Just in the same way, my friends, as too many of us are apt to make the

Lord harden our hearts by hardening them ourselves, and to make, as

Pharaoh did, the very things which the Lord sends to soften us, the

causes of our becoming more stubborn; the very things which the Lord

sends to bring us to reason, the means of our becoming more mad and

foolish. Believe me, my friends, this is no old story with which we have

nothing to do. What happened to Pharaoh’s heart may happen to yours, or

mine, or any man’s. Alas! alas! it does happen to many a man’s and

woman’s heart every day—and may the Lord have mercy on them before it be

too late,—and yet how can the Lord have mercy on those who will not let

Him have mercy on them?

What do I mean? This is what I mean, my friends; Oh, listen to it, and

take it solemnly to heart, you who are living still in sin; take it to

heart, lest you, like Pharaoh, die in your sins, and your latter end will

be worse than your beginning.

Suppose a man to be going on in some sinful habit; cheating his

neighbours, grinding his labourers, or getting tipsy, or living with a

woman without being married to her. He comes to church, and there he

hears the word of the Lord, by the Bible, or in sermons, telling him that

God commands him to give up his sin, that God will certainly punish him

if he does not repent and amend. God sends that message to him in love

and mercy, to soften his heart by the terrors of the law, and turn him

from his sin. But what does the man feel? He feels angry and provoked;

angry with the preacher; ay, angry with the Bible itself, with God’s

words. For he hates to hear the words which tell him of his sin; he

wishes they were not in the Bible; he longs to stop the preacher’s mouth;

and, as he cannot do that, he dislikes going to church. He says: “I

cannot, and what is more, I will not, give up my sinful ways, and

therefore I shall not go to church to be told of them.” So he stops away

from church, and goes on in his sins. So that man’s heart is hardened,

just as Pharaoh’s was. Yet the Lord has come and spoken to that sinful

man in loving warnings: though all the effect it has had is that the

Lord’s message has made him worse than he was before, more stubborn, more

godless, more unwilling to hear what is good. But men may fall into a

still worse state of mind. They may determine to set the Lord at naught;

to hear Him speaking to their conscience, and know that He is right and

they wrong, and yet quietly put the good thoughts and feelings out of

their way, and go in the course which they know to be the worst. How

many a man in business or the world says to himself, ay, and in his

better moments will say to his friend: “Ah, yes, if one could but be what

one would wish to be. . . . What one’s mother used to say one might be.

. . . But for such a world as this, the gospel ideal is somewhat too

fine and unpractical. One has one’s business to carry on, or one’s

family to provide for, or one’s party in politics to serve; one must obey

the laws of trade, the usages of society, the interests of one’s class;”

and so forth. And so an excuse is found for every sin, by those who know

in their hearts that they are sinning; for every sin; and among others,

too often, for that sin of Pharaoh’s, of “_not letting the people go_.”

And how many, my friends, when they come to church, harden their hearts

in the same quiet, almost good-humoured way, not caring enough for God’s

message to be even angry with it, and take the preacher’s warnings as

they would a shower of rain, as something unpleasant which cannot be

helped; and which, therefore, they must sit out patiently, and think

about it as little as possible? And when the sermon is over, they take

their hats and go out into the churchyard, and begin talking about

something else as quickly as possible, to drive the unpleasant thoughts,

if there are a few left, out of their heads. And thus they let the

Lord’s message to them harden their hearts. For it does harden them, my

friends, if it be taken in this temper. Every time anyone sits through

the service or the sermon in this stupid and careless mood, he dulls and

deadens his soul, till at last he is able coolly to sit through the most

awful warnings of God’s judgment, the most tender entreaties of God’s

love, as if he were a brute animal without understanding. Ay, he is able

to make the responses to the commandments, and join in the psalms, and so

with his own mouth, before the whole congregation, confess that God’s

curse is on his doings, with no more sense or care of what the words

mean, and of what a sentence he is pronouncing against himself, than if

he were a parrot taught to speak by rote words which he does not

understand. And so that man, by hardening his own heart, makes the Lord

harden it for him.

But there is a third way, and a worse way still, in which people’s hearts

are hardened by the Lord’s speaking to them. A man is warned of his sins

by the preacher; and he says to himself: “If the minister thinks that he

is going to frighten me away from church, he is very much mistaken. He

may go his way, and I shall go mine. Let him preach at me as much as he

will; I shall go to church all the more for that, to show him that I am

not afraid.” And so the Lord’s warnings harden his heart, and provoke

him to set his face like a flint, and become all the more proud and

stubborn.

Now, young people, I speak openly to you as man to man. Will you tell me

that this was not the very way in which some of you took my sermon last

Sunday afternoon, in which I warned you of the misery which your sinful

lives would bring upon you? Was there not more than one of you, who, as

soon as he got outside the church, began laughing and swaggering, and

said to the lad next him: “Well, he gave it us well in his sermon this

afternoon, did he not? But I don’t care; do you?”

To which the other foolish fellow answered: “Not I. It is his business

to talk like that; he is paid for it, and I suppose he likes it. So if

he does what he likes, we shall do what we like. Come along.” And at

that all the other foolish fellows round burst out laughing, as if the

poor lad had said a very clever thing; and they all went off together,

having their hearts hardened by the Lord’s warning to them, as Pharaoh’s

was.

And they showed, I am afraid, that very evening that their hearts were

hardened. For out of a sort of spite and stubbornness they took a

delight in doing what was wrong, just because they had been told that it

was wrong, and because they were determined to show that they would not

be frightened or turned from what they chose.

And all the while they knew that it was wrong, did those poor foolish

lads. If you had asked one of them openly, “Do you not know that God has

forbidden you to do this?” they would have either been forced to say,

“Yes,” or else they would have tried to laugh the matter off, or perhaps

held their tongues and looked silly, or perhaps again answered

insolently; showing by each and all of these ways of taking it, that the

Lord’s message had come home to their consciences, and convinced them of

their sin, though they were determined not to own it or obey it. And the

way they would have put the matter by and excused themselves to

themselves would have been just the way in which Pharaoh did it. They

would have tried to forget that the Lord had warned them, and tried to

make out to themselves that it was all the preacher’s doing, and to make

it a personal quarrel between him and them. Just so Pharaoh did when he

hardened his heart. He made the Lord’s message a ground for hating and

threatening Moses and Aaron, as if it was any fault of theirs. He knew

in his heart that the Lord had sent them; but he tried to forget that,

and drove them out from his presence, and told them that if they dared to

appear before him again they should surely die. And just so, my friends,

people will be angry with the preacher for telling them unpleasant

truths, as if it was any more pleasure to him to speak than for them to

hear. Oh, why will you forget that the words which I speak from this

pulpit are not my words, but God’s? It is not I who warn you of what you

are bringing on yourselves by your sins, it is God Himself. There it is

written in His Bible—judge for yourselves. Read your Bibles for

yourselves, and you will see that I am not speaking my own thoughts and

words. And as for being angry with me for telling you truth, read the

ordination service which is read whenever a clergyman is ordained, and

judge for yourselves. What is a clergyman sent into the world for at

all, but to say to you what I am saying now? What should I be but a

hypocrite and a traitor to the blessed Lord who died for me, and saved me

from my sins, and ordained me to preach to sinners, that they too may be

saved from their sins,—what should I be but a traitor to Him, if I did

not say to you, whenever I see you going wrong:

“O come, let us worship, and fall down and kneel before the Lord our

Maker.

“For He is the Lord our God; and we are the people of His pasture, and

the sheep of His hand.

“To-day, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts,

“Lest He sware in His wrath that you shall not enter into His rest!”

And now, my friends, I will tell you what will happen to you. You see

that I know something, without having been told of what has been going on

in your hearts. I beseech you, believe me when I tell you what will go

on in them. God will chastise you for your sins. He will; just because

He loves you, and does not hate you; just because you are His children,

and not dumb animals born to perish. Troubles will come upon you as you

grow older. Of what sort they will be I cannot tell; but that they will

come, I can tell full well. And when the Lord sends trouble to you,

shall it harden your hearts or soften them? It depends on you,

altogether on you, whether the Lord hardens your hearts by sending those

sorrows, or whether He softens and turns them and brings them back to the

only right place for them—home to Him. But your trouble may only harden

your heart all the more. The sorrows and sore judgments which the Lord

sent Pharaoh only hardened his heart. It all depends upon the way in

which you take these troubles, my friends. And that not so much when

they come as after they come. Almost all, let their hearts be right with

God or not, seem to take sorrow as they ought, while the sorrow is on

them. Pharaoh did so too. He said to Moses and Aaron: “I have sinned

this time. The Lord is righteous, and I and my people are wicked.

Entreat the Lord that there be no more mighty thunderings and hail; and I

will let you go.” What could be more right or better spoken? Was not

Pharaoh in a proper state of mind then? Was not his heart humbled, and

his will resigned to God? Moses thought not. For while he promised

Pharaoh to pray that the storm might pass over, yet he warned him: “But

as for thee and thy servants, I know that ye will not yet fear the Lord

your God.” And so it happened; for, “when Pharaoh saw that the rain, and

hail, and thunder had ceased, he sinned yet more, and hardened his heart,

he and his servants. Neither would he let the children of Israel go.” . . .

And so, alas! it happens to many a man and woman nowadays. They

find themselves on a sick-bed. They are in fear of death, in fear of

poverty, in fear of shame and punishment for their misdeeds. And then

they say: “It is God’s judgment. I have been very wicked. I know God is

punishing me. Oh, if God will but raise me up off this sick-bed; if He

will but help me out of this trouble, I will give up all my wicked ways.

I will repent and amend.” So said Pharaoh; and yet, as soon as he was

safe out of his distress, he hardened his heart. And so does many a man

and woman, who, when they get safe through their troubles, never give up

one of their sins, any more than Pharaoh did. They really believe that

God has punished them. They really intend to amend, while they are in

the trouble: but as soon as they are out of it, they try to persuade

themselves that it was not God who sent the sorrow, that it came “by

accident,” or that “people must have trouble in this life,” or that “if

they had taken better care, they might have prevented it.”—All of them

excuses to themselves for forgetting God in the matter, and, therefore,

for forgetting what they promised to God in trouble; and so, after all,

they go on just as they went on before. And yet not as they went on

before. For every such sin hardens their hearts; every such sin makes

them less able to see God’s hand in what happens to them; every such sin

makes them more bold and confident in disobeying God, and saying to

themselves: “After all, why should I be so frightened when I am in

trouble, and make such promises to amend my life? For the trouble goes

away, whether I mend my life or not; and nothing happens to me; God does

not punish me for not keeping my promises to Him. I may as well go on in

my own way, for I seem not the worse off in body or in purse for so

doing.” Thus do people harden their hearts after each trouble, as

Pharaoh did; so that you will see people, by one affliction after

another, one loss after another, all their lives through, warned by God

that sin will not prosper them; and confessing that their sins have

brought God’s punishment on them: and yet going on steadily in the very

sins which have brought on their troubles, and gaining besides, as time

runs on, a heart more and more hardened. And why?

