may be
wrong, and miserable for ever. And how many people, in this Christian
land, are saying at this very moment to themselves, "Oh that I could get
rid of this I myself in me, which is so discontented and unhappy! Oh
that I had no conscience! Oh that I could forget myself!" And they try
to forget themselves by dissipation, by gaming, by drinking, by taking
narcotic drugs, even sometimes by suicide, as a last desperate attempt to
escape from themselves, they know not and care not whither. It is all in
vain. There is no escape from self. As the pious poet whose bust stands
beneath yonder tower has said:
Each in his separate sphere of joy and woe
Our hermit spirits dwell, and range apart.
I must be I, thou must be thou, he must be he, she must be she, and no
one else, throughout our mortal lives, and, for aught we can tell, for
ever; alone, each of us, with our own souls, our own thoughts, our own
actions, our own hopes, our own fears, our own deservings. Stay
alone:--with all these? Yes, and alone with one more. Each of us is
alone with God. Face to face with God, seen by Him through and through,
and directly answerable to Him at every moment of our lives, for every
deed, and word, and thought. And is that not a more terrible thought
than any? Ah! my friends, it may be. But it may be also the most
comforting of all thoughts, the only really comforting thought, if we
will but look at the question as the Psalmist looks at it, and cry with
him to God, "I am Thine, oh save the me whom Thou hast made."
There are those, and those who deserve a respectful hearing, who will
differ from all that I have been saying, and indeed from the beliefs of
999 out of 1000 of the human race in every age. They will say--This
fancy that you are an I, a self, individual and indivisible, is but a
fancy; one of the many idols which man creates for himself, by bestowing
reality and personality on mere abstractions like this I and self. Each
man is not one indivisible, much less indestructible, thing or being. He
is really many things. He is the net result of all the organic cells of
his body, and of all the forces which act through them within, and of all
the circumstances which influence them from without, ay, and of all the
forces and circumstances which have influenced his ancestors ever since
man appeared on the earth. But because he remembers many states of
consciousness, many moments in which he was aware of sensations within
him, and of circumstances without him, therefore he strings all these
together, and talks of them as one thing which he calls I; and speaks of
them as his remembrances of himself, when really the many things are but
links of a chain which is perpetually growing at one end and dropping off
at the other. To say, therefore, that he is the same person as he was
when a child, or as he would be when an old man,--is, when we know that
every atom of his physical frame has changed again and again during the
course of years, a popular delusion, or at least a misnomer used for
convenience' sake; as when we say that the sun rises and sets, when we
know that the earth moves, and not the sun. A man, therefore, according
to this school, is really no more a person, one and indivisible, than is
the coral with its million polypes, the tree with its million buds, or
even the thunderstorm with its million vesicles of attracting and
repelling vapour.
Now that a truth underlies such a theory as this, I am the last to deny.
How much of the character of each man is inherited, how much of it
depends on his actual bodily organization; how much of it, alas! on the
circumstances of his youth; how much of it changes with the mere physical
change from youth to old age--who does not know all this, who has ever
needed to fight for himself the battle of life? Only, I say, this is but
half the truth; and these philosophers cannot state their half-truth,
without employing the very words which they repudiate; without using the
very personal pronouns, the I and me, the thou and thee, the he and him,
to which they deny any real existence. Beside, I ask--Is the experience
and the conclusion of the vast majority of all mankind to go for nothing?
For if there be one point on which human beings have been, and are still,
agreed, it is this--that each of them is, to his joy or his sorrow, an I;
a separate person. And, I should have said, this conviction becomes
stronger and stronger in each of them, the more human they become,
civilized, and worthy of the respect and affection of their fellow-men.
