tares, or what some would account tares, which must be left to
after-times to adjust, as best they can, with the pure wheat which
is gathered into the garner of God. There were imitators, parasites,
exaggerators, of the genuine growth, which sometimes almost choked
the original seed and disfigured its usefulness and its value;
but of this we do not speak here. Gather them up into bundles and
burn them. We speak only of him and of his best self. Nor would we
now discourse at length on those brilliant gifts which gave such
a charm to his writings, and such an unexampled splendor to his
conversation. All the world knows how the words and the deeds of
former times became, as Luther describes in the apostle's language,
"not dead things, but living creatures with hands and feet." Every
detail was presented before us, penetrated through and through with
the fire of poetic imagination, which was the more powerful because
it derived its warmth from facts gathered together by the most
untiring industry. Who can ever, from this time forward, picture the
death of Louis XVI, or the flight of the king and queen, without
remembering the thrill of emotion with which, through the "History
of the French Revolution," they became acquainted with him for the
first time? Who can wander among the ruins of St. Edmunds's at
Bury without feeling that they are haunted in every corner by the
lifelike figure of the Abbot Samson, as he is drawn from the musty
chronicle of Jocelyn? Who can read the letters and the speeches of
Cromwell, now made almost intelligible to modern years, without
gratitude to the unwearied zeal which gathered together from every
corner those relics of departed greatness? What German can fail to
acknowledge that, not even in that much-enduring, all-exhausting,
country of research and labor--not even there has there been raised
such a monument to Frederick the Second, called the Great, as by the
simple Scotchman who, for the sake of describing what he considered
the last hero-king, almost made himself, for the time, a soldier and
a statesman?
But, on these and many like topics, this is not the time or place to
speak. It is for us to ask, as I have said, What was the good seed
which he sowed in the field of our hearts, and in what respects we
shall be, or ought to be, the better for the sower having lived and
died among us?
It was customary for those who honored him to speak of him as a
prophet. And, if we take the word in its largest sense, he truly
deserved the name. He was a prophet, in the midst of an untoward
generation: his prophet's mantle was his rough Scotch dialect, and
his own peculiar diction, and his own secluded manner of life. He
was a prophet, most of all, in the emphatic utterance of truth
which no one else, or hardly anyone else, ventured to deliver,
and which, he felt, was a message of good to a world which sorely
needed them. He stood almost alone, among the men of his time, in
opposing a stern, inflexible resistance to the whole drift and
pressure of modern days toward exalting popular opinion and popular
movements as oracles to be valued above the judgment of the few,
above the judgment of the wise, the strong, and the good. Statesmen,
men of letters, preachers, have all bowed their heads under the
yoke of this, as they believed, irresistible domination, under the
impression that the first duty of the chiefest man is, not to lead,
but to be led--the necessary conditions of success, to ascertain
which way the current flows, and to swim with it as far as it will
bear us. To his mind all this proved an insane delusion. That
expression of his, which has become, like many of his expressions,
almost proverbial in the minds of those who like them least, will
express the attitude of his mind, his answer to the question, "What
are the people of England?" "Thirty millions--mostly fools." The
whole framework and fabric of his mind was built up on the belief
that there are not many wise, not many noble minds, not many
destined by the supreme Ruler of the universe to rule their fellows;
that few are chosen; that "strait is the gate and narrow is the
way, and few there be that find it." But, when the few appear, when
the great and good present themselves it is the duty and the wisdom
of the multitude to seek their guidance. A Luther, a Cromwell, a
Goethe, were to him the born kings of men. This was his doctrine of
the work of heroes; this, right or wrong, was the mission of his
life. It is, all things considered, a fact much to be meditated
upon; it is, all things considered, a seed which is worthy of all
cultivation.
