Himself--and it is either the greatest blasphemy or the greatest
truth in the world--"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man
cometh unto the FATHER but by Me."
Trafalgar Day, 1915, then, should be not only the turning-point
of the world's history, but the inauguration of a new Britain.
If the war stopped at this moment, should we really be a changed
nation?--would not the old miserable internal disputes break out
again?--might we not again be as we were in July, 1914, on the verge
of civil war in Ireland, of a revolution among women, and of the
greatest industrial strike of modern times? I come back at the end
of so many months of the war to the picture which I tried to hold
up to London in its first week--"Facing the war is drinking the
cup"--"The cup which My FATHER hath given me, shall I not drink it?"
We have to repeat the very words of our LORD Himself.
Have we drunk the cup, and drunk it to its dregs? Only then will the
angels come and strengthen us for victory; we shall deserve victory
then, and we shall be ready for it, for the cup which we shall drink
will be the cup to which the SON of GOD Himself put His lips, and
the courage and fortitude of Gethsemane leads on to the overwhelming
victory of Easter Day.
It is then "Our Day" in an even deeper sense than those mean who so
rightly ask our alms to-day for those splendid sister societies of
St. John and the Red Cross. Of course we shall pour out into their
lap, for the sake of our wounded heroes at the Front, all that we
can; but it is "Our Day" because it is the day when the nation is
tested to the roots of its being. "If thou hadst known, even thou,
in the midst of this thy day, the things which belong unto thy
peace, but now they are hid from thine eyes." They are not hid from
our eyes yet; it is still Our Day; but let it pass, and it has gone
for ever.
VI
THE KNOCKING AT THE DOOR[11]
[11] Preached at St. Mary's, Bryanston Square, at a service for the
Church-workers of the Deanery.
"Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear My voice
and open the door, I will come and sup with him, and he with
Me."--REV. iii. 20.
I will come unto him and sup with him, and he with Me. I think
sometimes that we dwell in our Advent meditation too exclusively
on the thought of the coming Judgment. Of course we have to dwell
on it. "Behold, the Judge standeth before the door." A tremendous
truth that is. "Behold, the Judge standeth before the door." There
is going to come a time when the door will come down with a crash,
and we shall be face to face with the Judge. And this affects
every single period of our lives. We sometimes imagine that we are
going--dare I say the word?--to _dodge_ the Judgment. Not at all;
we are going to look into those Eyes like a Flame of Fire, and every
man will give an account of himself before GOD. And every day is
making up the Judgment. Every thought, every word, every act, every
service, every decision we make, it all goes into the judgment, it
all goes into the verdict. And when the Judge who stands before the
door comes inside, He registers the verdict and the sentence we have
been preparing all our lives. We go to our own place--the place that
we have prepared for ourselves.
Now that is a tremendous thought, and it is one that we cannot
possibly ignore. What is a person, what is a Church-worker, to do
who realises that the Judge standeth before the door? What am I to
do when I realise that He stands before the door of my heart? The
answer can only be: Ask Him in as the SAVIOUR, before He comes as
the Judge that is to be.
I want now to take with you another kind of Advent--may I say a more
delightful kind of Advent?--that is, the Advent of JESUS CHRIST
Himself into the soul. "Behold, I stand at the door and knock, and
if any man will hear My voice and open the door, I will come in to
him and sup with him, and he with Me." It seems at first sight too
good to be true, when you think who JESUS CHRIST was--the LORD of
Angels, the SON of GOD, the supreme Captain of the heavenly host,
the most perfect beautiful Character that ever lived--that He is
going Himself to come. Think of it--that He is going to come within
me, within you, to live there, to dominate your consciousness,
dominate your mind, your life, so that you will speak with His
words, think with His thoughts, judge with His judgment; that He
will live in you. It seems almost too much to believe; and yet this
is precisely the thing which, when we study the New Testament,
we find is promised, not only in this passage, but in St. John's
Gospel. "My FATHER and I, We will come unto him and make Our abode
with him." St. Paul's favourite motto is: "CHRIST in you the hope
of glory." CHRIST in you, through the HOLY SPIRIT. He, of course,
brings JESUS with Him. It is said in St. John's Gospel: "He is
with you, but He shall be _in_ you." And when I speak to a number
of Confirmation candidates, I believe it is perfectly true to say
before the Confirmation: "He is _with_ you, but He shall be _in_
you." For that is the great gift of Confirmation, the falling of the
HOLY GHOST. "Then laid they their hands on them, and the HOLY GHOST
came upon them, for as yet He had fallen on none of them."
