they are partakers of His resurrection. Let us believe the blessed news
in all its fulness, and be at peace. A little while and we see them, and
again a little while and we do not see them. But why? Because they are
gone to the Father, to the Source and Fount of all life and power, all
light and love, that they may gain life from His life, power from His
power, light from His light, love from His love; and surely not for
nought. Surely not for nought. For if they were like Christ on earth,
and did not use their powers for themselves alone; if they are to be like
Christ when they see Him as He is, then, more surely, will they not use
their powers for themselves, but as Christ uses His, for those they love.
_MS. Sermon_. 1866.
SAINTS' DAYS, FASTS, & FESTIVALS.
Passion-tide.
From the earliest times the Cross has been the special sign of
Christians. St. Paul tells us his great hope, his great business, what
God had sent him into the world to do, was this--to make people know the
love of Christ; to look at Christ's Cross, and take in its breadth and
length and depth and height.
And what is the _breadth_ of Christ's Cross? My friends, it is as broad
as the whole world, for He died for the whole world; as it is written,
"He is a propitiation not for our sins only, but for the sins of the
whole world." And that is the _breadth_ of Christ's Cross.
And what is the _length_ of Christ's Cross? Long enough to last through
all time. As long as there is a sinner to be saved; as long as there is
ignorance, sorrow, pain, death, or anything else which is contrary to God
and hurtful to man in the universe of God, so long will Christ's Cross
last. And that is the _length_ of the Cross of Christ.
And how _high_ is Christ's Cross? As high as the highest heaven, and the
throne of God and the bosom of the Father--that bosom out of which for
ever proceed all created things. Ay, as high as the highest heaven; for,
if you will receive it, when Christ hung upon the Cross heaven came down
on earth, and earth ascended into heaven. And that is the _height_ of
the Cross of Christ.
And how _deep_ is the Cross of Christ? This is a great mystery which
people are afraid to look into, and darken it of their own will. But if
the Cross of Christ be as high as heaven, then it must be as deep as
hell, deep enough to reach the deepest sinner in the deepest pit to which
he may fall, for Christ descended into hell, and preached to the spirits
in prison. Let us hope, then, that is the _depth_ of the Cross of
Christ.
"_The Measure of the Cross_,"
_Sermons_ (_Good News of God_).
Good Friday.
Listen! and our God shall whisper, as we hang upon the cross, {97}
"Children! love! and loving, faint not! great your glory, light your
loss!
_Ye_ are bound--ye may be loosed--_I_ was nailed upon the tree,
Of the pangs I suffered for you--bear awhile a few for me!
Fear not, though the waters whelm you; fear not, though ye see no land!
Know ye not your God is with you, guiding with a Father's hand?
Cords may wring, and winds may freeze you, shivering on the sullen sea,
Yet the life that burns within you liveth ever hid with Me!"
_MS._ 1842.
Christ must suffer before He entered into His glory. He must die before
He could rise. He must descend into hell before He could ascend into
heaven. For this is the law of God's kingdom. Without a Good Friday
there can be no Easter Day. Without self-sacrifice there can be no
blessedness.
My Saviour! My King! Infinite, Eternal Love--alone of all beings devoid
of self-love! Glory be to Thee for Thy humiliation, for Thy Cross and
Passion!
_MS._
Easter Even.
Christ went down into hell and preached to the spirits in prison. It is
written that "as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made
alive;" and again, "When the wicked man turns from his wickedness he
shall save his soul alive." And we know that in the same chapter God
tells us that His ways are not unequal. It is possible, therefore, that
He has not one law for this life and another for the life to come. Let
us hope, then, that David's words may be true after all, when, speaking
by the Spirit of God, he says not only "if I ascend up to heaven, thou
art there," but "if I go down to hell, thou art there also."
_MS. Sermon_.
Easter Day.
The Creed says, "I believe in the Resurrection of the flesh." I believe
that we, each of us, as human beings, men and women, shall have a share
in that glorious day; not merely as ghosts and disembodied spirits, but
as real live human beings, with new bodies of our own, on a new earth,
under a new heaven. "Therefore," David says, "my flesh shall rest in
hope;" not merely my soul, my ghost, but my flesh. For the Lord, who not
only died but rose again with His body, shall raise our bodies according
to His mighty working, and then the whole manhood of us--body, soul, and
spirit--shall have our perfect consummation and bliss in His eternal and
everlasting glory.
_National Sermons_.
APRIL 25.
