yesterday, to-day, and for ever, we are bound by the Christian faith to
believe that He has now, and will have for ever, the same Divine
indignation against wrong, the same determination to put it down: and to
cast out of His kingdom, which is simply the whole universe, all that
offends, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.
And if any say, as some say now-a-days--"Ah, but you cannot suppose that
our Lord would propagate His Gospel by the sword, or wish Christians to
do so." My friends, this chapter and this sermon has nothing to do with
the propagation of the Gospel, in the popular sense; nothing to do with
converting heathens or others to Christianity. It has to do with that
awful government of the world, of which the Bible preaches from beginning
to end; that moral and providential kingdom of God, which rules over the
destiny of every kingdom, every nation, every tribe, every family, nay,
over the destiny of each human being; ay, of each horde of Tartars on the
furthest Siberian steppe, and each group of savages in the furthest
island of the Pacific; rendering to each man according to his works,
rewarding the good, punishing the bad, and exterminating evildoers, even
wholesale and seemingly without discrimination, when the measure of their
iniquity is full. Christ's herald in this noble chapter calls men, not
to repentance, but to inevitable doom. His angel--His messenger--stands
in the sun, the source of light and life; above this petty planet, its
fashions, its politics, its sentimentalities, its notions of how the
universe ought to have been made and managed; and calls to whom?--to all
the fowl that fly in the firmament of heaven--"Come and gather yourselves
together, to the feast of the great God, that ye may eat the flesh of
kings, and of captains, and of mighty men; and the flesh of horses and of
them that sit on them; and the flesh of all men, both free and slave,
both small and great."
What those awful words may mean I cannot say. But this I say, that the
Apostle would never have used such words, conveying so plain and so
terrible a meaning to anyone who has ever seen or heard of a
battle-field, if he had really meant by them nothing like a battle-field
at all.
It may be that these words have fulfilled themselves many times--at the
fall of Jerusalem--at the wars which convulsed the Roman empire during
the first century after Christ--at the final fall of the Roman empire
before the lances of our German ancestors--in many another great war, and
national calamity, in many a land since then. It may be, too, that, as
learned divines have thought, they will have their complete fulfilment in
some war of all wars, some battle of all battles; in which all the powers
of evil, and all those who love a lie, shall be arrayed against all the
powers of good, and all those who fear God and keep His commandments: to
fight it out, if the controversy can be settled by no reason, no
persuasion; a battle in which the whole world shall discover that, even
in an appeal to brute force, the good are stronger than the bad; because
they have moral force also on their side; because God and the laws of His
whole universe are fighting for them, against those who transgress law,
and outrage reason.
The wisest of living Britons has said,--"Infinite Pity, yet infinite
rigour of Law. It is so that the world is made." I should add, It is so
the world must be made, because it is made by Jesus Christ our Lord, and
its laws are the likeness of His character; pitiful, because Christ is
pitiful; and rigorous, because He is rigorous. So pitiful is Christ,
that He did not hesitate to be slain for men, that mankind through Him
might be saved. But so rigorous is Christ, that He does not hesitate to
slay men, if needful, that mankind thereby may be saved. War and
bloodshed, pestilence and famine, earthquake and tempest--all of them, as
sure as there is a God, are the servants of God, doing His awful but
necessary work, for the final benefit of the whole human race.
It may be difficult to believe this: at least to believe it with the same
intense faith with which prophets and apostles of old believed it, and
cried--"When Thy judgments, O Lord, are abroad in the earth, then shall
the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness." But we must believe
it: or we shall be driven to believe in no God at all; and that will be
worse for us than all the evil that has happened to us from our youth up
until now.
But most people find it very difficult to believe in such a God as the
Scripture sets forth--a God of boundless tenderness; and yet a God of
boundless indignation.
The covetous and luxurious find it very difficult to understand such a
being. Their usual notion of tenderness is a selfish dislike of seeing
any one else uncomfortable, because it makes them uncomfortable likewise.
