poor and wretched, while the civilised people become richer and more
prosperous? Why, for instance, do the poor savage gipsies never grow
more comfortable or wiser—each generation of them remaining just as low
as their forefathers were, or, indeed, getting lower and fewer? for the
gipsies, like all savages, are becoming fewer and fewer year by year,
while, on the other hand, we English increase in numbers, and in wealth,
and knowledge; and fresh inventions are found out year by year, which
give fresh employment and make life more safe and more pleasant.
This is the reason: That the English have laws and obey them, and the
gipsies have none. This is the whole secret. This is why savages remain
poor and miserable, that each man does what he likes without law. This
is why civilised nations like England thrive and prosper, because they
have laws and obey them, and every man does not do what he likes, but
what the law likes. Laws are made not for the good of one person here,
or the other person there, but for the good of all; and, therefore, the
very notion of a civilised country is, a country in which people cannot
do what they like with their own, as the savages do. “Not do what he
likes with his own?” Certainly not; no one can or does. If you have
property, you cannot spend it all as you like. You have to pay a part of
it to the government, that is, into the common stock, for the common
good, in the shape of rates and taxes, before you can spend any of it on
yourself. If you take wages, you cannot spend them all upon yourself and
do what you like with them. If you do not support your wife and family
out of them, the law will punish you. You cannot do what you like with
your own gun, for you may not shoot your neighbour’s cattle or game with
it. You cannot do what you like with your own hands, for the law forbids
you to steal with them. You cannot do what you like with your own feet,
for the law will punish you for trespassing on your neighbour’s ground
without his leave. In short, you can only do with your own what will not
hurt your neighbour, in such matters as the law can take care of. And
more, in any great necessity the law may actually hurt you for the good
of the nation at large. The law may compel you to sell your land, to
your own injury, if it is wanted for a railroad. The law may compel you,
as it did fifty years ago, to serve as a soldier in the militia, to your
own injury, if there is a fear of foreign invasion; so that the law is
above each and all of us. Our own wills are not our masters. No man is
his own master. The law is the master of each and all of us, and if we
will not obey it willingly, it can make us obey unwillingly.
Can make us? Ay, but ought it to make us? Is it right that the law
should over-ride our own free wills, and prevent our doing what we like
with our own?
It is right—absolutely right. St. Paul tells us what gives law this
authority: “There is no power but of God. The powers that be are
ordained of God.” And he tells us also why this authority is given to
the law. “Rulers,” he says, “are not a terror to good works, but to
evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of those who administer the law? Do
that which is good, and thou shalt have praise from them, for they are
God’s ministers to thee for good.”
For good, you see. For the good of mankind it was, that God put into
their hearts and reasons, that notion of making laws, and appointing
kings and magistrates to see that those laws are obeyed. For our good.
For without law no man’s life, or family, or property would be safe.
Every man’s private selfishness, and greediness, and anger, would
struggle without check to have its way, and there would be no bar or curb
to keep each and every man from injuring each and every man else; so the
strong would devour the weak, and then tear each other in pieces
afterwards. So it is among the savages. They have little or no
property, for they have no laws to protect property; and therefore every
man expects his neighbour to steal from him, and finds it his shortest
plan to steal from his neighbour, instead of settling down to sow corn
which he will have no chance of eating, or build houses which may be
taken from him at night by some more strong and cunning savage. There is
no law among savages to protect women and children against the men, and
therefore the women are treated worse than beasts, and the children
murdered to save the trouble of rearing them. Every man’s hand is
against his neighbour. No one feels himself safe, and therefore no one
thinks it worth while to lay up for the morrow. No one expects justice
and mercy to be done to him, and therefore no one thinks it worth while
to do justice and mercy to others. And thus they live in continual fear
and quarrelling, feeding like wild animals on game or roots, often, when
they have bad luck in their hunting, on offal which our dogs would
refuse, and dwindle away and become fewer and wretcheder year by year; in
this way do the savages in New South Wales live to this day, for want of
law.
It is for our good, then, that God has put into the heart of man to make
laws, and to obey them as sacred and divine things. For our good, in
order to save us from sinking down into the same state of poverty and
misery in which the savages are. For our good, because we are fallen
creatures, with selfish and corrupt wills, continually apt to break
loose, and please ourselves at the expense of our neighbours. For our
good, because, however fallen we are, we are still brothers, members of
God’s family, bound to each other by duty and relationship, if not by
love.
Just as in a family, if parents, brothers, and sisters will not do their
duty to each other lovingly and of their free will, the law interferes,
and the custom of the country interferes, and the opinion of neighbours
interferes, and says: “You may not love your parents: but you have no
right to leave them to starve.” “You may not love your brothers: but if
you try to injure and slander them, you are doing an unnatural and
hateful thing, abhorred by God and man, and you must expect us to treat
you accordingly, as a wild beast who does not feel the common laws of
nature and right and wrong.” So with the law of the land. The law is
meant to remind us more or less that we are brothers, members of one
body; that we owe a duty to each other; that we are all equal in God’s
sight, who is no respecter of persons, or of rank, or of riches, any more
than the law is when it punishes the greatest nobleman as severely as the
poorest labourer. The law is meant to remind us that God is just; that
when we injure each other, we sin against God; that God’s rule and law
is, that each transgression should receive its just reward, and that,
therefore, because man is made in the likeness of God, man is bound, as
far as he can, to visit every offence with due and proportionate
punishment. And the law punishes, as St. Paul says, in God’s name, and
for God’s sake. The magistrate is a witness for God’s righteous
government of the world, the minister of God’s vengeance against
evil-doers, to remind all continually that evil-doing has no place, and
cannot prosper, and must not be allowed, upon this God’s earth whereon we
live.
But what if the laws are unfair, and punish only some sorts of evil-doers
and not others? What if they are like spiders’ webs, which catch the
little flies, and let the great wasps break through? What if they punish
poor and weak offenders, and let the rich and powerful sinners escape?
“Obey them still,” says St. Paul. In his time and country the laws were
as unfair in that way as laws ever were, and yet he tells Christians to
obey them for conscience’s sake. Thank God that they do punish weak
offenders. Pray God that the time may come when they may be strong
enough to punish great offenders also. But, in the meantime, see that
they have not to punish you. As far as the laws go, they are right and
good. As far as they keep down any sort of wrong-doing whatsoever, they
are God’s ordinances, and you must obey them for God’s sake.
But what if the laws are not only unfair and partial, but also unjust and
wrong? Are we to obey them then? Obey them still, says St. Paul. Of
course, if they command you to do a clearly wrong thing; if, for
instance, the law commanded you to worship idols, or to commit adultery,
there is no question then; such laws cannot be God’s ordinance. The laws
can only be God’s ordinance as far as they agree with what we know of
God’s will written in our hearts, and written in His holy Bible. Then a
man must resist the law to the death, if need be, as the old martyrs did,
dying as witnesses for God’s righteous and eternal law, against man’s
false and unrighteous law. It is a very difficult thing, no doubt, to
tell where to draw the line in such matters. But we, thank God, here in
England now, have no need to puzzle our heads with such questions. Every
man’s conscience is free here, and he has full liberty to worship God as
he thinks best, provided that by so doing he does not interfere with his
neighbour’s character, or property, or comfort. There is no single law
in England now, that I know of, which a man has any need to refuse to
obey, let his conscience be as tender as it may. And as for laws which
we think hurtful to the country, or hurtful to any particular class in
the country, our thinking them hurtful is no reason that we should not
obey them. As long as they are law, they are God’s ordinance, and we
have no right to break them. They may be useful after all. Or even if
they are hurtful in some way, still God may be bringing good out of them
in some other way, of which we little dream, as He has often done out of
laws and customs which seem at first sight most foolish and hurtful, and
yet which He endured and winked at, for the sake of bringing good out of
evil. At all events, whatsoever laws are here in England, are made by
the men whom we English have chosen, as the men most fit and wise to make
them, and we are bound to abide by them. If Parliament is not wise
enough to make perfectly good laws, that is no one’s fault but our own;
for if we were wise, we should choose wise law-makers, and we must be
filled with the fruit of our own devices. As long as these laws have
been made and passed, by Commons, Lords, and Queen, according to the
ancient forms and constitution which God has taught our forefathers from
time to time for more than a thousand years, and which have had God’s
blessing and favour on them, and made us, from the least of all nations,
the greatest nation on the earth; in short, as long as those laws are
made according to law, so long we are bound to believe them to be God’s
ordinance, and obey them. But understand; that is no reason why we
should not try to get them improved; for when they are changed and done
away according to the same law which made them, that will be a sign that
they are God’s ordinances no longer; that God thinks we have no more need
for them, and does not require us to keep them. But as long as any law
is what St. Paul calls “the powers that be,” obeyed it must be, not only
for wrath, but for conscience’s sake.
That is a very important part of the matter. Obey the law, St. Paul
says, not only for wrath, that is, not only for fear of punishment, but
for conscience’s sake. Even if you do not expect to be punished; even if
you think no one will ever find out that you have broken the law,
remember it is God’s ordinance. He sees you. Do not hurt your own
conscience, and deaden your own sense of right and wrong, by breaking the
least or the most unjust law in the slightest point.
For instance: some people think the income-tax is very unfair; and
therefore they think there is no harm in cheating the revenue a little,
by making out their income less than it is. Others, again, think the
laws against smuggling unjust and harsh; and therefore they see no harm
in trying to avoid paying duty on goods which they bring home, whenever
they have an opportunity, or buying cheap goods, which they must know
from their price are smuggled. Others, again, think the game laws are
unfair, and therefore see no harm in going out shooting on their own
lands without a licence; while many see no harm, or say they see no harm,
in poaching on other people’s grounds, and killing game contrary to law
wherever they can. That it is wrong to break the law in these two first
cases, you all know in your own hearts. On the matter of poaching, some
of you, I know, have many very mistaken notions. But, my friends, I ask
you only to look at the sin and misery which poaching causes, if you want
to see that those who break the law do indeed break the ordinance of God,
and that God’s laws avenge themselves. Look at the idleness, the
untidiness, the deceit, the bad company, the drunkenness, the misery and
sin, to man, woman, and child, which that same poaching brings about, and
then see how one little sin brings on many great ones; how a man, by
despising the authority of law, and fancying that he does no harm in
disobeying the laws, from his own fancy about poaching being no harm,
falls into temptation and a snare, and pierces himself through with many
sorrows. My young friends, believe my words. Avoid poaching, even once
in a way. The beginning of sin is like the letting out of water; no one
can tell where it will stop. He who breaks the law in little things will
be tempted to go on and break it in greater and greater things. He who
begins by breaking man’s law, which is the pattern of God’s law, will be
tempted to go on and break God’s law also. Is it not so? There is no
use telling me, “The game is no one’s; there is no harm in taking it.”
