(Twelfth Sunday after Trinity, 1856.)
2 Kings xviii. 9-12. And it came to pass in the fourth year of King
Hezekiah, which was the seventh year of Hoshea son of Elah king of
Israel, that Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, came up against Samaria,
and besieged it. And at the end of three years they took it: even
in the sixth year of Hezekiah, that is the ninth year of Hoshea king
of Israel, Samaria was taken. And the king of Assyria did carry
away Israel unto Assyria, and put them in Halah and in Habor by the
river of Gozon, and in the cities of the Medes: because they obeyed
not the voice of the Lord their God, but transgressed his covenant,
and all that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded, and would not
hear them, nor do them.
These are very simple words: but they are awful words enough.
Awful enough to the poor creatures of whom they speak. You here,
most of you, can hardly guess all that these words mean. You may
thank God that you do not. That you do not know the horrors of war,
and the misery of a conquered country, in old times.
To lose all they had ever earned; all that makes life worth having.
To have their homes burnt over their heads, their crops carried off
their fields. To see their women dishonoured, their old men and
children murdered--to be insulted, beaten, and tortured to make them
tell where their money was hidden; and after they and theirs had
suffered every unspeakable shame and misery from the hands of brutal
enemies, to be stripped, bound, and marched away, for hundreds of
miles across the deserts, into the cold and dreary mountains of the
north of Assyria, there to live and die as slaves, and never again
to see their native land. And such a land as it was, and is still:
or rather might be still, if there were men in it worthy the name of
men. For of all countries in the world, that land of Israel is one
of the most rich and beautiful. The climate and the soil there is
such, that two crops can often be grown in the year, of almost any
kind which man may need; there are rich valleys well watered, where
not only wheat and every grain-crop, but the olive, and the fig, and
the vine, flourish in perfection; rich park-like uplands, where
sheep and cattle without number may find pasture; great forests of
timber, fit for every use; and all kept cool and fruitful, even
beneath that burning eastern sun, by the clear streams which flow
for ever down from Hermon. the great snow-mountain ten thousand feet
high, which overlooks that pleasant land. There is hardly,
travellers say, a lovelier or richer country upon earth, than the
land of Israel, from Hebron on the south to Hermon on the north; nor
a country which might have been stronger, and safer, and more
prosperous, if these Jews had been but wise.
It is, so to speak, one great castle, rising most of it two thousand
feet high, and walled in by God in a way as is seen hardly in any
other land. On the west lies the sea; on the south and on the east
vast wildernesses of sandy desert; and on the north, the mighty
mountains of Hermon and Lebanon, which no invading army could have
crossed, if the Jews had had courage to keep them out. And that,
the noble and divine Law of Moses would have given them. It would
have made them one free, brave, God-fearing people, at unity with
itself; and the promise of Moses would have been fulfilled--that one
of them should chase a thousand, and no man or nation be able to
stand against them. In David's time, and in Solomon's time also,
that promise came true; and that small people of the Jews became a
very powerful nation, respected and feared by all the kingdoms
round.
But when they fell into idolatry, and forsook the true God, and his
law: all was changed. Idolatry brought sin, and sin brought bad
passions, hatred, division, weakness, ruin.
The first beginning was, the breaking up of the nation into two;--
the kingdom of Judah to the south, the kingdom of Israel to the
north. And with that division came envy, spite, quarrels; wars
between Israel and Judah, which were but madness. For what could
come of those two brother-nations fighting against each other, but
that both should grow weaker and weaker, and so fall a prey to some
third nation stronger than them both? The ruin of the kingdom of
Israel, of which the text tells us, arose out of some unnatural
quarrel of this kind. Pekah, the king of Israel, had made friends
with the heathen king of Syria, and got him to join in making war on
Judah: and a fearful war it was; for the Israelites, according to
one account, killed in that war a hundred and twenty thousand of the
Jews, men of their own blood and language, all Abraham's descendants
as well as they. On which, Ahaz, king of Judah, not to be behind-
hand in folly, sent to the heathen king of Assyria to help him, just
as the king of Israel had sent to the king of Damascus. He had
better have been dead than to have done that. For those terrible
Assyrians, who had set their hearts on conquering the whole east,
were standing by, watching all the little kingdoms round tearing
themselves to pieces by foolish wars, till they were utterly weak,
and the time was ripe for the Assyrians to pounce upon them. The
king of Assyria came. He swept away all the heathen people of
Damascus, and killed their king. But he did not stop there. In a
very few years, he came on into the land of Israel, besieged Samaria
for three years, and took it, and carried off the whole of the
inhabitants of the country; and there was an end of that miserable
kingdom of Israel, which had been sinking lower and lower ever since
the days of Jeroboam. This was the natural outcome of all their sin
and folly, of which we have been reading for the last few Sundays.