Their usual notion of indignation is a selfish desire of revenge against
anyone who interferes with their comfort. And therefore they have no
wholesome indignation against wrong and wrong-doers, and a great deal of
unwholesome tenderness for them. They are afraid of any one's being
punished; probably from a fellow-feeling; a suspicion that they deserve
to be punished themselves. They hate and dread honest severity, and
stern exercise of lawful power. They are indulgent to the bad, severe
upon the good; till, as has been bitterly but too truly said,--"Public
opinion will allow a man to do anything, except his duty."
Now this is a humour which cannot last. It breeds weakness, anarchy, and
at last ruin to society. And then the effeminate and luxurious,
terrified for their money and their comfort, fly from an unwholesome
tenderness to an unwholesome indignation; break out into a panic of
selfish rage; and become, as cowards are apt to do, blindly and wantonly
cruel; and those who fancied God too indulgent to punish His enemies,
will be the very first to punish their own.
But there are those left, I thank God, in this land, who have a clear
understanding of what they ought to be, and an honest desire to be it;
who know that a manful indignation against wrong-doing, a hearty hatred
of falsehood and meanness, a rigorous determination to do their duty at
all risks, and to repress evil with all severity, may dwell in the same
heart with gentleness, forgiveness, tenderness to women and children;
active pity to the weak, the sick, the homeless; and courtesy to all
mankind, even to their enemies.
God grant that that spirit may remain alive among us. For without it we
shall not long be a strong nation; not indeed long a nation at all. And
it is alive among us. Not that we, any of us, have enough of it--God
forgive us for all our shortcomings. And God grant it may remain alive
among us; for it is, as far as it goes, the likeness of Christ, the Maker
and Ruler of the world.
"Christian," said a great genius and a great divine,
"If thou wouldst learn to love,
Thou first must learn to hate."
And if any one answer--"Hate? Even God hateth nothing that He has made."
The rejoinder is,--And for that very reason God hates evil; because He
has not made it, and it is ruinous to all that He has made.
Go you and do likewise. Hate what is wrong with all your heart, and
mind, and soul, and strength. For so, and so only, you will shew that
you love God with all your heart, and mind, and soul, and strength,
likewise.
Oh pray--and that not once for all merely, but day by day, ay, almost
hour by hour--Strengthen me, O Lord, to hate what Thou hatest, and love
what Thou lovest; and therefore, whenever I see an opportunity, to put
down what Thou hatest, and to help what Thou lovest--That so, at the last
dread day, when every man shall be rewarded according to his works, you
may have some answer to give to the awful question--On whose side wert
thou in the battle of life? On the side of good men and of God, or on
the side of bad men and the devil? Lest you find yourselves forced to
reply--as too many will be forced--with surprise, and something like
shame and confusion of face--I really do not know. I never thought about
the matter at all. I never knew that there was any battle of life.
Never knew that there was any battle of life? And yet you were
christened, and signed with the sign of the Cross, in token that you
should fight manfully under Christ's banner against sin, the world, and
the devil, and continue Christ's faithful soldier and servant to your
life's end. Did it never occur to you that those words might possibly
mean something? And you used to sing hymns, too, on earth, about
"Soldiers of Christ, arise, And put your armour on." What prophets, and
apostles, and martyrs, and confessors meant by those words, you should
know well enough. Did it never occur to you that they might possibly
mean something to you? That as long as the world was no better than it
is, there was still a battle of life; and that you too were sworn to
fight in it? How many will answer--Yes--Yes--But I thought that these
words only meant having my soul saved, and going to heaven when I died.
And how did you expect to do that? By believing certain doctrines which
you were told were true; and leading a tolerably respectable life,
without which you would not have been received into society? Was that
all which was needed to go to heaven? And was that all that was meant by
fighting manfully under Christ's banner against sin, the world, and the
devil? Why, Cyrus and his old Persians, 2,400 years ago, were nearer to
the kingdom of God than that. They had a clearer notion of what the
battle of life meant than that, when they said that not only the man who
did a merciful or just deed, but the man who drained a swamp, tilled a
field, made any little corner of the earth somewhat better than he found
it, was fighting against Ahriman the evil spirit of darkness, on the side
of Ormuzd the good god of light; and that as he had taken his part in
Ormuzd's battle, he should share in Ormuzd's triumph.
