about God, or do duties to God; but more: that it is alone with God
Himself, face to face with God Himself day and night. But that therefore
it is to dread God, and look up to God as a taskmaster and tyrant, and
try to hide from God's awful eye, and forget God, and forget itself--if
it can?--God forbid; God forbid. The Catechism leaves such teaching for
those Pharisees who tell little children that unless they are converted,
and become as them, they shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of
heaven. The Catechism says, My good child--not, My bad child--know this.
Know that thou art weak: but know that God is strong; and look up to Him
as the Father of all fathers, the Teacher of all teachers, the Helper of
all helpers, the Friend of all friends, who has I called thee unto His
kingdom of grace, that He might shew thee graciousness; and make thee
gracious and graceful in all thy thoughts, and works, and ways: and,
therefore, far from trying to hide from Him, call on Him with diligent
prayer. For the Father of all fathers is the Father of thy soul, the Son
of all sons died for thee upon the Cross, the Holy Spirit of all holy
spirits will make thee a holy spirit and person, even as He is a Holy
Spirit and Person Himself.
Believing those words, no one will dare to forget to say his prayers. For
when he prays, he is indeed a person. He is himself; and not ashamed,
however sinful, to be himself; and to tell God about himself. Oh, think
of that. You, each of you, have a right, as God's children, to speak to
the God who made the universe. Therefore be sure, that when you dislike
to say your prayers, it is because you do not like to be what you are, a
person; and prefer--ah foolish soul--to be a thing, and an animal.
Believing those words, no man need long to forget himself, to escape from
himself. He can lift up himself to God who made him, with reverence, and
fear, and yet with gratitude and trust, and say--
I, Lord, am I; and what I am--a very poor, pitiful, sinful person. But
Thou, Lord, art Thou; and what Thou art--happily for me, and for the
whole universe--Perfect. Thou art what Thou oughtest to be--Goodness
itself. And therefore Thou canst, and Thou wilt, make me what I ought to
be at last, a good person. To thee, O Lord, I can bring the burden of
this undying I, which I carry with me, too often in shame and sadness,
and ask Thee to help me to bear it; saying--"Thou knowest, Lord, the
secrets of our hearts. Shut not Thy merciful ears to our prayers: but
spare us, O Lord most Holy, O God most Mighty, Thou worthy Judge Eternal,
and suffer us not, for any temptation of the world, the flesh or the
devil, to fall from Thee." Guide me, teach me, strengthen me, till I
become such a person as Thou wouldst have me be; pure and gentle,
truthful and high-minded, brave and able, courteous and generous, dutiful
and useful, like Thy Son Jesus Christ when He increased not only in
stature, but in favour with God and man.
To which may God in His mercy bring us all! Amen.
SERMON XVI. THE CEDARS OF LEBANON.
PSALM CIV. 16.
The trees of the Lord are full of sap; the cedars of Lebanon, which He
hath planted.
