TWENTY-FIVE VILLAGE SERMONS

SERMON I. GOD'S WORLD

PSALM civ. 24. 

"O Lord, how manifold are Thy works! in wisdom hast Thou made themall: the earth is full of Thy riches. "

When we read such psalms as the one from which this verse is taken, we cannot help, if we consider, feeling at once a great differencebetween them and any hymns or religious poetry which is commonlywritten or read in these days. The hymns which are most liked now, and the psalms which people most willingly choose out of the Bible, are those which speak, or seem to speak, about God's dealings withpeople's own souls, while such psalms as this are overlooked. People do not care really about psalms of this kind when they findthem in the Bible, and they do not expect or wish nowadays any oneto write poetry like them. For these psalms of which I speak praiseand honour God, not for what He has done to our souls, but for whatHe has done and is doing in the world around us. This very 104thpsalm, for instance, speaks entirely about things which we hardlycare or even think proper to mention in church now. It speaks ofthis earth entirely, and the things on it. Of the light, theclouds, and wind--of hills and valleys, and the springs on the hill-sides--of wild beasts and birds--of grass and corn, and wine andoil--of the sun and moon, night and day--the great sea, the ships, and the fishes, and all the wonderful and nameless creatures whichpeople the waters--the very birds' nests in the high trees, and therabbits burrowing among the rocks, --nothing on the earth but thispsalm thinks it worth mentioning. And all this, which one wouldexpect to find only in a book of natural history, is in the Bible, in one of the psalms, written to be sung in the temple at Jerusalem, before the throne of the living God and His glory which used to beseen in that temple, --inspired, as we all believe, by God's Spirit, --God's own word, in short: that is worth thinking of. Surely theman who wrote this must have thought very differently about thisworld, with its fields and woods, and beasts and birds, from what wethink. Suppose, now, that we had been old Jews in the temple, standing before the holy house, and that we believed, as the Jewsbelieved, that there was only one thin wall and one curtain of linenbetween us and the glory of the living God, that unspeakablebrightness and majesty which no one could look at for fear ofinstant death, except the high-priest in fear and trembling once a-year--that inside that small holy house, He, God Almighty, appearedvisibly--God who made heaven and earth. Suppose we had been therein the temple, and known all this, should we have liked to besinging about beasts and birds, with God Himself close to us? Weshould not have liked it--we should have been terrified, thinkingperhaps about our own sinfulness, perhaps about that wonderfulmajesty which dwelt inside. We should have wished to say or singsomething spiritual, as we call it; at all events, something verydifferent from the 104th psalm about woods, and rivers, and dumbbeasts. We do not like the thought of such a thing: it seemsalmost irreverent, almost impertinent to God to be talking of suchthings in His presence. Now does this shew us that we think aboutthis earth, and the things in it, in a very different way from thoseold Jews? They thought it a fit and proper thing to talk about cornand wine and oil, and cattle and fishes, in the presence of AlmightyGod, and we do not think it fit and proper. We read this psalm whenit comes in the Church-service as a matter of course, mainly becausewe do not believe that God is here among us. We should not be soready to read it if we thought that Almighty God was so near us. 

That is a great difference between us and the old Jews. Whether itshews that we are better or not than they were in the main, I cannottell; perhaps some of them had such thoughts too, and said, 'It isnot respectful to God to talk about such commonplace earthly thingsin His presence;' perhaps some of them thought themselves spiritualand pure-minded for looking down on this psalm, and on David forwriting it. Very likely, for men have had such thoughts in allages, and will have them. But the man who wrote this psalm had nosuch thoughts. He said himself, in this same psalm, that his wordswould please God. Nay, he is not speaking and preaching ABOUT Godin this psalm, as I am now in my sermon, but he is doing more; he isspeaking TO God--a much more solemn thing if you will think of it. He says, "O Lord my God, THOU art become exceeding glorious. Thoudeckest Thyself with light as with a garment. All the beasts waiton Thee; when Thou givest them meat they gather it. Thou renewestthe face of the earth. " When he turns and speaks of God as "He, "saying, "He appointed the moon, " and so on, he cannot help goingback to God, and pouring out his wonder, and delight, and awe, toGod Himself, as we would sooner speak TO any one we love and honourthan merely speak ABOUT them. He cannot take his mind off God. Andjust at the last, when he does turn and speak to himself, it is tosay, "Praise thou the Lord, O my soul, praise the Lord, " as ifrebuking and stirring up himself for being too cold-hearted andslow, for not admiring and honouring enough the infinite wisdom, andpower, and love, and glorious majesty of God, which to him shinesout in every hedge-side bird and every blade of grass. Truly I saidthat man had a very different way of looking at God's earth fromwhat we have!

Now, in what did that difference lie? What was it? We need notlook far to see. It was this, --David looked on the earth as God'searth; we look on it as man's earth, or nobody's earth. We knowthat we are here, with trees and grass, and beasts and birds, roundus. And we know that we did not put them here; and that, after weare dead and gone, they will go on just as they went on before wewere born, --each tree, and flower, and animal, after its kind, butwe know nothing more. The earth is here, and we on it; but who putit there, and why it is there, and why we are on it, instead ofbeing anywhere else, few ever think. But to David the earth lookedvery different; it had quite another meaning; it spoke to him of Godwho made it. By seeing what this earth is like, he saw what God whomade it is like: and we see no such thing. The earth?--we can eatthe corn and cattle on it, we can earn money by farming it, andploughing and digging it; and that is all most men know about it. But David knew something more--something which made him feel himselfvery weak, and yet very safe; very ignorant and stupid, and yethonoured with glorious knowledge from God, --something which made himfeel that he belonged to this world, and must not forget it orneglect it, that this earth was his lesson-book--this earth was hiswork-field; and yet those same thoughts which shewed him how he wasmade for the land round him, and the land round him was made forhim, shewed him also that he belonged to another world--a spirit-world; shewed him that when this world passed away, he should livefor ever; shewed him that while he had a mortal body, he had animmortal soul too; shewed him that though his home and business werehere on earth, yet that, for that very reason, his home and businesswere in heaven, with God who made the earth, with that blessed Oneof whom he said, "Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid thefoundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure; they all shall fade as agarment, and like a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shallbe changed; but Thou art the same, and THY years shall not fail. The children of Thy servants shall continue, and their seed shallstand fast in Thy sight. " "As a garment shalt Thou change them, "--ay, there was David's secret! He saw that this earth and skies areGod's garment--the garment by which we see God; and that is what ourforefathers saw too, and just what we have forgotten; but David hadnot forgotten it. Look at this very 104th psalm again, how herefers every thing to God. We say, 'The light shines:' David sayssomething more; he says, "Thou, O God, adornest Thyself with lightas with a curtain. " Light is a picture of God. "God, " says St. John, "is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. " We say, 'Theclouds fly and the wind blows, ' as if they went of themselves; Davidsays, "God makes the clouds His chariot, and walks upon the wings ofthe wind. " We talk of the rich airs of spring, of the flashinglightning of summer, as dead things; and men who call themselveswise say, that lightning is only matter, --'We can grind the like ofit out of glass and silk, and make lightning for ourselves in asmall way;' and so they can in a small way, and in a very small one:David does not deny that, but he puts us in mind of something inthat lightning and those breezes which we cannot make. He says, Godmakes the winds His angels, and flaming fire his ministers; and St. Paul takes the same text, and turns it round to suit his purpose, when he is talking of the blessed angels, saying, 'That text in the104th Psalm means something more; it means that God makes His angelsspirits, (that is winds) and His ministers a flaming fire. ' Soshewing us that in those breezes there are living spirits, thatGod's angels guide those thunder-clouds; that the roaringthunderclap is a shock in the air truly, but that it is somethingmore--that it is the voice of God, which shakes the cedar-trees ofLebanon, and tears down the thick bushes, and makes the wild deerslip their young. So we read in the psalms in church; that isDavid's account of the thunder. I take it for a true account; youmay or not as you like. See again. Those springs in the hill-sides, how do they come there? 'Rain-water soaking and flowingout, ' we say. True, but David says something more; he says, Godsends the springs, and He sends them into the rivers too. You maysay, 'Why, water must run down-hill, what need of God?' But supposeGod had chosen that water should run UP-hill and not down, how wouldit have been then?--Very different, I think. No; He sends them; Hesends all things. Wherever there is any thing useful, His Spirithas settled it. The help that is done on earth He doeth it allHimself. --Loving and merciful, --caring for the poor dumb beasts!--Hesends the springs, and David says, "All the beasts of the fielddrink thereof. " The wild animals in the night, He cares for themtoo, --He, the Almighty God. We hear the foxes bark by night, and wethink the fox is hungry, and there it ends with us; but not withDavid: he says, "The lions roaring after their prey do seek theirmeat from God, "--God, who feedeth the young ravens who call uponHim. He is a God! "He did not make the world, " says a wise man, "and then let it spin round His finger, " as we wind up a watch, andthen leave it to go of itself. No; "His mercy is over all Hisworks. " Loving and merciful, the God of nature is the God of grace. The same love which chose us and our forefathers for His peoplewhile we were yet dead in trespasses and sins; the same only-begotten Son, who came down on earth to die for us poor wretches onthe cross, --that same love, that same power, that same Word of God, who made heaven and earth, looks after the poor gnats in the wintertime, that they may have a chance of coming out of the ground whenthe day stirs the little life in them, and dance in the sunbeam fora short hour of gay life, before they return to the dust whence theywere made, to feed creatures nobler and more precious thanthemselves. That is all God's doing, all the doing of Christ, theKing of the earth. "They wait on Him, " says David. The beasts, andbirds, and insects, the strange fish, and shells, and the namelesscorals too, in the deep, deep sea, who build and build below thewater for years and thousands of years, every little, tiny creaturebringing his atom of lime to add to the great heap, till their heapstands out of the water and becomes dry land; and seeds floatthither over the wide waste sea, and trees grow up, and birds aredriven thither by storms; and men come by accident in stray ships, and build, and sow, and multiply, and raise churches, and worshipthe God of heaven, and Christ, the blessed One, --on that new landwhich the little coral worms have built up from the deep. Considerthat. Who sent them there? Who contrived that those particular menshould light on that new island at that especial time? Who guidedthither those seeds--those birds? Who gave those insects thatstrange longing and power to build and build on continually?--Christ, by whom all things are made, to whom all power is given inheaven and earth; He and His Spirit, and none else. It is when HEopens His hand, they are filled with good. It is when HE takes awaytheir breath, they die, and turn again to their dust. HE lets Hisbreath, His spirit, go forth, and out of that dead dust grow plantsand herbs afresh for man and beast, and He renews the face of theearth. For, says the wise man, "all things are God's garment"--outward and visible signs of His unseen and unapproachable glory;and when they are worn out, He changes them, says the Psalmist, as agarment, and they shall be changed. 

The old order changes, giving place to the new, And God fulfils Himself in many ways. 

But He is the same. He is there all the time. All things are Hiswork. In all things we may see Him, if our souls have eyes. Allthings, be they what they may, which live and grow on this earth, orhappen on land or in the sky, will tell us a tale of God, --shewforth some one feature, at least, of our blessed Saviour'scountenance and character, --either His foresight, or His wisdom, orHis order, or His power, or His love, or His condescension, or Hislong-suffering, or His slow, sure vengeance on those who break Hislaws. It is all written there outside in the great green book, which God has given to labouring men, and which neither taxes nortyrants can take from them. The man who is no scholar in lettersmay read of God as he follows the plough, for the earth he ploughsis his Father's: there is God's mark and seal on it, --His name, which though it is written on the dust, yet neither man nor fiendcan wipe it out!

The poor, solitary, untaught boy, who keeps the sheep, or minds thebirds, long lonely days, far from his mother and his playmates, maykeep alive in him all purifying thoughts, if he will but open hiseyes and look at the green earth around him. 

Think now, my boys, when you are at your work, how all things mayput you in mind of God, if you do but choose. The trees whichshelter you from the wind, God planted them there for your sakes, inHis love. --There is a lesson about God. The birds which you driveoff the corn, who gave them the sense to keep together and profit byeach other's wit and keen eyesight? Who but God, who feeds theyoung birds when they call on Him?--There is another lesson aboutGod. The sheep whom you follow, who ordered the warm wool to growon them, from which your clothes are made? Who but the Spirit ofGod above, who clothes the grass of the field, the silly sheep, andwho clothes you, too, and thinks of you when you don't think ofyourselves?--There is another lesson about God. The feeble lambs inspring, they ought to remind you surely of your blessed Saviour, theLamb of God, who died for you upon the cruel cross, who was led as alamb to the slaughter; and like a sheep that lies dumb and patientunder the shearer's hand, so he opened not his mouth. Are not theselambs, then, a lesson from God? And these are but one or twoexamples out of thousands and thousands. Oh, that I could make you, young and old, all feel these things! Oh, that I could make you seeGod in every thing, and every thing in God! Oh, that I could makeyou look on this earth, not as a mere dull, dreary prison, andworkhouse for your mortal bodies, but as a living book, to speak toyou at every time of the living God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!Sure I am that that would be a heavenly life for you, --sure I amthat it would keep you from many a sin, and stir you up to many aholy thought and deed, if you could learn to find in every thingaround you, however small or mean, the work of God's hand, thelikeness of God's countenance, the shadow of God's glory. 

SERMON II. RELIGION NOT GODLINESS

PSALM civ. 13-15. 

"He watereth the hills from his chambers: the earth is satisfiedwith the fruit of thy works. He causeth the grass to grow for thecattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forthfood out of the earth; and wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengthenethman's heart. "

Did you ever remark, my friends, that the Bible says hardly anything about religion--that it never praises religious people? Thisis very curious. Would to God we would all remember it! The Biblespeaks of a religious man only once, and of religion only twice, except where it speaks of the Jews' religion to condemn it, andshews what an empty, blind, useless thing it was. 

What does this Bible talk of, then? It talks of God; not ofreligion, but of God. It tells us not to be religious, but to begodly. You may think there is no difference, or that it is but adifference of words. I tell you that a difference in words is avery awful, important difference. A difference in words is adifference in things. Words are very awful and wonderful things, for they come from the most awful and wonderful of all beings, JesusChrist, the Word. He puts words into men's minds--He made allthings, and He makes all words to express those things with. Andwoe to those who use the wrong words about things!--For if a mancalls any thing by its wrong name, it is a sure sign that heunderstands that thing wrongly, or feels about it wrongly; andtherefore a man's words are oftener honester than he thinks; for asa man's words are, so is a man's heart; out of the abundance of ourhearts our mouths speak; and, therefore, by right words, by theright names which we call things, we shall be justified, and by ourwords, by the wrong names we call things, we shall be condemned. 

Therefore a difference in words is a difference in the things whichthose words mean, and there is a difference between religion andgodliness; and we shew it by our words. Now these are religioustimes, but they are very ungodly times; and we shew that also by ourwords. Because we think that people ought to be religious, we talka great deal about religion; because we hardly think at all that aman ought to be godly, we talk very little about God, and that goodold Bible word "godliness" does not pass our lips once a-month. Fora man may be very religious, my friends, and yet very ungodly. Theheathens were very religious at the very time that, as St. Paultells us, they would not keep God in their knowledge. The Jews werethe most religious people on the earth, they hardly talked orthought about anything but religion, at the very time that they knewso little of God that they crucified Him when He came down amongthem. St. Paul says that he was living after the strictest sect ofthe Jews' religion, at the very time that he was fighting againstGod, persecuting God's people and God's Son, and dead in trespassesand sins. These are ugly facts, my friends, but they are true, andwell worth our laying to heart in these religious, ungodly days. Iam afraid if Jesus Christ came down into England this day as acarpenter's son, He would get--a better hearing, perhaps, than theJews gave him, but still a very bad hearing--one dare hardly thinkof it. 

And yet I believe we ought to think of it, and, by God's help, Iwill one day preach you a sermon, asking you all round this fairquestion:--If Jesus Christ came to you in the shape of a poor man, whom nobody knew, should YOU know him? should you admire him, fallat his feet and give yourself up to him body and soul? I am afraidthat I, for one, should not--I am afraid that too many of us herewould not. That comes of thinking more of religion than we do ofgodliness--in plain words, more of our own souls than we do of JesusChrist. But you will want to know what is, after all, thedifference between religion and godliness? Just the difference, myfriends, that there is between always thinking of self and alwaysforgetting self--between the terror of a slave and the affection ofa child--between the fear of hell and the love of God. For, tellme, what you mean by being religious? Do you not mean thinking agreat deal about your own souls, and praying and reading about yourown souls, and trying by all possible means to get your own soulssaved? Is not that the meaning of religion? And yet I have nevermentioned God's name in describing it! This sort of religion musthave very little to do with God. You may be surprised at my words, and say in your hearts almost angrily, 'Why who saves our souls butGod? therefore religion must have to do with God. ' But, my friends, for your souls' sake, and for God's sake, ask yourselves thisquestion on your knees this day:--If you could get your souls savedwithout God's help, would it make much difference to you? Supposean angel from heaven, as they say, was to come down and prove to youclearly that there was no God, no blessed Jesus in heaven, that theworld made itself, and went on of itself, and that the Bible was alla mistake, but that you need not mind, for your gardens and cropswould grow just as well, and your souls be saved just as well whenyou died. 

To how many of you would it make any difference? To some of you, thank God, I believe it would make a difference. Here are somehere, I believe, who would feel that news the worst news they everheard, --worse than if they were told that their souls were lost forever; there are some here, I do believe, who, at that news, wouldcry aloud in agony, like little children who had lost their father, and say, 'No Father in heaven to love? No blessed Jesus in heavento work for, and die for, and glory and delight in? No God to ruleand manage this poor, miserable, quarrelsome world, bringing goodout of evil, blessing and guiding all things and people on earth?What do I care what becomes of my soul if there is no God for mysoul to glory in? What is heaven worth without God? God isHeaven!'

Yes, indeed, what would heaven be worth without God? But how manypeople feel that the curse of this day is, that most people haveforgotten THAT? They are selfishly anxious enough about their ownsouls, but they have forgotten God. They are religious, for fear ofhell; but they are not godly, for they do not love God, or see God'shand in every thing. They forget that they have a Father in heaven;that He sends rain, and sunshine, and fruitful seasons; that Hegives them all things richly to enjoy in spite of all their sins. His mercies are far above, out of their sight, and therefore Hisjudgments are far away out of their sight too; and so they talk ofthe "Visitation of God, " as if it was something that was veryextraordinary, and happened very seldom; and when it came, onlybrought evil, harm, and sorrow. If a man lives on in health, theysay he lives by the strength of his own constitution; if he dropsdown dead, they say he died by "the visitation of God. " If thecorn-crops go on all right and safe, they think THAT quite natural--the effect of the soil, and the weather, and their own skill infarming and gardening. But if there comes a hailstorm or a blight, and spoils it all, and brings on a famine, they call it at once "avisitation of God. " My friends! do you think God "visits" the earthor you only to harm you? I tell you that every blade of grass growsby "the visitation of God. " I tell you that every healthy breathyou ever drew, every cheerful hour you ever spent, every good cropyou ever housed safely, came to you by "the visitation of God. " Itell you that every sensible thought or plan that ever came intoyour heads, --every loving, honest, manly, womanly feeling that everrose in your hearts, God "visited" you to put it there. If God'sSpirit had not given it you, you would never have got it ofyourselves. 

But people forget this, and therefore they have so little real loveto God--so little real, loyal, childlike trust in God. They do notthink much about God, because they find no pleasure in thinkingabout Him; they look on God as a task-master, gathering where He hasnot strewed, reaping where He has not sown, --a task-master who hasput them, very miserable, sinful creatures, to struggle on in a verymiserable, sinful world, and, though He tells them in His Bible thatthey CANNOT keep His commandments, expects them to keep them justthe same, and will at the last send them all into everlasting fire, unless they take a great deal of care, and give up a great manynatural and pleasant things, and beseech and entreat Him very hardto excuse them, after all. This is the thought which most peoplehave of God, even religious people; they look on God as a sterntyrant, who, when man sinned and fell, could not satisfy His ownjustice--His own vengeance in plain words, without killing some one, and who would have certainly killed all mankind, if Jesus Christ hadnot interfered, and said, "If Thou must slay some one, slay me, though I am innocent!"

Oh, my friends, does not this all sound horrible and irreverent?And yet if you will but look into your own hearts, will you not findsome such thoughts there? I am sure you will. I believe every manfinds such thoughts in his heart now and then. I find them in myown heart: I know that they must be in the hearts of others, because I see them producing their natural fruits in people'sactions--a selfish, slavish view of religion, with little or no reallove to God, or real trust in Him; but a great deal of uneasy dreadof Him: for this is just the dark, false view of God, and of thegood news of salvation and the kingdom of heaven, which the devil isalways trying to make men take. The Evil One tries to make usforget that God is love; he tries to make us forget that God givesus all things richly to enjoy; he tries to make us forget that Godgives at all, and to make us think that we take, not that He gives;to make us look at God as a task-master, not as a father; in oneword, to make us mistake the devil for God, and God for the devil. 

And, therefore, it is that we ought to bless God for such Scripturesas this 104th Psalm, which He seems to have preserved in the Biblejust to contradict these dark, slavish notions, --just to testifythat God is a GIVER, and knows our necessities before we ask andgives us all things, even as He gave us His Blessed Son--freely, long before we wanted them, --from the foundation of all things, before ever the earth and the world was made--from all eternity, perpetual love, perpetual bounty. 

What does this text teach us? To look at God as Him who gives toall freely and upbraideth not. It says to us, --Do not suppose thatyour crops grow of themselves. God waters the hills from above. Hecauses the grass to grow for the cattle, and the green herb for theservice of man. Do not suppose that He cares nothing about seeingyou comfortable and happy. It is He, He only who sends all whichstrengthens man's body, and makes glad his heart, and makes him of acheerful countenance. His will is that you should be cheerful. Ah, my friends, if we would but believe all this!--we are too apt to sayto ourselves, 'Our earthly comforts here have nothing to do withgodliness or God, God must save our souls, but our bodies we mustsave ourselves. God gives us spiritual blessings, but earthlyblessings, the good things of this life, for them we must scrambleand drudge ourselves, and get as much of them as we can withoutoffending God;'--as if God grudged us our comforts! as if godlinesshad not the promise of this life as well as the life to come! If wewould but believe that God knows our necessities before we ask--thatHe gives us daily more than we can ever get by working for it!--ifwe would but seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, all other things would be added to us; and we should find that hewho loses his life should save it. And this way of looking at God'searth would not make us idle; it would not tempt us to sit withfolded hands for God's blessings to drop into our mouths. No! Ibelieve it would make men far more industrious than ever mere self-interest can make them; they would say, 'God is our Father, He gaveus His own Son, He gives us all things freely, we owe Him notslavish service, but a boundless debt of cheerful gratitude. Therefore we must do His will, and we are sure His will must be ourhappiness and comfort--therefore we must do His will, and His willis that we should WORK, and therefore we MUST work. He has biddenus labour on this earth--He has bidden us dress it and keep it, conquer it and fill it for Him. We are His stewards here on earth, and therefore it is a glory and an honour to be allowed to work herein God's own land--in our loving Father's own garden. We do notknow why He wishes us to labour and till the ground, for He couldhave fed us with manna from heaven if He liked, as He fed the Jewsof old, without our working at all. But His will is that we shouldwork; and work we will, not for our own sakes merely, but for Hissake, because we know He likes it, and for the sake of our brothers, our countrymen, for whom Christ died. '

Oh, my friends, why is it that so many till the groundindustriously, and yet grow poorer and poorer for all their drudgingand working? It is their own fault. They till the ground for theirown sakes, and not for God's sake and for their countrymen's sake;and so, as the Prophet says, they sow much and bring in little, andhe who earns wages earns them to put in a bag full of holes. Suppose you try the opposite plan. Suppose you say to yourself, 'Iwill work henceforward because God wishes me to work. I will workhenceforward for my country's sake, because I feel that God hasgiven me a noble and a holy calling when He set me to grow food forHis children, the people of England. As for my wages and my profit, God will take care of them if they are just; and if they are unjust, He will take care of them too. He, at all events, makes the gardenand the field grow, and not I. My land is filled, not with thefruit of my work, but with the fruit of His work. He will see thatI lose nothing by my labour. If I till the soil for God and forGod's children, I may trust God to pay me my wages. ' Oh, myfriends, He who feeds the young birds when they call upon Him; andfar, far more, He who gave you His only-begotten Son, will He notwith Him freely give you all things? For, after all done, He mustgive to you, or you will not get. You may fret and stint, andscrape and puzzle; one man may sow, and another man may water; but, after all, who can give the increase but God? Can you make a loadof hay, unless He has first grown it for you, and then dried it foryou? If you would but think a little more about Him, if you wouldbelieve that your crops were His gifts, and in your hearts offerthem up to Him as thank-offerings, see if He would not help you tosell your crops as well as to house them. He would put you in theway of an honest profit for your labour, just as surely as He onlyput you in the way of labouring at all. "Trust in the Lord, and bedoing good; dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed;" for"without me, " says our Lord, "you can do nothing. " No: these areHis own words--nothing. To Him all power is given in heaven andearth; He knows every root and every leaf, and feeds it. Will Henot much more feed you, oh ye of little faith? Do you think that Hehas made His world so ill that a man cannot get on in it unless heis a rogue? No. Cast all your care on Him, and see if you do notfind out ere long that He cares for you, and has cared for you fromall eternity. 

SERMON III. LIFE AND DEATH

PSALM civ. 24, 28-30. 

"O Lord, how manifold are Thy works! in wisdom hast Thou made themall: the earth is full of Thy riches. That Thou givest them theygather: Thou openest Thine hand, they are filled with good. Thouhidest Thy face, they are troubled: Thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust. Thou sendest forth Thy spirit, they are created: and Thou renewest the face of the earth. "

I had intended to go through this psalm with you in regular order;but things have happened this parish, awful and sad, during the lastweek, which I was bound not to let slip without trying to bring themhome to your hearts, if by any means I could persuade thethoughtless ones among you to be wise and consider your latter end:--I mean the sad deaths of various of our acquaintances. The death-bell has been tolled in this parish three times, I believe, in oneday--a thing which has seldom happened before, and which God grantmay never happen again. Within two miles of this church there arenow five lying dead. Five human beings, young as well as old, towhom the awful words of the text have been fulfilled: "Thou takestaway their breath, they die, and return to their dust. " And thevery day on which three of these deaths happened was Ascension-day--the day on which Jesus, the Lord of life, the Conqueror of death, ascended upon high, having led captivity captive, and became thefirst-fruits of the grave, to send down from the heaven of eternallife the Spirit who is the Giver of life. That was a strangemixture, death seemingly triumphant over Christ's people on the veryday on which life triumphed in Jesus Christ Himself. Let us see, though, whether death has not something to do with Ascension-day. Let us see whether a sermon about death is not a fit sermon for theSunday after Ascension-day. Let us see whether the text has not amessage about life and death too--a message which may make us feelthat in the midst of life we are in death, and that yet in the midstof death we are in life; that however things may SEEM, yet death hasnot conquered life, but life has conquered and WILL conquer death, and conquer it most completely at the very moment that we die, andour bodies return to their dust. 

Do I speak riddles? I think the text will explain my riddles, forit tells us how life comes, how death comes. Life comes from God:He sends forth His spirit, and things are made, and He renews theface of the earth. We read in the very two verses of the book ofGenesis how the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters thecreation, and woke all things into life. Therefore the Creed wellcalls the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of God, that is--the Lord and Giverof life. And the text tells us that He gives life, not only to uswho have immortal souls, but to every thing on the face of theearth; for the psalm has been talking all through, not only of men, but of beasts, fishes, trees, and rivers, and rocks, sun and moon. Now, all these things have a life in them. Not a life like ours;but still you speak rightly and wisely when you say, 'That tree isalive, and, That tree is dead. That running water is live water--itis sweet and fresh, but if it is kept standing it begins to putrefy, its life is gone from it, and a sort of death comes over it, andmakes it foul, and unwholesome, and unfit to drink. ' This is a deepmatter, this, how there is a sort of life in every thing, even tothe stones under our feet. I do not mean, of course, that stonescan think as our life makes us do, or feel as the beasts' life makesthem do, or even grow as the trees' life makes them do; but I meanthat their life keeps them as they are, without changing ordecaying. You hear miners and quarrymen talk very truly of the liverock. That stone, they say, was cut out of the live rock, meaningthe rock as it is under ground, sound and hard--as it would be, foraught we know, to the end of time, unless it was taken out of theground, out of the place where God's Spirit meant it to be, andbrought up to the open air and the rain, in which it is not itsnature to be. And then you will see that the life of the stonebegins to pass from it bit by bit, that it crumbles and peels away, and, in short, decays and is turned again to its dust. Itsorganisation, as it is called, or life, ends, and then--what? doesthe stone lie for ever useless? No! And there is the great blessedmystery of how God's Spirit is always bringing life out of death. When the stone is decayed and crumbled down to dust and clay, itmakes SOIL--this very soil here, which you plough, is the decayedruins of ancient hills; the clay which you dig up in the fields wasonce part of some slate or granite mountains, which were worn awayby weather and water, that they might become fruitful earth. Wonderful! but any one who has studied these things can tell youthey are true. Any one who has ever lived in mountainous countriesought to have seen the thing happen, ought to know that the land inthe mountain valleys is made at first, and kept rich year by year, by the washings from the hills above; and this is the reason whyland left dry by rivers and by the sea is generally so rich. Thenwhat becomes of the soil? It begins a new life. The roots of theplants take it up; the salts which they find in it--the staple, aswe call them--go to make leaves and seed; the very sand has its use, it feeds the stalks of corn and grass, and makes them stiff. Thecorn-stalks would never stand upright if they could not get sandfrom the soil. So what a thousand years ago made part of amountain, now makes part of a wheat-plant; and in a year more thewheat grain will have been eaten, and the wheat straw perhaps eatentoo, and they will have DIED--decayed in the bodies of the animalswho have eaten them, and then they will begin a third new life--theywill be turned into parts of the animal's body--of a man's body. Sothat what is now your bone and flesh, may have been once a rock onsome hillside a hundred miles away. 

Strange, but true! all learned men know that it is true. You, ifyou think over my words, may see that they are at least reasonable. But still most wonderful! This world works right well, surely. Itobeys God's Spirit. Oh, my friends, if we fulfilled our life andour duty as well as the clay which we tread on does, --if we obeyedGod's Spirit as surely as the flint does, we should have many aheartache spared us, and many a headache too! To be what God wantsus!--to be MEN, to be WOMEN, and therefore to live as children ofGod, members of Christ, fulfilling our duty in that state to whichGod has called us, that would be our bliss and glory. Nothing canlive in a state in which God did not intend it to live. Suppose atree could move itself about like an animal, and chose to do so, thetree would wither and die; it would be trying to act contrary to thelaw which God has given it. Suppose the ox chose to eat meat likethe lion, it would fall sick and die; for it would be actingcontrary to the law which God's Spirit had made for it--going out ofthe calling to which God's Word has called it, to eat grass and notflesh, and live thereby. And so with us: if we will do wickedly, when the will of God, as the Scripture tells us, is oursanctification, our holiness; if we will speak lies, when God's lawfor us is that we should speak truth; if we will bear hatred andill-will, when God's law for us is, Love as brothers, --you allsprang from one father, Adam, --you were all redeemed by one brother, Jesus Christ; if we will try to live as if there was no God, whenGod's law for us is, that a man can live like a man only by faithand trust in God;--then we shall DIE, if we break God's lawsaccording to which he intended man to live. Thus it was with Adam;God intended him to obey God, to learn every thing from God. Hechose to disobey God, to try and know something of himself, bygetting the knowledge of good and evil; and so death passed on him. He became an unnatural man, a BAD man, more or less, and so hebecame a dead man; and death came into the world, that time atleast, by sin, by breaking the law by which man was meant to be aman. As the beasts will die if you give them unnatural food, or inany way prevent their following the laws which God has made forthem, so man dies, of necessity. All the world cannot help hisdying, because he breaks the laws which God has made for him. 

And how does he die? The text tells us, God takes away his breath, and turns His face from him. In His presence, it is written, islife. The moment He withdraws his Spirit, the Spirit of life, fromany thing, body or soul, then it dies. It was by SIN came death--byman's becoming unfit for the Spirit of God. 

Therefore the body is dead because of sin, says St. Paul, doomed todie, carrying about in it the seeds of death from the very moment itis born. Death has truly passed upon all men!

Most sad; and yet there is hope, and more than hope, there iscertain assurance, for us, that though we die, yet shall we live! Ihave shewn you, in the beginning of my sermon, how nothing that diesperishes to nothing, but begins a new and a higher life. How thestone becomes a plant, --something better and more useful than it wasbefore; the plant passes into an animal--a step higher still. And, therefore, we may be sure that the same rule will hold good about usmen and women, that when we die, we shall begin a new and a noblerlife, that is, if we have been true MEN; if we have lived fulfillingthe law of our kind. St. Paul tells us so positively. He says thatnothing comes to life except it first die, then God gives it a newbody. He says that even so is the resurrection of the dead, --thatwe gain a step by dying; that we are sown in corruption, and areraised in incorruption; we are sown in dishonour, and are raised inglory; we are sown in weakness, and are raised in power; we are sowna natural body, and are raised a spiritual body; that as we now areof the earth earthy, after death and the resurrection our new andnobler body will be of the heavens heavenly; so that "when thiscorruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shallhave put on immortality, then death shall be swallowed up invictory. " Therefore, I say, Sorrow not for those who sleep as ifyou had no hope for the dead; for "Christ is risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept. For as in Adam alldie, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. "

And I say that this has to do with the text--it has to do withAscension-day. For if we claim our share in Christ, --if we claimour share of our heavenly Father's promise, "to give the Holy Spiritto those who ask Him;" then we may certainly hope for our share inChrist's resurrection, our share in Christ's ascension. For, saysSt. Paul (Rom. Viii. 10, 11), "if Christ be in you, the body is deadbecause of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised up Jesus from the dead dwell inyou, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken yourmortal bodies, by His Spirit that dwelleth in you!" There is ablessed promise! that in that, as in every thing, we shall be madelike Christ our Master, the new Adam, who is a life-giving Spirit, that as He was brought to life again by the Spirit of God, so weshall be. And so will be fulfilled in us the glorious rule whichthe text lays down, "Thou, O God, sendest forth Thy Spirit, and theyare created, and Thou dost renew the face of the earth. "Fulfilled?--yes, but far more gloriously than ever the old Psalmistexpected. Read the Revelations of St. John, chapters xxi. And xxii. For the glory of the renewed earth read the first Epistle of Paul tothe Thessalonians, chap. Iv. 16-18, for the glorious resurrectionand ascension of those who have died trusting in the blessed Lord, who died for them; and then see what a glorious future lies beforeus--see how death is but the gate of life--see how what holds trueof every thing on this earth, down to the flint beneath our feet, holds true ten thousand times of men that to die and to decay isonly to pass into a nobler state of life. But remember, that justas we are better than the stone, we may be also worse than thestone. It cannot disobey God's laws, therefore it can enjoy noreward, any more than suffer any punishment. We can disobey--we canfall from our calling--we can cast God's law behind us--we canrefuse to do His will, to work out our own salvation; and justbecause our reward in the life to come will be so glorious, if wefulfil our life and law, the life of faith and the law of love, therefore will our punishment be so horrible, if we neglect the lifeof faith and trample under foot the law of love. Oh, my friends, choose! Death is before you all. Shall it be the gate ofeverlasting life and glory, or the gate of everlasting death andmisery? Will you claim your glorious inheritance, and be for everequal to the angels, doing God's will on earth as they in heaven; orwill you fall lower than the stones, who, at all events, must dotheir duty as stones, and not DO God's will at all, but only SUFFERit in eternal woe? You must do one or the other. You cannot belike the stones, without feeling--without joy or sorrow, justbecause you are immortal spirits, every one of you. You must beeither happy or miserable, blessed or disgraced, for ever. I knowof no middle path;--do you? Choose before the night comes, in whichno man can work. Our life is but a vapour which appears for alittle time, then vanishes away. "O Lord, how manifold are Thyworks! in wisdom hast Thou made them all: the earth is full of Thyriches. That Thou givest them they gather: Thou openest Thinehand, they are filled with good. Thou hidest Thy face, they aretroubled: Thou takest away their breath, they die, and return totheir dust. Thou sendest forth Thy Spirit, they are created: andThou renewest the face of the earth. "

SERMON IV. THE WORK OF GOD'S SPIRIT

JAMES, i. 16, 17. 

