toward a Father. All, my friends, turns on this. Do you look on God as
your Father, or do you not? God is your Father, remember, already. You
cannot (as some people seem to think) make Him your Father by believing
that He is one; and you need not, thanks to His mercy. Neither can you
make Him not your Father by forgetting Him. Be you wise or foolish,
right or wrong, God is your Father in heaven; and you ought to feel
towards Him as towards a father, not with any sentimental, fanciful,
fanatical affection; but with a reverent, solemn, and rational affection;
such as that which the good old Catechism bids us have, when it tells us
our duty toward God.
‘My duty towards God is to believe in Him, to fear Him, and to love Him
with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my soul, and with all my
strength; to worship Him, to give Him thanks, to put my whole trust in
Him, to call upon Him, to honour His holy Name and His Word, and to serve
Him truly all the days of my life.’
Now, I ask you—and what I ask you I ask myself,—Do we love the Lord our
God thus? And if not, why not?
I do not ask you to tell me. I am not going to tell you what is in my
heart; and I do not ask you to tell me what is in yours. We are free
Englishmen, who keep ourselves to ourselves, and think for ourselves,
each man in the depths of his own heart; and who are the stronger and the
wiser for not talking about our feelings to any man, priest or layman.
But ask yourselves, each of you,—Do I love God? And if not, why not?
There are two reasons, I believe, which are, alas! very common. For one
of them there are great excuses; for the other, there is no excuse
whatsoever.
In the first place, too many find it difficult to love God, because they
have not been taught that God is loveable, and worthy of their love.
They have been taught dark and hard doctrines, which have made them
afraid of God.
They have been taught—too many are taught still—not merely that God will
punish the wicked, but that God will punish nine-tenths, or
ninety-nine-hundredths of the human race. That He will send to endless
torments not merely sinners who have rebelled against what they knew was
right, and His command; who have stained themselves with crimes; who
wilfully injured their fellow-creatures: but that He will do the same by
little children, by innocent young girls, by honourable, respectable,
moral men and women, because they are not what is called sensibly
converted, or else what is called orthodox. They have been taught to
look on God, not as a loving and merciful Father, but as a tyrant and a
task-master, who watches to set down against them the slightest mishap or
neglect; who is extreme to mark what is done amiss; who wills the death
of a sinner. Often—strangest notion of all—they have been told that,
though God intends to punish them, they must still love Him, or they will
be punished—as if such a notion, so far from drawing them to God, could
do anything but drive them from Him. And it is no wonder if persons who
have been taught in their youth such notions concerning God, find it
difficult to love Him. Who can be frightened or threatened into loving
any being? How can we love any being who does not seem to us kind,
merciful, amiable, loving? Our love must be called out by God’s love.
If we are to love God, it must be because He has first loved us.
But He has first loved us, my friends. The dark and cruel notions about
God—which are too common, and have been too common in all ages—are not
what the world about us teaches, nor what Scripture teaches us either.
Look out on the world around you. What witness does it bear concerning
the God who made it? Who made the sunshine, and the flowers, and singing
birds, and little children, and all that causes the joy of this life?
Let Christ Himself speak, and His apostles. No one can say that their
words are not true; that they were mistaken in their view of this earth,
or of God who gave it to us that it might bear witness of Him. What said
our Lord to the poor folk of Galilee, of whom the Scribes and the
Pharisees, in their pride, said, ‘This people, who knoweth not the law,
is accursed.’—What said our Lord, very God of very God? He told them to
look on the world around, and learn from it that they had in heaven not a
tyrant, not a destroyer, but a Father; a Father in heaven who is perfect
in this, that He causeth His sun to shine upon them, and is good to the
unthankful and the evil.
What of Him did St. Paul say?—and that not to Christians, but to
heathens—That God had not left Himself without a witness even to the
heathen who knew Him not—and what sort of witness? The witness of His
bounty and goodness. The simple, but perpetual witness of the yearly
harvest—‘In that He sends men rain and fruitful seasons, filling their
hearts with food and gladness.’
