it, a new and very different scene opens upon us. First, we are reminded
that though this life must ever be a life of toil and effort, yet that,
properly speaking, we have not to seek our highest good. It is found, it
is brought near us, in the descent of the Son of God from His Father's
bosom to this world. It is stored up among us on earth. No longer need
men of ardent minds weary themselves in the pursuit of what they fancy
may be chief goods; no longer have they to wander about and encounter
peril in quest of that unknown blessedness to which their hearts
naturally aspire, as they did in heathen times. The text speaks to them
and to all, "Unto you," it says, "is born this day in the city of David a
Saviour, which is Christ the Lord."
Nor, again, need we go in quest of any of those things which this vain
world calls great and noble. Christ altogether dishonoured what the
world esteems, when He took on Himself a rank and station which the world
despises. No lot could be more humble and more ordinary than that which
the Son of God chose for Himself.
So that we have on the Feast of the Nativity these two lessons--instead
of anxiety within and despondence without, instead of a weary search
after great things,--to be cheerful and joyful; and, again, to be so in
the midst of those obscure and ordinary circumstances of life which the
world passes over and thinks scorn of.
Let us consider this more at length, as contained in the gracious
narrative of which the text is part.
1. First, what do we read just before the text? that there were certain
shepherds keeping watch over their flock by night, and Angels appeared to
them. Why should the heavenly hosts appear to these shepherds? What was
it in them which attracted the attention of the Angels and the Lord of
Angels? Were these shepherds learned, distinguished, or powerful? Were
they especially known for piety and gifts? Nothing is said to make us
think so. Faith, we may safely say, they had, or some of them, for to
him that hath more shall be given; but there is nothing to show that they
were holier and more enlightened than other good men of the time, who
waited for the consolation of Israel. Nay, there is no reason to suppose
that they were better than the common run of men in their circumstances,
simple, and fearing God, but without any great advances in piety, or any
very formed habits of religion. Why then were they chosen? for their
poverty's sake and obscurity. Almighty God looks with a sort of especial
love, or (as we may term it) affection, upon the lowly. Perhaps it is
that man, a fallen, dependent, and destitute creature, is more in his
proper place when he is in lowly circumstances, and that power and
riches, though unavoidable in the case of some, are unnatural appendages
to man, as such. Just as there are trades and callings which are
unbecoming, though requisite; and while we profit by them, and honour
those the more who engage in them, yet we feel we are glad that they are
not ours; as we feel grateful and respectful towards a soldier's
profession, yet do not affect it; so in God's sight greatness is less
acceptable than obscurity. It becomes us less.
The shepherds, then, were chosen on account of their lowliness, to be the
first to hear of the Lord's nativity, a secret which none of the princes
of this world knew.
And what a contrast is presented to us when we take into account who were
our Lord's messengers to them! The Angels who excel in strength, these
did His bidding towards the shepherds. Here the highest and the lowest
of God's rational creatures are brought together. A set of poor men,
engaged in a life of hardship, exposed at that very time to the cold and
darkness of the night, watching their flocks, with the view of scaring
away beasts of prey or robbers; they--when they are thinking of nothing
but earthly things, counting over the tale of their sheep, keeping their
dogs by their side, and listening to the noises over the plain,
considering the weather and watching for the day--suddenly are met by far
other visitants than they conceived. We know the contracted range of
thought, the minute and ordinary objects, or rather the one or two
objects, to and fro again and again without variety, which engage the
minds of men exposed to such a life of heat, cold, and wet, hunger and
nakedness, hardship and servitude. They cease to care much for any
thing, but go on in a sort of mechanical way, without heart, and still
more without reflection.
To men so circumstanced the Angel appeared, to open their minds, and to
teach them not to be downcast and in bondage because they were low in the
world. He appeared as if to show them that God had chosen the poor in
this world to be heirs of His kingdom, and so to do honour to their lot.
"Fear not," he said, "for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy,
which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city
of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord."