Light words of that kind will not do to answer God with. You know there
is harm in taking it; for you know, as well as I do, that you cannot go
after game without neglecting your work to get it; or without going to
the worst of public-houses, among the worst of company, to sell it. You
know, as well as I do, that hand in hand with poaching go lying, and
idling, and sneaking, and fear, and boasting, and swearing, and drinking,
and the company of bad men and bad women. And then you say there is no
harm in poaching. Do you suppose that I do not know, as well as any one
of you here, what goes to the snaring of a hare, and the selling of a
hare, and the spending of the ill-got price of a hare? My dear young
men, I know that poaching, like many other sins, is tempting: but God has
told us to flee from temptation—to resist the devil, and he will flee
from us. If we are to give up ourselves without a struggle to every
pleasant thing which tempts us, we shall soon be at the devil’s door. We
were sent into the world to fight against temptation and to conquer it.
We were sent into the world to do what God likes, not what we like; and
therefore we were sent into the world to obey the laws of the land
wherein we live, be they better or worse; because if we break one law
because we don’t like it, our neighbour may break another because he
don’t like that, and so forth; till there is neither law, nor peace, nor
safety, but every man doing what is right in his own eyes, which is sure
to end by every man’s doing what is right in the devil’s eyes. We were
sent into the world to live as brothers, under laws which make us give up
our own wills and selfish lusts for the common good. And if we find it
difficult to keep the laws, if we are tempted to break the laws, God has
promised His Spirit to those who ask Him. God has promised His Spirit to
us. If we pray for that Spirit night and morning, He will make it easy
for us to keep the laws. He will make us what our Lord was before us,
humble, patient, loving, manful and strong enough to restrain our fancies
and appetites, and to give up our wills for the good of our neighbours,
anxious and careful to avoid all appearance of evil, trusting that
because God is just, and God is King, all laws which are not wicked are
His ordinance, and therefore being obedient to every ordinance of man for
the Lord’s sake, even as Jesus Christ Himself was, who, though He was
Lord of all, paid taxes and tribute money to the Roman government, like
the rest of the Jews, and kept the law of Moses perfectly, and was
baptised with John’s baptism, to show that in all just and reasonable
things we are to obey the laws and customs of our forefathers, in the
country to which it has pleased the Lord that we should belong.
XXVII.
THE SOURCE OF LAW.
Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no
power but of God. The powers that be are ordained of God.—ROMANS
xiii. 1.
IN this chapter, which we read for the second lesson for this afternoon’s
service, St. Paul gives good advice to the Romans, and equally good
advice to us.
Of course what he says must be equally good for us, and for all people,
at all times, in all countries, as long as time shall last; because St.
Paul spoke by the Spirit of God, who is God eternal, and therefore cannot
change His mind, but lays down, by the mouth of His apostles and
prophets, the everlasting laws of right and wrong, which are always
equally good for all.
But there is something in this lesson which makes it especially useful to
us; because we English are in some very important matters very like the
Romans to whom St. Paul wrote; though in others, thanks to Almighty God,
we are still very unlike them.
Now, these old Romans, as I have often told you, had risen to be the
greatest and mightiest people in the world, and to conquer many foreign
countries, and set up colonies of Romans in them, very much as the
English have done in India, and North America, and Australia: so that the
little country of Italy, with its one great city of Rome, was mistress of
vast lands far beyond the seas, ten times as large as itself, just as
this little England is.
But it is not so much this which I have to speak to you about now, as how
this Rome became so great; for it was at first nothing but a poor little
country town, without money, armies, trade, or any of those things which
shallow-minded people fancy are the great strength of a nation. True,
all those things are good; but they are useless and hurtful—and, what is
more, they cannot be got—without something better than them; something
which you cannot see nor handle; something spiritual, which is the life
and heart of a country or nation, and without which it can never become
great. This the old Romans had; and it made them become great. This we
English have had for now fifteen hundred years; even when our forefathers
were heathens, like the Romans, before we came into this good land of
England, while we were poor and simple people, living in the barren moors
of Germany, and the snowy mountains of Norway; even then we had this
wonderful charm, by which nations are sure to become great and powerful
at last; and in proportion as we have remembered and acted upon it, we
English have thriven and spread; and whenever we have forgotten it and
broken it, we have fallen into distress, and poverty, and shame, over the
whole land.
Now, what is this wonderful charm which made the old Romans and we
English great, which is stronger than money, and armies, and trade, and
all the things which we can see and handle?
St. Paul tells us in the text: “Let every soul be subject to the higher
powers. For there is no power but of God. The powers that be are
ordained of God.”
To respect the law; to believe that God wills men to live according to
law; and that He will teach men right and good laws; that magistrates who
enforce the laws are God’s ministers, God’s officers and servants; that
to break the laws is to sin against God;—that is the charm which worked
such wonders, and will work them to the end of time.
So you see it was a very proper thing for St. Paul, when he wrote to
these Romans after they became Christians, to speak to them as he does in
this chapter. They might have fancied, and many did fancy, that because
they were Jesus Christ’s servants now, they need not obey their heathen
rulers and laws any more. But St. Paul says: “No; Jesus Christ’s being
King of Kings, is only the strongest possible reason for your obeying
these heathen rulers. For if He is King of all the earth, He is King of
Rome also, and of all her colonies; and therefore you may be sure that He
would not leave these Roman rulers, and laws here if He did not think it
right and fitting. If Jesus Christ is Lord of lords He is Lord of these
Roman rulers, and they are His ministers and stewards; and you must obey
them, and pay taxes to them for conscience’s sake, as unto the Lord, and
not unto man.”
So you see that St. Paul gave these Roman Christians no new commandment
on these matters; nothing different from what their old heathen
forefathers had believed. For the law which he mentions in verse 9,
“Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal,” etc., had been for centuries
past part of the old Roman law, as well as of Moses’ law.
Those old heathen Romans believed, and rightly, that all law and order
came from the great God of gods, whom they called in their tongue
Jupiter, that is, the Heavenly Father. They believed that He would bless
those who kept the laws; who kept their oaths and agreements, and the
laws about government, about marriage, about property, about inheritance;
and that He would surely punish those who broke the laws, who defrauded
their neighbours of their rights, who swore falsely against their
neighbour, or broke their agreements, who were unfaithful to their wives
and husbands, or in any way offended against justice between man and man.
And they believed too, and rightly, that as long as they kept the laws,
and lived justly and orderly by them, the great Heavenly Father would
protect and prosper their town of Rome, and make it grow great and
powerful, because they were living as He would have men live; not doing
each what was right in the sight of his own eyes, but conquering their
own selfish wills and private fancies, for the sake of their neighbour’s
good, and the good of his country, that they might all help and trust
each other, as fellow-citizens of one nation.
Only St. Paul had told them: Your forefathers were right in fancying that
law and right came from the great God of gods: but they knew hardly
anything, or rather, in time they forgot almost everything, about that
Heavenly Father. In their ignorance they mixed up the belief in the one
great almighty and good God, which dwells in the hearts of all men, with
filthy fables and superstitions till they came to fancy that there were
many gods and not one, and that these many gods were sinful, foul, proud,
and cruel, as fallen men. But you have been brought back to the
knowledge of the one true, and righteous, and loving God, which your
forefathers lost. He has revealed and shown Himself, and what He is
like, in His Son Jesus Christ. He is love, and wisdom, and justice, and
order itself; and, therefore, you must be sure, even more sure than your
old heathen forefathers, that He cares for a nation being at peace and
unity within itself, governed by wise laws, doing justice between man and
man, and keeping order throughout all its business, that every man may do
his work and enjoy his wages without hindrance, or confusion, or fear, or
robbery and oppression from those who are stronger than he.
And so St. Paul says to them: “You must believe that power and law come
from God, far more firmly and clearly than ever your heathen forefathers
did.”
Now that St. Paul was right in this we may see from the Old Testament.
In the first lesson for this afternoon’s service, we read how Jeremiah
was sent with the most awful warnings to the king, and the queen, and the
crown prince of his country. And why? Because they had broken the laws;
because, in a word, they had been unfaithful stewards and ministers of
the Lord God, who had given them their power and kingdom, and would
demand a strict account of all which He had committed to their charge.
But in the same book of the prophet Jeremiah we read more than this; we
read exactly what St. Paul says about the heathen Roman governors: for
the Lord God, who is the Lord Jesus Christ, sent Jeremiah with a message
to all the heathen kings round about, to tell them that He was their Lord
and Master, that He had given them their power, heathens as they were,
because it seemed fit to Him, and that now, for their sins, He was going
to deliver them over into the hand of another heathen, His servant
Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon; and that whosoever would not serve
Nebuchadnezzar, the Lord God would punish him with sword, and famine, and
pestilence till he had consumed them. And the first four chapters of the
book of Daniel, noble and wonderful as they are, seem to me to have been
put into the Bible simply to teach us this one thing, that heathen
rulers, as well as Christians, are the Lord’s servants, and that their
power is ordained by God. For these chapters are entirely made up of the
history, how God, by His prophet Daniel, taught the heathen king
Nebuchadnezzar that he was God’s minister and steward. And the latter
part of the book of Daniel is the account of his teaching the same thing
to another heathen, Cyrus the great and good king of Persia. And here
St. Paul teaches the Christian Romans just the same thing about their
heathen governors and heathen laws, that they are the ministers and the
ordinance of God.
Now, our own English forefathers, as I said before, believed this same
thing; and if I had time, I could show you, I think, plainly enough from
God’s dealings with England, how He has blest and prospered us whensoever
we have acted up to it. But whether we have believed it or not, there is
enough in our English laws, and in our English Prayer Book too, to
witness for it and remind us of it.
The very title which we give the Queen, “Queen by the grace of God;” the
solemn prayers for her when she is crowned and anointed, not in her own
palace, or in the House of Parliament, but in the Church of God at
Westminster; the prayers which we have just offered up for the Queen, for
the government, and for the magistrates—these are all so many signs and
tokens to us that they are God’s stewards, called to do God’s work, and
that we must pray for God’s grace to help them to fulfil their calling.
And are not those ten commandments which stand in every church, a witness
of the same thing? They are the very root of all law whatsoever. And
more, the solemn oath which a witness takes in the court of justice, what
is it but a sign of the same thing, that our forefathers, who appointed
these forms, believed that law and justice were holy things, and that he
who goes into a court of law goes into the presence of God Himself, and
confesses, when he promises to speak the truth, so help him God, that God
is the protector and the avenger of law and justice?
