that we may surrender up our whole souls to it; before which obedience, reverence, without measure, intense humility, most unreserved adoration, may all be duly rendered. One name there is, and one only; one alone in heaven and in earth; not truth, not justice, not benevolence, not Christ’s mother, not his holiest servants, not his blessed sacraments, not his very mystical body, but Himself only, who died for us and rose again, Jesus Christ, both God and Man.
He is truth, and he is righteousness, and he is love; he gives his grace to his sacraments, and his manifold gifts to his Church; whoever hath him hath all things; but if we do not take heed, whenever we turn our mind to any other object, we shall make it an idol and lose him. Take him in all his fulness, not as God merely, not as man merely; not in his life on earth only, not in his death only, not in his exaltation at God’s right hand only; but in all his fulness, the Christ of God, God and Man, our Prophet, our Priest, our King and Lord, redeeming us by his blood, sanctifying us by his Spirit; and then worship him and love him with all the heart, and with, all the soul, and with all the strength; and we shall see how all evil will be barred, and all good will abound. No man who worships Christ alone, can be a fanatic, nor yet can be a more philosopher; he cannot be bigoted, nor yet can he be indifferent; he cannot be so the slave of what be calls amiable feelings as to cast truth and justice behind him; nor yet can he so pursue truth and justice as to lose sight of humbler and softer feelings, self-abasement, reverence, devotion. There is no evil tendency in the nature of any one of us, which has not its cure in the true worship of Christ our Saviour. Let us look into our hearts, and consider their besetting faults. Are we indolent, or are we active; are we enthusiastic, or are we cold; zealous or indifferent, devout or reasonable; whatever the inclination, or bias of our nature be, if we follow its kindred idol, it will be magnified and grow on to our ruin; if we worship Christ, it will be pruned and chastened, and made to grow up with opposite tendencies, all alike tempered, none destroyed; none overgrowing the garden, but all filling it with their several fruits; so that it shall be, indeed, the garden of the Lord, and the Spirit of the Lord shall dwell in the midst of it.
And who shall dare to make sad the heart of him who is thus drinking daily of the well-spring of righteousness, by telling him that he is not yet saved, nor can be, unless he will come and bow down before his idol? And if, rather than do so, he break the idol in pieces, who shall dare to call him profane, or cold in love to his Lord, when it was in his very jealousy for his Lord, and in his full purpose to worship him alone, that he threw down all that exalted itself above its due proportion against him? And if a man be not so worshipping Christ only, who shall dare to encourage him in his evil way, by magnifying the sacredness of his idol, and ascribing to it that healing virtue which belongs to Christ alone?
What has been here said might bear to be followed up at far greater length than the present occasion will admit of. But the main point is one, I think, of no small importance, that all fanaticism and superstition on the one hand, and all unbelief and coldness of heart on the other, arise from what is in fact idolatry,–the putting some other object, whether it be called a religious or moral one,–and an object often in itself very excellent,–in the place of Christ himself, as set forth to us fully in the Scriptures. And as no idol can stand in Christ’s place, or in any way save us, so whoever worships Christ truly is preserved from all idols and has life eternal. And if any one demand of him further, that he should worship his idol, and tells him that he is not safe if he does not; his answer will be rather that he will perish if he does; that he is safe, fully safe, and only safe, so long as he clings to Christ alone; and that to make anything else necessary to his safety, is not only to minister to superstition, but to ungodliness also; not only to lay on us a yoke which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear; but, by the very act of laying this unchristian yoke upon us, to tear from us the easy yoke and light burden of Christ himself, our Lord and our life.
LECTURE XXI.
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ADVENT SUNDAY.
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HEBREWS in. 16.
_For some, when they had heard, did provoke: howbeit not all that came out of Egypt by Moses_.
I take this verse as my text, rather than those which immediately go before or follow it, because it affords one of the most serious instances of mistranslation that are to be met with in the whole New Testament. For the true translation of the words is this: “For who were they who, when they had heard, did provoke? nay, were they not all who came out of Egypt through Moses?” And then it goes on–“And with whom was he grieved forty years? was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcases fell in the wilderness? And to whom sware he that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not?” I call this a serious mistranslation, because it lessens the force of the writer’s comparison. So far from meaning to say that “some, but not all did provoke,” he lays a stress on the universality of the evil: it was not only a few, but the whole people who came out of Egypt, with only the two individual exceptions of Caleb and Joshua. All the rest who were grown up when they came out of Egypt did provoke God; and the carcases of that whole generation, fell in the wilderness.
Had the lesson from the Hebrews been actually chosen for the service of this day, it could hardly have suited it better. For this day is the New-year’s day of the Christian year; and it is probably for this reason that the service of the first day of the common year is confined entirely to the commemoration of our Lord’s circumcision, and takes no notice of the beginning of a new year. It is manifest that it could not do so without confusion: for the first of January is not the beginning of the Christian year, but Advent Sunday; the last Sunday of the Christian year is not Christmas-day, as it would be this year if we reckoned by the common divisions of time; but it is the last Sunday after Trinity. Now, then, we are at the beginning of our year; and well it is that, as our trial is now become shorter by another year, as another division of our lives has passed away, we should fix our eyes on that which makes every year so valuable,–the Judgment, for which it ought to be a preparation. In fact, if we observe, we shall see that these Sundays in Advent are much more regarded by the Church as the beginning of a new year, than as a mere prelude to the celebration of the festival of Christmas. That is, Christmas-day is regarded, so to speak, in a two-fold light, as representing both the comings of our Lord, his first coming in the flesh, and his second coming to judgment. When the day actually arrives, it commemorates our Lord’s first coming: and this is the beginning of the Christian year, historically regarded, that is, so far as it is a commemoration of the several events of our Lord’s life on earth. But before it comes, it is regarded as commemorating our Lord’s second coming: and wisely, for his first coming requires now no previous preparation for it; we cannot well put ourselves into the position of those who lived before Christ appeared. But our whole life is, or ought to be, a preparation for his second coming; and it is this state, of which the season of Advent in the Church services is intended to be the representation.
There is something striking in the season of the natural year at which we thus celebrate the beginning of another Christian year. It is a true type of our condition, of the insensible manner in which all the changes of our lives steal upon us, that nature, at this moment, gives no outward signs of beginning: it is a period which does not manifest any striking change in the state of things around us. The Christian Spring begins ere we have reached the half of the natural winter. Nature is not bursting into life, but rather preparing itself for a long period of death. And this is a type of an universal truth, that the signs and warnings which we must look to, must come from within us, not from without: that neither sky nor earth, will arouse us from our deadly slumber, unless we are ourselves aroused already, and more disposed to make warnings for ourselves than to find them.
If this be true of nature, it is true also of all the efforts of man. As nature will give no sign, so man cannot. Let the Church do all that she may; let her keep her solemn anniversaries, and choose out for her services all such passages of Scripture as may be most fitted to impress the lesson which she would teach; still we know that these are alike powerless and unheeded; that unless there be in our own minds something beforehand disposed to profit by them, they are but the words of unavailing affection, vainly spoken to the ears of the dead.
Oh that we would remember this, all of us; that there is no voice in nature, no voice in man, that can really awaken the sleeping soul. That is the work of a far mightier power, to be sought for with most earnest prayers for ourselves and for each other: that the Holy Spirit of God would speak, and would dispose our hearts to hear; that so being awakened from death and our ears being truly opened, all things outward may now join in language which we can hear; and nature, and man, life and death, things present and things to come, may be but the manifold voices of the Spirit of God, all working for us together for good. Till this be so, we speak in vain; our words neither reach our own hearts, nor the hearts of our hearers; they are but recorded in God’s book of judgment, to be brought forward hereafter for the condemnation of us both.
Yet we must still speak; for the Spirit of God, who alone works in us effectually, works also secretly; we know not when, nor how, nor where. But we know, that as the Father worketh hitherto, and the Son worketh hitherto, so the Holy Spirit worketh hitherto, and is still working daily. We know that, every year, he creates in thousands of God’s people that work which alone shall abide for ever. We know that in the year that is just past he has done this; that in the year which is just beginning he will do it. Have we not here, also, many in whom he has wrought this work? may we not hope, and surely believe, that there are many in whom he is even now preparing to work it?
We know not who these are; still less do we know, what were the occasions which the Holy Spirit so blessed as to work in them his work of life. But this we know, that we are bound to minister all the occasions which we can; we must not spare our labour, although it is God alone who gives the increase. We must speak of life and of death, of Christ and of judgment, not forgetting that we speak often, and shall speak, utterly in vain; yet knowing that it is by these very thoughts, though long unheeded, that God’s Spirit does in his own good time awaken the heart; he takes of the things of Christ and shows them to us; and then, what was before like a book in a strange language–we saw the figures, but they conveyed no meaning to our minds–becomes, on a sudden, instinct with the language of God, which we hear and understand as readily as if it were our own tongue wherein we were born.
Therefore, we speak and say, that another year has now dawned upon us; and we would remind you, and remember, ourselves, in what words the various Scriptures of this day’s service point out its inestimable value. “Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.” So says St. Paul in the epistle of this day; and how blessed are all those amongst us who can feel that this is truly said of them! Then, indeed, a new year’s day is a day of rejoicing; we are so much nearer that period when all care, all anxiety, all painful labour will be for ever ended. But there is other language of a different sort, which, it may be, will suit us better. “I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.” “Their land is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made;” which means to us, the work of our own hearts, that which our own fancies and desires have made. “Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty.” For in the very temple of God, his Church, all manner of profane thoughts and words and works are crowded together; the din of covetousness and worldliness is loud and constant, and will ill abide the day of his coming, who will, a second time, cast out of his temple all that is unclean. And is there not also in us that evil heart of unbelief and disobedience which departs from the living God? are there not here those who are becoming daily hardened through the deceitfulness of sin? How are they passing their time in the wilderness, and with what prospects when they come to the end of it? God said, “I sware in my wrath, that they shall not enter into my rest.” By the way that they came, by the same shall they return; they shall go back to that bondage from which they were once redeemed, and from which they will be redeemed again no more for ever.