Oh be at least able to say in that day,--Lord, I am no hero. I have been
careless, cowardly, sometimes all but mutinous. Punishment I have
deserved, I deny it not. But a traitor I have never been; a deserter I
have never been. I have tried to fight on Thy side in Thy battle against
evil. I have tried to do the duty which lay nearest me; and to leave
whatever Thou didst commit to my charge a little better than I found it.
I have not been good: but I have at least tried to be good. I have not
done good, it may be, either: but I have at least tried to do good. Take
the will for the deed, good Lord. Accept the partial self-sacrifice
which Thou didst inspire, for the sake of the one perfect self-sacrifice
which Thou didst fulfil upon the Cross. Pardon my faults, out of Thine
own boundless pity for human weakness. Strike not my unworthy name off
the roll-call of the noble and victorious army, which is the blessed
company of all faithful people; and let me, too, be found written in the
Book of Life: even though I stand the lowest and last upon its list.
Amen.
SERMON XXII. NOBLE COMPANY.
HEBREWS XII. 22, 23.
Ye are come to the city of the living God, and to the spirits of just
men made perfect.
I have quoted only part of the passage of Scripture in which these words
occur. If you want a good employment for All Saints' Day, read the whole
passage, the whole chapter; and no less, the 11th chapter, which comes
before it: so will you understand better the meaning of All Saints' Day.
But sufficient for the day is the good thereof, as well as the evil; and
the good which I have to say this morning is--You are come to the spirits
of just men made perfect; for this is All Saints' Day.
Into the presence of this noble company we have come: even nobler
company, remember, than that which was spoken of in the text. For more
than 1800 years have passed since the Epistle to the Hebrews was written:
and how many thousands of just men and women, pure, noble, tender, wise,
beneficent, have graced the earth since then, and left their mark upon
mankind, and helped forward the hallowing of our heavenly Father's name,
the coming of His kingdom, the doing of His will on earth as it is done
in heaven; and helped therefore to abolish the superstition, the misrule,
the vice, and therefore the misery of this struggling, moaning world. How
many such has Christ sent on this earth during the last 1800 years. How
many before that; before His own coming, for many a century and age. We
know not, and we need not know. The records of Holy Scripture and of
history strike with light an isolated mountain peak, or group of peaks,
here and here through the ages; but between and beyond all is dark to us
now. But it may not have been dark always. Scripture and history
likewise hint to us of great hills far away, once brilliant in the one
true sunshine which comes from God, now shrouded in the mist of ages, or
literally turned away beyond our horizon by the revolution of our planet:
and of lesser hills, too, once bright and green and fair, giving pasture
to lonely flocks, sending down fertilizing streams into now forgotten
valleys; themselves all but forgotten now, save by the God who made and
blessed them.
Yes: many a holy soul, many a useful soul, many a saint who is now at
God's right hand, has lived and worked, and been a blessing, himself
blest, of whom the world, and even the Church, has never heard, who will
never be seen or known again, till the day in which the Lord counteth up
His jewels.
Let us rejoice in that thought on this day, above all days in the year.
On this day we give special thanks to God for all His servants departed
this life in His faith and fear. Let us rejoice in the thought that we
know not how many they are; only that they are an innumerable company,
out of all tongues and nations, whom no man can number. Let us rejoice
that Christ's grace is richer, and not poorer, than our weak imaginations
can conceive, or our narrow systems account for. Let us rejoice that the
goodly company in whose presence we stand, can be limited and defined by
no mortal man, or school of men: but only by Him from whom, with the
Father, proceeds for ever the Holy Spirit, the inspirer of all good; and
who said of that Spirit--"The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou
hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and
whither it goeth. So is every one who is born of the Spirit"--and who
said again, "John came neither eating nor drinking, and ye said, He hath
a devil. The Son of man came eating and drinking, and ye say, Behold a
man gluttonous and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But
I say unto you, Verily wisdom is justified of all her children"--and who
said again--when John said to Him, "Master, we saw one casting out devils
in Thy name, and he followeth not us"--"Forbid him not. For I say to
you, that he that doeth a miracle in My name will not lightly speak evil
of Me"--and who said, lastly--and most awfully--that the unpardonable
sin, either in this life or the life to come, was to attribute beneficent
deeds to a bad origin, because they were performed by one who differed
from us in opinion; and to say, "He casteth out devils by Beelzebub,
prince of the devils."