2. And now comes a second lesson, which I have said may be gained from
the Festival. The Angel honoured a humble lot by his very appearing to
the shepherds; next he taught it to be joyful by his message. He
disclosed good tidings so much above this world as to equalize high and
low, rich and poor, one with another. He said, "Fear not." This is a
mode of address frequent in Scripture, as you may have observed, as if
man needed some such assurance to support him, especially in God's
presence. The Angel said, "Fear not," when he saw the alarm which his
presence caused among the shepherds. Even a lesser wonder would have
reasonably startled them. Therefore the Angel said, "Fear not." We are
naturally afraid of any messenger from the other world, for we have an
uneasy conscience when left to ourselves, and think that his coming
forebodes evil. Besides, we so little realize the unseen world, that
were Angel or spirit to present himself before us we should be startled
by reason of our unbelief, a truth being brought home to our minds which
we never apprehended before. So for one or other reason the shepherds
were sore afraid when the glory of the Lord shone around about them. And
the Angel said, "Fear not." A little religion makes us afraid; when a
little light is poured in upon the conscience, there is a darkness
visible; nothing but sights of woe and terror; the glory of God alarms
while it shines around. His holiness, the range and difficulties of His
commandments, the greatness of His power, the faithfulness of His word,
frighten the sinner, and men seeing him afraid, think religion has made
him so, whereas he is not yet religious at all. They call him religious,
when he is merely conscience-stricken. But religion itself, far from
inculcating alarm and terror, says, in the words of the Angel, "Fear
not;" for such is His mercy, while Almighty God has poured about us His
glory, yet it is a consolatory glory, for it is the light of His glory in
the Face of Jesus Christ[2]. Thus the heavenly herald tempered the too
dazzling brightness of the Gospel on that first Christmas. The glory of
God at first alarmed the shepherds, so he added the tidings of good, to
work in them a more wholesome and happy temper. Then they rejoiced.
"Fear not," said the Angel, "for behold I bring you good tidings of great
joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the
city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord." And then, when he
had finished his announcement, "suddenly there was with the Angel a
multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, Glory to God in
the highest, and on earth peace, good will towards men." Such were the
words which the blessed Spirits who minister to Christ and His Saints,
spoke on that gracious night to the shepherds, to rouse them out of their
cold and famished mood into great joy; to teach them that they were
objects of God's love as much as the greatest of men on earth; nay more
so, for to them first He had imparted the news of what that night was
happening. His Son was then born into the world. Such events are told
to friends and intimates, to those whom we love, to those who will
sympathize with us, not to strangers. How could Almighty God be more
gracious, and show His favour more impressively to the lowly and the
friendless, than by hastening (if I may use the term) to confide the
great, the joyful secret to the shepherds keeping watch over their sheep
by night?
The Angel then gave the first lesson of mingled humility and joyfulness;
but an infinitely greater one was behind in the event itself, to which he
directed the shepherds, in that birth itself of the Holy Child Jesus.
This he intimated in these words: "Ye shall find the babe wrapped in
swaddling clothes, lying in a manger." Doubtless, when they heard the
Lord's Christ was born into the world, they would look for Him in kings'
palaces. They would not be able to fancy that He had become one of
themselves, or that they might approach Him; therefore the Angel thus
warned them where to find Him, not only as a sign, but as a lesson also.
"The shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem,
and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known
to us." Let us too go with them, to contemplate that second and greater
miracle to which the Angel directed them, the Nativity of Christ. St.
Luke says of the Blessed Virgin, "She brought forth her first-born Son,
and wrapped Him in swaddling clothes, and laid Him in a manger." What a
wonderful sign is this to all the world, and therefore the Angel repeated
it to the shepherds: "Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling
clothes, lying in a manger." The God of heaven and earth, the Divine
Word, who had been in glory with the Eternal Father from the beginning,
He was at this time born into this world of sin as a little infant. He,
as at this time, lay in His mother's arms, to all appearance helpless and
powerless, and was wrapped by Mary in an infant's bands, and laid to
sleep in a manger. The Son of God Most High, who created the worlds,
became flesh, though remaining what He was before. He became flesh as
truly as if He had ceased to be what He was, and had actually been
changed into flesh. He submitted to be the offspring of Mary, to be
taken up in the hands of a mortal, to have a mother's eye fixed upon Him,
and to be cherished at a mother's bosom. A daughter of man became the
Mother of God--to her, indeed, an unspeakable gift of grace; but in Him
what condescension! What an emptying of His glory to become man! and not
only a helpless infant, though that were humiliation enough, but to
inherit all the infirmities and imperfections of our nature which were
possible to a sinless soul. What were His thoughts, if we may venture to
use such language or admit such a reflection concerning the Infinite,
when human feelings, human sorrows, human wants, first became His? What
a mystery is there from first to last in the Son of God becoming man!
Yet in proportion to the mystery is the grace and mercy of it; and as is
the grace, so is the greatness of the fruit of it.