These are some of the passages of this day’s service which speaks to us at the beginning of this new Christian year. Let me add to all this language of warning, the language in which God, by his apostle Paul, answers every one of us, if we ask of him in sincerity of heart, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” He answers, “The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying: but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the works thereof.” Now, I grant, that this day, of which the apostle speaks, has never yet shone so brightly, as he had hoped and imagined; clouds have, up to this hour, continually overshadowed it. I mean, that the lives of Christians have hindered them from being the light of the world. It has been a light pale and dim, and therefore the works of darkness have continued to abound. But admit this, and what follows? Is it, or can it be, anything else but a more earnest desire not to be ourselves children of darkness, lest what we see to have happened in part should happen altogether; namely, that the day should never shine on us at all? We see that God’s promises have been in part forfeited; we see that Christ’s kingdom has not been what it was prophesied it should be. Is not this a solemn warning, that for us, too, individually, God’s promises may be forfeited? that all we read in Scripture of light, and life, and glory, and happiness, should really prove to us words only, and no reality? that whereas the promise of salvation has been made to us, we should be in the end, not saved, but lost? If, indeed, God’s kingdom were shining around us, in its full beauty; if every evil thing were driven out of his temple; if we saw nothing but holy lives and happy, the fruits of his Spirit, truth, and love, and joy; then we might be less anxious for ourselves; our course would be far smoother; the very stream would carry us along to the end of our voyage without our labour: what evil thoughts would not be withered, and die long ere they could ripen into action, if the very air which we breathed were of such, keen and heavenly purity! It is because all this is not so, that we have need of so much watchfulness; it is because the faults of every one of us make our brethren’s task harder; because there is not one bad or careless person amongst us who is not a hindrance in his brother’s path, and does not oblige him to exert himself the more. Therefore, because the day is not bright, but overclouded; because it is but too like the night, and too many use it as the night for all works of darkness; let us take the more heed that we do not ourselves so mistake it; let us watch each of us the light within us, lest, indeed, we should wholly stumble; let us put on the Lord Jesus Christ. You know how often I have dwelt on this; how often I have tried to show that Christ is all in all to us; that to put on Christ, is a truer and fuller expression, by far, than if we had been told to put on truth, or holiness, or goodness. It includes all these, with something more, that nothing but itself can give–the sense of safety, and joy unspeakable, in feeling ourselves sheltered in our Saviour’s arms, and taken even into himself. Assuredly, if we put on the Lord Jesus Christ, we shall not make provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof; such a warning would then be wholly unnecessary. Or, if we do not like language thus figurative, let us put it, if we will, into the plainest words that shall express the same meaning; let us call it praying to Christ, thinking of him, hoping in him, earnestly loving him; these, at least, are words without a figure, which all can surely understand. Let us be Christ’s this year that is now beginning; be his servants, be his disciples, be his redeemed in deed; let us live to him, and for him; setting him before us every day to do his will, and to live in his blessing. Then, indeed, if it be his pleasure that we should serve him throughout this year, even to its end, we may repeat, with a deeper feeling of their truth, the words of St. Paul; we may say, when next Advent Sunday shall appear, that now is our salvation nearer than when we became believers.
LECTURE XXII.
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CHRISTMAS DAY.
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JOHN i. 10.
_He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not_.
When we use ourselves, or hear others use, the term “mystery,” as applied to things belonging to the gospel, we should do well to consider what is meant by it. For our common notion of the word mystery is of something dark; whereas Christ and his gospel are continually spoken of as being, above all other things, light. Then come others, and say, “Light and darkness cannot go together: what you call the mysteries of Christianity are no part of it, but the fond inventions of man: Christianity is all simple and clear:” and thus they strike away some of the very greatest truths which God has revealed to us. Thus they deal in particular with the great truth declared in the text, that He who made the world visited it in the likeness of man. Now, if this truth were a mystery, in the common notion of that term; if it were a thing full of darkness, defying our minds to understand it, or to draw any good from it; then, indeed, it would be of little consequence whether we received it or no. It is because it is a mystery in a very different sense, in the sense in which the word is used commonly in the Scriptures; that is, a thing which was a secret, but which God has been pleased to reveal, and to reveal for our benefit, that therefore the loss of it would be the loss of a real blessing, a loss at once of light and comfort.
But we must go a little further, and explain from what this sad confusion in the use of the term “mystery” has arisen. There are many things relating to ourselves and to things around us, which by nature we cannot understand; and of God we can scarcely understand anything. Now, while the gospel has revealed much that we did not know before, it yet has not revealed everything: of God, in particular, it has given us much most precious knowledge, yet it has not removed all the veil. It has furnished us with a glass, indeed, to use the apostle’s comparison; but the glass, although, a great help, although reflecting a likeness of what, without it, we could not see at all, is yet a dark and imperfect manner of seeing, compared with, the seeing face to face. So, when the gospel tells us that He who made the world visited it in our nature, it does not indeed enable us yet fully to conceive what He is who made us, and then became as one of us; there is still left around the name of God that light inaccessible which is to our imperfections darkness; and so far as we cannot understand or conceive rightly of God, so far it is true that we cannot understand all that is conveyed in the expression that God was in the world dwelling among us. Yet it is still most true that by the revelation thus made to us we have gained immensely. God, as he is in himself, we cannot understand; but Jesus Christ we can. When we are told to love God, if we look to the life and death of Christ, we can understand and feel how truly he deserves our love; when we are told to be perfect as God is perfect, we have the image of this perfection so truly set before us in his Son Jesus, that it may be well said, “Whoso hath seen Him hath seen the Father;” and why, then, should we ask with Philip, that “He should show us the Father?”
What, then, the festival of Christmas presents to us, as distinct from that of Easter, is generally the revelation of God in the flesh. True it is, that we may make it, if we will, the same as Easter: that is, we may celebrate it as the birth of our Saviour, of him who died and rose again for us; but then we only celebrate our Lord’s birth with reference to his death and resurrection: that is, we make Christmas to be Easter under another name. And so everything relating to our Lord may be made to refer to his death and resurrection; for in them consists our redemption, and for that reason Easter has ever been considered as the great festival of the Christian year. But yet apart from this, Christmas has something peculiarly its own: namely, as I said before, the revelation of God in the flesh, not only to make atonement for our sins,–which is the peculiar subject of the celebration of the season of Easter,–but to give us notions of God at once distinct and lively; to enable us to have One in the invisible world, whom we could conceive of as distinctly as of a mere man, yet whom we might love with all our hearts, and trust with all our hearts, and yet be guilty of no idolatry.
It is not, then, only as the beginning of an earthly life of little more than thirty years, that we may celebrate the day of our Lord’s birth in the flesh. His own words express what this day has brought to us: “Henceforth shall ye see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.” The words here, like so many of our Lord’s, are expressed in a parable; but their meaning is not the less clear. They allude evidently to Jacob’s vision, to the ladder reaching from earth to heaven, on which the angels were ascending and descending continually. But this vision is itself a parable; showing, under the figure of the ladder reaching from earth to heaven, and the angels going up and down on it, a free communication, as it were, between God and man, heaven brought nearer to earth, and heavenly things made more familiar. Now, this is done, in a manner, by every revelation from God; most of all, by the revelation of his Son. Nor is it only by his Spirit that Christ communicates with us even now; though, he is ascended again into heaven, yet the benefits of his having become man, over and above those of his dying and rising again for us, have not yet passed away. It is still the man Christ Jesus who brings heaven near to earth, and earth near to heaven.
It has been well said by Augustine, that babes in Christ should so think of the Son of man as not to lose sight of the Son of God; that more advanced Christians should so think of the Son of God as not to lose sight of the Son of man. Augustine well understood how the thought of the Son of man is fitted to our weakness; and that the best and most advanced of us in this mortal life are never so strong as to be able to do without it. Have we ever tried this with our children? We tell them that God made them, and takes care of them, and loves them, and hears their prayers, and knows what is in their hearts, and cannot bear what is evil. These are such notions of God as a child requires, and can understand. But, if we join with them some of those other notions which belong to God as he is in himself; that he is a Spirit, not to be seen, not to be conceived of as in any one place, or in any one form; what do we but embarrass our child’s mind, and lessen that sense of near and dear relation to God which, our earlier accounts of God had given him? Yet we must teach him something of this sort, if we would prevent him from forming unworthy notions of God, such as have been the beginning of all idolatry. Here, then, is the blessing of the revelation of God in Christ. All that he can understand of God, or love in him, or fear in him–that is to be found in Christ. Christ made him, takes care of him, can hear his prayers, can read his little heart, loves him tenderly; yet cannot bear what is evil, and will strictly judge him at the last day. But what we must teach when we speak of God, yet which has a tendency to lessen the liveliness of our impressions of him, this has no place when we speak of Christ. Christ has a body, incorruptible and glorified indeed, such as they who are Christ’s shall also wear at his coming, yet still a body. Christ is not to be seen, indeed, for the clouds have received him out of our sight: yet he may be conceived of as in one place–at the right hand of God; as in one certain and well-known form–the form of the Son of man. Yet let us observe again, and be thankful for the perfect wisdom of God. Even while presenting to us God in Christ; that is to say, God with all those attributes which we can understand, and fear, and love; and without those which, throw us, as it were, to an infinite distance, overwhelming our minds, and baffling all our conceptions; even then the utmost care is taken to make us remember that God in himself is really that infinite and incomprehensible Being to whom we cannot, in our present state, approach; that even his manifestation of himself in Christ Jesus, is one less perfect than we shall be permitted to see hereafter; that Christ stands at the right hand of the Majesty on high; that he has received from the Father all his kingdom and his glory; finally, that the Father is greater than he, inasmuch as any other nature added to the pure and perfect essence of God, must, in a certain measure, if I may venture so to speak, be a coming down to a lower point, from the very and unmixed Divinity.
I have purposely mentioned this last circumstance, although it is not the view that I wish particularly to take to-day, because such passages as that which I quoted, where Christ tells his disciples that his Father was greater than he, and many others of the same sort, throughout the New Testament, are sometimes apt to embarrass and perplex us, if we do not consider their peculiar object. It was very necessary, especially at a time when men were so accustomed to worship their highest gods under the form of men, that whilst the gospel was itself holding out the man Christ Jesus as the object of religious faith, and fear, and love, and teaching that all power was given to him, in heaven and in earth,–it should, also, guard us against supposing that it meant to represent God as, in himself, wearing a human form, or having a nature partaking of our infirmities; and, therefore, it always speaks of there being something in God higher, and more perfect, than could possibly be revealed to man; and for this eternal and infinite, and inconceivable Being, it claims the reserve of our highest thoughts, or, rather, it commands us to believe, that they who shall hereafter see God face to face, shall be allowed to see something still greater than is now revealed to us, even in him who is the express image of God, and the brightness of his glory.
But, now, to return to what I was dwelling on before. It is not only for children, that the revelation of God in Christ is so valuable; it is fitted to the wants of us all, at all times, and under all circumstances. Say, that we are in joy; say, that we are enjoying some of the festivities of this season. It is quite plain, that, at whatever moment the thought of God is unwelcome to us, that moment is one of sin or unbelief: yet, how can we dare to mix up the notion of the most high God with any earthly merriment, or festivity? Then, if we think of him who was present at the marriage in Cana of Galilee, and who worked a miracle for no other object than to increase the enjoyment of that marriage supper, do we not feel how the highest thoughts may be joined with the most common occasions? how we may bring Christ home with, us to our social meetings, to bless us, and to sanctify them? Imagine him in our feasts as he was in Cana:–we may do it without profaneness; being sure, from that example, that he condemns not innocent mirth; that it is not merely because there is a feast, or because friends and neighbours are gathered together, that Christ cannot, therefore, be in the midst of us. This alone does not drive him away; but, oh consider, with what ears would he have listened to any words of unkindness, of profaneness, or of impurity! with what eyes would he have viewed any intemperance, or revelling; any such, immoderate yielding up of the night to pleasure, that a less portion of the next day can be given to duty and to God! Even as he would have heard or seen such things in Cana of Galilee, so does he hear and see them amongst us; the same gracious eye of love is on our moderate and permitted enjoyments; the same turning away from, the same firm and just displeasure at every word or deed which turns pleasure into sin.
