Transcribed from the 1890 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org
THE WATER OF LIFE
_AND OTHER SERMONS_
* * * * *
BY
CHARLES KINGSLEY.
* * * * *
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
1890
_The right of translation is reserved_
* * * * *
First Edition (Fcap. 8vo), 1867.
New Edition 1872, Reprinted 1873, 1875.
New Edition, Crown 8vo, 1879, Reprinted 1881, 1885.
New Edition 1890.
* * * * *
CONTENTS.
SERMON I.
Page
THE WATER OF LIFE. (_Revelation_ xxii. 17.) 1
SERMON II.
THE PHYSICIAN’S CALLING. (_St. Matthew_ ix. 35.) 14
SERMON III.
THE VICTORY OF LIFE. (_Isaiah_ xxxviii. 18, 19.) 27
SERMON IV.
THE WAGES OF SIN. (_Romans_ vi. 21–23.) 40
SERMON V.
NIGHT AND DAY. (_Romans_ xiii. 12.) 56
SERMON VI.
THE SHAKING OF THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH. (_Hebrews_ xii. 68
26–29.)
SERMON VII.
THE BATTLE OF LIFE. (_Galatians_ v. 16, 17.) 83
SERMON VIII.
FREE GRACE. (_Isaiah_ lv. 1.) 90
SERMON IX.
EZEKIEL’S VISION. (_Ezekiel_ i. 1, 26.) 98
SERMON X.
RUTH. (_Ruth_ ii. 4.) 111
SERMON XI.
SOLOMON. (_Ecclesiastes_ i. 12–14.) 123
SERMON XII.
PROGRESS. (_Ecclesiastes_ vii. 10.) 134
SERMON XIII.
FAITH. (_Habakkuk_ ii. 4.) 143
SERMON XIV.
THE GREAT COMMANDMENT. (_Matthew_ xxii. 37, 38.) 153
SERMON XV.
THE EARTHQUAKE. (_Psalm_ xlvi. 1, 2.) 164
SERMON XVI.
THE METEOR SHOWER. (_Matthew_ x. 29, 30.) 176
SERMON XVII.
CHOLERA, 1866. (_Luke_ vii. 16.) 189
SERMON XVIII.
THE WICKED SERVANT. (_Matthew_ xviii. 23.) 203
SERMON XIX.
CIVILIZED BARBARISM. (_Mattthew_ ix. 12.) 213
SERMON XX.
THE GOD OF NATURE. (_Psalm_ cxlvii. 7–9.) 233
SERMON I.
THE WATER OF LIFE.
(_Preached at Westminster Abbey_)
REVELATION xxii. 17.
And the Spirit and the Bride say, Come. And let him that heareth
say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will,
let him take the water of life freely.
THIS text is its own witness. It needs no man to testify to its origin.
Its own words show it to be inspired and divine.
But not from its mere poetic beauty, great as that is: greater than we,
in this wet and cold climate, can see at the first glance. We must go to
the far East and the far South to understand the images which were called
up in the mind of an old Jew at the very name of wells and water-springs;
and why the Scriptures speak of them as special gifts of God, life-giving
and divine. We must have seen the treeless waste, the blazing sun, the
sickening glare, the choking dust, the parched rocks, the distant
mountains quivering as in the vapour of a furnace; we must have felt the
lassitude of heat, the torment of thirst, ere we can welcome, as did
those old Easterns, the well dug long ago by pious hands, whither the
maidens come with their jars at eventide, when the stone is rolled away,
to water the thirsty flocks; or the living fountain, under the shadow of
a great rock in a weary land, with its grove of trees, where all the
birds for many a mile flock in, and shake the copses with their song; its
lawn of green, on which the long-dazzled eye rests with refreshment and
delight; its brook, wandering away—perhaps to be lost soon in burning
sand, but giving, as far as it flows, Life; a Water of Life to plant, to
animal, and to man.
All these images, which we have to call up in our minds one by one,
presented themselves to the mind of an Eastern, whether Jew or heathen,
at once, as a well-known and daily scene; and made him feel, at the very
mention of a water-spring, that the speaker was telling him of the good
and beautiful gift of a beneficent Being.
And yet—so do extremes meet—like thoughts, though not like images, may be
called up in our minds, here in the heart of London, in murky alleys and
foul courts, where there is too often, as in the poet’s rotting sea—
‘Water, water, everywhere,
Yet not a drop to drink.’
And we may bless God—as the Easterns bless Him for the ancestors who
digged their wells—for every pious soul who now erects a
drinking-fountain; for he fulfils the letter as well as the spirit of
Scripture, by offering to the bodies as well as the souls of men the
Water of Life freely.
But the text speaks not of earthly water. No doubt the words ‘Water of
Life’ have a spiritual and mystic meaning. Yet that alone does not prove
the inspiration of the text. They had a spiritual and mystic meaning
already among the heathens of the East—Greeks and barbarians alike.
