Eversley, 1869. Chester Cathedral, 1870. Trinity Sunday.
Revelation iv. 11. "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour
and power: for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they
are and were created."
I am going to speak to you on a deep matter, the deepest and most
important of all matters, and yet I hope to speak simply. I shall say
nothing which you cannot understand, if you will attend. I shall say
nothing, indeed, which you could not find out for yourselves, if you will
think, and use your own common sense. I wish to speak to you of
Theology--of God Himself. For this Trinity Sunday of all the Sundays of
the year, is set apart for thinking of God Himself--not merely of our own
souls, though we must never forget them, nor of what God has done for our
souls, though we must never forget that--but of what God is Himself, what
He would be if we had no souls--if there were, and had been from the
beginning, no human beings at all upon the earth.
Now, if we look at any living thing--an animal, say, or a flower, and
consider how curiously it is contrived, our common sense will tell us at
once that some one has made it; and if any one answers--Oh! the flower
was not made, it grew--our common sense would tell us that that was only
a still more wonderful contrivance, and that there must be some one who
gave it the power of growing, and who makes it grow. And so our common
sense would tell us, as it told the heathens of old, that there must be
GODS--beings whom we cannot see, who made the world. But if we watch
things more closely, we should find out that all things are made more or
less upon the same plan; that (and I tell you that this is true, strange
as it may seem) all animals, however different they may seem to our eyes,
are made upon the same plan; all plants and flowers, however different
they may seem, are made upon the same plan; all stones, and minerals, and
earths, however different they may seem, are made upon the same plan.
Then common sense would surely tell us, one God made all the animals, one
God made all the plants, one God made all the earths and stones. But if
we watch more closely still, we should find that the plants could not
live without the animals, nor the animals without the plants, nor either
of them without the soil beneath our feet, and the air and rain above our
heads. That everything in the world worked together on one plan, and
each thing depended on everything else. Then common sense would tell us,
one God must have made the whole world. But if we watched more closely
again, or rather, if we asked the astronomers, who study the stars and
heavens, they would tell us that all the worlds over our heads, all the
stars that spangle the sky at night, were made upon the same plan as our
earth--that sun and moon, and all the host of heaven, move according to
the same laws by which our earth moves, and as far as we can find out,
have been made in the same way as our earth has been made, and that these
same laws must have been going on, making worlds after worlds, for
hundreds of thousands of years, and ages beyond counting, and will, in
all probability, go on for countless ages more. Then common sense will
tell us, the same God has made all worlds, past, present, and to come.
There is but one God, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.
So we should learn something of how all things were made; and then would
come a second question, why all things were made? Why did God make the
worlds?
Let us begin with a very simple example. Simple things will often teach
us most. You see a flower growing, not in a garden, but wild in a field
or wood. You admire its beautiful colours, or if it is fragrant, its
sweet scent. Now, why was that flower put there? You may answer, "to
please me." My dear friends, I should be the last person to deny that.
I can never see a child picking a nosegay, much less a little London
child, born and bred and shut up among bricks and mortar, when it gets
for the first time into a green field, and throws itself instinctively
upon the buttercups and daisies, as if they were precious jewels and
gold;--I never can see that sight, I say, without feeling that there are
such things as final causes--I mean that the great Father in heaven put
those flowers into that field on purpose to give pleasure to His human
children. But then comes the question, Of all the flowers in a single
field, is one in ten thousand ever looked at by child or by men? And yet
they are just as beautiful as the rest; and God has, so to speak, taken
just as much pains with the many beautiful things which men will never
see, as with the few, very few, which men may see. And when one thinks
further about this--when one thinks of the vast forests in other lands
which the foot of man has seldom or never trod, and which, when they are
entered, are found to be full of trees, flowers, birds, butterflies, so
beautiful and glorious, that anything which we see in these islands is
poor and plain in comparison with them; and when we remember that these
beautiful creatures have been going on generation after generation, age
after age, unseen and unenjoyed by any human eyes, one must ask, Why has
God been creating all that beauty? simply to let it all, as it were, run
to waste, till after thousands of years one traveller comes, and has a
hasty glimpse of it? Impossible. Or again--and this is an example still
more strange, and yet it is true. We used to think till within a very
few years past, that at the bottom of the deep sea there were no living
things--that miles below the surface of the ocean, in total darkness, and
under such a weight of water as would crush us to a jelly, there could be
nothing, except stones, and sand, and mud. But now it is found out that
the bottom of the deepest seas, and the utter darkness into which no ray
of light can ever pierce, are alive and swarming with millions of
creatures as cunningly and exquisitely formed, and in many cases as
brilliantly coloured, as those which live in the sunlight along the
shallow shores.