But some people, and especially young and light-hearted persons, are
ready to say: “Obey the powers that be, whosoever they may be, good or
bad, and believe that to break their laws is to sin against God? We
might as well be slaves at once. A man has a right to his own opinion;
and if he does not think a law good, how can he be bound to obey it?”
You will often hear such words as those when you go out into the world,
into great towns, where men meet together much. Let me give you, young
people, a little advice about that beforehand; for, fine as it sounds, it
is hollow and false at root.
If you wish to be really free, and to do what you like, like what is
right; and do that, says St. Paul, and then the law will not interfere
with you: “For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil.
Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good, and
thou shalt have praise of the same: for he is the minister of God to thee
for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth
not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to
execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.” And then he sums up what doing
right is, in one short sentence: “Love thy neighbour as thyself; for love
is the fulfilling of the law.” All that the laws want to make you do, is
to behave like men who do love their neighbours as themselves, and
therefore do them no harm—to behave like men who are ready to give up
their own private wills and pleasures, and even their own private
property, if wanted, for the good of their neighbours and their country.
Therefore the law calls on you to pay rates and taxes, which are to be
spent for the good of the nation at large. And if you love your
neighbour as yourself, and have the good of everyone round you at heart,
you will no more grudge paying rates and taxes for their benefit than you
will grudge spending money to support and educate your own children. And
so you will be free, free to do what you like, because you like, from the
fear and love of God, to do those right things which the law is set to
make you do.
But some may say: “That is not what we mean by being free. We mean
having a share in choosing Members of Parliament, and so in making the
laws and governing the country. When people can do that the country is a
free country.”
Well, my friends, and it is a strange thing, or rather not a strange
thing, if we will but study our Bibles, that a country cannot be free in
that way, unless the people of it do really believe that the powers that
be are ordained of God. Instead of that faith making the old Romans
slavish, or careless what laws were made, or how they were governed, as
some fancy it would make a people, they were as free a people, and freer
almost than we English now. They chose their own magistrates, and they
made their own laws, and prospered by so doing. And why? Because they
believed that laws came from God; and, therefore, they not only obeyed
the laws when they were made, but they had heart and spirit to help to
make them, because they trusted that The Heavenly Father, who loved
justice, would teach them to be just, and that The God who protected laws
and punished law-breakers, would put into their minds how to make the
laws well; and so they were not afraid to govern themselves, because they
believed that God would enable them to govern themselves well, and
therefore they were free. And so far from their having a slavish spirit
in them, they were the most bold and independent people of the whole
earth. Their soldiers conquered almost every nation against whom they
fought, because they always obeyed their officers dutifully and
faithfully, believing that it was their duty to God to obey, and to die,
if need was, for their country. Old history is full of tales, which will
never be forgotten, I trust, till the world’s end, of the noble deeds of
their men, ay, and even of their women, who counted their own lives
worthless in comparison with the good of their country, and died in
torments rather than break the laws, or do what they knew would injure
the people to whom they belonged.
And so with us English. For hundreds of years we have been growing more
and more free, and more and more well-governed, simply because we have
been acting on St. Paul’s doctrine—obeying the powers that be, because
they are ordained by God. It is the Englishman’s respect for law, as a
sacred thing, which he dare not break, which has made him, sooner or
later, respected and powerful wherever he goes to settle in foreign
lands; because foreigners can trust us to be just, and to keep our
promises, and to abide by the laws which we have laid down. It is the
English respect for law, as a sacred thing, which has made our armies
among the bravest and the most successful on earth; because they know how
to obey their officers, and are therefore able to fight and to endure as
men should do. And as long as we hold to that belief we shall prosper at
home and abroad, and become more and more free, and more and more strong;
because we shall be united, helping each other, trusting each other,
knowing what to expect of each other, because we all honour and obey the
same laws.
And, on the other hand, have we not close to us, in France, a fearful
sign and proof from God that without the fear of God no people can be
free? Three times in the last sixty years have the French risen up
against evil rulers, and driven them out. And have they been the better
for it? They are at this very moment in utter slavery to a ruler more
lawless than ever oppressed them before. And why? Because they did not
believe that law came from God, and that the powers that be are ordained
by Him. Therefore, whenever they were oppressed, they did not try to
right themselves by lawful ways, according to the old English God-fearing
custom, but to break down the old law by riot and bloodshed, and then to
set up new laws of their own. But those new laws would never stand.
They made them, but they would not obey them when they were made, and
they could not make others obey them; because they had no real reverence
for law, and did not believe that law came from God, or that His Spirit
would give them understanding to make good laws. They talked loud about
the power and rights of the people, and that whatever the people willed
was right: but they said nothing about the power and rights of the Lord
God; they forgot that it is only what God has willed from everlasting
that is right; and so they made laws in the strength of their own hearts,
according to what was right in the sight of their own eyes, to please
themselves. How could they respect the laws, when the laws were only
copies of their own selfish fancies? So, because they made them to
please themselves, they soon broke them to please themselves. And so
came more lawlessness and riot, and confusion worse confounded, till, of
course, the strongest, and cunningest, and most shameless got the upper
hand; and they were plunged, poor creatures! into the same pit of misery
out of which they had been trying to deliver themselves in their own
strength, for a sign and an example that the Lord is King, and not man at
all, and that the fear of the Lord is the only beginning of wisdom.
And very much the same sad fate had happened to the Romans a little
before St. Paul’s time. They gave up their ancient respect for law; they
broke the laws, and ran into all kinds of violence, and riot, and filthy
sin; and therefore God took away their freedom from them, because they
were not fit for it, and delivered them over into the hand of one cruel
tyrant after another; and perhaps the cruellest of them all was the man
who was emperor of Rome in St. Paul’s time. Therefore it was that St.
Paul says to them: Love each other, and obey the laws, “knowing the time,
that now it is high time to awake out of sleep.”
As much as to say: “Your souls have fallen asleep; you have been in a
dark night, not seeing that God would avenge you of all these sins of
yours; that God’s eye was on them: you have fallen asleep and forgotten
your forefathers’ belief, that God loves law, and order, and justice, and
will punish those who break through them. But now the Lord Jesus, the
light of the world, is come to awaken you, and to open your eyes to see
the truth about this, and to show you that you are in God’s kingdom, and
that God commands you to repent, and to obey Him, and do justly and
righteously. Therefore awake out of your sleep; give up the works of
darkness, those mean and wicked habits which were contrary to the good
old laws of your forefathers, and which you were at heart ashamed of, and
tried to hide even while you indulged in them. Open your eyes, and see
that God is near you, your Judge, your King, seeing through and through
your souls, keen and sharp to discern the secret thoughts and intents of
the heart, so that all things are naked and open in the sight of Him with
whom we have to do.”
And so I may say to you, my friends, it is high time for us to awake out
of sleep. The people in England, religious as well as others, have
fallen asleep of late years too much about this matter. They have
forgotten that God is King, that magistrates are God’s ministers. They
talk as if laws were meant to be only the device of man’s will, to serve
men’s private interests and selfishness; and therefore they have lost
very much of their respect for law, and their care to make good laws for
the future. And it is high time for us, while all the nations of Europe
are tottering and crumbling round us, to awake out of sleep on this
matter. We must open our eyes and see where we are. For we are in God’s
kingdom. God’s Bible, God’s churches, God’s commandments, and all the
solemn old law forms of England witness to us that God is King, set in
the throne which judges right; that order and justice, fellow-feeling and
public spirit, are His gifts, His likeness, on which He looks down with
loving care and protection; and that if we forget that, and begin to
fancy that law stands merely by the will of the many, or by the will of
the stronger, or even by the will of the wiser—by any will of man in
short; we shall end by neither being able to make just laws any more, nor
to obey those which we have, by the blessing of God, already.
XXVIII.
THE EDUCATION OF A HEATHEN.
Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise, and extol, and honour the King of
heaven, all whose works are truth, and His ways judgment; and those
that walk in pride He is able to abase.—DANIEL iv. 37.
WE read for the first lesson to-day two chapters out of the book of
Daniel. Those who love to study their Bibles, have read often, of
course, not only these two chapters, but the whole book.
And I would advise all of you who wish to understand God’s dealings with
mankind, to study this book of Daniel, and especially at this present
time.
I do not wish you to study it merely on account of those prophecies in
it, which many wise and good men think foretell the dates of our Lord’s
first and second comings, and of the end of the world. I am not skilled,
my friends, in that kind of wisdom. I cannot tell you what God will do
hereafter. But I think that the book of Daniel like the other prophets,
tells us what God is always doing on earth, and so gives us certain and
eternal rules by which we may understand strange and terrible events,
wars, distress of nations, the fall of great men, and the suffering of
innocent men, when we see them happen, as we may see any day—perhaps very
soon indeed.
The great lesson, I think, that this book of Daniel teaches us is, that
God is not the Lord of the Jews only, or of Christians only, but of the
whole earth; that the heathens are under His moral law and government, as
well as we; and that, as St. Peter says, God is no respecter of persons:
but in every nation, he that feareth God, and worketh righteousness, is
accepted of him. For the history of Nebuchadnezzar seems to me to be the
history of God’s educating a heathen and an idolater to know Him. And we
must always remember, that as far as we can see, it was because
Nebuchadnezzar was faithful to the light which he had, that God gave him
more. Of course he had his sins; the Bible tells us what they were; just
the sins which one would expect of a man brought up a heathen and an
idolater; of one who was a great conqueror, and had gained many bloody
battles, and learned to hold men’s lives very cheap; of one who was an
absolute emperor, with no law but his own will, furious at any
contradiction; of a man of wonderful power of mind—confident in himself,
his own power, his own cunning. But he seems not to have been a bad man,
considering his advantages. The Bible never speaks harshly of him,
though he carried away the Jews captive to Babylon. In all that fearful
war, Nebuchadnezzar was in the right, and the Jews in the wrong; so at
least Jeremiah the prophet declared. Nebuchadnezzar saved and respected
Jeremiah; and Daniel seems to have regarded the great conqueror with real
respect and affection. When Daniel says to him, “O king, live for ever,”
and tells him that he is the head of gold, and prays that his fearful
dream may come true of his enemies and not of him, I cannot believe that
the prophet was using mere empty phrases of court-flattery. He really
felt, I doubt not, that Nebuchadnezzar was a great and good king, as
kings went then, and his government a gain (as it easily might be) to the
nations whom he had conquered, and that it was good that he should reign
as long as possible.
