and death, and indeed of the whole creation, which the Psalmist has,
because he has faith. There is in him no sentimentalism, no complaining
of God, no impious, or at least weak and peevish, cry of "Why hast Thou
made things thus?" He sees the mystery of pain and death. He does not
attempt to explain it: but he faces it; faces it cheerfully and manfully,
in the strength of his faith, saying--This too, mysterious, painful,
terrible as it may seem, is as it should be; for it is of the law and
will of God, from whom come all good things; of The God in whom is light,
and in Him is no darkness at all. Therefore to the Psalmist the earth is
a noble sight; filled, to his eyes, with the fruit of God's works. And
so is the great and wide sea likewise. He looks upon it; "full of things
creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts," for ever dying, for
ever devouring each other. And yet it does not seem to him a dreadful
and a shocking place. What impresses his mind is just what would impress
the mind of a modern poet, a modern man of science; namely, the wonderful
variety, richness, and strangeness of its living things. Their natures
and their names he knows not. It was not given to his race to know. It
is enough for him that known unto God are all His works from the
foundation of the world. But one thing more important than their natures
and their names he does know; for he perceives it with the instinct of a
true poet and a true philosopher--"These all wait upon thee, O God, that
Thou mayest give them meat in due season."
But more.--"There go the ships;" things specially wonderful and
significant to him, the landsman of the Judaean hills, as they were
afterward to Muhammed, the landsman of the Arabian deserts. And he has
talked with sailors from those ships; from Tarshish and the far Atlantic,
or from Ezion-geber and the Indian seas. And he has heard from them of
mightier monsters than his own Mediterranean breeds; of the Leviathan,
the whale, larger than the largest ship which he has ever seen, rolling
and spouting among the ocean billows, far out of sight of land, and
swallowing, at every gape of its huge jaws, hundreds of living creatures
for its food. But he does not talk of it as a cruel and devouring
monster, formed by a cruel and destroying deity, such as the old
Canaanites imagined, when--so the legend ran--they offered up Andromeda
to the sea-monster, upon that very rock at Joppa, which the Psalmist,
doubtless, knew full well. No. This psalm is an inspired philosopher's
rebuke to that very superstition; it is the justification of the noble
old Greek tale, which delivers Andromeda by the help of a hero, taught by
the Gods who love to teach Mankind.
For what strikes the Psalmist is, again, exactly what would strike a
modern poet, or a modern man of science: the strength and ease of the
vast beast; its enjoyment of its own life and power. It is to him the
Leviathan, whom "God has made to play in the sea;" "to take his pastime
therein."
Truly this was a healthy-minded man; as all will be, and only they, who
have full faith in the one good God, of whom are all things, both in
earth and heaven.
Then he goes further still. He has looked into the face of life
innumerable. Now he looks into the face of innumerable death; and sees
there too the Spirit and the work of God.
Thou givest to them; they gather:
Thou openest thy hand; they are filled with good:
Thou hidest thy face; they are troubled:
Thou takest away their breath; they die, and are turned again to their
dust.
Poetry? Yes: but, like all highest poetry, highest philosophy; and
soundest truth likewise. Nay, he goes further still--further, it may be,
than most of us would dare to go, had he not gone before us in the
courage of his faith. He dares to say, of such a world as this--"The
glory of the Lord shall endure for ever. The Lord shall rejoice in His
works."
The glory of the Lord, then, is shewn forth, and endures for ever, in
these animals of whom the Psalmist has been speaking, though they devour
each other day and night. The Lord rejoices in His works, even though
His works live by each other's death. The Lord shall rejoice in His
works--says this great poet and philosopher.
But what Lord, and what God? Ah, my friends, all depends on the answer
to that question. "There be," says St Paul, "lords many, and gods many:"
and since his time, men have made fresh lords and gods for themselves,
and believed in them, and worshipped them, while they fancied that they
were believing in the one true God, in the same God in whom the man
believed who wrote the 104th Psalm.
Do we truly believe in that one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit?