But if I seek for instances to show how God in Christ is brought very near to us, what can I choose more striking than that most solemn act of Christian communion to which we are called this day? For, what is there in our mortal life, what joy, what sorrow, what feeling elated or subdued, which is not in that communion brought near to Christ to receive his blessing? What is the first and outward thing of which it reminds us? Is it not that last supper in Jerusalem, in which men,–the twelve disciples, the first members of our Christian brotherhood,–were brought into such solemn nearness to God, as seems to have begun the privileges of heaven upon earth? They were brought near at once to Christ and to one another: united to one another in him, in that double bond which, is the perfection at once of our duty and of our happiness. And so in our communion we, too, draw near to Christ and to each other; we feel–who is there at that moment, at least, that does not feel?–what a tie there is to bind each of us to his brother, when we come to the table of our common Lord. So far, the Lord’s Supper is but a type of what every Christian meeting should be: never should any of us be gathered together on any occasion of common life, in our families or with our neighbours; we should sit down to no meal, we should meet in no company, without having Christ also in the midst of us; without remembering what we all are to him, and what we each therefore are to our brethren. But when we further recollect what there is in the Lord’s Supper beyond the mere meeting of Christ and his disciples; what it is which the bread and the wine commemorate; of what we partake when, as true Christians, we eat of that bread, and drink of that cup; then we shall understand that God indeed is brought very near to us; inasmuch, as he who is a Christian, and partakes sincerely of Christian communion, is a partaker also of Christ: and as belonging to his body, his living spiritual body, the universal Church, receives his share of all those blessings, of all that infinite love which the Father shows continually to the head of that body, his own well-beloved Son.
Say not then in your hearts, Who can ascend up into heaven, that is, to bring Christ down? As on this day, when he took our nature upon him, he came down to abide with us for ever; to abide with, us, even when we should see him with our eyes no more: for whilst he was on earth he so took part in all the concerns of life, in all its duties, its sorrows, and its joys, that memory, when looking back on the past, can fancy him present still; and then let the liveliest fancy do its work to the utmost, it cannot go beyond the reality; he is present still, for that belongs to his almightiness; he is present with us, because he is God; and we can fancy him with us, because he is man. This is the way to lessen our distance from God and heaven, by bringing Christ continually to us on earth: the sky is closed, and shows no sign; all things continue as they were from the beginning of the world; evil abounds, and therefore the faith of many waxes cold; but Christ was and is amongst us; and we need no surer sign than that sign of the prophet Jonah–Christ crucified and Christ risen–to make us feel that we may live with God daily upon earth, and doing so, shall live with him for an eternal life, in a country that cannot pass away.
LECTURE XXIII.
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SUNDAY NEXT BEFORE EASTER.
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MATTHEW xxvi. 40, 41.
_What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak_.
These words, we cannot doubt, have an application to ourselves, and to all Christians, far beyond the particular occasion on which they were actually spoken. They are, in fact, the words which Christ addresses daily to all of us. Every day, when he sees how often we have gone astray from him, he repeats to us, Could ye not watch with me one hour? Every day he commands us to watch and pray, that we enter not into temptation; every day he reminds us, that however willing may be our spirits, yet our flesh is weak; and that through that weakness, sin prevails over it, and having triumphed over our flesh, proceeds to enslave our spirit also.
And as the words are applicable to us every day, so also are they in a particular manner suitable now, when the season of Lent is so nearly over, and Easter is so fast approaching. Have we been unable to watch, with Christ one hour? Already are the good resolutions with which, we, perhaps, began Lent, broken in many instances; and the impressions, if any such were made in us, are already weakened. They have been a burden, which we have shaken off, because the weakness of our nature found it too heavy to bear. Sad it is to think how often this same process has been repeated in all time, how often it will be repeated to the end.
Let us just review what the course of this process has probably been. Now, as the parable of the Sower describes three several sorts of persons, who never bring forth, fruit; so in the very same persons, there is at different times something of each of the three characters there described. We, the very same persons, are at one time hard, at another careless, and at another over-busy; although, if compared with, other persons, and in the general form of their characters, some are hard, and others are careless, and others over-busy; different persons having different faults predominantly. But even the hardness of the road side, although God forbid that it should be our prevailing temper, yet surely it does sometimes exist in too many of us. In common speech, we talk of a person showing a hard temper, meaning, generally, a hard temper towards other men. We have done wrong, but being angry when we are reproved for it, we will not acknowledge it at all, and cheat our consciences, by dwelling upon the supposed wrong that has been done to us in some over-severity of reproof or punishment, instead of confessing and repenting of the original wrong which we ourselves did. But is it not true, that a hard temper towards man is very often, even consciously, a hard temper towards God? Does it never happen, that if conscience presents to us the thought of God, whether as a God of judgment to terrify us, or as a God of love to melt us, we repel it with impatience, or with sullenness? Does not the heart sometimes almost speak aloud the language of blasphemy: Who is God, that I should mind him? I do not care what may happen, I will not be softened. Do not all sorts of unbelieving thoughts pass rapidly through the mind at such moments; first in their less daring form, whispering, as the serpent did to Eve, that we shall not surely die; that we shall have time to repent by and by; that God will not be so strict a judge as to condemn us for such a little; that by some means or other, we shall escape? But then they come, also, in their bolder form: What do I or any man know about another world, or God’s judgments? may it not be all a fiction, so that I have, in reality, nothing to fear? In short, under one form or another, is it not true, that our hearts have sometimes displayed actually hardness towards God; that the thought of God has been actually presented to our minds, but that we have turned it aside, and have not suffered it to make any impression upon us? And thus, we have not only not watched with Christ according to his command, but have actually told him that we would not. But this has been in our worst temper, certainly; it may not have happened,–I trust that it has not happened often. More commonly, I dare say, the fault has been carelessness. We have gone out of this place; sacred names have ceased to sound in our ears; sights in any degree connected with, holy things have been all withdrawn from us. Other sounds and other sights have been before us, and our minds have yielded to them altogether. There are minds, indeed, which have no spring of thought in themselves; which are quiet, and in truth empty, till some outward objects come to engage them. Take them at a moment when they are alone, or when there is no very interesting object before them, and ask them of what they are thinking. If the answer were truly given, such a mind would say, “Of nothing.” Certain images may be faintly presented to it; it may be that it is not altogether a blank; yet it could not name anything distinctly. No form had been vivid enough to produce any corresponding resolution in us; we were, as it were, in a state between sleeping and waking, with neither thoughts nor dreams definite enough to affect us. This state finds exactly all that it desires in the presence or the near hope of outward objects; the mind lives in its daily pursuits, and companions, and amusements. What impressions have been once produced are soon worn away; and in a soil so shallow nothing makes a durable impression: everything can, as it were, scratch upon its surface, while nothing can strike deeply down within.
Or, again, take the rarer case of those who are over-busy. There are minds, undoubtedly, which are as incapable of rest as those of the generality of men are prone to it; there are minds which enter keenly into everything presented to them by their outward senses, and which, when their senses cease to supply them, have an inexhaustible source of thought within, which furnishes them with abundant matter of reflection or of speculation. To such a mind, doing is most delightful; whether it be outward doing, or the mere exercise of thought, either supplies alike the consciousness of power. Where, then, is there room for the less obtruding things of God? Into that restless water, another and another image is for ever stepping down, pushing aside and keeping at a distance the sobering reflections of God and of Christ. Alas! the thorns grow so vigorously in such a soil, that they altogether choke and kill the seed of God’s word.
So, then, we are either asleep, or, if we are awake, we are not waking with Christ. On one side, in that garden of Gethsemane were the disciples sleeping; below, and fast ascending the hill,–not sleeping, certainly, but with lanterns and torches and weapons,–were those whose waking was for evil. Where were they who watched with Christ one hour then,–or where are those who watch with him now?
HOW gently, yet how earnestly, does he call upon us to “watch and pray, lest we enter into temptation.” To watch and to pray: for of all those around him some were sleeping, and none were praying; so that they who watched were not watching with him, but against him. In our careless state of mind the call to us is to watch; in our over-busy state the call to us is to pray; in our hard state there is equal need for both. And even in our best moods, when we are not hard, nor careless, nor over-busy, when we are at once sober and earnest and gentle, then not least does Christ call upon us to watch and to pray, that we may retain that than which else no gleam of April sunshine was ever more fleeting; that we may perfect that which else is of the earth, earthly, and when we lie down in the dust will wither and come to dust also.
Jesus Christ brought life and immortality, it is said, to light through the gospel. He brought life and immortality to light:–is this indeed true as far as we are concerned? What do we think would be the difference in this point between many of us–who will dare say how many?–and a school, I will not say of Jewish, but even of Greek or Roman or Egyptian boys, eighteen hundred, or twenty-four hundred, or three or four thousand years ago? Compare us at our worship with them, and then, I grant, the difference would appear enormous. We have no images, making the glory of the incorruptible God like to corruptible man; we have no vain stream of incense; no shedding of the blood of bulls and calves in sacrifice: the hymns which are sung here are not vain repetitions or impious fables, which gave no word of answer to those questions which it most concerns mankind to know. Here, indeed, Jesus Christ is truly set forth, crucified among us; here life and immortality are brought to light. But follow us out of this place,–to our respective pursuits and amusements, to our social meetings, or our times of solitary thought,–and wherein do we seem to see life and immortality more brightly revealed than to those heathen schools of old? Do we enjoy any worldly good less keenly, or less shrink from any worldly evil? Death, which to the heathen view was the end of all things, is to us (so our language goes) the gate of life. Do we think of it with more hope and less fear than the heathen did? Christ has risen, and has reconciled us to God. Is God more to us?–God now revealed to us as our reconciled Father–do we oftener think of him, do we love him better, than he was thought of and loved in those heathen schools, which had Homer’s poetry for their only gospel? We talk of light, of revelation, of the knowledge of God, while verily and really we are walking, not in light, but in darkness: not in knowledge of God, but in blindness and hardness of heart.
“The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” How great is the loving-kindness of these words,–how gently does Christ bear with the weakness of his disciples! But this thought may be the most blessed or the most dangerous thought in the world; the most blessed if it touches us with love, the most dangerous if it emboldens us in sin. He is full of loving-kindness, full of long-suffering; for days, and weeks, and months, and years he bears with us: we grieve him, and he entreats; we crucify him afresh, yet he will not come down from the cross in power and majesty; he endures and spares. So it is for days, and months, and years; for some years it may be to most of us,–for many years to some of the youngest. There may be some here who may go on grieving Christ, and crucifying him afresh, for as much as seventy years; and he will bear with them all that time, and his sun will daily shine upon them, and his creatures and his word will minister to their pleasure; and he himself will say nothing to them but to entreat them to turn and be saved. This may last, I say, to some amongst us for seventy years; to others it may last fifty; to many of us it may last for forty, or for thirty; none of us, perhaps, are so old but that it may last with us twenty, or at the least ten. Such is the prospect before us, if we like it: not to be depended upon with certainty, it is true, but yet to be regarded as probable. But as these ten, or twenty, or fifty, or seventy years pass on, Christ will still spare us, but his voice of entreaty will be less often heard; the distance between him and us will be consciously wider. From one place after another where we once used sometimes to see him, he will have departed; year after year some object which used once to catch the light from heaven, will have become overgrown, and will lie constantly in gloom; year after year the world will become to us more entirely devoid of God. If sorrow, or some softening joy ever turns our minds towards Christ, we shall be startled at perceiving there is something which keeps us from him, that we cannot earnestly believe in him; that if we speak of loving him, our hearts, which can still love earthly things, feel that the words are but mockery. Alas, alas! the increased weakness of our flesh, has destroyed all the power of our spirit, and almost all its willingness: it is bound with chains which it cannot break, and, indeed, scarcely desires to break. Redemption, Salvation, Victory,–what words are these when applied to that enslaved, that lost, that utterly overthrown and vanquished soul, which sin is leading in triumph now, and which will speedily be given over to walk for ever as a captive in the eternal triumph of death!