There is no doubt that this tremendous gift is the special promise
given by Christianity. CHRIST wants to live in me. He wants to come
inside. He stands outside the door, but if I ask Him He will come
inside. And notice, secondly, that this tremendous promise is not
made to a few selected people. You might suppose that it was meant
for a few Sisters of Mercy, very devoted, who live their lives
among the poor, or to a few particular saints among the clergy.
But you all have this promise. This tremendous promise comes in
the midst of the message to the Church in Laodicea, the people who
were neither cold nor hot, the people who were uplifted when they
ought to have been humble, the people who had to be chastened and
rebuked that they might be made humble, the people who had not a
chance of overcoming in their own strength--in fact, people just
like you and me. And it is just because we know this, that I have
to give this message of love to you. It is just because we know
that we are neither cold nor hot, but lukewarm--the churchwardens,
workers, sidesmen, Sunday-School teachers--it is just because we are
conscious, and because we know that we do want chastening, that we
may be perfected and purified; in fact, it is just because we are
like the people to whom that message was given that we need to pay
heed to the warning of the message. CHRIST says: "I stand at the
door and knock, and if any of you will open the door and hear My
voice, I will come in and sup with you, and you with Me."
And, therefore, you see, that sets us thinking, does it not? as to
what this knocking at the door can mean. Is it possible, you say,
that CHRIST has been knocking at the door, and I never knew it was
He who was knocking? The whole thing is wonderfully symbolised
at the consecration of a church. Perhaps you have not seen the
consecration of a church. The Bishop, representing JESUS CHRIST,
knocks three times at the door, and says: "Lift up your heads, O
ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of
Glory shall come in." The churchwardens and sidesmen say: "Who is
the King of Glory?" And the Bishop outside replies: "The LORD of
Hosts. He is the King of Glory." Then the doors are flung open,
and the Bishop enters, symbolising the entrance of CHRIST into His
Church. That happens every time a new church is consecrated in the
diocese of London or anywhere else. Who is the King of Glory? Who is
He? Is it possible that He has been knocking at my heart and I have
never known?
How does He knock? 1. First of all, and perhaps most commonly, by
what we call _smiting the conscience_. You notice we use the very
words in our popular language which represents knocking--smiting
the conscience. Is it possible, for instance, that even now some
of you have been conscious that you are not what you ought to be,
that your life is not what it ought to be, that there is something
wrong with you? People sometimes come to me and say: "Bishop, I
want to see you. I am not right. There is something not right with
me; something tells me I have not done my work as I ought. There
seems to be something between me and GOD." Well, you must cherish
that smiting of the conscience. Do not ignore it or despise it. It
is the knocking, knocking at the door, of JESUS CHRIST Himself.
There is not a doubt about it. Sometimes He knocks the door very
loudly. Sometimes His knocks are soft, just like taps. When some
pure-hearted boys or girls are going to be confirmed, it is a very
gentle knock that CHRIST makes at the door of their young hearts.
He feels sure they will attend. He does not have to rouse them by
loud thundering knocks. He comes quietly because that heart is made
for JESUS CHRIST, and JESUS CHRIST is made for that heart. And
therefore at a Confirmation of well-prepared candidates it is lovely
to think how He comes up and knocks at the young soul, and the soul
recognises the knock, and says: "Come in." No loud knock is wanted.
We were meant to grow up with "our days bound each to each by
natural piety." CHRIST, who has taken us up in His arms at Baptism,
is made to come gently, quietly, and happily, into the young soul
at Confirmation. There is not meant to be some great break in our
lives. We are meant to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our
LORD and SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST. But if there comes this knocking,
a smiting of the conscience, I do pray you to remember that it is
meant in love, that it is CHRIST who wants to come within us.