This is St. Paul’s witness. And what is St. James’s? He tells men of a
Father of lights, from whom comes down every good and perfect gift; who
gives to all liberally, and upbraideth not, grudges not, stints not, but
gives, and delights in giving,—the same God, in a word, of whom the old
psalmists and prophets spoke, and said, ‘Thou openest Thine hand, and
fillest all things with good.’
And if natural religion tells us thus much, and bears witness of a Father
who delights in the happiness of His creatures, what does revealed
religion and the Gospel of Jesus Christ tell us?
Oh, my friends, dull indeed must be our hearts if we can feel no love for
the God of whom the Gospel speaks! And perverse, indeed, must be our
minds if we can twist the good news of Christ’s salvation into the bad
news of condemnation! What says St. Paul,—That God is against us? No.
But—‘If God be for us, who can be against us?
‘Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that
justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea
rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who
also maketh intercession for us.
‘Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or
distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
‘As it is written, For Thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are
accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
‘Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that
loved us.
‘For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor
height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us
from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’
What says St. John? Does he say that God the Father desires to punish or
slay us; and that our Lord Jesus Christ, or the Virgin Mary, or the
saints, or any other being, loves us better than God, and will deliver us
out of the hands of God? God forbid! ‘We have known and believed,’ he
says, ‘the love that God hath to us. God is love, and he that dwelleth
in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.’
My friends, if we could believe those blessed words—I do not say in all
their fulness—we shall never do that, I believe, in this mortal life—but
if we could only believe them a little, and know and believe even a
little of the love that God has to us, then love to Him would spring up
in our hearts, and we should feel for Him all that child ever felt for
father. If we really believed that God who made heaven and earth was
even now calling to each and every one of us, and beseeching us, by the
sacrifice of His well-beloved Son, crucified for us, ‘My son, give Me thy
heart,’ we could not help giving up our hearts to Him.
Provided—and there is that second reason why people do not love God, for
which I said there was no excuse—provided only that we wish to be good,
and to obey God. If we do not wish to do what God commands, we shall
never love God. It must be so. There can be no real love of God which
is not based upon a love of virtue and goodness, upon what our Lord calls
a hunger and thirst after righteousness. ‘If ye love Me, keep My
commandments,’ is our Lord’s own rule and test. And it is the only one
possible. If we habitually disobey any person, we shall cease to love
that person. If a child is in the habit of disobeying its parents, dark
and angry feelings towards those parents are sure to arise in its heart.
The child tries to forget its parents, to keep out of their way. It
tries to justify itself, to excuse itself by fancying that its parents
are hard upon it, unjust, grudge it pleasure, or what not. If its
parents’ commandments are grievous to a child, it will try to make out
that those commandments are unfair and unkind. And so shall we do by
God’s commandments. If God’s commandments seem too grievous for us to
obey, then we shall begin to fancy them unjust and unkind. And then,
farewell to any real love to God. If we do not openly rebel against God,
we shall still try to forget Him. The thought of God will seem dark,
unpleasant, and forbidding to us; and we shall try, in our short-sighted
folly, to live as far as we can without God in the world, and, like Adam
after his fall, hide ourselves from the loving God, just because we know
we have disobeyed Him.
But if, in spite of many bad habits, we desire to get rid of our bad
habits; if, in spite of many faults, we still desire to be faultless and
perfect; if, in spite of many weaknesses, we still desire to be strong;
if, in one word, we still hunger and thirst after righteousness, and long
to be good men; then, in due time, the love of God will be shed abroad in
our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
For that will happen to us which happens to all those who have the pure,
true, and heroical love. If we really love a person, we shall first
desire to please them, and therefore the thought of disobeying and
paining them will seem more and more grievous unto us.
But more. We shall soon rise a step higher. The more we love them, and
the more we see in them, in their characters, things worthy to be loved,
the more we shall desire to be like them, to copy those parts of their
characters which most delight us; and we shall copy them: though
insensibly, perhaps, and unawares.
