In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
IT may seem hardly worth while to preach upon this text. Every one
thinks that he believes it. Of course—they say—we know that God made the
world. Teach us something we do not know, not something which we do.
Why preach to us about a text which we fully understand, and believe
already?
Because, my friends, there are few texts in the Bible more difficult to
believe than this, the very first; few texts which we need to repeat to
ourselves again and again, in all the chances and changes of this mortal
life; lest we should forget it just as we feel we are most sure of it.
We know that it was very difficult for people in olden times to believe
it. Else why did all the heathens of old, and why do all heathens now,
worship idols?
We know that the old Jews, after it had been revealed to them, found it
very difficult to believe it. Else why were they always deserting the
worship of God, and worshipping idols and devils, sun, moon, and stars,
and all the host of heaven?
We know that the early Christians, in spite of the light of the Gospel
and of God’s Spirit, found it very difficult to believe it. Doubtless
they believed it a thousand times more fully than it had ever been
believed before. They would have shrunk with horror from saying that any
one but God had made the heavens and the earth. But Christians clung,
for many hundred years, even almost up to our own day, to old heathen
superstitions, which they would have cast away if their faith had been
full, and if they had held with their whole hearts and souls and minds,
that there was one God, of whom are all things. They believed that the
Devil and evil spirits had power to raise thunderstorms, and blight
crops, and change that course of nature of which the Psalmist had said,
that all things served God, and continued this day as at the beginning,
for God had given them a law which could not be broken. They believed in
magic, and astrology, and a hundred other dreams, which all began from
secret disbelief that God made the heaven and the earth; till they
fancied that the Devil could and would teach men the secrets of nature,
and the way to be rich and great, if they would but sell their souls to
him. They believed, in a word, the very atheistic lie which Satan told
to our blessed Lord, when he said that all the kingdoms of the world and
the glory of them were his, and to whomsoever he would he gave
them—instead of believing our Lord’s answer, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan:
it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt
thou serve.’
And therefore I tell you here—as the Church has told Christian people in
all ages—that if any of you have any fancy for such follies, any belief
in charms and magic, any belief that you can have your fortunes told by
astrologers, gipsies, or such like, you must go back to your Bible, and
learn better the first text in it. ‘In the beginning God created the
heaven and the earth.’ God’s is the kingdom, and the power, and the
glory, of all things visible and invisible; all the world round us, with
its wonderful secrets, is governed, from the sun over our heads, to the
smallest blade of grass beneath our feet, by God, and by God alone, and
neither evil spirit nor magician has the smallest power over one atom of
it; and our fortunes, in likewise, do not depend on the influences of
stars or planets, ghosts or spirits, or anything else: but on ourselves,
of whom it is written, that God shall judge every man according to his
works.
Even now, in these very days, many good people are hardly able, it seems
to me, to believe with their whole hearts that God made heaven and earth.
They half believe it: but their faith is weak; and when it is tried, they
grow frightened, and afraid of truth. This it is which makes so many
good people afraid of what is now called Science—of all new discoveries
about the making of this earth, and the powers and virtues of the things
about us; afraid of wonders which are become matters of course among us,
but of which our forefathers knew little or nothing. They are afraid
lest these things should shake people’s faith in the Bible, and in
Christianity; lest men should give up the good old faith of their
forefathers, and fancy that the world is grown too wise to believe in the
old doctrines. One cannot blame them, cannot even be surprised at them.
So many wonderful truths (for truths they are), of which our fathers
never dreamed, are discovered every year, that none can foretell where
the movement will stop; what we shall hear next; what we shall have to
believe next.
Only, let us take refuge in the text—‘In the beginning God created the
heaven and the earth.’ All that we see around us, however wonderful; all
that has been found out of late, however wonderful; all that will be ever
found out, however still more wonderful it may be, is the work of God; of
that God who revealed himself to Moses; of that God who led the children
of Israel out of their slavery in Egypt; of that God who taught David, in
all his trouble and wanderings, to trust in him as his guide and friend;
of that God who revealed to the old Prophets the fate of nations, and the
laws by which he governs all the kingdoms and people of the earth; of
that God, above all, who so loved the world, that he gave his only
begotten Son, that the world by him might be saved.
This material world which we do see, is as much God’s world as the
spiritual world we do not see. And, therefore, the one cannot contradict
the other; and the true understanding of the one will never hurt our true
understanding of the other.
But many good people have another fear, and that, I think, a far more
serious one. They are afraid, in consequence of all these wonderful
discoveries of science, that people will begin to trust in science, and
not in God. And that fear is but too well founded. It is certain that
if sinful man can find anything to trust in, instead of God, trust
therein he surely will.
The old Jews preferred to trust in idols, rather than God; the Christians
of the Middle Age, to their shame, trusted in magic and astrology, rather
than God; and after that, some 200 years ago, when men had grown too wise
to trust in such superstitions, they certainly did not grow wise enough,
most of them, to trust in the living God. They relied, the rulers of the
nations especially, in their own wit and cunning, and tried to govern the
world and keep it straight, by falsehood and intrigue, envy and jealousy,
plotting and party spirit, and the wisdom which cometh not from above,
but is earthly, sensual, devilish,—that wisdom against which we pray,
whenever we sing ‘God save the Queen,’—
‘Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks,
On Thee our hopes we fix,
GOD save the Queen.’