The East—and indeed the West likewise—was haunted by dreams of a Water of
Life, a Fount of Perpetual Youth, a Cup of Immortality: dreams at which
only the shallow and the ignorant will smile; for what are they but
tokens of man’s right to Immortality,—of his instinct that he is not as
the beasts,—that there is somewhat in him which ought not to die, which
need not die, and yet which may die, and which perhaps deserves to die?
How could it be kept alive? how strengthened and refreshed into perpetual
youth?
And water—with its life-giving and refreshing powers, often with
medicinal properties seemingly miraculous—what better symbol could be
found for that which would keep off death? Perhaps there was some
reality which answered the symbol, some actual Cup of Immortality, some
actual Fount of Youth. But who could attain to them? Surely the gods
hid their own special treasure from the grasp of man. Surely that Water
of Life was to be sought for far away, amid trackless mountain-peaks,
guarded by dragons and demons. That Fount of Youth must be hidden in the
rich glades of some tropic forest. That Cup of Immortality must be
earned by years, by ages, of superhuman penance and self torture.
Certain of the old Jews, it is true, had had deeper and truer thoughts.
Here and there a psalmist had said, ‘With God is the well of Life;’ or a
prophet had cried, ‘Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters,
and buy without money and without price!’ But the Jews had utterly
forgotten (if the mass of them ever understood) the meaning of the old
revelations; and, above all, the Pharisees, the most religious among
them. To their minds, it was only by a proud asceticism,—by being not as
other men were; only by doing some good thing—by performing some
extraordinary religious feat,—that man could earn eternal life. And
bitter and deadly was their selfish wrath when they heard that the Water
of Life was within all men’s reach, then and for ever; that The Eternal
Life was in that Christ who spoke to them; that He gave it freely to
whomsoever He would;—bitter their wrath when they heard His disciples
declare that God had given to men Eternal Life; that the Spirit and the
Bride said. Come.
They had, indeed, a graceful ceremony, handed down to them from better
times, as a sign that those words of the old psalmists and prophets had
once meant something. At the Feast of Tabernacles—the harvest feast—at
which God was especially to be thanked as the giver of fertility and
Life, their priests drew water with great pomp from the pool of Siloam;
connecting it with the words of the prophet: ‘With joy shall ye draw
water out of the wells of salvation.’ But the ceremony had lost its
meaning. It had become mechanical and empty. They had forgotten that
God was a giver. They would have confessed, of course, that He was the
Lord of Life: but they expected Him to prove that, not by giving Life,
but by taking it away: not by saving the many, but by destroying all
except a favoured few. But bitter and deadly was their wrath when they
were told that their ceremony had still a living meaning, and a meaning
not only for them, but for all men; for that mob of common people whom
they looked on as accursed, because they knew not the law. Bitter and
deadly was their selfish wrath, when they heard One who ate and drank
with publicans and sinners stand up in the very midst of that grand
ceremony, and cry; ‘If any man thirst, let him come to Me and drink. He
that believeth on Me, as the scripture hath said, Out of him shall flow
rivers of living water.’ A God who said to all ‘Come,’ was not the God
they desired to rule over them. And thus the very words which prove the
text to be divine and inspired, were marked out as such by those bigots
of the old world, who in them saw and hated both Christ and His Father.
The Spirit and the Bride say, Come. Come, and drink freely.
Those words prove the text, and other texts like it in Holy Scripture, to
be an utterly new Gospel and good news; an utterly new revelation and
unveiling of God, and of the relations of God to man.
For the old legends and dreams, in whatsoever they differed, agreed at
least in this, that the Water of Life was far away; infinitely difficult
to reach; the prize only of some extraordinary favourite of fortune, or
of some being of superhuman energy and endurance. The gods grudged life
to mortals, as they grudged them joy and all good things. That God
should say Come; that the Water of Life could be a gift, a grace, a boon
of free generosity and perfect condescension, never entered into their
minds. That the gods should keep their immortality to themselves seemed
reasonable enough. That they should bestow it on a few heroes; and, far
away above the stars, give them to eat of their ambrosia, and drink of
their nectar, and so live for ever; that seemed reasonable enough
likewise.
But that the God of gods, the Maker of the universe should say, ‘Come,
and drink freely;’ that He should stoop from heaven to bring life and
immortality to light,—to tell men what the Water of Life was, and where
it was, and how to attain it; much more, that that God should stoop to
become incarnate, and suffer and die on the cross, that He might purchase
the Water of Life, not for a favoured few, but for all mankind; that He
should offer it to all, without condition, stint, or drawback;—this,
this, never entered into their wildest dreams.
And yet, when the strange news was told, it looked so probable, although
so strange, to thousands who had seemed mere profligates or outcasts; it
agreed so fully with the deepest voices of their own hearts,—with their
thirst for a nobler, purer, more enduring Life,—with their highest idea
of what a perfect God should be, if He meant to show His perfect
goodness; it seemed at once so human and humane, and yet so superhuman
and divine;—that they accepted it unhesitatingly, as a voice from God
Himself, a revelation of the Eternal Author of the universe; as, God
grant you may accept it this day.
And what is Life? And what is the Water of Life?