For no one can look up for any length of time with love and respect
towards a person better, wiser, greater than themselves, without becoming
more or less like that person in character and in habit of thought and
feeling; and so it will be with us towards God.
If we really long to be good, it will grow more and more easy to us to
love God. The more pure our hearts are, the more pleasant the thought of
God will be to us; even as it is said, ‘Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they shall see God,’—in this life as well as in the life to come. We
shall not shrink from God, because we shall know that we are not wilfully
offending Him.
But more. The more we think of God, the more we shall long to be like
Him. How admirable in our eyes will seem His goodness, how admirable His
purity, His justice, and His bounty, His long-suffering, His magnanimity
and greatness of heart. For how great must be that heart of God, of
which it is written, that ‘He hateth nothing that He hath made, but His
mercy is over all His works;’ ‘that He willeth that none should perish,
but that all should be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth.’
Although He be infinitely high and far off and we cannot attain to Him,
yet we shall feel it our duty and our joy to copy Him, however faintly,
and however humbly; and our highest hope will be that we may behold, as
in a glass, the glory of the Lord, and be changed into His image from
glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord; that so, whether in
this world or in the world to come, we may at last be perfect, even as
our Father in heaven is perfect, and, like Him, cause the sunlight of our
love to slime upon the evil and on the good; the kindly showers of our
good deeds to fall upon the just and on the unjust; and—like Him who sent
His only begotten Son to save the world—be good to the unthankful and to
the evil.
SERMON XV.
THE EARTHQUAKE.
(_Preached October_ 11, 1863.)
PSALM xlvi. 1, 2.
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though
the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.
NO one, my friends, wishes less than I, to frighten you, or to take a
dark and gloomy view of this world, or of God’s dealings with men. But
when God Himself speaks, men are bound to take heed, even though the
message be an awful one. And last week’s earthquake was an awful
message, reminding all reasonable souls how frail man is, how frail his
strongest works, how frail this seemingly solid earth on which we stand;
what a thin crust there is between us and the nether fires, how utterly
it depends on God’s mercy that we do not, like Korah, Dathan, and Abiram
of old, go down alive into the pit.
What do we know of earthquakes? We know that they are connected with
burning mountains; that the eruption of a burning mountain is generally
preceded by, and accompanied with, violent earthquakes. Indeed, the
burning mountains seem to be outlets, by which the earthquake force is
carried off. We know that these burning mountains give out immense
volumes of steam. We know that the expanding power of steam is by far
the strongest force in the world; and, therefore, it is supposed
reasonably, that earthquakes are caused by steam underground.
We know concerning earthquakes two things: first, that they are quite
uncertain in their effects; secondly, quite uncertain in their
occurrence.
No one can tell what harm an earthquake will, or will not, do. There are
three kinds. One which raises the ground up perpendicularly, and sets it
down again—which is the least hurtful; one which sets it rolling in
waves, like the waves of the sea—which is more hurtful; and one, the most
terrible of all, which gives the ground a spinning motion, so that things
thrown down by it fall twisted from right to left, or left to right. But
what kind of earthquake will take place, no one can tell.
Moreover, a very slight earthquake may do fearful damage. People who
only read of them, fancy that an earthquake, to destroy man and his
works, must literally turn the earth upside down; that the ground must
open, swallowing up houses, vomiting fire and water; that rocks must be
cast into the sea, and hills rise where valleys were before. Such awful
things have happened, and will happen again: but it does not need them to
lay a land utterly waste. A very slight shock—a shock only a little
stronger than was felt last Wednesday morning, might have—one hardly dare
think of what it might have done in a country like this, where houses are
thinly built because we have no fear of earthquakes. Every manufactory
and mill throughout the iron districts (where the shock was felt most)
might have toppled to the earth in a moment. Whole rows of houses,
hastily and thinly built, might have crumbled down like packs of cards;
and hundreds of thousands of sleeping human beings might have been buried
in the ruins, without time for a prayer or a cry.