There is another feeling of the age to which he also stood
resolutely opposed, or, rather, a feeling of the age which was
resolutely opposed to him, the tendency to divide men into two
hostile camps, parted from each other by watchwords and flags,
and banners and tokens, which we commonly designate by the name
of party. He, perchance, disparaged unduly the usefulness, the
necessity, of party organization or party spirit as a mode of the
secondary machinery by which the great affairs of the world are
carried on; but he was a signal example of a man who not only could
be measured by no party standard, but who absolutely disregarded
it. He never, during the whole course of his long life, took any
active part, never, I believe, voted in those elections which, to
most of us, are the very breath of our nostrils. For its own sake
he cherished whatever was worth preserving; for its own sake he
hailed whatever improvement was worth effecting. He cared not under
what name or by what man the preservation or the improvement was
achieved. This, too, is an ideal which few can attain, which still
fewer attempt; but it is something to have had one man who was
possest by it as a vital and saving truth. And such a man was the
Prophet of Chelsea. But there was that in him which, in spite of his
own contemptuous description of the people, in spite of his scorn
for the struggles of party, endeared him, in no common degree, even
to those who most disagreed with him--even to the humblest classes
of our great community. He was an eminent instance of how a man can
trample on the most cherished idols of the market-place, if yet he
shows that he has in his heart of hearts the joys, the sorrows, the
needs of his toiling, suffering fellow creatures. In this way they
insensibly felt drawn toward that tender, fervid nature which was
weak when they were weak, which burned with indignation when they
suffered wrong. They felt that, if he despised them, it was in love;
if he refused to follow their bidding, it was because he believed
that their bidding was an illusion.
And for that independence of party of which I spoke, there was also
the countervailing source, that no man could for a moment dream that
it arose from indifference to his country. He was no monk; he was
no hermit dwelling apart from the passions which sway the destinies
of a great nation. There is no man living to whom the thrift, the
industry, the valor of his countrymen were so deeply precious. There
is no man living, to whom, had it been possible for him to have
been aroused from the torpor of approaching death, the news would
have been more welcome that the Parliament of England had been in
the last week saved from becoming a byword and reproach and shame
among the nations of the earth. And all this arose out of a frame
of mind which others have shared with him, but which, perhaps, few
have been able to share to the same extent. The earnestness, almost
the very word is his own, the earnestness, the seriousness, with
which he approached the great problems of all human life, have made
us feel them also. The tides of fashion have swept over the minds
of many who once were swayed by his peculiar tones; but there must
be many a young man whose first feelings of generosity and public
spirit were roused within him by the cry as if from the very depths
of his heart, "Where, now, are your Hengists and your Horsas? Where
are those leaders who should be leading their people to useful
employments, to distant countries, where are they? Preserving their
game!" Before his withering indignation all false pretensions, all
excuses for worthless idleness and selfish luxury, fell away. The
word which he invented to describe them has sunk, perhaps, into cant
and hollowness; but it had a truth when first he uttered it. Those
falsities were shams, and they who practised them were guilty of the
sin which the Bible, in scathing scorn, calls hypocrisy.
And whence came this earnestness? Deep down in the bottom of his
soul it springs from his firm conviction that there was a higher, a
better world than that visible to our outward senses. All, whether
called saints, in the middle ages, or Puritans, in the seventeenth
century, or what you like in our own day, he revered them, with all
their eccentricities, as bright and learned examples of those who
"sacrificed their lives to their higher natures, their worser to
their better parts." In addressing the students of Edinburgh, he
bade them remember that the deep recognition of the eternal justice
of heaven, and the unfailing punishment of crimes against the law
of God, is at the origin and foundation of all the histories of
nations. No nation which did not contemplate this wonderful universe
with an awe-stricken and reverential belief that there was a great
unknown, omnipotent, all-wise, and all-just Being superintending
all men and all interests in it, no nation ever came to very much,
nor did any man either, who forgot that. If a man forgot that, he
forgot the most important part of his mission in the world. So he
spoke, and the ground of his hope for Europe--of his hope, we may
say, against hope--was that, after all, in any commonwealth where
the Christian religion exists, nay, in any commonwealth where it
has once existed, public or private virtue, the basis of all good,
never can become extinct; but in every new age, and even from the
deepest decline, there is a chance, and, in the course of ages, the
certainty, of renovation. The divine depths of sorrow, the sanctuary
of sorrow, the life and death of the divine Man, were, to him,
Christianity. We stand, as it were, beside him whilst the grave
has not yet closed over those flashing eyes, over those granite
features, over that weird form on which we have so often looked,
whilst the silence of death has fallen on that house which was once
so frequented and so honored. We call up memories which occurred
to ourselves. One such, in the far past, may, perchance, come with
peculiar force to those whose work is appointed in this place. Many
years ago, whilst I belonged to another cathedral, I met him in St.
