Christ gives us the light. This agrees with what St. John says, that “He

is the light who lights every man who comes into the world.” And it

agrees also with what St. James says: “Be not deceived, my beloved

brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and

cometh down from God, the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness,

nor shadow of turning.” And it agrees also with what the prophet says,

that it is the Spirit of God which gives man understanding. And it

agrees also with what the Lord Himself promised us when He was on earth,

that He would send down on us the Spirit of God—the Spirit which proceeds

alike from Him and from His Father, to guide us into all truth. Ay, my

friends, if we really believe this, what a solemn and important thing

education would seem to us! If we really believed that all light, all

true understanding of any matter, came from the Lord Jesus Christ: and if

we remember what the Lord Jesus’ character was; how He came to do good to

all; to teach not merely the rich and powerful, but the poor, the

ignorant, the outcast, the sinful: should we not say to ourselves, then:

“If knowledge comes from Christ, who never kept anything to Himself, how

dare we keep knowledge to ourselves? If it comes from Him who gave

Himself freely for all, surely He means that knowledge should be given

freely to all. If He and His Father, and our Father, will that all

should come to the knowledge of the truth, how dare we keep the truth

from anyone?” So we should feel it the will of our heavenly Father, the

solemn command of our blessed Saviour, that our children, and not only

they, but every soul around us, young and old, should be educated in the

best possible way, and in any way whatsoever, rather than in none at all.

The education of the poor would be, in our eyes, the most sacred duty. A

school would be, in our eyes, as necessary and almost as sacred a thing

as a church. And to neglect sending our children to school, or to leave

our servants or work-people in ignorance, would seem to us an awful sin

against the Father of lights; a rebellion against the Lord Jesus, who

lights every man who comes into the world, and against our Father in

heaven, who willeth not that one of these little ones should perish.

And this is made still more plain and certain by the next word in the

text: “Christ shall _give_ thee light:” not sell thee light, or allow

thee to find light after great struggles, and weary years of study: but,

_give_ thee light. Give it thee of His free grace and generosity. We

might have expected that, merely from remembering to whom the light

belongs. The mere fact that light belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ, who

is the express likeness of His Father, might have made us sure that He

would give His light freely to the unthankful and to the evil, just as

His Father makes His sun to shine alike on the evil and on the good.

Therefore this text does not leave us to find out the good news for

ourselves. It declares to us plainly that He will give it us, as freely

as He gives us all things richly to enjoy.

But, someone will say: You surely cannot mean that we shall have

understanding without study?

You cannot mean that we are to become wise without careful thought, or

that we are to understand books without learning to read? Of course not,

my friends. The text does not say: “Christ will give thee eyes; Christ

will give thee sense:” but, “Christ will give thee light.” . . . Do you

not see the difference? Of what use would your eyes be without light?

And of what use would light be if your eyes were shut, and you asleep?

In darkness you cannot see. Your eyes are there, as good as ever; the

world is there, as fair as ever: but you cannot see it, because there is

no light. You can only feel it, by groping about with your hands, and

laying hold of whatsoever happens to be nearest you. And do you think

that though your bodily eyes cannot see, unless God puts His light in the

sky, to shine on everything, and show it you, yet your minds and souls

can see without any light from God? Not so, my friends. What the sun is

to this earth, that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, is to the

spirit—that is, the reason and conscience—of every man who comes into the

world. Now, the good news of holy baptism is, that the light is here;

that God’s Spirit is with us, to teach us the truth about everything,

that we may see it in its true light, as it is, as God sees it; that the

day-spring from on high has visited us, to give light to those who sit in

darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of

peace; and that we are children of the light and of the day. But what if

those who sit in darkness like the darkness; and wilfully shut their eyes

tight that they may not see the day-spring from on high, and the light

which God has sent into the world? Then the light will not profit them,

but they will walk on still in darkness, not knowing whither they are

going.

But some may say, wicked men are very wise; although they rebel against

God’s Spirit, and do not even believe in God’s Spirit, but say that man’s

mind can find out everything for itself, without God’s help, yet they are

very wise. Are they? The Bible tells us again and again that the wisdom

of such men is folly; that God takes such wise men in their own

craftiness. And the Bible speaks truth. If there is one thing of which

I am more certain than another, my friends, it is that, just in

proportion as a man is bad, just in proportion as he does not believe in

a good Spirit of God who wills to teach him, and gives him light, he is a

fool. If there is one thing more than another which such men’s books

have taught me, it is that they are in darkness, when they fancy they are

in the brightest light; that they make the greatest mistakes when they

intend to say the cleverest things; and when they least fancy it, fall

into nonsense and absurdities, not merely on matters of religion, but on

points which they profess to have studied, and in cases where, by their

own showing, they ought to have known better. But our business is rather

with ourselves. Our business, in this time of Lent, is to see whether we

have been shutting our eyes; whether we have been walking in darkness,

while God’s light is all around us. And how shall we know that? Let St.

John tell us: “He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother,

is in darkness until now, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because

darkness has blinded his eyes.” Hating our brother. Covetousness, which

is indeed hating our brother, for it teaches us to prefer our good to our

neighbour’s good, to fatten ourselves at our neighbour’s expense, to get

his work, his custom, his money, away from him to ourselves; bigotry,

which makes men hate and despise those who differ from them in religion;

spite and malice against those who have injured us; suspicions and dark

distrust of our neighbours, and of mankind in general; selfishness, which

sets us always standing on our own rights, makes us always ready to take

offence, always ready to think that people mean to insult us or injure

us, and makes us moody, dark, peevish, always thinking about ourselves,

and our plans, or our own pleasures, shut up as it were within

ourselves—all these sins, in proportion as anyone gives way to them,

darken the eyes of a man’s soul. They really and actually make him more

stupid, less able to understand his neighbours’ hearts and minds, less

able to take a reasonable view of any matter or question whatsoever. You

may not believe me. But so it is. I know it by experience to be true.

I warn you that you will find it true one day; that all spite, passion,

prejudice, suspicion, hard judgments, contempt, self-conceit, blind a

man’s reason, and heart, and soul, and make him stumble and fall into

mistakes, even in worldly matters, just as surely as shutting our eyes

makes us stumble in broad daylight. He who gives way to such passions is

asleep, while he fancies himself broad awake. His life is a dream; and

like a dreamer, he sees nothing really, only appearances, fancies,

pictures of things in his own selfish brain. Therefore it is written:

“Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give

thee life.” You may say: Can I awaken myself? Perhaps not, unless

someone calls you. And therefore Christ calls on you to awake. He says

by my mouth: Awake, thou sleeper, and I will give thee light; awake, thou

dreamer, who fanciest that the sinful works of darkness can give thee any

real profit, any real pleasure; awake, thou sleep-walker, who art going

about the world in a dream, groping thy way on from day to day and year

to year, only kept from fall and ruin by God’s guiding and preserving

mercy. Open thine eyes, and let in the great eternal loving light,

wherein God beholds everything which He has made, and behold it is very

good. Open thine eyes, for it is day. The light is here if thou wilt

but use it. “I will guide thee,” saith the Lord, “and inform thee with

mine eye, and teach thee in the way wherein thou shalt go.” Only believe

in the light. Believe that all knowledge comes from God. Expect and

trust that He will give thee knowledge. Pray to Him boldly to give thee

knowledge, because thou art sure that He wishes thee to have knowledge.

He wishes thee to know thy duty. He wishes thee to see everything as He

sees it. “If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all

liberally and upbraideth not, and he shall receive it.” And when thou

hast prayed for knowledge, expect it to come; as it is written: When thou

prayest for anything, believe that thou wilt receive it, and thou wilt

receive it. If thou dost not believe that thou wilt have it, of course

thou wilt not have it. And why? Because thou wilt pass by it without

seeing it. It will be there ready for thee in thy daily walks; Wisdom

will cry to thee at the head of every street; God will not deny Himself

or break His promise: but thou wilt go past the place where wisdom is,

and miss the lessons which God is strewing in thy path, because thou art

not looking for them. Wisdom is here, my friends, and understanding is

here, and the Spirit of God is here, if our eyes were but open to see

them. Oh my friends, of all the sins of which we have to repent in this

time of Lent, none ought to give us more solemn and bitter thoughts of

shame than the way in which we overlook the teaching of God’s Spirit, and

shut our eyes to His light, times without number, every day of our lives.

My friends, if our hearts were what they ought to be, if we had humble,

loving, trustful hearts, full of faith and hope in God’s promise to lead

us into all truth, I believe that every joy and every sorrow which befell

us, every book which we opened, every walk which we took upon the face of

God’s earth, ay, every human face into which we looked, would teach us

some lesson, whereby we should be wiser, better, more aware of where we

are and what God requires of us as human beings, neighbours, citizens,

subjects, members of His church. All things would be clear to us; for we

should see them in the light of God’s Spirit. All things would look

bright to us, for we should see them in the light of God’s love. All

things would work together for good to us, for we should understand each

thing as it came before us, and know what it was, and what God meant it

for, and how we were to use it. And knowing and seeing what was right,

we should see how beautiful it was, and love it, and take delight in

doing it, and so we should walk in the light. Dark thoughts would pass

away from our minds, dark feelings from our hearts, dark looks from our

faces. We should look our neighbours cheerfully and boldly in the face;

for our consciences would be clear of any ill-will or meanness toward

them. We should look cheerfully and boldly up to God our Father; for we

should know that He was with us, guiding and teaching us, well-pleased

with all our endeavours to see things as He sees them, and to live and

work on earth after His image, and in His likeness. We should look out

cheerfully and boldly on the world around us, trying to get knowledge

from everything we see, expecting the light, and welcoming it, and

trusting it, because we know that it comes from Him who is true and

cannot lie, Him who is love and cannot injure, Him who is righteous and

cannot lead us into temptation: Jesus Christ, the Light who lighteth

every man that cometh into the world.

XXXIX.

THE UNPARDONABLE SIN.

Wherefore I say unto you: All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be

forgiven unto men; but the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit shall

not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against the

Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever speaketh a word

against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this

world, or in the world to come.—MATTHEW xii. 31, 32.

THESE awful words were the Lord’s answer to the Pharisees, when they said

of Him: “He casts out devils by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils.”

What was it now which made this speech of the Pharisees so terrible a

sin, past all forgiveness?

