another, happens in one way or other to all of us. In the case of all
of us occasions arise, when practices countenanced by others do not
approve themselves to our consciences. If after serious thought we
find we cannot acquiesce in them, we must follow our consciences, and
stand prepared for the censure of others. We must submit (should it be
unavoidable) to appear to those who have no means of understanding us,
self-willed, or self-conceited, or obstinate, or eccentric, or
headstrong, praying the while that God's mercy may vouchsafe to us,
that we be not really what we seem to the world.
Some are exposed to a temptation of a different kind, that of making
themselves seem more religious than they really are. It may happen,
that to advocate right opinions may be profitable to our worldly
interests, and be attended by the praise of men. You may ask, since in
such cases God and man approve the same thing, why should the applause
of the world be accounted dangerous then? I answer, it is dangerous
because God requires of us a modest silence in our religion; but we
cannot be religious in the eyes of men without displaying religion. I
am now speaking of display. God sees our thoughts without our help,
and praises _them_; but we cannot be praised by men without being seen
by men: whereas often the very excellence of a religious action,
according to our Saviour's precept, consists in the not being seen by
others. This is a frequent cause of hypocrisy in religion. Men begin
by feeling as they should feel, then they think it a very hard thing
that men should not know how well they feel, and in course of time they
learn to speak without feeling. Thus they have learned to "love the
praise of men more than the praise of God."--We have to guard against
another danger, against the mistake of supposing that the world's
despising us is a proof that we are particularly religious; for this,
too, is often supposed. Frequently it happens that we encumber our
religion with extravagances, perversions, or mistakes, with which
religion itself has no necessary connexion, and these, and not
religion, excite the contempt of the world. So much is this the case,
that the censure of numbers, or of the sober-minded, or of various and
distinct classes of men, or censure consistently urged, or continued
consistently, ought always to lead a man to be very watchful as to what
he considers right to say or do in the line of duty, to lead him to
examine his principles; to lead him, however thoroughly he adheres to
these after all, to be unaffectedly humble about himself, and to
convince him in matter of fact (what he might be quite sure of
beforehand, from the nature of the case), that, however good his
principles are in themselves, he is mixing up with them the alloy of
his own frail and corrupt nature.
In conclusion, I would say to those who fear the world's censure,
this:--
1. Recollect you cannot please all parties, you must disagree with some
or other: you have only to choose (if you are determined to look to
man) with which you will disagree. And, further, you may be sure that
those who attempt to please all parties, please fewest; and that the
best way to gain the world's good opinion (even if you were set upon
this, which you must not be) is to show that you prefer the praise of
God. Make up your mind to be occasionally misunderstood, and
undeservedly condemned. You must, in the Apostle's words, go through
evil report, and good report, whether on a contracted or a wider field
of action. And you must not be anxious even for the praise of good
men. To have, indeed, the approbation of those whose hearts are guided
by God's Holy Spirit, is indeed much to be coveted. Still this is a
world of discipline, not of enjoyment; and just as we are sometimes
bound in duty to abstain from indulgences of sense in themselves
innocent, so are we sometimes bound to deny ourselves the satisfaction
derived from the praise even of the religious and conscientious. Only
let us beware in all this, lest we act from pride and self-conceit.
2. In the next place, think of the multitude of beings, who, unseen
themselves, may yet be surveying our conduct. St. Paul charges Timothy
by the elect Angels[2]; and elsewhere he declares that the Apostles
were made "a spectacle unto the world, and to Angels, and to men[3]."
Are we then afraid to follow what is right, lest the world should
scoff? rather let us be afraid not to follow it, because God sees us,
and Christ, and the holy Angels. They rejoice over one sinner that
repenteth; how must they mourn over those who fall away! What
interest, surely, is excited among them, by the sight of the
Christian's trial, when faith and the desire of the world's esteem are
struggling in his heart for victory! what rejoicing if, through the
grace of God, he overcomes! what sorrow and pity if he is overcome by
the world! Accustom yourselves, then, to feel that you are on a public
stage, whatever your station of life may be, that there are other
witnesses to your conduct besides the world around you; and, if you
feel shame of men, you should much more feel shame in the presence of
God, and those servants of His that do His pleasure.