Not one word of what I have said is raised beyond the simplest expression of truth; this is our portion if we will not watch with Christ. We know how often we have failed to do so, either sleeping in carelessness, or being busy and wakeful, but not with him or for him. Still he calls us to watch and pray, lest we enter into temptation; to mark our lives and actions; to mark them often; to see whether we have done well or ill in the month past, or in the week past, or in the day past; to consider whether we are better than we were, or worse; whether we think Christ loves us better, or worse; whether we are more or less cold towards him. I know not what else can be called watching with Christ than such a looking into ourselves as we are in his sight. It is very hard to be done;–yes, it is hard–harder than anything probably which we ever attempted before; and, therefore, we must pray withal for his help, whose strength is perfected in our weakness. And if it be so hard, and we have need so greatly to pray for God’s help, should we not all also be anxious to help one another? And knowing, as we do from our own consciences, how difficult it is to watch with Christ, and how thankful we should be to any one who were to make it easier to us, should we not be sure that our neighbour is in like case with ourselves; that our help may be as useful to him as we feel that his would be to us? This is our bounden duty of love towards one another; what then should be said of us if we not only neglect this duty, but do the very contrary to it; if we actually help the evil in our brother’s heart to destroy him more entirely; if we will not watch with Christ ourselves, and strive to prevent others from doing so?
LECTURE XXIV.
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GOOD FRIDAY.
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ROMANS v. 8.
_God commendeth his love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us_.
We all remember the story in the Gospel, of the different treatment which our Lord met with in the same house, from the Pharisee, who had invited him into it, and from the woman who came in and knelt at his feet, and kissed them, and bathed them with her tears. Our Lord accounted for the difference in these words, “To whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little;” which means to speak of the sense or feeling in the person’s own mind, “He who feels that little is or needs to be forgiven him, he also loves little.” And this same difference which existed toward him when he was present on earth, exists no less now, whenever he is brought before our thoughts. The same sort of persons who saw him with indifference, think of him also with indifference; they who saw him with love, think of him also with love. There is no art, no power in the world, which can give an interest to words spoken concerning him, for those who feel that little is and that little needs to be forgiven them, or to those who never consider about their being forgiven at all. To such, this day, with its services, what they hear from the Scriptures, or what they hear from men, must be alike a matter of indifference: it is not possible that it should be otherwise. Yet, God forbid that we should design what we are saying this day only for a certain few of our congregation, as if the rest neither would nor could be interested in it. So long as any one is careless, he cannot, it is true, be interested about the things of Christ; but who can say at what moment, through God’s grace, he may cease to be careless? Is it too much to say, that scarcely a service is performed in any congregation in the land, which does not awaken an interest in some one who before was indifferent? I do rot say a deep interest, nor a lasting one, but an interest; there is a thought, a heeding, an inclination of the mind to listen, created probably by the Church services in some one or other, every time that they are performed. As we never can know in whom this may be so created, as all have great need that it should be created, as all are deeply concerned whether they feel that they are so or no, so we speak to all alike; and if the language does pass over their ears like an unknown or indistinct sound, the fault and the loss are theirs; but the Church has borne her witness, and has so far done her duty.
But again, for ears not careless, but most interested; for hearts to whom Christ is more than all in the world besides; for minds, before whom the wisdom of the gospel is ever growing, rising to a loftier height, and striking downwards to a depth more profound,–yet without end in its height or its depth; is there not, also, a difficulty in speaking to them of that great thing which the Church celebrates to-day? Is there no difficulty in awakening their interest, or rather how can we escape even from wearying or repelling them, when their own affections and deep thoughts must find all words of man, whether of themselves or others, infinitely unworthy to express either the one or the other? To such, then, the words of the preacher may be no more than music without any words at all; which does but serve to lead and accompany our own thoughts, without distinctly suggesting any thoughts of another to interrupt the workings of our own minds. We would speak of Christ’s death; most good it is for us and for you to think upon it; so far as our words suit the current of your own thoughts, use them and listen to them; so far as they are a too unworthy expression of what we ought to think and feel, follow your own reflections, and let the words neither offend you nor distract you.
I would endeavour just to touch, upon some of the purposes for which the Scripture tells us that Christ died, and for which his death was declared to be the great object of our faith. This done in the simplest and fewest words will best show the infinite greatness of the subject; and how truly it is, so to speak, the central point of Christianity.
First of all, Christ died as a proper sacrifice for sin; as a sacrifice, the virtue of which, is altogether distinct from our knowledge of it, or from any effect which it has a tendency to produce on our own minds. We are forgiven for his sake; we are acquitted through his death, and through faith in his blood. What a view does this open, partially, indeed,–for what mortal eye can reach to the end of it?–of the evil of sin, and of God’s love! of what God’s justice required, and of what God’s love fulfilled! This great sacrifice was made once, but it will not be made again; for those who despise this there remains no more offering for sin, but their sin abideth with them for ever.
Secondly, Christ’s death is revealed to us as a motive capable of overcoming all temptations to evil. “How much more shall the blood of Christ purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” “He suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God;” that is, that a consideration of what Christ’s death declares to us should have power to melt the hardest heart, and to sober the lightest: that, when we think of Christ dying, dying for us, and so purchasing for us the forgiveness of sins, and everlasting life, such a love, and such a prospect of peace with God, and of glory, should in the highest degree soften and enkindle us; and from love for him, and confidence of hope through the prospect which he has given us, we should be able to overcome all temptations. “I am persuaded,” says St. Paul, “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Thirdly, Christ suffered for as, leaving us an example that we should follow his steps. He left us an example of all meekness, and patience, and humility; he left us an example of perfect submission to God’s will; he left us an infinite comfort by letting us feel when we are in any trouble, or pain, or affliction, that he was troubled too; that he knew pain, and endured affliction. Above all, in that hour which must come to all of us, he has left us the greatest of all supports;–for he endured to die; and we may enter with less fear into the darkness of the grave, for even there Christ has been for our sakes, and arose from out of it a conqueror.
Fourthly, Christ died that he might gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad; he died to purchase to himself his universal Church. So it is said in the Scriptures: and on this particular purpose of his death, it may not be amiss to dwell, for none so needs to be held in remembrance. Many there are, and ever have been, who have rested their whole hope towards God on his sacrifice; many who have learnt from his cross to overcome sin; from his resurrection to overcome the world; many who, amidst all the troubles of life, and in the hour of death, have been supported by the thought of his example. But where is his universal Church? where the company of God’s children gathered together into one? where is the city set upon the hill, that cannot be hid? where is the visible kingdom of God, where all its people are striving under one Divine Head, against sin, the world, and the devil? This is the sign which we look for and cannot find; this is the fulfilment of the prophecies for which we seem destined to wait in vain.
And what if, on the contrary, that which is called the Church act rather the part of the world; if our worst foes be truly those of our own household: if they who should have been for our help, be rather an occasion of falling: if one of our greatest difficulties in following Christ steadily, arise from the total want of encouragement, yea, often from the direct opposition of those who are themselves pledged to follow him to the death; if that Church, which was to have been the clearest sign to the world of the truth of Christ’s gospel, be now, in many respects, rather a stumbling-block to the adversary and unbeliever, so that the name of God is through us blasphemed among the heathen, rather than glorified; may we not humble ourselves before God in sorrow and in shame? and must we not confess, that through our sin, and the sin of our fathers, Christ, in respect of this one purpose of his death, has as yet died in vain?
Israel after the flesh, lamenting their Jerusalem which is now not theirs, and mourning over their ruined temple, in all their synagogues repeat constantly the prayer, O Lord, build thou the walls of Jerusalem! O Lord, build! O Lord, build! O Lord, build! is the solemn chorus, marking by its repetition the earnestness of their desire. And should not this be the prayer of the Israel of God, scattered now as they are into their thousand divided and corrupted synagogues, and no token to be seen of the pure and universal Church, the living temple of the Spirit of God; should not we too, privately and publicly, join in the prayer of the earthly Israel, and pray that Christ would build for us the walls of our true Jerusalem? For only think what it would be, if Christ’s Church existed more than in name; consider what it would be if baptism were a real bond; if we looked on one another as brethren, redeemed by one ransom, pledged to one service; if we bore with one another’s weaknesses; if we helped one another’s endeavours; if each saw and heard, in the words and life of his neighbour, an image of Christ, and a pledge of the truth of his promises. Consider what it would be, if, with no quarrels, with no jealousies, with no unkindness, we sought not every man his own, but every man also another’s welfare; as true members one of another,–of one body, of which Christ is the head. Consider what it would be, if our judgments of men and things were like Christ’s judgments; neither strengthening the heart of the careless and sinful by our laxity, nor making sad the heart of God’s true servant by our uncharitableness; not putting little things in the place of great, nor great things in the place of little; not neglecting the unity of the Spirit; not stickling for a sameness in the form. Or, if we carry our views a little wider; if we look out upon the world at large, and hear of rumours of wars, and see the signs of internal disorders, and perhaps may think that the clouds are gathering which, herald one of the comings of the Son of man to judgment, whether the last of all or not it were vain to ask; how blessed would it be, if we could see such an ark of Christ’s Church as should float visibly upon, the stormy waters; gathering within it, in peace and safety, men of various dispositions and conditions, and opinions; those who held much of truth, and those who had mixed with it much of error: those whom Christ would call clean, and those, too, whom some of their brethren call unclean, but whom Christ has redeemed, and will save no less than their despisers; all, in short, who fled from sin and from the world to Christ, and to the company of Christ’s people! O if we could but see such an ark preparing while God’s long-suffering yet withholds the flood! O that all God’s scattered and divided children would join together in one earnest prayer, O Lord, build thou the walls of Jerusalem! O Lord, build! O Lord, build! O Lord, build!
Yet, for this, among other purposes of mercy, did the Son of God, as on this day, suffer death upon the cross: he died that we might be one in him. Let us turn, then, from the thought of the general temple in ruins, and let us see whether we cannot, at any rate, within the walls of our own little particular congregation, fulfil also this object of Christ’s death, and be one in him. Let us consider one another, to provoke unto love and to good works: we too often consider one another for the very contrary purpose, to provoke to contempt or ill-will. True it is, that if we look for it we can find much of evil in our brethren, and they can find much also in us; and we might become all haters of one another, all in some sort deserving to be hated. But where is he who is entitled to hate another’s evil when he has evil in himself; and when Christ, who had none, did not hate the evil of us all, but rather died to save it? And is it not true also, that, if we look for it, we can also find in every one something to love? something, undoubtedly, even in him who has in himself least: but much, infinitely much in all, when we look upon them as Christ’s redeemed. Not more beautifully than truly has it been said, that Christian souls–
“Though worn and soiled by sinful clay, Are yet, to eyes that see them true,
All glistening with baptismal dew.”
