[Preached for the Chelsea National Schools.]
Ephesians v. 13. All things which are reproved are made manifest by
the light: for whatsoever is made manifest is light.
This is a noble text, a royal text; one of those texts which forbid
us to clip and cramp Scripture to suit any narrow notions of our
own; which open before us boundless vistas of God's love, of human
knowledge, of the future of mankind. There are many such texts,
many more than we fancy; but this is one which is especially
valuable at the present time; one especially fit for a sermon on
education; for it is, as it were, the scriptural charter of the
advocate of education. It enables him boldly to say, 'There is
nothing I will refuse to teach; there is nothing which man shall
forbid me to teach; there is nothing which God has made in heaven or
earth about which I will not tell the truth boldly to the young.'
For light comes from God. God is light, and in Him is no darkness
at all. And therefore He wishes to give light to His children. He
willeth not that the least of them should be kept in darkness about
any matter. Darkness is of the Devil; and he who keeps any human
soul in darkness, let his pretences be as reverent and as religious
as they may, is doing the Devil's work. Nothing, then, which God
has made will we conceal from the young.
True, there are errors of which we will not speak to the young; but
they are not made by God: they are the works of darkness. Our duty
is to teach the young what God has made, what He has done, what He
has ordained; to make them freely partakers of whatsoever light God
has given us. Then, by means of that light, they will be able to
reprove the works of darkness.
For whatsoever is made manifest is light. Our version says;
'Whatsoever makes manifest is light.' That is true, a noble truth;
but I should not be honest, if I did not confess that that is not
what St. Paul says here. He says, 'That which _is_ made manifest is
light.' On this the best commentators and scholars agree. Our old
translators have made a mistake, though in grammar only, and have
substituted one great truth for another equally great.
'Whatsoever is made manifest is light.' We should have expected
this, if we are really Christians. If we have faith in God; if we
believe that God is worthy of our faith--a God whom we can trust; in
whom is neither caprice, deceit, nor darkness, but pure and perfect
light;--if we believe that we are His children, and that He wishes
us to be, like Himself, full of light, knowing what we are and what
the world is, because we know who God is;--if we believe that He
sent His Son into the world to reveal Him, to unveil Him, to draw
aside the veil which dark superstition and ignorance had spread
between man and God, and to show us the glory of God;--if we believe
this, then we shall be ready to expect that whatsoever is made
manifest would be light; for if God be light, all that He has made
must be light also. Like must beget like, and therefore light must
beget light, good beget good, love beget love; and therefore we
ought to expect that as true and sound knowledge increases, our
views of God will be more full of light.
Yes, my friends; under the influence of true science God will be no
longer looked upon, as He was in those superstitions which we well
call dark, as a proud, angry, capricious being, as a stern
taskmaster, as one far removed from the sympathy of men: but as one
of whom we may cheerfully say, Thy name be hallowed, for Thy name is
Father; Thy kingdom come, for it is a Father's kingdom; Thy will be
done, for it is a Father's will; and in doing Thy will alone men
claim their true dignity of being the sons of God.
Our views of our fellow-men will be more cheerful also; more full of
sympathy, comprehension, charity, hope; in one word, more full of
light. If it be true (and it is true) that God loves all, then we
should expect to find in all something worthy of our love. If it be
true that God willeth that none should perish, we should expect to
find in each man something which ought not to perish. If it be true
that God stooped from heaven, yea stoops from heaven eternally, to
seek and to save that which is lost, then we should have good hope
that our efforts to seek to save that which is lost will not be in
vain. We shall have hope in every good work we undertake, for we
shall know that in it we are fellow-workers with God.
Our notions of the world--of God's whole universe, will become full
of light likewise. Do we believe that this earth was made by Jesus
Christ?--by Him who was full of grace and truth? Do we believe our
Bibles, when they tell us, that He hath given all created things a
law which cannot be broken; that they continue as at the beginning,
for all things serve Him? Do we believe this? Then we must look on
this earth, yea on the whole universe of God, as, like its Master,
full of grace and truth; not as old monks and hermits fancied it, a
dark, deceiving, evil earth, filled with snares and temptations; a
world from which a man ought to hide himself in the wilderness, and
find his own safety in ignorance. Not thus, but as the old Hebrews
thought of it, as a glorious and a divine universe, in which the
Spirit of God, the Lord and Giver of life, creates eternal melody,
bringing for ever life out of death, light out of darkness, letting
his breath go forth that new generations may be made, and herein
renew the face of the earth.
And experience teaches us that this has been the case; that for near
one thousand eight hundred years there has been a steady progress in
the mind of the Christian race, and that this progress has been in
the direction of light.