For what rises in them, or seems to rise, more and more painfully and
fiercely? What but that protest, that battle, between the everlasting I
within them, and their own passions, and motives, and circumstances;
which St Paul of old called the battle between the spirit on one side,
and the flesh and the world on the other. The nobler, surely, and
healthier, even for a moment, the manhood of any man is, the more intense
is that inward struggle, which man alone of all the animals endures. Is
it in moments of brave endeavour, whether to improve our own character,
or to benefit our fellow-men: or is it in moments of depression,
disappointment, bodily sickness, that we are tempted to say?--I will
fight no more. I cannot mend myself, or the world. I am what nature has
made me; and what I am, I must remain. I, and all I know, and all I
love, are things, not persons; parts of nature, even as the birds upon
the bough, only more miserable, because tormented by a hope which never
will be fulfilled; an empty pageant of mere phenomena, blown onward
toward decay, like dying autumn leaves, before the "everlasting storm
which no one guides." Is this the inward voice of health and strength?
or rather, for evil or for good, that voice which bids the man, the
woman, in the mysterious might of the free I within, trample on their own
passions, defy their own circumstances, even to the death; fall back, in
utter need, on the absolute instinct of self; and even though all seem
lost, say with Medea in the tragedy--
Che resta? Io!
Medea?--Some one will ask, and have a right to ask--Is that the model
which you set before us? The imperious sorceress, who from the first has
known no law but self, her own passions, her own intellect; who, at last,
maddened by a grievous wrong, asserts that self by the murder of her own
babes? You might as well set before us as a model Milton's Satan.
Just so. Remember first, nevertheless, the old maxim, that the best,
when corrupted, is the worst; that the higher the nature, when used
aright in its right place, the baser it becomes when used wrongly, in its
wrong place. When Satan fell from his right place, said the old Jews, he
became, remember, not a mere brute: but worse, a fiend. There is a deep
and true philosophy in that. As long as he was what he was meant to
be--the servant of God--he was an archangel and more; the fairest of all
the sons of the morning. When he rebelled; when in pride and self-will
he tore himself--his person--away from that God in whom he lived and
moved and had his being: the personality remained; he could still, like
Medea, fall back, even when he knew that he had rebelled against his
Creator, on his indomitable self, and reign a self-sufficing king, even
in the depths of hell.
But the very strength and richness of that personality made him, like
Medea, only the more capable of evil. He stood, that is, his moral
health endured, only by loyalty to God. When he lost that, he fell; to
moral disease: disease the vaster, the vaster were his own capacities.
And so it is with you, and me, and every soul of man. Only by loyalty to
God can this undying I, this self, this person, which each of us has--or
rather which each of us is--be anything but a torment and a curse; the
more terrible to us, and those around us, the stronger and the richer are
the nature and faculties through which it works.
Wouldest thou not be a curse unto thy self? Then cry with him who wrote
the 119th Psalm--I am Thine. Oh save the me, whom Thou, O God, hast
made.
For he who wrote that psalm had an intense conviction of his own
personality. I, and me, are words for ever in his mouth: but not in self-
satisfied conceit; nor in self-tormenting superstition, crying
perpetually, Shall I be saved? shall I be lost? No. Faith in God
delivers him from either of these follies. He is forced to think of
self. Sad, persecuted, seemingly friendless, he is alone with self: yet
not alone. For at every moment he is referring himself to his true place
in the universe; to God; God's law, God's help. The burden of self--of
mingled responsibility and weakness--is to him past bearing. It would be
utterly past bearing, if he could not cast it down, at least at moments,
at the foot of the throne of God, and cry, I am Thine. Oh save me.
And if any should ask--as has been asked ere now--But is there not in
this tone of mind something undignified, something even abject? thus to
cry for help, instead of helping oneself? thus to depend on another
being, instead of bearing stoically with manly independence? I
answer--The Psalmist does bear stoically, just because he cries for help.
For the old Stoics cried for help; the earlier and truer-hearted of them,
at least. Some here, surely, have read Epictetus, the heathen whose
thought most exactly coincides with that of the Psalmist. If so, do they
not see what enabled him, the slave of Nero's minion, to assert himself,
and his own unconquerable personality; to defy circumstance; and to
preserve his own calm, his own honour, his own purity, amid a degradation
which might well have driven a good man to suicide? And was it not
this--The intensity of his faith in God? In God the helper, God the
guide?
If any man here have learnt, to his own loss, to undervalue the
experience of prophets, psalmists, apostles: then let him turn to
Epictetus the heathen; and learn from that heroic slave, that the true
dignity of man lies in true faith in God.