They have the seal of belonging to Christ; they are his and our brethren. And, as his latest command, and his beloved Apostle’s also, was that we should love one another; so, if we would bring all our solemn thoughts of Christ’s death to one point, and endeavour to derive from it some one particular lesson for our daily lives, I know not that any would be more needed or better for us, than that we should especially apply the thought of Christ dying on the cross for us to soften our angry, and proud, and selfish feelings; to restrain us from angry or sneering words; from unkind, offensive, rude, or insulting actions; to excite us to gentleness, courtesy, kindness; remembering that he, be he who he may, whom we allow ourselves to despise, or to dislike, or to annoy, or to neglect, was one so precious in Christ’s sight, that he laid down his life for his sake, and invites him to be for ever with, him and with his Father.
LECTURE XXV.
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EASTER DAY.
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JOHN xx. 20.
_Then the disciples went away again unto their own home_.
With this verse ends the portion of the scripture chosen for the gospel in this morning’s service. It finishes the account of the visit of Peter and John to the sepulchre; and, therefore, the close of the extract at this point is sufficiently natural. Yet the effect of the quiet tone of these words, just following the account of the greatest event which earth has ever witnessed, is, I think, singularly impressive; the more so when we remember that they were written by one of the very persons, whose visit had been just described; and that the writer, therefore, could tell full well, to how intense an interest there had succeeded that solemn calm. They went away from the very sight, if I may so speak, of Christ risen, to their own homes. And what thoughts do we suppose that they carried with them? Let us endeavour to recall them, for our benefit, also, who, like them, are going, as it were, to the ordinary tenure of our daily lives from this day’s high solemnity.
The disciples went away to their own homes; and there they waited, either in Jerusalem or in Galilee, pursuing, as we find from the last chapter of St. John, their common occupations, till, after their Lord’s ascension, power was given them from on high, and the great work of their apostleship began. During this period, Christ appeared to them several times: he conversed with them, he ate and drank with them: but he did not live continually with them, as he had done before his crucifixion: he did not take them about with him as before, while he was performing the part of the great prophet of the house of Israel. They were now at their own homes waiting for his call to more active duties. They had seen him dead, and they had seen, him risen, and they were receiving into their souls all the lessons of his life and death and resurrection, brought before them, and impressed upon them by that Holy Spirit, who, according to Christ’s promise, was to take of the things which are Christ’s, and to show them to Christ’s disciples.
It is true that there came upon them, after this, an especial visitation of the Spirit of power, to fit them for their particular work of apostles or messengers to mankind. Having been converted themselves, they were to strengthen their brethren. And as this especial visitation of the Holy Spirit was given to them only, and to those on whom they themselves laid their hands, so none have ever since been called to that particular work to which they were called, in any thing of the same degree of fulness. What is peculiar to them as apostles is not applicable exactly to us; but we are all concerned in what belongs to them as Christians: in this respect, their case is ours; and they, when at their own homes, and engaged in their own callings, stand in the same situation as we all.
We may, however, still make a two-fold division; we may regard the apostles going away to their own homes, as a temporary thing, as a mere term of preparation for the duties which they were afterwards called to; or we may look upon it as complete so far as earth is concerned, since, taking them as Christians only and not as apostles, they might have so lived on to the end of their lives, having received all those helps which were needed for their own personal salvation, and having only to use them daily for their soul’s benefit. This same distinction we may apply to ourselves. We may consider ourselves as going to our own homes for a time only, awaiting our call to active life; or we may consider ourselves as withdrawing, after every celebration of Christ’s resurrection, to that round of daily duties which on earth shall never alter; and to which all the helps derived from our communion with Christ are to be applied, with nothing future, so for as earth is concerned, for which we may need them. So then, of whatever age we may be, what is said of the apostles in the text may apply to us also: after having witnessed, as it were, Christ’s resurrection, we go away to our own homes. Let us first take that part of the text which is common to us all, though not in the same degree–the having been witnesses of Christ’s resurrection. John and Peter found him not in the sepulchre; they found the linen clothes and the napkin lying there, but he was gone. And upon this, as John assures us, both for himself and his companion, “they believed.” They believed, we should observe, when as yet they had no more seen Jesus himself after his resurrection, than we Lave now. They only knew that he had been dead, and that he was not in the sepulchre. And this we know also; we have not seen him, indeed, since his resurrection: but we are sure he is not in the sepulchre. We are sure that the malice of his enemies did not do its work: we are sure, for we are ourselves witnesses of it, that that name, and that word, which they hoped would have been destroyed for ever, like the names of many, not only of false prophets and deceivers, but even of good men and of wise, have not perished, but have brought forth fruit more abundantly, from the very cause that was intended to put them out. Christ’s gospel, assuredly, is a living thing, full of vigour and full of power; it has worked mightily for good, and is working; it is so full of blessing, it tends so largely towards the happiness that is enjoyed upon earth, that we are quite sure it is not lying still buried in Christ’s sepulchre.
They (the two disciples) then went away believing, because they found that he was not in the sepulchre. But Mary Magdalene came and told them, that she had seen him risen, and had heard his voice with her ears. What she told Peter and John, Peter and John are now telling to us. They tell us that they have heard him, have seen him with their eyes, have looked upon him, yea, that their hands have handled him. They tell us even more than Mary Magdalene told them; for she had not been allowed to touch him. We may well trust their testimony, as they trusted hers, being quite ready indeed to believe that he was alive, because they had found that he was not amongst the dead. And so we, finding that he is not amongst the dead, seeing and knowing the fruits of his gospel, the living and ever increasing fruits of it, may well believe that its author is risen, and that the pains of death were loosed from off him, because it was not possible that he should be holden by them.
In this way, we, like the two disciples, may be all said to be witnesses of Christ’s resurrection. May it not be said still more of those amongst us who assembled this morning round Christ’s table, to keep alive the memory of his death; when we partook of that bread, and drank of that cup, of which so many thousands and millions, in every age and in every land, have eaten and drunken, all receiving them, with nearly the same words,–the body that was given for us, the blood that was shed for us,–all, making allowances for human weakness, finding in that communion the peace and the strength of God; all alike receiving it with penitent hearts, and with faith, and purposes of good for the time to come? Did we not then witness that Christ is not perished? that he has been ever, and still is, mighty to save? That command given to twelve persons, in an obscure chamber in Jerusalem, by one who, the next day, was to die as a malefactor, has been, and is obeyed from one end of the world to another; and wherever it has been obeyed, there, in proportion to the sincerity of the obedience, has been the fulness of the blessing.
But this is now past, as with the two disciples, and we are going again to our own homes. There, neither the empty sepulchre nor the risen Saviour are present before us, but common scenes and familiar occupations, which, in themselves have nothing in them of Christ. So it must be; we cannot be always within these walls; we cannot always be engaged in public prayer; we cannot always be hearing Christ’s word, nor partaking of his communion; we must be going about our several works, and must be busied in them; some of us in preparation for other work to come, others to go on till the end of their lives with this only. May we not hope that Christ, and Christ’s Spirit, will visit us the while in these our daily callings, as he came to his disciples Peter and John, when following their business as fishers on the lake of Gennesareth?
How can we get him to visit us? There is one answer–by prayer and by watchfulness. By prayer, whether we are in our preparatory state, or our fixed one; by prayer, and I think I may add, by praying in our own words. Of course, when we pray together, some of us must join in the words of others; and it makes little difference, whether those words be spoken or read. But when we pray alone, some, perhaps, may still use none but prayers made by others, especially the Lord’s prayer. We should remember, however, that the Lord’s prayer was given for this very purpose, to teach us how to pray for ourselves. But it does not do this, if we use it alone, and still more, if we use it without understanding it. If we do understand it, and study it, it will indeed teach us to pray; it will show us what we most need in prayer, and what are our greatest evils; but surely it may be said, that no man ever learnt this lesson well without wishing to practise it; no man ever used the Lord’s prayer with understanding and with earnestness, without adding to it others of his own. And this is not a trifling matter. We know the difficulty of attending in prayer; and if we use the words of others only, which we must, therefore, repeat from memory, it is perfectly possible to say them over without really joining with them in our minds: we may say them over to ourselves, and be actually thinking of other things the while. And the same thing holds good, of course, even with prayers that we have made ourselves, if we accustom ourselves to repeat them without alteration; they then become, in fact, the work of another than our actual mind, and may be repeated by memory alone. Therefore, it seems to be of consequence to vary the words, and even the matter of our private prayers, that so we may not deceive ourselves, by repeating merely, when we fancy that we are praying. Ten words actually made by ourselves at the moment, and not remembered, are a real prayer; for it is not hypocrisy that is the most common danger; our temper, when we are on our knees, is apt indeed to be careless, but not, I hope and believe, deceitful. This, of course, must be well known to a very large proportion of us; but, perhaps, there are some to whom it may be useful; some to whom the advice may not yet have suggested itself, that they should make their own prayers, in part, at least, whenever they kneel down to their private devotions.
And this sort of prayer, with God’s blessing, is likely to make us watchful. We rise in the morning: we say some prayers of our own; we hear others read to us; and yet it is possible that we may not have really prayed ourselves in either case; we may not have brought ourselves truly into the presence of God. Hence our true condition, with all its dangers, has not been brought before our minds; the need of watchfulness has not been shown to us. But with real prayer of our own hearts’ making it is different; God is then present to us, and sin and righteousness: our dream of carelessness is, for a moment at least, broken. No doubt it is but too easy to dream again; yet still an opportunity of exerting ourselves to keep awake is given us; we are roused to consciousness of our situation; and that, at any rate, renders exertion possible. There is no doubt that souls are most commonly lost by this continued dreaming, till at length, when seemingly awake (they are not so really), they are like men who answer to the call that would arouse them, but they answer, in fact, unconsciously. We cannot tell for ourselves or others any way by which our souls shall certainly be saved, in spite of carelessness; or any way by which, carelessness shall be overcome necessarily; all that can be done is, to point out how it may be overcome, by what means the soul may be helped in its endeavours; not how those endeavours and holy desires may be rendered needless.
Thus, then, we may gain Christ to visit us at our own homes and in our common callings, when we are returned to them. And that difference which I spoke of as existing between us, that some of us are waiting for Christ’s call to a higher field of action, while others are engaged in that sort of duty which will last their lives, I know not that this–though it be often important, and though I am often obliged to dwell on it–need enter into our considerations to-day. Rather, perhaps, may we overlook this difference, and feel that all of us here assembled–those in their state of earliest preparation for after duties; those to whom that earliest state is passed away, and who are entered into another state, in part preparatory, in part partaking of the character of actual life; and those also whose preparation, speaking of earth, only, is completed altogether, who must be doing, and whose time even of doing is far advanced–that all of us have in truth one great call yet before us: and that, with respect to that, we are all, as it were, preparing still. And for that great call, common to all of us, we need all the same common readiness; and that readiness will be effected in us only by the same means,–if now, before it come, Christ and Christ’s Spirit shall, in our homes and daily callings, be persuaded to visit us.
LECTURE XXVI.
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WHITSUNDAY.
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ACTS xix. 2.
_Have you received the Holy Ghost since ye believed_?