And we may well believe Daniel’s interest in this great king, when we
consider how teachable Nebuchadnezzar showed himself under God’s
education of him, so proving that there was in him the honest and good
heart, which, when The Word is sown in it, will bring forth fruit,
thirty-fold or a hundred-fold, according to the talents which God has
bestowed on each man.
This first lesson we read in the first chapter of Daniel. He dreamt a
dream. He felt that it was a very wonderful one: but he forgot what it
was. None of the magicians of Babylon could tell him. A young Jew,
named Daniel, told him the dream and its meaning, and declared at the
same time that he had found it out by no wisdom of his own, but God had
revealed it to him. Nebuchadnezzar learned his lesson, and confessed
Daniel’s God to be a God of gods and a Lord of kings, and a revealer of
secrets, seeing that Daniel could reveal that secret; and forthwith, like
a wise prince, advanced Daniel and his companions to places of the
highest authority and trust.
But Nebuchadnezzar required another lesson. He had learned that the God
of the Jews was wiser than all the planets and heavenly lords and gods
whom the Babylonian magicians consulted; he had not learned that that
same God of the Jews was the Creator and Lord of heaven and earth. He
had learned that the God of heaven favoured him, and had helped him
toward his power and glory; but he thought that for that very reason the
power and glory were his own—that he had a right over the souls and
consciences of his subjects, and might make them worship what he liked,
and how he liked.
Three Jews, whom he had set over the affairs of Babylon, refused to
worship the golden image which he had set up, and were cast into a fiery
furnace, and forthwith miraculously delivered, and beheld by
Nebuchadnezzar walking unhurt and loose in the midst of the furnace, and
with them a fourth, whose form was like the form of the Son of God.
So Nebuchadnezzar was taught that this God of the Jews was the Lord of
men’s souls and consciences; that they were to obey God rather than man.
So he was taught that the God of the Jews was no mere star or heavenly
influence who could help men’s fortunes, or bestow on them a certain
fixed destiny; but a living person, the Lord and Master of the fire, and
of all the powers of the earth, who could change and stop those powers at
His will, to deliver those who trusted in Him and obeyed Him.
And this lesson, too, Nebuchadnezzar learned. He confessed his mistake
upon the spot, just in the way in which we should have expected a great
Eastern king to do, though not in the most enlightened or merciful way.
He “blessed the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who hath sent His
angel, and delivered His servants who trusted in Him. Therefore I make a
decree, that every people, nation, and language, which speak anything
amiss against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, shall be cut in
pieces, and their houses be made a dunghill: because there is no other
God that can deliver after this sort.”
But there was still one deep mistake lying in the great king’s heart
which required to be rooted out. He had learnt that Jehovah, the God of
the Jews, was a revealer of secrets, a master of the fire, a deliverer of
those who trusted in Him, a living personal Lord, wise, just, and
faithful, very different from any of his star gods or idols. But he
looked upon Jehovah only as the God of the Jews, as Daniel’s God. He had
not yet learnt that God was _his_ God as well as Daniel’s; that Jehovah
was very near his heart and mind, and had been near him all his life;
that from Jehovah came all his wisdom, his strength of mind, his success,
and all which made him differ, not only from his fellow-men, but from the
beast; that Jehovah, in a word, was the light and the life of the world,
who fills all things and by whom all things consist, deserted by whose
inward light, even for a moment, man becomes as one of the beasts which
perish. In his own eyes Nebuchadnezzar was still the great
self-dependent, self-sufficing conqueror, wiser and stronger than all the
men around him. He thought, most probably, that on account of his
wisdom, and courage, and royalty of soul, the God of heaven had become
fond of him and favoured him. In short, he was swollen with pride.
God sent him again a strange dream, which made him troubled and afraid.
He told it to his old counsellor Daniel; and Daniel, at the danger of his
life, interpreted it for him; and a very awful meaning it had. A fearful
and shameful downfall was to come upon the king; no less than the loss of
his reason, and with it, of his throne. But whether this came to pass or
not, depended, like all God’s everlasting promises and threats, on
Nebuchadnezzar’s own behaviour. If he repented, and broke off his sins
by righteousness, and his iniquities by showing mercy to the poor, there
was good reason to hope that so his tranquillity might be lengthened.
But the lesson was too hard for the proud conqueror; he did not take the
warning. He could not believe that the Most High ruled in the kingdom of
men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will. He still fancied that he, and
such as he, were the lords of the world, and took from others by their
own power and cunning whatsoever they would. He does not seem to have
been angry, however, with Daniel for his plain speaking. Most Eastern
kings like Nebuchadnezzar would have put Daniel to a cruel death on the
spot as the bearer of evil news, speaking blasphemy against the king; and
no one in those times and countries would have considered him wicked and
cruel for so doing; but Nebuchadnezzar seems to have learnt too much
already so to give way to his passion.
Yet, as I said before, he had not learned enough to take God’s warning.
The lesson that he was nothing, and that God is all in all, was too hard
for him. And, alas! my friends, for whom of us is it not a hard lesson?
And yet it is the golden lesson, the first and the last which man has to
learn on earth, ay, and through all eternity: “I am nothing; God is all
in all.” All in us which is worth calling anything; all in us which is
worth having, or worth being; all in us which is not disobedience and
shortcoming, failure and mistake, ignorance and madness, filthiness and
fierceness, as of the beasts which perish; all strength in us, all
understanding, all prudence, all right-mindedness, all purity, all
justice, all love; all in us which is worth living for, all in us which
is really alive, and not mere death in life, the death of sin and the
darkness of the pit—all is from God the Father of lights, and from Jesus
Christ the life and the light, who lighteth every man who cometh into the
world, shining for ever in the darkness of our spirits, though that
darkness, alas! too often cannot comprehend, and embrace, and confess Him
who is striving to awake it from the dead and give it light. Hardest of
all lessons! Most blessed of all lessons! So blessed, that if we will
not let God teach it us in any other way, it would be good and
advantageous to us for Him to teach it us as He taught it to
Nebuchadnezzar—good for us to become with him for awhile like the beasts
that perish, that we might learn with him to lift up our eyes to heaven,
and so have our understandings return to us, and learn to bless the Most
High, and not our own wit, and cunning, and prudence; and praise and
honour Him that liveth for ever, instead of praising and honouring our
own pitiful paltry selves, who are in death in the midst of life, who
come up and are cut down like the flower, and never continue in one stay.
“All this came upon the King Nebuchadnezzar.” It seems that after he or
his father had destroyed the old Babylon, the downfall of which Isaiah
had prophesied, he built a great city, after the fashion of Eastern
conquerors, near the ruins of the old one; and “at the end of twelve
months he walked in the palace of the kingdom of Babylon. The king
spake, and said, Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the
house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honour of my
majesty? While the word was in the king’s mouth, there fell a voice from
heaven, saying, O king Nebuchadnezzar, to thee it is spoken, The kingdom
is departed from thee. And they shall drive thee from men, and thy
dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field: they shall make thee to
eat grass as oxen, and seven times shall pass over thee, until thou know
that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to
whomsoever He will. The same hour was the thing fulfilled upon
Nebuchadnezzar.”
What a lesson! The great conqueror of all the East now a brutal madman,
hateful and disgusting to all around him—a beast feeding among the
beasts: and yet a cheap price—a cheap price—to pay for this golden
lesson.
Seven times past over him in his madness. What those seven times were we
do not know. They may have been actual years: or they may have been, as
I am inclined to think, changes in his own soul and state of mind. But,
at the end of the days, the truth dawned on him. He began to see what it
all meant. He saw what he was, and why he was so; and he lifted up his
eyes to heaven; and from that moment his madness past. He lifted up his
eyes to heaven. That is no mere figure of speech: it is an actual truth.
Most madmen, if you watch them, have that down look, or rather that
inward look, as if their eyes were fixed only on their own fancies. They
are thinking only of themselves, poor creatures—of their own selfish and
private suspicions and wrongs—of their own selfish superstitious dreams
about heaven or hell—of their own selfish vanity and ambition—sometimes
of their own frantic self-conceit, or of their selfish lusts and
desires—of themselves, in short. They have lost the one Divine light of
reason, and conscience, and love, which binds men to each other, and are
parted for a while from God and from their kind—alone in their own
darkness. So was Nebuchadnezzar.
At last he looked up, as men do when they pray; up from himself to One
greater than himself; up from the earth to heaven; up from the natural
things which we do see, which are temporal and born to die, to moral and
spiritual things which we do not see, which are real and eternal in the
heavens; up from his own lonely darkness, looking for the light and the
guidance of God; for now he began to see that all the light which he had
ever had, all his wisdom, and understanding, and strength of will, had
come from God, however he might have misused them for his own selfish
ambition; that it was because God had taken from him His light, who is
the Word of God, that he had become a beast. And then his reason
returned to him, and he became again a man, a rational being, made,
howsoever fallen and sinful, in the likeness of God; then he blessed and
praised God. It was not merely that he confessed that God was strong,
and he weak; righteous, and he sinful; wise, and he foolish; but he
blessed and praised God; he felt and confessed that God had done him a
great benefit, and taught him a great lesson—that God had taught him what
he was in himself and without God, that he might see what he was with God
in its true light, and honour and obey Him from whom his reason and
understanding, as well as his power and glory, came, that so it might be
fulfilled which the prophet says: “Let not the wise man glory in his
wisdom, nor the mighty man in his might, nor the rich man in his riches:
but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and
knoweth me, that I am the Lord which exercise loving-kindness, judgment,
and righteousness _in the earth_; for in these things I delight, saith
the Lord.”
And so was Nebuchadnezzar’s soul brought to utter, in his own way, the
very same glorious song which, or something like it, is said to have been
sung by the three men whom, years before, he had seen delivered from the
fiery furnace, which calls on all the works of the Lord, angels and
heaven, sun and stars, seas and winds, mountains and hills, fowls and
cattle, priests and laymen, spirits and souls of the righteous, to bless
the Lord, praise Him, and magnify Him for ever.
And so ends Nebuchadnezzar’s history. We read no more of him. He had
learnt the golden lesson. May God grant that we may learn it also!
But who tells the story of his madness? He himself. The whole account
is in the man’s own words. It seems to be some public letter or
proclamation, which he either sent round his empire, or commanded to be
laid up among his records; having, as it seems, set Daniel to write it
down from his mouth. This one fact, I think, justifies me in all that I
have said about Nebuchadnezzar’s nobleness, and Daniel’s affection for
him. He does not try to smooth things over; to pretend that he has not
been mad; to find excuses for himself; to lay any blame on any human
being. He repents openly, confesses openly. Shameful as it may be to
him, he tells the whole story. He confesses that he had fair warning,
that all was his own fault. He justifies God utterly. My friends, we
may read, thank God, many noble, and brave, and righteous speeches of
kings and great men: but never have I read one so noble, so brave, so
righteous as this of the great king of Babylon.