Has it not been so in our notions of God? What has the history of
theology been for near one thousand eight hundred years? Has it not
been a gradual justification of God, a gradual vindication of His
character from those dark and horrid notions of the Deity which were
borrowed from the Pagans, and from the Jewish Rabbis? a gradual
return to the perfect good news of a good God, which was preached by
St. John and by St. Paul?--In one word, a gradual manifestation of
God; and a gradual discovery that when God is manifested, behold,
God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all?
That progress, alas! is not yet perfect. We still see through a
glass darkly, and we are still too apt to impute to God Himself the
darkness of those very hearts of ours in which He is so dimly
mirrored. And there are men still, even in Protestant England, who
love darkness rather than light, and teach men that God is dark, and
in Him are only scattered spots of light, and those visible only to
a favoured few; men who, whether from ignorance, or covetousness, or
lust of power, preach such a deity as the old Pharisees worshipped,
when they crucified the Lord of Glory, and offer to deliver men,
forsooth, out of the hands of this dreadful phantom of their own
dark imaginations.
Let them be. Let the dead bury their dead, and let us follow
Christ. Believe indeed that He is the likeness of God's glory, and
the express image of God's person, and you will be safe from the
dark dreams with which they ensnare diseased and superstitious
consciences. Let them be. Light is stronger than darkness; Love
stronger than cruelty. Perfect God stronger than fallen man; and
the day shall come when all shall be light in the Lord; when all
mankind shall know God, from the least unto the greatest, and
lifting up free foreheads to Him who made them, and redeemed them by
His Son, shall in spirit and in truth, worship The Father.
Does not experience again show us that in the case of our fellow-
men, whatsoever is made manifest, is light?
How easy it was, a thousand years ago--a hundred years ago even, to
have dark thoughts about our fellow-men, simply because we did not
know them! Easy it was, while the nations were kept apart by war,
even by mere difficulty of travelling, for Christians to curse Jews,
Turks, Infidels, and Heretics, and believe that God willed their
eternal perdition, even though the glorious collect for Good Friday
gave their inhumanity the lie. Easy to persecute those to whose
opinions we could not, or would not, take the trouble to give a fair
hearing. Easy to condemn the negro to perpetual slavery, when we
knew nothing of him but his black face; or to hang by hundreds the
ragged street-boys, while we disdained to inquire into the
circumstances which had degraded them; or to treat madmen as wild
beasts, instead of taming them by wise and gentle sympathy.
But with a closer knowledge of our fellow-creatures has come
toleration, pity, sympathy. And as that sympathy has been freely
obeyed, it has justified itself more and more. The more we have
tried to help our fellow-men, the more easy we have found it to help
them. The more we have trusted them, the more trustworthy we have
found them. The more we have treated them as human beings, the more
humanity we have found in them. And thus man, in proportion as he
becomes manifest to man, is seen, in spite of all defects and sins,
to be hallowed with a light from God who made him.
And if it has been thus, in the case of God and of humanity, has it
not been equally so in the case of the physical world? Where are
now all those unnatural superstitions--the monkish contempt for
marriage and social life, the ghosts and devils; the astrology, the
magic, and other dreams of which I will not speak here, which made
this world, in the eyes of our forefathers, a doleful and dreadful
puzzle; and which made man the sport of arbitrary powers, of cruel
beings, who could torment and destroy us, but over whom we could
have no righteous power in return? Where are all those dark dreams
gone which maddened our forefathers into witch-hunting panics, and
which on the Continent created a priestly science of witch-finding
and witch-destroying, the literature whereof (and it is a large one)
presents perhaps the most hideous instance known of human cruelty,
cowardice, and cunning? Where, I ask, are those dreams now? So
utterly vanished, that very few people in this church know what a
great part they played in the thoughts of our forefathers; how
ghosts, devils, witches, magic, and astrology, filled the minds, not
only of the ignorant, but of the most learned, for centuries.
And now, behold, nature being made manifest, is light. Science has
taught men to admire where they used to dread; to rule where they
used to obey; to employ for harmless uses what they were once afraid
to touch; and, where they once saw only fiends, to see the orderly
and beneficent laws of the all-good and almighty God. Everywhere,
as the work of nature is unfolded to our eyes, we see beauty, order,
mutual use, the offspring of perfect Love as well as perfect Wisdom.
Everywhere we are finding means to employ the secret forces of
nature for our own benefit, or to ward off physical evils which
seemed to our forefathers as inevitable, supernatural; and even the
pestilence, instead of being, as was once fancied, the capricious
and miraculous infliction of some demon--the pestilence itself is
found to be an orderly result of the same laws by which the sun
shines and the herb grows; a product of nature; and therefore
subject to man, to be prevented and extirpated by him, if he will.