What are they indeed, my friends? You will find many answers to that
question, in this, as in all ages: but the one which Scripture gives is
this. Life is none other, according to the Scripture, than God Himself,
Jesus Christ our Lord, who bestows on man His own Spirit, to form in him
His own character, which is the character of God.
He is The one Eternal Life; and it has been manifested in human form,
that human beings might copy it; and behold, it was full of grace and
truth.
The Life of grace and truth; that is the Life of Christ, and, therefore,
the Life of God.
The Life of grace—of graciousness, love, pity, generosity, usefulness,
self-sacrifice; the Life of truth—of faithfulness, fairness, justice, the
desire to impart knowledge and to guide men into all truth. The Life, in
one word, of charity, which is both grace and truth, both love and
justice, in one Eternal essence. That is the life which God lives for
ever in heaven. That is The one Eternal Life, which must be also the
Life of God. For, as there is but one Eternal, even God, so is there but
one Eternal Life, which is the life of God and of His Christ. And the
Spirit by which it is inspired into the hearts of men is the Spirit of
God, who proceedeth alike from the Father and from the Son.
Have you not seen men and women in whom these words have been literally
and palpably fulfilled? Have you not seen those who, though old in
years, were so young in heart, that they seem to have drunk of the
Fountain of perpetual Youth,—in whom, though the outward body decayed,
the soul was renewed day by day; who kept fresh and pure the noblest and
holiest instincts of their childhood, and went on adding to them the
experience, the calm, the charity of age? Persons whose eye was still so
bright, whose smile was still so tender, that it seemed that they could
never die? And when they died, or seemed to die, you felt that THEY were
not dead, but only their husk and shell; that they themselves, the
character which you had loved and reverenced, must endure on, beyond the
grave, beyond the worlds, in a literally Everlasting Life, independent of
nature, and of all the changes of the material universe.
Surely you have seen such. And surely what you loved in them was the
Spirit of God Himself,—that love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness,
goodness, which the natural savage man has not. Has not, I say, look at
him where you will, from the tropics to the pole, because it is a gift
above man; the gift of the Spirit of God; the Eternal Life of goodness,
which natural birth cannot give to man, nor natural death take away.
You have surely seen such persons—if you have not, _I_ have, thank God,
full many a time;—but if you have seen them, did you not see this?—That
it was not riches which gave them this Life, if they were rich; or
intellect, if they were clever; or science, if they were learned; or
rank, if they were cultivated; or bodily organization, if they were
beautiful and strong: that this noble and gentle life of theirs was
independent of their body, of their mind, of their circumstances? Nay,
have you not seen this,—_I_ have, thank God, full many a time,—That not
many rich, not many mighty, not many noble are called: but that God’s
strength is rather made perfect in man’s weakness,—that in foul garrets,
in lonely sick-beds, in dark places of the earth, you find ignorant
people, sickly people, ugly people, stupid people, in spite of, in
defiance of, every opposing circumstance, leading heroic lives,—a
blessing, a comfort, an example, a very Fount of Life to all around them;
and dying heroic deaths, because they know they have Eternal Life?
And what was that which had made them different from the mean, the
savage, the drunken, the profligate beings around them? This at least.
That they were of those of whom it is written, ‘Let him that is athirst
come.’ They had been athirst for Life. They had had instincts and
longings; very simple and humble, but very pure and noble. At times, it
may be, they had been unfaithful to those instincts. At times, it may
be, they had fallen. They had said ‘Why should I not do like the rest,
and be a savage? Let me eat and drink, for to-morrow I die;’ and they
had cast themselves down into sin, for very weariness and heaviness, and
were for a while as the beasts which have no law.
But the thirst after The noble Life was too deep to be quenched in that
foul puddle. It endured, and it conquered; and they became more and more
true to it, till it was satisfied at last, though never quenched, that
thirst of theirs, in Him who alone can satisfy it—the God who gave it;
for in them were fulfilled the Lord’s own words: ‘Blessed are they that
hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.’
There are those, I fear, in this church—there are too many in all
churches—who have not felt, as yet, this divine thirst after a higher
Life; who wish not for an Eternal, but for a merely endless life, and who
would not care greatly what sort of life that endless life might be, if
only it was not too unlike the life which they live now; who would be
glad enough to continue as they are, in their selfish pleasure, selfish
gain, selfish content, for ever; who look on death as an unpleasant
necessity, the end of all which they really prize; and who have taken up
religion chiefly as a means for escaping still more unpleasant
necessities after death. To them, as to all, it is said, ‘Come, and
drink of the water of life freely.’ But The Life of goodness which
Christ offers, is not the life they want. Wherefore they will not come
to Him, that they may have life. Meanwhile, they have no right to sneer
at the Fountain of Youth, or the Cup of Immortality. Well were it for
them if those dreams were true; in their heart of hearts they know it.
Would they not go to the ends of the earth to bathe in the Fountain of
Youth? Would they not give all their gold for a draught of the Cup of
Immortality, and so save themselves, once and for all, the trouble of
becoming good?