These are words of our Lord, which we are specially bound to keep in our
minds, with reverence and godly fear, on All Saints' Day, lest by
arranging our calendar of saints according to our own notions of who
ought to be a saint, and who ought not--that is, who agrees with our
notions of perfection, and who does not--we exclude ourselves, by
fastidiousness, from much unquestionably good company; and possibly mix
ourselves up with not a little which is, to say the least, questionable.
Men in all ages, Churchmen or others, have fallen into this mistake. They
have been but too ready to limit their calendar of saints; to narrow the
thanksgivings which they offer to God on All Saints' Day.
The Romish Church has been especially faulty on this point. It has
assumed, as necessary preliminaries for saintship--at least after the
Christian era--the practice of, or at least the longing after, celibacy;
and after the separation of the Eastern and Western Churches,
unconditional submission to the Church of Rome. But how has this
injured, if not spoiled, their exclusive calendar of saints. Amid
apostles, martyrs, divines, who must be always looked on as among the
very heroes and heroines of humanity, we find more than one fanatic
persecutor; more than two or three clearly insane personages; and too
many who all but justify the terrible sneer--that the Romish Calendar is
the "Pantheon of Hysteria."
And Protestants, too--How have they narrowed the number of the spirits of
just men made perfect; and confined the Paean which should go up from the
human race on All Saints' Day, till a "saint" has too often meant with
them only a person who has gone through certain emotional experiences,
and assented to certain subjective formulas, neither of which, according
to the opinion of some of the soundest divines, both of the Romish,
Greek, and Anglican communions, are to be found in the letter of
Scripture as necessary to salvation; and who have, moreover, finished
their course--doubtless often a holy, beneficent, and beautiful course--by
a rapturous death-bed scene, which is more rare in the actual experience
of clergymen, and, indeed, in the conscience and experience of human
beings in general, than in the imaginations of the writers of religious
romances.
But we of the Church of England, as by law established--and I recognize
and obey, and shall hereafter recognize and obey, no other--have no need
so to narrow our All Saints' Day; our joy in all that is noble and good
which man has said or done in any age or clime. We have no need to
define where formularies have not defined; to shut where they have
opened; to curse where they either bless, or are humbly, charitably, and
therefore divinely, silent. With a magnificent faith in the justice of
the Father, and in the grace of Christ, and in the inspiration of the
Holy Spirit, our Church bids us--Judge not the dead, lest ye be judged.
Condemn not the dead, lest ye be condemned. For she bids us commit to
the earth the corpses of all who die not "unbaptized," "excommunicate,"
or wilful suicides, and who are willing to lie in our consecrated ground;
giving thanks to God that our dear brother has been delivered from the
miseries of this sinful world, and in sure and certain hope of the
resurrection to eternal life.
At least: we of the Abbey of Westminster have a right to hold this; for
we, thank God, act on it, and have acted on it for many a year. We have
a right to our wide, free, charitable, and truly catholic conception of
All Saints' Day. Ay, if we did not use our right, these walls would use
it for us; and in us would our Lord's words be fulfilled--If we were
silent, the very stones beneath our feet would cry out.
For hither we gather, as far as is permitted us, and hither we gather
proudly, the mortal dust of every noble soul who has done good work for
the British nation; accepting each and all of them as gifts from the
Father of lights, from whom proceedeth every good and perfect gift, as
sent to this nation by that Lord Jesus Christ who is the King of all the
nations upon earth; and acknowledging--for fear of falling into that
Pelagian heresy, which is too near the heart of every living man--that
all wise words which they have spoken, all noble deeds which they have
done, have come, must have come, from The One eternal source of wisdom,
of nobleness, of every form of good; even from the Holy Spirit of God.