Let me say a few words this afternoon about the noble 104th Psalm, which
was read this afternoon, as it is now in many churches, and most wisely
and rightly, as the Harvest Psalm. It is a fit psalm for a service in
which we thank God for such harvest as He has thought best to send us,
whether it be above or below the average. But it is also a fit psalm to
be thought earnestly over just now, considering the turn which men's
minds are taking more and more in these times in which it has pleased God
that we should live. For we have lost, all of us, unlearned as well as
learned, the old superstitious notions about this world around us which
our forefathers held for many hundred years. No rational person now
believes that witches can blight crops or cattle, or that evil spirits
cause storms. No one now believes that nymphs and fairies live in
fountains or in trees; or that the spirits of the planets rule the fates
of men. That old belief is gone, for good and for evil, and it was good
that it should go; for it was false: and falsehoods can do no good, but
only harm, to any man, in body and in soul alike. It has died out
quickly and strangely. Some say that modern science has destroyed it. I
can hardly agree to that: for it has died out--and that almost since my
own recollection and under my own eyes--in the minds of country people,
who know nothing of science. I had rather say--as I presume the man who
wrote the 104th Psalm would have said--The Lord has taken the belief out
of men's hearts and minds. And I cannot but hope that He has taken it
away, and allows us to believe no more in demons and fairies ruling the
world around us, in order that we may believe in Him, and nothing but
Him, the true Ruler of the world; in Him of whom it is written, "Him
shalt thou worship, and Him only shalt thou serve;" even God the Father,
of whom are all things, and God the Son, by whom are all things, and God
the Holy Spirit, who is the Lord and Giver of life, alike to sun and
stars over our heads, and to the meanest weed and insect under our feet;
the Lord and Giver of life alike to matter and spirit, soul and body,
worm and man, and angel and archangel before the throne of God. I hope
it is so. I trust it is so. For we never had more need than now to
believe with all our hearts in the living God; to take into all our
hearts the teaching of the 104th Psalm. For now that we have given up
believing in superstitions, we are in danger of going to the other
extreme, and believing in nothing at all which we cannot see with our
eyes, and handle with our hands. Now that we have given up believing in
the fabled supernatural; in ghosts, fairies, demons, witches, and such-
like: we are in danger of giving up believing in the true and eternal
supernatural, which is the Holy Spirit of God, by whom the whole creation
is kept alive and sound. We are in danger of falling into a low, stupid,
brutish view of this wonderful world of God in which we live; in danger
of thinking of nature--that is, of the things which we can see and
handle--only as something of which we can make use--till we fall as low
as that poor ruffian, of whom the poet says:
A primrose on the river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more.
Lower, that is, than even our own children, whom God has at least taught
to admire and love the primroses for their beauty--as something precious
and divine, quite independent of their own emotions about them. Men in
these days are but too likely to fall into the humour of those poor
savages, of whom one who knows them well said to me once--bitterly but
truly--that when a savage sees anything new, however wonderful or
beautiful, he has but two thoughts about it; first--Will it hurt me? and
next--Can I eat it? And from that truly brutish view of God's world, we
shall be delivered, I believe, only by taking in with our whole hearts
the teaching of the 104th Psalm; which is indeed the teaching of all Holy
Scripture throughout.
The Psalmist, in the passage which I have chosen, is talking of the
circulation of water on the earth; how wisely and well it is ordered; how
the vapours rise off the sea, till the waters stand above the mountain-
tops, to be brought down in thunder-storms--for in his country, as in
many hot ones, thunder was generally needed, at the end of the dry
season, to bring down the rain; how it forms springs in the highland, and
flows down from thence in brooks and rivers, making the whole lowland
green and fertile. Well--all very true, you may say. But that is simply
a matter of science, or indeed of common observation and common sense. It
is not a subject for a psalm or for a sermon.
True: in the words in which I have purposely put it. But not in the
words in which the Psalmist puts it; and which I purposely left out, to
shew you just the difference between even the soundest science, and
faith. He brings in another element, which is the true cause of the
circulation of water; and that is, none other but Almighty God.
This is the way in which the inspired Psalmist puts it; and this is the
truth of it all; this is the very kernel and marrow and life and soul of
it all: while the facts which I told you just now are the mere shell and
dead skeleton of it--"_Thou_ sendest the springs into the rivers."
Thou art the Lord of the lightning and of the clouds, the Lord of the
highlands and of the lowlands, and the Lord of the rainfall and of the
drought, the Lord of good seasons and of bad, of rich harvests and of
scanty. They, like all things, obey Thine everlasting laws; and of them,
whatever may befal, poor purblind man can say in faith and hope--"It is
the Lord, let Him do what seemeth Him good."
Yes. He was not of course a man of science, in the modern sense of the
word, this old Psalmist. But this I know, that he was a man of science
in the soundest and deepest sense; an inspired philosopher, as well as an
inspired poet; and had the highest of all sciences, which is the science
and knowledge of the living God. For he saw God in everything and
everything in God.