Elijah's warnings had been in vain, and Elisha's warnings also.
They liked, at heart, Ahab's and Jezebel's idolatries better than
they did the worship of the true God. And why? Because, if they
worshipped God, and kept his laws, they must needs have been more or
less good men, upright, just, merciful, cleanly and chaste livers:
while, on the other hand, they might worship their idols, and
nevertheless be as bad as they chose. Indeed, the very idol-feasts
and sacrifices were mixed up with all sorts of filthy sin,
drunkenness and profligacy; so that it is a shame even to speak of
the things which went on, especially at those sacrifices to
Ashtaroth, the queen of heaven, of which they were so fond. They
choose the worse part, and refused the better; and they were filled
with the fruit of their own devices, as every unrepenting sinner
surely will be.
But did the Jews of Judea and their king escape, who had thus
brought the king of Assyria down to murder their own countrymen, and
lay that fair land waste? Not they. A very few years more, the
Assyrians were back again, and overran Judea itself, laying the
country waste with fire and sword, till nothing was left to them,
but the mere city of Jerusalem. And so they, too, were filled with
the fruit of their own devices. In their madness they had destroyed
their brethren, the people of Israel, who ought to have been a
safeguard for them to the north; now there was nothing and no man to
prevent the Assyrians, or any other invaders, from pouring right
down into their land. Truly says Solomon, 'He that diggeth a pit,
shall fall into it, and he who breaketh a hedge, a serpent shall
bite him.' From that day, Judah became weaker and weaker, standing
all alone. Good king Hezekiah, good king Josiah, could only stave
off her ruin for a few years; a little while longer, and her cup was
full too, and the Babylonians came and swept the Jews away into
captivity, as the Assyrians had swept away Israel, and that fair
land lay desolate for many a year.
The king of Assyria, we read, after he had carried away the people
of Israel, brought heathens from Assyria, and settled them in the
Holy Land, instead of the Israelites. But the Lord sent lions among
them, we read; the land, I suppose, lying waste, the wild beasts
increased, and became very dangerous: so these poor ignorant
settlers sent to the king of Assyria, to beg for a Jewish priest, to
teach them, as they said, the manner of the god of that land, that
they might worship him, and not be terrified by the lions any more.
It was a simple, confused notion of theirs: but it brought a
blessing with it; for the king of Assyria sent them one of the
Jewish priests who had been carried away from Samaria; and he came
and lived at Beth-el, and taught them to fear the Lord. So these
poor people got some confused notion of the one true God: but they
mixed it up sadly with their old heathen idolatry, and made gods of
their own, and some of them even burnt their children in the fire,
to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim, from which
town they had come. And so they went on for several hundred years,
marrying with the remnant of the Israelites who were left behind,
and worshipping idols and the true God at the same time. Now these
people are the Samaritans, of whom you read so often in the New
Testament. The Jews, when they came back, hated and despised the
Samaritans, and would not speak to them, eat with them, trade with
them, because they were only half-blooded Jews, and did not observe
Moses' law rightly; and so they were left to themselves: but as
time went on, they seemed to have got rid of their old idolatry, and
built themselves a temple on Mount Gerizim, by Samaria, in Jacob's
old haunts, by Jacob's well, and there worshipped they knew not
what. But still they did their best. And their reward came at
last.
