2 Kings xix. 34. I will defend this city, to save it for mine own
sake.
The first lesson for this morning's service is of the grandest in
the whole Old Testament; grander perhaps than all, except the story
of the passage of the Red Sea, and the giving of the Law on Sinai.
It follows out the story which you heard in the first lesson for
last Sunday afternoon, of the invasion of Judea by the Assyrians.
You heard then how this great Assyrian conqueror, Sennacherib, after
taking all the fortified towns of Judah, and sweeping the whole
country with fire and sword, sent three of his generals up to the
very walls of Jerusalem, commanding King Hezekiah to surrender at
discretion, and throw himself and his people on Sennacherib's mercy;
how proudly and boastfully he taunted the Jews with their weakness;
how, like the Russian emperor now, he called in religion as the
excuse for his conquests and robberies, saying, as if God's
blessings were on them, 'Am I now come up without the Lord against
this place to destroy it? The Lord said to me, Go up against this
place to destroy it;' while all the time what he really trusted in
(as his own words showed) was what the Russian emperors trust in,
their own strength and the number of their armies.
Jerusalem was thus in utter need and danger; the vast army of the
Assyrians was encamped at Lachish, not more than ten miles off; and
however strong the walls of Jerusalem might be, and however
advantageously it might stand on its high hill, with lofty rocks and
cliffs on three sides of it, yet Hezekiah knew well that no strength
of his could stand more than a few days against Sennacherib's army.
For these Assyrians had brought the art of war to a greater
perfection than any nation of the old world: they lived for war,
and studied, it seems, only how to conquer. And they have left
behind them very remarkable proofs of what sort of men they were, of
which I think it right to tell you all; for they are most
instructive, not merely because they prove the truth of Isaiah's
account, but because they explain it, and help us in many ways to
understand his prophecies. They are a number of sculptures and
paintings, representing Sennacherib, his army, and his different
conquests, which were painted by his command, in his palace; and
having been lately discovered there, among the ruins of Nineveh,
have been brought to England, and are now in the British Museum,
while copies of many of them are in the Crystal Palace. There we
see these terrible Assyrian conquerors defeating their enemies,
torturing and slaughtering their prisoners, swimming rivers, beating
down castles, sweeping on from land to land like a devouring fire,
while over their heads fly fierce spirits who protect and prosper
their cruelties, and eagles who trail in their claws the entrails of
the slain. The very expression of their faces is frightful for its
fierceness; the countenances of a 'bitter and hasty nation,' as the
Prophet calls them, whose feet were swift to shed blood. And as for
the art of war, and their power of taking walled towns like
Jerusalem, you may see them in these pictures battering down and
undermining forts and castles, with instruments so well made and
powerful, that all other nations who came after them, for more than
two thousand years, seem to have been content to copy from them, and
hardly to have improved on the old Assyrian engines.
Such, and so terrible, they came up against Jerusalem: to attempt
to fight them would have been useless madness; and Hezekiah had but
one means of escaping from them, and that was to cast himself and
his people upon the boundless mercy, and faithfulness, and power of
God.
And Hezekiah had his answer by Isaiah the prophet: and more than an
answer. The Lord took the matter into His own hand, and showed
Sennacherib which was the stronger, his soldiers and horses and
engines, or the Lord God; and so that terrible Assyrian army came
utterly to nought, and vanished off the face of the earth.
Now, my friends, has this noble history no lesson in it for us? God
forbid! It has a lesson which ought to come nearer to our hearts
than to the hearts of any nation: for though we or our forefathers
have never been, for nearly three hundred years, in such utter need
and danger as Jerusalem was, yet be sure that we might have been so,
again and again, had it not been for the mercy of the same God who
delivered Jerusalem from the Assyrians. It is now three hundred
years ago that the Lord delivered this country from as terrible an
invader as Sennacherib himself; when He three times scattered by
storms the fleets of the King of Spain, which were coming to lay
waste this land with fire and sword: and since then no foreign foe
has set foot on English soil, and we almost alone, of all the
nations of Europe, have been preserved from those horrors of war,
even to speak of which is dreadful! Oh, my friends! we know not
half God's goodness to us!