2. Sometimes the knock is a very heavy one, the heavy dull knocking
of a _great sorrow_. I have seen a great deal of it, when people
have lost their dear ones in this Great War. One who had lost the
light of her eyes said to me the other day: "I somehow feel nearer
GOD in spite of it all." No doubt in that heavy, sad knock at the
door you can hear JESUS CHRIST'S own knocking. He may come into the
soul through the sorrow in a way in which He has never come when
all is right and bright and happy. If some of you have heard that
heavy knocking at the door, do not think GOD has forgotten you and
forsaken you. Rise and open the door, and CHRIST will come into your
soul in a way in which He has never come before in all your life.
3. Sometimes it is the quick happy _knocking of joy_. Someone
wrote to me the other day that he had had a great joy. All the
darkness seemed now to have cleared away. He said: "I see my path
in the light of GOD'S love." There was the quick knocking of joy,
and CHRIST came in with the joy. The clearer knock of joy was the
knocking of JESUS CHRIST.
4. Sometimes it is _some friend_ who comes into the life, some
influence, perhaps a parish priest, who knocks at the door. Perhaps
only too unwillingly at first you open the door, and you find that
in the parish priest who comes you have found your best friend on
earth, and he by his coming in brings CHRIST to you; he brings Him
with him, and he leaves Him with you, if he is a faithful steward.
If the parish priest is a faithful steward, he leads you to the
Master. Then, perhaps, the sudden call comes. I have seen this
happen to many young soldiers. I lately spent two months with those
who were just going out--they are now in the trenches. They crowded
in every evening to have a talk or they lay down on the ground and
drank in every word at some Church Parade service. I could see, as
I watched their faces, that they were hearing the call of their
country to risk their lives, their all. It brought them near to
JESUS CHRIST. In the knocking of their country's call JESUS CHRIST
knocked, and I believe there are many fighting in the trenches now
every day borne up by a faith they did not have until this summer--a
belief in the immediate presence of their SAVIOUR with them. It
would not have happened but for this sudden necessity of facing the
ordeal of their lives.
Is it possible that all these things, or some of them, have
been happening to you--or something different that I have not
mentioned--and you have never recognised it as yet as being what
it is, JESUS CHRIST knocking at the door? Now what are you to do?
What are any of us to do, for I am just one among you? It seems
clear there are three things that we are bound to do, if this great
miracle (and it is nothing else) is to take place. The first thing
is to listen for and recognise the voice of JESUS CHRIST outside the
door, that we may be ready and prepared to open the door. And do you
not think that the reason that many of us never hear JESUS CHRIST'S
voice is that we never listen for it, that we have no quiet time,
that we have provided no time for meditation and prayer? We are too
busy. We get up in the morning just in time to start off for our
work; we never have this quiet time, or only a very few moments to
think, in which the voice will be heard.
Now, I cannot tell you how much I believe in what I call _listening
to the voice of God_. We pray, indeed--we all of us pray. But it is
the ten minutes after prayer that matters, it is the ten minutes'
listening to what He is going to say back, and often we do not give
that time at all, and so we never get the answer. Is it not fair
to say that some of you Church-workers just kneel down for a few
hurried moments, and then are up again from your knees, off to
some duty on earth, and that possibly a few minutes each day would
constitute all the time we devote to listening to the voice of GOD?
If that is all, can you wonder when you take your Sunday-School
lesson that it is rather dry, or that your mission sermons do not
seem to have much inspiration about them, and gradually the voice
of JESUS CHRIST fades away and becomes very vague? You do not give
time. Do not tell me that in the twenty-four hours you cannot find
time for the most vital thing in this world. We are only here for a
few passing years. Five minutes after death it matters more than I
can say--these quiet times in our lives, they are worth more than
gold, quiet times when we listen to the voice of GOD. After death
how still it is!
"I hear no more the busy beat of time,
Nor in me feel the fluttering pulse nor faltering breath."