Of course we all feel that they were very sinful; we shrink with horror

from their words as we read them. But why ought they to have done the

same? We know, thank God, who Jesus Christ was. But they did not; at

that time, when He was first beginning to preach, they hardly could have

known. And mind, we must not say: “They ought to have known that He was

the Son of God by His having the _power_ of casting out devils;” for the

Lord Himself says that the sons of these Pharisees used to cast them out

also, or that the Pharisees believed that they did; and only asks them:

“Why do you say of my casting out devils, what you will not say of your

sons’ casting them out?” Pray bear this in mind; for if you do not—if

you keep in your mind the vulgar and unscriptural notion that the

Pharisees’ sin was not being convinced by the great power of Christ’s

miracles, you will never understand this story, and you will be very

likely to get rid of it altogether as speaking of a sin which does not

concern you, and a sin which you cannot commit. Now, if the Pharisees

did not know that Jesus was the Son of God, the Maker and King of the

world, as we do, why were they so awfully wicked in saying that He cast

out devils by the prince of the devils? Was it anything more than a

mistake of theirs? Was it as wicked as crucifying the Lord? Could it be

a worse sin to make that one mistake, than to murder the Lord Himself?

And yet it must have been a worse sin. For the Lord prayed for his

murderers: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And

these Pharisees, they knew not what they did: and yet the Lord, far from

praying for them, told them that even He did not see how such serpents,

such a generation of vipers, could escape the damnation of hell.

It is worth our while to think over this question, and try and find out

what made the Pharisees’ sin so great. And to do that, it will be wiser

for us, first, to find out what the Pharisees’ sin was; lest we should

sit here this morning, and think them the most wicked wretches who ever

trod the earth; and then go away, and before a week is over, commit

ourselves the very same sin, or one so fearfully like it, that if other

people can see a difference between them, I confess I cannot. And to

commit such a sin, my good friends, is a far easier thing to do than some

people fancy, especially here in England now.

Now, the worst part of the Pharisees’ sin was not, as we are too apt to

fancy, their insulting the Lord: but their insulting the Holy Spirit.

For what does the Lord Himself say? That all manner of blasphemy as well

as sin should be forgiven; that whosever spoke a word against Him, the

Son of Man, should be forgiven: but that the unpardonable part of their

offence was, that they had blasphemed the Holy Spirit.

And who is the Holy Spirit? The Spirit of holiness. And what is

holiness? What are the fruits of holiness? For, as the Lord told the

Pharisees on this very occasion, the tree is known by its fruit. What

says St. Paul? The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,

long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, meekness, temperance. Those who do

not show these fruits have not God’s Spirit in them. Those who are hard,

unloving, proud, quarrelsome, peevish, suspicious, ready to impute bad

motives to their neighbours, have not God’s Spirit in them. Those who do

show these fruits; who are gentle, forgiving, kind-hearted, ready to do

good to others, and believe good of others, have God’s Spirit in them.

For these are good fruits, which, as our Lord tells us, can only spring

from a good root. Those who have the fruit must have the root, let their

doctrines be what they may. Those who have not the fruit cannot have the

root, let their doctrines be what they may.

That is the plain truth; and it is high time for preachers to proclaim it

boldly, and take the consequences from the Scribes and Pharisees of this

generation. That is the plain truth. Let doctrines be what they will,

the tree is known by its fruit. The man who does wrong things is bad,

and the man who does right things is good. It is a simple thing to have

to say, but very few believe it in these days. Most fancy that the men

who can talk most neatly and correctly about certain religious doctrines

are good, and that those who cannot are bad. That is no new notion.

Some people thought so in St. John’s time; and what did he say of them?

“Little children, let no man deceive you; it is he that doeth

righteousness who is righteous, even as God is righteous.” And again:

“He who says, I know God, and keeps not His commandments, is a liar, and

the truth is not in him.” St. John was the apostle of love. He was

always preaching the love of God to men, and entreating men to love one

another. His own heart was overflowing with love. Yet when it came to

such a question as that; when it came to people’s pretending to be

religious and orthodox, and yet neither obeying God nor loving their

neighbours, he could speak sternly and plainly enough. He does not say:

“My dear friends, I am sorry to have to differ from you, but I am afraid

you are mistaken;” he says: “You are liars, and there is no truth in

you.”

Now this was just what the Pharisees had forgotten. They had got to

think, as too many have nowadays, that the sign of a man’s having God’s

Spirit in him, was his agreeing with them in doctrine. But if he did not

agree with them; if he would not say the words which they said, and did

not belong to their party, and side with them in despising every one who

differed from them, it was no matter to them, as they proved by their

opinion of Jesus Himself, how good he might be, or how much good he might

do; how loving, gentle, patient, benevolent, helping, and caring for poor

people; in short, how like God he was; all that went for nothing if he

was not of their party. For they had forgotten what God was like. They

forgot that God was love and mercy itself, and that all love and mercy

must come from God; and, that, therefore, no one, let his creed or his

doctrine be what it might, could possibly do a loving or merciful thing,

but by the grace and inspiration of God, the Father of mercies. And yet

their own prophets of the Old Testament had told them so, when they

ascribed the good deeds of heathens to the inspiration of God, just as

much as the good deeds of Jews, and agreed, as they do in many a text,

with what St. James, himself a Jew, said afterwards: “Be not deceived;

every good gift, and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down

from the Father of lights.” But the Pharisees, like too many nowadays,

did not think so. They thought that good and perfect gifts might some of

them very well come from below, from the father of darkness and cruelty.

They saw the Lord Jesus Christ doing good things; driving out evil, and

delivering men from the power of it; healing the sick, cleansing the

leper, curing the mad, preaching the gospel to the poor: and yet they saw

in that no proof that God’s Spirit was working in Him. Of course, if He

had been one of their own party, and had held the same doctrines as they

held, they would have praised Him loudly enough, and held Him up as a

great saint of their school, and boasted of all His good deeds as proofs

of how good their party was, and how its doctrines came from God. But as

long as He was not one of them, His good works went for nothing. They

could not see God’s likeness in that loving and merciful character. All

His charity and benevolence made them only hate Him the more, because it

made them the more afraid that He would draw the people away from them.

“And of course,” they said to themselves, “whosoever draws people away

from us, must be on the devil’s side. We know all God’s law and will.

No one on earth has anything to teach us. And therefore, as for any one

who differs from us, if he cast out devils, it must be because the devil

is helping him, for his own purposes, to do it.”

In one word, then, the sin of these Pharisees, the unpardonable sin,

which ruins all who give themselves up to it, was bigotry; calling right

wrong, because it did not suit their party prejudices to call it right.

They were fancying themselves very religious and pious, and all the while

they did not know right when they saw it; and when the Lord came doing

right, they called it wrong, because He did not agree with their

doctrines. They fancied they were the only people on earth who knew how

to worship God perfectly; and yet while they pretended to worship Him,

they did not know what He was like. The Lord Jesus came down, the

perfect likeness of God’s glory, and the express pattern of His

character, helping, and healing, and delivering the souls and bodies of

all poor wretches whom He met; and these Pharisees could not see God’s

Spirit in that; and because it was certainly not their own spirit, called

it the spirit of a devil, and blasphemed against the Holy Spirit, the

Spirit of Right and Love.

This was bigotry, the flower and crown of all sins into which man can

fall; the worst of all sins, because a man may keep from every other sin

with all his might and main, as the Pharisees did, and yet be led by

bigotry into almost every one of them without knowing it; into harsh and

uncharitable judgment; into anger, clamour, and railing; into

misrepresentation and slander; and fancying that the God of truth needs

the help of their lying; perhaps, as has often happened, alas! already,

into devilish cruelty to the souls and bodies of men. The worst of all

sins; because a man who has given up his heart to bigotry can have no

forgiveness. He cannot; for how can a man be forgiven unless he repent?

and how can a bigot repent? how can he confess himself in the wrong,

while he fancies himself infallibly in the right? As the Lord said to

these very Pharisees: “If ye had been blind, ye had had no sin: but now

ye say We see; therefore your sin remaineth.”

How can the bigot repent? for repenting is turning to God; and how can a

man turn to God who does not know where to look for God, who does not

know who God is, who mistakes the devil for God, and fancies the

all-loving Father to be a taskmaster, and a tyrant, and an accuser, and a

respecter of persons, without mercy or care for ninety-nine hundredths of

the souls which He has made? How can he find God? He does not know whom

to look for.

How can the bigot repent? for to repent means to turn from wrong to

right; and he has lost the very notion of right and wrong, in the midst

of all his religion and his fine doctrines. He fancies that right does

not mean love, mercy, goodness, patience, but notions like his own; and

that wrong does not mean hatred, and evil-speaking, and suspicion, and

uncharitableness, and slander, and lying, but notions unlike his own.

What he agrees with he thinks is heavenly, and what he disagrees with is

of hell. He has made his own god for himself out of himself. His own

prejudices are his god, and he worships them right worthily; and if the

Lord were to come down on earth again, and would not say the words which

he is accustomed to say, it would go hard but he would crucify the Lord

again, as the Pharisees did of old.

My friends, there is too much of this bigotry, this blasphemy against

God’s Spirit, abroad in England now. May God keep us all from it! Pray

to Him night and day, to give you His Spirit, that you may not only be

loving, charitable, full of good works yourselves, but may be ready to

praise and enjoy a good, and loving, and merciful action, whosoever does

it, whether he be of your religion or not; for nothing good is done by

any living man without the grace of Christ, and the inspiration of the

Spirit of God, the Father of lights, from whom comes down every good and

perfect gift. And whosoever tries to escape from that great truth, when

he sees a man whose doctrines are wrong doing a right act, by imputing

bad motives to him, or saying: “His actions must be evil, however good

they may look, because his doctrines are wrong,”—that man is running the

risk of committing the very same sin as the Pharisees, and blaspheming

against the Holy Spirit, by calling good evil. And be sure, my friends,

that whosoever indulges, even in little matters, in hard judgments, and

suspicions, and hasty sneers, and loud railing, against men who differ

from him in religion, or politics, or in anything else, is deadening his

own sense of right and wrong, and sowing the seeds of that same state of

mind, which, as the Lord told the Pharisees, is utterly the worst into

which any human being can fall.

XL.

THE SPIRIT OF BONDAGE.

For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye

have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba,

Father.—ROMANS viii. 15.

SOME of you here may not understand this text at all. Some of you,

perhaps, may misunderstand it; for it is not an easy one. Let us, then,

begin, by finding out the meaning of each word in it; and, let us first

see what is the meaning of the spirit of bondage unto fear. Bondage

means slavery; and the spirit of bondage means the spirit which makes men

look up to God as slaves do to their taskmaster. Now, a slave obeys his

master from fear only; not from love or gratitude. He knows that his

master is stronger than he is, and he dreads being beaten and punished by

him; and therefore, he obeys him only by compulsion, not of his own good

will. This is the spirit of bondage; the slavish, superstitious spirit

in religion, into which all men fall, in proportion as they are mean, and

sinful, and carnal, fond of indulging themselves, and bearing no love to

God or right things. They know that God is stronger than they; they are

afraid that God will take away comforts from them if they offend Him;

they have been taught that He will cast them into endless torment if they

offend Him; and, therefore, they are afraid to do wrong. They love what

is wrong, and would like to do it; but they dare not, for fear of God’s

punishment. They do not really fear God; they only fear punishment,

misfortune, death, and hell. That is better, perhaps, than no religion

at all. But it is not the faith which _we_ ought to have.