Let me beg you to consider that question earnestly. The Psalmist, when
he talked of the Lord, did not mean merely what some people call the
Deity, or the Supreme Being, or the Creator. You will remark that I
said--What. I do not care to say, Whom, of such a notion; that is, of a
God who made the world, and set it going once for all, but has never
meddled with it; never, so to speak, looked at it since: so that the
world would go on just the same, and just as well, if God thenceforth had
ceased to be. No: that is a dead God; an absentee God--as one said
bitterly once. But the Psalmist believed in the living God, and a
present God, in whom we live and move and have our being; in a God who
does not leave the world alone for a moment, nor in the smallest matter,
but is always interested in it, attending to it, enforcing His own laws,
working--if I may so speak in all reverence--and using the most pitifully
insufficient analogy--working--I say--His own machinery; making all
things work together for good, at least to those who love God; a God
without whom not a sparrow falls to the ground, and in whose sight all
the hairs of our heads are numbered.
In one word, he believed in a living God. If anyone had said to the
Psalmist, as I have heard men say now-a-days--Of course we believe, with
you, in a general Providence of God over the whole universe. But you do
not surely believe in special Providences? That would be superstition.
God governs the world by law, and not by special Providences. Then I
believe that the Psalmist would have answered--Laws? I believe in them
as much as you, and perhaps more than you. But as for special
Providences, I believe in them so much, that I believe that the whole
universe, and all that has ever happened in it from the beginning, has
happened by special Providences; that not an organic being has assumed
its present form, after long ages and generations, save by a continuous
series of special Providences; that not a weed grows in a particular
spot, without a special Providence of God that it should grow there, and
nowhere else; then, and nowhen else. I believe that every step I take,
every person I meet, every thought which comes into my mind--which is not
sinful--comes and happens by the perpetual special Providence of God,
watching for ever with Fatherly care over me, and each separate thing
that He has made.
And if a modern philosopher--or one so called--had said to him,--'This is
unthinkable and inconceivable, and therefore cannot be. I cannot "think
of"--I cannot conceive a mind--or as I call it--"a series of states of
consciousness," as antecedent to the infinity of processes simultaneously
going on in all the plants that cover the globe, from scattered polar
lichens to crowded tropical palms, and in all the millions of animals
which roam among them, and the millions of millions of insects which buzz
among them:'--Then the Psalmist would have answered him, I believe,--'If
you cannot, my friend, I can. And you must not make your power of
thought and conception the measure of the universe, or even of other
men's intellects; or say--"Because I cannot conceive a thing, therefore
no man can conceive it, and therefore it does not exist." But pray, O
philosopher, if you cannot think and conceive of the omnipresence and
omnipotence of God, what can you think and conceive?'
Then if that philosopher had answered him--as some would now-a-days--'I
can conceive that the properties of very different elements,--and
therefore the infinite variety and richness of nature which I cannot
conceive as caused by a God--that the properties--I say--of different
elements result from differences of arrangement arising by the
compounding and recompounding of ultimate homogeneous units'--Then, I
think, the Psalmist would have replied, as soon as he had--like Socrates
of old in a like case--recovered from the 'dizziness' caused by an
eloquence so unlike his own--'Why, this proposition is far more
"unthinkable" to me, and will be to 999 of 1000 of the human race, than
mine about a God and a Providence. Alas! for the vagaries of the mind of
man. When it wants to prove a pet theory of its own, it will strain at
any gnat, and swallow any camel.'
But again--if a philosopher of more reasonable mood had said to him--as
he very likely would say--'This is a grand conception of God: but what
proof have you of it? How do you know that God does interfere, by
special Providences, in the world around us; not only, as you say,
perpetually: but even now and then, and at all?'