But there are those here, I doubt not, who have in them, by grace of God,
that same divine thirst for the Higher Life; who are discontented with
themselves, ashamed of themselves; who are tormented by longings which
they cannot satisfy, instincts which they cannot analyse, powers which
they cannot employ, duties which they cannot perform, doctrinal
confusions which they cannot unravel; who would welcome any change, even
the most tremendous, which would make them nobler, purer, juster, more
loving, more useful, more clear-headed and sound-minded; and when they
think of death say with the poet,—
‘’Tis life, not death for which I pant,
’Tis life, whereof my nerves are scant,
More life, and fuller, that I want.’
To them I say—for God has said it long ago,—Be of good cheer. The
calling and gifts of God are without repentance. If you have the divine
thirst, it will be surely satisfied. If you long to be better men and
women, better men and women you will surely be. Only be true to those
higher instincts; only do not learn to despise and quench that divine
thirst; only struggle on, in spite of mistakes, of failures, even of
sins—for every one of which last your heavenly Father will chastise you,
even while He forgives; in spite of all falls, struggle on. Blessed are
you that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for you shall be filled.
To you—and not in vain—‘The Spirit and the Bride say, Come. And let him
that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever
will, let him drink of the water of life freely.’
SERMON II.
THE PHYSICIAN’S CALLING.
(_Preached at Whitehall for St. George’s Hospital_.)
ST. MATTHEW ix. 35.
And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their
synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing
every sickness and every disease among the people.
THE Gospels speak of disease and death in a very simple and human tone.
They regard them in theory, as all are forced to regard them in fact, as
sore and sad evils.
The Gospels never speak of disease or death as necessities; never as the
will of God. It is Satan, not God, who binds the woman with a spirit of
infirmity. It is not the will of our Father in heaven that one little
one should perish. Indeed, we do not sufficiently appreciate the
abhorrence with which the whole of Scripture speaks of disease and death:
because we are in the habit of interpreting many texts which speak of the
disease and death of the body in this life as if they referred to the
punishment and death of the soul in the world to come. We have a perfect
right to do that; for Scripture tells us that there is a mysterious
analogy and likeness between the life of the body and that of the soul,
and therefore between the death of the body and that of the soul: but we
must not forget, in the secondary and higher spiritual interpretation of
such texts, their primary and physical meaning, which is this—that
disease and death are uniformly throughout Scripture held up to the
abhorrence of man.
Moreover—and this is noteworthy—the Gospels, and indeed all Scripture,
very seldom palliate the misery of disease, by drawing from it those
moral lessons which we ourselves do. I say very seldom. The Bible does
so here and there, to tell us that we may do so likewise. And we may
thank God heartily that the Bible does so. It would be a miserable
world, if all that the clergyman or the friend might say by the sick-bed
were, ‘This is an inevitable evil, like hail and thunder. You must bear
it if you can: and if not, then not.’ A miserable world, if he could not
say with full belief; ‘“My son, despise not thou the chastening of the
Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him. For whom the Lord loveth
He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.” Thou knowest
not now why thou art afflicted; perhaps thou wilt never know in this
life. But a day will come when thou wilt know: when thou wilt find that
this sickness came to thee at the exact right time, in the exact right
way; when thou wilt find that God has been keeping thee in the secret
place of His presence from the provoking of men, and hiding thee
privately in His tabernacle from the spite of tongues; when thou wilt
discover that thou hast been learning precious lessons for thy immortal
spirit, while thou didst seem to thyself merely tossing with clouded
intellect on a bed of useless pain; when thou wilt find that God was
nearest to thee, at the very moment when He seemed to have left thee most
utterly.’
Thank God, we can say that, and more; and we will say it. But we must
bear in mind, that the Gospels, which are the very parts of Scripture
which speak most concerning disease, omit almost entirely that cheering
and comforting view of it.
And why? Only to force upon our attention, I believe, a view even more
cheering and comforting: a view deeper and wider, because supplied not
merely to the pious sufferer, but to all sufferers; not merely to the
Christian, but to all mankind. And that is, I believe, none other than
this: that God does not only bring spiritual good out of physical evil,
but that He hates physical evil itself: that He desires not only the
salvation of our souls, but the health of our bodies; and that when He
sent His only begotten Son into the world to do His will, part of that
will was, that He should attack and conquer the physical evil of
disease—as it were instinctively, as his natural enemy, and directly, for
the sake of the body of the sufferer.
Many excellent men, seeing how the healing of disease was an integral
part of our Lord’s mission, and of the mission of His apostles, have
wished that it should likewise form an integral part of the mission of
the Church: that the clergy should as much as possible be physicians; the
physician, as much as possible, a clergyman. The plan may be useful in
exceptional cases—in that, for instance, of the missionary among the
heathen.