3. Still further: you fear the judgment of men upon you. What will you
think of it on your death-bed? The hour must come, sooner or later,
when your soul is to return to Him who gave it. Perhaps you will be
sensible of your awful state. What will you then think of the esteem
of the world? will not all below seem to pass away, and be rolled up as
a scroll, and the extended regions of the future solemnly set
themselves before you? Then how vain will appear the applause or blame
of creatures, such as we are, all sinners and blind judges, and feeble
aids, and themselves destined to be judged for their deeds. When,
then, you are tempted to dread the ridicule of man, throw your mind
forward to the hour of death. You know what you will then think of it,
if you are then able to think at all.
4. The subject is not exhausted. You fear shame; well, and will you
not shrink from shame at the judgment-seat of Christ? There will be
assembled all the myriads of men who ever lived, a vast multitude!
There will be Apostles, prophets, martyrs, and all saints from the
beginning of time. There will be all the good men you ever heard of or
knew. There will be your own kindest and best friends, your pious
parents, or brothers, or children. Now what think you of being put to
shame before all these? You fear the contempt of one small circle of
men; what think you of the Saints of God, of St. Mary, of St. Peter and
St. Paul, of the ten thousand generations of mankind, being witnesses
of your disgrace? You dread the opinion of those whom you do not love;
but what if a father then shrink from a dear son, or the wife, or
husband, your earthly companion, then tremble at the sight of you, and
feel ashamed of you? Nay, there is One greater than parents, husbands,
or brothers; One of whom you have been ashamed on earth; and what will
He, that merciful, but neglected Saviour, think of you then? Hear His
own words:--"Whosoever shall be ashamed of Me and of My words, of him
shall the Son of Man be ashamed, when He shall come in His own glory,
and in His Fathers, and of the holy Angels." Then such unhappy men,
how will they feel shame at themselves! they will despise and loathe
themselves; they will hate and abominate their own folly; they will
account themselves brutish and mad, so to have been beguiled by the
devil, and to have trifled with the season of mercy. "Many of them
that sleep in the dust of the earth," says Daniel, "shall awake, some
to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt."
Let us, then, rouse ourselves, and turn from man to God; what have we
to do with the world, who from our infancy have been put on our journey
heavenward? Take up your cross and follow Christ. He went through
shame far greater than can be yours. Do you think He felt nothing when
He was lifted up on the Cross to public gaze, amid the contempt and
barbarous triumphings of His enemies, the Pharisees, Pilate and his
Roman guard, Herod and his men of war, and the vast multitude collected
from all parts of the world? They all looked on Him with hatred and
insult, yet He endured (we are told), "despising the shame[4]." It is
a high privilege to be allowed to be conformed to Christ; St. Paul
thought it so, so have all good men. The whole Church of God, from the
days of Christ to the present, has been ever held in shame and contempt
by men of this world. Proud men have reasoned against its Divine
origin; crafty men have attempted to degrade it to political purposes:
still it has lasted for many centuries; it will last still, through the
promised help of God the Holy Ghost; and that same promise which is
made to it first as a body, is assuredly made also to every one of us
who seeks grace from God through it. The grace of our Lord and Saviour
is pledged to every one of us without measure, to give us all necessary
strength and holiness when we pray for it; and Almighty God tells us
Himself, "Fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye afraid of
their revilings. For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and
the worm shall eat them like wool; but My righteousness shall be for
ever, and My salvation from generation to generation."
[1] Gal. i. 24.
[2] 1 Tim. v. 21.
[3] 1 Cor. iv. 9.
[4] Heb. xii. 2.
SERMON V.
Temporal Advantages.