Because they, like Pharaoh, love to have their own way. They will not

submit to God, and do what He bids them, and believe that what He bids

them must be right—good for them, and for all around them.

They promised to mend. But they promised as Pharaoh did. “If God will

take away this trouble, then I will mend”—meaning, though they do not

dare to say it: “And if God will not take away this trouble, of course He

cannot expect me to mend.” In plain English—If God will not act toward

them as they like, then they will not act toward Him as He likes. My

friends, God does not need us to bargain with Him. We must obey Him

whether we like it or not; whether it seems to pay us or not; whether He

takes our trouble off us or not; we must obey, for He is the Lord; and if

we will not obey, He will prove His power on us, as He did on Pharaoh, by

showing plainly what is the end of those who resist His will.

What, then, are we to do when our sins bring us, as they certainly will

some day bring us, into trouble?

What we ought to have done at first, my friends. What we ought to have

done in the wild days of youth, and so have saved ourselves many a dark

day, many a sleepless night, many a bitter shame and heartache. To open

our eyes, and see that the only thing for men and women, whom God has

made, is to obey the God who has made them. He is the Lord. He has made

us. He will have us do one thing. How can we hope to prosper by doing

anything else? It is ill fighting against God. Which is the stronger,

my friends, you or God? Make up your minds on that. It surely will not

take you long.

But someone may say: “I do wish and long to obey God; but I am so weak,

and my sins have so entangled me with bad company, or debts, or—, or—.”

We all know, alas! into what a net everyone who gives way to sin gets his

feet: “And therefore I cannot obey God. I long to do so. I feel, I

know, when I look back, that all my sin, and shame, and unhappiness, come

from being proud and self-willed, and determined to have my own way, and

do what I choose. But I cannot mend.” Do not despair, poor soul! I had

a thousand times sooner hear you say you cannot mend, than that you can.

For those who say they can mend, are apt to say: “I can mend; and

therefore I shall mend when I choose, and no sooner.” But those who

really feel they cannot mend—those who are really weary and worn out with

the burden of their sins—those who are really tired out with their own

wilfulness, and feel ready to lie down and die, like a spent horse, and

say: “God, take me away, no matter to what place; I am not fit to live

here on earth, a shame and a torment to myself day and night”—those who

are in that state of mind, are very near—very near finding out glorious

news.

Those who cannot mend themselves and know it, God will mend. God will

mend your lives for you. He knows as well as you what you have to

struggle against; ay, a thousand times better. He knows—what does He not

know? Pray to Him, and try what He does not know. Cry to Him to rid you

of your bad companions; He will find a way of doing it. Cry to Him to

bring you out of the temptations you feel too strong for you; He will

find a way for doing it. Cry to Him to teach you what you ought to do,

and He will send someone, and that the right person, doubt it not, to

teach you in His own good time. Above all, cry and pray to Him to

conquer the pride, and self-conceit, and wilfulness in your heart; to

take the hard proud heart of stone out of you, and give you instead a

heart of flesh, loving, and tender, and kindly to every human creature;

and He will do it. Cry to Him to make your will like His own will, that

you may love what He loves, and hate what He hates, and do what He wishes

you to do. And then you will surely find my words come true: “Those who

long to mend, and yet know that they cannot mend themselves, let them but

pray, and God will mend them.”

XXXIII.

THE RED SEA TRIUMPH.

_Preached Easter-day Morning_, 1852.

This is a night to be much observed unto the Lord, for bringing the

children of Israel out of the land of Egypt.—EXODUS xii. 42.

YOU all, my friends, know what is the meaning of Easter-day—that it is

the Day on which The Lord rose again from the dead. You must have seen

that most of the special services for this day, the Collect, Epistle, and

Gospel, and the second lessons, both morning and evening, reminded you of

Christ’s rising again; and so did the proper Psalms for this day, though

it may seem at first sight more difficult to see what they have to do

with the Lord’s rising again.

Now the first lessons, both for the morning and evening services, were

also meant to remind us of the very same thing, though it may seem even

more difficult still, at first sight, to understand how they do so.

Let us see what these two first lessons are about. The morning one was

from the twelfth chapter of Exodus, and told us what the Passover was,

and what it meant. The first lesson for this afternoon was the

fourteenth chapter of Exodus. Surely you must remember it. Surely the

most careless of you must have listened to that glorious story, how the

Jews went through the Red Sea as if it had been dry land, while Pharaoh

and the Egyptian army, trying to follow them, were overwhelmed in the

water. Surely you cannot have heard how the poor Jews looked back from

the farther shore, and hardly believed their own eyes for joy and wonder,

when they saw their proud masters swept away for ever, and themselves

safe and free out of the hateful land where they had been slaves for

hundreds of years. You cannot surely, my friends, have heard that

glorious story, and forgotten it again already. I hope not; for God

knows, that tale of the Jews coming safe through the Red Sea has a deep

and blessed meaning enough for you, if you could but see it.

But some of you may be saying to yourselves: “No doubt it is a very noble

story; and a man cannot help rejoicing at the poor Jews’ escape, and at

the downfall of those cruel Egyptians. It is a pleasant thought, no

doubt, that if it were but for that once, God interfered to help poor

suffering creatures, and rid them of their tyrants. But what has that to

do with Easter Day and Christ’s rising again?”

I will try to show you, my friends. The Jews’ Passover is the same as

our Easter-day, as you know already. But they are not merely alike in

being kept on the same day. They are alike because they are both of them

remembrances and tokens of the Lord Jesus Christ’s delivering men out of

misery and slavery. For never forget—though, indeed, in these strange

times, I ought rather to say, I beseech you to read your Bibles and

see—that it was Jesus Christ Himself who brought the Jews out of Egypt.

St. Paul tells us so positively, again and again. In 1 Cor. x. 4 he

tells us that it was Christ who followed them through the wilderness. In

verse 9 of the same chapter, he says that it was Christ Himself whom they

tempted in the wilderness. He was the Angel of the Covenant who went

with them. He was the God of Israel whom the elders of the Jews saw, a

few weeks afterwards, on Mount Sinai, and under His feet a pavement like

a sapphire stone. True, the Lord did not take flesh upon Him till nearly

two thousand years after. But from the very beginning of all things,

while He was in the bosom of the Father, He was the King of men. Man was

made in His image, and therefore in the image of the Father, whose

perfect likeness He is—“the brightness of His glory, and the express

image of His person.” It was He who took care of men, guided and taught

them, and delivered them out of misery, from the very beginning of the

world. St. Paul says the same thing, in many different ways, all through

the epistle to the Hebrews. He says, for instance, that Moses, when he

fled from Pharaoh’s court in Egypt, esteemed the reproach of Christ

greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he endured as seeing Him

who is invisible. The Lord said the same thing of Himself. He said

openly that He was the person who is called, all through the Old

Testament, “The Lord.” He asked the Pharisees: “What think ye of Christ?

whose son is He? They say unto Him, David’s son. Christ answered, How

then does David in spirit call him Lord, saying, the Lord said unto my

Lord, Sit thou on my right hand until I make thy foes thy footstool?” So

did Christ declare, that He Himself, who was standing there before them,

was the Lord of David, who had died hundreds of years before. He told

them again that their father Abraham rejoiced to see His day, and saw it

and was glad; and when they answered, in anger and astonishment, “Thou

art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?” Jesus said,

“Verily I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.” I am. The Jews had

no doubt whom He meant; and we ought to have none either. For that was

the very name by which God had told Moses to call Him, when he was sent

to the Jews: “Thou shalt say unto them, I AM hath sent me to you.” The

Jews, I say, had no doubt who Jesus said that He was; that He meant them

to understand, once and for all, that He whom they called the carpenter’s

son of Nazareth, was the Lord God who brought their forefathers up out of

the land of Egypt, on the night of the first Passover. So they, to show

how reverent and orthodox they were, and how they honoured the name of

God, took up stones to stone Him—as many a man, who fancies himself

orthodox and reverent, would now, if he dared, stone the preachers who

declare that the Lord Jesus Christ is not changed since then; that He is

as able and as willing as ever to deliver the poor from those who grind

them down, and that He will deliver them, whenever they cry to Him, with

a mighty hand and a stretched-out arm, and that Easter-day is as much a

sign of that to us as the Passover was for the Jews of old.

But, my friends, if Christ the Lord showed His love and power in behalf

of poor oppressed wretches on that first Passover, surely He showed it a

thousand times more on that first Easter-day. His great love helped the

Jews out of slavery; and that same great love of His at this Easter-tide,

moved Him to die and rise again for the sins of the whole world. In that

first Passover He delivered only one people. On the first Easter He

delivered all mankind. The Jews were under cruel tyrants in the land of

Egypt. So were all mankind over the world, when Jesus came. The Jews in

Egypt were slaves to worse things than the whip of their task-masters;

they had slaves’ hearts, as well as slaves’ bodies. They were kept down

not only by the Egyptians, but by their own ignorance, and idolatry, and

selfish division, and foul sins. They were spiritually dead—without a

noble, pure, manful feeling left in them. Their history makes no secret

of that. The Bible seems to take every care to let us see into what a

miserable and brutal state they had fallen. Christ sent Moses to raise

them out of that death; to take them through the Red Sea, as a sign that

all that was washed away, to be forgiven of God and forgotten by them,

and that from the moment they landed, a free people, on the farther

shore, they were to consider all their old life past and a new one begun.

So they were baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea, as St. Paul

says. And now all was to be new. They had been fancying that they

belonged to the Egyptians. Now they had found out, and had it proved to

them by signs and wonders which they could not mistake, that they

belonged to the Lord. They had been brutal sinners. The Lord began to

teach them that they were to rise above their own appetites and passions.