But--he says--the trees of the Lord are full of sap; even the cedars of
Lebanon which He hath planted. Why should he say that specially of the
cedars? Did not God make all trees? Does He not plant all wild trees,
and every flower and seed? My dear friends, happy are you if you believe
that in spirit and in truth. But let me tell you that I think you would
not have believed that, unless the Psalmist, and others who wrote the
Holy Scriptures, had told you about trees of God, and rivers of God, and
winds of God, and had taught you that the earth is the Lord's and the
fulness thereof. You do not know--none of us can know--how much we owe
to the Bible for just and rational, as well as orthodox and Christian,
notions of the world around us. We, and--thank God--our forefathers for
hundreds of years, have drunk in Bible thoughts, as it were, with our
mother's milk; till much that we have really learnt from the Bible we
take as a matter of course, as self-evident truths which we have found
out for ourselves by common sense.
And yet, so far from that being the case, if it had not been for the
Bible, we might be believing at this moment, that one god made one tree,
and another another; that one tree was sacred to one god, and another
flower to another goddess, as the old Greeks believed; and that the wheat
and barley were the gift, and therefore the property, of some special
deity; and be crying now in fear and trembling to the sun-god, or the
rain-god, or some other deified power of nature, because we fancied that
they were angry with us, and had therefore sent us too much rain and a
short harvest.
It is difficult, now-a-days, to make even cultivated people understand
the follies of those who, like the heathen round the Jews, worshipped
many gods: and all the more because our modern folly runs in a different
channel; because we are tempted, not to believe in many gods, but in no
God at all; to believe not that one god made one thing and another
another, but that all things have made themselves.
When Hiram, king of Tyre, sent down timber cut from the cedars of
Lebanon, to build the temple of God for Solomon; his heathen workmen,
probably, were angry and terrified at what they were doing. They said
among themselves--"These cedars belong to Baal, or to Melkart, the gods
of Tyre. Our king has no right to send them to build the temple of
Jehovah, the God of the Jews. It is a robbery, and a sacrilege; and Baal
will be angry with us; and curse us with drought and blight."
But now-a-days men say--"The cedars of Lebanon are not God's trees, nor
are any other trees. They belong to nature." Now I believe in nature no
more than I do in Baal. Nature is merely things--a great many things it
is true, but only things--and when I add them all up together, and call
them nature, as if they were one thing, I make an abstraction of them.
There is no harm in that: but if I treat that abstraction as if it really
existed, and did anything, then I make of it an idol, the which I have no
mind to do. I believe, I say, in nature no more than I do in Baal. Both
words were at first symbols; and both have become in due course of time
mere idols. But those who worship nature and not God, say now--God did
not make trees; they were made by the laws of nature and nothing else.
Well: I believe that the so-called philosophers who say that, will be
proved at last to be no more right, and no more rational, than those
heathen workmen of Tyre. But meanwhile, what the Psalmist says, and what
the Bible says, is--Those trees belong to God. He made them, He made all
things; the sap--the mysterious life in them, by which each grows and
seeds according to its kind--is His gift. Their growth is ordered by
Him; and so are all things in earth and heaven.
Then why speak of them especially as trees of God? Because, my friends,
we can only find out that something is true of many things, by finding
out that it is true of one thing; and that we usually find out by some
striking instance; some case about which there can be no mistake. And
these cedars of Lebanon were, and are still, such a striking instance,
which there was no mistaking. Upon the slopes of the great snow-mountain
of Lebanon stood those gigantic cedar-trees--whole forests of them
then--now only one or two small groups, but awful, travellers tell us,
even in their decay. Whence did they come? There are no trees like them
for hundreds, I had almost said for thousands, of miles. There are but
two other patches of them left now on the whole earth, one in the Atlas,
one in the Himalaya. The Jews certainly knew of no trees like them; and
no trees either of their size. There were trees among them then,
probably, two and three hundred feet in height; trees whose tops were as
those minster towers; whose shafts were like yonder pillars; and their
branches like yonder vaults. No king, however mighty, could have planted
them up there upon the lofty mountain slopes. The Jew, when he entered
beneath the awful darkness of these cedars; the cedars with a shadowy
shroud--as the Scripture says--the cedars high and lifted up, whose tops
were among the thick boughs, and their height exalted above all the trees
of the field; fair in their greatness; their boughs multiplied, and their
branches long--for it is in such words of awe and admiration that the
Bible talks always of the cedars--then the Jew said, "God has planted
these, and God alone." And when he thought, not merely of their grandeur
and their beauty, but of their use; of their fragrant and incorruptible
timber, fit to build the palaces of kings, and the temples of gods; he
said--and what could he say better?--"These are trees of God;" wonderful
and glorious works of a wonderful and a glorious Creator. If he had not,
he would have had less reason in him, and less knowledge of God, than the
Hindoos of old; who when they saw the other variety of the cedar growing,
in like grandeur, on the slopes of the Himalaya, called them the
Deodara--which means, in the old Sanscrit tongue, neither more nor less
than "the timber of God," "the lance of God"--and what better could they
have said?