Now, my dear friends,--surely beautiful things were made to be seen by
some one, else why were they made beautiful? Common sense tells us that.
But who has seen those countless tribes, which have been living down, in
utter darkness, since the making of the world? Common sense, I think,
can give but one answer--GOD. He, and He only, to whom the night is as
clear as the day, to whom the darkness and the light are both alike. But
more--God has not only made things beautiful; He has made things happy;
whatever misery there may be in the world, there is no denying that.
However sorrow may have come into the world, there is a great deal more
happiness than misery in it. Misery is the exception; happiness is the
rule. No rational man ever heard a bird sing, without feeling that that
bird was happy; and, if so, his common sense ought to tell him that if
God made that bird, He made it to be happy; He intended it to be happy,
and He takes pleasure in its happiness, though no human ear should ever
hear its song, no human heart should ever share in its joy. Yes, the
world was not made for man; but man, like all the world, was made for
God. Not for man's pleasure merely, not for man's use, but for God's
pleasure all things are, and for God's pleasure they were created.
And now, surely, common sense will tell us why God made all things. For
His own pleasure. God is pleased to make them, and pleased with what He
has made, because what He has made is worth being pleased with. He has
seen all things that He has made, and, behold, they are very good, and
right, and wise, and beautiful, and happy, each after its kind. So that,
as the Psalmist says, "The Lord shall rejoice in His works." And
Scripture tells that it must be so, if we only recollect and believe one
word of St. John's that "God is Love"--for it is the very essence of
love, that it cannot be content to love itself. It must have something
which is not itself to love that it may go out of itself, and forget
itself, and spend itself in the good and in the happiness of what it
loves. All true love of husband and wife, mother and child, sister and
brother, friend and friend, man to his country,--what does it mean but
this? Forgetting one's selfish happiness in doing good to others, and
finding a deeper, higher happiness in that. The man who only loves
himself knows not what Love means. In truth, he does not even love
himself. He is his own worst enemy: his selfishness torments him with
discontent, disgust, pride, fear, and all evil passions and lusts; and in
him is fulfilled our Lord's saying, that he that will save his life shall
lose it. But the man who is full of love, as God is full of love, who
forgets himself in making others happy, who lives the eternal life of
God, which is alone worth living, he is the only truly happy man; and in
him is fulfilled that other saying of our Lord, that he who loseth his
life shall save it.
And the loving, unselfish man too is the only sound theologian, for he
who dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. He alone will
understand the mystery of who God is, and why He made all things. The
loving man alone, I say, will understand the mystery--how because God is
love He could not live alone in the abyss, but must create all things,
all worlds and heavens, yea, and the heaven of heavens, that He might
have something beside Himself, whereon to spend His boundless love. And
why? Because love can only love what is somewhat like itself, He made
all things according to the idea of His own eternal mind. Because He is
unchangeable, and a God of order and of law, He made all things according
to one order, and gave them a law which cannot be broken, that they might
continue this day as they were at the beginning, serving Him and
fulfilling His word. Because He is a God of justice, He made all things
just, depending on each other, helping each other, and compelled to
sacrifice themselves for each other, and minister to each other whether
they will or not. Because He is a God of beauty, He made all things
beautiful, of a variety and a richness unspeakable, that He might rejoice
in all His works, and find a divine delight in every moss which grows
upon the moor, and every gnat which dances in the sun. Because He is a
God of love, He gave to every creature a power of happiness according to
its kind, that He might rejoice in the happiness of His creatures. And
lastly, because God is a spirit--a moral and a rational Being--therefore
He created rational beings to be more like Him than any other creatures,
and constituted the services of men and angels in a most wonderful order,
that they might reverence law as He does, and justice as He does--that
they might love to be loving as He loves, and to be useful as He is
useful--that they might rejoice in the beauty of His works as He rejoices
in them Himself; and, catching from time to time fuller and fuller
glimpses of that Divine and wonderful order according to which He has
made all things and all worlds, may see more and more clearly, as the
years roll on, that all things are just, and beautiful, and good; and
join more and more heartily in the hymn which goes up for ever from every
sun, and star, and world, and from the tiniest creature in these worlds:
"Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power; for Thou
hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created."
Now, to God the Father, who, out of His boundless love, ordains the
making of all things; and to God the Son, who, out of His boundless love,
performs the making of all things; and to God the Holy Spirit, who, out
of His boundless love, breathes law and kind, life and growth into all
things, three Persons in one, ever-blessed Trinity, be all glory, and
honour, and praise, for ever and ever. Amen.