Eversley. 19th Sunday after Trinity, 1868.
Ezekiel xviii. 1-4. "The word of the Lord came unto me again, saying,
What mean ye, that ye use this proverb concerning the land of Israel,
saying, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are
set on edge? As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion
any more to use this proverb in Israel. Behold, all souls are mine; as
the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul
that sinneth, it shall die."
This is a precious chapter, and a comfortable chapter likewise, for it
helps us to clear up a puzzle which has tormented the minds of men in all
ages whenever they have thought of God, and of whether God meant them
well, or meant them ill.
For all men have been tempted. We are tempted at times to say,--The
fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.
That is, we are punished not for what we have done wrong, but for what
our fathers did wrong. One man says,--My forefathers squandered their
money, and I am punished by being poor. Or, my forefathers ruined their
constitutions, and, therefore, I am weakly and sickly. My forefathers
were ignorant and reckless, and, therefore, I was brought up ignorant,
and in all sorts of temptation. And so men complain of their ill-luck
and bad chance, as they call it, till they complain of God, and say, as
the Jews said in Ezekiel's time, God's ways are unequal--partial--unfair.
He is a respecter of persons. He has not the same rule for all men. He
starts men unequally in the race of life--some heavily weighted with
their father's sins and misfortunes, some helped in every way by their
father's virtue and good fortune--and then He expects them all to run
alike. God is not just and equal. And then some go on,--men who think
themselves philosophers, but are none--to say things concerning God of
which I shall say nothing here, lest I put into your minds foolish
thoughts, which had best be kept out of them.
But, some of you may say, Is it not so after all? Is it not true? Is
not God harder on some than on others? Does not God punish men every day
for their father's sins? Does He not say in the Second Commandment that
He will do so, and visit the sins of the fathers upon the children to the
third and fourth generation; and how can you make that agree with what
Ezekiel says,--"The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father." My
dear friends, I know that this is a puzzle, and always has been one.
Like the old puzzle of God's foreknowledge and our free will, which seem
to contradict each other. Like the puzzle that we must help ourselves,
and yet that God must help us, which seem to contradict each other. So
with this. I believe of it, as of the two others I just mentioned, that
there is no real contradiction between the two cases; and that some-when,
somehow, somewhere, in the world to come, we shall see them clearly
reconciled; and justify God in all His dealings, and glorify Him in all
His ways. But surely already, here, now, we may see our way somewhat
into the depths of this mystery. For Christ has come to give us light,
and in His light we may see light, even into this dark matter.
For see: God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the
third and fourth generation--but of whom?--of them that hate Him. Now,
by those who hate God is meant, those who break His commandments, and are
bad men. If so, then, I say that God is not only just but merciful, in
visiting the sins of the fathers on the children.
For, consider two cases. Suppose these bad men, from father to son, and
from son to grandson, go on in the same evil ways, and are incorrigible.
Then is not God merciful to the world in punishing them, even in
destroying them out of the world, where they only do harm? The world
does not want fools, it wants wise men. The world does not want bad men,
it wants good men; and we ought to thank God, if, by His eternal laws, He
gets rid of bad men for us; and, as the saying is, civilizes them off the
face of the earth in the third or fourth generation. And God does so.
If a family, or a class, or a whole nation becomes incorrigibly
profligate, foolish, base, in three or four generations they will either
die out or vanish. They will sink to the bottom of society, and become
miserably poor, weak, and of no influence, and so unable to do harm to
any but themselves. Whole families will sink thus, I have seen it; you
may have seen it. Whole nations will sink thus; as the Jews sank in
Ezekiel's time, and again in our Lord's time; and be conquered, trampled
on, counted for nothing, because they were worth nothing.
But now suppose, again, that the children, when their father's sins are
visited on them, are NOT incorrigible. Suppose they are like the wise
son of whom Ezekiel speaks, in the 14th verse, who seeth all his father's
sins, and considereth, and doeth not such like--then has not God been
merciful and kind to him in visiting his father's sins on him? He has.