One moment will not be different from the next in the stillness and
quiet of Paradise. And in the quiet of the other world how much we
shall regret having had so few quiet times on earth! Why, one of
the very busiest merchants in the City used to be very regular at
a daily service. I said to him once: "How can you find time, you,
one of the very busiest merchants in the City, to attend daily
service?" He said: "I am so busy I must go to the daily service." He
felt his business would simply sweep him away if he did not get a
quiet time. And Mr. Gladstone, you will remember, kept his Sundays
in unbroken quiet, waiting upon GOD during the very busiest period
of his life. Without it he would have lost the quiet and strength of
his soul. Therefore make your first resolution. "I will listen to
what the LORD GOD will say concerning my soul." "Speak, LORD, for
Thy servant heareth." If you want to have strength and happiness in
your spiritual work, wait upon God. And in the silence you will hear
the voice of JESUS CHRIST; you will hear His knock.
Then, when we have heard the voice and recognised the knock, the
next thing to do is to open the door. How simple that sounds, does
it not? and how difficult it often is! Picture some who have had the
door of their souls closed tightly for years. You have to prise the
door open, and you have to break down the fixed habits of the man
who has never prayed except for a few moments or two in his life;
how hard he finds it to reverse the habits of a lifetime! Someone
who has an old quarrel, through jealousy or something else, with
another worker--how hard it is to forgive and begin all over again!
But it has got to be done, the door has to be prised or forced,
because if CHRIST is to come in we have to open the door--that is
our part in it--and CHRIST _will_ come in. And if only we realised
how eager He is to come in, and what a power He has to change the
heart and control the thoughts and purify the conscience, we should
all want Him to come, and we should not spare any time and trouble
to get the door open.
And when He has come in, notice this wonderful phrase: "I will sup
with him, and he with Me." He does not come in as a transient guest
to stay for a little while, and go away, but He comes on a permanent
visit, to take up His permanent residence. And although we should
not have dared to use the words ourselves, the words "I will sup
with him, and he with Me," describe the most delightful friendship.
Do you desire His presence? How often do you come to Holy Communion,
how carefully do you prepare for the great gift of the presence of
JESUS CHRIST in your soul? Why, I would press this on you, that the
supping with JESUS CHRIST and He with you which takes place in the
Holy Communion is the most glorious moment of your whole day. The
first Christians never thought of spending Sunday without going
first to Holy Communion. It was the special service on the Lord's
Day. It may be that some of you who used to be regular have drifted
away from this way of receiving the presence of CHRIST into the
soul. We know no better way for cherishing the presence of CHRIST in
the soul than being regular at Communion. The humblest communicant
comes away from his Communion with the thought: "CHRIST lives in me;
I live, yet not I, but CHRIST liveth in me."
Will you, then, take from me these three thoughts, Listening,
Opening, and Cherishing the Presence: Devotion, Consecration,
Communion? And if you do, I tell you what will happen to your
deanery. It will gradually become the most Christian fellowship in
London. You will be drawn to one another in a way in which you never
have been before. We want more unity in every deanery, so that the
parishes may take an interest in one another, and that all Church
gatherings may be keen and well attended as by a band of brothers
and sisters.
This service now may be the beginning of a new life for the deanery,
not only of a new fellowship, and of far greater devotion in your
work, and of a joy which you never had before. Christmas in war time
is not going to be a merry Christmas for any of us. But there is no
reason, if we understand what happiness means, why it should not be
a happy one. If these three lessons are taken home, you will as a
deanery and individually and as parishes have a joy which the world
can neither give nor take away.
VII
IMMORTALITY[12]
[12] Preached at the Parish Church, Camden Town.
"JESUS said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he
that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:
and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die."--ST.
JOHN xi. 25, 26.
"Whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die." If a man
die, shall he live again? There is no time in our history when that
has been a more pressing question than it is to-day. Men are dying
in hundreds. I can think myself of some as dear to me as if they
were my own sons, whose bodies are lying to-day in some Belgian or
French grave. And I spend much of my time in going to comfort the
widows and the mothers. If a man die, shall he live again? I wonder
whether you have ever read or heard read this little poem called
"The Army of the Dead":[13]
[13] By Barry Pain. Published in the _Westminster Gazette_.