A little more—a very little more—and all that or more might have
happened; millions’ worth of property might have been destroyed in a few
seconds, and the prosperity and civilization of England have been thrown
back for a whole generation. There is absolutely no reason whatever, I
tell you, save the mercy of God, why that, or worse, should not have
happened; and it is only of the Lord’s mercies that we were not consumed.
Next, earthquakes are utterly uncertain as to time. No one knows when
they are coming. They give no warning. Even in those unhappy countries
in which they are most common there may not be a shock for months or
years; and then a sudden shock may hurl down whole towns. Or there may
be many, thirty or forty a-day for weeks, as there happened in a part of
South America a few years ago, when day after day, week after week,
terrible shocks went on with a perpetual underground roar, as if brass
and iron were crashing and clanging under the feet, till the people were
half mad with the continual noise and continual anxiety, expecting every
moment one shock, stronger than the rest, to swallow them up. It is
impossible, I say, to calculate when they will come. They are altogether
in the hand of God,—His messengers, whose time and place He alone knows,
and He alone directs.
Our having had one last week is no reason for our not having another this
week, or any day this week; and no reason, happily, against our having no
more for one hundred years. It is in God’s hands, and in God’s hands we
must leave it.
All we can say is, that when one comes, it is likely to be least severe
in this part of England, and most severe (like this last) in the coal and
iron districts of the west and north-west, where it is easy to see that
earthquakes were once common, by the cracks, twists and settlements in
the rocks, and the lava streams, poured out from fiery vents (probably
under water) which pierce the rocks in many places. Beyond that we know
nothing, and can only say,—It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not
consumed.
Why do I say these things? To frighten you? No, but to warn you. When
you say to yourselves,—Earthquakes are so uncommon and so harmless in
England that there is no need to think of them, you say on the whole what
is true. It has been, as yet, God’s will that earthquakes should be
uncommon and slight in England; and therefore we have a reasonable ground
of belief that such will be His will for the future. Certainly He does
not wish us to fold our hands, and say, there is no use in building or
improving the country, if an earthquake may come and destroy it at any
moment. If there be an evil which man can neither prevent or foresee,
then, if he be a wise man, he will go on as if that evil would never
happen. We ever must work on in hope and in faith in God’s goodness,
without tormenting and weakening ourselves by fears about what may
happen.
But when God gives to a whole country a distinct and solemn warning,
especially after giving that country an enormous bounty in an abundant
harvest, He surely means that country to take the warning. And, if I
dare so judge, He means us perhaps to think of the earthquake, and
somewhat in this way.
There is hardly any country in the world in which man’s labour has been
so successful as in England. Owing to our having no earthquakes, no
really destructive storms,—and, thank God, no foreign invading
armies,—the wealth of England has gone on increasing steadily and surely
for centuries past, to a degree unexampled. We have never had to rebuild
whole towns after an earthquake. We have never seen (except in small
patches) whole districts of fertile land ruined by the sea or by floods.
We have never seen every mill and house in a country blown down by a
hurricane, and the crops mown off the ground by the mere force of the
wind, as has happened again and again in our West India Islands. Most
blessed of all, we have never seen a foreign army burning our villages,
sacking our towns, carrying off our corn and cattle, and driving us into
the woods to starve. From all these horrors, which have, one or other of
them, fallen on almost every nation upon earth, God has of His great
mercy preserved us. Ours is not the common lot of humanity. We English
do not know the sorrows which average men and women go through, and have
been going through, alas! ever since Adam fell. We have been an
exception, a favoured and peculiar people, allowed to thrive and fatten
quietly and safely for hundreds of years.
But what if that very security tempts us to forget God? Is it not so?
Are we not—I am sure I am—too apt to take God’s blessings for granted,
without thanking Him for them, or remembering really that He gave them,
and that He can take them away? Do we not take good fortune for granted?