Let us steadily contemplate the mystery, and say whether any consequence
is too great to follow from so marvellous a dispensation; any mystery so
great, any grace so overpowering, as that which is already manifested in
the incarnation and death of the Eternal Son. Were we told that the
effect of it would be to make us as Seraphim, that we were to ascend as
high as He descended low--would that startle us after the Angel's news to
the shepherds? And this indeed is the effect of it, so far as such words
may be spoken without impiety. Men we remain, but not mere men, but
gifted with a measure of all those perfections which Christ has in
fulness, partaking each in his own degree of His Divine Nature so fully,
that the only reason (so to speak) why His saints are not really like
Him, is that it is impossible--that He is the Creator, and they His
creatures; yet still so, that they are all but Divine, all that they can
be made without violating the incommunicable majesty of the Most High.
Surely in proportion to His glory is His power of glorifying; so that to
say that through Him we shall be made _all but_ gods--though it is to
say, that we are infinitely below the adorable Creator--still is to say,
and truly, that we shall be higher than every other being in the world;
higher than Angels or Archangels, Cherubim or Seraphim--that is, not
here, or in ourselves, but in heaven and in Christ:--Christ, already the
first-fruits of our race, God and man, having ascended high above all
creatures, and we through His grace tending to the same high blessedness,
having the earnest of His glory given here, and (if we be found faithful)
the fulness of it hereafter.
If all these things be so, surely the lesson of joy which the Incarnation
gives us is as impressive as the lesson of humility. St. Paul gives us
the one lesson in his epistle to the Philippians: "Let this mind be in
you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God,
thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made Himself of no
reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the
likeness of men[3]:" and St. Peter gives us the lesson of joyfulness:
"whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see Him not, yet
believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable, and full of glory: receiving
the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls."
Take these thoughts with you, my brethren, to your homes on this festive
day; let them be with you in your family and social meetings. It is a
day of joy; it is good to be joyful--it is wrong to be otherwise. For
one day we may put off the burden of our polluted consciences, and
rejoice in the perfections of our Saviour Christ, without thinking of
ourselves, without thinking of our own miserable uncleanness; but
contemplating His glory, His righteousness, His purity, His majesty, His
overflowing love. We may rejoice in the Lord, and in all His creatures
see Him. We may enjoy His temporal bounty, and partake the pleasant
things of earth with Him in our thoughts; we may rejoice in our friends
for His sake, loving them most especially because He has loved them.
"God has not appointed us unto wrath, but to obtain salvation through our
Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we
should live together with Him." Let us seek the grace of a cheerful
heart, an even temper, sweetness, gentleness, and brightness of mind, as
walking in His light, and by His grace. Let us pray Him to give us the
spirit of ever-abundant, ever-springing love, which overpowers and sweeps
away the vexations of life by its own richness and strength, and which
above all things unites us to Him who is the fountain and the centre of
all mercy, lovingkindness, and joy.
[1] For Christmas Day.
[2] 2 Cor. iv. 6.
[3] Phil. ii. 6-7. 1 Pet. i. 8, 9.
SERMON XVIII.
Ignorance of Evil.
"_And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of Us, to
know good and evil._"--Gen. iii. 22.
It is plain that the temptation under which man fell in paradise was
this, an ambitious curiosity after knowledge which was not allowed him:
next came the desire of the eyes and the flesh, but the forbidden tree
was called the tree of _knowledge_; the Tempter _promised_ knowledge;
and after the fall Almighty God pronounced, as in the text, that man
had gained it. "Behold, the man is become as one of Us, to _know_ good
and evil."
You see it is said, "man is become _as one of Us_, to know good and
evil," because God does know evil as well as good. This is His
wonderful incommunicable attribute; and man sought to share in what God
was, but he could not without ceasing to be what God was also, holy and
perfect. It is the incommunicable attribute of God to know evil
without experiencing it. But man, when he would be as God, could only
attain the shadow of a likeness which as yet he had not, by losing the
substance which he had already. He shared in God's knowledge by losing
His image. God knows evil and is pure from it--man plunged into evil
and so knew it.
Our happiness as well as duty lies in not going beyond our measure--in
being contented with what we are--with what God makes us. They who
seek after forbidden knowledge, of whatever kind, will find they have
lost their place in the scale of beings in so doing, and are cast out
of the great circle of God's family.
It is, I say, God's incommunicable attribute, as He did not create, so
not to experience sin--and as He permits it, so also to know it; to
permit it without creating it, to know it without experiencing it--a
wonderful and incomprehensible attribute truly, yet involved, perhaps,
in the very circumstance that He permits it. For He is every where and
in all, and nothing exists except in and through Him. Mysterious as it
is, the very prison beneath the earth, its chains and fires and
impenitent inmates, the very author of evil himself, is sustained in
existence by God, and without God would fall into nothing. God is in
hell as well as in heaven, a thought which almost distracts the mind to
think of. The awful God! "Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit, or
whither shall I go from Thy Presence? If I climb up into heaven, Thou
art there; if I go down to hell, Thou art there also." Where life is,
there is He; and though it be but the life of death--the living death
of eternal torment--He is the principle of it. And being thus
intimately present with the very springs of thought, and the first
elements of all being, being the sustaining cause of all spirits,
whether they be good or evil, He is intimately present with evil, being
pure from it--and knows what it is, as being with and in the wretched
atoms which originate it.