"Do not err, my beloved brethren; every good gift and every perfectgift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights. "

This text, I believe more and more every day, is one of the mostimportant ones in the whole Bible; and just at this time it is moreimportant for us than ever, because people have forgotten it morethan ever. 

And, according as you firmly believe this text, according as youfirmly believe that every good gift you have in body and soul comesdown from above, from God the Father of lights--according, I say, asyou believe this, and live upon that belief, just so far will you beable to do your duty to God and man, worthily of your blessedSaviour's calling and redemption, and of the high honour which Hehas given you of being free and christened men, redeemed by His mostprecious blood, and led by His most noble Spirit. 

Now, just because this text is so important, the devil isparticularly busy in trying to make people forget it. For what ishis plan? Is it not to make us forget God, to put God OUT of allour thoughts, to make us acknowledge God in none of our ways, tomake us look at ourselves and not at God, that so we may becomefirst earthly and sensual, and then devilish, like Satan himself?Therefore he tries to make us disbelieve this text. He puts intoour hearts such thoughts as these:--'Ay, all good gifts may comefrom God; but that only means all spiritual gifts. All those fine, deep doctrines and wonderful feelings that some very religiouspeople talk of, about conversion, and regeneration, andsanctification, and assurance, and the witness of the indwellingSpirit, --all those gifts come from God, no doubt, but they are quiteabove us. We are straightforward, simple people, who cannot feelfine fancies; if we can be honest, and industrious, and good-natured, and sober, and strong, and healthy, that is enough for us, --and all that has nothing to do with religion. Those are not giftswhich come from God. A man is strong and healthy by birth, andhonest and good-natured by nature. Those are very good things; butthey are not gifts--they are not GRACES--they are not SPIRITUALblessings--they have nothing to do with the state of a man's soul. Ungodly people are honest, and good-tempered, and industrious, andhealthy, as well as your saints and your methodists; so what is theuse of praying for spiritual gifts to God, when we can have all wewant by nature?'

Did such thoughts never come into your head, my friends? Are theynot often in your heads, more or less? Perhaps not in these verywords, but something like them. 

I do not say it to blame you, for I believe that every man, eachaccording to his station, is tempted to such thoughts; I believethat such thoughts are not YOURS or any man's; I believe they arethe devil's, who tempts all men, who tempted even the Son of GodHimself with thoughts like these at their root. Such thoughts arenot YOURS or mine, though they may come into our heads. They arepart of the evil which besets us--which is NOT us--which has noright or share in us--which we pray God to drive away from us whenwe say, "Deliver us from evil. " Have you not all had such thoughts?But have you not all had very different thoughts? have you not, every one of you, at times, felt in the bottom of your hearts, afterall, 'This strength and industry, this courage, and honesty, andgood-nature of mine, must come from God; I did not get them myself?If I was born honest, and strong, and gentle, and brave, some onemust have made me so when I was born, or before? The devilcertainly did not make me so, therefore GOD must? These, too, areHis gifts?'

Did you ever think such thoughts as these? If you did not, not muchmatter, for you have all acted, more or less, in your better momentsas if you had them. There are more things in a man's heart, thankGod, than ever come into his head. Many a man does a noble thing byinstinct, as we say, without ever THINKING whether it is a noblething or not--without THINKING about it at all. Many a man, thankGod, is led at times, by God's Spirit, without ever knowing whoseSpirit it is that leads him. 

But he OUGHT to know it, for it is WILLING, REASONABLE service whichGod wants of us. He does not care to use us like tools and puppets. And why? He is not merely our Maker, He is our Father, and Hewishes us to know and feel that we are His children--to know andfeel that we all have come from Him; to acknowledge Him in all ourways, to thank Him for all, to look up lovingly and confidently toHim for more, as His reasonable children, day by day, and hour byhour. Every good gift we have comes from Him; but He will have usknow where they all come from. 

Let us go through now a few of these good gifts, which we callnatural, and see what the Bible says of them, and from whom theycome. 

First, now, that common gift of strength and courage. Who gives youthat?--who gave it David? For He that gives it to one is mostlikely to be He that gives it to another. David says to God, "Thouteachest my hands to war, and my fingers to fight; by the help ofGod I can leap over a wall: He makes me strong, that my arms canbreak even a bow of steel:"--that is plain-spoken enough, I think. Who gave Samson his strength, again? What says the Bible? HowSamson met a young lion which roared against him, and he had nothingin his hand, and the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, andhe tore the lion as he would have torn a kid. And, again, how whentraitors had bound him with two new cords, the Spirit of the Lordcame mightily upon him, and the cords which were on his arms becameas flax that was burnt with fire, and fell from off his hands. And, for God's sake, do not give in to that miserable fancy that becausethese stories are what you call miraculous, therefore they havenothing to do with you--that Samson's strength came to himmiraculously by God's Spirit, and yet yours comes to you a differentway. The Bible is written to tell you how all that happens reallyhappens--what all things really are; God is working among us always, but we do not see Him; and the Bible just lifts up, once and forall, the veil which hides Him from us, and lets us see, in oneinstance, who it is that does all the wonderful things which go onround us to this day, that when we see any thing like it happen wemay know whom to thank for it. 

The Great Physician healed the blind and the lame in Judea; andwhy?--to shew us who heals the blind and the lame now--to shew usthat the good gift of medicine and surgery, and the physician's art, comes down from Him who cured the paralytic and cleansed the lepersin Judea--to whom all power is given in heaven and earth. 

So, again, with skill in farming and agriculture. From whom doesthat come? The very heathens can tell us that, for it is curious, that among the heathen, in all ages and countries, those men whohave found out great improvements in tilling the ground have beenhonoured and often worshipped as divine men--as gods, therebyshewing that the heathen, among all their idolatries, had a true andjust notion about man's practical skill and knowledge--that it couldonly come from Heaven, that it was by the inspiration and guidanceof God above that skill in agriculture arose. What says Isaiah ofthat to the very same purpose? "Doth the ploughman plow all day tosow? doth he open and break the clods of his ground? When he hathmade plain the face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the vetches, and cast in the principal wheat and the appointed barley and the ryein their place? For his God doth instruct him to discretion, anddoth teach him. This also, " says Isaiah, "cometh from the Lord ofHosts, who is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working. "Would to God you would all believe it!

Again; wisdom and prudence, and a clear, powerful mind, --are notthey parts of God's likeness? How is God's Spirit described inScripture? It is called the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, theSpirit of prudence and might. Therefore, surely, all wisdom andunderstanding, all prudence and strength of mind, are, like thatSpirit, part of God's image; and where did we get God's image? Canwe make ourselves like God? If we are like him, He must have formedthat likeness; and He alone. The Spirit of God, says the Scripture, giveth us understanding. 

Or, again; good-nature and affection, love, generosity, pity, --whoselikeness are they? What is God's name but love? God is love. Hasnot He revealed Himself as the God of mercy, full of long-suffering, compassion, and free forgiveness; and must not, then, all love andaffection, all compassion and generosity, be His gift? Yes. As therays come from the sun, and yet are not the sun, even so our loveand pity, though they are not God, but merely a poor, weak image andreflection of Him, yet from Him alone they come. If there is mercyin our hearts, it comes from the fountain of mercy. If there is thelight of love in us, it is a ray from the full sun of His love. 

Or honesty, again, and justice, --whose image are they but God's? IsHe not THE Just One--the righteous God? Is not what is just for manjust for God? Are not the laws of justice and honesty, by which mandeals fairly with man, HIS laws--the laws by which God deals withus? Does not every book--I had almost said every page--in the Bibleshew us that all our justice is but the pattern and copy of God'sjustice, --the working out of those six latter commandments of His, which are summed up in that one command, "Thou shalt love thyneighbour as thyself?"

Now here, again, I ask: If justice and honesty be God's likeness, who made us like God in this--who put into us this sense of justicewhich all have, though so few obey it? Can man make himself likeGod? Can a worm ape his Maker? No. From God's Spirit, the Spiritof Right, came this inborn feeling of justice, this knowledge ofright and wrong, to us--part of the image of God in which He createdman--part of the breath or spirit of life which He breathed intoAdam. Do not mistake me. I do not say that the sense, and honesty, and love in us, ARE God's Spirit--they are the spirit of MAN, butthat they are LIKE God's Spirit, and therefore they must be given usBY God's Spirit to be used as God's Spirit Himself uses them. How aman shall have his share of God's Spirit, and live in and by God'sSpirit, is another question, and a higher and more blessed one; butwe must master this question first--we must believe that our spiritscome FROM God, then, perhaps, we shall begin to see that our spiritsnever can work well unless they are joined to the Spirit of God, from whom they came. From whom else, I ask again, can they come?Can they come from our bodies? Our bodies? What are they?--Fleshand bones, made up of air and water and earth, --out of the deadbodies of the animals, the dead roots and fruits of plants which weeat. They are earth--matter. Can MATTER be courageous? Did youever hear of a good-natured plant, or an honest stone? Then thisgood-nature, and honesty, and courage of ours, must belong to oursouls--our spirits. Who put them there? Did we? Does a child makeits own character? Does its body make its character first? Can itsfather and mother make its character? No. Our characters must comefrom some spirit above us--either from God or from the devil. Andis the devil likely to make us honest, or brave, or kindly? I leaveyou to answer that. God--God alone, my friends, is the author ofgood--the help that is done on earth, He doeth it all Himself:every good gift and every perfect gift cometh from Him. 

Now some of you may think this a strange sort of sermon, because Ihave said little or nothing about Jesus Christ and His redemption init, but I say--No. 

You must believe this much about yourselves before you can believemore. You must fairly and really believe that GOD made you onething before you can believe that you have made yourselves anotherthing. You must really believe that you are not mere machines andanimals, but immortal souls, before you can really believe that youhave sinned; for animals cannot sin--only reasonable souls can sin. We must really believe that God made us at bottom in His likeness, before we can begin to find out that there is another likeness in usbesides God's--a selfish, brutish, too often a devilish likeness, which must be repented of, and fought against, and cast out, thatGod's likeness in us may get the upper hand, and we may be what Godexpects us to be. We must know our dignity before we can feel ourshame. We must see how high we have a right to stand, that we maysee how low, alas! we have fallen. 

Now you--I know many such here, thank God--to whom God has givenclear, powerful heads for business, and honest, kindly hearts, I dobeseech you--consider my words, Who has given you these but God?They are talents which He has committed to your charge; and will Henot require an account of them? HE only, and His free mercy, hasmade you to differ from others; if you are better than the fools andprofligates round you, He, and not yourselves, has made you better. What have you that you have not received? By the grace of God aloneyou are what you are. If good comes easier to you than to others, HE alone has made it easier to you; and if you have done wrong, --ifyou have fallen short of your duty, as ALL fall short, is not yoursin greater than others? for unto whom much is given of them shallmuch be required. Consider that, for God's sake, and see if you, too, have not something to be ashamed of, between yourselves andGod. See if you, too, have not need of Jesus Christ and Hisprecious blood, and God's free forgiveness, who have had so muchlight and power given you, and still have fallen short of what youmight have been, and what, by God's grace, you still may be, and, asI hope and earnestly pray, still will be. 

And you, young men and women--consider;--if God has given you manlycourage and high spirits, and strength and beauty--think--GOD, yourFather, has given them to you, and of them He will surely require anaccount; therefore, "Rejoice, young people, " says Solomon, "in youryouth, and let your hearts cheer you in the days of your youth, andwalk in the ways of your heart and in the sight of your eyes. Butremember, " continues the wisest of men, --"remember, that for allthese things God shall bring you into judgment. " Now do notmisunderstand that. It does not mean that there is a sin in beinghappy. It does not mean, that if God has given to a young man abold spirit and powerful limbs, or to a young woman a handsome faceand a merry, loving heart, that He will punish them for these--Godforbid! what He gives He means to be used: but this it means, thataccording as you use those blessings so will you be judged at thelast day; that for them, too, you will be brought to judgment, andtried at the bar of God. As you have used them for industry, andinnocent happiness, and holy married love, or for riot andquarrelling, and idleness, and vanity, and filthy lusts, so shallyou be judged. And if any of you have sinned in any of these ways, --God forbid that you should have sinned in ALL these ways; butsurely, surely, some of you have been idle--some of you have beenriotous--some of you have been vain--some of you have beenquarrelsome--some of you, alas! have been that which I shall notname here. --Think, if you have sinned in any one of these ways, howcan you answer it to God? Have you no need of forgiveness? Haveyou no need of the blessed Saviour's blood to wash you clean? Youngpeople! God has given you much. As a young man, I speak to you. Youth is an inestimable blessing or an inestimable curse, accordingas you use it; and if you have abused your spring-time of youth, asall, I am afraid, have--as I have--as almost all do, alas! in thisfallen world, where can you get forgiveness but from Him that diedon the cross to take away the sins of the world?

SERMON V. FAITH

HABAKKUK, ii. 4. 

"The just shall live by faith. "

This is those texts of which there are so many in the Bible, which, though they were spoken originally to one particular man, yet aremeant for every man. These words were spoken to Habakkuk, a Jewishprophet, to check him for his impatience under God's hand; but theyare just as true for every man that ever was and ever will be asthey were for him. They are world-wide and world-old; they are thelaw by which all goodness, and strength, and safety, stand either inmen or angels, for it always was true, and always must be true, thatif reasonable beings are to live at all, it is by faith. 

And why? Because every thing that is, heaven and earth, men andangels, are all the work of God--of one God, infinite, almighty, all-wise, all-loving, unutterably glorious. My friends, we do notthink enough of this, --not that all the thinking in the world canever make us comprehend the majesty of our Heavenly Father; but wedo not remember enough what we DO know of God. We think of God, watching the world and all things in it, and keeping them in orderas a shepherd does his sheep, and so far so good; but we forget thatGod does more than this, --we forget that this earth, sun, and moon, and all the thousand thousand stars which cover the midnight sky, --many of them suns larger than the sun we see, and worlds larger thanthe world on which we stand, that all these, stretching awaymillions of millions of miles into boundless space, --all are lying, like one little grain of dust, in the hollow of God's hand, and thatif He were to shut His hand upon them, He could crush them intonothing, and God would be alone in the universe again, as He wasbefore heaven and earth were made. Think of that!--that if God wasbut to will it, we, and this earth on which we stand, and the heavenabove us, and the sun that shines on us, should vanish away, and beno-where and no-thing. Think of the infinite power of God, and thenthink how is it possible to LIVE, except by faith in Him, bytrusting to Him utterly. 

If you accustom yourselves to think in the same way of the infinitewisdom of God, and the infinite love of God, they will both teachyou the same lesson; they will shew you that if you were thegreatest, the wisest, the holiest man that ever lived, you wouldstill be such a speck by the side of the Almighty and EverlastingGod that it would be madness to depend upon yourselves for any thingwhile you lived in God's world. For, after all, what CAN we dowithout God? IN Him we live, and move, and have our being. He madeus, He gave us our bodies, gave us our life; what we do HE lets usdo, what we say He lets us say; we all live on sufferance. What isit but God's infinite mercy that ever brought us here or keeps ushere an instant? We may pretend to act without God's leave or help, but it is impossible for us to do so; the strength we put forth, thewit we use, are all His gifts. We cannot draw a breath of airwithout His leave. And yet men fancy they can do without God in theworld! My friends, these are but few words, and poor words, aboutthe glorious majesty of God and our littleness when compared withHim; but I have said quite enough, at least, to shew you all howabsurd it is to depend upon ourselves for any thing. If we are merecreatures of God, if God alone has every blessing both of this worldand the next, and the will to give them away, whom ARE we to go tobut to Him for all we want? It is so in the life of our bodies, andit is so in the life of our spirits. If we wish for God'sblessings, from God we must ask them. That is our duty, even thoughGod in His mercy and long-suffering does pour down many a blessingupon men who never trust in Him for them. To us all, indeed, Godgives blessings before we are old enough to trust in Him for them, and to many He continues those blessings in after-life in spite oftheir blindness and want of faith. "He maketh His sun to shine onthe evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on theunjust. " He gives--gives--it is His glory to give. Yet strange!that men will go on year after year, using the limbs, and eating thefood, which God gives them, without ever believing so much as thatGod HAS given them, without so much as looking up to heaven once andsaying, "God, I thank Thee!" But we must remember that thoseblessings will not last for ever. Unless a man has lived by faithin God with regard to his earthly comforts, death will come and putan end to them at once; and then it is only those who have trustedin God for all good things, and thanked Him accordingly in thislife, who shall have their part in the new heavens and the newearth, which will so immeasurably surpass all that this earth cangive. 

And it is the same with the life of our spirits; in it, too, we mustlive by faith. The life of our spirits is a gift from God theFather of spirits, and He has chosen to declare that unless we trustto Him for life, and ask Him for life, He will not bestow it uponus. The life of our bodies He in His mercy keeps up, although weforget Him; the life of our souls He will not keep up: therefore, for the sake of our spirits, even more than of our bodies, we mustlive by faith. If we wish to be loving, pure, wise, manly, noble, we must ask those excellent gifts of God, who is Himself infinitelove, and purity, wisdom and nobleness. If we wish for everlastinglife, from whom can we obtain it but from God, who is the boundless, eternal, life itself? If we wish for forgiveness for our faults andfailings, where are we to get it but from God, who is boundless loveand pity, and who has revealed to us His boundless love and pity inthe form of a man, Jesus Christ the Saviour of the world?

And to go a step further; it is by faith in Christ we must live--inChrist, a man like ourselves, yet God blessed for ever. For it is acertain truth, that men cannot believe in God or trust in Him unlessthey can think of Him as a man. This was the reason why the poorheathen made themselves idols in the form of men, that they mighthave something like themselves to worship; and those among them whowould not worship idols almost always ended in fancying that God waseither a mere notion, or else a mere part of this world, or elsethat He sat up in heaven neither knowing nor caring what happenedupon earth. But we, to whom God has given the glorious news of HisGospel, have the very Person to worship whom all the heathen weresearching after and could not find, --one who is "very God, " infinitein love, wisdom, and strength, and yet "very man, " made in allpoints like ourselves, but without sin; so that we have not a HighPriest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but one who is able to help those who are tempted, because He wastempted Himself like us, and overcame by the strength of His ownperfect will, of His own perfect faith. By trusting in Him, andacknowledging Him in every thought and action of our lives, we shallbe safe, for it is written, "The just shall live by faith. "

These things are true, and always were true. All that men ever didwell, or nobly, or lovingly, in this world, WAS DONE BY FAITH--byfaith in God of some sort or other; even in the man who thinks leastabout religion, it is so. Every time a man means to do, and reallydoes, a just or generous action, he does it because he believes, more or less clearly, that there is a just and loving God above him, and that justice and love are the right thing for a man--the law bywhich God intended him to walk: so that this small, dim faith stillshews itself in practice; and the more faith a man has in God and inGod's laws, the more it will shew itself in every action of hisdaily life; and the more this faith works in his life and conduct, the better man he is;--the more he is like God's image, in which manwas originally made;--and the more he is like Christ, the newpattern of God's image, whom all men must copy. 

So that the sum of the matter is this, without Christ we can donothing, by trusting in Christ we can do every thing. See, then, how true the verse before my text must be, that he whose soul islifted up in him is not upright; for if a man fancies that his bodyand soul are his own, to do what he pleases with them, when all thetime they are God's gift;--if a man fancies that he can take perfectcare of himself, while all the time it is God that is keeping himout of a thousand sins and dangers;--if a man fancies that he can doright of himself, when all the time the little good that he does isthe work of God's Spirit, which has not yet left him;--if a manfancies, in short, that he can do without God, when all the time itis in God that he lives, and moves, and has his being, how can sucha man be called upright? Upright! he is utterly wrong;--he isbelieving a lie, and walking accordingly; and, therefore, instead ofkeeping upright, he is going where all lies lead; into all kinds oflow and crooked ways, mistakes, absurdities, and at last to ruin ofbody and soul. Nothing but truth can keep a man upright andstraight, can keep a man where God has put him, and where he oughtto be; and the man whose heart is puffed up by pride and self-conceit, who is looking at himself and not at God, that man hasbegun upon a falsehood, and will soon get out of tune with heavenand earth. For consider, my friends: suppose some rich and mightyprince went out and collected a number of children, and of sick andinfirm people, and said to them, "You cannot work now, but I willgive you food, medicine, every thing that you require, and then youmust help me to work; and I, though you have no right to expect itof me, will pay you for the little work you can do on the strengthof my food and medicine. "--Is it not plain that all those personscould only live by faith in their prince, by trusting in him forfood and medicine, and by acknowledging that that food and medicinecame from him, and thanking him accordingly? If they wished to betrue men, if they wished him to continue his bounty, they wouldconfess that all the health and strength they had belonged to him ofright, because his generosity had given it to them. Just in thisposition we stand with Christ the Lord. When the whole world lay inwickedness, He came and chose us, of His free grace and mercy, to beone of His peculiar nations, to work for Him and with Him; and fromthe time He came, all that we and our forefathers have done well hasbeen done by the strength and wisdom which Christ has given us. Nowsuppose, again, that one of the persons of whom I spoke was seizedwith a fit of pride--suppose he said to himself, "My health andstrength does not come from the food and medicine which the princegave me, it comes from the goodness of my own constitution; thewages which I am paid are my just due, I am a free man, and maychoose what master I like. " Suppose any one of YOUR servantstreated you so, would you not be inclined to answer, "You are afaithless, ungrateful fellow; go your ways, then, and see how littleyou can do without my bounty?" But the blessed King in heaven, though He is provoked every day, is more long-suffering than man. All He does is to withdraw His bounty for a moment, to take thisworld's blessings from a man, and let him find out how impossible itis for him to keep himself out of affliction--to take away His HolySpirit for a moment from a man, and let him see how straight herushes astray, and every way but the right; and then, if the man ishumbled by his fall or his affliction, and comes back to his Lord, confessing how weak he is and promising to trust in Christ and thankChrist only for the future, THEN our Lord will restore His blessingsto him, and there will be joy among the angels of God over onesinner that repents. This was the way in which God treated Jobwhen, in spite of all his excellence, HIS heart was lifted up. Andthen, when he saw his own folly, and abhorred himself, and repentedin dust and ashes, God restored to him sevenfold what He had takenfrom him--honour, wisdom, riches, home, and children. This is theway, too, in which God treated David. "In my prosperity, " he tellsus, "I said, I shall never be moved; thou, Lord, of Thy goodnesshast made my hill so strong"--forgetting that he must be kept safeevery moment of his life, as well as made safe once for all. "Thoudidst turn Thy face from me, and I was troubled. Then cried I untoThee, O Lord, and gat me to my Lord right humbly. And THEN, " headds, "God turned my heaviness into joy, and girded me withgladness, " (Psalm xxx. ) And again, he says, "BEFORE I was troubledI went wrong, but NOW I have kept Thy word, " (Psalm cxix. ) And thisis the way in which Christ the Lord treated St. Peter and St. Paul, and treats, in His great mercy, every Christian man when He sees himpuffed up, to bring him to his senses, and make him live by faith inGod. If he takes the warning, well; if he does not, he remains in alie, and must go where all lies lead. So perfectly does it holdthroughout a man's whole life, that he whose soul is lifted upwithin him is not upright; but that the just must live by faith. 

Now there is one objection apt to rise in men's minds when they hearsuch words as these, which is, that they take such a "low view ofhuman nature;" it is so galling to our pride to be told that we cando nothing for ourselves: but if we think of the matter moreclosely, and, above all, if we try to put it into practice and liveby faith, we shall find that there is no real reason for thusobjecting. This is not a doctrine which ought to make us despisemen; any doctrine that DOES, does not come of GOD. Men are notcontemptible creatures--they are glorious creatures--they werecreated in the image of God; God has put such honour upon them thatHe has given them dominion over the whole earth, and made thempartakers of His eternal reason; and His Spirit gives themunderstanding to enable them to conquer this earth, and make thebeasts, ay, and the very winds and seas, and fire and steam, theirobedient servants; and human nature, too, when it is what God madeit, and what it ought to be, is not a contemptible thing: it wasnoble enough for the Son of God to take it upon Himself--to becomeman, without sinning or defiling Himself; and what was good enoughfor Him is surely good enough for us. Wickedness consists inUNMANLINESS, in being unlike a man, in becoming like an evil spiritor a beast. Holiness consists in becoming a TRUE MAN, in becomingmore and more like the likeness of Jesus Christ. And when the Bibletells us that we can do nothing of ourselves, but can live only byfaith, the Bible puts the highest honour upon us which any createdthing can have. What are the things which cannot live by faith?The trees and plants, the beasts and birds, which, though they liveand grow by God's providence, yet do not know it, do not thank Him, cannot ask Him for more strength and life as we can, are mere deadtools in God's hands, instead of living, reasonable beings as weare. It is only reasonable beings, like men and angels, withimmortal spirits in them, who CAN live by faith; and it is thegreatest glory and honour to us, I say again, that we CAN do so--that the glorious, infinite God, Maker of heaven and earth, shouldcondescend to ask us to be loyal to Him, to love Him, shouldencourage us to pray to Him boldly, and then should condescend tohear our prayers--WE, who in comparison of Him are smaller than thegnats in the sunbeam in comparison of men! And then, when weremember that He has sent His only Son into the world to take ournature upon Him, and join us all together into one great andeverlasting family, the body of Christ the Lord, and that He hasactually given us a share in His own Almighty Holy Spirit that wemay be able to love Him, and to serve Him, and to be joined to Him, the Almighty Father, do we not see that all this is infinitely morehonourable to us than if we were each to go on his own way herewithout God--without knowing anything of the everlasting world ofspirits to which we now belong? My friends, instead of beingashamed of being able to do nothing for ourselves, we ought torejoice at having God for our Father and our Friend, to enable us to"do all things through Him who strengthens us"--to do whatever isnoble, and loving, and worthy of true men. Instead, then, ofdreaming conceitedly that God will accept us for our own sakes, letus just be content to be accepted for the sake of Jesus Christ ourKing. Instead of trying to walk through this world without God'shelp, let us ask God to help and guide us in every action of ourlives, and then go manfully forward, doing with all our mightwhatsoever our hands or our hearts see right to do, trusting to Godto put us in the right path, and to fill our heads with rightthoughts and our hearts with right feeling; and so our faith willshew itself in our works, and we shall be justified at the last day, as all good men have ever been, by trusting to our Heavenly Fatherand to the Lord Jesus Christ, and the guidance of His Holy Spirit. 

SERMON VI. THE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH

GALATIANS, v. 16. 

"I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lustsof the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and theSpirit against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to theother. "

The more we think seriously, my friends, the more we shall see whatwonderful and awful things words are, how they mean much more thanwe fancy, --how we do not make words, but words are given to us byone higher than ourselves. Wise men say that you can tell thecharacter of any nation by its language, by watching the words theyuse, the names they give to things, for out of the abundance of theheart the mouth speaks, and by our words, our Lord tells us, weshall be justified and condemned. 

It is God, and Christ, the Word of God, who gives words to men, whoputs it into the hearts of men to call certain things by certainnames; and, according to a nation's godliness, and wisdom, andpurity of heart, will be its power of using words discreetly andreverently. That miracle of the gift of tongues, of which we readin the New Testament, would have been still most precious and fullof meaning if it had had no other use than this--to teach men fromwhom words come. When men found themselves all of a sudden inspiredto talk in foreign languages which they had never learnt, to utterwords of which they themselves did not know the meaning, do you notsee how it must have made them feel that all language is God'smaking and God's giving? Do you not see how it must have made themfeel what awful, mysterious things words were, like those cloventongues of fire which fell on the apostles? The tongues of firesignified the difficult foreign languages which they suddenly beganto speak as the Spirit gave them utterance. And where did thetongues of fire come from? Not out of themselves, not out of theearth beneath, but down from the heaven above, to signify that it isnot from man, from man's flesh or brain, or the earthly part of him, that words are bred, but that they come down from Christ the Word ofGod, and are breathed into the minds of men by the Spirit of God. Why do I speak of all this? To make you feel what awful, wonderfulthings words are; how, when you want to understand the meaning of aword, you must set to work with reverence and godly fear--not inself-conceit and prejudice, taking the word to mean just what suitsyour own notions of things, but trying humbly to find out what theword really does mean of itself, what God meant it to mean when Heput it into the hearts of wise men to use that word and bring itinto our English language. A man ought to read a newspaper or astory-book in that spirit; how much more, when he takes up theBible! How reverently he ought to examine every word in the NewTestament--this very text, for instance. We ought to be sure thatSt. Paul, just because he was an inspired apostle, used the verybest possible words to express what he meant on so important amatter; and what ARE the best words? The clearest and the simplestwords are the best words; else how is the Bible to be the poor man'sbook? How, unless the wayfaring man, though simple, shall not errtherein? Therefore we may be sure the words in Scripture arecertain to be used in their simplest, most natural, most everydaymeaning, such as the simplest man can understand. And, therefore, we may be sure, that these two words, "flesh" and "spirit, " in mytext, are used in their very simplest, straightforward sense; andthat St. Paul meant by them what working-men mean by them in theaffairs of daily life. No doubt St. Peter says that there are manythings in St. Paul's writings difficult to be understood, whichthose who are unlearned and unstable wrest to their own destruction;and, most true it is, so they do daily. But what does "wresting" athing mean? It means twisting it, bending it, turning it out of itsoriginal straightforward, natural meaning, into some new crookedmeaning of their own. This is the way we are all of us too apt, Iam afraid, to come to St. Paul's Epistles. We find him difficultbecause we won't take him at his word, because we tear a text out ofits right place in the chapter--the place where St. Paul put it, andmake it stand by itself, instead of letting the rest of the chapterexplain its meaning. And then, again, people use the words in thetext as unfairly and unreasonably as they use the text itself, theywon't let the words have their common-sense English meaning--theymust stick a new meaning on them of their own. 'Oh, ' they say, 'that text must not be taken literally, that word has a spiritualsignification here. Flesh does not mean flesh, it means men'scorrupt nature;' little thinking all the while that perhaps theyunderstand those words, spiritual, and corrupt, and nature, just asill as they do the rest of the text. 

How much better, my friends, to let the Bible tell its own story;not to be so exceeding wise above what is written, just to believethat St. Paul knew better how to use words than we are likely todo, --just to believe that when he says flesh he means flesh. Everybody agrees that when he says spirit he means spirit, why, inthe name of common sense, when he says flesh should he not meanflesh? For my own part I believe that when St. Paul talks of man'sflesh, he means by it man's body, man's heart and brain, and all hisbodily appetites and powers--what we call a man's constitution; in aword, the ANIMAL part of man, just what a man has in common with thebeasts who perish. 

To understand what I mean, consider any animal--a dog, for instance--how much every animal has in it what men have, --a body, and brain, and heart; it hungers and thirsts as we do, it can feel pleasure andpain, anger and loneliness, and fear and madness; it likes freedom, company, and exercise, praise and petting, play and ease; it uses agreat deal of cunning, and thought, and courage, to get itself foodand shelter, just as human beings do: in short, it has a fleshlynature, just as we have, and yet, after all, it is but an animal, and so, in one sense, we are all animals, only more delicately madethan the other animals; but we are something more, we have a spiritas well as a flesh, an immortal soul. If any one asks, what is aman? the true answer is, an animal with an immortal spirit in it;and this spirit can feel more than pleasure and pain, which are merecarnal, that is, fleshly things; it can feel trust, and hope, andpeace, and love, and purity, and nobleness, and independence, and, above all, it can feel right and wrong. There is the infinitedifference between an animal and a man, between our flesh and ourspirit; an animal has no sense of right and wrong; a dog who hasdone wrong is often terrified, but not because he feels it wrong andwicked, but because he knows from experience that he will bepunished for doing it: just so with a man's fleshly nature;--acarnal, fleshly man, a man whose spirit is dead within him, whosespiritual sense of right and wrong, and honour and purity, is gone, when he has done a wrong thing is often enough afraid; but why? Notfor any spiritual reason, not because he feels it a wicked andabominable thing, a sin, but because he is afraid of being punishedfor it, because he is afraid that his body, his flesh will bepunished by the laws of the land, or by public opinion, or becausehe has some dim belief that this same body and flesh of his will beburnt in hell-fire; and fire, he knows by experience, is a painfulthing--and so he is AFRAID of it; there is nothing spiritual in allthat, --that is all fleshly, carnal; the heathens in all ages havebeen afraid of hell-fire; but a man's spirit, on the other hand, ifit be in hell, is in a very different hell from mere fire, --aspiritual hell, such as torments the evil spirits, at this verymoment, although they are going to and fro on this very earth. Thisearth is hell to them; they carry about hell in them, --they aretheir own hell. Everlasting shame, discontent, doubt, despair, rage, disgust at themselves, feeling that they are out of favourwith God, out of tune with heaven and earth, loving nothing, believing nothing, ever hating, hating each other, hating themselvesmost of all--THERE is their hell! THERE is the hell in which thesoul of every wicked man is, --ay, is now while he is in THIS life, though he will only awake to the perfect misery of it after death, when his body and fleshly nature have mouldered away in the grave, and can no longer pamper and stupify him and make him forget his ownmisery. Ay, there has been many a man in this life who had everyfleshly enjoyment which this world can give, riches and pleasure, banquets and palaces, every sense and every appetite pampered, --hispride and his vanity flattered; who never knew what want, ortrouble, or contradiction, was on the smallest point; a man, I say, who had every carnal enjoyment which this earth can give to a man'sselfish flesh, and yet whose spirit was in hell all the while, andwho knew it; hating and despising himself for a mean selfishvillain, while all the world round was bowing down to him andenvying him as the luckiest of men. I am trying to make youunderstand the infinite difference between a man's flesh and hisspirit; how a man's flesh can take no pleasure in spiritual things, while man's spirit of itself can take no pleasure in fleshly things. Now, the spirit and the flesh, body and soul, in every man, are atwar with each other, --they have quarrelled; that is the corruptionof our nature, the fruit of Adam's fall. And as the Article says, and as every man who has ever tried to live godly well knows, fromexperience, "that infection of nature does remain to the last, evenin those who are regenerate. " So that as St. Paul says, the spiritlusteth against the flesh, and the flesh against the spirit; and itcontinually happens that a man cannot do the things which he would;he cannot do what he knows to be right; thus, as St. Paul saysagain, a man may delight in the law of God in his inward man, thatis, in his spirit, and yet all the while he shall find another lawin his members, I. E. In his body, in his flesh, in his brain whichthinks, and his heart which feels, and his senses which are fond ofpleasure; and this law of the flesh, these appetites and passionswhich he has, like other animals, fight against the law of his mind, and when he wishes to do good, make him do evil. Now how is this?The flesh is not evil; a man's body can be no more wicked than adumb beast can be wicked. St. Paul calls man's flesh sinful flesh;not because our flesh can sin of itself, but because our sinfulsouls make our flesh do sinful things; for, he says, Christ came inthe likeness of sinful flesh, and yet in him was no sin. The pureand spotless Saviour could not have taken man's flesh upon him ifthere was any sinfulness in it. The body knows nothing of right andwrong; it is not subject to the law of God, neither, indeed, can be, says St. Paul. And why? Because God's law is spiritual; deals withright and wrong. Wickedness, like righteousness, is a spiritualthing. If a man sins, his body is not in fault; it is his spirit;his weak, perverse will, which will sooner listen to what his fleshtells him is pleasant than to what God tells him is right; for this, my friends, is the secret of the battle of life. We stand betweenheaven and earth. Above is God's Spirit striving with our spirits, speaking to them in the depths of our soul, shewing us what isright, putting into our hearts good desires, making us long to behonest and just, pure and manful, loving and charitable; for who isthere who has not at times longed after these things, and felt thatit would be a blessed thing for him if he were such a man as JesusChrist was and is?--Above us, I say, is God's Spirit speaking to ourspirits, below us is this world speaking to our flesh, as it spoketo Eve's, saying to us, "This thing is pleasant to the eyes--thisthing is good for food--that thing is to be desired to make youwise, and to flatter your vanity and self-conceit. " Below us, Isay, is THIS world, tempting us to ease, and pleasure, and vanity;and in the middle, betwixt the two, stands up the third part of man--his SOUL and WILL, set to choose between the voice of God's Spiritand the temptations of this world--to choose between what is rightand what is pleasant--to choose whether he will obey the desires ofthe spirit, or obey the desires of the flesh. He must choose. Ifhe lets his flesh conquer his spirit, he falls; if he lets hisspirit conquer his flesh, he rises; if he lets his flesh conquer hisspirit, he becomes what he was not meant to be--a slave to fleshlylust; and THEN he will find his flesh set up for itself, and workfor itself. And where man's flesh gets the upper hand, and takespossession of him, it can do nothing but evil--not that it is evilin itself, but that it has no rule, no law to go by; it does notknow right from wrong; and therefore it does simply what it likes, as a dumb beast or an idiot might; and therefore the works of theflesh are--adulteries, drunkenness, murders, fornications, envyings, backbitings, strife. When a man's body, which God intended to bethe servant of his spirit, has become the tyrant of his spirit, itis like an idiot on a king's throne, doing all manner of harm andfolly without knowing that it IS harm and folly. That is not ITSfault. Whose fault is it, then? OUR fault--the fault of our willsand our souls. Our souls were intended to be the masters of ourflesh, to conquer all the weaknesses, defilements of ourconstitution--our tempers, our cowardice, our laziness, ourhastiness, our nervousness, our vanity, our love of pleasure--tolisten to our spirits, because our spirits learn from God's Spiritwhat is right and noble. But if we let our flesh master us, andobey its own blind lusts, we sin against God; and we sin against Goddoubly; for we not only sin against God's commandments, but we sinagainst ourselves, who are the image and glory of God. 