They had been worshipping only what they could see and handle. The Lord

began to teach them to worship Him—a person whom they could not see,

though He was always near them, and watching over them. They had been

living without independence, fellow-feeling, the sense of duty, or love

of order. The Lord began to teach them to care for each other, to help

each other, to know that they had a duty to perform towards each other,

for which they were accountable to Him. They had owned no master except

the Egyptians, whom they feared and obeyed unwillingly. The Lord began

to teach them to obey Him loyally, from trust, and gratitude, and love.

They had been willing to remain sinners, and brutes, and slaves, provided

they could get enough to eat and drink. The Lord began to teach them

that His favour, His protection, were better than the flesh-pots of

Egypt, and that He was able to feed them where it seemed impossible to

men; to teach them that “man does not live by bread alone—cheap or dear,

my friends—not by bread alone, but by _every_ word that proceeds out of

the mouth of God, does man live.” That was the meaning of their being

baptized in the cloud and in the sea. That was the meaning, and only a

very small part of the meaning, of their Passover. Would you not think,

my friends, that I had been speaking rather of our own Baptism, and of

our own Supper of the Lord, to which you have been all called to-day, and

that I had been telling you the meaning of them?

For when Jesus, the Lord, and King, and Head of mankind, died and rose

again, He took away the sin of the world. He was the true Passover, the

Lamb without spot, slain, as the scripture tells us, for the sins of the

whole world. In the Jews’ Passover, when the angel saw the lamb’s blood

on the door of the house, he passed by, and spared everyone in it. So

now. The blood of Jesus, the Lamb of God, is upon us; and for His sake,

God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from

all unrighteousness.

But the Lord rose again this day. And when He, the Lord, the King, and

Head of all men, rose, all men rose in Him. “As in Adam all die,” says

St. Paul, “even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”

Baptism is a sign of that to us, as the going through the Red Sea, and

being baptized to Moses in it, was to the Jews. The passing of the Red

Sea said to the Jews: “You have passed now out of your old miserable

state of slavery into freedom. The sins which you committed there are

blotted out. You are taken into covenant with God. You are now God’s

people, and nothing can lose you this love and care, except your own

sins, your own unfaithfulness to Him, your own wilful falling back into

the slavish and brutal state from which He has delivered you.”

And just so, baptism says to us: “Your sins are forgiven you. You are

taken into covenant with God. You are God’s people, God’s family. You

must forget and cast away the old Adam, the old slavish and savage

pattern of man, which your Lord died to abolish, the guilt of which He

bore for you on His cross; and you must rise to the new Adam, the new

pattern of man, which is created after God in righteousness and true

holiness, which the Lord showed forth in His life, and death, and rising

again. For now God looks on you not as a guilty and condemned race of

beings, but as a redeemed race, His children, for the sake of Jesus

Christ the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. You have a

right to believe that, as human beings, you are dead with Christ to the

old Adam, the old sinful, brutal pattern of man.” Baptism is the sign of

it to you. Every child, let it or its parents be who they may, is freely

baptized as a sign that all that old pattern of man is washed away, that

they can and must have nothing to do with it hence-forward, that it is

dead and buried, and they must flee from it and forget it, as they would

a corpse.

And the Lord’s Supper also is a sign to us that, as human beings, we are

risen with Christ, to a new life. A new life is our birthright. We have

a right to live a new life. We have a duty to live a new life. We have

a power, if we will, to live a new life; such a life as we never could

live if we were left to ourselves; a noble, just, godly, manful,

Christlike, Godlike life, bred and nourished in us by the Spirit of

Christ. That is our right; for we belong to Him who lived that life

Himself, and bought us our share in it with His own death and

resurrection. That is our duty; for if we share the Lord’s blessings, it

can only be in order that we may become like the Lord. Do you fancy that

He died to leave us all no better than we are? His death would have had

very little effect if that was all. No, says St. Paul; if you have a

share in Christ, prove that you believe in your own share by becoming

like Christ. You belong to His kingdom, and you must live as His

subjects. He has bought for you a new and eternal life, and you must use

that life. “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things that are

above.” . . . And what are they? Love, peace, gentleness, mercy, pity,

truth, faithfulness, justice, patience, courage, order, industry, duty,

obedience. . . . All, in short, which is like Jesus Christ. For these

are heavenly things. These are above, where Christ sits at God’s right

hand. These are the likeness of God. That is God’s character. Let it

be your character likewise.

But again; if it is our right and our duty to be like that, it is also in

our power. God would not have commanded us to be, what He had not given

us the power to be. He would not have told us to seek those things which

are above, if He had not intended us to find them. Wherefore it is

written: “Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find; for if ye,

being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more

shall your Heavenly Father give His Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”

This is the meaning of that text; namely, that God will give us the power

of living this new and risen life, which we are bound to live. This is

one of the gifts for men, which the scripture tells us that Christ

received when He rose from the dead, and ascended up on high. This is

one of the powers of which He spoke, when after His resurrection He said,

“That all power was given to Him in heaven and earth.” The Lord’s Supper

is at once a sign of who will give us that gift, and a sign that He will

indeed give it us. The Lord’s Supper is the pledge and token to us that

we all have a share in the likeness of Christ, the true pattern of man;

and that if we come and claim our share, He will surely bestow it on us.

He will renew, and change, and purify our hearts and characters in us,

day by day, into the likeness of Himself. He who is the eternal life of

men will nourish us, body, soul, and spirit, with that everlasting life

of His, even as our bodies are nourished by that bread and wine. And if

you ask me how? When you can tell me why a wheat grain cannot produce an

oak, or an acorn a wheat plant; when you can tell me why our bodies are,

each of them, the very same bodies which they were ten years ago, though

every atom of flesh, and blood, and bone in them has been changed; when,

in short, you, or any other living man, can tell me the meaning of those

three words, body, life, and growth, then it will be time to ask that

question. In the meantime let us believe that He who does such wonders

in the life and growth of every blade of grass, can and will do far

greater wonders for the life and growth of us, immortal beings, made in

His own likeness, redeemed by His blood, and so believe, and thank, and

obey, and wait till another and a nobler life to understand. And if we

never understand at all—what matter, provided the thing be true?

XXXIV.

CHRISTMAS-DAY.

For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the

government shall be on His shoulder: and His name shall be called

Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Father of an Everlasting

age, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and

peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his

kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with

justice henceforth even forever.—ISAIAH ix. 6, 7.

IN the time when the prophet Isaiah wrote this prophecy, everything round

him was exactly opposite to his words. The king of Judæa, the prophet’s

country, was not reigning in righteousness. He was an unrighteous and

wicked governor. The princes and great men were not ruling in judgment.

They were unjust and covetous; they took bribes, and sold justice for

money. They were oppressors, grinding down the poor, and defrauding

those below them. So that the weak, and poor, and needy had no one to

right them, no one to take their part. There was no man to feel for

them, and defend them, and be a hiding-place and a covert for them from

their cruel tyrants; no man to comfort and refresh them as rivers of

water refresh a dry place, or the shadow of a great rock comforts the

sunburnt traveller in the weary deserts.

Neither were these very poor oppressed people of the Jews in a right

state of mind. They were ignorant and stupid, given to worship false

gods. They had eyes, and yet could not use them to see that, as the

psalm told us this morning, the heavens declared the glory of God, and

the firmament showed His handiwork. They were worshipping the sun, and

moon, and stars, in stead of the Lord God who made them. They were

brutish too, and would not listen to teaching. They had ears, and yet

would not hearken with them to God’s prophets. They were rash, too,

living from hand to mouth, discontented, and violent, as ignorant poor

people will be in evil times. And they were stammerers—not with their

tongue, but with their minds and thoughts. They were miserable; but they

could not tell why. They were full of discontent and longings; but they

could not put them into words. They did not know how to pray, how to

open their hearts to God or to man. They knew of no one who could

understand them and their sorrows; they could not understand them

themselves, much less put them into words. They were altogether confused

and stupefied; just in the same state, in a word, as the poor negro

slaves in America, and the heathens ay, and the Christians too, are in,

in all the countries of the world which do not know the good news of

Christmas-day or have forgotten it and disobeyed it.

But Isaiah had God’s Spirit with him; the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of

holiness, righteousness, justice. And that Holy Spirit convinced him of

sin, and of righteousness and of judgment, as He convinces every man who

gives himself up humbly to God’s teaching.

First, the Spirit convinced Isaiah of sin. He made him feel that the

state of his country was wrong. And He made him feel why it was wrong;

namely, because the men in it were wrong; because they were thinking

wrong notions, feeling wrong feelings, doing wrong things; and that wrong

was sin; and that sin was falling short of being what a man was made, and

what every man ought to be, namely, the likeness and glory of God; and

that so his countrymen the Jews, one and all, had sinned and come short

of the glory of God.

Next, He convinced Isaiah of righteousness. He made Isaiah feel and be

sure that God was righteous; that God was no unjust Lord, like the wicked

king of the Jews; that such evil doings as are going on were hateful to

Him; that all that covetousness, oppression, taking of bribes,

drunkenness, deceit, ignorance, stupid rashness and folly, of which the

land was full, were hateful to God. He must hate them, for He was a

righteous and a good God. They ought not to be there. For man, every

man from the king on his throne to the poor labourer in the field, was

meant to be righteous and good as God is. “But how will it be altered?”

thought Isaiah to himself. “What hope for this poor miserable sinful

world? People are meant to be righteous and good: but who will make them

so? The king and his princes are meant to be righteous and good, but who

will set them a pattern? When will there be a really good king, who will

be an example to all in authority; who will teach men to do right, and

compel and force them not to do wrong?”

And then the Holy Spirit of God answered that anxious question of

Isaiah’s, and convinced him of judgment.

Yes, he felt sure; he did not know why he felt so sure: but he did feel

sure; God’s Spirit in his heart made him feel sure, that in some way or

other, some day or other, the Lord God would come to judgment, to judge

the wicked princes and rulers of this world, and cast them out. It must

be so. God was a righteous God. He would not endure these unrighteous

doings for ever. He was not careless about this poor sinful world, and

about all the sinful down-trodden ignorant men, and women, and children

in it. He would take the matter into His own hands. He would show that

He was Lord and Master. If kings would not reign in righteousness, He

would come and reign in righteousness Himself. He would appoint princes

under Him, who would rule in judgment. And He would show men what true

righteousness was; what the pattern of a true ruler was; namely, to be

able to feel for the poor, and the afflicted, and the needy, to

understand the wants, and sorrows, and doubts, and fears of the lowest

and the meanest; in short, to be a man, a true, perfect man, with a man’s

heart, a man’s pity, a man’s fellow-feeling in Him. Yes. The Lord God

would show Himself. He would set His righteous King to govern. And yet

Isaiah did not know how, but he saw plainly that it must be so, that same

righteous King, who was to set the world right, would be a _man_. It

would be a man who was to be a hiding-place from the storm and a covert

from the tempest. A man who would understand man, and teach men their

duty.