St. Mark, Evangelist and Martyr.
God's apostles, saints, and martyrs are our spiritual ancestors. They
spread the Gospel into all lands, and they spread it, remember always,
not only by preaching what they knew, but by being what they were. Their
characters, their personal histories, are as important to us as their
writings.
_Sermons_.
May.
Is it merely a fancy that we are losing that love for Spring which among
our old forefathers rose almost to worship? That the perpetual miracle
of the budding leaves and the returning song-birds awakes no longer in us
the astonishment which it awoke yearly among the dwellers in the old
world, when the sun was a god who was sick to death each winter, and
returned in spring to life, and health, and glory; when Freya, the
goddess of youth and love, went forth over the earth while the flowers
broke forth under her tread over the brown moors, and the birds welcomed
her with song? To those simpler children of a simpler age winter and
spring were the two great facts of existence; the symbols, the one of
death, the other of life; and the battle between the two--the battle of
the sun with darkness, of winter with spring, of death with life, of
bereavement with love--lay at the root of all their myths and all their
creeds. Surely a change has come over our fancies! The seasons are
little to us now!
_Prose Idylls_.
Past and Present. May 1.
Now see the young spring leaves burst out a-maying,
Fill with their ripening hues orchard and glen;
So though old forms pass by, ne'er shall their spirit die,
Look! England's bare boughs show green leaf again.
_Poems_. 1849.
The Earth is the Lord's. May 2.
The earth is holy! Can there be a more glorious truth to carry out--one
which will lead us more into all love and beauty and purity in heaven and
earth? One which must have God's light of love shining on it at every
step. God gives us souls and bodies exquisitely attuned for this very
purpose--the aesthetic faculty, our sensibilities to the beautiful. All
events of life, all the workings of our hearts, should point to this one
idea. As I walk the fields, the trees and flowers and birds, and the
motes of rack floating in the sky, seem to cry to me: "Thou knowest us!
Thou knowest we have a meaning, and sing a heaven's harmony by night and
day! Do us justice! Spell our enigma, and go forth and tell thy fellows
that we are their brethren, that their spirit is our spirit, their
Saviour our Saviour, their God our God!"
_Letters and Memories_. 1842.
The Great Question. May 3.
Is there a living God in the universe, or is there not? That is the
greatest of all questions. Has our Lord Jesus Christ answered it, or has
He not?
_Water of Life Sermons_. 1866.
Our Father. May 4.
Look at those thousand birds, and without our Father not one of them
shall fall to the ground; and art thou not of more value than many
sparrows--thou for whom God sent His Son to die? . . . Ah! my friend, we
must look out and around to see what God is like. It is when we persist
in turning our eyes inward, and prying curiously over our own
imperfections, that we learn to make a god after our own image, and fancy
that our own hardness and darkness are the patterns of His light and
love.
_Hypatia_, chap. xi.
Want of Sympathy. May 5.
If we do not understand our fellow-creatures we shall never love them.
And it is equally true, that if we do not love them we shall never
understand them. Want of charity, want of sympathy, want of good feeling
and fellow-feeling--what does it, what can it breed but endless mistakes
and ignorances, both of men's characters and men's circumstances?
_Westminster Sermons_. 1873.
A Religion. May 6.
If all that a man wants is "a _religion_," he ought to be able to make a
very pretty one for himself, and a fresh one as often as he is tired of
the old. But the heart and soul of man wants more than that; as it is
written, "My soul is athirst for GOD, even for the living God." I want a
living God, who cares for men, forgives men, saves men from their sins:
and Him I have found in the Bible, and nowhere else, save in the facts of
life which the Bible alone interprets.
_Sermons on the Pentateuch_. 1863.
True Civilisation. May 7.
Do the duty which lies nearest to you; your duty to the man who lives
next door, and to the man who lives in the next street. Do your duty to
your parish, that you may do your duty by your country and to all
mankind, and prove yourselves thereby civilised men.
_Water of Life Sermons_. 1866.
Nature and Grace. May 8.
Why speak of the God of Nature and the God of grace as two antithetical
terms? The Bible never in a single instance makes the distinction, and
surely if God be the eternal and unchangeable One, and if all the
universe bears the impress of His signet, we have no right, in the
present infantile state of science, to put arbitrary limits of our own to
the revelation which He may have thought good to make of Himself in
Nature. Nay, rather, let us believe that if our eyes were opened we
should fulfil the requirement of genius and see the universal in the
particular by seeing God's whole likeness, His whole glory, reflected as
in a mirror in the meanest flower, and that nothing but the dulness of
our simple souls prevents them from seeing day and night in all things
the Lord Jesus Christ fulfilling His own saying, "My Father worketh
hitherto, and I work."