"_We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry
nothing out. And having food and raiment let us be therewith
content._"--1 Tim. vi. 7, 8.
Every age has its own special sins and temptations. Impatience with
their lot, murmuring, grudging, unthankfulness, discontent, are sins
common to men at all times, but I suppose one of those sins which
belongs to our age more than to another, is desire of a greater portion
of worldly goods than God has given us,--ambition and covetousness in
one shape or another. This is an age and country in which, more than
in any other, men have the opportunity of what is called rising in
life,--of changing from a lower to a higher class of society, of
gaining wealth; and upon wealth all things follow,--consideration,
credit, influence, power, enjoyment, the lust of the flesh, and the
lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. Since, then, men now-a-days
have so often the opportunity of gaining worldly goods which formerly
they had not, it is not wonderful they should be tempted to gain them;
nor wonderful that when they have gained them, they should set their
heart upon them.
And it will often happen, that from coveting them before they are
gained, and from making much of them when they are gained, men will be
led to take unlawful means, whether to increase them, or not to lose
them. But I am not going so far as to suppose the case of dishonesty,
fraud, double-dealing, injustice, or the like: to these St. Paul seems
to allude when he goes on to say, "They that will be rich fall into
temptation and a snare;" again, "The love of money is the root of all
evil." But let us confine ourselves to the consideration of the nature
itself, and the natural effects, of these worldly things, without
extending our view to those further evils to which they may give
occasion. St. Paul says in the text, that we ought to be content with
food and raiment; and the wise man says, "Give me neither poverty nor
riches; feed me with food convenient for me[1]." And our Lord would
have us "take no thought for the morrow," which surely is a dissuasion
from aggrandizing ourselves, accumulating wealth, or aiming at
distinction. And He has taught us when we pray to say, "Give us this
day our _daily_ bread." Yet a great number of persons, I may say,
nearly all men, are not content with enough, they are not satisfied
with sufficiency; they wish for something more than simplicity, and
plainness, and gravity, and modesty, in their mode of living; they like
show and splendour, and admiration from the many, and obsequiousness on
the part of those who have to do with them, and the ability to do as
they will; they like to attract the eye, to be received with
consideration and respect, to be heard with deference, to be obeyed
with promptitude; they love greetings in the markets, and the highest
seats; they like to be well dressed, and to have titles of honour.
Now, then, I will attempt to show that these gifts of the world which
men seek are not to be reckoned good things; that they are ill suited
to our nature and our present state, and are dangerous to us; that it
is on the whole best for our prospects of happiness even here, not to
say hereafter, that we should be without them.
Now, first, that these worldly advantages, as they are called, are not
productive of any great enjoyment even now to the persons possessing
them, it does not require many words to prove. I might indeed
maintain, with no slight show of reason, that these things, so far from
increasing happiness, are generally the source of much disquietude;
that as a person has more wealth, or more power, or more distinction,
his cares generally increase, and his time is less his own: thus, in
the words of the preacher, "the abundance of the rich will not suffer
him to sleep," and, "in much wisdom is much grief, and he that
increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow[2]." But however this may be,
at least these outward advantages do not increase our happiness. Let
me ask any one who has succeeded in any object of his desire, has he
experienced in his success that full, that lasting satisfaction which
he anticipated? Did not some feeling of disappointment, of weariness,
of satiety, of disquietude, after a short time, steal over his mind? I
think it did; and if so; what reason has he to suppose that that
greater share of reputation, opulence, and influence which he has not,
and which he desires, would, if granted him, suffice to make him happy?