But experience has decided, that in a civilized and Christian country it
had better be otherwise: that the great principle of the division of
labour should be carried out: that there should be in the land a body of
men whose whole mind and time should be devoted to one part only of our
Lord’s work—the battle with disease and death. And the effect has been
not to lower but to raise the medical profession. It has saved the
doctor from one great danger—that of abusing, for the purposes of
religious proselytizing, the unlimited confidence reposed in him. It has
freed him from many a superstition which enfeebled and confused the
physicians of the Middle Ages. It has enabled him to devote his whole
intellect to physical science, till he has set his art on a sound and
truly scientific foundation. It has enabled him to attack physical evil
with a single-hearted energy and devotion which ought to command the
respect and admiration of his fellow-countrymen. If all classes did
their work half as simply, as bravely, as determinedly, as unselfishly,
as the medical men of Great Britain—and, I doubt not, of other countries
in Europe—this world would be a far fairer place than it is likely to be
for many a year to come. It is good to do one thing and to do it well.
It is good to follow Christ in one thing, and to follow Him utterly in
that. And the medical man has set his mind to do one thing,—to hate
calmly, but with an internecine hatred, disease and death, and to fight
against them to the end.
The medical man is complained of at times as being too materialistic—as
caring more for the bodies of his patients than for their souls. Do not
blame him too hastily. In his exclusive care for the body, he may be
witnessing unconsciously, yet mightily, for the soul, for God, for the
Bible, for immortality.
Is he not witnessing for God, when he shows by his acts that he believes
God to be a God of Life, not of death; of health, not of disease; of
order, not of disorder; of joy and strength, not of misery and weakness?
Is he not witnessing for Christ when, like Christ, he heals all manner of
sickness and disease among the people, and attacks physical evil as the
natural foe of man and of the Creator of man?
Is he not witnessing for the immortality of the soul when he fights
against death as an evil to be postponed at all hazards and by all means,
even when its advent is certain? Surely it is so. How often have we
seen the doctor by the dying bed, trying to preserve life, when he knew
well that life could not be preserved. We have been tempted to say to
him, ‘Let the sufferer alone. He is senseless. He is going. We can do
nothing more for his soul; you can do nothing more for his body. Why
torment him needlessly for the sake of a few more moments of respiration?
Let him alone to die in peace.’ How have we been tempted to say that?
We have not dared to say it; for we saw that the doctor, and not we, was
in the right; that in all those little efforts, so wise, so anxious, so
tender, so truly chivalrous, to keep the failing breath for a few moments
more in the body of one who had no earthly claim upon his care, that
doctor was bearing a testimony, unconscious yet most weighty, to that
human instinct of which the Bible approves throughout, that death in a
human being is an evil, an anomaly, a curse; against which, though he
could not rescue the man from the clutch of his foe, he was bound, in
duty and honour, to fight until the last, simply because it was death,
and death was the enemy of man.
But if the medical man bears witness for God and spiritual things when he
seems exclusively occupied with the body, so does the hospital. Look at
those noble buildings which the generosity of our fellow-countrymen have
erected in all our great cities. You may find in them, truly, sermons in
stones; sermons for rich alike and poor. They preach to the rich, these
hospitals, that the sick-bed levels all alike; that they are the equals
and brothers of the poor in the terrible liability to suffer! They
preach to the poor that they are, through Christianity, the equals of the
rich in their means and opportunities of cure. I say through
Christianity. Whether the founders so intended or not (and those who
founded most of them, St. George’s among the rest, did so intend), these
hospitals bear direct witness for Christ. They do this, and would do it,
even if—which God forbid—the name of Christ were never mentioned within
their walls. That may seem a paradox; but it is none. For it is a
historic fact, that hospitals are a creation of Christian times, and of
Christian men. The heathen knew them not. In that great city of ancient
Rome, as far as I have ever been able to discover, there was not a single
hospital,—not even, I fear, a single charitable institution. Fearful
thought—a city of a million and a half inhabitants, the centre of human
civilization: and not a hospital there! The Roman Dives paid his
physician; the Roman Lazarus literally lay at his gate full of sores,
till he died the death of the street dogs which licked those sores, and
was carried forth to be thrust under ground awhile, till the same dogs
came to quarrel over his bones. The misery and helplessness of the lower
classes in the great cities of the Roman empire, till the Church of
Christ arose, literally with healing in its wings, cannot, I believe, be
exaggerated.
Eastern piety, meanwhile, especially among the Hindoos, had founded
hospitals, in the old meaning of that word—namely, almshouses for the
infirm and aged: but I believe there is no record of hospitals, like our
modern ones, for the cure of disease, till Christianity spread over the
Western world.
And why? Because then first men began to feel the mighty truth contained
in the text. If Christ were a healer, His servants must be healers
likewise. If Christ regarded physical evil as a direct evil, so must
they. If Christ fought against it with all His power, so must they, with
such power as He revealed to them. And so arose exclusively in the
Christian mind, a feeling not only of the nobleness of the healing art,
but of the religious duty of exercising that art on every human being who
needed it; and hospitals are to be counted, as a historic fact, among the
many triumphs of the Gospel.