Believe this, my friends; believe that, because you are all fallenhuman creatures, there must go on in you this sore life-long battlebetween your spirit and your flesh--your spirit trying to be masterand guide, as it ought to be, and your flesh rebelling, and tryingto conquer your spirit and make you a mere animal, like a fox incunning, a peacock in vanity, or a hog in greedy sloth. Butbelieve, too, that it is your sin and your shame if your spirit doesnot conquer your flesh--for God has promised to help your spirits. Ask Him, and His Spirit will teach them--fill them with pure, noblehopes, with calm, clear thoughts, and with deep, unselfish love toGod and man. He will strengthen your wills, that they may be ableto refuse the evil and choose the good. Ask Him, and He will jointhem to His own Spirit--to the Spirit of Christ, your Master; for hethat is joined unto the Lord is one spirit with Him. Ask him, andHe will give you the mind of Christ--teach you to see and feel allmatters as Christ sees and feels them. Ask Him, and He will giveyou wisdom to listen to His Spirit when it teaches your spirit, andthen you will be able to walk after the spirit, and not obey thelusts of the flesh; and you will be able to crucify the flesh withits passions and lusts, that is, to make it, what it ought to be, adead thing--a dead tool for your spirit to work with manfully andgodly, and not a live tyrant to lead you into brutishness and folly;and then you will find that the fruit of the spirit, of your spiritled by God's Spirit, is really, as St. Paul says, "love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, honesty"--"whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honourable and of good report;" and instead ofbeing the miserable slaves of your own passions, and of the opinionsof your neighbours, you will find that where the Spirit of the Lordis, there is liberty, true freedom, not only from your neighbours'sins, but, what is far better, freedom from your own. 

These are large words, my friends, and promise mighty things. But Idare speak them to you, for God has spoken to you. These promisesGod made you at your baptism; these promises I, on the warrant ofyour baptism, dare make to you again. At your baptism, God gave youthe right to call Him your loving Father, to call His Son yourSaviour, His Spirit your Sanctifier. And He is not a man, that Heshould lie; nor the son of man, that He should repent! Try Him, andsee whether He will not fulfil His word. Claim His promise, andthough you have fallen lower than the brutes, He will make men andwomen of you. He will be faithful and just to forgive you yoursins, and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. 

SERMON VII. RETRIBUTION

NUMBERS, xxxii. 23. 

"Be sure your sin will find you out. "

The full meaning of this text is, that every sin which a man commitsis certain, sooner or later, to come home to him with fearfulinterest. 

Moses gave this warning to two tribes of the Israelites, --to theReubenites and Gadites, who had promised to go over Jordan, and helptheir countrymen in war against the heathen, on condition of beingallowed to return and settle on the east bank of Jordan, where theythen were; but if they broke their promise, and returned before theend of the war, they were to be certain that their sin would findthem out; that God would avenge their falsehood on them in some wayin their lifetime: in their lifetime, I say, for there is nomention made in this chapter, or in any part of the story, of heavenor hell, or any world to come. And the text has been always takenas a fair warning to all generations of men, that their sin also, even in their lifetimes, will be visited upon them. 

Now, it is strange, at first sight, that these texts, which warn menthat their sins will be punished in this life, are just the mostunpleasant texts in the whole Bible; that men shrink from them more, and shut their eyes to them more than they do to those texts whichthreaten them with hell-fire and everlasting death. Strange!--thatmen should be more afraid of being punished in this life for a fewyears than in the life to come for ever and ever;--and yet notstrange if we consider; for to worldly and sinful souls, that lifeafter death and the flames of hell seem quite distant and dim--things of which they know little and believe less, while this worldthey DO know, they are quite certain that its good things arepleasant and its bad things unpleasant, and they are thoroughlyafraid of losing THEM. Their hearts are where their treasure is, inthis world; and a punishment which deprives them of this world'sgood things hits them home: but their treasure is NOT in heaven, and, therefore, about losing heaven they are by no means so muchconcerned. And thus they can face the dreadful news that "thewicked shall be turned into hell, and all the people that forgetGod;" while, as for the news that the wicked shall be recompensed onthe earth, that their sins will surely find them out in this life, they cannot face that--they shut their ears to it, --they try topersuade themselves that sin will PAY them HERE, at all events; andas for hereafter, they shall get off somehow, --they neither know norcare much how. 

Yet God's truth remains, and God's truth must be heard; and thosewho love this world so well must be told, whether they like or not, that every sin which they commit, every mean, every selfish, everyfoul deed, loses them so much enjoyment in this very present worldof which they are so mighty fond. That is God's truth; and I willprove it true from common sense, from Holy Scripture, and FROM THEWITNESS of men's own hearts. 

Take common sense. Does not common sense tell us that if God madethis world, and governs it by righteous and God-like laws, this mustbe a world in which evil-doing cannot thrive? God made the worldbetter than that, surely! He would be a bad law-giver who made suchlaws, that it was as well to break them as to keep them. You wouldcall them bad laws, surely! No, God made the world, and not thedevil; and the world works by God's laws, and not the devil's; andit inclines towards good, and not towards evil; and he who sins, even in the least, breaks God's laws, acts contrary to the rule andconstitution of the world, and will surely find that God's laws willgo on in spite of him, and grind him to powder, if he by sinninggets in the way of them. God has no need to go out of His way topunish our evil deeds. Let them alone, and they will punishthemselves. Is it not so in every thing? If a tradesman tradesbadly, or a farmer farms badly, there is no need of lawyers topunish him; he will punish himself. Every mistake he makes willtake money out of his pocket; every time he offends against theestablished rules of trade or agriculture, which are God's laws, heinjures himself; and so, be sure, it is in the world at large, --inthe world in which men and the souls of men live, and move, and havetheir being. 

Next, to speak of Scripture. I might quote texts innumerable toprove that what I say Scripture says also. Consider but this onething, --that there is a whole book in the Bible written to provethis one thing, --that our good and bad deeds are repaid us withinterest in this life--the Proverbs of Solomon I mean--in whichthere is little or no mention of heaven or hell, or any world tocome. It is all one noble, and awful, and yet cheering sermon onthat one text, "The righteous shall be recompensed in the earth, much more the wicked and the sinner, "--put in a thousand differentlights; brought home to us a thousand different roads, comes thesame everlasting doom, --"Vain man, who thinkest that thou canst livein God's world and yet despise His will, know that, in everysmiling, comfortable sin, thou art hatching an adder to sting theein the days of old age, to poison thy cup of sinful joy, even whenit is at thy lips; to haunt thy restless thoughts, and dog thee dayand night; to rise up before thee, in the silent, sleepless hours ofnight, like an angry ghost! An awful foretaste of the doom that isto come; and yet a merciful foretaste, if thou wilt be but taught bythe disappointment, the unsatisfied craving, the gnawing shame of aguilty conscience, to see the heinousness of sin, and would turnbefore it be too late. "

What, my friends, --what will you make of such texts as this, "Thathe who soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption?" Doyou not see that comes true far too often? Can it help ALWAYScoming true, seeing that God's apostle spoke it? What will you makeof this, too, "That the wicked is snared by the working of his ownhands;"--"That EVIL"--the evil which we do of its own self--"shallslay the wicked?" What says the whole noble 37th Psalm of David, but that same awful truth of God, that sin is its own punishment?

Why should I go on quoting texts? Look for yourselves, you whofancy that it is only on the other side of the grave that God willtrouble Himself about you and your meanness, your profligacy, yourfalsehood. Look for yourselves in the book of God, and see if therebe any writer there, --lawgiver, prophet, psalmist, apostle, up toChrist the Lord Himself, --who does not warn men again and again, that here, on earth, their sins will find them out. Our Saviour, indeed, when on earth, said less about this subject than any of theprophets before Him, or the apostles after Him, and for the best ofreasons. The Jews had got rooted in their minds a superstitiousnotion, that all disease, all sorrow, was the punishment in eachcase of some particular sin; and thus, instead of looking with pityand loving awe upon the sick and the afflicted, they wereaccustomed, too often, to turn from them as sinners, smitten of God, bearing in their distress the token of His anger. The blessed One, --He who came to heal the sick and save the lost, --reproved thaterror more than once. When the disciples fancied a certain poorman's blindness to be a judgment from God, "Neither did he sin, "said the Lord, "nor his parents, but that the glory of God might bemade manifest in him. " And yet, on the other hand, when He healed acertain man of an old infirmity at the pool of Bethesda, what wereHis words to him? "Go thy way, sin no more, lest a worse thing comeunto thee;"--a clear and weighty warning that all his long misery ofeight-and-thirty years had been the punishment of some sin of his, and that the sin repeated would bring on him a still severerjudgment. 

What, again, does the apostle mean, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, when he tells us how God scourges every son whom he receives, andtalks of His chastisements, whereof all are partakers. Why do weneed chastising if we have nothing which needs mending? And thoughthe innocent MAY sometimes be afflicted to make them strong as wellas innocent, and the holy chastened to make them humble as well asholy, yet if the good cannot escape their share of affliction, howwill the bad get off? "If the righteous scarcely be saved, wherewill the ungodly and the sinner appear?" But what use in arguingwhen you know that my words are true? You KNOW that your sins willfind you out. Look boldly and honestly into your own hearts. Lookthrough the history of your past lives, and confess to God, atleast, that the far greater number of your sorrows have been yourown fault; that there is hardly a day's misery which you everendured in your life of which you might not say, 'If I had listenedto the voice of God in my conscience--if I had earnestly consideredwhat my DUTY was--if I had prayed to God to determine my judgmentright, I should have been spared this sorrow now?' Am I not right?Those who know most of God and their own souls will agree most withme; those who know little about God and their own souls will agreebut hardly with me, for they provoke God's chastisements, and writheunder them for the time, and then go and do the same wrong again, asthe wild beast will turn and bite the stone thrown at him withouthaving the sense to see why it was thrown. 

Think, again, of your past lives, and answer in God's sight, howmany wrong things have you ever done which have SUCCEEDED, that is, how many sins which you would not be right glad were undone if youcould but put back the wheels of Time? They may have succeededOUTWARDLY; meanness will succeed so--lies--oppression--theft--adultery--drunkenness--godlessness--they are all pleasant enoughwhile they last, I suppose; and a man may reap what he callssubstantial benefits from them in money, and suchlike, and keep thatsafe enough; but has his sin succeeded? Has it not FOUND HIM OUT?--found him out never to lose him again? Is he the happier for it?Does he feel freer for it? Does he respect himself the more forit?--No! And even though he may prosper now, yet does there not runthough all his selfish pleasure a certain fearful looking forward toa fiery judgment to which he would gladly shut his eyes, but cannot?

Cunning, fair-spoken oppressor of the poor, has not thy sin foundthee out? Then be sure it will. In the shame of thine own heart itwill find thee out;--in the curses of the poor it will find theeout;--in a friendless, restless, hopeless death-bed, thycovetousness and thy cruelty will glare before thee in their truecolours, and thy sin will find thee out!

Profligate woman, who art now casting away thy honest name, thyself-respect, thy womanhood, thy baptism-vows, that thou mayestenjoy the foul pleasures of sin for a season, has not thy sin foundthee out? Then be sure it will hereafter, when thou hast becomedisgusted at thyself and thine own infamy, --and youth, and health, and friends, are gone, and a shameful and despised old age creepsover thee, and death stalks nearer and nearer, and God vanishesfurther and further off, then thy sin will find thee out!

Foolish, improvident young man, who art wasting the noble strengthof youth, and manly spirits which God has given thee on sin andfolly, throwing away thine honest earnings in cards and drunkenness, instead of laying them by against a time of need--has not thy sinfound thee out? Then be sure it will some day, when thou hast tobring home thy bride to a cheerless, unfurnished house, and there tolive from hand to mouth, --without money to provide for hersickness, --without money to give her the means of keeping thingsneat and comfortable when she is well, --without a farthing laid byagainst distress, and illness, and old age:--THEN your sin will findyou out: then, perhaps, my text, --my words--may come across you asyou sigh in vain in your comfortless home, in your impoverished oldage, for the money which you wasted in your youth! My friends, myfriends, for your own sakes consider, and mend ere that day come, aselse it surely will!

And, lastly, you who, without running into any especial sins, asthose which the world calls sins, still live careless aboutreligion, without loyalty to Christ the Lord, without any honestattempt, or even wish, to serve the God above you, or to rejoice inremembering that you are His children, working for Him and underHim, --be sure your sin will find you out. When affliction, orsickness, or disappointment come, as come they will, if God has notcast you off;--when the dark day dawns, and your fool's paradise ofworldly prosperity is cut away from under your feet, then you willfind out your folly--you will find that you have insulted the onlyFriend who can bring you out of affliction--cast off the onlycomfort which can strengthen you to bear affliction--forgotten theonly knowledge which will enable you to be the wiser for affliction. Then, I say, the sin of your godlessness will find you out; if youdo not intend to fall, soured and sickened merely by God'schastisements, either into stupid despair or peevish discontent, youwill have to go back, to go back to God and cry, "Father, I havesinned against heaven and before Thee, and am no more worthy to becalled Thy son. "

Go back at once before it be too late. Find out your sins and mendthem--before they find you out, and break your hearts. 

SERMON VIII. SELF-DESTRUCTION

1 KINGS, xxii. 23. 

"The Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thyprophets. "

The chapter from which my text is taken, which is the first lessonfor this evening's service, is a very awful chapter, for it gives usan insight into the meaning of that most awful and terrible word--temptation. And yet it is a most comforting chapter, for it shewsus how God is long-suffering and merciful, even to the most hardenedsinner; how to the last He puts before him good and evil, to choosebetween them, and warns him to the last of his path, and the ruin towhich it leads. 

We read of Ahab in the first lesson this morning as a thoroughlywicked man, --mean and weak, cruel and ungodly, governed by his wifeJezebel, a heathen woman, in marrying whom he had broken God's law, --a woman so famous for cruelty and fierceness, vanity andwickedness, that her name is a by-word even here in England now--"asbad as Jezebel, " we say to this day. We heard of Ahab in thismorning's lesson letting Jezebel murder the righteous Naboth, byperjury and slander, to get possession of his vineyard; and then, instead of shrinking with abhorrence from his wife's iniquity, goingdown and taking possession of the land which he had gained by hersin. We read of God's curse on him, and yet of God's long-sufferingand pardon to him on his repentance. Yet, neither God's curse norGod's mercy seem to have moved him. But he had been always thesame. "He did evil, " the Bible tells us, "in the sight of the Lordabove all that were before him. " He deserted the true God for hiswife's idols and false gods; and in spite of Elijah's miracle atCarmel--of which you heard last Sunday--by which he proved by firewhich was the true God, and in spite of the wonderful victory whichGod had given him, by means of one of God's prophets, over theSyrians, he still remained an idolater. He would not be taught, norunderstand; neither God's threats nor mercies could move him; hewent on sinning against light and knowledge; and now his cup wasfull--his days were numbered, and God's vengeance was ready at thedoor. 

He consulted all his false prophets as to whether or not he shouldgo to attack the Syrians at Ramoth-Gilead. They knew what to say--they knew that their business was to prophesy what would pay them--what would be pleasant to him. They did not care whether what theysaid was true or not--they lied for the sake of gain, for the Lordhad put a lying spirit into their mouths. They were rogues andvillains from the first. They had turned prophets, not to speakGod's truth, but to make money, to flatter King Ahab, to getthemselves a reputation. We do not hear that they were allheathens. Many of them may have believed in the true God. But theywere cheats and liars, and so they had given place to the devil, thefather of lies: and now he had taken possession of them in spite ofthemselves, and they lied to Ahab, and told him that he wouldprosper in the battle at Ramoth-Gilead. It was a dangerous thingfor them to say; for if he had been defeated, and returneddisappointed, his rage would have most probably fallen on them fordeceiving them. And as in those Eastern countries kings do whateverthey like without laws or parliaments, Ahab would have most likelyput them all to a miserable death on the spot. But howeverdangerous it might be for them to lie, they could not help lying. Aspirit of lies had seized them, and they who began by lying, becauseit paid them, now could not help doing so whether it paid them ornot. 

But the good king of Judah, Jehoshaphat, had no faith in theseflattering villains. He asked whether there was not another prophetof the Lord to inquire of? Ahab told him that there was one, Micaiah the son of Imlah, but that he hated him, because he onlyprophesied evil of him. What a thorough picture of a hardenedsinner--a man who has become a slave to his own lusts, till he caresnothing for a thing being true, provided only it is pleasant! Thusthe wilful sinner, like Ahab, becomes both fool and coward, afraidto look at things as they are; and when God's judgments stare him inthe face, the wretched man shuts his eyes tight, and swears that theevil is not there, just because he does not choose to see it. 

But the evil was there, ready for Ahab, and it found him. When heforced Micaiah to speak, Micaiah told him the whole truth. He toldhim a vision, or dream, which he had seen. "Hear thou therefore theword of the Lord: I saw the Lord sitting on His throne, and all thehost of heaven standing by Him. And the Lord said, Who shallpersuade Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-Gilead? Andthere came forth a spirit, and said, I will go forth, and be a lyingspirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And the Lord said, Thoushalt persuade him, and prevail also: go forth, and do so. Nowtherefore, behold, the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth ofall these thy prophets, and the Lord hath spoken evil concerningthee. "

What warning could be more awful, and yet more plain? Ahab was toldthat he was listening to a lie. He had free choice to follow thatlie or not, and he did follow it. After having put Micaiah intoprison for speaking the truth to him, he went up to Ramoth-Gilead;and yet he felt he was not safe. He had his doubts and his fears. He would not go openly into the battle, but disguised himself, hoping that by this means he should keep himself safe from evil. Fool! God's vengeance could not be stopped by his paltry cunning. In spite of all his disguises, a chance shot struck him down betweenthe joints of his armour. His chariot-driver carried him out of thebattle, and "he was stayed up in his chariot against the Syrians, and died at even: and the blood ran out of his wound into the midstof the chariot. And one washed the chariot in the pool of Samaria;and the dogs licked up his blood there, " according to the word ofthe Lord, which He spoke by the mouth of His prophet Elijah, saying, "In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, whom thouslewest, shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine. "

And do not fancy, my friends, that because this is a miraculousstory of ancient times, it has nothing to do with us. All thesethings were written for our example. This chapter tells us notmerely how Ahab was tempted, but it tells us how WE are tempted, every one of us, here in England, in these very days. As it waswith Ahab, so it is with us. Every wilful sin that we commit wegive room to the devil. Every wrong step that we take knowingly, wegive a handle to some evil spirit to lead us seven steps furtherwrong. And yet in every temptation God gives us a fair chance. Heis no cruel tyrant who will deliver us over to the devil, to be ledhelpless and blindfold to our ruin. He did not give Ahab over tohim so. He sent a lying spirit to deceive Ahab's prophets, thatAhab might go up and fall at Ramoth-Gilead; but at the very sametime, see, he sends a holy and a true man, a man whom Ahab couldtrust, and did trust at the bottom of his heart, to tell him thatthe lie was a lie, to warn him of his ruin, so that he might have noexcuse for listening to those false prophets--no excuse forfollowing his own pride, his own ambition, to his destruction. Soyou see, "Let no man say, when he is tempted, I am tempted of God, for God tempteth no man, but every one is tempted when he is ledaway by his own lust and enticed. " Ahab was led away by his ownlust; his cowardly love of hearing what was pleasant and flatteringto him, rather than what was true--rather than what he knew hedeserved; that was what enticed him to listen to Zedekiah and thefalse prophets, rather than to Micaiah the son of Imlah. THAT iswhat entices us to sin--the lust of believing what is pleasant tous, what suits our own self-will--what is pleasant to our bodies--pleasant to our purses--pleasant to our pride and self-conceit. Then, when the lying spirit comes and whispers to us, by badthoughts, by bad books, by bad men, that we shall prosper in ourwickedness, does God leave us alone to listen to those evil voiceswithout warning? No! He sends His prophets to us, as He sentMicaiah to Ahab, to tell us that the wages of sin is death--to tellus that those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind--to setbefore us at every turn good or evil, that we may choose betweenthem, and live or die according to our choice. For do not fancythat there are no prophets in our days, unless the gift of the HolySpirit, which is promised to all who believe, be a dream and a lie. There are prophets nowadays, --yea, I say unto you, and more thanprophets. Is not the Bible a prophet? Is not every page in it aprophecy to us, foretelling God's mercies and God's punishmentstowards men. Is not every holy and wise book, every holy and wisepreacher and writer, a prophet, expounding to us God's laws, foretelling to us God's opinions of our deeds, both good and evil?Ay, is not every man a prophet to himself? That "still small voice"in a man's heart, which warns him of what is evil--that feelingwhich makes him cheerful and free when he has done right, sad andashamed when he has done wrong--is not that a prophecy in a man'sown heart? Truly it is. It is the voice of God within us--it isthe Spirit of God striving with our spirits, whether we will hear, or whether we will forbear--setting before us what is righteous, andnoble, and pure, and what is manly and God-like--to see whether wewill obey that voice, or whether we will obey our own selfish lusts, which tempt us to please ourselves--to pamper ourselves, ourgreediness, covetousness, ambition, or self-conceit. And again, Isay, we have our prophets. Every preacher of righteousness is aprophet. Every good tract is a prophet. That Prayer-book, thosePsalms, those Creeds, those Collects, which you take into yourmouths every Sunday, what are they but written prophecies, cryingunto us with the words of holy men of old, greater than Micaiah, orDavid, or Elijah, "Hear thou the word of the Lord?" The spirits ofthose who wrote that Prayer-book--the spirits of just men madeperfect, filled with the Spirit of the Lord--they call to us tolearn the wisdom which they knew, to avoid the temptations whichthey conquered, that we may share in the glory in which they sharedround the throne of Christ for evermore. 

And if you ask me how to try the spirits, how to know whether yourown thoughts, whether the sermons which you hear, the books whichyou read, are speaking to you God's truth, or some lying spirit'sfalsehood, I can only answer you, "To the law and to the testimony"--to the Bible; if they speak not according to that word, there is notruth in them. But how to understand the Bible? for the fleshly manunderstands not the things of God. The fleshly man, he who caresonly about pleasing himself, he who goes to the Bible full of self-conceit and selfishness, wanting the Bible to tell him only justwhat he likes to hear, will only find it a sealed book to him, andwill very likely wrest the Scriptures to his own destruction. Takeup your Bible humbly, praying to God to shew you its meaning, whether it be pleasant to you or not, and then you will find thatGod will shew you a blessed meaning in it; He will open your eyes, that you may understand the wondrous things of His law; He will shewyou how to try the spirit of all you are taught, and to find outwhether it comes from God. 

SERMON IX. HELL ON EARTH

MATTHEW, viii. 29. 

"And behold the evil spirits cried out, saying, What have we to dowith Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of God? Art Thou come hither to tormentus before the time?"

This account of the man possessed with devils, and of his languageto our Lord, of our Lord's casting the devils out of the poorsufferer, and His allowing them to enter into a herd of swine, isone that is well worth serious thought; and I think a few words onit will follow fitly after my last Sunday's sermon on Ahab and histemptations by evil spirits. In that sermon I shewed you whattemper of mind it was which laid a man open to the cunning of evilspirits; I wish now to shew you something of what those evil spiritsare. It is very little that we can know about them. We wereintended to know very little, just as much as would enable us toguard against them, and no more. The accounts of them in theScriptures are for our use, not to satisfy our curiosity. But wemay find out a great deal about them from this very chapter, fromthis very story, which is repeated almost word for word in threedifferent Gospels, as if to make us more certain of so curious andimportant a matter, by having three distinct and independent writersto witness for its truth. I advise all those who have Bibles tolook for this story in the 8th chapter of St. Matthew, and follow meas I explain it. {1}

Now, first, we may learn from this account, that evil spirits arereal persons. There is a notion got abroad that it is only a figureof speech to talk of evil spirits, that all the Bible means by themare certain bad habits, or bad qualities, or diseases. There aremany who will say when they read this story, 'This poor man was onlya madman. It was the fashion of the old Jews when a man was mad tosay that he was possessed by evil spirits. All they meant was thatthe man's own spirit was in an evil diseased state, or that hisbrain and mind were out of order. '

When I hear such language--and it is very common--I cannot helpthinking how pleased the devil must be to hear people talk in such away. How can people help him better than by saying that there is nodevil? A thief would be very glad to hear you say, 'There are nosuch things as thieves; it is all an old superstition, so I mayleave my house open at night without danger;' and I believe, myfriends, from the very bottom of my heart, that this new-fangleddisbelief in evil spirits is put into men's hearts by the evilspirits themselves. As it was once said, 'The devil has tried everyplan to catch men's souls, and now, as the last and most cunningtrick of all, he is shamming dead. ' These may seem homely words, but the homeliest words are very often the deepest. I advise youall to think seriously on them. 

But it is impossible surely to read this story without seeing thatthe Bible considers evil spirits as distinct persons, just as muchas each one of us is a person, and that our Lord spoke to them andtreated them as persons. "What have WE to do with Thee, Jesus, ThouSon of God? Art Thou come hither to torment US before the time?"And again, "If Thou cast US out, suffer us to go into the herd ofswine. " What can shew more plainly that there were some persons inthat poor man, besides himself, his own spirit, his own person? andthat HE knew it, and Jesus knew it too? and that He spoke to thesespirits, these persons, who possessed that man, and not to the manhimself? No doubt there was a terrible confusion in the poormadman's mind about these evil spirits, who were tormenting him, making him miserable, foul, and savage, in mind and body--a terribleconfusion! We find, when Jesus asked him his name, he answers"LEGION, " that is an army, a multitude, "for we are many, " he says. Again, one gospel tells us that he says, "What have _I_ to do withThee, Jesus, Thou Son of God?" While in another Gospel we are toldthat he said, "What have WE to do with Thee?" He seems not to havebeen able to distinguish between his own spirit, and these spiritswho possessed him. They put the furious and despairing thoughtsinto his heart; they spoke through his mouth; they made a slave anda puppet of him. But though he could not distinguish between hisown soul and the devils who were in it, Christ could and Christ did. 

The man says to Him, or rather the devils make the man say to Him, "If Thou cast us out, suffer us to go into the herd of swine, anddrive us not out into the deep. " What did Christ answer him?Christ did not answer him as our so-called wise men in these dayswould, 'My good man, this is all a delusion and a fancy of your own, about your having evil spirits in you--more persons than one in you--for you are wrong in saying WE of yourself. You ought to say "I, "as every one else does; and as for spirits going out of you, orgoing into a herd of swine, or anything else, that is all asuperstition and a fancy. There is nothing to come out of you, there is nothing in you except yourself. All the evil in you isyour own, the disease of your own brain, and the violent passions ofyour own heart. Your brain must be cured by medicine, and yourviolent passions tamed down by care and kindness, and then you willget rid of this foolish notion that you have evil spirits in you, and calling yourself a multitude, as if you had other persons in youbesides yourself. '

Any one who spoke in this manner nowadays would be thought veryreasonable and very kind. Why did not our Lord speak so to thisman, for there was no outward difference between this man's conductand that of many violent mad people whom we see continually inEngland? We read, that this man possessed with devils would wear noclothes; that he had extraordinary strength; that he would not keepcompany with other men, but abode day and night in the tombs, exceeding fierce, crying and cutting himself with stones, trying inblind rage, which he could not explain to himself, to hurt himselfand all who came near him. And, above all, he had this notion, thatevil spirits had got possession of him. Now every one of thesehabits and fancies you may see in many raging maniacs at this day. 

But did our Lord treat this man as we treat such maniacs in thesedays? He took the man at his word, and more; the man could notdistinguish clearly between himself and the evil spirits, but ourLord did. When the devils besought Him, saying, "If thou cast usout, suffer us to go into the herd of swine, " our Lord answers "Go;"and "when they were cast out, they went into the herd of swine; and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep placeinto the sea, and perished in the waters. "

It was as if our Lord had meant to say to the bystanders, --ay and tous, and to all people in all times and in all countries, 'This poorpossessed maniac's notion was a true one. There were other personsin him besides himself, tormenting him, body and soul: and, behold, I can drive these out of him and send them into something else, andleave the man uninjured, HIMSELF, and only himself, again in aninstant, without any need of long education to cure him of his badhabits. ' It will be but reasonable, then, for us to take this storyof the man possessed by devils, as written for our example, as aninstance of what MIGHT, and perhaps WOULD, happen to any one of us, were it not for God's mercy. 

St. Peter tells us to be sober and watchful, because "the devil goesabout as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour;" and when welook at the world around, we may surely see that that stands as truenow as it did in St. Peter's time. Why, again, did St. James tellsus to resist the devil if the devil be not near us to resist? Whydid St. Paul take for granted, as he did, that Christian men were, of course, not ignorant of Satan's devices, if it be quite a proofof enlightenment and superior knowledge to be ignorant of hisdevices, --if any dread, any thought even, about evil spirits, bebeneath the attention of reasonable men? My friends, I say fairly, once for all, that that common notion, that there are no men nowpossessed by evil spirits, and that all those stories of the devil'spower over men are only old, worn-out superstitions has come fromthis, that men do not like to retain God in their knowledge, andtherefore, as a necessary consequence, do not like to retain thedevil in their knowledge; because they would be very glad to believein nothing but what they can see, and taste, and handle; and, therefore, the thought of unseen evil spirits, or good spiritseither, is a painful thing to them. First, they do not reallybelieve in angels--ministering spirits sent out to minister to theheirs of salvation; then they begin not to believe in evil spirits. The Bible plainly describes their vast numbers; but these people arewiser than the Bible, and only talk of ONE--of THE devil, as ifthere were not, as the text tells us, legions and armies of devils. Then they get rid of that one devil in their real desire to believein as few spirits as possible. I am afraid many of them have goneon to the next step, and got rid of the one God out of theirthoughts and their belief. I said I am afraid, I ought to have saidI KNOW, that they have done so, and that thousands in this day whobegan by saying evil spirits only mean certain diseases and badhabits in men, have ended by saying, "God only means certain goodhabits in man. God is no more a person than the evil spirits arepersons. "

I warn you of all this, my friends, because if you go to live inlarge towns, as many of you will, you will hear talk enough of thissort before your hairs are grey, put cleverly and eloquently enough;for, as a wise man said, "The devil does not send fools on hiserrands. " I pray God, that if you ever do hear doctrines of thatkind, some of my words may rise in your mind and help to shew to youthe evil path down which they lead. 

We may believe, then, from the plain words of Scriptures, that thereare vast numbers of evil spirits continually tempting men, each ofthem to some particular sin; to worldliness, for instance, for weread of the spirit of the evil world; to filthiness, for we read ofunclean spirits; to falsehood, for we read of lying spirits and aspirit of lies; to pride, for we read of a spirit of pride;--inshort, to all sins which a man CAN commit, to all evil passions towhich a man can give way. We have a right to believe, from theplain words of Scripture, that these spirits are continuallywandering up and down tempting men to sin. That wonderful story ofJob's temptation, which you may all read for yourselves in the firstchapter of the book of Job, is, I think, proof enough for any one. 

But next, and I wish you to pay special attention to this point: Wehave no right to believe, --we have every right NOT to believe, thatthese evil spirits can make us sin in the smallest matter againstour own wills. The devil cannot put a single sin into us; he canonly flatter the sinfulness which is already in us. For, see; thispride, lust, covetousness, falsehood, and so on, to which the Bibletells us they tempt us, have roots already in our nature. Ourfallen nature of itself is inclined to pride, to worldliness, and soon. These devils tempt us by putting in our way the occasion tosin, by suggesting to us tempting thoughts and arguments which leadto sin; so the serpent tempted Eve, not by making her ambitious andself-willed, but by using arguments to her which stirred up theambition and self-will in her: "Ye shall be as gods, knowing goodand evil, " the devil said to her. 