No; the fact is certain, however slow and unwilling we may be to
believe it, none of these things bring the pleasure which we beforehand
suppose they will bring. Watch narrowly the persons who possess them,
and you will at length discover the same uneasiness and occasional
restlessness which others have; you will find that there is just a
something beyond, which they are striving after, or just some one thing
which annoys and distresses them. The good things you admire please
for the most part only while they are new; now those who have them are
accustomed to them, so they care little for them, and find no
alleviation in them of the anxieties and cares which still remain. It
is fine, in prospect and imagination, to be looked up to, admired,
applauded, courted, feared, to have a name among men, to rule their
opinions or their actions by our word, to create a stir by our
movements, while men cry, "Bow the knee," before us; but none knows so
well how vain is the world's praise, as he who has it. And why is
this? It is, in a word, because the soul was made for religious
employments and pleasures; and hence, that no temporal blessings,
however exalted or refined, can satisfy it. As well might we attempt
to sustain the body on chaff, as to feed and nourish the immortal soul
with the pleasures and occupations of the world.
Only thus much, then, shall I say on the point of worldly advantages
not bringing present happiness. But next, let us consider that, on the
other hand, they are positively dangerous to our eternal interests.
Many of these things, if they did no other harm, at least are injurious
to our souls, by taking up the time which might else be given to
religion. Much intercourse with the world, which eminence and station
render a duty, has a tendency to draw off the mind from God, and deaden
it to the force of religious motives and considerations. There is a
want of sympathy between much business and calm devotion, great
splendour and a simple faith, which will be to no one more painful than
to the Christian, to whom God has assigned some post of especial
responsibility or distinction. To maintain a religious spirit in the
midst of engagements and excitements of this world is possible only to
a saint; nay, the case is the same though our business be one of a
charitable and religious nature, and though our chief intercourse is
with those whom we believe to have their minds set upon religion, and
whose principles and conduct are not likely to withdraw our feet from
the narrow way of life. For here we are likely to be deceived from the
very circumstance that our employments are religious; and our end, as
being a right one, will engross us, and continually tempt us to be
inattentive to the means, and to the spirit in which we pursue it. Our
Lord alludes to the danger of multiplied occupations in the Parable of
the Sower: "He that received seed among thorns, is he that heareth the
word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke
the word, and he becometh unfruitful."
Again, these worldly advantages, as they are called, will seduce us
into an excessive love of them. We are too well inclined by nature to
live by sight, rather than by faith; and besides the immediate
enjoyment, there is something so agreeable to our natural tastes in the
honours and emoluments of the world, that it requires an especially
strong mind, and a large measure of grace, not to be gradually
corrupted by them. We are led to set our hearts upon them, and in the
same degree to withdraw them from God. We become unwilling to leave
this visible state of things, and to be reduced to a level with those
multitudes who are at present inferior to ourselves. Prosperity is
sufficient to seduce, although not to satisfy. Hence death and
judgment are unwelcome subjects of reflection to the rich and powerful;
for death takes from them those comforts which habit has made necessary
to them, and throws them adrift on a new order of things, of which they
know nothing, save that in it there is no respect of persons.
And as these goods lead us to love the world, so again do they lead us
to trust in the world: we not only become worldly-minded, but
unbelieving; our wills becoming corrupt, our understandings also become
dark, and disliking the truth, we gradually learn to maintain and
defend error. St. Paul speaks of those who "having put away a good
conscience, concerning faith made shipwreck[3]." Familiarity with this
world makes men discontented with the doctrine of the narrow way; they
fall into heresies, and attempt to attain salvation on easier terms
than those which Christ holds out to us. In a variety of ways this
love of the world operates. Men's opinions are imperceptibly formed by
their wishes. If, for instance, we see our worldly prospects depend,
humanly speaking, upon a certain person, we are led to court him, to
honour him, and adopt his views, and trust in an arm of flesh, till we
forget the overruling power of God's providence, and the necessity of
His blessing, for the building of the house and the keeping of the city.