If there be any one—especially a working man—in this church this day who
is inclined to undervalue the Bible and Christianity, let him know that,
but for the Bible and Christianity, he has not the slightest reason to
believe that there would have been at this moment a hospital in London to
receive him and his in the hour of sickness or disabling accident, and to
lavish on him there, unpaid as the light and air of God outside, every
resource of science, care, generosity, and tenderness, simply because he
is a human being. Yes; truly catholic are these hospitals,—catholic as
the bounty of our heavenly Father,—without respect of persons, giving to
all liberally and upbraiding not, like Him in whom all live, and move,
and have their being; witnesses better than all our sermons for the
universal bounty and tolerance of that heavenly Father who causes the sun
to shine on the evil and the good, and his rain to fall upon the just and
on the unjust, and is perfect in this, that He is good to the unthankful
and the evil.
And, therefore, the preacher can urge his countrymen, let their opinions,
creed, tastes, be what they may, to support hospitals with especial
freedom, earnestness, and confidence. Heaven forbid that I should
undervalue any charitable institution whatever. May God’s blessing be on
them all. But this I have a right to say,—that whatever objections,
suspicions, prejudices there may be concerning any other form of charity,
concerning hospitals there can be none. Every farthing bestowed on them
must go toward the direct doing of good. There is no fear in them of
waste, of misapplication of funds, of private jobbery, of ulterior and
unavowed objects. Palpable and unmistakeable good is all they do and all
they can do. And he who gives to a hospital has the comfort of knowing
that he is bestowing a direct blessing on the bodies of his fellow-men;
and it may be on their souls likewise.
For I have said that these hospitals witness silently for God and for
Christ; and I must believe that that silent witness is not lost on the
minds of thousands who enter them. It sinks in,—all the more readily
because it is not thrust upon them,—and softens and breaks up their
hearts to receive the precious seed of the word of God. Many a man, too
ready from bitter experience to believe that his fellow-men cared not for
him, has entered the wards of a hospital to be happily undeceived. He
finds that he is cared for; that he is not forgotten either by God or
man; that there is a place for him, too, at God’s table, in his hour of
utmost need; and angels of God, in human form, ready to minister to his
necessities; and, softened by that discovery, he has listened humbly,
perhaps for the first time in his life, to the exhortations of a
clergyman; and has taken in, in the hour of dependence and weakness, the
lessons which he was too proud or too sullen to hear in the day of
independence and sturdy health. And so do these hospitals, it seems to
me, follow the example and practice of our Lord Himself; who, by
ministering to the animal wants and animal sufferings of the people, by
showing them that He sympathised with those lower sorrows of which they
were most immediately conscious, made them follow Him gladly, and listen
to Him with faith, when He proclaimed to them in words of wisdom, that
Father in heaven whom He had already proclaimed to them in acts of mercy.
And now, I have to appeal to you for the excellent and honourable
foundation of St. George’s Hospital. I might speak to you, and speak,
too, with a personal reverence and affection of many years’ standing, of
the claims of that noble institution; of the illustrious men of science
who have taught within its walls; of the number of able and honourable
young men who go forth out of it, year by year, to carry their blessed
and truly divine art, not only over Great Britain, but to the islands of
the farthest seas. But to say that would be merely to say what is true,
thank God, of every hospital in London.
One fact only, therefore, I shall urge, which gives St. George’s Hospital
special claims on the attention of the rich.
Situated, as it is, in the very centre of the west end of London, it is
the special refuge of those who are most especially of service to the
dwellers in the Westend. Those who are used up—fairly or unfairly—in
ministering to the luxuries of the high-born and wealthy: the groom
thrown in the park; the housemaid crippled by lofty stairs; the workman
fallen from the scaffolding of the great man’s palace; the footman or
coachman who has contracted disease from long hours of nightly exposure,
while his master and mistress have been warm and gay at rout and ball;
and those, too, whose number, I fear, are very great, who contract
disease, themselves, their wives, and children, from actual want, when
they are thrown suddenly out of employ at the end of the season, and
London is said to be empty—of all but two million of living souls:—the
great majority of these crowd into St. George’s Hospital to find there
relief and comfort, which those to whom they minister are solemnly bound
to supply by their contributions. The rich and well-born of this land
are very generous. They are doing their duty, on the whole, nobly and
well. Let them do their duty—the duty which literally lies nearest
them—by St. George’s Hospital, and they will wipe off a stain, not on the
hospital, but on the rich people in its neighbourhood—the stain of that
hospital’s debts.
The deficiency in the funds of the hospital for the year 1862–3—caused,
be it remembered, by no extravagance or sudden change, but simply by the
necessity for succouring those who would otherwise have been destitute of
succour—the deficiency, I say, on an expenditure of 15,000_l._ amounts to
more than 3,200_l._ which has had to be met by selling out funded
property, and so diminishing the capital of the institution. Ought this
to be? I ask. Ought this to be, while more wealth is collected within
half a mile of that hospital than in any spot of like extent in the
globe?