And if you ask me, why God has so blest and favoured this land, I
can only answer--and I am not ashamed or afraid to answer--I believe
it is on account of the Church of England; it is because God has put
His name here in a peculiar way, as He did among the Jews of old,
and that He is jealous for His Church, and for the special knowledge
of His Gospel and His Law, which He has given us in our Prayer-book
and in our Church Catechism, lighting therein a candle in England
which I believe will never be put out. It is not merely that we are
a Protestant country,--great blessing as that is,--it is, I believe,
that there is something in the Church of England which there is not
in Protestant countries abroad, unless perhaps Sweden: for every
one of them (except Sweden and ourselves) has suffered, from time to
time, invading armies, and the unspeakable horrors of war. In some
of them the light of the Gospel has been quenched utterly, and in
others it lingers like a candle flickering down into the socket. By
horrible persecutions, and murder, and war, and pillage, have those
nations been tormented from time to time; and who are we, that we
should escape? Certainly from no righteousness of our own. Some
may say, It is our great wealth which has made us strong. My
friends, believe it not. Look at Spain, which was once the richest
of all nations; and did her riches preserve her? Has she not
dwindled down into the most miserable and helpless of all nations?
Has not her very wealth vanished from her, because she sold herself
to work all unrighteousness with greediness?
Some may say, It is our freedom which makes us strong. My friends,
believe it not. Freedom is a vast blessing from God, but freedom
alone will preserve no nation. How many free nations have fallen
into every sort of misery, ay, into bitter slavery, in spite of all
their freedom. How many free nations in Europe lie now in bondage,
gnawing their tongues for pain, and weary with waiting for the
deliverance which does not come? No, my friends, freedom is of
little use without something else--and that is loyalty; reverence
for law and obedience to the powers that be, because men believe
those powers to be ordained of God; because men believe that Christ
is their King, and they His ministers and stewards, and that He it
is who appoints all orders and degrees of men in His Holy Church.
True freedom can only live with true loyalty and obedience, such as
our Prayer-book, our Catechism, our Church of England preaches to
us. It is a Church meant for free men, who stand each face to face
with their Heavenly Father: but it is a Church meant also for loyal
men, who look on the law as the ordinance of God, and on their
rulers as the ministers of God; and if our freedom has had anything
to do (as no doubt it has) with our prosperity, I believe that we
owe the greater part of our freedom to the teaching and the general
tone of mind which our Prayer-book has given to us and to our
forefathers for now three hundred years.
Not that we have listened to that teaching, or acted up to it: God
knows, we have been but too like the Jews in Isaiah's time, who had
the Law of God, and yet did every man what was right in his own
eyes; we, like them, have been hypocritical; we, like them, have
neglected the poor, and the widow, and the orphan; we, like them,
have been too apt to pay tithe of mint and anise, and neglect the
weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy, and judgment. When we
read that awful first chapter of Isaiah, we may well tremble; for
all the charges which he brings against the Jews of his time would
just as well apply to us; but yet we can trust in the Lord, as
Isaiah did, and believe that He will be jealous for His land, and
for His name's sake, and not suffer the nations to say of us, 'Where
is now their God?' We can trust Him, that if He turn His hand on
us, as He did on the Jews of old, and bring us into danger and
trouble, yet it will be in love and mercy, that He may purge away
our dross, and take away all our alloy, and restore our rulers as at
the first, and our counsellors as at the beginning, that we may be
called, 'The city of righteousness, the faithful city.' True, we
must not fancy that we have any righteousness of our own, that we
merit God's favour above other people; our consciences ought to tell
us that cannot be; our Bibles tell us that is an empty boast. Did
we not hear this morning, 'Bring forth fruits meet for repentance:
and think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our
father; for God is able of these stones to raise up children to
Abraham.' But we may comfort ourselves with the thought that there
is One standing among us (though we see Him not) who will, ay, and
does, 'baptize us with the Holy Ghost and with fire, whose fan is in
His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His floor, and gather the
wheat into His garner,' for the use of our children after us, and
the generations yet unborn, while the chaff, all among us which is
empty, and light, and rotten, and useless, He will burn up (thanks
be to His holy name) with fire unquenchable, which neither the
falsehood and folly of man, nor the malice of the Devil, can put
out, but which will purge this land of all its sins.