In this way the old heathens lived: loving sin and not holiness, and yet

continually tormented with the fear of being punished for the very sins

which they loved; looking up to God as a stern taskmaster; fancying Him

as proud, and selfish, and revengeful as themselves; trying one day to

quiet that wrath of His which they knew they deserved, by all sorts of

flatteries and sacrifices to Him; and the next day trying to fancy that

He was as sinful as themselves, and was well-pleased to see them sinful

too. And yet they could not keep that lie in their hearts; God’s light,

which lights every man who comes into the world, was too bright for them,

and shone into their consciences, and showed them that the wages of sin

was death. The law of God, St. Paul tells us, was written in their

hearts; and how much soever, poor creatures, they might try to blot it

out and forget it, yet it would rise up in judgment against them, day by

day, night by night, convincing them of sin. So they in their terror

sold themselves to false priests, who pretended to know of plans for

helping them to escape from this angry God, and gave themselves up to

superstitions, till they even sacrificed their sons and their daughters

to devils, in some sort of confused hope of buying themselves off from

misery and ruin.

And in the same way the Jews lived, for the most part, before the Lord

Jesus came in the flesh of man. Not so viciously and wickedly, of

course, because the law of Moses was holy, and just, and good; the law

which the Lord Himself had given them, because it was the best for them

then; because they were too sinful, and slavish, and stupid, for anything

better. But, as St. Paul says, Moses’s law could not give them life, any

more than any other law can. That is, it could not make them righteous

and good; it could not change their hearts and lives; it could only keep

them from outward wrong-doing by threats and promises, saying: “Thou

shalt not.” It could, at best, only show them how sinful their own

hearts were; how little they loved what God commanded; how little they

desired what He promised; and so it made them feel more and more that

they were guilty, unworthy to look up to a holy God, deserving His anger

and punishment, worthy to die for their sins; and thus by the law came

the knowledge of sin, a deeper feeling of guilt, and shame, and slavish

dread of God, as St. Paul sets forth, with wonderful wisdom, in the

seventh chapter of Romans.

Now, let us consider the latter half of the text. “But ye have received

the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father.”

What is this adoption? St. Paul tells us in the beginning of the fourth

chapter of his epistle to the Galatians. He says: As long as a man’s

heir is a child, and under age, there is no difference in law between him

and a slave. He is his father’s property. He must obey his father,

whether he chooses or not; and he is under tutors and governors, until

the time appointed by his father; that is, until he comes of age, as we

call it. Then he becomes his own master. He can inherit and possess

property of his own after that. And from that time forth the law does

not bind him to obey his father; if he obeys him it is of his own free

will, because he loves, and trusts, and reverences his father.

Now, St. Paul says, this is the case with us. When we were infants, we

were in bondage under the elements of the world; kept straight, as

children are, by rules which they cannot understand, by the fear of

punishment which they cannot escape, with no more power to resist their

father than slaves have to resist their master. But when the fulness of

time was come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under a law,

that He might redeem those who were under a law, that we might receive

the adoption of sons.

As much as to say: You were God’s _children_ all along: but now you are

more; you are God’s sons. You have arrived at man’s estate; you are men

in body and in mind; you are to be men in spirit, men in life. You are

to look up to the great God who made heaven and earth, and know, glorious

thought! that He is as truly your Father as the men whose earthly sons

you call yourselves. And if you do this, He will give you the Spirit of

adoption, and you shall be able to call Him Father with your hearts, as

well as with your lips; you shall know and feel that He is your Father;

that He has been loving, watching, educating, leading you home to Him all

the while that you were wandering in ignorance of Him, in childish

self-will, and greediness after pleasure and amusement. He will give you

His Spirit to make you behave like His sons, to obey Him of your own free

will, from love, and gratitude, and honour, and filial reverence. He

will make you love what He loves, and hate what He hates. He will give

you clear consciences and free hearts, to fear nothing on earth or in

heaven, but the shame and ingratitude of disobeying your Father.

The Spirit of adoption, by which you look up to God as your Father, is

your right. He has given it to you, and nothing but your own want of

faith, and wilful turning back to cowardly superstition, and to the

wilful sins which go before superstition, and come after it, can take it

from you. So said St. Paul to the Romans and the Galatians, and so I

have a right, ay, and a bounden duty, to say to every man and woman in

this church this day.

For, my dear friends, if you ask me, what has this to do with us? Has it

not everything to do with us? Whether we are leading good lives, or

middling lives, or utterly bad worthless lives, has it not everything to

do with us? Who is there here who has not at times said to himself: “God

so holy, and pure, and glorious; while I am so unjust, and unclean, and

mean! And God so great and powerful; while I am so small and weak! What

shall I do? Does not God hate and despise me? Will He not take from me

all which I love best? Will He not hurl me into endless torment when I

die? How can I escape from Him? Wretched man that I am, I cannot escape

from Him! How, then, can I turn away His hate? How can I make Him

change His mind? How can I soothe Him and appease Him? What shall I do

to escape hell-fire?”

Did you ever have such thoughts? But, did you find those thoughts, that

slavish terror of God’s wrath, that dread of hell, made you any _better_

men? I never did. I never saw them make any human being better. Unless

you go beyond them—as far beyond them as heaven is beyond hell, as far

above them as a free son is above a miserable crouching slave, they will

do you more harm than good. For this is all that I have seen come of

them: That all this spirit of bondage, this slavish terror, instead of

bringing a man nearer to God, only drove him further from God. It did

not make him hate what was wrong; it only made him dread the punishment

of it. And then, when the first burst of fear cooled down, he began to

say to himself: “I can never atone for my sins. I can never win back God

to love me. What is done, is done. If I cannot escape punishment, let

me be at least as happy as I can while it lasts. If it does not come

to-day, it will come to-morrow. Let me alone, thou tormenting

conscience. Let me eat and drink, for to-morrow I die!” And so back

rushed the poor creature into all his wrong-doing again, and fell most

probably deeper than ever into the mire, because a certain feeling of

desperation and defiance rose up in him, till he began to fancy that his

terror was all a dream—a foolish accidental rising up of old

superstitious words which he learnt from his mother or his nurse; and he

tried to forget it all, and did forget it—God help him!—and his latter

end was worse than his first.

How then shall a man escape shame and misery, and an evil conscience, and

rise out of these sins of his? For do it he must. The wages of sin is

death—death to body and soul; and from sin he must escape.

There is but one way, my friends. There never was but one way. Believe

the text, and therefore believe the warrant of your Baptism. Believe the

message of your Confirmation.

Your baptism says to you, God does _not_ hate you, be you the greatest

sinner on earth. He does not hate you. He loves you; for you are His

child. He hateth nothing that He hath made. He willeth not the death of

a sinner, but that _all_ should come to be saved. And your baptism is

the sign of that to you. But God hates everything that He has not made;

for everything which He has not made is bad; and He has made all things

but sin; and therefore He hates sin, and, loving you, wishes to raise you

out of sin; and baptism is the sign of that also. Man was made

originally in the image and likeness of God, and of Jesus Christ, the Son

of Man, the express image of God the Father; and therefore everything

which is sinful is unmanly, and everything which is truly manful, and

worthy of a man, is like Jesus Christ; and God’s will is, that you should

rise out of all these unmanly sins, to a truly manful life—a life like

the life of Jesus Christ, the Son of Man. And baptism is God’s sign of

this also. That is the meaning of the words in the Baptism Service which

tell you that you were baptised into Jesus Christ, that you might put off

the old man—the sinful, slavish, selfish, unmanly pattern of life, which

we all lead by nature; and put on the new man—the holy and noble,

righteous and loving pattern of life, which is the likeness of the Lord

Jesus. That is the message of your baptism to you; that you are God’s

children, and that God’s will and wish is that you should grow up to

become His _sons_, to serve Him lovingly, trustingly, manfully; and that

He can and will give you power to do so—ay, that He has given you that

power already, if you will but claim it and use it. But you must claim

it and use it, because you are meant not merely to be God’s wilful,

ignorant, selfish children, obeying Him from mere fear of the rod; but to

be His willing, loving, loyal sons. And that is the message which

Confirmation brings you. Baptism says: You are God’s child, whether you

know it or not. Confirmation says: Yes; but now you are to know it, and

to claim your rights as His sons, of full age, reasonable and

self-governing.

Baptism says: You are regenerated and born from above, by water and the

Holy Spirit. Confirmation answers: True, most true; but there is no use

in a child’s being born, if it never comes to man’s estate, but remains a

stunted idiot.

Baptism says: You may and ought to become more or less such a man as the

Lord Jesus was. Confirmation says: You can become such; for you are no

longer children; you are grown to man’s estate in body, you can grow to

man’s estate in soul if you will. God’s Spirit is with you, to show you

all things in their true light; to teach you to value them or despise

them as you ought; to teach you to love what He loves, and hate what He

hates. God wishes you no longer to be merely His children, obeying Him

you know not why; still less His slaves, obeying Him from mere brute

coward fear, and then breaking loose the moment that you forget Him, and

fancy that His eye is not on you: but He wishes you to be His sons; to

claim the right and the power which He has given you to trample your sins

under foot; to rise up by the strength which God your Father will surely

give to those who ask Him; and so to be new men, free men, true men, who

do look boldly up to God, knowing that, however wicked they may have

been, and however weak they are still, God’s love belongs to them, God’s

help belongs to them, and that those who trust in Him shall never be

confounded, but shall go on from strength to strength to the measure of

the stature of a perfect man, to the noble likeness of the Lord Jesus

Christ Himself.

For this is the message of the blessed sacrament of the body and blood of

Christ, to which you have been all called this day. That sacrament tells

you that in spite of all your daily sins and failings, you can still look

up to God as your Father; to the Lord Jesus Christ as your life; to the

Holy Spirit as your guide and your inspirer; that though you be prodigal

sons, your Father’s house is still open to you, your Father’s eternal

love ready to meet you afar off, the moment that you cry from your heart:

“Father, I have sinned;” and that you must be converted and turn back to

God your Father, not merely once for all at Confirmation, or at any other

time, but weekly, daily, hourly, as often as you forget and disobey Him;

and that he will receive you. This is the message of the blessed

sacrament, that though you cannot come there trusting in your own

righteousness, you can come trusting in His manifold and great mercies;

that though you are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under

His table, yet He is the same Lord whose property is ever to have mercy;

that He will, as surely as He has appointed that sign of the bread and

wine, grant you so to eat and drink that spiritual flesh and blood of the

Lord Jesus Christ, which is the life of the world, that your sinful

bodies may be made clean by His body, and your souls washed in His most

precious blood, and that you may dwell in Him, and He in you, for ever.