So Satan, the prince of the evil spirits, tempted our Lord. And asthe prince of the devils tempted Christ, so do HIS servants temptUS, Christ's servants. Our tempers, our longings, our fancies, arenot evil spirits; they are, as old divines well describe them, likegreedy and foolish fish, who rise at the baits which evil spiritshold out to us. If we resist those baits--if we put ourselves underGod's protection--if we claim strength from Him who conquered thedevil and all His temptations, then we shall be able to turn ourwills away from those tempting baits, and to resign our wills intoour Father's hand, and He will take care of them, and strengthenthem with His will; and we shall find out that if we resist thedevil, he will flee from us. But if we yield to temptationswhenever they come in our way, we shall find ourselves less and lessable to resist them, for we shall learn to hate the evil spiritsless and less; I mean we shall shrink less from the evil thoughtsthey hold out to us. We shall give place to the devil, as theScripture tells us we shall; for instance, by indulging in habitualpassionate tempers, or rooted spite and malice, letting the sun godown upon our wrath: and so a man may become more and more theslave of his own nature, of his own lusts and passions, andtherefore of the devils, who are continually pampering and maddeningthose lusts and passions, till a man may end in COMPLETE POSSESSION;not in common madness, which may be mere disease, but as a savageand a raging maniac, such as, thank God, are rare in Christiancountries, though they were common among our own forefathers beforethey were converted to Christianity, --men like the demoniac of whomthe text speaks, tormented by devils, given up to blind rage andmalice against himself and all around, to lust and blasphemy, toconfusion of mind and misery of body, God's image gone, and theimage of the devil, the destroyer and the corrupter, arisen in itsplace. Few men can arrive at this pitch of wretchedness in acivilised country. It would not answer the evil spirit's purpose tolet them do so. It suits HIS spirits best in such a land as this towalk about dressed up as angels of light. Few men in England wouldbe fools enough to indulge the gross and fierce part of their naturetill they became mere savages, like the demoniac whom Christ cured;so it is to respectable vices that the devil mostly tempts us, --tocovetousness, to party spirit, to a hard heart and a narrow mind; tocruelty, that shall clothe itself under the name of law; tofilthiness, which excuses itself by saying, "It is a man's nature, he cannot help it;" to idleness, which excuses itself on the scoreof wealth; to meanness and unfairness in trade, and in political andreligious disputes--these are the devils which haunt us Englishmen--sleek, prim, respectable fiends enough; and, truly, THEIR name isLegion! And the man who gives himself up to them, though he may notbecome a raving savage, is just as truly possessed by devils, to hisown misery and ruin, that he may sow the wind and reap thewhirlwind; that though men may speak well of him, and posteritypraise his saying, and speak good of the covetous whom Godabhorreth, yet he may go for ever unto his own, to the evil spiritsto whom his own wicked will gave him up for a prey. I beseech you, my friends, consider my words; they are not mine, but the Bible's. Think of them with fear;--and yet with confidence, for we arebaptised into the name of Him who conquered all devils; you mayclaim a share in that Spirit which is opposite to all evil spirits, --whose presence makes the agony and misery of evil spirits, anddrives them out as water drives out fire. If He is on your side, why should you be afraid of any spirit? Greater is He that is inyou than he that is against you; and He, Christ Himself, is withevery man, every child, who struggles, however blindly and weakly, against temptation. When temptation comes, when evil lookspleasant, and arguments rise up in your mind, that seem to make itlook right and reasonable, as well as pleasant, THEN, out of thevery depths of your hearts, cry after Him who died for you. Say toyourselves, 'How can I do this thing, and offend against Him whobought me with His blood?' Say to Him, 'I am weak, I am confused; Ido not see right from wrong; I cannot find my way; I cannot answerthe devil; I cannot conquer these cunning thoughts; I know in thebottom of my heart that they are wrong, mere temptations, and yetthey look so reasonable. Blessed Saviour, THOU must shew me wherethey are wrong. Thou didst answer the devil Thyself out of God'sWord, put into MY mind some answer out of God's Word to thesetemptations; or, at least, give me spirit to toss them off--strengthof will to thrust the whole temptation out of my head, and say, Iwill parley no longer with the devil; I will put the whole matterout of my head for a time. I don't know whether it is right orwrong for me to do this particular thing, but there are twenty otherthings which I DO know are right. I'll go and do THEM, and let thiswait awhile. '

Believe me, my friends, you CAN do this--you can resist these evilspirits which tempt us all; else why did our Lord bid us pray, "Leadus not into temptation, but deliver us from evil?" Why? Becauseour Father in heaven, if we ask Him, will NOT lead us INTOtemptation, but THROUGH it safe. Tempted we MUST be, else we shouldnot be men; but here is our comfort and our strength--that we have aKing in heaven, who has fought out and conquered all temptations, and a Father in heaven, who has promised that He will not suffer usto be tempted above that we are able, but will, with the temptation, make a way to escape, that we may be able to bear it. 

Again, I say, draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 

SERMON X. NOAH'S JUSTICE

GENESIS, vi. 9. 

"Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walkedwith God. "

I intend, my friends, according as God shall help me, to preach toyou, between this time and Christmas, a few sermons on some of thesaints and worthies of the Old Testament; and I will begin this daywith Noah. 

Now you must bear in mind that the histories of these ancient menwere, as St. Paul says, written for our example. If these men inold times had been different from us, they would not be examples tous; but they were like us--men of like passions, says St. James, asourselves; they had each of them in them a corrupt NATURE, which wascontinually ready to drag them down, and make beasts of them, andmake them slaves to their own lusts--slaves to eating and drinking, and covetousness, and cowardice, and laziness, and love for thethings which they could see and handle--just such a nature, inshort, as we have. And they had also a spirit in each of them whichwas longing to be free, and strong, and holy, and wise--such aspirit as we have. And to them, just as to us, God was revealinghimself; God was saying to their consciences, as He does to ours, 'This is right, that is wrong; do this, and be free and clear-hearted; do that, and be dark and discontented, and afraid of thyown thoughts. ' And they too, like us, had to live by faith, bycontinual belief that they owed a DUTY to the great God whom theycould not see, by continual belief that He loved them, and wasguiding and leading them through every thing which happened, good orill. 

This is faith in God, by which alone we, or any man, can liveworthily, --by which these old heroes lived. We read, in the twelfthchapter of Hebrews, that it was by faith these elders obtained agood report; and the whole history of the Old-Testament saints isthe history of God speaking to the hearts of one man after another, teaching them each more and more about Himself, and the history alsoof these men listening to the voice of God in their hearts, andBELIEVING that voice, and acting faithfully upon it, into whateverstrange circumstances or deeds it might lead them. "By faith, " weread in this same chapter, --"by faith Noah, being warned of God, prepared an ark to the saving of his house, and became heir of therighteousness which is by faith. "

Now, to understand this last sentence, you must remember that Noahwas not under the law of Moses. St. Paul has a whole chapter (thethird chapter of Galatians) to shew that these old saints hadnothing to do with Moses' law any more than we have, that it wasgiven to the Jews many hundred years afterwards. So these historiesof the Old-Testament saints are, in fact, histories of men whoconquered by faith--histories of the power which faith in God has toconquer temptation, and doubt, and false appearances, and fear, anddanger, and all which besets us and keeps us down from being freeand holy, and children of the day, walking cheerfully forward on ourheavenward road in the light of our Father's loving smile. 

Noah, we read, "was a just man, and perfect in his generations;" andwhy? Because he was a faithful man--faithful to God, as it iswritten, "The just shall live by his faith;" not by trusting in whathe does himself, in his own works or deservings, but trusting in Godwho made him, believing that God is perfectly righteous, perfectlywise, perfectly loving; and that, because He is perfectly loving, Hewill accept and save sinful man when He sees in sinful man theearnest wish to be His faithful, obedient servant, and to givehimself up to the rule and guidance of God. This, then, was Noah'sjustice in God's sight, as it was Abraham's. They believed God, andso became heirs of the righteousness which is by faith; not theirown righteousness, not growing out of their own character, but giventhem by God, who puts His righteous Spirit into those who trust inHim. 

But, moreover, we read that Noah "was perfect in his generations;"that is, he was perfect in all the relations and duties of life, --agood son, a good husband, a good father: these were the fruits ofhis faith. He believed that the unseen God had given him theseties, had given him his parents, his children, and that to love themwas to love God, to do his duty to them was to do his duty to God. This was part of his walking with God, continually under his greatTaskmaster's eye, --walking about his daily business with the beliefthat a great loving Father was above him, whatever he did; ready tostrengthen, and guide, and bless him if he did well, ready to avengeHimself on him if he did ill. These were the fruits of Noah'sfaith. 

But you may think this nothing very wonderful. Many a man inEngland does this every day, and yet no one ever hears of him; heattends to all his family ties, doing justly, loving mercy, andwalking humbly with God, like one who knows he is redeemed byChrist's blood; he lives, he dies, he is buried, and out of his ownparish his name is never known; while Noah has earned for himself aworldwide fame; for four thousand years his name has been spreadingover the whole earth as one of the greatest men who ever lived. Mighty nations have worshipped Noah as a God; many heathen nationsworship him under strange and confused names and traditions to thisday; and the wisest and holiest men among Christians now reverenceNoah, write of him, preach on him, thank God for him, look up to himas, next to Abraham, their greatest example in the Old Testament. 

Well, my friends, to understand what made Noah so great, we mustunderstand in what times Noah lived. "The wickedness of men wasgreat in the earth in those days, and every imagination of thethoughts of their heart was only evil continually, and the earth wasfilled with violence through them. " And we must remember that thewickedness of men before the flood was not outwardly like wickednessnow; it was not petty, mean, contemptible wickedness of silly andstupid men, such as could be despised and laughed down; it was likethe wickedness of fallen angels. Men were then strong andbeautiful, cunning and active, to a degree of which we can form noconception. Their enormous length of life (six, seven, and eighthundred years commonly) must have given them an experience anddaring far beyond any man in these days. Their bodily size andstrength were in many cases enormous. We read that "there weregiants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when thesons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they barechildren to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, menof renown. " Their powers of invention seem to have beenproportionably great. We read, in the fourth chapter of Genesis, how, within a few years after Adam was driven out of Paradise, theyhad learned to build cities, to tame the wild beasts, and live upontheir milk and flesh; that they had invented all sorts of music andmusical instruments; that they had discovered the art of working inmetals. We read among them of Tubal-Cain, an instructor of everyworkman in brass and iron; and the old traditions in the East, wherethese men dwelt, are full of strange and awful tales of their power. 

Again, we must remember that there was no law in Noah's days beforethe flood, no Bible to guide them, no constitutions and acts ofparliament to bind men in the beaten track by the awful majesty oflaw, whether they will or no, as we have. 

This is the picture which the Bible gives us of the old world beforethe flood--a world of men mighty in body and mind, fierce and busy, conquering the world round them, in continual war and turmoil; withall the wild passions of youth, and yet all the cunning andexperience of enormous old age; with the strength and the courage ofyoung men to carry out the iniquity of old ones; every one guidedonly by self-will, having cast off God and conscience, and doingevery man that which was right in the sight of his own eyes. Andamidst all this, while men, as wise, as old, as strong, as great ashimself, whirled away round him in this raging sea of sin, Noah wasstedfast; he, at least, knew his way, --"he walked with God, a justman, and perfect in his generations. "

To Noah, living in such a world as this, among temptation, andviolence, and insult, no doubt, there came this command from God:"The end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filledwith violence through them, and I will destroy them with the earth. And behold I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, todestroy all flesh wherein is the breath of life; but with thee willI establish my covenant, and thou shalt make thee an ark of woodafter the fashion which I tell thee; and thou shalt come into theark, thou and thy family, and of every living thing, two of everysort, male and female, shalt thou bring into the ark, and keep themalive with thee; and take thou of all food that is eaten into theark, for thee and for them. " What a message, my friends! If wewish to see a little of the greatness of Noah's faith, conceive sucha message coming from God to one of us! Should we believe it--muchless act upon it? But NOAH believed God, says the Scripture; and"according as God commanded him, so did he. " Now, in whatever waythis command came from God to Noah, it is equally wonderful. Someof you, perhaps, will say in your hearts, 'No! when God spoke tohim, how could he help obeying Him?' But, my friends, askyourselves seriously, --for, believe me, it is a most importantquestion for the soul and inner life of you and me, and every man--how did Noah know that it was God who spoke to him? It is easy tosay God appeared to him; but no man hath seen God at any time. Itis easy, again, to say that an angel appeared to him, or that Godappeared to him in the form of a man; but still the same question isleft to be answered, how did he know that this appearance came fromGod, and that its words were true? Why should not Noah have said, 'This was an evil spirit which appeared to me, trying to frightenand ruin me, and stir up all my neighbours to mock me, perhaps tomurder me?' Or, again; suppose that you or I saw some gloriousapparition this day, which told us on such and such a day such andsuch a town will be destroyed, what should WE think of it? Shouldwe not say, I must have been dreaming--I must have been ill, and somy brain and eyes must have been disordered, and treat the wholething as a mere fancy of ill-health; now why did not Noah do thesame?

Why do I say this? To shew you, my friends, that it is notapparitions and visions which can make a man believe. As it iswritten, "If they believe not Moses and the prophets, neither willthey believe though one rose from the dead. " No; a man must havefaith in his heart already. A man must first be accustomed todiscern right from wrong--to listen to and to obey the voice of Godwithin him; THAT word of God of which it is said, "the word is nighthee, in thy heart, and in thy mind, " before he can hear God's wordfrom without; else he will only explain away miracles, and callvisions and apparitions sick men's dreams. 

But there was something yet more wonderful and divine in Noah'sfaith, --I mean his patience. He knew that a flood was to come--heset to work in faith to build his ark--and that ark was in buildingfor one hundred and twenty years, --one hundred and twenty years! Itseems at first past all belief. For all that time he built; and allthe while the world went on just as usual; and, before he hadfinished, old men had died, and children grown into years; and greatcities had sprung up perhaps where there was not a cottage before;and trees which were but a yard high when that ark was begun hadgrown into mighty forest-timber; and men had multiplied and spread, and yet Noah built and built on stedfastly, believing that what Godhad said would surely one day or other come to pass. For onehundred and twenty years he saw the world go on as usual, and yet henever forgot that it was a doomed world. He endured the laughterand mockery of all his neighbours, and every fresh child who wasborn grew up to laugh at the foolish old man who had been toilingfor a hundred years past on his mad scheme, as they thought it; andyet Noah never lost faith, and he never lost LOVE either--for allthose years, we read, he preached righteousness to the very men whomocked him, and preached in vain--one hundred and twenty years hewarned those sinners of God's wrath, of righteousness and judgmentto come, and no man listened to him! That, I believe, must havebeen, after all, the hardest of all his trials. 

And, doubtless, Noah had his inward temptation many a time; no doubthe was ready now and then to believe God's message all a dream--tolaugh at himself for his fears of a flood which seemed never coming, but in his heart was "the still small voice" of God, warning himthat God was not a man that he should lie, or repent, or deceivethose who walked faithfully with him; and around him he saw mengrowing and growing in iniquity, filling up the cup of their owndamnation; and he said to himself, 'Verily there is a God whojudgeth the earth--for all this a reckoning day will surely come;'and he worked stedfastly on, and the ark was finished. And then atlast there came a second call from God, "Come thou and all thy houseinto the ark, for thee have I seen righteous before me in thisgeneration. Yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon theearth, and every living substance that I have made will I destroyfrom off the earth. " And Noah entered into the ark, and seven dayshe waited; and louder than ever laughed the scoffers round him, atthe old man and his family shut into his ark safe on dry land, whileday and night went on as quietly as ever, and the world ran itsusual round; for seven days more their mad game lasted--they ate, they drank, they married, they gave in marriage, they planted, theybuilded; and on the seventh day it came--the rain fell day afterday, and week after week--and the windows of heaven were opened, andthe fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the flood arose, and swept them all away!

SERMON XI. THE NOACHIC COVENANT

GEN, ix. 8, 9. 

"And God spake unto Noah, and his sons with him, saying, And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed afteryou. "

In my last sermon on Noah I spoke of the flood and of Noah's faithbefore the flood; I now go on to speak of the covenant which Godmade with Noah after the flood. Now, Noah stood on that newly-driedearth as the head of mankind; he and his family, in all eight souls, saved by God's mercy from the general ruin, were the only humanbeings left alive, and had laid on them the wonderful and gloriousduty of renewing the race of man, and replenishing the vast worldaround them. From that little knot of human beings were to springall the nations of the earth. 

And because this calling and destiny of theirs was a great and all-important one--because so much of the happiness or misery of the newrace of mankind depended on the teaching which they would get fromtheir forefathers, the sons of Noah, therefore God thought fit tomake with Noah and his sons a solemn covenant, as soon as they cameout of the ark. 

Let us solemnly consider this covenant, for it stands good now asmuch as ever. God made it "with Noah, and his seed after him, " forperpetual generations. And WE are the seed of Noah; every man, woman, and child of us here were in the loins of Noah when the greatabsolute God gave him that pledge and promise. We must earnestlyconsider that covenant, for in it lies the very ground and meaningof man's life and business on this earth. 

"And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitfuland multiply, and replenish the earth; and the fear of you and thedread of you shall be upon every living creature. Into your handthey are delivered. Every moving thing that liveth shall be meatfor you, even as the green herb have I given you all things. Butflesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof shall ye noteat. And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at thehand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of men; atthe hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for inthe image of God made He man. "

Now, to understand this covenant, consider what thoughts would havebeen likely to grow up in the mind of Noah's children after theflood. Would they not have been something of this kind: 'God doesnot love men; He has drowned all but us, and we are men of likepassions with the world who perished, may we not expect the likeruin at any moment? Then what use to plough and sow, and build andplant, and work for those who shall come after us?' 'Let us eat anddrink, for to-morrow we die. '

And again, they would have been ready to say, 'This God, whom ourforefather Noah said sent floods, we cannot see Him; but the floodsthemselves we can see. All these clouds and tempests, lightning, sun, and stars, are we STRONGER than them? No! They may crush us, drown us, strike us dead at any moment. They seem, too, to go bycertain wonderful rules and laws; perhaps they have a will andunderstanding in them. Instead of praying to a God whom we neversaw, why not pray to the thunderclouds not to strike us dead, and tothe seas and rivers not to sweep us away? For this great, wonderful, awful world in which we are, however beautiful may be itsflowers, and its fruits, and its sunshine, there is no trusting it;we are sitting upon a painted sepulchre, a beautiful monster, a gulfof flood and fire, which may burst up any moment, and sweep us away, as it did our forefathers. '

Again, Noah's children would have begun to say, 'These beasts hereround us, they are so many of them larger than us, stronger than us, able to tear us to atoms, eat us up as they would eat a lamb. Theyare self-sufficient, too; they want no clothes, nor houses, norfire, like us poor, weak, naked, soft human creatures. They can runfaster than we, see farther than we; their scent, too, what awonderful, mysterious power that is, like a miracle to us! And, besides all their cunning ways of getting food and building nests, they never do WRONG; they never do horrible things contrary to theirnature; they all abide as God has made them, obeying the law oftheir kind. Are not these beasts, then, much wiser and better thanwe? We will honour them, and pray to them not to devour us--to makeus cunning and powerful as they are themselves. And if they are nobetter than us, surely they are no worse than us. After all, whatdifference is there between a man and a beast? The flood whichdrowned the beasts drowned the men too. A beast is flesh and blood, what more is a man? If you kill him, he dies, just as a beast dies;and why should not a man's carcase be just as good to eat as abeast's, and better?' And so there would have been a free openingat once into all the horrors of cannibalism!

Again, Noah's descendants would have said, 'Our forefathers offeredsacrifices to the unseen God, as a sign that all they had belongedto Him, and that they had forfeited their own souls by sin, and weretherefore ready to give up the most precious things they had--theircattle, as a sign that they owed all to that very God whom they hadoffended. But are not human creatures much more precious thancattle? Will it not be a much greater sign of repentance andwillingness to give up all to God if we offer Him the best thingswhich we have--human creatures? If we kill and sacrifice to Him ourmost beautiful and innocent things--little children--noble youngmen--beautiful young girls?'

My friends, these are very strange and shocking thoughts, but theyhave been in the hearts and minds of all nations. The heathens dosuch things now. Our own forefathers used to do such things once;they were tempted to worship the sun and the moon, and the rivers, and the thunder, and to look with superstitious terror at the bears, and the wolves, and the snakes, round them, and to kill their youngchildren and maidens, and offer them up as sacrifices to the darkpowers of this world, which they thought were ready to swallow themup. And God is my witness, my friends, when one goes through someparts of England now, and sees the mine-children and factory-children, and all the sin and misery, and the people wearyingthemselves in the fire for very vanity, we seem not to be so veryfar from the same dark superstition now, though we may call it by adifferent name. England has been sacrificing her sons and herdaughters to the devil of covetousness of late years, just as muchas our forefathers offered theirs to the devil of selfish andcowardly superstition. 

But see, now, how this covenant which God made with Noah wasintended just to remedy every one of those temptations which I justmentioned, into which Noah's children's children would have beencertain to fall, and into which so many of them did fall. Theymight have become reckless, I said, from fear of a flood at anymoment. God promises them--and confirms it with the sign of therainbow--never again to destroy the earth by water. They would havebeen likely to take to praying to the rain and the thunder, the sunand the stars; God declares in this covenant that it is HE alone whosends the rain and thunder, that He brings the clouds over theearth, that He rules the great, awful world; that men are to look upand believe in God as a loving and thinking PERSON, who has a willof His own, and that a faithful, and true, and loving, and mercifulwill; that their lives and safety depend not on blind chance, or thestern necessity of certain laws of nature, but on the covenant of analmighty and all-loving person. 

Again, I said, that Noah's sons would have been ready to fear, and, at last, to worship the dumb beasts; God's covenant says, "No; thesebeasts are not your equals--they are your slaves--you may freelykill them for your food; the fear of you shall be upon them. Thehuge elephant and the swift horse shall become your obedientservants; the lion and the tiger shall tremble and flee before you. Only claim your rights as men; believe that the invisible God whomade the earth is your strength and your protector, and that He towhom the earth belongs has made you lords of the earth and all thattherein is. But, " said God's covenant to Noah's sons, "you did notMAKE these beasts--you did not give them life, therefore I forbidyou to eat their blood wherein their life lies; that you may neverforget that all the power you have over these beasts was given youby God, who made and preserves that wonderful, mysterious, holything called life, which you can never imitate. " Again, I said, that Noah's children, having been accustomed to the violence andbloodshed on the earth before the flood, might hold man's lifecheap; that, having seen in the flood men perish just like thebeasts around them, they might have begun to think that man's lifewas not more precious than the beasts'. They might have all gone onat last, as some of them did, to those horrors of cannibalism andhuman sacrifice of which I just now spoke. Now, here, again comesin God's covenant, "Surely the blood of your lives will I require. At the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand ofevery man's brother will I require it. Whoso sheddeth man's bloodby man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made Heman. " This, then, is the covenant which God made with Noah forperpetual generations, and therefore with us, the children of Noah. In this covenant you see certain truths come out into light; some, of which you read nothing before in the Bible, and other truthswhich, though they were given to Adam, yet had been utterly lostsight of before the flood. This has been God's method, we find fromthe Bible, ever since the creation, --to lead man step by step upinto more and more light, up to this very day, and to make each sinand each madness of men an occasion for revealing to Him more andmore of truth and of the living God. And so each and every chapterin the Bible is built upon all that has gone before it; and he thatneglects to understand what has gone before will never come to theunderstanding of what follows after. Why do I say this? Becausemen are continually picking out those scraps of the Bible which suittheir own fancy, and pinning their whole faith on them, and tryingto make them serve to explain every thing in heaven and earth;whereas no man can understand the Epistles unless he firstunderstand the Gospels. No man will understand the New Testamentunless he first understands the pith and marrow of the Old. No manwill understand the Psalms and the Prophets unless he firstunderstands the first ten chapters of Genesis; and, lastly, no onewill ever understand any thing about the Bible at all, who, insteadof taking it simply as it is written, is always trying to twist itinto proofs of his own favourite doctrines, and make Abraham a highCalvinist, or Noah a member of the Church of England. Why do I saythis? To make you all think seriously that this covenant on which Ihave been preaching is your covenant; that as sure as the rainbowstands in heaven, as sure as you and I are sprung out of the loinsof Noah, so surely this covenant which binds us is part of ourChristian covenant, and woe to us if we break it!

This covenant tells us that we are made in God's likeness, and, therefore, that all sin is unworthy of us and unnatural to us. Ittells us that God means us bravely and industriously to subdue theearth and the living things upon it; that we are to be the mastersof the pleasant things about us, and not their slaves, as sots andidlers are; that we are stewards and tenants of this world for thegreat God who made it, to whom we are to look up in confidence forhelp and protection. It tells us that our family relationships, theblessed duties of a husband and a father, are sacred things; thatGod has created them, that the great God of heaven Himself respectsthem, that the covenant which He makes with the father He makes withthe children; that He commands marriage, and that He blesses it withfruitfulness; that it is He who has told us "Be fruitful andmultiply, and replenish the earth;" that the tie of brotherhood isHis making also; that HE will require the blood of the murdered manAT HIS BROTHER'S HAND; that a man's brothers, his nearest relations, are bound to protect and right him if he is injured; so that we allare to be, in the deepest sense of the word, what Cain refused tobe, our BROTHERS' KEEPERS, and each member of a family is more orless answerable for the welfare and safety of all his relations. Herein lies the ground of all religion and of all society--in thecovenant which God made with Noah; and just as it is in vain for aman to pretend to be a scholar when he does not even know hisletters, so it is mockery for a man to pretend to be a convertedChristian man who knows not even so much as was commanded to Noahand his sons. He who has not learnt to love, honour, and succourhis own family--he who has not learnt to work in honest and manfulindustry--he who has not learnt to look beyond this earth, and itschance, and its customs, and its glittering outside, and see andtrust in a great, wise, loving God, by whose will every tree growsand every shower falls, what is Christianity to him? He has tolearn the first principles which were delivered to Noah, and whichnot even the heathen and the savage have utterly forgotten. 

SERMON XII. ABRAHAM'S FAITH

HEBREWS, xi. 9, 10. 

"By faith Abraham sojourned in the land of promise as in a strangecountry, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirswith him of the same promise. For he looked for a city, which hathfoundations, whose builder and maker is God. "

In the last sermon which I preached in this church, I said that theBible is the history of God's ways with mankind, how He has schooledand brought them up until the coming of Christ; that if we read theBible histories, one after another, in the same order in which Godhas put them in the Bible, we shall see that they are all regularsteps in a line, that each fresh story depends on the story whichwent before it; and yet, in each fresh history, we shall find Godtelling men something new--something which they did not know before. And that so the whole Bible, from beginning to end, is one glorious, methodic, and organic tree of life, every part growing out of theothers and depending on the others, from the root--that foundation, other than which no man can lay, which is Christ, revealing Himself, though not by name, in that wonderful first chapter of Genesis, --upto the FRUIT, which is the kingdom of Christ, and Gospel of Christ, and the salvation in which we here now stand. I told you that thelesson which God has been teaching men in all ages is faith in God--that the saints of old were just the men who learnt this lesson offaith. Now this, as we all know, was the secret of Abraham'sgreatness, that he had faith in God to leave his own country atGod's bidding, and become a stranger and a pilgrim on the earth, wandering on in full trust that God would give him another countryinstead of that which he had left--"a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. " This was what Abraham looked for. Something of what it means we shall see presently. 

You remember the story of the tower of Babel? How certain of Noah'sfamily forgot the covenant which God had made with Noah, forgot thatGod had commanded them to go forth in every direction and fill theearth with human beings, solemnly promising to protect and blessthem, and took on themselves to do the very opposite--set up akingdom of their own fashion, and herded together for selfishsafety, instead of going forth to all the quarters of the world in anatural way, according to their families, in their tribes, aftertheir nations, as the eleventh chapter of Genesis says they ought tohave done. "Let us build us a city and a tower, and make us a name, lest, " they said, "we be scattered abroad over the face of the wholeworld. " Here was one act of disobedience to God's order. Butbesides this they had fallen into a slavish dread of the powers ofnature--they were afraid of another flood. They set to to build atower, on which they might worship the sun and stars, and the hostof heaven, and pray to them to send no more floods and tempests. They thus fell into a slavish fear of the powers of nature, as wellas into a selfish and artificial civilisation. In short, theyutterly broke the covenant which God had made with Noah. But bymiraculously confounding their language, God drove them forth overthe face of the whole earth, and so forced them to do that whichthey ought to have done willingly at first. 

Now, we must remember that all this happened in the very country inwhich Abraham lived. He must have heard of it all--for aught weknow he had seen the tower of Babel. So that, for good or for evil, the whole Babel event must have produced a strong effect on the mindof a thoughtful man like Abraham, and raised many strangequestionings in his heart, which God alone could answer for him, ORFOR US. Now, what did God mean to teach Abraham by calling him outof his country, and telling him, "I will make of thee a greatnation?" I think He meant to shew him, for one thing, that thatBabel plan of society was utterly absurd and accursed, certain tocome to naught, and so to lead him on to hope for a city which hadfoundations, and to see that ITS builder and maker must be, not theselfishness or the ambition of men, but the will, and the wisdom, and providence of God. 

Let us see how God led Abraham on to understand this--to look for acity which had foundations; in short, to understand what a State anda nation means and ought to be. First, God taught him that he wasnot to cling coward-like to the place where he was born, but to goout boldly to colonise and subdue the earth, for the great God ofheaven would protect and guide him. "Get thee out of thy countryand from thy father's house unto a land which I will shew thee. AndI will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee. "Again; God taught him what a nation was: "_I_ will make of thee agreat nation. " As much as to say, 'Never fancy, as those fools atBabel did, that a nation only means a great crowd of people--neverfancy that men can make themselves into a nation just by feedingaltogether, and breeding altogether, and fighting altogether, as theherds of wild cattle and sheep do, while there is no real unionbetween them. ' For what brought those Babel men together? Justwhat keeps a herd of cattle together--selfishness and fear. Eachman thought he would be SAFER, forsooth, in company. Each manthought that if he was in company, he could use his neighbours' witsas well as his own, and have the benefit of his neighbours' strengthas well as his own. And that is all true enough; but that does notmake a nation. Selfishness can join nothing; it may join a set ofmen for a time, each for his own ends, just as a joint-stock companyis made up; but it will soon split them up again. Each man, in amerely selfish community, will begin, after a time, to play on hisown account as well as work on his own account--to oppress andoverreach for his own ends as well as to be honest and benevolentfor his own ends, for he will find ill-doing far easier, and morenatural, in one sense, and a plan that brings in quicker profits, than well-doing; and so this godless, loveless, every-man-for-himself nation, or sham nation rather, this joint-stock company, inwhich fools expect that universal selfishness will do the work ofuniversal benevolence, will quarrel and break up, crumble to dustagain, as Babel did. "But, " says God to Abraham, "I will make ofthee a great nation. I make nations, and not they themselves. " Soit is, my friends: this is the lesson which God taught Abraham, thelesson which we English must learn nowadays over again, or smart forit bitterly--that God makes nations. He is King of kings; "by Himkings reign and princes decree judgment. " He judges all nations:He nurtureth the nations. This is throughout the teaching of thePsalms. "It is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we areHis people, and the sheep of His pasture;" for this I take to be thetrue bearing of that glorious national hymn the 100th Psalm, and notmerely the old truism that men did not create themselves, when itexhorts ALL nations to praise God because it is He that hath madethem nations, and not they themselves. The Psalms set forth the Sonof God as the King of all nations. In Him, my friends, --in Him allthe nations of the earth are truly blessed. 

He the Saviour of a few individual souls only? God forbid! To HimALL POWER is given in heaven and earth; by Him were all thingscreated, whether in heaven or earth, visible and invisible, whetherthey be thrones or dominions, or principalities or powers;--allnational life, all forms of government, whether hero-despotisms, republics, or monarchies, aristocracies of birth, or of wealth, orof talent, --all were created by Him and for Him, and He is beforeall things, and by Him all things CONSIST and hold together. Everything or institution on earth which has systematic and organic lifein it--by HIM it consists--by Him, the Life and the Light wholighteneth every man that cometh into the world. From Him come law, and order, and spiritual energy, and loving fellow-feeling, andpatriotism, the spirit of wisdom, and understanding, and prudence--all, in short, by which a nation consists and holds together. It isnot constitutions, and acts of parliament, and social contracts, andrights of the people, and rights of kings, and so on, which make usa nation. These are but the effects, and not the consequences, ofthe national life. THAT is the one spirit which is shed abroad upona country, whose builder and maker is God, and which comes down fromabove--comes down from Christ the King of kings, who has given eachnation its peculiar work on this earth, its peculiar circumstancesand history to mould and educate it for its work, and its peculiarspirit and national character, wherewith to fulfil the destiny whichChrist has appointed for it. 

Believe me, my friends, it takes long years, too, and much trainingfrom God and from Christ, the King of kings, to make a nation. Everything which is most precious and great is also most slow ingrowing, and so is a nation. The Scripture compares it everywhereto a tree; and as the tree grows, a people must grow, from smallbeginnings, perhaps from a single family, increasing on, accordingto the fixed laws of God's world, for years and hundreds of years, till it becomes a mighty nation, with one Lord, one faith, one work, one Spirit. 

But again; God said to Abraham, when He had led him into this farcountry, "Unto thy seed will I GIVE THIS LAND. " This was a greatand a new lesson for Abraham, that the earth belonged to that samegreat invisible God who had promised to guide and protect him, andmake him into a nation--that this same God gave the earth towhomsoever He would, and allotted to each people their properportion of it. "He (said St. Paul on the Areopagus) hath determinedthe times before appointed for all nations, and the bounds of theirhabitation, that they may seek after the Lord and find Him. " Ah!this must have been a strange and a new feeling to Abraham; but, stranger still, though God had given him this land, he was not totake possession of a single foot of it; the land was already in thehands of a different nation, the people of Canaan; and Abraham wasto go wandering about a sojourner, as the text says, in this veryland of promise which God had given him, without ever takingpossession of his own, simply because it belonged to others already. How this must have taught Abraham that the rights of property weresacred things--things appointed by God; that it was an awful and aheinous sin to make wanton war on other people, to drive them outand take possession of their land; that it was not mere force ormere fancy which gave men a right to a country, but the providenceof Almighty God! Now Abraham needed this warning, for the men ofBabel seem from the first to have gone on the plan of driving outand conquering the tribes round them. They seem to have set uptheir city partly from ambition. "Let us make us a name, " theysaid, meaning, 'Let us make ourselves famous and terrible to all thepeople around us, that we may subdue them. ' And we read of Nimrod, who was their first king and the founder of Babel, that he was amighty hunter before the Lord, that is, as most learned men explainit, a mighty conqueror and tyrant in defiance of God and His laws, as the poet says of him, "A mighty hunter, and his game was man. "

The Jews, indeed, have an old tradition that Nimrod cast Abrahaminto a fiery furnace for refusing to worship the host of heaven withhim. The story is very likely untrue, but still it is of use inshewing what sort of reputation Nimrod left behind him in his ownpart of the world. We may thus see that Abraham would need warningagainst these habits of violence, tyranny, and plunder, into whichthe men of Babel and other tribes were falling. And this was whatGod meant to teach him by keeping him a stranger and a pilgrim inthe very land which God had promised to him for his own. ThusAbraham learnt respect for the rights and properties of hisneighbours; thus he learnt to look up in faith to God, not only ashis patron and protector, but as the lord and absolute owner of thesoil on which he stood. 