"I dreamt that overhead
I saw in twilight grey
The Army of the Dead
Marching upon its way,
So still and passionless,
With faces so serene,
That scarcely could one guess
Such men in war had been.
"No mark of hurt they bore,
Nor smoke, nor bloody stain;
Nor suffered any more
Famine, fatigue, or pain;
Nor any lust of hate
Now lingered in their eyes--
Who have fulfilled their fate,
Have lost all enmities.
"A new and greater pride
So quenched the pride of race
That foes marched side by side
Who once fought face to face.
That ghostly army's plan
Knows but one race, one rod--
All nations there are Man,
And the one King is God.
"No longer on their ears
The bugle's summons falls;
Beyond these tangled spheres
The Archangel's trumpet calls;
And by that trumpet led
Far up the exalted sky,
The Army of the Dead
Goes by, and still goes by.
"Look upward, standing mute;
Salute!"
And will they live again? I think that what chills our faith, and
forms really the only argument that they will not live again, is
the dead appearance of the dead. I am perfectly certain it is that
that chills the faith of hundreds. The dead look so dead. There is
"no voice nor any that answers, nor any that regardeth," and all the
attempts, foolish, often even mischievous, to reach those in the
other world have ended in utter failure. And, therefore, when we
are facing the dead appearance of the dead, we are facing the only
argument there is that they do not live again.
I want to say now one or two things that I hope will help you to
have a happy view of death, to make you absolutely certain that when
a man dies he does live again.
1. And, first of all, remember how _deceptive are appearances in
Nature_. We might be absolutely certain, might we not? if we did
not know to the contrary, that this earth was quite still. It does
not seem to move in the slightest degree, but we really know that
the earth is travelling at the terrific speed of nineteen miles a
second through space--nineteen miles every second. It does look,
does it not? as if the sun was going round the earth quite quickly.
But actually the earth is going round the sun. Again, when you blow
a candle out, it does seem as if you really put it out. But do you?
It is just the one thing you do not do. You do not blow it out. The
force in the flame passes into another form. The conservation of
force or energy is one of the great truths of science. You do not
blow the candle out at all. Therefore even from this lowest ground
there is nothing whatever in science that makes it improbable that
when a man dies he shall live again. But you may go farther, without
leaving what we are taught by scientific knowledge. A man's body
is changed every seven years. Yet the man does not change. I look
back and remember myself perfectly well as a boy who went to a
certain school. And yet not a fragment of my present body went to
that school. There must be someone in me that persists, that goes
on when the body changes. If I were to cut off my hand I should
still be myself; if I were to cut off my arm, my leg, still I should
remain. And so if the whole body goes, I am still myself. If we
had not anything more than this, we could not prove that men live
after death; but there is nothing whatever in the whole teaching of
science to _disprove_ that we do. You might, for instance, notice
that an instrument in a room is perfectly silent, but that may be
because he who has been playing upon it has gone into another room.
There would be no argument in the silence of the instrument for the
non-existence of the player. I say that because one of the most
touching incidents in my life was when a poor little girl said to me
(I have often quoted this): "I feel so afraid of death. I seem to
see it coming down on me like a great shadow." For a moment or two
I prayed for the right word to say to her, and it seemed to come to
me, as it does come at these moments, from the HOLY SPIRIT. I said
to her: "You would not be afraid if I were to come and carry you
into the next room." "No," she said, "I should not." "Well, then,"
I said, "would you be afraid if someone ten thousand times kinder,
and with ten thousand times more strength, should carry you into
another room?" When I next saw her she was dead, with a smile on
her face. If the player has gone away into the next room, no wonder
the instrument does not sound. And therefore, if the body seems
dead, it only seems dead because the owner of the body has gone into
the next room. It is said in the hospital, as the nurse comes out
from behind the screen: "He is gone." He is gone--quite so, he is
gone--therefore no wonder his body looks dead.