XLI.

THE FALL.

As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so

death passed on all men, for that all have sinned.—ROMANS v. 12.

WE have been reading the history of Adam’s fall. With that fall we have

all to do; for we all feel the fruits of it in the sinful corruptions

which we bring into the world with us. And more, every fall which we

have is like Adam’s fall: every time we fall into wilful sin, we do what

Adam did, and act over again, each of us many times in our lives, that

which he first acted in the garden of Paradise. At least, all mankind

suffer for something. Look at the sickness, death, bloodshed,

oppression, spite, and cruelty, with which the world is so full now, of

which it has been full, as we know but too well from history, ever since

Adam’s time. The world is full of misery, there is no denying that. How

did that come? It must have come somehow. There must be some reason for

all this sorrow. The Bible tells us a reason for it. If anyone does not

like the Bible reason, he is bound to find a better reason. But what if

the Bible reason, the story of Adam’s fall, be the only rational and

sensible explanation which ever has been, or ever will be given, of the

way in which death and misery came among men?

Some people will say: What puzzle is there in it? All animals die, why

should not man? All animals fight and devour each other, why should not

man do so too? But why need we suppose that man is fallen? Why should

he not have been meant by nature to be just what he is? Some scholars

who fancy themselves wise, and think that they know better than the

Bible, will say that now, and pride themselves on having said a very fine

thing; ignorant men, too, often are led into the same mistake, and are

willing enough to say: “What if we are brutish, and savage, and ignorant,

and spiteful, indulging ourselves, hating and quarrelling with each

other? God made us what we are, and we cannot help it.” But there is a

voice in the heart of every man, and just in proportion as a man is a

man, and not a beast and a savage, that voice cries in his heart more

loudly: No; God did not make you what you are. You are not meant to be

what you are, but something better. You are not meant to fight and

devour each other as the animals do; for you are meant to be better than

they. You are not meant to die as the animals do; for you feel something

in you which cannot die, which hates death. You may try to be a mere

savage and a beast, but you cannot be content to be so. And yet you feel

ready to fall lower, and get more and more brutish. What can be the

reason? There must be something wrong about men, something diseased and

corrupt in them, or they would not have this continual discontent with

themselves for being no better than they are; this continual hankering

and longing after some happiness, some knowledge, some good and noble

state which they do not see round them, and never have felt in

themselves. Man must have fallen, fallen from some good and right state

into which he was put at first, and for which he is hankering and craving

now. There must be an original sin in him; that is, a sin belonging to

his origin, his race, his breed, as we say, which has been handed down

from father to son; an original sin as the church calls it. And I

believe firmly that the heart of man, even among savages, bears witness

to the truth of that doctrine, and confesses that we are fallen beings,

let false philosophers try as they will to persuade us that we are not.

Then, again, there are another set of people, principally easy,

well-to-do, respectable people, who run into another mistake, the same

into which the Pelagians did in old time. They think: “Man is not

fallen. Every man is born into the world quite good enough, if he chose

to remain good. Every man can keep God’s laws if he likes, or at all

events keep them well enough.” As for his having a sinful nature which

he got from Adam, they do not believe that really, though often they

might not like to say so openly. They think: “Adam fell, and he was

punished; and if I fall I shall be punished; but Adam’s sin is nothing to

me, and has not hurt me. I can be just as good and right as Adam was, if

I like.” That is a comfortable doctrine enough for easy-going well-to-do

folks, who have but few trials, and few temptations, and who love little

because little has been forgiven them. But what comfort is there in that

for poor sinners, who feel sinful and base passions dragging them down,

and making them brutish and miserable, and yet feel that they cannot

conquer their sins of themselves, cannot help doing wrong, all the while

they know that it is wrong? They feel that they have something more in

them than a will and power to do what they choose. They feel that they

have a sinful nature which keeps their will and reason in slavery, and

makes sin a hard bondage, a miserable prison-house, from which they

cannot escape. In short, they feel and know that they are fallen. Small

comfort, too, to every thinking man, who looks upon the great nations of

savages, which have lived, and live still, upon God’s earth, and sees

how, so far from being able to do right if they choose, they go on from

father to son, generation after generation, doing wrong, more and more,

whether they like or not; how they become more and more children of

wrath, given up to fierce wars, and cruel revenge, and violent passions,

all their thought, and talk, and study, being to kill and to fight; how

they become more and more children of darkness, forgetting more and more

the laws of right and wrong, becoming stupid and ignorant, until they

lose the very knowledge of how to provide themselves with houses,

clothes, fire, or even to till the ground, and end in feeding on roots

and garbage, like the beasts which perish. And how, too, long before

they fall into that state, death works in them. How, the lower they

fall, and the more they yield to their original sin and their corrupt

nature, they die out. By wars with each other; by murdering their own

children, to avoid the trouble of rearing them; by diseases which they

know not how to cure, and which they too often bring on themselves by

their own brutishness; by bad food, and exposure to the weather, they die

out, and perish off the face of the earth, fulfilling the Lord’s words to

Adam: “Thou shalt surely die.” I do not say that their souls go to hell.

The Bible tells us nothing of where they go to. God’s mercy is

boundless. And the Bible tells us that sin is not imputed where there is

no law, as there is none among them. So we may have hope for them, and

leave them in God’s hand. But what can we hope for them who are utterly

dead in trespasses and sins? Well for them, if, having fallen to the

likeness of the brutes, they perish with the brutes. I fancy if you, as

some may, ever go to Australia, and there see the wretched black people,

who are dying out there, faster and faster, year by year, after having

fallen lower than the brutes, then you will understand what original sin

may bring a man to, what it would have brought us to, had not God in His

mercy raised us and our forefathers up from that fearful down-hill

course, when we were on it fifteen hundred years ago.

And another thing which shows that these poor savages are not as God

intended them to be, but are falling, generation after generation, by the

working of original sin, is, that they, almost all of them, show signs of

having been better off long ago. Many, like the South Sea Islanders,

have curious arts remaining among them in spite of their brutish

ignorance, which they could only have learned when they were far more

clever and civilised than they are now. And almost all of them have some

sad remembrance, handed down from father to son, kept up in songs and

foolish tales, of having been richer, and more prosperous, and more

numerous, a long while ago. They will confess to you, if you ask them,

that they are worse than their fathers—that they are going down, dying

out—that the gods are angry with them, as they say. The Lord have mercy

upon them! But what is, to my mind, the most awful part of the matter

remains yet to be told—and it is this: That man may actually fall by

original sin too low to receive the gospel of Jesus Christ, and be

recovered again by it. For the negroes of Africa and the West Indies,

though they have fallen very low, have not fallen too low for the gospel.

They have still understanding left to take it in, and conscience, and

sense of right and wrong enough left to embrace it; thousands of them do

embrace it, and are received unto righteousness, and lead such lives as

would shame many a white Englishman, born and bred under the gospel.

But the black people in Australia, who are exactly of the same race as

the African negroes, cannot take in the gospel. They seem to have become

too stupid to understand it; they seem to have lost the sense of sin and

of righteousness too completely to care about it. All attempts to bring

them to a knowledge of the true God have as yet failed utterly. God’s

grace is all-powerful; He is no respecter of persons; and He may yet, by

some great act of His wisdom, quicken the dead souls of these poor brutes

in human shape. But, as far as we can see, there is no hope for them:

but, like the Canaanites of old, they must perish off the face of the

earth, as brute beasts.

I have said so much to show you that man is fallen; that there is

original sin, an inclination to sin and fall, sink down lower and lower,

in man. Now comes the question: What is this fall of man? I said that

the Bible tells us rationally enough. And I have also made use several

times of words, which may have hinted to some of you already what Adam’s

fall was. I have spoken of the likeness of the beasts, and of men

becoming like beasts by original sin. And this is why I said it.

If you want to understand what Adam’s fall was, you must understand what

he fell from, and what he fell to. That is plain.

Now, the Bible tells us, that he fell from God’s grace to nature.

What is nature? Nature means what is born, and lives, and dies, and is

parted and broken up, that the parts of it may go into some new shape,

and be born and live, and die again. So the plants, trees, beasts, are a

part of nature. They are born, live, die; and then that which was them

goes into the earth, or into the stomachs of other animals, and becomes

in time part of that animal, or part of the tree or flower, which grows

in the soil into which it has fallen. So the flesh of a dead animal may

become a grain of wheat, and that grain of wheat again may become part of

the body of an animal. You all see this every time you manure a field,

or grow a crop. Nature is, then, that which lives to die, and dies to

live again in some fresh shape. And, in the first chapter of Genesis,

you read of God creating nature—earth, and water, and light, and the

heavens, and the plants and animals each after their kind, born to die

and change, made of dust, and returning to the dust again. But after

that we read very different words; we read that when God created man, He

said:

“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have

dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over

the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that

creepeth upon the earth.” He was made in God’s likeness; therefore he

could only be right in as far as he was like God. And he could not be

like God if he did not will what God willed, and wish what God wished.

He was to live by faith in God; he was justified by faith in God, and by

that only.

Never fancy that Adam had any righteousness of his own, any goodness of

which he could say: “This is mine, part of me; I may pride myself on it.”

God forbid. His righteousness consisted, as ours must, in looking up to

God, trusting Him utterly, believing that he was to do God’s will, and

not his own. His spirit, his soul, as we call it, was given to him for

that purpose, and for none other, that it might trust in God and obey

God, as a child does his father. He had a free will; but he was to use

that will as we must use our wills, by giving up our will to God’s will,

by clinging with our whole hearts and souls to God.

Adam fell. He let himself be tempted by a beast, by the serpent. How,

we cannot tell: but so we read. He took the counsel of a brute animal,

and not of God. He chose between God and the serpent, and he chose

wrong. He wanted to be something in himself; to have a knowledge and

power of his own, to use it as he chose. He was not content to be in

God’s likeness; he wanted to be as a god himself. And so he threw away

his faith in God, and disobeyed Him. And instead of becoming a god, as

he expected, he became an animal; he put on the likeness of the brutes,

who cannot look up to God in trust and love, who do not know God, do not

obey Him, but follow their own lusts and fancies, as they may happen to

take them. Whether the change came on him all at once, the Bible does

not say: but it did come on him; for from him it has been handed down to

all his children even to this day. Then was fulfilled against him the

sentence, In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. Not

that he died that moment; but death began to work in him. He became like

the branch of a tree cut off from the stem, which may not wither at the

instant it is cut off, but it is yet dead, as we find out by its soon

decaying. He had come down from being a son of God, and he had taken his

place in nature, among the things which grow only to die; and death began

to work in him, and in his children after him. He handed down his nature

to his children as the animals do; his children inherited his faults, his

weaknesses, his diseases, the seed of death which was in him, just as the

animals pass down to their breed, their defects, and diseases, and

certainty of dying after their appointed life is past.

