This is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief,
suffering wrongfully.
THIS is a great epistle, this epistle for the day, and full of deep
lessons. Let us try to learn some of them.
‘What glory is it,’ St. Peter says, ‘if, when ye be beaten for your
faults, ye take it patiently?’ What credit is it to a man, if, having
broken the law, he submits to be punished? The man who will not do that,
the man who resists punishment, is not a civilized man, but a savage and
a mere animal. If he will not live under discipline, if he expects to
break the law with impunity, he makes himself an outlaw; he puts himself
by his rebellion outside the law, and becomes unfit for society, a public
enemy of his fellow-men. The first lesson which men have to learn, which
even the heathen have learnt, as soon as they have risen above mere
savages, is the sacredness of law—the necessity of punishment for those
who break the law.
The Jews had this feeling of the sacredness of law. Moses’ divine law
had taught it them. The Romans, heathen though they were, had the same
feeling—that law was sacred; that men must obey law. And the good thing
which they did for the world (though they did it at the expense of
bloodshed and cruelty without end) was the bringing all the lawless
nations and wild tribes about them under strict law, and drilling them
into order and obedience. That it was, which gave the Roman power
strength and success for many centuries.
But above the kingdom of law, which says to a man merely, ‘Thou shalt not
do wrong: and if thou dost, thou shalt be punished,’ there is another
kingdom, far deeper, wider, nobler; even the kingdom of grace, which says
to a man, not merely, ‘Do not do wrong,’ but ‘Do right;’ and not only ‘Do
right for fear of being punished,’ but ‘Do right because it is right; do
right because thou hast grace in thy heart; even the grace of God, and
the Spirit of God, which makes thee love what is right, and see how right
it is, and how beautiful; so that thou must follow after the right, not
from fear of punishment, but in spite of fear of punishment; follow after
the right, not when it is safe only, but when it is dangerous; not when
it is honourable only in the eyes of men, but when it is despised. If
thou hast God’s grace in thy heart; if thou lovest what is right with the
true love, which is the Spirit of God, then thou wilt never stop to ask,
“Will it pay me to do right?” Thou wilt feel that the right thou must
do, whether it pays thee or not; still loving the right, and cleaving
steadfastly to the right, through disappointment, poverty, shame,
trouble, death itself, if need be: if only thou canst keep a conscience
void of offence toward God and man.’
‘But shall I have no reward?’ asks a man, ‘for doing right? Am I to give
up a hundred pleasant things for conscience’ sake, and get nothing in
return?’ Yes: there is a reward for righteousness, even in this life.
God repays those who make sacrifices for conscience’ sake, I verily
believe, in most cases, a hundred fold in this life. In this life it
stands true, that he who loses his life shall save it; that he who goes
through the world with a single eye to duty, without selfishness, without
vanity, without ambition, careless whether he be laughed at, careless
whether he be ill-used, provided only his conscience acquits him, and
God’s approving smile is on him—in this life it stands true that that man
is the happiest man after all; that that man is the most prosperous man
after all; that, like Christ, when he was doing his Father’s work, he has
meat to eat and strengthen him in his life’s journey, which the world
knows not of. But if not; if it seem good to God to let him taste the
bitters, and not the sweets, of doing right, in this life; if it seem
good to God that he should suffer—as many a man and woman too has
suffered for doing right—nothing but contempt, neglect, prison, and
death; is he worse off than Jesus Christ, his Lord, was before him?
Shall the disciple be above his master? What if he have to drink of the
cup of sorrow of which Christ drank, and be baptized with the baptism of
martyrdom with which Christ was baptized? Where is he, but where the Son
of God has been already? What is he doing, but treading in the steps of
Christ crucified; that he may share in the blessing and glory and honour
without end which God the Father heaped upon Christ his Son, because he
was perfect in duty, perfect in love of right, perfect in resignation,
perfect in submission under injustice, perfect in forgiveness of his
murderers, perfect in faith in the justice and mercy of God: who did no
sin—that is, never injured his own cause by anger or revenge; and had no
guile in his mouth—that is, never prevaricated, lied, concealed his
opinions, for fear of the consequences, however terrible; but before the
chief priests and Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession, though he
knew that it would bring on him a dreadful death; who, when he was
reviled, reviled not again, but committed himself to him who judgeth
righteously—the meekest of all beings, and in that very meekness the
strongest of all beings; the most utterly resigned, and by that very
resignation the most heroic—the being who seemed, on the cross of
Calvary, most utterly conquered by injustice and violence: but who, by
that very cross, conquered the whole world.