Now in the 14th chapter of Genesis there is an account of Abraham'sbeing called on to put in practice what he had learnt, and, by doingso, learning a fresh lesson. We read of four kings making waragainst five kings, against Chedorlaomer, king of Elam or Persia, who had been following the ways of Nimrod and the men of Babel, andconquering these foreign kings and making them serve him. We readof Chedorlaomer and four other kings coming down and wantonlyravaging and destroying other countries, besides the five kings whohad rebelled against them, and at last carrying off captive thepeople of Sodom and Gomorrah, and Lot, Abraham's nephew. We readthen how Abraham armed his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen men, and pursued after these tyrants andplunderers, and with his small force completely overthrew that greatarmy. Now that was a sign and a lesson to Abraham, as much as tosay, 'See the fruits of having the great God of heaven and earth foryour protector and your guide, --see the fruits of having men roundyou, not hirelings, keeping in your company just to see what theycan get by it, but born in your own house, who love and trust you, whom you can love and trust, --see how the favour of God, andreverence for those family ties and duties which He has appointed, make you and your little band of faithful men superior to thesegreat mobs of selfish, godless, unjust robbers, --see how hundreds ofthese slaves ran away before one man, who feels that he is a memberof a family, and has a just cause for fighting, and that God and hisbrethren are with him. '

Here, you see, was another hint to Abraham of what it was and who itwas that made a great nation. 

And now some of you may say, 'This is a strange sermon. You have asyet said nothing of Christ, nothing of the Holy Spirit, nothing ofgrace, redemption, sanctification. What kind of sermon is this?'

My friends, do not be too sure that I have not been preaching Christto you, and Christ's Spirit to you, and Christ's redemption too, most truly in this sermon, although I have mentioned none of them byname. There are times for ornamenting the house, there are timesfor repairing the wall, there are times, too, for thoroughlyexamining the foundation, because, if that be not sound, it islittle matter what fine work is built up upon it; and there aretimes when, as David says, the foundations of the earth are out ofcourse, when men have forgotten sadly the very first principles ofsociety and religion. 

And, surely, men are doing so in these days; men are forgetting thatother foundation can no man lay save that which IS laid, which isChrist; they laugh at the thought of a city, that is, a state andform of government, "not made with hands, eternal in the heavens;"they have forgotten that St. Paul tells them in the Hebrews that weHAVE "a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker isGod, " a kingdom which cannot be moved. Yes, men who call themselveslearned and worldly wise, and good men too, alas! who fancy thatthey are preaching God's gospel, go about and tell men, 'The men ofBabel were right after all. What have nations to do with God andreligion? Nations are merely earthly, carnal things, that were onlyinvented by sinful men themselves, to preserve their bodies andgoods, and make trading easy. Religion has only to do with a man'sprivate opinions, his single soul; the government has nothing to dowith the Church: a Christian has nothing to do with politics. ' Andso these men most unwittingly open a door to all sorts ofcovetousness and meanness in the nation, and all sorts of trickeryand cowardice in the government. Tell a man that his business hasnothing to do with God, and you cannot wonder if he acts withoutthinking of God. If you tell a nation that it is selfishness whichmakes it prosperous, of course you must expect it to be selfish. Ifyou tell us Englishmen that the duties of a citizen are not dutiesto God, but only duties to the constable and the tax-gatherer, whatwonder if men believe you and become undutiful to God in theircitizenship? No, my friends, once for all, as sure as God madeAbraham a great nation, so if we English are a great nation, God hasmade us so--as sure as God gave Abraham the land of Canaan for hispossession, so did HE give us this land of England, when He broughtour Saxon forefathers out of the wild barren north, and drove outbefore them nations greater and mightier than they, and gave themgreat and goodly cities which they builded not, and wells diggedwhich they digged not, farms and gardens which they planted not, that we too might fear the Lord our God, and serve Him, and swear byHis name;--as sure as He commanded Abraham to respect the propertyof his neighbours, so has He commanded us;--as sure as God taughtAbraham that the nation which was to grow from him owed a duty toGod, and could be only strong by faith in God, so it is with us:we, English people, owe a duty to God, and are to deal amongourselves, and with foreign countries, by faith in God, and in thefear of God, "seeking first the kingdom of God and Hisrighteousness, " sure that then all other things--victory, health, commerce, art, and science--will be added to us, as the first Lessonsays. For this is your wisdom and understanding in the sight of thenations, which shall say, Surely this great nation is a wise andunderstanding people! For what nation is grown so great, that hathstatutes and judgments so righteous as these laws, this gospel, which God sets before us day by day?--us, Englishmen!

And I say that these are proper thoughts for this place. This isnot a mere preaching-house, where you may learn every man to savehis own soul; this is a far nobler place; this building belongs tothe National Church of England, and we worship here, not merely asmen, but as men of England, citizens of a Christian country, comehere to learn not merely how to save ourselves, but how to helptowards the saving of our families, our parish, and our nation; andtherefore we must know what a country and a nation mean, and what isthe meaning of that glorious and divine word, "a citizen;" that bylearning what it is to be a citizen of England, we may go on tolearn fully what it is to be a citizen of the kingdom of God. 

For this is part of the whole counsel of God, which He reveals inHis Holy Bible; and this also we must not, and dare not, shundeclaring in these days. 

SERMON XIII. ABRAHAM'S OBEDIENCE

HEBREWS, xi. 17-19. 

"By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac; and he thathad received the promises offered up his only-begotten son, of whomit was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called: accountingthat God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whencealso he received him in a figure. "

In this chapter we come to the crowning point of Abraham's history, the highest step and perfection of his faith; beyond which it seemsas if man's trust in God could no further go. 

You know, most of you, doubtless, that Isaac, Abraham's son, wascome to him out of the common course of nature--when he and hiswife, Sarah, were of an age which seemed to make all chance of afamily utterly hopeless. You remember how God promised Abraham thatthis boy should be born to him at a certain time, when He appearedto him on the plains of Mamre, in that most solemn and deep-meaningvision of which I spoke to you last Sunday. You remember, too, nodoubt, most of you, how God had promised Abraham again and again, that in his seed, his children, all the nations of the earth shouldbe blessed; so that all Abraham's hopes were wrapped up in this boyIsaac; he was his only son, whom he loved; he was the child of hisold age, his glory and his joy; he was the child of God's promises. Every time Abraham looked at him he felt that Isaac was a wonderfulchild: that God had a great work for him to do; that from thatsingle boy a great nation was to spring, as many in multitude as thestars in the sky, or the sand on the sea-shore, for the greatAlmighty God had said it. And he knew, too, that from that boy, whowas growing up by him in his tent, all the nations in the earthshould be blessed: so that Isaac, his son, was to Abraham a dailysacrament, as I may say, a sign and a pledge that God was with him, and would be true to him; that as surely as God had wonderfully andbeyond all hope given him that son, so wonderfully and beyond allhope He would fulfil all His other promises. Conceive, then, if youcan, what Abraham's astonishment, and doubt, and terror, and misery, must have been at such a message as this from the very God who hadgiven Isaac to him: "And it came to pass after these things thatGod did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only sonIsaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; andoffer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains whichI will tell thee of. "

What a storm of doubt it must have raised in Abraham's mind! Howunable he must have been to say whether that message came from agood or bad spirit, or commanded him to do a good action or a badone; that the same God who had said, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, byman shall his blood be shed;" who had forbidden murder as the veryhighest of crimes, should command him to shed the blood of his ownson; that the same God who had promised him that in Isaac all thenations of the earth should be blessed, should command him to put todeath that very son upon whom all his hopes depended! Fearful, indeed, must have been the struggle in Abraham's mind, but the goodand the right thought conquered at last. His feeling was, no doubt, 'This God who has blessed me so long, who has guided me so long, whom I have obeyed so long, shall I not trust Him a little furtheryet? how can I believe that He will do wrong? how can I believe thatHe will lead me wrong? If it is really wrong that I should kill myson, He will not let me do it: if it really is His will that Ishould kill my son, I WILL DO IT. Whatever He says must be right;it is agony and misery to me, but what of that? Do I not owe Him athousand daily and hourly blessings? Has He not led me hither, preserved me, guided me, taught me the knowledge of Himself, --chosenme to be the father of a great nation? Do I not owe Him everything?and shall I not bear this sharp sorrow for His sake? I know, too, that if Isaac dies, all my hope, all my joy, will die with him; thatI shall have nothing left to look for, nothing left to work for inthis world. Nothing! shall I not have God left to me? When Isaacis dead will the Lord die? will the Lord change? will He grow weak?--Never! Years ago did He declare to me that He was the AlmightyGod; I will believe that He will be always Almighty; I will believethat though I kill my son, my son will be still in God's hands, andI shall be still in God's hands, and that God is able to raise himagain, even from the dead. God can give him back to me, and if Hewill NOT give him back to me, He can fulfil His promises in athousand other ways. Ay, and He will fulfil His promises, for inHim is neither deceit, nor fickleness, nor weakness, norunrighteousness of any kind; and, come what will, I will believe Hispromise and I will obey His will. '

Some such thoughts as these, I suppose, passed through Abraham'smind. He could not have had a man's heart in him indeed, if notonly those thoughts, but ten thousand more, sadder, and stranger, and more pitiful than my weak brain can imagine, did not sweep likea storm through his soul at that last and terrible temptation, butthe Bible tells us nothing of them: why should the Bible tell usanything of them? the Bible sets forth Abraham as the faithful man, and therefore it simply tells us of his faith, without telling us ofhis doubts and struggles before he settled down into faith. Ittells us, as it were, not how often the wind shifted and twistedabout during the tempest, but in what quarter the wind settled whenthe tempest was over, and it began to blow steadily, and fixedly, and gently, and all was bright, and mild, and still in Abraham'sbosom again, just as a man's mind will be bright, and gentle, andcalm, even at the moment he is going to certain death or fearfulmisery, if he does but know that his suffering is his duty, and thathis trial is his heavenly Father's will: and so all we read in theOld-Testament account is simply, "And Abraham rose up early in themorning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men withhim, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt-offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him. Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the placeafar off. And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here withthe ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and comeagain to you. And Abraham took the wood of the burnt-offering, andlaid it upon Isaac his son: and he took the fire in his hand, and aknife; and they went both of them together. And Isaac spake untoAbraham his father, and said, My father, and he said, Here am I, myson. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood, but where is thelamb for a burnt-offering? and Abraham said, My son, God willprovide Himself a lamb for a burnt-offering. So they went both ofthem together. And they came to the place which God had told himof; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay hisson. "

Really if one is to consider the whole circumstances of Abraham'strials, they seem to have been infinite, more than mortal man couldbear; more than he could have borne, no doubt, if the same God whotried had not rewarded his strength of mind by strengthening himstill more, and rewarded his faith by increasing his faith; when weconsider the struggle he must have had to keep the dreadful secretfrom the young man's mother, the tremendous effort of controllinghimself, the long and frightful journey, the necessity, and yet thedifficulty he seems to have felt of keeping the truth from his son, and yet of telling him the truth, which he did in those wonderfulwords, "God shall provide Himself a lamb for a burnt-offering" (onwhich I shall have occasion to speak presently); and, last and worstof all, the perfect obedience and submission of his son; for Isaacwas not a child then, he was a young man of nearly thirty years ofage; strong and able enough, no doubt, to have resisted his agedfather, if he had chosen. But the very excellence of Isaac seems tohave been, that he did not resist, that he shewed the same perfecttrust and obedience to Abraham that Abraham did towards God; for hewas led "as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before hershearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth, " for we read, "Abrahambound Isaac his son and laid him on the wood. " Surely that was thebitterest pang of all, to see the excellence of his son shine forthjust when it was too late for him to enjoy him--to find out what aperfect child he had, in simple trust and utter obedience, just atthe very moment when he was going to lose him: "And Abrahamstretched forth his hand and took the knife to slay his son. "

At that point Abraham's trial finished. He had shewn thecompleteness of his faith by the completeness of his works, that is, by the completeness of his obedience. He had utterly given up allfor God. He had submitted his will completely to God's will. Hehad said in heart, as our Blessed Lord said, "Father, if it bepossible, let this woe pass from me, nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt;" and thus I say, he was justified by his works, byhis actions; that is, by this faithful action he proved thefaithfulness of his heart, as the Angel said to him, "Now I knowthat thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thineonly son from me:" for as St. James says, "Was not Abraham ourfather justified by works when he had offered Isaac his son upon thealtar? Seest thou, " says he, "how his faith wrought with hisworks;" how his works were the tool or instrument which his faithused; and by his works his faith was brought to perfection, as atree is brought to perfection when it bears fruit. "And so, " St. James continues, "the scripture was fulfilled, which says, Abrahambelieved God, and it was imputed to him for righteousness; and hewas called the friend of God. Ye see then, " he says, "how that byworks a man is justified, " or shewn to be righteous and faithful, "and not by faith only;" that is, not by the mere feeling of faith, for, as he says, "as the body without the spirit is dead, so faithwithout works is dead also. " For what is the sign of a being dead?It is its not being able to do anything, not being able to work;because there is no living and moving spirit in it. And what is thesign of a man's faith being dead? his faith not being able to WORK, because there is no living spirit in it, but it is a mere dead, empty shell and form of words, --a mere notion and thought aboutbelieving in a man's head, but not a living trust and loyalty to Godin his heart. Therefore, says St. James, "shew me thy faith withoutthy works, " if thou canst, "and I will shew thee my faith by myworks, " as Abraham did by offering up Isaac his son. 

Oh! my friends, when people are talking about faith and works, andtrying to reconcile St. Paul and St. James, as they call it, becauseSt. Paul says Abraham was justified by faith, and St. James saysAbraham was justified by works, if they would but pray for thesimple, childlike heart, and the head of common sense, and look attheir own children, who, every time they go on a message for them, settle, without knowing it, this mighty difference of man's makingbetween faith and works. You tell a little child daily to do manythings the meaning and use of which it cannot understand; and thechild has faith in what you tell it; and, therefore, it does whatyou tell it, and so it shews its faith in you by obedience inworking for you. 

But to go on with the verses: "And the angel of the Lord calledunto Abraham out of heaven the second time, and said, By myself haveI sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, andhast not withheld thy son, thine only son: that in blessing I willbless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the starsof the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea-shore; and thyseed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shallall the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed myvoice. "

Now, here remark two things; first, that it was Abraham's obediencein giving up all to God, which called forth from God thisconfirmation of God's promises to him; and next, that God herepromised him nothing new; God did not say to him, 'Because thou hastobeyed me in this great matter, I will give thee some great rewardover and above what I promised thee. ' No; God merely promises himover again, but more solemnly than ever, what He had promised himmany years before. 

And so it will be with us, my friends, we must not expect to BUYGod's favour by obeying Him, --we must not expect that the more we dofor God, the more God will be bound to do for us, as the Papists do. No; God has done for us all that He will do. He has promised us allthat He will promise. He has provided us, as He provided Abraham, alamb for the burnt-offering, the Lamb without blemish and withoutspot, which taketh away the sins of the world. We are His redeemedpeople--we HAVE a share in His promises--He bids us believe THAT, and shew that we believe it by living as redeemed men, not our own, but bought with a price, and created anew in Christ Jesus to do goodworks; not that we may buy forgiveness by them, but that we may shewby them that we believe that God HAS forgiven us already, and thatwhen we have done all that is commanded us, we are stillunprofitable servants; for though we should give up at God's biddingour children, our wives, and our own limbs and lives, and shew asutter faith in God, and complete obedience to God, as Abraham did, we should only have done just what it was already our duty to do. 

SERMON XIV. OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN

1 JOHN, ii. 13. 

"I write unto you, little children, because ye have known theFather. "

I preached some time ago a sermon on the whole of these most deepand blessed verses of St. John. 

I now wish to speak to those who are of age to be confirmed threeseparate sermons on three separate parts of these verses. First tothose whom St. John calls little children; next, to those whom Hecalls grown men. To the first I will speak to-day; to the latter, by God's help, next Sunday. And may the Blessed One bring home myweak words to all your hearts!

Now for the meaning of "little children. " There are those who willtell you that those words mean merely "weak believers, " "babes ingrace, " and so on. They mean that, no doubt; but they mean muchmore. They mean, first of all, be sure, what they say. St. Johnwould not have said "little children, " if he had not meant littlechildren. Surely God's apostle did not throw about his words atrandom, so as to leave them open to mistakes, and want some one tostep in and tell us that they do not mean their plain, common-sensemeaning, but something else. Holy Scripture is too wisely written, and too awful a matter, to be trifled with in that way, and cut andsquared to suit our own fancies, and explained away, till itsblessed promises are made to mean anything or nothing. 

No! By little children, St. John means here children in age, --ofcourse CHRISTIAN children and young people, for he was writing onlyto Christians. He speaks to those who have been christened, andbrought up, more or less, as christened children should be. But, nodoubt, when he says little children, he means also all Christianpeople, whether they be young or old, whose souls are still young, and weak, and unlearned. All, however old they may be, who have notbeen confirmed--I do not merely mean confirmed by the bishop, butconfirmed by God's grace, --all those who have not yet come to a fullknowledge of their own sins, --all who have not yet been converted, and turned to God with their whole hearts and wills, who have notyet made their full choice between God and sin, --all who have notyet fought for themselves the battle which no man or angel can fightfor them--I mean the battle between their selfishness and theirduty--the battle between their love of pleasure and their fear ofsin--the battle, in short, between the devil and his temptations todarkness and shame, and God and His promises of light, and strength, and glory, --all who have not been converted to God, to them St. Johnspeaks as little children--people who are not yet strong enough tostand alone, and do their duty on God's side against sin, the world, and the devil. And all of you here who have not yet made up yourminds, who have not yet been confirmed in soul, --whether you wereconfirmed by the bishop or not, --to you I speak this day. 

Now, first of all, consider this, --that though St. John calls you"little children, " because you are still weak, and your souls havenot grown to manhood, yet he does not speak to you as if you wereheathens and knew nothing about God; he says, "I have written untoyou, little children, because ye have known the Father. " Considerthat; that was his reason for all that he had written to thembefore; that they had known the Father, the God who made heaven andearth--the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ--the Father of littlechildren--my Father and your Father, my friends, little as we maybehave like what we are, sons of the Almighty God. That was St. John's reason for speaking to little children, because they hadalready known the Father. So he does not speak to them as if theywere heathens; and I dare not speak to you, young people, as if youwere heathens, however foolish and sinful some of you may be; I darenot do it, whatever many preachers may do nowadays; not because Ishould be unfair and hard upon you merely, but because I should lie, and deny the great grace and mercy which God has shewn you, andcount the blood of the covenant, with which you were sprinkled atbaptism, an unholy thing; and do despite to the spirit of gracewhich has been struggling in your hearts, trying to lead you out ofsin into good, out of light into darkness, ever since you were born. Therefore, as St. John said, I say, I preach this day to you, youngpeople, because you have known your Father in heaven!

But some of you may say to me, 'You put a great honour on us; but wedo not see that we have any right to it. You tell us that we have avery noble and awful knowledge--that we know the Father. We areafraid that we do not know Him; we do not even rightly understand ofwhom or what you preach. '

Well, my young friends, these are very awful words of St. John; suchblessed and wonderful words, that if we did not find them in theBible, it would be madness and insolence to God of us to say such athing, not merely of little children, but even of the greatest, andwisest, and holiest man who ever lived; but there they are in theBible--the blessed Lord Himself has told us all, "When ye pray, say, Our Father in heaven;"--and I dare not keep them back because theysound strange. They may SOUND strange, but they ARE NOT strange. Any one who has ever watched a young child's heart, and seen hownaturally and at once the little innocent takes in the thought ofhis Father which is in heaven, knows that it is not a strangethought--that it comes to a little child almost by instinct--thathis Father in heaven seems often to be just the thought which fillshis heart most completely, has most power over him, --the thoughtwhich has been lying ready in his heart all the time, only waitingfor some one to awaken it, and put it into words for him; that hewill do right when you put him in mind of his Father above the skiessooner than he will for a hundred punishments. For truly says thepoet, --

"Heaven lies about us in our infancy, Not in complete forgetfulness, Nor yet in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come, From God who is our home!"

And yet more truly said the Blessed One Himself, "That children'sangels always behold the face of our Father which is in heaven;" andthat "of such is the kingdom of heaven. " Yet you say, some of you, perhaps, 'Whatever knowledge of our Father in heaven we had, orought to have had, when we were young, we have lost it now. We haveforgotten what we learnt at school. We have been what you wouldcall sinful; at all events, we have been thinking all our time abouta great many things beside religion, and they have quite put out ofour head the thought that God is our Father. So how have we knownour Father in heaven?'

Well, then, to answer that, --consider the case of your earthlyfathers, the men who begot you and brought you up. Now there mightbe one of you who had never seen his father since he was born, butall he knows of him is, that his name is so and so, and that he issuch and such a sort of man, as the case might be; and that he livesin such and such a place, far away, and that now and then he hearstalk of his father, or receives letters or presents from him. Suppose I asked that young man, Do you know your father? would henot answer--would he not have a right to answer, 'Yes, I know him. I never saw him, or was acquainted with him, but I know him wellenough; I know who he is, and where to find him, and what sort of aman he is. ' That young man might not know his father's face, orlove him, or care for him at all. He might have been disobedient tohis father; he might have forgotten for years that he had a fatherat all, and might have lived on his own way, just as if he had nofather. But when he was put in mind of it all, would he not say atonce, 'Yes, I know my father well enough; his name is so and so, andhe lives at such and such a place. I know my father. '

Well, my young friends, and if this would be true of your fathers onearth, it is just as true of your Father in heaven. You have neverseen Him--you may have forgotten Him--you may have disobeyed Him--you may have lived on your own way, as if you had no Father inheaven; still you know that you have a Father in heaven. You pray, surely, sometimes. What do you say? "Our Father which art inheaven. " So you have a Father in heaven, else what right have youto use those words, --what right have you to say to God, "Our Fatherin heaven, " if you believe that you have no Father there? Thatwould be only blasphemy and mockery. I can well understand that youhave often said those words without thinking of them--withoutthinking what a blessed, glorious, soul-saving meaning there was inthem; but I will not believe that you never once in your whole livessaid, "Our Father which art in heaven, " without believing them to betrue words. What I want is, for you ALWAYS to believe them to betrue. Oh young men and young women, boys and girls--believe thosewords, believe that when you say, "Our Father which art in heaven, "you speak God's truth about yourselves; that the evil devil rageswhen he hears you speak those words, because they are the wordswhich prove that you do not belong to him and to hell, but to Godand the kingdom of heaven. Oh, believe those words--behave as ifyou believed those words, and you shall see what will come of them, through all eternity for ever. 

Well, but you will ask, What has all this to do with confirmation?It has all to do with confirmation. Because you are God's children, and know that you are God's children, you are to go and confirmbefore the bishop your right to be called God's children. You areto go and claim your share in God's kingdom. If you were heir to anestate, you would go and claim your estate from those who held it. You are heirs to an estate--you are heirs to the kingdom of heaven;go to confirmation, and claim that kingdom, say, 'I am a citizen ofGod's kingdom. Before the bishop and the congregation, here Iproclaim the honour which God has put upon me. ' If you have afather, you will surely not be ashamed to own him! How much morewhen the Almighty God of heaven is your Father! You will not beashamed to own Him? Then go to confirmation; for by doing so youown God for your Father. If you have an earthly father, you willnot be ashamed to say, 'I know I ought to honour him and obey him;'how much more when your father is the Almighty God of heaven, whosent His own Son into the world to die for you, who is daily heapingyou with blessings body and soul! You will not be ashamed toconfess that you ought to honour and obey Him? Then go toconfirmation, and say, 'I here take upon myself the vow and promisemade for me at my baptism. I am God's child, and therefore I willhonour, love, and obey Him. It is my duty; and it shall be mydelight henceforward to work for God, to do all the good I can to mylife's end, because my Father in heaven loves the good, and hascommanded me, poor, weak countryman though I be, to work for Him inwell-doing. ' So I say, If God is your Father, go and own Him atconfirmation. If God is your Father, go and promise to love andobey Him at confirmation; and see if He does not, like a strong andloving Father as He is, confirm you in return, --see if He does notgive you strength of heart, and peace of mind, and clear, quiet, pure thoughts, such as a man or woman ought to have who considersthat the great God, who made the sky and stars above their heads, istheir Father. But, perhaps, there are some of you, young people, who do not wish to be confirmed. And why? Now, look honestly intoyour own hearts and see the reason. Is it not, after all, becauseyou don't like the TROUBLE? Because you are afraid that beingconfirmed will force you to think seriously and be religious; andyou had rather not take all that trouble yet? Is it not because youdo not like to look your ownselves in the face, and see howfoolishly you have been living, and how many bad habits you willhave to give up, and what a thorough conversion and change you mustmake, if you are to be confirmed in earnest? Is not this why you donot wish to be confirmed? And what does that all come to? Thatthough you know you are God's children, you do not like to tellpeople publicly that you are God's children, lest they should expectyou to behave like God's children--that is it. Now, young men andyoung women, think seriously once for all--if you have any commonSENSE--I do not say grace, left in you--think! Are you not playinga fearful game? You would not dare to deny your fathers on earth--to refuse to obey them, because you know well enough that they wouldpunish you--that if you were too old for punishment, yourneighbours, at least, would despise you for mean, ungrateful, andrebellious children! But because you cannot SEE God your Father, because you have not some sign or wonder hanging in the sky tofrighten you into good behaviour, therefore you are not afraid toturn your backs on him. My friends, it is ill mocking the livingGod. Mark my words! If a man will not turn He will whet His sword, and make us feel it. You who can be confirmed, and know in yourhearts that you ought to be confirmed, and ought to be REALLYconverted and confirmed in soul, and make no mockery of it, --mark mywords! If you will not be converted and confirmed of your own goodwill, God, if He has any love left for you, will convert and confirmyou against your will. He will let you go your own ways till youfind out your own folly. He will bring you low with afflictionperhaps, with sickness, with ill-luck, with shame. Some way orother, He will chastise you, again and again, till you are forced tocome back to Him, and take His service on you. If He loves you, Hewill drive you home to your Father's house. You may laugh at mywords now, see if you laugh at them when your hairs are grey. Oh, young people, if you wish in after-life to save yourselves shame andsorrow, and perhaps, in the world to come eternal death, come toconfirmation, acknowledge God for your Father, promise to come andserve Him faithfully, make those blessed words of the Lord's Prayer, "Our Father in heaven, " your glory and your honour, your guide andguard through life, your title-deeds to heaven. You who know thatthe Great God is your Father, will you be ashamed to own yourselvesHis sons?

SERMON XV. THE TRANSFIGURATION

MARK, ix. 2. 

"Jesus taketh Peter, and James, and John, and leadeth them up into ahigh mountain apart, and was transfigured before them. "

The second lesson for this morning service brings us to one of themost wonderful passages in our blessed Saviour's whole stay onearth, namely, His transfiguration. The story, as told by thedifferent Evangelists, is this, --That our Lord took Peter, and John, and James his brother, and led them up into a high mountain apart, which mountain may be seen to this very day. It is a high peakedhill, standing apart from all the hills around it, with a smallsmooth space of ground upon the top, very fit, from its height andits loneliness, for a transaction like the transfiguration, whichour Lord wished no one but these three to behold. There theapostles fell asleep; while our blessed Lord, who had deeperthoughts in His heart than they had, knelt down and prayed to HISFather and OUR Father, which is in heaven. And as He prayed, theform of His countenance was changed, and His raiment became shining, white as the light; and there appeared Moses and Elijah talking withHim. They talked of matters which the angels desire to look into, of the greatest matters that ever happened in this earth since itwas made; of the redemption of the world, and of the death whichChrist was to undergo at Jerusalem. And as they were talking, theapostles awoke, and found into what glorious company they had fallenwhile they slept. What they felt no mortal man can tell--thatmoment was worth to them all the years they had lived before. Whenthey had gone up with Jesus into the mount, He was but the poorcarpenter's son, wonderful enough to THEM, no doubt, with His wise, searching words, and His gentle, loving looks, that drew to Him allmen who had hearts left in them, and wonderful enough, too, from allthe mighty miracles which they had seen Him do, but still He wasmerely a man like themselves, poor, and young, and homeless, whofelt the heat, and the cold, and the rough roads, as much as theydid. They could feel that He spake as never man spake--they couldsee that God's spirit and power was on Him as it had never been onany man in their time. God had even enlightened their reason by HisSpirit, to know that He was the Christ, the Son of the living God. But still it does seem they did not fully understand who and what Hewas; they could not understand how the Son of God should come in theform of a despised and humble man; they did not understand that Hisglory was to be a spiritual glory. They expected His kingdom to bea kingdom of this world--they expected His glory to consist inpalaces, and armies, and riches, and jewels, and all themagnificence with which Solomon and the old Jewish kings wereadorned; they thought that He was to conquer back again from theRoman emperor all the inestimable treasures of which the Romans hadrobbed the Jews, and that He was to make the Jewish nation, like theRoman, the conquerors and masters of all the nations of the earth. So that it was a puzzling thing to their minds why He should be Kingof the Jews at the very time that He was but a poor tradesman's son, living on charity. It was to shew them that His kingdom was thekingdom of heaven that He was transfigured before them. 

They saw His glory--the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. The form of His countenance was changed;all the majesty, and courage, and wisdom, and love, and resignation, and pity, that lay in His noble heart, shone out through His face, while He spoke of His death which He should accomplish at Jerusalem--the Holy Ghost that was upon Him, the spirit of wisdom, and love, and beauty--the spirit which produces every thing that is lovely inheaven and earth: in soul and body, blazed out through His eyes, and all His glorious countenance, and made Him look like what Hewas--a God. My friends, what a sight! Would it not be worth whileto journey thousands of miles--to go through all difficulties, dangers, that man ever heard of, for one sight of that gloriousface, that we might fall down upon our knees before it, and, if itwere but for a moment, give way to the delight of finding somethingthat we could utterly love and utterly adore? I say, the delight offinding something to worship; for if there is a noble, if there is aholy, if there is a spiritual feeling in man, it is the feelingwhich bows him down before those who are greater, and wiser, andholier than himself. I say, that feeling of respect for what isnoble is a heavenly feeling. The man who has lost it--the man whofeels no respect for those who are above him in age, above him inknowledge, above him in wisdom, above him in goodness, --THAT manshall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven. It is only theman who is like a little child, and feels the delight of having someone to look up to, who will ever feel delight in looking up to JesusChrist, who is the Lord of lords and King of kings. It was the wantof respect, it was the dislike of feeling any one superior tohimself, which made the devil rebel against God, and fall fromheaven. It will be the feeling of complete respect--the feeling ofkneeling at the feet of one who is immeasurably superior toourselves in every thing, that will make up the greatest happinessof heaven. This is a hard saying, and no man can understand it, save he to whom it is given by the Spirit of God. 

That the apostles HAD this feeling of immeasurable respect forChrist there is no doubt, else they would never have been apostles. But they felt more than this. There were other wonders in thatglorious vision besides the countenance of our Lord. His raiment, too, was changed, and became all brilliant, white as the lightitself. Was not THAT a lesson to them? Was it not as if our Lordhad said to them, 'I am a king, and have put on glorious apparel, but whence does the glory of my raiment come? _I_ have no need offine linen, and purple, and embroidery, the work of men's hands; _I_have no need to send my subjects to mines and caves to dig gold andjewels to adorn my crown: the earth is mine and the fulnessthereof. All this glorious earth, with its trees and its flowers, its sunbeams and its storms, is MINE. _I_ made it--_I_ can do whatI will with it. All the mysterious laws by which the light and theheat flow out for ever from God's throne, to lighten the sun, andthe moon, and the stars of heaven--they are mine. _I_ am the lightof the world--the light of men's bodies as well of their souls; andhere is my proof of it. Look at Me. I am He that "decketh Himselfwith light as it were with a garment, who layeth the beams of Hischambers in the waters, and walketh upon the wings of the wind. "This was the message which Christ's glory brought the apostles--amessage which they could never forget. The spiritual glory of Hiscountenance had shewn them that He was a spiritual king--that Hisstrength lay in the spirit of power, and wisdom, and beauty, andlove, which God had given Him without measure; and it shewed them, too, that there was such a thing as a spiritual body, such a body aseach of us some day shall have if we be found in Christ at theresurrection of the just--a body which shall not hide a man'sspirit, when it becomes subject to the wear and tear of life, anddisease, and decay; but a spiritual body--a body which shall befilled with our spirits, which shall be perfectly obedient to ourspirits--a body through which the glory of our spirits shall shineout, as the glory of Christ's spirit shone out through His body atthe transfiguration. "Brethren, we know not yet what we shall be, but this we do know, that when He shall appear, we shall be LIKEHIM, for we shall see Him as He is. " (1 John, iii. 3. )

Thus our Lord taught them by His appearance that there is such athing as a spiritual body, while, by the glory of His raiment, inaddition to His other miracles, He taught them that He had powerover the laws of nature, and could, in His own good time, "changethe bodies of their humiliation, that they might be made like untoHis glorious body, according to the mighty working by which He isable to subdue all things to Himself. "

But there was yet another lesson which the apostles learnt from thetransfiguration of our Lord. They beheld Moses and Elijah talkingwith Him:--Moses the great lawgiver of their nation, Elijah thechief of all the Jewish prophets. We must consider this a little tofind out the whole depth of its meaning. You remember how Christhad spoken of Himself as having come, not to destroy the Law and theProphets, but to fulfil them. You remember, too, how He had alwayssaid that He was the person of whom the Law and the Prophets hadspoken. 

Here was an actual sign and witness that His words were true--herewas Moses, the giver of the Law, and Elijah, the chief of theProphets, talking with Him, bearing witness to Him in their ownpersons, and shewing, too, that it was His death and His perfectsacrifice that they had been shadowing forth in the sacrifices ofthe law and in the dark speeches of prophecy. For they talked withHim of His death, which He was to accomplish at Jerusalem. Whatmore perfect testimony could the apostles have had to shew them thatJesus of Nazareth, their Master, was He of whom the Law and theProphets spoke--that He was indeed the Christ for whom Moses andElijah, and all the saints of old, had looked; and that He was comenot to destroy the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfil them? We canhardly understand the awe and the delight with which the disciplesmust have beheld those blessed Three--Moses, and Elias, and JesusChrist, their Lord, talking together before their very eyes. For ofall men in the world, Moses and Elias were to them the greatest. All true-hearted Israelites, who knew the history of their nation, and understood the promises of God, must have felt that Moses andElias were the two greatest heroes and saviours of their nation, whom God had ever yet raised up. And the joy and the honour of thusseeing them face to face, the very men whom they had loved andreverenced in their thoughts, whom they had heard and read of fromtheir childhood, as the greatest ornaments and glories of theirnation--the joy and the honour, I say, of that unexpected sight, added to the wonderful majesty which was suddenly revealed to theirtransfigured Lord, seemed to have been too much for them--they knewnot what to say. Such company seemed to them for the moment heavenenough; and St. Peter first finding words exclaimed, "Lord, it isgood for us to be here. If thou wilt let us build threetabernacles, one for Thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias. "Not, I fancy, that they intended to worship Moses and Elias, butthat they felt that Moses and Elias, as well as Christ, had each adivine message, which must be listened to; and therefore, theywished that each of them might have his own tabernacle, and dwellamong men, and each teach his own particular doctrine and wisdom inhis own school. It may seem strange that they should put Moses andElias so on an equality with Christ, but the truth was, that as yetthey understood Moses and Elias better than they did Christ. Theyhad heard and read of Moses and Elijah all their lives--they wereacquainted with all their actions and words--they knew thoroughlywhat great and noble men the Spirit of God had made them, but theydid NOT understand Christ in like manner. They did not yet FEELthat God had given Him the Spirit without measure--they did notunderstand that He was not only to be a lawgiver and a prophet, buta sacrifice for sin, the conqueror of death and hell, who was tolead captivity captive, and receive inestimable gifts for men. Muchless did they think that Moses and Elijah were but His servants--that all THEIR spirit and THEIR power had been given by Him. Butthis also they were taught a moment afterwards; for a bright cloudovershadowed them, hiding from them the glory of God the Father, whom no man hath seen or can see, who dwells in the light which noman can approach unto; and out of that cloud, a voice saying, "Thisis my beloved Son; hear ye Him;" and then, hiding their faces infear and wonder, they fell to the ground; and when they looked up, the vision and the voice had alike passed away, and they saw no manbut Christ alone. Was not that enough for them? Must not themeaning of the vision have been plain to them? They surelyunderstood from it that Moses and Elijah were, as they had everbelieved them to be, great and good, true messengers of the livingGod; but that their message and their work was done--that Christ, whom they had looked for, was come--that all the types of the lawwere realised, and all the prophecies fulfilled, and thathenceforward Christ, and Christ alone, was to be their Prophet andtheir Lawgiver. Was not this plainly the meaning of the Divinevoice? For when they wished to build three tabernacles, and tohonour Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets, as separate fromChrist--that moment the heavenly voice warned them: 'THIS--THIS ismy beloved Son--hear ye HIM, and Him only, henceforward. ' And Mosesand Elijah, their work being done, forthwith vanished away, leavingChrist alone to fulfil the Law and the prophets, and all otherwisdom and righteousness that ever was or shall be. This is anotherlesson which Christ's transfiguration was meant to teach and us, that Christ alone is to be henceforward our guide; that nophilosophies or doctrines of any sort which are not founded on atrue faith in Jesus Christ, and His life and death, are worthlistening to; that God has manifested forth His beloved Son, andthat Him, and Him only, we are to hear. I do not mean to say thatChrist came into the world to put down human learning. I do notmean that we are to despise human learning, as so many are apt to donowadays; for Christ came into the world not to destroy humanlearning, but to fulfil it--to sanctify it--to make human learningtrue, and strong, and useful, by giving it a sure foundation tostand upon, which is the belief and knowledge of His blessed self. Just as Christ came not to destroy the Law and the Prophets, but tofulfil them--to give them a spirit and a depth in men's eyes whichthey never had before--just so, He came to fulfil all truephilosophies, all the deep thoughts which men had ever thought aboutthis wonderful world and their own souls, by giving THEM a spiritand a depth which THEY never had before. Therefore let no man temptyou to despise learning, for it is holy to the Lord. 