For this, my friends, is the lesson which Adam’s fall teaches us, that in

God alone is the life of immortal souls, whether of men, or of angels, or

of archangels; and in God alone is righteousness; in God alone is every

good thing, and all good in men or angels comes from Him, and is only His

pattern, His likeness; and that the moment either man or angel sets up

his will against God’s, he falls into sin, a lie, and death. That He has

given us reasonable souls for that one purpose, that with our souls we

may look up to Him, with our souls we may cling to Him, with our souls we

may trust in Him, with our souls we may understand His will, and see that

it is a good, and a right, and a loving will, and delight in it, and obey

it, and find all our delight and glory, even as the Lord Jesus, the Son

of Man, the New Adam, did, in doing not our own will, but the will of our

Father.

For, as St. Augustine says, man may live in two ways, either according to

himself, or according to God; by self-will or by faith. He may determine

to do his own will or to do God’s will, to be his own master or to let

God be his master, to seek his own glory, and try to be something fine

and grand in himself: or he may seek God’s glory and obey Him, believing

that what God commands is the only good for him, what makes God to be

honoured in the eyes of his neighbours is the only real honour for him.

But, says St. Augustine, if he tries to live according to himself, he

falls into misery, because he was meant to live according to God. So he

puts himself into a lie, into a false and wrong state; and because he has

cut himself off from God he falls below what a man should be; and puts on

more and more of the likeness of the beast, and is more and more the

slave of his own lusts, and passions, and fancies, as the dumb animals

are. And, as St. Paul says, the animal man, the carnal man, understands

not the things of God. And we need no one to tell us that this is the

state of nature which we bring into the world with us. We feel it; from

our very childhood, from the earliest time we can recollect, have we not

had the longing to do what we liked? to please ourselves, to pride

ourselves on ourselves, to set up our own wills against our parents,

against what we learnt out of the Bible? Ay, has not this wilful will of

ours been so strong, that often we would long after a thing, we would

determine to have it, only because we were forbidden to have it; we might

not care about the thing when we had it, but we would have our own way

just because it was our own way. In short, like Adam, we would be as

gods, knowing good and evil, and choosing for ourselves what we should

call good and what we shall call evil. And, my dear friends, consider:

did not every wrong that we ever did come from this one root of all

sin—determining to have our own way? That root-sin of self-will first

brought death and misery among mankind; that sin of self-will keeps it up

still: that sin of self-will it is which hinders sinners from giving

themselves up to God; and that sin must be broken through, or religion is

a mockery and a dream.

Oh my friends, say to yourselves once for all, I was made in God’s

likeness; and therefore His will, and not my own, I must do. I have no

wisdom of my own, no strength of mind of my own, no goodness of my own,

no lovingness of my own. God has them all; God, who is wisdom, strength,

goodness, love; and I have none. And then, when the fearful thought

comes over you: “I have no goodness, and I cannot have any. I cannot do

right. There is no use struggling and trying to be better. My passions,

my lusts, my fancies are too strong for me. If I am brutish and low,

brutish and low I must remain. If I have fallen in Adam, I must lie in

the mire till I die—”

Then, then, my friends, answer yourselves: “No! Not so. Man fell in the

first Adam: but man rose again in the second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ.

I belong no more to the old Adam, who fell in Paradise. I belong to the

New Adam, who was conceived without sin, and born of a pure virgin, who

lived by perfect faith, in perfect obedience, doing His Father’s will

only, even to the death upon the cross, wherein He took away the sins of

the whole world. And now for His sake my original sin, my fallen,

brutish nature, is forgiven me. God does not hate me for it. He loves

me, because I belong to His Son. My baptism is a witness and a warrant,

a sign and a covenant between me and God, that I belong not to old Adam

of Paradise, but to the Lord Jesus Christ, who sits at God’s right hand.

The cross which was signed on my forehead when I was baptised is God’s

sign to me that I am to sacrifice myself and give up my own will to do

God’s will, even as the Lord Jesus did when He gave Himself to die,

because it was His Father’s will. And because I belong to Jesus Christ,

because God has called me to be His child, therefore He will help me. He

will help me to conquer this low, brutish nature of mine. He will put

His Spirit into me, the Spirit of His Son Jesus Christ, that I may trust

Him, cry to Him, My Father! that I may love Him; understand His will, and

see how good, and noble, and beautiful, and full of peace and comfort it

is; delight in obeying Him; glory in sacrificing my own fancies and

pleasures for His sake; and find my only honour, my only happiness, in

doing His will on earth as saints and angels do it in heaven.”

XLII.

GOD’S COVENANTS.

I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a

covenant between me and the earth.—GENESIS ix. 13.

THE text says that God made a covenant with Noah, and with his seed after

him—that is, with all mankind; with us who sit here, and our children

after us, and with all human beings who will ever live upon the face of

the earth. God made a covenant with them. Now, what is a covenant? We

say that two men make a covenant with each other when they make a

bargain, an agreement; in this way: If you will do this thing, then I

will do that; but if you will not do this thing, I will not do that. If

you do not keep to our agreement, I am free of it. If I do not do my

part of the agreement, you are free. Is not that what we call a

covenant—a bargain between two parties, which, if either party breaks it,

becomes null and void, and binds neither? Let us see whether God’s

covenants with man are of this kind.

Does God say to Noah: “If you and your children are righteous, I will

look upon the rainbow, and remember my covenant: but if you and your

children are unrighteous, I will not look on the rainbow, and I will

break my covenant because you have broken it?” We read no such words;

God made no conditions with Noah and his sons. Whether they forgot the

covenant or not, God would remember it. It was a covenant of free grace,

even as all God’s covenants are. Not a bargain, but a promise. “By

Myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, that I will not fail David.” By

Himself He sware to Abraham: “Surely blessing I will bless thee, and

multiplying I will multiply thee.” That is the form of God’s covenants.

God swears by Himself—by God who cannot change. If God can change, then

His covenant can change. If God can fail Himself, then can He fail His

covenant to which He has sworn by Himself. If it had been a mere

bargain, like men’s bargains, and not a promise out of His absolute love,

His free grace, His boundless mercy, would He have sworn by Himself?

Nay, rather, He would have sworn by Abraham: “By thy obedience or

disobedience I swear to bless thee or curse thee.” But He swore by

Himself, the absolute, the unchangeable, the Giver whose name is Love.

Consider now the token of the covenant which God gave to Noah. It was

the rainbow. What is the rainbow? Sunlight turned back to our eye,

through drops of falling rain. What sign could be more simple? And yet

what sign could be more perfect? Noah’s sons would fear that another

flood was coming, perhaps flood after flood. The token of the rainbow

said to them, No. Floods and rain are not to be the custom of this

earth. Sunshine is to be the custom of it. Do not fear the clouds and

storm and rain; look at the bow in the cloud, in the very rain itself.

That is a sign that the sun, though you cannot see it, is shining still.

That up above, beyond the cloud, is still sunlight, and warmth, and

cloudless blue sky. Believe in God’s covenant. Believe that the sun

will conquer the clouds, warmth will conquer cold, calm will conquer

storm, fair will conquer foul, light will conquer darkness, joy will

conquer sorrow, life conquer death, love conquer destruction and the

devouring floods; because God is light, God is love, God is life, God is

peace and joy eternal and without change, and labours to give life, and

joy, and peace, to man and beast and all created things. This was the

meaning of the rainbow. Not a sudden or strange token, a miracle, as men

call it, like as some voice out of the sky, or fiery comet, might have

been; but a regular, orderly, and natural sign, to witness that God is a

God of order. Whenever there was a rainy day there might be a rainbow.

It came by the same laws by which everything else comes in the world. It

was a witness that God who made the world is the friend and preserver of

man; that His promises are like the everlasting sunshine which is above

the clouds, without spot or fading, without variableness or shadow of

turning.

And do you fancy, my friends, that the new covenant, the covenant which

God made with all mankind in the blood of His only-begotten Son, is

narrower or weaker than the covenant which He made with Noah, Abraham,

and David? He asked no conditions from them. Do you think He asks them

from us? He called them by free grace. Do you think He calls us by

anything less? He swore by Himself to them. How much more has He sworn

by Himself to us? He who was born, and died, and rose again for us, who

now sits at the right hand of the Father, very Man of the substance of a

human mother, yet very God of very God begotten.

His covenants of old stood true and faithful, however disobedient and

unfaithful men might be; as it is written: “I have sworn once for all by

my holiness, that I will not fail David.” And those words, the New

Testament declares to us, again and again, are true of the new covenant,

and fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ, into whose name we are baptized.

Yes; into whose name we are baptized. There is the sign of the new

covenant; of a covenant of free grace. Therefore we can bring our

children to be baptized as we were baptized ourselves, before they have

done either good or evil, for a sign that God’s love is over them, God’s

kingdom is their inheritance, God’s love their everlasting portion.

But we may fall from grace; and then what good will our baptism be to us?

We shall be lost, just as if we had never been baptized.

My friends, if, though the sun was shining in the sky, you shut your eyes

close, and kept out the light, what use would the sunlight be to you?

You would stumble, and fall, and come to harm, as certainly as in the

darkest night. But would the sun go out of the sky, my friends, because

you were unwise enough to shut your eyes to it? The sun would still be

there, shining as bright as ever. You would have only to be reasonable

and to open your eyes, and you would see your way again as well as ever.