It appears, by what follows these words, that the question here related especially to those gifts of the Holy Ghost which were given, in the first age of the church, as a sign of God’s power, and a witness that the work of the gospel was from God. Yet although this be so, and therefore the words, in this particular sense, cannot to any good purpose be asked now; yet there is another sense, and that not a lower but a far higher one, in which we may ask them, and in which it concerns us in the highest degree, what sort of answer we can give to them, I say, “what sort of answer;” for I think it is true of all Christians that, in a certain measure, they have received the Holy Ghost. Not only does the doctrine of our own, and I believe every other, church, concerning baptism, show this: but it seems also necessarily to follow, from those words of St. Paul, that “No man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost.” And yet the Scripture and common experience alike show us, that a man may call Jesus Lord, and yet not be really his, nor one who will be owned by Him at the last day. So that what is of real importance to us is, the degree of fulness and force with which we could give the answer to the words of the text; not simply saying that we have received the Holy Ghost, which would be true, but might be far from sufficient; but saying that we have received Him and are receiving Him more and more, so that our hearts and lives are showing the impression of his heavenly seal daily more and more clearly and completely.
And this must really have always been the answer which it concerned every Christian to be able to make; although it has been in various instances, and by very opposite parties, tried to be evaded. It is evaded alike by those who set too highly the grace given in baptism, and by those who, setting this too low, direct our attention to another point in a man’s life, which they call his justification or conversion. For both alike would give an exaggerated importance to one particular moment of our lives, and to the grace then given. Now, the importance of particular moments in men’s lives differs exceedingly in different persons; but yet in all may be exaggerated. I suppose that if ever in any man’s life a particular point was of immense importance, it was the point of his conversion in the case of St. Paul. There were here united all that grace which according to one view accompanies baptism especially, and all which according to the other view accompanies conversion and justification. Here was a point which separated St. Paul’s later life from his earlier with a broader line of separation than can possibly be the ease in general. There can be no doubt that he, if ever man did, received at that particular time the Holy Ghost. But if, ten or twenty years afterwards, St. Paul had been asked concerning what the Holy Ghost had done for him, he would not certainly have confined himself in his answer to the grace once given him at his conversion and baptism, but would have spoken of that which he had been receiving since every hour and every day, carrying forward and completing that work of God which had been begun at the time of his journey to Damascus. And as he had received more and more grace, so was his confidence in his acceptance with God at the last day more and more assured. For he writes to the Corinthians, many years after his conversion and baptism, that he kept under his body, and was bringing it into subjection, lest that by any means, after having preached to others, he should be himself a castaway. And some years later still, though he does not use so strong an expression as that of becoming a castaway, yet he still says, even when writing to the Philippians from Rome, that he counted not himself to have apprehended, nor to have attained his object fully; but forgetting what was behind, even the grace of his conversion and baptism, he pressed on to the things which were before, even that continued and increasing grace which was required to bring him in safety to his heavenly crown. But if we go on some years yet farther, when his labours were ended, and the sure prospect of speedy death was before him; when the past grace was everything, and what he could expect yet to come was scarcely any other than that particular aid which we need in our struggle with the last enemy–death; then, his language is free from all uncertainty; then, in the full sense of the words, he could say that he had received the Holy Ghost, that his spirit had been fully born again for its eternal being, and that there only remained the raising up also of his mortal body, to complete that new creation of body and soul which Christ’s Spirit works in Christ’s redeemed. “I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me my crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me at that day.”
It seems, then, that the great question which we should be anxious to be able to answer in the affirmative, is this, “_Are we receiving_ the Holy Ghost since we believed?” “Since we believed,” whether we choose to carry back the date of our first belief to the very time of our baptism, when grace was given to us,–we know not to what degree nor how,–yet given to us, as being then received into Christ’s flock; or whether we go back only to that time when we can ourselves remember ourselves to have believed, and so can remember that God’s grace was given to us. Have we been ever since, and are we still, receiving the Holy Ghost? O blessed above all blessedness, if we can say that this is true of us! O blessed with a blessedness most complete, if we only do not too entirely abandon ourselves to enjoy it! Elect of God; holy and beloved; justified and sanctified; there is nothing in all the world that could impair or destroy such happiness, except we ourselves, in evil hour, believed it to be out of the reach of danger.
But if the witness of memory and conscience be less favourable; if we can remember long seasons of our lives during which we were not receiving the Holy Ghost; long seasons of a cold and hard state, in which there was, as it were, neither rain nor dew, nor yet sun to ripen what had grown before; but all was so ungenial that no new thing grew; and what had grown was withering and almost dying; what shall be said, then, and how can the time be made up which was so wasted? But we remember, it may be, that this deadly season passed away: the rain fell once more, and the tender dew, and the quickening sun shone brightly: our spiritual growth began again, and is now going on healthily; we have not always been receiving the Holy Ghost since we believed, but we are receiving him now. How gracious, then, has God been to us, that he has again renewed us unto repentance; that he has shown that we have not, in the fullest sense, sinned against the Holy Ghost, seeing that the Holy Ghost still abides with us! we grieved him, and tried his long-suffering, but he has not abandoned us to our own evil hearts; we are receiving him who is the giver of life, and we still live.
But must not we speak of others? is not another case to be supposed possible? may there not be some who cannot say with truth that they are receiving the holy Ghost now? They received him once; we doubt it not; perhaps they were receiving him for some length of time; their early childhood was watched by Christian care; their youth and early manhood, when it received freshly things of this world, received also, with lively thankfulness, the grace of God; they can remember a time when they were growing in goodness; when they were being renewed after the image of God. But they can remember, also, that this time passed away; the grace of early childhood was put out by the temptations of boyhood; the grace of youth and opening manhood died away amid the hardness of this life’s maturity. It is so, I believe, often; that boyhood, which is, as it were, ripened childhood, destroys the grace of our earliest years; that again, when youth offers us a second beginning of life, we are again impressed with good; but that ripened youth, which is manhood, brings with it again the reason of hardness, and again our spiritual growth, is destroyed. We can remember, I am supposing, that this fatal change did take place; but can we date it to any particular act, or month, or day, or hour? We can do so most rarely: in this respect the seed of death can even less be traced to its beginning than the seed of life. And yet there _was_ a beginning, only we do not remember it. And why do we not remember it? Because the real beginning was in some act which seemed of so little consequence that it made no impression; in the altering some habit which we judged to be a mere trifle; in the indulging some temper which even at the time we hardly noticed. Some such little thing,–little in our view of it,–made the fatal turn; we received the grace of God less and less: we heeded not the change for a season; and when it was so marked that we could not but heed it, then we had ceased to regard it; and so it was that the spring of our life was dried up: and it is of no more avail to our present and future state, that we once received grace, than the rain of last winter will be sufficient to ripen the summer’s harvest, if from this time forward we have nothing but drought and cold.
Some few, again, there may be, who, within their own recollection, could not say that they have received the Holy Ghost: persons who have lived among careless friends, to whom the way of life has never been steadily pointed out; while the way of death, with all its manifold paths, meeting at last in one, has been continually before them. Shall we say that these, because they have been baptized, are therefore guilty of having rejected grace given? that this sin is aggravated, because a mercy was offered them once of which they were unconscious? We would not say this; but we would say that it is impossible but that they must have received the Holy Ghost within their memory; it is impossible but that conscience must have sometimes spoken, and that they must have sometimes been enabled to obey it; it is impossible but that they must have had some notions of sin, and some desires to struggle against it; and so far as they ever felt that desire, it was the work of God’s Holy Spirit. Man cannot dare to say how great the amount of their guilt may be; but guilt there certainly is; they have grieved the Holy Spirit; and, though we dare not say that they have utterly blasphemed him, yet they have a long hardness to overcome, and every hour of delayed turning to God increases it: it may be possible still to overcome it, but meanwhile it is not overcome; they are not receiving the Holy Spirit; they are not being renewed into the likeness of Christ, without which no man can see God.
Here, then, are the four cases, one of which must belong to every one of us here assembled. Either we have been always and still are receiving the Holy Ghost; or we can remember when we were not, but yet are receiving him now; or we can remember when we were, but yet now are not; or we cannot remember to have received him ever, nor are we yet receiving him. I cannot say which of the last two states is the most dreadful, nor scarcely which of the first two states is the most blessed. But yet as even those happy states admit not of over-confidence, so neither do the last two most unhappy states oblige us to despair. Not to despair; but they do urge us to every degree of fear less than despair. There is far more danger of our not fearing enough than of our being driven to despair. There is far more danger of your looking on the season of youth, of our looking on to old age; you trusting to the second freshness and tenderness of the first,–we to the calmness and necessary reflection of the last. There is far more danger of our thus hardening ourselves beyond recall; there is not only the danger, but there is the sin, the greatest sin, I suppose, of which the human mind is capable, that of deliberately choosing evil for the present rather than good, calculating that, by and by, we shall choose good rather than evil. I believe, that it is impossible to conceive of any state of mind more sinful than one which should so feel and so choose; and this is the state which we incur, and which we persist in whenever we put off the thought of repentance. Now, then, it only remains, that we apply this each to ourselves; I say all of us apply it, the young and the old alike; for there is not one here so young as not to have cause to apply it; there is not one of us who would not, I am sure, be a different person from what he now is, if he were to ask himself steadily every day, Have I been and am I receiving the Holy Ghost since I believed?
LECTURE XXVII.
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TRINITY SUNDAY.
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JOHN iii. 9.
_How can these things be_?
This is the second question put by Nicodemus to our Lord with regard to the truths which Jesus was declaring to him. The first was, “How can a man be born when he is old?” which was said upon our Lord’s telling him that, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Now, it will be observed, that these two questions are treated by our Lord in a different manner: to the first he, in fact, gives an answer; that is, he removes by his answer that difficulty in Nicodemus’s mind which led to the question; but to the second he gives no answer, and leaves Nicodemus–and with Nicodemus, us all also–exactly in the same ignorance as he found him at the beginning.
Now, is there any difference in the nature of these two questions, which led our Lord to treat them so differently? We might suppose beforehand that there would be; and when we come to examine them, so we shall find it. The difficulty in the first question rendered true faith impossible, and, therefore, our Lord removed it; the difficulty in the second question did not properly interfere with faith at all, but might, through man’s fault, be a temptation to him to refuse to believe. And as this, like other temptations, must be overcome by us, and not taken away from our path before we encounter it, so our Lord did not think proper to remove it or to lessen it.
We must now unfold this difference more clearly. When Christ said, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God,” Nicodemus could not possibly believe what our Lord said, because he did not understand his meaning. He did not know what he meant by “a man’s being born again,” and, therefore, he could not believe, as he did not know what he was to believe. Words which we do not understand, are like words spoken in an unknown language; we can neither believe them nor disbelieve them, because we do not know what they say. For instance, I repeat these words, [Greek: tous pantas haemas phanerothaenai dei emprosaen tou baematos tou Christou.] Now, if I were to ask, Do you believe these words? is it not manifest that all of you who know Greek enough, to understand them may also believe them; but of those who do not know Greek, not a single person can yet believe them? They are as yet words spoken as to the air. But when I add, that these words mean, “We must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ;” now we can all believe them because we can all understand them.