Many a hundred years had passed away. The proud Pharisees of
Jerusalem were still calling them dogs and infidels; when there came
to that half-heathen city of Samaria such a one as never came there
before or since; and yet had been very near that place, and those
poor Samaritans, for a thousand years.
And being wearied with his journey, he sat down upon the edge of
Jacob's well, by Joseph's tomb. The well is still there, choked
with rubbish to this very day; and Joseph's tomb by it, all in
ruins, among broad fields of corn. And on the edge of that well he
sat. Along the very road which was before him, Jeroboam, and Ahab,
and many a wicked king of Israel, had gone in old times, travelling
between Shechem and Samaria: along that road the terrible Assyrians
had marched back to their own land, leading strings of weeping
prisoners out of their pleasant native land, to slavery and misery
in the far North. He knew it all; and doubt not that he thought
over it all, as never man thought on earth. Doubt not that his
heart yearned over these poor ignorant Samaritans, and over the
sinful woman who came to draw water at the well. After all, half-
heathens as they were, Jacob's blood was in their veins; and if not,
were they not still human beings? They were worshipping they knew
not what: but still they were worshipping the best which they knew.
'Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye
shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the
Father. Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for
salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the
true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth:
for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a spirit: and
they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. The
woman saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which is called
Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things. Jesus saith
unto her, I that speak unto thee am he. . . . So when the Samaritans
were come unto him, they besought him that he would tarry with them:
and he abode there two days. And many more believed because of his
own word; and said unto the woman, Now we believe, not because of
thy saying: for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is
indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.'
Oh, my friends, despise no man; for Christ despises none. He is no
respecter of persons: but in every nation, he that feareth God and
worketh righteousness is accepted with him. Despise no man; for by
so doing you deny the Father, who has made of one blood all nations
of men to dwell on the earth, and has appointed them their times,
and the bounds of their habitation; if haply they may feel after
him, and find him: though he be not far from any of us; for in him
we live and move and have our being, and are the offspring of God.
For hundreds of years those poor ignorant Samaritans had felt after
him; in that foreign land to which the cruel Assyrian conqueror had
banished them: but it was God who had appointed them their
habitation there, and their time also; and, in due time, they found
God: for he came to them, and found them, and spoke with them face
to face.
Better to have been one of those ignorant Samaritans, than to have
been King Ahab, or King Hoshea, in all their glory, with all their
proud Jewish blood. Better to have been one of those ignorant
Samaritans than one of those conceited Pharisees at Jerusalem, who,
while they were priding themselves on being Abraham's children, and
keeping Moses' law, ended by crucifying him who made Abraham, and
Moses, and his law, and them themselves. Better to be the poorest
negro slave, if, in the midst of his ignorance and misery and shame,
he believes in Christ, and works righteousness, than the cleverest
and proudest and freest Englishman, if, in the midst of his great
light, he works the works of darkness, and, while he calls himself a
child of God, lives the sinful life, on which God's curse lies for
ever.
So you who have many advantages, take warning by the fate of those
foolish Jews, who knew a great deal, and yet did not do it, and so
came to shame and ruin. And you who have few advantages, take
comfort by those poor Samaritans, who knew a very little, and yet
made the best of it, and so at last saw a great light, after sitting
in darkness for so long. Schools, books, church-going, ordinances
of all kinds, they are good. If you can get them, use them, and
thank God for them: but remember, God does not ask for learning,
but for goodness and holiness: he does not ask for knowledge, but
for a right life. And do not fancy, that because your children have
a good education now, and you had none, that God does not love you
as well as he loves them. His mercy is over all his works; and the
promises are to you as well as to your children. There is many a
poor soul who never read a book in her life, who is nearer God than
many a great scholar, and fine preacher, and learned divine. All
Christ asks of you is, to receive him when he comes to you; and to
love, and thank, and admire him, and try to be like him, because he
will make you like him: while for the rest to whom little is given,
of him shall little be required; and to him who uses what he has, be
it little or much, more shall be given, and he shall have abundance.
For God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation, he that
feareth God, and worketh righteousness, is accepted by him.