This is our hope, and this is the cause of our thankfulness. For
who but we should be thankful this day that we are Englishmen,
members of Christ's Church of England, inhabitants of, perhaps, the
only country in Europe which is not now perplexed with fear of
change, while men's hearts fail them for dread, and looking for
those things which are coming on the earth? a country which has
never seen, as all the countries round have seen, a foreign army
trampling down their crops, burning their farms, cutting down their
trees, plundering their towns, destroying in a day the labour of
years, while women are dishonoured, men tortured to make them give
up their money, the able-bodied driven from their homes, ruined and
wanderers, and the sick and aged left to perish of famine and
neglect. My friends, all these things were going on but last year
upon the Danube. They are going on now in Asia: even with all the
mercy and moderation of our soldiers and sailors, we have not been
able to avoid inflicting some of these very miseries upon our own
enemies; and yet here we are, going about our business in peace and
safety in a land in which we and our forefathers have found, now for
many a year, that just laws make a quiet and prosperous people; that
the effect of righteousness is peace, and the fruit of
righteousness, quietness and assurance for ever;--a land in which
the good are not terrified, the industrious hampered, and the greedy
and lawless made eager and restless by expectation of change in
government; but every man can boldly and hopefully work in his
calling, and 'whatsoever his hand finds to do, do it with all his
might,' in fair hope that the money which he earns in his manhood he
will be able to enjoy quietly in his old age, and hand it down
safely to his children, and his children's children;--a land which
for hundreds of years has not felt the unspeakable horrors of war; a
land which even now is safely and peacefully gathering in its
harvest, while so many countries lie wasted with fire and sword.
Oh, my friends, who made us to differ from others, or what have we
that we did not receive? Not to ourselves do we owe our blessings;
hardly even to our wise forefathers: but to God Himself, and the
Spirit of God which was with them, and is with us still, in spite of
all our shortcomings. We owe it to our wise Constitution, to our
wise Church, the principle of which is that God is Judge and Christ
is King, in peace as well as in war, in times of quiet as well as in
times of change; I say, to our wise Constitution and to our wise
Church, which teach us that all power is of God; that all men who
have power, great or small, are His stewards; that all orders and
degrees of men in His Holy Church, from the queen on the throne to
the labourer in the harvest-field, are called by God to their
ministry and vocation, and are responsible to God for their conduct
therein. How then shall we show forth our thankfulness, not only in
our lips, but in our lives? How, but by believing that very
principle, that very truth which He has taught us, and by which
England stands, that we are God's people, and God's servants? He
has indeed showed us what is good, and our fathers before us; and
what does the Lord require of us in return, but to do the good which
He has showed us, to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly
with our God?
Oh, my friends, come frankly and joyfully to the Lord's Table this
day. Confess your sins and shortcomings to Him, and entreat Him to
enable you to live more worthily of your many blessings. Offer to
Him the sacrifice of your praise and thankfulness, imperfect though
it is, and join with angels and archangels in blessing Him for what
He is, and what He has been to you: and then receive your share of
_His_ most perfect sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, the bread
and the wine which tell you that you are members of His Church; that
His body gives you whatsoever life and strength your souls have;
that His blood washes out all your sins and shortcomings; that His
Spirit shall be renewed in you day by day, to teach you to do the
good work which He has prepared already for you, and to walk in the
old paths which have led our forefathers, and will lead us too, I
trust, safe through the chances and changes of this mortal life, and
the fall of mighty kingdoms, towards that perfect City of God which
is eternal in the heavens.