contained in this verse, we must just try to bear in mind what this
world would be without the thought of a resurrection. If we could
conceive an unselfish man looking upon this world of desolation with
that infinite compassion which all the brave and good feel, what
conception could he have but that of defeat, and failure, and
sadness--the sons of man mounting into a bright existence, and one
after another falling back into darkness and nothingness, like
soldiers trying to mount an impracticable breach, and falling back
crushed and mangled into the ditch before the bayonets and the
rattling fire of their conquerors. Misery and guilt, look which way
you will, till the heart gets sick with looking at it.
Brethren, until a man looks on evil till it seems to him almost like a
real personal enemy rejoicing over the destruction that it has made,
he can scarcely conceive the deep rapture which rushed into the mind
of the Apostle Paul when he remembered that a day was coming when all
this was to be reversed. A day was coming, and it was the day of
reality for which he lived, ever present and ever certain, when this
sad world was to put _off for ever_ its changefulness and its misery,
and the grave was to be robbed of its victory, and the bodies were to
come forth purified by their long sleep. He called all this a victory,
because he felt that it was a real battle that has to be fought and
won before that can be secured. One battle has been fought by Christ,
and another battle, most real and difficult, but yet a conquering one,
is to be fought by us. He hath imparted to us the virtue of His
wrestlings, and the strength of His victory. So that, when the body
shall rise again, the power of the law to condemn is gone, because we
have learned to love the law.
And now to conclude all this, there are but two things which remain to
say. In the first place, brethren, if we would be conquerors, we must
realize God's love in Christ. Take care not to be under the law.
Constraint never yet made a conqueror: the utmost it can do is to make
either a rebel or a slave. Believe that God loves you. He gave a
triumphant demonstration of it in the Cross. Never shall we conquer
self till we have learned _to love_. My Christian brethren, let us
remember our high privilege. Christian life, so far as it deserves the
name, is victory. We are not going forth to mere battle--we are going
forth to conquer. To gain mastery over self, and sin, and doubt, and
fear: till the last coldness, coming across the brow, tells us that
all is over, and our warfare accomplished--that we are safe, the
everlasting arms beneath us--_that_ is our calling. Brethren beloved,
do not be content with a slothful, dreamy, uncertain struggle. You are
to conquer, and the banner under which we are to win is not Fear, but
Love. "The strength of sin is the law;" the victory is by keeping
before us God in Christ.
Lastly, there is need of encouragement for those of us whose faith is
not of the conquering, but the timid kind. There are some whose hearts
will reply to all this, Surely victory is not always a Christian's
portion. Is there no cold dark watching in Christian life--no struggle
when victory seems a mockery to speak of--no times when light and life
seem feeble, and Christ is to us but a name, and death a reality?
"Perfect love casteth out fear," but who has it? Victory is by faith,
but, oh God, who will tell us what this faith _is_ that men speak of
as a thing so easy; and how we are to get it! You tell us to pray for
faith, but how shall we pray in earnest unless we first have the very
faith we pray for?
My Christian brethren, it is just to this deepest cry of the human
heart that it is impossible to return a full answer. All that is
true. To feel Faith is the grand difficulty of life. Faith is a deep
impression of God and God's love, and personal trust in it. It is easy
to say "Believe and thou shalt be saved," but well we know it is
easier said than done. We cannot say how men are to _get_ faith. It is
God's gift, almost in the same way that genius is. You cannot work
_for_ faith; you must have it first, and then work _from_ it.
But brethren beloved, we can say, Look up, though we know not how the
mechanism of the will which directs the eye is to be put in motion; we
can say, Look to God in Christ, though we know not how men are to
obtain faith to do it. Let us be in earnest. Our polar star is the
love of the Cross. Take the eye off that, and you are in darkness and
bewilderment at once. Let us not mind what is past. Perhaps it is all
failure, and useless struggle, and broken resolves. What then? Settle
this first, brethren, Are you in earnest? If so, though your faith be
weak and your struggles unsatisfactory, you may begin the hymn of
triumph _now_, for victory is pledged. "Thanks be to God, which" not
_shall_ give, but "_giveth_ us the victory through our Lord Jesus
Christ."
XVIII.
_Preached June 20, 1852._
MAN'S GREATNESS AND GOD'S GREATNESS.
"For thus saith the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth Eternity,
whose Name is Holy. I dwell in the high and holy place--with him
also that is of a contrite and humble spirit."--Isaiah lvii. 15.
The origin of this announcement seems to have been the state of
contempt in which religion found itself in the days of Isaiah. One of
the most profligate monarchs that ever disgraced the page of sacred
history, sat upon the throne of Judah. His court was filled with men
who recommended themselves chiefly by their licentiousness. The altar
was forsaken. Sacrilegious hands had placed the abominations of
heathenism in the Holy Place; and Piety, banished from the State, the
Church, and the Royal court, was once more as she had been before, and
will be again, a wanderer on the face of the earth.
Now, however easy it may be to contemplate such a state of things at a
distance, it never takes place in a man's own day and time, without
suggesting painful perplexities of a twofold nature. In the first
place suspicions respecting God's character; and, in the second place,
misgivings as to his own duty. For a faithless heart whispers, Is it
worth while to suffer for a sinking cause? Honour, preferment,
grandeur, follow in the train of unscrupulous conduct. To be strict in
goodness, is to be pointed at and shunned. To be no better than one's
neighbours is the only way of being at peace. It seems to have been to
such a state as this that Isaiah was commissioned to bring light. He
vindicated God's character by saying that He is "the High and Lofty
One that inhabiteth Eternity." He encouraged those who were trodden
down, to perseverance, by reminding them that real dignity is
something very different from present success. God dwells with him,
"that is of a contrite and humble spirit" We consider
I. That in which the greatness of God consists.
II. That in which man's greatness consists.
The first measurement, so to speak, which is given us of God's
greatness, is in respect of Time. He inhabiteth Eternity. There are
some subjects on which it would be good to dwell, if it were only for
the sake of that enlargement of mind which is produced by their
contemplation. And eternity is one of these, so that you cannot
steadily fix the thoughts upon it without being sensible of a peculiar
kind of elevation, at the same time that you are humbled by a personal
feeling of utter insignificance. You have come in contact with
something so immeasurable--beyond the narrow range of our common
speculations--that you are exalted by the very conception of it. Now
the only way we have of forming any idea of eternity is by going, step
by step, up to the largest measures of time we know of, and so
ascending, on and on, till we are lost in wonder. We cannot grasp
eternity, but we can learn something of it by perceiving, that, rise
to what portion of time we will, eternity is vaster than the vastest.
We take up for instance, the history of our own country, and then,
when we have spent months in mastering the mere outline of those great
events which, in the slow course of revolving centuries, have made
England what she is, her earlier ages seem so far removed from our own
times that they appear to belong to a hoary and most remote antiquity.
But then, when you compare those times with even the existing works of
man, and when you remember that, when England was yet young in
civilization, the pyramids of Egypt were already grey with 1500 years,
you have got another step which impresses you with a doubled amount of
vastness. Double that period, and you come to the far distant moment
when the present aspect of this world was called, by creation, out of
the formless void in which it was before.
Modern science has raised us to a pinnacle of thought beyond even
this. It has commanded us to think of countless ages in which that
formless void existed before it put on the aspect of its present
creation. Millions of years before God called the light day, and the
darkness night, there was, if science speaks true, creation after
creation called into existence, and buried in its own ruins upon the
surface of this earth. And then, there was a time beyond even
this--there was a moment when this earth itself, with all its
countless creations and innumerable ages, did not exist. And, again,
in that far back distance it is more than conceivable, it seems by the
analogy of God's dealings next to certain, that ten thousand worlds
may have been called into existence, and lasted their unnumbered ages,
and then perished in succession. Compared with these stupendous
figures, 6,000 years of _our_ planet sink into nothingness. The mind
is lost in dwelling on such thoughts as these. When you have
penetrated far, far back, by successive approximations, and still see
the illimitable distance receding before you as distant as before,
imagination absolutely gives way, and you feel dizzy and bewildered
with new strange thoughts, that have not a name.
But this is only one aspect of the case. It looks only to time past.
The same overpowering calculations wait us when we bend our eyes on
that which is to come. Time stretches back immeasurably, but it also
stretches on and on for ever. Now it is by such a conception as this
that the inspired prophet attempts to measure the immeasurable of God.
All that eternity, magnificent as it is, never was without an
Inhabitant. Eternity means nothing by itself. It merely expresses the
existence of the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth it. We make a
fanciful distinction between eternity and time--there is no real
distinction. We are in eternity at this moment. That has begun to be
with us which never began with God. Our only measure of time is by the
succession of ideas. If ideas flow fast, and many sights and many
thoughts pass by us, time seems lengthened. If we have the simple
routine of a few engagements, the same every day, with little variety,
the years roll by us so fast that we cannot mark them. It is not so
with God. There is no succession of ideas with Him. Every possible
idea is present with Him now. It was present with Him ten thousand
years ago. God's dwelling-place is that eternity which has neither
past nor future, but one vast, immeasurable present.
There is a second measure given us of God in this verse. It is in
respect of Space. He dwelleth in the High and Lofty place. He dwelleth
moreover, in the most insignificant place--even the heart of man. And
the idea by which the prophet would here exhibit to us the greatness
of God is that of His eternal Omnipresence. It is difficult to say
which conception carries with it the greatest exaltation--that of
boundless space or that of unbounded time. When we pass from the tame
and narrow scenery of our own country, and stand on those spots of
earth in which nature puts on her wilder and more awful forms, we are
conscious of something of the grandeur which belongs to the thought of
space. Go where the strong foundations of the earth lie around you in
their massive majesty, and mountain after mountain rears its snow to
heaven in a giant chain, and then, when this bursts upon you for the
first time in life, there is that peculiar feeling which we call, in
common language, an enlargement of ideas. But when we are told that
the sublimity of those dizzy heights is but a nameless speck in
comparison with the globe of which they form the girdle; and when we
pass on to think of that globe itself as a minute spot in the mighty
system to which it belongs, so that our world might be annihilated,
and its loss would not be felt; and when we are told that eighty
millions of such systems roll in the world of space, to which our own
system again is as nothing; and when we are again pressed with the
recollection that beyond those furthest limits creative power is
exerted immeasurably further than eye can reach, or thought can
penetrate; then, brethren, the awe which comes upon the heart is only,
after all, a tribute to a _portion_ of God's greatness.
Yet we need not science to teach us this. It is the thought which
oppresses very childhood--the overpowering thought of space. A child
can put his head upon his hands, and think and think till it reaches
in imagination some far distant barrier of the universe, and still the
difficulty presents itself to his young mind, "And what is beyond that
barrier?" and the only answer is "The high and lofty place." And this
brethren, is the inward seal with which God has stamped Himself upon
man's heart. If every other trace of Deity has been expunged by the
fall, these two at least defy destruction--the thought of Eternal
Time, and the thought of Immeasurable Space.
The third measure which is given us of God respects His character.
His name is Holy. The chief idea which this would convey to us is
separation from evil. Brethren, there is perhaps a time drawing near
when those of us who shall stand at His right hand, purified from all
evil taint, shall be able to comprehend absolutely what is meant by
the Holiness of God. At present, with hearts cleaving down to earth,
and tossed by a thousand gusts of unholy passion, we can only form a
dim conception _relatively_ of that which it implies. None but the
pure can understand purity. The chief knowledge which we have of God's
holiness comes from our acquaintance with unholiness. We know what
impurity is--God is _not_ that. We know what injustice is--God is
_not_ that. We know what restlessness, and guilt, and passion are, and
deceitfulness, and pride, and waywardness--all these we know. God is
none of these. And this is our chief acquaintance with His character.
We know what God is _not_. We scarcely can be rightly said to know,
that is to feel, what God _is_. And therefore, this is implied in the
very name of holiness. Holiness in the Jewish sense means simply
separateness. From all that is wrong, and mean, and base, our God is
for ever separate.
There is another way in which God gives to us a conception of what
this holiness implies. Tell us of His justice, His truth, His
loving-kindness. All these are cold abstractions. They convey no
distinct idea of themselves to our hearts. What we wanted was, that
these should be exhibited to us in tangible reality. And it is just
this which God has done. He has exhibited all these attributes, not in
the light of _speculation_, but in the light of _facts_. He has given
us His own character in all its delicacy of colouring in the history
of Christ. Love, Mercy, Tenderness, Purity--these are no mere names
when we see them brought out in the human actions of our Master.
Holiness is only a shadow to our minds, till it receives shape and
substance in the life of Christ. All this character of holiness is
intelligible to us in Christ. "No man hath seen God at any time, the
only begotten of the Father He hath declared Him."
There is a third light in which God's holiness is shown to us, and
that is in the sternness with which He recoils from guilt. When Christ
died for man, I know what God's love means; and when Jesus wept human
tears over Jerusalem, I know what God's compassion means; and when the
stern denunciations of Jesus rung in the Pharisees' ears, I can
comprehend what God's indignation is; and when Jesus stood calm before
His murderers, I have a conception of what serenity is. Brethren,
revelation opens to us a scene beyond the grave, when this shall be
exhibited in full operation. There will be an everlasting banishment
from God's presence of that impurity on which the last efforts have
been tried in vain. It will be a carrying out of this sentence by a
law that cannot be reversed--"Depart from me, ye cursed." But it is
quite a mistake to suppose that this is only a matter of revelation.
Traces of it we have now on this side the sepulchre. Human life is
full of God's recoil from sin. In the writhings of a heart which has
been made to possess its own iniquities--in the dark spot which guilt
leaves upon the conscience, rising up at times in a man's gayest
moments, as if it will not come out--in the restlessness and the
feverishness which follow the efforts of the man who has indulged
habits of sin too long,--in all these there is a law repelling
wickedness from the presence of the Most High,--which proclaims that
God is holy.
Brethren, it is in these that the greatness of God consists--Eternal
in Time--Unlimited in Space--Unchangeable--Pure in character--His
serenity and His vastness arise from His own perfections.
We are to consider, in the second place, the greatness of man.
1. The nature of that greatness.
2. The persons who are great.
Now, this is brought before us in the text in this one fact, that man
has been made a habitation of the Deity--"I dwell with him that is of
a contrite and humble spirit." There is in the very outset this
distinction between what is great in God and what is great in man. To
be independent of everything in the universe is God's glory, and to be
independent is man's shame. All that God has, He has from Himself--all
that man has, He has from God. And the moment man cuts himself off
from God, that moment he cuts himself off from all true grandeur.
There are two things implied in Scripture, when it is said that God
dwells with man. The first is that peculiar presence which He has
conferred upon the members of His church. Brethren, we presume not to
define what that Presence is, and how it dwells within us--we are
content to leave it as a mystery. But this we know, that something of
a very peculiar and supernatural character takes place in the heart of
every man upon whom the gospel has been brought to bear with power.
"Know ye not," says the Apostle, "that your bodies are the temples of
the Holy Ghost." And again in the Epistle to the Ephesians--"In Christ
ye are builded for an habitation of God through the Spirit." There is
something in these expressions which refuses to be explained away.
They leave us but one conclusion, and that is--that in all those who
have become Christ's by faith, God personally and locally has taken up
His dwelling-place.
There is a second meaning attached in Scripture to the expression God
dwells in man. According to the first meaning, we understand it in the
most plain and literal sense the words are capable of conveying.
According to the second, we understand His dwelling in a figurative
sense, implying this--that He gives an acquaintance with Himself to
man. So, for instance, when Judas asked, "Lord, how is it, that Thou
wilt manifest Thyself to us and not to the world?" Our Redeemer's
reply was this--"If a man love me, he will keep my words, and my
Father will love him, and We will come unto him and make Our abode
with him." In the question it was asked _how_ God would manifest
Himself to His servants. In the answer it was shown _how_ He would
make His abode with them. And if the answer be any reply to the
question at all, what follows is this--that God making His abode or
dwelling in the heart is the same thing exactly as God's manifesting
himself to the heart.
Brethren, in these two things the greatness of man consists. One is to
have God so dwelling in us as to impart His character to us; and the
other is to have God so dwelling in us that we recognise His presence,
and know that we are His and He is ours. They are two things perfectly
distinct To _have_ God in us, this is salvation; to _know_ that God is
in us, this is assurance.
Lastly, we inquire as to the persons who are truly great. And these
the Holy Scripture has divided into two classes--those who are humble
and those who are contrite in heart. Or rather, it will be observed
that it is the same class of character under different circumstances.
Humbleness is the frame of mind of those who are in a state of
innocence, contrition of those who are in a state of repentant guilt.
Brethren, let not the expression innocence be misunderstood. Innocence
in its true and highest sense never existed but once upon this earth.
Innocence cannot be the religion of man now. But yet there are those
who have walked with God from youth, not quenching the spirit which He
gave them, and who are therefore _comparatively_ innocent beings. All
they have to do is to go on, whereas the guilty man has to stop and
turn back before he can go on. Repentance with them is the gentle work
of every day, not the work of one distinct and miserable part of life.
They are those whom the Lord calls just men which need no repentance,
and of whom He says, "He that is clean needeth not save to wash his
feet."
Now they are described here as the humble in heart. Two things are
required for this state of mind. One is that a man should have a true
estimate of God, and the other is that he should have a true estimate
of himself.
Vain, blind man, places himself on a little corner of this planet, a
speck upon a speck of the universe, and begins to form conclusions
from the small fraction of God's government which he can see from
thence. The astronomer looks at the laws of motion and forgets that
there must have been a First Cause to commence that motion. The
surgeon looks at the materialism of his own frame and forgets that
matter cannot organise itself into exquisite beauty. The metaphysician
buries himself in the laws of mind and forgets that there may be
spiritual influences producing all those laws. And this brethren, is
the unhumbled spirit of philosophy--intellectual pride. Men look at
Nature, but they do not look through it up to Nature's God. There is
awful ignorance of God, arising from indulged sin, which produces an
unhumbled heart. God may be shut out from the soul by pride of
intellect, or by pride of heart.
Pharaoh is placed before us in Scripture almost as a type of pride.
His pride arose from ignorance of God. "Who is the Lord that I should
obey His voice? I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go."
And this was not intellectual pride; it was pride in a matter of duty.
Pharaoh had been immersing his whole heart in the narrow politics of
Egypt. The great problem of his day was to aggrandise his own people
and prevent an insurrection of the Israelites; and that small kingdom
of Egypt had been his universe. He shut his heart to the voice of
justice and the voice of humanity; in other words, great in the pride
of human majesty, small in the sight of the High and Lofty One, he
shut himself out from the knowledge of God.
The next ingredient of humbleness is, that a man must have a right
estimate of himself. There is a vast amount of self-deception on this
point. We say of ourselves that which we could not bear others to say
of us. A man truly humbled would take it only as his due when others
treated him in the way that he says that he deserves. But my brethren,
we kneel in our closets in shame for what we are, and we tell our God
that the lowest place is too good for us; and then we go into the
world, and if we meet with slight or disrespect, or if our opinion be
not attended to, or if another be preferred before us, there is all
the anguish of a galled and jealous spirit, and half the bitterness of
our lives comes from this, that we are smarting from what we call the
wrongs and the neglect of men. My beloved brethren, if we saw
ourselves as God sees us, we should be willing to be anywhere, to be
silent when others speak, to be passed by in the world's crowd, and
thrust aside to make way for others. We should be willing to put
others in the way of doing that which we might have got reputation for
by doing ourselves. This was the temper of our Master--this is the
meek and the quiet spirit, and this is the temper of the humble with
whom the High and Lofty One dwells.