We make no severe or minute inquiries here. We leave them, if they must
be made, to God the Judge of all things, and Christ who knows the secrets
of the hearts; to Him who is merciful in this: that He rewardeth every
man according to his works.
All we ask is--and all we dare ask--of divine or statesman, poet or
warrior, musician or engineer--of Dryden or of Handel--of Isaac Watts or
of Charles Dickens--but why go on with the splendid diversities of the
splendid catalogue?--What was your work? Did we admire you for it? Did
we love you for it? And why? Because you made us in some way or other
better men. Because you helped us somewhat toward whatsoever things are
pure, true, just, honourable, of good report. Because, if there was any
virtue--that is, true valour and manhood; if there was any praise--that
is, just honour in the sight of men, and therefore surely in the sight of
the Son of man, who died for men; you helped us to think on such things.
You, in one word, helped to make us better men.
Welcome then, friends unknown--and, alas! friends known, and loved, and
lost--welcome into England's Pantheon, not of superstitious and selfish
hysteria, but of beneficent and healthy manhood.
Your words and your achievements have gone out into all lands, and your
sound unto the ends of the world; and let them go, and prosper in that
for which the Lord of man has sent them. Our duty is, to guard your
sacred dust. Our duty is, to point out your busts, your monuments around
these ancient walls, to all who come, of every race and creed; as proofs
that the ancient spirit is not dead; that Christ has not deserted the
nation of England, while He sends into it such men as you; that Christ
has not deserted the Church of England, while He gives her grace to
recognize and honour such men as you, and to pray Christ that He would
keep up the sacred succession of virtue, talent, beneficence, patriotism;
and make us, most unworthy, at last worthy, one at least here and there,
of the noble dead, above whose dust we now serve God.
Yes, so ought we in Westminster to keep our All Saints' Day; in giving
thanks to God for the spirits of just men made perfect. Not only for
those just men and women innumerable, who--as I said at first--have
graced this earth during the long ages of the past: but specially for
those who lie around us here; with whom we can enter, and have entered
already, often, into spiritual communion closer than that, almost, of
child with parent; whose writings we can read, whose deeds we can admire,
whose virtues we can copy, and to whom we owe a debt of gratitude, we and
our children after us, which never can be repaid.
And if ever the thought comes over us--But these men had their faults,
mistakes--Oh, what of that?
Nothing is left of them
Now, but pure manly.
Let us think of them: not as they were, compassed round with
infirmities--as who is not?--knowing in part, and seeing in part, as St
Paul himself, in the zenith of his inspiration, said that he knew; and
saw, as through a glass, darkly.
Let us think of them not as they were, the spirits of just men imperfect:
but as the spirits of just men made, or to be made hereafter, perfect;
when, as St Paul says, "that which is in part is done away, and that
which is perfect is come." And let us trust Christ for them, as we would
trust Him for ourselves; sure "that the path of the just is as a shining
light, which shineth more and more unto the perfect day."
Ah, how many lie in this Abbey, to meet whom in the world to come, would
be an honour most undeserved!
How many more worthy, and therefore more likely, than any of us here, to
behold that endless All Saints' Day, to which may God in His mercy, in
spite of all our shortcomings, bring us all. Amen.
SERMON XXIII. DE PROFUNDIS.
PSALM CXXX.
Out of the deep have I called unto Thee, O Lord: Lord, hear my voice.
O let Thine ears consider well the voice of my complaint. If Thou,
Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss, O Lord, who may
abide it? For there is mercy with Thee, therefore shall Thou be
feared. I look for the Lord; my soul doth wait for Him: in His word
is my trust. My soul fleeth unto the Lord before the morning watch: I
say, before the morning watch. O Israel, trust in the Lord: for with
the Lord there is mercy, and with Him is plenteous redemption. And He
shall redeem Israel from all his sins.
Let us consider this psalm awhile, for it is a precious heirloom to
mankind. It has been a guide and a comfort to thousands and tens of
thousands. Rich and poor, old and young, Jews and Christians, Romans,
Greeks, and Protestants, have been taught by it the character of God; and
taught to love Him, and trust in Him, in whom is mercy, therefore He
shall be feared.