My friends, this is the time of Lent; the time whereof it is written,—‘Is
not this the fast which I have chosen, to deal thy bread to the hungry,
and bring the poor that is cast out to thine house? when thou seest the
naked that thou cover him, and that thou hide not thyself from thine own
flesh? If thou let thy soul go forth to the hungry, and satisfy the
afflicted soul, then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness
be as the noonday. And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and
satisfy thy soul, and make fat thy bones, and thou shalt be like a
watered garden, and as a spring that doth not fail.’
Let us obey that command literally, and see whether the promise is not
literally fulfilled to us in return.
SERMON III.
THE VICTORY OF LIFE.
(_Preached at the Chapel Royal_.)
ISAIAH xxxviii. 18, 19.
The grave cannot praise thee, death cannot celebrate thee: they that
go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth. The living, the
living, he shall praise thee.
I MAY seem to have taken a strange text on which to speak,—a mournful, a
seemingly hopeless text. Why I have chosen it, I trust that you will see
presently; certainly not that I may make you hopeless about death.
Meanwhile, let us consider it; for it is in the Bible, and, like all
words in the Bible, was written for our instruction.
Now it is plain, I think, that the man who said these words—good king
Hezekiah—knew nothing of what we call heaven; of a blessed life with God
after death. He looks on death as his end. If he dies, he says, he will
not see the Lord in the land of the living, any more than he will see man
with the inhabitants of the world. God’s mercies, he thinks, will end
with his death. God can only show His mercy and truth by saving him from
death. For the grave cannot praise God, death cannot celebrate Him;
those who go down into the pit cannot hope for His truth. The living,
the living, shall praise God; as Hezekiah praises Him that day, because
God has cured him of his sickness, and added fifteen years to his life.
No language can be plainer than this. A man who had believed that he
would go to heaven when he died could not have used it.
In many of the Psalms, likewise, you will find words of exactly the same
kind, which show that the men who wrote them had no clear conception, if
any conception at all, of a life after death.
Solomon’s words about death are utterly awful from their sadness. With
him, ‘that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; as one
dieth, so dieth the other. Yea, they have all one breath, so that a man
hath no pre-eminence over a beast, and all is vanity. All go to one
place, all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knoweth the
spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth
downward to the earth?’
He knows nothing about it. All he knows is, that the spirit shall return
to God who gave it,—and that a man will surely find, in this life, a
recompence for all his deeds, whether good or evil.
‘Remember therefore thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil
days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no
pleasure in them. Fear God, and keep His commandments; for this is the
whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with
every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.’
This is the doctrine of the Old Testament; that God judges and rewards
and punishes men in this life: but as for death, it is a great black
cloud into which all men must enter, and see and be seen no more. Only
twice or thrice, perhaps, a gleam of light from beyond breaks through the
dark. David, the noblest and wisest of all the Jews, can say once that
God will not leave his soul in hell, neither suffer His holy one to see
corruption; Job says that, though after his skin worms destroy his body,
yet in his flesh he shall see God; and Isaiah, again, when he sees his
countrymen slaughtered, and his nation all but destroyed, can say, ‘Thy
dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake
and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of the
morning, which brings the parched herbs to life and freshness
again.’—Great and glorious sayings, all of them: but we cannot tell how
far either David, or Job, or Isaiah, were thinking of a life after death.
We can think of a life after death when we use them; for we know how they
have been fulfilled in Jesus Christ our Lord; and we can see in them more
than the Jews of old could do; for, like all inspired words, they mean
more than the men who wrote them thought of; but we have no right to
impute our Christianity to them.
The only undoubted picture, perhaps, of the next life to be found in the
Old Testament, is that grand one in Isaiah xiv., where he paints to us
the tyrant king of Babylon going down into hell:—
‘Hell from beneath is moved for thee, to meet thee at thy coming; it
stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it
hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. All they
shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? art thou
become like unto us? Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the
noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover
thee. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!
how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the
nations!’—Awful and grand enough: but quite different, you will observe,
from the notions of hell which are common now-a-days; and much more like
those which we read in the old Greek poets, and especially, in the
Necyomanteia of the Odyssey.
When it was that the Jews gained any fuller notions about the next life,
it is very difficult to say. Certainly not before they were carried away
captive to Babylon. After that they began to mix much with the great
nations of the East: with Greeks, Persians, and Indians; and from them,
most probably, they learned to believe in a heaven after death to which
good men would go, and a fiery hell to which bad men would go. At least,
the heathen nations round them, and our forefathers likewise, believed in
some sort of heaven and hell, hundreds of years before the coming of our
blessed Lord.
The Jews had learned, also—at least the Pharisees—to believe in the
resurrection of the dead. Martha speaks of it; and St. Paul, when he
tells the Pharisees that, having been brought up a Pharisee, he was on
their side against the Sadducees.—‘I am a Pharisee,’ he says, ‘the son of
a Pharisee; for the hope of the resurrection of the dead I am called in
question.’