James' Park, and walked with him to his own house. It was during
the Crimean war; and after hearing him denounce, with his vigorous
and, perhaps, exaggerated earnestness, the chaos and confusion into
which our administration had fallen, and the doubt and distrust
which pervaded all classes at the time, I ventured to ask him,
"What, under the circumstances, is your advice to a canon of an
English cathedral?" He grimly laughed at my question. He paused
for a moment and then answered, in homely and well-known words;
but which were, as it happened, especially fitted to situations
like that in which he was asked to give his counsel--"Whatsoever
thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might." That is, no
doubt, the lesson he leaves to each one of us in this place, and
also to this weary world--the world of which he felt the weariness
as age and infirmity grew upon him--the lesson which, in his more
active days, he practised to the very letter. He is at rest, he is
at rest; delivered from that burden of the flesh against which he
chafed and fretted: he is at rest! In his own words, "Babylon, with
its deathening inanity, rages on to the dim innocuous and unheeded
forever." From the "silence of the eternities," of which he so often
spoke, there still sound, and will long sound, the tones of that
marvelous voice.
Let us take one tender expression, written three or four years
ago--one plaintive yet manful thought, which has never yet reached
the public eye: "Three nights ago, stepping out after midnight and
looking up at the stars, which were clear and numerous, it struck
me with a strong, new kind of feeling: 'In a little while I shall
have seen you also for the last time. God Almighty's own theater of
immensity--the infinite made palpable and visible to me--that also
will be closed--flung too in my face--and I shall never behold death
any more.' The thought of the eternal deprivation even of this, tho
this is such a nothing in comparison, was sad and painful to me. And
then a second feeling rose upon me: 'What if Omnipotence that has
developed in me these appetites, these reverences, these infinite
affections, should actually have said, Yes, poor mortal, such as
you who have gone so far, shall be permitted to go further. Hope!
despair not!' God's will, not ours, be done."
Yes, God's will be done for us and for him. The Lord gave, and the
Lord taketh away.
VAUGHAN
GOD CALLING TO MAN
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
CHARLES JOHN VAUGHAN, Church of England divine and educator, was
born at Leicester in 1816, and educated at Rugby under Dr. Arnold.
He was ordained in 1841 and in 1844 elected headmaster of Harrow.
But the post which gave him the best opportunity as a preacher, was
that of Master of the Temple which he occupied from 1869 to 1894. He
was a leader in the Broad Church party and his sermons are marked by
simplicity of diction, deep sincerity, and rare spiritual insight.
He died at Llandoff, of which he had been dean since 1879, in 1897.
VAUGHAN
1816-1897
GOD CALLING TO MAN
_And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art
thou?_--Genesis iii., 9.
"I wish," said a great man of our day, "that some one would preach
under the dome of St. Paul's, on the text, 'Where art thou, Adam?'"
A noble subject, my brethren, when we think of it! But who is
equal to the task of handling it? The work of God is quick and
powerful--may it be so now, He Himself using it, and prospering it
in the thing whereto He sent it.
I shall ask you to look very closely into the text itself. I need
not tell anyone whence it comes; from the midst of that awful story
which tells us of the first sin, and of its immediate consequences.
That same story is in substance acted over and over again in
every marked sin that is ever done by any man: the same mode of
temptation; first inward question, "Yea, hath God said? is this
thing which I wish to do really forbidden?" and then the thought
of the hardship; "God doth know that this which He has forbidden
is something desirable, something delightful; it is hard that it
should be denied me;" and then the growing confidence, "I shall not
surely die for it;" and then the last review of all the advantages,
"good for food--pleasant to the eyes--to be desired to make me
wise, or to make me happy, or to make me independent;" and then the
act itself--the taking and eating; and then the sense of leanness
entering into the very soul. But that is not all which sin brings
after it. The next tells us of a summons, and after the context of
an arraigning, and an examination, and at first a self-excusing,
and then of a conviction, and a silencing, and a judgment: only one
little word of comfort, one little streak of light, amidst all the
sorrow, and all the curse, and all the gloom.