So it is with holy baptism. In it we were made members of Christ,

children of God, inheritors of the kingdom of heaven. God’s love is

above us and around us, like a warm, bright, life-giving sun. We may

shut our eyes to it, but it is there still. We may disbelieve our

baptism covenant, but it is true still. We are children of God; and

nothing that we can do, no sin, no unfaithfulness of ours, can make us

anything else. We can no more become not God’s children, than a child

can become not his own father’s son. But this we can do by sinning, by

disbelieving that we are God’s children, by behaving as the devil’s

children when we are God’s; we can believe ourselves not God’s children

when we are; we can try to be what we are not; we can enter into a lie,

and into the misery to which all lies lead; we can walk in darkness, and

stumble, and fall, when all the while we are children of the light, and

have only to open our eyes to walk in the light. Ay, we can shut our

eyes to the light so long, that at last we forget that there is any light

at all; and that is the gate of hell. We may wrap ourselves up in our

selfishness, in selfish pleasures, selfish cunning, selfish covetousness,

and selfish pride, till we forget that there is anything better for us

than selfishness, till we forget that God is love, and that we His

children are meant to be loving even as He is loving; and that also is

the gate of hell. And worst and darkest of all, when in that stupid,

sinful, loveless state of mind, God’s loving Spirit still strives and

pleads with us, and tries to awaken us, and terrify us with the sight of

the everlasting misery and ruin into which we have thrown ourselves, we

may turn those pleadings of God’s Spirit, by our own evil wills, into a

darker curse than all which have gone before. We may refuse to believe

that God is love, and fancy Him as hard, and cruel, and proud, and

spiteful, and unloving as we ourselves are. We may refuse, though

Scripture, Prayer-book, sacraments, preachers, assure us of it, that God

is our Father still; and deny His covenant of baptism, and blaspheme His

holy name, by fancying Him our tyrant and taskmaster, who hates us, and

willeth the death of a sinner, and has pleasure in the death of him that

dieth. And then we may behave according to the lie which we ourselves

have invented, and all sorts of inventions of our own to escape God’s

wrath, when, in reality, it is He who is wishing to turn His wrath away

from us; and to win back His favour, when, in reality, it is not we who

are out of favour with Him, but He who is out of favour with us, who

dread Him and shrink from Him; we may try to deliver ourselves from Him,

when all the while it is He, the very God whom we are dreading and flying

from, who alone is able and willing to deliver us; and with all our

fears, and self-tormentings, and faithless terrors, and blasphemings of

God by fancying Him the very opposite to what He has declared Himself, we

shall get no peace of conscience, no deliverance from sins, or from the

fear of punishment, but only a fearful and fiery looking forward to

judgment, which is hell. That is superstition; hell on earth; when men

have so utterly forgotten the likeness of God, which He manifested in His

Son Jesus Christ, that they look on Him as a stern and dreadful

taskmaster, a tyrant, and not a deliverer. Hell on earth, which may and

must lead to hell hereafter; a hell of fear, and doubt, and hatred of Him

who is all lovely; the hell whereof it is written, that its worst torment

is being cast out from the sight of God: unless the hapless sinner opens

his eye and believes the covenant of his baptism, and sees that God

cannot lie, God cannot change, cannot break His covenant, cannot alter

His love; that though he have left his Father’s house, and wandered into

far countries, and wasted his Father’s substance in riotous living, he is

still his Father’s son, his Father’s house is still where it was from the

beginning, his Father’s heart still what it was from the beginning; and

so arises and goes back to his Father’s house, confessing that he is no

more worthy to be called His son, willing to be only as one of His hired

servants; and then—sees not the stern countenance, the cruel punishments

which he dreaded: but—“While he was yet afar off, his Father saw him, and

ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him!”

And if, in our sins, our only hope of comfort, and peace, and strength,

lies in remembering our baptismal covenant, and being sure and certain

that though we have changed, God has not; that though we are dark, God’s

love shines bright and clear for ever, how much more when the dark day of

affliction comes? Why should I speak of this and that affliction? Each

heart knows its own bitterness; each soul has its own sorrow; each man’s

life has its dark days of storm and tempest, when all his joys seem flown

away by some sudden blast of ill-fortune, and the desire of his eyes is

taken from him, and all his hopes and plans, all which he intended to do

or to enjoy, are hid with blinding mist, so that he cannot see his way

before him, and knows not whither to go, and whither to flee for help;

when faith in God seems broken up for the moment, when he feels no

strength, no will, no purpose, and knows not what to determine, what to

do, what to believe, what to care for; when the very earth seems reeling

under his feet, and the fountains of the abyss are broken up: then let

him think of God’s covenant, and take heart; let him think of his

baptism, and be at peace. Is the sun’s warmth perished out of the sky,

because the storm is cold with hail and bitter winds? Is God’s love

changed, because we cannot feel it in our trouble? Is the sun’s light

perished out of the sky, because the world is black with cloud and mist?

Has God forgotten to give light to suffering souls, because we cannot see

our way for a few short days of perplexity?

For this is the gospel, this is the message which we have received from

God, to preach to every sad and desolate heart on earth, that God is

light, and in Him is no darkness at all. That God is love, and in Him

there is no cruelty at all. That God is one, and in Him there is no

change at all. And therefore, we all, the most ignorant of us as well as

the wisest, the most sinful of us as well as the holiest, the saddest and

most wretched of us as well as the happiest, have a right to join in that

Litany which is offered up here thrice every week during the time of

Lent, and to call upon God to deliver us and all mankind, not merely

because we wish to be delivered from evil, but because God wishes to

deliver us from evil. If we pray that Litany in any dark dread of God,

in doubt of His love and goodwill towards us, like terrified slaves

crying out to a hard taskmaster, and entreating him not to torment them,

we do not pray that Litany aright; we do not pray it at all. For it asks

God not to leave us alone, but to come to us; not to stop punishing us,

but actually Himself to deliver us, to defend us, to set us free.

Therefore it begins by calling on God the Father, because He is our

Father; on God the Son, because He has already redeemed and bought us for

His own; on God the Holy Spirit, because He has been striving with our

wilful hearts from our youth up till now, lovingly desiring to teach us,

to change us, to sanctify us. Therefore it calls on the holy, blessed,

and glorious Trinity, three Persons and one God, because the Son does not

love us better than the Father does, or than the Holy Spirit does, but in

the life and death of the Man Christ Jesus, whom we call on to deliver us

by His birth, His baptism, His death, His resurrection, by all that His

manhood did and suffered here on earth, in His life and death, I say,

were shown forth bodily the glory, and condescension, and love, and

goodwill of the fulness of the Godhead, of all three Persons of the one

and undivided Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Therefore we may

pray boldly to Him to spare us, because we know that we are already His

people, already redeemed with his most precious blood, already declared

by holy baptism to be bound to Him in an everlasting covenant. Therefore

we may pray boldly to Him not to be angry with us for ever, because we

know that He desires to bless us for ever, if we will only let Him; if we

will only let His love have free course, and not shut our hearts to it,

and turn our backs upon it. Therefore we can ask Him to deliver us in

all time of our tribulation and misery; in all time of the still more

dangerous temptations which wealth and prosperity bring with them; in the

hour of death, whether of our own death or the death of those we love; in

the day of judgment, whereof it is written: “It is God who justifieth us,

who is he that condemneth? It is Christ who died, yea rather who is

risen again, who even now maketh intercession for us.” To that boundless

love of God which He showed forth in the life of Christ Jesus; to that

utter and perfect will to deliver us, which God showed forth in the death

of Christ Jesus, when the Father spared not His only-begotten Son, but

freely gave Him for us; to that boundless love we may trust ourselves,

our fortunes, our families, our bodies, our souls, the souls of those we

love. Trusting in that great love, we may pray in that Litany for

deliverance; to be delivered from distress and accidents, from all sins

which drag us down, and make us miserable, ashamed, confused, terrified,

selfish, hateful, and hating each other. We may pray to be delivered

from evil, because God is righteousness, and hates evil. We may pray to

be delivered from our sins, because God is righteousness, and hates our

sins. We may pray for the Queen, her ministers, her parliament, because

God’s love and care is over them; for all orders and ranks of men,

whether laymen or clergymen, high or low, in God’s holy church; for all

who are afflicted and desolate; for all who are wandering in ignorance,

and mistakes, and sin; ay, for all mankind, for God loves them all, the

Son of God has bought them all with His most precious blood. And however

dark, and sad, and sinful the world may seem around us; however dark, and

sad, and sinful our own hearts may be within us, we may find comfort in

that Litany, and pour out in it our sorrows and our fears, if we begin

only as it begins, with the thought of God who is righteousness, God who

is love, God who is the Deliverer. And then, as the rainbow reflects the

sunbeams for a sign and token that the sun is shining, though we see it

not; so will that blessed Litany, with its sacred name of God, its calls

to Him who was born of the Virgin Mary, and crucified under Pontius

Pilate; its entreaties to God to deliver us, because He is a deliverer;

to hear us, and send us good, because He is a good Lord Himself; its

remembrances of the noble works which God did in our fathers’ days, and

in the old time before them; its noble declaration that God does not

despise the sighing of a contrite heart, nor the desire of a humble

spirit, and that it is the very glory of His name to turn from us those

evils which we most justly have deserved—that Litany, I say, will be like

a rainbow declaring to our dark and stormy hearts that the sun is shining

still above the clouds; that over and above us, and all mankind, and all

the changes and chances of this mortal life, is the still bright

sunshine, the life-giving warmth of the Sun of Righteousness, the

absolute eternal love of our Father who is in heaven, who, as he has

declared by the mouth of His only-begotten Son, is perfect in this, that

He does not deal with us after our sins, nor reward us according to our

iniquities, but is good to the unthankful and the evil, sending His rain

alike upon the just and on the unjust, and making His sun to shine alike

upon the evil and the good.

XLIII.

THE MYSTERY OF GODLINESS.

Great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh,

justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached to the Gentiles,

believed on in the world, received up into glory.—1 TIMOTHY iii. 16.

ST. PAUL here sums up in one verse the whole of Christian truth. He

gives us in a few words what he says is the great mystery of godliness.

Now, men had been inventing for themselves all kinds of mysteries of

godliness; all sorts of mysterious and wonderful notions about God; all

sorts of mysterious and strange ceremonies, and ways of pleasing God, or

turning away His anger.

And Christian men are apt to do so also, as well as those old heathens.

They feel that they are very mysterious and wonderful beings themselves,

simply because they are men. They say to themselves: “How strange that I

should have a body of flesh and blood, and appetites and passions, like

the animals, and yet that I should have an immortal spirit in me. How

strange this notion of duty which I have, and which the other animals

have not; this notion of its being right to do some things, and wrong to

do others! From whence did that notion come? And again, this strange

notion which I have, and cannot help having, that I ought to be like God:

and yet I do not know what God is like. From whence did that notion

come?”

Again: “I fancy that God ought to be good. But how do I know that He

really is good? I see the world full of injustice, and misery, and

death. How do I know that this is not God’s doing, God’s fault in some

way?”

Again, says a man to himself: “I have a fair right to believe that

mankind are not the only persons in the universe—that there are other

beings beside God whom I cannot see. I call them angels. I hardly know

what I mean by that. The really important question about them to me is:

Will they do me harm? Can they do me good? Are they stronger than

I?—Ought I not to fear them, to try to please them, to keep them

favourable to me?”

Again, he asks: “Does God care whether I know what is right? Does God

care to teach me about Himself? Is God desirous that I should do my

duty? For if He does not care about my being good, why should I care

about it?”

Again, he asks: “But if I knew my duty, might I not find it something too

far-fetched, too difficult, for poor simple folk to do: so that I should

be forced to leave a right life to great scholars, and to rich people, or

to people of a very devout delicate temper of mind, who have a natural

turn that way?”