Then the Psalmist, like all true Jews, would have gone back to a certain
old story which is to me the most precious story, save one, that ever was
written on earth; and have taken his stand on that. He would have gone
back--as the Scripture always goes back--to the story of Moses and the
Israelites in Egypt, and have said--'Whatever I know or do not know about
the Laws of nature, this I know--That God can use them as He chooses, to
punish the wicked, and to help the miserable. For He did so by my
forefathers. When we Jews were a poor, small, despised tribe of slaves
in Egypt, The God who made heaven and earth shewed Himself at once the
God of nature, and the God of grace. For He took the powers of nature;
and fought with them against proud Pharaoh and all his hosts; and shewed
that they belonged to Him; and that He could handle them all to do His
work. He shewed that He was Lord, not only of the powers of nature which
give life and health, but of those which give death and disease. Nothing
was too grand, nor too mean, for Him to use. He took the lightning and
the hail, and the pestilence, and the darkness, and the East wind, and
the springtides of the Red sea; and He took also the locust-swarms, and
the frogs, and the lice, and the loathsome skin-diseases of Egypt, and
the microscopic atomies which turn whole rivers into blood, and kill the
fish; and with them He fought against Pharaoh the man-God, the tyrant
ruling at his own will in the name of his father the sun-God and of the
powers of nature; till Egypt was destroyed, and Pharaoh's host drowned in
the sea; And He brought out my forefathers with a mighty hand and an
outstretched arm, because He had heard their cry in Egypt, and saw their
oppression under cruel taskmasters, and pitied them, and had mercy on
them in their slavery and degradation.' That is my God--the old Psalmist
would have said. Not merely a strong God, or a wise God; but a good God,
and a gracious God, and a just God likewise; a God who not only made
heaven and earth, the sea, and all that therein is, but who keepeth His
promise for ever; who helpeth them to right who suffer wrong, and feedeth
the hungry.
Yes, my friends, it is this magnificent conception of God's living and
actual goodness and justice, which the Psalmist had, which made him trust
God about all the strange and painful things which he saw in the
world--about, for instance, the suffering and death of animals; and
say--'If the lion roaring after his prey seeks his meat, he seeks his
meat from God: and therefore he ought to seek it, and he will find it. It
is all well: I know not why: but well it is, for it is the law and will
of the good and righteous and gracious God, who brought His people out of
the land of Egypt. And that is enough for me.'
Enough for him? and should it not be enough for us, and more than
enough?--We know what the Psalmist knew not. We know God to be more
good, more righteous, more gracious than any Prophet or Psalmist could
know. We know that God so loved the world, that He spared not His only-
begotten Son, but freely gave Him for us. We know that the only-begotten
Son Jesus Christ so loved the world that He stooped to be born and suffer
as mortal man, and to die on the cross, even while He was telling men
that not a sparrow fell to the ground without the knowledge of their
heavenly Father, and bidding them see how God fed the birds and clothed
the lilies of the field. Ah, my friends, in this case, as in all cases,
rest and comfort for our doubts and fears is to be found in one and the
same place--at the foot of the Cross of Christ. If we believe that He
who hung upon that Cross is--as He is--the maker and ruler of the
universe, the same from day to day and for ever: then we can trust Him in
darkness as well as in light; in doubt as well as in certainty; in the
face of pain, disease, and death, as well as in the face of joy, health,
and life; and say--Lord, we know not, but Thou knowest. Lord, we
believe, help Thou our unbelief. Make us sure that Thou, Lord, shalt
save both man and beast. For great are Thy mercies, O Lord; and the
children of men shall put their trust under the shadow of Thy wings.
Yes, my friends, this is, after all, a strange world, a solemn world, a
world full of sad mysteries, past our understanding. As was said once by
the holiest of modern Englishmen, now gone home to his rest--whose bust
stands worthily in yonder chapel--This is a world in which men must be
sometimes sad who love God, and care for their fellow-men.
But it is not over the dumb animals that we must mourn. For they fulfil
the laws of their being; and whatever meat they seek, they seek their
meat from God.
Rather must we mourn over those human beings who, being made in the
likeness of God, and redeemed again into that likeness by our Lord Jesus
Christ, and baptized into that likeness by the Holy Spirit, put on again
of their own will the likeness of the beasts which perish; and find too
often, alas! too late, that the wages of sin are death.
Rather must we mourn for those human beings who do not fulfil the laws of
their being: but break those laws by sin; till they are ground by them to
powder.
Rather must we mourn for those who seek their meat, not from God, but
from the world and the flesh; and neglect the bread which cometh down
from heaven, and the meat which endureth to eternal life, whereof the
Lord who gives it said--Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His
righteousness, and all other things shall be added unto you.