And moreover, these temporal advantages, as they are considered, have a
strong tendency to render us self-confident. When a man has been
advanced in the world by means of his own industry and skill, when he
began poor and ends rich, how apt will he be to pride himself, and
confide, in his own contrivances and his own resources! Or when a man
feels himself possessed of good abilities; of quickness in entering
into a subject, or of powers of argument to discourse readily upon it,
or of acuteness to detect fallacies in dispute with little effort, or
of a delicate and cultivated taste, so as to separate with precision
the correct and beautiful in thought and feeling from the faulty and
irregular, how will such an one be tempted to self-complacency and
self-approbation! how apt will he be to rely upon himself, to rest
contented with himself, to be harsh and impetuous; or supercilious; or
to be fastidious, indolent, unpractical; and to despise the pure,
self-denying, humble temper of religion, as something irrational, dull,
enthusiastic, or needlessly rigorous!
These considerations on the extreme danger of possessing temporal
advantages, will be greatly strengthened by considering the conduct of
holy men when gifted with them. Take, for instance, Hezekiah, one of
the best of the Jewish kings. He, too, had been schooled by
occurrences which one might have thought would have beaten down all
pride and self-esteem. The king of Assyria had come against him, and
seemed prepared to overwhelm him with his hosts; and he had found his
God a mighty Deliverer, cutting off in one night of the enemy an
hundred fourscore and five thousand men. And again, he had been
miraculously recovered from sickness, when the sun's shadow turned ten
degrees back, to convince him of the certainty of the promised
recovery. Yet when the king of Babylon sent ambassadors to
congratulate him on this recovery, we find this holy man ostentatiously
displaying to them his silver, and gold, and armour. Truly the heart
is "deceitful above all things;" and it was, indeed, to manifest this
more fully that God permitted him thus to act. God "left him," says
the inspired writer, "to try him, that he might know all that was in
his heart[4]." Let us take David as another instance of the great
danger of prosperity; he, too, will exemplify the unsatisfactory nature
of temporal goods; for which, think you, was the happier, the lowly
shepherd or the king of Israel? Observe his simple reliance on God and
his composure, when advancing against Goliath: "The Lord," he says,
"that delivered me out of the paw of the lion and out of the paw of the
bear, He will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine[5]." And
compare this with his grievous sins, his continual errors, his
weaknesses, inconsistencies, and then his troubles and mortifications
after coming to the throne of Israel; and who will not say that his
advancement was the occasion of both sorrow and sin, which, humanly
speaking, he would have escaped, had he died amid the sheepfolds of
Jesse? He was indeed most wonderfully sustained by Divine grace, and
died in the fear of God; yet what rightminded and consistent Christian
but must shrink from the bare notion of possessing a worldly greatness
so corrupting and seducing as David's kingly power was shown to be in
the instance of so great a Saint? The case of Solomon is still more
striking; his falling away even surpasses our anticipation of what our
Saviour calls "the deceitfulness of riches." He may indeed, for what
we know, have repented; but at least the history tells us nothing of
it. All we are told is, that "King Solomon loved many strange
women . . . and it came to pass when Solomon was old, that his wives
turned away his heart after other gods; and his heart was not perfect
with the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father. For
Solomon went after Ashtaroth, the goddess of the Sidonians, and after
Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites[6]." Yet this was he who had
offered up that most sublime and affecting prayer at the Dedication of
the Temple, and who, on a former occasion, when the Almighty gave him
the choice of any blessing he should ask, had preferred an
understanding heart to long life, and honour, and riches.
So dangerous, indeed, is the possession of the goods of this world,
that, to judge from the Scripture history, seldom has God given unmixed
prosperity to any one whom He loves. "Blessed is the man," says the
Psalmist, "whom Thou chastenest, and teachest him out of Thy law[7]."
Even the best men require some pain or grief to sober them and keep
their hearts right. Thus, to take the example of St. Paul himself,
even his labours, sufferings, and anxieties, he tells us, would not
have been sufficient to keep him from being exalted above measure,
through the abundance of the revelations, unless there had been added
some further cross, some "thorn in the flesh[8]," as he terms it, some
secret affliction, of which we are not particularly informed, to humble
him, and to keep him in a sense of his weak and dependent condition.