Nay more. It is a serious question, whether ungodliness--by which I
mean, as the Psalmist means, the assertion of self, independent of
God--whether ungodliness, I say, is ever dignified; whether, as has been
often said, Milton's still dignified Satan is not an impossible
character; whether Goethe's utterly undignified Mephistopheles is not the
true ideal of an utterly evil spirit. Ungodliness, as we see it
manifested in human beings, may be repulsive, as in the mere ruffian,
whose mouth is filled with cursing, and his feet swift to shed blood. It
may, again, be pitiable, as in those human butterflies, who live only to
enjoy, or to minister to, what they call luxury and fashion. And it may
be again--when it calmly and deliberately asserts itself to be a
philosophy, and an explanation of man and of the universe, and gives
itself magisterial airs, however courteously and kindly--it may be then,
I dare to think, a little ludicrous.
But as for its dignity, I leave to you to say which of the two beings is
the more dignified, which the more abject--a little organism of flesh and
blood, at most not more than six feet high, liable to be destroyed by a
tile off the roof, or a blast of foul gas, or a hundred other accidents;
standing self-poised and self-complacent in the centre of such an
universe as this, and asserting that it acknowledges no superior, and
needs no guide--or the same being, awakened to the mystery of his own
actual weakness, his possible strength; his own actual ignorance, his
possible wisdom; his own actual sinfulness, his possible holiness: and
then; by a humility which is the highest daring; by a self-distrust which
is the truest self-assertion, vindicating the divine element within, by
taking personal and voluntary service under no less a personage than Him
who made him; and crying directly to the Creator of sun and stars and all
the universe--I am Thine. Oh save the me which Thou hast made?
Make up your own minds, make up your minds, which of the two figures is
the more abject, which the more dignified. For me, I have had too good
cause, long since, to make up mine.
And if you wish to judge further for yourselves, whether the teaching of
the Psalmist is more likely to produce an abject or a dignified
character, I advise you to ponder carefully a certain singular--I had
almost said unique--educational document, written by men who had
thoroughly imbibed the teaching of this psalm; a document which, the
oftener I peruse it, arouses in me more and more admiration; not only for
its theology, but for its knowledge of human nature; and not only for
what it does, but for what it does not, say. I mean the Catechism of the
Church of England.
You will remark at first sight, that it does not affect to teach the
child; with one remarkable exception to be hereafter noticed. It does
not tell the child--You should do this, you should not do that.
It is strictly an Educational Catechism. It tries to educe--that is,
draw out--what is in the child already; its own native instincts and
native conscience. Therefore it makes the child speak for itself. It
makes each child feel that he or she is an I; a person, a responsible
soul. It begins--What is your name? It makes the child confess that it
has a name, as a sign that it is a person, a self, a soul, different from
all other persons in earth or heaven; and that its name was given it at
baptism, for a sign that God made it a person, and wishes it to know that
it is a person, and will teach it how to be a true person, and a good
person. It teaches the child to say--I, and me, not in fear and dread,
like those heathen of whom I spoke just now, but with manly confidence,
and self-respect, and gratitude to God who has made it a person, and an
immortal soul.
To say--I am a person; and in order that I might be a right kind of
person, and not a wrong kind, I was made a member of Christ, a child of
God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.
To say--I am a person; and that I may be a right kind of person, I must
know and believe certain things concerning God Himself, Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost. I am a person; and that I may be a right kind of person, I
must keep certain commandments and do certain duties toward God, and my
parents, and my Queen, and my country, and my neighbour, and all toward
whom I am responsible for right behaviour.
And then, and only then, after it has made the child say all this for
itself and about itself, the Catechism does begin to teach; and in a few
very short words, tell the child about that which is not itself--
"My good child, know this, that thou art not able to do these things of
thyself, nor to walk in the Commandments of God, and to serve Him,
without His special grace; which thou must learn at all times to call for
by diligent prayer."
Now consider these words. There is comfort and strength in them; comfort
for the child; comfort for you, and me, and every human being who has
awakened to the sense of his own personal responsibility, and finds it
too often a burden heavier than he--and, alas, often, she--can bear.