ANOTHER SERMON.
It often seems to those in earnest about the right as if all things
conspired to prevent their progress. This of course is but an
appearance, arising in part from this, that the pilgrim must be headed
back from the side paths into which he is constantly wandering. To
Wingfold, however, it seemed that all things fell in to further his
quest, which will not be so surprising if we remember that his was no
intermittent repentant seeking, but the struggle of his whole energy.
And there are those who, in their very first seeking of it, are
nearer to the kingdom of heaven than many who have for years believed
themselves of it.
In the former there is more of the mind of Jesus, and when he calls them
they recognize him at once and go after him; while the others examine
him from head to foot, and, finding him not sufficiently like the Jesus
of their conception, turn their backs, and go to church, or chapel, or
chamber, to kneel before a vague form mingled of tradition and fancy.
But the first shall be last, and the last first; and there are from
whom, be it penny or be it pound, what they have must be taken away
because with them it lies useless.
For Wingfold, he soon found that his nature was being stirred to depths
unsuspected before. Hitherto nothing had ever roused him to genuine
activity: his history not very happy; his life not very interesting, his
work not congenial, and paying itself in no satisfaction, his pleasures
of a cold and common intellectual sort,--he had dragged along,
sustained, without the sense of its sustentation, by the germ within him
of a slowly developing honesty. But now that Conscience had got up
into the guard’s seat, and Will had taken the reins, he found all his
intellectual faculties in full play, keeping well together, heads up
and traces tight, while the outrider Imagination, with his spotted dog
Fancy, was always far ahead, but never beyond the sound of the guard’s
horn; and ever as they went, object after object hitherto beyond the
radius of his interest, rose on the horizon of question, and began to
glimmer in the dawn of human relation.
His first sermon is enough to show that he had begun to have thoughts of
his own--a very different thing from the entertaining of the thoughts of
others, however well we may feed and lodge them--thoughts which came to
him not as things which sought an entrance, but as things that sought
an exit--cried for forms of embodiment that they might pass out of the
infinite, and by incarnation become communicable.
The news of that strange first sermon had of course spread through the
town, and the people came to church the next Sunday in crowds--twice as
many as the usual assembly--some who went seldom, some who went nowhere,
some who belonged to other congregations and communities--mostly bent
on witnessing whatever eccentricity the very peculiar young man might
be guilty of next, but having a few among them who were sympathetically
interested in seeing how far his call, if call it was, would lead him.
His second sermon was to the same purport as the first. Preposing no
text, he spoke to the following effect, and indeed the following are of
the very words he uttered:
“The church wherein you now listen, my hearers, the pulpit wherein I
now speak, stand here from of old in the name of Christianity. What is
Christianity? I know but one definition, the analysis of which, if the
thing in question be a truth, must be the joyous labour of every devout
heart to all eternity. For Christianity does not mean what you think or
what I think concerning Christ, but what IS OF Christ. My Christianity,
if ever I come to have any, will be what of Christ is in me; your
Christianity now is what of Christ is in you. Last Sunday I showed you
our Lord’s very words--that he, and no other, was his disciple who did
what he told him,--and said therefore that I dared not call myself a
disciple. I say the same thing in saying now that I dare not call myself
a Christian, lest I should offend him with my ‘Lord, Lord!’ Still it is,
and I cannot now help it, in the name of Christianity that I here stand.
I have, alas, with blameful and appalling thoughtlessness I subscribed
my name, as a believer, to the Articles of the Church of England, with
no better reason than that I was unaware of any dissent therefrom, and
have been ordained one of her ministers. The relations into which this
has brought me I do not feel justified in severing at once, lest I
should therein seem to deny that which its own illumination may yet
show me to be true, and I desire therefore a little respite and room for
thought and resolve. But meantime it remains my business, as an honest
man in the employment of the church, to do my best towards the setting
forth of the claims of him upon whom that church is founded, and in
whose name she exists. As one standing on the outskirts of a listening
Galilean crowd, a word comes now and then to my hungry ears and hungrier
heart: I turn and tell it again to you--not that ye have not heard it
also, but that I may stir you up to ask yourselves: ‘Do I then obey this
word? Have I ever, have I once sought to obey it? Am I a pupil of Jesus?
Am I a Christian?’ Hear then of his words. For me, they fill my heart
with doubt and dismay.
“The Lord says: Love your enemies. Sayest thou, It is impossible? Then
dost thou mock the word of him who said, I am the Truth, and has no part
in him. Sayest thou, Alas, I cannot? Thou sayest true, I doubt not. But
hast thou tried whether he who made will not increase the strength put
forth to obey him?
“The Lord says: Be ye perfect. Dost thou then aim after perfection, or
dost thou excuse thy wilful short-comings, and say, To err is human--nor
hopest that it may also be found human to grow divine? Then ask thyself,
for thou hast good cause, whether thou hast any part in him.
“The Lord said, Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth. My part
is not now to preach against the love of money, but to ask you: Are
you laying up for yourselves treasures on earth? As to what the command
means, the honest heart and the dishonest must each settle in his own
way; but if your heart condemn you, what I have to say is, Call not
yourselves Christians, but consider whether you ought not to become
disciples indeed. No doubt you can instance this, that, and the other
man who does as you do, and of whom yet no man dreams of questioning the
Christianity: it matters not a hair; all that goes but to say that you
are pagans together. Do not mistake me: I judge you not. I but ask you,
as mouthpiece most unworthy of that Christianity in the name of which
this building stands and we are met therein, to judge your own selves by
the words of its founder.
“The Lord said: Take no thought for your life. Take no thought for the
morrow. Explain it as you may or can--but ask yourselves--Do I take no
thought for my life? Do I take no thought for the morrow? and answer to
yourselves whether or no ye are Christians.
“The Lord says: Judge not. Didst thou judge thy neighbour yesterday?
Wilt thou judge him again to-morrow? Art thou judging him now in the
very heart that within thy bosom sits hearing the words Judge not? Or
wilt thou ask yet again--Who is my neighbour? How then canst thou look
to be of those that shall enter through the gates into the city? I tell
thee not, for I profess not yet to know anything, but doth not thy own
profession of Christianity counsel thee to fall upon thy face, and cry
to him whom thou mockest, ‘I am a sinful man, O Lord’?
“The Lord said: All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to
you, do ye even so to them. Ye that buy and sell, do you obey this law?
Examine yourselves and see. Ye would that men should deal fairly by
you; do you deal fairly by them as ye would count fairness in them to
you?--If conscience makes you hang the head inwardly, however you sit
with it erect in the pew, dare you add to your crime against the law and
the prophets the insult to Christ of calling yourselves his disciples?
“Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the
kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in
heaven. He will none but those who with him do the will of the Father.”