This is a great mystery, and hard to learn. Flesh and blood, our animal
nature, will never compass it all; for it belongs, not to the flesh, but
to the spirit. But our spirits, our immortal souls, may learn the lesson
at last, if we feed them continually with the thought of Christ; if we
meditate upon whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are
honourable, just, pure, lovely, and of good report. Then we may learn,
at last, after many failures, and many sorrows of heart, that the spirit
is stronger than the flesh; that meekness is stronger than wrath, silence
stronger than shouting, peace stronger than war, forgiveness stronger
than vengeance, just as Christ hanging on his cross was
stronger—exercising a more vast and miraculous effect on the hearts of
men—than if he had called whole armies of angels to destroy his enemies,
like one of the old kings and conquerors of the earth, whose works have
perished with themselves.
Yes, gradually we must learn that our strength is to sit still; that to
do well and suffer for it, instead of returning evil for evil, and
railing for railing, is to show forth the spirit of Christ, and to enter
into the joy of our Lord.
The statesman debating in Parliament; the conqueror changing the fate of
nations on bloody battle-fields; these all do their work; and are
needful, doubtless, in a sinful, piecemeal world like this. But there
are those of whom the noisy world never hears, who have chosen the better
part which shall not be taken from them; who enter into a higher glory
than that of statesmen, or conquerors, or the successful and famous of
the earth. Many a man—clergyman or layman—struggling in poverty and
obscurity, with daily toil of body and mind, to make his fellow-creatures
better and happier; many a poor woman, bearing children in pain and
sorrow, and bringing them up with pain and sorrow, but in industry, too,
and piety; or submitting without complaint to a brutal husband; or
sacrificing all her own hopes in life to feed and educate her brothers
and sisters; or enduring for years the peevishness and troublesomeness of
some relation;—all these (and the world which God sees is full of such,
though the world which man sees takes no note of them)—gentle souls,
humble souls, uncomplaining souls, suffering souls, pious souls—these are
God’s elect; these are Christ’s sheep; these are the salt of the earth,
who, by doing each their little duty as unto God, not unto men, keep
society from decaying more than do all the constitutions and acts of
parliament which statesmen ever invented. These are they—though they
little dream of any such honour—who copy the likeness of the old martyrs,
who did well and suffered for it; and the likeness of Christ, of whom it
was said, ‘He shall not strive nor cry, neither shall his voice be heard
in the streets.’
For what was it in the old martyrs which made men look up to them, as
persons infinitely better than themselves, with quite unmeasurable
admiration; so that they worshipped them after their deaths, as if they
had been gods rather than men?
It was this. The world in old times had been admiring successful people,
just as it does at this day. Was a man powerful, rich? Had he slaves by
the hundred? Was his table loaded with the richest meats and wines?
Could he indulge every pleasure and fancy of his own? Could he heap his
friends with benefits? Could he ruin or destroy any one who thwarted
him? In one word, was he a mighty and successful tyrant? Then that was
the man to honour and worship; that was the sort of man to become, if
anyone had the chance, by fair means or foul. Just as the world worships
now the successful man; and—if you will but make a million of money—will
flatter you and court you, and never ask either how you made your money,
or how you spend your money; or whether you are a good man or a bad one:
for money in man’s eyes, as charity in God’s eyes, covereth a multitude
of sins; and as long as thou doest well unto thyself, men will speak well
of thee.
But there arose, in that wicked old world in which St. Paul lived, an
entirely new sort of people—people who did not wish to be successful; did
not wish to be rich; did not wish to be powerful; did not wish for
pleasures and luxuries which this world could give: who only wished to be
good; to do right, and to teach others to do right. Christians, they
were called; after Christ their Lord and God. Weak old men, poor women,
slaves, even children, were among them. Not many mighty, not many rich,
not many noble, were called. They were mostly weak and oppressed people,
who had been taught by suffering and sorrow.