And last of all: “Even if I did struggle to do right; even if I gave up

everything for the sake of doing right; how do I know that it will profit

me to do so? I shall die as every man dies, and then what will become of

me? Shall I be a man still, or only—horrible thought!—some sort of empty

ghost, a spirit without body, of which I dream, and shudder while I dream

of it?”

Men in all ages, heathens and Christians, have been puzzled by such

thoughts as these, as soon as they began to feel that there was a world

which they could not see, as well as a world which they could see; a

spiritual world, wherein God the Spirit, and their own spirits, and

spiritual things, such as right, wrong, duty, reason, love, dwell for

ever; and a strange hidden duty on all men to obey that unseen God, and

the laws of that spiritual world; in short a mystery of godliness.

Then they have tried to answer these questions for themselves; and have

run thereby into all manner of follies and superstitions, and often, too,

into devilish cruelties, in the hope of pleasing God according to some

mystery of godliness of their own invention.

But to each of these puzzles St. Paul gives an answer in the text. Let

us take them each in its order, and you will see what I mean.

The first puzzle was: How is it that while I am like the animals in some

things, and yet feel as if I ought to be, and can be, like God in other

things? How is it that I feel two powers in me; one dragging me downward

to make me lower than the beasts, the other lifting me upwards—I dare not

think whither? It seems to me to be my body, my bodily appetites and

tempers which drag me down. Is my body me, part of me, or a thing I

should be ashamed of, and long to be rid of? I fancy that I can be like

God. But can my body be like God? Must I not crush it, neglect it, get

rid of it before I can follow the good instinct which draws me upward?

To which St. Paul told Timothy to answer: God was manifest in the flesh.

God sent down His only-begotten Son, co-equal and co-eternal with

Himself, very God of very God, the very same person who had been putting

into men’s minds those two notions of which we spoke, that there is a

right and a wrong, and that men ought to be like God; Him the Father sent

into the world that He might be born, and live, and die, and rise again,

as a man; that so men might see from His example, manifestly and plainly,

what God was like, and what man ought to be like. And so Jesus Christ

was God, manifested in the flesh.

Now we do know what God is like. We know that He is so like man, that He

can take upon Him man’s flesh and blood without changing, or lowering, or

defiling Himself. That proves that man must have been originally made in

God’s likeness; that man’s being fallen, means man’s falling from the

likeness of God, and taking up instead with the likeness of the brutes

which perish; that the fault cannot be in our bodies, but in our spirits

which have yielded to our bodies, and become their slaves instead of

their masters, as Christ’s Spirit was master of His body. But the Son of

God, by being born and living as a man, showed us that we are not fallen

past hope, not fallen so low that we cannot rise again. He showed that

though mankind are sinful, yet they need not be sinful; for He was a man

as exactly, and perfectly, and entirely as we are, and yet in Him was no

sin. So He showed that brutishness and sinfulness is not our proper

state, but our disease and our fall; and a disease of which we can be

cured, a fall out of which we can rise and be renewed into the true and

real pattern of mankind, the new Adam, Jesus the sinless Son of Man and

Son of God.

The next question, I said, that rose in men’s mind was: “How do I know

that God is good, as I fancy sometimes that He must be? I see the world

full of sin, and injustice, and misery, and death. Perhaps that is God’s

doing, God’s fault.” That is a common puzzle enough, and a sad and

fearful one. The sin and the misery and the death are here. If God did

not bring it here, yet why did He let it come here? He could have

stopped if He would, and kept out all this wretchedness: why did He not?

Was He just or loving in letting sin into the world?

To all which St. Paul answers: “God was justified in the Spirit.”

You do not see what that has to do with it? Then let me show you.

To be justified means to be shown and proved to be just, righteous. Now

what justified God to man was the Spirit of God, as He showed Himself in

the Lord Jesus Christ. For when God became man and dwelt among men, what

sort of works were His? What was His conduct, His character; of what

sort of spirit did He show Himself to be? He went, we read, doing good,

for God was with Him. Not of His own will, but to do His Father’s will,

and because He was filled without measure by the Spirit of God, He did

good, He healed the sick, He rebuked the proud and self-conceited

hypocrite, He proclaimed pardon and mercy to the broken-hearted sinner,

wearied and worn out by the burden of his sins. Thus, in every action of

His life, He was fighting against evil and misery, and conquering it; and

so showing that God hates evil and misery, and that the evil and the

misery in the world are here against God’s will. Strange as it may seem

to have to say it, so it is. Jesus Christ showed that howsoever sin and

sorrow came into the world, it is God’s will and purpose to root them out

of the world, and that He is righteous, He is loving, He is merciful, He

does and will fight against evil, for those who are crushed by it; and

help poor sufferers always when they call upon Him, and often, often, of

His most undeserved condescension and free grace, when they are

forgetting and disobeying Him. And so by the good, and loving, and just

spirit which Jesus showed, God was justified before men, and showed to be

a God of goodness and justice.

The next puzzle, I said, was about angels and spirits, whether we need to

pray to them to help us, and not to hurt us. St. Paul answers: God, when

He was manifested in the flesh of a man, was seen by these angels. And

that is enough for us. They saw the Lord God condescend to be born in a

stable, to live as a poor man, to die on the cross. They saw that His

will to man was love. And they do His will. And therefore they love

men, they help men, they minister to men, because they follow the Lord’s

example, and do the will of their Father in Heaven, even as we ought to

do it on earth. Therefore we have no need to fear them, for they love us

already. And, on the other hand, we have no need to pray to them to help

us, for they know already that it is their duty to help us. They know

that the Son of God has put on us a higher honour than He ever put on

them; for He took not on Him the nature of angels, He took on Him the

nature of man; and thus, though man was made a little lower than the

angels, yet by Christ’s taking man’s nature, man is crowned with a glory

and honour higher than the angels. Know ye not, says St. Paul, that we

shall judge angels? And the angels, as they told St. John, are our

fellow-servants, not our masters; and they know that; for they saw the

Son of God doing utterly His Father’s will, and therefore they know that

their duty is to do their Father’s will also; not to do their own wills,

and set themselves up as our masters, to be pleaded with by us. They saw

the Son of God take our nature on Him, when they sang to the shepherds on

the first Christmas night: “Peace on earth, and good-will toward men;”

and therefore they look on us with love and honour, because we wear the

human nature which Christ their Master wore, and are partakers of the

Holy Spirit of God, even as they are. For no angel or archangel could do

a right thing, any more than we, except by the Holy Spirit of God. And

that Holy Spirit is bestowed on the poorest man who asks for it, as

freely as upon the highest of the heavenly host.

And this leads us on to the next puzzle of which I spoke: Men were apt,

and are apt now, to say to themselves: Does God care whether I know what

is right? Does God care to teach me about Himself? Is God desirous that

I should do my duty? For if He does not care about my being good, why

should I care about it?

To this St. Paul answers: “God, who was manifest in the flesh, was

preached to the Gentiles.”

God does care that men should know about God; for He loves them. He

yearns after them as a father after his children, and He knows that to

know God, to know the truth about God, is the beginning of all wisdom,

the root of all safety and honour and happiness. He willeth not that any

should perish, but that all should come to the knowledge of the truth.

And, therefore, when the Son of God died for our sins, He did not stop at

that great deed of love; but He ordained Apostles, and put upon them

especially and above all men, His Holy Spirit, that they might go and

preach to all nations the good news that God had become flesh, and dwelt

among men, and borne their sorrows and infirmities, and to baptize them

into the very name of God itself, into the name of the Father, and of the

Son, and of the Holy Ghost; that so, instead of fancying now that God did

not care for them, they might be sure that God so longed to teach them,

that He called every child, even from its cradle, to come into His

kingdom, and be taught the whole mystery of godliness.

The next puzzle I mentioned was: “But this right life, this mystery of

godliness, is it not something very strange and difficult, and past the

understanding of simple men who are not extraordinarily clever and

learned scholars or deep philosophers?” To that St. Paul answers: No.

It is not past any man. It is not too deep or too difficult for the

simplest, the most unlearned countryman. For, says St. Paul in the text,

we Apostles have had proof of that; we have tried it; we Apostles

preached the mystery of godliness, and it was believed on in the world.

People of the world, plain working men and women going about their

worldly business, who had no time to be great readers, or great thinkers,

or to shut themselves up in monasteries to meditate on heavenly things,

but had to live and work in the commonplace, busy, workday world—they

believed our message. We Apostles told them that the Son of God had

showed Himself in the likeness of man, and called on every man to repent,

and to be such a man as He was. And worldly people believed us, and

tried, and found that without giving up their worldly work, or deserting

the station in which God had put them, they could live godlike lives, and

become the sons of God without rebuke. They saw that scholarship was not

wanted, leisure was not wanted, but only the humble heart which hungers

and thirsts after righteousness. About their daily work, by their

cottage firesides, among their poor neighbours, the Spirit of Almighty

God gave them strength to live as Jesus their pattern lived; He filled

them with all holy, pure, noble, brave, loving thoughts and feelings, fit

for angels and archangels. He enabled them to rise out of their sins, to

trample their temptations under foot, to leave their old low brutish

sinful way of life behind them, and become new men, and persevere in

every word, and thought, and action, in virtues such as the greatest

heathen sages could not copy; ay, even to shed their life-blood freely

and boldly in martyrdom, for the sake of God and the truth of God. They,

these plain simple people, living in the world, could still live the life

of God, and die like heroes for the sake of God.

And this again brings us to the last puzzle of which I spoke: “But what

became of those holy and godlike people when they died? What reward did

they receive for all they had done, and given up, and suffered? What

will become of us after we die? What will the next world be like? What

is heaven like? Shall I be able to enjoy it? Shall I be a man there, or

only a ghost, a spirit without a body?”

To this St. Paul answers: That Christ, the Son of God, after He was

manifested in the flesh, was received up into glory. He does not tell us

what heaven is like; for though he had been caught up into the third

heaven, yet what he saw there, he says, was unspeakable. He neither

ought to tell, or could tell, what he saw. Neither does St. Paul tell us

what the next life will be like; for as far as we can find, God had not

told him. All he says is: The man Christ Jesus, who walked this earth

like other men, was received up into glory; and He did not leave His

man’s mind, His man’s heart, even His man’s body, behind Him. He carried

up into heaven with Him His whole manhood, spirit, soul, and body, even

to the print of the nails in His hands and in His most holy feet, and the

wound of the spear in His most holy side. And that is enough for us.