Then the eyes of the blind would see, and the ears of those who heard

should hearken; for they would hear a loving human voice, the voice of

One who knew what was in man, who could tell them just what they wanted

to know, and put His teaching into the shape in which it would sink most

easily and deeply into their hearts. And then the hearts of the rash

would understand knowledge; and the tongue of the stammerers would speak

plainly. There will be no more confused cries from poor ignorant brutish

oppressed people, like the cries of dumb beasts in pain; for He who was

coming would give them words to utter their sorrows in. He would teach

them how to speak to man and God. He would teach them how to pray, and

when they prayed to say, “Our Father which art in heaven.”

Then the vile person would be no more called bountiful, or the churl

called liberal: flattery and cringing to the evil great would be at an

end. The people would have sense to see the truth about right and wrong,

and courage to speak it. Men would then be held for what they really

were, and honoured and despised according to their true merits. Yes,

said Isaiah, we shall be delivered from our wicked king and princes, from

the heathen Assyrian armies, who fancy that they are going to sweep us

out of our own land with fire and sword; from our own sins, and

ignorance, and infidelity, and rashness. We shall be delivered from them

all, for The righteous King is coming. Nay, He is here already, if we

could but see. His goings-forth have been from everlasting. He is

ruling us now—this wondrous Child, this Son of God. Unto us a Child is

born already, unto us a Son is given already. But one day or other He

will be revealed, and made manifest, and shown to men as a man; and then

all the people shall know who He is; and His name shall be called

Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince

of Peace.

Ah, my friends, Isaiah saw all this but dimly and afar off. He saw as

through a glass darkly. He perhaps thought at times—indeed we can have

little doubt that he thought—that the good young Prince Hezekiah, “The

might of God,” as his name means, who was growing up in his day to be a

deliverer and a righteous king over the Jews, was to set the world right.

No doubt he had Hezekiah in his mind when he said that a Child was born

to the Jews, and a Son given to them; just as, of course, he meant his

own son, who was born to him by the virgin prophetess, when he called his

name Emmanuel, that is to say, God with us. But he felt that there was

more in both things than that. He felt that his young wife’s conceiving

and bearing a son, was a sign to him that some day or other a more

blessed virgin would conceive and bear a mightier Son. And so he felt

that whether or not Hezekiah delivered the Jews from their sin, and

misery, and ignorance, God Himself would deliver them. He knew, by the

Spirit of God, that his prophecy would come true, and remain true for

ever. And so he died in faith, not having received the promises, God

having prepared some better King for us, and having fulfilled the words

of His prophet in a way of which, as far as we can see, he never dreamed.

Yes. Hezekiah failed to save the nation of the Jews. Instead of being

the “father of an everlasting age,” and having “no end of his family on

the throne of David,” his great-grandchildren and the whole nation of the

Jews were swept away into captivity by the Babylonians, and no man of his

house, as Jeremiah prophesied, has ever since prospered or sat on the

throne of David. But still Isaiah’s prophecy was true. True for us who

are assembled here this day.

For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; even the Babe of

Bethlehem, Jesus Christ the Lord. The government shall indeed be upon

His shoulder; for it has been there always. For the Father has committed

all things to the Son, that he may be King of kings and Lord of lords for

ever. His name is indeed Wonderful; for what more wondrous thing was

ever seen in heaven or in earth, than that great love with which He loved

us? He is not merely called “The might of God,” as Hezekiah was,—for a

sign and a prophecy; for He is the mighty God Himself. He is indeed the

Counsellor; for He is the light who lighteth every man who comes into the

world. He is “the Father of an everlasting age.” There were hopes that

Hezekiah would be so; that he would raise the nation of the Jews again to

a reform from which it would never fall away: but these hopes were

disappointed; and the only one who fulfilled the prophecy is He who has

founded His Church for ever on the rock of everlasting ages, and the

gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Hezekiah was to be the

prince of peace for a few short years only. But the Child who is born to

us, the Son who is given to us, is He who gave eternal peace to all who

will accept it; peace which this world can neither give nor take away;

and who will make that peace grow and spread over the whole earth, till

men shall beat their swords into plough-shares, and their spears into

pruning-hooks, and the nations shall not learn war any more. Of the

increase of His government and of His peace there shall be no end, till

the earth be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the

sea, and the spirit of God be poured out on all flesh, to teach kings to

reign in righteousness, after the pattern of the King of kings, the Babe

of Bethlehem; to make the rich and powerful do justice, to teach the

ignorant, to give the rich wisdom, to free the oppressed, to comfort the

afflicted, to proclaim to all mankind the good news of Christmas Day, the

good news that there was a man born into the world on this day who will

be a hiding-place from the storm, a covert from the tempest, like rivers

of water in a dry place, like the shadow of a great rock in a weary land;

even the man Christ Jesus, who is able and willing to save to the

uttermost those who come to God through Him, seeing that he has been

tempted in all things like as we are, yet without sin.

Yes, my friends, on that holy table stands the everlasting sign that

Isaiah’s prophecy has been fulfilled to the uttermost. That bread and

that wine declare to us, that to us a Child is born, to us a Son is

given. They declare to us, in a word, that on this blessed day God was

made man, and dwelt among men, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of

the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

Oh, come to that table this day, and there claim your share in the most

precious body and blood of the Divine Child of Bethlehem. Come and ask

Him to pour out on you His Spirit, the Spirit which He poured on Hezekiah

of old, “that he might fulfil his own name and live in the might of God.”

So will you live in the might of God. So you will be able to govern

yourselves, and your own appetites, in righteousness and freedom, and

rule your own households, or whatsoever God has set you to do, in

judgment. So you will see things in their true light, as God sees them,

and be ready and willing to hear good advice, and understand your way in

this life, and be able to speak your hearts out in prayer to God, as to a

loving and merciful Father. And in all your afflictions, let them be

what they will, you will have a comfort, and a sure hope, and a

wellspring of peace, and a hiding-place from the tempest, even The Man

Christ Jesus, who said: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto

you; let not your heart be troubled, neither be ye afraid.” The Man

Christ Jesus, at whose birth the angels sang: “Glory to God in the

Highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men.”

Now to Him who on this day was born of the blessed virgin, man of the

substance of His mother, yet God the Son of God, be ascribed, with the

Father and the Spirit, all power, glory, majesty, and dominion, both now

and for ever. Amen.

XXXV.

NEW YEAR’S DAY.

(1853.)

But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and He that

formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have

called thee by thy name; thou art mine. When thou passest through

the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall

not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not

be burnt; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. For I am the

Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour: I gave Egypt for

thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee. Since thou wast precious in

my sight, thou hast been honourable, and I have loved thee: therefore

will I give men for thee, and peoples for thy life.—ISAIAH xliii.

1–4.

THE New Year has now begun; and I am bound to wish you all a happy New

Year. But I am sent here to do more than that; to teach you how you may

make your own New Year a happy one; or, if not altogether a happy one—for

sorrows may and must come in their turn—yet still something better than a

happy year, namely, a blessed year; a year on which you will be able to

look back this day twelvemonths, and thank God for it; thank God for the

tears which you have shed in it, as well as for the joy which you have

felt; thank God for the dark days as well as for the light; thank God for

what you have lost, as well as what you have found; and be able to say,

“Well, this last year, if it has not been a happy year for me, at least

it has been a blessed one for me. It has left me a stronger, soberer,

wiser, godlier, better man than it found me.”

How, then, can you make the New Year a blessed one for yourselves? I

know but one way, my friends. The ancient way. The Bible way. The way

by which Abraham, and Jacob, and David, and all the holy men of old, and

all the saints, and martyrs, and righteous and godly among men, made

their lives blessed among themselves, in spite of sorrow, and misfortune,

and distress, and persecution, and torture, and death itself; the one

only old way of being blessed, which was from the beginning, and will

last for ever and ever, through all worlds and eternities; the way of the

old saints, which St. Paul sets forth in the eleventh chapter of the

Hebrews; and that is, _faith_. Faith, which is the substance of what we

hope for, the evidence of things not seen. Faith, of which it is

written, that the just shall live by his faith.

But how can faith give you a blessed New Year? In the same way in which

it gave the old saints blessed years all their lives through, and is

giving them a blessed eternity now and for ever before the face of the

Lord Jesus Christ, to which may God in His mercy bring us all likewise.

They trusted in God. They had faith, not in themselves, like too many;

not in their own good works, like too many; not in their own faith, in

their own frames, and feelings, and assurances, like too many; but they

had faith in God. It was faith in God which made one of them, the great

prophet Isaiah, write the glorious words which I have chosen for my text

this day, to show his countrymen the Jews, even while they were in the

very lowest depths of shame, and poverty, and misfortune, that God had

not forgotten them; that for those who trusted in Him, a blessed time was

surely coming.

And it was faith in God, too, which put it into the minds of the good men

who choose these Sunday lessons out of the Bible, to appoint such

chapters as these to be read year by year, at the coming in of the new

year, for ever. Faith in God, I say, put that into their minds. For

those good men trusted in God, that He would not change; that hundreds

and thousands of years would make no difference in His love; that the

promises made by His Holy Spirit to Isaiah the prophet would stand true

for ever and ever. And they trusted in God, too, that what He had spoken

by the mouth of His holy apostles was true; that after the blessed Lord

came down on earth, there was to be no difference between Jews and

Gentiles; that the great and precious promises made by God to the Jews

were made also to all the nations of the earth; that all things written

in the Old Testament, from the first chapter of Genesis to the last of

Malachi, were written not for the Jews only, but for English, French,

Italians, Germans, Russians—for all the nations of the world; that we

English were God’s people now, just as much, ay, far more, than the old

Jews were, and that, therefore, the Old Testament promises, as well as

the New Testament ones, were part of our inheritance as members of

Christ’s Church. And therefore they appointed Old Testament lessons to

be read in church, to show us English what our privileges were, what

God’s covenant and promise to us were. We, as much as the Jews, are

called by the name of the Lord who created us. Were we not baptised into

His name at that font? Has He not loved us? Has He not heaped us

English, for hundreds of years past, with blessings such as He never

bestowed on any nation? Has He not given men for us, and nations for our

life? While all the nations of the world have been at war, slaying and

being slain, has He not kept this fair land of England free and safe from

foreign invaders for more than eight hundred years? Since the world was

made, perhaps, such a thing was never heard of, such a mercy shown to any

nation; that a great and rich country like this should be preserved for

eight hundred years from invasion of foreign armies, and all the horrors

and miseries of war, which have swept, from time to time, every other

nation in the world with the besom of desolation.