One would have thought that the world would have despised these
Christians, and let them go their own way in peace. But it was not so.
The mighty of this world, and those who lived by pandering to their
vices, so far from despising the Christians, saw at once how important
they were. They saw that, if people went about the world determined to
speak nothing but what they believed to be true, and to do nothing but
what was right, then the wicked world would be indeed turned upside down,
and, as they complained against St. Paul more than once, the hope of
their gains would be gone. Therefore they conceived the most bitter
hatred against these Christians, and rose against them, for the same
simple reason that Cain rose up against Abel and slew him, because his
works were wicked, and his brother’s righteous. They argued with them;
they threatened them; they tried to terrify them: but they found to their
astonishment that the Christians would not change their minds for any
terror. Then their hatred became rage and fury. They could not
understand how such poor ignorant contemptible people as the Christians
seemed to be, dared to have an opinion of their own, and to stand to it;
how they dared to think themselves right, and all the world wrong; and in
their fury they inflicted on them tortures to read of which should make
the blood run cold. And their rage and fury increased to madness, when
they found that these Christians, instead of complaining, instead of
rebelling, instead of trying to avenge themselves, submitted to all their
sufferings, not only patiently and uncomplaining, but joyfully, and as an
honour and a glory. Some, no doubt, they conquered by torture, agony,
and terror; and so made them deny Christ, and return to the wickedness of
the heathen. But those renegades were always miserable. Their own
consciences condemned them. They felt they had sold their own souls for
a lie; and many of them, in their agony of mind, repented again, like St.
Peter after he had denied his Lord through fear, proclaimed themselves
Christians after all, went through all their tortures a second time, and
died triumphant over death and hell.
But there were those—to be counted by hundreds, if not thousands—who
dared all, and endured all; and won (as it was rightly called) the crown
of martyrdom. Feeble old men, weak women, poor slaves, even little
children, sealed their testimony with their blood, and conquered, not by
fighting, but by suffering.
They conquered. They conquered for themselves in the next world; for
they went to heaven and bliss, and their light affliction, which was but
for a moment, worked out for them an exceeding and eternal weight of
glory.
They conquered in this world also. For the very world which had scourged
them, racked them, crucified them, burned them alive, when they were dead
turned round and worshipped them as heroes, almost as divine beings. And
they were divine; for they had in them the Divine Spirit, the Spirit of
God and of Christ. Therefore the foolish world was awed,
conscience-stricken, pricked to the heart, when it looked on those whom
it had pierced, as it had pierced Christ the Lord, and cried, as the
centurion cried on Calvary, ‘Surely these were the sons and daughters of
God. Surely there was some thing more divine, more noble, more beautiful
in these poor creatures dying in torture, than in all the tyrants and
conquerors and rich men of the earth. This is the true greatness, this
is the true heroism—to do well and suffer for it patiently.’
And thenceforth men began to get, slowly but surely, a quite new idea of
true greatness; they learnt to see that not revenge, but forgiveness; not
violence, but resignation; not success, but holiness, are the perfection
of humanity. They began to have a reverence for those who were weak in
body, and simple in heart,—a reverence for women, for children, for
slaves, for all whom the world despises, such as the old Egyptians,
Greeks, Romans, had never had. They began to see that God could make
strong the weak things of this world, and glorify himself in the courage
and honesty of the poorest and the meanest. They began to see that in
Christ Jesus was neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, barbarian,
Scythian, slave or free, but that all were one in Christ Jesus, all alike
capable of receiving the Spirit of God, all alike children of the one
Father, who was above all, and in all, and with them all.
And so the endurance and the sufferings of the early martyrs was the
triumph of good over evil; the triumph of honesty and truth; of purity
and virtue; of gentleness and patience; of faith in a just and loving
God: because it was the triumph of the Spirit of Christ, by which he
died, and rose again, and conquered shame and pain, and death and hell.
SERMON XXII.
TOLERATION.
(_Preached at Christ Church_, _Marylebone_, 1867, _for the Bishop of
London’s Fund_.)