And since that false wisdom has failed, and the wisdom of this world, and
the rulers of this world, came to nought in the terrible crisis of the
French Revolution, eighty years ago, men have been taking up a new
idolatry. For as science has spread, they have been trusting in science
rather than in the living God, and giving up the old faith that God’s
judgments are in all the earth, and that he rewards righteousness and
punishes iniquity; till too many seem to believe that the world somehow
made itself, and that there is no living God ordering and guiding it; but
that a man must help himself as he best can in this world, for in God no
help is to be found.
And how shall we escape that danger?
I do not think we shall escape it, if we stop short at the text. We must
go on from the Old Testament and let the New explain it. We must believe
what Moses tells us: but we must ask St. John to show us more than Moses
saw. Moses tells us that God created the heavens and the earth; St. John
goes further, and tells us what that God is like; how he saw Christ, the
Word of God, by whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was
made that is made. And what was he like? He was the brightness of his
Father’s glory, and the express image of his person. And what was that
like? was there any darkness in him—meanness, grudging, cruelty,
changeableness, deceit? No. He was full of grace and truth. Grace and
truth: that is what Christ is; and therefore that is what God is.
There was another aspect of him, true; and St. John saw that likewise.
And so awful was it that he fell at the Lord’s feet as he had been dead.
But the Lord was still full of grace and truth; still, however awful he
was, he was as full as ever of love, pity, gentleness. He was the Lamb
that was slain for the sins of the world, even though that Lamb was in
the midst of the throne from which came forth thunderings and lightnings,
and judgments against the sins of all the world. Terrible to wrong, and
to the doers of wrong: but most loving and merciful to all true
penitents, who cast themselves and the burden of their sins before his
feet; perfect justice and perfect Love,—that is God. That is the maker
of this world. That is he who in the beginning made heaven and earth.
An utterly good God. A God whose mercy is over all his creatures. A God
who desires the good of his creatures; who willeth not that one little
one should perish; who will have all men to be saved, and to come to the
knowledge of the truth; who wages everlasting war against sin and folly,
and wrong and misery, and all the ills to which men are heirs; who not
only made the world, but loves the world, and who proved that—what a
proof!—by not sparing his only-begotten Son, but freely giving him for
us.
Therefore we can say, not merely,—I know that a God made the world, but I
know what that God is like. I know that he is not merely a great God, a
wise God, but a good God; that goodness is his very essence. I know that
he is gracious and merciful, long suffering, and of great kindness. I
know that he is loving to every man, and that his mercy is over all his
works. I know that he upholds those who fall, and lifts up those who are
down; I know that he careth for the fatherless and widow, and executes
judgment and justice for all those who are oppressed with wrong. I know
that he will fulfil the desire of those who call upon him; and will also
hear their cry and will help them. I know, in short, that he is a living
God, and a loving God; a God in whom men may trust, to whom they may open
their hearts, as children to their father: and I am sure that those who
come to him he will in no wise cast out; for he himself has said, with
human voice upon this earth of ours,—‘Come unto me all ye that labour and
are heavy laden and I will give you rest.’
In him all can trust. The sick man on his bed can trust in him and
say—In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth; and he is full
of grace and truth. This sickness of mine comes by the laws of heaven
and earth; and those laws are God’s laws. Then even this sickness may be
full of grace and truth. It comes by no blind chance, but by the will of
him who so loved me, that he stooped to die for me on the Cross. Christ
my Lord and God has some gracious and bountiful purpose in it, some
lesson for me to learn from it. I will ask him to teach me that lesson;
and I trust in him that he will teach me; and that, even for this
sickness and this sorrow, I shall have cause to thank him in the world to
come. Shall I not trust him who not only made this world, but so loved
it that he stooped to die for it upon the Cross?
The labourer and the farmer can trust in him, in the midst of short crops
and bad seasons, and say, In the beginning God created the heaven and the
earth; and he is full of grace and truth. Frost and blight obey his
commands as well as sunshine and plenty. He knows best what ought to be.
Shall we not trust in him, who not only made this world, but so loved it,
that he stooped to die for it upon the Cross?
The scholar and the man of science, studying the wonders of this earth,
can trust in him, and say, In the beginning God created the heaven and
the earth; and he is full of grace and truth. Many things puzzle me; and
the more I learn the less I find I really know; but I shall know as much
as is good for me, and for mankind. God is full of grace, and will not
grudge me knowledge; and full of truth, and will not deceive me. And I
shall never go far wrong as long as I believe, not only in one God, the
Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible, but in one
Lord Jesus Christ, his only-begotten Son, light of light, very God of
very God, by whom all things were made, who for us men and our salvation
came down, and died, and rose again; whose kingdom shall have no end; who
rules over every star and planet, every shower and sunbeam, every plant
and animal and stone, every body and every soul of man; who will teach
men, in his good time and way, all that they need know, in order to
multiply and replenish the earth, and subdue it in this life, and attain
everlasting life in the world to come. And for the rest, puzzled though
I be, shall I not trust him, who not only made this world, but so loved
it, that he stooped to die for it upon the Cross?
SERMON XI.
THE ARMOUR OF GOD.
(_Preached before the Prince of Wales_, _at Sandringham_, _January_
20_th_, 1867.)