God is justified therein. His eternal laws of natural retribution,
severe as they are, have worked in love and in mercy, if they have taught
the young man the ruinousness, the deadliness of sin. Have the father's
sins made the son poor? Then he learns not to make his children poor by
his sin. Have his father's sins made him unhealthy? Then he learns not
to injure his children's health. Have his father's sins kept him
ignorant, or in anywise hindered his rise in life? Then he learns the
value of a good education, and, perhaps, stints himself to give his
children advantages which he had not himself--and, as sure as he does so,
the family begins to rise again after its fall. This is no fancy, it is
fact. You may see it. I have seen it, thank God. How some of the
purest and noblest women, some of the ablest and most right-minded men,
will spring from families, will be reared in households, where everything
was against them--where there was everything to make them profligate,
false, reckless, in a word--bad--except the grace of God, which was
trying to make them good, and succeeded in making them good; and how,
though they have felt the punishment of their parents' sins upon them in
many ways during their whole life, yet that has been to them not a mere
punishment, but a chastisement, a purifying medicine, a cross to be
borne, which only stirred them up to greater watchfulness against sin, to
greater earnestness in educating their children, to greater activity and
energy in doing right, and giving their children the advantages which
they had not themselves. And so were fulfilled in them two laws of God.
The one which Ezekiel lays down--that the bad man's son who executes
God's judgments and walks in God's statutes shall not die for the
iniquity of his father, but surely live; and the other law which Moses
lays down--that God shews mercy unto thousands of generations, as I
believe it means--that is, to son after father, and son after father
again, without end--as long as they love Him and keep His commandments.
I do not, therefore, see that there is any real contradiction between
what Moses says in the second commandment and what Ezekiel says in this
chapter. They are but two different sides of the same truth; and Moses
is shewing the Jews one side, because they needed most to be taught that
in his time, and Ezekiel showing them the other, because that was the
teaching which they needed most then. For they were fancying themselves,
in their calamities, the victims of some blind and cruel fate, and had
forgotten that, when God said that He visited the sins of the fathers on
the children, He qualified it by saying, "of them that hate Me."
Therefore, be hopeful about yourselves, and hopeful about your children
after you. If any one here feels--I am fallen very low in the world--
here all has been so much against me--my parents were the ruin of me--Let
him remember this one word of Ezekiel. "Have I any pleasure at all that
the wicked should die? saith the Lord God: and not that he should return
from his ways, and live?" Let him turn from his father's evil ways, and
do that which is lawful and right, and then he can say with the Prophet,
in answer to all the strokes of fortune and the miseries of circumstance,
"Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall I shall arise."
Provided he will remember that God requires of all men something, which
is, to be as good as they can be; then he may remember also that our Lord
Himself says, "Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be
required;" implying that to whom little is given, of him will little be
required. God's ways are not unequal. He has one equal, fair, and just
rule for every human being; and that is perfect understanding, perfect
sympathy, perfect good will, and therefore perfect justice and perfect
love.
And if any one of you answers in his heart--these are good words, and all
very well: but they come too late. I am too far gone. I ate the sour
grapes in my youth, and my teeth must be on edge for ever and ever. I
have been a bad man, or I have been a foolish woman too many years to
mend now. I am down, and down I must be. I have made my bed, and I must
lie on it, and die on it too. Oh my dear brother or sister in Christ,
whoever you are who says that, unsay it again for it is not true.
Ezekiel tells you that it is not true, and one greater than Ezekiel,
Jesus Christ, your Saviour, your Lord, your God, tells you it is not
true.
For what happens, by God's eternal and unchangeable laws of retribution,
to a whole nation, or a whole family, may happen to you--to each
individual man. They fall by sin; they rise again by repentance and
amendment. They may rise punished by their sins, and punished for a long
time, heavily weighted by the consequences of their own folly, and
heavily weighted for a long time. But they rise--they enter into their
new life weak and wounded, from their own fault. But they enter in. And
from that day things begin to mend--the weather begins to clear, the soil
begins to yield again--punishment gradually ceases when it has done its
work, the weight lightens, the wounds heal, the weakness strengthens, and
by God's grace within them, and by God's providence outside them, they
are made men of again, and saved. So you will surely find it in the
experience of life.
No doubt in general, in most cases,