_Glaucus_. 1855.
Wisdom the Child of Goodness. May 9.
Goodness rather than talent had given her a wisdom, and goodness rather
than courage a power of using that wisdom, which to those simple folk
seemed almost an inspiration.
_Two Years Ago_, chap. ii. 1857.
Rule of Life. May 10.
Two great rules for the attainment of heavenly wisdom are simple
enough--"Never forget what and where you are," and "Grieve not the Holy
Spirit."
_MS. Letter_. 1841.
Music the Speech of God. May 11.
Music--there is something very wonderful in music. Words are wonderful
enough, but music is more wonderful. It speaks not to our thoughts as
words do, it speaks straight to our hearts and spirits, to the very core
and root of our souls. Music soothes us, stirs us up; it puts noble
feelings into us; it melts us to tears, we know not how; it is a language
by itself, just as perfect, in its way, as speech, as words; just as
divine, just as blessed. Music has been called the speech of angels; I
will go farther, and call it the speech of God Himself.
The old Greeks, the wisest of all the heathen, made a point of teaching
their children music, because, they said, it taught them not to be self-
willed and fanciful, but to see the beauty of order, the usefulness of
rule, the divineness of law.
_Good News of God Sermons_. 1859.
Facing Realities. May 12.
The only comfort I can see in the tragedies of war is that they bring us
all face to face with the realities of human life, as it has been in all
ages, giving us sterner and yet more loving, more human, and more divine
thoughts about ourselves, and our business here, and the fate of those
who are gone, and awakening us out of the luxurious, frivolous, and
unreal dream (full nevertheless of hard judgments) in which we have been
living so long, to trust in a living Father who is really and practically
governing this world and all worlds, and who willeth that none should
perish.
_Letters and Memories_. 1855.
Street Arabs. May 13.
One has only to go into the streets of any great city in England to see
how we, with all our boast of civilisation, are yet but one step removed
from barbarism. Is that a hard word? Only there _are_ the barbarians
round us at every street corner--grown barbarians, it may be, now all but
past saving, but bringing into the world young barbarians whom we may yet
save, for God wishes us to save them. . . . Do not deceive yourselves
about the little dirty, offensive children in the street. If they be
offensive to you, they are not to Him who made them. "Take heed that ye
despise not one of these little ones: for I say unto you, their angels do
always behold the face of your Father which is in heaven."
_All Saints' Day Sermons_. 1871.
Fellowship of Sorrow. May 14.
How was He,
The blessed One, made perfect? Why, by grief--
The fellowship of voluntary grief--
He read the tear-stained book of poor men's souls,
As we must learn to read it. Lady! lady!
Wear but one robe the less--forego one meal--
And thou shalt taste the core of many tales,
Which now flit past thee, like a minstrel's songs,
The sweeter for their sadness.
_Saint's Tragedy_, Act ii. Scene v.
1847.
Heaven and Hell. May 15.
Heaven and hell--the spiritual world--are they merely invisible places in
space which may become visible hereafter? or are they not rather the
moral world of right and wrong? Love and righteousness--is not that the
heaven itself wherein God dwells? Hatred and sin--is not that hell
itself, wherein dwells all that is opposed to God?
_Water of Life Sermons_.
The Awfulness of Life. May 16.
Our hearts are dull, and hard, and light, God forgive us! and we forget
continually what an earnest, awful world we live in--a whole eternity
waiting for us to be born, and a whole eternity waiting to see what we
shall do now we are born. Yes, our hearts are dull, and hard, and light.
And therefore Christ sends suffering on us, to teach us what we always
gladly forget in comfort and prosperity--what an awful capacity of
suffering we have; and more, what an awful capacity of suffering our
fellow-creatures have likewise. . . .
We sit at ease too often in a fool's paradise, till God awakens us and
tortures us into pity for the torture of others. And so, if we will not
acknowledge our brotherhood by any other teaching, He knits us together
by the brotherhood of suffering.
_All Saints' Day Sermons_. 1871.
Hope and Fear. May 17.
Every gift of God is good, and given for our happiness, and we sin if we
abuse it. To use your fancy to your own misery is to abuse it and to
sin. The realm of the possible was given to man to _hope_ and not to
_fear_ in.