If there be this sort of connexion between God's knowledge and
sufferance of evil, see what an ambition it was in our first parents to
desire to know it without experiencing it; it was, indeed, to desire to
be as gods,--to know the secrets of the prison-house, and to see the
worm that dieth not, yet remain innocent and happy.
This they understood not; they desired something which they knew not
that they could not have, remaining as they were; they did not see how
knowledge and experience went together in the case of human nature; and
Satan did not undeceive them. They ate of the tree which was to make
them wise, and, alas! they saw clearly what sin was, what shame, what
death, what hell, what despair. They lost God's presence, and they
gained the knowledge of evil. They lost Eden, and they gained a
conscience.
This, in fact, is the knowledge of good and evil. Lost spirits do not
know good. Angels do not know evil. Beings like ourselves, fallen
beings, fallen yet not cast away, know good and evil; evil not external
to them, nor yet one with them; but in them, yet not simply of them.
Such was the fruit of the forbidden tree, as it remains in us to this
day.
We do not know in what the duty and happiness of other beings consist;
but at least this seems to have been man's happiness in Paradise, not
to think about himself or to be conscious of himself. Such, too, to
recur to the parallel especially suggested on this day, seems to be the
state of children. They do not reflect upon themselves. Such, too,
seems to be the state of those orders of Angels whose life is said to
consist in contemplation--for what is contemplation but a resting in
the thought of God to the forgetfulness of self? Hence the Saints are
described as "Virgins who _follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth_."
But Adam, discontented with what he was, pined after a knowledge which
he could not obtain from without--which he could only have from
miserable experience within--from moral disorders within him, and from
having his mind drawn to the contemplation of himself in consequence of
those disorders. He obtained the wished for knowledge; and his first
recorded act afterwards was one of reflection upon self, and he hid
himself among the trees of the garden. He was no longer fitted for
contemplating glories without him; his attention was arrested to the
shame that was upon him.
What is so miserably seen in the history of our first parents has been
the temptation and sin of their posterity ever since,--indulgence in
forbidden, unlawful, hurtful, unprofitable knowledge; as some instances
will show.
1. I ought to notice in the first place that evil curiosity which
stimulates young persons to intrude into things of which it is their
blessedness to be ignorant. Satan gains our souls step by step; and
his first allurement is the knowledge of what is wrong. He first
tempts them to the knowledge, and then to the commission of sin.
Depend on it that our happiness and our glory, in these matters, is to
be ignorant, as well as to be guiltless. St. Paul says that "it is a
shame even to speak" of those things which are done by the sons of
Belial in secret. Oh, thoughtless, and worse, oh, cruel to your own
selves, all ye who read what ye should not read, and hear what ye
should not hear! Oh, how will you repent of your folly afterwards!
Oh, what bitter feelings, oh, what keen pangs, will shoot through your
souls hereafter, at the memory, when you look back, of what has come of
that baneful curiosity! Oh, how will you despise yourselves, oh, how
weep at what you have brought on you! At this day surely there is a
special need of this warning; for this is a day when nothing is not
pried into, nothing is not published, nothing is not laid before all
men.
2. In the next place I would observe, that the pursuit of science,
which characterizes these times, is very likely to draw us aside into a
sin of a particular kind, if we are not on our guard. We read, in the
book of Acts, of many who used curious arts burning their books; that
is, there are kinds of knowledge which are forbidden to the Christian.
Now this seems strange to the world in this day. The only forbidden
subjects which they can fancy, are such as are not _true_--fictions,
impostures, superstitions, and the like. Falsehood they think wrong;
false religions, for instance, _because_ false. But they are perplexed
when told that there may be branches of real knowledge, yet forbidden.
Yet it has ever been considered in the Church, as in Scripture, that
soothsaying, consulting the stars, magic, and similar arts, are
unlawful--unlawful, even though not false; and Scripture certainly
speaks as if at least some of them were more than merely a pretended
knowledge and a pretended power; whereas men now-a-days have got to
think that they are wrong, merely because _frauds_ and _impostures_;
and if they found them not so, they would be very slow to understand
how still they are unlawful. They have not mastered the idea that real
knowledge may be forbidden us.