Ay, and but sixty years ago, in the time of the French war, when almost

every other nation in Europe was made desolate with fire, and sword, and

war, did not God preserve this land of England, as He never preserved

country before, from all the miseries which were sweeping over other

nations? Oh, strange and wonderful mercy of God, that at the very time

that the gospel was dying out all over Europe, it was being lighted again

in England; and that while the knowledge of God was failing elsewhere, it

was increasing here! Oh, strange and wonderful mercy of God, who has

given to us English, now for one hundred and sixty years and more, those

very equal laws, and freedom, and rights of conscience, for which so many

other nations of Europe are still crying and struggling in vain, amid

slavery, and oppression, and injustice, and heavy burdens, such as we

here in England should not endure a week! Oh, strange and wonderful

mercy of God, who but three years ago, when all the other nations of

Europe were shaken with wars, and riots, and seditions, every man’s hand

against his neighbour, kept this land of England in perfect peace and

quiet by those just laws and government, proving to us the truth of His

own promises, that those who seek peace by righteous dealings, shall find

it, and that, as Isaiah says, the fruit of justice is quietness and

assurance for ever! And last, but not least, my friends, is it not a

sign, a sign not to be mistaken, of God’s good-will and mercy to us, that

now, at this very time of all others, when almost every country in Europe

is going to wrack and ruin through the folly and wickedness of their

kings and rulers, He should have given us here in England a Queen who is

a pattern of goodness and purity, in ruling not only the nation, but her

own household, to every wife and mother, from the highest to the lowest;

and a Prince whose whole heart seems set on doing good, and on helping

the poor, and improving the condition of the labourers? My friends, I

say that we are unthankful and unfaithful. We do not thank God a

hundredth part enough for the blessings which He has given us. We do not

trust Him a hundredth part enough for the blessings which He has in store

for us. If some of us here could but see and feel for a single month how

people are off abroad; if they could change places with a French, an

Italian, a Russian labourer, it would teach them a lesson about God’s

goodness to England which they would not soon forget. May God grant that

we may never have to learn that lesson in that way! God grant that we

may never, to cure us of our unthankfulness and want of faith, and

godless and unmanly grumbling and complaining, be brought, for a single

week, into the same state as some hundred millions of our

fellow-creatures are in foreign parts! Oh, my friends, let us thank God

for the mercies of the past year! Most truly He has fulfilled to England

his promise given by the mouth of the prophet Isaiah: “When thou passest

through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they

shall not overflow thee. For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One, thy

Saviour. Thou hast been precious in my sight, and I have loved thee:

therefore will I give men for thee, and peoples for thy life.”

Away, then, with discontent and anxiety for the coming year. Or rather,

let us be only discontented with ourselves. Let us only be anxious about

our own conduct. God cannot change. If anything goes wrong, it will be

not because He has left us, but because we have left Him. Is it not

written that all things work together for good to those who love God?

Then if things do not work together for good in this coming year, it will

be because we do not love God. Do not let us say, “I am righteous, but

my neighbours are wicked, and therefore I must be miserable;” neither let

us lay the blame of our misfortunes on our rulers; let us lay it on

ourselves.

What was the word of the Lord to the Jews in a like case: “What means

this proverb which you take up, saying, The fathers have eaten sour

grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge? It is not so, O house

of Israel. The son shall not die for the iniquity of his father, nor the

father for the iniquity of the son. The soul that sinneth, it shall die,

saith the Lord.”

Oh, my friends, take this to heart solemnly, in the year to come. Our

troubles, more of them at least than we fancy, are our own fault, and not

our neighbours’, or the government’s, or anyone’s else. And those which

are not our own fault directly are so in this way, that they are sent as

sharp and wholesome lessons to us; and if we were what we ought to be, we

should not want those lessons. Do not fancy that that is a sad and

doleful thought to begin the new year with. God forbid! It would be

doleful and sad indeed if any one of us, in spite of all his right-doing,

might be plunged into any hopeless misery, through the fault of other

people, over whom he has no control. But thanks be to the Lord, it is

not so. We are His children, and He cares for each and every one of us

separately. Each and every one of us has to answer for himself alone,

face to face with his God, day by day; every man must bear his own

burden; and to every one of us who love God, all things will work

together for good. It is, and was, and always will be, as Abraham well

knew, far from God to punish the righteous with the wicked. The Judge of

all the earth will do right. None of us who repents and turns from the

sins he sees round him and in him; none of us who prays for the light and

guiding of God’s Spirit; none of us who struggles day by day to keep

himself unspotted from this evil world, and live as God’s son, without

scandal or ill-name in the midst of a sinful and perverse generation;

none of us who does that, but God’s blessing will rest on him. What

ruins others will only teach and strengthen him; what brings others to

shame, will only bring him to honour, and make his righteousness plain to

be seen by all, that God may be glorified in His people. Let the coming

year be what it may; to the holy, the humble, the upright, the godly, it

will be a blessed year, fulfilling the blessed promises of the Lord, that

those who trust in Him shall never be confounded.

Oh, my friends, consider but this one thing, that the Almighty God, who

made all heaven and earth, has bid us trust in Him. And when He bids us,

is it not a sin, an insult to Him, not to trust Him—not to believe His

words to us? “Put thou thy trust in the Lord, and be doing good; dwell

in the land,” working where He has set thee, “and verily thou shalt be

fed.” “Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the

arrow that flieth by day. A thousand shall fall by thy side, and ten

thousand at thy right hand: but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with

thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked. Because

thou hast made the Lord thy refuge, no plague shall come nigh thy

dwelling. Thou shalt call upon me, I will answer thee. Because thou

hast set thy love on me, I will deliver thee; with long life will I

satisfy thee, and show thee my salvation.”

My friends, these words are in the book of Psalms. Either they are the

most cruel words that ever were spoken on earth to tempt poor wretches

into vain security and fearful disappointment, or they are—what are

they?—the sure and everlasting promise of our Father in heaven to us His

children. We have only to ask for them, and we shall receive them; to

claim them, and they will be fulfilled to us. “For He who spared not His

own Son, but freely gave Him for us, will He not with Him likewise freely

give us all things,” and make, by His fatherly care, and providence, and

education, all our new years blessed new years, whether or not they are

happy ones?

XXXVI.

THE DELUGE.

My spirit shall not always strive with man.—GENESIS vi. 3.

LAST Sunday we read in the first lesson of the fall. This Sunday we read

of the flood, the first-fruits of the fall.

It is an awful and a fearful story. And yet, if we will look at it by

faith in God, it is a most cheerful and hopeful story—a gospel—a good

news of salvation—like every other word in the Bible, from beginning to

end. Ay, and to my mind, the most hopeful words of all in it, are the

very ones which at first sight look most terrible, the words with which

my text begins: “And the Lord said, My Spirit shall not always strive

with man.”

For is it not good news—the good news of all news—the news which every

poor soul who is hungering and thirsting after righteousness, longs to

hear; and when they hear it, feel it to be the good news—the only news

which can give comfort to fallen and sorrowful men, tied and bound with

the chain of their sins, that God’s Spirit does strive at all with man?

That God is looking after men? That God is yearning over sinners, as the

heart of a father yearns over his rebellious child, as the heart of a

faithful and loving husband yearns after an unfaithful wife? That God

does not take a disgust at us for all our unworthiness, but wills that

none should perish, but that all should come to repentance? Oh joyful

news! Man may be, as the text says that he was in the time of Noah, so

low fallen that he is but flesh like the brutes that perish; the

imaginations of his heart may be only evil continually; his spirit may be

dead within him, given up to all low and fleshly appetites and passions,

anger, and greediness, and filth; and yet the pure and holy Spirit of God

condescends to strive and struggle with him, to convince him of sin, and

make him discontented and ashamed at his own brutishness, and shake and

terrify his soul with the wholesome thought: “I am a sinner—I am wrong—I

am living such a life as God never meant me to live—I am not what I ought

to be—I have fallen short of what God intended me to be. Surely some

evil will come to me from this.” Then the Holy Spirit convinces man of

righteousness. He shows man that what he has fallen short of is the

glory of God; that man was meant to be, as St. Paul says, the likeness

and glory of God; to show forth God’s glory, and beauty, and

righteousness, and love in his own daily life; as a looking-glass, though

it is not the sun, still gives an image and likeness of the sun, when the

sun shines on it, and shows forth the glory of the sunbeams which are

reflected on it.

And then, the Holy Spirit convinces man of judgment. He shows man that

God cannot suffer men, or angels, or any other rational spirits and

immortal souls, to be unlike Himself; that because He is the only and

perfect good, whatsoever is unlike Him must be bad; because He is the

only and perfect love, who wills blessings and good to all, whatsoever is

unlike Him must be unloving, hating, and hateful—a curse and evil to all

around it; because He is the only perfect Maker and Preserver, whatsoever

is unlike Him must be in its very nature hurtful, destroying, deadly—a

disease which injures this good world, and which He will therefore cut

out, burn up, destroy in some way or other, if it will not submit to be

cured. For this, my friends, is the meaning of God’s judgments on

sinners; this is why He sent a flood to drown the world of the ungodly;

this is why He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah; this is why He swept away

the nations of Canaan; this is why He destroyed Jerusalem, His own

beloved city, and scattered the Jews over the face of the whole earth

unto this day; this is why He destroyed heathen Rome of old, and why He

has destroyed, from time to time, in every age and country, great nations

and mighty cities by earthquake, and famine, and pestilence, and the

sword; because He knows that sin is ruin and misery to all; that it is a

disease which spreads by infection among fallen men; and that He must cut

off the corrupt nation for the sake of preserving mankind, as the surgeon

cuts off a diseased limb, that his patient’s whole body may not die. But

the surgeon will not cut off the limb as long as there is a chance of

saving it: he will not cut it off till it is mortified and dead, and

certain to infect the whole body with the same death, or till it is so

inflamed that it will inflame the whole body also, and burn up the

patient’s life with fever. Till then he tends it in hope; tries by all

means to cure it. And so does the Lord, the Lord Jesus, the great

Physician, whom His Father has appointed to heal and cure this poor

fallen world. As long as there is hope of curing any man, any nation,

any generation of men, so long will his Spirit strive lovingly and

hopefully with man. For see the blessed words of the text: “My Spirit

shall not always strive with man. This must end. This must end at some

time or other. This battle between my Spirit and the wicked and perverse

wills of these sinners; this battle between the love and the justice and

the purity which I am trying to teach them, and the corruption and the

violence with which they are filling the earth.” But there is no passion

in the Lord, no spite, no sudden rage, like the brute passionate anger of

weak man. Our anger, if we are not under the guiding of God’s Spirit,

conquers our wills, carries us away, makes us say and do on the

moment—God forgive us for it—whatsoever our passion prompts us. The

Lord’s anger does not conquer Him. It does not conquer His patience, His

love, His steadfast will for the good of all. Even when it shows itself

in the flood and the earthquake; even though it break up the fountains of

the great deep, and destroy from off the earth both man and beast, yet it

is, and was, and ever will be, the anger of The Lamb—a patient, a

merciful, and a loving anger.

