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 thon 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."