Rather must we pray for ourselves, and for all we love, that God's Spirit
of eternal life would raise us up, more and more day by day, out of the
likeness of the old Adam, who was of the earth, earthy; of whom it is
written that--like the animals--dust he was, and unto dust he must
return; and would mould us into the likeness of the new Adam, who is the
Lord from heaven, into the likeness of which it is written, that it is
created after God's image, in righteousness and true holiness; the end of
which is not death, but everlasting life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
And so will be fulfilled in us the saying of the Psalmist; and the Lord
shall rejoice in His works: for we too, not only body and soul, but
spirit also, shall be the work of God; and God will rejoice in us, and we
in God.
SERMON XIX. SIGNS AND WONDERS.
JOHN IV. 48-50.
Then said Jesus unto him, Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not
believe. The nobleman saith unto him, Sir, come down ere my child
die. Jesus saith unto him, Go thy way; thy son liveth.
These words of our Lord are found in the Gospel for this day. They are a
rebuke, though a gentle one. He reproved the nobleman, seemingly, for
his want of faith: but He worked the miracle, and saved the life of the
child.
We do not know enough of the circumstances of this case, to know exactly
why our Lord reproved the nobleman; and what want of faith He saw in him.
Some think that the man's fault was his mean notion of our Lord's power;
his wish that He should come down the hills to Capernaum, and see the boy
Himself, in order to cure him; whereas he ought to have known that our
Lord could cure him--as He did--at a distance, and by a mere wish, which
was no less than a command to nature, and to that universe which He had
made.
I cannot tell how this may be: but of one thing I think we may be
sure--That this saying of our Lord's is very deep, and very wide; and
applies to many people, in many times--perhaps to us in these modern
times.
We must recollect one thing--That our Lord did not put forward the mere
power of His miracles as the chief sign of His being the Son of God. Not
so: He declared His almighty power most chiefly by shewing mercy and
pity. Twice He refused to give the Scribes and Pharisees a sign from
heaven. "An evil and adulterous generation," He said, "seeketh after a
sign: but there shall be no sign given them, but the sign of the prophet
Jonas." And what was that,--but a warning to repent, and mend their
ways, ere it was too late?
Now the slightest use of our common sense must tell us, that our Lord
could have given a sign of His almighty power if He had chosen; and such
a sign as no man, even the dullest, could have mistaken. What prodigy
could He not have performed, before Scribes and Pharisees, Herod, and
Pontius Pilate? "Thinkest thou," He said Himself, "that I cannot now
pray to My Father, and He will send Me presently more than twelve legions
of angels?" Yet how did our Lord use that miraculous and almighty power
of His? Sparingly, and secretly. Sparingly; for He used it almost
entirely in curing the diseases of poor people; and secretly; for He used
it almost entirely in remote places. Jerusalem itself, recollect, was at
best a remote city compared with any of the great cities of the Roman
empire. And even there He refused to cast Himself down from a pinnacle
of the temple, for a sign and wonder to the Jews. If He, the Lord of the
world, had meant to convert the world by prodigious miracles, He would
surely have gone to Rome itself, the very heart and centre of the
civilized world, and have shewn such signs and wonders therein, as would
have made the Caesar himself come down from his throne, and worship Him,
the Lord of all.
But no. Our Lord wished for the obedience, not of men's lips, but of
their hearts. It was their hearts which He wished to win, that they
might love Him--and be loyal to Him--for the sake of His goodness; and
not fear and tremble before Him for the sake of His power. And therefore
He kept, so to speak, His power in the background, and put His goodness
foremost; only shewing His power in miracles of healing and mercy; that
so poor neglected, oppressed, hardworked souls might understand that
whoever did not care for them, Christ their Lord did; and that their
disease and misery were not His will; nor the will of His Father and
their Father in heaven.
But because, also, Christ was Lord of heaven and earth; therefore--if I
may make so bold as to guess at the reason for anything which He did--He
seems to have interfered as little as possible with those regular rules
and customs of this world about us, which we now call the Laws of Nature.