My friends, I speak on this matter from the fulness of my heart. It has
happened to me--through the bounty of God, for which I shall be ever
grateful--to have spent days in primeval forests, as grand, and far
stranger and far richer than that of Lebanon and its cedars; amid trees
beside which the hugest tree in Britain would be but as a sapling;
gorgeous too with flowers, rich with fruits, timbers, precious gums, and
all the yet unknown wealth of a tropic wilderness. And as I looked up,
awestruck and bewildered, at those minsters not made by hands, I found
the words of Scripture rising again and again unawares to my lips, and
said--Yes: the Bible words are the best words, the only words for such a
sight as this. These too are trees of God which are full of sap. These,
too, are trees, which God, not man, has planted. Mind, I do not say that
I should have said so, if I had not learnt to say so from the Bible.
Without the Bible I should have been, I presume, either an idolater or an
atheist. And mind, also, that I do not say that the Psalmist learnt to
call the cedars trees of God by his own unassisted reason. I believe the
very opposite. I believe that no man can see the truth of a thing unless
God shews it him; that no man can find out God, in earth or heaven,
unless God condescends to reveal Himself to that man. But I believe that
God did reveal Himself to the Psalmist; did enlighten his reason by the
inspiration of His Holy Spirit; did teach him, as we teach a child, what
to call those cedars; and, as it were, whispered to him, though with no
audible voice: "Thou wishest to know what name is most worthy whereby to
call those mighty trees: then call them trees of God. Know that there is
but one God, of whom are all things; and that they are His trees; and
that He planted them, to shew forth His wisdom, His power, and His good
will to man."
And do you fancy that because the Jew called the great cedars trees of
God, that therefore he thought that the lentiscs and oleanders, by the
brook outside, were not God's shrubs; or the lilies and anemones upon the
down below were not God's flowers? Some folk have fancied so.--It seems
to me most unreasonably. I should have thought that here the rule stood
true; that that which is greater contains the less; that if the Psalmist
knew God to be mighty enough to make and plant the cedars, he would think
Him also mighty enough to make and plant the smallest flower at his feet.
I think so. For I know it was so with me. My feeling that those
enormous trees over my head were God's trees, did not take away in the
least from my feeling of God's wisdom and power in the tiniest herb at
their feet. Nay rather, it increased my feeling that God was filling all
things with life and beauty; till the whole forest,--if I may so speak in
all humility, but in all honesty--from the highest to the lowest, from
the hugest to the smallest, and every leaf and bud therein, seemed full
of the glory of God. And if I could feel that,--being the thing I am--how
much more must the inspired Psalmist have felt it? You see by this very
psalm that he did feel it. The grass for the use of cattle, and the
green herb for men, and the corn and the wine and the oil, he says, are
just as much God's making, and God's gift. The earth is "filled," he
says, "with the fruit of God's works." Filled: not dotted over here and
there with a few grand and wonderful things which God cares for, while He
cares for nothing else: but filled. Let us take the words of Scripture
honestly in their whole strength; and believe that if the Psalmist saw
God's work in the great cedars, he saw it everywhere else likewise.