And therefore it is; because this letter of his, in the fourth chapter of
the book of Daniel, is indeed full of the eternal Holy Spirit of God;
therefore it is, I say, that it forms part of the Bible, part of holy
scripture to this day,—a greater honour to Nebuchadnezzar than all his
kingdom; for what greater honour than to have been inspired to write one
chapter, yea, one sentence, of the Book of Books?
My friends, every one of you here is in God’s school-house, under God’s
teaching, far more than Nebuchadnezzar was. You are baptised men,
knowing that blessed name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which
Nebuchadnezzar only saw dimly, and afar off. Jesus Christ, the Word of
God, is striving with your hearts, giving to them whatsoever light and
life they have. You have been taught from childhood to look up to Him as
your King and Deliverer; to His Father as your Father, to His Holy Spirit
as your Inspirer. Take heed how you listen to His voice within your
hearts. Take heed how you learn God’s lessons; for God is surely
educating you, and teaching you far more than He taught the king of
Babylon in old time. As you learn or despise these lessons of God’s,
will be your happiness or your misery now and for ever. Unto the king of
Babylon little was given, and of him was little required. To you and me
much has been given; of you and me will much be required.
XXIX.
JEREMIAH’S CALLING.
Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a
righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall
execute judgment and justice in the earth.—JEREMIAH xxiii. 5.
AT the time when Jeremiah the prophet spoke those words to the Jews,
nothing seemed more unlikely than that they would ever come true. The
whole Jewish nation was falling to pieces from its own sins. Brutish and
filthy idolatry in high and low—oppression, violence, and luxury among
the court and the nobility—shame, and poverty, and ignorance among the
lower classes—idleness and quackery among the priesthood—and as kings
over all, one fool and profligate after another, set on the throne by a
foreign conqueror, and pulled down again by him at his pleasure. Ten out
of the twelve tribes of Israel had been carried off captive, young and
old, into a distant land. The small portion of country which still
remained inhabited round Jerusalem, had been overrun again and again by
cruel armies of heathens. Without Jerusalem was waste and ruins,
bloodshed and wretchedness; within every kind of iniquity and lies,
division and confusion. If ever there was a miserable and contemptible
people upon the face of the earth, it was the Jewish nation in Jeremiah’s
time. Jeremiah makes no secret of it. His prophecies are full of
it—full of lamentation and shame: “Oh that my head were a fountain of
tears, to weep for the sins of my people!” He feels that God has sent
him to rebuke those sins, to warn and prophesy to his fellow-countrymen
the certain ruin into which they are rushing headlong; and he speaks
God’s message boldly. From the poor idol-ridden labourer, offering cakes
to the Queen of Heaven to coax her into sending him a good harvest, to
the tyrant king who had built his palace of cedar and painted it with
vermilion, he had a bitter word for every man. The lying priest tried to
silence him; and Jeremiah answered him, that his wife should be a harlot
in the city, and his children sold for slaves. The king tried to flatter
him into being quiet; and he told him in return, that he should be buried
with the burial of an ass, dragged out and cast forth beyond the gates of
Jerusalem. The luxurious queen, who made her nest in the cedars, would
be ashamed and confounded, he said, for her wickedness. The crown prince
was a despised broken idol—a vessel in which was no pleasure; he should
be cast out, he and his children, into slavery in a land which he knew
not. The whole royal family, he said, would perish; none of them should
ever again prosper or sit upon the throne of David. This was his
message; shame and confusion, woe and ruin, to high and low; every human
being he passed in the street was a doomed man. For the day of the Lord
was at hand, and who should be able to escape it?
A sad calling, truly, to have to work at; and all the more sad because
Jeremiah had no pride, no steadfast opinion of his own excellence to keep
him up. He hates his calling of prophet. At the very moment he is
foretelling woe, he prays God that his prophecy may not come true; he
tries every method to prevent its coming true, by entreating his
countrymen to repent. There runs through all his awful words a vein of
tenderness, and pity, and love unspeakable, which to me is the one great
mark of a true prophet; a sign that Jeremiah spoke by the Spirit of God;
a sign that too many writers nowadays do not speak by the Spirit of God.
If they rebuke the rich and powerful, they do it generally in a very
different spirit from Jeremiah’s—in a spirit of bitterness and insolence,
not very easy to describe, but easy enough to perceive. They seem to
rejoice in evil, to delight in finding fault, to be sorry, and not glad,
when their prophecies of evil turn out false; to try to set one class
against another, one party against another, as if we were not miserably
enough split up already by class interests and party spirit. They are
glad enough to rebuke the wicked great; but not to their face, not to
their own danger and hurt like Jeremiah. Their plan is to accuse the
rich to the poor, on their own platform, or in their own newspaper, where
they are safe; and, moreover, to make a very fair profit thereby; to say
behind the back of authorities that which they dare not say to their
face, and which they soon give up saying when they have worked their own
way into office; and meanwhile take mighty credit to themselves for
seeing that there is wrong and misery in the world; as if the spirits in
hell should fancy themselves righteous, because they hated the devil!
No, my friends, Jeremiah was of a very different spirit from that. If he
ever was tempted to it when he was young, and began to fancy himself a
very grand person, who had a right to look down on his neighbours,
because God had called him and set him apart to be a prophet from his
mother’s womb, and revealed to him the doom of nations, and the secrets
of His providence—if he ever fancied that in his heart, God led him
through such an education as took all the pride out of him, sternly and
bitterly enough. He was commissioned to go and speak terrible words, to
curse kings and nobles in the name of the Lord: but he was taught, too,
that it was not a pleasant calling, or one which was likely to pay him in
this life. His fellow-villagers plotted against his life. His wife
deserted him. The nobles threw him into a dungeon, into a well full of
mire, whence he had to be drawn up again with ropes to save his life. He
was beaten, all but starved, kept for years in prison. He had neither
child nor friend. He had his share of all the miseries of the siege of
Jerusalem, and all the horrors of its storm; and when he was set free by
Nebuchadnezzar, and clung to his ruined home, to see if any good could
still be done to the remnant of his countrymen, he was violently carried
off into a heathen land, and at last stoned to death, by those very
countrymen of his whom he had been trying for years to save. In
everything, and by everything, he was taught that he was still a Jew, a
brother to his sinful brothers; that their sorrows were his sorrows,
their shame his shame, their ruin his ruin. In all their afflictions he
was afflicted, even as his Lord was after him.
He struggled, we find, again and again against this strange and sad
calling of a prophet. He cried out in bitter agony that God had deceived
him; had induced him to become a prophet, and then repaid him for
speaking God’s message with nothing but disappointment and misery. And
yet he felt he must speak; God, he said, was stronger than he was, and
forced him to it. He said: “I will speak no more words in His name; but
the Word of the Lord was as fire within his bones, and would not let him
rest;” and so, in spite of himself, he told the truth, and suffered for
it; and hated to have to tell it, and pitied and loved the very country
which he rebuked till he cursed “the day in which he saw the light, and
the hour in which it was said to his father, there is a man-child born.”
You who fancy that it is a fine thing, and a paying profession, to be a
preacher of righteousness and a rebuker of sin, look at Jeremiah, and
judge! For as surely as you or any other man is sent by God to do
Jeremiah’s work, so surely he must expect Jeremiah’s wages.
Do you think, then, that Jeremiah was a man only to be pitied? Pitiable
he was indeed, and sad. There was One hung on a cross eighteen hundred
years ago, more pitiable still: and yet He is the Lord of heaven and
earth. Yes; Jeremiah had a sad life to live, and a sad task to work out;
and yet, my friends, was not that a cheap price to pay for the honour and
glory of being taught by God’s Spirit, and of speaking God’s words? I do
not mean the mere honour of having his fame and name spread over all
Christ’s kingdom; the honour of having his writings read and respected by
the wisest and the holiest to the end of time; that mere earthly fame is
but a slight matter. I mean the real honour, the real glory, of knowing
what was utterly right and true, and therefore of knowing Him who is
utterly right and true; of knowing God; of knowing what God’s character
is: that he is a living God, and not a dead one; a God who is near and
not absent at all, loving and merciful, just and righteous, strong and
mighty to save. Ay, my friends, this is the lesson which God taught
Jeremiah; to know the Lord of heaven and earth, and to see His hand, His
rule, in all that was happening to his fellow-countrymen, and himself; to
know that from the beginning the Lord, the Saviour-God, Jehovah, the
messenger of the covenant, He who brought up the Jews out of Egypt, was
the wise and just and loving King of the Jews, and of all the nations
upon earth; and that some day or other He must and would conquer all the
sinfulness, and misery, and tyranny, and idolatry in the world, and show
Himself openly to men, and fulfil all the piteous longings after a just
and good king which poor wretches had ever felt, and all the glorious
promises of a just and good king which God had made to the wise men of
old time; and, therefore, in the midst of shame and persecution, despair
and ruin, Jeremiah could rejoice. Jehoiakim, the wicked king, and all
his royal house, might be driven out into slavery; Jerusalem might become
a heap of ruins and corpses; the fair land of Judæa, and the village
where he was bred, might become thorns, and thistles, and heaps of
stones; the vineyard which he loved, the little estate at Anathoth which
had belonged to him, might be trodden down by the stranger, and he
himself die in a foreign land; around him might be nothing but sin and
decay, before him nothing but despair and ruin: yet still there was hope,
joy, everlasting certainty for that poor, childless, captive old man; for
he had found out that the Lord still lived, the Lord still reigned. He
could not lie; he could not forget his people. Could a mother forget her
sucking child? No. When the Jews turned to Him, He would still have
mercy. His punishment of them was a sign that he still cared for them.
If He had forgotten them, He would have let them go on triumphant in
their iniquity. No. All these afflictions were meant to chasten them,
teach them, bring them back to Him. It would be good for them, an actual
blessing to them, to be taken away into captivity in Babylon. It might
be hard to believe, but it must be true. The Lord of Israel, the
Saviour-God, who had been caring for them so long, rising up early and
sending His prophets to them, pleading with them as a father with his
child, He would have mercy; He would teach them, in sorrow and slavery,
the lesson they were too rebellious and hard-hearted to learn in
prosperity and freedom: that the Lord was their righteousness, and that
there was no other name under heaven which could save them from the
plague, and from the famine, from the swords of the Chaldeans, or from
the division, and oppression, and brutishness, and manifold wickedness,
which was their ruin. And then Jeremiah saw and felt—how we cannot
tell—but there his words, the words of this text, stand to this day, to
show that he did see and feel it, that some day or other, in God’s good
time, the Jews would have a true King—a very different king from
Jehoiakim the tyrant—a son of David in a very different sense from what
Jehoiakim was; that He would come, and must come, sooner or later, The
unseen King, who had all along been governing Jews and heathens, and
telling his prophets that Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus, the Chaldee and the
Persian, were his servants as well as they, and that all the nations of
the earth could do but what he chose. “Behold the days come, saith the
Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall
reign and prosper, and shall execute justice and judgment on the earth.”