There is one more lesson which we may learn from our Lord'stransfiguration; when St. Peter said, "LORD! it is good for us to behere, " he spoke a truth. It WAS good for him to be there;nevertheless, Christ did not listen to his prayer. He and his twocompanions were not allowed to STAY in that glorious company. Andwhy? Because they had a work to do. They had glad tidings of greatjoy to proclaim to every creature, and it was, after all, but aselfish prayer, to wish to be allowed to stay in ease and glory onthe mount while the whole world was struggling in sin and wickednessbelow them: for there is no meaning in a man's calling himself aChristian, or saying that he loves God, unless he is ready to hatewhat God hates, and to fight against that which Christ foughtagainst, that is, sin. No one has any right to call himself aservant of God, who is not trying to do away with some of the evilin the world around him. And, therefore, Christ was merciful, when, instead of listening to St. Peter's prayer, He led the apostles downagain from the mount, and sent them forth, as He did afterwards, topreach the Gospel of the kingdom to all nations. For Christ put ahigher honour on St. Peter by that than if He had let him stay onthe mount all his life, to behold His glory, and worship and adore. And He made St. Peter more like Himself by doing so. For what wasChrist's life? Not one of deep speculations, quiet thoughts, andbright visions, such as St. Peter wished to lead; but a life offighting against evil; earnest, awful prayers and struggles within, continual labour of body and mind without, insult and danger, andconfusion, and violent exertion, and bitter sorrow. This wasChrist's life--this is the life of almost every good man I everheard of;--this was St. Peter, and St. James, and St. John's lifeafterwards. This was Christ's cup, which they were to drink of aswell as He;--this was the baptism of fire with which they were to bebaptised of as well as He;--this was to be their fight of faith;--this was the tribulation through which they, like all other greatsaints, were to enter into the kingdom of heaven; for it is certainthat the harder a man fights against evil, the harder evil willfight against him in return: but it is certain, too, that theharder a man fights against evil, the more he is like his SaviourChrist, and the more glorious will be his reward in heaven. It iscertain, too, that what was good for St. Peter is good for us. Itis good for a man to have holy and quiet thoughts, and at moments tosee into the very deepest meaning of God's word and God's earth, andto have, as it were, heaven opened before his eyes; and it is goodfor a man sometimes actually to FEEL his heart overpowered with theglorious majesty of God, and to FEEL it gushing out with love to hisblessed Saviour: but it is not good for him to stop there, any morethan it was for the apostles; they had to leave that glorious visionand come down from the mount, and do Christ's work; and SO HAVE WE;for, believe me, one word of warning spoken to keep a little childout of sin, --one crust of bread given to a beggar-man, because he isyour brother, for whom Christ died, --one angry word checked, when itis on your lips, for the sake of Him who was meek and lowly inheart; in short, any, the smallest endeavour of this kind to lessenthe quantity of evil, which is in yourselves, and in those aroundyou, is worth all the speculations, and raptures, and visions, andframes, and feelings in the world; for those are the good FRUITS offaith, whereby alone the tree shall be known whether it be good orevil. 

SERMON XVI. THE CRUCIFIXION

ISAIAH, liii. 7. 

"He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter. "

On this day, my friends, was offered up upon the cross the Lamb ofGod, --slain in eternity and heaven before the foundation of theworld, but slain in time and space upon this day. All the oldsacrifices, the lambs which were daily offered up to God in theJewish Temple, the lambs which Abel, and after him the patriarchsoffered up, the Paschal Lamb slain at the Passover, our Eastertide, all these were but figures of Christ--tokens of the awful and yetloving law of God, that without shedding of blood there is noremission of sin. But the blood of dumb animals could not take awaysin. All mankind had sinned, and it was, therefore, necessary thatall mankind should suffer. Therefore He suffered, the new Adam, theMan of all men, in whom all mankind were, as it were, collected intoone and put on a new footing with God; that henceforward to be a manmight mean to be a holy being, a forgiven being, a being joined toGod, wearing the likeness of the Son of God--the human soul and bodyin which He offered up all human souls and bodies on the cross. Forman was originally made in Christ's likeness; He was the Word of Godwho walked in the garden of Eden, who spoke to Adam with a humanvoice; He was the Lord who appeared to the patriarchs in a man'sfigure, and ate and drank in Abraham's tent, and spoke to him with ahuman voice; He was the God of Israel, whom the Jewish elders sawwith their bodily eyes upon Mount Sinai, and under His feet apavement as of a sapphire stone. From Him all man's powers came--man's speech, man's understanding. All that is truly noble in manwas a dim pattern of Him in whose likeness man was originally made. And when man had fallen and sinned, and Christ's image was fadingmore and more out of him, and the likeness of the brutes growingmore and more in him year by year, then came Christ, the head andthe original pattern of all men, to claim them for His own again, todo in their name what they could never do for themselves, to offerHimself up a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world: so that Heis the real sacrifice, the real lamb; as St. John said when hepointed Him out to his disciples, "Behold the Lamb of God, whichtaketh away the sin of the world!"

Oh, think of that strong and patient Lamb, who on this day shewedHimself perfect in fortitude and nobleness, perfect in meekness andresignation. Think of Him who, in His utter love to us, endured thecross, despising the shame. And what a cross! Truly said theprophet, "His visage was marred more than any man, and His form morethan the sons of men:" in hunger and thirst, in tears and sighs, bruised and bleeding, His forehead crowned with thorns, His sidestorn with scourges, His hands and feet gored with nails, His limbsstretched from their sockets, naked upon the shameful cross, the Sonof God hung, lingering slowly towards the last gasp, in the death ofthe felon and the slave! The most shameful sight that this earthever saw, and yet the most glorious sight. The most shameful sight, at which the sun in heaven veiled his face, as if ashamed, and theskies grew black, as if to hide those bleeding limbs from the fouleyes of men; and yet the noblest sight, for in that death upon thecross shone out the utter fullness of all holiness, the utterfullness of all fortitude, the utter fullness of that self-sacrificing love, which had said, "The Son of Man came to seek andto save that which was lost;" the utter fullness of obedientpatience, which could say, "Father, not My will but Thine be done;"the utter fullness of generous forgiveness, which could pray, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do;" the utterfullness of noble fortitude and endurance, which could say at thevery moment when a fearful death stared Him in the face, "Thinkestthou that I cannot now pray to the Father, and He will send me atonce more than twelve armies of angels? But how then would theScriptures be fulfilled that thus it must be?"

Oh, my friends, look to Him, the author and perfecter of all faith, all trust, all loyal daring for the sake of duty and of God! Lookat His patience. See how He endured the cross, despising the shame. See how He endured--how patience had her perfect work in Him--how inall things He was more than conqueror. What gentleness, whatcalmness, what silence, what infinite depths of Divine love withinHim! A heart which neither shame, nor torture, nor insult, couldstir from its Godlike resolution. When looking down from that crossHe beheld none almost but enemies, heard no word but mockery; whenthose who passed by reviled Him, wagging their heads and saying, "Hesaved others, Himself He cannot save;" His only answer was a prayerfor forgiveness for that besotted mob who were yelling beneath Himlike hounds about their game. Consider Him, and then considerourselves, ruffled and put out of temper by the slightest crossaccident, the slightest harsh word, too often by the slightest pain--not to mention insults, for we pride ourselves in not bearing them. Try, my friends, if you can, even in the dimmest way, fancyyourselves for one instant in His place this day 1815 years. Fancyyourselves hanging on that cross--fancy that mocking mob below--fancy--but I dare not go on with the picture. Only think--thinkwhat would have been YOUR temper there, and then you may get someslight notion of the boundless love and the boundless endurance ofthe Saviour whom WE love so little, for whose sake most of us willnot endure the trouble of giving up a single sin. 

And then consider that it was all of His own free will; that at anymoment, even while He was hanging upon the cross, He might havecalled to earth and sun, to heaven and to hell, "Stop! thus far, butno further, " and they would have obeyed Him; and all that cross, andagony, and the fierce faces of those furious Jews, would havevanished away like a hideous dream when one awakes. For they liedin their mockery. Any moment He might have been free, triumphant, again in His eternal bliss, but He would not. He Himself keptHimself on that cross till His Father's will was fulfilled, and thesacrifice was finished, and we were saved. And then at last, whenthere was no more human nobleness, no more agony left for Him tofulfil, no gem in the crown of holiness which He had not won as Hisown, no drop in the cup of misery which He had not drained as Hisown; when at last He was made perfect through suffering, and Hisstrength had been made perfect in weakness, then He bowed thatbleeding, thorn-crowned head, and said, "It is finished. Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit. " And so He died. 

How can our poor words, our poor deeds, thank Him? How mean andpaltry our deepest gratitude, our highest loyalty, when comparedwith Him to whom it is due--that adorable victim, that perfect sin-offering, who this day offered up Himself upon the altar of thecross, in the fire of His own boundless zeal for the kingdom of God, His Father, and of His boundless love for us, His sinful brothers!"Oh, thou blessed Jesus! Saviour, agonising for us! God Almighty, who did make Thyself weak for the love of us! oh, write that loveupon our hearts so deeply that neither pleasure nor sorrow, life nordeath, may wipe it away! Thou hast sacrificed Thyself for us, oh, give us the hearts to sacrifice ourselves for Thee! Thou art theVine, we are the branches. Let Thy priceless blood shed for us onthis day flow like life-giving sap through all our hearts and minds, and fill us with Thy righteousness, that we may be sacrifices fitfor Thee. Stir us up to offer to Thee, O Lord, our bodies, oursouls, our spirits, in all we love and all we learn, in all we planand all we do, to offer our labours, our pleasures, our sorrows, toThee; to work for Thy kingdom through them, to live as those who arenot their own, but bought with Thy blood, fed with Thy body; andenable us now, in Thy most holy Sacrament, to offer to Thee ourrepentance, our faith, our prayers, our praises, living, reasonable, and spiritual sacrifices, --Thine from our birth-hour, Thine now, andThine for ever!"

SERMON XVII. THE RESURRECTION

LUKE, xxiv. 6. 

"He is not here--He is risen"

We are assembled here to-day, my friends, to celebrate the joyfulmemory of our blessed Saviour's Resurrection. All Friday night, Saturday, and Saturday night, His body lay in the grave; His soulwas--where we cannot tell. St. Peter tells us that He went andpreached to the spirits in prison--the sinners of the old world, whoare kept in the place of departed souls--most likely in the depthsof the earth, in the great fire-kingdom, which boils and flamesmiles below our feet, and breaks out here and there through theearth's solid crust in burning mountains and streams of fire. Theresome say--and the Bible seems to say--sinful souls are kept inchains until the judgment-day; and thither they say Christ went topreach--no doubt to save some of those sinful souls who had neverheard of Him. However this may be, for those two nights and daythere was no sign, no stir in the grave where Christ was laid. Hisbody seemed dead--the stone lay still over the mouth of the tombwhere Joseph and Nicodemus laid him; the seal which Pilate had puton it was unbroken; the soldiers watched and watched, but no onestirred; the priests and Pharisees were keeping their sham Passover, thinking, no doubt, that they were well rid of Christ and of Hisrebukes for ever. 

But early on the Sunday morn--this day, as it might be--in the greydawn of morning there came a change--a wondrous change. There was agreat earthquake; the solid ground and rocks were stirred--the angelof the Lord came down from heaven, and rolled back the stone fromthe door, and sat upon it, waiting for the King of glory to arisefrom His slumber, and go forth the conqueror of Death. 

His countenance was like lightning, and His raiment white as snow;and for fear of Him those fierce, hard soldiers, who feared neitherGod nor man, shook, and became as dead men. And Christ arose andwent forth. How he rose--how he looked when he arose, no man cantell, for no man saw. Only before the sun was risen came MaryMagdalene, and the other Mary, and found the stone rolled away, andsaw the angels sitting, clothed in white, who said, "Fear not, for Iknow that ye seek Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here, for Heis risen. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. "

What must they have thought, poor, faithful souls, who came, lonelyand broken-hearted, to see the place where HE, their only hope, was, as they thought, shut up and lost for ever, to hear that He wasrisen and gone? Half terrified, half delighted, they went back withother women who had come on the same errand, with spices to anointthe blessed body, and told the apostles. Peter and John ran to thesepulchre, and saw the linen clothes lie, and the napkin that wasabout his blessed head, wrapped together by itself. They thenbelieved. Then first broke on them the meaning of His old saying, that He must rise from the dead; and so, wondering and doubting whatto do, they went back home. 

But Mary--faithful, humble Mary--stood without, by the sepulchre, weeping. The angels called to her, "Woman, why weepest thou?""They have taken away my Lord, " said she; "and I know not where theyhave laid him. "

Then, in a moment, out of the air, He appeared behind her. His bodyhad been changed; it was now a glorified, spiritual body, whichcould appear and disappear when and how he liked. She turned back, and saw Him standing, but she knew Him not. A wondrous change hadcome over Him since last she saw Him hanging, bleeding, pale, anddying, on the cross of shame. "Woman, " said He, "why weepest thou?"She, fancying it was the gardener, said to Him, "Sir, if thou hastborne Him hence, tell me where thou hast laid Him, and I will takeHim away. " Jesus said to her, "Mary. " At the sound of that belovedvoice--His own voice--calling by her name, her recollection cameback to her. She knew Him--knew Him for her risen Lord; and, falling at His feet, cried out, "My Master!"

So Jesus Christ, the Son of God, rose from the dead!

Now come the questions, WHY did Christ rise from the dead?--and HOWdid he rise? And, first, I will say a few words about how he rosefrom the dead. And this the Bible will answer for us, as it willevery thing else about the spirit-world. Christ, says the Bible, was put to death in the flesh; but quickened, that is, brought tolife, by the Spirit. Now what is the Spirit but the Lord and Giverof Life, --life of all sorts--life to the soul--life to the body--life to the trees and plants around us? With that Spirit Christ isfilled infinitely without measure; it is HIS Spirit. He is thePrince of Life; and the Spirit which gives life is His Spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son. THEREFORE the gates of hellcould not prevail against Him--THEREFORE the heavy grave-stone couldnot hold Him down--THEREFORE His flesh could not see corruption anddecay as other bodies do; not because His body was different fromother bodies in its substance, but because HE was filled, body andsoul, with the great Spirit of Life. For this is the great businessof the Spirit of God, in all nature, to bring life out of death--newgenerations out of old. What says David? "When Thou, O God, turnest away Thy face, things die and return again to the dust; whenThou lettest Thy breath (which is the same as Thy spirit) go forth, they are made, and Thou renewest the face of the earth. " This isthe way that seeds, instead of rotting and perishing, spring up andbecome new plants--God breathes His spirit on them. The seeds musthave heat, and damp, and darkness, and electricity, before they cansprout; but the heat, and damp, and darkness, do not make themsprout; they want something more to do that. A philosopher can findout exactly what a seed is made of, and he might make a seed of theproper materials, and put it in the ground, and electrify it--butwould it grow? Not it. To grow it must have life--life from thefountain of life--from God's Spirit. All the philosophers in theworld have never yet been able, among all the things which they havemade, to make a single living thing--and say they never shall;because, put together all they will, still one thing is wanting--LIFE, which God alone can give. Why do I say this? To shew youwhat God's Spirit is; to put you in mind that it is near you, aboveyou, and beneath you, about your path in your daily walk. And also, to explain to you how Christ rose by that Spirit, --how your bodies, if you claim your share in Christ's Spirit, may rise by it too. 

You can see now, how Christ, being filled with God's Spirit, rose ofHimself. People had risen from the dead before Christ's time, butthey had been either raised in answer to the prayers of holy men whohad God's Spirit, or at some peculiar time when heaven was opened, and God chose to alter His laws (as we call it) for a moment. 

But here was a Man who rose of Himself. He was raised by God, andtherefore He raised Himself, for He was God. 

You all know what life and power a man's own spirit will often givehim. You may have heard of "spirited" men in great danger, or"spirited" soldiers in battle; when faint, wounded, having sufferedenough, apparently, to kill them twice over, still struggling orfighting on, and doing the most desperate deeds to the last, fromthe strength and courage of their spirits conquering pain andweakness, and keeping off, for a time, death itself. We all knowhow madmen, diseased in their spirits, will, when the fit is onthem, have, for a few minutes, ten men's strength. Well, justthink, if a man's own spirit, when it is powerful, can give his bodysuch life and force, what must it have been with Christ, who wasfilled full of THE Spirit--God's Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life. The Lord could not HELP rising. All the disease, and poison, androttenness in the world, could not have made His body decay;mountains on mountains could not have kept it down. His body!--thePrince of Life!--He that was the life itself! It was impossiblethat death could hold Him. 

And does not this shew us WHY He rose, that we might rise with Him?What did He say about His own death? "Except a corn of wheat fallinto the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die it bringethforth much fruit. " He was the grain which fell into the ground anddied, and from His dead body sprung up another body--His glorifiedbody; and we His Church, His people, fed with that body--Hismembers, however strange it may sound--St. Paul said it, andtherefore I dare to say it, little as I know what it means--membersof His flesh and of His bones. 

But think! Remember what St. Paul tells you about this very matterin that glorious chapter which is read in the burial-service, "howwhen thou sowest seed, thou sowest not that body which it will have, but bare grain; but God gives it a body as it hath pleased Him, andto every seed its own body. " For the wheat-plant is in reality thesame thing as the wheat-seed, and its life the same life, differentas the outside of it may look. Dig it up just at this time of year, and you will find the seed-corn all gone, sucked dry; the life ofthe wheat-seed has formed it into a wheat-plant--yet it is the sameindividual thing. The substance of the seed has gone into the rootand the young blade; but it is the same individual substance. Youknow it is, and though you cannot tell why, yet you say "What a fineplant that seed has grown into, " because you feel it is so, that theseed is the very same thing as the plant which springs up from it, though its shape is changed, and its size, and its colour, and thevery stuff of which it was made is changed, since it was a mereseed. And yet it is at bottom the same individual thing as the seedwas, with a new body and shape. 

So with Christ's body. It was changed after He rose. It had gonethrough pain, and weakness, and death, gone down to the lowest depthof them, and conquered them, and passed triumphant through them andfar beyond their power. His body was now a nobler, a morebeautiful, a glorified body, a spiritual body, one which could dowhatever His Spirit chose to make it do, one which could never dieagain, one which could come through closed doors, appear and vanishas He liked, instead of being bound to walk the earth, and standcold and heat, sickness and weariness. 

Yet it was the very same body, just as the wheat-plant is the sameas the wheat-seed--the very same body. Every one knew His faceagain after His resurrection. There was the very print of the nailsto be seen in His hands and feet, the spear-wound in His blessedside. So shall it be with us, my friends. We shall rise again, andwe shall be the same as we are now, and yet not the same; our bodiesshall be the same bodies, and yet nobler, purer, spiritual bodies, which can know neither death, nor pain, nor weariness. Then, nevercare, my friends, if we drop like ripe grain into the bosom ofmother earth, --if we are to spring up again as seedling plants, after death's long winter, on the resurrection morn. Truly says thepoet, {2} how

 "Mother earth, she gathers allInto her bosom, great and small:Oh could we look into her face, We should not shrink from her embrace. "

No, indeed! for if we look steadily with the wise, searching eye offaith into the face of mother earth, we shall see how death is butthe gate of life, and this narrow churchyard, with its corpsesclose-packed underneath the sod, would not seem to us a frightfulcharnel-house of corruption. No! it would seem like what it is--ablessed, quiet, seed-filled God's garden, in which our forefathers, after their long-life labour, lay sown by God's friendly hand, waiting peaceful, one and all, to spring up into leaf, and flower, and everlasting paradise-fruit, beneath the breath of God's Spiritat the last great day, when the Sun of Righteousness arises inglory, and the summer begins which shall never end. 

One and all, did I say? Alas! would God it were so! We cannot hopeas for all, but they are dead and gone, and we are not here to judgethe dead. They have another Judge, and all shall be as He wills. 

But we--we in whose limbs the breath of life still boils--we who canstill work, let us never forget all grain ripens not. There is somefalls out of the ear unripe, and perishes; some is picked out bybirds; some withers and decays in the ear, and yet gets into thebarn with it, and is sown too with the wheat, of which I never heardthat any sprang up again--ploughed up again it may be--a withered, dead husk of chaff as it died, ploughed up to the resurrection ofdamnation to burn as chaff in unquenchable fire; but the good seedalone, ripe, and safe with the wheat-plant till it is ripe, thatonly will SPRING UP to the resurrection of eternal life. 

Now, consider again that parable of the wheat-plant. After it hassprung up, what does it next, but TILLER?--and every new shoot thattillers out bears its own ear, ripens its own grain, twenty, thirty, or forty stems, and yet they are all the same plant, living with thelife of that one original seed. So with Christ's Church--His bodythe Church. As soon as he rose, that new plant began to tiller. Hedid not keep His Spirit to Himself, but poured it out on theapostles, and from them it spread and spread--Each generation ofChristians ripening, and bearing fruit, and dying, a freshgeneration of fruit springing up from them, and so on, as we are nowat this day. And yet all these plants, these millions and millionsof Christian men and women, who have lived since Christ's blessedresurrection, all are parts of that one original seed, the body ofChrist, whose members they are, and all owe their life to that onespirit of Christ, which is in them all and through them all, as thelife of the original grain is in the whole crop which springs fromit. 

And what can you learn from this? Learn this, that in Christ youare safe, out of Christ you are lost. But REALLY in Christ, I mean--not like the dead and dying grains, mildewed and worm-eaten, whichyou find here and there on the finest wheat-plant. Their end is tobe burned, and so will ours be, for all our springing out ofChrist's root, if the angel reapers find us not good wheat, butchaff and mildew. Every branch in Christ which beareth not fruit, His heavenly Father taketh away. Therefore, never pride yourself onhaving been baptised into Christ, never pride yourself on shewingsome signs of God's Spirit, on being really good, right in this andright in that, --the question is, not so much, Are you IN CHRIST atall, are you part of His tree, a member of His body? but, Are youripening there? If you are not ripening, you are decaying, and yourend will be as God has said. And do you wish to know whether youare in Christ, safe, ripening? see whether you are like Him. If theyoung grain does not shew like the seed grain, you may be sure it ismaking no progress; and as surely as a wheat-plant never broughtforth rye, or a grape-tree thistles, so surely, if you are not likeChrist in your character, in patience, in meekness, in courage, truth, purity, piety, and love, you may be of His planting, but youare none of His ripening, and you will not be raised with Him at thelast day, to flower anew in the gardens of Paradise, world withoutend. 

SERMON XVIII. IMPROVEMENT

PSALM xcii. 12. 

"The righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree: he shall growlike the cedar in Lebanon. Those that be planted in the house ofthe Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall stillbring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing. "

The Bible is always telling Christian people to GO FORWARDS--togrow--to become wiser and stronger, better and better day by day;that they ought to become better, and better, because they can, ifthey choose, improve. This text tells us so; it says that we shallbring forth more fruit in our old age. Another text tells us that"those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength;" anothertells us that we "shall go from strength to strength. " Not one ofSt. Paul's Epistles but talks of growing in grace and in theknowledge of God, of being FILLED with God's Spirit, of having oureyes more and more open to understand God's truth. Not one of St. Paul's Epistles but contains prayers of St. Paul that the men towhom he writes may become holier and wiser. And St. Paul says thathe himself needed to go forward--that he wanted fresh strength--thathe had to forget what was past, and consider all he had done andfelt as nothing, and press forward to the prize of his high calling;that he needed to be daily conquering himself more and more, keepingdown his bad feelings, hunting out one bad habit after another, lest, by any means, when he had preached to others, he himselfshould become a castaway. Therefore, I said rightly, that the Bibleis always bidding us go forwards. You cannot read your Bibleswithout seeing this. What else was the use of St. Paul's Epistles?They were written to Christian men, redeemed men, converted men, most of them better I fear than ever we shall be; and for what? totell them not be content to remain as they were, to tell them to goforwards, to improve, to be sure that they were only just inside thegate of God's kingdom, and that if they would go on to perfection, they would find strength, and holiness, and blessing, and honour, and happiness, which they as yet did not dream of. "Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect, " said our blessedLord to all men. "Be ye perfect, " says St. Paul to the Corinthians, and the Ephesians, and all to whom he wrote; and so say I to you nowin God's name, for Christ's sake, as citizens of God's kingdom, asheirs of everlasting glory, "Be you perfect, even as your Father inheaven is perfect. "

Now I ask you, my friends, is not this reasonable? It isreasonable, for the Bible always speaks of our souls as livingthings. It compares them to limbs of a body, to branches of a tree, often to separate plants--as in our Lord's parable of the tares andthe wheat. Again, St. Paul tells us that we have been planted inbaptism in the likeness of Christ's death; and again, in the firstPsalm, which says that the good man shall be like a tree planted bythe waterside; and again, in the text of my sermon, which says "thatthose who are planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in thecourts of our God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age;they shall be fat and flourishing. "

Now what does all this mean? It means that the life of our souls isin some respects like the life of a plant; and, therefore, that asplants grow, so our souls are to grow. Why do you plant anything, but in order that it may GROW and become larger, stronger, bearflower and fruit? Be sure God has planted us in His garden, Christ's Church, for no other reason. Consider, again--What is lifebut a continual growing, or a continual decaying? If a tree doesnot get larger and stronger, year by year, is not that a sure signthat it is unhealthy, and that decay has begun in it, that it isunsound at heart? And what happens then? It begins to becomeweaker and smaller, and cankered and choked with scurf and moss tillit dies. If a tree is not growing, it is sure in the long run to bedying; and so are our souls. If they are not growing they aredying; if they are not getting better they are getting worse. Thisis why the Bible compares our souls to trees--not out of a merepretty fancy of poetry, but for a great, awful, deep, world-widelesson, that every tree in the fields may be a pattern, a warning, to us thoughtless men, that as that tree is meant to grow, so oursouls are meant to grow. As that tree dies unless it grows, so oursouls must die unless they grow. Consider that!

But how does a tree grow? How are our souls to grow? Now here, again, we shall understand heavenly things best by taking andconsidering the pattern from among earthly things which the Biblegives us--the tree, I mean. A tree grows in two ways. Its rootstake up food from the ground, its leaves take up food from the air. Its roots are its mouth, we may say, and its leaves are its lungs. Thus the tree draws nourishment from the earth beneath and from theheaven above; and so must our souls, my friends, if they are to liveand grow, they must have food both from earth and from heaven. Andthis is what I mean--Why has God given us senses, eyes, and ears, and understanding? That by them we may feed our souls with thingswhich we see and hear, things which are going on in the world roundus. We must read, and we must listen, and we must watch people andtheir sayings and doings, and what becomes of them, and we must tryand act, and practise what is right for ourselves; and so we shall, by using our eyes and ears and our bodies, get practice, andexperience, and knowledge, from the world round us--such as Solomongives us in his Proverbs--and so our eyes, and ears, andunderstandings, are to be to us like roots, by which we may feed oursouls with earthly learning and experience. But is this enough?No, surely. Consider, again, God's example which He has given us--atree. If you keep stripping all the leaves off a tree, as fast asthey grow, what becomes of it? It dies, because without leaves itcannot get nourishment from the air, and the rain, and the sunlight. Again, if you shut up a tree where it can get neither rain, air, norlight, what happens? the tree certainly dies, though it may beplanted in the very richest soil, and have the very strongest roots;and why? because it can get no food from the sky above. So with oursouls, my friends. If we get no food from above, our souls willdie, though we have all the wit, and learning, and experience, inthe world. We must be fed, and strengthened, and satisfied, withthe grace of God from above--with the Spirit of God. Consider howthe Bible speaks of God's Spirit as the breath of God; for the veryword SPIRIT means, originally, breath, or air, or gas, or a breezeof wind, shewing us that as without the airs of heaven the treewould become stunted and cankered, so our souls will without thefresh, purifying breath of God's Spirit. Again, God's Spirit isoften spoken of in Scripture as dew and rain. His grace or favour, we read, is as dew on the grass; and again, that God shall come untous as the rain, as the first and latter rain upon the earth; andagain, speaking of the outpourings of God's Spirit on His Church, the Psalmist says that "He shall come down as the rain upon the mowngrass, as showers that water the earth;" and to shew us that as thetree puts forth buds, and leaves, and tender wood, when it drinks inthe dew and rains, so our hearts will become tender, and bud outinto good thoughts and wise resolves, when God's Spirit fills themwith His grace. 

But again; the Scripture tells us again and again that our soulswant light from above; and we all know by experience that the treesand plants which grow on earth want the light of the sun to makethem grow. So, doubtless, here again the Scripture example of atree will hold good. Now what does the sunlight do for the tree?It does every thing, for without light, the soil, and air, and rain, are all useless. It stirs up the sap, it hardens the wood, itbrings out the blossom, it colours the leaves and the flowers, itripens the fruit. The light is the life of the tree;--and is therenot one, my friends, of whom these words are written--that He is theLife, and that He is the Light--that He is the Sun of Righteousnessand the bright and morning Star--that He is the light which lightethevery man that cometh into the world--that in Him was life, and thelife was the light of men? Do you not know of whom I speak? Evenof Him that was born at Bethlehem and died on the cross, who nowsits at God's right hand, praying for us, offering to us His bodyand His blood;--Jesus the Son of God, He is the Light and the Life. From Him alone our light must come, from Him alone our life mustcome, now and for ever. Oh, think seriously of this--and think, too, how a short time before He died on earth He spoke of Himself asthe Bread of life--the living Bread which comes down from heaven;how He declared to men, that unless they eat His flesh and drink Hisblood, they have no life in them. And, lastly, consider this, howthe same night that He was betrayed, He took bread, and when He hadgiven thanks, He brake it, and said, "Take, eat; this is my body, which is given for you; this do in remembrance of me. " And how, likewise, He took the cup, and when He had blessed it, He gave it tothem, saying, "Drink ye all of this, for this is the new covenant inmy blood, which is shed for you and for many, for the forgiveness ofsins; this do, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. " Oh, consider these words, my friends--to you all and every one they werespoken. "Drink ye ALL of this, " said the Blessed One; and will yourefuse to drink it? He offers you the bread of life, the sign andthe pledge of His body, which shall feed your souls with everlastingstrength and life; and will you refuse what the Son of God offersyou, what He bought for you with His death? God forbid, my friends!This is your blessed right and privilege--the right and theprivilege of every one of you--to come freely and boldly to thatholy table, and there to remember your Saviour. At that table toconfess your Saviour before men--at that table to shew that youreally believe that Jesus Christ died for you--at that table toclaim your share in the strength of His body, in the pardon of Hisblood, which cleanses from all sin--and at that table to receivewhat you claim, to receive at that table the wine, as a sign fromChrist Himself, that His blood has washed away your sins; and thebread, as a sign that His body and His spirit are really feedingyour spirits, that your souls are strengthened and refreshed by thebody and blood of Christ, as your bodies are with the bread andwine. I have shewn you that your souls must be fed from heaven, --that the Lord's Supper is a sign to you that they ARE fed fromheaven. You pray to God, I hope, many of you, that He would giveyou His Holy Spirit, that He would change, and renew, and strengthenyour souls--you pray God to do this, I hope--Well, then, there isthe answer to your prayers. There your souls WILL be renewed andstrengthened--there you will claim your share in Christ, who alonecan renew and strengthen them. The bread which is there broken isthe communion, the sharing, of the body of Christ; the cup which isthere blessed is the communion of the blood of Christ: to thatheavenly treat, to that spiritual food of your souls, Jesus Himselfinvites you, He who is the life of men. Do not let it be said atthe last day of any one of you, that when the Son of God Himselfinvites you, you would not come to Him that you might have life. 

SERMON XIX. MAN'S WORKING DAY

JOHN, xi. 9, 10. 

"Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any manwalk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light ofthis world. But if a man walk in the night he stumbleth, becausethere is no light in him. "

This was our blessed Lord's answer to His disciples when they saidto Him, "Master, the Jews of late tried to stone Thee, and goestThou among them again?" And "Jesus answered, Are there not twelvehours in the day? If any man walk in the day he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world. But if a man walk in thenight he stumbleth, because there is no light in him. "

Now, at first sight, one does not see what this has to do with thedisciples' question--it seems no answer at all to it. But we mustremember who it was who gave that answer. The Son of God, from whomall words come, who came to do good, and only good, every minute ofHis life. And, therefore, we may be sure that He never threw away asingle word. And we must remember, too, to whom He spoke--to Hisdisciples, whom He was training to be apostles to the whole world, teaching them in every thing some deep lesson, to fit them for theirglorious calling, as preachers of the good news of His coming. Sowe may be sure that He would never put off any question of theirs;we may be certain, that whatever they asked Him, He would give themthe best possible answer; not, perhaps, just the answer for whichthey wished, but the answer which would teach them most. ThereforeI say, we must believe that there is some deep, wonderful lesson inthis text--that it is the very best and fullest answer which ourLord could have made to His disciples when they asked Him why He wasgoing again to Judea, where He stood in danger of His life. 

Let us think a little about this text in faith, that is, sure thatthere is a deep, blessed meaning in it, if we can but find it out. Let us take it piece by piece; we shall never get to the bottom ofit, of course, but we may get deep enough into it to set us thinkinga little between now and next Sunday. 