Therefore the Lord says: “Yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty

years.” One hundred and twenty years more he would endure those corrupt

and violent sinners, in the hope of correcting them. One hundred and

twenty years more would God’s Spirit strive with men. One hundred and

twenty years more the long-suffering of God, as St. Peter says, would

wait, if by any means they would turn and repent. Oh, wonderful love and

condescension of God! God waits for man! The Holy One waits for the

unholy! The Creator waits for the work of His own hands! The wrathful

God, who repents that He has made man upon the earth, waits one hundred

and twenty years for the very creatures whom He repents having made!

Does this seem strange to us—unlike our notions of God? If it is strange

to us, my friends, its being strange is only a proof of how far we have

fallen from the likeness of God, wherein man was originally created. If

we were more like God, then the accounts of God’s long-suffering, and

mercy, and repentance, which we read in the Bible, would not be so

strange to us. We should understand what God declares of Himself, by

seeing the same feelings working in ourselves, which He declares to be

working in Himself. And if we were more righteous and more loving, we

should understand more how God’s will was a loving and a righteous will;

how His justice was His mercy, and His mercy His justice, instead of

dividing His substance, who is one God, by fancying that His mercy and

His justice are two different attributes, which are at times contrary the

one to the other.

We read nothing here about God’s absolute purposes, and fixed decrees,

whereof men talk so often, making a god in their own fallen image, after

their own fallen likeness. The Lord, the Word of God, of whom the Bible

tells us, does not think it beneath his dignity to say: “It repenteth me

that I have made man.” Different, truly, from that false god which man

makes in his own image. Man is proud, and he fancies that God is proud;

man is self-willed and selfish, and he fancies that God is self-willed

and selfish; man is arbitrary and obstinate, and determined to have his

own way just because it is his own way; and then he fancies that God is

arbitrary and obstinate, and determines to have His own way and will,

just because it is His own way and will. But wilt thou know, oh vain

man, why God will have His own way and will? Because His way is a good

way, and His will a loving will; because the Lord knows that His way is

the only path of life, and joy, and blessing to man and beast, yes, and

to the very hairs of our head, which are all numbered, and to the

sparrows, whereof not one falls to the ground without our Father’s

knowledge; because His will is a loving will, which wills that none

should perish, but that all should come and be saved in body, soul, and

spirit. He will have His own will done, not because it is His own will,

but because it is good, good for men. And if men will change and repent,

then will He change and repent also. If man will resist the striving of

God’s Spirit with him, then will the Lord say: “It repenteth me that I

have made that man.” But if a man will repent him of the evil, then God

will repent Him of the evil also. If a man will let God’s Spirit

convince him, and will open his ears and hear, and open his eyes and see,

and open his heart to take in the loving thoughts and the right thoughts,

and the penitent and humble thoughts, which do come to him—you know they

do come to you all at times—then the Lord will repent also, as he

repents, and repent concerning the evil which He has declared concerning

that man. So said the Lord, who cannot change, the same yesterday,

to-day, and for ever, the same now that He was in the days of the flood,

to Jeremiah the prophet, when He moved him to go down to the potter’s

house, and watch him there at his work.

And the potter made a vessel—something which would be useful and good for

a certain purpose—but the clay was marred in the hand of the potter. He

was good and skilful; but there was a fault in the clay. What did he do?

Throw the clay away as useless? No. He made it again another vessel.

He was determined to make, not anything, but something useful and good.

And if the clay, being faulty, failed him once, he would try again. He

would change his purpose and plan, but not his right will to make good

and useful vessels; them he _would_ make, if not by one way, then by

another. And Jeremiah watched him; and as he watched, the Spirit of the

Lord came on him, and taught him that that poor potter’s way of working

with his clay, was a pattern and likeness of the Lord’s work on earth.

Oh shame, that this great parable should have been twisted by men to make

out that God is an arbitrary tyrant, who works by a brute necessity! It

taught Jeremiah the very opposite. It taught him what it ought to teach

us, that God does change, because man changes, that God’s steadfast will

is the good of men, and therefore because men change their weak

self-willed course, and fall, and seek out many inventions, therefore God

changes to follow them, like a good shepherd, tracking and following the

lost and wandering sheep up and down, right and left, over hill and dale,

if by any means He may find him, and bring him home on His shoulders to

the fold, calling upon the angels of God: “Rejoice with me, for I have

found my sheep which I had lost.”

This is the likeness of God. The good and loving will of a Father

following his wandering children. The likeness of a loving Father

repenting that He hath brought into the world sinful children, to be a

misery to themselves and all around them, and yet for the same reason

loving those children, striving with their wicked wills to the very last,

giving them one last chance and time for repentance; as the Lord did to

those evil men of the old world, sending to them Noah, a preacher of

righteousness, if by any means they would turn from their sins and be

saved. Ay, not only preaching to their ears by Noah, but to their hearts

by His Spirit; as St. Peter tells us, He Himself, Christ the Lord, went

Himself by His Spirit to those very sinners before the flood, and strove

to bring them to their reason again. By His Spirit; by the very same one

and only Holy Spirit of God, St. Peter says, by which Christ Himself was

raised from the dead, did He try to raise the souls of those sinners

before the flood, from the death of sin to the life of righteousness: but

they would not. They were disobedient. Their wills resisted His will to

the last; and then the flood came, and swept them all away.

And so the first work of the heavenly Workman was marred in the making by

no fault of His, but by the fault of what He made. He made men persons,

rational beings with wills, that they might be willingly like Him: but

they used those wills to be unlike Him, to rebel against Him, and to fill

the earth with violence and corruption. And so, for the good of all

mankind to come, He had to sweep them all away. But of that same sinful

clay He made another vessel, as it seemed good to Him; even Noah and his

Sons, whom He saved that He might carry on the race of the Sons of God

unto this day.

And after that again, my friends, in a day more dark and evil still, when

the earth was again corrupt before God, and filled with violence; when

all flesh had corrupted His way upon the earth, so that, as St. Paul said

of them, there was none that did good, no not one: then the same Lord,

when He saw that all the world lay in wickedness, and that the clay of

human-kind was marred in the hands of the potter, then did He cast away

that clay as reprobate and useless, and destroy mankind off the face of

the earth? Not so. Then, when there was none to help, His own arm

brought salvation, and His own righteousness sustained Him; He trod the

wine-press alone, and of the people there was none with Him. His own

righteousness sustained Him. His perfectly good and righteous will never

failed Him for a moment; man He would save, and man He saved. If none

else could do it, He would do it Himself. He would bring salvation with

His own arm. He would fulfil His Father’s will, which is that none

should perish; He would be made flesh, and dwell among men, that man

might behold the likeness of God the Father, full of grace and truth, and

see what they were meant to be. Then, in Him, in Jesus who wept over

Jerusalem, was fully revealed and shown the likeness and glory of the

Lord; the Lord in whose image man was made; who walked and spoke with

Adam in the garden; who was not ashamed to say that it repented Him that

He had made man; whom Ezekiel saw upon His throne, and as it were upon

the throne the appearance of the likeness of a man; whom Daniel saw, and

knew him to be the Son of Man. Not a man, then, of flesh and blood; but

the Eternal Word of God, in whose image man was made, who could be loving

and merciful, long-suffering and repenting Him of the evil, but never of

the good. He came, and He swept away, as He had told the Apostles that

He would do, by such afflictions as man had never seen since the

beginning of the world until then, that Roman world with all its devilish

systems and maxims, whereby the nations were kept down in slavery and

sin; and He founded a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwell

righteousness, even this Holy Catholic Church, to which we all belong

this day.

Yes, my friends, this is our gospel, our good news, that there is a God

whose Spirit strives with sinners to change them into His own likeness.

A God who is no dark, obstinate, inexorable Fate, whose arbitrary decrees

must come to pass; but a loving and merciful God, long-suffering, and who

repenteth Him of the evil; who repents Him of the evil which is in man,

and hates it, and has sworn to Himself to fight against it, till He has

put all enemies under His foot, and cast out of His kingdom all things

which offend. Who repents Him of the evil in man: but who will never

again repent Him of having made man, for then He would repent of having

become man; He would repent of having been conceived of the Holy Ghost;

He would repent of having been born of the Virgin Mary; He would repent

of having been crucified, dead, and buried; He would repent of having

risen from the dead, and ascended up into heaven in His man’s body, and

soul, and spirit; He would repent of sitting on the right hand of God; He

would repent of coming to judge the quick and the dead; He would repent

of having done His Father’s will on earth, even as He did it from all

eternity in the bosom of the Father. For He is a man; and even as the

reasonable soul and body are one man, so God and man are one Christ. As

man, He did His Father’s will in Judæa of old; as man, He will judge the

world; as man He rules it now; as man, St. John saw Him fifty years after

He ascended to heaven, and His eyes were like a flame of fire, and His

hair like fine wool, and He was girt under the bosom with a golden

girdle, and His voice was like the sound of many waters; as man, He said:

“Fear not: I am the first and the last; I am He that liveth, and was

dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of

death and hell.” Yes. This is the gospel, the good news for fallen man,

that there is a Man in the midst of the throne of God, to whom all power

is given in heaven and earth; that the fate of the world, and all that is

therein—the fate of suns and stars—the fate of kings and nations—the fate

of every publican and harlot, and heathen and outcast—the fate of all who

are in death and hell, depends alike upon the sacred heart of Jesus; the

heart which groaned at the tomb of Lazarus His friend; the heart which

wept over Jerusalem; the heart which said to the blessed Magdalene, the

woman who was a sinner: “Go in peace; thy sins are forgiven thee;” the

heart which now yearns after every sinful and wandering soul in His

church, and all over the earth of God, crying to you all: “Why will ye

die? Have I any pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord,

and not rather that he should turn from his wickedness and live? Come

unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you

rest.” Oh, my friends, wonderful as my words are—as wonderful to me who

speak them as they can be to you who hear them—yet they are true. True;

for on that table stand the bread and wine whereof He Himself said,

standing upon this very earth which He Himself had made: “This is my body

which is given for you; this cup is the new covenant in my blood, which I

will give for the life of the world.”