Yes, my friends, let us teach these things to our children, to all
children. Let us tell them to go to the Light, and see their
Heavenly Father's works manifested, and know that they are, as He
is, _Light_. I say, let us teach our children freely and boldly to
know these things, and grow up in the light of them. Let us leave
those to sneer at the triumphs of modern science, who trade upon the
ignorance and the cowardice of mankind, and who say, 'Provided you
make a child religious, what matter if he does fancy the sun goes
round the earth? Why occupy his head, perhaps disturb his simple
faith, by giving him a smattering of secular science?'
Specious enough is that argument: but shortsighted more than
enough. It is of a piece with the wisdom which shrinks from telling
children that God is love, lest they should not be sufficiently
afraid of Him; which forbids their young hearts to expand freely
towards their fellow-creatures: which puts into their mouths the
watchwords of sects and parties, and thinks to keep them purer
Christians by making them Pharisees from the cradle.
My friends, we may try to train up children as Pharisees: but we
shall discover, after twenty years of mistaken labour, that we have
only made them Sadducees. The path to infidelity in manhood is
superstition in youth. You may tell the child never to mind whether
the sun moves round the earth or not: but the day will come when he
will mind in spite of you; and if he then finds that you have
deceived him, that you have even left him in wilful ignorance, all
your moral influence over him is gone, and all your religious
lessons probably gone also. So true is it, that lies are by their
very nature self-destructive. For all truth is of God; and no lie
is of the truth, and therefore no lie can possibly help God or God's
work in any human soul. For as the child ceases to respect his
teachers he ceases to respect what they believe. His innate
instinct of truth and honour, his innate longing to believe, to look
up to some one better than himself, have been shocked and shaken
once and for all; and it may require long years, and sad years, to
bring him back to the faith of his childhood. Again I say it, we
must not fear to tell the children the whole truth; in these days
above all others which the world has yet seen. You cannot prevent
their finding out the truth: then for our own sake, let us, their
authorized teachers, be the first to tell it them. Let them in
after life connect the thought of their clergyman, their
schoolmaster, their church, with their first lessons in the free and
right use of their God-given faculties, with their first glimpses
into the boundless mysteries of art and science. Let them learn
from us to regard all their powers as their Heavenly Father's gift;
all art, all science, all discoveries, as their Heavenly Father's
revelation to men. Let them learn from us not to shrink from the
light, not to peep at it by stealth, but to claim it as their
birthright; to welcome it, to live and grow in it to the full
stature of men--rational, free, Christian English men. This, I
believe, must be the method of a truly Protestant education.
I said Protestant--I say it again. What is the watchword of
Protestantism? It is this. That no lie is of the truth. There are
those who complain of us English that we attach too high a value to
TRUTH. They say that falsehood is an evil: but not so great a one
as we fancy. We accept the imputation. We answer boldly that there
can be no greater evil than falsehood, no greater blessing than
truth; and that by God's help we will teach the same to our
children, and to our children's children. Free inquiry, religious
as well as civil liberty--this is the spirit of Protestantism. This
our fathers have bequeathed to us; this we will bequeath to our
children;--to know that all truth is of God, that no lie is of the
truth. Our enemies may call us heretics, unbelievers, rebellious,
political squabblers. They may say in scorn, You Protestants know
not whither you are going; you have broken yourselves off from the
old Catholic tree, and now, in the wild exercise of your own private
judgment, you are losing all that standard of doctrine, all unity of
belief. Our answer will be--It is not so: but even if it were so--
even if we did not know whither we were going--we should go forward
still. For though we know not, God knows. We have committed
ourselves to God, the living God; and He has led us; and we believe
that He will lead us. He has taught us; and we believe that He will
teach us still. He has prospered us, and we believe that He will
prosper us still: and therefore we will train up our children after
us to go on the path which has brought us hither, freely to use
their minds, boldly to prove all things, and hold fast that which is
good; manfully to go forward, following Truth whithersoever she may
lead them; trusting in God, the Father of Lights, asking Him for
wisdom, who giveth to all liberally, and upbraideth not; and it
shall be given them.
I have been asked to preach this day for the National Schools of
this parish. I do so willingly, because I believe that in them this
course of education is pursued, that conjoined with a sound teaching
in the principles of our Protestant church, and a wholesome and
kindly moral training, there is free and full secular instruction as
far as the ages of the children will allow. Were it not the case, I
could not plead for these schools; above all at this time, when the
battle between ancient superstition and modern enlightenment in this
land seems fast coming to a crisis and a death struggle. I could
not ask you to help any school on earth in which I had not fair
proof that the teachers taught, on physical and human as well as on
moral subjects, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth, so help them God.