"Are there not twelve hours in the day?" said our Lord. We knowthere are, and we know, too, that if any man walks in the day, andkeeps his eyes open, he does not stumble, because he has the lightof this world to guide him. Twelve hours for business, and twelvefor food, and sleep, and rest, is our rule for working men, or, indeed, not our rule, but God's. He has set the sun for the lightof this world, to rule the day, to settle for us how long we are towork. In this country days vary. In summer they are more thantwelve hours, and then men work early and late; but that is made upto us by winter, when the days are less than twelve hours, and menwork short time. In the very cold countries again, far away in thefrozen north, the sun never sets all the summer, and never rises allthe winter, and there is six months day and six months night. Wonderful! But even there God has fitted the land and men's livesto that strange climate, and they can gather in enough meat in thesummer to keep them all the winter, that they may be able to spendthe long six months' night of winter warm in their houses, sleepingand resting, with plenty of food. So that even to them there aretwelve hours in the day, though their hours are each a fortnightlong, --I mean a certain fixed time in which to walk, and do thebusiness which they have to do before the long frozen night comes, wherein no man can work, because the sun, the light of this world, is hid from them below the ice for six whole months. So that ourLord's words hold true of all men, even of those people in the icynorth. But in by far the most parts of the world, and especially inthe hot countries, where our Lord lived, there are twelve commonhours in every day, wherein men may and ought to work. 

Now what did our Lord mean by reminding His disciples of this, whichthey all knew already? He meant this, --that God His Father hadappointed Him a certain work to do, and a certain time to do it in;that though His day was short, only thirty-three years in all, whilewe have, many of us, seventy years given us, yet that there weretwelve hours in His day in which He must work--that God would takecare that He lived out His appointed time, provided He was ready andearnest in doing God's work in it--and that He MUST work in thattime which God had given Him, whatever came of it, and do Hisappointed work before the night of death came in which no man canwork. 

There was a heathen king once, named Philip of Macedon, and a verywise king he was, though he was a heathen, and one of the wisest ofhis plans was this:--he had a slave, whom he ordered to come in tohim every morning of his life, whatever he was doing, and say to himin a loud voice, "Philip, remember that thou must die!"

He was a heathen, but a great many who call themselves Christiansare not half so wise as he, for they take all possible care, not toremember that they must die, but to FORGET that they must die; andyet every living man has a servant who, like King Philip's, puts himin mind, whether he likes it or not, that his day will run out atlast, and his twelve hours of life be over, and then die he must. And who is that servant? A man's own body. Lucky if his body ishis servant, though--not his MASTER and his tyrant. But still, bethat as it may, every finger-ache that one's body has, every coughand cold one's body catches, ought to be to us a warning like KingPhilip's servant, "Remember that thou must die. " Every little painand illness is a warning, a kindly hint from our Father in heaven, that we are doomed to death; that we have but twelve hours in thisshort day of life, and that the twelve must end; and that we mustget our work done and our accounts settled, and be ready for ourlong journey, to meet our Father and our King, before the nightcomes wherein no man can work, but only takes his wages; for themwho have done good the wages of life eternal, and for them who havedone evil--God help them! we know what is written--"the wages of sinis death!"

Now, observe next, that those who walk in the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world, and those who walk in thenight stumble--they have no light in them. If they are to see, itmust be by the help of some light outside themselves, which is notpart of themselves, or belonging to themselves at all. We only seeby the light which God has made; when that is gone, our eyes areuseless. 

So it is with our souls. Our wits, however clever they may be, onlyunderstand things by the light which God throws on those things. Hemust explain and enlighten all things to us. Without His light--HisSpirit, all the wit in the world is as useless as a pair of eyes ina dark night. 

Now this earthly world which we do see is an exact picture andpattern of the spiritual, heavenly world which we do not see, asSolomon says in the Proverbs, "The things which are seen are thedoubles of the things which are not seen. " And as there is a lightfor us in this earth, which is NOT OURSELVES, namely the sun, sothere is a light for us in the spirit-world, which is NOT OURSELVES. And who is that? The blessed Lord shall answer for Himself. Hesays, "I am the light of the world;" and St. John bears witness toHim, "In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. " And doesnot St. Paul say the same thing, when he blessed God so often forhaving called him and his congregations out of darkness into thatmarvellous light? If you read his Epistles you will find what hemeant by the darkness, what he meant by the light. The darkness washeathendom, knowing nothing of Christ. The light was Christianity, knowing Christ the light; and, more, being IN the light, belongingto Christ--being joined to Him, as the leaves are to the tree, --living by trust in Christ, being taught and made true men and truewomen of, by the Noble and Holy Spirit of Christ--seeing their waythrough this world by trust in Christ and His promises, --That waslight. 

And there is no other light. If a man does not work trusting inChrist, whom God has set for the light of the world, he works in thenight, where God never set or meant him to work; and stumble hewill, and make a fool of himself, sooner or later, because he iswalking in the night, and sees nothing plainly or in a right view. For as our Lord says truly, "There is no light in him. " No light inhim? In one sense there is no light in any one, be he the wisest orholiest man who ever lived. But this is just what three people outof four will not believe. They will not believe that the Spirit ofGod gives man understanding. They fancy that they have light inthemselves. They try, conceitedly and godlessly, to walk by thelight of their own eyes--to make their own way plain before theirface for themselves. They will not believe old David, a man whoworked, and fought, and thought, and saw, far more than any one ofus will ever do, when he tells them again and again in his Psalms, that the Lord is his light, that the Lord must guide a man, andinform him with His eye, and teach him in the way in which he shouldgo. And, therefore, they will not pray to God for light--thereforethey will not look for light in God's Word, and in the writings ofgodly men; and they are like a man in the broad sunshine, who shouldchoose to shut his eyes close, and say, 'I have light enough in myown head to do without the sun;' and therefore they walk on still indarkness, and all the foundations of the earth are out of course, because men forget the first universal ground rules of common sense, and reason, and love, which God's Spirit teaches. I tell you, allthe mistakes that you ever made--that ever were made since Adamfell, came from this, that men will not ask God for light andwisdom; they love darkness rather than light, and therefore, thoughGod's light is ready for every man, shining in the darkness to shewevery man his way, yet the darkness will not comprehend it--will nottake it in, and let God change its blindness into day. 

Now, then, to gather all together, what better answer could our Lordhave given to His disciples' question than this, "Are there nottwelve hours in the day? If a man walk in the day he does notstumble, because he seeth the light of this world; but if a man walkin the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him. "

It was as if He had said, "However short my day of life may be, there are twelve hours in it, of my Father's numbering andmeasuring, not of mine. My times are in His hand, as long as Hepleases I shall live. He has given me a work to do, and He will seethat I live long enough to do it. Into His hands I commend myspirit, for, living or dying, He is with me. Though I walk throughthe valley of the shadow of death, He will be with me. He will keepme secretly in His tabernacle from the strife of tongues, and willturn the furiousness of my enemies to His glory; and as my day mystrength will be. And I have no fear of running into dangerneedlessly. I have prayed to Him daily and nightly for light, forHis Spirit--the spirit of wisdom and understanding, of prudence andcourage; and His word is pledged to keep me in all my ways, so thatI dash not my foot against a stone. Know ye not that I must beabout my Father's business? While I am about that I am safe. It isonly if I go about my own business--my own pleasure; if I forget toask Him for His light and guidance, that I shall put myself into thenight, and stumble and fall. "

Well, my friends, what is there in all this, which we may not say aswell as our Lord? In this, as in all things, Christ set Himself upas our pattern. Oh, believe it!--believe that your time--yourmeasure of life, is in God's hand. Believe that He is your light, that He will teach and guide you into all truth, and that all yourmistakes come from not asking counsel of Him in prayer, and thought, and reading of His Holy Bible. Believe His blessed promise that Hewill give His Holy Spirit to those who ask Him. Believe, too, thatHe has given you a work to do--prepared good works all ready for youto walk in. Be you labourer or gentleman, maid, wife, or widow, Godhas given you a work to do; there is good to be done lying all roundyou, ready for you. And the blessed Jesus who bought you, body andsoul, with His own blood, commands you to work for Him: "Whatsoeveryour hand finds to do, do it with all your might. "

"Work ye manful while ye may, Work for God in this your day;Night must stop you, rich or poor, Godly deeds alone endure. "

And then, whether you live or die, your Father's smile will be onyou, and His everlasting arms beneath you, and at your last hour youshall find that "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord, for theyrest from their labour, and their works do follow them. "

SERMON XX. ASSOCIATION

GALATIANS, vi. 2. 

"Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. "

If I were to ask you, my friends, why you were met together here to-day, you would tell me, I suppose, that you were come to church asmembers of a benefit club; and quite right you are in coming here assuch, and God grant that we may meet together here on this sameerrand many more Whit-mondays. But this would be no answer to myquestion; I wish to know why you come to church to-day sooner thanto any other place? what has the church to do with the benefit club?Now this is a question which I do not think all of you could answervery readily, and therefore I wish to make you, especially theyounger members of the club, think a little seriously about themeaning of your coming here to-day. You will be none the lesscheerful this evening for having had some deep and godly thoughts inyour heads this morning. 

Now these benefit clubs are also called provident societies, and avery good name for them. You become members of them, because youare prudent, or provident, that is, because you are careful, andlook forward to a rainy day. But why does not each of you lay uphis savings for himself, instead of putting them into a commonpurse, and so forming a club? Because you have found out, whatevery one else in the world, but madmen, ought to have found out, that two are better than one; that if a great many men join togetherin any matter, they are a great deal stronger when working together, than if they each worked just as hard, but each by himself; that theway to be safe is not to stand each of you alone, but to help eachother; in short, that there is no getting on without bearing oneanother's burdens. 

Now this plan of bearing one another's burdens is not only good inbenefit clubs--it is good in families, in parishes, in nations, inthe church of God, which is the elect of all mankind. Unless menhold together, and help each other, there is no safety for them. 

Let us consider what there is bearing on this matter of prudence, that makes one of the greatest differences between a man and a brutebeast. It is not that the man is prudent, and the beast is not. Many beasts have forethought enough; the very sleepmouse hoards upacorns against the winter; a fox will hide the game he cannot eat. No, the great difference between man and beast is, that the beasthas forethought only for himself, but the man has forethought forothers also; beasts have not reason enough to bear each others'burdens, as men have. And what is it that makes us call the ant andthe bee the wisest of animals, except that they do, in some degree, behave like men, in helping one another, and having some sort offamily feeling, and society, and government among them, by whichthey can help bear each other's burdens? So that we all confess, bycalling them wise, how wise it is to help each other. Consider afamily, again. In order that a family may be happy and prosperous, all the members of it must bear each other's burdens. If the fatheronly thought of himself, and the mother of herself, and each of thechildren did nothing but take care of themselves, would not thatfamily come to misery and ruin? But if they all helped each other--all thought of each other more than of themselves--all were ready togive up their own comfort to make each other comfortable, thatfamily would be peaceful and prosperous, and would be doing a greatdeal towards fulfilling the law of Christ. 

It is just the same in a parish. If the rich help and defend thepoor, and the poor respect and love the rich, and are ready to servethem as far as they can, --in short, if all ranks bear each other'sburdens, that parish is a happy one, and if they do not, it is amiserable one. 

Just the same with a nation. If the king only cares about makinghimself strong, and the noblemen and gentlemen about their rank andriches, and the poor people, again, only care for themselves, andare trying to pull down the rich, and so get what they can forthemselves, --if a country is in this state, what can be morewretched? Neither a house, nor a country, divided against itself, can ever stand. But if the king and the nobles give their wholeminds to making good laws, and seeing justice done to all, andworkmen fairly paid, and if the poor, in their turns, are loyal, andready to fight and work for their king and their nobles, then willnot that country be a happy and a great country? Surely it will, because its people, instead of caring every man for himself only, help each other and bear one another's burdens. 

And just in the same way with Christ's Church, with the company oftrue Christian men. If the clergymen thought only of themselves, and neglected the people, and forgot to labour among them, and prayfor them, and preach to them; and if the people each cared forhimself, and never prayed to God to give them a spirit of love andcharity, and never helped their neighbours, or did unto others asthey wished to be done by; and above all, if Christ, our Head, leftHis Church, and cared no more about us, what would become ofChrist's Church? What would happen to the whole race of sinful man, but misery in this world, and ruin in the next? But if the peoplelove and help each other, and obey their ministers, and pray forthem; and if the ministers labour earnestly after the souls andbodies of their people; and Christ in heaven helps both minister andpeople with His Spirit, and His providence and protection; in short, if all in the whole Church bear each other's burdens, then Christ'sChurch will stand, and the gates of hell will not prevail againstit. 

Thus you see that this text of bearing one another's burdens is nonew or strange commandment, but the very state in which every man ismeant to live, both in his family, his parish, his country, and hisChurch--all his life helping others, and being helped by them inturn. And because families and nations, and the Church of Christabove all, are good, and holy, and beautiful, therefore any societywhich is formed upon the same plan--I mean of helping each other--must be good also. And, therefore, benefit societies are right andreasonable things, and among all the good which they do they do thisone great good, that they teach men to remember that there is no usetrying to stand alone, but that the way to be safe and happy is tobear each other's burdens. 

Thus benefit societies are patterns of Christ's Church. But now, myfriends, there is another point for each of you to consider, whichis this--the benefit club is a good thing, but are you a good memberof the club? Do you do your duty, each of you, in the club asChristian men should?

I do not ask whether you pay your subscriptions regularly or not--that is quite right and necessary, but there is something more thanthat wanted to make a club go on rightly. Mere paying and receivingmoney will never keep men together any more than any other outwardbusiness. A man may pay his club-money regularly and yet not be areally good member. And how is this? You remember that I tried toshew you that a family, and a nation, and a church, all were kepttogether by the same principle of bearing one another's burdens, just as a benefit club is. Now, what makes a man a good member ofChrist's Church, --a good Christian, in short? A man may pay histithes to the rector, and his church-rates to repair God's house, and his poor-rates to maintain God's poor, all very regularly, andyet be a very bad member of Christ's Church. These payments are allright and good; but they are but the outside, the letter of what Godrequires of him. What is wanted is, to serve God in the SPIRIT, tohave the spirit--THE WILL, of a Christian in him; that is, to do allthese things for GOD'S sake--not of constraint, but willingly--"notgrudgingly, for God loveth a cheerful giver. " No! If a man is areally good member of Christ's Church, he lives a life of faith inJesus Christ, and of thankfulness to Him for His infinite love andmercy in coming down to die for us, and thus the love of God and manis shed abroad in his heart by God's Spirit, which is given to him. Therefore, that man thinks it an honour to pay church-rates, and sohelp towards keeping God's house in repair and neatness. He payshis tithes cheerfully, because he loves God's ministers, and feelstheir use and worth to him. He pays his poor-rates with a willingmind, for the sake of that God who has said, "that he who gives tothe poor lends to the Lord. " And so he obeys not only the letterbut the spirit of the law. 

But the man does more than this. Besides obeying not only theletter but the spirit of the law, he helps his brethren in athousand other ways. He shews, in short, by every action that hebelieves in God and loves his neighbour. 

And why should it not be just the same in a benefit club? There thegood member is NOT the man who pays his money merely to have a claimfor relief when he himself is sick, and yet grudges every farthingthat goes to help other members. That man is not a good member. Hehas come into the club merely to take care of himself, and not tobear others' burdens. He may obey the letter of the club-rules bypaying in his subscriptions and by granting relief to sick members, but he does not obey the spirit of them. If he did, he would beglad to bear his sick neighbour's burden with so little trouble tohimself. He would, therefore, grant club relief willingly andcheerfully when it was wanted, --ay, he would thank God that he hadan opportunity of helping his neighbours. He would feel that allthe members of the society were his brothers in a double sense;first, because they had joined with him to help and support eachother in the society; and, next, that they were his brothers inChrist, who had been baptised into the same Church of God withhimself. And he would, therefore, delight in supporting them intheir sickness, and honouring them when they died, and in helpingtheir widows and orphans in their affliction; in short, in bearinghis neighbour's burdens, and so fulfilling the law of Christ. Anddo you not see, that if any of you subscribe to this benefit societyin such a spirit as this, that they are the men to give an answer tothe question I asked at first, "Why are you all here at church to-day?" They come here for the same reason that you all ought tocome, to thank God for having kept them well, and out of the want ofrelief for the past year, and to thank Him, too, for having enabledthem to bear their sick neighbours' burdens. And they come, also, to pray to God to keep them well and strong for the year to come, and to raise up those members who are in sickness and distress, thatthey may all worship God here together another year, as a company offaithful friends, helping each other on through this life, and allon the way to the same heavenly home, where there will be no morepoverty, nor sorrow, nor sickness, nor death, and God shall wipeaway tears from all widows and orphans' eyes. 

And now, my friends, I have tried to put some new and true thoughtsinto your head about your club and your business in this church to-day. And I pray, God grant that you may remember them, and think ofthis whole matter as a much more solemn and holy one than you everdid before. 

SERMON XXI. HEAVEN ON EARTH

1 COR. X. 31. 

"Whether ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the gloryof God. "

This is a command from God, my friends, which well worth a fewminutes' consideration this day;--well worth considering, because, though it was spoken eighteen hundred years ago, yet God has notchanged since that time;--He is just as glorious as ever; andChristian men's relation to God has not changed since that time;they still live, and move, and have their being in God; they arestill His children--His beloved; Christ, who died for us, is stillour King; God's Spirit is still with us, God's mercy still saves us:we owe God as much as any people ever did. If it was ever any one'sduty to shew forth God's glory, surely it is our duty too. 

Worth considering, indeed, is this command, for though it is in theBible, and has been there for eighteen hundred years, it is seldomread, seldomer understood, and still more seldom put into practice. Men eat and drink, and do all manner of things, with all their mightand main; but how many of them do they do to the glory of God? No;this is the fault--the especial curse of our day, that religion doesnot mean any longer, as it used, the service of God--the being likeGod, and shewing forth God's glory. No; religion means, nowadays, the art of getting to heaven when we die, and saving our ownmiserable, worthless souls, and getting God's wages without doingGod's work--as if that was godliness, --as if that was any thing butselfishness; as if selfishness was any the better for beingeverlasting selfishness! If selfishness is evil, my friends, thesooner we get rid of it the better, instead of mixing it up as we dowith all our thoughts of heaven, and making our own enjoyment andour own safety the vile root of our hopes for all eternity. Andtherefore it is that people have forgotten what God's glory is. They seem to think, that God's highest glory is saving them fromhell-fire. And they talk not of God and of the wondrous majesty ofGod, but only of the wonder of God's having saved them--looking atthemselves all the time, and not at God. We must get rid of thissort of religion, my friends, at all risks, in order to get rid ofall sorts of irreligion, for one is the father of the other. 

It is a wonder, indeed, that we are saved from hell, much moreraised to heaven, such peevish, cowardly, pitiful creatures as thebest of us are: and yet the more we think of it, the less wonder weshall find it. The more we think of the wonder of all wonders, --GodHimself, His majesty, His power, His wisdom, His love, His pity, Hisinfinite condescension, the less reason we shall have to besurprised that He has stooped to save us. Yes, do not be startled--for it is true, that He has done for sinful men nothing contrary toHimself, but just what was to be expected from such unutterablecondescension, and pity, and generosity, as God's is. And sorecollecting this, we shall begin to forget ourselves, and look atGod; and in thinking of Him we shall get beyond mere wondering atHim, and rise to something higher--to worshipping Him. 

Yes, my friends, this is what we must try at if we would be reallygodly--to find out what God is--to find out His likeness, Hischaracter, as He is: and has He not shewn us what He is? He whohas earnestly read Christ's story--he who has understood, andadmired, and loved Christ's character, and its nobleness and beauty--he who can believe that Jesus Christ is now, at this minute, raising up his heart to good, guiding his thoughts to good, he hasseen God; for he has seen the Son, who is the exact likeness of theFather's glory, in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead in abodily shape. Remember, he who knows Christ knows God, --and thatknowledge will help us up a noble step farther--it will help us toshew forth God's glory. For when we once know what God's glory is, we shall see how to make others know it too. We shall know how toDO GOD JUSTICE, to set men right as to their notions of God, to givethem, at all events, in our own lives and characters, a pattern ofChrist, who is the Pattern of God; and whatsoever we do we shall beable to do all to God's glory. 

For what is doing every thing to the glory of God? It is this;--wehave seen what God's glory is: He is His own glory. As you say ofany very excellent man, you have but to know him to honour him; orof any very beautiful woman, you have but to see her to love her; soI say of God, men have but to see and know Him to love and honourHim. 

Well, then, my friends, if we call ourselves Christian men, if webelieve that God is our Father, and delight, as on the grounds ofcommon feeling we ought, to honour our Father, we should try to makeevery one honour Him as He deserves. In short, whatever we do weshould make it tend to His glory--make it a lesson to ourneighbours, our friends, and our families. We should preach God'sglory to them day by day, not by WORDS only, often not by words atall, but by our conduct. Ay, there is the secret. --If you wishother men to believe a thing, just behave as if you believed ityourself. Nothing is so infectious as example. If you wish yourneighbours to see what Jesus Christ is like, let them see what Hecan make YOU like. If you wish them to know how God's love is readyto save them from their sins, let them see His love save YOU fromYOUR sins. If you wish them to see God's tender care in everyblessing and every sorrow they have, why let them see you thankingGod for every sorrow and every blessing you have. I tell you, friends, example is every thing. One good man, --one man who doesnot put his religion on once a-week with his Sunday coat, but wearsit for his working dress, and lets the thought of God grow into him, and through and through him, till every thing he says and doesbecomes religious, that man is worth a ton of sermons--he is aliving Gospel--he comes in the spirit and power of Elias--he is theimage of God. And men see his good works, and admire them in spiteof themselves, and see that they are Godlike, and that God's graceis no dream, but that the Holy Spirit is still among men, and thatall nobleness and manliness is His gift, His stamp, His picture; andso they get a glimpse of God again in His saints and heroes, andglorify their Father who is in heaven. 

Would not such a life be a heavenly life? Ay, it would be more, itwould be heaven--heaven on earth: not in versemongering cant, butreally. We should then be sitting, as St. Paul tells us, inheavenly places with Jesus Christ, and having our conversation inheaven. All the while we were doing our daily work, following ourbusiness, or serving our country, or sitting at our own firesideswith wife and child, we should be all that time in heaven. Why not?we are in heaven now--if we had but faith to see it. Oh, get rid ofthose carnal, heathen notions about heaven, which tempt men to fancythat, after having misused this place--God's earth--for a wholelife, they are to fly away when they die, like swallows in autumn, to another place--they know not where--where they are to be veryhappy--they know not why or how, nor do I know either. Heaven isnot a mere PLACE, my friends. All places are heaven, if you will beheavenly in them. Heaven is where God is and Christ is. And hellis where God is not and Christ is not. The Bible says, no doubt, there is a place now--somewhere beyond the skies--where Christespecially shews forth His glory--a heaven of heavens: and forreasons which I cannot explain, there must be such a place. But, atall events, here is heaven; for Christ is here and God is here, ifwe will open our eyes and see them. And how?--How? Did not ChristHimself say, 'If a man will love Me, My Father will love him; andwe, My Father and I, will come to him, and make our abode with him, and we will shew ourselves to him?' Do those words mean nothing orsomething? If they have any meaning, do they not mean this, that inthis life, we can see God--in this life we can have God and Christabiding with us? And is not that heaven? Yes, heaven is where Godis. You are in heaven if God is with you, you are in hell if God isnot with you; for where God is not, darkness and a devil are sure tobe. 

There was a great poet once--Dante by name--who described most trulyand wonderfully, in his own way, heaven and hell, for, indeed, hehad been in both. He had known sin and shame, and doubt anddarkness and despair, which is hell. And after long years ofmisery, he had got to know love and hope, and holiness andnobleness, and the love of Christ and the peace of God, which isheaven. And so well did he speak of them, that the ignorant peopleused to point after him with awe in the streets, and whisper, Thereis the man who has been in hell. Whereon some one made these lineson him:--

"Thou hast seen hell and heaven? Why not? since heaven and hellWithin the struggling soul of every mortal dwell. "

Think of that!--thou--and thou--and thou!--for in thee, at thismoment, is either heaven or hell: and which of them? Ask thyself--ask thyself, friend. If thou art not in heaven in this life, thouwilt never be in heaven in the life to come. At death, says thewise man, each thing returns into its own element, into the groundof its life; the light into the light, and the darkness into thedarkness. As the tree falls so it lies. My friends, who callyourselves enlightened Christian folk, do you suppose that you canlead a mean, worldly, covetous, spiteful life here, and then themoment your soul leaves the body that you are to be changed into thevery opposite character, into angels and saints, as fairy tales tellof beasts changed into men? If a beast can be changed into a man, then death can change the sinner into a saint, --but not else. If abeast would enjoy being a man, then a sinner would enjoy being inheaven, but not else. A sinful, worldly man enjoy being in heaven?Does a fish enjoy being on dry land? The sinner would long to beback in this world again. Why, what is the employment of spirits inheaven, according to the Bible (for that is the point to which Ihave been trying to lead you round again)? What but glorifying God?Not TRYING only to do every thing to God's glory, but actuallysucceeding in DOING it--basking in the sunshine of His smile, delighting to feel themselves as nothing before His gloriousmajesty, meditating on the beauty of His love, filling themselveswith the sight of His power, searching out the treasures of Hiswisdom, and finding God in all and all in God--their whole eternityone act of worship, one hymn of praise. Are there not some among uswho will have had but little practice at that work? Those who havedone nothing for God's glory here, how do they expect to be able todo every thing for God's glory hereafter? (Those who will not takethe trouble of merely standing up at the psalms, like the rest oftheir neighbours, even if they cannot sing with their voices God'spraises in this church, how will they like singing God's praisesthrough eternity?) No; be sure that the only people who will be fitfor heaven, who will like heaven even, are those who have been inheaven in this life, --the only people who will be able to do everything to God's glory in the new heavens and new earth, are those whohave been trying honestly to do all to His glory in this heaven andthis earth. 

Think over, in the meantime, what I have said this day; consider it, and you will have enough to think of, and pray over too, till wemeet here again. 

SERMON XXII. NATIONAL PRIVILEGES

LUKE, x. 23. 

"Blessed are the eyes which see the things which ye see: for I tellyou, that many prophets and kings have desired to see those thingswhich ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things whichye hear, and have not heard them. "

This is a noble text, my friends--and yet an awful one, for if itdoes not increase our religion, it will certainly increase ourcondemnation. It tells us that we, even the meanest among us, aremore favoured by God than the kings, and judges, and conquerors ofthe old world, of whom we read this afternoon in the first lesson;that we have more light and knowledge of God than even the prophetsDavid, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, to whom God's glory appearedin visible shape. It tells us that we see things which they longedto see, and could not; that words are spoken to us for which theirears longed in vain; that they, though they died in hope, yetreceived not the promises, God having provided some better thingsfor us, that they without us should not be made perfect. 

Now, what was this which they longed for, and had not, and yet wehave? It was this, --a Saviour and a Saviour's kingdom. All wiseand holy hearts for ages--as well heathens as Jews--had had thislonging. They wanted a Saviour, --one who should free them from sinand conquer evil, --one who should explain to them all the doubt andcontradiction and misery of the world, and give them some means ofbeing freed from it, --one who should set them the perfect pattern ofwhat a man should be, and join earth and heaven, and make godlinesspart of man's daily life. They longed for a Saviour, and for aheavenly kingdom also. They saw that all the laws in the worldcould never make men good; that one half of men broke them, and theother half only obeyed them unwillingly through slavish fear, lovingthe sin they dared not do. That men got worse and worse as timerolled on. That kings, instead of being shepherds of their people, were only wolves and tyrants to keep them in ignorance and misery. That priests only taught the people lies, and fattened themselves attheir expense. That, in short, as David said, men would not learn, or understand, and all the foundations of the earth, the grounds andprinciples of society, politics and religion, were out of course, and the devil very truly the king of this lower world; so theylonged for a heavenly kingdom--a kingdom of God, one in which menshould obey God for love, and not for fear, and man for God's sake;a spiritual kingdom--a kingdom whose laws should be written in men'shearts and spirits, and be their delight and glory, not their dread. They longed for a King of kings, who should teach all kings andmagistrates to rule in love and wisdom. They longed for a High-priest, who should teach all priests to explain the wonder and theglory that there is in every living man, and in heaven and earth, and all that therein lies, and lead men's hearts into love, andpurity, and noble thoughts and deeds. They longed, in short, for akingdom of God, a golden age, a regeneration of the world, as theycalled it, and rightly. Of course, the Jewish prophets saw mostclearly how this would be brought about, and how utterly necessary aSaviour and His kingdom was to save mankind from utter ruin. They, I say, saw this best. But still all the wise and pious heathens, each according to his measure of light, saw the same necessity, orelse were restless and miserable, because they could not see it. Sothat in all ages of the world, in a thousand different shapes, therewas rising up to heaven a mournful, earnest prayer, --"Thy kingdomcome!"

And now this kingdom is come, and the King of it, the Saviour ofmen, is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Long men prayed, and long menwaited, and at last, in the fulness of God's good time, just whenthe night seemed darkest, and under the abominations of the RomanEmpire, religion, honesty, and common decency, seemed to have diedout, the Sun of Righteousness rose on the dead and rotten world, tobring life and immortality to light. God sent forth His Son made ofa woman, not to condemn the world, but that the world, through Him, might be saved. He sent Him to be our Saviour, to die on the crossfor our sins and our children's, that all our guilt might be washedaway, and we might come boldly to the throne of grace, with ourhearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed inthe waters of baptism. He sent Him to be our Teacher in the perfectlaw of love, our pattern in every thing which a man should be, andis not. He sent Him to conquer death by rising from the dead, thatHe might have power to raise us also to life and immortality. Hesent Him to fill men with His Spirit, the Spirit of reason andtruth, the Spirit of love and courage, that he might know the willof God, and do it as our Saviour did before us. He sent Him tofound a Church, to join all men into one brotherhood, one kingdom ofGod, whose rulers are kings and parliaments, whose ministers are theclergy, whose prophets are all poets and philosophers, authors andpreachers, who are true to their own calling; whose signs and tokensare the sacraments; a kingdom which should never be moved, butshould go on for ever, drawing into all honest and true hearts, andpreserving them ever for Christ their Lord. 

And that we might not doubt that we, too, belonged to this kingdom, He has placed in this land His ministers and teachers, Christ'ssacraments, Christ's churches in every parish in the land, Christ'sBible, or the means of attaining the Bible, in every house and everycottage; that from our cradle to our grave we might see that webelonged, as sworn servants and faithful children, to the greatFather in heaven and Jesus Christ, the King of the earth. 

Thus, my friends, all that all men have longed for we possess; wewant no more, and we shall have no more. If, under the presentstate of things, we cannot be holy, we shall never be holy. If wecannot use our right in this kingdom of Christ, how can we becomecitizens of God's everlasting kingdom, when Christ shall havedelivered up the dominion to His Father, and God shall be all inall? God has done all for us that God will do. He has given us HisSon for a Saviour, and a Church in which and by which to worshipthat Saviour; and what more would we have? Alas! my friends, havewe yet used fairly what God has given us? and if not, how terriblewill be our guilt! "How shall we escape if we neglect so greatsalvation?" And yet how many do neglect--how few live as if theywere citizens of Christ's kingdom! It seems as if God had been toogood to us, and heaped us so heavily with blessings, that we weretired of them, and despised them as common things. Common things?They are the very things, as I said, which the great and the wise inall ages have longed for and prayed for, and yet never found!Surely, surely, God may well say to us, "What could have been doneunto my vineyard which has not been done to it?" What, indeed? Iwish I could take some of you into a heathen country for a singleweek, that you might see what it is not to know of a Saviour--not tobe members of His Church, as we are. Why, we here in England are inthe very garden of the Lord. We have but to stretch out our hand tothe tree of life, and eat and live for ever. From our cradle to ourgrave, Christ the King is ready to guide, to teach, to comfort, todeliver us. When we are born, we are christened in His name, mademembers of Christ, children of God, and inheritors by hope of thekingdom of heaven. Is that nothing? It is, alas! nothing in theeyes of most parents! As we grow older, are we not taught who weare--taught call God our Father--taught about Jesus Christ, who Heis, and what He is? Is that, too, nothing? Alas! that knowledge isgenerally a mere meaningless school-lesson, cared for neither bychild nor by man. At confirmation, again, we solemnly declare thatwe belong to Christ's kingdom, and that we will live as Hissubjects, and His alone. And we are brought to His bishops, to bereceived as free, reasonable, Christian people, to claim ourcitizenship in the kingdom of God. Is that nothing? Yet that, too, is nothing with three-fourths of us. Nothing? Hear me, youngpeople--as I have often told you--you are ready enough to excuseyourselves from your confirmation vows, by saying you were nottaught to understand them--were not taught how to put them intopractice. That may be true, or it may not; your sin is just thesame. No one with any common honesty or common sense could answeras you have to the bishop's questions at confirmation, withoutknowing that you did make a promise, and knowing well enough whatyou promised--and you who carried to confirmation a careless heartand a lying tongue, have only yourselves to blame for it!--But toproceed. Is not Christ present, or ready to be present, with us?Sunday after Sunday, for years, have not the churches been openedall around us, inviting us to enter and worship Christ, knowing thatwhere two or three are gathered together, there is Christ in themidst of them. Is that nothing? This Creed--these Lessons--theseprayers, which Sunday after Sunday you have used;--are they nothing?Are they not all proofs that the kingdom of God is come to you, andmeans whereby you can behave like children of the kingdom? And noton Sundays alone. Have we not been taught daily, in our own houses, in our own hearts, in all danger, and trouble, and temptation, topray to Jesus Christ, our King, knowing that He will hear and saveall them that put their trust in Him?

Is that nothing? On our happy marriage morn, too, was it not inGod's house, before Christ's minister, in Christ's name, that wewere married? Surely the kingdom of God is come to us, when ourwedlock, as well as our souls and bodies, is holy to the Lord. Isthat nothing? How few think of their marriage-joys as holy things--an ordinance of Christ's kingdom, which He delights in and blesseswith His presence and His special smile, seeing that it is thenoblest and the purest of all things on earth--the picture of thegreat mystery which shall be the bridal of all bridals, the marriageof Christ and His Church! People do not, nowadays, believe inmarriage as a part of their religion; and so, according to theirwant of faith it happens to them; their marriage is not holy, andthe love and joy of their youth wither into a peevish, careless, lonely old age;--and yet over their heads these words were said, "They are man and wife together, in the Name of the Father, and ofthe Son, and of the Holy Ghost!" comes of not believing in Christ'spresence and Christ's favour; of not believing, in short, in whatthe Creed truly calls the Holy Catholic Church. Neither after thatdoes Christ leave us. Every time a woman is churched, is not thatmeant to be a sign of thankfulness to Christ, the great Physician, to whom she owes her life and health once more? Then, season afterseason, is the sacrament of Christ's body and blood offered you. Isthat no sign that Christ is here among us? Ah! blessed are the eyeswhich see that--blessed are the ears which hear those words, "Take, eat; this is My body which is given for you. " Truly, if thathonour--that blessing--is so vast, the love and the condescension ofChrist, the Lamb of God, so unutterable, that prophets and kings, whatever they believed, never could have desired, never could haveimagined, that the Son of God should offer to the sons of men, yearafter year, in their little parish churches, His most precious body, His most precious blood. And another thing, too, those prophets andkings would never have imagined, --that when Christ, in thosechurches, offers His body and His blood, nine-tenths of thecongregation, calling themselves Christians, should quietly walkout, and go home, and leave the sacraments of Christ's body andChrist's blood behind as a useless and unnecessary matter! That, indeed, the old prophets and kings never saw, and never expected tosee--but so it is. Christ is among us, and our eyes are holden, andwe know Him not. 