_Letters and Memories_. 1842.
Cry of the Heart and Reason. May 18.
A living God, a true God, a real God, a God worthy of the name, a God who
is working for ever, everywhere, and in all; who hates nothing that He
has made, forgets nothing, neglects nothing; a God who satisfies not only
the head but the heart, not only the logical intellect but the highest
reason--that pure reason which is one with the conscience and moral
sense! For Him we cry out, Him we seek, and if we cannot find Him we
know no rest.
_Water of Life Sermons_. 1867.
Speaking the Truth in Love. May 19.
Whenever we are tempted to say more than is needful, let us remember St.
John's words (in the only sermon we have on record of his), "Little
children, love one another," and ask God for His Holy Spirit, the spirit
of love, which, instead of weakening a man's words, makes them all the
stronger in the cause of truth, because they are spoken in love.
How difficult it is to distinguish between the loving _tact_, which
avoids giving offence to a weaker brother, and the fear of man, which
bringeth a snare!
_MS. Letter_. 1842.
Peasant Souls. May 20.
. . . Dull boors
See deeper than we think, and hide within
Those leathern hulls unfathomable truths,
Which we amid thought's glittering mazes lose.
They grind among the iron facts of life,
And have no time for self-deception.
_Saint's Tragedy_, Act iii. Scene ii.
1847.
Death and Everlasting Life. May 21.
Do not rashly count on some sudden radical change happening to you as
soon as you die to make you fit for heaven. There is not one word in the
Bible which gives us reason to suppose that we shall not be in the next
world the same persons that we have made ourselves in this world. . . .
What we sow here we shall reap there. And it is good for us to know and
face this. Anything is good for us, however unpleasant it may be, which
drives us from the only real misery, which is sin and selfishness, to the
only true happiness, which is the everlasting life of Christ, a pure,
loving, just, generous, useful life of goodness.
_Good News of God Sermons_.
Science and Virtue. May 22.
Science is great; but she is not the greatest. She is an instrument and
not a power--beneficent or deadly, according as she is wielded by the
hand of virtue or vice. But her lawful mistress, the only one which can
use her aright, the only one under whom she can truly grow and prosper
and prove her divine descent, is Virtue, the likeness of Almighty God.
_Roman and Teuton_. 1860.
A Child's Heart. May 23.
"I saw at last! I found out that I had been trying for years which was
stronger, God or I; I found out I had been trying whether I could not do
well enough without Him; and there I found that I could not--could not! I
felt like a child who had marched off from home, fancying it can find its
way, and is lost at once. I did not know that I had a Father in heaven
who had been looking after me, when I fancied I was looking after myself.
I don't half believe it now." . . . And so the old heart passed away
from Thomas Thurnall, and instead of it grew up the heart of a little
child.
_Two Years Ago_, chap. xxviii. 1857.
Self-Security. May 24.
Strange it is how mortal man, "who cometh up and is cut down like the
flower," can harden himself into a stoical security, and count on the
morrow which may never come. Yet so it is, and perhaps if it were not so
no work would get done on earth--at least by the many who know not that
God is guiding them, while they fancy they are guiding themselves.
_Two Years Ago_, chap. i.
There is a Providence which rules this earth, whose name is neither
Political Economy nor Expediency, but the Living God, who makes every
right action reward, and every wrong action punish, _itself_.
_History Lecture_, _Cambridge_. 1866.
Loss and Gain. May 25.
"He has yet to learn what losing his life to save it means, Amyas. Bad
men have taught him (and I fear these Anabaptists and Puritans at home
teach little else) that it is the one great business of every man to save
his own soul after he dies; every one for himself; and that that, and not
divine self-sacrifice, is the one thing needful, and the better part
which Mary chose."
"I think," said Amyas, "men are enough inclined to be selfish without
being taught that."
_Westward Ho_! chap. vii. 1854.
The Law of Righteousness. May 26.
What if I had discovered that one law of the spiritual world, in which
all others were contained, was Righteousness? and that disharmony with
that law, which we call unspirituality, was not being vulgar, or clumsy,
or ill-taught, or unimaginative, or dull; but simply being unrighteous?
that righteousness, and it alone, was the beautiful, righteousness the
sublime, the heavenly, the God-like--ay, God Himself?
_Hypatia_, chap. xxvii. 1852.
Human and Divine Love. May 27.