Because the man Christ Jesus is in heaven, we as men may ascend to

heaven. Where He is we shall be. And what He is, in as far as He is

man, we shall be. What we shall be we know not; but this we know, that

we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And He is a man

still; for it is written: “There is one Mediator between God and man, the

man Christ Jesus.” And He will be a man at the day of judgment; for it

is written that: “God hath ordained a day in which He will judge the

world by a man whom He hath chosen.” And He will be a man for ever; for

it is written: “This man abideth for ever.” And He Himself said to His

disciples: “I will not drink of this fruit of the vine, till I drink it

new with you in the kingdom of my Father.” And again He declared, even

when he was on earth, that He was the Son of Man who is in heaven. And

in heaven nothing can grow less. But if Christ were not man for ever as

well as God, He would become less; for He is now God and man also at

once; but if He laid down His manhood, and so became not man any more,

but God only, He would become less, which is not to be believed of Him of

whom it is written: That Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and

for ever. For, as the Athanasian creed teaches us, He is not God alone,

nor man alone, but God and man is one Christ; and therefore, when St.

John declares that Christ shall reign for ever and ever, he declares that

He shall reign not only as God, but as man also. Therefore whatever we

do not know about the next life, we know this, that we shall be men

there; not sinful, weak, and mortal, as we are here, but holy, strong,

immortal, after the likeness of our Lord, the firstborn from the dead,

who has ascended up on high and raised our human nature to the heaven of

heavens, and is gone to prepare a place for us, into which we too shall

enter in that day when He shall change these mortal and fallen bodies

which we now wear, the bodies of our humiliation, the bodies by wearing

which we are now a little lower than the angels; them the Lord will

change, that they may be made like unto His glorious body, according to

the mighty working whereby He subdueth all things unto Himself, that we

may see Him face to face, and dwell with Him in the glory of God the

Father for ever.

Oh my friends, who is sufficient for these things? What shall we say of

man? Is he not indeed fearfully and wonderfully made? Here we are, weak

creatures, more liable to disease and death than the dumb beasts round

us; full of poverty, and adversity, and longings which are never

satisfied; our minds full of mistakes, our hearts full of false conceit,

full of spite and folly, struggles, murmurings, quarrellings; our

consciences full of the remembrance of sins without number. The greatest

of all heathen poets said, that there was not a more miserable and

pitiable animal upon the earth than man. He knew no better. He could

not know better. How could he, when God had not yet been manifest in the

flesh? How could he dream that the Lord God would condescend to be made

flesh, and dwell among us, and show man His glory, the glory of the

only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth—how could he dream

that? And more than all, how could he dream that God, instead of

throwing away our human nature when He rose again, as if it was too great

a degradation for Him to be a man one moment more, should condescend to

take up His human nature, His man’s body, soul, and spirit, with Him into

everlasting glory, that He might feed with it for ever the bodies and

souls of those who trust in Him, so as to make them fit for us at the

last day, to share in His everlasting life? The old heathen poet knew as

well as you or I that there was an everlasting life beyond the grave;

that men’s souls were immortal, and could not die: but the thought of it

was all dark, and dreary, and uncertain to him and to all mankind, till

the Son of God brought life and immortality to light, when He was

manifest in the flesh.

Wonderful mystery of godliness! Wonderful love of God to man! Wonderful

condescension of God to man! Still more wonderful patience of God to

man!

Oh you who live still in sin, when the Son of God died and rose again to

make you righteous; you who defile your bodies with sins worse than the

brutes, when the Son of God offers to raise those bodies of yours to be

equal with the angels; how shall you escape if you neglect so great

salvation; if you despise this unspeakable love; if you trample under

foot, like swine, the everlasting glory and happiness which God offers

you freely, without fee or price, for the sake of His only-begotten Son,

Jesus Christ, who died to buy them for you?

XLIV.

THE WORK OF GOD’S SPIRIT.

If I go not away, the comforter will not come unto you; but if I

depart, I will send Him unto you. And when He is come, He will

reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of

sin, because they believe not on me: of righteousness, because I go

to my Father, and ye see me no more: of judgment, because the prince

of this world is judged.—JOHN xvi. 7–11.

I DO not pretend to be able to explain to you the whole meaning of this

text, or even more than a very small part of it. For it speaks of God;

of God the Holy Spirit. And God is boundless; and, therefore, every text

which speaks of God is boundless too, as God is. No man can ever see the

whole meaning of it, or do more than understand dimly a little of its

truth. But what we can see, we must think over and make use of. What

can we see, now, from this text? First, we may see that the Holy Spirit,

the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, is a person. Not a mere thing, or a state

of our own hearts, or a feeling in us, or a power, like the powers and

laws by which the trees and plants grow, and the sun and moon move in

their courses; but a person, just as each of us is a person. He, the

Holy Spirit, gives life to trees and plants, sun and moon: but He is not

their life. He gives them their life; and, therefore, that life of

theirs is not He, or He could not give it; for you can only give

something which is not you.

The Scripture speaks of the Holy Spirit, not as it, but as He; as a

person, and not as a thing; as a person who can speak to men’s souls,

guide and teach them.

“When He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth;

for He shall not speak of Himself.”

But we may see also that the Holy Spirit is neither God the Father, nor

the Lord Jesus Christ. For the Lord speaks of Him, the Holy Spirit, as a

different person either from Him or from the Father. “The Spirit,” He

says, “shall glorify me; for He shall receive of mine, and shall show it

unto you.”

But we may see also that there is no difference in will, or opinion, or

love, between the Holy Spirit and the Father and the Son. For the Spirit

does not speak of Himself; there is no self-will in Him. There is not

one will of the Father, and another of the Son, and another of the Holy

Ghost; or, one love of the Father, another love of the Son, and another

of the Holy Ghost; or, one righteousness of the Father, another of the

Son, another of the Holy Ghost: or, one mercy and grace of the Father,

another of the Son, another of the Holy Ghost. For then there would be

three Gods and three Lords; and the substance of God would be divided.

But they have all one will, and one love, and one righteousness, and one

mercy. And such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy

Ghost.

And remember always, that the Holy Spirit is very and indeed God. For He

is the Spirit of holiness itself, of righteousness itself, of goodness

itself, of love itself, of truth itself; and, therefore, He is the Spirit

of God, who is the perfect holiness, and righteousness, and truth, and

love. All other holiness, and righteousness, and truth, and love, are

only pictures and patterns of God, just as the sun’s reflection in water,

or in a glass, is a picture and pattern of the sun. As the Epistle for

to-day tells us: “Every good gift and every perfect is from above, and

cometh down from the Father of lights.”

But the Spirit of God must be God. For else what do the words mean? Is

not the spirit of a man, a man? Is not your spirit, what you call your

soul, you? Is not your soul you, just as much as your body is you; ay, a

hundred times more? Just so, the Spirit of God is God, God Himself; and

the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, of the Holy Ghost, is all one, the

glory equal, the majesty co-eternal.

This, then, is the glorious promise made to you, and to me, and to all

who believe and are baptized into the name of the Father, the Son, and

the Holy Spirit; that that Spirit will come to us, and take charge of our

spirits, and work in them, and teach them. We cannot see Him with our

eyes, or hear Him with our ears; we cannot even feel Him at work in our

hearts and thoughts. For He is a Spirit; and His likeness, the thing in

this world which is a pattern of Him, is the wind; as indeed the name

Spirit means. You cannot see the wind, you cannot even really feel the

wind or hear it: you only know it by its effects, by what it does: by the

noise among the branches, the force against your faces, the bending

boughs, and flying dust. The Spirit bloweth where it listeth, and thou

hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, or

whither it goeth; even so is every one who is born of the Spirit. On him

the Spirit of God will work unseen, and unfelt, only to be discovered by

the change which He makes in the man’s heart and thoughts; and first by

the way in which He convinces him of sin, because men believe not on

Jesus Christ.

The Holy Spirit shows men that the sins of the world, the sin of all

sins, the sin which is the root of all other sins, is not believing on

the Lord Jesus Christ; that it was because they would not believe on the

Lord Jesus Christ, that they had been falling into every other sort of

sin.

But you may say: “How could they believe on Him before He came, and was

born in Judæa of the Virgin Mary? How could they believe on Him when He

was not there?” Ah! my friends, who told you that the Lord Jesus Christ

was not there in the world all along? Not the Bible, certainly. For the

Bible tells us that He is the Light who lights every man who cometh into

the world; that from Him came, and have come, all the right thoughts and

feelings which ever arose in the heart of every human being. The Bible

tells us that when God created the world, He was daily rejoicing in the

habitable parts of the earth, and His delights were with the sons of men.

The Bible tells us that He was in the world, and the world knew Him not;

that all along, through the dark times of heathendom, the Lord Jesus

Christ was a light shining in darkness, which the darkness could not

close round, and hide and quench.

Not merely to the Jews, but to all heathens who hungered and thirsted

after righteousness, did the Lord Jesus show something of His truth; as

it is written, God is no acceptor of persons; that is, no shower of

partiality, or unjust favour: but in every nation, he that feareth God

and worketh righteousness is accepted of Him.

But at the time that the Lord Jesus sent down His Holy Spirit, men were

not working righteousness. There was not one who did good, no not one.

For men had forgotten what righteousness was like, what a righteous man

ought to do and be. Men are ready to forget it every day. You and I are

ready to forget it, and invent some false righteousness of our own, not

like Jesus Christ, but like what we in our private fancies think is most

graceful, or most agreeable, or most easy; or most grand, and

far-fetched, and difficult. But the Holy Spirit came to convince men of

righteousness; to show them what true righteousness was like.

And how? In the same way that He must convince us of righteousness, if

we are ever to know what righteousness is, or are ever to be righteous

ourselves. He must show us goodness; or we shall never see it, or

receive it, or copy it.

And where is this righteousness, this perfect goodness of which the Holy

Spirit will convince us? Where, but in the Lord Jesus Christ? In the

Lord Jesus’s character, the Lord Jesus’s good works; His love, His

patience, His perfect obedience, His life, His death. The Holy Spirit,

if we give up our hearts to be taught by Him, will make us believe, and

be sure, and feel in our very inmost hearts, how noble, how beautiful,

how holy, how perfectly Godlike, was He who was born of a poor virgin,

who walked this earth for thirty-three years in toil and sorrow, who gave

His back to the smiters, and His cheeks to them that plucked off the

hair, and hid not His face from shame and spitting, who died upon a cross

between two thieves. And the Holy Spirit will convince us of

righteousness, by making us feel what the Lord Jesus’s righteousness

consisted in; what was the root of all His goodness and holiness, namely

His perfect obedience to His Father and our Father in heaven. That is

the righteousness, which is not our own, but God’s; the righteousness

which comes by faith; not to trust in ourselves, but in God; not to

please ourselves, but God; not to do our own will, but God’s will. That

is the righteousness of Jesus Christ, which God set His seal on and

approved, when He exalted Him far above all principality and powers, and

set Him at His own right hand for a sign to all men, and angels, and

archangels; that righteousness means to trust and to obey God even to the

death.