And then at last, after all these blessed privileges, these tokensof God's kingdom have been neglected through a long life, doesChrist neglect us in the hour of death? Ah, no! He is at thegrave, as He was at the font, at the marriage-bed, at His own holytable in God's house; and the body is laid in the ground by Christ'sminister, in the certain hope of a joyful resurrection. But what--asure and certain hope for each and all? The resurrection is ajoyful hope--but is it so for all? Only, too often, a faint, dimlonging that clings to the last chance, and dares not confess toitself how hopeless must be the death of that man or woman whoselife was spent in the kingdom of God, in the midst of blessingswhich kings said prophets desired in vain to see, and yet whoneglected them all, never entered into the spirit of them--neverloved them--never lived according to them, but despised and trampledunder foot the kingdom of God from their childhood to their grave, as three-fourths of us do. Christ came to judge no man, andtherefore Christ's ministers judge no man, and read the Christianfuneral service over all, and pray Christ to be there, and toremember His blessed promise of raising up the body and soul toeverlasting life. But how can they help fearing that Christ willnot hear them--that after all His offers and gifts in this life havebeen despised, He will give nothing after death but death; and thatit were better for the sinful, worldly sham Christian, when lying inhis coffin, if he had never been born? How can those escape whoneglect such great salvation?

Ah, my friends--my friends, take this to heart! Blessed, indeed, are the eyes which see what you see, and hear what you hear;prophets and kings have desired to see and hear them, and have notseen or heard! But if you, cradled among all these despised honoursand means of grace, bring forth no fruit in your lives--shut outfrom yourselves the thought of your high calling in Jesus Christ;what shall be your end but ruin? He that despises Christ, Christwill despise him; and say not to yourselves, as many do, We arechurch-goers--we are all safe. I say to you, God is able, fromamong the Negro and the wild Irishman--ay, God is able of thesestones to raise up children to the Church of England, while those ofyou, the children of the kingdom, who lived in the Church of yourfathers, and never used or loved her, or Christ, her King, shall becast into outer darkness, where there shall be weeping and gnashingof teeth. 

SERMON XXIII. LENTEN THOUGHTS

HAGGAI, i. 5. 

"Now, therefore, thus saith the Lord of Hosts, consider your ways. "

Next Wednesday is Ash-Wednesday, the first day of Lent, the seasonwhich our forefathers have appointed for us to consider and mend ourways, and return, year by year, heart and soul to that Lord andHeavenly Father from whom we are daily wandering. Now, we all knowthat we ought to have repented long ago; we all know that, sinningin many things daily, as we do, we ought all to repent daily. Butthat is not enough; we do want, unless we are wonderfully betterthan the holy men of old, --we do want, I say, a particular time inwhich we may sit down deliberately and look our own souls steadilyin the face, and cast up our accounts with God, and be thoroughlyashamed and terrified at those accounts when we find, as we shall, that we cannot answer God one thing in a thousand. It is all verywell to say, I confess and repent of my sins daily, why should I doit especially in Lent? Very true--Let us see, then, by your alteredlife and conduct that you have repented during this Lent, and thenit will be time to talk of repenting every day after Lent. But, infact, a man might just as well argue, I say my prayers every day, and God hears them, why should I say them more on Sundays than anyother day? Why? not only because your forefathers, and the Churchof your forefathers, have advised you, which, though not animperative reason, is still a strong one, surely, but because thething is good, and reasonable, and right in itself. Because, asthey found in their own case, and as you may find in yours, if youwill but think, the hurry and bustle of business is daily puttingrepentance and self-examination out of our heads. A man may thinkmuch, and pray much, thank God, in the very midst of his busiestwork, but he is apt to be hurried; he has not set his thoughtsespecially on the matters of his soul, and so the soul's work is notthoroughly done. Much for which he ought to pray he forgets to prayfor. Many sins and feelings of which he ought to repent slip pasthim out of sight in the hurry of life. Much good that might be doneis put off and laid by, often till it is too late. But now here isa regular season in which we may look back and say to ourselves, 'How have I been getting on for this twelvemonth, not in pocket, butin character? not in the appearance of character in my neighbour'seyes, but in real character--in the eyes of God? Am I more manly, or more womanly--more godly, more true, more humble, above all, moreloving, than I was this time last year? What bad habits have Iconquered? What good habits have grown upon me? What chances ofdoing good have I let slip? What foolish, unkind things have Idone? My duty to God and my neighbours is so and so, how have Idone it? Above all, this Saviour and King in heaven, in whom Iprofess to believe, to whom I have sworn to be loyal and true, andto help His good cause, the cause of godliness, manliness, andhappiness among my neighbours, in my family, in my own heart, --howhave I felt towards Him? Have I thought about Him more this yearthan I did last? Do I feel any more loyalty, respect, love, gratitude to Him than I did? Ay, more, do I think about Him at allas a living man, much less as my King and Saviour; or, is all reallyknow about Him the sound of the words Jesus Christ, and the storyabout Him in the Apostles' Creed? Do I really BELIEVE and trust in"Jesus Christ, " or do I not? These are sharp, searching questions, my friends, --good Lenten food for any man's soul, --questions whichit is much more easy to ask soberly and answer fairly now when youlook quietly back on the past year, than it is, alas! to answer themday by day amid all the bustle your business and your families. Butyou will answer, 'This bustle will go on just as much in Lent asever. Our time and thoughts will be just as much occupied. We haveour livings to get. We are not fine gentlemen and ladies who canlie by for forty days and do nothing but read and pray, while theirtradesmen and servants are working for them from morning to night. How then can we give up more time to religion now than at othertimes?

This is all true enough; but there is a sound and true answer to it. It is not so much more TIME which you are asked to give up to yoursouls in Lent, as it is more HEART. What do I talk of? GIVING UPmore time to your souls? And yet this is the way we all talk, as ifour time belonged to our bodies, and so we had to rob them of it, togive it up to our souls, --as if our bodies were ourselves, and oursouls were troublesome burdens, or peevish children hanging at ourbacks, which would keep prating and fretting about heaven and hell, and had to be quieted, and their mouths stopped as quickly andeasily as possible, that we might be rid of them, and get about ourtrue business, our real duty, --this mighty work of eating anddrinking, and amusing ourselves, and making money. I am afraid--afraid there are too many, who, if they spoke out their wholehearts, would be quite as content to have no souls, and no necessityto waste their precious time (as they think) upon religion. But, myfriends, my friends, the day will come when you will see yourselvesin a true light; when your soul will not seem a mere hanger-on toyour body, but you will find out THAT YOU ARE YOUR SOUL. Then therewill be no more forgetting that you have souls, and thrusting theminto the background, to be fed at odd minutes, or left to starve, --no more talk of GIVING UP time to the care of your souls; your soulswill take the time for themselves then--and the eternity, too; theywill be all in all to you then, perhaps when it is too late!

Well, I want you, just for forty days, to let your souls be all inall to you now; to make them your first object--your first thoughtin the morning, the last thing at night, --your thought at every oddmoment in the day. You need not neglect your business; only for oneshort forty days do not make your business your God. We are all tooapt to try the heathen plan, of seeking first every thing else inthe world, and letting the kingdom of God and His righteousness beadded to us over and above--or NOT as it may happen. Try for oncethe plan the Lord of heaven and earth advises, and seek first thekingdom of God and His righteousness, and see whether every thingelse will not be added to you. Again, you need not be idle a momentmore in Lent than at any other time. But I dare say, that none ofyou are so full of business that you have not a free ten minutes inthe morning, and ten minutes at night, of which the best of uses maybe made. What do I say? Why, of all men in the world, farmers andlabourers have most time, I think, to themselves; working, as theydo, the greater part of their day in silence and alone; whatopportunities for them to have their souls busy in heaven, whilethey are pacing over the fields, ploughing and hoeing! I have readof many, many labouring men who had found out their opportunities inthis way, and used them so well as to become holy, great, andlearned men. One of the most learned scholars in England at thisday was once a village carpenter, who used, when young, to keep abook open before him on his bench while he worked, and thuscontrived to teach himself, one after the other, Latin, Greek, andHebrew. So much time may a man find who LOOKS for time!

But after all, and above all, believe this--that if your business oryour work does actually give you no time to think about God and yourown souls, --if in the midst of it all you cannot find leisure enoughnight and morning to pray earnestly, to read your Bible carefully, --if it so swallows up your whole thoughts during the day, that youhave no opportunity to recollect yourself, to remember that you arean immortal being, and that you have a Saviour in heaven, whom youare serving faithfully, or unfaithfully, --if this work or businessof yours will not give you time enough for that, then it is notGod's business, and ought not to be yours either. 

But you have time, --you have all time. When there is a will thereis a way. Make up your minds that there shall be a will, and prayearnestly to God to give it you, if it is but for forty days: andin them think seriously, slowly, solemnly, over your past lives. Examine yourselves and your doings. Ask yourselves fairly, --'Am Igoing forward or back? Am I living like a child of God, or like amere machine for making food and wages? Is my conduct such as theHoly Scripture tells me that it should be? You will not need to gofar for a set of questions, my friends, or rules by which to examineyourselves. You can hardly open a page of God's blessed Bookwithout finding something which stares you in the face with thequestion, 'Do I do thus?' or, 'Do I not do thus?' Take, forexample, the Epistle of this very day. What better test can we havefor trying and weighing our own souls?

What says it? That though we were wise, charitable, eloquent--allthat the greatest of men can be, and yet had not charity--LOVE, weare nothing!--nothing! And how does it describe this necessary, indispensable, heavenly love? Let us spend the last few minutes ofthis sermon in seeing how. And if that description does not prickall our hearts on more points than one, they are harder than I takethem for--far harder, certainly, than they should be. 

This charity, or love, we hear, which each of us ought to have andmust have--"suffers long, and is kind. " What shall we say to that?How many hasty, revengeful thoughts and feelings have risen in thehearts of most of us in the last year?--Here is one thought forLent. "Charity envies not. "--Have we envied any their riches, theirhappiness, their good name, health, and youth?--Another thought forLent. "Charity boasts not herself. " Alas! alas! my friends, arenot the best of us apt to make much of the little good we do, --topride ourselves on the petty kindnesses we shew, --to be puffed upwith easy self-satisfaction, just as charity is NOT puffed up?--Another Lenten thought. "Charity does not behave herself unseemly;"is never proud, noisy, conceited; gives every man's opinion a fair, kindly hearing; making allowances for all mistakes. Have we doneso?--Then there is another thought for Lent. "Charity seeks not herown;" does not stand fiercely and stiffly on her own rights, on thegratitude due to her. While we--are we not too apt, when we havedone a kindness, to fret and fume, and think ourselves deeplyinjured, if we do not get repaid at once with all the humblegratitude we expected? Of this also we must think. "Charity thinksno evil, " sets down no bad motives for any one's conduct, but takesfor granted that he means well, whatever appearances may be; whilewe (I speak of myself just as much as of any one), are we notcontinually apt to be suspicious, jealous, to take for granted thatpeople mean harm; and even when we find ourselves mistaken, and thatwe have cried out before we are hurt, not to consider it as any sinagainst our neighbour, whom in reality we have been silentlyslandering to ourselves? "Charity rejoices not in iniquity, " but inthe truth, whatever it may be; is never glad to see a high professorprove a hypocrite, and fall into sin, and shew himself in his truefoul colours; which we, alas! are too apt to think a very pleasantsight. --Are not these wholesome meditations for Lent? "Charityhopes all things" of every one, "believes all things, " all good thatis told of every one, "endures all things, " instead of flying offand giving up a person at the first fault. Are not all thesepoints, which our own hearts, consciences, common sense, or whateveryou like to call it (I shall call it God's spirit), tell us areright, true, necessary? And is there one of us who can say that hehas not offended in many, if not in all these points; and is notthat unrighteousness--going out of the right, straightforward, childlike, loving way of looking at all people? And is not allunrighteousness sin? And must not all sin be repented of, and thatAS SOON AS WE FIND IT OUT? And can we not all find time this Lentto throw over these sins of ours?--to confess them with shame andsorrow?--to try like men to shake them off? Oh, my friends! you whoare too busy for forty short days to make your immortal souls yourfirst business, take care--take care, lest the day shall come whensickness, and pain, and the terror of death, shall keep you too busyto prepare those unrepenting, unforgiven, sin-besotted souls ofyours for the kingdom of God. 

SERMON XXIV. ON BOOKS

JOHN, i. 1. 

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and theWord was God. "

I do not pretend to be able to explain this text to you, for no mancan comprehend it but He of whom it speaks, Jesus Christ, the Wordof God. But I can, by God's grace, put before you some of the awfuland glorious truths of which it gives us a sight, and may Christdirect you, who is THE Word, and grant me words to bring the matterhome to you, so as to make some of you, at least, ask yourselves thegolden question, 'If this is true, what must we DO to be saved?'

The text says that the Word was from the beginning with God, --ay, God Himself: who the Word is, there is no doubt from the rest ofthe chapter, which you heard read this morning. But why is Christcalled the Word of all words--the Word of God? Let us look at this. Is not Christ THE MAN, the head and pattern of all men who are whatmen ought to be? And did He not tell men that He is THE Life? Thatall life is given by Him and out of Him? And does not St. John tellus that Christ the Life is the light of men, --the true light whichlighteth every man who cometh into the world?

Remember this, and then think again, --what is it which makes mendifferent from all other living things we know of? Is it notspeech--the power of words? The beasts may make each otherunderstand many things, but they have no speech. These gloriousthings--words--are man's right alone, part of the image of the Sonof God--the Word of God, in which man was created. If men would butthink what a noble thing it is merely to be able to speak in words, to think in words, to write in words! Without words, we should knowno more of each other's hearts and thoughts than the dog knows ofhis fellow dog;--without words to think in; for if you willconsider, you always think to yourself in WORDS, though you do notspeak them aloud; and without them all our thoughts would be mereblind longings, feelings which we could not understand our ownselves. Without words to write in, we could not know what ourforefathers did;--we could not let our children after us know whatto do. But, now, books--the written word of man--are preciousheirlooms from one generation to another, training us, encouragingus, teaching us, by the words and thoughts of men, whose bodies arecrumbled into dust ages ago, but whose words--the power of utteringthemselves, which they got from the Son of God--still live, and bearfruit in our hearts, and in the hearts of our children after us, till the last day!

But where did these words--this power of uttering our thoughts, comefrom? Do you fancy that men first, began like brute beasts orbabies, with strange cries and mutterings, and so gradually foundout words for themselves? Not they; the beasts have been on theearth as long as man; and yet they can no more speak than they couldwhen God created Adam: but Adam, we find, could speak at once. Godspoke to Adam the moment he was made, and Adam understood Him; so heknew the power and the meaning of words. Who gave him that power?Who but Jehovah--Jesus--the Word of God, who imparted to him theword of speech and the light of reason? Without them what use wouldthere have been in saying to him, "Thou shalt not eat of the tree ofknowledge?" Without them what would there have been in God'sbringing to him all the animals to see what he would call them, unless He had first given Adam the power of understanding words, andthinking of words, and speaking words? This was the glorious giftof Christ--the Voice or Word of the Lord God, as we read in thesecond chapter of Genesis, whom Adam heard another time with fearand terror, --"The voice of the Lord walking in the garden in thecool of the day. "--A text and a story strange enough, till we findin the first chapter of St. John the explanation of it, telling usthat the Word was in the beginning with God--very God, and that Hewas the light which lighteth every man who cometh into the world. So Christ is the light which lighteth every man who cometh into theworld. How are we to understand that, when there are so many wholive and die heathens or reprobates, --some who never hear ofChrist, --some, alas! in Christian lands, who are dead to everydoctrine or motive of Christianity? yet the Bible says that Christlights EVERY MAN who comes into the world. Difficult to understandat first sight, yet most true, and simple too, at bottom. 

For how is every one, whether heathen or Christian, child or man, enlightened or taught, to live and behave? Is it not by the wordsof those round him, by the words he reads in books, by the thoughtswhich he thinks out and puts into shape for himself? All this isthe light which every human being has his share of. And has notevery man, too, the light of reason and good feeling, more or less, to tell him whether each thing is right or wrong, noble or mean, ugly or beautiful? This is another way by which the light whichlighteth every man works. And St. John tells us in the text, thathe who works in this way, --he who gives us the power ofunderstanding, and thinking, and judging, and speaking, is the verysame Word of God who was made flesh, and dwelt among men, and diedon the Cross for us; "the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins ofthe world!"

He is the Word of God--by Him God has spoken to man in all ages. Hetaught Adam, --He spoke to Abraham as a man speaketh with his friend. It was He Jehovah, whom we call Jesus, whom Moses and the seventyelders saw--saw with their bodily eyes on Mount Sinai, who spoke tothem with human voice from amid the lightning and the rainbow. Itmust have been only He, the Word, by whom God the Father uttersHimself to man, for no man hath seen God at any time; only the Word, the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hathdeclared Him. And who put into the mouth of David those gloriousPsalms--the songs in which all true men for three thousand yearshave found the very things they longed to speak themselves and couldnot? Who but Christ the Word of God, the Lord, as David calls Him, put a new song into the mouth of His holy poet, --the sweet singer ofIsrael? Who spake by the prophets, again? What do they saythemselves?--"The Word of the Lord came to me, saying. " And then, when the Spirit of God stirred them up, the Word of God gave themspeech, and they said the sayings which shall never pass away tillall be fulfilled. And who was it who, when He was upon earth, spakeas never man spake, --whose words were the simplest, and yet thedeepest, --the tenderest, and yet the most awful, which ever brokethe blessed silence upon this earth, --whose words, now to this day, come home to men's hearts, stirring them up to the very roots, piercing through the marrow of men's souls, --whose but Christ's, theWord, who was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace andtruth? And who since then, do you think, has it been who has givento all wise and holy poets, philosophers, and preachers, the powerto speak and write the wonderful truths which, by God's grace, theythought out for themselves and for all mankind, --who gave themutterance?--who but Christ, the Lord of men's spirits, the Word ofGod, who promised to give to all His true disciples a mouth andwisdom, which their enemies should not be able to gainsay or resist?

Well, my friends, ought not the knowledge of this to make us betterand wiser? Ought it not to make us esteem, and reverence, and usemany things of which we are apt to think too lightly? How it shouldmake us reverence the Bible, the written word of God's saints andprophets, of God's apostles, of Christ, the Word Himself? Oh, thatmen would use that treasure of the Bible as it deserves;--oh, thatthey would believe from their hearts, that whatever is said there istruly said, that whatever is said there is said to them, thatwhatever names things are called there are called by their rightnames. Then men would no longer call the vile person beautiful, orcall pride and vanity honour, or covetousness respectability, orcall sin worldly wisdom; but they would call things as Christ callsthem--they would try to copy Christ's thoughts and Christ'steaching; and instead of looking for instruction and comfort tolying opinions and false worldly cunning, they would find their onlyadvice in the blessed teaching, and their only comfort in thegracious promises, of the word of the Book of Life. 

Again, how these thoughts ought to make us reverence all books. Consider! except a living man, there is nothing more wonderful thana book!--a message to us from the dead--from human souls whom wenever saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away; and yetthese, in those little sheets of paper, speak to us, amuse us, terrify us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us asbrothers. 

Why is it that neither angels, nor saints, nor evil spirits, appearto men now to speak to them as they did of old? Why, but because wehave BOOKS, by which Christ's messengers, and the devil's messengerstoo, can tell what they will to thousands of human beings at thesame moment, year after year, all the world over! I say, we oughtto reverence books, to look at them as awful and mighty things. Ifthey are good and true, whether they are about religion or politics, farming, trade, or medicine, they are the message of Christ, theMaker of all things, the Teacher of all truth, which He has put intothe heart of some man to speak, that he may tell us what is good forour spirits, for our bodies, and for our country. 

And at the last day, be sure of it, we shall have to render anaccount--a strict account, of the books which we have read, and ofthe way in which we have obeyed what we read, just as if we had hadso many prophets or angels sent to us. 

If, on the other hand, books are false and wicked, we ought to fearthem as evil spirits loose among us, as messages from the father oflies, who deceives the hearts of evil men, that they may spreadabroad the poison of his false and foul messages, putting good forevil, and evil for good, sweet for bitter, and bitter for sweet, saying to all men, 'I, too, have a tree of knowledge, and you mayeat of the fruit thereof, and not die. ' But believe him not. Whenyou see a wicked book, when you find in a book any thing whichcontradicts God's book, cast it away, trample it under foot, believethat it is the devil tempting you by his cunning, alluring words, ashe tempted Eve, your mother. Would to God all here would make thatrule, --never to look into an evil book, a filthy ballad, anonsensical, frivolous story! Can a man take a snake into his bosomand not be bitten?--can we play with fire and not be burnt?--can weopen our ears and eyes to the devil's message, whether ofcovetousness, or filth, or folly, and not be haunted afterwards byits wicked words, rising up in our thoughts like evil spirits, between us and our pure and noble duty--our baptism-vows?

I might say much more about these things, and, by God's help, inanother sermon I will go on, and speak to you of the awfulimportance of spoken words, of the sermons and the conversation towhich you listen, the awful importance of every word which comes outof your own mouth. But I have spoken only of books this morning, for this is the age of books, the time, one would think, of whichDaniel prophesied that many should run to and fro, and knowledgeshould be increased. A flood of books, newspapers, writings of allsorts, good and bad, is spreading over the whole land, and young andold will read them. We cannot stop that--we ought not: it is God'sordinance. It is more: it is God's grace and mercy, that we have afree press in England--liberty for every man, that if he have any ofGod's truth to tell he may tell it out boldly, in books orotherwise. A blessing from God! one which we should reverence, forGod knows it was dearly bought. Before our forefathers could buy itfor us, many an honoured man left house and home to die in thebattle-field or on the scaffold, fighting and witnessing for theright of every man to whom God's Word comes, to speak God's Wordopenly to his countrymen. A blessing, and an awful one! for thesame gate which lets in good lets in evil. The law dare not silencebad books. It dare not root up the tares lest it root up the wheatalso. The men who died to buy us liberty knew that it was better tolet in a thousand bad books than shut out one good one; for a grainof God's truth will ever outweigh a ton of the devil's lies. Wecannot then silence evil books, but we can turn away our eyes fromthem--we can take care that what we read, and what we let othersread, shall be good and wholesome. Now, if ever, are we bound toremember that books are words, and that words come either fromChrist or the devil, --now, if ever, we are bound to try all books bythe Word of God, --now, if ever, are we bound to put holy and wisebooks, both religious and worldly, into the hands of all around us, that if, poor souls! they must need eat of the fruit of the tree ofknowledge, they may also eat of the tree of life, --and now, if ever, are we bound to pray to Christ the Word of God, that He will raiseup among us wise and holy writers, and give them words andutterance, to speak to the hearts of all Englishmen the message ofGod's covenant, and that he may confound the devil and his lies, andall that swarm of vile writers who are filling England with trash, filth, blasphemy, and covetousness, with books which teach men thatour wise forefathers, who built our churches and founded ourconstitution, and made England the queen of nations, were butignorant knaves and fanatics, and that selfish money-making andgodless licentiousness are the only true wisdom; and so turn thedivine power of words, and the inestimable blessing of a free press, into the devil's engine, and not Christ's the Word of God. Buttheir words shall be brought to nought. 

May God preserve us and all our friends from that defilement, andmay He give you all grace, in these strange times, to take care whatyou read and how you read, and to hold fast by the Book of allbooks, and Christ the Word of God. Try by them all books and men;for if they speak not according to God's law and testimony, it isbecause there is no truth in them. 

SERMON XXV. THE COURAGE OF THE SAVIOUR

JOHN, xi. 7, 8. 

"Then after that saith He to His disciples, Let us go into Judeaagain. His disciples say to Him, Master, the Jews of late sought tostone thee, and goest thou thither again?"

We all admire a brave man. And we are right. To be brave is God'sgift. To be brave is to be like Jesus Christ. Cowardice is onlythe devil's likeness. But we must take care what we mean by beingbrave. Now, there are two sorts of bravery--courage and fortitude. And they are very different: courage is of the flesh, --fortitude isof the spirit. Courage is good, but dumb animals have it just asmuch as we. A dog, a tiger, and a horse, have courage, but theyhave no fortitude, --because fortitude is a spiritual thing, andbeasts have no spirits like ours. 

What is fortitude? It is the courage which will make us not onlyfight in a good cause, but suffer in a good cause. Courage willhelp us only to give others pain; fortitude will help us to bearpain ourselves. And more, fortitude will make a fearful personbrave, and very often the more brave the more fearful they are. Andthus it is that women are so often braver than men. We, men, aremade of coarser stuff; we do not feel pain as keenly as women; andif we do feel, we are rightly ashamed to shew it. But a tenderwoman, who feels pain and sorrow infinitely more than we do, whoneed not be ashamed of being frightened, who perhaps is terrified atevery mouse and spider, --to see her bearing patiently pain, andsorrow, and shame, in spite of all her fearfulness, because sheknows it is her duty--that is Christ's likeness--that is truefortitude--that is a sight nobler than all the "bull-dog courage" inthe world. For what is the courage of the bull-dog after all, or ofthe strong quarrelsome man? He is confident in his own strength, heis rough and hard, and does not care for pain; and when he thrustshis head into a fight, like a surly dog, he does it not because itis his duty, but because he likes it, because he is angry, and thenevery blow and every wound makes him more angry, and he fights on, forgetting his pain from blind rage. 

That is not altogether bad; men ought to be courageous. But, oh! myfriends, is there not a more excellent way to be brave? and which isnobler, to suffer bravely for God's sake, or to beat men made inGod's image bravely for one's own sake? Think of any fight you eversaw, and then compare with that the stories of those old martyrs whodied rather than speak a word against their Saviour. If you want tosee true fortitude, think of what has happened thousands of timeswhen the heathen used to persecute the Christians. --How delicatewomen, who would not venture to set the sole of their foot to theground for tenderness, would submit, rather than give up theirreligion and deny the Lord who died for them, to be torn fromhusband and family, and endure nakedness, and insult, and tortureswhich make one's blood run cold to read of, till they were tornslowly piecemeal, or roasted in burning flames, without a murmur oran angry word, --knowing that Christ, who had borne all things forthem, would give them strength to bear all things for Him, trustingthat if they were faithful unto death, He would give them a crown oflife. There was true fortitude--there was true faith--there wasGod's strength made perfect in woman's weakness! Do you not see, myfriends, that such a death was truly brave? How does bull-dogcourage shew beside that courage--the courage which conquers griefand pain for duty's-sake, instead of merely forgetting them in rageand obstinacy?

And do you not see how this bears on my text? How it bears on ourLord's whole life? Was he not indeed the perfectly brave man--theman who endured more than all living men put together, at the verytime that he had the most intense fear of what he was going tosuffer? And stranger still, endured it all of His own will, whileHe had it in His power to shake it all off any instant, and freeHimself utterly from pain and suffering. 

Now, this speech of our Lord's in the text is just a case of truefortitude. He was beyond Jordan. He had been forced to escapethither to save His life from the mad, blinded Jews. He had nofoolhardiness; He knew that He had no more right than we have to putHis life in danger when there was no good to be done by it. But nowthere WAS good to be done by it. Lazarus was dead, and He wanted toraise him to life. Therefore He said to His disciples, "Let us gointo Judea again. " They knew the danger; they said, "Master, theJews of late sought to stone Thee, and goest Thou thither again?"But He would go; He had a work to do, and He dared bear anything todo His work. Ay, here is the secret, this is the feeling whichgives a man true courage--the feeling that he has a work to do atall costs, the sense of duty. Oh! my friends, let men, women, orchildren, once feel that they have a duty to perform, let them oncesay to themselves, 'I am bound to do this thing--it is right for meto do this thing; I owe it as a duty to my family, I owe it as aduty to my country, I owe it as a duty to God, who called me intothis station of life; I owe it as a duty to Jesus Christ, who boughtme with His blood, that I might do His will and not my ownpleasure. '--When a man has once said that HONESTLY to himself, whenthat glorious heavenly thought, 'IT IS MY DUTY, ' has risen upon hissoul, like the sun upon the earth, warming his heart andenlightening it and making it bring forth all good and noble fruits, then that man will feel a strength come to him, and a courage fromGod above, which will conquer all his fears and his selfish love ofease and pleasure, and enable him to bear insults, and pain, andpoverty, and death itself, provided he can but do what is right, andbe found by God, whatever happens to him, working God's will whereGod has put him. This is fortitude--this is true courage--this isChrist's likeness--this is the courage which weak women on sick bedsmay have as well as strong men on the battle-field. Even when theyshrink most from suffering, God's Spirit will whisper to them, 'Itis THY duty, it is thy Father's will, ' and then they will find Hisstrength made perfect in their weakness, and when their humanweakness fails most God will give them heavenly fortitude, and theywill be able, like St. Paul, to say, "When I am weak, then I amstrong, for I can do all things through Christ, who strengthenethme. "

And now, remember that there was no pride, no want of feeling tokeep up our Lord's courage. He has tasted sorrow for every man, woman, and child, and therefore He has tasted fear also; tempted inall things, like as we are, that in all things He might be touchedwith the feeling of our infirmities, --that there might be no poorsoul terrified at the thought of pain or sorrow, but could comfortthemselves with the thought, Well, the Son of God knows what fearis. He who said that His soul was troubled--He who at the thoughtof death was in such agony of terror, that His sweat ran down to theground like great drops of blood, --He who cried in His agony, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me, "--Heunderstands my pain, --He tells me not to be ashamed of crying in mypain like Him, "Father, if it be possible let this cup pass fromme"--for He will give me the strength to finish that prayer of His, and in the midst of my trouble say, "Nevertheless, Father, not as Iwill, but as Thou wilt. " Remember, again, that our Lord was notlike the martyrs of old, forced to undergo His sufferings whether Heliked them or not. We are too apt to forget that, and therefore wemisunderstand our Lord's example; and therefore we misunderstandwhat true fortitude is. Jesus Christ was the Son of God; He hadmade the very men who were tormenting Him; He had made the very woodof the cross on which He hung, the iron which pierced His blessedhands; and, for aught we know, one wish of His, and they would allhave crumbled into dust, and He have been safe in a moment. But Hewould not; He ENDURED the cross. He was the only man who everreally endured anything at all, because He alone of all men hadperfect power to save Himself, even when He was nailed to the tree, fainting, bleeding, dying. It was never too late for Him to stop. As He said to Peter when he wanted to fight for Christ, "Thinkestthou that I cannot pray to my Father, and He will send me instantlymore than twelve legions of angels?" But HE WOULD NOT. He had tosave the world, and He was determined to do it, whatever agony orfear it cost Him. St. Peter was a BRAVE man. He drew his sword inthe garden, and attacked, single-handed, that great body of armedsoldiers; cutting down a servant of the high-priest's. But he wasonly brave, our Lord was more. The blessed Jesus had truefortitude; He could BEAR patiently, while Peter could only rage andfight uselessly. And see how Christ's fortitude lasted Him, whilePeter's mere courage failed him. While our Lord was witnessing thatglorious confession of His before Pilate, bearing on through, without shrinking, even to the cross itself, where was Peter? Hehad denied his Master, and ran shamefully away. He had a longlesson to learn before he was perfect, had Peter. He had to learnnot how to fight, but how to suffer--and he learnt it; and in hisold age that strong, fierce St. Peter had true fortitude to givehimself up to be crucified, like his Lord, without a murmur, andpreach Christ's gospel as he hung for three whole days upon thetorturing cross. There was fortitude; that violence of his in thegarden was only courage as of a brute animal, --courage of the flesh, not the true courage of the spirit. Oh, my friends, that we couldall learn this lesson, that it is better to suffer than to revenge, better to be killed than to kill. There are times when a man mustfight--for his country, for just laws, for his family, but forhimself it is very seldom that he must fight. He who returns goodfor evil, --he who when he is cursed, blesses those who curse him, --he, who takes joyfully the spoiling of his goods, who submits to becheated in little matters, and sometimes in great ones, sooner thanruin the poor sinful wretch who has ill-used him; that man hasreally put on Christ's likeness, that man is really going on toperfection, and fulfilling the law of love; and for everything hegives up for the sake of peace and mercy, which is for God's sake, God will reward him sevenfold into his bosom. There are times whena man is bound to go to law, bound to expose and punish evil-doers, lest they should, being unpunished, become confident and go on frombad to worse, and hurt others as well as him. A man sometimes isbound by his duty to his neighbours and to society to defendhimself, to go to law with those who injure him, --sometimes; butnever bound to revenge himself, never bound to say, 'He has hurt me, and I will pay him off for it at law;' that is abusing law, which isGod's ordinance, for mere selfish revenge. You may say, it isdifficult to know which is which, when to defend oneself, and whennot. It is difficult; without the light of God's Spirit, I think noman will know. But let a man live by God's Spirit, let him pray forkindliness, mercifulness, manliness, and patience, for truefortitude to bear and to forbear, and God will surely open his eyesto see when he is called on to avenge an injury, and when he iscalled on to suffer patiently. God will shew him--if a man wishesto be like Christ, and to work like Christ, at doing good, God willteach him and guide him in all puzzling matters like this. And donot be afraid of being called cowards and milksops for bearinginjuries patiently--those who call you so will be likely to be thegreatest cowards themselves. Patience is the truest sign ofcourage. Ask old soldiers, who have seen real war, and they willtell you that the bravest men, the men who endured best, not in merefighting, but in standing still for hours to be mowed down bycannon-shot; who were most cheerful and patient in shipwreck, andstarvation and defeat, --all things ten times worse than fighting, --ask old soldiers, I say, and they will tell you that the men whoshewed best in such miseries, were generally the stillest andmeekest men in the whole regiment: that is true fortitude; that isChrist's image--the meekest of men, and the bravest too. And sobooks say, and seem to prove it, by many strange stories, that thelion, while he is the strongest and bravest of beasts of prey, isalso the most patient and merciful. He knows his own strength andcourage, and therefore he does not care to be shewing it off. Hecan afford to endure an affront. It is only the cowardly cur whoflies out and barks at every passer-by. And so with our blessedLord. The Bible calls Him the Lion of Judah; but it also calls Himthe Lamb dumb before the shearers. Ah, my friends, we must comeback to Him, for all the little that is great and noble in man orwoman, or dumb beast even, is perfected in Him; He only is perfectlygreat, perfectly noble, brave, meek. He who to save us sinful men, endured the cross, despising the shame, till He sat down at theright hand of the Majesty on high, perfectly brave He is, andperfectly gentle, and will be so for ever; for even at His secondcoming, when He shall appear the Conqueror of hell, with tens ofthousands of angels, to take vengeance on those who know not God, and destroy the wicked with the breath of His mouth, even then inHis fiercest anger, the Scripture tells us, His anger shall be "theanger of the Lamb. " Almighty vengeance and just anger, and yetperfect gentleness and love all the while. --Mystery of mysteries!--The wrath of the Lamb! May God give us all to feel in that day, notthe wrath, but the love of the Lamb who was slain for us!

Footnotes:

{1} "And when He was come to the other side, into the country ofthe Gergesenes, there met Him two possessed with devils, coming outof the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man might pass by thatway. And, behold, they cried out, saying, What have we do withThee, Jesus, Thou Son of God? Art Thou come hither to torment usbefore the time? And there was a good way off from them an herd ofmany swine feeding. So the devils besought him, saying, If Thoucast us out, suffer us to go away into the herd of swine. And Hesaid unto them, Go. And when they were come out, they went into theherd of swine: and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran violentlydown a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters. "

{2} Von Stolberg.