He did not offer--as the magicians of His time did offer--and as too many
have pretended since to do--to change the courses of the elements, to
bring down tempests or thunderbolts, to shew prodigies in the heaven
above, and in the earth beneath. Why should He? Heaven and earth, moon
and stars, fire and tempest, and all the physical forces in the universe,
were fulfilling His will already; doing their work right well according
to the law which He had given them from the beginning. He had no need to
disturb them, no need to disturb the growth of a single flower at His
feet.
Rather He loved to tell men to look at them, and see how they went well,
because His Father in heaven cared for them. To tell people to look, not
at prodigies, comets, earthquakes, and the seeming exceptions of God's
rule: but at the common, regular, simple, peaceful work of God, which is
going on around us all day long in every blade of grass, and flower, and
singing bird, and sunbeam, and shower. To consider the lilies of the
field how they grow: which toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say
unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of
these.--And the birds of the air: They sow not, neither reap, nor gather
into barns; and yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. How much more
will He feed you, who can sow, and reap, and gather into barns?--O ye of
little faith, who fancy always that besides sowing and reaping honestly,
you must covet, and cheat, and lie, and break God's laws instead of
obeying them; or else, forsooth, you cannot earn your living? To see
that the signs of God's Kingdom are not astonishing convulsions, terrible
catastrophes and disorders: but order, and peace, and usefulness, in
creatures which are happy, because they live according to the law which
God has given them, and do their duty--that duty, of which the great poet
of the English Church has sung--
Stern Lawgiver! Thou yet dost wear
The Godhead's most benignant grace
Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face.
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds,
And fragrance in thy footing treads;
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong,
And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong.
But men would not believe that in our Lord's time; neither would they
believe it after His time. Will they believe it even now? They craved
after signs and wonders; they saw God's hand, not in the common sights of
this beautiful world; not in seed-time and harvest, summer and winter;
not in the blossoming of flowers, and the song of birds: but only in
strange portents, absurd and lying miracles, which they pretended had
happened, because they fancied that they ought to have happened: and so
built up a whole literature of _un_reason, which remains to this day, a
doleful monument of human folly and superstition.
But is not this too true of some at least of us in this very day? Must
not people now see signs and wonders before they believe in God?
Do they not consider whatever is strange and inexplicable, as coming
immediately from God? While whatever they are accustomed to, or fancy
that they can explain, they consider comes in what they call the course
of nature, without God's having anything to do with it?
If a man drops down dead, they say he died "by the hand of God," or "by
the visitation of God:" as if any created thing or being could die, or
live either, save by the will and presence of God: as if a sparrow could
fall to the ground without our Father's knowledge. But so it is; because
men's hearts are far from God.
If an earthquake swallowed up half London this very day, how many would
be ready to cry, "Here is a visitation of God. Here is the immediate
hand of God. Perhaps Christ is coming, and the end of the world at
hand." And yet they will not see the true visitation, the immediate hand
of God, in every drop of rain which comes down from heaven; and returneth
not again void, but gives seed to the sower and bread to the eater. But
so it always has been. Men used to see God and His power and glory
almost exclusively in comets, auroras, earthquakes. It was not so very
long ago, that the birth of monstrous or misshapen animals, and all other
prodigies, as they were called, were carefully noted down, and talked of
far and wide, as signs of God's anger, presages of some coming
calamity.--Atheists while they are in safety, superstitious when they are
in danger--Requiring signs and wonders to make them believe--Interested
only in what is uncommon and seems to break God's laws--Careless about
what is common, and far more wonderful, because it fulfils God's
laws--Such have most men been for ages, and will be, perhaps, to the end;
shewing themselves, in that respect, carnal and no wiser than dumb
animals.
For it is carnal, animal and brutish, and a sign of want of true
civilization, as well as of true faith, only to be interested and
surprised by what is strange; like dumb beasts, who, if they see anything
new, are attracted by it and frightened by it, at the same time: but who,
when once they are accustomed to it, and have found out that it will do
them no harm, are too stupid to feel any curiosity or interest about it,
though it were the most beautiful or the most wonderful object on earth.