But I intend to sever the text now somewhat from its context, and to
look into it, with you, by itself alone. "The Lord God called unto
Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?" There is the speaker--God,
the Lord God. There is the person spoken to--Adam, the first man;
Adam, from whom we all sprang; the father, and the likeness, and
the representative of us all. There is the nature of the address--a
call, a summons, decisive, authoritative, majestic. There are, at
last, the words uttered--few and plain, yet, when looked into,
big with meaning--"Where art thou?" And we shall not end without
appealing to all of you, to each of you separately, to answer that
question; to answer it truly, as we shall all have to answer it one
day.
Now I shall not occupy your time, or use many words, about the
speaker. There are those who profess to doubt the being of God;
and there are those, on the other hand, who profess to prove it. I
shall not suspect you of the one, and I shall not endeavor to do the
other. I am quite sure that in your inmost hearts you do not doubt
His being; and I am quite certain that, if you do, I cannot prove
it to you. The being of God is not a matter of argument, it is a
matter of instinct. The doubt or denial of it may pass muster with
scoffing men in robust health and prosperous circumstances; but nine
out of ten of those same men, finding themselves in sudden danger,
by land or sea, from accident or disease, will be heard praying:
they may conceal it, they may disown it, they may be ashamed of
it afterwards--but they did it: and that prayer was a witness,
an unimpeachable witness, that down in the depths of their heart
there was a belief in God all the time; in their works alike and in
their words they deny Him, but in their inmost souls, like the very
spirits of evil, they believe and tremble. God, then, speaks here. I
tell you not who He is: you know it; you know that there is such a
person, your creator, your ruler, your judge: happy if you know also
that He is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!
Now, to whom does He here speak? I will say two things of His call
as here described: First, that it is an individual call; and,
secondly, that it is a universal call. We try to make God's call
a vague one. It is for some one, no doubt; but every natural man
tries to put it away from himself. In hearing a sermon, everyone
thinks how suitable this reproof or that warning is to his neighbor;
he goes away to wish that such a person had heard it, to hope that
such a person listened to it; but the person who thus hopes, and
probably, too, the person thus hoped about, never thought of taking
it home--never said to himself, tho he was but too ready to say
to another, "Thou art the man." Nevertheless, God's call is an
individual one. The only use of it is to be so. O that we could
hear it in that spirit! O that we could practise ourselves in so
hearing it! Where art thou? not, where is he? still less, generally,
where are they? Read the Bible thus, my brethren, as written for
you, for your learning, for your reproof, for your comfort--yours
individually and personally--and you will never need it in vain.
But this individual call is also universal. Let us not flatter
ourselves that we are more to God than others are: it is a very
common, tho a well-disguised notion. We think that our souls are
more important than any others; and that is the least form of the
error: but we go on to think our faults are more excusable, our
sins more venial, than those of others; we go on to think that God
will spare us when He does not spare others; we go on to think that
our virtues are greater, our self-denials more meritorious, than
those of others; and by this time we have got farther away from
the truth and the gospel, than the poor self-condemning sinner who
feels, and denies it not, that he is yet in the gall of bitterness,
in the very bond of iniquity.
The call of God, like the care of God, is universal. It is to
the race. It is to His creatures. Hear the word--"The Lord God
called unto Adam, and said unto him." If it had been, God called
to Abraham, or to Moses, or to David, there would have been some
particularity, perhaps some limitation, in the summons; but none of
us can say he is not included when Adam is spoken to; he is, indeed,
the father of us all: of him we all come. What God says to him, He
certainly says to us--to us all, as to each of us.
But we ask, perhaps, thirdly: How does God call to us? I will say,
in three ways. He calls within--in conscience. Can you tell me what
that thing is in each of us which seems at once so intimate with us,
yet so independent of us, that it knows everything we do, or say,
or even think, and yet sits in judgment upon us for everything? Is
it not a strange thing? We should expect that the whole man would
move together; that, if we did a thing, if we said a thing, if we
thought a thing, we should go along with it, we should approve that
thing: but is it so? No; we carry about within us a whole machinery
of judicature; a witness, a jury, a judge, yes, an executioner, too;
and, strange to say, it is in early life that the process is most
perceptible, just while we are most ignorant, least reflecting,
least logical in our judgments. It is the work of many men through
life to stifle the voice within, and at last they almost succeed:
but do not tell me that you have no such voice within--certainly you
will not say that you never had it; and I will tell you what that
voice is, or was. It was the voice of the Lord God within, calling
to Adam, and saying, "Where art thou?"