XXXVII.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD.

The kingdom of God is within you.—LUKE xvii. 21.

THESE words are in the second lesson for this morning’s service. Let us

think a little about them.

What they mean must depend on what the kingdom of God means; for that is

the one thing about which they speak.

Now, the kingdom of God is very often spoken of in the New Testament.

Indeed, it is the thing it speaks of above all others. It was the thing

which our Lord went about preaching. It was the thing of which He spoke

in His parables, likening the kingdom of God first to one thing, then to

another, that He might make men understand what it was like.

Now, it is worth remarking that we—I mean even religious people—speak

very little about the kingdom of God nowadays. One hears less about it

than about any other words, almost, which stand in the New Testament.

Both in sermons and in religious books, and in the talk of godly people,

one hears the kingdom of God spoken of very seldom. One hears words

about the Church, which are very good and true; but very little, if

anything, about the kingdom of God, though both St. Paul, and St. John,

and the blessed Lord Himself, speak of the two together, as if they could

not be parted; as if one could not think of the one without thinking of

the other. And we hear words about the gospel, too, some of them very

good and true, and others, I am sorry to say, very bad and false: but,

true or false, they are not often joined now in men’s minds, or mouths,

or books, with the kingdom of God. But the New Testament joins them

almost always. It says that gospel must be good news. Therefore the

gospel must be good news about something. But about what? We hear all

manner of answers nowadays; but we hear the right one very seldom.

People talk of the gospel as if it only meant the good news that one man

can be saved here, and another man can be saved there. And that is good

news, certainly. It is good and blessed news to hear that any one poor

sinner can be saved from sin, and from the wages of sin. But the holy

scriptures, when they talk of the gospel, call it the gospel of the

kingdom of God. And I think it best and wisest to call it oftenest, what

the holy scripture calls it oftenest, and to try and understand, first of

all, what that means, what the good news of the kingdom of God is: and to

understand that, we must first understand what the kingdom of God is.

But some may answer, holy scripture speaks of the gospel of salvation.

True, it does, once or twice. But what does that show? Is that a

different gospel from the gospel of the kingdom of God? Are there two

gospels? Surely not. Else why would holy scripture speak so often of

“the gospel”—“the good news,” by itself, without any word after to show

what it was about? It says often simply “the gospel;” because there is

but one gospel; and, as St. Paul says, if any man or angel preach any

other than that one, “Let him be anathema.”

Therefore the gospel of salvation must be the same as the gospel of the

kingdom of God; and, therefore, it seems to me, that salvation and the

kingdom of God must be one and the same thing.

Now, do you think so? When I say “The kingdom of God is salvation,” do

you think it is? Have you even any clear notion of what I mean when I

say it? Some of you have not, I am afraid; you cannot see at first sight

what salvation and the kingdom of God have to do with each other. And

why? You think salvation means being saved from hell, and going to

heaven, when you die. And so it does: but I trust in God and in God’s

holy scripture, that it means a great deal more; for I think it means

being unfit for hell, and fit for heaven, before we die. At least, so

says the Church Catechism, which teaches every little child to thank his

Heavenly Father for having brought him into such a state of salvation in

this life, even while he is young. Thanks be to The Spirit of God which

taught our fore-fathers to put these precious words into the Church

Catechism, to guard us against falling into the very same mistake as the

Pharisees of old fell into, when they asked our Lord when the kingdom of

God was to come. And, believe me, it is easy enough and common enough to

fall into the same mistake.

For what was their mistake? They fancied that the kingdom of God was not

yet come. And do not most of you think the same? They did not deny, of

course, that God was almighty, and could rule and govern all mankind if

He chose so to do. But they did not believe that He was ruling and

governing all mankind then, because they did not know what His rule and

government were like. Now, St. Paul tells us what God’s kingdom is like.

The kingdom of God, he says, is righteousness, and peace, and joy in the

Holy Spirit. So wherever there is righteousness, and peace, and joy in

the Holy Spirit, there the kingdom of God is. But His kingdom over what?

Over dumb animals, or over men? Over men, certainly; for dumb animals

cannot have righteousness, or joy in the Holy Spirit. But over what part

of a man? Over his body or over his spirit, as we call it nowadays?

Over his spirit, certainly; for it is only our spirits which can be

righteous, or peaceful, or joyful in God’s Spirit. Therefore God’s

kingdom, of which St. Paul speaks, is a kingdom, a government over the

souls, the spirits of men. Now, are our spirits the inward part of us,

or our bodies? Our spirits, certainly. We all say, and say rightly,

that our bodies are the outward part of us, and that our spirits are

within us. Now, do you not see how that agrees exactly with the blessed

Lord’s saying in the text, “Behold, the kingdom of God is within

you”—that is, in your spirits, because it is righteousness, and peace,

and joy in the Holy Spirit; and these are things which only our souls,

not our bodies at all, can have.

But these Pharisees were not righteous; they were wicked and hypocritical

men. Was the kingdom of God within them? The blessed Lord said plainly

that it was. He said not, “The kingdom of God is within some people’s

hearts;” or, “The kingdom of God is within the hearts of believers;” or,

“The kingdom of God might be within you if you liked.” But He said that

the kingdom of God was then and there within the hearts of those wicked

and unbelieving Pharisees.

Now, how could that be? In the same way that some time before that, as

St. Luke tells us, the power of the Lord was present to heal those same

Pharisees; and they were for the time amazed, and glorified God, and were

filled with fear at His mighty works; but not healed. Their souls were

not cured of their sin and folly by any means; for we find in the very

next chapter, that because Jesus cured a palsied man on the Sabbath-day

they were filled with madness, and consulted together how to kill Him.

For, my friends, as it was with them, so it is with us. God’s kingdom is

within every one of us; but it may make us worse, as well as make us

better. It may fill us with righteousness, and peace, and joy in the

Holy Spirit; or it may fill us, as it filled the Pharisees, with madness,

and hatred of religion and of goodness; as it is written, that the gospel

may be a savour of death unto death to us, as well as a savour of life

unto life. And it depends on us which it shall be.

This is what I mean: God’s kingdom is within each of us. God is the King

of our hearts and souls; our baptism tells us so; and it tells us truly.

And because God is the King of each of our hearts, He comes everlastingly

to take possession of our hearts, and continues claiming our souls for

His own. He speaks in our hearts day and night; whenever we have a good

thought, He speaks in our hearts, and says to us: “I am the King of your

spirit. It must obey me. I put this good thought into your hearts, and

you are bound to follow that good thought, because it is a law of my

kingdom.” Or again, God speaks in our hearts, and says to us: “You have

done this wrong thing. You know that it is wrong. You know that it is

an offence against my law. Why have you rebelled against me?” Or again,

when we see anyone do a good, a loving, or a noble action; or when we

read of the lives of good and noble men and women; above all, when we

read or hear of the character and doings of the blessed Lord Jesus, then

and there God speaks in our hearts, and stirs us up to love and admire

these noble and blessed examples, and says to us: “That is right. That

is beautiful. That is what men should do. That is what you should do.

Why are you not like that man? Why are you not like my saints? Why are

you not like me, the Lord Jesus Christ?”

You all surely know what I mean. You know that I do not mean that you

hear a voice speaking to your ears, but that thoughts and feelings come

into your heart, without you putting them there: ay, often enough, in

spite of your trying to drive them away. Now, those right thoughts are

the kingdom of God within you. They are the voice of the Lord Jesus

Christ speaking by His Holy Spirit to your spirit, and telling you that

He is your King, and that you ought to obey Him; and that obeying Him

means being righteous and good, as He is righteous and good; and calling

on you to give up your own wills and fancies, and to do His will, and let

Him make you holy, even as He is holy. That, I say, is the kingdom of

God showing itself within you, telling you that God is your King, and

telling you how to obey Him.

But what if a man will not hear that voice? What if a man rebels proudly

against the good thoughts that rise in his mind, and tries to forget

them, and grows angry with them, angry with the preacher, the Church

Service, the Bible itself, because they _will_ go on reminding him of

what he knows in his heart to be right? What if those good thoughts only

make him the more stubborn and determined to do his own pleasure, and

follow his own interests, and do his own will?

Do you not see that to that man God’s kingdom over his heart is a savour

of death unto death—that his finding out that God is his Lord only makes

him more rebellious—that God’s Spirit striving with his heart to bring it

right, only stirs up his stubbornness and self-will, and makes him go the

more obstinately wrong?

Oh, my friends, this is a fearful thought! That man can become worse by

God’s loving desire to make him better! But so it is. So it was with

Pharaoh of old. All God’s pleading with him by the message of Moses and

Aaron, by the mighty plagues which God sent on Egypt, only hardened

Pharaoh’s heart. The Lord God spoke to him, and his message only lashed

Pharaoh’s proud and wicked will into greater fury and rebellion, as a

vicious horse becomes the more unmanageable the more you punish it.

Therefore, it is said plainly in scripture, that _The Lord_ hardened

Pharaoh’s heart; not as some fancy, that the Lord’s will was to make

Pharaoh hard-hearted and wicked. God forbid. The Lord is the fountain

of good only, and not He, but we and the devil, make evil. But the more

the Lord pleaded with Pharaoh, and tried to bend his will, the more

self-willed he became. The more the Lord showed Pharaoh that the Lord

was King, the more he hated the kingdom and will of God, the more he

determined to be king himself, and to obey no law but his own wicked

fancies and pleasures, and asked: “Who is the Lord, that I should obey

Him?”