This was the blessed knowledge which God gave Jeremiah in return for all
the misery he had to endure in warning his countrymen of their sins. And
this same blessed knowledge, the knowledge that the earth is the Lord’s,
that to Jesus Christ is given, as He said Himself, all power in heaven
and earth, and that He is reigning, and must reign, and conquer, and
triumph till He has put all His enemies under His feet, God will surely
give to everyone, high or low, who follows Jeremiah’s example, who boldly
and faithfully warns the sinner of his way, who rebukes the wickedness
which he sees around him: only he must do it in the spirit of Jeremiah.
He must not be insolent to the insolent, or proud to the proud. He must
not be puffed up, and fancy that because he sees the evil of sin, and the
certain ruin which is the fruit of it, that he is therefore to keep apart
from his fellow-countrymen, and despise them in Pharisaic pride. No.
The truly Christian man, the man who, like Jeremiah, has the Spirit of
God in him, will feel the most intense pity and tenderness of sinners.
He will not only rebuke the sins of his people, but mourn for them; he
will be afflicted in all their affliction. However harshly he may have
to speak, he will never forget that they are his countrymen, his
brothers, children of the same Father, to be judged by the same Lord. He
will feel with shame and fear that he has in himself the root of the very
same sins which he sees working death around him—that if others are
covetous, he might be so too—if they be profligate, and deceitful, and
hypocritical, without God in the world, he might be so too. And he must
feel not only that he might be as bad as his neighbours, but that he
actually would be, if God withdrew His Spirit from him for a moment, and
allowed him to forget the only faith which saves him from sin, loyalty to
his unseen Saviour, the righteous King of kings. Therefore he will not
only rebuke his sinful neighbours; but he will tell them, as Jeremiah
told his countrymen, that all their sin and misery proceed from this one
thing, that they have forgotten that the Lord is their King. He will
pray daily for them, that the Lord their King may show Himself to their
hearts and thoughts, and teach them all that He has done for them, and is
doing for them; and may convert them to Himself that they may be truly
His people, and His way may be known upon earth, His saving health among
all nations.
XXX.
THE PERFECT KING.
Tell ye the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy King cometh to thee, meek,
and sitting upon an ass, and a colt, the foal of an ass.—MATTHEW xxi.
5.
YOU all know that this Sunday is called the First Sunday in Advent. You
all know, I hope, that Advent means coming, and that these four Sundays
before Christmas, as I have often told you, are called Advent Sundays,
because upon them we are called to consider the coming of our King and
Saviour Jesus Christ. If you will look at the Collects, Epistles, and
Gospels for these next four Sundays, you will see at once that they all
bear upon our Lord’s coming. The Gospels tell us of the prophecies about
Christ which He fulfilled when He came. The Epistles tell us what sort
of men we ought to be, both clergy and people, because He has come and
will come again. The Collects pray that the Spirit of God would make us
fit to live and die in a world into which Christ has come, and in which
He is ruling now, and to which He will come again. The text which I have
taken this morning, you just heard in this Sunday’s Gospel. St. Matthew
tells you that Jesus Christ fulfilled it by riding into Jerusalem in
state upon an ass’s colt; and St. Matthew surely speaks truth. Let us
consider what the prophecy is, and how Jesus Christ fulfilled it. Then
we shall see and believe from the Epistle what effect the knowledge of it
ought to have upon our own souls, and hearts, and daily conduct.
Now this prophecy, “Behold, thy king cometh unto thee,” etc., you will
find in your Bibles, in the ninth verse of the ninth chapter of the book
of Zechariah. But I do not think that Zechariah wrote it. St. Matthew
does not say he wrote it; he merely calls it that which was spoken by the
prophet, without mentioning his name. Provided it is an inspired word
from God, which it is, it perhaps does not matter to us so much who wrote
it: but I think it was written by the prophet Jeremiah, perhaps in the
beginning of the reign of the good king Josiah; for the chapter in which
this text is, and the two or three chapters which follow, are not at all
like the rest of Zechariah’s writings, but exactly like Jeremiah’s. They
certainly seem to speak of things which did not happen in Zechariah’s
time, but in the time of Jeremiah, nearly ninety years before. And,
above all, St. Matthew himself seems plainly to have thought that some
part, at least, of those chapters was Jeremiah’s writing; for in the
twenty-seventh chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel, and in the ninth verse,
you will find a prophecy about the potter’s field, which St. Matthew says
was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet. Now, those words are not in the book
of Jeremiah as it stands in our Bibles: but they are in the book of
Zechariah, in the eleventh chapter, twelfth and thirteenth verses, coming
shortly after my text, and making a part of the same prophecy. This has
puzzled Christians very much, because it seemed as if St. Matthew has
made a mistake, and miscalled Zechariah Jeremiah. But I believe firmly
that, as we are bound to expect, St. Matthew made no mistake whatsoever,
and that Jeremiah did write that prophecy as St. Matthew said, and the
two chapters before it, and perhaps the two after it, and that they were
probably kept and preserved by Zechariah during the troublous times of
the Babylonish captivity, and at last copied by Nehemiah into Zechariah’s
book of prophecy, where they stand now; and I think it is a comfort to
know this, and to find that the evangelist St. Matthew has not made a
mistake, but knew the Scriptures better than we do.
But I think Jeremiah having written this prophecy in my text, which I
believe he did, is also very important, because it will show us what the
prophet meant when he spoke it, and how it was fulfilled in his time; and
the better we understand that, the better we shall understand how our
blessed Lord fulfilled it afterwards.
Now, when Jeremiah was a young man, the Jews and their king Amon were in
a state of most abominable wickedness. They were worshipping every sort
of idol and false god. And the Bible, the book of God’s law, was utterly
unknown amongst them; so that Josiah the king, who succeeded Amon, had
never seen or heard the book of the law of Moses, which makes part of our
Old Testament, till he had reigned eighteen years, as you will find if
you refer to 2 Kings xxii. 3. But this Josiah was a gentle and just
prince, and finding the book of the law of God, and seeing the abominable
forgetfulness and idolatry into which his people had fallen, utterly
breaking the covenant which God had made with their forefathers when he
brought them up out of Egypt—when he found the book of the law, I say,
and all that he and his people should have done and had not done, and the
awful curses which God threatened in that book against those who broke
His law, “he humbled himself before God, because his heart was tender,
and turned to the Lord, as no king before him had ever turned,” says the
scripture, “with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his
might; so that there was no such king before him, or either after him.”
The history of the great reformation which this great and good king
worked, you may read at length in 2 Kings xxii. xxiii. and 2 Chron.
xxxiv. xxxv. which I advise you all to read.
And it appears to me that this prophecy in the text first applies to the
gentle and holy king Josiah, the first true and good king the Jews had
had for years, and the best they were ever to have till Christ came
Himself; and that it speaks of Josiah coming to Jerusalem to restore the
worship of God, not with pomp and show, like the wicked kings both before
and after him, but in meekness and humbleness of heart, for all the sins
of his people, as the prophetess said of him in 2 Kings xxii. 19, “that
his heart was tender and humble before the Lord;” neither coming with
chariots and guards, like a king and conqueror, but riding upon an ass’s
colt; for that was, in those countries, the ancient sign of a man’s being
a man of peace, and not of war; a magistrate and lawgiver, and not a
soldier and a conqueror. Various places of holy scripture show us that
this was the meaning of riding upon an ass in Judæa, just as it is in
Eastern countries now.
But some may say, How then is this a prophecy? It merely tells us what
good king Josiah was, and what every king ought to be. Well, my friends,
that is just what makes it a prophecy. If it tells you what ought to be,
it tells you what will be. Yes, never forget that; whatever ought to be,
surely will be; as surely as this is God’s earth and Christ’s kingdom,
and not the devil’s.
Now, it does not matter in the least whether the prophet, when he spoke
these words, knew that they would apply to the Lord Jesus Christ. We
have no need whatsoever to suppose that he did: for scripture gives us no
hint or warrant that he did; and if we have any real or honest reverence
for scripture, we shall be careful to let it tell its own story, and
believe that it contains all things necessary for salvation, without our
patching our own notions into it over and above. Wise men are generally
agreed that those old prophets did not, for the most part, comprehend the
full meaning of their own words. Not that they were mere puppets and
mouthpieces, speaking what to them was nonsense—God forbid!—But that just
because they did thoroughly understand what was going on round them, and
see things as God saw them, just because they had God’s Eternal Spirit
with them, therefore they spoke great and eternal words, which will be
true for ever, and will go on for ever fulfilling themselves for more and
more. For in proportion as any man’s words are true, and wide, and deep,
they are truer, and wider, and deeper than that man thinks, and will
apply to a thousand matters of which he never dreamt. And so in all true
and righteous speech, as in the speeches of the prophets of old, the
glory is not man’s who speaks them, but God’s who reveals them, and who
fulfils them again and again.
It is true, then, that this text describes what every king should
be—gentle and humble, a merciful and righteous lawgiver, not a
self-willed and capricious tyrant. But Josiah could not fulfil that. He
was a good king: but he could not be a perfect one; for he was but a
poor, sinful, weak, and inconsistent man, as we are. But those words
being inspired by the Holy Spirit, must be fulfilled. There ought to be
a perfect king, perfectly gentle and humble, having a perfect salvation,
a perfect lawgiver; and therefore there must be such a king; and
therefore St. Matthew tells us there came at last a perfect king—one who
fulfilled perfectly the prophet’s words—one who was not made king of
Jerusalem, but was her King from the beginning; for that is the full
meaning of “Thy King cometh to thee.” To Jerusalem He came, riding on
the ass’s colt, like the peaceful and fatherly judges of old time, for a
sign to the poor souls round Him, who had no lawgivers but the proud and
fierce Scribes and Pharisees, no king but the cruel and godless Cæsar,
and his oppressive and extortionate officers and troops. Meek and lowly
He came; and for once the people saw that He was the true Son of David—a
man and king, like him, after God’s own heart. For once they felt that
He had come in the name of the Lord the old Deliverer who brought them
out of the land of Egypt, and made them into a nation, and loved and
pitied them still, in spite of all their sins, and remembered His
covenant, which they had forgotten. And before that humble man, the Son
of the village maiden, they cried: “Hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed
is He that cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the Highest.”