Nay, more: I will say this. That I believe it was such teaching as that
of this very 104th Psalm--teaching which runs, my friends, throughout the
Old Testament, especially through the Psalmists and the Prophets--which
enabled the Jews to understand our Lord's homely parables about the
flowers of the field and the birds of the air. Those of them at least
who were Israelites indeed; those who did understand, and had treasured
up in their hearts, the old revelation of Moses, and the Psalmists, and
the Prophets; those who did still believe that the cedars were the trees
of God, and that God brought forth grass for the cattle, and green herb
for the service of men; and who could see God's hand, God's laws, God's
love, working in them--those men and women, be sure, were the very ones
who understood our Lord, when He said, "Consider the lilies of the field,
how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto
you, that Solomon in all his glory was not compared unto one of these."
And why should it not be so with you, townsfolk though you are? Every
Londoner has now, in the public parks and gardens, the privilege of
looking on plants and flowers, more rich, more curious, more varied than
meet the eye of any average countryman. Then when you next avail
yourselves of that real boon of our modern civilization, let me beg you
not to forget the lesson which I have been trying to teach you.
You may feel--you ought to feel--that those strange and stately
semitropic forms are indeed plants of God; the work of a creative Spirit
who delights to employ His Almighty power in producing ever fresh shapes
of beauty--seemingly unnecessary, seemingly superfluous, seemingly
created for the sake of their beauty alone--in order that the Lord may
delight Himself in His works. Let that sight make you admire and
reverence more, not less, the meanest weed beneath your feet. Remember
that the very weeds in your own garden are actually more highly
organized; have cost--if I may so say, with all reverence, but I can only
speak of the infinite in clumsy terms of the finite--the Creator more
thought, more pains, than the giant cedars of Lebanon, and the giant
cypresses of California. Remember that the smallest moss or lichen which
clings upon the wall, is full of wonders and beauties, as inexplicable as
unexpected; and that of every flower on your own window-sill the words of
Christ stand literally true--that Solomon in all his glory was not
arrayed as one of these: and bow your hearts and souls before the
magnificent prodigality, the exquisite perfection of His work, who can
be, as often as He will, greatest in that which is least, because to His
infinity nothing is great, and nothing small; who hath created all
things, and for His pleasure they are, and were created; who rejoices for
ever in His own works, because He beholds for ever all that He makes, and
it is very good.
And then refresh your hearts as well as your brains--tired it may be, too
often, with the drudgery of some mechanical, or merely calculating,
occupation--refresh your hearts, I say, by lifting them up unto the Lord,
in truly spiritual, truly heavenly thoughts; which bring nobleness, and
trust, and peace, to the humblest and the most hardworked man.
For you can say in your hearts--All the things which I see, are God's
things. They are thoughts of God. God gives them law, and life, and
use. My heavenly Father made them. My Saviour redeemed them with His
most precious blood, and rules and orders them for ever. The Holy Spirit
of God, which was given me at my baptism, gives them life and power to
grow and breed after their kinds. The divine, miraculous, and
supernatural power of God Himself is working on them, and for them,
perpetually: and how much more on me, and for me, and all my children,
and fellow-creatures for whom Christ died. Without my Father in heaven
not a sparrow falls to the ground: and am I not of more value than many
sparrows? God feeds the birds: and will He not feed me? God clothes the
lilies of the field: and will He not clothe me? Ah, me of little faith,
who forget daily that in God I live, and move, and have my being, and am,
in spite of all my sins, the child of God. Him I can trust in prosperous
times, and in disastrous times; in good harvests and in bad harvests; in
life and in death, in time and in eternity. For He has given all things
a law which cannot be broken. And they continue this day as at the
beginning, serving Him. And if I serve Him likewise, then shall I be in
harmony with God, and with God's laws, and with God's creatures, great
and small. The whole powers of nature as well as of spirit will be
arrayed on my side in the struggle for existence; and all things will
work together for good to those who love God.
SERMON XVII. LIFE.
PSALM CIV. 24, 28-30.
O Lord, how manifold are Thy works! in wisdom hast Thou made them all:
the earth is full of Thy riches.
That Thou givest them they gather. Thou openest Thine hand, they are
filled with good. Thou hidest Thy face, they are troubled. Thou
takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust. Thou
sendest forth Thy Spirit, they are created: and Thou renewest the face
of the earth.
What is the most important thing to you, and me, and every man?
I suppose that most, if they answered honestly, would say--Life. I will
give anything I have for my life.