And so it was with the Pharisees. When they found out that the kingdom

of God was within them, that God was the King of their hearts and minds,

and was trying to change their feelings and alter their opinions, it only

maddened them. They were determined not to change. They were determined

not to confess that they had been wrong, and had mistaken the meaning of

holy scripture. They were too proud to confess what Jesus told them,

that they were no better than the poor ignorant common people whom they

despised. And yet they knew in their hearts that He was right. When the

Lord told them the parable of the vineyard, they answered, “God forbid!”

they felt at once that the parable had to do with them—that they were the

wicked husbandmen on whom He said their master would take vengeance: but

that only maddened them the more, till they ended by crucifying the Lord

of Glory, upon a pretence which they knew was a false and lying one; and

when Judas Iscariot said, “I have betrayed the innocent blood,” they did

not deny that the Lord Jesus was innocent; all they answered was, “What

is that to us?” They were determined to have their own way whether He

was innocent or not. They had seen God’s likeness. They had seen what

God was like, by seeing the conduct of His only begotten Son Jesus

Christ. And when they saw God’s likeness they hated it, because it was

not like themselves. And the more God strove with their hearts, and

tried to make them obey Him, the more, in short, they felt His kingdom

within them, the more they hated that kingdom of God within them, because

it reproved them, and convinced them of sin. Oh, my friends, young

people especially, beware; beware lest you fall into the same miserable

state of mind. The kingdom of God is within you. The Holy Spirit, by

which you were regenerate in holy baptism, is stirring and pleading with

your hearts, making you happy when you do right, unhappy when you do

wrong. Oh, listen to those good thoughts and feelings within you! Never

fancy that they are your own thoughts and feelings: else you will fancy

that you can put them away and take them back again when you choose to

change and become religious. Do not let the devil deceive you into that

notion. These good thoughts and feelings are the Spirit of God. They

are the signs that the kingdom of God is within you; that God is King and

Master of your hearts and minds; and that you cannot keep Him out of

them: but that He can enter into them when He likes, and put right

thoughts into them. But though you cannot prevent God and His kingdom

entering into you, you can refuse to enter into it. Alas! alas! how many

of you shut your ears to God’s voice: try to drive God’s Spirit out of

your own hearts; try to forget what is right, because it is unpleasant to

remember it, and say to yourselves, “I will have my own way. I will try

and forget what the clergyman said in his sermon, or what I learnt at

school. I am grown up now, and I will do what I like.” Oh, my friends,

is it a wise or a hopeful battle to fight against the living God? Grieve

not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed to the day of

redemption, lest He go away from you and leave you to yourselves,

spiritually dead, twice dead, plucked up by the roots, whose end is to be

burned. Grieve Him not, lest He depart, and with Him both the Father and

the Son. And then you will not know right from wrong, because God the

Holy Spirit, the Spirit of right, has left you. You will not know what a

man ought to be or do, because the Son of Man, the perfect likeness of

God, and therefore the pattern of man, has left you. You will not know

that God the Father is your Father, but only fancy him a stern

taskmaster, reaping where He has not sown, and requiring of you more than

you are bound to pay, because God the Father has left you.

You may, indeed, keep out ugly thoughts for a time. You may go on

wantonly in sin, and worldliness, and self-will. And then, by way of

falling deeper still, you may take up with some false sort of religion,

which makes people fancy that they know God, and are one of His elect,

while in works they deny Him, and their sinful heart is unchanged. Then

your mouth indeed may be full of second-hand talk about the gospel. But

what gospel? I call that a devil’s gospel, and not God’s gospel, which

makes men fancy that they may continue in sin that grace may abound. I

call any grace which leaves men in their sins the devil’s grace, and not

God’s grace. Certainly it is not the gospel of the kingdom of God; for

if it was, it would produce in men the fruits of that kingdom,

righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit, instead of the

fruits which we see too often, bigotry and self-conceit, bitterness,

evil-speaking, and hard judgments, and joy in a most unholy and damnable

spirit, not to mention covetousness and deceitfulness, or even in some

cases wantonness and lust. And yet such men will often fancy that they

belong especially to God, and doubt whether He will have mercy on any who

do not exactly agree with them; while in reality God and His kingdom have

utterly left their hearts, and they are as blind and dark as the beasts

which perish. May God preserve us from that second death which comes on

sinners, when, after a sinful youth, their terrified souls begin to cry

out in fear at the sight of their sins; and they, instead of casting away

their sins, keep their sins, or change old sins for more respectable and

safe new ones, and drug their souls with false doctrines, as foolish

nurses quiet children’s crying by giving them poisonous medicines. I

know men who have fallen, I really fear at times, into that state of

mind, and are like those Pharisees of whom our Lord said: “Ye serpents,

ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?” Even

for them it is not too late: but, let them recollect, if the kingdom of

God is within them, if they have any feelings of right and wrong left in

them, that their covetousness, and lying, and slandering, and conceit, is

fighting against God; that these are just what God desires to cast out of

them; and that unless they give up their hearts to God, and let Him cast

out their sins, and be converted, and become like little children,

gentle, humble, teachable, friendly, and kind-hearted, obedient to their

heavenly Father, God will cast them out of His kingdom among the things

which offend, and bring a bad name on religion; among those very

profligate and open sinners whom they are so ready to despise and curse.

XXXVIII.

THE LIGHT.

But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for

whatsoever doth make manifest is light. Wherefore He saith, Awake

thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give

thee light.—EPHESIANS v. 13, 14.

ST. PAUL has been telling the Ephesians who they are; that they are God’s

dear children. To whom they belong; to Christ who has given Himself for

them. What they ought to do; to follow God’s likeness, and live in love.

That they are light in the Lord; and are to walk as children of the

light; and have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but

rather reprove them. As much as to say: Do not believe those who tell

you that there is no harm in young people going wrong together before

marriage, provided they intend to marry after all. Do not believe those

who tell you that there is no harm in filthy words, provided you do not

do filthy things; and no harm in swearing, provided you do not mean the

curses which you speak. Do not believe those who tell you there is no

harm in poaching another man’s game, provided you do not steal his

poultry, or anything except his game. Do not believe those who tell you

that there is no harm in being covetous, provided you do not actually

cheat your neighbours; and that the sin lies, not in being covetous at

all, but in being more covetous than the law will let you be.

Do not believe those who say to you that you may keep dark thoughts,

spite, suspicion, envy, cunning, covetousness in your hearts day after

day, year after year, provided you do not openly act on them so as to do

your neighbours any great and notorious injury.

Plenty of people will tell you so, and try to deceive you with vain

words, and give you arguments, and texts of scripture perhaps, to prove

that sin is not sin, and that the children of light may do the works of

darkness. But do not believe them, says St. Paul. They are deceivers,

and their words are vain. These are the very things which bring down

God’s wrath on His disobedient children. These are the bad ways which

make young people, when they are married, despise, and distrust, and

quarrel with each other, and live miserable lives together, as children

of wrath, peevish, and wrathful, and discontented with each other,

because they feel that God is angry with them, just as Adam in the

garden, when he felt that he had sinned, and that God was wroth with him,

laid the blame on his wife, and accused her, whom he ought to have loved,

and protected, and excused.

These are the bad ways which make people ashamed when they meet a good

and a respectable person, make them afraid of being overheard, afraid of

being found out, fond of haunting low and out-of-the-way places where

they will not be seen; fond of prowling and lurching out at night after

their own sinful pleasures, because the darkness hides them from their

neighbours, and seems to hide them from themselves, though it cannot hide

them from God. These are the sins which make men silent, cunning, dark,

sour, double-tongued, afraid to look anyone full in the face, unwilling

to make friends, afraid of opening their minds to anyone, because they

have something on their minds which they dare not tell their neighbours,

which they dare not even tell themselves, but think about as little as

they can help. Do you not know what I mean? Do you not often see it in

others? Have you never felt it in yourselves when you have done wrong,

that dark feeling within which shows itself in dark looks? You talk of a

“dark-looking man,” or a “dark sort of person;” and you mean, do you not,

a man whom you cannot make out, who does not wish you to make him out;

who keeps his thoughts and his feelings to himself, and is never frank or

free, except with bad companions, when the world cannot see him; who goes

about hanging down his head, and looking out of the corners of his eyes,

as if he were afraid of the very sunshine—afraid of the light. We know

that such a man has something dark on his mind. We call him a “dark sort

of man.” And we are right. We say of him what St. Paul says of him in

this very epistle, when he says, that sin is darkness, and sinful works

the deeds of darkness; and that goodness, and righteousness, and truth,

are light, the very light of God and the Spirit of God. Our reason, our

common sense, which is given us by God’s Spirit, the Spirit of light,

makes us use the right words, the same words as St. Paul does, and call

sin darkness.

But rather reprove these dark works, says St. Paul; that is, look at

them, and see that they are utterly worthless and damnable. And how?

“All things that are reproved,” he says, “are made manifest by the light.

For whatsoever makes manifest is light.” Whatsoever makes manifest, that

is, makes plain and clear. Whatsoever makes you see anything or person

in heaven or earth as it really is; whatsoever makes you understand more

about anything; whatsoever shows you more what you are, where you are,

what you ought to do; whatsoever teaches you any single hint about your

duty to God, or man, or the dumb beasts which you tend, or the soil which

you till, or the business and line of life which you ought to follow;

whatsoever shows you the right and the wrong in any matter, the truth and

the falsehood in any matter, the prudent course and the imprudent course

in any matter; in a word, whatsoever makes your mind more clear about any

single thing in heaven or earth, is light. For, mind, St. Paul does not

say, whatsoever is light makes things plain; but whatsoever makes things

plain is light. That is saying a great deal more, thank God; for if he

had said, whatsoever is light makes things clear, we should have been

puzzled to know what was light; we should have been tempted to settle for

ourselves what was light. And, God knows, people in all ages, and people

of all religions, Christians as well as heathens, have been tempted to

say so, and to misread this text, till they said: “Whatsoever agrees with

our doctrine is light, of course, but all other teaching is darkness, and

comes from the devil;” and so they oftentimes blasphemed against God’s

Holy Spirit by calling good actions bad ones, just because they were done

by people who did not agree with them, and fell into the same sin as the

Pharisees of old, who said that the Lord cast out devils by Beelzebub the

prince of the devils.

But St. Paul says, whatsoever makes anything clearer to you, is light.

There is the gospel, and there is the good news of salvation again,

coming out, as it does all through St. Paul’s epistles, at every turn,

just where poor, sinful, dark man least expects it. For, what does St.

Paul say in the very next verse? “Wherefore,” he says, “arise from the

dead, and Christ shall give thee light.” “Christ shall give thee light!”

Oh blessed news! _Christ_ gives us the light, and therefore we need not

be afraid of it, but trust it, and welcome it. And Christ _gives_ us the

light, therefore we have not to hunt and search after it; for He will

give it us. Let us think over these two matters, and see whether there

is not a gospel and good news in them for all wretched, ignorant, sinful,

dark souls, just as much as for those who are learned and wise, or bright

and full of peace.