But if it be so,—if St. Paul and the Apostles believed in heaven and
hell, and the resurrection of the dead, before they became Christians,
what more did they learn about the next life, when they became
Christians? Something they did learn, most certainly—and that most
important. St. Paul speaks of what our Lord and our Lord’s resurrection
had taught him, as something quite infinitely grander, and more blessed,
than what he had known before. He talks of our Lord as having abolished
death, and brought life and immortality to light; of His having conquered
death, and of His destroying death at last. He speaks at moments as if
he did not expect to die at all; and when he does speak of the death of
the Christian, it is merely as a falling asleep. When he speaks of his
own death, it is merely as a change of place. He longs to depart, and to
be with Christ. Death had looked terrible to him once, when he was a
Jew. Death had had a sting, and the grave a victory, which seemed ready
to conquer him: but now he cries, ‘O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave,
where is thy victory?’ and then he declares that the terrors of death and
the grave are taken away, not by anything which he knew when he was a
Pharisee, but through our Lord Jesus Christ.
All his old Jewish notions of the resurrection, though they were true as
far as they went, seemed poor and paltry beside what Christ had taught
him. He was not going to wait till the end of the world—perhaps for
thousands of years—in darkness and the shadow of death, he knew not where
or how. His soul was to pass at once into life,—into joy, and peace, and
bliss, in the presence of his Saviour, till it should have a new body
given to it, in the resurrection of life at the last day.
This, I think, is what St. Paul learned, and what the Jews had not
learned till our blessed Lord came. They were still afraid of death. It
looked to them a dark and ugly blank; and no wonder. For would it not be
dark and ugly enough to have to wait, we know not where, it may be a
thousand, it may be tens of thousands of years, till the resurrection in
the last day, before we entered into joy, peace, activity or anything
worthy of the name of life? Would not death have a sting indeed, the
grave a victory indeed, if we had to be as good as dead for ten thousands
of years?
What then? Remember this, that death is an enemy, an evil thing, an
enemy to man, and therefore an enemy to Christ, the King and Head and
Saviour of man. Men ought not to die, and they feel it. It is no use to
tell them, ‘Everything that is born must die, and why not you? All other
animals died. They died, just as they die now, hundreds of thousands of
years before man came upon this earth; and why should man expect to have
a different lot? Why should you not take your death patiently, as you
take any other evil which you cannot escape?’ The heart of man, as soon
as he begins to be a man, and not a mere savage; as soon as he begins to
think reasonably, and feel deeply; the heart of man answers: ‘No, I am
not a mere animal. I have something in me which ought not to die, which
perhaps cannot die. I have a living soul in me, which ought to be able
to keep my body alive likewise, but cannot; and therefore death is my
enemy. I hate him, and I believe that I was meant to hate him.
Something must be wrong with me, or I should not die; something must be
wrong with all mankind, or I should not see those I love dying round me.
Yes, my friends, death is an enemy,—a hideous, hateful thing. The longer
one looks at it, the more one hates it. The more often one sees it, the
less one grows accustomed to it. Its very commonness makes it all the
more shocking. We may not be so much shocked at seeing the old die. We
say, ‘They have done their work, why should they not go?’ That is not
true. They have not done their work. There is more work in plenty for
them to do, if they could but live; and it seems shocking and sad, at
least to him who loves his country and his kind, that, just as men have
grown old enough to be of use, when they have learnt to conquer their
passions, when their characters are formed, when they have gained sound
experience of this world, and what man ought and can do in it,—just as,
in fact, they have become most able to teach and help their
fellow-men,—that then they are to grow old, and decrepit, and helpless,
and fade away, and die just when they are most fit to live, and the world
needs them most.
Sad, I say, and strange is that. But sadder, and more strange, and more
utterly shocking, to see the young die; to see parents leaving infant
children, children vanishing early out of the world where they might have
done good work for God and man.
What arguments will make us believe that that ought to be? That that is
God’s will? That that is anything but an evil, an anomaly, a disease?
Not the Bible, certainly. The Bible never tells us that such tragedies
as are too often seen are the will of God. The Bible says that it is not
the will of our Father that one of these little ones should perish. The
Bible tells us that Jesus, when on earth, went about fighting and
conquering disease and death, even raising from the dead those who had
died before their time. To fight against death, and to give life
wheresoever He went—that was His work; by that He proclaimed the will of
God, His Father, that none should perish, who sent His Son that men might
have life, and have it more abundantly. By that He declared that death
was an evil and a disorder among men, which He would some day crush and
destroy utterly, that mortality should be swallowed up of life.
And yet we die, and shall die. Yes. The body is dead, because of sin.
Mankind is a diseased race; and it must pay the penalty of its sins for
many an age to come, and die, and suffer, and sorrow. But not for ever.
For what mean such words as these—for something they must mean?—
‘If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.’ And again, ‘He that
believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and he that
liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.’
Do such words as these mean only that we shall rise again in the
resurrection at the last day? Surely not. Our Lord spoke them in answer
to that very notion.
‘Martha said to Him, I know that my brother shall rise again, in the
resurrection at the last day. Jesus said unto her, I _am_ the
resurrection and the life;’ and then showed what He meant by bringing
back Lazarus to life, unchanged, and as he had been before he died.