He calls also without--in providence. I really know not whether
this be not the most persuasive of all His modes of calling to us;
certainly it is the most authoritative of all. Conscience may be
stifled, but providence grasps us very tightly--we cannot escape
from it. Tell me, who caused you to be born where and what you were?
Who settled that you should be born in this country and not in that?
Who decided that you were to have poor parents or rich, Christian
parents or un-Christian? Who has managed your circumstances for
you since you had a being? Who gave you, who has continued to give
you, your vigor of mind and body, your power of enjoyment, or your
experience of kindness, or your principles of judgment, or your
instincts of affection? Who took away from you that friend for
whom you are now mourning--that parent, that brother, that sister,
that wife, that child? Yes, we may forget it, or we may fret under
it, but in the hands of a providence we all are; we are utterly
powerless in that grasp: and whether we will believe it or no, that
power is a voice too--a call from God without, even as conscience is
His voice and His call within.
Once more, God calls from above also--in revelation. My friend,
believest thou the Scriptures? I know that thou believest. Your
presence here seems to say that you do. And yet in this multitude
how many must there be who do not in their hearts believe! Let me
rather say, who do not in their lives believe; for in your hearts I
think you do: sure I am that there are some parts of the Bible which
you cannot read and disbelieve; of course you may leave them unread,
that is always possible--easier than to read them--but I do not
think you can read the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, for example,
in the Old Testament, and I do not think you can read one chapter of
St. John's Gospel in the New Testament, and shut the book, saying,
"There is nothing in it." I suspect that is why we so often leave
the Bible unread--just because we believe it; we feel, when we do
read it, that it is God's voice, and we do not want to hear that
voice. The Bible is more its own witness than we like oftentimes to
admit.
"Who that has felt its glance of dread
Thrill through his heart's remotest cells,
About his path, about his bed,
Can doubt what spirit in it dwells?"
God speaks; and speaks to us--to each of us and to all of us; and
speaks, chiefly in three ways--in conscience, in providence, in
revelation: and now, fourthly, what is His call? How is it here
briefly exprest? It might have been put, it is put in the Bible, in
different forms--but how is it here exprest? "The Lord called unto
Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?" This is a call, first,
to attention. As tho God had said, Listen to Me. That is the first
step in all religion. What we want first is a spirit of attention.
It is the great art of our enemy to keep our thoughts off religion.
That is the meaning of the overwhelming cares of life. The devil
would occupy our whole time and thoughts with something which is
not, and has nothing (as he persuades us) to do with God. That is
the meaning of the excessive amusements of life. The cares of life
are not enough to engross the attention of all men always; and
therefore the enemy provides something which shall alternate with
them for some men, and take the place of them for others. It is this
art which God, in His mercy, in His long-suffering, in His desire
that we should not perish, has to counteract by His divine skill. He
takes a man aside now and then, from time to time--blest be His name
for it!--and makes him listen. He interposes by some chastisement,
some sickness, some bereavement, and constrains him to hearken to
what He, the Lord God, has to say concerning him and to him. This is
the first point gained. Behold, he listens! better still, Behold,
he prayeth! It is a call, next, to the recognition of God's being,
and of our responsibility to Him. "Where art thou?" It is as if He
had said, I am, and thou art Mine. As if He has said, I have a right
to know about thee, and thou canst not evade Me. As if He had said,
I am about, now, to enter into judgment with thee: give an account
of thy stewardship. Yes, my brethren, it is an awful moment, when a
man first becomes distinctly conscious that God is, and is something
to him. He may have talked of God before: he may have fancied that
he knew all about Him: he may even have prayed before, and confest
himself before, and asked grace and help before: but now, for the
first time, he sees how much more there is in all this than he has
yet dreamed of; and the only words which he can find at all to
express his new feeling, are those of the patriarch of old--"I have
heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth
thee: wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes."