(Ninth Sunday after Trinity.)
1 Corinthians x. 4. They drank of that Spiritual Rock which
followed them; and that Rock was Christ.
St. Paul has been speaking to the Corinthians about the Holy
Communion.
In this text, St. Paul is warning the Corinthians about it. He
says, 'You may be Christian men; you may have the means of grace;
you may come to the Communion and use the means of grace; and yet
you may become castaways.' St. Paul himself says, in the very verse
before, 'I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest .
. . . I myself should be a castaway.' Look, he says then, 'at the
old Jews in the wilderness. They all partook of God's grace: but
they were not all saved. They were all baptized to Moses in the
cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual meat, the
manna from heaven. They all drank the same spiritual drink, the
water out of the rock in Horeb. And yet with many of them God was
not well pleased;' for they were overthrown--their corpses were
scattered far and wide--in the wilderness. The spiritual meat and
the spiritual drink could not keep them alive, if they sinned, and
deserved death. 'So,' says St. Paul, 'with you. You are members of
Christ's body. The cup of blessing which we bless, is the communion
of the blood of Christ; the bread which we break, is the communion
of the body of Christ:' but beware, they will not save you, if you
sin. Nothing will save you, if you sin. If you lust after evil
things, as those old Jews did; if you are idolaters, as they were;
if you are profligates, as they were; if you tempt Christ, as they
did; if you murmur against God, as they murmured, you will be
destroyed like them.
Note here two things. First, that St. Paul says that we really
receive Christ in the Holy Communion. He does _not_ say, as some
do, that the Communion is merely a remembrance of Christ's death.
He says that the faithful verily and indeed receive Christ's body
and blood in the Sacrament. He says so, distinctly, plainly,
literally; and if that be not true, his whole argument goes for
nothing, and will not stand. The Jews, he says, drank of the
spiritual Rock which followed them, and that Rock was Christ; and so
he says to you. But that did not save them from the punishment of
their sins, when they went and sinned afresh: neither will it save
you.
But now--What are these strange words which St. Paul uses? These
old Jews drank of the spiritual Rock which followed them, and that
Rock was Christ? Where in the Old Testament do we read of the Rock
following them? We read of Moses striking the rock in Horeb, at the
beginning of their wanderings in the wilderness; but not of its
following them afterwards.
St. Paul is here using a beautiful old tradition of the Rabbis, that
the rock which Moses struck in Horeb followed the Jews through all
their forty years' wanderings, and that on every Sabbath day when
they stopped, it stopped also, and the elders called to it, 'Flow
out, O fountain,' and the water flowed. A beautiful old story,
which St. Paul turns into an allegory, to teach, as by a picture,
the deepest and the highest truth. Whether that rock followed them
or not, he says, there was One who did follow them, from whom flowed
living water; and that Rock is Christ. Christ followed them.
Christ the creator, the preserver, the inspirer, the light, the
life, the guide of men, and of all the universe. It was to Christ
they owed their deliverance from Egypt; to Christ they owed their
knowledge of God, and of the law of God, to Christ they owed
whatever reason, justice, righteousness, good government, there was
among them. And to Christ we owe the same.
The rock was a type of him from whom flows living water. As he
himself said on earth, 'Whosoever drinketh of the water which I
shall give him, shall never thirst; but the water which I shall give
him shall be in him a well of water, springing up to everlasting
life.' Just as the manna also was a type of him, as he himself
declared, when the Jews talked to him of the manna; 'Our fathers did
eat manna in the desert, as it is written, He gave them bread from
heaven to eat.' Then Jesus said to them, 'Verily, verily, I say
unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven.' No: but only
a type and picture of it. 'My Father giveth you the true bread from
heaven. For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven,
and giveth life unto the world. . . . I am that bread of life.'
My friends, herein is a great mystery. Something of what it means,
however, we may learn from that wise and good Jew, Philo, who was
St. Paul's teacher according to the flesh, before he became a
Christian; and who himself was so near to the kingdom of God, that
St. Paul often in his epistles uses Philo's very words, putting into
them a Christian meaning. And what says he concerning the Rock of
living waters?
The soul, he says, falls in with a scorpion in the wilderness; and
then thirst, which is the thirst of the passions--of the lusts which
war in our members--seizes on it; till God sends forth on it the
stream of his own perfect wisdom, and causes the changed soul to
drink of unchangeable health. For the steep rock is the wisdom of
God (by whom he means the Word of God, whom Philo knew not in the
flesh, but whom we know, as the Lord Jesus Christ), which, being
both sublime and the first of all things; he quarried out of his own
powers; and of it he gives drink to the souls which love God; and
they, when they have drunk, are filled with the most universal
manna.
So says Philo, the good Jew, who knew not Christ; and therefore he
says only a part of the truth. If you wish to learn the whole
truth, you must read St. John's Gospel, and St. Paul's Epistles,
especially this very text; and again, the opening of the Epistle to
the Ephesians; and again, that most royal passage in the opening of
the Colossians, where he speaks of the Everlasting Being of Christ,
who is before all things, and by whom all things consist--in whom
dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and in whom are hid
all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
Therefore he is rightly called the Rock, the Rock of Ages, the
Eternal Rock; because on him all things rest, and have rested since
the foundation of the world, being made, and kept together, and
ruled, and inspired by him alone. Therefore he is rightly called
the Rock of living waters; for in him are hid all the treasures of
wisdom and knowledge, and from him they flow forth freely to all who
cry to him in their thirst after truth and holiness. Yes, my
friends, by Christ all things live; and therefore, most of all, by
Christ our souls live. To be parted from Christ is death. To be
joined to Christ and the body of Christ is life.
But what life? The life of the soul. And what is the life of the
soul? Holiness, righteousness, sanctification, virtue,--call it
what pleases you best. I shall call it goodness. That is the only
life of the soul. And why? Because it is the life of Christ. That
is the only wisdom of the soul. And why? Because it is the mind of
Christ. That is the living water. And why? Because it flows
eternally from Christ.
For who is Christ, but the likeness of God, and the glory of God?
And what is the likeness of God, but goodness; and what is the glory
of God, but goodness? Therefore Christ is goodness itself, as it is
written, 'Now the Lord is that Spirit.' Yes, if you will believe
it, Christ, the only-begotten Son, co-equal and co-eternal, is the
very and essential goodness of the Father, coming out everlastingly
in action and in life, in himself, and in his people, who are his
mystical body, filled with the Spirit of him and his Father; who is
the Holy Spirit, the spirit of goodness. From Christ, and not from
any created being, comes all goodness in man or angel. Comes from
Christ? It were more right, and more according to St. Paul's own
words, to say, that all goodness _is_ Christ; Christ dwelling in a
man, Christ forming himself in a man, little by little, step by
step, as he grows in grace, in purity, in self-control, in
experience, in knowledge, in wisdom, in strength, in patience, in
love, in charity; till he comes to the stature of a perfect man, to
the measure of the fulness of Christ.
Meanwhile, let the good which a man does be much, or be it little,
he must say, 'The good which I do, _I_ do not, but Christ who
dwelleth in me.'
For in every age of man, it is Christ who is awakening in him the
hunger and thirst after righteousness, and then satisfying it with
the only thing which can satisfy them, namely, his most blessed
self.
Yes, believe it. It is Christ in the child which makes it speak the
truth; Christ in the child which makes it shrink from whatever it
has been told is wrong. It is Christ in the young man, which fills
him with lofty aspirations, hopes of bettering the world around him,
hopes of training his soul to be all that it can be, and of putting
forth all his powers in the service of Christ. It is Christ in the
middle-aged man, which makes him strong in good works, labouring
patiently, wisely, and sturdily; so that having drunk of the living
waters himself, they may flow out of him again to others in good
deeds; a fountain springing up in him to an eternal life of
goodness. It is Christ in the old man, which makes him look on with
calm content while his own body and mind decay, knowing that the
kingdom of God cannot decay; for Christ is ruling it in
righteousness; and all will be well with him, and with his children
after him, and with all mankind, and all heaven and earth, if they
themselves only will it, long after he has been gathered to his
fathers.
Yes, such a man knows in whom he has believed. He knows that the
spiritual Rock has been following him through all his wanderings in
this weary world; and that that Rock is Christ. He can recollect
how, again and again, at his Sabbath haltings in his life's journey,
it was to him in the Holy Communion as to the Israelites of old in
their haltings in the wilderness, when the priests of Jehovah cried
to the mystic rock, 'Flow forth, O fountain,' and the waters flowed.
So can he recollect how, in Holy Communion, there flowed into his
soul streams of living water, the water of life, quenching that
thirst of his soul, which no created thing could slake; the water of
life; of Christ's life, which is the light of men, shewing them what
they ought to be and do; the life which is the light; the life which
is according to the eternal and divine reason; the life of wisdom;
which is the life of love; which is the life of justice; which is
the life of Christ; which is the life of God.
But if these things are so--and so they are, for Christ has said it,
St. Paul has said it, St. John has said it--but if these things are
so, will they not teach us much about Holy Communion, how we may
receive it worthily, and how unworthily?
If what we receive in the Communion be Christ himself, the good
Christ who is to make us good; then how can we receive it worthily,
if we do not hunger and thirst after goodness? If we do not come
thither, longing to be made good, and sanctified, then we come for
the wrong thing, to the wrong place. We are like those Corinthians
who came to the Lord's supper not to be made good men, but to exalt
their own spiritual self-conceit; and so only ate and drank their
own damnation, not discerning the Lord's body, that it was a holy
body, a body of righteousness and goodness.
But if we come hungering and thirsting to be made good men, then we
come for the right thing, to the right place. Then we need not stay
away, because we feel ourselves intolerably burdened with many sins;
that will be our very reason for coming, that we may be cleansed
from our sins--cleansed not only from their guilt, but from their
power; and cry, in spirit and in truth, as we kneel at that holy
table--
Rock of ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in thee;
By the water and the blood,
From thy riven side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure,
Cleanse me from its guilt and power.
Yes, from its guilt and from its power also. Let us all pray, each
in his own fashion:--
Oh Lamb eternal, beyond all place and time! Oh Lamb slain
eternally, before the foundation of the world! Oh Lamb, which liest
slain eternally, in the midst of the throne of God! Let the blood
of life, which flows from thee, procure me pardon for the past; let
the water of life, which flows from thee, give me strength for the
future. I come to cast away my own life, my life of self and
selfishness, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, that
I may live it no more; and to receive thy life, which is created
after the likeness of God, in righteousness and true holiness, that
I may live it for ever and ever, and find it a well of life
springing up in me to everlasting life. Eternal Goodness, make me
good like thee. Eternal Wisdom, make me wise like thee. Eternal
Justice, make me just like thee. Eternal Love, make me loving like
thee. Then I shall hunger no more, and thirst no more; for
Thou, O Christ, art all I want;
More than all in thee I find;
Raise me, fallen; cheer me, faint;
Heal me, sick; and lead me, blind.
Thou of life the fountain art;
Freely let me take of thee;
Spring thou up within my heart;
Rise to all eternity.
Oh come to Holy Communion with the words of that glorious hymn not
merely on your lips, but in your hearts; and you will never come
amiss.