And do you think He came, the true and perfect King, only to go away
again and leave this world as it was before, without a law, a ruler, a
heavenly kingdom? God forbid! Jesus is the same yesterday, to-day, and
for ever. What He was then, when He rode in triumph into Jerusalem, that
is He now to us this day—a king, meek and lowly, and having salvation;
the head and founder of a kingdom which can never be moved, a city which
has foundations, whose builder and maker is God. To that kingdom this
land of England now belongs. Into it we, as Englishmen, have been
christened. And the unchristened, though they know not of it, belong to
it as well. What God’s will, what Christ’s mercies may be to them, we
know not. That He has mercy for them, if their ignorance is not their
own fault, we doubt not; perhaps, even if their ignorance be their own
fault, we need not doubt that He has mercy for them, considering the
mercy which He has shown to us, who deserved no more than they. But His
will to us we do know; and His will is this—our holiness. For He came
not only to assert His own power, to redeem his own world, but to set His
people, the children of men, an example, that they should follow in His
steps. Herein, too, He is the perfect king. He leads His subjects, He
sets a perfect example to His subjects, and more, He inspires them with
the power of following that example, as, if you will think, a perfect
ruler ought to be able to do. Josiah set the Jews an example, but he
could not make them follow it. They turned to God at the bidding of
their good king, with their lips, in their outward conduct; but their
hearts were still far from Him. Jeremiah complains bitterly of this in
the beginning of his prophecies. He complains that Josiah’s reformation
was after all empty, hollow, hypocritical, a change on the surface only,
while the wicked root was left. They had healed, he said, the hurt of
the daughter of his people slightly, crying, “Peace, peace, when there
was no peace.” But Jesus, the perfect King, is King of men’s spirits as
well as of their bodies. He can turn the heart, He can renew the soul.
None so ignorant, none so sinful, none so crushed down with evil habits,
but the Lord will and can forgive him, raise him up, enlighten him,
strengthen him, if he will but claim his share in his King’s mercy, his
citizenship in the heavenly kingdom, and so put himself in tune again
with himself, and with heaven, and earth, and all therein.
Keeping in mind these things, that Jesus, because He is our perfect King,
is both the example and the inspirer of our souls and characters, we may
look without fear at the epistle for the day, where it calls on us to be
very different persons from what we are, and declares to us our duty as
subjects of Him who is meek and lowly, just and having salvation. It is
no superstitious, slavish message, saying: “You have lost Christ’s mercy
and Christ’s kingdom; you must buy it back again by sacrifices, and
tears, and hard penances, or great alms-deeds and works of mercy.” No.
It simply says: “You belong to Christ already, give up your hearts to Him
and follow His example. If He is perfect, His is the example to follow;
if he is perfect, His commandments must be perfect, fit for all places,
all times, all employments; if He is the King of heaven and earth, His
commandments must be in tune with heaven and earth, with the laws of
nature, the true laws of society and trade, with the constitution, and
business, and duty, and happiness of all mankind, and for ever obey Him.”
Owe no man anything save love, for He owed no man anything. He gave up
all, even His own rights, for a time, for His subjects. Will you pretend
to follow Him while you hold back from your brothers and fellow-servants
their just due? One debt you must always owe; one debt will grow the
more you pay it, and become more delightful to owe, the greater and
heavier you feel it to be, and that is love; love to all around you, for
all around you are your brothers and sisters; all around you are the
beloved subjects of your King and Saviour. Love them as you love
yourself, and then you cannot harm them, you cannot tyrannise over them,
you cannot wish to rise by scrambling up on their shoulders, taking the
bread out of their mouths, making your profit out of their weakness and
their need. This, St. Paul says, was the duty of men in his time,
because the night of heathendom was far spent, the day of Christianity
and the Church was at hand. Much more is it our duty now—our duty, who
have been born in the full sunshine of Christianity, christened into His
church as children, we and our fathers before us, for generations, of the
kingdom of God. Ay, my friends, these words, that kingdom, that King,
witness this day against this land of England. Not merely against
popery, the mote which we are trying to take out of the foreigner’s eye,
but against Mammon, the beam which we are overlooking in our own. Owe no
man anything save love. “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”
That is the law of your King, who loved not Himself or His own profit,
His own glory, but gave Himself even to death for those who had forgotten
Him and rebelled against Him. That law witnesses against selfishness and
idleness in rich and poor. It witnesses against the employer who grinds
down his workmen; who, as the world tells him he has a right to do, takes
advantage of their numbers, their ignorance, their low and reckless
habits, to rise upon their fall, and grow rich out of their poverty. It
witnesses against the tradesman who tries to draw away his neighbour’s
custom. It witnesses against the working man who spends in the alehouse
the wages which might support and raise his children, and then falls back
recklessly and dishonestly on the parish rates and the alms of the
charitable. Against them all this law witnesses. These things are unfit
for the kingdom of Christ, contrary to the laws and constitution thereof,
hateful to the King thereof; and if a nation will not amend these
abominations, the King will arise out of His place, and with sore
judgments and terrible He will visit His land and purify His temple,
saying: “My Father’s house should be a house of prayer, and ye have made
it a den of thieves.” Ay, woe to any soul, or to any nation, which,
instead of putting on the Lord Jesus Christ, copying His example, obeying
His laws, and living worthy of His kingdom, not only in the church, but
in the market, the shop, the senate, or the palace, give themselves up to
covetousness, which is idolatry; and care only to make provision for the
flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof. Woe to them; for, let them be what
they will, their King cannot change. He is still meek and lowly; He is
still just and having salvation; and He will purge out of His kingdom all
that is not like Himself, the unchaste and the idle, the unjust and the
unmerciful, and the covetous man, who is an idolater, says the scripture,
though he may call himself seven times a Protestant, and rail at the Pope
in public meetings, while he justifies greediness and tyranny by glib
words about the necessities of business and the laws of trade, and by
philosophy falsely so called, which cometh not from above, but is
earthly, sensual, devilish. Such a man loves and makes a lie, and the
Lord of truth will surely send him to his own place.
XXXI.
GOD’S WARNINGS.
It may be that the house of Judah will hear all the evil which I
purpose to do unto them; that they may return every man from his evil
way; that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin.—JEREMIAH xxxvi.
3.
THE first lesson for this evening’s service tells us of the wickedness of
Jehoiakim, king of Judah. How, when Jeremiah’s prophecies against the
sins of Jehoiakim and his people were read before him, he cut the roll
with a penknife, and threw it into the fire. Now, we must not look on
this story as one which, because it happened among the Jews many hundred
years ago, has nothing to do with us; for, as I continually remind you,
the history of the Jews, and the whole Old Testament, is the history of
God’s dealings with man—the account of God’s plan of governing this
world. Now, God cannot change; but is the same yesterday, to-day, and
for ever; and therefore His plan of government cannot change: but if men
do as those did of whom we read in the Old Testament, God will surely
deal with them as He dealt with the men of the Old Testament. This St.
Paul tells us most plainly in the tenth chapter of 1 Corinthians, where
he says that the whole history of the Jews was written for our
example—that is for the example of those Christian Corinthians, who were
not Jews at all, but Gentiles as we are; and therefore for our example
also.
He tells them, that it was Christ Himself, the Lord Jesus Christ, who fed
and guided the old Jews in the wilderness, and that the Lord will deal
with us exactly as He dealt with the old Jews.
Therefore it is a great and fearful mistake, to suppose that because the
Jews were a peculiar people and God’s chosen nation, that therefore the
Lord’s way of governing them is in any wise different from His way of
governing us English at this very day; for that fancy is contrary to the
express words of Holy Scripture, in a hundred different places; it is
contrary to the whole spirit of our Prayer Book, which is written all
through on the belief that the Lord deals with us just as He did with the
Jewish nation, and which will not even make sense if it be understood in
any other way; and besides, it is most dangerous to the souls and
consciences of men. It is most dangerous for us to fancy that God can
change; for if God can change, right and wrong can change; for right is
the will of God, and wrong is what is against His will; and if we once
let into our hearts the notion that God can change His laws of right, our
consciences will become daily dimmer and more confused about right and
wrong, till we fall, as too many do, under the prophet’s curse, “Woe to
them who call good evil, and evil good; who put sweet for bitter, and
bitter for sweet,” and fancy, like Ezekiel’s Jews, that God’s ways are
unequal; that is, unlike each other, changeable, arbitrary, and
capricious, doing one thing at one time, and another at another. No. It
is sinful man who is changeable; it is sinful man who is arbitrary. But
The Lord is not a man, that He should lie or repent; for He is the
only-begotten Son, and therefore the express likeness, of The Everlasting
Father, in whom is no variableness, nor shadow of turning.
But some may say, Is not that a gloomy and terrible notion of God, that
He cannot change His purpose? Is not that as much as to say that there
is a dark necessity hanging over each of us; that a man must just be what
God chooses, and do just what He has ordained to do, and go to
everlasting happiness or misery exactly as God has foreordained from all
eternity, so that there is no use trying to do right, or not to do wrong?
If I am to be saved, say such people, I shall be saved whether I try or
not; and if I am to be damned, I shall be damned whether I try or not. I
am in God’s hands like clay in the hands of the potter; and what I am
like is therefore God’s business, and not mine.
No, my friends, the very texts in the Bible which tell us that God cannot
change or repent, tell us what it is that He cannot change in—in showing
loving-kindness and tender mercy, long-suffering, and repenting of the
evil. Whatsoever else He cannot repent of, He cannot repent of repenting
of the evil.
It is true, we are in His hand as clay in the hand of the potter. But it
is a sad misreading of scripture to make that mean that we are to sit
with our hands folded, careless about our own way and conduct; still less
that we are to give ourselves up to despair, because we have sinned
against God; for what is the very verse which follows after that?
Listen. “O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith
the Lord. Behold, as the clay is in the hand of the potter, so are ye in
my hand, O house of Israel. At what instant I shall speak concerning a
kingdom, to pull down and destroy it; if that nation against whom I have
pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil which I
thought to do to them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a
nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; if it do evil
in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good
wherewith I said I would benefit them.”
So that the lesson which we are to draw from the parable of the potter’s
clay is just the exact opposite which some men draw. Not that God’s
decrees are absolute: but that they are conditional, and depend on our
good or evil conduct. Not that His election or His reprobation are
unalterable, but that they alter “at that instant” at which man alters.