It is, then, perfectly impossible for any man to believe a statement except in proportion as he understands its meaning. And, therefore, our Lord explained what he meant to Nicodemus, and told him that, by being born again, he did not mean the natural birth of the body; but a birth caused by the Spirit, and therefore itself a birth of a spirit: for, as that which is born from a body is itself also a body, so that which is born of a spirit is itself also a spirit. So that Christ’s words now are seen to have this meaning,–No man can enter into the kingdom of God except God’s Spirit creates in him a spirit or mind like unto himself, and like unto Christ, and like unto the Father. Nicodemus, then, could now understand what was meant, and might have believed it. But he asks rather another question, “How can these things be?” How can God’s Spirit create within me a spirit like himself, while I continue a man as before? Many persons since have asked similar questions; but to none of them is an answer given. How God’s Spirit works within us I cannot tell; but if we take the appointed means of procuring his aid, we shall surely find that he has worked and does work in us to life eternal.
We must, then, in order to believe, understand what it is that is told us; but it is by no means necessary that we should understand how it is to happen. It is not necessary, and in a thousand instances we do not know. “If we take poison, we shall die:” there is a statement which we can understand, and therefore believe. But do we understand how it is that poison kills us? Does every one here know how poisons act upon the human frame, and what is the different operation of different poisons,–how laudanum kills, for instance, and how arsenic? Surely there are very few of us, at most, who do understand this: and yet would it not be exceedingly unreasonable to refuse to believe that poison will kill us, because we do not understand the manner _how_?
Thus far, I think, the question is perfectly plain, so soon as it is once laid before us. But the real point of perplexity is to be found a step further. In almost all propositions there is something about the terms which we do understand, and something which we do not. For instance, let me say these few words:–“A frigate was lost amidst the breakers.” These words would be understood in a certain degree, by all who hear me: and so far as all understand them, all can believe them. All would understand that a ship had sunk in the water, or been dashed to pieces; that it would be useful no more for the purposes for which it had been made. But what is meant by the words “frigate” and “breakers” all would not understand, and many would understand very differently: that is to say, those who had happened to have known most about the sea and sea affairs would understand most about them, while those who knew less would understand less; but probably none of us would understand their meaning so fully, or would have so distinct and lively an image of the things, as would be enjoyed by an actual seaman; and even amongst seamen themselves, there would again be different degrees of understanding, according to their different degrees of experience, or knowledge of ships, or powers of mind.
I have taken the instance at random, and any other proposition might have served my purpose as well. But men do not speak to one another at random; when they say anything to their neighbour, they mean it to produce on his mind a certain effect. Suppose that we were living near the sea-coast, and any one were suddenly to come in, and to utter the words which I have taken as my example: should we not know that what the man meant by these words was, that there was a danger at hand for which our help was needed? It matters not that we have no distinct ideas of the terms “frigate” or “breakers;” we understand enough for our belief and practice, and we should hasten to the sea-shore accordingly. Or suppose that the same words were told us of a frigate in which we had some near relation: should we not see at once that what we were meant to understand and to believe in the words was, that we had lost a relation? That is the truth with which we are concerned; and this we can understand and feel, although we may be able to understand nothing more of the words in which that truth is conveyed to us. Now, in like manner, in whatever God says to us there is a purpose: it is intended to produce on our minds a certain impression, and so far it must be understood. But when God speaks to us of heavenly things, the terms employed can only be understood in part, and so far as God’s purpose with regard to our minds reaches; but there must be a great deal in them which we can no more understand than one who had never seen a ship, or a picture of one, could understand the word “frigate.” Our business is to consider what impression or what actions the words are intended to produce in us. Up to this point we can and must understand them: beyond this they may be wholly above the reach of our faculties, and we can form of them no ideas at all.
It is clear that this will be the case most especially whenever God reveals to us anything concerning himself. Take these few words, for example, “God is a spirit;” take them as a mere abstract truth, and how little can we understand about them! Who will dare to say that he understands all that is contained in the words “God” and “spirit?” We might weary ourselves for ever in attempting so to search out either. But God said these words to us: and the point is, What impression did he mean them to have upon us? how far can we understand them? This he has not by any means left doubtful, for it follows immediately, “They who worship him should worship Him in spirit and in truth.” For this end the words were spoken, and thus far they are clear to us. God lives not on Mount Gerizim or at Jerusalem: but in every place he hears the prayers of the sincere and contrite heart, in no place will he regard the offerings of the proud and evil.
Or again, “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all who believe in him should not perish, but have eternal life.” Here are words in themselves, as abstract truths, perfectly overwhelming; “God,” “God’s only-begotten Son,” “Eternity.” Who shall understand these things, when it is said, that “none knoweth the Son, save the Father; that none knoweth the Father, save the Son?” But did God tell us the words for nothing? can we understand nothing from them? believe nothing? feel nothing? Nay, they were spoken that we might both understand, and believe, and feel. How must He love us, who gives for us his only-begotten Son! how surely may we believe in Him who is an only-begotten Son to his Father,–so equal in nature, so entire in union!–What must that happiness be, which reaches beyond our powers of counting! Would we go further?–then the veil is drawn before us; other truths there are, no doubt, contained in the words; truths which the angels might desire to look into; truths which even they may be unable to understand. But these are the secret things which belong unto our God; the things which are revealed they are what belong to us and to our children, that we may understand, and believe, and do them.
Again, “the Comforter, whom Christ will send unto us from the Father, even the Spirit of Truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of Christ.” What words are here! “The Spirit of Truth,” “the Spirit proceeding from the Father;” the Spirit “whom Christ will send,” and “send from the Father.” Can any created being understand, to the full, such “heavenly things” as these? But would Christ have uttered to his disciples mere unintelligible words, which could tell them nothing, and excite in them no feeling but mere wonder? Not so; but the words told them that Christ was not to be lost to them after he had left them on earth; that every gift of God was his: that even that Spirit of God, in which is contained all the fulness of the Godhead, is the Spirit of Christ also; that that mighty power which should work in them so abundantly, was of no other or lower origin than God himself; as entirely God, as the spirit of man is man. But can we therefore understand the Spirit of God, or conceive of him? How should we, when we cannot understand our own? This, and this only, we understand and believe, that without him our spirits cannot be quickened; that unless we pray daily for his aid, and listen to his calls within us, our spirit will never be created after his image, and we cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
It is thus, and thus only, that the revelations of God’s word are beyond our understandings: that in them, beings and things are spoken of, which, taken generally, and in themselves, we should in vain endeavour to comprehend. But what God means us to know, or feel, or do, respecting them, that we can understand; and beyond this we have no concern. It is, in fact, a contradiction to speak of revealing what is unintelligible; for so far as it is a revealed truth it is intelligible; so far as it is unintelligible, it is not revealed. But though a thing revealed must be intelligible in itself, yet it by no means follows that we can understand _how_ it happens. When we are told that the dead shall rise again, we can understand quite well what is meant; that we beings who feel happiness and misery, shall feel them again, either the one or the other, after we seemingly have done with them for ever in the grave. But “How are the dead raised up, and with what body do they come?” are questions to which, whether asked scoffingly or sincerely, we can give no answers; here our understanding fails, and here the truth is not revealed to us.
How, then, has Christianity no mysteries? In one sense, blessed be God for it, it has many. Using mysteries in St. Paul’s sense of great revelations of things which were and must be unknown to all, except God had revealed them: then, indeed, they are many; the pillar and ground of truth, great without controversy, and full of salvation. But take mysteries in our more common sense of the word,–as things which are revealed to none, and can be understood by none,–then it is true that Christianity leaves many such in existence; that many such she has done away; that none has she created. She leaves many mysteries with respect to God, and with respect to ourselves; God is still incomprehensible; life and death have many things in them beyond our questioning; we may still look around us, above us, and within us, and wonder, and be ignorant. But if she still leaves the veil drawn over much in heaven and in earth, yet from how much has she removed it! Life and death are still in many respects dark; but she has brought to light immortality. God is still in himself incomprehensible; but all his glory, and all his perfections, are revealed to us in his only-begotten Son Christ Jesus. God’s Spirit who can search out in his own proper essence? yet Christianity has taught us how we may have him to dwell with us for ever, and taste the fulness of his blessings. Yea, thanks be to God for the great Christian mystery which we this day celebrate; that he has revealed himself to us as our Saviour and our Comforter; that he has revealed to us his infinite love, in that he has given us his only-begotten Son to die for us, and his own Eternal Spirit to make our hearts his temple.
LECTURE XXVIII.
* * * * *
EXODUS iii. 6.
_And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God_.
LUKE xxiii. 30.
_Then shall they begin to say to the mountains. Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us_.
These two passages occur, the one in the first lesson of this morning’s service, the other in the second. One or other of them must have been, or must be, the case of you, of me, of every soul of man that lives or has lived since the world began. There must be a time in the existence of every human being when he will fear God. But the great, the infinite difference is, whether we fear him at the beginning of our relations to him, or at the end.
The fear of Moses was felt at the beginning of his knowledge of God. When God revealed himself to him at the bush, it was, so far as we are told, the first time that Moses learnt to know him. The fear of those who say to the mountains, “Fall on us,” is felt at the very end of their knowledge of God; for to those who are punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, God is not. So that the two cases in the text are exact instances of the difference of which I spoke, in the most extreme degree. Moses, the greatest of the prophets, fears God at first; those who are cast into hell, fear him at last.
The appearance of God, as described in this passage of Scripture, is an image also of his dealings with us at the beginning of our course, when we fear him with a saving fear. “The bush burned with fire, but the bush was not consumed.” God shows his terrors, but he does not, as yet, destroy with them. It is the very opposite to this at last, for then he is expressly said to be a consuming fire.
Moses turned aside to see this great sight, why the bush was not burnt. That sight is the very same which the world has been offering for so many hundreds of years: God’s terrors are around it, but, as yet, it is not consumed, because he wills that we should fear him before it is too late.
There is, indeed, this great difference;–that the signs of God’s presence do not now force themselves upon our eyes; so that we may, if we choose, walk on our own way, without turning aside to see and observe them. And thus we do not see God, and do not, therefore, hide our faces for fear of him, but go on, and feel no fear, till the time when we cannot help seeing him. And it may be, that this time will never come till our life, and with it our space of trial, is gone for ever.
Here, then, is our state, that God will manifest himself no more to us in such a way as that we cannot help seeing him. The burning bush will be no more given us as a sign; Christ will no more manifest himself unto the world. And yet, unless we do see him, unless we learn to fear him while he is yet an unconsuming fire, unless we know that he is near, and that the place whereon we stand is holy ground, we shall most certainly see him when he will be a consuming fire, and when we shall join in crying to the mountains, to fall on us, and to the hills, to cover us.
Every person who thinks at all, must, I am sure, be satisfied, that our great want, the great need of our condition, is this one thing–to realize to ourselves the presence of God. It is a want not at all peculiar to the young. Thoughtfulness, in one sense, is indeed likely to come with advancing years: we are more apt to think at forty than at fifteen; but it by no means follows that we are more apt to think about God. In this matter we are nearly at a level at all times of our life: it is with all of us our one great want, to bring the idea of God, with a living and abiding power, home to our minds.