Believe me that he who has been led by love to a human being to
understand the mystery of that divine love which fills all heaven and
earth, and concentrates itself into an articulate manifestation in the
person of Christ, will soon begin to find that he cannot enter into the
perfect bliss of that truth without going further, and seeing that the
human heart requires some standing-ground for its affection, even for the
love of wife and child, deeper and surer than that love, namely, in utter
loyalty, resignation, adoring affection to Him in whom all loveliness is
concentrated. It is a great mystery. It is a hard lesson.
_Letters and Memories_. 1847.
A High Finish. May 28.
A high artistic finish is important for more reasons than for the mere
pleasure it gives. There is something sacramental in perfect metre and
rhythm. They are outward and visible signs (most seriously we speak as
we say it) of an inward and spiritual grace, namely, of the
self-possessed and victorious temper of one who has so far subdued nature
as to be able to hear that universal sphere-music of hers, speaking of
which Mr. Carlyle says, that "all deepest thoughts instinctively vent
themselves in song."
_Miscellanies_. 1849.
Our Prayers. May 29.
There can be no objection to praying for certain special things. God
forbid! I cannot help doing it, any more than a child in the dark can
help calling for its mother. Only it seems to me that when we pray,
"Grant this day that we run into no kind of danger," we ought to lay our
stress on the "run" rather than on the "danger," to ask God not to take
away the danger by altering the course of nature, but to give us light
and guidance whereby to avoid it.
_Letters and Memories_. 1860.
Clearing Showers. May 30.
When a stream is swelled by a flood, a shower of rain _clears_ it. So in
trouble, when the heart is turbid from the world's admixtures, and the
stirring up of the foul particles which will lie at the bottom, nothing
but the pure dew of heaven can restore its purity, when God's spirit
comes down upon it like a gentle rain!
_MS._ 1843.
Vineyards in Spring. May 31.
Look at the rows of vines, or what will be vines when the summer comes,
but are now black, knotted and gnarled clubs, without a sign of life in
the seemingly dead stick. One who sees that sight may find a new beauty
and meaning in the mystic words, "I am the Vine, ye are the branches." It
is not merely the connection between branch and stem common to all trees;
not merely the exhilarating and seemingly inspiring properties of the
grape, which made the very heathen look upon it as the sacred and
miraculous fruit, the special gift of God; not merely the pruning out of
the unfruitful branches, to be burned as firewood--not merely these, but
the seeming death of the Vine, shorn of all its beauty, its fruitfulness,
of every branch and twig which it had borne the year before, and left
unsightly and seemingly ruined, to its winter sleep; and then bursting
forth again by an irresistible inward life into fresh branches, spreading
and trailing far and wide, and tossing their golden tendrils to the sky.
This thought surely--the emblem of the living Church, springing from the
corpse of the dead Christ, who yet should rise to be alive for
evermore--enters into, it may be forms an integral part of, the meaning
of that prophecy of all prophecies.
_Prose Idylls_. 1864.
SAINTS' DAYS, FASTS, & FESTIVALS.
MAY 1.
St. Philip and St. James, Apostles and Martyrs.
Christ's cross says still, and will say to all Eternity, "Wouldst thou be
good? Wouldst thou be like God? Then work and dare, and if need be,
suffer for thy fellow-men." On the Cross Christ consecrated, and as it
were offered to the Father in His own body, all loving actions, unselfish
actions, merciful actions, heroic actions, which man has done or ever
will do. From Him, from His spirit, their strength came; and therefore
He is not ashamed to call them brethren. He is the King of the noble
army of martyrs; of all who suffer for love and truth and justice' sake;
and to all such He says, thou hast put on My likeness; thou hast suffered
for My sake, and I too have suffered for thy sake, and enabled thee to
suffer likewise, and in Me thou too art a Son of God, in whom the Father
is well pleased.
_Sermons_.
Feast of the Ascension.
"Lo, I am with you always," said the Blessed One before He ascended to
the Father. And this is the Lord who we fancy is gone away far above the
stars till the end of time! Oh, my friends, rather bow your heads before
Him at this moment! For here He is among us now, listening to every
thought of our poor simple hearts. He is where God is, in whom we live,
and move, and have our being, and that is everywhere. Do you wish Him to
be any nearer?
_National Sermons_.
. . . Oh, my Saviour!
My God! where art Thou? That's but a tale about Thee,
That crucifix above--it does but show Thee
As Thou wast once, but not as Thou art now. . . .
_Saint's Tragedy_, Act iv. Scene i.
June.