Not that His grace and will are irresistible, as the foolish man against
whom St. Paul argues fancies: but that we can resist God’s will, and that
our destruction comes only by resisting His will; in short, that God’s
will is no brute material necessity and fate, but the will of a living,
loving Father.
And the very same lesson is taught us in Ezek. xviii., of which I spoke
just now; for if we read that chapter we shall find that the Jews had a
false notion of God that He had changed His character, and had become in
their time unmerciful and unjust. They fancied that God was, if I may so
speak, obstinate—that if His anger had once arisen, there was no turning
it away, but that He would go on without pity, punishing the innocent
children for their father’s sin; and therefore they fancied God’s ways
were unfair, self-willed, and arbitrary, without any care of what sort of
person He afflicted; punishing the righteous as well as the wicked, after
He had promised in His law to reward the righteous and punish the wicked.
They fancied that His way of governing the world had changed, and that He
did not in their days make a difference between the bad and the good.
Therefore Ezekiel says to them: “When the righteous man turneth away from
his righteousness, he shall die.” “When the wicked man turneth away from
his wickedness, he shall live.” “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?”
This, then, is the good news, that God is love; love when He punishes,
and love when He forgives; very pitiful, and full of long-suffering and
tender mercy and repenting Him, never of the good, but only of the evil
which He threatens.
Both Jeremiah, therefore, and Ezekiel, give us the same lesson. God does
not change, and therefore He never changes His mercy and His justice: for
He is merciful because He is just. If we confess our sins, He is
faithful and just to forgive us our sins. That is His everlasting law,
and has been from the beginning: Punishment, sure and certain, for those
who do not repent; and free forgiveness, sure and certain also, for those
who do repent.
So He spoke to Jeremiah in the time of Jehoiakim: “It may be that the
house of Judah will hear all the evil that I purpose to do to them; that
I may forgive them their iniquity and their sin.” The Lord, you see,
wishes to forgive—longs to forgive. His heart yearns over sinful men as
a father’s over his rebellious child. But if they will still rebel, if
they will still turn their wicked wills away from Him, He must punish.
Why we know not; but He knows. Punish He must, unless we repent—unless
we turn our wills toward His will. And woe to the stiff-necked and
stout-hearted man who, like the wicked king Jehoiakim, sets his face like
a flint against God’s warnings. How many, how many behave for years,
Sunday after Sunday, just as king Jehoiakim did! When he heard that God
had threatened him with ruin for his sins, he heard also that God offered
him free pardon if he would repent. Jeremiah gave him free choice to be
saved or to be ruined; but his heart and will were hardened. Hearing
that he was wrong only made him angry. His pride and self-will were hurt
by being told that he must change and alter his ways. He had chosen his
way, and he would keep to it; and he cared nothing for God’s offers of
forgiveness, because he could not be forgiven unless he did what he was
too proud to do, confess himself to be in the wrong, and openly alter his
conduct. And how many, as I first said, are like him! They come to
church; they hear God’s warnings and threats against their evil ways;
they hear God’s offers of free pardon and forgiveness; but being told
that they are in the wrong makes them too angry to care for God’s offers
of pardon. Pride stops their cars. They have chosen their own way, and
they will keep it. They would not object to be forgiven, if they might
be forgiven without repenting. But they do not like to confess
themselves in the wrong. They do not like to face their foolish
companions’ remarks and sneers about their changed ways. They do not
like even good people to say of them: “You see now that you were in the
wrong after all; for you have altered your mind and your doings yourself,
as we told you you would have to do.” No; anything sooner than confess
themselves in the wrong; and so they turn their backs on God’s mercy, for
the sake of their own carnal pride and self-will.
But, of course, they want an excuse for doing that; and when a man wants
an excuse, the devil will soon fit him with a good one. Then, perhaps,
the foolish sinner behaves as Jehoiakim did. He tries to forget God’s
message in the man who brings it. He grows angry with the preacher, or
goes out and laughs at the preacher when service is over, as if it was
the preacher’s fault that God had declared what he has; as if it was the
preacher’s doing that God has revealed His anger against all sin and
unrighteousness. So he acts like Jehoiakim, who tried to take Jeremiah
the prophet and punish _him_, for what not he but the Lord God had
declared. Nay, they will often peevishly hate the very sight of a good
book, because it reminds them of the sins of which they do not choose to
be reminded, just as the young king Jehoiakim was childish enough to vent
his spite on Jeremiah’s book of prophecies, by cutting the roll on which
it was written with a penknife, and throwing it into the fire. So do
sinners who are angry with the preacher who warns them, or hate the sight
of good books. But let such foolish and wilful sinners, such full-grown
children—for, after all, they are no better—hear the word of the Lord
which came to Jehoiakim: “As it is written, he that despiseth Me shall be
despised, saith the Lord.” And let them not fancy that their shutting
their ears will shut the preacher’s mouth, still less shut up God’s
everlasting laws of punishment for sin. No. God’s word stands true, and
it will happen to them as it did to Jehoiakim. His burning Jeremiah’s
book did not rid him of the book, or save him from the woe and ruin which
was prophesied in it; for we have Jeremiah’s book here in our Bibles to
this day, as a sign and a warning of what happens to men, be they young
or old, be they kings or labouring men, who fight against God.
Jeremiah’s words were not lost after all; they were all re-written, and
there were added to them also many more like words; for Jehoiakim, by
refusing the Lord’s offer of pardon, had added to his sins, and therefore
the Lord added to his punishment.
Perhaps, again, the devil finds the wilful sinner another excuse, and the
man says to himself, as the Jews did in Ezekiel’s time: “The fathers have
eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge. It is not
my own fault that I am living a bad life, but other people’s. My parents
ought to have brought me up better. I have had no chance. My companions
taught me too much harm. I have too much trouble to get my living; or, I
was born with a bad temper; or, I can’t help running after pleasure. Why
did God make me the sort of man I am, and put me where I am? God is hard
upon me; He is unfair to me. His ways are unequal; He expects as much of
me as He does of people who have more opportunities. He threatens to
punish me for other people’s sins.”
And then comes another and a darker temptation over the man, and the
devil whispers to him such thoughts as these: “God does not care for me;
God hates me. Luck, and everything else is against me. There seems to
be some curse upon me. Why should I change? Let God change first to me,
and then I will change toward Him. But God will not change; He is
determined to have no mercy on me. I can see that; for everything goes
wrong with me. Then what use in my repenting? I will just go my own
way, and what must be must. There is no resisting God’s will. If I am
to be saved, I shall be; if I am to be damned, I shall be. I will put
all melancholy thoughts out of my head, and go and enjoy myself and
forget all. At all events, it won’t last long: ‘Let me eat and drink,
for to-morrow I die.’”
Oh, my dear friends, have not some of you sometimes had such thoughts?
Then hear the word of the Lord to you: “When—whensoever—whensoever the
wicked man turneth away from his wickedness which he hath committed, and
doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive.”
“Have I any pleasure in the death of him that dieth? saith the Lord, and
not rather that he should be converted, and live?” True, most true, that
the Lord is unchangeable: but it is in love and mercy. True, that God’s
will and law cannot alter: but what is God’s will and law? The soul that
sinneth, it shall die? Yes. But also, the soul that turneth away from
its sin, it shall live. Never believe the devil when he tells you that
God hates you. Never believe him when he tells you that God has been too
hard on you, and put you into such temptation, or ignorance, or poverty,
or anything else, that you cannot mend. No. That font there will give
the devil the lie. That font says: “Be you poor, tempted, ignorant,
stupid, be you what you will, you are God’s child—your Father’s love is
over you, His mercy is ready for you.” You feel too weak to change; ask
God’s Spirit, and He will give you a strength of mind you never felt
before. You feel too proud to change; ask God’s Spirit, and He will
humble your proud heart, and soften your hard heart; and you will find to
your surprise, that when your pride is gone, when you are utterly ashamed
of yourself, and see your sins in their true blackness, and feel not
worthy to look up to God, that then, instead of pride, will come a
nobler, holier, manlier feeling—self-respect, and a clear conscience, and
the thought that, weak and sinful as you are, you are in the right way;
that God, and the angels of God, are smiling on you; that you are in tune
again with all heaven and earth, because you are what God wills you to
be—not His proud, peevish, self-willed child, fancying yourself strong
enough to go alone, when in reality you are the slave of your own
passions and appetites, and the plaything of the devil: but His loving,
loyal son, strong in the strength which God gives you, and able to do
what you will, because what you will God wills also.
XXXII.
PHARAOH’S HEART.
And the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and he did not let the people
go.—EXODUS ix. 17.
WHAT lesson, now, can we draw from this story? One, at least, and a very
important one. What effect did all these signs and wonders of God’s
sending, have upon Pharaoh and his servants? Did they make them better
men or worse men? We read that they made them worse men; that they
helped to harden their hearts. We read that the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s
heart, so that he would not let the children of Israel go. Now, how did
the Lord do that? He did not wish and mean to make Pharaoh more
hard-hearted, more wicked. That is impossible. God, who is all goodness
and love, never can wish to make any human being one atom worse than he
is. He who so loved the world that He came down on earth to die for
sinners, and take away the sins of the world, would never make any human
being a greater sinner than he was before. That is impossible, and
horrible to think of. Therefore, when we read that the Lord hardened
Pharaoh’s heart, we must be certain that that was Pharaoh’s own fault;
and so, we read, it was Pharaoh’s own fault. The Lord did not bring all
these plagues on Egypt without giving Pharaoh fair warning. Before each
plague, He sent Moses to tell Pharaoh that the plague was coming. The
Lord told Pharaoh that He was his Master, and the Master and Lord of the
whole earth; that the children of Israel belonged to Him, and the
Egyptians too; that the river, light and darkness, the weather, the
crops, and the insects, and the locusts belonged to Him; that all
diseases which afflict man and beast were in His power. And the Lord
proved that His words were true, in a way Pharaoh could not mistake, by
changing the river into blood, and sending darkness, and hailstones, and
plagues of lice and flies, and at last by killing the firstborn of all
the Egyptians. The Lord gave Pharaoh every chance; He condescended to
argue with him as one man would with another, and proved His word to be
true, and proved that He had a right to command Pharaoh. And therefore,
I say, if Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, it was his own fault, for the
Lord was plainly trying to soften it, and to bring him to reason. And
the Bible says distinctly that it was Pharaoh’s own fault. For it says
that Pharaoh hardened his own heart, he and his servants, and therefore
they would not let the children of Israel go. Now how could Pharaoh
harden his own heart, and yet the Lord harden it at the same time?