This is illustrated by a wish ascribed to a great and good man–Johnson, and which has been noticed with a sneer by unbelievers, a wish that he might see a spirit from the other world, to testify to him of the truth of the resurrection. This has been sneered at, as if it were a confession of the unsatisfactory nature of the evidence which we actually possess: but, in truth, it is a confession only of the weakness which clings to us all, that things unseen, which our reason only assures us to be real, are continually overpowered by things affecting our senses; and, therefore, it was a natural wish that sight might, in a manner, come to the aid of reason; that the eye might see, and the ear might hear, a form and words which belonged to another world. And this wish might arise (I do not say wisely, or that his deliberate judgment would sanction it, but it might arise) in the breast of a good man, and one who would be willing to lay down his life in proof of his belief in Christ’s promises. It might arise, not because he felt any doubt, when his mind turned calmly to the subject; not because he was hesitating what should be the main principle of his life; but because his experience had told him, that there are many times in the life of man when the mind does not fully exert itself; when habit and impressions rule us, in a manner, in its stead. And when so many of our impressions must be earthly, and as our impressions colour our habits, is it not natural (I do not say wise, but is it not natural) to desire some one forcible unearthly impression, which might, on the other side, colour our habits, and so influence us at those times when the mind, almost by the necessity of our condition, cannot directly interpose its own deliberate decision as our authority?
No doubt the wish to which I have been alluding is not one which our reason would sanction; but it expresses in a very lively and striking manner a want which is most true and real, although it proposes an impossible remedy. But the question cannot but occur to us, Can it be that our heavenly Father, who knows whereof we are made, should have intended us to live wholly by faith in this world? That is, Can it have been his will that all visible signs of himself should be withdrawn from us; and that we should be left only with the record and the evidence of his mighty works done in our behalf in past times; and with that other evidence of his wisdom and power which is afforded by the wonders of his creation?
We look into the Scriptures and we learn that such was not his will. We were to live by faith, indeed, with, respect to the unseen world, there the sign given was to be for ever only the sign of Christ’s resurrection. But yet it was not designed that the evidence of Christ’s having redeemed us should be sought for only in the records of the past; he purposed that there should be a living record, a record that might speak to our senses as well as to our reason; that should continually present us with impressions of the reality of Christ’s salvation; and so might work upon the habits of our life, as insensibly as the air we breathe. This living witness, which should last till Christ came again, was to be no other than his own body instinct with his own Spirit–his people, the temple of the Holy Ghost, his holy universal Church.
If we consider for a moment, this would entirely meet the want of which I have been speaking. It is possible, certainly, to look upon the face of nature without being reminded of God; yet it is surely true, that in the outward creation, in the order of the seasons, the laws of the heavenly bodies, the wonderful wisdom and goodness displayed in the constitution of every living thing in its order, there is a tendency at least to impress us with, the thought of God, if nothing else obstructed it. But there is a constant obstruction in the state of man. Looking at men, hearing them, considering them, it is not only possible not to be reminded of God; but their very tendency is to exclude him from our minds, because the moral workmanship which is so predominant in them has assuredly not had God for its author. We all in our dealings with one another, lead each other away from God. We present to each other’s view what seems to be a complete world of our own, in which God is not. We see a beginning, a middle, and an end; we see faculties for acquiring knowledge, and for receiving enjoyment; and earth furnishes knowledge to the one and enjoyment to the other. We see desires, and we see the objects to which they are limited; we see that death removes men from all these objects, and consistently with this, we observe, that death is generally regarded as the greatest of all evils. Man’s witness, then, as far as it goes, is against the reality of God and of eternity. His life, his language, his desires, his understanding appear, when we look over the world, to refer to no being higher than himself, to no other state of things than that of which sight testifies.
Now, Christ’s Church, the living temple of the Holy Ghost, puts in the place of this natural and corrupt man, whose witness is against God, another sort of man, redeemed and regenerate, whose whole being breathes a perpetual witness of God. Consider, again, what we should see in such a Church. We should see a beginning, a middle, but the end is not yet visible; we should see, besides the faculties for knowledge and enjoyment which were receiving their gratification daily, other faculties of both kinds, whose gratification was as yet withheld; we should see desires not limited to any object now visible or attainable. We should see death looked to as the gate by which these hitherto unobtained objects were to be sought for; and we should hear it spoken of, not as the greatest of evils, but as an event solemn, indeed, and painful to nature, but full of blessing and of happiness. We should see love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance; a constitution of nature as manifestly proclaiming its author to be the God of all holiness and loving-kindness, as the wonderful structure of our eyes or hands declares them to be the work of the God of all wisdom and power. We should thus see in all our fellow-men, not only as much, but far more than in the constitution of the lower animals, or of the plants, or of the heavenly bodies, a witness of God and of eternity. Their whole lives would be a witness; their whole conversation would be a witness; their outward and more peculiar acts of worship would then bear their part in harmony with all the rest. Every day would the voices of the Church be heard in its services of prayer and thanksgiving; every day would its members renew their pledges of faithfulness to Christ, and to one another, upon partaking together the memorials of his sacrifice.
What could we desire more than such a living witness as this? What sign in the sky, what momentary appearance of a spirit from the unseen world, could so impress us with the reality of God, as this daily worshipping in his living temple; this daily sight, of more than the Shechinah of old, even of his most Holy Spirit, diffusing on every side light and blessing? And what is now become of this witness? can names, and forms, and ordinances, supply its place? can our unfrequent worship, our most seldom communion, impress on us an image of men living altogether in the presence of God, and in communion with Christ? But before we dwell on this, we may, while considering the design of the true Church of Christ, well understand how such excellent things should be spoken of it, and how it should have been introduced into the Creed itself, following immediately after the mention of the Holy Ghost. That holy universal Church was to be the abiding witness of Christ’s love and of Christ’s promises; not in its outward forms only, for they by themselves are not a living witness; they cannot meet our want–to have God and heavenly things made real to us; but in its whole spirit, by which renewed man was to bear as visibly the image of God, as corrupted man had lost it. This was the sure sign that Christ had appointed to abide until his coming again; this sign, as striking as the burning bush, would compel us to observe; would make us sure that the place whereon we stand is holy ground.
Then follows the question: With this sign lost in its most essential points, how can we supply its place? and how can we best avail ourselves of those parts of it which still remain? and how can we each endeavour to build up a partial and most imperfect imitation of it, which may yet, in some sort, serve to supply our great want, and remind us daily of God? This opens a wide field for thought, to those who are willing to follow it; but much of it belongs to other occasions rather than this: the practical part of it,–the means of most imperfectly supplying the want of God’s own appointed sign, a true and living universal Church, shall be the subject of my next Lecture.
LECTURE XXIX.
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PSALM cxxxvii. 4.
_How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land_?
This was said by the exiles of Jerusalem, when they were in the land of their captivity in Babylon. There is no reason to suppose that their condition was one of bondage, as it had been in Egypt: the nations removed by conquest, under the Persian kings, from their own country to another land, were no otherwise ill-treated; they had new homes given them in which they lived unmolested; only they were torn away from their own land, and were as sojourners in a land of strangers. But the peculiar evil of this state was, that they were torn away from the proper seat of their worship. The Jew in Babylon might have his own home, and his own land to cultivate, as he had in Judaea; but nothing could replace to him the loss of the temple at Jerusalem: there alone could the morning and evening sacrifices be offered; there alone could the sin-offering for the people be duly made. Banished from the temple, therefore, he was deprived also of the most solemn part of his religion; he was, as it were, exiled from God; and the worship of God, as it was now left to him,–that is, the offering up of prayers and praises,–was almost painful to him, as it reminded him so forcibly of his changed condition.
Such also, in some respects, was to be the state of the Christian Church after our Lord’s ascension. The only acceptable sacrifice was now that of their great High Priest interceding for them in the presence of the Father: heaven was their temple, and they were far removed from it upon earth: they, too, like the Jews in Babylon, were a little society by themselves living in the midst of strangers. “Our citizenship,” says St. Paul to the Philippians, “is in heaven:” here they were not citizens, but sojourners. Why, then, should not the early Christians have joined altogether in the feeling of the Jews at Babylon? why should not they, too, have felt and said, “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”
The answer is contained in what I said last Sunday; because Christ had not left them comfortless or forsaken, but was come again to them by his Holy Spirit; because God was dwelling in the midst of them; because they were not exiles from the temple of God, but were themselves become God’s temple; because through the virtue of the one offering for sin once made, but for ever presented before God by their High Priest in heaven, they, in God’s temple on earth, were presenting also their daily and acceptable sacrifice, the sacrifice of themselves; because also, though as yet they were a small society in a land of strangers, yet the stone formed without hands was to become a mighty mountain, and cover the whole earth: what was now the land of strangers was to become theirs; the whole earth should be full of the knowledge of the Lord; the kingdoms of the world were to become his kingdom; and thus earth, redeemed from the curse of sin, was again to be so blessed that God’s servants living upon it should find it no place of exile.
But if this, in its reality, does not now exist; if, although God’s temple be on earth, the appointed sacrifice in it is not offered, the living sacrifice of ourselves; if the society has, by spreading, become weak, and the kingdoms of the earth are Christ’s kingdoms in name alone; are we, then, come back once more to the condition of the Jews in Babylon? are we exiles from God, living amongst strangers? and must we, too, say, with the prophet, “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”
This was the question which I proposed to answer: What can we do to make our condition unlike that of exiles from God: to restore that true sign of his presence amongst us, the living fire of his Holy Spirit pervading every part of his temple? I mean, what can we do as individuals? for the question in any other sense is not to be asked or answered here. But we, each of us, must have felt, at some time or other, our distance from God. Put the idea in what form or what words we will, we must–every one of us who has ever thought seriously at all–we must regret that there is not a stronger and more abiding influence over us, to keep us from evil, and to turn us to good.
Now, the vestiges of Christ’s church left among us are chiefly these: our prayers together, whether in our families or in this place; our reading of the Scriptures together; our communion, rare as it is, in the memorials of the body and blood of Christ our Saviour. These are the vestiges of that which was designed to be with us always, and in every part of our lives, the holy temple of God, his living church; but which now presents itself to us only at particular times, and places, and actions; in our worship and in our joint reading of the Scriptures, and in our communion.
It will be understood at once why I have not spoken here of prayer and reading the Scriptures by ourselves alone. Most necessary as these are to us, yet they do not belong to the helps ministered to us by the church; they belong to us each as individuals, and in these respects we must be in the same state everywhere: these were enjoyed by the Jews even in their exile in Babylon. But the church acts upon us through one another, and therefore the vestiges of the church can only be sought for in what we do, not alone, but together. I, therefore, noticed only that prayer, and that reading of the Scriptures, in which many of us took part in common.
Such common prayer takes place amongst us every morning and evening, as well as on Sundays within these walls. Whenever we meet on those occasions, we meet as Christ’s church. Now, conceive how the effect of such meeting depends on the conduct of each of us. It is not necessary to notice behaviour openly profane and disorderly: this does not occur amongst us. We see, however, that if it did occur in any meeting for the purposes of religious worship, such a meeting would do us harm rather than good: its witness to us would not be in favour of God, but against him. But take another case: when we are assembled for prayers, suppose our behaviour, without being disorderly, was yet so manifestly indifferent as to be really indecent; that is, suppose every countenance showed such manifest signs of weariness, and impatience, and want of interest in what was going forward, that it was evident there was no general sympathy with any feeling of devotion. Would not the effect here also be injurious? would not such a meeting also shock and check our approaches towards God? would it not rather convince us that God was really far distant from us, instead of showing that he was in the midst of us?
Ascend one step higher. Our behaviour is neither disorderly, nor manifestly indifferent: it is decent, serious, respectful. What is the