Do we not take for granted that if we build a house it will endure for
ever; that if we buy a piece of land it will be called by our name long
years hence; that if we amass wealth we shall hand it down safely to our
children? Of course we think we shall prosper. We say to ourselves,
To-morrow shall be as to-day, and yet more abundant.
Nothing can happen to England, is, I fear, the feeling of Englishmen.
Carnal security is the national sin to which we are tempted, because we
have not now for forty years felt anything like national distress; and
Britain says, like Babylon of old, the lady of kingdoms to whom
foreigners so often compare her,—‘I shall be a lady for ever; I am, there
is none beside me. I shall never sit as a widow, nor know the loss of
children.’
What, too, if that same security and prosperity tempts us—as foreigners
justly complain of us—to set our hearts on material wealth; to believe
that our life, and the life of Britain, depends on the abundance of the
things which she possesses? To say—Corn and cattle, coal and iron, house
and land, shipping and rail-roads, these make up Great Britain. While
she has these she will endure for ever.
Ah, my friends—to people in such a temptation, is it wonderful that a
good God should send a warning unmistakeable, though only a warning; most
terrible, though mercifully harmless; a warning which says, in a voice
which the dullest can hear—Endure for ever? The solid ground on which
you stand cannot do that. Safe? Nothing on earth is safe for a moment,
save in the long-suffering and tender mercy of Him of whom are all
things, and by whom are all things, without whom not a sparrow falls to
the ground. Is the wealth of Britain, then, what she can see and handle?
The towns she builds, the roads she makes, the manufactures and goods she
produces? One touch of the finger of God, and that might be all rolled
into a heap of ruins, and the labour of years scattered in the dust. You
trust in the sure solid earth? You shall feel it, if but for once, reel
and quiver under your feet, and learn that it is not solid at all, or
sure at all; that there is nothing solid, sure, or to be depended on, but
the mercy of the living God; and that your solid-seeming earth on which
you build is nothing less than a mine, which may bubble, and heave, and
burst beneath your feet, charged for ever with an explosive force, as
much more terrible than that gunpowder which you have invented to kill
each other withal, as the works of God are greater than the works of man.
Safe, truly! It is of God’s mercy from day to day and hour to hour that
we are not consumed.
This, surely, or something like this, is what the earthquake says to us.
It speaks to us most gently, and yet most awfully, of a day in which the
heavens may pass away with a great noise, and the elements may melt with
fervent heat, and the earth and the works which are therein may be burnt
up. It tells us that this is no impossible fancy: that the fires
imprisoned below our feet can, and may, burst up and destroy mankind and
the works of man in one great catastrophe, to which the earthquake of
Lisbon in 1755—when 60,000 persons were killed, crushed, drowned, or
swallowed up in a few minutes—would be a merely paltry accident.
And it bids us think, as St. Peter bids us: ‘When therefore all these
things are dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in holy
conversation and godliness?’
What manner of persons?
Remember, that if an earthquake destroyed all England, or the whole
world; if this earth on which we live crumbled to dust, and were blotted
out of the number of the stars, there is one thing which earthquake, and
fire, and all the forces of nature cannot destroy, and that is—the human
race.
We should still be. We should still endure. Not, indeed, in flesh and
blood: but in some state or other; each of us the same as now, our
characters, our feelings, our goodness or our badness; our immortal
spirits and very selves, unchanged, ready to receive, and certain to
receive, the reward of the deeds done in the body, whether they be good
or evil. Yes, we should still endure, and God and Christ would still
endure. But as our Saviour, or as our Judge? That is a very awful
thought.
One day or other, sooner or later, each of us shall stand before the
judgment-seat of Christ, stripped of all we ever had, ever saw, ever
touched, ever even imagined to ourselves, alone with our own consciences,
alone with our own deserts. What shall we be saying to ourselves then?
Shall we be saying—I have lost all: The world is gone—the world, in which
were set all my hopes, all my wishes; the world in which were all my
pleasures, all my treasures; the world, which was the only thing I cared
for, though it warned me not to trust in it, as it trembled beneath my
feet? But the world is gone, and now I have nothing left!